The letters of Queen Charlotte to her ‘dear friend’ are on small subjects, expressed in a small way, and terminating with a mixture of condescension and dignity, with good wishes from ‘your affectionate Queen.’
Mrs. Delany speaks in her own letters with well-warranted praise of one circumstance which marked the routine of royal life at Windsor. Every morning throughout the year, at eight o’clock, the Queen, leaning on the King’s arm, led her family procession to the Chapel Royal, for the purpose of attending early morning prayer. One of the most pleasing features in the Queen’s routine of daily life was to be found in this exemplary practice of hers. The Queen never forced any one to follow her example; she left it to the consciences of all. She was independent, too, in her opinions, and though she joined fervently with the King in the prayer, ‘Give peace in our time, O Lord!’ and acknowledged (with more truth than the stereotyped expression itself would seem to convey—so illogical is it with its impertinent ‘because’) that none other fought for us but God alone, yet would she not remain silent, as the King invariably did, when the Athanasian Creed was being repeated. That awful and overwhelming judicatory denunciation at the close shocked the mind of the monarch whose own penal laws, however, were the most sanguinary in Europe. The Queen, as is the case with most ladies in church matters, had less mercy, and she heartily joined in the sentence which so stringently winds up the creed which, after all, was not written by Athanasius.
When the Rev. Tom Twining heard that the celebrated Miss Burney was about to be dresser and reader to the Queen, he exclaimed, ‘What a fine opportunity you will have of studying the philosophy of human capacity in the highest sphere of life!’ ‘Goodness me! madam!’ he exclaims, admiringly; ‘are you to take care of the robes yourself?’ Miss Burney hardly knew what she would have to do or what her opportunities might be, but she was not long in acquiring the knowledge in question.
Indeed, she picked up much acquaintance with court routine on the first day of her arrival at the Queen’s lodge. She found a royal mistress who was extremely anxious to calm the fluttering agitation of her new attendant, and who received her, if not as a friend, yet in no respect as a servant. Gracious as was the reception, the young lady was not sorry to escape to the dinner-table of the ladies and gentlemen in waiting. How graphically does she describe the German officer there who was in waiting on the Queen’s brother, Prince Charles of Mecklenburgh: ‘He could never finish a speech he had begun, if a new dish made its appearance, without stopping to feast his eyes upon it, exclaim something in German, and suck the inside of his mouth; but all so openly, and with such perfect good-humour, that it was diverting without being distasteful.’ The old ceremonious forms had not yet become quite extinct at court. Men did not kneel on serving the Queen, but they never sat down in her presence. How they contrived to dine comfortably at the royal table defies conjecture, if the following paragraph is to be taken literally: ‘I find it has always belonged to Mrs. Swellenburgh and Mrs. Haggerdorn to receive at tea whatever company the King or Queen invite to the lodge, as it is only a very select few that can eat with their Majesties, and those few are only ladies; no man, of what rank soever, being permitted to sit in the Queen’s presence.’ The royal table must then have been the dullest in the palace; and no wonder it is that bishops, peers, officers, and gentlemen enjoyed themselves so thoroughly, in less dignity and more comfort, with the maids of honour and ladies of less official greatness.
Nothing was, indeed, more homely and hearty than the promenades made by the illustrious couple, their children all about them, on the terrace, of an evening, or when they assembled in the concert-room, where ‘nothing was played but Handel.’ The time was a transition time; feudality was growing faint, and the best of kings were losing their prestige of infallibility. Still there was much of ceremony both at bed and board; that of the latter has been already mentioned. That at bed-time was not so cumbersome as the ceremony observed at the coucher of Marie Antoinette, but it was still of a high and ponderous, yet affectionate, formality. The Queen was handed into her dressing-room by the King, followed by the Princess Royal and the Princess Augusta. The King, on leaving the room, kissed his daughters, who in their turn ceremoniously kissed their royal mother’s hand, and bade her ‘good-night.’ This done, the Queen placed herself in the hands of her ‘women,’ who, in as brief a time as was consistent with the dignity of her whom they tended, fitted the royal lady for repose. The Queen paid, with a formal curtsey, every sign of respect, by whomsoever offered her, as she passed along.
It is said that Burnet introduced the fashion of high-partitioned pews in the Chapel Royal to prevent the flirting that was constantly going on between the officers and maids of honour. Upon some plea for decorum, rather than because of offence, Queen Charlotte had appointed separate tables for the ladies and gentlemen in waiting; but as she did not forbid them to invite each other, or, as was very often the case with the gentlemen, to invite themselves, the division of tables was only nominally maintained.
The Queen’s ‘dressing,’ deprived as it was of some of the ceremonies of an olden time, was nevertheless not without its formality. Her new ‘dresser,’ Miss Burney, was not always in time, disliked at first, but wisely got over her dislike, being summoned by a bell, and was so nervous as to mar her services. No maid was permitted to remain in the apartment during the time the Queen was ‘tiring.’ One lady dresser handed to the other the portions of dress required. ‘’Tis fortunate for me,’ says Miss Burney, ‘I have not the handing of them. I should never know which to take first, embarrassed as I am, and should run a prodigious risk of giving the gown before the hoop, and the fan before the neck-kerchief.’
The actual ‘dressing for the day’ took place at one o’clock, and included the then elaborate matter of powdering. Till the hair-dresser was admitted for the completion of this last matter, the Queen, while being dressed, read the newspapers; but when the powderer came she dismissed the attendants, who had previously covered her up in a peignoir, and was then left alone with the artist, who must have looked very ridiculous in casting, as the Queen must have looked in receiving, the impenetrable clouds of powder which he continued to fling at and about the royal head. But there was another sort of powder patronised by the Queen—the mother of George IV. condescended to take snuff. In the admixture and scent of this she was curiously learned; and Miss Burney filled her boxes and damped the contents when they had got too dry, to her great satisfaction.
There is a fashion in country-towns observed by ladies who go out in chairs to parties, consisting in their carrying with them some portion of their dress, to be adjusted at the locality where they are about to spend the evening. This fashion, too, is a relic of the days of Queen Charlotte. ‘On court days,’ says Miss Burney, ‘the Queen dresses her head at Kew, and puts on her drawing-room apparel at St. James’s. Her new attendant dresses all at Kew, except tippet and long ruffles, which she carries in paper to save from dusty roads.’ It was the etiquette at St. James’s that the finishing of the Queen’s dressing there should be the work of the bedchamber-woman. It consisted of little more than tying the necklace, handing the fan and gloves, and bearing the Queen’s train as she left the room. This she did alone, only as far as the anteroom; there the lady of the bedchamber became the ‘first trainbearer,’ and the poor Queen had two annoyances to put up with instead of one.
From the cumbrous ceremonies of St. James’s the Queen was glad enough to escape to Kew. At the latter place, indeed, ceremony, as far as the royal family was concerned, was left outside the gates. The sovereigns were thoroughly ‘at home,’ and the Queen enjoyed a ‘country life,’ not as Marie Antoinette did, a dairymaid in diamonds, at Trianon, but as a simple English country lady. The foreigners who visited the court at this time were disgusted by the republican look which it wore. It was simple and plain enough, at Kew that is, to have pleased even Franklin. The King was really there what he was popularly called everywhere, ‘Farmer George;’ the Queen was his true dame, the plainest of the plain things around her. The children—that is, the younger portion of them—were as unaffected as their parents, and the little Princess Amelia was the fairy of the place, if one may speak of a fairy in connection with farming. However grave the King might look, through pressure of public events, the little hand of the Princess Amelia, placed by the Queen in his, always touched his heart, and a look into the child’s eyes ever brought a smile into his own. Never daughter more closely nestled in a father’s heart than Amelia did in that of George III. The Queen loved, but the King adored her. At Kew, father and child appeared more unrestrained in the hearty demonstrations of their love than elsewhere. Indeed, everything at Kew was free and unrestrained; and it was no offence there if any of the attendants did pass a room the door of which was open and somebody royal within. In France, they who desired to enter an apartment in which the Queen was, scratched, but never knocked, at the door. In England, at least in Queen Charlotte’s time, the etiquette was also not to knock at, but to shake the handle of, the door. Another ceremony was observed in order to avoid ceremony. When royal birthdays occurred during the Queen’s stay at Windsor the family walked on the terrace, which was crowded with people of distinction, who took that mode of showing respect, to avoid the trouble and fatigue of attending at the following drawing-room. Here is a scene on the birthday of the Princess Amelia, drawn by one who was present:—