LEICESTER HOUSE AND RICHMOND LODGE.
1718–1719.
Leicester House, “the pouting place of princes,” as Pennant wittily
called it, is chiefly known in history as the residence of two
successive Princes of Wales of the Hanoverian dynasty who were at feud
with the head of the House, but it has other titles to fame. It was
built in the reign of James the First by Lord Leicester, the famous
ambassador, as his town house, and in subsequent reigns it became the
residence, for short or long periods, of many celebrated personages,
such as the patriot, Algernon Sidney, the Queen of Bohemia, during the
last years of her life, Peter the Great, on his visit to England, and
Prince Eugene of Savoy. It was situated on the north side of Leicester
Fields, as the square was then called, and stood a little way back from
the road, with gardens behind it. It was a long, two-storied house,
shut off from the square by a large court-yard, and in front of the
court-yard, on either side of the entrance gate, was a low range of
shops. Inside, the house was large and spacious, with a fine staircase,
and handsome reception rooms on the first floor, but externally it
was ugly, and the neighbourhood was hardly an ideal place for a royal
residence. Leicester Fields was an ill-lighted and not very well-kept
district; in the previous reign it had an evil reputation as being
a favourite place for duelling, and that band of wild bloods, the
Mohocks, had raced about it after nightfall, wrenching knockers and
slitting noses, to the terror of all peaceable citizens.
But when the Prince and Princess of Wales repaired to Leicester House,
Leicester Fields soon became the fashionable part of the town. At night
it was crowded with coaches and sedan-chairs, bearers and runners,
linkmen with flambeaux and gorgeously liveried footmen. Lords and men
of fashion in gold-laced coats, with enormous periwigs, and ladies in
hoops and powder, tripped across the court-yard of Leicester House
at all hours of the day and far into the night, for the Prince and
Princess of Wales kept a brilliant court here, especially in the first
years of their occupation. The discontented among the politicians,
especially the Whigs, rallied around the Prince. “The most promising of
the young lords and gentlemen of that party,” says Horace Walpole, “and
the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new Court
of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The apartment of the bedchamber
woman-in-waiting became the fashionable evening _rendezvous_ of the
most distinguished wits and beauties.” A drawing-room was held every
morning, and three times a week receptions took place in the evening,
which were thronged by the most elegant beaux, the most accomplished
wits, and the most beautiful of the ladies of quality. Balls, routs
and assemblies were the order of the day, or rather of the night, at
Leicester House, and on the evenings when there were none of these
entertainments, the Prince and Princess showed themselves at the
theatre, the opera, or some other public resort, always followed by a
splendid suite. Leicester House became a synonym for brilliancy, and if
it was the wish of the Prince and Princess to outshine the old King’s
court, they quickly achieved it. The fashion they set of a court of
pleasure was soon followed by many of the nobility, who sought to excel
each other in the splendour of their entertainments. At no time had
the social life of London been more brilliant, or more varied, than
in these early days at Leicester House. Lord Chesterfield, that most
polished of courtiers, writes of this period: “Balls, assemblies and
masquerades have taken the place of dull, formal visiting-days, and
the women are more agreeable triflers than they were designed. Puns
are extremely in vogue, and the licence very great. The variation of
three or four letters in a word breaks no squares, in so much that an
indifferent punster may make a very good figure in the best companies.”
He was as ready with puns as Lord Hervey was with epigrams, or Lord
Bath with verses.
Lord Chesterfield--he was Lord Stanhope then, but we use the title by
which he was afterwards famous--was about twenty-five years of age. He
had proved himself at Cambridge an accomplished classical scholar, and
on leaving the university he made the then fashionable tour of Europe.
He wasted a good deal of money gaming at the Hague--a vice to which
he was much given--and then went to Paris, where, as he was young,
handsome and wealthy, he achieved a great success. “I shall not give
you my opinion of the French,” he writes, “as I am very often taken
for one; and many a Frenchman has paid me the highest compliment he
thinks he can pay to any one, which is, ‘Sir, you are just like one of
us’. I talk a great deal; I am very loud and peremptory; I sing and
dance as I go along; and, lastly, I spend a monstrous deal of money in
powder, feathers, white gloves, etc.” When he came back to England he
was appointed a gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales,
and at the court of Leicester House he was one of the most shining
ornaments. Johnson speaks of him as “a wit among lords and a lord among
wits”. He warmly espoused the cause of the Prince against his father,
and he often delighted the Princess by ridiculing the dull court of
the King, and especially the mistresses, whom he described as “two
considerable specimens of the King’s bad taste and strong stomach”. The
Princess was mocking one day at Kielmansegge’s painted face. “She looks
young--if one may judge from her complexion,” she said, “not more than
eighteen or twenty.” “Yes, madam,” replied Chesterfield, “eighteen
or twenty stone.” And then he went on to say: “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
the dignity of the ox. Some succeed, and others--burst.” Whereat the
Princess and her ladies laughed heartily. But Chesterfield’s wit was
a two-edged sword, which he sometimes directed against the Princess
herself, mimicking her gestures and her foreign accent the moment her
back was turned. She soon became aware through her ladies, who, of
course, told tales, that she was mocked at by him, and once she warned
him, half in jest and half in earnest. “You have more wit, my lord,
than I,” she said, “but I have a bitter tongue, and always repay my
debts with exorbitant interest”--a speech which he had later reason
to remember. Of course he denied, with exquisite grace, that he could
possibly have dared to ridicule the most charming of princesses, but
Caroline did not trust him. His sarcasms made him many enemies, though
his great object, he declares, when a young man, was “to make every man
I met like me, and every woman love me”.
Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, the soldier and statesman, also
came to Leicester House from time to time. His days of adventure were
now over, so he had leisure to indulge in his love of gallantry and
the arts. He tempered his wit with a vein of philosophy. He affected
a superiority over the ordinary conventions of life, and never lost
an opportunity of showing his contempt for fops and fools. One day,
seeing a dancing-master picking his way along with pearl-coloured silk
stockings, he was so irritated at the sight of this epicene being,
that he leaped out of his coach and ran at him with drawn sword,
driving the man and his stockings into the mud. As this was an age of
over-dressed beaux, Peterborough would sometimes show his disregard
for outward appearances by going to the opposite extreme. Mary Lepel,
then Lady Hervey, wrote once from Bath: “Lord Peterborough is here,
and has been so some time, though, by his dress one would believe he
had not designed to make any stay; for he wears boots all day, and as
I hear, must do so, having brought no shoes with him. It is a comical
sight to see him with his blue ribbon and star and a cabbage under each
arm, or a chicken in his hand, which, after he himself has purchased
from market, he carries home for his dinner.”[87] If we may believe
the Duchess of Orleans, Peterborough was in love with the Princess of
Wales, and often told her so, but she certainly did not encourage him.
Her conduct was a model in this respect, notwithstanding that the King
about this time spread many injurious reports against her: “He will get
laughed at by everybody for doing this,” says the Duchess, “for the
Princess has a spotless reputation”.[88]
A more frequent figure at Leicester House than Peterborough was John,
Lord Hervey, eldest son of the first Earl of Bristol, who was a
gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince, and a great favourite with
the Princess of Wales. He was considered an exquisite beau and wit, and
showed himself in after life to be possessed of considerable ability,
both as writer[89] and orator. He was an accomplished courtier, and
possessed some of the worst vices of courtiers; he was double-faced,
untrustworthy and ungrateful. He had a frivolous and effeminate
character; he was full of petty spite and meannesses, and given to
painting his face and other abominations, which earned for him the
nickname of “Lord Fanny”. He is described by some of the poets of
the time as a man possessed of great personal beauty; the Duchess of
Marlborough was of an opposite opinion. “He has certainly parts and
wit,” she writes, “but is the most wretched, profligate man that ever
was born, besides ridiculous; a painted face, and not a tooth in his
head.” Despite his affectations and his constitutional ill-health, he
had great success with the fair sex, and two or three years later he
wedded one of the beauties of Leicester House, the incomparable Mary
Lepel.
The eccentric Duchess of Buckingham, “mad with pride,” was also wont to
attend the drawing-rooms at Leicester House, not because she had any
affection for the Prince and Princess of Wales--on the contrary, she
hated the Hanoverian family, and was always plotting against them--but
because she thought that by going she would annoy the King. She was
the acknowledged daughter of James the Second, by Katherine Sedley,
Countess of Dorchester, and she was inordinately proud of her Stuart
ancestry, though Horace Walpole, who was among her enemies, declares
that her mother said to her: “You need not be so vain, daughter, you
are not the King’s child, but Colonel Graham’s”. Graham’s daughter, the
Countess of Berkshire, was supposed to be very like the duchess, and he
himself was not unwilling to claim paternity, though she stoutly denied
the suggestion. “Well, well,” said Graham, “kings are all powerful, and
one must not complain, but certainly the same man was the father of
those two women.” On the other hand, James the Second always treated
the duchess as his child, bestowed upon her the rank and precedence
of a duke’s daughter, and gave her leave to bear the royal arms with
a slight variation. She first married James, Earl of Anglesey, and
later became the third wife of the magnificent John Sheffield, Duke of
Buckingham, and survived him. At Buckingham House the wealthy duchess
lived in semi-regal state, and she made journeys to Paris, which were
like royal progresses, to visit the church where lay the unburied
body of James the Second, and to weep over it. She refused to visit
Versailles unless the French Court received her with the honours due
to a princess of the blood royal, which, of course, were not granted
her. She had her opera box in Paris decorated in the same way as those
set apart for crowned heads, and she sometimes appeared at the opera
in London in royal robes of red velvet and ermine. On one occasion,
when she wished to drive through Richmond Park, she was told by the
gatekeeper that she must not pass as the road was reserved for royalty.
“Tell the King,” she cried indignantly, “that if it is reserved for
royalty, I have more right to go through it than he has.” She was
inordinately vain, and had a great love of admiration and society,
always wishing to see and be seen.
But if the court of the Prince and Princess of Wales had consisted
only of duchesses, young noblemen and beautiful women of fashion,
it would have been much like any other court. What gave Leicester
House its peculiar distinction was the presence of poets, writers
and learned men, who were drawn thither by the Princess. The Prince,
like his father, had a great contempt for men of letters, and for
literature generally. He did not love “boetry,” as he called it, and
once when Lord Hervey was composing a poem he said to him testily that
such an occupation was unbecoming to a man of his rank; he should
leave the scribbling of verses to “little Mr. Pope”. But Caroline
thought differently, and she endeavoured at Leicester House to set
up a court modelled upon the one she had known in her early years at
Lützenburg, and she held, as far as she could, the same réunions.
Learned and scientific men were more familiar figures at courts in
those days than now. Louis the Fourteenth had set the fashion among
royal personages for appreciating “learned incense”. In the latter part
of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth century the
more famous writers were to be met as a matter of course in the highest
social and political circles, and the position of men of letters never
stood higher in England than during the reign of Anne. Tories and
Whigs vied with one another in winning over to their side the ablest
writers of the day. It is not contended that this advanced the higher
interests of literature, but an age which produced Pope, Addison,
Swift, Congreve, Defoe, Gay and Steele (to name only a few) cannot
be considered barren. There was an intimate link between diplomacy
and letters. Matthew Prior, in return for scribbling some indifferent
verses, rose to become ambassador at Paris; Addison, who undertook a
good deal of diplomatic work, became eventually Secretary of State;
Gay had dabbled in diplomacy; and Steele, from being a trooper in the
Guards, was advanced to a lucrative position in the Civil Service.
Many men of letters, at the advice of their patrons, took Holy Orders,
and the Church was regarded as a convenient way of providing for their
necessities; Swift was an instance of this, and many another besides.
The press, as we understand it to-day, was then only in its infancy;
but in the patronage extended by statesmen and noble lords who wished
to play the part of Mæcenas to pamphleteers, playwrights, poetasters
and so forth, we see the first recognition of what is now known as
the power of the press. When George the First ascended the throne,
nearly all the cleverest pamphleteers were Tories or Jacobites, and
the King was indifferent whether they were so or not. But Caroline
saw the necessity of employing some able writers on the side of the
dynasty, and so counteracting the Jacobite publications. In pursuance
of this policy, after the Jacobite rising, Addison was employed by the
Government to write up, in _The Freeholder_, the Hanoverian succession
and Whig policy, and he was rewarded shortly after by a lucrative
appointment. His social ambition led him to marry the Dowager Countess
of Warwick, a haughty virago, who treated him more like a lackey than
a husband. Both Addison and the countess were often to be seen at
Leicester House.
Pope, who had just had his famous quarrel with Addison, often came to
Leicester House, and was on friendly terms with Mrs. Howard and many
of the maids of honour. He was probably brought before the notice of
the Princess of Wales by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu before she left for
Constantinople. He had already achieved fame by his _Rape of the Lock_
and his _Pastorals_, and he had published the first four books of his
translation of the _Iliad_. He was a Roman Catholic, had entered upon
his career as a Tory with a leaning to Jacobitism; his patrons had
been Oxford, Harcourt and Bolingbroke, all fallen statesmen now. But
these things made no difference to Caroline, who quickly recognised
the poet’s genius, and with her genius stood before every other
consideration.
Gay, the poet, found his way here too, careless, good-humoured, popular
with every one. He had first made Caroline’s acquaintance at Hanover,
whither he went as secretary to Lord Clarendon on his special mission
just before the death of Queen Anne. He wrote to Swift from there,
speaking of himself as strutting in silver and blue through the clipped
avenues of Herrenhausen, perfecting himself in the diplomatic arts
“of bowing profoundly, speaking deliberately, and wearing both sides
of my long periwig before”. He was a very necessitous poet, always in
difficulties, and he hit upon a plan of making a little money, and
at the same time winning the favour of the Court. He wrote a long
poem to the Princess of Wales, in which he mingled her praises with
his necessities. The only practical result of this effusion was that
Caroline went to Drury Lane to honour the first performance of Gay’s
next effort, which he described as a tragi-comi-pastoral-farce, “_What
d’ye call it?_” a burlesque on the plays of the time; it was a failure,
notwithstanding this distinguished patronage. Gay at this time was a
far greater social success than a literary one, and the maids of honour
especially delighted in his sunny, cheery presence.
Tickell, the poet-laureate, a favourite of Addison, also paid his court
to the Princess, and wrote odes to the Royal Family, notably his _Royal
Progress_, but Caroline did not care for him, despite his fulsome
verses. Voltaire and Swift did not come until later, towards the end
of the reign. Arbuthnot, the fashionable physician and the friend of
Chesterfield, Pulteney and Mrs. Howard, was often seen at Leicester
House, though he no longer held a position at court, and through him
Caroline made the acquaintance of many of the rising writers of the
day. Arbuthnot was the “friend, doctor and adviser of all the wits”.
Pope wrote of him in dedicating one of his volumes:--
Friend of my life, which did not you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song.
Of course the broad-viewed Dr. Samuel Clarke came to Leicester House
to continue Caroline’s weekly discussions on metaphysical, theological
and philosophical subjects. He brought with him many of his way of
thinking, notably Whiston, who had been compelled to resign his
Cambridge professorship in consequence of having written a book to
show that the accepted doctrine of the Trinity was erroneous. He then
came to live in London, and started a society for promoting what he
called “Primitive Christianity”. This society held weekly meetings at
his house in Cross Street, Hatton Garden, and it is very likely that
Caroline sometimes attended these gatherings _incognito_. Whiston was
extremely plain-spoken, and often at the Princess’s discussions used
her roughly, treating her remarks with contempt; but Caroline took his
reproofs good-humouredly, and helped him all she could.
Newton, an old man then, came sometimes to Leicester House, carried
across in his chair from his house in St. Martin’s Street, hard by.
Caroline had a great veneration and love for him, and she always gave
him the first place at her gatherings, and listened with reverence
to all he had to say. She often saw Newton in private, and consulted
him about the education of her children. It was Caroline who made the
remark, absurdly credited to George the First, that it was the greatest
glory of the House of Hanover to have such subjects as Newton in one
country and Leibniz in another.
These intellectual friendships were the delight of Caroline’s life,
yet she had frequently to interrupt them to amuse her pompous little
husband, and enter into the brilliant inanities of the court. She
combined with these higher joys a keen sense of more material
pleasures, and she loved music and the dance and the gaming table as
much as any of her courtiers. These grave, learned and scientific men
did not follow the Princess to her crowded saloons, but her assemblies
always contained a sprinkling of the more famous men of letters.
Literature became the fashion of the hour, and Leicester House had
quite a literary atmosphere. Of course all the witty young noblemen and
poets set their talents to work to praise the charms of the Princess
and her ladies. “Characters” were all the vogue, and every lady, from
the Princess down to the youngest maid of honour, had her character
elaborately written in prose, or was immortalised in verse. If all the
poetry written about Caroline and her ladies were collected, it would
fill a large volume.
The most be-rhymed of all the beauties after the Princess was Mary
Lepel. The honours were divided between her and Mary Bellenden; an old
ballad runs:--
What pranks are played behind the scenes,
And who at Court the belle--
Some swear it is the Bellenden,
And others say la Pell.
After Mary Lepel married Lord Hervey, Voltaire, who met her during his
visit to England, celebrated her beauty in English verse, as follows:--
Hervey, would you know the passion
You have kindled in my breast?
Trifling is the inclination
That by words can be expressed.
In my silence see the lover;
True love is by silence known;
In my eyes you’ll best discover,
All the power of your own.
Gay wrote of her:--
Youth’s youngest daughter, sweet Lepel.
Miss Lepel was married secretly to Lord Hervey, and when her marriage
became known, Lords Chesterfield and Bath indited a string of verses,
and sent them to her under the name of a begging poet. The young lady
sent the usual fee, and when the authorship was disclosed she was much
“miffed,” not at the licence of the verses, to which she might well
have objected, but to being “bit,” to use the fashionable slang of the
period. Some of the verses are unquotable, others run as follows:--
Bright Venus yet never saw bedded
So perfect a beau and a belle,
As when Hervey the handsome was wedded
To the beautiful Molly Lepel.
So powerful her charms, and so moving,
They would warm an old monk in his cell,
Should the Pope himself ever go roaming,
He would follow dear Molly Lepel.
Had I Hanover, Bremen, and Verden,
And likewise the Duchy of Zell!
I’d part with them all for a farthing,
To have my dear Molly Lepel.
Should Venus now rise from the ocean,
And naked appear in her shell,
She would not cause half the emotion,
That we feel for dear Molly Lepel.
Old Orpheus, that husband so civil,
He followed his wife down to hell,
And who would not go to the devil,
For the sake of dear Molly Lepel.
In a bed you have seen banks of roses;
Would you know a more delicate smell,
Ask the fortunate man who reposes
On the bosom of Molly Lepel.
Or were I the King of Great Britain
To choose a minister well,
And support the throne that I sit on,
I’d have under me Molly Lepel.
Mary Bellenden rivalled Mary Lepel in loveliness. Gay writes of her in
his _Ballad of Damon and Cupid_:--
So well I’m known at Court
None ask where Cupid dwells;
But readily resort,
To Bellenden’s or Lepel’s.
And again he mentions her and her sister Margaret in his _Welcome to
Pope from Greece_:--
Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land,
And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.
Like many of the Princess’s young ladies, Mary Bellenden was often in
want of money. On one occasion she writes to Mrs. Howard from Bath:
“Oh Gad, I am so sick of bills; for my part I believe I shall never be
able to hear them mentioned without casting up my accounts--bills are
_accounts_, you know. I do not know how your bills go in London, but
I am sure mine are not dropped, for I paid one this morning as long
as my arm and as broad as my ----. I intend to send you a letter of
attorney, to enable you to dispose of my goods before I may leave this
place--such is my condition.”[90]
[Illustration: LEICESTER HOUSE, LEICESTER SQUARE, TEMP. GEORGE I.]
The Prince of Wales, who was early attracted by Mary Bellenden’s
charms, made addresses to her which she did not reciprocate. The Prince
was not accustomed to having his advances slighted, and knowing that
Mary Bellenden had her little bills, as a hint by no means delicate,
he sat down one evening by her side, and taking out his purse began to
count his money. The lively Bellenden bore it for a while, but when he
was about to tell his guineas all over again, she cried: “Sir, I cannot
bear it; if you count your money any more, I will go out of the room”.
This remonstrance had so little effect that he proceeded to press his
attentions upon her, and jingled the gold in her ear. Thereupon she
lost her temper and knocked the purse out of his hand, scattering the
guineas far and wide, and ran out of the room. In other ways, too, she
showed her disapproval of his advances, for, writing later to Mrs.
Howard, about a new maid of honour, she says: “I hope you will put
her a little in the way of behaving before the Princess, such as not
turning her back; and one thing runs mightily in my head, which is,
crossing her arms, _as I did to the Prince_, and told him I was not
cold, but I liked to stand so”.[91] Mary Bellenden had a great bulwark
to her virtue in the fact that she was deeply in love with Colonel John
Campbell, many years later the Duke of Argyll, who was then one of the
Prince’s grooms of the bedchamber. The Prince discovered that she was
in love, though he did not know with whom, and, so far from showing
resentment, he told her that if she would promise not to marry without
his knowledge, he would do what he could for her and her lover. But
Mary Bellenden distrusted the Prince’s good faith, and a year or two
later secretly married Campbell. The Prince did not dismiss Colonel
Campbell from court, but he never forgave Mary, and whenever she came
to a drawing-room, he would whisper reproaches in her ear, or shake his
finger at her and scowl. The lady did not care, as she had married the
man she loved.
Even the prudish Miss Meadows found a poet, for Doddington in one of
his trifles couples her name with that of Lady Hervey:--
As chaste as Hervey or Miss Meadows,
and Pope, in some lines addressed to Sophy Howe, introduces Meadows in
no amiable light:--
What is prudery?
’Tis a beldam
Seen with wit and beauty seldom,
’Tis a fear that starts at shadows;
’Tis (no ’tisn’t) like Miss Meadows;
’Tis a virgin hard of feature,
Old and void of all good nature,
Lean and fretful; would seem wise
Yet plays the fool before she dies.
’Tis an ugly envious shrew
That rails at dear Lepel and you.
Sophia Howe, whose wild spirits were responsible for many lively
scenes at Leicester House, often figured in verse. Gay alludes to her
giddiness when he says:--
Perhaps Miss Howe came there by chance,
Nor knows with whom, nor why she comes along.
This young lady’s flightiness is shown in her letters. She thought
no life worth living except the life at court, and when she was in
the country on a visit to her mother, she wrote to Mrs. Howard: “You
will think, I suppose, that I have had no flirtation since I am 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 influence and fatigue of a court life, and intimated
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. I think this is very well advanced for the short time I have been
here.”[92] And again, when she was anxious to return to Leicester
House, she writes: “Pray, desire my Lord Lumley[93] to send the coach
to Godalming next Wednesday, that I may go off on Thursday, which will
be a happy day, for I am very weary of The Holt, though I bragged to
Carteret[94] that I was very well pleased.... If my Lord Lumley does
not send the coach, he never shall have the least flirtation more with
me. Perhaps he may be glad of me for a _summer suit_ next year at
Richmond, when he has no other business upon his days. Next Wednesday
the coach must come, or I die.... 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.”[95]
Alas! poor Miss Howe did not long remain a maid of honour. Soon after
these letters were written she was betrayed into a fatal indiscretion;
she was expelled from court, and died a few years later of a broken
heart. Her fall made a great sensation in the Princess’s household, so
great that it shows that such cases were uncommon, for however much
the maids of honour might flirt, and however free might be their wit
and conversation, like their mistress, they kept their virtue intact.
Poor Sophia’s betrayer was Anthony Lowther, brother of Lord Lonsdale;
he was base enough not to marry her. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in
a poem written nearly twenty years later, introduces the tale of this
unfortunate girl’s ruin:--
Poor girl! she once was thought extremely fair,
Till worn by love, and tortured by despair.
Her pining cheek betray’d the inward smart;
Her breaking looks foretold a breaking heart.
At Leicester House her passion first began,
And Nunty Lowther was a proper man:
But when the Princess did to Kew remove,
She could not bear the absence of her love,
But flew away....
Mrs. Howard was the most be-rhymed of the more mature ladies. Lord
Peterborough penned her praises in both prose and verse. Perhaps the
best known of his effusions is the poem beginning:--
I said to my heart, between sleeping and waking,
“Thou wild thing that always art leaping or aching,
What black, brown, or fair, in what clime, in what nation,
By turns has not taught thee a pit-a-pat-ation,”
and ending:--
Oh wonderful creature! a woman of reason!
Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season;
When so easy to guess who this angel should be,
Would one think Mrs. Howard ne’er dreamt it was she?
Pope, who held her in high esteem, coins a compliment even out of her
deafness:--
When all the world conspires to praise her
The woman’s deaf, and does not hear.
And Gay:--
Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies.
Mrs. Howard continued to be the recipient of the Prince’s attentions
in the intervals of his unsuccessful overtures to Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, Mary Bellenden and others; yet she conducted herself with
so much discretion, and was so popular, that every one about the
court, from the Princess downwards, conspired to ignore the _liaison_
existing between them. But Mrs. Howard’s spendthrift husband was so
inconsiderate as to interrupt this harmony. He held the post of a
gentleman of the bedchamber to the King, and under the new rule the
ladies whose husbands were in the King’s service were to quit the
service of the Princess. Mrs. Howard had refused, but Howard now
insisted that his wife should leave Leicester House and return to
him. Howard’s action was instigated by the King, who saw in this an
opportunity of annoying the Prince and Princess of Wales. Mrs. Howard
again refused to obey, and the aggrieved husband went one night,
half-tipsy, to Leicester House, and noisily demanded his wife. He was
promptly turned out by the lackeys, but the scandal went abroad. Howard
then adopted a loftier tone, and made an appeal to the Archbishop
of Canterbury, beseeching his Grace to use his influence to induce
his wife to return to her lawful spouse. Thereon the aged Archbishop
wrote a lengthy letter to the Princess, pointing out the obligations
of the married state, the duties of the wife and the privileges of the
husband, as laid down by St. Peter and St. Paul, and asking her to send
Mrs. Howard back to her husband. The Princess took no notice of this
homily, and Mrs. Howard remained where she was.
Howard, therefore, went to Leicester House and forced himself into the
Princess’s presence. He made a great scene--he declared that he would
have his wife even if he had to pull her out of the Princess’s coach.
Caroline spiritedly told him “to do it if he dared”. “Though,” she said
years later, when relating this scene to Lord Hervey, “I was horribly
afraid of him (for we were _tête-à-tête_) all the while I was thus
playing the bully. What added to my fear on this occasion was that as I
knew him to be _so brutal_, as well as a little mad, and seldom quite
sober, so I did not think it impossible 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, _je pris mon grand ton de
Reine, et je disois_, ‘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 resolution was positively neither to force his wife to go to him, if
she had no mind to it, nor to keep her if she had.” Howard blustered
and swore without any respect for the Princess’s presence, and declared
that he would go to the King. Whereupon the Princess said: “The King
has nothing to do with my servants, and for that reason you may save
yourself the trouble.” So Howard took his leave.
Poor Mrs. Howard was in great alarm, as she dreaded to return to her
husband, who had neglected her and used her cruelly. Some of the lords
about Leicester House formed a guard to protect her against forcible
abduction, and when the Prince’s court moved from Leicester House to
Richmond for the summer, as etiquette did not permit her to travel in
the same coach as the Princess, it was arranged that she should slip
away quietly, and so evade her husband. Therefore, on the day the court
set out, the Duke of Argyll and Lord Islay, who were her great friends,
conveyed Mrs. Howard very early in the morning to Richmond in a private
coach. But this state of affairs could not continue. If Howard carried
the matter into the law courts, he could force his wife to return to
him, willy-nilly, and the spectacle of the Prince and Princess of Wales
defying the law by detaining her was not one which could be allowed.
Therefore, after a good deal of negotiation, the matter was settled
by Howard’s allowing his wife to remain in the Prince’s household in
return for the sum of £1,200 a year, paid quarterly in advance. He had
never really wished her to come back, and the whole dispute at last
narrowed itself into an attempt to extort money on the one hand, and
to withhold it on the other--a dispute far from creditable to any one
concerned in it.
As the royal palaces of Windsor, Hampton Court and Kensington were now
closed to the Prince and Princess of Wales, it was necessary that they
should have some country house, and Richmond was fixed upon as their
summer residence. Richmond Lodge, situated in the little, or old park
of Richmond, had been the residence of Ormonde before his flight, and
he had lived here in great luxury. “It is a perfect Trianon,” says a
contemporary writer; “everything in it, and about it, is answerable to
the grandeur and magnificence of its great master.” The house itself
was not very large; it is described as “a pleasant residence for a
country gentleman,” but the gardens were beautiful. Ormonde’s estates
were forfeited for high treason, and Richmond Lodge came into the
market. The Prince of Wales bought it for £6,000 from the Commissioners
of the Confiscated Estates Court, though not without difficulty, for
the King endeavoured to prevent his obtaining it.
Richmond was much more in the country then than now, and there were
very few houses between it and Piccadilly, except Kensington Palace.
The road thither was lonely, and infested with highwaymen and dangerous
characters. At night it was very unsafe. Bridget Carteret, one of the
maids of honour, when attending the Princess on one of these journeys,
had her coach stopped by highwaymen, and was forced to give up all her
jewels.[96] The Princess gave her a diamond necklace and gold watch
in place of the trinkets she had lost. There were other drawbacks,
too, for we read: “Richmond Lodge having been very much pestered with
vermin, one John Humphries, a famous rat physician, was sent for
from Dorsetshire by the Princess, through the recommendation of the
Marchioness of Hertfordshire, who collected together five hundred rats
in his Royal Highness’s Palace, which he brought alive to Leicester
House as a proof of his art in that way”.[97] He must have been a
veritable Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Richmond Lodge soon became quite as gay as Leicester House; a great
number of the nobility drove down by road on their coaches, or came
by water in their barges, during the summer months. Lady Bristol, who
was one of the Princess’s ladies, writes from here: “Yesterday there
was a horse race for a saddle, etc., the Prince gave; ’twas run under
the terrace wall for their Royal Highnesses to see it. There was an
infinite number of people to see them all along the banks; and the
river full of boats with people of fashion, and that do not come to
court, among whom was the Duchess of Grafton and Mr. and Mrs. Beringer.
They all stayed, until it was late, upon the water to hear the Prince’s
music, which sounded much sweeter than from the shore. Every one took
part in the Prince and Princess’s pleasure in having this place secured
to them when they almost despaired of it, and though such a trifle, no
small pains were taken to disappoint them.”[98]
From Richmond the Prince and Princess of Wales hunted several days
in the week, going out early in the morning and coming back late
in the afternoon, riding hard all day over a rough country. It was
a peculiarity of the Prince’s court that all its pleasures were in
excess. The hunt was largely attended, and many of the maids of honour
rode to hounds; some of them would have shirked this violent exercise
had they dared, but the Prince would not let them off. Pope writes:
“I met the Prince, with all his ladies on horseback, coming from
hunting. Mrs. Bellenden and Mrs. Lepel took me under their protection
(contrary to the laws against harbouring Papists), and gave me dinner,
with something I liked better, an opportunity of conversation with
Mrs. Howard. We all agreed that the life of a maid of honour was of
all things the most miserable, and wished that every woman who envied
it had a specimen of it. To eat Westphalia ham in a morning, ride
over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks, come home in the heat of
the day with a fever, and (what is worse a hundred times), with a red
mark on the forehead from an uneasy hat; all this may qualify them
to make excellent wives for fox-hunters, and bear abundance of ruddy
complexioned children. As soon as they can wipe off the sweat of
the day, they must simper an hour, and catch cold in the Princess’s
apartment; from thence (as Shakspeare has it), to dinner with what
appetite they may, and after that, till midnight, walk, work or think,
which they please.”
Richmond boasted of springs of water which were supposed to have
health-giving properties. As soon as the Prince and Princess of Wales
settled in the place, the value of these wells greatly increased, and
the number of ills they were declared to cure was quite extraordinary.
A pump-room and an assembly-room were built, ornamental gardens
were laid out, and a great crowd of people of quality flocked
thither, nominally to drink the waters, really to attach themselves
to the Prince’s court. Balls, bazaars and raffles were held in the
assembly-rooms, and an enterprising _entrepreneur_, one Penkethman,
built a theatre on Richmond Green, and to his variety entertainments
the Prince and Princess were wont to resort. Thus we read: “On Monday
night last Mr. Penkethman had the honour to divert their Royal
Highnesses, the Prince and Princesses of Wales, at his theatre at
Richmond, with entertainments of acting and tumbling, performed to
admiration; likewise with his picture of the Royal Family down from
the King of Bohemia to the young princesses, in which is seen the Nine
Muses playing on their several instruments in honour of that august
family”.[99]
Caroline grew very fond of Richmond. She interested herself closely
in the prosperity of the village, and in the welfare of its poorer
inhabitants, aiding the needy, and subscribing liberally to the schools
and charities. In later years she always came back to Richmond as
to home, and though her grandson George the Third, who resented her
attitude to his father Frederick Prince of Wales, tried to destroy
every sign of her occupation, it still remains identified with her
memory.
FOOTNOTES TO BOOK II, CHAPTER VIII:
[87] Letter of Lady Hervey to the Countess of Suffolk, Bath, 7th June,
1725.
[88] Letter of the Duchess of Orleans to the Raugravine Louise, Paris,
28th July, 1718.
[89] He was the author of the famous _Memoirs of the Reign of George
II_.
[90] Mary Bellenden (Mrs. John Campbell) to Mrs. Howard, Bath, 1720.
[91] _Suffolk Correspondence._
[92] Miss Howe to Mrs. Howard, The Holt, Farnham, 1719 (_Suffolk
Correspondence_).
[93] Master of the Horse to the Prince of Wales, eldest son of Lord
Scarborough.
[94] The Hon. Bridget Carteret, a maid of honour.
[95] Miss Howe to Mrs. Howard, The Holt, Farnham, 1st October, 1719.
[96] _Weekly Journal_ and _Saturday’s Post_, 13th June, 1719.
[97] Brice’s _Weekly Journal_, 30th December, 1719.
[98] The Countess of Bristol to the Earl of Bristol, Richmond, 14th
July, 1719.
[99] _Daily Post_, 23rd August, 1721.