The King and the Prince and Princess of Wales were very fond of the theatres. In the gazettes of the time frequent mention is made of their being present at the opera to hear Nicolina sing or witnessing a play at Drury Lane. We find the Royal Family, together with a great concourse of the nobility, at a masquerade and ball at the Haymarket,[57] which was attended by all the town, and the company was numerous rather than select. It was the pleasure of the royal personages to don mask and domino and go down from their box and mingle freely with the company. It was on this occasion, probably, that a fair Jacobite accosted the King. “Here, sirrah, a bumper to King James.” “I drink with all my heart to the health of any unfortunate prince,” said his Majesty, and emptied his glass, without disclosing his identity. Caroline said she liked to go to the play to improve her English, and her taste was very catholic, ranging from Shakespeare to the broadest farce. She rather scandalised the more sober part of her Court by witnessing a comedy called “The Wanton Wife,” which was considered both improper and immoral; it had been recommended to her by the chaste and prudish Lady Cowper, of all matrons in the world. The Duchess of Bolton often recommended plays to the King. She was very lively and free in her conversation, making many droll slips of the tongue when she talked French, either designedly or by accident. At one of the King’s parties she was telling him how much she had enjoyed the play at Drury Lane the night before; it was Colley Cibber’s “Love’s Last Shift”. The King did not understand the title, so he said, “Put it into French”. “La dernière chemise de l’amour,” she answered, quite gravely, whereat the King burst out laughing.
The Royal Family were also assiduous in honouring with their presence the entertainments of the great nobility, provided they were Whig in politics. We hear of their being at a ball at the Duchess of Somerset’s, a dinner at the Duchess of Shrewsbury’s, a supper at my Lady Bristol’s, and so on. At Lady Bristol’s the King was never in better humour, and said “a world of sprightly things”. Among the rest, the Duchess of Shrewsbury said to him: “Sir, we have a grievance against your Majesty because you will not have your portrait painted, and lo! here is your medal which will hand your effigy down to posterity with a nose as long as your arm”. “So much the better,” said the King, “c’est une tête de l’antique”. But the virtuous Lady Cowper adds: “Though I was greatly diverted, and there was a good deal of music, yet I could not avoid being uneasy at the repetition of some words in French which the Duchess of Bolton said by mistake, which convinced me that the two foreign ladies” (presumably Schulemburg and Kielmansegge) “were no better than they should be”. A good many ladies “who were no better than they should be” attended the drawing-rooms of George the First, and their conversation was very free. Old Lady Dorchester, the mistress of James the Second, came one night, and meeting the Duchess of Portsmouth, mistress of Charles the Second, and Lady Orkney, mistress of William the Third, exclaimed, “Who would have thought that we three whores should have met here!” It was certainly an interesting meeting.
The Princess of Wales was in great request as godmother at the christenings of children of the high nobility. Apparently this form of royal condescension was somewhat expensive, for there was a lively dispute among the Princess’s ladies as to the sum she ought to give the nurses at christenings. When she stood godmother to the Duchess of Ancaster’s child she and the Prince sent thirty guineas, which was thought too little, though, on inquiry into precedent, it was found that King Charles the Second never gave more on such occasions than five guineas to an esquire’s nurse, ten to a baron’s, twenty to an earl’s, and then raised five guineas for every degree in the peerage. Sometimes the Royal Family acted as sponsors to the children of humbler personages. On one occasion the King stood as godfather and the Princess of Wales as godmother to the infant daughter of Madame Darastauli, chief singer at the opera. Though they frequently attended christenings, there is not a single record in the Gazette of any of the Royal Family having honoured a wedding, or having been present at a funeral, even of the most distinguished personages in the realm. Christenings and funerals were then the great occasions in family life. If my lord died it was usual for his bereaved lady to receive her friends sitting upright in the matrimonial bed under a canopy. The widow, the bed and the bedchamber (which was lighted by a single taper) were draped with crape, and the children of the deceased, clad in the same sable garments, were ranged at the foot of the bed. The ceremony passed in solemn silence, and after sitting for a while the guests retired without having uttered a word.
The London to which Caroline came was a very different London to the vast metropolis we know to-day. Its total population could not have exceeded seven hundred thousand, and between the City of London proper and Westminster were wide spaces, planted here and there with trees, but for the most part waste lands. The City was then, as now, the heart of London, and the centre of business lay between St. Paul’s and the Exchange, while Westminster had a life apart, arising out of the Houses of Parliament. The political and fashionable life of London collected around St. James’s and the Mall. St. James’s Park was the fashionable promenade; it was lined with avenues of trees, and ornamented with a long canal and a duck-pond. St. James’s Palace was much as it is now, and old Marlborough House occupied the site of the present one, but on the site of Buckingham Palace stood Buckingham House, the seat of the powerful Duke of Buckingham, a stately mansion which the duke had built in a “little wilderness full of blackbirds and nightingales”. In St. James’s Street were the most frequented and fashionable coffee and chocolate houses, and also a few select “mug houses”. Quaint signs, elaborately painted, carved and gilded, overhung the streets, and largely took the place of numbers; houses were known as “The Blue Boar,” “The Pig and Whistle,” “The Merry Maidens,” “The Red Bodice,” and so forth.
It was easy in those days to walk out from London into the open country on all sides. Marylebone was a village, Stepney a distant hamlet, and London south of the river had hardly begun. Piccadilly was almost a rural road, lined with shady trees, and here and there broken by large houses with gardens. It terminated in Hyde Park, then a wild heath, with fields to the north and Kensington to the west. Bloomsbury, Soho and Seven Dials were fashionable districts (many old mansions in Bloomsbury are relics of the Queen Anne and early Georgian era), though the tide of fashion was already beginning to move westward. Grosvenor Square was not begun until 1716, and Mayfair was chiefly known from the six weeks’ fair which gave it its name. One feature of the London of the early Georges might well be revived in these days of crowded streets and increasing traffic. The Thames was then a fashionable waterway, and a convenient means of getting from one part of London to another. Boats and wherries on the Thames were as numerous and as fashionable as gondolas at Venice, and the King, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and many of the nobility, had their barges in the same way that they had their coaches and sedan-chairs, and often “took the air on the water”.
London, though quainter and more interesting then than now, had its drawbacks. Fogs had scarcely made their appearance, but the ill-paved streets, except for a few lamps which flickered here and there, were in darkness, and link boys were largely employed. After dark the streets were dangerous for law-abiding citizens. The “Mohocks,” who were the aristocratic prototypes of the “Hooligans” of our day, had been to some extent put down, but many wild young bloods still made it their business at night to prowl about the streets molesting peaceable citizens, insulting women and defying the Watch, who, drunken and corrupt, often played into their hands. Conveyances were difficult to procure; the old and dirty hackney coaches were few, and dear to hire. There were sedan-chairs, but they had not yet come into general use, and were the privilege of the few rather than of the many. The town must have been very noisy in those days, a babel of cries went up from itinerant musicians, ballad-singers, orange girls, flower girls, beggars, itinerant vendors, rat-catchers, chair-menders, knife-grinders and so forth. Idle and disreputable persons stood in the gutters, and shook dice boxes at the passers-by and pestered them to gamble. Drunkenness was common, and accounted for the many fights and brawls that took place in the streets.
In the fashionable world dinner was taken in the middle of the day, or from two to four o’clock, and supper was the pleasanter and more informal meal. Card parties and supper parties generally went together. There were lighter hospitalities also; and among the less wealthy many pleasant little gatherings were held in the evening around coffee and oranges. Ladies of quality passed most of their afternoons going from house to house drinking tea, which at the high prices then asked was a luxury. Men of fashion idled away many hours in the coffee and chocolate houses, of which some of the most famous were White’s Chocolate House (now the well-known club), the Cocoa Tree, also in St. James’s Street, Squire’s near Gray’s Inn Gate, Garraway’s in ’Change Alley and Lloyd’s in Lombard Street. Clubs were in their infancy when George the First was king. A few had come into being, but they were chiefly literary or political societies, such as the brief-lived Kit-Cat Club, which was devoted to the House of Hanover, and flourished in Queen Anne’s reign, or the October Club, chiefly formed of Jacobite squires. There was also the Hellfire Club, a wild association of young men, under the Duke of Wharton, which did its best to justify the name.
London lived more out of doors at the beginning of the eighteenth century than it does now; we read of fêtes in the gardens and parks, the ever popular fairs, pleasure parties on the Thames in the summer, and bonfires in the squares and on the ice in winter, and many street shows.
Any picture of social life of the period would lack colour which did not give some idea of the quaint dress of the day. Men thought as much about dress as women, and though it is impossible to follow all the vagaries of fashion as shown in the waxing and waning of wigs, the variations of cocked hats, coats, gold lace and sword hilts, yet we may note that men of fashion began to wear the full-bottomed peruke in the reign of George the First, and their ordinary attire consisted of ample-skirted coats, long and richly embroidered waistcoats, breeches, stockings, and shoes with buckles, and three-cornered hats. The beaux or “pretty fellows” of the day blazed out into silks and velvets, reds and greens, and a profusion of gold lace; they were distinguished not only by the many-coloured splendour of their attire, but by their scents of orange flower and civet, their jewelled snuff-boxes, their gold or tortoise-shell rimmed perspective glasses, and especially for their canes, which were often of amber, mounted with gold, the art of carrying which bespoke the latest mode.
The ladies, naturally, were no whit behind the men in the variety and novelty of their attire. They bedecked themselves with the brightest hues, and their hair, piled up or flowing, with head-dresses high or low, as fashion decreed, arranged in ringlets or worn plain or powdered, went through as many fluctuations as their lords’ big-wigs, periwigs and perukes. The fan played a large part in conversation and flirtation, and patches and powder were arranged with due regard to effect. Muffs were a prodigious size. It is impossible for the mere man to give a particular description of the silks, velvets, jewels, laces, ribbons and feathers which formed part of the equipment of a lady of quality, or to follow the mysteries of commodes, sacks, négligés, bedgowns and mob-caps. But the walking dresses, if we may judge from the fashion plates, seem to have left an extraordinary amount of bosom exposed, to have been very tight in the waist, and to have carried an enormous number of flounces. The hoop, which gradually developed through the Georgian era, was the most monstrous enormity that ever appeared in the world of fashion. The lady who wore a hoop really stood in a cage, and when she moved, she did not seem to walk, for her steps were not visible, but she was rather wafted along. So stepped fair ladies from their sedan-chairs, or floated down the avenues of Kensington and Hampton Court. Servants wore clothes almost as fine as their masters and mistresses, and aped their manners and their vices. All great mansions supported throngs of idle servants in gorgeous liveries, and my lady often had her negro boy, who waited on her, clad in scarlet and gold, with a silver collar around his neck.