The decorations to the house had not been necessary. It had been beautiful as it was. So much of the expensive food had not been eaten.
She pointed this out.
‘My dear Dora, I fancy I have more experience of entertaining Princes than you have. Not to have given of the very best would have been an insult to the Prince of Wales.’
Dorothy shrugged her shoulders. It was no use continuing with recriminations. They had to find the money – or some of it – enough to keep their creditors quiet for a time.
There was only one thing to do.
She must return to work. On a cold January day she opened at Drury Lane as Peggy in The Country Girl.
She was as popular as ever in the early parts, which was amazing considering she was almost fifty years old. She often felt ill; the pain in her chest had grown worse and she was spitting blood again. But the audience was faithful. She could still charm them; she had that indefinable quality which the years could not destroy. Dorothy Jordan was a draw again.
There was the money – always the money. They would manage somehow as long as she worked.
One evening she found Fanny in the Green Room, an excited Fanny, with a secret she was bubbling over to tell.
‘Mamma,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be married.’
Dorothy embraced her daughter. At last she had found a husband! Poor Fanny was about to enter that state which Dorothy herself for all her genius, for all that she had thirteen children – little Amelia had been born to bring the FitzClarence children to ten in number – had never been able to achieve.
‘Who is he?’ she asked.
‘Well, Mamma, he is not in a very good position. He has a post in the Ordnance Office.’
‘A clerk.’
‘Oh, I know that is not to be compared with a duke, but at least he can marry me. And a clerk in a government office like the Ordnance is no ordinary clerk.’
‘That’s true,’ said Dorothy. ‘And are you happy, my darling?’
Fanny nodded. Of course she was happy. She had found a man willing to marry her. She had thought she never would and she was twenty-six years old.
‘Then I am happy, too,’ said Dorothy.
She was less contented when she met Thomas Alsop; she could not rid herself of the uneasy feeling that he had heard of the dowry which was to be Fanny’s when she married. He would know of course that she was the daughter of Dorothy Jordan and there had too been all that publicity when she had inherited the Bettesworth money.
However, Fanny was happy and determined on marriage so preparations must go on.
When she told William of the forthcoming marriage he was not so pleased. The dowry would have to be provided, £10,000 in all. £2,000 was to be paid to the husband on the marriage and the rest at £200 a year. Dorothy had managed to invest in an annuity which would provide for Fanny, but she had been obliged to lend the money which she had saved for the other girls to William; and the fact that she would have to ask for this in the event of the others marrying worried her – and him.
His gout flared up, he was touchy and irritable. A gloom had settled over Bushy House.
But the marriage of Fanny to Thomas Alsop took place and it was arranged that Hester with Dodee and Lucy should share a house they had acquired in Park Place.
This was settled, but somewhat uneasily; and as she was now working hard in the theatre and not feeling very well, Dorothy was beset by fears of the future.
Soon after Fanny’s marriage Dodee was betrothed to another clerk of the Ordnance Office, whom Thomas had brought to the house. He was Frederick Edward March, a natural son of Lord Henry Fitzgerald.
‘We plan to get married soon, Mamma,’ said Dodee.
Dorothy said she was delighted to see her daughter so happy; and then she began to think about the money.
She had found Fanny’s dowry but Dodee’s would be another matter. It was going to be necessary to ask William to return the money he had borrowed.
He was not well, and he always hated talking of money. There was something undignified, he always felt, when a member of the royal family was asked to pay. The Prince of Wales felt the same; but he dismissed these matters with an elegant shrug and allowed the debts to mount until they were of such proportions that only the Government could settle them for him. Then they came up with conditions. It was such a condition which had brought him to marriage with the wife he loathed.
Marriage, thought William. What if they were to demand it of him!
Perhaps Dorothy did not understand this.
‘I have promised the girls this money,’ cried Dorothy in distraction. ‘I must have it. Everything else must be put aside but I must have it.’
‘They will have to wait for their money like everyone else.’
‘Not the dowry, William. They must have it.’
‘What about their father?’
She drew back as if he had struck her. It was not like William to refer to those unfortunate incidents in her life. She had thought he understood them. She had told him of the persecution of Daly, her devotion to Richard Ford and the latter’s promise to marry her.
‘I could not ask him now.’
‘Why not. He’s comfortably placed. Sir Richard now – and didn’t he marry a rich wife?’
‘I would not ask him,’ she said. ‘I have promised this dowry. You must let me have it. I have your bond.’
There was nothing that could infuriate him more than the reference to a bond. He owed her money, he admitted it. He believed it was somewhere in the neighbourhood of £30,000, but to think that she could refer to the bond in that way. As though she were a moneylender.
‘So what will you do?’ he demanded. ‘Send me to a debtors’ prison?’
‘William, I only meant…’
‘I know full well what you meant, Madam Shylock. I have had money from you… which you were pleased to give me and now I must repay it. It says so in the bond.’
She was distraught. So was he. He hated to see her so worried. But he thought of all the creditors who were crying out to be paid. So how could he let her have the money he owed her?
His frustration whipped up his temper. He was saying things he did not mean, unkind things which were untrue; and she had turned and hurried away.
They were reconciled afterwards but the question of money was between them. It hung over them and would not be dismissed.
He would find the money, he declared, if he had to go to the moneylender he would find it.
‘I must take more engagements,’ she said. ‘I shall work all through the season if I can get them.’
George was now fourteen and William had said he should join the Army as a Cornet.
‘He’s far too young,’ she argued.
‘Nonsense!’ retorted William. ‘I was sent to sea when I was thirteen. It did me no harm.’
So she lost her darling George, and not only did he become a soldier but one on active service. She was distracted when he was sent out to Spain to join Sir John Moore’s army. This made a further rift between herself and William, because she blamed him for sending George away at such an early age.
There was the continual round at the theatre. She had to go on stage and play parts like Miss Hoyden, for which she felt far too old and tired when all the time she was conscious of great anxieties. What was happening in the Alsop household? Would Dodee be happy? Would William be able to find the money? What when Lucy’s turn came? What of George – such a boy to be thrust into battle!
In May of that year there were riots among the weavers of Manchester. The military were called in to deal with them and two people were killed while several were wounded.
In September Covent Garden was burned down and the rumour was that the fire had been started on purpose. The roof collapsed and nineteen people were killed; the losses were tremendous and a shudder of horror ran through the theatrical world.