At length the doors opened, four aides-de-camp stood inside, and as soon as the Prince had handed down the Duchess d’Angoulême, and the King of France handed the Duchess of York, Monsieur with Princess Sophia of Gloucester, &c., all other persons were stopped at the door who did not present their tickets.
Luckily for me, during the hour of waiting, I found myself close to Lord Chichester; and upon communication we found ourselves ticketed, and without any lady attached to either, so we agreed to make common cause. Lady Chichester not being in a state of bustle, had by the Prince’s gracious permission, seen all the preparations in the morning.
Upon descending into the conservatory, Perceval, Lord Chichester, and myself, after some difficulty of finding places, separated, and it ended in my going with Lord Chichester to the vacant end of the Prince’s long table, which could not be less than 200 feet long. My children would have been amused with the river of water and the little gudgeons swimming about in the whole length of this table; and all the grown children were equally delighted.
Tierney said to me in the course of the evening that he had previously seen and admired the whole spectacle, except that Sadler’s Wells business of the rivulet and the swimming fishes.
Nevertheless it was oriental and fanciful, towards the Prince’s end particularly; for in that part the table widened, and the water also, and fell by a succession of cascades into a circular lake surrounded with architectural decorations, and small vases, burning perfumes, which stood under the arches of the colonnade round the lake.
Behind the Prince’s end of the table there was a magnificent sideboard of gilt plate three stories high.
A band in the garden, not seen by the company, played the whole time.
After the supper was well ended, and before the company rose to go upstairs, there was a grand crowd from the supper room beyond the brass railing, of fine ladies and gentlemen, who came to lean against and look over the railing at our superior lot, and to endeavour at descrying the gudgeons in our river. “There, I see them;” “Look, look;” “Don’t you?” &c., by all the Misses and company, old and young, not to mention Lady Mansfield, Lady Buckingham’s niece, old Mr. Hastings, and many other souls old and young, whose eager and ridiculous curiosity was very entertaining.
At length the royals all rose and went upstairs; Lord Chichester had undertaken to pilot me all round the rest of the supper apartments; Lady Chatham and a young lady of her family were tacked on to us, and so we proceeded.
A few minutes so completely filled the conservatory in which the Prince’s table was placed, that before we got fairly round, the crowd and pressing was beyond anything I ever saw or felt; until, not without an intolerable cram and jam, we made our way with one tide which bore down another tide, and thus we saw the other six rooms all in continuation of the same line as the conservatory. The furthest room was seven or eight steps higher than the rest, and commanded a long but indistinct view of tables and tables not less than 500 feet in distance.