Queen in Waiting: (Georgian Series) (50 page)

‘He has had a paralytic seizure,’ said the Queen. ‘That this should have happened here! My poor father. Send for the physicians at once.’

But before the physicians arrived the King had recovered. Almost immediately he seemed to know where he was and, reaching for his wig which had fallen off, put it on his head.

‘It is nothing,’ he said. ‘Here! Help me to my feet.’

With the aid of the King of Prussia and Lord Townsend he stood up.

‘I will conduct you to your apartments,’ he told his daughter.

‘Your Majesty…’

‘I will conduct you to your apartments,’ he repeated.

The assembly looked on in amazement while he did so.

Then he returned to his own apartments. There was no sign of paralysis.

‘It is nothing,’ was the verdict. ‘The King merely fainted.’

And after that, since it was his wish, no mention was made of the incident.

He was not inclined however to complete the negotiations for the double wedding.

‘I shall come back to Hanover,’ he told his daughter. ‘The children are young yet… too young for marriage.’

‘I hear Frederick already has a mistress in Hanover,’ pointed out Sophia Dorothea.

‘They are too young yet,’ said the King obstinately.

And that was all the satisfaction she could get.

The ghost of the old Leine Schloss

IN SPITE OF
the fact that the King had wished to keep the news of his collapse secret he was unable to do so, and accounts of it reached England.

The Prince received them exultantly, Caroline inwardly so, but outwardly she was more restrained than her husband.

George Augustus strode up and down his wife’s apartment, his wig awry, his blue eyes brilliant.

‘This is the end of him,’ he declared. ‘A paralytic seizure at his age!’

‘They are saying that he appears to be as veil as he vas on the day he left England.’

‘Impossible. I tell you this, my tear. It is my turn now. King of Englandt! How you like that, eh? King George II!’

‘It sounds very veil, but let us vait a bit and be careful.’

He came to the chair on which she was sitting and pinched her cheek. ‘Oh, you are the cautious von, alvays, my Caroline. Ve shall soon be planning our coronation.’

‘Let us not talk so… even in private.’ She glanced over her shoulder. But he only laughed the louder. He was so sure of
himself, standing on tiptoe, seeing himself in the mirror, a crown instead of the wig on his head.

Caroline was alarmed, imagining the King’s spies carrying tales of his son’s unseemly behaviour; would it be possible for him to have George Augustus passed over in favour of Frederick? Who knew what vindictive scheme that man might invent. And Frederick, thought Caroline, what do I know of Frederick? My son is a stranger to me. We must be careful… more so now than ever.

But how make the exuberant George Augustus understand this?

The King had returned to England. Before she saw him Caroline heard that he showed no ill effects; but she could not believe that. He was advancing into his sixties. How could a man of that age collapse mysteriously at dinner and it have no significance?

When he received her he was attended as usual by the Duchesses of Kendal and Darlington, and Caroline was immediately aware of their anxious looks. But the King had not changed at all. There was no sign of illness in his dour unwelcoming face.

Did he look at her a little sardonically? He would know of course how their hopes had soared. Was he saying: Not yet, my dear. It is not the turn of that booby of a husband of yours yet. Oh, no you have to wait, my dear.

‘I have brought you a present,’ he told Caroline.

She was surprised and pleased for it was the first time he had brought a gift for her.

‘Your Majesty is gracious to me.’

His lips turned up at the corners; it was as near as he could get to a smile. Was she visualizing some magnificent piece of jewellery, wondered the King. She was going to have yet another surprise and he wondered whether this one would be as unpalatable as the first, for when she had come to him she had expected to see him disabled from his so-called seizure.

He signed to one of his attendants and said that the Princess’s gift was to be brought to her.

The man disappeared and when he returned there was an astonished silence throughout the apartment, for he led by a
chain attached to the creature’s neck what might have been a boy or a monkey. The creature stooped slightly and loped while it looked about it at the assembled company with something between fear and defiance. It was dressed in a bright blue suit lined with red, and red stockings. ‘It is a wild boy,’ said the King. ‘We found him in the forest; he ran on all fours then, but he can stand up already. He lived on grass, moss, nuts and whatever he could find. I thought he would amuse Your Highness.’

Caroline said, without showing her distaste or surprise: ‘Your Majesty is gracious.’

She took the chain which was offered her and led the creature from the King’s presence.

Everyone was talking of the Wild Boy and wondered what lay behind the King’s motive in presenting him to the Princess. Was it because she had introduced the fashion of inoculation? Was the King hinting that as she appeared to be interested in medical science, here was an opportunity to try a further experiment?

Caroline, however, had given no sign of her dismay; the first thing she did on reaching her apartments was to send for her good friend Dr Arbuthnot.

She showed him the boy who glared at them both from under his bushy eyebrows and Caroline asked the doctor if he thought by gentle treatment and teaching he might become normal.

‘It would be interesting,’ she said, ‘to discover whether this is possible.’

The doctor agreed and said he would take the wild boy away and see what could be done with him.

‘Poor boy,’ said Caroline. ‘I wonder what
his
history is. He doubtless lost his parents in some way or was abandoned. But he must certainly have fended for himself for some ten or twelve years.’

‘That we may discover… if we can teach him to speak.’

‘Then teach him. I know you will be kind to him. I fancy he needs kindness. He looks at us so suspiciously. I think he is rather frightened. You must bring him to visit me from time to time; and he should have a name. We will call him Peter.’

So Dr Arbuthnot took Peter away and tried to teach him;
and very soon the wild boy was forgotten except by Caroline who had many interviews with Dr Arbuthnot, who could report little progress; and she continued to wonder why the King had given her such a present.

Soon after the King’s return from Hanover, Caroline’s daughter Louisa was born. Caroline now had a little family of three and to these she devoted herself; she was able to visit Anne, Amelia and Caroline more frequently than she had before the reconciliation, but she still felt resentful because she had no control of them.

The court was less gay than it had been in the old days. Molly Lepel was rarely there, although Lord Hervey was a frequent visitor and Caroline was always delighted to see him. Mary Bellenden remained but she had become quieter in her contentment. Poor Sophie Howe would never return. She was heartbroken and had fallen into such a decline that it was not expected she would live more than a few more months.

It was a saddening thought. Henrietta, Mrs Clayton and Lady Cowper retained their posts but they had never been the gay spirits of the court. Yes, the court had lost its earlier sparkle.

Walpole was a frequent visitor; but she told herself she could not forgive him for deceiving her at the time of the reconciliation; and she still talked continually of her desire to have her older children back under her roof. The King was devoted to Walpole and for that reason – and because his debts had not been paid as Walpole had promised they would – the Prince disliked him.

Yet in spite of this Caroline was fascinated by the man. He was wily and had even succeeded in ousting the Germans from the King’s favour and holding first position there himself.

Walpole must be watched, she thought, so that when the great day came his services could be called upon.

If George Augustus hated Walpole he did not hate Walpole’s wife. Rumour was that she was for a time his mistress and as she was notorious for the fact that she took lover after lover while her husband went his own way, it seemed possible.

And so a few years slipped by and although the King grew older he remained in excellent health and when Anne Brett, a
very handsome, dark-haired young woman came to court he showed marked interest in her.

Caroline, aware of this, wondered whether the King could live for another ten or fifteen years. Would her children ever be returned to her? Was Frederick going to be kept in Hanover for the rest of the King’s life? Would the crown never be her husband’s? Would she never know the power for which, ever since her marriage, she had been preparing herself?

The King was approaching his sixty-sixth year. Was he going to outlive them all?

George was pleased with life. He had become reconciled to England; he was devoted to his two German mistresses, particularly the Duchess of Kendal; she was constantly with him and was to him as a wife. At the same time Anne Brett excited him and he would enjoy his association with her as wholeheartedly as he had indulged in such affairs at the age of eighteen.

He too had begun to think he was immortal.

Anne was no Ermengarda. She made demands; but she was so young and he was perhaps ready nowadays to do a little more courting than he had been in his youth.

She amused him; she delighted him; she was as beautiful as the Countess von Platen and that made a pleasant change from the Duchesses of Kendal and Darlington.

Then his content was disturbed – and for the strangest reason. He should have been pleased if anything – at least indifferent, but he was surprised to find he was not.

A messenger arrived from Hanover with news that his wife Sophia Dorothea had died in her prison at Ahlden after thirty-two years of that captivity to which her husband had condemned her.

George shut himself in his apartment. Why should he care?

She deserved it, he said. She betrayed me with Königsmarck.

And for some strange reason the past became clear again; he remembered the quarrels when she had accused him of infidelity. Ermengarda had been the cause of the quarrel, and she was still with him, his dear Duchess of Kendal.

Then Sophia Dorothea had taken her lover, been discovered,
her lover mysteriously murdered, herself made a prisoner for life… the prisoner of her husband.

How she must have hated him, living out her lonely life in Ahlden, calling herself Queen of England, a country she would never see – for he had condemned her to life imprisonment!

She had died cursing him. He did not want to know more. It was better not.

He made up his mind there should be a brief announcement – that was all. And life should go on as though nothing had happened.

Nor had it. She had been nothing to him for years. And now she was dead.

‘My mother is dead,’ said George Augustus.

Caroline thought of Sophia Dorothea of whom she had heard so much during her first years in Hanover, although she had never seen her. She remembered the shadow which had seemed to hang over the old Leine Schloss; she recalled vividly the spot where it was said Konigsmarck, creeping from his mistress’s rooms, had been set upon and murdered.

Poor Sophia Dorothea, the victim of the King’s vindictiveness even as she was!

‘The court must go into mourning,’ she said.

The King came into her apartment, his eyes bulging, his jaw trembling. Never before had she seen him moved in this way.’

‘What is this I hear?’ he demanded. ‘The court in mourning! Why?’

‘For the death of the Prince’s mother.’

‘She is… nothing. There will be no mourning. Do you hear me. I said no mourning.’

‘If it is Your Majesty’s command…’

‘It is an order. No mourning, I say. No mourning.’

She bowed her head. ‘There shall be no mourning.’

He left her. No, certainly she had never seen him so disturbed.

He looked ten years older than he had before the news had come.

That night the King went to the theatre, with more pomp than
usual. On one side of him was the Duchess of Kendal, on the other the Duchess of Darlington.

He gave an impression of enjoying the show more than usual.

Caroline, who had been ordered to go to the theatre with the Prince at the same time, watched him more than the play.

He is too eager, she thought. And he has aged. Can it really be that he suffers remorse, or is it that he is more afraid of the dead than of the living?

George could not shut himself away from rumour. Sophia Dorothea had cursed him when she was dying. Those who had been at her bedside had heard it distinctly. She had been half-conscious but she had talked of him. He would not survive her a year, she had prophesied; he would be called to face her at the judgement seat when he would have to answer for what he had done to her.

The King heard the prophecies and laughed at them. Anne Brett had become his mistress after he had given her fine apartments in St James’s Palace and a good pension, but she wanted a title too.

He had explained that that was a matter which took some time to arrange but it should be hers in due course.

The young woman strutted about the court giving herself airs as none of the other mistresses had dared do. The Duchess of Kendal was annoyed that another woman should take up so much of the King’s time, and some said that to placate her the King married her – but there was no proof of this. However, in spite of his infatuation for Anne Brett, he still did not waver in his devotion to Ermengarda. Perhaps when they were alone together they talked of those early days when his devotion to her had called forth the protests of his wife – for that had been the beginning of the trouble. Ermengarda had had no hand in the condemnation of Sophia Dorothea but because she was in some way involved he found even greater comfort in her company.