Victoria in the Wings

Clarence

THE DUKE OF Clarence was driving down to Brighton to propose to the lady whom he had decided to make his wife and he was certain of the outcome this time. He had to admit that he had been very unlucky so far. No Prince could ever have been so constantly refused. He could not understand it. Sometimes he thought it was the ghost of Dorothy Jordan mocking him from her obscure grave across the Channel.

‘Nonsense,’ he said to himself. She would be the first to wish for my happiness. Had it not always been so? She had always thought of him. Why, when she drew her salary at the theatre she would write to him and say: ‘Do you want it? Please let me know before I spend it.’

Dorothy had invariably understood as soon as he had explained his motives to her.

‘Dear Miss Wykeham.’ He rehearsed the speech he would make to his prospective bride. He enjoyed making speeches and the proposal of a Prince who was third in the line of succession was surely the occasion to make one. ‘Dear Miss Wykeham, I have something of the greatest importance to say to you. I have not a farthing to my name. I owe sixty thousand pounds. But if you would like to be a Duchess, and perhaps a Queen, I should have great pleasure in arranging it.’

There! A rough sailor’s wooing. That was after all what he was.

He was fifty-two – not an ideal age to become a bridegroom but still able to beget children, he would explain to her, as she would discover. She was young; and if they could get a son that boy would most certainly be a King of England. Unless, of course, the Regent realized his ambition to divorce Queen Caroline, remarry and have a son of his own, which was very unlikely. George was three years older than he was, and hadn’t worn so well. In spite of his gout and asthma he was in better shape than George. The life at sea had been a healthy one; it had hardened William and he had lived quietly and respectably for twenty years at Bushy Park with Dorothy Jordan and their ten children, whereas George had indulged himself far more.

Not such a bad figure of a man, thought William, considering himself. Why had the women refused him? It was a mystery to him. Had it had anything to do with Dorothy?

He frowned remembering her. He wished he could forget her; he couldn’t help feeling ashamed of the way in which he had treated her. They had been good days when she had agreed to set up house with him and they had been together – a husband and wife in all but name – and the children started to arrive; he, a young man of twenty-five, Dorothy a year or so older, clever, piquant, charming, the finest comic actress on the stage; and how deeply he had loved her! He had thought it would have lasted for ever and it would have done but for the fact that they grew older and Dorothy put on weight and he had his gout and asthma; and there was always the vexing question of money between them. Dorothy was always trying to save up money to give a good dowry to the girls she had had before she met him. That had rankled; and of course they had been the subject of considerable comment and ridicule in the press.

Moreover, he was after all the son of a king and a king’s son was expected to do his duty to the State as his mother was constantly reminding him, and one of his most unpleasant duties had been to remind Dorothy of this.

Poor dear Dorothy! How stricken she had been at that last meeting. He could see that she hadn’t believed it was possible. ‘It’s only because I have to do my duty …’ His voice had been a little more high-pitched than usual, and false.

That was the dreadful thing. It had been false. He need not have deserted her. The Queen might complain that he did not do his duty but his brother George, the Regent, would have stood firmly behind him if he had refused to leave Dorothy.

But he had wanted change. That was the plain truth. He was weak; he was vain. He would not accept the fact that he was an ageing man; and how better to prove that he was not than by taking a young wife. If he married he could expect the government to settle his debts and increase his income. It had happened with George and Frederick. And if he married a woman with money, the unfortunate pecuniary difficulties need not arise again.

Miss Wykeham was an heiress to estates in Oxfordshire – pretty enough, young and rich. He asked no more. This time he would succeed.

He could not understand why he had failed to do so before for he had made several attempts since he parted with Dorothy. Was it because he was no longer young or because he had ten children named FitzClarence whom he acknowledged as his own, or because the press ridiculed him mercilessly and immediately involved the lady he was wooing in that amused contempt as soon as it was known his fancy had alighted on her. That was it, he assured himself. It was the ridicule of the press which had persuaded Catherine Tylney-Long, one of the richest heiresses in the country, to choose Wellesley Pole instead of him. He remembered now the humiliation when she refused his offer; she a commoner to refuse the proposal of marriage from a duke; whereas Dorothy, a leading actress, a woman of high principles, had become his mistress for love of him.

The refusal of Miss Tylney-Long might have been lived down had not another heiress, Miss Mercer Elphinstone, refused him too.

By that time he was becoming a laughing-stock. He would offer to elevate no more commoners; next time it should be a princess and then perhaps the Misses Tylney-Long and Elphinstone would begin to realize what they had missed.

His brother Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, who was some nine years younger than William, had been sent to Hanover to act as Viceroy there. Adolphus was one of the most endearing of the brothers; there was an innocence about him; his manners were charming and he was good looking. One could trust Adolphus.

William wrote to him: ‘My dear Adolphus, I want you to look for a suitable bride for me. She must be a princess, young enough to bear children, charming, one who could, if the occasion arose, grace the English throne. She must be a Protestant, as you know, and you may well run across her at one of the German Courts, the stables from where our princesses come. Where else could they come from, since they must be Protestant? The family needs another German princess for England. Find her for me, my dear Adolphus.’

As he had told himself repeatedly, one could trust Adolphus who had immediately set to work and found the lovely Augusta Wilhemina Louisa, daughter of the Landgraf, Duke Frederick of Hesse-Cassel.

No sooner had Adolphus set eyes on this lady than he knew she was the most perfect woman he had ever met; and who better suited to the throne of England than such a paragon? Adolphus, not addicted to the use of the pen, turned it now to express his admiration. He must write of the perfections of Augusta. She had lived through the hazardous years of the Napoleonic occupation which had increased her understanding; she grew in beauty every day. She had the most glorious dark eyes and brows – a bewitching contrast to the flaxen-haired blue-eyed princesses who were commonplace in Germany. Life had tended to make her a little serious but this merely added to her charm; she could sing exquisitely and to see her with a piece of embroidery in her fine tapering fingers was to see Grace personified.

‘I know of no one who would make a more ideal Queen of England,’ wrote Adolphus.

William read his brother’s letters, picturing the joy of receiving such a beauty in England, and all that would follow on his marriage: the government grant, his heir to the nation.

Adolphus continued to write, and his letters consisted of nothing but praise for the perfections of Augusta, until at last, reading one of these letters an idea flashed into William’s head. Surely no woman could be quite as perfect as Adolphus painted Augusta. ‘He’s in love with her himself,’ cried William.

This amused him. He laughed aloud. His laughter had become louder, his oaths more frequent since Dorothy died.

Adolphus, a young bachelor of forty-three, was in love with a young princess whom he was wooing on behalf of his brother! And she, how did she feel? It was almost certain that she was in love with the charming, nine-years-junior prince who had discovered her perfections.

William resembled his brother George in that he was sentimental in the extreme and enjoyed making a fine gesture. He was also fond of Adolphus. He now made the gesture.

‘My dear Adolphus, tell me the truth. Are you by any chance in love with the lady?’

What could Adolphus answer but that it was not possible to be near Augusta of Hesse-Cassel without loving her?

‘I resign her to you,’ wrote William.

He was rewarded by Adolphus’s gratitude. When Augusta agreed to marry him he wrote: ‘I believe that on the surface of the globe there is not a happier being than myself. She is everything in heart, mind and person that I could wish for.’

Charming! Affecting! William took the letter to the Regent and they wept together over William’s sacrifice and Adolphus’s happiness.

But that did not find a bride for William.

He was determined on royalty, though. He tried the Tsar’s sister, the Duchess of Oldenburg, who after pretending to consider his proposal and even visiting England and being lavishly entertained there, decided against the match. Another humiliation! After her, the Princess Anne of Denmark.

He must succeed. He was becoming known as the Prince who could not find a wife. It was a situation beloved of the cartoonists and naturally they made the most of it.

He engaged the poet Southey to write poems for him to send to the Danish princess but before he could dispatch them she refused the match.

Another chortle of glee from the press! Poor Clarence! And whenever he appeared in the cartoons – which was with distressing frequency – Dorothy Jordan was there in the background with the ten FitzClarence children clinging to her skirts.

What had William, Duke of Clarence, to offer? Nothing but a vague possibility of becoming King of England, having two brothers to come before him. He was past fifty and no longer a Prince Charming, if he ever had been, was somewhat rough in the speech and manners which he had acquired at sea, and he was overburdened by debts. ‘Small wonder,’ said the press, ‘that when William offers the ladies decline.’ Worst of all they recalled Dorothy. He had deserted her after twenty years; she had died in poverty in France; she was buried in an unknown grave. Not a very good recommendation for Husband William, for he had been husband to Dorothy Jordan in all but name.

There had been a distressing crop of rumours about her.

Her eldest daughter by Richard Daly, who had been a source of trouble to Dorothy and William all her life, declared that she had seen her mother in the Strand, and that she had been so startled for some seconds that she had allowed her to pass. When she had sought to follow her, Dorothy had disappeared.

The theatre critic, James Boaden, who had been a great friend of Dorothy, declared he saw her looking in a bookshop in Piccadilly. He was certain it was Dorothy because of the strange way she handled the eyeglass she had invariably used to aid her short sight. Like Dorothy’s daughter he had been too startled by the vision of one whom he believed to be dead to speak for a moment; and the vision lowered a thick veil over her face and hurried away.

This gave rise to two rumours: Dorothy Jordan was not dead but had come back to London from which she had fled to avoid a debtor’s prison. Dorothy Jordan, unable to rest in her grave, had come back to haunt the man who had treated her so badly.

William declared he did not believe either of them. Fanny Alsop, Dorothy’s daughter, had always hated him and would tell any tale that might harm him. As for Boaden, he had been mistaken. The whole thing was a fabrication.

But was it one of the reasons why no one seemed anxious to become his wife in spite of a promise – a vague one it had to be admitted – of a crown?

He had, however, great hopes of Miss Wykeham. In his pocket he carried Southey’s poem to the Princess Anne of Denmark which a little adjustment had made applicable to Miss Wykeham.

He would forget past failures and concentrate on success.

He joined George at the Pavilion, where he was staying with their sister Mary. George embraced him with great affection.

‘So you have come, William, to be with me in my sorrow.’

George always acted so well that one immediately took one’s part in whatever drama was being enacted. Mary, who was now Duchess of Gloucester, wept with George for the loss of his daughter; and as they talked of Charlotte William could not recognize in his niece the young woman whom death had endowed with qualities she had never possessed – or at least her father had not admitted she possessed – in life.

William was thinking of his wooing. A sailor learned to be practical. But even he realized that this was not the moment to speak to his brother and sister of his intentions.

But Miss Wykeham was staying in her house at Brighton, for like most of the rich and fashionable she had a house there; and William took the first opportunity to escape from the gloom of the Pavilion in mourning to Miss Wykeham’s house.

She received him a little archly. She was fully aware of why he had come. He needed a bride and Miss Wykeham – who was no fool – knew that the death of the Princess made the need imperative and, from her point of view, the match more desirable.

‘How good of you to call.’

‘Oh, I had a purpose.’

He was very lacking in the graces of polite society. Was it due to all those years of bourgeois existence with the easy-to-please Dorothy Jordan? wondered Miss Wykeham.

‘A purpose? Now I wonder what that could be.’

She fluttered her eyes at him. She had been told they were very fine. As fine as her fortune? she had wondered, for she was a somewhat cynical young woman.

‘You shall see. Here read this. Or would you like me to read it to you?’

‘You read it to me. But pray first be seated.’

She led him to a couch and they sat down together while he read Southey’s poem to the Princess Anne of Denmark.

‘What flattering words. Did I really inspire them?’

‘No one but you, my dear Miss Wykeham. And you must know why.’

‘In case I have misunderstood, don’t you think you should explain?’

‘It’s as simple as this,’ he said. And he repeated the speech he had learned by heart. ‘Dear Miss Wykeham I have not a farthing to my name, but if you would like to be a Duchess and perhaps a Queen, I should have great pleasure in arranging it.’

She laughed. Plain Miss would certainly like to be a Duchess; she would like even better to be a Queen. An exciting prospect.

‘That is what is called a rough sailor’s wooing, I suppose,’ she said.

‘You can call it that, but I mean every word of it. Well, what’s the answer?’

‘Please arrange it,’ she said.

He laughed with her. He kissed her. She was young, she was not unhandsome; she was very rich, and at last he had found a woman to accept him.