Had the prince been sincere in his expressions when addressing either of his parents by letter after the delivery of his wife, it is not impossible but that a reconciliation might have followed. His studied disrespect towards the Queen was, however, too strongly marked to allow of this conclusion to the quarrel. He invariably omitted to speak of her as ‘your Majesty;’ Madam, and you, were the simple and familiar terms employed by him. Indeed, he more than once told her that he considered that the Prince of Wales took precedence of the Queen-consort; at which Caroline would contemptuously laugh, and assure her ‘dear Fritz’ that he need not press the point, for even if she were to die, the King could not marry him!
It was for mere annoyance’ sake that he declared, at the end of August, after the christening of his daughter, that she should not be called the ‘Princess Augusta,’ but the ‘Lady Augusta,’ according to the old English fashion. At the same time he declared that she should be styled ‘Your Royal Highness,’ although such style had never been used towards his own sisters before their father’s accession to the crown.
It will hardly be thought necessary to go through the documentary history of what passed between the Sovereigns and their son before he was finally ejected from St. James’s Palace. Wrong as he was in his quarrel, ‘Fritz’ kept a better temper, though with as bitter a spirit as his parents. On the 13th of September, the day before that fixed on for the prince’s departure, ‘the Queen, at breakfast, every now and then repeated, I hope in God I shall never see him again; and the King, among many other paternal douceurs in his valediction to his son, said: Thank God! to-morrow night the puppy will be out of my house.’ The Queen thought her son would rather like, than otherwise, to be made a martyr of; but it was represented to her, that however much it might have suited him to be made one politically, there was more disgrace to him personally in the present expulsion than he would like to digest. The King maintained that his son had not sense of his own to find this out; and that as he listened only to boobies, fools, and madmen, he was not likely to have his case truly represented to him. And then the King ran through the list of his son’s household; and Lord Carnarvon was set down as being as coxcombical and irate a fool as his master; Lord Townshend, for a proud, surly booby; Lord North, as a poor creature; Lord Baltimore, as a trimmer; and ‘Johnny Lumley’ (the brother of Lord Scarborough), as, if nothing else, at least ‘a stuttering puppy.’ Such, it is said, were the followers of a prince, of whom his royal mother remarked, that he was ‘a mean fool’ and ‘a poor-spirited beast.’
While this dissension was at its hottest, the Queen fell ill of the gout. She was so unwell, so weary of being in bed, and so desirous of chatting with Lord Hervey, that she now for the first time broke through the court etiquette, which would not admit a man, save the Sovereign, into the royal bed-chamber. The noble lord was with her there during the whole day of each day that her confinement lasted. She was too old, she said, to have the honour of being talked of for it; and so, to suit her humour, the old ceremony was dispensed with. Lord Hervey sate by her bed-side, gossiped the live-long day; and on one occasion, when the Prince of Wales sent Lord North with a message of enquiry after her health, he amused the Queen by turning the message into very slipshod verse, the point of which is at once obscure and ill-natured, but which seems to imply that the prince would have been well content had the gout, instead of being in her foot, attacked her stomach.
The prince had been guilty of no such indecency as this; but there was no lack of provocation to make him commit himself. When he was turned out of St. James’s, he was not permitted to take with him a single article of furniture. The royal excuse was, that the furniture had been purchased, on the prince’s marriage, at the King’s cost, and was his Majesty’s property. It was suggested that sheets ought not to be considered as furniture; and that the prince and princess could not be expected to carry away their dirty linen in baskets. ‘Why not?’ asked the King; ‘it is good enough for them!’
Such were the petty circumstances with which Caroline and her consort troubled themselves at the period in question. They at once hurt their own dignity and made their son look ridiculous. The great partisan of the latter (Lord Baltimore) did not rescue his master from ridicule by comparing his conduct to that of the heroic Charles XII. of Sweden. But the comparison was one to be expected from a man whom the King had declared to be, in a great degree, a booby, and, in a trifling degree, mad.
As soon as the prince had established himself at Kew, he was waited on by Lord Carteret, Sir William Wyndham, and Mr. Pulteney. The King could not conceal his anger under an affected contempt of these persons or of their master. He endeavoured to satisfy himself by abusing the latter, and by remarking that ‘they would soon be tired of the puppy, who was, moreover, a scoundrel and a fool; and who would talk more fiddle-faddle to them in a day than any old woman talks in a week.’
The prince continued to address letters both to the King and Queen, full of affected concern, expressed in rather impertinent phrases. The princess addressed others, in which she sought to justify her husband’s conduct; but as in all these notes there was a studied disrespect of Caroline, the King would neither consent to grant an audience to the offenders, nor would the Queen interfere to induce him to relent.
The Queen, indeed, did not scruple to visit with her displeasure all those courtiers who showed themselves inclined to bring about a reconciliation; and yet she manifested some leaning towards Lord Carteret, the chief agent of her son. This disposition alarmed Walpole, who took upon himself to remind her that her minister could serve her purpose better than her son’s, and that it was of the utmost importance that she should conquer in this strife. ‘Is your son to be bought?’ said Walpole. ‘If you will buy him, I will get him cheaper than Carteret.’ Caroline answered only with ‘a flood of grace, good words, favour, and professions’ of having full confidence in her own minister—that is, Walpole himself—who had served her so long and so faithfully.
A trait of Caroline’s character may here be mentioned, as indicative of how she could help to build up her own reputation for shrewdness by using the materials of others. Sir Robert Walpole, in conversation with Lord Hervey, gave him some account of an interview he had had with the Queen. The last-named gentleman believed all the great minister had told him, because the Queen herself had, in speaking of the subject to Lord Hervey, used the precise terms now employed by Walpole. The subject was the lukewarmness of some of the noblemen about court to serve the King: the expression used was—‘People who keep hounds must not hang every one that runs a little slower than the rest, provided, in the main, they will go with the pack; one must not expect them all to run just alike and to be equally good.’ Hervey told Walpole of the use made by the Queen of this phrase, and Sir Robert naturally enough remarked, ‘He was always glad when he heard she repeated as her own any notion he had endeavoured to infuse, because it was a sign what he had laboured had taken place.’