Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1

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One of the Queen's delights was the improvement of the garden at
Richmond; and the King believed she paid for all with her own
money-nor would he ever look at her intended plans, saying he did
not care how she flung away her own revenue. He little suspected
the aids Sir Robert furnished to her from the treasury. When she
died, she was indebted twenty thousand pounds to the King.

Her learning I have said was superficial; her knowledge of
languages as little accurate. The King, with a bluff Westphalian
accent, spoke English correctly. The Queen's chief study was
divinity, and she had rather weakened her faith than enlightened
it. She was at least not orthodox; and her confidante, Lady
Sundon, an absurd and pompous simpleton, swayed her countenance
towards the less-believing clergy. The Queen, however, was so
sincere at her death, that when Archbishop Potter was to
administer the sacrament to her, she declined taking it, very few
persons being in the room. When the prelate retired, the
courtiers in the ante-room crowded round him, crying, "My lord,
has the queen received?" His grace artfully eluded the question,
only saying most devoutly , "Her Majesty was in a heavenly
disposition"-and the truth escaped the public.

She suffered more unjustly by declining to see her son, the
Prince of Wales, to whom she sent her blessing and forgiveness;
but conceiving the extreme distress it would lay on the King,
should he thus be forced to forgive so impenitent a son, or to
banish him again if once recalled, she heroically preferred a
meritorious husband to a worthless child.

The Queen's greatest error was too high an opinion of her own
address and art; she imagined that all who did not dare to
contradict her were imposed upon; and she had the additional
weakness of thinking that she could play off @any persons without
being discovered. That mistaken humour, and at other times her
hazarding very offensive truths, made her many enemies; and her
duplicity in fomenting jealousies between the ministers, that
each might be more dependent on herself, was no sound wisdom. It
was the Queen who blew into a flame the ill-blood between Sir
Robert Walpole and his brother-in-law, Lord Townshend. Yet
though she disliked some of the cabinet, she never let her own
prejudices disturb the King's affairs, provided the obnoxious
paid no court to the mistress. Lord Islay was the only man, who,
by managing Scotland for Sir Robert Walpole, was maintained by
him in spite of his attachment to Lady Suffolk.

The Queen's great secret was her own rupture, which, till her
last illness, nobody knew but the King, her German nurse, Mrs.
Mailborne, and one other person. To prevent all suspicion, her
Majesty would frequently stand some minutes in her shift talking
to her ladies (114) and though labouring with so dangerous a
complaint, she made it so invariable a rule never to refuse a
desire of the King, that every morning at Richmond she walked
several miles with him; and more than once, when she had the gout
in her foot, she dipped her whole leg in cold water to be ready
to attend him. The pain, her bulk, and the exercise, threw her
into such fits of perspiration as vented the gout; but those
exertions hastened the crisis of her distemper. It was great
shrewdness in Sir Robert Walpole, who, before her distemper broke
out, discovered her secret. On my mother's death, who was of the
Queen's age, her Majesty asked Sir Robert many physical
questions; but he remarked that she oftenest reverted to a
rupture, which had not been the illness of his wife. When he
came home, he said to me, "Now, Horace, I know by possession of
what secret Lady Sundon (115)has preserved such an ascendant over
the Queen." He was in the right. How Lady Sundon had wormed
herself into that mystery was never known. As Sir Robert
maintained his influence over the clergy by Gibson, Bishop of
London, he often met with troublesome obstructions from Lady
Sundon, who espoused, as I have said, the heterodox clergy; and
Sir Robert could never shake her credit.

Yet the Queen was constant in her protection of Sir Robert, and
the day before she died gave a strong mark of her conviction that
he was the firmest supporter the King had. As they two alone
were standing by the Queen's bed, she pathetically recommended,
not the minister to the sovereign, but the master to the servant.
Sir Robert was alarmed, and feared the recommendation would leave
a fatal impression; but a short time after, the King reading with
Sir Robert some intercepted letters from Germany, which said that
now the Queen was 'gone, Sir Robert would have no protection: "On
the contrary," said the King, "you know she recommended me to
you." This marked the notice he had taken of the expression; and
it was the only notice he ever took of it: nay, his Majesty's
grief was so excessive and so sincere, that his kindness to his
minister seemed to increase for the Queen's sake.

The Queen's dread of a rival was a feminine weakness; the
behaviour of her elder son was a real thorn. He early displayed
his aversion to his mother, who perhaps assumed too much at
first; yet it is certain that her good sense, and the interest of
her family, would have prevented, if possible, the mutual dislike
of the father and son, and their reciprocal contempt. As the
Opposition gave into all adulation towards the Prince, his
ill-poised head and vanity swallowed all their incense. He even
early after his arrival had listened to a high act of
disobedience. Money he soon wanted: old Sarah, Duchess of
Marlborough, (116) e ever proud and ever malignant, was persuaded
to offer her favourite Granddaughter, Lady Diana Spencer,
afterwards Duchess of Bedford, to the Prince of' Wales, with a
fortune of a hundred thousand pounds. He accepted the proposal,
and the day was fixed for their being secretly married at the
Duchess's lodge in the Great park at Windsor. Sir Robert Walpole
got intelligence of the project, prevented it, and the secret was
buried in silence.

Youth, folly, and indiscretion, the beauty of the young lady, and
a large sum of ready money, might have offered something like a
plea for so rash a marriage, had it taken place; but what could
excuse, what indeed could provoke, the senseless and barbarous
insult offered to the King and Queen, by Frederick's taking his
wife out of the palace of Hampton Court in the middle of the
night, when she was in actual labour, and carrying her, at the
imminent risk of the lives of her and the child, to the unaired
palace and bed at St. James's? Had he no way of affronting his
parents but by venturing to kill his wife and the heir of the
crown? A baby that wounds itself to vex its nurse is no more void
of reflection. The scene which commenced by unfeeling idiotism
closed with paltry hypocrisy. The Queen on the first notice of
her son's exploits, set out for St. James's to visit the Princess
by seven in the morning. The gracious Prince, so far from
attempting an apology, spoke not a word to his mother; but on her
retreat gave her his hand, led her into the street to her
coach-still dumb!-but a crowd being assembled at the gate, he
kneeled down in the dirt, and humbly kissed her Majesty's hand.
Her indignation must have shrunk into contempt.

After the death of the Queen, Lady Yarmouth (117) came over, who
had been the King's mistress at Hanover during his latter
journeys-and with the Queen's privity, for he always made her the
of his amours; which made Mrs. Selwyn once tell him, he should be
the last man with whom she would have an intrigue, for she knew
he would tell the Queen. In his letters to the latter from
Hanover, he said, "You must love the Walmoden, for she loves me."
She was created a countess, and had much weight with him; but
never employed her credit but to assist his ministers, or to
convert some honours and favours to her own advantage. She had
two sons, who both bore her husband's name; but the younger,
though never acknowledged, was supposed the King's, and
consequently did not miss additional homage from the courtiers.
That incense being one of the recommendations to the countenance
of Lady Yarmouth, drew Lord Chesterfield into a ridiculous
distress. On his being made secretary of state, be found a fair
young lad in the antechamber at St. James's, -who seeming much at
home, the earl, concluding it was the mistress's son, was profuse
of attentions to the boy, and more prodigal still of his
prodigious regard for his mamma. The shrewd boy received all his
lordship's vows with indulgence, and without betraying himself:
at last he said, "I suppose your lordship takes me for Master
Louis; but I am only Sir William Russel, one of the pages."

The King's last years passed as regularly as clockwork. At nine
at night he had cards in the apartment of his daughters, the
Princesses Amelia and Caroline, with Lady Yarmouth, two or three
of the late Queen's ladies, and as many of the most favoured
officers of his own household. Every Saturday in summer he
carried that uniform party, but without his daughters, to dine at
Richmond: they went in coaches and six in the middle of the day ,
with the heavy horse-guards kicking up the dust before
them-dined, walked an hour in the garden, returned in the same
dusty parade; and his Majesty fancied himself the most gallant
and lively prince in Europe.

His last year was glorious and triumphant beyond example; and his
death was most felicitous to himself, being without a Pang,
without tasting a reverse, and when his sight and hearing were so
nearly extinguished that any prolongation could but have swelled
to calamities. (118)

(105) She is thus described in a ballad, made upon the quarrel
between George the First and the Prince of Wales, at the
christening recorded at p. 83 when the Prince and all his
household were ordered to quit St. James's:-

"But Bellenden we needs must praise,
Who, as down the stairs she jumps,
Sings over the hills and far away,
Despising doleful dumps."-E.

(106) Colonel John Campbell succeeded to the dukedom in 1761:
Mrs. Campbell died in 1736. She was the mother of the fifth Duke
of Argyle and three other sons, and of Lady Caroline, who
married, first, the Earl of Aylesbury, and, secondly, Walpole's
bosom friend, Marshal Conway.-E.

(107) "The letter which Walpole alludes to," says Mr. Croker, "is
in existence. It is not a letter from Mr. Howard to his lady,
but from the Archbishop to the Princess; and although his grace
urges a compliance with Mr. Howard's demand of the restoration of
his wife, he treats it not as a matter between them, but as an
attack on the Princess herself, whom the Archbishop considers as
the direct protectress of Mrs. Howard, and the immediate cause of
her resistance. So that in this letter at least there is no
ground for imputing to Mrs. Howard any rivalry with the Princess,
or to the Princess any malicious jealousy of Mrs. Howard." Vol.
i. p. xiv.-E.

(108) Mr. Croker asserts, that "neither in Mrs. Howard's
correspondence with the King, nor in the notes of her
conversation with the Queen, nor in any of her most confidential
papers, has he found a single trace of the feeling which Walpole
so confidently imputes." Upon this assertion, Sir Walter Scott,
in a review of the Suffolk Correspondence, pleasantly
remarks,-"We regret that the editor's researches have not enabled
him to state, whether it is true that the restive husband sold
his own noisy honour and the possession of his lady for a pension
of twelve hundred a-year. For our own parts, without believing
all Walpole's details, we substantially agree in his opinion,
that the King's friendship was by no means Platonic or refined;
but that the Queen and Mrs. Howard, by mutual forbearance, good
sense, and decency, contrived to diminish the scandal: after all,
the question has no great interest for the present generation,
since scandal is only valued when fresh, and the public have
generally enough of that poignant fare, without ripping up the
frailties of their grandmothers." Sir Walter sums up his notice
of the inaccuracies occurring in these Reminiscences, with the
following just and considerate reflection: "When it is
recollected that the noble owner of Strawberry Hill was speaking
of very remote events, which he reported on hearsay, and that
hearsay of old standing, such errors are scarcely to be wondered
at, particularly when they are found to correspond with the
partialities and prejudices of the narrator. These,
strengthening as we grow older, gradually pervert or at least
alter, the accuracy of our recollections, until they assimilate
them to our feelings, while,

"As beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's faint traces melt away.
See Prose Works, vol. xix. p. 201.-E.

(109) Pope alludes to this personal defect in his lines "On a
certain Lady at court:"

"I know a thing that's most uncommon;
(Envy be silent, and attend!)
I know a reasonable woman,
handsome and witty, yet a friend.
Not warp'd by passion, awed by rumour;
Not grave through pride, or gay through folly--
An equal mixture of good humour
And sensible, soft melancholy.
'Has she no faults then,' (Envy says,) 'Sir?'
'Yes, she has one, I must aver;
When all the world conspires to praise her--
The woman's deaf, and does not hear.'"-E.

(110) The same thing has happened to me by books. A passage
lately read has recalled some other formerly perused; and both
together have opened to me, or cleared up some third fact, which
neither separately would have expounded.

(111) Lady Suffolk died in July, 1767.-E.

(112) Lady Suffolk was early affected with deafness. Cheselden,
the surgeon, then in favour at court, persuaded her that he had
hopes of being able to cure deafness by some operation on the
drum of the ear, and offered to try the experiment on a condemned
convict then in Newgate, who was deaf. If the man could be
pardoned, he would try it; and, if he succeeded, would practise
the same cure on her ladyship. She obtained the man's pardon,
who was cousin to Cheselden, who had feigned that pretended
discovery to save his relation-and no more was heard of the
experiment. The man saved his ear too-but Cheselden was
disgraced at court.

(113) Lady Suffolk formally retired from court in 1734, and in
the following year married the Honourable George Berkeley,
youngest son of the second Earl of Berkeley. He was Master of
St. Catherine's, in the Tower, and had served in two parliaments
as member for Dover. He died in 1746.-E.

(114) While the Queen dressed, prayers used to be read in the
outward room, where hung a naked Venus. Mrs. Selwyn,
bedchamber-woman in waiting, was one day ordered to bid the
chaplain, Dr. Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, begin the
service. He said archly, "And a very proper altar-piece is here,
Madam!" Queen Anne had the same custom; and once ordering the
door to be shut while she shifted, the chaplain stopped. The
Queen sent to ask why he did not proceed. He replied, "he would
not whistle the word of God through the keyhole."

(115) Mrs. Clayton, wife of Robert Clayton, Esq. of the Treasury,
bedchamber-woman to the Queen. This lady, who had the art to
procure her husband to be created Lord Sundon, possessed over her
royal mistress an influence of which even Sir Robert Walpole was
jealous.-E.

(116) That woman, who had risen to greatness and independent
wealth by the weakness of another Queen, forgot, like Duc
d'Epernon, her own unmerited exultation, and affected to brave
successive courts, though sprung from the dregs of one. When the
Prince of Orange came over to marry the Princess Royal, Anne, a
boarded gallery with a penthouse roof was erected for the
procession from the windows of the great drawing-room at St.
James's cross the garden to the Lutheran chapel in the friary.
The Prince being indisposed, and going to Bath, the marriage was
deferred for some weeks, and the boarded gallery remained,
darkening the windows of Marlborough House. The Duchess cried,
"I wonder when my neighbour George will take away his
orange-chest!"--which it did resemble. She did not want that
sort of wit,* which ill-temper, long knowledge of the world, and
insolence can sharpen-and envying the favour which she no longer
possessed, Sir R. Walpole was often the object of her satire.
Yet her great friend, Lord Godolphin, the treasurer, had enjoined
her to preserve very different sentiments. The Duchess and my
father and mother were standing by the Earl's bed at St. Albans
as he was dying. Taking Sir Robert by the hand, Lord Godolphin
turned to the Duchess, and said, "Madam, should 'you ever desert
this young man, and there should be a possibility of returning
from the grave, I shall certainly appear to you." Her grace did
not believe in spirits.

* Baron Gleicken, minister from Denmark to France, being at Paris
soon after the King his master had been there, and a French lady
being so ill-bred as to begin censuring the King to him, saying,
"Ah! Monsieur, c'est une t`ete!"-"Couronn`ee," replied he
instantly, stopping her by so gentle a hint.

(117) Amelia Sophia, wife of the Baron de Walmoden, Created
Countess of Yarmouth in 1739.

(118) For an interesting account of the death of George the
Second, on the 24th of October, 1760, and also of his funeral in
Westminster Abbey, see Walpole's letters to Mr. Montagu on the
25th of that month, and of the 13th of November.-E.

CHAPTER VIII.

George the Second's Daughters-Anne, Princess of Orange-Princess
Amelia-Princess Caroline-Lord Hervey-Duke of Cumberland.

I am tempted to drain my memory of all its rubbish, and will set
down a few more of my recollections, but with less method than I
have used in the foregoing pages.

I have said little or nothing of the King's two unmarried
daughters. Though they lived in the palace with him, he never
admitted them to any share in his politics; and if any of the
ministers paid them the compliment of seeming attachment, it was
more for the air than for the reality. The Princess Royal, Anne,
married in Holland, was of a most imperious and ambitious nature;
and on her mother's death, hoping to succeed to her credit, came
to Holland on pretence of ill health; but the King, aware of her
plan, Was so offended that he sent her to Bath as soon as she
arrived, and as peremptorily back to Holland-I think, without
suffering her to pass two nights in London.

Princess Amelia, as well disposed to meddle, was confined to
receiving court from the Duke of Newcastle, who affected to be in
love with her; and from the Duke of Grafton, in whose connexion
with her there was more reality.

Princess Caroline, one of the most excellent of women, was
devoted to the Queen, who, as well as the King, had such
confidence in her veracity, that on any disagreement among their
children, they said, "Stay, send for Caroline, and then we shall
know the truth."

The memorable Lord Hervey had dedicated himself to the Queen, and
certainly towards her death had gained great ascendance with her.
She had made him privy-seal; and as he took care to keep as well
with Sir Robert Walpole, no man stood in a more prosperous light.

But Lord Hervey, who handled all the weapons of a court, (119)
had also made a deep impression on the heart of the virtuous
Princess Caroline; and as there was a mortal antipathy between
the Duke of Grafton and Lord Hervey, the court was often on the
point of being disturbed by the enmity of the favourites of the
two Princesses. The death of the Queen deeply affected her
daughter Caroline; and the change of the ministry four years
after, dislodged Lord Hervey whom for the Queen's sake the King
would have saved, and who very ungratefully satirized the King in
a ballad, as if he had sacrificed him voluntarily.
Disappointment, rage, and a distempered constitution carried Lord
Hervey off, and overwhelmed his Princess - she never appeared in
public after the Queen's death; and, being dreadfully afflicted
with the rheumatism, never stirred out of her apartment, and
rejoiced at her own dissolution some years before her father.

Her sister Amelia leagued herself with the Bedford faction during
the latter part of her father's life. When he died, she
established herself respectably; but enjoying no favour with her
nephew, and hating the Princess-dowager, she made a plea of her
deafness, and soon totally abstained from St. James's.

The Duke of Cumberland, never, or very rarely, interfered in
politics. Power he would have liked, but never seemed to court
it. His passion would have been to command the army, and he
would, I doubt, have been too ready to aggrandize the crown by
it: but successive disgusts weaned his mind from all pursuits,
and the grandeur of his sense, (120) and philosophy made him
indifferent to a world that had disappointed all his views. The
unpopularity which the Scotch and Jacobites spread against him
for his merit in suppressing the rebellion, his brother's
jealousy, and the contempt he himself felt for the Prince, his
own ill success in his battles abroad, and his father's
treacherous sacrifice of him on the convention of Closterseven,
the dereliction of his two political friends, Lord Holland and
Lord Sandwich, and the rebuffing spite of the Princess-dowager;
all those mortifications centring on a constitution evidently
tending to dissolution, made him totally neglect himself, and
ready to shake off being, as an encumbrance not worth the
attention of a superior understanding.

>From the time the Duke first appeared on the stage of the public,
all his father's ministers had been blind to his Royal Highness's
capacity, or were afraid of it. Lord Granville, too giddy
himself to sound a young Prince, had treated him arrogantly when
the King and the Earl had projected a match for him with the
Princess of Denmark. The Duke, accustomed by the Queen and his
governor, Mr. Poyntz, to venerate the wisdom of Sir Robert
Walpole, then on his death-bed, sent Mr. Poyntz, the day but one
before Sir Robert expired, to consult him how to avoid the match.
Sir Robert advised his Royal Highness to stipulate for an ample
settlement. The Duke took the sage counsel, and heard no more of
his intended bride.

The low ambition of Lord Hardwicke, the childish passion for
power of the Duke of Newcastle, and the peevish jealousy of Mr.
Pelham, combined on the death of the Prince of Wales, to exclude
the Duke of Cumberland from the regency (in case of minority,)
and to make them flatter themselves that they should gain the
favour of the Princess-dowager by cheating her with the semblance
of power. The Duke resented the slight, but scorned to make any
claim. The Princess never forgave the insidious homage; and, in
concurrence with Lord Bute, totally estranged the affection of
the young King from his uncle, nor allowed him a shadow of
influence.

(119) He had broken with Frederick, Prince of Wales, on having
shared the favours of his mistress, Miss Vane, one of the Queen's
maids of honour. When she fell in labour at St. James's, and was
delivered of a son, which she ascribed to the Prince, Lord Hervey
and Lord Harrington each told Sir Robert Walpole that he believed
himself father of the child.

(120) the Duke, in his very childhood, gave a mark of his sense
and firmness. He had displeased the Queen, an(f she sent him up
to his chamber. When he appeared again, he was sullen.
"William," said the Queen, "what have you been doing?"--
"Reading."--"Reading what?"--"The Bible."--"And what did you read
there?"--"About Jesus and Mary.=--"And what about them?"--"Why,
that Jesus said to Mary, Woman! what hast thou to do with me?"

CHAPTER IX.

Anecdotes of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-and of Catherine
Duchess of Buckingham.

I have done with royal personages: shall I add a codicil on some
remarkable characters that I remember? As I am writing for young
ladies, I have chiefly dwelt on heroines of your own sex; they,
too, shall compose my last chapter: enter the Duchesses of
Marlborough and Buckingham.

Those two women were considerable personages in their day. The
first, her own beauty, the superior talents of her husband in
war, and the caprice of a feeble princess, raised to the highest
pitch of power; and the prodigious wealth bequeathed to her by
her lord, and accumulated in concert with her, gave her weight in
a free country. The other, proud of royal, though illegitimate
birth, was, from the vanity of that birth, so zealously attached
to her expelled brother, the Pretender, that she never ceased
labouring to effect his restoration; and, as the opposition to
the House of Brunswick was composed partly of principled
Jacobites-of Tories, who either knew not what their own
principles were, or dissembled them to themselves, and of Whigs,
who, from hatred of the minister, both acted in concert with the
Jacobites and rejoiced in their assistance-two women of such
wealth, rank, and enmity to the court, were sure of great
attention from all the discontented.