History of Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk-Miss
Bellenden-Her Marriage with Colonel John Campbell, afterwards
fourth Duke of Argyle-Anecdotes of Queen Caroline-her last
Illness and Death-Anecdote of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-Last
Years of George the Second-Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady
Sundon-Lady Diana Spencer-Frederick, Prince of Wales-Sudden
Removal of the Prince and Princess from Hampton Court to St.
James's -Birth of a Princess-Rupture with the King-Anecdotes of
Lady Yarmouth.
I will now resume the story of Lady Suffolk whose history, though she had none of that influence on the transactions of the cabinet that was expected, will still probably be more entertaining to two young ladies than a magisterial detail of political events, the traces of which at least may be found in journals and brief chronicles of the times. The interior of courts, and the lesser features of history, are precisely those with which we are least acquainted,-I mean of the age preceding our own. Such anecdotes are forgotten in the multiplicity of those that ensue, or reside only in the memory of idle old persons, or have not yet emerged into publicity from the portefeuilles of such garrulous Brant`omes as myself. Trifling I will not call myself; for, while I have such charming disciples as you two to inform; and though acute or plodding politicians, for whom they are not meant, may condemn these pages; which is preferable, the labour of an historian who toils for fame and for applause from he knows not whom; or my careless commission to paper of perhaps insignificant passages that I remember, but penned for the amusement of a pair of such sensible and cultivated minds as I never met at so early an age, and whose fine eyes I do know will read me With candour, and allow me that mite of fame to which I aspire, their approbation of my endeavours to divert their evenings in the country? O Guicciardin! is posthumous renown so valuable as the satisfaction of reading these court-tales to the lovely Berrys?
Henrietta Hobart was daughter of Sir Henry, and sister of Sir John Hobart, Knight of the Bath on the revival of the order, and afterwards by her interest made a baron; and since created Earl of Buckinghamshire.
She was first married to Mr. Howard, the younger brother of more than one Earl of Suffolk; to which title he at last succeeded himself, and left a son by her, who was the last earl of that branch. She had but the slender fortune of an ancient baronet's daughter; and Mr. Howard's circumstances were the reverse of opulent. It was the close of Queen Anne's reign: the young couple saw no step more prudent than to resort to Hanover, and endeavour to ingratiate themselves with the future sovereigns of England. Still so narrow was their fortune, that Mr. Howard finding it expedient to give a dinner to the Hanoverian ministers, Mrs. Howard is said to have sacrificed her beautiful head of hair to pay for the expense. It must be recollected, that at that period were in fashion those enormous full-bottomed wigs, which often cost twenty and thirty guineas. Mrs. Howard was extremely acceptable to the intelligent Princess Sophia; but did not at that time make farther impression on the Electoral Prince, than, on his father's succession to the crown, to be appointed one of the bedchamber-women to the new Princess of Wales.
The elder Whig politicians became ministers to the King. The most promising of the young lords and gentleman of that party, and the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new court of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The apartment of the bedchamber-woman in waiting became the fashionable evening rendez-vous of the most distinguished wits and beauties. Lord Chesterfield, then Lord Stanhope, Lord Scarborough, Carr Lord Hervey, elder brother of the more known John Lord Hervey, and reckoned to have superior parts, General (at that time only Colonel) Charles Churchill, and others not necessary to rehearse, were constant attendants: Miss Lepelle, afterwards Lady Hervey, my mother, Lady Walpole, Mrs. Selwyn, mother of the famous George, and herself of much vivacity and pretty, Mrs. Howard, and above all for universal admiration, Miss Bellenden, one of the maids of honour. Her face and person were charming; lively she was almost to `etourderie; (105) and so agreeable she was, that I never heard her mentioned afterwards by one of her contemporaries who did not prefer her as the most perfect creature they ever knew. The Prince frequented the waiting-room, and soon felt a stronger inclination for her than he ever entertained but for his Princess. Miss Bellenden by no means felt a reciprocal passion. The Prince's gallantry was by no means delicate; and his avarice disgusted her. One evening sitting by her, he took out his purse and counted his money. He repeated the numeration: the giddy Bellenden lost her patience, and cried out, "Sir, I cannot bear it! if you count your money any more, I will go out of the room." The chink of the gold did not tempt her more than the person of his Royal Highness. In fact, her heart was engaged; and so the Prince, finding his love fruitless, suspected. He was even so generous as to promise her, that if she would discover the object of her Choice, and would engage not to marry without his privity, he would consent to the match, and would be kind to her husband. She gave him the promise he exacted, but without acknowledging the person; and then, lest his Highness should throw any obstacle in the way, married, without his knowledge, Colonel Campbell, one of the grooms of his bedchamber, and who long afterwards succeeded to the title of Argyle at the death of Duke Archibald. (106) The Prince never forgave the breach of her word; and whenever she went to the drawing-room, as from her husband's situation she was sometimes obliged to do, though trembling at what she knew she was to undergo, the Prince always stepped up to her, and whispered some very harsh reproach in her ear. Mrs. Howard was the intimate friend of Miss Bellenden; had been the confidante of the Prince's passion; and, on Mrs. Campbell's eclipse, succeeded to her friend's post of favourite, but not to her resistance.
>From the steady decorum of Mrs. Howard, I should conclude that she would have preferred the advantages of her situation to the ostentatious `eclat of it: but many obstacles stood in the way of total concealment; nor do I suppose that love had any share in the sacrifice she made of her virtue. She had felt poverty, and was far from disliking power. Mr. Howard was probably as little agreeable to her as he proved worthless. The King, though very amorous, was certainly more attracted by a silly idea he had entertained of gallantry being becoming, than by a love of variety; and he added the more egregious folly of fancying that inconstancy proved he was not governed; but so awkwardly did he manage that artifice, that it but demonstrated more clearly the influence of the Queen. With such a disposition, secrecy would by no means have answered his Majesty's views; yet the publicity of the intrigue was especially owing to Mr. Howard, who, far from ceding his wife quietly, went one night into the quadrangle of St. James's, and vociferously demanded her to be restored to him before the guards and other audience. Being thrust out, he sent a letter to her by the Archbishop of Canterbury, reclaiming her, and the Archbishop by his instructions consigned the summons to the Queen, who had the malicious pleasure of delivering the letter to her rival. (107)
Such intemperate proceedings by no means invited the new mistress to leave the asylum of St. James's. She was safe while under the royal roof: even after the rupture between the King and Prince (for the affair commenced in the reign of the first George), and though the Prince, on quitting St. James's, resided in a private house, it was too serious an enterprise to attempt to take his wife by force out of the palace of the Prince of Wales. The case was altered, when, on the arrival of summer, their Royal Highnesses were to remove to Richmond. Being only woman of the bedchamber, etiquette did not allow Mrs. Howard the entr`ee of the coach with the Princess. She apprehended that Mr. Howard might seize her on the road. To baffle such an attempt, her friends, John, Duke of Argyle, and his brother, the Earl of Islay, called for her in the coach of one of them by eight o'clock in the morning of the day, at noon of which the Prince and Princess were to remove, and lodged her safely in their house at Richmond. During the summer a negotiation was commenced with the obstreperous husband, and he sold his own noisy honour and the possession of his wife for a pension of twelve hundred a-year. (108)
These now little-known anecdotes of Mr. Howard's behaviour I received between twenty and thirty years afterwards, from the mouth of Lady Suffolk herself. She had left the court about the year 1735, and passed her summers at her villa of Marble Hill, at Twickenham, living very retired both there and in London. I purchased Strawberry Hill in 1747; and being much acquainted with the houses of Dorset, Vere, and others of Lady Suffolk's intimates, was become known to her; though she and my father had been at the head of two such hostile factions at court. Becoming neighbours, and both, after her second husband's death, living single and alone, our acquaintance turned to intimacy. She was extremely deaf, (109) and consequently had more satisfaction in narrating than in listening; her memory both of remote and of the most recent facts was correct beyond belief. I, like you, was indulgent to, and fond of old anecdotes. Each of us knew different Parts of many court stories, and each was eager to learn what either could relate more; and thus, by comparing notes, we sometimes could make out discoveries of a third circumstance, (110) before unknown to both. Those evenings, and I had many of them in autumnal nights, were extremely agreeable; and if this chain of minutiae proves so to you, you owe perhaps to those conversations the fidelity of my memory, which those repetitions recalled and stamped so lastingly.
In this narrative will it be unwelcome to you, if I subjoin a faithful portrait of the heroine of this part? lady Suffolk was of a just height, well made, extremely fair, with the finest light brown hair; was remarkably genteel, and always well dressed with taste and simplicity. Those were her personal charms, for her face was regular and agreeable rather than beautiful and those charms she retained with little diminution to her death at the age of seventy-nine. (111) Her mental qualifications were by no means shining; her eyes and countenance showed her character, which was grave and mild. Her strict love of truth and her accurate memory were always in unison, and made her too circumstantial on trifles. She was discreet without being reserved; and having no bad qualities, and being constant to her connexions, she preserved uncommon respect to the end of her life; and from the propriety and decency of her behaviour was always treated as if her virtue had never been questioned; her friends even affecting to suppose, that her connexion with the King had been confined to pure friendship. Unfortunately, his Majesty's passions were too indelicate to have been confined to Platonic love for a woman who was deaf, (112)-sentiments he had expressed in a letter to the Queen, who, however jealous of Lady Suffolk, had latterly dreaded the King's contracting a new attachment to a younger rival, and had prevented Lady Suffolk from leaving the court as early as she had wished to do. "I don't know," said his Majesty, "why you will not let me part with an old deaf woman, of whom I am weary."
Her credit had always been extremely limited by the Queen's superior influence, and by the devotion of the minister to her Majesty. Except a barony, a red riband, and a good place for her brother, Lady Suffolk could succeed but in very subordinate recommendations. Her own acquisitions were so moderate, that, besides Marble Hill, which cost the King ten or twelve thousand pounds, her complaisance had not been too dearly purchased. She left the court with an income so little to be envied, that, though an economist and not expensive, by the lapse of some annuities on lives not so prolonged as her own she found herself straitened; and, besides Marble Hill, did not at most leave twenty thousand pounds to her family. On quitting court, she married Mr. George Berkeley, and outlived him. (113)