Victoria in the Wings: (Georgian Series) (13 page)

The Duchess Eleanor was looking anxiously at her daughter. She wished romantically that the Duke of Clarence could have come to Saxe-Meiningen and fallen in love with Adelaide and she with him – as with the case of Ida and Weimar.

She was being absurdly romantic, but she did hope that Adelaide was not too fearful. She did not show her feelings, admirable girl.

Let her be happy, prayed the Duchess.

Every day the Duchess Eleanor fearfully awaited a message. She was terrified that there might be some hitch.

But preparations went on and nothing happened to stop them, and one warm July day the party set out for England.

The bride took her last look at the castle and wondered whether she would ever see it again. Adelaide, soon to be the Duchess of Clarence – and perhaps in due course Queen of England – was on her way to the new life.

‘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.