(The PRINCE OF WALES' drawing room. COLONEL HOTHAM sits at a table in front of the PRINCE OF WALES, perspiring and feeling terribly anxious as he reads off a piece of paper.)
COLONEL HOTHAM
Therefore, the approximate sum of Your Royal Highness' debts comes to £269,878 6s, 7¼d.
PRINCE OF WALES
(Pause, quietly horrified)
I admit this figure is...a tad higher than I had anticipated it would be... How has this happened in less than three years' time?
COLONEL HOTHAM
(With pity, shifting through papers)
Sir, the amazing expense of your stables alone amounts to £31,000 a year, while the cost of keeping racehorses is beyond all kind of calculation whatsoever. Meanwhile, your annual allowance from His Majesty is only £50,000, excluding the precarious supply from the Duchy of Cornwall; not to mention the fact that you have borrowed well over £25,000! Recent bulk purchases include ten-dozen pairs of gloves, two-dozen waistcoats, three-dozen toothbrushes, thirty-two walking sticks, hundreds of creams and perfumes of every description...
PRINCE OF WALES
Well, Colonel Hotham?
COLONEL HOTHAM
Your Royal Highness?
PRINCE OF WALES
How will you help me liquidate my debts?
COLONEL HOTHAM
I regret I can do nothing in that regard, sir. Your Royal Highness is entirely at the mercy of your builder and your upholster—who are carrying out works of enormous amounts on Carlton House, without a single care or inquiry from whence money is to arise for their discharge—as well as your jeweler, your tailor, your moneylenders, and so on.
PRINCE OF WALES
Then I shall take out some loans until I am able to reimburse every one of them.
COLONEL HOTHAM
Sir, you have already taken out loans on your loans. Your creditors' patience is rapidly depleting.
PRINCE OF WALES
Then I am entirely helpless?
COLONEL HOTHAM
(Contemplating)
Perhaps not, sir... There is one person who might provide you with considerable funds to liquidate your debt, but I cannot promise that he will be able or willing to do so.
PRINCE OF WALES
(Desperate)
Well? Who is it?
(Cut to ACT I, SCENE XXIII.)
YOU ARE READING
The Drunken Feathers
Historical FictionIn this biographical series that begins in 1784, twenty-one-year-old George, Prince of Wales-- the eldest son of King George III and heir to the British throne-- spends his youth idly by keeping countless mistresses, drinking profusely, and making f...
