She listened, made intelligent comment, and later spent an affectionate hour in his company.
The Queen plots
NEWS OF THE life the Prince was leading came in time to the George … young George … little more than a boy and keeping King’s ears. He could not sleep at night for thinking of it. a play actress! The King’s mind went back to the days when he himself was eighteen. He thought of that establishment in which he had set up Hannah, where their children were born. But it was discreet. No one knew. It was wrong, it was foolish, and he deeply repented it; but it was discreet. That was the first quality a prince who would be king must acquire. It was not generally known about his affair with Hannah, although it had been rumoured and whispered of here and there. This was different. This was blatant. Going out together … her in her carriage … painted like a harlot – although the women in the Prince’s set all did the same. Rouge and white lead, bah! Didn’t they know it stopped up the pores and caused consumption?
And the company he kept. That was the real source of trouble! He was a frequent visitor at Cumberland House. Nothing he could have done could have been more designed to flout his father. To go … as soon as a little freedom was granted him … to that hotbed of Whiggery which was in complete opposition to everything his father stood for. To choose them as his friends. If it had been the Gloucesters it would have been different. But it was not. It was Cumberland, that lecher who had made a scandal with Grosvenor’s wife – Cumberland and that woman with her eyelashes. George must have set out deliberately to defy his father.
He summoned Gloucester to Kew and told him of his anxieties.
‘You’ve heard, of course,’ he said.
‘The whole town is talking of it,’ replied Gloucester. ‘He’s there every other night. Sometimes with his play actress, sometimes without her. He’s constantly in the company of Fox and Sheridan.’
‘Rogues, both of them. Fox would do anything to plague me. As for Sheridan, he’s a drunkard and a lecher and I think it the greatest shame that he should have married that charming Miss Linley.’ The King’s eyes clouded momentarily with sentiment. ‘I shall never forget hearing her sing in an oratorio. Never heard singing like it. Sang like an angel, looked like an angel. I’m sorry to see her married to a fellow like that.’
‘They say he’s talented. I heard it said that on the first night of his School for Scandal a journalist passing the theatre ran for his life because he thought the thunder of the applause would bring the roof down.’
‘Bah! Pandering to the senses! Low taste. The man’s a drunkard and a gambler and he and Fox are teaching George to be the same.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘What can I do? The young dog’s eighteen. They say that’s the time for a little independence. Fox, Sheridan, Cumberland … Cumberland most of all.’
‘I wonder you allow them to meet.’
‘I don’t care to part relations.’
Gloucester looked surprised considering the manner in which he – as well as Cumberland – had been kept from their nephews and nieces for so many years. But old George was behaving oddly nowadays; one could never be sure of him.
The King began to pace up and down, his face growing scarlet.
‘What would you have me do in my present distress?’ he demanded. ‘Eh, what? If I attempt to put a stop to this I shall drive my son further and further into the arms of the opposition. And that would increase my distress.’
Gloucester agreed that taking into account the Prince’s age and the freedom he had already had it would be difficult to intervene now. Perhaps if he had not been so rigorously controlled beforehand he would not have rushed so madly into freedom. But he did not distress his brother still further by telling him this.
‘He comes to see you, I suppose?’ said the King.
‘Not often.’
‘But he is fond of you?’
‘Yes, I think so. But when I have tried to remonstrate with him he has hinted that he does not care to be preached at.’
‘You see. You see. What can you do with such a young dog? Tell me that, eh, what?’
‘It may be that after a while he will grow less wild.’
‘Less wild! Less wild! I hear that he is beginning to talk like that woman … that coarse creature with the eyelashes. I hear that he drinks to excess … that he has actually been carried home to that place where he lives with the actress. A pleasant story to be set about the Prince of Wales.’
‘Many princes have behaved in similar fashion,’ soothed Gloucester.
‘I won’t have my sons doing it. I won’t, I say. But how can I stop it? Tell me that, eh, what?’
The Duke of Gloucester could give no answer. ‘I fear Cumberland may be attempting to blackmail me into receiving that woman of his,’ went on the King.
‘Well,’ retorted the Duke of Gloucester, speaking for his own Duchess, ‘she is after all a member of the family.’
‘Eyelashes, bah!’ said the King.
When Gloucester left he went to see the Queen. She was a little worried about the health of the baby, for young Alfred had not picked up as her older children had and as little Octavius had never really been strong there were new anxieties in the nurseries.
She was sitting in her drawing room at her embroidery, her snuff box beside her, some of her women with her, contented apart from her anxiety about her family, to be staying at ‘dear little Kew’.
She gave the order for dismissal because she saw at once from the King’s expression that he was upset and she knew that if he talked too quickly or incoherently some of these women would gossip about it, so she took every opportunity of keeping them out of the King’s way.
She did not have to ask what was wrong. She guessed the American Colonies might have something to do with it, but he would not of course come here to discuss those with her. She was supposed to be unaware that any conflict was taking place. If she had offered an opinion it would have been received with cold surprise. She had grown accustomed to this, and only resented it now and then.
But the family was a different matter. So it was family affairs of which he had come to speak.
‘The baby?’ he asked.
‘As well as we can expect. He grows a little stronger each day, I think.’
‘I’m glad of that. And Octavius? Eh! What?’
‘He has had a little cold but it is better,’ soothed the Queen.
Now to the subject which had brought him here; George, Prince of Wales.
‘It’s young George,’ he said.
The Queen put her hand involuntarily to her heart.
‘Up to his tricks,’ went on the King. ‘Gambling, drinking and keeping a play actress.’
‘No!’ cried the Queen.
‘But I say it is so and something will have to be done about it. He’ll have to be taught his duties to the state, to his family … eh? what?’
‘There are always people to gossip … to lie … about us.’
‘These are not lies. I’ve heard from too many sources. He’s wild. He’s set this woman up in a house … He lives there with her. His friends are my enemies. Fox is always with him. He goes to Cumberland and that woman of his. He’s with the Whigs … he’s with the Opposition. His bosom friends are the people I most dislike. He does it to spite me, eh, what?’
‘A play actress,’ murmured the Queen. ‘George with a play actress.’
‘I’m afraid our son is too fond of women.’
The Queen was silent.
‘If that were all … I’d understand.’ The King seemed as though he were talking to himself. ‘Young man … hot blood. It happens now and then. They grow out of it … become sober …’ He looked at Charlotte with her big mouth and her lack of eyelashes. They do their duty, are faithful to the wives that are chosen for them … But he has deliberately gone to Cumberland. My brother is teaching him to despise everything that I wish him to respect. That’s what is happening to the Prince of Wales and what am I going to do about it, eh, what?’