‘Perhaps,’ answered Lord Hervey, ‘he may be about Philipsburg as David was about the child, who, whilst it was sick, fasted, lay upon the earth, and covered himself with ashes, but the moment it was dead, got up, shaved his beard, and drank wine.’ ‘It may be like David,’ said the princess royal, ‘but I am sure it is not like Solomon.’
It was hardly the time for Solomons. Lord Chancellor King was a man of the people, who, by talent, integrity, and perseverance, rose to the highest rank to which a lawyer can work his way. He lost his popularity almost as soon as he acquired the seals, and these he was ultimately compelled, from growing imbecility of mind, to resign. He was the most dilatory in rendering judgments of all our chancellors, and would never willingly have decided a question, for fear he should decide it incorrectly. This characteristic, joined to the fact of his having published a history of the Apostles’ Creed, extorted from Caroline the smart saying, that ‘He was just in the law what he had formerly been in the Gospel, making creeds upon the one without any steady belief, and judgments in the other without any settled opinion. But the misfortune for the public is,’ said Caroline, ‘that though they could reject his silly creeds, they are forced often to submit to his silly judgments.’
The court private life of the sovereigns at this time was as dull as can well be imagined. There were two persons who shared in this life, and who were very miserably paid for their trouble. These were the Count de Roncy and his sister. They were French Protestants, who, for conscience’ sake, had surrendered their all in France and taken refuge in England. The count was created Earl of Lifford in Ireland. His sister, Lady Charlotte de Roncy, was governess to the younger children of George II. Every night in the country, and thrice a week when the King and Queen were in town, this couple passed an hour or two with the King and Queen before they retired to bed. During this time ‘the King walked about, and talked to the brother of armies, or to the sister of genealogies, while the Queen knotted and yawned, till from yawning she came to nodding, and from nodding to snoring.’[14]
This amiable pair, who had lived in England during four reigns, were in fact hard-worked, ill-paid court-drudges; too ill-paid, even, to appear decently clad; an especial reproach upon Caroline, as the lady was the governess of her children. But they were not harder worked, in one respect, than Caroline herself, who passed seven or eight hours tête-à-tête with the King every day, ‘generally saying what she did not think,’ says Lord Hervey, ‘and forced, like a spider, to spin out of her own bowels all the conversation with which the fly was taken.’ The King could bear neither reading nor being read to. But, for the sake of power, though it is not to be supposed that affection had not some part in influencing Caroline to undergo such heavy trial, she endured that willingly, and indeed much more than that.
At all events, she had some respect for her husband; but she despised the son, who, in spite of her opinion of the natural goodness of his heart, was mean and mendacious. The prince, moreover, was weaker of understanding and more obstinate of temper than his father. The latter hated him, and because of that hatred, his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, was promoted to public employment. His sisters betrayed him. Had Caroline not had a contempt for him, she would have influenced the King to a very different line of conduct.
It was said of Frederick, that, from his German education, he was more of a German than an Englishman. But the bias alluded to was not stronger in him than it was in his mother.
Caroline was so much more of a German than of an Englishwoman, that when the interests of Germany were concerned she was always ready to sacrifice the interests of England. Her daughter Anne would have had Europe deluged in blood for the mere sake of increasing her own and her husband’s importance. In a general war she thought he would come to the surface. Caroline was disinclined to go to war for the empire only because she feared that, in the end, there might be war in England, with the English crown for the stake.
There was at this time in London a dull and proud imperial envoy, named Count Kiuski. He was haughty and impertinent in his manner of demanding succour, as his master was in requiring it, from the Dutch. Caroline rallied him on this one day, as he was riding by the side of her carriage at a stag-hunt. She used a very homely and not a very nice illustration to show the absurdity of losing an end by foolishly neglecting the proper means. ‘If a handkerchief lay before me,’ said she, ‘and I felt I had a dirty nose, my good Count Kiuski, do you think I should beckon the handkerchief to come to me, or stoop to take it up?’[15]
Political matters were not neglected at these hunting-parties. Lord Hervey, ‘her child, her pupil, and her charge,’ who constantly rode by the side of her carriage, on a hunter which she had given him, and which could not have been of much use to him if he never quitted the side of his mistress, used to discuss politics while others followed the stag. The Queen, who was fourteen years older than he, used to say, ‘It is well I am so old, or I should be talked of because of this creature!’ And indeed the intercourse was constant and familiar. He was always with her when she took breakfast, which she usually did alone, and was her chief friend and companion when the King was absent. Such familiarity gave him considerable freedom, which the Queen jokingly called impertinence, and said that he indulged in that and in contradicting her because he knew that she could not live without him.
It was at a hunting-party that Lord Hervey endeavoured to convince her that for England to go to war for the purpose of serving the empire would be a disastrous course to take. He could not convince her in a long conversation, and thereupon, the chase being over, he sat down and penned a political pamphlet, which he called a letter, which was ‘as long as a “President’s Message,” and which he forwarded to the Queen.’ If Caroline was not to be persuaded by it, she at least thought none the worse of the writer, who had spared no argument to support the cause in which he boldly pleaded.