FOOTNOTES TO BOOK II, CHAPTER I:
[46] The Weekly Journal, 22nd September, 1714.
[47] Lord Berkeley of Stratton to Lord Strafford, 24th September, 1714. Wentworth Papers.
[48] Wentworth Papers.
[49] The Leiden Gazette, Hanover, 29th October, 1714.
[50] The Daily Courant, 19th October, 1714.
[51] Ibid., 12th October, 1714.
[52] Peter Wentworth to Lord Strafford, 18th October, 1714.
[53] A long and detailed account of the coronation of George I. is given in The Political State of Great Britain, vol. viii., pp. 347 et seq., from which these particulars are taken.
[54] Lady Cowper’s Diary.
CHAPTER II.
THE COURT OF THE FIRST GEORGE. 1714–1715.
Caroline’s duties as Princess of Wales began almost from the first hour of her arrival in England. The Court of George the First lacked a Queen, and all that the presence of a Queen implies. The King’s unhappy consort, Sophie Dorothea, whose grace, beauty and incomparable charm might have lent lustre to the Court of St. James’s, and whose innate refinement would have toned down some of the grossness of the early Hanoverian era, was locked up in Ahlden. Caroline had to fill her place as best she could; she laboured under obvious disadvantages, for no Princess of Wales, however beautiful and gifted, and Caroline was both, could quite take the place of Queen, and in Caroline’s case her difficulties were increased by the jealousy of the King, who viewed with suspicion every act of the Prince and Princess of Wales to win popularity as directed against himself. Caroline at first managed by tact and diplomacy to avoid the royal displeasure, and she would probably have continued to do so had it not been for the inept blundering of the Prince of Wales, who, in his efforts to gain the popular favour, was apt to overdo his part. But at first the Princess kept him in check, and gave the King no tangible excuse for manifesting his disapproval. “The Princess of Wales hath the genius,” quoth Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who hated her, “to fit her for the government of a fool,” forgetting that she was really paying a tribute to Caroline’s powers, for fools are proverbially difficult to govern, especially so vain and choleric a fool as little George Augustus.
The Princess of Wales possessed that consummate art which enabled her to govern without in the least appearing to do so, and so effectually did she hoodwink even those admitted to the inner circle of the Court, that many were disposed at first to treat her as a mere cypher, knowing that she had no influence with the King, and thinking she had none with her husband. But others, more shrewd, paid her their court, recognising her abilities, and realising that in the future she might become the dominant factor in the situation. Even now she was the first lady of the land, and whatever brilliancy George the First’s Court possessed during the first two or three years of his reign was due to her. From the beginning she was the only popular member of the royal family. Her early training at the Court of Berlin stood her in good stead at St. James’s and she was well fitted by nature to maintain the position to which she had been called. She still retained her beauty. She was more than common tall, of majestic presence; she had an exquisitely modelled neck and bust, and her hand was the delight of the sculptor. Her smile was distinguished by its sweetness and her voice rich and low. Her lofty brow, and clear, thoughtful gaze showed that she was a woman of no ordinary mould. She had the royal memory, and, what must have been a very useful attribute to her, the power of self-command; she was an adept in the art of concealing her feelings, of suiting herself to her company, and of occasionally appearing to be what she was not. Her love of art, letters and science, her lively spirits, quick apprehension of character and affability were all points in her favour. She had, too, a love of state, and appeared magnificently arrayed at Court ceremonials, evidently delighting in her exalted position and fully alive to its dignity.
The Prince and the Princess of Wales had a great advantage over the King in that they were able to speak English; not very well, it is true, but they could make their meaning plain, and understood everything that was said to them. In her immediate circle Caroline talked French, though she spoke English when occasion served. When she was excited she would pour forth a volley of polyglot sentences, in which French, English and German were commingled. The Prince and Princess of Wales loudly expressed their liking for England and things English: “I have not a drop of blood in my veins dat is not English,” exclaimed the Prince, and Lady Cowper relates how she went to dinner at Mrs. Clayton’s, and found her hostess in raptures over all the pleasant things the Prince had been saying about the English: “That he thought them the best, handsomest, the best-shaped, best-natured and lovingest people in the world, and that if anybody would make their court to him, it must be by telling him that he was like an Englishman”. And she adds, “This did not at all please the foreigners at our table. They could not contain themselves, but fell into the violentest, silliest, ill-mannered invective against the English that was ever heard.”[55] Caroline, too, was full of England’s praises, and on one occasion forcibly declared that she would “as soon live on a dunghill as return to Hanover”. All these kind expressions were duly repeated, and greatly pleased the people, and the popularity of the Prince and Princess of Wales grew daily.
Places in the household of the Princess of Wales were greatly sought, and as there was no Queen-Consort, they assumed unusual importance. Among the earliest appointments to the Princess’s household were those of the Duchesses of Bolton, St. Albans and Montagu to different positions; the Countesses of Berkeley, Dorset and Cowper as ladies of the bedchamber; and Mrs. Selwyn, Mrs. Pollexfen, Mrs. Howard and Mrs. Clayton as bedchamber women. Some of these names call for more than passing comment. The Duchess of Bolton was the natural daughter of the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth, by Eleanor, daughter of Sir Richard Needham, and all of Monmouth’s blood had good reason to hate James the Second and his descendants. The Duchess of St. Albans was an heiress in her own right, and the duchess of the Protestant Whig duke, who was a natural son of Charles the Second, by Eleanor Gwynne; he also had suffered many affronts from James the Second. The Duchess of Montagu was a daughter of the Duke of Marlborough. The Countesses of Berkeley and Dorset were both the ladies of great Whig lords. Lady Cowper was the wife of the new Lord Chancellor; she came of a good Durham family, the Claverings, and had married Lord Cowper with a suddenness and secrecy that had never been satisfactorily explained. Rumour said that as Molly Clavering her reputation had not been unblemished, and she was spoken of familiarly by the rakish part of the town. We find her denying this gossip with a vigour which tempts us to believe that there must have been something in it. But it is certain that after her marriage to Lord Cowper she was a virtuous matron of highly correct principles, and devotedly attached to her husband and children. Like her lord she had fixed her hopes upon the Hanoverian succession. She tells us how “for four years past I had kept a constant correspondence with the Princess, now my mistress. I had received many, and those the kindest letters from her,” which shows not only the interest which Caroline, while yet Electoral Princess, took in English affairs, but also the astuteness of some of the Whig ladies, who were anxious to take time by the forelock, and pay their court to the powers that might be. Very soon after the Princess’s arrival, Lady Cowper was rewarded by being given this post in her household, and for some years she stood high in Caroline’s favour. If we may believe her, she also enjoyed the favour of Bernstorff and of the King, for she tells us how she rejected Bernstorff’s addresses, and of her virtuous discouragement of the King’s overtures.
Among the Princess of Wales’s women of the bedchamber two names stand out pre-eminent, those of Mrs. Howard and Mrs. Clayton. The first came over from Hanover with her husband in the train of the Princess of Wales as a dame du palais, and Caroline further showed her complaisance to her husband’s favourite by consenting to her appointment in her household. Howard was consoled by being made a gentleman usher to the King. In England, as at Hanover, Mrs. Howard behaved with great discretion, and was exceedingly popular at Court and much liked by the other ladies of the household (except Mrs. Clayton), who, however much they might quarrel among themselves, never quarrelled with her. Mrs. Clayton, née Dyves, was a lady of obscure origin. She married Robert Clayton, a clerk of the Treasury and a manager of the Duke of Marlborough’s estates. Clayton was a dull man and his wife ruled him completely. He would never have risen in the world had not his wife been a friend and correspondent of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. The duchess, through Bothmar’s influence, procured a post in the Princess’s household for Mrs. Clayton. She became a favourite with the Princess, and gradually exercised influence over her, especially agreeing with her mistress in her views on religion. She was a woman of considerable ability, and of no ordinary share of cunning.
In addition to these ladies Caroline surrounded herself with a bevy of maids of honour, most of them still in their teens, all well born, witty and beautiful, who lent great brightness to her Court. Of these beautiful girls Mary Bellenden came first. She was the daughter of John, second Lord Bellenden, and was one of the most attractive women of her day. She was celebrated for her beauty, and especially for her wit and high spirits, which nothing could damp. She was the delight and ornament of the Court; the palm, Horace Walpole tells us, was given “above all for universal admiration to Miss Bellenden. Her face and person were charming, lively she was even to étourderie, and so agreeable that she was never afterwards mentioned by her contemporaries but as the most perfect creature they had ever seen.”
With Mary Bellenden was her sister (or cousin), Margaret Bellenden, who was only a little less lovely, but of a more pensive type of beauty. Another maid of honour was Mary Lepel, the daughter of General Lepel, and if we may believe not only courtiers like Chesterfield and Bath, but independent critics like Gay, Pope and Voltaire, she was one of the most charming of women. She was of a more stately style of beauty than Mary Bellenden, her spirits were not so irrepressible, but she had vivacity and great good sense, which, together with her rare power of pleasing, won for her the admiration of all. Chesterfield writes of her: “She has been bred all her life at Courts, of which she has acquired all the easy good breeding and politeness without the frivolousness. She has all the reading that a woman should have, and more than any woman need have; for she understands Latin perfectly well, though she wisely conceals it. No woman ever had more than she has le ton de la parfaitement bonne compagnie, les manières engageantes et le je ne sçais quoi qui plaît”.
Pretty Bridget Carteret, petite and fair, a niece of Lord Carteret, was another maid of honour. Prim, pale Margaret Meadows was the oldest of them all, and did her best to keep her younger colleagues in order. She had a difficult task with one of them, giddy Sophia Howe. This young lady was the daughter of John Howe, by Ruperta, a natural daughter of Prince Rupert, brother of the old Electress Sophia; perhaps it was this relationship which led the Princess of Wales to appoint Sophia as one of her maids of honour. She was exceedingly gay and flighty, very fond of admiration, and so sprightly that she was laughing all the time, even in church. Once the Duchess of St. Albans chid her severely for giggling in the Chapel Royal, and told her “she could not do a worse thing,” to which she saucily answered: “I beg your Grace’s pardon, I can do a great many worse things”.
In these early days the Hanoverian family were especially anxious to show their conformity to the Church of England, and the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales made a point of regularly attending the Sunday morning service at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s, attended by a numerous following. The Princess of Wales brought in her train a whole bevy of beauties, who were not so attentive to their devotions as they ought to have been, for the Chapel Royal soon became the fashionable resort of all the beaux of the town, and a great deal of ogling and smiling and tittering went on, especially during the sermon. At last Bishop Burnet complained to the Princess of the ill-behaviour of her maids of honour. He dared not complain to the King, as his Majesty was the most irreverent of all, habitually going to sleep through the sermon, or carrying on a brisk conversation in an audible voice. In justification he could have pleaded that Burnet’s prosy homilies were exceptionally long, and he did not understand a word of them. The Princess expressed her contrition to the Bishop and rebuked her ladies, but as the gallants still continued to come and to gaze, she at last consented to Burnet’s suggestion that the pew of the maids of honour should be boarded up so high that they could not see over the top. This excited great indignation on the part of the imprisoned fair and their admirers, and in revenge one of the noblemen about the Court, it was said Lord Peterborough, wrote the following lines:—
Bishop Burnet perceived that the beautiful dames
Who flocked to the Chapel of hilly St. James
On their lovers alone their kind looks did bestow,
And smiled not on him while he bellowed below.
To the Princess he went, with pious intent,
This dangerous ill to the Church to prevent.
“Oh, madam,” he said, “our religion is lost
If the ladies thus ogle the knights of the toast.
These practices, madam, my preaching disgrace:
Shall laymen enjoy the first rights of my place?
Then all may lament my condition so hard,
Who thrash in the pulpit without a reward.
Then pray condescend such disorders to end,
And to the ripe vineyard the labourers send
To build up the seats that the beauties may see
The face of no bawling pretender but me.”
The Princess by rude importunity press’d,
Though she laugh’d at his reasons, allow’d his request;
And now Britain’s nymphs in a Protestant reign
Are box’d up at prayers like the virgins of Spain.
Rhyming was the vogue in those days, and all fair ladies had poems composed in their honour. Of course King George and the Prince and Princess of Wales were not forgotten by the bards. The poet Young hailed the King on his arrival as follows:—
Welcome, great stranger, to Britannia’s Throne,
And let thy country think thee all her own.
Of thy delay how oft did we complain;
Our hope reached out and met thee on the main.
With much more in the same strain. The Prince of Wales was celebrated by Congreve in his song on the Battle of Oudenarde:—
Not so did behave young Hanover brave
On this bloody field, I assure ye;
When his war-horse was shot he valued it not,
But fought still on foot like a fury.
It was unfortunate that the Prince, on having this effusion quoted to him, asked, “And who might Mr. Congreve be?” This ignorance gives us the measure of the House of Hanover respecting everything English, for Congreve was the most celebrated dramatist of his day. Addison summoned his muse to extol the Princess of Wales. He assured her that
She was born to strengthen and grace our isle,
and speaks of her:—
With graceful ease
And native majesty is formed to please.
The Royal Family were very much in evidence at first. They were anxious, no doubt, to impress their personalities upon the English people, and they lost no opportunity of showing themselves in public. In pursuance of this policy, soon after the coronation, the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales, together with the young Princesses Anne and Amelia, went to see the Lord Mayor’s Show, attended by the great officers of state, many of the nobility and judges, and a retinue of Hanoverians, including, no doubt, though they were not specified in the official lists, Schulemburg and Kielmansegge. The royal family took up their position in a balcony over against Bow Church, with a canopy of crimson velvet above them; the Prince of Wales sat on the King’s right hand, the Princess on his left, and the two young Princesses were placed in front. The royal party and their Hanoverian suite were highly delighted with the show, which far exceeded anything of the kind they had seen before, and when it was over, the King offered to knight the owner of the house from whose balcony he had looked down upon the procession. But the worthy citizen was a Quaker, and refused the honour, much to the astonishment of his Majesty. After the procession the Sheriffs and Aldermen came to escort the royal family to the Guildhall, where a magnificent feast was prepared. The Lord Mayor, Sir William Humphreys, knelt at the entrance of the Guildhall and presented the City sword to the King, who touched it, and gave it back to his good keeping. The Lady Mayoress, arrayed in black velvet, with a train many yards long, came forward to make obeisance to the Princess of Wales. It was a moot point, and one which had occasioned much discussion between the Princess and her ladies-in-waiting, whether she should kiss the Lady Mayoress or not; but some one remembered that Queen Anne had not done so, and so the Princess determined to be guided by this recent precedent. The Lady Mayoress, however, fully expected to be saluted by the Princess, and advanced towards her with this intent, but finding the kiss withheld, she, to quote Lady Cowper, “did make the most violent bawling to her page to hold up her train before the Princess, being loath to lose the privilege of her Mayoralty. But the greatest jest was that the King and the Princess both had been told that my Lord Mayor had borrowed her for the day only, so I had much ado to convince them of the contrary, though she by marriage was a sort of relation of my Lord’s first wife. At last they did agree that if he had borrowed a wife, it would have been another sort of one than she was.”
The King soothed the Lady Mayoress’s wounded feelings by declaring that she should sit at the same table with him, and harmony being restored, the royal party proceeded to the banqueting hall, which was hung with tapestry and decked with green boughs. The Lord Mayor, on bended knee, presented to the King the first glass of wine, which, it was noted with satisfaction, his Majesty drank at one gulp, and then again asked if there was any one for him to knight. Apparently knighthoods were not in the programme, but the King showed his appreciation of the civic hospitality by making the Lord Mayor a baronet, an honour that dignitary had striven hard to obtain, for he had been zealous in suppressing Jacobite libels, and sending hawkers of ribald verses and seditious ballad singers to prison. The King was also very gracious to Sir Peter King, the Recorder, and told him to acquaint the citizens of London with “these my principles. I never forsake a friend, and I will endeavour to do justice to everybody.” When the banquet was ended there was a concert, and late in the evening the royal party departed, expressing themselves much pleased with their reception.
The Prince and Princess of Wales showed themselves continually in the West End, and in places where the quality of the town most did congregate. At first they walked in St. James’s Park every day, attended by a numerous suite, and followed by a fashionable, and would-be-fashionable, crowd. But after a time the Princess, who was as fond of outdoor exercise and fresh air as the old Electress Sophia, declared that St. James’s Park “stank of people,” and she migrated to Kensington, driving thither by coach, and then walking in the gardens. Kensington was at that time in the country, and separated from the town by Hyde Park and open fields. The palace, a favourite residence of William and Mary and Queen Anne, was the plainest and least pretending of the royal palaces, though Wren was supposed to have built the south front. But the air was reckoned very salubrious, and the grounds were the finest near London. The gardens were intersected by long straight gravel walks, and hedges of box and yew, many of them clipped and twisted into quaint shapes. Pope made fun of them, and gave an imaginary catalogue of the horticultural fashions of the day, such as: “Adam and Eve in yew, Adam a little shattered by the fall of the Tree of Knowledge in a great storm, Eve and the Serpent very flourishing”. “St. George in box, his arm scarce long enough, but will be in condition to stick the dragon by next April.” “An old Maid of Honour in wormwood.” “A topping Ben Jonson in laurel,” and so forth.
As soon as the Princess of Wales took to walking at Kensington, the gardens became a fashionable promenade. The general public was not admitted except by ticket, but persons of fashion came in great throng. The poets now began to sing of Kensington and its beauties. Tickell gives a picture of these promenades in the following lines:—
Where Kensington, high o’er the neighb’ring lands,
’Midst greens and sweets, a regal fabrick stands,
And sees each spring, luxuriant in her bowers,
A snow of blossoms and a wild of flowers,
The dames of Britain oft in crowds repair
To groves and lands and unpolluted air.
Here, while the town in damps and darkness lies,
They breathe in sunshine and see azure skies;
Each walk, with robes of various dies bespread
Seems from afar a moving tulip-bed,
Where rich brocades and glossy damasks glow,
And chintz, the rival of the showery bow.
Here England’s Daughter,[56] darling of the land,
Sometimes, surrounded with her virgin band,
Gleams through the shades. She towering o’er the rest,
Stands fairest of the fairer kind confess’d;
Form’d to gain hearts that Brunswick cause denied
And charm a people to her father’s side.
The Kensington promenades were only a small part of the busy Court life of the day. Almost every evening drawing-rooms were held at St. James’s Palace, at which were music and cards. The latter became the rage in season and out of season, and high play was the pastime of every one at Court. On one occasion at the Princess’s court the Prince was “ill of a surfeit” and obliged to keep his bed, so that the ordinary levée could not be held. But he was not to be cheated of his game, and the ladies in waiting were summoned, tables were placed, and they were all set to play at ombre with the lords of the Prince’s bedchamber. And on another occasion Lady Cowper writes of the King’s drawing-room at St. James’s: “There was such a Court I never saw in my life. My mistress and the Duchess of Montagu went halves at hazard and won six hundred pounds. Mr. Archer came in great form to offer me a place at the table, but I laughed and said he did not know me if he thought I was capable of venturing two hundred guineas at play, for none sat down to the table with less.” Deep drinking went with the high play. One George Mayo was one night turned out of the royal presence “for being drunk and saucy. He fell out with Sir James Baker, and in the fray pulled him by the nose.”
KING GEORGE I.
From the Painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller in the National Portrait Gallery.
The Court was no longer exclusive as in the days of Queen Anne, almost every one of any station came who would, and in the crowded rooms there was a good deal of pushing and hustling to get within sight of the Royal Family. The Venetian ambassadress, Madame Tron, a very lively lady, was so hustled one night that she kept crying, “Do not touch my face,” and she cried so loud that the King heard her, and turning to a courtier behind him said: “Don’t you hear the ambassadress? She offers you all the rest of her body provided you don’t touch her face.” A pleasantry truly Georgian. These crowded drawing-rooms were a great change to what St. James’s was in Queen Anne’s time, where, according to Dean Swift, who gives us an account of one of her receptions, “the Queen looked at us with a fan in her mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some one who was near her. Then she was told dinner was ready and went out.” Now every event in the Royal Family was made the pretext for further gaiety. “This day, 30th October” [1714], writes Lady Cowper, “was the Prince’s birthday; I never saw the Court so splendidly fine. The evening concluded with a ball, which the Prince and Princess began. She danced in slippers very well; the Prince better than anybody.”
The King and the Prince and Princess of Wales were very fond of the theatres. In the gazettes of the time frequent mention is made of their being present at the opera to hear Nicolina sing or witnessing a play at Drury Lane. We find the Royal Family, together with a great concourse of the nobility, at a masquerade and ball at the Haymarket,[57] which was attended by all the town, and the company was numerous rather than select. It was the pleasure of the royal personages to don mask and domino and go down from their box and mingle freely with the company. It was on this occasion, probably, that a fair Jacobite accosted the King. “Here, sirrah, a bumper to King James.” “I drink with all my heart to the health of any unfortunate prince,” said his Majesty, and emptied his glass, without disclosing his identity. Caroline said she liked to go to the play to improve her English, and her taste was very catholic, ranging from Shakespeare to the broadest farce. She rather scandalised the more sober part of her Court by witnessing a comedy called “The Wanton Wife,” which was considered both improper and immoral; it had been recommended to her by the chaste and prudish Lady Cowper, of all matrons in the world. The Duchess of Bolton often recommended plays to the King. She was very lively and free in her conversation, making many droll slips of the tongue when she talked French, either designedly or by accident. At one of the King’s parties she was telling him how much she had enjoyed the play at Drury Lane the night before; it was Colley Cibber’s “Love’s Last Shift”. The King did not understand the title, so he said, “Put it into French”. “La dernière chemise de l’amour,” she answered, quite gravely, whereat the King burst out laughing.
The Royal Family were also assiduous in honouring with their presence the entertainments of the great nobility, provided they were Whig in politics. We hear of their being at a ball at the Duchess of Somerset’s, a dinner at the Duchess of Shrewsbury’s, a supper at my Lady Bristol’s, and so on. At Lady Bristol’s the King was never in better humour, and said “a world of sprightly things”. Among the rest, the Duchess of Shrewsbury said to him: “Sir, we have a grievance against your Majesty because you will not have your portrait painted, and lo! here is your medal which will hand your effigy down to posterity with a nose as long as your arm”. “So much the better,” said the King, “c’est une tête de l’antique”. But the virtuous Lady Cowper adds: “Though I was greatly diverted, and there was a good deal of music, yet I could not avoid being uneasy at the repetition of some words in French which the Duchess of Bolton said by mistake, which convinced me that the two foreign ladies” (presumably Schulemburg and Kielmansegge) “were no better than they should be”. A good many ladies “who were no better than they should be” attended the drawing-rooms of George the First, and their conversation was very free. Old Lady Dorchester, the mistress of James the Second, came one night, and meeting the Duchess of Portsmouth, mistress of Charles the Second, and Lady Orkney, mistress of William the Third, exclaimed, “Who would have thought that we three whores should have met here!” It was certainly an interesting meeting.
The Princess of Wales was in great request as godmother at the christenings of children of the high nobility. Apparently this form of royal condescension was somewhat expensive, for there was a lively dispute among the Princess’s ladies as to the sum she ought to give the nurses at christenings. When she stood godmother to the Duchess of Ancaster’s child she and the Prince sent thirty guineas, which was thought too little, though, on inquiry into precedent, it was found that King Charles the Second never gave more on such occasions than five guineas to an esquire’s nurse, ten to a baron’s, twenty to an earl’s, and then raised five guineas for every degree in the peerage. Sometimes the Royal Family acted as sponsors to the children of humbler personages. On one occasion the King stood as godfather and the Princess of Wales as godmother to the infant daughter of Madame Darastauli, chief singer at the opera. Though they frequently attended christenings, there is not a single record in the Gazette of any of the Royal Family having honoured a wedding, or having been present at a funeral, even of the most distinguished personages in the realm. Christenings and funerals were then the great occasions in family life. If my lord died it was usual for his bereaved lady to receive her friends sitting upright in the matrimonial bed under a canopy. The widow, the bed and the bedchamber (which was lighted by a single taper) were draped with crape, and the children of the deceased, clad in the same sable garments, were ranged at the foot of the bed. The ceremony passed in solemn silence, and after sitting for a while the guests retired without having uttered a word.
The London to which Caroline came was a very different London to the vast metropolis we know to-day. Its total population could not have exceeded seven hundred thousand, and between the City of London proper and Westminster were wide spaces, planted here and there with trees, but for the most part waste lands. The City was then, as now, the heart of London, and the centre of business lay between St. Paul’s and the Exchange, while Westminster had a life apart, arising out of the Houses of Parliament. The political and fashionable life of London collected around St. James’s and the Mall. St. James’s Park was the fashionable promenade; it was lined with avenues of trees, and ornamented with a long canal and a duck-pond. St. James’s Palace was much as it is now, and old Marlborough House occupied the site of the present one, but on the site of Buckingham Palace stood Buckingham House, the seat of the powerful Duke of Buckingham, a stately mansion which the duke had built in a “little wilderness full of blackbirds and nightingales”. In St. James’s Street were the most frequented and fashionable coffee and chocolate houses, and also a few select “mug houses”. Quaint signs, elaborately painted, carved and gilded, overhung the streets, and largely took the place of numbers; houses were known as “The Blue Boar,” “The Pig and Whistle,” “The Merry Maidens,” “The Red Bodice,” and so forth.
It was easy in those days to walk out from London into the open country on all sides. Marylebone was a village, Stepney a distant hamlet, and London south of the river had hardly begun. Piccadilly was almost a rural road, lined with shady trees, and here and there broken by large houses with gardens. It terminated in Hyde Park, then a wild heath, with fields to the north and Kensington to the west. Bloomsbury, Soho and Seven Dials were fashionable districts (many old mansions in Bloomsbury are relics of the Queen Anne and early Georgian era), though the tide of fashion was already beginning to move westward. Grosvenor Square was not begun until 1716, and Mayfair was chiefly known from the six weeks’ fair which gave it its name. One feature of the London of the early Georges might well be revived in these days of crowded streets and increasing traffic. The Thames was then a fashionable waterway, and a convenient means of getting from one part of London to another. Boats and wherries on the Thames were as numerous and as fashionable as gondolas at Venice, and the King, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and many of the nobility, had their barges in the same way that they had their coaches and sedan-chairs, and often “took the air on the water”.
London, though quainter and more interesting then than now, had its drawbacks. Fogs had scarcely made their appearance, but the ill-paved streets, except for a few lamps which flickered here and there, were in darkness, and link boys were largely employed. After dark the streets were dangerous for law-abiding citizens. The “Mohocks,” who were the aristocratic prototypes of the “Hooligans” of our day, had been to some extent put down, but many wild young bloods still made it their business at night to prowl about the streets molesting peaceable citizens, insulting women and defying the Watch, who, drunken and corrupt, often played into their hands. Conveyances were difficult to procure; the old and dirty hackney coaches were few, and dear to hire. There were sedan-chairs, but they had not yet come into general use, and were the privilege of the few rather than of the many. The town must have been very noisy in those days, a babel of cries went up from itinerant musicians, ballad-singers, orange girls, flower girls, beggars, itinerant vendors, rat-catchers, chair-menders, knife-grinders and so forth. Idle and disreputable persons stood in the gutters, and shook dice boxes at the passers-by and pestered them to gamble. Drunkenness was common, and accounted for the many fights and brawls that took place in the streets.
In the fashionable world dinner was taken in the middle of the day, or from two to four o’clock, and supper was the pleasanter and more informal meal. Card parties and supper parties generally went together. There were lighter hospitalities also; and among the less wealthy many pleasant little gatherings were held in the evening around coffee and oranges. Ladies of quality passed most of their afternoons going from house to house drinking tea, which at the high prices then asked was a luxury. Men of fashion idled away many hours in the coffee and chocolate houses, of which some of the most famous were White’s Chocolate House (now the well-known club), the Cocoa Tree, also in St. James’s Street, Squire’s near Gray’s Inn Gate, Garraway’s in ’Change Alley and Lloyd’s in Lombard Street. Clubs were in their infancy when George the First was king. A few had come into being, but they were chiefly literary or political societies, such as the brief-lived Kit-Cat Club, which was devoted to the House of Hanover, and flourished in Queen Anne’s reign, or the October Club, chiefly formed of Jacobite squires. There was also the Hellfire Club, a wild association of young men, under the Duke of Wharton, which did its best to justify the name.
London lived more out of doors at the beginning of the eighteenth century than it does now; we read of fêtes in the gardens and parks, the ever popular fairs, pleasure parties on the Thames in the summer, and bonfires in the squares and on the ice in winter, and many street shows.
Any picture of social life of the period would lack colour which did not give some idea of the quaint dress of the day. Men thought as much about dress as women, and though it is impossible to follow all the vagaries of fashion as shown in the waxing and waning of wigs, the variations of cocked hats, coats, gold lace and sword hilts, yet we may note that men of fashion began to wear the full-bottomed peruke in the reign of George the First, and their ordinary attire consisted of ample-skirted coats, long and richly embroidered waistcoats, breeches, stockings, and shoes with buckles, and three-cornered hats. The beaux or “pretty fellows” of the day blazed out into silks and velvets, reds and greens, and a profusion of gold lace; they were distinguished not only by the many-coloured splendour of their attire, but by their scents of orange flower and civet, their jewelled snuff-boxes, their gold or tortoise-shell rimmed perspective glasses, and especially for their canes, which were often of amber, mounted with gold, the art of carrying which bespoke the latest mode.
The ladies, naturally, were no whit behind the men in the variety and novelty of their attire. They bedecked themselves with the brightest hues, and their hair, piled up or flowing, with head-dresses high or low, as fashion decreed, arranged in ringlets or worn plain or powdered, went through as many fluctuations as their lords’ big-wigs, periwigs and perukes. The fan played a large part in conversation and flirtation, and patches and powder were arranged with due regard to effect. Muffs were a prodigious size. It is impossible for the mere man to give a particular description of the silks, velvets, jewels, laces, ribbons and feathers which formed part of the equipment of a lady of quality, or to follow the mysteries of commodes, sacks, négligés, bedgowns and mob-caps. But the walking dresses, if we may judge from the fashion plates, seem to have left an extraordinary amount of bosom exposed, to have been very tight in the waist, and to have carried an enormous number of flounces. The hoop, which gradually developed through the Georgian era, was the most monstrous enormity that ever appeared in the world of fashion. The lady who wore a hoop really stood in a cage, and when she moved, she did not seem to walk, for her steps were not visible, but she was rather wafted along. So stepped fair ladies from their sedan-chairs, or floated down the avenues of Kensington and Hampton Court. Servants wore clothes almost as fine as their masters and mistresses, and aped their manners and their vices. All great mansions supported throngs of idle servants in gorgeous liveries, and my lady often had her negro boy, who waited on her, clad in scarlet and gold, with a silver collar around his neck.
Society in the early Georgian era, though marred by excess in eating and drinking and by coarseness in conversation, which the example of the King had made fashionable, was characterised by a spirit of robust enjoyment. Judging from the letters, journals, plays, poems and caricatures of the period, social life was exceedingly lively and varied, though too often disfigured by bitter party animosities, scurrilous personal attacks and brutal practical jokes. The tone was not high. The beaux and exquisites were given to drunkenness, vice and gambling; the belles and ladies of quality to scandal, spite and extravagance, to a degree unusual even among the rich and idle, and the marriage vow seemed generally to be held in light estimation. But we should not be too hasty in assuming that the early Georgian era was necessarily much worse than the present day. If there was more grossness there were fewer shams. Its sins were very much on the surface; it indulged in greater freedom of manners and licence of speech, and many leaders of society, from the King downwards, led lives which were notoriously immoral; but there were plenty of honest men and virtuous women in those days as now, probably more in proportion, only we do not hear so much about them as the others. In many respects life was purer, simpler and more honest than it is to-day, beliefs were more vital, and the struggle for existence far less keen.
Such was the London to which Caroline came, and such was the society which she, as the first lady in the land, might influence for good or evil. Let it be recorded that in her own life and conduct she did what she could to set a good example. She was a good wife and a good mother, no word of scandal was ever whispered against her, and in her own circle she strove to encourage the higher and intellectual life, and to purify and refine some of the grosser elements around her. More than that she could not do, for it must be remembered that the duty of moral responsibility was not greatly accounted of in the days of the early Georges.