CHAPTER III.THE COURT OF QUEEN CAROLINE.

Thecourt of King George the Second and Queen Caroline was conducted on a larger scale than any court England had known since the days of Charles the Second, though it lacked much of the gaiety and more of the grace that enlivened and adorned the court of the Merry Monarch. George the Second was a great lover of show, but he had neither wit nor good taste, and when he assumed the crown he seemed to think that he ought also to assume a stiffness and pomposity of manner to maintain his regal dignity. Like all German princes he was a great stickler for etiquette, and he modelled his court not only on Versailles, which then served as a pattern for all the courts of Europe, but imported to it some of the dulness of Herrenhausen, and further regulated it with strict regard to English precedents in previous reigns. The court officials were often very hard put to it to unearth them. But the King was exceedingly precise and resented the most trifling breach of etiquette as a reflection on his royal dignity. He was a great authority on dress and ceremonial; he could tell to a hair’s-breadth the precisewidth of the gold braid which should adorn the coat of a gentleman of the bedchamber, and recall with accuracy the number of buttons required for the vest of a page of the backstairs. The Queen encouraged and applauded his bent in this direction; it occupied his mind and left her free to arrange with Walpole the weightier affairs of the nation.

Leicester House was given up and the court made St. James’s Palace its headquarters in London. All the Hanoverian mistresses and favourites who had occupied apartments there during the last reign were turned out without ceremony. The court of Queen Caroline was more select than that of George the First. Drunkenness was still a venial offence, but it was not approved of in the royal presence, and women of notoriously ill repute were no longer received at St. James’s. When the court was at St. James’s, drawing-rooms were held several times a week, public days as they were called, and the King and Queen gave frequent audiences besides. Court balls often took place, and at the evening drawing-rooms cards and high play were still in vogue. Every movement of the King and Queen in public was made the occasion of ceremonial; they attended divine service at the Chapel Royal in state; they walked in St. James’s Park followed by a numerous suite, the way kept clear by guards; they seldom drove out unless preceded by an escort; their visits to the theatre or opera were always announced beforehand, and their coming and going made the occasion of aspectacle. The people, with whom the pomp and circumstance of Royalty is always popular, loved these sights mightily, and all classes were pleased that there was once more a court in London. The King and Queen also revived the custom of dining in public on Sundays. One of the large state rooms of St. James’s Palace was set apart for the occasion, and at a flourish of trumpets the King and Queen and the Royal Family entered and sat down to table in the centre of the room surrounded by the officers of the household. The courses were served with much ceremony on bended knee. The table was decked with magnificent plate and a band played during dinner. The enclosure was railed around, and the public were admitted by ticket, and allowed to stand behind the barriers and watch the royal personages eat, a privilege of which they freely availed themselves. After dinner the King and Queen withdrew to their apartments, their going, as their coming, being made the occasion of a procession.

One of the first acts of the new King and Queen was to make a tour of the royal palaces, which had been practically closed to them since their rupture with George the First. The old King had disliked Windsor and rarely went there, its grandeur oppressed him, and he and his German mistresses felt out of their element in a place steeped in traditions essentially English. George the Second did not care for Windsor any more than his sire, and excused himself from going there oftenon the ground that it was too far from London. He visited the castle chiefly for the purpose of hunting in the forest. But Caroline loved royal Windsor greatly, and used to go there during the King’s absences at Hanover. In one of the recesses of the picture gallery, now the library, she arranged an extensive and valuable collection of china; the collection was afterwards dispersed, but some of the china remains at Windsor Castle until this day, and is the only relic of Queen Caroline’s occupation.10

The King and Queen paid their first visit to Windsor in the autumn of 1728, and great preparations were made to welcome them to the royal borough. “Last Saturday,” we read, “when their Majesties arrived at Windsor, the Mayor, aldermen, and capital burgesses were ready in their formalities to receive them, and the balconies were hung with tapestry and vast crowds of spectators, but their Majesties came the Park way. The King and Queen walked in the Park till dinner time. The next day their Majesties dined in public, when all the country people, whether in, or out of, mourning, were permitted to see them.”11On this occasion George the Second assumed his stall in St. George’s Chapel as Sovereign of the Order of the Garter, and made his offering at the altar. The Queen,with the Duke of Cumberland, the Princess Royal, and the Princesses Caroline, Mary and Louisa, were present, and the Queen was seated under a canopy erected on the south side of the choir. A ball was given in the evening. The royal pair hunted the stag in Windsor Forest frequently during the visit, and on one occasion remained out until nine o’clock at night, and on another hunted all day through the rain, chasing the stag as far as Weybridge. The Queen followed the hounds in a chaise with one horse, in the same way that Queen Anne used to hunt in Windsor Forest. During their sojourn at Windsor the King and Queen received one Mrs. Joy, “a widow lady in the ninety-fourth year of her age, who had kissed Charles the First’s hand; she was very graciously received”.12The Queen celebrated her first visit to Windsor by giving £350 at Christmas for releasing insolvent debtors confined in the town and castle gaol—her favourite form of charity. The prisoners, to the number of sixteen, were set free.

Kensington was George the Second’s favourite palace, as it had been his father’s. King George the First rebuilt the eastern front and added the cupola. He also improved the interior, notably by making the grand staircase. Then, as now, Kensington Palace was an irregular building with little pretence to beauty and none to grandeur. But our first Hanoverian kings loved it; its homeliness reminded them of Herrenhausen. TheKensington promenades were now revived, and the King and Queen accompanied by the Royal Family would pace down the walks between an avenue of bowing and smiling courtiers. Throughout this reign, and far into the next, Kensington Gardens formed a fashionable resort, and with the promenades are associated many of the great names of the eighteenth century. People were admitted to the gardens by ticket obtainable through the Lord Chamberlain. Thus the promenades developed into a sort of informal court and were much resorted to by persons who did not attend drawing-rooms and levées in the ordinary way, as well as by those who did. The King and the Queen on these morning walks would make many a person happy by singling him out from the crowd with a bow, a smile, or the honour of a few words; or, on the other hand, they would plunge many an aspirant to Court favour into gloom by ignoring him. The origin of these promenades may be traced to the daily walks of the Electress Sophia in the gardens of Herrenhausen, when she used to give audience to her supporters. Like the old Electress, her grandson and his Queen were great walkers. The little King used to walk very fast, with a curious strutting step, and generally forged ahead, leaving his taller and stouter consort to pant along behind him. In a political skit of the day there is an amusing reference to Caroline’s custom of dropping behind her husband. It is headed: “Supposed to be written on account of three gentlemenbeing seen in Kensington Gardens by the King and Queen while they were walking”. It was written either by Pulteney or Chesterfield, and these two were doubtless represented in it, the third being Wyndham or Bolingbroke. “The great river Euphrates” is the Serpentine, which Caroline created out of a string of ponds. Itruns:—

“Now it came to pass in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, in the eighth month, of the sixth year, the beginning of hay harvest, that the King and Queen walked arm in arm in the gardens which they had planted on the banks of the river, the great river Euphrates, and behold there appeared on the sudden three men, sons of the giants. Then Nebuchadnezzar the King lifted up his voice and cried: ‘Oh men of war, who be ye, who be ye, and is it peace?’ They answered him not. Then spake he and said: ‘There is treachery, oh my Queen, there is treachery,’ and he turned his face and fled. Now when the Queen had seen what had befallen the King she girt up her loins and fled also, crying: ‘Oh my God!’ So the King and Queen ran together, but the King outran her mightily, for he ran very swiftly; neither turned he to the right hand nor the left, for he was sore afraid where no fear was, and fled when no man pursued.”

The King and Queen probably saw Pulteney, Chesterfield and Bolingbroke coming towards them, and as they were no doubt just then opposing some pet measure of Walpole and of the court, the Kingnot wishing to receive their salutations, and not caring to ignore them, turned on his heel, and, followed by the Queen, hurried off as fast as he could.

Richmond Lodge had now become Caroline’s personal property, and the Queen continued to be very fond of it, and spent large sums of money in enlarging the gardens. Soon after Caroline became Queen she gave £500 for railing and improving Richmond Green, and we read: “A subscription is set on foot among the inhabitants of the town of Richmond for erecting the effigy of her Majesty in the middle of the green”.13But this intention was apparently never carried out. The Queen also had a cottage at Kew where she often drove to breakfast from Richmond. She gave the use of it to her favourite, Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady Sundon.

HAMPTON COURT, TEMP. GEORGE II.

Hampton Court, more than any other royal palace, has memories of Queen Caroline, and many of its rooms remain to this day much as she left them. The Queen’s dressing-room is almost the same as it was one hundred and seventy years ago; her high marble bath on one side of the room may still be seen, and on the other side is the door that led to her private chapel. Under Caroline’s supervision Hampton Court was altered in many ways, and in some improved. The great staircase was completed and decorated; the Queen’s presence chamber and the guard chamber were altered in a way characteristic of the early Georgian period. The publicdining room, which is one of the finest rooms in the palace, was also redecorated, and the massive chimney-piece of white marble which bears the arms of George the Second was placed in it. Nor did the Queen confine her alterations only to the palace. She had a passion for gardening, especially landscape gardening, and the grounds of Hampton Court were considerably changed under her supervision. It was she who substituted wide sweeping lawns for the numerous fountains and elaborate flower beds which until then had ornamented the great fountain garden. Her alterations in many respects were severely criticised.14

Both the King and the Queen had pleasant memories of the place where they had celebrated their only regency when Prince and Princess of Wales. The summer after the coronation they came to Hampton Court for some time, and, as long as the Queen lived, a regular practice was made of spending at least two months there every summer. From Hampton Court the King did a great deal of stag hunting; he was especially fond of the pleasures of the chase and would not forego them on any account. His enthusiasm was not shared by the lady members of the royal household. “We hunt,” writes Mrs. Howard from Hampton Court to Lady Hervey, “with great noise and violence, and have every day a very tolerable chance to have a neckbroke;”15and her correspondent, writing of the same subject, declares her belief that much of Mrs. Howard’s illness was due to this violent riding. The following is a description of one of theseexpeditions:—

“On Saturday their Majesties, together with their Royal Highnesses the Duke (of Cumberland) and the Princesses, came to the new park by Richmond from Hampton Court and diverted themselves with hunting a stag, which ran from eleven to one, when he took to the great pond, where he defended himself for half an hour, when he was killed. His Majesty, the Duke, and the Princess Royal hunted on horseback, her Majesty and the Princess Amelia in a four-wheeled chaise, Princess Caroline in a two-wheeled chaise, and the Princesses Mary and Louisa in a coach. Her Majesty was pleased to show great condescension and complaisance to the country people by conversing with them, and ordering them money. Several of the nobility attended, amongst them Sir Robert Walpole, clothed in green as Ranger. When the diversion was over their Majesties, the Duke, and the Princesses refreshed themselves on the spot with a cold collation, as did the nobility at some distance of timeafter, and soon after two in the afternoon returned to Hampton Court.”16

The Queen always accompanied the King in her chaise, but she cared nothing for the sport. She took with her her vice-chamberlain, Lord Hervey, “who loved hunting as little as she did, so that he might ride constantly by the side of her chaise, and entertain her whilst other people were entertaining themselves by hearing dogs bark, and seeing crowds gallop”.17The King cared only for stag-hunting and coursing; he affected to despise fox-hunting, though the sport was very popular among his subjects. Once, when the Duke of Grafton said he was going down to the country to hunt the fox, the King told him that: “It was a pretty occupation for a man of quality, and at his age to be spending all his time in tormenting a poor fox, that was generally a much better beast than any of those that pursued him; for the fox hurts no other animal but for his subsistence, while those brutes who hurt him did it only for the pleasure they took in hurting.” The Duke of Grafton said he did it for his health. The King asked him why he could not as well walk or ride post for his health; and added, if there was any pleasure in the chase, he was sure the Duke of Grafton can know nothing of it; “for,” added his Majesty, “with your great corps of twenty stone weight, no horse, I am sure, can carry you within hearing, much less within sight, of the hounds.”18

At Hampton Court, as at St. James’s, the King and Queen dined in public on Sundays, and the people came in crowds to see the sight. On one of these occasions an absurd incident took place. “There was such a resort to Hampton Court last Sunday to see their Majesties dine,” writes a news-sheet, “that the rail surrounding the table broke, and causing some to fall, made a diverting scramble for hats and wigs, at which their Majesties laughed heartily.”19On private evenings at Hampton Court the only amusement was cards, but now and then the King and Queen held drawing-rooms, in the audience chamber.20Often in summer, when the nights were fine, the Queen and her ladies would go out and walk in the gardens. We may picture her pacing up and down the avenues of chestnut and lime in the warm dusk, or viewing from the gardens the beautiful palace bathed in the moonbeams. So little is changed to-day that it requires no great effort of the imagination to re-people Hampton Court with the figures of the early Georgian era.

One of the most prominent personages at the Court of Queen Caroline was her favourite, Lord Hervey, whom she had now appointed her vice-chamberlain, and who enjoyed her fullest confidence.The Queen delighted to have him about her at all times, and would converse with him for hours together, asking him questions about a hundred and one things, and laughing at his clever talk. Lord Hervey was a man of considerable wit and ability, and undoubtedly an amusing companion. But he was a contemptible personality, diseased in body and warped in mind, incapable of taking a broad and generous view of any one or anything; ignorant of lofty ideals and noble motives himself, he was quite unable to understand them in others, and always sought some sordid or selfish reason for every action. The Queen, however, overlooking his faults, with which she must have been familiar, and his effeminacies and immoralities, of which she could not have been ignorant, believed that he was a faithful servant to her, and trusted him in no ordinary degree. As a sign of her favour she increased his salary as vice-chamberlain by £1,000 a year, allowed him considerable patronage, which was worth a good deal more, and made him many valuable presents. She treated him rather as a son than as a subject. “It is well I am so old,” she used to say (she was fourteen years Hervey’s senior), “or I should be talked of over this creature.” No one, however, ever talked scandal of her Majesty, though some doubted her judgment in choosing her friends, and it must be confessed that she was unwise in admitting Hervey to so many of her secrets. Notwithstanding that she heaped favours uponhim, he repaid her with ingratitude, and when she was dead endeavoured to befoul her memory. But to the Queen’s face he was a fawning and accomplished courtier, and expressed the greatest zeal in her service.

Hervey had a nimble and superficial pen, and sometimes employed himself in writing anonymous pamphlets in defence of the Government and Court against members of the Opposition. A great many of these anonymous pamphlets were showered upon the town at this time, and Pulteney chancing to come across one of them, entitledSedition and Defamation Displayed, which attacked him and Bolingbroke in no measured terms, thought it was from Lord Hervey’s pen (it afterwards turned out to be not so), and wrote a violent answer, also anonymous, calledA Proper Reply to a Late Scurrilous Libel. This pamphlet abused Walpole, and by implication the Court, and applied several opprobrious epithets to Hervey, speaking of him by his nickname “Lord Fanny,” describing him as “half-man and half-woman,” and dwelling malignantly on his peculiar infirmities. The pamphlet was warmly resented at court. Like many who set no bounds to their own malice, Hervey was extremely sensitive to attack, and wishing to curry favour with the King and Queen he wrote to Pulteney to know if he were the author of the pamphlet. Pulteney answered that he would inform him on that point if Hervey would tell him first whether he was the writer ofSedition and DefamationDisplayed. Hervey sent back word to say that he had not written the pamphlet, and again demanded an answer to his question. Pulteney returned a defiant message saying that “whether or no he was the author of theReplyhe was ready to justify and stand by the truth of every word of it, at what time and wherever Lord Hervey pleased”. This was tantamount to a challenge, and Hervey, though not given to duelling, could not in honour ignore it. A duel was arranged. “Accordingly,” writes an eye-witness,21“on Monday last, between three and four in the afternoon, they met in Upper St. James’s Park, behind Arlington Street, with their two seconds, who were Mr. Fox and Sir J. Rushout. The two combatants were each of them slightly wounded, but Mr. Pulteney had once so much the advantage of Lord Hervey that he would have infallibly run my lord through the body if his foot had not slipped, and then the seconds took the occasion to part them. Upon which Mr. Pulteney embraced Lord Hervey, and expressed a great deal of concern at the accident of their quarrel, promising at the same time that he would never personally attack him again, either with his mouth or his pen. Lord Hervey made him a bow without giving him any sort of answer, and, to use a common expression, thus they parted.” Sir Charles Hanbury Williams wrote some lines on this duel, in which, addressing Pulteney, hesays:—

Lord Fanny once did play the dunce,And challenged you to fight;And he so stood to lose his blood,But had a dreadful fright.

Lord Fanny once did play the dunce,

And challenged you to fight;

And he so stood to lose his blood,

But had a dreadful fright.

Among minor figures about the court two of the most familiar were Lord Lifford and his sister, Lady Charlotte de Roussie. They were the children of a Count de Roussie, a French Protestant who came over to England with William of Orange in 1688, and was created by him Earl of Lifford in the peerage of Ireland. They were typical courtiers of the baser sort, and would perform the meanest offices and indulge in the grossest flattery in order to win some rays of the royal favour. They were not popular with any of the English people about the court. Hervey tells us: “They had during four reigns subsisted upon the scanty charity of the English Court. They were constantly, every night in the country and three nights in the town, alone with the King or Queen for an hour or two before they went to bed, during which time the King walked about and talked to the brother of arms, or to the sister of genealogies, whilst the Queen nodded and yawned, till from yawning she came to nodding, and nodding to snoring. These two miserable Court drudges, who were in a more constant waiting than any of the pages of the backstairs, were very simple and very quiet, did nobody any hurt, nor anybody but His Majesty any pleasure, who paid them so ill for all their assiduity and slavery that they were not only not in affluence, but laboured under the disagreeable burdens of smalldebts, which £1,000 would have paid, and had not an allowance from the Court, that enabled them to appear there even in the common decency of clean clothes. The King nevertheless was always saying how well he loved them, and calling them the best people in the world, but though he never forgot their goodness he never remembered their poverty.”

Another foreign dependent was Schütz, a Hanoverian. Pope, who had lost the favour of the Court, was very bitter upon those who retained it; in one of his ballads hesings:—

Alas! like Schütz I cannot pun,Like Grafton court the Germans,Tell Pickenbourg how slim she’s grown,Like Meadows run to sermons.

Alas! like Schütz I cannot pun,

Like Grafton court the Germans,

Tell Pickenbourg how slim she’s grown,

Like Meadows run to sermons.

Hervey satirises Schütz’s dulness asfollows:—

And sure in sleep no dulness you need fearWho, ev’n awake, can Schütz and Lifford bear.

And sure in sleep no dulness you need fear

Who, ev’n awake, can Schütz and Lifford bear.

Andagain—

Charlotte and Schütz like angry monkeys chatter,None guessing what’s the language or the matter.

Charlotte and Schütz like angry monkeys chatter,

None guessing what’s the language or the matter.

While in another of his satires occur theselines:—

There is another Court booby, at once hot and dull,Your pious pimp Schütz, a mean Hanover tool.

There is another Court booby, at once hot and dull,

Your pious pimp Schütz, a mean Hanover tool.

A personage of quite a different order to the foregoing was Henrietta Louisa, Countess of Pomfret, the authoress of the correspondence with Lady Hertford. Lady Pomfret was the granddaughter on the paternal side of Judge Jefferies, on the maternalof the Earl of Pembroke, and on the strength of the latter claimed descent from Edward the First. Lady Pomfret accepted the post of lady of the bedchamber, but she was of a different type to many of the Queen’s ladies. She was a matron of unimpeachable virtue, the mother of six lovely daughters—all beauties—of whom, perhaps, the best known was Lady Sophia Fermor, afterwards Lady Carteret. Lady Pomfret had a keen sense of her dignity, and she affected a knowledge of literature and the fine arts. The celebrated “Pomfret Letters,” much admired in their day, are packed with platitudes, and so dull that they leave no doubt as to the correctness of her principles. Lady Pomfret was considered by many of her contemporaries to be a prodigy of learning; she seems rather to have been a courtly Mrs. Malaprop. She once declared that “It was as difficult to get into an Italian coach as for Cæsar to take Attica”—by which she meant Utica. On another occasion some one telling her of a man “who talked of nothing but Madeira, she asked gravely what language that was”. But despite her eccentricities she had sterling qualities, and was as much a credit to the court as her daughters were its ornaments.

The Queen’s household was numerous, and included the Mistress of the Robes, the Duchess of Dorset, six ladies of the bedchamber, all countesses; six bedchamber women and six maids of honour. The two most prominent members of it were two bedchamber women, Mrs. Clayton, the Queen’sfavourite, and Mrs. Howard, the King’s favourite, who hated one another thoroughly.

Mrs. Clayton had now great influence with the Queen, more indeed than any one except Walpole, with whom she came frequently into collision. She was an irritating woman with an overwhelming sense of self-esteem. Horace Walpole calls her “an absurd pompous simpleton”. Lord Hervey credits her with all the virtues, and declares that she possessed an excellent understanding and a good heart. She undoubtedly possessed cunning and ability, which she used to such advantage that she ultimately procured for her stupid husband a peerage, as Viscount Sundon, and she foisted a large family of needy relatives on to the public service. She acted as a sort of unofficial private secretary to the Queen and became the medium of all manner of communications to her mistress. Many of the letters written to her were really addressed to Caroline. Walpole heartily disliked Mrs. Clayton and tried in vain to shake her influence with the Queen. Her ascendency was inexplicable to him for years, but at last he thought that he had discovered the reason. When Lady Walpole died, the Queen asked him many questions about his wife’s last illness and persistently referred to one particular malady from which, in point of fact, Lady Walpole had not suffered. The Prime Minister noticed it, and when he came home he said to his son: “Now, Horace, I know by the possession of what secret Lady Sundon has preserved such an ascendant over the Queen”. Whetherher influence was wholly due to this cause is open to question, for she stood in high favour before her mistress’s malady began. But for long years Caroline suffered from a distressing illness of which she would rather have died than have made it known, and Mrs. Clayton was one of the few who knew her secret.

All the maids of honour except Miss Meadows had changed since the King and Queen were last at Hampton Court, but these young ladies were still of a lively temperament. One evening in the darkness several of them played at ghost, and stole out into the gardens and went round the palace rattling and knocking at the windows. Lady Hervey, who had heard of these frolics, writes to Mrs. Howard: “I think people who are of such very hot constitutions as to want to be refreshed by night walking, need not disturb others who are not altogether so warm as they are; and it was very lucky that looking over letters till it was late, prevented some people being in bed, and in their first sleep, otherwise the infinite wit and merry pranks of the youthful maids might have been lost to the world.”22

But, however lively may have been the young maids of honour, one member of the Queen’s household found Hampton Court dull under the new reign and its glory departed. Writing to Lady Hervey Mrs. Howardsays:—

“Hampton is very different from the place youknew; and to say we wishedTom Lepell,SchatzandBella-dineat the tea-table, is too interested to be doubted.Frizelation,flirtationanddangleationare now no more, and nothing less than a Lepell can restore them to life; but to tell you my opinion freely, the people you now converse with” (books) “are much more alive than any of your old acquaintances.”23

Mrs. Howard had a good reason to be dispirited, for the new reign had proved a sad disappointment to her. She had expected, and so had her friends, that the King’s accession to the throne would bring her an increase of power, wealth and influence, which would have helped to compensate her for the equivocal position she occupied, a position which, as she was a modest woman, could not have been altogether congenial to her. “No established mistress of a sovereign,” says Horace Walpole, “ever enjoyed less brilliancy of the situation than Lady Suffolk.” The only benefit she received was a peerage for her brother, Sir Henry Hobart, and at the end of a long and trying career at court she managed to amass a sum, not indeed sufficient to give her wealth, but to save her from indigence. The Queen once said that Mrs. Howard received £1,200 a year from the King all the time he was Prince of Wales, and it was increased to £3,200 a year when he became King. He also gave her £12,000 towards building her villa at Marble Hill, near Twickenham, besides several “little dabs”both before and after he came to the throne. But this represented all that Mrs. Howard gained, if indeed she gained so much; patronage or influence she had none, and those who placed their trust in her found themselves out of favour. After a while the courtiers began to find out that it was more profitable to pay their suit to Mrs. Clayton, who had the ear of the Queen, than to Mrs. Howard, who had not the ear of the King. Yet the King still continued to visit Mrs. Howard for some three or four hours every evening, at nine o’clock, “but with such dull punctuality that he frequently walked up and down the gallery for ten minutes with his watch in his hand if the stated minute was not arrived”.24The Queen was doubtless glad to get rid of him for a time, but Mrs. Howard must have suffered sadly from the tedium of entertaining her royal master on these daily visits, and certainly deserved more than she got in the way of recompense. She had, as one puts it, “the scandal of being the King’s mistress without the pleasure, the confinement without the profit”. The Queen took care that the profit was strictly limited.

The King was so mean that at one time he even suggested, indirectly, that the Queen should pay Mrs. Howard’s husband out of her privy purse for keeping himself quiet. This was too great a tax even on Caroline’s complaisance and in one of her burstsof confidence she told Lord Hervey that when Howard insisted on his wife returning to him, “That old fool, my Lord Trevor, came to me from Mrs. Howard, and after thanking me in her name for what I had done, proposed to me to give £1,200 a year to Mr. Howard to let his wife stay with me; but as I thought I had done full enough, and that it was a little too much not only to keep the King’sguenipes” (in English trulls) “under my roof, but to pay them too, I pleaded poverty to my good Lord Trevor, and said I would do anything to keep so good a servant as Mrs. Howard about me, but that for the £1,200 a-year I really could not afford it”. So Howard’s silence was bought out of the King’s pocket, and Mrs. Howard’s maintenance was partly provided by him, and partly by the Queen, who gave her a place in her household and so threw a veil of respectability over the affair.

Mrs. Howard found that she gained so little by the King’s accession, that she wished to retire from court, but was not allowed to do so. Meanwhile all her nominations were refused. She seems to have shown her resentment in divers ways. Her refusal to kneel during the ceremony of the Queen’s dressing was perhaps one manifestation of it. With regard to her uprising and retiring, her dressing and undressing, Queen Caroline followed the custom which had been observed by all kings and queens of England until George the First, who refused to be bound by precedent in this matter. Caroline performed the greater part of her dressing surroundedby many persons. The Queen, who had a great idea of what was due to her dignity, desired that the bedchamber-woman in waiting should bring the basin and ewer and present them to her kneeling. Mrs. Howard objected to this, and, considering the peculiar relations which existed between her and the King, her objection was natural enough. But the Queen insisted. “The first thing,” said Caroline to Lord Hervey later, “this wise, prudent Lady Suffolk” [Mrs. Howard] “did was to pick a quarrel with me about holding a basin in the ceremony of my dressing, and to tell me, with her little fierce eyes, and cheeks as red as your coat, that positively she would not do it; to which I made her no answer then in anger, but calmly, as I would have said to a naughty child, ‘Yes, my dear Howard, I am sure you will; indeed you will. Go, go! fie for shame! Go, my good Howard; we will talk of this another time.’”

Mrs. Howard went, and in her dilemma wrote to Dr. Arbuthnot to inquire of Lady Masham, who had been at one time bedchamber-woman to Queen Anne, whether this disputed point was really according to precedent. She got little comfort from Lady Masham, who through Arbuthnotreplied:—

“The bedchamber-womancame into waiting before the Queen’s prayers, which was before her Majesty was dressed. The Queen often shifted in a morning; if her Majesty shifted at noon, the bedchamber-ladybeing by, the bedchamber-womangave the shift to theladywithout any ceremony, and theladyput it on. Sometimes, likewise, the bedchamber-womangave the fan to theladyin the same manner; and this was all that the bedchamber-ladydid about the Queen at her dressing.

“When the Queen washed her hands the page of the backstairs brought and set down upon a side-table the basin and ewer, then the bedchamber-womanset it before the Queen, and knelt on the other side of the table over against the Queen, the bedchamber-ladyonly looking on. The bedchamber-womanpoured the water out of the ewer upon the Queen’s hands.

“The bedchamber-womanpulled on the Queen’s gloves when she could not do it herself.25

“The page of the backstairs was called in to put on the Queen’s shoes.

“When the Queen dined in public the page reached the glass to the bedchamber-woman, and she to theladyin waiting.

“The bedchamber-womanbrought the chocolate, and gave it without kneeling.

“In general, the bedchamber-womanhad no dependence on theladyof the bedchamber.”26

As Mrs. Howard was not a lady of the bedchamber but bedchamber-woman only, she found that the Queen had asked of her nothing more than etiquette required, and after a week of indecision she yielded the point, and knelt with the basin as commanded. Horace Walpole, who was fond ofimputing base motives to others, says that the Queen delighted in subjecting her to such servile offices, though always apologising to her “good Howard”. But there is no evidence to show that the Queen was capable of such petty spite; she required nothing more than the duties the office involved, however menial they may seem now. The Queen, who bore no malice, soon forgave Mrs. Howard this little display of temper, for she told Lord Hervey: “About a week after, when upon maturer deliberation, she had done everything about the basin that I would have her, I told her I knew we should be good friends again; but could not help adding, in a little more serious voice, that I owned of all my servants I had least expected, as I had least deserved it, such treatment from her, when she knew I had held her up at a time when it was in my power, if I had pleased, any hour of the day to let her drop through my fingers—thus——.”

HENRIETTA HOWARD (COUNTESS OF SUFFOLK).

The Queen’s morning toilet was generally made by her the occasion of an informal levée, and to it she would command all those whom she wished to see on any subject. While her head was being tired a group would be standing around her, and in the ante-chamber divines rubbed shoulders with poets, and learned men with politicians and court ladies. On the Queen’s toilet table would be found not only the requisites for dressing but a heap of other things—a sermon, a new book, a poem in her praise, a report as to her gardens and building plans, a pile of letters on every conceivablesubject, and the memorandum of a minister. All these she would deal with quickly and characteristically. She would also on these occasions have retailed to her the latest news, or engage a philosopher and a divine in a dispute upon some abstract question, and would put in a word in the interval of having her head tired and washing her hands. Prayers would be read to her in an adjoining room while she was dressing, in order to save time. The door was left a little ajar so that the chaplain’s voice might be heard. The bedchamber-woman was one day commanded to bid the chaplain, Dr. Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, to begin his prayers, but seeing a picture of a naked Venus over the fald-stool, the divine made bold to remark: “And a very proper altar piece is here, madam!” On another occasion the Queen ordered the door to be closed for a minute, and then, not hearing the chaplain’s voice, she sent to know why he was not going on with his prayers. The indignant clergyman replied that he refused to whistle the word of God through the keyhole. This latter anecdote is sometimes told of Queen Anne, though, as she was always very devout in her religious observances, it is far more likely to be true of Queen Caroline. It is borne out by the following passage, which occurs in “a dramatic trifle” which Lord Hervey wrote to amuse the Queen, entitledThe Death of Lord Hervey or a Morning at Court. The scene is laid in the Queen’s dressing-room. “The Queen is discovered at hertoilet cleaning her teeth, with Mrs. Purcell dressing her Majesty’s head, and the princesses, and ladies and women of the bedchamber standing around her. The Litany is being said in the nextroom”:—

First Parson(behind the scenes): “From pride, vain glory and hypocrisy, from envy, hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness”.

Second Parson: “Good Lord deliver us!”

Queen: “I pray, my good Lady Sundon, shut a little that door; those creatures pray so loud, one cannot hear oneself speak.” [Lady Sundon goes to shut the door.] “So, so, not quite so much; leave it enough open for those parsons to think we may hear, and enough shut that we may not hear quite so much.”

The King seldom honoured these morning levées of his Queen with his presence, for he disliked cosmopolitan gatherings, but sometimes he would strut in and clear out the crowd with scant ceremony. On one occasion he came into the room while the Queen was dressing, and seeing that his consort’s bosom was covered with a kerchief, he snatched it away, exclaiming angrily to Mrs. Howard who was in waiting: “Is it because you have an ugly neck yourself that you love to hide the Queen’s”? The Queen’s bust was said by sculptors to have been the finest in Europe.

The Queen was pleased with Mrs. Howard’s submission in the matter of the basin, and by way of marking her appreciation, she did her the honour of dining with her at her new villa at Marble Hill—thatfamous villa of which Lords Burlington and Pembroke designed the front, Bathurst and Pope planned the gardens, and Swift, Gay and Arbuthnot arranged the household. But the Queen would allow Mrs. Howard no political influence. Compton and Pulteney, Bolingbroke and other Opposition leaders who had trusted to her found that they had leant on a broken reed. Indeed Mrs. Howard’s goodwill seemed fatal to all her friends. It was through her, unwittingly, that Lord Chesterfield lost the favour of the Queen, though Walpole’s jealousy, and the remembrance the Queen had of his mocking her in the old days at Leicester House, had something to do with it.

Chesterfield, who had been appointed in the last reign Ambassador at the Hague, came over to England some little time after King George the Second ascended the throne to see his friends and pay his respects to their Majesties. He at once repaired to Walpole, who said to him jealously: “Well, my Lord, I find you have come to be Secretary of State”. Lord Chesterfield declared that he had no such ambition, but he said: “I claim the Garter, not on account of my late services, but agreeably with the King’s promise to me when he was Prince of Wales; besides, I am a man of pleasure, and the blue riband would add two inches to my size”. The King kept his word, and Chesterfield was given the Garter, and also the sinecure of High Steward of the Household. All would have gone well with him if he had not been so unfortunateas to get again into the Queen’s bad books. “The Queen,” says Horace Walpole, “had an obscure window at St. James’s that looked into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at night, which looked upon Mrs. Howard’s apartment. Lord Chesterfield, one Twelfth-night at Court, had won so large a sum of money that he thought it imprudent to carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with the mistress. Thus the Queen inferred great intimacy; thenceforward Lord Chesterfield could obtain no favour from Court.” The sum which Lord Chesterfield was said to have won on this occasion was £15,000, which gives some idea of the high play then in vogue. But he lost far more than he gained—the Queen’s goodwill, without which no statesman could hold place in the councils of the King.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER III:10After Queen Caroline’s death George II. rarely went to Windsor, and so neglected the Castle that when George III. ascended the throne it was found to be in a ruinous condition.11Stamford Mercury, 19th September, 1728.12Daily Post, 27th December, 1728.13Country Journal, 22nd June, 1728.14Most of them, both in the palace and the gardens, were carried out by Kent, an unworthy successor to Sir Christopher Wren. Some of Kent’s work at Hampton Court is very incongruous and inferior.15Accidents were not infrequent at these hunting parties. For instance, we read in the newspapers of theday:—“25th August, 1731.—The Royal Family were hunting, and in the chase a stag started upon the Princess Amelia’s horse, which, being frightened, threw her.“28th August, 1731.—The Royal Family hunted in Richmond Park, when the Lord Delaware’s lady was overturned in a chaise, which went over but did no visible hurt.”16Stamford Mercury, 22nd August, 1728.17Hervey’sMemoirs.18Ibid.19Stamford Mercury, 25th July, 1728.20The canopy of crimson silk under which Caroline stood is still affixed to the wall of the Queen’s audience chamber at Hampton Court—or was there until lately.21Thomas Pelham to Lord Waldegrave, 30th June, 1730.22Lady Hervey to Mrs. Howard, 7th July, 1729.Suffolk Correspondence.23Mrs. Howard to Lady Hervey, September, 1728.24Walpole’sReminiscences. Mrs. Howard was lodged at Hampton Court in the fine suite of rooms until recently occupied by the late Lady Georgiana Grey.25Queen Anne’s hands were swollen with gout.26Dr. Arbuthnot to Mrs. Howard, 29th May, 1728.Suffolk Correspondence.

10After Queen Caroline’s death George II. rarely went to Windsor, and so neglected the Castle that when George III. ascended the throne it was found to be in a ruinous condition.

11Stamford Mercury, 19th September, 1728.

12Daily Post, 27th December, 1728.

13Country Journal, 22nd June, 1728.

14Most of them, both in the palace and the gardens, were carried out by Kent, an unworthy successor to Sir Christopher Wren. Some of Kent’s work at Hampton Court is very incongruous and inferior.

15Accidents were not infrequent at these hunting parties. For instance, we read in the newspapers of theday:—“25th August, 1731.—The Royal Family were hunting, and in the chase a stag started upon the Princess Amelia’s horse, which, being frightened, threw her.“28th August, 1731.—The Royal Family hunted in Richmond Park, when the Lord Delaware’s lady was overturned in a chaise, which went over but did no visible hurt.”

15Accidents were not infrequent at these hunting parties. For instance, we read in the newspapers of theday:—

“25th August, 1731.—The Royal Family were hunting, and in the chase a stag started upon the Princess Amelia’s horse, which, being frightened, threw her.

“28th August, 1731.—The Royal Family hunted in Richmond Park, when the Lord Delaware’s lady was overturned in a chaise, which went over but did no visible hurt.”

16Stamford Mercury, 22nd August, 1728.

17Hervey’sMemoirs.

18Ibid.

19Stamford Mercury, 25th July, 1728.

20The canopy of crimson silk under which Caroline stood is still affixed to the wall of the Queen’s audience chamber at Hampton Court—or was there until lately.

21Thomas Pelham to Lord Waldegrave, 30th June, 1730.

22Lady Hervey to Mrs. Howard, 7th July, 1729.Suffolk Correspondence.

23Mrs. Howard to Lady Hervey, September, 1728.

24Walpole’sReminiscences. Mrs. Howard was lodged at Hampton Court in the fine suite of rooms until recently occupied by the late Lady Georgiana Grey.

25Queen Anne’s hands were swollen with gout.

26Dr. Arbuthnot to Mrs. Howard, 29th May, 1728.Suffolk Correspondence.

Back to Index Next