THE COURT OF QUEEN CAROLINE.
The court of King George the Second and Queen Caroline was conducted
on a larger scale than any court England had known since the days of
Charles the Second, though it lacked much of the gaiety and more of
the grace that enlivened and adorned the court of the Merry Monarch.
George the Second was a great lover of show, but he had neither wit nor
good taste, and when he assumed the crown he seemed to think that he
ought also to assume a stiffness and pomposity of manner to maintain
his regal dignity. Like all German princes he was a great stickler for
etiquette, and he modelled his court not only on Versailles, which
then served as a pattern for all the courts of Europe, but imported
to it some of the dulness of Herrenhausen, and further regulated it
with strict regard to English precedents in previous reigns. The court
officials were often very hard put to it to unearth them. But the
King was exceedingly precise and resented the most trifling breach
of etiquette as a reflection on his royal dignity. He was a great
authority on dress and ceremonial; he could tell to a hair’s-breadth
the precise width of the gold braid which should adorn the coat of a
gentleman of the bedchamber, and recall with accuracy the number of
buttons required for the vest of a page of the backstairs. The Queen
encouraged and applauded his bent in this direction; it occupied his
mind and left her free to arrange with Walpole the weightier affairs of
the nation.
Leicester House was given up and the court made St. James’s Palace its
headquarters in London. All the Hanoverian mistresses and favourites
who had occupied apartments there during the last reign were turned out
without ceremony. The court of Queen Caroline was more select than that
of George the First. Drunkenness was still a venial offence, but it was
not approved of in the royal presence, and women of notoriously ill
repute were no longer received at St. James’s. When the court was at
St. James’s, drawing-rooms were held several times a week, public days
as they were called, and the King and Queen gave frequent audiences
besides. Court balls often took place, and at the evening drawing-rooms
cards and high play were still in vogue. Every movement of the King
and Queen in public was made the occasion of ceremonial; they attended
divine service at the Chapel Royal in state; they walked in St. James’s
Park followed by a numerous suite, the way kept clear by guards; they
seldom drove out unless preceded by an escort; their visits to the
theatre or opera were always announced beforehand, and their coming
and going made the occasion of a spectacle. The people, with whom the
pomp and circumstance of Royalty is always popular, loved these sights
mightily, and all classes were pleased that there was once more a court
in London. The King and Queen also revived the custom of dining in
public on Sundays. One of the large state rooms of St. James’s Palace
was set apart for the occasion, and at a flourish of trumpets the King
and Queen and the Royal Family entered and sat down to table in the
centre of the room surrounded by the officers of the household. The
courses were served with much ceremony on bended knee. The table was
decked with magnificent plate and a band played during dinner. The
enclosure was railed around, and the public were admitted by ticket,
and allowed to stand behind the barriers and watch the royal personages
eat, a privilege of which they freely availed themselves. After dinner
the King and Queen withdrew to their apartments, their going, as their
coming, being made the occasion of a procession.
One of the first acts of the new King and Queen was to make a tour of
the royal palaces, which had been practically closed to them since
their rupture with George the First. The old King had disliked Windsor
and rarely went there, its grandeur oppressed him, and he and his
German mistresses felt out of their element in a place steeped in
traditions essentially English. George the Second did not care for
Windsor any more than his sire, and excused himself from going there
often on the ground that it was too far from London. He visited the
castle chiefly for the purpose of hunting in the forest. But Caroline
loved royal Windsor greatly, and used to go there during the King’s
absences at Hanover. In one of the recesses of the picture gallery,
now the library, she arranged an extensive and valuable collection of
china; the collection was afterwards dispersed, but some of the china
remains at Windsor Castle until this day, and is the only relic of
Queen Caroline’s occupation.[10]
The King and Queen paid their first visit to Windsor in the autumn of
1728, and great preparations were made to welcome them to the royal
borough. “Last Saturday,” we read, “when their Majesties arrived at
Windsor, the Mayor, aldermen, and capital burgesses were ready in
their formalities to receive them, and the balconies were hung with
tapestry and vast crowds of spectators, but their Majesties came the
Park way. The King and Queen walked in the Park till dinner time. The
next day their Majesties dined in public, when all the country people,
whether in, or out of, mourning, were permitted to see them.”[11] On
this occasion George the Second assumed his stall in St. George’s
Chapel as Sovereign of the Order of the Garter, and made his offering
at the altar. The Queen, with the Duke of Cumberland, the Princess
Royal, and the Princesses Caroline, Mary and Louisa, were present, and
the Queen was seated under a canopy erected on the south side of the
choir. A ball was given in the evening. The royal pair hunted the stag
in Windsor Forest frequently during the visit, and on one occasion
remained out until nine o’clock at night, and on another hunted all
day through the rain, chasing the stag as far as Weybridge. The Queen
followed the hounds in a chaise with one horse, in the same way that
Queen Anne used to hunt in Windsor Forest. During their sojourn at
Windsor the King and Queen received one Mrs. Joy, “a widow lady in the
ninety-fourth year of her age, who had kissed Charles the First’s hand;
she was very graciously received”.[12] The Queen celebrated her first
visit to Windsor by giving £350 at Christmas for releasing insolvent
debtors confined in the town and castle gaol--her favourite form of
charity. The prisoners, to the number of sixteen, were set free.
Kensington was George the Second’s favourite palace, as it had been
his father’s. King George the First rebuilt the eastern front and
added the cupola. He also improved the interior, notably by making
the grand staircase. Then, as now, Kensington Palace was an irregular
building with little pretence to beauty and none to grandeur. But
our first Hanoverian kings loved it; its homeliness reminded them of
Herrenhausen. The Kensington promenades were now revived, and the King
and Queen accompanied by the Royal Family would pace down the walks
between an avenue of bowing and smiling courtiers. Throughout this
reign, and far into the next, Kensington Gardens formed a fashionable
resort, and with the promenades are associated many of the great names
of the eighteenth century. People were admitted to the gardens by
ticket obtainable through the Lord Chamberlain. Thus the promenades
developed into a sort of informal court and were much resorted to by
persons who did not attend drawing-rooms and levées in the ordinary
way, as well as by those who did. The King and the Queen on these
morning walks would make many a person happy by singling him out from
the crowd with a bow, a smile, or the honour of a few words; or, on
the other hand, they would plunge many an aspirant to Court favour
into gloom by ignoring him. The origin of these promenades may be
traced to the daily walks of the Electress Sophia in the gardens of
Herrenhausen, when she used to give audience to her supporters. Like
the old Electress, her grandson and his Queen were great walkers. The
little King used to walk very fast, with a curious strutting step,
and generally forged ahead, leaving his taller and stouter consort
to pant along behind him. In a political skit of the day there is an
amusing reference to Caroline’s custom of dropping behind her husband.
It is headed: “_Supposed to be written on account of three gentlemen
being seen in Kensington Gardens by the King and Queen while they were
walking_”. It was written either by Pulteney or Chesterfield, and
these two were doubtless represented in it, the third being Wyndham
or Bolingbroke. “The great river Euphrates” is the Serpentine, which
Caroline created out of a string of ponds. It runs:--
“Now it came to pass in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of
Babylon, in the eighth month, of the sixth year, the beginning of hay
harvest, that the King and Queen walked arm in arm in the gardens which
they had planted on the banks of the river, the great river Euphrates,
and behold there appeared on the sudden three men, sons of the giants.
Then Nebuchadnezzar the King lifted up his voice and cried: ‘Oh men of
war, who be ye, who be ye, and is it peace?’ They answered him not.
Then spake he and said: ‘There is treachery, oh my Queen, there is
treachery,’ and he turned his face and fled. Now when the Queen had
seen what had befallen the King she girt up her loins and fled also,
crying: ‘Oh my God!’ So the King and Queen ran together, but the King
outran her mightily, for he ran very swiftly; neither turned he to the
right hand nor the left, for he was sore afraid where no fear was, and
fled when no man pursued.”
The King and Queen probably saw Pulteney, Chesterfield and Bolingbroke
coming towards them, and as they were no doubt just then opposing some
pet measure of Walpole and of the court, the King not wishing to
receive their salutations, and not caring to ignore them, turned on his
heel, and, followed by the Queen, hurried off as fast as he could.
Richmond Lodge had now become Caroline’s personal property, and the
Queen continued to be very fond of it, and spent large sums of money in
enlarging the gardens. Soon after Caroline became Queen she gave £500
for railing and improving Richmond Green, and we read: “A subscription
is set on foot among the inhabitants of the town of Richmond for
erecting the effigy of her Majesty in the middle of the green”.[13]
But this intention was apparently never carried out. The Queen also
had a cottage at Kew where she often drove to breakfast from Richmond.
She gave the use of it to her favourite, Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady
Sundon.
[Illustration: HAMPTON COURT, TEMP. GEORGE II.]
Hampton Court, more than any other royal palace, has memories of
Queen Caroline, and many of its rooms remain to this day much as she
left them. The Queen’s dressing-room is almost the same as it was one
hundred and seventy years ago; her high marble bath on one side of the
room may still be seen, and on the other side is the door that led to
her private chapel. Under Caroline’s supervision Hampton Court was
altered in many ways, and in some improved. The great staircase was
completed and decorated; the Queen’s presence chamber and the guard
chamber were altered in a way characteristic of the early Georgian
period. The public dining room, which is one of the finest rooms
in the palace, was also redecorated, and the massive chimney-piece
of white marble which bears the arms of George the Second was placed
in it. Nor did the Queen confine her alterations only to the palace.
She had a passion for gardening, especially landscape gardening, and
the grounds of Hampton Court were considerably changed under her
supervision. It was she who substituted wide sweeping lawns for the
numerous fountains and elaborate flower beds which until then had
ornamented the great fountain garden. Her alterations in many respects
were severely criticised.[14]
Both the King and the Queen had pleasant memories of the place where
they had celebrated their only regency when Prince and Princess of
Wales. The summer after the coronation they came to Hampton Court for
some time, and, as long as the Queen lived, a regular practice was
made of spending at least two months there every summer. From Hampton
Court the King did a great deal of stag hunting; he was especially
fond of the pleasures of the chase and would not forego them on any
account. His enthusiasm was not shared by the lady members of the
royal household. “We hunt,” writes Mrs. Howard from Hampton Court to
Lady Hervey, “with great noise and violence, and have every day a very
tolerable chance to have a neck broke;”[15] and her correspondent,
writing of the same subject, declares her belief that much of Mrs.
Howard’s illness was due to this violent riding. The following is a
description of one of these expeditions:--
“On Saturday their Majesties, together with their Royal Highnesses
the Duke (of Cumberland) and the Princesses, came to the new park by
Richmond from Hampton Court and diverted themselves with hunting a
stag, which ran from eleven to one, when he took to the great pond,
where he defended himself for half an hour, when he was killed. His
Majesty, the Duke, and the Princess Royal hunted on horseback, her
Majesty and the Princess Amelia in a four-wheeled chaise, Princess
Caroline in a two-wheeled chaise, and the Princesses Mary and Louisa
in a coach. Her Majesty was pleased to show great condescension and
complaisance to the country people by conversing with them, and
ordering them money. Several of the nobility attended, amongst them Sir
Robert Walpole, clothed in green as Ranger. When the diversion was over
their Majesties, the Duke, and the Princesses refreshed themselves on
the spot with a cold collation, as did the nobility at some distance of
time after, and soon after two in the afternoon returned to Hampton
Court.”[16]
The Queen always accompanied the King in her chaise, but she cared
nothing for the sport. She took with her her vice-chamberlain, Lord
Hervey, “who loved hunting as little as she did, so that he might ride
constantly by the side of her chaise, and entertain her whilst other
people were entertaining themselves by hearing dogs bark, and seeing
crowds gallop”.[17] The King cared only for stag-hunting and coursing;
he affected to despise fox-hunting, though the sport was very popular
among his subjects. Once, when the Duke of Grafton said he was going
down to the country to hunt the fox, the King told him that: “It was a
pretty occupation for a man of quality, and at his age to be spending
all his time in tormenting a poor fox, that was generally a much better
beast than any of those that pursued him; for the fox hurts no other
animal but for his subsistence, while those brutes who hurt him did it
only for the pleasure they took in hurting.” The Duke of Grafton said
he did it for his health. The King asked him why he could not as well
walk or ride post for his health; and added, if there was any pleasure
in the chase, he was sure the Duke of Grafton can know nothing of
it; “for,” added his Majesty, “with your great corps of twenty stone
weight, no horse, I am sure, can carry you within hearing, much less
within sight, of the hounds.”[18]
At Hampton Court, as at St. James’s, the King and Queen dined in public
on Sundays, and the people came in crowds to see the sight. On one of
these occasions an absurd incident took place. “There was such a resort
to Hampton Court last Sunday to see their Majesties dine,” writes a
news-sheet, “that the rail surrounding the table broke, and causing
some to fall, made a diverting scramble for hats and wigs, at which
their Majesties laughed heartily.”[19] On private evenings at Hampton
Court the only amusement was cards, but now and then the King and Queen
held drawing-rooms, in the audience chamber.[20] Often in summer, when
the nights were fine, the Queen and her ladies would go out and walk
in the gardens. We may picture her pacing up and down the avenues of
chestnut and lime in the warm dusk, or viewing from the gardens the
beautiful palace bathed in the moonbeams. So little is changed to-day
that it requires no great effort of the imagination to re-people
Hampton Court with the figures of the early Georgian era.
One of the most prominent personages at the Court of Queen Caroline
was her favourite, Lord Hervey, whom she had now appointed her
vice-chamberlain, and who enjoyed her fullest confidence. The Queen
delighted to have him about her at all times, and would converse with
him for hours together, asking him questions about a hundred and one
things, and laughing at his clever talk. Lord Hervey was a man of
considerable wit and ability, and undoubtedly an amusing companion. But
he was a contemptible personality, diseased in body and warped in mind,
incapable of taking a broad and generous view of any one or anything;
ignorant of lofty ideals and noble motives himself, he was quite
unable to understand them in others, and always sought some sordid or
selfish reason for every action. The Queen, however, overlooking his
faults, with which she must have been familiar, and his effeminacies
and immoralities, of which she could not have been ignorant, believed
that he was a faithful servant to her, and trusted him in no
ordinary degree. As a sign of her favour she increased his salary as
vice-chamberlain by £1,000 a year, allowed him considerable patronage,
which was worth a good deal more, and made him many valuable presents.
She treated him rather as a son than as a subject. “It is well I am so
old,” she used to say (she was fourteen years Hervey’s senior), “or I
should be talked of over this creature.” No one, however, ever talked
scandal of her Majesty, though some doubted her judgment in choosing
her friends, and it must be confessed that she was unwise in admitting
Hervey to so many of her secrets. Notwithstanding that she heaped
favours upon him, he repaid her with ingratitude, and when she was
dead endeavoured to befoul her memory. But to the Queen’s face he was a
fawning and accomplished courtier, and expressed the greatest zeal in
her service.
Hervey had a nimble and superficial pen, and sometimes employed himself
in writing anonymous pamphlets in defence of the Government and Court
against members of the Opposition. A great many of these anonymous
pamphlets were showered upon the town at this time, and Pulteney
chancing to come across one of them, entitled _Sedition and Defamation
Displayed_, which attacked him and Bolingbroke in no measured terms,
thought it was from Lord Hervey’s pen (it afterwards turned out to be
not so), and wrote a violent answer, also anonymous, called _A Proper
Reply to a Late Scurrilous Libel_. This pamphlet abused Walpole, and
by implication the Court, and applied several opprobrious epithets to
Hervey, speaking of him by his nickname “Lord Fanny,” describing him
as “half-man and half-woman,” and dwelling malignantly on his peculiar
infirmities. The pamphlet was warmly resented at court. Like many who
set no bounds to their own malice, Hervey was extremely sensitive to
attack, and wishing to curry favour with the King and Queen he wrote
to Pulteney to know if he were the author of the pamphlet. Pulteney
answered that he would inform him on that point if Hervey would tell
him first whether he was the writer of _Sedition and Defamation
Displayed_. Hervey sent back word to say that he had not written the
pamphlet, and again demanded an answer to his question. Pulteney
returned a defiant message saying that “whether or no he was the author
of the _Reply_ he was ready to justify and stand by the truth of every
word of it, at what time and wherever Lord Hervey pleased”. This was
tantamount to a challenge, and Hervey, though not given to duelling,
could not in honour ignore it. A duel was arranged. “Accordingly,”
writes an eye-witness,[21] “on Monday last, between three and four in
the afternoon, they met in Upper St. James’s 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 the occasion to part them. Upon which Mr.
Pulteney embraced Lord Hervey, and expressed a great deal of concern
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 a common expression, thus they parted.” Sir Charles Hanbury
Williams wrote some lines on this duel, in which, addressing Pulteney,
he says:--
Lord Fanny once did play the dunce,
And challenged you to fight;
And he so stood to lose his blood,
But had a dreadful fright.
Among minor figures about the court two of the most familiar were
Lord Lifford and his sister, Lady Charlotte de Roussie. They were the
children of a Count de Roussie, a French Protestant who came over to
England with William of Orange in 1688, and was created by him Earl
of Lifford in the peerage of Ireland. They were typical courtiers of
the baser sort, and would perform the meanest offices and indulge in
the grossest flattery in order to win some rays of the royal favour.
They were not popular with any of the English people about the court.
Hervey tells us: “They had during four reigns subsisted upon the scanty
charity of the English Court. They were constantly, every night in the
country and three nights in the town, alone with the King or Queen for
an hour or two before they went to bed, during which time the King
walked about and talked to the brother of arms, or to the sister of
genealogies, whilst the Queen nodded and yawned, till from yawning she
came to nodding, and nodding to snoring. These two miserable Court
drudges, who were in a more constant waiting than any of the pages
of the backstairs, were very simple and very quiet, did nobody any
hurt, nor anybody but His Majesty any pleasure, who paid them so ill
for all their assiduity and slavery that they were not only not in
affluence, but laboured under the disagreeable burdens of small debts,
which £1,000 would have paid, and had not an allowance from the Court,
that enabled them to appear there even in the common decency of clean
clothes. The King nevertheless was always saying how well he loved
them, and calling them the best people in the world, but though he
never forgot their goodness he never remembered their poverty.”
Another foreign dependent was Schütz, a Hanoverian. Pope, who had lost
the favour of the Court, was very bitter upon those who retained it; in
one of his ballads he sings:--
Alas! like Schütz I cannot pun,
Like Grafton court the Germans,
Tell Pickenbourg how slim she’s grown,
Like Meadows run to sermons.
Hervey satirises Schütz’s dulness as follows:--
And sure in sleep no dulness you need fear
Who, ev’n awake, can Schütz and Lifford bear.
And again--
Charlotte and Schütz like angry monkeys chatter,
None guessing what’s the language or the matter.
While in another of his satires occur these lines:--
There is another Court booby, at once hot and dull,
Your pious pimp Schütz, a mean Hanover tool.
A personage of quite a different order to the foregoing was Henrietta
Louisa, Countess of Pomfret, the authoress of the correspondence with
Lady Hertford. Lady Pomfret was the granddaughter on the paternal side
of Judge Jefferies, on the maternal of the Earl of Pembroke, and on
the strength of the latter claimed descent from Edward the First.
Lady Pomfret accepted the post of lady of the bedchamber, but she was
of a different type to many of the Queen’s ladies. She was a matron
of unimpeachable virtue, the mother of six lovely daughters--all
beauties--of whom, perhaps, the best known was Lady Sophia Fermor,
afterwards Lady Carteret. Lady Pomfret had a keen sense of her dignity,
and she affected a knowledge of literature and the fine arts. The
celebrated “Pomfret Letters,” much admired in their day, are packed
with platitudes, and so dull that they leave no doubt as to the
correctness of her principles. Lady Pomfret was considered by many of
her contemporaries to be a prodigy of learning; she seems rather to
have been a courtly Mrs. Malaprop. She once declared that “It was as
difficult to get into an Italian coach as for Cæsar to take Attica”--by
which she meant Utica. On another occasion some one telling her of a
man “who talked of nothing but Madeira, she asked gravely what language
that was”. But despite her eccentricities she had sterling qualities,
and was as much a credit to the court as her daughters were its
ornaments.
The Queen’s household was numerous, and included the Mistress of
the Robes, the Duchess of Dorset, six ladies of the bedchamber, all
countesses; six bedchamber women and six maids of honour. The two most
prominent members of it were two bedchamber women, Mrs. Clayton, the
Queen’s favourite, and Mrs. Howard, the King’s favourite, who hated
one another thoroughly.
Mrs. Clayton had now great influence with the Queen, more indeed
than any one except Walpole, with whom she came frequently into
collision. She was an irritating woman with an overwhelming sense of
self-esteem. Horace Walpole calls her “an absurd pompous simpleton”.
Lord Hervey credits her with all the virtues, and declares that she
possessed an excellent understanding and a good heart. She undoubtedly
possessed cunning and ability, which she used to such advantage that
she ultimately procured for her stupid husband a peerage, as Viscount
Sundon, and she foisted a large family of needy relatives on to the
public service. She acted as a sort of unofficial private secretary to
the Queen and became the medium of all manner of communications to her
mistress. Many of the letters written to her were really addressed to
Caroline. Walpole heartily disliked Mrs. Clayton and tried in vain to
shake her influence with the Queen. Her ascendency was inexplicable
to him for years, but at last he thought that he had discovered the
reason. When Lady Walpole died, the Queen asked him many questions
about his wife’s last illness and persistently referred to one
particular malady from which, in point of fact, Lady Walpole had not
suffered. The Prime Minister noticed it, and when he came home he said
to his son: “Now, Horace, I know by the possession of what secret Lady
Sundon has preserved such an ascendant over the Queen”. Whether her
influence was wholly due to this cause is open to question, for she
stood in high favour before her mistress’s malady began. But for long
years Caroline suffered from a distressing illness of which she would
rather have died than have made it known, and Mrs. Clayton was one of
the few who knew her secret.
All the maids of honour except Miss Meadows had changed since the King
and Queen were last at Hampton Court, but these young ladies were
still of a lively temperament. One evening in the darkness several of
them played at ghost, and stole out into the gardens and went round
the palace rattling and knocking at the windows. Lady Hervey, who had
heard of these frolics, writes to Mrs. Howard: “I think people who are
of such very hot constitutions as to want to be refreshed by night
walking, need not disturb others who are not altogether so warm as they
are; and it was very lucky that looking over letters till it was late,
prevented some people being in bed, and in their first sleep, otherwise
the infinite wit and merry pranks of the youthful maids might have been
lost to the world.”[22]
But, however lively may have been the young maids of honour, one member
of the Queen’s household found Hampton Court dull under the new reign
and its glory departed. Writing to Lady Hervey Mrs. Howard says:--
“Hampton is very different from the place you knew; and to say we
wished _Tom Lepell_, _Schatz_ and _Bella-dine_ at the tea-table,
is too interested to be doubted. _Frizelation_, _flirtation_ and
_dangleation_ are now no more, and nothing less than a Lepell can
restore them to life; but to tell you my opinion freely, the people you
now converse with” (books) “are much more alive than any of your old
acquaintances.”[23]
Mrs. Howard had a good reason to be dispirited, for the new reign had
proved a sad disappointment to her. She had expected, and so had her
friends, that the King’s accession to the throne would bring her an
increase of power, wealth and influence, which would have helped to
compensate her for the equivocal position she occupied, a position
which, as she was a modest woman, could not have been altogether
congenial to her. “No established mistress of a sovereign,” says
Horace Walpole, “ever enjoyed less brilliancy of the situation than
Lady Suffolk.” The only benefit she received was a peerage for her
brother, Sir Henry Hobart, and at the end of a long and trying career
at court she managed to amass a sum, not indeed sufficient to give
her wealth, but to save her from indigence. The Queen once said that
Mrs. Howard received £1,200 a year from the King all the time he was
Prince of Wales, and it was increased to £3,200 a year when he became
King. He also gave her £12,000 towards building her villa at Marble
Hill, near Twickenham, besides several “little dabs” both before and
after he came to the throne. But this represented all that Mrs. Howard
gained, if indeed she gained so much; patronage or influence she had
none, and those who placed their trust in her found themselves out of
favour. After a while the courtiers began to find out that it was more
profitable to pay their suit to Mrs. Clayton, who had the ear of the
Queen, than to Mrs. Howard, who had not the ear of the King. Yet the
King still continued to visit Mrs. Howard for some three or four hours
every evening, at nine o’clock, “but with such dull punctuality that
he frequently walked up and down the gallery for ten minutes with his
watch in his hand if the stated minute was not arrived”.[24] The Queen
was doubtless glad to get rid of him for a time, but Mrs. Howard must
have suffered sadly from the tedium of entertaining her royal master
on these daily visits, and certainly deserved more than she got in
the way of recompense. She had, as one puts it, “the scandal of being
the King’s mistress without the pleasure, the confinement without the
profit”. The Queen took care that the profit was strictly limited.
The King was so mean that at one time he even suggested, indirectly,
that the Queen should pay Mrs. Howard’s husband out of her privy purse
for keeping himself quiet. This was too great a tax even on Caroline’s
complaisance and in one of her bursts of confidence she told Lord
Hervey that when Howard insisted on his wife returning to him, “That
old fool, my Lord Trevor, came to me from Mrs. Howard, and after
thanking me in her name for what I had done, proposed to me to give
£1,200 a year to Mr. Howard to let his wife stay with me; but as I
thought I had done full enough, and that it was a little too much not
only to keep the King’s _guenipes_” (in English trulls) “under my roof,
but to pay them too, I pleaded poverty to my good Lord Trevor, and said
I would do anything to keep so good a servant as Mrs. Howard about
me, but that for the £1,200 a-year I really could not afford it”. So
Howard’s silence was bought out of the King’s pocket, and Mrs. Howard’s
maintenance was partly provided by him, and partly by the Queen, who
gave her a place in her household and so threw a veil of respectability
over the affair.
Mrs. Howard found that she gained so little by the King’s accession,
that she wished to retire from court, but was not allowed to do so.
Meanwhile all her nominations were refused. She seems to have shown her
resentment in divers ways. Her refusal to kneel during the ceremony
of the Queen’s dressing was perhaps one manifestation of it. With
regard to her uprising and retiring, her dressing and undressing, Queen
Caroline followed the custom which had been observed by all kings and
queens of England until George the First, who refused to be bound by
precedent in this matter. Caroline performed the greater part of her
dressing surrounded by many persons. The Queen, who had a great idea
of what was due to her dignity, desired that the bedchamber-woman
in waiting should bring the basin and ewer and present them to her
kneeling. Mrs. Howard objected to this, and, considering the peculiar
relations which existed between her and the King, her objection was
natural enough. But the Queen insisted. “The first thing,” said
Caroline to Lord Hervey later, “this wise, prudent Lady Suffolk” [Mrs.
Howard] “did was to pick a quarrel with me about holding a basin in the
ceremony of my dressing, and to tell me, with her little fierce eyes,
and cheeks as red as your coat, that positively she would not do it;
to which I made her no answer then in anger, but calmly, as I would
have said to a naughty child, ‘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.’”
Mrs. Howard went, and in her dilemma wrote to Dr. Arbuthnot to inquire
of Lady Masham, who had been at one time bedchamber-woman to Queen
Anne, whether this disputed point was really according to precedent.
She got little comfort from Lady Masham, who through Arbuthnot
replied:--
“The bedchamber-_woman_ came into waiting before the Queen’s prayers,
which was before her Majesty was dressed. The Queen often shifted
in a morning; if her Majesty shifted at noon, the bedchamber-_lady_
being by, the bedchamber-_woman_ gave the shift to the _lady_ without
any ceremony, and the _lady_ put it on. Sometimes, likewise, the
bedchamber-_woman_ gave the fan to the _lady_ in the same manner; and
this was all that the bedchamber-_lady_ did about the Queen at her
dressing.
“When the Queen washed her hands the page of the backstairs brought
and set down upon a side-table the basin and ewer, then the
bedchamber-_woman_ set it before the Queen, and knelt on the other side
of the table over against the Queen, the bedchamber-_lady_ only looking
on. The bedchamber-_woman_ poured the water out of the ewer upon the
Queen’s hands.
“The bedchamber-_woman_ pulled on the Queen’s gloves when she could not
do it herself.[25]
“The page of the backstairs was called in to put on the Queen’s shoes.
“When the Queen dined in public the page reached the glass to the
bedchamber-_woman_, and she to the _lady_ in waiting.
“The bedchamber-_woman_ brought the chocolate, and gave it without
kneeling.
“In general, the bedchamber-_woman_ had no dependence on the _lady_ of
the bedchamber.”[26]
As Mrs. Howard was not a lady of the bedchamber but bedchamber-woman
only, she found that the Queen had asked of her nothing more than
etiquette required, and after a week of indecision she yielded the
point, and knelt with the basin as commanded. Horace Walpole, who was
fond of imputing base motives to others, says that the Queen delighted
in subjecting her to such servile offices, though always apologising
to her “good Howard”. But there is no evidence to show that the Queen
was capable of such petty spite; she required nothing more than the
duties the office involved, however menial they may seem now. The
Queen, who bore no malice, soon forgave Mrs. Howard this little display
of temper, for she told Lord Hervey: “About a week after, when upon
maturer deliberation, she had done everything about the basin that I
would have her, I told her I knew we should be good friends again; but
could not help adding, in a little more serious voice, that I owned of
all my servants I had least expected, as I had least deserved it, 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, any hour of the day to let her drop
through my fingers--thus----.”
[Illustration: HENRIETTA HOWARD (COUNTESS OF SUFFOLK).]
The Queen’s morning toilet was generally made by her the occasion
of an informal levée, and to it she would command all those whom
she wished to see on any subject. While her head was being tired a
group would be standing around her, and in the ante-chamber divines
rubbed shoulders with poets, and learned men with politicians and
court ladies. On the Queen’s toilet table would be found not only the
requisites for dressing but a heap of other things--a sermon, a new
book, a poem in her praise, a report as to her gardens and building
plans, a pile of letters on every conceivable subject, and the
memorandum of a minister. All these she would deal with quickly and
characteristically. She would also on these occasions have retailed to
her the latest news, or engage a philosopher and a divine in a dispute
upon some abstract question, and would put in a word in the interval
of having her head tired and washing her hands. Prayers would be read
to her in an adjoining room while she was dressing, in order to save
time. The door was left a little ajar so that the chaplain’s voice
might be heard. The bedchamber-woman was one day commanded to bid the
chaplain, Dr. Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, to begin his
prayers, but seeing a picture of a naked Venus over the fald-stool, the
divine made bold to remark: “And a very proper altar piece is here,
madam!” On another occasion the Queen ordered the door to be closed
for a minute, and then, not hearing the chaplain’s voice, she sent to
know why he was not going on with his prayers. The indignant clergyman
replied that he refused to whistle the word of God through the keyhole.
This latter anecdote is sometimes told of Queen Anne, though, as she
was always very devout in her religious observances, it is far more
likely to be true of Queen Caroline. It is borne out by the following
passage, which occurs in “a dramatic trifle” which Lord Hervey wrote
to amuse the Queen, entitled _The Death of Lord Hervey or a Morning
at Court_. The scene is laid in the Queen’s dressing-room. “The Queen
is discovered at her toilet cleaning her teeth, with Mrs. Purcell
dressing her Majesty’s head, and the princesses, and ladies and women
of the bedchamber standing around her. The Litany is being said in the
next room”:--
_First Parson_ (_behind the scenes_): “From pride, vain glory and
hypocrisy, from envy, hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness”.
_Second Parson_: “Good Lord deliver us!”
_Queen_: “I pray, my good Lady Sundon, shut a little that door; those
creatures pray so loud, one cannot hear oneself speak.” [_Lady Sundon
goes to shut the door._] “So, so, not quite so much; leave it enough
open for those parsons to think we may hear, and enough shut that we
may not hear quite so much.”
The King seldom honoured these morning levées of his Queen with his
presence, for he disliked cosmopolitan gatherings, but sometimes he
would strut in and clear out the crowd with scant ceremony. On one
occasion he came into the room while the Queen was dressing, and seeing
that his consort’s bosom was covered with a kerchief, he snatched
it away, exclaiming angrily to Mrs. Howard who was in waiting: “Is
it because you have an ugly neck yourself that you love to hide the
Queen’s”? The Queen’s bust was said by sculptors to have been the
finest in Europe.
The Queen was pleased with Mrs. Howard’s submission in the matter
of the basin, and by way of marking her appreciation, she did her
the honour of dining with her at her new villa at Marble Hill--that
famous villa of which Lords Burlington and Pembroke designed the front,
Bathurst and Pope planned the gardens, and Swift, Gay and Arbuthnot
arranged the household. But the Queen would allow Mrs. Howard no
political influence. Compton and Pulteney, Bolingbroke and other
Opposition leaders who had trusted to her found that they had leant on
a broken reed. Indeed Mrs. Howard’s goodwill seemed fatal to all her
friends. It was through her, unwittingly, that Lord Chesterfield lost
the favour of the Queen, though Walpole’s jealousy, and the remembrance
the Queen had of his mocking her in the old days at Leicester House,
had something to do with it.
Chesterfield, who had been appointed in the last reign Ambassador at
the Hague, came over to England some little time after King George the
Second ascended the throne to see his friends and pay his respects
to their Majesties. He at once repaired to Walpole, who said to him
jealously: “Well, my Lord, I find you have come to be Secretary of
State”. Lord Chesterfield declared that he had no such ambition, but
he said: “I claim the Garter, not on account of my late services, but
agreeably with the King’s promise to me when he was Prince of Wales;
besides, I am a man of pleasure, and the blue riband would add two
inches to my size”. The King kept his word, and Chesterfield was given
the Garter, and also the sinecure of High Steward of the Household. All
would have gone well with him if he had not been so unfortunate as to
get again into the Queen’s bad books. “The Queen,” says Horace Walpole,
“had an obscure window at St. James’s that looked into a dark passage,
lighted only by a single lamp at night, which looked upon Mrs. Howard’s
apartment. Lord Chesterfield, one Twelfth-night at Court, had won so
large a sum of money that he thought it imprudent to carry it home in
the dark, and deposited it with the mistress. Thus the Queen inferred
great intimacy; thenceforward Lord Chesterfield could obtain no favour
from Court.” The sum which Lord Chesterfield was said to have won on
this occasion was £15,000, which gives some idea of the high play then
in vogue. But he lost far more than he gained--the Queen’s goodwill,
without which no statesman could hold place in the councils of the
King.
FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER III:
[10] After Queen Caroline’s death George II. rarely went to Windsor,
and so neglected the Castle that when George III. ascended the throne
it was found to be in a ruinous condition.
[11] _Stamford Mercury_, 19th September, 1728.
[12] _Daily Post_, 27th December, 1728.
[13] _Country Journal_, 22nd June, 1728.
[14] Most of them, both in the palace and the gardens, were carried out
by Kent, an unworthy successor to Sir Christopher Wren. Some of Kent’s
work at Hampton Court is very incongruous and inferior.
[15] Accidents were not infrequent at these hunting parties. For
instance, we read in the newspapers of the day:--
“25th August, 1731.--The Royal Family were hunting, and in the chase a
stag started upon the Princess Amelia’s horse, which, being frightened,
threw her.
“28th August, 1731.--The Royal Family hunted in Richmond Park, when the
Lord Delaware’s lady was overturned in a chaise, which went over but
did no visible hurt.”
[16] _Stamford Mercury_, 22nd August, 1728.
[17] Hervey’s _Memoirs_.
[18] _Ibid._
[19] _Stamford Mercury_, 25th July, 1728.
[20] The canopy of crimson silk under which Caroline stood is still
affixed to the wall of the Queen’s audience chamber at Hampton
Court--or was there until lately.
[21] Thomas Pelham to Lord Waldegrave, 30th June, 1730.
[22] Lady Hervey to Mrs. Howard, 7th July, 1729. _Suffolk
Correspondence._
[23] Mrs. Howard to Lady Hervey, September, 1728.
[24] Walpole’s _Reminiscences_. Mrs. Howard was lodged at Hampton Court
in the fine suite of rooms until recently occupied by the late Lady
Georgiana Grey.
[25] Queen Anne’s hands were swollen with gout.
[26] Dr. Arbuthnot to Mrs. Howard, 29th May, 1728. _Suffolk
Correspondence._