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

Among the few bishops who took the ‘unrestricted’ side on the Regency Bill, Bishop Watson of Llandaff was the most active. No doubt his activity was founded on conscientiousness, for many able men of the period were to be found who were by no means violent partisans, yet who were ready to maintain that, according to the constitutional law, the right of exercising the power of regent in the case of incapacity on the part of the reigning sovereign rested in the next heir, the Prince of Wales. There is as little doubt as to the Queen’s having looked with considerable disfavour on all who held such sentiments. Among those who did was this Bishop of Llandaff. If Queen Charlotte felt towards the prelate as Queen Caroline used to do towards those who stood between her and her wishes, the fault, if fault there were, was not attributable to her, but to the minister. He, right or wrong—and most persons who knew what the conduct of the elder son of Charlotte was will agree that he was at least morally right—he, the minister, represented to her that all who supported the Prince and opposed the ministerial measure which gave great power to the Queen were enemies of the sovereign. Charlotte believed this, and perhaps the Whig bishop is not wrong who says that the Queen lost, in the opinion of many, the character she had hitherto maintained in this country by falling in with the designs of the minister. These many were, however, only the Whigs. It is nevertheless unfortunately true that the Queen distinguished by different degrees of courtesy on the one hand, and by meditated affronts on the other, those who had voted with and those who had voted against the ministers, ‘inasmuch,’ says Bishop Watson, ‘that the Duke of Northumberland one day said to me, “So, my lord, you and I also are become traitors.”’

At the drawing-room held on the King’s recovery the Queen received Bishop Watson with a degree of coldness which, he says, ‘would have appeared to herself ridiculous and ill-placed could she have imagined how little a mind such as mine regarded in its honourable proceedings the displeasure of a woman, though that woman happened to be a Queen.’ But it must not be forgotten that if the Queen had, as it were, two faces for the two parties into which society at Court was divided, her eldest son exhibited the same characteristic, and he was accordingly eminently cordial with the prelate of Llandaff. When, at the drawing-room above-named, the Queen looked displeased as the bishop stood before her, the Prince of Wales, who was standing by her side, immediately asked him to come and dine with him. A more unseemly proceeding cannot well be imagined. ‘On my making some objection,’ says the bishop, ‘to dining at Carlton House, the Prince turned to Sir Thomas Dundas and asked him to give us a dinner at his house on the following Saturday.’ The party was arranged, the guests met, and, while they were waiting for dinner, the Prince took the bishop by the button-hole, and, says the prelate, ‘he explained to me the principle on which he had acted during the whole of the King’s illness, and spoke to me with an afflicted feeling of the manner in which the Queen had treated himself. I must do him the justice to say that he spoke, in this conference, in as sensible a manner as could possibly have been expected from an heir-apparent to the throne and from a son of the best principles towards both his parents.’

The especial words ‘in this conference’ would seem to imply that the son of Charlotte did not always speak in so sensible a manner as could have been expected from a royal heir-apparent. It would have been as well, too, if the bishop had told his readers what the principle was on which the Prince had grounded his conduct throughout the King’s illness. When he simply talks of the Prince as a son imbued with the best principles towards both his parents, he would have done well if he had added whether he was considering that son politically or morally. It must have been politically, for the right reverend prelate did not impress upon his younger friend that a mother’s faults should be invisible to the eyes of her children; but, on the other hand, he rather emphatically charged her with ill-humour by advising the Prince ‘to persevere in dutifully bearing with his mother’s ill-humour till time and her own good sense should disentangle her from the web which ministerial cunning had thrown around her.’ Now to persevere in a line of conduct is to continue in that already entered upon, and the line followed by the Prince was one of continual insult and provocation against the Queen. The bishop confesses an inclination to think well of her. ‘I was willing,’ he writes, ‘to attribute her conduct during the agitation of the regency question to her apprehensions of the King’s safety, to the misrepresentations of the King’s minister, to anything rather than a fondness for power.’ There is something inexpressibly ingenuous in the paragraph which follows:—‘Before we rose from table at Sir Thomas Dundas’s, where the Duke of York and a large company were assembled, the conversation turning on parties, I happened to say I was sick of parties, and should retire from all public concerns. “No,” said the Prince, “and mind who it is that tells you so, you shall never retire—a man of your talents shall never be lost to the public.”’ This testimony of himself was recorded by the bishop in 1814, and was published by his son in the Queen’s lifetime in 1817. Like the passage touching the Queen, it gave offence to the principal person concerned in it. The aged Queen was not pleased to have her ‘ill-humour’ registered before the world, nor was her son flattered by the innuendo which was conveyed in the paragraph which chronicled his promise of conferring preferment on the Bishop of Llandaff. Dr. Watson died prelate of that small diocese.

The clergy of the diocese of Llandaff presented congratulatory addresses to both their Majesties upon the King’s recovery. Those addresses were written by Bishop Watson; and in that which he presented to Queen Charlotte he inserted a paragraph which he avows, in his memoirs, that he knew would be disagreeable to her. The address in question, after expressing that the sympathy of every family had been extended to the Queen in her late distress, complimenting her on the sincerity of her piety, the amiableness and purity of her manners as Queen, wife, and mother, and referring, in laudatory terms to the concern which she had exhibited for the Monarch during his late unhappy situation, thus proceeds:—‘We observed in the deliberations of Parliament a great diversity of opinions as to the constitutional mode of protecting the rights of the Sovereign during the continuance of his indisposition; but we observed no diversity whatever as to the necessity of protecting them in the most effectual manner. This circumstance cannot fail of giving solid satisfaction to your Majesty; for, next to the consolation of believing that in his recovery he has been the especial object of God’s mercy, must be that of knowing that during his illness he was the peculiar object of his people’s love; that he rules over a free, a great, and an enlightened nation, not more by the laws of the land than by the wishes of the people.’

Upon this text of his own constructing, the bishop makes the following comment in his ‘Autobiography’:—‘The first part of this last paragraph I knew would be disagreeable to the Queen, as it contradicted the principle she wished to be generally believed, and the truth of which alone could justify her conduct—that the opposition to the minister was an opposition to the King. Now, as there was not a word of disaffection to the King in any of the debates in either House of Parliament during the transaction of the regency, and as I verily believe the hearts of the Opposition were as warm with the King, and warmer with the constitution, than those of their competitors, I thought fit to say what was, in my judgment, the plain truth.’ The bishop, however, loses sight of the fact that Queen, ministers, and a great majority of the people desired a restricted regency, in order that the rights of the Sovereign should suffer nothing, in case of recovery; and that Queen, ministers, and a great majority of the people felt that the Prince of Wales had no divine right to the regency, but had by his public and private conduct shown that he was entirely unworthy of holding any powers but under constitutional limitation.

Previous to the King’s recovery, the Bishop of Llandaff had expressed himself as having been miserably neglected by Mr. Pitt, and ‘I feel the indignity as I ought.’ The bishop declares that he was overlooked, for want of political pliancy. However, we have seen that, in the allegedly offended Queen’s presence, the Prince of Wales ostentatiously patronised the prelate, and subsequently made a post-prandial promise touching preferment, which he never fulfilled. The bishop strongly suspected that the Queen stood in his way. In 1805, the Duke of Grafton wrote to him, to give him early intimation that the Archbishop of Canterbury was not expected to live; but ‘I had no expectation of an archbishopric,’ says Dr. Watson, ‘for the Duke of Clarence had once said to me, (speaking in conversation no doubt the language of the court), ‘they will never make you an archbishop; they are afraid of you.’ In the following year, the bishopric of St. Asaph became vacant, and Dr. Watson applied for it to Lord Grenville, stating that it ‘would be peculiarly acceptable to himself.’ ‘It was given to the Bishop of Bangor; and the bishopric of Bangor was given to the Bishop of Oxford.’ Hereupon, the diocesan of Llandaff, suspecting that the Queen’s influence was exercised against him over the King, addressed a letter to the Duke of Clarence, begging him to lay the same, which contained a statement of the writer’s wishes, before the Prince of Wales, whom the bishop ‘most earnestly entreated to take some opportunity of doing him justice with the King.’ Years, however, passed on; and, in 1810, we find the right reverend prelate expressing himself in doubt ‘whether it is by her or by his Majesty that I am laid on the shelf.’ In fact, he was by far worse treated at the hands of the Prince of Wales, whose cause he had supported against Queen, ministers, and a great majority of the people, than he ever was by the Queen herself. The Prince had intimated that such a champion should not go without his reward; and that the Prince would not forget the prelate. His Highness did, however, completely forget the right reverend father. We do him wrong: he remembered him on one occasion. On the 3rd of May 1812 there was a dinner party at Carlton House. At these parties it was no uncommon thing for the Regent to tell stories which sent the Queen’s fan up to her face, with a remonstrating ‘George! George!’ to induce him to have some respect for decency. On the occasion in question, however, the conversation turned on immorality and irreligion. Mr. Tyrrwhitt thereupon told a story how he had been in society with a Sussex baronet, who gave utterance to such profligate and atheistic opinions that Mr. Tyrrwhitt was obliged to leave the room, after recommending the blasphemer and libertine to look into Bishop Watson’s ‘Apology’ for that Bible which the baronet so scoffed at. At the royal table ‘the baronet’s answer was produced and read, expressive of the greatest thankfulness for having had it put into his hands, as it not only had decided and clearly proved the error and fallacy of every opinion he had before entertained, but had afforded him a degree of secret comfort and tranquillity that his mind had previously been a stranger to.’ The Regent thereupon bethought himself of his old friend of Llandaff, and ordered Mr. Braddyll to communicate to him the highly gratifying anecdote. Dr. Watson returned his best thanks for ‘this instance of a Prince’s remembrance of a retired bishop;’ and therewith ended the patronage of the Regent, which was not more profitable to the prelate than the alleged opposition or indifference of the Queen.

The Prince’s party were somewhat ashamed, it would seem, at what had taken place in connection with White’s Club ball; and the Club at Brookes’s resolved to render themselves blameless in the eyes of the Queen, who was supposed to be more indignant than her consort at the measures of their elder sons and their followers. The club at Brookes’s hired the Opera-house, and gave a festival to the ladies, consisting of a concert, recitations, a ball, and a supper. At this festival Mrs. Siddons was engaged to appear as Britannia, and recite some silly verses, by silly Merry, in which laudation of the King was qualified by political instructions to the people. ‘Long may he rule a willing land!’ was declaimed by the actress with solemn and melodious dignity; and this line was followed by the hint to the people that ‘Oh, for ever may that land be free!’ A long roll of ‘infinite deal of nothings’ followed, in which scant courtesy was paid to the Queen; and Mrs. Siddons, having got to the end of her ‘lines,’ astonished the spectators by an exhibition of the ‘pose plastique,’ assuming the ‘exact attitude of Britannia, as impressed upon our copper coin.’

Having noticed what took place at the King’s drawing-room, omission must not be made of the Queen’s, held by her in March, especially to receive congratulations upon the happy recovery of her consort. More than usual splendour did honour to the occasion. The Queen sat on a chair of state, under a canopy, and surrounded by the great officers of her household. Eye-witnesses declare that the blaze of diamonds which covered her Majesty was something more than the ordinary glory. Around the Queen’s neck, too, was a double row of gold chain, supporting a medallion. ‘Across her shoulders was another chain of pearls, in three rows; but the portrait of the King was suspended from five rows of diamonds, fastened loose upon the dress behind, and streaming over the person with the most gorgeous effect. The tippet was of fine lace, fastened with the letter G, in brilliants of immense value. In front of her Majesty’s hair, in letters formed of diamonds, were easily legible the words, “God save the King.” The Princesses were splendidly, but not equally, adorned. The female nobility wore emblematical designs, beautifully painted on the satin of their caps, and fancy teemed with the inventions of loyalty and joy. At half-an-hour after six o’clock, her Majesty quitted the drawing-room for duties still more interesting.’

What these duties were, after the long drawing-room, Mr. Boaden, from whose ‘Life of Kemble’ the details are borrowed, does not inform us; but he adds, in a burst of eloquence not unlike the tone of some of the dramas of which he discourses so pleasantly, that he cannot forbear from expressing the full conviction of his understanding and his heart, that no more glorious being than the consort of George III. ever existed. ‘I have lived,’ he says, ‘to see a miserable delusion withdraw some part of the affection of the multitude for a time; but she was in truth the idol of the people, and they paid to her that sort of homage as if in her person they were reverencing the form of Virtue itself.’

The same unreserved panegyrist, describing her Majesty’s visit to Covent Garden Theatre on the 15th of April 1789, states that she was accompanied by three of the Princesses—the Princess Royal, most unassuming of all Charlotte’s daughters; the Princess Augusta, so careless as to what she was dressed in, provided only that she were dressed; and the Princess Elizabeth, who was always anxious to be doing little services for people about the court, as if she wished to forget that she was burdened by being great, and by the formalities which she must observe, to give greatness dignity. Mr. Boaden strikingly describes the scene. ‘The Queen entered the royal box alone; the Princesses not being, for a few minutes, ready. On the appearance of the Queen, a shout arose, of transport, from the spectators; the curtain ran up, and displayed a transparency which had the words, in striking letters, Long live the King! and May the King live for ever!’ For all this no preparation could be sufficient; and tears fortunately came to her relief. In this state she paid her compliments to her people. On the entrance of the Princesses, the emotion somewhat subsided—

The entertainments of the evening had no allusion whatever to the event. They consisted of ‘He would be a Soldier,’ and ‘Aladdin.’ The simple introduction, by Edwin, of giving the King’s health, was the only allusion made to passing events. But the house cheered, and the Queen smiled and nodded her gratification.

Whilst on the subject of theatricals, it may be noticed that the King and Queen not only patronised Mrs. Siddons, but that the patronage which they showed to this lady was not confined to witnessing and applauding her performances on the stage. She was a frequent visitor at Buckingham House and Windsor; and she was among the first to discover that the King’s mind was affected. On occasion of one of her visits, after her task was done of reading a play, at a high desk, before which she stood, the King went up to her, and presented her with a blank paper—blank, with the exception that his signature was at the bottom of it. Such a gift intimated that the giver bound himself to make any amount of pecuniary provision which the will of the actress might choose to name, above the royal signature. The paper was doubtless received with a graceful and grateful dignity, but with equal propriety it was, on the earliest opportunity, presented blank, as it was received, to the Queen. Her Majesty was very pointed in the expression of her approbation at conduct so delicate and dignified; but the virtue of Mrs. Siddons was left to be its own reward.

While the Duke of York was leading a ‘gay’ life, running in debt, and falling asleep over his cards (his constant habit), to find himself a great loser when he awoke, his next brother, Clarence, with some lively propensities, too, contrived to maintain considerable popularity. He was of a popular profession. At the age of thirteen the King sent him as midshipman on board a man-of-war, and told him to fight his way. He obeyed the injunction by having a set-to with another ‘middy,’ soon after he was afloat, and secured, in this way, the respect of his fellow-officers. He served under Keith, Hood, and Nelson. His sole remark on first seeing the last-named gallant ‘shadow,’ was, that his tail seemed more than he had strength to carry. The little Duke was present in several actions, and shared in several victories. When the Spanish commander, Don Juan de Langera, was brought prisoner on board the ‘Prince George,’ and was told that the smart and active midshipman whom he had observed on duty at the gangway was a prince of the blood, and son of the reigning King, the brave but unlucky captain exclaimed, ‘Well may England be queen of the seas, when the son of her sovereign is engaged in such a duty!’ The companions of the young Prince were not the most suitable for a youth of his condition and prospects, as far as refinement is concerned; they were rude, but I question if their principles of conduct were not as good as any by which modern middies and lieutenants are influenced. In some respects they were better, for I do not imagine that if any one of the lieutenants of Keith, Hood, or Nelson, had fallen into such a scrape as befel Lieutenant Royer of the ‘Tiger,’ he would have expressed ‘satisfaction’ at being permitted, at the theatre, to use the identical glass through which a hostile commander had watched the destruction of a British ship. The rough and ready manner of old days is better than the refinement which takes such form and expression as this; and William Henry was little the worse for the former, although Beau Brummell did say of him that he was never good for anything but to walk about a quarterdeck and cry ‘luff.’

Walpole writes of him, in 1789: ‘The Duke of Clarence, no wonder, at his age, is already weary of a house in the middle of a village, with nothing but a green short apron to the river, a situation only fit for an old gentlewoman, who has put out her knee-pans and loves cards.’ The writer adds, that were the Duke a commoner and a candidate, Richmond, if it were a borough, would return him unanimously. ‘He pays his bills regularly himself, locks up his doors that his servants may not stay out late, and never drinks but a few glasses of wine.’ Miss Burney’s report would lead us to a different conclusion. Walpole adds: ‘Though the value of crowns is mightily fallen of late at market, it looks as if his Royal Highness thought they were still worth waiting for. Nay, it is said, he tells his brothers he shall be King before either. This is fair, at least.’

William Henry was not always so blameless in his economy as Queen Charlotte loved to see him. His hospitality at the Admiralty was unbounded; but when it is remembered that the exercise of it during fifteen months ran him in debt to the amount of not less than three-and-twenty thousand pounds, such hospitality is rather to be censured than eulogised. He was as profuse when King, until his treasurer, Sir F. Watson, confessed his inability to go on.

The second son of Queen Charlotte delivered his maiden speech in the House of Lords at the close of 1788. A few months after he made another speech, in private society, which might have had a very fatal issue. He stated that Colonel Lennox (afterwards Duke of Richmond) had been addressed at Daubigny’s club in language to which no gentleman would have quietly listened as the colonel had done. The latter, on parade, asked for an explanation. The Duke refused, ordered him to his post, and offered him ‘satisfaction’ if he felt himself aggrieved. The colonel appealed to the club as to whether the members adopted the Duke’s statement. They remained silent; and the result was a duel on Wimbledon Common, on the 26th of May 1789. Lord Rawdon accompanied the Duke, and the Earl of Winchilsea attended on the colonel. The duel ended with no bloodier finale than the loss of a curl on the part of the Duke. The latter, it was found, had not fired; he refused to fire, bade the colonel fire again if he were not satisfied, and rejected every inducement held out to him to make some explanation. On this the parties separated.

Some littleness of spirit was exhibited in what followed. The colonel was present at a court ball, at which the Queen presided, and formed part in a country dance of which the Prince of Wales and other members of the royal family were also a portion. The Prince, who was remarkable for his gallantry, did not exhibit that quality on the present occasion. He passed over the colonel, and the lady his partner, without ‘turning’ the latter, as the laws of contre-danse required. The Prince’s conduct was imitated by both his brothers and sisters, and the colonel’s partner was thus subjected to most unwarrantable insult. The Queen, who had marked her opinion of the colonel’s conduct by graciously speaking to him, remarking the chafed look of her son, and addressing some inquiry to him, was answered that he was heated, because he disliked the company. Upon this hint the Queen rose, and the festive scene was brought to a disturbed and sudden conclusion.

The fall of the year was passed in the south of England, with Weymouth for head-quarters. The King and Queen were not without peculiar annoyances here, chiefly in the threats of assassination conveyed in private letters. The Queen indeed, like the King, disregarded them, but she feared the evil effect they might have on his excitable mind. Among the visits paid by them to private individuals was one to the Roman Catholic proprietor of Lulworth Castle, Mr. Weld, a relation, by her first marriage, of Mrs. Fitzherbert. They were present in the chapel attached to the castle during the celebration of divine service, and remained while the anthem was sung,—without any ill effects resulting to Protestantism.

In January 1790 the fears of the Queen were again excited for her consort, at whom a stone was thrown by a mad Lieutenant Frick, as his Majesty was on his way to the House of Lords. The muse was hardly more sane or loyal than the lieutenant, for Peter Pindar wrote of this incident:

The Queen, at the time of the King’s illness, was assailed with unmeasured vituperation by the Opposition papers. Even her interviews with Pitt were made base account of, in order to raise the public odium against her. In the present year the ‘Hopes of the Party,’ a caricature so named, by Gillray, served to show the supposed wishes of the Opposition. The caricature represents many revolutionary horrors. Among them is what is termed ‘a pair of pendants,’ showing the Queen and prime minister each hanging from a lamp iron. ‘It is commonly believed,’ says Mr. Wright, in the History from which a passage has been already quoted, ‘that Pitt and Queen Charlotte were closely leagued together to pillage and oppress the nation; and she was far less popular than the King, whose infirmity produced general sympathy, and who had many good qualities that endeared him to those with whom he came in contact. In another part of Gillray’s picture the King is brought to the block, held down by Sheridan, while Fox, masked, acts as executioner. Priestley, with pious exhortations, is encouraging the fallen monarch to submit to his hard fate.’ Later in the year, in September, the Queen’s second son, Frederick Duke of York, married Frederica, eldest daughter of the King of Prussia. The marriage was solemnised on Michaelmas Day, at Berlin. The bride was then in her twenty-fourth year, her husband in his twenty-eighth. She was fair, virtuous, accomplished, and kindly-hearted,—by far too good a wife for the profligate Prince to whom she was allied. The newly-married pair travelled to England through France, where they met with but rough treatment from the republican mob, some of whom very unceremoniously scratched the royal arms off their carriages. The ceremony of marriage was reperformed in England on the 23rd of November by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in presence of the entire royal family. By an addition of 18,000l. to the Duke’s income, his revenue amounted to 35,000l. a year; and an annual 30,000l. was settled on the Duchess, in case of her surviving him.

The Queen, accompanied by the King and the elder branches of her family, paid a visit of welcome to the young couple, which was the most formal and ceremonious matter that can well be conceived. The visit took the form of a tea-party; it ought, therefore, to have been social and chatty, but it was as stiff and silent as much ceremony and formal etiquette could make it. The King’s tea was solemnly handed to him by the Prince of Wales, while the Duchess of York, receiving a cup from the Duke, presented it, with much reverence, to the Queen. But in the cups which cheer and not inebriate, ceremony was soon dissolved; and the King getting loquacious, the family party, before the night was far gone, became as mirthful and pleasant as if it had been made up of more mirthful and pleasant materials.

Despite the great popularity of the excellent Duchess, the caricaturists spared neither her nor her royal father and mother-in-law. In one of the satirical prints by Gillray, the King and Queen—the latter most outrageously caricatured—are represented in ridiculous attitudes of joy: the King is fairly ‘kicking up his heels’ in ecstasy, offering eager welcome to the Duchess. The Queen is holding out her apron to receive some of the wealth and jewels which her daughter-in-law was popularly supposed to have brought with her. The latter has her apron full of money, and the Duke is introducing her to his parents.

The poor Duchess was soon one of the unhappiest of wives. The profligacy and shameless infidelity of her husband, to whom she had been fondly attached, disgusted her. His extravagance involved him in a ruin from which he could never relieve himself, and which his creditors never forgot. It made many a hearth cold, and it brought misery to that of the Duchess. For six years she bore with treatment from the ‘commander-in-chief’ such as no trooper under him would have inflicted on a wife equally deserving. At the end of that time the ill-matched pair separated, and the Duchess withdrew from the world; but in her retirement she forgot none of the duties which it could fairly demand of her. She was beloved by all, and was popularly and affectionately mentioned by the popular voice as ‘the poor soldier’s friend.’

She was indeed the friend of all who needed her service, and did not refuse even to give to poor ‘Monk’ Lewis the meed of admiration which his little vanity required. He was once met coming in tears from the Duchess’s drawing-room; and on intimating to his questioner that they had their source in the very kind and flattering things the Duchess had said to him, the weeper was roughly consoled by his acquaintance, with the soothing advice, to ‘Never mind, as perhaps she did not mean it!’

Never was the alleged avarice of the King and Queen more bitterly satirised than during this year (1791). The King, however, was a cheerful giver, and the amount of property which the Queen left at her death proves that she was no hoarder. The caricaturists, nevertheless, smote them mercilessly. Peter Pindar assailed them in coarse and witless lines, that had in them a certain rough humour, but as ill-natured as rough. Gillray exhibited them as cheapening wares in the streets of Windsor. In another print, the King, in the commonest of garbs, was seen toasting his own muffins; and the Queen, with a hideous twist given to her now plain features, and with pockets bursting with the national money, was depicted busily engaged in frying sprats for supper. In another, the Queen is sourly commanding her highly-disgusted daughters to take their tea without sugar, as a saving to papa. There were many of a similar cast, and not a few which exposed the vices to which the Princes of the family—young men of great hopes and with much kindliness of feeling, but with little principle—had unfortunately surrendered themselves.

The King himself was ever depicted as slovenly both in dress and gait—the Queen as mean in attire and sharply sour of visage. The latter always wears a far more acute, but a less inquiring, air than her husband. This was a true reflection. After Dr. Johnson had his celebrated interview with the monarch at Buckingham Palace, he is said to have declared that ‘His Majesty seems to be possessed of some good nature and much curiosity; as for his nous, it is not contemptible. His Majesty, indeed, was multifarious in his questions; but, thank God, he answered them all himself.’

The public discontent and the general distress increased greatly at this time, and had their effect in throwing a gloom over the court circle. The old formality and not a very diminished festivity were still, however, maintained there, and the republican fashions of France were held in abhorrence at Windsor.

The sons of Queen Charlotte were not so formal in their behaviour towards her, before witnesses, as the daughters were. The Duke of York was now the most observant of ceremony, but he exhibited therewith a show, perhaps a reality, of very tender feeling. Even on common occasions the household of the Queen was encumbered by much stiffness of observance of etiquette. It was not an uncommon occurrence for the Duke of York to attend at his mother’s toilette, conversing with her during its closing progress. When this was the case, and the dresser’s task was done, that lady could not leave the room if the Duke happened to stand between her and the door; to cross the Duke would have been a terrible breach of good manners. Nor could the Queen help the dresser; all that the illustrious lady could do was to watch till the Duke changed his position, and then with a smile, and a ‘Now, I will let you go,’ give freedom to the dresser, longing for liberty.

The Prince William (Duke of Clarence) was the least courteous of the sons of Charlotte. But it must be remembered that he not only went early to sea, but it was at a time when roughness of manner was considered as more becoming to a naval officer than refinement; to support the character, the young Prince probably assumed more coarseness of style and speech than was really natural to him. The Queen’s birthday drawing-room, in 1791, was followed by a ball, at which the pretty Princess Mary was to dance her first minuet in public, and her brother, the sailor Prince, had promised to be her partner. But previous to the ball there was a dinner, and at a birthday dinner more champagne was drunk by the Prince than on ordinary days. Under its inspiration, the Duke found his way to the table of some of the ladies and gentlemen in waiting. There he ruled as king, insisted upon more champagne, compelled the not-unwilling gentlemen to drink with him glass after glass, laughed at its effects upon them and himself, smacked the servants on the shoulder, abused them good humouredly, praised his sister Mary, had more champagne, kissed the hand of old Madam Schwellenberg with infinite mock heroics, was always going and never went, and ended all he said with the common oath of gentlemen, a loudly-uttered ‘By G—!’ With a morning so spent, he was not likely to be steady enough for the minuet at night. In fact, he was incapable of appearing at the ball at all; much to the chagrin of the Queen; still more to that of the Princess Mary, to whom, however, the offender made less apology the next morning than confession, that on the Queen’s birthday he had been ‘too far gone’ to think of dancing.

The Prince of Wales was not more temperate even on ordinary occasions; and he was less heartily courteous to ladies than his brothers, while perhaps he was more formally polite. Miss Burney describes him as staring at her when she was in attendance upon the Queen, not haughtily or impertinently, she says, but in an ‘extremely curious manner’—probably as Don Juan may have looked upon Zerlina.

With all the Queen’s respect for the formality of court, she enjoyed herself most when she was least observant of it. Reading the letters of Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, she liked to talk them over with Miss Burney, who could explain so many circumstances connected with them which would, otherwise, have been incomprehensible to the Queen. She loved to hear her dresser’s graphic account of Warren Hastings’ trial, whither she had sent her with a reticule stuffed full of cakes from the Queen’s own table. At Cheltenham, when she accompanied the King thither previous to his late illness, the royal residence was of such contracted dimensions, and so scant of accommodation, that her Majesty dressed and undressed in the drawing-room. Many of her ladies would not have submitted half so cheerfully as she did to such an arrangement. In the rural expeditions of the royal pair, there was indeed a comic sort of mixture of formality and fun. At Weymouth, for instance, when the King went to take his ‘dip,’ the royal machine was followed by another full of fiddlers and other musical persons, who, as the monarch plunged into the ocean, saluted him and the bold deed with ‘God save the King,’ horribly out of tune!

It was when the royal pair were at Weymouth that, on one occasion, the mayor of the borough, after presenting an address, and receiving the stereotyped answer, boldly walked up to the Queen to kiss her hand. ‘You must kneel,’ whispered the master of the ceremonies. Mr. Mayor, not heeding the court guide, continued standing, and in that position kissed the royal hand. As he retired, the highly offended master of the ceremonies remarked, angrily, ‘Sir, you ought to have knelt.’ ‘Sir,’ said the Mayor, ‘I can’t; don’t you see I have got a wooden leg?’

It is upon record that the Queen once attempted to write some verses; and having got to the third line gave the matter up in despair—leaving her ‘reader’ to finish and perfect the rhymes. The occasion was on presenting a pair of old-fashioned gloves to Lord Harcourt, who had an affection for ancient gear, and cared more for old gloves than new verses. Miss Burney acquitted herself, however, very well with her impromptu; indeed, she may be said to have been the Queen’s laureate during the five years she served that Sovereign. Her royal mistress employed her to compose some congratulatory verses on the King’s recovery from his serious indisposition; and of these it may be said that if Warton, over whom paralysis was then pending, might have written better, Henry James Pye, the succeeding laureate, could hardly have written worse.

The taste of the Queen was itself not unimpeachable. With regard to the drama, she would rather have seen little Quick in Tony Lumpkin, than Mrs. Siddons in Lady Macbeth. So her ‘reader’ was not called upon to exert her powers upon any great works. The first book she was required to read aloud was Colman’s broad farce of ‘Polly Honeycomb.’ The young lady must have had a difficult task with the novel-reading Polly, whose heart beat for Mr. Scribble, and into whose head her sire could not beat a favourable opinion for ‘the rich Jew’s wife’s nephew,’ Mr. Ledger. The young Princesses were listeners, and it could hardly have been edifying for them to hear the rollicking Polly say of her father, ‘Lord, lord! my stupid papa has no taste; he has no notion of humour and character and the sensibility of delicate feeling.’ ‘A novel,’ says Miss Honeycomb, ‘is the only thing to teach a girl life;’ and she adds, ‘Every girl elopes when her parents are obstinate and ill-natured about marrying her.’ Her ridicule of the long-lived affection of her parents is expressed in the coarsest manner; and she thinks it a good joke that her father recommends her to read the ‘Practice of Piety;’ she runs away with a scamp, and her honest lover, rightly disenamoured, declares of her that ‘he would not underwrite her for ninety per cent.’ What Miss Pope made of Polly and King of Scribble, when this farce was first produced, in 1760, it is not worth inquiring. Miss Pope was considered great in it; but it is worth noticing that when Miss Burney was reading the piece to the Queen and her daughters, an actress whose name can never be separated from that of the Queen’s third son was then turning half the heads in town with her Polly. Mrs. Jordan was well supported by Palmer in Scribble, and the piece seems to have found its way to court, as the ‘Dragon of Wantley’ did in the preceding reign, on the strength of its popularity.

The reader to the royal audience performed her vocation under great disadvantages. She read on in mortal silence on the part of those who listened; neither comment, applause, nor feeling of any sort was ever exhibited; and when Miss Burney had to read other of the elder Colman’s plays, and once ventured to relieve the voice, long fatigued by reading, by making some remark on the construction of the piece, the innovation was submitted to without being commended.

This scene of a Queen whose high moral character and purity of taste have been long matters of eulogy, seated amid her daughters, listening to a farce which would hardly now be tolerated, is not pleasant. But society had not yet freed itself from the uncleanness with which it had been overwhelmed during the two preceding reigns. The unspeakable degradation into which the first two Georges dragged the country must not be forgotten, though it may not be detailed. While detesting the restrictions with which monarchy had been loaded in the great revolution, they indulged unrestrainedly in the worst coarseness of vice. Kept back from pressing despotically upon the people, they yielded unbridled sway to their own passions, and their infamous example corrupted three-fourths of society. Caroline herself would listen to stories told her by Sir Robert Walpole, upon which the eye of the student of history cannot rest without a blush of indignation mantling in his cheek. If the Stuarts were vicious, they were, in a certain degree, gentlemanlike in their vices. The first two Georges were as vicious, but they had none of the refinement of the Stuarts, and would have been to the full as tyrannical had the men of England left them the power. Their conduct was enough to render monarchy detested, and the name of Brunswick execrable. The domestic virtues of George III. and Queen Charlotte insured respect for the first, and surrounded the latter name with something like a halo of love. If there be any yet among us who sing ‘Hail, Star of Brunswick!’ with any mental reservation, the reason may probably be traced to impressions received from the records of the first Georges. The tone of society had not yet recovered itself fully when Queen Charlotte caused ‘Polly Honeycomb’ to be read aloud to herself and daughters. It is true that her Majesty also listened in like company to the teaching of Mrs. Hannah More; but even that high moralist hardly as yet understood how the work of morality might best be sped. Even ten years later than the time when Colman’s farces were deemed not unfitting to be read to an audience of mother and children, Mrs. More, in ‘Cœlebs,’ was recommending the observance of modesty on the part of ladies on very selfish grounds. In allusion to the ‘naked style’ of dress which was then the fashion with women, Mrs. More admonitorily and significantly exclaims: ‘Oh, if women in general knew what was their real interest; if they could guess with what a charm even the appearance of modesty invests its possessor, they would dress decorously from mere self-love, if not from principle. The designing would assume modesty as an artifice; the coquet would adopt it as an allurement; the pure as her appropriate attraction; and the voluptuous as the most infallible art of seduction.’ When the Reverend Sydney Smith read this passage, he remarked that if there were any truth in it, ‘nudity becomes a virtue, and no decent woman for the future can be seen in garments.’ This is, perhaps, more smartly than truly said. Queen Charlotte certainly abhorred the style of dress which is censured in ‘Cœlebs.’ When the Lady Charlotte Campbell, famous for her beauty and for her subsequent connection with Queen Caroline, first went to court, she was attired in the scant costume of the period. She was, in fact, in the very highest of the fashion, and as she was passing before Queen Charlotte, the latter recommended her to ‘let out a tuck in her petticoat!’

While on the subject of fashion, it may here be noticed that when the marriage of the Princess Royal with the head of the House of Wurtemburg had been determined on, her Majesty made the bridal dress, and helped to deck her daughter with it. As a King’s eldest daughter, she had a right to be attired in a dress of white and silver. The Princess, however, was about to marry a widower, and it appears that custom, consequently, required the bride to wear white and gold. And so the robe was fashioned accordingly, and the preference of the Princess was made to yield to etiquette. This marriage, however, did not take place till 1797.

In 1792, the Prince’s pecuniary affairs were in a worse condition than ever. Several executions had been in his house, from one of which he had been saved by the benevolence of Lord Rawdon. His debts now amounted to 400,000l. The Queen advised him to press the King, through the lord chancellor, to apply for an increase of income. What the Prince required was 100,000l. yearly, and if that were granted he proposed to set aside 35,000l. per annum for the liquidation of his debts. He had now abandoned racing, a silly pursuit which had cost him yearly not less than 30,000l.; and having done that, he feigned to be shocked at his equally embarrassed brother, York, remaining on the turf. He added, that if his request were not acceded to, he should shut up Carlton House, go abroad, and live upon 10,000l. a year. It was very properly suggested to him that he would do much better, if the Queen’s wishes and his own could not be carried out, by staying in England and showing the people that he could adapt his circumstances to his revenue. This was a course, however, which he had never seriously determined to follow. He was made up of contradictions; and although he was at this period more than ever attached to Mrs. Fitzherbert, it did not prevent him from maintaining the well-known actress, Mrs. Crouch, in the post of ‘favourite.’ Mrs. Fitzherbert met this course by ridiculing it, and by coquetting on her side. This hurt the Prince’s vanity, and brought him again under her influence. What his homage was worth may be judged of by the fact that it was paid to many deities, and while he was maintaining Mrs. Crouch, forgetting poor Perdita Robinson, making love to the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire (who was separated from her husband, but did not on that account in the slightest degree regard the Prince), he had also opened an intercourse with Lady Jersey, who was not half such a prude as the Duchess, and who was the most shameless of those to whom the heartless Prince had pretended to surrender his heart. With many loves, or what were called such, Mrs. Fitzherbert continued the married sultana. He built for her a residence at Brighton, where she kept up the establishment of a queen—really looked like one, for she was a superb woman—had as brilliant diamonds as Queen Charlotte herself, and was greeted by all the bathing women with the respectful appellation of ‘Mrs. Prince.’

But the Queen had soon to deplore another mésalliance. Her son Prince Augustus (Sussex), when travelling in Italy, had become attached to the Lady Augusta Murray, daughter of the Earl of Dunmore; and, after a courtship during which the Prince wrote love-letters to the lady that, with respect to style were neither sublime nor beautiful, and with regard to grammar were calculated to make Lindley Murray die of despair, the parties were married privately by an English clergyman, and were re-married, at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on their return to England. Of this union two children were born, of whom the daughter (once known as Mademoiselle d’Este) became the wife of Lord Truro, who, when Mr. Serjeant Wilde, endeavoured to establish the validity of her father’s marriage, and acquired the lady’s hand by way of honorarium. The moment the marriage of the Duke with Lady Augusta Murray was first declared invalid by the ecclesiastical court, Lady Augusta separated from her husband. The latter appears to have borne the separation very philosophically, but he did not marry again during Lady Augusta’s life. In his later days, when his brother, William IV., was King, he married the lady who long survived him under the title of Duchess of Inverness. But a marriage of more importance remains to be noticed.