Jean Plaidy - The Regent’s Daughter

‘Y … yes, Mamma, I understand but please do not try to shut me up with Captain Hesse … or with any man, again.’

‘Never, unless my angel wishes it. It was Mamma’s silly way of saying she loves her little girl and wants to give her all that the others take away from her. Say you understand. Say you love your Mamma. It is the only thing she has … her little Charlotte.’

‘You have Willie, Mamma. He is as a son to you.’

‘I have Willie … but he is the substitute for my own little girl. Try to understand me, Charlotte, and love me.’

‘I do, Mamma, I do.’

They wept together. I do love her, Charlotte told herself, I do.

‘Promise me, dearest, that when you are your own mistress you will not forget your mother.’

‘I promise,’ said Charlotte.

‘So perhaps it is not so long to wait, eh?’ Mischievous lights shot up in the eyes of the Princess of Wales. ‘And in the meantime we plague them in all ways we know, eh?’

Charlotte did not answer.

Poor Mamma, she thought, she is starved of love. I must try to understand and help her.

But when she went back to Warwick House, sitting in the carriage with Lady de Clifford, she wondered what that lady would say if she knew what had happened in her mother’s bedroom and she shivered with apprehension.

It was a great trial to be a princess and heiress – though only presumptive – to the throne of England and at the same time to be a buffer between two such strange parents.

MRS GAGARIN AND Louisa Lewis were dressing the Princess for her birthday ball. It was to be a grand occasion at Carlton House given by the Prince of Wales because she was sixteen years old.

‘Soon,’ she was saying, ‘they will have to stop treating me as a child. I’m longing to wear feathers. When I do, you will know then that I really am no longer regarded as a child.’

‘Don’t you be in such a hurry to grow up,’ advised Louisa. ‘It’ll come soon enough.’

‘Not soon enough for me. Do you think the Prince R. will be proud of me tonight? Now don’t say “Yes, yes, yes”. Stop and think. Think of him and all his elegance. I have to be rather good to come up to his standards. Why, what’s the matter with Gagy?’

‘It’s all right, Your Highness, just a stitch in my side.’

‘Better sit down,’ advised Louisa. ‘You know …’

Mrs Gagarin flashed her a warning look which Charlotte intercepted.

‘Now what is this?’ she demanded imperiously. ‘Gagy, you are not ill, are you?’

‘No, no. It’s nothing. My dinner did not agree with me.’

Charlotte looked suspicious and felt a sudden touch of panic. Birthdays made one realize that time was passing. It did not seem so long since her last; and some of these people who had been with her for so long that she thought they would be with her for ever, were getting old.

Mrs Gagarin had a grey tinge to her face today. Charlotte threw her arms about her and said: ‘Gagy, you mustn’t die. Don’t forget I made you want to live after you lost Mr Gagarin, didn’t I? I still want you. You mustn’t be ill.’

‘What a fuss,’ said Mrs Gagarin, ‘about a touch of indigestion. Anyone would think I was on my death-bed.’

‘Don’t talk about death,’ commanded Charlotte. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘All right,’ said Mrs Gagarin. ‘Let’s see that you look your best for this party.’

‘Do I?’

‘Lovely,’ cried Mrs Gagarin. ‘Doesn’t she, Louisa?’

Louisa adoringly agreed.

It was silly, Charlotte assured herself, to think poor Gagy was going to die just because she had indigestion. There were years and years left yet to them all.

She was in a slightly sombre mood, however, on the journey to Carlton House, but she was soon elated, for her father had determined this should be a special occasion. The people who had gathered to watch her alight from her carriage cheered her and she waved as Lady de Clifford had told her many times she should not – instead of bowing regally. But the people liked her for her free and easy ways and she was not going to obey Lady de Clifford’s orders much longer.

Her father looked splendid and she was thrilled as always to see him and proud that he was her father; and the odd feelings of resentment and pride fought together in the familiar way; but resentment was defeated on this night, because he smiled as he embraced her affectionately, even with a glint of tears in his eyes, and told her that she looked charming.

She was happy as, holding her lightly by the hand, he led her into that house which the old gossip, Horace Walpole, had described as the most perfect in Europe. She was proud of the tasteful decorations; they had all been done under his supervision; and from the moment she passed through the front porch with its Corinthian portico, because he was leading her there and seemed pleased to have her, she knew this was going to be a happy evening, a birthday to remember.

Carlton House was her birthplace and his home where she wished they could all live together – her father, her mother and herself, like an affectionate family. It was what she had always wanted more than anything and she had confided this to Mercer.

‘Papa,’ she said, ‘whenever I come to Carlton House I am struck afresh by its beauty.’

He was pleased. ‘I confess to a fondness for the place myself.’

‘Everything is p … perfect,’ she cried, and for once he did not frown at her stammer. She went on: ‘The lovely apartments, and best of all I think I love the dear little music room that opens on to the gardens. I never saw a room as pretty as that music room.’

He began to tell her how the idea had come to him to create such a room; and this was one of the rare occasions when they were able to chat easily together.

During dinner when she sat on his right hand he talked almost exclusively to her and told her how for the banquet to celebrate his accession to the Regency he had entertained two thousand guests here in Carlton House.

‘I had the idea that a canal should be made to run right down the central table and in it was a stream in which fish swam – they were silver and gold and I can tell you were extremely beautiful.’

‘How wonderful it must have looked. That was a great occasion.’

He was sad momentarily, thinking about Maria who had refused to come because she had been denied a place at the stream-decorated table. Why could she not understand that as Regent he dared not bring into prominence one who was a Catholic and suspected of being his wife? It was not really because Isabella had not wished her to be at the top table. Maria could not understand that. How shackled one was when one was royal! Why the legitimacy of this girl seated beside him might be in question if that ceremony in Maria’s drawing room was accepted as a true marriage.

He wished he had not reminded himself of the Regency banquet.

‘Papa,’ Charlotte was saying. ‘You have grown more slender. I trust you are well.’

He was pleased with the remark, although he disliked people to hint that he had ever been ‘fat’ which he considered an unpleasant word. He had lost a little weight, yet lying up at Oatlands had not improved his health.

Later when he led her into the dance she noticed that he limped a little and did not call attention to this; by that time she was thinking that this was one of the happiest days of her life. Her father was fonder of her than he had been for a long time and as this was, she hoped, the beginning of the gratification of one of her dearest wishes, she could forget her misgivings caused by Mrs Gagarin’s grey looks and the odd eccentric behaviour of her mother.

For once her father approved of her – and that was perhaps what she most wanted in life.

Mercer was a constant visitor to Warwick House. Charlotte often wondered what she would do without her. She confided in Mercer – not everything, of course, but a great deal. She could never talk of her feelings for her parents but perhaps this was because she did not fully understand them herself. She had not mentioned that occasion when her mother had shut her in the bedroom with Captain Hesse. That was something she could scarcely bring herself to think of – let alone talk about.

But in almost everything else Mercer was her confidante, her alter ego; and she often thought that while she could have Mercer for her friend she could bear everything else – the criticisms of her paternal grandmother and the dreary boredom of her maternal one; the alternate scoldings and gushing affection of the Old Girls; the sadness that came to her when she thought of poor mad Grandpapa and most of all her mingled feelings for her parents.

Sometimes Mercer would describe the dresses she had seen at a ball. Then they would talk of clothes – a subject of which Mercer was a past mistress, as of everything else, and they would perhaps call in Mrs Gagarin and Louisa Lewis to discuss what could be made for Charlotte out of what Mercer sternly called her ‘somewhat inadequate allowance’.

‘Never mind,’ cried Charlotte, ‘I shall soon have an establishment of my own and that will mean a good allowance. They can’t keep me in the nursery for ever.’

‘It will be on your eighteenth birthday,’ prophesied Mercer, ‘which is not really very far away.’

Charlotte’s eyes sparkled at the thought of growing up.

‘One thing you must promise me, Mercer. When I am Queen you will always be with me.’

Mercer said it was not really very becoming to talk of being Queen when one considered what must happen before she was.

There were times when Mercer was a little self-righteous, and Charlotte was glad of it. It would not have been good for them both to be as impulsive as she was.