[71] “Tales of a Grandfather.”
[72] Mahon, vol. 2, p. 203.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Summer Days.
All fear of the Pretender being dispelled, the Court turned to gaiety again, and the principal social event of the year 1746 was the marriage of the Princess Mary, the King’s second daughter, to the Prince of Hesse.
To celebrate this event there were a series of Royal entertainments, concerning one of which Horace Walpole relates a humorous incident. “A most ridiculous tumble t’other night at the Opera. They had not pegged up his,”—the Prince of Hesse’s, “box tight after the Ridotto, and down he came on all fours. George Selwyn says he carried it off with unembarrassed countenance.”
The marriage, however, proved a sad one for poor Princess Mary. She was back again in England in a year, under the excuse of having to drink the Bath waters, but really to escape from the cruelty of her husband. She was glad enough to get back to her favourite brother and sister, the Duke of Cumberland and the Princess Caroline; the former just in the full enjoyment of his new title, “the Butcher.” So common had this sobriquet become among the public, that when the Duke lost his sword one night at the opera, the people remarked: “The Butcher has lost his knife!”
However, the troubles of his newly-married daughter did not much affect the King. He was particularly annoyed about this time—1747—by a new opposition created by the Prince of Wales, which it was declared was to last until he ascended the throne. Father and son, despite their fussy reconciliation, were as far apart as ever, and the reception given by the King to the Duke of Cumberland after his bloody errand in the North, had not tended to mend matters.
Horace Walpole thus comments on the Prince’s new opposition:—
“He began it pretty handsomely the other day,” he remarks, “with one hundred and forty-three to one hundred and eighty-four, which has frightened the Ministry like a bomb. This new Party wants nothing but heads,” he continues, “though not having any, to be sure, the struggle is fairer.”
The Party was led by Lord Baltimore, “a man with a good deal of fumbled knowledge.”