Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court
Page 25
Poor John Hervey understandably complained that he was ‘tired to death of hearing nothing but this sort of stuff over and over again; it ennuies me to a degree that is inconceivable’. ‘I shall see you tomorrow,’ he wrote to Henry Fox, ‘and I suppose you, not being so tired of the subject as I am, will make me talk it all over again.’120
In the earlier ‘christening quarrel’ George II had been kicked out of the royal palaces, and now he found himself expelling his son in exactly the same manner. On 12 September, the order went out to ‘all peers, peeresses, Privy Councillors and their ladies and persons in any station in the service of ye King and Queen that whoever goes to pay their court to their Royal Highnesses the prince or princess of Wales will not be admitted into their Majesty’s presence’.121
Meanwhile, just as before, ‘whoever was unwelcome at St James’s, was sure of countenance at the Prince’s apartments’.122 Again the courtiers had to choose their allegiance, and one of them found this ‘melancholy prospect’ made him ‘almost burst into tears’.123 The doomsayers inevitably predicted the end for the House of Hanover: with all these silly quarrels, the crown would ‘be lost long before this little Princess can possibly enjoy it’.124
So Prince Frederick, Princess Augusta and their servants prepared to leave St James’s Palace for the last time, their clothes hurriedly tossed into wicker laundry baskets rather than being properly packed.125 The soldier on gate duty was one among the many who found themselves torn in two at the sight. He’d been ordered by his captain ‘not to salute the Prince on his departure (for the King had given that command)’. He would have saluted anyway, had not the eagle eye of his captain been ‘particularly on him’. The salute was left unmade while ‘the tears trickled’ down his cheeks.126
Now George II deployed exactly the same weapons against his son as his own father had used in earlier years. Prince Frederick’s cohort of official guards was withdrawn, so that he and Princess Augusta were forced to creep out of the house ‘like private people’, with a mere footman to attend them.127 During the preceding quarrel, George II had retired from St James’s to Leicester Fields. Extraordinarily, his son would also eventually settle down in the very same house, earning it the nickname of the ‘pouting-place of princes’.128 Kew Gardens also became a more frequent rural residence for the prince.
But there was one big difference between the quarrels of 1717 and 1737. Despite his numerous supporters, Prince Frederick was never remotely likely to win a popularity contest against his father. George II and Caroline were considerably more beloved by their subjects than George I had been.
Frederick may have had wit, charm, a healthy young family and the prospect of great future power, yet he lost something immensely valuable by his rash act: his reputation. His good qualities were now submerged beneath the deluge of condemnation that was poured upon him for his selfish insubordination. As a result of this, history would come to remember him as a failure, hated by his parents, damned by the poisonous pen of John Hervey.
Yet weak, foolish Frederick – appropriately nicknamed ‘Poor Fred’ by historians – was really something of a victim. He felt forced by his parents’ revulsion into taking this desperate step, but in doing so he only confirmed their low opinion of him.
As the weeks turned into months, though, Frederick began to think regretfully about the wrong turns taken in his relationship with his mother. Perhaps having a child of his own made him begin to take a more tolerant view of his parents’ behaviour. Slowly, secretly but surely, he started longing to see Caroline once again.
But the period of time left for any possible reconciliation to take place was shorter than anyone could have guessed.
Notes
1. Halsband (1965–7), Vol. 2, p. 476, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to her husband (2 March 1751).
2. Brooke (1985), Vol. 1, p. 51.
3. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 37.
4. Duchess of Marlborough to the second Earl of Stair (17 August 1737), quoted in Cunningham (1857), Vol. 1, p. cxlix.
5. Robert Halsband, Lord Hervey, Eighteenth-Century Courtier (Oxford, 1973), p. 28.
6. Hervey (1894), Vol. 2, p. 41, his father to John Hervey (14 December 1716).
7. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 874.
8. Halsband (1965–7), Vol. 1, pp. 286–7, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to the Countess of Bristol, Hanover (25 November 1716).
9. Hervey (1894), Vol. 3, p. 29, Lady Bristol to Lord Bristol (7 January 1729).
10. Holland (1846), Vol. 1, p. 77.
11. Wilkins (1901), Vol. 1, p. 90.
12. ‘The Griff … was a nickname the King had long ago given the Prince’, Hervey (1931), Vol. 3, p. 804; see Sir George Young, Poor Fred, the People’s Prince (London, 1937), pp. 8–9; but for a refutation of Young see also Frances Vivian, A Life of Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707–1751), Ed. Roger White (Lewiston, 2006), pp. 14–15.
13. Matthew Kilburn, ‘Frederick Lewis, prince of Wales (1707–1751)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).
14. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 559.
15. RA GEO/MAIN/54227, Frederick, Prince of Wales, ‘Instructions for my Son George’.
16. Coxe (1798b), Vol. 1, p. 522.
17. Thomson (1943), p. 86, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough to Diana, Duchess of Bedford (3 January 1733).
18. SRO 941/48/1, p. 49, Mary Hervey to the Reverend Edmund Morris (24 March 1744).
19. BL Sloane MS 4076, f. 98r.
20. Tobias Smollett, The History of England from the Revolution to the Death of George the Second (London, 1848 edn), Vol. 3, p. 62.
21. Rosenthal (1970), p. 135.
22. Hervey (1931), Vol. 1, p. 306.
23. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 504.
24. George Hastings Wheler (Ed.), Hastings Wheler Family Letters 1704–1739 (West Yorkshire, 1935), p. 153, Lady Catherine Jones (24 December 1737).
25. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 371.
26. Pöllnitz (1737), Vol. 1, p. 64.
27. Romney Sedgwick (Ed.), Letters from George III to Lord Bute, 1756–1766 (London, 1939), p. 259.
28. Brooke (1985), Vol. 1, p. 116.
29. Ibid., Vol. 3, p. 121.
30. RA GEO/MAIN/53039.
31. Cannon (2004).
32. HMC Polwarth, Vol. 1 (London, 1911), p. 112 (19 October 1716).
33. Quoted in Greenwood (1909), Vol. 1, p. 228.
34. Daily Post, No. 2873 (5 December 1728).
35. Verney (1930), Vol. 2, p. 139 (April 1736).
36. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, pp. 550–1.
37. Cartwright (1883), p. 522.
38. Stella Tillyard, A Royal Affair, George III and his Troublesome Siblings (London, 2006), p. 7.
39. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 493.
40. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 5.6 (April 1736), p. 230.
41. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 550.
42. HMC Carlisle, appendix, part 6, p. 167, Lady A. Irwin to Lord Carlisle (April 1736).
43. Cartwright (1883), p. 522.
44. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 5.6 (April 1736), p. 231.
45. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 553.
46. Read’s Weekly Journal Or British Intelligencer (8 May 1736), issue 609.
47. The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 8 (November 1738), p. 603.
48. Duchess of Marlborough quoted in Averyl Edwards, Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales (London, 1947), p. 60.
49. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 564.
50. Ibid., p. 613.
51. Ilchester (1950), pp. 258–9.
52. Gaunt and Knight (1988–9), Vol. 2, p. 488.
53. Hervey (1931), Vol. 3, pp. 868–9
54. Morris Marples, Poor Fred and the Butcher, Sons of George II (London, 1970), p. 18.
55. BL Add MS 24407, ‘Kew Book’ containing accounts of Frederick, Prince of Wales for Kew; Vivian (2006), pp. 134–5.
56. Mowl (2006), p. 109.
57. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 628.
58. The Daily Gazetteer (2 October
1736), quoted in Wilkins (1901), Vol. 2, pp.305–6.
59. HMC Egmont (1923), Vol. 2, p. 325.
60. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 628.
61. HMC Egmont (1923), Vol. 2, p. 10.
62. Hervey (1931), Vol. 3, pp. 662, 670, 681.
63. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 615.
64. Ibid., pp. 615, 617–18.
65. Halsband (1973), p. 138.
66. Halsband and Grundy (1977), p. 261
67. HMC Egmont (1920), Vol. 1, p. 208 (1731).
68. Ralph Trumbach, ‘Modern Sodomy: The Origins of Homosexuality,1700–1800’, in Matt Cock (Ed.), A Gay History of Britain (Oxford, 2007), pp. 77–105.
69. Misson (1719), p. 24.
70. Anon., Plain Reasons for the Growth of Sodomy in England (London, 1728).
71. SRO 941/47/4, p. 295, John Hervey to Ste Fox (26 August 1731).
72. Ibid., p. 53, John Hervey to Ste Fox (1 June 1727).
73. Anon., Plain Reasons (1728), p. 14.
74. SRO 941/47/4, p. 98, John Hervey to Ste Fox (22 November 1729).
75. Ibid., the first thirteen pages have been cut out.
76. Lewis (1937–83), Vol. 33, p. 156 (3 January 1780).
77. SRO 941/47/1, Frederick, Prince of Wales to John Hervey (n.d.); SRO 941/47/4, p. 207, John Hervey to Frederick, Prince of Wales (16 July 1731); Hannah Smith and Stephen Taylor, ‘Hephaestion and Alexander: Lord Hervey, Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the Royal Favourite in England in the 1730s’, The English Historical Review, Vol. CXXIV, No. 507 (2009), pp. 283–312.
78. Hervey (1931), Vol. 3, p. 671.
79. SRO 941/47/4, p. 320, John Hervey to Ste Fox (14 December 1731).
80. Ibid., p. 165, John Hervey to Ste Fox (31 August 1731).
81. Quoted in Moore (2000), p. 53.
82. ‘Introductory Anecdotes’, probably using information from Lady Bute, in Wharncliffe (1837), p. 69.
83. Thomson (1847), Vol. 2, p. 374, Countess of Pomfret to Lady Sundon (23 September 1735); BL Add MS 75358, Lady Burlington (23 September 1735).
84. SRO 941/21/2(ii), ‘A Character of Lady Mary Hervey’, f. 1.
85. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, quoted in Hervey (1931), Vol. 1, p. xvii.
86. ‘Introductory anecdotes’, probably based on information from Lady Bute, in Wharncliffe (1837), Vol. 1, p. 69; Stuart (1936), p. 127.
87. Harvey (1994; 2001), p. 134.
88. William Pulteney, A Proper Reply to a Late Scurrilous Libel (London, 1731), pp. 6–7.
89. Alexander Pope, Ethic epistles, satires, & c. (London, 1735), p. 108.
90. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 562.
91. Ibid., Vol. 3, p. 757.
92. Quoted in Grundy (1999), p. 368.
93. Weekly Miscellany, issue CCXLI (5 August 1737), ‘Domestic Occurences’.
94. BL Add MS 20104, ff. 6–7, Lord Hervey to Mrs Clayton, Hampton Court (31 July 1733).
95. Hervey (1931), Vol. 2, p. 528.
96. Ibid., Vol. 3, p. 758.
97. BL Add MS 75358, Lady Burlington (‘Thursday eight o’clock’, 1737); HMC Egmont (1923), Vol. 2, p. 426.
98. G. H. Rose (Ed.), A Selection from the papers of the Earls of Marchmont (London, 1831), Vol. 2, p. 88, Alexander, Earl of Marchmont (13 October 1737).
99. HMC Egmont (1923), Vol. 2, p. 426; BL Add MS 75358, Lady Burlington (‘Thursday 8 o’clock’, 1737).
100. HMC Egmont (1923) Vol. 2, p. 425.
101. Ibid., pp. 425–6; Hervey (1931), Vol. 3, p. 758.
102. Hervey (1931), Vol. 3, p. 759.
103. Walpole, Reminiscences (1818 edn), p. 95.
104. HMC Egmont (1923), Vol. 2, p. 425.
105. BL Add MS 75358, Lady Burlington (‘Thursday eight o’clock’, 1737).
106. Holland (1846), Vol. 1, p. 74.
107. Hervey (1931), Vol. 3, p. 758.
108. Ibid., p. 759.
109. Holland (1846), Vol. 1, p. 74.
110. Hervey (1931), Vol. 3, p. 759
111. HMC Egmont (1923), Vol. 2, p. 425.
112. Hervey (1931), Vol. 3, p. 761.
113. HMC Egmont (1923), Vol. 2, p.
114. BL Add MS 75358, Lady Burlington (‘Thursday 8 o’clock’, 1737); Duchess of Marlborough to the second Earl of Stair (17 August 1737), quoted in Cunningham (1857), Vol. 1, p. cli.
115. The Earl of Bolingbroke quoted in Walter Sichel, Bolingbroke and his Times, 2 vols, (London, 1901), Vol. 2, p. 357.
116. Holland (1846), Vol. 1, p. 74.
117. Hervey (1931), Vol. 3, pp. 767, 793.
118. Ibid., pp. 760, 763.
119. SRO 941/47/4, p. 610, John Hervey to Count Algarotti (17/28 September 1737).
120. Ilchester (1950), p. 267.
121. TNA LC 5/202, p. 436 (11 September 1737).
122. Brooke (1985), Vol. 1, p. 52.
123. Philip Yorke, The Life and Correspondence of Philip Yorke, Earl of Hardwicke (Cambridge, 1913), Vol. 1, p. 171.
124. Hailes (1788), p. 92.
125. Tillyard (2006), p. 18.
126. HMC Egmont, Vol. 2 (1923), p. 436.
127. Cambridge University Library SPCK MS D4/43, f. 26, quoted in Smith(2006), p. 219.
128. Pennant (1791), p. 119.
EIGHT
The Queen’s Secret
‘May Caroline continue long
For ever fair and young! – in song.
… the royal carcass must,
Squeezed in a coffin, turn to dust.’1
(Jonathan Swift)
The appalling family wounds of summer 1737 remained unhealed that autumn, and Caroline was still eaten up with hatred for her son.
But the next conflict at court would be fought between mightier forces than the warring royals. A battle between eighteenth-century medicine and mortality was about to begin, and the scene of the struggle was to be the bed of the weakened queen.
Her fight for life would take place back at St James’s Palace, which was still in the same unsatisfactory condition as it was when the Hanoverians first came to England. Foreigners considered that there were ‘few Princes in Europe worse lodged than the King of England’, and once the royal family was temporarily forced out of the palace by the ‘stench of a necessary house’ belonging to the tavern next door.2
Caroline’s ‘room of her own’: the library William Kent designed for her at St James’s Palace
After many trying years as queen, the balance of Caroline’s life had shifted and was now weighted towards despair. By the later 1730s, she was feeling neglected by her husband as well as her son. As time went by, George II’s summer holidays in Hanover grew longer and longer, so much so that his family and his adoptive British subjects felt that they hardly saw him at all. Caroline constantly dwelt upon her failures as a wife and a mother: ‘her Majesty is exceeding uneasy and often weeps when alone’.3
Caroline decided to comfort herself during one of the king’s unaccountable extended absences by beginning to build herself a new library at St James’s Palace. This was to be a room of her own, a consolation; it was a private project that would be of no conceivable interest to her husband. And it was not surprising that she turned for soothing discussions about the necessary decoration to the jovial and familiar William Kent.
Together they agreed upon a rich cornice, twenty-one bookcases, busts of philosophers and green couches trimmed with silver lace.4 In her library, this peaceful and private place, Caroline planned to cure her cares with literature. She was certainly fond of her three thousand books: on various occasions we hear of her laughing at Gulliver’s Travels; listening to literature read aloud during the tedious hours at her toilette; and sending out a Lady of the Bed-chamber to get her ‘all my Lord Bacon’s works’.5
William Kent doodled this lovely portrait of the mature Queen Caroline at the edge of his page. She stoically insisted that she minded her husband’s infidelities ‘no more than his going to the close stool’
Caroline was impatient to put her temple of learning to use, and John Hervey was annoyed when the
builders promised her unachievable progress. He wrote crossly to Henry Fox, who’d recently been put in charge of the unimproved and still inefficient Office of the King’s Works: ‘which of the devils in Hell prompted you to tell the Queen that everything in her Library was ready for the putting up of her books? – Thou abominable new broom, that so far from sweeping clean, has not removed one grain of dirt.’6
It was in her unfinished library, on 9 November 1737, during her fifty-fifth year, that Caroline collapsed to the floor with an unbearable pain in her stomach.
*
What are we to make of the many and varied dispatches from the front line of Caroline’s battle with death, penned over the next few days as the whole nation waited with baited breath and snapped up every crumb of information available?
John Hervey’s account of the following week of Caroline’s life, covering the progress of her illness, is the great set piece of his memoirs, the most memorable, most melodramatic and blackest of all his sketches of court events.
Although it is Hervey’s horrifically gory account that has become the best known, other contemporary descriptions of Caroline’s illness were more reverent, noting that she bore pain ‘like a heroine’ and with ‘a Christian firmness and resignation of mind’.7 And indeed the minor but telling details of the next few days would make a great impression upon the nation: ‘these little circumstances are too trivial in themselves to relate, but when they concern the last moments of Princes, are to be taken notice of’.8
All the accounts of Caroline’s final few days, whether sensational or instructional, agreed that this uniquely testing time would reveal her ‘greatness of soul’.9 The queen would find her greatest strength in her weakest hour.
*
Despite the public’s unquenchable thirst for information, royal health was surrounded by secrecy. George II took great pains to disguise any chink of weakness, and John Hervey noted
a strange affectation of an incapacity of being sick that ran through the whole Royal Family … I have known the King get out of his bed, choking with a sore throat, and in a high fever, only to dress and have a levée, and in five minutes undress and return to his bed.10