“It was how I met Maria.
“This would have been forty-one years ago. I would have been twenty-two, Maria six years older. And it would have been at a ball, and I would have been strolling down the formal presentation line, barely glancing at the men’s bowed kowtows and carefully observing the revealing curtsies of the women.
Examining,
I mean. Holding their hands and by a subtle pressure of my own keeping them down, availing myself of stunning vistas of bosom, controlling honor’s duration and causing those ladies to heat and blush as surely as if I had kindled their dry white flesh with the oxygens of my gloves. Although some never took color at all, their breasts pale as lime, fixed as paint or whitewash. (Or as if, I thought when I detected among them some recent mother, all the blood in the world could neither stain nor stanch the tide of such milk. I was neither prospecting for virgins nor inspecting for trollops, these little litmus tests of mine not so much science as interested, even-handed, even innocent forays into Nature, as a man might engage to witness sunsets, say.)
“Maria was the most charmingly endowed woman I had ever seen. But she was no flusher.
“If she had been I might not have ventured—though I may have, covered as a bed by my prince’s privilege and anything-goes protocol and all my good time Charlie dispensations—to have offered my proposal.
“ ‘Would you,’ I whispered, still on that inverted receiving line which was my style and preference and down which I ambled as if I were the only invited guest in some stuffed tenement of princes and princesses, ‘be my wet nurse? I will give you Tom Gainsborough’s
Blue Boy.
’
“
‘Sir, I have no milk.’
“ ‘My mistress then. I will give you a house in Brighton and five thousand a year.’
“ ‘Sir, I have a husband.’
“ ‘Two thousand for the husband. Could even a king say fairer?’
“ ‘Sir, I cannot.’
“ ‘Madam, I’m a generous prince.’
“ ‘Sir, I’m a virtuous woman.’
“ ‘You did not redden.’
“ ‘Redden?’
“ ‘When I leered your breasts, when I squinnied your nipples. When I leisurely look-see’d and gave them the once-over and the glad eye. You did not redden, madam! You did not plum or peach! I might for rise have well as ogled the stitch of your frock!’
“ ‘Then, sir, might I have glowed indeed for it is the very principle of propriety, if not of virtue itself, that the scrutiny of one’s fashion in high company can betoken only the awry and amiss. I would, in such a circumstance, have warmed under the gaze of a tailor or the glance of a seamstress.’
“ ‘I am no
tailor,
madam. I am no
seamstress.
I’m Prince of Wales and I attentioned your tits.
You did not redden!
’
“
‘Then, sir, I am no scarlet woman,’ Mrs. Fitzherbert told me softly.
“This was still on the line, still ceremonial. That the others who had yet to be presented had entirely ceased the customary buzz they do even at Court, even in the presence of the King himself, let alone a mere Prince of Wales who wouldn’t be Regent for another twenty-seven years or King for another thirty-six, ought perhaps to have given us pause or made one or the other of us a bit more cautious. Indeed, I suppose that at this point I should have smiled at Mrs. Fitzherbert’s clever grace note, clicked what I had for heels, bowed, and gone on to the next person waiting to be presented. Or, rather, I suppose it’s what you suppose. But the splendour of our arrangements, their true civility and grandeur, is actually quite opposite. Court must, simply
must,
have its gossip, its exclusionary spice. Well, do you understand, Mills, that gossip and rumor are always more or less horizontal, that, like certain species of fish, they swim only their customary strata and rarely attempt the antipathetical depths? Now, it ain’t in Newton, but it’s true as physics that in fixed societies like our own, nasty stories neither ascend nor descend but stay within their class of origin. It’s why we have to spy on you people. It’s why you’re cordoned off on state occasions; it’s why there’s crowd control, squeeze play, spurs on horsemen; cosh, curb and roped-off street——all rule’s royal leash law, all order’s rerouted traffic, all rank’s union shop. It ain’t assassination we fear, the villain’s and madman’s bullet at close quarters; it’s just hard by, at hand, stone’s throw, simple spit distance earshot.
“So, if anything, we were not more circumspect but less, not less garrulous but more. Is the Prince a clam? Is he an oyster? He
brims
with prate! He
glibs
with gush! And this was audience indeed,
this
was! This primed, fervent, rubberneck, avid, all-ears bunch. My true subjects, Mills, and not
your
remote, long-range, arm’s-length lot. The group.
Our
crowd. And I as much their subject this night as they mine. We were
soliloqual,
Mills!
“ ‘It is your breastplate, madam, those fleecy ramparts, that so astonish us. How may things which to our vision appear such soft and lenient stuff prove so intractable, so stony ground in the campaign of a prince? No no, don’t answer. We would not hear prattle of husbands and virtue, or passion talked down as if’twere only an obligation owed to pledge like the gambler a game debt or the poor student’s circumstanced promise to redeem a watch from some pawnshop Jew. Is
this
your honor, madam? Is
this
your merciless, inconsequent, merely proscriptive character? I’ll teach you
character,
ma’am, and it’s nothing to do with promises, declarations, assurances, covenants or nitwit oath. Honor is simply not contractual, Fitzherbert! It does not blindly undertake action in a future it cannot yet understand at the sacrifice of the only tense in which it may reliably do anyone any good at all. Which is the present. Which is the
present,
Mrs. Madam Fitzherbert!
“ ‘Honor is ardor. It is dash and fire and thrill. It is the obligation skin owes blood, teeth appetite. My organ’s duty to my mood. It is entirely obsessive and endures no third parties. It welcomes no middlemen.’
“ ‘The Prince of Wales is hot tonight,’ said a guest.
“ ‘He is. He
is,
’ we acknowledged. ‘We have our honor on us and we fly it like the colors.’
“ ‘And do you know, madam, in what my honor subsists? Why in my peculiar, spangled lust. In the singularity of my ruling passion, my most feeling fetish. Which we neither hide nor hinder, watch nor ward. Why should we? Is the Prince custodian of his ruling passion or only the lowly drayman of his drives?’
“ ‘Hear hear!’ said honored guests. And “Three cheers!’ And ‘Give three times three!’
“ ‘I asked to milk you, madam. No husband but husbandman plain enough. Oh, plain. Plain, quite plainly. I’ve this sweet tooth for softs, this yen for your puddings. George the Famished, George the Parched. Georgie the pap prince. Feed us, ma’am. Slake the slake rake! Sow,
sew
this rip!’
“And ‘Ahh,’ mouthful’d the fellowship. And ‘Ooh,’ oratoried the witnesses.
“And still no more crimson than an eggshell. Why you, sir, are more raddled. Fitzherbert herself was glacial as pack ice. She said she’d pray for me.
“
Pray
for me, dun God with her demon orthodoxy! (Did I mention, Mills, that she was Catholic? She was Catholic, churched as a pope.)
“ ‘Do it then, madam,’ I told her coolly. ‘You know our prayers. You may say them
for
us!’
“And turned away politely to make the rest of my devoirs, saying my ‘So glads’ and ‘How pleaseds,’ aloof and indifferent as an already king.
“I learned she lived at Richmond and sent with my compliments my private yacht to fetch her. It came back empty. I sent it out again a week later, laden with gifts. The Gainsborough I’d promised, precious jewels, rare ivories. It came back empty, my gifts unopened. In a month I sent the ship out once more, this time with specific instructions to proffer my prince’s compliments to
Lord
Fitzherbert and to invite him and his amiable wife to stay at Buckingham House with my family and myself. There was no ‘Lord’ Fitzherbert of course, and what I offered was not so much a bribe as the promise of a bribe. Titled Catholics were practically unheard of in the country at this time. I knew my man and what I was doing. The appeal was not so much to his ambition as to his churchianity. The bark returned empty.
“And empty again when I dispatched it to Pangbourne, where I’d learned the Fitzherberts summered with a colony of their coreligionists.
“The King had of course heard of my efforts and their failures. How could he not? All society knew what I was up to. All it had to do was glance out its window whenever it heard a ship go by. The chances were excellent it would be the royal bark plying its unsuccessful trade route, hauling its unwanted merchandise about its watery itinerary like some failed merchantman. My mad king father was not yet mad. He was only angry. The truth, George, is that he missed his princedom, his own long-gone good time Charlie days when he had all the honors of a king but none of his dubious duties. They had been pushing him in the colonies. They were pushing him in France. The truth is, Mills, I pissed him. All he had for amusement in those days was my lust’s blunting against Mrs. Fitzherbert’s obdurate recalcitrance.
“He summoned me and offered a father’s advice in the throne room at Buckingham. He even removed the crown from his head before he spoke.
“ ‘Son,’ he said, ‘it disheartens us to see you so sobersides at a time in life when you should be all waggish and sportive. It tarnishes our comfort to perceive in you the mopes and melancholies of a distrait heart. We would have you cock-a-hoop, all frisk and frolic, and miss the horse laugh whoopee which was your once wont. Give us a chortle, love. Cackle a snigger for us. Titter—no offense, old son—titter your smirk. What? No? Not in we? Then send again to Richmond. I know what you demand of Mrs. Fitzherbert, and what you offer——paintings and pretties, jewelry and gewgaw. The woman is pious, mavourneen. She’s serious, treasure apple. You don’t go up in public to a pious, serious, high-minded woman like this and order her to put her titties in your mouth. What, in public? A sensitive, religious, married lady? It isn’t the way, it’s not how it’s done. You must be gentle, you must be discreet. You must offer reassurances. You must say: “Madam, I shall have my teeth pulled. The grinders and incisors, the molars and canines. All——all shall come out. I vow you, ma’am, then only will I chew and nibble, suck and gum!” Send to Richmond, lad; send to Richmond, son. We’ll make a picnic Thames-side and wait and wait till the cows come home.’ And laughed like a loon.
“I did send to Richmond, had already sent for her when my father had sent for me. When the yacht returned Mrs. Fitzherbert was on it, standing near the bowsprit and, with her generous, billowy, partially exposed bosoms, looking for all the world like the very figurehead on the ship’s very prow.
“I clambered aboard and took her in my arms.
“ ‘My darling,’ I said. ‘My dearest, you’ve come.’
“ ‘Fitzherbert’s dead,’ she whispered. ‘Tomorrow we’ll be married secretly by the priest. Then, suckling, shall you enjoy your little milkmaid to her bright twin pails’ sweetest residuals!”
“We dress up,” the King said. “We dress up, too. And lead free will these dumb show lives, our tastes a step behind our palates and our very existence revue, vaudeville, cabaret. And even our highest behaviors only simple ‘turns,’ studied as set piece, blocked as tableau. Sequenced as music hall and timed as spectacle. We don’t want walls and floors, ceilings and rooms but back cloths, stages, flats and scrim. Not property but props. Not bad luck but tragedy, not even happiness, only comedy. So
we
dress up. Good time Charlie, the merry-andrew. The milkmaid. The milkmaid milkmade man.
“Yes. Well. We were married. Secretly. You spoke of oaths.
We
swore oaths. As heavily pledged as debtors. Proclaiming and promising, vowing, professing. All intention’s by-all-that’s-holy’s.
“We honeymooned at Pangbourne while the royal yacht stood by. We boarded the ship and sailed to Scotland. We sailed to Ireland, where we anchored off a lovely blue bay. You could see palm trees.
“The marriage was secret, known only to the priest and to one or two of Maria’s friends. I like to think that those of our class who lived along those shores must have seen the ship and guessed it on some romantic errand, engaged in some pretty myth——all spurned love’s Flying Dutchman.
We
dress up. Oh yes.
“Well. Even someone as apparently arbitrary as a prince or king with his edicts and decrees and his
ipse dixit
say-so style lives a life proviso’d and ordinanced as any tavern keeper’s. And if there’s more loophole than loop to my bonds—I could, for example, have shot you before without bringing any more trouble upon myself than if I had sent my meat back to my chef—there is a special pandect of law for royalty.
“The Settlement Act forbids any of the King’s issue under the age of twenty-five to marry without first obtaining the consent of the King. This would have been forty years ago. I would have been twenty-three. The consent of the
King?
I knew better than even to ask for it. My only hope was to present my father with a
fait accompli,
thinking he’d think that the scandal which surrounded our relationship, and whatever embarrassment it may have caused him, might best be smoothed over by a royal announcement that we were now married.
“They had pushed him out of the colonies, they were pushing him in France. They were pushing him in his own Parliament. Now my father was now not only angry, he was actually mad.”
“Please, sir,” George Mills interrupted, “that was a rumor. Even our sort heard it. His political enemies…”
“Third was a lunatic, Forty-third. George was crazy, George,” George IV said quietly.
“More loophole than loop, the laws bleeding into their crimes like loose and leaking bandages. French leave law. Because it was out of his hands now. Out of his hands and out of his head. And he
wasn’t
embarrassed. And they didn’t—I mean his ministers, I mean his council—even have to
use
the Settlement Act. More loophole than loop.