‘Time, dear brother, to have left childhood behind and if our miserly parents will not allow me an establishment at least I shall have a life of my own.’


* * *

In the Queen’s drawing room the royal family was assembled for the evening concert. These concerts took place twice a week, on the King’s orders, and every member of the family was expected to attend or the King would want to know the reason why. Only baby Sophie, not yet two years old, was spared. Even three-year-old Mary was there, seated on a foot-stool at her mother’s feet while Queen Charlotte, pregnant with the child who would shortly make its appearance and bring the number of royal offspring to thirteen, industriously worked on her embroidery.

The King was comparatively content on occasions like this. It was while he sat with his family – all outwardly docile – while he listened to the excellent performance of some piece by Handel, that he could forget his anxieties. There were many of these. The trouble growing steadily worse over the American colonies; the conflict among his ministers, the growing truculence of the Prince of Wales; and worst of all the voices in his head which would not leave him alone, which mischievously mocked him, starting a train of thought and suddenly snatching it away so that he could not remember what had been in his mind a moment before, malicious voices which whispered to him: ‘George, are you going mad?’

But here in the drawing room with his family seated quietly about him and the Queen looking placid, as she always did when pregnant, listening to the mastery of Mr Papendiek with his flute and Mr Cramer at the harpsichord and the Cervettos – father and son – miraculously performing on their violins, he felt more at peace than at any other time.

He let his eyes linger on the younger children; he sometimes wished that they did not have to grow up. The arch-trouble maker was his eldest son and as Frederick was his intimate companion that made a pair of them. Young William was only fourteen; he would get him off to sea as soon as possible; that would provide some necessary discipline. Twelve-year-old Edward should go to Germany – as should the other boys, except the Prince of Wales of course. There would be an outcry if he were sent out of England; and he had heard that his son had expressed very strong opinions about that too. George was anxious to forget that his great-great-grandfather, who had become George I, was a German who could speak no English. The Prince of Wales was trying to win the approval of the English people already. The King looked uneasily at his eldest son. A tall, good-looking boy, quite handsome, fair and fresh-complexioned; his only physical imperfection being the family tendency to fat. The King wondered whether the Prince had cajoled his attendants into leaving the fat on his meat or to giving him crust with fruit pies. The King was coming to the conclusion that his eldest son was capable of anything.

Why had George turned out so differently from what he had hoped? The rod had not been spared. He himself had had a hand in those beatings – and well deserved punishments they were – but he carried a memory with him of the flushed angry face of the Prince of Wales, and much resentment at the outrage to his dignity.

‘Necessary,’ murmured the King to himself. ‘Disobedience has to be beaten out, eh, what?’ And there was young Augustus with his asthma. That had to be beaten out of him too. He was six years old, but he was already well acquainted with the cane; and it certainly seemed to help him get his breath better.

A family could be a great trial – particularly a royal family. But when they were small they were charming. A great solace, thought the King, particularly the girls. He wished there had been more girls. Dear little Sophie was a delight; and as for Mary sitting there so solemnly at her mother’s feet, she looked like a little doll. It would have given him great pleasure to have picked her up and caressed her while he explained to her that Mr Handel’s music was the best in the world. But he must observe the decorum of the drawing room.

His feet tapped in time with the music, but his mind had darted from his children to the situation in America. They’ll capitulate, he was telling himself. They’ll sue for peace … the rebels! Lord North was uneasy and wanted to give up the Ministry, but he wasn’t going to let him. Who else was there but North? Chatham dead. Charles James Fox was making a nuisance of himself – he was even more of a menace than his father had been. Nothing went right abroad … and at home there was the intransigence of the Prince of Wales. Why could he not be at peace in the heart of his family? Charlotte was dull but he was accustomed to her by now; it was true he looked with pleasure on other women … women like Elizabeth Pembroke, of course, but his emotions were so much in control that he never went beyond looking. His subjects sneered at him for being a good husband. They laughed at his interest in making buttons; in his liking for the land. ‘Farmer George’ they called him, and ‘The Royal Button Maker’. There was scorn rather than affection in these appellations. The people forgot that when he was not with his family at Kew he was closeted with his ministers making decisions on how the campaign against the American rebels was to be conducted, making decisions as to how the armies were to be deployed; discussing naval tactics. Even now he was urging Lord Sandwich to hold the West Indies at all costs. How could we continue to meet our commitments if we lost our revenue from the sugar islands? And what of home defence? What about the aggressive French and the Spaniards?

Problems everywhere he looked, and the voices every now and then whispering in his head: ‘George, are you going mad?’

And why shouldn’t a king be a virtuous husband? What was there to sneer at in virtue? It seemed to George that whatever a king did he displeased his subjects if he were no longer young. Everywhere that young rascal, the Prince of Wales went he was cheered. What will become of him I cannot think, mused the King uneasily. Ideas chased themselves round and round in his head; like mice, he thought of them … fighting each other for his attention and when he tried to look closely at them they disappeared; they turned into mocking voices that reminded him of that dreadful time when he had been ill and had lost control of his mind. Pleasant things like his model farm at Kew, his buttons, his gardens, his baby daughters represented safety. If he could have escaped from all his troubles and lived quietly, the voices might be stilled. He glanced at Charlotte … good Queen Charlotte, unexciting but safe. Sometimes he was tormented by erotic dreams of women. Hannah Lightfoot, the Quaker girl with whom he had gone through a form of marriage when he had been very young and foolishly romantic, long since dead – for which ironically he must be grateful; for while she lived she represented a threat to his marriage with Charlotte, and that was a matter to shake the whole foundations of the monarchy, for if his sons were bastards … well, it did not bear thinking of and set the voices in his head working faster than ever. And then there was Sarah Lennox – Sarah Bunbury as she had become – whom he had wanted to marry, for whom he had as he had told Lord Bute ‘burned’; but he had been obliged to marry his plain German princess because all Hanoverian Kings married German princesses; it was a duty they must observe and when the time came young George would have to do the same. So instead of his dear Hannah Lightfoot whom he had so dangerously loved in his extreme youth, in spite of flighty Sarah Lennox for whom he had so burned, he was married to Charlotte.

He was a faithful husband, but there were times when his senses were in revolt. Why, he would demand of himself, should he be the one member of the family who observed a strict moral code? His brothers … his sister Caroline Matilda … He shuddered at the memory of them. Poor Caroline Matilda whom he had dearly loved and longed to protect was now dead – and he could not be sure that her death had been a natural one – after being involved in a storm of intrigue. Married to a near imbecile she had taken a lover and with him had been accused of treason. The lover had died barbarously and she, the Queen of Denmark, had come very near to the same fate, and would have succumbed to it but for the intervention of her affectionate brother – himself, the King of England. He had been deeply disturbed by the death of Caroline Matilda. Such events haunted him in nightmares. Poor Caroline Matilda had paid a high price for her follies.

With his brothers it was a very different matter.

William, Duke of Gloucester and Henry, Duke of Cumberland, had defiantly made their scandals and brazenly shown their indifference to disgrace. Yet they did not arouse half the resentment and mocking scorn which was poured on the King for being a good husband.

Cumberland had been involved in a most disgraceful affair with the Grosvenors because he had seduced Lady Grosvenor and had – young fool! – written letters to the woman which gave no doubt of the relationship between them. George remembered phrases from those letters which made his face burn with shame – and something like envy – even now. Accounts of intimate details when they had lain together ‘on the couch ten thousand times’. His brother, who had been brought up so carefully by their mother, watched over, never allowed to meet anyone but the immediate family in case he should be contaminated, had written those words! And as soon as they escaped from Mamma’s apron strings, there they were running wild, getting into scandals like that of Cumberland and the Grosvenors. And Lord Grosvenor had had the effrontery to sue a royal duke and to win his case. The jury had brought in a verdict of £10 000 plus costs of £3000 against the Duke of Cumberland which George had had to find with the help of Lord North … out of the King’s household expenses.