When Tomassio received this letter he took it immediately to Pergami.
So this was the answer, thought Pergami. How right he had been to dismiss the man!
Pergami went at once to Caroline and showed her Credé’s letter.
‘So Your Highness now has clear proof that we are being spied on,’ said Pergami.
‘d‘Ompteda!’ cried the Princess. ‘I should not have believed it of him. So Mrs. Fitzherbert’s husband has appointed him spy-in-chief. This makes me laugh.’
‘Perhaps Your Highness’s laughter should be tempered with caution.’
‘Dear, dear Bartolomeo, you are right as usual.’
The Baron d’Ompteda was asking for an audience with the Princess.
‘Tell the Baron,’ said Caroline to Pergami, ‘that I am having a reception to celebrate my homecoming. I shall expect him to be my guest.’
Pergami looked unhappy.
‘My dear good friend, leave this to me,’ she soothed him. ‘You know how outrageously I can behave when the need arises.’
So she had not learned the lesson, thought Pergami. She was going to receive d’Ompteda. She was going to snap her fingers at all the intrigues. ‘Where will this lead us?’ he asked his sister, Countess Oldi.
‘She is too warm-hearted, too forgiving,’ sighed the Countess.
But Caroline was on this occasion determined on revenge.
When d’Ompteda arrived at the reception, she called for Pergami to bring her a huge cardboard key and this she presented to him.
He looked bewildered. ‘My dear Baron,’ said Caroline, ‘knowing your love of keys I give you this one. I hope it will satisfy you.’
Caroline turned to Pergami who was standing by.
‘Please give the Baron one cup of coffee, and tell him that he may leave and that I do not wish to see him again.’
Publicly dismissed! Before all these people he was given the great key and a cup of coffee. What humiliation! He understood that someone had betrayed him and immediately thought of Credé. This was disaster, for he had failed in his mission. What hope had he now of secreting himself in the Princess’s bedchamber!
Captain Hownam sent a challenge to d’Ompteda. In view of certain facts which had come to light concerning his behaviour, he challenged him to a duel.
D’Ompteda was to name the place and he would inform his seconds without delay.
The wretched d’Ompteda did not reply; he had reported to Hanover and was awaiting instructions. If ever a spy had made a hash of a mission he was that spy.
Caroline meanwhile had heard about the challenge. She did not wish dear Captain Hownam to risk his life for that worthless creature, she declared, so she wrote to the governor of Naples telling him how her privacy had been invaded while she was in Italy and begged him to intervene on her behalf.
D’Ompteda was ordered to leave the country; and this he did almost gratefully and with the utmost speed.
Tragedy in England
THE Villa d’Este had lost all charm for her. Every time she went into her bedroom she wondered whether anyone was spying on her. Her conduct became even more suspicious. She could not help it. It was her nature to behave more indecorously simply because she was suspected of immorality. She walked about with scarcely any clothes on. She allowed Pergami to be in her bedroom when she was there alone. It was some mischievous spirit in her which drove her to such conduct. It was like that occasion when she had pretended to be in labour knowing perfectly well that in the future it would be believed by many people that she actually had been.
She was misunderstood. She had always been misunderstood. She was not promiscuous. She had dreamed of love and marriage and a family of children.
That was what she had wanted. If they had allowed her to marry Töbingen she would have been a happy wife and mother. But they had separated her from him; they had married her to a man who loathed her and made no secret of his loathing and her brief experience with him had not made her long for more physical relationships. But could she explain this to people when they so clearly believed the opposite?
She was affectionate towards those who served her; she was familiar; but she did not seek the ultimate familiarity. No, she had no lover in the full sense of the word, but she liked to pretend she had. It amused her to pretend, also to deceive her husband in a topsy-turvy way. Deceive him into thinking she was an unfaithful wife.
She laughed at the thought. He provides enough infidelity for one family, she told herself. What she enjoyed doing was shocking people, making them speculate about the wild and immoral life she led; let them make up fantastic stories about her and her lovers. They were now linking her name with that of Pergami. Let them! She loved Pergami in her way. He was a good chamberlain who managed her affairs with skill; he amused her; he was a very good friend.
But he was not her lover and there was no sexual relationship between them. Nor would there be with any man.
There was something she kept from people. She did not want to think too much about it herself, but there was a mysterious recurring pain in the region of her stomach which at times she found almost unendurable. Then it would pass and she would attempt to forget it. She had mentioned it to her doctor but he could not say what it was and, like her, hoped it would pass. She was fifty-two years of age. When she removed her wig and the white lead and rouge she looked like an old woman. Scarcely one to indulge in riotous behaviour with lovers of all classes.
Poor Caroline! she would say to herself. You dreamed of so much and you realized so little. The next best thing was to pretend to the world that one lived gaily, unconventionally and scandalously.
It amused her. So forget encroaching age, alarming symptoms of pain. Slap on the rouge and the feathers, the pink tights and the white lead— and pretend. It was the next best thing.
She left the Villa d’Este and came to Pesaro where she took a villa overlooking the Adriatic Sea.
She missed the Villa d’Este because she had made it so beautiful. How dared he send spies to attempt to trap her! But for that, she would still be there. He was not content with refusing to live with her, not content with humiliating her in every way possible; he must make trouble among her friends and servants by setting them to spy on her.
She was angry with him. But if he wanted scandal, he should have it. The more outrageously she behaved the more amused she was.
‘He’ll hear of this,’ she cried gleefully. ‘Let him. I want him to. He’ll be shocked and mortified. Let him be. Wasps leave their stings in the wounds they inflict. And so do I.’
She was entertaining lavishly. She rode out in her shell-like chariot; she would sit bowing, smiling, exposing her short fat legs in their pink tights. She talked to all kinds of people and when the children ran after her carriage she threw money to them. People gathered along the roads to see her pass; she was the wild Princess of Wales.
The Empress Marie Louise came to Parma and had taken a brief residence there. She was in a similar position to Caroline, wandering the Continent looking for solace; and with her was her son who had been King of Rome, and as Caroline rarely went anywhere without Willikin in attendance, the similarity was increased.
Marie Louise was different from Caroline in one respect though; she was very conscious of her royalty and loved to stand on ceremony, a trait which aroused Caroline’s spirit of mischief. The more regal Marie Louise became, the more ribald Caroline would grow.
The climax to their friendship came when the ex-Empress invited the Princess to a dinner party at her mansion in Parma. It was a very ceremonial occasion.
Caroline had been rouged and leaded and appeared in multi-coloured feathers.
She was received by the ex-Empress and the guests were made to understand that they should leave the two royal ladies to talk together before joining them in the banqueting hall. She and Caroline sat together before a fire on two ornate chairs. Caroline’s short legs did not reach the floor; she was very bored with the Empress’s convers
ation which was mainly concerned with past grandeur and, as she moved impatiently in her chair, tipped it back and falling with it, remained convulsed with laughter while her legs waved wildly in the air.
The Empress shrieked; several of her suite came running to see what was wrong; and the sight of the Princess of Wales toppled on the floor, her skirts about her waist, her legs waving in the air, so dumbfounded them that they could only stand and stare.
The Empress kept repeating again and again: ‘Madame, you alarm me.’
And Caroline unnecessarily prolonged the occasion by remaining in her inelegant and ridiculous position.
She was at length helped to her feet, convulsed with laughter, her face scarlet under her rouge, her wig awry.
She insisted on repeating the story at dinner, her accent thickening as she explained the situation.
‘I fell mit meine legs in the air. I stay just like this and she—’ She nodded to the Empress. ‘All she can say is: Mon Dieu! Comme vous m’avez effrayé. ‘
The incident was repeated. With anyone else it would have been unbelievable, but not with Caroline.
She thought often of her daughter. Dearest Charlotte would soon give birth to a child. She longed for news of her. Charlotte wrote to her now and then and she was always the affectionate daughter. Caroline was melancholy sometimes thinking of her.
She would repeat again and again to Pergami the story how Charlotte had left her father to run away to her mother.
‘She loved me, my, little Charlotte. There was no doubt, that. Nothing he could do could alter it.’
Dear headstrong creature, she had jilted the Prince of Orange and married a Prince whom she loved— Leopold Saxe-Coburg.
Charlotte had written to her of her joy in the marriage. Leopold was handsome and good, he was her choice and she was the happiest of Princesses.
Happy indeed, thought Caroline and rejoiced.
She would talk of her daughter to the Countess Oldi with whom she had become very friendly during her eastern travels.
‘I’m so happy because my dearest daughter will know the joy that has been denied to me. She loves her husband and he her, and I think that must be the greatest blessing in the world I missed it, dear Oldi, and I am so happy that she has found it. How can I be sure? Oh, I know my Charlotte. She would never pretend. Her letters overflow with happiness it makes me laugh aloud just to read them— real laughter this time, Oldi— the laughter that means you are happy.’
The married pair, she learned, had acquired Claremont as their country house and there they were spending the happy months of waiting. For Charlotte had written the glad news; she was going to have a child.
Dearest Charlotte, mused Caroline. To think of my baby with a little baby. This is all she needs to make her happiness complete. I hope this child will be the first of many. I can imagine the excitement in England about the birth. You see, this child could be a King or Queen of England. The bells will ring; the guns will boom; and there’ll be bonfires In the streets. The people loved my Charlotte. And her father— oh, he’ll be pleased too and so will the old Begum though she disapproved of darling Charlotte— because she was my daughter, I suppose. And Charlotte disapproved of her. But she’ll be glad. And the King— poor mad King. I don’t supposed he will even know. I could weep to think of him. He was the only one in the whole family who showed me kindness., Oh, it makes me wish I was there. For the first time, Oldi, I wish I were back in England. Each day when she rose she would sit at the window overlooking the sea.
‘I wonder how Charlotte is,’ she would say. ‘Her time must be near. She will write to me and tell me all about her little baby. Poor darling, I hope it is not a difficult labour.’
When any messengers came the first thing she thought of was letters from England.
‘Any day now,’ she said to the Countess. ‘It must be soon. Unless of course she miscalculated. How like Charlotte. But over this, I should not have thought so. She has become more serious since her marriage— I sense it in her letters.
Fancy! It is three years since I saw my daughter. There’ll be news soon. She’ll write. I shall hear all the news about the most wonderful baby in the world.’
And still she waited to hear.
She would never forget that morning.
She liked to glance through the English newspapers and had them brought to her. They lay on her table for some time before she picked them up and then she settled idly to skim through them.
She opened one and stared at the page. No! She was dreaming.
This could not be true.
‘On November 5th after a long labour the Princess Charlotte was delivered of a fine large dead boy. She died shortly afterwards.’
Birth and Death
THE whole country was in mourning for the Princess Charlotte. The Prince Regent shut himself in his apartments.
He could face nobody— not even Lady Hertford. He wept bitterly. He forgot his disagreements with his daughter; he only saw her now as his beloved child.
Sir Richard Croft, the accoucheur, had come to him in an utmost demented state. The Prince had tried to comfort him and himself at the same time.
‘They tell me the child was perfect— perfect— and a boy.’
‘It was so, sir. And his features were undoubtedly those of your family.’
The Prince turned away and wiped his eyes. ‘I cannot bear to think of it. Pray leave me to my grief.’
Sir Richard went away and in the streets the people recognized his carriage and booed him. The rumours were already spreading through the town that he had been careless; he had not done his job as he should; he was responsible for the death of their beloved Princess.
The Regent gave way to tears and at the back of his mind was the thought: It is even more important now to rid myself of that woman. It’s not too late. But for her, I could marry again, get another son. They must bring me news of her misconduct. Why can’t the obvious be proved? But it is necessary now— necessary. The Queen was at Bath taking the waters. She had been unwell lately, and her doctors had suggested the visit. Her daughter Elizabeth had accompanied her and they had taken three houses in Sydney Place for themselves and their attendants.
She was glad that her relationship with the Prince Regent was better than it had been for many years. The old battles were done with. He had mellowed, she told herself, and perhaps she was no longer seeking power. It was all his now,.
and her feelings towards him were like those she had had when he was a child, when he had been her favourite.
He had married that odious woman and she would like to see him free of her; not that he needed to marry now that he had a child and this child was about to bear another. She hoped it would be a boy which would please the people and make them love their royal family again. There was nothing like a child to do that.
She remembered how they used to crowd round young George when he was a baby and cheered when he was wheeled into the Park.
How different they were towards him now. Only a few months ago when he returned from the opening of Parliament the mob had surrounded his carriage and thrown mud and all sorts of ill smelling rubbish at it. He had sat in it, ignoring the smell, his scented handkerchief at his nose, a figure of elegance and disdain.
Some people said that a bullet had been fired at him although the sound of it was not heard, so loudly was the mob shouting. They found a hole in the woodwork of the coach though.
Such scenes were frightening. One could never be sure when the mob would get out of hand.
But all that was over for a while. The people would be thinking of the new royal child. The bells would be ringing out and there would be general rejoicing.
She hoped she might have a hand in bringing up the child. It certainly should not be left to flighty Charlotte.
She was eagerly awaiting news of the birth. It must be soon now.
Lady Ancaster, one of her ladies-in-waiting, had come to read to her as she did at this time every day
. How strange she looked.
‘Is anything wrong, Lady Ancaster?’
‘Your Majesty—’ Lady Ancaster had begun to sob.
‘It is Charlotte— is it?’
Lady Ancaster tried to speak but could not do so. ‘Something has gone wrong.
The child—’
Lady Ancaster looked at her helplessly. ‘Born dead—’ murmured the Queen.
And she knew the answer.
‘Charlotte—’
Still that look of blank misery.
‘No! No!’ cried the Queen.
But he knew it was true. Charlotte was dead.
Lady Ancaster was startled into action. She ran to get assistance, for the Queen had fainted.
They were saying in the streets that wicked old Queen Charlotte had planned this. She had always hated her young namesake. Why should one so young and healthy die in childbirth?
And what had Sir Richard Croft to do with it?
Why, the old Queen and the accoucheur had plotted together. They were determined that Charlotte should die so they had poisoned her. Sir Richard had neglected her. He had bled her too much. He had weakened her when he should have strengthened her. Who was Sir Richard Croft anyway? The son of a chancery clerk who had become a fashionable doctor.
Wait till they could lay their hands on the old Queen. Wait until they could meet Richard Croft face to face. They had been hoping for a royal birth and the accompanying festivities— and all they would get was a funeral.
Sir Richard Croft blew out his brains and the people were satisfied. After that there was no more talk about the murder of Princess Charlotte and her child.
When the funeral was over the Prince Regent retired to Brighton there to think of the future. He wandered through his ornate rooms and took comfort from all the splendour which was his creation. And all the time he was haunted by a shadow— the shadow of the woman who was his wife. While he was married to her he would know no peace and he longed as never before to be rid of her.
Indiscretions of the Queen Page 33