Mrs Jordan's Profession

by Claire Tomalin

  William was a less sophisticated character than the Regent. He also found it hard to change the pattern of his life; he had nothing to reproach Dora with but that she was who she was, and chose to go on doing what she had always done. There are stories of attempts to blacken her name, of persons who ‘affecting a high sense of public virtue and regard for the family on the throne, and its members within the probability of succession, spared no pains to excite distrust or disgust in the royal person connected with her’.6 The Duke would not have believed a word of such insinuations. But he was ripe and ready to be corrupted.

  His letters to Dora in Yorkshire suggest some uneasiness. He apologized for their being ‘stupid’, to which she answered, ‘why do you say your letters are stupid – I don’t find them so – don’t they speak of everything that is dear to me?’7 He told her the Queen was ill; her reply was full of sympathy for the Queen’s afflictions. She asked him why the Duke of Cumberland seemed angry with her and would not let FitzErnest stay at Bushy: ‘I loved the boy for his own sake.’ He did not offer any explanation, but enthused instead about the gravel walk, his latest improvement. He also mentioned in passing that the family would all be absent on the day she proposed to arrive home.

  She reached home on 6 September, whether to a full or empty house we don’t know. Perhaps he avoided her eye, perhaps she pretended not to notice, and busied herself with children, house and garden. She appeared once at Richmond, where she gave two farces, and left again for Cheltenham on the 16th. Whatever the Duke had said or not said, she was aware of a change in their relations. ‘I frequently feel myself a restraint on your pleasures, and this idea makes me unhappy even in the midst of my family,’ she wrote to him now, adding, ‘You see I already consider you as an old friend, and tell you everything I think.’8 A few days later she put in a postscript, ‘I see Miss Tylney Long is going to give another Ball, I hope you and Sophy will be invited.’9

  If she had understood he might be looking for love elsewhere, she also seems to have thought, or hoped, it could be accommodated within their existing arrangements. Her letters show she was tired, and anxious about money; there were the usual problems, the weather turned rainy, Cheltenham audiences thinned, she developed a sore throat, and the manager who had offered her a short season at Exeter wrote to say he could not raise a company unless she would do the whole west country circuit. This she could not possibly undertake; so she was planning to return to Bushy when, on 2 October, she heard again from the Duke. He suggested they should meet at Maidenhead in three days’ time.

  The story goes that his letter came just before she was due to perform the part of Nell in The Devil to Pay, and that, though she guessed what it signified and was in anguish,

  with that kindness that always marked her conduct, she would not withdraw her name from the bills, though such was her state, when she arrived at the theatre, from continual hysterics, that we may literally say, she was saturated in sorrow… In her scene with Jobson… Nell laughs immoderately, on which Jobson remarks, ‘Why, Nell, the conjurer has not only made you drunk, but he has made you laughing drunk.’ When Mrs Jordan attempted to laugh, she burst into tears; and the actor, with great presence of mind, altered the text by saying, ‘Nell, the conjurer has not only made thee drunk, he has made thee crying drunk,’ and thus brought her through the scene. As soon as the play was over, she was put into a travelling chariot, in her Nell’s dress, and started to keep her appointment with her royal lover.10

  It is a good theatre tale, and gives powerful dramatic expression to the real shift from comedy to tragedy, laughter to tears, taking place in her life; but the last part at least cannot be literally true. There was no need for her to travel in her stage outfit, because we know she answered his letter, and had three days in which to prepare to go to Maidenhead, where they had often met, happily, in the past.

  There is no record of what was said between them at Maidenhead. Dora now understood there was to be some sort of separation, but she still did not, and perhaps could not, grasp the full significance of the Duke’s change of heart. In the next few days she was busy in London, seeing her beloved Lucy, not yet recovered from her confinement, and George, about to join his regiment again in Brighton; she also began negotiations with Covent Garden, which wanted her for the winter season. Then she went home to Bushy, the four younger girls and Tuss, and wrote affectionately to the Duke, describing the family’s ‘high health and spirits’, and the planting and preparation of ground in the garden and trees around the dairy, which she discussed as usual with the gardener. All the dear little girls clamoured to send their love, she told him; none of the children of course knew anything of the proposed separation of their parents.11 Fanny had been looking after them; Dora described going up to say goodnight and finding Eliza, Augusta and Mely all at ‘proper prayers for the night, nor did my coming into and going out of the room take off their attention – the sight tho’ it could not fail to give me pleasure yet it affected me very much’.12 She said the family would be alone at Bushy until his return; either she really expected everything to go on as before, or she thought her best tactic was to behave as though it would.

  But the Duke stayed away, dividing his time between London and Ramsgate, where Miss Long was taking the sea air. Princess Charlotte saw him ‘in very high spirits & looking remarkably well’. Now that he had Dora’s permission, as he saw it, he approached Miss Long’s guardian with letters assuring her of his devotion and eligibility in terms that may not have produced quite the effect he intended. He explained he had adored Miss Long for ‘four or five months’, spoke of himself as ‘the first unmarried man in the kingdom’ and ‘a man of honour’, and added, ‘Mrs Jordan has behaved like an angel and is equally anxious for the marriage.’ ‘Never will or can Miss Long meet with the man whose conduct either can or will be like mine,’ he added.13 The truth is, Dora did offer him some advice on his wooing of Miss Long; there is a curious letter from her in which she warns him to ‘be cautious for fear of a disappointment. All women are not to be taken by an open attack, and a premeditated one stands a worse chance than any other.’14 Perhaps she thought she could still help the man she had trusted for so long to avoid making a complete ass of himself before the world; but her counsel was in vain. Although Miss Long was flattered for a moment, she did not care for him at all. When he asked her to dance with him, she made the classic excuse that she had hurt her foot; she preferred a suitor of her own age.

  Gossip raged. Lady Bessborough knew all about it: ‘Lady Holland says the Duke told her he had the Regent’s promise to withdraw the restrictions on Royal Marriages as soon as he was in power.’15 A few days later she heard more. ‘The story of the D of C and Miss Long is true. He propos’d in form, was rejected, but still has hopes founded on the Royal honours the Prince is to bestow, and on the chance of being the Mother of Kings. What will become of poor Mrs Jordan and all her Children, I wonder? for I have no doubt he will marry someone if he does not her.’ Princess Charlotte heard the story too, and wrote of Mrs Jordan’s excellent conduct and of how she had ‘proved herself a true friend to him, & a most affcte. mother’.16

  Sophy and George were the first of the children to hear of their father’s plans. She objected strongly to the idea of his marrying and had to be coaxed into changing her mind. It did not take long; when only half your blood is good, it becomes all the more important to keep in with the good half. To George the Duke said little beyond that he had ‘a thousand places to go to, and think I cannot be home at Christmas’.17 He had decided – or been advised – not to see Dora face to face, perhaps because he knew he could not argue with her and would lose his resolve in her presence. When Miss Long turned him down, he immediately set about proposing to other rich women, though with no better luck; he continued to travel about, to Chatham and Portsmouth, and then Oatlands. He appears at his very worst during these months, like a parody of a wicked prince, as though whatever decency and kindliness he had acquired over twenty hap
py years had been blown to bits by excitement and vanity.

  At Bushy Dora tried to understand his wishes. She had discreetly given up her negotiations with Covent Garden for the moment and made no further plans to work. She wrote to George in the middle of November that ‘if he insists on taking all the children – I shall submit’.18 As the law stood, she had a legal claim only to Tuss – for the next few months, until he was seven – and Amelia.19 But she was not asked to give up the children. Perhaps the Duke’s advisers saw that such a demand would be outrageous and hardly to his advantage. On 22 November – her fiftieth birthday – she wrote to him to say she had seen their lawyer Adam at Bushy, and that she was happy with all the arrangements he proposed. She asked to keep Miss Sketchley with the children, and the same teachers; she also hoped to be consulted about any new masters appointed. She seemed to think things were now settled and went into no further details.

  But she was particularly grateful for the Duke’s ‘additional goodness to the rest of my family’ – his acceptance of some continuing link with her three eldest daughters.20 A week later he was still ‘My dear friend’. She assured him she would defend his name against any attacks in the press; she cautioned him against unguarded talk and told him that his ‘future credit shall be dearer to me than my existence’.21

  She also wrote to Boaden, in her public voice, insisting that ‘every branch of the Royal Family’ was treating her very kindly, and that they all deplored ‘this melancholy business’; the Regent in particular had praised her forbearance and said he would never forsake her. ‘Do not hear the D of C unfairly abused,’ she wrote. ‘He has done wrong, and he is suffering for it. But as far as he has left it in his own power, he is doing everything kind and noble, even to distressing himself.’22 But whose power was he in, if the royal family was so much engaged on her behalf? Dora was reluctant to find a villain, and unable to suspect she was being lied to by the highest in the land in order to keep her quiet.

  Was there no one to tell the Duke to his face that his behaviour was that of a monster? Not a single adviser? Never mind his brothers, not even one of his sisters, the poor Princesses? Not a single bishop, to remind him of his duty towards the mother of his family, whether blessed by ceremony or not? Apparently not. Even some later historians have exonerated him, on the grounds that Mrs Jordan had grown ‘plump, motherly and coarse’ and that ‘at the end she was not ungenerously treated and, during the twenty years she lived with the Duke, there were compensations for the lack of money in the shape of Royal favour and domestic bliss’.23 Another, more sympathetic historian suggests that she had lost her sexual appeal: ‘Mrs Jordan, stout, matronly, short of breath, could offer little stimulus to his flagging powers’ and that, although his behaviour was ‘inexcusable by any standards’, he nevertheless behaved ‘rather better than might have been expected’.24

  No doubt this was the view from the royal family, but in lower circles there was unfavourable comment. The newspapers were not slow to get hold of the story. A paragraph appeared in The Times early in November, another in December. George Cruikshank published a drawing called ‘Princely Piety’, showing the Duke proposing, with Dora and children in the background; another showed her asking pathetically, ‘What, leave your faithful Peggy?’, again with a group of children about her. Peter Pindar, always her supporter, produced an illustrated poem, ‘The R—1 Lover, or The Admiral on a Lee Shore’, poking merciless fun at the Duke. It began,

  What! leave a woman to her tears?

  Your faithful friend for twenty years;

  One who gave up her youthful charms,

  The fond companion of your arms!

  Brought you ten smiling girls and boys,

  Sweet pledges of connubial joys;

  As much your wife in honor’s eye,

  As if fast bound in wedlock’s tie.

  – and went on with the suggestion that Miss Long herself had advised him to

  Return to Mistress J —’s arms,

  Soothe her, and quiet her alarms;

  Your present differences o’er,

  Be wise, and play the fool no more.

  At this stage Dora wrote to the Duke telling him she was anxious to leave Bushy as soon as possible, finding it too painful to be there. She had asked her son-in-law March to take a house for her in London: ‘The expense of the house could go into the general arrangement,’ she suggested, adding, ‘I could get the house sooner. I cannot describe how much I wish it as the only means of restoring me to any degree of comfort.’25 Clearly she believed that an amicable agreement had been reached about the future; but now it suddenly appeared that everything was to be gone over again by John Barton. Dora took the children to St James’s and had more talks about the settlement that was being drawn up. She was now faced not only by Adam and Barton, but also by the Prince Regent’s secretary, John McMahon, and another lawyer called Wilks. She had no adviser of her own and had to fight her battles for herself, though her old friend Colonel Dalrymple – Barton’s predecessor – seems to have tried to intervene in her favour; it may have been he who advised her to return to Bushy and remain there until the settlement was agreed; and this is what she did.

  Dora had understood that the Duke shared her wish that the children should live with her. She was confident enough to write to Boaden to tell him everything was settled.26 But when Adam came out to Bushy on Sunday, 15 December, to go through everything again, he denied any knowledge of such an agreement. This was the breaking point for her. She stopped writing in the old way to the Duke and for the first time ever addressed him formally as ‘Sir’, ending her letter ‘I remain, Your Royal Highness’s dutiful servant’.27 When you have read through the hundreds of intimate, daily letters that cover their years together, the change of style is shocking. There is no direct reproach, she is simply distancing herself through her language. She had played enough dramatic heroines to see the force of that; and it is almost as though she were aware for the first time that posterity might read her letters. Until now, she had gone on believing some mutual love and trust remained; this was the formal marking of its end.

  She wrote to McMahon, the Regent’s man, protesting at the way she was being treated:

  I yesterday saw Mr Adam – and you may imagine my surprise – when he declared he knew nothing of the proposed arrangement or even of the Duke’s wish that the children should live with me ’till they attained the age of 13. He had seen the Duke the Thursday before. All this, my dear Sir, you will allow must appear strange to one who has acted so firmly and openly as I have done. If they will decidedly say they cannot meet my fair demands – I should make up my mind on the subject and do the best I could for myself and children, but this is trifling most cruelly with my feelings and unfortunate situation. I now begin to feel the value of the advice of not quitting Bushy till something decided is done, but as a friend to both parties you will, I am sure, feel the advantage of an early decision in consequence of our last conversation, I told all those who are anxious about me that it was finally settled; judge then of my disappointment. Mr Adam had not seen or heard of MY statement.28

  George got a letter too, in which for the first time she treated him as an adult and complained of Adam’s behaviour:

  I now begin to feel the value and prudence of the advice of not quitting Bushy, till I have a settled home to go to. Here I STICK and I will be well paid for leaving it. Generosity and liberality will not always do in this world – but I have justice on my side and shall be able to fight my own battles.

  She told George that she had pointed out she might be forced to return to her profession if ‘everything was not as I could fairly wish… This seemed to give great alarm’29 From now on George was her chief confidant. It was not always an easy position for a boy of seventeen whose future prospects depended on the favour of the royal family.

  Her second son, Henry, was not regarded as much of a letter-writer in the family; he had spent more time at sea, and fighting, than studying. In Dece
mber 1811 he was at the Royal Military College when one of his friends showed him a newspaper story about his parents. This is what he wrote to George:

  Dear George,

  Pray tell me all you know of this business mentioned in the papers between my Father and Mother I have really been in torments ever since I saw cursed papers I can never believe my Father would ever make proposals to Miss Long for god’s sake write to me tell me all you know about I have not heard lately from Home… If it is true that my Father did offer his hand to Miss Long I have no hesitation whatsoever in declaring my dear Mother right in separating if so I never more go near My Father… were he not my father I could and would say more… My God!! To think that our father such a father should have done such a thing I can assure you I have been literally very ill I find great consolation in writing to you for god’s sake write immediately I should like to see you before the vacation… If this be true I will never more go home except once to see my Dear Mother whom I consider as a Most Injured Woman. Pray write as soon as you receive this – I could not believe my eyes when I saw the paper which contained Distressing truth I scarcely know how I write I am nearly mad I think I shall run away home…