The Regent's Daughter: (Georgian Series) (18 page)

She was obviously a little sad and Charlotte wondered how anyone could be on a day like this.

‘I hope,’ she said, ‘that soon this silly notion will be forgotten and we shall be visiting you again.’

‘God bless you,’ said Mrs Fitzherbert tenderly.

‘When I am old enough to please myself no one shall tell me where I may and may not go.’

‘I am sure that will be so,’ said Mrs Fitzherbert with a warm smile, and she added: ‘Minney has missed your visits, haven’t you, Minney?’

‘Very much,’ replied Minney. ‘Mamma and I were saying so only this morning.’

Charlotte was pleased that they had talked of her.

‘One day it will be different,’ she said; and because she noticed that she was attracting attention, she said goodbye and left them.

And after the picnic there followed the review which she witnessed from her father’s carriage. How proud he was of his own regiment, the 10th Hussars, and he seemed to grow more and more magnificent in his own splendid Hussar’s uniform as he took the salute.

When it was over they went to the Pavilion. What a magic palace it was, what an Aladdin’s cave! Although it was her father’s home it was unfamiliar to her. It was true she had once had a children’s ball here. She had stood in this vestibule with its odd but splendid decorations and received her guests. They had gathered in the ornate banqueting hall where now the Prince would entertain the chosen guests; and in the music room she had listened to an occasional concert.

She wished that she might live with her father and mother in this house which he so loved and for which he was always
planning alterations; it was beginning to look like an oriental palace and everywhere was his love of Chinese art evident.

In those little paragraphs in the newspapers which gave her so much pleasure – partly because she knew that her grandmother would have given orders that they were to be kept from her if she was aware that she saw them – she heard a great deal about the Pavilion. Mrs Udney was constantly chuckling over the papers and Charlotte’s curiosity, which her grandmother would, she was sure, have called prying, made a bond between them. She did not dislike Mrs Udney half as much as she had once; and Mrs Udney’s way of calling attention to these paragraphs with a little chuckle or giggle or a clicking of the tongue was the sign for Charlotte to demand – imperiously so that Mrs Udney could not refuse – to see the paragraph.

There were references to Mrs Fitzherbert which she did not always understand but she did guess that Mrs Fitzherbert was not as happy as she had once been. Perhaps dear little Minney was not climbing on
his
knee so often. But quite a lot of the references concerned the Pavilion and since Charlotte had read of it she longed to see her father’s new bathroom. She slipped away from the throng of people – not easy for a princess, but Charlotte was nothing if not resourceful – and made her way to her father’s apartments.

This was his bedroom. His bed was as she would have expected it to be – elegant in the extreme. It had been made for him in France and was unexpectedly simple, but she could recognize the graceful lines. She climbed the bedsteps, sat on it and bounced up and down laughing, sticking out her legs and looking at her long lacetrimmed drawers. They were not quite as clean round the lace edges as they had been when they set out from Worthing.

All the furniture was beautiful and everywhere was the Chinese influence. She looked round, admiring the ormolu clock and the candelabra. Dismounting the bedsteps she took a closer look and saw the clock was in the form of a cupid driving in a beautiful chariot, which was drawn by butterflies. It was lovely, and Cupid was represented in the candelabra also.

My father is very much attached to Cupid, she thought. But I suppose he would be.

But she had come to see the bathroom and there it was; its walls were of white marble and its bath of which she had read
was sixteen feet long, ten feet wide and six feet deep. It was a miracle of a bath because it could be supplied with sea water.

What an exciting man my father is! thought Charlotte. If only …

Then she remembered that she had read somewhere that one of the reasons why her father disliked her mother was because he loved bathing and she did not.

It is a very sad thing, she thought, that a girl has to learn all the important things about her parents from the newspapers.

She dared not linger for fear she would be missed; so she rejoined the guests and hoped no one had noticed her absence.

And after that memorable day Worthing seemed less desirable than ever.

Charlotte had a piece of good luck. The Queen had noticed that she had not maintained the good health she was enjoying when she arrived at Worthing and decided that the place did not agree with her as well as Bognor. She had made inquiries about the danger of living near a hospital for those suffering from ophthalmia and had learned that the disease was only contagious when people were in immediate contact and for instance slept on the same pillow. There was no evidence of anyone in Bognor having caught the disease.

The Queen summoned Lady de Clifford and said that in the circumstances she believed that the Princess Charlotte might go back to Bognor for the rest of the summer while she herself and the Princesses, her daughters, would return to Windsor.

What joy! Bognor again and freedom! No more lectures from the Begum! No more boring sessions with the Old Girls! Instead long rambles on the seashore and conversation with Mr Richardson while she munched his buns.

‘Now,’ said Lady de Clifford, ‘you must get plenty of fresh air. There is nothing like fresh air, Your Highness.’

‘Nothing like fresh
Bognor
air, my lady,’ cried Charlotte hilariously.

Her health began to improve and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Bognor was the spot best suited to the Princess.

The days were full of interest for her. She liked to mingle with people, to talk to them, to discover how they lived. For this, she told Lady de Clifford, is the duty of one who is to be their Sovereign.

Lady de Clifford was always nervous of such talk. It was in any case bad taste and she was not sure that it was not treason. But Charlotte always laughed at her. Her familiarity with the ordinary people was alarming but her father could behave in the same way and like her father she could at a moment’s notice become imperious.

On one occasion she was driving her four greys along a country road with Lady de Clifford beside her when she saw a woman, poorly dressed, with nine children trailing behind her.

Charlotte pulled up with a jerk which almost sent Lady de Clifford out of her seat.

‘What a large family!’ cried Charlotte. ‘Are they all your own?’

‘Yes, sweet lady, they are all my own and a terrible task I have to try to feed them!’

‘So many!’ cried Charlotte.

‘But all the children of my own wedded husband,’ the woman assured her.

Charlotte studied the children and said: ‘How did you manage to have so many of an age? Now, come, I want the truth. I always want to hear the truth and I cannot abide lies. I will give you a shilling if you tell me the truth.’

Charlotte felt in her purse which she always carried with her in case she met any deserving poor person whom she thought she should help.

The woman looked at the shilling. ‘I have lied to you, my-lady. Two of these children are mine. One by my husband and the other by another man. The rest of them are borrowed.’

‘To arouse pity, I daresay,’ said the Princess severely. ‘I was going to give you a guinea if you had told me the truth at first. But you lied and although you have told a plausible tale now which I accept as truth, you only told it because I offered you a shilling. You shall have two shillings because I believe at last you told me the truth.’

The woman accepted the two shillings with many thanks, but her lips were trembling and Charlotte knew she was thinking of the lost guinea.

She drove on and after a while she stopped.

‘Poor woman,’ she said. ‘I suppose when one must beg for a living it is easy to lie.’

She waited until the woman came up.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘Here is your guinea. But remember that you will prosper more by telling the truth than lies.’

She did not wait to hear the woman’s thanks but whipped up the greys.

‘I do not think it proper for Your Highness to bandy words with these people,’ admonished Lady de Clifford.

‘Bandy words! I was advising her always to tell the truth. Is that not a good thing? My lord Bish-Up tells me it is.’

‘I do not think it wise to hold these conversations with beggars.’

‘Jesus did. So why not the Princess Charlotte?’

‘You blaspheme.’

‘I don’t see it. My lady, I don’t indeed. According to you, it is at some times good to follow Jesus … at others not. No, I think that was just how He would have behaved to that poor woman.’

Lady de Clifford put her hands over her ears. Sometimes she wondered with great trepidation what the Princess would do and say next.

What she did on this occasion was to whip up the greys and they galloped along at great speed while Lady de Clifford clutched the side of the carriage in terror and exclaimed in dismay as they turned into a field.

‘Where are you going? This is Sir Thomas Troubridge’s field.’

‘I don’t deny it.’

‘I pray you, turn back.’

‘Too late, my lady, too late. Hold tight. That was a good one!’

The carriage went bouncing over the ruts.

‘Heaven save us,’ cried Lady de Clifford.

‘Nothing like exercise, my lady,’ Charlotte told her. ‘Nothing like exercise!’

The shells on Bognor beach were numerous and of the most exquisite colours; the seaweed was of a kind Charlotte had never seen before; it had extraordinary, hard black berries. She decided to add to the excitement of her rambles by collecting them and when she took them back to Mr Wilson’s mansion she made them into necklaces and painted some of them.

Mrs Gagarin and Louisa declared they were lovely and that she was a true artist.

She made necklaces for both of them and one for herself, and promised that she would make one for Lady de Clifford. One day when searching for seaweed along the beach she found in one of the banks a layer of what looked like gold in its raw state. It had formed itself into strange patterns and while she was examining it three young ladies came along with their governess and excitedly she called to them to come and see what she had found. They all thought it was a great discovery and she told the girls and their governess that she was going to send two labourers along to get the metal out of the rock so that she might have it tested to see if it were gold.

‘I will let you know the result,’ she told them.

Meanwhile some of her attendants had come up and she excitedly explained to them.

She turned to the girls. ‘You must come and see me tomorrow and I will tell you then the result of this discovery.’ She nodded at the governess. ‘Pray bring them at three of the afternoon. We might play some games together. Do you like games?’

The girls said they did and listened attentively while she told them of the games she had played in Tilney Street with George Keppel, George Fitzclarence and Minney Seymour.

‘So … tomorrow,’ she cried as she went off.

Her attendants looked on with disapproval but she snapped her fingers at them and returning to the town she insisted on going to the house of a labourer whose wife she had talked with. The woman was heavily pregnant and Charlotte had been very interested in her condition, so she visited her often. The result of this visit was that the woman’s husband should find a fellow worker and they would go down to the shore to see what it was the Princess had discovered.

Charlotte, pleased with the afternoon’s work, returned to the house.

When Lady de Clifford heard what she had done she clicked and clucked and said it would not do.

‘You forget your dignity.’

‘Not entirely,’ argued Charlotte. ‘Now and then perhaps I throw it aside but I make sure it is never out of reach so that I can bring it back at a moment’s notice if the need should arise.’

‘I do not know what Her Majesty the Queen would say if she were to hear of this.’

‘Nor shall you ever, my lady, for she will never know,
because neither of us would dare tell her.’ Charlotte laughed aloud at her own cleverness and Lady de Clifford thought anxiously: Is she growing more like her mother every day?

‘I gather that you have asked these girls to visit you. Who are they? You do not know. How can we be sure whom you are inviting into the house?’

‘Their governess is very stern. I am sure you would not object to her.’

‘I must point out that you condescended too much to them by all accounts. You were too familiar. You must never forget your station. I hope that when they come you will be careful.’

‘I promise you, dear Cliffy,’ said Charlotte demurely.

The metal she had discovered turned out not to be precious gold, but the pieces the labourers had hewn out of the rock were very pretty and she would keep them as ornaments. She wished the labourers to be brought to her so that she could give them two guineas for their work.

This was not the manner in which royal persons conducted themselves, Lady de Clifford pointed out. A royal person gave orders that money was to be paid to workmen. She did not summon them and go through the sordid business of handing them their pay.

‘Very well,’ conceded Charlotte. ‘Let the money be paid to them and tell them how pleased I am with my ornaments.’

She was at the pianoforte when the young ladies were brought to her. Lady de Clifford had arranged to be present, to make sure, thought Charlotte, laughing inwardly, that I do not become too familiar. Very well, my lady! You shall see.

She continued to play.

‘Your Highness,’ said Lady de Clifford, ‘the young ladies are here.’

Charlotte went on playing and neither Lady de Clifford nor the young ladies knew what to do. They could only stand bewildered by the antics of royalty. Then turning, Charlotte inclined her head haughtily at the girls and went on playing.