* If he received royal gifts, he was also princely in his
acknowledgments. According to Hearne (Dohle, 1889, iii.
329), he paid twenty guineas for Joshua Barnes's quarto
'Homer' of 1711, and fifteen guineas for Wiston's
'Heretical Book.' he also paid thirty guineas for Samuel
Clarke's edition of 'Caesar's Commentaries (Tonson, 1712),'
then just published with a magnificent portrait of
Marlborough, to whom it was dedicated. A large paper copy of
this, sumptuously bound, fetched sixteen guineas at Dr.
Mead's sale of 1754-5; but though it is praised by Addison
in 'Spectator,' No. 367, as doing 'Honour to the English
Press,' Eugene certainly gave too much. Probably he meant to
do so. 'Je fis des présens,' he says ('Mémoires,' 1811, p.
107); 'ear'—he adds significantly—'on achète beaucoup en
Angleterre.'
After this Leicester House continued to be the home of the German Resident, apparently one Hoffmann, whom Swift calls a 'puppy.' But he had also called his predecessor, Count Gallas, a 'fool,' and too much importance may easily be attached to these flowers of faction. 'Scandal between Whig and Tory goes for nothing,' said Mrs. Manley of the 'New Atalantis'—and Mrs. Manley's knowledge was experimental. About 1718, the house, being again to let, was bought for £6,000 by George Augustus, Prince of Wales, who had quarrelled with his father; and a residence of the Prince of Wales it continued for forty years to come.
This was perhaps the gayest time in its history. From the precision and decorum of St. James's, people flocked eagerly to the drawing-rooms and receptions of Leicester House, where the fiddles were always going. 'Balls, assemblies and masquerades have taken the place of dull formal visiting,' writes my Lord Chesterfield, 'and the women are more agreeable triflers than they were designed. Puns are extremely in vogue, and the license very great. The variation of three or four letters in a word breaks no squares, inasmuch, that an indifferent punster may make a very good figure in the best companies.' He himself was one of the most brilliant luminaries of that brilliant gathering, delighting the Prince and Princess by his mimicry and his caustic raillery. Another was that eccentric Duchess of Buckingham, who passed for the daughter of James II. by Catherine Sed-ley, Countess of Dorchester, and who always sat in a darkened chamber, in the deepest mourning, on the anniversary of King Charles's execution. Thus she was discovered by Lord Hervey, surrounded by servants in sables, in a room hung with black, and lighted only by wax candles. But the most attractive figures of the prince's Court are the youthful maids of honour,—charming, good-humoured Mary Bellenden, Mary Lepel (to whom a later paper of these 'Vignettes' has been devoted), * and reckless and volatile Sophia Howe. Pope and Gay wrote them verses,—these laughing ladies,—and they are often under contemporary pens.
* See 'Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey,' in 'Eighteenth Century
Vignettes,' 1806, pp. 293-323.
Miss Bellenden married Colonel John Campbell, and became a happy wife; the 'beautiful Molly Lepel' paired off with John, Lord Hervey, whose pen-portrait by Pope exhausts the arts of 'conscientious malevolence,' while poor Sophia Howe fell in love, but did not marry at all, and died in 1726 of a broken heart.
When, in June, 1727, George II. passed from Leicester House to the throne of England, another Prince of Wales succeeded him,—though not immediately,—and maintained the traditions of an opposition Court. This was Frederick, Prince of Wales. Bubb Dodington, afterwards Lord Melcombe, was the Chesterfield of this new régime, and Miss Chudleigh and Lady Middlesex, its Bellenden and Lepel. Political intrigue alternated with gambling and theatricals. One of the habitués was the dancing master Desnoyers, whom Hogarth ridiculed; and French comedians made holiday. 'The town,' says a historian of the Square, 'was at this time full of gaiety—masquerades, ridottos, Ranelagh in full swing, and the Prince a prominent figure at all, for he loved all sorts of diversion, from the gipsies at Norwood, the conjurors and fortune-tellers in the bye-streets about Leicester Fields, and the bull-baits at Hockley-in-the-Hole, to Amorevoli at the Opera, and the Faussans in the ballet. When the news came of the Duke of Cumberland having lost the battle of Fontenoy in May, 1745, the Prince was deep in preparation for a performance at Leicester House of Congreve's masque of "The Judgment of Paris," in which he played Paris. He himself wrote a French song for the part, addressed to the three rival goddesses, acted by Lady Catherine Hanmer, Lady Fauconberg, and Lady Middlesex, the dame régnante of the time. It is in the high Regency vein:—
'Venez, mes chères Déesses,
Venez, calmez mon chagrin;
Aidez, mes belles Princesses,
A le noyer dans le vin.