Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court

by Lucy Worsley

  Entering George I’s service and following the king to England, Mohammed worked his way up from ‘bodyservant’ (Leibdiener) to the much grander ‘Keeper of the King’s Closet’.85 Mustapha, his junior colleague, made a similar journey. He arrived in Hanover after a period in the service of the Swedish army officer who had captured him.

  Mohammed, controller of access to the king, was such a favoured servant that he was painted several times during his lifetime. He was effectively (if not officially) Master of the Robes and Keeper of the Privy Purse to the king, both important jobs.86 Government ministers often paid him court. He had his own servant, who helped him wash the king’s clothes, and he slept in a grand four-poster bed upholstered in scarlet and trimmed with lace.87 Mustapha was also rich enough to employ a private tutor for his sons.88

  Mohammed’s even greater responsibilities and pay were earned through his discretion and his solid, reliable character. ‘Never did he burden the ear of his Royal Master, with complaints,’ it was said, nor did he ‘ever presume to ask a favour’. Like Mustapha, he was a family man. Of his ‘dear wife’, Maria Hedewig Mohammed, a wealthy woman of Hanover, he declared: ‘I love her most heartily.’89 They had a daughter and two sons, and it’s no surprise to find that their names – Sophia Caroline, Johann Ludewig and George Ludewig – were borrowed from the family Mohammed had served for nearly forty years.

  *

  However, William Kent did not choose just the most colourfully dressed members of the court to decorate his staircase. He could also be attracted by a pretty face. When he first met Mrs Elizabeth Tempest, Princess Caroline’s milliner, he was ‘so struck with her appearance, as to beg her to sit for her picture’.90 To judge from her lovely visage, and her hyper-fashionable black hood, Mrs Tempest is probably the lady in the group near the window.91

  Kent also included a number of scarlet-clad Yeomen of the Guard. The one hundred Yeomen of the Guard by now formed a great British institution, providing the king with a bodyguard whenever he left the palace.92 Created shortly after the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to protect the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, this royal bodyguard has remained in continuous existence ever since.93 Since the reign of Henry VIII, the Yeomen had worn ‘scarlet, with braidings and laces of gold’. Their right hands grasped a ceremonial partisan, or bladed staff.94 An Italian visitor to London in 1669 provided the first mention of their alternative, informal name: ‘They are called “Beefeaters”, that is, eaters of beef, of which a considerable portion is allowed them daily by the Court.’95

  It’s harder to know the identity of the other figures: the ladies, the children, the gigantic Scotsman and the gentleman commonly known as ‘The Mysterious Quaker’. William Pyne, writing a history of the royal residences in 1819, when George I’s court was only just out of living memory, made a series of further identifications which sound reasonable but can’t be proved.96 He claimed that the young page hanging precariously on the drop side of the balcony worked for Henrietta Howard. If that is indeed Henrietta’s page, then maybe the little dog looking between the balusters is Fop, her spoiled and crabby lapdog, to whom Alexander Pope’s dog Bounce wrote this poem:

  We Country Dogs love nobler sport,

  And scorn the pranks of Dogs at Court.

  Fye, naughty Fop! where e’er you come

  To fart and piss about the room,

  To lay your head in every lap,

  And, when they think not of you – snap!97

  Many of the ladies upon the staircase, probably colleagues of Mrs Tempest such as dressers, seamstresses and laundresses, are holding fans, and the fan could sometimes speak. The secret and allusive language in which messages were conveyed by a fan’s position in the hands would not become formalised and codified until much later in the century. But it seems more than a curious accident that according to its conventions, all these women are speaking along the same lines. The lady in green tells the Scottish gentleman ‘your flattery annoys me’. The lady next to Mohammed taps her left cheek, signifying ‘no’. The lady with the dog says, ‘I am not in love with you.’

  Either this is a coincidence or else the language of fans existed earlier than historians think, and William Kent was enjoying the irony of portraying all these cruelly virtuous females with their languishing looks and emphatic denials.

  *

  Finally, on the staircase’s ceiling, Kent added in four more personal portraits. He included himself – the cherubic, rosy-cheeked Signior, ‘fat and hot’ – and the two assistants, Robert and Franciscus, who helped him with the work. Kent’s self-portrait provides a complete contrast to the rather stiff, uptight approach chosen by Sir James Thornhill in the painting mentioned earlier. Both wear a plain brown coat, but Thornhill’s cravat is knotted tightly while Kent’s is loose. Thornhill wears a formal wig; Kent wears a relaxed turban. Thornhill’s hand is carefully poised, his brush loaded, while Kent nonchalantly brandishes his palette while being diverted by conversation. Thornhill is solitary; Kent is the focus of admiring attention. Indeed, lit from below, the cheeks of Kent and his assistants glow and their eyes sparkle as if they are actors upon a stage. There is no doubt that this is the coming man.

  Elizabeth Butler: was she married to William Kent or not? The two were certainly on-and-off partners for nearly a lifetime

  Whispering into Kent’s left ear as she nonchalantly taps her fan on the balustrade is a real actress: the lady presumed to be his lover, the formidable Elizabeth Butler.98 With perhaps more romance than truth, it was claimed that Elizabeth was ‘an illegitimate daughter of a noble duke’.99 Kent lived ‘in particular friendship’ with her and had begun to spend his free time, when he was not required by Lord Burlington, at her home in Leicester Fields.100 At the date of the painting she was still early on in her career. She would later become renowned for playing frightening females: a fierce Lady Macbeth and a brutal Gertrude.101

  In 1726, a year that began with heavy snow, the murals on the Grand Staircase were nearly finished. George I would shortly pronounce that the staircase pleased him ‘very much’ and that he approved ‘of everything’. Like clients everywhere, though, he was impatient for completion, wanting to know ‘how long it would be before Mr Kent would have done’.102

  But Kent was adding one last figure into his painting. This was a boy with strange curly hair, whose even stranger story had been the talk of London since his arrival upon the drawing-room scene in April of 1726. Shortly after his first court appearance, it was reported that he ‘hath begun to sit for his picture’.103

  This enigmatic boy is our next courtier.

  Notes

  1. Stanhope (1774), Vol. 2, p. 159.

  2. Jourdain (1948), p. 37.

  3. Stanhope (1774), Vol. 1, p. 476 (17 October 1749).

  4. The Walpole Society, Vol. 24 (1935–6) (Vertue IV), p. 163.

  5. BL Add MS 75358, William Kent to Lord Burlington (27 January 1739).

  6. BL Add MS 75358, Lady Burlington (4 November 1731); Sherburn (1956), Vol. 4, p. 140, Alexander Pope to Countess of Burlington (29 October 1739).

  7. Chatsworth MS, William Kent to Lady Burlington (14 December 1738), quoted in Jourdain (1948), p. 86.

  8. Sherburn (1956), Vol. 4, p. 125, Alexander Pope to the Countess of Burlington (c.8 September 1738).

  9. Tabitha Barber, ‘Thornhill, Sir James (1675/6–1734)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).

  10. Letter from Queen Caroline to Princess Anne quoted in R. L. Arkell, Caroline of Ansbach (London, 1939), p. 297.

  11. The Walpole Society, Vol. 18 (1930) (Vertue I), p. 45.

  12. John Hutchins, The history and antiquities of the county of Dorset (London, 1774), Vol. 1, p. 410; third edn revised by William Shipp and James Whitworth Hodson (London, 1868), Vol. 3, p. 675.

  13. Franklin (1993), p. 92.

  14. Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post, issue 130 (27 May 1721).

  15. HMC Portland, Vol. 5, p. 602 (23 August 1720).

  1
6. Thomas Tickell, Kensington Garden (London, 1722), p. 1.

  17. John Haynes, Kensington Palace (London, 1995), p. 2.

  18. Rizzini to the Duke of Modena (20 January 1695), quoted in Martin Haile, Queen Mary of Modena, her life and letters (London, 1905), p. 310.

  19. TNA Work 4/1 (13 June 1716).

  20. HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Polwarth, Vol. 1 (London, 1911), p. 176.

  21. L. S. Wright and M. Tinling (Eds), William Byrd, The London Diary, 1717–21 (New York, 1958), p. 127.

  22. J.M. Beattie, The English Court in the Reign of George I (Cambridge, 1967), p. 274.

  23. TNA Work 6/11, p. 2 (1715); TNA T 56/18, Lord Chamberlain’s warrants, p. 34 (2 July 1717).

  24. TNA Work 6/7, p. 148 (19 December 1719).

  25. Ibid., p. 68 (19 June 1718).

  26. Peter Gaunt and Caroline Knight, an unpublished history of Kensington Palace, Historic Royal Palaces (1988–9), Vol. 2, p. 304.

  27. John Holland, The History, Antiquities, and Description of the Town and Parish of Worksop (Sheffield, 1826), p. 176.

  28. TNA Work 6/7, p. 153.

  29. Kroll (1998), p. 231.

  30. BL Add MS 22227, ff. 98–100, Peter Wentworth to Lord Strafford (25 July 1729).

  31. HMC, 15th Report, Manuscripts of the Earl of Carlisle, appendix, part 6 (London, 1897), p. 35 (19 August 1721).

  32. John Arbuthnot, Mr Maitland’s Account of Inoculating the Small Pox (London, 1722), p. 3.

  33. Romney Sedgwick, The House of Commons, 1715–54 (London, 1970), Vol. 2, p. 115.

  34. The Walpole Society, Vol. 18 (1929–30) (Vertue I), p. 100.

  35. TNA T 1/243, No. 70 (14 February 1723).

  36. The Walpole Society, Vol. 18 (1929–30) (Vertue I), p. 100.

  37. The Walpole Society, Vol. 17 (1933–34) (Vertue III), p. 139.

  38. William Kent to Burrell Massingberd (26 June 1713), quoted in Jourdain (1948), pp. 27–8.

  39. Michael I. Wilson, William Kent (London, 1984), p. 16; HMC 12th Report, appendix, Part III, The Manuscripts of Earl Cowper (London, 1889), Vol. 3, p. 122.

  40. William Kent (1719), quoted in Jourdain (1948), p. 46.

  41. Barbara Arciszewska, The Hanoverian Court and the Triumph of Palladio (Warsaw, 2002), p. 279.

  42. TNA Works 6/7, p. 272, ‘la proposition de Monsr. Kent pour peindre la Voute de la Grande Chambre’.

  43. The Walpole Society, Vol. 22 (1933–34) (Vertue III), p. 139.

  44. The Walpole Society, Vol. 18 (1929–30) (Vertue I), p. 100.

  45. The Walpole Society, Vol. 22 (1933–4) (Vertue III), p. 55.

  46. The Walpole Society, Vol. 18 (1929–30) (Vertue I), p. 101.

  47. John Gay, ‘Epistle IV’, Poems (1720), p. 306.

  48. TNA Work 6/7, pp. 272–4.

  49. Beard (1981), p. 25.

  50. Ibid., pp. 90–2.

  51. TNA Work 6/7, pp. 273–4 (22 May 1722).

  52. R. D. Harley, Artists’ Pigments, c.1660–1835 (London, 1982) p. 44.

  53. Ibid., p. 152.

  54. Ibid., p. 71.

  55. HMC, Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, Vol. 8 (London, 1913), p. 368 (12 December 1723).

  56. HMC Carlisle, appendix, part 6, p. 42, Sir John Vanbrugh to Lord Carlisle (19 July 1722).

  57. BL Add MS 78514 B, ‘Journal of Sir John Evelyn Baronet’, f. 64v (1 July 1722).

  58. TNA Work 4/2, f. 80r (15 August 1722).

  59. Ibid., f. 81v (22 August 1722).

  60. TNA Work 6/7, p. 277 (22 August 1722).

  61. The Walpole Society, Vol. 22 (1933–4) (Vertue III), p. 140.

  62. Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of painting in England (second edn, Strawberry Hill, 1771), Vol. 4, p. 137.

  63. The Walpole Society, Vol. 22 (1933–4) (Vertue III), p. 19.

  64. TNA T 56/18, p. 232 (5 October 1726); Edward Impey, Kensington Palace, The Official Illustrated History (London, 2003), p. 69.

  65. John Murray Graham (Ed.), Annals and Correspondence of the Viscount and the First and Second Earls of Stair (Edinburgh and London, 1875), Vol. 2, p. 94.

  66. The Walpole Society, Vol. 22 (1933–4) (Vertue III), pp. 35–6.

  67. Ibid., p. 68.

  68. William Aikman to Sir John Clerk (15 July 1725), quoted in John Fleming, Robert Adam and his Circle (London, 1962), p. 39.

  69. Haynes (1995), p. 22.

  70. BL Add MS 20101, f. 30r (12 May 1735).

  71. Ruth Guilding, ‘Sculpture at Holkham’, Country Life (6 March 2008), p. 85.

  72. Stanhope (1774), Vol. 1, p. 444.

  73. Beattie (1967), pp. 48, 174.

  74. Anon., The Present State of the British Court (London, 1720).

  75. BL 1890c.1 (Miscellaneous Tracts), Book II; George Bickham, Apelles Britannicus (London, 1741), p. 28.

  76. Rudolf Grieser (Ed.), Die Memoiren des Kammerherrn Friedrick Ernst von Fabrice (1683–1750) (Hildesheim, 1956), p. 126; BL Add MS 40843, f. 9r.

  77. Anon, attributed to Dr Arbuthnot or Jonathan Swift, It cannot Rain but it Pours, part two (London, 1726), p. 4.

  78. Grieser (1956), p. 126.

  79. The painting is in the Royal Collection. Oliver Millar, Pictures in the Royal Collection, Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures (London, 1963), No. 616; Jürgen Prüser, Die Göhrde (Hildesheim, 1969), pp. 68–70.

  80. BL Add MS 47028, f. 7v, John Percival (26 January 1715); Anon., Some Memoirs of the life of Lewis Maximilian Mahomet, Gent. Late Servant to his Majesty (London, 1727) (copy kindly provided by Esther Godfrey).

  81. BL Stowe MS 563, William III’s bedchamber orders, which were still presumably at least officially in force in the reign of George I (11 June 1689, a copy made in 1736).

  82. TNA SP 1/47, f. 55; Frederick J. Furnivall (Ed.), The Babees Book, etc., Early English Text Society (London, 1868), p. 180.

  83. Hatton (1978), p. 206.

  84. J. J. Caudle, ‘Mohammed von Königstreu, (Georg) Ludwig Maximilian (c.1660–1726)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).

  85. Ibid.

  86. TNA LC 5/89 f. 4v (29 May 1717; 24 January 1720).

  87. TNA LC 5/89 f. 5v (25 September 1718).

  88. TNA LS 13/115 f. 121v (2 August 1722).

  89. Anon., Lewis Maximilian Mahomet (1727), pp. 11, 15.

  90. Early nineteenth-century editor’s note in Croker (1824), Vol. 1, p. 269 (spotted by Joanna Marschner); ‘E. Tempest, Milliner’ is mentioned in RA GEO/ADD17/75/71 (1733).

  91. E. Tempest supplied Caroline with three yards of ‘Black frinch Lace’ in 1733, RA GEO/ADD 17/75/78.

  92. Samuel Pegge, Curialia: or an Historical Account of Some Branches of the Royal Household (London, 1791), Vol. 1, p. 84.

  93. Colonel Sir Reginald Hennell, The History of the King’s Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard (London, 1904), p. 23.

  94. Saussure (1902), p. 40.

  95. Cosmo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, quoted in Hennell (1904), p. 29.

  96. W. H. Pyne, ‘The History of Kensington Palace’, in The History of the Royal Residences (London, 1819), Vol. 2, pp. 29–30.

  97. Alexander Pope, Bounce to Fop. An Heroick Epistle from a Dog at Twickenham to a Dog at Court (London, 1736), p. 6.

  98. Pyne (1819), Vol. 2, p. 30.

  99. Philip H. Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim and Edward A. Langhams, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians & Other Stage Personnel in London 1660–1800 (Carbondale, 1973) Vol. 2, p. 450.

  100. Walpole (1771), Vol. 4, p. 116.

  101. James L. Steffensen, ‘Lillo, George (1691/1693–1739)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).

  102. HMC Cowper, Vol. 3, p. 187 (n.d.).

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

  FOUR

  The Wild Boy

  ‘The best Court-talent in the world is Silence.’1

  (Lord Berkeley of Stratton, 1760)

  On the evening of 7 April 1726, the king and courtiers were gathered as usual i
n the Great Drawing Room at St James’s Palace. The room was alive with their chatter, ‘a sort of chit-chat, or small talk’, which was unutterably trivial in its topics: the uniforms of the armies of foreign princes; the minor relations of important people; balls and masquerades.2 As usual the crowd was alive to any breath of scandal, and anyone remotely notorious endured the customary ordeal of ‘ogling’, ‘whispering’ and ‘glancing’.3 Everything seemed just as normal.

  But a sensational event would make this drawing room the most memorable in a long while. The doors suddenly burst open to a blur of bodies, arms and legs. In came a brace of footmen, bearing between them a curly-headed boy. He was perhaps twelve years old.

  He had a friendly grin, but there was something decidedly odd about this youth. In the first place, he seemed not the least ‘embarrassed at finding himself in the midst of such a fashionable assembly’.4 Once lowered to the drawing-room floor, he crouched down and scuttled about using his arms, like a chimp. And instead of bowing and scraping to the Lord Chamberlain and taking his place in the circle, the young man boldly scampered straight up to the king.

  The courtiers were scandalised by his audacious lack of ceremony.

  This was their first encounter with Peter, the curious ‘Wild Boy’ of the woods, a feral child. Peter was a captivating character, green-eyed and with a peculiarly bushy brush of dark brown hair; he had ‘very good strong teeth’ and was prone to bouts of irrepressible laughter.5 In stark contrast to the fops of the drawing room, Peter preferred to go about naked, had no table manners and did not understand the use of a bed.6 Strangest of all, he could speak neither English nor German. In fact, the Wild Boy had absolutely no language at all.