The Regent's Daughter: (Georgian Series) (32 page)

‘Y … yes, Mamma, I understand but please do not try to shut me up with Captain Hesse … or with any man, again.’

‘Never, unless my angel wishes it. It was Mamma’s silly way of saying she loves her little girl and wants to give her all that the others take away from her. Say you understand. Say you love your Mamma. It is the only thing she has … her little Charlotte.’

‘You have Willie, Mamma. He is as a son to you.’

‘I have Willie … but he is the substitute for my own little girl. Try to understand me, Charlotte, and love me.’

‘I do, Mamma, I do.’

They wept together. I do love her, Charlotte told herself, I do.

‘Promise me, dearest, that when you are your own mistress you will not forget your mother.’

‘I promise,’ said Charlotte.

‘So perhaps it is not so long to wait, eh?’ Mischievous lights shot up in the eyes of the Princess of Wales. ‘And in the meantime we plague them in all ways we know, eh?’

Charlotte did not answer.

Poor Mamma, she thought, she is starved of love. I must try to understand and help her.

But when she went back to Warwick House, sitting in the carriage with Lady de Clifford, she wondered what that lady would
say if she knew what had happened in her mother’s bedroom and she shivered with apprehension.

It was a great trial to be a princess and heiress – though only presumptive – to the throne of England and at the same time to be a buffer between two such strange parents.

Charlotte in revolt

MRS GAGARIN AND
Louisa Lewis were dressing the Princess for her birthday ball. It was to be a grand occasion at Carlton House given by the Prince of Wales because she was sixteen years old.

‘Soon,’ she was saying, ‘they will have to stop treating me as a child. I’m longing to wear
feathers.
When I do, you will know then that I really am no longer regarded as a child.’

‘Don’t you be in such a hurry to grow up,’ advised Louisa. ‘It’ll come soon enough.’

‘Not soon enough for me. Do you think the Prince R. will be proud of me tonight? Now don’t say “Yes, yes, yes”. Stop and think. Think of him and all his elegance. I have to be rather good to come up to his standards. Why, what’s the matter with Gagy?’

‘It’s all right, Your Highness, just a stitch in my side.’

‘Better sit down,’ advised Louisa. ‘You know …’

Mrs Gagarin flashed her a warning look which Charlotte intercepted.

‘Now what is this?’ she demanded imperiously. ‘Gagy, you are not ill, are you?’

‘No, no. It’s nothing. My dinner did not agree with me.’

Charlotte looked suspicious and felt a sudden touch of panic. Birthdays made one realize that time was passing. It did not seem so long since her last; and some of these people who had been with her for so long that she thought they would be with her for ever, were getting old.

Mrs Gagarin had a grey tinge to her face today. Charlotte threw her arms about her and said: ‘Gagy, you mustn’t die. Don’t forget I made you want to live after you lost Mr Gagarin, didn’t I? I still want you. You mustn’t be ill.’

‘What a fuss,’ said Mrs Gagarin, ‘about a touch of
indigestion. Anyone would think I was on my death-bed.’

‘Don’t talk about death,’ commanded Charlotte. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘All right,’ said Mrs Gagarin. ‘Let’s see that you look your best for this party.’

‘Do I?’

‘Lovely,’ cried Mrs Gagarin. ‘Doesn’t she, Louisa?’

Louisa adoringly agreed.

It was silly, Charlotte assured herself, to think poor Gagy was going to die just because she had indigestion. There were years and years left yet to them all.

She was in a slightly sombre mood, however, on the journey to Carlton House, but she was soon elated, for her father had determined this should be a special occasion. The people who had gathered to watch her alight from her carriage cheered her and she waved as Lady de Clifford had told her many times she should not – instead of bowing regally. But the people liked her for her free and easy ways and she was not going to obey Lady de Clifford’s orders much longer.

Her father looked splendid and she was thrilled as always to see him and proud that he was her father; and the odd feelings of resentment and pride fought together in the familiar way; but resentment was defeated on this night, because he smiled as he embraced her affectionately, even with a glint of tears in his eyes, and told her that she looked charming.

She was happy as, holding her lightly by the hand, he led her into that house which the old gossip, Horace Walpole, had described as the most perfect in Europe. She was proud of the tasteful decorations; they had all been done under
his
supervision; and from the moment she passed through the front porch with its Corinthian portico, because he was leading her there and seemed pleased to have her, she knew this was going to be a happy evening, a birthday to remember.

Carlton House was her birthplace and
his
home where she wished they could all live together – her father, her mother and herself, like an affectionate family. It was what she had always wanted more than anything and she had confided this to Mercer.

‘Papa,’ she said, ‘whenever I come to Carlton House I am struck afresh by its beauty.’

He was pleased. ‘I confess to a fondness for the place myself.’

‘Everything is p … perfect,’ she cried, and for once he did not frown at her stammer. She went on: ‘The lovely apartments, and best of all I think I love the dear little music room that opens on to the gardens. I never saw a room as pretty as that music room.’

He began to tell her how the idea had come to him to create such a room; and this was one of the rare occasions when they were able to chat easily together.

During dinner when she sat on his right hand he talked almost exclusively to her and told her how for the banquet to celebrate his accession to the Regency he had entertained two thousand guests here in Carlton House.

‘I had the idea that a canal should be made to run right down the central table and in it was a stream in which fish swam – they were silver and gold and I can tell you were extremely beautiful.’

‘How wonderful it must have looked. That was a great occasion.’

He was sad momentarily, thinking about Maria who had refused to come because she had been denied a place at the stream-decorated table. Why could she not understand that as Regent he dared not bring into prominence one who was a Catholic and suspected of being his wife? It was not really because Isabella had not wished her to be at the top table. Maria could not understand that. How shackled one was when one was royal! Why the legitimacy of this girl seated beside him might be in question if that ceremony in Maria’s drawing room was accepted as a true marriage.

He wished he had not reminded himself of the Regency banquet.

‘Papa,’ Charlotte was saying. ‘You have grown more slender. I trust you are well.’

He was pleased with the remark, although he disliked people to hint that he had ever been ‘fat’ which he considered an unpleasant word. He had lost a little weight, yet lying up at Oatlands had not improved his health.

Later when he led her into the dance she noticed that he limped a little and did not call attention to this; by that time she was thinking that this was one of the happiest days of her life. Her father was fonder of her than he had been for a long time and as this was, she hoped, the beginning of the gratification of
one of her dearest wishes, she could forget her misgivings caused by Mrs Gagarin’s grey looks and the odd eccentric behaviour of her mother.

For once her father approved of her – and that was perhaps what she most wanted in life.

Mercer was a constant visitor to Warwick House. Charlotte often wondered what she would do without her. She confided in Mercer – not everything, of course, but a great deal. She could never talk of her feelings for her parents but perhaps this was because she did not fully understand them herself. She had not mentioned that occasion when her mother had shut her in the bedroom with Captain Hesse. That was something she could scarcely bring herself to think of – let alone talk about.

But in almost everything else Mercer was her confidante, her
alter ego
; and she often thought that while she could have Mercer for her friend she could bear everything else – the criticisms of her paternal grandmother and the dreary boredom of her maternal one; the alternate scoldings and gushing affection of the Old Girls; the sadness that came to her when she thought of poor mad Grandpapa and most of all her mingled feelings for her parents.

Sometimes Mercer would describe the dresses she had seen at a ball. Then they would talk of clothes – a subject of which Mercer was a past mistress, as of everything else, and they would perhaps call in Mrs Gagarin and Louisa Lewis to discuss what could be made for Charlotte out of what Mercer sternly called her ‘somewhat inadequate allowance’.

‘Never mind,’ cried Charlotte, ‘I shall soon have an establishment of my own and that will mean a good allowance. They can’t keep me in the nursery for ever.’

‘It will be on your eighteenth birthday,’ prophesied Mercer, ‘which is not really very far away.’

Charlotte’s eyes sparkled at the thought of growing up.

‘One thing you must promise me, Mercer. When I am Queen you will always be with me.’

Mercer said it was not really very becoming to talk of being Queen when one considered what must happen before she was.

There were times when Mercer was a little self-righteous, and Charlotte was glad of it. It would not have been good for them both to be as impulsive as she was.

She confided in Mercer that her Uncle Cumberland had said her father was suffering from
his
father’s malady.

‘That is a treasonable and most wicked statement,’ announced Mercer. ‘I have always been suspicious of the Duke of Cumberland.’

Charlotte had declared that she too had always been suspicious of him. There was something definitely
sinister
about the man. The fact that he had only one eye made him look a real villain.

Mercer agreed. ‘He’s a Tory too.’ Heinous sin in Mercer’s opinion. She could always be angry with anyone who might seek to turn Charlotte from the Whig cause.

They spent a hilarious half hour talking of Uncle Cumberland’s many failings and building up a quite horrifying picture of him which eventually sent them into fits of laughter, for Mercer had her lighter moments.

Louisa, hearing them laughing together, commented that it seemed to her that that Miss Elphinstone was the Queen of Warwick House and that if they didn’t look out they would soon be taking their orders from her.

Mrs Gagarin, who was looking more frail than ever, replied that it was pleasant to hear dearest Charlotte laugh. Her life was not all Mrs Gagarin would wish for a young high-spirited girl. Let her enjoy herself while she could.

But when Charlotte told Mercer of the cartoons Mrs Udney had brought in for her, Mercer’s lips were set into lines of disapproval. ‘I don’t like Mrs Udney,’ she said.

‘Nor do I,’ admitted Charlotte, and told Mercer about the will she had once made. Soon they were laughing again, but Mercer added that she thought it was not suited to Charlotte’s
dignity
to look at these scurrilous cartoons about her own family. She should reprimand Mrs Udney for bringing them into her household; and Mercer for one would like to see Mrs Udney
replaced
.

Charlotte nodded gravely. ‘As for the cartoons,’ she said, ‘I only had a little peep. I shan’t look at them any more, dearest Mercer, if you think I should not.’

As Mercer would prefer the Princess Charlotte not to so demean herself, Charlotte declared she would do nothing of which dearest Mercer would not approve.

Mercer allowed the conversation to become lighthearted
again and talked of Lord Byron, who had the good sense to admire Mercer very much. He also admired the Princess Charlotte whom he had once had the honour of meeting.

‘I remember him well,’ cried Charlotte. ‘The most handsome man I ever met … or one of them. He is like a Greek god and that limp makes him exciting in some way. They say he is very wicked.’

‘What he needs is a woman to look after him.’ Mercer smiled complacently and Charlotte was ready to believe that he needed Mercer as she herself did. Everyone must be in need of Mercer.

‘Oh, Mercer,’ she cried in an excess of affection, ‘how glad I am that you are my friend.’

‘It’s useful,’ admitted Mercer. ‘Being so much older, I can help you.’

The Prince Regent was reading a poem to his friend Sheridan who, having a great belief in the power of the pen – particularly when wielded by the celebrated Lord Byron – was disturbed.

It was called
Lines to a Young Lady Weeping
.

Weep, daughter of a royal line,

A Sire’s disgrace, a realm’s decay:

Ah, happy if each tear of thine

Could wash a father’s fault away.

Weep, for thy tears are virtue’s tears,

Auspicious to these suffering isles:

And be each drop in future years

Repaid thee by a people’s smiles.

The Prince’s face had flushed scarlet and his eyes filled with tears of anger.

‘This is referring to that disgraceful scene the other night. Sometimes I think my daughter is determined to anger me.’

‘There are too many seeking to take sides, sir,’ said Sheridan.

‘They are giving her ideas of her own importance. By God, she has no importance and she
shall
have none if I say so.’

Sheridan knew when to be silent. It would have been folly to remind the Prince that Charlotte was his daughter and unless by a miracle in the form of divorce from the Princess of Wales he was able to get a son, Charlotte must in due course inherit the throne.

‘You know what happened. I was speaking of those rogues Grey and Grenville, who had refused my offer to join the government. Lauderdale defended them and declared he would have refused in their place. He was a true Whig and so on and hoped he would always remain faithful to the cause. And what does Charlotte do but burst into tears. Tears, Sherry, at a dinner party! How is the girl being brought up?’