and speaks of her:—
With graceful ease
And native majesty is formed to please.
The Royal Family were very much in evidence at first. They were anxious, no doubt, to impress their personalities upon the English people, and they lost no opportunity of showing themselves in public. In pursuance of this policy, soon after the coronation, the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales, together with the young Princesses Anne and Amelia, went to see the Lord Mayor’s Show, attended by the great officers of state, many of the nobility and judges, and a retinue of Hanoverians, including, no doubt, though they were not specified in the official lists, Schulemburg and Kielmansegge. The royal family took up their position in a balcony over against Bow Church, with a canopy of crimson velvet above them; the Prince of Wales sat on the King’s right hand, the Princess on his left, and the two young Princesses were placed in front. The royal party and their Hanoverian suite were highly delighted with the show, which far exceeded anything of the kind they had seen before, and when it was over, the King offered to knight the owner of the house from whose balcony he had looked down upon the procession. But the worthy citizen was a Quaker, and refused the honour, much to the astonishment of his Majesty. After the procession the Sheriffs and Aldermen came to escort the royal family to the Guildhall, where a magnificent feast was prepared. The Lord Mayor, Sir William Humphreys, knelt at the entrance of the Guildhall and presented the City sword to the King, who touched it, and gave it back to his good keeping. The Lady Mayoress, arrayed in black velvet, with a train many yards long, came forward to make obeisance to the Princess of Wales. It was a moot point, and one which had occasioned much discussion between the Princess and her ladies-in-waiting, whether she should kiss the Lady Mayoress or not; but some one remembered that Queen Anne had not done so, and so the Princess determined to be guided by this recent precedent. The Lady Mayoress, however, fully expected to be saluted by the Princess, and advanced towards her with this intent, but finding the kiss withheld, she, to quote Lady Cowper, “did make the most violent bawling to her page to hold up her train before the Princess, being loath to lose the privilege of her Mayoralty. But the greatest jest was that the King and the Princess both had been told that my Lord Mayor had borrowed her for the day only, so I had much ado to convince them of the contrary, though she by marriage was a sort of relation of my Lord’s first wife. At last they did agree that if he had borrowed a wife, it would have been another sort of one than she was.”
The King soothed the Lady Mayoress’s wounded feelings by declaring that she should sit at the same table with him, and harmony being restored, the royal party proceeded to the banqueting hall, which was hung with tapestry and decked with green boughs. The Lord Mayor, on bended knee, presented to the King the first glass of wine, which, it was noted with satisfaction, his Majesty drank at one gulp, and then again asked if there was any one for him to knight. Apparently knighthoods were not in the programme, but the King showed his appreciation of the civic hospitality by making the Lord Mayor a baronet, an honour that dignitary had striven hard to obtain, for he had been zealous in suppressing Jacobite libels, and sending hawkers of ribald verses and seditious ballad singers to prison. The King was also very gracious to Sir Peter King, the Recorder, and told him to acquaint the citizens of London with “these my principles. I never forsake a friend, and I will endeavour to do justice to everybody.” When the banquet was ended there was a concert, and late in the evening the royal party departed, expressing themselves much pleased with their reception.
The Prince and Princess of Wales showed themselves continually in the West End, and in places where the quality of the town most did congregate. At first they walked in St. James’s Park every day, attended by a numerous suite, and followed by a fashionable, and would-be-fashionable, crowd. But after a time the Princess, who was as fond of outdoor exercise and fresh air as the old Electress Sophia, declared that St. James’s Park “stank of people,” and she migrated to Kensington, driving thither by coach, and then walking in the gardens. Kensington was at that time in the country, and separated from the town by Hyde Park and open fields. The palace, a favourite residence of William and Mary and Queen Anne, was the plainest and least pretending of the royal palaces, though Wren was supposed to have built the south front. But the air was reckoned very salubrious, and the grounds were the finest near London. The gardens were intersected by long straight gravel walks, and hedges of box and yew, many of them clipped and twisted into quaint shapes. Pope made fun of them, and gave an imaginary catalogue of the horticultural fashions of the day, such as: “Adam and Eve in yew, Adam a little shattered by the fall of the Tree of Knowledge in a great storm, Eve and the Serpent very flourishing”. “St. George in box, his arm scarce long enough, but will be in condition to stick the dragon by next April.” “An old Maid of Honour in wormwood.” “A topping Ben Jonson in laurel,” and so forth.
As soon as the Princess of Wales took to walking at Kensington, the gardens became a fashionable promenade. The general public was not admitted except by ticket, but persons of fashion came in great throng. The poets now began to sing of Kensington and its beauties. Tickell gives a picture of these promenades in the following lines:—
Where Kensington, high o’er the neighb’ring lands,
’Midst greens and sweets, a regal fabrick stands,
And sees each spring, luxuriant in her bowers,