Jean Plaidy - Victoria in the Wings

She was plump – how he loathed lean women; she was handsome; no woman could attract him if she were not. She never gave herself airs. She quite frankly admitted that she was not of the aristocracy although she had married into it. She was at a comforting age – in her early fifties, a few years younger than he was himself. She was in good health and understood little of politics. Oh, these women, like Lady Hertford, who liked to dabble in state matters; how trying they could be! She would never be obsessed by her religion. It was Maria’s religion, he was sure, which had broken their relationship. Elizabeth, Lady Conyngham, was in fact the most comfortable person at court and it gave him more pleasure to be in her company than that of anyone else. She had a complaisant husband. The Marquis Conyngham was no doubt pleased to see the favour his wife was finding with the Regent; she was motherly; she had four children to prove it; and she was rich in her own right, for it was money which had brought her her place in the peerage.

She had told him herself that her grandfather had been a clerk and her grandmother the daughter of a hatter. Her father had been a most excellent business man and had made a fortune in what the Regent could not remember. But his two daughters had married titles.

‘Papa bought us a title apiece, Your Highness,’ Elizabeth explained to the Regent, and he laughed with pleasure at her frankness.

‘Politics, Your Highness,’ she would say. ‘I know nothing of politics. I am not clever like some. But I can tell a good diamond when I see one and I know how to be kind to my friends.’

An admirable woman. With her large languishing eyes and her comfortable maternal bosom, she offered just what he needed at this time.

He was thinking how much he missed the chats he had with his mother who had so adored him. He missed her more than he would have thought possible. There was something completely maternal about Elizabeth Conyngham; and at the same time she offered all the charm of a mistress. Comfortable, that was the word he would apply to her. It was something Lady Hertford had never been. Maria yes, at times; but there was Maria’s devilish temper.

If he could go back to Maria … Ah, if he could! But he could not now. There would be too many recriminations. Besides, how could he, the Regent, live openly with a woman whom people believed to be his wife and who was a Catholic!

There was the crux of the matter. Maria’s adherence to her religion. That was what was so comforting about Lady Conyngham. She had no stern principles which constantly ruined one’s peace of mind.

He brought his mind back to Lady Hertford, sitting there elegant, it was true, like a porcelain figure, perfectly dressed, looking as though she were carved out of stone. An iceberg, rather. He wondered he had ever thought her attractive. There was no womanliness about her.

‘I have never known the people so hostile to Your Highness,’ she was saying. ‘The mob threw stones at my carriage yesterday and called out the most uncomplimentary things about you.’

He shifted uneasily. Why was she always stressing his unpopularity? She herself was partly responsible for it. If he had stayed with Maria he would have been far more popular. Maria had always been a favourite with the people, whereas they loathed Isabella Hertford.

‘No doubt they were intended for you,’ he said coldly. ‘And now I shall take my leave.’

She looked surprised for he had so recently come. But there would be more surprises awaiting Lady Hertford.

The poor old man, blind, deaf and lost to the world, who was the King of England, lay in his chamber in Windsor Castle. It had been little more than a padded cell. He did not know what events were taking place; he did not even know where he was, or sometimes who he was.

There were occasions when he would see a picture from the past of a young prince learning to be a king, of a young man in love with a beautiful Quakeress, visiting her secretly, suffering remorse for his treatment of her; sometimes in his muddled thoughts he saw lovely Sarah Lennox making hay in the gardens of Holland House and dreamed of marrying her; he saw his wife, the plain Princess Charlotte, who had become his Queen and borne him many children.

In the dark recesses of his mind he heard the defiant voice of a handsome boy raised in protest in the nursery demanding meat on the days when his father, the King, had said there should be no meat; then the handsome boy was an elegant young man … in trouble … always in trouble. Words formed on the lips of the poor blind, mad old man. ‘Actresses, letters, wild living …’ ‘Ten sleepless nights I’ve had in a row thinking of those sons of mine …’

And there were no days, only the long endless night, with rough hands to tend him – and sometimes laughter at the foibles and follies, the childish inanities of a man who had once been their King. No light … only darkness … no understanding … only fleeting pictures … vague memories that mocked him and ran from him when he sought to catch them like mischievous boys in a royal nursery.

He did not know that his granddaughter, young Charlotte, was dead; he did not know that Charlotte his wife had gone; nor that the Prince of Wales had become the Regent and King in all but name because his father the true King was helplessly insane, living in darkness behind the strong grey walls of Windsor Castle.

He knew nothing – except sometimes, that he was waiting for the end.

Once he had said before he was blind, before the darkness had descended on him: ‘I would that I could die for I am going mad.’

He did not say that now. But somewhere in his mind was the longing for release.

And one morning when his attendants came to his room they saw that it had come.

‘The King is dead,’ they said.

The Regent was confined to his bed with an attack of pleurisy. His doctors had bled him but he showed no sign of improving. His great bulk did not make breathing easy and it was generally feared that he could not live long.

In the streets they were shouting: ‘King George III is dead. Long live King George IV.’

‘What is it they are shouting?’ he asked.

‘Your Majesty,’ they called him. So at last, he thought, it has come.

All his life he had been bred for this; he had known from nursery days that one day he would be King and he had longed to wear the crown. And now? He was not so sure. He had had a taste of sovereignty as Regent. The people had loved the Prince of Wales better than they loved the Regent. Now perhaps they would prefer the Regent to the King.

The glory had come too late. He was too old and ill for it.

He lay back in his bed and remorse came to him. He and his father had never been good friends. There had been a natural enmity between them. It was always so in the family. It was a Hanover tradition that fathers should quarrel with sons. So many things he might have done. So many little kindnesses.

He wept and they were real tears.

‘I should have been a better son to him,’ he murmured.

He was in a low state. His spirits would rise when he felt better. He would send for Lady Conyngham to come and talk to him. She would cheer him.

And then he thought: I am King. Then she … that loathsome woman will be Queen.

Oh God, what will this mean? She will return to England. She will want to be at my side. She was content enough to stay away when she was Princess of Wales. But now she will want to be recognized as Queen of England.

The thought of what this could mean destroyed his peace of mind. No one could comfort him. Not even Lady Conyngham.

There was real anxiety for the state of the King’s health. His doctors insisted that he must not dream of attending his father’s funeral. Even the people, who had grown to hate him, were concerned for him now. They might taunt him and ridicule him but they did not want to lose him.

His doctors prescribed the air of Brighton which had never failed to benefit him, and as soon as he was able to be lifted from his bed he travelled down to the Pavilion with a few special friends and there he attempted to regain his strength.

At Windsor the old King was buried with the pomp due to his rank. The bells tolled and the trumpets rang out to remind everyone that this was the passing of a king. He had lived more than eighty years – nine of them in a state of insanity. No one could really regret his passing yet many remembered that he had been a man who had always striven to do his duty.

The last rites were performed. A new reign had begun, but how long would it last? was a question on everyone’s lips, for the new King was a semi-invalid so swollen with gout and dropsy that it was said the ‘water was rapidly rising in him’; he was beset by mysterious illnesses; some even implied there were lapses when he suffered from his father’s complaint.

That may have been but he was a King and whatever his ailments, however gross his body had become, he only had to appear in public to dazzle all who beheld him.

A new King meant a coronation. And what of the Queen?

The people were not displeased with George IV; he could always provide diversion.

They were right in this.

Very soon the news spread through the country. Caroline, wife of George IV, having learned that she was the Queen of England was coming home to claim her rights.

ADELAIDE AND WILLIAM could not stay in the inadequate apartments in Stable Yard and William took her down to Bushy House. The grounds delighted her; so did the house itself which she saw as an ideal country residence, not grand enough for ceremonious living and yet spacious enough to exist graciously.

‘It’s enchanting,’ she told William, who was delighted.

‘I always thought so,’ he replied. ‘Some of the happiest years of my life were spent here.’

She smiled. She had learned not to be in the least jealous when he referred nostalgically to his life with Dorothy Jordan. ‘The children always loved it,’ he added wistfully. ‘They made it their home.’

‘I hope they will continue to think of it as such.’

He gave her that dog-like look of gratitude which was often on his face when he regarded her. He wanted to tell her that when he had married her he had seen her just as a vehicle for providing an heir to the throne. Somehow it had become different; and it was due to her. He was well aware of that. He himself was changing. He was no longer the crude sailor he had always fancied himself to be. George had said: ‘William, Adelaide is good for you. You’ve ceased to be a sailor and are becoming a gentleman.’

He felt he must treat her gently – far more so than he had treated Dorothy. There was a fragility about Adelaide; and her pleasant placidity was a great contrast to Dorothy’s vitality and quick temper. It was impossible to quarrel with Adelaide. Of course he could not feel for her the wild passion he had felt for Dorothy; he could not in fact understand his feelings. It was almost as though in spite of himself a sturdy affection was becoming the foundation of his family life. He was proud of this quiet pleasant girl who was his wife. She was no beauty it was true, but she had dignity and her charm of manner served her well.

As he crossed the threshold of Bushy House with her he felt a sudden happiness such as he had not experienced since the death of Dorothy. Those rumours of her not being dead or, worse still, dead and unable to rest had worried him.

Now, oddly enough, with Adelaide beside him in the house which had been Dorothy’s home, he could find peace.

Everywhere there was evidence of Dorothy. He had planned the gardens with her, and he only had to look back into his memory and he could see Dorothy on the lawn surrounded by the children, sitting there laughing with them as she used to on those occasions when she slipped away from her duties at the theatre to come home. He could see her playing pranks such as those she played on the stage in the role of Little Pickle to amuse the children. It was not really so long ago.

Bushy was haunted by memories of Dorothy but with Adelaide beside him strangely enough they were not unhappy memories. He could imagine himself explaining to Adelaide his feelings for Dorothy. He wanted her to understand the strength of that love which had enabled them to live together so cosily for twenty years and bring up ten children. And he had deserted her in the end and she had fled from the country and died with no one but a woman companion beside her. Poor Dorothy, the comic actress whose life had ended in tragedy.