CHAPTER VIII.LEICESTER HOUSE AND RICHMOND LODGE.1718–1719.

Leicester House, “the pouting place of princes,” as Pennant wittily called it, is chiefly known in history as the residence of two successive Princes of Wales of the Hanoverian dynasty who were at feud with the head of the House, but it has other titles to fame. It was built in the reign of James the First by Lord Leicester, the famous ambassador, as his town house, and in subsequent reigns it became the residence, for short or long periods, of many celebrated personages, such as the patriot, Algernon Sidney, the Queen of Bohemia, during the last years of her life, Peter the Great, on his visit to England, and Prince Eugene of Savoy. It was situated on the north side of Leicester Fields, as the square was then called, and stood a little way back from the road, with gardens behind it. It was a long, two-storied house, shut off from the square by a large court-yard, and in front of the court-yard, on either side of the entrance gate, was a low range of shops. Inside, the house was large and spacious, with a fine staircase, and handsome reception roomson the first floor, but externally it was ugly, and the neighbourhood was hardly an ideal place for a royal residence. Leicester Fields was an ill-lighted and not very well-kept district; in the previous reign it had an evil reputation as being a favourite place for duelling, and that band of wild bloods, the Mohocks, had raced about it after nightfall, wrenching knockers and slitting noses, to the terror of all peaceable citizens.

But when the Prince and Princess of Wales repaired to Leicester House, Leicester Fields soon became the fashionable part of the town. At night it was crowded with coaches and sedan-chairs, bearers and runners, linkmen with flambeaux and gorgeously liveried footmen. Lords and men of fashion in gold-laced coats, with enormous periwigs, and ladies in hoops and powder, tripped across the court-yard of Leicester House at all hours of the day and far into the night, for the Prince and Princess of Wales kept a brilliant court here, especially in the first years of their occupation. The discontented among the politicians, especially the Whigs, rallied around the Prince. “The most promising of the young lords and gentlemen of that party,” says Horace Walpole, “and the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new Court of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The apartment of the bedchamber woman-in-waiting became the fashionable eveningrendezvousof the most distinguished wits and beauties.” A drawing-room was held every morning, and three times a week receptions took place in the evening,which were thronged by the most elegant beaux, the most accomplished wits, and the most beautiful of the ladies of quality. Balls, routs and assemblies were the order of the day, or rather of the night, at Leicester House, and on the evenings when there were none of these entertainments, the Prince and Princess showed themselves at the theatre, the opera, or some other public resort, always followed by a splendid suite. Leicester House became a synonym for brilliancy, and if it was the wish of the Prince and Princess to outshine the old King’s court, they quickly achieved it. The fashion they set of a court of pleasure was soon followed by many of the nobility, who sought to excel each other in the splendour of their entertainments. At no time had the social life of London been more brilliant, or more varied, than in these early days at Leicester House. Lord Chesterfield, that most polished of courtiers, writes of this period: “Balls, assemblies and masquerades have taken the place of dull, formal visiting-days, and the women are more agreeable triflers than they were designed. Puns are extremely in vogue, and the licence very great. The variation of three or four letters in a word breaks no squares, in so much that an indifferent punster may make a very good figure in the best companies.” He was as ready with puns as Lord Hervey was with epigrams, or Lord Bath with verses.

Lord Chesterfield—he was Lord Stanhope then, but we use the title by which he was afterwardsfamous—was about twenty-five years of age. He had proved himself at Cambridge an accomplished classical scholar, and on leaving the university he made the then fashionable tour of Europe. He wasted a good deal of money gaming at the Hague—a vice to which he was much given—and then went to Paris, where, as he was young, handsome and wealthy, he achieved a great success. “I shall not give you my opinion of the French,” he writes, “as I am very often taken for one; and many a Frenchman has paid me the highest compliment he thinks he can pay to any one, which is, ‘Sir, you are just like one of us’. I talk a great deal; I am very loud and peremptory; I sing and dance as I go along; and, lastly, I spend a monstrous deal of money in powder, feathers, white gloves, etc.” When he came back to England he was appointed a gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, and at the court of Leicester House he was one of the most shining ornaments. Johnson speaks of him as “a wit among lords and a lord among wits”. He warmly espoused the cause of the Prince against his father, and he often delighted the Princess by ridiculing the dull court of the King, and especially the mistresses, whom he described as “two considerable specimens of the King’s bad taste and strong stomach”. The Princess was mocking one day at Kielmansegge’s painted face. “She looks young—if one may judge from her complexion,” she said, “not more than eighteen or twenty.” “Yes, madam,” repliedChesterfield, “eighteen or twenty stone.” And then he went on to say: “The standard of his Majesty’s taste, as exemplified in his mistress, makes all ladies who aspire to his favour, and who are near the suitable age, strain and swell themselves, like the frogs in the fable, to rival the bulk and the dignity of the ox. Some succeed, and others—burst.” Whereat the Princess and her ladies laughed heartily. But Chesterfield’s wit was a two-edged sword, which he sometimes directed against the Princess herself, mimicking her gestures and her foreign accent the moment her back was turned. She soon became aware through her ladies, who, of course, told tales, that she was mocked at by him, and once she warned him, half in jest and half in earnest. “You have more wit, my lord, than I,” she said, “but I have a bitter tongue, and always repay my debts with exorbitant interest”—a speech which he had later reason to remember. Of course he denied, with exquisite grace, that he could possibly have dared to ridicule the most charming of princesses, but Caroline did not trust him. His sarcasms made him many enemies, though his great object, he declares, when a young man, was “to make every man I met like me, and every woman love me”.

Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, the soldier and statesman, also came to Leicester House from time to time. His days of adventure were now over, so he had leisure to indulge in his love of gallantry and the arts. He tempered his wit with avein of philosophy. He affected a superiority over the ordinary conventions of life, and never lost an opportunity of showing his contempt for fops and fools. One day, seeing a dancing-master picking his way along with pearl-coloured silk stockings, he was so irritated at the sight of this epicene being, that he leaped out of his coach and ran at him with drawn sword, driving the man and his stockings into the mud. As this was an age of over-dressed beaux, Peterborough would sometimes show his disregard for outward appearances by going to the opposite extreme. Mary Lepel, then Lady Hervey, wrote once from Bath: “Lord Peterborough is here, and has been so some time, though, by his dress one would believe he had not designed to make any stay; for he wears boots all day, and as I hear, must do so, having brought no shoes with him. It is a comical sight to see him with his blue ribbon and star and a cabbage under each arm, or a chicken in his hand, which, after he himself has purchased from market, he carries home for his dinner.”87If we may believe the Duchess of Orleans, Peterborough was in love with the Princess of Wales, and often told her so, but she certainly did not encourage him. Her conduct was a model in this respect, notwithstanding that the King about this time spread many injurious reports against her: “He will get laughed at by everybody for doing this,” says theDuchess, “for the Princess has a spotless reputation”.88

A more frequent figure at Leicester House than Peterborough was John, Lord Hervey, eldest son of the first Earl of Bristol, who was a gentleman of the bedchamber to the Prince, and a great favourite with the Princess of Wales. He was considered an exquisite beau and wit, and showed himself in after life to be possessed of considerable ability, both as writer89and orator. He was an accomplished courtier, and possessed some of the worst vices of courtiers; he was double-faced, untrustworthy and ungrateful. He had a frivolous and effeminate character; he was full of petty spite and meannesses, and given to painting his face and other abominations, which earned for him the nickname of “Lord Fanny”. He is described by some of the poets of the time as a man possessed of great personal beauty; the Duchess of Marlborough was of an opposite opinion. “He has certainly parts and wit,” she writes, “but is the most wretched, profligate man that ever was born, besides ridiculous; a painted face, and not a tooth in his head.” Despite his affectations and his constitutional ill-health, he had great success with the fair sex, and two or three years later he wedded one of the beauties of Leicester House, the incomparable Mary Lepel.

The eccentric Duchess of Buckingham, “mad with pride,” was also wont to attend the drawing-rooms at Leicester House, not because she had any affection for the Prince and Princess of Wales—on the contrary, she hated the Hanoverian family, and was always plotting against them—but because she thought that by going she would annoy the King. She was the acknowledged daughter of James the Second, by Katherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, and she was inordinately proud of her Stuart ancestry, though Horace Walpole, who was among her enemies, declares that her mother said to her: “You need not be so vain, daughter, you are not the King’s child, but Colonel Graham’s”. Graham’s daughter, the Countess of Berkshire, was supposed to be very like the duchess, and he himself was not unwilling to claim paternity, though she stoutly denied the suggestion. “Well, well,” said Graham, “kings are all powerful, and one must not complain, but certainly the same man was the father of those two women.” On the other hand, James the Second always treated the duchess as his child, bestowed upon her the rank and precedence of a duke’s daughter, and gave her leave to bear the royal arms with a slight variation. She first married James, Earl of Anglesey, and later became the third wife of the magnificent John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, and survived him. At Buckingham House the wealthy duchess lived in semi-regal state, and she made journeys to Paris, which were like royal progresses, to visit the church where lay the unburied body ofJames the Second, and to weep over it. She refused to visit Versailles unless the French Court received her with the honours due to a princess of the blood royal, which, of course, were not granted her. She had her opera box in Paris decorated in the same way as those set apart for crowned heads, and she sometimes appeared at the opera in London in royal robes of red velvet and ermine. On one occasion, when she wished to drive through Richmond Park, she was told by the gatekeeper that she must not pass as the road was reserved for royalty. “Tell the King,” she cried indignantly, “that if it is reserved for royalty, I have more right to go through it than he has.” She was inordinately vain, and had a great love of admiration and society, always wishing to see and be seen.

But if the court of the Prince and Princess of Wales had consisted only of duchesses, young noblemen and beautiful women of fashion, it would have been much like any other court. What gave Leicester House its peculiar distinction was the presence of poets, writers and learned men, who were drawn thither by the Princess. The Prince, like his father, had a great contempt for men of letters, and for literature generally. He did not love “boetry,” as he called it, and once when Lord Hervey was composing a poem he said to him testily that such an occupation was unbecoming to a man of his rank; he should leave the scribbling of verses to “little Mr. Pope”. But Caroline thought differently, and she endeavoured at Leicester Houseto set up a court modelled upon the one she had known in her early years at Lützenburg, and she held, as far as she could, the same réunions. Learned and scientific men were more familiar figures at courts in those days than now. Louis the Fourteenth had set the fashion among royal personages for appreciating “learned incense”. In the latter part of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth century the more famous writers were to be met as a matter of course in the highest social and political circles, and the position of men of letters never stood higher in England than during the reign of Anne. Tories and Whigs vied with one another in winning over to their side the ablest writers of the day. It is not contended that this advanced the higher interests of literature, but an age which produced Pope, Addison, Swift, Congreve, Defoe, Gay and Steele (to name only a few) cannot be considered barren. There was an intimate link between diplomacy and letters. Matthew Prior, in return for scribbling some indifferent verses, rose to become ambassador at Paris; Addison, who undertook a good deal of diplomatic work, became eventually Secretary of State; Gay had dabbled in diplomacy; and Steele, from being a trooper in the Guards, was advanced to a lucrative position in the Civil Service. Many men of letters, at the advice of their patrons, took Holy Orders, and the Church was regarded as a convenient way of providing for their necessities; Swift was an instance of this, and many another besides. The press, as we understand it to-day,was then only in its infancy; but in the patronage extended by statesmen and noble lords who wished to play the part of Mæcenas to pamphleteers, playwrights, poetasters and so forth, we see the first recognition of what is now known as the power of the press. When George the First ascended the throne, nearly all the cleverest pamphleteers were Tories or Jacobites, and the King was indifferent whether they were so or not. But Caroline saw the necessity of employing some able writers on the side of the dynasty, and so counteracting the Jacobite publications. In pursuance of this policy, after the Jacobite rising, Addison was employed by the Government to write up, inThe Freeholder, the Hanoverian succession and Whig policy, and he was rewarded shortly after by a lucrative appointment. His social ambition led him to marry the Dowager Countess of Warwick, a haughty virago, who treated him more like a lackey than a husband. Both Addison and the countess were often to be seen at Leicester House.

Pope, who had just had his famous quarrel with Addison, often came to Leicester House, and was on friendly terms with Mrs. Howard and many of the maids of honour. He was probably brought before the notice of the Princess of Wales by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu before she left for Constantinople. He had already achieved fame by hisRape of the Lockand hisPastorals, and he had published the first four books of his translation of theIliad. He was a Roman Catholic, had entered uponhis career as a Tory with a leaning to Jacobitism; his patrons had been Oxford, Harcourt and Bolingbroke, all fallen statesmen now. But these things made no difference to Caroline, who quickly recognised the poet’s genius, and with her genius stood before every other consideration.

Gay, the poet, found his way here too, careless, good-humoured, popular with every one. He had first made Caroline’s acquaintance at Hanover, whither he went as secretary to Lord Clarendon on his special mission just before the death of Queen Anne. He wrote to Swift from there, speaking of himself as strutting in silver and blue through the clipped avenues of Herrenhausen, perfecting himself in the diplomatic arts “of bowing profoundly, speaking deliberately, and wearing both sides of my long periwig before”. He was a very necessitous poet, always in difficulties, and he hit upon a plan of making a little money, and at the same time winning the favour of the Court. He wrote a long poem to the Princess of Wales, in which he mingled her praises with his necessities. The only practical result of this effusion was that Caroline went to Drury Lane to honour the first performance of Gay’s next effort, which he described as a tragi-comi-pastoral-farce, “What d’ye call it?” a burlesque on the plays of the time; it was a failure, notwithstanding this distinguished patronage. Gay at this time was a far greater social success than a literary one, and the maids of honour especially delighted in his sunny, cheery presence.

Tickell, the poet-laureate, a favourite of Addison, also paid his court to the Princess, and wrote odes to the Royal Family, notably hisRoyal Progress, but Caroline did not care for him, despite his fulsome verses. Voltaire and Swift did not come until later, towards the end of the reign. Arbuthnot, the fashionable physician and the friend of Chesterfield, Pulteney and Mrs. Howard, was often seen at Leicester House, though he no longer held a position at court, and through him Caroline made the acquaintance of many of the rising writers of the day. Arbuthnot was the “friend, doctor and adviser of all the wits”. Pope wrote of him in dedicating one of hisvolumes:—

Friend of my life, which did not you prolong,The world had wanted many an idle song.

Friend of my life, which did not you prolong,

The world had wanted many an idle song.

Of course the broad-viewed Dr. Samuel Clarke came to Leicester House to continue Caroline’s weekly discussions on metaphysical, theological and philosophical subjects. He brought with him many of his way of thinking, notably Whiston, who had been compelled to resign his Cambridge professorship in consequence of having written a book to show that the accepted doctrine of the Trinity was erroneous. He then came to live in London, and started a society for promoting what he called “Primitive Christianity”. This society held weekly meetings at his house in Cross Street, Hatton Garden, and it is very likely that Caroline sometimes attended these gatheringsincognito. Whiston was extremely plain-spoken, and often at the Princess’sdiscussions used her roughly, treating her remarks with contempt; but Caroline took his reproofs good-humouredly, and helped him all she could.

Newton, an old man then, came sometimes to Leicester House, carried across in his chair from his house in St. Martin’s Street, hard by. Caroline had a great veneration and love for him, and she always gave him the first place at her gatherings, and listened with reverence to all he had to say. She often saw Newton in private, and consulted him about the education of her children. It was Caroline who made the remark, absurdly credited to George the First, that it was the greatest glory of the House of Hanover to have such subjects as Newton in one country and Leibniz in another.

These intellectual friendships were the delight of Caroline’s life, yet she had frequently to interrupt them to amuse her pompous little husband, and enter into the brilliant inanities of the court. She combined with these higher joys a keen sense of more material pleasures, and she loved music and the dance and the gaming table as much as any of her courtiers. These grave, learned and scientific men did not follow the Princess to her crowded saloons, but her assemblies always contained a sprinkling of the more famous men of letters. Literature became the fashion of the hour, and Leicester House had quite a literary atmosphere. Of course all the witty young noblemen and poets set their talents to work to praise the charms of the Princessand her ladies. “Characters” were all the vogue, and every lady, from the Princess down to the youngest maid of honour, had her character elaborately written in prose, or was immortalised in verse. If all the poetry written about Caroline and her ladies were collected, it would fill a large volume.

The most be-rhymed of all the beauties after the Princess was Mary Lepel. The honours were divided between her and Mary Bellenden; an old balladruns:—

What pranks are played behind the scenes,And who at Court the belle—Some swear it is the Bellenden,And others say la Pell.

What pranks are played behind the scenes,

And who at Court the belle—

Some swear it is the Bellenden,

And others say la Pell.

After Mary Lepel married Lord Hervey, Voltaire, who met her during his visit to England, celebrated her beauty in English verse, asfollows:—

Hervey, would you know the passionYou have kindled in my breast?Trifling is the inclinationThat by words can be expressed.In my silence see the lover;True love is by silence known;In my eyes you’ll best discover,All the power of your own.

Hervey, would you know the passionYou have kindled in my breast?Trifling is the inclinationThat by words can be expressed.

Hervey, would you know the passion

You have kindled in my breast?

Trifling is the inclination

That by words can be expressed.

In my silence see the lover;True love is by silence known;In my eyes you’ll best discover,All the power of your own.

In my silence see the lover;

True love is by silence known;

In my eyes you’ll best discover,

All the power of your own.

Gay wrote ofher:—

Youth’s youngest daughter, sweet Lepel.

Miss Lepel was married secretly to Lord Hervey, and when her marriage became known, Lords Chesterfield and Bath indited a string of verses, and sent them to her under the name of a begging poet. The young lady sent the usual fee, and when the authorship was disclosed she was much “miffed,” notat the licence of the verses, to which she might well have objected, but to being “bit,” to use the fashionable slang of the period. Some of the verses are unquotable, others run asfollows:—

Bright Venus yet never saw beddedSo perfect a beau and a belle,As when Hervey the handsome was weddedTo the beautiful Molly Lepel.So powerful her charms, and so moving,They would warm an old monk in his cell,Should the Pope himself ever go roaming,He would follow dear Molly Lepel.Had I Hanover, Bremen, and Verden,And likewise the Duchy of Zell!I’d part with them all for a farthing,To have my dear Molly Lepel.Should Venus now rise from the ocean,And naked appear in her shell,She would not cause half the emotion,That we feel for dear Molly Lepel.Old Orpheus, that husband so civil,He followed his wife down to hell,And who would not go to the devil,For the sake of dear Molly Lepel.In a bed you have seen banks of roses;Would you know a more delicate smell,Ask the fortunate man who reposesOn the bosom of Molly Lepel.Or were I the King of Great BritainTo choose a minister well,And support the throne that I sit on,I’d have under me Molly Lepel.

Bright Venus yet never saw beddedSo perfect a beau and a belle,As when Hervey the handsome was weddedTo the beautiful Molly Lepel.

Bright Venus yet never saw bedded

So perfect a beau and a belle,

As when Hervey the handsome was wedded

To the beautiful Molly Lepel.

So powerful her charms, and so moving,They would warm an old monk in his cell,Should the Pope himself ever go roaming,He would follow dear Molly Lepel.

So powerful her charms, and so moving,

They would warm an old monk in his cell,

Should the Pope himself ever go roaming,

He would follow dear Molly Lepel.

Had I Hanover, Bremen, and Verden,And likewise the Duchy of Zell!I’d part with them all for a farthing,To have my dear Molly Lepel.

Had I Hanover, Bremen, and Verden,

And likewise the Duchy of Zell!

I’d part with them all for a farthing,

To have my dear Molly Lepel.

Should Venus now rise from the ocean,And naked appear in her shell,She would not cause half the emotion,That we feel for dear Molly Lepel.

Should Venus now rise from the ocean,

And naked appear in her shell,

She would not cause half the emotion,

That we feel for dear Molly Lepel.

Old Orpheus, that husband so civil,He followed his wife down to hell,And who would not go to the devil,For the sake of dear Molly Lepel.

Old Orpheus, that husband so civil,

He followed his wife down to hell,

And who would not go to the devil,

For the sake of dear Molly Lepel.

In a bed you have seen banks of roses;Would you know a more delicate smell,Ask the fortunate man who reposesOn the bosom of Molly Lepel.

In a bed you have seen banks of roses;

Would you know a more delicate smell,

Ask the fortunate man who reposes

On the bosom of Molly Lepel.

Or were I the King of Great BritainTo choose a minister well,And support the throne that I sit on,I’d have under me Molly Lepel.

Or were I the King of Great Britain

To choose a minister well,

And support the throne that I sit on,

I’d have under me Molly Lepel.

Mary Bellenden rivalled Mary Lepel in loveliness. Gay writes of her in hisBallad of Damon andCupid:—

So well I’m known at CourtNone ask where Cupid dwells;But readily resort,To Bellenden’s or Lepel’s.

So well I’m known at Court

None ask where Cupid dwells;

But readily resort,

To Bellenden’s or Lepel’s.

And again he mentions her and her sister Margaret in hisWelcome to Pope fromGreece:—

Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land,And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.

Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land,

And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.

Like many of the Princess’s young ladies, Mary Bellenden was often in want of money. On one occasion she writes to Mrs. Howard from Bath: “Oh Gad, I am so sick of bills; for my part I believe I shall never be able to hear them mentioned without casting up my accounts—bills areaccounts, you know. I do not know how your bills go in London, but I am sure mine are not dropped, for I paid one this morning as long as my arm and as broad as my ——. I intend to send you a letter of attorney, to enable you to dispose of my goods before I may leave this place—such is my condition.”90

LEICESTER HOUSE, LEICESTER SQUARE, TEMP. GEORGE I.

The Prince of Wales, who was early attracted by Mary Bellenden’s charms, made addresses to her which she did not reciprocate. The Prince was not accustomed to having his advances slighted, and knowing that Mary Bellenden had her little bills, as a hint by no means delicate, he sat down one evening by her side, and taking out his purse began to count his money. The lively Bellenden bore it for a while, but when he was about to tell his guineas all over again, she cried: “Sir, I cannot bear it; if you count your money any more, I will go out of the room”. This remonstrance had so littleeffect that he proceeded to press his attentions upon her, and jingled the gold in her ear. Thereupon she lost her temper and knocked the purse out of his hand, scattering the guineas far and wide, and ran out of the room. In other ways, too, she showed her disapproval of his advances, for, writing later to Mrs. Howard, about a new maid of honour, she says: “I hope you will put her a little in the way of behaving before the Princess, such as not turning her back; and one thing runs mightily in my head, which is, crossing her arms,as I did to the Prince, and told him I was not cold, but I liked to stand so”.91Mary Bellenden had a great bulwark to her virtue in the fact that she was deeply in love with Colonel John Campbell, many years later the Duke of Argyll, who was then one of the Prince’s grooms of the bedchamber. The Prince discovered that she was in love, though he did not know with whom, and, so far from showing resentment, he told her that if she would promise not to marry without his knowledge, he would do what he could for her and her lover. But Mary Bellenden distrusted the Prince’s good faith, and a year or two later secretly married Campbell. The Prince did not dismiss Colonel Campbell from court, but he never forgave Mary, and whenever she came to a drawing-room, he would whisper reproaches in her ear, or shake his finger at her and scowl. The lady did not care, as she had married the man she loved.

Even the prudish Miss Meadows found a poet,for Doddington in one of his trifles couples her name with that of LadyHervey:—

As chaste as Hervey or Miss Meadows,

and Pope, in some lines addressed to Sophy Howe, introduces Meadows in no amiablelight:—

What is prudery?’Tis a beldamSeen with wit and beauty seldom,’Tis a fear that starts at shadows;’Tis (no ’tisn’t) like Miss Meadows;’Tis a virgin hard of feature,Old and void of all good nature,Lean and fretful; would seem wiseYet plays the fool before she dies.’Tis an ugly envious shrewThat rails at dear Lepel and you.

What is prudery?

’Tis a beldam

Seen with wit and beauty seldom,

’Tis a fear that starts at shadows;

’Tis (no ’tisn’t) like Miss Meadows;

’Tis a virgin hard of feature,

Old and void of all good nature,

Lean and fretful; would seem wise

Yet plays the fool before she dies.

’Tis an ugly envious shrew

That rails at dear Lepel and you.

Sophia Howe, whose wild spirits were responsible for many lively scenes at Leicester House, often figured in verse. Gay alludes to her giddiness when hesays:—

Perhaps Miss Howe came there by chance,Nor knows with whom, nor why she comes along.

Perhaps Miss Howe came there by chance,

Nor knows with whom, nor why she comes along.

This young lady’s flightiness is shown in her letters. She thought no life worth living except the life at court, and when she was in the country on a visit to her mother, she wrote to Mrs. Howard: “You will think, I suppose, that I have had no flirtation since I am here; but you will be mistaken; for the moment I entered Farnham, a man, in his own hair, cropped, and a brown coat, stopped the coach to bid me welcome, in a very gallant way; and we had a visit, yesterday, from a country clown of this place, who did all he could to persuade meto be tired of the influence and fatigue of a court life, and intimated that a quiet country one would be very agreeable after it, and he would answer that in seven years I should have a little court of my own. I think this is very well advanced for the short time I have been here.”92And again, when she was anxious to return to Leicester House, she writes: “Pray, desire my Lord Lumley93to send the coach to Godalming next Wednesday, that I may go off on Thursday, which will be a happy day, for I am very weary of The Holt, though I bragged to Carteret94that I was very well pleased.... If my Lord Lumley does not send the coach, he never shall have the least flirtation more with me. Perhaps he may be glad of me for asummer suitnext year at Richmond, when he has no other business upon his days. Next Wednesday the coach must come, or I die.... One good thing I have got by the long time I have been here, which is, the being more sensible than ever I was of my happiness in being maid of honour; I won’t say God preserve me so neither, that would not be so well.”95

Alas! poor Miss Howe did not long remain a maid of honour. Soon after these letters were written she was betrayed into a fatal indiscretion;she was expelled from court, and died a few years later of a broken heart. Her fall made a great sensation in the Princess’s household, so great that it shows that such cases were uncommon, for however much the maids of honour might flirt, and however free might be their wit and conversation, like their mistress, they kept their virtue intact. Poor Sophia’s betrayer was Anthony Lowther, brother of Lord Lonsdale; he was base enough not to marry her. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in a poem written nearly twenty years later, introduces the tale of this unfortunate girl’sruin:—

Poor girl! she once was thought extremely fair,Till worn by love, and tortured by despair.Her pining cheek betray’d the inward smart;Her breaking looks foretold a breaking heart.At Leicester House her passion first began,And Nunty Lowther was a proper man:But when the Princess did to Kew remove,She could not bear the absence of her love,But flew away....

Poor girl! she once was thought extremely fair,

Till worn by love, and tortured by despair.

Her pining cheek betray’d the inward smart;

Her breaking looks foretold a breaking heart.

At Leicester House her passion first began,

And Nunty Lowther was a proper man:

But when the Princess did to Kew remove,

She could not bear the absence of her love,

But flew away....

Mrs. Howard was the most be-rhymed of the more mature ladies. Lord Peterborough penned her praises in both prose and verse. Perhaps the best known of his effusions is the poembeginning:—

I said to my heart, between sleeping and waking,“Thou wild thing that always art leaping or aching,What black, brown, or fair, in what clime, in what nation,By turns has not taught thee a pit-a-pat-ation,”

I said to my heart, between sleeping and waking,

“Thou wild thing that always art leaping or aching,

What black, brown, or fair, in what clime, in what nation,

By turns has not taught thee a pit-a-pat-ation,”

andending:—

Oh wonderful creature! a woman of reason!Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season;When so easy to guess who this angel should be,Would one think Mrs. Howard ne’er dreamt it was she?

Oh wonderful creature! a woman of reason!

Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season;

When so easy to guess who this angel should be,

Would one think Mrs. Howard ne’er dreamt it was she?

Pope, who held her in high esteem, coins a compliment even out of herdeafness:—

When all the world conspires to praise herThe woman’s deaf, and does not hear.

When all the world conspires to praise her

The woman’s deaf, and does not hear.

AndGay:—

Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies.

Mrs. Howard continued to be the recipient of the Prince’s attentions in the intervals of his unsuccessful overtures to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Bellenden and others; yet she conducted herself with so much discretion, and was so popular, that every one about the court, from the Princess downwards, conspired to ignore theliaisonexisting between them. But Mrs. Howard’s spendthrift husband was so inconsiderate as to interrupt this harmony. He held the post of a gentleman of the bedchamber to the King, and under the new rule the ladies whose husbands were in the King’s service were to quit the service of the Princess. Mrs. Howard had refused, but Howard now insisted that his wife should leave Leicester House and return to him. Howard’s action was instigated by the King, who saw in this an opportunity of annoying the Prince and Princess of Wales. Mrs. Howard again refused to obey, and the aggrieved husband went one night, half-tipsy, to Leicester House, and noisily demanded his wife. He was promptly turned out by the lackeys, but the scandal went abroad. Howard then adopted a loftier tone, and made an appeal to the Archbishopof Canterbury, beseeching his Grace to use his influence to induce his wife to return to her lawful spouse. Thereon the aged Archbishop wrote a lengthy letter to the Princess, pointing out the obligations of the married state, the duties of the wife and the privileges of the husband, as laid down by St. Peter and St. Paul, and asking her to send Mrs. Howard back to her husband. The Princess took no notice of this homily, and Mrs. Howard remained where she was.

Howard, therefore, went to Leicester House and forced himself into the Princess’s presence. He made a great scene—he declared that he would have his wife even if he had to pull her out of the Princess’s coach. Caroline spiritedly told him “to do it if he dared”. “Though,” she said years later, when relating this scene to Lord Hervey, “I was horribly afraid of him (for we weretête-à-tête) all the while I was thus playing the bully. What added to my fear on this occasion was that as I knew him to beso brutal, as well as a little mad, and seldom quite sober, so I did not think it impossible that he might throw me out of the window.... But as soon as I got near the door, and thought myself safe from being thrown out of the window,je pris mon grand ton de Reine, et je disois, ‘I would be glad to see who should dare to open my coach door and take out one of my servants....’ Then I told him that my resolution was positively neither to force his wife to go to him, if she had no mind to it, norto keep her if she had.” Howard blustered and swore without any respect for the Princess’s presence, and declared that he would go to the King. Whereupon the Princess said: “The King has nothing to do with my servants, and for that reason you may save yourself the trouble.” So Howard took his leave.

Poor Mrs. Howard was in great alarm, as she dreaded to return to her husband, who had neglected her and used her cruelly. Some of the lords about Leicester House formed a guard to protect her against forcible abduction, and when the Prince’s court moved from Leicester House to Richmond for the summer, as etiquette did not permit her to travel in the same coach as the Princess, it was arranged that she should slip away quietly, and so evade her husband. Therefore, on the day the court set out, the Duke of Argyll and Lord Islay, who were her great friends, conveyed Mrs. Howard very early in the morning to Richmond in a private coach. But this state of affairs could not continue. If Howard carried the matter into the law courts, he could force his wife to return to him, willy-nilly, and the spectacle of the Prince and Princess of Wales defying the law by detaining her was not one which could be allowed. Therefore, after a good deal of negotiation, the matter was settled by Howard’s allowing his wife to remain in the Prince’s household in return for the sum of £1,200 a year, paid quarterly in advance. He had never really wished her to come back, and the whole dispute at lastnarrowed itself into an attempt to extort money on the one hand, and to withhold it on the other—a dispute far from creditable to any one concerned in it.

As the royal palaces of Windsor, Hampton Court and Kensington were now closed to the Prince and Princess of Wales, it was necessary that they should have some country house, and Richmond was fixed upon as their summer residence. Richmond Lodge, situated in the little, or old park of Richmond, had been the residence of Ormonde before his flight, and he had lived here in great luxury. “It is a perfect Trianon,” says a contemporary writer; “everything in it, and about it, is answerable to the grandeur and magnificence of its great master.” The house itself was not very large; it is described as “a pleasant residence for a country gentleman,” but the gardens were beautiful. Ormonde’s estates were forfeited for high treason, and Richmond Lodge came into the market. The Prince of Wales bought it for £6,000 from the Commissioners of the Confiscated Estates Court, though not without difficulty, for the King endeavoured to prevent his obtaining it.

Richmond was much more in the country then than now, and there were very few houses between it and Piccadilly, except Kensington Palace. The road thither was lonely, and infested with highwaymen and dangerous characters. At night it was very unsafe. Bridget Carteret, one of the maids of honour, when attending the Princess on one ofthese journeys, had her coach stopped by highwaymen, and was forced to give up all her jewels.96The Princess gave her a diamond necklace and gold watch in place of the trinkets she had lost. There were other drawbacks, too, for we read: “Richmond Lodge having been very much pestered with vermin, one John Humphries, a famous rat physician, was sent for from Dorsetshire by the Princess, through the recommendation of the Marchioness of Hertfordshire, who collected together five hundred rats in his Royal Highness’s Palace, which he brought alive to Leicester House as a proof of his art in that way”.97He must have been a veritable Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Richmond Lodge soon became quite as gay as Leicester House; a great number of the nobility drove down by road on their coaches, or came by water in their barges, during the summer months. Lady Bristol, who was one of the Princess’s ladies, writes from here: “Yesterday there was a horse race for a saddle, etc., the Prince gave; ’twas run under the terrace wall for their Royal Highnesses to see it. There was an infinite number of people to see them all along the banks; and the river full of boats with people of fashion, and that do not come to court, among whom was the Duchess of Grafton and Mr. and Mrs. Beringer. They all stayed, until it was late, upon the water to hear the Prince’s music, which sounded much sweeter than from the shore.Every one took part in the Prince and Princess’s pleasure in having this place secured to them when they almost despaired of it, and though such a trifle, no small pains were taken to disappoint them.”98

From Richmond the Prince and Princess of Wales hunted several days in the week, going out early in the morning and coming back late in the afternoon, riding hard all day over a rough country. It was a peculiarity of the Prince’s court that all its pleasures were in excess. The hunt was largely attended, and many of the maids of honour rode to hounds; some of them would have shirked this violent exercise had they dared, but the Prince would not let them off. Pope writes: “I met the Prince, with all his ladies on horseback, coming from hunting. Mrs. Bellenden and Mrs. Lepel took me under their protection (contrary to the laws against harbouring Papists), and gave me dinner, with something I liked better, an opportunity of conversation with Mrs. Howard. We all agreed that the life of a maid of honour was of all things the most miserable, and wished that every woman who envied it had a specimen of it. To eat Westphalia ham in a morning, ride over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks, come home in the heat of the day with a fever, and (what is worse a hundred times), with a red mark on the forehead from an uneasy hat; all this may qualify them to make excellent wives for fox-hunters, and bear abundance of ruddy complexionedchildren. As soon as they can wipe off the sweat of the day, they must simper an hour, and catch cold in the Princess’s apartment; from thence (as Shakspeare has it), to dinner with what appetite they may, and after that, till midnight, walk, work or think, which they please.”

Richmond boasted of springs of water which were supposed to have health-giving properties. As soon as the Prince and Princess of Wales settled in the place, the value of these wells greatly increased, and the number of ills they were declared to cure was quite extraordinary. A pump-room and an assembly-room were built, ornamental gardens were laid out, and a great crowd of people of quality flocked thither, nominally to drink the waters, really to attach themselves to the Prince’s court. Balls, bazaars and raffles were held in the assembly-rooms, and an enterprisingentrepreneur, one Penkethman, built a theatre on Richmond Green, and to his variety entertainments the Prince and Princess were wont to resort. Thus we read: “On Monday night last Mr. Penkethman had the honour to divert their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princesses of Wales, at his theatre at Richmond, with entertainments of acting and tumbling, performed to admiration; likewise with his picture of the Royal Family down from the King of Bohemia to the young princesses, in which is seen the Nine Muses playing on their several instruments in honour of that august family”.99

Caroline grew very fond of Richmond. Sheinterested herself closely in the prosperity of the village, and in the welfare of its poorer inhabitants, aiding the needy, and subscribing liberally to the schools and charities. In later years she always came back to Richmond as to home, and though her grandson George the Third, who resented her attitude to his father Frederick Prince of Wales, tried to destroy every sign of her occupation, it still remains identified with her memory.

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