Goddess of the Green Room: (Georgian Series) (39 page)

The King, always moved by a show of affection from his people, went to the front of the box and stood there bowing and smiling.

Then suddenly a man stood up and pointed a horse-pistol straight at the King.

There were shouts of: ‘Stop him!’ And at that moment the shot was fired.

The Princesses screamed; the people in the theatre shouted and leaped to their feet; the man with the pistol was seized by some members of the audience and the orchestra. Everyone was crowding round him.

The King stood erect.

‘I am unhurt,’ he said.

Pandemonium had broken out in the theatre. The man who had tried to kill the King was hustled away but the noise continued until Mrs Jordan came on to the stage.

‘Your Majesties,’ she said, holding up her hand for silence. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen. The man who fired the shot has been taken away. There is nothing more to fear.’

The Queen said: ‘Perhaps we should leave.’

‘Nonsense,’ said the King, ‘we came to hear the play and we shall stay to hear it.’

Mrs Jordan was looking at the royal box. No doubt waiting for the royal assent for the play to continue.

He nodded to her smiling; she curtsied and cried: ‘Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, ladies and gentlemen, we shall now play for your enjoyment
She Would and She Would Not
.’

It was an evening to be remembered. No one could help but admire the cool courage of the King. He looked younger and in better health after the shooting than he had been before. In such a situation he had full confidence for he knew how to act. Courage was a quality he had never lacked; it was statecraft that baffled him.

Dorothy played as well as she ever had. She held the audience
which was not easy after such a scare. Everyone wanted to talk about it, to ask who the man was, why he had shot at the King, how near he had come to killing him. It all seemed so much more interesting than the fate of characters in a play.

Behind the scenes the Duke of Clarence was waiting for Dorothy when she came in between playing. It was a man called John Hadfield, he told her. He was obviously another of those madmen who got it into their heads from time to time that they should kill the King.

‘His Majesty is magnificent,’ said Dorothy emotionally. ‘I feel tonight that I have indeed played before a King.’

Sheridan said that such an event in his theatre must not go un-noted. When the last curtain calls had been taken he came on the stage to say how happy everyone present was that there had been no tragic outcome of that unfortunate affray. No one need be alarmed. The culprit was under arrest. But they were a happy house tonight because they had His Majesty the King and Her Majesty the Queen with them and what might have been a tragedy had turned out to be merely an incident. His Majesty’s cool courage was an example to them all and he believed that they should all stand up and sing the national anthem with special fervour.

Because they would all wish to show their loyalty and devotion to His Majesty he had this very evening composed an extra verse which he was sure every man and woman present tonight would feel, and want His Majesty to know they felt, so he had had the new verse printed and it would now be handed round that they might all rise and sing another verse to the national anthem.

They rose and sang and the King stood up, tears falling from his eyes while his loyal subjects expressed their delight in his escape by singing from the bottom of their hearts the national anthem with Sheridan’s additional verse:

‘From every latent foe,

From the assassin’s blow,

God save the King!

O’er him thine arm extend,

For Britain’s sake defend,

Our father, prince and friend,

God save the King!’

People were weeping openly, embracing each other and smiling up at the royal box.

The King had not been so happy for many years. His people loved him. A madman had tried to shoot at him and because he had failed his dear people were rejoicing. Pretty little Mrs Jordan – William’s woman – was on the stage leading the singing in her enchanting voice; even the Queen was touched.

It was an inspiring evening and he would not let them be too hard on the man who had shot at him. A madman, they said; he had a great desire to be kind to madmen.

And when he returned to St James’s it was to hear that the Princess Amelia when she had heard that he had been shot at had fallen into a fit and could not be comforted until she saw for herself that her dear father was safe.

He went to her at once. He embraced her – his darling, the best loved of them all.

‘I’m safe,’ he said. ‘No need to fret. I’m back. All went well. Mrs Jordan is a delightful woman. Plump and pretty. Acts well, sings even better. And even that villain Sheridan composed a very nice addition to the national anthem and they all sang it most loyally. Nothing to fret about, eh, what?’

So in spite of what might have been tragedy the night the King saw Dorothy in
She Would and She Would Not
was a great success for all except poor John Hadfield.

After that incident the relations between the King and his sons improved. They had all called at Buckingham House the following morning to take breakfast with their parents and to congratulate them on their lucky escape.

‘We don’t see enough of you, William,’ said his mother. ‘You must not forget your position entirely, you know.’

William thanked her for her kindness. He wanted to say that it was difficult for him to appear as much as he would wish when the lady whom he considered his wife could not be received at court as such.

The Queen understood perfectly and was implying that he should come without her.

The Prince of Wales was also affable to his father and the King to him, but the Queen could not help wondering what her son’s
real feelings were. She had a notion that his fingers were itching to take the crown. And the poor King’s mental state was not improved by incidents like that of last night, however bravely he might stand up to them.

William was thoughtful as he left Buckingham House. He would go to some functions; he owed it to his parents and to his position. As long as it did not interfere too much with life at Bushy. George was happily reunited with Mrs Fitzherbert and was enjoying one of those honeymoon periods during which he was promising himself that they would never be parted again.

He was not very good company at such times.

William left his brothers and went down to the House of Lords where Lord Auckland’s bill on divorce was being discussed. He made one of the long boring speeches for which he was becoming notorious, full of allusions and quotations which made him feel he was indeed a statesman.

He spoke against divorce and everyone listened to him in amazement for they knew that when he left the House of Lords he would drive down to Bushy to live in comfortable domesticity with the kind of woman to whom he referred in his speech as ‘lapsed’.

It was scarcely likely that this would pass unnoticed. His speech on that day gave rise to a fresh spate of lampoons which once more called attention to his irregular union and the affairs of all the brothers, so that the popularity which had risen through the incidents in Hyde Park and Drury Lane was forgotten.

The royal family was making itself ridiculous again.

On the road to Canterbury

DOROTHY WAS WORRIED
about Fanny, and William was a little irritated because of her preoccupation over the girl.

‘I declare,’ he said petulantly, ‘that in your eyes Madam Fanny is more important than the rest of us put together.’

She assured him that it was not true. But he was often sullen about Fanny.

She had to think of Fanny’s dowry and when he needed money she became, as he said, almost a usurer, making a bond with him, so that she might be sure that the money was paid back by him when Fanny would need her dowry.

‘It’s simply that I feel I must do the best for poor Fanny,’ she said.

‘Poor Fanny!’ grumbled William. ‘I’d call her rich Fanny.’

How could she make him see that Fanny had always been the outsider? Richard Ford had loved his two little girls – not enough to marry their mother but still he had cared for them. As for the FitzClarence family they were petted by everyone. Their father concerned himself with them; their uncles came to see them; and the Prince of Wales himself was particularly fond of young George, his namesake. The point was, she tried to make William understand, Fanny did not get the attention that the rest of them did.

‘I always feel I have to make it up to poor Fanny.’

Fanny had taken a great fancy to Gyfford Lodge, a house on Twickenham Common, which stood in pleasant gardens surrounded by a high wall. It had belonged to the Marchioness of Tweedale before her death and it was now empty and to let. The rent was fifty pounds a year. Not a large sum. And how pleasant for Fanny to have a house which she could call her own!

She should choose her own decorations and they would select the furniture by degrees. It should be Fanny’s own house and she should live there with a servant or two; Dorothy guessed that she would want to invite her sisters to stay with her now and then, but the invitation would come from her.

Fanny was enchanted with the idea and for a while she was happy with Gyfford Lodge.

William did not like it, though.

‘Damned unnecessary expense,’ he said, and a quarrel flared up before Dorothy realized it.

‘It happens to be my money.’

William was angry because he had lapsed with the allowance he had pledged himself to pay her.

She was talking like some low scribbler, he said. He’d be damned if he’d ever ask her to lend him another penny, even though
he was prepared to pay back anything he had from her. Did she ever consider what she’d had from him? What he’d given up for her? Why he was cut off in a way from his own family. He ought to be going to court; he ought to be serving with the Navy. Why did she think he was denied a place in the Navy? Because he was out of favour with his father. And why? Because he had upset them all by living with an actress who displayed herself on a stage in breeches for anyone who had the price of a ticket to gloat over.

This was too much for Dorothy.

‘Did I want to go on acting? I should have been happy to give it all up. Why do I have to go on? Because we’d be in debt… more than we are already… if I didn’t. You may be a royal Prince but you still need money… 
my
money!’

It was too much. The Duke walked out to the stables, took his horse and rode off in a rage, while Dorothy sat down and wept. Her head was aching, her eyes ablaze with anger. And when she saw her reflection in the mirror, she said: ‘I’m growing old and fat. He no longer cares for me.’

She lay on her bed and wept until he came in and found her.

He saw the traces of tears on her cheeks; she saw those on his. Like all the brothers he shed tears when disturbed, though not as readily – nor as elegantly – as the Prince of Wales.

She rose from the bed and went to stand close to him. He put his arms round her.

‘We must not quarrel, Dora,’ he said.

‘It was my Irish temper.’

‘It was my arrogance.’

‘Oh, my love. What is there for me without you and the little ones?’

‘And for me? There would be nothing in my life without you.’

‘You are a King’s son. You could be at court. There could be a great future for you.’

‘My future is here. You are a successful actress. Without us you could be rich, feted. You need not work so hard.’

‘I would throw it all away – all the success and applause – if I might live here in peace for the rest of my life.’

They laughed and clung to each other.

‘I could not believe that we were really quarrelling. It was like the end of the world.’

‘It would be the end of my world if we could not mend our quarrels.’

‘What was it all about? Something silly… something of no importance.’

‘So it is over.’

‘It is over.’

And afterwards she thought: It was money. It’s always money… money and Fanny.

She was back to the old routine. Working at Drury Lane, snatching what time she could to go down to Bushy. Now and then doing provincial tours because they were profitable and they needed the money.

She was soon pregnant again.

‘I must be the most fertile woman on Earth!’ she told the Duke.

‘I know one to equal you – the Queen!’

‘She had fifteen, I believe.’

‘Elizabeth was your sixth.’

‘You’re forgetting Fanny, Dodee and Lucy. Nine with them.’

It was often that he forgot those three, she thought a little resentfully and then chided herself inwardly. It was natural. It was his own little FitzClarences who counted with him.

‘And this new one will make ten. Not a bad tally.’

‘It’s time I stopped having children. It’s time I gave up the theatre.’

‘It won’t be long now. We’ll work towards it. I look forward to it, too. How pleasant it will be when you’re not constantly running away from us.’

‘I long to be home more. Just think, little George is eight now. I feel they are growing up a great deal of the time without me.’

But when the time of birth grew near it meant an enforced rest and how happy she was to drive down to Bushy and say to herself: Now for a few months I shall be with the family.

She came down in January of that year to await the birth of the child and on a bleak February day the seventh little FitzClarence was born – another boy to delight his father. They called him Adolphus and caring for him, having the others about her, with frequent visits from the girls, Dorothy was happy again.

But she could not enjoy the peaceful existence for long. There were more engagements to be filled; and two incidents in the next months made her wonder whether she and William should not try to make some arrangement whereby their expenses could be cut by half and to save her from having to work so hard and continuously.