From Dodington’s diary we get glimpses of the domestic life of the Princess-Dowager and her children after her husband’s death. For instance, he writes: “The Princess sent for me to attend her between eight and nine o’clock. I went to Leicester House expecting a small company, or little musick, but found nobody but her Royal Highness. She made me draw a stool and sit by the fireside. Soon after came in the Prince of Wales, and Prince Edward, and then the Lady Augusta, all in an undress, and took their stools and sat round the fire with us. We continued talking of familiar occurrences till between ten and eleven, with the ease and unreservedness and unconstraint as if one had dropped into a sister’s house that had a family to pass the evening. It is much to be wished that the Prince conversed familiarly with more people of a certain knowledge of the world.”[13]
[13] Dodington’s Diary, Nov. 17, 1753, edition 1784.
This last point Dodington ventured to press upon the Princess more than once, for it was a matter of general complaint that she kept her children so strictly and so secluded from the world. They had no companions or playmates of their own age besides themselves, for the Princess declared that “the young people of quality were so ill-educated and so very vicious that they frightened her.... Such was the universal profligacy ... such the character and conduct of the young people of distinction that she was really afraid to have them near her children. She should be even in more pain for her daughters than her sons, for the behaviour of the women was indecent, low, and much against their own interests by making themselves so cheap.”[14]
[14] Dodington’s Diary, edition 1784.
We have dwelt thus on Augusta Princess of Wales not only because she was the mother of Princess Matilda, but because so little is known of her. The scandalous tales of Whig pamphleteers, and the ill-natured gossip of her arch-maligner Horace Walpole cannot be accepted without considerable reserve. No adequate memoir has ever been written of this Princess. Yet she was the mother of a king whose reign was one of the longest and most eventful in English history, and the training she gave her eldest son moulded his character, formed his views and influenced his policy. It influenced also, though in a lesser degree, the life of her youngest daughter. Matilda inherited certain qualities from her father, but in her early education and environment she owed everything to her mother. To the strict seclusion in which she was brought up by this stern mother, who won her children’s respect but never their confidence, and to her utter ignorance of the world and its temptations (more particularly those likely to assail one destined to occupy an exalted position), may be traced to some extent the mistakes of her later years.
There were breaks in the children’s circle at Carlton House and Kew. Prince Frederick William died in 1765 at the age of fifteen, and Princess Elizabeth in 1759 at the age of nineteen. Of the first nothing is recorded, of the latter Horace Walpole quaintly writes: “We have lost another princess, Lady Elizabeth. She died of an inflammation in her bowels in two days. Her figure was so very unfortunate, that it would have been difficult for her to be happy, but her parts and application were extraordinary. I saw her act in Cato at eight years old when she could not stand alone, but was forced to lean against the side scene. She had been so unhealthy, that at that age she had not been taught to read, but had learned the part of Lucia by hearing the others studying their parts. She went to her father and mother, and begged she might act; they put her off as gently as they could; she desired leave to repeat her part, and, when she did, it was with so much sense that there was no denying her.”[15]
[15] Walpole’s Letters, vol. iii., edition 1857.
The following year a life of much greater importance in the royal family came to a close. George II. died at Kensington Palace on October 25, 1760, in the seventy-seventh year of his age, under circumstances which have always been surrounded by a certain amount of mystery. The version generally received is as follows: The King rose in the morning at his usual hour, drank his chocolate, and retired to an adjoining apartment. Presently his German valet heard a groan and the sound of a heavy fall; he rushed into the room and found the King lying insensible on the floor with the blood trickling from his forehead, where he had struck himself against a bureau in falling. The valet ran to Lady Yarmouth, but the mistress had some sense of the fitness of things, and desired that the Princess Amelia should be sent for. She arrived to find her father quite dead. His death was due to heart disease and was instantaneous.
George II. was buried in Henry VII.’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey. His last wishes were fulfilled to the letter. He had desired that one of the sides of Queen Caroline’s coffin (who had predeceased him by twenty-three years) should be removed and the corresponding side of his own coffin should be taken away, so that his body might lie side by side with hers, and in death they should not be divided. This touching injunction was piously carried out by command of his grandson, who now succeeded him as King George III.