‘About nine o’clock every night the King used to return to the Queen’s apartment from that of his daughter’s, where, from the time of Lady Suffolk’s disgrace, he used to pass those evenings he did not go to the opera or play at quadrille, constraining them, tiring himself, and talking a little indecently to Lady Deloraine, who was always of the party.
‘At his return to the Queen’s side, the Queen used often to send for Lord Hervey to entertain them till they retired, which was generally at eleven. One evening among the rest, as soon as Lord Hervey came into the room, the Queen, who was knotting, while the King walked backwards and forwards, began jocosely to attack Lord Hervey upon an answer just published to a book of his friend Bishop Hoadly’s on the Sacrament, in which the bishop was very ill-treated; but before she had uttered half what she had a mind to say, the King interrupted her, and told her she always loved talking of such nonsense, and things she knew nothing of; adding, that if it were not for such foolish people loving to talk of these things when they were written, the fools who wrote upon them would never think of publishing their nonsense, and disturbing the government with impertinent disputes that nobody of any sense ever troubled himself about. The Queen bowed, and said, “Sir, I only did it to let Lord Hervey know that his friend’s book had not met with that general approbation he had pretended.” “A pretty fellow for a friend!” said the King, turning to Lord Hervey. “Pray what is it that charms you in him? His pretty limping gait?” And then he acted the bishop’s lameness, and entered upon some unpleasant defects which it is not necessary to repeat. The stomachs of the listeners must have been strong, if they experienced no qualm at the too graphic and nasty detail. “Or is it,” continued the King, “his great honesty that charms your lordship? His asking a thing of me for one man, and when he came to have it in his own power to bestow, refusing the Queen to give it to the very man for whom he had asked it? Or do you admire his conscience, that makes him now put out a book that, till he was Bishop of Winchester, for fear his conscience might hurt his preferment, he kept locked up in his chest? Is his conscience so much improved beyond what it was when he was Bishop of Bangor, or Hereford, or Salisbury—for this book, I fear, was written so long ago—or is it that he would not risk losing a shilling a year more whilst there was anything better to be got than what he had? I cannot help saying, that if the Bishop of Winchester is your friend, you have a great puppy, and a very dull fellow, and a great rascal, for your friend. It is a very pretty thing for such scoundrels, when they are raised by favour above their deserts, to be talking and writing their stuff, to give trouble to the government which has showed them that favour; and very modest for a canting, hypocritical knave to be crying that the kingdom of Christ is not of this world at the same time that he, as Christ’s ambassador, receives 6,000l. or 7,000l. a year. But he is just the same thing in the Church that he is in the government, and as ready to receive the best pay for preaching the Bible, though he does not believe a word of it, as he is to take favour from the Crown, though, by his republican spirit and doctrine, he would be glad to abolish its power.”’
There is something melancholily suggestive in thus hearing the temporal head of a Church accusing of rank infidelity a man whom he had raised to be an overseer and bishop of souls in that very Church. If George knew that Hoadly did not believe in Scripture, he was infinitely worse than the prelate for the simple fact of his having made him a prelate, or having translated him from one diocese to another of more importance and more value. But, to resume:—
‘During the whole time the King was speaking, the Queen, by smiling and nodding in proper places, endeavoured all she could, but in vain, to make her court, by seeming to approve everything he said.’ Lord Hervey then attempted to give a pleasant turn to the conversation by remarking on prelates who were more docile towards government than Hoadly, and who, for being dull branches of episcopacy, and ignorant piecers of orthodoxy, were none the less good and quiet subjects. From the persons of the Church the vice-chamberlain got to the fabric, and then descanted to the Queen upon the newly restored bronze gates in Henry VII.’s Chapel. This excited the King’s ire anew. ‘My lord,’ said he, ‘you are always putting some of these fine things in the Queen’s head, and then I am to be plagued with a thousand plans and workmen.’ He grew sarcastic, too, on the Queen’s grotto in Richmond Gardens, which was known as Merlin’s Cave, from a statue of the great enchanter therein; and in which there was a collection of books, over which Stephen Duck, thresher, poet, and parson, had been constituted librarian. The Craftsman paper had attacked this plaything of the Queen, and her husband was delighted at the annoyance caused to her by such an attack.
The poor Queen probably thought she had succeeded in cleverly changing the topic of conversation by referring to and expressing disapproval of the expensive habit of giving vails to the servants of the house at which a person has been visiting. She remarked that she had found it no inconsiderable expense during the past summer to visit her friends even in town. ‘That is your own fault,’ growled the King; ‘for my father, when he went to people’s houses in town, never was fool enough to give away his money.’ The Queen pleaded that she only gave what her chamberlain, Lord Grantham, informed her was usual; whereupon poor Lord Grantham came in for his full share of censure. The Queen, said her consort, ‘was always asking some fool or another what she was to do, and that none but a fool would ask another fool’s advice.’
The vice-chamberlain gently hinted that liberality would be expected from a Queen on such occasions as her visits at the houses of her subjects. ‘Then let her stay at home, as I do,’ said the King. ‘You do not see me running into every puppy’s house to see his new chairs and stools.’ And then, turning to the Queen, he added: ‘Nor is it for you to be running your nose everywhere, and to be trotting about the town, to every fellow that will give you some bread and butter, like an old girl who loves to go abroad, no matter where, or whether it be proper or no.’ The Queen coloured, and knotted a good deal faster during this speech than before; whilst the tears came into her eyes, but she said not one word.
Such is the description of Lord Hervey, and it shows Caroline in a favourable light. The vice-chamberlain struck in for her, by observing that her Majesty could not see private collections of pictures without going to the owners’ houses, and honouring them by her presence. ‘Supposing,’ said the King, ‘she had a curiosity to see a tavern, would it be fit for her to satisfy it? and yet the innkeeper would be very glad to see her.’ The vice-chamberlain did not fail to see that this was a most illogical remark, and he very well observed, in reply, that, ‘if the innkeepers were used to be well received by her Majesty in her palace, he should think that the Queen’s seeing them at their own houses would give no additional scandal.’ As George found himself foiled by this observation, he felt only the more displeasure, and he gave vent to the last by bursting forth into a torrent of German, which sounded like abuse, and during the outpouring of which ‘the Queen made not one word of reply, but knotted on till she tangled her thread, then snuffed the candles that stood on the table before her, and snuffed one of them out. Upon which the King, in English, began a new dissertation upon her Majesty, and took her awkwardness for his text.’[22]
Unmoved as Caroline appeared at this degrading scene, she felt it acutely; but she did not wish that others should be aware of her feelings under such a visitation. Lord Hervey was aware of this; and when, on the following morning, she remarked that he had looked at her the evening before as if he thought she had been going to cry, the courtier protested that he had neither done the one nor thought the other, but had expressly directed his eyes on another object, lest if they met hers, the comicality of the scene should have set both of them laughing.
And such scenes were of constant occurrence. The King extracted something unpleasant from his very pleasures, just as acids may be produced from sugar. Sometimes he fell into a difficulty during the process. Thus, on one occasion, when the party were again assembled for their usual delightful evening, the Queen had mentioned the name of a person whose father, she said, was known to the King. It was at the time when his Majesty was most bitterly incensed against his eldest son. Caroline was on better terms with Frederick; but, as she remarked, they each knew the other too well to love or trust one another. Well, the King hearing father and son alluded to, observed, that ‘one very often sees fathers and sons very little alike; a wise father has very often a fool for his son. One sees a father a very brave man, and his son a scoundrel; a father very honest, and his son a great knave; a father a man of truth, and his son a great liar; in short, a father that has all sorts of good qualities, and a son who is good for nothing.’[23] The Queen and all present betrayed, by their countenances, that they comprehended the historical parallel; whereupon the King attempted, as he thought, to make it less flagrantly applicable, by running the comparison in another sense. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘the case was just the reverse, and that very disagreeable fathers had very agreeable men for their sons.’ In this case, the King, as Lord Hervey suggests, was thinking of his own father, as in the former one he had been thinking of his son.
But how he drew what was sour from the sweetest of his pleasures is shown from his remarks after having been to the theatre to see Shakspeare’s ‘Henry IV.’ He was tolerably well pleased with all the actors, save the ‘Prince of Wales.’ He had never seen, he said, so awkward a fellow and so mean a looking scoundrel in his life. Everybody, says Lord Hervey, who hated the actual Prince of Wales thought of him as the King here expressed himself of the player; ‘but all very properly pretended to understand his Majesty literally, joined in the censure, and abused the theatrical Prince of Wales for a quarter of an hour together.’