The Third George Read online

  Henry flushed at the term, which amused Augusta; she always knew what would hurt people most and contrived to do it.

  "I'll swear it's the wedding," she went on. "And Henry is telling you all about it. You should remember though that Henry knows very little. And sit up straight, Frederick. All humped up like that! No wonder you're always tired. And you supposed to be working at your embroidery, Caroline?”

  Caroline said: "I had only just laid it down for a moment.”

  "Then pick it up and make up for that moment of idleness. I shall be forced to tell Mamma how I found you all wasting time and telling each other stories about the wedding.”

  "Oh, but we weren't!" cried Caroline.

  And Augusta looked at her in that way which implied she was lying because she, Augusta, had stood outside the door for fully five minutes before coming in. Even when you were not guilty, thought Caroline, Augusta made you feel you were.

  Augusta laughed unpleasantly and said: "Well, if you want to know, that silly little Sarah Lennox is furious because she will not be Queen of England. I spoke to her yesterday at the drawing room.

  I showed I understood how she must be feeling.

  "Poor Lady Sarah," I said; and she tossed her silly head and pretended not to care. And something else I'll tell you. She is to be one of the bridesmaids. That will be fun, I promise you.”

  Caroline Matilda contemplated what excitement existed in the outside world; and even while she listened avidly to what Augusta had to tell about the King's desire to marry Lady Sarah -which had been rightly thwarted it seemed, according to her sister's account, as much by her, Augusta, as anyone she was thinking of the story of Augusta's birth when their father and mother, then Prince and Princess of Wales, had fled from Hampton Court that their first child might be born at St.

  James's; and how the King and Queen Caroline Matilda's grandfather and grandmother had been so angry; and there had been no sheets at St. James's and nothing ready, so that the baby Augusta had The royal family to be wrapped in a tablecloth. What drama surrounded their lives. All except mine, thought Caroline Matilda. I have to stay in the nursery, 'cooped up', while all the excitement goes on in the world outside.

  And how her grandparents had quarrelled with her parents! They were always quarrelling, Henry told them. They were a quarrelling family. Well, she would have some fun one day. She would be free to run wild. In the meantime she listened to Augusta's account of the snubbing of silly Sarah Lennox who had believed mistakenly that she could be Queen of England.

  **** And while the wedding was being discussed in the schoolroom, the Princess and Lord Bute were also talking of it. There was to be no delay. In spite of the death of the Grand Duchess, the plans would go on as previously arranged.

  "She will be here soon," said the Princess Dowager of Wales, "I confess I shall not feel safe until she is.”

  "Never fear," soothed Lord Bute. "All will be well.”

  He fervently hoped so. He was about to climb to the top of the pinnacle towards which he had patiently striven ever since he had seen the way to favour through George who was now the King.

  Prime Minister, he thought. I shall rule this land. There is no end to the power which will be mine.

  Pitt will have to do as he is told ... or go. And Pitt would never be able to let go; he was too ambitious. I'll use Pitt, thought Bute. He's too good a man to lose. But he'll have to realize who is his master.

  He smiled fondly at the Princess. They were in agreement. The sooner George was safely married the better. And the Princess Charlotte was ideal. Plain, so that she would not enslave George; daughter of a very minor dukedom, so that she should be forever grateful; and not speaking a word of English so that she could not wheedle with her tongue at any rate. All would be well and once the wedding was over they would feel safe.

  George too was thinking of the wedding. Sarah, Hannah, Charlotte. He saw them all in turn. The two first so vividly the shadowy charm of Hannah, the vital beauty of Sarah; and he turned away from those two and saw a Princess whom he endowed with their grace and beauty.

  Charlotte. He kept saying her name over and over again. And he longed for her coming because it would end the uncertainty, and he was sure that once he saw her, once he had taken his vows neither Sarah nor Hannah would torment him. They would be banished from his thoughts for ever, for no faithful husband gave a thought to other women.

  "And I will be faithful," he assured himself. "I am impatient for her arrival and for the moment when she shall be joined to me ... forever, I hope. And I pray God that He will make her fruitful.”

  And all through the hot August days the whole Court talked of the wedding. The Court of Mecklenburg might be in mourning but there was to be no delay in the marriage ceremony. This was the order of the Duke.

  He sent for Charlotte, bewildered Charlotte, who had so recently lost her mother, but was to gain a husband. Poor Christina had nothing to gain, thought Charlotte, but at least she remains at a Court familiar to her.

  The Duke regarded his sister with the increased affection which he had felt for her since the King of England desired her for his bride.

  "My dear sister," he said, embracing her somewhat curtly, as a duty, thought Charlotte, and as an acknowledgement of her new importance, "I understand your grief for your mother. It is a grief I share. I have been thinking of the postponement of your marriage and I can see no good that can come from it.”

  "A wedding so soon after a funeral..." began Charlotte.

  But her brother silenced her. He had not summoned her that he might hear her views, but in order that she might hear his. "It is the best way to forget your grief," he told her. "I have asked that there shall be no delay.”

  "But… “

  "I am thinking of you, sister. This is what our mother would have wished. She knows you mourn in your heart. Your husband will comfort you.”

  "And Christina ...?”

  Her brother raised his eyebrows. Christina had been foolish; she had fallen in love with an English duke. That would not have been an impossible union but for the clause in Charlotte's marriage contract; as it was the affair had ceased to exist as far as the Duke was concerned, and Charlotte was extremely indiscreet to have mentioned it. But Charlotte could be indiscreet. There was that letter she had written to Frederick of Prussia. What tremendous impertinence! But by great good luck it had worked to her advantage, and he was delighted that she had written the letter. But in his secret thoughts he considered it was most indiscreet. What a mercy that Charlotte would soon be leaving for England. Now he silenced her with a look.

  He said: "The proxy marriage will take place almost immediately; and after that there will be little delay in your departure. The coronation is to be the twenty-second of September; and you must have been married to him before that. So you see there is very little time.”

  "So soon ..." gasped Charlotte.

  Her brother smiled at her. "Your bridegroom is, where his wedding is concerned, a very impatient man.”

  The Duke came into Charlotte's bedroom. She was wrapped in a robe more splendid than any she had had before; beneath it she was shivering, though not with cold.

  "Are you prepared?" asked her brother sternly.

  "Yes," she answered.

  He took her hand. "All is ready in the salon," he told her.

  Flunkeys threw open the doors that they might pass through to that salon which was lighted by a thousand candles. The cost must have been great, thought Charlotte. But the petty Dukedom of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was allying itself with the throne of England, so it was not the time to count the cost of a few candles.

  And this is all on account of me I thought Charlotte, more than ever before by the awesomeness of the occasion and all that it meant. She saw the ceremonial velvet sofa on which she was to lie and beside it Mr. Drummond, the representative of the King of England, who was to stand proxy for him in this preliminary ceremony.

  The sight of the sofa filled her with
dread because it brought with it a fresh realization of her responsibilities. This was not only leaving home, breaking up Christina's romance, it was living intimately with a stranger, bearing his children, with the eyes of the world on her because she would be the mother of the next King of England.

  The sofa represented a state bed, their royal bed which she would have to share with a strange young man and therein perform rites of which she was ignorant. She was trembling; her legs had become stubborn and were refusing to carry her towards that symbolic couch. It was not too late even now. Suppose she refused to continue with this. Suppose she cried out that they must let Christina marry her Englishman for she had decided not to marry hers. Christina longed for marriage; she was breaking her heart because it was being denied her; whereas she, Charlotte, was realizing in this solemn moment that she did not wish to marry. She did not want to leave her home; she wanted to stay here ... remain a child for a little longer, doing her lessons Latin, history, geography, making maps with Madame de Grabow, mending, sewing. Why should she not protest that this was too sudden? There was something she suspected about this hurried wedding. Why so much haste? Was her bridegroom being hurried as she was? Was he in England crying out against the marriage as she was here? Why should she, who had once written a letter to Frederick the Great, hesitate now? But it was because of that letter ... This web was of her own making. But at least it showed that one had the power to direct one's own life.

  "It is not too late." It was a message tapping out in her brain.

  Her brother took her hand and pressed it impatiently. "Come, come. We are waiting for you.”

  "No..." she whispered.

  "Don't be a baby," hissed her brother angrily. "You are going to be Queen of England.”

  Don't be a baby. She was seventeen years old ... old enough to leave her home, to marry, to bear children. It was the fate of all Princesses. All through history they had found themselves in positions like this. They were not expected to have any free will. They obeyed orders. They married for the good of their countries, where their fathers or brothers decided they should. And they had decided that she should be a queen as readily and as ruthlessly as they had decided Christina should lose her hopes of happiness.

  She lay on the sofa and the coverlet was placed over her. Beneath the coverlet she must expose her right leg; it was all part of the proxy ceremony.

  Mr. Drummond, the Englishman, removed his boot and thrust his leg, bare to the knee under the covers. When his flesh touched hers she tried to stop her teeth from chattering. Now the symbol had been expressed, Mr. Drummond removed his leg and replaced his boot, while beneath the coverlet she arranged her robe to cover her own bare leg and rose from the couch.

  The ceremony was over. Her brother, all tenderness and affection, embraced her. She was a very important person now. He called her Your Majesty.

  "Preparations for the journey must not be delayed." The Duke was giving his orders throughout the schloss. "We must think of Her Majesty's coronation. There is very little time.”

  There were only two days left to her in Mecklenburg and these were to be spent in ceremonies.

  No longer did she eat her meals in the schoolroom under the scrutiny of Madame de Grabow.

  Now she dined in public. It was her very first experience of such ceremony. She must sit at a separate table at the banquet which followed the proxy ceremony and beside her sat Christina, pale and sombre, looking as though she would never smile again, while since her mother could not be there her place was taken by the girls' great aunt, the Princess Schwartzenburg. All the time the Princess talked of the great honour which had come to charlotte and how proud they were, and how she must do her duty and be a docile wife and bear her husband many children.

  Christina said little; she ate scarcely anything. Poor sad Christina! Charlotte began to feel that she would not be sorry to leave home... in the circumstances. In the great salon her brother was seated with the English envoy Lord Harcourt, Mr. Drummond, and members of the English embassy; there were one hundred and fifty guests in all, and through the windows Charlotte could see the gardens lighted by forty thousand lamps. All in honour of my marriage, she thought. I have become very important here. But soon she would be on her way to her new country.

  When she reached her bedroom she found her new dressers, Madame Haggerdorn and Mademoiselle von Schwellenburg, waiting for her; everything was going to be so much more ceremonious from now on. Though these two ladies had been chosen to accompany her to England, there had been some controversy about their coming, for it deemed that the King would have wished her to come without attendants and on her arrival choose English ones or have them chosen for her. But she had pleaded that she be allowed at least two of her own countrywomen.

  "For I do not speak the "language," she had explained. She spoke French tolerably well, her brother told her, and German would be understood; so she need have no fears; but the English envoy had agreed that two female attendants, provided they were well chosen, might accompany her. She was also allowed to bring Albert, her hairdresser.

  As the new dressers helped her to prepare for bed, Charlotte thought nostalgically of Ida and the lack of ceremony of the old days, and it was clear that Madame Haggerdorn was in awe of Mademoiselle von Schwellenburg right from the start.

  Mademoiselle von Schwellenburg, putting herself in charge, made it clear that she intended to extract the utmost ceremony from the occasion. She signed for Madame Haggerdorn to hand the nightgown and she herself slipped it over Charlotte's head.

  "I trust there is nothing Your Majesty needs.”

  "No thank you," answered Charlotte.

  "Then we beg Your Majesty's leave to retire." Yes, thought Charlotte, retire and leave me alone.

  So they left her and she lay in her bed unable to think, scenes from this eventful day darting in and out of her mind. She saw herself entering the brightly lighted salon; she heard again her brother's impatient voice; she was lying on the couch; she could feel the cold touch of the Englishman's flesh against her own. And through it all she saw the brooding unhappy eyes of Christina. I believe, she thought, frightened as I am of what the future may hold, I shall not be sorry to go.

  There was one more day of ceremony and then she left Strelitz. For ever, she thought, and she knew in her heart that it would be so. Farewell, brother, she thought, you who are so glad to see me go. Farewell Christina, my poor broken-hearted sister.

  Her brother embraced her with a show of that new affection. Affection for a crown rather than a sister, she thought cynically. "You are going to a new country, sister. You are going to be a queen, but never forget you are a German; never forget your homeland.”

  She knew what that meant. If ever she had an opportunity to bring good to Mecklenburg-Strelitz she must never neglect to do so.

  "You are the most illustrious member of the family now," he told her with a smile.

  And goodbye Christina. Forgive me for what I have done to you ... for if I had not written that letter it would have been your marriage we should have been celebrating. Of course there would not have been those thousands of candles; there would not have been the ceremonies; but you would have gone to your bridegroom so willingly and with such joy, whereas I go to mine ... But she had promised herself that she would not think of what awaited her in that remote land.

  Mademoiselle von Schwellenburg's importance was growing hourly. The Queen must have this ...

  must do that. She seemed to proclaim constantly: I am serving the Queen. No one in the Queen's retinue is as important as her dresser Schwellenburg; and both poor Haggerdorn and Albert seemed to agree with her.

  Everyone was talking anxiously of the weather none more so than the Duke, who lived in terror that something would happen to delay his sister's departure for England. The day was overcast and inclined to be stormy when the cavalcade, consisting of thirty coaches, set out, and as they rode through the countryside the people from the villages came out to see them pas
s and gape in wonder, for it was a new experience to see a wedding procession and far more welcome than the soldiers to whom they were accustomed.

  Charlotte took her last look at the schloss, trying to forget what she was leaving behind and to choke back the lump in her throat. She must smile all the while and speak gaily when anyone addressed her. Those were her brother's orders. She must not offend the English by letting them think that her great good fortune in marrying their kind did not make up for all the bereavements she had suffered.

  She would feel better, she told herself, when she reached Stade, for there she would meet the English party who had crossed the seas for the purpose of escorting her to her new country; once she was on the boat she would really feel that she had left the past behind. As the party rode into Stade the wind was blowing fiercely but the bells were ringing and the cannons were firing in her honour.

  Charlotte looked up at the lowering sky and said to Schwellenburg, "We shall never embark in weather like this.”

  "It would be most unpleasant, Your Majesty, and unsafe.”

  "So we have a little longer in Germany.”

  Charlotte sighed, uncertain whether to be pleased or sorry. At one moment she longed to get on, to come face to face with her bridegroom; but the next she was hoping to be able to postpone the encounter.

  They had come to rest at a small schloss where they would spend the night; and as Lord Harcourt came to help her from her carriage he told her that the party from England had arrived and were waiting to greet her. As she stepped inside the schloss she saw them waiting for her and how magnificent they seemed in their brocades and velvets, as they came forward to kneel and pay homage to their queen! Their queen! She could scarcely believe that the odd and rather ridiculous ceremony made her so.

  "And Your Majesty, your new ladies in waiting, the Marchioness of Lome and the Duchess of Ancaster. She stared at them. She had never seen such women before. They were like goddesses.

  It was their rich garments. No, it was not. That smooth skin which they both possessed; those magnificent eyes; the abundant hair coiled about shapely heads; the grace; the charm. She had always known that she was plain; now she believed that she was ugly.