Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill: (Georgian Series) (45 page)

She made a point of receiving him with very special favour and during the evening was seen to kiss her fan to him. This was deliberate and calculated to annoy the Prince of Wales, which it undoubtedly did. The inevitable crisis came when the Prince was partnering his sister, the Princess Royal, in a country dance. The Prince and his sister must trip between two rows of dancers and the Prince must dance with each lady in turn and the Princess with each gentleman.

When the Prince reached Colonel Lennox and his partner he bowed low to the lady and said: ‘Madam, I crave your pardon, but this dance is over. This is not meant as an insult to you. I think you will understand.’ And with that he took the hand of his astonished sister and led her back to the Queen.

The Queen said: ‘But what has happened? Your Highness is tired?’

‘By no means,’ replied the Prince.

‘Then you find it too hot?’

‘Madam, in such company it is impossible not to find it too hot.’

‘I suppose you wish me to break up the ball.’

‘I do wish it, Madam.’

The Prince bowed and left the ballroom and the Queen had no alternative but to bring the ball to a close.

In a way, a victory for the Prince.

He went back to Carlton House, angry and dissatisfied.

He knew what he would do. He would leave all this – and go to Maria in Brighton.

There was no lack of warmth in the welcome he received at Brighton. Everywhere he went he was cheered, and the people were glad to see him back. There he could forget his troubles, for his friends rallied round him and sought to make him forget his disappointment at not having acquired the Regency and the humiliations he had suffered at the hands of his parents.

There was Maria, comforting and motherly – his Dear Love waiting to give him her devotion. There was his Marine Pavilion, always a joy, and he delighted in planning new alterations to it; there were his friends. The Sheridans were there and the Barry family ready to amuse him with the wildest pranks. The Lades came to greet him and talk of horses; he was surrounded by his old friends, the only one who was absent was Charles James Fox. He was indisposed, he wrote to the Prince, and was living quietly for a while at Chertsey.

The King had gone to Weymouth, there to recuperate and enjoy a little sea bathing, taking with him the Queen and the three elder princesses.

Weymouth! thought the Prince with a sneer. How different from fashionable Brighton.

Brighton was wonderful. The sun seemed to shine endlessly; every morning there was old Smoker waiting to superintend the Prince’s bathing, always with a wry remark to amuse him; and then there were balls and banquets, the strolling along by the sea and the races. Always the races. He enjoyed driving out of Brighton with Maria in his carriage drawn by four grey ponies and when they reached Lewes there he would be received by the High Sheriff of the County; he gambled recklessly; he was constantly in the company of the Lades; he was seen more and more often with the reckless Barrys; he seemed determined to enjoy every minute of that summer.

‘Hellgate’, the eldest of the Barry brothers, was constantly thinking up the wildest diversions to amuse the Prince. He often behaved like a madman and liked to drive through the streets cracking his whip and lashing out at the houses as he passed; a favourite ‘joke’ of his was to ride from London to Brighton with his brothers and shout as they went ‘Murder!’ ‘Rape!’ in such high-pitched voices that they would give the impression that a female was being abducted. If anyone stopped them in order to rescue the woman they imagined was being abducted, the brothers amused themselves by thrashing the would-be rescuer. Their idea of fun almost always included physical violence in which the Prince had no wish to partake; but the wildness of the brothers amused him, and although he did not share their cruel adventures, he liked to hear of them.

Not so Maria. She wished to be gay and enjoy those summer months, but as she told the Prince, she could find no pleasure in Hellgate’s kind of fun.

Instead she had arranged that the Old Theatre in Duke Street should be used by amateur actors who believed they could do well on the stage if given a chance. Let them act their plays, she said, and London managers could come down and watch them and perhaps discover their talent. The people of Brighton would provide them with the audiences they needed. And since it was her idea that this should be done, they must, she told the Prince, support the theatre.

Often she and the Prince could be seen together in their box and the antics of the actors so delighted them, unpractised as they were, that they often laughed until the tears rolled down their cheeks.

A much better way of enjoying life, commented Maria, than
the sort of dangerous horseplay indulged in by Hellgate Barrymore.

That summer the refugees were arriving from France, for that country was now groaning under the onslaught of fearsome revolution.

The Prince and Mrs Fitzherbert received them warmly and the influence of French aristocracy was obvious in Brighton.

Those were happy days for Maria and she felt a determination to enjoy them to the full. She sensed change. She was thirty-four – no longer young, and she was growing fat. So was the Prince; but the six years between them seemed more marked now than they had before. Perhaps it was because he so enjoyed the company of people like the Barrys and the Lades, and those who wished to please the Prince must enjoy his pleasures. It was no use urging him to spend less recklessly; she herself had her money difficulties, for she had added her resources to his and received an income from him. This he often forgot to pay and her expenses were prodigious. This worried her, for she was the sort of woman who left to herself would have lived within her means, for the thought of owing money was abhorrent to her; and yet since she must maintain her royal style how could she do anything but fall into debt?

But for one glorious summer at Brighton she must forget such things. She must try to keep up with the pace set by her spectacular husband. She must dance, ride, laugh and be merry; and she must be there to comfort him when he needed her. Because that was what he expected of her.

She became more and more aware of the clouds … distant so far, but nevertheless showing themselves on the horizon. He was not faithful. Maria heard whispers of his amours. But he always came back to her, and although he never mentioned his infidelities she sensed his contrition. She was his Dear Love, as he constantly addressed her. She was there to receive him back into the home after his adventures. Maria must know that however many women there were in his life she would always be the first and most important of them all – his Dear Love – the woman whom he had defied the law to marry, the woman for whom he had once been ready to resign his crown.

It was her dream that she would lure him away from the
friends who were of no use to him – the profligate Barry brothers, the eccentric Major Hanger, the coarse Letty Lade and her husband. Fox would have been a better friend. As for Sheridan he had become as wild as the Barrys and the Lades, following the Prince into many a foolish adventure, drinking, gambling … and she supposed amusing themselves with women.

Sometimes he would be unconscious when they brought him home. How she hated his drinking! It was humiliating to have to share in his horseplay and she avoided it whenever possible. When she heard him coming in with his friends in a merry mood after an evening’s drinking she would hide herself perhaps under a sofa or in the heavy curtains at the windows hoping that, finding the room empty, they would go away. It was no use. The Prince would cry: ‘Where is my Maria? Where is my Dear Love. Come out, Maria, if you are in hiding.’ And then they would search the room, pushing their swords and canes behind curtains, under sofas until they found her and drew her out – when with shouts of triumph they would expect her to indulge in whatever sort of maudlin fun they fancied.

There was undoubtedly change.

She was anxious, too, about his position with his family. He had always been in conflict with his father, but it was particularly disconcerting that now his mother should be his enemy. She had heard that the Queen hated her son so much that she was ready to do anything to bring about his downfall. There was a rumour that she, Maria Fitzherbert, was to be accused of praemunire for violating the Royal Marriage Act by going through a form of marriage with the Prince of Wales.

She reminded herself that she had known that if she became involved with the Prince of Wales she was going to be very vulnerable to attacks from all directions.

‘Why did I?’ she asked herself.

The answer was that she loved him.

Yes, she did. She must face the fact. Perhaps it would have been easier if she had not. Perhaps she would have been wiser in her conduct towards him. Perhaps when she heard of those infidelities she would have left him.

But how could she? She considered herself married to him;
she had sworn to love, honour and obey him; and she was a woman who kept her vows.

And fundamentally – she loved him. Even sensible women did not stop loving a man who they knew was not worthy of that love.

He could charm her with his gaiety, with his gallantries, with his gracious manners, with his protestations of devotion. They were insincere, but she made herself believe them because she wanted to. She had heard a remark Sheridan had made of him which had wounded her deeply, the more so because she knew it to be true.

‘The Prince is too much every lady’s man to be the man of any lady.’

How true! she thought. How sadly true!

There was a not very characteristic recklessness about the manner in which she determined to enjoy that summer.

Debts. They were her constant thoughts.

One morning she was awakened by her maid in her house at Pall Mall to be told that two gentlemen were below and insisting on admittance.

‘Two gentlemen?’ she asked. Was it a joke of the Prince’s?

Miss Pigot came running into the room, her face long and indignant.

‘It’s the bailiffs,’ she cried. ‘They’re demanding immediate payment of this.’

‘This’ was a bill for one thousand eight hundred and thirty-five pounds.

‘Oh, Pig, how did I accumulate such a debt?’

‘I don’t know, but we’ve got to find it unless we want these men with us for weeks.’

It was even worse than she had anticipated as she soon discovered. The debt had been long outstanding and her creditors would wait no longer. Unless she could find the required sum before the day was out she would be conveyed to the debtors’ prison.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, call the Prince. Go to Carlton House at once and tell him what plight I am in.’

He came at once. That was one of his most lovable qualities. He would always be gallant and a lady in distress would
receive his immediate compassion. A lady in distress! She was his wife. And the debts incurred had been through entertaining him.

He was with her in as short a time as it took to come from Carlton House.

‘My dear, dear love, what has happened? These wretched people are bothering you.’

Prison! For his dear love! It was ridiculous.

But they would have to find the money, Maria told him.

‘Leave it to me,’ he replied, embracing her; he was always lighthearted about money. He never took it seriously. Debts? Oh, they were one of the little pinpricks in the life of royalty. One incurred them and they were settled.

Perhaps for princes, Maria reminded him. But what of people like herself?

‘No one is going to bother my dear love,’ he told her. ‘I will go with all speed to the moneylenders.’

He was back not long afterwards with the money.

Beaming with satisfaction he paid the debt and the house was free of its unwelcome visitors.

He then explained that the Jews had refused to advance him the money until some of his own outstanding commitments had been met.

‘So, my dear, what do you think I did. I’ve pledged some of the jewels and plate from Carlton House.’

‘Your jewels and plate!’

This was a situation that appealed to him, with tears in his eyes he declared that he would pledge his life for his dear love.

He stayed with her; they laughed; they were lovers as they had been in the first days after the marriage ceremony.

She was as happy as she had rarely been.

But those were uneasy times.

The Quarrel

EARLY THE FOLLOWING
year the matter of the Prince’s debts had become so acute that he had no alternative but to appeal once more to his father.

The King received him with sorrow. Since his illness he wanted to be reconciled to his son and as he himself had become more mellow, the reconciliation might have taken place had not the Queen been determined to present her son to his father in the worst possible light.

But the quarrel between the Court and Carlton House was having disastrous results on the Monarchy and both the King and the Prince realized that it was unwise to show their dislike of each other so blatantly. This was brought home to them afresh with news of the terrible things which were happening across the Channel.

The Princess Royal, now twenty-five years of age, was aware of the harm the family quarrel was doing and tried to reason with her mother, but the Queen, having so recently acquired her influence, was not going to allow her daughter to interfere with it. Her dislike of the Prince of Wales was like a disease. It possessed her and it seemed there was no cure. She was delighted at the scurrilous reports of his liaison with Mrs Fitzherbert which filled the newspapers, and when the Princess Royal pointed out that that lady had always behaved with the greatest decorum the Queen poohpoohed the suggestion and said that of course the woman was a scheming adventuress who hoped to take advantage of the Prince of Wales’s folly. When Maria brought an action against one pamphleteer the Queen read the accounts with glee; but when the writer was fined and imprisoned and the affair appeared to be a warning to others not to incur further penalties, the Queen was disappointed.