Виктория Холт - Indiscretions of the Queen

July 19 1821! The day when His Majesty King George IV was to be crowned.

The previous day he had left Carlton House in a closed carriage to spend the night at the Speaker’s House and next morning the procession assembled in Westminster Hall for the walk to the Abbey.

When the King appeared, there was a gasp of admiration. One observer remarked that he was ‘a being buried in satin, feathers and diamonds’. He could always be relied upon to give a good performance on occasions such as this and the people who had waited in the streets since the early morning were not going to be disappointed.

The procession was led by the King’s herb woman and six of her assistants.

They threw down flowers on the path which the King would take to the Abbey.

Under the canopy came the centre of attraction: King George IV; and the crowds roared its approval. His crimson velvet train decorated with gold stars was nine yards long and on his head was a black hat with ostrich feathers.

The people went mad with joy. Trust old George to give them a good show.

The manner in which he walked was alone worth watching, and it was said no one on Earth could bow as he did.

He was a king, all said and done, and if he had had a few wild adventures, who could blame him?

God save the King.

An open carriage drawn by six horses was making its way from Brandenburg House to the Abbey.

‘I am going!’ Caroline had cried, her eyes alight with purpose. ‘I have said I shall go to the Coronation and no one is going to stop me.’

Painted more heavily than usual— it was necessary she told Lady Anne for her face was a peculiar shade of yellow under the lead and rouge— dressed in outrageous colours, her jewels flashing, she rode through the crowd.

‘The Queen!’ they cried and ran after her carriage. They surrounded it, impeding its passage towards the Abbey. What now? Everyone knew that the King had forbidden the Queen to come to the Coronation.

She was surprised to detect a note of jeering laughter. Someone started to boo.

She did not believe that could be meant for her. The people had always been on her side and she had just been acquitted.

She had been warned against coming to the Abbey by all those who wished her well. It would be considered had taste, they told her. This was after all the day when the King was to be crowned. But she had been determined and had gone against them.

At the door of the Abbey her way was barred.

‘Madam, no one is allowed to enter the Abbey without a ticket,’ said the stalwart doorkeeper.

‘I am the Queen.’

‘No one without a ticket, Madam.’

She turned away. Someone in the crowd laughed. Flushed beneath her rouge, her head shaking so that her enormous hat was jerked rakishly to one side, she ordered her coach-man to drive her to another door.

‘No entrance without a ticket.’

‘I am the Queen.’

‘No entrance without a ticket, Your Majesty. Those are orders.’

She stood dismayed. The pain started to nag. A voice in the crowd called: ‘Go home.’

She looked wildly about her as though she were about to speak and someone cried: ‘Go to Como. Go and enjoy yourself with the Italian.’

Gracious Queen we thee implore

Go away and sin no more.

’But that effort be too great,

Go away— at any rate.

They were jeering at her. They no longer believed her. They were suggesting that she was guilty of what she had been proved innocent They had been right. She had been foolish to come— foolish, foolish. Foolish as I ever was, she thought.

She gave instructions to be driven home.

And as her carriage passed through the crowd she heard the jeering laughter.

The next day she was very ill.

‘I pray you give me the magnesia quickly,’ she cried to Lady Anne; and she mixed such a close that it was like a paste so that she had to eat it with a spoon.

‘And laudanum too,’ she added. ‘It will deaden this pain and perhaps let me sleep.’

Lady Anne was alarmed and tried to dissuade her but Caroline took the stuff and after a while slept.

A few days later she recovered and talked to Lady Anne about that humiliating experience.

‘I should never have gone. I should have listened to advice. But then I never did listen to advice, did I? I shall go to the theatre. I said I would go to see Edward Kean and I will go.’

‘Your Majesty is not well enough—’

‘Nonsense, my dear Lady Anne. I wish to see how the people treat me. They were very unkind on Coronation Day. They have changed. They quickly change, I fear. The play is Richard III. Don’t try to dissuade me, my love I must go.’

And so to Drury Lane with a fearful Lady Anne.

She fainted half way through the performance but recovered by the time the play was over. The audience was neither friendly nor unfriendly. This was Coronation time— and George was their King.

When she returned to Brandenburg House she collapsed on to her bed.

Magnesia could bring her little relief and even laudanum could not give her sleep.

‘I fear,’ she said, ‘that I am very ill.’

The doctors came and bled her. They gave her more magnesia and castor oil.

She had been ill for some time, her doctors said. It was an inflammation of the bowels which she had tried to pretend did not exist.

She sent for Willikin and embraced him.

‘You have been a great comfort to me, dear boy,’ she told him. ‘We have had some good times together, have we not?’

Willikin wept and said that was so.

‘Do not fret, my little Willikin. You will not want. I have taken care of that.’

Brougham came to her bedside and she laughed at him. She began to talk of all the places she had seen during her travels and of the strange life she had led.

She had grown animated and seemed unconscious now of pain.

‘Your Majesty is going to recover,’ said Brougham.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I shall not. Nor do I wish to. It is better for me to die. I am tired of this life.’

Believing that she would recover, he left her.

But she asked for her friends to come to her bedside. There was Willikin and Lady Anne, Sir Matthew Wood and one or two more.

‘My friends,’ she said, smiling at them. ‘Bury me in Brunswick, it is better that I should return to the home which perhaps I should never have left. In my will you will find the inscription I wish to be engraved on my coffin. Will you see that it is done?’

They assured her that it would be; and she smiled and died.

According to her wish, her body was to be buried in Brunswick, and the King, suspecting trouble as the cortege travelled through London on its way to the coast gave orders that it was not to pass through the City.

The rain was streaming down yet the people had come out in their thousands to pay their last tribute to Queen Caroline. Now that she was dead she had again become a heroine and when it was discovered that the procession was to be diverted that it might not pass through the City the crowd decided otherwise.

As it came down Kensington Gore and Knightsbridge the mob surrounded it and insisted on leading it to Temple Bar.

There was a clash between the soldiers who had been sent to guard the cortege, and in the mêlée two men were shot.

But the people had their way, and the crowds waiting in the city madly cheered the departing Queen.

She was buried in Brunswick. Willikin and Lady Hamilton were among those present. They stood solemnly thinking of her and the strange life she had led; and the words she had asked should be engraved on her coffin were: HERE LIES CAROLINE OF BRUNSWICK, THE INJURED QUEEN OF ENGLAND.