Certainly this must have been an enjoyable day for the young Princess, during which probably she did not miss the presence of the King and Queen, whose personality was pretty well known on the Continent.
The next day after this excursion, one of the Royal coaches was sent down to Greenwich to bring the Princess up to Lambeth, where she embarked in a royal barge and was rowed across the river to Whitehall. Thence she was carried in one of Queen Caroline’s sedan chairs to the garden entrance of St. James’s Palace, by a couple of stout carriers, to the great content no doubt of the inhabitants of Westminster, who were assembled there to see her.
Her reception at the palace is said to have been magnificent and tasteful. Certainly the meeting itself of Frederick and Augusta was very pretty and likely to impress the public and increase the young people’s popularity with them.
On the arrival of the bride, Frederick was there to meet her and gallantly assisted her from her chair. Then when she attempted to kneel and kiss his hand, he prevented her, but instead drew her to him and kissed her twice upon the lips before everybody, a proceeding no doubt which gave satisfaction to all, including the Princess.
The picture of confusion and happiness, it is said the young couple ascended the broad staircase of the Palace together hand in hand. Thus they proceeded into the Presence Chamber crowded with courtiers of both sexes.
Here, according to Lord Hervey, the Princess “threw herself all along the floor, first at the King’s, then at the Queen’s feet,” and by so doing greatly pleased little George, whose kingly brow had been disfigured by wrinkles when she arrived, for she was a little late.
This act was considered by the Court as being so exceedingly tactful that she was given the credit at once of being a girl of “propriety and sense.”
But the King graciously raised her up and kissed her on both cheeks with his royal arm round her. The Queen embraced her too, and the remainder of the family did their best to make up for their neglect of her at Greenwich.
This must have been a trying ordeal for the young Princess considering that her wedding was to take place that very night at nine o’clock!
To avoid the question of precedence before Augusta became Princess of Wales, the King and Queen decided that she should dine with the younger members of the family, and this incident gave rise to a scene which can only be regarded as exceedingly comic, and which gave the bride an idea of what sort of a family she was marrying into.