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

by Tracy Borman

  The King’s shenanigans in Hanover were soon the talk of the English court, and Caroline was determined not to show any sign of humiliation at her husband’s foolish infatuation with such a conniving young harlot. Her Gentleman Usher reported that when she overheard some indiscreet whispers about her husband’s affair one day at court, she declared that she was ‘sorry for the scandal it gave others, but for herself she minded it no more than his going to the close stool’.7 In truth, however, she was growing increasingly weary of her husband’s infidelities. Ill health added to her troubled state, and she was now in almost constant pain and discomfort.

  Despite her ailments, Caroline still had all her wits about her, and devised a clever plan to bring her husband to heel. She wrote to suggest that he bring his mistress over to England so that she might be employed in the Queen’s service, adding thoughtfully that the lady should be given apartments at St James’s so that she would be within convenient reach of the King. To the untrained eye, it seemed as if Caroline had admitted defeat, but her real motive was in fact to have her new rival where she could keep an eye on her. Showing such apparently selfless devotion to her husband’s wishes would also sweeten his temper towards her and make him more likely to do her will.

  It was a bold move, and one that even the master tactician Walpole had counselled against on the basis that the King’s German mistress enjoyed more influence with him than Lady Suffolk had done, and that she would therefore be much harder to manipulate. But the Queen was determined to bring the situation under some sort of control, and saw this as the only way. At first it seemed that her gamble had paid off. Upon receiving her letter, George wrote back at once, praising his wife’s understanding and goodness, and instructing her to prepare Henrietta’s old apartments so that Madame Walmoden might take up residence there as soon as possible. He also promised to make his own way back to London without delay.

  His stay had already been a protracted one, however, and the people of England were growing increasingly hostile towards their absentee monarch. The pamphleteers and satirists had a field day. ‘It is reported that his Hanoverian Majesty designs to visit his British dominions for three months in spring,’ ran one acerbic comment. For a time, public sympathy was firmly with the Queen, who was viewed as a long-suffering and loyal wife to a man who, at almost sixty years of age, ought to know better than to be chasing after young girls. A particularly daring soul caused great hilarity by posting a bill making fun of the King on the very gates of St James’s Palace. ‘Lost or strayed out of this house a man who has left a wife and six children on the parish,’ it declared. ‘Whoever will give any tidings of him to the church-wardens of St James’s parish, so that he may be got again, shall receive four shillings and sixpence reward. This will not be increased, nobody judging him to deserve a crown.’ As George II’s absence grew longer, the jests became ever more inventive. One day, an old horse was set loose in the city with a ragged saddle on its back and a woman’s pillion tied behind it. A note was fastened to its forehead which read: ‘Let nobody stop me, I am the King’s Hanoverian equipage going to fetch his Majesty and his whore back to England.’8

  George II’s protracted stay in Hanover, coupled with his foolish antics whilst there, were bringing shame on the entire royal family. Although she was arguably the greatest victim of his betrayal, Caroline was soon tarred with the same brush as her husband. One evening in mid-November 1736, long after the King should have returned to England, she paid a visit to the opera, determined to maintain the pretence that all was well. The assembled crowds were not to be fooled, however, and to her horror, as she took her seat in the royal box, they started to hiss at her. Worse was to come. She was jeered by a mob of people on her way to Kensington Palace, who cried out that they did not wish to see her there again. Then in December, when she set off to spend the winter at St James’s Palace, it was noticed that ‘the people did not rejoice as they used to do, but stood sullen as she passed the streets without pulling off their hats’.9

  This was the greatest crisis the Hanoverian family had ever faced. The tide of public opinion had turned so firmly against them that it seemed unlikely the damage could ever be repaired. It was a dangerous time to lose their subjects’ loyalty, for the Jacobites were steadily gathering support for a new offensive. The Queen wrote again and again to her husband, urging him to return. But week after week passed, and there was still no sign of him. His birthday came and went, and the disapproval at his absence was all too evident among the crowds who had gathered for the official reception. It was serious indeed for the King to miss his own birthday celebrations, and it was the first time that any of the Hanoverian monarchs had done so.

  It was now December, and people began to suspect that His Majesty would also miss the Christmas receptions at court. At last, news reached the court that George had left Herrenhausen, after a long and tender farewell to his mistress, and was expected in London within a few days. No sooner had this dispatch been read, however, than another arrived bearing the terrible news that there had been a violent storm at sea on the day that he was due to embark, and it was not known whether or not he had sailed. If he had, then he was surely drowned, for no ship could have survived such angry seas.

  Eight agonising days passed with no further news, and the suspense at court was great. Caroline was in extreme distress the whole time, fearing the worst. By contrast, her subjects seemed to care little about the King’s fate and casually laid bets on whether he was alive or dead. At last a messenger arrived with news that he had not sailed, and was therefore still safely on the other side of the Channel awaiting a favourable wind. In her relief, the Queen cried out in front of the assembled courtiers: ‘The King is safe! the King is safe!’ They did not share her enthusiasm. When an official enquired how the wind fared now for His Majesty, one wry soul replied: ‘Like the nation – against him.’10

  George II finally arrived back in London on 15 December, after more than seven months’ absence. Courtiers were astonished to find him as cheerful and convivial as he had been foul-tempered and irritable upon his last return. He showered the Queen with praise and affection, prompted no doubt by her generous offer of welcoming his mistress to St James’s. But Madame Walmoden demurred, keen to avoid being trapped in a similar situation to Lady Suffolk. She therefore remained in Hanover with only the vaguest promise to join her royal lover in England as soon as she was able.

  Caroline could take little satisfaction from this favourable turn of events, for she was by now preoccupied with her own rapidly fading health. George’s absence had at least given her the luxury of a rest, and she had been able to forego the exhausting daily route-marches around the gardens of Kensington and St James’s. But now he was back, the strain of keeping up the appearance of good health for his sake served only to make her condition worse. Her son, Frederick, was also creating fresh trouble, and in an extraordinary repetition of the scene played out exactly twenty years before, the simmering resentment between him and his parents suddenly broke out into open rupture. He was promptly expelled from St James’s Palace and forced to take up residence at Leicester House, which assumed the well-deserved nickname of ‘the pouting place of princes’.

  All of this served to hasten the Queen’s decline, and by the autumn of 1737, her suffering was so obvious that even the King noticed it. One day in early November, she was busying herself with the fitting out of her new library at St James’s when she suddenly collapsed with violent stomach pains. Insisting that it was just a passing complaint, she dragged herself to the drawing room that evening, forcing smiles and chatter as if nothing was amiss. By the end of the evening, however, she was in so much pain that she had no choice but to take to her bed and remain there all the following day. The physicians were summoned to bleed and purge her, and when this worked no effect, they made an incision into the part of her bowel that seemed to be causing her most distress. Those who gathered around her bedside were aghast when this ‘cast forth so great a quantity
of corruption’ that the stench was intolerable. The physicians declared that there was a larger abscess inside which would continue to grow ‘untill it gains a vital part’.11

  The King, who had enjoyed the delusion that his wife was merely suffering from a temporary indisposition, was acquainted with the grave news and fell into paroxysms of grief. Day and night he kept a vigil by her bedside, telling anyone who would listen what an incomparable woman his wife was, and how deeply he loved her. Even in the midst of his turmoil, though, he could not help displaying a little of his accustomed short temper. As Caroline shifted restlessly on the bed, trying desperately to escape the pain, he burst out that she should keep still, for he found her constant moving about most irritating. ‘How the devil should you sleep, when you will never lie still a moment?’ he expostulated. ‘You want to rest, and the doctors tell you nothing can do you so much good, and yet you are always moving about.’

  Eventually, after two long weeks of suffering, the Queen entered the final stages of her demise and began her farewells to the distraught family members surrounding her bed. To Princess Caroline she recommended the care of her two younger sisters. Her son William, Duke of Cumberland, she begged to support his father and show ‘superior merit’ to his elder brother, Frederick, whom she still refused to see. And finally, her husband, the King, she urged to marry again after she was dead. This threw him into a renewed fit of weeping, and in between sobs he spluttered: ‘Non-j’aurai-des-maîtresses’ [No, I will have mistresses], to which his wife sardonically replied: ‘Ah! mon Dieu! cela n’empêche pas.’ [My God! That won’t prevent your marrying.]12

  At about ten o’clock in the evening of 20 November 1737, Caroline’s breath started to rasp in her throat. ‘I have got an asthma,’ she gasped. ‘Open the window.’ This being hurriedly done, she uttered, ‘Pray,’ and as her daughter Amelia began to read some verses, the Queen breathed her last. George kissed the face and hands of her lifeless body several times, and then left the bedchamber to weep in private. The sincerity of his grief betrayed a tenderness ‘of which the world thought him before utterly incapable’, and for a time this made him more popular with his English subjects than he had ever been. He remained inconsolable for many months afterwards. When he opened Parliament in January 1738, the assembled MPs watched in sympathy as he struggled to compose himself enough to read his speech, and then during it ‘he often put his hand to his forehead, and as they thought had tears in his eyes’. At a reception later that day, one courtier noted that he talked only of the Queen, and ‘cried the whole time’.

  The King never tired of saying that there was no other woman on earth who was ‘worthy to buckle her shoe’. There was one, however, who might dry his tears just a little. Realising this, Walpole sent for Madame Walmoden to comfort the nation’s grieving monarch. The lady duly arrived in June 1738 and took up residence at St James’s in the apartments formerly belonging to Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk.

  Mr and Mrs Berkeley, along with the rest of polite society, observed the necessary protocols to mark the death of the Queen, such as wearing mourning clothes in public. Whether Henrietta felt any real grief at her former mistress’s passing is uncertain, however. The momentous event was afforded no mention in her correspondence, and she and her husband continued to enjoy the pleasant diversions of their life together. Visits to country estates, pleasure gardens and spa towns – both at home and abroad – occupied most of their time, and they were now often away from Marble Hill.

  So absorbed was Mrs Berkeley in her joyful new life that she neglected some of her old friends. Most were glad that she had at last found happiness, and were content to see her as and when time allowed. But Pope was rather less forgiving. ‘What vexes me most is, that my female friends who can bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me,’ he complained to Swift a few months after Henrietta and George’s wedding, adding: ‘I have nobody now left but you.’ His sourness towards his old friend had increased so much by the following autumn that he claimed he had only found out by accident that she and her husband had returned from their holiday in France and were staying at Savile Street. Nor did he expect to see them for many weeks, for he only made the journey up to London ‘when Particular Friends are there, and I now think there are but few Particular Friends’.13

  Pope had, admittedly, always been rather quick to take offence if his friends paid him less attention than usual. When Henrietta had failed to wait for him before setting off on her escape to Bath in September 1734, he had complained to Martha Blount: ‘Lady Suffolk has a strange power over me: She would not stir a days Journey either East or West for me, tho she had dying or languishing Friends on each Quarter who wanted & wishd to see her.’ He said that he could expect no thanks for his trouble in going to see her there, adding rather pensively, ‘I suppose she’ll be at cards and receive me as coldly as if I were Archdeacon of the place’.14

  Of course, he said such things half in jest, always keen to add colour and amusement to his letters. But there was nevertheless a very discernible edge to the criticism that he levelled at Henrietta after her marriage to Mr Berkeley. Jealousy no doubt played a substantial part in it. For many years, Pope had been Henrietta’s closest male friend, and the two had met and corresponded often during her time at court. Now she shared all her hopes and fears (and by far the greatest part of her time) with her husband, and Pope – dear friend though he was – no longer occupied centre stage in her personal life.

  It is also possible that the poet’s feelings towards his ‘Lady at Court’ extended beyond pure friendship. Pope had a tendency to confuse tender and platonic love in his relationships with women, and had once famously mistaken Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s feelings for the former. When he had duly declared his love for her, she had laughed in his face, scorning the very notion that she should have any romantic inclination towards this deformed little man. In his pain and humiliation, Pope had mounted a campaign to discredit her with his pen, and the two had embarked upon a very public war of words.

  His letters to Henrietta certainly suggest an affection that bordered on the romantic. Scarred by his experience with Lady Mary, however, he never openly declared his love – perhaps hoping that once she had finally escaped court and moved to Marble Hill, their relationship would develop naturally. When she subsequently married George Berkeley, any romantic hopes that he might have entertained were dashed. But the secrets of his heart went with him to the grave, so any theories about the nature of his feelings towards the new Mrs Berkeley must remain speculative. What is certain, though, is that he was genuinely put out by the fact that she now had a good deal less time for him than she had in the past.

  His hostility towards her boiled over in 1738, when he started making plans to publish his correspondence – a tradition followed by many of his distinguished contemporaries. In the eighteenth century, letters tended to be written for show as much as for the amusement or interest of the recipient, and there was an increasing trend amongst high-profile courtiers, politicians and men of letters to publish their correspondence or memoirs as a way of leaving their mark on history. The more controversial the collection, the more likely it was to be published posthumously – Lord Hervey’s memoirs being a notorious case in point. The Earl of Peterborough’s letters were apparently so shocking that his widow burnt them after his death, rather than fulfil his last wish to share them with the world.

  Alexander Pope’s correspondence was not particularly shocking, but it was no less diverting for that. All the wit and eloquence that had made him famous as a poet also shone through in his letters, and the fact that he conversed with some of the most important figures of the age made them even more compelling. Pope was keen to enhance the interest of his collection by including the letters that he had exchanged with George II’s most famous mistress. But Henrietta was reluctant to return a correspondence that she had cherished for so many years. She may also have been keen to avoid any further scandal now that she was living so
pleasant and retired a life away from public scrutiny. She therefore demurred, reminding Pope that years ago he had told her that he kept copies of all the letters he sent anyway. When he persisted, she put an end to the matter by telling him (falsely) that she had burned them. Pope was furious. All the resentment that had been building up since her marriage now spilled over, and he exacted revenge through the most effective means at his disposal.

  Later that year, he published ‘Cloe’, a poem about a woman as fickle in her affections as she is shallow in her tastes: a woman who, in short, ‘wants a Heart’. While she ‘speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought’, he wrote, she ‘never, never, reach’d one gen’rous Thought’. Warming to the theme, he continued:

  She, while her Lover pants upon her breast,

  Can mark the figures on an Indian chest;

  And when she sees her Friend in deep despair,

  Observes how much a Chintz exceeds Mohair.

  Although some commentators have claimed that Cloe was not based upon Henrietta, the evidence is quite compelling. The traits described resonate with elements of her character, such as her interest in design and furnishings, and ‘Cloe’ was the name given to her in Peterborough’s ‘Song’. Furthermore, when the verse was later included as part of Pope’s Characters of Women anthology, the introduction presented Cloe as someone who was personally known to Patty Blount, which was true of none of the other characters. Horace Walpole also made a note in the margin of his copy that the character was ‘meant for Lady Suffolk’.15 The contrast with the ‘handsome and witty’ friend of ‘A Certain Lady At Court’ could not have been greater. Pope’s esteem had, it seemed, turned to disdain.