It is distressing to read the expression of sorrow at the idea that the King, so to speak, continually went on not coming. With the new year (1825) the wail opens to its old solemn tune. ‘There is no change at the Pavilion.’ ‘We hope that the desire to see his Majesty again among us may speedily be realised.’ Alas! the realisation does not speedily come, and the ‘Fashionable Intelligencer’ wept in its imitation lawn handkerchief, and then wiped its loyal eyes and exclaimed, ‘The gloom of silence and desertion continues to envelop the Pavilion.’ Double envelopes of desertion and of silence. Then followed reports that the King was coming soon. The soon was succeeded by ‘a period not yet determined.’ Finally, it was said that his Majesty would visit Brighton and take up his residence there during the Christmas holidays. But before that time and its event arrived, ‘Fashionable Intelligencer’ discovered that, instead of the King coming, his best wine was going. It did not require much logic to enable observers to come to the conclusion that if the best vintage were taking its departure, Sacred Majesty would not be among speedy arrivals. The town could hardly find consolation in the assurance that wherever the monarch might be, his heart was certainly at Brighton. The King never came. The local banks could not bear it. They unanimously broke.
A royal duke and duchess were scarcely equivalent to a king; yet the appearance of the Duke of York relieved in some degree the heart of Brighton from some of its heavings. There was a burst of joy when it was announced that H.R.H. ‘purposed to give an entertainment to his tonish friends.’ Everyone uninvited must henceforth consider himself to be mauvais ton. What a flutter there was when ‘tonish reporters’ proclaimed in the newspapers that the Duke would give a public breakfast at Ireland’s Royal Gardens, and that ‘the whole fashionable world would partake of the repast.’ Meanwhile ‘Fashionable Intelligencer’ watched the Duke and noted his ducal ways. We read with infinite emotion that his royal princeliness not only entered several shops, but that he purchased various articles in the most unassuming manner. The grand breakfast at last came off, and a very jolly affair it was; but Snob, who was not invited, and who felt his ‘fashionable’ honour very much ruffled in consequence, declared that the thing was low, and that the company were vulgar.
The Duchess of Gloucester did not put herself so prominently forward as the Duke of York; but the local observer did not fail to chronicle the proud circumstance, namely, that ‘The Duchess gives importance by her presence to the Steyne.’ Her condescension, too, was eulogised in lofty terms; but in the practice of proud humility the Duchess was nothing in comparison with the Bishop of Chichester. Robert James Carr was then, as prelate, only a year old. In the bloom of his official age the Right Rev. Father, &c., visited Brighton, and on his first Sunday there he repaired to the Royal Chapel. There was the ordinary congregation, but there was no clergyman. He had been taken ill and was unable to attend. But the diocesan was not proud. The fashionable chronicler tells us that the Bishop performed divine worship himself, ‘with his usual kindness and condescension.’
Sometimes high-born and ill-bred personages condescended to much stranger performances. Thus we find Jeames the Chronicler setting down a record of the fact that Sir Godfrey Webster, one of the fastest of the very rapid men of the day, had left the town, and that the regret was universal; but that the baronet would soon return, in order to take the chair of a free-and-easy at the ‘Swan Inn.’ It is to be observed, that whenever a ‘tonish’ person took his departure, all Brighton was filled with the most poignant regret. Also, that when a family or individual of the haut ton or beau monde (nice distinctions!) arrived, all Brighton was stirred with an indescribable sort of happiness. If Mrs. Fitzherbert left the town drowned in tears, the arrival of Lady Berwick brought it again to life and laughter. Sir Matthew Tierney’s post-carriage, galloping out of Brighton, pierced the hearts of all beholders; but there was balm in Gilead. How sympathetic must have been the fashionable reporter of 1825 when he wrote down the fact that, ‘Grateful rumour states that the esteemed Dukes of Richmond and Argyle, and the Marquis of Anglesea, again propose to add to the importance of the “Royal York Hotel” by residing there before the end of the present year.’ Mark the new and original figure, ‘grateful rumour.’ But to indulge in strange figures was the old Brighton reporter’s dearest delight. ‘The Marquis of Granby,’ says our friend, ‘without any feeling of indisposition, enjoys good spirits in Regency Square.’ This might astonish Mark Tapley, whose spirits were highest under prostration, but to us it seems natural enough. Another fashionable record, this time full of simplicity, is to the effect that ‘Lady William Gordon confesses the salutary influence of the coast air.’ Occasionally an unexpected arrival makes the reporter of it facetious. For example, the local chronicler states how the ‘Barossa,’ homeward bound from St. Helena, had dropped her anchor off the town the previous night, without any idea of her being there, and how her gallant captain, Hutchenson, went ashore, and gave joyous surprise to his lady and family, and how he was on board again, and on his way to the Downs, by five in the morning.
Speaking of ladies as well as of captains, let us not forget—indeed it is impossible to overlook—that incarnation of gaiety and beauty, the Lady Berwick of that day. Before her marriage, she was a Miss Sophia Dubouchet. This young lady was married to the second Lord Berwick in 1812. In some peerages she is styled plain ‘Sophia Dubouchet,’ with no more account of her family than if she had been, like Melchizedek, without father and without mother. It is clear that this lady, who died childless, was not of illustrious descent. How she looked at Brighton, in 1825, and what were ‘pretty Fanny’s ways’ in that year, at that place, we may gather from another of the scraps of intelligence. ‘A la mode Lady Berwick,’ says a contemporary local journal, ‘formerly Miss Sophia de Bouchez’ (the chroniclers were not particular as to names), ‘has been the source of attraction for our fashionable promenades during the week. It afforded us much pleasure to observe that the late abuse of the press has in no degree diminished the vivacity so characteristic of her ladyship and family.’ There were two other ladies at Brighton at that time who were of a quieter quality, and whose wealth was the least of their charms. They are thus registered in the fashionable column: ‘We have two of the richest heiresses in the country now with us, Miss Wykeham and Miss Pleydell.’ How little did the chronicler conjecture that the former lady, who died so recently as 1870, was the heroine of a romance, and might have been Queen of England if she had chosen to bear that magnificent title. When Miss Wykeham was at Brighton, at a much earlier period than 1825, she attracted the attention of the Duke of Clarence. She was then the much honoured heiress of an Oxfordshire squire, Wykeham of Swalcliffe, a member of the family of William of Wykeham. The royal Duke had other opportunities of seeing this beautiful and accomplished heiress; and, overcome by her beauty, her intellectual qualities, and her account at her banker’s, he made her the offer of his hand. With good common sense, Miss Wykeham declined the offer. The Duke subsequently married a German princess, but he never ceased to esteem the heiress, whose presence made Brighton so happy nearly half a century ago. As soon as the Duke became William IV., King of England, he, with the glad sanction of Queen Adelaide, prevailed on the lady whom he had once sought to make his wife, to accept a peerage. Miss Wykeham took the title of Baroness Wenman, whereby she revived an old title in her family. Her grandfather had married the sister and heiress of the Viscount Wenman, in the Irish peerage. The Viscount having died childless, in 1800, the dignity became extinct; but Wenman, as an English baronial title, was conferred on Miss Wykeham in 1834. For six and thirty years she wore it with dignity, and when she died, in 1870, there was not a memory more honoured in the three kingdoms than that of Sophia Elizabeth Wykeham, Baroness Wenman, of Thame Park, county Oxon.
When William IV. took up his residence at Brighton, he played the citizen king. He walked and talked in the streets, and knocked at the doors of his personal friends, paying morning visits, and speedily discovering that, altogether, ‘it wouldn’t do.’ Queen Victoria went down to look at the place, to give it a trial, and to come to the same conclusion, that ‘it wouldn’t do.’ When cabmen or their customers stood on the roofs of their cabs to gaze at the Queen over the garden walls, royalty quietly withdrew, and Brighton took good heart, and has since contrived to get on handsomely alone, but she is ever glad, and naturally so, when a prince or princess is to be reckoned among her visitors. Only now the inhabitants do not go out to meet them, as they did in 1815 to meet Queen Charlotte. Large bodies of them then received permission to welcome the Queen at Patcham. They were dressed in buff, and mounted. As they cantered by the side of the Queen’s carriage, as her escort, she smiled and bowed to such of them as were ‘getting a look at her,’ as if she liked it. The Prince Regent, the Duke of Clarence, and a bright array of nobility, waited in the open space before the Pavilion to do honour to her on her arrival. ‘The present,’ says a contemporary historian, ‘is beyond all doubt the most brilliant period in the annals of Brighton.’
Fitting period wherewith to close these remarks. What a contrast is the fuss to get a sovereign into Brighton with the anxiety to get Charles II. out of it! For effecting the escape of the King, Captain Tattersall was rewarded with a pension of 100l. a year to himself and his descendants. We suppose that the most democratic of politicians would not object to a pension being paid which was originally earned by getting his most ‘religious majesty’ out of the kingdom.