A new reign.--Funeral of the late King.--Houghton
revisited.--Election at Lynn.--Marriage of George the
Third.--His Coronation.
The accession of George III. was the beginning of a new era in English
society. The character of George II. could inspire no respect. His
successor, with all his faults, did as much perhaps towards reforming
the manners of the higher classes as a more enlightened prince could
have effected. His regular life and the strictness of his Court
applied a pressure answering to that which grew daily stronger from
below. The chief want of the aristocracy at this time was not so much
culture as something more vitally important. Culture they did, indeed,
sorely lack, but many influences among themselves were tending to
promote this. What they mainly needed to have enforced upon them from
without was some regard to the first principles of social order, some
recognition of moral and religious obligations. Those who despise the
formalism of George III.’s reign, may reflect that to impose external
decorum on the society represented in Hogarth’s pictures was of itself
no trifling improvement. Even this was some time in coming. It was
retarded by the mistaken system of government which for a long while
rendered the Crown unpopular. Still the signs of a change for the
better gradually became apparent; and when the close of the American
War had removed the last subject of national discontent, the great
majority of the upper, as well as of the middle ranks, rallied round
the throne as the mainstay of public morality, supporting the King and
the sedate minister of his choice against a rival whose irregularities
recalled the disorders of a former time.
We give the letter in which Walpole describes the funeral of George II.
It should be stated that the writer did not long retain the favourable
opinion he here expresses of the new Sovereign:
“Arlington Street, Nov. 13, 1760.
“Even the honeymoon of a new reign don’t produce events every
day. There is nothing but the common saying of addresses and
kissing hands. The chief difficulty is settled; Lord Gower
yields the Mastership of the Horse to Lord Huntingdon, and
removes to the Great Wardrobe, from whence Sir Thomas Robinson
was to have gone into Ellis’s place, but he is saved. The City,
however, have a mind to be out of humour; a paper has been
fixed on the Royal Exchange, with these words, ‘No petticoat
Government, no Scotch Minister, no Lord George Sackville;’
two hints totally unfounded, and the other scarce true. No
petticoat ever governed less, it is left at Leicester-house;
Lord George’s breeches are as little concerned; and, except
Lady Susan Stuart and Sir Harry Erskine, nothing has yet
been done for any Scots. For the King himself, he seems all
good-nature, and wishing to satisfy everybody; all his speeches
are obliging. I saw him again yesterday, and was surprised to
find the levee-room had lost so entirely the air of the lion’s
den. This Sovereign don’t stand in one spot, with his eyes
fixed royally on the ground, and dropping bits of German news;
he walks about, and speaks to everybody. I saw him afterwards
on the throne, where he is graceful and genteel, sits with
dignity, and reads his answers to addresses well; it was the
Cambridge address, carried by the Duke of Newcastle in his
Doctor’s gown, and looking like the _Médecin malgré lui_. He
had been vehemently solicitous for attendance, for fear my Lord
Westmoreland, who vouchsafes himself to bring the address from
Oxford, should outnumber him. Lord Lichfield and several other
Jacobites have kissed hands; George Selwyn says, ‘They go to St
James’s, because now there are so many _Stuarts_ there.’
“Do you know, I had the curiosity to go to the burying t’other
night; I had never seen a royal funeral; nay, I walked as a
rag of quality, which I found would be, and so it was, the
easiest way of seeing it. It is absolutely a noble sight. The
Prince’s chamber, hung with purple, and a quantity of silver
lamps, the coffin under a canopy of purple velvet, and six vast
chandeliers of silver on high stands, had a very good effect.
The Ambassador from Tripoli and his son were carried to see
that chamber. The procession, 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 horseback, the drums muffled, the fifes, 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
_chiaroscuro_. 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 catholic enough. I had been in dread of being coupled
with some boy of ten years old; but the heralds were not very
accurate, and I walked with George Grenville, taller and older,
to keep me in countenance. When we came to the chapel of Henry
the Seventh, all solemnity and decorum ceased; no order was
observed, 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 born
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 melancholy 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 so soon descend;
think how unpleasant a situation! He bore it all with a
firm and unaffected countenance. 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, spying with one hand,
and mopping his eyes with the other. Then returned the 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. It was very theatric to look down into the
vault where the coffin lay, attended by mourners with lights.
Clavering, the groom of the bedchamber, refused to sit up with
the body, and was dismissed by the King’s order.”
The demise of the Crown, of course, dissolved Parliament. Horace
Walpole went down to Houghton to be re-elected for Lynn:
“Houghton, March 25, 1761.
“Here I am at Houghton! and alone! in this spot, where (except
two hours last month) I have not been in sixteen years! Think,
what a crowd of reflections! No; Gray, and forty churchyards,
could not furnish so many; nay, I know one must feel them with
greater indifference than I possess, to have patience to put
them into verse. Here I am, probably for the last time of my
life, though not for the last time: every clock that strikes
tells me I am an hour nearer to yonder church--that church,
into which I have not yet had courage to enter, where lies that
mother on whom I doated, and who doated on me! There are the
two rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever wished
to enjoy it! There too lies he who founded its greatness, to
contribute to whose fall Europe was embroiled; there he sleeps
in quiet and dignity, while his friend and his foe, rather his
false ally and real enemy, Newcastle and Bath, are exhausting
the dregs of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets.[31]
“The surprise the pictures gave me is again renewed; accustomed
for many years to see nothing but wretched daubs and varnished
copies at auctions, I look at these as enchantment. My own
description of them seems poor; but shall I tell you truly,
the majesty of Italian ideas almost sinks before the warm
nature of Flemish colouring. Alas! don’t I grow old? My young
imagination was fired with Guido’s ideas: must they be plump
as Abishag to warm me now? Does great youth feel with poetic
limbs, as well as see with poetic eyes? In one respect I am
very young, I cannot satiate myself with looking: an incident
contributed to make me feel this more strongly. A party
arrived, just as I did, to see the house, a man and three women
in riding-dresses, and they rode post through the apartments.
I could not hurry before them fast enough; they were not so
long in seeing for the first time, as I could have been in one
room, to examine what I knew by heart. I remember formerly
being often diverted with this kind of _seers_; they come, ask
what such a room is called, in which Sir Robert lay, write it
down, admire a lobster or a cabbage in a market-piece, dispute
whether the last room was green or purple, and then hurry to
the inn for fear the fish should be overdressed. How different
my sensations! not a picture here but recalls a history; not
one, but I remember in Downing-street or Chelsea, where queens
and crowds admired them, though seeing them as little as these
travellers!
“When I had drunk tea, I strolled into the garden; they told
me it was now called the _pleasure-ground_. What a dissonant
idea of pleasure! those groves, those _allées_, where I have
passed so many charming moments, are now stripped up or
overgrown--many fond paths I could not unravel, though with
a very exact clew in my memory: I met two gamekeepers, and
a thousand hares! In the days when all my soul was tuned to
pleasure and vivacity (and you will think, perhaps, it is
far from being out of tune yet), I hated Houghton and its
solitude; yet I loved this garden, as now, with many regrets, I
love Houghton; Houghton, I know not what to call it, a monument
of grandeur or ruin! How I have wished this evening for Lord
Bute! how I could preach to him! For myself, I do not want to
be preached to; I have long considered, how every Balbec must
wait for the chance of a Mr. Wood. The servants wanted to lay
me in the great apartment--what, to make me pass my night as I
have done my evening! It were like proposing to Margaret Roper
to be a duchess in the court that cut off her father’s head,
and imagining it would please her. I have chosen to sit in my
father’s little dressing-room, and am now by his scrutoire,
where, in the height of his fortune, he used to receive the
accounts of his farmers, and deceive himself, or us, with the
thoughts of his economy. How wise a man at once, and how weak!
For what has he built Houghton? for his grandson to annihilate,
or for his son to mourn over. If Lord Burleigh could rise and
view his representative driving the Hatfield stage, he would
feel as I feel now. Poor little Strawberry! at least, it will
not be stripped to pieces by a descendant! You will find all
these fine meditations dictated by pride, not by philosophy.
Pray consider through how many mediums philosophy must pass,
before it is purified--
“‘---- how often must it weep, how often burn!’
“My mind was extremely prepared for all this gloom by parting
with Mr. Conway yesterday morning; moral reflections or
commonplaces are the livery one likes to wear, when one has
just had a real misfortune. He is going to Germany: I was
glad to dress myself up in transitory Houghton, in lieu of
very sensible concern. To-morrow I shall be distracted with
thoughts, at least images of very different complexion. I go
to Lynn, and am to be elected on Friday. I shall return hither
on Saturday, again alone, to expect Burleighides on Sunday,
whom I left at Newmarket. I must once in my life see him on his
grandfather’s throne.
“_Epping_, _Monday night, thirty-first_.--No, I have not seen
him; he loitered on the road, and I was kept at Lynn till
yesterday morning. It is plain I never knew for how many
trades I was formed, when at this time of day I can begin
electioneering, and succeed in my new vocation. Think of me,
the subject of a mob, who was scarce ever before in a mob,
addressing them in the town-hall, riding at the head of two
thousand people through such a town as Lynn, dining with above
two hundred of them, amid bumpers, huzzas, songs, and tobacco,
and finishing with country dancing at a ball and sixpenny
whist! I have borne it all cheerfully; nay, have sat hours in
_conversation_, the thing upon earth that I hate; have been to
hear misses play on the harpsichord, and to see an alderman’s
copies of Rubens and Carlo Marat. Yet to do the folks justice,
they are sensible, and reasonable, and civilised; their very
language is polished since I lived among them. I attribute
this to their more frequent intercourse with the world and the
capital, by the help of good roads and postchaises, which, if
they have abridged the King’s dominions, have at least tamed
his subjects. Well, how comfortable it will be to-morrow, to
see my parroquet, to play at loo, and not be obliged to talk
seriously! The Heraclitus of the beginning of this letter will
be overjoyed on finishing it to sign himself your old friend,
“DEMOCRITUS.
“P.S. I forgot to tell you that my ancient aunt Hammond came
over to Lynn to see me; not from any affection, but curiosity.
The first thing she said to me, though we have not met these
sixteen years, was, ‘Child, you have done a thing to-day, that
your father never did in all his life; you sat as they carried
you,--he always stood the whole time.’ ‘Madam,’ said I, ‘when
I am placed in a chair, I conclude I am to sit in it; besides,
as I cannot imitate my father in great things, I am not at
all ambitious of mimicking him in little ones.’ I am sure she
proposes to tell her remarks to my uncle Horace’s ghost, the
instant they meet.”
The King’s marriage followed a few months later:
“Arlington Street, Sept. 10, 1761.
“When we least expected the Queen, she came, after being ten
days at sea, but without sickness for above half-an-hour. She
was gay the whole voyage, sung to her harpsichord, and left
the door of her cabin open. They made the coast of Suffolk
last Saturday, and on Monday morning she landed at Harwich; so
prosperously has Lord Anson executed his commission. She lay
that night at your old friend Lord Abercorn’s, at Witham in
Essex; and, if she judged by her host, must have thought she
was coming to reign in the realm of taciturnity. She arrived
at St. James’s a quarter after three on Tuesday the 8th. When
she first saw the Palace she turned pale: the Duchess of
Hamilton smiled. ‘My dear Duchess,’ said the Princess, ‘_you_
may laugh; you have been married twice; but it is no joke to
me.’ Is this a bad proof of her sense? On the journey they
wanted her to curl her toupet. ‘No, indeed,’ said she, ‘I
think it looks as well as those of the ladies who have been
sent for me: if the King would have me wear a periwig, I will;
otherwise I shall let myself alone.’ The Duke of York gave
her his hand at the garden-gate: her lips trembled, but she
jumped out with spirit. In the garden the King met her; she
would have fallen at his feet; he prevented and embraced her,
and led her into the apartments, where she was received by the
Princess of Wales and Lady Augusta: these three princesses only
dined with the King. At ten the procession went to chapel,
preceded by unmarried daughters of peers, and peeresses in
plenty. The new Princess was led by the Duke of York and
Prince William; the Archbishop married them; the King talked
to her the whole time with great good humour, and the Duke
of Cumberland gave her away. She is not tall, nor a beauty;
pale, and very thin; but looks sensible, and is genteel. Her
hair is darkish and fine; her forehead low, her nose very
well, except the nostrils spreading too wide; her mouth has
the same fault, but her teeth are good.[32] She talks a good
deal, and French tolerably; possesses herself, is frank, but
with great respect to the King. After the ceremony, the whole
company came into the drawing-room for about ten minutes, but
nobody was presented that night. The Queen was in white and
silver; an endless mantle of violet-coloured velvet, lined
with ermine, and attempted to be fastened on her shoulder by
a bunch of large pearls, dragged itself and almost the rest
of her clothes halfway down her waist. On her head was a
beautiful little tiara of diamonds; a diamond necklace, and
a stomacher of diamonds, worth three score thousand pounds,
which she is to wear at the Coronation too. Her train was
borne by the ten bridesmaids, Lady Sarah Lenox, Lady Caroline
Russell, Lady Caroline Montagu, Lady Harriot Bentinck, Lady
Anne Hamilton, Lady Essex Kerr (daughters of Dukes of Richmond,
Bedford, Manchester, Portland, Hamilton, and Roxburgh); and
four daughters of the Earls of Albemarle, Brook, Harcourt, and
Ilchester,--Lady Elizabeth Keppel, Louisa Greville, Elizabeth
Harcourt, and Susan Fox Strangways: their heads crowned with
diamonds, and in robes of white and silver. Lady Caroline
Russell is extremely handsome; Lady Elizabeth Keppel very
pretty; but with neither features nor air, nothing ever looked
so charming as Lady Sarah Lenox; she has all the glow of beauty
peculiar to her family. As supper was not ready, the Queen
sat down, sung, and played on the harpsichord to the Royal
Family, who all supped with her in private. They talked of the
different German dialects; the King asked if the Hanoverian was
not pure--‘Oh, no, sir,’ said the Queen; ‘it is the worst of
all.’--She will not be unpopular.
“The Duke of Cumberland told the King that himself and Lady
Augusta were sleepy. The Queen was very averse to leave the
company, and at last articled that nobody should accompany her
but the Princess of Wales and her own two German women, and
that nobody should be admitted afterwards but the King--they
did not retire till between two and three.
“The next morning the King had a Levee. After the Levee there
was a Drawing-Room; the Queen stood under the throne: the women
were presented to her by the Duchess of Hamilton, and then the
men by the Duke of Manchester; but as she knew nobody, she
was not to speak. At night there was a ball, drawing-rooms
yesterday and to-day, and then a cessation of ceremony till
the Coronation, except next Monday, when she is to receive the
address of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, sitting on the throne
attended by the bridesmaids. A ridiculous circumstance happened
yesterday; Lord Westmoreland, not very young nor clear-sighted,
mistook Lady Sarah Lenox for the Queen, kneeled to her, and
would have kissed her hand if she had not prevented him. People
think that a Chancellor of Oxford was naturally attracted by
the blood of Stuart. It is as comical to see Kitty Dashwood,
the famous old beauty of the Oxfordshire Jacobites, living in
the palace as Duenna to the Queen. She and Mrs. Broughton, Lord
Lyttelton’s ancient Delia, are revived again in a young court
that never heard of them. There, I think you could not have
had a more circumstantial account of a royal wedding from the
Heralds’ Office. Adieu!
“Yours to serve you,
“HORACE SANDFORD,
“Mecklenburgh King-at-Arms.”
The Coronation of the King and Queen took place on the 22nd of
September, 1761, a fortnight after their marriage. Walpole writes to
Mann:
“Strawberry Hill, Sept. 28, 1761.
“What is the finest sight in the world? A Coronation. What do
people talk most about? A Coronation. Indeed, one had need
be a handsome young peeress not to be fatigued to death with
it. After being exhausted with hearing of nothing else for
six weeks, and having every cranny of my ideas stuffed with
velvet and ermine, and tresses, and jewels, I thought I was
very cunning in going to lie in Palace-yard, that I might not
sit up all night in order to seize a place. The consequence of
this wise scheme was, that I did not get a wink of sleep all
night; hammering of scaffolds, shouting of people, relieving
guards, and jangling of bells, was the concert I heard from
twelve to six, when I rose; and it was noon before the
procession was ready to set forth, and night before it returned
from the Abbey. I then saw the Hall, the dinner, and the
champion, a gloriously illuminated chamber, a wretched banquet,
and a foolish puppet-show. A Trial of a peer, though by no
means so sumptuous, is a preferable sight, for the latter is
interesting. At a Coronation one sees the peerage as exalted as
they like to be, and at a Trial as much humbled as a plebeian
wishes them. I tell you nothing of who looked well; you know
them no more than if I told you of the next Coronation. Yes,
two ancient dames whom you remember, were still ornaments of
the show,--the Duchess of Queensberry and Lady Westmoreland.
Some of the peeresses were so fond of their robes, that they
graciously exhibited themselves for a whole day before to all
the company their servants could invite to see them. A maid
from Richmond begged leave to stay in town because the Duchess
of Montrose was only to be seen from two to four. The Heralds
were so ignorant of their business, that, though pensioned for
nothing but to register lords and ladies, and what belongs to
them, they advertised in the newspaper for the Christian names
and places of abode of the peeresses. The King complained of
such omissions and of the want of precedent; Lord Effingham,
the Earl Marshal, told him, it was true there had been great
neglect in that office, but he had now taken such care of
registering directions, that _next coronation_ would be
conducted with the greatest order imaginable. The King was so
diverted with this _flattering_ speech that he made the earl
repeat it several times.
“On this occasion one saw to how high-water-mark extravagance
is risen in England. At the Coronation of George II. my mother
gave forty guineas for a dining-room, scaffold, and bedchamber.
An exactly parallel apartment, only with rather a worse view,
was this time set at three hundred and fifty guineas--a
tolerable rise in thirty-three years! The platform from St.
Margaret’s Round-house to the church-door, which formerly let
for forty pounds, went this time for two thousand four hundred
pounds. Still more was given for the inside of the Abbey. The
prebends would like a Coronation every year. The King paid nine
thousand pounds for the hire of jewels; indeed, last time, it
cost my father fourteen hundred to bejewel my Lady Orford. A
single shop now sold six hundred pounds’ sterling worth of
nails--but nails are risen--so is everything, and everything
adulterated. If we conquer Spain, as we have done France, I
expect to be poisoned.”
An observation as awkward as that of Lord Effingham had been made by
the beautiful Lady Coventry to George II. “She was tired of sights,”
she said; “there was only one left that she wanted to see, and that
was a coronation.” The old man, says Walpole, told the story himself
at supper to his family with great good humour. As it happened, he
outlived Lady Coventry by a few days.