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The little dry leaves are blowing against the windows of a house near the sea, with a sound like the whispering of small pale ghosts; they are blowing along the parade, over the edge of the century, they are floating away and away into the far-off plantations where the country gentlemen are rooted in the mould.

Here they come, these small ghosts left over, drifting over, from the eighteenth century—dry ghosts like the Beau and Beelzebub or Wicked Shifts, Bogey and Calibre, Gooserump and King Jog, Mouldy and Madagascar and Snipe, and Mr Creevey himself brushing those leaves together with his old hands. Soon there will be no leaves left.

On the 22nd day of January in the year 1820, whilst the threadbare-looking sea beat thinly upon the shore, a man of fifty-two years of age, his once robust and reddish face now yellow, his thin dyed black hair, that had once been shining and carefully brushed (where any remained), now dull with sweat, and with the grey showing through the black and with the skull showing through the hair, lay dying upon a hired bed in Sidmouth.

Downstairs, a damp whining wind drifting aimlessly through an open window blew hundreds of unopened bills across the floor, with a rattling noise like that of rain upon a window-pane; but in the room upstairs there was no sound excepting that of the dying man’s breath, struggling now for regularity like the beat of the clocks he had been so interested in making—fluttering unevenly, slowing down. Soon time would stop for him, and all mathematical precision. Turning restlessly with a half-conscious movement towards the stout and usually voluble, apple-cheeked woman, grown so strangely pale and silent, who sat at his bedside, he breathed with some last effort, who knows if produced by that affectionate nature which was at least partly genuine, by his habit of what had been half-unconscious hypocrisy, or by that gift for self-pity which had always been so strong a comfort and excuse, “Do not forget me.”

So loud was now the sound of that struggling breath, that there was little room for memory, there was nothing left but that sound, and that last pitiful burst of egotism or affection. There was no place now, in those last moments that were left to him, for the discipline and regularity that had been the gods of his life. Long forgotten in his bloodstained grave lay the soldier whom the Duke of Kent, his commander-in-chief, had ordered to receive nine hundred and ninety-nine lashes as a punishment for some minor offence. Long forgotten was Private Draper,^[1] who, because of his desertion and mutiny, had been sentenced by the Duke to execution. Long past was that funeral procession, marching for two long miles to a place outside Quebec, with the Duke at the head, and Private Draper marching behind the soldiers and his coffin, marching upright in his grave-clothes whilst the military band played funeral dirges behind him. When this procession had arrived at the gallows, the Duke stepped forward and, after informing Private Draper that he was now at a very awful moment and within a few minutes of being judged by his Maker, in the peroration of an extremely long speech, pardoned him. But, as the Duke’s biographer, Mr Roger Fulford, remarks, “this was an expensive lesson, as the coffin and the grave-clothes were presumably a slightly gruesome addition to the Prince’s debts”.^[2]

I do not know what was the subsequent fate of Private Draper, if he developed epilepsy or was confined to a mad-house; but now, within a few hours, the bloodstained ghost of one soldier, and perhaps many others—the terrible figure of one marching upright in his grave-clothes, endlessly marching—would rise to denounce this outworn effigy lying upon the bed.

But of these he did not think. Only the clock in his breast counted.

Forgotten was his odd championship of Mr Owen, with his schemes for the bettering of mankind and his cotton-mills on the banks of the Clyde where the workers lived in decent surroundings and where was made some attempt to educate them and to ameliorate the horrors of child labour. “I know,” the Duke is reported to have said in reference to Mr Owen’s socialistic theories, “that there will be a much more just equality of our race and an equality that will give much more security and happiness to all.” And he added, on a later occasion: “I am fully satisfied with the principles, spirit, and practice of the system which you advocate for new-forming the human character, as far as human means are concerned, and for new-forming the human race, and I acknowledge myself to be a full and devoted convert to your philosophy, in principle, spirit, and practice. But,” he continued characteristically, “we must act with prudence and foresight. The English are emphatically a practical people and practice has great influence over them.”^[3]

It may be true that the Duke had borrowed some hundreds of pounds from Mr Owen, but that does not alter the fact that he was genuinely and benevolently interested in his projects, and had wished, with the Duchess, to visit the mills at Lanark. But now he lay on his death-bed, and the visit would never take place. Nor was the borrowed sum repaid, although, according to Mr Owen’s account, the Duke returned from the spirit sphere, after death, not once but several times, in order to confide matters of importance to him. “His whole spirit proceeding with me has been most beautiful,” his confidant assures us, “making his own appointments, and never in one instance has this spirit not been punctual to the minute he had named.” These spirit-visits must, one imagines, have been the result of the Duke’s interest in minor details, for, apart from the vague intimation that he wished “to benefit, not a class, a sect, a party, or any particular country, but the whole of the human race through futurity”, his main communication seems to have been that there were no tides in the spirit world—and in this he was backed up by the spirits of President Jefferson and Jeremy Bentham.

The Duke of Kent did not confine his benevolent interests to Mr Owen’s scheme; for he supported, both with money and with work, the Westminster Infirmary, the Lying-in Charity for Delivering Poor Women at their own Habitations, the Literary Fund for Distressed Authors, and many other charitable institutions.^[4] But now he was too tired to pursue philanthropy any farther. Long past, long forgotten too, were the house in Montreal, and the Lodge at Ealing, where the Duke had lived for twenty-seven years with his faithful Madame St Laurent, who, when Princess Charlotte died, must be discarded so that he might marry and produce an heir to the throne and earn from a grateful country the payment of his debts. How regular had been the life of the royal debtor in the Lodge at Ealing, amidst the pleasant sounds coming from cages full of artificial singing-birds, musical clocks, and organs with dancing horses. Fountains and running streams played in the water-closets; everything was pleasant, trivial, and orderly, and everything was a matter of routine. The footmen’s hair was powdered every day by a hairdresser who lived on the premises and whose work was this, and this alone; and every morning at breakfast the tea-caddy was solemnly unlocked by the Duke, who on one occasion remarked to a guest: “Take a lesson from me—you are just starting in life—never be above attending to particulars, ay, and minute particulars. What is a trifle? Nothing that has reference to our comfort, our independence, or our peace.”^[5]

In spite, however, of comfort, independence, and peace, the Duke had myriads of debts. But these, if inconvenient, had, together with his sense of duty to the nation, led him into a comfortable and satisfactory marriage, two years before his death. Princess Charlotte, the heir to the throne, was dead, the Prince Regent would never provide another, the Duke of York had no child, the Duke of Clarence seemed unwilling to marry. Was it not, therefore, the duty of the Duke of Kent (remembering, also, that the Duke of York had received a settlement of £25,000 a year on his marriage) to sacrifice himself and produce an heir to the throne of England?

Unfortunately he chose, as a confidant on this project, sly, watchful, spiteful Mr Creevey—partly, I imagine, because he wished the subject to be broached in influential circles. But little did he guess in what a manner everything would be repeated. The interview between the Duke and Mr Creevey took place in Brussels, and the Duke began it with some conversation about trivial matters, then changed the conversation abruptly and came to the point. After referring, gloomily, to the improbability of the rest of the royal family saving him from this sacrificial act of producing an heir, the Duke continued: “Should the Duke of Clarence not marry, the next prince in succession is myself, and although I trust I shall be at all times ready to obey any call my country may make upon me, God only knows the sacrifice it will be to make, whenever I shall think it to be my duty to become a married man. It is now seven and twenty years that Madame St Laurent and I have lived together; we are of the same age, and have been in all climates, and in all difficulties together, and you can well imagine, Mr Creevey, the pain it will occasion me to part with her. I put it to your own feelings—in the event of any separation between you and Mrs Creevey.... As for Madame St Laurent herself, I protest I don’t know what is to become of her if a marriage is to be fixed upon me; her feelings are already so agitated upon the subject.” It seemed that one morning at breakfast, only a few days after the death of Princess Charlotte, the Morning Chronicle had made some reference to the possibility of the Duke of Kent taking a wife. When he, as usual, had thrown the paper across the table to Madame St Laurent, and had begun to open and read his letters, he “had not done so but a very short time,” continued the Duke, “when my attention was called to an extraordinary noise and a strong convulsive movement in Madame St Laurent’s throat. For a short time I entertained serious apprehensions for her safety; and when, upon her recovery, I enquired into the occasion of this attack, she pointed to the article in the Morning Chronicle.” The Duke paused for a moment, then continued in this same noble spirit of duty and self-sacrifice: “My brother the Duke of Clarence is the elder brother, and has certainly the right to marry if he chooses, and I would not interfere with him on this account. If he wishes to be king—to be married and have children, poor man—God help him; let him do so. For myself, I am a man of no ambition, and wish only to remain as I am.... Easter, you know, falls very early this year—the 22nd of March. If the Duke of Clarence does not take any step before that time, I must find some pretext to reconcile Madame St Laurent to my going to England for a short time. When once there, it will be easy for me to consult with my friends as to the proper step to be taken. Should the Duke of Clarence do nothing before that time as to marrying it will be my duty, no doubt, to take some measures upon the subject myself.”

As to his choice of a bride, it seemed that the Duke was in two minds as to whether he should take the Princess of Baden or the Princess of Saxe-Coburg; he was inclined to think the latter, owing to the popularity of her brother, the widower of Princess Charlotte, with the English people. But whichever bride he chose, he hoped, nay, expected, the grateful nation to do justice to Madame St Laurent. For she was, he assured Mr Creevey, of very good family, and had never been an actress, and, he continued, “I am the first and only person who ever lived with her. Her disinterestedness, too, has been equal to her fidelity. When she first came to me, it was upon £100 a year. That sum was afterwards raised to £400, and finally to £1000, but when my debts made it necessary for me to sacrifice a great part of my income, Madame St Laurent insisted upon again returning to her income of £400 a year. If Madame St Laurent is to return to live amongst her friends, it must be in such a state of independence as to command their respect. I shall not require very much, but a certain number of servants and a carriage are essentials.” With this, the Duke reverted to the more important matter of his own settlement, explaining that the Duke of York’s marriage settlement ought to be considered as the precedent, since he, too, had made a marriage for the succession, “and £25,000 for income was settled, in addition to all his other income, purely on that account. I shall be contented with the same arrangement without making any demands grounded on the difference of the value of money in 1792 and at present.... As for the payment of my debts,” added the Duke, “I don’t call them great. The nation, on the contrary, is greatly my debtor.”

At the peroration of this address, a clock struck, reminding the Duke that he was due for another appointment. He rose, and Mr Creevey rushed home as fast as his legs would carry him. Great was his excitement, vast was his joy. Here, indeed, was a piece of gossip of the utmost importance. Mr Creevey, having bustled off to communicate the news to the Duke of Wellington, wrote to tell Lord Sefton. The letter arrived just at the moment when a surgeon was sounding his lordship’s bladder to discover if it contained a stone. “I never saw a fellow more astonished than he was,” wrote the sufferer in reply to Mr Creevey’s amazing piece of news, “at seeing me laugh as soon as the operation was over. Nothing could be more first-rate than the royal Edward’s ingenuousness. One does not know which to admire most—the delicacy of his attachment to Madame St Laurent, the refinement of his sentiments towards the Duke of Clarence, or his own perfect disinterestedness in pecuniary matters.”^[6] For alas, the Duke, in spite of all his rather self-conscious virtues, was not a popular figure. Disliked by the Duke of Wellington, who had named him the Corporal, he was even more detested by his brothers, who resented his talent for combining, with a modified version of their own moral behaviour, frequently expressed moral sentiments of the highest character. His sisters shared their feelings on the subject: “God damme,” said the Duke of Wellington to Mr Creevey, with a loud horse-laugh, “d’ye know what his sisters call him—they call him Joseph Surface.” The Regent adopted this name for him, and called him, in addition, Simon Pure.

The Duke of Kent married, as was his duty, and the new Duchess escaped from one state of poverty to another. And, by a strange coincidence, twelve days after the marriage, which took place according to the rites of the Lutheran Church on the 29th of May 1818 at Amorbach (a second ceremony was performed on July the 11th at Kensington, in the presence of Queen Charlotte, the Prince Regent, and other members of the royal family), the Duke of Clarence followed his brother’s example, his bride being the daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. It is sad to think that neither of these self-sacrificing men received the Martyr’s crown, for the motions to increase their allowances, when brought forward in the House of Commons, were defeated with a large majority. This delighted, though it failed to astonish, the Duke of Wellington. “By God!” he exclaimed to Mr Creevey, “there is a great deal to be said about that. They are the damnedest millstones about the necks of any government that can be imagined. They have insulted—personally insulted—two-thirds of the gentlemen of England, and how can it be wondered at that they take their revenge upon them in the House of Commons? It is their only opportunity, and I think, by God! they are quite right to use it.”^[7] In the end, however, Parliament relented so far as to add £6000 to the Duke of Kent’s allowance. As for Madame St Laurent, it is comforting to think that she was neither a burden nor an expense, for, having refused both carriage and servants, she crept away into the shadows of a convent, and troubled the Duke no more.

The new ménage started inauspiciously enough. The Duchess, Victoria Maria Louisa, Princess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, was accustomed to poverty, but it was a different kind from that endured by the Duke of Kent, her second husband. The sister of Prince Leopold, the widower of Princess Charlotte, she had married when seventeen years of age the elderly and impoverished, but resplendent, Prince of Leiningen. Her father and her husband were equally poor; indeed, three years after her marriage, the former died a ruined man, owing to his generosity and his extravagance. Disaster after disaster had befallen him, the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg had been seized by the French, and Mr Strachey tells us, in his Queen Victoria, that “the ducal family were reduced to beggary, almost to starvation”. Prince Leopold, therefore, that warm-hearted but cautious, ambitious and far-seeing man, had since the age of fifteen been obliged to fend for himself, and had done so very successfully, blending love and ambition in his marriage with the heiress to the throne of England. His sister the Princess of Leiningen, on her side, was forced, by the necessity of poverty and of dealing with a supine will-less husband, into developing a strength of character and, to put it mildly, an obstinacy, which were afterwards to become the despair of King William the Fourth. When her husband died, after eleven years of marriage, she was left with two children, Princess Feodore and Prince Charles, and, as her previous life had rendered her very capable of acting as Regent, she managed the Principality with some success. She was now to be an equally capable wife to the Duke of Kent, moving without complaint from country to country, from Germany to England, England to Belgium, and back again, according to the necessities of ambition or the exigencies of the Duke’s debts, cheerful and bustling, voluble and platitudinous, with her short stout body, her rosy cheeks, and her brown eyes and hair set off by her bright-coloured velvets and gorgeous silks. She always, indeed, seemed to be moving, placid-tempered and obstinate, in a hurricane of flying feathers and loud-rustling silks, and this, in after years, added irritation to the dislike with which her brother-in-law, King William the Fourth, regarded her.

After a certain number of wanderings, the royal pair returned to the Duchess’s castle at Amorbach; and here the Duke occupied himself with supervising the battalions of English workmen who had been imported to rebuild and alter the castle, in order to make it fit for him to inhabit (£10,000 had been borrowed by the Duke for this purpose), with drilling the footmen into military precision, with clock-making, locking up the tea-caddy, and other important duties. He had just settled down to this peaceful life^[8] when the Duchess announced that she was with child, and the wanderings began all over again. For had not a gipsy at Gibraltar prophesied that, though the Duke was to have a life of many vicissitudes, he would die happy, and his only child would be a great queen? And, if this was so, the child in question must be born in England. The Duchess of Clarence and the Duchess of Cambridge might bear their children in Hanover, but his child must be born in England.

The money for the journey, however, was not forthcoming at first, for the Regent had no wish for his brother’s presence, and Prince Leopold was unable to help in the matter. In the end, the Duke’s trustee, Mr Allen, sent a certain sum, though it was not large enough to admit of a suitable grandeur in transit. A coach was hired, and what an English spectator called “an unbelievably odd caravan” set off in April, less than two months before the Duchess’s confinement, with the Duke sitting on the box and jogging the reins, and with the Duchess, her daughter Feodore, a nurse, a lady’s maid, and the Duchess’s beloved lap-dogs and song-birds inside—jolting over the stony roads, away and away. The journey was long, exhausting, and uncomfortable; the inns were unendurable, the crossing was rough, but at last in the middle of April they arrived at Kensington, where their reception by the Prince Regent was anything but gratifying.^[9]

Yet nothing could alter the Duke’s trust in his country’s gratitude, however much he might deplore the ingratitude of his brother: “I trust,” he wrote to a friend, “my countrymen will duly appreciate the great sacrifice and exertion made by her” (the Duchess) “in travelling at a period drawing so near her confinement.... With regard to congratulations from a certain quarter, to which you allude, I could say a great deal, but as harmony and peace is my object, I had much rather the world should think that everything was most cordial between us, than the reverse.”

On May the 24th 1819, the Duchess of Kent gave birth to a daughter, and the Duke wrote: “As to the circumstances of the child not proving to be a son instead of a daughter, I feel it due to myself to declare that such sentiments are not in unison with my own; for I am decidedly of opinion that the decrees of Providence are at all times wisest and best.”^[10]

Alas, whether the country was grateful or not, was never known to the Duke. For the Regent, enraged that so soon after the death of Princess Charlotte he should have his failure to provide an heir to the throne brought home to him, furious at his brother’s rather smug satisfaction at the situation, refused to allow the public to do anything in the matter. And at the christening, which took place on the 24th of June in the grand saloon at Kensington Palace, he appeared in the role of wicked fairy. Resplendent in costume and in manner, he outshone the gold font, part of the regalia of the kingdom, which had been brought from the Tower of London, he put the crimson velvet curtains, which had been imported for the ceremony, in the shade. But it was easy to see that something had made him very angry; the eyes that stared at his brother and sister-in-law seemed more protuberant than usual, the puffiness beneath them was more marked and pinker—a sure sign with the Regent. He had already announced, irrespective of the parents’ feelings in the matter, that the Czar Alexander of Russia was to be one of the godparents, and now he arrived at the christening with the fixed determination of thwarting the Duke in every possible way. When, therefore, the Archbishop of Canterbury inquired by what name the child was to be called, the Regent answered “Alexandrina”, to which the Duke hastily replied that one name surely would not be enough. The Regent assented blandly: “Georgina,” he added. “Or Elizabeth?” suggested the Duke, the memory of a certain reign in his mind. This was too much. The Regent’s face looked thunderous. Was he to be reminded in this open manner of the child’s future? There was an angry pause, and then, “Very well,” said the Regent, “call her after her mother; but Alexandrina must come first.”

The incident was over, but not the Duke’s troubles, for the Prince Regent continued to ignore the claims of gratitude on the English people. This was made so clear at last that the prudent Prince Leopold offered to provide the money for his sister, her husband, and her children to return to Amorbach. But the Duke refused with some firmness. His child, now that the Duchess of Clarence’s baby had died a few hours after birth, was the heir to the throne of England, and in England she should stay, until she was weaned in any case. After that, he hinted, the family would most likely withdraw to Germany, if some signs of appreciation of their services had not been shown before then.

Meanwhile, far away in the yellow stone castle at Rosenau, below the dark pine-haunted Thuringian Forest, the young Duchess of Saxe-Coburg was awaiting the birth of a child. How peaceful and solemn everything seemed in the lovely August light, thought the Duchess as she looked out of the flower-wreathed windows of her room filled with imitations of Empire furniture, at the beeches, elms, and oaks shining in the late afternoon light, at the clear waterfall and river, the gardens filled with heavy roses, the peaceful fields and the stately virtuous-looking storks.^[11] The Dowager Duchess, writing to her daughter in England, said: “Luise is much more comfortable here than if she had been laid up in Coburg. The quiet of this house, only interrupted by the murmuring of the water, is so agreeable ... no one considered the noise of the palace at Coburg, the shouts of the children, and the rolling of the carriages in the streets.”^[12]

At 6 o’clock in the morning of the 26th of August, 1819, a little boy “looked at the world with a pair of jolly eyes”, and seven weeks later the Duchess wrote to her great friend Augusta von Studnitz, the eldest daughter of President August von Studnitz of Gotha: “You should see him, he is pretty like an angel, he has big blue eyes, a beautiful nose, quite a small mouth and dimples in his cheeks. He is friendly and he smiles the whole time, and he is so big that a cap which Ernst wore when three months is too small for him, and he is only seven weeks as yet.”^[13]

The old Duchess, in her delight, exclaimed: “He is just the pendant to the pretty cousin.” So time passed, whilst, in England, the troubles of the Duke and Duchess of Kent grew worse and worse, and at the beginning of December, as a matter of policy, the Duke decided to remove with his small family to a hired house at Sidmouth, in order, as he said, “that the Duchess may have the benefit of tepid sea-bathing and our infant that of sea air”, and (though on this matter he was silent) because he would be removed from the attentions of his creditors. For himself, he declared, he needed no sea air. His health was so robust that he would say, when speaking of his brothers, “I shall outlive them all. The Crown will come to me and my children.”

The new year dawned, and the Duke, always a superstitious man, remembered another gipsy prophecy: in the year 1820, he had been told, two members of the royal family would die. Well, the King was doomed, the Duchess of York was seriously ill, and, as for his brothers, their lives had been most irregular. “I shall outlive them all,” he repeated. But on one soft and insidiously warm and damp day in January the Duke climbed up Peak’s Hill and stood looking at the view. A sea-mist rose and wrapped him round, soaked through his skin, soaked through his body to the lungs. What should such a man, endowed with such abundant vitality and robust health, do with nursing a cold? The Duke was impatient of any such restraint, and the cold was neglected, with the result that it attacked his lungs, and now, as he lay on his hired bed, the uneven clock in his breast was slowing down, though its sound was so loud you could hear it beating through the silence. Prince Leopold and his devoted friend young Doctor Stockmar rushed to his bedside; the Prince Regent sent flocks of doctors and of messengers, but all was in vain. All was dim now, and cold like the sea-fog, and nothing counted but the clock in his breast—that and his wish to be remembered. “Do not forget me,” he murmured.... “May God have mercy upon my wife and child, and forgive my sins.”

During the night he became unconscious, and, when the dawn broke, this strange blend of the two centuries, this mixture of warm affection and cold self-seeking, of unutterable harshness in discipline and genuine charitableness and wish to ameliorate the condition of the poor, of self-indulgence and self-righteousness, hypocrisy and clear-sightedness, lay dead.

It was Prince Leopold who paid the funeral expenses and for the journey of his widowed sister and little niece to Kensington Palace.

[1] See Roger Fulford: The Royal Dukes (Gerald Duckworth and Co., Ltd.). I am deeply indebted to the chapter on the Duke of Kent for most of the information contained in this chapter.

[2] Fulford, op. cit., p. 157.

[3] Fulford, op. cit., pp. 194-5.

[4] See Fulford, op. cit., p. 184.

[5] Fulford, op. cit., pp. 186-8.

[6] The Creevey Papers, edited by the Rt. Hon. Sir Herbert Maxwell. Bart., Volume I, pp. 267-71 (quoted by permission of Messrs John Murray the publishers). Queen Victoria, by Lytton Strachey (Chatto and Windus), pp. 9-12 (Phoenix Library edition).

[7] The Creevey Papers, Volume I, pp. 276-7. Strachey, op. cit., p. 12.

[8] See Fulford, op. cit., p. 191.

[9] See Fulford, op. cit., p. 192.

[10] Fulford, op. cit., p. 192.

[11] See Hector Bolitho: Albert the Good (R. Cobden-Sanderson. Ltd.), p. 17.

[12] Bolitho, op. cit., p. 12.

[13] Bolitho, op. cit., p. 12.