“I warned the D. of B*********, that if the commission examined me, I would make his old uncle blush finely. If they ask me an impudent question, I will always answer—‘I don’t understand,’ and so go on with ‘I don’t understand, I don’t understand,’ until I make them, by that, put their questions in such clear terms that their primosity will be finely puzzled: and then I’ll put the examination into the newspapers. This frightened them all so, that they did not know what to do. But it was I that was really frightened—terribly, doctor, and I pretended to be so bold about it, only to drive them from their purpose; and I succeeded too.
“Oh! what an impudent woman was that P—ss of W.! she was a downright ——. She had a Chinese figure in one of her rooms at Blackheath, that was wound up like a clock, and used to perform the most extraordinary movements. How the sea-captains used to colour up when she danced about, exposing herself like an opera girl; and then she gartered below the knee:—she was so low, so vulgar! I quarrelled with her at Plymouth, for I was the only person that ever told her the truth; and Lady Carnarvon assured me afterwards that they had never seen her moved so much as after a conversation I had with her. I plainly told her it was a hanging matter, and that she should mind what she was about. The Prince, I intimated to her, might do her a great deal of mischief when he became king. ‘Oh, he will never be kink!’ she would reply; for a German fortune-teller had told her she never would be queen, and, as she believed the fortune-teller, she thought she was safe.
“There was a handsome footman, who might have been brought into the scrape, if the trial had related to anybody but the Italian courier.” Then Lady Hester asked me what had become of young Austin. “I did not believe,” added she, “that the child was anybody else’s but the reputed mother’s at Greenwich; and, as for the P—ss of W.’s adopting it, and making such a fuss about it, it was only pure spite to vex the Prince. He was a nasty boy. Oh! how Mr. Pitt used to frown, when he was brought in after dinner, and held by a footman over the table to take up anything out of the dessert that he liked: and, when the P—ss used to say to Mr. Pitt—‘Don’t you think he is a nice boy?’ he would reply, ‘I don’t understand anything about children; your R. H. had better ask his nurse, for she knows those things better than I do.’ He was indeed a nasty, mischievous boy. I once saw him at Lord Mount Edgecumbe’s, turning over the leaves of a valuable book of plates backward and forward with his nasty fingers, that he had just before smeared in the ink. I told the P—ss it was a shame to let him dirt and tear books of such value, and she gave him another, a common one, but he cried and whimpered, and said he would have the first. I declared he shouldn’t, and said, if he dared touch it, he should see what I would do. My resolute manner frightened him. Once, he cried for a spider on the ceiling, and, though they gave him all sorts of playthings to divert his attention, he would have nothing but the spider. Then there was such a calling of footmen, and long sticks, and such a to-do! He was a little, nasty, vulgar brat.
“It was unpardonable in the P—ss to lavish her love upon such a little urchin of a boy, a little beggar, really no better. To see him brought in every day after dinner, bawling and kicking down the wine, and hung up by his breeches over the table for people to laugh at; and so ugly! Then she had five or six more, not one of whom was pretty, except a little midshipman, son of a beautiful woman in the Isle of Wight. It was supposed that she kept these little urchins to carry her love-letters: she certainly used to employ them in that way, sometimes as a sort of make-believe. I know that when she used to invite a sea-captain to dinner, instead of sending a scarlet footman in a barge, as she ought to have done, she would tell one of these boys to go on board and give her billet to Captain Such-a-one, and on no account to let it fall into anybody else’s hands; making people imagine there was a mystery, when there really was none.
“Indeed, when one thinks of Lady ——, of Lord ——, and such characters, the P—ss is not so much to blame, after all. There was no lack of bad example. In all London, you could not find a more abandoned character than Lord ——. He had exhausted every species of vice known in the Palais Royal, and was so notorious in that way that some gentlemen refused to meet him at dinner unless they were sure of having grave and weighty people present who could keep him in order. Yet he is a clever, sharp man; no person has carried on more intrigues in the very first classes: and then to finish by marrying a woman who really did not know who her father and mother were—strange enough, you will say. She left him for a Frenchman, and lives at Paris: but he is on very good terms with her. He says she is in the right, if she likes a Frenchman better. She came over to England sometimes, by means of a passport, during the war, to see him, and arrange matters about their children.
“The P. had always been used to women of such perfect cleanliness and sweetness, that it is no wonder he was disgusted with the P—ss of W., who was a sloven, and did not know how to put on her own clothes. Those kind of people should let themselves be dressed as you dress a doll. She did sometimes; but then she was sure to spoil it all again by putting on her stockings with the seam before, or one of them wrong side outwards: and then her manner of fastening them—it was shocking!
“Mrs. Fitzherbert had a beautiful skin; at sixty it was like a child’s of six years old: for I knew her well, having passed at one time six weeks in the same house with her: so had Lady —— and her daughters. There are some people who are sweet by nature, and who, even if they are not washed for a fortnight, are free from odour; whilst there are others, who, two hours after they have been to a bath, generate a fusty atmosphere about them. Mrs. Fitzherbert, likewise, had a great deal of tact in concealing the Prince’s faults. She would say, ‘Don’t send your letter to such a person—he is careless, and will lose it:’ or, when he was talking foolish things, she would tell him, ‘You are drunk to-night; do hold your tongue.’[65]
“Poor Mrs. Robinson was a woman of a different kind, naturally good and innocent; and, perhaps, there was personal love towards him in her composition: but then she had no cleverness. I don’t mean in politics, but none in common matters: she possessed no guiding influence over him, so that he scribbled and wrote to her things, that, if they had been brought to light, would have stamped him with infamy. When she died, she charged her daughter never to part with a certain casket; but they got it out of her for £10,000. I believe it was Lord M**** who got possession of it. But a peer told me that there were most abominable things in those letters, not of common debauchery, but of every nature. I, for my part, believe he was really married to Mrs. Robinson, and yet he left her to starve; and she would have starved, if it had not been for Sir Henry Halford.”
August 6.—This being Sunday, I spent it as usual with my family.
August 7.—Lady Hester Stanhope spoke of Mr. Canning. She said, “The first time he was introduced to Mr. Pitt, a great deal of prosing had been made beforehand of his talents, and when he was gone, Mr. P. asked me what I thought of him. I said I did not like him; for, doctor, his forehead was bad, his eyebrows were bad, he was ill-made about the hips; but his teeth were evenly set, although he rarely showed them. I did not like his conversation. Mr. C. heard of this, and, some time after, when upon a more familiar footing with me, said, ‘So, Lady Hester, you don’t like me.’—‘No,’ said I; ‘they told me you were handsome, and I don’t think so.’”