"Sir William, cover'd with Chinese renown,
Whose Houses are no sooner up than down,
Don't heed the discontented Nation's cry:
Thine are religious Houses, very humble
Upon their faces inclin'd to tumble;
So meek they cannot keep their head on high."[223]
A model of the proposed design was made and operations begun, only to be suspended, while the ground floor was yet in course of erection, by the refusal of the authorities of the town to sell a small piece of ground essential to the scheme. Thereupon the King determined to remove to Kew, where he had spent large sums on the improvement of the gardens under the direction of Sir William Chambers, who had erected all sorts of buildings, Roman, Greek, Moresque, and Chinese.
"Be these the rural pastimes that attend
Great Brunswick's leisure: these shall best unbend
His royal mind, whene'er from state withdrawn,
He treads the velvet of his Richmond lawn;
These shall prolong his Asiatic dream,
Tho' Europe's balance trembles on its beam."[224]
Subsequently when alterations on an extensive scale were made at Windsor Castle,[225] the people of Richmond, realizing they were in danger of losing their royal residents altogether, offered the land they had before refused; but it was too late, and the enclosure round the abandoned palace was given over to farming.
"Soon after [the marriage] Buckingham House was purchased, and bestowed on her Majesty, St. James's not seeming a prison strict enough," Horace Walpole has written; and in this sentence may be read the key to the first years of Queen Charlotte in England, for during that period she was, indeed, little better than a prisoner, with a gaoler in the form of her duenna (who was also supposed to be a spy of the Princess Dowager) Katherine Dashwood,[226] the "Delia" of James Hammond, who had not been to Court for twenty-five years, when she was a Woman of the Bedchamber to George II's consort. "Except the Ladies of the Bedchamber[227] for half-an-hour a week in a funereal circle, or a ceremonious drawing-room, she [the Queen] never had a soul to speak to but the King," Mrs. Harcourt has recorded in her Diary. "This continued till her first child, the Prince of Wales, was born; then the nurse and governess, Lady Charlotte Finch, coming into the room was a little treat; but they had still for years no other society, till by degrees the Ladies of the Bedchamber came far more frequently, and latterly the society, for various reasons—the children growing up, the journeys, etc.—was much increased. Expecting to be Queen of a gay Court, finding herself confined in a convent, and hardly allowed to think without the leave of her husband, checked her spirits, made her fearful and cautious to an extreme, and when the time came that amusements were allowed, her mind was formed to a different manner of life." Seclusion in a dreary Court at the age of seventeen was not the way to bring out that which is best in a woman's character, and doubtless this had its effect in producing a certain bitterness and hardness that subsequently showed themselves, although some fifty years later the Queen expressed her belief that the course followed had been advisable. "I am most truly sensible of the dear King's great strictness, at my arrival in England, to prevent my making many acquaintances; for he was always used to say that, in this country, it was difficult to know how to draw a line on account of the politics of the country and that there never could be kept up a society without party, which was always dangerous for any woman to take part in, but particularly so for the royal family; and with truth do I assure you that I am not only sensible that he was right, but I feel thankful for it from the bottom of my heart."
Charlotte had hoped to bring with her some of her countrywomen, but she was allowed only to carry with her two dressers, Mrs. Haggerdorn and Mademoiselle Schwellenberg, the latter a shrewd ambitious woman who, not content to play the subordinate part imposed upon her by her office, set herself up as a mentor to the Queen, and no one was to be admitted to her Majesty's presence without having first been introduced to "Mademoiselle."[228] It would doubtless have been a surprise to "Mademoiselle" to learn that she was to achieve immortality, and her astonishment would scarcely have been pleasurable could she have read the passages in Miss Burney's Diary that have procured her that distinction. It would, however, probably have surprised her still more to know that, within a century, for one reader of the annals of the reign of George III there would be scores who eagerly turned over the pages of the journal of the little lady she treated so cavalierly. "I found [silence] equally necessary to keep off the foul fiends of Jealousy and Rivalry of my colleague," wrote Miss Burney,[229] "who, apparently, never wishes to hear my voice but when we are tête-à-tête and then never in good humour when it is at rest."
In vain an adulatory biographer of Queen Charlotte[230] has drawn a pleasant portrait of Mademoiselle Schwellenberg, in vain he states she was "a well-educated and highly accomplished woman, extremely courteous in her manner, much respected by all the domestics of the royal household, and devotedly attached to the illustrious family with whom she lived, who, in their turn, entertained for her the sincerest affection. Mademoiselle Schwellenberg had been, however, most cruelly and wantonly held up to public ridicule by a profligate wit, whose delight lay in ribaldry, as a woman of sordid disposition, than which nothing could be more opposite to her real character, for she was ever ready to oblige all who applied to her for assistance; and though, like her royal mistress, she chose to do good by stealth, her charities were very extensive." She lives for all time as Miss Burney's harsh, unsympathetic taskmaster, a stern unbending woman whose overpowering ways eventually caused the King to desire her dismissal, a fate from which she was saved only by the request of the Queen, who was very attached to her,[231] and upon her subscribing to his Majesty's conditions, that she should not resent his commands, nor influence the Queen's mind upon any subject, that she should share the labours with her companion, and infringe upon no regulation unconnected with her immediate appointment.
These instructions the dresser accepted, and, as was only to be expected in a woman of her character, soon ignored, thereby earning the dislike of Mrs. Papendiek, of Frederick Albert, of Fanny Burney, and, of course, of "Peter Pindar," who salvoed a farewell verse when she left the country on a visit to Germany in 1789.
"With great respect I here assure you, Ma'am,
Your name our common people loudly damn;
Genteeler folk attack with silent curses."