CHAPTER X.THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE.1720.

InJune, soon after the reconciliation, the King, attended by Stanhope, set out for Hanover. He had intended to make a longer stay than usual, for everything appeared prosperous and peaceful when he left England. The Ministry was in the plenitude of its power, the Whigs were reconciled, the wound in the Royal Family was healed, or at least skinned over, and the Jacobites were in despair. But this proved to be merely the calm before the storm. In a few months the storm burst with unprecedented violence, and the King’s visit was cut short by an urgent summons from the Government, who, like the nation, were plunged into panic and dismay by the collapse of the South Sea Bubble.

The South Sea Bubble was one of the most glittering bubbles that ever dazzled the eyes of speculators. The South Sea Company had been established by Harley, Lord Oxford, in 1711, to relieve taxation. The floating debts at that time amounted to nearly ten millions, and the Lord Treasurer wished to establish a fund to pay off that sum. The interestwas secured by making permanent the duties on wine, vinegar, tobacco, and certain other commodities; and creditors were attracted by the promise of a monopoly of trade with the Spanish coasts of America. This scheme was regarded by friends of the Government as a masterpiece of finance, and it was sanctioned both by Royal Charter and Act of Parliament. The leading merchants thought highly of the scheme, and the nation saw in it an El Dorado. People recalled the discoveries of Drake and Raleigh, and spoke of the Spanish coasts of America as though they were strewn with gold and gems. The Peace of Utrecht ought to have done something to destroy these illusions, for instead of England being granted free trade with the Spanish colonies in America, Spain only gave England the Asiento treaty, or contract for supplying negro slaves, the privilege of annually sending one ship of less than five hundred tons to the South Sea, and establishing certain factories. The first ship of the South Sea Company, theRoyal Prince, did not sail until 1717, and the next year war broke out with Spain, and all British goods and vessels in Spanish ports were seized. Nevertheless, the South Sea Company flourished; its funds were high, and it was regarded as a sort of rival to the Bank of England.

At the close of 1719 Stanhope’s Administration was anxious to buy up and diminish the irredeemable annuities granted in the last two reigns, and amounting to £800,000 per annum. Competing schemes to effect this were sent in by the SouthSea Company and the Bank of England, and the two corporations tried to outbid one another; they went on increasing their offers until at last the South Sea Company offered the enormous sum of £7,500,000, which the Government accepted. The South Sea Company had the right of paying off the annuitants, who accepted South Sea stock in lieu of Government stock, and two-thirds of them agreed to the offer of eight and a quarter years’ purchase. There seemed no shadow of doubt in any quarter that this was a most satisfactory solution of the difficulty. The South Sea Company was everywhere regarded as prosperous.

Throughout the summer of this year, 1720, speculation was in the air. The example of John Law’s Mississippi scheme in Paris had created a rage for it. Law was a Scottish adventurer, who had some years before established a bank in Paris, and afterwards proceeded to form a West Indian company, which was to have the sole privilege of trading with the Mississippi. It was at first an enormous success, and Law was one of the most courted men in Europe. “I have seen him come to court,” says Voltaire, “followed humbly by dukes, by marshals and by bishops.” He became so arrogant that he quarrelled with Lord Stair, the English ambassador, and the fact that Lord Stair was recalled shows how great was the financier’s power. A great number of Frenchmen amassed large fortunes, and Law’s office in the Rue Quincampoix was thronged from daybreak to night with enormous crowds. Onelittle hunchback in the street was said to have earned no less than 50,000 francs by allowing eager speculators to use his hump as their desk!

As soon as the South Sea Bill had received the royal assent in Parliament, the South Sea Company opened large subscriptions, which were filled up directly. For no reason whatever, its trade, which did not exist, was regarded as a certain road to fortune. The whole of London went mad on the South Sea, and in August the stock, which had been quoted at 130 in the winter, rose to 1,000. Third and fourth subscriptions were opened, the directors pledging themselves that, after Christmas, their dividends should not be less than 50 per cent. Nothing was talked of but the South Sea, and it was gratefully remembered that Oxford, the fallen Minister, had started it. “You will remember when the South Sea was said to be Lord Oxford’s bride,” wrote the Duchess of Ormonde to Swift. “Now the King has adopted it and calls it his beloved child, though perhaps you may say, that if he loves it no better than his son, it may not be saying much.”110

If operations had been confined to the South Sea Company ruin might have been averted, or at least postponed, but the town was seized with the lust for speculation. A variety of other bubbles were started simultaneously, and so great was the infatuation that they were seized upon by an eager public. To give the Government its due, it hadstriven to prohibit such undertakings, describing them in a proclamation as “mischievous and dangerous”. But the proclamation was not worth the paper it was written on, and immediately after the King’s departure for Hanover, the Prince of Wales himself lent his name as governor of a Welsh copper company. “It is no use trying to persuade him,” declared Walpole, whose own hands were far from clean, “that he will be attacked in Parliament, and the ‘Prince of Wales’s Bubble’ will be cried in ’Change Alley.” The Prince eventually withdrew, but not until the company was threatened with prosecution, and he had netted a profit of £40,000. The Duchess of Kendal and Lady Darlington were also deeply pledged, and with the examples of such exalted personages before them, the greed of the people at large cannot be wondered at. ’Change Alley repeated the scene in the Rue Quincampoix; it was crowded from morning to night, and so great was the throng that the clerks had to set up tables in the streets. The whole town seemed to turn into ’Change Alley. In the mad eagerness for speculation all barriers were broken down; Tories, Whigs and Jacobites, Roman Catholics, Churchmen and Dissenters, nobility, squires from the country, clergymen, ladies of quality and ladies of no quality at all, all turned gamblers, and rushed to ’Change Alley. The news-sheets of the day were full of nothing else, and the theatres reflected the popular craze. To quote a topicalballad:—

Here stars and garters do appear,Among our lords the rabble;To buy and sell, to see and hear,The Jews and Gentiles squabble.Here crafty courtiers are too wiseFor those who trust to fortune;They see the cheat with clearer eyes,Who peep behind the curtain.Our greatest ladies hither come,And ply in chariots daily;Oft pawn their jewels for a sumTo venture in the Alley.Young harlots, too, from Drury Lane,Approach the ’Change in coachesTo fool away the gold they gainBy their impure debauches.

Here stars and garters do appear,

Among our lords the rabble;

To buy and sell, to see and hear,

The Jews and Gentiles squabble.

Here crafty courtiers are too wise

For those who trust to fortune;

They see the cheat with clearer eyes,

Who peep behind the curtain.

Our greatest ladies hither come,And ply in chariots daily;Oft pawn their jewels for a sumTo venture in the Alley.Young harlots, too, from Drury Lane,Approach the ’Change in coachesTo fool away the gold they gainBy their impure debauches.

Our greatest ladies hither come,

And ply in chariots daily;

Oft pawn their jewels for a sum

To venture in the Alley.

Young harlots, too, from Drury Lane,

Approach the ’Change in coaches

To fool away the gold they gain

By their impure debauches.

At Leicester House, and in all the great houses, lords and ladies talked of nothing but reports, subscriptions and transfers, and every day saw new companies born, almost every hour. Fortunes were made in a night, and people who had been indigent rose suddenly to great wealth. Stock-jobbers and their wives, Hebrew and Gentile, were suddenly admitted to the most exclusive circles, and aped the manners and the vices of the aristocracy who courted them for what they could get. They drove in gorgeous coaches, decked with brand-new coats of arms, which afforded much opportunity for ridicule. Only the mob, who hooted them in the streets, was not complaisant.

THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE.From an old Cartoon.

THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE.

From an old Cartoon.

Some of the companies hawked about were for the most preposterous objects, such as companies “To make salt water fresh,” “To build hospitals for bastard children,” “For making oil from sunflower seeds,” “For fattening of hogs,” for “Trading in humanhair,” for “Extracting silver from lead,” for “Building of ships against pirates,” for “Importing a number of large jackasses from Spain,” for “A wheel with a perpetual motion,” and, strangest of all, for “An undertaking which shall in due time be revealed”.111For this last scheme the trusting subscribers were to pay down two guineas, “and hereafter to receive a share of one hundred, with the disclosure of the object”. So gullible was the public, that one thousand subscriptions were paid in the course of the morning. The projector levanted in the evening, and the object of the undertaking was revealed.

The disenchantment was not long in coming. The South Sea directors, jealous of all who came in opposition to their schemes, began legal proceedings against several bogus companies, and obtained orders and writs ofscire faciasagainst them. These companies speedily collapsed, but in their fall they dragged down the fabric of speculation on which the South Sea Company itself was reared. The spirit of distrust was excited, and holders became anxious to convert their bonds into money. By the end of September South Sea stock had fallen from 1,000 to 150. The panic was general. Money was called up from the distant counties to London, goldsmiths were applied to, and Walpole used his influence with the Bank of England—but all to no purpose, so great was the disproportion between paper promises and the coin wherewith to pay. Public confidencehad been shaken, and could not be restored. The news of the crash in Paris, caused by the failure of Law’s Mississippi scheme, completed the general ruin. Everywhere were heard lamentations and execrations. The Hebrew stock-jobbers and their wives made their exit from English society as suddenly as they had entered it, and for at least a century were no more seen in noble mansions.

Though a few persons had managed to amass large fortunes by selling out in time—Walpole was one of them, selling out at 1,000—thousands of families were reduced to utter beggary, and thousands more within measurable distance of it. A great cry of rage and resentment went up all over the country, and this cry was raised not only against the South Sea directors, but against the Government, the Prince of Wales, and even the King himself. There was a very general feeling that some one ought to be hanged, and public indignation was directed chiefly against the heads of the Treasury, the South Sea directors, and the German Ministers and mistresses, who were suspected of having been bribed with large sums to recommend the project. So threatening was the outlook against them that the Hanoverian following, at least that part of it which the King had left behind in England, were in a great panic, and in their fright gave utterance to the wildest schemes. One suggested to the Prince of Wales the resignation of the Royal Family, and flight to Hanover; another that it would be well to bribe the army, and proclaim an absolute power; andyet another advised the Government to apply to the Emperor for foreign troops. But such mad plans, though proposed, were never seriously considered by the English Ministers, who, at their wits’ end what to do next, sent to the King at Hanover urging his immediate return. George landed at Margate on November 9th, but so far from his presence having any effect on the falling credit of the South Sea funds, they dropped to 135 soon after.

Parliament met on December 8th thirsting for vengeance. It was thought that the South Sea directors could not be reached by any known laws, but “extraordinary crimes,” one member of Parliament declared, “called for extraordinary remedies,” and this was the temper of the House of Commons. A Secret Committee was appointed to inquire into the affairs of the South Sea Company, and while this committee was sitting a violent debate took place in the House of Lords, when the Duke of Wharton, the ex-president of the Hell-Fire Club, vehemently denounced the Ministry, and hinted that Lord Stanhope, the Prime Minister, was the origin of all this trouble, and had fomented the dissension between the King and the Prince of Wales. He drew a parallel between him and Sejanus, who made a division in the Imperial family, and rendered the reign of Tiberius hateful to the Romans. Stanhope rose in a passion of anger to reply, but after he had spoken a little time he became so excited that he fell down in a fit. He was relieved by bleeding, and carried home, but he died the next day. He wasthe first victim, and the greatest, of the South Sea disclosures.

The Prime Minister was happy, perhaps, in the moment of his death, for when the committee reported, a tale of infamous corruption was disclosed. It was found that no less than £500,000 fictitious South Sea stock had been created, in order that the profits might be used by the directors to facilitate the passing of the Bill through Parliament. The Duchess of Kendal, it was discovered, had received £10,000, Madame Platen another £10,000, and two “nieces,” who were really illegitimate daughters of the King, had also received substantial sums. Against them no steps could be taken. But among the members of the Government who were accused of similar peculations were the younger Craggs, Secretary of State, his father, the Postmaster-General, Charles Stanhope, Aislabie and Sunderland. The very day this report was read to Parliament the younger Craggs died; he was ill with small-pox, but his illness was no doubt aggravated by the anxiety of his mind. A few weeks later his father poisoned himself, unable to face the accusations hurled against him. Charles Stanhope was acquitted by the narrow majority of three. Aislabie was convicted; he was expelled from Parliament, and sent to the Tower, and the greater part of his property forfeited. There were bonfires in the city to celebrate the event. Sunderland was declared to be innocent, but the popular ferment against him was so strong that he was unable to continue at thehead of the Treasury, and resigned. Some months later he died so suddenly that poison was rumoured, but the surgeons, after a post-mortem examination, declared that it was heart disease. The South Sea directors were condemned in a body, disabled from ever holding any place in Parliament, and their combined estates, amounting to above £2,000,000, were confiscated for the relief of the South Sea sufferers. They were certainly punished with great severity; some of them at any rate were innocent of the grosser charges brought against them, but public opinion thought that they were treated far too leniently. The “Cannibals of ’Change Alley,” as they were called, were, if we may believe the pamphlets of the day, fit only for the common hangman.

In the Ministry now reconstituted the chief power was placed in the hands of Robert Walpole, who became, and remained for the next twenty years, the first Minister of State. The hour had brought the man. It was felt by everyone, even by his enemies, that there was only one man who could restore the public credit, and he was Walpole. Nevertheless, when he brought forward his scheme, into the details of which it is unnecessary to enter, many were dissatisfied. It was, of course, impossible to satisfy everybody, though Walpole’s scheme was the best that could be devised, and as far as possible did justice to all parties. The proprietors of the irredeemable annuities were especially dissatisfied, and roundly accused Walpole of having made acollusive arrangement with the Bank of England, and concerted his public measures with a view to his personal enrichment. The accusation may have been true, but whether it was so or not, the fact remains that he was the only man who stood between the people and bankruptcy, and carried the nation through this perilous crisis.

The general election of the following year, 1722, gave the Government an overwhelming majority, and made Walpole master of the situation, with almost unlimited power.

A great man, as great as or greater than Walpole, died at this time—John, Duke of Marlborough. His career lies outside the scope of this book, it belongs to an earlier period, but this at least may be said: whatever his faults, his name will always remain as that of one of the greatest of Englishmen. He had had a paralytic stroke in 1716, so that he had retired from active politics for some time, and his death made no difference to the state of affairs. He left an enormous fortune to his widow, Duchess Sarah, who survived him more than twenty years. So great was her wealth that she was able in some degree to control the public loans, and affect the rate of interest. She was a proud, imperious, bitter woman, but devoted to her lord, and though she had many offers of marriage, especially from the Duke of Somerset and Lord Coningsby, she declared that she would not permit the “Emperor of the World” to succeed to the place in her heart, which was ever devoted to the memory of John Churchill. Marlborough wasburied with great magnificence at Westminster Abbey, but none of the Royal Family attended the funeral, though the Prince and Princess of Wales and the little princesses viewed the procession from a window along the line of route. The King did not even show this mark of respect to the dead hero, who, at one time, had he been so minded, could have effectually prevented the Elector of Hanover from occupying the throne of England.

The confusion and discontent which followed the South Sea crash were favourable to the Jacobites, and the unpopularity of the King was increased by the recent revelations of the rapacity of his mistresses. “We are being ruined by trulls, and what is more vexatious, by old, ugly trulls, such as could not find entertainment in the hospitable hundreds of old Drury,”112wrote a scribbler, who for this effusion was sentenced to fine and imprisonment by the House of Commons. Moreover, at this time the Jacobites were further elated by the news that James’s Consort had given birth to a son and heir at Rome in 1722, who was baptised with the names of Charles Edward Lewis Casimir, and became in after years the hero of the rising in 1745. A second son, Henry Benedict, Duke of York, and afterwards cardinal, was born in 1725. James’s little court seemed to be living in a fool’s paradise, for this year (1722) James issued an extraordinary manifesto in which he gravely proposed that George should restore to him the crown of England, and he inreturn would make him King of Hanover, and give him a safe escort back to his German dominions.

A new plot was set afoot by the Jacobites for the landing of five thousand foreign troops under Ormonde, and to this end they opened negotiations with nearly every court in Europe. The Regent of France revealed this to the English ambassador.

Walpole, being now in the fulness of his power, determined to make the plot a pretext for striking at his old foe Atterbury, who was by far the ablest and most powerful of the Jacobites left in England. Atterbury was seated in his dressing-gown in the Deanery of Westminster one morning when an Under-Secretary of State suddenly entered and arrested him for high treason. His papers were seized, and the aged prelate was hurried before the Privy Council, who proceeded to examine him. He, however, would say nothing, answering a question put to him in the words of the Saviour: “If I tell you, ye will not believe, and if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go”.113At the conclusion of the investigation he was committed to the Tower, a measure which excited the strongest commiseration; his age, his talents, his long service in the Church, and his blameless life, all being remembered in his favour. On the ground of ill-health, and he was really very ill at the time, he was publicly prayed for by most of the clergy in the churches of London and Westminster. His usagewhile in the Tower was disgraceful to the Minister who prompted it.

Atterbury himself said, when summoned many months later before the House of Lords to stand his trial: “I have been under a very long and close confinement, and have been treated with such severity, and so great indignity, as I believe no prisoner in the Tower, of my age and function and rank, ever was; by which means, what strength and use of my limbs which I had when I was first committed in August last, is now so far declined, that I am very unfit to make my defence against a Bill of such an extraordinary nature. The great weakness of body and mind under which I labour; such usage, such hardships, such insults as I have undergone might have broken a more resolute spirit, and much stronger constitution than falls to my share.” Notwithstanding his bodily infirmities, Atterbury made a most able and eloquent defence, which lasted more than two hours, in which he referred to his well-known contempt of ambition or money, and his dislike of the Roman Catholic religion. Atterbury was found guilty of high treason, deprived of all his benefices, and sentenced to be exiled for life. The aged bishop was taken back to the Tower, where he bade farewell to his friends, including Pope, whom he presented with his Bible. The poet was a Roman Catholic, but he kept it as a cherished treasure until the last day of his life. Two weeks later Atterbury was taken under guard to Dover, and sent across the Channel. A great crowd of sympathisers attended his embarkation,and a vast number of boats followed him to the ship’s side. The first news which greeted the venerable exile at Calais was that Bolingbroke had received the King’s pardon, and had just arrived at Calais on his return to England. “Then I am exchanged,” exclaimed Atterbury, with a smile. “Surely,” wrote Pope of this irony of events, “this nation is afraid of being overrun with too much politeness, and cannot regain one great genius but at the expense of another.”114

Bolingbroke’s exile had lasted nine years. Ever since he had broken with James he had lived only for one thing—to get back to England. His first wife died in 1718, and soon after he privately married the Marquise de Villette, a niece of Madame de Maintenon. The lady, who was rich, talented and handsome, was entirely devoted to Bolingbroke; her wealth was at his disposal, she entered into his literary tastes, and sought to further his political ambitions. She even went so far as to change her religion lest her being a Roman Catholic should prejudice him further with the Court of England. The marriage was kept a secret for a long time, and Lady Bolingbroke, as Madame de Villette, came over to England to see what she could do to bring her lord back again. She was received by George the First and at Leicester House. It was thought very likely that she would gain the goodwill of the Princess of Wales, whose views of philosophy, religion and literature had much insympathy with those of Bolingbroke; and in Voltaire they had a friend in common. But in some way Madame de Villette failed at Leicester House; perhaps she overdid her part, perhaps Walpole had effectually prejudiced the Princess against his rival. Caroline believed that Bolingbroke had betrayed James, and said later that Madame de Villette had told her that Bolingbroke had only entered James’s service to be of use to the English Government and so earn his pardon. “That was, in short,” said Caroline, “tobetraythe Pretender; for though Madame de Villette softened the word, she could not soften the thing; which I owned was a speech that had so much villainy and impudence mixed in it, that I could never bear him nor her from that hour; and could hardly hinder myself from saying to her: ‘And pray, Madam, what security can the King have that my Lord Bolingbroke does not desire to come here with the same honest intent that he went to Rome?115Or that he swears he is no longer a Jacobite with more truth than you have sworn you are not his wife?’”

Having failed with the Princess of Wales, Madame de Villette next addressed herself to the Duchess of Kendal through her “niece,” the Countess of Walsingham, with such good effect that for a bribe of £12,000 the duchess persuaded the King to let Bolingbroke return toEngland. The duchess hated Walpole for having thwarted her on more than one occasion in some favourite scheme, and her hatred gave her zest to urge the King to grant a pardon to the Minister’s great rival and bitterest foe. It says much for the duchess’s influence over the King that she was able to obtain it at a time when Walpole was in the zenith of his power. The pardon, however, at first amounted to little more than a bare permission for Bolingbroke to return to England. His attainder remained in force, his title was still withheld, and he was incapable of inheriting estates, and precluded from sitting in the House of Lords, or holding any office. But Walpole had to acquiesce in his return, and no sooner had the pardon passed the great seal than Bolingbroke came back to England, and at once set to work to get his remaining disabilities removed.

HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE.

He was unfortunate in the moment of his return, for the King and Bolingbroke’s friend at court, the Duchess of Kendal, had already set out for Hanover with Townshend and Carteret, and Walpole was carrying on the Government alone. Bolingbroke at first made overtures to Walpole for peace between them, and, if we may believe Horace Walpole (the younger), even went to dine with him at Chelsea. But this effort was too much for the fallen statesman; he choked over the first morsel at dinner, and was obliged to retire from the room. After remaining in England some months, during which he renewed his political friendships, especiallywith Sir William Wyndham and Lord Harcourt, Bolingbroke went to Aix-la-Chapelle, hoping to obtain permission to pay his respects to the King at Hanover. Failing in this, he returned to Paris, where, on the sudden death of the Regent, he gave valuable information against the Jacobites to the elder Horace Walpole, then ambassador, by way of showing his devotion to the House of Hanover, but though Horace Walpole made use of Bolingbroke’s information, he treated him ungraciously.

The King remained in Hanover some time, and later in the year, 1723, went to Berlin on a visit to his son-in-law, King Frederick William of Prussia, and his daughter, Queen Sophie Dorothea.

The Court of Berlin was very different to what it had been in the days of the splendour-loving King Frederick and his brilliant consort, Sophie Charlotte. The penurious habits which Sophie Charlotte had lamented in her son when he was a youth had now developed into sordid avarice, and his boorish manners into a harsh and brutal despotism. At the Prussian Court economy was the order of the day, and in the State everything was subservient to militarism. The misery and squalor of the King of Prussia’s household are graphically told in the Memoirs of his daughter Wilhelmina.116The half-mad King was subject to fits of ungovernable fury, inwhich he sometimes kicked and cuffed his children, starved them, spat in their food, locked them up, and cursed and swore at them. His Queen, except for the beatings, was subject to much the same treatment, and the home life was made wretched by perpetual quarrels.

Queen Sophie Dorothea had much beauty and considerable ability, and despite her frequent disputes with her husband, she was, after her fashion, much attached to him, and he to her. But she had a love of intrigue and double-dealing, and she was incapable of going in the straight way if there was a crooked one. She was a woman of one idea, and this idea she clung to with an obstinacy and tenacity which nothing could weaken. For years—almost from the moment of the birth of her children—she had become enamoured of what was afterwards known as the “Double Marriage Scheme,” a scheme to unite her eldest daughter Wilhelmina, to Frederick, Duke of Gloucester (afterwards Prince of Wales), and her son, Frederick William (afterwards Frederick the Great), to the Princess Amelia, second daughter of the Prince and Princess of Wales. By continual arguments, and perpetual intrigues, she had brought her husband round to her way of thinking, and she had also worked upon her father, George the First, to the extent of gaining his consent to the marriage of the Princess Amelia, when she should be old enough, to the Crown Prince Frederick.

But King George did not approve of the idea of marrying his grandson Frederick to Wilhelmina;Lady Darlington had given him a bad account of her. “She said that I waslaide à faire peurand deformed,” writes Wilhelmina indignantly, “that I was as bad as I was ugly, and that I was so violent that my violence often caused me to have epileptic fits.” Wilhelmina declared that Lady Darlington maliciously spread these falsehoods because she knew the young princess was exceedingly clever, and she did not want any more clever women about the English Court; Caroline was more than enough for her. But Lady Darlington was not the only opponent: the Princess of Wales also did not favour the double marriage scheme so far as Wilhelmina was concerned, and the Prince of Wales did not favour it at all. He hated his cousin and brother-in-law, the King of Prussia; he had hated him as a boy, and he hated him more when he was a rival for the hand of Caroline. He also disliked his sister, for whom he had never a good word. But at this time, what the Prince and Princess of Wales might think about the marriage of their children was of no importance to the Queen of Prussia. What King George thought was a different matter, and, acting on the advice of the Duchess of Kendal, who had been brought round to favour the scheme by a judicious expenditure of money, she implored her father to come to Berlin and see Wilhelmina for himself, as the best way of answering Lady Darlington’s malicious fabrications.

To Berlin accordingly George the First came. He arrived at Charlottenburg on the evening ofOctober 7th, where the King and Queen and the whole court were assembled to welcome him. Wilhelmina was presented to her grandfather from England. “He embraced me,” she says, “and said nothing further than ‘She is very tall; how old is she?’ Then he gave his hand to the Queen, who led him to her room, all the princes following. No sooner had he reached her room than he took a candle, which he held under my nose, and looked at me from top to toe. I can never describe the state of agitation I was in. I turned red and pale by turns; and all the time he had never uttered one word.” Presently the King left the room to confer with his daughter, and Wilhelmina was left alone with the English suite, including my Lords Carteret and Townshend, who at once began their inspection by talking to her in English. She spoke English fluently, and after she had talked to them for more than an hour, the Queen came and took her away. “The English gentlemen,” said Wilhelmina, “said I had the manners and bearing of an English woman; and, as this nation considers itself far above any other, this was great praise.”

King George, however, remained undemonstrative. Wilhelmina calls him “cold-blooded,” and so “serious and melancholy” that she could never muster up courage to speak to him all the time he was at Berlin. There was a great banquet in the evening, though King Frederick William must have sorely grudged the expense. “The Queen,” says Wilhelmina, “kept the conversation going. Wehad already sat for two hours at table when Lord Townshend asked me to beg my mother to get up from the dinner-table as the King was not feeling well. She thereupon made some excuse, saying he must be tired and suggested to him that dinner was over. He, however, several times declared that he was not the least tired, and to prevent further argument on the subject, she laid down her napkin and got up from her chair. She had no sooner done so than the King began to stagger. My father rushed forward to help him, and several persons came to his aid, and held him up for a while, when he suddenly gave way altogether, and had he not been supported, he would have had a dreadful fall. His wig lay on one side, and his hat on the other, and they had to lay him down on the floor, where he remained a whole hour before regaining consciousness. Every one thought he had had a paralytic stroke. The remedies used had the desired effect, and by degrees he recovered. He was entreated to go to bed, but would not hear of it till he had accompanied my mother back to her apartments.”

The rest of the visit was spent infêtes, balls and so forth, but a good deal of business was transacted also, and the preliminaries for the double marriage were settled before King George left Berlin for Göhr, a hunting-place near Hanover.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK II, CHAPTER X:110The Duchess of Ormonde to Swift, 18th August, 1720.111The Political State of Great Britaingives a list of these bubbles, in July, 1720, amounting to 104.112Letter of Decius inMist’s Journal.113St. Luke xxii. 67, 68.114Pope to Swift, 1723.115This was a mistake, as Bolingbroke never went to Rome. He entered James’s service at Barr and quitted it at Versailles.116The Memoirs of Wilhelmina, Margravine of Baireuth.Carlyle drew largely on these Memoirs for the first two volumes of hisFrederick the Great. But the book has since been admirably translated into English by H.R.H. the Princess Christian, and the quotations which follow are taken from her translation.

110The Duchess of Ormonde to Swift, 18th August, 1720.

111The Political State of Great Britaingives a list of these bubbles, in July, 1720, amounting to 104.

112Letter of Decius inMist’s Journal.

113St. Luke xxii. 67, 68.

114Pope to Swift, 1723.

115This was a mistake, as Bolingbroke never went to Rome. He entered James’s service at Barr and quitted it at Versailles.

116The Memoirs of Wilhelmina, Margravine of Baireuth.Carlyle drew largely on these Memoirs for the first two volumes of hisFrederick the Great. But the book has since been admirably translated into English by H.R.H. the Princess Christian, and the quotations which follow are taken from her translation.

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