By George! It's a Sad Goodbye

In my last installment I mentioned that the Prince proved his sensitivity to social conventions by having Mrs Fitzherbert present while he had his new girlfriend, Lady Hertford, over for dinner. My regular readers will not be surprised to learn that Mrs Fitzherbert found this intolerable.

After the business with Lady Jersey, she had no desire to go through that again. With the greatest reluctance, she asked the Prince to keep his distance. Mrs. Fitzherbert’s attachment to the Prince would have been touching if it weren’t so grossly misplaced. One might think that the Prince would be overjoyed to have the decks cleared, so to speak, for his romance with Lady Hertford. Nope. Not the case at all.

The Prince wrote to a friend of Mrs. Fitzherbert’s a Miss Pigot, that

he was inconsolable. Mrs. Fitzherbert had written the Prince a letter, which he refused to read because it would, “verify the very kind accusation which amongst many others she had laid at his door, namely of his always acting a part and playing to the galleries.” It deeply hurt the Prince that Mrs. Fitzherbert would think of him thus. He was a generous fellow, however; If Mrs. Fitzherbert returned to him, presumably with an apology on her lips, he would welcome her with “open arms.”

He took a rather different tone when writing to Mrs. Fitzherbert directly.

“As it is, my only, only, only love, quite out of my calculation by being able to sleep, I may as well employ myself in that what to me is the only pleasant, as well as only interesting occupation of my life. (Aside from, one must presume, drinking, gambling, shopping, skirt chasing, redecorating, drug taking, being a drama queen and pestering the King about being made a general.) Which is writing to thee; and though this alas! Is but poor consolation, still as I fancy to myself that it is in some degree, or at any rate, a convincing proof…I cannot resist the temptation as it affords me not inconsiderable relief of applying to my pen to endeavour…to establish within my bosom at least a species of requiem…I am a different animal, a different being from any other in the whole of creation…Every thought and every idea of my existence and of my life never leave and never quit thee, for the smallest particle of an instant.”

And Mrs. Fitzherbert would receive thirty or forty pages of this!! On an almost daily basis when the Prince was in the mood! I wonder if she had to hire a translator to help her wade through all the pointless verbiage. Mrs. Fitzherbert was not moved. She had ridden in that particular carriage enough times to know that it only drove her one place; around the bend.

She checked in with him long enough to establish that he was, indeed, still hankering after Lady Hertford. It was the last straw. Really! This time she meant it.

She wrote to him in the fall of 1809 that she could not stand it any longer… “It has quite destroyed the entire comfort and happiness of both our lives; it has so completely destroyed mine, that neither my health nor my spirits can bear it any longer. What am I to think of the inconsistency of your conduct, when, scarcely three weeks ago, you voluntarily declared to me that this sad affair was quite at an end; and in less than a week afterwards the whole business was begun all over again? The purport of my writing to you is to implore you to come to a resolution…You must decide, and that decision must be done immediately, that I may know what line to pursue. I beg your answer may be a written one, to avoid all unpleasant conversations upon a subject so heartrending to one who’s life has been dedicated to you and who’s affection for you none can surpass.”

Mrs. Fitzherbert may have been wordy, but at least she was clear.

The Prince sent letter after letter to Mrs. Fitzherbert, begging reconciliation and forgiveness. He also knew that he was much more persuasive in person than in writing and begged Mrs. Fitzherbert to visit him and give him a chance to explain. To this suggestion she replied that she “could not possibly accept the honor of his invitation” citing “very great incivilities” received over the previous two years. She had no intention of putting herself “in a situation of being again treated with such indignity.”

The Prince wasn’t going to give up. He continued to send letters begging her to reconsider. No doubt he believed that all he had to do was keep it up and she would relent. Why not? It always worked before.

Not this time. Wrote Mrs. Fitzherbert with admirable finality, “It is well known your Royal Highness four and twenty years ago placed me in a situation so nearly connected with your own that I have a claim upon you for protection. I feel I owe it to myself not to be insulted under your roof with impunity.”

The Prince had finally gone too far with Mrs. Maria Fitzherbert.
As painful as that may, or may not have been for the Prince, he soon had something of greater importance to worry about.

– Mr Al