When she arrived in June, it was the first time she had been in England for thirty years. She found everything altered. The England she had known was transformed, and her adored, glamorous brother was now an old man, worn out by drink, sickness and laudanum at the age of sixty-four, as big and ungainly as she was; but nothing could detract from Royal’s pleasure in being with her closest family once again. She stayed at Frogmore, where she spent her time with Mary and Augusta, the sisters working together quietly, much as they had done when they were young. She went to see her eight-year-old niece, the Duke of Kent’s daughter Princess Victoria. With her love for little girls undimmed, Royal hoped ‘she will take a little bit of a fancy to me’.223 Best of all, she was able to spend time with George, whom she had looked up to since childhood. ‘She stayed nearly two hours with the king,’ wrote Augusta, ‘who is enchanted with her company.’224 So pleased was he to see his sister again that he organised a special party, held on the banks of Virginia Water. Dinner was served in a grand tent, and brother and sisters were then rowed across the lake in the moonlight to enjoy their coffee on a small island. Augusta was suffused with pleasure, delighted to see them all together once more, ‘my sister and the dear king, as happy as it is possible to be’.225
The ability to take pleasure in each other’s company might not have seemed fair compensation for the difficulties George’s children endured in seeking love and happiness elsewhere. Yet it was in its own way a lasting testimony to their father’s genuine desire to leave his family in a better state than he had found it. The affection his children felt for each other was a reflection of what he had once felt for them. One of George’s greatest achievements was to show his children what love and affection looked like; his great tragedy was that as grown men and women he allowed them so few chances to enjoy them.
Notes
Prologue
1. Rev. L. V. Harcourt (ed.), Diaries and Correspondence of the Rt Hon. George Rose (4 vols, London, 1860), I, p. 188.
2. Romney Sedgwick (ed.), Letters from George III to Lord Bute, 1756–1766 (London, 1939), p. 48.
3. Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, ed. Derek Jarrett (4 vols, London, 1999), I, p. 6.
4. Walpole to George Montagu, 22 July 1761, The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, ed. W. S. Lewis (48 vols, New Haven, 1937–83), IX, p. 378.
5. César de Saussure, A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I and George II, ed. Mme van Muyden (London, 1902), p. 177.
6. Ibid., p. 179.
7. Ibid., p. 111.
8. Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory, Europe, 1648–1815 (London, 2007), p. 9.
9. Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialisation of Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1982), p. 21.
10. Ibid.
11. Frederick A. Pottle (ed.), Boswell’s London Journal 1762–1763 (New Haven, 1950), p. 44.
12. Ibid., index, pp. 343–70.
13. Blanning, Pursuit of Glory, p. 95, quoting Paul Langford.
14. Ibid., p. 111.
15. McKendrick et al., Consumer Society, p. 10.
16. Ibid., p. 80.
17. De Saussure, A Foreign View, p. 113.
18. McKendrick et al., Consumer Society, p. 77.
19. Ibid., p. 26.
20. Blanning, Pursuit of Glory, p. 111.
21. Jeremy Black, George III, America’s Last King (New Haven, 2006), p. 43.
22. Walpole to George Montagu, 13 November 1760, Yale Edition of Walpole’s Correspondence, IX, p. 320.
23. James Greig (ed.), The Diaries of a Duchess (London, 1926), p. 35.
24. Walpole to Horace Mann, 28 October 1760, Yale Edition of Walpole’s Correspondence, XXI, p. 442
25. The Countess of Ilchester and Lord Stavordale (eds), The Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, 1745–1826 (London, 1904), p. 607.
26. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, I, p. 8.
Chapter 1 – The Strangest Family
1. Black, George III, p. 44.
2. Horace Walpole, Lord Orford’s Reminiscences (London, 1818), pp. 6–8.
3. Alice Drayton Greenwood, Lives of the Hanoverian Queens of England (2 vols, London, 1909–11), I, p. 7.
4. Ibid.
5. Ragnhild Hatton, George I (New Haven, 2001), p. 27.
6. Hatton, George I, p. 27.
7. Greenwood, Hanoverian Queens, I, p. 20.
8. Hatton, George I, p. 34.
9. Ibid., p. 49.
10. Greenwood, Hanoverian Queens, I, p. 48.
11. Ibid., p. 64.
12. Walpole, Reminiscences, p. 20.
13. Hatton, George I, p. 59.
14. Walpole, Reminiscences, p. 21.
15. Hatton, George I, p. 64.
16. Greenwood, Hanoverian Queens, I, p. 110.
17. Dr Doran, Lives of the Queens of England (2 vols, London, 1855), I, pp. 194–95.
18. John, Lord Hervey, Some Materials Towards Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ed. Romney Sedgwick (3 vols, London, 1931), III, p. 918.
19. Walpole, Reminiscences, p. 35.
20. Hervey, Memoirs, III, p. 917.
21. Greenwood, Hanoverian Queens, I, p. 188.
22. Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ed. Lord Holland (3 vols, London, 1846), I, p. 175.
23. Andrew C. Thompson, George II (New Haven, 2011), p. 32.
24. Hervey, Memoirs, II, pp. 340–41.
25. Ibid., I, p. 261.
26. Walpole, Reminiscences, p. 29.
27. W. H. Wilkins, Caroline the Illustrious (2 vols, London, 1902), I, p. 30.
28. Ibid., p. 44.
29. Thompson, George II, p. 37.
30. Walpole, Reminiscences, p. 84.
31. Hervey, Memoirs, II, p. 641.
32. Ibid., I, p. 254.
33. Hervey, Memoirs, II, p. 445.
34. Ibid., I, p. 262.
35. Wilkins, Caroline the Illustrious, I, p. 34.
36. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ed. Holland, I, p. 176.
37. Hervey, Memoirs, I, p. 261.
38. Ibid., p. 488.
39. Wilkins, Caroline the Illustrious, I, p. 16.
40. Ibid., p. 201.
41. Ibid., p. 207.
42. Mary Clavering, Countess Cowper, Diary of Mary Countess Cowper, 1714–1720 (London, 1864), p. 99.
43. Wilkins, Caroline the Illustrious, I, p. 162.
44. Ibid., p. 151
45. Ibid., p. 326.
46. Walpole, Reminiscences, p. 46.
47. Greenwood, Hanoverian Queens, I, p. 226.
48. Ibid., p. 237.
49. Ibid., p. 238.
50. Ibid., pp. 262–63.
51. Cowper, Diary, p. 132.
52. Ibid., p. 131.
53. Hervey, Memoirs, I, p. 68.
54. Greenwood, Hanoverian Queens, I, p. 236.
Chapter 2 – A Passionate Partnership
1. Walpole, Reminiscences, p. 22.
2. Thompson, George II, p. 73.
3. Ibid., p. 75.
4. Hervey, Memoirs, I, p. lv.
5. Ibid., p. xxiv.
6. Ibid., II, p. 349.
7. Ibid., I, p. 45.
8. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ed. Holland, I, p. 179.
9. Hervey, Memoirs, I, p. 69.
10. Thompson, George II, pp. 216–17.
11. Hervey, Memoirs, II, p. 487.
12. Ibid., p. 486.
13. Ibid., p. 487.
14. Greenwood, Hanoverian Queens, I, p. 342.
15. Walpole, Reminiscences, p. 74.
16. Hervey, Memoirs, I, p. 41.
17. Walpole, Reminiscences, p. 84.
18. Hervey, Memoirs, I, p. 43.
19. Ibid., II, p. 472.
20. Ibid., p. 278.
21. Ibid., p. 382.
22. Ibid., p. 458.
23. Ibid., p. 458–59.
24. Ibid., p. 496.
25. Ibid., p
. 490.
26. Ibid., p. 599.
27. Ibid., p. 600.
28. Ibid., p. 603.
29. Ibid., p. 649.
30. Wilkins, Caroline the Illustrious, I, pp. 278–79.
31. Greenwood, Hanoverian Queens, I, p. 234.
32. Marples, Morris, Poor Fred and the Butcher (London, 1970), p. 13.
33. Hervey, Memoirs, I, p. 95.
34. Marples, Poor Fred, p. 20.
35. Hervey, Memoirs, I, p. 309.
36. Ibid., p. 306.
37. Marples, Poor Fred, p. 6.
38. Ibid., p.13.
39. Lucy Moore, Amphibious Thing: The Life of a Georgian Rake (London, 2000), p. 102.
40. Ibid., p. 104.
41. Robert Halsband, Lord Hervey, Eighteenth-Century Courtier (Oxford, 1973), p. 68.
42. Ibid., pp. 69, 71.
43. Moore, Amphibious Thing, p. 105.
44. Halsband, Lord Hervey, p. 127.
45. Marples, Poor Fred, p. 24.
46. Moore, Amphibious Thing, p. 96.
47. Ibid., p.144.
48. Hervey, Memoirs, I, p. 307.
49. Ibid., III, p. 820.
50. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ed. Holland, I, p. 72.
51. Hervey, Memoirs, I, p. 234.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., p. 305.
54. Ibid., II, p. 504.
55. Ibid., p. 371.
56. Ibid., III, p. 843.
57. Ibid., I, p. 310.
58. Ibid., II, pp. 550–51.
59. Ibid., p. 550.
60. Ibid., pp. 552–53.
61. Ibid., p. 614.
62. Ibid., p. 617.
63. Ibid., III, p. 757.
64. Ibid., pp. 758–59.
65. Ibid., p. 760.
66. Ibid., p. 762.
67. Ibid., p. 844.
68. Ibid., p. 677.
69. Ibid., p. 681.
70. Ibid., p. 806.
71. Ibid., p. 807.
72. Ibid., p. 820.
73. Ibid., p. 812.
74. Ibid., II, p. 372.
75. Ibid., III, p. 877.
76. Ibid., p. 881.
77. Ibid., p. 910.
78. Ibid., p. 883.
79. Ibid., pp. 891–92.
80. Ibid., p. 896.
81. Ibid., p. 884.
82. Ibid., p. 916.
83. Ibid., p. 909.
Chapter 3 – Son and Heir
1. Anon., George III, His Court and Family (London, 1821), p. 74.
2. Stella Tillyard, A Royal Affair, George III and his Troublesome Siblings (London, 2008), p. 20.
3. Black, George III, p. 6.
4. Anon., Court and Family, p. 74.
5. Marples, Poor Fred, p. 90.
6. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ed. Holland, I, p. 76.
7. Ibid., p. 145.
8. Ibid.
9. George Bubb Dodington, The Political Journal of George Bubb Dodington, ed. John Carswell and Leslie Dralle (Oxford, 1965), p. 75.
10. Marples, Poor Fred, p. 88.
11. Tillyard, Royal Affair, p. 22.
12. Anon., Court and Family, p. 97.
13. Tillyard, Royal Affair, p. 24.
14. Marples, Poor Fred, p. 79.
15. Dodington, Political Journal, p. 59.
16. Anon., Court and Family, p. 118.
17. Christopher Hibbert, George III: A Personal History (London, 1998), p. 13.
18. Tillyard, Royal Affair, p. 24.
19. Marples, Poor Fred, p. 79.
20. Tillyard, Royal Affair, p. 24.
21. J. A. Home (ed.), The Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke (4 vols, Edinburgh, 1889), I, p. lxxxiv.
22. Ibid.
23. Sedgwick (ed.), Letters, p. ix.
24. Home (ed.), Coke, I, p. lxxxv.
25. Dodington, Political Journal, p. 104.
26. John L. Bullion, ‘“George, Be a King!” The Relationship between Princess Augusta and George III’, in Stephen Taylor, Richard Connors and Clyve Jones (eds), Hanoverian Britain and Empire (London, 1998), p. 182.
27. Dodington, Political Journal, p. 105.
28. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ed. Holland, I, p. 71.
29. Ibid., p. 77.
30. Hibbert, George III, p. 14.
31. Dodington, Political Journal, p. 112.
32. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ed. Holland, I, p. 83.
33. Marples, Poor Fred, p. 141.
34. Ibid., p. 154.
35. Ibid., p. 176.
36. Ibid., p. 153.
37. Sedgwick (ed.), Letters, p. xx.
38. Marples, Poor Fred, p. 197.
39. J. H. Jesse, Memoirs of the Life and Reign of George III (3 vols, London, 1867), I, p. 10.
40. Ibid., p. 11.
41. Bullion, ‘George, Be a King!’, p. 183.
42. Hervey, Memoirs, III, pp. 792–93.
43. Bullion, ‘George, Be a King!’, p. 188n.
44. Ibid., p. 183.
45. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ed. Holland, I, p. 78.
46. Ibid.
47. Dodington, Political Journal, p. 180.
48. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, ed. Jarrett, I, p. 15n.
49. Dodington, Political Journal, p. 190.
50. Ibid., p. 200.
51. Ibid., p. 208.
52. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, ed. Jarrett, I, p. 16.
53. Ibid., p. 105.
54. Doran, Lives of the Queens of England, I, p. 433.
55. Home (ed.), Coke, II, p. 264.
56. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, ed. Jarrett, II, p. 6.
57. Ibid., III, p. 176.
58. Dodington, Political Journal, pp. 240–41.
59. Ibid., p. 271.
60. Ibid., p. 300.
61. Hibbert, George III, p. 19.
62. Sedgwick (ed.), Letters, p. 21.
63. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, ed. Jarrett, I, p. 86.
64. Hibbert, George III, p. 16.
65. Tillyard, Royal Affair, p. 37.
66. Dodington, Political Journal, p. 318.
67. Ibid., p. 178.
68. Ibid., p. 207.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid., p. 318.
71. Ibid., p. 178.
72. James, Earl Waldegrave, Memoirs (London, 1821), pp. 63–64.
73. Ibid., p. 63.
74. Dodington, Political Journal, p. 202.
75. Waldegrave, Memoirs, p. 10.
76. Ibid., p. 9.
77. Dodington, Political Journal, p. 178.
78. Nathaniel Wraxall, The Historical and Posthumous Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall, ed. Henry Wheatley (4 vols, London, 1884), I, p. 64.
79. Waldegrave, Memoirs, p. 38.
80. Sedgwick (ed.), Letters, p. xliv.
81. Wraxall, Historical Memoirs, I, p. 62.
82. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, ed. Jarrett, I, p. 196.
83. Ibid., p. 11n.
84. Ibid., p. xxxvi.
85. Ibid., p. 176.
86. Sedgwick (ed.), Letters, pp. 2–3.
87. Ibid., p. 4n.
88. Ibid., p. 4.
89. Ibid., p. 3.
90. Ibid., p. 21.
91. Ibid., p. 4.
92. Ibid., p. 45.
93. Ibid., p. liii.
94. Ibid.
95. Black, George III, p. 12.
96. Sedgwick (ed.), Letters, p. lii.
97. Ibid., p. liii.
98. Ibid., p. 31n.
99. Ibid., p. 4.
100. Ibid., p. 5.
101. Ibid., p. 45.
102. Tillyard, Royal Affair, p. 26.
103. Sedgwick (ed.), Letters, pp. 36, 13–14.
104. Ibid., p. 15.
105. Ibid., p. 20.
106. Ibid., p. 13.
107. Ibid., p. 46.
108. Ibid., p. 168.
109. Ibid., pp. 45–46.
110. Ibid., p. 6.
111. Ibid., pp. 26–27.
112. Ibid., p. 43.
113. Ibid., p. 37.
114. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, ed. Jarrett, I, p. 43.
115. Sedgwick (ed.), Letters, p. 37.
116. Ibid., p. 38.
117. Countess of Ilchester and Lord Stavordale (eds), Lady Sarah Lennox (London, 1904), p. 87.
118. Ibid., p. 88.
119. Ibid.
120. Stella Tillyard, Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily and Sarah Lennox, 1740–1832 (London, 1994), p. 122.
121. Ibid.
122. Walpole to Montagu, 22 January 1761, Yale Edition of Walpole’s Correspondence, IX, p. 335.
123. Tillyard, Aristocrats, p. 126.
124. Sedgwick (ed.), Letters, p. 38.
125. Ibid., pp. 39, 39n.
126. Ilchester and Stavordale (eds), Lady Sarah Lennox, p. 28.
127. Ibid.
128. Ibid., p. 102.
129. Ibid., p. 47.
130. Ibid., pp. 102–03.
131. Ibid., p. 107.
132. Ibid., pp. 104–05.
133. Ibid., p. 105.
134. Ibid., p. 94.
Chapter 4 – The Right Wife
1. Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, 28 October 1760, Yale Edition of Walpole’s Correspondence, XXI, p. 442.
2. Horace Walpole to Montagu, 13 November 1760, ibid., IX, 9, p. 320.
3. Jeremy Black, George II: Puppet of the Politicians? (Exeter, 2007), p. 253.
4. Waldegrave, Memoirs, p. 7.
5. Black, George II, p. 254.
6. Sedgwick (ed.), Letters, p. 17n.
7. Ibid., p. 40.
8. Dodington, Political Journal, p. 319.
9. Romney Sedgwick, ‘The Marriage of George III’, History Today, 10, 6 (June 1960), p. 372.
10. Ibid.
11. Olwen Hedley, Queen Charlotte (London, 1975), p. 9.
12. Sedgwick, ‘Marriage of George III’, p. 373.
13. Ibid., p. 374.
14. Sedgwick (ed.), Letters, p. 53.
15. Ibid., p. 54.
16. Ibid., p. 55.
17. Lucille Iremonger, Love and the Princesses (London, 1958), p. 43.
18. Percy Fitzgerald, The Good Queen Charlotte (London, 1899), p. 14.
19. Ibid.
20. John Watkins, Memoirs of Her Most Excellent Majesty Sophia Charlotte, Queen of Great Britain (London, 1819), p. 30.
21. A term whose meaning of ‘female intellectual’ came into use around this time, in the middle of the eighteenth century. It originates in the fact that instead of formal black stockings, blue stockings were sometimes worn (by men) at literary assemblies in London hosted by society ladies; other women attending became known as ‘bluestockings’.
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