Jean Plaidy - Goddess of the Green Room

‘I daresay they are stationed somewhere not far off,’ said Dorothy, ‘listening to everything that is going on down here.’

‘Could they not come down… for a little while… just to have a look at the company – and to give the company the pleasure of looking at them?’

‘If Your Highness would not be bored with them…’

‘My dearest Dora, bored with my enchanting nephews and nieces! But I adore them… every single one.’

So Dorothy called to one of the liveried attendants and told him that it was the Prince’s wish that the children come to the dining room.

And very soon there they were – all eight of them, led by the intrepid George with Henry marching like a soldier – Sophia, Mary, Frederick, Elizabeth, Molpuss and Augusta. A round of applause, led by the Prince, greeted them. Dorothy found herself weeping with pride in them. They were a healthy, handsome band indeed. They came and made their bows and curtsies to the Prince of Wales who had a word with each of them, and Molpuss almost succeeded in removing the royal diamond shoe buckles so the Prince took the young miscreant on to his knee and fed him with sweetmeats from the table until he was rewarded with a sticky kiss which seemed to please him. Augusta preferred to view her glittering uncle from her mother’s knee, and the children made a delightful domestic contrast to all the grand ceremony of the occasion.

The Prince asked about the youngest of the children, and Dorothy sent a servant to tell the nursemaid to bring down the baby; and young Augustus appeared, somewhat startled, from his bed and everyone exclaimed on his beautiful white hair.

William sat back in his chair, the proud father of such a family.

The public had been allowed to come into the grounds for the occasion and while this pleasant scene was enacted they strolled round and looked in at the windows. They saw the Prince of Wales with a FitzClarence on either knee and the rest of the family amusing the guests. The band went on playing. And the people of Bushy said how pleasant it was to have the Duke of Clarence for a neighbour.

The dinner over, the children retired and the Prince of Wales rose to announce a toast.

‘The Duke of Clarence.’ And when this was drunk he gave ‘The King, the Queen and the Princesses’, followed by ‘The Duke of York and the Army’. When the toasts were drunk the bands played once more and the guests strolled in to the gardens where they mingled with those members of the public who had come in to see them.

It was a happy day, they decided, a worthy celebration of a forty-first anniversary.

When all the guests had gone William and Dorothy together went into the nurseries to see their children, all fast asleep.

‘God bless them and keep them safe,’ murmured Dorothy; and she wondered what Grace would have thought had she been present on this occasion.

It was not the marriage for which she had hoped, but surely even Grace would have been satisfied.

It was hardly to be expected that the birthday party would have been allowed to escape without comment. The extravagance of the entertainment for one thing was taken up by the press.

Cobbet, the editor of The Courier who was constantly attacking the royal family, wrote:

‘The representing of the oratorio of

The Creation

applied to the purpose of ushering in the numerous family of the Duke of Clarence whereby the procreation of a brood of illegitimate children is put in comparison with the great works of the Almighty, is an act of the most indiscreet disloyalty and blasphemy. We all know that the Duke of Clarence is not married and that therefore if he has children those children must be bastards, and that the father must be guilty of a crime in the eyes of the law as well as of religion…

‘I am confirmed in my opinion when I hear that the Prince of Wales took Mother Jordan by the hand… taking his place upon her right hand, his royal brothers arranging themselves according to their rank on both sides of the table, the post of honour being nearest Mother Jordan, who the last time I saw her cost me eighteenpence in her character of Nell Jobson.’

The King read of the party and almost wept rage and frustration.

‘I help him to pay his debts and what does he do, eh, what? He immediately sets about incurring some more. What can I do with these sons, eh? All very well to honour Mrs Jordan in private… nice little woman… good actress, good mother, so I hear, eh, what? But an affair like this. Think of the cost! What was the cost of that, eh? He’ll be in trouble before long if he goes on like this. Nine children to keep, eh? That place at Bushy. He’ll be in debt, you mark my words, and then who’s going to get him out of trouble, eh, what?’

The Queen replied: ‘There’s one thing he can do.’

‘What’s that, eh, what?’

‘He’ll do what George did before him. He’ll have to marry. Then the Parliament will settle his debts and his income will be increased and he’ll be in time, I hope, to give the family some legitimate children.’

‘But it won’t do. Debts. Extravagance. The people are not so fond of us. There was that bullet. It wouldn’t take much… I think of France. Sometimes I don’t sleep all night thinking of France… and those boys. Could be a difficult situation. Should be careful. Shouldn’t have parties. Shouldn’t drink and gamble. Shouldn’t show off their women. People don’t like it.’

‘I can see the day coming,’ said the Queen, ‘when William will be in the same position as George was. Then he will have to marry – and marry the wife who is chosen for him.’

THE IDYLLIC SCENE at Bushy was too good to last. The usual troubles arose. William could never understand that what he bought would eventually have to be paid for. The cost of his birthday party had been enormous; he had had no idea it would be so expensive.

Dorothy frowned over the bills. ‘You couldn’t possibly have spent so much.’

‘It’s all there, all set out,’ he replied irritably. His gout was bad that morning. It always was when he was agitated.

‘But we’re almost as much in debt as we were before you paid off that £20,000.’

‘Am I to be blamed because the price of things is so high?’

The decorations to the house had not been necessary. It had been beautiful as it was. So much of the expensive food had not been eaten.

She pointed this out.

‘My dear Dora, I fancy I have more experience of entertaining Princes than you have. Not to have given of the very best would have been an insult to the Prince of Wales.’

Dorothy shrugged her shoulders. It was no use continuing with recriminations. They had to find the money – or some of it – enough to keep their creditors quiet for a time.

There was only one thing to do.

She must return to work. On a cold January day she opened at Drury Lane as Peggy in The Country Girl.

She was as popular as ever in the early parts, which was amazing considering she was almost fifty years old. She often felt ill; the pain in her chest had grown worse and she was spitting blood again. But the audience was faithful. She could still charm them; she had that indefinable quality which the years could not destroy. Dorothy Jordan was a draw again.

There was the money – always the money. They would manage somehow as long as she worked.

One evening she found Fanny in the Green Room, an excited Fanny, with a secret she was bubbling over to tell.

‘Mamma,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be married.’

Dorothy embraced her daughter. At last she had found a husband! Poor Fanny was about to enter that state which Dorothy herself for all her genius, for all that she had thirteen children – little Amelia had been born to bring the FitzClarence children to ten in number – had never been able to achieve.

‘Who is he?’ she asked.

‘Well, Mamma, he is not in a very good position. He has a post in the Ordnance Office.’

‘A clerk.’

‘Oh, I know that is not to be compared with a duke, but at least he can marry me. And a clerk in a government office like the Ordnance is no ordinary clerk.’

‘That’s true,’ said Dorothy. ‘And are you happy, my darling?’

Fanny nodded. Of course she was happy. She had found a man willing to marry her. She had thought she never would and she was twenty-six years old.

‘Then I am happy, too,’ said Dorothy.

She was less contented when she met Thomas Alsop; she could not rid herself of the uneasy feeling that he had heard of the dowry which was to be Fanny’s when she married. He would know of course that she was the daughter of Dorothy Jordan and there had too been all that publicity when she had inherited the Bettesworth money.

However, Fanny was happy and determined on marriage so preparations must go on.

When she told William of the forthcoming marriage he was not so pleased. The dowry would have to be provided, £10,000 in all. £2,000 was to be paid to the husband on the marriage and the rest at £200 a year. Dorothy had managed to invest in an annuity which would provide for Fanny, but she had been obliged to lend the money which she had saved for the other girls to William; and the fact that she would have to ask for this in the event of the others marrying worried her – and him.

His gout flared up, he was touchy and irritable. A gloom had settled over Bushy House.

But the marriage of Fanny to Thomas Alsop took place and it was arranged that Hester with Dodee and Lucy should share a house they had acquired in Park Place.