Lord Harcourt wrote from Strelitz of the bride as "no regular beauty", but credited her with a charming complexion, very pretty eyes, and a good figure, summing her up as a very fine girl, and Mrs. Papendiek, who came over with her, has placed on record a not dissimilar picture, "She was certainly not a beauty, but her countenance was expressive and intelligent. She was not tall, but of a slight, rather pretty figure; her eyes bright and sparkling with good humour and vivacity, her mouth large, but filled with white and even teeth, and her hair really beautiful." Walpole has said that within half-an-hour of her arrival in the metropolis one heard of nothing but proclamations of her beauty, but his first description of her was not flattering, and his second denies her all claim to good looks. "Her person was small and very lean, not well made; her face pale and homely, her nose somewhat flat and mouth very large. Her hair, however, was of a fine brown, and her countenance pleasing," he wrote on her arrival; but later remarked: "She had always been, if not ugly, at least ordinary, but in her later years her want of personal charms became, of course, less observable, and it used to be said that she was grown better-looking. I said one day something to this effect to Colonel Desbrowe, her Chamberlain. 'Yes,' he replied, 'I do think the bloom of her ugliness is going off!'"
Immediately upon her arrival the King introduced to his bride the members of his family, and soon after the royal party sat down to dinner. Later the bridesmaids[140] and the Court were introduced, and in such numbers that she exclaimed as the long procession passed before her, "Mon Dieu, il y en a tout, il y en a tout." She bore herself with dignity, but was civil and good-humoured, showed pleasure when she was told she should kiss the peeresses, and betrayed a pretty reluctance to give her hand to be kissed by the humbler folk. At ten o'clock all repaired to the chapel where the marriage ceremony was repeated. The Queen was, of course, in bridal costume, and Walpole thought she looked very sensible, cheerful, and remarkably genteel. "Her tiara of diamonds was very pretty, her stomacher was sumptuous," he commented: "her violet-velvet mantle so heavy that the spectators know as much of her upper half as the King himself." This was a trying ordeal after a long journey, but the Queen forgot or disguised her fatigue, and when the party returned to the drawing-room, was quite cheerful, played the spinet and sang while the company was waiting for supper, talked French with some guests and German with her attentive husband. "It does not promise," said Walpole, "as if they would be the two most unhappy people in England."
CHAPTER VIII
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE "FAVOURITE"
The great question that agitated English political society at the accession of George III was, as a lady summed it up in a bon-mot, "whether the new King would burn in his chamber Scotch coal, Newcastle coal, or Pitt coal." The curious were not long kept in a state of suspense, for George showed at once that he was determined so far as possible to be independent of ministers not of his own choosing; and when, after his arrival in London, Pitt waited on him and presented a paper on which were written a few sentences that the Great Commoner thought the monarch should deliver at his first Council, the King, after thanking Pitt for his consideration, said he had already prepared his speech for that occasion.[141] This, as a matter of fact, he had done in conjunction with Lord Bute, and at the meeting of the Council, although at first somewhat embarrassed, he soon recovered his self-possession, and delivered himself of the address.
From an engraving after the painting by Allan Ramsay