Victoria in the Wings

‘The Humbugs’

QUEEN CHARLOTTE FERVENTLY wished that she did not feel so ill. At this important time she needed all her strength of purpose. She awoke every morning with the realization that the family’s existence was in danger and that none of them seemed to be urgently aware of it.

She was not a woman to magnify her ailments, but she was fully aware what the dropsical state of her body meant and doubted whether she would live long enough to see the birth of the new heir to the throne. Who would be first, she wondered, Clarence or Kent – or failing them there was Cumberland (God forbid that it should be that woman’s child) or Cambridge. The marriages took so long to arrange, and her sons were not the most ardent of wooers; there was Kent with his French woman and he seemed to be more concerned about her future than that of the woman who was to be his wife. That somewhat independent widow, the Princess Victoria, might become aware of this and change her mind. As for Clarence, when had he ever behaved with wisdom?

He had been furious to have to jilt Miss Wykeham. Jilt! What a ridiculous expression! He had never been properly betrothed to her in any case and if she had had any sense she would have known it.

And then all that fuss about the marriage allowances. Really Clarence had a perfect genius for getting himself into absurd situations.

She sent one of the women for her daughter Elizabeth for she wished to talk to her about the marriage which was being proposed for her.

Such a crop of marriages, she thought. Necessary for brothers but why for the sisters? There was something rather pathetic about an ageing woman marrying – and being so eager to do so.

Elizabeth came to her call. She was forty-eight. Indeed, she should have more dignity.

‘My dear Elizabeth, my snuff-box.’

Elizabeth hastened to bring it to her mother.

‘It has not been filled,’ complained the Queen.

Elizabeth thought: How irritable she is! Her rheumatism, I suppose. What joy to be free of it all!

‘Thank you. I am surprised that you forgot to fill it, Elizabeth.’

‘I am sorry, Mamma.’

‘You had other things on your mind.’ The ugly mouth curled to a sneer. ‘This … marriage of yours, I’ll swear.’

‘I suppose when she is about to be married a woman could be excused for being a little absent-minded about a snuff-box.’

‘Oh dear!’ sighed the Queen. ‘How you have changed!’

‘I am sorry, Mamma,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I shall not forget again … as long as I am here.’

‘So you have determined to accept this proposal.’

‘I have already accepted, Mamma.’

The Queen laughed unpleasantly. ‘I have heard he is little better than an animal.’

‘That could apply to so many,’ retorted Elizabeth blithely.

‘Elizabeth, I do not think you have considered this sufficiently.’

‘I did not have to consider it, Mamma. I always knew that I would prefer any marriage to none at all.’

‘I cannot understand you … any of you.’

The Queen’s mouth shut like a trap. She would have liked to oppose the marriage but George was for it, providing, he said, Elizabeth wanted it. He was sorry for his sisters. They had never had a chance, he affirmed; and it was unnatural for them to be shut away as they had been all their lives. The King had behaved towards his daughters as though they were birds to be kept in cages. He forgot they were human beings although they were princesses. George had always sworn that when he came to the throne – and the Regency was the same thing – his first act would be to do something for his sisters. And for once George had kept his word. He had given them all allowances and if any of them could find men to marry them, he was not going to withhold his consent.

So when the Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg offered for Elizabeth the Regent declared that it was Elizabeth’s affair and if she wished to accept the fellow she might do so. And she had accepted with unbecoming alacrity.

What she would do without Elizabeth, she was not sure. Elizabeth had been her favourite daughter – because she was the most useful. Mary had married her cousin Gloucester, that ridiculous ‘Slice’ as the papers called him or ‘Silly Billy’ as the Regent had named him, and she was no longer available to wait upon her Mamma. There would be only Augusta and Sophia left when Elizabeth had married, and Sophia was so often ill that she had to keep to her bed.

And just at the time when I most need them! thought the Queen irritably. Surely they could have waited a little longer before rushing off with the first man who asked them.

Elizabeth guessed the Queen’s thoughts. How unfair! She was forty-eight. How could she be expected to wait! Already she was too old to have children and when she thought how they had all been treated she could hate the irritable ugly old woman in the chair for having condemned them all to live as they had. Although perhaps Papa was more to blame. But how could she hate that poor shambling old man who was nearly blind and completely deaf and lived shut away from them all with his doctors who were really his keepers?

But the door of the cage was open at last and no matter what the Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg was like she was going to have him.

‘Sit down. Sit down,’ said the Queen. ‘You fidget me standing there looking so … so helpless. What is the news? Have you heard any?’

‘Nothing I daresay, Mamma, that you would not have heard already.’

‘Pray take your embroidery. I do not care to see you sitting idle-handed.’

For the time it was easier to obey, thought Elizabeth. But the tyranny was almost over. Soon the Landgrave would be in England. What was he like? She had heard some reports that were not very flattering but then people were so unkind. They loved to poke fun. And anything … just anything would be better than this slavery.

Elizabeth was thinking of her sisters. Charlotte the eldest who had married twenty years before. Strangely her bridegroom had been the husband of the Regent’s wife’s sister who had disappeared mysteriously and was said to have been murdered. She remembered how ill poor Charlotte had been when she had thought the wedding might not take place because of a rumour that her bridegroom’s first wife was still alive. She had suffered from jaundice, poor girl, and had been quite yellow at the ceremony. But she had achieved marriage, the only one of them to do so at that time. Mary had married last year. She should have married Gloucester years before. Augusta was doomed to remain a spinster and that left Sophia who had not been without adventures. She had at least had a lover – old General Garth – and there had been the boy to prove it. What a time that had been when they had discovered Sophia was pregnant and had had to get her down to Weymouth ‘for her health’s sake’ where she had successfully given birth. Garth adored the boy – and so did Sophia. She saw him whenever she could and Garth was still at Court. The scandals in this family were almost beyond belief. It was because the King had been so strict with the boys that as soon as they were free they rushed off wildly to make up for lost time; and the girls did what they could in their prisons to brighten the monotony of their lives. Even the dead, sainted Amelia had been in love with Charles Fitzroy and had had to keep it hidden from Papa.

And now here was freedom coming towards her in the person of the Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg.

Was she going to seize that freedom? She certainly was … with both hands; and she had quoted an ancestress of hers to Augusta: ‘I would marry an ape rather than no one at all.’

And nothing is going to stop me, she determined.

‘Of course,’ the Queen was saying, ‘when you see the Landgrave you may change your mind.’

Elizabeth plied her needle steadily.

The Queen sighed. ‘At least your brother Clarence is being sensible at last. He was in quite a tantrum. First about that woman with the odd name.’

‘Miss Wykeham.’

‘That is the creature. And then declaring that he would not marry at all because Parliament only offered him an additional £6,000 a year.’

‘He has decided against that now, Mamma. He is quite ready to take the Princess of Saxe-Meiningen.’

‘I should think so. Such a waste of time. I shall not rest easily until these marriages take place. And when I hear that they are fruitful I shall be really at peace.’

‘Yes, Mamma.’

‘I cannot think why there always has to be fuss about these matters. And why your brothers seem to do everything they possibly can to make themselves unpopular.’

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. That freedom which was almost within her grasp made her reckless.

‘I heard that the Duke of Wellington has said that the royal dukes are the damnedest millstone round the necks of any government that can be imagined.’

‘That man uses the most coarse language. I am surprised at your repeating it, Elizabeth.’

‘I thought Your Majesty wished to hear all I had heard.’

The Queen closed her eyes. ‘Bring me the higher footrest. And hand me my snuff-box.’

Elizabeth obeyed and, looking at her mother lying back in the chair, her eyes closed, that yellowish tinge to her face, thought how ill she looked and even uglier than usual.

She felt sorry for her. She would not repeat the latest quip about George. ‘Prinney has let loose his belly which now reaches to his knees.’ A comment on the fact that the Regent no longer belted his waist. They were coarse and unkind; and they liked to ridicule them all. She could imagine what would be said of her and her Landgrave.

But I don’t care, thought Elizabeth. All I care is that I escape.

She looked at her mother and believed she had fallen asleep.

How unlike her! And how grey and old she looked in sleep!

Poor Mamma! thought Elizabeth. She is as ill in her way as Papa is in his.

And she thought of her father, and how it was sometimes necessary to put him into a strait-jacket, and her cold-hearted mother, who had helped to ruin so many of their lives, and George with his wild affairs and the other brothers with their matrimonial difficulties.

What a family!

The Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg had arrived in England and the public was amused. What was this creature who had come to marry the Princess? There was something ridiculous about a woman of forty-eight behaving like a coy young bride which, it was insisted, was what the Princess Elizabeth was doing. She was over-plump, somewhat unwieldy in fact; and when her bridegroom appeared the cartoons came thick and fast.

When he arrived in England, it was said, his face and body were so caked with dirt that no one could see his features. He had never washed in his life. He did not think washing necessary. He smoked continuously and the smell of his smoky unclean person sent people scurrying away from him.

They had had to insist that he take several very hot baths one after another to make some inroad into the grime; and to take his pipe away from him, which made him peevish.

The truth was that hygiene at the English Court had become something of a fetish owing to the Regent’s habits. He himself bathed every day and he expected everyone who came into contact with him to do the same. Thus the bathing habit was taken up throughout the Court but baths were rarities in Hesse-Homburg; and remembering the disastrous meeting of the Regent with Caroline of Brunswick when the odour which emanated from her person so sickened him that he turned away calling for a strong brandy, the Landgrave was advised to bath and change his linen before being presented to his future bride.

He seemed to be an easy-going fellow and submitted to the baths with a good grace; and when he was presented to Elizabeth she blushed deeply with pleasure. He was extremely fat but she was no sylph. They might appear to be a most unromantic-looking couple but he was willing to marry her and more than anything else on earth she wanted to be married.

So the bride and groom were satisfied with each other.

The press was delighted with its Landgrave. He was such a good subject for caricature. Because he was from Hesse-Homburg he was quickly christened the Humbug; and the bridal pair were known as The Two Humbugs.

Their wedding gave rise to coarse comment and much that was caustic too.

Naturally the Princess was lavishly endowed.

‘A fresh attack on John Bull’s Purse,’ commented the papers.

The Regent offered to lend the pair one of his houses for the honeymoon, but the bridegroom declared ungraciously that he did not care for the country; however, no one took any notice of this except the Queen who expressed her surprise that Elizabeth could consider marrying such a creature. To which Elizabeth retorted that she was completely content.

The Queen took to laughing at him – at his manners, at his lack of cleanliness and most of all his clumsy attempts to speak English.

‘Many foreign princes – princesses – have to learn a new language when they marry,’ retorted Elizabeth. ‘There is nothing unusual in that.’

They all changed, thought the Queen sadly, once they married. Look at Mary! Now she was the Duchess of Gloucester how different she was from when she had been plain Princess Mary – and all because of her alliance with that Slice of Gloucester Cheese whose mother had been a milliner and had no right to marry into the royal family at all.

At the wedding ceremony the Queen could not control her laughter at the strange manner in which the Landgrave spoke English. It was too comical; and the whole wedding was a farce. So said the Queen. But it was not so much amusement that made her laugh as the desire to ridicule her daughter’s bridegroom. She hated losing her daughters. She wanted them all at her side, waiting on her as they had done in their youth.

The Regent was kind to his sister. After the ceremony he embraced her warmly and wanted to know if she was happy.

‘I am completely content,’ she told him.

‘Then I am happy, too.’

Dear George, he didn’t really care, but he always pretended to so charmingly.

And she was married at last. She would not be the old maid of the family. That would be Augusta. For in view of her adventures no one would ever be able to call Sophia an old maid.

Shortly after the marriage of Elizabeth and the Landgrave, Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, was married to his lovely Augusta at her father’s Belvedere Palace in Cassel.

Adolphus, the forty-four-year-old bridegroom, was happy. He was marrying for love; he could not forget his great good fortune in coming to Hesse-Cassel to seek a bride for Clarence and finding one for himself. He was gentle, rather naïve; and they were very happy.

Even the Queen of England approved of the bride and had sent her warm messages of welcome and an invitation to come to England.

‘We must,’ said Adolphus, ‘be married in England as well as here in Hesse-Cassel; and after the ceremony we’ll come back here.’

Augusta was delighted; she had no wish to leave her beautiful mountain home where she had spent the happiest of childhoods with the kindest of parents and her brothers and sisters. Even the Napoleonic Wars had not greatly disturbed Hesse-Cassel, for Duke Frederick had successfully managed to remain in a sense neutral while he placated both sides.

He agreed with Adolphus that the marriage must be celebrated in England and announced his intention of accompanying the pair to England to assist at the ceremony.

Augusta herself was a little nervous of the visit. She had naturally heard a great deal about the happenings at the English Court. The affairs of that family had been the scandal of a Continent; for one thing no other family seemed to behave quite so outrageously and Germany was so closely linked with the English royal family, which was after all the House of Hanover, that all Germans were particularly interested.

‘I am very nervous of meeting the Queen and the Regent,’ Augusta told her husband.

‘You need have no fears of the Regent. He is the most charming man alive – particularly to beautiful women.’

Adolphus looked complacently at his bride with her tall slim figure, her dark eyes, her abundant dark hair and thick well-arched brows; she was beautiful, entirely feminine; she could sing delightfully – which, Adolphus said, would please the Regent who fancied he had a very fine singing voice himself.

‘But the Queen?’ she asked.

The Queen? Well he was not sure of the Queen. She would admire Augusta’s dexterity with the needle. Augusta was a very fine needlewoman and examples of her exquisite embroidery adorned her father’s palaces; she could arrange flowers with true artistry. The Queen would find those pleasant accomplishments.

‘The Queen does not disapprove of our marriage,’ said Adolphus; ‘and as she is disapproving of so much recently it may well be that she will be pleased to find something which she can like.’

And so they set out for England, and how rough was the crossing and how sick poor Augusta, tossing on her bunk and wishing she were anywhere on earth rather than on a frail boat in a malicious sea on a trip to see a fractious Queen of England.

But when the trip was over she looked very lovely with her white gown and lavender-coloured pelisse which accorded so well with her dark hair and bright complexion and her lovely eyes shaded by the white ostrich feathers in her hat.

The people thought her beautiful and cheered her. What a change from the fat, dirty Humbug from Homburg.

Adolphus was delighted by her reception but Augusta who could not understand what the people were shouting was a little alarmed. When she drove through the streets of London and grinning faces came close to the carriage windows she drew back in some alarm. These noisy streets were so different from what she had been used to in Hesse-Cassel where the people were orderly and disciplined and showed proper respect to their ruling house.

‘They are admiring you, my love,’ said Adolphus proudly.

She smiled faintly at the people and they began to think her aloof, so they did not care for that however beautiful she was, and Augusta, sensing a certain hostility, was longing to go home to Hesse-Cassel, although she dreaded another sea crossing.

The Queen, however, received her with the utmost affability. Augusta showed the proper deference to her; they spoke in German together, and Charlotte was less of an ogress than she had feared. The Regent was, as she had been led to believe, perfectly charming. Adolphus was the luckiest fellow on earth to have won such a beauty, he told her; and he sighed to imply that he envied his brother, and was faintly melancholy, in the most charming way, because the happiness of the newly married pair could not but remind him of his own sorry plight with the Princess of Wales.

Clarence and Kent were inclined to be suspicious. She felt they were weighing her up, assessing her fertility. Adolphus whispered that now the race was on they were all eager to have the child which would be heir to the throne.

‘And we, my darling, have the start of them. Clarence and Kent are not even married yet.’

The meeting with the Duke of Cumberland was less successful, for she did not meet the Duchess who was not received at Court. He had a terrifying countenance and she could well believe all the stories she had heard of him.

The English ceremony was performed in the presence of the Queen. The bride looked charming, the bridegroom was clearly content, and even the Queen had no criticism to offer.

It was hardly to be expected that the press would not find something to ridicule.

Augusta might be a beauty and the royal family might be pleased with the match, but what of the cost to the nation?

Wellington was right when he said the family was a millstone round the nation’s neck. Royal marriages were all very well, but these brides and grooms took government grants and an increase in income as their right. And where did the money come from but the taxes?

‘More Humbugs,’ announced the papers. ‘Another attack on John Bull’s Purse.’

And the activities of the two married couples were reported with glee – particularly those of Elizabeth and the Duke of Hesse-Homburg it was true; but they were known as the Four Humbugs, and Adolphus and his bride did not escape.

Frederica, Duchess of Cumberland, was furious. As she complained to Ernest, her husband: ‘Cambridge’s wife is received at Court. The Queen makes a great fuss of her. And yet I am beneath her notice. She behaves as though I don’t exist.’

‘My dear,’ said Ernest, ‘you know my mother. She is the most cantankerous old woman alive. She has made up her mind to disapprove of you and nothing will make her change it. I shouldn’t fret. If you were dull and uninteresting she would approve. Remember that.’

‘Like Madam, the Duchess of Cambridge? I hear she is a beauty.’

‘Pretty but insipid.’

‘I wonder …’

‘What do you wonder?’

‘Whether she is enceinte yet?’

‘So soon?’

‘They were married in Hesse-Cassel. The second ceremony was not really necessary. I wonder.’

‘We shall know soon enough.’

‘Not soon enough for me. I am determined that we are going to produce the King of England.’

‘Of course. And it’s a sobering thought that I have three brothers all with the same ambition.’

‘Sobering! It’s exciting. Who will be the winner? At least we and Adolphus are first in the field. Clarence and Kent haven’t started yet?’

‘No, but when they do, being the eldest they have the advantage.’

‘It is not always the favourite that wins.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘Oh, Ernest, it excites me. This contest. Which of us is going to win? It’s the race for a throne. And our chances are as good as any. But the Cambridges are formidable. She is young – twenty-one; he is forty-four, the youngest of the contestants. Somehow I feel that Clarence and Kent are too old. The Cambridges are our true rivals. And to think at this very moment your insipid – but extremely pretty – little Duchess may be with child.’

‘We shall soon hear if she is. I must say Cambridge seems very pleased with himself.’

‘He is very naïve. I knew him well once, remember. Imagine, I might have myself been the Duchess of Cambridge!’

‘Are you regretting that?’

‘My dear Ernest, it is not like you to ask foolish questions.’

‘I have something to tell you. Leopold was very affable when I last saw him. I wonder why.’

‘He is going to bring his sister to England to marry Kent. And he wants the family to approve of her.’

‘But why concern himself with such unpopular members of it? What do you think? He is paying a visit to Saxe-Coburg and has offered us Claremont.’

‘Excellent! When do we move in?’

‘As soon as he leaves.’

‘That’s good news. Now if I only knew whether little Augusta was pregnant I’d be content. I don’t mind telling you that I shall have no peace until I do know.’

‘You must wait for an announcement like the rest of us, my dear.’

Frederica smiled slyly at her husband.

Augusta, Duchess of Cambridge, greatly enjoyed walking, and it was pleasant to escape from the crowds as one could in the gardens at Kew.

She took an hour’s solitary walk there every day; and it appeared to be quite safe for on these walks she met no one but the members of the Queen’s household who, respecting her need for privacy, often pretended not to see her.

She was walking through one of the shady paths close to the river when she heard footsteps behind her and turning saw a woman approaching her. Augusta was immediately aware of her beauty and regal carriage; and she was puzzled; she was not, to her knowledge, a member of the royal family and yet she behaved as though she were.

Augusta could not hide her surprise at being so accosted and to her relief the woman addressed her in German.

‘I’m your sister-in-law, Frederica – Cumberland’s wife. I know you are Augusta and the new Duchess of Cambridge.’

Augusta’s face lit up with pleasure.

She’s certainly pretty, thought Frederica. And yet … somewhat insipid, but that may be compared with an adventuress like myself.

‘It’s such a pleasure to hear someone speak German,’ said Augusta.

‘I was thinking exactly the same. May I join you in your walk or do you prefer to be alone?’

‘Please join me. It will be a great pleasure.’

‘Tell me how do you like England?’

‘It is very strange. There are so many people about. I find London … terrifying. And the noise and the bustle.’

‘Very different from Hesse-Cassel,’ said Frederica. ‘As it is from Mecklenburg-Strelitz.’

‘You notice it too?’

Frederica nodded. ‘I shall not be sorry to go home.’

‘Nor I,’ agreed Augusta.

‘Although,’ went on Frederica, ‘I had a very sad time before I left. Ernest thought it would help me to forget if I went away. I lost my baby.’

Augusta’s expression softened to one of great pity. Frederica was alert. Is she? she wondered.

‘That must have been a terrible tragedy.’

‘Only a mother can know how great,’ said Frederica earnestly. ‘You could not imagine …’

‘I think I could,’ said Augusta.

Significant? wondered Frederica.

‘Do you really?’ Her voice was warm, almost begging for confidences. But Augusta was not of a warm nature; she was also cautious.

‘I suppose,’ went on Frederica, ‘now that you are married you are hoping … as we all do.’

‘As we all do,’ said Augusta. ‘But you have other children.’

‘Yes, I have other children.’

‘From previous marriages.’ The voice was a little cold. Oh, they have been gossiping about me, thought Frederica. What has prim little Augusta heard? If wicked old Aunt Charlotte has discussed me with her, I fear the worst. Augusta would at least know that Frederica was not received by the Queen.

‘I have found happiness at last,’ said Frederica in a voice she hoped sounded suitably soft and romantic. ‘And I hope naturally that I shall bear a child.’ And don’t forget, Madam Augusta, that if we both bear a son mine will come before yours!

It was obvious that Augusta would not confide such a secret to her and she could not ask a direct question naturally. So she allowed the conversation to turn to their lives in their native countries which was clearly what Augusta enjoyed talking about. She would hope that unconsciously Augusta might betray what she wanted to know. So they talked pleasantly and Augusta was clearly delighted to be able to chat easily.

But when they parted Frederica had not discovered what she wanted to know; and they had been seen and the fact that they had been together reported to the Queen.

The Queen was furious.

‘Sophia! Augusta!’ she cried. ‘Why are you never here when I need you? Do you know what has happened? That woman … my brother’s daughter … has been waylaying the Duchess of Cambridge in Kew Gardens and forcing herself upon her.’

‘Well, Mamma,’ said Sophia, ‘I daresay they had a great deal to say to each other. And it must have been good to be able to speak in German together.’

How dared they bandy words with her! What had happened to her family? Mary had left her to marry that fool Slice and although she was constantly being called back to dance attendance on her mother one could not order the Duchess of Gloucester to do this and that as one could the Princess Mary. Elizabeth was making herself a fool with that Humbug. And now Augusta and Sophia seemed to think it fitting to Answer Back.

‘It is disgraceful. Fetch my snuff-box. Sophia, I cannot understand why you cannot do a simple thing like remember my snuff-box. It was very different in the old days.’

‘You were different in the old days, Mamma.’

They were forgetting the respect due to her. Everything was changing. She felt tired and there were pains all over her body.

‘I am … incensed,’ she cried. ‘I gave orders that that woman was not to be received at Court and she has been … waylaying … Augusta.’

‘Mamma, are you all right?’ It was Sophia’s voice coming from some distance it seemed. But Sophia was bending over; her eyes seemed enormous … full of secrets. What dreadful things were said about the children. Were they true? And they were turning away from her. They were all a disappointment to her … except …

‘George?’ she said, and the sound of her voice was like thunder in her ears.

‘I think we should get Mamma to bed,’ said Augusta. ‘And call the doctors.’

The Regent sat by her bed. He held her hand tenderly; and in spite of the pain which racked her body she was almost happy.

He had come as soon as he heard she had been taken ill. How like him! Such perfect manners! But perhaps he was a little anxious. If he were half as concerned as he said he was she would be happy.

‘It was good of you to come,’ she murmured.

‘My dear Madre, as soon as I heard you had been taken ill of course I came. Would you not expect that of me?’ Tenderly reproachful, she thought. How well he did it! But never mind, he did it, and it was for her.

‘My dearest son.’ And there was no pretence about that. He was her dearest son, always had been and always would be. ‘I felt so ill I was sure my last moment had come.’

‘I beg of you do not distress me.’

She smiled. ‘I will not. But I was so shocked. It was that woman … Cumberland’s wife. She is my own niece, I know …’

‘Yes,’ said the Regent whose own troubles loomed so large in his life that he was easily reminded of them, ‘as my wife is my father’s niece.’

‘A pair,’ said the Queen almost viciously. ‘I do believe the one is as bad as the other … in their different ways. Immoral, both of them.’

‘I don’t despair of a divorce.’

‘And she had the impertinence to accost Augusta. I don’t blame Augusta. She speaks no English. She did not understand that I … that we … that you … have forbidden her to come to Court.’

The Regent looked uncomfortable. He had not forbidden Cumberland’s wife to come to Court. He had met her once or twice and thought her an exciting woman. It was the Queen who had refused to receive her. But he did not intend to raise controversial issues now.

The Queen said: ‘That she had dared do this so … upset me. It brought on this attack. It was such … defiance.’

The Regent nodded sadly. He had been reminded of Caroline and once he got that woman into his head he could not get her out. He had sent his spies into her household on the Continent; there was an Italian, Bergami … a kind of majordomo. Was that man her lover? If he was there was every hope that he could divorce her; and then … he would marry again. Some fresh young princess, as exciting as Frederica, Duchess of Cumberland, as beautiful as Augusta, Duchess of Cambridge. Why should his brothers be married to women like that while he had the nauseating Caroline … for more than twenty years he had been tied to her. The years of my youth wasted! he thought dramatically.

‘And,’ the Queen was saying, ‘I cannot allow it to pass. I want to show them my disapproval. I am sure you will approve of this. I am sure you will not wish me to be aggravated by the continued presence of that woman in the country.’

‘Dearest Madre,’ he said, ‘anything that soothes you must be done.’

A triumphant smile gave a grotesque look to the Queen’s yellowish face.

‘I will let Ernest know that he is expected to leave England with his wife … immediately. And that is an order.’

‘So,’ said Frederica, ‘we are ordered to leave.’

Ernest grimaced. ‘And you have only yourself to blame for that, my dear. Your curiosity got the better of you.’

‘But not of Augusta. The girl would not give away her secrets.’

‘So your little encounter was a wasted effort.’

‘Such efforts are never really wasted. I shall not be sorry to go back to Germany. Although, of course, this is the field of action and when the brides of Clarence and Kent arrive the battle will really begin.’ She laughed. ‘But one doesn’t have to be in England to produce the future King. That is what your dear Mamma seems to forget. And although I should have enjoyed staying for a while in Claremont, which Leopold so graciously offered to us, I am not really sorry to go home.’

‘In Germany we have to rely on news from England.’

‘Don’t worry, as soon as one of the contestants is pregnant we shall hear. But I intend to forestall them; and once I am to bear the future King of England even my wicked old aunt won’t be able to keep me out.’

‘Speed the day,’ said Ernest.

‘I have a feeling that it will not be long in coming. And Augusta … I think she was … or will soon be. But what chance will hers have against ours? How clever of you, my Ernest, to get born before Cambridge.’

‘Cleverer still if I’d managed to outdo Clarence and Kent.’

‘Never mind. It makes the fight all the more interesting when the odds are against you.’

But for all she said, Frederica was chagrined to be so dismissed from England by her malevolent old aunt.