The year 1734 was marked by the retirement from court of the lady whom it was the fashion to call the Queen’s rival. Mrs. Howard, on becoming Countess of Suffolk, by the accession of her husband to the earldom in 1731, had been raised to the office of mistress of the robes to the Queen. Her husband died two years subsequently; and, shortly after, the King’s widowed favourite was sought in marriage by another suitor.

Her departure from court was doubtless principally caused by this new prospect of a happier life. It may have been accelerated by other circumstances. Lord Chesterfield, angry with the Queen for forgetting to exert her promised influence for him in obtaining some favour, applied to Lady Suffolk, and informed the Queen of the course he had taken. Caroline thereon told the King that she had had some petition to present on Lord Chesterfield’s behalf, but that as he had entrusted it to Lady Suffolk’s presenting, her own influence would probably be unavailing. The King, fired at the implied affront to his consort, treated his old mistress, now nearly half a century in years, with such severity that she begged to be permitted to withdraw. Lady Suffolk brought her long career at court to a close in this year, previous to her marriage with the Honourable George Berkeley, younger son of the second Earl of Berkeley. He was Master of St. Catherine’s in the Tower, and had served in two parliaments as member for Dover. Horace Walpole, who knew Lady Suffolk intimately when she was residing at Marble Hill, Twickenham, and he at Strawberry Hill, says of her, that she was what may be summed up in the word ‘lady-like.’ She was of a good height, well made, extremely fair, with the finest light-brown hair, was remarkably genteel, and was always dressed with taste and simplicity. He adds, ‘for her face was regular and agreeable rather than beautiful, and those charms she retained, with little diminution, to her death, at the age of seventy-nine’ (in July 1767). He does not speak highly of her mental qualifications, but states that she was grave, and mild of character, had a strict love of truth, and was rather apt to be circumstantial upon trifles. The years of her life, after her withdrawal from court, were passed in a decent, dignified, and ‘respectable’ manner, and won for her a consideration which her earlier career had certainly not merited.

The Queen’s influence was even stronger than the favourite’s credit. ‘Except a barony, a red riband, and a good place for her brother, Sir John Hobart, Earl of Buckinghamshire, Lady Suffolk could succeed but in very subordinate recommendations. Her own acquisitions were so moderate, that, besides Marble Hill, which cost the King ten or twelve thousand pounds, her complaisance had not been too dearly purchased. She left the court with an income so little to be envied, that though an economist and not expensive, by the lapse of some annuities on lives not so prolonged as her own, she found herself straitened, and, besides Marble Hill, did not at most leave twenty thousand pounds to her family. On quitting court, she married Mr. George Berkeley, and outlived him.’12

It is not certain how far Caroline’s influence was exercised in the removal of Lady Suffolk, whom the Queen, according to some authors, requested to continue some time longer in her office of mistress of the robes. Nor is it important to ascertain. Caroline had higher duties to perform. She continued to serve her husband well, and she showed her opinion of her son, the Prince of Wales, by her conduct to him on more than one occasion. Thus, on New Year’s Day the prince attended his royal sire’s levée, not with any idea of paying his father the slightest measure of respect, but, suspecting that the King would not speak to him, to show the people with what contempt the homage of a dutiful son was met by a stern parent. When Caroline heard of the design, she simply persuaded the King to address his son kindly in public. This advice was followed, and the filial plot accordingly failed.

The Queen was as resolute in supporting the King against being driven into settling a permanent income upon the prince. She spoke of the latter as an extravagant and unprincipled fool, only less ignorant than those who were idiots enough to give opinions upon what they could not understand. ‘He costs the King 50,000l. a-year, and till he is married that may really be called a reasonable allowance.’ She stigmatised him as a ‘poor creature,’ easily led away, but not naturally bad-hearted. His seducers she treated as knaves, fools, and monsters. To the suggestion that a fixed allowance, even if it should be less than what the King paid out for him every year, would be better than the present plan, Caroline only replied that the King thought otherwise; and so the matter rested.

The tact of the Queen was further displayed in the course adopted by her on an occasion of some delicacy. Lord Stair had been deprived of his regiment for attempting to bring in a law whereby the commissions of officers should be secured to them for life. The King said he would not allow him to keep by favour what he had endeavoured to keep by force. Thereupon Lord Stair addressed a private letter to the Queen, through her lord-chamberlain, stuffed with prophetic warnings against the machinations of France and the designs of Walpole.

Caroline, on becoming acquainted with the contents of the epistle, rated her chamberlain soundly, and bade him take it instantly to Sir Robert Walpole, with a request to the latter to lay it before the King. She thus ‘very dexterously avoided the danger of concealing such a letter from the King, or giving Sir Robert Walpole any cause of jealousy from showing it.’ His Majesty very sententiously observed upon the letter, that Lord Stair ‘was a puppy for writing it, and the lord-chamberlain a fool for bringing it.’ The good chamberlain was a fool for other reasons also. He had no more rational power than a vegetable, and his solitary political sentiment was to this effect, and wrapped up in very bad English: ‘I hate the French, and I hope as we shall beat the French.’13

The times were growing warlike, and it was on the occasion of the Prince of Orange going to the camp of Prince Eugene that the Princess Anne returned to England. She was as arrogant and as boldly spoken as ever. In the latter respect she manifested much of the spirit of her mother. During her stay at court, the news of the surrender of Philipsburg reached this country. Her highness’s remark thereon, in especial reference to her royal father, is worth quoting. It was addressed to Lord Hervey, who was leading the princess to her own apartment after the drawing-room. ‘Was there ever anything so unaccountable,’ said she, shrugging up her shoulders, ‘as the temper of papa? He has been snapping and snubbing every mortal for this week, because he began to think Philipsburg would be taken; and this very day, that he actually hears it is taken, he is in as good humour as I ever saw him in in my life. To tell you the truth,’ she added, in French, ‘I find that so whimsical, and (between ourselves) so utterly foolish, that I am more enraged by his good, than I was before by his bad, humour.’

‘Perhaps,’ answered Lord Hervey, ‘he may be about Philipsburg as David was about the child, who, whilst it was sick, fasted, lay upon the earth, and covered himself with ashes, but the moment it was dead, got up, shaved his beard, and drank wine.’ ‘It may be like David,’ said the princess royal, ‘but I am sure it is not like Solomon.’

It was hardly the time for Solomons. Lord Chancellor King was a man of the people, who, by talent, integrity, and perseverance, rose to the highest rank to which a lawyer can work his way. He lost his popularity almost as soon as he acquired the seals, and these he was ultimately compelled, from growing imbecility of mind, to resign. He was the most dilatory in rendering judgments of all our chancellors, and would never willingly have decided a question, for fear he should decide it incorrectly. This characteristic, joined to the fact of his having published a history of the Apostles’ Creed, extorted from Caroline the smart saying, that ‘He was just in the law what he had formerly been in the Gospel, making creeds upon the one without any steady belief, and judgments in the other without any settled opinion. But the misfortune for the public is,’ said Caroline, ‘that though they could reject his silly creeds, they are forced often to submit to his silly judgments.’

The court private life of the sovereigns at this time was as dull as can well be imagined. There were two persons who shared in this life, and who were very miserably paid for their trouble. These were the Count de Roncy and his sister. They were French Protestants, who, for conscience’ sake, had surrendered their all in France and taken refuge in England. The count was created Earl of Lifford in Ireland. His sister, Lady Charlotte de Roncy, was governess to the younger children of George II. Every night in the country, and thrice a week when the King and Queen were in town, this couple passed an hour or two with the King and Queen before they retired to bed. During this time ‘the King walked about, and talked to the brother of armies, or to the sister of genealogies, while the Queen knotted and yawned, till from yawning she came to nodding, and from nodding to snoring.’14

This amiable pair, who had lived in England during four reigns, were in fact hard-worked, ill-paid court-drudges; too ill-paid, even, to appear decently clad; an especial reproach upon Caroline, as the lady was the governess of her children. But they were not harder worked, in one respect, than Caroline herself, who passed seven or eight hours tête-à-tête with the King every day, ‘generally saying what she did not think,’ says Lord Hervey, ‘and forced, like a spider, to spin out of her own bowels all the conversation with which the fly was taken.’ The King could bear neither reading nor being read to. But, for the sake of power, though it is not to be supposed that affection had not some part in influencing Caroline to undergo such heavy trial, she endured that willingly, and indeed much more than that.

At all events, she had some respect for her husband; but she despised the son, who, in spite of her opinion of the natural goodness of his heart, was mean and mendacious. The prince, moreover, was weaker of understanding and more obstinate of temper than his father. The latter hated him, and because of that hatred, his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, was promoted to public employment. His sisters betrayed him. Had Caroline not had a contempt for him, she would have influenced the King to a very different line of conduct.

It was said of Frederick, that, from his German education, he was more of a German than an Englishman. But the bias alluded to was not stronger in him than it was in his mother.

Caroline was so much more of a German than of an Englishwoman, that when the interests of Germany were concerned she was always ready to sacrifice the interests of England. Her daughter Anne would have had Europe deluged in blood for the mere sake of increasing her own and her husband’s importance. In a general war she thought he would come to the surface. Caroline was disinclined to go to war for the empire only because she feared that, in the end, there might be war in England, with the English crown for the stake.

There was at this time in London a dull and proud imperial envoy, named Count Kiuski. He was haughty and impertinent in his manner of demanding succour, as his master was in requiring it, from the Dutch. Caroline rallied him on this one day, as he was riding by the side of her carriage at a stag-hunt. She used a very homely and not a very nice illustration to show the absurdity of losing an end by foolishly neglecting the proper means. ‘If a handkerchief lay before me,’ said she, ‘and I felt I had a dirty nose, my good Count Kiuski, do you think I should beckon the handkerchief to come to me, or stoop to take it up?’15

Political matters were not neglected at these hunting-parties. Lord Hervey, ‘her child, her pupil, and her charge,’ who constantly rode by the side of her carriage, on a hunter which she had given him, and which could not have been of much use to him if he never quitted the side of his mistress, used to discuss politics while others followed the stag. The Queen, who was fourteen years older than he, used to say, ‘It is well I am so old, or I should be talked of because of this creature!’ And indeed the intercourse was constant and familiar. He was always with her when she took breakfast, which she usually did alone, and was her chief friend and companion when the King was absent. Such familiarity gave him considerable freedom, which the Queen jokingly called impertinence, and said that he indulged in that and in contradicting her because he knew that she could not live without him.

It was at a hunting-party that Lord Hervey endeavoured to convince her that for England to go to war for the purpose of serving the empire would be a disastrous course to take. He could not convince her in a long conversation, and thereupon, the chase being over, he sat down and penned a political pamphlet, which he called a letter, which was ‘as long as a “President’s Message,” and which he forwarded to the Queen.’ If Caroline was not to be persuaded by it, she at least thought none the worse of the writer, who had spared no argument to support the cause in which he boldly pleaded.

We have another home-scene depicted by Lord Hervey, which at once shows us an illustration of parental affection and parental indifference. The Princess Anne, after a world of delay, had reluctantly left St. James’s for Holland, where her husband awaited her, and whither she went for her confinement. The last thing she thought of was the success of the opera and the triumph of Handel. She recommended both to the charge of Lord Hervey, and then went on her way to Harwich, sobbing. When she had reached Colchester she, upon receiving some letters from her husband stating his inability to be at the Hague so soon as he expected, started suddenly for Kensington.

In the meantime, in the palace at the latter place Lord Hervey found the Queen and the gentle Princess Caroline sitting together, drinking chocolate, shedding tears, and sobbing, all at the absence of the imperious Lady Anne. The trio had just succeeded in banishing melancholy remembrances by launching into cheerful conversation, when the gallery door was suddenly opened, and the Queen rose, exclaiming, ‘The King here already!’ When, however, she saw that, instead of the King, it was only the Prince of Wales, and ‘detesting the exchange of the son for the daughter, she burst out anew into tears, and cried out, “Oh, God! this is too much!”’ She was only relieved by the entry of the King, who, perceiving but not speaking to his son, took the Queen by the hand and led her out to walk.

This ‘cut direct,’ by affecting to be unconscious of the presence of the obnoxious person, was a habit with the King. ‘Whenever the prince was in a room with him,’ says Lord Hervey, ‘it put one in mind of stories that one has heard of ghosts which appear to part of the company and were invisible to the rest; and in this manner, wherever the prince stood, though the King passed him ever so often, or ever so near, it always seemed as if the King thought the prince filled a void space.’

On the following day, the 22nd of October, the Princess Anne suddenly appeared before her parents. They thought her at Harwich, or on the seas, the wind being fair. Tears and kisses were her welcome from her mother, and smiles and an embrace formed the greeting from her father. The return was ill-advised, but the Queen, with a growing conviction of decaying health, could not be displeased at seeing again her first child.

The health of Caroline was undoubtedly at this time much impaired, but the King allowed her scant respite from labour on that account. Thus on the 29th of this month, although the Queen was labouring under cold, cough, and symptoms of fever, in addition to having been weakened by loss of blood, a process she had recently undergone twice, the King not only brought her from Kensington to London for the birthday, but forced her to go with him to the opera to hear the inimitable Farinelli. He himself thought so little of illness, or liked so little to be thought ill, that he would rise from a sick couch to proceed to hold a levée, which was no sooner concluded than he would immediately betake himself to bed again. His affection for the Queen was not so great but that he compelled the same sacrifices from her; and on the occasion of this birthday, at the morning drawing-room, she found herself so near swooning, that she was obliged to send her chamberlain to the King, begging him to retire, ‘for she was unable to stand any longer.’ Notwithstanding which, we are told by Lord Hervey, that ‘at night he brought her into a still greater crowd at the ball, and there kept her till eleven o’clock.’

Sir Robert Walpole frequently, and never more urgently than at this time, impressed upon her the necessity of being careful of her own health. He addressed her as though she had been Queen Regnant of England—as she certainly was governing sovereign—and he described to her in such pathetic terms the dangers which England would, and Europe might, incur, if any fatal accident deprived her of life, and the King were to fall under the influence of any other woman, that the poor Queen, complaining and coughing, with head heavy, and aching eyes half closed with pain, cheeks flushed, pulse quick, spirits low, and breathing oppressed, burst into tears, alarmed at the picture, and with every disposition to do her utmost for the benefit of her health and the well-being of the body politic.

It was the opinion of Caroline, that in case of her demise the King would undoubtedly marry again, and she had often advised him to take such a step. She affected, however, to believe that a second wife would not be able to influence him to act contrary to the system which he had adopted through the influence of herself and Walpole.

It was during the sojourn of the Princess Anne in England that she heard the details of the withdrawal of Lady Suffolk from court. Everybody appeared to be rejoiced at that lady’s downfall, but most of all the Princess Anne. The King thought that of all the children of himself and Caroline, Anne loved him best. This dutiful daughter, however, despised him, and treated him as an insufferable bore, who always required novelty in conversation from others, but never told anything new of his own. In allusion to the withdrawal of Lady Suffolk from court, this amiable child remarked, ‘I wish with all my heart he would take somebody else, that Mamma might be a little relieved from the occasion of seeing him for ever in her room!’

In November the Princess Anne once more proceeded to Harwich, put to sea, and was so annoyed by the usual inconveniences that she compelled the captain to land her again. She declared that she should not be well enough for ten days to go once more aboard. This caused great confusion. Her father, and indeed the Queen also, insisted on her repairing to Holland by way of Calais, as her husband had thoughtfully suggested. She was compelled to pass through London, much to the King’s annoyance, but he declared that she should not stop, but proceed at once over London Bridge to Dover. He added, that she should never again come to England in the same condition of health. His threat was partly founded on the expense, her visit having cost him 20,000l. Her reluctance to proceed to her husband’s native country was founded, it has been suggested, on her own ambitious ideas. Her brothers were unmarried, and she was anxious, it is thought, that her own child should be English born, as it would stand in the line of inheritance to the throne. However this may be, the Queen saw the false step the daughter had already taken, and insisted on the wishes of her husband, the prince, being attended to; and so the poor foiled Anne went home to become a mother, very much against her will.

The Princess Amelia observed to Mrs. Clayton, the Queen’s bedchamber-woman, that her brother, Prince Frederick, would have been displeased if the accouchement of the princess had taken place in England. To this, Mrs. Clayton, as Lord Hervey observes, very justly remarked, ‘I cannot imagine, madam, how it can affect the prince at all where she lies in; since with regard to those who wish more of your royal highness’s family on the throne, it is no matter whether she be brought to bed here or in Holland, or of a son or a daughter, or whether she has any child at all; and with regard to those who wish all your family well, for your sake, madam, as well as our own, we shall be very glad to take any of you in your turn, but none of you out of it.’

But the Queen had other business this year wherewith to occupy her besides royal marriages, or filial indispositions. In some of these matters her sincerity is sadly called in question. Here is an instance.

In 1734 the Bishop of Winchester was stricken with apoplexy, and Lord Hervey was no sooner aware of that significant fact—it was a mortal attack—than he wrote to Hoadly at Salisbury, urging him in the strongest terms to make application to be promoted from Sarum to the almost vacant see.

This promotion had been promised him by the King, Queen, and Walpole, all of whom joined in blandly reproving the bishop for being silent when Durham was vacant, whereby alone he lost that golden appointment. He had served government so well, and yet had contrived to maintain most of his usual popularity with the public, that he had been told to look upon Winchester as his own, whenever an opening occurred.

Hoadly was simple enough to believe that the Queen and Walpole were really sincere. He addressed a letter to the King through his ‘two ears’—the Queen and Walpole; and he wrote as if he were sure of being promoted, according to engagement, while at the same time he acted as if he were sure of nothing.

Caroline called the bishop’s letter indelicate, hasty, ill-timed, and such like; but Hoadly so well obeyed the instructions given to him that there was no room for escape, and he received the appointment. When he went to kiss hands upon his elevation, the King was the only one who behaved with common honesty. He, and Caroline too, disliked the man, whom the latter affected a delight to honour, for the reason that his respect for royalty was not so great as to blind him to popular rights, which he supported with much earnestness. On his reception by the King, the latter treated him with disgraceful incivility, exactly in accordance with his feelings. Caroline did violence to hers, and gave him honeyed words, and showered congratulations upon him, and pelted him, as it were, with compliments and candied courtesy. As for Sir Robert Walpole, who hated Hoadly as much as his royal mistress and her consort did together, he took the new Bishop of Winchester aside, and, warmly pressing his hand, assured him without a blush that his translation from Sarum to Winchester was entirely owing to the mediation of himself, Sir Robert. It was a daring assertion, and Sir Robert would have hardly ventured upon making it had he known the share Lord Hervey had had in this little ecclesiastical intrigue. Hoadly was not deluded by Walpole, but he was the perfect dupe of the Queen.

Lord Mahon,16 in speaking of Caroline, says that ‘her character was without a blemish.’ Compared with many around her, perhaps it was; but if the face had not spots it had ‘patches,’ which looked very much like them. On this matter, the noble lord appears to admit that some doubt may exist, and he subsequently adds: ‘But no doubt can exist as to her discerning and most praiseworthy patronage of worth and learning in the Church. The most able and pious men were everywhere sought and preferred, and the episcopal bench was graced by such men as Hare, Sherlock, and Butler.’ Of course, Queen Caroline’s dislike of Hoadly may be set down as founded upon that prelate’s alleged want of orthodoxy. It has been noticed in another page, that, according to Walpole, the Queen had rather weakened than enlightened her faith by her study of divinity, and that her Majesty herself ‘was at best not orthodox.’ Her countenance of the ‘less-believing’ clergy is said, upon the same authority, to have been the effect of the influence of Lady Sundon, who ‘espoused the heterodox clergy.’

Lord Mahon also says that the Queen was distinguished for charity towards those whom she accounted her enemies. She could nurse her rage, however, a good while to keep it warm. Witness her feeling manifested against that daughter of Lord Portland who married Mr. Godolphin. Her hatred of this lady was irreconcileable, nor was the King’s of a more Christian quality. That lady’s sole offence, however, was her acceptance of the office ‘of governess to their daughter in the late reign, without their consent, at the time they had been turned out of St. James’s, and the education of their children, who were kept there, taken from them.’17 For this offence the King and Queen were very unwilling to confer a peerage and pension on Godolphin in 1735, when he resigned his office of groom of the stole in the royal household. The peerage and pension were, nevertheless, ultimately conferred at the earnest solicitation of Walpole, and with great ill-humour on the part of the King.

Even Walpole, with all his power and influence, was not at this time so powerful and influential but that when he was crossed in parliament he suffered for it at court. Thus, when the Crown lost several supporters in the house by adverse decisions on election petitions, the King was annoyed, and the Queen gave expression to her own anger on the occasion. It was rare indeed that she ever spoke her dissatisfaction of Sir Robert; but on the occasion in question she is reported as having said that Sir Robert Walpole either neglected these things, and judged it enough to think they were trifles, though in government, and especially in this country, nothing was a trifle, ‘or, perhaps,’ she said, ‘there is some mismanagement I know nothing of, or some circumstances we are none of us acquainted with; but, whatever it is, to me these things seem very ill-conducted.’18

The Queen really thought that Walpole was on the point of having outlived his ability and his powers to apply it for the benefit of herself and husband. She observed him melancholy, and set it down that he was mourning over his own difficulties and failures. When Caroline, however, was told that Sir Robert was not in sorrow because of the difficulties of government, but simply because his mistress, Miss Skerret, was dangerously ill of a pleuritic fever, the ‘unblemished Queen’ was glad! She rejoiced that politics had nothing to do with his grief, and she was extremely well pleased to find that the prime-minister was as immoral as men of greater and less dignity. And then she took to satirising both the prime-minister and the lady of his homage. She laughed at him for believing in the attachment of a woman whose motives must be mercenary, and who could not possibly see any attraction in such a man but through the meshes of his purse. ‘She must be a clever gentlewoman,’ said Caroline, ‘to have made him believe that she cares for him on any other score; and to show you what fools we all are on some point or other, she has certainly told him some fine story or other of her love, and her passion, and that poor man, with his burly body, swollen legs, and villainous stomach (“avec ce gros corps, jambes enflés, et ce vilain ventre”) believes her!—ah, what is human nature?’ On this rhapsody Lord Hervey makes a comment in the spirit of Burns’ verse—

and it was excellent opportunity for such comment. ‘While she was saying this,’ remarks the noble lord, ‘she little reflected in what degree she herself possessed all the impediments and antidotes to love she had been enumerating, and that, “Ah, what is human nature?” was as applicable to her own blindness as to his.’

She certainly illustrated in her own person her assertion that in government nothing was a trifle. Thus, when what was called the Scotch Election Petition was before parliament and threatening to give some trouble to the ministerial side, her anxiety till the question was decided favourably to the Crown side, and her affected indifference after the victory, were both marked and striking. On the morning before the petition was presented, praying the House of Lords to take into consideration certain alleged illegalities in the recent election of sixteen representative peers of Scotland—a petition which the house ultimately dismissed—the anxiety of Caroline was so great ‘to know what was said, thought, or done, or expected on this occasion, that she sent for Lord Hervey while she was in bed; and because it was contrary to the queenly etiquette to admit a man to her bedside while she was in it, she kept him talking upon one side of the door, which was just upon her bed, while she conversed with him on the other for two hours together, and then sent him to the King’s side to repeat to his Majesty all he had related to her.’19 By the King’s side is meant, not his Majesty’s side of the royal couch, but the side of the palace wherein he had his separate apartments.

It was soon after this period (1735), that the King set out for Hanover, much against the inclination of his ministers, who dreaded lest he should be drawn in to conclude some engagement, when abroad, adverse to the welfare of England. His departure, however, was witnessed by Caroline with much resignation. It gave her infinitely more power and more pleasure; for, as regent, she had no superior to consult or guide, and in her husband’s absence she had not the task of amusing a man who was growing as little amusable as Louis XIV. was when Madame de Maintenon complained of her terrible toil in that way. His prospective absence of even half a year’s duration did not alarm Caroline, for it released her from receiving the daily sallies of a temper that, let it be charged by what hand it would, used always to discharge its hottest fire, on some pretence or other, upon her!

The Queen’s enjoyment, however, was somewhat dashed by information conveyed to her by that very husband, and by which she learned that the royal reprobate, having become smitten by the attractions of a young married German lady, named Walmoden, had had the rascality to induce her to leave her husband—a course which she had readily adopted for the small consideration of a thousand ducats.

This Madame Walmoden brings us back to the times of Sophia Dorothea. Elizabeth, sister of the Countess von Platen who brought about the catastrophe in which Königsmark perished and Sophia Dorothea was ruined, was married, first to von Busch, and secondly to von Weyhe (or Weyke). By this second marriage she had a daughter, who became the wife of General von Wendt. These von Wendts had a daughter also, who married Herr Walmoden. It was this last lady whom the son of Sophia Dorothea lured from her husband, and whom he ultimately raised to the dignity of Countess of Yarmouth.

Not the smallest incident which marked the progress of this infamous connection was concealed by the husband from his wife. He wrote at length minute details of the person of the new mistress, for whom he bespoke the love of his own wife!

Lord Hervey thinks that the pride of the Queen was much more hurt than her affections on this occasion; which is not improbable, for the reasoning public, to whom the affair soon became known, at once concluded that the rise of the new mistress would be attended with the downfall of the influence of Caroline.

The latter, however, knew well how to maintain her influence, let who would be the object of the impure homage of her exceedingly worthless husband. To the letters which he addressed to her with particular unction, she replied with an unction quite as rich in quality and profuse in degree. Pure and dignified as she might seem in discoursing with divines, listening to philosophers, receiving the metrical tributes of poets, or cavilling with scholars, she had no objection to descend from Olympus and find relaxation in wallowing in Epicurus’ stye. Nor did she thus condescend merely to suit a purpose and to gain an end. Her letters, encouraging her husband in his amours with women at Hanover, were coarse enough to have called up a blush on the cheek of one of Congreve’s waiting-maids. They have the poor excuse tied to them of having been written for the purpose of securing her own power. The same apology does not apply to the correspondence with the dirty Duchess of Orleans. Caroline appears to have indulged in the details of that correspondence for the sake of the mere pleasure itself. And yet she has been called a woman without blemish!

The King’s letters to her are said to have extended to sixty, and never to less than forty, pages. They were filled, says Lord Hervey, ‘with an hourly account of everything he saw, heard, thought, or did, and crammed with minute trifling circumstances, not only unworthy of a man to write, but even of a woman to read; most of which I saw, and almost all of them I heard reported by Sir Robert Walpole, to whose perusal few were not committed, and many passages were transmitted to him by the King’s own order; who used to tag several paragraphs with “Montrez ceci et consultez ladessus le gros homme.” Among many extraordinary things and expressions these letters contained was one in which he desired the Queen to contrive, if she could, that the Prince of Modena, who was to come at the latter end of the year to England, might bring his wife with him.’ She was the younger daughter of the Regent Duke of Orleans. The reason which the King gave to his wife for the request which he had made with respect to this lady was, that he had understood the latter was by no means particular as to what quarter or person she received homage from, and he had the greatest inclination imaginable to pay his addresses to a daughter of the late Regent of France. ‘Un plaisir,’ he said—for this German husband wrote even to his German wife in French—‘que je suis sûr, ma chère Caroline, vous serez bien aise de me procurer, quand je vous dis combien je le souhaite!’ If Wycherley had placed such an incident as this in a comedy, he would have been censured as offending equally against modesty and probability.

In the summer of this year, Lord Hervey was absent for a while from attendance on his royal mistress; but we may perhaps learn from one of his letters, addressed to her while he was resting in the country from his light labours, the nature of his office and the way in which Caroline was served. The narrative is given by the writer as part of an imaginary post-obit diary, in which he describes himself as having died on the day he left her, and as having been repeatedly buried in the various dull country houses by whose proprietors he was hospitably received. He thus proceeds:—

‘But whilst my body, madam, was thus disposed of, my spirit (as when alive) was still hovering, though invisible, round your Majesty, anxious for your welfare, and watching to do you any little service that lay within my power.

‘On Monday, whilst you walked, my shade still turned on the side of the sun to guard you from its beams.

‘On Tuesday morning, at breakfast, I brushed away a fly that had escaped Teed’s observation’ (Teed was one of the Queen’s attendants) ‘and was just going to be the taster of your chocolate.

‘On Wednesday, in the afternoon, I took off the chillness of some strawberry-water your Majesty was going to drink as you came in hot from walking; and at night I hunted a bat out of your bedchamber, and shut a sash just as you fell asleep, which your Majesty had a little indiscreetly ordered Mrs. Purcel to leave open.

‘On Thursday, in the drawing-room, I took the forms and voices of several of my acquaintances, made strange faces, put myself into awkward postures, and talked a good deal of nonsense, whilst your Majesty entertained me very gravely, recommended me very graciously, and laughed at me internally very heartily.

‘On Friday, being post-day, I proposed to get the best pen in the other world for your Majesty’s use, and slip it invisibly into your standish just as Mr. Shaw was bringing it into your gallery for you to write; and accordingly I went to Voiture, and desired him to hand me his pen; but when I told him for whom it was designed, he only laughed at me for a blockhead, and asked me if I had been at court for four years to so little purpose as not to know that your Majesty had a much better of your own.

‘On Saturday I went on the shaft of your Majesty’s chaise to Richmond; as you walked there I went before you, and with an invisible wand I brushed the dew and the worms out of your path all the way, and several times uncrumpled your Majesty’s stocking.

‘Sunday.—This very day, at chapel, I did your Majesty some service, by tearing six leaves out of the parson’s sermon and shortening his discourse six minutes.’

While these imaginary services were being rendered by the visionary Lord Hervey to the Queen, realities more serious and not less amusing were claiming the attention of Caroline and her consort.

In return for the information communicated by the King to the Queen on the subject of Madame Walmoden and her charms, Caroline had to inform her husband of the marriage we have spoken of between Lady Suffolk and Mr. George Berkeley. The royal ex-lover noticed the communication in his reply in a coarse way, and expressed his entire satisfaction at being rid of the lady, and at the lady’s disposal of herself.

When Caroline informed her vice-chamberlain, Lord Hervey, of the report of this marriage, his alleged disbelief of the report made her peevish with him, and induced her to call him an ‘obstinate devil,’ who would not believe merely improbable facts to be truths. Caroline then railed at Lady Suffolk in good set terms as a sayer and doer of silly things, entirely unworthy of the reputation she had with some people of being the sayer and doer of wise ones.

It was on this occasion that Caroline herself described to Lord Hervey the farewell interview she had had with Lady Suffolk. The ex-mistress took a sentimental view of her position, and lamented to the wife that she, the mistress, was no longer so kindly treated as formerly by the husband. ‘I told her,’ said the Queen, ‘in reply, that she and I were not of an age to think of these sort of things in such a romantic way, and said, “My good Lady Suffolk, you are the best servant in the world; and, as I should be most extremely sorry to lose you, pray take a week to consider of this business, and give me your word not to read any romances in that time, and then I dare say you will lay aside all thoughts of doing what, believe me, you will repent, and what I am very sure I shall be very sorry for.”’20 It was at one of these conversations with Lord Hervey that the Queen told him that Lady Suffolk ‘had had 2,000l. a year constantly from the King whilst he was prince, and 3,200l. ever since he was King; besides several little dabs of money both before and since he came to the crown.’

A letter of Lady Pomfret’s will serve to show us not only a picture of the Queen at this time, but an illustration of feeling in a fine lady.

Lady Pomfret, writing to Lady Sundon, in 1735, says: ‘All I can say of Kensington is, that it is just the same as it was, only pared as close as the bishop does the sacrament. My Lord Pomfret and I were the greatest strangers there; no secretary of state, no chamberlain or vice-chamberlain, but Lord Robert, and he just in the same coat, the same spot of ground, and the same words in his mouth that he had when I left there. Mrs. Meadows in the window at work; but, though half an hour after two, the Queen was not quite dressed, so that I had the honour of seeing her before she came out of her little blue room, where I was graciously received, and acquainted her Majesty, to her great sorrow, how ill you had been; and then, to alleviate that sorrow, I informed her how much Sundon was altered for the better, and that it looked like a castle. From thence we proceeded to a very short drawing-room, where the Queen joked much with my Lord Pomfret about Barbadoes. The two ladies of the bedchamber and the governess are yet on so bad a foot, that upon the latter coming into the room to dine with Lady Bristol, the others went away, though just going to sit down, and strangers in the place.’

The writer of this letter soon after lost a son, the Honourable Thomas Fermor. It was a severely felt loss; so severe that some weeks elapsed before the disconsolate mother was able, as she says, ‘to enjoy the kind and obliging concern’ expressed by the Queen’s bedchamber-woman in her late misfortune. Christianity itself, as this charming mother averred, would have authorised her in lamenting such a calamity during the remainder of her life; but then, oh joy! her maternal lamentation was put an end to and Rachel was comforted, and all because—‘It was impossible for any behaviour to be more gracious than that of the Queen on this occasion, who made it quite fashionable to be concerned’ at the death of Lady Pomfret’s son.

But there were more bustling scenes at Kensington than such as those described by this fashionably sorrowing lady and the sympathising sovereign.

On Sunday, the 26th of October, the Queen and her court had just left the little chapel in the palace of Kensington, when intimation was given to her Majesty that the King, who had left Hanover on the previous Wednesday, was approaching the gate. Caroline, at the head of her ladies and the gentlemen of her suite, hastened down to receive him; and, as he alighted from his ponderous coach, she took his hand and kissed it. This ceremony performed by the regent, a very unceremonious, hearty, and honest kiss was impressed on his lips by the wife. The King endured the latter without emotion, and then, taking the Queen-regent by the fingers, he led her upstairs in a very stately and formal manner. In the gallery there was a grand presentation, at which his Majesty exhibited much ill-humour, and conversed with everybody but the Queen.

His ill-humour arose from various sources. He had heated himself by rapid and continual travelling, whereby he had brought on an attack of a complaint to which he was subject, which made him very ill at ease, and which is irritating enough to break down the patience of the most patient of people.

On ordinary occasions of his return from Hanover his most sacred Majesty was generally of as sour disposition as man so little heroic could well be. He loved the Electorate better than he did his kingdom, and would not allow that there was anything in the latter which could not be found in Hanover of a superior quality. There was no exception to this: men, women, artists, philosophers, actors, citizens, the virtues, the sciences, and the wits, the country, its natural beauties and productions, the courage of the men and the attractions of the women—all of these in England seemed to him worthless. In Hanover they assumed the guise of perfection.

This time he returned to his ‘old’ wife laden with a fresh sorrow—the memory of a new favourite. He had left his heart with the insinuating Walmoden, and he brought to his superb Caroline nothing but a tribute of ill-humour and spite. He hated more than ever the change from an Electorate where he was so delightfully despotic, to a country where he was only chief magistrate, and where the people, through their representatives, kept a very sharp watch upon him in the execution of his duties. He was accordingly as coarse and evil-disposed towards the circle of his court as he was to her who was the centre of it. He, too, was like one of those pantomime potentates who are for ever in King Cambyses’ vein, and who sweep through the scene in a whirlwind of farcically furious words and of violent acts, or of threats almost as bad as if the menaces had been actually realised. It was observed that his behaviour to Caroline had never been so little tinged with outward respect as now. She bore his ill-humour with admirable patience; and her quiet endurance only the more provoked the petulance of the little and worthless King.

He was not only ill-tempered with the mistress of the palace, but was made, or chose to think himself, especially angry at trifling improvements which Caroline had carried into effect in the suburban palace during the temporary absence of its master. The improvements consisted chiefly in removing some worthless pictures and indifferent statues and placing master-pieces in their stead. The King would have all restored to the condition it was in when he had last left the palace; and he treated Lord Hervey as a fool for venturing to defend the Queen’s taste and the changes which had followed the exercise of it. ‘I suppose,’ said the dignified King to the courteous vice-chamberlain, ‘I suppose you assisted the Queen with your fine advice when she was pulling my house to pieces, and spoiling all my furniture. Thank God! at least she has left the walls standing!’

Lord Hervey asked if he would not allow the two Vandykes which the Queen had substituted for ‘two signposts,’ to remain. George pettishly answered, that he didn’t care whether they were changed or no; ‘but,’ he added, ‘for the picture with the dirty frame over the door, and the three nasty little children, I will have them taken away, and the old ones restored. I will have it done, too, to-morrow morning, before I go to London, or else I know it will not be done at all.’

Lord Hervey next enquired if his Majesty would also have ‘his gigantic fat Venus restored too?’ The King replied that he would, for he liked his fat Venus better than anything which had been put in its place. Upon this Lord Hervey says he fell to thinking ‘that if his Majesty had liked his fat Venus as well as he used to do, there would have been none of these disputations.’

By a night’s calm repose the ill-humour of the Sovereign was not dispersed. On the following morning we meet with the insufferable little man in the gallery, where the Queen and her daughters were taking chocolate; her son, the Duke of Cumberland, standing by. He only stayed five minutes, but in that short time the husband and father contrived to wound the feelings of his wife and children. ‘He snubbed the Queen, who was drinking chocolate, for being always stuffing; the Princess Amelia for not hearing him; the Princess Caroline for being grown fat; the Duke of Cumberland for standing awkwardly; and then he carried the Queen out to walk, to be re-snubbed in the garden.’21

Sir Robert Walpole told his friend Hervey that he had done his utmost to prepare the Queen for this change in the King’s feelings and actions towards her. He reminded her that her personal attractions were not what they had been, and he counselled her to depend more upon her intellectual superiority than ever. The virtuous man advised her to secure the good temper of the King by throwing certain ladies in his way of an evening. Sir Robert mentioned, among others, Lady Tankerville, ‘a very safe fool, who would give the King some amusement without giving her Majesty any trouble.’ Lady Deloraine, the Delia from whose rage Pope bade his readers dread slander and poison, had already attracted the royal notice, and the King liked to play cards with her in his daughter’s apartments. This lady, who had the loosest tongue of the least modest women about the court, was characterised by Walpole as likely to exercise a dangerous influence over the King. If Caroline would retain her power, he insinuated, she must select her husband’s favourites, through whom she might still reign supreme.

Caroline is said to have taken this advice in good part. There would be difficulty in believing that it ever was given did we not know that the Queen herself could joke, not very delicately, in full court, on her position as a woman not first in her husband’s regard. Sir Robert would comment on these jokes in the same locality, and with increase of coarseness. The Queen, however, though she affected to laugh, was both hurt and displeased—hurt by the joke and displeased with the joker, of whom Swift has said, that—