“And ‘Ahh,’ mouthful’d the fellowship. And ‘Ooh,’ oratoried the witnesses.
“And still no more crimson than an eggshell. Why you, sir, are more raddled. Fitzherbert herself was glacial as pack ice. She said she’d pray for me.
“Pray for me, dun God with her demon orthodoxy! (Did I mention, Mills, that she was Catholic? She was Catholic, churched as a pope.)
“ ‘Do it then, madam,’ I told her coolly. ‘You know our prayers. You may say them for us!’
“And turned away politely to make the rest of my devoirs, saying my ‘So glads’ and ‘How pleaseds,’ aloof and indifferent as an already king.
“I learned she lived at Richmond and sent with my compliments my private yacht to fetch her. It came back empty. I sent it out again a week later, laden with gifts. The Gainsborough I’d promised, precious jewels, rare ivories. It came back empty, my gifts unopened. In a month I sent the ship out once more, this time with specific instructions to proffer my prince’s compliments to Lord Fitzherbert and to invite him and his amiable wife to stay at Buckingham House with my family and myself. There was no ‘Lord’ Fitzherbert of course, and what I offered was not so much a bribe as the promise of a bribe. Titled Catholics were practically unheard of in the country at this time. I knew my man and what I was doing. The appeal was not so much to his ambition as to his churchianity. The bark returned empty.
“And empty again when I dispatched it to Pangbourne, where I’d learned the Fitzherberts summered with a colony of their coreligionists.
“The King had of course heard of my efforts and their failures. How could he not? All society knew what I was up to. All it had to do was glance out its window whenever it heard a ship go by. The chances were excellent it would be the royal bark plying its unsuccessful trade route, hauling its unwanted merchandise about its watery itinerary like some failed merchantman. My mad king father was not yet mad. He was only angry. The truth, George, is that he missed his princedom, his own long-gone good time Charlie days when he had all the honors of a king but none of his dubious duties. They had been pushing him in the colonies. They were pushing him in France. The truth is, Mills, I pissed him. All he had for amusement in those days was my lust’s blunting against Mrs. Fitzherbert’s obdurate recalcitrance.
“He summoned me and offered a father’s advice in the throne room at Buckingham. He even removed the crown from his head before he spoke.
“ ‘Son,’ he said, ‘it disheartens us to see you so sobersides at a time in life when you should be all waggish and sportive. It tarnishes our comfort to perceive in you the mopes and melancholies of a distrait heart. We would have you cock-a-hoop, all frisk and frolic, and miss the horse laugh whoopee which was your once wont. Give us a chortle, love. Cackle a snigger for us. Titter — no offense, old son — titter your smirk. What? No? Not in we? Then send again to Richmond. I know what you demand of Mrs. Fitzherbert, and what you offer — paintings and pretties, jewelry and gewgaw. The woman is pious, mavourneen. She’s serious, treasure apple. You don’t go up in public to a pious, serious, high-minded woman like this and order her to put her titties in your mouth. What, in public? A sensitive, religious, married lady? It isn’t the way, it’s not how it’s done. You must be gentle, you must be discreet. You must offer reassurances. You must say: “Madam, I shall have my teeth pulled. The grinders and incisors, the molars and canines. All — all shall come out. I vow you, ma’am, then only will I chew and nibble, suck and gum!” Send to Richmond, lad; send to Richmond, son. We’ll make a picnic Thames-side and wait and wait till the cows come home.’ And laughed like a loon.
“I did send to Richmond, had already sent for her when my father had sent for me. When the yacht returned Mrs. Fitzherbert was on it, standing near the bowsprit and, with her generous, billowy, partially exposed bosoms, looking for all the world like the very figurehead on the ship’s very prow.
“I clambered aboard and took her in my arms.
“ ‘My darling,’ I said. ‘My dearest, you’ve come.’
“ ‘Fitzherbert’s dead,’ she whispered. ‘Tomorrow we’ll be married secretly by the priest. Then, suckling, shall you enjoy your little milkmaid to her bright twin pails’ sweetest residuals!”
“We dress up,” the King said. “We dress up, too. And lead free will these dumb show lives, our tastes a step behind our palates and our very existence revue, vaudeville, cabaret. And even our highest behaviors only simple ‘turns,’ studied as set piece, blocked as tableau. Sequenced as music hall and timed as spectacle. We don’t want walls and floors, ceilings and rooms but back cloths, stages, flats and scrim. Not property but props. Not bad luck but tragedy, not even happiness, only comedy. So we dress up. Good time Charlie, the merry-andrew. The milkmaid. The milkmaid milkmade man.
“Yes. Well. We were married. Secretly. You spoke of oaths. We swore oaths. As heavily pledged as debtors. Proclaiming and promising, vowing, professing. All intention’s by-all-that’s-holy’s.
“We honeymooned at Pangbourne while the royal yacht stood by. We boarded the ship and sailed to Scotland. We sailed to Ireland, where we anchored off a lovely blue bay. You could see palm trees.
“The marriage was secret, known only to the priest and to one or two of Maria’s friends. I like to think that those of our class who lived along those shores must have seen the ship and guessed it on some romantic errand, engaged in some pretty myth — all spurned love’s Flying Dutchman. We dress up. Oh yes.
“Well. Even someone as apparently arbitrary as a prince or king with his edicts and decrees and his ipse dixit say-so style lives a life proviso’d and ordinanced as any tavern keeper’s. And if there’s more loophole than loop to my bonds — I could, for example, have shot you before without bringing any more trouble upon myself than if I had sent my meat back to my chef — there is a special pandect of law for royalty.
“The Settlement Act forbids any of the King’s issue under the age of twenty-five to marry without first obtaining the consent of the King. This would have been forty years ago. I would have been twenty-three. The consent of the King? I knew better than even to ask for it. My only hope was to present my father with a fait accompli, thinking he’d think that the scandal which surrounded our relationship, and whatever embarrassment it may have caused him, might best be smoothed over by a royal announcement that we were now married.
“They had pushed him out of the colonies, they were pushing him in France. They were pushing him in his own Parliament. Now my father was now not only angry, he was actually mad.”
“Please, sir,” George Mills interrupted, “that was a rumor. Even our sort heard it. His political enemies…”
“Third was a lunatic, Forty-third. George was crazy, George,” George IV said quietly.
“More loophole than loop, the laws bleeding into their crimes like loose and leaking bandages. French leave law. Because it was out of his hands now. Out of his hands and out of his head. And he wasn’t embarrassed. And they didn’t — I mean his ministers, I mean his council — even have to use the Settlement Act. More loophole than loop.
“There was a sort of conference to which I was invited. There weren’t even barristers there, only a sort of solicitor from the Customs Office whom they’d rounded up at the last minute.
“The solicitor asked if I had reached my twenty-fifth birthday when I had been secretly married. He asked if I had obtained my father’s consent. Then Mrs. Fitzherbert — he called her Mrs. Fitzherbert — was not my wife, was she? It was ’is opinion, the solicitor said, that the hact of 1701 was not even happlicable. The act did not have to be enforced because under the very provisions of the rule the marriage was regarded as invalid! Law squalid and stinky as secret passageway. Dodge and diddle law, gull and bubble precedent.