6. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but January and February 1812, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, pp. 230–31.
7. DJ to George FitzClarence, ‘Tuesday ye 3d’ but slip for 4 February 1812, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 230.
8. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but?7 February 1812, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 232.
9. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but spring 1812, RA Add. 40/ 179.
10. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but? March 1812, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 235.
11. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but June 1812, RA Add. 40/ 184, and DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but June 1812, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 236.
12. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but June 1812, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 235.
13. DJ to George FitzClarence, ye 21st (i.e., 21 August 1812), Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 237; then two September letters, ibid., pp. 237, 238–9.
14. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but September 1812, RA Add. 40/195, and DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but watermark 1812, RA Add. 40/222.
15. DJ to George FitzClarence, November and December 1812, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, pp. 239–43.
16. ibid., p. 244.
17. ibid.
18. ibid., p. 246.
19. ibid., pp. 245–6.
20. The Times, Thursday, 11 February 1813.
21. Lord Melbourne recalled Madame de Staël’s verdict to Queen Victoria; Crabb Robinson’s entry is in his diary for 18 March 1813, Eluned Brown (ed.), Henry Crabb Robinson on the Theatre (1966), p. 53.
22. The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, pp. 348–9.
23. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but February 1813, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 249.
19 ‘BITTER THANKLESS’: 1814
1. James Boaden, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2 (1831), p. 363.
2. Marchand (ed.), Byron’s Letters and Journals, vol. 3 (1974), p. 249.
3. Quoted in W. Clark Russell’s Representative Actors (n.d.), pp. 275–6.
4. Sketches of Performers, No. 187, 7 January 1815, cited in the anonymous Life of 1886, pp. 108–10.
5. At Covent Garden this year she played Cora in Pizarro, Rosalind in As You Like It, Nell in The Devil to Pay, Miss Prue in Love for Love, Miss Hoyden in A Trip to Scarborough, Violante in The Wonder, Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal, Beatrice in The Pannel and created the role of Barbara Green in Kenney’s Debtor and Creditor.
6. ‘Before she left the stage some of her real friends wished her to take up elderly characters, such as Mrs Malaprop.’ John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830, vol. 8 (1832), p. 432. Brian Fothergill in Mrs Jordan: Portrait of an Actress (1965), p. 261, says Charlton, the manager at Bath, tried to persuade her to play old women in farces in January 1813, but she refused on the grounds that they were vulgar, and out of her line.
7. H. Simpson and Mrs C. Braun, A Century of Famous Actresses 1750–1850 (n.d.), p. 289.
8. The Duke of Clarence to Sir Henry Bunbury, 5 April 1813, Arthur Aspinall (ed.), Mrs Jordan and Her Family, being the Unpublished Letters of Mrs Jordan and the Duke of Clarence, later William IV (1951), pp. xvii–xviii. Sir Henry was the son of the Bunbury who saw Dora in Cheltenham in 1788, and painted her in a scene from As You Like It.
9. DJ reports this to George and Henry FitzClarence, 13 November 1813, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 255. Sophy took the attentions of the Duke quite calmly. He was Georgiana’s son, and therefore part of a tangle of legitimate and illegitimate half-brothers and sisters, although himself the heir. It was widely expected he would propose to Sophy, but she was not disappointed when he failed to do so. He never married.
10. DJ to George and Henry FitzClarence, n.d. watermark 1812 but? 1813, R A Add. 40/223.
11. Princess Charlotte to Miss Mercer Elphinstone, August 1813, Arthur Aspinall (ed.), The Letters of Princess Charlotte (1949), pp. 62–3.
12. DJ to George and Henry FitzClarence, 18 December 1813, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 257.
13. DJ to George and Henry FitzClarence, 6 January 1814, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 263, and DJ to George and Henry FitzClarence, n.d. but watermark 1812 and? 1813, RA Add. 40/223.
14. Sheridan appears to have been arrested several times in 1813 and 1814; W. Fraser Rae gives the August 1813 date (Sheridan: A Biography, vol. 2, 1896, pp. 277–8), Cecil Price mentions March 1814 and August 1815 (The Letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, vol. 3, 1966, p. 187n.), and prints a reproachful letter from Sheridan, detained in the Sheriff’s office in Tooke’s Court, Cursitor Street, to Whitbread, dated May 1814.
15. DJ to George FitzClarence, 26 January 1814, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 265.
16. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but April 1814, RA Add. 40/ 235.
17. The Duke of Clarence to George FitzClarence, n.d. but summer 1814, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 269.
18. DJ to George FitzClarence, 19 September 1814, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 272.
19. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but November 1814, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 274.
20. This is Boaden’s paraphrase (The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, p. 295). He said the contents of the letter were made known to him by the officer who received it. His story is confirmed by Lord Moira’s letter from Calcutta of 6 October 1816 to John McMahon:
It is singular that in my last letter I should omit what had really been prominent in my mind. I was solicitous, because I know how earnestly the Prince feels on the subject, to tell you that I continue to have every reason for being satisfied with Capt. FitzClarence’s conduct. He is perfectly attentive to his duty, strictly correct in his maners, & much liked by all the officers in my family. The Prince feared that if he were not kept in order he would be apt to run riot. I do assure you I have not seen any thing of that disposition in him. We go steadily & regularly; but, were there even more opening, I do not think he would have any propensity to avail himself of it.
Arthur Aspinall (ed.), The Letters of King George IV 1812–1830, vol. 1 (1938), p. 170.
21. The Duke of Clarence to George and Henry FitzClarence, n.d. but November 1814, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 282.
22. Mary FitzClarence to George FitzClarence, n.d. but December 1814, Birkbeck Archive.
23. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but December 1814, quoted in Mrs Jordan: Portrait of an Actress, p. 277.
24. George FitzClarence to DJ, 2 December 1814, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, pp. 302–3.
25. A letter from John Barton to DJ, dated 6 December 1814, says ‘That the Expense of the Equipment will be heavy is pretty certain, but I presume H.R.H. will, if not otherwise assisted, be able to divise the means of defraying the same, and will not on any account permit it to be [word illeg.] in the same manner you suggest.’ Barton also assured her that her sons were going out ‘with the strongest recommendation to the Governor General’. Birkbeck Archive. DJ to George and Henry FitzClarence, n.d. but December 1814, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 284.
26. The Duke of Clarence to George and Henry FitzClarence, n.d. but December 1814, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, pp. 284–5.
27. DJ to Frederick March, 3 December 1814, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, p. 303.
28. DJ to Frederick March, 3 December 1814, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, p. 298.
29. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but 4 December 1814, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 284.
30. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but December 1814, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 285.
31. The Duke of Clarence to Henry FitzClarence, 5 May 1815, RA Add. 39/250.
32. DJ to Adolphus FitzClarence, 30 August 1815, unpublished MS in private possession.
33. Boaden quotes Barton’s own account, written nine years later, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, pp. 343–56.
34. This is the story given by Robert Huish, History of the Life and Reign of William IV (1837), p. 395: Charles Wigley, who ran public exhibitions in Spring Gardens, was asked by DJ if he wanted to buy her furniture; he approached th
e auctioneer Fisher (father of the child actress Clara), and asked him to go to Sloane Square to estimate value of goods, not naming the vendor. Fisher looked, went to coffee house with Wigley, said the goods were worth £300 in place, if moved £220. The two men returned to the house, Fisher met DJ, then left. Wigley then offered her 100 guineas, with lease of house thrown in (it was worth £500). DJ was anxious to conclude, and easily swindled.
35. Typed copies of Sophy’s letters are in the De L’Isle Archive.
36. Frederick FitzClarence to DJ, n.d. but September 1815, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, p. 325.
37. Cited in Mrs Jordan: Portrait of an Actress, p. 280.
38. William Hazlitt, View of the English Stage (1818), p. 168.
20 HEARTBREAK: 1816
1. DJ to George FitzClarence, 6 January 1814, RA Add. 40/230.
2. The palace was destroyed in 1870, and the rue d’Angoulême disappeared under modern buildings in the mid-twentieth century; but the site of the palace is clearly marked, and many of the service buildings are still there.
3. James Boaden, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2 (1831), p. 328, and Sir Jonah Barrington, Personal Sketches of My Own Time (1827), vol. 2, p. 58.
4. DJ to John Barton, 18 January 1816, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, pp. 354–6 (March gives the date as 16 January 1818).
5. DJ to Adolphus FitzClarence, 19 January 1816, MS in private archive, partly printed in Brian Fothergill, Mrs Jordan: Portrait of an Actress (1965), pp. 305–7.
6. Miss Williams died in Paris in 1827, and her account of her talks with Mrs Jordan were printed in The Great Illegitimates of 1832 (see Bibliography), pp. 198–239.
7. Philip Ziegler, King William IV (1971), pp. 117–18.
8. The story is given by both Lewis Gibbs (Sheridan, 1947) and Madeleine Bingham (Sheridan: The Track of a Comet, 1972), both of whom believe it.
9. The Duke of Clarence to George FitzClarence, 6 November 1817, RA Add. 39/288.
10. Information about her last days and funeral from The Life of Mrs Jordan and Mrs Jordan: Portrait of an Actress.
11. According to John Barton, quoted in The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, pp. 341–2, the last payment of the Duke’s allowance was drawn after her death by ‘a lady, formerly a governess at Bushy, and afterwards resident with her as a companion in France, who came over to London for the purpose’.
12. In 1943 the municipality of Saint-Cloud decided to raze the old cemetery on the Rue Gounod. Some of the tombs were moved to a tidy new one in the Avenue Foch, among them that of Mrs Jordan. John Genest’s inscription had weathered into illegibility, but it read:
Memoriae Sacrum
DOROTHEAE JORDAN,
Quae per multos annos
Londini, inque aliis
Britanniae Urbibus,
Scenam egregie ornavit;
Lepore comico,
vocis suavitate,
Puellarum hilarium,
Alteriusque sexus,
Moribus, habitu, imitandis,
Nulla secunda:
Ad exercendam earn,
Qua tam feliciter
Versata est artem,
Ut res egenorum
adversas sublevaret,
Nemo Promptior.
E vita exiit
Tertio nonas Julii, 1816,
Annos nata 50.
MEMENTOTE.
LUGETE.
(Sacred to the memory of DJ who for many years, in London and other cities of Britain, outstandingly adorned the stage. For comic wit and sweetness of voice, for imitating the manners and customs of laughing girls as well as the opposite sex she ranked second to none in the display of that art wherein she was so pre-eminently skilled; and no one was more prompt to relieve the needy. She departed this life, etc.) Other versions have been printed but this is Genest’s own.
The date of her death and her age are wrongly given. In 1971 the late Thomas Goff, Dora’s great-grandson, and grandson of her youngest son, Augustus (Tuss), had a round bronze tablet fixed over a stone, with a French inscription:
Ci-gît
Dorothy Jordan
La plus grande interprète anglaise
de la Comédie de 1782 à 1815.
Bien-aimée de
William Henry, Duke of Clarence
par la suite William IV
Roi de Grande-Bretagne et d’Irlande
et mère de ses dix enfants,
décédée à Saint-Cloud
5 juillet 1816.
21 THE CHILDREN: ‘WITH THE KING THEY DIE’
1. The Duke of Clarence to Henry FitzClarence, 13 July 1816, RA Add. 39/273.
2. Sir John Hislop to John McMahon, 28 April 1816, Lord Moira to John McMahon, 26 October 1816, both in Arthur Aspinall (ed.), The Letters of King George IV 1812–1830, vol. 2 (1938), pp. 164, 170.
3. The Duke of Clarence to Henry FitzClarence, 12 September 1816, RA Add. 39/274.
4. The Duke of Clarence to George FitzClarence, 6 November 1817, RA Add. 39/288.
5. The anonymous Life of 1886 (see Bibliography), p. 107, gives the announcement, by Colburn of Conduit Street, Bond Street, on 13 June 1817. It is likely the book was suppressed by royal intervention.
6. 5 February 1817, Eluned Brown (ed.), Henry Crabb Robinson on the Theatre (1966), p. 75. Crabb Robinson wrote,
The pleasure I had was in being reminded of old times and in having old enjoyments brought back to my mind – I saw for the first time Mrs Alsop – Mrs Jordan’s daughter – the ugliest woman I should think who ever ventured on the stage – ill-made almost to deformity – cross-eyed and ill-complexioned – she nevertheless delighted by the sweet tones of her voice which frequently startled me by their resemblance to her mother’s – Mrs Alsop has the same or nearly the same hearty laugh and much of the frolicsome antics of Mrs Jordan – Only one is apt to conceive that so ugly a creature has no right to take such liberties – And how I should have enjoyed her acting if I had not recollected her mother I cannot tell.
7. A Lucy Hawker died at Alverstoke, Hampshire, in 1850, but appears to have left no will.
8. Princess Augusta to Sophy FitzClarence, 4 October 1816, De L’Isle Archive, Sydney MSS U1500 C212.
9. The Duke of Clarence to George FitzClarence, 21 March 1818, Arthur Aspinall (ed.), Mrs Jordan and Her Family, being the Unpublished Letters of Mrs Jordan and the Duke of Clarence, later William IV (1951), p. xxiii.
10. Anne Mathews, Memoirs of Charles Mathews, vol. 3 (1839), PP. 574–5.
11. Cited in Mary Hopkirk, Queen Adelaide (1956), p. 55.
12. 6 April 1821, The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. 16 (1984), p. 5,644
13. Amelia’s book was called Chow-Chow; being Selections from a Journal Kept in India, Egypt and Syria by the Viscountess Falkland. She chose the title, she explains, because the pedlars in India carried among their wares one basket which they called the Chow-Chow basket, in which there were all sorts of odds and ends; ‘and in offering my Chow-Chow basket to the public, I venture to hope that something, however trifling, may be found in it, suited to the taste of everyone’. It was published in 1857, the year of the Indian mutiny; and Mely died the following year, aged only fifty-one.
14. The Duchess of Kent, reporting conversation with the Duchess of Northumberland, 7 February 1831, RA M5/19.
15. For the King of Würtemberg’s visit, see 11 July 1830, George FitzClarence to Lord Aberdeen, British Library Add. MSS 43040. Daniel Stuart, editor of the Morning Post, wrote to George, 19 July 1831, about Coleridge’s pension. He had been given £100 annually since 1824 from the Privy Purse of George IV, through the Royal Society of Literature, and was supposed to read an annual essay in return (only one had been delivered). George promised Stuart he would lay his letter before the King, but warned that his income was only half that of the previous monarch; and the pension was discontinued. It was made up by others; but Coleridge complained that his gold had been taken to ‘emblazon d’or the black bar across the Royal Arms of the Fitzclarences’. See E.K. Chambers, S
amuel Taylor Coleridge (1938), p. 322.
16. Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. xxv.
17. Philip Ziegler, King William IV (1971), p. 158.
18. Fanny Kemble, Record of a Girlhood, vol. 2 (1878), p. 74.
19. According to a Mr Bunn, who records a conversation with him on 28 April 1838, cited in Clare Jerrold, The Story of Dorothy Jordan (1914), pp. 420–21. Wyatt’s splendid portrait of Lolly (Lord Adolphus FitzClarence) now belongs to Viscount Falkland, and hangs in Brooks’s Club.
20. Obituary notice in Illustrated London News, 23 December 1854.
21. Frederick kept the letters until his death, and left all his property to his wife; and it is after this they began to be dispersed.
22. He is buried in Mapledurham Churchyard, and the clock which his father the King presented to his school can be seen on the tiny church.
23. Lord Munster to Sir Robert Peel, 25 November 1841, British Museum Add. MSS 40495, f. 372.
24. Report of inquest in The Times, 29 March 1842. In the report of George’s death The Times stated that ‘Mrs Jordan withdrew from the protection of the Duke of Clarence… soon after the death of Princess Charlotte’, which was of course untrue – Princess Charlotte’s death was in 1818, seven years after the separation, and more than two years after the death of Mrs Jordan. The Times praised George’s military career, saying he had taken part in twelve engagements, but made no mention of the court martial of 1814.
25. Sir Robert Peel to Lord Adolphus FitzClarence, 22 March 1842, British Museum Add. MSS 40505, f. 27.
26. 23 March 1842, R. Fulford and L. Strachey (eds.), Memoirs of Charles Greville, vol. 2 (1938), p. 20.
27. Queen Adelaide, p. 187.
28. The church had been rebuilt since his childhood. It is now impossible to see his tomb, as a carpet has been fixed down over it, and there is no record of the inscription; but Mr Francis C.E. Atkins, for many years church warden, recalls that there was an inscription. Lady Munster died in December of the same year, and is also buried there.
29. George Munster to William IV,? n.d. but after 10 April 1837, De L’Isle Archive, Sydney MSS U1500 C221.
Mrs Jordan's Profession Page 41