The King--to return to that royal widower--indubitably mourned over

his loss, and regarded with some rag, as it were, of the dignity of

affection her memory, and that with a tearful respect. He was for

ever talking of her, even to his mistress; and Lady Yarmouth (as

Madame Walmoden was called), as well as others, had to listen to the

well-conned roll of her queenly virtues, and to the royal conjectures

as to what the advice of Caroline would have been in certain

supervening contingencies. There was something noble in his remark, on

ordering the payment to be continued of all salaries to her officers

and servants, and all her benefactions to benevolent institutions,

that, if possible, nobody should suffer by her death but himself. We

almost pity the wretched but imbecile old man too, when we see him

bursting into tears at the sight of Walpole, and confessing to him,

with a helpless shaking of the hands, that he had lost the rock of his

support, his warmest friend, his wisest counsellor, and that henceforth

he must be dreary, disconsolate, and succourless, utterly ignorant

whither to turn for succour or for sympathy.

This feeling never entirely deserted him; albeit, he continued to

find much consolation where he had done better not to have sought it.

Still, the old memory would not entirely fade, the old fire would

not entirely be quenched. ‘I hear,’ said he, once to Baron Brinkman,

as he lay sleepless, at early morn, on his couch, ‘I hear you have a

portrait of my wife, which was a present from her to you, and that

it is a better likeness than any I have got. Let me look at it.’ The

portrait was brought, and so placed before the King that he could

contemplate it leisurely at his ease. ‘It _is_ like her,’ he murmured.

‘Place it nearer me and leave me till I ring.’ For two whole hours the

baron remained in attendance in an adjoining room, before he was again

summoned to his master’s presence. At the end of that time, he entered

the King’s bedroom, on being called. George looked up at him, with eyes

full of tears, and muttered, pointing to the portrait: ‘Take it away;

take it away! I never yet saw the woman worthy to buckle her shoe.’ And

then he arose, and went and breakfasted with Lady Yarmouth.

A score of years after Caroline’s death, he continued to speak of her

only with emotion. His vanity, however, disposed him to be considered

gallant to the last. In 1755, being at Hanover, he was waited upon by

the Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and all her unmarried daughters.

The provident and maternal duchess had an object, and she was not very

far from accomplishing it. The King considered all these young ladies

with the speculative look both of a connoisseur and an amateur. He was

especially struck by the beauty of the eldest, and he lost no time in

proposing her as a match to his grandson and heir-apparent, George,

Prince of Wales, then in his minority. The prince, at the prompting

of his mother, very peremptorily declined the honour which had been

submitted for his acceptance, and the young princess, her mother, and

King George were all alike profoundly indignant. ‘Oh!’ exclaimed the

latter with ardent eagerness, to Lord Waldegrave, ‘oh, that I were but

a score of years younger, this young lady should not then have been

exposed to the indignity of being refused by the Prince of Wales, for I

would then myself have made her Queen of England!’ That is to say, that

if the young Princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel could only have been

introduced to him while he was sitting under the shadow of the great

sorrow which had fallen upon him by the death of Caroline, he would

have found solace for his grief by offering her his hand. However, it

was now too late, and the gay old monarch, taking his amber-headed

cane, feebly picked his way to Lady Yarmouth and a game at ombre.

Lord Chesterfield allowed Caroline some degree of female knowledge. If

by this he would infer that she had only a portion of the knowledge

which was commonly possessed by the ladies her contemporaries, his

lordship does her great injustice. Few women of her time were so

well instructed; and she was not the less well-taught for being

in a great degree self-taught. She may have been but superficially

endowed in matters of theology and in ancient history; but, what

compensated at least for the latter, she was well acquainted with

what more immediately concerned her, the history of her own times.

Lord Chesterfield further remarks, that Caroline would have been an

agreeable woman in social life if she had not aimed at being a great

one in public life. This would imply that she had doubly failed,

where, in truth, she had doubly succeeded. She _was_ agreeable in the

circle of social, and she not merely aimed at, but achieved, greatness

in public life. She was as great a queen as queen could become in

England under the circumstances in which she was placed. Without any

constitutional right, she ruled the country with such wisdom that her

right always seemed to rest on a constitutional basis. There was that

in her, that, had her destiny taken her to Russia instead of England,

she would have been as Catherine was in all but her uncleanness; not

that, in purity of mind, she was very superior to Catherine the Unclean.

The following paragraph in Lord Chesterfield’s character of Caroline is

less to be contested than others in which the noble author has essayed

to pourtray the Queen. ‘She professed wit, instead of concealing it;

and valued herself on her skill in simulation and dissimulation, by

which she made herself many enemies, and not one friend, even among the

women the nearest to her person.’ It may very well be doubted, however,

whether any sovereign ever had a ‘friend’ in the true acceptation of

that term. It is much if they acquire an associate whose interest or

inclination it is to be faithful; but such a person is not a friend.

Lord Chesterfield seems to warm against her as he proceeds in his

picture. ‘Cunning and perfidy,’ he says, ‘were the means she made use

of in business, as all women do for want of a better.’ This blow

is dealt at one poor woman merely for the purpose of smiting all.

Caroline, no doubt, was full of art, and on the stage of public life

was a mere, but most accomplished, actress. It must be remembered,

too, that she was surrounded by cunning and perfidious people. Society

was never so unprincipled as it was during her time; and yet, amid its

unutterable corruption, _all_ women were not crafty and treacherous.

There were some noble exceptions; but these did not lie much in the way

of the deaf and dissolute earl’s acquaintance.

‘She had a dangerous ambition,’ continues the same author, ‘for it was

attended with courage, and, if she had lived much longer, might have

proved fatal either to herself or the constitution.’ It is courage

like Caroline’s which plucks peril from ambition, but does not indeed

make the latter less dangerous to the people; which is, perhaps,

what Chesterfield means. With respect to the Queen’s religion, he

says: ‘After puzzling herself in all the whimsies and fantastical

speculations of different sects, she fixed herself ultimately in Deism,

believing in a future state.’ In this he merely repeats a story, which,

probably, originated with those whose views on church questions were

of a ‘higher’ tendency than those of her Majesty. And after repeating

others, he contradicts himself; for he has no sooner stated that the

Queen was not an agreeable woman, because she aimed at being a great

one, than he adds, ‘Upon the whole, the _agreeable woman_ was liked

by most people--but the _Queen_ was neither esteemed, beloved, nor

trusted by anybody but the King.’ At least, she was not despised by

everybody; and _that_, considering the times in which she lived, and

the discordant parties over whom she really reigned, is no slight

commendation. It is a praise which cannot be awarded to the King.

Let us add, that not only has Chesterfield said of Caroline that she

settled down to Deism, ‘believing in a future state,’ but he has said

the same, and in precisely the same terms, of Pope and--upon Pope’s

authority--of Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester. Here is at least a double

and, perhaps, as we should hope, a triple error.

The popular standard of morality was deplorably low throughout the

reigns of the first two Georges. Marlborough was ridiculed for the

unwavering fidelity and affection which he manifested towards his wife.

There were few husbands like him, at the time, in either respect. He

was satirised for being superior to almost irresistible temptations; he

was laughed at for having prayers in his camp--for turning reverently

to God before he turned fiercely against his foes; the epigrammatists

were particularly severe against him because he was honest enough to

pay his debts and live within his income. But ‘his meanness?’ Well,

his meanness might rather be called prudence; and if his censurers had

nourished in themselves something of the same quality, it would have

been the better for themselves and their contemporaries, and, indeed,

none the worse for their descendants. One of the alleged instances of

Marlborough’s meanness is cited, in his having once played at whist

with Dean Jones, at which he left off the winner of sixpence. The dean

delayed to pay the stake, and the duke asked for it, stating that he

wanted the sixpence for a chair to go home in. It seems to me that the

meanness rested with the rich dean in not paying, and not with the

millionaire duke in requiring to be paid.

No man ever spoke more disparagingly of Marlborough than his enemy,

Lord Peterborough, though even _he_ did justice to Marlborough’s

abilities; but Lord Peterborough was especially severe on the duke’s

love of money. The latter spent wisely, the former squandered

profusely, and cheated his heirs. The duke in the Bath-rooms, dunning

a dean for sixpence, is not so degrading a picture as Peterborough,

in the Bath market, cheapening commodities, and walking about in his

blue ribbon and star, with a fowl in his hand and a cabbage or a

cauliflower under either arm. Peterborough was lewd and sensual, vain,

passionate, and inconstant, a mocker of Christianity, and a remorseless

transgressor of the laws of God and man. He was superior to Marlborough

only in one thing--in spelling. A poor boast. Compare the duke, leading

a well-regulated life, and walking daily with his God, to Peterborough,

whose only approaches to religion consisted in his once going to hear

Penn preach, because he ‘liked to be civil to all religions,’ and in

his saying of Fenelon that he was a delicious creature, but dangerous,

because acquaintance with him was apt to make men pious!

Marlborough’s favourite general, Cadogan, was one of the ornaments

of the court of George and Caroline down to 1726. They had reason to

regard him, for he was a staunch Whig, although, as a diplomatist,

he perilled what he was commissioned to preserve. _His_ morality is

evidenced in his remark made when some one enquired, on the committal

of Atterbury to the Tower for Jacobite dealings, what should be done

with the bishop? ‘Done with him!’ roared Cadogan; ‘throw him to the

lions!’ Atterbury, on hearing of this meek suggestion, burst out with

an explosion of alliterative fierceness, and denounced the earl to Pope

‘as a bold, bad, blundering, blustering, bloody bully!’ The episcopal

sense of forgiveness was on a par with the sentiment of mercy which

influenced the bosom of the soldier.

But Marlborough’s social, severe, and domestic virtues were not asked

for in the commanders of following years. Thus Macartney, despite the

blood upon his hand, stained in the duel between the Duke of Hamilton

and Lord Mohun, was made colonel of the twenty-first regiment six

years previous to the Queen’s death. General Webb, who died two years

previously, was thought nothing the worse for his thrasonic propensity,

and was for ever boasting of his courage, and alluding to the four

wounds he had received in the battle of Wynendael. ‘My dear general,’

said the Duke of Argyle, on one of these occasions, ‘I wish you had

received a fifth--in your tongue; for then everybody else would have

talked of your deeds!’

Still more unfavourably shines another of the generals of this reign.

Lord Cobham did not lack bravery, but he owed most of his celebrity to

Pope. He did not care how wicked a man was, provided only he were a

gentleman in his vices; and he was guilty of an act which Marlborough

would have contemplated with horror--namely, tried hard to make

infidels of two promising young gentlemen--Gilbert West, and George,

subsequently Lord, Lyttelton.

Marlborough, too, was superior in morality to Blakeney, that brave

soldier and admirable dancer of Irish jigs; but who was so addicted to

amiable excesses, of which court and courtiers thought little at this

liberal period, that he drank punch till he was paralysed. And surely

it was better, like Marlborough, to play for sixpences, than, like

Wade, to build up and throw down fortunes, night after night, at the

gaming-table. But there was a more celebrated general at the court of

the second George than the road-constructing Wade. John Dalrymple, Earl

of Stair, was one of those men in high station whose acts tend to the

weal or woe of inferior men who imitate them. Stair was for ever gaily

allowing his expenditure to exceed his income. His sense of honour

was not so keen but that he would go in disguise among the Jacobites,

profess to be of them, and betray their confidence. And yet even Lord

Stair could act with honest independence. He voted against Walpole’s

Excise scheme, in 1733, although he knew that such a vote would cost

him all his honours. He _was_ accordingly turned out from his post of

lord high admiral for Scotland. Caroline was angry at his vote, yet

sorry for its consequences. ‘Why,’ said she to him, ‘why were you so

silly as to thwart Walpole’s views?’ ‘Because, madam,’ was the reply,

‘I wished you and your family better than to support such a project.’

Stair merits, too, a word of commendation for his protesting against

the merciless conduct of the government with respect to the captive

Jacobites; and, like Marlborough, he was of praiseworthy conduct

in private life, zealous for Presbyterianism, yet tolerant of all

other denominations, and, by his intense attachment to a Protestant

succession, one of the most valuable supporters of the throne of George

and Caroline. Both the men were consistent; but equal praise cannot be

awarded to another good soldier of the period. The Duke of Argyle, when

out of office, declared that a standing army, in time of peace, was

ever fatal either to prince or nation; subsequently, when in office,

he as deliberately maintained that a standing army never had in any

country the chief hand in destroying the liberties of the state. This

sort of disgraceful versatility marked his entire political career; and

it is further said of him that he ‘was meanly ambitious of emolument as

a politician, and contemptibly mercenary as a patron.’ He had, however,

one rare and by no means unimportant virtue. ‘The strictest economy was

enforced in his household, and his tradesmen were punctually paid once

a month.’ This virtue was quite enough to purchase sneers for him in

the cabinet of King George and the court of Queen Caroline.

In the last year of the reign of that King died General Hawley, whose

severity to his soldiers acquired for him in the ranks the title of

lord chief justice. An extract from his will may serve to show that

the ‘lord chief justice’ had little in him of the Christian soldier.

‘I direct and order that, as there’s now a peace, and I may die the

common way, my carcase may be put anywhere, ’tis equal to me; but I

will have no more expense or ridiculous show than if a poor soldier,

who is as good a man, were to be buried from the hospital. The priest,

I conclude, will have his fee--let the puppy take it. Pay the carpenter

for the carcase-box. I give to my sister 5,000_l._ As to my other

relations, I have none who want, and as I never was married, I have no

heirs; I have, therefore, long since taken it into my head to adopt one

son and heir, after the manner of the Romans; who I hereafter name,

&c.... I have written all this,’ he adds, ‘with my own hand, and this

I do because I hate all priests of all professions, and have the worst

opinion of all members of the bar.’

Having glanced at these social traits of men who were among the

foremost of those who were above the rank of mere courtiers around the

throne of the husband of Caroline, let us quit the palace, and seek for

other samples of the people and the times in the prisons, the private

houses, and the public streets.

With regard to the prisons, it is easier to tell than to conceive

the horrors even of the debtors’ prisons of those days. Out of them,

curiously enough, arose the colonisation of the state of Georgia.

General Oglethorpe having heard that a friend named Castle, an

architect by profession, had died in consequence of the hardships

inflicted on him in the Fleet Prison, instituted an enquiry, by which

discovery was made of some most iniquitous proceedings. The unfortunate

debtors, unable to pay their fees to the gaolers, who had no salary

and lived upon what they could extort from the prisoners and their

friends, were subjected to torture, chains, and starvation. The

authorities of the prison were prosecuted, and penalties of fine and

imprisonment laid upon them. A better result was a parliamentary grant,

with a public subscription and private donations, whereby Oglethorpe

was enabled to found a colony of liberated insolvents in Georgia. Half

of the settlers were either insolvent simply because their richer and

extravagant debtors neglected to pay their bills; the other half were

the victims of their own extravagance.

Bad roads and ill-lighted ways are said to be proofs of indifferent

civilisation when they are to be found in the neighbourhood of great

cities. If this be so, then civilisation was not greatly advanced

among us, in this respect, a century and a quarter ago. Thus we read

that on the 21st of November 1730, ‘the King and Queen, coming from

Kew Green to St. James’s, were overturned in their coach, near Lord

Peterborough’s, at Parson’s Green, about six in the evening, the wind

having blown out the flambeaux, so that the coachman could not see his

way. But their Majesties received no hurt, nor the two ladies who were

in the coach with them.’

If here was want of civilisation, there was positive barbarity in

other matters. For instance, here is a paragraph from the news of the

day, under date of the 10th of June 1731. ‘Joseph Crook, _alias_ Sir

Peter Stranger, stood in the pillory at Charing Cross, for forging

a deed; and after he had stood an hour, a chair was brought to the

pillory scaffold, in which he was placed, and the hangman with a

pruning-knife cut off both his ears, and with a pair of scissors slit

both his nostrils, all which he bore with much patience; but when his

right nostril was seared with a hot iron, the pain was so violent he

could not bear it; whereupon his left nostril was not seared, but he

was carried bleeding to a neighbouring tavern, where he was as merry

at dinner with his friends, after a surgeon had dressed his wounds, as

if nothing of the kind had happened. He was afterwards imprisoned for

life in the King’s Bench, and the issues and profits of his lands were

confiscated for his life, according to his sentence.’

It was the period when savage punishment was very arbitrarily

administered; and shortly after Sir Peter was mangled, without

detriment to his gaiety, at Charing Cross, the gallant Captain Petre

had very nearly got hanged at Constantinople. That gallant sailor and

notable courtier had entertained our ambassador, Lord Kinneal, on board

his ship, and honoured him, on leaving the vessel at nine o’clock at

night, with a salute of fifteen guns. The Sultan happened to have gone

to bed, and was aroused from his early slumbers by the report. He was

so enraged, that he ordered the captain to be seized, bastinadoed,

and hanged; and so little were King George and Queen Caroline, and

England to boot, thought of in Turkey at that day, that it was with

the greatest difficulty that the British ambassador could prevail on

the Sultan to pardon the offender. The court laughed at the incident.

Cromwell would have avenged the affront.

But we must not fancy that we were much less savage in idea or action

at home. There was one John Waller, in 1732, who stood in the pillory

in Seven Dials, for falsely swearing against persons whom he accused as

highway robbers. The culprit was dreadfully pelted during the hour he

stood exposed; but at the end of that time the mob tore him down and

trampled him to death. Whether this, too, was considered a laughable

matter at court is not so certain. Even if so, the courtiers were

soon made serious by the universal sickness which prevailed in London

in the beginning of the year 1732. Headache and fever were the common

symptoms; very few escaped, and a vast number died. In the last week of

January, not less than fifteen hundred perished of the epidemic within

the bills of mortality. There had not been so severe a visitation since

the period of the plague. But our wonder may cease that headache and

fever prevailed, when we recollect that gin was being sold, contrary

to law, in not less than eight thousand different places in the

metropolis, and that drunkenness was not the vice of the lower orders

only.

It has been truly said of Queen Caroline that, with all her

opportunities, she never abused the power which she held over the

King’s mind, by employing it for the promotion of her own friends and

favourites. This, however, is but negative, or questionable praise.

There is, too, an anecdote extant, the tendency of which is to show

that she was somewhat given to the enjoyment of uncontrolledly

exercising the power she had attained for her personal purposes. She

had prepared plans for enclosing St. James’s Park, shutting out the

public, and keeping it for the exclusive pleasure of herself and the

royal family. It was by mere chance, when she had matured her plans,

that she asked a nobleman connected with the Board which then attended

to what our Board of Woods and Forests neglects, what the carrying out

of such a plan might cost. ‘Madam,’ said the witty and right-seeing

functionary, ‘such a plan _might_ cost three crowns.’ Caroline was as

ready of wit as he, and not only understood the hint, but showed she

could apply it, by abandoning her intention.

And yet, she doubtless did so with regret, for gardens and their

arrangement were her especial delight; and she _did_ succeed in taking

a portion of Hyde Park from the public, and throwing the same into

Kensington Gardens. The Queen thought she compensated for depriving the

public of land by giving them more water. There was a rivulet which

ran through the park; and this she converted, by help from Hampstead

streams and land drainage near at hand, into what is so magniloquently

styled the Serpentine river. It is not a river, nor is it serpentine,

except by a slight twist of the imagination.

This Queen was equally busy with her gardens at Richmond and at Kew.

The King used to praise her for effecting great wonders at little cost;

but she contrived to squeeze contributions from the ministry, of which

the monarch knew nothing. She had a fondness, too, rather than a taste,

for garden architecture, and was given to build grottoes and crowd

them with statues. The droll juxtaposition into which she brought the

counterfeit presentments of defunct sages, warriors, and heroes caused

much amusement to the beholders generally.

There was one child of George and Caroline more especially anxious than

any other to afford her widowed father consolation on the death of the

Queen. That child was the haughty Anne, Princess of Orange. She had

strong, but most unreasonable, hopes of succeeding to the influence

which had so long been enjoyed by her royal mother; and she came over

in hot haste from Holland, on the plea of benefiting her health, which

was then in a precarious state. The King, however, was quite a match

for his ambitious and presuming child, and peremptorily rejected her

proffered condolence. This was done with such prompt decision, that the

princess was compelled to return to Holland immediately. The King would

not allow her, it is said, to pass a second night in the metropolis. He

probably remembered her squabbles with his father’s ‘favourite,’ Miss

Brett; and the disconsolate man was not desirous of having his peace

disturbed by the renewal of similar scenes with his own ‘favourite,’

Lady Yarmouth.

Of all the eulogies passed upon Caroline, few were so profuse in their

laudation as that contained in a sermon preached before the council

at Boston, in America, by the Rev. Samuel Mather. There was not a

virtue known which the transatlantic chaplain did not attribute to

her. As woman, the minister pronounced her perfect; as queen, she was

that and sublime to boot. As regent, she possessed, for the time, the

King’s wisdom added to her own. Good Mr. Mather, too, is warrant for

the soundness of her faith; and he applied to her the words in Judith:

‘There was none that gave her an ill word, for she feared God greatly.’

William III. is recorded as having said of his consort, Mary, that if

he could believe any mortal was born without the contagion of sin, he

would believe it of the queen. Upon citing which passage, the Bostonian

exclaims: ‘And oh, gracious Caroline, thy respected consort was ready

to make the same observation of thee; so pure, so chaste, so religious

wast thou, and so in all good things exemplary, amidst the excesses of

a magnificent court, and in an age of luxury and wantonness!’ And he

thus proceeds: ‘The pious Queen was constant at her secret devotions;

and she loved the habitation of God’s house; and from regard to the

divine institutions, with delight and steadiness attended on them. And

as she esteemed and practised every duty of piety towards the Almighty,

so she detested and frowned on every person and thing that made but

an appearance of what was wicked and impious. As she performed every

duty incumbent on her towards her beloved subjects, so she deeply

reverenced the King; and while his Majesty honours her and will grieve

for her to his last moments, her royal offspring rise up and call her

blessed.’

‘Seven are the children,’ said the preacher, ‘which she has left

behind her. These, like the noble Roman Cornelia, she took to be her

chief ornaments. Accordingly, it was both her care and her pleasure

to improve their minds and form their manners, that so they might

hereafter prove blessings to the nation and the world. What a lovely,

heavenly sight must it have been to behold the majestic royal matron,

with her faithful and obsequious offspring around her! So the planetary

orbs about the sun gravitate towards it, keep their proper distance

from it, and receive from it the measures of light and influence

respectively belonging to them. Such was--oh, fatal grief!--such was

the late most excellent Queen.’

The issue of the marriage of Caroline and George II. comprised four

sons and five daughters--namely, Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales,

born January 20, 1706; Anne, Princess of Orange, born October 22,

1708; Amelia Sophia, born June 10, 1711; Caroline Elizabeth, born

May 31, 1713; William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, born April 15,

1721; the Princess Mary, born February 22, 1723; the Princess Louisa,

born December 7, 1724. All these survived the Queen. There was also

a prince born in November 1716, who did not survive his birth; and

George William, Duke of Gloucester, born November 2, 1717, who died in

February of the year following.

At the funeral of Caroline, which was called ‘decently private,’ but

which was, in truth, marked by much splendour and ceremony, not the

King, but the Princess Amelia, acted as chief mourner; and the anthem,

‘The Ways of Zion do mourn,’ was ‘set to Musick by Mr. Handell.’ Of

all the verses poured out on the occasion of her death, two specimens

are subjoined. They show how the Queen was respectively dealt with by

the Democritus and Heraclitus of her subjects:--

Here lies, lamented by the poor and great--

(Prop of the Church, and glory of the State)--

A woman, late a mighty monarch’s queen,

Above all flattery, and above all spleen;

Loved by the good, and hated by the evil,

Pursued, now dead, by satire and the devil.

With steadfast zeal (which kindled in her youth)

A foe to bigotry, a friend to truth;

Too generous for the lust of lawless rule,

Nor Persecution’s nor Oppression’s tool:

In Locke’s, in Clarke’s, in Hoadley’s paths she trod,

Nor fear’d to follow where _they_ follow’d God.

To all obliging and to all sincere,

Wise to choose friendships, firm to persevere.

Free without rudeness; great without disdain;

An hypocrite in nought but _hiding pain_.

To courts she taught the rules of just expence,

Join’d with economy, magnificence;

Attention to a kingdom’s vast affairs,

Attention to the meanest mortal’s cares;

Profusion might consume, or avarice hoard,

’Twas hers to feed, unknown, the scanty board.

Thus, of each human excellence possess’d,

With as few faults as e’er attend the best;

Dear to her lord, to all her children dear,

And (to the last her thought, her conscience clear)

Forgiving all, forgiven and approved,

To peaceful worlds her peaceful soul removed.

The above panegyric was drawn up as a reply to an epitaph of another

character, which was then in circulation, from the pen of a writer

who contemplated his subject in another point of view. It was to this

effect:--

Here lies unpitied, both by Church and State,

The subject of their flattery and hate;

Flatter’d by those on whom her favours flow’d,

Hated for favours impiously bestow’d;

Who aim’d the Church by Churchmen to betray,

And hoped to share in arbitrary sway.

In Tindal’s and in Hoadley’s paths she trod,

An hypocrite in all but disbelief in God.

Promoted luxury, encouraged vice,

Herself a sordid slave to avarice.

True friendship’s tender love ne’er touch’d her heart,

Falsehood appear’d in vice disguised by art.

Fawning and haughty; when familiar, rude;

And never civil seem’d but to delude.

Inquisitive in trifling, mean affairs,

Heedless of public good or orphan’s tears;

To her own offspring mercy she denied,

And, unforgiving, unforgiven died.

CHAPTER X.

THE REIGN OF THE WIDOWER.

Success of Admiral Vernon--Royal visit to ‘Bartlemy Fair’--

Party-spirit runs high about the King and Prince--Lady

Pomfret--The mad Duchess of Buckingham--Anecdote of Lady Sundon

--Witty remark of Lady Mary Wortley--_Fracas_ at Kensington

Palace--The battle of Dettingen--A precocious child--Marriage

of Princess Mary--A new opposition--Prince George--Lady Yarmouth

installed at Kensington--Death of Prince Frederick--Conduct of

the King on hearing of this event--Bubb Dodington’s extravagant

grief--The funeral scant--Conduct of the widowed Princess--

Opposition of the Prince to the King not undignified--Jacobite

epitaph on the Prince--The Prince’s rebuke for frivolous jeer on

Lady Huntingdon--The Prince’s patronage of literary men--Lady

Archibald Hamilton, the Prince’s favourite--The Prince and the

Quakers--Anecdote of Prince George--Princely appreciation of Lady

Huntingdon.

The era of peace ended with Caroline. Walpole endeavoured to prolong

the era, but Spanish aggressions against the English flag in South

America drove the ministry into a war. The success of Vernon at Porto

Bello rendered the war highly popular. The public enthusiasm was

sustained by Anson, but it was materially lowered by our defeat at

Carthagena, which prepared the way for the downfall of the minister

of Caroline. Numerous and powerful were the opponents of Walpole, and

no section of them exhibited more fierceness or better organisation

than that of which the elder son of Caroline was the founder and great

captain.

Frederick, however, was versatile enough to be able to devote as much

time to pleasure as to politics.

As the _roué_ Duke of Orleans, when regent, and indeed before he

exercised that responsible office, was given to stroll with his witty

but graceless followers, and a band of graceful but witless ladies,

through the fairs of St. Laurent and St. Germain, tarrying there till

midnight to see and hear the drolleries of ‘Punch’ and the plays of the

puppets, so the princes of the royal blood of England condescended,

with much alacrity, to perambulate Bartholomew Fair, and to enjoy the

delicate amusements then and there provided. An anonymous writer,

some thirty years ago, inserted in the ‘New European Magazine,’ from

an older publication, an account of a royal visit, in 1740, to the

ancient revels of St. Bartholomew. In this amusing record we are told,

that ‘the multitude behind was impelled violently forwards, and a

broad blaze of red light, issuing from a score of flambeaux, streamed

into the air. Several voices were loudly shouting, ‘Room there for

Prince Frederick! make way for the Prince!’ and there was that long

sweep heard to pass over the ground which indicates the approach of

a grand and ceremonious train. Presently the pressure became much

greater, the voices louder, the light stronger, and, as the train

came onward, it might be seen that it consisted, firstly of a party

of yeomen of the guards clearing the way; then several more of them

bearing flambeaux, and flanking the procession; while in the midst of

all appeared a tall, fair, and handsome young man, having something

of a plump foreign visage, seemingly about four-and-thirty years of

age, dressed in a ruby-coloured frock-coat, very richly guarded with

gold lace, and having his long flowing hair curiously curled over his

forehead and at the sides, and finished with a very large bag and

courtly queue behind. The air of dignity with which he walked; the blue

ribbon and star-and-garter with which he was decorated; the small,

three-cornered, silk court-hat which he wore while all around him

were uncovered; the numerous suite, as well of gentlemen as of guards,

which marshalled him along; the obsequious attention of a short stout

person who, by his flourishing manner, seemed to be a player: all these

particulars indicated that the amiable Frederick, Prince of Wales, was

visiting Bartholomew Fair by torchlight, and that Manager Rich was

introducing his royal guest to all the amusements of the place. However

strange,’ adds the author, ‘this circumstance may appear to the present

generation, yet it is nevertheless strictly true; for about 1740, when

the revels of Smithfield were extended to three weeks and a month, it

was not considered derogatory to persons of the first rank and fashion

to partake in the broad humour and theatrical entertainments of the

place.’

In the following year the divisions between the King and the prince

made party-spirit run high, and he who followed the sire very

unceremoniously denounced the son. To such a one there was a court at

St. James’s, but none at Carlton House. Walpole tells a story which

illustrates at once this feeling and the sort of wit possessed by the

courtiers of the day. ‘Somebody who belonged to the Prince of Wales

said he was going to court. It was objected, that he ought to say

“going to Carlton House;” that the only _court_ is where the King

resides. Lady Pomfret, with her paltry air of learning and absurdity,

said, “Oh, Lord! is there no _court_ in England but the King’s? sure,

there are many more! There is the _Court_ of Chancery, the _Court_ of

Exchequer, the _Court_ of King’s Bench, &c.” Don’t you love her? Lord

Lincoln does her daughter.’ Lord Lincoln, the nephew of the Duke of

Newcastle, the minister, was a frequenter of St. James’s, and, says

Horace, ‘not only his uncle-duke, but even Majesty is fallen in love

with him. He talked to the King at his _levée_ without being spoken to.

That was always thought high treason, but I don’t know how the gruff

gentleman liked it.’ The gruff gentleman was the King, and the phrase

paints him at a stroke, like one of Cruikshank’s lines, by which not

only is a figure drawn, but expression given to it.

The prince’s party, combined with other opponents, effected the

overthrow of Caroline’s favourite minister, Walpole, in 1742. The

succeeding cabinet, at the head of which was Lord Wilmington, did not

very materially differ in principles and measures from that of their

predecessors. In the same year died Caroline’s other favourite, Lady

Sundon, mistress of the robes.

‘Lord Sundon is in great grief,’ says Walpole. ‘I am surprised, for she

has had fits of madness ever since her ambition met such a check by

the death of the Queen. She had great power with her, though the Queen

affected to despise her; but had unluckily told her, or fallen into her

power by, some secret. I was saying to Lady Pomfret, “To be sure she is

dead very rich.” She replied with some warmth, “She never took money.”

When I came home I mentioned this to Sir Robert. “No,” said he, “but

she took jewels. Lord Pomfret’s place of master of the horse to the

Queen was bought of her for a pair of diamond ear-rings, of fourteen

hundred pounds value.” One day that she wore them at a visit at old

Marlbro’s, as soon as she was gone, the duchess said to Lady Mary

Wortley, “How can that woman have the impudence to go about in that

bribe?” “Madam,” said Lady Mary, “how would you have people know where

wine is to be sold unless there is a sign hung out?” Sir Robert told me

that in the enthusiasm of her vanity, Lady Sundon had proposed to him

to unite with her and govern the kingdom together: he bowed, begged her

patronage, but, he said, he thought nobody fit to govern the kingdom

but the King and Queen.’ That King, unsustained by his consort,

appears to have become anxious to be reconciled with his son the Prince

of Wales, at this time, when reports of a Stuart rebellion began to be

rife, and when theatrical audiences applied passages in plays, in a

favourable sense to the prince. The reconciliation was effected; but

it was clumsily contrived, and was coldly and awkwardly concluded. An

agent from the King induced the prince to open the way by writing to

his father. This was a step which the prince was reluctant to take, and

which he only took at last with the worst possible grace. The letter

reached the King late at night, and on reading it he appointed the

following day for the reception of Frederick, who, with five gentlemen

of his court, repaired to St. James’s, where he was received by ‘the

gruff gentleman’ in the drawing-room. The yielding sire simply asked

him, ‘How does the princess do? I hope she is well.’ The dutiful son

answered the query, kissed the paternal hand, and respectfully, as far

as outward demonstration could evidence it, took his leave. He did not

depart, however, until he had distinguished those courtiers present

whom he held to be his friends by speaking to them; the rest he passed

coldly by. As the reconciliation was accounted of as an accomplished

fact, and as the King had condescended to speak a word or two to some

of the most intimate friends of his son; and finally, as the entire

royal family went together to the Duchess of Norfolk’s, where ‘the

streets were illuminated and bonfired;’ there was a great passing to

and fro of courtiers of either faction between St. James’s and Carlton

House. Secker, who went to the latter residence with Benson, Bishop of

Gloucester, to pay his respects, says that the prince and princess were

_civil_ to both of them.

The reconciliation was worth an additional fifty thousand pounds a-year

to the prince, so that obedience to a father could hardly be more

munificently rewarded. ‘He will have money now,’ says Walpole, ‘to

tune up Glover, and Thomson, and Dodsley again:--

Et spes et ratio studiorum in Cæsare tantum.’

There was much outward show of gladness at this court, pageants and

‘reviews to gladden the heart of David and triumphs of Absalom,’ as

Walpole styles his Majesty and the heir-apparent. The latter, with the

princess, went ‘in great parade through the city and the dust to dine

at Greenwich. They took water at the Tower, and trumpeting away to

Grace Tosier’s--

Like Cimon, triumphed over land and wave.’

In another direction, there were some lively proceedings, which would

have amused Caroline herself. Tranquil and dull as Kensington Palace

looks, its apartments were occasionally the scene of more rude than

royal _fracas_. Thus we are told of one of the daughters of the King

pulling a chair from under the Countess Deloraine, just as that not too

exemplary lady was about to sit down to cards. His Majesty laughed at

the lady’s tumble, at which she was so doubly pained, that, watching

for revenge and opportunity, she contrived to give the Sovereign just

such another fall. The sacred person of the King was considerably

bruised, and the trick procured nothing more for the countess than

exclusion from court, where her place of favour was exclusively

occupied by Madame Walmoden, Countess of Yarmouth.

We often hear of the wits of one era being the butts of the next,

and without wit enough left to escape the shafts let fly at them.

Walpole thus describes a drawing-room held at St. James’s, to which

some courtiers resorted in the dresses they had worn under Queen Anne.

‘There were so many new faces,’ says Horace, ‘that I scarce knew where

I was; I should have taken it for Carlton House, or my Lady Mayoress’s

visiting day, only the people did not seem enough at home, but rather

as admitted to see the King dine in public. It is quite ridiculous to

see the number of old ladies, who, from having been wives of patriots,

have not been dressed these twenty years; out they come with all the

accoutrements that were in use in Queen Anne’s days. Then the joy and

awkward jollity of them is inexpressible; they titter, and, wherever

you meet them, are always going to court, and looking at their watches

an hour before the time. I met several at the birth-day, and they were

dressed in all the colours of the rainbow; they seem to have said to

themselves twenty years ago: “Well; if I ever do go to court again, I

will have a pink and silver, or a blue and silver,” and they kept their

resolutions.’

The English people had now been long looking towards that great

battle-field of Europe, Flanders, mingling memories of past triumphs

with hopes of future victories. George II. went heartily into the cause

of Maria Theresa, when the French sought to deprive her of her imperial

inheritance. In the campaign which ensued was fought that battle of

Dettingen which Lord Stair so nearly lost, where George behaved so

bravely, mounted or a-foot, and where the Scots Greys enacted their

bloody and triumphant duel with the gens-d’arme of France.

Meanwhile, Frederick was unemployed. When the King and the Duke of

Cumberland proceeded to the army in Flanders, a regency was formed,

of which Walpole says, ‘I think the prince might have been of it when

Lord Gower is. I don’t think the latter more Jacobite than his royal

highness.’

When the King and the duke returned from their triumphs on the

Continent, the former younger for his achievements, the latter older by

the gout and an accompanying limp, London gave them a reception worthy

of the most renowned of heroes. In proportion as the King saw himself

popular with the citizens did he cool towards the Prince of Wales. The

latter, with his two sisters, stood on the stairs of St. James’s Palace

to receive the chief hero; but though the princess was only confined

the day before, and Prince George lay ill of the small-pox, the King

passed by his son without offering him a word or otherwise noticing

him. This rendered the King unpopular, without turning the popular

affection towards the elder son of Caroline. Nor was that son deserving

of such affection. His heart had few sympathies for England, nor was he

elated by her victories or made sad by her defeats. On the contrary,

in 1745, when the news arrived in England of the ‘tristis gloria,’

the illustrious disaster at Fontenoy, which made so many hearts in

England desolate, Frederick went to the theatre in the evening, and

two days after, he wrote a French ballad, ‘Bacchic, Anacreontic, and

Erotic,’ addressed to those ladies with whom he was going to act in

Congreve’s masque, ‘The Judgment of Paris.’ It was full of praise

of late and deep drinking, of intercourse with the fair, of stoical

contempt for misfortune, of expressed indifference whether Europe had

one or many tyrants, and of a pococurantism for all things and forms

except his _chère Sylvie_, by whom he was good-naturedly supposed to

mean his wife. But this solitary civility cannot induce us to change

our self-gratulation at the fact that a man with such a heart was not

permitted to ascend the throne of Great Britain. In the year after he

wrote the ballad alluded to, he created a new opposition against the

crown, by the counsels of Lord Bath, ‘who got him from Lord Granville:

the latter and his faction acted with the court.’ Of the princess,

Walpole says, ‘I firmly believe, by all her quiet sense, she will turn

out a Caroline.’

In this year, 1743, died that favourite of George I. who more than

any other woman had enjoyed in his household and heart the place

which should have belonged to his wife Sophia Dorothea. Mademoiselle

von der Schulenburg, of the days of the Electorate, died Duchess of

Kendal by favour of the King of England, and Princess of Eberstein by

favour of the Emperor of Germany. She died at the age of eighty-five,

immensely rich. Her wealth was inherited by her so-called ‘niece,’

Lady Walsingham, who married Lord Chesterfield. ‘But I believe,’ says

Walpole, ‘that he will get nothing by the duchess’s death--but his

wife. She lived in the house with the duchess, where he had played away

all his credit.’

George loved to hear his Dettingen glories eulogised in annual odes

sung before him. But, brave as he was, he had not much cause for

boasting. The Dettingen laurels were changed into cypress at Fontenoy

by the Duke of Cumberland in 1744, whose suppression of the Scottish

rebellion in 1745 gained for him more credit than he deserved. The

treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, by which our Continental war was concluded

in 1748, gave peace to England, but little or no glory.

The intervening years were years of interest to some of the children

of Caroline. Thus, in June 1746, the Prince of Hesse came over to

England to marry the second daughter of Caroline, the Princess Mary.

He was royally entertained; but on one occasion met with an accident

which Walpole calls ‘a most ridiculous tumble t’other night at the

opera. They had not pegged up his box tight after the ridotto, and down

he came on all fours. George Selwyn says he carried it off with an

_unembarrassed_ countenance.’

In a year Mary was glad to escape from the brutality of her husband and

repair to England, under pretext of being obliged to drink the Bath

waters. She was an especial favourite with her brother, the Duke of

Cumberland, and with the Princess Caroline.

The result of this marriage gave little trouble to the King. He was

much more annoyed when the Prince of Wales formally declared a new

opposition (in 1747), which was never to subside till he was on the

throne. ‘He began it pretty handsomely, the other day,’ says Walpole,

‘with 143 to 184, which has frightened the ministry like a bomb.

This new party wants nothing but heads; though not having any,’ says

Horace, wittily, ‘to be sure the struggle is fairer.’ It was led by

Lord Baltimore, a man with ‘a good deal of jumbled knowledge.’ The

spirit of the father certainly dwelt in some of his children. The

King, we are told, sent Steinberg, on one occasion, to examine the

prince’s children in their learning. The boy, Prince Edward, acquitted

himself well in his Latin grammar, but Steinberg told him that it would

please his Majesty and profit the prince, if the latter would attend

more to attain proficiency in the German language. ‘German, German!’

said the boy; ‘any dull child can learn that!’ The prince, as he said

it, ‘squinted’ at the baron, and the baron was doubtless but little

flattered by the remark or the look of the boy. The King was probably

as surprised and as little pleased to hear the remark as he was a few

months later to discover that the Prince of Wales and the Jacobite

party had united in a combined parliamentary opposition against the

government. However, Prince Edward’s remark and the Prince of Wales’s

opposition did not prevent the King from conferring the Order of the

Garter on the little Prince George in 1749. The youthful knight,

afterwards King of England, was carried in his father’s arms to the

door of the King’s closet. There the Duke of Dorset received him, and

carried him to the King. The boy then commenced a speech, which had

been taught him by his tutor, Ayscough, Dean of Bristol. His father no

sooner heard the oration commenced, than he interrupted its progress

by a vehement ‘No, no!’ The boy, embarrassed, stopped short; then,

after a moment of hesitation, recommenced his complimentary harangue;

but, with the opening words, again came the prohibitory ‘No, no!’ from

the prince, and thus was the eloquence of the young chevalier rudely

silenced.

But it was not only the peace of the King, his very palaces were put in

peril at this time. The installation of Lady Yarmouth at Kensington,

after the _fracas_ occasioned by Lady Deloraine, had nearly resulted

in the destruction of the palace. Lady Yarmouth resided in the room

which had been occupied by Lady Suffolk, who disregarded damp, and

cared nothing for the crop of fungi raised by it in her room. Not so

Lady Yarmouth, at least after she had contracted an ague. She then

kept up such a fire that the woodwork caught, and destruction to the

edifice was near upon following. There were vacant chambers enough,

and sufficiently comfortable; but the King would not allow them to be

inhabited, even by his favourite. ‘The King hoards all he can,’ writes

Walpole, ‘and has locked up half the palace since the Queen’s death;

so he does at St. James’s; and I believe would put the rooms out at

interest if he could get a closet a-year for them.’

The division which had again sprung up between sire and son daily

widened until death relieved the former of his permanent source of

vexation. This event took place in 1751. Some few years previous to

that period, the Prince of Wales, when playing at tennis or cricket, at

Cliefden, received a blow from a ball, which gave him some pain, but

of which he thought little. It was neglected; and one result of such

neglect was a permanent weakness of the lungs. In the early part of

this year he had suffered from pleurisy, but had recovered--at least,

partially recovered. A previous fall from his horse had rendered him

more than usually delicate. Early in March he had been in attendance

at the House of Lords on occasion of the King, his father, giving his

royal sanction to some bills. This done, the prince returned, much

heated, in a chair with the windows down, to Carlton House. He changed

his dress, put on light, unaired clothing, and, as if _that_ had not

been perilous enough, he had the madness, after hurrying to Kew and

walking about the gardens there in very inclement weather, to lie down

for three hours after his return to Carlton House, upon a couch in a

very cold room which opened upon the gardens. Lord Egmont alluded to

the danger of such a course; the prince laughed at the thought. He was

as obstinate as his father, to whom Sir Robert Walpole once observed,

on finding him equally intractable during a fit of illness, ‘Sir, do

you know what your father died of? Of thinking he could not die.’ The

prince removed to Leicester House. He ridiculed good counsel, and

before the next morning his life was in danger. He rallied, and during

one of his hours of least suffering he sent for his eldest son, and,

embracing him with tenderness, remarked, ‘Come, George, let us be

good friends while we are permitted to be so.’ Three physicians, with

Wilmot and Hawkins, the surgeons, were in constant attendance upon him,

and, curiously enough, their united wisdom pronounced that the prince

was out of danger only the day before he died. Then came a relapse,

an eruption of the skin, a marked difficulty of breathing, and an

increase of cough. Still he was not considered in danger. Some members

of his family were at cards in the adjacent room, and Desnoyers, the

celebrated dancing-master, who, like St. Leon, was as good a violinist

as he was a dancer, was playing the violin at the prince’s bedside,

when the latter was seized with a violent fit of coughing. When this

had ceased, Wilmot expressed a hope that his royal patient would

be better, and would pass a quiet night. Hawkins detected symptoms

which he thought of great gravity. The cough returned with increased

violence, and Frederick, placing his hand upon his stomach, murmured

feebly, ‘_Je sens la mort!_’ (‘I feel death!’). Desnoyers held him

up, and feeling him shiver, exclaimed, ‘The prince is going!’ At that

moment the Princess of Wales was at the foot of the bed: she caught up

a candle, rushed to the head of the bed, and, bending down over her

husband’s face, she saw that he was dead.

So ended the wayward life of the elder son of Caroline; so terminated

the married life of him, which began so gaily when he was gliding about

the crowd in his nuptial chamber, in a gown and night-cap of silver

tissue. The bursting of an imposthume between the pericardium and

diaphragm, the matter of which fell upon the lungs, suddenly killed

_him_ whom the heralds called ‘high and mighty prince,’ and the heir

to a throne lay dead in the arms of a French fiddler. _Les extrêmes se

touchent!_--though Desnoyers, be it said, was quite as honest a man as

his master.

Intelligence of the death of his son was immediately conveyed to George

II., by Lord North. The King was at Kensington, and when the messenger

stood at his side and communicated in a whisper the doleful news, his

Majesty was looking over a card-table at which the players were the

Princess Amelia, the Duchess of Dorset, the Duke of Grafton, and the

Countess of Yarmouth. He turned to the messenger, and merely remarked

in a low voice, ‘Dead, is he? Why, they told me he was better;’ and

then going round to his mistress, the Countess of Yarmouth, he very

calmly observed to her, ‘Countess, Fred is gone!’ And that was all the

sorrow expressed by a father at the loss of a first-born boy, who had

outlived his father’s love. The King, however, sent kind messages to

the widow, who exhibited on the occasion much courage and sense.

As the prince died without priestly aid, so was his funeral unattended

by a single bishop to do him honour or pay him respect. With the

exception of Frederick’s own household and the lords appointed to hold

the pall, ‘there was not present one English lord, not one bishop,

and only one Irish peer (Limerick), two sons of dukes, one baron’s

son, and two privy councillors.’ It was not that want of respect was

intentional, but that no due notice was issued from any office as to

the arrangement of the funeral. The body was carried from the House

of Lords to Westminster Abbey, but without a canopy, and the funeral

service was performed, undignified by either anthem or organ.

But the prince’s friend, Bubb Dodington, poured out a sufficient

quantity of expressed grief to serve the entire nation, and make up

for all lack of ceremony or of sorrow elsewhere. In a letter to Mann,

he swore that the prince was the delight, ornament, and expectation

of the world. In losing him the wretched had lost their refuge,

balm, and shelter. Art, science, and grace had to deplore the loss

of a patron, and in that loss a remedy for the ills of society had

perished also! ‘Bubb de Tristibus’ goes on to say, that _he_ had lost

more than any other man by the death of the prince, seeing that his

highness had condescended to stoop to him, and be his own familiar

friend. Bubb protested that if he ever allowed the wounds of his grief

to heal he should be for ever infamous, and finally running a-muck

with his figures of speech, he declares--‘I should be unworthy of

all consolation if I was not inconsolable.’ This is the spirit of

a partisan; but, on the other side, the spirit of party was never

exhibited in a more malignantly petty aspect than on the occasion of

the death of the prince. The gentlemen of his bedchamber were ordered

to be in attendance near the body, from ten in the morning till the

conclusion of the funeral. The government, however, would order them

no refreshment, and the Board of Green Cloth would provide them

with none, without such order. Even though princes die, _il faut que

tout le monde vive_; and accordingly these poor gentlemen sent to a

neighbouring tavern and gave orders for a cold dinner to be furnished

them. The authorities were too tardily ashamed of thus insulting

faithful servants of rank and distinction, and commanded the necessary

refreshments to be provided. They were accepted, but the tavern dinner

was paid for and given to the poor.

The widowed Augusta, who had throughout her married life exhibited

much mental superiority, with great kindness of disposition, and that

under circumstances of great difficulty, and sometimes of a character

to inflict vexation on the calmest nature, remained in the room by the

side of the corpse of her husband for full four hours, unwilling to

believe in the assurances given her that he was really dead. She was

then the mother of eight children, expecting to be shortly the mother

of a ninth, and she was brought reluctantly to acknowledge that their

father was no more. It was six in the morning before her attendants

could persuade her to retire to bed; but she rose again at eight, and

then, with less thought for her grief than anxiety for the honour of

him whose death was the cause of it, she proceeded to the prince’s room

and burned the whole of his private papers. By this action the world

lost some rare supplementary chapters to a _Chronique Scandaleuse_.

The death of Frederick disconcerted all the measures of intriguing

men, and brought about a great change in the councils of the court as

of the factions opposed to the court. ‘The death of our prince,’ wrote

Whitfield, ‘has afflicted you. It has given me a shock; but the Lord

reigneth, and that is my comfort.’ The Duchess of Somerset, writing

to Dr. Doddridge, says on the same subject: ‘Providence seems to have

directed the blow where we thought ourselves the most secure; for among

the many schemes of hopes and fears which people were laying down to

themselves, this was never mentioned as a supposable event. The harmony

which appears to subsist between his Majesty and the Princess of Wales

is the best support for the spirits of the nation under their present

concern and astonishment. He died in the forty-fifth year of his age,

and is generally allowed to have been a prince of amiable and generous

disposition, of elegant manners, and of considerable talents.’

The opposition which the prince had maintained against the government

of the father who had provoked him to it was not undignified. Unlike

his sire, he did not ‘hate both bainting and boetry;’ and painters and

poets were welcome at his court, as were philosophers and statesmen. It

was only required that they should be adverse to Walpole. Among them

were the able and urbane wits, Chesterfield and Carteret, Pulteney and

Sir William Wyndham; the aspiring young men, Pitt, Lyttelton, and the

Grenvilles: Swift, Pope, and Thomson lent their names and pens to the

prince’s service; while astute and fiery Bolingbroke aimed to govern in

the circle where he affected to serve.

All the reflections made upon the death of the prince were not so

simple of quality as those of the Duchess of Somerset. Horace Walpole

cites a preacher at Mayfair Chapel, who ‘improved’ the occasion after

this not very satisfactory or conclusive fashion: ‘He had no great

parts, but he had great virtues--indeed, they degenerated into vices.

He was very generous; but I hear his generosity has ruined a great

many people; and then, his condescension was such that he kept very

bad company.’ Not less known, and yet claiming a place here, is the

smart Jacobite epitaph, so little flattering to the dead, that had all

Spartan epitaphs been as little laudatory, the Ephori would have never

issued a decree entirely prohibiting them. It was to this effect:

Here lies Fred,

Who was alive and is dead!

Had it been his father,

I had much rather.

Had it been his brother,

Still better than another.

Had it been his sister,

No one could have missed her.

Had it been the whole generation,

Still better for the nation:

But since ’tis only Fred,

Who was alive and is dead,

There is no more to be said.

I have not mentioned among those who were the frequenters of his court

the name of Lady Huntingdon. Frederick had the good sense to appreciate

Lady Huntingdon, and he did not despise her because of a little

misdirected enthusiasm. On missing her from his circle, he enquired of

the gay, but subsequently the godly, Lady Charlotte Edwin, where Lady

Huntingdon could be, that he no longer saw her at his court. ‘Oh, I

dare say,’ exclaimed the unconcerned Lady Charlotte--‘I dare say she is

praying with her beggars!’ Frederick had the good sense and the courage

to turn sharply round upon her, and say: ‘Lady Charlotte, when I am

dying I think I shall be happy to seize the skirt of Lady Huntingdon’s

mantle to lift me up to Heaven.’ This phrase was not forgotten when the

adapter of Cibber’s ‘Nonjuror’ turned that play into the ‘Hypocrite,’

and, introducing the fanatic Mawworm, put into his mouth a sentiment

uttered for the sake of the laugh which it never failed to raise, but

which originated, in sober sadness, with Frederick, Prince of Wales.

The character of Caroline’s son was full of contradictions. He had low

tastes, but he also possessed those of a gentleman and a prince. When

the ‘Rambler’ first appeared, he so enjoyed its stately wisdom that he

sought after the author, in order to serve him if he needed service.

His method of ‘serving’ an author was not mere lip compliment. Pope,

indeed, might be satisfied with receiving from him a complimentary

visit at Twickenham. The poet there was on equal terms with the prince;

and when the latter asked how it was that the author who hurled his

shafts against kings could be so friendly towards the son of a king,

Pope somewhat pertly answered, that he who dreaded the lion might

safely enough fondle the cub. But Frederick could really be princely to

authors; and what is even more, he could do a good action gracefully,

an immense point where there is a good action to be done. Thus to

Tindal he sent a gold medal worth forty guineas; and to dry and dusty

Glover, for whose ‘Leonidas’ he had much respect, he sent a note for

500_l._ when the poet was in difficulties. This handsome gift, too, was

sent unasked. The son of song was honoured and not humiliated by the

gift. It does not matter whether Lyttelton, or any one else, taught him

to be the patron of literature and literary men; it is to his credit

that he recognised them, acknowledged their services, and saw them with

pleasure at his little court, often giving them precedence over those

whose greatness was the mere result of the accident of birth.

The prince not only protected poets but he wooed the Muses. Those shy

ladies, however, loved him none the better for being a benefactor to

their acknowledged children. The rhymes of Frederick were generally

devoted to the ecstatic praises of his wife. The matter was good, but

the manner was execrable. The lady deserved all that was said, but

her virtues merited a more gracefully skilful eulogist. The reasoning

was perfect, but the rhymes halted abominably. But how could it be

otherwise? Apollo himself would not stoop to inspire a writer who,

while piling up poetical compliments above the head of his blameless

wife, was paying adoration, at all events not less sincere, to most

worthless ladies of the court? The apparently exemplary father within

the circle of home, where presided a beautiful mother over a bright

young family, was a wretched libertine outside of that circle. His sin

was great, and his taste of the vilest. His ‘favourites’ had nothing of

youth, beauty, or intellect to distinguish them, or to serve for the

poor apology of infidelity. Lady Archibald Hamilton was plain and in

years when she enjoyed her bad pre-eminence. Miss Vane was impudent,

and a maid of honour by office; nothing else: while Lady Middlesex was

‘short and dark, like a cold winter’s day,’ and as yellow as a November

morning. Notwithstanding this, he played the father and husband well.

He loved to have his children with him, always appeared most happy when

in the bosom of his family, left them with regret, and met them again

with smiles, kisses, and tears. He walked the streets unattended, to

the great delight of the people; was the presiding Apollo at great

festivals, conferred the prizes at rowings and racings, and talked

familiarly with Thames fishermen on the mysteries of their craft. He

would enter the cottages of the poor, listen with patience to their

twice-told tales, and partake with relish of the humble fare presented

to him. So did the old soldier find in him a ready listener to the

story of his campaigns and the subject of his petitions; and never

did the illustriously maimed appeal to him in vain. He was a man to

be loved in spite of all his vices. He would have been adored had his

virtues been more, or more real. But his virtue was too often--like his

love for popular and parliamentary liberty--rather affected than real;

and at all events, not to be relied upon.

When a deputation of Quakers waited on the prince to solicit him to

support by himself and friends a clause of the Tything bill in their

favour, he replied: ‘As I am a friend to liberty in general, and to

toleration in particular, I wish you may meet with all proper favour;

but, for myself, I never gave my vote in parliament; and to influence

my friends or direct my servants in theirs does not become my station.

To leave them entirely to their own consciences and understandings is a

rule I have hitherto prescribed to myself, and purpose through life to

observe.’ Andrew Pitt, who was at the head of the deputation, replied:

‘May it please the Prince of Wales, I am greatly affected with thy

excellent notions of liberty, and am more pleased with the answer thou

hast given us than if thou hadst granted our request.’ But the answer

was _not_ a sincere one, and the parliamentary friends and servants of

the prince were expected to hold their consciences at his direction.

Once Lord Doneraile ventured to disregard this influence; upon which

the prince observed: ‘Does he think that I will support him unless he

will do as I would have him? Does he not consider that whoever may

be my ministers, I must be king?’ Of such a man Walpole’s remark was

not far wide of truth when he said that Frederick resembled the Black

Prince only in one circumstance--in dying before his father!

He certainly exhibited little of the chivalrous spirit of the Black

Prince. In 1745, vexed at not being promoted to the command of the

army raised to crush the rebellion, and especially annoyed that it

was given to his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, who had less vanity

and more courage, he ridiculed all the strategic dispositions of the

authorities; and when Carlisle was being besieged by the rebels, a

representation in paste of the citadel was served up at his table, at

dessert, which, at the head of the maids of honour, he bombarded with

sugar-plums.

The young Prince George, afterwards George III., ‘behaved excessively

well on his father’s death.’ The words are Walpole’s; and he

establishes his attestation by recording, that when he was informed

of his father’s decease, he turned pale and laid his hand on his

breast. Upon which his reverend tutor, Ayscough, said, very much like

a simpleton, and not at all like a divine, ‘I am afraid, sir, you are

not well.’ ‘I feel,’ said the boy, ‘something here, just as I did when

I saw the two workmen fall from the scaffold at Kew.’ It was not the

speech of a boy of parts, nor an epitaph deeply filial in sentiment

on the death of a parent; but one can see that the young prince was

conscious of some painful grief, though he hardly knew how to dress his

sensations in equivalent words.

Another son of Frederick, Edward, Duke of York, was ‘a very plain boy,

with strange loose eyes, but was much the favourite. He is a sayer of

things,’ remarks Walpole. Nine years after his father’s death, Prince

Edward had occasion to pay as warm a compliment to Lady Huntingdon

as ever had been paid her by his father. The occasion was a visit

to the Magdalen, in 1760. A large party accompanied Prince Edward

from Northumberland House to the evening service. They were rather

wits than worshippers; for among them were Horace Walpole, Colonel

Brudenell, and Lord Hertford, with Lords Huntingdon and Dartmouth to

keep the wits within decent limits. The ladies were all gay in silks,

satins, and rose-coloured taffeta; there were the Lady Northumberland

herself, Ladies Chesterfield, Carlisle, Dartmouth, and Hertford, Lady

Fanny Shirley, Lady Selina Hastings, Lady Gertrude Hotham, and Lady

Mary Coke. Lord Hertford, at the head of the governors, met the prince

and his brilliant suite at the doors, and conducted him to a sort of

throne in front of the altar. The clergyman, who preached an eloquent

and impressive sermon from Luke xix. 20, was, not many years after,

dragged from Newgate to Tyburn, and there ignominiously hung. Some

one in the company sneeringly observed that Dr. Dodd had preached a

very Methodistical sort of sermon. ‘You are fastidious indeed,’ said

Prince Edward to the objector: ‘I thought it excellent, and suitable

to season and place; and in so thinking, I have the honour of being of

the same opinion as Lady Huntingdon here, and I rather fancy that she

is better versed in theology than any of us.’ This was true, and it was

gracefully said. The prince, moreover, backed his opinion by leaving a

fifty-pound note in the plate.

CHAPTER XI.

THE LAST YEARS OF A REIGN.

Princess Augusta named Regent in the event of a minority--Cause of

the Prince’s death--Death of the Prince of Orange--The King’s

fondness for the theatre--Allusion to the King’s age--Death

of the Queen of Denmark--Her married life unhappy--Suffered

from a similar cause with her mother--Rage of Lady Suffolk at a

sermon by Whitfield--Lady Huntingdon insulted by her--War in

Canada--Daily life of the King--Establishments of the sons of

Frederick--Death of the truth-loving Princess Caroline--Deaths

of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Anne--Queen Caroline’s rebuke

of her--Death of the King--Dr. Porteous’s eulogistic epitaph

on him--The King’s personal property--The royal funeral--The

burlesque Duke of Newcastle.

The last nine years of the reign of the consort of Caroline were of

a very varied character. The earliest of his acts after the death of

Frederick was one of which Caroline would certainly not have approved.

In case of his demise before the next heir to the throne should be

of age, he, with consent of parliament, named the widow of Frederick

as regent of the kingdom. This appointment gave great umbrage to the

favourite son of Caroline, William, Duke of Cumberland, and it was one

to which Caroline herself would never have consented.

But George now cared little for what the opinions of Caroline _might_

have been; and the remainder of his days was spent amid death,

gaiety, and politics. The year in which Frederick died was marked by

the decease of the husband of Caroline’s eldest daughter, of whose

plainness, wooing, and marriage I have previously spoken. The Prince of

Orange died on the 11th of October 1751. He had not improved in beauty

since his marriage, but, increasingly ugly as he became, his wife

became also increasingly jealous of him. Importunate, however, as the

jealousy was, it had the merit of being founded on honest and healthy

affection.

The immediate cause of the prince’s death was an imposthume in the

head. Although his health had been indifferent, his death was rather

sudden and unexpected. Lord Holdernesse was sent over from England by

the King, Walpole says, ‘to learn rather than to teach,’ but certainly

with letters of condolence to Caroline’s widowed daughter. She is

said to have received the paternal sympathy and advice in the most

haughty and insulting manner. She was proud, perhaps, of being made the

_gouvernante_ of her son; and she probably remembered the peremptory

rejection by her father of the interested sympathy she herself had

offered him on the decease of her mother, to whose credit she had hoped

to succeed at St. James’s.

But George himself had little sympathy to spare, and felt no immoderate

grief for the death of either son or son-in-law. On the 6th of

November 1751, within a month of the prince’s death, and not very many

after that of his son and heir to the throne, George was at Drury

Lane Theatre. The entertainment, played for his especial pleasure,

consisted of Farquhar’s ‘Beaux Stratagem’ and Fielding’s ‘Intriguing

Chambermaid.’ In the former, the King was exceedingly fond of the

‘Foigard’ of Yates and the ‘Cherry’ of Miss Minors. In the latter

piece, Mrs. Clive played her original part of ‘Lettice,’ a part in

which she had then delighted the town--a town which could be delighted

with such parts--for now seventeen years. Walpole thus relates an

incident of the night. He is writing to Sir Horace Mann, from Arlington

Street, under the date of the 22nd of November 1751: ‘A certain King,

that, whatever airs you may give yourself, you are not at all like, was

last week at the play. The intriguing chambermaid in the farce says to

the old gentleman, ‘You are villainously old; you are sixty-six; you

can’t have the impudence to think of living above two years.’ The old

gentleman in the stage-box turned about in a passion, and said, “This

is d--d stuff!”’

George was right in his criticism, but rather coarse than king-like

in expressing it. Walpole too, it may be noticed, misquotes what his

friend Mrs. Clive said in her character of Lettice, and he misquotes

evidently for the purpose of making the story more pointed against

the King, who was as sensitive upon the point of age as Louis XIV.

himself. Lettice does not say to Oldcastle ‘you are villainously old.’

She merely states the three obstacles to Oldcastle marrying her young

mistress. ‘In the first place your great age; you are at least some

sixty-six. Then there is, in the second place, your terrible ungenteel

air; and thirdly, that horrible face of yours, which it is impossible

for any one to see without being frightened.’ She does, however, add a

phrase which must have sounded harshly on the ear of a sensitive and

sexagenarian King; though not more so than on that of any other auditor

of the same age. ‘I think you could not have the conscience to live

above a year or a year and a half at most.’ The royal criticism, then,

was correct, however roughly expressed.

In the same year, 1751, died another of the children of George

and Caroline--Louisa, Queen of Denmark. She had only reached her

twenty-seventh year, and had been eight years married. Her mother loved

her, and the nation admired her for her grace, amiability, and talents.

Her career, in many respects, resembled that of her mother. She was

married to a king who kept a mistress in order that the world should

think he was independent of all influence on the part of his wife. She

was basely treated by this king; but not a word of complaint against

him entered into the letters which this spirited and sensible woman

addressed to her relations. Indeed, she had said at the time of her

marriage that, if she should become unhappy, her family should never

know anything about it. She died, in the flower of her age, a terrible

death, as Walpole calls it, and after an operation which lasted an

hour. The cause of it was the neglect of a slight rupture, occasioned

by stooping suddenly when _enceinte_, the injury resulting from which

she imprudently and foolishly concealed. This is all the more strange,

as her mother, on her death-bed, said to her: ‘Louisa, remember I die

by being giddy and obstinate, in having kept my disorder a secret.’ Her

farewell letter to her father and family, a most touching address, and

the similitude of her fate to that of her mother, sensibly affected

the almost dried-up heart of the King. ‘This has been a fatal year

to my family,’ groaned the son of Sophia Dorothea. ‘I lost my eldest

son, _but I was glad of it_. Then the Prince of Orange died, and left

everything in confusion. Poor little Edward has been cut open for an

imposthume in his side; and now the Queen of Denmark is gone! I know

I did not love my children when they were young; I hated to have them

coming into the room; but now I love them as well as most fathers.’

The Countess of Suffolk (the servant of Caroline and the mistress of

Caroline’s husband) was among the few persons whom the eloquence and

fervour of Whitfield failed to touch. When this latter was chaplain

to Lady Huntingdon, and in the habit of preaching in the drawing-room

of that excellent and exemplary woman, there was an eager desire to

be among the privileged to be admitted to hear him. This privilege

was solicited of Lady Huntingdon by Lady Rockingham, for the King’s

ex-favourite, Lady Suffolk. The patroness of Whitfield thought of

Magdalen repentant, and expressed her readiness to welcome her, an

additional sheep to an increasing flock. The beauty came, and Whitfield

preached neither more nor less earnestly, unconscious of her presence.

So searching, however, was his sermon, and so readily could the enraged

fair one apply its terrible truths to herself, that it was only with

difficulty she could sit it out with apparent calm. Inwardly, she felt

that she had been the especial object at which her assailant had flung

his sharpest arrows. Accordingly, when Whitfield had retired, the

exquisite fury, chafed but not repentant, turned upon the meditative

Lady Huntingdon, and well nigh annihilated her with the torrent

and power of her invective. Her sister-in-law, Lady Betty Germain,

implored her to be silent; but only the more unreservedly did she empty

the vials of her wrath upon the saintly lady of the house, who was

lost in astonishment, anger, and confusion. Old Lady Bertie and the

Dowager Duchess of Ancaster rose to her rescue; and, by right of their

relationship with the lady whom the King delighted to honour, required

her to be silent or civil. It was all in vain: the irritated fair one

maintained that she had been brought there to be pilloried by the

preacher; and she finally swept out of the room, leaving behind her an

assembly in various attitudes of wonder and alarm; some fairly deafened

by the thundering echoes of her expressed wrath, others at a loss to

decide whether Lady Huntingdon had or had not directed the arrows of

the preacher, and all most charmingly unconscious that, be that as it

might, the lady was only smarting because she had rubbed against a

sermon bristling with the most stinging truths.

Whitfield made note of those of the royal household who repaired to

the services over which he presided in Lady Huntingdon’s house. In

1752, when he saw regularly attending among his congregation one of

Queen Caroline’s ex-ladies, Mrs. Grinfield, he writes thereupon: ‘One

of Cæsar’s household hath been lately awakened by her ladyship’s

instrumentality, and I hope others will meet with the like blessing.’

In 1755 England and France were at issue touching their possessions

in Canada. The dispute resulted in a war; and the war brought with it

the temporary loss of the Electorate of Hanover to England, and much

additional disgrace; which last was not wiped out till the great Pitt

was at the helm, and by his spirited administration helped England to

triumph in every quarter of the globe. Amid misfortune or victory,

however, the King, as outwardly ‘impassible’ as ever, took also less

active share in public events than he did of old; and he lived with the

regularity of a man who has a regard for his health. Every night, at

nine o’clock, he sat down to cards. The party generally consisted of

his two daughters, the Princesses Amelia and Caroline, two or three of

the late Queen’s ladies, and as many of the gentlemen of the household

--whose presence there was a proof of the Sovereign’s personal esteem

for them. Had none other been present, the party would have been one on

which remark would not be called for. But at the same table with the

children of good Queen Caroline was seated their father’s mistress,

the naturalised German Baroness Walmoden--Countess of Yarmouth. George

II. had no idea that the presence of such a woman was an outrage

committed upon his own children. Every Saturday, in summer, he carried

those ladies, but _without his daughters_, to Richmond. They went in

coaches-and-six, in the middle of the day, with the heavy horse-guards

kicking up the dust before them--dined, walked an hour in the garden,

returned in the same dusty parade; and his Majesty fancied himself the

most gallant and lively prince in Europe.[44]

He had leisure, however, to think of the establishment of the sons

of Frederick; and in 1756 George II. sent a message to his grandson,

now Prince of Wales, whereby he offered him 40,000_l._ a-year and

apartments at Kensington and St. James’s. The prince accepted the

allowance, but declined the residence, on the ground that separation

from his mother would be painful to her. When this plea was made,

the prince, as Dodington remarks in his diary, did not live with

his mother, either in town or country. The prince’s brother Edward,

afterwards created Duke of York, was furnished with a modest revenue of

5,000_l._ a-year. The young prince is said to have been not insensible

to the attractions of Lady Essex, daughter of Sir Charles Williams.

‘The prince,’ says Walpole, ‘has got his liberty, and seems extremely

disposed to use it, and has great life and good humour. She has already

made a ball for him. Sir Richard Lyttelton was so wise as to make her

a visit, and advise her not to meddle with politics; that the Princess

(Dowager of Wales) would conclude that it was a plan laid for bringing

together Prince Edward and Mr. Fox. As Mr. Fox was not just the person

my Lady Essex was thinking of bringing together with Prince Edward, she

replied, very cleverly, “And, my dear Sir Richard, let me advise you

not to meddle with politics neither.”’

From the attempt to establish the Prince of Wales under his own

superintendence, the King was called to mourn over the death of another

child.

The truth-loving Caroline Elizabeth was unreservedly beloved by her

parents, was worthy of the affection, and repaid it by an ardent

attachment. She was fair, good, accomplished, and unhappy. The cause

of her unhappiness may be perhaps more than guessed at in the

circumstance of her retiring from the world on the death of Lord

Hervey. The sentiment with which he had, for the sake of vanity or

ambition, inspired her was developed into a sort of motherly love

for his children, for whom she exhibited great and constant regard.

Therewith she was conscious of but one strong desire--a desire to

die. For many years previous to her decease she lived in her father’s

palace, literally ‘cloistered up,’ inaccessible to nearly all, yet with

active sympathy for the poor and suffering classes in the metropolis.

Walpole, speaking of the death of the Princess Caroline, the third

daughter of George II., says: ‘Though her state of health had been so

dangerous for years, and her absolute confinement for many of them, her

disorder was, in a manner, new and sudden, and her death unexpected

by herself, though earnestly her wish. Her goodness was constant and

uniform, her generosity immense, her charities most extensive; in

short, I, no royalist, could be lavish in her praise. What will divert

you is that the Duke of Norfolk’s and Lord Northumberland’s upper

servants have asked leave to put themselves in mourning, not out of

regard for this admirable princess, but to be more _sur le bon ton_. I

told the duchess I supposed they would expect her to mourn hereafter

for their relations.’

The princess died in December 1757, and early in the following year the

King was seized with a serious fit of illness, which terminated in a

severe attack of gout, ‘which had never been at court above twice in

his reign,’ says Walpole, and the appearance of which was considered

as giving the royal sufferer a chance of five or six years more of

life. But it was not to be so; for the old royal lion in the Tower had

just expired, and people who could ‘put that and that together’ could

not but pronounce oraculary that the royal man would follow the royal

brute. ‘Nay,’ says Lord Chesterfield to his son, ‘this extravagancy was

believed by many above _people_.’ The fine gentleman means that it was

believed by many of his own class.

It was not the old King, however, who was first to be summoned from

the royal circle by the Inevitable Angel. A young princess passed away

before the more aged Sovereign. Walpole has a word or two to say upon

the death of the Princess Elizabeth, the second daughter of Frederick,

Prince of Wales, who died in the September of this year. The immediate

cause of death was an inflammation, which carried her off in two days.

‘Her figure,’ he says, ‘was so very unfortunate that it would have

been difficult for her to be happy; but her parts and application were

extraordinary. I saw her act in “Cato” at eight years old (when she

could not stand alone, but was forced to lean against the side-scene),

better than any of her brothers and sisters. She had been so unhealthy

that, at that age, she had not been taught to read, but had learned the

part of Lucia by hearing the others study their parts. She went to her

father and mother, and begged she might act. They put her off as gently

as they could; she desired leave to repeat her part, and when she did,

it was with so much sense, that there was no denying her.’

Before George’s hour had yet come, another child was to precede the

aged father to the tomb. In 1759 Anne, the eldest and least loved of

the daughters of Caroline, died in Holland. At the period of her birth,

the 9th of October 1709, her godmother, Queen Anne, was occupying the

throne of England; her grandfather, George, was Elector of Hanover;

Sophia Dorothea was languishing in the castle of Ahlden, and her

father and mother bore the title of Electoral Prince and Princess. She

was born at Hanover; and was five years old when, with her sister,

Amelia Sophia, who was two years younger, her mother, the Princess

Caroline, afterwards Queen, arrived in this country on the 15th of

October 1714. She early exhibited a haughty and imperious disposition;

possessed very little feeling for, and exercised very little gentleness

towards, those who even rendered her a willing service. Queen Caroline

sharply corrected this last defect. She discovered that the princess

was accustomed to make one of her ladies-in-waiting stand by her

bedside every night, and read aloud to her till she fell asleep. On

one occasion the princess kept her lady standing so long, that she at

last fainted from sheer fatigue. On the following night, when Queen

Caroline had retired to rest, she sent for her offending daughter, and

requested her to read aloud to her for a while. The princess was about

to take a chair, but the Queen said she could hear her better if she

read standing. Anne obeyed, and read till fatigue made her pause. ‘Go

on,’ said the Queen; ‘it entertains me.’ Anne went on, sulkily and

wearily; till, increasingly weary, she once more paused for rest and

looked round for a seat. ‘Continue, continue,’ said the Queen, ‘I am

not yet tired of listening.’ Anne burst into tears with vexation, and

confessed that she _was_ tired both of standing and reading, and was

ready to sink with fatigue. ‘If you feel so faint from one evening of

such employment, what must your attendants feel, upon whom you force

the same discipline night after night? Be less selfish, my child,

in future, and do not indulge in luxuries purchased at the cost of

weariness and ill-health to others.’ Anne did not profit by the lesson;

and few people were warmly attached to the proud and egotistical lady.

The princess spent nearly twenty years in England, and a little more

than a quarter of a century in Holland; the last seven years of that

period she was a widow. Her last thoughts were for the aggrandisement

of her family; and, when she was battling with death, she rallied her

strength in order to sign the contract of marriage between her daughter

and the Prince Nassau Walberg, and to write a letter to the States

General, requesting them to sanction the match. Having accomplished

this, the eldest daughter of Caroline laid down the pen, and calmly

awaited the death which was not long in coming.

It remains for us now only to speak of the demise of the husband of

Caroline. On the night of Friday, the 25th of October 1760, the King

retired to rest at an early hour, and well in health. At six (next

morning) he drank his usual cup of chocolate, walked to the window,

looked out upon Kensington Gardens, and made some observation upon the

direction of the wind, which had lately delayed the mails from Holland,

and which kept from him intelligence which he was anxious to receive,

and which he was saved the pain of hearing. George had said to the

page-in-waiting that he would take a turn in the garden; and he was on

his way thither, at seven o’clock, when the attendant heard the sound

of a fall. He entered the room through which the King was passing on

his way to the garden, and he found George II. lying on the ground,

with a wound on the right side of his face, caused by striking it in

his fall against the side of a bureau. He could only say, ‘Send for

Amelia,’ and then, gasping for breath, died. Whilst the sick, almost

deaf, and purblind daughter of the King was sent for, the message being

that her father wished to speak to her, the servants carried the body

to the bed from which the King had so lately risen. They had not time

to close the eyes, when the princess entered the room. Before they

could inform her of the unexpected catastrophe, she had advanced to

the bedside: she stooped over him, fancying that he was speaking to

her, and that she could not hear his words. The poor lady was sensibly

shocked; but she did not lose her presence of mind. She despatched

messengers for surgeons and wrote to the Prince of Wales. The medical

men were speedily in attendance; but he was beyond mortal help, and

they could only conclude that the King had died of the rupture of some

vessel of the heart, as he had for years been subject to palpitation

of that organ. Dr. Beilby Porteous, in his panegyrising epitaph on the

monarch, considers his death as having been appropriate and necessary.

He had accomplished all for which he had been commissioned by Heaven,

and had received all the rewards in return which Heaven could give to

man on earth:--

No further blessing could on earth be given,

The next degree of happiness--was Heaven.

George II. died possessed of considerable personal property. Of this he

bequeathed 50,000_l._ between the Duke of Cumberland and the Princesses

Amelia and Mary. The share received by his daughters did not equal what

he left to his last ‘favourite’--Lady Yarmouth. The legacy to that

German lady, of whom he used to write to Queen Caroline from Hanover,

‘You must love the Walmoden, for she loves _me_,’ consisted of a

cabinet and ‘contents,’ valued, it is said, at 11,000_l._ His son, the

Duke of Cumberland, further received from him a bequest of 130,000_l._,

placed on mortgages not immediately recoverable. The testator had

originally bequeathed twice that amount to his son; but he revoked

half, on the ground of the expenses of the war. He describes him as

the best son that ever lived, and declares that he had never given him

cause to be offended: ‘A pretty strong comment,’ as Horace Walpole

remarks, when detailing the incidents of the King’s decease, ‘on the

affair of Klosterseven.’ The King’s jewels were worth, according

to Lady Suffolk, 150,000_l._: of the best of them, which he kept in

Hanover, he made crown jewels; the remainder, with some cabinets,

were left to the duke. ‘Two days before the King died,’ says Walpole,

‘it happened oddly to my Lady Suffolk. She went to make a visit at

Kensington, not knowing of the review. She found herself hemmed in by

coaches, and was close to him whom she had not seen for so many years,

and to my Lady Yarmouth; but they did not know her. It struck her, and

has made her sensible to his death.’

Intelligence of the King’s decease was sent, as before said, to

the Prince of Wales, by the Princess Amelia. The heir-apparent,

however, received earlier intimation of the fact through a German

_valet-de-chambre_, at Kensington. The latter despatched a note, which

bore a private mark previously agreed upon, and which reached the heir

to so much greatness as he was out riding. He knew what had happened by

the sign. ‘Without surprise or emotion, without dropping a word that

indicated what had happened, he said his horse was lame, and turned

back to Kew. At dismounting he said to the groom: “I have said this

horse was lame; I forbid you to say to the contrary.”’ If this story of

Walpole’s be true, the longest reign in England started from a lie.

In the meantime there was the old King to bury, and he was consigned

to the tomb with a ceremony which has been graphically pictured by

Horace Walpole. He describes himself as attending the funeral, not as

a mourner, but as ‘a rag of quality,’ in which character he walked, as

affording him the best means of seeing the show. He pronounced it a

noble sight, and he appears to have enjoyed it extremely. ‘The Prince’s

chamber, hung with purple, and a quantity of silver lamps, the coffin

under a canopy of purple velvet, and six vast chandeliers of silver,

on high stands, had a very good effect. The procession, through a line

of foot-guards, every seventh man bearing a torch--the horse-guards

lining the outsides--their officers, with drawn sabres and crape

sashes, on horseback--the drums muffled--the fifes--bells tolling--and

minute guns--all this was very solemn.’ There was, however, something

more exquisite still in the estimation of this very unsentimental

rag of quality. ‘The _charm_,’ he says, ‘the charm was the entrance

to the Abbey, where we were received by the dean and chapter in rich

robes, the choir and almoners bearing torches; the whole Abbey so

illuminated that one saw it to greater advantage than by day; the

tombs, long aisles, and fretted roof all appearing distinctly, and with

the happiest _chiaro oscuro_. There wanted nothing but incense and

little chapels here and there, with priests saying mass for the repose

of the defunct; yet one could not complain of its not being Catholic

enough. I had been in dread of being coupled with some boy of ten years

old; but the heralds were not very accurate, and I walked with George

Grenville, taller and older, to keep me in countenance. When we came to

the chapel of Henry VII. all solemnity and decorum ceased; no order was

observed, people sat or stood where they could or would; the yeomen of

the guard were crying out for help, oppressed by the immense weight of

the coffin; the bishop read sadly, and blundered in the prayers. The

fine chapter, _Man that is born of a woman_, was chanted, not read; and

the anthem, besides being immeasurably tedious, would have served as

well for a nuptial. The real serious part was the figure of the Duke of

Cumberland, heightened by a thousand melancholy circumstances. He had

a dark-brown adonis, with a cloak of black cloth, and a train of five

yards. Attending the funeral of a father _could not be pleasant_; his

leg extremely bad, yet forced to stand upon it near two hours; his

face bloated and disturbed with his late paralytic stroke, which has

affected, too, one of his eyes; and placed over the mouth of the vault,

into which, in all probability, he must himself soon descend; think

how unpleasant a situation. He bore it all with a firm and unaffected

countenance. This grave scene was fully contrasted by the burlesque

Duke of Newcastle. He fell into a fit of crying the moment he came

into the chapel, and flung himself back into a stall, the archbishop

hovering over him with a smelling-bottle; but in two minutes his

curiosity got the better of his hypocrisy, and he ran about the chapel

with his glass, to spy who was or who was not there, spying with one

hand and mopping his eyes with the other. Then returned the fear of

catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat,

felt himself weighed down, and turning round, found it was the Duke of

Newcastle standing upon his train to avoid the chill of the marble. It

was very theatrical to look down into the vault, where the coffin lay

attended by mourners with lights. Clavering, the groom of the chamber,

refused to sit up with the body, and was dismissed by the King’s order.’

Speaking of the last year of the life of George II., Walpole remarks,

with a truth that cannot be gainsaid: ‘It was glorious and triumphant

beyond example; and his death was most felicitous to himself, being

without a pang, without tasting a reverse, and when his sight and

hearing were so nearly extinguished that any prolongation could but

have swelled to calamities.’

_CHARLOTTE SOPHIA_,

WIFE OF GEORGE III.

CHAPTER I.

THE COMING OF THE BRIDE.

Lady Sarah Lennox, the object of George the Third’s early

affections--The fair Quaker--Matrimonial commission of Colonel

Græme--Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburgh--Her spirited letter

to the King of Prussia--Demanded in marriage by George the Third

--Arrival in England--Her progress to London--Colchester and its

candied eringo-root--Entertained by Lord Abercorn--Arrival in

London, and reception--Claim of the Irish Peeresses advocated by

Lord Charlemont--The Royal marriage--The first drawing-room--A

comic anecdote---The King and Queen at the Chapel Royal--At the

theatre; accidents on the occasion--The coronation--Incidents

and anecdotes connected with it--The young Pretender said to have

been present--The coronation produced at the theatre.

The eldest son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, was yet young when his

grandfather began to consider the question of his marriage; and, it

is said, had designed to form a union between him and a princess of

the royal family of Prussia. The design, if ever formed, entirely

failed; and while those most anxious for the Protestant succession were

occupied in naming princesses worthy to espouse an heir to a throne,

that heir himself is said to have fixed his young affections on an

English lady, whose virtues and beauty might have made her eligible had

not the accident of her not being a foreigner barred her way to the

throne. This lady was Lady Sarah Lennox; and a vast amount of gossip

was expended upon her and the young prince by those busy persons whose

chief occupation consists in arranging the affairs of others. It is

impossible to say how far this young couple were engaged; but the fact,

as surmised, rendered the friends of the prince, now George III., more

anxious than ever to see him provided with a fair partner on the throne.

George III. had first been ‘smitten’ by seeing Lady Sarah Lennox making

hay in a field close to the high road in Kensington. She was charming

in feature, figure, and expression; but her great beauty, according

to Henry Fox, was ‘a peculiarity of countenance that made her at the

same time different from, and prettier than, any other girl I ever

saw.’ At a private court ball, the young King said to Lady Susan

Strangways: ‘There will be no coronation until there is a Queen, and

I think your friend is the fittest person for it; tell her so from

me.’ Subsequently, the enamoured monarch had an opportunity of asking

Lady Sarah if she had received the message confided to Lady Susan. On

the young lady replying in the affirmative, and on her being asked

what she thought of it, her answer was: ‘Nothing, sir!’ Her friends,

however, thought a good deal of it. As Lady Sarah was once entering the

presence chamber, Lady Barrington gently pulled the skirt of her dress,

and said: ‘Let me go in before you; for you will never have another

opportunity of seeing my beautiful back.’ Lady Barrington was famed for

the beauty of her shoulders. Lady Sarah, too, had thought more about

the King’s message than she had confessed to the King himself.

When the news reached her that the young Sovereign was about to marry

a ‘Princess of Mecklenburgh,’ she wrote to Lady Susan: ‘Does not your

choler rise at hearing this. I shall take care to show that I am not

mortified to anybody; but if it is true that one can vex anybody with

a cold, reserved manner, he shall have it, I promise him.’ Anon, the

writer thinks she only liked him a little, and the ‘disappointment

affected her only for an hour or two.’ Ultimately, she remarks: ‘If

he were to change his mind again (which can’t be, tho’), and not give

a _very, very_ good reason for his conduct, I would not have him. We

are to act a play and have a little ball, to show that we are not so

melancholy quite!’ And thus the disappointment was ostensibly got over.

Walpole has described the lady who first raised a tender feeling in the

breast of George in very graphic terms: ‘There was a play at Holland

House, acted by children; not all children, for Lady Sarah Lennox’

(subsequently Lady Sarah Napier) ‘and Lady Susan Strangways played the

women. It was ‘Jane Shore.’ Charles Fox was Hastings. The two girls

were delightful, and acted with so much nature that they appeared the

very things they represented. Lady Sarah was more beautiful than you

can conceive; and her very awkwardness gave an air of truth to the

sham of the part, and the antiquity of the time, kept up by her dress,

which was taken out of Montfaucon. Lady Susan was dressed from Jane

Seymour. I was more struck with the last scene between the two women

than ever I was when I have seen it on the stage. When Lady Sarah was

in white, with her hair about her ears, and on the ground, no Magdalen

of Correggio was half so lovely and expressive.’

But there is a pretty romance extant, based, as even romances may

be, upon some foundation of reality; and, according to the narrators

thereof, it is said that the King, when yet only Prince of Wales, had

been attracted by the charms of a young Quakeress, named Lightfoot (of

the vicinity of St. James’s Market), long before he had felt subdued

by the more brilliant beauty of Lady Sarah Lennox. The romance has

been recounted circumstantially enough by its authors and editors; and,

if these are to be trusted, the young prince was so enamoured that,

finding his peace of mind and happiness depended on his being united to

the gentle Hannah, he made a confidant of his brother, Edward, Duke of

York, and another person, who has never had the honour of being named,

and in their presence a marriage was contracted privately at Curzon

Street Chapel, Mayfair, in the year 1759!

A few years previous to this time, Mayfair had been the favourite

locality for the celebration of hurried marriages, particularly at

‘Keith’s Chapel,’ which was within ten yards of ‘Curzon Chapel.’ The

Reverend Alexander Keith kept open altar during the usual office hours

from ten till four, and married parties for the small fee of a guinea,

license included. Parties requiring to be united at other hours paid

extra. The Reverend Alexander so outraged the law that he was publicly

excommunicated in 1742; for which he as publicly excommunicated the

excommunicators in return. Seven years before George is said to have

married Hannah Lightfoot at Curzon Chapel, James, the fourth Duke of

Hamilton, was married at ‘Keith’s’ to the youngest of the beautiful

Misses Gunning--‘with a ring of the bed-curtain,’ says Horace Walpole,

‘and at half an hour after twelve at night.’

The rest of the pretty romance touching George and Hannah is rather

lumbering in its construction. The married lovers are said to have

kept a little household of their own, and round the hearth thereof we

are further told that there were not wanting successive young faces,

adding to its happiness. But there came the moment when the dream was

to disappear and the sleeper to awaken. We are told by the retailers

of the story that Hannah Lightfoot was privately disposed of--not by

bowl, prison, or dagger, but by espousing her to a gentle Strephon

named Axford, who, for a pecuniary consideration, took Hannah to

wife, and asked no impertinent questions. They lived, at least Hannah

did, for a time, in Harper Street, Red Lion Square. The story is an

indifferent one, but it has been so often alluded to that some notice

of it seemed necessary in this place.

Something more than rumour asserts that the young King was attracted

by the stately grace of Elizabeth Spencer, Countess of Pembroke, who

is described as a living picture of majestic modesty. In after years,

the King looked on the mother of the Napiers, and on the above-named

countess, with a certain loving interest. In the intervals of his

attacks of insanity, it is said that he used to dwell with impassioned

accents on the former beauty of the majestic countess.

The King’s mother had been most averse to the Prussian connection. Mr.

Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, is said to have done his best to further

a union with a subject. The Princess-dowager of Wales and Lord Bute

would have selected a princess of Saxe Gotha; but it was whispered that

there was a constitutional infirmity in that family which rendered

an alliance with it in no way desirable. Besides, George II. said

he had had enough of that family already. A Colonel Græme was then

despatched to Germany, and rumour invested him with the commission to

visit the German courts, and if he could find among them a princess

who was faultless in form, feature, and character, of sound health

and highly accomplished, he was to report accordingly. Colonel Græme,

love’s military messenger, happened to fall in at Pyrmont with the

Princess-dowager of Strelitz and her two daughters. At the gay baths

and salutary springs of Pyrmont very little etiquette was observed,

even in those very ceremonious times, and great people went about less

in masquerade and less strait-laced than they were wont to do at home,

in the circle of their own courts. In this sort of _negligé_ there was

a charm which favoured the development of character, and under its

influence the scrutinising colonel soon vicariously fell in love with

the young Princess Charlotte, and at once made the report which led to

the royal marriage that ensued.

There were persons who denied that this little romantic drama was ever

played at all; but as the colonel was subsequently appointed to the

mastership of St. Catherine’s Hospital, the prettiest bit of preferment

possessed by a Queen-consort, other persons looked upon the appointment

as the due acknowledgment of a princess grateful for favours received.

But, after all, the young King is positively declared to have chosen

for himself. The King of Prussia at that time was a man much addicted

to disregard the rights of his contemporaries, and among other outrages

committed by his army, was the invasion, and almost desolating, of

the little dominion of Mecklenburgh Strelitz, the ducal possession of

the Princess Charlotte’s brother. This act inspired, it is said, the

lady last-named to pen a letter to the monarch, which was as full of

spirit as of logic, and not likely to have been written by so young a

lady. The letter, however, was sufficiently spirited and conclusive

to win reputation for the alleged writer. Its great charm was its

simple and touching truthfulness, and the letter, whether forwarded

to George by the Prussian king, or laid before him by his mother the

princess-dowager, is said to have had such an influence on his mind,

as to at once inspire him with feelings of admiration for the writer.

After praising it, the King exclaimed to Lord Hertford: ‘This is the

lady whom I shall select for my consort--here are lasting beauties

--the man who has any mind may feast and not be satisfied. If the

disposition of the princess but equals her refined sense, I shall be

the happiest man, as I hope, with my people’s concurrence, to be the

greatest monarch in Europe.’