*God save the Queen!*
Note: Product of my own fascination with the more bizarre politics of the period this deals briefly with the now almost forgotten attempt by George IV to try his long-estranged wife for adultery, and the violent popular reaction that it caused.
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1820
“My dear, I do wish you had removed to the country.”
The newly elevated Admiral Lord Hornblower was anything but a stranger to threatening situations, but he had never thought to feel so threatened in his own London drawing room.
“That would be a most cowardly retreat,” Barbara, Lady Hornblower, replied calmly. “I hope that I would not run from a few misguided individuals whose riot has not yet gone beyond window breaking.”
Hornblower cast an uneasy look at the window. With the great drapes drawn they would be free from flying shards. All the same….
“I think you should at least withdraw to an interior room.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind. Did you hear that Lord Exmouth, when they came to his house, rushed out on them with sword and pistol?”
“A most, ahem, courageous action, but ultimately futile,” Hornblower said, with some embarrassment. Whilst he felt some respect for the elder Admiral’s hot-blooded action he had no desire to emulate it. He knew he would find any such confrontation obscurely humiliating.
“I was not suggesting you do likewise, my dear,” Barbara responded. “I believe that I would rather see the situation calmed than inflamed. We could, if you wished it, still illuminate.”
“My dear!” This time Hornblower was honestly shocked. “I could not possibly desire a course of action that must do extraordinary violence to your sentiments.”
“Would it do violence to them?” Barbara mused. “I am not certain that it would.”
“My dear, surely you cannot – ” he groped without success for words.
“The conduct of Queen Caroline, for as long as she is married to our king I do consider her queen: her conduct, I say, is certainly very bad. But I do consider his conduct has been far worse, and he moreover the first offender; so that she might not have been bad if he had not been so much worse. I certainly do not condone her behaviour, and yet I have sympathy for her as a woman, and one who was much wronged before ever she gave cause.”
Hornblower wondered, not for the first time, how much of his wife’s condemnation was of manners rather than morals. Barbara, in common with many aristocrats, seemed to regard adultery as a trifling affair; a view Hornblower, for all his own guilt, could never share. But breeches of decorum were another matter, and Caroline of Brunswick, whether or not she had committed adultery, had been nothing if not indecorous.
“I can agree, my dear,” Hornblower said uncomfortably, “that the conduct of the King is far from what I can approve. Yet I would not on that account be swayed by a disordered mob, preaching not far from revolution.”
“On that I agree,” Barbara replied. “I do not approve of the Queen lending herself to the Radicals, although I believe it may have its root in her being unable to turn elsewhere for hope of justice. No, if you feel that to illuminate would be surrender to the mob, then of course we must hold out. But I have no intention of being driven from my own drawing room. I shall remain.”
Hornblower regretted yet again the delays that had prevented him from being already on his way to take up the eagerly desired West Indian appointment. He cast an uneasy glance at the window, fancying he could already hear the shattering of his neighbours glass by a mob bent on breaking any window not illuminated ‘for the Queen.’ For a silly, scandalous, perhaps slightly crazy woman supported less for herself than because she was set against a widely despised king and a government hated for its policy of repression. He wished he need have nothing to do with the business.
“We might at least remove to the room’s far end,” he proposed.
“That is unobjectionable.” Barbara, who had been standing by the mantel, crossed to seat herself on the couch against the far wall. “I do trust that I can endure the unpleasantness without any silly outcry.”
Hornblower almost said, ‘So do I,’ but checked the words in time. Barbara would naturally suppose him to be referring to her, not himself. Looking at her straight back and resolute expression he said instead, “I have every confidence,” and seated himself in a straight-backed chair to await the onslaught.