That young couple certainly began life in a prosaically business-like way. To suit the King’s convenience, one opera night was changed from Tuesdays to Mondays, because the former was ‘post-day’ and his Majesty too much engaged to attend; and the Queen would not have gone on Tuesdays without him. There was more questionable taste exhibited on other occasions. Eight thousand pounds were expended on a new state-coach, which was ‘a beautiful object crowded with improprieties.’ The mixture of palm-trees and Tritons was laughed at; the latter as not being adapted to a land-carriage; the former as being as little aquatic as the Tritons were terrestrial.
It was, perhaps, with reference to the Queen’s first supperless party that Lord Chesterfield uttered a bon mot, when an addition to the peerage was contemplated. When this was mentioned in his presence, some one remarked: ‘I suppose there will be no dukes made.’ ‘Oh, yes, there will!’ exclaimed Chesterfield, ‘there is to be one’ ‘Is? who?’ ‘Lord Talbot; he is to be created Duke Humphrey, and there is to be no table kept at court but his.’
The young nobility, who had formed great expectations of the splendour and gaiety that were to result, as they thought, from the establishment of a new court, with a young couple at the head of it, were miserably disappointed that pleasure alone was not the deity enshrined in the royal dwelling. To the Queen’s palace they gave the name of Holyrood House, intending to denote thereby that it was the mere abode of chill, gloom, and meanness. But, be this as it may, the English court was now the only court in Europe at which vice was discountenanced, and virtue set as an example and insisted on in others. With respect to the routine followed there, it certainly lacked excitement, but was hardly the worse for that. The Queen passed most of her mornings in receiving instruction from Dr. Majendie in the English tongue. She was an apt scholar, improved rapidly, and though she never spoke or wrote with elegance, yet she learned to appreciate our best authors justly, and was remarkable for the perfection of taste and manner with which she read aloud. Needle-work followed study, and exercise followed needle-work. The Queen usually rode or walked in company with the King till dinner-time; and in the evening she played on the harpsichord, or sang aloud—and this she could do almost en artiste; or she took share in a homely game of cribbage, and closed the innocently spent day with a dance. ‘And so to bed,’ as Mr. Pepys would say—without supper.
The routine was something changed when her Majesty’s brother, Prince Charles of Strelitz, became a visitor at the English court in February 1762. He was a prince short of stature, but well-made, had fine eyes and teeth, and a very persuasive way with him. So persuasive, indeed, that he at one time contrived to express from the King 30,000l. out of the civil-list revenue, to pay the debts the prince had contracted with German creditors.
In the meantime, matters of costume, as connected with court etiquette, were not considered beneath her Majesty’s notice. Her birth-day was kept on the 18th of January, to make it as distinct as possible from the King’s, kept in June, and to encourage both winter and summer fashions. For the latter anniversary a dress was instituted of ‘stiff-bodied gowns and bare shoulders;’ and invented, it was said, ‘to thin the drawing-room.’ ‘It will be warmer, I hope,’ says Walpole, in March, ‘by the King’s birth-day, or the old ladies will catch their deaths. What dreadful discoveries will be made both on fat and lean! I recommend to you the idea of Mrs. Cavendish when half stark!’ The Queen’s drawing-rooms, however, were generally crowded by the ladies; and no wonder, when seventeen English and Scotch unmarried dukes might be counted at them. The especial birthday drawing-room on the anniversary of the King’s natal day was, however, ill attended, less on the King’s account than on that of his minister, Lord Bute. Meanwhile, court was made to the Queen by civilities shown to a second brother who had come over to visit her, allured by affection and the success which had attended the elder brother. Lady Northumberland’s fête to this wandering prince was a ‘pompous festine;’ ‘not only the whole house, but the garden was illuminated, and was quite a fairy scene. Arches and pyramids of lights alternately surrounded the enclosure; a diamond necklace of lamps edged the rails and descent, with a spiral obelisk of candles on each hand; and dispersed over the lawn with little bands of kettle-drums, clarinets, fifes, &c., and the lovely moon who came without a card.’ Queen Charlotte knew how to perform a graceful action gracefully as well as any queen who ever shared the throne. Thus, Lady Bolingbroke having been trusted by the Duchess of Bedford with a superb enamelled watch to exhibit to her Majesty, the latter desired her to put it on, that she might the better judge of its ornamental effect. She was obeyed, and thereupon she made a present of it to the happy lady, remarking, that the watch looked so well upon her ‘it ought to remain by Lady Bolingbroke’s side.’
But the great event of the year was the birth of the heir-apparent. It occurred at St. James’s Palace, on the 12th of August. In previous reigns such events generally took place in the presence of many witnesses; but on the present occasion the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor alone were present in that capacity.
‘Many rejoiced,’ writes Mrs. Scott, the sister of Elizabeth Montagu, ‘but none more than those who have been detained all this hot weather in town to be present at the ceremony. Among them, no one was more impatient than the chancellor, who, not considering any part of the affair as a point of law, thought his presence very unnecessary. His lordship and the archbishop must have had a fatiguing office; for, as she was brought to bed at seven in the morning, they must have attended all night, for fear they should be absent at the critical moment. I wish they were not too much out of humour before the prince was born to be able to welcome it properly.’
The royal christening will be, however, of more interest than details of the birth of the prince. The ceremony was performed in the grand council chamber, the Archbishop of Canterbury—‘the right rev. midwife, Thomas Secker,’ as Walpole calls him—officiating. Walpole, describing the scene, on the day after, says: ‘Our next monarch was christened, last night, George Augustus Frederick. The Princess (Dowager of Wales), the Duke of Cumberland, and the Duke of Mecklenburgh, sponsors. The Queen’s bed, magnificent and, they say, in taste, was placed in the drawing-room; though she is not to see company in form, yet it looks as if they had intended people should have been there, as all who presented themselves were admitted, which were very few, for it had not been notified; I suppose to prevent too great a crowd. All I have heard named, besides those in waiting, were the Duchess of Queensberry, Lady Dalkeith, Mrs. Grenville, and about four other ladies.’
It was precisely at the period of the christening of this royal babe that the marriage of her who was to be the mother of his future wife was first publicly spoken of. In September Walpole expresses a hope to his friend Conway that the hereditary Prince of Brunswick is ‘recovering of the wound in his loins, for they say he is to marry the Princess Augusta.’ Walpole, however, would have nothing to do with the new Prince of Wales. ‘With him,’ he says, ‘I am positive never to occupy myself. I kissed the hand of his great-great-grandfather; would it not be preposterous to tap a volume of future history, of which I can never see but the first pages?’
Poor Queen Charlotte did not escape scandal. Less than twenty years after her death a M. Gailliardet published, in 1836, a memoir of the celebrated Chevalier d’Eon, founded, it is said, on family papers. In this book, the young Queen Charlotte was described, in the year 1763, as giving interviews by night to the chevalier, and the Prince of Wales, just named, was said to be their son. Many years after Gailliardet’s book had appeared a M. Jourdan published ‘Un Hermaphrodite,’ which was a wholesale plagiarism from Gailliardet. Jourdan denied this fact; when Gailliardet declared that the whole story about the Queen and the chevalier was pure fiction! Jourdan then affirmed that he had nothing to do with ‘Un Hermaphrodite,’ and had only put his name to it. In this way is calumny propagated. If we may judge from a letter written about this time, by Mrs. Scott, the Queen was not a person to attract chevaliers. The Queen’s ‘person,’ she says, ‘is not the only thing that displeases. There is a coarseness and vulgarity of manners that disgust much more. She does not seem to choose to fashion herself at all.’