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

by Gold, Claudia

  Opera at the Haymarket was under the direction of the Swiss impresario John James Heidegger. He created such a marvellous display that even sophisticated Londoners used to ‘Show! Show!’ were impressed. Heidegger scoured Italy for the best singers, securing them for astronomical sums; the castrato Francesco Bernard, known as Senesino, would only come for £2,000. His antics both on and off stage thrilled the crowd and filled the newspapers. Heidegger additionally made his theatre the setting of a sumptuous masquerade where the crowd would mingle in their finery and disguises in the glow of candlelight. This was the London that Melusine adored – music, spectacle and wealth. She and Heidegger became friends; in 1728 she leased his house at Barnes, near the river in Richmond, while he travelled to Italy in search of yet more operatic stars.7

  The newly created Royal Academy of Music was financed by subscriptions of a minimum of £200, making it the province of the wealthy. The guidelines of its establishment reflected the contemporary mania for stocks and the resultant bubbles, and many contemporaries compared the fever for opera with the mania created by the catastrophic South Sea Bubble of 1720. Its excesses prompted commentators such as Bishop Berkeley to thunderous diatribes:

  Our gaming, our Operas, our Maskerades, are, in spite of our Debts and Poverty, become the Wonders of our Neighbours . . . The Plague dreadful as it is, is an Evil of short duration; Cities have often recovered and flourished after it; but when was it known that a People broken and corrupted by Luxury recovered themselves?8

  But despite such ragings, the taste of Melusine and George triumphed. Many, such as Swift and Gay, were appalled. In the winter of 1723 Gay wrote:

  There is nobody allowed to say I sing but an Eunuch or an Italian Woman. Every body is grown now as great a judge of Music as they were in your time of Poetry, and folks that could not distinguish one tune from another now daily dispute about the different Styles of Handel, Bononcini and Attilio. People have now forgot Homer, and Virgil & Caesar, or at least they have lost their ranks, for in London and Westminster in all polite conversations, Senesino is daily voted to be the greatest man that ever liv’d.9

  It was only in 1728, a year after George’s death, that John Gay brought his irreverent The Beggar’s Opera to the stage, with its vilification of the Whig oligarchy that served George and Melusine so well.

  George Frideric Handel was the musician most closely associated with George and Melusine. Like most cultured Germans, Handel’s influences were primarily Italian. In 1706 he visited Italy and stayed for four years, developing his musical style. By the time he was appointed George’s Kapellmeister in 1710 he was famous, not least for operas such as Agrippina, which had premiered in Venice in 1710. Handel spent the next four years in both Hanover and London, where his operas Rinaldo, Il Pastor Fido and Teseo were raging successes. He was reluctant to leave London for parochial Hanover, where one of his duties was teaching music to the royal grandchildren and Melusine’s daughters; he was saved by the death of Queen Anne. He remained in England for the rest of his life (he was naturalized in 1726), enjoying the favour of the ruling house and the aristocracy. One of his most enduring pieces, the Water Music of 1717, written for string and wind instruments, was composed to accompany Melusine and George as they rowed down the Thames. In his biography of London, Peter Ackroyd puts a less romantic twist on this image of the companionship of love in middle age – Melusine and George snuggling to the sounds of Handel’s exquisite composition as they wended their way along the river. Ackroyd suggests the music was performed not to accompany a romantic tryst but to drown out the sounds of the Thames’s foul-mouthed boatmen.

  In London Handel’s operas were performed at Vanbrugh’s King’s Theatre on Haymarket. The premieres of the new operas that appeared almost every year were one of Melusine’s chief delights. She enjoyed Floridante in 1721, Ottone in 1723, Giulio Cesare in 1724, Rodelinda in 1725 and Scipione in 1726.

  Melusine and the girls all subscribed to music publications, particularly to Handel’s.10 It was a passion enjoyed by the extended family too. In 1721 we hear of an impromptu concert arranged for George by Sophia Charlotte, to George’s evident delight:

  Being one evening at the home of Mademoiselle Schulemburg [probably Louise], niece of the duchess of Kendal, the king sent for him [Bononcini – a musician] to look at the beginning of a pastorale, and he recognized its style [probably Steffani’s]. When . . . [Sophia Charlotte] put on a very private concert of the king in his apartment, which was managed by her servant Brighella, that is, me, we decided to perform this pastorale and thus gave His Majesty a pleasant surprise . . .11

  And in 1725 young Melusine interceded for a young Italian singer, Benedetta Sorosina, and managed to find her a small part in Handel’s opera Giulio Cesare. By all accounts it was not a very good opera – or perhaps it was a case of professional jealousy – for in January 1725 Giuseppe Riva wrote to Agostino Steffani: ‘Benedetta . . . could not make a great impact, because the arias are mediocre and stuck on, as they say, with spit . . .’12

  One of the relatively new institutions that gave London such vibrancy – spreading the gossip and sparking political discourse – was the coffee and chocolate house, informal centres of both relaxation and fierce debate. Coffee-house culture exploded in the eighteenth century, but its beginnings can be found in the seventeenth. Originating in Venice, the first London coffee house was established in 1652 in St Michael’s Alley, near Cornhill, and within five years two more opened nearby, in St Michael’s Churchyard and in Fleet Street. The author of The Topography of London noted that ‘theire ware also att this time a Turkish drink to be sould in eury street, called Coffee, and another kind of drink called Tee, and also a drink called Chacolate, which was a very hearty drink.’13 Such was their popularity that they survived Charles II’s attempts in 1675 to eradicate them – he feared that political discussion, so integral to coffee-house culture, would sow discord for his regime. By the time Melusine and George arrived in England there were roughly two thousand of them. They were cheap – Macaulay observed that you were ‘able to pass evenings socially at a very small charge’. And they were everywhere.

  The first edition of the Spectator in 1711 wrote of the variety of activities to be pursued in the coffee house:

  sometimes I am seen thrusting my Head into a Round of Politicians at Will’s, and listening with great Attention to the Narratives that are made in those little Circular Audiences. Sometimes I smoak a Pipe at Child’s, and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Post-Man [a newspaper commonly found in coffee houses] overhear the Conversation of every Table in the Room. I appear on Sunday Nights at St James’s Coffee-House, and sometimes join the little Committee of Politicks in the Inner Room, as one who comes there to hear and to improve. My Face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa-Tree . . .14

  Individual coffee houses became synonymous with different professions. Surgeons would congregate in one, lawyers in another, artists and writers in another, brokers in yet another. Some attracted Whigs, others Tories. One particular coffee house – The Chapter – even attracted members of the clergy. And the London Stock Exchange grew out of the coffee-house culture: brokers were accustomed to frequenting the coffee houses in Change Alley. When establishments such as Jonathan’s became too noisy to effectively conduct business, they moved to New Jonathan’s – renamed the Stock Exchange in 1773.15 They were unofficial clubs without the fees, darting in and out of fashion. They were not particularly comfortable and they stank of tobacco, but they were excellent meeting places, profitable places of business, and they made London into a particularly sociable city. In the words of Macaulay, ‘the coffee house was the Londoner’s home, and . . . those who wished to find a gentleman commonly asked, not whether he lived in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane, but whether he frequented the Grecian or the Rainbow.’16

  Coffee-house culture provided the perfect environment where Melusine and George could be mercilessly caricatured. In 1695 the Licensing Act, which
demanded pre-publication censorship, had been allowed to lapse, leading to a flowering of the British press. (As England had relaxed its censorship laws, so autocratic Hanover increased its efforts to stifle a free press.) Britain’s essayists and satirists were among the most talented in Europe, and Melusine’s alleged crimes did not escape their pens. Swift, Pope and Gay did as much as anyone to destroy her reputation.

  She and George were derided in publications such as the Daily Courant and the Evening Post, and Melusine was also a natural target for the hostile Jacobite press, as can be seen in a popular ballad entitled ‘An Excellent New Ballad’, dating sometime between 1716 and 1719 and referring to her as ‘Munster’ – Melusine was created Duchess of Munster in 1716. This particular ballad uses the popular anti-Hanoverian sentiment of comparing George to a turnip – the Hanoverians had introduced the turnip to Britain and they were often accused of eating nothing else. It also vilifies George for taking a throne he had no right to, for leaving Sophia Dorothea behind to rot in her lonely prison, and for surrounding himself with ‘Turks and Germans’. His crimes are committed with ‘Munster’ (Melusine) on his knee:

  An Excellent New Ballad

  To the Tune of, ‘A Begging we will go,’ etc.

  I am a Turnip Ho-er,

  As good as ever ho’d;

  I have hoed from my Cradle,

  And reap’d where I ne’er sow’d.

  And a Ho-ing I will go, etc.

  For my Turnips I must Hoe.

  With a Hoe for myself,

  And another for my Son;

  A Third too for my Wife –

  But Wives I’ve two, or None.

  And a Ho-ing we will go, etc . . .

  . . . I’ve pillag’d Town and Country round,

  And no Man durst say, No;

  I’ve lop’d off Heads, like Turnip-tops,

  Made England cry, High! Ho!

  And a Ho-ing I will go, etc . . .

  . . . To Hannover I’ll go, I’ll go,

  And there I’ll mery be;

  With a good Hoe in my right Hand,

  And Munster on my Knee.

  And a Ho-ing I will go, etc.

  Come on, my Turks and Germans,

  Pack up, pack up, and go,

  Let J————s take his Scepter,

  So I can have my Hoe.

  And a Ho-ing we will go, etc . . .17

  Melusine was also lampooned for the misconception that she was part of George’s ‘harem’, together with Sophia Charlotte and Countess Platen. And another publication irreverently called Melusine and Sophia Charlotte ‘two big blousy German women’.18

  The Weekly Journal of May 1721 spat bile at her. Its editorial lamented that ‘we are ruined by . . . parasites, bawds, whores, nay, what is more vexatious, old ugly whores! Such as could not find entertainment in the most hospitable hundreds of old Drury? . . .’19

  In 1720, on the eve of George’s departure for Hanover, Samuel Wesley, brother of John Wesley, penned a singularly unattractive sketch of Melusine. The poem was set against the background of George’s appointments for his regency council while he was out of the country, and it imagines a conversation between George and Melusine:

  As soon as the wind it came fairly about,

  That kept the king in and his enemies out,

  He determined no longer confinement to bear;

  And thus to the Duchess his mind did declare:

  Quoth he, my dear Kenny [Kendal], I’ve been tired a long while,

  With living obscure in this poor little isle.

  And now Spain and Pretender have no more enemies to spring

  I’m resolved to go home and live like a king.

  The Duchess approves of this, describes and laughs at all the persons nominated for the Council of Regency, and concludes:

  ‘On the whole, I’ll be hanged if all over the realm

  There are thirteen such fools to be put to the helm!

  So for this time be easy, nor have jealous thought,

  They ha’n’t sense to see you, nor are worth being bought.’

  ‘’Tis for that (quoth the King, in very bad French),

  I chose them for my regents, and you for my wench.

  And neither, I’m sure, will my trust e’er betray,

  For the devil won’t take you if I turn you away.’20

  Melusine was vilified for her unattractiveness, George for his stupidity – he only speaks ‘very bad French’. This is a complete falsehood. His French was as fluent as his German. The pair are portrayed mocking the kingdom they rule. If these damning reports from the Tory press hurt Melusine, we have no way of knowing. Nothing is recorded.

  10.

  Palaces

  Nothing is more beautiful than the road from London to Kensington, crossing Hyde Park. It is perfectly straight and so wide that three or four coaches can drive abreast. It is bordered on either side by a wide ditch, and has posts put up at even distances, on the tops of which lanterns are hung and lamps placed in them, which are lighted every evening when the Court is at Kensington.

  Saussure, A Foreign View1

  For thirteen years Melusine enjoyed life in England’s palaces, which were amongst the most sublime in Europe. St James’s became much less crowded when Caroline, Georg August and their retinue were forcibly moved out and took up residence at Leicester House in 1717. The palace was enlarged and redecorated by Sir Christopher Wren and William Kent, an artist who enjoyed huge favour under both George and Georg August, but there was no grand scheme to redesign it, although St James’s was their main London home. It was rather a policy of ‘piecemeal alteration and adaptation’. A frustrated Vanbrugh submitted hopeful drawings for a grand new palace, but George was not keen, preferring to expend his time and imagination on redesigning Kensington.

  George and Melusine saw no romance in St James’s and the building work they carried out was mostly for practical purposes. According to the editor of The History of the King’s Works, building was one of ‘orders for new backstairs, laundries, wardrobes and dressing-rooms for members of the Court; alterations to guard-rooms, kitchens, stables and wine-cellars; of the gradual encroachment on the Tudor courtyards which is so apparent in the eighteenth-century surveys of the palace’.2

  Melusine had the use of the best apartments in the palace, apartments that were, according to Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, later occupied by a mistress of George II, Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk. They overlooked the garden and George insisted on their refurbishment, ordering a new parquet floor on his accession and authorizing works costing over £4,000 for the years between 1717 and 1723.

  George also ensured that his other close confidantes were comfortable. Sophia Charlotte’s lodgings were refurbished – she was noted in the accounts as ‘Madame Kilmansack’ and it is interesting that the accounts do not mention her husband, leaving us to wonder as to whether or not they cohabited. The apartments of the Turkish servants Mustapha and Mehemet were also improved, along with those that housed Baron Hattorf, George’s Cabinet secretary, his tailor, and his fool Ulrich, of whom he was reportedly very fond. Money was exchanged for Ulrich when he arrived in England. Although he was ostensibly a gift from the Duke of Saxe Gotha, the duke’s envoy was given £330 for him.

  In keeping with the practical nature of the building works, Melusine had a large laundry ‘with vaults beneath and rooms above’ built in 1723, at a cost of over £2,000.3 George indulged in a new library and a smoking room.

  Tragically, in 1809 fire ripped through the palace, destroying nearly all of the building undertaken by George and Melusine. Today nothing remains of her lovely rooms facing the garden.

  Hampton Court, their summer home, was the palace furthest from London, standing on the river about twelve miles from the capital. The writer César de Saussure was impressed. He wrote to his family: ‘Had he [William III] lived longer, he would have made the palace of Hampton Court one of the most beautiful in Europe, for he was very fond of it and greatly em
bellished it.’4

  Sir Christopher Wren as Master of the King’s Works had been responsible for the extensive rebuilding programme initiated by William and Mary, demolishing much of the Tudor palace and replacing it with a large, modern mansion more in keeping with William’s Dutch tastes. He was particularly fond of large, light spaces and indoor plumbing. Work more or less ceased with Mary’s death in 1694 and by the time George and Melusine arrived Hampton Court was effectively two palaces. The remains of the magnificent Tudor building were at the front – a building so sublime that its beauty had compelled Henry VIII to steal it from Cardinal Wolsey – with the more modern and rather pedestrian structure, the work of Wren’s dotage, welded to it, facing the river.

  George commissioned Sir John Vanbrugh to complete the Queen’s Apartments, designed by Wren for Mary, for Georg August and Caroline. Wren, a victim of political infighting, was dismissed from his post at the King’s Works in 1718, at the age of eighty-six, and replaced by William Benson.

  Melusine’s detractors have accused her of having a hand in Wren’s dismissal. One anti-Hanoverian historian of the early twentieth century argues that Wren was sacked because he ‘refused to allow her to mutilate Hampton Court with her execrable taste, and in revenge she sold his place to William Benson’.5 The historian goes on to claim that ‘Frog Walk’ at Hampton Court was actually a corruption of ‘Frau’ walk, so named because George used to walk there with Melusine and Sophia Charlotte.6 I have found no evidence to substantiate either claim.

  Wren’s dismissal probably had far more to do with his age – he was eighty-two when George ascended the throne – and his close association with the Tories during Anne’s reign. According to his biographer, Lisa Jardine, that he kept his position at the Board of Works during the early days of George’s reign was ‘something of a courtesy’.