Since the death of Walpole, a portion of his political Memoires, comprising the History of the last ten years of the Reign of George the Second, has been published, and has made a very remarkable addition to the historical information of that period. At the same time it must be allowed, that this work has not entirely fulfilled the expectation which the public had formed of it. Though full of curious and interesting details; it can hardly be said to form a very interesting whole; while in no other of the publications of the author do his prejudices and aversions appear in so strong and unreasonable a light. His satire also, and we might even call it by the stronger name of abuse, is too general, and thereby loses its effect. Many of the characters are probably not too severely drawn; but some evidently are, and this circumstance shakes our faith in the rest. We must, however, remember that the age he describes was one of peculiar corruption; and when the virtue and character of public men were, perhaps, at a lower ebb than at any other period since the days of Charles the Second. The admirably graphic style of Walpole, in describing particular scenes and moments, shines forth in many parts of the Memoires: and this, joined to his having been an actor in many of the circumstances he relates and a near spectator of all, must ever render his book one of extreme value to the politician and the historian.
But, the posthumous works of Walpole, upon which his lasting fame with posterity will probably rest, are his "incomparable LETTERS." (46) Of these, a considerable portion was published in the quarto edition of his works in 1798: since which period two quarto volumes, containing his letters to George Montagu, Esq. and the Rev. William Cole; and another, containing those to Lord Hertford and the Rev. Henry Zouch, have been given to the world; and the present publication of his correspondence with Sir Horace Mann completes the series, which extends from the year 1735 to the commencement of 1797, within six weeks of his death-a period of no less than fifty-seven years.
A friend of Mr. Walpole's has observed, that "his epistolary talents have shown our language to be capable of all the grace and all the charms of the French of Madame de S`evign`e;" (47) and the remark is a true one, for he is undoubtedly the author who first proved the aptitude of our language for that light and gay epistolary style, which was before supposed peculiarly to belong to our Gallic neighbours. There may be letters of a higher order in our literature than those of Walpole. Gray's letters, and perhaps Cowper's, may be taken as instances of this; but where shall we find such an union of taste, humour, and almost dramatic power of description and narrative, as in the correspondence of Walpole? Where such happy touches upon the manners and characters of the time? Where can we find such graphic scenes, as the funeral of George the Second; as the party to Vauxhall with Lady Harrington; as the ball at Miss Chudleigh's, in the letters already published; or as some of the House of Commons' debates and many of the anecdotes of society in those now offered to the world? Walpole's style in letter-writing is occasionally quaint, and sometimes a little laboured; but for the most part he has contrived to throw into it a great appearance of ease, as if he wrote rapidly and without premeditation. This, however, was by no means the case, as he took great pains with his letters, and even collected, and wrote down beforehand, anecdotes, with a view to their subsequent insertion. Some of these stores have been discovered among the papers at Strawberry Hill. The account of the letters of Walpole leads naturally to some mention of his friends, to whom they were addressed. These were, Gray the poet, Marshal Conway, his elder brother, Lord Hertford, George Montagu, Esq., the Rev. William Cole, Lord Strafford, Richard Bentley, Esq., John Chute, Esq., Sir Horace Mann, Lady Hervey, and in after-life, Mrs. Hannah More, Mrs. Damer, and the two Miss Berrys. His correspondence with the three latter ladies has never been published; but his regard for them, and intimacy with them, are known to have been very great. Towards Mrs. Damer, the only child of the friend of his heart, Marshal Conway, he had an hereditary feeling of affection; and to her he bequeathed Strawberry Hill. To the Miss Berrys he left, in conjunction with their father, the greater part of his papers, and the charge of collecting and publishing his works, a task which they performed with great care and judgment. To these friends must be added the name of Richard West, Esq., a young man of great promise, (only son of Richard West, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, by the daughter of Bishop Burnet,) who died in 1742, at the premature age of twenty-six.
Gray had been a school friend of Walpole, as has been before mentioned, they travelled together, and quarrelled during the Journey. Walter Scott suggests as a reason for their differences, "that the youthful vivacity, and perhaps aristocratic assumption, of Walpole, did not agree with the somewhat formal opinions and habits of the professed man of letters." (48) This conjecture may very possibly be the correct one; but we have no clue to guide us with certainty to the causes of their rupture. In after-life they were reconciled, though the intimacy of early friendship never appears to have been restored between them. (49) Scott says of Walpole, that , his temper was precarious;" and we may, perhaps, affirm the same of Gray. At all events, they were persons of such different characters, that their not agreeing could not be surprising. What could be more opposite than "the self-sequestered, melancholy Gray," and the eager, volatile Walpole, of whom Lady Townshend said, when some one talked of his good spirits, "Oh, Mr. Walpole is spirits of hartshorn." When Mason was writing the life of Gray, Walpole bade him throw the whole blame of the quarrel upon him. This might be mere magnanimity, as Gray was then dead; what makes one most inclined to think it was the truth, is the fact, that Gray was not the only intimate friend of Walpole with whom he quarrelled. He did so with Bentley, for which the eccentric conduct of that man of talent might perhaps account. But what shall we say to his quarrel with the good-humoured, laughing George Montagu, with whom for the last years of the life of the latter, he held no intercourse? It is true, that in a letter to Mr. Cole, Walpole lays the blame upon Montagu, and says, "he was become such an humourist;" but it must be remembered that we do not know Montagu's version of the story; and that undoubtedly three quarrels with three intimate friends rather support the charge, brought by Scott against Walpole, of his having "a precarious temper."
The friendship, however, which does honour both to the head and heart of Horace Walpole, was that which he bore to Marshal Conway; a man who, accordant to all the accounts of him that have come down to us, was so truly worthy of inspiring such a degree of affection. Burke's panegyric (50)upon his public character and conduct is well-known; while the Editor of Lord Orford's Works thus most justly eulogizes his private life. "It is only those who have had the opportunity of penetrating into the most secret motives of his public conduct and the inmost recesses of his private life, that can do real justice to the unsullied purity of his character-who saw and knew him in the evening of his days, retired from the honourable activity of a soldier and a statesman, to the calm enjoyments of private life, happy in the resources of his own mind, and in the cultivation of useful science, in the bosom of domestic peace-unenriched by pensions or places, undistinguished by titles or ribands, unsophisticated by public life, and unwearied by retirement." The offer of Walpole to share his fortune with Conway, when the latter was dismissed from his places, an offer so creditable to both parties, has been already mentioned; and if we wish to have a just idea of the esteem in which Marshal Conway was held by his contemporaries, it is only necessary to mention, that upon the same occasion, similar offers were pressed upon him by his brother Lord Hertford, and by the Duke of Devonshire, without any concert between them.
The rest of' Walpole's friends and correspondents it is hardly necessary to dwell upon; they are many of them already well known to the public from various causes. it may, however, be permitted to observe, that, they were, for the most part, persons distinguished either by their taste in the fine arts, their love of antiquities, their literary attainments, or their conversational talents. To the friends already mentioned, but with whom Walpole did not habitually correspond, must be added, Mason the poet, George Selwyn, Richard second Lord Edgecumbe, George James Williams, Esq. Lady Suffolk, and Mrs. Clive the actress.
With the Marquise du Deffand, the old, blind, but clever leader of French society, he became acquainted at Paris late in her life. Her devotion for him appears to have been very great, and is sometimes expressed in her letters with a warmth and tenderness, which Walpole, who was most sensitive of ridicule, thought so absurd in a person of her years and infirmities, that he frequently reproves her very harshly for it; so much so, as to give him the appearance of a want of kindly feeling towards her, which his general conduct to her, and the regrets he expressed on her death, do not warrant us in accusing him of. (51)
In concluding the literary part of the character of Walpole, it is natural to allude to the transactions which took place between him and the unfortunate Chatterton; a text upon which so much calumny and misrepresentation have been embroidered. The periodicals of the day, and the tribe of those "who daily scribble for their daily bread," and for whom Walpole had, perhaps unwisely, frequently expressed his contempt, attacked him bitterly for his inhumanity to genius, and even accused him as the author of the subsequent misfortunes and untimely death of that misguided son of genius; nay, even the author of "The Pursuits of Literature," who wrote many years after the transaction had taken place, and who ought to have known better, gave in to the prevailing topic of abuse. (52) It therefore becomes necessary to state shortly what really took place upon this occasion, a task which is rendered easier by the clear view of the transaction taken both by Walter Scott in his "Lives of the Novelists," and by Chalmers in his "Biographical Dictionary," which is also fully borne out by the narrative drawn up by Walpole himself, and accompanied by the correspondence.
it appears then, that in March 1769, Walpole-received a letter from Chatterton, enclosing a few specimens of the pretended poems of Rowley, and announcing his discovery of a series of ancient painters at Bristol. To this communication Walpole, naturally enough, returned a very civil answer. Shortly afterwards, doubts arose in his mind as to the authenticity of the poems; these were confirmed by the opinions of some friends, to whom he showed them; and he then wrote an expression of these doubts to Chatterton. This appears to have excited the anger of Chatterton, who, after one or two short notes, wrote Walpole a very impertinent one, in which he redemanded his manuscripts. This last letter Walpole had intended to have answered with some sharpness; but did not do so. He only returned the specimens on the 4th of August 1769; and this concluded the intercourse between them, and as Walpole observes, "I never saw him then, before, or since." Subsequently to this transaction, Chatterton acquired other patrons more credulous than Walpole, and proceeded with his forgeries. In April 1770 he came to London, and committed suicide in August of that year; a fate which befell him, it is to be feared, more in consequence of his own dissolute and profligate habits, than from any want of patronage. However this may be, Walpole clearly had nothing to say to it.
In addition to the accusation of crushing, instead of fostering his genius, Walpole has also been charged with cruelty in not assisting him with money. Upon this, he very truly says himself, "Chatterton was neither indigent nor distressed, at the time of his correspondence with me. He was maintained by his mother and lived with a lawyer. His only pleas to my assistance were, disgust to his profession, inclination to poetry, and communication of some suspicious MSS. His distress was the consequence of quitting his master, and coming to London, and of his other extravagances. He had depended on the impulse of the talents he felt for making impression, and lifting him to wealth, honours, and faine. I have already said, that I should have been blamable to his mother and society, if I had seduced an apprentice from his master to marry him to the nine Muses;' and I should have encouraged a propensity to forgery, which is not the talent most wanting culture in the present age." (53) Such and so unimportant was the transaction with Chatterton, which brought so much obloquy on Walpole, and seems really to have given him at different times great annoyance.
There remains but little more to relate in the life of Walpole. His old age glided on peacefully, and, with the exception of his severe sufferings from the gout, apparently contentedly, in the pursuit of his favourite studies and employments. In the year 1791, he succeeded his unhappy nephew, George, third Earl of Orford, who had at different periods of his life been insane, in the family estate and the earldom. The accession of this latter dignity seems rather to have annoyed him than otherwise. He never took his seat in the House of Lords, and his unwillingness to adopt his title was shown in his endeavours to avoid making use of it in his signature. He not unfrequently signed himself, "The Uncle of the late Earl of Orford." (54)
He retained his faculties to the last, but his limbs became helpless from his frequent attacks of gout: as he himself expresses it,
"Fortune, who scatters her gifts out of season,
Though unkind to my limbs, has yet left me my reason." (55)
As a friend of his, who only knew him in the last years of his life, speaks of "his conversation as singularly brilliant as it was original," (56) we may conclude his liveliness never deserted him; that his talent for letter-writing did not, we have a proof in a letter written only six weeks before his death, in which, with all his accustomed grace of manner he entreats a lady of his acquaintance not to show "the idle notes of her ancient servant."-Lord Orford died in the eightieth year `of his life, at his house in Berkeley Square, on the 2d of March 1797, and was buried with his family in the church at Houghton and with him concluded the male line of the descendants of Sir Robert Walpole.
(20) Originally prefixed to his lordship's edition of Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann, first published in 1833.
(21) In a MS. note by Walpole, in his own copy of collins's Peerage, it is stated, that Sir Robert Walpole had, by his first wife, "another son, William, who died young, and a daughter, Catherine, who died of a consumption at Bath, aged nineteen."-E.
(22) The occasion of the death of sir John Shorter was a curious one. It is thus related in the Ellis Correspondence:-"Sir John Shorter, the present Lord Mayor. is very ill with a fall off his horse, under Newgate, as he was going to proclaim Bartholomew Fair. The city custom is, it seems, to drink always under Newgate when the Lord Mayor passes that way; and at this time the Lord Mayor's horse, being somewhat skittish,-started at the sight of the large glittering tankard which was reached to his lordship." Letter of Aug. 30th, 1688.
"On Tuesday last died the Lord Mayor, Sir John Shorter: the occasion of his distemper was his fall under Newgate, which bruised him a little, and put him into a fever." Letter of September 6th, 1688.
(23 )birthdate) In Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary it is stated, that Horace Walpole was born in 1718; and Sir Walter Scott says he was born in 1716-17, which, according to the New Style, would mean that he was born in one of the three first months of the year 1717. Both these statements are, however, erroneous, as he himself fixes the day of his birth, in a letter to Mr. Conway, dated October 5th, 1764, where he says "What signifies what happens when one is seven-and-forty, as I am to-day? They tell me 'tis my birthday," And again, in a letter to the same correspondent, dated October 5th, 1777, he says, "I am three-score to-day."
(24) The exact cause of this quarrel," says Mr. Mitford, in his Life of Gray, " has been passed over by the delicacy of his biographer, because Horace Walpole was alive when the Memoirs of Gray were written. The former, however, charged himself with the chief blame, and lamented that he had not paid more attention and deference to Gray's superior judgment and prudence." See Works of Gray, vol. i. p. 9, Pickering's edition 1836. In the "Walpolianae" is the following passage:-"The quarrel between Gray and me arose from his being too serious a companion. I had just broke loose from the restraints of the University with as much money as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself. Gray was for antiquities, etc. while I was for perpetual balls and plays: the fault was mine."-E.
(25) Sir Walter Scott says that Walpole, on one occasion, " vindicated the memory of his father with great dignity and eloquence" in the House of Commons; but, as I cannot find any trace of a speech of this kind made by him after Sir Robert Walpole's death, I am inclined to think Sir Walter must have made a mistake as to the time of delivery of the speech mentioned in the text. [Secker, at that time Bishop of Oxford, says that Walpole "spoke well against the motion." See post, letter to Sir Horace Mann, dated March 24, 1742.
(26) Sir Walter Scott is in error when he says that Walpole retired from the House of Commons in 1758, "at the active age of forty-one." This event occurred, as is here stated, in March, 1768, and when Walpole was consequently in his fifty-first year.
(27) Letter, dated Arlington Street, March 12th, 1768. It is but fair to mention, in opposition to the opinion respecting George Grenville, here delivered by Walpole, that of no less an authority than Burke, who says, "Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country,"
(28) He had also offered to share his fortune with Mr. Conway in the year 1744 (see letter of July 20th of that year), in order to enable Mr. Conway to marry a lady he was then in love with. He ends his very pressing entreaties by saying, "For these reasons, don't deny me what I have set my Heart on-the making your fortune easy to you." Nor were these the only instances of generosity to a friend, which we find in the life of Walpole. In the year 1770, when the Abb`e Terrai was administering the finances of France, (or, to use the more expressive language of Voltaire, "Quand Terrai nous mangeait,") his economical reductions occasioned the loss of a portion of her pension, amounting to three thousand livres, to Madame du Deffand. Upon this occasion Walpole wrote thus to his old blind friend, who had presented a memorial of her case to M. de St. Florentin, a course of proceeding which Walpole did not approve of:-"Ayez assez d'amiti`e pour moi pour accepter les trois mille livres de ma part. Je voudrais que la somme ne me f`ut pas aussi indiferente qu'elle l'est, mais je vous jure qu'elle ne retranchera rien, pas m`eme sur mes amusemens. La prendriez vous de la main de la grandeur, et la refuseriez vous de moi? Vous me connaissez: faites ce sacrifice `a mon orgueil, qui serait enchants de vous avoir emp`ech`ee de vous abaisser jusqu'`a la sollicitation. Votre m`emoire me blesse. Quoi! vous, vous, r`eduite `a repr`esenter vos malheurs! Accordez moi, je vous conjure, la grace que je vous demande `a genoux, et jouissez de la satisfaction de vous dire, J'ai un ami qui ne permettra jamais que je me jette aux pieds des grands. Ma Petite, j'insiste. Voyez, si vous aimez mieux me faire le plaisir le plus sensible, ou de devoir une grace qui, ayant `et`e sollicit`ee, arrive toujours trop tard pour contanter l'amiti`e. Laissez moi go`uter la joie la plus pure, de vous avoir mise `a votre aise, et que cette joie soit un secret profond entre nous deux." See Letters of the Marquise de Deffand to the Honourable Horace Walpole.-It was impossible to make a pecuniary offer with more earnestness or greater delicacy; and Madame du Deffand's not having found it necessary subsequently to accept it, in no degree diminishes the merit of the proffered gift.
(29) See letter, dated Monday, five o'clock, Feb. 1761.
(30) See letter, dated April 19th, 1764.
(31) See letter to Sir Horace Mann, Feb. 25, 1750.
(32) Catherine Hyde, the eccentric friend of Pope and Gay. She was, at this time, living in a small house in Ham Walks. Walpole, having found her out airing in her Carriage, one day that he had called on her, there addressed the following lines to her:—
'To many a Kitty, Love his car
Would for a day engage;
But Prior's Kitty, ever fair,
Retains it for an age."
(33) Letter of June 8th, 1747.
(34) Lee, in Kent.
(35) Letter of June 5th, 1788.
(36) George James Williams, Esq.
(37) In his vers de soci`et`e we perpetually discover a laborious effort to introduce the lightness of the French badinage into a masculine and somewhat rough language."-Quart. Rev. vol. xix. p. 122.
(38) Lives of the Novelists, Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 304, ed. 1834.
(39) Chalmer's Biographical Dictionary, article Walpole.
(40) "The Mysterious Mother" was printed in that year: but was never published till after the death of Walpole.
(41) Lord Byron, Preface to Mtrino Faliero."
(42) Lives of the Novelists, Sir Walter Scott; Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 313.
(43) Shortly after the appearance of this romance, the following high encomium was passed upon it by Bishop Warburton:-"We have been lately entertained with what I will venture to call a masterpiece in the fable, and a new species likewise. The piece I mean is laid in Gothic chivalry, where a beautiful imagination, supported by strength of judgment, has enabled the author to go beyond his subject, and effect the full purpose of the ancient tragedy; that is, to purge the passions by pity and terror, in colouring as great and harmonious as in any of the best dramatic writers."-E.
(44) Lives of the Novelists; Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 323.
(45) Postscript to "The Mysterious Mother."
(46) Lord Byron.
(47) Social Life in England and France," by Miss Berry.
(48) Lives of the Novelists; Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 301.
(49) "In 1744, the difference between Walpole and Gray was adjusted by the interference of a lady, who wished well to both parties. The lapse of three years had probably been sufficient, in some degree, to soften down, though not entirely obliterate, the remembrance of supposed injustices on both sides; natural kindness of temper had resumed their place, and we find their correspondence again proceeding on friendly and familiar terms." Mitford's Gray, vol. i. p. xxiii; see also vol. ii. p. 174.-E.
(50) Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774.
(51) "Vanity, when it unfortunately gets possession of a wise man's head, is as keenly sensible of ridicule, as it is impassible to its shafts when more appropriately lodged with a fool. Of the sensitiveness arising out of this foible Walpole seems to have had a great deal, and it certainly dictated those hard-hearted reproofs that repelled the warm effusions of friendship with which poor Madame du Deffand (now old and blind) addressed him, and of which he complained with the utmost indignation, merely because, if her letters were opened by a clerk at the post-office, such expressions of kindness might expose him to the ridicule of which he had such undue terror." Quart. Rev. Vol. xix. p. 119.-E.
(52) See "Pursuits of Literature," second Dialogue:-
"The Boy, whom once patricians pens adorn'd,
First meanly flatter'd, then as meanly scorn'd."
Which lines are Stated in a note to allude to Walpole. See also, first Dialogue, where Chatturton is called, "That varlet bright." The note to which passage is "'I am the veriest varlet that ever chew'd,' says Falstaff, in Henry IV. Part 1. Act. 2. Mr. Horace Walpole, now Lord Orford, did not, however, seem to think it necessary that this varlet Chatterton should chew at all. See the Starvation Act, dated at Strawberry Hill."
(53) Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of Chatterton. Works, vol. iv.
(54) The Duke of Bedford has a letter of Walpole's with this signature.
(55) "Epitapilium vivi auctoris."-l 792.
(56) "Social Life in England and France."
REMINISCENCES OF THE COURTS OF GEORGE THE FIRST AND SECOND: WRITTEN IN 1788, FOR THE AMUSEMENT OF MISS MARY AND MISS AGNES BERRY.
Il ne faut point d'esprit pour s'occuper des vieux `ev`enements.-Voltaire.
CHAPTER 1.
Motives to the Undertaking-Precedents-George the First's Reign a
Proem to the History of the Reigning House of Brunswick-The
Reminiscent introduced to that Monarch-His Person and Dress-The
Duchess of Kendal-her Jealousy of Sir Robert Walpole's Credit
with the King-and Intrigues to displace him, and make Bolingbroke
Minister. '
You were both so entertained with the old stories I told you one evening lately, of what I recollected to have seen and heard from my childhood of the courts of King George the First, and of his son the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Second, and of the latter's princess, since Queen Caroline; and you expressed such wishes that I would commit those passages (for they are scarce worthy of the title even of anecdotes) to writing, that, having no greater pleasure than to please you both, nor any more important or laudable occupation, I will begin to satisfy the repetition of your curiosity. But observe, I promise no more than to begin; for I not only cannot answer that I shall have patience to continue, but my memory is still so fresh, or rather so retentive of trifles which first made impression on it, that it is very possible my life (turned of seventy-one) may be exhausted before my stock of remembrances; especially as I am sensible of the garrulity of old age, and of its eagerness of relating whatever it recollects, whether of moment or not. Thus, while I fancy I am complying with you, I may only be indulging myself, and consequently may wander into many digressions for which you will not care a straw, and which may intercept the completion of my design. Patience, therefore young ladies; and if you coin an old gentleman into narratives, you must expect a good deal of alloy. I engage for no method, no regularity, no polish. My narrative will probably resemble siege-pieces, which are struck of any promiscuous metals; and, though they bear the impress of some sovereign's name, only serve to quiet the garrison for the moment, and afterwards are merely hoarded by collectors and virtuosos, who think their series not complete, unless they have even the coins of base metal of every reign. As I date from my nonage, I must have laid up no state secrets. Most of the facts I am going to tell you though new to you and to most of the present age, were known perhaps at the time to my nurse and my tutors. Thus, my stories will have nothing to do with history.
Luckily, there have appeared within these three months two publications, that will serve as precedents for whatever I am going to say: I mean Les Fragments of the Correspondence of the Duchess of Orleans, (57) and those of the M`emoires of the Duc de St. Simon. (58) Nothing more d`ecousu than both: they tell you what they please; or rather, what their editors have pleased to let them tell. In one respect I shall be less satisfactory. They knew and were well acquainted, or thought they were, with their personages. I did not at ten years old, penetrate characters; and as George 1. died at the period where my reminiscence begins, and was rather a good sort of man than a shining king; and as the Duchess of Kendal was no genius, I heard very little of either when he and her power were no more. In fact, the reign of George 1. was little more than the proem to the history of England Under the House of Brunswick. That family was established here by surmounting a rebellion; to which settlement perhaps the phrensy of the South Sea scheme contributed, by diverting the national attention from the game of faction to the delirium of stockjobbing; and even faction was split into fractions by the quarrel between the king and the heir apparent-another interlude, which authorizes me to call the reign of George 1. a proem to the history of the reigning House of Brunswick, so successively agitated by parallel feuds.
Commen`cons.
As my first hero was going off the stage before I ought to have come upon it, it will be necessary to tell you why the said two personages happened to meet just two nights before they were to part for ever; a rencounter that barely enables me to give you a general idea of the former's person and of his mistress's-or, as has been supposed, his wife's.
As I was the youngest by eleven years of Sir Robert Walpole's children by his first wife, and was extremely weak and delicate, as you see me still, though with no constitutional complaint till I had the gout after forty, and as my two sisters were consumptive and died of consumptions, the supposed necessary care of me (and I have overheard persons saying, "That child cannot possibly live") so engrossed the attention of my mother, that compassion and tenderness soon became extreme fondness; and as the infinite good-nature of my father never thwarted any of his children, he suffered me to be too much indulged, and permitted her to gratify the first vehement inclination that I ever expressed, and which, as I have never since felt any enthusiasm for royal persons, I must suppose that the female attendants in the family must have put into my head, to long to see the king. This childish caprice was so strong, that my mother solicited the Duchess of Kendal to obtain for me the honour of kissing his Majesty's hand before he set out for Hanover. A favour so unusual to be asked for a boy of ten years old, was still too slight to be refused to the wife of the first minister for her darling child; yet not being proper to be made a precedent, it was settled to be in private, and at night.
Accordingly, the night but one before the king began his last journey, my mother carried me at ten at night to the apartment of the Countess of Walsingham, (59) on the ground floor, towards the garden at St. James's, which opened into that of her aunt, the Duchess of Kendal's: apartments occupied by George II. after his queen's death, and by his successive mistresses, the Countesses of Suffolk and Yarmouth.
Notice being given that the king was come down to supper, Lady Walsingham took me alone into the duchess's ante-room, where we found alone the king and her. I knelt down, and kissed his hand. He said a few words to me, and my conductress led me back to my mother (60)
The person of the king is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him but yesterday. It was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins; Dot tall; of an aspect rather good than august; with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches of snuff coloured cloth, with stockings Of the same colour, and a blue riband over all. So entirely was he my object that I do not believe I once looked at the duchess; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I remember that just beyond his Majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill-favoured old lady but I did not retain the least idea of her features, nor know what the colour of her dress was.
My childish loyalty, and the condescension in gratifying it, were, I suppose, causes that contributed, very soon afterwards, to make me shed a flood of tears for that sovereign's death, when, with the other scholars at Eton college, I walked in procession to the proclamation of the successor; and which (though I think they partly felt because I imagined it became the son of a prime-minister to be more concerned than other boys) were no doubt imputed by many of the spectators who were politicians, to fears of my father's most probable fall, but of which I had not the smallest conception, nor should have met with any more concern than I did when it really arrived, in the year 1742; by which time I had lost all taste for courts and princes and power, as was natural to one who never felt an ambitious thought for himself.
It must not be inferred from her obtaining this grace for me, that the Duchess of Kendal was a friend to my father; on the contrary, at that moment she had been labouring to displace him, and introduce Lord Bolingbroke (61) into the administration; on which I shall say more hereafter.
It was an instance of Sir Robert's singular fortune, or evidence of his talents, that he not only preserved his power under two successive monarchs, but in spite of the efforts of both their mistresses (62) to remove him. It was perhaps still more remarkable, and an instance unparalleled, that Sir Robert governed George the First in Latin, the King not speaking English, (63) and his minister no German, nor even French. (64) It was much talked of, that Sir Robert, detecting one of the Hanoverian ministers in some trick or falsehood before the King'S face, had the firmness to say to the German, "Mentiris, impudentissime!" The good-humoured monarch only laughed, as he often did when Sir Robert complained to him of his Hanoverians selling places, nor would be persuaded that it was not the practice of the English court; and which an incident must have planted in his mind with no favourable impression of English disinterestedness. "This is a strange country!" said his Majesty; "the first morning after my arrival at St. James's, I looked out of the window, and saw a park with walks, a canal, etc. which they told me were mine. The next day, Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my park, sent me a fine brace of carp out of my canal; and I was told I must give five guineas to Lord Chetwynd's servant for bringing me my own carp out of my own canal in my own park!" I have said, that the Duchess of Kendal was no friend of Sir Robert, and wished to make Lord Bolingbroke minister in his room. I was too young to know any thing of that reign, nor was acquainted with the political cabals of the court, which, however, I might have learnt from my father in the three years after his retirement; but being too thoughtless at that time, nor having your laudable curiosity, I neglected to inform myself of many passages and circumstances, of which I have often since regretted my faulty ignorance.
By what I can at present recollect, the Duchess seems to have been jealous of Sir Robert's credit with the King, which he had acquired, not by paying court, but by his superior abilities in the House of Commons, and by his knowledge in finance, of which Lord Sunderland and Craggs had betrayed their ignorance in countennancing the South Sea scheme; and who, though more agreeable to the King, had been forced to give way to Walpole, as the only man capable of repairing that mischief. The Duchess, too, might be alarmed at his attachment to the Princess of Wales; from whom, in case of the King's death, her grace could expect no favour. Of her jealousy I do know the following instance; Queen Anne had bestowed the rangership of Richmond New Park on her relations the Hydes for three lives, one of which was expired. King George, fond of shooting, bought out the term of the last Earl of Clarendon, and of his son Lord Cornbury, and frequently shot there; having appointed my eldest brother, Lord Walpole, ranger nominally, but my father in reality, wished to hunt there once or twice a week. The park had run to great decay under the Hydes, nor was there any mansion (65) better than the common lodges of the keepers. The King ordered a stone lodge designed by Henry, Earl of Pembroke, to be erected for himself, but merely as a banqueting-house, (66) with a large eating-room, kitchen, and necessary offices, where he might dine after his sport. Sir Robert began another of brick for himself, and the under-ranger, which by degrees, he much enlarged; usually retiring thither from business, or rather, as he said himself, to do more business than he could in town, on Saturdays and Sundays. On that edifice, on the thatched-house, and other improvements, he laid out fourteen thousand pounds of his own money. In the meantime, he hired a small house for himself on the hill without the park; and in that small tenement the King did him the honour of dining with him more than once after shooting. His Majesty, fond of private joviality, (67) was pleased with punch after dinner, and indulged in it freely. The Duchess, alarmed at the advantage the minister might make of the openness of the King's heart in those convivial, unguarded hours, and at a crisis when she was conscious Sir Robert was apprised of her inimical machinations in favour of Lord Bolingbroke, enjoined the few Germans who accompanied the King at those dinners to prevent his Majesty from drinking too freely. Her spies obeyed too punctually, and without any address. The King was offended, and silenced the tools by the coarsest epithets in the German language. He even, before his departure, ordered Sir Robert to have the stone lodge finished against his return: no symptom of a falling minister, as has since been supposed Sir Robert then was, and that Lord Bolingbroke was to have replaced him, had the King lived to come back. But my presumption to the contrary is more strongly corroborated by what had recently passed: the Duchess had actually prevailed on the King to see Bolingbroke secretly in his closet. That intriguing Proteus, aware that he might not obtain an audience long enough to efface former prejudices, and make sufficient impression on the King against Sir Robert, and in his own favour, went provided with a memorial, which he left in the closet. and begged his Majesty to peruse coolly at his leisure. The King kept the paper, but no longer than till he saw Sir Robert, to whom he delivered the poisoned remonstrance. If that communication prognosticated the minister's fall, I am at a loss to know what a mark of confidence is.
Nor was that discovery the first intimation that Walpole had received of the measure of Bolingbroke's gratitude. The minister, against the earnest representations of his family and Most intimate friends, had consented to the recall of that incendiary from banishment, (68) excepting only his readmission into the House of Lords, that every field of annoyance might not be open to his mischievous turbulence. Bolingbroke, it seems, deemed an embargo laid on his tongue would warrant his hand to launch every envenomed shaft against his benefactor, who by restricting had paid him the compliment of avowing that his eloquence was not totally inoffensive. Craftsmen, pamphlet, libels, combinations, were showered on or employed for years against the prime-minister, without shaking his power or ruffling his temper; and Bolingbroke had the mortification of finding his rival had abilities to maintain his influence against the mistresses of two kings, with whom his antagonist had plotted in vain to overturn him. (69)
(57) Charlotte Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector of Bavaria. In 1671 she became the second wife (his first being poisoned) of the brother of Louis XIV. by whom she was the mother of the regent, Duke of Orleans. She died in 1722. A collection of her letters, addressed to Prince Ulric of Brunswick, and to the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, was published at Paris in 1788.-E.
(58) These celebrated M`emoires of the Court of Louis XIV. were first published, in a mutilated state, in 1788. A complete edition, in thirteen volumes, appeared in 1791.-E.
(59) Melusina Schulemberg, niece of the Duchess of Kendal, created Countess of Walsingham and -,afterwards married to the famous Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield.
(60) The following is the account of this introduction given in "Walpoliana:"-"I do remember something of George the First. My father took me to St. James's while I was a very little boy; after waiting some time in an anteroom, a gentleman came in all dressed in brown, even his stockings, and with a riband and star. He took me up in his arms, kissed me, and chatted some time,"-E.
(61) The well-known Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, secretary of state to Queen Anne; on whose death he fled, and was attainted. ["We have the authority of Sir Robert Walpole himself," says Coxe, "that the restoration of Lord Bolingbroke was the work of the Duchess of Kendal. He gained the duchess by a present of eleven thousand pounds, and obtained a promise to use her influence over the King, for the purpose of forwarding his complete restoration."]
(62) The Duchess of Kendal and Lady Suffolk.
(63) Sir Robert was frequently heard to say, that during the reign of the first George, he governed the kingdom by means of bad Latin: it is a matter of wonder that, under such disadvantages. the King should take pleasure in transacting business with him: a circumstance which was principally owing to the method and perspicuity of his calculations, and to the extreme facility with which he arranged and explained the most abstruse and difficult combinations of finance." Coxe.-E.
(64) Prince William, afterwards Duke of Cumberland, then a child, being carried to big grandfather on his birthday, the King asked him at what hour he rose. The Prince replied, "when the chimney-sweepers went about." "Vat is de chimney-sweeper?" said the King. "Have you been so long in England," said the boy, "and do not know what a chimney-sweeper is? Why, they are like that man there;" pointing to Lord Finch, afterwards Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham, of a family uncommonly swarthy and dark-"the black funereal Finches"-Sir Charles Williams's Ode to a Number of Great Men, 1742.
(65) The Earl of Rochester, who succeeded to the title of Clarendon on the extinction of the elder branch, had a villa close without the park; but it had been burnt down, and only one wing was left. W. Stanhope, Earl of Harrington, purchased the ruins, and built the house, since bought by Lord Camelford.
(66) It was afterwards enlarged by Princess Amelia; to whom her rather, George II. had granted the reversion of the rangership after Lord Walpole. Her Royal Highness sold it to George III. for a pension on Ireland of twelve hundred pounds a-year, and his Majesty appointed Lord Bute ranger for life.
(67) The King Hated the parade of royalty. When he went to the opera, it was in no state; nor did he sit in the stage-box, nor forwards, but behind the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Walsingham, in the second box, now allotted to the maids of honour.
(68) Bolingbroke at his return could not avoid waiting on Sir Robert to thank him, and was Invited to dine with him at Chelsea; but whether tortured at witnessing Walpole's serene frankness and felicity, or suffocated with indignation and confusion at being forced to be obliged to one whom be hated and envied, the first morsel he put into his mouth was near choking him, and he was reduced to rise from table and leave the room for some minutes. I never heard of their meeting more.
(69) George II. parted with Lady Suffolk, on Princess Amelia informing Queen Caroline from Bath, that the mistress had interviews there with Lord Bolingbroke. Lady Suffolk, above twenty years after, protested to me that she had not once seen his lordship there; and I should believe she did not, for she was a woman of truth: but her great intimacy and connexion with Pope and Swift, the intimate friends of Bolingbroke, even before the death of George I. and her being the channel through whom that faction had flattered themselves they should gain the ear of the new King, can leave no doubt of Lady Suffolk's support of that party. Her dearest friend to her death was William, afterwards Lord Chetwynd, the known and most trusted confidant of Lord Bolingbroke. Of those political intrigues I shall say more in these Reminiscences.
CHAPTER II
Marriage of George the First, while Electoral Prince, to the
Princess Sophia Dorothea-Assassination of Count
Konigsmark-Separation from the Princess-Left-handed
Espousal-Piety of the Duchess of Kendal-Confinement and Death of
Sophia Dorothea in the Castle of Alden-French Prophetess-The
King's Superstition-Mademoiselle Schulemberg—Royal
Inconstancy-Countess of Platen-Anne Brett—Sudden Death of George
the First.
George the First, while Electoral Prince, had married his cousin, the Princess Dorothea (70) only child of the Duke of Zell; a match of convenience to reunite the dominions of the family. Though she was very handsome, the Prince, who was extremely amorous, had several mistresses; which provocation, and his absence in the army of the confederates, probably disposed the Princess to indulge some degree of coquetry. At that moment arrived at Hanover the famous and beautiful Count Konigsmark, (71) the charms of whose person ought not to have obliterated the memory of his vile assassination of Mr. Thynne.(72)His vanity, the beauty of the Electoral Princess, and the neglect under which he found her, encouraged his presumption to make his addresses to her, not covertly; and she, though believed not to have transgressed her duty, did receive them too indiscreetly. The old Elector flamed at the insolence of so stigmatized a pretender, and ordered him to quit his dominions the next day. The Princess, surrounded by women too closely connected with her husband, and consequently enemies of the lady they injured, was persuaded by them to suffer the count to kiss her hand before his abrupt departure and he was actually introduced by them into her bedchamber the next morning before she rose. From that moment he disappeared nor was it known what became of him, till on the death of George I., on his son the new King's first journey to Hanover, some alterations in the palace being ordered by him, the body of Konigsmark was discovered under the floor of the Electoral Princess's dressing-room-the Count having probably been strangled there the instant he left her, and his body secreted. The discovery was hushed up; George II. entrusted the secret to his wife, Queen Caroline, who told it to my father: but the King was too tender of the honour of his mother to utter it to his mistress; nor did Lady Suffolk ever hear of it, till I informed her of it several years afterwards. The disappearance of the Count made his murder suspected, and various reports of the discovery of his body have of late years been spread, but not with the authentic circumstances. The second George loved his mother as much as he hated his father, and purposed, as was said, had the former survived, to have brought her over and declared her Queen Dowager. (73) Lady Suffolk has told me her surprise, on going to the new Queen the morning after the news arrived of the death of George I., at seeing hung up in the Queen's dressing-room a whole length of a lady in royal robes; and in the bedchamber a half length of the same person, neither of which Lady Suffolk had ever seen before. The Prince had kept them concealed, not daring to produce them during the life of his father. The whole length he probably sent to Hanover: (74) the half length I have frequently and frequently seen in the library of Princess Amelia, who told me it was the portrait of her grandmother. she bequeathed it, with other pictures of her family, to her nephew, the Landgrave of Hesse.
Of the circumstances that ensued on Konigsmark's disappearance I am ignorant; nor am I acquainted with the laws of Germany relative to divorce or separation: nor do I know or suppose that despotism and pride allow the law to insist on much formality when a sovereign has reason or mind to get rid of his wife. Perhaps too much difficulty of untying the Gordian not of matrimony thrown in the way of an absolute prince would be no kindness to the ladies, but might prompt him to use a sharper weapon, like that butchering husband, our Henry VIII. Sovereigns, who narrow or let out the law of God according to their prejudices and passions, mould their own laws no doubt to the standard of their convenience. Genealogic purity of blood is the predominant folly of Germany; and the code of Malta seems to have more force in the empire than the ten commandments. Thence was introduced that most absurd evasion of the indissolubility of marriage, espousals with the left hand-as if the Almighty had restrained his ordinance to one half of a man's person, and allowed a greater latitude to his left side than to his right, or pronounced the former more ignoble than the latter. The consciences both of princely and noble persons in Germany are quieted, if the more plebeian side is married to one who would degrade the more illustrious moiety-but, as if the laws of matrimony had no reference to the children to be thence propagated, the children of a left-handed alliance are not entitled to inherit. Shocking consequence of a senseless equivocation, that only satisfies pride, not justice; and calculated for an acquittal at the herald's Office, not at the last tribunal.
Separated the Princess Dorothea certainly was, and never admitted even to the nominal honours of her rank, being thenceforward always styled Duchess of Halle. Whether divorced (75) is problematic, at least to me; nor can I pronounce, as, though it was generally believed, I am not certain that George espoused the Duchess of Kendal with his left hand. As the Princess Dorothea died only some months before him, that ridiculous ceremony was scarcely deferred till then; and the extreme outward devotion of the Duchess, who every Sunday went seven times to Lutheran chapels, seemed to announce a realized wife. As the genuine wife was always detained in her husband's power, he seems not to have wholly dissolved their union; for, on the approach of the French army towards Hanover, during Queen Anne's reign, the Duchess of Halle was sent home to her father and mother, who doted on their only child, and did retain her for a whole year, and did implore, though in vain that she might continue to reside with them. As her son too, George II., had thoughts of bringing her over and declaring her Queen Dowager, one can hardly believe that a ceremonial divorce had passed, the existence of which process would have glared in the face of her royalty. But though German casuistry might allow her husband to take another wife with his left hand, because his legal wife had suffered her right hand to be kissed in bed by a gallant, even Westphalian or Aulic counsellors could not have pronounced that such a momentary adieu constituted adultery; and therefore of a formal divorce I must doubt-and there I must leave that case of conscience undecided, till future search into the Hanoverian chancery shall clear up a point of little real importance.
I have said that the disgraced Princess died but a short time before the King. (76) It is known that in Queen Anne's time there was much noise about French prophets. A female of that vocation (for we know from Scripture that the gift of prophecy is not limited to one gender) warned George I. to take care of his wife, as he would not survive her a year. That oracle was probably dictated to the French Deborah by the Duke and Duchess of Zell, 'who might be apprehensive lest the' Duchess of Kendal should be tempted to remove entirely the obstacle to her conscientious union with their son-in-law. Most Germans are superstitious, even such as have few other impressions of religion. George gave such credit to the denunciation, that on the eve of his last departure he took leave of his son and the Princess of Wales with tears, telling them he should never see them more. It was certainly his own approaching fate that melted him, not the thought of quitting for ever two persons he hated. He did sometimes so much justice to his son as to say, "Il est fougueux, mais il a de l'honneur."-For Queen Caroline, to his confidants he termed her "cette diablesse Madame la Princesse."
I do not know whether it was about the same period, that in a tender mood he promised the Duchess of Kendal, that if she survived him, and it were possible for the departed to return to this world, he would make her a visit. The Duchess, on his death, so much expected the accomplishment of that engagement, that a large raven, or some black fowl, flying into one of the windows of her villa at Isteworth, she was persuaded it was the soul of her departed monarch so accoutred, and received and treated it with all the respect and tenderness of duty, till the royal bird or she took their last flight.
George II., no more addicted than his father to too much religious credulity, had yet implicit faith in the German notion of vampires, and has more than once been angry with my father for speaking irreverently of those imaginary bloodsuckers.
the Duchess of Kendal, of whom I have said so much, was when Mademoiselle Schulemberg, maid of honour to the Electress Sophia, mother of King George I. and destined by King William and the Act of Settlement to succeed Queen Anne. George fell in love with Mademoiselle Schulemberg, though by no means an inviting object-so little, that one evening when she was in waiting behind the Electress's chair at a ball, the Princess Sophia, who had made herself mistress of the language of her future subjects, said in English to Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, then at her court, "Look at that mawkin, and think of her being my son's passion!" Mrs. Howard, who told me the story, protested that she was terrified, forgetting that Mademoiselle Schulemberg did not understand English.
The younger Mademoiselle Schulemberg, who came over with her and was created Countess Walsingham, passed for her niece; but was so like to the King that it is not very credible that the Duchess, who had affected to pass for cruel, had waited for the left-handed marriage.
The Duchess under whatever denomination, had attained and preserved to the last her ascendant over the king: but notwithstanding that influence, he was not more constant to her than he had been to his avowed wife; for another acknowledged mistress, whom he also brought over, was Madame Kilmansegge, Countess of Platen, who was created Countess of Darlington, and by whom he was indisputably father of Charlotte, married to Lord Viscount Howe, and mother of the present earl. (77) Lady Howe was never publicly acknowledged as the Kings daughter; but Princess Amelia, (78) treated her daughter, Mrs. Howe, (79) upon that foot, and one evening, when I was present, gave her a ring, with a small portrait of George I, with a crown of diamonds.
Lady Darlington, whom I saw at my mother's in my infancy, and whom I remember by being terrified at her enormous figure, was as corpulent and ample as the Duchess was long and emaciated. Two fierce black eyes, large and rolling beneath two lofty arched eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays 80) no wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress, and that the mob of London were highly diverted at the importation of so uncommon a seraglio! They were food from all the venom of the Jacobites; and, indeed nothing could be grosser than the ribaldry that was vomited out in lampoons, libels, and every channel of abuse, against the sovereign and the new court, and chaunted even in their hearing about the public streets. (81)
On the other hand, it was not till the last year or two of his reign that their foreign sovereign paid the nation the compliment of taking openly an English mistress. That personage was Anne Brett, eldest daughter by her second husband, (82) of the repudiated wife of the Earl Of Macclesfield, the unnatural mother of Savage the poet. Miss Brett was very handsome, but dark enough by her eyes, complexion, and hair, for a Spanish beauty. Abishag was lodged in the palace under the eyes of Bathsheba, who seemed to maintain her power, as other favourite sultanas have done, by suffering partners in the sovereign's affections. When his Majesty should return to England, a countess's coronet was to have rewarded the young lady's compliance, and marked her secondary rank. She might, however, have proved a troublesome rival, as she seemed SO confident of the power of her charms, that whatever predominant ascendant the Duchess might retain, her own authority in the palace she thought was to yield to no one else. George I., when his son the Prince of Wales and the Princess had quitted St. James's on their quarrel with him, had kept back their three eldest daughters, who lived with him to his death, even after there had outwardly been a reconciliation between the King and Prince. Miss Brett, when the King set out, ordered a door to be broken out of her apartment into the royal garden. Anne, the eldest of the Princesses, offended at that freedom, and not choosing such a companion in her walks, ordered the door to be walled up again. Miss Brett as imperiously reversed that command. The King died suddenly, and the empire of the new mistress and her promised coronet vanished. She afterwards married Sir William Leman, and was forgotten before her reign had transpired beyond the confines of Westminster! (70) Her names were Sophia Dorothea ; but I call her by the latter, to distinguish her from the Princess Sophia, her mother-in-law, on whom the crown of Great Britain was settled. (71) Konigsmark behaved with great intrepidity, and was wounded at a bull-feast in Spain. See Letters from Spain of the Contesse D'Anois, vol. ii. He was brother of the beautiful Comtesse de Konigsmark, mistress of Augustus the Second, King of Poland. (72) It was not this Count Konigsmark, but an elder brother, who was accused of having suborned Colonel Vratz, Lieutenant Stern, and one George Boroskey, to murder Mr. Thynne in Pall-Mall, on the 12th of February, 1682, and for which they were executed in that street on the 10th of March. For the particulars, see Howell's State Trials, vol. ix. p. 1, and Sir John Reresby's Memoirs, p. 135. "This day," says Evelyn, in his Diary of the 10th of March, "was executed Colonel Vrats, for the execrable murder of Mr. Thynne, set on by the principal, Konigsmark: he went to execution like an undaunted hero, as one that had done a friendly office for that base coward, Count Konigsmark, who had hopes to marry his widow, the rich Lady Ogle, and was acquitted by a corrupt jury, and so got away: Vrats told a friend of mine, who accompanied him to the gallows, and gave him some advice, that he did not value dying of a rush, and hoped and believed God would deal with him like a gentleman." Mr. Thynne was buried in Westminster Abbey; the manner of his death being represented on his monument. He was the Issachar of Absalom and Achitophel; in which poem Dryden, describing the respect and favour with which Monmouth was received upon his progress in the year 1691, Says: "Hospitable hearts did most commend Wise Issachar, his wealthy, western friend."
Reresby states, that Lady Ogle, immediately after the marriage, "repenting herself of the match, fled from him into Holland, before they were bedded." This circumstance added to the fact, that Mr. Thynne had formerly seduced Miss Trevor, one of the maids of honour to Catherine of Portugal, wife of Charles II., gave birth to the following lines:
"Here lies Tom Thynne, of Longleat Hall,
Who never would have miscarried,
Had he married the woman he lay withal,
Or lain with the woman he married."
On the 30th of May, in the same year, Lady Ogle was married to
Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset.-E.
(73) Lady Suffolk thought he rather would have her regent of Hanover; and she also told me, that George I. had offered to live again with his wife, but she refused, unless her pardon were asked publicly. She said, what most affected her was the disgrace that would be brought on her children; and if she were only pardoned, that would not remove it. Lady Suffolk thought she was then divorced, though the divorce was never published; and that the old Elector consented to his son's marrying the Duchess of Kendal with the left hand-but it seems strange, that George I. should offer to live again with his wife, and yet be divorced front her. Perhaps George II. to vindicate his mother, supposed that offer and her spirited refusal.
(74) George II. was scrupulously exact in separating and keeping in each country whatever belonged to England or Hanover. Lady Suffolk told me, that on his accession he could not find a knife, fork, and spoon of gold which had belonged to Queen Ann(@, and which he remembered to have seen here at his first -arrival. He found them at Hanover on his first journey thither after he came to the crown, and brought them back to England. He could not recollect much of greater value; for, on Queen Anne's death, and in the interval before the arrival of the new family, such a clearance had been made of her Majesty's jewels, or the new King so instantly distributed what he found amongst his German favourites, that, as Lady S. told me, Queen Caroline never obtained of the late Queen's.jewels but one pearl necklace.
(75) George I., says Coxe, who never loved his wife, gave implicit credit to the account of her infidelity, as related by his father; consented to her imprisonment, and obtained from the ecclesiastical consistory a divorce, which was passed on the 28th of December 1694." Memoirs of Walpole.-E.
(76) "the unfortunate Sophia was confined in the castle of Alden, situated on the small river Aller, in the duchy of Zell. She terminated her miserable existence, after a long captivity of thirty-two years, on the 13th of November 1726, only seven months before the death of George the First; and she was announced in the Gazette, under the title of the Electress Dowager of Hanover. During her whole confinement she behaved with no less mildness than dignity; and, on receiving the sacrament once every week, never omitted making the most solemn asseverations, that she was not guilty of the crime laid to her charge." Coxe, vol. i. p. 268.-E.
(77) Admiral Lord Howe, and also of sir William, afterwards Viscount Howe.-E.
(78) Second daughter of George the Second; born in 1711, died October the 31st, 1786.
(79) Caroline, the eldest of Lady Howe's children, had married a gentleman of her own name, John Howe, Esq, of Honslop, in the county of Bucks.
(80) According to Coxe, she was, when young, a woman of great beauty, but became extremely corpulent as she advanced in years. "Her power over the King," he adds, "was not equal to that of the Duchess of Kendal, but her character for rapacity was not inferior." On the death of her husband, in 1721, she was created Countess of Leinster in the kingdom of Ireland, Baroness of Brentford, and Countess of Darlington.-E.
(81) One of the German ladies, being abused by the mob, was said to have put her head out of the coach, and cried in bad English, "Good people, why you abuse us? We come for all your goods." "Yes, damn ye," answered a fellow in the crowd, "and for all our chattels too." I mention this because on the death of Princess Amelia the newspapers revived the story and told it of her, though I had heard it threescore years before of one of her grandfather's mistresses.
(82) Colonel Brett, the companion of Wycherley, Steele, Davenant, etc. and of whom the following particulars are recorded by Spence, on the authority of Dr. Young:-"The Colonel was a remarkably handsome man. The Countess looking out of her window on a great disturbance in the street, saw him assaulted by some bailiffs, who were going to arrest him. She paid his debt, released him from their pursuit, and soon after married him. When she died, she left him more than he expected; with which he bought an estate in the country, built a very handsome house upon it, and furnished it in the highest taste; went down to see the finishing of it, returned to London in hot weather and in too much hurry; got a fever by it, and died. Nobody had a better taste of what would please the town, and his opinion was much regarded by the actors and dramatic poets." Anecdotes, p. 355.-E.
CHAPTER III.
Quarrel between George the First and his Son-Earl of
Sunderland-Lord Stanhope-South Sea Scheme-Death of Craggs-Royal
Reconcilement-Peerage Bill defeated-Project for seizing the
Prince of Wales and conveying him to America-Duke of
Newcastle-Royal Christening-Open Rupture-Prince and Princess of
Wales ordered to leave the Palace.
One of the most remarkable occurrences in the reign of George I. was the open quarrel between him and his son the Prince of Wales. Whence the dissension originated; whether the prince's attachment to his mother embittered his mind against his father, or whether hatred of' his father occasioned his devotion to her, I do not pretend to know. I do suspect front circumstances, that the hereditary enmity in the House of Brunswick between the parents and their eldest sons dated earlier than the divisions between the first two Georges. The Princess Sophia was a woman of parts and great vivacity: in the earlier part of her life she had professed much zeal for the deposed House of Stuart, as appeared by a letter of hers in print, addressed to the Chevalier de St. George. It is natural enough for all princes,-who have no prospect of being benefited by the deposition of a crowned head, to choose to think royalty an indelible character. The Queen of Prussia, daughter of George I. lived and died an avowed Jacobite. The Princess Sophia, youngest child of the Queen of Bohemia, was consequently the most remote from any pretensions to the British crown; (83) but no sooner had King William procured a settlement of it after Queen Anne on her Electoral Highness, than nobody became a stancher Whig than the Princess Sophia, nor could be more impatient to mount the throne of the expelled Stuarts. It is certain, that during the reign of Anne, the Elector George was inclined to the Tories, though-after his mother's death and his own accession he gave himself to the opposite party. But if be and his mother espoused different factions, Sophia found a ready partisan in her grandson, the Electoral prince; (84) and it is true, that the demand made by the Prince of his writ of summons to the House of Lords as Duke of Cambridge, which no wonder was so offensive to Queen Anne, was made in concert with his grandmother, without the privity of the Elector his father. Were it certain, as was believed, that Bolingbroke and the Jacobites prevailed on the Queen *85) to consent to her brother coming secretly to England, and to seeing him in her closet; she might have been induced to that step, when provoked by an attempt to force a distant and foreign heir upon her while still alive. The Queen and her heiress being dead, the new King and his son came over in apparent harmony; and on his Majesty's first visit to his electoral dominions, the Prince of Wales was even left Regent; but never being trusted afterwards with that dignity on like occasions, it is probable that the son discovered too much fondness for acting the king, or that the father conceived a jealousy of his son having done so. Sure it is, that on the King's return great divisions arose in the court; and the Whigs were divided-some devoting themselves to the wearer of the crown, and others to the expectant. I shall not enter into the detail of those squabbles, of which I am but superficially informed. The predominant ministers were the Earls of Sunderland and Stanhope. The brothers-in-law, the Viscount Townshend and Mr. Robert Walpole, adhered to the Prince. Lord Sunderland is said to have too much resembled as a politician the earl his father, who was so principal an actor in the reign of James II. and in bringing about the Revolution. Between the earl in question and the Prince of Wales grew mortal antipathy; of which -,in anecdote told me by my father himself will leave no doubt. When a reconciliation had been patched up between the two courts, and my father became first lord of the treasury a second time, Lord Sunderland in a t`ete-`a-t`ete with him said, "Well, Mr. Walpole, we have settled matters for the present; but we must think whom we shall have next" (meaning in case of the King's demise). Walpole said, "Your lordship may think as you please, but my part is taken;" meaning to support the established settlement.
Earl Stanhope was a man of strong and violent passions, and had dedicated himself to the army; and was so far from thinking of any other line, that when Walpole, who first suggested the idea of appointing him secretary of state, proposed it to him, he flew into a furious rage, and was on the point of a downright quarrel, looking on himself' as totally unqualified for the post, and suspecting it for a plan of mocking him. He died in one of those tempestuous sallies, being pushed in the House of Lords on the explosion of the South Sea scheme. That iniquitous affair, which Walpole had early exposed, and to remedy the mischiefs of which he alone was deemed adequate, had replaced him at the head of affairs, and obliged Sunderland to submit to be only a coadjutor of the administration. The younger Craggs, (86) a showy vapouring man, had been brought forward by the ministers to oppose Walpole; but was soon reduced to beg his assistance on one (87) of their ways and means. Craggs caught his death by calling at the gate of Lady March, (88) who was ill of the small-pox; and being told so by the porter, went home directly, fell ill of the same distemper, and died. His father, the elder Craggs, whose very good sense Sir R. Walpole much admired, soon followed his son, and his sudden death was imputed to grief; but having been deeply dipped in the iniquities of the South Sea, and wishing to prevent confiscation and save his ill-acquired wealth for his daughters, there was no doubt of his having despatched himself. When his death was divulged, Sir Robert Owned that the unhappy man had in an oblique manner hinted his resolution to him. The reconciliation of the royal family was so little cordial, that I question whether the Prince did not resent Sir Robert Walpole's return to the King's service. Yet had Walpole defeated a plan of Sunderland that @would in future have exceedingly hampered the successor, as it was calculated to do; nor do I affect to ascribe Sir Robert's victory directly to zeal for the Prince: personal and just views prompted his opposition, and the commoners of England were not less indebted to him than the Prince. Sunderland had devised a bill to restrain the crown from ever adding above six peers to a number limited., (89) The actual peers were far from disliking the measure; but Walpole, taking fire, instantly communicated his dissatisfaction to all the great commoners, who might for ever be excluded from the peerage. He spoke, he wrote, (90) he persuaded, and the bill was rejected by the Commons with disdain, after it had passed the House of Lords. (91)
But the hatred of some of the junta at court had gone farther, horribly farther. On the death of George 1. Queen Caroline found in his cabinet a proposal of the Earl of Berkeley, (92) then, I think, first lord of the admiralty, to seize the Prince of Wales, and convey him to America, whence he should never be heard of more. This detestable project copied probably from the Earl of Falmouth's offer to Charles II. with regard to his Queen, was in the handwriting of Charles Stanhope, elder brother of the Earl of Harrington: (93) and so deep was the impression deservedly made on the mind of George II. by that abominable paper, that all the favour of Lord Harrington, when secretary of state, could never obtain the smallest boon to his brother, though but the subordinate transcriber. (94) George I. was too humane to listen to such an atrocious deed. It was not very kind to the conspirators to leave such an instrument behind him; and if virtue and conscience will not check bold bad men from paying court by detestable offers, the King's carelessness or indifference in such an instance ought to warn them of the little gratitude that such machinations can inspire or expect.
Among those who had preferred the service of the King to that of the heir apparent, was the Duke of Newcastle;, (95) Who, having married his sister to Lord Townshend, both his royal highness and the viscount had expected would have adhered to that connexion-and neither forgave his desertion.-I am aware of the desultory manner in which I have told my story, having mentioned the reconciliation of the King and Prince before I have given any account of their public rupture. The chain of my thoughts led me into the preceding details, and, if I do not flatter myself, will have let you into the motives of my dramatis personae better than if I had 'more exactly observed chronology.- and as I am not writing a regular tragedy, and profess but to relate facts as I recollect them; or (if you will allow me to imitate French writers of tragedy) may I not plead that I have unfolded my piece as they do, by introducing two courtiers to acquaint one another, and by bricole the audience, with what had passed in the penetralia before the tragedy commences?
The exordium thus duly prepared, you must suppose, ladies, that the second act opens with a royal christening The Princess of Wales had been delivered of a second son. The Prince had intended his uncle, the Duke of York, Bishop of Osnaburg, should with his Majesty be godfathers. Nothing could equal the indignation of his Royal Highness when the King named the Duke of Newcastle for second sponsor, and would hear of no other. The christening took place as usual in the Princess's bedchamber. Lady Suffolk, then in waiting as woman of the bedchamber, and of most accurate memory painted the scene to me exactly. On one side of the bed stood the godfathers and godmother; on the other the Prince and the Princess's ladies. No sooner had the Bishop closed the ceremony, than the Prince, crossing the feet of the bed in a rage, stepped up to the Duke of Newcastle, and, holding up his hand and fore-finger in a menacing attitude, said, "You are a rascal, but I shall find you," meaning, in broken English, "I shall find a time to be revenged."-"What was my astonishment," continued Lady Suffolk, "when going to the Princess's apartment the next morning, the yeOMen in the guard-chamber pointed their halberds at my breast, and told me I must not pass! I urged that it was my duty to attend the Princess. They said, 'No matter; I must not pass that way.'"