Chapter One
7th April 1818
‘Running round the woodlump
if you chance to find’
Julia Farraday sank into a deep curtsy, rose gracefully, and with an indiscernible kick of her right foot swept the train of her Court dress around. She proceeded backwards from the Royal couple, her eyes demurely lowered.
Well, at least they seemed happy. Princess Elizabeth’s plump flushed face had a broad smile, and if her wedding finery of rich silver tissue, Brussels lace and ostrich feathers was more suited to a girl of eighteen than a woman of almost forty-eight, who was she to judge?
As for the forty-nine year-old bridegroom, Prince Frederick of Hesse-Homberg, with his great paunch, massive whiskers and reek of tobacco, he was certainly no woman’s ideal of manly beauty even in his dazzling uniform of an Austrian General. However, he did have a kindly face and seemed as genuinely enamoured of his ‘die Elisabeth’ as she was of her dearest ‘Bluff’.
Glancing around the crowded room, Julia saw Queen Charlotte, a faded relic of her former self, seated on a sofa attended by her daughters, the Princesses Augusta and Sophia.
The King’s continuing illness - she couldn’t say madness - and the death last November in childbirth of her granddaughter, had broken the last remnants of her resolute will and Queen Charlotte now appeared as a crushed old woman.
Many considered her daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, callous to have married the hereditary Prince of Hesse-Homberg at this time, but then the Princess had always longed to marry and have an establishment of her own, even though the London wags said the whole principality was no bigger than the Royal Borough of Kensington.
So who could blame the Princess for seizing this chance to escape from the ‘nunnery’ as the Prince of Wales called his mother’s household. After all, she’d waited thirty years for this day and seen many prospective bridegrooms fade into oblivion.
Julia felt suddenly tired from the glare of a thousand candles, and although the April evening wasn’t warm, with all the guests crowded into the reception rooms and overflowing into the antechambers, the temperature had risen dramatically. After ten years as a maid of honour at Court she was quite used to standing for hours on end. She had certainly attended receptions more crowded and hotter than this, but a feeling of sadness that the end of all that was familiar and safe was now coming to an end, overwhelmed her.
When she had left Miss Harriet Anderton’s Academy for Young Ladies at the age of eighteen to join the Royal Household, she had a thorough grounding in music, dancing, deportment, geography and the globes, French, German and the English languages, mathematics including the keeping of accounts and management of servants, as well as religious instruction and artistic pursuits, including watercolours, oils and the decoration of china, together with the art of tambour and painting on silks.
The ten years spent at Miss Anderton’s Academy had been beneficial for her at Court, for it was the artistic pursuits that she enjoyed the most. With a soulmate like the artistically talented Princess Elizabeth, Julia soon became a constant companion for the five Princesses, helping and assisting with their music and artistic pursuits until poor Princess Amelia’s death, followed by Princess Mary’s marriage to her cousin, ‘Silly Billy’, the Duke of Gloucester.
Now Princess Elizabeth too was married and Julia knew if she didn’t make the break from Court, she would end up as one of the dreary old retainers who were treated as objects of scorn and derision by the younger courtiers. Her Great Uncle Thomas had obtained her position here in the first place through his friendship with Queen Charlotte’s physician, and although she had not seen her great uncle since she left Miss Anderton’s Academy to go to Court, she had dutifully corresponded with him at Christmas and for his birthday in August.
On the announcement of Princess Elizabeth’s engagement in February, Julia had, reluctantly, written to him asking if she could be allowed to retire from Court life and make her home with him on the Sussex coast. He was now in his eighties and his reply, written by his housekeeper Mrs Knight, although not exactly affable was polite enough, although he cautioned that she would not find country life to her taste after the heady pleasures of the Court.
The latter comment had made her laugh out loud. If only he knew of the interminable boredom, the standing about plus all the petty jealousies and little tyrannies one had to endure. Of course she would miss the Princesses and the few friends she had made here, but oh, to have the freedom just to live outside that gilded cage was something she was prepared to risk, even if it meant being buried in the country. For at twenty-eight, with no fortune of her own, a life of spinsterhood loomed before her as no suitor was likely to appear on the horizon.
She had been eight when her parents died in India from one of the recurring cholera epidemics. Julia and her brother Edward had been sent to their grandmother in England, three years earlier, but after grandmother’s sudden death, followed by Edward’s from scarlet fever, only Great Uncle Thomas was left.
Reluctant as he may have been, he did his duty and sent Julia to Miss Anderton. No matter how hard she tried she could not remember ever having visited her great uncle’s home. Their only meeting she could recall had been a formal one, in the parlour of the academy as she prepared to leave for Court.
‘You will be on trial, and any credit you can bring will be a reflection on both Miss Anderton’s educational skills and on my reputation as your mentor in nominating you for this most important position. I trust you will undertake this responsibility with the utmost gravity and with due regard for your unfortunate circumstances,’ and he had almost glared at her from under his shaggy eyebrows.
That was ten years ago and the upright elderly gentleman would surely have mellowed into a less forbidding personage. Anyway, the deed was done. Tomorrow she would begin the long day’s journey by hire chaise, only stopping for luncheon at Tonbridge, and then on to Winchelsea to whatever fate might hold in store for her.