But still the Prince drew around him all the rising young men of the Tory Party and many of the wits of the day.
Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, thus speaks of him at this time:—
“There is a great deal of very good company goes to Norfolk House, but if I were to advise, I would have more play, to make more people easy by sitting down, as it used to be in all the Courts, that ever I knew, either by a basset-table, or at other games, letting people of quality go halves. But they begin, to my thinking, with the same forms the late Queen did, only to leave room to entertain a few of the town ladies, and I think it don’t lessen one’s greatness, but the contrary, to make everybody, one can, easy.”
There was an incident one night at a theatre which caused the King and Queen much chagrin.
The play was “Cato,” and the Prince of Wales and his party were present; and the lines:
“When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,
The post of honour is a private station.”
The audience, noting the application, broke out into cheers for the Prince, which he suitably acknowledged and joined in the applause for the actor.
But the most exasperating incident for the King and Queen was when the Prince and Princess of Wales received their good friends the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London at Carlton House, to which mansion they went for the occasion.
The Lord Mayor and Aldermen had, very soon after the birth of the Princess, expressed a hope to the Prince that he would receive them to express their congratulations, and the Prince had characteristically replied that as soon as the Princess was well enough, he would communicate a date to them, when they could both receive them. The date eventually fixed upon was Thursday, the 22nd September, and the place Carlton House, the Duke of Norfolk’s house probably not being sufficiently large to contain such a deputation.