To sum up this topic so interesting to the softer sex, ladies at that time wore just as many furs and feathers, silks and satins, jewels and fine laces, as they do at the present day, and the craving after them, the debts incurred in their procuring, wrought them, possibly, quite as much harm, and were the cause, no doubt, of just as many broken marriage vows.
The world is very much the same at all times, except that now and then we take on a little extra enamel, which we call civilization, to hide our natural barbarism for a time, as the Greeks and the Romans and the Egyptians before them did—these latter even to having their hollow teeth gold-crowned as we do—until some upheaval from within, or a crushing blow from without, breaks the thin crust, and leaves us just the natural savages we were at first.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] From the “Old Whig” newspaper 26 Feb., 1736. This inscription was afterwards introduced by Hogarth in his caricature of Gin Lane. Wilkins.
CHAPTER VII.
Peter Wentworth’s Letters on the Prince’s Life.
Floating in and out of English history of this period are the letters of a person who apparently was furnished by Providence to write tittle-tattle of his times for the information of posterity. These are the letters of the Honourable Peter Wentworth, mostly addressed to his brother, Lord Strafford, but others to his sister-in-law, Lady Strafford. To these we have to look for the first little insights into the Prince’s life in England.
Through the insistence of the Privy Council, not of the King’s own freewill, Frederick had been created Prince of Wales soon after his arrival in England, but the King had made no provision for him, although £100,000 per annum of the King’s income—he received no less than £900,000 a year from the country—had been earmarked for the Prince’s use, subject to his father’s pleasure. He preferred to keep him in the Palace like his other younger children, and under very much the same restrictions. The young Prince of Wales appears at this time to have had a good friend in his mother, even if she had forgotten her natural love for him. It was she who urged the King to provide a separate establishment for him becoming his rank, even going as far as to look at a house for him in George Street, Hanover Square, but her solicitations produced no effect whatever upon the King, who would not make him any sufficient allowance. So Frederick, though over twenty-two, and Prince of Wales, had to remain at his mother’s apron strings.
He appears, however, at this time to have lived on very pleasant terms with the Queen, and to have steadily grown in the public favour. He had learned English in Hanover, and spoke it fairly well on his arrival in this country.
In a letter dated July 28th, 1729—a few months after the Prince’s coming—written by Mr. Peter Wentworth to Lord Strafford, his brother, we get a little glimpse of what the Prince’s life was like at this time.
“Kensington.