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Fanny Burney: Royal Servant |
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The journals
Fanny had her revenge on Schwelly in the secret journals which she kept throughout her five-year sojourn in the Windsor ‘monastery’. They provide a vivid picture of the life and personalities of the court, and Mrs Schwellenberg is exposed for her unkindness, for her bad English and habits such as keeping a pair of pet frogs which she fed with flies.
Sketch of the tea tray and urn presented to Fanny by the Queen
© Olivia Davenport |
But Fanny came to love the royal family, despite the Queen’s uncertain temper. The King and Queen were as kind and considerate as blinkered royalty could be, and Fanny treasured the Queen’s New Year gifts, including a white and gold tea and coffee service and a gold enamelled pocket watch and chain. She adored the six princesses (the seven princes lived elsewhere), beautiful and unaffected girls. The youngest, Princess Amelia, celebrated her third birthday soon after Fanny’s arrival and Fanny recorded how the little princess, dressed in her best with cap, gloves and a fan, composedly led a procession onto the Terrace. Her heart was taken for ever when the child held up her face to be kissed.
The King’s madness
Fanny made her greatest contribution to history when she recorded the terrible period of the King’s so-called ‘madness’ (he is now thought to have suffered from variegate porphyria, a metabolic disorder). The illness showed itself first in October 1788, and grew in intensity until he burst out in uncontrolled lunacy during a family dinner party, trying to throttle the Prince of Wales with whom he was on bad terms. That night Fanny found her mistress ‘pale, ghastly pale’, her hands as cold as marble.
Words: Hester Davenport
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