Caroline the Queen Read online

  Caroline the Queen

  Виктория Холт

  JEAN PLAIDY

  Caroline, the Queen

  The Transformation Scene

  THE Prince of Wales lay on his back, snoring. To sleep after a heavy meal in the middle of the day was a custom he had brought with him from Hanover. This was no light afternoon nap; but like everything the Prince did it was performed with precision. He lived by the clock; there was a time for eating, sleeping, doing business, and even making love. In fact, throughout the Court his habits were a joke of which he was ignorant; but his wife, who had made it her first duty to discover as much as she could of what was going on around her, was well aware of this.

  Poor George Augustus, although he was more popular than his father, the King, who could not speak a word of English, appealed strongly to the people’s ridicule. He was choleric and a lack of inches had made him ready to assert his importance; his quarrels with his father, his habit of walking up and down his mistress’s apartments, watch in hand that he might visit her at exactly the appointed time, had provided material for the lampooners who frequented the city’s coffee houses and taverns and seemed to be of the opinion that the royal family’s chief duty was to amuse its subjects.

  But on this hot June afternoon when the bees buzzed busily in the lavender which formed the sweet scented border in the flower gardens of Richmond Lodge, the Prince slept, unaware that it was to be one of the most important days in his life.

  * * *

  Close by in her apartments Caroline Princess of Wales was knotting, an occupation she favoured because it kept the hands occupied while the brain was not in the least concerned with the thread in her hands.

  So hot! she thought. And on these hot days she felt fatigued nowadays. It was something she never admitted to others but occasionally in the privacy of her own apartments she faced the fact that her health was not what she would wish it to be. The subject was like a threatening cloud—not overhead at the moment—just perhaps a shadow on the horizon; but it was there, and each week she fancied it was a little bigger.

  Of course, she told herself angrily, I’m perfectly healthy.

  Women had these troubles. After all she had had seven children, and a few miscarriages. Louisa the youngest was now three, and it had been after her birth that the trouble had started. It frightened her, for an internal rupture could be a dangerous and humiliating affliction, and she was terrified that someone would discover her secret. George Augustus had once been aware of it. He hated illness in those around him. She supposed it reminded him that he too was not immortal.

  ‘It will clear up,’ she had told him. ‘It is nothing ... it happens after a difficult childbirth now and then.’

  He had accepted that; and she had been fortunate in being able to hide from him the pain she felt. She wondered though whether he was later aware of it and preferred to pretend, as she did, that it did not exist.

  Henrietta Howard was sitting in the antechamber now with Charlotte Clayton, no doubt dozing, but ready to come in at precisely the right moment when they would prepare the Princess for her husband’s visit.

  Henrietta was George Augustus’s mistress, but the affair was certainly not one of tempestuous passion. He had selected her long ago in Hanover whither she had come to seek her fortune and it was merely because he believed he ought to have a mistress that he had chosen her. At that time he had been very content with his wife. Now of course he had other mistresses, but she always believed it was to prove to these cynical observers his immense virility rather than due to any overriding passion. However, Henrietta remained—a habit. Yet a man who made love with his eye on the clock could not really be seriously involved.

  She smiled fondly. She felt affectionate towards her little man; her position was a difficult one, but she knew how to keep it tenable. He was fond of her, for he was a sentimental man; he was proud of her, for she was a good-looking woman; there was one quality which she must not make too obvious and that was her intelligence, for George Augustus was not the man to tolerate a woman who was known to be cleverer than himself. But it was not beyond the wit of a clever woman to hide her cleverness. It had been done in the past and would be done again. She in any case had been successfully doing it for many years.

  She dismissed her fears. The King was in Hanover. Long might he stay there. What a pleasure to have the old ogre out of the country. She believed that if he would only stay away for a year, she and George Augustus would wean any affection the people had for the King completely from him. He was a silly old man in many respects. He did not appreciate this country which had fallen into his lap like ripe fruit from a tree. He preferred his little Hanover principality to this great kingdom, Herrenhausen to Hampton, the old Leine Schloss to St James’s. He, with his German speech and his German habits, kept his two German mistresses whom he had brought with him thirteen years ago from Hanover; they were the delight of the people because surely they must be the two ugliest women in the country and did such good service to the writers of lampoons. But the King did occasionally show an interest in English women. There was that saucy creature, Anne Brett, who was at this moment giving herself such airs at St James’s Palace and would doubtless receive her title and coronet when her lover returned to England. But it was Ermengarda Schulemburg who had accompanied him to Hanover—Ermengarda, now Duchess of Kendal, the mistress who was like a wife to him and with whom, some said, he had even gone through a form of marriage in the last year or so since he had heard of the death of George Augustus’s mother in the prison of Ahlden in which he had placed her.

  There was such joy in contemplating his absence.

  He despised George Augustus, but she happened to know that he had far more respect for the Princess of Wales than he had for the Prince. That meant, though, that he was more watchful of her than of his son; and she had had to be very careful, knowing him for the vindictive man he was. She would never forget what he had done to his wife—the mother-in-law whom she had never met—because she was guilty of one infidelity, and had not only divorced her but sent her to a dreary exile which had lasted thirty years and had such a short while ago ended.

  From her first days at Hanover she had realized that she must never put herself in a similar position to that of her unfortunate mother-in-law.

  Not that she ever would. Sophia Dorothea must have been a foolish, frivolous creature; Caroline would never be that.

  She yawned and looked at the clock. Not yet three. Another hour before the Prince came to her apartment and they took their walk together in the gardens. He was a great walker and so had she been before she had begun to feel this affliction—slight, she insisted, and something many women suffered from. She fancied there was a little gout in her feet. She shuddered, remembering the stories she had heard of the King’s predecessor, Queen Anne, who had so often had to be carried in her chair to important functions.

  Anne had been the Queen and Caroline, though she might one day bear that proud title, would be but a Queen Consort, and that was very different from a Queen Regnant. Very different indeed. For when a Queen Consort depended on the whims of a choleric little husband she would have to be very careful.

  Yet she was recognized for a clever woman. Prime Minister Walpole was more respectful now, although she knew he had once referred to her as ‘That fat beast, the Prince’s wife’; but he was aware that the day would come when he would wish to be in the good books of Queen Caroline, ‘and she herself knew that when that day came she would need his services. They understood each other. He had disappointed her at that time when he had patched up the quarrel between George Augustus and herself on one side and the King on the other, because although he had promised that he would see that the Kin
g gave over the guardianship of her elder children to her, he had not done this. Still, she understood he was the shrewdest man in England and he was one whom she would want as her chief minister.

  The thread fell from her hands and she dozed.

  She awoke startled.

  ‘Henrietta! Charlotte!’

  ‘Your Highness ...’

  ‘Vot is this?’ In spite of all the time she had been in England she still spoke with a German accent and was apt to express herself quaintly. ‘Vot is this clatter?’

  ‘Someone has arrived, Your Highness,’ said Henrietta. The Princess yawned.

  ‘It is better to be dressed now,’ she said. ‘I will not then keep the Prince vaiting yen he comes. Go to the vindow and see who is coming.’

  Henrietta moved to the window. She walked with grace though she was not exactly a beautiful woman; her fine but abundant hair was her greatest beauty; but she was ageing, thought the Princess, and lately she had become so deaf that she could seem almost stupid—which was far from the truth. Caroline was sure that the Prince only performed his precision lovemaking as a habit.

  ‘It is Sir Robert Walpole, Your Highness,’ said Henrietta.

  ‘Vot can bring him here at this hour,’ wondered Caroline. ‘Come, it is yell I am dressed.’

  * * *

  Sir Robert Walpole had been working in the study of his Chelsea house when the messenger arrived. He knew whence he came and that he could only bring news of the utmost importance.

  The King was in Hanover and Walpole’s brother-in-law, Lord Townshend, was in attendance there; it was from Townshend that the messenger came.

  Walpole lifted his unwieldy body from the chair and went to meet the messenger. Prepared as he was for important news he could not suppress an exclamation of dismay as he read that King George I had died of a seizure on his way to Osnabrück.

  He steadied himself, summoned a servant, gave orders that the messenger should be provided with refreshment, but first his coach must be made ready for a journey and brought to his door, and called to his valet that he might be suitably and immediately dressed for a solemn occasion.

  As his orders were obeyed he was saying to himself: This could well be the end. But even at the same time he was telling himself that he would not allow it to be. Walpole was not so easily defeated.,

  So, he mused, the little fellow is now the King. George the First is dead. Long live George the Second.

  He must be the first to say so. That was the immediate necessity. Townshend would know that well enough and not have sent the news to anyone else.

  By the time he was ready to leave the house his carriage was waiting to take him from Chelsea to Richmond.

  ‘It has to be quick,’ he told the coachman. ‘Not a minute to be lost.’

  The coachman understood.

  ‘Change horses half way,’ ordered Walpole, ‘but make them work.’

  He sat back against the upholstery and pictured the scene at Richmond. It was what many had been waiting for, but no one had suspected it would come just yet. The old King, although he had suffered a couple of seizures, had seemed as if he were going on for a very long time. Walpole wished he had; they had been on good terms.

  And not dissimilar in character, mused Walpole. Both gross in habit, crude in speech, and lacking in culture. Walpole laughed aloud, and his laughter reminded him that there was one difference: he was a merry man; the late King had been a dour one.

  How, he asked himself, am I going to ingratiate myself with the little fellow? I should have begun to woo him earlier, of course. But his father wouldn’t pay his debts and it is the Princess who is important. And the Princess? Well at least we understand each other. She’s a clever woman and I’ve always known it. Not like that fool, Townshend, paying attention to Henrietta Howard and ignoring the Princess ... beg her pardon, the Queen.

  Queen Caroline! She would be the one to cultivate; for as long as she could convince the little man that he ruled her she would be able to do what she wanted with him. Together we will rule England, thought Walpole. And you, little man, will not prevent us ... providing of course that Madame Caroline will stand with me.

  Would she? Ah, there was the point. He had called her a fat beast at one time, and she had heard of it. Politicians should guard their tongues, which was not always easy when a politician’s tongue was both his best friend and his worst enemy.

  That reminded him—what he said to the new King would be of the utmost importance. His tongue was going to have to be very clever to extricate himself from this delicate situation.

  He looked out of the window. He knew every inch of the road to Richmond, for recently he had acquired the Rangership of Richmond Park and had bought the Old Lodge. This he had made into his home . . . his real home where Maria Skerrett waited for him; and every weekend he spent there with her and their two-year-old daughter rejuvenated him. It was strange to him, this feeling he had for Maria. He had never been a sentimental man until he had met her; his marriage had been a failure from the beginning, although when he had married Catherine, daughter of Sir John Shorter, Lord Mayor of London, she had seemed an ideal choice, being both beautiful and wealthy. Long ago he had gone his own way, she had gone hers; she was extravagant in manners and money. Her lovers were numerous and rumour had it—and Walpole had never given himself the trouble of attempting to discover the truth of this—that the Prince of Wales himself had been among them.

  Walpole had lived heartily, drinking, hunting the fox and women, seeking power; he had liked to boast of his exploits with women; his conversation at table was coarse in the extreme and his accounts were accompanied by the loud laughter which shook his unwieldy frame. But he never joked about Maria Skerrett; he never mentioned her; she had shown him a new way of life which never ceased to make him marvel.

  Even now as the coach rattled along the rough roads and he was thinking of the interview with the new King which could be so momentous as to mean the end of his career as a politician of importance, he was consoling himself that if he should fail he would be content to live quietly with Maria and little Molly.

  The coach had stopped. The horses would have to be changed; they were exhausted.

  ‘Then hurry,’ shouted Walpole.

  He closed his eyes. No one must be there before him. That would never do. He saw himself arriving late and the Prince already transformed into a king. A minute before he had thought he would be happy living quietly at the Old Lodge or Houghton in Norfolk with Maria. No, he was a politician, an ambitious man, and could not throw aside his main reason for living and expect to find contentment. Maria provided the solace, the respite, the haven—the real flavour of life was power.

  They were off again. And in due course they had arrived at Richmond.

  He went to the Lodge and shouted to the guard that he wished to be conducted to the Prince without delay, but he did not wait to be conducted, and he made his way to the royal apartments.

  The Duchess of Dorset who happened to be in waiting, hearing the commotion of his arrival, came to the door of the royal suite to remind him that the Prince was sleeping, the Princess resting, and that as it was only three o’clock the time had not yet arrived for waking them.

  ‘Nevertheless they must be awakened. I have important news.’

  ‘Sir Robert, the Prince is undressed. It is his practice at this hour ...’

  ‘I know His Highness’s practices, but I tell you there must be no delay. Tell him I have come. Tell him I have news of the utmost importance. Tell him I must see him without delay.’

  The Duchess looked dubious; but Sir Robert clearly must be obeyed.

  She lifted her shoulders slightly and leaving Walpole impatiently in the anteroom called to one of the Prince’s attendants and told him to awaken His Highness as Sir Robert Walpole was waiting to give him news which could not be delayed.

  * * *

  George Augustus sat up in bed; his first impulse was to look at the clock.

&nb
sp; ‘Vot is this,’ he shouted. ‘It is but three o’clock.’

  ‘Your Highness, Sir Robert Walpole is waiting to speak to you. He said it is a matter of the utmost importance.’

  ‘It should vait,’ snapped the Prince, always bad tempered to have a habit broken. ‘I haf not my sleep finished.’

  ‘Your Highness, Sir Robert was most insistent.’

  ‘Sir Robert!’ growled the Prince. He was not very pleased with that man. He had not done what he promised when he had attempted to patch up the quarrel between the Prince and his father. He had made slighting remarks about the Prince’s abilities to act as Regent. And such remarks had been carried back to His Highness by Sir Robert’s enemies. George Augustus was like his father in the fact that he never forgave a slight. ‘That man should take care ...’

  ‘Your Highness ...’

  ‘I know ... I know. I vill to him go. I vill to him tell I must not be disturbed at this hour.’

  The Prince rose from his bed, picked up his wig which had been placed on a table nearby and crammed it on his head. His valet sprang forward but he waved him aside.

  He stood in his underwear, a little man with a fresh complexion now ruddy from annoyance, his bulbous blue eyes blazing with anger.

  His valet would have helped him into his breeches, but the Prince snatched them from him and it was at this moment that Walpole, who had determined to wait no longer, came into the room.

  The bulging blue eyes glared at the minister, but Walpole had sunk to his knees, taken the hand which held the breeches and said: ‘Sire, your father, King George the First, is dead. You are now the King of England.’

  ‘Vot!’ cried George Augustus.

  ‘Your Majesty’s father is dead.’

  ‘That is von big lie!’

  ‘Indeed not, Your Majesty. I have a letter here from Lord Townshend. Your father, King George, has had a seizure and died on the way to Osnabrück.’