THE KING COMES.
[Sidenote: 1714--Hanover]
"The old town of Hanover," says Thackeray, "must look still pretty much
as in the time when George Louis left it. The gardens and pavilions of
Herrenhausen are scarce changed since the day when the stout old
Electress Sophia fell down in her last walk there, preceding but by a
few weeks to the tomb James the Second's daughter, whose death made way
for the Brunswick Stuarts in England. . . . You may see at
Herrenhausen the very rustic theatre in which the Platens danced and
performed masks and sang before the Elector and his sons. There are
the very fauns and dryads of stone still glimmering through the
brandies, still grinning and piping their ditties of no tone, as in the
days when painted nymphs hung garlands round them, appeared under their
leafy arcades with gilt crooks, guiding rams with gilt horns, descended
from 'machines' in the guise of Diana or Minerva, and delivered immense
allegorical compliments to the princes returned home from the
campaign." Herrenhausen, indeed, is changed but little since those
days of which Thackeray speaks. But although not many years have
passed since Thackeray went to visit Hanover before delivering his
lectures on "The Four Georges," Hanover itself has undergone much
alteration. If one of the Georges could now return to his ancestral
capital he would indeed be bewildered at the great new squares, the
rows of tall vast shops and warehouses, the spacious railway-station,
penetrated to every corner at night by the keen electric light. But in
passing from Hanover to Herrenhausen one goes back, in a short drive,
from the {56} days of the Emperor William of Germany to the days of
George the Elector. Herrenhausen, the favorite residence of the
Electors of Hanover, is but a short distance from the capital.
Thackeray speaks of it as an ugly place, and it certainly has not many
claims to the picturesque. But it is full of a certain curious
half-melancholy interest, and well fitted to be the cradle and the home
of a decaying Hanoverian dynasty. In its galleries one may spend many
an hour, not unprofitably, in studying the faces of all the men and
women who are famous, notorious, or infamous in connection with the
history of Hanover. The story of that dynasty has more than one
episode not unlike that of the unfortunate Sophia Dorothea and
Königsmark, her lover. A good many grim legends haunt the place and
give interest to some of the faces, otherwise insipid enough, which
look out of the heavy frames and the formal court-dresses of the
picture-gallery.
[Sidenote: 1714--The entry into London]
On the evening of August 5, 1714, four days after Queen Anne's death,
Lord Clarendon, the lately appointed English Minister at the Court of
Hanover, set out for the palace of Herrenhausen to bear to the new King
of Great Britain the tidings of Queen Anne's death. About two o'clock
in the morning he entered the royal apartments of the ungenial and
sleepy George, and, kneeling, did homage to him as King of Great
Britain. George took the announcement of his new rank without even a
semblance of gratification. He had made up his mind to endure it, and
that was all. He was too stolid, or lazy, or sincere to affect the
slightest personal interest in the news. He lingered in Hanover as
long as he decently could, and sauntered for many a day through the
prim, dull, and orderly walks of Herrenhausen. He behaved very much in
the fashion of the convict in Prior's poem, who, when the cart was
ready and the halter adjusted,
Often took leave but seemed loath to depart.
August 31st had arrived before George began his journey to England.
But he did one or two good-natured things {57} before leaving Hanover;
he ordered the abolition of certain duties on provisions, and he had
the insolvent debtors throughout the Electorate discharged from
custody. On September 5th he reached the Hague, and here another
stoppage took place. The exertion of travelling from Hanover to the
Hague had been so great that George apparently required a respite from
September 5th until the 16th. On the 16th he embarked, and reached
Greenwich two days after. He was accompanied to England by his two
leading favorites--the ladies whose charms we have already described.
For many days after his arrival in London the King did little but
lament his exile from his beloved Herrenhausen, and tell every one he
met how cordially he disliked England, its people, and its ways.
Fortunately, perhaps, in this respect, for the popularity of his
Majesty, George's audience was necessarily limited. He spoke no
English, and hardly any of those who surrounded him could speak German,
while some of his ministers did not even speak French. Sir Robert
Walpole tried to get on with him by talking Latin. Even the English
oysters George could not abide; he grumbled long at their queer taste,
their want of flavor, and it was some time before his devoted
attendants discovered that their monarch liked stale oysters with a
good strong rankness about them. No time was lost, when this important
discovery had been made, in procuring oysters to the taste of the King,
and one of George's objections to the throne of England was easily
removed.
There was naturally great curiosity to see the King, and a writer of
the time gives an amusing account of the efforts made to obtain a sight
of him. "A certain person has paid several guineas for the benefit of
Cheapside conduit, and another has almost given twenty years' purchase
for a shed in Stocks Market. Some lay out great sums in shop-windows,
others sell lottery tickets to hire cobblers' stalls, and here and
there a vintner has received earnest for the use of his sign-post.
King Charles the Second's horse at the aforesaid market is to carry
double, {58} and his Majesty at Charing Cross is to ride between two
draymen. Some have made interest to climb chimneys, and others to be
exalted to the airy station of a steeple."
[Sidenote: 1714--"Under which King?"]
The princely pageant which people were so eager to see lives still in a
print issued by "Tim. Jordan and Tho. Bakenwell at Ye Golden Lion in
Fleet Street." We are thus gladdened by a sight of the splendid
procession winding its way through St. James's Park to St. James's
Palace. There are musketeers and trumpeters on horseback; there are
courtly gentlemen on horse and afoot, and great lumbering, gilded,
gaudily-bedizened carriages with four and six steeds, and more
trumpeters, on foot this time, and pursuivants and heralds--George was
fond of heralds, and created two of his own, Hanover and
Gloucester--and then the royal carriage, with its eight prancing
horses, and the Elector of Hanover and King of England inside, with his
hand to his heart, and still more soldiers following, both horse and
foot, and, of course, a loyal populace everywhere waving their
three-cornered hats and huzzaing with all their might.
The day of the entry was not without its element of tragedy. In the
crowd Colonel Chudleigh called Mr. Charles Aldworth, M.P. for New
Windsor, a Jacobite. There was a quarrel, the gentlemen went to
Marylebone Fields, exchanged a few passes, and Mr. Aldworth was almost
immediately killed. This was no great wonder, for we learn, in a
letter from Lord Berkeley of Stratton, preserved in the Wentworth
Papers, describing the duel, that Mr. Aldworth had such a weakness in
his arms from childhood that he could not stretch them out; a fact,
Lord Berkeley hints, by no means unknown to his adversary.
Horace Walpole has left a description of King George which is worth
citation. "The person of the King," he says, "is as perfect in my
memory as if I saw him yesterday; it was that of an elderly man, rather
pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins; not tall, of an aspect
rather good than august, with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat
and breeches of snuff-colored cloth, with stockings of the {59} same
color, and a blue ribbon over all." George was fond of heavy dining
and heavy drinking. He often dined at Sir Robert Walpole's, at
Richmond Hill, where he used to drink so much punch that even the
Duchess of Kendal endeavored to restrain him, and received in return
some coarse admonition in German. He was shy and reserved in general,
and he detested all the troublesome display of royalty. He hated going
to the theatre in state, and he did not even care to show himself in
front of the royal box; he preferred to sit in another and less
conspicuous box with the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Walsingham. On the
whole, it would seem as if the inclination of the English people for
the Hanoverian dynasty was about to be tried by the severest test that
fate could well ordain. A dull, stolid, and profligate king, fond of
drink and of low conversation, without dignity of appearance or manner,
without sympathy of any kind with the English people and English ways,
and without the slightest knowledge of the English language, was
suddenly thrust upon the people and proclaimed their king. Fortunately
for the Hanoverian dynasty, the English people, as a whole, had grown
into a mood of comparative indifference as to who should rule them so
long as they were let alone. It was impossible that a strong feeling
of loyalty to any House should burn just then in the breast of the
great majority of the English people. Those who were devoted to the
Stuarts and those who detested the Stuarts felt strongly on the subject
this way or that, and they would therefore admire or detest King George
according to their previously acquired political principles. But to
the ordinary Englishman it only seemed that England had lately been
trying a variety of political systems and a variety of rulers; that one
seemed to succeed hardly better than the other; that so long as no
great breakdown in the system took place, it mattered little whether a
Stuart or a Brunswick was in temporary possession of the throne.
Within a comparatively short space of time the English Parliament had
deposed Charles the First; the Protectorate had been {60} tried under
Cromwell; the Restoration had been brought about by the adroitness of
Monk; James the Second, a Catholic, had come to the throne, and had
been driven off the throne by William the Third; William had
established a new dynasty and a new system, which was no sooner
established than it had to be succeeded by the introduction to the
throne of one of the daughters of the displaced House of Stuart.
England had not had time to become attached, or even reconciled, to any
of these succeeding rulers, and the English people in general--the
English people outside the circle of courts and Parliament and
politics--were well satisfied when George came to the throne to let any
one wear the crown who did not make himself and his system absolutely
intolerable to the nation.
[Sidenote: 1714--"A King and no King."]
The old-fashioned romantic principle of personal loyalty, unconditional
loyalty--the loyalty of Divine right--was already languishing unto
death. It was now seen for the last time in effective contrast with
what we may call the modern principle of loyalty. The modern principle
of loyalty to a sovereign is that which, having decided in favor of
monarchical government and of an hereditary succession, resolves to
abide by that choice, and for the sake of the principle and of the
country to pay all respect and homage to the person of the chosen
ruler. But the loyalty which still clung to the fading fortunes of the
Stuarts was very different from this, and came into direct contrast
with the feelings shown by the majority of the people of England
towards the House of Hanover. Though faults and weaknesses beyond
number, weaknesses which were even worse than actual faults, tainted
the character and corroded the moral fibre of every successive Stuart
prince, the devotees of personal loyalty still clung with sentiment and
with passion to the surviving representatives of the fallen dynasty.
Poets and balladists, singers in the streets and singers on the
mountain-side, were, even in these early days of George the First,
inspired with songs of loyal homage in favor of the son of James the
Second. Men {61} and women in thousands, not only among the wild
romantic hills of Scotland, but in prosaic North of England towns, and
yet more prosaic London streets and alleys, were ready, if the occasion
offered, to die for the Stuart cause. Despite the evidence of their
own senses, men and women would still endow any representative of the
Stuarts with all the virtues and talents and graces that might become
an ideal prince of romance. No one thought in this way of the
successors of William the Third. No one had had any particular
admiration for Queen Anne, either as a sovereign or as a woman; nobody
pretended to feel any thrill of sentimental emotion towards portly,
stolid, sensual George the First. About the King, personally, hardly
anybody cared anything. The mass of the English people who accepted
him and adhered to him did so because they understood that he
represented a certain quiet homely principle in politics which would
secure tranquillity and stability to the country. They did not ask of
him that he should be noble or gifted or dignified, or even virtuous.
They asked of him two things in especial: first, that he would maintain
a steady system of government; and next, that he would in general let
the country alone. This is the feeling which must be taken into
account if we would understand how it came to pass that the English
people so contentedly accepted a sovereign like George the First. The
explanation is not to be found merely in the fact that the Stuarts, as
a race, had discredited themselves hopelessly with the moral sentiment
of the people of England. The very worst of the Stuarts, Charles the
Second, was not any worse as regards moral character than George the
First, or than some of the Georges who followed him. In education and
in mental capacity he was far superior to any of the Georges. There
were many qualities in Charles the Second which, if his fatal love of
ease and of amusement could have been kept under control, might have
made him a successful sovereign, and which, were he in private life,
would undoubtedly have made him an {62} eminent man. But the truth is
that the old feeling of blind unconditional homage to the sovereign was
dying out; it was dying of inanition and old age and natural decay.
Other and stronger forces in political thought were coming up to jostle
it aside, even before its death-hour, and to occupy its place. A king
was to be in England, for the future, a respected and honored chief
magistrate appointed for life and to hereditary office. This new
condition of things influenced the feelings and conduct of hundreds of
thousands of persons who were not themselves conscious of the change.
This was one great reason why George the First was so easily accepted
by the country. The king was in future to be a business king, and not
a king of sentiment and romance.
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