Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court

by Lucy Worsley

  Alexander Pope, an admirer of the old Molly Lepell, was hurt when the news of her marriage finally came out. Previously he and she had been happy talking and walking together ‘three or 4 hours, by moonlight’ in the palace gardens.104 But Pope began to turn against her as she became contaminated by her husband’s affected manners. ‘Let me tell you, I don’t like your style,’ he wrote plainly in answer to a letter of Molly’s. ‘Methinks I have lost the Mrs L. I formerly knew, who writ and talk’d like other people (and sometimes better).’105 (‘Mrs L’ was Molly before her marriage, when like all unmarried ladies she was addressed as ‘Mistress’ Lepell.)

  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was another who had preferred the lovers separately rather than as a pair: she quickly grew ‘weary of those Birds of Paradise’. She also thought that Molly had acquired new and exaggerated airs and graces: she’d become ‘the top figure in town’, condescending to show herself ‘twice a-week at the drawing room and twice more at the opera for the entertainment of the public’.106

  Perhaps inevitably, by 1726 the stylish, stylised Hervey couple were gradually growing apart. Maybe it was John’s neglect that encouraged Molly to treat her six-year-old marriage a little less seriously, or perhaps it was the depressing realisation that she and her husband were still spending their way towards insolvency.

  Her father-in-law, the Earl of Bristol, could not have been fonder of Molly herself, but he wished his son had married someone with more money. He castigated John for having even entertained the thought of ‘marrying any woman without a considerable fortune’.107 On the other hand, Molly’s mother-in-law, Lady of the Bedchamber Lady Bristol, had never liked her, and they were well known for quarrelling together like the fishwives of Billingsgate Market.108

  Now, perhaps feeling a little empty inside, Molly began to mirror the caricature of herself as the brittle court lady – ‘the finely-polished, highly-bred, genuine woman of fashion’ – by entering into an intrigue that did her reputation no good.109

  Molly had long been a practised flirt, collecting admirers as others collected snuff boxes. Even Voltaire, when he visited England, was soon writing to her about the ‘passion’ she had kindled within him.110 Despite the elderly king’s supposed preference for fat women, he too was smitten by the ethereal Molly’s ‘soft and sprightly’ grey eyes, which she used to open ‘a little wider than ordinary’.111 And he was also captivated by the spiky, sparky personality that comes through in Molly’s derisive catalogue of her own considerable charms (‘I had forgot my eyebrows. Observe that they are not very handsome, but well enough’).112

  In 1725, the year before Peter the Wild Boy came to court, rumours swirled around that Molly had finally solved her financial problems. The gossips had it that she’d deliberately gone ‘to the Drawing-Room every night, and publicly attracted his Majesty in a most vehement manner’ which was ‘the diversion of the town’.113 It was said that Melusine had paid Molly £4,000 to break off her increasingly flagrant relationship with the king.

  Yet the rumours were just rumours, and Molly was equally criticised for not having had a royal affair. ‘Lady Hervey, by aiming too high, has fallen very low,’ commented Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She ‘is reduc’d to trying to persuade folks she has an intrigue, and gets nobody to believe her’.114

  Even the shameless flattery penned by the poets about their former favourite, Molly Lepell, was not quite straightforward. It began to contain a mocking, spiteful note, typical of an age when wit had a cutting edge, but hurtful nonetheless. Lord Chesterfield and William Pulteney wrote a poem about Molly that would have soured upon her as she discerned its double meaning:

  So powerful her charms, and so moving

  They would warm an old Monk in his cell,

  Should the Pope himself ever go roaming,

  He would follow dear Molly Le[pel]l.

  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.115

  Molly herself was ‘in a little sort of miff’ about this ballad, which flashed around the court in an instant, and asked for the double entendres to be deleted. But her friend Dr Arbuthnot thought her philosophical: ‘not displeas’d I believe with the ballad, but only with being bit’.116

  At the time of Peter the Wild Boy’s arrival, Princess Caroline had just lost the services of yet another Maid of Honour, Mary Howard. She’d had to resign because of her marriage, on 14 March 1726, to Henry Scott, first Earl of Deloraine, one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber to Prince George Augustus.117 Soon to be widowed, though, Lady Deloraine would later return to become a court figure of great consequence.

  *

  Princess Caroline, the Maids of Honour and the Women of the Bedchamber were all fascinated by Peter. Petted and cosseted by the ladies of Leicester House, he settled down as well as could be expected. Yet he gave back very little, showing no affection and demanding inexhaustible patience. The female courtiers began to treat him as a joke, spreading it about that his sturdy body and his lack of speech would make him a fine, discreet toy boy.

  Only the endlessly protective Princess Caroline and Dr Arbuthnot stood between Peter and a life as a character in a freak show.

  The Wild Boy’s overnight social success had been achieved at great cost to his high spirits and love of freedom. In Daniel Defoe’s words, he’d made an extraordinary ‘leap from the woods to the court; from the forest among beasts … to the society of all the wits and beaus of the age’. But despite the care that was lavished upon him, Peter was simply a creature in captivity. It was clear that really he longed ‘to run wild again in the woods’ and ‘to live as he did before’.118

  And he was not the only courtier to find the palace more like a prison.

  Notes

  1. Lord Berkeley of Stratton quoted in Aston (2008), p. 189.

  2. Stanhope (1774), Vol. 2, p. 171.

  3. Llanover (1861), Vol. 1, p. 175 (1728).

  4. Saussure (1902), p. 149.

  5. Anon., An Enquiry How the Wild Youth, Lately taken in the Woods near Hanover, (and now brought over the England) could be there left, and by what Creature he could be suckled, nursed and brought up (London, 1726), p. 3.

  6. Brice’s Weekly Journal (8 April 1726), p. 3.

  7. Ibid. Saussure (1902) p. 149.

  8. Plaque at the gate of Herrenhausen Garden, Hanover.

  9. The forest is named as Hertswold in the brass plaque in Northchurch Church. See John Edwin Cussans, History of Hertfordshire (London, 1879–1881), Vol. 3, p. 90.

  10. Anon., An Enquiry (1726), p. 2.

  11. The St James’s Evening Post (14 December 1725), quoted in James Burnet, Lord Monboddo, Antient Metaphysics (1779–99), Vol. 3 (London and Edinburgh, 1784), p. 58.

  12. Anon., An Enquiry (1726), p. 2.

  13. Brice’s Weekly Journal (8 April 1726), p. 3.

  14. Anon., An Enquiry (1726), p. 4.

  15. Brice’s Weekly Journal (8 April 1726), p. 3.

  16. The St James’s Evening Post (14 December 1725), quoted in Burnet, Vol. 3 (1784), p. 58.

  17. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 20 (November, 1751), p. 522.

  18. Burnet, Vol. 3 (1784), p. 370.

  19. Brice’s Weekly Journal (8 April 1726), p. 3.

  20. Anon., An Enquiry (1726), p. 3.

  21. Harold Williams (Ed.), The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, 5 vols (Oxford, 1963–5), Vol. 4, p. 98, Swift to Lady Elizabeth Germain (8 January 1733).

  22. Ibid., Vol. 3, p. 128, Swift to Thomas Tickell (16 April 1726).

  23. Walpole, Reminiscences (1818 edn), pp. 7–8.

  24. Ibid.

  25. BL Egerton MS 1717, f. 79 (1726).

  26. Rosenthal (1970), p. 93.

  27. Quoted in Coxe (1798b), Vol. 1, p. 267.

  28. Wraxall (1904), pp. 450–1.

  29. Coxe (1798b), Vol. 1, p. 57.

  30. Anon., The Character of George the F
irst (1777), p. 2.

  31. Anon., The Grand Exemplar Set forth, in an Impartial Character Of His Sacred Majesty King George (London, 1715), pp. 1–2.

  32. BL Add MS 75358, Richard Arundell to Lord Burlington (14 April 1726).

  33. The Country Gentleman, No. 10 (11 April 1726), quoted in Burnet, Vol. 3 (1784), p. 60.

  34. Williams (1963–5), Vol. 3, p. 128, Swift to Thomas Tickell (16 April 1726); Anon. (attributed to Daniel Defoe), Mere Nature Delineated (1726), p. 31.

  35. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 55 (March, 1785), p. 236; Joanna Marschner, ‘Caroline of Ansbach: The Queen, Collecting and Connoisseurship at the Early Georgian Court’, PhD thesis, University College (London, 2007), p. 52.

  36. Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, London in 1710, from the travels of Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach (London, 1934), p. 118.

  37. Smith (2006), p. 80.

  38. Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 37.

  39. Anon. (attributed to Daniel Defoe), Mere Nature Delineated (1726), p. iii.

  40. Newton (2002), p. 35.

  41. Anon. (attributed to Daniel Defoe), Mere Nature Delineated (1726), pp. 22, iv.

  42. SRO 941/47/4, p. 111, John Hervey to Ste Fox (13 June 1730).

  43. Stanhope (1774), Vol. 1, p. 146.

  44. London Magazine (London, 1774), p. 213, quoted in Ribeiro (1984), p. 120.

  45. Anon., An Enquiry (1726), p. 4.

  46. Saussure (1902), p. 43; Cowper (1864), p. 21.

  47. Anon., A collection of ordinances and regulations for the government of the Royal Household (Society of Antiquaries, London, 1790), p. 367; R. O. Bucholz, ‘Going to Court in 1700: a visitor’s guide’, The Court Historian, Vol. 4.3 (December 2000), p. 200.

  48. Saussure (1902), pp. 40–1.

  49. BL Add MS 61474, f. 16v, Mrs South to Sarah, Countess of Marlborough (15 March?1694).

  50. BL Add MS 22627, ff. 90v–91r.

  51. Anne Somerset, Ladies in Waiting (London, 1984), p. 203.

  52. Bucholz (2000), p. 185.

  53. Stanhope (1774), Vol. 2, p. 165.

  54. Ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 268–9.

  55. Anon., It cannot Rain (London, 1726), p. 9.

  56. Brice’s Weekly Journal (8 April 1726), p. 3; Edinburgh Evening Courant (12 April 1726), quoted in Burnet, Vol. 3 (1784), p. 60.

  57. Brice’s Weekly Journal (8 April 1726), p. 3.

  58. Anon. (attributed to Daniel Defoe), Mere Nature Delineated (1726), p. 24.

  59. Anon., An Enquiry (1726), p. 4.

  60. Burnet, Vol. 3 (1784), p. 369.

  61. Anon., An Enquiry (1726), p. 3.

  62. Anon., It cannot Rain (1726), p. 5.

  63. Anon., An Enquiry (1726), p. 3.

  64. Ibid., p. 4.

  65. Burnet, Vol. 3 (1784), p. 58.

  66. Brice’s Weekly Journal (8 April 1726), p. 3.

  67. John Boyle, fifth Earl of Orrery, Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr Jonathan Swift (London, 1752), p. 164.

  68. George Berkeley quoted in George Aitken, The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot (Oxford, 1892), p. 55.

  69. Lord Chesterfield quoted in Aitken (1892), p. 134.

  70. Sherburn (1956), Vol. 2, p. 253; Angus Ross (Ed.), The Correspondence of Dr John Arbuthnot (Münster, 2006), p. 259 (Swift to Pope, 29 September 1725).

  71. Anon., The Most Wonderful Wonder That ever appear’d to the Wonder of the British Nation (London, 1726), p. 7.

  72. Anon., An Enquiry (1726), p. 3.

  73. Franklin (1993), p. 106.

  74. Anon., The Most Wonderful Wonder (1726), p. 7.

  75. Anon., An Enquiry (1726), p. 4.

  76. Edinburgh Evening Courant (14 November 1726), quoted in Burnet, Vol. 3 (1784) p. 61.

  77. Edinburgh Evening Courant (5 July 1726), quoted in Burnet, Vol. 3 (1784), p. 60.

  78. Coxe (1798b), Vol. 1, p. 275.

  79. Margaret Maria Verney (Ed.), Verney Letters of the Eighteenth Century from the MSS. at Claydon House (London, 1930), Vol. 2, p. 22.

  80. Williams (1963–5), Vol. 4, p. 98, Swift to Lady Elizabeth Germain (8 January

  1733).

  81. Onno Klopp (Ed.), Correspondence de Leibniz (Hanover, 1874), p. 105 (25 October 1704).

  82. Ibid., p. 108 (1 November 1704).

  83. John Gay, The poetical works of John Gay, from the royal quarto edition of 1720 (London, 1797), ‘Epistles’, p. 9.

  84. TNA SP 84/161, p. 594, Poley to Harley (Hanover, 28 July 1705).

  85. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 514.

  86. RA GEO/ADD28/52, transcript by Mrs Clayton of a letter from Caroline to Mrs Clayton (n.d.).

  87. Letter from Queen Caroline to Princess Anne quoted in Arkell (1939), pp.297–8.

  88. Kroll (1970), p. 214 (27 August 1719).

  89. Edmund Turnor, Collections for the history of the town and soke of Grantham (London, 1806), p. 164, ‘Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton, sent by Mr Conduitt to Monsieur Fontenelle’ (1727).

  90. By several hands, Sketches and Characters of the most Eminent and most Singular Persons Now Living (London, 1770), p. 10.

  91. Smith (2006), p. 206.

  92. Account given by Frederick the Great, quoted in Wilkins (1901), Vol. 1, p. 34.

  93. Ross (2006), p. 274 (John Arbuthnot to Jonathan Swift, 30 November 1726).

  94. Walpole, Reminiscences (1818 edn), p. 73.

  95. A. Hamilton, Memoirs of Count Grammont, Ed. W. Scott (London, 1905), p. 225.

  96. BL Add MS 31144, f. 524v, Peter Wentworth to Lord Strafford (12 October1714).

  97. Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope in John Arbuthnot, Miscellanies (Dublin,1746), p. 254, ‘A true and faithful narrative of what pass’d in London’.

  98. BL Add MS 22628, f. 21r, Molly Hervey to Henrietta Howard (7 July 1729).

  99. Wilkins (1901), Vol. 1, pp. 166–7.

  100. Lewis (1937–83) Vol. 34, p. 257.

  101. BL Add MS 22629, ff. 4r, 7r, Sophy Howe to Henrietta Howard (1719?).

  102. Thomson (1847), Vol. 2, pp. 320–1.

  103. SRO 941/48/1, p. 1, Mary Hervey to Reverend Edmund Morris (20 September 1742).

  104. Sherburn (1956), Vol. 1, p. 427, Pope to Teresa and Martha Blount (13 September 1717).

  105. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 41, Pope to Mary Hervey (1720).

  106. Halsband (1965–7), Vol. 2, p. 8 (c.15 July 1721), p. 48 (c.20 March 1725).

  107. Hervey (1894), Vol. 3, p. 244, Lord Bristol to Lord Hervey (17 May 1740).

  108. Halsband (1965–7), Vol. 2, p. 45 (February 1725).

  109. ‘Introductory Anecdotes’, probably using information from Lady Bute, in Wharncliffe (1837), p. 66.

  110. Quoted in Melville (1927), p. 176.

  111. Charles Hanbury Williams quoted in Hervey (1931), Vol. 1, p. xvii.

  112. SRO 941/21/2(ii), ‘A Character of Lady Mary Hervey’, f. 1; Sir Charles Hanbury Williams quoted in Hervey (1931), Vol. 1, p. xvii.

  113. Duchess of Marlborough to the second Earl of Stair (3 December 1737), quoted in Melville (1927), p. 178.

  114. Halsband (1965–7), Vol. 2, pp. 58–9, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Lady Mar (c.3 February 1726).

  115. SRO 941/53/1, p. 219, William Hervey’s commonplace book, ‘Ballad of Molly Le Pell, 1726’.

  116. Ross (2006), p. 269 (John Arbuthnot to Jonathan Swift, 5 November 1726).

  117. RA EB/EB 48 (unpaginated).

  118. Anon. (attributed to Daniel Defoe), Mere Nature Delineated (1726), p. 22.

  FIVE

  The Neglected Equerry

  ‘An unfortunate man as I am is glad to catch at any glimpse of happiness.’1

  (Peter Wentworth, 1718)

  The Wild Boy was a thrilling novelty at court. He brought a breath of fresh air into its stale confines, and to imagine seeing it through his eyes is to see something of its strangeness. But the court already contained another, very different, royal servant called Peter. This second Peter had arrived
by a much more conventional route.

  Peter Wentworth was an equerry. It was his job to accompany the king if he walked abroad from his private rooms, and to ride alongside whenever the royal coach left the palace. Wentworth was an insider, an old hand, and a witness to decades of changing court fortunes. To him the court was the world: familiar, fatiguing, of fundamental importance in his life. While he had the dedication of a true courtier, he also suffered from a sense of gnawing and growing frustration.

  The Wentworths were a worthy, respectable, upright family. Peter’s older brother Thomas, Earl of Strafford, was Britain’s ambassador to Berlin. His own court career had begun long ago, as an equerry to George, Prince of Denmark, Queen Anne’s rather tedious husband. (‘I have tried him drunk’, Charles II said of Prince George, ‘and tried him sober and there’s nothing in him.’) At Prince George’s death, Peter transferred to Queen Anne’s own household.

  While Peter Wentworth spent his undemanding days opening doors and standing to attention in the drawing room, he had a secret skill unsuspected by his courtier colleagues: he was a natural and gifted writer. He penned frequent and gossipy letters to his brother, first in Berlin and then later in rural retirement in England. As a long-time, if lowly, cog in the court machine, he vividly recorded the high dramas and low tricks of court life. His is one of the best accounts, for example, of the dramatic deathbed scene in 1714, when the dying Queen Anne averted the danger of the Stuart succession by handing the symbolic staff of the Treasurer’s office to the Hanoverian-inclined Duke of Shrewsbury.2

  Wentworth’s letters were always deliciously full of court gossip, mercilessly exposing pretence, artifice and greed. His keen eyes and flapping ears missed nothing. Hopelessly indiscreet, he forwarded the scurrilous ballads the courtiers loved, accompanied by half-hearted injunctions to secrecy. He typically signed off with: ‘I think here’s a pretty deal of scandal for one letter.’