Frederick floundered ineffectually. He denied that he had sent such a message; then he recapitulated and said he had written to Miss Vane because a friend of hers had intimated that the settlement he offered would be agreeable to her.

Everyone was talking about the affair of Miss Vane, and the Prince was in such a position that he could only declare that she should continue in her house in Grosvenor Street and that he would pay her her £1,600 as long as she lived.

Hervey walked to her house and was let in by Anne herself and smuggled up to her bedchamber that her servants might not see him.

She was exhilarated.

‘I’ve never been so comfortably placed in my life,’ she said. ‘All this and no encumbrances. I wish him joy of his Augusta. Poor girl, I pity her!’

They laughed over the affair and she told him that she had had some anxious moments, for after all it was dangerous to do battle with a Prince; but she had such good friends and she would always be grateful to them. However, the affair had brought on her fits of colic and her doctors had suggested she go to Bath for a few weeks.

‘I shall leave little Fitz with my brother and his family while I go,’ she said. ‘They’ll be happy to have him.’

‘Don’t stay away too long,’ Lord Hervey instructed.

She passionately assured him that she would not and that very soon they would resume their exciting adventures.

This they did not do, however, for Anne had not been long in Bath when her little son died of a convulsion fit. When she received this news Anne had an attack of what she called the colic. It was rather more severe than the previous ones and her doctor ordered her to keep to her bed for a few days.

In a week she was dead.

The Prince of Wales was overcome with grief at the loss of the little boy whom he claimed to be his son.

‘I should not have thought him capable of such emotion,’ said the Queen.

The King’s Temper


MEANWHILE the King was finding it more and more difficult to delay his departure from Hanover, for with each day Madame de Walmoden seemed to grow more irresistible.