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

The Queen was in tears when the ‘people’ were rejoicing, less certainly for her sake than for the popular victory which had been achieved. There was nothing in the issue of the trial for any party to rejoice at. The ministry could not exult, for although they had carried the bill which declared the Queen worthy of degradation from her rights and privileges, rank and station, yet they refrained from acting upon it, because the popular voice was hoarse with menace, so unfairly had the case of the two antagonists been tried before the august tribunal of the peers.

The popular voice had been heeded, and was satisfied with the triumph. Caroline must have felt that she was really of but secondary account in the matter, that the victory was not for her, and that, righteously or unrighteously, her reputation had been irretrievably shaken into ruins.

Her great spirit, however, was as yet undaunted. The bill was no sooner withdrawn than she formally applied to Lord Liverpool to be furnished with a fitting place of residence and a suitable provision. The premier’s reply informed her Majesty that the King was by no means disposed to permit her to reside in any of the royal palaces, but that the pecuniary allowance which she had hitherto enjoyed would be continued to her until parliament should again meet for the regular despatch of business. Caroline, determined to harass her husband, next sent the following note to the prime minister:—‘The Queen requests Lord Liverpool to inform his Majesty of the Queen’s intention to present herself next Thursday in person at the King’s Drawing-room, to have the opportunity of presenting a petition to his Majesty for obtaining her rights.’

The following humiliating minute was accordingly made to guide the King:—‘If the Queen should decline delivering her petition into any hands but the King’s, the King should not be advised to permit her to come up to the Drawing-room, but should himself go down to the room where the Queen is, attended by such of his household and his ministers as may be there, and receive the petition.’

The then present parliament was about to be prorogued, and the Queen was resolved that, if possible, that body should not separate until it had granted her what, as Queen-consort, she had a right to demand. Her solicitor-general, accordingly, went down to the Commons with a royal message, which he was not permitted to deliver. The House probably never presented such a scene as that disgraceful one of the night of the 23rd of November. Mr. Denman stood with the Queen’s letter in his hand; he was perfectly in order, but the Speaker chose rather to obey that brought by the usher of the black rod, summoning the members to attend at the bar of the Lords and listen to the prorogation. The Speaker hurried out of the House, and the Queen’s message was virtually flung into the street. The public, however, knew that its chief object was to announce the Queen’s refusal of any allowance or accommodation made to her as by ministerial bounty. She still claimed the restoration of her name to the Liturgy, and a revenue becoming her recognised rank as Queen-consort.

In the meantime she publicly partook of the Holy Communion at the parish church of Hammersmith, a proceeding which many persons considered as a new protestation of her innocence. The admirers of coincidences affected to have found a remarkable one in the first lesson for the day, on this occasion (Isaiah lix.); and particularly in the verse which declares that ‘Judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off, for truth is fallen into the street, and equity cannot enter.’ This was considered as applicable to the Queen’s case, but, as its applicability presented itself in a double sense, every one construed it as he thought best.

Caroline’s next step was to proceed to St. Paul’s in solemn, public array, to return thanks for her escape from the meshes constructed for her by her enemies. Due notice was given of her Majesty’s intention and object to the Cathedral authorities, and the day appointed by her was the 29th of November. The intimation excited in those authorities neither admiration nor respect. Even the dean, the mild and virtuous Van Mildert, seemed to think that it was highly unbecoming in the Queen to be grateful for the dispensations of Heaven. The whole chapter thought, or were taught to think, that there was no greater nuisance upon earth than for this woman to come to St. Paul’s and thank God that he had not allowed her enemies to prevail over her. Those who may have any doubt as to these being the capitular sentiments are referred to the ‘Life of Lord Sidmouth,’ by Dean Pellew, who records with emphatic approval what the good, but mistaken, Van Mildert very uncharitably said and did upon the occasion.

The Corporation of London were anxious to facilitate the Queen’s object; the Chapter of St. Paul’s, under pressure from very high authority without, resolved to do all they could to impede it. They determined that nothing should be changed in the ordinary service; that the Queen’s presence or purpose should in no way be recognised; that the doors should be thrown open to the rush of Queen and canaille indiscriminately; and that the mayor and corporation should be held responsible for the safety of the Cathedral.

The chief magistrate and his council soon, however, brought the chapter to a more proper sense of seemliness. The latter body indeed would not yield on any really ecclesiastical point; but they agreed that certain arrangements might be made by the mayor and his corporate brothers for the better maintenance of the decorum, dignity, and decency becoming so solemn an occasion.

The dean was satisfied that the unwashed artisans—the unclean public generally—would make of the day a ‘saturnalia,’ a festival of obscene desecration. The public, it is to be hoped, pleasingly surprised him. It generally comports itself with propriety when it descends in countless masses into the streets to form a portion of the solemnity, partly actors, partly spectators, on great occasions. The people never behaved with more decency than they did on this day.

The circumstance was really solemn, but there were matters about it that robbed it of some of its solemnity. It was solemn to see a Queen proceeding alone, as it may be said, but through myriads of people, to acknowledge publicly the mercies of Heaven. Lady Anne Hamilton was her solitary female English attendant; but every woman who witnessed her progress either praised or pitied her that day. Her ‘procession’ was made up of very slender material, though all her court followed her in the person of Mr. Vice-Chamberlain Craven. This little company, however, was swollen by numerous additions on the way; members of parliament, among others, Sir Robert Wilson, Mr. Hume, and Mr. John Cam Hobhouse, lent some dignity by their presence. Horsemen fell into the line, vehicles of every degree took up their following, and the ‘trades’ marshalled themselves, either in joining the march or drawing up to greet the pious Queen as she passed upon her way. Among these, perhaps, the solemnity most suffered. Some very ill-favoured individuals shouted for her Majesty beneath banners which declared, ‘Thus shall it be done to the woman whom the people delight to honour.’ The braziers added a joke to the occasion by raising a flag over their position at the end of Bridge Street, on which it was recorded that ‘The Queen’s Guards are Men of Metal.’

With the addition of the ordinary civic pomp the Queen arrived at the Cathedral, where she was received with affectionate respect by her friends, and with some show of courtesy by the ecclesiastical authorities, who had wiled away the time previous to her arrival by squabbling rather too loudly for the place and occasion with the corporation present.

The usual service was then proceeded with, and again the coincidence hunters sought for their favourite spoil. They found abundance of what they desired in the hundred-and-fortieth and the following psalms. But of these the phrases cut both ways, and perhaps there was no passage more personally applicable to the Queen, and some of those friends less in deed than in word, than where it is written, ‘Oh let not my heart be inclined to any evil thing; let me not be occupied in ungodly works with the men that work wickedness, lest I eat such things as please them. Let the righteous rather smite me friendly, and reprove me. But let not their precious balsam break my head; yea, I will pray yet against their wickedness.’ No especial form of thanksgiving was made use of in her Majesty’s name, but this was not needed. It was, however, imperative upon the clergy officiating to read the parenthetical clause in the General Thanksgiving prayer, which has immediate reference to the individual who desires to make an offering of human gratitude to God. This clause, however, was omitted! The Queen-consort of England was upon her knees upon the floor of the Cathedral, but the officiating minister virtually looked up to Him, and standing between Caroline and her Creator, exclaimed, ‘Lord, she is not here!’ The omission of the clause was tantamount to this. The people behaved better than the priests on that day; and yet it was one on which the priests might have found occasion to give valuable instruction to the people. Those of St. Paul’s mistook their mission on the day in question.

This spiritual matter ended, the temporal welfare of the Queen had to be looked to. If she could have existed upon good wishes, she would have been wealthy, for never did congratulatory addresses pour in upon her as at the end of this year and the beginning of that which followed. But she needed something more substantial than good wishes, and the King himself acknowledged as much in a speech from the throne, delivered on the re-opening of parliament in January, 1821. His Majesty recommended that a separate provision should be made for the Queen-consort. She instantly declared her refusal of any provision that was not accompanied by the restoration of her name in the Liturgy. The condition was peremptorily declined by the government, and the income of 50,000l. a year was then accepted by the Queen. In this step she disappointed numberless friends, who would not have contributed a farthing to her maintenance. But stern necessity broke the pride of the poor lady, who was beginning to feel that a banker without ‘effects’ for her use was a worse thing than a Liturgy without her name. Her increased revenue enabled her to bear the expenses of a town establishment, which she now formed at Cambridge House, South Audley Street, but her favourite residence was still that on the banks of the Thames.

Early in May, 1821, the ceremony of the King’s coronation began to be spoken of as an event that was about to take place. Caroline did not forget that she was Queen-consort. She immediately addressed Lord Liverpool, claiming to take part in the ceremony. The claim was made literally in these words:—‘The Queen, from circumstances, being obliged to remain in England, she requests of the King will be pleased to command those ladies of the first rank his Majesty may think the most proper in the realm to attend the Queen on the day of the Coronation, of which her Majesty is informed is now fixed, and also to name such ladies which will be required to bear her Majesty’s train on that day. The Queen, being particularly anxious to submit to the good taste of his Majesty, most earnestly entreats the King to inform the Queen in what dress the King wishes the Queen to appear in on that day at the Coronation.’ The premier replied that, as his Majesty had determined that the Queen should form no part of the ceremonial of the coronation, it was his royal pleasure that she should not even attend the ceremony itself. Ever active when she could inflict annoyance on the King by claiming what she very well knew he would never concede, she succeeded in obtaining a hearing for her legal advisers in her behalf before the Privy Council. They served her to the best of their ability, but in truth they had no right upon their side, and the arguments which they raised to prove what could not be demonstrated fell down as rapidly as they were constructed. Mr. Brougham deduced a presumed right from a curious fact, from a circumstance of a law being passed in the year 784 excluding Queen Adelberga from the ceremony of being crowned Queen of the West Saxons, because she had murdered a former husband. The most early instance in which the title of Queen is given to a wife of a King of Wessex in any contemporary document occurs in the reign of Edmund, A.D. 945. The West Saxons, it will be remembered, had well-nigh dethroned Ethelwolf for crowning his wife Judith, on the ground that by so doing he had violated the laws of the West Saxons, made by them on the death of their King Bertric. ‘It has been supposed,’ says Lingard, in his History of the Anglo-Saxon Church, ‘that Queens were crowned, because in some MSS. the order for the coronation of a Queen follows that for the coronation of a King; but this proves only that both orders were contained in the original from which the copy was made.’ The same writer also states that the little Queen Judith was so beloved that the people ultimately acquiesced in her coronation without a murmur. Mr. Brougham never pleaded a cause more unsuccessfully than on this day. Mr. Denman, the Queen’s solicitor-general, was, if not more successful, at least infinitely more reasonable. He grounded his application upon the simple and incontrovertible fact, that the Queen was in so unfortunate a position as to be unable to waive any right she considered she possessed without being exposed to the most injurious imputations. ‘He begged to impress upon their lordships, as well as upon the country, that the claim of his illustrious client was put forth in self-defence, because her Majesty could not forego that claim without hazarding her reputation or sacrificing her honour, which, to her, was dearer than life itself.’

The King’s attorney-general showed that, if claim there were, it rested solely on usage, and that here the law of usage was without application, as a coronation of a Queen-consort was not a right, but a mere favour conferred by the King. The Queen, in short, could no more demand her own coronation than she could that of the King. The Privy Council made a report accordingly; it was approved by the King, and a copy was transmitted to Viscount Hood. The purport of it was—that, as the queens consort of this realm are not entitled of right to be crowned at any time, it followed that her Majesty Queen Caroline was not entitled as of right to be crowned at the time specified in her Majesty’s memorial. The conclusion was disagreeable, but it was inevitable. They who thought, however, that it would silence the Queen for ever, were much mistaken. If she could not form a part of the ceremony, she could mar it by her presence; and this she resolved to effect. An announcement was made to Lord Sidmouth of the Queen’s intention to be present at the coronation on the 19th of July, and she demanded that a suitable place might be appointed for her accordingly. The noble lord, in a letter commencing ‘Madam,’ and terminating without the signature of the writer, informs the Queen that it was not his Majesty’s intention to comply with the application contained in her letter.

The Queen was none the less bent upon appearing in the Abbey, and due notification of the fact was made to the Duke of Norfolk, as earl marshal of England, with the request added that his grace would order persons to be in attendance to conduct the Queen to her seat. The earl marshal transmitted the letter containing the notification and request to Lord Howard of Effingham, who was the ‘acting earl marshal’ on the day in question, and that official ‘made his humble representations to her Majesty of the impossibility, under existing circumstances, of his having the honour of obeying her Majesty’s commands.’ Her Majesty, however, was not so easily got rid of. She now addressed a note to the Archbishop of Canterbury, informing him of her desire to be crowned, some day after the King, and before the arrangements for the previous ceremony had been done away with. The lord primate humbly replied that he was the King’s servant, and was ready to obey any commands that he might receive from his royal master. Thus foiled once more, the Queen issued a protest against the proceedings. This document was drawn up by the law-advisers of her Majesty. It re-asserted that the Queen could claim as of right to be crowned, and yet it admitted that there had been cases in which the exercise of the right ‘was from necessity suspended, or from motives of policy checked;’ and though perhaps not in the sense in which it was understood by the Queen’s council, the King now saw that there was a ‘necessity’ for the suspension of the right claimed, and that there were ‘motives of policy,’ as well as of personal feeling, for declining to authorise the exercise of it. The protest was addressed to the King, from whom, says the royal protester, ‘the Queen has experienced only the bitter disappointment of every hope she had indulged;’ but—and it was in such phrases she was made to represent the nation as hostile against the King—‘in the attachment of the people she has found that powerful and decided protection which has ever been her ready support and unfailing consolation.’

Her Majesty’s legal advisers supposed, at least they hoped, that she had now done enough for her dignity, and that with this protest would end all further prosecution of a matter which could not be carried further without much peril to that dignity and to her self-respect. But even they did not know of what metal she was made. On the coronation day she was up with the dawn, determined to penetrate into the Abbey, or resolved to test the popular attachment, the powerful and decided protection of the people, the ready support of the public, of which she boasted in her last protest, and see if, upon one or other of these visionary essences, she could not be borne to the end which she ardently desired. Her health had already begun to suffer from the effects of the unsettled and agitated career through which she had passed, but her resolution was above all thoughts of health. She was like the sick gladiator, determined to stand in the arena, trusting to the chance of striking an effective blow and yet almost assured that defeat was certain.

At six o’clock in the morning, the poor Queen, in a carriage drawn by six horses, and with Lord and Lady Hood and Lady Anne Hamilton in attendance upon her, proceeded down to Westminster. The acclamations of the people hailed her on her way, and she reached the front of Westminster Hall without obstruction. If many a shout here welcomed her as she descended from her carriage, there was something like fear, too, in many a breast, lest the incident, peaceful as it seemed, should not end peacefully. After some hesitation, Caroline, attended as above mentioned, advanced to the doors of the Hall, amid much confusion, both of people and soldiery—the first were eager to witness the result, the second were uncertain how to act, and their leaders appeared as uncertain how to direct them. The officer on guard respectfully declined allowing her to pass, even though she were, as she said, Queen of England. He could only obey his orders, and they were to this effect: to give passage to no one whatever who was not the bearer of a ticket. The Queen turned away, disappointed, proceeded on foot to other doors, and encountered only similar results. It was a pitiable sight to see her, hurrying along the platform by which her husband was presently to march in gorgeous array, seeking for permission to pass the way she would go, ejected alike wherever she made the application, forced back in one direction by officers in authority, and turned off the platform, not roughly, but yet turned off, by the common men; and not an arm of the multitude, upon whose aid she reckoned, was raised to help her to her end. They pitied her, perhaps, but as her presence there promised to mar the splendour of which they hoped to be spectators, they wished she were gone, and rather tolerated than encouraged her.

Never was Queen cast so low as she, when, flurried, fevered, now in tears and now hysterically laughing, she stood at the door of the Abbey haggling with the official who acted as porter, and striving to force or win her way into the interior. The chief of the ‘door-keepers’ demanded to see her ticket, but Lord Hood claimed exemption for her on account of her recognised rank: the door-keeper would not recognise the claim. ‘This is your Queen!’ said Lord Hood. ‘Yes, I am your Queen; will you admit me?’ The assertion and the request were repeatedly made, but always with the same effect. No passage could be given without the indispensable ticket. Lord Hood possessed one, and the Queen appeared for a moment inclined to pass in with that. But her heart failed her, and, half-laughing, to hide perhaps what she could not conceal, her half-crying, she declined to go in without her ladies. Finally, a superior officer appeared, and respectfully intimated that no preparations whatever had been made for the accommodation of her Majesty; upon which, after looking around her, as if searching for suggestions or help from the people, and finding no encouragement, she assented to Lord Hood’s proposition, that it were better for her to enter her carriage and return home.

She had dared the hazard of the die: the cast had been unfortunate. She, for the first time, felt degraded, and she withdrew, still, like the gladiator from the arena, conscious of bearing the wound of which death must ultimately and speedily come.

Meanwhile, let us tarry for a moment at the Hall and the Abbey. It is not likely that England will ever again behold such a scene of coronation splendour as that of George IV., and it is quite certain that England would not care to do so. The national taste does not merely regulate itself by the national purse, but by general principle; and it is an incontrovertible fact, that the outlay of millions for the crowning of one man involves the violation of a principle which the nation desires to see respected.

Never did sovereign labour as George IV. laboured to give éclat to the entire ceremony. He passed days and nights with his familiar friends in discussing questions of dress, colours, fashions, and effects. His own costume was to him a subject of intense anxiety, and when his costly habits were completed, so desirous was he to witness their effect that, according to the gossip of the day, a court-gossip which was not groundless, his Majesty had one of his own servants attired in the royal garments, and the King contemplated with considerable satisfaction the sight of a menial pacing up and down the room in the monarch’s garb. The man did his office with as much mock gravity as the dramatic King, Mr. Elliston, when he showered tipsy benedictions upon the public as he crossed the platform over the pit of Drury Lane.

But it is true in real things as it is in tragedies, that ‘the King’ is not necessarily the principal character. Even in a ballet the sovereign is less cared for than the chief dancer who cuts entrechats in his presence. So at the coronation festival of George IV., although he was first in rank and as princely as any in bearing, he was very far from being the first in consequence or the foremost man in the people’s love. This matter is admirably put by Mr. Rush, the American ambassador to our court, who witnessed the ceremony, and made a very nice distinction as to the true position of the principal actors in it. In his account of the scene the amiable and accomplished diplomatist remarks that the chief splendour of the day, where all wore an air of joy and animation, was in the Hall. ‘The table for the King’s banquet,’ he remarks, ‘was spread on the royal platform; the foreign ambassadors and ministers had theirs in the painted chamber of the house of lords, a communicating apartment under the same roof—but we ran from it soon to come into the hall, the centre of all attraction. The peeresses, peers, and others associated with them had theirs in the body of the hall. Here six long tables were laid, three on each side, leaving a vista, or aisle, open in the middle, which directly fronted the royal platform. The platform and all the seats were covered with crimson, which, with the peeresses richly dressed, and the plate on the banqueting-tables, and the company all seated, with the King at the head of his sumptuous table, shaped as a crescent, so that he and a few seated on his right and left faced the whole company, made the spectacle extremely magnificent. The comptroller and clerk of the kitchen, and purveyor of wines, had not, as may be imagined, overlooked their duties. But when the Champion appeared at the opposite extremity of the hall, directly in front of the King, nothing seen at first but tufts of plumes waving from his horse’s head and his own helmet, startling emotions arose in every bosom. Curiosity was breathless to see what was coming. He was attended by Howard of Effingham, and by Anglesea, and by another greater than all—the Duke of Wellington; and as these, all on horseback, entered abreast, the Champion heralding his challenge, and the horses seeming almost in contact with the outward line of peeresses at the table, yet obedient to the bit which they kept champing—as this equestrian train slowly advanced in martial grace and strength up the aisle towards the King, all eyes were seen turned upon one man in it. In vain did the declining sun through the vast old Gothic edifice throw beams upon the bright and heavy armour of the Champion; in vain was it, when the horses reaching by slow, impatient steps the top of the aisle, and proudly halting at the steps of the royal platform, that the stout-clad Champion again put forth his challenge, threw down his glove, received the cup from his sovereign, and drank to his sovereign—in vain all this; the beauty and chivalry at the banqueting-tables still looked at the Duke of Wellington; still kept their eyes on the man whose person and horse recalled, not war in romance, but its stern and recent realities. All were at gaze—fixed, silent. He was habited only as a peer, had only his staff as Lord High Constable, yet was he the observed of all. Nowhere was he more intently eyed than from the box where sat the assembled ambassadors of the potentates of Europe. Judging from opinion in that box, there was nothing in the elaborate grandeur of the day to rival the scene. It was the inherent pre-eminence of a great man exalting moral admiration above the show of the whole kingdom.’ This was the imperative fact. The King was the great figure of the hour, but the Duke was the great hero of the age; and the truth was not lost sight of in the gorgeous splendour of the spectacle.

To do the King justice, it must be confessed that he was among the first to acknowledge the pre-eminence of the Duke as regarded his services and merits. At the dinner given by the Duke of Wellington, a few days after the coronation, in honour of the new sovereign, and with that monarch as chief guest, this acknowledgment was very gracefully made. At this splendid banquet, after the noble host had proposed the health of his royal guest—a toast that was drunk all standing and all silent, the King himself merely rising to bow his thanks to the company—George IV. in turn proposed, in a brief speech, the health of the Duke. ‘The purport of his remarks,’ says Mr. Rush, who was present at this interesting festival, was, ‘that, had it not been for the exertions of his friend upon the left (it was so that he spoke of the Duke), he, the King, might not have had the happiness of meeting those whom he now saw around him at that table; it was, therefore, with particular pleasure that he proposed his health. The King spoke his words with emphasis and great apparent pleasure. The Duke made no reply, but took in respectful silence what was said. The King continued sitting while he spoke, as did the company, in profound silence under his words.’

The silence of the host was true courtesy. It has not escaped Mr. Rush’s discernment. ‘I thought,’ he says, ‘of Johnson, when George III. complimented him: the innate dignity of great minds is the same. In Johnson it was that of the rough, virtuous recluse—whose greatness was that of the author. In Wellington it was externally moulded into the will which armies and courts, and long association with the élite of mankind, may be supposed to give. Johnson did not bandy civilities with his Sovereign, whom he had never seen before; nor did Wellington, who saw him every day!’ It is ever the same with true gentlemen.

It would seem, however, that all the nobles who shone at the coronation festivities of George IV. were not so perfect in politeness as the warrior-duke. King George IV. gave a banquet to the ambassadors specially sent to grace the high solemnity of the coronation. To this banquet the foreign ministers generally and the members of the cabinet were invited and were present. The American Ambassador sat next to Lord Londonderry, and the two discussed between themselves the power, pretensions, and infamy of Russia, Lord Londonderry affecting to trust to the moderation of the Muscovite—a moderation which has been more truly described by Lord John Russell as more menacing than the ambition of other powers. The conversation then fell upon English society; and while on this theme Lord Londonderry remarked, ‘that the higher the rank and education, the better bred, as a general rule, their people in England—so he believed it was considered.’ Setting aside the fact that this is only partially true, it was at the same time a most uncourteous remark to be made by one who was high in rank and education to a commoner. But the Stewart-Castlereaghs have ever been unlucky in their civilities, and with their precious balsams they have too often bruised the heads they would only have anointed. Witness the fact of the banquet given by the late Marquis of Londonderry to the ambassador of Louis Napoleon. Everything was well done but one, and that one thing, ill done, marred all besides that was well. The room in which the English host welcomed his French guest was decorated with pierced and battered French cuirasses, which had covered the breasts of gallant French enemies at Waterloo. The man who is fortunate enough to kill an adversary in a duel may, possibly, in after years, be reconciled with that adversary’s brother, and perhaps entertain him at dinner; but he would hardly think of hanging up the dead man’s clothes (purchased as a trophy from his valet) in his dining-room.

The grand banquet at Carlton House was given on the 26th July. The special and ordinary ambassadors and the ministers were present. The monarch’s brothers were also among the guests—always excepting the Duke of Sussex, whose sympathies for Queen Caroline had been too markedly and publicly expressed.

‘We were invited,’ says Mr. Rush, ‘at seven o’clock. As my carriage turned into Pall Mall from the foot of St. James’s Street, the old clock at St. James’s struck seven, and before I reached Carlton Palace all the carriages appeared to be entering or coming out through the double gates of the Ionic screen in front of the palace. Mine was among the last that drove up to the portico, and by a very few minutes past seven all the guests, save one, were assembled in the reception rooms. I had never before witnessed such punctuality at any dinner in England.

‘The King entered a minute or two afterwards, and saluted his guests generally, then went the rounds, speaking to each individually. With the special ambassadors he paused longest. Time had now run on to more than a quarter past seven, still one of the guests had not yet arrived, and that one was the Duke of Wellington. The man not apt to be behind time when his Majesty’s enemies were to be met was, it seems, in meeting his friends. Five minutes more went by, and still no Duke of Wellington; critical moments when each one seemed to count two. At length, in one of the rooms at a distance, the Duke was seen; he was dressed in the uniform of an Austrian field-marshal, a plain round-about jacket of white cloth and white under-dress to suit, relieved by scarcely anything but his sword. The dress, being tight and simple, gave to his person a thinner look than usual; and as he kept advancing with easy step, quite alone, and a general silence prevailing, the King separated himself from the group of ambassadors where he was standing, and when he got near enough stepped forward to meet him. With both hands he shook the Duke by both with great cordiality, saying something which the company could not hear, but which, from the manner, we took to be a good-natured rally upon his late arrival. The Duke received it with placid composure, made no reply, but bowed. When liberated from the friendly grasp of the King, he approached a circle of which I happened to be one. One of the ministers composing it said to him, “We hope you will forgive our little treason, my Lord Duke, but we have just been determining that, as some one of the company was to be too late, it was best to have fallen to your Grace’s lot, who can so well bear it.” With a half whisper and an arch smile, the Duke replied, “The King knows I could have been here sooner but for attending to some of his Majesty’s business.” This, considering the Duke as a cabinet minister and privy councillor, had doubtless been sufficient to excuse his delinquency, and secure for him the very cordial reception all had witnessed.... The entire dinner-service was of gold. Each of the salt-cellars, as well as I could catch the design, represented a small rock in dead gold, on which reclined a sea-nymph holding in her hand a shell, which held the salt. One of these was before every two guests; so it was, as to number, with the gold coolers down the sides, containing wine. The whole table, sideboard, and room had an air of chaste and solid grandeur, not, however, interfering with the restrained enjoyments of a good dinner, of which the King seemed desirous that his foreign guests should in no wise be abridged, for we sat till past ten o’clock.’ Contrasting this banquet with the one given by the Duke of Wellington, the same writer and guest remarks that the Duke’s table-service was not only brilliant, but that it lighted-up better than the King’s; for being entirely of silver, and very profuse, the whole aspect was of pure, glittering white, unlike the slightly-shaded tinges which candles seem to cast from gold plate. The dessert-service at the Duke’s was of china, a present from the King of Prussia, and made emblematical of the life of the Duke, commencing with a view of Dangan Castle, the (supposed) birth-place of Arthur Wellesley, and going through a course of views of all the places rendered interesting by his presence or remarkable by his deeds, down to the porcelained pictorial representation of the crowning glory at Waterloo.

While all these matters were in progress, people who nursed superstition were prophesying some calamity to come; and certainly, among the incidents of the coronation of George IV., was one which would have been counted ominous in earlier days. The gallant Marquis of Anglesea was Lord High Steward on that occasion, and it was part of his office to carry the crown up to the altar before the Archbishop placed it on the King’s head. It was heavier than the gallant Lord High Steward had reckoned upon, and the glittering crown, ponderous with gold, diamonds, and other precious stones, slipped from his hands. He dexterously recovered it, however, before it reached the ground. Among the medallic records of the time one was the work of an enemy of Caroline of Brunswick. A bronze medal of the time is extant which has the Queen’s head, on the obverse, with the inscription: ‘Caroline, D. G. Britt. Regina.’ On the reverse is the head of Bergami, with the inscription: ‘Count B. Bergami.’