Mrs Jordan's Profession

by Claire Tomalin

  Your servant has this moment brought me the picture. Mrs Jordan sat for your father, and which I particularly requested General Grey to express my wishes that you would have the goodness to permit me to possess, you cannot be surprized I should be anxious to have all the pictures of Mrs Jordan, knowing and therefore admiring her public and private excellent qualities, the only two I had before; they are both at Bushy, and this late valuable present from you compleats the whole except a small miniature that cannot be recovered by any means.8

  The idea that he could comfort himself, or show his remorse, by collecting pictures of the living woman he had cast off is certainly odd; but it remained with him, and surfaced again when she was no longer living, and he commissioned the Chantrey statue. Another difficulty for the Duke in 1813 was the ever widening gap between his mental image of the royal life he felt it necessary to maintain, and what was actually available for its maintenance. Sophy was invited to the great houses and, at eighteen, could be considered on the marriage market, and Frederick – the least intellectual and the most solidly conventional of the boys – was much in demand at royal fêtes and balls; both had to be kitted out properly. Meanwhile there was a plague of black beetles in the Bushy kitchens, and running skirmishes among the different factions of governesses and nurses.

  Dora got news of everything at Bushy, and was able to see a good deal of her family during the spring and summer. She visited the boys at school, and the little girls came to stay over the Easter theatrical break; the Lloyds, who remained entirely devoted to her, not only kept her in touch but also offered their house as a cheerful meeting place with the children when she could get out of town for a few hours. Lucy was with her in May, and the Marches were increasingly inclined to use Cadogan Place as their home. Even Sophy came to dinner, in high beauty and health, showing a new mildness. She had her mother’s musical gifts, and played the harp so well that her proud father forgot he was a pauper for long enough to lay out £100 on a new instrument for her. She was also enjoying the marked attentions of the young Duke of Devonshire, who invited her to Chiswick and Chatsworth, and idealistically took up the cause of all the FitzClarences, telling her that the way the Regent and the royal family neglected and undervalued her and her brothers made him furious.9

  Sophy’s success and prospects were everything her mother could wish for. They made a painful contrast with those of Fanny, now living alone in lodgings, with no husband, no harp, and nothing at all to do. Alsop had finally sailed for India. He left without any sign of regret or any indication that he meant to send for his wife later; he continued, however, to extract the instalments on Fanny’s dowry. Meanwhile Dora had to maintain her, and found her ‘a great trouble to me’. She was still hankering after a stage or concert singer’s career and, rightly or wrongly, Dora was still opposed to it. At thirty Daly’s daughter had become her problem child. Dora insisted that Fanny’s heart was good, but her temper was growing more violent and unpredictable from month to month; she would never make a quiet companion for her mother’s old age – which was in any case the last thing Fanny had in mind. She had the theatre in her blood from her bad, unknown father as well as her mother, and she envied what her mother had done for herself by working; probably she would have been happier if she had grown up backstage instead of being protected and turned into a lady – or half way to a lady. Rage and ambition burned inside her small frame; and she was driven to stoke her fires, and then damp them down again, by dosing herself with drugs, and then more drugs.

  Of Richard Ford’s two daughters, Dodee March had no ambitions and not much character: she remained sweet and bland, in thrall to her dashing and plausible husband, and overwhelmed with babies, pregnancies and miscarriages. She had a soft heart; when she met the Duke unexpectedly one day, and he shook her hand and spoke kindly to her, she burst into tears. He had been something like a father to her, and he was touched by the encounter too; but it was nothing more than a moment’s indulgence in sensibility. Lucy, the one with the sense, calm and good, remained everyone’s favourite; she had the knack of linking the different parts of the family. All the FitzClarence children loved her and were at ease with her, and she felt she was one of them; George stood godfather to her first son. As often as she could manage it, she was with her mother; but she was kept very steadily pregnant by her old General.

  First Henry and then George went back to Spain in the spring of 1813. Their mother was a heroic correspondent, as always, and encouraged the other children to write to their brothers (‘direct to Captain FitzClarence with Hussars, serving under Lord Wellington Spain – and then enclose this To the under Secretary of State War Department Downing Street London – it will be about 10 or 14 days going,’ she told Lolly). Her own regular ‘packet’ letters – written in instalments – went off, full of family news and gossip; she described how she lay awake at night worrying about them, and working out in her mind what they might need. Some of her offers must have made the young men laugh: ‘a very nice stewing canteen’ was her suggestion in one letter; and could they do with ‘anything warm in the flannel way’? Other gifts were received with delight: drawing books – George was a keen artist – and a map of France; a telescope; ‘portable soup’, which she had learnt to use in what she sometimes called her campaigns, while touring (you just added boiling water, as with today’s stock cubes); and always, of course, money.

  At the end of July both boys distinguished themselves in the victory over the French at Pamplona. They fought so bravely that even the Queen was told of it, and she congratulated the Duke on their bravery; the Princesses also ‘inquired kindly’ (in the royal phrase) after them. Hearing this, Dora almost softened: ‘[I] am glad to find that there is some feeling in your august family.’10 It was just as well she was spared the sight, a few days later, of the Duke and his royal brothers celebrating the Regent’s birthday. A fascinated Princess Charlotte described them drinking till they were so ‘cut’ (drunk) that they fell off their chairs one by one; the scene reached its culmination as the Duke of York ‘fell over the back of his chair against a wine cooler & cut his head a good deal, & in recovering himself pulled the tablecloth & all the things upon him’.11

  In September Dora started another of her campaigns, touring in the south-west and the Midlands again, and as far north as Chester. Her plan was to continue acting for eighteen months more and then retire in May 1815, by which time she was confident she would be able to afford to. Then she would give up Cadogan Place, settle in a small house within reach of Bushy, and live a quiet life: such was the dream. But before that, one more summer at Covent Garden, two more winters in the provinces. She remained extraordinarily resilient and tough, curious and interested in the world about her: finding herself in Lichfield, she set off at once to discover the birthplaces of Garrick and Dr Johnson. In Portsmouth she visited a Lancasterian school – they were set up by Quakers for educating orphans – and played a benefit performance for it. In Bath, in the freezing January of 1814, she plucked a wretched beggar boy from a snowdrift, bought him clothes and determined to send him to a charity school in London – only to have him turn on her and say he would rather be his own master and beg his way. All this she reported very frankly to Lolly, always passionately interested in whatever she was doing.

  To Lolly she wrote of the wonderful new actor, Edmund Kean, who appeared at Drury Lane early in 1814, and whom she thought far better than Kemble; she sent her son a Sunday paper that gave a full account of Kean, and a likeness. She also kept him abreast of his father’s travels, and of how his sisters were looking, and of how they had received presents from the Princesses. She joked with him, drawing little parcels marked ‘kisses for Lolly’ and ‘blessings for Tuss’. She dug out and posted, obviously at his request, ‘an account of the first appearance of Mrs Jordan’. She made her letters fun, sending ‘Mrs Jordans Compts to the Masters A and A FitzClarence’, and continuing in the same mock formal style, ‘She likes Covent Garden very well, and what is better, C
ovent Garden likes her.’ She sent him writing-paper and books. Anyone who remembers lonely days at boarding school will see that what she did for the two youngest boys was just as important as her letters to her soldier sons. She was giving Lolly and Tuss a lifeline. She was giving herself one too: in her imagination, she still held them all together as a united group. ‘What would I not give to see you both safe at home!’ she wrote to George and Henry. ‘I dare say I sd not know Henry – for he remains on my mind a little fat, chubby boy. Tus grows very like him – & Lolly is a compleat fine gentleman.’12

  Outside the safe place in her imagination, the world grew less comfortable. She was not earning as much as she had expected. She told George, ‘Don’t be uneasy about me, or my money matters – I am determined to wry myself out of all embarrassments before I quit the profession,’ but she also wrote, ‘All my excursions begin in necessity and end in the sweat of my brow.’13 There were some frightening examples before her now of what could happen to friends who failed to keep a grasp upon money matters, and had lost their protectors. Lady Hamilton was arrested early in 1813 for debt and was living within the confines of the King’s Bench Prison. In August Sheridan too was arrested for the same reason; Whitbread, chairman of the Drury Lane committee, paid for his freedom, but made him wait in the sponging-house where he was being held on the way to the Fleet prison; and it was only a holding measure.14 Sheridan wept at the humiliation. The Regent would do nothing more for his old friend. Sheridan’s debts may have seemed a bottomless pit to him, but his behaviour does him little credit. Power had made the Prince into a creature of cruelty and caprice.

  Early in 1814, while Dora was in Bath, the Duke persuaded the Regent to give him £1,000 to finance a trip to Holland to woo the young widowed sister of the Tsar Alexander I. Whether Dora knew the object of his journey or not, she worried about the children being left without either parent – something she had always tried to avoid in the old days – and wrote with a touch of caustic to George, ‘your father’s expedition to Holland I do not understand – nor how it can be of any use to himself & his family. The weather is greatly against it, or the change of scene & air might have done his health good, but in no other point of view can I perceive the advantage.’15 The Duke thoroughly enjoyed himself seeing Brussels and Antwerp, and felt he was somehow taking part in the final defeat of Napoleon; but the Grand Duchess found his manners not up to scratch, and turned down his proposal of marriage. His brother forgave him the wasted £1,000 and offered consolation in the form of a naval job: that of ferrying the restored Bourbon King of France, the fatuous Louis XVIII, across the channel.

  At once sentimental and unimaginative, the Duke acquired the buffoon’s knack of passing unscathed through all his adventures. Dora, though she believed she always landed catlike on her feet, was less lucky. In April there was a family crisis when she was summoned away in the middle of her Covent Garden season to Essex, where Lucy appeared to be on the point of death after giving birth to her second child. Having made one of her dashes to be with her daughter, she poured out her emotion in a letter to George:

  We have been in the greatest misery and distress – expecting to see one of the most sensible young creatures in the World breathe her last – she received the sacrament – and awaited her doom with the resignation of an Angel, she was again bled and blistered, and today fresh hopes are held out – but the suspense is almost too much to bear – the General is the most pitiable object you can picture to your mind, – and she is just in the state I was in when you were born, with inflammation in the side – but she has not the constitution I then had.

  Lucy, however, had a better constitution than she thought, and recovered from childbirth, and bleeding and blistering. The worst fears over, Dora remembered she was a working woman as well as a mother. ‘This has been been… a most cruel occurrence on me – for much depended on my playing, both in respect to money matters and keeping up the Ball, so fairly poised – but, in the reflection that I am performing a sacred Duty, all other considerations vanish – my philosophy can stand buff to every thing but the loss of what I love…’16

  Just as Lucy was getting well again, there was another drama: George was wounded in the fighting outside Toulouse. The first news meant panic, then came reassurance; it was only a flesh wound, and he was well enough to be sent back to England to convalesce. Henry had already arrived home with a bad arm. Since neither was seriously hurt, and the war was virtually over, Dora could surely now breathe a sigh of relief and regard them as safe. What she did not know was that the two of them were planning a course of action that would turn to catastrophe both for them and for her.

  They had decided, with the support of twenty-two of their fellow officers – all young men – that they were going to bring formal accusations against their commanding officer of the 10th Hussars, Colonel Quentin, charging him with incompetence and neglect of duty in France over the four months between January and April of that year. They spent June and July preparing their accusations with great care. The charges were detailed, and related to particular incidents and battles; they included hazarding the safety of his men and allowing them to be taken prisoner, failing to give orders during battle, and failing to maintain proper discipline. These were charges that would inevitably lead to a court martial.

  No group of officers would mount such an exercise unless they felt strongly that their officer had let them down, and unless they could produce good evidence; but it was a very unusual action, and as soon as it was started, those in authority over the army began to show they were worried by it. Captain George FitzClarence and Lieutenant Henry Fitz-Clarence were very young, but they were clearly ambitious. They felt themselves to be able; they chafed against their uncertain status and their poverty, surrounded as they were by officers with well-established families who purchased their commissions for them. They had grown up in a world at war, and had taken early – while they were still children – and with exemplary courage to life in the services. France was the enemy, but it was an admired enemy, and one of acknowledged brilliance, as George’s writing makes quite clear; and it offered the example of a meritocratic army, led by a man who had risen through that army to become an emperor. Their own commander, Wellington, likewise, from being the younger son of an obscure Irish peer, had become the idol of his country through military prowess. Their father’s hero, Nelson, had made the same ascent. These were the models and heroes of their generation. George especially was impatient for promotion, and for command.

  His father had warned him that he must not expect to advance quickly, and that his best course was to please the Regent; the Duke was

  sorry to see you always grumbling about the regiment: remember you are not one and twenty, and near three years a captain and without purchase. Recollect how much the Prince is your friend and attached to the regiment… the Prince expects you to attend to the regiment; besides, should those captains you expect leave the regiment, and you become the senior captain, with the reduction of two Field Officers you will occasionally be in command. The Prince will take care of you if you are attentive… 17

  The Duke’s insistence on the Prince, and the absolute importance of pleasing the Prince, underlined his own entire dependence on his brother; the only advice he could give his sons was to seek favour and bow their necks, exactly as he had always done.

  When the Duke sent this letter, he had no idea that George and Henry were preparing their attack on Colonel Quentin. In any case his advice was not palatable. They presented their accusations in mid-August. George told his mother what they had done as soon as it was public, writing from his regimental quarters in Brighton. She was then in Margate, appearing there and at Ramsgate, and feeling lonely and unwell. Her first reaction was a slight uneasiness, because she worried about what the Duke would think of his sons’ action; but there seemed no cause for serious anxiety, since this was an internal army matter, and both George and Henry were acknowledged to be good officers and favoured by the
Regent. She trusted their good sense. So she went ahead with a trip she had planned, crossing the channel and visiting Bruges, Ghent and Brussels; she even acted for three nights in Brussels ‘with great éclat & was called the belle actrice’.18 It was her first visit to the continent; she found it reviving and enjoyable, and was away for three weeks.

  When she got back she heard that the court martial was scheduled for 17 October, and that the Regent was displeased with the whole business. The Duke began to sound anxious in his letters to his sons; still Dora had no idea – why should she? – that there was any risk for them. She was due to set off again at the end of October for a three-month tour to the north. It was to be her last; she sent a cheerful letter to Henry from Stafford to say she was saving up – ‘making up a purse’ – for a continental holiday with him and George when she returned. Her next letter, from Sheffield, suggests that George had sent her a gloomy account of the proceedings, and that he had been singled out by Quentin as the ringleader of his accusers. Still there was no reason for alarm: ‘the worst they can say of you all [is] that you acted from too nice & quick a sense of honour’.19

  She was wrong. The court martial was presided over by the Duke of York as commander-in-chief of the army, and he made it clear that, in his view, the real offence was not Colonel Quentin’s but that of the junior officers who had dared to criticize him; and while he allowed that the Colonel had indeed been neglectful of his duty in some respects and should be reprimanded, it was the accusers who were to be punished. Unbelievably, all twenty-two of them were stripped of their swords and dismissed from the regiment; and to bring home York’s disapproval, the prosecuting officer at the trial was given the same treatment.