When Hervey became Vice-Chamberlain, the King was fortyseven years of age-the Queen was her husband's senior by six months-Walpole was fifty-four. Between pens and pencils we are all familiar enough with the outward aspect and bearing of the higher figures in his group :-Walpole, the most dexterous and the most successful of English ministers, with a broad, florid, squire-like face, a clumsy, gross figure set off with a blue ribbon, a strong Norfolk accent certainly,' says Hervey, 'a very ill-bred man'-addicted to and glorying in the lowest low-comedy strain of wit and merriment:-George II., with something of the countenance that still lives among his descendants-the open blue eye, the well-formed nose, and the fresh sanguine complexion-but wanting advantages that have been supplied from subsequent alliances of the race; his figure short, but wiry, well knit, and vigorous-his manner abrupt, brusque, even when he chose to be gallant in ladies' bower -more of the martinet than the monarch; choleric, opinionative, sensitive and jealous of temper-but with a fund of good sense at bottom, and perfect courage and honesty; from vanity and long indulgence the slave of that vice which had degraded the far superior talents of Henry II., Edward I., Edward IV., and Charles II.-but, unlike the ablest of these, seldom allowing any influence connected with such errors to affect his exercise of patronage, and never at all to affect his policy and administration as King; with a strong natural predilection for his native electorate, its people, its manners, and its peculiar interests-and occasionally in word and in writing betraying such feelings to a very unwise extent but as to them, as on all other subjects but one, quickly reducible to reason and discretion through the patient tact of his Queen, who never had any rival in his confidence any more than in his esteem-nay, never even as a woman had any real rival in his affection-not even now, when years had done their usual work on that once very loveable person, and neither form nor complexion were much caricatured in Lady Mary Wortley's picture of her (Works, vol. iii., p. 424) 'Superior to her waiting nymphs, The following passages occur early: She managed this deified image as the heathen priests used to do the oracles of old, when, kneeling and prostrate before the altars of a pageant god, they received with the greatest devotion and reverence those directions in public which they had before instilled in private. And as these idols consequently were only propitious to the favourites of the augurers, so nobody who had not tampered with our chief priestess ever received a favourable answer from our god: storms and thunder greeted every votary that entered the temple without her protection; protection; calms and sunshine those who obtained it. The King himself was so little sensible of this being his case, that one day enumerating the people who had governed this country in other reigns, he said Charles I. was governed by his wife; Charles II. by his mistresses; King James by his priests; King William by his men -and Queen Anne by her women-favourites. His father, he added, had been by anybody that could get at him. And at the end of this compendious history of our great and wise monarchs, with a significant, satisfied, triumphant air, he turned about, smiling, and asked-" And who do they say governs now?"-The following verses will serve for a specimen of the strain in which the libels and lampoons of these days were composed :— You may strut, dapper George, but 't will all be in vain; Then if you would have us fall down and adore you, 'Her predominant passion was pride, and the darling pleasure of her soul was power; but she was forced to gratify the one and gain the other, as some people do health, by a strict and painful régime. She was at least seven or eight hours tête-à-tête with the King every day, during which time she was generally saying what she did not think, assenting to what she did not believe, and praising what she did not approve; for they were seldom of the same opinion, and he too fond of his own for her ever at first to dare to controvert it-consilii quamvis egregii quod ipse non afferret, inimicus: she used to give him her opinion as jugglers do a card, by changing it imperceptibly, and making him believe he held the same with that he first pitched upon. But that which made these tête-à-têtes seem heaviest was that he neither liked reading nor being read to (unless it was to sleep): she was forced, like a spider, to spin out of her own bowels all the conversation with which the fly was taken.. To contradict his will directly, was always the way to strengthen it; and to labour to convince, was to confirm him. Besides all this, he was excessively passionate, and his temper upon those occasions was a sort of iron reversed, for the hotter it was the harder it was to bend, and if ever it was susceptible of any impression, it was only when it was quite cool. . . For all the tedious hours she spent her single consolation was in reflecting that people in coffee-houses and ruelles were saying she governed this country. 'His design at first was as Boileau says of Louis XIV.,— Seul, sans ministre, à l'exemple des Dieux, Faire tout par sa main et voir tout de ses yeux. He intended to have all his ministers in the nature of clerks, not to give advice, but to receive orders; but it was very plain that the Queen had subverted all his notions........ Instead of betraying (as formerly) a jealousy of being thought to be governed by Sir Robert-instead of avoiding every opportunity of distinguishing and speaking to him in public-he very apparently now, if he loved anybody in the world besides 2 M 2 the the Queen, had not only an opinion of the statesman, but an affection for the man. When Lord Hervey (often to try him) gave him accounts of attacks that had been made on Sir Robert in the House, and the things Sir Robert had said in defence and retaliation, the King would cry out, with colour flushing into his cheeks, tears sometimes in his eyes, and with a vehement oath," He is a brave fellow; he has more spirit than any man I ever knew." The Queen always joined in chorus: and Lord Hervey, in these partial moments, never failed to make the most he could of his friend and patron's cause.' The following little sketch of the important evening (9th April, 1733) on which Walpole found himself compelled to give up his Excise Bill is among the first in which all the three principal figures appear: As soon as the whole was over, Lord Hervey went to the Queen, to acquaint her with what had passed. When Lord Hervey at his first coming into the room shook his head and told her the numbers, the tears ran down her cheeks and for some time she could not utter a word; at last she said "It is over, we must give way; but, pray, tell me a little how it passed." Lord Hervey said, it was not to be wondered at that opponents to this Bill should increase when everybody now believed that my Lord Bolingbroke's party at St. James's was more numerous than at Dawley........ Whilst he was saying this the King came in, and the Queen made Lord Hervey repeat all he had been saying. The King heard willingly, but that night said very little; he asked many questions, but was much more costive than usual in his comments upon the answers; however, when he asked if he could remember some of those who had swelled the defection that day, as Lord Hervey repeated the names, his Majesty tacked remarks to them :Lord James Cavendish, a fool;" Lord Charles Cavendish, "he is half mad;" Sir William Lowther, a whimsical fellow;" Sir Thomas Prendergast," an Irish blockhead;" Lord Tyrconnel, "a puppy that never votes twice together on the same side." There were more in the same style. As soon as Lord Hervey was dismissed he went to Sir Robert Walpole's, who had assembled about a dozen friends to communicate the resolution taken. After supper, when the servants were gone, Sir Robert opened his intentions with a sort of unpleased smile, and saying "This dance it will no farther go; the turn my friends will take will be to declare they have not altered their opinion, but that the clamour that has been raised makes it necessary to give way." .....On this text he preached for some time to this select band of his firmest friends, and then sent them to bed to sleep if they could.'— vol. i. p. 198. Hervey adds: Many thought that the Queen imagined her power with the King depended at this time on her being able to maintain Sir Robert Walpole, consequently that she looked on his cause as her own; but these conjectures were mistaken: the Queen knew her own strength with the King too well to be of this opinion. The future Ministry would cer tainly have been of her nomination, in case of a change, as much as the present, and if they had subsisted, as much at her devotion, for had she found them less so, their reign would not have been long. But it is very probable her pride might be somewhat concerned to support a minister looked upon in the world as her creature, and that she might have a mind to defeat the hope Lady Suffolk might have conceived of being able to make any advantage of the King's seeing himself reduced. by the voice of the people to dismiss a man whom her private voice had so long condemned.'-vol. i. p. 213. It was in the same year, 1733, that the first marriage among the royal progeny was negotiated, and the details of the whole affair are given in the most pungent style of the favourite at the ear of Eve. The candidate for the hand of the Princess Royal (Anne) was the young Prince of Orange, whose position in his own country was then uneasy and unsatisfactory, for he had not obtained the stadtholderate of Holland, and, his property being overburdened, he had but a free income of 12,000l. a-year. The tone of the English Court and of Walpole's adherents in Parliament was, that the King listened to the proposal purely out of his anxiety to strengthen the Protestant succession, and to renew the alliance with the race of the great deliverer;' but, says our author :— pox. "The true reason for this match was, that there was no other for the Princess in all Europe, so that her Royal Highness's option was not between this Prince and any other, but between a husband and no husband-between an indifferent settlement and no settlement at all. "The Princess Royal's beauties were a lively clean look and a very fine complexion, though she was marked a good deal with the smallThe Prince of Orange's figure, besides his being almost a dwarf, was as much deformed as it was possible for a human creature to be; his countenance sensible, but his breath more offensive than it is possible to imagine. These defects, unrecompensed by the éclat of rank or the more essential comforts of great riches, made the situation of the poor Princess so much more commiserable; for as her youth and an excellent warm animated constitution made her, I believe, now and then remember she was a woman, so I can answer for her that natural and acquired pride seldom or never let her forget she was a Princess; and as this match gave her little hope of gratifying the one, so it afforded as little prospect of supporting the other. There is one of two inconveniences that generally attends most marriages the one is sacrificing all consideration of interest and grandeur for the sake of beauty and an agreeable person; and the other, that of sacrificing all consideration of beauty and person to interest and grandeur. This match most unfortunately conciliated the inconveniences of both these methods of marrying; however, as she apprehended the consequences of not being married at all must one time or other be worse than even the being so married, she very prudently submitted to : the the present evil to avoid a greater in futurity. "For my part (said the Queen), I never said the least word to encourage or to dissuade; as she thought the King looked upon it as a proper match, she said, if it was a monkey, she would marry him."'-vol. i. p. 274. We reach presently the ceremonial of the nuptials, from the procession to the Chapel Royal at St. James's to the solemn inspection of the bedding by the whole royal family and the lords and ladies of the household-which last custom was first honoured in the breach' at the marriage of George III. :— "The Prince of Orange was a less shocking and less ridiculous figure in this pompous procession and at supper than one could naturally have expected such an Æsop, in such trappings and such eminence, to have appeared. He had a long peruke that flowed all over his back, and hid the roundness of it; and as his countenance was not bad, there was nothing very strikingly disagreeable. But when he was undressed, and came in his nightgown and nightcap into the room to go to bed, the appearance he made was as indescribable as the astonished countenances of everybody who beheld him. From the shape of his brocaded gown, and the make of his back, he looked behind as if he had no head, and before as if he had no neck and no legs. The Queen, in speaking of the whole ceremony next morning alone with Lord Hervey, when she came to mention this part of it, said, "Ah! mon Dieu! quand je voiois entrer ce monstre pour coucher avec ma fille, j'ai pensé m'évanouir; je chancelois auparavant, mais ce coup là m'a assommée. Dites moi, my Lord Hervey, avez vous bien remarqué et considéré ce monstre dans ce moment? et n'aviez vous pas bien pitié de la pauvre Anne? Bon Dieu! c'est trop sot en moi, mais j'en pleure encore." Lord Hervey turned the discourse as fast as he was able. He only said, "Oh! Madam, in half a year all persons are alike; the figure of the body one's married to, like the prospect of the place one lives at, grows so familiar to one's eyes that one looks at it mechanically without regarding either the beauties or deformities that strike a stranger." "One may, and I believe one does (replied the Queen) grow blind at last; but you must allow, my dear Lord Hervey, there is a great difference, as long as one sees, in the manner of one's going blind." The sisters spoke much in the same style as the mother, with horror of his figure, and great commiseration of the fate of his wife.'-vol. i. pp. 310, 311. The honeymoon party being windbound for a short time at Gravesend, Hervey repairs thither, and is not a little surprised to find how completely in the course of a few days the blooming bride had let her monkey' into all the dessous des cartes of St. James's. We have here the first allusion to what was, it seems, the main cause of the hatred between Frederick Prince of Wales and Lord Hervey, namely, their rivalry, or rather their community of success, in the loves of one of the Queen's maids of honour, Miss Vane, sister of the first Lord Darlington. This nymph |