Some dawning beauty blooms in every grace.
Some Caroline, to Heaven’s dictates true,
Who, while the sceptred rivals vainly sue,
Thy inborn worth with conscious eyes shall see,
And slight th’ imperial diadem for thee.
Of the princess herself, he says more truly, that she—
with graceful ease
And native majesty is form’d to please.
And he adds, that the stage, growing refined, will draw its finished heroines from her, who was herself known to be ‘skill’d in the labours of the deathless muse.’ In short, Parnassus was made to echo with eulogies of or epigrams upon this royal lady. George I., for years together, never addressed a word to the Prince of Wales, but the princess would compel him, as Count Broglie, the French ambassador writes, to answer the remarks which she addressed to him when she encountered him ‘in public.’ ‘But even then,’ says the count, ‘he only speaks to her on these occasions for the sake of decorum.’ She-devil was the appellation commonly employed by the amiable King to designate his high-spirited daughter-in-law.
The Prince and Princess of Wales, on withdrawing from St. James’s, established their court in ‘Leicester Fields.’ Of this court, Walpole draws a pleasant picture. It must have been a far livelier locality than that of the King, whose ministers were the older Whig politicians. ‘The most promising,’ says Walpole, ‘of the young lords and gentlemen of that party, and the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new court of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The apartment of the bedchamber-women in waiting became the fashionable evening rendezvous of the most distinguished wits and beauties: Lord Chesterfield, Lord Stanhope, Lord Scarborough, Carr (Lord Hervey), elder brother of the more known John Lord Hervey, and reckoned to have superior parts; General (at that time only Colonel) Charles Churchill, and others, not necessary to mention, were constant attendants; Miss Lepell, afterwards Lady Hervey, my mother, Lady Walpole, Mrs. Selwyn, mother of the famous George, and herself of much vivacity, and pretty; Mrs. Howard, and, above all, for universal admiration, Miss Bellenden, one of the maids of honour. Her face and person were charming; lively she was almost to étourderie; and so agreeable she was, that I never heard her mentioned afterwards by one of her contemporaries who did not prefer her as the most perfect creature they ever knew.’