Princesses (19 page)

Nor were the younger princesses exempt from Miss Burney's scrutiny. Princess Sophia, ‘curtseying and colouring', came looking for her mother's dog Badine, which the Queen was accustomed to leave in Miss Burney's care while she was at early prayers. The author begged permission to carry the basket to the Queen's room, but Princess Sophia insisted on taking it herself, ‘with a mingled modesty and good breeding extremely striking in one so young'. Princess Mary Miss Burney encountered earlier the same morning in the Queen's Lodge when the Princess was ‘capering upstairs to her elder sisters'. She ‘instantly stopped and then, coming up … enquired
how her mother's attendant did, with all the elegant composure of a woman of maturest age'. Miss Burney had already seen how three-year-old Princess Amelia could be ‘decorous and dignified when called upon to act
en princesse
to any strangers, as if conscious of her high rank, and the importance of condescendingly
sustaining
it'. Now she reflected: ‘Amazingly well are all these children brought up. The readiness and the grace of their civilities, even in the midst of their happiest wildnesses and freedom, are at once a surprise and a charm to all who see them.' But the princesses were also trained to be civil when in the midst of their wildest misery.

Miss Burney saw how the Princess Royal performed many secretarial tasks for her mother, including, on one occasion, efficiently labelling a ‘new collection of German books, just sent over', while keeping up a conversation. In the spring of 1788, the Queen wrote to her botanical mentor, Lord Bute, offering him ‘a sight of the beginning of an herbal from impressions on black paper'. The Princess Royal and she together, she explained, meant to attempt this work of pressing plants – ‘not only the leaves, but the flowers and stalks, which I believe had not been done before with any success'. With the summer before them, the Queen declared blithely, and with the
assistance
of Mr Aiton, the royal gardener, she hoped to take her specimens ‘quite in the botanical way'.

With the encouragement of Sir Joseph Banks, director of the royal gardens at Kew, and of the head gardener there, the Princess Royal had already begun to copy, with growing skill, nature in the form of botanical specimens. She began with a wavering painting of a lily. Soon she was drawing parts of the flower as well, and writing Latin inscriptions beneath flower paintings, copied from the engravings illustrating John Miller's
An Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus.
‘There is not a plant in the Gardens of Kew … but has either been drawn by her gracious Majesty, or some of the Princesses, with a grace and skill which reflect on these personages the highest honour,' wrote the author of
The New Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus
a decade later. Mrs Delany's astonishing flower mosaics cut from paper were a shining example. And no doubt Lady Charlotte Finch, who took up botany, and Miss Hamilton, who was an enthusiast, encouraged their work. Confirming royal interest in this new branch of the natural sciences, the Queen, in 1784, had accepted the dedication of Lord Bute's
Botanical Tables:
‘I am much flattered to be thought capable of so rational, beautiful and enticing amusement, and shall make it my endeavour not to forfeit his good opinion by pursuing this study steadily, as I am persuaded this botanical book will more than encourage me in
doing it.'

She appointed the Princess Royal her assistant in the spring of 1788, as the Princess's ‘natural steadiness never makes her shun labour or difficulty'. She added, ‘I do not mean any reflection upon my other daughters, for all are equally amiable in their different ways.' But she and Royal had left the initial execution to M. Deluc: ‘The specimens of plants being rather large, it requires more strength than my arms will afford, but in the smaller kind I constantly assist.'

How long would the Princess Royal be content to act as her mother's secretary and ‘scholar'? She was never at her best in her mother's company. Furthermore one observer described her as ‘born to preside', which she could certainly never do at her mother's Court. ‘Timidity, with a want of affectionate confidence in the Queen's commands and wishes, always brought her Royal Highness forward as ill at ease,' wrote another courtier, ‘while out of the Queen's presence she was a different being.' Mrs William Harcourt, Lady Harcourt's sister-in-law, added: ‘Princess Royal has excessive sensibility, a great sense of injury, a great sense of her own situation, much timidity: without wanting resolution, she wants presence of mind, from the extreme quickness of her feelings, which show themselves in her perpetual blushes. She has excellent judgment, wonderful memory, and great application … She is unjustly considered proud, and a peculiarity in her temper is mistaken for less
sweetness.'

The King and Queen had both been against the matches proposed so far, but they could not hope to fend off for much longer the matter of the Princess Royal's marriage – not now that she was rising twenty-two. Her letters to her brothers make it clear that marriage was on her mind. Did her ‘timidity' make it impossible for her to speak of it? Or was it an unmentionable subject?

All agree that, whatever the Princess Royal's relationship with her mother, she dearly loved her father, ‘whom she resembled in many points of character, and she was his comfort and [his]
darling.'
On 3 July 1788 she therefore wrote from Windsor to her brother Augustus in a less collected state than usual to give a hurried family bulletin: they had stayed unusually long – a fortnight – at Kew, owing to an unexpected bilious attack that had seized the King.

My dear Augustus by this time knows how ill our dear papa has been. His complaint was very disagreeable and indeed alarming for the time that it lasted – the spasm beginning at three in the morning, and continuing till eight o'clock in the evening. He is, thank God, perfectly recovered, but is advised by Sir George Baker to drink the Cheltenham waters, which are particularly good for all bilious complaints. We are to go to Cheltenham on
the twelfth. Lord Fauconberg has lent papa his house. Lady Weymouth, Mr Digby and Colonel Gwynne are to be of the party, also Miss Planta and Miss Burney. Mary, Sophia and Amelia are to remain at Kew during our absence with all those that belong to them.

The Queen wrote a supplementary letter to Prince Augustus the next day, ascribing her husband's ‘violent attacks' to ‘the dryness and heat of the season … everybody has been troubled by this complaint…'. More on her mind was the farmers' and country gentlemen's anxieties about the harvest in these arid conditions – and for once with reason, as she suggested. ‘Providentially' an abundance of rain had come in good time, and ‘everything bears a prosperous and plentiful
aspect.'

She could not have been more wrong. The kingdom was about to be plunged into chaos and confusion. But in an excellent frame of mind the small royal party, as described by the Princess Royal, set off for Cheltenham and in good hope that the King would soon be fully recovered. The patient himself, unperturbed by his ailment, had no doubt, he wrote to Prince Augustus, ‘that the efficacy of the waters which are not unlike those of Pyrmont, the salubrity of the air, the change of scene, privation of long conversations at St James's and, above all, the exercise of riding and good mutton will do what may be at present wanting'. And the King too was to be proved wrong.

‘Never did schoolboys enjoy tneir holidays equal to what we have
done,'
wrote the Queen after the July 1788 visit to
Cheltenham
. ‘The King went there without any guards,' which pleased the local people. ‘At various times have they thrown out that he was better guarded without troops walking among his subjects whose hearts were ready to
defend him …'

Lord Fauconberg's
house,
with a charming view of the Malvern Hills, had so few rooms that, even with only a skeleton staff accompanying the King and Queen and their elder daughters, Miss Planta had to take her tea with Miss Burney on a landing. All arrangements were rustic. When Miss Burney, plagued by
illness,
consulted an apothecary brought in to dose the Princess Royal for influenza, he thought mightily before suggesting a saline
draught
. On a visit
days
later to Worcester the Princess Royal divided the orgeat she had been given for her
own
influenza, and put half by Miss Burney's
bed
.

The royal family strolled ‘on the walks', and bought fairings and novelties which they distributed among their ladies and sent home to the younger
princesses
. At first, such was the curiosity of the local inhabitants about their royal visitors, the crowd around Lord Fauconberg's
house
was ‘one
head',
as, on the way, every town had ‘seemed all face'. But the extravagances of the initial welcome died down, and there was little to do in the little spa once the invalids of the party had walked at six in the morning across a couple of fields and an orchard to the wells to take their daily dose.

The King informed Sir George Baker in London that his bilious complaint was lessening, and enquired what that daily dose should be. Baker wrote, ‘no one except the drinker can possibly determine it. It is in general experienced to be a weak
purgative.'
Baker conceived that a pint drunk every morning would act on the bowels sufficiently, but if the King wished to drink more, he would not object unless sleepiness or headache followed. He did beg, however, that the King should not take strong exercise.
Fatigue, when taking the
waters,
was counter-productive, as it heated the constitution.

The King heeded Sir George to the extent of not riding his usual thirty miles a day. Instead, he embarked with his wife and daughters on a series of exhausting days out. Having written ahead to the Prince of Wales's former tutor Dr Hurd,
now
Bishop of Worcester, with warning of his intention to attend the Three Choirs Festival and visit the china manufactory there, the King with his womenfolk meanwhile surveyed the model jail and hospital at Gloucester, where an enormous crowd surrounded them. They travelled to Stroud, where they inspected every
stage
of the process for making jackets at a clothing manufactory. And they visited, in addition, various seats of the nobility. At Lord Coventry's house, Croome Court, the princesses sat stiff on stools with no backs, provided for them at the specific request of Lord Harcourt. But the formality of the visit abated when some young farmers, having found their way into Lord Coventry's cellar, clambered into the King's coach and sat there, despite remonstrances from coachman and postilions. The King, it was
known,
had a great fondness for the ‘harmless sportings' of country people, and no disciplinary action ensued.

One of the King's preoccupations at Cheltenham was a promised visit from his second son Prince Frederick, Duke of York. The Duke was loath to leave Oadands, the house near Weybridge on which he had just taken a lease. But the King was determined, and at last the Duke relented. Elated, the King was next concerned to have his son near at hand, but there was literally not a room to spare in the Fauconberg house. The King solved that difficulty by buying a sturdy timber house that stood on the outskirts of the town, and having it dismantled and re-erected on Lord Fauconberg's land. (He also caused a well to be dug in his host's garden, averring the quality of the water there to be infinitely superior to that in the celebrated wells a few miles off.) Unfortunately, for all the King's energy, the Duke stayed only one night, pressure of business forcing him to fly off again – in the direction of Newmarket races. For male companionship, the King instead took to raising his equerries from their beds at six in the morning with a holler.

The stay at Cheltenham was punctuated by the arrival of letters from Princess Mary and Princess Sophia at Kew, and even from Princess
Amelia,
who turned five there on 7 August. While the King and his daughters were taking the waters under Sir George Baker's direction, the doctor had another patient at Kew. Princess Mary had developed a ‘tumour' in her arm, and Mr Charles Hawkins – Caesar's son and Pennell's nephew, who had become the King's Serjeant-Surgeon on his father's
death
two years
before – had to operate. Princess Sophia wrote to her father in French, to thank him for a ‘charmante' present, and to add, ‘Amélie est enchantee de son joli cadeau … Le bras de ma chère Marie continue d'etre toujours le même et grâce à dieu elle ne souffre pas
beaucoup.'

Princess Mary wrote, too, describing her sufferings from her arm, or rather from the ‘part swelled up to my shoulder'. ‘How
happy
I was when I awoke to receive your kind letter and the beautiful present you were so good to send me. Amelia was so delighted to hear there was something for her,' she continued, ‘that she came upon my bed to receive it, and means to wear it
today.'

Princess Amelia made a sprawling attempt at a signature to a letter to her father this same day, which an attendant – probably Miss Gouldsworthy – acting as scribe and coach for the flood of information she had to give, wrote for her. ‘My dear Papa,' the letter ran, ‘I am very much obliged to you for the very pretty belt, and I am to wear it today when I dress. Pray give my duty to Mama, I hope you are quite well after the waters. Pray give my love to my sisters, and I hope when they come back that they will be very well. Minny [Princess Mary] feels pain when she puts on [the] poultice, I always do hold her hand … Pray tell Augusta and Elizabeth, I intend to write to them very soon, so I do to Princess Royal. Lady Ely and Mrs Bonfoy come today. My dear Papa I am your affectionate daughter Amelia.'

Sophia wrote again, in English this time. ‘My dear Papa, I am very much obliged to you for the charming letter you was so good as to write me, and for the charming descriptions it contains.' (The royal party was now at Worcester staying with Bishop Hurd for the choral festival.) She was very happy to hear that one Lady Reid had made acquaintance with General Gouldsworthy – Gouly's brother and the King's equerry – and she expected ‘to hear in a short time that he is gone to make her a visit'. Gouly desired her to send her duty to him ‘and is very much flattered at your remembrance of her'. But the burden of Sophia's letter was excitement. Princess Mary still being
hors de combat
following her operation, the younger sister had received permission to attend one of the children's balls that were held in private houses, at which boys and girls practised their dance steps in for-giving company. ‘I am very much obliged to you, my dear Papa, for letting me go to the ball and my dear Mary is so good as to say that she is very glad I am. Mr Hawkins has given her leave to come down stairs which you may suppose makes me very happy.'