King's Mistress, Queen's Servant: The Life and Times of Henrietta Howard

by Tracy Borman

  This letter, however impassioned, did little to melt George II’s heart, and when his mistress left court a few days later, on 22 November 1734, he showed neither sorrow nor regret. Indeed, if Lord Hervey is to be believed, he was heartily glad to be rid of her. When the Queen told him that she had tried to persuade Henrietta to reconsider, he cried: ‘What the devil did you mean by trying to make an old, dull, deaf, peevish beast stay and plague me when I had so good an opportunity of getting rid of her.’20 Caroline, meanwhile, was careful to show no disappointment at her failure to keep Lady Suffolk at court, and declared herself to be ‘both sorry and glad’. She could not, however, resist one final swipe at her rival. ‘I have always heard a great deal of her good sense from other people,’ she told Lord Hervey, ‘but I never saw her, in any material great occurrence of her life, take a sensible step since I knew her; her going from Court was the silliest thing she could do.’21

  Lady Suffolk’s resignation caused a scandal throughout the court, and was soon the talk not just of the city but of fashionable resorts across the country. The Countess of Pembroke observed that it had caused ‘a great deal of discourse’. It was also reported in all the newspapers, from The London Journal and The Gentleman’s Magazine to The Craftsman and The Grub Street Journal. Some railed against the King’s cruelty towards a lady who had ‘undergone twenty years’ slavery to his disagreeable temper and capricious will, after she had sacrificed her time, her quiet, her reputation and her health, to his service and pleasure’. Others said that he had every right to spurn a mistress who had been nothing but trouble, and dedicate himself instead to a wife whom he truly loved.22

  Whichever view was favoured, speculation as to what had prompted the split was rife. ‘The number of story’s & contradictory reasons given for Lady Suffolks removing from court wou’d fill more than an ordinary length of one of my Letters,’ wrote Elizabeth Compton to her sister, the Countess of Northampton. Some said that Walpole had ‘worked her out of favour’; others that her conspiracy with Lord Bolingbroke at Bath had caused her downfall; and others still that it was due to ‘the acquaintance she was known to have with many of the opposing party, and the correspondence she was suspected to have with many more of them’. Only a few people outside her immediate circle guessed the truth. ‘My own opinion is that . . . since her Lords death that she was out of danger of falling into his hands I believe she has been desirous to have Liberty & a little more time at her own command,’ Miss Compton shrewdly observed.23

  Henrietta’s prediction that her true friends would stand by her was fulfilled. ‘Her integrity and goodness had secured the continuation of respect, and no fallen favourite had ever experienced less neglect,’ observed one.24 They had long been aware of her misery at court, and therefore rejoiced at her escape. ‘I congratulate her removall from a palace to a house of her own,’ wrote the Earl of Peterborough, ‘where I hope she will enjoy ease, quiett, & perfect Liberty.’ The Duchess of Queensberry, meanwhile, declared that her heart was full on hearing the news, and urged her friend to come and stay with her at the earliest opportunity.

  Those friends who knew her less well, although proving equally sincere, expressed some anxiety at what they feared must be her very great distress at leaving court. Mary Herbert, one of Henrietta’s former companions in the Queen’s household, told her: ‘I heartily wish you may make your self easie, tho I know it must be a hard strugle.’ Lord Bathurst sent her a letter of condolence, ‘for it is a sad thing, without doubt, to be remov’d from the sunshine of the court to the melancholy Shades of privacy and retirement’. Echoing Henrietta’s own words in her interview with the Queen, he predicted that ‘all ye beau-monde, that used to crowd about your Toiletts, will avoid you, as if you had got ye plague’, but added that it must be a great source of satisfaction to have discovered ‘who were friends to ones person and who to ones fortune, which you could never have found out without this Change’.25

  Back at St James’s, there was both celebration and disappointment among the courtiers and politicians. Those who had allied themselves to Lady Suffolk for as long as she was the King’s mistress clung to the faint hope that his cruel treatment of her would prompt an outcry and lead to a change of ministry. Members of the opposing party, meanwhile, rejoiced to see ‘this back door to the King’s ear . . . at last shut up’. Although Walpole was counted among the latter, his satisfaction was tempered by a fear that she would be replaced by a mistress who might hate him as much as Lady Suffolk had done, ‘but hate him more dangerously’.

  A common thought united them all, both friend and foe, and that was the necessity of deterring any other would-be mistress from ‘sailing near those rocks on which Lady Suffolk had split’.26

  Chapter 14

  Mrs Berkeley

  * * *

  FOR ALL THE GOSSIP and speculation that Henrietta’s departure from court occasioned, it proved to be merely the ‘novel of a fortnight’, and people soon turned to other subjects. Life at court also began to return to normal. Camilla, Countess of Tankerville, was expected to take over both Henrietta’s official and unofficial duties, and the other ladies in the Queen’s household resumed their daily chores and petty quarrels.

  Only Caroline noticed any real difference, and it was an irksome one, for she was now obliged to entertain her husband during the many long hours he had formerly passed with Lady Suffolk. She soon became heartily sick of his company, and her daughter, Anne, the Princess Royal, shared her desire that he might soon find a suitable replacement. ‘I wish, with all my heart, he would take someone else,’ she told Lord Hervey, ‘then Mamma might be a little relieved from the ennui of seeing him for ever in her room.’ Deprived of her customary periods of peace and rest, Caroline’s health began to suffer, and it was whispered about the court that she was sick with fear that Lady Tankerville was ‘not a proper person to preserve the good correspondence between the King and herself that is necessary for her influencing his Majesty in the manner she has been used to do’.1

  Nevertheless, the Queen resolved to make the best of the materials available to her. If Lady Tankerville was not so ideal a pawn as Lady Suffolk had been, she was at least good-natured and simple – ‘a very safe fool’ – and was a known quantity insofar as the King had flirted with her in the past. Together with Walpole, she therefore set about engineering a liaison between them, making sure the lady was placed at the King’s table for cards. George, though, had already found a far more alluring companion with whom he could while away his hours of leisure.

  Lady Deloraine, his daughters’ governess, was a vivacious and attractive woman, with ‘a pretty face, a lying tongue, and a false heart’.2 Walpole and the Queen were alarmed at his choice, knowing that, far from being the malleable mistress they required, she was cunning and dangerous. But George was apparently besotted, and before long he was boasting that he had bedded her in his daughters’ apartments. Feeling that her hold over the King was slipping away, and all too conscious of her own fading charms, Caroline must have rued the day she allowed Lady Suffolk to quit the court.

  Henrietta, meanwhile, had no such regrets. Upon leaving the palace, she had sought refuge in her brother John’s house on nearby Pall Mall, opposite St James’s Square. The two had remained close throughout her time at court, and he no doubt shared in her joy at being free from it at last. She left his house after a few weeks, eager to take up residence in the Thames-side villa that had been hers for a decade.

  Her arrival at Marble Hill inaugured what was to be the happiest period of her life. She at once set about arranging the interiors to her satisfaction, ensuring that every detail of the decoration, furnishings and art complemented Campbell’s elegant structural designs. The crowning glory was the magnificent Great Room, which was lavishly decorated with gilded sculptures, moulded plasterwork and finely carved furniture. Paintings by the Italian artist Panini served as a further reminder to Lady Suffolk’s guests that they were living in the new Augustan Age, one which had produc
ed this perfect Palladian villa. The decor also had some darker allusions, for there were a number of prominent portraits of the Stuarts, which hinted at Jacobite sympathies on the part of the hostess.

  As soon as it was completed (which was the work of no more than a few weeks), Henrietta put the house to one of the main purposes for which she had intended it: a place of entertainment for her friends. Upon her retirement from court, Lord Bathurst had jokingly warned her that ‘to be reduc’d to live within the Circle of one’s friends, would be to most people a most dismal retreat’.3 But in truth, this was the very thing for which she had yearned throughout the long and dreary years at St James’s. Alexander Pope was one of the first to visit Marble Hill, delighted by his friend’s proximity to his own villa, and he soon became a regular fixture there.

  Henrietta must have revelled in the novelty of being able to enjoy her friends and her house without the grim prospect of having to leave either and return to her duties at court. The transformation of her life had an instant effect upon her health, as well as her happiness. ‘She has now much more ease and liberty and accordingly her health better,’ observed Lady Betty Germain, another frequent visitor to Marble Hill.4

  So much did the Dowager Countess of Suffolk delight in being mistress of her own house that just a few months after moving there, she decided to buy another. She was eager to have a base in town to complement her country residence, and she set her sights on a new development in a fashionable area just north of Piccadilly. Savile Street (now Savile Row) was at the heart of the Burlington Estate, owned by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington. An acquaintance of Lady Suffolk, he was one of the greatest advocates of the Palladian style in England, and had recently remodelled his mansion at Chiswick so that it formed a perfect homage to it. The Earl also owned Burlington House on Piccadilly (now the Royal Academy of Arts), which Colen Campbell had rebuilt for him in the Palladian style.

  In the early 1730s, building work was begun in the area north of Burlington House. Savile Street, named after the Earl’s wife, Lady Dorothy Savile, comprised a series of elegant three-storey houses designed for members of London’s most fashionable society. William Kent, one of the greatest architects of the age, leased a house at No. 2, and Lord Robert Montagu, Vice-Chamberlain to the Queen, moved into No.17. The lease for No.15 was put up for sale by the builders, Gray and Fortnum, at the beginning of 1735. The house had only just been built, and it was offered in an unfinished state. Relishing the prospect of being able to put her architectural skills to work yet again, Henrietta snapped it up for £2,500 on 12 February 1735, along with an adjoining coach house large enough to accommodate three horses.5 Some ‘allowances’ were made by Gray in his bill for finishing the house, and Lady Suffolk again commissioned the Earl of Pembroke and Roger Morris to carry this out – an indication of how satisfied she had been with their work at Marble Hill.

  Compared with her first house, the completion of No.15 Savile Street was a much simpler project, but Henrietta nevertheless threw herself into it with alacrity. Every last detail was described in the instructions she gave her builders, from applying stucco work to the great stairs and hall, to skirting both the public rooms and the servants’ quarters, glazing the windows with ‘the best Crown Glass’, lining them with lead, and installing a ‘pump cistern and seat’ to the water closet. Everything was finished to the highest possible specification. Even the paintwork, which had been applied only a few days before the sale, was deemed of insufficient quality, and Lady Suffolk sent instructions for ‘All the work new painted to be painted over again.’6

  She could certainly afford such luxuries, for the King had generously agreed to continue her annual allowance of £2,000 by way of a pension after she had retired from court. There was even a suggestion that she might have received an additional lump sum of around £40,000, although her accustomed discretion extended to money matters, and even her closest friends could only guess at the scale of her fortune.7 Henrietta also continued to receive interest from the money she had been left by her late brother-in-law, albeit a rather more modest sum than her royal pension.

  Once completed, Lady Suffolk’s new town house presented an impressive prospect to her visitors. All the public rooms were elegant and spacious, their features shown off to best effect by the light that came flooding through the large sash windows. Like Marble Hill, it was a homage to the designs of Palladio. The steps up to the house were flanked by ornate iron railings, and the large front door opened into a thirty-foot-long parlour, flanked by four Ionic columns. Every room beyond was ornamented with richly carved stucco work. There were panelled ceilings with plaster mouldings, dado rails and wainscoting around the walls, and polished wooden floorboards. The overall effect was completed by lavish furnishings throughout, from the highly fashionable ‘India paper’ in the back parlour to the cherry-coloured silk damask in the twenty-eight-foot high saloon.

  The Savile Street house was large enough to entertain a sizeable party of guests, for as well as an impressive dining room, it had a front and back saloon for ladies and gentlemen respectively, a study and four spacious bedrooms. The extensive service quarters were indicative of a house built for entertaining. There was a large kitchen, detached from the main house, containing four stoves, an enormous lead-based sink and many yards of shelving. Adjoining this was a pantry, store rooms and a wash house, together with accommodation for a housekeeper and a butler.8

  Having such a lavish town house to entertain in, as well as a country villa by the Thames, might seem a little excessive for a lady on her own, no matter how high her status. A countess she might have been, but Henrietta was also a widow, and her only son had long been estranged from her. Custom tended to dictate that a woman in her situation should live in just one house, and that would normally be in town rather than the country, so that she was closer to the social life it offered. Others might choose to live in a dower house on their children’s estate. Lady Betty Germain, one of Henrietta’s closest friends, had moved out of her country estate at Drayton after her husband’s death, and spent the rest of her life with the Duke and Duchess of Dorset at Knole in Kent, where she had her own apartments.

  It was therefore rather unusual for Lady Suffolk to have bought a second residence so soon after moving into her first. Of course, it might simply have been that, free at last from the shackles of court, she was determined to make up for all those wasted years. Besides, as a woman who had separated from her husband and had a long-standing affair with the King, she was hardly one to bow to convention. But it is at least equally likely that Henrietta did not plan to entertain alone for long.

  As well as Pope, Chesterfield and the other members of Lady Suffolk’s circle who came to see her at Marble Hill, there was another friend whose visits she most particularly anticipated. George Berkeley’s admiration for the King’s former mistress had in no way diminished after she had resigned her prestigious position at court. In fact, he had become an ever more frequent visitor to Marble Hill, and was also among the Duchess of Queensberry’s guests at Highclere when Henrietta went there in early summer 1735.

  Lady Suffolk had been widowed for almost two years (a respectable period, even for one who had not been estranged from her late husband), she had no further duties to her royal master, and she also enjoyed the luxury of financial independence. It was therefore entirely reasonable – and, in the eyes of polite society, respectable – for her to enter into a courtship with another man. That she had, to all intents and purposes, been doing so with George Berkeley for several years was known only to their closest friends.

  The couple were discreet in their courtship, apparently anxious not to reveal it beyond their immediate circle. So successful were they that even those acquaintances who saw them often were astonished when, in July 1735, they joyfully announced to the world that they were married. The wedding had taken place at St Dunstan’s Church on the Berkeley family’s estate of Cranford, Middlesex, on 26 June. Only a handful of close family membe
rs, including Lady Betty, had witnessed the event, and they had kept it secret for almost two weeks. When the couple at last announced it, the whole of the fashionable world was agog at the news. ‘The town’s surpris’d, & the town talks, as the town loves to do on these ordinary Extraordinary occasions,’ observed Lady Betty Germain in a letter to Swift.9 It was reported in all the newspapers (most of which inaccurately claimed that the wedding had taken place in early July), and was gossiped about throughout the court and polite society.

  Henrietta once more found herself the subject of intense speculation. ‘Mr Berkeley was neither young, nor handsome, healthy, nor rich,’ observed Lord Hervey in typically cutting fashion, ‘which made people wonder what induced Lady Suffolk’s prudence to deviate into this unaccountable piece of folly.’ The cruellest among those who commented on the matter claimed that she had been so long with a companion that she ‘could not live without something in that style’, but that as she was getting on in years, she could not afford to be too selective so had grabbed the first offer that had come her way. Some asserted that it was a deliberate ploy to salvage her reputation and convince the world that nothing improper had ever passed between her and the King. Others believed the opposite, and that it was designed to pique her former royal lover.

  If that had been Lady Suffolk’s intention, then she had failed miserably. George II was in Hanover when he received the news in a letter from the Queen, and was reported to have expressed great surprise that his old mistress should have married the ‘gouty’ Mr Berkeley, who was himself somewhat advanced in years. He added: ‘I would not wish to confer such presents upon my friends, and when my enemies rob me, pray God they may always do it thus!’ Caroline, meanwhile, was similarly taken aback by the news, and dismissed the match as ‘the silliest thing she could do’.10