The King-Elector was received at Hanover with demonstrations of joy, and a succession of fêtes was carried out in his honour. There was plenty of money at Hanover now—English money—and the Hanoverians could have as many entertainments as they desired without thinking of the expense. The King’s brother, Ernest Augustus, welcomed him on the frontier. He had acted as Regent entirely to George’s satisfaction, and he showed it by creating him Duke of York. The King’s grandson, Frederick, was also there, and he had held the courts and levées at Herrenhausen in the King’s absence. It was not a good training. He was a precocious youth, showing signs, even at this early age, of emulating his father and grandfather in their habits and vices. He already gambled and drank, and when his governor sent a complaint against him to his mother in England, she good-naturedly took his part. “Ah,” she wrote, “je m’imagine que ce sont des tours de page.” The governor replied, “Plût à Dieu, madame, que ce fûssent des tours de page! Ce sont des tours de laquais et de coquin.” His grandfather thought him a most promising prince, and created him Duke of Gloucester, as a sign of his approval.
The return of the King brought many people to Hanover—ministers, diplomatists and princes all came to pay their respects, and to see if they could not arrange matters in some way for their own benefit. Lady Mary writes: “This town is neither large nor handsome, but the palace capable of holding a greater Court than that of St. James’s. The King has had the kindness to appoint us a lodging in one part, without which we should be very ill-accommodated, for the vast number of English crowds the town so much it is very good luck to get one sorry room in a miserable tavern.... The King’s company of French comedians play here every night; they are very well dressed, and some of them not ill actors. His Majesty dines and sups constantly in public. The Court is very numerous, and its affability and goodness make it one of the most agreeable places in the world.”[70] To another correspondent she writes more critically: “I have now got into the region of beauty. All the women have literally rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and bosoms, jet eyebrows and scarlet lips, to which they generally add coal black hair. These perfections never leave them until the hour of their deaths, and have a very fine effect by candle-light. But I could wish them handsome with a little more variety. They resemble one of the beauties of Mrs. Salmon’s Court of Great Britain,[71] and are in as much danger of melting away by approaching too close to the fire, which they, for that reason, carefully avoid, though it is now such excessive cold weather that I believe they suffer extremely by that piece of self-denial.”[72] She much admired Herrenhausen. “I was very sorry,” she writes, “that the ill weather did not permit me to see Herrenhausen in all its beauty, but in spite of the snow I think the gardens very fine. I was particularly surprised at the vast number of orange trees, much larger than any I have ever seen in England, though this climate is certainly colder.”[73]
The King mightily diverted himself at Hanover, passing much time in the society of his mistress, Countess Platen, whom he now rejoined after two years’ separation, and holding a crowded Court every night. Lady Mary, too, had a great success, and some of the English courtiers thought that she ran Countess Platen hard in the King’s favour. Lord Peterborough, who was in the King’s suite, declared that the King was so happy at Hanover, that “he believed he had forgotten the accident which happened to him and his family on the 1st August, 1714”.
FOOTNOTES TO BOOK II, CHAPTER V:
[66] The Earl of Stair (English ambassador in Paris) to the elder Horace Walpole, 3rd March, 1716.
[67] A full account of Lord Nithisdale’s escape from the Tower is given in a letter written by Lady Nithisdale to her sister, Lady Traquair. It may be read in the Transactions of the Societies of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. i., pp. 523–38. These particulars are taken from it.
[68] The Weekly Journal, 28th January, 1716.
[69] The Weekly Journal, 3rd March, 1716.
[70] Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to the Countess of Bristol, Hanover, 25th November, 1716.
[71] A celebrated waxwork show in London.