MADAME DE WALMODEN, COUNTESS OF YARMOUTH.
From the Painting at Gülzow, by permission of Count Kielmansegg.
Lady Yarmouth was the last instance of a mistress of the King of England who received a peerage. Her title did not give her much prestige, and her presence at court did not add to its lustre. During her ten years’ reign Queen Caroline had set an example of virtue and decorum, which was not forgotten, and the presence of a recognised mistress standing in her place was resented by many of the wives of the high nobility. Some of these ladies abstained from going to St. James’s on principle, others, and these the more numerous, because the assemblies there had become insufferably dull and tedious. If the court had been conducted on the lavish scale which marked the reigns of the Stuarts, if beauty, wit and brilliancy had met together, some slight lapses from the strict path of virtue might have been overlooked. But a court, which was at once vicious and dull, was impossible.
The Princess-Dowager of Wales, who prided herself on the propriety of her conduct and the ordered regularity of her household, was the most conspicuous absentee, and though she now and then attended St. James’s as in duty bound, she never took her daughters to court, but declared that the society there would contaminate them. She rarely, if ever, honoured the mansions of the nobility with a visit, and her appearances in public were few and far between. She lived a life of strict seclusion, which her children shared. During the ten years that elapsed between Frederick’s death and George III.’s accession to the throne, the Princess-Dowager was little more than a name to the outer world; the time had not come when the veil of privacy was to be rudely torn from her domestic life, and the publicity from which she shrank turned on her with its most pitiless glare.
The policy of the Princess was to keep in the background as much as possible and devote herself wholly to the care and education of her numerous family. She did her duty (or what she conceived to be her duty) to her children to the utmost in her power, and in her stern, undemonstrative way there is no doubt that she loved them. She ruled her household with a rod of iron, her children feared and obeyed, but it could hardly be said that they loved her. Despite her high sense of duty, almsgiving and charity, the Princess-Dowager was not a lovable woman. Her temperament was cold and austere, her religion was tinged with puritanism, and her views were strict and narrow. She had many of the virtues associated with the Roman matron. There was only one flaw in the armour of the royal widow’s reputation, and this her enemies were quick to note. That flaw was her friendship with Lord Bute.
John, third Earl of Bute, had been a favourite of Frederick Prince of Wales. He owed his introduction to the Prince to an accident which, slight though it was, served to lay the foundations of his future political career. He was watching a cricket match at Cliveden when a heavy shower of rain came on. The Prince, who had been playing, withdrew to a tent and proposed a game of whist until the weather should clear. At first nobody could be found to take a fourth hand, but presently one of the Prince’s suite espied Bute and asked him to complete the party. The Prince was so much pleased with his new acquaintance that he invited him to Kew, and gave him a post in his household. Bute soon improved his opportunities, and the Princess also extended to him her confidence and friendship; perhaps she found in his cold, proud temperament and narrow views some affinity with her own character and beliefs. Frederick rather encouraged this friendship than otherwise. He was very much attached to his excellent and virtuous wife, but no doubt her serious way of looking at things wearied his more frivolous nature occasionally. According to the scandalous gossip of Horace Walpole: “Her simple husband when he took up the character of the regent’s gallantry had forced an air of intrigue even upon his wife. When he affected to retire into gloomy allées of Kew with Lady Middlesex, he used to bid the Princess walk with Lord Bute. As soon as the Prince was dead, they walked more and more, in honour of his memory.”[12]
[12] Memoirs of George II., vol. ii.; see also Wraxall’s Hist. Memoirs, vol. ii.
At the corrupt court of George II., where the correct conduct of the Princess was resented as a tacit affront, the intimacy between the Princess and Lord Bute was soon whispered into an intrigue. Once at a fancy dress ball during the lifetime of Frederick when the Princess was present, the beautiful Miss Chudleigh appeared as Iphigenia and so lightly clad as to be almost in a state of nudity. The Princess threw a shawl over the young lady’s bosom, and sharply rebuked her for her bad taste in appearing in so improper a guise. “Altesse,” retorted Miss Chudleigh, in no wise abashed, “vous savez, chacun a son but.” The impertinent witticism ran like wildfire round the court, and henceforth the names of the Princess and Lord Bute were associated together in a scandalous suggestion, which had nothing to warrant it at the time beyond the fact that the Princess treated Lord Bute as an intimate friend.
After Frederick’s death the scandal grew, for the Princess was very unpopular with the Walmoden and her circle, and they delighted to have the chance of painting her as bad as themselves. Yet Bute was some years older than the Princess. He was married to a beautiful wife, the only daughter and heiress of Edward Wortley Montagu, by whom he had a large family, and he was devoted to his wife and children. He was a man of high principle, and lived a clean life in an age of uncleanness. Lady Hervey writes of him: “He has always been a good husband, an excellent father, a man of truth and sentiments above the common run of men”. Bute was not a great man, but his abilities were above the average, and he possessed considerable force of character. He acquired complete ascendency in the household of the Princess-Dowager, and exercised unbounded influence over the young Prince of Wales. Princess Augusta and Prince Edward disliked him, and secretly resented his presence and his interference in family matters. The other children were too young to understand, but Lord Bute was a factor which made itself felt in the daily life of them all, and not a welcome one. Life had become appreciably duller with the royal children since their father’s death. Gone were the little plays and masquerades, the singers and dancers. Gone were the picnics and the children’s parties. Even the cards were stopped, and the utmost the Princess-Dowager would allow was a modest game of comet. The children suspected Lord Bute of aiding and abetting their mother in her Spartan treatment of them, and disliked him accordingly.
The Princess-Dowager had need of a friend and counsellor, whether Lord Bute was the wisest choice she could have made or not. She was quite alone in the world, and had to fight against many intrigues. She was not a woman to make friendships quickly, and she disliked the society of her own sex. Thus it came about that in the secluded life she led, except for the members of her household, two persons only were admitted to Carlton House and Kew. One was Lord Bute, the other Bubb Dodington.
Bubb Dodington, whose diary we have quoted before, was a wealthy parvenu whose ambition in life was to become peer. Walpole had refused him his coveted desire, and he therefore attached himself to Frederick Prince of Wales, who borrowed money from him, and invented a post in his household for his benefit. As far as it was possible for Dodington to be attached to any one, he seems to have been attached to his “Master,” as he calls him. After Frederick’s death, when, to use his own phrase, “there was little prospect of his doing any good at Leicester House,” he again courted the favour of the government. But he retained a sentimental attachment to his master’s widow, or (for he was a born intriguer) he wished to keep in touch with the young Prince of Wales. In either case he was careful not to break off his friendship with the Princess-Dowager, and often waited upon her at Carlton House. The Princess, though she did not wholly trust him, clung to him as a friend of her husband’s. He was useful as a link with the outer world, he could retail to her all the political gossip of the day, and she, in turn, could make him the medium of her views, for she knew what she told him in apparent confidence would be retailed to all the town before the day was over. Dodington was an inveterate gossip, and his vanity was too much flattered by being made the confidant of the Princess-Dowager for him to conceal the fact. Moreover, he was wealthy, and a shrewd man of business. The Princess sorely needed advice in money matters, for her dower was only £50,000 a year, and out of that sum she had to keep up Leicester House, Carlton House and Kew, educate and maintain her numerous family, and to pay off by instalments her husband’s debts—a task which she voluntarily took upon herself, though it crippled her financially for years. She did all so well that her economy was a triumph of management.