Charlotte & Leopold by James Chambers

Author:James Chambers [James Chambers ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910400326
Publisher: Old Street Publishing
Published: 2015-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

In her isolation at Cranbourne Lodge Charlotte was at least allowed to see newspapers. She read that the motion had been withdrawn. The week went by. The sense of being watched was oppressive. The loneliness without the company of Miss Knight or any hope of being allowed to see Mercer was dispiriting.

Then her father appeared, accompanied by the ‘Bish-UP’, and told her with undisguised pleasure that her mother was planning to leave for an extended tour of the Continent. Charlotte would, of course, be allowed to go up to London to say goodbye.

Charlotte’s mother had always been less supportive than Charlotte had hoped, and more of a liability than Charlotte was prepared to recognise. But her planned departure was as much of a blow to Charlotte as it was to Brougham, and the way in which she said farewell was very painful. When Charlotte went to Connaught House, she faced the truth for the first time. Her mother did not really care for her. The Princess of Wales was so excited about her impending adventure that she could not even bring herself to pretend. Her manner was ‘indifferent’.

‘I feel so hurt at that being a leave-taking’, Charlotte wrote to Mercer, ‘for God knows how long, or what events may occur before we meet again, or if ever she will return.’

The Royal Navy laid on the one warship that was accustomed to carrying important ladies. On 9 August the Princess of Wales boarded HMS Jason off Lancing and sailed south for France. Charlotte never saw her again.

For the rest of that month the principal preoccupation at the isolation lodge was the holiday that the Duke of Sussex mentioned in his questions to the Prime Minister. Charlotte, as the Duke knew, was longing for a holiday by the sea, and her doctors were all in favour of it. She really did have a sore, swollen knee, which was now so bad that they told her to stop riding, and since her arrival at Cranbourne Lodge she had been displaying symptoms of depression. The sea air, in their view, would be ideal for both. But, to everybody’s exasperation, the Prince Regent prevaricated. As Earl Grey put it in one of his letters to Mercer, ‘All the best season will be wasted before she gets to the sea-side.’

Charlotte wanted to take Mercer with her, but the Regent said no. He claimed that Mercer’s father would not allow it. Lord Keith, he said, did not want his daughter to spend too much time in isolation with Charlotte, where there would be no chance of her meeting a suitable husband.

Charlotte wanted to go to fashionable Brighton, but the Regent said no to that as well. He wanted Brighton to himself. Eventually he asked the Queen if they could borrow Gloucester Lodge, a house that she and the King owned far away in Dorset, in no longer quite so fashionable Weymouth. The Queen took her time and then said yes, reluctantly. And so, at last, with September approaching, Weymouth was chosen as the setting for Charlotte’s seaside holiday.

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