There is another St. James's anecdote of Chesterfield, which shows him in no very dignified light. Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, a very amiable woman, supposed to have been one of the mistresses of George the Second, was thought to have more influence with his Majesty than she possessed. Sir Robert Walpole told his son Horace that Queen Caroline saw Lord Chesterfield one night, after having won a large sum of money at court, steal along a dark passage under her window that was lighted only by a single lamp, in order to deposit it in Mrs. Howard's apartment, for fear of carrying it home in the dark. Sir Robert (his son adds) thought that this was the occasion of Chesterfield's losing his credit with the Queen; but the conclusion has shown it to be unfounded. Chesterfield, however, though really a very sharp-sighted man, was rendered liable by his bad principles to a failure in what he thought his acutest views; and Caroline's better nature may have seen through his lordship's character without the help of the lamp and the dark passage.
The Queen's ladies above alluded to were the famous bevy of the Howards, Lepells, and Bellendens, celebrated in the pages of Swift and Pope. They have become well known to the public by the appearance of the Suffolk Correspondence, and Lady Hervey's Letters. George the Second, when Prince of Wales, and living in this palace with his father, had probably made love to them all, fluttering more than flattering them, between his attentions as a prince and his unengaging qualities as a brusque and parsimonious man. Miss Bellenden, who became Duchess of Argyle, is said to have observed one day to him as he was counting his money in her presence (probably with an intimation of his peculiar sense of the worth of it), "Sir, I cannot bear it. If you count your money any more, I will go out of the room." Another version of the story says that she tilted the guineas over, and then ran out of the room while the Prince was picking them up. This is likely, for she had great animal spirits. When the Prince quarrelled with his father, and he and his household were ordered to quit St. James's, Miss Bellenden is described, in a ballad written on the occasion, as taking her way from the premises by jumping gaily down-stairs.
The occasion of this rupture between George the First and his son was curious. Palaces are very calm-looking things outside; but within, except in very wise and happy, or very dull reigns, are pampered passions, and too often violent scenes. George the First and his son, like most sovereigns and heirs apparent, were not on good terms. The Princess of Wales had been delivered of a second son, which was to be christened; and the Prince wished his uncle the Duke of York to stand godfather with his Majesty. His Majesty, on the other hand, peremptorily insisted on dividing the pious office with the officious Duke of Newcastle. The christening accordingly took place in the Princess's bed-chamber; and no sooner had the bishop shut the book than the Prince, furiously crossing the foot of the bed, and heedless of the King's presence, "held up his hand and forefinger to the Duke in a menacing attitude (as Lady Suffolk described the scene to Walpole) and said, 'You are a rascal, but I shall find you' (meaning in his broken English, 'I shall find a time to be revenged')." The next morning Lady Suffolk (then Mrs. Howard), while about to enter the Princess's apartment, was surprised to find her way barred by the yeomen with their halberds; and the same night the Prince and Princess were ordered to quit so unexpectedly, that they were obliged to go to the house of their chamberlain, the Earl of Grantham, in Albemarle Street. The father and son were afterwards reconciled, but they never heartily agreed.
Nor was the case better between George the Second and the new Prince of Wales, his son Frederick. If George the First was a common-place man of the quiet order, and George the Second of the bustling, Frederick was of an effeminate sort, pretending to taste and gallantry, and possessed of neither. He affected to patronise literature in order to court popularity, and because his father and grandfather had neglected it; but he took no real interest in the literati, and would meanly stop their pensions when he got out of humour. He passed his time in intriguing against his father, and hastening the ruin of a feeble constitution by sorry amours.
Not long after the marriage of George the Third, Buckingham House was settled on his young Queen in the event of her surviving him; and the King took such a liking to it as to convert St. James's Palace wholly into a resort for state occasions, and confine his town residence to the new abode. Buckingham House was so called from John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, who built it. It was a dull though ornamented brick edifice, not unworthily representing the mediocre ability and stately assumptions of the owner, who was a small poet and a fastidious grandee, nearly as mad with pride as his duchess. This lady was a natural daughter of James the Second (if indeed she was even that, for a Colonel Godfrey laid claim to the paternity), and she carried herself so loftily in consequence, as to wish to be treated seriously as a princess, receiving visitors under a canopy, and going to the theatre in ermine. She and the Duchess of Marlborough, who had a rival palace next door to St. James's, used to sit swelling at one another with neighbourly spite. Sheffield, her husband, is said to have first made love to her sister Anne (afterwards Queen), for which her uncle, Charles the Second, has been accused of sending him on an expedition to Tangier in a "leaky vessel." The duke wrote a long complacent description of Buckingham House, that has often been reprinted, recording, among other things, the classical inscriptions which he put upon it and the princely chambers which it contained for the convenience of the births of his illustrious house. The births came to nothing in consequence of the death of his only legitimate child; a natural son inherited the property, and Government bought it for Queen Charlotte. Henceforward it divided its old appellation of Buckingham House with that of the "Queen's House;" almost all the Queen's children were born there; and there, as at Kew and Windsor, she may be said to have secreted her husband as much as she could from the world, partly out of judicious consideration for his infirmities, and partly in accordance with the pride as well as penuriousness that were at the bottom of manners not ungentle, and a shrewd though narrow understanding. The spirit of this kind of life was very soon announced to the fashionable world after her marriage by the non-appearance of certain festivities; and it continued as long as her husband lived, and as far as her own expenditure was concerned; though when her son came to the throne she astonished the public by showing her willingness to partake of festivities in an establishment not her own. A deplorable exhibition of her tyrannous and unfeeling habits of exaction of the attentions of those about her is to be found in the Diary of Madame d'Arblay (Miss Burney), whom they nearly threw into a consumption. It is clear that they would have done so, had not the poor waiting-gentlewoman mustered up courage enough to dare to save her life by persisting in her request to be set free. Queen Charlotte was a plain, penurious, soft-spoken, decorous, bigoted, shrewd, over-weening personage, "content" through a long life "to dwell on decencies for ever," inexorable "upon principle" to frailty, but not incapable of being bribed out of it by German prepossessions, and whatever else might assist to effect the miracle, as was seen in the instance of Mrs. Hastings, who had been Warren Hastings's mistress, and who was, nevertheless received at court. Pleasant as her Majesty might have been to Miss Burney, who seems to have loved to be "persecuted," she was assuredly no charmer in the eyes of the British nation; nor was she in the slightest degree lamented when she died. Nevertheless she was a very good wife, for such we really believe her to have been; we mean not merely faithful, (for who would have tempted her?) but truly considerate, and anxious, and kind; and besides this she had another merit, not indeed of the same voluntary description, but one for which the nation is strongly indebted to her, though we are not aware that it has ever been mentioned. We mean that her cool and calculating brain turned out to be a most happy match for the warmer one of her husband, in ultimate as well as immediate respects; for it brought reason back into the blood of his race, and drew a remarkable line in consequence between him and his children; none of whom, however deficient in abilities, partook of their father's unreasonableness, while some went remarkably counter to his want of orderliness and self-government. The happy engraftment of the Cobourg family on the stock, completed this security in its most important quarter; and if ever a shade of more than ordinary sorrow for the necessity should have been brought across the memory in that quarter by a ridiculous pen, the sense of the security ought to fling it to the winds, with all the joy and comfort befitting the noblest brow and the wisest reign that have yet adorned the annals of its house.
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