SCENE: _The Queen's Gallery. The time, nine in the
morning._
_Enter the_ QUEEN, PRINCESS EMILY, PRINCESS CAROLINE,
_followed by_ LORD LIFFORD, _and_ MRS. PURCEL.
_Queen._ Mon Dieu, quelle chaleur! en vérité on étouffe. Pray
open a little those windows.
_Lord Lifford._ Hasa your Majesty heara de news?
_Queen._ What news, my dear Lord?
_Lord Lifford._ Dat my Lord Hervey, as he was coming last night
to _tone_, was rob and murdered by highwaymen and tron in a
ditch.
_Princess Caroline._ Eh! grand Dieu!
_Queen_ [_striking her hand upon her knee._] Comment est-il
véritablement mort? Purcel, my angel, shall I not have a little
breakfast?
_Mrs. Purcel._ What would your Majesty please to have?
_Queen._ A little chocolate, my soul, if you give me leave, and a
little sour cream, and some fruit. [_Exit_ MRS. PURCEL.
_Queen_ [_to Lord Lifford._] Eh bien! my Lord Lifford, dites-nous
un peu comment cela est arrivé. I cannot imagine what he had to
do to be putting his nose there. Seulement pour un sot voyage
avec ce petit mousse, eh bien?
_Lord Lifford._ Madame, on scait quelque chose de celui de Mon.
Maran, qui d'abord qu'il a vu les voleurs s'est enfin venu à
grand galoppe à Londres, and after dat a waggoner take up the
body and put it in his cart.
_Queen._ [_to_ PRINCESS EMILY.] Are you not ashamed,
Amalie, to laugh?
_Princess Emily._ I only laughed at the cart, mamma.
_Queen._ Oh! that is a very fade plaisanterie.
_Princess Emily._ But if I may say it, mamma, I am not very
sorry.
_Queen._ Oh! fie donc! Eh bien! my Lord Lifford! My God! where is
this chocolate, Purcel?
As Mr. Croker remarks, Queen Caroline's breakfast-table, and her
parentheses, reminds one of the card-table conversation of Swift:--
'The Dean's dead: (pray what are trumps?)
Then Lord have mercy on his soul!
(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.)
Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall;
(I wish I knew what king to call.)'
Fragile as was Lord Hervey's constitution, it was his lot to witness the
death-bed of the queen, for whose amusement he had penned the jeu
d'esprit just quoted, in which there was, perhaps, as much truth as wit.
The wretched Queen Caroline had, during fourteen years, concealed from
every one, except Lady Sundon, an incurable disorder, that of hernia. In
November (1737) she was attacked with what we should now call English
cholera. Dr. Tessier, her house-physician, was called in, and gave her
Daffey's elixir, which was not likely to afford any relief to the
deep-seated cause of her sufferings. She held a drawing-room that night
for the last time, and played at cards, even cheerfully. At length she
whispered to Lord Hervey, 'I am not able to entertain people.' 'For
heaven's sake, madam,' was the reply, 'go to your room: would to heaven
the king would leave off talking of the Dragon of Wantley, and release
you!' The Dragon of Wantley was a burlesque on the Italian opera, by
Henry Carey, and was the theme of the fashionable world.
The next day the queen was in fearful agony, very hot, and willing to
take anything proposed. Still she did not, even to Lord Hervey, avow the
real cause of her illness. None of the most learned court physicians,
neither Mead nor Wilmot, were called in. Lord Hervey sat by the queen's
bed-side, and tried to soothe her, whilst the Princess Caroline joined in
begging him to give her mother something to relieve her agony. At
length, in utter ignorance of the case, it was proposed to give her some
snakeroot, a stimulant, and, at the same time, Sir Walter Raleigh's
cordial; so singular was it thus to find that great mind still
influencing a court. It was that very medicine which was administered by
Queen Anne of Denmark, however, to Prince Henry; that medicine which
Raleigh said, 'would cure him, or any other, of a disease, except in
case of poison.'
However, Ranby, house-surgeon to the king, and a favourite of Lord
Hervey's, assuring him that a cordial with this name or that name was
mere quackery, some usquebaugh was given instead, but was rejected by
the queen soon afterwards. At last Raleigh's cordial was administered,
but also rejected about an hour afterwards. Her fever, after taking
Raleigh's cordial, was so much increased, that she was ordered instantly
to be bled.
Then, even, the queen never disclosed the fact that could alone dictate
the course to be pursued. George II., with more feeling than judgment,
slept on the outside of the queen's bed all that night; so that the
unhappy invalid could get no rest, nor change her position, not daring
to irritate the king's temper.
The next day the queen said touchingly to her gentle, affectionate
daughter, herself in declining health, 'Poor Caroline! you are very ill,
too: we shall soon meet again in another place.'
Meantime, though the queen declared to every one that she was sure
nothing could save her, it was resolved to hold a _levée_. The foreign
ministers were to come to court, and the king, in the midst of his real
grief, did not forget to send word to his pages to be sure to have his
last new ruffles sewed on the shirt he was to put on that day; a trifle
which often, as Lord Hervey remarks, shows more of the real character
than events of importance, from which one frequently knows no more of a
person's state of mind than one does of his natural gait from his
dancing.
Lady Sundon was, meantime, ill at Bath, so that the queen's secret
rested alone in her own heart. 'I have an ill,' she said, one evening,
to her daughter Caroline, 'that nobody knows of.' Still, neither the
princess nor Lord Hervey could guess at the full meaning of that sad
assertion.
The famous Sir Hans Sloane was then called in; but no remedy except
large and repeated bleedings were suggested, and blisters were put on
her legs. There seems to have been no means left untried by the faculty
to hasten the catastrophe--thus working in the dark.
The king now sat up with her whom he had so cruelly wounded in every
nice feeling. On being asked, by Lord Hervey, what was to be done in
case the Prince of Wales should come to inquire after the queen, he
answered in the following terms, worthy of his ancestry--worthy of
himself. It is difficult to say which was the most painful scene, that
in the chamber where the queen lay in agony, or without, where the
curse of family dissensions came like a ghoul to hover near the bed of
death, and to gloat over the royal corpse. This was the royal
dictum:--'If the puppy should, in one of his impertinent airs of duty
and affection, dare to come to St. James's, I order you to go to the
scoundrel, and tell him I wonder at his impudence for daring to come
here; that he has my orders already, and knows my pleasure, and bid him
go about his business; for his poor mother is not in a condition to see
him act his false, whining, cringing tricks now, nor am I in a humour to
bear with his impertinence; and bid him trouble me with no more
messages, but get out of my house.'
In the evening, whilst Lord Hervey sat at tea in the queen's outer
apartment with the Duke of Cumberland, a page came to the duke to speak
to the prince in the passage. It was to prefer a request to see his
mother. This message was conveyed by Lord Hervey to the king, whose
reply was uttered in the most vehement rage possible. 'This,' said he,
'is like one of his scoundrel tricks; it is just of a piece with his
kneeling down in the dirt before the mob to kiss her hand at the coach
door when she came home from Hampton Court to see the Princess, though
he had not spoken one word to her during her whole visit. I always hated
the rascal, but now I hate him worse than ever. He wants to come and
insult his poor dying mother; but she shall not see him: you have heard
her, and all my daughters have heard her, very often this year at
Hampton Court desire me if she should be ill, and out of her senses,
that I would never let him come near her; and whilst she had her senses
she was sure she should never desire it. No, no! he shall not come and
act any of his silly plays here.'
In the afternoon the queen said to the king, she wondered the _Griff_, a
nickname she gave to the prince, had not sent to inquire after her yet;
it would be so like one of his _paroitres_. 'Sooner or later,' she
added, 'I am sure we shall be plagued with some message of that sort,
because he will think it will have a good air in the world to ask to see
me; and, perhaps, hopes I shall be fool enough to let him come, and give
him the pleasure of seeing the last breath go out of my body, by which
means he would have the joy of knowing I was dead five minutes sooner
than he could know it in Pall Mall.'
She afterwards declared that nothing would induce her to see him except
the king's absolute commands. 'Therefore, if I grow worse,' she said,
'and should I be weak enough to talk of seeing him, I beg you, sir, to
conclude that I doat--or rave.'
The king, who had long since guessed at the queen's disease, urged her
now to permit him to name it to her physicians. She begged him not to do
so; and for the first time, and the last, the unhappy woman spoke
peevishly and warmly. Then Ranby, the house-surgeon, who had by this
time discovered the truth, said, 'There is no more time to be lost; your
majesty has concealed the truth too long: I beg another surgeon may be
called in immediately.'
The queen, who had, in her passion, started up in her bed, lay down
again, turned her head on the other side, and, as the king told Lord
Hervey, 'shed the only tear he ever saw her shed whilst she was ill.'
At length, too late, other and more sensible means were resorted to: but
the queen's strength was failing fast. It must have been a strange scene
in that chamber of death. Much as the king really grieved for the
queen's state, he was still sufficiently collected to grieve also lest
Richmond Lodge, which was settled on the queen, should go to the hated
_Griff_:[22] and he actually sent Lord Hervey to the lord chancellor to
inquire about that point. It was decided that the queen could make a
will, so the king informed her of his inquiries, in order to set her
mind at ease, and to assure her it was impossible that the prince could
in any way benefit pecuniarily from her death. The Princess Emily now
sat up with her mother. The king went to bed. The Princess Caroline
slept on a couch in the antechamber, and Lord Hervey lay on a mattress
on the floor at the foot of the Princess Caroline's couch.
On the following day (four after the first attack) mortification came
on, and the weeping Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey were informed that
the queen could not hold out many hours. Hervey was ordered to
withdraw. The king, the Duke of Cumberland, and the queen's four
daughters alone remained, the queen begging them not to leave her until
she expired; yet her life was prolonged many days.
When alone with her family, she took from her finger a ruby ring, which
had been placed on it at the time of the coronation, and gave it to the
king. 'This is the last thing,' she said, 'I have to give you; naked I
came to you, and naked I go from you; I had everything I ever possessed
from you, and to you whatever I have I return.' She then asked for her
keys, and gave them to the king. To the Princess Caroline she intrusted
the care of her younger sisters; to the Duke of Cumberland, that of
keeping up the credit of the family. 'Attempt nothing against your
brother, and endeavour to mortify him by showing superior merit,' she
said to him. She advised the king to marry again; he heard her in sobs,
and with much difficulty got out this sentence: '_Non, j'aurai des
maitresses_' To which the queen made no other reply than '_Ah, mon Dieu!
cela n'empêche pas._' 'I know,' says Lord Hervey, in his Memoirs, 'that
this episode will hardly be credited, but it is literally true.'
She then fancied she could sleep. The king kissed her, and wept over
her; yet when she asked for her watch, which hung near the chimney, that
she might give him the seal to take care of, his brutal temper broke
forth. In the midst of his tears he called out, in a loud voice, 'Let it
alone! _mon Dieu!_ the queen has such strange fancies; who should meddle
with your seal? It is as safe there as in my pocket.'
The queen then thought she could sleep, and, in fact, sank to rest. She
felt refreshed on awakening and said, 'I wish it was over; it is only a
reprieve to make me suffer a little longer; I cannot recover, but my
nasty heart will not break yet.' She had an impression that she should
die on a Wednesday: she had, she said, been born on a Wednesday, married
on a Wednesday, crowned on a Wednesday, her first child was born on a
Wednesday, and she had heard of the late king's death on a Wednesday.
On the ensuing day she saw Sir Robert Walpole. 'My good Sir Robert,'
she thus addressed him, 'you see me in a very indifferent situation. I
have nothing to say to you but to recommend the king, my children, and
the kingdom to your care.'
Lord Hervey, when the minister retired, asked him what he thought of the
queen's state.
'My lord,' was the reply, 'she is as much dead as if she was in her
coffin; if ever I heard a corpse speak, it was just now in that room!'
It was a sad, an awful death-bed. The Prince of Wales having sent to
inquire after the health of his dying mother, the queen became uneasy
lest he should hear the true state of her case, asking 'if no one would
send those ravens,' meaning the prince's attendants, out of the house.
'They were only,' she said, 'watching her death, and would gladly tear
her to pieces whilst she was alive.' Whilst thus she spoke of her son's
courtiers, that son was sitting up all night in his house in Pall Mall,
and saying, when any messenger came in from St. James's, 'Well, sure, we
shall soon have good news, she cannot hold out much longer.' And the
princesses were writing letters to prevent the Princess Royal from
coming to England, where she was certain to meet with brutal unkindness
from her father, who could not endure to be put to any expense. Orders
were, indeed, sent to stop her if she set out. She came, however, on
pretence of taking the Bath waters; but George II., furious at her
disobedience, obliged her to go direct to and from Bath without
stopping, and never forgave her.
Notwithstanding her predictions, the queen survived the fatal Wednesday.
Until this time no prelate had been called in to pray by her majesty,
nor to administer the Holy Communion and as people about the court began
to be scandalized by this omission, Sir Robert Walpole advised that the
Archbishop of Canterbury should be sent for: his opinion was couched in
the following terms, characteristic at once of the man, the times, and
the court:--
'Pray, madam,' he said to the Princess Emily, 'let this farce be played;
the archbishop will act it very well. You may bid him be as short as you
will: it will do the queen no hurt, no more than any good; and it will
satisfy all the wise and good fools, who will call us atheists if we
don't pretend to be as great fools as they are.'
Unhappily, Lord Hervey, who relates this anecdote, was himself an
unbeliever; yet the scoffing tone adopted by Sir Robert seems to have
shocked even him.
In consequence of this advice, Archbishop Potter prayed by the queen
morning and evening, the king always quitting the room when his grace
entered it. Her children, however, knelt by her bedside. Still the
whisperers who censured were unsatisfied--the concession was thrown
away. Why did not the queen receive the communion? Was it, as the world
believed, either 'that she had reasoned herself into a very low and cold
assent to Christianity?' or 'that she was heterodox?' or 'that the
archbishop refused to administer the sacrament until she should be
reconciled to her son?' Even Lord Hervey, who rarely left the
antechamber, has only by his silence proved that she did _not_ take the
communion. That antechamber was crowded with persons who, as the prelate
left the chamber of death, crowded around, eagerly asking, 'Has the
queen received?' 'Her majesty,' was the evasive reply, 'is in a heavenly
disposition:' the public were thus deceived. Among those who were near
the queen at this solemn hour was Dr. Butler, author of the 'Analogy.'
He had been made clerk of the closet, and became, after the queen's
death, Bishop of Bristol. He was in a remote living in Durham, when the
queen, remembering that it was long since she had heard of him, asked
the Archbishop of York 'whether Dr. Butler was dead?'--'No, madam,'
replied that prelate (Dr. Blackburn), 'but he is buried;' upon which she
had sent for him to court. Yet he was not courageous enough, it seems,
to speak to her of her son and of the duty of reconciliation; whether
she ever sent the prince any message or not is uncertain; Lord Hervey is
silent on that point, so that it is to be feared that Lord
Chesterfield's line--
'And, unforgiving, unforgiven, dies!'
had but too sure a foundation in fact; so that Pope's sarcastic verses--
'Hang the sad verse on Carolina's urn,
And hail her passage to the realms of rest;
All _parts performed_ and _all_ her children blest,'
may have been but too just, though cruelly bitter. The queen lingered
till the 20th of November. During that interval of agony her consort was
perpetually boasting to every one of her virtues, her sense, her
patience, her softness, her delicacy; and ending with the praise,
'_Comme elle soutenoit sa dignité avec grace, avec politesse, avec
douceur!_' Nevertheless he scarcely ever went into her room. Lord Hervey
states that he did, even in this moving situation, _snub_ her for
something or other she did or said. One morning, as she lay with her
eyes fixed on a point in the air, as people sometimes do when they want
to keep their thoughts from wandering, the king coarsely told her 'she
looked like a calf which had just had its throat cut.' He expected her
to die in state. Then, with all his bursts of tenderness he always
mingled his own praises, hinting that though she was a good wife he knew
he had deserved a good one, and remarking, when he extolled her
understanding, that he did not 'think it the worse for her having kept
him company so many years.' To all this Lord Hervey listened with,
doubtless, well-concealed disgust; for cabals were even then forming for
the future influence that might or might not be obtained.
The queen's life, meantime, was softly ebbing away in this atmosphere of
selfishness, brutality, and unbelief. One evening she asked Dr. Tessier
impatiently how long her state might continue.
'Your Majesty,' was the reply, 'will soon be released.'
'So much the better,' the queen calmly answered.
At ten o'clock that night, whilst the king lay at the foot of her bed,
on the floor, and the Princess Emily on a couch-bed in the room, the
fearful death-rattle in the throat was heard. Mrs. Purcell, her chief
and old attendant, gave the alarm: the Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey
were sent for; but the princess was too late, her mother had expired
before she arrived. All the dying queen said was, 'I have now got an
asthma; open the window:' then she added, '_Pray!_' That was her last
word. As the Princess Emily began to read some prayers, the sufferer
breathed her last sigh. The Princess Caroline held a looking-glass to
her lips, and finding there was no damp on it, said, ''Tis over!' Yet
she shed not one tear upon the arrival of that event, the prospect of
which had cost her so many heartrending sobs.
The king kissed the lifeless face and hands of his often-injured wife,
and then retired to his own apartment, ordering that a page should sit
up with him for that and several other nights, for his Majesty was
afraid of apparitions, and feared to be left alone. He caused himself,
however, to be buried by the side of his queen, in Henry VII.'s chapel,
and ordered that one side of his coffin and of hers should be withdrawn;
and in that state the two coffins were discovered not many years ago.
With the death of Queen Caroline, Lord Hervey's life, as to court, was
changed. He was afterwards made lord privy seal, and had consequently to
enter the political world, with the disadvantage of knowing that much
was expected from a man of so high a reputation for wit and learning. He
was violently opposed by Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, who had been adverse
to his entering the ministry, and since, with Walpole's favour, it was
impossible to injure him by fair means, it was resolved to oppose Lord
Hervey by foul ones. One evening, when he was to speak, a party of
fashionable Amazons, with two duchesses--her grace of Queensberry and
her grace of Ancaster--at their head, stormed the House of Lords and
disturbed the debate with noisy laughter and sneers. Poor Lord Hervey
was completely daunted, and spoke miserably. After Sir Robert Walpole's
fall Lord Hervey retired. The following letter from him to Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu fully describes his position and circumstances:--
'I must now,' he writes to her, 'since you take so friendly a part in
what concerns me, give you a short account of my natural and political
health; and when I say I am still alive, and still privy seal, it is all
I can say for the pleasure of one or the honour of the other; for since
Lord Orford's retiring, as I am too proud to offer my service and
friendship where I am not sure they will be accepted of, and too
inconsiderable to have those advances made to me (though I never forgot
or failed to return any obligation I ever received), so I remain as
illustrious a nothing in this office as ever filled it since it was
erected. There is one benefit, however, I enjoy from this loss of my
court interest, which is, that all those flies which were buzzing about
me in the summer sunshine and full ripeness of that interest, have all
deserted its autumnal decay, and from thinking my natural death not far
off, and my political demise already over, have all forgot the death-bed
of the one and the coffin of the other.'