CHAPTER IX.
ROYALTY UNDER VARIOUS PHASES.
Bishop Watson a partisan of the Prince—The bishop’s reception by the Queen—The Prince’s patronage of the bishop—Bishop Watson’s views on the Regency—Laid on the shelf—The Prince and the bishop’s ‘Apology’—Ball given on the King’s recovery by Brookes’s Club; Mrs. Siddons, as Britannia—The Queen’s Drawing-room on the occasion—Mrs. Siddons’s readings at Buckingham House—Gay life of the Duke of York—Popularity of the Duke of Clarence—His boundless hospitality at the Admiralty—Duel between the Duke of York and Colonel Lennox—Littleness of spirit of the Princes—Royal visit to Lulworth Castle—Assault on the King—Caricatures of the day—Marriage of the Duke of York—Ceremonious royal visit to the young couple—Caricatures of the Duchess of York—Unhappy in her marriage—The Duchess and Monk Lewis—Alleged avarice of the King and Queen—Dr. Johnson’s opinion of the King—Etiquette at Court—The Sailor Prince ‘too far gone’ for a minuet—The Royal family at Cheltenham—The mayor and the master of the ceremonies—Questionable taste of the Queen in regard to the drama—Moral degradation of England during the reign of the first two Georges—Mrs. Hannah More’s ideas on morality; and Rev. Sydney Smith’s witty remark on it—A delicate hint by the Queen to Lady Charlotte Campbell—The Prince’s pecuniary difficulties—The Prince and affairs of the heart—Mésalliance of the Duke of Sussex.
Among the few bishops who took the ‘unrestricted’ side on the Regency Bill, Bishop Watson of Llandaff was the most active. No doubt his activity was founded on conscientiousness, for many able men of the period were to be found who were by no means violent partisans, yet who were ready to maintain that, according to the constitutional law, the right of exercising the power of regent in the case of incapacity on the part of the reigning sovereign rested in the next heir, the Prince of Wales. There is as little doubt as to the Queen’s having looked with considerable disfavour on all who held such sentiments. Among those who did was this Bishop of Llandaff. If Queen Charlotte felt towards the prelate as Queen Caroline used to do towards those who stood between her and her wishes, the fault, if fault there were, was not attributable to her, but to the minister. He, right or wrong—and most persons who knew what the conduct of the elder son of Charlotte was will agree that he was at least morally right—he, the minister, represented to her that all who supported the Prince and opposed the ministerial measure which gave great power to the Queen were enemies of the sovereign. Charlotte believed this, and perhaps the Whig bishop is not wrong who says that the Queen lost, in the opinion of many, the character she had hitherto maintained in this country by falling in with the designs of the minister. These many were, however, only the Whigs. It is nevertheless unfortunately true that the Queen distinguished by different degrees of courtesy on the one hand, and by meditated affronts on the other, those who had voted with and those who had voted against the ministers, ‘inasmuch,’ says Bishop Watson, ‘that the Duke of Northumberland one day said to me, “So, my lord, you and I also are become traitors.”’
At the drawing-room held on the King’s recovery the Queen received Bishop Watson with a degree of coldness which, he says, ‘would have appeared to herself ridiculous and ill-placed could she have imagined how little a mind such as mine regarded in its honourable proceedings the displeasure of a woman, though that woman happened to be a Queen.’ But it must not be forgotten that if the Queen had, as it were, two faces for the two parties into which society at Court was divided, her eldest son exhibited the same characteristic, and he was accordingly eminently cordial with the prelate of Llandaff. When, at the drawing-room above-named, the Queen looked displeased as the bishop stood before her, the Prince of Wales, who was standing by her side, immediately asked him to come and dine with him. A more unseemly proceeding cannot well be imagined. ‘On my making some objection,’ says the bishop, ‘to dining at Carlton House, the Prince turned to Sir Thomas Dundas and asked him to give us a dinner at his house on the following Saturday.’ The party was arranged, the guests met, and, while they were waiting for dinner, the Prince took the bishop by the button-hole, and, says the prelate, ‘he explained to me the principle on which he had acted during the whole of the King’s illness, and spoke to me with an afflicted feeling of the manner in which the Queen had treated himself. I must do him the justice to say that he spoke, in this conference, in as sensible a manner as could possibly have been expected from an heir-apparent to the throne and from a son of the best principles towards both his parents.’
The especial words ‘in this conference’ would seem to imply that the son of Charlotte did not always speak in so sensible a manner as could have been expected from a royal heir-apparent. It would have been as well, too, if the bishop had told his readers what the principle was on which the Prince had grounded his conduct throughout the King’s illness. When he simply talks of the Prince as a son imbued with the best principles towards both his parents, he would have done well if he had added whether he was considering that son politically or morally. It must have been politically, for the right reverend prelate did not impress upon his younger friend that a mother’s faults should be invisible to the eyes of her children; but, on the other hand, he rather emphatically charged her with ill-humour by advising the Prince ‘to persevere in dutifully bearing with his mother’s ill-humour till time and her own good sense should disentangle her from the web which ministerial cunning had thrown around her.’ Now to persevere in a line of conduct is to continue in that already entered upon, and the line followed by the Prince was one of continual insult and provocation against the Queen. The bishop confesses an inclination to think well of her. ‘I was willing,’ he writes, ‘to attribute her conduct during the agitation of the regency question to her apprehensions of the King’s safety, to the misrepresentations of the King’s minister, to anything rather than a fondness for power.’ There is something inexpressibly ingenuous in the paragraph which follows:—‘Before we rose from table at Sir Thomas Dundas’s, where the Duke of York and a large company were assembled, the conversation turning on parties, I happened to say I was sick of parties, and should retire from all public concerns. “No,” said the Prince, “and mind who it is that tells you so, you shall never retire—a man of your talents shall never be lost to the public.”’ This testimony of himself was recorded by the bishop in 1814, and was published by his son in the Queen’s lifetime in 1817. Like the passage touching the Queen, it gave offence to the principal person concerned in it. The aged Queen was not pleased to have her ‘ill-humour’ registered before the world, nor was her son flattered by the innuendo which was conveyed in the paragraph which chronicled his promise of conferring preferment on the Bishop of Llandaff. Dr. Watson died prelate of that small diocese.
The clergy of the diocese of Llandaff presented congratulatory addresses to both their Majesties upon the King’s recovery. Those addresses were written by Bishop Watson; and in that which he presented to Queen Charlotte he inserted a paragraph which he avows, in his memoirs, that he knew would be disagreeable to her. The address in question, after expressing that the sympathy of every family had been extended to the Queen in her late distress, complimenting her on the sincerity of her piety, the amiableness and purity of her manners as Queen, wife, and mother, and referring, in laudatory terms to the concern which she had exhibited for the Monarch during his late unhappy situation, thus proceeds:—‘We observed in the deliberations of Parliament a great diversity of opinions as to the constitutional mode of protecting the rights of the Sovereign during the continuance of his indisposition; but we observed no diversity whatever as to the necessity of protecting them in the most effectual manner. This circumstance cannot fail of giving solid satisfaction to your Majesty; for, next to the consolation of believing that in his recovery he has been the especial object of God’s mercy, must be that of knowing that during his illness he was the peculiar object of his people’s love; that he rules over a free, a great, and an enlightened nation, not more by the laws of the land than by the wishes of the people.’
Upon this text of his own constructing, the bishop makes the following comment in his ‘Autobiography’:—‘The first part of this last paragraph I knew would be disagreeable to the Queen, as it contradicted the principle she wished to be generally believed, and the truth of which alone could justify her conduct—that the opposition to the minister was an opposition to the King. Now, as there was not a word of disaffection to the King in any of the debates in either House of Parliament during the transaction of the regency, and as I verily believe the hearts of the Opposition were as warm with the King, and warmer with the constitution, than those of their competitors, I thought fit to say what was, in my judgment, the plain truth.’ The bishop, however, loses sight of the fact that Queen, ministers, and a great majority of the people desired a restricted regency, in order that the rights of the Sovereign should suffer nothing, in case of recovery; and that Queen, ministers, and a great majority of the people felt that the Prince of Wales had no divine right to the regency, but had by his public and private conduct shown that he was entirely unworthy of holding any powers but under constitutional limitation.
Previous to the King’s recovery, the Bishop of Llandaff had expressed himself as having been miserably neglected by Mr. Pitt, and ‘I feel the indignity as I ought.’ The bishop declares that he was overlooked, for want of political pliancy. However, we have seen that, in the allegedly offended Queen’s presence, the Prince of Wales ostentatiously patronised the prelate, and subsequently made a post-prandial promise touching preferment, which he never fulfilled. The bishop strongly suspected that the Queen stood in his way. In 1805, the Duke of Grafton wrote to him, to give him early intimation that the Archbishop of Canterbury was not expected to live; but ‘I had no expectation of an archbishopric,’ says Dr. Watson, ‘for the Duke of Clarence had once said to me, (speaking in conversation no doubt the language of the court), ‘they will never make you an archbishop; they are afraid of you.’ In the following year, the bishopric of St. Asaph became vacant, and Dr. Watson applied for it to Lord Grenville, stating that it ‘would be peculiarly acceptable to himself.’ ‘It was given to the Bishop of Bangor; and the bishopric of Bangor was given to the Bishop of Oxford.’ Hereupon, the diocesan of Llandaff, suspecting that the Queen’s influence was exercised against him over the King, addressed a letter to the Duke of Clarence, begging him to lay the same, which contained a statement of the writer’s wishes, before the Prince of Wales, whom the bishop ‘most earnestly entreated to take some opportunity of doing him justice with the King.’ Years, however, passed on; and, in 1810, we find the right reverend prelate expressing himself in doubt ‘whether it is by her or by his Majesty that I am laid on the shelf.’ In fact, he was by far worse treated at the hands of the Prince of Wales, whose cause he had supported against Queen, ministers, and a great majority of the people, than he ever was by the Queen herself. The Prince had intimated that such a champion should not go without his reward; and that the Prince would not forget the prelate. His Highness did, however, completely forget the right reverend father. We do him wrong: he remembered him on one occasion. On the 3rd of May 1812 there was a dinner party at Carlton House. At these parties it was no uncommon thing for the Regent to tell stories which sent the Queen’s fan up to her face, with a remonstrating ‘George! George!’ to induce him to have some respect for decency. On the occasion in question, however, the conversation turned on immorality and irreligion. Mr. Tyrrwhitt thereupon told a story how he had been in society with a Sussex baronet, who gave utterance to such profligate and atheistic opinions that Mr. Tyrrwhitt was obliged to leave the room, after recommending the blasphemer and libertine to look into Bishop Watson’s ‘Apology’ for that Bible which the baronet so scoffed at. At the royal table ‘the baronet’s answer was produced and read, expressive of the greatest thankfulness for having had it put into his hands, as it not only had decided and clearly proved the error and fallacy of every opinion he had before entertained, but had afforded him a degree of secret comfort and tranquillity that his mind had previously been a stranger to.’ The Regent thereupon bethought himself of his old friend of Llandaff, and ordered Mr. Braddyll to communicate to him the highly gratifying anecdote. Dr. Watson returned his best thanks for ‘this instance of a Prince’s remembrance of a retired bishop;’ and therewith ended the patronage of the Regent, which was not more profitable to the prelate than the alleged opposition or indifference of the Queen.
The Prince’s party were somewhat ashamed, it would seem, at what had taken place in connection with White’s Club ball; and the Club at Brookes’s resolved to render themselves blameless in the eyes of the Queen, who was supposed to be more indignant than her consort at the measures of their elder sons and their followers. The club at Brookes’s hired the Opera-house, and gave a festival to the ladies, consisting of a concert, recitations, a ball, and a supper. At this festival Mrs. Siddons was engaged to appear as Britannia, and recite some silly verses, by silly Merry, in which laudation of the King was qualified by political instructions to the people. ‘Long may he rule a willing land!’ was declaimed by the actress with solemn and melodious dignity; and this line was followed by the hint to the people that ‘Oh, for ever may that land be free!’ A long roll of ‘infinite deal of nothings’ followed, in which scant courtesy was paid to the Queen; and Mrs. Siddons, having got to the end of her ‘lines,’ astonished the spectators by an exhibition of the ‘pose plastique,’ assuming the ‘exact attitude of Britannia, as impressed upon our copper coin.’
Having noticed what took place at the King’s drawing-room, omission must not be made of the Queen’s, held by her in March, especially to receive congratulations upon the happy recovery of her consort. More than usual splendour did honour to the occasion. The Queen sat on a chair of state, under a canopy, and surrounded by the great officers of her household. Eye-witnesses declare that the blaze of diamonds which covered her Majesty was something more than the ordinary glory. Around the Queen’s neck, too, was a double row of gold chain, supporting a medallion. ‘Across her shoulders was another chain of pearls, in three rows; but the portrait of the King was suspended from five rows of diamonds, fastened loose upon the dress behind, and streaming over the person with the most gorgeous effect. The tippet was of fine lace, fastened with the letter G, in brilliants of immense value. In front of her Majesty’s hair, in letters formed of diamonds, were easily legible the words, “God save the King.” The Princesses were splendidly, but not equally, adorned. The female nobility wore emblematical designs, beautifully painted on the satin of their caps, and fancy teemed with the inventions of loyalty and joy. At half-an-hour after six o’clock, her Majesty quitted the drawing-room for duties still more interesting.’