Perdita's Prince: (Georgian Series) (23 page)

‘It was a boy,’ the Queen told them. ‘George … George was the name. The same as your Papa’s.’

‘And our brother’s,’ William reminded her.

There was silence. The King looked round the family circle as though he had not before noticed the absence of his eldest son.

‘It’s a pity that our eldest son does not see fit to honour a
family
occasion with his presence.’

‘Frederick is not here either,’ the Queen reminded him, as though excusing the Prince.

‘Where George is, Frederick will be,’ William told them.

The Queen silenced her son with a look.

‘Would Your Majesty care for a little music?’

‘I want to know why the Prince of Wales and his brother behave as though they are apart from the rest of us.’

‘They are growing up,’ sighed the Queen.

‘They should have been here.’ The King looked round him and one of his pages immediately came to him.

‘Go to the Dower Lodge at once,’ he said. ‘Tell the Prince of Wales and Prince Frederick that I command their attendance without delay. Did you hear that? Without delay, eh, what?’

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’ The page disappeared and the King glowered into space, and neither the Queen’s attempts to amuse him nor the chatter of his children could divert him from his irritation with his eldest son.

Nor was his mood improved when shortly afterwards the page returned to report that neither the Prince nor his brother could be found in the Dower Lodge.

The King looked at his watch. ‘Is this not the time when they should be doing their private study?’

‘On a fine afternoon like this they might decide to do it in the gardens,’ suggested the Queen.

The King replied: ‘If they are shirking their lessons …’ And he immediately felt frustrated, for if he attempted to question his sons, George would in a few minutes show him that he was so much more educated than his father and would immediately have the advantage. He had that way with him – which was growing more and more obvious – of mocking his father without saying anything that could be complained of. Young George was clever. He had been able to learn his lessons with the utmost ease; he had actually liked Greek and Latin and languages and literature and poetry; he could talk about pictures and artists in a way his father could not understand. Yet he never seemed to try as his father had. The King’s mind went back to those hours in the schoolroom when he had worked so hard and assimilated so little; and there was George, his son, even outstripping some of his tutors as though that was something he did without effort while he went on with the serious business of plaguing his father.

‘The Prince is a natural scholar,’ said the Queen quietly. ‘I don’t think he ever shirks his lessons. He likes them. Perhaps having completed their work they have taken a stroll. That is it.’

‘There is a time for strolling,’ muttered the King. ‘I’ll speak to the young puppy tomorrow.’

The Queen was relieved. Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow.

Mrs Papendiek, the wife of one of the flautists who was in attendance on the Queen, wondered whether she ought to tell Her Majesty that something very strange was going on in the Dower House. She had actually seen the young Princes scaling the wall; and they went off regularly somewhere along the river.

Should I? Mrs Papendiek asked herself.

The Prince would be annoyed with her. She had mentioned the affair to her husband; he had said: ‘Don’t do anything to upset the Prince. Once he’s of age there’ll be no holding him. The King won’t have the power to either. See and say nothing. It’s safer.’

Yes, thought Mrs Papendiek, seeing the increased colour in the King’s face and noting that he was speaking more quickly than normally, better to hold one’s tongue.

The Queen said: ‘I am sure Your Majesty would like a little music.’

The King agreed that he would, so the Queen soothed him by her skilful performance on the harpsichord.

*

It was July.

‘Next month,’ declared the Prince, ‘I shall be eighteen years old. Even the King cannot deny me my privileges then.’

‘Ah!’ sighed Perdita. ‘How I look forward to the day when we no longer have to meet in this clandestine way.’

‘You shall have a fine establishment. The best house we can find.’

Perdita sighed and the Prince hurried on: ‘You will be so happy in it and I shall be there all the time. The whole world shall know that it is the place where I most long to be.’

Perdita he knew felt her position deeply. She was a good woman and believed that a union could only be perfect if it were legal. The Prince hated legality. Already he was hedged in by rules, and to him no relationship could be as perfect as that which existed between himself and Perdita.

She could become melancholy easily, wondering if, in being with him in this way, she was sinful. The Prince did not wish to consider sin. He was interested only in pleasure. He would do everything in the world to please her, he assured her, but he thought that when they were together they should be happy.

For fear that she would brood on the loss of her reputation, for as soon as she was set up in that establishment which the Prince would provide for her, the whole of the Court – the whole of London – would know of their relationship, the Prince brought in a grievance of his own.

‘I could not allow you to continue on the stage.’

She was silent.

‘Oh, no, no,’ he went on. ‘I do not wish you to be paraded for other men to look at, to comment on.’

‘But … it is my living.’

The Prince laughed. She was not going to
think
about money again. When he was eighteen he would have an income, an establishment. By God, his Perdita forgot that the man who adored her, worshipped her, who would be faithful to the end of his days, was the Prince of Wales. No sordid considerations of money! No talk of working for a living! He would not
allow
her to continue on the stage. She was for him … for him alone.

She was not displeased at this display of authority. When the whole of London knew the position it would have been a little humiliating to appear at the theatre, to be gazed at while everyone pictured her with the Prince. No, she was not displeased at all.

But she performed a touching renunciation scene. She told him of how Mr Garrick himself had prophesied a great future for her; of the days when he himself tutored her; and would Mr Garrick have concerned himself with anything short of genius? The Prince should have seen her Juliet. ‘Pale pink satin. Spangles of silver. White feathers. But the most becoming scene was the last. My transparent gauze veil fell from the back of my head to my feet.’

‘Yes, and you looked like an angel. But no more stage. Do you think I will allow anyone to gaze at you in breeches!’

‘Ah, those breeches parts! Some thought them my best. But all this I will give up … for you.’

More lovemaking. More professions of eternal devotion.

When she was home in her bedroom she told Mrs Armistead:
‘I am looking forward to the adjusting of His Royal Highness’s establishment for the public avowal of our mutual attachment.’

*

It was mid-morning when Mrs Armistead, after having given her mistress a dish of chocolate in bed, said she must go out as there were several items she needed such as ribbons, rouge and patches.

She might be gone for a couple of hours but in view of Madam’s being so late the previous night, she was sure the rest in bed would do her the world of good and she would of course wish to be fresh for the trip to Eel Pie Island.

Wrapping her cloak about her and pulling its hood well over her head she left the house and, instead of making her way to the market, went straight to St James’s Street where Mr Fox had his lodgings. His servant, knowing that his master always received her whatever the hour, ushered her in and went to tell Mr Fox that she had arrived.

‘Bring the lady in,’ cried Mr Fox; and Mrs Armistead was a little astonished to be taken into his bedroom.

‘I rarely rise before eleven,’ he told her; and indeed he was wearing a linen nightgown which was none too clean. Mrs Armistead wondered angrily why his servants did not take the soiled nightgown away and put out a new one. His hair, which was black and thick, was dishevelled.

He laughed at her dismay for although she had believed she was hiding it, she had for a second betrayed it.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘if I were female you might with reason call me a slut.’

‘Sir!’

He laughed at her and putting his hands on her shoulders studied her face.

‘Do you know, Mrs Armistead, at one time I, my friend Richard Fitzpatrick and my cousin the Earl of Carlisle were regarded as the three best dressed men in London? Times change and we change with them, eh. Look at me now. You could not, in reason, call me the best dressed man in London.’

‘I would not call you dressed at all, sir.’

‘Stop calling me sir,’ he said. ‘And I refuse to call you Mrs Armistead.’

‘My name was Elizabeth Bridget Cane before I married Mr Armistead.’

‘Well Lizzie, now you have formally introduced yourself and I am very pleased that we have become good friends.’

‘I came to tell you that Mrs Robinson is going to give up the stage.’

He grimaced. ‘Sheridan won’t like that. He’s playing to excellent business. Everyone wants to see Mrs Robinson. It’s rumoured, but the audience is not certain, that she is the mistress of the Prince of Wales.’

‘When the Prince has his establishment he is going to set her up in a house.’

Fox nodded.

‘Their little affair goes according to plan. There are other matters.’

He was looking at her intently. She had known it must come to this; and when it did of course this would not be the end. There was more between them than a passing desire for a handsome lady’s maid on his side and the need not to offend an important man on hers.

As he came nearer she did not draw back. He took her hand and she let it rest in his.

*

Sheridan sat in his office at the theatre surrounded by playbills, plays which had been sent in for reading, and bills which he chose to ignore because he knew he could not settle them.

He was surprised when Mr Charles James Fox was announced. They were acquainted and had an admiration for each other; but as yet their interests had been divergent. Sheridan followed political affairs with a mild interest; Fox was an occasional visitor to the theatre; but Sheridan, himself a Whig, had been impressed by Fox’s adroit manoeuvres and Fox by
The School for Scandal
and
The Rivals.

But why, wondered Sheridan, had the important gentleman seen fit to call upon him?

‘Mr Fox, sir, at your service,’ he said.

‘At yours, sir. I trust this is not an inconvenient hour to call?’

‘Any hour would be convenient to receive a visit from Mr Fox.’

Fox laughed to imply they could dispense with trite formalities.

‘Business is booming, I see,’ said Mr Fox. He was well aware that although business boomed so did Sheridan’s debts. Sheridan was a gambler and a gay liver; moreover, he was of an intellectual calibre to match Fox’s. Such kindred spirits were rare.

Sheridan, knowing that Fox would be well aware of his financial difficulties, shrugged his shoulders and nodded in the direction of the pile of bills. No need to excuse himself to a man who had been – was constantly – in a similar position.

‘So tiresome,’ said Mr Fox, ‘to have to pay for one’s pleasures!’

‘But if one did not make a pretence of doing so we should have every Tom, Dick and Harry scrambling for them. Would there be enough to go round?’

‘I do not think it would be beyond the powers of our invention to create new ones, Mr Sheridan.’

Sheridan opened a cupboard and brought out two glasses.

Without speaking he filled them and handed one to Fox.

‘Your very good health, sir, and good fortune to the project you have come here to discuss with me this day.’

Fox laughed. ‘Mr Sheridan, your talents are considerable. Words are your forte. The same thing applies to me. To be brief I have come to suggest that you stand for Parliament.’

‘Did I hear you aright, sir?’

‘As a Whig. You are a Whig, sir. No doubt of that.’

Sheridan lifted his glass. ‘To wine, women and Whigs, sir.’

Mr Fox drank and said: ‘So, Mr Sheridan?’

‘Mr Fox, sir. I am sitting here among my accounts, doing my theatre business with no thought of taking on the office of Lord of the Treasury.’

‘You will not be hurried into that position quite yet, Mr Sheridan.’

‘But no one enters politics surely without dreaming of the Great Seal. It is the Field Marshal’s baton … it is the Admiral’s … Forgive me, sir, but what is the insignia of our sea lords? Is it the holy grail?’

‘Dream of it then, Mr Sheridan! Dream of it! You are too clever a man to concentrate all your efforts into one undertaking. Your plays … your theatre … yes, excellent for an ordinary man.
But you are not an ordinary man, Mr Sheridan. You have a touch of genius. Give it to your country.’

‘Are there not too many at this moment offering their genius to the country? See what such genius has done. Lost us the American Colonies, for one thing.’

‘Alas, politicians are legion; genius is rare. North is the biggest blundering idiot that ever held the Great Seal. And HM clings to him. Why? Because he sees himself as a Supreme Ruler. In that addled head of his he’s thinking of Divine Rights. North and the King. By God, what a pair. I have to put the King and his Tories out of office, Mr Sheridan; and I can only do that by putting the Whigs in.’

‘Surely the people are behind the Government.’

‘Mr Sheridan, you will have to learn your politics. The people will be Tory one day and Whig the next and it is our task to see that they are Whig the day after and the week after and the year after. How do we do it? By teaching them, educating them, by making them realize what a holy mess we’re in, what the loss of the colonies mean to us.’

‘We?’

‘Those of us who have the power to do so. Men who are on familiar and caressing terms with the English language.’