The Third George: (Georgian Series) (33 page)

Grimly he walked the streets of Paris and dreamed of London.
His ugly face had ceased to be comical; it was only melancholy, and that made his squint look more alarming and not mischievous at all, only sinister.

‘I must get back,’ he told himself. ‘I’ll die of melancholy here.’

He waited avidly for news from London. Pitt was back … Chatham now. Oh, fool of a man to think the title of Earl could give him a greater name than Pitt. And Grafton was with him. Now there was a man who might give him a helping hand. He didn’t trust Chatham who had washed his hands of him when he was in trouble; Wilkes was not going to ask favours of that man. But Grafton was a different matter. Grafton might do something.

He returned to London and there wrote to Grafton, who immediately went to see Chatham. This happened before Chatham had shut himself away and was suffering from that mysterious illness which robbed him of his mental powers; and Chatham’s advice to Grafton was not to become involved with Mr Wilkes.

So, dispirited, Wilkes returned to Paris, but within a year he was back again in London and rented a house at the corner of Princes Court in Westminster.

*

George was disturbed when he received a letter from John Wilkes. The King was at Buckingham House which he enjoyed very much when he could not get to Kew or Richmond. But when Wilkes’s servant arrived with the letter the peace of Buckingham House was definitely disturbed.

‘What does this man want, eh?’ George demanded of himself. ‘Trouble, eh? What? Here he comes after making a nuisance of himself … Ought to have stayed in France. Better go back as soon as possible.’

And he was petitioning for a pardon, was he? And after that he’d be wanting compensation!

Wilkes might want to be in London, but London did not want him – at least the King didn’t and there must be a good many of his ministers who didn’t either.

George burned the letter and tried to forget the troublesome fellow. As if Wilkes was the kind to allow himself to be forgotten!

He kept quiet until the next general election and then he
suddenly appeared at the hustings, asking the people of London to elect him to represent them. He failed with London but he did succeed in getting in at Middlesex.

Now the trouble started. The new member for Middlesex was an outlaw; he had been sentenced to exile; he had returned to England without permission; but nobly he surrendered himself to the King’s Bench and was committed to prison.

Crowds gathered in the streets to see him taken there. He was in his element, the centre of attraction once more – Wilkes, with his wicked-looking face, his sinister squint and his cries of freedom.

‘Such men,’ said the King, ‘could destroy the peace of nations.’

The City was in a turmoil. People paraded the streets shouting: ‘Free Wilkes. Wilkes for Liberty.’ They would have rescued him and freed him on his way to prison but he had no desire to be freed. He wished to go to prison for he realized that while he was there he would hold the sympathy of the people; he would be Wilkes, imprisoned for speaking his mind.

His prison was in St George’s Fields and for days crowds accumulated there to talk of Wilkes and demand his release; the great topic of conversation through the city was John Wilkes.

It was necessary to call out the troops to disperse the mob and when he heard this Wilkes chuckled with delight, for nothing could have pleased him better.

When, after a month in prison, he was sentenced to a year and ten months’ imprisonment, a fine was imposed and he appealed against this in both the Commons and the Lords.

Wilkes! Wilkes! Wilkes! He dominated the scene. Everyone was discussing the rights and wrongs of his case. The great battle took place in print. There were articles written under the pseudonym of Junius in a periodical supported by the Whigs, while Dr Samuel Johnson made somewhat dull apologies for the Government.

It was Wilkes who was emerging from the conflict as the victor and when he brought a case against Lord Halifax he won and received heavy damages. Thus when he had gone to prison he had been penniless, but he emerged comfortably off.

The King was deeply concerned by almost everything around him. Nothing was as he had believed it was going to be. He had wanted to be the good King surrounded by contented subjects;
and during this weary year there had been not only trouble with his ministers and the Wilkes controversy, but every month the situation between England and the American Colonies was growing more and more tense.

*

Even at Kew George could not escape from Wilkes. It was not that he discussed the man with Charlotte. At Kew life went on as he had decided it should, completely shut away from the outside world. The Queen was – naturally – pregnant, and next spring would give birth to her seventh child, and as she was still in her early twenties it seemed hardly likely that she would stop at seven.

The Prince of Wales was now seven years old, bright and more precocious than ever; he was always listening to gossip and repeating it to his parents to show them that he was well in the swim of affairs. He bullied – and at best patronized – his younger brothers and was indeed the little King of the nursery. He never failed to remind anyone who dared to reprimand him that after all he was the Prince of Wales; but his handsome looks, his bright intelligence, and his often engaging manners won him great affection and he was naturally adored by the nurses and maids of honour.

Even the Queen could not help spoiling him a little. He was her firstborn, a sign to the rest of the world that although she might be a plain and insignificant little woman, at least she could produce a charming son.

The people did not like her. She was aware of that. She would never forget driving through Richmond with the King beside her when a woman ran up to the carriage and began to curse her. It was horrible to be made aware of such hatred and to wonder what one had done to be the cause of it.

‘Go back where you belong, you crocodile.’

They hated her because she was a foreigner, because she was ugly. She was small and thin and her mouth made her look like a crocodile, it was true. She admitted to the resemblance when she herself looked in the glass.

The woman had taken off her shoe and thrown it at her. It had narrowly missed her face and hit the upholstery of the carriage.

‘Go back. Go back where you belong, you German woman!’

A scene. The carriage stopping. The Guards arresting the poor creature who, they said, was mad. She could have been severely punished but both the King and Queen decided against that.

But the unreasoning hatred of a mob was a frightening thing, something of which she supposed all kings and queens were made aware at some time.

But in her rooms at Kew she felt a pleasant security; it was as though she were wrapped round in a cocoon which protected her from the world. When she had first come to England she had imagined herself ruling England with the King; now she knew she would never be allowed to do that. Therefore she would rule her own household at Kew … dear
little
Kew … where with her children she could live shut away from the unpleasantness of the world. Not for her to dabble in politics as the Princess Dowager had done – but only after her husband’s death. She would content herself with ruling her own household.

And rule she did, taking an interest in the smallest details. Following the King’s lead she must study the household accounts; she wanted to know how every penny was spent. She became fascinated by economies – which did not endear her to the members of her household.

Albert, her hairdresser whom she had brought with her from Mecklenburg, was one who was in revolt.

He came to her one day and said: ‘Madam, I wish to return to Mecklenburg.’

She was astonished. Leave England, this great and expanding country, for a little dukedom! Albert must have taken leave of his senses.

‘No, Madam,’ was the answer, ‘I could find a more lucrative post in the household of the Duke, I am sure. My skill is such that I should be welcomed there; and if Your Majesty would allow me to retire from your service on a pension …’

‘A pension!’ The Queen was horrified. More money given away. She could not bear to contemplate it.

Albert pointed out sadly that the expectations with which he had come to England had not materialized.

‘That is often the case with many of us,’ she told him, and that was the end of the matter. Albert was not going to be allowed to leave.

The ladies-in-waiting said she was becoming like a miserly old country woman measuring out the preserves from the still-room; and aware of their hostility she became more and more autocratic, although bowing to the King’s will in all things.

She had made a rule that all her ladies should buy English goods.

‘I myself,’ she told Lady Charlotte Finch, ‘shall wear an English nightdress.’ She smiled. ‘The King is pleased when I do. And, Lady Charlotte, I expect you to do the same.’

Lady Charlotte, who liked to choose her own clothes, was a little deflated, but owing to her position in the nurseries could do nothing but obey.

‘And the children’s clothes should be English too.’

‘Then Your Majesty would wish me to order new English clothes for them.’

‘Good heavens, no. What a wicked waste! Only when the time comes, Lady Charlotte.’

Lady Charlotte smiled. Like other ladies of the Court she liked to tease the Queen, without her knowing it, of course.

Charlotte asked for the lists of the children’s clothes to be brought to her then. Each boy had six full dress suits a year besides several ordinary suits for ordinary day wear; once a fortnight they had new shoes, and new hats as they were required.

‘The Prince of Wales seems to wear a great many hats.’

‘He enjoys playing ball with them, Your Majesty.’

‘Oh, the wicked waste! He must be stopped.’

But even Charlotte was pleased at her son’s high spirits.

‘And William’s shoes! Edward’s too! Surely they cannot need so many pairs? A pair for spring and autumn should be adequate.’

‘They have a passion for kicking stones, Your Majesty. And if they can find anything to kick they will kick it.’

‘Then they must be forbidden to do so, the naughty little things. Where do they learn such habits?’

‘From the Prince of Wales, Your Majesty.’

It always came back to the Prince of Wales.

‘He is a rogue,’ said his mother affectionately; but she doted on him to such an extent that she could even forget to be shocked by the extravagance he caused.

Such pleasant days at dear little Kew, waiting for her
children to be born, bearing them, having the pleasure of seeing another little face in the nursery.

And of course the King came often to escape from state affairs, for a little respite such as he loved. There were times when Charlotte would have liked to reason with him, to ask him why he could not discuss affairs with her. How interesting it would have been if he had. It was not that she was meek by nature, far from it; but she could not forget those terrifying weeks of his illness when he had wandered in his mind and had been – yes, she had to admit it – somewhat deranged, when the Princess Dowager and Lord Bute had sought to keep her away from him – a foretaste of what her life would be like if ever she lost him.

Sometimes when George’s eyes seemed to become more prominent than ever, when his speech became more rapid and was punctuated even more liberally than usual by those interminable ‘Whats’, a terrible fear came to her that George might again suffer the same sort of illness which he had experienced that spring.

No, Kew meant refuge to him as it did to her. There he played the country gentleman; there he made his buttons and inspected the farms and talked about turning some of the park into arable land, supervised the children’s education, diet, their wardrobes, their household. That was when he was happiest dealing with the little things of life which to him were of the utmost importance.

‘Plenty of exercise,’ he would say, ‘and plenty of fresh air, eh? And not overloading with food. What? Vegetables. Good for you. And never wine. Make sure the children get lean meat.’

He himself followed these rules which he laid down for the children, for he was certain they were necessary for all.

While the Wilkes trouble was at its height and there were riots in St George’s Square outside the jail, the King came to Kew for a little respite.

Charlotte who had listened to her women talking of Wilkes – as indeed everyone was – who had heard the servants whisper the man’s name often when they were unaware that she could hear, mentioned him to the King which brought forth unusual indignation in His Majesty.

‘Why, Charlotte,’ he said, ‘I thought you knew that I come
here to escape from these tiresome matters. Didn’t you? Didn’t you, eh? What peace am I to get if I am to have nothing but Wilkes in St James’s and nothing but Wilkes at Kew, what? What?’

Charlotte said that that man’s name seemed to be on all lips so she supposed it was natural it should be on hers, too.

‘Not at Kew. I come to Kew to get away from all that. Not much use coming here to find Wilkes waiting for me, eh?’

To soothe him Charlotte asked if he would care to go into the children’s house to see them dine. They would be just sitting down to dinner and delighted doubtless to see their father.

This suggestion restored the King’s good humour and together he and the Queen left the main house at Kew and walked the little distance to the small one occupied by the children.

Charlotte was right; the children were just sitting down to their meal, Lady Charlotte Finch presiding.

Charlotte noted that it was a fish day and that there was nothing on the table which the King had laid down should not be eaten by his family.

The children greeted their parents with pleasure and cries of delight from little Edward which were echoed by little Charlotte who had only just become old enough to join the group at the table. The youngest, Augusta Sophia, was naturally not present.

The Prince of Wales made an announcement – which he made every fish day without fail – that he liked meat and when he was king he would eat it every day.