Royal Affairs: A Lusty Romp through the Extramarital Adventures that Rocked the British Monarchy

by Leslie Carroll

  Wardle was not returned to Parliament in the 1812 elections. According to Mary Anne Clarke, he was reduced “to selling milk about Tunbridge.” In 1815, deeply in debt, he decamped to the Continent, dying in Florence at the age of seventy-one on November 30, 1833.

  But Mary Anne just couldn’t leave well enough alone. In 1813, she was convicted of libel for publishing “A Letter to the Right Hon. William Fitzgerald” and served nine months in prison. After her release, she left England, spending the rest of her life abroad, mostly in Brussels and Paris, entertaining numerous lovers, including the Marquess of Londonderry, and making good marriages for her daughters.

  On June 21, 1852, Mary Anne Clarke died in Boulogne, at the age of seventy-six.

  Her descendant, the twentieth-century author Daphne Du Maurier, fictionalized Mary Anne Clarke’s already colorful life in her 1954 novel, Mary Anne.

  WILLIAM IV

  1765–1837 RULED 1830–1837 and Dorothy Jordan 1761–1816

  Her face, her tears, her manners were irresistible. Her smile had the effect of sunshine, and her laugh did one good to hear it. Her voice was eloquence itself; it seemed as if her heart was always at her mouth. She was all gaiety, openness, and good nature. She rioted in her fine animal spirits, and gave more pleasure than any other actress, because she had the greatest spirit of enjoyment in herself.

  —WILLIAM HAZLITT, 1815

  Warning: do not read this entry before bedtime. It is a horror story.

  Dorothy Jordan was one of nine children born to Grace Phillips, a vicar’s daughter-turned-actress, and Francis Bland, a judge’s son and the heir to Derriquin Castle in County Derry. Francis had eloped with Grace when they were both underage, and therefore their “marriage” was illegal. His father refused to recognize the union and disowned him. When Dora was just thirteen, Francis left his large family in the lurch and legally married an English heiress.

  By the time she met William, Duke of Clarence, the third son of King George III and Queen Charlotte, Dora already had three daughters and was at the top of her profession, known far and wide as the finest comedic actress in England. Her oldest child, Fanny, was born after Dora was raped or at the very least seduced by Richard Daly, the very married manager of the Dublin theatre where she made her stage debut. With her mother, a pair of siblings, and her baby in tow, in 1782 Dora fled to England, auditioning in Leeds for Tate Wilkinson’s company.

  Wilkinson “christened” Dora “Mrs. Jordan.” In an era where actresses were generally considered no better than prostitutes, the “Mrs.” conveyed an element of respectability, giving the impression that there was, or had at one time been, a husband.

  “Why, said I, my dear, you have crossed the water, so I’ll call you ‘Jordan,’ ” said Wilkinson.

  Dora liked the inside joke, so it stuck. There never was a Mr. Jordan.

  In 1784, at the age of twenty-three, she made her London debut at Drury Lane, scoring an immediate artistic and commercial success. Dora’s wholesome appearance stood her in good stead in the comedic roles that were her greatest triumphs. She was short and small-waisted with a perfectly proportioned figure, terrific legs that were shown to great advantage in the trouser roles, and a mop of brown curls. Although she was not a classic beauty by Georgian standards, her nose and chin being too prominent, her face was charming and very expressive. Dora was also so nearsighted that she took to wearing her spectacles on a slender gold chain about her neck.

  For five years Dora lived with the son of one of Drury Lane’s investors, Richard Ford, a lawyer and future MP. They called each other Mr. and Mrs. Ford. Dora bore Richard a son, who didn’t live long enough to be named, and two daughters, Dorothea Maria (“Dodee”) and Lucy. But as time dragged on, it was becoming clearer that the marriage proposal Ford had promised Dora before they set up housekeeping would never be forthcoming.

  This left Dora in an ideal position toward the end of 1791 to give some credence to a new admirer. The young Duke of Clarence, four years her junior, had been making his amorous intentions known to her since February. Fully aware that the Hanover princes had a habit of wooing and jilting in a most callous fashion, she hesitated. Perhaps Ford was the safer bet after all.

  Being of the blood royal, William was accustomed to getting his own way. When he was thirteen, his father had sent him off to the navy. As a fourteen-year-old midshipman, he saw action when the British fleet captured a Spanish flagship, which was promptly renamed the Prince William. He returned to London a hero, but his naval career was all downhill from there. William lost his princely polish and picked up all the sailors’ bad habits: drinking, swearing, and whoring. Even Horatio Nelson couldn’t talk sense into him. And when the prince was given his own ship, he turned into a bully—a captain too fond of the lash who did not respect the orders of his superior officers. The Admiralty couldn’t get him out of the water fast enough.

  In 1783, William’s disappointed parents sent him to Hanover for two years to learn some manners from his German cousins. It didn’t work. But he did learn to fornicate standing up. The teenage prince wrote home to his elder brother George, complaining of the dearth of agreeable (or compliant) women, indignantly adding that he was compelled to perform . . . with a lady of the town against a wall or in the middle of a parade. . . . Oh, for England! And the pretty girls of Westminster; at least to such as would not clap or pox me every time I fucked.

  But this was not the side he showed to Mrs. Jordan. For all their faults, George III’s sons were renowned for their irresistible charm. Most of them weren’t much to look at, though. The fair-haired William was of middling height with all the traits of the Hanover physiognomy—the bulging blue eyes, long nose, florid complexion, and nonexistent chin. But he had a genuine warmth about him, and the twenty-six-year-old duke was desperate for love and affection; not only that, royalty conferred some of its magic on those who traveled within its exalted sphere. The thirty-year-old Dora might have seen it all in her theatrical career, but she was not immune to the aura. Add to this William’s jolly and kind behavior toward her children, and as a mother she was won.

  On October 13, 1791, the duke wrote a triumphant letter to the Prince of Wales, having ascertained for certain that Dora and Richard Ford had never been legally married, and therefore, she would be his. I have all proofs requisite and even legal ones. . . . Suspend then judgment till we meet. . . . I am sure I am too well acquainted with your friendship to doubt for a moment you will, my dear brother, behave kindly to a woman who possesses so deservedly my heart and confidence, and who has given me so many unequivocal and steady proofs of the most uncommon steady attachment.

  Aware of the way the princes of the blood had behaved toward the actresses they professed to admire, Dora had secured an arrangement from William, who was now Duke of Clarence, having been gazetted in 1788. For the consideration of £3,000 prior to consummation (nearly half a million dollars today) and an £840 annual allowance (a little more than $152,000), to be paid quarterly, Dora would agree to be his mistress. It sounds mercenary, but such agreements were the way of the world.

  Offstage, Dora was more the anxious mother than the flamboyant bon vivant. She could be quite retiring, rarely joining in a conversation, as though she needed a good script in order to be clever or witty. “What a task you give me to tell you how much I love you,” she wrote to the duke in one of her early letters. Although she assured William of her feelings, she did not want to conduct their courtship in public, anxious about what the servants might say. And she begged the duke to delay their moving in together because she was “of a very shy disposition.” Dora offered to meet him somewhere in the country instead—“any where out of town.”

  As soon as rumors began to circulate about the new glamour couple, the press gleefully pounced. The caricaturists and satirists had a field day and soon every shop window was hung with scurrilous cartoons.

  In the eyes of the press and the public, because she was an actress, Dora was therefore a gold digger
. Jests abounded that she collected her weekly salary from the Royal Treasurer. Worse, Bon Ton magazine reported that since she had taken up with the duke, Dora had become a neglectful mother.

  Nothing was further from the truth, and Dora enlisted Richard Ford to write a letter upholding her maternal integrity. . . . her conduct has been as laudable, generous, and as like a fond mother as in her present situation it was possible to be. She has indeed given up for their use every six-pence she has been able to save from her theatrical profits. She has also engaged to allow them £550 per an. [nearly $100,000 in today’s economy] . . .’tis but bare justice for me to assert this as the father of those children . . .

  This was not propaganda. It was as true in 1791 as it would be in 1811. Nearly every penny Dora earned went to the support of her children—including saving for dowries, educations, and paying off gambling debts.

  By 1795, Ford was married, with a legitimate son. He cut Dodee and Lucy out of his 1798 will, dying in 1806.

  As a couple, Dora and William were generally good for each other. Although he was not clever or smart, William was warm and outgoing, energetic, and passionately in love with her. Dora supplied consistency, stability, and devotion, as tenderly maternal as she was amorous. She even managed to curb her royal lover’s drinking, although she couldn’t prevent him from doing “hard duty” on his visits to the Prince of Wales.

  One satirist mused: She’s in truth the best feather you have in your cap.

  How you got her, to me, I must own, is a wonder!

  When I think of your natural aptness to blunder.

  But it took Dora a while to find her footing in the relationship. William could be very overbearing at times (which angered her sister, Hester, who was caring for the girls while Dora was at the theatre). Other times, he could be very needy. And because he was on a fixed income of £12,000 (a little more than $2.1 million today), he was not a good provider. A terrible money manager, he was almost permanently in debt, and his allowance payments to Dora were spotty at best.

  A verse by Peter Pindar, the popular poet and satirist, swiftly made the rounds of every coffeehouse in London. As Jordan’s high and mighty squire

  Her playhouse profits deign to skim

  Some folks audaciously inquire

  If he keeps her or she keeps him.

  Two things the couple excelled at were motility and fertility. Dora bore William ten children (five of each) in twenty years, and there were a few miscarriages along the way as well. She was forty-five years old when she gave birth to her last child. All ten of their offspring were healthy and reached adulthood, a rarity in those days.

  Each time Dora gave birth, she returned to the stage as soon as possible, not simply because she adored her career but because she had to maintain her family. Small wonder that as soon as she slowed down long enough to catch her breath and take stock, she was assailed by a bout of melancholy.

  She breast-fed her own babies in an age when they were usually farmed out to a wet nurse. She did all the things a stay-at-home mother would have done for them, while managing a career that demanded very long hours, extensive travel, and full-bore energy at every moment. When she was on the road, touring the provinces, Dora’s letters to William—the house-husband—were full of sweet domestic concerns about the children’s colds, as well as griping about insensitive theatre managers and grueling schedules.

  In the winter of 1796, after Dora and William had presented a model of domestic bliss for four years, King George grudgingly came round to accepting the situation. Although it did not result in any official recognition of their children, it led to a terrific home and an occupation for William. In January 1797, Dora and the duke inspected Bushy, the king’s gift to his third son. Bushy House was a red-brick mansion dating from the reign of Charles II, surrounded by thousands of acres of parkland, of which William was to be the Ranger. Feeling professionally emasculated by his father as well as by Dora, the duke would have preferred a naval commission, as his veins were blue with seawater, but the Admiralty collectively shuddered at the idea.

  Bushy became their idyll, a relaxed pastoral landscape that was an optimal location for raising a family. The children, finally given a surname—FitzClarence—romped and played with their menagerie of dogs, ponies, and birds. Their parents told them bedtime stories. During their years there Dora enjoyed a vast measure of comfort and security, and delighted in William’s genial help with their brood. For any era, and particularly for the eighteenth century, the duke was an extremely “hands-on” father.

  William Boaden, a friend of Dora’s who had been a guest at Bushy House, expressed his admiration for the way Dora “devoted herself to [William’s] interests and his habits, his taste and domestic pleasures.” He observed, “Whoever has had the happiness of seeing them together at Bushy saw them surrounded by a family rarely equaled for personal and mental grace; they saw their happy mother an honored wife, in every thing but the legal title, and uniformly spoke of the establishment at Bushy as one of the most enviable that had ever presented itself to their scrutiny.”

  Despite the fact that this was exactly the sort of family picture George III desperately desired for his children (barring the absence of legality, of course), there remained no formal acceptance from Windsor. However, the king and queen must have said something to William, because during the early years at Bushy Dora wrote to her lover, who was visiting his parents, to say, “A thousand thanks, dear love, for your kind letter. . . . I am proud of their Majesties’ notice of the dear children. . . .”

  William missed Dora dreadfully during her frequent absences while she toured the provinces. At the end of 1805, he asked her to give up her stage career and devote herself entirely to their family. It represented a huge sacrifice for Dora, emotionally, professionally, and financially, but she acquiesced, and remained off the boards for the next year and a half.

  In 1809, when William went to Windsor to press his father for a naval appointment, he wrote the forty-seven-year-old Dora an extremely touching letter. It bears a mention because only two years later, he would adopt a very different attitude. Thro’ your excellence and kindness in private life I am the happiest man possible and look forward only to a temporary separation to make that happiness more compleat from having provided for our dear children. My love and best and tenderest wishes attend you all at Bushy . . . Adieu till we meet and ever believe me, dearest Dora, Yours most affectionately . . .

  After Drury Lane burned to the ground on February 24, Dora had immediately pitched in, playing benefits to help the displaced stagehands. William then, inexplicably, stopped attending her performances and exercised his royal prerogative to “prohibit” Dora from appearing on a London stage. No reasons were discussed or given. Suddenly, William’s dignity took precedence over her career and her renown. On the heels of these new restrictions, however, came the urgent need for funds. There were always debts and William had no employment. So Dora was free to continue to tour the provinces, jouncing about on rutted dirt roads from town to town.

  As she always was when she was on the road, Dora was distressed to be separated from her beloved family. Her insightful letter perfectly encapsulates the mixed emotions and the demands of professionalism that remain the actor’s burden today. I drive you all from my mind as much as I can during the time I am employed, but then you all return with a double force and my dreams are confused and disturbed to a degree.

  She was now pushing fifty, no longer slim-waisted, but by no means stout. And yet early in 1811, performing at Bath, Dora felt at the top of her game. I really think, and it is the opinion of several critics here that have known me from my first appearance in London, that I am a better actress at this moment than I ever was.

  Her audiences were as appreciative as ever. But back home at Bushy, a sea change was taking place. William’s attitude had cooled significantly; he made it clear that he was indifferent as to whether Dora went or stayed.

  Things were changing. Her ch
ildren by William were growing older and were now invited to attend royal events with their father, from which Dora was barred. Her other children’s roles evolved as well. Lucy, her younger daughter by Richard Ford (and her traveling companion on the road) moved on, marrying Colonel Hawker, a man old enough to be her father. As a settled matron, Lucy could no longer accompany her mother on her provincial engagements. So Dora’s oldest daughter, the miserably married Fanny Alsop, assumed Lucy’s duties, but seemed overly fond of dosing her mother’s wine with white poppy syrup—laudanum—much to Dora’s distress.

  When the Prince of Wales became Regent, William, now in his mid-forties, grew one step closer to the throne. He had to marry. And the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 prevented him from wedding the illegitimate commoner with whom he had resided for twenty years, because the king would never consent to it.

  He began to pay not very subtle court to Catherine Tylney-Long, a twenty-two-year-old heiress. Dora began to realize what was happening, and in some way resigned herself to the inevitable, writing to William: I frequently feel myself a restraint on your pleasures, and this idea makes me unhappy, even in the midst of my family . . . You see, I already consider you as an old friend, and tell you everything I think.

  How she must have swallowed her pride to write those words! And yet she rather hoped that the duke would be able to sustain her as his mistress. After all, she was the devoted mother of their children, and couldn’t imagine breaking up the home.