A fountain sealed

Front matter

bervesrene nnalwvgemnctoanrereate

SWRA Mis

ZB

Preface

Tue story about George, Prince of Wales, and a certain amour or liaison, has been floating about the world for along time. The name of the lady varies: it is Lightfoot ; it is Wheeler: it is Whitefoot. The history varies also: she married the Prince of Wales at St. James’s Church: she did not marry the Prince, but a certain Axford, a grocer, at May Fair Chapel: she left her husband at the chapel door, and never saw him again: she lived with him for some time: there were children by her husband: she died in Piccadilly of a broken heart: she died, many years later, at Islington, and is buried in the churchyard under an assumed name: the documents concerning her marriage with the Prince have been produced: there are people in America and in South Africa who claim to be her descendants. It is now some thirty years since the late W. J. Thoms began to investigate this tangled story. He proved, after a great deal of trouble, that there was a Hannah Lightfoot: that she was a Quakeress of Shadwell: that she did marry one Axford at May Fair: that she was expelled the Society of Friends for being married by a priest, and for not living with her husband : that ali this happened when Prince George was only fifteen years of age: that the man Axford married again vi PREFACE at Warminster in 1759 as a widower: that no one knows where or how Hannah his wife died; and, finally, that he could find nothing whatever to connect George with Hannah.

These are the legends and these are the facts of the case. Was Hannah at any time the mistress of the Prince? First, there is no breath of contemporary scandal on the subject: next, we must remember that a Prince cannot conceal his actions: that someone would most certainly find out and proclaim the thing: thirdly, that George was the most truthful of men at all times, and that he made a solemn statement, twenty years after his accession, to the effect that he had never been involved in any affair of the kind. These considerations made Thoms disbelieve the whole story from beginning to end. ‘There was, however, one thing possible and even probable ; that is, some flirtation or friendship with a eitl of the middle class. Youth is attracted by beauty of whatever rank : it must be pleasant for a Prince to step outside his rank and for a time to be treated as an ordinary gentleman. Such an episode in the life of the Prince was probably the foundation of the persistent story about his latson with a fair Quakeress.

In other words, the pages that follow are an attempt to tell the true story of George and Hannah. Whatever may be thought of the accuracy of the history, it must certainly be allowed by all the world to be a great deal nearer the truth than the old story of the Prince and the Quakeress and her May Fair husband. At the same time, I do not, as a historian, vouch for the exact truth of every circumstance in the story that follows.

W. B.

UniTeD UNIVERSITY CLUB, May 4, 1897,

Contents

CUAPTER PAGE PROLOGUE—HIS MAJESTY’S OWN WORDS - - 1

I. ON THE RIVER DARENTH - - - 21 II, A MIRACLE - - - - - 45 UI. THE WICKED WORLD - - - - 5D IV. THE FIRST MEETING - - - - 65 Vv. THE NEXT DAY - - - - 77 VI. THE CORPORAL - - - - - 84 VII. THE BOOKSELLER - = - - 87 Vill. ‘MY BROTHER, SIR GEORGE” - - - 95 IX. WARNINGS - - - - - 107 X. THE OPINIONS OF A GENTLEMAN - - Ill XI, THE CHRISTENING OF A CONVERT - - 130 XII, KINGS’ FAVOURITES - - - - 136 XIII. ROBERT STOREY — - - - - 144 XIV, THE MASQUERADE - - - Sibi) XV. MOLLY AND THE CORPORAL = = SS

XVI. A RIVER PARTY = - - -

Prologue

HIS MAJESTY’S OWN WORDS.

Ar noon, as I knew by the shadow of my sundial in the middle of the grass ; by the striking of the clock in the tower of Hackney Church ; by the disappearance of the shadows from the side walls of my garden, which lie exactly north and south; I was faling’ the air upon my , lawn. It was, I remember, Saturday ene September 16, in the year of grace 1780. The day, though the season was already advanced into autumn, was fair and warm; the orchard was still pleasing to the eye, those apples not yet gathered showing like balls of vermilion and gold; the summer flowers were nearly over, yet there were still some; the sweet-peas, which had been that year more than commonly luxuriant, were now piled in a heap of brown seed-pods, brown leaves, and gray stalks, yet there were blossoms still among them:

there were late roses still in bloom; the Jessamine on the wall was still dotted with a few white sweet-smelling blossoms—it is a scent which makes the senses reel and - the heart beat—it recalls old memories. Wherefore I, who now for twenty years live wholly in the past, love that blossom. ‘There were hollyhocks, the flowers finished, all but one or two on the very top of their drooping heads; sunflowers gone to seed weighing down the thick stalk; trailing nasturtium; flaunting marigolds, which refuse to believe that winter is nigh ; mignonette lying all across the path, its stalks breaking at a touch, its little delicate flowrets without scent yet still beautiful. The soft air breathed a pleasing fragrance ; there was no breeze. Such consolations of lingering flowers and perfumed air doth the autumn offer to those who are growing old and have retired from the world. With that strange pride of man, which allows him to regard nature as reflecting his own moods, as if the round earth, and all that therein is, had nothing to do but to watch his thoughts and to act in sympathy with them, I chose to take this warm, sweet autumn morning as granted especially to myself, and so sat on the garden bench, or strolled across the lawn and along the walks, with a mind contented and grateful. The humble-bee who rolled heavily about like some great river-barge on the flowing tide, reeling from fiower to flower, covered all over with white dust, boomed its monotonous song for me: the honey-bee buzzed louder—a note of accompaniment and solace— for me: the yellow wasp fluttered about among the peaches—for me to see his beauty: a thrush sat on a pear-tree, singing, late as it was in the year—for me. What they said, or sang, I know not, but they filled my mind with peace and such happiness—that of resignation —as can befall a woman such as I am—lonely—bereaved —with no change before her—and with such a past as mine to look back upon.

It is my own garden, lying at the back of my own house : a large and richly fuwmished garden behind the house of a gentlewoman. At the end of the garden is a wicket-gate which I sometimes open in order to gaze across the broad valley of the Lea. From the elevation on which my house stands I can see below me the whole expanse of low meadows called the Hackney Llats, intersected with ditches here and there. This morning a light mist rolled over them—not the cold marshy exhalation which all through winter lies upon them by day and night, but a gentle vaporous veil through which I could discern the river winding in the midst ; and beyond the river more flats; and beyond the flats the low green hills of Essex, looking upon which, on such a day as this, with the sunshine lying on them, the heart goes up to heaven, and the distant hills remind one of the everlasting rest to come when all tears shall be wiped away and the memory of former sorrows will only show as steps by which the soul hath climbed.

This morning I saw smoke mounting straight to the sky from the bank of the river: “twas an encampment of the thievish people called gipsies: only a week before they had robbed my poultry-yard. Thus do thoughts and memories of evil always mar the thing most beautiful upon the earth. I shut the wicket and locked it, and turned back to the house.

My own house: my own garden: all that is contained in either is mine. I did certainly receive them as a gift, yet not in the way alleged: and I have resolved upon telling you why I took this gift, and for what reasons I live here, retired from the world.

Twenty years and more have I lived in this house alone, save for Molly, my faithful woman. A long time: a peaceful time: a time without pain or disease of the body, without any anxiety of the mind except

1—2 for the natural sadness which can never leave a mind so full of memories: yet from time to time I am disturbed as I consider the place and remember that I am the owner of all. Mine is the house: mine the books, the furniture, the plate, the wardrobe, the jewels, the garden, the orchard, the greenhouses—everything mine. Yet what kind of price have I paid for this seclusion in this place? Whenever I arrive at this question, my heart beats and my cheek changes colour. If I am in the house I make haste to open a desk and to take from it two miniatures. The one represents him who was once my lover; the other, the fondest, faithfullest friend that ever woman had. ‘These, too, were mine, and they represent the price that I have paid. You shall hear, if you will listen. Good name and reputation I have given ; friends and relations I have abandoned ; obscurity I have accepted—nay, embraced. No ankress woman in her cage has been more lonely than I, whom no one ever visits except one friend of that undying past and the Rector of Hackney—a good and worthy man who still, against his will, believes the worst that can be whispered of me and waits for the time when I shall make confession. ‘This is a grievous price to be paid by a woman, then young, of good repute, well connected, and of pious conversation. I say that this was indeed a heavy price to pay. At the time I counted not the cost. Indeed, I willingly paid the price. Yes, and I would pay it all over again: the loss of name and reputation; the burden of a shameful story: for nobody in the world who once knew me or has heard tell of me—to be sure, there are not many—but whispers evil things about me and believes the worst. ‘Their whispers do not reach me: the things that they believe do me no harm. I am dead to scandal: I am dead to the world: I live here, now a woman of forty and more: I hear nothing that is said and know nothing that is done. All my life lies in a brief season of three short months. It is but a little time to make up a whole life, but I live it over and over and over again: I am never tired of letting my memory dwell upon every day of that short time. I desire no other Heaven than to live that brief time over and over again, from the first evening when those two, whose miniatures I keep, came to my help, down to the last morning when we parted, never to meet again. Oh! Name, fame, rumour, scandal, reputation—all—all—all would I freely give over and over again and think them of no account for the dear sake of that brief time and of that most godlike lover !

At the thought of that time, house and garden and orchard and lawns, the breath of summer, the blue of the sky, the sunshine, all vanish: they sink and fall and disappear. I am once more in the parlour of the house in St. James’s Place, and my heart is beating and my cheek is glowing because I know that he is coming and because he loves me. Yes—he loves me——me, the first. To myself I dare to own and to avow it: I confess it with a front of brass: I glory in the memory of it: I am so proud of it that I can hardly contain myself: on Sunday when I walk to church, Molly—the faithful, fond Molly—who alone knows all the truth, behind me, I dress myself in my best silk ; I wear my gold chain ; I draw on my best silk gloves, and I walk down the aisle to my pew with head erect and proud bearing. The world knows not why; but Molly knows: Molly says to herself, as she carries Bible and Prayer-book, ‘ My lady does well to bear herself proudly. My lady has been loved by But this we never say: we only think it. Some things there are that must not even be whispered.

Now, as I was meditating this morning, not for the first time, nor for the hundredth, upon these things, there came running into the garden Molly herself—and at the sight of her the past vanished again and the present returned.

‘Madam,’ she said quickly, ‘there is my Lord’s carriage coming up the road: his runners are even now standing at the door, but the carriage is stuck in last year’s ruts. They are lifting it over. Shall I lay out your black silk frock ? You have time.’

There was but one noble Lord who ever came to see me: there was no occasion to name him. He was the one friend who remained to me of the past.

‘Molly,’ I said, ‘I will put on my gray silk, and, if there is time, touch my hair before my Lord arrives. And give the runners, while his carriage stands at the door, a drink of ale and a piece of cheese.”

So presently, in my gray silk and my gold chain and lace gloves, I descended the stairs and found his Lordship waiting for me in the best parlour.

Robert, Viscount de Lys, was at this time nearly fifty years of age. ‘Too great a devotion to the bottle in his early manhood had produced in him symptoms which threatened to cut short his earthly pilgrimage. Indeed, he died about three months after this visit, which was the last time that I saw him. The gout flying about him settled in his stomach, where it killed him after inflicting terrible pains. As befits his rank, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where I am told (for I have not seen it) that a marble monument represents him as borne up to Heaven, with the Star of the Bath upon his breast, by two angels. Indeed, I hope that

HIS MAJESTY’S OWN WORDS i his soul has received the reward of everlasting happiness, though it must be owned that during life, like many other gentlemen of Quality, he lived as if the means of grace were not intended for persons of rank, and as if they had no occasion to regard the next world with either fear or hope. Yet a man of kindly heart and generous, and, except for this vice of drinking, of a cleanly life. To me he was always loyal and true. Wherefore, if the prayers of the living could help the dead, Lord de Lys should have my prayers, night and day.

On this day he hobbled, leaning on his gold-headed cane more than was customary with him. His feet were in soft shoes; his fingers were swollen at the joints; his face was red; his eyes were bloodshot ; his voice was husky. He was sitting in the window-seat looking across my front garden planted with box cut into shapes.

‘Madam, he said, rising with difficulty, and kissing my hand—he always had the finest manners in the world—‘I need not, I am sure, repeat that I am always your most obedient servant to command in anything.’

‘Your Lordship,’ I replied, ‘is, which is much better, always my kindest friend.’ Compliments mean little, yet show friendliness. For instance, when one gazes upon a man who is the mere pitiful wreck of what he once was; when one remembers what he once was— how tall and gallant and comely; and when one tells that man that he looks well but for the touch of gout in his feet—which, indeed, is a good sign, for gout is better out than in—why, one means nothing but the assurance of friendly interest. Such compliments passed, we sat down, and came at once to the business in hand.

‘Madam, he said, ‘I have in my possession—they have been lent to me by the person to whom they are addressed for the express purpose of showing them to you—certain letters which give me a pretext for making this visit.’

‘Then am I vastly obliged to the letters. They concern me, I may presume, in some way or other.’

‘They will certainly interest you. You shall judge for yourself how they concern yourself.’

‘What letters can they be? You awaken my curiosity, my Lord.’

‘They are written by a certain Person—whom you once knew—to Lord North.’

‘Oh! But... What has Lord North to do with me? Why does that Person write to Lord North about me ?”

* Lord North has nothing to do with you. He does not even know of your existence.’

‘Then, how can they concern me? My Lord, do not without reason remind me that the world is cruel and censorious and believes the worst.’

‘I do not seek to do so, Madam, I assure you. Indeed, you have so often informed me of the true relations—I mean, of the true friendship once existing between yourself and a certain Person—that I thought you would like to see these letters, which, in fact, corroborate your information.’

‘If you wish me to read them I will do so, though I do not desire. I had thought that nothing would ever occur which would bring me back to the world again—or bring the world to me.’

‘Believe me, dear Madam, I would not willingly disturb your rest, since it is your pleasure to live buried in this solitude. But these letters you must, indeed, read, if only for your own satisfaction.’

‘But, my Lord, once more: how does Lord North know anything about me ?”

‘I know not. I am sure that he knows nothing definite about you. I am the only person now living who knows anything about the matter.’

‘Are you quite sure that you know the story, my Lord ?

‘Can any man know more of a woman than she chooses to tell ?

‘I am still waiting to know what Lord North thinks or has heard.’

‘There are rumours—quite uncertain and vague— about the early life of the Person aforesaid : I suppose, because alone among those of his rank he hath led, and still doth lead, an unspotted life. People, as a rule, do not like those in very high places to be virtuous: every Prince must needs commit the common sins in order to win the love of the multitude: his faults, I suppose, bring him down to the common level. Very well, these rumours cling to a certain house in St. James’s Place, and to a certain lady who once lived there.’

‘The rumour is, of course, the worst that can be invented ?”

‘It varies. The lady ran away with him: the lady married him secret] y—it varies according to the imagination or the inventive faculty of the person handing it on: it grows: it becomes embellished: your name is known: your religion is known: nothing else is certain. People turn into St. James’s Place when they wish to calumniate that Person, and point to the house and tell their story.’

‘Nothing matters to me now, since I am retired from the world.’

‘Lord North, therefore, called upon me. He said to me, “ Rumour credits you with knowing something of certain passages which formerly happened in the life of—this Person.” I replied that it was true that accident had placed me in possession of facts which could not be published.’

‘In a word, my Lord, you allowed Lord North to believe that these disgraceful rumours were true,’ I replied, but would say no more, thinking of the truth, which I alone can know.

‘Nothing of the kind, dear Madam, I assure you. He wished me to confess that these rumours were true, but I refused. He then lugged out these letters and asked me to read them. “If,” he said, “ any other person knows the facts of the case, let that person also read the letters. He, or she, will understand that now, if ever, the most absolute silence must be observed.” ’

‘ But if there is nothing that need be concealed ?”

‘So far as I can see, the whole world may read the letters. “If,” he added, “any money were wanted for the purchase of other letters >——

‘Do not insult me, my Lord.’

‘Pardon me, Madam. J do but repeat what he said.’

‘The letters, you tell me, come from—a certain Person. Does that Person know of this message of yours ?”

‘I believe not. Ishould say not. My own existence is probably forgotten by that Person. He desires, apparently, to bury in oblivion a certain passage in his life. Would he, then, be thought more—or less—than Man ?”

‘He is more than Man,’ I replied. ‘The ordinary man cannot contemplate such virtues as were his. Now, my Lord, it is idle to talk about secrecy. I, who might have enjoyed notoriety at least, which is a kind of fame, have accepted obscurity and silence. Is it likely that I am going to attempt notoriety after twenty years and more? As for money—I had no occasion to accept it, for I had no need of any money, or any help whatever in that way.’

‘Madam,’—he bowed again—‘ your conduct has been always full of dignity, and worthy of that passion which was once lavished upon you.

‘ Then,’ I said, ‘ without more words let me see these letters.”

He took out of his pocket a book in which lay two letters. ‘You will, I believe, he said, ‘ recognise the handwriting.’

I did. I had one letter—only one—in the same handwriting, which was little changed. He opened and gave me one of the letters. It had reference to the creation of a separate establishment for the writer’s eldest son. The following passage halfway down caught my eyes: ‘I thank Heaven that my morals and course of life have but little resembled those prevalent in the present age: and certainly of all the objects of this life, the one I have most at heart is to form my children that they may become useful examples and worthy of imitation.’

‘Well, I said, ‘the sentiment is worthy of the writer.”

‘ And his gratitude is, no doubt, based on a sound and solid foundation.’

‘ Assuredly, I replied. ‘Is this all you have to show me?

‘There is the other letter, he said, handing it to me with curiosity in his eyes.

It was a letter of a very private character. I felt that I had no right to be reading it: the letter was not meant for the eyes of anyone but Lord North. At the end of it was this passage: ‘I am happy at being able to say that I never was personally engaged in such a transaction, which makes me feel] this business the stronger.’

‘Such a transaction,’ his Lordship repeated. ‘ He means an amour—a pre-nuptial amour.’

‘Not at all. It means that his son has become involved in some love affair of a low and disgraceful kind: that he has now, in order to avoid the exposure which the disgraceful woman threatens, to buy back letters. This Person writes that he has no such odious business on his conscience: that he has never written letters which the whole world might not read: that there is no creature living who either could or would threaten him. That is the meaning, my Lord, of this passage.’

‘It seems to me, rather, as if his memory was playing him false. ‘Such a transaction.” Has he, then, forgotten everything ?”

‘Go on, my Lord.” But my cheek burned.

‘Nay! All I would say is that at the present juncture it is highly important that the—the—passage I referred to should not be whispered about. The effect might be most mischievous. It must not even be known that the writer of this letter was ever engaged in any love affair at all before his marriage, not even a simple and platonic affair of conversation only, and, you will allow me to observe, the censorious might ask why a mere friendship was rewarded by a comfortable allowance in the country.’

‘One moment, my Lord,’ I interrupted him. ‘ You are quite wrong. ‘This house and the income on which

I live were not given me by the writer of this letter. Let me assure you quite seriously upon this point. If you have thought otherwise, pray think so no longer.’

‘Indeed,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Then I know not who But, dear Madam, why should I give you pain? Ihave shown you the letters. I have told you what Lord North said. I have nothing to add.’

‘ About secrecy ; who is there left to talk about the affair? You, my Lord, will never speak about it to anyone. His brother Edward died—alas !—seven years after it. Corporal Bates was killed in action. Molly doesn’t talk; my cousin Isabel is dead; Mr. Robert Storey is dead: he died a bankrupt, poor wretch! in the Fleet. The Doctor, old Mr. Mynsterchamber, went abroad, I believe, and must now be dead. Mrs. Bates, the widow, may know something, but very little :

‘Dear Madam, there remain only you and I and Molly. Yet this Mrs. Bates—it may be that through her the rumours have spread. It is strange how rumours arise and grow and are spread around. Well, we cannot help rumours and whispers ; we cannot silence the world. It is enough for me to assure Lord North that there is no danger of anything worse than a whisper; or more dangerous than scandalous gossip. There will be no proof that the son is only treading in the footprints of his father. Let us now, dear Madam, talk of things more pleasant and, to me, more interesting than of rumours which attack your name.’

We talked long and earnestly: there was much to recall—the treachery of the Doctor, the good fortune of the Corporal, the evening of the masquerade, and many, many other things of which he knew a little and thought he knew a great deal. We sat talking together in my best parlour for three or four hours,

‘Nancy,’ he said—for, having taken a glass or two while we talked, he had gone back to the past, when it was Fair Nancy, or Cruel Nancy, or Conquering Nancy, or Heartless Nancy, or Nancy the Toast, or any other compliment that he might light upon ; in a word, his imagination was inflamed to some degree—‘ Nancy, whenever I remember that happy time when a bottle— nay, three bottles—brought nothing worse in the morning than an aching head, and when I gazed daily upon thy charms—ah ! sweet Nancy ’—he laid his hand upon mine, but a twinge of the gout caused him to draw it back swiftly—‘I say—devil take this gout !—that whenever I think of that time it is your heavenly face that still I see.’

‘ Through the bottles, my Lord ?

‘Perhaps. He sighed. ‘ Wecould see through halfa-dozen bottles in those days. Thy face, Madam Nancy, was lovely then, and *tis, I swear, lovely still. But in those days, for the angelic sweetness and tenderness of it, I say that it had no equal.’

‘Your Lordship is so good as to pay me compliments.’

‘They are the truth, not compliments at all. And this being the case, even though you should a thousand times affirm the contrary, out of your constancy and fidelity, I will never believe that a certain Person did not think so as well. Come, Nancy, we are old friends : I am discretion itself: it is an old story: tell me: was this Person a stock and a stone?”

‘Certainly he was neither stock nor stone. Yet, my Lord, the words written in these letters are the truth.’

‘Ta-ra-ra! Ta-ra-ra!’ said his Lordship. ‘”I'was ever the most obstinate piece—as well as the loveliest.’

His Lordship, I know very well, always took pleasure in my society. On this occasion—though he kept his horses standing in the road and his people waiting for him—though as to that he paid no heed—he remained talking with me, I say, for nearly four hours. It pleases me now to think with what kindness and remembrance he spoke of the past which he had in a measure shared. Yet, for all I could say, I perceived that he could not believe one word as to my relations with the Person above referred to. By this time I was accustomed to this disbelief, which at the outset cut me to the soul. What did I say above? The price was name and fame and reputation—all the things that a woman most highly prizes. And I had paid that price. Not one word did my Lord believe—affirm it as I might—as to the truth of those two letters. He laughed: he put it off with a smile, with the uplifting of his eyebrows, with a gentle inclination of his head, with the wave of his hand, with a ‘Nay, Madam, since you say so, with a pinch of snuff.