by Tracy Borman
Consummate hosts though they were, Henrietta and George also made regular visits to the country estates of friends. Their most frequent destination was Lady Betty Germain’s. Henrietta’s marriage to the lady’s brother had deepened their friendship still further, and the three made a very relaxed and convivial party together. Although Lady Betty lived with the Duke and Duchess of Dorset most of the time, she returned to her house at Drayton in Northamptonshire to receive the Berkeleys. This was a considerable journey from Marble Hill, and as the roads were among the most treacherous in the country, it could take several days.
On one trip, Henrietta complained that ‘the roads were worse than I had ever gone, and the miles longer’. At the slowest part of the journey, it took two hours to cover just five miles. Things got even worse on this particular trip, for their coach overturned and although nobody was seriously injured, Henrietta sustained a small wound ‘in a place where I hope it will be no eye sore’. They found little relief at the coach houses where they stayed en route, which grew less salubrious the further they travelled from London. Mrs Berkeley described one of these to her friend Anne Pitt. ‘I, like a good wife, went to see our chamber was clean, aired, and in order,’ she wrote. Unfortunately, it fell short on all three counts, and when she and George retired to bed that night, they quarrelled over which side of it smelt the least, eventually concluding that both sides were just as bad.26
Such inconveniences were to be expected for an age in which transport was still quite primitive, particularly outside London. ‘I find the farther one goes from the capital, the more tedious the miles grow, and the more rough and disagreeable the way,’ complained Lord Hervey.27 Some rural roads dated back to Roman times or even prehistoric trackways, but many more meandered haphazardly up hill and down dale, or wound their way through uneven open fields. This meant a slow, uncomfortable and often hazardous journey for the passengers within. ‘If one could fly in ye Aire twould be a charming Countrey,’ wrote Henrietta’s cousin Margaret Bradshaw during a trip to Cheshire, ‘but since there is no such machine I would not live here . . . for ye Kings ransum.’28
During the early to mid-eighteenth century, most people travelled in heavy, lumbering coaches, which covered an average of just four miles per hour. Passengers would be in for an uncomfortable ride in summer, as the coaches jolted and bumped their way over the dusty ground; whereas in winter the roads were often so caked in mud that travellers became stuck en route. Added to this was the perennial danger of highwaymen, which was a very real one judging by the number of attacks reported in the papers. Only later in the century did things start to improve, but for Henrietta and her contemporaries, travel was a necessary evil in the pursuit of social pleasures.
The couple did not restrict their excursions to Britain alone. As the century progressed, it became increasingly fashionable for well-to-do ladies and gentlemen to go travelling on the Continent. The ‘Grand Tour’, which included France, Italy and the Netherlands, became an essential part of an aristocratic son’s cultural education. There he would be expected to acquire a knowledge of languages (in particular French, which was spoken by polite society across Europe) and sophisticated Continental etiquette, and above all to develop a taste for the arts and architecture. Many young men returned with crates of art and antiques with which to adorn their country houses. By the 1760s, the Grand Tour had become so popular that much of the paraphernalia associated with modern-day travel had started to be introduced, including published guides to historical monuments and art galleries, and even a few tour guides, who were usually expatriates from Britain.
The Grand Tour aside, other, less formal overseas excursions were made by increasing numbers of England’s nobility and gentry during the Georgian period. The vast majority of these headed to France and Belgium, where certain fashionable stopping-off points became an essential part of any visit. Travellers might take the waters at Spaa or Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen) in Belgium, admire the splendid landscaped gardens surrounding Brussels, or visit the art galleries of Paris. The summer months were the most popular time to travel, and those members of high society who did so could expect to encounter a great many people they knew. ‘I found the place swarming with English,’ wrote the Duchess of Queensberry from Spaa in August 1738. ‘Lord Lonsdale and his brother, Mr and Mrs Poultney, the Duke of Buckingham, Mr Herbert, Mr Newgent, Lord Cornbury . . . Lord Scarborough . . . Mr and Mrs Pryce, and 10,000 more.’29
A number of Henrietta and George’s other close acquaintances were also devotees of Continental travel, including Lady Hervey and Lady Betty Germain. Their letters were full of praise for the sights they saw and the lively company they kept, and were no doubt an important factor in prompting the newlyweds to make a trip of their own during their first full summer together. George Berkeley was, apparently, rather against the scheme at first, for he had a well-known aversion to the French. Lady Hervey, a fervent Francophile, had chided him for this shortcoming on several occasions. ‘Pray tell Mr Berkley that if I did not think of the French as I do, I shou’d think of them as he does,’ she wrote to Henrietta upon hearing of their marriage. ‘One must love or hate them there is no mean.’30 But he was a sensible man, and the pleasant prospect of a summer spent with his new wife and their circle of friends soon overcame any initial resistance. Moreover, he was eager to see his elder brother, James, 3rd Earl of Berkeley, who was on a recuperative visit to the Duke of Richmond’s house at Aubigny.
They duly set sail in early May 1736, accompanied by their beloved young charge, Dorothy Hobart. Their departure attracted some attention in the press, and was reported in several London newspapers. The contrast with Henrietta’s only other overseas excursion, some twenty-two years earlier, when she had wagered everything on an uncertain voyage to Hanover with her first husband, could not have been greater. This time, she was taking her first holiday with a loving new husband, and the objective was to seek pleasure rather than to secure her future.
The party rested at Calais before continuing their journey to Aubigny. The Duke of Richmond and his wife Sarah were old friends of Mrs Berkeley, having served in the households of George II and his consort respectively. The Duke had inherited the title and estate of Aubigny upon the death of his grandmother in 1734, and had thereafter spent a great deal of time in that pleasant retreat with his family. He was a genial host and his house soon became an unmissable part of the Continental tour for genteel travellers.
Mr and Mrs Berkeley knew several of the guests who were there upon their arrival, and received a warm welcome. The person whom they were most anxious to see was George’s brother James, whose health was showing little sign of improvement. Having lost his other brother, Henry, just a few weeks before, these were anxious times for George. He was greatly comforted by the arrival of his old friend Lord Bolingbroke and his second wife Marie-Claire de Marcilly, who had been living in France since his defeat by Walpole in 1734 and the brief sojourn in Bath that followed. His departure had prompted various disaffected politicians and other opponents to the regime to follow him there, and before long he had gathered quite a body of supporters about him. These included a growing contingent of Jacobites, who used the safety of the Continent to develop fresh plots to restore James ‘III’ to the British throne.
Lady Suffolk no longer needed to conceal her political allegiance, and therefore openly courted her old acquaintance. Both she and Mr Berkeley were delighted with Bolingbroke’s wife, who was renowned for her amiable disposition and good sense, and they maintained a correspondence with her long after their departure from France.
The party at Aubigny also included William Chetwynd, a mutual acquaintance of the Bolingbrokes and Berkeleys, who was known as ‘Brother Will’ in the close-knit society of disaffected politicians who gathered on the Continent. His attachment to Bolingbroke did not prevent his attaining considerable offices under George II, and he proved a very useful ally at the heart of government. Chetwynd’s friendship with the Berkeleys was to devel
op once they were back in England, and he became a regular guest at Marble Hill and Savile Street.
After spending a pleasant few weeks with this company, Henrietta and George took their leave, sufficiently well assured of James Berkeley’s health. Lady Bolingbroke promised to keep them informed of his progress. Together with his wife and her niece, George continued on to Paris, following what had now become the accustomed route for fashionable travellers. The absence of any correspondence to their friends back in England suggests that their time was entirely taken up with the vibrant social scene that greeted them upon their arrival.
Having enjoyed the galleries, theatres and assemblies for a few days, the Berkeleys spent the remainder of their trip recovering at Aix-la-Chapelle and Spaa, where they joined various other members of their acquaintance in taking the waters for their health. They had genuine cause to do so, for Henrietta was still troubled by headaches and poor hearing, and her husband had had a renewed attack of gout. Whilst in Spaa, they received the sad news that James Berkeley’s health had taken a turn for the worse after their departure from Aubigny, and he had died on 17 August. This cast a shadow over their carefree adventure, and they prepared to leave for home soon afterwards.
Chapter 15
‘The Melancholy Shades
of Privacy’
* * *
NOW WELL INTO THEIR forties, Henrietta and George were aware that death would be an ever more frequent blight on their lives. Up until the mid-eighteenth century, medical practices were largely ineffectual and tended to worsen conditions rather than alleviate them. Purgatives and blood-letting were common, as it was widely believed that ridding the body of phlegm, vomit and toxins in the blood was beneficial. These practices, coupled with a fatty, sugary diet lacking in fresh fruit and vegetables, excessive drinking and a lack of exercise, rendered the population vulnerable to disease. Smallpox was the scourge of the eighteenth century, claiming around 15,000 victims every year in London alone, and influenza often reached epidemic proportions. Gout, with which George Berkeley suffered, was also common, particularly among the wealthier classes, with their rich diet and sedentary lifestyle, and comprised a painful inflammation of the joints which sometimes led to arthritis. All of this considered, it is perhaps not surprising that the average life expectancy was just thirty-eight.
The first year of Mr and Mrs Berkeley’s marriage saw the death of two of their closest friends. The first was John Arbuthnot, who had been a physician, friend and confidant to Henrietta throughout her time at court, and whose political leanings had also won him the respect of her husband George. Pope and Chesterfield were with him at his house in Cork Street, Piccadilly, the night before he died, aged sixty-eight. ‘He suffered racking pains from an inflammation in his bowels, but his head was clear to the last,’ wrote Chesterfield. He had taken leave of them ‘without tenderness, without weakness’, deriving comfort from his devout Christian faith.1
Five months later, in October 1735, Henrietta’s old admirer, the Earl of Peterborough, also died. His health had been failing for some years, and he had lost much of his energetic lust for life. He was fond of saying that the world had become so indifferent to him that he amused himself with thoughts of going out of it. When his health began to deteriorate rapidly, several of his closest friends visited him at his home at Bevis Mount, near Southampton. They were amazed by the humour and optimism with which he approached his impending death. ‘This man was never born to die like other men any more than to live like them,’ wrote Pope, who had been among the friends to visit. Peterborough retained his affection for Henrietta to the end, and urged her to come and see him, saying that it was one of his ‘strongest motives’ for keeping alive a little longer. ‘I want to make an appointment with you, Mr Pope, and a few friends more, to meet upon the summit of my Bevis hill and thence, after a speech and a tender farewell, I shall take my leap towards the clouds . . . to mix among the stars,’ he wrote.2 Sadly, she never made it, and at the end of the summer, Peterborough set sail with his young wife for Lisbon, where he died on 25 October.
Death was also stalking the corridors of St James’s Palace. The Queen, who had been suffering with her ‘secret rupture’ for some time, was becoming noticeably slower and in need of frequent rests. Her condition was not helped by the fact that she was now somewhat obese, years of indulging in hot chocolate and rich food having swelled her portly figure to considerable proportions. Although the King still loved her deeply, he no longer desired her, and he was now finding sexual pleasure elsewhere.
Caroline’s long-held fear that once Henrietta had left court, her husband would find a more alluring mistress who would threaten her own hold over him was now being realised. Lady Deloraine had proved a passing fancy, but she had soon been replaced by a more dangerous rival. The year after Lady Suffolk’s retirement, George II had paid one of his triennial summer visits to Hanover. Whilst there, he had fallen head over heels in love with a young German noblewoman, Amelia Sophia de Walmoden. Vivacious and high-spirited, she was also cunning and quick-witted, and used all her feminine wiles to seduce the King. Although she was married and already enjoying a series of illicit liaisons with various men at Herrenhausen, Madame Walmoden flattered the King into believing that he was the only man she had ever loved. He was soon so besotted that he showered her with gifts and trailed after her like a lovesick puppy, all the while sending detailed accounts of each stage of the conquest back to his wife in England. ‘I know you will love the Walmoden, because she loves me,’ he assured her in one.3
The whole of London was buzzing with the news, and speculation was rife that the Queen’s notoriously tight hold on her husband was now, finally, slipping. Caroline dismissed such notions as ridiculous. She firmly believed that by the time George returned at the end of the summer, the affair would have fizzled out. When he delayed his return because he could not bear to be parted from his new love, however, she began to panic. Her anxiety rose even further as the King’s birthday approached and there was still no sign of him: it was inconceivable that he could miss such an important state occasion. In fact, he arrived just in time for the event, but some six weeks later than originally scheduled. What was worse, he had only managed to tear himself away by promising his mistress that he would return the following spring – an unprecedented move that was likely to be as unpopular with his English subjects as it was alarming for his wife.
When at last he arrived back in England, George was in the foulest of tempers, full of bitterness at being forced to leave the ‘magnificent delightful dwelling’ of Hanover and return to the ‘mean dull island’ over which he was King. He railed against his ministers, courtiers and the English in general. No Englishman could cook, no English player could act, no English coachman could drive, no Englishman knew how to come into a room, nor any English woman how to dress herself. But it was the Queen who bore the brunt of his ill humour. Everyone at court noticed that his behaviour towards her had completely changed. Everything she did was now a fresh cause for irritation – from hanging some pictures in the wrong place at Kensington to constantly ‘stuffing’ herself with chocolate.4 ‘The King . . . was now abominably and perpetually so harsh and rough, that she could never speak one word uncontradicted, nor do any one act unreproved,’ observed Lord Hervey.5
Caroline was greatly troubled by his treatment of her. She had experienced humiliation at his hands in the past, but never anything to compare with this. She confided her fears to Walpole, who told her frankly that after thirty years of marriage, she could not expect to enjoy the same influence over her husband that she had done before, and that ‘three-and-fifty and three-and-twenty could no more resemble one another in their effects than in their looks’. This was cold comfort indeed, and she could find no better from her husband. All he could talk about were the charms of his new mistress – a subject that gave him so much delight that he could not understand why his wife apparently failed to share it. When he was not talking about her, he was writing to her,
or reading out the letters that she faithfully sent him every post. Blundering on in his insensitivity towards the Queen’s feelings, he even had a full-length portrait of the lady installed at the foot of his bed, ‘a compliment that shows indeed the violence of his love’, one courtier observed.6
George II’s impatience to return to Hanover was heightened still further by the fact that the object of his passion was with child. While in reality the father could have been one of several men (not least her husband), she swore that the baby was his, and he did not doubt it for a second. He assured her that he would do everything possible to be with her for the birth, but by the time he arrived in early summer 1736, she was already holding their son in her arms. The child proved ‘a cement that binds them faster’, and George was now more besotted with his mistress than ever.
It was fortunate for her that he was, for it made him blind to her obvious infidelities. One night during the King’s sojourn in Hanover, a gardener discovered a ladder beneath Madame Walmoden’s window. Fearing that an intruder was at that very moment making away with her jewels, he scoured the gardens and found a man lurking behind a nearby trellis. With the assistance of his fellow servants, he carried him to the captain of the guard then on duty. Rather than a thief, however, the man turned out to be a relation of George I’s old mistress, Madame Schulenburg, and an officer in the Imperial Service.
The affair at once created a scandal at Herrenhausen, and Madame Walmoden flew to present her version of events to her royal lover before he heard the gossip from a less favourable (and more accurate) source. Giving the performance of her life, she threw herself at his feet, weeping bitterly and pleading with him to protect her from insult and falsehood. Speaking very quickly, in between sobs, she regaled the bewildered George with an elaborate tale of how the Schulenburg family had plotted to ruin her reputation. Incensed by such an outrage committed against his lady-love, the King ordered that the captain of the guard at Hanover be put under immediate arrest for having released the culprit, and that the latter should again be apprehended. However, the incident had planted a small seed of doubt in his mind, and he wrote to ask the Queen and Walpole’s advice on the matter.
