Gog and Magog have never looked down on so glorious a scene and so splendid a banquet as enlivened Guildhall, at which the Queen and her consort were royally entertained, at a cost approaching 8000l. Both Sovereigns united in remarking that ‘for elegance of entertainment the city beat the court end of the town.’ A foreign minister present described it as a banquet such only as one king could give another. And it was precisely so. The King of the City exhibited his boundless hospitality to the King of England. The majesty of the people had the chief magistrate for a guest.
The majesty of the people, however, if we may credit the Earl of Albemarle, the author of the ‘Memoir of the Marquis of Rockingham and his Contemporaries,’ was by no means so civil to the royal guests as the occasion warranted.
On the 9th of November, George III., who had been married only two months, went in state with his youthful Queen, to dine with the Lord Mayor. It was their Majesties’ first visit to the city. Mr. Pitt, yielding to Lord Temple’s persuasions, and, as he afterwards declared, ‘against his better judgment,’ went with him in his carriage, and joined the procession. Pitt, the ‘great commoner,’ the terrible ‘Cornet of Horse,’ hated and dreaded by Sir Robert Walpole, had only just resigned office, because he could not get his colleagues to agree with him in an aggressive policy against Spain, to be at war with which power was then a passion with the people. For this reason Pitt was their idol and the court party their abomination. Hence, the result of Pitt’s joining the procession might partly have been anticipated. The royal bride and bridegroom were received by the populace with indifference, and Pitt’s late colleague with cries of ‘No Newcastle salmon!’ As for Lord Bute, he was everywhere assailed with hisses and execrations, and would probably have been torn in pieces by the mob, but for the interference of a band of butchers and prize-fighters, whom he had armed as a body-guard. All the enthusiasm of the populace was centred in Mr. Pitt, who was ‘honoured[45] with the most hearty acclamations of people of all ranks; and so great was the feeling in his favour, that the mob clung about every part of the vehicle, hung upon the wheels, hugged his footman, and even kissed his horses.’
The royal bride must have been astonished, and the bridegroom was indignant at what, a few days after the banquet, he called ‘the abominable conduct of Mr. Pitt.’ The court members of parliament were directed to be personally offensive to him in the house, and all the fashionable ladies in town went to see the noble animal baited.
The year of pageants ended with matters of money. Parliament settled on Queen Charlotte 40,000l. per annum, to enable her the better to support the royal dignity; with a dowry of 100,000l. per annum, and Richmond Old Park and Somerset House annexed, in case she should survive his Majesty. On the 2nd of December the King went in state to the House to give the royal assent to the bill. The Queen accompanied him; and when the royal assent had been given, her Majesty rose from her seat and curtsied to him the grateful acknowledgments which were really due to the representatives of the people who gave the money.
Somerset House was but an indifferent town residence for either Queen or queen-dowager, and the King showed his taste and gratified Queen Charlotte when, in lieu of the above-named residence, he purchased for her that red-brick mansion which stood on the site of the present Buckingham Palace, and was then known as ‘Buckingham House.’ It was subsequently called the ‘Queen’s House.’ The King bought it of Sir Charles Sheffield for 21,000l., and settled it on his consort by an act of parliament obtained some years afterwards. Therein were all the children born, with the exception of their eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, who was born at St. James’s Palace; who demolished the old house in 1825, and erected on its site one of the ugliest palaces by which the sight was ever offended. Queen Victoria has had some difficulty to make it a comfortable residence; to render it beautiful was out of the power even of her Majesty’s architect, Mr. Blore. The edifice of his predecessor, Nash, defied all his efforts.
In Queen Charlotte’s time Mr. Wyatt erected a grand staircase. West’s pictures soon filled the great gallery, and that artist at least would not complain, as so many others did, that the Queen and King were mean patrons of art, seeing that the latter, to gratify his consort, paid West no less than 40,000l. for his labours. The principal of these pictures are now at Hampton Court. The ‘Regulus’ brought West a very liberal pension. The dining-room was adorned with pictures by Zucchero, Vandyke, Lely, Zoffani, Mytens, and Houseman. The Queen’s house, although intended as a simple asylum for its royal owners from the oppressive gorgeousness and ceremony of St. James’s, did not lack a splendour of its own. The crimson drawing-room, the second drawing-room, and the blue-velvet room, were magnificent apartments, adapted for the most showy of royal pageants, and adorned with valuable pictures. Queen Charlotte had hardly been installed in this her own ‘House,’ when her husband commenced the formation of that invaluable library which her son, on demolishing her house, made over to the nation, and is now in the British Museum.
The son just alluded to was George IV. Under the pretence of being about to repair Buckingham House, he applied to the Commons to afford the necessary supplies. These were granted under the special stipulation that repairs (and not rebuilding) were intended. The King and his architect, Nash, however, went on demolishing and reconstructing until the fine old mansion disappeared, and a hideous palace took its place, at a tremendous cost to the public. Neither of the children of Charlotte who lived to ascend the throne resided in this palace. The old building was the property of a queen-consort, the new one was first occupied by a Queen-regnant, the daughter of Charlotte’s third son, Edward. The first great event in Queen Charlotte’s life, after she became mistress of Buckingham House, was her becoming the mother of him who destroyed it—George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales.
In 1762 Horace Walpole says: ‘The King and Queen are settled for good and all at Buckingham House, and are stripping the other palaces to furnish it. In short, they have already fetched pictures from Hampton Court, which indicates their never living there; consequently Strawberry Hill will remain in possession of its own tranquillity, and not become a cheese-cake house to the palace. All I ask,’ says the cynic in lace ruffles, ‘all I ask of princes is not to live within five miles of me.’ Even thus early in the reign, the King’s health gave rise to some disquietude. ‘The King,’ writes Walpole to Mann, ‘had one of the last of those strong and universally epidemic colds, which, however, have seldom been fatal. He had a violent cough, and oppression on his breast, which he concealed, just as I had; but my life was of no consequence, and having no physicians in ordinary, I was cured in four nights by James’s powder, without bleeding. The King was blooded seven times and had three blisters. Thank God, he is safe, and we have escaped a confusion beyond what was ever known on the accession of the Queen of Scots. Nay, we have not even a successor born. Fazakerly, who has lived long enough to remember nothing but the nonsense of the law, maintained, according to its wise tenets, that, as the King never dies, the Duke of York must have been proclaimed King; and then be unproclaimed again on the Queen’s delivery. We have not even any standing law for the regency; but I need not paint you all the difficulties there would have been in our situation.’
The difficulty was overcome; the King recovered, the royal couple lived quietly, and when they were disposed to be gay and in company, they already exhibited a spirit of economy which may illustrate the saying, that any virtue carried to excess becomes a vice. On the 26th of November the Queen and the King saw ‘a few friends’; the invitations only included half a dozen strangers, and the entire company consisted of not more than twelve or thirteen couple. The six strangers were Lady Caroline Russell, Lady Jane Stewart, Lord Suffolk, Lord Northampton, Lord Mandeville, and Lord Grey. Besides these were the court habitués, namely the Duchess of Ancaster and her Grace of Hamilton, who accompanied the Queen on her first arrival. These ladies danced little: but on the other hand, Lady Effingham and Lady Egremont danced much. Then there were the six maids of honour, Lady Bolingbroke—who could not dance because she was in black gloves, and Lady Susan Stewart in attendance upon ‘Lady Augusta.’ The latter was that eldest daughter of Frederick, Prince of Wales, at whose birth there had been such a commotion, and who was commonly called the Lady Augusta, in obedience to her father’s wishes, who was fond of this old-fashioned English style of naming our princesses. The noblemen in waiting were Lords March, Eglintoun, Cantilupe, and Huntingdon. There were ‘no sitters-by,’ except the King’s mother, the Duchess of Bedford, and Lady Bute. At this select party, which commenced between half-past six and seven, the King danced the whole time with the Queen; and the Lady Augusta, future mother of the next Queen of England, with her four younger brothers. The dancing went on uninterruptedly till one in the morning: the hungry guests separated without supper; and so ended the young couple’s first and not very hilarious party.