His other passions were, Germany, the Army,[150] and women. Both the latter had a mixture of parade in them: he [treated] my Lady Suffolk, and afterwards Lady Yarmouth, as his mistresses, while he admired only the Queen; and never described what he thought a handsome woman, but he drew her picture. Lady Suffolk[151] was sensible, artful, and agreeable, but had neither sense nor art enough to make him think her so agreeable as his wife. When she had left him, tired of acting the mistress, while she had in reality all the slights of a wife, and no interest with him, the Opposition affected to cry up her virtue, and the obligations the King had to her for consenting to seem his mistress, while in reality she had confined him to mere friendship—a ridiculous pretence, as he was the last man in the world to have taste for talking sentiments, and that with a woman who was deaf![152] Lady Yarmouth[153] was inoffensive, and attentive only to pleasing him, and to selling Peerages whenever she had an opportunity. The Queen had been admired and happy for governing him by address; it was not then known how easily he was to be governed by fear.
Indeed there were few arts by which he was not governed at some time or other of his life; for not to mention the late Duke of Argyle, who grew a favourite by imposing himself upon him for brave; nor Lord Wilmington,[154] who imposed himself upon him for the Lord knows what; the Queen governed him by dissimulation, by affected tenderness and deference:[155] Sir Robert Walpole by abilities and influence in the House of Commons; Lord Granville by flattering him in his German politics; the Duke of Newcastle by teazing and betraying him; Mr. Pelham by bullying him,—the only man by whom Mr. Pelham was not bullied himself. Who indeed had not sometimes weight with the King, except his children and his mistresses? With them he maintained all the reserve and majesty of his rank. He had the haughtiness of Henry the Eighth, without his spirit; the avarice of Henry the Seventh, without his exactions; the indignities of Charles the First, without his bigotry for his prerogative; the vexations of King William, with as little skill in the management of parties; and the gross gallantry of his father, without his goodnature or his honesty:—he might, perhaps, have been honest, if he had never hated his father, or had ever loved his son.
Of all the resigners, the Duke of Grafton had treated his master with the greatest decency: he had retired to hunt, according to his custom, on the first scent of a storm; and it was with the greatest reluctance that he was forced to declare himself for any Ministry that was in a disputable situation: nothing could have forced him to it but the inequality of the dispute. When he went into the closet, he told the King, as if laughing at those he sided with, “Sir, I am come to direct you who shall be your Minister.”
The Duke of Grafton[156] was a very extraordinary man; with very good common sense and knowledge of mankind, he contrived to be generally thought a fool, and by being thought so, contrived to be always well at Court, and to have it not remarked that he was so: yet he would sometimes boast of having been a short time in Opposition, and of having early resolved never to be so again. He had a lofty person, with great dignity; great slowness in his delivery, which he managed with humour. He had the greatest penetration in finding out the foibles of men that ever I knew, and wit in teazing them. He was insensible to misfortunes of his own[157] or of his friends: understood the Court perfectly, and looking upon himself as of the Blood Royal, he thought nothing ought to affect him, but what touched them: as he had no opportunity of forsaking them for a family to which he was more nearly related, one must not say he would have forsaken them: betraying was never his talent; he was content to be ungrateful, when his benefactors were grown unhappy. He was careless of his fortune, and provided against nothing but a storm that might remove him from his station. An instance once broke out of his having ambition to something more than barely adorning the Court. On the Queen’s death, whom he always hated, teazed, yet praised to the King, he was imprudent enough in a private conversation with Sir Robert Walpole and the Duke of Newcastle, to dispute with the latter, whose the power should be, both silently agreeing, fools as they were, in his very presence, that it was no longer to be Sir Robert’s. Grafton thinking to honour him enough by letting him act under him, said at last in a great passion to t’other Duke, “My Lord, sole Minister I am not capable of being; first Minister, by G—, I will be.” The foundation of either’s hopes lay in their credit with Princess Emily, who was suspected of having been as kind to Grafton’s love, as she would have been unkind in yielding to Newcastle’s, who made exceeding bustle about her, but was always bad at executing all business. The Queen had in reality a thorough aversion to the Duke of Grafton for the liberties he took with one of her great blood; and if she had not been prevented by Sir Robert Walpole, would one night have complained to the King, when the Princess and the Duke, who hunted two or three times a week together, had staid out unusually late, lost their attendants, and gone together to a private house in Windsor Forest. The Queen hated him too for letting her see he knew her. He always teazed her, and insisted that she loved nobody. He had got a story of some Prince in Germany,[158] that she had been in love with before her marriage: “G—, madam,” he used to say, “I wish I could have seen that man that you could love!” “Why,” replied she, “do you think I don’t love the King?” “G—, I wish I was King of France, and I would be sure whether you do or not!”
Princess Emily detached herself from that cabal, and united with her brother the Duke and the Bedfords. She was meanly inquisitive into what did not relate to her, and foolishly communicative of what was below her to know: false without trying to please, mischievous with more design, impertinent even where she had no resentment; and insolent, though she had lost her beauty, and acquired no power. After her father’s death, she lived with great dignity; but being entirely slighted by her nephew, who was afraid of her frankness, she soon forbore going to Court or to keep a Drawing-room herself, on pretence of her increased deafness. She was extremely deaf, and very short-sighted; yet had so much quickness and conception, that she seemed to hear and see more readily than others. She was an excellent mistress to her servants, steady to her favourites, and nobly generous and charitable.
When the Pelhams were returned to Court, they for some time sat but loose in the King’s affections. The Duke of Newcastle had long been used to be called names by his master; and of whatever breach of duty he was guilty, he took care to submit with patience to abuse from his Sovereign. Mr. Pelham having more pride, was more resty under ill treatment, and soon threatened again to resign. The King, who would not venture again suddenly to be making Ministers upon his own authority, asked him who he wished should succeed him? He said peevishly, “Winnington.” “No,” said the King; “you know he is too much your friend.” “I had rather,” replied Mr. Pelham, “you would give my place to Lord Granville than keep it.” “That is better still!” said the King; “you make it impossible for him to have it, and then want me to give it to him!”
If that three-days’ Ministry had lasted, Lord Hartington, as errant a bigot to the Pelham faction as ever Jacques Clement was to the Jesuits, had offered to impeach Lord Granville—so soon had Sir Robert Walpole’s friends forgot the abhorrence they had expressed for the motion to remove him without a cause; and so little do the silly bravos of a party foresee how soon they may be brought to adopt and refine upon the most unjustifiable excesses of their antagonists! This new violence was the more odious than its precedent, as here was a man to be impeached only because he was going to be an unpopular Minister! In four years, Lord Granville and Lord Hartington came into place together!
The Duke of Newcastle, who had conquered every obstacle to power, but the aversion of his master, began to think he might as well add his favour to the other attributes of a Minister; and having overturned Lord Granville for his German adulation, was so equitable as to make the King amends by giving into all excess of it himself. There was one impediment; he had never been out of England, and dreaded the sea. After having consulted his numerous band of physicians[159] and apothecaries, he at last ventured; and himself and his gold plate,[160] and his mad Duchess, under a thousand various convoys, treated Europe with a more ridiculous spectacle than any it had seen since Caligula’s cockle-shell triumph.
He was now at the height of his wishes, but was still unsatisfied. The connexion of the Duke with Lord Sandwich, and through him with the Duke of Bedford, had given him the uneasiness that was mentioned at the beginning of these Memoirs; and the Prince’s death having smoothed all opposition, it was determined by the brothers in their Cabinet Council, to dismiss their rivals, whose interest in the House of Commons could now turn no scale into which it might be thrown. The measure was taken to remove Lord Sandwich, and thereby provoke the Duke of Bedford to resign; or to give the latter some more insignificant post, as Master of the Horse, President of the Council, or Master of the Ordnance. Mr. Fox, who saw the insult that was aimed at the Duke, endeavoured as much as possible to save his honour, by persuading the Duke of Bedford to acquiesce in the latter plan, as he would have more opportunities of crossing his enemies while he staid at Court, than probability of returning thither if once totally removed. Lord Sandwich laboured the same point, and even hoped to be overlooked if he could persuade the Duke of Bedford to accept one of the other less obnoxious employments; but the Duke was swayed to the contrary opinion.
He was a man of inflexible honesty, and good-will to his country: his great economy was called avarice; if it was so, it was blended with more generosity and goodness than that passion will commonly unite with. His parts were certainly far from shining, and yet he spoke readily, and upon trade, well: his foible was speaking upon every subject, and imagining he understood it, as he must have done, by inspiration. He was always governed; generally by the Duchess,[161] though immeasurably obstinate, when once he had formed or had an opinion instilled into him. His manner was impetuous, of which he was so little sensible, that being told Lord Halifax was to succeed him, he said, “He is too warm and overbearing; the King will never endure him.” If the Duke of Bedford could have thought less well of himself, the world would probably have thought better of him.