When the note was completed, the writer gave it to Mr. Stanhope to

read. The stiff vice-chamberlain felt rather shocked at the tone, and

politely advised the duchess to think better of the matter, and write

another note. Her grace consented, but the second edition was so more

highly spiced, and so more pungent than the first, that the officer

preferred taking the latter, which he must have placed before King and

Queen with a sort of decent horror, appropriate to a functionary of his

polite vocation. The duchess lost the royal favour, and the duke, her

husband, lost his posts.

After all, it seems singular, that while so stupid a piece as ‘Polly’

was prohibited, the representation of the ‘Beggars’ Opera’ still went

on. The alleged offence was thus seemingly permitted, while visitation

was made on an unoffending piece; and subscriptions for the printing

of that piece were asked for, as we have seen, by the Duchess of

Queensberry, in the very apartments of the Sovereign, who is said to

have been most offended at the poet’s alleged presumption.

Other poets and the players advanced in the good will of Caroline

and her house by producing pieces complimentary to the Brunswick

family. Thus Rich, who had offended the royal family by getting up the

‘Beggars’ Opera,’ in January 1728, produced Mrs. Haywood’s tragedy of

‘Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lunenberg,’ in March 1729. The authoress

dedicated her play to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and her object in

writing it was to represent one of the ancestors of his royal highness

as raised to the imperial throne in consequence of his virtues. It may

be a question whether Caroline, or her husband, or son, could approve

of a subject which exhibited the Brunswick monarch falling under the

dagger of an assassin. However this may be, the public was indifferent

to the piece and its object; and, after being represented three times,

it disappeared for ever and left the stage to be again occupied by the

‘Beggars’ Opera:’ Peachum--Walpole, Lockit--Townshend, and Mat o’ the

Mint, type of easy financiers, who gaily bid the public ‘stand and

deliver!’

On the first occasion on which George I. left England to visit Hanover,

he appointed the Prince of Wales regent of the kingdom during his

absence. The prince, in spite of his limited powers--he was unable to

act on the smallest point without the sanction of ministers--contrived

to gain considerable and well-deserved popularity. George never again

allowed him to hold the same honourable office; and the son and father

hated each other ever after. In the May of this year, that son, now

King, quitted England in order to visit the Electorate, but he did not

appoint Frederick, Prince of Wales, as regent during his absence. He

delegated that office to the Queen, and most probably by the Queen’s

advice. Frederick had not been long in London before the opposition

party made him, if not their chief, at least their rallying point.

The prince hated his father heartily and openly, and he had as little

regard for his mother. When application was made to parliament to pay

some alleged deficiencies in the civil list, Frederick was particularly

severe on the extravagance of his sire and the method adopted to remedy

it. He talked loudly of what he would have done in a similar extremity,

or rather of how he would never have allowed himself to fall into so

extreme a difficulty. He was doubly in the wrong; ‘in the first place,

for saying what he ought only to have thought; and, in the next, for

not thinking what he ought not to have said.’ It was not likely, even

if the King had been so disposed, that the Queen would have consented

to an arrangement which would have materially diminished her own

consequence. She was accordingly invested with the office of regent;

and she performed its duties with a grace and an efficiency which

caused universal congratulation that the post had not been confided to

other, and necessarily weaker, hands. She had Sir Robert Walpole at her

side to aid her with his counsel; and the presence of the baronet’s

enemy, Lord Townshend, with the King had no effect in damaging the

power effectively administered by Caroline and her great minister.

It was not merely during the absence of the King in Hanover that

Caroline may be said to have ruled in England. The year 1730 affords us

an illustration on this point.

The dissenters, who had originally consented to the Test and

Corporation Acts, upon a most unselfish ground--for they sacrificed

their own interest in order that the Romanists might be prevented from

being admitted to places of power and trust--now demanded the repeal of

those Acts. The request perplexed the crown and ministry, especially

when an election was pending. To promise the dissenters (and it was

more especially the Presbyterians who moved in this matter) relief

would be to deprive the crown of the votes of churchmen; and to reject

the petition would be to set every dissenter against the government

and its candidates. Sir Robert Walpole, in his perplexity, looked

around for a good genius to rescue him from the dilemma in which he

was placed. He paused, on considering Hoadly, Bishop of Salisbury. The

bishop was the very _deus ex machinâ_ most needed, but he had been

shabbily treated on matters of preferment; and Walpole, who had face

for most things, had not the face to ask help from a man whom he had

ill-treated. The Queen stepped in and levelled the difficulty.

Caroline sent for Hoadly to come to her at Kensington. She received the

prelate with affability, and overwhelmed him with flattery, compliments

on his ability, and grateful expressions touching his zeal and the

value of his services in the King’s cause. She had now, she said, a

further service to ask at his hands; and, of course, it was one which

demanded of him no sacrifice of opinion or consistency: the Queen would

have been the last person to ask such a thing of the reverend prelate!

The service was this. The dissenters required the repeal of the Test

and Corporation Acts. The government did not dispute their right to

have such a concession made to them, but it did feel that the moment

was inconvenient; and, therefore, Bishop Hoadly, for whom the whole

body of dissenters entertained the most profound respect, was solicited

to make this opinion known to them, and to induce them to defer their

petition to a more favourable opportunity.

The Queen supported her request by such close and cogent arguments,

flattered the bishop so adroitly, and drew such a picture of the

possibly deplorable results of an attempt to force the repeal of the

Acts alluded to at the present moment, that Hoadly may be excused if he

began to think that the stability of the House of Hanover depended on

the course he should take in this conjuncture. He was not, however, to

be cajoled out of his opinions or his independence; he pronounced the

restrictive Acts unreasonable politically, and profane theologically.

He added, that, as a friend to religious and civil liberty, he

would vote for the repeal whenever and by whomsoever proposed. He

should stultify himself if he did otherwise. All that was in his

‘little power,’ consistent with his honour and reputation, he would,

nevertheless, willingly do. If he could be clearly convinced that the

present moment was unpropitious for pressing the demand, and perilous

to the stability of the government, he would not fail to urge upon the

dissenters to postpone presenting their petition until the coming of a

more favourable opportunity.

The out-of-door world no sooner heard of this interview between the

Queen and the prelate, than a report arose that her Majesty had

succeeded in convincing the right reverend father that the claims of

the dissenters were unreasonable, and that the bishop, as a consequence

of such conviction, would henceforth oppose them resolutely.

Hoadly became alarmed, for such a report damaged all parties. He was

very anxious to maintain a character for consistency, and at the same

time not to lose his little remnant of interest at court. He tried in

vain to get a promise from Sir Robert, that, if the dissenters would

defer preferring their claim until the meeting of a new parliament,

it should then meet with the government support. Sir Robert was too

wary to make such a promise, although he hinted his conviction of

the reasonableness of the claim, and that it would be supported when

so preferred. But the bishop, in his turn, was too cautious to allow

himself to be caught by so flimsy an encouragement; and he was admitted

to several subsequent consultations with the Queen; but, clever as

she was, she could not move the bishop. Hoadly was resolved that the

dissenters should know, that if he thought they might with propriety

defer their petition, he would uphold its prayer whenever presented.

In the mean time, Sir Robert extricated himself and the government

cleverly. Caroline doubtless enjoyed this exercise of his ability as

well as its results. The dissenters, organising an agitation, had

established a central committee in London, all the members of which

were bound to Sir Robert; ‘all monied men, and scriveners, and chosen

by his contrivance. They spoke only to be prompted, and acted only

as he guided.’[5] This committee had a solemnly farcical meeting with

the administration, to hold a consultation in the matter. Sir Robert

and the speakers confined themselves to the unseasonableness, but

commended the reasonableness, of the petition. ‘My lord president

looked wise, was dull, took snuff, and said nothing. Lord Harrington

(the Mr. Stanhope who had waited on the Duchess of Queensberry) took

the same silent, passive part. The Lord-Chancellor (King) and the Duke

of Newcastle had done better had they followed that example too; but

both spoke very plentifully, and were both equally unintelligible; the

one (King) from having lost his understanding, and the other from never

having had any.’[6]

The committee, after this interview, came to the resolution, that if

a petition were presented to parliament now in favour of the repeal

of the Test and Corporation Acts, ‘there was no prospect of success.’

This resolution saved the administration from the storm threatened by

the Presbyterian party. That party considered itself betrayed by its

own delegates, the Queen and Sir Robert were well satisfied with the

result, and the bishop was looked upon by the dissenters as having

supported their cause too little, and by the Queen’s cabinet as having

supported it too much.

In this case it may, perhaps, be fairly asserted that the Queen and

the minister, while they punished the dissenters, caused the blame to

fall upon the church. Their chief argument was, that the opposition

of the clergy would be a source of the greatest embarrassment to the

administration. It had long been the fashion to make the church suffer,

at least in reputation, on every occasion when opportunity offered,

and without any thought as to whether the establishment deserved it

or not. It was in politics precisely as it was in Sir John Vanbrugh’s

comedy of the ‘Provoked Wife.’ It will be remembered that, in that

dramatic mirror, which represents nature as objects are seen reflected

in flawed glass, when the tailor enters with a bundle, the elegant

_Lord Rake_ exclaims, ‘Let me see what’s in that bundle!’ ‘An’t please

you,’ says the tailor, ‘it is the doctor of the parish’s gown.’ ‘The

doctor’s gown!’ cries my lord; and then, turning to _Sir John Brute_,

he exultingly enquires, or requires, ‘Hark you, knight; you won’t stick

at abusing the clergy, will you?’ ‘No!’ shouts _Brute_, ‘I’m drunk, and

I’ll abuse anything!’ ‘Then,’ says _Lord Rake_, ‘you shall wear this

gown whilst you charge the watch; that though the blows fall upon you,

the scandal may light upon the church!’ ‘A generous design, by all the

Gods!’ is the ecstatic consent of the Pantheistic _Brute_--and it is

one to which _Amen!_ has been cried by many of the Brute family since

first it was uttered by their illustrious predecessor.

Meanwhile, Caroline could be as earnest and interested upon trifles

as she was upon questions of political importance. She loved both to

plague and to talk about Mrs. Howard.

That the Queen was not more courteous to this lady than their

respective positions demanded there is abundant evidence. In

a very early period of the reign Mrs. Howard was required, as

bedchamber-woman, to present a basin for the Queen to wash her hands

in, and to perform the service kneeling. The _etiquette_ was, for the

basin and ewer to be set on the Queen’s table by a page of the back

stairs: the office of the bedchamber-woman was then to take both, pour

out the water, set it before the Queen, and remain kneeling while her

Majesty washed, of which refreshing ceremony the kneeling attendant was

the only one who dared be the ocular witness.

This service of genuflexion remained in courtly fashion till the death

of Queen Charlotte. In the mean time, Mrs. Howard was by no means

disposed to render it to Queen Caroline. The scene which ensued was

highly amusing. On the service being demanded, said Caroline to Lord

Hervey, ‘Mrs. Howard proceeded 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. I know you will. Go, go; fie for shame! Go, my good Howard; we

will talk of this another time._” Mrs. Howard did come round; and I

told her,’ said Caroline, ‘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----.’

Caroline’s own account of the _fracas_ between Mrs. Howard and her

husband is too characteristic to be passed over. The curious in such

matters will find it in full detail in ‘Lord Hervey’s Memoirs.’ In

this place it will suffice to say, that, according to Lord Hervey, Mr.

Howard had a personal interview with the Queen. Caroline described the

circumstances of it with great graphic power. At this interview he had

said that he would take his wife out of her Majesty’s coach if he met

her in it. Caroline told him to ‘Do it, if he dare; though,’ she added,

‘I was horribly afraid of him (for we were _tête à tête_) all the time

I was thus playing the bully. What added to my fear on this occasion,’

said the Queen, ‘was, that as I knew him to be so _brutal_, as well

as a little mad, and seldom quite sober, so that I did not think it

impossible but that he might throw me out of window (for it was in

this very room our interview was, and that sash then open, as it is

now); but as soon as I got near the door, and thought myself safe from

being thrown out of the window, I resumed my grand tone of Queen, and

said I would be glad to see who would dare to open my coach-door and

take out one of my servants; knowing all the time that he might do so

if he would, and that he could have his wife and I the affront. 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. He

then said he would complain to the King; upon which I again assumed my

high tone, and said the King had nothing to do with my servants; and,

for that reason, he might save himself the trouble, as I was sure the

King would give him no answer but that it was none of his business to

concern himself with my family; and after a good deal more conversation

of this sort (I standing close to the door all the while to give me

courage), Mr. Howard and I bade one another _good morning_, and he

withdrew.’

Caroline proceeded to call Lord Trevor ‘an old fool’ for coming to her

with thanks from Mrs. Howard, and suggestions that the Queen should

give 1,200_l._ a-year to the husband for the consent of the latter to

his wife’s being retained in the Queen’s household. Caroline replied

to this suggestion with as high a tone as she could have used when

addressing herself to Mr. Howard; but with a coarseness of spirit and

sentiment which hardly became a queen, although they do not appear to

have been considered unbecoming in a queen at _that_ time. ‘I thought,’

said Caroline, ‘I had done full enough, and that it was a little too

much, not only to keep the King’s “_guenipes_” (trollops) 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_l._ a-year, I really could not afford

it.’ The King used to make presents to the Queen of fine Hanoverian

horses, not that _she_ might be gratified, but that he might, when he

wanted them, have horses maintained out of her purse. So he gave her

a bedchamber-woman in Mrs. Howard; but Caroline would not have her on

the same terms as the horses, and the 1,200_l._ a-year were probably

paid---not by the King, after all, but by the people.

Lord Chesterfield describes the figure of Mrs. Howard as being

above the middle size and well-shaped, with a face more pleasing

than beautiful.[7] She was remarkable for the extreme fairness and

fineness of her hair. ‘Her arms were square and lean, that is, ugly.

Her countenance was an undecided one, and announced neither good nor

ill nature, neither sense nor the want of it, neither vivacity nor

dulness.’ It is difficult to understand how such a face could be

‘pleasing;’ and the following is the characteristic of a common-place

person. ‘She had good natural sense, not without art, but in her

conversation dwelt tediously upon details and _minuties_.’ Of the man

whom she had, when very young, hastily married for love, and heartily

hated at leisure, Chesterfield says, ‘he was sour, dull, and sullen.’

The same writer sets it down as equally unaccountable that the lady

should have loved such a man, or that the man should ever have loved

anybody. The noble lord is also of opinion that only a Platonic

friendship reigned between the King and the favourite; and that it was

as innocent as that which was said to have existed between himself and

Miss Bellenden.

Very early during the intercourse, ‘the busy and speculative

politicians of the antechambers, who knew everything, but knew

everything wrong,’ imagined that the lady’s influence must be

all-powerful, seeing that her admirer paid to her the homage of

devoting to her the best hours of his day. She did not reject

solicitations, we are told, because she was unwilling to have it

supposed that she was without power. She neither rejected solicitations

nor bound herself by promises, but hinted at difficulties; and, in

short, as Chesterfield well expresses it, she used ‘all that trite

cant of those who with power will not, and of those who without power

cannot, grant the requested favours.’ So far from being able to make

peers, she was not even successful in a well-meant attempt to procure

a place of 200_l._ a-year ‘for John Gay, a very poor and honest man,

and no bad poet, only because he was a poet, which the King considered

as a mechanic.’ Mrs. Howard had little influence, either in the house

of the Prince, or, when she became Countess of Suffolk, in that of the

King. Caroline, we are told, ‘had taken good care that Lady Suffolk’s

apartment should not lead to power and favour; and from time to time

made her feel her inferiority by hindering the King from going to her

room for three or four days, representing it as the seat of a political

faction.’

CHAPTER III.

THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS ANNE.

Violent opposition to the King by Prince Frederick--Readings

at Windsor Castle--The Queen’s patronage of Stephen Duck

--His melancholy end--Glance at passing events--Precipitate

flight of Dr. Nichols--Princess Anne’s determination to get a

husband--Louis XV. proposed as a suitor; negotiation broken off

--The Prince of Orange’s offer accepted--Ugly and deformed--

The King and Queen averse to the union--Dowry settled on the

Princess--Anecdote of the Duchess of Marlborough--Illness

of the bridegroom--Ceremonies attendant on the marriage--

Mortification of the Queen--The public nuptial chamber--Offence

given to the Irish peers--The Queen and Lady Suffolk--Homage

paid by the Princess to her deformed husband--Discontent of

Prince Frederick--His anxiety not unnatural--Congratulatory

addresses by the Lords and Commons--Spirited conduct of the Queen

--Lord Chesterfield--Agitations on Walpole’s celebrated Excise

Scheme--Lord Stair delegated to remonstrate with the Queen--

Awkward performance of his mission--Sharply rebuked by the Queen

--Details of the interview--The Queen’s success in overcoming the

King’s antipathy to Walpole--Comments of the populace--Royal

interview with a bishop.

The social happiness of Caroline began now to be affected by the

conduct of her son Frederick, Prince of Wales. Since his arrival in

England, in 1728, he had been but coolly entertained by his parents,

who refused to pay the debts he had accumulated in Hanover previous to

his leaving the Electorate. He was soon in the arms of the opposition;

and the court had no more violent an enemy, political or personal, than

this prince.

His conduct, however--and some portion of it was far from being

unprovoked--did not prevent the court from entering into some social

enjoyments of a harmless and not over-amusing nature. Among these may

be reckoned the ‘readings’ at Windsor Castle. These readings consisted

of the poetry, or verses rather, of that Stephen Duck, the thresher,

whose rhymes Swift has ridiculed in lines as weak as any which ever

fell from the pen of Duck. The latter was a Wiltshire labourer, who

supported, or tried to support, a family upon the modest wages of

four-and-sixpence a week. In his leisure hours, whenever those could

have occurred, he cultivated poetry; and two of his pieces, ‘The

Shunamite’ and ‘The Thresher’s Labour,’ were publicly read in the

drawing-room at Windsor Castle, in 1730, by Lord Macclesfield. Caroline

procured for the poet the office of yeoman of the guard, and afterwards

made him keeper of her grotto, _Merlin’s Cave_, at Richmond. This

last act, and the patronage and pounds which Caroline wasted upon the

wayward and worthless savage, show that Swift’s epigram upon the busts

in the hermitage at Richmond was not based upon truth--

Louis, the living learned fed,

And raised the scientific head.

Our frugal Queen, to save her meat,

Exalts the heads that cannot eat.

Swift’s anger against the Queen, who once promised him some medals,

but who never kept her word, and from whom he had hoped, perhaps, for

a patronage which he failed to acquire, was further illustrated about

this time in a fiercely satirical poem, in which he says:--

May Caroline continue long--

For ever fair and young--in song.

What, though the royal carcase must,

Squeez’d in a coffin, turn to dust?

Those elements her name compose,

Like atoms, are exempt from blows.

And, in allusion to the princesses and their prospects, he adds, that

Caroline ‘hath graces of her own:’--

Three Graces by Lucina brought her,

Just three, and ev’ry Grace a daughter.

Here many a king his heart and crown

Shall at their snowy feet lay down;

In royal robes they come by dozens

To court their English-German cousins:

Besides a pair of princely babies

That, five years hence, will both be Hebes.

The royal patronage of Duck ultimately raised him to the church, and

made of him Vicar of Kew. But it failed to bring to the thresher

substantial happiness. He had little enjoyment in the station to which

he was elevated; and, weary of the restraints it imposed on him, he

ultimately escaped from them by drowning himself.

Of the Graces who were the daughters of Caroline, the marriage of one

began now to be canvassed. Meanwhile, there was much food for mere talk

in common passing events at home. The courtiers had to express sympathy

at their Majesties’ being upset in their carriage, when travelling only

from Kew to London. Then the son of a Stuart had just died in London.

He was that Duke of Cleveland who was the eldest son of Charles II. and

Barbara Villiers. In the year 1731 died two far more remarkable people.

On the 8th of April ‘Mrs. Elizabeth Cromwell, daughter of Richard

Cromwell, the Protector, and grand-daughter of Oliver Cromwell, died

at her house in Bedford Row, in the eighty-second year of her age.’ In

the same month passed away a man whose writings as much amused Caroline

as they have done commoner people--Defoe. He had a not much superior

intellectual training to that of Stephen Duck, but he was ‘one of the

best English writers that ever had so mean an education.’ The deaths

in the same year of the eccentric and profligate Duke of Wharton, and

of the relict of that Duke of Monmouth who lost his head for rebellion

against James II., gave further subject of conversation in the court

circle; where, if it was understood that death was inevitable and

necessary, no one could understand what had induced Dr. Nichols, of

Trinity College, Cambridge, to steal books from the libraries in that

university town. The court was highly merry at the precipitate flight

of the doctor, after he was found out; but there was double the mirth

the next year at the awkwardness of the Emperor of Germany, who,

happening to fire at a stag, chanced to shoot Prince Schwartzenberg,

his master of the horse. But we turn from these matters to those of

wooing and marriage.

In the year 1733 the proud and eldest daughter of Caroline, she who

had expressed her vexation at having brothers, who stood between her

and the succession to the crown--a crown, to wear which for a day,

she averred she would willingly die when the day was over--in the

year above named, the Princess Anne had reached the mature age of

twenty-four, and her hand yet remained disengaged. Neither crown nor

suitor had yet been placed at her disposal. A suitor _with_ a crown was

once, however, very nearly on the point of fulfilling the great object

of her ambition, and that when she was not more than sixteen years of

age. The lover proposed was no less a potentate than Louis XV., and he

would have offered her a seat on a throne, which, proud as she was, she

might have accepted without much condescension.

It is said that the proposal to unite Louis XV. and the Princess Anne

originated with the French minister, the Duke de Bourbon, and that

the project was entertained with much favour and complacency, until

it suddenly occurred to some one that if the princess became queen in

France, she would be expected to conform to the religion of France.

This, it was urged, could not be thought of by a family which was a

reigning family only by virtue of its pre-eminent Protestantism. It

does not seem to have occurred to any one that when Maria Henrietta

espoused Charles I., she had not been even asked to become a professed

member of the Church of England, and that we might have asked for the

same toleration in France for the daughter of Caroline as had been

given in England to the daughter of the ‘Grand Henri.’ However this may

be, the affair was not pursued to its end, and Caroline could not say

to her daughter, as Stanislas said to his on the morning he received an

offer for her from the young King Louis:--‘_Bon jour! ma fille: vous

êtes Reine de France!_’

Anne was unlucky. She lived moodily on for some half-dozen years, and,

nothing more advantageous offering, she looked good-naturedly on one of

the ugliest princes in Europe. But then he happened to be a sovereign

prince in his way. This was the Prince of Orange, who resembled

Alexander the Great only in having a wry neck and a halt in his gait.

But he also had other deformities from which the Macedonian was free.

George and Caroline were equally indisposed to accept the prince for

a son-in-law, and the parental disinclination was expressed in words

to the effect that neither King nor Queen would force the feelings of

their daughter, whom they left free to accept or reject the misshapen

suitor who aspired to the plump hand and proud person of the Princess

Anne.

The lady thought of her increasing years; that lovers were not to be

found on every bush, especially sovereign lovers; and, remembering

that there were Princesses of England before her who had contrived to

live in much state and a certain degree of happiness as Princesses of

Orange, she declared her intention of following the same course, and

compelling her ambition to stoop to the same modest fortune.

The Queen was well aware that her daughter knew nothing more of the

prince than what she could collect from his counterfeit presentments

limned by flattering artists; and Caroline suggested that she should

not be too ready to accept a lover whom she had not seen. The princess

was resolute in her determination to take him at once, ‘for better,

for worse.’ Her royal father was somewhat impatient and chafed by

such pertinacity, and exclaimed that the prince was the ugliest man

in Holland, and he could not more terribly describe him. ‘I do not

care,’ said she, ‘how ugly he may be. If he were a Dutch baboon I would

marry him.’ ‘Nay, then, have your way,’ said George, in his strong

Westphalian accent, which was always rougher and stronger when he was

vexed; ‘have your way: you will find _baboon_ enough, I promise you!’

Could the aspiring Prince of Orange only have heard how amiably he

was spoken of _en famille_ by his future relations, he would perhaps

have been less ambitious of completing the alliance. Happily these

family secrets were not revealed until long after he could be conscious

of them, and accordingly his honest proposals were accepted with

ostentatious respect and ill-covered ridicule.

The marriage of the princess royal could not be concluded without an

application to parliament. To both houses a civil intimation was made

of the proposed union of the Princess Anne and the Prince of Orange.

In this intimation the King graciously mentioned that he promised

himself the concurrence and assistance of the Commons to enable him

to give such a portion with his eldest daughter as should be suitable

to the occasion. The Commons’ committee promised to do all that the

King and Queen could expect from them, and they therefore came to the

resolution to sell lands in the island of St. Christopher to the amount

of 80,000_l._, and to make over that sum to the King, as the dowry of

his eldest daughter. The resolution made part of a bill of which it was

only one of the items, and the members in the house affected to be

scandalised that the dowry of a Princess of England should be ‘lumped

in’ among a mass of miscellaneous items--charities to individuals,

grants to old churches, and sums awarded for less dignified purposes.

But the bill passed as it stood, and Caroline, who only a few days

before had sent a thousand pounds to the provost of Queen’s College,

Oxford, for the rebuilding and adorning of that college, was especially

glad to find a dowry for her daughter, in whatever company it might

come, provided only it was not out of her own purse.

The news of the securing of the dowry hastened the coming of the

bridegroom. On the 7th of November 1732 he arrived at Greenwich,

and thence proceeded to Somerset House. His intended wife, when she

heard of his arrival, was in no hurry to meet him, but went on at her

harpsichord, surrounded by a number of opera-people. The Queen spoke

of him as ‘that animal!’ The nuptials were to have been speedily

solemnised, but the lover fell grievously sick. When the poor ‘groom’

fell sick, not one of the royal family condescended to visit him, and

though he himself maintained a dignified silence on this insulting

conduct, his suite, who could not imitate their master’s indifference,

made comment thereupon loud and frequent enough. They got nothing by

it, save being called Dutch boobies. The princess royal exhibited

no outward manifestation either of consciousness or sympathy. She

appeared precisely the same under all contingencies; and whether the

lover were in or out of England, in life or out of it, seemed to this

strong-minded lady to be one and the same thing.

There was no one whom the postponement of the marriage more annoyed

than it did the Duchess of Marlborough. She was then residing in

Marlborough House, which had been built some five-and-twenty years

previously by Wren. That architect was employed, not because he was

preferred, but that Vanbrugh might be vexed. The ground, in which had

formerly been kept the birds and fowls ultimately destined to pass

through the kitchen to the royal table, had been leased to the duchess

by Queen Anne, and the expenses of building amounted to nearly fifty

thousand pounds. The duchess both experienced and caused considerable

mortifications here. She used to speak of the King in the adjacent

palace as her ‘neighbour George.’ The entrance to the house, from Pall

Mall, was, as it still is, a crooked and inconvenient one. To remedy

this defect, she intended to purchase some houses ‘in the Priory,’

as the locality was called, for the purpose of pulling them down and

constructing a more commodious entry to the mansion; but Sir Robert

Walpole, with no more dignified motive than spite, secured the houses

and ground, and erected buildings on the latter, which, as now,

completely blocked in the front of the duchess’s mansion. She was

subjected to a more temporary, but as inconvenient, blockade when the

preparations for the wedding of the imperious Anne and her ugly husband

were going on. Among other preparations a boarded gallery, through

which the nuptial procession was to pass, was built up close against

the duchess’s windows, completely darkening her rooms. As the boards

remained there during the postponement of the ceremony, the duchess

used to look at them with the remark, ‘I wish the princess would oblige

me by taking away her _orange chest_!’

But the sick bridegroom took long to mend; and it was not till the

following January that he was even sufficiently convalescent to journey

by easy stages to Bath, and there drink in health at the fashionable

pump. A month’s attendance there restored him to something like health;

and in February his serene highness was gravely disporting himself at

Oxford, exchanging compliments and eating dinners with the sages and

scholars at that seat of learning. Another month was allowed to pass,

and then, on the 24th of March 1733, the royal marriage was solemnised

‘in the French Chapel,’ St. James’s, by the Bishop of London.

The ceremony was as theatrical and coarse as such things used to be in

those days. The prince must have looked very much as M. Potier used to

look in Riquet à la Houppe, before his transformation from deformity to

perfection. He was attired in a ‘cloth of gold suit;’ and George and

Caroline may be pardoned if they smiled at the ‘baboon’ whom they were

about to accept for their son-in-law. The bride was ‘in virgin robes of

silver tissue, having a train six yards long, which was supported by

ten dukes’ and earls’ daughters, all of whom were attired in robes of

silver tissue.’

Nature will assert its claims in spite of pride or expediency; and

accordingly it was observed that, after the bridegroom had arrived,

and the marriage procession began to move through the temporarily

constructed gallery, blazing with light, and glittering with bright

gems and brighter eyes, the bride herself seemed slightly touched, and

Caroline especially grave and anxious in her deportment. She appeared,

for the first time, to feel that her daughter was about to make a great

sacrifice, and her consequent anxiety was probably increased by the

conviction that it was too late to save her daughter from impending

fate. The King himself, who had never been in the eager condition of

the _seigneur_ in the song, who so peremptorily exclaims--

De ma fille Isabelle

Sois l’époux à l’instant--

manifested more impassibility than ever. Finally, the knot was tied

under a salvo of artillery and a world of sighs.

The ceremony took place in the evening, and at midnight the royal

family supped in public. It was a joyous festival, and not before

two in the morning did the jaded married couple retire to the bower

prepared for them, where they had to endure the further nuisance of

sitting up in bed, in rich undresses, while the court and nobility,

‘fresh’ from an exhilarating supper and strong wines, defiled before

them, making pleasant remarks the while, as ‘fine gentlemen’ used to

make who had been born in our Augustan age.

Caroline felt compassion for her daughter, but she restrained her

feelings until her eye fell upon the bridegroom. In his silver tissue

night-dress, his light peruque, his ugliness, and his deformity, he

struck her as the impersonation of a monster. His ill figure was so

ill-dressed, that, looked at from behind, he appeared to have no

head, and seen from before, he appeared as if he had neither neck nor

legs.[8] The Queen was wonderfully moved at the sight--moved with pity

for her daughter, and with indignation at her husband. The portion

of the ceremony which used to be the merriest was by far the most

mournful, at least so far as the Queen’s participation therein was

concerned. She fairly cried with mingled vexation, disappointment, and

disgust. She could not even revert to the subject, for days after,

without crying, and yet laughing too, as the oddity of the bridegroom’s

ugliness came across her mind.

The married couple were assuredly a strangely assorted pair. The

bride, indeed, was not without common-place charms. In common with

a dairy-maid the princess had a lively clear look and a very fair

complexion. Like many a dairy-maid, too, of the time, she was very

much marked with the small-pox. She was also ill-made, and inclined

to become as obese as her royal mother. But then the bridegroom! All

writers dealing with the subject agree that his ugliness was something

extraordinary. No one doubts that he was deformed; but Hervey adds some

traits that are revolting. His serene highness did not, like the gods,

distil a celestial ichor. He appears, however, not to have been void

of sense or good feeling; for when, at the period of his arrival, he

was received with very scanty honours and cold ceremony--was made to

feel that he was nothing in himself, and could only become anything

here by marrying an English princess; when George, if not Caroline,

‘snubbed’ the courtiers who crowded his apartments at Somerset House;

and when, in short, the prince of 12,000_l._ a year was made to feel

that but little value was set upon him--he bore it all in silence, or

as if he did not perceive it. Let us hope that gallantry for the lady

induced the princely Quasimodo thus to act. It was almost more than she

deserved; for while the people were ready to believe that the alliance

was entered into the better to strengthen the Protestant succession,

Anne herself was immediately moved thereto by fear, if she were left

single, of ultimately depending for a provision upon her brother

Frederick.

Lord Hervey was the master of the ceremonies on this serio-comic

occasion. According to his table of precedence, the Irish peers were to

walk in the procession after the entire body of the peerage of Great

Britain. This was putting the highest Irish peer beneath the lowest

baron in Britain. The Hibernian lords claimed to walk immediately

after the English and Scotch peers of their own degree. It was the

most modest claim ever made by that august body; but, modest as it

was, the arrogant peers of Great Britain threatened, if the claim were

allowed, to absent themselves from the ceremony altogether! The case

was represented to Caroline, and she took the side of right and common

sense; but when she was told that to allow the Irish claim would be to

banish every British peer from the solemn ceremony, she was weak enough

to give way. Lord Hervey, in his programme for the occasion, omitted to

make any mention of the peers of Ireland at all--thus leaving them to

walk where they could. On being remonstrated with, he said that if the

Irish lords were not satisfied he would keep all the finery standing,

and they might walk through it in any order of precedency they liked

on the day after the wedding. One lord grievously complained of the

omission of the illustrious Hibernian body from the programme. Lord

Hervey excused himself by remarking, that as the Irish house of peers

was then sitting in Dublin, he never thought, being an Englishman, of

the august members of that assembly being in two places at once.

The claim was probably disallowed because Ireland was not then in union

with England, as Scotland was. On no other ground could the claim have

been refused; and Caroline saw that even that ground was not a very

good one whereon to rest a denial. As it was, the Irish peers felt

like poor relations, neither invited to nor prohibited from the joyous

doings, but with a thorough conviction that, to use a popular phrase,

their room was deemed preferable to their company.

During the week following the marriage, Frederick, Prince of Wales,

was employed, after a fashion which suited his tastes extremely well,

in escorting his brother-in-law to witness the sights of London. It

then appears to have suddenly struck the government that it would

be as well to make an Englishman of the bridegroom, and that that

consummation could not be too quickly arrived at. Accordingly, a bill

for naturalising the prince was brought in and read three times on the

same day. It, of course, passed unanimously, and the prince received

the intelligence of his having been converted into a Briton with a

phlegm which showed that he had not altogether ceased to be a Dutchman.

He was much more pleasurably excited in the April of the following

year, when he heard that the King had sent a written message to the

Commons, intimating that he had settled five thousand a year on the

princess royal, and desiring that they would enable him to make the

grant for the life of the princess, as it would otherwise determine on

his Majesty’s death. The Commons complied with this message, and the

Prince of Orange was infinitely more delighted with this Act than with

that which bestowed on him the legal rights of an Englishman.

This pleasant little arrangement having been concluded, the prince and

princess set out for Holland, from St. James’s, on the 10th of April

1734; and in July of the same year the princess was again in England,

not at all to the satisfaction of her sire, and but very scantily to

the delight of her mother. The young lady, however, was determined to

remain; and it was not till November that she once more returned to her

home behind the dykes. The Queen was not sorry to part with her, for

just then she was deep in the _fracas_ connected with the dismissal of

her husband’s ‘favourite,’ Lady Suffolk, from her office of mistress

of the robes to her Majesty, an office in which she was succeeded by

the more worthy Countess of Tankerville. The King had the less time

to be troubled with thought about ‘that old deaf woman,’ as he very

ungallantly used to call his ancient ‘favourite,’ as he, too, was

deeply engaged in protesting against the Elector Palatine, who had been

very vigorously protesting against the right of the King, as Elector of

Hanover, to bear the title of arch-treasurer of the empire.

The commiseration which the Queen _had_ felt for her daughter was

shared by the sister of the latter, the Princess Amelia, who declared

that nothing on earth could have induced her to wed with such a man as

the Prince of Orange. Her declaration was accepted for as much as it

was worth. The gentle Princess Caroline, on the other hand, thought

that her sister, under the circumstances, had acted wisely, and that,

had _she_ been so placed, she would have acted in like manner. Nor did

the conduct of the bride give the world any reason to think that she

stood in need of pity. She appeared to adore the ‘monster,’ who, it

must be confessed, exhibited no particular regard for his spouse. The

homage she paid him was perfect. ‘She made prodigious court to him,’

says Lord Hervey, ‘addressed everything she said to him, and applauded

everything he said to anybody else.’

Perhaps the pride of the princess would not permit a doubt to be thrown

upon her supreme happiness. Her brother Frederick strove to mar it by

raising a quarrel, on a slight, but immensely absurd, foundation. He

reproached her for the double fault of presuming to be married before

him, and of accepting a settlement from her father when _he_ had none.

He was ingenious in finding fault; but there may have been a touch of

satire in this, for Anne was known to have been as groundlessly angry

with her brother for a circumstance which he could not very well help,

namely, his own birth, whereby the princess royal ceased to be next

heir to the crown.

The prince, however, was not much addicted to showing respect to

anybody, least of all to his mother. It was because of this miserable

want of respect for the Queen that the King, in an interview forced on

him by his son, refused to settle a fixed annuity upon him--at least

till he had manifested a more praiseworthy conduct towards the Queen.

The anxiety of Frederick on this occasion was not unnatural, for he

was deeply in debt, and of the 100,000_l._ granted to the prince by

parliament out of the civil list, the King allowed him only 36,000_l._

The remainder was appropriated by the King, who doubtless made his

son’s conduct the rule of his liberality, measuring his supplies to

the prince according as the latter was well or ill behaved. It was a

degrading position enough, and the degradation was heightened by the

silent contempt with which the King passed over his son’s application

to be permitted to join in active service. Throughout these first

family quarrels, the Queen preserved a great impartiality, with some

leaning, perhaps, towards serving her son. Nothing, however, came of

it; and, for the moment, Frederick was fain to be content with doing

the honours of the metropolis to his ungraceful brother-in-law.

The congratulatory addresses which were presented on the occasion of

the marriage had a mordantly satirical tone about them. It is wonderful

how George and Caroline, whose unpopularity was increasing at this

time, continued to preserve their equanimity at hearing praises rung

on the name and services of ‘Orange’--the name of a prince who had

become King of England by rendering the questionable service to _his

father-in-law_ of turning him off the throne.

The address of the Lords to the Queen, especially congratulating the

mother on the marriage of her daughter, was rendered painful instead

of pleasant by its being presented, that is spoken, to her by Lord

Chesterfield. Caroline had never seen this peer since the time he was

dismissed from her husband’s household, when she was Princess of Wales.

He had not been presented at court since the accession of the present

Sovereign, and the Queen was therefore resolved to treat as an utter

stranger the man who had been impertinent enough to declare he designed

that the step he took should be considered as a compliment to the

Queen. The latter abhorred him, nevertheless, for his present attempt

to turn the compliment addressed to her by the Lords into a joke.

Before he appeared, Caroline intimated her determination not to let the

peer’s cool impertinence awe or disconcert her. He really did find what

she declared he should, that ‘it was as little in his power for his

presence to embarrass her as for his raillery behind her back to pique

her, or his consummate skill in politics to distress the King or his

ministers.’[9]

The Queen acted up to this resolution. She received Lords Chesterfield,

Scarborough, and Hardwicke, the bearers of the address, in her

bedchamber, no one else being present but her children and Lord Hervey,

who stood behind her chair. The last-named nobleman, in describing the

scene, says: ‘Lord Chesterfield’s speech was well written and well got

by heart, and yet delivered with a faltering voice, a face as white as

a sheet, and every limb trembling with concern. The Queen’s answer was

quiet and natural, and delivered with the same ease that she would have

spoken to the most indifferent person in her circle.’

Caroline, however, had more serious matters to attend to during this

year than affairs of marriage. Of these we will now briefly speak.

Sir Robert Walpole’s celebrated Excise scheme was prolific in raising

political agitations and exciting both political and personal passions.

The Peers were, strangely enough, even more resolute against the

measure than the Commons; or perhaps it would be more correct to say,

that a portion of them took advantage of the popular feeling to further

thereby their own particular interests and especial objects.

It is again illustrative of the power and influence of Caroline, and

of the esteem in which she was held, that a body of the peers delegated

Lord Stair to proceed to the Queen, at Kensington, and remonstrate

with her upon the unconstitutional and destructive measure, as they

designated the Excise project.

Lord Stair was a bold man and was accustomed to meet and contend with

sovereigns. He had no doubt of being able to turn Caroline to his

purpose. But never did delegate perform his mission so awkwardly. He

thought to awaken the Queen’s indignation against Walpole by imparting

to her the valuable admonitory knowledge that she was ruled by that

subtle statesman. He fancied he improved his position by informing

her that Walpole was universally hated, that he was no gentleman, and

that he was as ill-looking as he was ill-inclined. He even forgot

his mission, save when he spoke of fidelity to his constituents, by

going into purely personal matters, railing at the minister whose very

shoe-buckles he had kissed in order to be appointed vice-admiral of

Scotland, when the Duke of Queensberry was ejected from that post, and

accusing Walpole of being manifestly untrue to the trust which he held,

seeing that whenever there was an office to dispose of, he invariably

preferred giving it to the Campbells rather than to him--Stair. To the

_Campbells_!--he reiterated, as if the very name were enough to rouse

Caroline against Walpole. To the Campbells! who tried to rule England

by means of the King’s mistress; opposed to governing it by means of

the King’s wife.

Caroline heard him with decent and civil patience until he had gone

through his list of private grievances, and began to meddle with

matters personal to herself and the royal hearth. She then burst forth,

and was superb in her rebuke--superb in its matter and manner--superb

in her dignity and in the severity with which she crushed Lord Stair

beneath her fiery sarcasms and her withering contempt. She ridiculed

his assertions of fidelity, and told him he had become traitor to his

own country and the betrayer of his own constituents. She mocked his

complacent assurances that his object was not personal, but patriotic.

She professed her intense abhorrence of having the private dissensions

of noblemen ripped open in her presence, and bade him learn better

manners than to speak, as he had done, of ‘the King’s servants to the

King’s wife.’

‘My conscience,’ said Lord Stair.

‘Don’t talk to me of your conscience, my lord,’ said Caroline, ‘or I

shall faint.’ The conversation was in French, and the Queen’s precise

words were, ‘Ne me parlez point de conscience, milord; vous me faites

évanouir.’

The Scottish lord was sadly beaten down, and confessed his disgraceful

defeat by requesting her Majesty to be good enough to keep what had

passed at the interview as a secret. He added, in French, ‘Madame, le

Roi est trompé et vous êtes trahie’--‘The King is deceived and you are

betrayed.’ He had previously alluded to Lords Bolingbroke and Carteret,

as men worthy indeed to be trusted, and who had the honour and glory

of the kingdom at heart. These names, with such testimonial attached

to them, especially excited the royal indignation. ‘Bolingbroke and

Carteret!’ exclaimed Caroline. ‘You may tell them from me, if you will,

that they are men of no parts; that they are said to be two of the

greatest liars in any country; and that my observation and experience

confirm what is said of them.’[10]

Stair reiterated his request that the incidents of the private

interview should not be further spoken of. Caroline consented; and she

must have felt some contempt for him as he also promised that he would

keep them secret, giving knowledge thereof to no man.

‘Well?’ said Carteret, enquiringly, as he met with Lord Stair after

this notable interview with Caroline.

‘Well!’ exclaimed Lord Stair, ‘I have staggered her!’ A pigmy might as

well have boasted of having staggered Thalestris and Hippolyta.

A short time subsequently Lord Hervey was with the Queen, in her

apartment, purveying to her, as he was wont to do, the floating news

of the day. Among other things, he told her of an incident in a debate

in parliament upon the army supplies. In the course of the discussion,

Carteret had observed that, at the period when Cardinal Mazarin was

ruining France by his oppressive measures, a great man sought an

audience of the Queen (Anne of Austria, mother of the young King Louis

XIV.), and after explaining to her the perils of the times, ended with

the remark that she was maintaining a man at the helm who deserved to

be rowing in the galleys.

Caroline immediately knew that Lord Stair had revealed what he had

petitioned her to keep secret; and feeling that she was thereby

exonerated from observing further silence, her Majesty took the

opportunity to ‘out with it all,’ as she said in not less choice

French: ‘J’ai pris la première occasion d’égosiller tout.’

Reverting to Carteret’s illustration she observed that the ‘great man’

noticed by him was Condé, a man who never had a word to say against

Mazarin as long as the cardinal fed a rapacity which could never be

satisfied. This was, in some degree, Stair’s position with regard to

Walpole. ‘Condé, in his interview with the Queen of France,’ observed

the well-read Queen of England, ‘had for his object to impose upon

her and France, by endeavouring to persuade her that his private

resentments were only a consequence of his zeal for the public

service.’

Lord Hervey, very gallantly and courtier-like, expressed his wish that

her Majesty could have been in the house to let the senate know her

wisdom; or that she could have been concealed there, to have had the

opportunity of saying, with Agrippine--

Derrière une voile, invisible, et présente,

Je fus de ce grand corps l’âme toute puissante.

The quotation, perhaps, could not have been altogether applicable,

but as Lord Hervey quoted it, and ‘my lord’ was a man of wit, it is

doubtless as well-placed as wit could make it. The Queen, at all

events, took it as a compliment, laughed, and declared, that often

when she was with these impatient fellows, ever ready with their

unreasonable remonstrances, she was tempted herself to say, with

Agrippine, that she was--

Fille, femme, et mère de vos maîtres;

a quotation less applicable even than the former, but in which Lord

Hervey detected such abundance of wit that he went into a sort of

ecstasy of delight at the Queen’s judgment, humour, knowledge, and

ability.

When the Excise bill was for the first time brought before the house,

the debate lasted till one in the morning. Lord Hervey, during the

evening, wrote an account of its progress to the King and Queen; and

when he repaired to the palace at the conclusion of the discussion, the

King kept him in the Queen’s bed-chamber, talking over the scene, till

three o’clock in the morning, and never for a moment remembered that

the hungry intelligencer had not dined since the yesterday.

When the clamour against the bill rose to such a pitch that all

England, the army included, seemed ready to rise against it, Walpole

offered himself as a personal sacrifice, if the service and interests

of the King would be promoted by his surrender of office and power. It

is again illustrative of the influence of Caroline that this offer was

made to her and not to the King. He was in truth the Queen’s minister;

and nobly she stood by him. When Walpole made the offer in question,

Caroline declared that she would not be so mean, so cowardly, or so

ungrateful as to abandon him; and she infused the same spirit into the

King. The latter had intended, from the first, to reign and govern,

and be effectively his own minister; but Caroline so wrought upon him

that he thought he had of himself reached the conviction that it was

necessary for him to trust in a minister, and that Walpole was the

fittest man for such an office. And so he grew to love the very man

whom he had been wont to hold in his heart’s extremest hate. He would

even occasionally speak of him as a ‘noble fellow,’ and, with tears in

his eyes, would listen to an account of some courageous stand Walpole

had made in the house against the enemies of the government, and he

would add the while a running commentary of sobs.

The Queen’s greatest triumph was this overcoming of her husband’s

personal hatred for Walpole. It could not have been an achievement

easy to be accomplished. But her art in effecting such achievements

was supreme, and she alone could turn to her own purpose the caprices

of a hot-headed man, of whom it has been said, that he was of iron

obstinacy, but that he was unlike iron in this, that the hotter he

became the more impossible it was to bend him. Caroline found him

pliant when she found him cool. But then, too, he was most wary, and it

was necessary so to act as to cause every turn which she compelled him

to make appear to himself as if it were the result of his own unbiassed

volition.

Supremely able as Caroline was, she could not, however, always conceal

her emotion. Thus, at this very period of the agitation of the Excise

bill, on being told, at one of her evening drawing-rooms, of the

difficulties and dangers which beset the path of the government, she

burst into tears, became unusually excited, and finally affecting,

and perhaps feeling, headache and vapours, she broke up her quadrille

party, and betrayed in her outward manner an apparent conviction of

impending calamity. She evinced the same weakness on being told, on a

subsequent evening, that Walpole was in a majority of only seventeen.

Such a small majority she felt was a defeat; and, on this occasion,

she again burst into tears, and for the first time expressed a fear

that the court _must_ give way! The sovereign was, at the same time, as

strong within her as the woman; and when she heard of the subordinate

holders of government posts voting against the minister or declining to

vote with him, she bitterly denounced them, exclaiming, that they who

refused to march with their leader were as guilty as they who openly

deserted, and that both merited condign punishment.[11]

The King on this occasion was as excited as his consort, but he

manifested his feelings in a different way. He made Lord Hervey repeat

the names of those who thwarted the views of the crown, and he grunted

forth an angry commentary at each name. ‘Lord John Cavendish,’ began

Hervey. ‘_A fool!_’ snorted the King. ‘Lord Charles Cavendish.’ ‘_Half

mad!_’ ‘Sir William Lowther.’ ‘_A whimsical fellow!_’ ‘Sir Thomas

Prendergast.’ ‘_An Irish blockhead!_’ ‘Lord Tyrconnel.’ ‘_A puppy_,’

said George, ‘who never votes twice _on the same side_!’

On the other hand, the populace made _their_ comment on the proceedings

of the court. It was rendered in a highly popular way, and with much

significancy. In the city of London, for instance, the mob hung in

effigy Sir Robert Walpole and a _fat woman_. The male figure was duly

ticketed. The female effigy was well understood to mean the Queen.

_Her_ power would, after all, not have followed in its fall that of

Walpole. Lord Hervey remarks, that had he retired, Caroline would

have placed before the King the names of a new ministry, and that the

administration would not have hung together a moment after it had

outlived her liking.

In the meantime her indefatigability was great. At the suggestion, it

is supposed, of Walpole, she sent for the Bishop of Salisbury, Dr.

Hoadly, who repaired to the interview with his weak person and stately

independence, if one may so speak, upheld by his ‘crutched stick.’ His

power must have been considered very great, and so must his caprice;

for he was frequently sent for by Caroline, remonstrated with for

supposed rebellion, or urged to exert all his good offices in support

of the crown. It is difficult to believe that the lengthy speeches

reported by Hervey were actually delivered by Queen and bishop. There

is nothing longer in Livy, and we are not told that any one took

them down. Substantially, however, they may be true. The Queen was

insinuating, complimentary, suggestive, and audacious; the bishop all

duty, submission, and promise--as far as his consistency and principles

could be engaged. But, after all, the immense mountain of anxiety

and stratagem was reared in vain, for Walpole withdrew his bill, and

Caroline felt that England was but nominally a monarchy.

CHAPTER IV.

FAMILY AND NATIONAL QUARRELS.

Retirement of Lady Suffolk--Tact of Queen Caroline--Arrogance of

Princess Anne--Private life of the royal family--The Count de

Roncy, the French refugee--German predilections of the Queen--A

scene at court--Queen Caroline’s declining health--Ambitious

aspirations of Princess Anne--Bishop Hoadly and the see of

Winchester--The Queen and the clergy--The Queen appointed

Regent--The King and Madame Walmoden--Lord Hervey’s imaginary

post-obit diary--The Queen’s farewell interview with Lady

Suffolk--Grief made fashionable--The temper of the King on his

return--A scene: dramatis personæ, the King, Queen, and Lord

Hervey--Lady Deloraine (Pope’s _Delia_) a royal favourite--An

angry scene between the King and Queen--The King’s opinion of

Bishop Hoadly--Dissension between the King and Prince--The royal

libertine at Hanover--Court revels--Lady Bolingbroke and the

Queen.

The year 1734 was marked by the retirement from court of the lady whom

it was the fashion to call the Queen’s rival. Mrs. Howard, on becoming

Countess of Suffolk, by the accession of her husband to the earldom in

1731, had been raised to the office of mistress of the robes to the

Queen. Her husband died two years subsequently; and, shortly after, the

King’s widowed favourite was sought in marriage by another suitor.

Her departure from court was doubtless principally caused by this new

prospect of a happier life. It may have been accelerated by other

circumstances. Lord Chesterfield, angry with the Queen for forgetting

to exert her promised influence for him in obtaining some favour,

applied to Lady Suffolk, and informed the Queen of the course he had

taken. Caroline thereon told the King that she had had some petition to

present on Lord Chesterfield’s behalf, but that as he had entrusted

it to Lady Suffolk’s presenting, her own influence would probably be

unavailing. The King, fired at the implied affront to his consort,

treated his old mistress, now nearly half a century in years, with such

severity that she begged to be permitted to withdraw. Lady Suffolk

brought her long career at court to a close in this year, previous

to her marriage with the Honourable George Berkeley, younger son of

the second Earl of Berkeley. He was Master of St. Catherine’s in the

Tower, and had served in two parliaments as member for Dover. Horace

Walpole, who knew Lady Suffolk intimately when she was residing at

Marble Hill, Twickenham, and he at Strawberry Hill, says of her, that

she was what may be summed up in the word ‘lady-like.’ She was of a

good height, well made, extremely fair, with the finest light-brown

hair, was remarkably genteel, and was always dressed with taste and

simplicity. He adds, ‘for her face was regular and agreeable rather

than beautiful, and those charms she retained, with little diminution,

to her death, at the age of seventy-nine’ (in July 1767). He does not

speak highly of her mental qualifications, but states that she was

grave, and mild of character, had a strict love of truth, and was

rather apt to be circumstantial upon trifles. The years of her life,

after her withdrawal from court, were passed in a decent, dignified,

and ‘respectable’ manner, and won for her a consideration which her

earlier career had certainly not merited.

The Queen’s influence was even stronger than the favourite’s credit.

‘Except a barony, a red riband, and a good place for her brother, Sir

John Hobart, Earl of Buckinghamshire, Lady Suffolk could succeed but

in very subordinate recommendations. Her own acquisitions were so

moderate, that, besides Marble Hill, which cost the King ten or twelve

thousand pounds, her complaisance had not been too dearly purchased.

She left the court with an income so little to be envied, that though

an economist and not expensive, by the lapse of some annuities on

lives not so prolonged as her own, she found herself straitened, and,

besides Marble Hill, did not at most leave twenty thousand pounds to

her family. On quitting court, she married Mr. George Berkeley, and

outlived him.’[12]

It is not certain how far Caroline’s influence was exercised in the

removal of Lady Suffolk, whom the Queen, according to some authors,

requested to continue some time longer in her office of mistress of the

robes. Nor is it important to ascertain. Caroline had higher duties

to perform. She continued to serve her husband well, and she showed

her opinion of her son, the Prince of Wales, by her conduct to him on

more than one occasion. Thus, on New Year’s Day the prince attended

his royal sire’s _levée_, not with any idea of paying his father the

slightest measure of respect, but, suspecting that the King would

not speak to him, to show the people with what contempt the homage

of a dutiful son was met by a stern parent. When Caroline heard of

the design, she simply persuaded the King to address his son kindly

in public. This advice was followed, and the filial plot accordingly

failed.

The Queen was as resolute in supporting the King against being driven

into settling a permanent income upon the prince. She spoke of the

latter as an extravagant and unprincipled fool, only less ignorant

than those who were idiots enough to give opinions upon what they

could not understand. ‘He costs the King 50,000_l._ a-year, and till

he is married that may really be called a reasonable allowance.’

She stigmatised him as a ‘poor creature,’ easily led away, but not

naturally bad-hearted. His seducers she treated as knaves, fools, and

monsters. To the suggestion that a fixed allowance, even if it should

be less than what the King paid out for him every year, would be better

than the present plan, Caroline only replied that the King thought

otherwise; and so the matter rested.

The tact of the Queen was further displayed in the course adopted by

her on an occasion of some delicacy. Lord Stair had been deprived of

his regiment for attempting to bring in a law whereby the commissions

of officers should be secured to them for life. The King said he would

not allow him to keep by favour what he had endeavoured to keep by

force. Thereupon Lord Stair addressed a private letter to the Queen,

through her lord-chamberlain, stuffed with prophetic warnings against

the machinations of France and the designs of Walpole.

Caroline, on becoming acquainted with the contents of the epistle,

rated her chamberlain soundly, and bade him take it instantly to Sir

Robert Walpole, with a request to the latter to lay it before the

King. She thus ‘very dexterously avoided the danger of concealing

such a letter from the King, or giving Sir Robert Walpole any cause

of jealousy from showing it.’ His Majesty very sententiously observed

upon the letter, that Lord Stair ‘was a puppy for writing it, and the

lord-chamberlain a fool for bringing it.’ The good chamberlain was

a fool for other reasons also. He had no more rational power than a

vegetable, and his solitary political sentiment was to this effect, and

wrapped up in very bad English: ‘I hate the French, and I hope as we

shall beat the French.’[13]

The times were growing warlike, and it was on the occasion of the

Prince of Orange going to the camp of Prince Eugene that the Princess

Anne returned to England. She was as arrogant and as boldly spoken

as ever. In the latter respect she manifested much of the spirit of

her mother. During her stay at court, the news of the surrender of

Philipsburg reached this country. Her highness’s remark thereon,

in especial reference to her royal father, is worth quoting. It

was addressed to Lord Hervey, who was leading the princess to her

own apartment after the drawing-room. ‘Was there ever anything so

unaccountable,’ said she, shrugging up her shoulders, ‘as the temper

of papa? He has been snapping and snubbing every mortal for this week,

because he began to think Philipsburg would be taken; and this very

day, that he actually hears it is taken, he is in as good humour as

I ever saw him in in my life. To tell you the truth,’ she added, in

French, ‘I find _that_ so whimsical, and (between ourselves) so utterly

foolish, that I am more enraged by his good, than I was before by his

bad, humour.’

‘Perhaps,’ answered Lord Hervey, ‘he may be about Philipsburg as David

was about the child, who, whilst it was sick, fasted, lay upon the

earth, and covered himself with ashes, but the moment it was dead, got

up, shaved his beard, and drank wine.’ ‘It may be like David,’ said the

princess royal, ‘but I am sure it is not like Solomon.’

It was hardly the time for Solomons. Lord Chancellor King was a man of

the people, who, by talent, integrity, and perseverance, rose to the

highest rank to which a lawyer can work his way. He lost his popularity

almost as soon as he acquired the seals, and these he was ultimately

compelled, from growing imbecility of mind, to resign. He was the most

dilatory in rendering judgments of all our chancellors, and would

never willingly have decided a question, for fear he should decide it

incorrectly. This characteristic, joined to the fact of his having

published a history of the Apostles’ Creed, extorted from Caroline the

smart saying, that ‘He was just in the law what he had formerly been in

the Gospel, making creeds upon the one without any steady belief, and

judgments in the other without any settled opinion. But the misfortune

for the public is,’ said Caroline, ‘that though they could reject his

silly creeds, they are forced often to submit to his silly judgments.’

The court private life of the sovereigns at this time was as dull as

can well be imagined. There were two persons who shared in this life,

and who were very miserably paid for their trouble. These were the

Count de Roncy and his sister. They were French Protestants, who, for

conscience’ sake, had surrendered their all in France and taken refuge

in England. The count was created Earl of Lifford in Ireland. His

sister, Lady Charlotte de Roncy, was governess to the younger children

of George II. Every night in the country, and thrice a week when the

King and Queen were in town, this couple passed an hour or two with the

King and Queen before they retired to bed. During this time ‘the King

walked about, and talked to the brother of armies, or to the sister of

genealogies, while the Queen knotted and yawned, till from yawning she

came to nodding, and from nodding to snoring.’[14]

This amiable pair, who had lived in England during four reigns, were

in fact hard-worked, ill-paid court-drudges; too ill-paid, even, to

appear decently clad; an especial reproach upon Caroline, as the lady

was the governess of her children. But they were not harder worked, in

one respect, than Caroline herself, who passed seven or eight hours

_tête-à-tête_ with the King every day, ‘generally saying what she did

not think,’ says Lord Hervey, ‘and forced, like a spider, to spin out

of her own bowels all the conversation with which the fly was taken.’

The King could bear neither reading nor being read to. But, for the

sake of power, though it is not to be supposed that affection had not

some part in influencing Caroline to undergo such heavy trial, she

endured that willingly, and indeed much more than that.

At all events, she had some respect for her husband; but she despised

the son, who, in spite of her opinion of the natural goodness of his

heart, was mean and mendacious. The prince, moreover, was weaker

of understanding and more obstinate of temper than his father. The

latter hated him, and because of that hatred, his brother, the Duke of

Cumberland, was promoted to public employment. His sisters betrayed

him. Had Caroline not had a contempt for him, she would have influenced

the King to a very different line of conduct.

It was said of Frederick, that, from his German education, he was

more of a German than an Englishman. But the bias alluded to was not

stronger in him than it was in his mother.

Caroline was so much more of a German than of an Englishwoman, that

when the interests of Germany were concerned she was always ready to

sacrifice the interests of England. Her daughter Anne would have had

Europe deluged in blood for the mere sake of increasing her own and her

husband’s importance. In a general war she thought he would come to

the surface. Caroline was disinclined to go to war for the empire only

because she feared that, in the end, there might be war in England,

with the English crown for the stake.

There was at this time in London a dull and proud imperial envoy,

named Count Kiuski. He was haughty and impertinent in his manner of

demanding succour, as his master was in requiring it, from the Dutch.

Caroline rallied him on this one day, as he was riding by the side of

her carriage at a stag-hunt. She used a very homely and not a very

nice illustration to show the absurdity of losing an end by foolishly

neglecting the proper means. ‘If a handkerchief lay before me,’ said

she, ‘and I felt I had a dirty nose, my good Count Kiuski, do you think

I should beckon the handkerchief to come to me, or stoop to take it

up?’[15]

Political matters were not neglected at these hunting-parties. Lord

Hervey, ‘her child, her pupil, and her charge,’ who constantly rode

by the side of her carriage, on a hunter which she had given him, and

which could not have been of much use to him if he never quitted the

side of his mistress, used to discuss politics while others followed

the stag. The Queen, who was fourteen years older than he, used to

say, ‘It is well I am so old, or I should be talked of because of

this creature!’ And indeed the intercourse was constant and familiar.

He was always with her when she took breakfast, which she usually

did alone, and was her chief friend and companion when the King was

absent. Such familiarity gave him considerable freedom, which the Queen

jokingly called impertinence, and said that he indulged in that and in

contradicting her because he knew that she could not live without him.

It was at a hunting-party that Lord Hervey endeavoured to convince her

that for England to go to war for the purpose of serving the empire

would be a disastrous course to take. He could not convince her in a

long conversation, and thereupon, the chase being over, he sat down and

penned a political pamphlet, which he called a letter, which was ‘as

long as a “President’s Message,” and which he forwarded to the Queen.’

If Caroline was not to be persuaded by it, she at least thought none

the worse of the writer, who had spared no argument to support the

cause in which he boldly pleaded.

We have another home-scene depicted by Lord Hervey, which at once shows

us an illustration of parental affection and parental indifference.

The Princess Anne, after a world of delay, had reluctantly left St.

James’s for Holland, where her husband awaited her, and whither she

went for her confinement. The last thing she thought of was the success

of the opera and the triumph of Handel. She recommended both to the

charge of Lord Hervey, and then went on her way to Harwich, sobbing.

When she had reached Colchester she, upon receiving some letters from

her husband stating his inability to be at the Hague so soon as he

expected, started suddenly for Kensington.

In the meantime, in the palace at the latter place Lord Hervey

found the Queen and the gentle Princess Caroline sitting together,

drinking chocolate, shedding tears, and sobbing, all at the absence

of the imperious Lady Anne. The trio had just succeeded in banishing

melancholy remembrances by launching into cheerful conversation, when

the gallery door was suddenly opened, and the Queen rose, exclaiming,

‘The King here already!’ When, however, she saw that, instead of the

King, it was only the Prince of Wales, and ‘detesting the exchange of

the son for the daughter, she burst out anew into tears, and cried out,

“Oh, God! this is too much!”’ She was only relieved by the entry of the

King, who, perceiving but not speaking to his son, took the Queen by

the hand and led her out to walk.

This ‘cut direct,’ by affecting to be unconscious of the presence

of the obnoxious person, was a habit with the King. ‘Whenever the

prince was in a room with him,’ says Lord Hervey, ‘it put one in mind

of stories that one has heard of ghosts which appear to part of the

company and were invisible to the rest; and in this manner, wherever

the prince stood, though the King passed him ever so often, or ever so

near, it always seemed as if the King thought the prince filled a void

space.’

On the following day, the 22nd of October, the Princess Anne suddenly

appeared before her parents. They thought her at Harwich, or on the

seas, the wind being fair. Tears and kisses were her welcome from her

mother, and smiles and an embrace formed the greeting from her father.

The return was ill-advised, but the Queen, with a growing conviction

of decaying health, could not be displeased at seeing again her first

child.

The health of Caroline was undoubtedly at this time much impaired, but

the King allowed her scant respite from labour on that account. Thus on

the 29th of this month, although the Queen was labouring under cold,

cough, and symptoms of fever, in addition to having been weakened by

loss of blood, a process she had recently undergone twice, the King not

only brought her from Kensington to London for the birthday, but forced

her to go with him to the opera to hear the inimitable Farinelli. He

himself thought so little of illness, or liked so little to be thought

ill, that he would rise from a sick couch to proceed to hold a _levée_,

which was no sooner concluded than he would immediately betake himself

to bed again. His affection for the Queen was not so great but that

he compelled the same sacrifices from her; and on the occasion of

this birthday, at the morning drawing-room, she found herself so near

swooning, that she was obliged to send her chamberlain to the King,

begging him to retire, ‘for she was unable to stand any longer.’

Notwithstanding which, we are told by Lord Hervey, that ‘at night he

brought her into a still greater crowd at the ball, and there kept her

till eleven o’clock.’

Sir Robert Walpole frequently, and never more urgently than at this

time, impressed upon her the necessity of being careful of her own

health. He addressed her as though she had been Queen Regnant of

England--as she certainly was governing sovereign--and he described

to her in such pathetic terms the dangers which England would, and

Europe might, incur, if any fatal accident deprived her of life, and

the King were to fall under the influence of any other woman, that the

poor Queen, complaining and coughing, with head heavy, and aching eyes

half closed with pain, cheeks flushed, pulse quick, spirits low, and

breathing oppressed, burst into tears, alarmed at the picture, and with

every disposition to do her utmost for the benefit of her health and

the well-being of the body politic.

It was the opinion of Caroline, that in case of her demise the King

would undoubtedly marry again, and she had often advised him to take

such a step. She affected, however, to believe that a second wife would

not be able to influence him to act contrary to the system which he had

adopted through the influence of herself and Walpole.

It was during the sojourn of the Princess Anne in England that she

heard the details of the withdrawal of Lady Suffolk from court.

Everybody appeared to be rejoiced at that lady’s downfall, but most

of all the Princess Anne. The King thought that of all the children

of himself and Caroline, Anne loved him best. This dutiful daughter,

however, despised him, and treated him as an insufferable bore, who

always required novelty in conversation from others, but never told

anything new of his own. In allusion to the withdrawal of Lady Suffolk

from court, this amiable child remarked, ‘I wish with all my heart he

would take somebody else, that Mamma might be a little relieved from

the occasion of seeing him for ever in her room!’

In November the Princess Anne once more proceeded to Harwich, put to

sea, and was so annoyed by the usual inconveniences that she compelled

the captain to land her again. She declared that she should not be

well enough for ten days to go once more aboard. This caused great

confusion. Her father, and indeed the Queen also, insisted on her

repairing to Holland by way of Calais, as her husband had thoughtfully

suggested. She was compelled to pass through London, much to the King’s

annoyance, but he declared that she should not stop, but proceed at

once over London Bridge to Dover. He added, that she should never

again come to England in the same condition of health. His threat was

partly founded on the expense, her visit having cost him 20,000_l._

Her reluctance to proceed to her husband’s native country was founded,

it has been suggested, on her own ambitious ideas. Her brothers were

unmarried, and she was anxious, it is thought, that her own child

should be English born, as it would stand in the line of inheritance

to the throne. However this may be, the Queen saw the false step the

daughter had already taken, and insisted on the wishes of her husband,

the prince, being attended to; and so the poor foiled Anne went home to

become a mother, very much against her will.

The Princess Amelia observed to Mrs. Clayton, the Queen’s

bedchamber-woman, that her brother, Prince Frederick, would have been

displeased if the accouchement of the princess had taken place in

England. To this, Mrs. Clayton, as Lord Hervey observes, very justly

remarked, ‘I cannot imagine, madam, how it can affect the prince at all

where she lies in; since with regard to those who wish more of your

royal highness’s family on the throne, it is no matter whether she

be brought to bed here or in Holland, or of a son or a daughter, or

whether she has any child at all; and with regard to those who wish all

your family well, for your sake, madam, as well as our own, we shall be

very glad to take any of you in your turn, but none of you out of it.’

But the Queen had other business this year wherewith to occupy her

besides royal marriages, or filial indispositions. In some of these

matters her sincerity is sadly called in question. Here is an instance.

In 1734 the Bishop of Winchester was stricken with apoplexy, and

Lord Hervey was no sooner aware of that significant fact--it was a

mortal attack--than he wrote to Hoadly at Salisbury, urging him in the

strongest terms to make application to be promoted from Sarum to the

almost vacant see.

This promotion had been promised him by the King, Queen, and Walpole,

all of whom joined in blandly reproving the bishop for being silent

when Durham was vacant, whereby alone he lost that golden appointment.

He had served government so well, and yet had contrived to maintain

most of his usual popularity with the public, that he had been told to

look upon Winchester as his own, whenever an opening occurred.

Hoadly was simple enough to believe that the Queen and Walpole were

really sincere. He addressed a letter to the King through his ‘two

ears’--the Queen and Walpole; and he wrote as if he were sure of being

promoted, according to engagement, while at the same time he acted as

if he were sure of nothing.

Caroline called the bishop’s letter indelicate, hasty, ill-timed, and

such like; but Hoadly so well obeyed the instructions given to him that

there was no room for escape, and he received the appointment. When

he went to kiss hands upon his elevation, the King was the only one

who behaved with common honesty. He, and Caroline too, disliked the

man, whom the latter affected a delight to honour, for the reason that

his respect for royalty was not so great as to blind him to popular

rights, which he supported with much earnestness. On his reception by

the King, the latter treated him with disgraceful incivility, exactly

in accordance with his feelings. Caroline did violence to hers, and

gave him honeyed words, and showered congratulations upon him, and

pelted him, as it were, with compliments and candied courtesy. As for

Sir Robert Walpole, who hated Hoadly as much as his royal mistress

and her consort did together, he took the new Bishop of Winchester

aside, and, warmly pressing his hand, assured him without a blush that

his translation from Sarum to Winchester was entirely owing to the

mediation of himself, Sir Robert. It was a daring assertion, and Sir

Robert would have hardly ventured upon making it had he known the share

Lord Hervey had had in this little ecclesiastical intrigue. Hoadly was

not deluded by Walpole, but he was the perfect dupe of the Queen.

Lord Mahon,[16] in speaking of Caroline, says that ‘her character was

without a blemish.’ Compared with many around her, perhaps it was; but

if the face had not spots it had ‘patches,’ which looked very much

like them. On this matter, the noble lord appears to admit that some

doubt may exist, and he subsequently adds: ‘But no doubt can exist

as to her discerning and most praiseworthy patronage of worth and

learning in the Church. The most able and pious men were everywhere

sought and preferred, and the episcopal bench was graced by such men

as Hare, Sherlock, and Butler.’ Of course, Queen Caroline’s dislike

of Hoadly may be set down as founded upon that prelate’s alleged want

of orthodoxy. It has been noticed in another page, that, according to

Walpole, the Queen had rather weakened than enlightened her faith by

her study of divinity, and that her Majesty herself ‘was at best not

orthodox.’ Her countenance of the ‘less-believing’ clergy is said, upon

the same authority, to have been the effect of the influence of Lady

Sundon, who ‘espoused the heterodox clergy.’

Lord Mahon also says that the Queen was distinguished for charity

towards those whom she accounted her enemies. She could nurse her rage,

however, a good while to keep it warm. Witness her feeling manifested

against that daughter of Lord Portland who married Mr. Godolphin.

Her hatred of this lady was irreconcileable, nor was the King’s of a

more Christian quality. That lady’s sole offence, however, was her

acceptance of the office ‘of governess to their daughter in the late

reign, without their consent, at the time they had been turned out of

St. James’s, and the education of their children, who were kept there,

taken from them.’[17] For this offence the King and Queen were very

unwilling to confer a peerage and pension on Godolphin in 1735, when

he resigned his office of groom of the stole in the royal household.

The peerage and pension were, nevertheless, ultimately conferred at the

earnest solicitation of Walpole, and with great ill-humour on the part

of the King.

Even Walpole, with all his power and influence, was not at this time so

powerful and influential but that when he was crossed in parliament he

suffered for it at court. Thus, when the Crown lost several supporters

in the house by adverse decisions on election petitions, the King

was annoyed, and the Queen gave expression to her own anger on the

occasion. It was rare indeed that she ever spoke her dissatisfaction

of Sir Robert; but on the occasion in question she is reported as

having said that Sir Robert Walpole either neglected these things, and

judged it enough to think they were trifles, though in government,

and especially in this country, nothing was a trifle, ‘or, perhaps,’

she said, ‘there is some mismanagement I know nothing of, or some

circumstances we are none of us acquainted with; but, whatever it is,

to me these things seem very ill-conducted.’[18]

The Queen really thought that Walpole was on the point of having

outlived his ability and his powers to apply it for the benefit of

herself and husband. She observed him melancholy, and set it down that

he was mourning over his own difficulties and failures. When Caroline,

however, was told that Sir Robert was not in sorrow because of the

difficulties of government, but simply because his mistress, Miss

Skerret, was dangerously ill of a pleuritic fever, the ‘unblemished

Queen’ was glad! She rejoiced that politics had nothing to do with

his grief, and she was extremely well pleased to find that the

prime-minister was as immoral as men of greater and less dignity. And

then she took to satirising both the prime-minister and the lady of his

homage. She laughed at him for believing in the attachment of a woman

whose motives must be mercenary, and who could not possibly see any

attraction in such a man but through the meshes of his purse. ‘She must

be a clever gentlewoman,’ said Caroline, ‘to have made him believe that

she cares for him on any other score; and to show you what fools we all

are on some point or other, she has certainly told him some fine story

or other of her love, and her passion, and that poor man, with his

burly body, swollen legs, and villainous stomach (“_avec ce gros corps,

jambes enflés, et ce vilain ventre_”) believes her!--ah, what is human

nature?’ On this rhapsody Lord Hervey makes a comment in the spirit of

Burns’ verse--

Would but some god the giftie gi’e us,

To see ourselves as ithers see us--

and it was excellent opportunity for such comment. ‘While she was

saying this,’ remarks the noble lord, ‘she little reflected in what

degree she herself possessed all the impediments and antidotes to love

she had been enumerating, and that, “_Ah, what is human nature?_” was

as applicable to her own blindness as to his.’

She certainly illustrated in her own person her assertion that in

government nothing was a trifle. Thus, when what was called the Scotch

Election Petition was before parliament and threatening to give some

trouble to the ministerial side, her anxiety till the question was

decided favourably to the Crown side, and her affected indifference

after the victory, were both marked and striking. On the morning before

the petition was presented, praying the House of Lords to take into

consideration certain alleged illegalities in the recent election of

sixteen representative peers of Scotland--a petition which the house

ultimately dismissed--the anxiety of Caroline was so great ‘to know

what was said, thought, or done, or expected on this occasion, that she

sent for Lord Hervey while she was in bed; and because it was contrary

to the queenly etiquette to admit a man to her bedside while she was

in it, she kept him talking upon one side of the door, which was just

upon her bed, while she conversed with him on the other for two hours

together, and then sent him to the King’s side to repeat to his Majesty

all he had related to her.’[19] By the _King’s side_ is meant, not his

Majesty’s side of the royal couch, but the side of the palace wherein

he had his separate apartments.

It was soon after this period (1735), that the King set out for

Hanover, much against the inclination of his ministers, who dreaded

lest he should be drawn in to conclude some engagement, when abroad,

adverse to the welfare of England. His departure, however, was

witnessed by Caroline with much resignation. It gave her infinitely

more power and more pleasure; for, as regent, she had no superior to

consult or guide, and in her husband’s absence she had not the task

of amusing a man who was growing as little amusable as Louis XIV. was

when Madame de Maintenon complained of her terrible toil in that way.

His prospective absence of even half a year’s duration did not alarm

Caroline, for it released her from receiving the daily sallies of a

temper that, let it be charged by what hand it would, used always to

discharge its hottest fire, on some pretence or other, upon her!

The Queen’s enjoyment, however, was somewhat dashed by information

conveyed to her by that very husband, and by which she learned that the

royal reprobate, having become smitten by the attractions of a young

married German lady, named Walmoden, had had the rascality to induce

her to leave her husband--a course which she had readily adopted for

the small consideration of a thousand ducats.

This Madame Walmoden brings us back to the times of Sophia Dorothea.

Elizabeth, sister of the Countess von Platen who brought about the

catastrophe in which Königsmark perished and Sophia Dorothea was

ruined, was married, first to von Busch, and secondly to von Weyhe (or

Weyke). By this second marriage she had a daughter, who became the wife

of General von Wendt. These von Wendts had a daughter also, who married

Herr Walmoden. It was this last lady whom the son of Sophia Dorothea

lured from her husband, and whom he ultimately raised to the dignity of

Countess of Yarmouth.

Not the smallest incident which marked the progress of this infamous

connection was concealed by the husband from his wife. He wrote at

length minute details of the person of the new mistress, for whom he

bespoke the love of his own wife!

Lord Hervey thinks that the pride of the Queen was much more hurt

than her affections on this occasion; which is not improbable, for

the reasoning public, to whom the affair soon became known, at once

concluded that the rise of the new mistress would be attended with the

downfall of the influence of Caroline.

The latter, however, knew well how to maintain her influence, let who

would be the object of the impure homage of her exceedingly worthless

husband. To the letters which he addressed to her with particular

unction, she replied with an unction quite as rich in quality and

profuse in degree. Pure and dignified as she might seem in discoursing

with divines, listening to philosophers, receiving the metrical

tributes of poets, or cavilling with scholars, she had no objection

to descend from Olympus and find relaxation in wallowing in Epicurus’

stye. Nor did she thus condescend merely to suit a purpose and to gain

an end. Her letters, encouraging her husband in his amours with women

at Hanover, were coarse enough to have called up a blush on the cheek

of one of Congreve’s waiting-maids. They have the poor excuse tied to

them of having been written for the purpose of securing her own power.

The same apology does not apply to the correspondence with the _dirty_

Duchess of Orleans. Caroline appears to have indulged in the details of

that correspondence for the sake of the mere pleasure itself. And yet

she has been called a woman without blemish!

The King’s letters to her are said to have extended to sixty, and

never to less than forty, pages. They were filled, says Lord Hervey,

‘with an hourly account of everything he saw, heard, thought, or did,

and crammed with minute trifling circumstances, not only unworthy of

a man to write, but even of a woman to read; most of which I saw, and

almost all of them I heard reported by Sir Robert Walpole, to whose

perusal few were not committed, and many passages were transmitted

to him by the King’s own order; who used to tag several paragraphs

with “_Montrez ceci et consultez ladessus le gros homme_.” Among many

extraordinary things and expressions these letters contained was one

in which he desired the Queen to contrive, if she could, that the

Prince of Modena, who was to come at the latter end of the year to

England, might bring his wife with him.’ She was the younger daughter

of the Regent Duke of Orleans. The reason which the King gave to his

wife for the request which he had made with respect to this lady was,

that he had understood the latter was by no means particular as to what

quarter or person she received homage from, and he had the greatest

inclination imaginable to pay his addresses to a daughter of the late

Regent of France. ‘Un plaisir,’ he said--for this German husband wrote

even to his German wife in French--‘que je suis sûr, ma chère Caroline,

vous serez bien aise de me procurer, quand je vous dis combien je

le souhaite!’ If Wycherley had placed such an incident as this in

a comedy, he would have been censured as offending equally against

modesty and probability.

In the summer of this year, Lord Hervey was absent for a while from

attendance on his royal mistress; but we may perhaps learn from one

of his letters, addressed to her while he was resting in the country

from his light labours, the nature of his office and the way in which

Caroline was served. The narrative is given by the writer as part of

an imaginary post-obit diary, in which he describes himself as having

died on the day he left her, and as having been repeatedly buried in

the various dull country houses by whose proprietors he was hospitably

received. He thus proceeds:--

‘But whilst my body, madam, was thus disposed of, my spirit (as when

alive) was still hovering, though invisible, round your Majesty,

anxious for your welfare, and watching to do you any little service

that lay within my power.

‘On Monday, whilst you walked, my _shade_ still turned on the side of

the sun to guard you from its beams.

‘On Tuesday morning, at breakfast, I brushed away a fly that had

escaped Teed’s observation’ (Teed was one of the Queen’s attendants)

‘and was just going to be the taster of your chocolate.

‘On Wednesday, in the afternoon, I took off the chillness of some

strawberry-water your Majesty was going to drink as you came in hot

from walking; and at night I hunted a bat out of your bedchamber, and

shut a sash just as you fell asleep, which your Majesty had a little

indiscreetly ordered Mrs. Purcel to leave open.

‘On Thursday, in the drawing-room, I took the forms and voices of

several of my acquaintances, made strange faces, put myself into

awkward postures, and talked a good deal of nonsense, whilst your

Majesty entertained me very gravely, _recommended_ me very graciously,

and laughed at me internally very heartily.

‘On Friday, being post-day, I proposed to get the best pen in the other

world for your Majesty’s use, and slip it invisibly into your standish

just as Mr. Shaw was bringing it into your gallery for you to write;

and accordingly I went to _Voiture_, and desired him to hand me his

pen; but when I told him for whom it was designed, he only laughed at

me for a blockhead, and asked me if I had been at court for four years

to so little purpose as not to know that your Majesty had a much better

of your own.

‘On Saturday I went on the shaft of your Majesty’s chaise to Richmond;

as you walked there I went before you, and with an invisible wand I

brushed the dew and the worms out of your path all the way, and several

times uncrumpled your Majesty’s stocking.

‘Sunday.--This very day, at chapel, I did your Majesty some service,

by tearing six leaves out of the parson’s sermon and shortening his

discourse six minutes.’

While these imaginary services were being rendered by the visionary

Lord Hervey to the Queen, realities more serious and not less amusing

were claiming the attention of Caroline and her consort.

In return for the information communicated by the King to the Queen on

the subject of Madame Walmoden and her charms, Caroline had to inform

her husband of the marriage we have spoken of between Lady Suffolk and

Mr. George Berkeley. The royal ex-lover noticed the communication in

his reply in a coarse way, and expressed his entire satisfaction at

being rid of the lady, and at the lady’s disposal of herself.

When Caroline informed her vice-chamberlain, Lord Hervey, of the report

of this marriage, his alleged disbelief of the report made her peevish

with him, and induced her to call him an ‘obstinate devil,’ who would

not believe merely improbable facts to be truths. Caroline then railed

at Lady Suffolk in good set terms as a sayer and doer of silly things,

entirely unworthy of the reputation she had with some people of being

the sayer and doer of wise ones.

It was on this occasion that Caroline herself described to Lord Hervey

the farewell interview she had had with Lady Suffolk. The ex-mistress

took a sentimental view of her position, and lamented to the wife that

she, the mistress, was no longer so kindly treated as formerly by the

husband. ‘I told her,’ said the Queen, ‘in reply, that she and I were

not of an age to think of these sort of things in such a romantic

way, and said, “My good Lady Suffolk, you are the best servant in the

world; and, as I should be most extremely sorry to lose you, pray

take a week to consider of this business, and give me your word not

to read any romances in that time, and then I dare say you will lay

aside all thoughts of doing what, believe me, you will repent, and

what I am very sure I shall be very sorry for.”’[20] It was at one of

these conversations with Lord Hervey that the Queen told him that

Lady Suffolk ‘had had 2,000_l._ a year constantly from the King whilst

he was prince, and 3,200_l._ ever since he was King; besides several

little dabs of money both before and since he came to the crown.’

A letter of Lady Pomfret’s will serve to show us not only a picture of

the Queen at this time, but an illustration of feeling in a fine lady.

Lady Pomfret, writing to Lady Sundon, in 1735, says: ‘All I can say

of Kensington is, that it is just the same as it was, only pared as

close as the bishop does the sacrament. My Lord Pomfret and I were

the greatest strangers there; no secretary of state, no chamberlain

or vice-chamberlain, but Lord Robert, and he just in the same coat,

the same spot of ground, and the same words in his mouth that he had

when I left there. Mrs. Meadows in the window at work; but, though

half an hour after two, the Queen was not quite dressed, so that I

had the honour of seeing her before she came out of her little blue

room, where I was graciously received, and acquainted her Majesty, to

her great sorrow, how ill you had been; and then, to alleviate that

sorrow, I informed her how much Sundon was altered for the better, and

that it looked like a castle. From thence we proceeded to a very short

drawing-room, where the Queen joked much with my Lord Pomfret about

Barbadoes. The two ladies of the bedchamber and the governess are yet

on so bad a foot, that upon the latter coming into the room to dine

with Lady Bristol, the others went away, though just going to sit down,

and strangers in the place.’

The writer of this letter soon after lost a son, the Honourable Thomas

Fermor. It was a severely felt loss; so severe that some weeks elapsed

before the disconsolate mother was able, as she says, ‘to enjoy the

kind and obliging concern’ expressed by the Queen’s bedchamber-woman

in her late misfortune. Christianity itself, as this charming mother

averred, would have authorised her in lamenting such a calamity during

the remainder of her life; but then, oh joy! her maternal lamentation

was put an end to and Rachel was comforted, and all because--‘It was

impossible for any behaviour to be more gracious than that of the Queen

on this occasion, who made it _quite fashionable_ to be concerned’ at

the death of Lady Pomfret’s son.

But there were more bustling scenes at Kensington than such as those

described by this fashionably sorrowing lady and the sympathising

sovereign.

On Sunday, the 26th of October, the Queen and her court had just

left the little chapel in the palace of Kensington, when intimation

was given to her Majesty that the King, who had left Hanover on

the previous Wednesday, was approaching the gate. Caroline, at the

head of her ladies and the gentlemen of her suite, hastened down to

receive him; and, as he alighted from his ponderous coach, she took

his hand and kissed it. This ceremony performed by the regent, a very

unceremonious, hearty, and honest kiss was impressed on his lips by the

wife. The King endured the latter without emotion, and then, taking the

Queen-regent by the fingers, he led her upstairs in a very stately and

formal manner. In the gallery there was a grand presentation, at which

his Majesty exhibited much ill-humour, and conversed with everybody but

the Queen.

His ill-humour arose from various sources. He had heated himself by

rapid and continual travelling, whereby he had brought on an attack of

a complaint to which he was subject, which made him very ill at ease,

and which is irritating enough to break down the patience of the most

patient of people.

On ordinary occasions of his return from Hanover his most sacred

Majesty was generally of as sour disposition as man so little heroic

could well be. He loved the Electorate better than he did his kingdom,

and would not allow that there was anything in the latter which could

not be found in Hanover of a superior quality. There was no exception

to this: men, women, artists, philosophers, actors, citizens, the

virtues, the sciences, and the wits, the country, its natural beauties

and productions, the courage of the men and the attractions of the

women--all of these in England seemed to him worthless. In Hanover they

assumed the guise of perfection.