It should be added, that the intelligence no sooner reached the ears of the Queen than she commanded the attendance of her son, and insisted on knowing the whole truth. The Prince is declared not only to have acknowledged the fact of the marriage, but to have asserted that no power on earth should separate him from his wife. He is reported to have added, in reference to the King’s alleged marriage with Hannah Lightfoot, that his father would have been a happier man had he remained firm in standing by the legality of his own marriage. It would be difficult to say who was at hand to take down the Prince’s speech on this occasion; but, according to the author last named, it was substantially as follows:—‘But I beg farther that my wife be received at court, and proportionately as your Majesty receives her, and pays her attention from this time, so shall I render my attentions to your Majesty. The lady I have married is worthy of all homage, and my very confidential friends, with some of my wife’s relations only, witnessed our marriage. Have you not always taught me to consider myself heir to the first sovereignty in the world? Where then will exist any risk of obtaining a ready concurrence from the House in my marriage? I hope, madam, a few hours’ reflection will satisfy you that I have done my duty in following the impulse of my inclinations, and, therefore, I await your Majesty’s commands, feeling assured you would not blast the happiness of your favourite prince.’ The Queen is said to have been softened by his rather illogical reasoning. It is certain that her Majesty received Mrs. Fitzherbert at a drawing-room in the following year with very marked courtesy.
Sixteen years later, and of course long after the marriage of the Prince of Wales with Caroline of Brunswick, Mrs. Fitzherbert was still so high in the Prince’s favour that we find the following record in Lord Malmesbury’s Diary, under the date of May 25, 1803:—‘Duke of York came to me at five, uneasy lest the Duchess should be forced to sup at the same table as Mrs. Fitzherbert, at the ball to be given by the Knights of the Bath, on the 1st of June. Talks it over with me—says the King and Queen will not hear of it. On the other side, he wishes to keep on terms with the Prince. I say, I will see Lord Henley, who manages the fête, and try to manage it so that there shall be two distinct tables, one for the Prince, to which he is to invite, another for the Duke and Duchess, to which she is to invite her company.’ The dislike of Mrs. Fitzherbert for the Duchess of York was as determined as that entertained by the same lady against Fox, whom she never forgave for denying the fact of her marriage with the Prince.
The Prince’s pecuniary embarrassments pressed more heavily upon him than the troubles arising from his amours. The Prince, in his difficulties, again had recourse to the Queen. He revealed to her the amount of both his difficulties and debts, and reports credited him with having uttered a menace to the effect that, if the King failed to provide some means for the payment of those debts, there were State secrets which he would certainly reveal, whatever the consequences might be, as, suffering as he did from the treatment he met at his father’s hands, he was an object of suspicion or contempt to half the kingdom. The Queen would not engage herself by any promise, but she sent for Mr. Pitt. After this last interview the minister repaired to Carlton House, and the message he bore showed the amount of influence possessed by the Queen. The Prince was assured that means would be found for the discharge of his liabilities. The King promised an additional 10,000l. a year out of the civil list, and Parliament subsequently voted the sum of 161,000l. to discharge the debts of the Prince, with an additional sum of 20,000l. to finish the repairs of Carlton Palace. That mansion had been dull and silent, but it was soon again brilliant, and gaily echoing with the most festive of sounds.
CHAPTER VI.
COURT FORMS AND COURT FREEDOMS.
Loss of the American Colonies—Political Struggle—The King’s health unsatisfactory—Life of the Royal Family at Windsor—Mrs. Delany—The Queen and the Widow—Early service in the Chapel Royal at Windsor—Rev. Tom Twining and Miss Burney—Miss Burney’s Reception by the Queen—Promenade of the Royal Family on the terrace—The Queen’s ‘dressing’—The Queen’s partiality for Snuff—Country life of the Royal Family at Kew—Princess Amelia; the King’s great affection for her—Scene on the birthday of the Princess—Margaret Nicholson’s attempt to assassinate the King—The Queen’s dread—Her fondness for Diamonds—Mrs. Warren Hastings—The present from the Nizam of the Deccan—Unpopularity of the King and Queen—Their affection for each other—The Queen’s tenderness to Mrs. Delany—Reconciliation of the King and the Prince—A pleasant scene—Another Court Incident.
The loss of the American Colonies, and the triumph of Lord North and Fox, two men whom the King hated, and who forced an Administration upon him, had, in various degrees, a serious effect upon his health. He became dejected, but when Fox’s India Bill was thrown out by the Lords he had the firmness—a firmness suggested by the Queen—to turn the obnoxious Cabinet out. Pitt succeeded as prime minister, and no one saw him in that post with greater pleasure than Charlotte.
She continued to support both King and Minister through the tremendous political struggle which followed, and during which Pitt more than once expressed his determination to resign. ‘In such case I must resign too,’ said the King, adding that he would sooner retire with the Queen to Hanover than submit to a ministry whose political principles he detested. The public admired his firmness, and for a season he was again popular—popular, but not safe. His health was in an unsatisfactory state; and it was at a season when he required to be kept in a state of composure that an attempt was made to stab him by an insane woman named Nicholson, as he was leaving St. James’s Palace by the garden entrance, on the 2nd of August, 1786. As he received a paper which she presented, the woman stabbed at him, but with no worse result than piercing his waistcoat.
Before we show how the news of this attempt was received at Windsor, where the Queen was then sojourning, we may glance briefly at the nature of the life passed there. It was generally of a pleasing aspect.
The benevolence of the Queen and her consort was well illustrated in their conduct to Mrs. Delany. The lady in question was a Granville by birth, and in the first flush of her youth and beauty had been married, against her inclination, to a middle-aged squire, named Pendarves, who was much like what middle-aged squires were in those not very refined days. Mr. and Mrs. Pendarves passed much such a life as that described by the young Widow Cheerly as having been that of herself and the squire, her lord; and the lady, too, became a widow almost as early. She was, however, of mature age when she married her old and esteemed acquaintance, Dr. Delany, the friend of Swift. After being a second time a widow, she found a home with the Dowager-duchess of Portland, and when death deprived her of this friend also she found a new home and new friends in Queen Charlotte and King George. They assigned to her a house in Windsor Park, in the fitting-up of which both Queen and King took great personal interest, and the former settled upon her an annuity of 300l. When the good old lady went down to take possession of her new habitation the King was there ready to receive her, like a son establishing a mother in a new home. His courtesy was felt, and it was of the right sort, for while it brought him there to welcome the new guest, it would not allow him to stay there to embarrass her. With similar delicacy, when the Queen came down to visit her new neighbour, she put her at once at her ease by her own affability; and when, before leaving, she placed in Mrs. Delany’s hands the paper signed by the King, and authorising her to draw her first half-year of her little revenue, it was done with a grace which prevented the object of it from feeling that she was reduced to the condition of a pensioner.
These parties remained, as long as Mrs. Delany lived, on terms of as much equality as could exist between persons so different in rank. In Mrs. Delany’s little parlour the Queen would frequently take tea. It was a social banquet in which she delighted; and years afterwards, in her old age, she was as fond of going down to Datchet to take tea with Lord James Murray (afterwards Lord Glenlyon, grandfather of the present Duke of Athol) as she was at this early period of enjoying the same ‘dish’ with the fine old ‘gentlewoman’ who was her most grateful pensioner. Queen and widow corresponded with each other, lived as ladies in the country who esteem each other are accustomed to live; and when the doctor’s relict had not what was to her, good old soul, the supreme bliss of entertaining the Queen, she enjoyed the inexpressible felicity of receiving at tea the young princes and princesses. A riotous, romping, good-natured group these made; and many a sore headache they must have inflicted on the aged lady, who was too loyal to be anything but proud of such an infliction incurred in such a cause.