[153]. “Sunday, January 9.... There was hung in the apartment one portrait, amongst others, that very much resembled the Duke of D. I asked Miss Knight whom it represented; she said that was not known; it had been supposed a likeness of the Pretender when young.”—Lady C. Campbell’s Diary, vol. i.
[154]. There is evidently some confusion of dates in this narrative. It was on the 14th December that the grand City banquet was given at the London Tavern in honour of the hereditary Prince of Orange—the Duke of Clarence in the chair. According to Lord Colchester (Diary), the young Prince did not arrive from Spain before the 11th of December.
[155]. Purposely erased in the original journal.
[156]. “The frost was ushered in by a fog which, for its intensity and duration, has seldom been equalled. This began about five in the evening of Monday, December 27th.... The Prince Regent, intending to pay a visit to the Marquis of Salisbury at Hatfield House, was obliged to return back to Carlton House, after one of his out-riders had fallen into a ditch on this side of Kentish Town, and which short excursion occupied several hours. Mr. Croker, of the Admiralty, also wishing to proceed on a visit northward, wandered in the dark several hours without making more than three or four miles’ progress.... There is nothing in the memory of man to equal the late fall of snow, which, after several shorter intervals, continued incessantly for forty-eight hours, and this, too, after the ground was covered with a condensation, the result of nearly four weeks’ continued frost. Almost the whole of the time the wind blew continually from the north and north-east, and was intensely cold.”—Universal Magazine, January, 1814.
The thaw did not commence until the 6th of February, 1814, and a fair was held on the Thames for several weeks. “Paths were formed,” says the Universal Magazine for March, “both direct and diagonal from shore to shore; and frequent cautions were given to those heroines whose curiosity induced them to venture on the glassy plane, to be careful not to slip off the kerb. The votaries of Terpsichore amused themselves with the mazy dance, in which they were accompanied principally by Pandean pipes, while others diverted themselves with skittles; and the well-known cry of ‘Up and win ’em’ resounded from the voices of numerous vendors of savoury pies, gin, and gingerbread, &c. Most of the booths were distinguished by appropriate signs; there were the Watermen’s Arms, the Crown, the Magpye, the Eelpot, &c.; and one wag had a notice appended to his tent that several feet adjoining his premises were to be let on a building lease.”
[157]. The Morning Chronicle of January 6th gives the following account of the christening at Belvoir:
“The baptismal ceremony of the infant Marquis (who, to use the phrase of a nurse, ‘is as fine a little fellow of four months old as ever was seen’) took place at six o’clock in the evening (4th January, 1814). The sponsors were—
H.R.H. the Prince Regent - in person,
H.R.H. the Duke of York - in person,
Her Grace the Duchess-Dowager of Rutland, proxy for H.M. the Queen.