Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court
Page 37
29. Augustus Hervey, Augustus Hervey’s Journal, Ed. David Erskine (Rochester, 2002), p. 77.
30. Ibid., p. xxx.
31. Thomas Wright, England under the House of Hanover (London, 1848), Vol. 1, p. 343, note.
32. Quoted in Mavor (1964), p. 57.
33. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 20, pp. 212–13 (22 December 1750 OS).
34. SRO 941/21/2(ii), ‘A Character of Lady Mary Hervey’, f. 3.
35. Lady Louisa Stuart to Lord Wharncliffe, quoted in Stuart (1936), p. 145.
36. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 37, p. 308 (14 July 1751).
37. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 581.
38. The Walpole Society, Vol. 22 (1933–4) (Vertue III), p. 140.
39. Sir Thomas Robinson quoted in Jourdain (1948), p. 41.
40. Anonymous satirical poem at Chatsworth, quoted in Wilson (1984), p. 250.
41. The Walpole Society, Vol. 22 (1933–4) (Vertue III), p. 140.
42. Will of William Kent (April 1748), quoted in Jourdain (1948), p. 89.
43. Highfill, Burnim and Langhams (1973), Vol. 2, p. 451.
44. I’m grateful to John Harris for suggesting this.
45. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 539.
46. Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, Lord Chesterfield’s witticisms (London,1775), p. 37.
47. Alexander Fergusson (Ed.), Letters and Journals of Mrs Calderwood of Polton from England, Holland and the Low Countries in 1756 (Edinburgh, 1884), pp. 31–2.
48. Walpole, Reminiscences (1818 edn), p. 97.
49. Anon., George the Third (1820), p. 100.
50. SRO 941/48/1, p. 353, Mary Hervey to the Reverend Edmund Morris (21 November 1758).
51. Fergusson (1884), p. 32.
52. Hervey (1931), Vol. 1, p. 278.
53. Yorke (1913), Vol. 3, pp. 110–11.
54. J. A. Home (Ed.), The letters and journals of Lady Mary Coke (Edinburgh, 1889–96), Vol. 1, ‘Memoir by Lady Louisa Stuart’, p. lxxx.
55. HMC, 12th Report, appendix, Part X, The Manuscripts and Correspondence of James, first earl of Charlemont (London, 1891–4), Vol. 1, p. 14.
56. Horace Walpole, ‘Horace Walpole’s Journals of Visits to Country Seats’, Ed. Paget Toynbee, The Walpole Society, Vol. 16 (Oxford, 1927–8), p. 16.
57. Burford (1988), p. 31.
58. Horace Walpole, ‘Horace Walpole’s Journals of Visits to Country Seats’, Ed. Paget Toynbee, The Walpole Society, Vol. 16 (Oxford, 1927–8), p. 16.
59. Clark (1988), pp. 147–8 (1758).
60. Yorke (1913), Vol. 3, p. 111.
61. ‘Introductory anecdotes’, probably based on information from Lady Bute, in Wharncliffe (1837), p. 77.
62. Brooke (1985), Vol. 1, p. 120.
63. Ibid., p. 152.
64. Fergusson (1884), p. 31.
65. Royal Archives, quoted in Edwards (1947), p. 164.
66. Lord Berkeley of Stratton quoted in Aston (2008), p. 188.
67. Anon., George the Third (1820), p. 119.
68. Rose (1831), Vol. 1, p. 187, diary of Hugh, Earl of Marchmont (1747).
69. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 21 (March 1751), p. 140.
70. Wraxall (1904), pp. 251–2.
71. Anon., George the Third (1820), p. 128.
72. Holland (1846), Vol. 1, p. 83.
73. Lady Firebrace to Lady Denbigh, quoted in Young (1937), p. 218.
74. Holland (1846), Vol. 1, p. 87.
75. John Carswell and Lewis Arnold Dralle (Eds), The Political Journal of George Bubb Dodington (Oxford, 1965), pp. 112–13 (13 April 1751).
76. Aston (2008), p. 187.
77. Sedgwick (1939), pp. 40–1, the future George III to Lord Bute (winter 1759–60).
78. Frankland-Russell-Astley MSS, 253, quoted in W. A. Speck, ‘William Augustus, Prince, duke of Cumberland (1721–1765)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).
79. Speck (2004).
80. Staffordshire Record Office MS D/798/3/1/1, F. O. Eld to J. Eld (23 November 1745), quoted in Speck (2004).
81. Brooke (1985), Vol. 1, p. 55.
82. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 282.
83. Yorke (1913), Vol. 3, p. 184.
84. Lewis (1937–83) Vol. 20, p. 88 (17 August 1749 OS).
85. Home, Vol. 1 (1889), ‘Memoir by Lady Louisa Stuart’, p. lxxix.
86. General Evening Post, issue 5674 (22 February 1770), Baron Bielfield, ‘A Character of the celebrated Countess of Yarmouth’.
87. BL Add MS 22629, f. 82v, A. Pitt to Henrietta Berkeley (10 November 1758).
88. BL Add MS 32896, f. 136v, Newcastle to Lord Hardwicke (copy) (27 September 1759).
89. Quoted in Alan Hardy, The Kings’ Mistresses (London, 1980), p. 91.
90. Brooke (1985), Vol. 2, p. 183.
91. BL Add MS 32904, f. 428, Lady Yarmouth to Newcastle (18 April 1760).
92. HMC Egmont, Vol. 2 (1923), p. 459.
93. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 9, p. 51 (2 July 1747); Public Advertiser, issue 11715 (30 September 1772).
94. Brooke (1985), Vol. 1, p. 119.
95. Ibid., Vol. 3, p. 49.
96. Ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 151–2.
97. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 295; Hastings Wheler (1935), p. 153 Lady Catherine Jones (24 December 1737).
98. Brooke (1985), Vol. 2, p. 295.
99. Ibid., p. 23.
100. BL Egerton MS 1710, f. 27r, Princess Amelia to Princess Anne (19 July 1757).
101. David Williamson, ‘Mary, Princess (1723–1772)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).
102. Montagu (1864), Vol. 2, p. 335.
103. Tillyard (2006), p. 31.
104. Home, Vol. 1 (1889), ‘Memoir by Lady Louisa Stuart’, p. lxxxi.
105. Yorke (1913), Vol. 3, p. 170.
106. BL Add MS 22629, f. 39v, George Berkeley to Henrietta (1735?), f. 40v, Henrietta to George Berkeley (1735?).
107. Borman (2007), p. 179.
108. Miss Mary Laetitia Hawkins on Horace Walpole, quoted in Stuart (1936), p. 187.
109. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 33, p. 270 (8 June 1747).
110. Ibid., Vol. 9, p. 318 (4 November 1760).
111. Kensington Public Library, ‘Extra illustrated’ edition of Thomas Faulkner, History and Antiquities of Kensington (London, 1820), 3-volume version, Vol. 3, item 328 (2 April 1759).
112. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 9, p. 312 (25 October 1760).
113. Fergusson (1884), p. 31.
114. Yorke (1913), Vol. 3, p. 253.
115. Manning (1954), p. 63, Talbot Williamson to Edmund Williamson (28 October 1760).
116. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 9, p. 311 (25 October 1760).
117. Yorke (1913), Vol. 3, p. 253.
118. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 9, p. 311 (25 October 1760).
119. Borman (2007), p. 268.
120. See, for example, BL Egerton 1710, f. 1v.
121. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 30 (October 1760), p. 486.
122. Hervey (1931), Vol. 3, p. 913.
123. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 30 (October 1760), p. 486.
124. Ibid., p. 487.
125. TNA LS 9/48 (25 October 1760).
126. Lord Chamberlain’s Office (28 October 1760), The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 30 (October 1760), p. 488; The London Chronicle (25–28 October 1760), Vol. 8, No. 599, p. 410.
127. Manning (1954), p. 28, Talbot Williamson to Edmund Williamson (26 January 1758).
128. Llanover (1861), Vol. 3, pp. 606–7.
129. Manning (1954), pp. 63–4, Talbot Williamson to Edmund Williamson (30 October 1760).
130. The London Chronicle (25–28 October 1760), Vol. 8, No. 599, p. 410.
131. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 9, p. 314 (28 October 1760).
132. Hennell (1904), p. 194.
133. HMC Egmont, Vol. 2 (1923), p. 454.
134. Samuel Chandler, The character of a great and good king (London, 1760), p. 1.
135. Lord Berkeley of Stratton quoted in Aston (2008), p. 183.
136. Sarah Stanle
y (7 December 1760), quoted in Black (2007), p. 254.
137. Quoted in Christopher Hibbert, George III, A Personal History (London, 1998), p. 77.
138. Cavendish, William (1982), p. 41 (27 October 1760).
139. BL Add MS 22627, ff. 10–11.
140. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 9, p. 314–15 (28 October 1760).
141. Cavendish, William (1982), p. 49 (30 October 1760).
142. Gaunt and Knight (1988–9), Vol. 2, chapter 4, p. 521.
143. BL Add MS 33069, f. 295, J. Twells to the duke of Newcastle (31 October 1765).
144. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 35 (November, 1765), p. 534.
145. Kilburn, ‘Wallmoden’ (2004).
146. Chatsworth MS 332/20, Cumberland to Devonshire (31 October 1762), quoted in Rex Whitworth, William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland: A Life (London, 1992), p. 218.
147. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 9, p. 318 (4 November 1760).
148. Ibid., Vol. 10, p. 245 (31 July 1767).
149. Anon., Court tales: or, a History of the Amours of the Present Nobility (London,1717), title page.
150. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 31, pp. 416, 417.
151. Lewis (1937-83), Vol. 31, p. 16, Horace Walpole to Molly Hervey (12 January 1760); p. ix, introduction.
152. ‘Song, by the Earl of Peterborough’, quoted in Croker (1824), Vol. 1, p. xlvii.
153. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 10, p. 118 (11 January 1764).
154. Ibid., Vol. 22, p. 324 (12 August 1765).
155. BL Add MS 22626, f. 121v, Horace Walpole to Henrietta (3 July 1765).
156. Ibid., f. 122v, Horace Walpole to Henrietta (20 September 1765).
157. Croker (1824), Vol. 2, p. 122, Lord Bathurst to Lady Suffolk (26 November 1734).
158. BL Add MS 22629, f. 127r, M. Vere to Henrietta (16 August n.y.).
159. Alexander Pope, The Impertinent, or a Visit to the Court (London, 1733), p. 12.
160. E. H. Chalus, ‘Amelia, Princess (1711–1786)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).
161. Anon., The annual register, or a view of the history, politics, and literature for the years 1784 and 1785 (London, 1787), p. 44, ‘a particular Account of Peter the Wild Boy; extracted from the Parish Register of North Church, in the County of Hertford’; Burnet (1779–99), Vol. 3 (London and Edinburgh, 1784), p. 371
ELEVEN
The Survivors
‘I had lost all taste for courts and princes and power.’1
(Horace Walpole)
My search for the stories of the people who lived and worked in the Georgian royal palaces began on William Kent’s staircase at Kensington. The more I learnt about their lives, the more convinced I became that the whole sumptuous and luxurious cocoon of court life was in many ways a prison.
This was as true for kings and queens as it was for their servants. The first two Georges were rather successful in smoothing over the religious and social cracks in the realm that they had accidentally inherited. They worked hard at the job of being king. But there’s something sad and stunted about their lives off duty. In personal terms they paid a high price for their royal role.
History has not been kind to either of them. George I has been marginalised within the story of Britain, his German ‘otherness’ made less threatening by transposing him into a minor key and making him into a quaint buffoon. (According to one widely read Victorian historian, he and Melusine – his ‘antiquated Sultana’ – liked nothing better than to spend the evening cutting paper into various shapes.2)
And George II has an even less enviable reputation than his ‘dull and dreary’ father. Sandwiched in royal history between his father (founder of a new dynasty) and George III (the ‘mad’ king who lost America), George II has been practically forgotten. If he ever appears in pub quizzes, it’s merely as the last monarch to lead his troops in person on the battlefield.
Few people today could name his other achievements or the great events of his reign, which was marked by growing peace and prosperity, an emerging sense of nationhood and the successful seizure of all of France’s power in North America. All these things helped to define and promote a new sense of what it meant to be ‘British’.
Yet ironically they were achieved by foreign rulers whom the British themselves promptly forgot.
Despite the strenuous efforts of historians to ‘rescue’ George II from his embattled reputation as a slightly useless king, a ‘king in toils’ as one biographer put it, they have largely failed.3
Caroline’s reputation has survived far better than her husband’s. Thanks to John Hervey’s efforts, she has long been feted as a cultured and clever woman who was sorely tried by her German-accented husband’s well-known hatred for all of her ‘boets and bainters’. She is something of a celebrity among eighteenth-century queens: generous, enlightened, a very human ray of light illuminating the murky world of the court.
Contemporaries Horace Walpole and John Hervey have done more than anyone to shape perceptions of George II and his court. Both are much-loved, much-loathed figures whose texts are treacherously opinionated as well as deliciously quotable. ‘Nothing can be more cheery than Horace’s letters,’ wrote William Thackeray in the nineteenth century. ‘Fiddles sing all through them: wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle there: never was such a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair as that through which he leads us.’ Flicking through either writer, the court seems like a sparkling, amusing, playful place. But Thackeray could also see the dark side of Hervey’s memoirs: he found certain passages frightful, like wandering through a ‘city of the dead … through those godless intrigues and feasts, through crowds, pushing, and eager, and struggling – rouged, and lying, and fawning’.4
With George II’s death, the palace at Kensington fell from favour. To the new young king, ‘ceremony seems to have been always unpleasant; so that all the common splendour of a court was totally laid aside’, and his drawing-room gatherings were less frequent.5 George III’s young and lively court clearly brought with it a renewal of court life, but it was a little less focused upon the court set piece, the ball and the levee, and never again did the full court return to Kensington.
George III’s accession brought change to the personnel of the royal household, although some old-timers like John Teed, his grandmother’s chocolate-maker, were still employed.6 There were also changes of style and tone. While his grandfather had been widely promiscuous, George III was faithful to his wife. While George II had spent his latter days in dark and stately private apartments with his mistress, George III presented his devoted wife and their numerous children as a model of family life for the nation to emulate. And while George II lived in lavish style, George III is best known for the periods in his life when he lived in modest domesticity at tiny Kew Palace. Like Kensington, Hampton Court Palace was also left deserted. Buckingham Palace (then known as The Queen’s House) and Windsor Castle became the favoured residences instead. The drawing room at Kensington quietly became a museum, and would in due course echo with the shuffling footsteps of curious tourists.
‘All this is now so changed that I seem to be speaking of the world before the flood,’ wrote one ex-courtier in her memoirs.7
While everything else was changed, though, one thing would remain the same in the next reign. George III had been scarred by the rows he had experienced between the earlier generations of his family. In due course the ‘reversionary interest’ worked its mischief once more, and, despite his best intentions, he too ended up at war with his own eldest son, the future George IV.
George III nevertheless went on to become one of the most popular kings ever, placing the monarchy on the track of pleasant respectability that Queen Victoria maintained with such success. She herself had a prudish distaste for her predecessors, George I and George II, and thought that ‘the morals of the ladies surrounding these sovereigns left much to be desired’.8
The decline of the drawing room was no bad thing. D
espite its surface glamour, the life of a Georgian courtier – sought so earnestly by so many – was not a life to be longed for. Lord Chesterfield felt he could never laugh; Molly Hervey took great trouble to disguise her intelligence; Georgian princesses knew that ‘at Court, one learns deceit’.9 All the avenues leading to the court, it was said, ‘are gay, smiling, agreeable to the sight, and all end in one and the same point, honour, and self-interest’.10
George II’s generation certainly did not regret the regular trauma of being ‘curled, powdered, dressed’ for court, always in ‘hurry and confusion’, and arriving only to be ‘touz’d and hunched’, ‘hot and dispirited’, ‘very pleasing to the sight, but perhaps not altogether so refreshing to the smell’.11
Until her death in 1786, Princess Amelia complained about the toxic trial of court attendance and pretended to be too deaf to go. (This was much to her nephew’s relief, for George III was ‘afraid of her frankness’.12) Amelia herself was delighted to neglect the biweekly routine and revelled in the freedom to ‘stay them days comfortably at home & rest’.13
Henrietta finally died in 1767, and was visited on her life’s penultimate evening by the faithful Horace Walpole. He would sharply regret his ‘sincere and unalterable friend’ who had, in her long life, ‘seen, known and remembered so much’.14 Her final decade had been marred by penury, for her outgoings at Marble Hill exceeded her income. This once again brought a certain ‘anguish’ to ‘the last years of her life, though concealed’.15
Henrietta asked to be ‘buried as Mr Berkeley’s widow very privately as he was and with the Earl of Berkeley’s leave near him’.16 And so she ended up lying with her beloved second husband in his family mausoleum at Berkeley Castle.
Molly Hervey soon followed her, only a year later, and faced her death (from diarrhoea) bravely: ‘It is not that I fear, but ’tis the way to it; ’tis the struggles, the last convulsions that I dread; for once they are over, I don’t question but to rise to a new and better life.’17 These words formed part of the last letter she is known to have written. She died on 2 September 1768 and was buried a week later in the parish church at Ickworth.
She was not forgotten. The young daughter of a friend found that Molly’s loving attention and lavish gifts of books had ‘fixed her so strongly in my memory that I see and hear her still’.18 And Horace Walpole, missing her dreadfully, recollected how her terrible ‘suffering with the gout’ could ‘never affect her patience or divert her attention to her friends’.19