Farmer George, Volume 1

by Lewis Melville

From an engraving by W. Woollett

KEW PALACE

"The Kew life, you will perceive, is different from the Windsor. As there are no early prayers, the Queen rises later; and as there is no form or ceremony here of any sort, her dress is plain, and the hour for the second toilette extremely uncertain," Miss Burney wrote. "The royal family are here always in so very retired a way, that they live as the simplest country gentlefolks. The King has not even an equerry with him, nor the Queen any lady to attend her when she goes her airings."[239] At Windsor a certain degree of ceremony was observed, and many old customs preserved. "I find it has always belonged to Mrs. Schwellenberg and Mrs. Haggerdorn to receive at tea whatever company the King and Queen invite to the Lodge," Miss Burney noted, "as it is only a very select few that can eat with their Majesties, and those few are only ladies; no man, of what rank soever, being permitted to sit in the Queen's presence."[240] The King, who was an early riser, worked at affairs of state from six until eight o'clock, when a procession for chapel was formed, headed by the King and Queen, the Princesses following in pairs, and after them the ladies and gentlemen in waiting, who usually attended in full strength, for though it was not obligatory on the members of the suite, their absence was resented by the Queen. "The King rose every morning at six, and had two hours to himself. He thought it effeminate to have a carpet in his bedroom. Shortly before eight, the Queen and the royal family were always ready for him, and they proceeded to the King's chapel in the castle. There were no fires in the passages; the chapel was scarcely alight; Princesses, governesses, equerries grumbled and caught cold; but cold or hot, it was their duty to go; and, wet or dry, light or dark, the stout old George was always in his place to say amen to the chaplain."[241]

After breakfast, the King would either return to his study, or go riding or hunting, two forms of exercise to which he was very partial. Until his illness prevented him, he never missed going with the whole of his family to the races at Ascot Heath, at which place he gave a plate of a hundred guineas, to be run for on the first day by such horses as had hunted regularly with his own hounds the preceding winter.

While the King had the business of state and hunting with which to occupy himself, his consort was less fortunate, for her husband never mentioned public affairs in her presence, and let her understand from the first that this would always be so. Five years after the Royal marriage, Chesterfield remarked, "The King loves her as a woman, but I verily believe has not yet spoken one word to her about business"; and long after Lord Carlisle stated, "The King never placed any confidence whatever in the Queen as to public affairs, nor had she any power either to injure or serve any one. In this respect he treated her with great severity." However, as time passed and children came to her, she found some occupation—as well as much anxiety. "The Queen would have two physicians always on the spot to watch the constitutions of the royal children to eradicate, if possible, or at least to keep under, the dreadful disease, scrofula, inherited from the King," Mrs. Papendiek, assistant-keeper of the Wardrobe and Reader to her Majesty, has told us. "She herself saw them bathed at six every morning, attended the schoolroom of her daughters, was present at their dinner, and directed their attire, whenever these plans did not interfere with public duties, or any plans or wishes of the King, whom she neither contradicted nor kept waiting a moment under any circumstances."[242] As the children grew up, the elder were sometimes allowed to breakfast with their parents, who once a week went with the entire family to Richmond Gardens; but the intercourse was strictly regulated, and the little boys and girls were never allowed to forget that their mother and father were the King and Queen of England. Charlotte tried to find pleasure in her trinkets, and she told Miss Burney how much she liked the jewels at first. "But how soon that was over!" she sighed. "Believe me, Miss Burney, it is the pleasure of a week—a fortnight at most, and to return no more. I thought at first I should always choose to wear them; but the fatigue and trouble of putting them on, and the care they required, and the fear of losing them, believe me, ma'am, in a fortnight's time I longed again for my earlier dress."[243] The poor woman had not even the satisfaction of being popular with her subjects, for the public, which did not love minor German royalties, had not at the first shown any great enthusiasm for the Queen, and such favour as she had found in their eyes very soon declined.

Indeed, it was not long before there was a very marked feeling against her, and this became obvious to all the world when, within a month of her first accouchement, she attended a public installation of the Garter.[244] This early reappearance was thought indelicate, and an ill-advised plea put forward by her friends—that her German training must be taken into consideration—only added fuel to the fire, for foreign customs even to-day find little toleration at the hands of this nation whose creed is liberty.

"You seem not to know the character of the Queen: here it is—she is a good woman, a good wife, a tender mother, and an unmeddling queen," Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son in 1765; and a loyal rhymester set forth the same view in a "Birthday Ode," in which he played at satire.

"The Queen, they say,
Attends her nurs'ry every day;
And, like a common mother, shares
In all her infant's little cares.
What vulgar unamusing scene,
For George's wife and Britain's queen!
'Tis whispered also at the palace,
(I hope 'tis but the voice of malice)
That (tell it not in foreign lands)
She works with her own royal hands;
And that our sovereign's sometimes seen,
In vest embroidered by his queen.
This might a courtly fashion be
In days of old Andromache;[Pg 229]
But modern ladies, trust my words,
Seldom sew tunics for their lords.
What secret next must I unfold?
She hates, I'm confidently told,
She hates the manners of the times
And all our fashionable crimes,
And fondly wishes to restore
The golden age and days of yore;
When silly simple women thought
A breach of chastity a fault,
Esteem'd those modest things, divorces,
The very worst of human curses;
And deem'd assemblies, cards and dice,
The springs of every sort of vice.
Romantic notions! All the fair
At such absurdities must stare;
And, spite of all her pains, will still
Love routs, adultery, and quadrille."

In a Birthday Ode indiscriminate eulogy is expected, and due allowance made for the enthusiasm of the poet, but from a man with the perspicacity of Lord Chesterfield a more critical estimate of the Queen's character might have been anticipated. Leigh Hunt said Charlotte was a "plain, penurious, soft-spoken, decorous, bigoted, shrewd, overweening personage,"[245] and the truth of his description cannot be seriously impugned. That she was not fair to look upon was a misfortune more severe to herself than to others, but her domineering spirit was a sore trial to those who came into contact with her, as readers of Fanny Burney's Diary know. She was very jealous of her influence with the King, clinging to such power as it gave her with remarkable tenacity, and suspicious of those who were dear to him. Thus, when in 1772 the King's sister, the Duchess of Brunswick, visited England at the suggestion of the Princess Dowager, her mother, the Queen did not offer the Duchess the hospitality of a royal palace, but took for her "a miserable little house" in Pall Mall, and contrived that she should not see the King alone. This strange behaviour became generally known and as generally disapproved, with the result that when at this time the King and Queen visited a theatre they were received in chilling silence, but, to mark its feeling, the house vociferously cheered the Duchess of Brunswick on her entry.