Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover, volume 1 (of 2)

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:

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 500l. 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.