The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I

by Gold, Claudia

  From honest Mah’met, or plain Parson Hale.

  Mehemet and Mustapha were also immortalized by William Kent in his glorious mural on the grand staircase at Kensington Palace, with the Turkish touches in Mehemet’s dress adding to his exoticism. In the mural, alongside the two Turks and George’s jester-dwarf, Kent shows Peter the Wild Boy, a feral child, possibly mentally disabled, who had been abandoned by his parents and was living in the woods in northern Germany. George brought him over to England, where he was treated as a curiosity at court. In the minds of many Englishmen, particularly the Jacobites, this strange group – ‘heathen’ Turks, a dwarf, a ‘Wild Boy’, a half-sister who all thought was a mistress, and Melusine, who many laughed at simply because she was ageing yet continued to captivate the king – were established as corrupt and bizarre, in antithesis to poor, beautiful, imprisoned Sophia Dorothea.

  Melusine also brought her favourite German servants to London with her, but she was typically discreet about her household, and many of their names are lost to us. We do know that in December 1721, one of the women on her staff won the lottery. The Daily Post reported: ‘We hear that the prize of 300 l. per annum for life that was drawn in the York Buildings Lottery on Wednesday last, fell to the Duchess of Kendal’s gentlewoman.’ All we know of her identity is that she was a ‘German Lady, servant to the Duchess’.8 She was possibly Mrs Shrieder, Melusine’s chief gentlewoman, whom she employed until at least the end of 1727. Another servant important enough to her household to merit mention in the newspapers was Monsieur de Anthony, Melusine’s secretary. Melusine’s writing was an illegible scrawl, and Monsieur de Anthony must have taken dictation for those letters that are easier to read.

  Despite their distaste for display and the commotion of the early years, certain duties towards the court continued. Melusine was frantic with worry at the effect the rebellions and his fractious English ministers were having on George’s health, and Mary Countess Cowper reported: ‘Mademoiselle Schulenberg [sic] in great concern.’9 Nevertheless the countess recorded in her diary the celebrations for Georg August’s birthday: ‘I never saw the court so splendidly fine. The evening concluded with a ball, which the prince and princess began.’

  But they retreated as much as possible and happily allowed the more sociable and gregarious Georg August and Caroline to perform the social functions associated with monarchy and to provide the royal family with the requisite glamour.

  Thus from the beginning of the new reign two courts existed side-by-side – the monarch’s and the far more lively ambience created by Georg August and Caroline. It would eventually have disastrous consequences for the entire family. The separation would harden into a near-irreparable breach, splitting court, aristocracy and parliament.

  Georg August and Caroline, now Prince and Princess of Wales, enthusiastically embraced the role of society leaders. Lord Hervey, a writer and a gossip at the centre of court life (he became Georg August’s vice-chamberlain in 1730), recorded the different temperaments of father and son, and perceived that ‘the pageantry and splendour, the badges and trappings of royalty, were as pleasing to the son as they were irksome to the father’.10 Caroline held a drawing room in the evening twice a week, and gave balls at Somerset House and St James’s. She and her husband delighted the English courtiers by including them fully on their staff.

  Melusine and George lived at St James’s from October or November until May or early June. George’s birthday fell on 28 May, and they often stayed for the elaborate celebrations in London before departing for one of the summer palaces. Late spring was spent at Kensington, and high summer at glorious Hampton Court or Windsor. The movement between seasonal residences reminded them of Hanover, and the progression of its court between the Leineschloss, Herrenhausen and Ghörde. Courtiers followed them; in the winter receptions were held at the inadequate St James’s Palace, and in the summer at Kensington, Hampton Court or Windsor.

  Melusine’s days were spent with her daughters, her friends and her new English acquaintances, and her evenings with George. Melusine’s siblings were welcome visitors. Johann Matthias came to London in 1726 and George made sure that he reviewed the troops in Hyde Park. The king wore him out with his long and habitual hikes through the palace gardens, which could last up to three hours.11 There were some familiar faces already in England: the raugravine Caroline was married to one of William III’s officers, Meinhard von Schomberg, Duke of Leinster, and the two women were on excellent terms. Melusine and George dined together most evenings, either alone or with the girls. In 1717 she was given the generous sum of £3,000 per annum to maintain her own kitchen to feed George and their guests, and was allocated a great deal of beer, sherry, claret, bread and candles. Sophia Charlotte was typically jealous of Melusine’s allowance, and badgered George for an equal amount. She too was awarded £3,000 to maintain her own kitchen.12

  Melusine happily kept in the background while George’s days took on the familiar rhythm of Hanover. He woke early and worked in his room until noon, when he received his ministers in an adjacent room until about three o’clock. The king then ate alone in his bedchamber, served only by Mehemet or Mustapha. He exercised in the afternoons by taking long walks in the gardens at St James’s.13 Liselotte knew his character well. In October 1714 she wrote to the raugravine Louise: ‘Just between us, I believe that the King of England would have a better time at his Göhrde than in all his splendour in England. For my good cousin the Lord King is no more taken with ceremonies than his old cousin, my Excellency . . .’14

  Once a week George dined with Sophia Charlotte who, naturally more gregarious, arranged for the most interesting artists and wits to be at a lively supper. George and Melusine frequently went to the opera or the theatre together, whether alone or with the girls, or sometimes in an uncomfortable trio of Melusine, Sophia Charlotte and George. George was either unaware of the antipathy between his half-sister and his mistress, or he pragmatically chose to ignore it.

  The court was relatively informal. In 1725 a Swiss visitor to London, César de Saussure, managed to gain access to court easily, to his evident surprise. He has left us with a lovely description:

  On the Sunday following my arrival a friend asked me to accompany him to Court, and at midday we went together to St. James’s Palace. We passed through several rooms in which were noblemen and officers awaiting the opening of the King’s apartments. As soon as the signal was given, all these people disappeared inside them, we being unable to follow on account of the crowd. Knowing there was a gallery leading to the chapel through which the Court must pass, we posted ourselves on it, and had not long to wait. Six Yeomen appeared at the head of the procession; they reminded me very much of the Swiss Guard at Versailles, being dressed in the same quaint fashion. They carried halberds on their shoulders and walked two and two. These Yeomen were followed by several gentlemen of the Court, by the Duke of Grafton, the King’s Chamberlain, and by the Duke of Dorset, Master of the King’s Household, each carrying a long white wand of office. Two sergeants-at-arms, or mace-bearers, followed, carrying their maces on their shoulders, these being of silver-gilt, surmounted by crowns of the same precious metal. A nobleman of the Court followed, carrying the sword of state . . . The King then appeared, followed by the three young Princesses who reside with him in the Palace; they are the Prince of Wales’s three eldest daughters . . . I was surprised at seeing everyone making a profound reverence or bow as the King went by, which he in his turn acknowledged by a slight inclination of the head. The English do not consider their King to be so very much above them that they dare not salute him, as in France; they respect him and are faithful to him, and often sincerely attached to him. I speak, of course, of those who favour the reigning family . . .

  From this room you go into that of the Gentlemen Pensioners, called the Presence Chamber, which is furnished with antique hangings, and from thence into another room, where the gentlemen of the Court await the opening of the King’s apartments. The King
’s chambers consist firstly of a big room which leads into the bedchamber, the bed being covered with crimson velvet, braided and embroidered in gold. The bed stands in a sort of alcove, shut off from the rest of the room by a balustrade of gilded wood. To the right of the grand ante-chamber is the drawing-room, where the King gives audiences and receives ambassadors. In these two chambers there are canopies of purple velvet. All these rooms look on to the park gardens, and are hung with beautiful old tapestries . . .

  . . . Three Drawing-rooms are held every week, one on Sundays from two till three, and the other two on Mondays and Fridays from eight till ten or eleven in the evening. These evening circles are much pleasanter than those held on Sundays, for the apartments are magnificently lighted, and more ladies attend them, and the latter are always an ornament to society . . .

  But the court was not all pomp and glitter. Many needed the financial security that a place offered. John Gay wrote of the demoralizing necessity of attending evening after evening in the hope of finding courtly work:

  Pensive each night, from room to room I walk’d,

  To one I bow’d, and with another talk’d;

  Enquir’d what news, or such a lady’s name,

  And did the next day, and the next, the same.

  Places, I found, were daily given away,

  And yet no friendly Gazette mention’d Gay.

  I ask’d a friend what method to pursue;

  He cry’d, I want a place, as well as you.

  8.

  A Strange Family

  Nor are the Hanover womankind his Majesty has about him, quasi-wives or not, of a soul-entrancing character; far indeed from that. Two in chief there are, a fat and a lean: the lean, called ‘Maypole’ by the English populace, is ‘Duchess of Kendal’, with excellent pension, in the English Peeragy [sic]; Schulenburg the former German name of her; decidedly a quasi-wife . . . who is fallen thin and old . . . Then besides this lean one, there is a fat . . . Kielmannsegge by German name, was called ‘Countess of Darlington’ in this country with excellent pension, as was natural. They all had pensions . . .

  – Thomas Carlyle, nineteenth-century historian and writer

  Jacobite propaganda was largely responsible for George’s reputation for sexual rapacity. He was said to use his Turkish servants both as his pimps and his lovers. The historian Lucy Worsley repeats the rumours that George was besotted with a courtier, Molly Lepell, who was famously beautiful. She continues: ‘It was said that Melusine had paid Molly £4,000 to break off her increasingly flagrant relationship with the king.’1 The bitchy Lord Chesterfield and William Pulteney wrote a spiky little poem about Molly:

  Or were I the King of Great Britain

  To chuse a Minister well,

  And support the Throne that I sit on,

  I’d have under me Molly Le[pel]l.2

  In 1720 the Jacobites in London added fuel to George’s reputation as a deviant philanderer, excitedly gossiping that ‘a cargo of new German ladies of the largest size are coming, and Mohammed . . . is to be chief over them’.3

  Reliable contemporary accounts tell us that when George was relaxed, he could be flirtatious. The Prussian diplomat Bonet reported home of the ‘passion’ the Italian Duchess of Shrewsbury had conceived for the king.

  But shocking above all are the great familiarities which the duchess of Shrewsbury, an Italian lady whose reputation is not the best established, affects to take with the king in public and in private . . . everyone observes that she only eats what the king touches, or from the plates on which he is served; that she speaks to him with more boldness than respect; and it was not a little surprising that she spent an evening at the theatre in her box, with the King, the singer Sanclos, in her costume, and placing his hands on the latter’s bosom, she said to him, even before witnesses, ‘voilà, Sire, a beautiful throat’. The familiarities of this duchess give much to consider, but I shall not speak further.4

  This duchess was not liked at court. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, was disgusted by her behaviour, complaining to Mary Cowper how she set about ‘entertaining everybody aloud, thrusting out her disagreeable breasts with such strange motions’.5

  And César de Saussure observed how George loved to kiss pretty women:

  At about two o’clock we returned to the chamber called the circle or drawing-room . . . Three ladies were then presented to His Majesty; he kissed them all affectionately on the lips, and I remarked that he seemed to take most pleasure in kissing the prettiest of the three . . .6

  Were these innocuous flirtations? Perhaps. Sir Robert’s son Horace Walpole, whose gossipy and often unreliable writings still make such entertaining reading today, was convinced that towards the end of his reign George became so enamoured of an Anne Brett, daughter of a colonel, that he wished to replace Melusine with her. But, as with so much of Walpole’s chatter, the evidence is very sketchy. Intriguingly, just after George’s death on 24 June 1727, Mist’s Weekly Journal reported: ‘We hear Mrs Brett has a grant of a pension of 800 l. per annum for 30 years.’ I have been unable to find any evidence to corroborate a pension. This may be idle gossip, or it may show that George, on occasion, sought the company of other women.

  Saussure tells us:

  The King is fond of women; he has a mistress, sister of the Duke of Schulenburg, officer in the service of Venice. The King has created her Duchess of Kendal and Munster in Ireland; she is a fine, handsome woman, and said to be very benevolent and charitable. The King is very fond of her, yet he is not always quite faithful to her, amusing himself with passing intrigues every now and then.7

  True or not, he always came back to Melusine.

  The English enthusiastically repeated the rumours suggesting that George was having affairs with not only Melusine but also Sophia Charlotte, and Sophia Charlotte’s sister-in-law Countess Platen, who had remained in Hanover. A typical verse decrying George and two of his supposed mistresses – Melusine and Sophia Charlotte – ran as follows. It would have appeared in a pamphlet and been shouted in the streets:

  He preferred Hanover to England

  He preferred two hideous mistresses

  To a beautiful and innocent wife.

  He hated all art and despised literature . . .

  And he had Walpole for a minister,

  Consistent in his preference for every kind of corruption.8

  Horace Walpole said this of the pair:

  Lady Darlington [Sophia Charlotte] whom I saw at my mother’s in my infancy, and whom I remember by being terrified at her enormous figure, was as corpulent and ample as the Duchess [Melusine] was long and emaciated. Two fierce black eyes, large and rolling beneath two lofty arched eye-brows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays – no wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress and that the mob of London were highly diverted at the importation of so uncommon a seraglio!9

  Horace’s description, like so much of his writing, was hugely exaggerated. Sophia Charlotte had put on weight in her latter years but she was certainly not the ‘ogress’ he described. And as for Melusine, we can see from the three portraits painted around 1720 that she was no longer the ‘maukin’ that the Electress Sophia had called her in her youth. But his unfavourable account is one of the sources that fuelled the myth of the insatiable and grotesque ‘Maypole and Elephant’. It endured at least until the last quarter of the twentieth century when Ragnhild Hatton’s research did so much to disprove it.

  Although court gossip was rife with rumours that both Melusine and Sophia Charlotte were George’s mistresses, the only instance recorded in which it is clear that George was aware of gossip about a relationship with his half-sister led to a dismissal. In 1716 George had appointed a confectioner, Charles Burroughs – he had a very sweet tooth. The confectioner had apparently used ‘such indecent expressions concerning the King and Madam Kielmanseck [Kielmannsegg] as are not fit to be inserted .
. .’10 and George sacked him.

  Contemporaries such as Lord Chesterfield believed that George had a preference for large women, from whom he was open to offers. Chesterfield claimed that candidates for a liaison with the king would ‘strain and swell’ themselves to put on weight. And he believed that George was hugely attracted to any woman who was ‘but very willing, very fat, and had great breasts’.11 Considering that Melusine was famously slim, these rumours probably compounded the tales that George was unable to resist a large woman (Sophia Charlotte) who was living in such close proximity to him, even though they shared a father.

  Court rumours abounded that Sophia Charlotte’s lovers numbered not only the king but one of George’s English ministers, Paul Methuen. Mary Cowper claimed he made ‘sweet Eyes at Madame K.’ at a dinner. As her husband was still alive at the beginning of George’s reign Sophia Charlotte was mortified, particularly when she was told that Georg August, who could not stand her, was in the habit of telling anyone who would listen ‘that she had intrigued with all the men at Hanover’.12 Sophia Charlotte, responding to the charge, did an extraordinary thing. According to Mary Cowper:

  She [Sophia Charlotte] came to complain of this to the princess, who replied, she did not believe the prince had said so, it not being his custom to speak in that manner. Madame Kielmansegge cried, and said it had made her despised, and that many of her acquaintance had left her upon that story; but that her husband had taken all the care he could to vindicate her reputation; and thereupon she drew forth out of her pocket a certificate under her husband’s hand, in which he certified, in all the due forms, that she had always been a faithful wife to him, and that he had never had any cause to suspect her honesty. The princess smiled, and said that she did not doubt it at all, and that all that trouble was very unnecessary, and that it was a very bad reputation that wanted such a support. I believe it is the first certificate of the kind that ever was given.13