To this pleasant party in this pleasant resort, the Prince of Wales often came—his chief attraction being, not the wit or worth of the party, but the mere beauty of one of the party forming it. This was Miss Bellenden, who, on the other hand, saw nothing in the fair-haired and little prince that could attract her admiration. The prince was never famous for much delicacy either of expression or sentiment, but he could exhibit a species of wit in its way. He had probably been contemplating the engraving of the visit of Jupiter to the nymph Danae in a shower of gold, when he took to pouring the guineas from his purse in Miss Bellenden’s presence. He seemed to her, if we may judge by the comment she made upon his conduct, much more like a villainous little bashaw offering to purchase a Circassian slave; and on one occasion, as he went on counting the glittering coin, she exclaimed, ‘Sir, I cannot bear it; if you count your money any more I will go out of the room.’ She did even better, by marrying the man of her heart, Colonel John Campbell—a step at which the prince, when it came to his knowledge, affected to be extremely indignant; and never forgave her for an offence, which indeed was no offence and required no forgiveness. The prince, like that young Duke of Orleans who thought he would suffer in reputation if he had not a ‘favourite’ in his train, let his regard stop at Mrs. Howard, another of his wife’s bedchamber-women, who was but too happy to receive such regard, and to return it with all required attachment and service.
The Princess of Wales, during the reign of her father-in-law, maintained a brilliant court, and presided over a gay round of pleasures. In this career she gained that which she sought after—popularity. What she did from policy, her husband the prince did from taste; and the encouragement and promotion of pleasure were followed by the one as a means to an end, by the other for the sake of the pleasure itself. Every morning there was a drawing-room at the princess’s, and twice a week the same splendid reunion in her apartments, at night. This gave the fashion to a very wide circle; crowded assemblies, balls, masquerades, and ridottos became the ‘rage;’ and from the fatigues incident thereto, the votaries of fashion found relaxation in plays and operas.
Quiet people were struck by the change which had come over court circles since the days of ‘Queen Anne, who had always been decent, chaste, and formal.’ The change indeed was great, but diverse of aspect. Thus the court of pleasure at which Caroline reigned supreme was a court where decency was respected; respected, at least, as much as it well could be at a time when no superabundance of respect for decency was exhibited in any quarter. Still, there was not the intolerable grossness in the house of the prince which was to be met with in the very presence of his sire. Lord Chesterfield said of that sire that ‘he had nothing bad in him as a man,’ and yet he records of him that he had no respect for women—but some liking, it may be added, for those who had little principle and much fat. ‘He brought over with him,’ says Chesterfield, ‘two considerable samples of his bad taste and good stomach—the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Darlington; leaving at Hanover, because she happened to be a Papist, the Countess von Platen, whose weight and circumference was little inferior to theirs. These standards of his Majesty’s tastes made all those ladies who aspired to his favour, and who were near the statutable size, strain and swell themselves, like the frogs in the fable, to rival the bulk and dignity of the ox. Some succeeded and others burst.’ If the house of the son was not the abode of all the virtues, it at least was not the stye wherein wallowed his father. Upon the change of fashion, Chesterfield writes to Bubb Dodington, in 1716, the year when Caroline began to be looked up to as the arbitress of fashion:—‘As for the gay part of the town, you would find it much more flourishing than when you left it. Balls, assemblies, and masquerades have taken the place of dull, formal, visiting days, and the women are much more agreeable trifles 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, insomuch that an indifferent punster may make a very good figure in the best companies.’ The gaiety at the town residence of the prince and princess did not, however, accompany them to Richmond Lodge. There Caroline enjoyed the quiet beauties of her pretty retreat, which was, however, shared with her husband’s favourite, ‘Mrs. Howard.’
‘Leicester Fields’ was, nevertheless, not always such a bower of bliss as Walpole has described it, from hearsay. If the prince and ladies were on very pleasant terms, the princess and the ladies were sometimes at loggerheads, with as little regard for bienséance as if they had been very vulgar people; indeed, they often were exceedingly vulgar people themselves.
It was with Lord Chesterfield that Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea was most frequently at very disgraceful issue. Lord Chesterfield was one of the prince’s court, and he was possessed of an uncontrollable inclination to turn the princess into ridicule. Of course she was made acquainted with this propensity of the refined Chesterfield by some amiable friend, who had the regard which friends, with less judgment than what they call amiability, generally have for one’s failings.
Caroline, perhaps half afraid of the peer, whom she held to be a more annoying joker than a genuine wit, took a middle course by way of correcting Chesterfield. It was not the course which a woman of dignity and refinement would have adopted; but it must be remembered that, at the period in question, the princess was anxious to keep as many friends around her husband as she could muster. She consequently told Lord Chesterfield, half in jest and half in earnest, that he had better not provoke her, for though he had a wittier, he had not so bitter a tongue as she had, and any outlay of his wit, at her cost, she was determined to pay, in her way, with an exorbitant addition of interest upon the debt he made her incur.
The noble lord had, among the other qualifications of the fine gentleman of the period, an alacrity in lying. He would gravely assure the princess that her royal highness was in error; that he could never presume to mimic her; and thereupon he would only watch for a turn of her head to find an opportunity for repeating the offence which he had protested could not possibly be laid to his charge.
Caroline was correct in asserting that she had a bitter tongue. It was under control, indeed; but when she gave it unrestricted freedom, its eloquence was not well savoured. Indeed her mind was far less refined than has been generally imagined. Many circumstances might be cited in proof of this assertion; but perhaps none is more satisfactory, or conclusive rather, than the fact that she was the correspondent of the Duchess of Orleans, whose gross epistles can be patiently read only by grossly inclined persons; but which, nevertheless, tell so much that is really worth knowing that students of history read, blush, and are delighted.
The Prince of Wales, dissatisfied with his residences, entered into negotiations for the purchase of Buckingham House. That mansion was then occupied by the Dowager-duchess of Buckingham, she whose mother was Catherine Sedley, and whose father was James II. She was the mad duchess, who always went into mourning and shut up Buckingham House on the anniversary of the death of her grandfather, Charles I. The duchess thus writes of the negotiation, in a letter to Mrs. Howard:—
‘If their royal highnesses will have everything stand as it is, furniture and pictures, I will have 3,000l. per annum. Both run hazard of being spoiled; and the last, to be sure, will be all to be new bought, whenever my son is of age. The quantity the rooms take cannot be well furnished under 10,000l. But if their highnesses will permit all the pictures to be removed, and buy the furniture as it will be valued by different people, the house shall go at 2,000l. If the prince or princess prefer much the buying outright, under 60,000l. it will not be parted with as it now stands; and all his Majesty’s revenue cannot purchase a place so fit for them, nor for less a sum. The princess asked me at the drawing-room if I would not sell my fine house. I answered her, smiling, that I was under no necessity to part with it; yet, when what I thought was the value of it should be offered, perhaps my prudence might overcome my inclination.’