OF THE UNIVER.S ITY or ILLINOIS 94*. 07 M73 c BOOKSTACKS Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. University of Illinois Library Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/courtlifebelowst01 moll_0 v ■» ■ HUE UDRABY OF THE UNT/SOT OF ILLINOIS KING GEORGE I. FROM THE PICTURE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS OR LONDON UNDER THE FIRST GEORGES 1714— 1760 BY J. FITZGERALD. MOLLOY AUTHOR OF * THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF PEG WOFFINGTON,’ ETC, A NEW EDITION WITH PORTRAITS OF GEORGE I. AND GEORGE II DOWNEY & CO. Limited 12 York Street, Covent Garden, London 1897 LONDON i PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LD.» ST. JOHN’S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL, E.C. £tn 7 S 4 Q'.&l KM 3d. v.1 PREFACE. In the following pages an attempt is made to give a re- liable and, it is to be hoped, interesting picture of the manners, habits, and morals of the English Court under the reign of the two first Georges ; and of the society — brilliant, witty, remarkable — which revolved around and too faithfully followed these royal models. As far as possible, the dry and already well-known facts of the politics of this period have been omitted, and are only referred to in cases where they have direct bearing on the personages and scenes described. No incident has been mentioned, no statement made, without authority, though as much as possible unimportant notes and trivial references have been omitted ; and where it has been found admissible, descriptions are given in the language of the original narrators or of eye-witnesses. Much pains have been taken to give the characteristics of every prominent personage as faithfully as possible ; and for this purpose I have searched at length, not only through the 574**59 IV PREFACE. biographies and works of the period, but likewise through the newspapers, pamphlets, ballad-literature, and that mine of treasures to be found in the manuscript diaries and cor- respondence of the era, preserved in the library of the British Museum, which contains most valuable, reliable, and, so far as I am aware, hitherto unused information. I have to acknowledge with gratitude the extreme courtesy and ready assistance afforded me in my researches by Dr. Richard Garnet and Mr. Anderson of the British Museum Library; and, finally, to hope that what has been to me a ‘ love’s labour ’ may not, through want of public interest, be 4 lost' j. FITZGERALD MOLLOY. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Queen Anne’s Illness — Political Agitation — A Jacobite Council — The Queen’s Death — The Announcement made to the new King— Earl Dorset’s Message — Sophia the Electress — The King’s Carelessness per- ceptible— Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Opinion of him — He leaves Hanover — Lands at Greenwich — The City prepares for his Arrival — His Entry into London — Appearance of the City — The King at St. James’s — Rejoicing of the Mob - - - i CHAPTER II. The King’s first Visit to England in 1680 — Proposal for Queen Anne — The King’s Character — His Ignorance of the English Language— His Coronation — Change in the Feelings of the Mob — Anecdote of Baron Pollnitz — The King visits the City on Lord Mayor’s Day — Entertained at the Guildhall — Conduct of the Lady Mayoress — Eulogies on the King — Bitter Words— Pamphlets and Ballads of the Period — The King’s Heedlessness of Praise or Abuse « • - 17 VI CONTENTS . CHAPTER III. PAGE Pictures of the Period — The Fashionable Beaux — Their fine Speeches — Their Courtesy, Dress, Love of Wit, and Repartee — Carelessness of Politics — Jack Spencer and his Brother — An Afternoon in Town — At the Play- houses— The Masculine Beau — Exhibition at the Tennis Court in St. James’s — A Riot in Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre — Rich, the Manager — The Ladies of the Period — On the Mall - - - - - - 30 CHAPTER IV. No Queen on the English Throne — The King’s Marriage to Sophia Dorothea — Madame Platen and her Plots — Madame Schulenburg — Count Konigsmark — His Tragic Death — George Augustus obtains a Divorce — Sophia Dorothea’s Imprisonment and Death— The King’s Mistresses — Madame Schulenburg created Duchess of Kendal — Madame Kilmansegge — The Ladies of the House of Platen — German Favourites at the English Court — Madame Platen the Younger - 41 CHAPTER V. Avarice of the Royal Mistresses and Favourites — Count Broglio’s Letters to the French Court — The King’s Answer — Robethon and Bothmar — Mustapha and Mahomet — The King’s View of his New Possessions — Public Ridicule — The Civil List — Economy of the Hanoverian Court — Public Indignation and its Expres- sion — The Mob and its Conduct— Unpopularity of the Germans — Club formed to Protect the King from Insult — Wreck of a Mug-House — Attempt to Shoot the Prince and King — Rebellion in Scot- land - • - - - - -61 CONTENTS , Vll CHAPTER VI. PAGE The Court in Queen Anne’s Reign — Changes under George I. — Drawing-rooms at St. James’s— Some Courtiers — The King’s Daughter, Melesina — Lord Lincoln’s Freedom with the King— The Duchess of Shrewsbury’s ‘Extraordinary Discourse ’ — The German Beauties and Lady Deloraine — Madame Tron and Madame Robethon— Lady Mary Wortley Montagu — How she became a Toast — The Princess of Wales — The Duchess of Bolton’s Slips of the Tongue — The King’s Love for Richmond and Hampton Court — The Drury Lane Company plays there— Royal Diver- sions - - - - « - - 76 CHAPTER VII. His Majesty’s ‘most dear Son’ — His Character, Tastes, and Opinion of Literature — The Princess of Wales — Her Talents and bitter Tongue — How she governed her Husband — The King visits Hanover — Unwilling- ness to make the Prince Regent — The King at Han- over — The Prince affects Popularity — His Majesty’s Uneasiness and Return to England — Royal Displeasure — Scene at the Christening of the Young Prince— Its Consequences - - - - - -9 3 CHAPTER VIII. Leicester House Court and its Brilliancy — Uord Chester- field’s Wit and Mimicry — The Mad Duchess of Buck- ingham — ‘Smiling Mary’ Bellenden — Lord Hervey and MaryLapell — Sophia Howe — Miss Meadows - 114 CONTENTS. viii CHAPTER IX. PAGE Courtiers at Leicester House— Mrs. Howard — Her Appear- ance — She becomes Mistress of the Prince — Her Hus- band’s Interference — Her Position at Court — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu at Leicester House — Dean Swift as a Courtier — c Assemblies Rage ’ in the Town — The Royal Children — The King’s Detestation of the Prince — Proposal of Lord Berkeley to make away with His Royal Highness — His Majesty’s Ill-humour — Reconciliation of the King and Prince — Sir Robert Walpole and his Abilities — His Private Life and Power as a Statesman - - - - • - 132 CHAPTER X. London Town under George I. — Some Playwriters, Poets, and Journalists — Tonson, the Publisher — Little Mr. Pope among the Booksellers — Some wicked Taverns — Gin Shops — Coffee and Chocolate Houses — Dryden at 4 Will’s ’ — Addison at ‘ Button’s’ — The Guardian and Spectator — Clubs and their Origin — The Kit-cat and its Members — Sir Godfrey Kneller — Swift and the October Club — The Scribblers’ Club— Pope’s Farewell to Town — Lighting of the City— Captain Fitzgerald and his Lady-love — Dissipation and Irreligion — Bill for the Suppression of Vice ’ - - - 156 CHAPTER XI. The King’s last Mistress — Miss Brett’s Parents — The King’s Departure — His Superstition — Curious Pro- phecy regarding his Death — Miss Brett gives a sample of her Authority — The King’s Death — The Duchess of Kendal — Stories circulated after the King’s Death — CONTENTS . IX The King’s Reign a Proem to the History of England under the House of Brunswick — His Character — Story of him told by his Turkish Valet — His sympathy with those imprisoned for Debt — George I. as a Husband, Father, King, and Man- - - - -184 CHAPTER XII. The King is Dead : God Save the King — Sir Spencer Comp- ton — Walpole’s Diplomacy — The Court at Leicester House — The Queen’s favour to Walpole — Lady Wal- pole at Court — His Majesty’s Subtlety — The Civil List fixed — ‘ Bustle of the Bees ’ - - - - 191 CHAPTER XIII. The Coronation — Description of the Scene — The late King’s Will — Hereditary Dishonesty of the Royal Family — Mrs. Howard and the King — Lady Sundon — Lord Hervey — Queen Caroline’s Influence — Mrs. Clayton and the Courtiers — She distributes Appoint- ments — Dorothy Dyves and her Lover — The Favourite’s Influence concerning Church Matters— Alexander Pope’s Revenge — Extract from Letters on Court Life ------ 199 CHAPTER XIV. The King’s Family — Prince Frederick at Hanover— His Proposed Secret Marriage — His Arrival in England -~Hated by his Parents— His Popularity — The Prince and Miss Vane — Lady Archibald Hamilton — The Prince wishes to get rid of Miss Vane — Feelings of the Royal Family towards him — His Passion for Music — His Proposed Marriage— Arrival of the Bride — The Marriage Ceremony - - - - -225 a CONTENTS . X CHAPTER XV. The Prince courts Popularity — The King’s Danger at Sea — Suspense of the Queen and Courtiers — Expected Birth of an Heir — The Prince carries his Wife from Hampton Court — A Royal Quarrel and its Results — The Prince’s Behaviour during the Queen’s Illness — Lady Middlesex — Reconciliation of the King and Prince — His Amusements, Illness, and Death — What the Preachers said — What the Ballad-makers CHAPTER XVI. William Duke of Cumberland — His first Campaign— Made Commander of the Forces — Battle of Fontenoy— De- feat at Lauffeld— Culloden — 4 Billy the Butcher’ — His Last Battle — Indignation of the Nation — His Amuse- ments— The Princess Royal — Her Marriage with the Prince of Orange— Curious Court Customs — Her Re- ception in Holland - - - - -275 CHAPTER XVII. The Princess Amelia— Her Love for Horses and Hunting — The Dukes of Newcastle and Grafton— The Princess at Bath— Society at the Wells— The Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey — The Princess Mary and Prince Frederick of Hesse— The King’s youngest Daughter - 285 CONTENTS . xi CHAPTER XVIII. PAGE Social Life at Court — The King's Love for Hanover — The Queen made Regent— The Court at Claremont — Mrs. Howard resigns her Appointment — The King visits Hanover again — Madame Walmoden — The Royal Letters — His Majesty returns — The Queen seeks Advice — Royal Birthdays — The Town becomes Dull — The King's Anxiety to leave England — Madame Wal- moden and the Garden Ladder — A ‘ Hard Lesson ’ — The Archbishop of York congratulates Her Majesty on her Sense ----- . 295 CHAPTER XIX. The King's Unpopularity— His Return — Court Reception on Sunday — The Poet Gay — The Duchess of Queens- berry and the King — Dean Swift and Her Grace — Her Majesty the Patroness of Poets — The Queen's Illness — c An 111 fhat Nobody knows of' — Her Majesty's Fare- well — Her Death — The King's Grief— Sir Robert Wal- pole and ‘ Moll Skerrett ' - 316 CHAPTER XX. The King's Sorrow abates — Lady Doloraine — Madame Walmoden comes to England — Is created a Peeress — His Majesty's Horror of Old Age — Gaiety of the Town — The King and Miss Chudleigh — The Opera — ‘ Gen- tlemen Directors' — Musical Parties — Some Ladies of Quality — Opera Singers and their Amours — Handel's Oratorios - 344 CONTENTS . xii CHAPTER XXL PAGE The Rising in Scotland — Jacobite Toasts — Lord Lovat’s Execution — George Selwyn’s Jokes — Whitefield’s Preaching — ‘ Those of Caesar’s Household ’ — The Earthquake and its Effects— Pictures of Social Life — Robberies — A Fashionable Vice — The King’s Death — His Will and Funeral ----- 364 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. CHAPTER I. Queen Anne’s Illness — Political Agitation — A Jacobite Council — The Queen’s Death — The Announcement made to the new King— Earl Dorset’s Message — Sophia the Electress — The King’s Carelessness perceptible — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Opinion of him — He leaves Hanover — Lands at Greenwich — The City prepares for his Arrival — His Entry into London — Appearance of the City — The King at St. James’s — Rejoicing of the Mob. During the last days of July, 1714, Queen Anne of blessed memory lay dying in Kensington Palace. These were troubled times in England, for the Ministry and the nation were alike divided in opinion as to whether James Stuart, sometimes called the Pretender, or George Lewis Guelph, Elector of Hanover, should sit upon the British throne. Now Queen Anne hated the House of Hanover, and, though secretly desiring the restoration of her brother, yet she was too staunch a Protestant and too timid a woman to openly aid him by any decisive act ; and a like hesitation, begotten of her example, actuating the Stuart adherents, the nation looked forward to ominous times and prepared for civil war. 1 2 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. A month previously the good Queen had offered the re- spectable sum of five thousand pounds for her brother’s 4 apprehension, dead or alive, if he were found in Great Britain or Ireland.’ Now, however, when death drew near, some feeling of remorse seemed to have touched her, and she lay writhing in mental and physical pain, calling out, 4 Oh, my brother, what will become of you ? Oh, my poor brother !’ Cabinet councils were held in the ante-room, almost within ear-shot of Her Majesty, where some stormy scenes were enacted; agitated crowds gathered in the streets; the lovers of peace prayed for her recovery at the daily ser- vices at St. Paul’s; and in the City, stocks rose at the rumours of her death and fell again at those of her recovery. Still she lingered, and the Privy Council sat night and day waiting for her death. When at last she became insensible, it assembled in the royal bed-chamber, crowded with grave physicians, weeping women, and disconsolate favourites, v The Queen lay deaf and blind to all around her ; all hope that her life would be prolonged was now at an end, and trusty ^ Secretary Craggs was despatched to Planover with the tidings that Her Majesty was dying, and that ail things were in readiness for the accession of the Elector, George Lewis Guelph. In a small chamber opening off the Queen’s, three gentle- men, all true Tories and staunch Jacobites — to wit, Lord Marischal, the Duke of Ormond, Captain-General of the army, and my Lord Bishop Atterbury — held secret council. Lord Marischal and the Bishop, who saw that the cause they espoused was in great danger, sought to make the Duke go boldly forward and proclaim James Stuart King of Eng- land ; but His Grace of Ormond lacked courage, and pro- posed that they should first consult the Council, to which proposal my Lord Bishop replied stoutly, 4 Damn it, you A DYING QUEEN. 3 know very well that things have not been concerted enough for that yet, and that we have not a moment to lose/ The moment, however, was lost, for the upholders of the Stuart cause made no movement. On Sunday morning, August 1 st, Lady Masham, once waiting-maid, now peeress, announced that the Queen was dead, and the tolling of the bell of St. Paul's proclaimed the fact to the silent and ex- pectant throngs that filled the streets. Two messengers were sent from England to Hanover ^ with the news of Her Majesty's death, the one to the new King, the other to the Earl of Clarendon, English Envoy Extraordinary. When the courier despatched to the noble Earl arrived in hot haste at his destination, he found that my Lord Clarendon was enjoying himself at a little supper given by a lady who had a reputation for two excellent things in their way — beauty and pleasure. My lord was / I immediately sent for, and on arriving home saw the courier, who handed him the despatches announcing the important news, and bidding him recognise George Lewis, Elector of Brunswick-Liineburg, Hanover, as his King ; whereon the v Earl, whose temper was not improved at being rudely called away from his supper, and, moreover, at learning that the Stuart House, of which he was a kinsman, had seemingly lost all chance of restoration, got back into his coach and drove with great speed to Herrenhausen, where His Elec- toral Highness was comfortably snoring in bed, all un- conscious of the new honours which had suddenly fallen upon him. However, the Envoy Extraordinary dared on this occasion to disturb His Highness's sacred slumbers just as, thirteen years afterwards, Sir Robert Walpole ventured to rouse the Prince of Wales from his afternoon nap for the purpose of conveying a like intelligence. My Lord Clarendon entered 1 — 2 4 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. the Elector’s bed-chamber at two o’clock in the morning, and, falling upon his knees on the floor, told him, as Baron Pollnitz informs us, that 4 so great a diadem was fallen to him ;’ after hearing which George Lewis turned on his side, and slept soundly until the next morning. The following day brought the Earl of Dorset to the Court of Hanover, who announced to the new King that the English nation waited with impatience to place the crown of Great Britain, France, and Ireland on his head ; and to in- form him that his accession had been received, and his title proclaimed, with an unusual appearance of joy and satis- faction ; . which statements, though not quite true, probably sounded well to the little Elector who had suddenly be- come, in the words of his English subjects, ‘A high and mighty prince.’ It will always remain an historical doubt if George Lewis seriously cared for the royal honours thrust upon him. He had passed his fiftieth year ; he had acquired settled habits, which the duties of his new dignity, taking him among a people of whom he knew little, would necessarily interfere with : moreover, he had been very comfortable in his native Hanover, which he always preferred to England, or indeed to any other spot on the globe. He was surrounded by a Court which was no better than it should have been, and by a people who had learned to care for him, notwithstanding that he levied heavy taxes on them, took little trouble to aid or elevate them, and was not disinclined to play the despot when opportunity offered. He was a dull man and a lover of peace, and, in his native city, his days passed by in placid monotony. He held a 4 drawing-room ’ daily at his Court, which was numerously attended in obedience to his desires ; his palace was capable of accommodating a much larger number of courtiers than St. James’s; his opera-house was THE NEW KING. 5 much finer than that of Vienna ; persons of distinction from V other Courts and countries frequently passed through Han- over, and stayed to pay him their respects ; he had a com- pany of French comedians to amuse him, and a seraglio of ^ fat and ugly women ; he knew nothing of the cares and re- sponsibilities of a great State, and, altogether, his electoral city unto him a kingdom was. Nature had given him but little ambition, and that little his love of ease and sensuality had completely destroyed. In early life he had done some soldiering, had killed some dozens of Turks, and fought under King William at Steen- kerke and Landen ; but on the death of his father he had returned to paths of peace, drank, slept, and gambled a great deal, and passed most of his time among the daughters of his nation, who have been described as having, ‘ literally, * V rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and necks, jet eyebrows ; to which may be added coal-black hair, all of which had a very fine effect, especially by candle-light.’ His election as King was solely founded on the choice of V the majority of Parliament ; the reason for which was v/ because he professed the Protestant religion. Admitting the male line of the House of Stuart to have ended in James II., the ‘right of blood ’ rested in the House of Savoy, through Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, daughter of Charles I. So that more than fifty persons, whose claims were nearer than that of the Elector, were quietly passed over. His mother, the clever Sophia, Electress of Han- \/ v over, was the youngest daughter of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, sister of Charles I., and granddaughter of James L, of England. Had Sophia survived Queen Anne, she Y would have been the first of the Hanoverian line to reign over England. At one period of her life she was a thorough Jacobite, and, during her cousin James's exile in St. Germain, 6 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. kept up a secret correspondence with him. However, when her chance of succession became apparent, she, with re- markable rapidity, changed her mind. When the Act settling the succession on her and her House had passed, the good Lords Halifax and Dorset were sent to convey the news to the Electress. A day was ap- pointed for the formal announcement, and Sophia received the peers with great ceremony. After delivering their credentials, the set speech was commenced announcing the high honour falling to her, when Sophia gave a start, and getting up, ran to a corner of the room, fixed her back against the wall, and stood there erect and stiff until the audience ended. My lords were too good courtiers to ap- pear surprised at such a seeming piece of eccentricity, but were human enough to betray some curiosity afterwards, when they learned from one of the electoral household that Sophia had started on catching sight of a picture of the Pretender, and had run across the room and stood before it in order to hide this counterfeit presentment of her kinsman, lest they should see and feel offended by its presence. Poor soul ! she never lived to have her ambition gratified, as she died about six weeks before Queen Anne. ‘ I could die happy/ she used to say, ‘ if I could only live to have engraven upon my coffin the words : “ Here lies Sophia, Queen of England.” * It was due to her influence that her son looked forward to his ultimate succession, but, she being removed, his in- difference became perceptible. It has been stated that, if any signs of disfavour had been made at his proclamation, George I. would never have taken the English sceptre in his hands, but would have stayed comfortably at home to eat, drink, and make merry as usual, and not bother his head about Parliaments and peoples that were strange to A COURTIER'S OPINION . 7 him ; but no such signs were made, and the English throne was lost to the Stuarts for ever. ‘ The late King, I am fully persuaded/ says Dean Lockier, after the death of George Lewis, ‘ would never have stirred a foot if there had been any strong opposition; indeed, the family did not expect this crown; at least, nobody in it but the late Princess Sophia.’ In a letter written by Marshal Schulenberg to Baron Steinghaus a few days before the Queen’s death, he gives a clear testimony to the King’s feelings on the subject in these words : 4 It is quite evident that George is pro- > foundly indifferent to the result of this question of the succession. Nay, I would even bet that when it really comes to the point he will be in despair at having to give up his place of residence, where he amuses himself with trifles, in order to assume a post of honour and dignity. He is endowed with all the qualities adapted to make him a finished nobleman, but he wants all those that are neces- sary to constitute a king.’ That remarkable woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was one of the attractions of the first George’s Court, gives her opinion of the King, whom she had many oppor tunities of studying, in this graphic sentence : ‘ He was more properly dull than lazy, and would have been so well contented to have remained in his little town of Hanover that, if the ambition of those about him had not been greater than his own, we should never have seen him in England ; and the natural honesty of his temper, joined with the narrow notions of a low education, made him look upon his acceptance of the crown as an act of usurpation which was always uneasy to him.’ After a month’s delay the new King, almost unwillingly, left his beloved Hanover with tears in his eyes, accom- v v panied by his mistresses, having left the comforting assur- _ s COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . ance to his subjects that it would not be long before he visited them again. With such evidence as already men- tioned of his reluctance to visit his new kingdom, it cannot be wondered at that he received the addresses of Parliament v with a calmness truly Teutonic, which at the time greatly surprised my good Lord Dorset. Those of his most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords temporal and spiritual in Parliament assembled, assured His Majesty that with thank- ful hearts to Almighty God they congratulated him on his peaceful and happy accession to the English throne, that with all their zeal and affection they would maintain the dignity of his crown, and with thankful hearts they besought His Majesty to give them the favour of his royal presence speedily, which they were persuaded, good, trusting, faithful Lords that they were, ‘ would be attended with all other blessings.’ 7 The address from the House of Commons followed suit, and, if George Lewis understood a word of it, he must have been vastly amused — for he was a man who enjoyed a good joke — when he was assured ‘ His Majesty's princely virtues gave them a certain prospect of future happiness.’ Without signs of joy or elation, he had prepared to visit the people who were represented as giving utterance to these endearing terms ; but the solemn coolness he preserved did duty for majestic serenity. Meanwhile, the Regency had the pleasure of announcing to the people ‘that His Majesty was hastening over to employ his utmost care for putting these kingdoms into a happy and flourishing condition.’ And so it happened that the royal yachts and a squadron of men-of-war were sent to Holland to convey the King to A his people. His Majesty, and a numerous suite of Germans, embarked on board the yacht Peregrin , , that, by the help of an east wind — which some wag afterwards said was never THE KING LANDS AT GREENWICH . 9 favourable to the English people — was wafted to Albion’s shore. The King was met at Gravesend by a thick English fog, which not only prevented his landing, but denied him the sight of his new kingdom. The yacht moved slowly up to Greenwich, where he landed, and where the Lords spiritual and temporal came in great force, and knelt down and kissed the right royal hand of His Sacred Majesty, who had been wretchedly sea-sick during the voyage, and whose temper and appearance were by no means improved by the malady. Here came the loyal citizens likewise, troop- ing in large crowds from London ; all anxious to see their future King, and to exercise their vocal powers in shouting huzzas. Cannon thundered, bells clanged, crowds cheered as the monarch landed, but in the midst of the excitement he remained calm and self-possessed as a German, or a sphinx, wishing that these good people who shouted at him would go their ways, and leave a poor old man, who had done nothing in the world to cause such enthusiasm, in peace. But the good people would not go their ways just then, and when they did, after shouting themselves hoarse, they repaired to the Ship Tavern, where a right loyal subject, re- joicing in the name of Thomas Sweetapple, had given notice in the press some weeks before that, 4 On the night His Majesty King George arrives, I will give to all loyal subjects a hogshead of the best French claret to drink His Majesty’s and the royal family’s health, at the dock on the back side of the said Ship Tavern, at eight o’clock precisely. Where also will be a bonfire, all sorts of musick, etc.’ His Majesty had landed on Saturday, and the next day the good citizens came down to Greenwich in still greater numbers to inspect their King. An old newspaper informs us, ‘ There was an infinite crowd of spectators at Greenwich to see His Majesty and the Prince, who were pleased to y/ V I V \/ V * v V M * V IO COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. expose themselves for some time at the windows of their palace, to satisfy the impatient curiosity of his loving subjects.’ It may seem somewhat singular that the first honour these loving subjects sought to confer on George Lewis was that of electing him a churchwarden. Yet we have it on the authority of the London Magazine for September, 1787, that ‘ George I., when landing at Greenwich, was elected church- warden. It became a matter of dispute whether a king could be a churchwarden, and it was debated in the Privy Council for two months. The Archbishop of Canterbury declared, “ he cannot be both,” but that he can take his choice, and his crown again after he had served.’ Meanwhile, the City prepared to receive its King, who was to enter in great pomp and state. No voice was raised against him, who had been styled, ‘The saviour of his people. The Earl Marshal issued his orders for the direc- tion of the procession; concerning which the following curious advertisement appeared in the Flying Post:— Whereas, pursuant to an advertisement in last Thursday’s Flying Post, several senior gentlemen, with their own natural white and grey hairs, resolve to do themselves the honour to ride in a body before King George on white steeds when His Majesty makes his glorious entry through this honour- able city. 1 hese are to give notice to all gentlemen either in town or country, whose hairs are of the same complexion, and who are desirous to attend in the same body, that they furnish themselves with white horses and white camlet cloaks ; and, as for those who have none of their own, ’tis not doubted but other loyal gentlemen, though not qualified by the colour of their hair to ride in the venerable body, will so far favour the design as to send their white horses and cloaks to the landlords of the following inns, who will be careful to return them safe and to pay the horse hire. SUCH SENIOR GENTLEMEN \ ii ‘Note. — That such senior gentlemen now in town, so qualified and disposed for the appearance, are desired to meet next Friday at Lloyd’s, which was formerly Read’s coffee house, within Ludgate, in order to consert the best methods for managing the affair. God save the King.’ On Monday, September 20th, 1714, the King made his y \J entrance into London. As early as two o’clock on that September afternoon, which had all the brightness of a ^ - summer’s day, the royal procession set out from under the broad boughs of the trees in old Greenwich Park, headed by four of the Knights Marshal’s men on horseback, who were followed by the coaches of esquires, no coach with less than six spanking horses, each one looking as proud as Punch at being permitted to join in the show. Then came the coaches of the knights bachelors with their red and * yellow panels, the latter colour, in compliment to the King, being the prevailing hue of the day ; these coaches were followed by the King’s solicitor and the King’s attorney, look- ing very solemn, and learned, and wise, as befitted their offices and the occasion ; after them the baronets and the younger sons of barons and the younger sons of viscounts, all point de vice and looking mighty smart in their periwigs and bright coloured velvet coats, with handsome swords ready to jump out of their sheaths at a moment’s notice to defend their own or the King’s honour. These same young gentlemen were followed by the grave Barons of the Ex- chequer, the learned Justices of both benches, the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls, the Privy Councillors, all grave men and worthy, without doubt. Next came the eldest sons of barons, the younger sons of peers, the eldest sons of viscounts, the Speaker of the House of Commons, the barons and the bishops, full of dignity, of majesty, and of grace likewise ; then the younger sons of dukes, the 12 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. eldest sons of marquises, the earls, the Lord Steward of the King's Household, my Lords Suffolk and Bindon as exercising the office of Earl Marshal, the eldest sons of dukes, the marquises, the Lord Grand Chamberlain of England, the dukes, the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord President of the Council, the Lord High Treasurer, the Archbishop of York, the Lord Chancellor, then His Sacred Majesty and the Prince in a gilt coach big as a state bed, emblazoned with the arms of England, surrounded by his faithful Germans, whose faces were the only homely and familiar objects the royal eye could rest on amidst the unaccustomed glare and pomp of the goodly show : finally the royal carriage was backed up by a troop of Horse Guards and Grenadier Guards. The cannons roar from the Tower when the procession starts, bells ring and clang as if seeking to drown each other's notes, or, not succeeding in that design, to make as much confusion as possible. The loyal citizens have come down to see the wonderful sight, and line the fields by which the procession must pass ; the boys climb up the trees, and, holding on by the branches, lustily shout out ‘God save the King,' but presently, when the procession is past, they are lost in clouds of dust, just as their loyal voices were drowned amidst the tramping of horses, the roll of coaches, the jangling of spurs, swords, and other military equipments. It is a gay sight — this royal procession — as it now moves nearer to the good city of London, and approaches St. Margaret’s Hill in Southwark, where the bells sound more numerous and noisy than those of Greenwich, the excite- ment is greater, the crowd more vast ; for here my Lord Mayor and the brave fathers of the City are to meet the King. Sure enough there arc waiting already a detachment HIS ROYAL PRESENCE . 13 of the Artillery Company in their new buff coats, and the City Marshals and City trumpets right gaily apparelled as* becomes them on this day, and all on horseback, and the sheriffs’ officers with javelins in their hands, and the Lord Mayor’s officers in their sombre black gowns, and the water bailiff on horseback, so may it please you, carrying the City banner right proudly, and attended by his servant on foot in coloured livery, and all the City officers on horseback, with their servants, in bright liveries, on foot. And there was the King’s banner borne by the Common Hunt, with his servant, likewise in livery, and likewise on foot ; and the Common Crier, in his quaint gown, and the City Sword- bearer, in his black damask gown and great gold chain, both goodly gentlemen, mounted on brave steeds, and the sheriffs and aldermen in all the splendour of their scarlet gowns, each attended by two servants in coloured livery, and, lastly, the Lord Mayor himself, the great City King, in his gown of crimson velvet, wearing his rich collar and jewel, looking, poor man, rather ill at ease, and perhaps with sundry fears of catching cold running through his mind, by reason of having his head uncovered There he stands, holding the City sword in his arms, with his four servants, in brand new liveries, looking on from a respectful distance as they wait behind ; and at either side of him the Garter King-of-Arms and the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod. When the King arrives at the spot where the City fathers await him, Sir Peter King, the Recorder, reads his fine speech, assuring His Majesty that the worthy citizens ‘ with impatience await for his royal presence amongst them to secure those invaluable blessings which they promise them- selves from a prince of the most illustrious merit.’ Whilst listening to so much eloquence, George Lewis nods his head judiciously from time to time, though it might as 14 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. well be the recitation of a chapter of the Koran in the original, or some verses of a Chinese poem, for all that he understands of it. His Majesty having given back the sword to the City King, the procession moves on again, whilst the trained bands of the city of Southwark and the militia of Westminster and His Majesty’s Foot Guards line the streets. The officers of the parishes between Greenwich and London had had timely notice given them to have the King’s highway mended and put in fit repair; and the Justices of the Peace in Surrey, my Lord Mayor of London, and the head bailiff of Westminster, had hints given them to have the streets through which the royal procession would pass 6 well cleansed from soil and filth,’ which precautions were by no means unnecessary in those days. On the day of the procession, Old London presented a splendid sight, but it was not splendid enough to move the King, who went through the routine of the day with an im- mobility of facial muscle and general placidness worthy of a better cause. The great guns boom out as he crosses London Bridge, with its row of quaint shops and houses at each side, and the cannons thunder in St. James’s Park in reply. London Town, with its hotels and coffee-houses, its narrow-windowed, high-pitched-roofed houses, its narrow streets, haply unconscious of dull uniformity, its wonderful signs and crooked byways, is dressed up for a holiday, and looks its best in the bright September sunshine. Business is suspended, and all the shops are closed ; the windows, balconies, and newly-erected scaffolds are crowded with eager faces that break into smiles and laughter at some action happening in the crowd below, or look with wonder as the procession moves past. From every window and balcony hang bright-coloured stuffs, and rich tapestries, and A GALA DAY. 15 carpets of many hues ; and all the spectators are dressed in gay colours, orders being given that none should appear in mourning on that happy day. Persons of quality are dis- tinguishable by their dresses of silk, satin, and velvet, decked with all the bravery of gold and silver brocade. Flags, banners, and arches cross the streets ; the bells in the City are ringing, the fountains run with wine. At St. Paul’s, the boys of Christ’s Hospital stand in full force, their blue gowns and yellow stockings marking them out from the dingier colours of the mob. The King stops, and one of the boys steps forward, and repeats an oration in good Latin, with which His Majesty was so pleased that he condescended to give the lad the honour to kiss his royal hand. Close by are four thousand charity children, boys and girls, on a raised platform six hundred feet long, all eagerly waiting to catch a glance of His Majesty and the Prince, and greet their royal ears with a hymn as soon as the sacred personages come within earshot of the four thousand voices. When the hymn has been sung, the procession moves on again ; there is renewed shouting ; mighty huzzas are sent up from the throats of the crowd, who would shout as loudly to-morrow, and toss their caps as high in the air for King James, if he would give them as good a show, and as much wine to drink and make merry over. George Lewis leans back in his coach, and wonders to himself why the people should make such a fuss and bother over him, whilst there remained fifty-seven heirs to the British throne, most of whom had a far better right than he, and none of them a lesser claim. It was almost eight o’clock in the evening when the King reached St. James’s Palace, where again the cannons fired a salute, and the procession broke up. The upholders of the 16 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. Hanover family have it all their own way to-day, and those who are supposed to favour the Stuarts must keep their tongues quiet and their brains free from hatching plots. The supporters of George Lewis are in great glee, and one of them, to wit, Colonel Chudleigh, must call out that one Mr. Allworth, who is a member of the House ot Commons, is a Jacobite ; upon which Mr. Allworth, who is in the royal procession, looking as loyal a man as any, is much concerned. When these two gentlemen have seen the King to his palace, nothing will satisfy them but they must fight ; for some words have passed between them, and the Colonel insists on blood being spilt. So they drive in their coaches to Mary-le-bone Fields, and then fight a duel, which ends tragically enough in Mr. Allworth’s death. When night came the fun and excitement were by no means over, neither was the ringing of bells, which pealed away as if they had not been at work all through the day, but were now as fresh and noisy as on a wedding morning. Bonfires were kindled, barrels of ale were tapped and emptied with great speed, and bands played through the City. At Spring Gardens, in St. George’s Fields, there was £ an extraordinary concert of vocal and instrumental musick, by good masters,’ where also a fat ox was roasted whole for the occasion, it £ being designed for diversion, and in order to drink the King’s health, whom God long preserve.’ Illuminations made the streets brighter than day ; fire- works were let off ; in St. Paul’s Churchyard was the repre- sentation of two burning dragons on one side, and on the other the motto £ Floreat Civitas,’ a spectacle which mightily pleased the mob, who laughed, and cheered, and drank the new King’s health, and were as merry as a mob could be. And so George I. came into a kingdom which was to be his henceforth. CHAPTER TI. The King’s first Visit to England in 1680 — Proposal for Queen Anne — The King’s Character — His Ignorance of the English Language — His Coronation — Change in the Feelings of the Mob — Anecdote of Baron Pollnitz — The King visits the City on Lord Mayor’s Day — Entertained at the Guildhall — Conduct of the Lady Mayoress — Eulogies on the King- Bitter Words — Pamphlets and Ballads of the Period — The King’s Heedlessness of Praise or Abuse. At one time George Lewis had been proposed as a suitor for the hand of the Princess — afterwards Queen — Anne, and for this purpose had visited England in 1680; but his suit, for some reason or other not clearly known, met with no success. One thing, however, is certain, that the Queen heartily disliked her Hanoverian kinsman even to the end of her days, and he never re-visited the kingdom over which she reigned until she had done for ever with all mortal likes and dislikes. The new King was not calculated to win popularity either by his manner or appearance ; neither was he in the least degree refined, dignified, or graceful, and consequently he was without any of those fascinations proverbial to the rival claimant to the throne. In statpre he was below the middle height, and inclined to corpulency, his face mild and dull of expression, with little pretension to good looks ; in disposi- tion slothful, gross, and avaricious ; m manner placid, without i8 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . indications of much intelligence, and usually inclined to be affable. ‘In private life he would have been called an honest blockhead/ writes Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ‘and For- tune, that made him a king, added nothing to his happiness, only prejudiced his honesty and shortened his days.’ He was ignorant of the English language, and scarcely under- stood a word of what his new subjects were saying around him. All conversations with his Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, were carried on in Latin, the King knowing no English, and the Premier neither German nor French, so that Walpole used to say he governed the nation by means of bad Latin. Even when George had spent years in Eng- land his knowledge of the language spoken by his subjects was almost as limited as on the first day of his arrival. Once when on his birthday his little grandson William, afterwards Duke of Cumberland, came to visit him, he asked the boy at what hour he rose. ‘ When the chimney- sweepers went about/ answered the Prince. ‘ Vat is de chimney-sweeper?’ asked the King, whereon his grandson, opening wide his eyes, said, reproachfully, ‘ What, have you been in England so long and do not know what a chimney- sweeper is ? Why, they are like that man there/ pointing, as he made this supplementary remark, to Lord Finch, who was remarkable for his dark complexion. In consequence of this ignorance, which he was too slothful or stupid to overcome, he never attendeo the consultations of his ministers, and hence arose what Earl Grey declared to be ‘ the highly beneficial practice of holding Cabinet councils without the presence of the sovereign.’ James Stuart, shortly after the proclamation of the new King, referred to George Lewis Guelph as ‘ a foreigner, ignorant of the laws, manners, customs, and language of England and Mr. Shippen, daring to hint at the same truth on one IGNORANT OF THE LAWS . 19 occasion in the House of Commons, was carefully locked up in the Tower. It was little less than a burlesque to declare that this ignorant, selfish old debauchee was, by God’s grace, King of Great Britain and Defender of the Faith. This latter title he adopted just as he would have assumed that of Cousin to the Moon, had it been the fashion of the inhabitants of these happy isles over which he reigned to bestow the like on their monarch. He had, in reality, no religious belief of any kind, and never defended the faith by any particular act in his life. Indeed, he belonged to a house that entertained broad and convenient views regarding religious creeds and forms, as we may judge from the fact that when a certain French courtier advised the Electress Sophia to bring up her daughter in the Roman Catholic faith, that most sagacious woman replied that her daughter had no religious belief just then, and what form it would take must totally depend on her future husband’s views ; and this liberality of the King’s mother was fully equalled by his father, Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover and Bishop of Osnaburgh, who built a church for such of his subjects as professed the Roman Catholic faith, and said that although he was too old to alter his creed, yet a change might prove beneficial to his House. One, at least, of his sons took this hint, and died a rigid Roman Catholic. For days after his triumphant entry into the City the new King was presented with addresses from the corpora- tions of towns all over Great Britain, whose names he had never heard in his life, and which he could not pronounce to save his head. He assured his people that he 4 took them kindly,’ with which flattering avowal they were com- pletely satisfied. Then came his coronation. Lady Cowper, who saw the ceremony from the pulpit 2 — 2 20 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . stairs, which she was forced to mount by the great crowd at Westminster Abbey, says, 4 One may easily conclude this was not a day of real joy to the Jacobites; however, they were all there, looking as cheerful as they could, but very peevish with everybody that spoke to them.’ She noticed in particular at the ceremony my Lady Dorchester, who had been mistress of James II., by reason of which she had been raised to the peerage, and who was consequently loyal to the Stuart cause. ‘ My Lady Dorchester stood underneath me/ writes this eye-witness, 4 and when the Archbishop went round the throne demanding the consent of the people, she turned about to me, and said, “ Does the old fool think that anybody here will say no to his question, when there are so many drawn swords ?” ’ On the day of his coronation the King saw Lord Boling- broke for the first time, that wily time-server, who had plotted with might and main against the accession of George Lewis, having before sought an opportunity of pre- senting himself to the King in vain. Shrewd old George, seeing a face in the crowd which he did not recognise, asked his name when he came in turn to pay His Majesty homage, and Lord Bolingbroke, hearing him as he went down from the throne, turned about and made three profound bows, which the King took for what they were worth. George Lewis had never before seen such an assemblage of bishops and divines, of peers and peeresses, statesmen, ministers, and soldiers. His stolidity was for once disturbed at the sight of such a concourse, and he declared, when the ceremony was over, that it 4 reminded him of the Day of Judgment.’ The loyalty of the mob, which had been so enthusiastic on the King’s entry, now suffered a change ; on this day A THIEVES' HARVEST. 21 there were riots in several places, affronts were offered to the King, and voices had been heard shouting i Damn King George !' The roughs and vagabonds were skilfully plying their trade and reaping a rich harvest from the crowd, and during the next week the Post Boy and the Daily Courier had many advertisements for articles stolen, for which, as was the habit of the times, the owners offered rewards and pledged themselves Go ask no questions.' A blue cloth cloak, several watches and seals, a ‘ silver-hilted sword, with a black string and japanned about six or eight inches long on the blade,' which disappeared ‘ on the north side of the choir, east of the organ loft,' a silver snuff-box, with an agate lid and a picture in the inside, gilded within, a ‘brown wig ty'd at the bottom,' were some of the articles stolen in and about Westminster Abbey during the ceremony of the coronation. But perhaps the most daring act was the robbery from Westminster Hall, concerning which the following notice ap- peared in the papers for a considerable time : — ‘ Whereas, several pieces of plate, as dishes, trencher- plates, knives, forks, spoons, and salts, together with pewter of all sorts, table-linen, and several other necessaries which were provided and used in Westminster Hall at His Majesty's coronation feast on Wednesday the 20th inst. (October) have been feloniously taken away from thence and are yet concealed, all persons who have any of His Majesty’s goods of what sort soever in their custody are hereby required forthwith to bring them to Whitehall, and there give notice of the same at His Majesty’s Board of Greencloth, upon pain of being prosecuted according to law ; and if any person or persons shall there make dis- covery of any such of His Majesty’s goods, so unlawfully de- tained by any person, whatsoever, they shall be well rewarded for the same/ / 22 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . Baron Pollnitz, who was, it would seem, rather given to gossip, says : 4 1 was told there was only one person, and that was a woman, who refused to own George I. for King, and that this happened upon the very day of the coronation, when a champion, armed from head to foot, entering into the banqueting-hall, and, according to custom, challenging any person whatsoever who did not acknowledge the Elector of Hanover as King of England, that lady threw down her glove, and with a very ill-timed effrontery made answer aloud that James III. was the only lawful heir of the crown, and that the Elector of Hanover was a usurper.’ But this story, though pretty, is doubtful, as no confirmation is given of it in any of the chronicles of the time ; indeed, it may possibly have been an exaggeration of my Lady Dor- chester’s words. Little more than a week after the coronation, came the Lord Mayor’s Day, when His Majesty received an invita- tion to the great civic banquet to meet the City fathers, who made vast preparations for the event. The King had never seen the Lord Mayor’s Show, and in order that he might witness the sight in all its glory, he, with the Prince and Princess of Wales, and a retinue of many wondering Ger- mans, took up his position in Cheapside, opposite Bow Church — the King sitting under a canopy of crimson velvet, with the Princess on his right hand and the Prince on his left, and the three young Princesses grouped in front, like a royal group in a waxwork exhibition. A goodly show was my Lord Mayor’s procession ; the citizens had a holiday to enjoy the sight in common with their King, and a right merry day it proved. The house from the balcony of which the royal party witnessed so much civic magnificence belonged to an honest Quaker, whom His Majesty, being in a gracious mood, and a little anxious to A GOODLY SHOW . 23 exercise some of the functions belonging to his royal office, offered to knight ; but he of the Society of Friends mildly shook his head, would not go down before His Majesty on bended knee, and declined the proffered honour. When the show was over, the sheriffs came in a body and con- ducted the royal family to the Guildhall ; the new Lord Mayor, William Humphreys, kneeling at the entrance, pre- sented the King with the City sword, who gave it back to his good keeping, whereon his City Majesty rose up and conducted the goodly company to the Mayor’s Court, and thence into the long gallery, where were present a great number of ladies, who had been bidden to the feast, and whom the King saluted, after which the royal family went to the Hustings Court, where they placed themselves beneath a canopy, and His Majesty, being a gallant man, called out that the Lady Mayoress should sit at the same table with him. The members of his suite, with the members of the Privy Council, the principal ministers of State, the foreign ministers, the judges and serjeants, occupied several tables in the hall. Then the Lord Mayor, having the honour to present the first glass of wine to King George, his excellent Majesty drank it at one gulp, and, smacking his royal lips, looked round to see whom he could knight, supposing, as the Daily Courant observed, 1 that some one should be pre- sented/ The hall was hung with rich tapestry for the occasion, ‘ there was a fine concert of musick ’ in the gallery, and the banquet was ‘ the most sumptuous and best ordered that has ever been seen, and the whole company declared an entire satisfaction.’ The Lady Mayoress was weighed down by pomp and state, and a black velvet dress with a train of many yards. It had been the custom for the Queens to kiss the Lady Mayoress when royalty accepted civic hospi- 24 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . tality, but her late Majesty of blessed memory had broken through the time-honoured custom, and there was much speculation as to whether the Princess of Wales would follow Queen Anne’s example, or give the royal kiss. My Lady Mayoress was in nowise anxious to forego the ancient privilege, and advanced towards the Princess with much ceremony and expectation ; but the royal salute was not given, and my Lady Mayoress, waxing indignant, called aloud for her train-bearer and her bouquet, by way of exhibiting the brief authority with which she had been newly invested. Perhaps she would have had the honour of feeling the royal lips brush her cheek, but that some mischievous spirit told the Princess and the King that the Lord Mayor had bor- rowed my lady for the day only to help him to do the honours proper to the occasion ; and they could only be persuaded afterwards that this was not the case by the con- sideration that, if he had borrowed her, he would have made a better selection. About eight o’clock the royal party left the Guildhall. A great crowd had assembled to see them drive away ; and that some violence occurred amongst the mob can be gathered from this curious notice which appeared in the Post Boy a few days afterwards : — ‘ A man had the misfortune on Friday, the Lord Mayor’s Day, to have a violent fall in the entry of Guildhall at eight o’clock at night, after His Majesty was gone from thence. Several boards were beaten down at the end of the entry, and he lost his hat, with a mourning hat-band upon it, his periwig, and an oaken-stick. Whoever will bring ’em to George Nash, Corn Chandler, in Wood Street, near Cripple-gate, shall receive twenty shillings, or pro- portionable for either. If they have disposed of the periwig, send him word where, and he will return the money, and SWEET PHRASES . 25 give ’em something for their pains; the wig being of his children’s hair.’ Though no blows were struck at George Lewis on his arrival, yet sharp-pointed and sure-winged missives were aimed at him and his family, and his mistresses, and his German favourites, and his two Turkish slaves, who had accompanied him to England, and who were attached to his royal person, through the press and pamphlets, the coarseness and bitterness of which were only equalled by the fulsome adulation of those devoted to extolling him and his cause. The specimens left us in the manuscripts and publications of the day cannot but make us smile when we think of the maliciousness on the one hand, and the sycophancy on the other, which dictated them, and make us feel glad that we live in times happily free from such unholy strife. A certain Mr. Croxall, who was no doubt a wily man in his day, published an ode containing numerous capitals, dedicated of course to a noble patron, in many ponderous phrases, which had a great success. It declared that it was no wonder winter had mildly passed, that spring had been serene and clear, ‘ that the summer ’scaped the mildew- blast,’ and, in short, that England had become a paradise, for all these strange and good things had happened, forsooth, because — ‘ Great George, like Phosphor from afar, Decked with resplendent beams, arises bright To cheer the expecting world with more prevailing light.’ According to the same ingenious and imaginative gentle- man — who was the author of ‘Two original cantos of Spenser’ (?) — Jove’s messengers paid various little attentions to the King. 26 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . 4 Some wreath his Brow with Rays all beauty bright, Some with ambrosial Fragrancies bespread His Royal Robes with glist’ring Glory dight ; Some with gold Circlets bind his Sacred Head, And o’er his manly Form unusual Graces shed. Joyn’d to his lofty Car each gen’rous Steed, Proud of his Charge, to Albion’s Wishes kind, Bounds o’er Germania's Fields with winged Speed. Swift in their course they leave the clouds behind, And that which drives the clouds, the nimble Wind. Onward they press, and eager in their Heat The Massy Bit with foaming fury grind ; Their reeking Sides bedew’d with frothy sweat, The hollow Plain resounds beneath their trampling Feet . 5 But all this is mild in comparison with other eulogistic terms. The little dull-visaged old man, who waddled when he walked, and was awkward in all his movements, was suddenly discovered to have ‘ a form god-like in beauty ; by one scribe, who was, moreover, quite convinced that the English language failed to give a verbal portrait of this mighty monarch. 6 Such majesty at its full length to draw Might the best master of the pencil awe.* Richard Steele adds his mite in declaring : — ( A finished prince, a hero fills the throne, Graced with a genius martial like her own { her 5 being Britannia. In one of the papers published a few days before his arrival, and probably by one who had never seen him, the King is described in sonorous prose, not wisely but too well. ‘ His person is comely and grave, 1 says this anonymous writer, ‘ his countenance has majesty and sweetness so mixed that nothing can be better suited to the throne of a king : he speaks readily rather than fluently, THE KING'S PICTURE. 27 apt and proper, without long premeditation or affectation of being quick. His temper is goodness itself, inexpressibly obliging, to the last degree courteous and kind, yet not lowered beneath the dignity of his birth. He is steady in counsel, sedate in resolving, vigorous in executing, brave and gallant in the field, wise and politic in the camp, enter- prising in matters of action, and yet of so calm a courage that he who dares do anything that is fit to do, can never be in danger of precipitating into what is impracticable to be done. In short, if it may be said of any man in Europe, it may be said of His Majesty that he is born for counsel and fitted to command the world.’ After this it is somewhat curious to reverse the medal and learn that the self-same King can be styled by his subjects ‘the jest of Europe and the factions’ tool,’ that his arrival in England can be compared to the seven plagues of Egypt, and that in plain language he is ‘ Covered with crimes of deepest dye, Murder, usurpation, tyranny/ One ballad, which enjoyed a wide circulation, said— ‘ If Queen Anne had done justice, George had stil Over slaves and German boobies reigned ; On leeks and garlick still regaled his fast In dirty dowlas shirts and fustians dressed/ Nothing, indeed, could equal the venom of the lampoons that were spread near and far, sung in the streets, and passed from hand to hand by the very courtiers. An epigram, preserved in the Lansdowne manuscripts, was to be found in all quarters of the town, and set forth — ‘ When Israel first provok’d the living Lord, He punished them with famine, plague, and sword, 28 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . Still they sinn’d on. He in His wrath did fling In' o thunderbolt among them — but a king, A George-like king, was heaven’s severest rod, The utmost vengeace of an angry God. God in His wrath sent Saul to punish Jewry, And George to England in a greater fury ; For George in sin as far exceeded Saul As ever Bishop Burnet did St. Paul.’ A pamphlet, remarkable for its freedom, alludes to the King as 4 a Hanoverian rat, of a small size, being just come over and very lean, and had what the French call a mine affamee , but at the same time so voracious for food there was nothing like it in any animal whatever : for not only doth it digest iron, but steel, brass, pewter, tin, copper, silver, and gold (of the two latter it is particularly fond), and, in fine, everything that comes within its clutches, and every animal it can overcome without danger.’ The King’s mistresses were spoken of in the freest and grossest language ; his German ministers were termed 4 pimps and whelps and reptiles,’ and the Prince of Wales and other members of the royal family came in for their share of abuse likewise. Nor was this spirit alone confined to London; it seemed to take to itself wings and spread all over the country. In Exeter one particularly obnoxious ballad was discovered, entitled 4 Nero the Second,’ which declared — ‘ George has usurped our royal James’s throne,’ and added, ‘ Free-born Britons, since a tyrant reigns, Assert your liberties, shake off your chains. 1 The printer of this, one Philip Bishop, was tried, found guilty, heavily fined, and imprisoned. THE KINGS COMPANIONS . 29 The war of words waged hot and strong. Sedition was openly uttered in the Court, and posted on the walls in the streets ; dissension was rife not only amongst statesmen, but amongst the meanest of His Majesty’s subjects, not only amongst the laity, but amongst clergymen of all ranks; and the pulpit became a political platform until a proclama- tion was issued forbidding 4 the mention of politics or subjects verging thereon in sermons/ But whilst all this hate, malice, and uncharitableness raged, and pamphleteers and writers of lampoons caricatured his person and spoke vile things of his actions, His Sacred Majesty turned a deaf ear to them, and consoled himself through many hours of the day by the sweet companionship of his ugly, fat mis- tresses. These ladies, for his better diversion, cut out figures in paper, whilst he, forgetful of the cares of State, lit his pipe and placidly smoked, now and then laughing heartily at some coarse joke of Kilmansegge’s, or applauding uproari- ously when Schulenburg had, in cutting out a figure, hit on some peculiarity of feature or form in a courtier or minister. CHAPTER III. Pictures of the Period — The Fashionable Beaux — Their fine Speeches — Their Courtesy, Dress, Love of Wit, and Re- partee — Carelessness of Politics — Jack Spencer and his Brother — An Afternoon in Town — At the Play-houses — The Masculine Beau — Exhibition at the Tennis Court in St. James’s — A Riot in Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre — Rich, the Manager — The Ladies of the Period — On the Mall. Whilst politicians wrangled and metaphorically shook their stout fists in each other’s faces, the beaux about town, and men and women of quality who figured at the Court, led a life as merry as could be, as the records of the times show us. Society in those days was a wonderful institution, and we scarcely know whether to grieve or laugh over the pictures it presents ; they are full of life and colour, and are certainly a curious study, and so it is better to stand and stare at them for awhile, smiling instead of frowning. The beaux were effeminate in their graces, magnificent in their dress, luxurious in their vices. Their speeches were crowded with dainty compliments, their movements dis- tinguished by a graceful ease which Colley Cibber describes as ‘the stateliness of a peacock.’ The courteous traditions and elegant manners of the Stuarts yet lingered with them, too soon to be eradicated in later generations under the influence of the gross habits and brusque bearing of the German Gueiphs. THE DAINTY BEAUX . 3 1 Wonderfully dainty these pretty gentlemen looked in their well-combed periwigs, their coats powdered half way down the back, their waistcoats of coloured silk or satin richly embroidered with gold or silver lace, their velvet breeches and coloured stockings, and their great silver-buckled shoes. See how daintily they trip along the Mall, their handsomely ornamented swords dangling by their sides, their scented lace handkerchiefs hanging with an air of carelessness from their pockets, their well-gloved hands arranging their cravats or securing the patches upon their faces. The chief object of their lives was to dress handsomely, enjoy intrigues, cultivate wit, and patronise the play-house or the Grub Street author. To give utterance to a piece of smart repartee, wear the newest cut coat, or pay court to some notorious mistress, were advantages for which they would have given one of their ears, if such a donation would not have disfigured the beauty they so much prized. They composed epigrams, wrote lampoons and libels, talked scandal — the broader and coarser the better, — and indited poetic and amorous verses and little notes to the mistresses with whom they believed themselves in love ; which missives they perfumed, tied with ribbons of favourite colours, and had them conveyed by mysterious ways, which latter stroke of diplomacy was believed to add considerably to the desired height of fascination. As a rule, they cared nothing for parliaments or politics, so long as they could deck themselves out in gay plumage, compose sonnets, and play cards till the small hours with my Lady Betty or Sal Salisbury of gay renown. They never wasted their elegant leisure or soiled their delicate hands with the inky sheets of the Tatter , Gazette , or Spectator ; they enjoyed wit coming in all its full first flavour from the lips of professional humourists ; they were elegant conver- 32 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . sationalists, effeminate triflers, graceful gentlemen, and as a rule heartless lovers, who would sacrifice the fame of the woman they professed to adore for the sake of a well-turned phrase or a sparkling bon mot at the expense of her honour. It was generally the habit of the beau to remain in bed until midday, where he received visitors, being habited for the occasion in a cambric shirt elaborately trimmed with handsome lace, usually the handiwork of some fair admirer, having his long periwig carefully powdered and arranged with an eye to effect over the pillow. At noon he languidly rose, and having bathed his face in washes guaranteed by the quacks to make it beautiful — if not for ever, at least for a day — put tiny patches on cheek and chin, rubbed essence of orange or jasmine on his eyebrows, soaked his handker- chief in rose water, and arranged and disarranged his cravat for an hour or so before the mirror ; he was then ready for his dainty little dinner. From this meal the roast beef of Old England, the boiled mutton of equally ancient Wales, or pork, the detested of Jews, were conspicuous by their absence, they being meats too gross for his appetite. Dinner being over, a chair was called, for the fine gentle- man seldom vouchsafed to walk. Indeed, according to Dr. John Brown, a worthy divine, ‘ no man of fashion can cross the street to dinner, without the effeminate covering and conveyance of an easy chair.’ Jack Spencer and his brother Charles, who afterwards succeeded to the Marlborough title, being men of this type, never condescended to ‘ dirty their fingers with silver ’ when paying for their conveyance ; and occasionally it vastly diverted these young gentlemen to see the chairmen fight for the honour of carrying them, the rogues knowing quite well that a guinea instead of a shilling would reward them, no matter how short the journey. The beau usually had himself conveyed to one of the coffee- SPENDING A MORNING . 33 houses, which at this hour were crowded with men of all degrees. At ‘ Wills’,’ which will be mentioned at greater length further on, he will be sure to meet the corpulent Mr. Gay, the poet, attired ‘ in silver loops and garments blue,’ who is now high in favour at the new Court, or Barton Booth, the Drury Lane actor, or Dennis, the critic, little Mr. Pope’s enemy. Mr. Congreve, whose ‘ Way of the World ’ has been hissed off the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, is cer- tain to be there, playing the fine gentleman to his heart’s delight ; and if he chances to take the air in the Park, and leaves Mr. Colley Cibber behind, that sharp-tongued gentle- man will be sure to take the opportunity of telling his hearers how the great Monsieur Voltaire called to pay his respects to Mr. Congreve, and make him some fine compliments on his plays, but the author, affecting to think little of them, told the French philosopher he had given up the writing of comedies, and wished to be visited not as an author, but as a gentleman ; on which Monsieur Voltaire had said that if he had only been a gentleman, and not an author, he would not have troubled himself to have called on him. Then old Colley Cibber takes a huge pinch of snuff, shakes his great wig, and chuckles with comfortable laughter at the discom- fort which this answer must have given his brother — or rather rival — playwright. Presently in comes Mr. Swift, the sharp-tongued Irish Dean, his pockets filled with papers and his head with plots, and by the time he has sipped his coffee and repeated a biting epigram or two, which he pretends to have heard from a friend just as he was coming up Piccadilly, but which in reality he had set afloat on the town a week ago, it is time for our friend the beau to hasten towards Five Courts, at the lower end of St. Martin’s Street, near Hedge Lane, where is, as the advertisement reads, ‘ Mr. Rymus, lately come from 3 34 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. the Court of France, who has brought with him a complete company of rope-dancers, and joined with the Widow Barne’s company : where you will see performed the best of rope- dancing, vaulting, and slack rope, some particular Italian performances, and especially the Ladder, danced by Mr. Harvey, the only master of Europe. You will be entertained by a good concert of musick, and the diverting humours of your old friend Pickle Herring, with a new dance to be danced after the French way, which has not yet been per- formed on our stage. We shall endeavour to entertain the Quality every day with fresh diversions, the lowest price six- pence, pit eighteenpence, stage half-a-crown.’ If he does not patronize the entertainment at Five Courts, he may journey towards Lambeth Wells, where, c at the desire of several gentlemen and ladies, will be choice musick, with French and country dances, for the benefit of Captain Hill. Note that, for the better encouragement of the above said Captain Hill, a gentleman will perform a solo upon his harp, who is particularly well known to be famous on that instrument. A scaramouch and harlequin by two young gentlemen, and the countryman’s dance. To begin at two o’clock, and continue till nine.’ To keep up his character as a man of pleasure, the beau puts in an appearance in the evening at the playhouse, where he exhibits himself, first at one side, and then at the other, finally condescending even to enter the pit, in order that he may become the object of more general attention. Here he gets up on the benches between the acts, whilst the candles at the footlights are being snuffed, that he may view the house through an opera-glass, which had at this time not long come into fashion. Then he bows to such persons as have the happiness of his acquaintance, and exhibits his handsomely dressed person to his uttermost 35 •oh, MADAM , RENOUNCE ME / satisfaction. It was usual for him, indeed, to be seen at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields play-house, as well as at Drury Lane; not that his love of the drama, legitimate or otherwise, induced his visits, but by reason of its being fashionable to be present at many performances. Indeed, it was part of his role to show his contempt or indifference to the play and players ; and, when the curtain rose, it was the custom of this super- fine gentleman to turn his back on the stage, as if he were insufferably bored. If by chance he condescended to notice the performance, it was merely that he might have an opportunity of saying aloud to one of the fairer sex — with whom perhaps he was anxious to become acquainted — ‘ Dem me, madam, here’s a dem’d play ! Madam, how can your ladyship sit it ? The devil take me if I could not write a better extempore !’ That he could not write a better was a certainty, yet his satanic majesty vouchsafed not to take him at his word, to the world’s loss. Before the play is over, out whips my beau, and it being yet little more than seven o’clock, betakes himself to the Park, where he may meet some lady in hood and mask anxious for adventure and diversion, to whom my fine beau advances, whether he has the advantage of her acquaintance or not, and with the agreeable freedom of the time permissible to- wards masks and hoods, commences, c Oh, madam, renounce me if I am not ready to expire !’ To which the masked one makes reply, ‘What is the cause of your distress, sir?’ ‘ Stap my vitals, madam,’ he answers, ‘ but I’ve been to the play-house, and the fellows there made me almost choke with laughter.’ And to revive himself he takes out his gold snuff-box, set with pearls, having on the inner side of the lid a coloured picture of some undraped goddess or charming houri, and sniffs a few grains of the contents with an exquisite grace, begotten of long practice. Then, offering 3—2 36 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. his arm to the mask and hood, they saunter forth upon their pleasant path. The more masculine beaux, though having many qualities in common with their more superfine brethren, were a different style of gallant. They were fond of picking quarrels, being mighty dextrous in the use of the sword, and had a right ready will to drink a bottle of good wine when and where they could. They were not much given to frequent coffee or chocolate houses, where the wits and scribblers and politicians prevailed in large numbers, but found it far more congenial to their tastes to witness ‘ trials of skill at the bear- garden at Marrow Bone Fields, at the backside of Soho Square, at the Boarding House, between David Bane, North Briton, master of the noble science of defence, and Timothy Buck, of Clare Market, master of the said science.’ When the trial of skill is over, the beau will step down into the ring, and perhaps put on the gloves, to the delight of the crowd, and, after a few rounds, carry away one of the masters of the noble science to a neighbouring tavern to share a bottle of wine and spend the evening in his company and that of some kindred spirits. The Tennis Court in St. James’s Street, Haymarket, was an entertainment where the masculine beaux — as we must call them for the sake of distinction — were to be found in numbers. The entertainment of this court consisted of the performances of a vaulting company, some rope-dancing, and the exhibition of a 'stiong man,’ who was agreeable enough to allow six men with sledge-hammers to break a stone of four hundredweight on his breast, and afterwards, to show that he was tar from being disabled by the recent exercise performed on his breast, with one hand held a horse sus- pended by a chain in mid-air, to the vast satisfaction of his audience. The cock-fight, too, was a favourite pastime with A GENUINE STAGE BATTLE. 37 these gentlemen of quality, who betted large sums on their favourite birds, and looked on at the sport with great delight. It was sometimes the good will and pleasure of these beaux to get up a riot in one of the play-houses, and we have an instance of this in an occurrence which took place in the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre a few years after George Lewis came to England. Some of these young men, among whom was a noble peer, entered the play-house in a right noisy manner, and commenced making audible comments of by no means a flattering character on the actors and actresses, and causing a general disturbance. Rich, the manager, after a while, stepped forward, and administered a mild rebuke. This was what the beaux required. Their blood was up at the idea of being reprimanded by a mere playing-fellow, and the noble peer before mentioned, to show the hereditary valour of his house, jumped on to the stage and administered a resounding smack to the managerial face, which Rich bravely returned with interest. This was more than was expected, and far more than could be tolerated. The other beaux at once rushed on the stage, oversetting the footlights, drawing their swords and swearing they would run the manager through the body. Rich, however, had stout adherents in the members of his company, who likewise drew their swords and defended their manager bravely. In a moment the whole house was in wild confusion. Women screamed, and rushed out, the instruments in the orchestra were overturned and smashed, half the lights were knocked down and extinguished, people climbed from the pit into the boxes; those in the gallery, delighted at the prospect of such a gratuitous sight, cheered lustily, and, amidst the general uproar, swords were heardclashing, and the voices of the combatants swearing. It was a genuine 33 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS, stage battle. At last the fine gentlemen began to get worsted in the fray ; the actors drove them at the point of the sword from the stage to the pit, and from the pit out into the street. Here the beaux, pulling themselves together, rushed into the house, bent on destruction, tore down the curtain, cut the velvet upholstery of the boxes, broke the chairs, smashed the sconces, and would have burned the house to satisfy their vengeance, but that one of the gallant actors — Richard Quinn — supported by a body of constables, came down on them, brought them to the lock-up, and finally to what did them duty as their senses. After this memorable riot, the King commanded that soldiers should guard the play-houses in future, whence arose a custom that became time- honoured. Under the friendly shades of night, the beaux of this species were at their best : then, drunk as lords after the day's pleasure, they went through the streets shouting, knock- ing down the stout watchman with a hearty will, locking him up in his box, and rolling it about, smashing windows with a recklessness that was magnificent, swearing great oaths that had a fierce sound, and playing such tricks as made them the terror of the town. The ladies of the period were as frivolous and pleasure- loving as were the sterner sex. In all ages men’s manners and morals are shaped and fashioned according to women’s ideals ; and, under the early years of Hanoverian rule, the fairer sex seemed at best to entertain but a poor opinion of morality. $ Intrigues were the order of the day ; faithlessness to the highest and most sacred duties looked on merely as a pleasant pastime. For a married woman not to have a history was indeed to be sadly out of fashion. The language which even the finest ladies wrote, spoke, and listened to with ap- probation was coarse and indecent to a degree , and the 39 ‘ TOO MUCH PHILOSOPHERS stage, as the mirror of the times, reflected the most objec- ^ tionable characteristics of the age. Baron Pollnitz, the intelligent foreigner before mentioned, speaking of them, says, * The ladies here have little to employ them : their amusement being to give and receive visits ; to go often to Court ; to have the pleasure of being seen, which really is of all pleasures that which they seem to take most delight in. They turn out in a morning with a black velvet mask on their faces, a coif on in form of a hat, with the brim down, a round gown and a white apron, and in this trim they go to the Park, or where else they please. They take the air very much on horseback ; in short, they do what they have a mind to. Meantime the husbands are seldom of their parties, and trouble themselves very little whither they go, being too much philosophers, and of too good sense, to v j make their honour dependent on the virtue of their wives. . . . When they go out in a deshabille, they commonly put on a camlet cloak as long as their petticoats, which is closed before, and on each side there’s a slit through which they put their arms ; they have withal a hood of the same stuff as the cloak, which is tied under the chin with a coloured ribbon. Nor is this dress unbecoming to the sex, for ’tis very often used by the citizens’ wives and daughters, and is also much worn among the gay ladies when they go upon intrigues with their lovers ; at which time they repair, thus rigged, on board certain wherries that carry them to houses of entertainment designed for such interviews.’ When they went out at noon, the Mall, situated in St. James’s Park, was the principal promenade, which at that hour was always crowded by persons of quality, and those desiring to become fashionable. Here the royal family often came, especially the Prince and Princess of Wales, attended by halberdiers in showy uniforms of scarlet, with 40 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. frontings of blue velvet and gold lace, and black velvet caps ornamented with white feathers, making in all a goodly dis- play. After dinner the fine ladies paid rounds of visits, drank tea, talked scandal behind their fans, damned a few reputations, and then with lighter hearts prepared for the opera, the Court drawing-rooms, or some private assembly. Such were the belles and beaux under the first Georges. • CHAPTER IV. No Queen on the English Throne — The King’s Marriage to Sophia Dorothea — Madame Platen and her Plots — Madame Schulenburg — Count Konigsmark — His Tragic Death — George Augustus obtains a Divorce — Sophia Dorothea’s Imprisonment and Death — The King’s Mistresses — Madame Schulenburg created Duchess of Kendal — Madame Kilmansegge — The Ladies of the House of Platen — German Favourites at the English Court — Madame Platen the Younger. Whilst the first of the Hanoverian monarchs reigned there was no Queen to share his throne, his wife being kept a prisoner in the Castle of Ahlen, as was called the half-ruinous brick and wood farm-house that stood by the melancholy river Aller, in a black and almost deserted district of the Duchy of Zell. Thirty-two years before his accession to the English throne, George Lewis had married his first cousin, Sophia Dorothea of Zell, for the purpose of re-uniting the family dominions. Sophia Dorothea, daughter of George William, Duke of Zell, was in her sixteenth year, when, against her inclina- tions, and notwithstanding that she had formed a previous attachment to the young Crown Prince of Wolfenbuttel, she was married to George Lewis Guelph. The Court of Han- over — her new home — as has been already hinted, was thoroughly licentious. Her father-in-law, Ernest Augustus, 42 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . Bishop of Osnaburgh and Elector of Hanover, was a man whose life was devoted to pleasure, and whose mistresses openly lived beneath the same roof, and shared almost the same honours as his wife — without much interference from her. One of these women, Madame Platen, wife to his Prime Minister, was especially vile, clever, and unscrupulous, and exercised a powerful influence over her aged lover. Her sister, Madame Busche, was the acknowledged mistress of his son, George Lewis. When the young bride, who was extremely beautiful, arrived at Hanover, these two women regarded her with all the malignity of their vile natures, and soon commenced plotting to injure her, so far as they could. From the first George Lewis betrayed no love for his young wife ; he had already proved himself an apt imitator of his father’s vices, and even at this time was by nature brutal, degraded, and little capable of understanding or appreciating the delicacy and charm of the woman to whom he was united. His manners had all the roughness, his language the coarseness, and his habits the freedom of the camp in the latter part of the seventeenth century ; and in person he was by no means attractive or likely to win the affections of any woman. It was plain from the first that for Sophia Dorothea there was little chance of happiness, and yet the J earlier years of her married life went by smoothly enough. She gave birth, in 1683, to a son (afterwards George II. of England), and subsequently to a daughter, who became Queen of Prussia. By her unerring conduct, and her gentle disposition, she succeeded in winning the esteem and friend- ship of her father and mother in-law. However, she was not long destined to enjoy peace. Madame Platen and her sister looked on her with daily Increasing envy ; the former saw that the old Elector enter- 43 * SAVE MY GOOD NAME / tained a regard for his daughter-in-law, which she feared might ultimately weaken her own power over him, an end she by no means desired. Madame Platen, being a wily woman, and knowing full well the weaknesses of the House of Hanover, infamously sent for her daughter, and estab- lished her at Court in the hope of making her George Lewis’s mistress, and thus separating him from his wife. Madame Platen’s, daughter was young, her manners agreeable, and she was not without wit. The consequence was that the too susceptible heart of George Lewis, which was never difficult to enflame, was smitten by her charms, and he quickly offered to make her his mistress, a position she then refused, simply because she was in love with a merchant named Kilmansegge, whom she shortly afterwards married to save herself from social ruin. Some time afterwards, how- ever, she deserted her husband to accept an offer she had once declined. Meanwhile Madame Platen, who was not disheartened by the failure of her plot, through what she considered the foolishness of her daughter, brought Madame Schulenburg, who was maid-of-honour to the old Electress, under George Lewis’s notice, and Sophia Dorothea soon had the mortifi- cation of seeing him pay this woman the attention which he denied her. To increase the breach which this knowledge caused, Madame Platen and her minions left nothing undone. On the one hand they openly boasted of their conquests, on the other they traduced her good name not only to her hus- band but to the courtiers. Overhearing one day some vile piece of slander which they had whispered concerning her, she hastened to her husband, and asked him, with tears in her eyes, to defend her honour from the attacks of these women, but he brutally laughed at her. Rendered almost mad by such treatment, and for the moment gaining courage, 44 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. she upbraided him with the wrongs which he had done her, and which she had borne in silence, on which our future King rushed at her, struck her, and would have probably strangled her in his passion, if her cries had not brought timely assistance. Shortly after this, Count Konigsmark came to Hanover on an evil day, and was appointed to the post of Captain of the Guards. He had known Sophia Dorothea from infancy, and at one time had been spoken of as an approved suitor for her hand. In person he was remarkably handsome, in figure graceful, polished from his intimacy with almost every European Court, a gay and gallant soldier, and, in every possible way, a complete contrast to George Lewis. On his arrival, the time-honoured mistress of the Elector, Madame Platen, fell in love with him ; her heart, which had been so often and so readily captivated, was once more con- quered by young Konigsmark, and she soon discovered means to make him aware of the fact; but the Count, though a man of by no means rigid morals, remained blind to her elderly charms. He even laughed at her wiles, and made mention of her name with more familiarity than politeness in many amusing sketches before the courtiers, all of which were faithfully repeated to her again. She felt herself a woman scorned, which we are informed on very excellent authority is a dangerous thing, and she, thirsting for vengeance, waited for some means of putting it into execution. This, unhappily, presented itself to her all too soon. Sophia Dorothea, de- serted by her husband, subject to the insults of his mistresses, and separated from her old home, welcomed the society of a man whose presence brought back to her the memory of happier times, and whose agreeable manners and society helped her to forget for a while her present misery. That 45 SOLDIER AND COURTIER. the friendship which was renewed between them at this time ever led to any closer intimacy, it is impossible to say, for those who have written on the subject differ as widely as the hemispheres in their opinions of her innocence. The Count was a courtier and a man of the world, who had not been innocent of intrigues, which on the one hand might favour the idea of her guilt; but on the other, when, after her divorce, she received communion once a week, she never omitted to make a solemn protestation of her inno- cence. Her husband was, however, glad of the opportunity of ridding himself of a wife whom he had never loved, and now detested. But, whether she was guilty or not, her friendship for Count Konigsmark served Madame Platen as a means of visiting her hatred on both of them when her plot was fully ripe. George Lewis at this time was absent from Hanover, and Madame Platen was obliged to confine her poisonous insinu- ations against the Count and Sophia Dorothea to the old Elector, whom she found harder to convince than she had anticipated. He declared that, before believing his daughter-in-law guilty, he would require proofs of her sin, but added that, if such could be given, he would not hesi- tate to punish Count Konigsmark. Therefore Madame Platen, nothing daunted, caused a note late one night to be left in the Count’s apartment, summoning him to the Prin- cess’s rooms, which, on reading, he without hesitation hastened to obey ; no sooner had he fallen into this trap than Madame Platen rushed to the Elector, told him that the Count was secreted in his daughter-in-law’s apartments, and demanded a guard for his arrest. To this he assented, called a guard, told them to obey Madame Platen’s instruc- tions, and take prisoner the person she should point out to them, and, if necessary, to use force. 46 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. This evil woman was quite satisfied now ; she secreted herself and the guards in a long hall, through which the Count must pass on his way to his rooms, and, in due time, hearing Konigsmark’s footsteps approaching, she told them to fall on the man who advanced. It was late at night ; the great hall was seemingly dark and deserted, and as Konigsmark came along, three men suddenly sprang upon him. He stepped back, and, sus- pecting some foul play, drew his sword ; they attacked him furiously, he defended himself bravely, and wounded two of them. This unequal fight of three to one was sharp and brief ; his sword soon snapped, and he was at the mercy of the guards, who, maddened by the wounds they had received, flung him to the ground, when they stabbed him several times. Before he died, his eyes opened once, and fell upon Madame Platen, who had watched the encounter, and was now glaring down at him, fiend-like, with malignity and triumph in her face. He raised himself for a second, and cursed her; she placed her foot upon his mouth, and crushed his lips with her heel. When she looked at him again, he was dead. The body was at once taken and bricked up in a wall, where long afterwards George Lewis discovered the skeleton on making some changes in the Hanoverian palace. It has been stated by Archdeacon Coxe that George Lewis obtained a divorce from the Ecclesiastical Consistory in Hanover, which was passed on the 25th of December, 1694. This Consistory was composed of laymen and ecclesiastics, all of whom were puppets of the Prince, and, before de- livering sentence, were, it is believed, bribed. At the hear- ing of the case it is well worth noting that no mention was made of the murdered Count Konigsmark. The suit was brought forward nominally because of Sophia Dorothea’s IF SHE WERE INNOCENT. 47 desire of separating from her brutal husband, whom she refused to live with after this tragedy. The Court gave George Lewis Guelph full permission to marry again, 6 Since/ said the decree which it issued, ‘ in similar cases of desertion, it has been permitted to the innocent party to remarry, which the other is forbidden. The same judicial power will be exercised in the present instance in favour of His Serene Highness the Crown Prince. ’ In the last years of the King’s life, he is said to have invited her over to England, and would have entered into a reconciliation with her, but she refused his advances, and declared that, ‘ if she were innocent, he was unworthy of her; and, if she were guilty, she was unworthy of him.’ On the King making a further application to her, Lady Suffolk tells us Sophia Dorothea refused to hear him unless he would first publicly beg her pardon for the grave wrongs he had done her, adding that ‘ what most afflicted her was the disgrace that would be brought on her children ; and, if she were only pardoned, that would not remove it.’ Her death took place on the 2nd of November, 1726. It was merely announced in the Gazette that the Duchess of Ahlen died at her residence, and no notice was taken of the event at the English Court, but that of Prussia went into mourning, the Queen being daughter of Sophia Dorothea. When King George heard of this he was furious, and loaded his daughter with a torrent of abuse in all the freedom of guttural German. The Prince of Wales had always espoused his mother’s cause, and on her death this verse, supposed to express his sentiments on the subject of mourning, was freely circulated : — ‘ A mother dead, and am I from the throne Commanded not to show myself her son? 48 CO UR 7 LIFE BELOW STAIRS. Well ! since the decent sable I’m denied For her, my parent on the surer side, Remember, George, ’twill be my turn one day, This, and all former favours to repay ; And when that long-expected time I see, Let Kendal, at her peril, mourn for thee.’ Had she survived her husband, it is said that her son, George II., intended to have made her Queen Dowager, or Regent of Hanover, but he never had an opportunity of putting these intentions into execution, as she died about a year before George I. This statement was made by Lady Suffolk, who told it to Horace Walpole. She also informed him that she was surprised, on going to the new Queen the morning after the arrival of the news of the death of George I., at seeing hung up in her dressing-room a whole-length portrait of a lady in royal robes, and, in the bed-chamber, a half-length of the same ; neither of which she had ever seen before. These represented Sophia Dorothea ; her son had long kept them concealed, not daring to produce them during his father’s lifetime. But, if there was no Queen on the English throne during the first George’s reign, His Sacred Majesty was not left lonely in his domestic life, which was solaced by his German mistresses, one of whom accompanied whilst another followed him to his new dominions, leaving a third, Madame Platen the younger, behind. The appearance in London of this detachment of his seraglio soon after his arrival was the signal for an outburst of raillery and ribaldry which they were well calculated to call forth. The two principal ladies belonging to his establishment were Madame Schulenburg, whose name will be remem- bered as having been selected by Madame Platen to sever all ties between George Lewis and his wife, and the influence 49 THE 'MAYPOLE? she obtained then, strange to say, lasted during the King’s life. The Schulenburg was no beauty. From her great height, she was called by the irreverent (in whose eyes she failed to become sacred by reason of the King’s choice) the ‘ Maypole,’ a title she was generally known by throughout the Court and town until her death. She was unusually tall; her complexion was yellow, her figure lean, and her general appearance unpleasant. When George Lewis received in Hanover news of Queen Anne’s death, the ‘ Maypole ’ was by no means elated at the prospect of her lover becoming King, though she was well aware her pension would assume proportions suitable to his increased dignity. She had no knowledge of the country, and but a slight acquaintance with the people over whom her royal lover was called to reign. She knew that he had no strong claim to the throne. She had heard that the English were a self-willed people, who had but some time before shown how little they thought of kings by depriving one of them of his head ; she feared that a similar fate might await her beloved, and perhaps she at the hands of the people should suffer likewise, an ending which she was not sufficiently loyal and heroic to covet. Altogether, she preferred a small income in safety at Hanover to a larger one with probable peril in England, and she refused the new King's invitation to accompany him. She might indeed have stayed at the Electoral Court for ever ; and the light of her presence, vast sums of money, open scandal, ridicule to the English nation, and disgrace to the peerage might have been spared, had she not learned that her rival, Madame Kilmansegge (who she believed could not stir out of Hanover in consequence of her heavy debts), was striving to escape from her creditors and preparing to sail with the King. Then her jealousy was aroused. The ‘Maypole’ 4 5o COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . swayed with anger, and, running to the King, declared that she could not bear the idea of parting with him, that she would run all risks rather than separate herself from his royal person, and that she would follow him to England, a statement which he received with great delight. Even in Hanover the Schulenburg’s beauty was not uni- versally admired, for the Countess of Suffolk, who afterwards occupied a position with George II. similar to that of the ‘ Maypole ’ to his father, was wont to tell, in after-days, that when she was at the Hanoverian Court, and attending a ball one night, the old Electress Sophia said aloud, but in English — ‘ Look at that mawkin,’ pointing to Schulenburg; 6 and think of her being my son’s mistress !’ — a remark which was lost upon the lady so delicately referred to, as she did not, in common with her lover, understand the language in which it was spoken. She had numbered sixty springs when she came to England ; her surprise at the size and wealth of London was great, and accordingly her desire to enrich her- self and her ambitions grew to equal proportions. In Han- over she had been satisfied with the small annuity the Prince allowed her, and the ‘ honour of his visits ’ when he had nothing else to do, which happened very often. ‘ She was so much of his own temper,’ says Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ‘ that I do not wonder at the engagement between them. She was duller than himself, and consequently did not find out that he was so, and had lived in that figure almost forty years, without meddling in any affairs of the Electorate.’ She lost no time in improving her opportunities in the English Court Two years after her arrival, ‘the Maypole’ was, by reason of her want of virtue, created Baroness of Dundalk, Marchioness of Dungannon, and Duchess of Munster; the sister island having been selected to have A NEW-MADE DUCHESS. 5i the honour of furnishing this delightful person with a triple title. But with these she was by no means satisfied ; they were only Irish, and therefore by no means good enough for her; she was not an English peeress, and nothing less than that would satisfy her ambition. The amicable and new- made Duchess stormed, and led the King a pretty dance ; she cursed in her native tongue, and poured out the vials of her wrath upon Lord Townshend, whom she blamed for de- barring her from the coveted honours. My Lord, who was the Secretary of State, fearing her in- fluence and desiring her favour, exerted himself in behalf of her wishes. Sometime afterwards, when the King invested him with the Order of the Garter, it was whispered that she had suggested this act to His Majesty, evidently thinking that one good turn deserved another, and in this way even Ministers played into her hands. However, with the King this woman was all-powerful, and notwithstanding public ridicule, and the indignation of the peers, rather than incur His Majesty’s displeasure, the Ministry created her Baroness of Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and Duchess of Kendal, with an income of four thousand a year on the Irish Establishment. In Hanover the news was received with some astonishment. From there a correspondent writes to Lady Cowper : ‘ I cannot express the surprise we are in here at Mademoiselle Schulenburg being naturalized and made an English Duchess. Madame Kilmansegge writes here that she is very unwilling to give place to the new Duchess ; therefore she will petition Parliament to be natu- ralized, that she may have a title equal to the other.’ The Duchess was by-and-by made Princess of Eberstein, and finally she aspired to a left-handed marriage with the amorous old King. The rumour of this last piece of ab- surdity gained ground during His Majesty’s life, and in a 4—2 UNIVERSITY OF JUANOJS LIBRARY 52 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . private letter written in 1746 to Dr. Birch, the Rev. Henry Etough says, ‘The late King was expensive and vain in his amours. He had Kilmansegge and Platen be- sides Kendal, to whom it is supposed the late Archbishop of York married him/ In an appendix to the second volume of the memoirs of the last ten years of the reign of George II., it is stated of George I. that he married the Duchess of Kendal with his left hand. There was certainly some rumour of this marriage, and Swift made a bitter epigram on the perplexity which it occasioned the Ministers. This was afterwards found amongst the Dean’s papers, with these words written on the back, ‘ A wicked, treasonable libel. I wish I knew the author, that I might hang him/ The Arch- bishop of York, who was declared to have performed the ceremony, was Dr. Lancelot Blackburn, of whom Horace Walpole speaks as ‘ the jolly old archbishop, who had all the manners of a man of quality, though he had been a bucca- neer, and was a clergyman, who retained nothing of his first profession except his seraglio/ In 1716 he w r as made Bishop of Exeter, and eight years later was promoted to the See of York. It was Schulenburg’s good will to be seen on Sundays at the chief Lutheran chapels, to which she repaired seven times, and where she communicated publicly, to the edifica- tion of large congregations. One clergyman had the courage to refuse administering the sacrament to her, but she easily found others whose scruples were not so nice, and whose ideas of advancement were not so limited, for the Schulen- burg had a good finger in the Church, and could boast of having made many bishops, for certain considerations. It was a constant complaint of hers that she did not know how to amuse the King in his idle hours, and probably her genius prompted her to cut out paper figures as one resource against NIECE OR DAUGHTER? S3 monotony ; it is certainly amusing to see how closely she watched His Majesty. The King was in the habit (after a day’s shooting in Richmond) of dining with Sir Robert Wal- pole, whom the Duchess hated ; after dinner His Majesty frequently got communicative and jovial over sundry strong glasses of punch, which he dearly loved, and which his minister skilfully mixed for him. Schulenburg by no means liked this, for she feared that in such moments the King would babble concerning her political intrigues, by which she sought to overthrow the ministers, and secretly told some of the German barons who accompanied His Majesty to check the King from indulging too freely in his favourite stimulant, which, true to her commands, they strove to do on one occasion with much promptitude, but, alas ! with little ad- dress, whereon the King became outraged, and, in the freest of language, cursed them, called them the ugliest of names, and consigned them to quarters supposed to be uncomfort- ably warm. With Schulenburg came over from Hanover a younger edition of her most ugly self, whom she introduced as her niece, but who was well known, from her likeness to George I. among other reasons, to be her daughter. This young lady was afterwards created Baroness of Aldborough and Coun- tess of Walsingham, and married the courtly Earl of Chester- field. Another of the principal ladies who found favour in the royal eye was Madame Kilmansegge, whom Lord Chester- ^ field wittily spoke of in connection with Madame Schulen- burg, Duchess of Kendal, as ‘ two considerable samples of the King’s bad taste and good stomach.’ She had tired very quickly of the good merchant of Hamburg who had given her his name, and, having the offer which George Lewis made her in view, went back to him When her mother, 54 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . the vile Madame Platen, who died a countess, left this world, she bequeathed her daughter the snug sum of ^40,000, all of which she had saved out of what her lover, Ernest Augustus, George I.’s father, had given her, and from the bribes she had received for her interest concerning ap- pointments and promotions in the Hanoverian Court and army. But this sum was a mere trifle to Madame Kilman- segge, who loved pleasure greatly, and knew no greater delight than in squandering the fortune left her ; moreover, she was the mistress of her Prince, and as such she could never lack for wealth. When the Prince became King, she at once made up her mind to accompany her royal master to England — a decision on her part which His Majesty accepted with gratitude, as the Schulenburg had refused him. However, she found con- siderable difficulty in putting her resolution into execution. She had squandered all her fortune, and from reckless ex- travagance had run deeply into debt, which George Lewis stoutly refused to pay. Her numerous creditors, not having much faith in her honour, believing that, if she was once beyond their reach, they would never again have the happi- ness of seeing either Kilmansegge or her money, and catching wind of the rumour that she was about to depart for England with the King, became alarmed, watchful, and determined not to let her escape. For Kilmansegge this was a desperate crisis. If she remained behind, she might lose the royal favour for ever, for kings, alas ! are seldom constant, and she had no means of paying the bills which hemmed her in on all sides. Then, on the other hand, if she was but once in England, she was quite safe from the reach of vulgar credi- tors — that country, she had heard, was wealthy. As the King’s mistress in a powerful Court, she would be certain to reap a golden harvest. BAFFLING CREDITORS. 55 With such considerations before her mental gaze, Madame Kilmansegge became desperate. Taking her royal lover into her confidence, she told him he must leave Hanover before her, in order to baffle the sharp-witted creditors, who by this manoeuvre would believe that she had abandoned her idea of accompanying him to England ; then she would don a disguise, and in an unpretentious post-chaise would escape from the city ; which design she cleverly effected, and reached Holland in time to accompany the King to England. By some strange fate, it seemed that the House of Platen was destined to furnish the House of Hanover with mistresses. Kilmansegge’s mother, the Countess Platen, had been mis- tress to George I.’s father, and had ruled that Prince for years. Kilmansegge, nee Platen, was the King’s mistress till her death, and her sister-in-law, Madame Platen the younger, shared a like infamy. Madame Kilmansegge was enormously stout, and singularly unwieldy in person, and when she first came to England she was hailed as the ‘ Elephant and Castle,’ a designation she long retained. She was over forty years old when she arrived in these happy isles as one of the King’s retinue, and was saluted by jeers and ridicule, which rather alarmed her, not being used to such demonstrations in the despotic Hanoverian Court, where everything belong- ing to the Prince was held as sacred ; but the sycophancy of those who gathered round the new King soon set her mind at ease. Horace Walpole has given a racy description of the per- sonal charms which enamoured the King that is well worth noting. He remembered seeing her at his mother’s, and was ‘terrified at her enormous figure, which was as corpulent and ample as the Duchess of Kendal’s was long and emaciated. Two fierce, black eyes, large and rolling, beneath two lofty arched eyebrows ; two acres of cheek spread with crimson ; COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . 56 an ocean of neck that overflowed, and was not distin- guished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays. No wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress.’ But Kilmansegge was by no means as heavy in mind as she was in person ; she had what was called a very pretty wit, was vivacious, and considered a brilliant conversa- tionalist, when in those days conversation was regarded as an art, and took pains to make herself as charming as pos- sible to all with whom she came in contact. Probably, in consideration of these gifts, the King forgot, if he was ever conscious of it, the unsightliness of her appearance ; for George never cared to talk much, preferring to hear others converse, especially if there was humour in their words. When Kilmansegge came to England, her notions regard- ing expenditure underwent a considerable change. She now became as saving of English money as she had been lavish of Hanoverian coin, and, during the first years of her stay, the presents made her by those who wished to gain the royal ear were numerous and magnificent, all of which she ac- cepted with a grace that was charming and a delight that was great. Whilst the royal sun shone on her she made hay, and saved a considerable sum. She was fond of social gaiety, and gave suppers and other entertainments, to which the King and the ladies of the Court were frequently bidden. Concerning one of these Pope writes to Teresa and Martha Blount that he had the ‘ honour to be invited and the grace to stay away. 7 Though time had unkindly traced some wrinkles on her brow, and art had unskilfully placed carmine on her cheeks, yet Kilmansegge was as pleasure-loving as in her early youth, and not only smiled upon the old monarch, but like- 57 ‘A PROFLIGATE ROGUE' wise on some of the courtiers, who were sometimes silly and sometimes wily enough to make love to her. Among these was Lord Halifax, who, much desiring the post of Lord of V the Treasury under the new Government, undertook, as the best means of gaining her favour, to provide her with a liberal purse and a handsome lover in the person of Mr. Methuen. This gentleman, who has been described by Swift as 1 a profligate rogue without religion or morals, yet cunning enough/ was a remarkably handsome man, with an interest- ing reputation for gallantry, which he did not now belie ; for he succeeded in pleasing the royal mistress and in satisfying his noble patron, who obtained the office he desired. She was clever, cunning, and subtle, though she described herself in writing to Lady Sundon as ‘ a dull and silly woman from whom her ladyship cannot expect a fine letter.’ Her whole life gave contradiction to this humble estimate of her- self, which was never believed by the Princess of Wales, who used to say of her that ‘ she never stuck a pin into her gown without a design.’ She was certainly well able to employ her wiles for gain in this intriguing Court. Between Schulenburg and Kilmansegge there was bitter detestation, and, when the former was naturalized as an English subject and created Duchess, the indignation of the latter rose to a high pitch. She declared she should receive equal honours. But the new Duchess seems to have thwarted her in these ambitious designs, for it was only on the death of Herr Kilmansegge, the Hamburg merchant, in 1721, that his faithless spouse was raised to the peerage as Countess of Leinster, and a year afterward as Baroness of Brentford and Countess of Darlington in the peerage of England. The flatterers of each of these vile and hideous women formed 53 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. themselves into two parties, who were, we are told, more violent than the Whigs and Tories. The Countess bore the King a daughter, named Maria Sophia Charlotte, for whom were found some scrapings from the royal purse, and who was married to Viscount Howe. Horace Walpole says, 6 Lady Howe was never publicly acknowledged as the King’s daughter ; but Princess Amelia treated her daughter, Mrs. Howe, upon that footing, and one evening, when I was present, gave her a ring with a small portrait of George I., with a crown of diamonds.’ When the King went to the play-house or the opera — for he had an ear for music — it was a droll sight to see His Majesty carried in his royal sedan chair, which he always used as a conveyance unless when he went to open Parlia- ment, when he rode in a coach drawn -by eight horses. Six footmen sedately walked before his chair, and six Yeomen of the Guards at each side of it ; and the proces- sion was brought up by his two old ugly sultanas in their chairs, carried by servants wearing the royal livery ; the whole procession making a pretty show, at which not only London, but Europe laughed. When they got into the theatre, these women, decked out in great finery and dia- monds, sat side by side in front of the royal box, hating each other with a good, deep-hearted detestation, whilst behind them sat a corpulent little old man in a brown wig, who constantly took snuff, and chuckled with laughter when the Countess uttered anything savouring of wit, or when some passage in the play tickled his coarse fancy. This little old man was King George. Along with these mistresses, a whole host of Germans came over with the monarch to England, who were after- wards appointed to various offices about the Court ; and this detachment was supplemented by the two Turks, named 1 IF YOU DO ADMIRE ME.' 59 Mustapha and Mahomet, whom the King had taken prisoners when he served in the Imperial army, and with whose society he could not afford to dispense. Reference is made to them in ‘La Correspondance Secrete du Comte du Broglio.' ‘ The King has no predilec- tion for the English nation,' says the Count, ‘ and never receives in private any English of either sex : none even of his principal officers are admitted to his chamber in the morning to dress him, nor in the evening to undress him. These offices are performed by the Turks, who are his valets-de-chambre , and who give him everything he wants in private.' Another of George's mistresses whom he left behind was Madame Platen, wife to his Minister, and sister-in-law to Madame Kilmansegge. She was considered the handsomest woman in the Hanoverian Court, but for long her charms were passed over, seemingly unnoticed by the Elector ; a proceeding on his part with which she was by no mean? satisfied. That he should admire Schulenburg and Kilmsn- segge and neglect her, was insufferable. But, being a woman of determination, if not of virtue, she resolved to change this state of affairs ; and one day requested a private audience of the Prince. When they were alone, she burst into tears, which probably she had discovered became her, and begged to know why it was that His Electoral High- ness could behave so cruelly to her. George Lewis was a dull man at best, and declared with surprise he had never been unkind to her ; that he had always admired and re- spected her. This latter-mentioned feeling on his part was not, however, what she desired. ‘If you do admire me,’ she said, ‘why is it that you scarcely honour me with a visit, whilst so much of your time is devoted to Madame Schulenburg ?’ 6o COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. Upon this hint the Prince so frequently visited Madame Platen, that her husband objected to his attentions, and parted from his wife. Some time afterwards Mr. Craggs, a young man who played an important part in her history, arrived at the Hanoverian Court. ‘ It is true/ said Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in speaking of him, ‘ there appeared a heat and want of judgment in all his words and actions, which did not make him very valuable in the eyes of cool judges, but Madame Platen was not of that number. His youth and fire made him appear a conquest worthy her charms, and her charms made her appear very well worthy his passionate addresses. Two people so well disposed towards each other were very soon in the closest engagement ; and the first proof Madame Platen gave him of her affec- tion was introducing him to the favour of the Elector, who took it on her word that he was a young man of extraor- dinary merit, and he named him for Cofferer at the first ac- cession to the Crown of England, and I believe it was the only place that he then disposed of from any inclination of his own. This proof of Madame Platen's favour hindered her coming hither.' However, though this lady did not form part of the King’s establishment in England, she retained her apartments in the Hanoverian palace, and was always ready to receive her lord and master whenever he made his frequent journeys to his beloved Electorate, CHAPTER V. Avarice of the Royal Mistresses and Favourites — Count Broglio’s Letters to the French Court — The King’s Answer — Robethon and Bothmar — Mustapha and Mahomet — The King’s View of his New Possessions — Public Ridicule — The Civil List — Economy of the Hanoverian Court — Public In- dignation and its Expression — The Mob and its Conduct- Unpopularity of the Germans — Club formed to Protect the King from Insult — Wreck of a Mug-House — Attempt to Shoot the Prince and King — Rebellion in Scotland. The King’s mistresses strove to enrich themselves by every foul means as quickly as possible, and so great and open a trade did they ply in the sale of preferments, civil and ecclesiastical, which His Majesty could bestow indepen- dently of his Ministers, that they employed brokers to negotiate between them and those seeking their aid. The Rev. Henry Etough, in a letter written not long after His Majesty’s death, says, in speaking of the unscrupulous con- duct of the royal mistresses : ‘Two of these most impudently and notoriously, by their brokers, took money for all sorts of places. So did Bernstorff, Bothmar, and Robethon. The embroils thus occasioned are well remembered.’ Mini- sters and courtiers, clergymen and lawyers, opened their purse-strings to them as the only means by which advance- ment could be obtained. The managers of the infamous South Sea Bubble, which filled the nation first with delirium 62 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . and then with woe, gave these shameless women the sum of ^30,000 to promote their plans ; this handsome sum being divided between them and their daughters. This scheme was afterwards denounced by a committee of the House of Commons as ‘ a train of the deepest villainy and fraud with which hell ever contrived to ruin a nation/ The Duchess, however, cared very little for the ruin of nations so long as her pocket filled quickly with money ; nor did she improve with time. In 1724, the patent for supplying Ireland with farthings and halfpence to the value of ^108,000, against which Swift protested, was granted through her influence, on the understanding that she was to receive a handsome share of the profits. When this in- famous design had to be abandoned, owing to the grand juries refusing to find true bills, Wood, to whom the patent had been granted, received by way of compensation a pension of ^3,000 for eight years, a share of which she received. From Viscount Bolingbroke, who had fled from England on being charged with favouring the Stuart cause, her grace obtained ^11,000 for using he* influence over the King for the purpose of granting his complete restoration after nine years of exile. No wonder that Sir Robert Walpole com- plained that ‘ her interest did everything, that she was in effect as much Queen of England as ever any was/ Of course there were many comparatively small sums which the Duchess quietly put in her pocket, and among others was one from Sir Richard Child, who sighed for the honours of a peerage, which she promised and obtained for him for a consideration. Her thirst for gold, however, seemed insatiable ; her constant cry was ‘ give, give/ and those who crowded her apartments in St. James’s Palace were always ready to minister to her greed. Assuredly she was the ' HUNGRY HANOVERIANS.' 63 leading spirit of that ‘ flight of hungry Hanoverians ’ which Mahon speaks of as ‘ like so many famished vultures that fell with keen and bended talons on the fruitful soil of England.’ Her greatest prize has, however, yet to be men- tioned. When Charles Seymour, ‘ the proud Duke of Somerset,’ resigned his appointment as Master of the Horse, the Duchess had the audacity to tell the King that, instead of naming a successor, he must leave the post vacant and give the salary to her ; a command which her old lover quietly obeyed. The profits of this appointment amounted to ^7,500 a year. Prominent among those who flocked about her seeking her patronage was Count Broglio, a wily ambassador and flattering, subtle courtier. He writes to his master, the King of France, ‘ As the Duchess of Kendal seemed to express a desire to see me often, I have been very attentive to her ; being convinced that it is highly essential to the advantage of your Majesty’s service to be on good terms with her.’ And again he says : 4 The King visits her every afternoon from five to eight, and it is there that she endeavours to penetrate the senti- ments of His Britannic Majesty, for the purpose of consult- ing the three Ministers, and pursuing the measures which may be thought necessary for accomplishing their designs. She sent me word that she was desirous of my friendship, and that I would place confidence in her. I assured her that I would do everything in my power to merit her esteem and. friendship. I am convinced that she may be advantageously employed in promoting your Majesty’s service, and that it will be necessary to employ her ; though I will not trust her further than is necessary.’ His Majesty writes back : ‘You will neglect nothing to acquire a share of her con- 64 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . fidence, from a conviction that nothing can be more con- ducive to my interest. There is, however, a manner of giving additional value to the marks of confidence you bestow on her in private, by avoiding in public all appearances which might seem too pointed, by which means you will avoid falling into the inconvenience of being suspected by those who are not friendly to the Duchess ; at the same time that a kind of mysteriousness in public, on the subject of your confidence, will give rise to a firm belief of your having formed a friendship mutually sincere/ The c marks of confidence ’ bestowed on her in private for the maintenance of the union between the two countries must have been pretty considerable. But the French King was not the only foreign Power which sought to keep this notorious woman in its favour. The Emperor of Austria, who was desirous that King George should renew the con- nection between England and Austria, kept up a secret correspondence with her. Madame Kilmansegge was equally rapacious, but her power over the King was not so great, and her profits were consequently limited. Occasionally she managed to secure a prize, such as the sum of jQ 500 from Mr. Chetwynd, for obtaining him an appointment as one of the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations on the Board of Trade, with the additional sum of ^200 per annum as long as he held it, which was for fourteen years. This system of robbery, how- ever, did not end with the ladies. ‘George I./ we read in the memoirs of Horace Walpole; £ had imported a little body-guard of Hanoverians who acted as a sort of secret council, to the great prejudice of every interest in the country, except such as found its way into their pockets/ These gentlemen, who had considerable influence over the King, and attempted to rule Great Britain through him, were THOSE BELOVED BY THE KING . 6 $ Baron Goritz, Count Bernstorff, who has been described as ‘ avaricious, artful, and designing/ Mr. Robethon, and Baron Bothmar. Their insolence, their desire of creating dissen- sion between the King and his English Ministers, and, above all, their avarice, rendered them almost insufferable. ‘Robethon’s impertinence is so notorious/ wrote Sir Robert Walpole to Secretary Stanhope, ‘ that depend upon it he does all the mischief he possibly can/ and Lord Townshend gives testimony to the character of another of the favourites in these words : ‘ Bothmar has every day some infamous project or other on foot to get money, and his dis- appointments in these particulars are what he cannot bear, having nothing in his view but raising a vast estate to him- self ; and, therefore, he will never be satisfied till he has got the Ministry and Treasury into such hands as will satisfy his avarice at the expense of the King’s credit, interest, and serviced Sure of the King’s favour, these men swaggered through the Court, and, without the slightest concealment or shame, offered their interest to the highest bidders. Robe- thon, a few months after his master came to the throne, procured from him the grant of Clerk of the Parliament, for anybody he would name when death had removed the pre- sent holder of that appointment. This Robethon sold to Spencer Cowper, Member of Parliament for Truro, for the sum of ;£i,8oo. Bernstorff, who was ‘beloved by the King/ and Bothmar, aspired to the Peerage, but His Majesty, though he had elevated his two mistresses to that honour, declined to fall in with the views of these wily gentlemen, probably fearing to tax the forbearance of Parlia- ment too much. Even His Majesty’s two Turkish slaves, Mustapha and Mahomet, were not without their influence over the King, and advanced so far in the royal favour as to have had their 5 66 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . portraits painted by royal command, which were afterwards hung above the great staircase in Kensington Palace. They followed the example set them by the King’s favourites, and realized considerable sums by retaining to themselves the right to dispose of the minor offices of the royal household. Archdeacon Coxe, accounting for the extraordinary rapacity of the Germans, says : ‘ These mistresses, Ministers, and favourites, coming from a poor Electorate, considered Eng- land as a land of promise, and at the same time so precarious a possession that they endeavoured to enrich themselves with all possible speed.’ At first the new King was regarded with ridicule by the subjects surrounding him, but this feeling soon grew to indignation at the vast sums w r hich these favourites were allowed to levy on anyone seeking position or promotion. When Sir Robert Walpole, on behalf of the Ministry, reasoned with His Majesty on the subject, George Lewis, used to despotism and unused to interference with his royal will, was indignant, and burst out with the coarse reply, ‘ I suppose you also are paid for your recommendations.’ He knew well the state of wholesale bribery and corruption that went on around him, and aided it by playing into the hands and smiling placidly on the work of his minions. He had benefited richly by the change, and was pleased that his friends should do so likewise. The amount of the Civil List which he enjoyed was ^700,000 a year, voted by the House of Commons, and a clause was inserted in the bill for the payment of ^65,000 due to the Hanoverian troops in the pay of England, but withheld up to the time of George’s accession by the Court, because in 1712 they had refused to join the Duke of Ormond. It was his habit to regularly receive a thousand pounds weekly ; 4 the remainder of his revenue, amounting to ^600,000 per annum,’ Count Broglio GERMAN RAPACITY. 67 says, * was remitted every month to his treasurer.’ From the Royal Exchange Assurance Company he received the sum of ^300,000, and from the London Assurance Companies ^300,000 more ; yet a year before his death the sum of one million sterling towards the payment of his debts was voted to him by the nation ! When in his little Electorate, his expenditure had never been liberal, and his establishment was conducted on econo- mical principles. Speaking of the monarch’s Hanoverian life, Toland says : ‘ I need give you no more particular proof of his frugality in laying out the public money, than that all the expenses of the Court, as to eating, drinking, fire, candles, and the like, are duly paid every Saturday night. The officers of the army receive their pay every month, and all the Civil Lists are cleared every half-year.’ Though this rigidity and economy of conduct practised in Hanover would have done justice to any housekeeper, his principles strangely altered in England, where his liberality with English money was regal. As an instance of this, it may be mentioned that Lady Suffolk said, when Queen Caroline, wife of George II., came to the throne, she found but one pearl necklace of all Queen Anne’s jewels, ‘as the new King had instantly distributed what he found amongst his German favourites.’ His generosity, indeed, confined itself to these, and was rarely extended to his English subjects. ‘This is a strange country,’ he said once, when a slight demand was made on his purse. ‘ The first morning after my arrival at St. James’s, I looked out of a window and saw a park, with walks and a canal, which they told me were mine. The next day Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my park, sent me a brace of fine carp out of my canal, and I was told I must give five guineas to Lord Chetwynd’s man for bringing nqy own carp out of my own canal in my own park.’ 5—2 68 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . Among the Germans who came over with the King was one whose honesty caused His Majesty some amusement. yf This anomaly was none other than the royal cook, who was so distressed at the limitless expenditure that went on in the kitchen of St. James’s that he> wished to resign his place and desired permission to go home. This cook was a favourite of the King, who sent for and asked him his reasons for wishing to leave. When the man told him it was because of the unaccustomed waste, His Majesty laughed right merrily. ‘ Never mind,’ he answered ; ‘ my present revenues will bear the expense. Do you rob like the rest ; and be sure you take enough.’ No wonder that Count Broglio wrote to the French King of this monarch, ‘ He rather considers England a temporary possession, to be made the most of while it lasts, than as a perpetual inheritance to himself and family.’ To this state- ment the King’s acts during his reign bear strong testimony. How could he tell that the Government might not sicken and tire of him any day, and bring back the rightful heir to the throne : or that the descendants of the people who had brought King Charles to the block would not rise up, and drive him and his hideous mistresses, and his meddlesome, grasping counts and barons, and his Turkish slaves, back to the little Electorate once more ? So, whilst he and his favourites could, they filled their pockets with English gold, and sent money home to their poor relations, who fattened on this country likewise, and profited by the plundering of this nation. The indignation which the shameless proceedings of the King and his foreigners caused amongst the English courtiers was not long in spreading to the general public, and was finally taken up by the mob. The crowd which had shouted so lustily for the King on the day of his entry lost much of DEMAGOGUE OF THE NIGHT . 69 its loyal enthusiasm when he went to be crowned at West- minster Abbey. On the celebration of his birthday, the 28th of May, when he had reigned about eight months, public opinion regarding the monarch had so changed that the mob smashed all the windows in the City that were illu- minated to do him honour, including those of my Lord Mayor : and when the anniversary of King Charles’s restora- tion came round, bonfires were lighted, the City was illumi- nated, and there were signs of general rejoicing. A poor half-witted schoolmaster seems to have been selected as the victim of this occasion ; the demagogue of the night and martyr of the hour mounted on a beer-barrel, which he had probably helped to empty, and told the crowd which gathered around that King George had no claim to the throne, but was a usurper. This utterer of dangerous sedition was seized on, and clapped into Newgate on a charge of high treason, and had afterwards the privilege of sharing that degree of martyrdom which gloriously awards one who is publicly whipped. The Flying Host, of July 16, 1715, speaking of a man who followed a trade historically democratic, that had been arrested as the leader of a town riot on this anniversary, says : ‘ That it is very observable that, on His Majesty’s birth- day, the cobbler put on very close mourning, and on the restoration day appeared in colours with a laced hat. In the meantime, it is expected that the cobbler’s merit will be so much taken notice of that we shall soon hear of his trans- lation from Highgate to Newgate/ Another trifle light as air, which, at the same time, shows which way public opinion blew, occurred on the King’s birth- day. As a mark of royal favour, the first regiment of Foot Guards were given new clothes, but the shirts which fell to their 70 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. lot were of so poor and coarse a material that the soldiers considered themselves hardly treated, and cried out against them. In some cases the men took private opportunities of flinging these garments which so offended them into the yard- way of St. James’s Palace; thus throwing them, as it were, in the King’s face. Others of them dared to show their dissatisfaction more openly ; and once, when a detachment of them were marching through the City to relieve guard at the Tower, they boldly pulled out their under-garments, and said to the good citizens, ‘ See our Hanoverian shirts !’ The episcopal clergy of Scotland refused to pray for the King’s welfare, and, to mark his sense of the probable loss he might sustain from such lack of petitions on his behalf, His Majesty ordered a decree to be issued compelling them in punishment to quit their offices, and in some cases to leave their country. The pamphlets and ballads which in those days flooded the town on every possible occasion were not slow to ventilate public opinion regarding the King and his favourites. One of them more daring than the others declared, ‘ A petty thief is only rogue and fool That hangs by law. Rob but enough and rule, Steal but the crown, and you’re above the law/ A ballad which had great popularity was styled ‘ A Dia- logue between the old black horse at Charing Cross and the new one with a figure on it in Hanover Square,’ and was sung to the tune of ‘ The Abbot of Canterbury.’ Only some verses of it can be given. ‘ In London late happen’d a pleasant discourse ’Twixt an old English nagg and a Hanover horse ; No wonder, my friends, if plain English they speak, For in old /Esop’s time horses spoke heathen Greek. Derry, Derry Down. A POPULAR BALLAD. 7i ‘ King Charles’s black nagg, being tired of the town, From fair Charing Cross one evening stole down, And, trotting along t’wards the fields for fresh air, He spy’d a strange beast up in Hanover Square. Derry, Derry Down. ‘ Marching up, he most civilly greeted the steed, But soon found he was not of true English breed, And the rider he thought a much more awkward thing, For he look’d like a lout, and was dressed like a king. Derry, Derry Down. c The Charing Cross nagg thus began : Brother Pad, ’Tis enough, sure, to make any mortal horse mad To see such a rider bestride a poor horse ; Were you hag-ridden, sure you’d scarce be no worse. Derry, Derry Down. £ Quoth the poor harmless beast, My hard lot I must bear, And I but the lot of these three kingdoms share ; For this wretch on my back has a proverb on’s side, Set a beggar on horseback, to the devil he’ll ride. Derry, Derry Down. 4 You seem to have brought him full many a lpng mile, But Englishmen, sure, will ne’er think it worth while For this creature to rule them, to send very far, When my good old master they never would bear. Derry, Derry Down. 4 We came from a poor little town called Hanover, But, oh ! had you seen us before we came over, You’d say times mended with me and this stupid thief, Since I’ve eat good oats and his worship good beef. Derry, Derry Down. ***** c Says Charles’s black nagg, Be ruled by me, To Tyburn go now, being on the right way, There carry him thither, and there let him swing, Or else pack him home like a dog in a string. Derry, Derry Down. 72 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . To turn to prose, we find that Mist's Journal contained an article that referred to the ladies King George had honoured with his favour in these harsh words : ‘ We are ruined by trulls, nay, what is more, by old ugly trulls, such as could not find entertainment in the most hospitable hun- dreds of Old Drury.’ This piece of impertinence offered to His Sacred Majesty’s favourites was so offensive to the King that it was made a subject of parliamentary debate ; and Mist was censured, fined, and kept in durance vile. When His Majesty and his favourites went abroad, the crowd was bold enough to make merry at the old man in his sedan-chair, followed by his mistresses. Moreover, it imitated the Hanoverian gentlemen, told them some plain truths, called them ugly names, and hinted its desire that they should speedily return to the land from whence they came. One day, when the King’s mistresses were driving through the streets, the crowd hissed and shouted at them, and for once their natural imperturbation was disturbed. One of them put her head out of the coach-window and said, in a conciliating tone, ‘ Good peoples, why do you abuse us ? we come for your goods.’ ‘ Yes, damn you,’ answered an honest Britisher, ‘ and for our chattels too.’ The detestation of these foreigners increased daily amongst the people. Baron Poll- nitz, writing of the English, says : ‘ Their hatred to the Germans is of no older date than that of the reiga of the Elector of Hanover ; for till then the English looked upon us as if they neither loved nor envied us ; but now they have a notion that the money of England goes over to Germany, and seem to think that we had no coin till they called the House of Hanover to govern them.’ But it was not only in Court but in town that foreigners began to flourish under the Hanoverian rule, so much so PELTED WITH UGLY WORDS . 73 that in the reign of George II. English trade and tradesman- ship was injured by the number of them who had taken up their residence in London ; and a committee of aldermen and commoners found it necessary to press for the licensing of foreigners under certain restrictions. The mob at last became so personal in its remarks to- wards the King and his favourites whenever he or they were seen abroad, that some loyal gentlemen, who were much in- censed by this treatment, formed themselves into companies in order to protect His Majesty and the foreign portion of his Court from being pelted with ugly words when passing through the City.* It was the duty of the members of these companies to meet at certain ale-houses, where they kept a goodly number of stout oaken cudgels, destined to beat or terrify the unruly mob when it dared to enjoy the luxury of freedom of speech. These places of assembly were called Mug-Houses, because the ale supplied by them was drunk in mugs. The fact of the interference of the members of the companies on days when His Majesty went abroad was resented by the crowd, which threatened destruction to all Mug-Houses. On one memorable occasion, indeed, the mob proceeded to put its promised vengeance into execution, and attacked a Mug-House in Salisbury Court, commencing by tearing down the sign and smashing the windows. One Martin Reade, the landlord, was a valiant man, who, with his firelock in his hand, prepared to defend himself and his castle. In the encounter which followed he shot one of the # The City rabble on most of the public festivals (especially those of the King’s birthday, accession to the throne, and corona- tion) assembled in a tumultuous manner ; and with the most amazing assurance, by expressions and representations, publicly reflected on and dishonoured the King. — Allen’s ‘ History and Antiquities of London/ vol. ii., p. n. 74 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. rioters through the body, who, as a consequence, fell dead. News of the riot reaching Whitehall, a detachment of Guards came out with good will to the rescue, when those who ran away lived to fight another day, and those who did not were taken to the lock-up. This feeling of disloyalty did not abate for many years. On the second celebration in England of the anniversary of the King's birthday, oak branches, the badge of the Stuarts, were generally and publicly worn, and two soldiers, who were found guilty of this crime, were whipped almost to death. In 1716 an attempt was made to shoot the Prince of Wales, concerning which Chancellor Hardwick writes to a friend : ‘To-morrow's print will, I suppose, bring you the story of the sentinels being shot at the play-house last night, whilst the Prince was there, as soon as this letter. The person who did it proves to be one Freeman, who has been known about town as a crazed man, which, in the opinion of most people, frees the affair from any suspicion of a plot. I happened to be in the pit when it was done, and never saw so much confusion in a public assembly in my life as there was on this occasion. The affrighted people called “Fire!" those that had more presence of mind “A quarrel;” but very few knew what it really was. The ladies were ready to climb over the boxes, and a duchess might have been had for a little protection. Even Bajazet and Tamer- lane descended from their characters to entreat the audience to sit still, and could hardly prevail ; but at last the play proceeded. The Prince kept his seat without any appear- ance of being moved.' FIFING AT THE PRINCE , 75 Two years later on, a youth named James Shepherd shot at His Majesty. He gloried in the act, said if his life were spared he would do the same again, and died declaring James Stuart the only King. To this discontent at home was added the fear and dis- turbance caused by the rebellion in Scotland in 1715, which ended in defeat, and, for some of the leaders, in decapita- tion on Tower Hill. CHAPTER VI. The Court in Queen Anne’s Reign — Changes under George I. — Drawing-rooms at St. James’s — Some Courtiers — The King’s Daughter, Melesina — Lord Lincoln’s Freedom with the King — The Duchess of Shrewsbury’s 6 Extraordinary Discourse’ — The German Beauties and Lady Deloraine — Madame Tron and Madame Robethon — Lady Mary Wort- ley Montagu — How she became a Toast — The Princess of Wales — The Duchess of Bolton’s Slips of the Tongue — The King’s Love for Richmond and Hampton Court — The Drury Lane Company plays there — Royal Diversions. During the reign of Queen Anne, who was zealous and re- ligious, the Court of St. James’s had been rather dull and decent. Her Majesty’s character had been unimpeachable ; she liberally patronized the Church ; expended but little money on ceremonies or favourites (with the exception of the ungrateful Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough), and was at once frugal, generous, and simple in her habits. Though occasionally she delighted in seeing her drawing-rooms crowded, and was exacting in all points concerning etiquette, the rights of precedent, and even the dresses of her courtiers, yet on such occasions she had little to say, and nothing that was wise or witty, and her levees were apt to be wearisome. Dean Swift, who figures at St. James’s under the reign of three sovereigns, gives us an etching of one of Queen Anne’s Court receptions. 4 The Queen looked at us with her fan in A NEW REGIME . 77 her mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some that were nearest her ; and then she was told dinner was ready, and went out,’ says the Dean. In fact, a Court reigned over by a dull Queen, and an ambitious, intolerant, and jealous Duchess, was by no means a lively place ; and in such an atmosphere dissipation perished, amorous intrigues were almost unknown, and gaiety met with but small en- couragement. But now, with the arrival of a new King, the history of whose amours had tickled the ears of Europe with pleasant scandals, and of a Prince of Wales whose youth must prove a warrant for his gaiety, it was expected that a different order of things would soon be established at the Court of St. James’s; an expectation by no means doomed to disappointment George Augustus, Prince of Wales, came to England with feelings very different from his father. He was elated with his new dignity as heir to the British throne, and filled with hopes of power and pleasure, which he did not care to conceal. He was still at an age when the sweets of life have not begun to satiate, and its joys have yet a fulness perhaps even more gratifying than the first flavour of freshness. When the King was established, a new regime was begun. The doors of St. James’s were thrown open to all who brought with them beauty, chivalry, wit, or learning, and though his Majesty and the Prince cared little for these latter recommendations in comparison with the former, yet it was an age when wit had become a profession, and learn- ing fashionable ; and those who possessed both were to be found in numbers at the drawing-rooms of St. James’s. The walls of the old palace echoed with laughter as in the days of the graceful, thoughtless, merry monarch, and none the less now as then, that it did not always arise from the purest sources. The language used in the royal drawing-rooms 73 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. was none too courtly, and oftentimes not all decent. The fine ladies of the Court could be coarse, and those fine gentlemen very loose of tongue, according to the practice of the age, in conversing with each other. The great drawing-room of St. James’s consisted of three saloons, adorned under the directions of her late Majesty, and hung with large canvases by Vandyck. Here savants and gallants, Ministers and courtesans, made their bow before royalty, under whose very nose intrigues were carried on, and bon-mots whispered from behind the shelter of fans to courtiers, who chuckled and shook their ponderous wigs from force of hilarity, but never blushed. All the homage of gold, and love, and flattery, and the dignities which fine-sounding titles can confer, were lavished on women witty of speech, fair of face, and frail of soul. ‘ Queen Sarah,’ proud and imperious, as in the days when the late Queen had let her rule the kingdom, is here. Her husband has returned in triumph, and the wily woman is scheming again for an ascendancy in the royal household ; she is closely watching that rough, good-humoured looking man opposite, whose face is deeply marked by small-pox, and who looks far more like a country squire than a courtier ; he is talking loudly ; his voice is full and mellow, and when he laughs (as he does pretty often, as freely as if he were not in the presence of royalty) his face lights up until its expres- sion becomes handsome. That man is Sir Robert Walpole, and the Duchess ot Marlborough hates him, and says the bitterest things she can concerning him ; but as her hate and bitterness are pretty well divided over her friends, acquaintances, and the world surrounding her, the Minister little heeds the brunt of her fury. Sir Robert is talking to Mr. Addison, who, for all the fine language of which he is master, when called on to 79 WIT, SCHOLAR , BEAU. write out the formal news of the late Queen’s death, could find no words suitable to his mind for the occasion, and, after destroying several copies of a draft, was obliged to call in his clerk, who made the plain statement with as few words and as little ceremony as were really needful. Addison had taken office in order that he might be more suited to become the husband of my Lady Warwick, who fell in love with and married him, and this caused Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to remark that 4 such a post as secretary and such a wife as the Countess do not seem to be in pru- dence eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and that she (Lady Mary) should live to see the day when he would be heartily glad to resign both/ As Walpole now listens to the refined scholar, his eyes turn watchfully round the room, not altogether as heedlessly as his wife might desire, on the fair courtiers. The great Minister has the reputation for being a gallant man, and even now there are some gossips in the room who whisper that a charming woman loves him, 4 not wisely, but too well ’ for the sake of her reputation. Near Sir Robert is young Philip Stanhope, afterwards the noble Earl of Chesterfield, an ele- gant and polished writer of letters, one of the ugliest and most graceful men at Court, rough of feature, broad of back, and with a head which a wit of the time said made him look like a 4 stunted giant/ Philip Stanhope is a wit, a scholar, and a beau ; his con- versation is full of classical learning, his attitudes are replete with courtly grace, and he is already setting up for a man of high attainments. This character was afterwards pretty generally allotted him, although George II. said in one of his unamiable moods : 4 Chesterfield is a little tea table scoundrel, that tells little womanish lies to make quarrels in families, and tries to make women lose their reputations, and 8o COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . make their husbands beat them, without any object but to give himself airs, as if anybody could like a dwarf baboon P But his Majesty’s judgment may have been a little pre- judiced by a small business transaction, of which more hereafter. Just now Philip Stanhope is talking to a lady sitting under the large portrait of Charles I., who is none other than Melesina, the King’s own daughter, who seems to find him agreeable and entertaining ; and whom he eventually married, in the hope of inheriting the ^40,000 which His Majesty was said to have left her mother, the Duchess ot Kendal. The King is in good humour, and wears a certain air of bonhomie , and beside him stands Lord Lincoln, who is addressing His Majesty without being spoken to, a thing which Lady Townshend tells that shrewd supporter of the House of Hanover, the Duke of Argyle, ‘ she always pre- viously thought was high treason.’ Beside the little fat monarch is the Duchess of Shrewsbury, who was considered ‘ extra- ordinary in her discourse,’ and who Lady Wentworth, sitting at some distance, declares ‘ will devour the King, for she will not let anyone speak to him but herself, and,’ adds her ladyship, ‘ she says she rivals Madame Kilmansegge.’ The Duchess was more witty than wise, and had afforded her friends considerable satisfaction by giving them a spicy bit of scandal to talk over, before fate and the Church united her to her lord and master. She was an accomplished woman, whose conversation was invariably brilliant, if not decent, and who had ever a ready word to amuse the crowd that was always sure to gather around her. The Duchess of Marlborough is watching her with envious eyes, and, of course, has something to say of her. 4 She played at ombre on the public walks at Bath,’ says Her Grace, in a voice loud DIVERTING THE KING . 81 enough to be heard half-way across the room, ‘that she might be sure to have company enough, and she was as well pleased in a crowd of strangers as the common people are with a bull-baiting or a mountebank,’ And ‘ Queen Sarah/ having delivered herself of this speech, looks scornfully at my Lady Shrewsbury, who is lady-in-ordinary to the Princess of Wales, and high in favour with His Majesty, whom she is mightily diverting just now. ‘ Sire/ she says, looking at the little man straight in the face, ‘ nous sommes en colere con- tre votre Majeste de ce que vous ne voulez pas vous faire peindre ; et voici votre medaille qui donnera votre effigie a la posterity, oil vous avez un nez long comme le bras.’ 4 Tant mieux/ replies the King, ‘ c’est une tete a Pantique/ at which piece of wit the circle surrounding His Majesty laughs heartily. In a group near the King stands my Lord Finch, in a red coat, trimmed with gold, which gave one of his friends an opportunity of making a joke by telling him he ‘looked as gay as a goldfinch / and close by are some of the ladies of the bed-chamber talking to a few of the German beauties who are scattered plentifully through the drawing-room. One of them, being in bad temper to-day, and a little envious, says aloud that ‘Englishwomen look pitiful and sneaking, that they hold their heads down, and always look frightened, whereas foreigners 5 (meaning themselves) ‘ hold their heads boldly up, and hold out their breasts, and make themselves look stately / on hearing which my Lady Delo- raine replies to the accuser with great spirit, ‘ We show our quality by our birth and titles, madame, and not by sticking out our bosoms/ Kilmansegge and Schulenburg are there too, and just now are laughing and repeating a French phrase which has more meanings than one, that the Duchess of Bolton has innocently made use of from want of a greater familiarity with that tongue, and this gives poor Lady Cowper 6 8 2 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS the idea that these foreign ladies 4 are no better than they should be/ And here is Madame Tron, the handsome wife of the Venetian ambassador, who is as jealous of her as any Turk, and who, as a means of preserving her virtue, beats her periodically. But madame is gay-hearted, like her country- women, and cares very little how her lord and master may threaten or punish her, if he leaves her face untouched. When he administers his chastisement, she is wont to call out, 4 Prenez garde a mon visage,’ for if her loveliness was marred, then, indeed, the world was lost to her. She is a charming woman, and has earned for herself the name, 4 la beaute sans souci.’ Crushing her way through the drawing- room, which is well crowded, she repeats her cry in a clear, musical voice that reaches the King’s ears, ‘Prenez garde a mon visage,’ upon which George Lewis, hearing, says, 4 En- tendez-vous l’ambassadrice ? Elle vous abandonne tout le reste du corps, pourvu que vous ayez soin du visage/ Amongst the crowd of German ladies is Madame Robe- thon, whose figure resembles a barrel in shape, and who, from the gruff tone of her voice, has been called by Lord Chesterfield, who was exceedingly fond of nicknames, 4 Madame Grenouille.’ There too is the smiling courtier, Bubb Dodington making merry with my Lady Marr over the story of the miserly Sir James Lowther, who drove in his coach to the George coffee-house to exchange a bad halfpenny which he had got in change after drinking his twopenny cup of coffee the previous day. Mr. Wortley is within earshot of the King, ready to speak French if His Majesty so desires, and at the far end of the room is his wife, Lady Mary, then remarkable for hei wit and beauty, and giving no hint of her becoming 4 that THE PRETTIEST GIRL. 83 old, foul, tawdry, painted, plastered personage/ such as Horace Walpole describes a quarter of a century later. When she was but eight years old she became the toast of the famous Kit-cat Club. It was one of the customs of the members to elect a beauty annually, to whom during the year toasts should be drunk, verses made, and whose name should be written with a diamond on their drinking-glasses ; one who should be to them as a goddess, in whose honour they would drink the richest vintage of the grape, as did the Greeks to their divinities of old. At one of the meet- ings held for the purpose of choosing a toast for the year, the eccentric Lord Kingston proposed his daughter, Lady Mary, not then eight years old, and declared her the prettiest girl of those mentioned on the list submitted to them. To this some of the other members did not lend a willing ear, and mentioned that the rules of the club for- bade the election of a beauty they had not seen. ‘ Then you shall see her/ said my lord stoutly, and immediately he sent home word to have her dressed in her finest gown and carried down to him at the club. When, in obedience to him, she was brought and presented to the members, she was received with acclamations, her claim was at once ad- mitted, her health drunk, and her name engraved upon a drinking-glass. She was handed about from member to member, petted, caressed, and praised by some of the most distinguished men in England. The impression which the scene made on her was never forgotten. Even then the love of admiration, which became the ruling passion of her life, had taken root in her heart, and when speaking years afterwards of this day, she declared 4 pleasure was too poor a word to express her sensations, that they amounted to ecstasy, and that never again could she spend such a day of uninterrupted happiness/ 6 — 2 8 4 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . In the royal drawing-room, Lady Mary is engaged in performing the difficult task of talking to half a dozen men at once — courtiers, ambassadors, Ministers. She has no great affection for her own sex, but she greatly delights in the interchange of wit and repartee with her male friends, and likes above all things to hear herself talking. It must be confessed she always talks cleverly and brilliantly. The old King is fond of listening to her ; she has become a favourite of his, and can put him in good humour when he is sulky, and make him laugh when she wills ; and, more- over, she can speak to him in his own language, and in French, so that he has not the difficulty of stammering the few words of English he can speak when addressing her, as is the case when he strives to converse with many other ladies of the Court. Then Lady Mary treats him without much ceremony, and tells him stories of those around him, and startles him occasionally by the originality of her ideas, and for all of these reasons he has a word of welcome for her when she comes to the royal drawing-room. One evening it happened that she wanted to get away from the Court somewhat earlier than usual, and she com- municated her desire to the Duchess of Kendal, who in turn told the King. His Majesty was not very willing to let her depart so soon, as he expected her to divert him, but after a while he reluctantly consented to dismiss her, saying it was not fair of her to deprive him of her company so soon, and paying her further compliments with which she was well pleased. On leaving, she hastened down the great stairs, and ran in full speed against Mr. Secretary Craggs, who was then high in the royal favour. He was about ascending to the drawing-room, and, seeing her in such haste, he asked her THE KING ASTONISHED . 85 what was the matter ; she told him she wanted to get away, and His Majesty was unwilling she should depart, hearing which he, thinking he might probably render the King a service, flung his arms around her, lightly carried her up stairs, set her down in the antechamber, kissed both her hands and, without a word, left her. The royal pages, see- ing she had returned, threw open the doors, and in another instant, whilst she was yet breathless and ruffled, she was in the presence of the King. 4 Ah ! la revoila,’ said the ugly old Duchess, and George Lewis turned round. She was yet more fluttered and dazed when she saw him looking at her ; and without hesitating she went up to him and said, 4 Oh Lord, sir, I have been so frightened,’ and she told him of her encountering Mr. Craggs, and of his carrying her back. The King was as- tonished ; but Lady Mary had scarcely finished her story when Mr. Craggs entered slowly and collectedly by another door, and made his usual obeisance to the King as coolly as possible. 4 Mais comment done, Monsieur Craggs,’ said the King, turning his eyes on him. 4 Est-ce aue e’est l’usage de ce pays de porter des belles dames comme un sac de froment ?’ Mr. Secretary Craggs for a moment was speechless : he had not expected that Lady Mary would have told on him, or that the King would have been displeased ; however, re- covering himself quickly, he answered, with the ease of one used to the atmosphere of Courts, ‘There is nothing I would not do for your Majesty’s satisfaction,’ a reply which helped to give an agreeable turn to the occurrence. Lady Ma-y, from her powers of attraction, did not find much favour in the eyes of the Princess of Wales, but the Prince amply made up for her lack of appreciation. 4 Cette diablesse, Madame la Princesse,’ as the King was wont to 86 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. style his daughter-in-law, was not a central figure in the drawing-rooms of St James’s during George Lewis’s life- time. She amused herself by playing cards with her ladies- in-waiting in the last saloon, which, though comparatively secluded, gave her a view of all that was passing in the other rooms : and here she could watch her maids-of-honour and the ladies of the Court as they listened to or parried the fine speeches of gallants and wits. Lady Cowper, one of the women of the bed-chamber, who describes herself as ‘ an English lady who has bread to put into her mouth,’ plays at basset in the royal drawing- room, but for such low stakes as make those surrounding the card-table merry. The poor Countess hears and sees them, and tells this uncivil lot that she plays out of duty and not inclination, that she must save her money, having four chil- dren, and that there is nothing dishonest in playing for low stakes ; whereon the idle courtiers are silenced, and content themselves with a sneer, seeing which the Princess says, in her kindly, soothing way, that ‘a woman’s highest duty is to her children.’ Lady Cowper thanks her for the defence with a smile, and tells her she never fails to drink her health and the Prince’s every night at supper. * Then,’ says the Prince, who is standing near and overhears her, ‘ I do not wonder that I have such good health since I came to England.’ The Countess, who is right loyal, tells him, with another smile, that she and her children drank his health before he came to England under the name of ‘Young Han- over Brave,’ which was a title Mr. Congreve had given him in a ballad. ‘ And who may Mr. Congreve be ?’ asked the Prince, who was wholly ignorant of the existence of this dis- tinguished subject of his father’s. There is another figure familiar to the royal drawing- room, to wit the Duchess of Bolton, who amuses the King A DROLL DUCHESS. 87 as fully as her Grace of Shrewsbury, or the vivacious Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She has the reputation of being droll, and either to keep up that character, or through genuine slips of the tongue, says remarkable things now and then, which, if not always the most proper, succeed in pleasing His Majesty all the more. One night she had been to Drury Lane to see Colley Cibber’s comedy, ‘Love’s Last Shift,’ and the next day she must tell the King all about it in a gushing, excited way. ‘ But what was the play ?’ said His Majesty, in French. ‘Cibber’s “ La derniere chemise de l’amour,” ’ she answered, with a serious face ; then, when the old King burst out laughing, Her Grace sees that she has made a mistake, and half covers her face with her fan. On another occasion she came into the drawing-room in a state of great excitement, and went straight up to the King, who asked her what was the matter. ‘ Mr. Whiston,’ she said, ‘ told me the world will be burnt up in three years ; and for my part,’ she added sagely, ‘ I am determined to go to China.’ The King did not care much for Court ceremonies or parade of any kind, and, when he could, he liked going to see the hunt at Richmond, where he afterwards dined with his congenial Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, when he ate a great deal, drank more punch than was good for him, and grew right jovial. Richmond, indeed, became a favourite place with him, and he had a lodge built there, from a design by Henry Lord Pembroke, for his occasional residence, to which he intended resorting when the worries of Court-life hedged him round too closely, and it was not convenient foi him to run off to Hanover. Sir Robert Walpole offered him the sincerest flattery — imi- tation — in building at Richmond an unpretending residence for his own use, which by degrees assumed larger and larger 88 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. proportions, until it became a mansion. Before this was com- pleted he lived on the Hill, and here he came every Saturday night away from the interruptions of Court and town, in order that on Sunday he might devote himself more fully to the busi- ness of his office. At this residence it was that he entertained the King, much to His Majesty’s satisfaction. Sir Robert, like most of the men of that period, had a habit of drinking deeply, being early trained by his father, who used to say to him, ‘ You shall drink twice to my once, Robert, for I cannot permit the son in his sober senses to be a witness of his father’s drunkenness.’ In gratitude for the Minister’s hospitality, His Majesty bought the rangership of Richmond Park from Lord Clarendon, and gave it to Walpole’s eldest son. The King was fond of Hampton Court also, where he diverted himself and the courtiers right well. Once whilst staying there he invited down the Drury Lane company : Barton Booth, Mills, Wilks, Colley Cibber, the renowned Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Porter, and Miss Younger. His Majesty was fond of the drama, though he did not quite understand all that was said. 4 Henry VIII.’ was his favourite play, and during one season he witnessed its performance three times. Plays at this time occupied a large share of public attention, and were a fruitful subject of conversation. The announce- ment of a new drama caused an interest and sensation all over the town, and the fashionable world and men of letters crowded to see its first performance. 4 Here in town,’ writes Pope, in 1718, 4 we hum over a piece of fine writing and whistle at a sermon. The stage is the only place we seem alive at.’ Before the Drury Lane Company went down, the fine old hall at Hampton Court was fitted up as a theatre with some taste and much magnificence. The King intended having plays twice a week during the summer, but the decorators ROYAL DIVERSIONS . 89 took so long in fitting up the hall, that only seven plays were performed there during the summer of 1718. His Majesty did not repeat the diversion during his life, except on the occasion of the Duke of Lorraine’s visit, when the King paid £100 for one performance. George I. enjoyed these plays at Hampton Court, ‘as the actors could see from the frequent satisfaction in his looks at particular scenes and passages,’ as Colley Cibber tells. This chronicler says he noticed the King’s pleasure when he came to the lines : 1 A word with you. Let there be letters writ in every shire Of the king’s grace and pardon : the grieved commons Hardly conceive of me. Let it be noised That, through our intercession, this revokement And pardon comes — I shall anon advise you Farther in the proceeding.’ For their performance at Hampton Court, the actors were to receive their usual day’s pay and travelling expenses ; the Court was to supply the music and wax lights, and have the wardrobes and scenery conveyed from town. The expenses of each representation amounted to ^50, but, to prove his satisfaction in a practical manner, the King gave the com- pany a round sum of ^200 in addition, which garrulous old Cibber thought ‘ more than our utmost merit ought to have hoped for.’ When he received the order for this sum from the Duke of Newcastle, who was Lord Chamberlain, he says he was so surprised that 1 1 imagined His Grace’s favour or recommendation of our readiness or diligence must have contributed to so high a consideration of it, and was offering my acknowledgments as I thought them due ; but was soon stopped short by His Grace’s declaration that we had no obligations for it, but to the King himself, who had 90 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . given it from no other motive than his own bounty which bounty to the poor players must have caused a great many fine things to be said of His Majesty. On this occasion His Majesty of course had ‘Henry VIII.' played to him, and was so delighted that Sir Richard Steele, who held with Colley Cibber and Wilks the patent of the Royal Company of Comedians, says, ‘ The King liked the play so well that I was afraid I should have lost all my actors ; for I was not sure that His Majesty would not keep them to fill the posts at Court that he saw them so fit for in the play.’ Mr. Cibber knew how to manage his Court cards well. When he wrote the ‘ Nonjuror/ a comedy dealing severely with the Jacobites, he dedicated it to the King in a preface ridiculous alike for its sycophancy and pomposity. It com- menced : c In a time when all communities congratulate your Majesty on the Glories of your Reign, which are continually arising from the Prosperities of your People ; be graciously pleased, Dread Sire, to permit the lowliest of your subjects from the Theatre to take this occasion of offering their most humble acknowledgment for your Royal Favour and Protection.’ To this play went the King in his sedan-chair, followed by the usual procession. All the courtiers who sought the royal favour came likewise, and the comedy was played for eighteen consecutive nights, then considered a long run. In con- sideration of the service the ‘ Nonjuror ’ was supposed to have rendered the Government, the author was, more than ten years afterwards, made poet laureate, when Eusden, who was wont to imbibe something much stronger than nectar, timely vacated that post. Before this honour reached Colley Cibber, and until the day of his death, he was made the butt of the Jacobite party. Cibber was not, however, the TAKING THE AIR . 9i first dramatist who had dedicated a play to the Hanoverian family. That honour was reserved for Susanna Centlivre, who, a year before the royal family came to England, in- scribed a comedy, called, ‘The Wonder; A Woman keeps a Secret/ to George Augustus, then just made Duke of Cambridge. When His Grace was made Prince of Wales, he gave this wise Susanna a handsome present, and ‘ be- spoke the play/ which the new Court honoured with their presence. His Majesty and those surrounding him seem to have en- joyed themselves heartily. When the Court stayed in town, the King visited Richmond and Hampton Court almost weekly, to which places he usually went by water, as he preferred this easy mode of travelling to being shaken by the motion of his coach. His journeys up and down the Thames were like triumphal processions. The courtiers went in barges hung with blue and scarlet and purple cloth, making the river a blaze of colour ; and almost in- variably there was a boat-load of musicians, whose duty it was to divert the royal ear during His Majesty’s journey. There is an account in the Flying Post , a right loyal paper, of a trip he made a few months after his coronation from Whitehall to Limehouse to take the air ‘ with their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales and several of the nobility in their barges/ ‘ They were diverted/ says this record of a royal amusement, ‘ by a concert of musick on board, which was elegantly performed by the best masters and instruments. The river was crowded with boats, and the banks with spectators, so that both from the river and the shore there were repeated huzzas and loud acclamations of “ Long live King George, the Prince and Princess, and all their Royal issue !” As they returned, abundance of ships were illuminated with lanterns in their rigging and the houses 92 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. on both sides of the river with candles. The musick con- tinued playing, and the guns were fired from the ships and wharfs till His Majesty landed/ There is no doubt the expression of the people’s loyalty was not diminished by the Flying Post . CHAPTER VII. His Majesty’s ‘most dear Son’ — His Character, Tastes, and Opinion of Literature — The Princess of Wales — Her Talents and bitter Tongue — How she Governed her Husband — The King visits Hanover — Unwillingness to make the Prince Regent — The King at Hanover — The Prince affects Popu- larity — His Majesty’s Uneasiness and Return to England — Royal Displeasure — Scene at the Christening of the Young Prince — Its Consequences. When George I. landed at Greenwich, he was accompanied by his only son, George Augustus, who was, ten days later, created Prince of Wales. His Royal Highness was then in his thirty-first year, and had been married for nine years to Caroline of Anspach. In 1706 Queen Anne had created him Baron of Tewkesbury, Viscount Northallerton, Earl of Milford Haven, and Marquess and Duke of Cambridge. George Augustus was anxious to sit in the House of Lords, and visit the country over which he should one day reign as King ; but Her Majesty by no means shared his anxiety, and was not at all anxious to see him. When the Hanoverian Minister applied to the English Lord Chan- cellor for a writ of summons on behalf of the new-made Duke, Queen Anne turned a deaf ear to the petition, and subsequently wrote to the Hanoverian Court that it was better for his interests and those of his house that the new 94 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . Duke should stay quietly at home for the present, which piece of advice the young man was obliged to take. He had never set foot upon English soil until he landed in his father’s train, when the Elector was hailed as King. He had shown the world that he had courage, and was a good soldier when he was yet almost a boy. At the age of fifteen he had fought with the British troops under the com- mand of the great Duke of Marlborough, and was present at the battle of Oudenarde, where he behaved gallantly, and had the satisfactic. ^ of seeing the enemy’s troops routed from the field. At this engagement James Francis Stuart, called by some Prince of Wales, by others the Young Pretender, was present with the troops ranged against the English. He was then about the age of George Augustus Guelph, and fought with an amount of courage and daring not less than his. So proud was the Hanoverian Prince of this victory that for years after it was his good will and pleasure to dress himself on State occasions with the same hat and coat which he had worn on this memorable day. George Augustus was but ten years old when the tragedy which preceded his mother’s banishment occurred in the Hanoverian palace. The remembrance of her gentleness and sufferings always remained with him, and the best trait which he exhibited in his long life was his unshaken love for her who bore him. Although His Majesty assured the nation in the patent creating George Augustus Prince of Wales, ‘ that his most dear son was a Prince whose eminent filial piety has always endeared him to us,’ yet it was well known the King heartily hated him ; and their public quarrels, a few years later, be- came the scandal of Europe. In many points the characters of this father and son resembled each other strongly. The odes which greeted the King on his arrival had spoken of LIKE FA THER , LIKE SON. 95 the Prince as an ‘ heir alike to his virtues and his throne ; but as the former never existed, the Prince could not inherit them by any means. If the King was notoriously immoral, his son was no better. Macaulay says of the former that 4 he loved nothing but punch and fat women/ and his son’s tastes in regard to the latter were identical with his royal parent’s. In the Prince’s person there was not the faintest trace of that grace which is supposed to be the inheritance of royalty by right divine. He was small and corpulent, and not only common-place, but vulgar-looking. His features were of the heavy Teutonic type, the mouth and chin particularly full, the eyes prominent and dull, with white lashes that gave a weak look to the whole face. To his low stature, which added to the insignificance of his appearance, a humorous reference was made in a ballad called ‘ The Seven Wise Men.’ Mr. Edgecumb mentioned in the first line was almost a dwarf ; the verse says — ‘ When Edgecumb spoke, the Prince Laugh’d at the merry elf : Rejoiced to see within his Court One shorter than himself. “ I’m glad,” cried out the quibbling squire, “ My lowness makes your highness higher 9 His language was habitually gross ; his manner, not only to those around him, but to his wife, whom he loved to the last in a half-brutal way, and to the mistress whose supposed charms captivated him, was rude and dogged. In disposi- tion he was thoroughly phlegmatic ; his mind travelled in a dull, sluggish channel, unless when roused by occurrences touching his immediate pleasures, and this natural heaviness his flatterers pretended to take for philosophic calmness. Underneath this general dulness, a certain shrewdness, often- 96 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. times characteristic of weak minds, and in his case an hereditary trait, showed itself now and then. He would smile on the noble flatterers about him, making them believe he relied on their honesty, whilst he secretly distrusted them ; and so, judging of humanity at large from those who sur- rounded him, he formed a poor idea of its merit, and believed the only thing worth living for was himself. Throughout his life his vices were of the coarsest order, and were marked by all the scandalous publicity which bad taste could suggest. Not one of the Muses nine found a friend or patron in him ; books he heartily detested. Horace Walpole says that he preferred a guinea to a composition as perfect as ‘Alexander’s Feast ;’ no doubt this assertion is true, for his contempt for verse was occasionally manifested, and Lord Chesterfield adds that he looked on the poet Gay, who for years was a frequent attendant at his Court, as a mechanic. Once, when this illustrious Prince heard that Lord Hervey had written some poems, he said to him reprovingly, ‘My Lord Hervey, you ought not to write verses ; it is beneath one of your rank ; leave such work to little Mr. Pope.’ But, if he had no taste for art, he never pretended to such, a merit which has almost completely vanished in these days of greater civilization. The only kind of beauty, indeed, which pleased the royal eye was that of woman’s form, and before this he bowed down with an admiration which some of the same sex, who did not come in for a share of it, freely admitted was blind. His consort was said to have the finest bust of any woman in Europe ; and, by the Prince’s desire, there was always as much of it on view as the decorum of those days — which was not too narrow — would admit. One day when she had become Queen, her not sufficiently dressed Majesty shivered from cold, and her ‘ good Howard,’ one of the women of the ‘ HE MIGHT KICK OR KISS .' 97 bed-chamber, who was also a royal mistress, placed a hand- kerchief on the Queen’s shoulders ; the King, viewing this act with an ill-approving eye, crossed the drawing-room before a tittering crowd of courtiers, and snatched it off, giving at the same time an unkind cut to his mistress by asking her aloud, ‘ Is it because you have an ugly neck your- self you hide the Queen’s ?’ He was never open-handed as the day, either to melting charity, deserving friendship, or other objects worthy in themselves, save when his immediate pleasure was concerned ; in this way strongly resembling many princes and peers, and men of lesser rank, and men and women of no rank at all, who live and have their being in the present day. He had shown great signs of pleasure at the prospect of coming to England, yet he never exhibited any love for the country or the people he was destined to rule ; and, when called to the throne, he ran back to his Electorate con- tinually, leaving the kingdom to the charge of his Ministers, and stayed in that blissful land as long, and sometimes longer than the Parliament would permit him. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, speaking of him, says, after first re- ferring to his ‘small understanding,’ that ‘he looked on all men and women he saw as creatures he might kick or kiss for his diversion ; and, whenever he met with any opposition in those designs, he thought his opposers insolent rebels to the will of God, who created them for his use ; and judged of the merit of all people by their ready submission to his orders, or the relation they had to his power.’ His consort, Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea, Princess of Wales, was a woman of very different parts. Her figure was stately and graceful, her face — though it could never have been called beautiful, and notwithstanding that it was marked by small-pox — possessed a charm that few who ap- 7 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 98 proached her failed to recognise. She had, in early life, refused the Archduke Charles, son of His Imperial Majesty Leopold I., because his merit in appreciating her was more than counterbalanced by his belonging to the Roman Catholic faith, and married George Augustus of Hanover in preference : and from the day she became his bride to that of her death she loved him as only a much-enduring, gentle, and withal forgiving wife loves; loved him much better than he deserved, never swerving in hek’ fidelity, though surrounded by a profligate Court, in whick her hus- band made wifely infidelity the fashion. Throughout her life she strove to close her eyes to his sins, and to the shame which he cast upon her ; and had no words for him but those of tenderness and affection in return for his oftentimes brutal roughness, cruel humilia- tions, and long neglects. ‘ My children are not as a grain of sand compared with him/ she used to say, and her con- duct through life showed that this was not a mere idle phrase. Her manners had a gentleness that easily gained her friends ; her voice was soft and musical, and there was a dignity and courtesy in her bearing which never failed in impressing even her husband. Mentally her attainments were beyond those usually acquired by royalty in those days. She was a linguist, a lover of books, a student of philosophy and the sciences. She delighted in listening to the controversy of theologians, had an appreciation for wit, and was as a conversationalist one of the most agreeable women at the Court. Her good traits indeed were many. With the suffering she had a quick sympathy that prompted her to many generous acts, and her charity to the distressed left her at her death in debt to the King. She had an ex- cellent memory for her friends, and, on the other hand, she seldom forgot those who in any way slighted or strove WISE IN HER WA YS. 99 to supplant her power, as many incidents in her life showed. This was the woman whom her royal father-in-law termed ‘ a she-devil ;’ which goes to show that members of the same family, especially when such members are fathers and mothers in-law, are not always the best judges of each other’s characters ; and it is quite certain that this daughter-in-law by no means deserved the bad language which the King was in the habit of using towards her. Though the Princess had many excellent qualities, it must be confessed she had a sharp-edged tongue ; and though she was much too excellent a wife to favour her hus- band with any examples of her power in this respect, she did not extend a like clemency to the King or his favourites, but sought in a right womanly manner to repay him for the broken English and guttural German, meaning much nasti- ness, which he greeted her with whenever he was particu- larly angry. Perhaps her chief and most valuable gift was tact, which from first to last she exercised with wonderful delicacy and skill, not only on those about her, but on her husband especially, over whom she held a strong influence, which would have been lost for ever if he had once suspected its existence ; and this she maintained even whilst his mis- tresses and favourites sought to govern him for their own purposes. She listened with an air of supreme deference to his counsels, humoured his whims, and managed him so adroitly that he obeyed her wishes, believing them to be dictated by his own mind. When the Prince became King, she and Sir Robert Walpole played into each other’s hands. She it was who helped to re-establish the great Minister in his position, which he lost on the death of George I. Having implicit confidence in his counsels and power, she would 7—2 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. ioo consult with him in private as to what measures the King should adopt ; and, when they had agreed, it was but a question of time for His Majesty to follow the policy they had determined on. Her husband was, of course, as un- conscious of this as she desired he should be ; and it was her care that he should retain his blissful ignorance. In this she succeeded well. If she and her royal spouse were talking, when Walpole came to the King to speak of busi- ness he had already arranged with the Queen, she would rise up, courtesy, and offer to retire; when the King would generally bid her stay, saying to Sir Robert, ‘ You see how much I am governed by my wife, as they say I am. Hoh, hoh, it is a fine thing to be governed by one's wife !’ 4 O sire !’ she would reply to the pompous little man, ‘ I must be vain indeed to pretend to govern your Majesty.' So subtly did she use this power, that the courtiers, in- cluding the shrewd and clever Dean Swift, did not for years suspect it ; and this Churchman blindly sought the favour of the Heir-Apparent through his mistress, Mrs. Howard, to whom he seemed to devote more of his time than to his wife. George I. shrewdly suspected the Princess’s influence, and on that account gave her a double share of the dislike in which he held his son ; and it was also recognised by the far-seeing Sir Robert Walpole, to whose courage and cleverness the Hanoverian monarchs owed it that they ever sat on the throne, or were allowed to retain the crown. Sir Robert, first through policy, and afterwards through honest friendship, became devoted to her through life. The Princess has been described — by one of her own sex — as 4 having the genius which qualified her for the government of a fool,’ but the fact of her exercising that power without its being suspected or recognised by the PLAYING AT PIQUET. ioi man who felt it most, might raise her genius to a higher standpoint. When she landed in England a few weeks after her husband and father-in-law, she was accompanied by the three daughters then born to her. Her entrance into the City was almost private, and it was only at the Lord Mayor’s procession that she made her first public debut. A brief description of one of her early appearances in the royal drawing-room is given by the Hon. Peter Wentworth, a courtier during three reigns, to whose private correspondence with his brother, the Earl of Strafford, as well as that of other members of the family, we are indebted for much that these pages contain. ‘The Princess,’ he writes, ‘came into the drawing-room at seven o’clock, and stayed until ten. There was a basset- table and ombre-table, but, the Princess sitting down to piquet, all the company flocked about to that table, and the others were not used. The Duchess of Marlborough, Lady Pembroke, and the Countess de Pekenburgh played with her. They say we are to have these apartments every night but Sunday.’ It was not until the Prince and Princess of Wales had been about two years in England that they came promi- nently before the public, and then only in consequence of their quarrel with the King. Before this the Prince was little noticed. Lady Cowper makes mention of him now and then in her diary, once to state that he had an intrigue with the Prime Minister’s wife, of which both Walpole and the Princess were aware ; and again she gives a glimpse of him on an occasion when he was ill in bed one morning ‘ of a surfeit,’ and felt no inclination to get up ; then all the ladies of the bed-chamber in attendance on the Princess were called into the room where he lay, and, tables being 102 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. set for the fair dames, they were made to play with the Prince’s fine gentlemen in order to amuse his sick Royal Highness. George I. had not been two years in England when he began to long for the sight of his beloved Hanover. He had stayed in a foreign country, and ruled over a foreign people, for almost nineteen months, and he was already well tired of both. His little Electorate had been always dearer to him and occupied more of his thoughts than the United Kingdom. It was in vain that his Ministers reminded him of the unsettled state of the nation, of the danger his quitting England might entail on his newlyestablished monarchy, and remonstrated with him ; but His Majesty, who had never been used to have his royal will opposed or listen to arguments, grew angry at the interference, and gave them to understand that in this respect he would do as he pleased, and ‘ would not endure a longer confinement in the kingdom.’ Sir Robert Walpole, seeing that his advice was so badly received, and had only the effect of placing him in ill-favour with the sovereign, gave way to His Majesty’s desire, merely suggesting that the Prince of Wales should be appointed Regent in his absence ; whereon Plis Majesty’s sacred brow became ruffled. One of the causes of this royal father’s dislike to his son was on account of the Prince’s affection for his mother, and his belief in her innocence. But besides this unnatural reason there were others which gave His Majesty equal offence. The King’s mother, the old Elec- tress Sophia, made no secret of the poor regard in which she held his abilities, and of her affection for her grandson, whom she had brought up and helped to educate, though by such bringing up he profited not at all. Then again, when the accession of the House of Hanover was settled, APPOINTING A REGENT . 103 Queen Anne, who much disliked George Lewis, her once suitor, passed him over in neglect, and invested his son with the Order of the Garter. These things, small in themselves, produced a feeling of jealousy in the King’s mind which was not lessened by a proposal of the Tory party that an annuity of ^100,000 should be settled on the Prince in- dependently of his father. The King in every way in his power restricted the authority and influence of his son. Though the Prince was nominally a member of the Privy Council, he was not permitted to have a knowledge of the secret affairs of State, but that privilege was given privately to the King’s mistresses, who used it to the advan- tage of their own mercenary purposes. Count Broglio writes to the King of France : ‘The Prince endeavours to obtain information of what passes from persons who are at- tached to him, but he learns nothing either from the King, the Duchess, or the Ministers/ With such feelings existing in His Majesty’s mind, he received the suggestion as to the regency with bad grace ; as for the Prince, when he became aware of the King’s determination to visit Hanover, he at once looked forward with pleasure to the honour which awaited him, and eagerly anticipated the sense of importance and freedom it would give him. This gave fresh offence to His Majesty, and he hesitated in allowing him to become Regent unless he was subject to the closest restrictions. He demanded that the Prince should dismiss the Duke of Argyle from the appointment of Groom of the Stole. His Majesty believed that the Duke exercised an influence over the Prince, and made a point of him leaving his service ; and His Royal Highness was obliged to consent, though he believed the demand was made merely for the purpose of thwarting him. Then the King sent one of his German favourites to state that it was 104 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . his royal wish other persons should join the Prince in his regency, to which the Ministers replied that c on a careful perusal of precedents, finding no instance of persons being joined in commission with the Prince of Wales, and few if any restrictions, they were of opinion that the constant tenor of ancient practice could not conveniently be receded from/ Yet His Majesty was not satisfied; he could not well oppose his Ministers from making the Prince Regent, but he was determined to shear him of as much of his glory as possible by merely appointing him nominally ‘ Guardian of the Realm and Lieutenant/ The last scion of a royal house who had borne that title was Edward the Black Prince. When at last the question of the regency was settled, the King set out for Hanover, accompanied by the two Turks and his two mistresses, without whom he was as unwilling to travel as they were to lose sight of him. Probably they had some lurking fears that, if they remained behind the King’s most excellent Majesty, they might meet with some unpleasantness from the Prince, who detested them, and from his friends, who, of course, shared his opinions. The Prince could say disagreeable things sometimes, and never cared to spare his father’s mistresses. A report of some words he had once made use of reached Madame Kilman- segge, and she, with tears in her great round eyes, went to the Princess to complain that His Royal Highness had said in Court she had intrigued with all the men in Hanover. The stout creature’s immaculate character was so injured by such a statement that she declared her acquaintance had cut her, and as a proof that she was at least without stain and above reproach, if not beyond the reach of suspicion, she said her husband had taken pains to vindicate her character, and thereupon drew from her pocket a testimony of her ‘ A BAD REPUTATION . 105 strict faithfulness as a wife, signed by her deserted but lenient spouse. The Princess, who shared her husband’s dislike to Kilmansegge, who had caused much misery to the unhappy Sophia Dorothea, laughed in the royal mistress’s face, and told her ‘it was indeed a bad reputation which rendered such a certificate necessary.’ The King was mightily indisposed in crossing over to his beloved Electorate, but as soon as he reached Herrnhausen, his summer residence, all things went smoothly with him. During his absence, his Hanoverian Court had continued its ceremonies and gaieties by his desire. His grandson, Prince Frederick, resided there, and received the same at- tention and the same attendance as George Augustus had before he became King. On His Majesty’s return the little Court became more brilliant. A drawing-room was held every evening, and the King and his courtiers walked about the lamp-lit gardens of Herrnhausen in the cool summer nights. Here he forgot the wrangling of parties which divided his’kingdom, the anxieties of his Ministers, and the hard truths which the press — then beginning for the first time to assert itself — said of him. Lord Peterborough, who went to see the King here, told Mr. Clavering that His Majesty was so happy ‘he believed he had forgotten the accident which happened to him and his family on the 1st of August, 1714.’ At home all things went well. When the King was at a safe distance, the Prince set about making himself popular, a task never difficult for a Prince to achieve. The first ad- vantage which he possessed was his understanding and speaking, though not fluently, the English tongue ; another, fully as great, was the influence of his consort. All those who could not bask in the sunshine of His Majesty’s favour now rallied round the Prince ; the former was old and a io6 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. trifle dull, and but little pleased with his English subjects, who were unable to convey to him the gracious sentiments they would have him believe they felt ; the latter was young and gay, and now took pains, not only to be civil, but courteous to all. So his praises were loudly sung. The Prince and Princess moved to Hampton Court, where his friends and courtiers soon followed him, and where much splendour and gaiety was kept up. The Prince had never been seen in such an amiable light, and his graciousness became the wonder of the Court. He dined publicly with the Princess daily in her apartments, and every morning they, with the maids-of-honour, generally went on the water in barges finely carved and gilt, hung with crimson silk curtains, and covered to the water’s edge with scarlet cloth, when the maids would sing glees and ballads to please the Prince’s ear, or chatter away during the pleasant hours of the summer days. In the evenings they went to the bowling-green, when not only the maids, but the women of the bed-chamber, with the ladies and gentlemen of the Court, played games and made merry. Then, when they were tired, they walked in the quaint gardens until the grey darkness of the summer nights came, when they went in- doors to supper or cards, or perhaps to dance till midnight. It was a pleasant, careless life, full of that robust enjoyment familiar to our ancestors a couple of hundred years ago. Here, too, came the Ministers, who were as anxious to please the Prince as he was anxious to please them : and the result of this mutual amiability was that the liberal measures passed during the King’s absence were attributed by the people to the Prince. My Lord Townsend, Sir Robert Walpole, and Count Bothmore were often to be seen at Hampton Court during the regency. The latter had been ordered by the King to keep watch on the Court during his HIGH WORDS . 107 absence, and report all that passed to him. Another friend of the King’s, who was frequently here, was my Lord Sunderland, who was sent to Hanover by the Ministry to persuade the King to return, after His Majesty had been absent some months. Before he went, he must take leave of the Princess, who had begun to take a share in the direc- tion of politics and politicians, and for this purpose went to see her in the Great Gallery. In the course of his conversa- tion with her, some difference of opinion arose, probably as to what messages he should bear to the King, which led to high words. Whereon the Princess asked him to speak low, as the people in the garden below could hear him ; when he cried out, roughly : ‘ Let them hear.’ To which answer she returned : ‘ Well, if you have a mind, let them ; but you shall walk next the windows, for in the humour we both are, one of us must certainly jump out at the window, and I am resolved it shan’t be me.’ To increase his popularity, the Prince determined to visit the provinces, at the mere prospect of which the ancestors of our country cousins were almost beside themselves with joy. When the royal progress was made through Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire, the good people got drunk as lords from the gladness of their hearts, and lit bonfires, and rang church bells, and made long speeches ; for never in their time had there been such occasion for general merriment. Indeed, the Prince became such a favourite, that news of his popularity reached Hanover, and destroyed the peace of His Sacred Majesty during the hours he passed with Madame Platen. His Royal Highness found it pleasant to play at being King, even if only for a little while, and did his best to make his short reign enjoyable to the people, if only to draw a con- trast between his own and his father’s regime. Lady Cowper 108 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. hints in her diary that the King intended remaining in Hanover. 4 M. Robethon,’ she writes, ‘ says the King will come back again, which he did not intend to have done if these things had not been arranged’ (/.&, if the Prince had not assumed such power). When, on his departure from London, her ladyship wished him a good journey and a quick return, His Majesty was in mighty good humour, ‘ and looked as if the last part of the speech was needless, and that he did not think of it.’ However unwilling he may have been, back he came to his English subjects in December ; and it was plain to all that whatever jealousy and dislike he felt for the Prince was now much increased, and that henceforth there must be two parties at St. James’s. Though the King gave little out- ward sign of his feelings, it was evident to the courtiers that a storm was gathering in the royal atmosphere, which at any moment might break above their heads. The expected moment was not long in arriving. Shortly after His Majesty’s return, the Princess of Wales gave birth to a son, and in due time preparations were made for the royal christening. The Prince had asked the King and his uncle, the Bishop of Osnaburgh, to stand as spon- sors, and to this proposal His Majesty seemingly con- sented, but a short time before the ceremony changed his royal mind, and insisted that the Duke of Newcastle should stand as godfather instead of the Bishop. His Grace was a man whom the Prince abhorred. It is of this nobleman Lady Hervey, writing years later from Bath, says, ‘ ’Tis a comical sight to see him with his blue ribband and star, and a cabbage under each arm, or a chicken in his hand, which after he himself has purchased at market, he carries home for his dinner.’ His Majesty was well aware of his son’s feelings towards the Duke, and the Prince believed it was on THE PRINCE ARRESTED . 109 account of his dislike to His Grace that he was selected. The King, whose obstinacy to all persons but his mistresses was a prominent characteristic, would hear of no objec- tion to the Duke, and insisted on his standing sponsor. The Prince was therefore obliged to submit to what he con- sidered an indignity to himself and his son, but restrained his feelings as well as he could until after the ceremony was over. This took place in the Princess’s chamber. His Majesty, the Duke of Newcastle, and the god-mother stood at one side of the bed, the Prince and maids-of-honour at the other. At the sight of His Grace the Prince’s sense of indignation was roused, and no sooner was the christening over, and the King had gone out of the room, than the Prince stepped over to the Duke, held up his hand and forefinger to him threateningly, and in a great passion called out to him, ‘You are a rascal, but I shall find you,’ meaning, ‘I shall find time to be revenged.’ In a moment all was confusion ; His Grace was insulted, the Prince ip a fury, the maids frightened. The news of the scene spread like wildfire through the Court ; those who espoused the King’s cause were indig- nant. His Majesty had never since his arrival displayed such anger as when he heard of it; he believed, or pre- tended to believe, that the Prince had said, ‘ I will fight you,’ and had challenged the Duke by such words to a duel almost in his royal presence. He blustered, used strong language, and had the Prince placed under arrest. ‘ What was my astonishment,’ says Mrs. Howard, who was woman of the bed-chamber to the Princess, ‘ when, going to the Princess’s apartment the next morning, the yeomen in the guard-chamber pointed their halberds at my breast, and told me I must not pass. I urged that it was my duty to no COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . attend the Princess ; they said, no matter — I must not pass that way/ This disturbance in St. James's caused the wildest scandal, which was increased when the Prince and Princess were commanded to leave the palace, and were obliged to take temporary lodgings in Lord Grantham’s house in Albemarle Street. On the evening of the second day after the christening, the Dukes of Roxburgh, Kent, and Kingston waited on the Prince, by the King’s command, for some explanation of his conduct; but these three gentlemen found him unchanged in his sentiments towards His Grace of Newcastle. When they asked if he had said he would fight the Duke, he declared he had not. ‘ But,’ said His Royal Highness, 4 I said I would find him, and I will find him, for he has often failed in his respect to me, particu larly on the late occasion, by insisting on standing god- father to my son when he knew it was against my will/ One of the noble lords told him that the offending Duke acted as sponsor merely in obedience to His Majesty, whereon His Royal Highness roundly told him that he did not believe it (for calling people liars was a royal luxury in which he occasionally indulged), and added that it was the right of all British subjects to choose sponsors for their children, and that he would allow no one to ill-use him. All of which was carried to the King. After the visit of their three Graces, the Prince wrote the King a letter, in which he hopes 4 His Majesty will have the goodness not to look upon what I said to the Duke in parti- cular as a want of respect to your Majesty. However, if I have been so unhappy as to offend your Majesty, contrary to my intention, I ask your pardon, and beg your Majesty will be persuaded that I am, with greatest respect, your Majesty’s most humble and most dutiful son and servant, George P/ Ill * MOST DUTIFUL SON To this His Majesty paid but slight heed, and was of opinion that if the intentions of His Royal Highness as to his submission 4 were such as were to be expected from a good son, he would not fail to agree to and sign ’ some singu- larly arbitrary articles which he had had drawn up, com- pelling the Prince to give up his children to his guardianship, and 4 not to hold communication with or have in his service any person or persons distasteful to the King to which the Prince promptly declined to submit. Four children, not including the infant whose christening was the cause of the quarrel, were then bom to the Prince and Princess of Wales; the eldest of whom, Frederick Louis, afterwards Prince of Wales, was left behind in Hanover, and never permitted to visit England until his father became King. The three remaining children, Anne, Amelia, and Caroline, who had landed with the Princess, were now claimed by the King, and were not allowed to accompany their parents when they departed from St. James’s. The infant for whom the Duke stood sponsor died when three months old, and was buried privately in Henry VII/s Chapel in Westminster Abbey. The town was, of course, vastly diverted by the royal quarrel, and the poetasters hurried to make capital of it, and produced ‘ An Excellent New Ballad/ a few verses of which can be given without offence. 4 God prosper long our noble King, His Turks and Germans all ; A woful christening late there did In James’s house befal. 4 To name a child with might and main Newcastle took his way, We all may rue the child was born Who christned was that dav. 112 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 1 His sturdy sire, the Prince of Wales, A vow to God did make, That, if he dared his child to name, His heart full sore should ake. ‘ But on the day straight to the court This Duke came with a staff ; Oh, how the Prince did stamp and stare, At which the Duke did laugh. * Hereat the Prince did wax full wroth £v’n in his father’s hall ; “ IT1 be revenged on thee,” he said, “ Thou rogue and eke rascal.” 1 The Duke ran straightway to the King, Complaining of his son ; And the King sent three Dukes more To know what he had done. a * o a a ‘ The King then took his grey goose-quill And dipt it o’er in gall, And by Master Vice-Chamberlain He sent to him this scrawl : Take hence yourself and eke your spouse, Your maidens and your men, Your trunks and all your trumpery, Except your children.” a a a a 9 ( The Prince secured with muckle haste Th’ artillery commission, And with him trudged full many a maid, But not one politician. a a a a a ‘ Then up the street they took their way, And knocked up good Lord Grantham, Higledy pigledy they lay, And all went rantum scantum. BALLAD OF THE TOWN, 113 * Now sire and son had played their part, What could befal beside ? Why, the poor babe took this to heart, Kicked up his heels and died. ‘ God grant the land may profit reap From all this silly pother, And send these fools may ne’er agree Till they are at Han-o-ver.’ The Prince, when he left St. James’s, was deprived of his usual guard and all signs of distinction ; and an announce- ment was made in the Gazette , that all those who paid their respects to the Prince would not be received at Court This notice caused considerable alarm to the courtiers, who had now to decide whether they should make friends with His Majesty or the Prince ; many of them were more eager to secure the favour of the coming King than that of the reigning Monarch, who was too closely surrounded by foreigners to admit the near approach of his English subjects. 8 CHAPTER VIII. Leicester House Court and its Brilliancy — Lord Chesterfield’s Wit and Mimicry — The Mad Duchess of Buckingham — ‘ Smiling Mary’ Bellenden — Lord Hervey and MaryLapell — Sophia Howe — Miss Meadows. After a few weeks’ residence in Albemarle Street, the Prince purchased a house in Leicester Fields for ^6,000 from Portman Seymour. It had been originally built by the Earl of Leicester, and had on several occasions been let to persons of distinction, such as the Queen of Bohemia, the Prince’s great-grandmother, and later on to the French and German ambassadors. In Leicester House, situated at one of the corners of the square, the Prince and Princess set up a Court of their own, which rivalled that of St. James’s. The Prince was suffi- ciently independent of his father. He had an annual allow- ance of 100,000 from a grateful nation ; and the revenues of the Principality of Wales brought him the sum of £ 20,000 yearly besides. With this sum he endeavoured to maintain his dignity. Every morning a drawing-room was held at Leicester House, and three times a week receptions were given which soon became famed for their brilliancy and pleasure. It was the aim of the Prince and Princess to become popular, for their popularity was sure to anger the King. The Princess especially neglected nothing that would ‘ LORD AMONG WITS ! ii5 increase the favour with which she was now regarded, and for this reason overlooked many things objectionable in those who attended her crowded assemblies. Her husband had always been devoted to pleasure, but never more so than now, when Leicester House became the attraction of women of beauty, of elegant beaux, and of the accomplished wits with whom the town abounded. The result was, the attendance at the King’s drawing-rooms became gradually thinner. On the nights when there were no receptions, assemblies, or concerts at Leicester House, the Prince and Princess went to balls, operas, and plays ; and gaiety became the established order of the day. That most elegant and dis- sipated man, Lord Chesterfield, says, in writing to a friend about this period, ‘ Balls, assemblies, and masquerades have taken the place of dull, formal visiting days, and the women are more agreeable trifiers than they were designed. Puns are extremely in vogue, and the license very great. The variation of three or four letters in a word breaks no squares, inasmuch that an indifferent punster may make a very good figure in the best companies/ This same courtier was at once feared and liked, sought after and dreaded, because of the sharpness of his wit and the bitterness of his tongue ; and yet it was his aim, as he says, £ to make every man like him, and every woman love him.’ He had followed the Prince to Leicester House, and was no small attraction at the mimic Court. He was one of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber to the Prince, and strongly espoused his side in the royal quarrel. This ‘ wit among lords, and lord among wits,’ as Dr. Johnson styles him, had a talent for mimicking, and used to entertain the Princess with specimens of his talents in this respect : ridiculing those who were obnoxious to her, and with the same ease imitating her when her back was turned. She 8 — 2 ii6 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. often became aware that she was the object of his ridicule, and would frequently, between jest and earnest, warn him not to provoke her. 4 You have more wit than 1/ she would say, 4 but I have a bitter tongue, and always repay my debts with exorbitant interest/ At which speech he would smile, deny that he had ever attempted to ridicule her — for a lie was nothing to this fine gentleman — and, when she had turned away, would mimic her once more for the amusement of the maids-of-honour. Then the Princess, seeing the smiles of those around her, would turn hastily and catch the courtier trying to compose his features and assume a look of tranquil innocence. The Princess, though she feared him, would laugh heartily over his excellent mimicry of others, especially when it extended itself to Madame Kilmansegge, who was frequently the butt of his wit, and afforded him ample and easy scope for ridicule. 4 She looks young — if one may judge from her com- plexion/ said the Princess, a little maliciously, speaking of the royal mistress. 4 One would judge her to be eighteen or twenty/ 4 Yes, eighteen or twenty stone/ replied the worthy Chesterfield, with a grave countenance; and, when the Princess and those around her laughed, he continued : 4 The standard of His Majesty’s taste, as exemplified in his mistress, makes all ladies who aspire to his favour, and who are near the suitable age, strain and swell themselves, like the frogs in the fable, to rival the bulk and dignity of the ox. Some succeed, others — burst !’ At this speech all the ladies laugh once more ; and, on the Duchess of Buckingham coming into the royal apartment, it is repeated to her, and diverts her vastly ; for Her Grace, though hating the Hanoverian family generally, detested the King in particular, and came to Leicester House in the hope of tormenting him. i KINGS ARE ALL-POWERFUL / 117 The eccentric Duchess was said to be the daughter of James II. Her mother was the Countess of Dorchester, mistress of that King, who, speaking of herself and the ladies who occupied a like position towards His Majesty, was wont to say bluntly, ‘ We are none of us handsome, and if we have wit, he 7 (the King) ‘ has not enough to find it out. 7 Her Grace of Buckingham, the supposed daughter of royalty, was extremely proud of her lineage, in which she implicitly believed, notwithstanding that her enemies de- clared her father was one Colonel Graham, who in the second James’s day was a gay and fashionable young courtier, upon whom my Lady Dorchester looked with favourable eyes. The Colonel’s legitimate daughter bore a strong re- semblance to the Duchess, and he used to say, 4 Well, well, Kings are all-powerful, and one must not complain, but certainly the same man is the father of these two women.’ Her Grace, by reason of her supposed descent from one of the royal Stuarts, had during the late reign employed herself in plotting for the restoration of the Pretender, and for this reason had frequently visited Rome and Versailles, travelling, as became the daughter of a King, in great pomp and state. She strove to impress on all the dignity and im- portance of her self-imposed mission, for which she was laughed at heartily. When abroad, it was her habit to have the boxes of the theatres she honoured with her presence hung with crimson velvet, as if for the visits of royalty ; and, because she was refused the honours due to a Princess of the royal blood at the Court of Versailles, she deter- mined never to appear there again. However, all her plotting never had the desired effect, though she is said to have offered the bribe of her hand and fortune to Sir Robert Walpole if he would lend her his aid in restoring the Stuarts ; but perhaps he considered these of n8 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. little matter if he lost his head, and so refused the tempting bait as courteously as Cardinal Fleury at the French Court declined her proffered advice. When she went to Leicester House she dressed with regal magnificence, and her manner clearly showed she looked upon her host and hostess as people who had been raised from the proper sphere of life in which Providence had placed them. A story is told of her that once, in striving to drive through an enclosure of the park private to the royal family, she was informed she could not pass that way, as it was reserved for royalty. ‘ Tell the King/ said the irate Duchess, 4 that, if it is reserved for royalty, he has no more right to go there than I have / and George I., on hearing this, laughed heartily, and gave orders that she was to be allowed to pass through any part of the park she desired. It was her custom, on the anniversary day of her royal grandsire’s execution, to draw down the blinds and close the shutters of Buckingham House, and don weeds of deepest mourning, in respect to the King’s memory. On one of these occasions she sent for Lord Hervey, and gave him an audience relative to the marriage of her grandson, then at Oxford, with my lord’s daughter. Hervey found her in an apartment hung with black cloth, lighted only with wax candles, she being seated on a chair of state, surrounded by her attendants, ail dressed in deep mourning. She had a morbid love of funeral pomp and the semblance of woe, which remained with her to the last. When the Duke of Buckingham died, the ceremony with which His Grace’s passage to the tomb was conducted was a nine days’ wonder of the town ; he, poor man, had also a love for posthumous state — perhaps it was contagious — and left the decent sum of ^500 for a monument to himself that was to bear an inscription of his own composi- STRANGE ECCENTRICITIES . 1 1 9 tion, which, however, the Dean of Westminster Abbey did not see fit to have written on imperishable marble. Later on, her only son, Edmund, Duke of Buckingham, dying at the age of nineteen, she had again an opportunity for indulging her fancy ; which indeed she did to an ex- traordinary degree. She wrote to the Duchess of Marl- borough requesting a loan of the triumphal car which had carried the Warrior Duke to the tomb ; at which request the Duchess was indignant, and sent word, ‘ It carried my Lord Marlborough, and shall never be used for anybody else/ to which the afflicted mother, never being behindhand with a proper answer, wrote back, ‘I have consulted the undertaker, and he tells me I may have a finer for twenty pounds.’ Pope wrote the epitaph, which, after enumerating the young Duke’s many virtues, ends by stating that he was a saint in heaven, His mother, yet on earth, had a wax statue made of him, which she dressed in costly fashion, and exhibited in a glass case in Westminster Abbey, as was the custom in those days ; and, being much pleased with the effect, she caused one to be made of herself, which she clad with velvet and adorned with jewels, and had on exhibition for years pre. vious to her demise. Before that event took place, she also arranged for her funeral procession, and one day during her last illness, when she feared that death had already come, she called out, ‘ Why don’t they send the canopy for me to see ? Let them send it, though all the tassels are not finished/ And then, poor soul ! her ruling passion being strong in death, she made her ladies promise that, if she should lie senseless, they would not sit down in the room before she was dead. Perhaps the most extraordinary act of hers was her writing a character of herself which she gave to Pope, and 120 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . pressed him, as he says, 4 by all the adjurations of friendship to give her my sincere opinion of it.’ He was also re- quested by her to select out of it as much as he thought true and return it to her. This he did, and, the extracts being in his handwriting, she passed them off as if written originally by him, and then fell out with him for having objected to some fine passages which her own copy con- tained. Probably she considered herself a better judge of her mental and physical qualities than the poet. As the character stands, it is perhaps unequalled for the plain terms of its self-appreciation. ‘ The nicest eye,’ it states, 4 could find no fault in the outward lineaments of her face or pro- portion of her body. It was such as pleased wherever she had a desire it should ; yet she never envied that of any other which might better please in general, in the same manner as, being content that her merits were esteemed where she desired they should be, she never depreciated those of any other that were esteemed or preferred elsewhere. For she aimed not at a general love or a general esteem where she was not known ; it was enough to be possessed of both wherever she was.’ This is pretty well of its kind, but her remarks on her mental qualities are still more wonderful. 4 Her under- standing was such,’ says this character, 4 as must have made a figure had it been in a man ; but the modesty of her sex threw a veil over its lustre, which, nevertheless, suppressed only the expression, not the exertion of it ; for her sense was not superior to her resolution, which, when once she was in the right, preserved her from making it only a transi- tion to the wrong, the frequent weakness even of the best women . . . Her heart,’ she continues, with exquisite humility, 4 was as compassionate as it was great ; her affec- tions warm even to solicitude ; her friendship not violent or AN EXCELLENT CHARACTER, , 121 jealous, but rational and persevering; her gratitude equal and constant to the living, to the dead boundless and heroical. What person soever she found worthy of her esteem, she would not give up for any power on earth ; and the greatest on earth whom she could not esteem obtained from her no further tribute than decency. . . . Her love and aversion, her gratitude and resentment, her esteem and neglect, were equally open and strong, and alterable only from the altera- tion of the persons who created them. Her mind was too noble to be insincere, and her heart too honest to stand in need of it ; so that she never found cause to repent her con- duct either to a friend or an enemy.’ Certainly Her Grace should have been a happy woman. When George I. died, his successor did not behave so leniently to the Duchess’s whims and her talent for plotting against his House. When she was desirous of sending her son, then a boy of twelve, to be educated in France, she feared that such an act might be regarded as an excuse for her visiting that country in order to foster her favourite scheme, and wrote a rather singular letter to consult a friend of some influence. 4 In case my son should go to France, to follow his exercises better than he could learn ’em here, whether he may not be seen and examined some- times. Now Mr. Costa dos instruct him without any hazard of forfeiture to a child. I know his mamma could not have the advantage of hearing herself his opinions without a forfeiture people would very willingly take. In short, the King has forbid me and my son the liberties we were per- mitted in his father’s (and which confines my son from air and exercise in town) reign, and I was no favourite in it. But, by the Duchess of Kendal’s means, I had a few com- mon acts of breeding and humanity showed me, that of the same priviledges of the King’s park, which I was allowed in 122 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. Queen Anne's reign .... though I fancy’d myself a sort of favourite of the Queen’s because I have about ten letters under her hand which flatty me with it ; and many personal assurances besides. I confess I am much tempted to breed my son abroad if I could secure his religion well, and education better, though it makes it impracticable for me to settle as I could wish with him ; yet I could visit him when I was not otherwise employ’d.’ Another prominent figure at this Court was the Duchess of Shrewsbury, already mentioned. She was no favourite with the Princess, and it was only because the King had asked his daughter-in-law three times, that she was appointed to the office she held. One of the fairest of all the ladies at the new Court was Mary Bellenden, whom Gay calls ‘ Smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.’ She had been ap- pointed maid-of-honour to the Princess before the royal quarrel, but her mistress never looked on her with favour whilst she remained in her service. Lady Cowper tells us that when she went to Court one morning she found the Duchess of Roxburgh was not such a favourite as she had been, and that the Princess resented her recommending Mrs. (as was the habit of calling unmarried ladies in those days) Bellenden. The reason was obvious : the handsome and witty maid-of-honour soon attracted the eyes of His Royal Highness. In the ‘Excellent New Ballad’ already referred to, describing the royal exit from the King’s palace, a verse is devoted to her : ‘ But Bellenden we needs must praise, Who as downstairs she jumps, Sings o’er the hills and far away, Despising doleful dumps.’ Mary Bellenden did not, however, respond to the Prince’s admiration, for the excellent reason that she was already in ON HIS KNEES . 123 love with handsome Colonel Campbell, who, long years afterwards, became the fourth Duke of Argyle. They were both wise enough in their generation to keep their love a secret from the eyes of the Prince and the gossiping cour- tiers, and it was no less sweet for its secrecy. His Royal Highness did not long hesitate about showing her he was enamoured of that beauty of which Pope and a host of minor poets had sung, and proceeded to prove his affection for her in a thoroughly gross and practical manner, quite in keeping with his character. In the drawing-rooms he would follow her about from place to place, undaunted by the plain speeches which she made him with her arms saucily crossed before her. The Prince was a persevering lover, and one evening sat down beside her and commenced reckoning out the gold which he felt sure would buy her love, glancing at her now and then as he paused in his occupa- tion ; when she cried out, ‘ Sir, I cannot bear it ; if you count your money any more I will go out of the room.’ George Augustus, however, had a supreme belief in the omnipotence of gold ; a faith that had probably come to him from experience, and he could not understand how the woman he honoured with his admiration could be blind to the value of his coin, even if she had the misfortune to be so towards his personal attractions. Again he followed her round the drawing-room when opportunity offered, counting out his money, until one day the high-spirited Bellenden suddenly turned round on him, and, knocking the purse from his hand, flung his money on the floor, when she beat a hasty retreat, leaving His Royal Highness to go down on his knees and pick up his scattered treasure. After this he came to the conclusion that, gold having failed to secure him her affections, they must already have been given in trust to some one else, whose name he sought 124 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. to find out from her. Failing in this, he extracted a promise from her that she would not marry without his consent, and declared, if she pledged her word not to do so, that he would prove a friend to her future husband. She promised him readily enough, but reflecting, probably, that delays are dangerous, especially in courts, she went forthwith and married her lover, Colonel Campbell, Groom of the Bed- chamber to the Prince, and they kept their marriage secret for a while, both being in a degree dependent on the salaries received from the royal household. When, event- ually, they declared themselves man and wife, the Prince was wroth with Mary Bellenden. Being married, she could no longer retain her post as maid-of-honour ; but Colonel Campbell retaining his place, his wife came frequently to Court, when George Augustus never lost an opportunity of following her round the room, upbraiding her for what he was pleased to call her falsity, and insulting her as far as he dared. It was not until about forty years after his marriage that Colonel Campbell became Duke of Argyle, and meanwhile he and his wife had to manage their limited income as best they could. ‘ Oh, gad/ she wrote to a friend a few years after her marriage, 4 1 am so sick of bills : for my part, I believe I shall never be able to hear them mentioned with- out casting up my accounts — bills are accounts , you know/ During her life her name was never mixed up with any scandal, as was the fashion in those times. She became the mother of many children, and retired from town life in order to devote herself to their care ; one of them afterwards be- came the fifth Duke of Argyle. In her home in Kent, the once beautiful maid-of-honour found employment which rendered her happier than waiting in Court. 4 It is well known to the whole country/ she writes, 4 that I have four 1 AT COURT THE BELLE / 125 fat calves, two fat hogs fit for killing, twelve promising black pigs, two young chickens, three fine geese, with thirteen eggs under each (several being duck eggs, else the others do not come to maturity) — all this, with rabbits and pigeons, and carp in plenty, beef and mutton at reasonable rates.’ A contemporary beauty of hers was the vivacious, bril- liant, and equally fascinating Mary Lapell, whose charms were celebrated in verse by Pope, Gay, and Voltaire, and in prose by the fastidious Chesterfield and the satirical Horace Walpole. In an old ballad, supposed to be written from town to young ladies in the country anxious for news, she is likewise spoken of in connection with the beauty just mentioned. ‘ To you it is my ballad comes, To tell you tales of drawing-rooms : What pranks are played behind the scenes, And who at Court the belle — Some swear it is the Bellenden, And others say La Pell.’ Both of these ladies were maids-of-honour whilst in their teens, Miss Lapell, indeed, being only fourteen when she was appointed to that post. Both of them shared the doubtful honour of the Prince’s admiration, and the coinci- dence between them was still further carried out in Mary Lapell being privately married, though whether she kept her nuptials a secret for the same reason as her frien'd it is im- possible to say. The object of her choice was Lord Hervey, afterwards Vice-Chamberlain to Queen Caroline, with whom he was a great favourite. From her husband’s parents her union met with no opposition, as may be gathered from some letters of her father-in-law, the Earl of Bristol, written whilst the union was yet unknown to the public, and in 126 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . which he congratulates her on her marriage, and calls her by ‘the endearing title of daughter/ When the marriage was made known, it was celebrated by Lord Chesterfield and Mr. Pulteney, in a ballad more remarkable for its flattery than delicacy, which they sent her under the name of a Grub Street pbet, one of the class who levied a tax on the great, whenever occasion offered ; and she, believing it to originate from the man whose signature it bore, though not admiring its general tone, sent him the usual fee. Only a few disconnected verses can be given of this ballad, which was an excellent sample of its class. Venus is declared never to have seen ‘ So perfect a beau and a belle, As when Hervey the handsome was wedded To the beautiful Molly Lapell. ‘ Old Orpheus, the husband so civil, He followed his wife down to hell ; And who would not go to the devil For sake of dear Molly Lapell? * So powerful her charms, so moving, They would warm an old monk in his cell. Should the Pope himself ever go roaming, He would follow dear Molly Lapell/ Concerning these verses, Arbuthnot says, in writing to his friend Swift, ‘ I gave your service to Lady Hervey. She is in a little sort of a miff about a ballad that was writ on her to the tune of “ Molly Mog,” and sent her in the name of a begging poet. She was bit , and wrote a letter to the begging poet, and desired him to change the doubles entendres; which the authors, Mr. Pulteney and Lord Chesterfield, changed into single entendres. I was against AN ACCOMPLISHED WOMAN. 12 7 that, though I had a hand in the first. She is not displeased, I believe, with the ballad, but only with being bit.'* The father of this young lady, celebrated whilst yet in her teens in song and story, was Brigadier-General Nicholas Lapell, who was styled Lord-Proprietor of Sark, where his daughter was born. The exquisite polish which rendered her manner distinguished through life was probably acquired in France, where she spent many of her earlier years. Lady Louisa Stuart says, in speaking of her, ‘ By the attractions she retained in age, she must have been singularly capti- vating when young, gay, and handsome ; and never was there so perfect a model of the finely polished, high-bred, genuine woman of fashion. Her manners had a foreign tinge, which some called affected, but they were gentle, easy, dignified, and altogether extremely pleasing.’ She was bril- liant as a conversationalist, and generally clever. Lord Chesterfield said : 4 She has been bred all her life at Courts, of which she has acquired all the easy good breeding and politeness without the frivolousness. She has all the reading that a woman should have, and more than any woman need have ; for she understands Latin perfectly well, though she wisely conceals it. No woman ever had more than she has le ton de la parfaitement bonne compagnie, les manieres engageantes, et le je ne sgais quoi qui plait’ That this accomplished woman used her talents for a * Dean Swift writes to Dr. Tisdall : ‘ I’ll teach you a way to outwit Mrs, Johnson. It is a new-fashioned way of being witty, and they call it a bite. You must ask a bantering question, or tell some damned lie in a serious manner, and then she will answer, or speak as if you were in earnest : and then cry you, “ Madam, that v s a bite.” I would not have you undervalue this, for it is the constant amusement in Court ; and everywhere else amongst great people ; and I let you know in order to have it obtain among you, and teach you a new refinement.’ COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. j 28 beneficial purpose, we have it on the authority of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who had, by the way, no great love for her. Her Grace says that, when Molly Lapell came into life, her father made her a cornet in his regiment, which had a salary attached to it, that was duly paid her after she became maid-of-honour; when, it being rather absurd for her to hold her post in the Army any longer, Lord Sunderland obtained her a pension. It was soon after that her courage and wit came to her aid, and sug- gested a scheme which she quickly carried out. Every night she attended the royal drawing-room, she made a point of publicly attacking the King’s Most Excellent Majesty ; levelling the sharpest darts of her satire at his sacred but vulnerable person, ‘insomuch as it was the diversion of all the town.’ The boldness of her strokes began to gain publicity ; courtiers tittered, and repeated her sallies. Loyalty was not strong enough to withstand amusement at her humour, until at last the Duchess of Kendal and the Ministry became alarmed, and determined to purchase her silence, ‘ lest the King should be put into the opposers’ hands.’ They therefore gave her a bribe of ^4,000, which had the desired effect. The belle became loyal to the reigning dynasty, bought a house, furnished it, and proclaimed her marriage. Her union was not one of perfect harmony. Both she and her husband had lived too long at Court, and imbibed its tainted atmosphere, to be perfectly spotless, and he at least proved that his principles were as lax as they were fashionable. A third maid-of-honour, which completes the group of these graces, was Sophia, daughter of General Howe, and grand-daughter of gay Prince Rupert and Peggy Hughes, the actress. Her Court career commenced brilliantly enough, though her life ended in darkness and sorrow. Of all the PEGGY HUGHES 9 S GRAND-DAUGHTER. 129 goodly maids to be seen at Leicester House, she was the brightest, most daring, and, it must be said, the boldest. She laughed aloud at church, she jested with more than doubtful propriety, and soiled her lips in the drawing-room with much coarseness. She was fully imbued with the evil atmosphere of her surroundings, where the most sacred relationships of life were violated with ease, publicity, and even approval. She freely spoke her opinions on religion and morality, with a daring carelessness that startled, but did not displease, the flippant and degenerate throng of men and women around her. Outside the bounds of Court and town, Miss Howe was of opinion that life was not worth living. The brilliant circle of fine gentlemen and wits amongst whom she moved, had an attraction for her which, alas ! proved fatal. A couple of extracts from her letters will give the best clue to her mind and character. Writing to Mrs. Howard from Holt Forest, near Farnham, of which her father was ranger, she says, whilst spending a short vacation there, ‘ You will think, I suppose, that I have had no flirtation since I came here, but you will be mistaken ; for the moment I entered Farnham, a man in his own hair, cropped, and a brown coat, stopped the coach to bid me welcome in a very gallant way ; and we had a visit yesterday from a country clown of this place, who did all he could to persuade me to be tired of the noise and fatigue of a Court life, and inti- mated that a quiet country one would be very agreeable after it, and he would answer that, in seven years, I should have a little Court of my own.’ In another epistle she is anxious that Lord l^umley, Master of the Horse to the Princess of Wales, should send a coach to convey her back to the Court ; and threatens him, if he does not comply with her wishes, he shall have 9 T30 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS , no more flirtations with her, though, ‘perhaps/ she says, ‘ he may be glad of me for a summer suit next year at Rich- mond, when he has no other business on hand/ Whilst she was yet at Farnham, her grandmother, Peggy Hughes, died, when the maid-of-honour says, ‘The good lady ’ (her mother) ‘ put on her broad-girdled calico gown, and striped night-clothes, to look decent upon the death of her mother ; that frill is a bad omen for me, for she always comes out with something dreadful when she is so adorned. She no sooner enters the room, with a face a thousand times more pale than you had, but she comes out with a fatal sentence, “ that I might take this opportunity of stay- ing here some time longer,” but hang me if I do, and, if that coach is not sent, I will come away in the waggon ; that I am resolved upon. One good thing I have got by the long time I have been here, which is the being more sensible than ever I was of my happiness in being maid-of-honour. I won't say, “ God preserve me so ” neither ; that would not be so well/ At Court her beauty and wit attracted Nanty Lowther, Lord Lonsdale’s brother. This gay young gentleman was without honour or principle of any kind, but had all the grace, and charm, and heartlessness and corruption of a true courtier. The brilliant, careless Sophia Howe fell in love, and left the Court with him. Nanty Lowther never married her, and, after a little, the bright, vivacious girl died of a broken heart. In Hanbury Williams’s poem, ‘The New Foundling Hos- pital for Wit/ Brigadier-General Churchill, who was a long- winded gossip that delighted in detailing a bit of scandal, is made to tell the story of the hapless Sophia. ‘ The General found a lucky minute now To speak. “ Ah, ma’am, you do not know Miss Howe. WITHOUT A HISTORY . 13 * I'll tell you all her history,” he cried. At this Charles Stanhope gaped extremely wide ; Dick Bateman hung^his head ; Her Grace turn’d pale, And Lovell trembled at th’ impending tale. “ Poor girl ! faith, she was once supremely fair. Till worn by love, and tortured by despair, Her pining face betrayed her inward smart, Her breaking looks foretold her breaking heart. At Leicester House her passion first began, And Nanty Lowther was a pretty man ; But when the Princess did to Kew remove, She could not bear the absence of her love : Away she flew — ” (interrupted by a footman’s knock)/ So far as conduct went, Miss Meadows, another maid-of- honour to the Princess, was a complete contrast to Sophia Howe. Miss Meadows’s prudery was a common theme in the Court ; and her companion maids-of-honour made merry over her reserve. Pope, who had a word to say about almost every person and every thing notable at the time, makes mention of her in a somewhat foolish poem called, ‘ What is Prudery ?’ He answers : 1 ’Tis a beldam, Seen with wit and beauty seldom. ’Tis a fear that starts at shadows ; ’Tis (no ’t isn’t) like Miss Meadows.’ This young lady has left few records of her Court life behind ; and, no doubt, what has been said of a nation being happy without a history holds good also concerning a maid- of-honour. 9— a CHAPTER IX. Courtiers at Leicester House— Mrs. Howard — Her Appearance — She becomes Mistress of the Prince — Her Husband’s In- terference — Her Position at Court — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu at Leicester House — Dean Swift as a Courtier — ‘Assemblies Rage’ in the Town— The Royal Children — The King’s Detestation of the Prince — Proposal of Lord Berkeley to make away with His Royal Highness — His Majesty’s Ill-humour — Reconciliation of the King and Prince — Sir Robert Walpole and his Abilities — His Private Life and Power as a Statesman. One of the most prominent ladies at the Prince’s Court was Mrs. Howard, whose name frequently occurs in the literature and gossip of the time. The position which she held in connection with the Prince and Princess renders her history one of the most singular in the history of Courts. She was the daughter of a baronet not very well-to-do in the world, and, when about twenty years old, married the third son of an Earl, Charles Howard, who was a worthless spendthrift, with all the expensive tastes of a man of fashion, without his corresponding means. Early in their married life, perhaps when their love had become a little worn, they began to look about themselves and see what they had best do in order to secure a suitable position. Mrs. Howard was a clever, sagacious woman, qualities which her husband did not share, and it was probably to her the sug- SEEKING THEIR FORTUNES . 133 gestion was due that they should face the rising sun, and go to the Court of Hanover to seek their fortunes. This was whilst Queen Anne reigned, and Sophia the Electress lived. Sophia was, at this time, most anxious to make friends with any of the English nobility, or their connec- tions, who came to her Court, and received Mrs. Howard very graciously, presenting her to the Hanoverian cour- tiers. This was the first step, and Mrs. Howard determined to profit by it. She was wise enough to know, however, that, in order to engage the confidence of friends, it is necessary to appeal to the inner man, especially when the outer man is a German. She therefore determined to give a dinner to the Hanoverian Ministers. This scheme was well enough, but the money to put it into execution was not in her purse, nor had she the prospect of receiving any. Her affairs must have grown desperate when she came to the resolution of cutting off her hair, which was of great length and beauty, and selling it to the barber, hair being in those days of full-bottomed wigs a very valuable article. This had the desired effect of paying for the dinner. Soon after she became popular at the little Court, where she got an appointment ; and when George Lewis was declared King she was made woman of the bed-chamber to the Princess of Wales. This post she held until her husband succeeded to the Earldom of Suffolk, when she was raised to the office of Mistress of the Robes. Her face was remarkable for a certain serenity of expres- sion and regularity of features which almost gave her a claim to beauty. Her complexion was fair ; her hair bright brown ; her figure shapely, and inclined to stoutness. It was not by any personal attractions so much as by the charm of her manner that she won, and was enabled to 134 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . keep, the friendship of almost every man and woman of distinction that appeared at the Courts of the first Georges. She was at once courteous, discreet, kind, generous when opportunity offered, just and truthful. Her conversa- tion was intelligent and sprightly, and her apartments at the palace were continually crowded, not only by the courtiers and wits, but by the men of learning who adorned the age. Horace Walpole, who became her intimate friend when she had retired from Court, speaks of her as being ‘ discreet without being reserved, and, from the propriety of her be- haviour and love of truth, preserving uncommon respect to the end of her days.’ Archdeacon Coxe hath it that when the Prince made overtures to Mary Bellenden, and was rejected by that lady, he poured his disappointment into Mrs. Howard’s sympa- thetic ear, and finally became enamoured of her. That she became his mistress was speedily noised abroad, and her husband, hearing of it, came in great haste to St. James’s, where, in expectation of some recompense for the outrage done to his honour, he made much ado. One night espe- cially he went in a noisy manner into the quadrangle, and before the guards and those assembled vehemently demanded his wife, for making which request he was instantly turned about his business. Soon after this he addressed himself to no less a per- sonage than the Archbishop of Canterbury, and besought His Grace to use his spiritual influence and have his spouse restored to him ; whereon the Archbishop wrote a letter to the Princess asking her to comply with Mr. Howard’s re- quest, and have his wife sent home to him from Court. Mrs. Howard, however, remained where she was, and her husband, still persevering in his claim, came to the Princess and declared he would take his wife out of her coach if he PLAYING THE BULLY. 135 met her in it. Her Royal Highness bid him ‘ do it if he dare ; though,' said she, in speaking of it afterwards to one of her courtiers, ‘ I was horribly afraid of him (for we were tete-a-tete) all the while I was thus playing the bully. What added to my fear on this occasion was that I knew him to be so brutal, as well as a little mad, and seldom quite sober, so I did not think it impossible but that he might throw me out of the window. But as soon as I got near the door, and thought myself safe from being thrown out of the window, I resumed my grand tone, and said I would be glad to see who should dare to open my coach door and take out one of my servants. Then I told him that my re- solution was positively neither to force his wife to go to him, if she had no mind to it, nor keep her if she had.' Then Mr. Howard said he would complain to the King, but the Princess told him His Majesty had nothing to do with her servants ; i and for that reason he might save himself that trouble, as I was sure the King would give him no answer, but that it was none of his business to concern himself with my family.' Notwithstanding the haughty tone taken by this com- placent wife, it was feared that Mrs. Howard would be seized by her lord and master on the occasion of her going to Richmond when the Prince and Princess were moving there for the summer months. As a woman of the bed- chamber, etiquette did not permit her to sit in the royal carriage during the journey ; she was to follow in a coach, when it was thought the attempt to arrest her would be made. To prevent this, two of her friends — John, Duke of Argyle, and his brother, the Earl of Islay — resolved to lend her their protection, and early on the morning of the day on which the journey was to be made, they called for her in a coach belonging to one of them, and conveyed her to 136 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. Richmond, A few months later, the Prince entered into an agreement with Mr. Howard, by which he consented to relinquish all claims to his spouse for the sum of twelve thousand a year. Whether as mistress to the Prince or King (when George Augustus came to the throne), Mrs. Howard never sought to play a brilliant part, such as might be expected from one holding that position. She was satisfied with the regard of the many friends whom she had the talent of attracting, who treated her with the utmost respect, as if her life were alto- gether blameless. Outwardly, indeed, her conduct was most proper. Dean Swift, another of her friends, said of her ‘ that for want of room to operate, her private virtues might be folded up and laid by clean, like clothes in a chest, never to be put on till satiety, or some reverse of fortune, should dispose her to retirement.’ Over George Augustus she had no influence, though the courtiers little suspected this, and daily flocked around her. Any power that she sought to obtain was quickly suppressed by the Princess, who never lost an opportunity of thwarting her designs, but in so subtle a manner that few suspected the fact Caroline treated her husband’s mistress in public with seeming forbearance and even friendship, and in private with a quiet contempt that must have made her sorely wince. Before the Court she was addressed by the Princess as ‘ my good Howard,’ but in the bed-chamber she was made to perform the most menial offices, In those days it was the custom for the woman of the bed-chamber to kneel after presenting the basin to the Princess, and remain in that position whilst she washed her hands. This Mrs. Howard rebelled against at first, and refused to comply with ; but the Princess, who afterwards narrated the story, said to her, 4 not in anger, but calmly, as I would to a naughty child, THE ‘ GOOD HOWARD / 137 “ Yes, my dear Howard, I am sure you will ; indeed you will. Go, go ; fie for shame ! Go, my good Howard ; we will talk of this another time.” ’ The ‘good Howard’ was conquered, and never sought to rebel again. Afterwards the Princess told her they should be good friends, that she had not expected such treatment from her, ‘ when she knew I had held her up at a time when it was in my power, if I had pleased, at any hour of the day to let her drop through my fingers.’ Pope, who was an intimate friend of hers, gives a summary of her disposition in these words : ‘ She means to do good, and does no harm, which is a vast deal for a courtier.’ By Gay and Addison, as well as the poet of Twickenham, she was regarded with most friendly feelings, and kept up a correspondence not only with these men of letters, but with most of the distinguished personages of the age. Many of the letters addressed to her are curious illustrations of the inflated epistolary style of the time ; one penned to her by Lord Bristol will serve as a specimen of the general style. ‘ The bel esprit your billet so abounds with,’ says his lord- ship, £ thoroughly shows the man had some sense, who, conscious of the vast inferiority of his own to yours, would prudently have waved a correspondence (that) must neces- sarily have exposed his insufficiency to maintain an equal with one whose style, “ Like a delicious stream it ever ran As smooth as woman, yet as strong as man.” However, since the price we pay for pleasures should be proportionate to the satisfaction they afford us, I am now content, rather than have it discontinued, even to suffer the mortification I shall frequently feel in being so far surpassed in the beauties of diction as well as sentiment by that very woman you most unjustly abuse as simple.’ J 38 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. Perhaps one of the reasons which imparted the habitual expression of calmness to her face was her early deafness. Pope, alluding to this, coins a skilful compliment out of her calamity, in saying, ‘ When all the world conspires to praise her The woman’s deaf, and does not hear.’ If the sex in general were deaf to their own praises, it would be much better for themselves, if not happier for mankind In writing of her affliction to Dean Swift, she exhibits her characteristic patience. ‘ I hear you are melan- choly/ she says, ‘ because you have a bad head. These two misfortunes I have laboured under these many years, and yet never was peevish with myself or with the world. Have I more philosophy and resolution than you, or am I so stupid that I do not feel the evil ?’ A story hangs by her deafness worth narrating. The surgeon most in favour at Court in those days was Cheselden, who must have been after a fashion a clever and adventurous fellow. He hap- pened to have a cousin under sentence at Newgate, whom he was anxious to serve ; and one day, in speaking to Mrs. Howard of her deafness, he said he should like to try an experiment with a condemned convict who was deaf. If the man could be pardoned, he would operate on him for her benefit, and, if successful, the same treatment which had cured him would serve her likewise. Without much trouble, she obtained the required pardon ; but no sooner was the convict liberated than Cheselden ceased to speak of the experiment. After a while it came to Mrs. Howard’s know- ledge that the man whose release she had gained was Cheselden’s cousin ; when the surgeon fell into disgrace at Court. The reccrds of her career as the King’s mistress and A BRILLIANT WOMAN *39 her retirement from Court are connected with the reign of George II., in treating of which her name will occur again. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu not only went to St. James’s, but, contrary to the regulations laid down, also visited at Leicester House, though at the latter Court she was not to be seen so frequently, a fact for which the Princess of Wales did not like her the less. It was plain to see that the Prince admired this brilliant and chatty woman as much as his father did. On one occasion, whilst she was at the Leicester House drawing-room, he, with his characteristic bad taste, called his wife’s attention to Lady Mary’s becoming dress ; when the Princess, with that habit of restraint which she had early learnt, replied, with a smile, ‘ Lady Mary always dresses well.’ Probably Her Royal Highness took some opportunity of letting my lady know what she thought of her, a luxury she occa- sionally indulged in ; for, as if in retaliation, Lady Mary left behind her a character of the Princess, in which she describes her as possessing ‘ low cunning, which gave her an inclination to cheat all the people she conversed with, and often cheated herself in the first place, by showing her the wrong side of her interest, not having under- standing enough to observe that falsehood in conversation, like red on the face, should be used very seldom and very sparingly, or they destroy that interest and beauty which they are designed to heighten.’ By saying so much, Lady Mary has laid the colours too glaringly on the picture for a true portrait. Dean Swift also came to the Leicester House Court, when he returned to England from the country he ab- horred, and stayed with his friend Pope at Twickenham. He said in a letter to the Duchess of Queensberry that ‘ a MO COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . nameless person had sent him eleven messages before he would yield to a visit.' The ‘ nameless person ' was the Princess, whom he visited probably on the twelfth invita- tion. The Dean seems to have been pleased with the result, for he afterwards said that the ‘ Princess retained her old civility ;’ an admission which, coming from him, meant much. Since he had last been to Court, he had published his famous ‘ Gulliver’s Travels,' which had found its way to Leicester House as well as elsewhere, and caused a good deal of merriment at the Court. The Princess had laughed heartily over the description of the Lilliputian heir who wore a high heel and a low one to his shoes; recognising under the guise of this satire the Prince, who was at the time halting between the Whigs and Tories. When the Princess saw the Dean, she, in a humorous way, charged him with writing the book, which had been pub- lished anonymously. He answered her evasively, and said the Ministry were angry with it; when she told him that both she and the Prince were well pleased with the ‘ Travels.’ But the Dean was cautious, and did not trust her all in all, and told her, if she liked the volume so well, she might sup- pose it to be written by anyone she pleased ; whereupon the Princess laughed, and the keen satirist bowed, and they entered into such friendly intercourse that my Lord Peter- borough, who was looking on, said to a group of courtiers, ‘ Swift has now only to chalk his pumps, and learn to dance on the tight-rope, to be yet a bishop.' To this minor Court came Carr, Lord Hervey, and Charles Churchill, and the pale-faced, melancholy Lord Scarborough, now in the freshness of his manhood, whom madness and death, inflicted by his own hand, were soon destined to over- take, and many other gay young men, who gave the reputa- tion of wit and brilliancy to the Leicester House drawing- THE COURT AT RICHMOND . 141 rooms. With the example of the Court before it, the town became likewise gay. ‘Assemblies rage,' says a correspon- dent of the period, ‘ and there is not a street in the fashion- able quarter of the town free from them ; and some spirited ladies go to seven of them in a night, when love and play flourish under such encouragements.’ In the summer months, the Prince and Princess removed their Court to Richmond, where the Prince had purchased the mansion of the exiled Duke of Ormond for ^6,000 from the Commissioners of the Confiscated Estates Court. Richmond Wells, as the place was then called, on account of its springs, which were supposed to possess healthful properties, had become the fashion. Here a large house and assembly-rooms were built, where public balls were held regularly on Mondays and Thursdays, and bazaars and raffles on the other nights of the week. Then there were pleasure-grounds open to the public, and Mr. Penketham, to add to the amusements the place afforded, opened a theatre on the green. This gentleman informed the public that ‘ he had formerly diverted the quality and gentry in Bartholomew Fair and Mayfair with dolls, and musick, and other delightful entertainments,’ and he had now settled at Richmond for the season. To Penketham’s play-house went the Prince and Princess, with the maids-of-honour and fine gentlemen of the Court, to the manager’s great delight. Here the royal party witnessed the performance of ‘ The Busy Body,’ and Sir Robert Howard’s comedy, ‘ The Committee ; or, The Faith- ful Irishman,’ which vastly amused them. Here the Prince’s Court was as gay as it had been in town, and almost as well attended, for the people of ‘ quality and fashion ’ came to the wells under the pretence of establishing their health but, in reality, in pursuit of fresh pleasures. 142 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. But during these years spent in gaiety and pleasure, the Prince and Princess were not without occasional anxiety and disappointment. The King, as already stated, was determined to have control of their three children, and to separate them from their parents, who, of course, rebelled against this decree, and were fearful as to what length His Majesty would proceed against them in revenge. The Prince claimed his children, when the King set the machinery of the law in motion, confident that its decisions would be agreeable to his wishes. Whilst the guardianship of the children was in dispute, nothing could be more painful than the grief and suspense which their mother felt. She cried night and day, complained bitterly that she had been betrayed, and said, ‘ I see now how all these things go ; I must be the sufferer at last, and have no power to help my- self. I can say since the hour I was born that I have not lived a day without suffering/ Surely it must have been a deep sense of bitterness that called forth this cry. The good Bishop of Norwich was touched by the mother’s grief, and went down on his knees and swore that the Princess should have her children, not counting on the King’s strength, obstinacy, and determination to punish his son and ‘ cette diablesse Madame la Princesse.’ Walpole thought to throw oil on the troubled waters, and advised the Princess to write to the Duchess of Kendal to beg her interference on her behalf, when he said everything would go right in a short time ; that the Princess must trust him and her friends, ‘who must play their part to serve them, for the King was inexorable if ruffled, and they must seem to submit in order that they might work in an underhand way.’ She listened to him patiently, but without much hope, and then cried out, ‘ Mr. Walpole, this is no jest- ing matter to me ; you will hear of me and my complaints THE ROYAL CHILDREN . 143 every day and every hour, and in every place, if I have not my children again/ Finally the control of the royal Princesses came before the judges for decision. Chief Justice Parker gave it as his opinion that His Majesty had the sole right to educate and manage his grand-children, and that their parents had none but what was in accordance with his wishes. This decision was agreed to by nine other judges, but was strongly op- posed by Lord Chancellor Cowper, with great determina- tion. As an example of His Majesty’s sense of justice, it may be mentioned that Lord Cowper, who the King had once said ‘ was the only man in England who had treated him with good manners whilst in his service/ was imme- diately deprived of his Chancellorship, whilst Chief Justice Parker, for the evidence he gave of remarkable wisdom on this occasion, was soon afterwards created Earl of Maccles- field. The Prince and Princess of Wales never forgave him, and soon after had an opportunity, which they did not neglect, of avenging the wrong he did them. It was pretty well known then that his lordship was not averse to bribes, and it was better known afterwards that his corrupt practices rendered his name a disgrace to the bench. Such a man as this was not, as might be expected, with- out numerous enemies, whom his dishonesty had injured, all of whom were anxious to bring him to justice. Knowing the feelings in which he was held by the Prince, they soon took courage, and publicly accused him of malpractices, when he was speedily found guilty, and condemned to pay a fine of ^30,000. This he succeeded in doing by the mortgage of his estates. The King, however, believing that the Prince of Wales had caused the accusation to be made against him, resolved to checkmate His Royal Highness in 1 44 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . his triumph, and promised to pay the fine for the Chief Justice, and actually did so in part, and would probably have paid the whole, but that death set a stop to his generous intentions. /The King now detested his son more than ever; for four years he had not spoken a word to him. The Prince’s growing popularity, which he took every care to cultivate amongst those who hailed the coming King in preference to incurring his displeasure by siding with the reigning monarch, was bitter indeed to His Majesty. He must have given expression to his hatred pretty freely, or certainly it would never enter into any man’s head to suggest a plan of making away with the Prince. This proposal was, however, made by the Earl of Berkeley, who calmly laid a scheme before the King, in which he offered to take his heir away to America, and, once there, this zealous advocate for His Majesty’s peace promised that His Royal Highness should be heard of never more. It is shocking to think that the King should have received such a proposal, and that he could, moreover, have retained the man who made it in his favour, and allowed him to continue in his service as First Lord of the Admiralty. After the King’s death, the new Queen, in searching a cabinet belonging to him, discovered the paper which boldly made this proposal of making away with her husband. Lord Berkeley was beyond reach of the King’s arm, and for the latter part of his years he lived and died abroad. It is worth noting that one of his ancestors had been guilty of a deed somewhat similar to that which he proposed to accom- plish, inasmuch as one of the Lords of Berkeley had lent his aid to the murder of the first Prince of Wales of the Planta- genet House. During this long quarrel the Prince was never seen at ‘SO OUT OF HUMOUR 145 Court ; but the Princess went occasionally to beard the lion in his den, and when His Majesty was surrounded by cour- tiers, always anxiously on the watch for some new item of gossip or some fresh scandal, she would make a point of addressing him, the King being then obliged to make her an answer. Count Broglio says in his correspondence, 4 For some years past the King has not spoken a word to the Prince, nor the Prince to him. The Princess of Wales sometimes in public attacks the King in conversation ; he answers her, but some, who are well apprised that His Majesty likes her no better than the Prince, have assured me that he only speaks to her on these occasions for the sake of decorum. ’ The royal quarrel at length began seriously to affect the nation. The upholders of the reigning dynasty felt that the scandal reflected on their choice ; whilst the Jacobite party were delighted to see how badly the King and his heir agreed, and came to have strong hopes that a house which was divided against itself could not stand. Disloyalty became more common daily, and Lord Sunderland said 4 the King was so out of humour about the quarrel, that if the Pretender were in England he could cut them all down/ There were other things, however, to make His Majesty feel rather ill at ease about this time, one of the principal of which was that he had exceeded the liberal grant of the civil list by ^550,000; he therefore determined to call on the Parliament to raise some measure which would pay that sum, and out of this scheme arose the infamous South Sea Company, which served His Majesty’s purpose in more ways than one ; as Horace Walpole assures us, it 4 helped to settle the Hanoverian line on the English throne by divert- 10 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 14 6 ing the national attention from the game of faction to the delirium of stock-jobbing.' When this bubble, which Lord Cowper said 4 was contrived for treachery and destruction,’ burst, steeping the nation in misery, the King good-humouredly said, ‘We have very good luck ; we sold out last week.’ He then left the king- dom when it was disturbed to its centre, and remained in Hanover until Walpole had devised some means of soothing the public mind. Before proposals were received to lessen the debt already referred to, it was deemed advisable by the Ministry to heal the royal quarrel if possible. The friends of both King and Prince were anxious that a reconciliation should take place ; but His Majesty remained obstinate and would not listen to such a proposal. His temper became so bad that the courtiers ‘ did not dare address him.’ Lord Sunderland, however, ventured to speak to him on the subject, when he replied angrily, ‘ Did you not promise to bring me the Prince bound hand and foot? And don’t you bring him back without my having power to put any one servant in or out about his person ?’ The Prince was not eager to submit to His Majesty, but after a while was prevailed upon to write him a letter ; some words in this were taken objection to, but he refused to withdraw them, and matters stood still for a time. ‘ The resentment of the King,’ says Archdeacon Coxe, ‘ was carried to such an extremity that, with a view to embarrass his son, he formed a resolution of obtaining an Act of Parlia- ment to compel him to resign his German dominions on his accession to the throne. With this view the opinion of the Lord Chancellor Parker, afterwards Earl of Macclesfield, was demanded, and a conference held to consider the legality and expediency of the scheme. The answer given 147 ‘ VOYEZ QUEL HOMME.' by the Chancellor fully put a stop to the measure as in expedient and impracticable, and liable to be followed by very dangerous consequences/ Meanwhile, the eldest of the royal children took ill, and her mother, who was only allowed to see them once a week, on every Sunday night, now sent and asked the King leave to see her daughter. Permission was given through one of the Turkish slaves, Mahomet, who said the Princess might visit, but she was not to bring either a doctor or physician with her. When she arrived at St. James’s she was much alarmed to find her daughter had small-pox ; and she came backwards and forwards every day whilst the illness lasted, staying from eleven o’clock until three, and from six to eleven. The young Princess was seriously ill, and con- tinued in danger for some time. One day, when the Princess was going to St. James’s as usual, two letters from the Archbishop of Canterbury were put into her hands ; one directed to herself, the other to Lord Sunderland, then in high favour with the King. The latter had been brought in by mistake of the messenger, but no sooner did Her Royal Highness see to whom it was ad- dressed than she determinedly broke the seal, and read it. Pier curiosity was rewarded. She learned that the Arch- bishop requested permission of his lordship to visit Leicester House as often as he was sent for without troubling him again, as he might soon be sent for ‘ to do his duty by the afflicted mother.’ His Grace’s letter to the Princess simply expressed his desire to wait on her. The former letter she sent back to the messenger with word that she had opened it by mistake, a statement strictly untrue ; then, turning away, she said, ‘ Voyez quel homme.’ On St. George’s Day, 1720, the Prince was induced to write another letter to the King, more submissive than the 10 — 2 148 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. first ; and this was borne by Lord Lumley, the Master of the Horse, to His Majesty. The result was that a private message was sent by the royal father to his son, who im- mediately called for his chair, and had himself conveyed to St. James’s. On his way, he met the Princess in Pall Mall, who was returning from her child’s sick-bed. She was sur- prised to see him, and, thinking that he might have heard ill news, she stopped and asked him where he was going, when they had a few words of consultation on the hoped-for reconciliation. When he went to the palace the Prince saw his father for about five minutes, when he made many apologies for the great grief he had caused His Majesty, but the King was so disturbed and excited that he could only stammer out, ‘ Votre conduite, votre conduite, sir !’ The audience was not satisfactory to either of them, but it was an indication to the Court that the long-standing quarrel had been patched up ; in further token of which, the Prince was accompanied by the royal guard when he returned to Leicester House. Great rejoicings followed the event. As the Prince took his way between the Beefeaters, the people in the streets shouted, and at night Leicester Square was filled with the carriages of those who came to congratulate him. When Lady Cowper wished the Prince joy, he kissed her right heartily in the presence of his wife, who laughed, and cried out, ‘ I think you two always kiss upon great occasions.’ The poetasters burst into song over the royal reconcilia- tion, each rivalling the other in saying the finest things in the most pompous sentences, and all striving to earn a few shillings from their Court patrons. Says one of these bards : — . ‘ So now our great, august, heroic Prince Pays low his mighty sire obedience, 149 A poetaster’s LAY. Both gloriously united firmly stand, Ev’n faction dies within a factious land. Though late with clouds o’ercast this happy isle, Britain and Europe now begin to smile. Though fogs and mists obscure our hemisphere The noble planets now again appear. The sun which long behind a cloud concealed Was lately, shines with radiant beams revealed. A Caroline is at St. James’s seen, Great is her virtue who is beauty’s queen ; A Prince whose wisdom in retirement shown, I dare presage the future times shall own Will make him glorious on a British throne ; At this each loyal breast with transport beats, Gives thanks to heaven, and the great joy repeats.’ But for all the fine things said on the occasion, the re- conciliation was by no means thorough. When the King and Prince afterwards met, they neither exchanged words nor glances ; nor could His Majesty be induced to see the Princess for some time ; when he did, it was at a private interview, during which he angrily told her it was all owing to her that the Prince had not behaved himself. The first night on which a drawing-room was held at St. James’s after the peace there was a vast crowd of the friends of both the King and Prince, who crushed their way to see how the royal actors would go through their performance. Lately at the King’s drawing-room there had been a very poor attendance, for St. James’s had grown dull as the Leicester House parties grew brilliant ; and sometimes there were only half a dozen ladies in the royal apartments to de- light the King’s gaze ; but on this occasion every room was full. When the Prince and his friends came in, the King took no notice of them ; nor did His Royal Highness or his clique make any advances towards His Majesty, but retired 150 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. to the lower end of the drawing-room. It was rather a comical than an impressive sight. The charming Duchess of Shrewsbury, who had come in the Prince’s train, was not at all satisfied with this state of things, and made bold to address the King’s most excellent Majesty ; but, there being none so deaf as those who will not hear, the King did not in the least heed her. The Duchess, however, being a woman of determination, resolved to be heard, and said, in a whining voice, 4 Je suis venue, Sire, pour faire rna cour, et je la veux faire.’ By-and-by Walpole comes to the Prince and asks him to send a polite message to the King, but the Prince, who could be as stubborn as his father, refused to comply with the Minister’s wishes, whereon that wily man said, if he would not, he would frame such an one as was fit for him to send, and deliver it in his name. Speaking of that memorable drawing-room, Lady Cowper says : 4 The whole thing looked like two armies drawn up in battle array ; for the King’s Court was all at the top of the room behind the King, and the Prince’s Court behind him. The Prince looked down, and behaved prodigious well. The King cast an angry look that way every now and then, and one could not help thinking ’twas like a little dog and a cat — whenever the dog stirs a foot, the cat sets up her back, and is ready to fly at him. Such a crowd was never seen, for not only curiosity, but interest, had brought it to- gether.’ Though the Princess was not present on this night, a short time afterwards she went to Court, on the occasion of the King’s birthday. A passage in the diary just quoted from says : 4 In the morning we waited on the Princess at Court, where was one of the greatest crowds I ever saw. At night we all went in the same train. The Duke of New- castle (Lord Chamberlain) had got drunk for our sins ; so ROBERT WALPOLE. T5i the Princess’s ladies had no places, but stood in the heat and crowd all the night. The Duchess of Shrewsbury down- right scolded aloud about it, and he told her, for conclusion, that places were provided for the Princess’s family, which they did not keep, but that ladies of the town came and took them. ’Twas not his fault, and he could not turn out the ladies of the town for us. There was so great a crowd, and we were so ill-used, that four of us went away, and left only Lady Dorset in waiting. It was plain we were to be used thus ; and I am almost tempted to think it was also one of the doughty articles of reconciliation.’ The Prince continued to live at Leicester House, where his Court was maintained, and where his drawing-rooms were not less brilliant than before. Walpole, who held considerable influence over the King, was the principal agent in bringing about this patched-up peace between the royal father and son. When His Majesty landed in England, Walpole, who had shown his zeal for the House of Brunswick during the agitation which disturbed the last months of Queen Anne’s reign, was appointed Pay- master of the Forces, whilst his brother-in-law, Lord Towns- hend was made Secretary of State. Some changes being made in the Ministry in the following year, he was appointed First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. His position was one of extreme difficulty. A large per- centage of the Parliament, the country, and even the courtiers were Tories and Jacobites; the King was a foreigner to the language, habits and manners of the nation, and had sur- rounded himself by a band of Hanoverians, who sought to influence him and rule for their own benefit ; so that it was only by the most skilful policy and sound judgment that the Minister contrived to steer clear of the quicksands which beset him, and save his country from the dangers of civil 152 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. war with which it was threatened. This he did unaided by the King, and closely hampered by the royal favourites ; and during the years that he afterwards filled the same office, he, by his wise counsel, his moderation, his easy good-humour, his ready forgiveness of foes, and faithful remembrance of friends, his tolerance, his steady resistance to injustice, governed England with an ability and faithfulness which she had rarely known before. He had but little love for Court life, save where it was connected with the affairs of State ; and in dealing with those he could adopt an address which was not only per- suasive, but almost irresistible. When he could make good his escape from the business of his office, he threw care to the winds, and, with the vivacity of a schoolboy out for a holiday, went down to his beagles at Richmond, or to enjoy some rural sport at Houghton, the family seat of the Wal- poles. In private life he was convivial, delighted in coarse humour, and no man better enjoyed a hearty dinner or a bottle of good wine. At heart he was always more of a country squire than a great statesman ; and no matter how the tide of politics ran, when his despatches were brought to him, his gamekeeper’s letter was the first which he invariably opened. His appearance was florid and cheery, his figure tall and burly ; in general aspect he resembled a gentleman farmer of strong sporting proclivities. In later life he became corpulent, a fact which caused George II. to style him 4 le gros homme.’ In dress he was exceedingly simple, and in disposition as gallant as the most immoral beau of that licentious age. He cared neither for reading nor writing, but his keen intellect quickly fathomed men’s minds, and his knowledge of human nature was great, by reason of which humanity ranked low in his esteem. 4 Few men,’ he once said, ‘should WHO WAS HIS FATHER f 153 be Ministers, for it lets them see too much of the badness of mankind/ Perhaps the most remarkable trait in his cha- racter was his determination, which gloried in steering through difficulties and overcoming opposition ; and pro- bably no better clue to his thoroughness can be found than his saying, ‘ If I had not been Prime Minister, I should have been Archbishop of Canterbury.' When he reached his twenty-fourth year, he married Catherine Shorter, the daughter of a Kentish squire, who was one of the most beautiful and clever women of the day. Her manners were charming and vivacious ; her conversa- tion witty, and she soon became one of the attractions of the Court. Her fascination, if she sought to exercise it over her husband, was not, however, sufficient to keep his fancy from straying to fresh maids and faces new ; and in a few years she found herself neglected by him, but surrounded by courtiers who, when her husband was in power, found a double attraction in her presence. The great Minister took little care to conceal his amours from his wife ; and she, either from indifference or because it was the fashion of the times, gave him but little trouble on the subject of his conjugal unfaithfulness, satisfying herself with the admiration of the courtiers in general, who invari- ably flocked about her, and of Carr, Lord Hervey, eldest son of the first Earl of Bristol, in particular. This courtier was said, by those who were well versed in evil ways, to be the father of Horace Walpole, who afterwards became a celebrity. To give colour to this statement, it was noticed, as the boy grew up, that in appearance, manners, and dis- position he was strikingly like the eccentric race from which he was popularly supposed to spring, and unlike Sir Robert Walpole, who treated him with marked neglect until such time as his natural cleverness became apparent at Eton, 154 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . when a friend of the family remarked that, 4 whether the lad had any right to the name he went by or not, he was likely to do it honour/ Lord Townshend, who was called 4 one of the most un- blemished statesmen and respectable gentlemen of the age/ was closely connected with Walpole’s administration. He had taken for his second wife Dolly Walpole, his colleague’s sister, who was remarkable for her personal beauty. The Walpoles and the Townshends had for generations been friends and neighbours, and this strengthened the bond which bound the statesmen for many years of their lives. When, in 1717, Lord Townshend resigned, Walpole followed his example, and, requesting an audience with the King, tendered him the seals of office. His Majesty had not ex- pected this, and refused to accept his resignation. But Walpole, who considered himself badly treated by his party, was firm in his determination, and laid the seals on the table, when the King took them, and placed them in his hat, assuring him the while of his high opinion of his con- duct and abilities. Walpole held firm to his purpose. The Minister’s brother, who was waiting in the next room, says the King put the seals into Sir Robert’s hat no less than ten times, and when he came out, 4 the heat, flame, and agitation, with the water standing in his eyes, appeared so strongly in his face, and indeed all over him, that he affected everybody in the room ; and ’tis said that they that went into the closet immediately, found the King no less disordered.’ It was not until three years after this that he again held office, when he was appointed Paymaster-General of the Forces, and soon after succeeded to his former posi- tion of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. His skill and ability as a statesman have been already re- walpole's influence. 155 ferred to ; Count Broglio writes to the Court of France that ‘ Mr. Walpole and Lord Townshend possess an unbounded influence over the King and the Duchess of Kendal ; they enjoy the whole power of the Government and the entire confidence of the King.’ And again the ambassador says, i The King cannot do without him 7 (Walpole) ‘ on account of his great influence in the House of Commons, where he depends entirely upon him in every respect/ His name will again occur in these pages in connection with the reign of George II. CHAPTER X. London Town under George I. — Some Playwriters, Poets, and Journalists — Tonson, the Publisher — Little Mr. Pope among the Booksellers — Some wicked Taverns— Gin Shops — Coffee and Chocolate-houses — Dryden at 6 Will’s ’ — Addison at 4 Button’s ’ — The Guardian and Spectator — Clubs and their Origin— The Kit-cat and its Members — Sir Godfrey Kneller — Swift and the October Club — The Scribblers’ Club — Pope’s Farewell to Town — Lighting of the City— Captain Fitzgerald and his Lady-love — Dissipation and Irreligion — Bill for the Suppression of Vice. London town was a curious place during the reign of George I. Its streets were mostly narrow, rough, and un- paved, so that in wet or dirty weather the loose stones splashed mud on the brocaded garments of the fine ladies and gentlemen who trod them. Close by the footpaths were cartloads of fruit, for which the vendors, with dice- boxes in their hands, called on the people to gamble. The thoroughfares were crowded with sedan chairs — there were four hundred of them licensed at this period — some having the arms of a noble family emblazoned on them, carried by servants in rich liveries, and preceded by lackeys that stepped forward with the airs, if not the graces, of French dancing- masters. There were also hackney coaches, with their many- caped drivers — infamous rascals in truth, who for a con- sideration would play into the hands of the thieves with IN FLEET STREET. 157 which the City swarmed, for the purpose of ridding people of their guineas as they rode home at night. Here we are in Fleet Street, if you please, with its rows of small crowded shops, its curiously shaped gable-ended houses, with over-hanging bow windows, the fronts mostly covered with carvings in old oak, or designs stamped in plaster, and some of them with the showy escutcheons of families who are patrons of the establishments bearing them. In the windows of most of the shops are books, pamphlets, and sheets of ballads fresh from the press, exposed for sale. Passing up and down and lounging about are a host of threadbare, nameless pamphleteers and obscure scribblers, who are ready to write verses at so much a line for a death or a birth, for Whig or for Tory, for Guelph or Stuart, with equal ease. They live a pitiful, hand-to-mouth existence, ever waiting till some event turns up which will give inspira- tion to their muse and bread to their stomachs. But there are others here beside those poets 4 ragged and forlorn ’ — men who flirt with, rather than steadily woo, ‘ the sacred nine,’ and occasionally make them handmaidens to their political projects. This man walking by the White Horse Tavern, whose coat is somewhat finer than the habits of those he passes, is honest Samuel Garth ; not only his garb, but his gait like- wise, proclaims him a physician. The doctor can occa- sionally enjoy a bottle of good port, tell a capital story, and make himself as jovial as any man. He writes, too, good vigorous English, which is appreciated by Pope and Con- greve, and other lights of the town, and has now been just arranging with his publisher about getting out his ‘ Prologue designed for Tamerlane.’ That middle-aged, thin man, with the dark complexion, COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 158 who is with him, is the great journalist and famous author of 4 Robinson Crusoe.' He is a shrewd, restless-looking fellow ; there is much nervous energy expressed in his spare features, and a twinkle of kindly humour in his grey eyes, which turn from time to time to Dr. Garth’s face, watchful of the effect of his quick-spoken, voluble words. The man who advances to meet them with a smile on his face has that jaunty, happy-go-lucky air which at once proclaims him an Irishman. He is none other than Charles Molloy, B.L., the author of half a dozen comedies, who, getting but few briefs entrusted to his charge, has turned to literature, as so many others in like circumstances have since done. He is the editor of Common Sense , a weekly journal not always so valuable as its name indicated, but to which my Lord Chesterfield contributed under the nom-de-plume of 4 Eudosia.’ It is also whispered that most of those spicy articles in 4 Fogg’s Journal’ are from the pen of this versatile Hibernian. When his farce ‘The Half-pay Officer ’ was produced at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields play-house, he got old Peg Fryer, who had played before Charles II., to take the part of Lady Richlove. Peg was, as may be gathered from her Christian name, a country- woman of his own, and was anxious for his success. So the honest old soul came back to the stage after an absence of fifty years, she being in her eighty-fifth year, and played her part right well. Peg gained the applause of a vastly crowded house, and she was full proud of the favour it showed her. When the performance was over, the audience would have her out again, for the bills promised she would dance a jig ; but, when she came forward in response, the artful old dame seemed tottering from fatigue and ready to fall, and made believe she must go off the boards. But the music suddenly striking up an Irish jig, she quickly straight- CHRISTOPHER BULLOCK . 159 ened herself, and danced it with as light a foot as if she had been twenty, to the vast delight of the house. At the opposite side of the street is Parnell the poet, * With softest manners gentlest arts adorn’d, Blest in each science, blest in every strain.’ He has his head down and walks with a shuffling gait, passing unnoticed in his abstraction a crowd at the end of the street that is making merry over a mountebank who calls himself Hightrehight. This ingenious man swallows burning coals, licks a red-hot poker, and performs various wonders for the benefit of those around him. In the very middle of the crowd is the lusty Christopher Bullock, the lover of all street sights. He is both an actor and an author, though not quite an honest one, as may be judged from the fact of his stealing the plot and situation of a play of Richard Savage’s which the unfortunate poet had sub- mitted to him for approval, and which the sturdy Bullock dished up and produced as original under his own name ; such things being known in those days. Coming out of the ‘ Duke of Marlborough’s Head J is a care-worn, pale- faced man, rather stooped and white-haired, and having a scholarly air. He is Robert Wilde, who wrote one play in the reign of Charles II., and that play was damned ; from that hour he became what he remained to the end — a dis- appointed man. The beau who is crossing the street is Vanbrugh, who cannot forget, nor is inclined to let his friends forget, that he has been in the army, though he has now turned architect, manager to a theatre, and play-writer, in which capacity he has set the whole town laughing at the sprightliness of his wit. Mr. Vanbrugh is in full dress to-day, and wears his white, flowing wig, a coat without a collar, adorned with raised hair buttons, cut square in front, 160 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . with loose hanging sleeves. His waistcoat is of a bright colour with great flaps, and the lace ruffles round his throat and wrists are excessively fine. By the way he steps one knows the wit and fine gentleman is proud of his small feet encased in square-toed, short-quartered shoes with large tongues and silver buckles. There is Tonson the publisher’s shop, where the first cheap edition of Shakespeare’s works was published ; he is a merciless little man, who makes his money out of struggling authors, the same who refused poor Dryden a paltry loan, for which incivility the poet repaid him by handing down to posterity his portrait in three magni- ficent lines : ; With leering look, bull-faced, and freckled fair, With two left legs and Judas coloured hair, And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air.’ It was in Tonson’s shop, some chroniclers say, that Wycherley was standing one day when my Lady Drogheda stepped in and asked for the ‘ Plain Dealer,’ hearing which, a friend of the author’s who was by pushed him forward and said, ‘ Madame, here is the “ Plain Dealer,” if you want him.’ Whereon Wycherley made a profound bow, and my lady smiled on him, he being a remarkably handsome man, and declared she was happy to know Mr. Wycherley, in reply to which he said something very fine. So a friend- ship was established between them, which by-and-by was strengthened by marriage. Tonson was Pope’s publisher, and it was in his shop the poet first met Arbuthnot, who afterwards became his great friend. Close by is William Sandby’s shop, whence were issued so many Tory pam- phlets, and other publications and squibs defamatory to the Whigs. Not far from the Temple stands Linton’s house. This worthy man used to boast that he could, ‘ by the aid of HE WOULD NEVER WRITE A LINE . 161 a beef dinner and plain pudding, make the hungry critics see more beauty in any book he published than ever the author dreamt of.’ The author of the ‘ Rape of the Lock ’ is often to be seen in Fleet Street among the publishers, making a shrewd bargain when he had aught to dispose of, saying sharp things all the while in a peevish, discontented manner, and assuring all who would listen to him that if he were to begin the world again, knowing as much as he does, he would never write a line. Let us walk through the Strand towards Pall Mall. What wonderful signs are swinging above the tavern doors ! Almost every figure that an artist’s imagination can suggest is painted in glowing colours on them : boars, hogs, and cocks having a decided preference. With every breeze they swing on their rusty hinges, and on windy days threaten the skulls of those who pass below. Wicked taverns they are, too, some of them, where duels are fought, oftentimes at a moment’s notice, and where men kill each other for little more than pastime. There is the ‘Queen’s Head,’ where but a night or two ago Cornet Castine was in com- pany with Mr. Moore, a worthy gentleman, and son to a late M.P. in Ireland, who dropped a few words concerning Chancellor Phips, which the cornet resenting, gave him very abusive language, upon which Mr. Moore walked out into the yard, and the other followed him, and vi hout any provocation from Mr. Moore, or offering to draw his sword, the cornet drew his and ran him into the breast, which in the opinion of the surgeons was likely to prove mortal. The ‘ White Lion,’ another tavern, has gained a certain reputation for gaiety. Even in the days of the second Charles it had been known as a place of diversion, and it not only kept up but excelled its old repute in the reign ol 1 1 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 162 George I. Under the pretence of assisting at a ‘ concort of musick/ ladies came here in great numbers in cloak and mask, and the gallants betrayed an equal appreciation for the sweet sounds discoursed under the roof of the ‘ White Lion.' It was noticed by the neighbours that these ‘con- corts ’ ended with riotousness and greater gaiety than usually attended such assemblies ; and it happened that a posse of constables slipped in one night, and, unmasking the fair ones, discovered some ladies of distinction, who were sent home, and some women of the town, who were conducted to Bridewell. In general these taverns were no better than Pagan shrines, where Bacchus and Venus were ardently worshipped. At the ‘Mitre Tavern ’ in St. James’s Market, the un- fledged genius of Mrs. Oldfield, afterwards the most famous actress of her time, was discovered. Her mother kept the tavern, and Anna, at this time a prudent little wench, served the customers. One day, when she was behind the bar, reading aloud Fletcher’s comedy of ‘The Scornful Lady,’ in a clear, musical voice, George Farquhar stepped in, and noticed that she emphasised the right points, and laughed at the proper places. So it entered into his head that this girl had some dramatic genius, and he advised her mother to put her on the stage, when Anna became an actress at the age of sixteen, and delighted the town for thirty years afterwards. Besides the temptations which taverns held forth, there were gin-shops, each with its painted board informing the public that they might ‘ get drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, and have straw to lie upon for nothing,’ each house having a cellar where those who availed themselves of the delights oftered to them might wallow. When even* tually the Government sought to put down these houses with ‘NO GIN, NO KING.' 163 the strong hand of the law, that portion of the populace which made use of them became outraged, and used the war-cry, 4 No gin, no King/ The coffee and chocolate-houses of Old London were places of entertainment around which a certain air of romance hovers. They numbered about two thousand, and were fre- quented by men of all professions and of every grade in the social scale. The entrance price was usually a penny, which entitled the depositor of that coin to sit and hear the news and gossip of the day, to listen to the fly-sheet papers read aloud, or take part in any discussion going on. The sum of twopence added the addition of a cup of coffee to the afore- said delights, and the climax to the pleasures of the hour was reached by permission to smoke a pipe on the premises. Baron Pollnitz says, in giving his impressions on England at this period, 4 ’Tis a sort of rule for the English to go once a day at least to houses of this kind ’ (coffee-houses), 4 where they talk of business and news. . . . The chocolate-house in St. James’s, where I go every morning to pass away the time, is always so full that a man can scarce turn about in it. Here are Dukes and other peers mixed with gentlemen ; and to be admitted there needs nothing more than to dress like a gentle- man.’ For those who were not Dukes, or peers, or gentlemen, or did not dress like gentlemen, there were other coffee and chocolate-houses, frequented by the majority of members of one or other of the professions, or by customers linked to- gether by some common tie. Scotchmen were wont to gather at 4 Forrest’s,’ and Frenchmen at 4 Giles’s.’ 4 Garraway’s ’ and 4 Jonathan’s’ were the favourite resorts of the honest citizens, who, over their social cups, talked of shares and bonds, and merchandise generally ; and black-coated parsons were to be found in great numbers at 4 Truby’s ’ or 4 Child’s/ close by St. Paul’s Churchyard, whilst the 4 Old’ or 4 Young 11 — 2 1 64 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . Men's ' was given up to the society of the country's gallant defenders. One of the most famous of these houses of entertainment was ‘ Will's,' rendered celebrated by being the haunt of the great Dryden ; and here it was he gathered around him the wits and men of letters and culture of his day. In the prin- cipal room of ‘ Will's,' there was a great arm-chair specially reserved for ‘the old man venerable,' which, during the winter, was placed by the fire-side, and, during the summer, in the balcony, and these spots he used to refer to as his winter and summer residences. In the great room at ‘ Will's,' common to all, the old man, grown garrulous in his latter days, would talk to any chance visitor who interested him, and tell anec- dotes of blind John Milton, whom he had known, and of all the rare events which had happened during his life. Two men, whose names afterwards became famous, first saw Dry- den at Will’s, one of whom was Alexander Pope, then about twelve years of age, who, at his entreaty, was brought by Sir Charles Wogan from the Forest of Windsor for this purpose ; the other being Dean Lockier, who has fortunately left us his first impressions of the poet, whom Colley Cibber used to speak of as ‘a decent old man.' The Dean says, ‘ I was about seventeen when I first came up to town, an odd-looking boy, with short, rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness which one always brings up at first out of the country with one. However, in spite of my bash- fulness and appearance, I used now and then to thrust myself into “ Will’s," to have the pleasure of seeing the most cele- brated wits of that time who then resorted thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, as he frequently did, especially of such as had been lately published. “ If anything of mine is good," says he, “ 'tis ‘ Mac Flecnoe,' and I value myself the more AT BU'I TON’S. 165 upon it, because it is the first piece of ridicule written in heroics.” On hearing this, I plucked up my spirits so far as to say, in a voice just loud enough to be heard, “ that 4 Mac Flecnoe ’ was a very fine poem, but that I had not imagined it to be the first that was ever writ that way.” On this Dry- den turned short upon me, as surprised at my interposing ; asked me how long “ I had been a dealer in poetry,” and added, with a smile, “ Pray, sir, what is it that you did imagine to have been writ so before ?” I named Boileau’s “ Lutrin ” and Tassoni’s “ Secchia Rapita,” which I had read, and knew Dryden had borrowed some strokes from each. “ Tis true,” said Dryden. “I had forgot them.” A little after Dryden went out, and, in going, spoke to me again, and desired me to come and see him the next day. I was highly delighted at the invitation ; went to see him accord- ingly, and was well acquainted with him after as long as he lived/ Button’s coffee-house, ‘ over against Tom’s in Covent Garden,’ was rendered fashionable in later years by Addison and his followers. Button had been a servant to the Right Honourable Joseph, who drew the wits and men of letters here that before were wont to meet at Will’s. Honest Richard Steele, and witty Congreve, and Budgell, and Tickle, and Phillips, all excellent fellows too, and many others of lesser note, delighted to assemble at Button’s. It was here that Phillips, when smarting from the pain of Pope’s flagellation on his pastorals, stuck up a great rod in the common room, which he vowed to exercise on the rival poet whenever that diminutive gentleman made his appear- ance there. On the front door, Addison fixed a lion’s head, which served as a letter-box, down which the scribblers were invited to slip their effusions, which were afterwards sup- posed to serve as a text for those delightful essays by 1 66 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . Addison, and Pope, and Steele, and Parnell, regarding the town, which afterwards appeared in the Guardian. ‘ This head/ says a letter in that journal, ‘ is to open a most wide and voracious mouth, which shall take in such letters and papers as are conveyed to me by my correspondents, it being my resolution to have a particular regard to all such matter as come to my hands through the mouth of the lion. There will be under it a box, of which the key will be kept in my own custody, to receive such papers as are dropped into it. Whatever the lion swallows I shall digest for the use of the publick.’ And in another letter there is a de- scription of the head from Addison’s pen, in which he tells us that it is reckoned an excellent piece of workmanship, and was designed by a great hand in imitation of the antique ^Egyptian lion, the face of it being compounded out of that of a lion and a wizard. The lion, he furthermore announces, is planted on the western side of the coffee-house, holding its paws under the chin, upon a box, which contains every- thing that he swallows. He begs of his readers to diet the animal on wholesome and substantial food, but desires that they will not gorge him either with nonsense or obscenity, and insists that his mouth may not be defiled with scandal. Tom’s coffee-house was within a stone’s-throw of the rival houses of entertainment, and it was whispered that within its walls play was carried on frequently until the small hours of morning ; and there Government Ministers and members of the Upper House did not disdain to come and have a chat with the frequenters of Tom’s, indulge in a cup of coffee, and have a look at the latest foreign ‘ prints/ as the illustrated journals were then called, and the ‘whimsical newspaper called the Tatler .’ Tom’s was a house where people are all ‘ too polite to hold a man in discourse by the button/ a habit that Steele makes merry over in the Guardian . , ‘A SILLY HABIT.' 167 giving at the same time a picture of the frequenters of this place of entertainment. ‘ There is a silly habit,’ he writes in No. 84 of the Guardian , ‘ among many of our minor orators who display their elo- quence in the several coffee-houses of this fair city, to the no small annoyance of considerable numbers of Her Majesty’s spruce and loving subjects, and that is a humour they have got of twisting off your buttons. These ingenious gentle- men are not able to advance three words till they have got fast hold of one of your buttons ; but as soon as they have procured such an excellent handle for discourse, they will proceed with great elocution. I know not how well some may have escaped, but for my part I have often met with them to my cost ; having, I believe, within these three years past been argued out of several dozen ; insomuch that I have for some time ordered my tailor to bring me home with every suit a dozen at least of spare ones, to supply the place of such as from time to time are detached as a help to dis- course, by the vehement gentlemen before mentioned. This way of holding a man in discourse is much practised in the coffee-houses within the City, and does not, indeed, so much prevail at the politer end of the town. It is likewise more frequently made use of among the small politicians than any other body of men ... In the coffee-houses here about the Temple you may harangue even among our dabblers in politics for about two buttons a day, and many times for less. I had yesterday the good fortune to receive very con- siderable additions to my knowledge in State affairs, and I find this morning that it has not stood me in above a button.’ The Coco-tree, the St. James’s, and the Smyrna were famous houses in their day, and were all frequented by busy politicians, the first of these being a rendezvous for the 1 68 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . Tories, as the St. James’s was for the Whigs. Together with the crowd of gallants, and intriguing courtiers, and busy statesmen that thronged the coffee-houses in and about Covent Garden, came a host of nameless pamphleteers and scribblers, who wrote verses to suit the subject of the hour. To them a coffee-house was a blessed haven, where they could sit in some obscure corner and, unnoticed, hear the great men engage in literary or political warfare, and perhaps pick up some scraps of thought which they would swiftly make away with to stew up in a nauseous drivel and dish as a piece of originality fresh from their own brains. These coffee-houses, used for the purpose of friendly intercourse and interchange of ideas, were the fore-runners of modern clubs, and were indeed clubs in all but the name. As time went on, however, it was deemed advisable that some house in particular should be assigned for the meeting of those engaged in similar occupations or agreeing in politics, where, uninterrupted by the supporters of other factions, they might discuss their opinions. For this latter purpose the Kit-cat club was established in the time of Queen Anne ; and it continued until the first year of George II.’s reign. The house selected for the meetings of these genial spirits who formed the club was situated in Shire Lane, at the ‘ Sign of the Cat and Fiddle,’ and was kept by a pastrycook rejoicing in the name of Christopher Kat ; from which it is supposed the club took its name. Pope, in an epigram which he wrote in 1716, says : 1 Whence deathly kit-cat took its name Few critics can unriddle ; Some say from pastrycook it came, And some from cat and fiddle. 169 ‘TO EAT MUTTON PIES.’ 4 From no trim beau its name it boasts, Grey statesmen or green wits, But from this pell-mell pack of toasts Of old cats and young kits.’ Christopher, otherwise Kit, concocted excellent pies, which were the pride of their maker and the delight of the members of the club, who dined at his house on special nights according to rule ; and to these savoury delicacies were given the name of the club. The members consisted of Whig noblemen and gentlemen anxious for the succession of the House of Hanover, amongst whom were the Dukes of Somerset, Grafton, Richmond, Devonshire, Marlborough, Sutherland, Manchester, Wharton, and Kingston, who as- sembled here to protest against the Tories, eat mutton pies, drink some good bottles of wine, sing songs, tell good stories, toast the women they admired and maidens fair to see, and enjoy themselves thoroughly in an age when enjoy- ment was an art. By-and-by, when there was no more need to fear for the safety of the House to which they had attached themselves, the club grew less exclusive, and, besides men of high degree, Addison, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Dr. Garth, and Walsh were admitted. All these men had distinguished themselves, principally in literature, and the humour and pleasantry with which their conversations were fraught made them valuable additions to the weekly dinner-table. Wit, which in this age gave a colouring to social life, had its birth at such re- unions ; and at the Kit-cat board in later times the gravity of political life and party warfare was laid aside to listen to the humourous narration of some love stratagem, or the adventures of some gallant, or other occurrences that were always found amusing, though occasionally savouring of more broadness than good taste sanctioned. When the 170 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . club had been some years established, two dissipated men, Lord Mohun and the Earl of Berkeley, were admitted, to the great grief of Tonson, the secretary, who declared it would now be ruined ; and when one day Lord Mohun broke the gilded emblem on the top of his chair, Tonson said the man who would do that would cut a throat. In this instance the good secretary, who had the forms of conventionality much at heart, was not far wrong, for my Lord Mohun was a famous duellist, and had despatched a number of men, if not by the means which Tonson hinted at, by another which was equally successful. Members who were a greater ornament to the club were Lord Dorset, 4 the grace of Courts, the muses’ pride,’ Lords Halifax and Essex, Walpole and Sir Richard Steele. The walls of this club must have heard some rare and humorous sayings fall from the lips of these wits, poets, and politicians, who could be right jovial when they came together, and warmed under the influence of old wine and good-fellowship. When once they met at the table of the Kit- cat they were somewhat loath to part, and sometimes the grey light of early morning looked in and saw the 4 merrie com- panie ’ over their revels. Sir Robert Walpole was never more at home than here, where he told his best stories to appreciative friends amidst roars of laughter, and drank bottle after bottle of honest port. Vanbrugh kept his wittiest tales for the Kit-cat table, Congreve his broadest humour, Dorset his politest speeches ; and here honest Richard Steele got drunk early, and was generally found under the table when his friends were hastening to their sedan-chairs. Once he told Dr. Garth that his time was too valuable to waste at the Kit-cat meetings whilst his patients waited for him. 4 Nay, nay, Dick, that’s no great matter after all,’ said 1 IT IS HUMANITY TO LAUGH.’ 17 1 the doctor, pulling out a list of fifteen patients from his fob ; 4 nine of them have such bad constitutions that not all the physicians in the world could save them, and the other six have such good constitutions that not all the physicians in the world could kill them.’ At this answer the members round the table laughed right heartily, and Dick Steele, amid cheers, proposed the patients’ health. On one occasion, the celebration of King William’s birthday, Sir Richard brought my Lord Bishop of Bangor with him, when the 4 immortal memory ’ was drunk. A mad hatter, one John Sly, who had stolen into the room on his knees in the old cavalier fashion, 4 drank the Orange toast in a tankard of foaming October.’ Steele whispered to the Bishop, 4 Laugh, do laugh — it is humanity to laugh.’ Soon after this the learned divine took up his hat and gravely went his way. When, in the early hours of morning, Steele was picked up from under the table and tumbled into a sedan-chair, he insisted on the carriers taking him to the Bishop's palace, in order that he might apologize to his lordship, and only by the force of great persuasion could he be induced to go home, and defer his excuses until the following day. When morning came, he freely tendered them in the couplet : 4 Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, All faults he pardons, though he none commits.’ Sir Godfrey Kneller was employed by Mr. Secretary Tonson to paint portraits of the members of the club, each picture to be of a certain size, which admitted of the hands being seen, and which afterwards gave rise to what is now known in art circles as the Kit-cat portrait. Sir Godfrey was one of the vainest men and Tonson one of the shrewdest. The latter, when dying at the age of eighty, regretted that he could not commence life over again, for he was sure he 7 2 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . would then be able to amass one hundred thousand pounds, instead of eighty thousand, which he was worth at his death. By pandering to the artist’s inordinate love of vanity, Tonson got a great many pictures from him without cost, including two portraits of himself. Sir Godfrey’s name was closely associated with the Kit- cat Club and many of its members, and he was no less remarkable than many of them. His wit brightened up and thrust itself forward now and then, and showed that it could be just as keen as his vanity. Once, when Pope, in his usual satirical way, said, 4 If Sir Godfrey had been con- sulted, the world would have been made more perfect/ Kneller looked down on the little poet, who acknowledged himself to be ‘ the least thing of a man in England,’ and replied with a smile, 4 ’Fore God, there are some little things in it I think I could have mended better.’ The poet and painter were, however, good friends and neighbours, and Pope during Sir Godfrey’s last days spent a great deal of time with him. Visiting him on one occasion, he found the artist lying in bed contemplating with great satisfaction a plan which he had drawn for his monument. Pope said he never saw a scene of such human vanity in his life, and that Kneller ‘ said many gross things in relation to himself and the memory he should leave behind him,’ which was the only thing that seemed to reconcile him to his death, which he regarded with fear. Pope strove to soothe him by saying he had been a good man during his life, and no doubt he would go to a better place, when Kneller replied, ‘ Ah, my good friend, Mr. Pope, I wish God would let me stay here.’ Then he went on to tell his friend of a remark- able dream he had recently had. ‘ A night or two ago,’ said Sir Godfrey, ‘ I dreamt that I was dead, and soon afterwards found myself walking between sir Godfrey's dream . 173 two hills, rising pretty equally on each side. Before me I saw a door, and a great number of people about it. I walked on towards them. As I drew nearer, I could dis- tinguish St. Peter by his keys, with some other of the Apostles ; they were admitting the people as they came next the door. When I had joined the company, I could see several seats every way at a little distance within the door. As the first after my coming up approached for admittance, St. Peter asked his name, and then his re- ligion. ‘“lama Roman Catholic,” replied the spirit. c “ Go in, then,” says St. Peter, “ and sit down on those seats there on the right hand.” 4 The next was a Presbyterian ; he was admitted after the usual questions, and ordered to sit down on the seat oppo- site the other. My turn came next, and as I approached, St. Peter very civilly asked me my name. I said ’twas Kneller. I had no sooner said so than St. Luke (who was standing just by) turned towards me and said, with a great deal of earnestness : 4 44 What ! the famous Sir Godfrey Kneller from Eng- land ?” 4 44 The very same, sir, at your service,” says I. 4 On this St. Luke immediately drew near to me, embraced me, and made me a great many compliments on the art both of us had followed in the world, and entered so far into the subject that he seemed almost to have forgot the business for which I came thither. At last, however, he recollected himself, and said : 4 44 1 beg your pardon, Sir Godfrey. I was so taken up with the pleasure of conversing with you ! But, apropos, pray, sir, what religion may you be of?” 4 44 Why, truly, sir,” says I, 44 1 am of no religion.” 174 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 4 “ Oh, sir,” says he, 44 you will be so good, then, as to go in, and take your seat where you please.” ’ When he had finished the narration of this wonderful dream, he spoke of his approaching death, and told his friend he should not like to lie among the rascals at West- minster ; that a memorial there would be sufficient, and desired him to write his epitaph, which Pope did, and after- wards declared : 4 1 think it is the worst thing I ever did in my life/ The Kit-cats did more to encourage art than employing Sir Godfrey's brush. Once they offered the sum of four hundred guineas for the encouragement of good comedies, which, they held, taught good manners. During the summer months, when the town grew unbearably hot and dusty, the club adjourned its meetings to the 4 Upper Flask ' tavern by Hampstead Heath, where they enjoyed themselves with that zest for which they were famous. When Tonson went to live at Barn Elms, which had once been the residence of Cowley, the Kits-cats held their meet- ings there, and continued to do so until the days of this merry club drew to an end towards the first year of George II.'s reign. By this time, most of its original members were scattered and gone. Good old Dr. Garth had been gathered to his forefathers ; Congreve was an invalid who suffered agonies from gout; that warm-hearted Irishman, honest Dick Steele, had become a hopeless paralytic, help- less in body, depressed in spirits, a wreck of his former self ; the sturdy old Duke of Marlborough had been resting for some years under a ton or two of white marble ; Addison had gone where the Countess of Warwick could no longer disturb him, and Lord Mohun, whose entrance to the club had been regretted by Tonson, and who had killed Captain Coote, and aided in murdering Montford the actor, had been ‘ SOME ARE GOOD MASTERS .’ 175 run through the body by the Duke of Hamilton, whom he succeeded in killing likewise. It is almost melancholy to read a letter from the once brilliant Vanbrugh in 1727, in which he says to Tonson : ‘ Both Lords Carlisle and Cobham expressed a great desire of having one meeting next winter, not as a club, but as old friends that have been of a club — and the best club that ever met/ The October Club differed politically from the Kit-cat, and held its meetings at the ‘ Bell Tavern ’ in King Street, Westminster, where, in the last reign, as Dean Swift writes, ‘A set of above a hundred Parliament men of the country, who drink October beer at home, meet every evening to consult affairs, and drive things on to extremes against the Whigs, to call the old Ministry to account, and get off five or six heads/ In the present reign the meetings of the club were not held for purposes of such grave import, for it was on the removal of the cloth after supper satires were hatched and lampoons composed which later on vastly diverted the town. The ‘ Mug-House ’ Club held its meetings in Long Acre, where, on Wednesdays, ‘a mixture of gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen meet in a great room. A grave old gentle- man, in his grey hair, and nearly ninety years of age, is the president, and sits in an armed chair some steps higher than the rest. A harp plays all the while at the lower end of the room, and now and then some one of the company rises and entertains the rest with a song (and, by-the-by, some are good masters). Here is nothing drunk but ale, and every gentleman chalks on the table as it is brought in ; every one also, as in coffee-houses, retires when he pleases/ Another club was the Scribblers (or Scriblerus), that could 176 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . boast of such members as Gay, Parnell, and Swift. At the various clubs Mr. Pope was a welcome guest when he came to town from his retreat, when he was translating 4 Horner/ They were almost all political, and he kept clear of them, so that, whilst his friends busied themselves with the affairs of State, he was, he says, 4 considering only how Menelaus may recover Helen, and the Trojan War be put to a speedy conclusion/ Such thoughts paid him better than politics, for the wise little gentleman received the sum of five thou- sand three hundred and twenty pounds four shillings for his translation. He had left town to avoid interruption during his work, and made his adieux in the lines com- mencing : 4 Dear, damn’d, distracting town, farewell, Thy fools no more I’ll tease/ His farewell to his friends is set down in a racy style : 4 Farewell, Arbuthnot’s raillery On every learned sot ; And Garth, the best good Christian he, Although he knows it not. * Linton, farewell, thy bard must go, Farewell, unhappy Tonson ! Heaven gives thee for thy loss of Rowe Lean Philip and fat Johnson. » 4 Why should I stay ? Both parties rage, My vixen mistress squalls ; The wits in envious feuds engage, And Homer (damn him) calls. 4 Delicious lobster nights, farewell, For sober, studious days 1 And Burlington’s delicious meal, For salads, tarts, and pease/ In 1718 the poet left town, after this farewell, and settled THE TOWN BY NIGHT . 1 77 down on the border of the Thames, in the district of Rich- mond and Twickenham, where, as he says, ‘I passed an entire year of my life without any fixed abode in London, or more than a transitory glance, for a day or two at most in a month, on the pomps of the town.’ On the occasions of such visits the poet, like many another child of the Muses before and since, caroused and drank more wine than was good for him. In a letter which he wrote to Con- greve he says, ‘ I sit up till two o’clock over burgundy and champagne, and am become so much a rake that I shall be ashamed in a short time to be thought to do any sort of business. I fear I must get the gout by drinking ; purely for a fashionable pretence to sit still long enough to trans- late four books of Homer. I hope you will by that time be up again, and I may succeed to the bed and couch of my predecessor ; pray cause the stuffing to be repaired and the crutches to be shortened for me.’ In the early years of the reign of George I. the city was wretchedly lighted. There were no glass lamps in the streets, but all householders whose dwellings faced a street, lane, or public passage were obliged to suspend a lantern from the doors of their houses from six to eleven o’clock, unless on such nights when the moon was full and did her duty, as every moon was expected to do by those who lit the thoroughfares under the penalty of a shilling fine. Such an advantage to thieves did this semi-light afford that the town was unsafe after dark, and the most impudent rob- beries were continually committed. It was no uncommon occurrence for these thieves to quietly and with dexterous stealthiness cut open the back of a hackney-coach as it drove along at night, and then make a sudden grab at the valuable wig of the male occupant, or the head-dress of the female, generally ornamented with jewels. Pursuit down the dark 12 •78 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. and narrow by-streets would prove useless, and probably dangerous. Those who were obliged to go out usually carried lanterns with them, but they were suddenly wrenched from them when an attempt at robbery was made, and their crying out for help often ended in murder. Nothing, indeed, could be more daring than the conduct of the foot-pads who infested both the town and suburbs ; and their hardiness is only a little more astonishing than the leniency with which they were treated. One instance of this is given in an ac- count of a felony contained in the Weekly Journal for August 17, 1723, at which one can scarcely help feeling amused. ‘ A highwayman robbed a single gentleman at Newmarket t’other day, and, taking a watch from him that he had set an extra value on, he entreated the gentleman that had made so free with him to let him redeem it at any price he should be pleased to put upon it, and to appoint a time and place for yielding up the ransom and paying the money. “ You are upon honour, I hope,” says the thief. “Yes, by my soul,” says the gentleman. “Why, then,” says the robber, “ if you are acquainted with anybody here- abouts, I’ll go with you now, and you shall have the watch again for two guineas.” So the gentleman named a house in Newmarket ; but the other desired to be excused wait- ing on him thither, because it lay a little way out of his business. “ Why, then, we’ll go to Bourne Bridge,” says the gentleman again. “ With all my heart,” says the other. So away they rode together, and in their way met a noble- man’s coach, with a great retinue, which they passed by without taking any notice, and at length came to the house at Bourne Bridge, where the gentleman borrowed some money, paid down two guineas, and had his watch returned, CAPTAIN FITZGERALD . 179 and, after the drinking of a bottle of wine, with mutual civilities they took leave of each other.’ Another paper gives an account of an outrage by a gallant Hibernian captain, Fitzgerald by name, who one summer night lay in wait till the lady of his love was returning in her chair through the Strand from St. James’s. Having stopped the sedan, the captain parleyed with the fair one, but she re- fused to accompany him or move from the chair; whereon the captain sought to force her, when the lady was defended by her carriers. Fitzgerald, however, had three friends in waiting for him, who immediately advanced, and, after beat- ing the carriers, commenced to cut open the sedan with their swords. The noise attracted a watchman, who was advancing with his stave when he was dexterously pierced in the back by one of the gallants, and left for dead on the footway. This attracted a crowd, when the captain was arrested, his friends having made good their escape. Such occurrences as these were frequent, yet it was not until the end of this reign that an application was made to Parliament by the Lord Mayor and Common Council to enable them to light the streets in a proper manner by the erection of a sufficient number of glass lamps for the purpose, to be kept burning from the setting to the rising of the sun. A few advertisements taken at random from the press of the period will perhaps best help to illustrate the ways of the town. ‘ Any agreeable persons of either sex who are willing to live all the year within an hour’s walk of London, if they send their names and places of abode to Mr. William Tomlison, at Frank’s coffee-house in Mitre Lane, Fleet Street, they shall be received into a very delightful dwelling, without even pay- ing any rent for their apartments, or being obliged to any 12 — 2 i So COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. further expense than only to bear an equal share with others for the dinner that will be daily provided for them at the house. This generous invitation is given to bring together a company of persons who love retirement and harmony.’ ‘ Matthew Roebuck, footman, born near Wakefield in Yorkshire, in a dark grey coat with black sleeves, talks York- shire, age about twenty-one years, a middle size, dark brown hair, grey eyes, a fresh complexion, with a down walk, did early on Wednesday morning last steal from Mrs. Asheton in Covent Garden a candle stick, snuffers, and stand of silver, with a coat-of-arms of a mullet, and three leopards’ heads, and a crest of a boar’s head, a man’s suit of light sagathy, a silver-laced hat, shirt, cravat, with other plate and things. Whoever secures him shall have twenty shillings, or for the things forty shillings or proportionable for any part ; paid by Mr. Jarnegan, goldsmith in Covent Garden.’ ‘ Whereas Elizabeth, the wife of Richard Littleton, of the parish of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, did on Saturday, the 4th inst., between the hours of five and six in the evening, elope from her said husband, carrying with her two bundles of wearing clothes and other things. This is to desire all per- sons not to trust the said Elizabeth with money or goods, on account of her said husband, for that he will not pay any debts she shall contract after the publication hereof. N.B. — The said Elizabeth is a short woman, her face somewhat thin, fresh-coloured, and much freckled in the face and neck, dark eyes, eyebrows, and dark hair. She lately lived with the Hon. Gilbert Vane as nurse ; she went away in a printed calico gown and petticoat with a suit of aced pinners on.’ ‘ A young gentlewoman, very light brown hair, fair com- plexion, middle stature, a large pit or mark of a small-pock DISSIPATED LONDON. 1 8 r near the corner of one of her eyes, and some few pits on her nose, about the age of seventeen years, in a scarlet camolet cloak, was about eleven o’clock before noon on Wednesday, the 3rd inst. (August, 1718), carried in a hackney-coach to the house of Sir Alexander Cairnes, Bart., on College Hill, and thence carried to Mr. Colebrook, a banker in Thread- needle Street, the back of the Royal Exchange, London, where she received a good sum of money, and was thence carried away in the same coach, but has not been since heard of by the family to whom she belongs, her name being at present concealed, in hopes she or any person concerned in conveying her away will let some of her relations know she is alive ; or if the said coachman who drove the said coach will give an account of what place he parted with her, or if any other stage or country coachman or other person will give an account to Mrs. Parker, who keeps the coffee-house formerly called “ Young Man’s Coffee-House,” near Charing Cross, where the said gentleman may be heard of, such per- sons giving the said account shall be well rewarded, and have their charges paid them by the said Mrs. Parker, or the said Sir Alexander Cairnes.’ During this reign London had become the very centre of dissipation. The nobility, with scarce an exception, were thoroughly profligate. The King’s immoral example was not lost to the Court, from whence the evil oozed out amongst those in the lesser ranks of society, and in turn descended to the lowest. Religion, .partly from a reaction of that religious strife which existed under Queen Anne, had now become a mere name to the higher classes, and could exercise no puri- fying restraints. Scepticism and infidelity crept into the Court under the shelter of Mary Lapell’s accomplishments, Lord Hervey’s wit, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s advanced opinions. The vice of drunkenness was widely practised. 182 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . and its effects were occasionally to be seen even in the royal drawing-room, as when Mr. George Mayo was turned out for being saucy and pulling Sir James Baker by the nose. The clergy, with few exceptions, were men whose characters dis- graced their calling. The bishops who were appointed to sees under the reign of George I. had chiefly bought their advancements from their Sovereign’s mistresses, and those in the lower ranks of the Church Militant lived in a free-and- easy style, which in those days was looked on with an indul- gent smile instead of with censure. The stage, always a mirror of the times, had become abominably coarse and licentious. Infidelity to the marriage vow was the general subject of the drama, virtue was ridi- culed, honour sneered at, yet the theatre continually received royal patronage. Once the Duchess of Roxburgh told the Princess of Wales that * The Amorous Widow ; or, The Wanton,’ then a great favourite with the town, and often ‘ be- spoke ’ by persons of quality, which Her Royal Highness purposed seeing, had not a good reputation. The Princess said she would venture to see it, and after returning from the play-house, declared she liked it as well as any play she had seen, and that it was ‘not more indecent than all comedies are.’ When the Prince visited the theatre, the broader and more immoral the comedy was, the louder and longer he laughed, his mirth oftentimes continuing when even that of the lackeys in the gallery had subsided, so that the house frequently beheld the spectacle of the Prince in the royal box clapping his fat hands and shaking his fat sides over some double en- tendre. He made no hesitation in displaying his taste in this direction. On one occasion, when ‘Venice Preserved’ was about to be put on the stage, he ordered that certain scenes which had long been exorcised should be fully restored, a command obeyed to his no small delight. VICE OBTAINS . 183 To such an extent, indeed, did vice obtain, that in 1721 Lord Nottingham rose in the House of Lords to complain of the profanity and blasphemy of the nation, and lent his aid towards introducing a Bill for the Suppression of Evil. Many of the lords spiritual and temporal approved of the motion, and one of the former declared he believed the calamities occasioned by the South Sea Bubble were brought on by the crimes of the people. 4 If so,’ replied Lord Onslow gravely, ‘ your lordship must be a very wicked sinner, for I hear you have lost considerably by the South Sea scheme.’ CHAPTER XI. The King’s last Mistress — Miss Brett’s Parents — The King’s Departure — His Superstition— Curious Prophecy regarding his Death — Miss Brett gives a sample of her Authority — The King’s Death — The Duchess of Kendal— Stories cir- culated after the King’s Death — The King’s Reign a Proem to the History of England under the House of Brunswick — His Character — Story of him told by his Turkish Valet — His sympathy with those imprisoned for Debt — George I. as a Husband, Father, King, and Man. In November, 1726, Sophia Dorothea died, and a few months after that event His Sacred Majesty, then approach- ing his sixty-seventh year, became enamoured of a young English lady, whom he had little trouble in persuading to become his mistress. This was Anne Brett, whose mother was a notorious woman — none other, indeed, than the re- pudiated wife of the Earl of Macclesfield, and most unnatural mother of the poet, Richard Savage. The new favourite’s father, Colonel Brett, was one of the handsomest and most licentious men of the day. The union of these parents came about in a strange manner, but one eminently characteristic of them, as well as of the times. Hearing a disturbance in the street in front of her house one day, the divorced Countess looked out to ascer- tain the cause, and saw the modern Adonis/ Colonel Brett, MISTRESS ANNE BRETT 185 being assaulted by bailiffs, who claimed his handsome person by way of set-off against his equally handsome debts. Seeing his difficulties, she immediately sent out to his debtors, pro- mising to pay their demands, and, when the colonel was released, she proposed to him that he should marry her, to which he, nothing loath, consented The offspring of this union became mistress of a King. Miss Brett was extremely high-spirited, haughty, and hand- some ; moreover, she had great faith in the power of her charms, and had some influence over His Majesty ; one proof of which was, that she extracted a promise from him to make her a Countess, and, doubtless, he would have kept his word, but that death put a stop to his intentions. In May, 1727, His Majesty began to yearn for another sight of what was to him the land of the blest — Hanover. He had gone backwards and forwards continually during his reign, but this visit was destined to be his last. So he set out from England, promising Miss Brett to make her a peeress when he returned ; and took leave of the Prince and Princess of Wales — whom he hated as much as ever — with tears rolling down his cheeks. The tears were not tributes of regret at parting with them, but were shed because he was certain, as he said, that he should never come back again. All his life he had been superstitious, and he now placed implicit faith in a prophetic warning he had received, that he should not survive his wife by a year. Horace Walpole is of opinion that the prophecy was probably dictated by the Duke and Duchess of Zell, ‘ who might be apprehensive lest the Duchess of Kendal should be tempted to remove entirely the obstacle to her conscientious union with their son-in-law.' This fear of the King’s ac- counted for the solicitude regarding her health which he showed during the last years of her life, when he had fre- 1 86 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. quently sent to make inquiries concerning her. Singularly enough, the prophecy came true. But Mistress Anne Brett anticipated no such sudden downfall to her ambitions. She was installed in St. James’s Palace, where she was to remain during the King’s absence until he returned to make her a Countess. Meanwhile, she resolved to give the Court a specimen of what her power might be able to accomplish in the future, by ordering a door to be broken out of her apartment into the royal garden. Three of the Princesses lived in the palace since the royal quarrel ; and the Princess Royal, resenting the liberty taken by Mistress Brett, immediately gave orders to have the door blocked up again ; on which the King’s favourite ordered it to be knocked down. At this the Princess waxed wrathful indeed. Of all the younger branches of the famity, she was the most haughty and ambitious, and these feelings she never sought to disguise. Once she said to her mother she wished she had no brothers, in order that she might succeed to the throne ; and, on being reproached for expressing this desire, she made answer, ‘ I would die to-morrow to be queen to- day.’ The Princess having such a spirit, Mistress Brett had an opponent to deal with more resolute and imperious than she had reckoned. Once more she gave peremptory orders to have the wall built up, and no doubt there would have been a pretty quarrel, but that news of the King’s death came, and Mistress Brett quickly left St. James’s, a disappointed woman. She was never destined to see her ambition of becoming a peeress fulfilled, but was quite satisfied, some years after, to marry Sir William Leman. Late on the night of Friday the 9th of June the King arrived at Dalden. He was apparently well, but little fatigued, and made a hearty supper, which was the cause ‘OSNABURG, OSNABURG 187 of his death. Etough, writing to Dr. Birch a few years after, said : ‘ The King’s make and constitution promised one hundred years ; but this was hurt (I heard) by eating sturgeon and other strong foods in great quantities at the late hours of supper.’ In the morning the King was up betimes, and anxious to get to his journey’s end with all possible speed. On his way, however, he was taken ill with violent pains, which were succeeded by a lethargic state. He was supported by one of his gentlemen-in-waiting, who rode with him in the carriage ; his hands fell down useless to his sides, his tongue hung out, and he muttered occa- sionally, 4 Osnaburg, Osnaburg.’ This led his attendants to believe that he wished to make no stay at Ippenburen, through which they passed, and they therefore drove in haste to the city whose name he muttered again and again. When they arrived at Osnaburg at last, and reached the residence of His Majesty’s brother, the King was lifted from the carriage, and instantly bled ; but he never recovered consciousness, and died a few hours afterwards, on the nth of June, 1727. When his illness first became apparent, a messenger was sent with word of his condition to the Duchess of Kendal, who had as usual accompanied the King on his journey from England, but was then staying at Dalden. The Duchess immediately set out for Osnaburg, but was met on the road by another courier, who announced His Majesty’s death ; on which, according to Archdeacon Coxe, she beat her breast, tore her hair, gave signs of great grief, and, dismissing the English ladies who accompanied her, went to Brunswick, where she remained three months. Of course there were many stories told concerning the King’s death that speedily gained wide circulation, one of which was that in her last days Sophia Dorothea wrote him COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 1 88 a letter, upbraiding him for the years of persecution she had suffered, declaring her innocence, and finally calling on him to appear at the great Judgment seat on a day which she named. This letter she entrusted to the care of a faithful servitor, with instructions to keep it until such time as the King made his next journey to Hanover, when it was to be presented to him in person. This epistle, Lock- hart assures us, was frequently shown him by Count Welling, Governor of Luxemburg. The man whom Sophia Dorothea entrusted with it did as she desired him, and handed the missive to the King as he drove away from Dalden, when His Majesty, after reading it, was immedi- ately seized with his last illness. Horace Walpole tells a story which is probably truer. The King, he says, in a moment of more than usual tenderness, promised the Duchess of Kendal that if she survived him, and if it were possible for him to return, he would pay her a visit. When he had departed from this vale of tears, the Duchess, who was no less superstitious than her late royal master had been, looked forward to His Majesty’s keeping his word, which she believed was fulfilled when one day a bird flew into her room ; she received it with great respect and tender- ness, 4 and kept it till the royal bird or she took their last flight.’ After three months spent in Brunswick, she had re- turned to England, and for many years lived at Kendal House, Twickenham. She had accumulated an immense sum of money, a portion of which her daughter, the Countess of Chesterfield, inherited, but the bulk of which went to her German relatives. It has been said that George I.’s reign was little more than 4 a proem to the history of England under the House of Brunswick.’ Certain it is that as a King he exercised but little influence over the country. He had said to his ‘ HITTING IIIS TOES AGAINST THE WALL' i8 9 Ministers when he first came to England, ‘ I will do as you advise, and thus you will become entirely answerable for everything I do.’ Sir Robert Walpole, who served him faithfully, and saved him from plunging the country into the troubles of war when His Majesty made some effort at managing it, said he had but two drawbacks, Hanover and German avarice. Any ambitions he possessed were for his Electorate. So long as he was allowed to have as much money as he wished for himself and his favourites he was satisfied, and conducted himself as a tranquil though selfish and gross old man. At times he showed that he was not without good nature. Mahomet, his Turkish valet, once entertained some ladies of the Court by telling them of the King’s grief at Hanover, when his sister, the Queen of Prussia, died. It was sus- pected that her death had been caused by having diamond dust administered to her, which slowly poisoned her. When her stomach was opened, Mahomet declared it was so worn that he could and did run his finger through it ; and, after detailing these interesting and delicate particulars, the Turk went on to say His Majesty’s grief was so intense that he spent five days without eating or drinking, which surely must have been an exaggeration of the valet’s, and that His Majesty kept walking up and down his room crying all the while, and hitting his toes against the wall, as was his habit when agitated or angry, until, his shoes being worn out, his toes protruded two inches at the foot. He had refused to see anyone, but Mahomet, knowing what was good for him, brought in his brother, the Bishop, when he flung his arms round his neck and cried out, ‘ Est-il possible, mon frere, que cette charmante femme nous puisse quitter en si peu de temps?’ Then he went to bed, and soothed his grief. He showed that he had a great sympathy with prisoners iQo COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . confined for debt. On the occasion of his first visit to the Mansion House he gave ;£i,ooo towards having such prisoners liberated, and during his reign gave smaller sums for the same purpose. His private life was, however, one of glaring immorality ; as a husband he was faithless, cruel, and vindictive ; as a father his actions were unnatural ; as a King he was despicable; and as a man he scarcely presented throughout his days one redeeming virtue to a life of gross sensuality. CHAPTER XII. The King is Dead : God Save the King — Sir Spencer Compton — Walpole’s Diplomacy — The Court at Leicester House — The Queen’s favour to Walpole — Lady Walpole at Court — His Majesty’s Subtlety — The Civil List fixed — ‘Bustle of the Bees.’ The tidings of the late King’s death were sent from Hanover by Lord Townshend, who had accompanied him on his journey, to Sir Robert Walpole, who received them whilst he was quietly eating his dinner in his villa at Chelsea. The Prime Minister, with all possible speed, rode to Richmond, where the Prince and Princess were then staying, in order to communicate to them the surprising intelligence he had received, feeling doubtful as to the reception he would receive at the future King’s hands. During the quarrels between his late Majesty and his heir, Walpole was supposed to have sided with the former, and, though he strove to reconcile both, the Prince derived so little advantage from the terms of peace that he owed the Minister no gratitude for any part he had taken in framing them. Moreover, he had a lurking distrust of Walpole, on whom he was wont to bestow the epithets of ‘ rogue ’ and ‘ rascal ’ with great frequency and no reserve. From ‘ The Minutes of a Conversation with Mr. Scrope (Secretary to the Treasury) relating to the arrangements of the new Ministry on the accession of George II.,’ preserved 192 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. in the Etough papers, we learn that when Sir Robert arrived at Richmond he found George Augustus indulging in an afternoon nap, as was customary with the Prince and Princess. Impatient of delay when such news was to be broken to them, Walpole desired the lady-in-waiting, the Duchess of Dorset, to wake them from their dreams, when the Prince ‘ came out in a great hurry, with his breeches in his hand from which it is plain to be seen that Fate had never intended the royal father or son to hear the tidings of their succession to the throne with what chroniclers would call ‘ becoming dignity.’ When His Majesty came out of his bedroom, Walpole went down on one knee, and, kissing the royal hand yet holding his nether garment, hailed the stout little man as King. The monarch at first declined to believe the tidings until the despatch announcing it was shown him, for he had no expectations that the days of his reign were so near at hand. When he had recovered somewhat from his surprise, Sir Robert asked him whom he would graciously appoint to draw up the declaration to the Privy Council, and was answered, briefly, ‘ Go to Chiswick and take your directions from Sir Spencer Compton.’ That sentence was sufficient to show Walpole that the King- intended he should no longer hold his post as First Minister, and that a change of Ministry was imminent. Sir Spencer Compton, who had been Treasurer to the Prince of Wales since his arrival in England, was a man eminently unsuited for the office of Prime Minister ; though he had been Speaker to three Parliaments, and held the post of Paymaster, he was considered dull, irresolute, and devoid of talent. No one was perhaps better aware of his inability than Sir Robert Walpole, and, quick-witted and clever as he was, he resolved to use Sir Spencer’s KING GEORGE II. ANXIOUS COURTIERS. 193 weakness for his own advantage. Going to him at once, he gave him the royal message, and assured him that, as he had been the Prince's Treasurer, it was most natural that he should now become the King's, when his master ascended the throne; that he and the rest of the world had but expected the favour to which his services entitled him, and which his abilities would enable him to support. With that cultured adroitness which is begotten of Courts he continued, ‘ My time has been, yours is beginning ; but as we must all depend in some degree upon our successors, and that it is always prudent for these successors by way of example to have some regard for their predecessors, that with the measure they mete it may be measured to them again, — for this reason I put myself under your protection, and for this reason I expect you will give it. I desire no share of power or business ; one of your white sticks, or any employment of that sort, is all I ask as a mark from the Crown that I am not abandoned to the enmity of those whose envy is the only source of their hate, and who consequently will wish you no better than they have done me the moment you are visited with those honours and that authority, the possession of which they will always covet, and the power of which of course they will always hate.' Having left an excellent impression on his successor’s mind, Sir Robert departed. Next day the Prince was proclaimed King, and their Majesties came to Leicester House, where courtiers and politicians crowded the rooms by day and night, anxious to kiss hands and gain favourable notice by the ardour of their congratulations. Those who were out of town at the time came back in all haste ; all day long Leicester Square was thronged with coaches and sedan-chairs, with groups of soldiers and statesmen, idlers, footmen and chairmen, all *3 i 9 4 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . more or less busy with speculations, and all, from the highest to the lowest, expecting to receive some benefit from the change which had happened. The late King was almost as readily forgotten as if he had never sat on the British throne, while his son was hailed as one born to achieve greatness. During the four days that he remained in town this state of things continued, but towards two men amongst the crowd popular feeling had changed. These were Sir Robert Walpole, who rumour declared had fallen from his high estate, and Sir Spencer Compton, who was looked on as the Prime Minister of the future Government. Those who had followed, flattered, and pleaded to Walpole but a little while ago, now shunned or ignored him in the presence of royalty wherever he went ; in the drawing-room he found a wide space was left for him, and, save by one or two of his old colleagues, he was deserted ; whilst on the other hand, Sir Spencer Compton, wherever he moved, was surrounded by a crowd of eager courtiers and statesmen anxious to obtain his favour. Amongst the most eager of those was Bubb Doddington, one of the Lords of the Treasury, who now courted the new Minister, though but a while before he had declared in some lines addressed to Walpole that it was his ambition 4 To share thy adverse fate alone pretend, In power a servant, out of pow’r a friend.’ The same conduct pursued at Court by the time-servers was likewise carried on at the private residences of the states- men whose names were now before the public. St. James’s Square, where Spencer Compton lived, was crowded with the coaches of those anxious to pay court to him, whilst Walpole’s house was deserted. SIR COMPTON'S DILEMMA . 195 Meanwhile the new Minister set about making a draft of the King’s speech, but, finding himself unequal to the task, asked Walpole as a favour to assist him. This he did readily, and when it was finished Compton copied it out in his own hand and took it to the King. After a while Sir Robert, who was determined not to let himself be forgotten, like- wise took his way to Leicester House, where he found his successor in a state of confusion, from the fact that the King had objected to one passage in his speech which he found himself unable to correct. In his dilemma he asked Walpole to persuade the King to let the sentence stand. Sir Robert seized on this chance of testing his power, took an opportunity of seeing His Majesty alone, and soon brought him round to think as he did of the passage objected to, when it was allowed to stand. This fact coming to the Queen’s knowledge, she, with her woman’s wit, immediately suspected who had originally made out the draft, and pointed out to the King the impru- dence of appointing as First Minister a man so incapable of writing out a speech that he had to apply to his predecessor for the purpose. Probably His Majesty began to see that he had made a mistake in hastily dismissing a Minister who had governed the country so fairly during the late reign. How- ever, he bided his time a little longer before making any change, until a question of great moment to him — the settlement of the Civil List — was regulated in Parliament. Meanwhile Sir Robert and his colleagues were in suspense. A slight incident occurred at this time which showed the point from which the breeze of royal favour was beginning to blow. The Queen privately took Sir Robert Walpole’s part, and was anxious to destroy all hopes of change in the minds of the courtiers, and express her own sentiments at the same time. One day, when Lady Walpole sought to pay her 13— a COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 196 homage to the new Court, she had great difficulty in push- ing her way through the crowd lately so subservient to her, but which now turned its back on her and made impassable barriers with its elbows, so that she could not get nearer to the Queen than within three or four rows. Her Majesty, however, caught sight of her, and taking in her position at a glance, called out, ‘There I'm sure I see a friend.’ Imme- diately the courtiers parted on either side to permit Lady Walpole’s approach, * And,’ the Minister’s wife used to say afterwards, ‘ as I came away I might have walked over their heads if I had pleased.’ When Parliament opened, the first thing to be decided was the Civil List ; and, when that was settled, the old Par- liament was to be dissolved and a new one elected. Regard- ing the Civil List, a question which so nearly touched his pocket, the King proved himself a wily man, who had his royal eyes open to the personal importance of the situation. The members of the old Parliament, who from the short delay in its dissolution had begun to entertain some hope of its continuance, as well as those who believed themselves destined for office in the new, were equally anxious to meet the King’s views with regard to the sum he should enjoy. His Majesty, who was therefore master of the situation, was clever enough to avoid giving signs of favour to either party. The late King had received a pension of ^700,000, and the Prince of Wales 100,000 ; but, avaricious as the former had been, his son had the same vice developed to a greater de- gree, and nothing less than these united sums would satisfy his greed. He knew Walpole to be a clever Minister, who had great influence in the Commons, and was anxious to secure his services for the passing of the Civil List Revenue. With a subtleness which could scarcely be expected from His THE CIVIL LIST . 197 Majesty, he strove to accomplish this end. Taking Walpole by the hand one day, he said, 4 Consider, Sir Robert, what makes me easy in this matter ’ (i.e., the Civil List) 4 will prove for your ease too. It is for my life it is to be fixed, and it is for your life/ At the time when he was so anxious about his future income, it is worth while noting that he was worth three hundred thousand pounds, and his revenues from Han- over exceeded five hundred thousand a year. The Queen, likewise, had great confidence in Walpole’s power. Once, according to Archdeacon Coxe, when she was having a comfortable chat at chapel with the late King, as was their wont, she had told him that, for want of funds, he would be obliged to disband his Hanoverian troops, when His Majesty made answer, 4 No, no, for Walpole can convert stones into gold.’ This estimate of the Minister’s power from one who had such experience of it, appropriately occurred to her, and strengthened her and her husband in their good opinion of Sir Robert. When the time came, he fixed the Civil List at eight hun- dred thousand pounds, out of which the King was to provide for the Prince of Wales, thus giving him a revenue greater than that previously enjoyed by any English King. This grant met with but one dissenting voice in the House of Commons, that of William Shippen, the same who had been sent to the Tower in 1717 for declaring that the King ‘was a stranger to our language and constitution,’ and whom Pope calls ‘ Downright Shippen.’ He was a thorough Jacobite, and Walpole said he was the only commoner in Parliament whose price he did not know. Shippen, in turn, said of Walpole, 4 Robin and I are two honest men ; he is for King George, and I am for King James; but those men with long cravats only desire place, either under King George or King James.’ COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . 198 However, the enthusiastic generosity of the nation, as represented by Parliament on this occasion, did not end here. It was thought a proper time to have Her Majesty's jointure settled. The sum finally fixed on was ^100,000 a year, exactly double that of any previous Queen of England ; moreover, Somerset House and Richmond Lodge were thrown into the bargain. This last item was principally due to Wal- pole, and at once settled him in the King’s favour, and in more than his old power. The Whig Ministry was retained, with Walpole as First Minister, and, to satisfy Sir Spencer Compton for any disappointment he might feel, he was sent to the Upper House as Baron Wilmington, where he was safely beyond the reach of being made troublesome by any of Walpole’s dissatisfied opponents. Pope, in writing of this stirring time to Mr. Bethel, says, ‘ It put the whole world into a new state. The only use I have, shall, or wish to make of it,’ continues the little gentle- man, ‘ is to observe the disparity of men from themselves in a week’s time : the desultory leaping and catching of new motions, new modes, new measures, and that strange spirit of life with which men, broken and disappointed, resume their hopes, their solicitations, their ambitions ! It would be worth your while, as a philosopher, to be busy in these ob- servations, and to come hither to see the fury and bustle of the bees in this hot season, without coming so near as to be stung by them T CHAPTER XIII The Coronation — Description of the Scene — The late King’s Will — Hereditary Dishonesty of the Royal Family — Mrs. Howard and the King — Lady Sundon — Lord Hervey — — Queen Caroline’s Influence — Mrs. Clayton and the Cour- tiers — She distributes Appointments — Dorothy Dyves and her Lover — The Favourite’s Influence concerning Church Matters — Alexander Pope’s Revenge — Extract from Letters on Court Life. Though the new King had come to the throne in June, it was not until the following October that his coronation took place. He was desirous that that ceremony should be con- ducted with all the pomp and state possible to the occasion. George I. invariably shrank from all display, but his suc- cessor was of another way of thinking. The coronation was therefore made a pageant from which nothing that could add to its splendour was missing. Lord Hervey tells us 4 that the dress of the Queen on this occasion was as fine as the accumulated riches of the City and suburbs could make it ; for, besides her own jewels (which were a great number, and very valuable), she had, on her head and on her shoul- ders, all the pearls she could borrow of the ladies of quality at one end of the town, and on her petticoat all the diamonds she could hire of the Jews and jewellers at the other.’ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has left a racy description of 200 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . the ceremony. ‘ I saw the procession much at my ease/ she writes, c with a house filled with my own company, and then got into Westminster Hall without much trouble, where it was very entertaining to observe the variety of airs that all meant the same thing. The business of every walker there was to conceal vanity and give admiration. For these pur- poses some languished and others strutted ; but a visible satisfaction was diffused over every countenance as soon as the coronet was clapped on the head. But she that drew the greater number of eyes was indisputably Lady Orkney. She exposed behind a mixture of fat and wrinkles, and before a very considerable protuberance which preceded her. Add to this the inestimable roll of her eyes, and her grey hairs, which by good fortune stood directly upright, and ’tis impos- sible to imagine a more delightful spectacle. She had em- bellished all this with considerable magnificence, which made her look as big again as usual ; and I should have thought her one of the largest things of God’s making, if my Lady St. John had not displayed all her charms in honour of the day. The poor Duchess of Montrose crept along with a dozen black snakes playing round her face, and my Lady Portland (who is fallen away since her dismissal from Court) represented very finely an Egyptian mummy, embroidered over with hieroglyphics. In general, I could not perceive but that the old were as well pleased as the young ; and I, who dread growing wise more than anything else in the world, was overjoyed to find that one can never outlive one’s vanity.’ The whole town was mightily diverted by the splendour of the ceremony, and was not easily disposed to let its memory pass into oblivion. The management of Drury Lane seized on the opportunity of playing ‘ Henry VIII./ having the coronation of Anne Boleyn at the close, a THE LATE KING'S WILL . 201 spectacle on which a thousands pound was expended. All London went to see the performance, including the King and Queen, who highly enjoyed the show. This scene, indeed, met with such success that it was afterwards fre- quently put on the stage mal apropos at the close of a comedy or farce. The poet of Twickenham mentions in his correspondence that the Drury Lane triumph ‘ is to be succeeded by a more ridiculous one of the harlequin’s (almost as ridiculous a farce as the real State one of a coro- nation itself). After that the people hope for it again in a puppet-show, which is to recommend itself by another quali- fication of having the exact portraits of the most conspicu- ous faces of our nobility in waxwork, so as to be known at sight without Punch’s help, or the master pointing to each with his wand as they pass/ The next ceremony was the dinner given to their Majesties on the Lord Mayor’s Day at the Guildhall, when two hundred and seventy-nine dishes were placed on the royal table. The cost of this entertainment amounted to the decent sum of ^4,889 4s. At the commencement of his reign, George II. signalized himself by an act of glaring injustice which must remain as a capital stain upon a character already covered with blemishes. At the meeting of the first Council which he held, Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, produced the late King’s will, and handed it to His Majesty, who received it in silence, and, instead of opening it before the Council, as His Grace expected, put it quietly into one of his pockets, and without more ado walked out of the room. The Arch- bishop was so much surprised at the coolness of this act that he had not presence of mind to interfere, nor did any other members of the Council venture to remonstrate. The result was that this will was never heard of again. The late 202 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. King, however, probably fearing that such a fate might happen to the copy entrusted to Dr. Wake, had made a second, which he left in the hands of the Duke of Wolfen- biittel ; this the honest Duke soon sold for a subsidy. The morning after the death of George II. a package was shown to his son, the Duke of Cumberland, by Lord Waldegrave, which was endorsed 6 a very private paper/ This was a letter from the Duke of Newcastle to the first Earl Walde- grave, then Ambassador in France, which stated that Lord Newcastle had received by the messenger the copy of the will and codicil of George I. ; that he had given it to His Majesty, who had put it in the fire unopened; that a messenger was despatched to the Duke of Wolfenbiittel, with a treaty granting him all he desired, and that by re- turn of the messenger the original will was expected from him. The destruction of wills seemed to have been practised in this royal but dishonest family. George I. had burnt the will of Sophia Dorothea, as also those of her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Zell ; all of which were believed to have been made in favour of his son ; so that, when it came to that son's turn to destroy his father’s will and ex- hibit what may be called the hereditary trait of dishonesty, it seems, if not a retribution, at least what might have been expected. Prince Frederick, George II.’s son, used to accuse his father of making away with the will of the King’s uncle, the Bishop of Osnaburg, who had been created Duke of York. He died the year after George II. came to the throne, and the Prince believed he had been made heir to some of his wealth. The King of Prussia, who was married to George Ills sister, considered he had been likewise de- frauded by His Majesty; but Queen Caroline, in speaking DOUBTED BY HIS FAMILY . 203 to Lord Hervey of the Duke of York’s will, said His Grace left everything he had, which amounted to ^50,000, to her husband, except his jewels, and these he left to the Queen of Prussia, to whom ‘ the King had delivered them/ after satisfying the King of Prussia (who, before the King showed him the will, had a mind to litigate it in favour of his wife) that the will would admit of no dispute. So that the King’s honesty was strongly doubted by the members of his own family. George II. was in his forty-fourth year when he com- menced his reign. The change from Prince to King seems to have altered his habits but little during the first years which he sat on the throne. Mrs. Howard still retained her position as his mistress, and at the same time her appoint- ment as woman of the bed-chamber to the Queen. It was not through any strong affection that His Majesty enter- tained for her that she was selected for this position, but rather as a protest to the Court that he was not subject to or governed by his wife, a suspicion to which he was most sensitive. When he succeeded to the throne Mrs. Howard was in her fortieth year ; her deafness had much increased ; and though the King, with that regularity for which he was remarkable, spent as much of his time with her as before, yet those who had long paid her Court began to suspect that she exercised but little influence over her royal master. It was the King’s boast that Her Majesty never meddled in his affairs, nor did she — in the presence of others ; but his very sensitiveness on this point arose from the fact that he undoubtedly began to feel he was swayed by her influ- ence. As when she was Princess, so it was when she be- came Queen. She held private consultations with Sir Robert Walpole, when they both settled questions of political 204 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . interest according to mutual satisfaction. When these con- clusions were arrived at, Her Majesty, with the exquisite skill that distinguished her, would afterwards impress them on the King’s mind so delicately that he came to believe they were his own sentiments, arrived at from mature reflec- tions. But, if he were anxious to seem as if he acted inde- pendently of the Queen, he was yet more eager to show that his mistress had no power over him whatsoever. In public he slighted her, and made a point of contra- dicting any statement she made with all the rudeness charac- teristic of the little domestic despot. Scarce a wish of hers was ever complied with. The only advantage which the royal mistress derived was that of being saved from a state of indigence, to which she would otherwise probably have sunk ; and the sole favour her family received from her position was a peerage given to her brother, Sir John Hobart. The Queen had not only looked complacently and toler- antly on this strange liaison of her husband’s, but was even anxious to retain her 4 good Howard ’ in the position she held, knowing that the King must keep a mistress, and fearing, if Mrs. Howard left him, a younger and handsomer woman might supplant her in the power she exercised over him. When it came to pass that Mrs. Howard — then Lady Suffolk — wished to retire, the Queen lent an unwilling ear to her desires, when the King complained, with a want of gallantry almost brutal, that 4 she would not let him part with a deaf old woman that he was weary of.’ A favourite with the Queen, and a rival of Mrs. Howard’s (though not for the King’s favour) was Mrs. Clayton, after- wards Lady Sundon, one of the women of the bed-chamber to the Queen. She exercised a strong influence over Her Majesty, which she used not unfrequently for her own benefit. DOROTHY DYVES . 205 Some of the letters addressed to her during the time she was in power are preserved in the library of the British Museum, and fill five stout volumes. The cringing tone, the sycophancy and flattery with which they overflow, would prove amusing if it were not so sad to consider the servile depths to which men and women can descend when self- interest lies at bottom. Almost every one who looked for Court favour or official appointment, from Dukes to the most humble servitors, sought her interest. In her general distribution of good things, her own family were not overlooked. Her brother-in-law was offered a snug post under Government; her nephews obtained good military and civil appointments, whilst her nieces were made maids- of-honour. These young ladies became a kind of unpaid Court spies in her service, and it is laughable to read the letters they penned to their ‘ most worthy and generous of aunts,’ keeping her acquainted during her absence with the pettiest news concerning the royal family, borrowing small sums of money from her to pay their debts, and consulting her as to economical stratagems regarding their wardrobes. These nieces were the daughters of Mr. Dyves, a poor gentleman who was arrested for debt — a not uncommon thing in those days — and who made pitiful application to his sister to free him from durance vile. Dorothy Dyves, one of his daughters, was appointed maid of-honour to the Princess Anne when she married the Prince of Orange. It so happened that the Rev. Charles Chenevix was made Court chaplain to Her Royal Highness, and this young gentleman took it into his reverend head to fall in love with the aforesaid fair Dorothy, not heedless, probably, of the certain promotion which his marriage with a niece of the all-powerful favourite would obtain him. Mrs. Clayton, when asked for her consent to the union, 206 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . at first refused it, as she considered a chaplain no mate for her niece, whilst she (Mrs. Clayton) held so many Court preferments in her hands. Pleading for the desired consent, with an honest simplicity that treats far more of business than of love, he wrote to the Court favourite : ‘ It is a diffi- cult thing for a man to speak of himself, and, whatever he may say, his character will, and ought to, be taken from the voices of others, and not from his own. I shall therefore only say upon this subject that I flatter myself that I may safely refer my character to the testimonies of all that know me. If it is not distinguished by any merit, I hope at least it is not sullied by any blemish. The Earl of Scarborough, who has long honoured me with his protection, I believe will not scruple declaring his sentiments upon this point. As to my fortune, I pretend to none. My salary as chaplain to Her Royal Highness will, I hope, be thought a reasonable earnest of some future preferment, and, could I ever be happy enough to obtain your protection, I might flatter my- self that I should one day owe to your goodness what I can never expect from my own merit — such a competency of fortune as may make Miss Dyves’s choice a little less un- equal. My birth, I may venture to add, is that of a gentle- man. My father long served, and at last was killed, in a post where he was very well known — a post that is oftener an annual subsistence than a large provision for a family, and that small provision was unfortunately lost in the year ’20. One of my brothers is now in the army — I in a pro- fession not thought below people of the first rank ; another indeed keeps a shop, but I hope that circumstance rather deserves compassion than contempt. He found an honest and advantageous settlement upon these terms, in which he is justified by the frequent practice of people much above him, who have not his excuse of a necessity. 1 ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENT . 20 7 Mrs. Clayton gave her consent to his marriage after a little while, and then it was but a mere question of time for the chaplain to become a bishop. He was soon made Doctor of Divinity, and his virtues and learning — which, had he not married Miss Dyves, might never have been perceived, and, therefore, have been unfortunately lost to the Church for ever — got him advanced to the See of Killaloe, and afterwards to the more important diocese of Waterford. Mrs. Clayton seems to have held the keys of all Church patronage in her hands, and wonderful was the discernment of the wily Churchmen, who saw her — if their letters are to be credited — endowed with wisdom, learning, virtue, and all the graces imaginable. One of these gifted with such re- markable penetration was Dr. Clayton, a kinsman of the favourite’s husband. He was early in the Queens reign converted to the Arian principles made fashionable by Her Majesty, who loved to dabble in theology and delighted in controversy, and, as a result of his change of opinions, was, contrary to the wishes of the Primate of Ireland, appointed to the See of Killaloe, and afterwards to that of Clogher. The opinions of this courtier-bishop on ecclesiastical prefer- ment may be gathered from a paragraph in one of his letters to his patroness, when recommending a son of Lord Aber- corn’s to her notice. ‘ What occurs to me at present,’ says this Right Reverend Father in God, ‘is the considering of ecclesiastical prefer- ments in a political view. It has not been customary for persons, either of birth or fortune, to breed up their children to the Church, by which means, when preferment in the Church is given by their Majesties, there is seldom anyone obliged but the very person to whom it is given, having no relatives either in the House of Lords or Commons that are 2oS COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . gratified or kept in dependence thereby. The only way to remedy which is, by giving extraordinary encouragements to persons of birth and interest whenever they seek for ecclesi- astical preferment, which will encourage others of the same quality to come into the Church, and may thereby render ecclesiastical preferments of the same use to their Majesties with civil employments.’ Another divine who corresponded with Mrs. Clayton was Dr. Hoadley, a weak, sickly man who went about on a crutch and knelt on a stool when he preached. In the reign of George I. he was made Bishop of Bangor, from which see he w r as moved to Hereford, to Salisbury, and finally to Winchester, creeping to such preferments by the backstairs, as it were. When he was made Bishop of Winchester, the richest see he could hope for, he revealed some of his prin- ciples, which, not being orthodox, he had heretofore kept safely in the background. George II. hated him, and said conscience made him lock up his work, ‘A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,’ until he was appointed to his last see, fearing his opinions might hurt his preferment. The King called his spiritual lordship ‘a great puppy and a great rascal,’ imitated his limping gait in the Queen’s apartment, and said, in speaking of him, ‘ It is a very pretty thing for such scoun- drels, when they are raised by favour so much above their desert, to be talking and writing their stuff . . . and very modest in a canting, hypocritical knave to be crying, “ The kingdom of Christ is not of this world,” at the same time that he, as Christ’s ambassador, receives ^6,000 or ^7,000 a year.’ For a friend of hers, Dr. Alured Clarke, Mrs. Clayton obtained an appointment to a vacant Prebend in West- minster, and for Dr. Martin a prebend at Windsor. The THE BISHOPS' PRESENTS . 209 Reverend Dr. Samuel Clarke, another of her pets, was offered, on the death of Sir Isaac Newton, the Mastership of the Mint, which, though not in his province, was the only appointment she had ready for him at the time ; this he had the decency to refuse. Her influence became so great that it only kept pace with her vanity. Sir Robert Walpole one day told his son Horace that she had proposed to him to unite with her in governing the kingdom, when the statesman bowed, begged her protection, but said he knew nobody fit to do that but the King and Queen. The presents that she received for her interest were numerous and sometimes remarkable. The Bishop of Cork sent her 4 a suit of fine linen,’ and the Bishop of Kildare a dozen bottles of green usquebaugh, the fault of which, he tells her, is ‘ that it loses its colour if it is kept above a year, and if it is drunk before that time it tastes fiery and hot,’ Lord Pembroke sent her one of Herbini’s marble tables, ‘ the best he had, which they call verdi antiques,' as a means of securing her friendship. But these and other offerings were lost in comparison with the splendour of Lord Pom- fret’s gift, when through her favour he had obtained the ap- pointment of Master of the Horse, His grateful lordship presented her with a pair of diamond ear-rings worth four- teen hundred pounds, which she was too much of a woman not to exhibit continually, with a pride which vexed the soul of the spiteful Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, through whom, indeed, the favourite had first obtained her place as woman of the bed-chamber. ‘ How can that woman,’ said the Duchess at one of the royal drawing-rooms, speaking in a loud voice for the benefit of those around her, ‘ how can that woman have the impudence to go about in that bribe ?’ i Madame,’ replied Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was 14 210 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . never at a loss for an answer, and who delighted in saying sharp things, 4 how can people know where there is wine to be sold unless there is a sign hung out ?’ There was no doubt Mrs. Clayton had far more power over the Queen than Mrs. Howard had over the King, and this caused an animosity to spring up between them which was all the deeper for its concealment. Occasionally Mrs. Clayton, whose temper was not the sweetest, would give vent to her ill-humour and resentment, but she met with no response from the King’s mistress, who invariably maintained a well-bred indifference on such occasions, which to her rival was more mortifying than words. Mrs. Clayton’s husband was a dull man, without talent for diplomacy or disposition for intrigue. When he became member of Parliament he systematically voted for the Walpole Government, and at last was appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury. He was made a continual butt for his want of humour and quick perception. Once when Bubb Doddington had given utterance to a witty saying in the Treasury office, Mr. Clayton laughed, on which some of the other commissioners gave him credit for his sharp- ness. 4 No, no,’ said Doddington ; 4 he is only now appre- ciating a joke I made last Treasury day.’ In 1735 Mr. Clayton was created Baron Sundon, when he and his wife retired from Court, where she was immediately forgotten by the learned divines and ambitious courtiers who had paid her homage so long as she remained in power, and no longer. A man who played a prominent part in the Court of George II. was John, Lord Hervey, second son of the first Earl of Bristol, and brother of the handsome and brilliant Carr, who 4 was reckoned to have parts superior to his brother.’ Carr died at an early age, leaving behind him a MY LORD HERVEY . 21 1 reputation for wit, and of being the father of one who after- wards excelled him in wit. After his demise, Pope, in writing of him to his brother, speaks of ‘ the debt I owed to his friendship, whose early death deprived your family of as much wit and honour as he left behind in any branch of it.’ Lord (John) Hervey graduated at Clare College, Cam- bridge, and in the summer of 1716 he went to Paris, and afterwards made his way to Hanover, which George I. was then visiting, in order to ingratiate himself with the new King and his favourites. This he had little difficulty in accomplishing, and his favour increased on his return to England. His mother had already been appointed a lady of the Princess’s bed-chamber, his brother Carr a lord of the bed-chamber to the Prince, and there was every chance of John Hervey coming into preferment quickly. He soon became a favourite with the Princess of Wales, to whose Court he attached himself, and that favour continued un- broken till her death. The Herveys were an eccentric family, and so unlike the generality of their fellow-creatures, according to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, that she divided the human race into three species, ‘men, women, and Herveys.’ John Hervey certainly upheld the family reputation for eccentricity. In appearance he was singularly handsome, fair, and effeminate. His busts and pictures represent his features as clearly cut and refined, the forehead lofty- and intellectual, the mouth at once delicate and satirical, the eyes full of repose and thought. Not satisfied with Nature’s gifts, he strove to add to them by painting his face, a habit which the Duchess of Marlborough said was to soften the ghastliness of his features, but that they were ghastly, no one else has ever said, and it is safe to believe that her Grace spoke with malice, as was 14 — 2 212 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . her wont. Pope, with his bitter tongue, speaks of him as 4 the painted child of dirt/ and again remarks that 4 his face is so finished that neither sickness nor passion could deprive it of colour/ The poet of Twickenham called him 4 My Lord Fanny/ from his fairness and effeminate appearance ; whilst the ballads of the period styled him ‘ Hervey the Handsome/ Intellectually he was reckoned one of the most brilliant men of that most intellectually brilliant period. His satires were sharp-edged, clever, and bright, his Parliamentary speeches full of force, and his political pamphlets 4 equal to any that ever were written/ according to Sir Robert Walpole. Moreover, he was a linguist, and had a spice of classic lore. All through his life Lord Hervey was an invalid, a fact which he sought to conceal from all eyes. In his youth his father found a cause for his debility in the use of that 4 detestable and poisonous plant — tea, which had once brought him to death's door, and, if persisted in, would carry him through it / but this ill-health owed its root to a deeper cause. There is something almost pitiable in the efforts he made to hide his malady. Writing to his friend, Stephen Fox, he says, 4 I have been so very much out of order since I writ last, that, going into the drawing-room before the King, I was taken with one of those disorders with the odious name that you know happened to me once when at Lin- coln's Inn Fields playhouse. I had just warning enough to catch hold of somebody (God knows who) in one side of the lane made for the King to pass through, and stopped till he was gone by. I recovered my senses enough imme- diately to say, when people came up to me asking what was the matter, that it was a cramp took me suddenly in my leg, and (that cramp excepted) that I was as well as ever ‘ IT WAS A CRAMP / 213 I was in my life. I was far from it, for I saw everything in a mist, and was so giddy that I could hardly walk, which I said was owing to my cramp not quite gone off. To avoid giving suspicion, I stayed and talked with people about ten minutes, and then (the Duke of Grafton being there to light the King) came down to my lodgings. I am now far from being well, but better and prodigiously pleased, since I was to feel this disorder, that I contrived to do it a Vi?isu de tout le monde . Mr. Churchill was close by me when it happened, and takes it for a cramp. The King, Queen, etc., inquired about my cramp this morning, and laughed at it : I joined in the laugh, said how foolish an accident it was, and so it has passed off; nobody but Lady Hervey (from whom it was impossible to conceal what followed) knows anything of it.’ In order to abate this painful disorder, his caution with regard to diet, and his care of himself, were unflagging. He never used wine or any other liquor save water and milk- tea ; he seldom eat meat, but, when he did, he could use nothing but chicken, and for days lived on nothing but bread and water and asses’ milk ; which gave his poetical enemy before mentioned an opportunity of styling him ‘ that mere white curd of asses 5 milk . 5 The wretchedness he had to endure whilst trying to simulate an appearance of vigour and cheerfulness, probably gave his mind that tinge of satire which so frequently marked his words. Yet, with all his want of health and effeminacy of bearing, he was not without courage, as was shown by his challenging Mr. Pulteney upon his writing a political satire which gave much offence to the King. Probably in taking this step he bore in mind what His Majesty had said to Lord Scarborough when the latter ac- knowledged seeing some scurrilous manuscript verses in which these lines occurred * 214 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . ‘ You may strut, clapper George, but 'twill be all in vain ; We know ’tis Queen Caroline, not you, that reign. You govern no more than Don Philip of Spain. Then, if you would have us fall down and adore you, Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before you.’ The King asked Lord Scarborough who it was that had shown him these verses. My Lord, who was then Master of the Horse, refused to say, telling His Majesty that he had passed his word of honour, even before reading the poem, not to mention from whom it was received. The King, who could never bear contradiction, or being denied anything he desired, grew angry, and said fiercely, ‘ Had I been Lord Scarborough in this situation, and you King, the man should have shot me, or I him, who should have dared to affront me in the person of my master by showing me such insolent nonsense !’ ‘ I have never told your Majesty that it was a man,' said my Lord coolly ; when his wrathful Majesty turned from him, and never spoke to or noticed him or some months afterwards. The cause of Lord Hervey’s duel took place a few years after this. Some pamphlets were showered on the town, attacking Pulteney and Bolingbroke, which the former be- lieved were from Lord Hervey’s pen, and in return wrote ‘ A Proper Reply to a Late Scurrilous Libel.' This abused the King, his Prime Minister, and, in most virulent and coarse terms, Lord Hervey. The result was that the latter sent a message to Pulteney, wishing to know if he was the writer of the pamphlet ; and received an answer from that gentleman that he would not give him satisfaction on this point until he knew if Lord Hervey had written the first pamphlet. Lord Hervey sent back word that he had not, by his friend, Mr. Fox, who asked Pulteney again if he were the author of 4 A Proper Reply to a Late Scurrilous Libel / and LORD HERVEY'S DUEL % 215 was answered that, whether he was the author or not, he was ready to justify and stand by the truth of any oart of it at what time or wherever Lord Hervey wished. 6 This last message,’ says Mr. Thomas Phelam, who relates the story, ‘ was the occasion of the duel ; and, accordingly, on Monday, at between three and four o’clock, they met in Upper St. James’s Park ’ (now Green Park), ‘ behind Arlington Street, with their two seconds, who were Mr. Fox and Sir J. Rushout. The two combatants were each of them slightly wounded, but Mr. Pulteney had once so much the advantage of Lord Hervey that he would have infallibly run my Lord through the body, if his foot had not slipped ; and then the seconds took an occasion to part them. Upon which Mr. Pulteney embraced Lord Hervey, and expressed a great deal of con- cern at the accident of their quarrel, promising at the same time that he would never personally attack him again, either with his mouth or his pen. Lord Hervey made him a bow, without giving him any sort of answer, and (to use the common expression) thus they parted.’ It was reserved for Lord Hervey to have the bitterest vials of Pope’s wrath and satire poured upon his head. It is un- pleasant to think that so much petty spite and cool malignity could lurk with a genius such as this poet possessed. Mr. Fox, in the House of Commons, spoke of him as a ‘ lam- pooner who scattered his ink without fear or decency,’ and this statement is at least correct so far as his treatment of Lord Hervey is concerned. With this quarrel the name of a woman, of course — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu — is inex- tricably mixed. She had been all her lifetime a friend of the Hervey family, and her natural brilliancy, her wit and talents, must have brought her in close connection with the courtier. This friendship, however, was not shared with Lady Hervey, who 21 6 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . had but little intercourse with this distinguished woman. Both of these ladies seem to have lived on terms of well- bred indifference with their husbands, as was fashionable in those days. Lady Mary had, at the time when her quarrel with Pope occurred, returned from the Turkish capital, and her sojourn there, as well as her previous travels, and conse- quent interchange of thought with some of the most famous men of the day, had given her ideas a breadth, and her speech a freedom, that permitted grounds for uncharitable surmises regarding her acts. Lady Mary, however, rather gloried in the fame she had acquired, and was no worse than those who surrounded her, though she may have laughed louder at a double entendre , or called a spade a spade, and not an agri- cultural instrument. She was some years older than Lord Hervey, and on that account may have allowed her friend- ship for him to become more confidential ; but there is no trace of their intimacy crossing the bounds of friendliness. In taste they thoroughly agreed. To write a lampoon or Court ballad was a labour of love to both ; each was a wit, a satirist, a sceptic, and the common bond was probably strengthened between them from the fact that his delicacy, hidden from the world, gave him a claim to the strong sym- pathy that lay under the polished surface of her manner. They corresponded continually, and when, after Lord Her- vey ’s death, his eldest son sealed up and sent Lady Mary her letters, she being then settled abroad, assuring her that they had not been read or opened, she, on writing to thank him, said she almost regretted he had not looked over a corre- spondence which would have revealed to him what, as a young man, he might feel inclined to doubt — ‘the possi- bility of a long and steady friendship subsisting between two persons of different sexes without the least mixture of love/ GALLANT MR. POPE. 21 7 Lady Mary was a woman bom to attract and enjoy ad- miration, and amongst those who felt the fascination which she exercised was Pope, whose heart, not often given to ten- derness, became most susceptible to the charms of her vivaciousness, wit, and learning. There is no doubt she received his attentions with pleasure, and flattered him, as may be seen from her correspondence. In one of her letters she assures him he has discovered the philosopher’s stone, 4 since by making the 44 Iliad ” pass through your poetical crucible into an English form without losing aught of its original beauty, you have drawn the golden current of Pac- tolus to Twickenham. ’ The poet, in responding, was not less complimentary. When he wrote to her concerning her portrait, then being painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, he says : 4 This picture dwells really at my heart, and I have made a perfect passion of preferring your present face to your past. I know and thoroughly esteem yourself of this year : I know no more of Lady Mary than to admire at what I have heard of her, or be pleased with some fragments of hers as I am with Sappho’s. But now — I cannot say what I would say of you now. Only still give me cause to say you are good to me, and allow me as much of your person as Sir Godfrey can help to me.’ Again, in another of his gallant epistles, he tells her : 4 1 write as if I were drunk ; the pleasure I take in thinking of your return transports me beyond the bounds of common decency. Yet, believe me, madam, if there be any circum- stance of chagrin on the occasion of that return — if there be any public or private ill-fortune that may give you a dis- pleasure, I must still be ready to feel a part of it, nolwith standing the joy I now express/ No doubt Lady Mary led on the little man by those arts which even wiser members of his sex could not withstand. 218 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. until at last 4 he was foolishly led into making her a declara- tion, which she interrupted by laughing in his face/ according to Warburton’s 4 Memoirs of Horace Walpole.’ With all her love of romance, flirtation, and poetry, Lady Mary had an admirable amount of sound common-sense, which she brought continually into active service ; and on the occasion of Mr. Pope’s love-making one can scarcely wonder at her outburst of hilarity. Ridicule was a thing which he, one of the most sensitive of men, as well as one of the most vindictive, could not forgive. Lord Chesterfield speaks of him as 4 the most irritable of all the genus irr Habile vatuni , offended with trifles, and never forgetting or forgiving them,’ and this estimate of him was fully borne out by his conduct in this instance. Fully believing Lord Hervey to be his rival in her affec- tions, he sneers in his 4 Letter to a Noble Lord’ at 4 a natural , a just and well-grounded esteem ,’ which existed between his lordship and Lady Mary. On account of this rivalry, he aimed the full force of his satire at the courtier. When questioned as to the origin of the quarrel which afterwards followed, Pope meanly laid the blame on his late friends by declaring that 4 Lady Mary and Lord Hervey had pressed him once together to write a satire on certain persons, that he refused it, and this had occasioned a breach.’ But Mr. Pope did not invariably speak the truth when it suited him to do otherwise, and this statement has not the appearance of veracity, for surely nothing could be more agreeable to him than the writing of satires. Another reason he gave was that these friends 4 had too much wit for him,’ and in a letter referring to the subject he states, in speaking of Lady Mary, ‘Neither had I the least misunderstanding with that lady till after I was the author of my own misfortune in discontinuing her acquaintance.’ POOR LITTLE POET . 219 There is a pitiable shabbiness in this sentence which shows the little man in his worst, if truest light. There can be no doubt that he was bitterly jealous of Lord Hervey, whether as a lover or a wit, and he lost no time in giving vent to his spleen. When his ‘ Miscellanies’ appeared, his sneers at him were very perceptible. But this was not sufficient. In his ‘ Imitation of the Second Satire of the First Book of Horace,’ Lord Hervey is spoken of as Lord Fanny, and Lady Mary as Sappho, with a venom and vileness rarely, if ever, equalled in literature. In his ‘Letter to a Noble Lord,’ he denied that he had ever meant to abuse his late friends, but his meaning was too plain for this statement to find credence. In this epistle his spite seems to have gained fresh strength. It is now seldom printed in the modern editions of his works, and must be regarded as a literary curi- osity. ‘ I shall now give your lordship a frank account of the offence you imagined to be meant for you,’ he writes to Lord Hervey. ‘ Fanny (my lord) is the plain English of Fannius, a real person, who was a foolish critic and an enemy of Horace ; perhaps a noble one, so (if your Latin be in earnest) I must acquaint you the word Beatus may be con- strued, “Beatus Fannius ! ultro Delatis capsis et imagine.” ‘This Fannius was, it seems, extremely fond both of his poetry and his person, which appears by the pictures and statues he caused to be made of himself, and by his dili- gence to propagate bad verses at Court, and get them admitted into the library of Augustus. He was, moreover, of a deli- cate or effeminate complexion, and constant at the assemblies and operas of those days, when he took it into his head to slander poor Horace, 220 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. “ Ineptus Fannius Hermogenis lsedat conviva Tigelli,” till it provoked him at last to name him, give him a lash, and send him whimpering to the ladies.’ This was severe, but his lines referring to the woman whose wit and beauty he once professed to admire are, if possible, more virulent. 4 In regard to the right honourable lady your lordship’s friend,’ he goes on, 4 1 was far from de- signing a person of her condition by a name so derogatory to her as that of Sappho ; a name prostituted to every in- famous creature that ever wrote verse or novels. I protest I never applied that name to her in any verse of mine, public or private ; (and I firmly believe) not in any letter or con- versation. Whoever could invent a falsehood to support an accusation I pity, and whoever can believe such a charac- ter to be theirs I pity still more.’ In return for this came a reply from those attacked called 4 Verses to the Imitator of Horace,’ in which Pope was told, i None thy crabbed numbers can endure, Hard as thy heart and as thy birth obscure,’ which was quickly followed by a second, named ‘Letter from a Nobleman at Hampton Court to a Doctor of Divinity.’ One retort, however, seemed but to beget another, and Pope yet more bitterly painted Lord Hervey, under the name of Sporus, in the vilest colours possible. There could be no doubt but the poet had gained the battle in this war of words, but he never exercised the generosity of a victor. Wherever and whenever opportunity offered, he stung Lord Hervey with an amount of spite happily rare in the history of literature. After about ten years of silence, Lord Hervey, 1 1 SHOULD BE TALKED OF.' 221 in a poem called ‘The Difference between Verbal and Practical Virtue/ flung another missile at his enemy. To this came no reply, so that he had at least the satisfaction of having the last word. No doubt the Court in general, and the Queen in particular were much incensed at the onslaught made upon Lord Hervey. The King detested ‘ little Mr. Pope/ but not more so than the Queen. During her reign the poet continued to sneer at her ; and after her death he flung sarcasms at her memory. Her Majesty was too clear-sighted not to see that beneath the effeminacy of Lord Hervey’s manners and his affectation of superlative refinement he had a mind capable of giving sound judgment, and a heart that was faithful to his friends. She had need of these, and trusted them in the daily anxieties that beset her, feeling all the more confidence in both, because he opposed her opinions and maintained his own whenever he considered her in the wrong. She showed him in return more the affection of a mothei than a friend. ‘It is well I am so old/ she used to say — she was fourteen years his senior — ‘ or I should be talked of for this creature.’ But if she was not talked of for this creature, her daughter Caroline was. There can be no secrets in a Court but time will find out, and it is now well known that the Princess secretly loved the handsome, graceful courtier, whose office brought him in continual as- sociation with the royal household. The Queen found in him, not only an adviser, but a com- panion in whose society it was her delight to pass many hours of the day. In the mornings after breakfast she sent for him, when they talked not so much as sovereign to subject but as friend to friend, of politics, the King, the Prince (whom they both heartily disliked), of the Court, and 222 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. town, and all things uppermost at the hour. If His Majesty came in to interrupt them, she would chide Lord Hervey for not having come sooner when she sent for him, so that they might have had a longer chat. When she drove out to the chase, he rode beside her by her desire. She had presented him with a horse, and added, as a more substantial testimony of her favour, a thousand a year to his income as Vice-Chamberlain. With all this show of royal favour, Lord Hervey was not contented with his position. His ambition was to hold some office of State which would have given his talents more fitting em- ployment than that of detailing Court gossip, wiling away the idle hours of his royal mistress with his wit, or sharing the painful confidences she gave him. But his desires in this direction were never gratified during the Queen's life- time. There were reasons for this, however ; the first was that Her Majesty was unwilling to spare him from the Court. Her intellect was superior to, and she was far better read than, the majority of those who daily surrounded her ; and in the interchange of ideas and conversation with her Vice- Chamberlain, she experienced an intellectual relief which gave her a keen sense of pleasure. When at times he had persisted in his opinions on various subjects contrary to hers, and expressed himself with but scant courtesy, she would good-humouredly say he had been impertinent and contra- dictory because he knew she could not do without him. This favour became the barrier to an appointment in the Ministry which he would otherwise have undoubtedly ob- tained. There was a second reason, however, which hung by the first. Lord Hervey was a friend of Walpole's, and the astute Minister, knowing that the Vice-Chamberlain possessed the LETTERS FROM COURT . 223 Queen’s private ear, did not dare remove him from a posi- tion so valuable to himself, which might, in case of his removal, be ffiled by one of whom he could not make such use. Yet if we may judge from some extracts from Lord Hervey’s letters, notwithstanding the favour he enjoyed, he found the Court occasionally dull enough, and himself suffi- ciently discontented. Writing from St. James’s to Mrs. Clayton, he says : ‘The Court removes on Monday after dinner to Hampton Court, so that I shall no longer be obliged to lead the disagree- able stage-coachman’s life which I have done during their stay at Richmond, and I assure you I have so little of the itinerant fashionable taste of many of my acquaintance that I look on the negative pleasure of fixing with no small comfort. It has often been matter of the utmost astonish- ment to me what satisfaction it can be to those people whom I see perpetually going from place to place (as others walk backwards and forwards in a room) from no other motive but merely going, for the first seem no more to prefer one corner of the world to another, than the last do this or that end of the room ; and the only way I can account for it is that, feeling an absolute cessation of thought, they keep their limbs in motion as their last resource to prevent their next heir seeing them decently interred .... If I knew any facts to entertain you I would launch out afresh, but there is nobody in town to furnish, invent, or relate any ; and at Court I need not tell you, madam, one seldom hears anything one cares to hear, more seldom what one cares to retain, and most seldom of all what one should care to have said.’ Again he writes : ‘ I will not trouble you with any account of our occupations at Hampton Court. No mill-horse ever went in a more constant track, or a more unchanging 224 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS circle ; so that by the assistance of an almanack for the day of the week, and a watch for the hour of the day, you may inform yourself fully, without any other intelligence but your memory, of every transaction within the verge of the Court. Walking, chaises, levees, and audiences fill the morning ; at night the King plays at commerce and back- gammon, the Queen at quadrille, where poor Lady Charlotte runs her usual nightly gauntlet, the Queen pulling her hood, Mr. Schutz spluttering in her face, and the Princess Royal rapping her knuckles, all at a time. The Duke of Grafton takes his nightly opiate of lottery, and sleeps as usual between the Princess Amelia and the Princess Caro- line. Lord Grantham strolls from one room to another, as Dryden says, “Like some discontented ghost that oft ap- pears, and is forbid to speak,” and stirs himself about as people stir a fire, not with any design, but in hopes to make it burn brisker, which his lordship constantly does to no purpose, and yet tries as constantly as if it had ever once succeeded. At last the King comes up, the pool finishes, and everybody has their dismission. Their Majesties retire to Lady Charlotte and my Lord Lifford ; the Princesses to Bilderbec and Lony ; my Lord Grantham to Lady Frances and Mr. Clarke ; some to supper, some to bed ; and thus (to speak in Scriptural phrase) the evening and the morning make the day.’ As his office of Vice-Chamberlain necessitated his pre- sence continually at the Court, Lord Hervey’s name will be found repeatedly in the following pages. It is now time to introduce the new King’s family, some of whom played an important part in the history of the Court* CHAPTER XIV. The King's Family — Prince Frederick at Hanover— His Pro- posed Secret Marriage — His Arrival in England — Hated by his Parents — His Popularity — The Prince and Miss Vane — Lady Archibald Hamilton — The Prince wishes to get rid of Miss Vane — Feelings of the Royal Family to- wards him — His Passion for Music — His Proposed Marriage — Arrival of the Bride — The Marriage Ceremony. During the residence of the Prince and Princess at Leicester House, three children were born to them, William, afterwards Duke of Cumberland, Mary, and Louisa. Of their seven children, Frederick, born in 1707, was the eldest. Since he was about seven years old, he had never seen his mother, and his father only on the occasional short visits he paid to Hanover. When his grandfather had left the Electorate to take pos- session of the English crown, it was his good will and plea- sure that the usual ceremonies should be carried on in his absence at the Hanoverian Court, and that Prince Fred, then a mere boy, should hold a drawing-room daily, and re- ceive the same attention as George Lewis had done before Fate had made him a King. Left to the guardianship of tutors, and exposed to the debasing servility of courtiers, the young Prince quickly found other employment for him- self than in holding drawing-rooms He soon learned to drink and gamble. His manners to those who were not his *5 226 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS ’ favourites became rough and unbearable, and his general conduct degraded. The fruits of his estrangement from his parents, and the license he enjoyed, became visible soon after his arrival in England. This event did not take place until his grandfather had been dead about eighteen months, for neither his father nor mother desired to see him. The King remembered what a thorn he himself had been in the flesh of his royal father, and of what use a Prince of Wales was liable to be made in the hands of courtiers and politicians in opposition to the King’s Ministry ; and, now that he had come to the throne, he feared his son might follow in his own footsteps. The Prince might have re- mained much longer in Hanover, but that the nation began to busy itself with the fact that the next heir to the throne was living away from the people, and out of the country over which they believed he would reign in the coming time. He was receiving a foreign education, it was said, and, if left longer abroad, would come to England as ignorant of English ways as his grandfather had been, and probably with the same stolid attachment to the little Electorate and its interests in preference to those of the British nation, and this was a consummation not to be desired. The King, however, closed his ears to the voice of the people, as he invariably did when it did not suit him to hear it, until the Privy Council reasoned with him, and then he felt he could no longer keep the Heir-Apparent out of the kingdom. Per- haps an action of Prince Frederick’s at this time made His Majesty pay more heed to the wishes of his Ministers than he otherwise would have done. In the reign of George I., a negotiation had been set on foot for the marriage of Prince Fred to his cousin, the Princess Royal of Prussia, and of the Prince Royal of Prussia to the Princess Amelia, the second daughter of VERY MUCH IN LOVE . 227 George II. At first both the royal houses seemed equally anxious for the marriages, but soon a coolness on the part of George I. was caused by Frederick William’s secession from the Treaty of Hanover. This coolness regarding the marriage proposal increased when the second George came to the throne; for the King hated his brother-inlaw of Prussia with an intensity which found a climax in a chal- lenge to a duel. At this time Prince Fred, who had reached the sus- ceptible age of one-and-twenty, believed himself very much in love with his fair cousin, and his affection was much strengthened by his father’s opposition. On the other hand, the Queen of Prussia favoured the Prince’s addresses, and her royal spouse shared her sentiments, knowing ‘the union would be certain to exasperate King George. Affairs had arrived at this stage when Prince Fred secretly sent word to his aunt that he would, with her consent, travel to Prussia incognito and marry his cousin, requesting her to keep his proposition a secret. The Queen was delighted, sent him word of her approval at once, and promised to keep it secret from all. When the message was communicated to the King, then absent from the Court, he hurried to Prussia that he might be present at the ceremony. But the Queen, woman-like, could not keep a secret. In her excitement she told Dubourgeay, the English envoy, believing him to be sufficiently her friend to favour her design. He did not, however, receive the communication in the spirit in which it was given, and told the Queen it was his duty to send word of it to his master, King George. The Queen was now in a dilemma : in vain she pleaded to him not to betray her ; but the result was that a messenger was hurriedly de- spatched to England with news of the marriage. There was nothing left for the Queen but to hope the Prince might 15—2 228 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. arrive before his father’s interference could prevent him. But this was not the case. Colonel Launay was speedily sent from England, charged with the mission of bringing the Prince from Hanover, and so this romance untimely ended. When leaving the Electorate the Prince was encumbered with debts which his father refused to pay, and which were, therefore, left behind as tokens of remembrance with the Hanoverian subjects. His arrival in England was not hailed by any public rejoicing, and he was received by his family with but cold courtesy. Lady Bristol describes him, with that charming flattery which comes with wondrous ease to a courtier, as ‘ the most agreeable young man it is possible to imagine, without being the least handsome ; his person little, but very well made and genteel ; a loveliness in his eyes that is indescribable, and the most obliging address that can be conceived.’ Somerville goes further still ; being a poet, he, in writing of a prince especially, took the full license allowed his craft. In a poem called ‘ The Chase,’ Prince Fred is depicted in these lines : — * Fresh as a rose-bud newly blown and fair As op’ning lilies : on whom every eye With joy and admiration dwells. See, see, He reins his docile barb with manly grace. Is it Adonis for the chase arrayed, Or Britain’s second hope ?’ If this youth was Britain’s hope, he was certainly not the hope of his parents : between him and them there existed a dislike and distrust impossible to trace to its origin, but which widened every year of his life. That some cause existed for their hatred to him is evident Sir Robert Wal- pole, who enjoyed the confidence of the King and the A PLEASING HYPOCRISY. 229 friendship of the Queen, and was aware of the secrets of the royal household, knew the origin of the unnatural strife. Lord Hardwicke tells us he informed him ‘ of certain passages between the King and himself, and between the Queen and the Prince, of too high and secret a nature even to be trusted to this narrative.’ Another courtier, who en- joyed even more of the royal friendship than Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Hervey, set down certain passages in his memoirs, ‘that appeared to have contained additional details of the dissensions of the royal family/ as John Wilson Croker tells us ; but these were destroyed by Lord Hervey’s son, the Earl of Bristol. So that, whatever the nature of the original feud was, all traces of it are lost. George I. hated and quarrelled with his son, and history repeated itself in the persons of George II. and his heir. Soon after his arrival in England, Frederick was made Prince of Wales. His manners were, when he pleased, agreeable enough, and bid fair to render him popular, if not with his own family, at least with the courtiers, and that share of the public with whom he came in contact. He had not so much of the German stolidity in his character as his father, but in- stead, he cultivated a pleasing hypocrisy, which became more and more habitual to him with advancing years. Lord Her- vey says, ‘ He was as false as his capacity would allow him to be, and was more capable in that walk than in any other, never having the least hesitation from principle or fear of future detection in telling any lie that served his present purpose.’ When he first took up his residence in England, he could speak but little of the language, and was totally ignorant of everything concerning the country. He also seemed to have a dread of his father, which feeling was mistaken by the cour- tiers for respect and obedience. But this, alas ! quickly 230 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. began to wear away, and no doubt those who attached them- selves to his person were not slow in pointing out to him the way he should go, according to their lights. The King treated him with the uttermost coldness and indifference, and the breach widened between them every day. Lord Her- vey says that, ‘ whenever the Prince was in the room with him ’ (the King), ‘ it put one in mind of stories that one has heard of ghosts that appear to part of the company, and were invisible to the rest ; and in this manner wherever the Prince stood, though the King passed him ever so often, or ever so near, it always seemed as if the King thought the Prince filled a void of space.’ But this habit of utterly ignoring him was not arrived at until he had been some little time in England. Frederick had, after a few months, thrown off all dread of the King’s displeasure, and the restraint which he had felt on his first arrival. He had begun to feel the dis- advantage of relying on his royal and excessively stingy father for a due allowance, and to complain loudly of the limited sum allowed him ; this grievance was subsequently made the chief occasion of the disgraceful quarrels which ensued be- tween them. The Queen never showed the slightest affection for her eldest son, but treated him with contempt, and her example was followed by his sisters, who seldom lost an opportunity of giving expression to their dislike. Meanwhile his popularity increased. He was found to have a taste for arts, and immediately he became a royal patron ; it was discovered that he could appreciate wit, and soon such men as Chesterfield, Pulteney, Cobham, Dodding- ton, and Sir William Townshend gathered round him. Then again, at times he was liberal in his expenditure, and this gained him a favourable repute amongst the public. All this popularity, perhaps, only helped him to get into - NO BETTER THAN HIS FATHER . 231 debt and difficulties, though, according to the Queen, he cost his father ^50, 000 a year, which she considered more than sufficient for a bachelor. But he had no settled allowance from the King, and this fact filled him with a discontent which he took every means of ventilating. It was in a time of need that Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, bethought her of a plan which would mortify the King and Queen, whom she now detested, and which would, at the same time, re- establish her in a power fully as great as that which she enjoyed in the days of the late Queen Anne. This scheme was to marry Prince Fred to her grand-daughter, Lady Diana Spencer, to whom she was ready to give a dowry of ^100,000, a bribe which she believed the Prince would not resist. In this supposition she was right. He fully entered into her arrangements, was anxious to obtain both money and wife and take a step which would enrage his parents. The wily Duchess bound him to the strictest secrecy, and appointed a meeting at the Lodge in Richmond Park, where the marriage ceremony was to take place. However, they counted without their host. Walpole, who seems to have had a special faculty for discovering plots, came to hear of this secret arrangement, which he at once made known to the King; the consequence being the Duchess’s ambitions were never realized. This gave fresh cause for the royal resentment against the Prince and the Duchess, and in return, for Her Grace’s bit- terness towards them and Sir Robert Walpole. This feud was afterwards strengthened by her grandson, the second Duke of Marlborough, becoming one of the Prince’s friends, and one of the Prime Minister’s political enemies. So far as morals went, the Prince of Wales soon showed that he was no better than his father, or than his grandfather had been. His first intrigue at the English Court was with Miss Vane, eldest daughter of Gilbert, Baron Bernard, one of 232 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. the Queen's maids-of-honour, ‘ who was willing to cease to be so upon the first opportunity.' Miss Vane one day gave birth to a male child in her apartments in St. James’s Palace, and this offspring was pub- licly baptized and named Fitz-Frederick Vane. Lord Hervey, the Queen’s favourite, though he had been married some dozen years and was the father of a family, was likewise the lover of this young lady, and became violently jealous of the Prince, whom he now hated, which latter fact must have delighted Her Majesty. The Prince, on his part, found no difficulty in returning the compliment. Another lover of the fascinating Miss Vane was the first Lord Harrington ; each of these believed that he was the father of her child, and told Sir Robert Walpole so in private. The Prince’s right to paternity was, however, admitted by the lady, who no doubt knew that heavier claims could be exacted from him than from those who sought to share the same distinction as His Royal Highness. But, notwith- standing her ceding him this favour, he did not long remain constant to her, and in her stead selected Lady Archibald Hamilton, wife to the Duke of Hamilton’s brother, and the mother of ten children. Lady Archibald was no longer either young or beautiful, but she was brilliant and clever, and showed herself a consummate actress, making her husband believe her a strictly virtuous woman with as much ease as she persuaded the Prince of her admiration for his supposed abilities and beauty of person. The intimacy of my Lady and His Royal Highness was plain to all but the man most concerned by it, who, by the way, was old enough to be her father. The Prince walked with her publicly in the morn- ings in St. James’s Park, visited her frequently at her home, and when she came to the royal drawing-room, they stood whispering in the corners, apparently oblivious of all present. 4 SHE MIGHT STARVE FOR HIM ? 2 33 She ruled the weak-minded Prince readily, hated Miss Vane thoroughly, and besought him to get rid of her as quickly as possible. To this wish the Queen added hers, as there was about this time some project of his marriage talked of at Court. The Prince, without much trouble, agreed to part with Miss Vane, of whom he was getting tired. He sent his friend, Lord Baltimore, to her with a message, stating that he wished her to live abroad for a few years, during which he would take charge of the child, and that, if she did not comply with his wishes in this respect, he should withdraw the sum of^i,6oo a year which he had allowed her since her dismissal from Court. The exact words of his com- munication were that, 4 if she would not live abroad, she might starve for him in England.’ Miss Vane was a clever young lady, and made no reply to Lord Baltimore, but took time for consideration, and mean- while sent for Lord Hervey in order to advise with him. He, as might be expected, was anxious to thwart the Prince, and so desired her to refuse the offer, and dictated a letter for her to that effect. When His Royal Highness received this, he was wrathful indeed, not so much with his mistress as with Lord Hervey, who he knew full well had advised her to this step and written the letter. With that want of good taste which dis- tinguished his father in a somewhat similar circumstance, he showed the communication to his mother, his sisters, and all who would read it, vowing vengeance at the same time on the villain by whom it was written. But Miss Vane’s wit, ably seconded by Lord Hervey, did not end here ; she told all her friends of the Prince’s offer, and showed the reply she had sent him. This annoyed him so much that he boldly denied ever having made her such a proposal. His anger, 234 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. indeed, reached a pitch which she did not anticipate, and she now began to fear she had gone too far. Remembering before it was too late that discretion is the better part of valour, she wrote a second time to Prince Fred, apologizing for her conduct, begging him to remember all she had sacri- ficed for his sake, and asking him to allow her to remain in England. This letter soothed him wonderfully; he no longer urged her to go away, but permitted her to retain her son, allowed her ^1,600 a year as before, and gave her in addi- tion a house in Grosvenor Street. She did not live long, however, to enjoy his favours ; her death took place in 1736; her boy had died a few weeks before her. So much did this amour of the Prince’s amuse the town, that ballads and pamphlets having Miss Vane, or, as she was called, ‘ Fair Vanella,’ for their theme were quickly pub- lished. ‘ Vanella on the Straw,’ ‘A Trip to the Garden of Love at Vauxhall,’ ‘Vanella; or, The Amours of the Great,’ ‘ Vanessa, the Humours of the Court of Modern Gallantry,’ were all showered upon the public, and continued to amuse them for some time. In addition to these, a print was published a few years later called ‘ A Satire referring to the Marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales, to the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha,’ which represented a room, with a throne at the end, to which the Prince was leading his consort; close by sat Miss Vane, with her boy by her side, and underneath ran the lines — ‘The Happy pair with Mutual Transports smile, And by Fond Looks each other’s cares beguile. Backwards behold the Effects of Lawless Love, In silent Grief each heedless Maid reprove. She feels the pangs of scorn, her Lover's hate, Mourns her Undoing, and grows wise too late.’ Whilst the Court and public were discussing such events THE HANDEL OPPOSITION . 235 as these, the bitterness and discord between the Prince and his family daily increased. The Queen used to curse the hour of his birth, the Princess Royal spoke of him as a nauseous beast, declared she grudged him every hour he continued to breathe, ‘ that he was the greatest liar that ever spoke, and would put one arm around anybody’s neck to kiss them, and then stab them with the other, if he could.’ One of the causes of the quarrel between this brother and sister was ‘ her daring to be married before him,’ when she would have a jointure from Parliament and an establishment of her own before he could taste such privileges ; another w'as caused by the very art which is supposed to soothe savage breasts. The Princess had a passion for music, and was not with- out proficiency as a performer. Her instructor had been Handel, who afterwards undertook the management of the opera at the Haymarket. The Princess patronized him, and became interested in the success of her former tutor, whose genius she had long acknowledged. Their Majesties supported her in her desire to make Handel’s efforts suc- cessful ; and here the Prince saw an opportunity of opposing and causing them one of those petty annoyances which are oftentimes more galling than the perpetration of greater offences. He at once set about organizing a series of operas at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, where all his friends and those opposed to the King and Sir Robert Walpole repaired night after night. This opposition, which at first might have been regarded as childish, soon became a grievance which occupied the attention of the whole Court. All who appeared at the Handel operas were at once hailed as friends of the King, whilst those who lent their presence to the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre were regarded as favourites of the Prince. Their Majesties and 2 36 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. the Princess were stubborn in their opposition, and would patiently sit freezing in the half-empty Haymarket Opera House night after night, having the dissatisfaction of know- ing that the opposition theatre was crowded with the Prince's adherents. This gave Lord Chesterfield an opportunity of saying one night, when he sauntered into the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, that he had been at the Haymarket, ‘but there being no one there but the King and Queen, and, as I thought they might be talking business, I came away :’ a piece of humour that vastly diverted His Royal Highness, and was repeated from mouth to mouth all over the town next day. ‘Voting against the Court in Parliament,' we are assured, ‘ was hardly a less remissible or more venial sin than speaking against Handel or going to the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Opera,’ and the Princess Royal said she ‘ expected in a little while to see half the House of Lords playing in the orchestra in their robes and coronets.’ Mindful of the attempts which the Prince had twice made to marry in opposition to their wishes, their Majesties now set about arranging a union for him when he was almost in his twenty-ninth year. In one of the King’s visits to Germany he met the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, and he immediately selected her as the future bride of the heir to the Crown, and at once wrote to the Queen, asking her to inform the Prince of his choice. When, however, the King came home, the union was not spoken of for some time, and it was not until early in 1736 that a formal message from the Cabinet Council was delivered to the Prince, stating that with his approval His Majesty would demand for him the hand of the Princess Augusta. His Royal Highness, with that external show of courtesy towards his parents which formed part of his policy, answered that A PROPER MATCH . 237 ‘whoever His Majesty thought a proper match would be agreeable to him.’ Lord Delaware was therefore despatched as Ambassador to Saxe-Gotha to demand the Princess in marriage, and a month later, on the 25th of April of the same year, the bride arrived in England. On the day on which she landed at Greenwich, the Prince hurried down to see his future wife, and spent some hours with her. The impression she made on him was favourable, and the next day found him visiting again and dining with her. Many of the good citizens like- wise went, either out of curiosity to see the Princess, or out of loyalty to greet her. A quaint account of her stay at Greenwich, speaking of the citizens who travelled thither, says : ‘ The crowd of people was very great, and Her High- ness condescended to show herself from the gallery of the palace, which drew forth the most lively acclamations.’ The Prince proved himself a gallant little man, for after dinner he 1 gave her the diversion of passing on the water as far as the Tower and back again in his barge, finely adorned, and preceded by a concort of musick. The ships saluted their Highnesses all the way they passed, and hung out their streamers and colours, and the river was covered with boats. Their Royal Highnesses afterwards supped in public.’ The Princess Augusta was little more than a child in age and manners, and between herself and her husband there was a disparity of twelve years. She could not speak a word of English, and had come from her mother’s country house, where she had passed the greater part of her dull, monoto- nous life, to a nation of which she knew nothing, and to a Court beset with intrigues and vice. For her age, she was tall and slender, awkward in her movements, and not very well made. However, in meeting with her future husband and the royal family, she conducted herself with a self- COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 238 possession and propriety which at once influenced the King, Queen, and Court in her favour. Sir Robert Walpole after- wards said that her winning the King’s approval when he first saw her, and her gaining the Prince’s esteem so quickly, ‘ were circumstances that spoke strongly in favour of brains that had but seventeen years to ripen/ The Prime Minister’s estimate of her was correct, for it became after- wards evident that, so far as her husband allowed her to exercise it, she possessed a mind .that was wise and discreet. Her arrival and marriage were of course golden oppor- tunities, in more senses than one, for the bards, verse-makers, and flatterers, of which they quickly availed themselves. The bridegroom was called ‘ a glorious Prince, Britannia’s pride/ and was assured that he and his bride were far happier than ‘ the first wedded pair.’ ‘ That pair in Eden ne’er reposed Where groves more lovely grew, Those groves in Eden ne’er inclosed A lovelier pair than you. ‘ You, happier than the former two, Have nobler tasks assigned ;• ’Twas theirs to curse the world, but you Were born to bless mankind.’ Poor Adam and Eve, if they had no nobler task assigned them than Fred and Augusta, must have had a wretched mission indeed ! One William Prynn, who should have had better sense, writing from Lincoln’s Inn of the Princess, whom probably he had never seen, says, 1 Her Highness is endowed with all those accomplishments which can render life agreeable, and make a Prince happy, if an amiable person, a fine deport- ment, and a natural sweetness of temper may be esteemed THE NEW -PRINCESS. 239 such. And, as the personal qualifications of her consort have already gained him the esteem of all good men, we have the greatest reason imaginable to expect that this marriage will be as fortunate to his country as that of his illustrious progenitors/ How fortunate that was may readily be judged. The University of Oxford, which had been the very hot-bed of Jacobitism, now bestirred itself to show its loyalty. Every college contributed a congratulatory ode, and these were in various languages : Greek, Latin, Hebrew, German, English, and Welsh, the latter being the production of Jesus College. These odes, seventy in number, were collected and bound in a handsome volume, as an offering to the royal bride and bridegroom, which it is to be hoped they duly appreciated. Having rested at Greenwich one day, the Princess Augusta drove on Tuesday morning in one of the royal coaches as far as Lambeth, and, there being no bridge but London Bridge then, she embarked in a state barge, and was conveyed to Whitehall, where her mode of travelling was again changed, and she was carried in the Queen’s chair through St. James’s Park, and finally set down at the foot of the steps leading from the King’s apartments, where the Prince of Wales met her, she sinking down upon her knee to kiss his hand. He raised her up, and, having gallantly saluted her on each cheek, led her to the great drawing- room, where the King, with surly impatience, the Queen, and the whole Court, all wearing the clothes they had had made for the royal wedding, were waiting to receive and congratu- late her. When ^she approached their Majesties, she prostrated herself on the floor before them, which act was most ac- ceptable to the King’s vanity. Both of them assisted her 240 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. to rise, and she was then presented to her future brother-in- law, the Duke of Cumberland, and the royal Princesses. When the reception was over, she dined with the Prince and the younger members of the royal family, who were desired to go in their ordinary undress to the table ; for but scant courtesy was shown to Fred’s bride, notwithstanding that he had striven hard to have the full ceremonies for such an occasion as the present carried out. ‘We are just come from the Court,’ writes Lady Staf- ford, on the day of the bride’s reception, ‘ where there was really a great deal of finery. The Princess is neither hand- some nor ugly, tall nor short, but has a lively, pretty coun- tenance enough. The Duke of Grafton told me we were to meet in the great drawing-room at six, and the peers and peeresses to either go down into the Chapel after the Queen, or to sit, during the ceremony, above in the King’s closet (which he said, as a friend, he thought would be the best place), then we are to see them ’ (the bride and bridegroom) ‘ sup, and then see them a-bed, and to-morrow at twelve o’clock we are to go to be presented to the Princess’s rooms, and at night is a ball.’ At eight o’clock the wedding procession formed, and pro- ceeded to the Chapel, where the marriage took place, the joining of hands being proclaimed to the people by the firing of guns. A somewhat curious account is given of the ceremony in the Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1736, which is quoted here in part : ‘ Her Highness was in her hair, wearing a crown with one bar, as Princess of Wales, set all over with diamonds ; her robe likewise, as Princess of Wales, being of crimson velvet, turned back with several rows of ermine, and having her train supported by four ladies, all of whom w£re in virgin habits of silver, like the Princess, and adorned with dia- THE ROYAL MARRIAGE . 241 iiionds not less in value than from twenty to thirty thousand pounds each. Her Highness was led by His Royal High- ness the Duke of Cumberland, and conducted by His Grace the Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain of the House- hold, and the Lord Hervey, Vice-Chamberlain, and attended by the Countess of Effingham and the other ladies of her household. The marriage service was read by the Lord Bishop of London, Dean of the Chapel ; and, after the same was over, a fine anthem was performed by a great number of voices and instruments. When the procession returned, His Royal Highness led his bride ; and coming into the drawing-room, their Royal Highnesses kneeled down and received their Majesties’ blessing. At half an hour after ten their Majesties sat down to supper in ambigu, the Prince and the Duke being on the King’s right hand, and the Princess of Wales and the four Princesses on the Queen’s left. Their Majesties retiring to the apartments of the Prince of Wales, the bride was conducted to her bed- chamber and the bridegroom to his dressing-room, where the Duke undressed him and His Majesty did His Royal Highness the honour to put on his shirt. The bride was undressed by the Princesses, and, being in bed in a rich undress, His Majesty came into the room, and the Prince following soon after in a night-gown of silver stuff, and cap of the finest lace, the quality were admitted to see the bride and bridegroom sitting up in the bed surrounded by all the royal family. His Majesty was dressed in a gold brocade turned up with silk, embroidered with large flowers in silver and colours, as was the waistcoat ; the buttons and star were diamonds. Her Majesty was in a plain yellow silk, robed and faced with pearls, diamonds, and other jewels of immense value. The Dukes of Grafton, Newcastle, and St. Albans, the Earl of Albemarle, Lord Hervey, Colonel Pel- 16 242 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . ham, and many other noblemen, were in gold brocades of from three to five hundred pounds a suit. The Duke of Marlborough was in a white velvet and gold brocade, upon which was an exceedingly rich point d’espagne ; the Earl of Euston and many others were in clothes flowered or sprigged with gold ; the Duke of Montagu in a gold brocaded tissue. The waistcoats were universally brocades, with large flowers. ’Twas observed, most of the rich clothes were the manu- facture of England, and in honour of our own artists. The few which were French did not come up to these in rich- ness, goodness, or fancy, as was seen by the clothes worn by the royal family, which were all of the British manufacture. The cuffs of the sleeves were universally deep and open, the waists long, and the plaits more sticking out than ever. The ladies were principally in brocades of gold and silver, and wore their sleeves much lower than had been done for some time.’ CHAPTER XV. The Prince courts Popularity — The King’s Danger at Sea — Suspense of the Queen and Courtiers— Expected Birth of an Heir — The Prince carries his Wife from Hampton Court — A Royal Quarrel and its Results — The Prince’s Behaviour during the Queen’s Illness — Lady Middlesex — Reconcilia- tion of the King and Prince — His Amusements, Illness, and Death— What the Preachers said — What the Ballad-makers said. Early in the next month the King, who had been for some time anxious to get back to Hanover, left England after appointing the Queen Regent in his absence, denying that honour to the Prince, as George I. had denied it to him when Prince of Wales. But history repeated itself in the affairs of this father and son yet more closely in the fact that one of the Prince’s first acts after his marriage was to appoint Lady Archibald Hamilton lady of the bed-chamber to the Princess, just as Mrs. Howard, his father’s mistress, had been woman of the bed-chamber to his mother. The Prince’s income was now raised from ^*50,000 to ^80,000 a year ; but this did not satisfy either himself, his friends, or his creditors. To the latter he gave bills and bonds payable on his accession to the throne, with a freedom that was almost reckless. Lord Hervey, when speaking to the Queen of this, told her he thought there ‘ was danger of the King’s days being shortened by the profligate usurers 16 — 2 244 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. who lent the Prince money on the condition of being paid at His Majesty’s death, and who, he thought, would want nothing but a fair opportunity to hasten the day of payment ; and the King’s manner of exposing himself would make it easy for the usurers to accomplish such a design.’ Her Majesty said that was true. Then the favourite suggested that he would move for an Act of Parliament making it capital for any man to lend money on a premium at the King’s death, on which the Queen promised to speak to Sir Robert Walpole about the matter. The Prince’s dissatisfaction increased daily, and was, of course, fanned into flame by his friends, who detested Wal- pole and the Ministry, and who were anxious to give them whatever trouble they could. His Royal Highness at last declared his determination of calling the nation’s attention to his affairs, by asking Parliament to interfere between himself and the King, and demanding a pension of £ 100,000 a year, the amount his father had enjoyed whilst Prince of Wales. This intention of his deepened — if possible — the animosity between his parents and himself. The Queen was especially bitter, and spoke of him in the strongest terms. But the Prince was rather pleased at exciting their anger, and, backed by his friends, resolved that his inten- tions should be carried out, certain that his cause would have the sympathies of both Houses, and that he stood fair to win this continued battle between himself and his sire. Meanwhile he steadily courted popularity, and never failed to use a suavity of manner when mixing with the people, which went far to gain him their good-will. He went about in the plainest way, usually unaccompanied by guards or lackeys, and made a point of attending all the popular amusements of the day. The more his favour in- ‘ SCOUNDRELS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 245 creased with the public, the more were their Majesties dis- pleased. On one occasion, when a fire broke out at the Temple, his efforts to extinguish the flames were very energetic and noticeable. He remained at the spot from nine o’clock at night till five the following morning, and called to his aid a hundred and fifty men from the Savoy. His friends stated that the mob cried out several times during the night, ‘ Crown him, crown him ’ ; for at this period, as we shall see later on, the King was most un- popular with the people. The Queen, when she heard of her son’s exertions and their result, elegantly said, ‘ My God, popularity makes me sick ; but Fritz’s 9 (the name she usually called him) ‘popularity makes me vomit. I hear that yesterday, on his side of the House, they talked of the King’s being cast away with the same sangfroid as one would talk of a coach being overturned ; and that my good son strutted about as if he had been already King. Did you mind the air with which he came into my drawing-room in the morning, though he does not think fit to honour me with his presence or ennui me with his wife’s of a night ? I swear his behaviour shocked me so prodigiously that I could hardly bring myself to speak to him when he was with me after- wards ; I felt something here in my throat that swelled and half choked me.’ About a year after his marriage, when his popularity was ripe, the Prince put the project of applying to Parliament for an increase of income and a settlement on the Princess’s jointure into execution. Their Majesties had a horror of the question being brought forward. The King feared that those whom he called ‘the scoundrels of the House of Commons’ would successfully carry his son’s petition, and yielded to Sir Robert Walpole’s suggestion of compromise. Lord Scar- borough was, therefore, sent to the Prince to reason with 246 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . him, but His Royal Highness was determined to strive and get a pension of ;£i 00,000 a year. Then my lord made bold to tell him that ‘the dissensions between father and son in this reign, as well as the last, w r as like to make the nation sick of a family that brought with them the curse of such internal disunion/ The Prince’s settlement was duly brought before Parlia- ment, and, principally owing to Sir Robert Walpole’s speech dwelling on the impropriety of interfering between father and son, the motion w r as lost. The King, though victorious, w T as not the less enraged with Fred, whom, but for the Prime Minister’s interference to save the family from public scandal, he would have immediately turned out of doors. One of the lampoons of the day prays God to send the Prince, ‘ That babe of grace, A little meaning in his face, And money in his purse/ And the same ballad, referring to both father and son, ironically says of the former— ‘ Not he who ruled great Judah’s realm, Y-clyped Solomon, Was wiser than ours at the helm, Or had a wiser son/ A few months before Prince Fred’s petition had been brought before Parliament, the King, in returning from Hanover,'* had encountered much danger at sea, and the public mind on the occasion was almost as much excited as the elements which threatened His Majesty. He had been detained at Helvoetsluys, unable to embark on account of the storm ; but the Queen, believing him to be at sea, w^as much alarmed, and this feeling was increased by the Prince c DAMNATION TO YOUR MASTER: 247 hastening to tell her he had got a letter, written at Harwich, in which it was said that, during the storm on the previous night, guns had been heard at sea, which must have been signals of distress, and that there was no doubt these had been fired from the Fleet accompanying the King, if not from the royal yacht on which His Majesty was. Amongst the citizens, the question and answer : 4 How is the wind for the King ?’ 4 Like the nation, against him,’ became by-words. His Majesty’s unpopularity was at its height at this period. It was openly stated that he had gone to Hanover to spend English money on foreign mis- tresses ; and, as an example of the state of public disloyalty, it may be mentioned that a man going into an ale-house in the City, where a crowd of soldiers were assembled, cried out to them, 4 You are all brave English boys, and you will pledge me in the toast of “ Here’s damnation to your master.” ’ The King was supposed to have embarked on Tuesday, and for four days nothing was heard of him, the storm continuing very violent all the while. The public mind was held in suspense ; a hundred messages passed between the Admiralty office and St. James’s; the tides, wind, and weather, became the sole topics of conversation, which, in a little while, took a deeper direction, and specu- lated on what would happen in case of the King’s death, and in this the Queen and the Princess Caroline took part with true Christian calmness and resignation. The latter said, if Fred came to the throne, 4 she would run out of the house au grand galops as fast as she could/ but Her Majesty said she would not stir before her proper time. Lord Hervey, by way of giving her comfort, told her that *she would have more weight with her son than anybody in England, if he came to the throne ; when she answered, 4 The Prince is such an ass tha 4 - one cannot tell what he 2 4 3 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . :hinks.’ 4 He is, madam, a mere bank of sand, 7 says my Lord, ‘and anybody may write upon him.’ To which Her Majesty replied that such writing could be easily rubbed out. Sir Robert Walpole was full of melancholy reflections during those days of suspense, and said he wished the King’s safety, much less for His Majesty’s sake than for that of the rest of the family. In any case, he pitied the Queen £ falling into the hands of a son who hates her, or receiving a husband whom she has much reason to hate.’ He spoke of the Prince as ‘ a poor, weak, irresolute, false, lying, dishonest, contemptible wretch, that nobody loves, that nobody be- lieves, that nobody will trust, and that will trust everybody by turns, and that everybody by turns will impose upon, betray, mislead, and plunder.’ Lord Hervey told him his opinion of the Queen’s probable influence over her son, if he came to be King. ‘ Zounds ! my Lord,’ said Sir Robert, interrupting him quickly, ‘ he would tear the flesh off her bones with hot irons. The notion he has of her making his father do everything she has a mind to, and the father doing nothing the son has a mind to, joined to that rancour against his mother which those about him are continually whetting, would make him use her worse than you or I can foresee. Then the notion he h‘as got of her great riches, and the desire he would feel to be fingering them, would make him pinch her, and pinch her again in order to make her buy her ease, till she had not a groat left.’ No one seems to have had much concern for the King for his own sake, but only for the position in which his death would place his family. His wife and daughter looked for- ward to his death with placidness ; the nation, if not with delight, at least without regret ; and his son with a satisfac- tion which he had not the decency to conceal. In the midst of the general suspense and uneasiness, Prince Fred enter- THE KING IN DANGER. 249 tamed the Lord Mayor and Aldermen right merrily at dinner, on the occasion of their presenting him with the freedom of the City. This shocked the courtiers of St. James’s, but did not surprise them. At length, on Saturday night, a messenger arrived from the King to inform Her Majesty that he had not stirred out of Helvoetsluys in consequence of the bad weather; the messenger had been delayed three days at sea, and had almost lost his life. The Queen, when she had read the letter, was much relieved, and cried out to those around her that the King was safe. On the following Monday the wind turned to a favourable direction for His Majesty’s voyage, and remained so until night, when it suddenly changed, and another storm, as violent as the last, arose. There was no doubt at Court that the King had embarked during the calmness, and all the fear and suspense just relieved returned once more. Sir Robert Walpole believed His Majesty to be lost, and the Queen shared his opinion and now wept continually. No news was heard of him all through the week until Friday, the fourth day following that spell of calmness when it was supposed he had embarked. Then news was brought from a sloop which had some clerks of the secretary’s office on board, who could only say they saw the King’s yacht tack about when the storm arose, but knew no more of him, their sloop being parted from the fleet, and wrecked upon the English coast. This news cast a gloom over all, but the Prince and his friends, who were much excited, whispered continually, and went constantly backwards and forwards, anxious to hear the last item of information, or the first message of the ex- pected fatality. Two days more passed, and on Sunday intelligence came from the King, announcing that, after 250 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . setting sail, he had put back into Helvoetsluys with some difficulty. He was obliged to delay again, and finally arrived in London on the 15th of January, 1737. In the following July a scene occurred in this royal family which, but for the danger accompanying it, and the brutality of Prince Fred, would read more like burlesque than reality. Their Majesties had conceived an idea that the Princess of Wales would never become a mother, and were heartily glad that it should be so, as, in that case, their second son, Wil- liam, Duke of Cumberland, whom they both regarded with affection, would succeed his brother on the throne. But this supposition of theirs was doomed to disappointment when a rumour reached them that the Princess was pregnant ; this fact the Prince announced to them after concealing it, for some reason or another, for a couple of months. Both the King and Queen believed him capable of introducing a supposititious child into the family as his own, in order to dis- appoint them, and give himself an air of greater weight in the eyes of the nation ; and this prejudice of theirs was heightened by the mystery which he sought to throw around the Prin cess’s condition. Their Majesties knew full well the Princess had no will but that of her husband, and would in all things do as he desired her. Her manners and ways were yet those of a child, as may be judged from the fact that a great part of her time was spent in nursing a big jointed doll, which she dressed and undressed several times a day at one of the windows of her apartments, unconscious of the staring- footmen and sentinels, who were much diverted by her occupation. The royal family were at this time staying at Hampton Court, where the King intended the Prince’s child, if such really existed, should be born. But Frederick, from some foolish whim, or now unknown reason, desired the event FLIGHT FROM HAMPTON COURT . 25 * should take place in London. It was, therefore, resolved that a message expressing the King’s wish should be sent by Sir Robert Walpole to the Prince, but this was delayed, as it was thought the birth could not take place for some months. The Queen determined to be present at it, for she was still suspicious of some trick on her son’s part. ‘ She cannot be brought to bed,’ said Her Majesty, in lan- guage that may have lacked elegance, but not force, ‘ as quick as one can blow one’s nose, and I will be sure it is her child.’ On Sunday, the 31st of July, 1737, the Princess of vVales dined in public with the King and Queen, and afterwards retired to her apartments at the opposite side of the court to that occupied by their Majesties. The King, in the evening, played at commerce, the Queen at quadrille, and the Prin- cess Caroline and Lord Hervey at cribbage, for it was a time when cards were mightily in vogue : at ten o’clock they all retired, and were in bed about eleven. Meanwhile a different scene was being enacted in Frederick’s apartments. The Princess had become ill, and it was evident that the hour of her confinement was at hand. The Prince immediately gave orders that his coach should be got ready with all despatch, in order that he might secretly carry his wife to London. She continued in great pain, but her husband, with a barbarity that scarcely seems credible, kept to his resolution, and had her assisted down- stairs and along the passage, his favourite and confidant, Dunoyer, the dancing-master, having a hold of one of her arms, an equerry taking the other, whilst the Princess kept crying out for God’s sake to let her stay still, as her pain was great. This procession was brought up by Lady Archi- bald Hamilton and Mr. Townshend, who remonstrated with the Prince in vain. He then warned all his servants not to 252 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . say that he had gone, and got into the coach ; his valet, who was a surgeon and accoucheur, getting on the box, and two or three of his gentlemen-in-waiting jumping up behind. They then drove to St. James’s Palace, where no prepara tions had been made, and where the Princess gave birth to a child, who afterwards became Duchess of Brunswick. A couple of hours after this event happening, news reached Hampton Court that the Princess was about being confined. One of the women of the bed-chamber went to wake the King and Queen ; when Her Majesty, being disturbed so suddenly and at such an hour, asked if the house w r as on fire. Then Mrs. Tichburne, who had entered the room, gave her message. ‘My God/ said the Queen, not yet knowing of the flight which had taken place ; ‘ my night- gown ; I’ll go to her this minute/ to which Mrs. Tichburne replied, ‘Your night-gown and your coaches too, your Majesty ; the Princess is at St. James’s/ Then the Queen asked her good Tichburne if she were mad, or asleep, or dreaming; and, being assured she was neither, the King sat up in bed, flew into a right royal passion, and abused the Queen in German, as that was the language which gave him the greatest scope for his eloquence. ‘ You see now, with all your wisdom, how they have outwitted you/ he said. ‘ This is all your fault. There is a false child will he put upon you , and how will you answer it to all your children ? This has been fine care and fine management for your son William : he is mightily obliged to you/ The Queen was stunned by surprise ; but, as soon as she could, drove off in the middle of the night, accompanied by two of her daughters and my Lords Grafton and Hervey, and was met by Prince Fred at the Palace, attired in his nightcap and nightgown, who told her a daughter had been born unto him. Then the Queen went to see the Princess, ‘ PLAYED THE DEVIL? 253 and Lady Archibald Hamilton brought in the little morsel of humanity wrapped in a red mantle, for it had as yet no clothes. The Queen kissed it, and said, 4 God bless you, poor little creature, you have come into a disagreeable world.’ The Prince then began to tell the story of his journey, and the Princess’s illness, with great complacency, when the Queen declared it was a miracle that mother and child had not been killed. On withdrawing, she said she had no longer any doubt of 4 this poor little bit of a thing ’ being the Prin cess’s child : 4 though I own,’ Her Majesty added, 4 1 had m> doubts upon the road that there would be some juggle; and if instead of this poor little ugly she-mouse there had been a brave, large, fat, jolly boy, I should not have been cured of my suspicions ; nay, I believe they would have been so much increased, or rather, that I should have been so confirmed in that opinion, that I should have gone about his house like a madwoman, played the devil, and insisted on knowing what chairman’s brat he had bought.’ She then wrote a letter to the King and sent for Sir Robert Walpole, who came presently, looking vexed and out of coun- tenance, and they both joined in hearty abuse of the Prince. The Minister said this conduct was intolerable, and Her Majesty broke out, 4 My God, there is really no human patience can bear such treatment, nor indeed ought one to bear it, for they will pull one by the nose in a little time if some stop is not put to their impertinence.’ She then went on to complain of the figure the whole family would make when the story found its way to foreign Courts. 4 1 swear I blush,’ she said, 4 when I think of the post going out and carrying the account of such a transaction into other countries.’ Her Majesty waited until morning and then took her de- parture from St. James’s. She said she was glad she had 2 54 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. come to the Princess, ‘ for, though one does not care a farthing for them, the giving one’s self all this trouble is “ une bonne grimace pour le publique and the more imperti- nences they do, and the more civilities we show, the more we shall be thought in the right and they in the wrong when we bring it to an open quarrel/ When she got to Hampton Court, she found the King’s anger had in no way abated ; whenever he spoke of his son, he coupled the appellations of scoundrel, puppy, and fool with his name, and refused to see him when he went to Court on the following Wednesday morning. The Queen and Princess Caroline lavished curses on him, and daily prayed fervently for his death. Nothing could now exceed the bitterness which existed between parents and son, and it was evident that some outbreak must soon occur in the royal family. When the Queen went to see the Princess again about nine days after her first visit, the Prince neither spoke to her nor his sisters the whole time of their visit ; but when Her Majesty was leaving, Fred made his appearance, handed her to her carriage, and, a crowd being assembled, he, with that hypocrisy which was part of his role , knelt down in the gutter and kissed her hand with an affectation of respect and affection duly appreciated by the mob. The smoulder- ing feud was not long in bursting out, the result being that the Prince was desired to quit St. James’s; moreover, the Secretaries of State signified to all Foreign Ministers that it would be agreeable to the King if they would forbear visiting the Prince, whilst a message in writing was sent to all Peers, Peeresses, and Privy Councillors that whoever went to the Prince’s Court would not be received at the King’s, and, as a final act of royal displeasure, the guard was taken from His Royal Highness. When the notice to quit THE POOR PRINCESS WAS AMAZED . 255 was sent to Frederick, the King devoutly thanked God ‘ that to-morrow night the puppy will be out of my house,’ and the Queen no less religiously hoped in God that she might never see him again. The Duchess of Marlborough, in writing to the Earl of Stair, tells him, in speaking of this quarrel, that ‘ there was some talk of a design to take the child away from the Princess to be under the care of Her Majesty/ and then adds, ‘Among common subjects, I think the law is that nobody that has any interest in an estate is to have anything to do with the person who is heir to it. What prejudice this sucking child can do the Crown I don’t see ; but to be sure Her Majesty will be very careful of it. What I apprehend most is/ continues the Duchess, who echoed the opinion of the day, ‘ that the Crown will be long lost before this little Princess can possibly enjoy it.’ The Princess of Wales had no act or part in any of the quarrels which raged between her husband and his parents. Her Majesty used to say that, if the Princess spat in her face, she would not heed her, because she would know c it had been done by the fool’s direction.’ She had no blame, therefore, for the Princess, and usually treated her with great kindness, though occasionally she had no objection to make fun of Fred’s wife. One day when Her Royal Highness was walking in the garden at Kensington with two gentlemen ushers before her, her chamberlain leading her, a page holding up her train, and a crowd of maids-of-honour and other ladies following in her wake, she suddenly encountered Her Majesty, who burst out laughing, and appeared much amused. The poor Princess was amazed, and begged to know what was the cause of her mirth, when the Princess Caroline sharply told her it was ridiculous for her to walk 256 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. like a Queen in a tragedy when she was taking the air in a private manner. In return for the obedience which the Princess unquestion- ably gave her husband in all things, he behaved to her with courtesy and kindness, if not with faithfulness, the lack of which she soon learned to overlook. In the midst of intrigues, and the jarring interests of various cliques, she behaved with great tact and much good sense. Horace Walpole, who was not inclined to leniency, declared ‘ she had never said a foolish thing, or did a disobliging one since her arrival and there is little doubt that, had the Prince lived, she would have exercised a beneficial influence over his maturer years. About this time a project was mooted at Court which would have been more astonishing, but that a precedent occurred for it in the previous reign. Lord Chancellor King, in his diary, bearing the date of June, 1725, states that ‘a negotiation had been lately on foot in relation to the two young Princes, Frederick and William. The Prince’ (George II.) ‘and his wife were for excluding Prince Fred, but that, after the King’ (George I.) ‘and the Prince, he should be Elector of Hanover, and Prince William King of Great Britain ; but that the King said it would be unjust to do it without Prince Frederick's consent, who was now of an age to judge for himself, and so the matter now stood.' The subject was allowed to rest for about twelve years, when the separation of the Electorate from Great Britain was again brought forward. Had such taken place, it would have been for the benefit of the country, and have given general satisfaction to the English people, but it was rather to gratify a family grudge than to serve the nation that the subject was considered by the Guelphs. Lord Hervey had heard that the Prince's friends had persuaded him to make THE MEAN FOOL / 257 an offer in Parliament of giving up the succession of the Electorate to his brother on condition of receiving £100,000 a year in the present. The Queen said the King had once resolved on such a project, but she, notwithstanding the Prince’s behaviour, had not thought it fair to deprive him of what he had inherited by birth ; moreover, she was sure he ‘ looked upon Hanover as a retreat in case the Jacobites in England ever got the better,’ and she could not believe he would ever consent to such a proposal, though there were few acts of folly for which she would not give him credit. Lord Hervey urged the Prince’s love of money as an excuse for the act which it was supposed he contemplated. ‘ The mean fool !’ said Her Gracious Majesty ; 1 the poor-spirited beast ! I remember you laughed at me when I told you once this avaricious and sordid monster was so little able to resist taking a guinea on any terms, if he saw it before his nose, that, if the Pretender offered him £500,000 for the reversion of this Crown, he would say, “ Give me the money.” I thought it cruel and unjust to pull out his eyes/ she went on, ‘ but, if he likes to pull one of them out himself, and give it to my dear William, I am satisfied. I am sure I shall not hinder him. I shall jump at it ; for though, be- tween you and I, I had as lief go and live upon a dunghill myself as go to Hanover, yet for William it will be a very good morsel ; and, for the ,£50,000 a year, I dare say the King will be very glad to give it ; and, if the silly beast in- sists upon it, I will give £25,000, more than half of my revenue, and live as I can upon shillings and pennies.’ How- ever, after a while, the subject dropped, and nothing more was heard of it during this reign. When Frederick quitted St. James’s, by the King’s com- mand, he retired, with the Princess and his suite, to Kew, where he stayed ten days, afterwards returning to town, and *7 258 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . taking up his residence in Carlton House, Pall Mall, which he had got Lord Chesterfield to buy for him. Whilst here, he received a deputation from the Lord Mayor and Aider- men, who came to congratulate him on the birth of the young Princess; this civic compliment having been delayed, at the Prince’s request, in order that his consort might be well enough to receive them. When the good fathers of the City came to Carlton House, Lord Chesterfield, and Carteret, and the young Duke of Marlborough, and some other friends of the Prince, stood near him, and delivered printed copies of the King’s letter ordering the heir to the throne out of St. James’s, with a garbled account of the quarrel, and a commentary on the cruelty of the case. But this was not all. A little while after, some of the letters which the Prince had written to the King, full of mock submission, were translated — the originals having been written in French — and freely circulated through the town. When His Majesty heard of these things, he was almost choked by passion, and gave orders to have the correspon- dence printed correctly, giving special directions to Lord Hervey, who was appointed to undertake the task, ‘not to embellish the fool’s letters in the translation, or mend the spelling in the original.’ This the King had despatched all over the kingdom, in order that the nation might judge between them. Nothing daunted by this last stroke, this dutiful son looked about him, and soon found a new means of mortify- ing his father. He managed to secure the correspondence which had passed between George I. and his present Majesty when Prince of Wales, on the occasion of their quarrel, when the latter was dismissed from St. James’s, and this he had printed for public use, and widely circulated. The King was now more wrathful than ever ; he said he ‘ doubted if ‘ THE GREATEST ASS . 1 259 the beast was his son,’ and was of opinion he was ‘ what in German we call a Weckselbalch — I do not know if you have a word for it in English ; it is not what you call a foundling , but a child put in a cradle instead of another.' The Queen, of course, was not behindhand in the condemnation of her firstborn, and freely gave it as her opinion that he was ‘ the greatest ass, the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille , and the greatest beast in the whole world, and I most heartily wish he was out of it.'* The Prince soon moved from Pall Mall to Norfolk House in St. James’s Square, where he reduced the number of his attendants. The little Court, indeed, was not getting on as smoothly as could be desired. Many of those in their Royal Highnesses’ service feared to incur their Majesties’ displeasure should they remain, and amongst others who left them were two of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber, Jemmy Pelham, the Prince’s secretary, and Mr. Cornwallis, one of his equerries. Lady Archibald Hamilton still re- mained, and of course maintained her influence, and so filled the Court with her kinsmen and kinswomen that it became a joke in town. Charles Stanhope, Lord Chester- field’s brother, who was something of a wit, going to Nor- folk House one day, addressed everyone he met there as Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton, for which high offence he was promptly dismissed. Lord Carteret, one of the Prince’s supporters, was some- what jealous of my Lady’s influence, and the regard in which they held each other did not contribute to the general harmony of Norfolk House. My Lord had for long allowed his mind to hang in the balance as to which Court he * For particulars of the quarrel between their Majesties and the Prince, I am indebted to Lord Hervey’s ‘ Memoirs of the Court of George II.’ I / — 2 26 o COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . should attach himself to ; at the outbreak of the royal quarrel he, though one of the Prince’s advisers, had, owing to his tact, contrived to hold their Majesties’ goodwill for a considerable time. The Princess Caroline used to say, if the Queen was to see him at the Prince’s Court, my Lord ‘ was capable of endeavouring to persuade her the devil had taken his figure seulement pour lui rendre un mauvais office aupres d’elle.’ But, when he had at length to decide at which Court he would serve, he preferred throwing his cause along with that of the dutiful Frederick. Whilst His Royal Highness and his friends were striving to devise fresh annoyances for His Majesty, news came to them of the Queen’s illness. Every day the Prince sent to make .inquiries at St. James’s, the King having forbidden him to come near Her Majesty, ‘ for his poor mother is not in a condition to see him act his false, whining, cringing tricks now,’ quoth the King ; and so he never saw her during her illness. He remained at home, waiting and welcoming every fresh messenger that came from St. James’s, meeting them (as his friends the Duke of Marlborough and Henry Fox afterwards told the Vice-Chamberlain) with the speech : ‘ Well, sure we shall soon have good news ; she cannot hold out much longer.’ When she was dead the breach between him and his father widened, if possible, so much so that the King could not bear to visit the theatre on the same nights as his son, and it was arranged that the Prince should visit the opera on Tuesdays, and His Majesty on Saturday , evenings. Few events marked the remainder of Frederick’s wasted life. His mistress, Lady Archibald Hamilton, favouring his friend William Pitt, His Royal Highness sought consola- tion for her desertion in the society of Lady Middlesex, wife to the Master of the Horse. The appointment of Mistress A PEACEFUL ENMITY. 261 of the Robes was taken from the late favourite and given to her successor in the Prince’s affections. Lady Archi- bald was dismissed with the pension of ^1,200 a year, and her husband was allowed to retain his post of cofferer. It is worth remarking here that it was a son of this lady who was husband of the famous Lady Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson. Lady Middlesex was no beauty, being small in person and yellow in complexion. She was, however, learned in the Greek and Latin tongues, an advantage which Frederick scarcely appreciated, could paint and sing, was dexterous in the art of pleasing, and ignorant of politics, and with these combined advantages she was enabled to hold the Prince’s affections. In 1742, after the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole, the King and Prince were formally reconciled. Frederick, at the desire of his friend and adviser, Mr. Pulteney, ‘ a fool with great parts,’ wrote his father a submissive letter. He had hesitated so long in acting on this advice that it was not until eleven o’clock on the night previous to one of the royal levees that this letter was written and received. He went to the drawing-room next day and kissed His Majesty’s hand. The King, though he had sworn never to speak to him, knowing that his silence would be made capital for a fresh grievance, broke through his resolution, and asked his son how the Princess did, after which he took no further notice of him. The reconciliation was a mere pretence; the same feelings existed between them as before, and, though the Prince visited St. James’s on days when levees were held, yet His Majesty never deigned to notice his pre- sence. ‘ Master sometimes comes to Court,’ writes Lady Strafford, ‘ but when he does he stands at the lower end of the room beside his spouse.’ 262 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . The following year ‘ the Prince designed/ as an old manuscript letter written by one Mr. Hamilton states, ‘ to have a concort every Friday night, and desired Mr. Handel to make him one, which he readily agreed to ; but it came to the King’s ears, and he sent Mr. Handel an order not to go near the Prince. I did not believe it till I heard it from his own mouth,’ says Mr. Hamilton. The dutiful Frederick in return found a means of repaying His Majesty for this by forbidding his favourite Dunoyer, the first dancing-master in England, to teach the younger Princesses. The King, indeed, never forgave his son : and an occur- rence which showed how bitter his hate was, not only to the Prince, but to those connected with him or friendly to him in any way, happened in 1749, when a young man at Oxford named Paul Wells was tried and found guilty of forgery, the so-called forgery consisting of his merely changing the date to the following year, of a bond which he had given a Mrs. Crooke for the sum of nine pounds. Condemnation for forgery meant death, but VVilles, the judge, strongly recom- mended him to mercy, and assured him of the King’s pardon. Willes was, however, a friend of the Prince’s, and on this account His Majesty refused pardon to Paul Wells, who was executed and made a victim of the King’s wrath. One man who acted as a guide, philosopher, and friend to the Prince was Bubb Doddington, who Horace Walpole said was always aiming at wit and never finding it. He was likewise a beau, a politician, and a maker of what has been called ‘ very pretty love-verses.’ Mullet declared that his ‘Wit well-tim’d and sense well-reasoned Give burgundy a brighter stain, And add new flavour to champagne.’ Bubb Doddington was the son of an apothecary, and WIT, BEAU ; AND POLITICIAN. 263 inherited an estate from his uncle. He lived the life of a fashionable man about town, mixed with Courts and Princes, with poets and men of letters and politicians, grew ambitious for a peerage, and finally succeeded in entering the Upper House. He lived in luxury, his dinners became the talk of the town, and, as they ministered to his friends’ satisfac- tion, these friends in return ministered to his vanity. His bon-mots were echoed in the coffee-houses, and his stories were not without a sparkle of humour. Perhaps the best specimen of this latter trait was his reply to Lord Cobham, with whom he was dining one day in company with Sir Richard Temple. After dinner Doddington felt drowsy, and quietly went to sleep, whilst his lordship went on talking. On being jestingly reproached for this afterwards, Dodding- ton denied having been asleep, and to prove his word offered to repeat all that Lord Cobham had been saying. Cobham challenged him, when Doddington repeated a story which the noble lord owned he had been telling. ‘And yet,’ said Doddington archly, as he concluded, ‘ I did not hear a word of it, but I went asleep because I knew that about this time of day you would tell this story.’ Men of letters looked on Doddington as a patron, and poets sang his praises — probably not unrewarded. Thom- son, when dedicating his ‘ Summer ’ to him, assures Mr. Dod- dington, who it may be worth noting was one of the Lords of the Treasury, that his ‘ example has recommended poetry with the greatest grace to the favour of those en- gaged in the most active scenes in life.’ Dr. Young like- wise dedicated to him one of his satires ‘ On the Love of Fame,’ and Lyttelton one of his cantos on ‘ The Progress of Love.’ The description of his houses at Eastberry and Hammer- smith proves him to have been not merely a man of ex- 264 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . travagance, but of tact. At the former residence, 4 in the great bed-chamber, hung with the richest red velvet, was pasted on every panel of the velvet his crest (a hunting horn supported by an eagle), cut out of gilt leather. The foot-cloth round the bed was a mosaic of the pockets, flaps, and cuffs of all his embroidered clothes.’ At Bradenburgh House, Hammersmith, ‘ his crest in pebbles was stuck into the centre of the turf before the door. The chimney-piece was hung with spar representing icicles round the fire, and a bed of purple lined with orange was crowned by a dome of peacock’s feathers. The great gallery, to which was a beautiful door of white marble, supported by two columns of lapis lazuli, was not only filled with busts and statues, but had an inlaid floor of marble.’ The owner of this magnificence had in the £eign of George I. held office under Walpole, but when, on the King’s death, it was generally believed the great Minister had fallen, Doddington deserted his chief. On Walpole’s restoration to his former office, a short time afterwards, this politician saw the mistake he had made, in spite of all his wariness. He was, however, a man who could turn himself round with the ease of a weathercock in all political winds ; he, therefore, bided his time, hung about the Court, and when Prince Fred came to England, he had sufficient tact to wheedle himself into his favour, submitting to the young gentleman’s caprices so far as to allow himself on one occasion to be wrapped in a blanket and rolled downstairs. In 1737 he struck up an alliance with Walpole once more, on the strength of a political epistle he had written, but soon afterwards he joined the Prince of Wales, and was dismissed from the Treasury. Being a man of such easy principles, and with an inordi- nate amount of vanity and ambition, Doddington easily fell a THE STORY OF MRS . STRAWBRIDGE. 265 prey to Frederick, Prince of Wales, who made him his tool. The wit's ready money sometimes supplied a need to His Royal Highness, who on one occasion, pointing to him, said to his secretary, ‘ That man is reckoned one of the most sensible men in England, yet with all his parts I have just knicked him out of five thousand pounds,' and the Prince laughed at this proof of his own ability. Doddington's per- sonal tastes in many ways were such as fitted in with those of the Prince. The beau was considered a poet, and Frederick likewise laid claim to the title, and wrote verses to his wife and mistress by turns; the Prince was fond of amateur theatricals, and had plays and charades acted in his own house, at which Doddington assisted. This versatile man had indeed written the greater part of a comedy called 4 The Wishes,’ which was given to the world under Bentley’s name ; then they both loved gambling, cards being a passion of the Prince, and at play he was considered very dexterous. Their views of morality were likewise strikingly similar. One fair object of Doddington’s choice, about whom a story was rife in those days, was Mrs. Strawbridge, a lady over fend of pleasure, if report spoke truly. She lived in Saville Row, Piccadilly, where the beau visited her frequently, for the purpose of expressing his undying affection. The lady had much experience of the world in general and beaux in particular, and was anxious to put Doddington’s protesta- tions to the test ; so on one occasion, when he declared his love for her with more ardour than usual, she told him he would soon forget and desert her ; this he denied indig- nantly, and the end of their little discussion was that he gave her a bond, promising to pay her the sum of ^10,000 if he should ever marry another woman whilst she lived. This, he probably thought, would bind his fancy if it were ever 266 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. liable to stray ; women see farther in such things, and Mrs. Strawbridge proved correct in her surmises regarding his unfaithfulness, for soon afterwards he transferred his affec- tions to Mrs. Behan, whom he was anxious to marry, but the dreaded bond stood between him and his wish. For seventeen years he remained Mrs. Behan’s lover, and made her his wife when Death, at length charitable, removed the object of his former passion from his path. Another friend of Frederick’s, though of a very different type, was Edward Walpole, the Minister’s son, who assisted His Royal Highness in carrying out his more harmless amuse- ments. The Prince strove to make him absent himself from the House of Commons on one occasion when a question in which His Royal Highness was interested was passing, but this his friend refused to do. The Prince asked him why, and Edward Walpole replied, ‘You will never forgive me, if I give you my reasons.’ ‘ By G — d I will,’ said Frederick, who had his arm round Walpole’s shoulder as they both walked up and down the room. ‘ By G — d you will not, and yet I will tell you,’ said Walpole. ‘ I will not stay away be- cause your father and mine are for the question.’ At which answer the Prince flung his friend away from him angrily. His Royal Highness was at this time giving weekly concerts, at which Edward Walpole was wont to perform. Though the concerts were mainly conducted by amateurs, professional assistance was sometimes had ; and when Edward Walpole next came with his violoncello, his royal friend, through petty revenge, pretended to believe he was a hired fiddler ; at which slight Walpole stormed, called out to his servants, had his violoncello removed, and, refusing to be pacified, left the house in a rage. When a little time had elapsed, the Prince apologized, Walpole returned, and was as friendly as of yore. By-and- A BORN DILETTANTE . 267 by, however, Frederick teased him to join the Opposition and vote in his favour, when he wrote the Prince a plain letter, refusing to comply with his wishes, and asking him how he would like him to behave when he came to be King ; in that way, he said, he would behave whilst George II. reigned. ‘ He is an honest man, and I will keep his letter,’ said the Prince. He did keep it, and years after his death, his widow, pointing to a Cremona violoncello which Edward Walpole had given Frederick, said to her eldest son, ‘ George, that instrument was given to your father by a man from whom I will show you a letter. When you are King, get him about you, if you can ; you cannot have an honester man.’ The Prince down to the last days of his life continued to amuse himself with gambling, private theatricals, music, planting, and gardening. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, writes that she hears there is a deal of company at Norfolk House, and that ‘the Princess of Wales, though so very young, behaves so as to please everybody ; and I think,’ adds Her Grace, with a touch of that acrimony for which she was famed, ‘ her conversation is much more proper and decent for a drawing-room than the wise Queen Caroline’s was, who never was half an hour without saying something shocking to somebody or another, even when she intended to oblige ; and generally very improper discourse for a public room.’ The Prince was a patron of operas and opera singers, some of whom he occasionally brought home in a friendly way to dine or sup with him : he carried out his friendship further still for Cuzzoni, for whom he went into the court and stood bail. He was a born diletta?ite ; he wrote songs and sang them, and played in private theatricals, making an excellent Paris, when Congreve’s mask, ‘ The Judgment of Paris,’ was 268 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. performed at his house, Lady Middlesex being one of the goddesses. He had a musical clock, which Lady Gower pointed out to a niece of hers whom she had brought with her to be presented at the Prince’s Court. 4 Lord, child, what are you afraid of?’ says her ladyship to the girl, who was nervous. 4 Can you be afraid of a man who has a musical clock ?’ His Royal Highness was a gallant little gentleman, and did not wholly confine his admiration to my Lady Middlesex, or my Lady Archibald Campbell, Miss Granville, or the beauties of the opera. The wife of the Venetian ambassador, who was a remarkably handsome woman, came in for some share of his fickle fancy, and Horace Walpole gives us a very pretty picture, in which the two central figures are Madame l’Ambassadrice and the Prince. Horace was going away to Vauxhall when he was 4 overtaken by a great light, and re- tired under the trees of Marble Hill to see what it should be. Then came a long procession of Prince Lobkowitz’s footmen in very rich new liveries, the two last bearing torches, and after them the Prince of Wales himself, in a new sky- blue tabby-coat, with gold button-holes, and a magnificent gold waistcoat fringed, leading Madame l’Ambassadrice de Venise in a green sack, with a straw hat, attended by my Lady Tyrawley, Wall, the private Spanish agent, and the two Miss Molyneux, and some other men. They went into one of the Prince of Wales’s barges; he had another filled with violins and hautboys, and an open boat with drums and trum- pets. This was one of the fetes des adieux. The nymph weeps all the morning, and says she is sure she shall be poisoned by her husband’s relations when she returns, for her behaviour with the Prince.’ His Royal Highness patronized Vauxhall and Ranelagh, and visited them in semi state, with his gentlemen of the AT BARTHOLOMEW FAIR . 269 household, maids-of-honour, and favourites following in his wake. He went to Bartholomew Fair, and mingled among the crowd to see the fun, dressed in a ruby-coloured frock- coat, richly guarded with gold lace, ornamented with the blue ribbon of the Star and Garter ; his light hair being ‘curiously curled over his forehead and at the sides, and finished with a very large bag, and courtly cue behind, all surmounted by a small three-cornered silk Court hat,’ whilst Rich, the manager, walked beside him, pointing out, with many gesticulations, the humours of the scene. Bubb Doddington kept a diary, ‘ carefully copied/ we are informed, ‘ from rough drafts, and scarcely a blot or correc- tion is to be seen throughout the whole. The month also, and each day of the week, is accurately inscribed on the margin, with his own pen, in printed characters from which it may be gathered that the diary was evidently intended for publication. But, alas ! its editor, Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, did not publish it in its complete form, and by way of apology says, ‘ it would be no entertainment to the reader to be informed who daily dined with his lordship, or whom he met at the tables of other peopled But here Henry Penruddocke Wyndham made a vast mistake. It would have been deeply interesting to the present genera- tion to sit in spirit at the table of this clever man amongst clever men, to hear the passages of wit they exchanged, to learn their opinions on the topics of the day, and of the courtiers and favourites prominent at St. James’s or Norfolk House, for the records of their daily lives were stranger than all fiction. As the entries in the diary stand they are dry, uninterest- ing, and futile; a few lines taken at random from the book may serve to show its present value. ‘ Went in private coaches with their Royal Highnesses, 270 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . Ladies Middlesex and Howe, Lord Inchiquin and Sir Thomas Bootle to Mr. Glasse’s, when we sent for a con- jurer/ ‘ Supped at Lady Middlesex’s. It being Twelfth Night, she staked seventy-five guineas and I one hundred and twenty with the Prince, who sent us word that we had lost eight guineas between us. Spent the week at Kew, when we had plays every day.’ ‘ In the afternoon I met their Royal Highnesses, by order, at Lady Middlesex’s, where came Madame de Munchausen and Mr. Breton. We went in our own coaches to a fortune- teller’s, who was young Dunoyer, disguised and instructed to surprise Madame de Munchausen, which he effectually did. From the fortune-teller’s we went to supper at Carlton House.’ On another occasion, he, with their Royal Highnesses and some others, ended the day ‘ by supping with Mrs. Cannon, the Princess’s midwife/ As the record of a day, a single line is sometimes left, such as : ‘Worked in the new walk at Kew/ The Prince, to his other accomplishments, added that of a gardener ; he took great pride in the grounds attached to his house at Kew, which he had planted. He had also cut a new walk there, which he and his friends worked at for amusement and health ; and it was whilst engaged at this labour that he caught a cold which led to his unex- pected death. At first it was regarded as merely a passing indisposition, and taken little heed of. Whilst he was yet suffering from its effects, he insisted on attending the King to the House of Lords ; the weight of his robes made him feel uncomfortably hot, and coming home he threw them aside, put on a light frock, and went to Kew ; after a little ALAS / POOR PRINCE. 271 while he returned to town feeling tired, when he lay down to rest before an open window. The following day his cold was much worse, and it rapidly inci eased ; he continually shivered and complained of pain in his stomach. Three doctors and a surgeon were called •in, but came too late to be of any service to him. A few hours before his death he had a fit of coughing ; when one of the medical men, named Wilmot, said wisely, 4 Sire, you have brought up all the phlegm ; I hope this will be over in a quarter of an hour, and that your Royal Highness will have a good night.’ On the evening of the 20th of March, 1751, whilst his friends were playing cards in the room next to that in which he lay, and Dunoyer the dancing-master — his friend to the last — was playing the fiddle beside him, the Prince suddenly placed his hand on his stomach and said, 4 Je sens la mort.’ Dunoyer laid down his fiddle and rushed to his support, when he felt a shiver pass through his frame, and he cried out, 4 Good God, the Prince is going !’ The Princess, who was at the end of the room, snatched up a candle, but before she had reached the bed her husband lay dead in the dancing-master’s arms. In this manner came the end of that poor, pitiful, schem- ing, dishonourable life, stained by many grievous faults, and unrelieved by one noble action. 4 1 am of opinion from experience,’ said the old Duchess of Marlborough, ‘that from flattery and want of understanding most Princes are alike ; and therefore it is to no purpose to argue against their passions, but to defend ourselves, at all events, against them.’ For four hours the Princess remained beside the dead body of her husband, refusing to believe that his life had gone out. When at last she was persuaded to go to bed, she arose after two hours’ rest, and took the precaution of 272 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. burning all the Prince’s papers. A short time after His Royal Highness had breathed his last, Lord North went to announce the intelligence to the King, whom he found placidly enjoying a game of cards. His Majesty immediately stood up and went to his mistress, Lady Yarmouth, looking pale and shocked ; but the only expression he gave utterance to was, ‘ II est mort.’ When he was called next morning he was already up, dressed, and walking about his room, silent and agitafed. He afterwards went to pay a visit of condo- lence to the Princess, when he embraced her, wept, and told his grandsons they must be brave boys, obedient to their mother, and deserve the fortune to which they were born. His Majesty’s grief, however, was of a fleeting nature ; so fleeting, indeed, that before a month had passed he was able to go and see the ‘ Beau’s Stratagem ’ played at Drury Lane. The Prince left eight children behind him, and the Princess gave birth to a ninth a few months after his death. She was wise enough in her generation to fling herself on the protection of the King ; and he, pleased with this act, behaved with kindness both to her and her children. When the Duke of Cumberland was told of his brother’s death, he remarked satirically, ‘ It is a great blow to the country, but I hope it will recover it in time.’ Laments on the Prince’s fate were soon written and printed, long-winded elegies were sold in the streets, and funeral orations were preached from the City pulpits. One of the most singular pieces of oratory which the event called forth was delivered at Mayfair Chapel, when the preacher said His Royal High- ness ‘ had no great parts, but he had great virtues ; indeed, they degenerated into vices ; he was very generous, but I hear his generosity has ruined a great many people ; and then his condescension was such that he kept very bad com- AN EPITAPH . 273 pany.’ This was much nearer to truth than Dr. Newton’s . statement made in St. George’s, Hanover Square, that ‘ never was there in a person of such eminence more humanity and condescension to the lowest, more pleasing courtesy and engaging address to the highest, more bene- ficence to all within his sphere, or more benevolence to all without it.’ The reverend doctor, in his oration, looked be- yond the present to the bright and glorious future when a mitre might repay his eloquence. The lampooners were likewise busy, and on this occasion saw an opportunity of having a hit at the reigning family. One of the verses set afloat at the time took the form of an epitaph, and ran as follows : — * Here lies Fred, Who was alive and is dead ; Had it been his father, We had much rather ; Had it been his brother, Still better than another ; Had it been his sister, No one would have missed her ; Had it been the whole generation, Still better for the nation ; But, since ’tis only Fred, Who was alive and is dead, There’s no more to be said.’ The Prince’s funeral, Doddington says, ‘ was far short of that for any son of a King.’ The heralds had orders to form it on the plan of the funerals of the Duke of Gloucester and Prince George of Denmark ; but private orders were afterwards given, and Prince Fred was carried to the grave with but little ceremony. With the exception of the lords who were appointed pallbearers and attendants on the chief 274 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. mourner, and those of his own domestics, there was but one English and one Irish lord present, whilst the Bishops were conspicuous by their absence. Moreover, the service was conducted without either anthem or organ. In this way Frederick, Prince of Wales, was laid in mother earth. CHAPTER XVI. William Duke of Cumberland — His First Campaign — Made Commander of the Forces — Battle of Fontenoy — Defeat at Lauffeld — Culloden — 4 Billy the Butcher’ — His Last Battle — Indignation of the Nation — His Amusements — The Princess Royal — Her Marriage with the Prince of Orange— Curious Court Custom — Her Reception in Holland. The Duke of Cumberland, born in 1721, was the second surviving son of George II. When six years old he was created Baron of Alderney, Viscount Trematon in Cornwall, Earl of Kennington in Surrey, Marquis of Berkhamsted, and Duke of Cumberland. The history of his life may be said to be written in the records of war. When quite young he exhibited an interest m everything connected with the army, and soon became a soldier by profession, serving his first campaign when he was two-and-twenty. He was said to have shown such courage at the battle of Dettingen, where he received a wound, that two years later he was made com mander of the British forces in Flanders, a post for which he soon proved himself utterly incompetent. In 1745 he fought the famous battle of Fontenoy, commanding the allied forces, when, by his want of generalship, he sacrificed the lives of ten thousand men, and suffered a memorable defeat. So prominent, indeed, was his want of ability that the enemy soon perceived it ; and when an English soldier, who had been made prisoner by the French, told them they 18 — 2 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 276 had barely missed making the Duke prisoner, a French officer answered, with a laugh, ‘ We took good care not to do so, for he does us much more service at the head of your army/ At Lauffeld he met with another defeat in the same year, when General Ligonier, by his skill and courage, pre- vented the total destruction of the English troops : from that day, however, the Duke never afterwards liked General Ligonier, or treated him fairly. In the following year the battle of Culloden was fought, when, by the gallant Duke’s orders, horrible barbarities and cold-blooded murders were practised on the unfortunate rebellious Highlanders, which must for ever stain the pages of English history. From this time William, Duke of Cumberland, was known to the populace as ‘Billy the Butcher.’ Lord Waldegrave, who is a lenient biographer, says, ‘ The severe treatment of Scotland after the defeat of the rebels was imputed to his ’ (the Duke’s) ‘ cruel and sanguinary disposition, and he became an object of fear ;’ this dread of him was publicly shown when, on the death of his brother Frederick, it was believed he would be nominated Regent, in case of the King’s death before Prince George came of age. When the Prince of Wales was dead, the sturdy citizens said, ‘ Oh, that it was his brother !’ his soldiers cried out against the unnecessary strictness of his discipline, and de- clared they were treated more like Germans than English- men, and this complaint, with such a comparison, was quickly taken up by the people. So far, indeed, did his un- popularity go that Mrs. Pitt, with whom he was in love, was on that account mobbed in the Park, and with difficulty rescued by some of her friends. He bore all this with a stolidity that had a striking resemblance to patience, and so far was he from resenting it, that when he spoke of the sub- 1 INSTEAD OF IMPEACHING HIM .* 2 77 ject he said he ‘ should always with gratitude remember the behaviour of the English, who received him with transports after the battle of Lauffeld instead of impeaching him.’ However, when, contrary to his expectations, the King appointed the Princess of Wales as Regent, the Duke felt the slight deeply. The Lord Chancellor, at His Majesty’s request, communicated to His Royal Highness the plan of the regency, and was afraid to ask if there was any message in return ; but the Duke begged him to return his duty and thanks to the King for the communication he had made him, adding, ‘ As for the part allotted to me, I shall sub- mit to it because he commands it, be that regency what it will.’ Though he sent this answer, his feelings were so keen as to make him wish ‘ the name of William could be blotted out of the English annals.’ Throughout his life his obedience to his father had been a remarkable trait in his character, and he said that, had his brother lived to be King, he would have borne anything from him out of the same spirit of obedience rather than set the example of defiance to the royal authority. He had an unfaltering belief to the dignity of his royal house, and, so far as he personally represented it, he expected to receive the most complete submission to his will from all beneath him in rank. The last battle which the Duke fought was in 1757, when the French threatened Hanover ; on this occasion he once more took command of the allied forces, and one of his first acts was a blunder, from which he never recovered. He retired with his army beyond the Weser, leaving the passage of the Rhine open to the French, who attacked him at Hastenbech, when an engagement followed. The contest was even, the armies on either side fought bravely, and D’Estrees, the French general, despairing of victory, was COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 278 about to retire, when the Duke of Cumberland, for some reason never afterwards explained, gave the signal for his troops to withdraw, and the English were defeated. The indignation of the British nation at this loss, and the consequences which followed it, were so great that on his return the Duke retired from the army, and spent the re- mainder of his days in private life. He had little ambition, though he liked war, not so much for the sake of any glory it might bring him as for the desire of carnage, for it was said 4 he loved blood like a leech.’ His severity at all times was extreme, even in cases of small offences ; one instance of this was towards a young soldier who counterfeited a furlough for a day. This was made a subject for court- martial, when the offender was ordered two hundred lashes; the Duke insisted that this was not enough, and made the court-martial sit three times, though each member adhered to the first sentence, and he swore that they should sit there six months till they increased the punishment. Like his father and brother, his character was tainted with immorality, which even exceeded theirs in its grossness and publicity. One of his mistresses was a certain Peggy Banks, to whom he gave a ball on one occasion, in order to spite my Lndy Rochford, who had smiled upon another Prince. The entertainment given to Mistress Peggy was held at Vauxhall, and was almost made a public demonstration. The Duke and his gay company got into their barges at Whitehall stairs, and went down the Thames, passing the City com- panies that were out for the lay in their great barges, and who laid by to play ‘ God save the King/ and cheer this noble son of so good a monarch. When His Royal High- ness came to Vauxhall there w r ere twenty-five hundred 279 ‘ LA Y LIKE A TORTOISE people already collected in the gardens, who cheered lustily, it being some time before his retirement — whilst he took his way to the great ball-room. Vauxhall was a favourite place with him, and once a laughable accident happened when he was going from thence to Ranelagh. Lord Cath- cart stepped on the side of the boat which was to convey him to lend him his arm, overset it, and both stood up to their chins in water in another instant. How the Duke, with his savage temper, must have sworn ! On his retire- ment, he lived in Windsor Great Park, and from the inac- tive life he led became excessively stout, when his weight became the subject of a wager. ‘There has been a droll cause in Westminster Hall,’ writes Horace Walpole. ‘A man laid another a wager that he produced a person who should weigh as much again as the Duke. When they had betted, they recollected not knowing how to desire the Duke to step into a scale. They agreed to establish his weight at twenty stone, which, however, is supposed to be two more than he weighs. One Bright was then produced (who is since dead), and who actually weighed forty-two and a half. As soon as he was dead the person who had lost, objected that he had been weighed in his clothes, and, though it was impossible to suppose that his clothes could weigh above two stone, they went to law. There were the Duke’s twenty stone bawled over a thousand times, but the righteous law decided against the man who had won.’ An- other anecdote told of his obesity was that, whilst he was dancing at a ball given by Lord Sandwich, he slipped and fell forward. ‘ They imagined he had beat his nose flat, but he lay like a tortoise on the top shell — his face could not reach the ground by some feet.’ The Duke survived his father. Of the five daughters born to George II., Anne was the 28 o COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . eldest. Her complexion was fair, like that of her mother, and like her, too, her face was marked by that curse of the age — small-pox ; her figure was unshapely, and even at an early age inclined to stoutness. In disposition she was haughty and ambitious. A few years after her father’s suc- cession, a suitor was found for her in the person of the Prince of Orange, who was deformed in figure, dwarfish, and almost revolting in general appearance. The King thought it fair to warn his daughter of the husband selected for her before she saw him, adding that she need not marry unless she pleased. ‘ I would marry him, even if he were a baboon,’ she said ‘ Then,’ replied His Majesty, with a satisfied air, £ he is baboon enough for you.’ Lord Hervey says that ‘ the true reason for this match was that there was indeed no other for the Princess in all Europe, so that Her Royal Highness’s option was not be- tween the Prince and any other, but between a husband and no husband — between an indifferent settlement and no settle- ment at all ; and whether she would be wedded to this piece of deformity in Holland, or die an ancient maid, immured in her royal convent at St. James’s/ To a woman of her ambitious disposition it was an un- pleasant consideration, that if the King died, she would be left dependent on the mercy of a brother who hated her as fully as she detested him, and from whom she might expect not only illiberality, but injustice. When the Prince of Orange came over from Holland to be married he was lodged at Somerset House, to which Lord Hervey was despatched as Vice-Chamberlain to pre- sent the King’s compliments. Before starting he had re- ceived a message from the Queen, telling him, on his return, to come to her and £ let her know without disguise what sort of hi leous animal she was to prepare herself to see.’ When, AN INDIFFERENT BRIDE . 281 in obedience to this command, he had described him to Her Majesty, he said he supposed the Princess Royal was suffering from anxiety. The Queen told him he was mis- taken, that the Princess was ‘ in her own apartment at her harpsichord, with some of the opera people/ The fact was, she had made up her mind to accept her fate, and remained strictly indifferent to all connected with its execution. This was yet more noticeable when the Prince caught fever the day before that appointed for the marriage, and was con- sidered in imminent danger. During his illness the Princess Royal betrayed not the slightest shade of suspense or hope, regret or joy. Her sister Amelia said ‘nothing on earth would induce her to marry this monster/ and the Princess Caroline owned ‘ it was bad.’ Though the income of the Prince scarcely amounted to £ 1 2,000 a year free of debts and encumbrances, yet the greater part of the nation hailed the alliance with satisfac- tion. The people were given to understand it was for the sake of the country the King consented to this union, in order to strengthen the connection with a family beloved by all upholders of the Protestant cause, and to secure a Pro- testant succession, should the Princess Royal ever come to the English throne. Believing this, the public looked on Her Royal Highness as a sacrifice offered up to their re- ligious interests, and she was in reward voted a jointure of ^80,000, just double as much as had ever been granted on a similar occasion. When after some months the Prince recovered, he was sent to Bath to drink the waters, and a day was fixed for his marriage. ‘ The Prince of Orange went to Bath yesterday/ writes Lady Strafford to her lord. ‘ He gave the Princess Royal in the morning the fine pearl necklace that was Queen 282 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . Mary’s, and the largest pearl drops that ever I see, for she came into the drawing-room with them on, and the Queen said to me, and everybody else that came in her way, “ Pray look at Anne’s necklace ; ’tis that which was Queen Mary’s. The Prince of Orange gave them this morning.” . . He ’ (the Prince) ‘is so feeble, he walked across the room with two sticks, and he tottered so he had like to have fallen, and the Prince ’ (of Wales) ‘ ran and held him under one arm till he got a chair.’ On the 14th of March, 1734, just four months after his arrival in England, the Prince of Orange was married to the Princess Royal. The King spared no expense that could add to the display made on the occasion. He had a gallery built from his own apartments, round the Palace garden to the French chapel adjoining St. James’s, where the ceremony took place. Through this gallery, which held four thousand people, and which was handsomely illuminated, the bridal procession passed. This temporary structure became an eyesore to the Duchess of Marlborough, who could see it from her windows, and who became impatient of its un- sightliness during the months the wedding was postponed. ‘ I wonder,’ said Her Grace one day, ‘ when my neighbour George will remove his orange chest f which ‘in fact it did resemble,’ says Horace Walpole. But all the splendour of the day could not help to diminish the hideousness of the bridegroom, though he dressed him- self in gold and silver brocade, and wore a long peruke like hair that flowed over his back and helped to hide the ugli- ness of his deformity. For all the glitter and parade of the occasion, ‘ it looked more like the mournful pomp of a sacri- fice than the joyful celebration of a wedding.’ According to the custom of the period, the Court went to pay its respects to the bride and bridegroom in the nuptial-chamber ; when THE DEFORMED PRINCE . 283 4 the Prince came in his nightgown and nightcap into the room to go to bed, the appearance he made was as inde- scribable as the astonished countenances of everybody who beheld him. From the shape of his brocaded gown, and the make of his back, he looked behind as if he had no head, and before as if he had no neck and no legs.’ A month after his marriage the Prince and his bride left for Holland ; in parting, the King gave her a thousand kisses, but never a penny, and the Queen wept bitterly. 4 The bride affected to put on a vast gaiety, but the poor Princess Caroline had cried her eyes out, and the tears ran down her face/ The Princess of Orange arrived at Harlingen on Saturday, but, the public reception not being quite ready, she had to wait in her yacht before landing until the following Tuesday. On that morning, everything being in readiness for the public entry, a procession came to conduct her to her new home, headed by the carriages of the Ministers. The Princess drove in an open coach drawn by eight horses, fol- lowed by the Prince’s empty chariot, and five other coaches full of English maids-of-honour. There was great firing of cannon and musketry right under the royal noses, which had the effect of frightening the processional horses and smash- ing innumerable windows ; soldiers lined the streets, and the people shouted lustily. The next evening a drawing-room was held, when 4 really very fine-looking people, and as fine in clothes and lace as could be without gold or silver,’ came to pay their respects to their Highnesses. The Princess, however, soon grew tired of these very fine people amongst whom her lot was cast, and at the end of six months hastened back to England, where she remained as long as she could, and until both her father and husband strongly urged her to return. When the Queen died, she, believing she could exercise the same influence as her mother 284 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. had done over the King, and by the same arts, returned once more to England. Her great love of power made the pro- ject most agreeable to her, and she had little doubt but that she should succeed in controlling the helm of Government. His Majesty, however, being made aware of the project, became incensed at the mere idea of anyone presuming to govern him, quite ignorant of the fact that he had been governed all his life. His indignation at this attempt of his daughter’s was so great, that he would not allow her to remain more than two nights in London, but ordered her off to Bath, from which place she soon returned to Holland indignant and defeated. CHAPTER XVII. The Princess Amelia — Her Love for Horses and Hunting — The Dukes of Newcastle and Grafton — The Princess at Bath — Society at the Weils — The Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey — The Princess Mary and Prince Frederick of Hesse — The King’s Youngest Daughter. The Princess Amelia, or, as she was more often called, Emily, was the King’s second daughter ; she was possessed of a greater share of personal charms than her elder sister, and her manners were far more lively. In early life she had a great passion for horses, hunted two or three times a week, visited the royal stables if her horses were ill, and carried her sporting proclivities so far (according to Horace Walpole) as to shock the good people at Hampton by going to church one Sunday in riding clothes, with a dog under each arm. In her later years cards and snuff supplied the place that dogs and horses had held in her affection. She lived and died unmarried, refusing the hands of some petty German princes, because she preferred enjoying liberty in England. The scandal of the time, indeed, connected her name with the Duke of Newcastle, who was twenty-eight years her senior, and also with His Grace of Grafton, who was obnoxious to the Queen. The Duke was the grandson of Charles II., a distinction of which he was extremely proud ; from being in this way a connection of the reigning house, he considered 286 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. everything which affected its members touched him likewise* This opinion made him freer in his manner with the Queen and the Princess Emily than Her Majesty quite liked; but he had an established right of saying what he pleased, and used to talk to the King on all subjects, sometimes touching on very tender points as no one else dared. Her Majesty’s dislike to him principally originated because of his attentions to the Princess Emily, and this was strength- ened by the fact that, when she and His Grace were one day out hunting, as was their wont, they, losing their at- tendants, sought shelter in a private house in Windsor Forest, and were kept out unusually late. Being Lord Chamberlain, the Duke lived at Court, and had many opportunities of pri- vate intercourse with the royal family. His appearance was handsome, and he had always an air of great dignity ; he was recognised as an able courtier and a man of much common- sense, though thoroughly illiterate, and fond of turning politics into ridicule. In his conduct towards Her Majesty he usually adopted a plan of plain speaking by no means agreeable to her. He told her once that he believed she could not love anybody. Some one had told him a story o^ her being enamoured of a German Prince before her marriage, and this he used to tell her in order to vex her, usually end- ing by saying, ‘ God, madam ! I wish I could have se^-n the man you could love.’ The year after her father came to the throne, the Princess Amelia, being in ill-health, was ordered to drink the waters and went to Bath, which city was known for centuries as a place beneficial to health, according to a column that stood in those days over the principal spring, on which an inscrip- tion was traced to the founder, who was none other than Bladud, the son of Lud, who lived three hundred and thirty years before Christ. Bath, under the reign of George II., BATH IN ITS GLORY. 287 was in the heyday of its glory. Those who suffered from the time-honoured complaints of gout, dissipation, rheumatism, the general exhaustion consequent to town life, or imaginary illnesses, all flocked here to kill time as agreeably as they could, and consult the fashionable physician, Dr. Bave, who was somewhat of a man of fashion, dressed in black velvet, and was ‘strangely powdered and perfumed/ Here the fine beaux came from town, powdered, patched, and be-wigged, with the last witticism fresh from Wills coffee-house, or the last bon mot from Doddington’s brain on the tip of their tongues. Here it was that the famous Beau Nash strutted in the fulness of his glory ; and here it was that the famous Duke of Marlborough, who ‘ was emi- nently illiterate — wrote bad, and spoke worse/ was to be seen in those later years of his life, when, grown parsimonious and infirm, he would walk on a dark night from the public rooms to his lodgings in order to save the sixpence a hackney-coach would cost him. Here, too, came Lady Bristol and her witty daughter-in-law, Lady Hervey, who ironically speaks of the former as ‘ a poor lady who abounds with peccant humours, and has a complication of distempers ; for she has frequently had ruptures, is subject to inflammations, false conceptions, diseases of the tongue, and, indeed, I believe there is no hope of her ever being better, and, in my opinion, the best things that can be given her are repeated quieting draughts/ Here also came Mrs. Barber, the poetess, ‘ a strange, bold, dis- agreeable woman/ made famous by the letter of introduction to the Queen purported to be written by Dean Swift, whose name she forged. Here, likewise, walking slowly in the garden made for people of rank and fashion, might be seen the brave Northumbrian Earl, Lord Widdrington, a little bowed, and somewhat worn by time and evil fortune. He had been one of those who led the unhappy insurrection of 288 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 1715, and had been thrown into the Tower to suffer much, and have sentence of death passed upon him, but he was afterwards reprieved under the general Act of Grace. He had been deprived of his estates, and of those of his wife, and on his liberation had come to Bath, where he quietly endured a poverty that sometimes reached privation. Here also came Congreve in the wake of the beautiful and im- perious Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, daughter of the sharp-tongued Sarah. The liaison between the younger Duchess and the playwright vastly diverted the town. He had written his first play at the age of nineteen, when he had come to London from Trinity College, Dublin, ‘ just to amuse myself during a slow recovery from a fit of sickness/ as he said. This play gave him more than fame; it brought him into contact with my Lord Halifax, who got him a place in the Pipe Office, and another in the Customs, with the sum of £600 per annum ; and so he abandoned the Muses in order to become a man of fashion, just as he, later on, aban- doned his mistress for the sake of Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, to whom he left at his death a handsome memento in the shape of 10,000. Bath was indeed a gay place in those days. The pump- room was elegantly fitted up, and had a band in attendance. The male sex came to drink its waters in the comfortable deshabille of night-gowns and caps, being conducted from their lodgings in chairs, the ladies being carried in much the same fashion. When they got into their respective baths, they were presented by the attendants with a little floating tray, on which were placed their snuff-boxes and coffee. The large assembly-room was built by Harrison at the Beau’s desire, where dances were held nightly, a rule being made by Nash ‘that no gentleman should give his ticket for the balls to anyone but gentlewomen. N.B. — Unless he has THE BEAU AND THE PRINCESS . 289 none of his acquaintance.’ These balls commenced at the primitive hour of six o’clock, and under his direction and superintendence were carried on in the most systematic manner. At eight o’clock the country dances began, and, after an hour allowed for the drinking of tea and coffee by way of refreshment, dancing recommenced, and was kept up with spirit until eleven o’clock. When the first stroke of that hour sounded, Beau Nash made a sign to the musicians, when the music instantly ceased, and the dancers, even if in the middle of a figure, were obliged to stop. This rule was peremptory, and not to be infringed, even by royalty ; for once when the Princess Amelia asked him to allow another dance, Beau Nash declared that his rules resembled those of Lycurgus, which would admit of no alteration without a subversion of all authority. Lady Pomfret, writing from Bath in 1728, describes the Princess Amelia as ‘the oddest, or, at least, one of the oddest Princesses that ever was known ; she has her ears shut to flattery,’ says this courtier, who, perhaps, spoke from experience, ‘ and her heart open to honesty. She has honour, justice, good nature, sense, wit, resolution, and more good qualities than I have time to tell you, so mixed that (if one is not a devil) it is impossible to say she has too much or too little of any ; yet all these do not in anything (without exception) make her forget that she is the King of England’s daughter, which dignity she keeps up with such an obliging- behaviour that she charms everybody.’ When it was known that she had arrived, all the men of quality and women of fashion staying at Bath called upon her to pay their Court, and sat simpering in her rooms, tell- ing each other the most recent scandal, or retailing the last gossip from St. James’s. The Princess in the mornings went out to drink the waters like the common humanity around l 9 290 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . her, and between every glass she drank she walked in Harrison’s Gardens to take the air, where all the people of fashion walked after her, and others who were not known to her followed at a certain distance. Whilst here Her Royal Highness saw Lady Wigtown, a warm adherent of the Stuart cause, who hated the House of Hanover heartily; her husband, the sixth earl of his name, had followed James II. to St. Germains, and was afterwards taken and imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle. , One day when the Princess Amelia was in the public garden, my Lady Wigtown came in, and pushing aside the ladies-in-waiting, to their great vexation, swept by the Princess without taking the slightest notice of her. Lady Pomfret writes, ‘ Lady Frances Manners asked me if I knew my Lady Wigtown (a Scottish Countess). I said I had never heard of her in my life, and believed she had not 3^et sent to the Princess, upon which she and the Duchess of Portland both smiled, and said, “No, nor will, I can tell you, for seeing the Princess coming to the pump the morn- ing before, she had run away like a fury for fear of seeing her, and declares so public an aversion for the King, etc., that she would not go to the ball made on the Queen’s birth- day ; and, some of the subscription money remaining, the company had another ball, which she denied going to, and told all the people it was because the Queen’s money had made it.”’ Bath seems to have continued a favourite place with the Princess Amelia during her life, possibly because her favourite amusement was carried on here almost without restraint. As late as 1752, Doddington mentions in his diary that the Princess of Wales assured him it was highly improper the way the Princess Amelia behaved at Bath, c that she played publicly all the evening very deep.’ Doddington asked with THE PRINCESS UNPOPULAR. 291 whom, and he was told the Duke and Duchess of Bedford. The Princess of Wales went on to say it was prodigious what work her offending sister-in-law made with Lord Chester- field. When his lordship was at Court, she said, the Princess Amelia would hardly speak to him, but when at Bath she sent to inquire of his coming before he arrived, and when the veteran gamester came she sent her compliments to say she expected him at her parties to play, and the Princess said ‘ he should always sit by her in the public rooms, and that he might be sure of a warm place.’ The Princess Amelia’s temper and manners did not im- prove with time ; she became inquisitive, mischievous, and oftentimes impertinent. She gave a proof of this latter trait one night in the public card-rooms at Bath, when a general officer ventured to take a pinch of snuff from her box, which stood beside her on her table. She made no remark, but instantly turning to one of her attendants, ordered the con- tents of the box to be thrown into the fire. Another story, illustrating her want of courtesy, is told by Horace Walpole in a letter to Horace Mann. ‘ The second time she saw Madame de Mirepoix/ he says, speaking of the Princess, ‘she cried out, “Ah, Madame, vous n’avez pas tant de rouge aujourd’hui ; la premiere fois que vous etes venue ici, vous aviez une quantite horrible.” This the Mire- poix herself repeated to me/ says Horace. At one period of her life the Princess contrived to make herself unpopular with the public. The King had made her Ranger of Richmond Park, and it became her good will and pleasure to assert an exclusive right of egress and ingress to it, a liberty which the people were quick to resent as an encroachment on their liberties. First they petitioned her to allow them the use of the Park, but she ungraciously refusing to hear them, they carried the case into the Law 19 — 2 292 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS , Courts. It was twice tried, and finally a verdict was given in favour of the people, at which she was so indignant that she resigned the rangership. After her father’s death, she re- tired, and seldom visited the Court. With increasing years she became deaf and near-sighted, gave no drawing-rooms, saw little of the world, practised charity, took snuff, played cards, and died at the age of seventy-six at her house in Cavendish Square, little regretted. Her next sister, Caroline, was her parents’ favourite ; her manners and disposition were grave and sensitive, and her love and practice of truth were so notable in an atmosphere where such a virtue was rare, that when their Majesties wished to find out the truth of any occurrence of which she was cognisant, it was their habit to send for her, and rely upon her statement. It is no secret now that Caroline be- came unhappily attached to Lord Hervey, who was con- tinually thrown into association with her, but no breath of scandal ever sullied the name of this Princess, whom Horace Walpole calls 4 the most excellent of women.’ She more than any of the family enjoyed the greatest share of the Queen’s affection, and was frequently present at her councils with Lord Hervey when he acted as guide, philosopher, and friend to Her Majesty. In this way she came to have op- portunities of seeing much of this peculiar man, who ‘handled the weapons of the Court with skilful dexterity.’ When the Queen died, this Princess retired as much as possible from Court; she had been suffering from ill-health before and during Her Majesty’s illness, and the Queen assured her she would follow her in less than a year, but this prophecy was not fulfilled. After Lord Hervey’s demise, the Princess never again appeared in public during the twenty years she survived him ; and one of the chief pleasures of her life was in having his children with her, and bestowing kindnesses VERY HUMBLE AND VERY FREQUENT . 293 on them. Though living in retirement, her sympathies with the poor were active, her charities wide-spread and numer- ous, and given so privately that in many cases the very reci- pients were ignorant, until after her death, of whose hand it was that supplied their necessities. Her youngest sister, the Princess Mary, was married by proxy to Frederick, Hereditary Prince of Hesse, before she reached the age of seventeen. The Prince was tall and handsome, but, like most of the German Princes of the period, both profligate and brutal, and rendered his wife miserable. When he came to England, in 1746, he was made much of by his father-in-law, who thought but little of matrimonial infidelities, and by the people, who were anxious to see what manner of man had married one of the King's daughters. 4 By seeing him with the Prince of Wales, people think he looks stupid,' says Horace Walpole, 4 but I dare say in his own country he is reckoned very lively, for though he don’t speak much he opens his mouth very often. The King has given him a fine sword, and the Prince a ball. He dined with the former the first day, and since with the great officers. Monday he went to Ranelagh, and supped in the house; Tuesday, at the opera, he sat with his Court in the box on the stage next the Prince, and went into theirs to see the last dance, and, after it was over, to the Venetian Ambassadress, who is the only woman he has yet noticed. To-night there is a masquerade at Ranelagh for him ; a play at Covent Garden on Monday, and a ridotto at the Hay- market, and then he is to go. Plis amours are generally very humble and very frequent, for he does not much affect our daughter, and he is a little apt to be boisterous when he has drunk.’ The Princess Mary survived him by a few years, and died in 177 1. 294 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. The Princess Louisa was the youngest of George II.’s children, and was little more than a child at the time of her mother’s death. When nineteen she was married by proxy to Frederick, Prince of Denmark, who three years after- wards succeeded to the Danish throne. Both in appearance and character she strongly resembled her mother, and a close coincidence existed between their lives, inasmuch that, though the King of Denmark proved an affectionate husband, he was not a faithful one, from the same reason which actuated George II. The young King would not have the world think he was ruled by his wife, or was so unfashionable as to love her ; and for the purpose of protesting his inde- pendence he publicly maintained a mistress. The Queen of Denmark, however, differed from her mother in not only withholding her approval from this arrangement, but in letting it become a source of unhappiness to her. She, how- ever, never complained, as she had promised never to do so, no matter what her wrongs might be, when she was leaving England. She died when but twenty-seven years old ; her last hours were rendered painful, by an operation for rupture which was performed without effect. When the news of her demise reached England, the King w r as greatly grieved, and lamented her bitterly. ‘This has been a fatal year’ (1751) ‘ to my family/ he said. 1 1 lost my eldest son, but I am glad of it ; then the Prince of Orange died, and left every- thing in confusion. Poor little Edward ? (his grandson) ‘ has been cut open ’ (for an imposthume in his skull), ‘ and now the Queen of Denmark is gone. I know I did not love my children when they were young ; I hated to have them running into my room ; but now I love them as well as most fathers/ And the King, grown affectionate in his old age, wept for his loss. CHAPTER XVIIL SociaffLife at Court — The King’s Love for Hanover — The Queen made r Regent — The Court at Claremont — Mrs. Howard re- signs her Appointment — The King visits Hanover again — Madame Walmoden — The Royal Letters— His Majesty returns— The Queen seeks Advice — Royal Birthdays — The Town becomes Dull — The King’s Anxiety to leave England — Madame Walmoden and the Garden Ladder — A ‘ Hard Lesson 9 — The Archbishop of York congratulates Her Majesty on her Sense. The social life of George II. and his Queen presents -us with one of the most curious chapters in the history of the English Court. The glimpses given us through the diaries, letters, and memoirs of the times afford a strange study, always interesting, and seldom without a moral. Here is, to commence with, a very fair etching of a Court scene, by a poor relation of my Lord Strafford. ‘ I stay very often to the night drawing-rooms,’ he writes, 4 which are kept in the little room between the presence-chamber and the Queen’s gallery, where I have generally the honour to stand very conspicuous, alone, full in all their view, so that by this time they must know every button on my coat. Poor old Mercmon, indeed, is often puffing and blowing by the Queen’s ears. The quadrille-table is well known, and there is the large table surrounded by my master 9 (the Prince of Wales), ‘the Princesses, the Duke of Cumberland, the bed-chamber COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . 296 ladies, Lord Lumley, Mr. Lumley, Mr. Campbell, Lord Carnarvon, Lord Middlesex, and all the belle-assemblee at a most stupid game — in my mind — lottery ticket. A hundred pounds are sometimes lost at this pastime. The ^aids play below with the King, in Mrs. Howard’s apartment, and the moment they come up, the Queen starts up and goes into her apartment. The drawing-room is quite over gene- rally at ten o’clock. On the coronation day they saw com- pany in the King’s gallery, which was pretty full. Count Skinsby was exceedingly fine in self, wife, and equipage. He had a bright scarlet velvet coat, embroidered richly with gold and fine point lace, which I think he generally has. At night the little room was crowded, but nothing extraordinary. T’other night Lord Grantham and the Queen had a dispute about going to a room without passing by the back stairs ; she bid him go and see : he did, and came back as positive as before. “Well,” says she, “will you go along with me if I show you the way ?” “ Yes, madam,” says he. Up she starts, and trots away with one candle, and came back triumphant over my Lord Grantham. The belle-assemblee was in an uproar, thinking the King was ill, when I told them it was a wager between the Queen and Lord Grantham. Were I to tell you I had the honour to turn the dog called Chance out of the room, and that the Queen bid me not beat him, ?nd that I had the same honour in the drawing- room, and once was so happy as to take a thief out of the Queen’s candle by the Princess Royal’s orders, you will immediately think I imagine my fortune to be made ; but I take all this as it is — nothing.’ George II. had little love for his English courtiers, or the people over whom he reigned. His heart was in Germany, just as his father’s had been in his lifetime ; so long as he was in Hanover, surrounded by his favourites, he was happy, ‘ THE PRINCE HAD THE FIDDLES 297 and when by the representations of his Ministers or the murmurs of his people he was forced to return to his wife and kingdom, he did not care to conceal his royal ill-humour, which it took all Her Majesty’s art and patience to soothe. In the second year of his reign, he went to his beloved Electorate, and remained there two years, making the Queen Regent in his absence, to the great mortification of the heir to the throne. Her Majesty retired to Kensington with the Court. Here the fine gentlemen and maids-of-honour amused themselves, principally by riding after the chase in Richmond Park and Windsor Forest, the Princesses on horse- back in hunting-suits of blue, richly trimmed with gold and faced and lined with red, the Queen following in her coach. During this absence of the King, Her Majesty visited some of the nobility at their country houses. ‘Yesterday the Queen and all the royal family dined at Claremont,’ writes the Eton. Peter Wentworth, one of the grooms of the bed-chamber to the Duke of Cumberland, ‘ and I dined with the Duke and Sir Robert Walpole. His Royal Highness ’ (the Prince of Wales) ‘ came to us as soon as his and our dinner was over, and drank a bumper of rack punch to the Queen’s health, which you may be sure I devoutly pledged, and he was going on with another, but Her Majesty sent us word she was going to walk in the garden ; so that broke up the company, and we walked till candlelight, being entertained with very fine French horns, then returned into the great hall, and everybody agreed never was anything finer. Her Majesty, the Princess Caroline, Lady Charlotte Rousey, and Mr. Shutz played there at quadrille. In the next room the Prince had the fiddles, and danced, and did me the honour to ask me if I could dance country dances. I told him yes, and if there had been a partner for me I should have made one in that 298 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. glorious company. The Prince danced with the Duchess of Newcastle, the Duke of Newcastle with the Princess Amelia, Sir Robert Walpole with Lady Catherine Pelham. They danced but two dances ; the Queen came from her cards to see that sight, and before she said it I thought that he 7 (Walpole) ‘ moved surprisingly genteel and easy ; dancing really became him, which I should not have be- lieved if I had not seen. Lord Lifford danced with Lady Fanny Manners ; when they came to an easy dance, my dear Duke ’ (of Cumberland) ‘ took her from my Lord, and I must confess it became him better than the man I wish to be my friend, Sir Robert, which you’ll easily believe. Mr. Henry Pelham danced with Lady Albemarle, Lord James Cavendish with Lady Middleton, Mr. Lumley with Betty Spence. I paid my court sometimes to the carders, and sometimes to the dancers. The Queen told Lord Lifford that he had not drunk enough to make him gay — “ and there’s honest Mr. Wentworth has not drank enough.” I told her I had drunk Her Majesty’s health. “And my children’s too, I hope?” I answered, “Yes ;” but she told me there was one health I had forgot, which was the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle’s, that had entertained us so well. I told her I had been down among the coachmen to see they had obeyed my orders to keep themselves sober, and I had had them all by the hand, and could witness for them they were so ; and it would not be decent for me to ex- amine them about without I had kept myself sober, but, now that that grand duty was over, I was at leisure to obey Her Majesty’s commands ; and there stood at the farther end of the room a table for bottles of wine for the dancers to drink, and I went and filled a bumper of burgundy, and drank the Duke and Duchess’s health to Mr. Pelham, and I told him I did it by Her Majesty’s command, and thus MY GOOD LORD GRANTHAM. 299 went to the dancers, and he to the Queen, who saw me, to tell her I had done so. When I came to her again, she told me she was glad I had obeyed her commands, and I thanked Mr. Pelham for the justice he had done me in telling of it to the Queen, which drew the compliment from him that he should be always ready to do me justice, or any service in his power. The Queen and Prince have invited themselves to the Duke of Grafton’s hunting-seat, that lies near Richmond, on Saturday. He fended the offer a great while by saying his house was not fit to receive them, and was so old, he was afraid it would fall upon their heads ; but His Royal Highness, who is very quick at good inven- tions, told him he would bring tents and pitch them in his gardens. So His Grace could not get off : the thing must be on Saturday. My Lord Lifford got drunk at Richmond/ continues the Hon. Peter, who was fond of gossiping of the Court and courtiers. ‘ His manner of getting so was pleasant enough. He dined with my good Lord Grantham, who is well served at his table with meat, but very stingy and sparing with his drink ; for, as soon as his dinner is done, he and his company rise, and there are no rounds of toasts. So my Lord made good use of his time whilst at dinner, and before they rose the Prince came to them, and drank a bumper to my Lord Lifford, which he pledged, and began another to him, and so a third. The Duke of Graf- ton, to show the Prince he had done his business, gave him a little shove, and threw him off his chair upon the ground, and then took him up and carried him to the Queen. Sunday morning she rallied him before the company upon his getting drunk in her company, and upon his gallantry and coquetry with the Princess Amelia, running up and down the slopes with her, and when somebody told him the Queen was there, she said his answer was, “ what did he care 300 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . for the Queen ?” He stood all her jokes, not only with French impudence, but Irish assurance.’ Her Majesty had no doubt a freer and much happier time when the King was away. When he returned from his long visit, his manner, always gruff, became now almost un- bearable, and the chief victims of his irascibility were his wife and his mistress. The Princess Royal complained of her father giving himself airs of gallantry, of his behaviour to the Queen, of his affectation of heroism, and of the diffi- culty of entertaining him. He never read a book, and de- tested to see the Queen reading ; he insisted on the con- versation to which he listened being always new, whilst his own was a repetition of the same subject over and over again — Hanover. Then it became whispered at Court that His Majesty’s visits to Lady Suffolk had grown much shorter than of yore, and were far from being constant ; that he slighted her in public, and that there was no doubt that, after almost twenty years, the King had grown tired of his mistress. She had for long borne the brunt of all his ill-humours, un- gallant treatment, and contradictions uncomplainingly, and at last resolved to leave him. This determination of hers made a stir at Court, and the reasons for her withdrawal and its probable effect became matter of conversation for the town for months. The Queen was not, however, quite willing to let her take her departure, as she feared the King would adopt a younger mistress, whose influence might interfere with her own ; and, in speaking of Lady Suffolk’s retirement to Lord Hervey afterwards, Her Majesty told him she had said, ‘ My good Lady Suffolk, you are the best servant in the world, and I should be most extremely sorry to lose you.’ She added persuasion to kind words, but all were useless ; and when she told the King she had striven LADY SUFFOLK LEAVES . 301 to keep his mistress, he replied angrily, ‘What the devil did you mean by trying to make an old, dull, deaf, peevish beast stay and plague me when I had so good an oppor- tunity of getting rid of her ?’ Before her final retirement, Lady Suffolk got permission to visit Bath for the benefit of her health, where she re- mained for six weeks ; when she returned, the King con- tinued to treat her with neglect and coldness, and, after remaining a fortnight at Court, she resigned her post as mistress of the robes and left. ‘ You will see by the newspapers/ writes the Duke of Newcastle to Sir Robert Walpole, ‘ that Lady Suffolk has left the Court. The particulars that I had from the Queen are, that last week she acquainted Her Majesty with her design, putting it upon the King’s unkind usage of her. The Queen ordered her to stay a week, which she did, but last Monday had another audience, complained again of her unkind treatment from the King, was very civil to the Queen, and went that night to her brother’s house in St. James’s Square.’ It is curious to learn the feelings with which the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal looked on the retirement of their father’s mistress. The former was glad of it because the King’s line of conduct in openly slighting and discard- ing Lady Suffolk would make her friends become his enemies, and so strengthen the opposition to the Ministry ; the Prin- cess Royal, on the other hand, was sorry, and ‘ wished with all her heart he ’ (the King) ‘ would take somebody else, that mamma might be a little relieved from the ennui of seeing him for ever in her room.’ Shortly after her retirement, Lady Suffolk married Mr. George Berkeley, whom she outlived. In the summer of 1735, the King resolved to visit Han- 302 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . over again, though his Ministers, who were then engaged in foreign negotiations, pressed him to stay at home, as his pre- sence in England might be necessary, and would certainly be a vast convenience to them ; reminding him at the same time of the way "in which his subjects looked on his absence from the kingdom. But His Majesty proved quite as stub- born as his father had done on a similar occasion, and to all Sir Robert Walpole’s entreaties answered doggedly, 4 You think to get the better of me, but you shall not.’ He had made up his mind to go, and nothing could keep him back ; so the Queen was again made Regent, and he departed. At this time there was at the Hanoverian Court a cer- tain Madame Walmoden, a young married woman, of whom the King quickly became enamoured. In his absence he wrote continually by post to the Queen, and once a week sent a courier with a letter, generally numbering sixty pages, and never less than forty. He was an excellent correspon- dent, at once lively, entertaining, and gracious. Sir Robert Walpole once said that if he ‘ only wrote to women, and never strutted and talked to them, he believed he would get the better of all the men in the world with them/ and Lord Hervey, adding his testimony, says that in the gift of writing love-letters he did not believe any man sur- passed the King. In the epistles he wrote Her Majesty during this time he gave her full details of the manner in which he passed his time, ‘crammed/ says the Vice-Cham- berlain, ‘ with minute trifling circumstances, not only un- worthy of a man to write, but even of a woman to read, most of which I saw, and almost all of them heard re- ported by Sir Robert, to whose perusal few were not committed.’ Inconceivable as it seems, yet it is given on the autho- rities of Lord Hervey, Lord Chancellor King, and Horace A ROYAL CORRESPONDENT. 303 Walpole that these letters were largely taken up with a description of the new favourite who soon became his mis- tress. ‘ It is certain/ writes Lord Hervey, ‘ that, from the very beginning of this new engagement, the King acquainted the Queen by letter of every step he took in it, of the growth of his passion, the progress of his applications, and their success, of every word as well as of every action that passed — so minute a description of her person that, had the Queen been a painter, she might have drawn her rival’s picture at six hundred miles’ distance. He added, too, the account of his buying her, and what he gave her, which, considering the rank of the purchaser and the merits of the purchase, as he set them forth, I think he had no great reason to brag of, when the first price, according to his report, was only one thousand ducats — a much greater proof of his economy than his passion.’ Another proof of this brutal indelicacy is given in Lord Campbell’s ‘ Lives of the Lord Chancellors,’ vol. 4, p. 633. The Chancellor speaks of dining with Sir Robert Walpole, and goes on to say : 4 On this occasion he let me into several secrets relating to the King and Queen. That the King constantly wrote her long letters of two or three sheets, being generally of all his actions, what he did every day, even to minute things, and particularly of his amours, what women he admired . . . and that the Queen, to continue him in a disposition to do what she desired, returned as long letters, and approved even of his amours ; not scrupling to say that she was but one woman, and an old woman, and that he might love more and younger women ... by which perfect subserviency to his will she effected whatever she desired, without which it was impossible to keep him in bounds.' Lord Campbell adds that he has put asterisks in lieu of ‘expressions imputed to Her Majesty too coarse to be 304 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS , copied.’ But notwithstanding how she may have written to her husband, or what freedom she declared herself willing to concede him, yet she looked anxiously forward to his return, and for six weeks expected to hear it an- nounced by every post. At last he returned, in October, after about six months’ absence, : arriving at Kensington Palace on a Sunday afternoon, where he was met by the Queen and the Court at the great gate. The King alighted, the Queen curtsied profoundly, and then kissed the hand which the ill-tempered, red-faced little man held out to her, after which they embraced. He had no smiles or pleasant words either for her or any of those present, but was evidently sulky at being obliged to return to the people who hailed him as their King, and by the haste with which he jour- neyed to get back, in order to reach London before his birthday. Crossing the courtyard beside the Queen, he offered her his hand, when she insisted on 6 glueing her lips to it ’ once more. Poor Queen Caroline had to listen to much abuse that day, and for many days to come. The memory of Madame Walmoden was fresh in her husband’s mind, and the fatigue of his journey, which he had purposely hurried, that he might afterwards brag of the speed of his movements, rendered him irritable and intolerable. He openly abused everything English. No English cook could dress a dinner, no English player could act, no Englishman could ride or drive properly, nor for that matter were there any English horses fit to be ridden or driven ; no Englishman could talk of anything but dull politics, nor was his conversation to be borne ; no Englishwoman knew how to dress, or could chatter of anything but her ugly clothes, nor were there any diversions in England, either public or private ; but in Han- over all that was changed. In that happy land the men and THE HAPPY LA AW, 305 women did everything well, and were themselves models of perfection ; the men were brave, polite, gallant, the women beautiful, interesting, witty ; the army in that country was the bravest in the world, the Ministers the wisest, the manu- facturers the most ingenious, the subjects the happiest. Everyone who approached him he enlightened with these facts, and they in turn fell in for a share of his bilious temper. He told Lady Sundon one day, as she waited at dinner, that he was forced to distribute his favours very differently in England from what he did at Hanover. There he rewarded people for doing their duty and serving him well, whilst here he was obliged to enrich people for being rascals, and bribe them not to cut his throat. During his absence the Queen had some wretched attempts at painting removed from the drawing-room at St. James’s, and genuine works of art placed in their stead. On his return he, who knew nothing of painting, merely for the sake of contradiction, declared he would have every picture replaced ; and, whilst his family were talking over this decision of his at breakfast, he came into the room in a surly humour, scolded the Queen ‘ for always stuffing herself,’ the Princess Amelia for not hearing, the Princess Caroline for growing fat, the Duke of Cumber- land for standing awkwardly, and Lord Hervey for not know- ing what relation the Prince of Sultzbach was to the Elector Palatine (German chronology being a craze with the King). He had brought back with him some coach-horses, which he said were superior to any in England, and these he presented to Her Majesty, as he had done several pairs before; so that, being nominally her property, the expense of keeping them should come out of her private purse. On his return his manner continued both rough and uncivil towards the Queen, who felt it keenly, but made no 20 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . 306 complaint. What she feared most was that much of her old influence over him had gone, and for consultation and advice she had recourse to Sir Robert Walpole, whom she treated with the greatest confidence, and spoke to on the most delicate topics. The Minister was plain of speech, and, though far-seeing and judicious, was without tact. So he told Her Majesty that, after thirty years’ acquaintance with the King, she must not expect to have the same in- fluence over him, and that for any she might have she must no longer, at her age, depend on the charms of her person, but on her head. He added that it would be well to send for Lady Tankerville, who was then in the country, and to whom the King had shown signs of preference some months before. She was a safe fool, and a good-natured woman, and would give the King some amusement without giving trouble to Her Majesty, and he advised that she should be placed in the King’s way, as it would be better to have some one chosen by Her Majesty than by the King. Sir Robert indeed feared that the royal favour might be bestowed on Lady Deloraine, to whom His Majesty liked to talk ‘ a little indecently ’ (according to Lord Hervey). Her ladyship was an attractive, clever woman, a trifle ambitious in her aims, and therefore calcu- lated to give the Queen and the Minister some trouble. She had been suspected of poisoning a certain Miss M’Kenzie, who had once been her rival, an act hinted at in a line of Pope’s : ‘ Slander or poison dread from Delia’s rage. 1 Yet, extraordinary as it may appear, she was for some time governess to the younger Princesses, in whose apartments the King was in the habit of playing at quadrille with her. Though this advice of Walpole’s must have been bitter and A BRILLIANT DRAWING-ROOM . 307 humiliating to the Queen, yet she took it in the spirit of friendliness in which it was meant. After His Majesty had spent a couple of days in Ken- sington, the Court moved to London to prepare for the celebration of the King’s birthday. This was always kept with much splendour, and those who went to the Court that day, as every loyal lady and man of quality was expected to do, almost invariably had new clothes made for the occasion, which were, as a rule, excessively rich and handsome; even the servants who drove the courtiers to St. James’s were arrayed in new liveries. The King and Queen, the Princess and maids-of-honour, and gentlemen of the house- hold, all went in splendid attire to the drawing-room on such days, and must have formed a brilliant group, so far, at least, as colour went. ‘ There was His Majesty in scarlet and gold,’ writes a correspondent of Lady Anne Campbell, who was anxious to supply her friend with Court news ; ‘ the Duke of Cumberland in blue, trimmed with silver ; the Princess Anne in silver, and colours upon yellow; the Princess Louisa in a dark green velvet em- broidered with gold ; my Lady Browne in scarlet, with great roses, not unlike large silver soup plates, made in an old silver lace, and spotted all over her gown : not to forget Lord Mark. I saw a bit of his body and waistcoat in the crowd, but had not the pleasure of a full view of either. He told me before that his waistcoat was to be fine, and his coat plain, upon which we foretold to him that he would catch cold with keeping his waistcoat open too long ; but he, always prudent, thought proper to unbutton his coat a night or two before the birthday, that he might harden him- self a little, and practised the art of keeping a coat open with a good grace, to show a fine waistcoat to advantage.’ Their Majesties on these occasions were ushered into the 20 — 2 3 °S COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. drawing-room by the Lord High Treasurer, the Master of the Household, the Comptroller, and the Lord Chamberlain, wearing his gold key of office suspended by a blue ribbon at his side, and all carrying white staves. Then the favourites gathered round the royal circle, the courtiers paid their homage, the Queen made audible comments on the fine company, not always complimentary, but uttered for the purpose of keeping His Sacred Majesty in good humour by some lucky stroke of wit ; the place-seekers watched their chance of meeting the King’s glance, the politicians gathered together in groups, and the fine ladies, with thickly painted faces and necks, talked scandal to the fine gentlemen, and told stories under the shelter of their fans. There was usually a concert going on the while in one of the smaller drawing-rooms at the end of the suite, and at night there was always a ball, when the same company assembled again, the town being illuminated, -and bonfires blazing in the streets. The Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the Duke of Cumberland had their birthdays also celebrated, but not with the same splendour. My Lady Strafford, in writing to the Earl, in 1735, gives a quaint description of his son’s (Lord Wentworth) attendance at St. James’s on the birthday of the Duke of Cumberland. ‘ My love^’ com- mences her ladyship, * is perfectly well and vastly delighted with his Court ball. I must begin to tell you all our pro- ceedings. I took him to Court in the morning, and the Queen cried out, “ Oh, Lord Wentworth, how do you do ? you’ve mightily grown. My Lady, he is most prodigiously well-dressed. I hope you’ll let him come to our ball to- night.” After the drawing-room was over, the Duke had a levee in his own room, so I desired my brother to take him there, and the Duke told him he hoped he would do him HE WAS VERY WELL-BRED 3<=>9 the favour to come at night ; but, as a great misfortune, Lady Deloraine fell in labour, and was just brought to bed of a dead son, so they could not have the room they used to dance in (it being next to hers), so they had a bad little room, and they did not dance French dances. Princess Emily asked Lord Wentworth to dance one with her, and afterwards the Duke gave him Lady Caroline Fitzroy for his partner. They had a supper of cold chicken, tongue, jelly, and sweetmeats, but they were 7 (served) ‘ in an odd manner, for they had neither knives nor plates ; so that, well as my love loves eating, he says he ate but a leg of chicken, for he says he did not’ (think) ‘it looked well to be pulling greasy bones about in a room full of Prin- cesses. The way of getting rid of the bones was, the children threw them out of the window. The King was to see them dance, but not the Queen. The ball ended about half an hour after ten ; the Duke was quite free and easy, and extremely civil. As Lord Wentworth danced with the Princess Emily, I thought it civil to carry him yesterday to know how she did, so the Queen came directly up to me> and said, “My Lady Strafford, all my children are quite charmed with Lord Wentworth; he is so civil and well-bred, and not like a child. ” (And, by what I hear, Lord Pomfret’s sons were vastly rude.) My love, to look like a man, did not stand by me, but at the other end of the room ; but as soon as the Queen saw him, she called him to her, and told ’ (him) ‘ she heard he was a very good dancer, and that he was very well-bred. 1 On the celebration of the King’s birthday in this year, the drawing-room was not so full as usual, and the town was rather thin, as the ‘families of quality’ had not yet returned from the country, and this state of things ruffled the King’s temper exceedingly. Sir Robert Walpole, when Flis Majesty 3io COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . came back, went down to his family seat in Norfolk, in order to throw off the cares of State, which weighed heavily on him in the King’s absence, and enjoy those rural sports in which he most delighted. Here he followed the hounds, and entertained troops of his friends and partisans at dinners, where ‘mountains of roast beef, that only seem roughly hewn out into the outlines of human form, like the great rock at Pratilino, was the staple food, washed down by flagons of home-brewed ale.’ Many of the other courtiers were in- clined to follow the Prime Minister’s example, and the King was in dread of having to endure a dull season. When the Duke of Grafton announced his intention of going down to the country for some hunting, his wrathful Majesty told him it was ‘ a pretty occupation for a man of quality and at his age to spend his time in tormenting a poor fox that was generally a better beast than any of those that pursued him.’ His Grace made reply that he took this exercise for sake of his health, when the King said, ‘ With your great corps of twenty stone weight, no horse, I am sure, can carry you within hearing, much less within sight of your hounds/ Then His Majesty delicately referred to the other ‘ puppies and fools ’ who were running out of town when they had had the whole summer to amuse themselves, and do their silly business in the country. In order to divert himself during this dull period, he very much wished to get up some public assemblies. ‘ The King is resolved to have a masquerade/ writes Captain Powell, in a private letter . to a friend, f which the Queen is much against, and many others, for fear he should be affronted ; for indeed they are hellishly rude with pamphlets and songs/ These obnoxious compositions referred principally to his absence from England, his love for Hanover, and his new mistress ; all of which were more or less gross and abusive. BEWITCHING SMILES AND MELTING TEATS . 31 1 But King George did not heed them so long as they did not actually interfere with his pleasure, and this, at the pre- sent time, lay outside the nation. All through the winter he never recovered from his ill-temper ; he wrote continually to Madame Walmoden, whom he had left with a promise of returning next year. At a supper on the night before his departure from her, the object of his royal love had, with a mixture of bewitching smiles and melting tears, drunk a toast to the 29th of the coming May, the date the ancient Lothario had fixed for their next happy meeting. Sir Robert Walpole, when he came to hear of this, stoutly declared that the King should not go, and that, though 4 he thought him- self devilish stout, and never gave up his will or his opinion, yet he never acted in anything material according to either of them but when I had a mind he should.’ But this boast of the great Minister’s proved idle on the present occasion. In the spring he began to grow impatient to visit Madame Walmoden, who in his absence had given birth to a son, a fact that added to the tenderness with which he regarded her. But the session in this year was somewhat prolonged on account of the Quaker’s Bill, in which the lords spiritual were vastly interested, being before Parliament. The con- tinued debates irritated His Majesty more and more, until his anxiety for the conclusion of the session, before which he could not leave the kingdom with any show of decency, rose almost to fever pitch. ‘ I wish with all my heart,’ he said to the Queen, who, as usual, had to bear the full brunt of his temper, 4 that the devil may take all your Bishops, and the devil take your Minister, and the deftdl take the Parlia- ment, and the devil take the whole island, provided I can get out of it and go to Hanover.’ He did get out of it on the 22nd of May, just in time to keep his appointment with Madame Walmoden, and the 312 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. royal circle, released from his presence, were at peace once more. Some time after his landing, a circumstance occurred concerning his mistress which caused much amusement at both Courts. Whilst he was staying at Herrnhausen, his country palace, and Madame Walmoden at the Hanoverian palace, it happened one night that a ladder was found placed against her window. The man who made this discovery was a gardener, who, probably being innocent of the ways of Court intrigues, concluded at once that the ladder had been placed there with a burglarious design, and, in a state of great excitement, made search for the robber. He had not proceeded far when he found a man hiding behind a large espalier, whom, with the assistance of some servants that he had hastily called to his aid, he seized and brought before the Captain of the Guard ; but the captive, proving to be an officer in the Imperial service, was immediately re- leased. The affair made a great sensation, but Madame Walmoden, being a very clever woman, was determined not to lose the royal favour by this unfortunate blunder ; therefore, at six o’clock next morning, she ordered her coach, and, driving to Herrnhausen, went at once to the King’s room, where she flung herself on her knees beside His Majesty’s bed, and, weeping bitterly, besought him either to protect her from insult or give her permission to retire. The King woke from his sacred slumbers, and was astonished at her supplications. Madame unfolded her tale of woe, and de- nounced the ladder incident as a base trick arranged to effect her ruin by* her enemy Madame d’Elitz, whom the King’s most excellent Majesty had forsaken and turned out of his affections and his home with equal ease the previous year. It was an awkward little fact that the said Madame d’Elitz was then, and had been for some time, in England; but Madame ROMEO FLED . 3 l 3 Walmoden was so certain that the plot had been concocted by that very wicked woman, and carried out by her friends, and, moreover, her protestations of affection for her royal master, merely as a lover, and not at all as a King, whose affection she valued more than all other pleasures, were so demonstrative, that his amorous Majesty did not hesitate in believing her. His royal wrath against her supposed enemies was great indeed. He ordered that the Captain of the Guard should be immediately arrested for suffering the Imperial officer to escape, and at the same time he commanded that the latter should likewise be apprehended ; but the Romeo of the Herrnhausen garden had wisely taken flight, and was not to be found. The whole affair caused great amusement amongst the King’s subjects in England, and became an oft-told tale in drawing-rooms, coffee-houses, and at card- tables. The King wrote a letter to Her Majesty, telling her the story at full length, asking her what she thought of it, and adding that perhaps his passion for the Walmoden had made him see it in a partial light. He desired her, moreover, to consult Sir Robert Walpole about it, ‘ qui a plus d’experience, ma chere Caroline, que vous dans ces affaires, et moins de prejuge que moi dans celle-ci.’ Madame Walmoden was, however, clever enough to re- tain the King’s affection, and His Majesty gave no indica- tion of returning home this year in time for the birthday. Once more the Queen became uneasy, and the people began to express their discontent loudly and freely ; but His Majesty could not drag himself away from his mistress, and cared little for what the English nation thought or said con- cerning him. Then Sir Robert Walpole was again called in to advise with the neglected and insulted wife, and his words, from the very purport of his kindness, must have 3H COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. been hard to bear. He said/if he had a mind to flatter her, he might talk to her as if she were five-and-twenty years old, but, as he spoke as a friend, he advised her to press the King to bring his mistress back with him to Eng- land ; and if Her Majesty would do this, and trust to him, he would engage that she should get the better of her rival and retain her influence over her husband. ‘ He taught her this hard lesson till she wept/ says Lord Hervey, i and Her Majesty, instead of reproaching him for the liberty he had taken, promised to do everything he had desired, and thanked him for the friendship he had shown her.’ It cer- tainly was a hard lesson, one which she deeply felt, but which she considered inevitable that she should learn, though it wounded her woman’s heart and humbled her woman’s pride. A few days afterwards she wrote a submissive letter to the little tyrant, assuring him she had nothing but his interest and his pleasure at heart, that such was only her duty, and she hoped (poor soul !) that she had proved this to him by her conduct ever since he had known her ; she ended by requesting he would bring Madame Walmoden to England, assuring him his wife’s conduct to his mistress ‘ should be everything he desired when he told his pleasure, and every- thing she imagined he wished when she was left to guess it.’ In answer to this came a letter from the King, expressing his sense of her goodness and his gratitude. He told her she knew him to be just, and wished he could be everything she would have him. ‘ Mais vous voyez mes passions, ma chere Caroline/ he adds with a brutality which shocks as much as it surprises. ‘ Vous connaissez mes foiblesses, il n’y a rien de cache dans mons coeur pour vous, et plut a Dieu que vous pourriez me corriger avec la meme facilite que vous m’approfondissez ! Plut a Dieu que je pourrais vous WALMODEN INVITED OVER. 315 imiter autant que je sais vous admirer, et que je pourrais apprendre de vous toutes les vertus que vous me faites voir, sentir, et aimer/ He added that Madame Walmoden relied on Her Majesty’s goodness, and had consented to go to England, and desired that Lady Suffolk’s apartments might be prepared for her. Accordingly, the rooms were made ready for her reception, the Queen even enlarging them by adding two closets to them in which her books were stored. But, though she did this, it was with a sense of pain that she could not conceal. ‘ The great lady sheds tears incessantly,’ writes the Coun- tess of Strafford, 4 and now people talk that the other lady has consented to come over.’ Sir Robert Walpole told the Archbishop of York, Launcelot Blackburn, of the Queen’s having written to invite the Walmoden over, and His Grace, being a very earthly man, visited the Queen to congratulate her on being ‘ so sensible as to like that her husband should divert himself.’ CHAPTER XIX. The King’s Unpopularity — His Return — Court Reception on Sunday — The Poet Gay — The Duchess of Queensberry and the King — Dean Swift and Her Grace — Her Majesty the Patroness of Poets— The Queen’s Illness — ‘ An 111 that Nobody knows of’ — Her Maje^y’s Farewell — Her Death — The King’s Grief — Sir Robert Walpole and ‘Moll Skerrett.’* Meanwhile the populace grew more and more dissatisfied at the King’s prolonged absence. They said Parliament had given him a greater civil list than any previous monarch had enjoyed, in order that he might spexid the money on his German mistress ; the citizens complained that his remain- ing from the capital injured trade, because the nobility stayed away likewise, and there was no Court. ‘ Nothing is talked/ writes Lady Harriet Wentworth to her father, ‘ but the people’s impatience for the King’s arrival The Prince was at the play two or three nights ago, and the people called out, “ Crown him, crown him !” (as they did once before), upon which he went directly out of the house.’ On the Royal Exchange a notice was posted, stating, ‘ It is reported that His Hanoverian Majesty designs to visit his British Dominions for three months in the spring/ whilst on one of the gates of St. James’s Palace the following adver- tisement was found : BACK AT ST. JAMES'S. 317 * Lost or strayed out of this house, a man who has left a wife and six children on the parish. Whoever will give any tidings of him to the churchwardens of St. James’s Parish, so as he may be got again, shall receive four shillings and sixpence reward. N.B. — This reward will not be increased, nobody judging him to deserve a crown.’ The whole town, in fact, was filled with satirical pamphlets and lampoons ridiculing His Sacred Majesty and his new mistress, and abusing him in terms that corresponded with the grossness of his conduct. After seven months’ absence the King embarked for Eng- land , this was the occasion of his home-coming when it was feared he was lost at sea during the storm which over- took and compelled him to return to Helvoetsluys. How- ever, he landed at Lowestoft on Friday, the 14th of January, 1737, and, borrowing six horses of Lord Straffcrd, drove towards London until met by his own coach. He reached town on Saturday morning, unaccompanied by Madame Walmoden, who, at the last hour, had refused to trust her- self to the Queen’s expressed generosity and goodness, pre- ferring to remain in safety at Hanover. On his arrival at St. James’s, Her Majesty and all the royal family received him as he alighted, and he greeted them all with great show of affection and delight. With the Queen his conduct was as gentle as it had been ill-humoured on his former return ; he told her no man ever had so faithful and meritorious a wife, or so able a friend ; his smiles were all sunshine, his speeches courteous, his manner unusually agreeable, and the poor Queen’s delight was as great as its cause was unex- pected. He assured his Minister that he was a great and a good man, whom, he should always love ; this Sir Robert received with a smile, but he afterwards said he knew His Majesty loved nobody. COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 3i8 The day after his arrival a drawing-room was held. ‘ A Sunday after church all the ladies was to be presented in the great drawing-room/ writes Lady Strafford, 4 and there was a greater crowd than ever I see at a birthday, that the King began at the bottom and only kissed away as fast as he could without saying one word ; but when the Duchess of Manchester said, “ My Lady Strafford/’ he made a full stop and said, “ My Lady Strafford, I can tell you I left my Lord Strafford in health, and he was so good as to lend me his horses.” As soon as the Queen could squeeze into the drawing-room (for she never got but a little within the door), , Lady Charlotte told me she said to somebody, “ Pray is my Lady Strafford here?” so somebody said “Yes,” and pointed to the upper part of the room, where I stood, and the Queen called quite out aloud, “ My Lady Strafford, come, come to me, for I must speak with you.” I was a good while before I could possibly get to her, but begged people’s pardon and crowded away as fast as I could. So she said, “ My Lady Strafford, I am, as well as the King, prodigiously obliged to my Lord Strafford for being so good as to lend the King his horses.” So I told her the same speech as I made the King. “I was sure you were extremely happy that you happened to be in the country, if you could be of any service to the King. I wished her joy of His Majesty’s safe arrival, and said I was very agreeably waked by the going off of the guns.” She said (in quite an easy way), “To tell you the truth, I had the news at four o’clock in the morning, and they told me the King could not be here before ten ; so I resolved to go to sleep again, but I found I couldn’t for my life, so I got up at seven.” I think I never see so much joy in any face as in the Queen’s, and she said to me, “ You have put on your best clothes, so have I, in respect to the King.” They dined in public, and they THE POET GAY . 3i9 say there was a vast crowd. I was sorry to hear it, but I was told that on Saturday, when the King came upstairs, and vast joy was showed by his family on his arrival, “one person stood in the corner of the room, spoke to nobody, and looked quite glum.” ’ This ‘ one person J was of course the Prince of Wales. Madame Walmoden’s name was never heard of more during the Queen’s life, save on one occasion, when the King ordered Sir Robert Walpole to buy ten lottery tickets of ^100 each for him, which he would send to Germany, and, to save making the disbursement of ^1,000 (their cost) out of the privy purse, he ordered the Minister to charge the money to the secret service. Very early in this reign an incident occurred which caused a sensation in Court and town, and became the topic of conversation for longer than the traditional nine days. When the Queen was Princess of Wales, the poet Gay had sung her praises in flattering strains, and paid court to her in a right loyal manner, and she in return looked kindly on this child of the Muses, extended her patronage to him, and gave him hopes of being appointed to some office when she came to the throne. But, meanwhile, Gay unwisely sought the patronage and friendship of Mrs. Howard ; for he, in common with some others, made the mistake of be- lieving the mistress to have more influence with the King than his wife. He, therefore, paid the former fine compli- ments, helped her to write her elegant letters to her numerous correspondents, flattered her in prose, and styled her ‘ a won- derful creature ’ and ‘ an angel 9 in flowing verse. The result of this was that, when Caroline became Queen, the poet, whose expectations had risen to a height by this time, was merely offered the place of Gentleman Usher to the Princess 320 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . Louisa, then a child of five years, with a salary attached of £ 200 . This he rejected with great indignation, and Pope, Swift, and other of his friends congratulated him on his spirit. He therefore left the Court, believing himself wronged. Pope, who was no lover of Kings or Courts, told him he was 4 happily rid of many cursed ceremonies, as well as of many ills and vicious habits, of which few or no men escape the infection who are hackneyed and trammelled in the ways of a Court. Princes, indeed, and peers (the lackeys of Princes), and ladies (the fools of peers) will smile on you the less,’ continued the poet, 4 but men of worth and real friends will look on you the better. There is a thing, the only thing, which Kings and Queens cannot give you (for they have it not to give), liberty, and which is worth all they have; which as yet, thank God, Englishmen need not ask from their hands. You will enjoy that/ Gay, it is to be feared, was scarcely comforted by this advice of one who had never addressed Her Majesty in panegyric, or other strains, and who never lost a chance of having a slap at the King or Court ; and, smarting with indignation and resentment, he wrote the famous 4 Beggar’s Opera/ ridiculing the Court and Sir Robert Walpole (to whom he ignorantly imputed his want of success with the Queen) in pointed and humorous satire. When he showed the manuscript to Congreve, that author said 4 it would either take greatly, or be damned confoundedly/ and its fate was looked forward to with much suspense. 4 We were all at the first night of it/ says Pope, 4 in great uncertainty of the event, till we were very much encouraged by our hearing the Duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, 44 It will do — it must do. I see it in the eyes of the people.” This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon ; for that Duke (besides his own good taste) has as THE ‘BEGGAR’S OPERA * 321 particular a knack as anyone now living in discovering the taste of the public. He was quite right in this, as usual. The good nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause/ The opera contained songs sparkling with satire, that hit the public taste and passed at once into popularity. It had a run of sixty-three consecutive nights, which, at that time, was considered a wonderful triumph. Selections from its ballads were written on ladies’ fans, and on screens, and were sung in drawing-rooms, and handed about in coffee-houses ; whilst the success of the opera in Dublin and the English provinces was equally remarkable. Elated by its popularity, Gay determined to write a sequel, which he called 4 Polly, ? the satire of which was less disguised and more personal, and in which Sir Robert Walpole was made to figure as a highwayman, whilst his various amours were hinted at in no very delicate manner. No sooner did the Prime Minister hear of this than he caused the Lord Chamberlain to exercise his right of prohibiting its perform- ance. This only rendered Gay more bitter, and he deter- mined to publish it by subscription, after the fashion of the day ; whilst the charming and somewhat eccentric Duchess of Queensberry, the poet’s latest patroness, freely canvassed for subscriptions of everyone who came in her way, until at last her zeal carried her so far as to prompt her to ask the courtiers to add their names to her list in the presence of royalty. Whilst she was engaged in this manner, it happened that the King noticed she was talking earnestly to some of the officers of the household, and, with his usual curiosity, felt anxious to know what was the subject of their conversation. Hearing him inquire, she answered, 4 What must be agree- able to anyone so humane as your Majesty, for it is an act 21 322 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. of charity, and one to which I do not despair of bringing your Majesty to contribute.’ The King at once understood the purport of her words ; his round, blond face became suddenly crimson with anger. He, however, made her no reply, but, on consulting with the Queen, he resolved to forbid Her Grace coming to the Court in future, as a punish- ment for her advocacy in Gay’s behalf. Accordingly, one of the Vice-Chamberlains was sent to the offending Duchess with a message which was to be delivered verbally, forbidding her presence at the Court. Her Grace was a woman of high spirit, and, whilst the royal messenger yet waited, she sat down and wrote, ‘ for fear of mistakes,’ as she said, the fol- lowing answer to his gracious Majesty : ‘The Duchess of Queensberry is surprised and well pleased that the King hath given her so agreeable a command as to stay from Court, where she never came for diversion, but to bestow a great civility on the King and Queen ; she hopes by such an unprecedented order as this is that the King will see as few as he wishes at his Court, particularly such as dare to think or speak truth. I dare not do otherwise, nor ought not, nor could have imagined that it would not have been the very highest compliment that I could possibly pay the King to endeavour to support truth and innocence in his house, particularly when the King and Queen had both told me that they had not read Mr. Gay’s play. I have certainly done right then to stand by my own word, rather than His Grace of Grafton’s, who has neither made use of truth, judg- ment, nor honour through the whole affair, either for himself or his friends.’ The Duchess remained away from Court, her husband resigned his post of High Admiral of Scotland against the King’s desire, and their Majesties felt that they had been somewhat impolitic in sending their hasty orders to Her POET AND PATRONESS. 333 Grace. The only person for whom this royal ill-wind blew fair was Gay, whose book was now eagerly subscribed for by all who had a grudge against the Court or Parliament, and which realized for him the handsome sum of over eleven hundred pounds. He still continued to correspond with Mrs. Howard, and she, as far as lay in her power, con- tinued to act in a friendly manner by him, one proof of which was the hint she gave him in these words : 1 Your head is your best friend ; it would clothe, lodge, and wash you ; but you neglect it, and follow that false friend your heart, which is such a foolish, tender thing that it makes others despise your head that have not half so good upon their own shoulders/ His good heart gained him the friendships of such men as Swift and Pope, and he treasured them through his life. To the former he wrote of the oc- currence, which was then affording delightful gossip to the town : ‘ You must undoubtedly have heard that the Duchess took up with the King and Queen in defence of my play, and that she hath been forbid the Court for interesting her- self to increase my fortune by the publication of it without being acted. The Duke, too, hath given up his employment, which he would have done if the Duchess hath not met with this treatment upon account of ill-usage from the Ministers ; but this hastened him to what he had determined. The play is now almost printed, with the music, words, and basses engraved on thirty-one copper plates, which by my friend’s assistance has a possibility to turn greatly to my advantage. The Duchess of Marlborough has given me a hundred pounds for one copy, and others have contributed very handsomely. For writing in the cause of virtue and against the fashionable vices, I am looked upon at present as the most obnoxious person in England.- Mr. Pope tells me that I am dead, and that this obnoxiousness is the reward 21 — 2 324 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . for my inoffensiveness in my former life. Mrs. Howard has declared herself strongly both to the King and Queen as my advocate. The Duchess of Queensberry is allowed to have shown more spirit, more honour, and more goodness than was thought possible in our times. I should have added, too, more understanding and good sense. You see, my fortune (as I hope my virtue) will increase by oppression. I go to no Courts, I drink no wine, and am calumniated even by Ministers of State, and yet am in good spirits. Most of the courtiers, though otherwise my friends, refuse to contribute to my undertaking. But the City and the people of England take my part very warmly, and I am told the best of the citizens will give me proof of it by their contributions.’ Gay, like a true son of the Muses, was rather lavish of his money, so much so indeed that his patron, the Duke of Queensberry, at last took charge of his purse, and the re- sult of this was that the poet died possessed of over ^*3,000. Dean Swift did not think that a sufficient sum for him to lay by, and in these his palmy days wrote to Gay that he ‘ would not allow ’ him rich enough till he was worth ^7,000, which would bring him an annuity of ^300. ‘ This will maintain you/ says the Dean, ‘ with the perquisite of sponging whilst you are young, and when you are old will afford you a pint of port at night, two servants and an old maid, a little garden, ai:d pen and ink — provided you live in the country.’ When the laureateship became vacant, Gay, who would most probably have had that honour conferred on him, if he had not quarrelled with the Court, was overlooked for Colley Cibber. The play-writer had striven to rival the ‘ Beggar’s Opera ’ by a production of his named ‘ Love in a Riddle/ but the performance was, as he says, ‘ so vilely AN ODE FOR THE NEW YEAR . 325 damned and hooted at, as so vain a presumption in the idle cause of virtue could deserve/ On the appointment of Cibber, who could possibly lay no claim to the bays, Gay grew more bitter against the Court, and had a large share in the composition of a poem satirizing their Majesties, which appeared shortly after the laureateship had been filled up. It was styled, ‘ An Ode for the New Year (1731), written by Colley Cibber, Esq./ and, as the poem does not permit of its being reprinted in full, selections only are given. * This is the day when right or wrong I, Colley Bays, Esquire, Must for my sack indite a song, And thrum my venal lyre.’ Then comes a reference to the King : ‘ His head with wisdom deep is fraught, His breast with courage glows ; Alas, how mournful is the thought He ever should want foes ! 4 For in his heart he loves a drum As children love a rattle ; If not in field, in drawing-room He daily sounds to battle. ‘ The Queen I also pray God save ! His consort plump and dear ; Who just as she is wise and brave is pious and sincere . 4 She’s courteous, good, and charms all folks. Loves one as well as t’other ; Of Arian and of Orthodox, Alike the nursing mother. t Oh ! may she always meet success In every scheme and job, And still continue to caress That honest statesman Bob.’ COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 326 Many satirical ballads like this were concocted by Pope, Swift, and Gay, three men of genius united by a common bond of friendship. The Dean, like most disappointed men, was occasionally out of humour with the world, and his eccentricities increased with time. 4 I have been sixteen years in Ireland since Queen Anne’s death in 1714/ he writes, 4 with only an intermission of two summers in Eng- land, and consequently am fifty years older than I was at the Queen’s death, and fifty thousand times duller, and fifty million times more peevish, perverse, and morose.’ One night, when Pope and Gay called on the Dean during one of his visits to England, they found him in one of his eccentric moods, when he was much inclined to be governed by the moroseness which he mentions. 4 Hey day, gentlemen, what’s the meaning of this visit ?’ he asked, when his friends presented themselves. ‘ How came you to leave all the great lords that you are so fond of, to come here and see a poor dean ?’ 4 Because,’ said Gay simply, 4 we would rather see you than any of them.’ 4 Ay, anyone that did not know you so well as I do might believe you,’ answered Swift, nothing softened by his friend’s expression of regard; ‘ but since you are come,’ he continued, 4 1 suppose I must get you some supper.’ They both assured him they had already supped, but this statement only aggrieved their host the more. 4 Supped already ! That’s impossible!’ he said. ‘Why, it’s only eight o’clock ; that’s very strange. But, if you had not supped, I must have got you something. Let me see, what should I have had ? — a couple of lobsters, two shillings; tarts, a shilling. But you will have a glass of wine with me,' he went on, in his quaint manner, 4 though you have supped so much before your usual time, only to spare my pocket.’ THE DISAPPOINTED DEAN. 327 They assured him they would rather talk than drink with him, but this did not seem to have the desired effect of soothing him. ‘ If you had supped with me,’ he said to them, c as in all reason you ought to have done, you must then have drunk with me — a bottle of wine, two shillings. Two and two are four, and one is five, just two and sixpence a-piece. There, Pope, is half-a-crown for you, and there is another for you, sir, for I won’t save anything by you, I am determined/ and he compelled them both to take the money. Swift, who hated living in Ireland, had for years desired a preferment in England, and a position in the Church which his talents, if not his morals, certainly entitled him to ex- pect. ‘ You think as I ought to think/ he wrote to his friend, Lord Bolingbroke, from Dublin, 4 that it is time for me to have done with the world ; and so I would if I could get into a better, before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage like a rat in a hole.’ The poor Dean, whose bitterness and discontent are so keenly expressed in these lines, had years before made the fatal mistake of paying his court to Mrs. Howard, through whom he sought to gain the King’s favour. During his visits to town he had called on her frequently, flattered her, told her his wittiest stories, and when absent he kept up a correspondence with her, in which he expressed his admira- tion for her talents and person in no measured terms. This friendship was sufficient to prove a barrier towards his desires in the Queen’s sight, until at last, Swift, sick with waiting, turned his expressed admiration for Mrs. Howard to words of reproach. When his hopes were in the ascen- dant, he had presented her with an Irish poplin dress, to which the Queen (then Princess of Wales) took a fancy, and COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 323 on this the Dean presented her with a robe of the same texture. But even this act did not touch her woman’s heart, as he probably expected. * As for Mrs. Howard and her mistress/ he writes some years afterwards, * I have nothing to say but that they have neither memory nor manners, else I should have had some mark of the former from the latter which I was promised about two years ago ; but since I made them a present, it would be mean to remind them/ When he did visit the Court, shortly after the Princess of Wales became Queen, he was by no means in a gracious mood with Her Majesty, who had not helped him to an English living — the goal of all his desires. The Queen had sent for him, and, when after some hesitation he made his appearance, he told Her Majesty he had been informed she ‘ loved to see odd persons, and that, having sent for a wild boy from Germany, he supposed she had a curiosity to see a wild dean from Ireland.’ Upon which Caroline, with her practised graciousness, smiled and appeared amused ; but this remark did not tend towards forwarding his desires. The Duchess of Queensberry, knowing that Swift hated the Court and was a friend of Gay’s, invited him to come over from Ireland and stay with her. The eccentric woman wrote to the Dean, at the bottom of one of Gay’s letters : i I would fain have you come. I cannot say you will be wel- come, for I do not know you, and perhaps I shall not like you ; but, if I do not (unless you are a very vain person), you shall know my thoughts as soon as I do myself.’ No doubt Mr. Dean felt flattered, and he loved flattery better than all things in life. His answer to Her Grace is remark- able, and strikingly characteristic of the man. ‘ Madam, my beginning thus low ’ (his reply was written at the end of his letter to Gay) ‘ is meant as a mark of respect, like receiving WHAT THE DEAN SAID. 329 your Grace at the bottom of the stairs. I am glad you know your duty, for it hath been a known and established rule above twenty years in England that the first advances have been constantly made me by all ladies who aspired to my acquaintance, and the greater their quality the greater were their advances. Yet I know not by what weakness I have condescended graciously to dispense with you upon this im- portant article. Though Mr. Gay will tell you that a name- less person 5 (the Queen) ‘ sent me eleven messages before I would yield to a visit ; I mean a person to whom he is in- finitely obliged for being the occasion of the happiness he now enjoys under the protection and favour of my Lord Duke and your Grace. At the same time, I cannot forbear telling you, madam, that you are a little imperious in your manner of making your advances. You say perhaps you shall not like me ; I affirm you are mistaken, which I can plainly demonstrate ; for I have certain intelligence that an- other person dislikes me of late, with whose likings yours have not for some time past gone together. However, if I shall once have the honour to attend your Grace, I will, out of fear and prudence, appear as vain as I can, that I may know your thoughts of me. This is your own direction, but it is needless ; for Diogenes himself would be vain to have received the honour of being one moment of his life in the thoughts of your Grace.’ The Dean fully intended visiting the Duchess, and spend- ing a month with, her at Amesbury, and whilst making pre- parations writes to her : ‘ Your Grace shall have your own way in all places except your own house and the domains about it. There, and there only, I expect to have mine, so that you have all the world to reign in, bating only two or three hundred acres, and two or three houses in town and country. I will likewise, out of my special grace, certain 330 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . knowledge and mere notion, allow you to be in the right against all human kind except myself, and to be never in the wrong but when you differ from me. You shall have a greater privilege in the third article of speaking your mind, which I shall graciously allow you now and then to do even to myself, and only rebuke you when it does not please me.’ The Dean was, however, never destined to visit the Duchess, or to see England after this letter was written ; the dread blankness of mental disease overtook him and shut out the lights of his sparkling wit and brilliant humour ; his health broke down, and in this life he saw his English friends no more. 6 If it pleases God to restore me to my health, I shall readily make a third journey/ he wrote to Pope, after his last visit to London, which he had terminated so abruptly, in order that he might hasten to the dying Stella. ‘If not/ he continues pathetically, ‘we must part as all human creatures have parted. You are the best and kindest friend in the world, and I know nobody alive or dead to whom I am so much obliged ; and if ever you made me angry it was for your too much care about me. I have often wished that God Almighty would be so easy to the weakness of mankind as to let old friends be acquainted in another state ; and, if I were to write an Utopia for heaven, that would be one of my schemes.’ ‘ This letter affected me so much/ said little Mr. Pope, ‘ that it made me feel like a girl !’ Though Her Majesty behaved unkindly towards Swift and Gay, she showed favour to other men of letters and followers of the Muses. One of these latter was Stephen Duck, a field-labourer, commonly called ‘The Thresher/ who had developed a knack of rhyming, and was brought to the notice of the Court by Dr, Alured Clarke, through Mrs. Clayton’s representations to the Queen. Duck’s first poem STEPHEN DUCK . 331 was a description of his life, which was called ‘The Thresher’s Labour/ This met with some success, not on account of its merit, but from the circumstances of the versifier. His next attempt was ‘ The Shunamite.’ ‘ We have some people of taste for such performances,’ writes Dr. Clarke, ‘ who think none but a thresher could write “ The Thresher’s Labour,” and that the author of “ The Shunamite ” must be the best poet of the age.’ Her Majesty became interested in this child of Nature, who could write poems and thresh corn with almost equal skill and ease, and deigned to make him her gardener at Richmond, allowing him twelve shillings a week, perhaps a sufficient sum for so humble a follower of the Muses in those days. Stephen therefore became a neighbour of Pope’s, and Dr. Clarke, who displayed great interest in him, wrote to Mrs. Clayton : ‘ As Stephen is to be his neighbour, and the friendship and assistance of Mr. Pope would be very serviceable to him, or at least it would be prudent not to expose him to the malice of the Dunciad Club, which might perhaps be the case if some little court be not paid — I believe on these conditions you will think there can be no harm in his carrying my letter, in which I have avoided anything that might look like a recommenda- tion of him in Her Majesty’s name, which is an honour I cannot think Mr. Pope has any claim to.’ In these lines the Rev. Doctor’s subserviency to the Court favourite is clearly expressed. The Thresher went on writing verses, and Dr. Clarke warns Mrs. Clayton not to ‘ suffer any copies of his future poetry to go out of her hands, considering the ill-use that has been made by the publication of his verses in a sur- reptitious manner.’ This shows that Stephen’s name had become of market value to the publishers. Indeed, a sad and needy literary hack, rejoicing in the name of Erasmus 332 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. Jones, who gathered news for the Evening Post , smuggled some of the Thresher’s verses through the press, an act which brought the publisher the decent sum of ^ioo. Those who disliked Pope, and were anxious to ignore the existence of the offending Gay, declared Duck the greatest poet in England, hearing which Dean Swift wrote the follow- ing lines, which have a fine full flavour of satire about them : — c The Thresher Duck could o’er the Queen prevail, The proverb says, “ No fence against a flail/’ From threshing corn he turns to threshing brains, For which Her Majesty allows him grains. Though, ’tis confessed, that those who ever saw His poems, think them all not worth a straw. Thrice happy Duck, employed in threshing stubble, Thy toil is lessened and thy profits double !’ The poet’s next step in the social scale was. his becoming a Yeoman of the Guard. He was also appointed keeper of Her Majesty’s private library at Richmond, and it was pro- bably whilst engaged in the duties of this office that he imbibed that little learning which became so terribly dan- gerous a thing to him ; for the good Thresher first flung himself into the bosom of the Church and got ordained, and then into the middle of the Thames and got drowned ; such being the various tastes of this one man. Another poet to whom Her Majesty acted as patroness was Richard Savage, son of the infamous Anne, Countess of Macclesfield, and step-brother of Miss Brett, whose name occurs in the first volume of this work. Savage was, as Johnson says, 4 born with a legal claim to honour and to affluence, was in two months illegitimated by the Parlia- ment and disowned by his mother, doomed to poverty and obscurity, and launched upon the ocean of life, only that he 333 ILLNESS OF THE QUEEN . might be swallowed by its quicksands or dashed upon its rocks.’ When Savage was accused and condemned for the murder of Mr. Sinclare during a tavern brawl which took place in a house of more than doubtful reputation, the Queen, hearing of it, exerted her influence and saved him from the gallows. Lord Tyrconnell then became his patron, but the poet s habits and extravagance quickly disgusted this nobleman, and he was soon adrift once more on the world. Savage then bethought him of writing a birthday ode to the Queen, and she, coming to learn that the man whose life she was instrumental in once saving was again in danger of death by starvation, granted him a pension of fifty pounds a year during her life. In return he called himself the ‘ Voluntary Laureate,’ and annually addressed a poem to Her Majesty on her birthday. To the granddaughter of John Milton, who, as became the offspring of a poet, had grown acquainted with poverty, the Queen likewise extended her clemency, and even in so small a measure helped to pay a nation’s debt of gratitude ; and when the noble poet Lansdowne and Carte the his- torian were in exile because of their political opinions, the Queen obtained their pardon, and enabled them to return to England. Early in November, 1737, a rumour ran through the Court that Her Majesty had been taken ill. All the mem- bers of the royal family had a nervous horror of being con- sidered invalids, and it sometimes happened that, when the King and Queen were really unwell, they purposely ap- peared in public, in order to divert suspicion from their condition. The first day on which Her Majesty suffered in this month, she was obliged to go to bed, sorely against her will, chiefly because she knew it would displease His Majesty ; but, when the usual hour came for her to attend 334 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. the drawing-room, she told the King she was better, and got up and received the guests, looking ill and pale the while. After a little time she complained to the Vice- Chamberlain that she was unable to entertain people, and he replied, ‘Would to God the King would have done talking of “The Dragon of Wantley,” ’ (a new burlesque), ‘and release you.’ When the drawing-room was at length over, Her Majesty went at once to bed, from which she never rose again. Through the early part of the night her favourite daughter, Caroline, sat alone with her, whilst the King, as was his wont, amused himself by playing cards. When he returned, he was much alarmed at the Queen’s sufferings, which neither nostrums administered to her nor bleedings had relieved, and, to mark his anxiety, lay all night outside the counterpane on her bed. Next day those about Her Majesty considered her much better ; but she knew it was otherwise ; she felt some suspicion that her life was ap- proaching its close, and said to the Princess Caroline, who had been unwell for some time past, ‘ Poor Caroline, you are very ill too ; we shall soon meet again in another place.’ The King resolved to hold a levee that day, and, not- withstanding his anxiety for the Queen, was much con- cerned about having his new ruffles sewn on the shirt he was to wear for the occasion. The day wore slowly away, and the Queen grew no better. She complained of having an ‘ ill that nobody knew of ;’ and this was the first hint she gave of some secret complaint which the doctors had not up to that time discovered. Days passed, and no relief came. His Majesty, now full of anxiety, tenderness, and grief, sat up with her some of the nights, and refused to see any Ministers or courtiers. The Prince of Wales sent 335 THE , SCOUNDRELS TRICKS Lord North to inquire after his mother, and request per- mission to see her. When his message was delivered to the King, he flew into a great rage. 4 This,’ he said, 4 is like one of the scoundrel’s tricks. It is just of a piece with his kneeling down in the dirt before the mob to kiss her hand at the coach-door when she came from Hampton Court to see the Princess, though he had not spoken one word to her during her whole visit. I always hated the rascal, but now I hate him worse than ever. He wants to come and insult his poor dying mother ; but she shall not see him. All my daughters have heard her very often, this year at Hampton Court, desire me, if she should be ill and out of her senses, that I would never let him come near her ; and, whilst she had her senses, she was sure she should never desire it. No, no ; he shall not come and act any of his silly plays here.’ The Queen, was not then aware that her son had sent to inquire after her, and said one evening she was sure, sooner or later, he would send some message, because it would look well in the eyes of the world ; and 4 perhaps he hopes,’ she added, 4 1 shall be fool enough to let him come, and give him the pleasure of seeing my last breath go out of my body, by which means he would have the joy of knowing I was dead five minutes sooner than he could know it in Pall Mall.’ The King, hearing her say this, told her the message he had already had delivered to the Prince, but said she could see him if she so desired ; when she replied nothing but His Majesty’s absolute commands should ever make her consent to it. If anything she could say would make him alter his behaviour, she would say it with all her heart, but she knew that was impossible. ‘Whatever advice I gave him,’ she said, 4 he would thank me for, fleureroit comme 336 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. • un veau . all the while I was speaking, and swear to follow my directions, and would laugh at me the moment he was out of the room, and do just the contrary of all I bid him the moment I was dead. And therefore, if I should grow worse, and be weak enough to talk of seeing him, I beg you, sir, to conclude that I doat or rave/ The ‘ill which nobody knew of’ was a rupture that she concealed as long as possible from the physician’s know- ledge. It was only discovered indeed by Dr. Ranby, and then at too late a stage to save her life, though pain- ful surgical operations were performed continually from the time Ranby became aware of her condition almost to the day of her death. Before each one she inquired if it were with the King’s approbation, and when once assured it was, bore her sufferings with great patience. In His Majesty’s manner to her during her last illness there was a strange mixture of brutality and tenderness. Her sat up with her a great part of the night, kissed her affection- ately, told her she was the best and wisest wife, mother, and friend that ever was born ; that God had never given any- one such a heart and temper ; that her death would be an irreparable loss, and would put an end to all the brilliancy and enjoyment of the Court. To those around him, he spoke unceasingly of her virtue, courage, prudence, and understanding, and of his affection for her, yet in some ways he was as rough in his manner as of yore. Once, when her constant weariness and pain made her shift her posi- tion in bed, continually, though vainly, hoping for rest, he asked her, ‘how the devil should she sleep if she would not lie still a moment !’ In his solicitude for her he was continually forcing her to eat something or another, which, though it gave her pain, and did her no service, she never refused. When she had swallowed whatever he desired he NON, J^A UR A I DES MATTRESSES ' 337 would thank her, and she, striving to conceal her pain, would reply. It was the last service she could do him. When at last the surgeons declared they could do no more for her, there occurred in that royal chamber, already darkened by death, one of the strangest scenes which history # has ever recorded. The Queen took leave of all her chil- dren in England save the Prince of Wales. ‘ I have always/ she said to the King, who cried with great vehemence, ‘ told you my thoughts of things and people as fast as they rose ; I have nothing left to communicate to you. The people I love, and those I do not, the people I like and dislike, and those I would wish you to be kind to, you know as well as myself, and I am persuaded it would therefore be a useless trouble both to you and to me at this time to add any par- ticular recommendations/ His Majesty sobbed aloud, kissed her hands and face over and over again, and was much affected. Then the dying wife advised him to marry again, to which he replied, in a voice broken by the force of his grief, ‘ Non, j’aurai des maitresses/ ‘ Ah, mon Dieu, cela n’empeche pas/ replied the Queen. He continued to sob, as did also the children and those around him. Her Majesty then took off a ruby ring he had given her on the coronation day and handed it to him. ‘ This is the last thing I have to give you/ she said. Presently she asked for her watch, which hung by the chimney-piece, in order to give him the seal on which her arms were engraved, when in the midst of his tears the King burst out ill-temperedly, 4 Let it alone : who should meddle with your seal ? Is it not as safe there as in my pocket ?’ The Queen lingered for almost a fortnight. She had a firm belief that she should die on the first Wednesday after she had been taken ill, because all the remarkable occur- rences of her life had happened on that day. She had been 22 333 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. born, and married, had given birth to her first child, and heard of the late King’s death, had been crowned, and taken ill on a Wednesday, and now she believed her death would happen on that day also. The King believed in this like- wise, and was uneasy and anxious when Wednesday came round. When she fell into a sleep on that day, he believed her dying, and said it was all over with her, that she would suffer no more ; but she woke presently, feeling better. ‘ I wish it was at an end, but my nasty heart will not break yet,’ she said quietly, and she lived until the following Sunday. Once, when, after a sleepless night, the Queen lay ex- hausted, with her eyes staring at vacancy, the King came into the room and said to her, ‘ Mon Dieu ! qu’est ce que vous regardez ? Comment peut-on fixer ses yeux comme 9 a ? Vos yeux ressemblent a ceux d’un veau a qui on vient de couper la gorge !’ For a considerable time during her illness she had neither a chaplain nor Bishop to visit her, and some of those about the Court began to speculate as to whether she should die without receiving the Sacrament. She had not at any time proved herself very religious, and probably her love for hear- ing controversy left her with little faith in the tenets of any particular creed. It had been her habit in the mornings to have her chaplain read the prayers in one room, whilst she was being dressed, and whilst she listened to the newest bon - mot or the latest Court scandal in another. One of her chaplains, Dr. Dunster, used to give exhortations which occasionally exceeded the time devoted to dressing, and which were then discovered to be ‘dull to the degree of an opiate/ In the anteroom where the prayers were read, a large picture of a naked Venus hung on the wall. When Dr. Maddox (afterwards Bishop of Worcester) was once NOT RELIGIOUS . 339 waiting to read the morning prayers for Her Majesty’s benefit, Mrs. Selwyn put her head out of the royal bed-chamber and ordered him to commence. ‘ And a very proper altar-piece is here, madam/ he replied, glancing at the goddess of beauty. This was not, however, so good an answer as that made by one of the royal chaplains in the reign of Queen Anne, who had the same irreverent habit as her successor. One day, whilst she was being dressed and the service pro- ceeding, the bedroom-door was closed for a few minutes, when the chaplain ceased to pray. The Queen sent out to know why he did not go on. ‘ Because/ he answered stoutly, ‘ I would not whistle the Word of God through the keyhole.’ Another irreverent habit of Queen Caroline’s was that of talking during the services at chapel. She had commenced it with George I., with whom she had many squabbles in the royal pew, and continued it with her husband, if he was not inclined to doze ; so that, whenever they were not chatting, a sonorous snore from the royal nose was sure to be heard as the accompaniment to unappreciated discourses of learned divines in St. James’s Chapel. Fearing the whisperings and murmurings of the religious people who busied themselves about the Queen’s frame of mind might act prejudicially towards the Defender of the Faith and his family, Sir Robert Walpole asked the Princess Amelia to consult the King about sending for the Archbishop of Canterbury to read prayers for Her Majesty. Years before, one of the spiritual lords, on learning the Queen’s views of religion, had waited on her, and sent word that he considered it his duty to place himself at her service, in order to satisfy any doubts and explain any principles she did not compre- hend. When the message was conveyed to her, she said, ‘ Send him away civilly, though he is very impertinent to 22— 2 340 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. suppose that I, who have refused to be an empress for the sake of the Protestant religion, don’t understand it fully.’ But this reason would not now hold good for her not seeing a clergyman, and, therefore, the Prime Minister thought it proper to make this request to the Princess Amelia, who was not, however, anxious to comply with his wishes. ‘Pray, madam,’ said Sir Robert, ‘ let this farce be played; the Arch- bishop will act it very well. You may bid him be as short as you will. It will do the Queen no hurt, no more than any good, and it will satisfy all the wise and good fools, who will call us all atheists if we don’t pretend to be as great fools as they are.’ After taking this view of the case, the Princess asked the King, and he consulted the Queen about having the Archbishop. Her Majesty consented, and His Grace came morning and evening to pray by the dying woman, a service in which he was joined by her family, except the King, who used to walk out of the room before the Archbishop was admitted. The Queen, however, declined to receive the Sacrament, and on the occasion of His Grace’s last visit, when it was known the Queen was sinking, the courtiers, who met him retiring from the royal chamber, crowded round him with eager curiosity, asking him if the Queen had received. That wily man, with the subtlety for which Walpole had given him credit, replied, ‘ Her Majesty is in a heavenly dis- position.’ On Sunday evening, the 20th of November, 1737, the Queen, yet suffering, asked one of her physicians how long her pains would last. ‘ It will not be long before your Majesty will be relieved,’ he answered. ‘The sooner the better,’ she said, and gave no other sign of impatience. About ten o’clock that night, whilst the King was dozing on a bed placed on the floor at the foot of the Queen’s, and the THE KING'S GRIEF. 34i Princess Amelia lying on another in the same room, Her Majesty's last struggle began. One of the bed-chamber women gave the alarm, when those in the room jumped up, and the Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey were sent for. The dying woman was yet conscious, and asked in a feeble voice that the window might be opened ; then she said, ‘ Pray.' It was her last word ; her agony was brief. In the solemn hush that followed, the Princess Caroline held a mirror to her mother’s lips, but no damp came upon it : she was dead. Then the King flung himself on her bed and kissed the lifeless body over and over again, crying bitterly all the while. When at length he was led away sobbing, and had gone to bed, he sent for the Vice-Chamberlain to sit with him, when he talked of the Queen and of her death at great length. Then, dismissing him, he directed that one of the pages should sit in his room all night, and for some time after the Queen’s death a page was required to sit or sleep in his apartment, as His Majesty was nervous and super- stitious. He showed by his grief he was capable of deeper affections than those who knew him previously gave him credit for possessing ; he talked of Her Majesty incessantly, told anecdotes of his first seeing her, of his marriage and of their life in Hanover, and his affectionate behaviour to her when she had small-pox, and he had refused to leave her, though he caught the disease. He said the whole nation would feel her loss, and for weeks continued much dejected ; he became so changed that he did everything Sir Robert Walpole desired without question, signing all papers and documents brought him in a listless way, without inquiring their purport. When he saw Her Majesty’s women-servants, he tried to speak to them, but became so affected that he had to leave 342 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . the room hastily in order to recover himself. He ordered that all the salaries of the Queen’s officers and servants should be continued, and all her charities to benevolent institutions, in order, he said, that, if possible, nobody should suffer by her death but himself. The Queen was buried on the 17th of December, in a new vault in Henry VII.’s Chapel ; and a few months afterwards a very odd story of His Majesty is mentioned in a private letter of Lord Wentworth’s to his father. ‘ A Saturday night,’ he says, 4 between one and two a clock the King waked out of a dream very uneasy, and ordered the vault where the Queen is to be broke open immediately, and have the coffin also opened ; and went in a hackney-chair through the Horse Guards to Westminster Abbey and back again to bed. I think it is the strangest thing that could be.’ It was so strange that at first my lord was inclined to discredit the tale, but in a subsequent letter he again refers to it. 4 The story about the King was true, for Mr. Wallop he heard of one that saw him go through the Horse Guards on Saturday night, with ten footmen before the chair, and he went towards Westminster Abbey.’ Whilst His Majesty was in retirement, the courtiers, Ministers, and politicians were busy in their speculations as to who would rule the King in the future ; for it was unanimously admitted that some one should govern him. My Lords of Grafton and Newcastle were certain much of the Queen’s power over him would pass to the Princess Amelia; but Sir Robert Walpole openly declared, ‘I’ll bring Madame Walmoden over, and I’ll have nothing to do with your girls ; I was for the wife against the mistress, but I will be for the mistress against the daughters.’ For some time after the Queen’s death he hesitated in tendering this advice to his Sovereign ; for the King’s grief lasted longer than was THE KINGS GRIEF . 343 expected, and bubbled up to the surface on unexpected occasions. One evening, when playing cards with his daughters, some queens happened to be dealt out to him, a fact that reminded him so forcibly of his loss that he burst into tears, and to prevent such a recurrence the Princess Amelia ordered all the oueens to be taken out of the pack. CHAPTER XX. The King’s Sorrow abates — Lady Deloraine — MadameWalmoden comes to England — Is created a Peeress — His Majesty’s Horror of Old Age — Gaiety of the Town — The King and Miss Chudleigh — The Opera — ‘ Gentlemen Directors ’ — Musical Parties —Some Ladies of Quality — Opera Singers and their Amours— Handel’s Oratorios. However, in a little time his grief became less poignant, and the Prime Minister suggested to him that he should send for Madame Walmoden to Hanover, and that he must not injure his health, for his own and his family’s sake, by indulging in vain regrets ; the King listened to him placidly, and though he did not act at once on the advice, he was not the less grateful for it to Sir Robert. The Minister’s almost brutal coarseness went so far as to advise the Princesses to try and divert their father’s melancholy by bringing Lady Deloraine to his notice in the meanwhile ; ‘ for people must wear old gloves till they get new ones,’ said he ; a counsel they, as was to be expected, never forgave. An event about this time happened in Sir Robert’s domestic life which much diverted the town. Lady Walpole had died a short time before the Queen, and the Prime Minister, after remaining for about six months a widower, made Miss Skerrett, with whom he had openly lived for ten years, his wife. This lady was the daughter of a merchant, MOLL SKERRETT. 345 and one of des amis choisis of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, from which one may conclude her to have been a woman of some wit and accomplishments. Miss Skerrett had given birth to a daughter many years before her marriage to Sir Robert, and this young lady obtained the rank of an earl’s daughter when her father was made a peer on his retirement in 1742. Horace Walpole pities his sister, ‘ who must be created an earl’s daughter, as her birth would deprive her of the rank. She must kiss hands/ he adds, ‘ and bear the flirts of impertinent real quality.’ She was not long allowed to remain without suitors after her * creation.’ Amongst those who declared themselves enamoured of her were Prince Caron, Lord Hartington (the Duke of Devonshire’s son), Lord Fitzwilliam, and Mr. Churchill, the natural son of General Churchill and Mrs. Oldfield the actress, whom she eventually married. The Prime Minster’s liaison was the common talk of the town during his wife’s lifetime, but not the common wonder ; and in this scandal the Muses more than once, through the medium of the Grub Street rhymers, found a theme on which to expend any superfluous scurrility with which they might have been overburdened. Her Gracious Majesty, when once speaking of Sir Robert’s amour, said, with the exquisite freedom of those days, she ‘ was glad if he had any amusement for his leisure hours, but wondered how a man could be very fond of a woman who was only attached to him — as she believed — for his money ; nor could she imagine how any woman would suffer him as a lover for any consideration or inducement but his money. She must be a clever woman/ continued Queen Caroline, 1 to have made him believe she cares for him on any other score ; and to show you what fools we all are in some point or other, she has certainly told him some fine story or other of her love 346 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. and her passion, and that poor man “ avec ce gros corps, ces jambes enflees, et ce vilain ventre,” believes her. Ah ! what is human nature !’ With which philosophic reflection she dismissed the subject. In February, 1738, the Church pronounced its benison on Sir Robert and his mistress, whom the old Duchess of Marl- borough calls ‘ Moll Skerrett.’ ‘ Monday next is fixed for presenting her at Court/ writes Her Grace, ‘ and there has been great solicitation from the Court ladies who should do it, in which the Duchess of Newcastle has succeeded, and all the apartment is made ready for Sir Robert’s lady, and at his house at the Cockpit. I never saw her in my life but at auctions, but I remember I liked her as to behaviour very well ; and I believe she has a great deal of sense. I am not one of the number that wonder at such a match ; for the King of France married Madame de Maintenon, and many men have done the same thing.’ The Duchess, who was terribly fond of gossiping, and hated Walpole, writes of his wedding a month after the former letter. ‘ It was celebrated/ she says, ‘ as if he had been the King of France, and the apartments were furnished in the richest manner, crowds of people of the first quality being presented to the bride, who is the daughter of a clerk that sung psalms in a church where Dr. Sacheverell was. After the struggle among the Court ladies who should have the honour of presenting her, which the Duchess of New- castle obtained, it was thought more proper to have her pre- sented by one of her own family, otherwise it would look as if she had no alliances ; and therefore that ceremony was performed by Horace Walpole’s (the elder) wife, who was daughter to my tailor Lumbar. The Duke of Dorset waited on my Lady Walpole to con- gratulate her on her marriage with the same ceremony as if ‘ WHAT THE WORLD IS COME TO.' 347 it had been one of the royal family, with his white staff, which has not been used these many years, but when they attend the Crown. But such a wretch as he is I hardly know/ (The letter, which is worth quoting for its vigorous style, continues :) ‘ And his wife, whose passion is only for money, assists him in his odious affair with Lady Betty Jermyn, who has a great deal to dispose of, and who, not- withstanding the great pride of the Berkeley family, married an innkeeper’s son. But indeed there was some reason for that ; and by that match she got money to entertain herself all manner of ways. I tell you these things which did not happen in your time of knowledge, which is a melancholy picture of what the world is come to/ The new Lady Walpole did not, however, live to enjoy her new honours long, as she died three months after her marriage ; and her husband was once more a widower. The King was not slow in acting on the advice which Sir Robert Walpole had tendered him regarding Madame Walmoden and Lady Deloraine. To soothe his grief in the present, he looked with kindly eyes on the latter, and after a little while invited the former to take up her residence in England. Lady Deloraine was an exceedingly pretty woman, lively, amusing, flippant, and not overburdened with brains. She had been a maid-of-honour to the Queen when Her Majesty was Princess of Wales, and was now governess to the younger Princesses. She it was who had complained one day in the royal drawing-room that she had not had a good dinner at her pupils’ table, whereon the proverbially disagreeable Lord Delaware replied, ‘ Time was that her ladyship had not so good, and he was sure she had often sat down to a worse/ Whereon she burst out crying, and the Princesses burst out laughing, to her great chagrin. This lively lady had been twice married, first to old Lord Delo- COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 348 raine, and afterwards to Mr. Windham, sub-governor to the Duke of Cumberland, who was living at the time when she was regarded with favourable eyes by the King. Her morality was courtly to a degree, and admirably suited to the disposition of His Majesty and the times ; and her character partook of a strange mixture of simplicity and cunning. ‘ Lord ! the King has been in love with me these two years/ she said, * but I am not of an age to act like a vain or a loving fool ; and if I do consent to become his mistress I shall be well paid for it ; as for love, I have had enough of that, as well as a younger man at home.’ This latter piece of information she gave to Sir Robert Walpole, probably with the intention of having it conveyed to His Majesty’s ears. Whether it was repeated to the King or not, Lady Deloraine soon became his mistress, and even during Madame Wal- moden’s reign continued to maintain her position at Court, until she was guilty of a breach of etiquette which sent her into disgrace. When she was playing cards with the King one night at Kensington Palace, one of the Princesses pulled her chair from under her and she came to the ground, at which piece of drawing-room diversion the King laughed heartily, to her great annoyance ; my lady, however, cherished her revenge, watched her opportunity, and quickly snatching the chair from her royal master, left his fat and sacred Majesty sprawling on the ground. This act she was never forgiven. Seven months after the Queen’s death, Madame Walmoden arrived in England. ‘ She is at present in a mighty mean, dirty lodging in St. James’s Street,’ writes the old Duchess of Marlborough. ‘ Her husband came with her, but he is going away ; and that house that was Mr. Seymour’s, in Hyde Park, which opens into the King’s garden, is fitted up for her - and the Duchess of Kendal’s lodgings are making MADAME WALMODEN . 349 ready for her at St. James's. There is nothing more known at present as to the settlement, but that directions are given for one upon the establishment of Ireland. Perhaps that mayn’t exceed the Duchess of Kendal’s, which was three thousand pounds a year. But ’tis easy for the Prime „ Minister to increase that as she pleases.’ Shortly after her arrival she was presented at the drawing- room, when the King went up to her, and kissed her affectionately on each cheek ;* and my Lord Harrington pre- sented the Ministry and foreign Ministers to her, who vied with each other in doing her honour. The people began to murmur at having another German mistress at Court, for the remembrance of Kendal and Darlington and their infamous rapacity was still in their minds ; but Madame Walmoden was in some ways different from the mistresses of George I. ‘ She is a married woman,’ writes a courtier, w-hose loyalty seemed to have been stronger than her sense of morality, i and the Count, her husband, holds himself highly obliged to His Majesty for the regard he has for his wife, whom he always loved so well, but now better than ever since he has discovered more virtues in her. She must be a very in- genious woman to give such entire satisfaction to so great a man ; she keeps him always in good humour, and that’s good for his health, and all that love him must rejoice in that.’ Madame Walmoden employed her influence over the King, not against, but in assisting the Ministers. In 1739 she was raised to the Peerage under the title of Countess of Yarmouth, and received an annual pension of ^4,000 a year on the Irish establishment. She was of course courted, flattered, and sought after by all who desired place of favour, and she frequently sold her patronage at a goodly price. For the sum of ^12,000 she got Sir Joseph Bouverie created Baron of Longford and Viscount Folkstone, and 35o COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. the vanity and greed of other courtiers enabled her from time to time to net an occasional heavy prize ; but she was much less ostentatious in her mode of trafficking than her obnoxious countrywomen had been in the former reign. She became His Majesty’s guide, philosopher, and friend ; held in her hands all the power which Queen Caroline had so carefully and jealously guarded and exercised over her royal master ; went backwards and forwards to Hanover with the King, and even accompanied him on his campaign, and held his favour till death. The routine of the last years of the monarch’s life was gone through with great regularity : he had always practised punc- tuality, but now this habit increased until his movements re- sembled clockwork in their monotonous exactitude. Every night at nine o’clock he played cards with his mistress and his daughters, for they never entertained an objection to treat her on most friendly terms ; and on every Saturday in summer she, with some of the Queen’s ladies and officers of the royal household, was taken by His Majesty to Rich- mond, where they dined, walked for an hour in the garden, and then returned as they came, in coaches and six, with great parade, when the little man 4 thought himself the most gallant Prince in Europe.’ He had always affected airs of gallantry, and continued them in his advancing years, to the amusement of his courtiers. Signs of age or illness were things which he loftily ignored. When he suffered even from a cold, those around him were far too wise in their courtly ways to ask him how he did. On one occasion Lord Dun- more ventured, when His Majesty was laid up, to hope he was better ; but the monarch did not graciously vouchsafe him any reply, but when he had turned his back, sent for Lord Pembroke, and told him as Groom of the Stole to say that he would take that week’s waiting instead of my 35i A GRAND MASQUERADE. Lord Dunmore, in order that he (the King) ‘ might not see any more of those troublesome inquisitive puppies who were always plaguing him with asking impertinent, silly questions about his health, like so many old nurses.' It happened that one night when he visited Drury Lane the play of the ‘Intriguing Chambermaid' was played, which His Majesty liked pretty well until the interesting heroine of the piece said to an aged gentleman, ‘ You are villainously old — you are sixty-six and cannot think of living many more years ’ ‘ What damn stuff is this ?' said His Sacred Majesty, aloud, bouncing up in a passion and looking at the poor actress with a brow more ruffled than the imperial Jove's. Neither the Court nor the town became less brilliant after the Queen’s death, as the King in his grief had prophesied. The world went on just the same, and the ladies and men of quality ate, drank, and made merry, sinned as easily and grievously, and enjoyed themselves as freely and heartily as before. At the royal drawing-rooms the King, grown more chivalrous in his late years, was gracious and polite to the fairer sex, and particularly familiar and cheerful with those who were good looking, or such of his old acquaintance who had been beauties in his younger days. A form of amuse- ment which he particularly enjoyed and which speedily re- vived after the Queen’s death, was the masquerade ball. Her Majesty had disliked and set her face against them for the liberties they allowed, the Bishop of London had preached against their continuance, and finally a royal proclamation was issued forbidding them. But all that was long ago, and now a new order of things commenced. The King and Prince of Wales it was known enjoyed them thoroughly, and the courtiers were not slow in gratifying the royal taste, especially when it so fully agreed with their own. 352 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. At a grand masquerade that the Duchess of Norfolk gave, all the town was present ; courtiers and politicians of various factions met and mingled as if politics was an unheard-of subject. The Prince and Princess of Wales were there, the latter as Mary Stuart, vastly bejewelled, with diamonds worth ^40,000, which she had borrowed from a jeweller named Frankz, who, being a shrewd man in his generation, and one knowing the value of an advertisement, would accept no money for the hire, on condition that Her Royal Highness told her friends whose they were. There were a dozen other Mary Stuarts present, amongst them the charming Isabell Fitzroy, Lady Conway. The Duke of Richmond and his handsome Duchess — nee Sarah Cadogan — went as Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour, in all the splendour of cloth of gold, silver tissue, and heirloom jewels ; and my Lord and Lady Pomfret as pilgrims with great staffs in their hands ; and Lord and Lady Euston as man and woman hussars. The nephew of the King of Denmark was present in armour, and his governor as Don Quixote ; and there amongst the dazzling throng garbed in bewildering colours was the beautiful Lady Sophia Fermor in a Spanish dress, followed by her lover, my Lord Lincoln, who the King said was the handsomest man in England, and who was also (merely by accident, of course) attired in a Spanish dress. His Majesty was present too at this merry gathering of his loyal subjects, and his entrance was the signal for the Faussans, two celebrated opera dancers, to commence their performance ; the royal man did not heed them much, but sat down by Mrs. Selwyn, and told her with tears in his eyes that ‘ the Whigs should find he loved them.’ All around His Majesty there were several Kings and Queens more royally apparelled than he, and several quaint and curious figures wonderful to behold. There was a HORACE WALPOLE IN MASQUERADE. 353 staid Quakeress dancing with a Turk, and a chimney-sweep in black velvet promenading with no less a personage than Diana. Vandycks were to be found in numbers, and clowns in motley groups, and it seemed as if many old pictures had taken it into their heads to step from their frames for the purpose of dancing a minuet. ‘ It was an assemblage of all ages and nations/ says Horace Walpole, who was there in an Aurengzebe dress, 1 and would have looked like the day of judgment, if tradition did not per- suade us that we are all to meet naked, and if something else did not tell us that we shall not meet then with quite so much indifference, nor thinking quite so much of the becoming. 5 Horace was fond of masquerades, and gossips about them pleasantly. He was present at another of these assemblies a few weeks after, dressed as an old woman, when he took what he calls ‘ the English liberty of teasing whom- ever he pleased/ General Churchill being one of his victims in particular. To this gallant son of Mars he said he was quite ashamed of being there until he met him, but was now comforted at finding one person in the room older than himself. The Duke of Cumberland was present, and, being told who the old woman was, went up to him, and said, ‘Je connois cette poitrine. 5 Walpole pretended to take him for a Templar, and replied, ‘ Vous, vous ne connoissez que des poitrines qui sont bien plus usees. 5 The next night at the drawing-room the Duke asked him who was the old woman who had teased everybody at the masquerade, at which those near him laughed ; and His Majesty crossed the room to inquire of my Lady Hervey what was the cause of the merriment, when she told him Mr. Walpole had said he was so awkward in undressing himself that he had stood for an hour in his stays and under-petticoat before his valet. At one of these mas- 23 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . 354 querades Miss Jenny Conway, with whom the Prince of Wales had been in love, drank some lemonade, which re- sulted in her death. The sad event was celebrated in these four lines — 6 Poor Jenny Conway, She drank lemonade At a masquerade, So now she’s dead and gone away/ Miss Chudleigh, who was maid-of-honour to the Princess of Wales, an honour secured her by her admirer and sup- posed lover, Mr. Pulteney, went to a masquerade on one occasion as Iphigenia, dressed, or rather undressed, for the sacrifice; so naked, indeed, that the Princess of Wales threw a veil over her, and the maids-of-honour refused to speak to her. But Miss Chudleigh, who was a remarkable young lady, did not care much for their slights. Both the King and the Prince of Wales were in love with her ; to prove his affection, His Majesty at one of the booths of a jubilee masquerade gave her as a fairing a watch which cost him thirty-five guineas, a sum disbursed out of his private purse, and not charged on the civil list. He gave her on another occasion an indication of his royal favour, when, having appointed her widowed mother housekeeper at Windsor, the corpulent little lover, then nearing his seven- tieth year, waddled up to the beauty in the drawing-room, and told her he was glad to have an opportunity of obeying her commands, and hoped she would not think a kiss too great a reward ; and, against all precedent, he then kissed her. Though he admired her, it is doubtful if she ever became his mistress. Probably she would not have ob- jected to take Lady Yarmouth’s position. When she was once speaking of Miss Murphy, an Irish beauty, who reigned for a short time as mistress of Louis XV., and was then dis- HEIDEGGER AND HIS DOUBLE . 355 carded, Miss Chudleigh said there was some sense in be- longing to a King who turned off an old mistress when he had got a new one. But she did not lack lovers or hus- bands; and for that matter, had during one part of her strange career two of the latter living at the same time. After Ranelagh was opened, it became a favourite spot for amusements of this kind. Here His Majesty gave a masquerade, and sat with his mistress in a box decked out with red damask, looking at the crowd in the gardens, and laughing at Lady Bel Finch dressed as a nun, who for cool- ness had cut the nose off her mask. At one of these balls which the King attended, an incident happened which caused him much amusement. Some time before, the Duke of Montagu invited Heidegger, the director of these en- tertainments, to a tavern, where he made him drunk, and whilst insensible he caused a plaster cast of his face to be taken, from which a mask was afterwards made. The Duke then got a man of the same height and figure as Heidegger to wear the mask and appear in a similar dress to his at the next masquerade. When His Majesty, who was made aware of the joke beforehand, came in, Heidegger ordered the musicians to play ‘ God Save the King/ but scarcely had he turned his back when his representative stepped for- ward, and, assuming his voice and manner, ordered them to play ‘Charley over the Water/ On this the director came back in a violent rage, stamped and swore, and once more gave orders for ‘God Save the King’; but no sooner had he retired when his representative again returned, and, countermanding the last order, bade the men again play ‘ Charley over the Water.’ The musicians considered him drunk, but dared not disobey ; and whilst the cry of ‘ Shame, shame !’ rose from those present, who considered this a public insult to the King, Heidegger rushed to His Majesty, -i — 2 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS , 356 but to his surprise saw his representative, who unhesita- tingly approached the King and said, 6 Sire, the whole fault lies with that devil in my likeness/ Heidegger turned pale at this accusation and could not speak, when, thinking the joke had gone far enough, his second self unmasked and the mystery was solved. Another fashionable amusement at this time was the opera, which had a company of gentlemen directors, among whom were Lords Middlesex, Dorset, and Brooke, and five other men of quality and fashion, who were generous enough to allow Monticelli and Viconti a thousand guineas, and Amorevolio eight hundred and fifty guineas for the season. Everyone in London talked of the opera, and the merest details connected with it formed subjects of interest for the whole town. When ‘ Scipione in Cartagine 7 was about being produced, it was intended to have a large elephant introduced that was to have carried Monticelli on a throne surrounded by twenty soldiers, who were likewise to have found room on the animal’s back, but during the first rehearsal the elephant fell through the stage, which was unable to bear such a weight, and it was thought judicious that he should not make his appearance in public. Vast sums were expended on the operas, which were con- ducted on the French system as to the scenes, dresses, and dances. Curious times these were ; fine ladies and men of quality are making love in the pit, my Lord Middlesex and his friends are waiting to applaud his mistress Muscovita, whilst my Lord Lincoln is being foully abused by a drunken officer whom he kicks in return, and on whom he would have drawn his sword but that his friends rushed between them. His Majesty is in the royal box watching Bettina’s move- ments in the mazy dance with great eagerness, for the cele- A MUSICAL PARTY . 357 brated danseuse has a halo of romance thrown round her person from the fact that her Neapolitan footman has striven to poison her at the instigation of a jealous and wicked Italian Prince whom she had left love-lorn. Opposite His Majesty is Miss Edwards, the heiress, in her box, with Lord William Anne Hamilton, whom she, in the face of the world, maintains as her lord and master ; close by her is my Lady Walpole, daughter-in-law to the great Minister (now Lord Orford), who is half mad and wholly bad. She is listening to Lord Stair’s protestation of his passion with calmness and without encouragement, because she does not care for him, but yet with attention, for she will rehearse this scene when she gets home, for the benefit and amuse- ment of her husband and his father. The passion for music did not end at operas ; it becam fashionable to give musical parties for which Italian singers were duly engaged, ‘ There’s nobody allowed to say “I sing,” but an eunuch or an Italian woman,’ Gay says in writing to Swift, ‘everybody is grown now as great judges of music as they were in your time of poetry, and folks that could not distinguish one tune from another now daily dis- pute about the different styles of Handel, and Bononcini and Attilio.’ The correspondence of the time is full of details of the favourite singers. ‘ Amorevolio is much liked, Viconti scarce at all, Monticelli pleases almost equal to Farnelli. We have a new opera by Pescetti, but a very bad one ; however, all the town runs after it, for it ends with a charming dance. They have flung open the stage to a great length, and made a perfect view of Venice, with the Rialto and numbers of gondolas that row about full of masks, who land and dance,’ and so on. ‘ Last night I had a good deal of company to see and hear Monticelli and Amorevolio, particularly the three COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 353 beauty-Fitzroys, Lady Euston, Lady Conway, and Lady Caroline,’ writes Horace Walpole. 1 My father liked the singers extremely ; he had not heard them before. I forgot to tell you all our beauties. There was Miss Hervey, my Lord’s daughter, a fine black girl, but as masculine as her father should be ; and Jenny Conway, handsomer still, though changed with illness ; then there were the Fitzroys. I made the music for my Lord Hervey, who is too ill to go to operas ; yet, with a coffin face, is as full of his little dirty politics as ever. I dropped in at my Lord Hervey’s the other night, knowing my lady (Molly Lapell) had company : it was soon after our defeats. My Lord, vho has always professed particularly to me, turned his back on me, and retired for an hour into a whisper with young Hammond at che end of the room. Not being at all amazed at one whose heart I knew so well, I stayed on to see more of his be- haviour ; indeed, to use myself to it. At last he came up to me and begged the music, which I gave him, and would often again, to see how many times I shall be ill and well with him within the month.’ My Lady Denbigh, who was supposed to be the ‘ produce of some French valet de chambre,’ but who was mighty entertaining, gave musical assemblies on Sunday nights, and also set up card-tables in her drawing-rooms, which were filled with all the fashionable world. My Lady Townshend was a great patroness of the Italian singers, and gave private concerts, being a woman of fashion in all things, even to parting with her husband, Charles, third viscount of his name. One of her lovers was Mr. Winnington, a wit, remarkable alike for his good humour and his bad morals. He deserted the Tories and laughed at the Whigs with equal ease, and was much inclined to take life easily. When my Lady Townshend’s brother-in-law MY LADY TOWNSHEND. 359 Augustus made some remark concerning her and her lover, he challenged him to a duel, which they fought one Sunday morning in Hyde Park, where they scratched each other’s fingers, fell into a ditch, embraced, and then walked home comfortably to breakfast together. My Lady Townshend’s gallantries were the talk of the town, for they were usually conducted in a manner that scorned secrecy : and were found so entertaining by her friends that it is stated Field- ing, under the name of Lady Bellaston in ‘Tom Jones,’ presented her character to his readers. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu says that, whilst Lord Townshend was spitting up his lungs at the Gravelpits, she 4 is diverting herself with daily rambles in town. She has made a new friendship, which is very delightful, with Madame Pulteney, and they hunt in couples from tea-drinking till midnight/ Lord Townshend went abroad, and, as the same correspondent says, ‘ renewed his lease of life by his French journey, and is at present situated in his house in Grosvenor Street in perfect health. The good lady is coming from Bath to meet him, with the joy you may imagine. Kitty Edwin has been the companion of his pleasure there. The alliance seems firmer than ever between them after the Tunbridge battles, which served for the entertainment of the public. The secret cause is variously guessed at ; but it is certain Lady Townshend came into the room gently behind her friend, and tapping her on the shoulder with her fan, said aloud, “ I know where , how , and who.”' These mysterious words drew the attention of the company, and had such an effect upon poor Kitty that she was carried to her lodgings in strong hysterics. However, by the intercessions of prudent mediators, peace was concluded ; and, if this conduct of these heroines was considered in a true light, perhaps it might serve as an example even to higher powers, by show- 360 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . ing that the surest method to obtain a lasting and honour- able peace is to begin with vigorous war/ Though my Lady Townshend figured prominently in the society of the day, her actions were quite eclipsed by those of Lady Walpole and the beautiful wife of the second Viscount Vane. These ladies, indeed, serve to illustrate the morals of the period. Lady Vane was the daughter of a country squire named Francis Hawes; she, being sent early in life to Court, met there my Lord William Hamilton, who fell in love with and married her, she being then at the age of seventeen. They were both poor in all but good looks, a fact which made Her Majesty term them ‘the hand- some beggars/ Little more than a year after their marriage, Lord William was obliged to go to Scotland, and in making desperate haste home to his wife, overheated himself, caught cold, and died. Ten months afterwards the youthful widow married Lord Vane, who settled ^1,500 a year jointure upon her, and ^400 pin money. Not only was she an exceedingly handsome woman, but she had also a reputation for wit, and was one of the finest minuet dancers in England, an art duly appreciated by the Court. The result of such beauty and accomplishments was to gather a crowd of worshipful gallants around her. Presently her tastes be- came extravagant, and by degrees gradually outstripped her husband’s means. She then commenced a series of in- trigues, beginning with Lord Berkeley, with whom she went away. My Lord Vane’s feelings were not quite so outraged at this fact as one might suppose. He was a passionate lover and a great fool, and, in order to induce his wife to return to him, he consented to cut off the entail of the Newcastle estate for the sum of sixty thousand pounds. Then he MEMOIRS OF AMOURS. 361 wrote to my lady, imploring her to return to him, as they 4 could now live comfortably/ To this request she turned a deaf ear. yet, when she and her husband met in public, they behaved as good friends, he making love to her as if the matrimonial tie never bound them, she listening to him with gracious attention. When tired of Lord Berkeley, she returned to her husband, but soon parted from him for yet another lover, and came back once more to Lord Vane, he receiving her with open arms whenever it was her good will and pleasure to live with him. 4 She did not pride herself on her fidelity to any one man, which was but a narrow way of thinking,’ as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu said, 4 but she boasted that she was always true to her nation, and, notwithstanding foreign at- tacks, always reserved her charms for the use of her country- men.’ Lady Vane was so proud of her conquests that she dictated her history to Smollett, and paid him for including it in 4 Peregrine Pickle/ under the heading of 4 Memoirs of a Lady of Quality/ When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu read them, she wrote to her daughter that they contained ‘more truth and less malice than any I ever read in my life. When she speaks of her acts being disinterested, I am apt to believe she really thinks so herself, as many highway- men, after having no possibility of retrieving the character of honesty, please themselves with that of being generous, because whatever they get on the road they always spend at the next ale-house, and are still as beggarly as ever. Her history rightly considered would be more instructive to young women than any sermon I know ; I think there is no rational creature that would not prefer the life of the strictest Carmelite to the round of hurry and misfortune she has gone through/ COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 362 These memoirs, full of the details of her amours, she gave her husband to read on one of the occasions when she re- turned to his house. My Lord read them carefully, but made no remark when he had finished, on which my Lady was tempted to ask him what he thought of them. 6 1 hope, madam,’ replied this most well-bred of husbands, ‘they will not occasion any difference between your ladyship and me.’ During the absence of his wife he was apt to console him- self for his loss after the manner of the times. ‘ Lord Vane keeps a lady in the country,’ writes young Lady Lucy Went- worth to her father, ‘ so he’s now easy without my lady ; but she’s coming from Bath, and says she’s sure she can behave in a manner that will make her be esteemed as well as ever.’ When my Lady Walpole gave birth to a son, she left her lord and master and went abroad, from whence the reputa- tion of her deeds travelled homewards from time to time. On the occasion of one of her returns to England, she lived with the Hon. Sewellis Shirley in a villa near Richmond. Her husband had at the time for his mistress Miss Norris, whom he had taken off the stage with the free consent of her parents, to whom he gave a bond, promising to marry her on the death of his wife. My lady, however, outlived him, and married Mr. Shirley, from whom she separated three years afterwards. It is no wonder that George Selwyn, when ‘ High Life Below Stairs ’ was first put on the boards, said he would certainly go and see it, for he was sick of low life above stairs. The mistresses of the men of quality seem to have been largely recruited from the operatic stage. My Lord Middle- sex, whilst his wife was mistress of the Prince of Wales, maintained Nardi, the famous dancer ; Lord Holderness was enamoured of Giuletta, who was supposed to have a voice AN IDEA OF HEAVEN. 363 like an angel singing out of heaven ; and to her and her par- ticular friends, including the hautboy and the prompter, my Lord gave charming little suppers in his saloon, lighted with coloured lamps, scented with delicate odours, and filled with the music of violins. Barberina, the little opera-dancer, 1/ became the object of another fine gentleman’s passion, but this was not returned, as her heart was probably engaged else- where One night when this possessor of a light fantastic toe was tripping her way home, she was waylaid by four men, muffled and masked, who would have run away with her to her rejected lover’s arms, but that she screamed at the pitch of her voice, when the guards came to her rescue, and the chairmen and link-boys from the neighbouring streets gathered round, to find that the four villains had fled like shadows. In opposition to the operas, Handel commenced a series y yy of oratorios, which had some success, though he had hired as singers ‘all the goddesses from farces and singers of “ Roast Beef” from between the acts, of both theatres, with a man with one note in his voice, and a girl without ever an one, who sang and made brave hallelujahs, and the good company encore the recitative, if it happens to have any cadence like what they call a tune.’ The general effect can scarcely have been harmonious. ‘ For my part/ says Horace Walpole, ‘ they give me an idea of heaven, where everybody is to sing, whether they have voices or not.’ CHAPTER XXI. The Rising in Scotland — Jacobite Toasts — Lord Lovat's Execu- tion — George Selwyn's Jokes — Whitefield's Preaching — 4 Those of Caesar's Household ' — The Earthquake and its Effects — Pictures of Social Life — Robberies — A Fashionable Vice — The King's Death — His Will and Funeral. So the people went on enjoying themselves and making merry, whilst Charles Edward Stuart landed in Scotland with seven brave followers, and gathered the faithful Highland clans around him. The news of the rising in the North, followed by rumours of a French invasion, came to the ears of the Londoners, but caused them little consternation. ‘ It is quite the fashion,’ says Horace Walpole, 4 to talk of the French coming here. Nobody sees it in any other light but as a thing to be talked of, not to be precautioned against. Don’t you remember a report of the plague being in the city, and everybody went to the house where it was to see it ? You see I laugh about it, for I would not for the world be so un-English as to do otherwise. I am persuaded that when Count Saxe, with two thousand men, is within a day's reach of London, people will be hiring windows at Charing Cross and Cheapside to see them pass by. 'Tis our characteristic to take dangers for sights, and evils for curiosities. Lord ! ’tis the i st of August’ (the anniversary of the accession of the House of Hanover), 4 a holiday that is going to be turned out of the almanack.’ ‘that’s quite ANOTHER THING' 365 Not only in Scotland, but in England, the Jacobites were still abroad. Their club was named the 1 Mourning Bush,’ and here they assembled to plot against the reigning house, and strengthen each other in the hope of some ultimate chance of a Stuart restoration. Their toasts expressed loyalty to those over the water, ^nd hostility to the King, but were cautiously expressed by signs or initials. At con- vivial meetings they repeated the alphabet, drinking in silence to every three letters, which indicated a toast, as : 6 A B C — A blessed change. D E F — Damn every foreigner, G H J — Get home, Jemmy. K L M — Keep loyal Ministers. N O P — No oppressive Parliaments. O R S \ Q uickl y return > Stuart, and ^ ( Quell Rebellious Subjects. T U W — Tuck up, Whelps (Guelphs). X Y Z — Exert your zeal.’ A ‘treasonable practice’ of these Stuart adherents, of which information was given before a Committee of the House of Commons, was that, on the King’s health being drunk, every man held a glass of water in his left hand, and waved a glass of wine over it with his right, indicating that he drank to the King over the water. John Byrom, of Manchester, who in his day had some fame as a poet, and much as a good citizen, and was withal a Jacobite, on one occasion, when he was anxious to ‘ allay the violence of party spirit,’ delivered himself, extempore, of these lines, remarkable for their subtilty : 4 God bless the King — I mean the faith’s defender ; God bless — no harm in blessing — the Pretender. Who the Pretender is, and who the King, God bless us all — that’s quite another thing.’ 366 COURT LIFE BELOIV STAIRS . A story is told of one of the Jacobites turning over a current coin in his hand, and, looking at the robe of Britannia, which, being well rubbed by wear, assumed the appearance of a rat climbing on her knees : ‘ There’s the Hanoverian rat,’ he said, pointing it out to one of the ad- herents of the Guelphs. T Then,’ said the latter, turning over the coin, which bore on the other side the impression of George II., ‘there’s the cat to catch him;’ for, by the same process of wear, the resemblance of a cat was said to be discernible, the leaves of laurel forming the ears, and a small hole beneath, the eye, whilst the outline of the back of the head made a fair resemblance to a cat’s back. The rising in the North was soon suppressed, and, when the Scottish Lords who had taken part in it were on their trial in Westminster Hall, the place was crowded by peers, peeresses, and other spectators. George Selwyn saw fit to make a jest on the occasion, in order to sustain his reputa- tion. 6 What a shame it is,’ he said, directing his eyes to- wards Mrs. Bethel, a lady remarkable for her hatchet-shaped countenance, ‘ to turn her face to the prisoners before they are condemned !’ When Lord Lovat was executed, a vast assembly went to see the spectacle, which one of the Italian singers, Panciatici, who was present, declared, ‘ triste, mais qu’il ne lassoit d’etre beau.’ Every available spot was crowded, but to accommodate an additional number of sightseers, platforms were erected, one of which, holding four hundred people, fell with a great crash on the heads of those below, killing twenty-two persons, and maiming many others. Old Lord Lovat was perhaps far more unmoved than those who had come to witness his death. When he came on the platform, he sat down quietly on a chair, and chatted with those about him, telling them that he had loved his country, though he did not know why ; that he had never QUEEN OF THE METHODISTS . 3 67 swerved from his principles, and that this was the character of his family, who had been gentlemen for five hundred years. Then he put his head on the block, and one blow severed it from the body. Among others present on the occasion was George Selwyn, who, with his great wit, pos- sessed a strong love for all that Was morbid. When he was subsequently accused by some of his fair friends of going to see the poor Jacobite lord’s head cut off, he answered that he made full amends, for he afterwards went to see it sewn on again. The executions of the Scottish lords did not interfere with the general gaiety ; neither did Whitefield’s denunciation of the folly and immorality of the age. He preached with an enthusiasm and fervour that was regarded as fanatical ; but as Lady Huntingdon, styled ‘ the Queen of the Methodists/ was his patron, it became fashionable to go and hear him in her drawing-rooms. My Lord Chesterfield, who was an infidel, and my Lord Bath, who was no better than he should have been, and my Lady Townshend, whose amours created amusement for the town, and Lady Thanet and many others, flocked to hear him, but without much profit to their souls. The preacher saw with gratification ‘ those of Caesar’s house- hold/ as he called the courtiers, gather round him, and prayed that they might be awakened ; but they laughed at the good man’s threats of fire and brimstone when they turned their backs on him. His language was occasionally vivid and stirring, and had a wonderful magnetic effect on his hearers ; at other times it was extravagant, egotistical, and bordered on the blasphemous. 4 1 have a garden near at hand,’ he told his friends, ‘ where I go particularly to meet and talk with my God at the cool of every day/ The weakness shown in sentences like this was readily seized on by the worldlings who heard, but did not heed him. One of the 368 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . fine beaux is ready to lay a wager that he will be run after instead of Garrick ; and my Lady Townshend, when asked if it was true the preacher had recanted, replied smartly, ‘ No, sir; he has only canted/ Lady Huntingdon, whom Whitefield dignified with the title of the 1 Lady Elect/ was sincere in her conversion ; she had once been of the world worldly, but becoming religious, she was missed from the royal drawing-rooms. When the Prince of Wales asked where she had gone, one of the courtiers replied she ‘ was probably praying with her beggars;’ then the Prince said, ‘ When I am dying I think I shall be happy to seize the skirt of Lady Huntingdon's mantle to lift me to heaven.’ The shock of earthquake which happened in 1750 had far more effect than Whitefield’s preaching on the citizens. The first shock occurred on the 8th of February, and the second exactly on that day month. This continued longer, was much more violent, and taking place in the night, intensified the alarm already felt. The people were suddenly awakened, some of them being flung out of their beds, most of them ran stricken with fright into the streets in their night clothes ; chimneys fell, bells rang, women screamed, and the greatest alarm obtained. On the morning after this occurrence a parson going into White's Club heard some of the members betting as to whether it had been an earthquake, or the blow- ing up of a powder-mill, which horrified the good man so much that he said he believed this impious set of people ‘ would bet a puppet show against judgment.' When the second shock was felt, people began to regard the fact with more seriousness ; especially when a wild enthusiast prophe- sied that, as the second had happened exactly a month after the first, so in four weeks later a third shock would lay waste the iniquitous city. This rumour quickly spread amongst THE ALARM INCREASES . 369 the people, who thought it a significant fact that, at a dis- tance of ten miles from London, no disturbance had been felt ; and that it was merely confined to the town. The Bishops seized upon this opportunity to write denunciatory pastorals, and the clergy to preach repentance to the people, who had at last been brought to a sense of their sinfulness ; balls were postponed, theatres shut, and masquerades heard of no longer. When the King asked Lady Coventry — one of the beautiful Gunnings — if she was not sorry that all amusements were stopped, she told His Majesty she was tired of them and surfeited with most sights, but what she best desired to see was a coronation. The panic continued to increase as the 8th of April approached, and the people quickly began to abandon the city ; the roads were thronged with the coaches and carriages of people of quality hurrying to their country seats. The towns and villages within twenty miles of the city were so crowded that lodgings were obtainable only at most extor- tionate prices. In the midst of this alarm two of the jeunesse dor'ee of the period, Dick Levison, and one Master Rigby, after having supped right merrily at Bedford House, knocked at all the doors as they came home in the early morning, and cried out, in imitation of a watchman’s voice, ‘Past four o’clock and a dreadful earthquake.’ When the evening of the dreaded night came, those who remained in their homes sat up till morning ; many people got into boats, and passed the time on the river, whilst others collected in crowds in the fields outside the town. When the night passed, and the city was not destroyed, according to prophecy, the people returned, feeling angry with themselves, ashamed of their credulity, and immediately had the false prophet committed to a place of confinement, fearing that he might again 24 370 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. exercise what he called his spiritual gift : and so the old course of life went on as before. Ladies of quality and men of fashion in those days went to fairs, dined in coffee-houses, and allowed themselves many liberties in such places. 4 1 was sent for the other day by Madam Lansdowne to usher her to the fair/ writes Captain Powell. ‘There was a party of Lord and Lady Southwell, Mr. Southwell, and all that family ; Lady Molesworth, Sir John Shad well, and his family, Lord Inchequin, and several other beaux to the number of twenty, who, after dining at the coffee-house, went to the fair. But I had the grace to slip from that overgrown company, and entertained poor humble Phillis with more satisfaction than those great ladies ; for ambition, everyone knows, was never my crime.’ But not only the diversions, but some- times the manners of the times were curious, according to our modern views. At one of my Lady Cobham’s fine assemblies, George Hervey (son of Lord Hervey) was leaning over a chair, with his hat in his hand, talking to some ladies, when his host, Lord Cobham, came up and spat in it, and then, turning to his friend Nugent, said, 4 Pay me my wager. ’ The latter had bet him a guinea he would insult Hervey in this manner, and that it would not be resented. Hervey asked him if he had further occasion for the hat. 4 Oh, I see you are angry/ said my lord. ‘Not very well pleased/ he answered. Next morn- ing the fine gentlemen who had made the bet called on Hervey, who refused to see them, but subsequently wrote asking to which of them he was to address himself for satisfaction ; when both sent him humble letters of apology. The Hon. Peter Wentworth gives an amusing account of a dinner to which he was invited by the Duke of Cumber- land, which affords another sample of the manners of the 4 TOO MUCH FOR THEM TO CARRY. 31 1 times. ‘When His Royal Highness retired, the young lords and gentlemen got up and cast a wistful eye upon a fine dessert of twenty dishes/ this gossip writes. ‘ I told them I was sure they were welcome to take what they pleased ; upon which they began modestly to nibble at some, but when Mr. Pointz came into the room, and confirmed what I had told them, and called for sheets of paper, they fell more boldly on, and soon demolished it all, sending their servants away with their packets. Mr. Pointz and I were well pleased to see how busy and nimble the young gentlemen were in making up and sending away their packets, for it was too much for them to carry.’ Another scion of the noble house of Strafford, writing to the Earl, also gives us a picture of social life. ‘ I am got into the newspapers/ he says, ‘ and I think it my duty to tell you how it came about. Several ladies of quality were dancing in a row by agreement, and would dance no lower than their own acquaintance. When Lady Grace and I came down, we stopt at one Mr. Turner, who very boisterously thrust into my place. I could do no less than tell him he might dance anywhere but in my place ; he told me he knew how to deal with me. “ If you do,” says I, “ pray say no more of it here : Til dispute it any- where and in what manner you please, but make no dis- turbance at present.” After this I thought myself bound in honour to ask the spark privately what he meant by saying he knew how to deal with me. He was upon the qui vive, so I desired we might very quietly meet in a private place, which the next day we did in a field by Chelsea, when I had the good fortune to come off victor by running him into the sword-arm. He dropt his sword, and said he could hold it no longer, upon which all our enmity was at an end/ A less bloodthirsty and more jovial account is given of 24 — 2 3 72 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. Lord Denbigh, Lord Craven, and Sir Fuller Shipworth, who, in attending the races at Rugby, got so drunk that they were forced to lie there all night. The next day these merry gentlemen, feeling an inclination to enjoy themselves further- more, did so forthwith in a right hearty and honest fashion by hiring a hay-cart, in which they, with eleven of their friends, drove to Lord Denbigh’s, with fiddles playing all the way before them ; and when they arrived at my Lord’s house, there was great firing of guns, and dancing, and much merry- making. Curious events happened at the playhouses sometimes ; amongst others was Lord Marchmont’s adventure, which vastly diverted the town. My Lord was an ambitious and impetuous politician, little devoted to the fairer sex, and all unskilled in the ways of love ; but being one night at the play, he espied a lady fair to see, in a box, and, without knowing even her name or interchanging a word with her, he became immediately enamoured. My Lord’s raptures were so undisguised, and his passion so expressive, that they were plainly seen by those around him. He lost no time in finding out her name, ‘ which was Crampton,’ and her station, which was that of a merchant’s daughter, and in a very few days she became Countess of Marchmont. Lady Harriet Herbert, daughter of the Marquis of Powis, was another victim of love in a theatre, for her lover was none other than John Beard, who sang in farces at Drury Lane play-house, and was, moreover, a scapegrace ; but my Lady Harriet cared little for that, and hastened to a parson to get married to the player. The clergyman, knowing her station, refused, and hastened to tell her relative, Lady Gage, who rushed for advice to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Her ladyship behaved on this occasion like one of Job’s comforters in telling her friend 4 honestly that, since the lady LADY HARRIET HERBERT 373 was capable of such amours, she did not doubt, if this was broke off, she would bestow her person and fortune on some hackney-coachman or chairman ;' and the end of the matter was that Lady Harriet and the farce-singer were made man and wife. Another woman of fashion, most notable in her day, my Lady Caroline Petersham, invariably attended the theatre with her favourite footman, Richard, whom she always kept in her box, in order that he might enjoy the play with com- fort. One night three gentlemen sought admission to my Lady's box, there being no room in any other part of the house, when Richard, with some impertinence, declined to let them in, on which one of the gallants caught him by the hair of his head, dragged him into the passage, and thrashed him soundly. My Lady was outrageous at such conduct being used towards her favourite, and sent for a warrant for the arrest of the beaux, which the Justice declined to grant. Robberies continued to be the terror of this reign, as of the former. A wit of the day said, ‘ One is forced to travel at noon as if one were going to battle.' Read’s Weekly News of July 24th, 1756, mentions that ‘ On Saturday last about six in the afternoon, David Garrick, Esq., was attacked by four or five fellows on foot within twenty yards of the Swan at Waltham Green ; but Mr. Garrick’s horse, taking fright at their sudden and tremendous bursts of oaths, ran away with him, by which means he escaped being robbed, and perhaps being very ill-treated.' Here are two extracts, similar to hundreds of others to be found in the columns of the same journal. ‘Wednesday morning, about one o’clock, Mr. Green, on his return home to his house in Upper Moorfields, was attacked by a fellow who presented a pistol to his head, and robbed him of his hat and peruke : it’s supposed, as the fellow did not take his 374 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . money, he saw some people near at hand, on which account he made off.’ 4 On Tuesday morning, early, as Mr. Lopez, only son to Mr. Lopez, an eminent Jew merchant, was coming from Stoke Newington, he was attacked in Cut-throat Lane by some villains, who robbed him of eighty pounds. These merciless ruffians, not satisfied with robbing the gentleman, cut and mangled him in such a cruel manner that he died of his wounds the same evening.’ Poor Miss Pelham, on coming home in a hired chair from the drawing-room on the night of a birthday celebration, was afraid of wearing her diamond earrings, which she had borrowed for the occasion, lest they should be stolen from her : in order to secure them from such a fate, she placed them under the seat, completely forgot them in getting out, and never saw them again. When she remembered her loss next morning she ‘was like to faint,’ and a friend ran for hartshorn. 4 Pho !’ said Mrs. Selwyn, ‘give her brilliant drops.’ General Wade was at a gambling-house one day, when he suddenly missed his snuff-box, which was both handsome and valuable. Everyone present, of course, denied taking it ; but he insisted on searching them, and did so until he came to the last man in the room, who refused to be searched unless the General would go into a private room alone with him. When there he told him he had been born a gentle- man, but was reduced, and lived by what bits he could pick up, and by the fragments he sometimes received from the waiters. 4 1 have now half a fowl in my pocket,’ he said, 4 and I was afraid of being exposed : now, sir, you may search me.’ The military man was touched, and gave him a hundred pounds. In return the needy gentleman made him discover his snuff-box, which he had believed lost, lying safely in one of his pockets. HIGH STAKES. 375 Gambling was also common in those days, and was, in- deed, a fashionable vice, much practised in the Court circle. The King and the royal family played almost nightly ; and on one occasion there was the sum of^*n,ooo on the table before His Majesty ; when the King won three guineas, and the Duke of Cumberland ^3,400. This was on a Twelfth Night, when the Court always played for high stakes. It was also on this festival that, some years before Queen Caroline died, Lord Chesterfield having won a larger sum than he thought safe to carry home, left it with Mrs. Howard, then Lady Suffolk. The Queen, watching him through an obscure window looking on to a dark passage lighted by a single lamp, inferred that an intimacy existed between them, and Lord Chesterfield, for years afterwards, lost all chances of preferment or royal favour. It was also on a Twelfth night that Sir John Bland and a friend of his named Offey played ; when the King paid them considerable attention, and they lost the sums of ^1,400 and ^1,300 respectively ; but were, perhaps, recompensed by His Majesty’s unusually agreeable manner to them at his levee next morning. Sir John, indeed, gambled away the whole of his fortune at hazard, and one night lost to Jansen, the famous player, the sum of ^32,000 ; though he regained the greater part of it before standing up. With the Duke of Cumberland gambling became a passion, and it was said that, when Lord Sandwich wanted to make his court to him, he carried a box and dice in his pocket when they went out hunting, so that they threw a main if opportunity permitted. Some of the members of White’s Club, amongst others Lords Bath, Lonsdale, and Coke, used to go down to Richmond, where they played for high stakes, on Saturdays and Sundays. When the latter became en- gaged to Lady Mary Campbell, much against that young 376 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. damsel’s will, she cried her pretty eyes out, and declared her future lord loved none of her sex except the four queens in a pack of cards ; hearing which, he promised, for her sweet sake, to abandon White's ; and so they were married, and lived as unhappily as might be. After a reign extending over forty and a life of seventy- seven years, the King, whose sight and hearing had begun to fail, died suddenly and without pain. On the night pre- vious to his death he had gone to bed in perfect health, and, as was his habit, rose next morning at six o'clock and called for his chocolate. Soon after he had drunk it, his valet-de- chambre, hearing a noise, went into his room and found him on the floor. He had cut his face in falling against a bureau, the ventricle of his heart had burst, and, with a gasp, he expired. Lady Yarmouth, the Princess Amelia, and the surgeons were immediately sent for, but His Sacred Majesty had departed, and there was only left so much clay, before which a courtier would bend his knee, and tremble, and smile, and fawn never more. When his will was opened, it was found that he had left ^50,000 between the three chil- dren who survived him — the Duke of Cumberland, the Princess Amelia, and the Princess of Hesse. The interest of this sum was to be paid to the two Princesses during their lives, and the survivor was to have the principal. The rest of his private fortune he left to the Duke of Cumberland) including his jewels, which the Duke soon after sold to the new King for ^50, 000. To his mistress, Lady Yarmouth, His Majesty left ‘a strong box,' which was estimated to con- tain ^11,000. The Countess promptly retired with her gains to Hanover, where she died five years afterwards. At the time of her death, in 1765, she had drawn her pension of ^4.000 a year for twenty-six years, which, with the sum THE WORLD WENT ON. 377 stated to have been left her in the strong box, amounted to 115,000 paid her since her elevation to the peerage. His Majesty left orders that one side of his coffin and one side of the Queen’s should be removed, so that their ashes might mingle together, a desire that must have been begotten of much tenderness for her whom he loved so well and treated so shamefully. These directions were, it appears, faithfully carried out. Mr. Milman, the Prebendary of Westminster, when superintending in 1837 the removal of the body of a child of the King of Hanover from the vault in which George II.’s family were buried, saw laid against the wall the two sides of their Majesties’ coffins which had been withdrawn. It was only a day or two before his death that the King was by accident brought close to his old mistress. It hap- pened that Lady Suffolk had gone to Kensington to pay a visit, and suddenly found herself hemmed in by a number of coaches that had brought their occupants to a review which she was not aware was being held. She passed close to the royal carriage, and saw the King sitting by her suc- cessor, Lady Yarmouth, but His Majesty neither saw her, nor was made aware of her presence. Now that the King was dead, after a long life wasted in grossness and self-indulgence, there remained nothing to be done, so far as he was concerned, save to take the body and lay it in the grand old Abbey, where the remains of so many kings, and queens, and princes, and royal and noble dames, and great warriors and illustrious statesmen have slowly crumbled into dust. For days and nights his late Majesty rested in his coffin under a canopy of purple velvet, the chamber being lighted by silver lamps and vast chandeliers, also of silver. Whilst he lay there, the world went on as usual; the new 378 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS . King was proclaimed, the courtiers and politicians were busy with fresh schemes of hope and favour, my Lord Archbishop of Canterbury at their head. The good man was scarcely ever seen out of the circle round the young King. In his haste to get there one day, he trod on the Duke of Cumber- land’s foot. 4 My lord/ said His Royal Highness hastily, £ if your Grace is in such a hurry to make your court, that is the way.’ The wits made puns and bon-mois regarding the King’s death and Miss Chudleigh’s tears for his loss ; and the Lord Mayor laid the first stone of Blackfriars Bridge. Poor Lady Coventry, who had told the King that she most wished of all sights to see a coronation, died a few days before the opportunity of gratifying her wishes occurred. Then came the King’s funeral, a very graphic account of which Horace Walpole has left us. He walked as 4 a rag of quality 7 in the solemn procession, being anxious to see it, and considering this the best way of doing so. To lend more solemnity to the occasion, the funeral took place at night, moving 4 through a line of Foot Guards, every seventh man bearing a torch, the Horse Guards lining the outside, their officers, with drawn sabres and crape sashes, on horse- back, the drums muffled, the bells tolling, and minute-guns — all this was very solemn. But the charm was the entrance of the Abbey, where we were received by the Dean and Chapter in rich robes, the choir and almsmen bearing torches, the whole Abbey so illuminated that one saw it to greater advantage than by day ; the tombs, long aisles, and fretted roof all appearing distinctly and with the happiest chiar- oscuro. There wanted nothing but incense, and little chapels here and there, with priests saying mass for the repose of the defunct ; yet one could not complain of its not being Catho- lic enough. When we came to the Chapel of Henry VII., all solemnity and decorum ceased ; no order was observed, ONLY A LAY FIGURE. 379 people sat or stood where they could or would ; the Yeomen of the Guard were crying out for help, oppressed by the immense weight of the coffin the Bishop read sadly, and blundered in the prayers ; the fine chapter, Man that is horn of a woman , was chanted, not read, and the anthem, besides being immeasurably tedious, would have served as well for a nuptial. The real serious part was the figure of the Duke of Cumberland, heightened by a thousand melan- choly circumstances. He had a dark brown adonis, and a cloak of black cloth with a train of five yards. ‘ Attending the funeral of a father could not be pleasant : his leg extremely bad, yet forced to stand upon it near two hours, his face bloated and distorted with his late paralytic stroke, which has affected, too, one of his eyes, and placed over the mouth of the vault, into which, in all probability, he must himself soon descend ; think how unpleasant a situa- tion ! He bore it all with a firm and unaffected counten- ance. This grave scene was fully contrasted by the burlesque Duke of Newcastle. He fell into a fit of crying the moment he came into the chapel, and flung himself back in a stall, the Archbishop hovering over him with a smelling-bottle; but in two minutes his curiosity got the better of his hypocrisy, and he ran about the chapel with his glass, to spy who was or was not there ; then returned for fear of catching cold, and the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat, felt himself weighed down, and, turning round, found it was the Duke of Newcastle standing upon his train to avoid the chill of the marble. ’ In this manner His Majesty was laid at rest. As a King he was little more than a lay figure, as his Ministers ruled the nation, which, as a foreigner, he disliked. Sir Robert Walpole said he was ‘ as great a political coward as ever wore 380 COURT LIFE BELOW STAIRS. a crown, and as much afraid of losing it/ And Lord Ches- terfield declared that, ‘ If the people had a mind effectually to prevent the Pretender from ever obtaining the crown, he should be made Elector of Hanover ; for the English people would never fetch another King from thence/ THE END, GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LD., ST. JOHN’S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL, LONDON.