less than forty, filled with an hourly account of everything he saw, heard, thought, or did, and crammed with minute trifling circumstances, not only unworthy of a man to write, but even of a woman to read, most of which I saw, and almost all of them heard reported by Sir Robert, for few were not transmitted to him by the King's own order, who used to tag paragraphs with "Montrez ceci-et consultez là-dessus le gros homme.” It was in the same correspondence that Queen Caroline, on her part, had the satisfaction of informing the King that Lady Suffolk had entered into the bonds of matrimony with the Honourable George Berkeley-a keen member of the opposition to Walpole : 'Mr. Berkeley was neither young, handsome, healthy, nor rich, which made people wonder what induced Lady Suffolk's prudence to deviate into this unaccountable piece of folly: some imagined it was to persuade the world that nothing criminal had ever passed between her and the King; others that it was to pique the King. If this was her reason, she succeeded very ill in her design, for the King, in answer to that letter from the Queen that gave him the first account of this marriage, told her, J'étois extrèmement surpris de la disposition que vous m'avez mandé que ma vieille maîtresse a fait de son corps en mariage à ce vieux goutteux George Berkeley, et je m'en rejouis fort. Je ne voudrois pas faire de tels présens à mes amis; et quand mes ennemis me volent, plut à Dieu que ce soit toujours de cette façon.” Then follows the Queen's full detail of all Lady Suffolk's previous adventures-not omitting the grand negotiation about a quieting allowance of 1200l. a-year to her first husband, and which that spirited gentleman had actually expected to be paid by the Queen herself: but no-said the Queen, I thought I had done full enough, and that it was a little too much not only to keep the King's guenipes under my roof, but to pay them too.' (vol. ii. p. 15.)-The King paid the 12007., and the blood of Howard was satisfied. We are not to suppose that Walpole never, during this period, had any alarm as to the state of his favour at head-quarters-the occasions were few-but we must give a slight specimen : 'Sir Robert Walpole was now in Norfolk (May, 1734), pushing the county election there, which the [Ministerial] Whigs lost by six or seven voices, to the great triumph of the Opposition. After the election was over he stayed some time at Houghton, solacing himself with his mistress, Miss Skerrett, while his enemies were working against him at Richmond, and persuading the King and Queen that the majority of the new Parliament would infallibly be chosen against the Court. Lord Hervey, who was every day and all day at Richmond, saw this working, and found their Majesties staggering; upon which he wrote an anonymous letter to Sir Robert with only these few words in it, quoted out of a play : • Whilst Whilst in her arms at Capua he lay, The world fell mouldering from his hand each hour. Sir Robert knew the hand, understood the meaning, and, upon the receipt of this letter, came immediately to Richmond. He told Lord Hervey that this was ever his fate, and that he never could turn his back for three days that somebody or other did not give it a slap of this kind. And how, indeed, could it ever be otherwise, for, as he was unwilling to employ anybody under him, or let anybody approach the King and Queen who had any understanding, lest they should employ it against him, so, from fear of having dangerous friends, he never had any useful ones, every one of his subalterns being as incapable of defending him as they were of attacking him, and no better able to support than to undermine him ?'—vol. i. p. 334. It is amusing to have this trace of Hervey's suspicion that the retention of himself in the household office might be connected with a private misappreciation of his talents on the part of Walpole; but he often does more justice to the great Minister's natural warmth of feeling. Thus, turn back only ten pages, and we read Sir Robert was really humane, did friendly things, and one might say of him, as Pliny said of Trajan, and as nobody could say of his master, "amicos habuit, quia amicus fuit :"- "He had friends, because he was a friend."."'—vol. i. p. 324. On another occasion (February, 1735), the Queen having signified a little surprise at Walpole's dejection of manner, Hervey informs her that there is nothing wrong in politics-it is only that Miss Skerrett is ill of a pleuritic fever : 'The Queen, who was much less concerned about his private afflictions than his ministerial difficulties, was glad to hear his embarrassment thus accounted for, and began to talk on Sir Robert's attachment to this woman, asking Lord Hervey many questions about Miss Skerrett's beauty and understanding, and his fondness and weakness towards her. She said she was very glad he had any amusement for his leisure hours, but could neither comprehend how a man could be very fond of a woman who was only attached to him for his money, nor ever imagine how any woman would suffer him as a lover from any consideration or inducement but his money. "She must be a clever gentlewoman," continued the Queen, "to have made him believe she cares for him on any other score; and to show you what fools we all are in some point or other, she has certainly told him some fine story or other of her love and her passion, and that poor man-avec ce gros corps, ces jambes enflées, et ce vilain ventre-believes her. Ah! what is human nature!" While she was saying this, she little reflected in what degree she herself possessed all the impediments and antidotes to love she had been enumerating, and that "Ah! what is human nature!" was as applicable to her own blindness as to his. However, her manner of speaking of Sir Robert on this occasion showed at least that he was not just at this time in the same rank of favour with her that he used to be.'-Ib. p. 476. It will not surprise any one to read that Sir Robert's rough and jocose bluntness now and then discomposed his royal patronSwift has not caricatured the mere manners: ess. By favour and fortune fastidiously bless'd, He was loud in his laugh, and was coarse in his jest ; Thus when on the King's return from Hanover, in October, 1735, everybody remarked the excessive irritability of his never placid temper, and those in the interior were quite aware that the cause was his separation from Madame Walmoden-Sir Robert, talking over matters with Lord Hervey, said— 'He had told the Queen she must not expect, after thirty years' acquaintance, to have the same influence that she had formerly; that three-and-fifty and three-and-twenty could no more resemble one another in their effects than in their looks; and that, if he might advise, she should no longer depend upon her person, but her head, for her influence. He added another piece of advice which I believe was as little tasted. It was to send for Lady Tankerville, a handsome, goodnatured, simple woman (to whom the King had formerly been coquet), out of the country, and place her every evening at commerce or quadrille in the King's way. He told the Queen it was impossible the King should long bear to pass his evenings with his own daughters after having tasted the sweets of passing them with other people's, and that, if the King would have somebody else, it would be better to have that somebody chosen by her than by him; that Lady Tankerville was a very safe fool, and would give the King some amusement without giving her Majesty any trouble. Lady Deloraine, who was very handsome, and the only woman that ever played with him in his daughters' apartment, Sir Robert said was a very dangerous one; a weak head, a pretty face, a lying tongue, and a false heart, making always sad work with the smallest degree of power or interest to help them forward; and that some degree of power or interest must always follow frequent opportunities given to a very coquette pretty woman with a very coquet idle man, especially without a rival to disturb or share with her. Lord Hervey asked Sir Robert how the Queen behaved upon his giving her this counsel, and was answered, that she laughed, and seemed mightily pleased with all he said. That the Queen laughed, I can easily believe; but imagine the laugh was rather a sign of her having a mind to disguise her not being pleased, than any mark that she was so; and I have the more reason to believe so, as I have been an eye-witness to the manner in which she has received ill-understood jokes of that kind from the same hand, particularly one this year at the King's birthday, when, point ing to some jewels in her hair, she said, "I think I am extremely fine too, though-alluding to the manner of putting them on-un peu à la mode; I think they have given me horns." Upon which Sir Robert Walpole burst out into a laugh, and said he believed Mrs. Purcel (the woman who usually dressed the Queen's head) was a wag. The Queen laughed on this occasion too; but, if I know anything of her countenance, without being pleased, and not without blushing. This style of joking was every way so ill understood in Sir Robert Walpole, that it was astonishing one of his extreme penetration could be guilty of it once, but much more that he could be guilty of it twice. For in the first place, when he told the Queen that the hold she used to have of the King by the charms of her person was quite lost, it was not true; it was weakened but not broken;-the charms of a younger person pulled him strongly perhaps another way, but they had not dissolved her influence, though they balanced it. In the next place, had it been true that the Queen's person could no longer charm any man, I have a notion that would be a piece of intelligence which no woman would like any man the better for giving her. It is a sort of thing which every woman is so reluctant to believe, that she may feel the effects of it long without being convinced that those effects can proceed from no other cause; and even after she is convinced of it herself, she still hopes other people have not found it out.'-vol. ii. p. 38. The fair Countess Dowager of Deloraine here mentioned made visible advances in his Majesty's good graces. She was at this time in her thirty-fifth year; but, Hervey says, looked ten years younger. She was by birth a Howard-had had adventures -some very strange ones-and is supposed to have been the 'dangerous one' meant in Pope's line many 'Slander or poison dread from Delia's rage.' She had lately remarried to a Mr. Windham, but kept her place as 'governess to the younger Princesses.' Enter again the courtly premier Sir Robert Walpole one day, whilst she was standing in the hall at Richmond, with her little son, of about a year old, in her arms, said to her "That's a very pretty boy, Lady Deloraine; whose is it?" To which her Ladyship, before half-a-dozen people, without taking the question at all ill, replied, "Mr. Windham's, upon honour ;" and then added, laughing, "but I will not promise whose the next shall be." To many people, from whom it used to come round in a whisper to half the inhabitants of the palace, she used to brag of this royal conquest, and say she thought England in general had great obligations to her, and particularly the Administration; for that it was owing to her, and her only, that the King had not gone abroad.'--vol. ii. p. 350. This was early in 1736. Madame Walmoden, however, was still the great favourite ;-for her sake, to the extreme disgust of his daughters' governess, the King revisited Hanover in the following autumn, and 'The "The ordinary and the godly people took the turn of pitying the poor Queen, and railing at his Majesty for using so good a wife, who had brought him so many fine children, so abominably ill. Some of them (and those would have fretted him most) used to talk of his age, and say, for a man at his time of day to be playing these youthful pranks, and fancying himself in love, was quite ridiculous, as well as inexcusable. Others, in very coarse terms, would ask if he must have a mistress whether England could furnish never a one good enough to serve his turn; and if he thought Parliament had given him a greater civil-list than any of his predecessors only to defray the extraordinary expenses of his travelling charges, and enrich his German favourites.'-vol. ii. p. 190. Walpole finding these recurring absences very inconvenient for business, and being still afraid of Lady Deloraine's gaining a fixed ascendant here, he and Hervey combine their efforts to persuade the Queen to press the King to bring Madame Walmoden home to England with him. It may be supposed that the Premier set about this delicate job in no very delicate manner; but he laid the blame elsewhere:: 'Sir Robert told Lord Hervey that it was those bitches Lady Pomfret and Lady Sundon, who were always bemoaning the Queen on this occasion, and making their court by saying they hoped never to see this woman brought under her Majesty's nose here, who made it so difficult to bring the Queen to do what was right and sensible for her to do. Lord Hervey replied, "You and I, Sir, are well enough acquainted with the Queen to know that when she lets a sentiment escape her which she is ashamed of, she had rather one should think it was planted in her, than that it grew there. But, believe me, the greatest obstacle in this kingdom to Madame Walmoden's coming here is the Queen's own heart, that recoils whenever her head proposes it.' However, the Queen at last complies. She writes to the King that she has had the apartments formerly tenanted by Lady Suffolk put into proper order-nay, that thinking Lady Suffolk had found the accommodation rather scanty, she has had her own library removed, which will give the new comer an additional room adjoining. The King answers-and, as Mr. Croker says, it is impossible not to wonder at the modesty, and even elegance of the expressions, and the indecency and profligacy of the sentiments they convey:' "This letter wanted no marks of kindness but those that men express to women they love; had it been written to a man, nothing could have been added to strengthen its tenderness, friendship, and affection. He extolled the Queen's merit towards him in the strongest expression of his sense of all her goodness to him and the gratitude he felt towards her. He commended her understanding, her temper, and in short left nothing |