Bolingbroke’s exile had lasted nine years. Ever since he had broken with James he had lived only for one thing—to get back to England. His first wife died in 1718, and soon after he privately married the Marquise de Villette, a niece of Madame de Maintenon. The lady, who was rich, talented and handsome, was entirely devoted to Bolingbroke; her wealth was at his disposal, she entered into his literary tastes, and sought to further his political ambitions. She even went so far as to change her religion lest her being a Roman Catholic should prejudice him further with the Court of England. The marriage was kept a secret for a long time, and Lady Bolingbroke, as Madame de Villette, came over to England to see what she could do to bring her lord back again. She was received by George the First and at Leicester House. It was thought very likely that she would gain the goodwill of the Princess of Wales, whose views of philosophy, religion and literature had much in sympathy with those of Bolingbroke; and in Voltaire they had a friend in common. But in some way Madame de Villette failed at Leicester House; perhaps she overdid her part, perhaps Walpole had effectually prejudiced the Princess against his rival. Caroline believed that Bolingbroke had betrayed James, and said later that Madame de Villette had told her that Bolingbroke had only entered James’s service to be of use to the English Government and so earn his pardon. “That was, in short,” said Caroline, “to betray the Pretender; for though Madame de Villette softened the word, she could not soften the thing; which I owned was a speech that had so much villainy and impudence mixed in it, that I could never bear him nor her from that hour; and could hardly hinder myself from saying to her: ‘And pray, Madam, what security can the King have that my Lord Bolingbroke does not desire to come here with the same honest intent that he went to Rome?[115] Or that he swears he is no longer a Jacobite with more truth than you have sworn you are not his wife?’”
Having failed with the Princess of Wales, Madame de Villette next addressed herself to the Duchess of Kendal through her “niece,” the Countess of Walsingham, with such good effect that for a bribe of £12,000 the duchess persuaded the King to let Bolingbroke return to England. The duchess hated Walpole for having thwarted her on more than one occasion in some favourite scheme, and her hatred gave her zest to urge the King to grant a pardon to the Minister’s great rival and bitterest foe. It says much for the duchess’s influence over the King that she was able to obtain it at a time when Walpole was in the zenith of his power. The pardon, however, at first amounted to little more than a bare permission for Bolingbroke to return to England. His attainder remained in force, his title was still withheld, and he was incapable of inheriting estates, and precluded from sitting in the House of Lords, or holding any office. But Walpole had to acquiesce in his return, and no sooner had the pardon passed the great seal than Bolingbroke came back to England, and at once set to work to get his remaining disabilities removed.
HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE.
He was unfortunate in the moment of his return, for the King and Bolingbroke’s friend at court, the Duchess of Kendal, had already set out for Hanover with Townshend and Carteret, and Walpole was carrying on the Government alone. Bolingbroke at first made overtures to Walpole for peace between them, and, if we may believe Horace Walpole (the younger), even went to dine with him at Chelsea. But this effort was too much for the fallen statesman; he choked over the first morsel at dinner, and was obliged to retire from the room. After remaining in England some months, during which he renewed his political friendships, especially with Sir William Wyndham and Lord Harcourt, Bolingbroke went to Aix-la-Chapelle, hoping to obtain permission to pay his respects to the King at Hanover. Failing in this, he returned to Paris, where, on the sudden death of the Regent, he gave valuable information against the Jacobites to the elder Horace Walpole, then ambassador, by way of showing his devotion to the House of Hanover, but though Horace Walpole made use of Bolingbroke’s information, he treated him ungraciously.
The King remained in Hanover some time, and later in the year, 1723, went to Berlin on a visit to his son-in-law, King Frederick William of Prussia, and his daughter, Queen Sophie Dorothea.
The Court of Berlin was very different to what it had been in the days of the splendour-loving King Frederick and his brilliant consort, Sophie Charlotte. The penurious habits which Sophie Charlotte had lamented in her son when he was a youth had now developed into sordid avarice, and his boorish manners into a harsh and brutal despotism. At the Prussian Court economy was the order of the day, and in the State everything was subservient to militarism. The misery and squalor of the King of Prussia’s household are graphically told in the Memoirs of his daughter Wilhelmina.[116] The half-mad King was subject to fits of ungovernable fury, in which he sometimes kicked and cuffed his children, starved them, spat in their food, locked them up, and cursed and swore at them. His Queen, except for the beatings, was subject to much the same treatment, and the home life was made wretched by perpetual quarrels.
Queen Sophie Dorothea had much beauty and considerable ability, and despite her frequent disputes with her husband, she was, after her fashion, much attached to him, and he to her. But she had a love of intrigue and double-dealing, and she was incapable of going in the straight way if there was a crooked one. She was a woman of one idea, and this idea she clung to with an obstinacy and tenacity which nothing could weaken. For years—almost from the moment of the birth of her children—she had become enamoured of what was afterwards known as the “Double Marriage Scheme,” a scheme to unite her eldest daughter Wilhelmina, to Frederick, Duke of Gloucester (afterwards Prince of Wales), and her son, Frederick William (afterwards Frederick the Great), to the Princess Amelia, second daughter of the Prince and Princess of Wales. By continual arguments, and perpetual intrigues, she had brought her husband round to her way of thinking, and she had also worked upon her father, George the First, to the extent of gaining his consent to the marriage of the Princess Amelia, when she should be old enough, to the Crown Prince Frederick.
But King George did not approve of the idea of marrying his grandson Frederick to Wilhelmina; Lady Darlington had given him a bad account of her. “She said that I was laide à faire peur and deformed,” writes Wilhelmina indignantly, “that I was as bad as I was ugly, and that I was so violent that my violence often caused me to have epileptic fits.” Wilhelmina declared that Lady Darlington maliciously spread these falsehoods because she knew the young princess was exceedingly clever, and she did not want any more clever women about the English Court; Caroline was more than enough for her. But Lady Darlington was not the only opponent: the Princess of Wales also did not favour the double marriage scheme so far as Wilhelmina was concerned, and the Prince of Wales did not favour it at all. He hated his cousin and brother-in-law, the King of Prussia; he had hated him as a boy, and he hated him more when he was a rival for the hand of Caroline. He also disliked his sister, for whom he had never a good word. But at this time, what the Prince and Princess of Wales might think about the marriage of their children was of no importance to the Queen of Prussia. What King George thought was a different matter, and, acting on the advice of the Duchess of Kendal, who had been brought round to favour the scheme by a judicious expenditure of money, she implored her father to come to Berlin and see Wilhelmina for himself, as the best way of answering Lady Darlington’s malicious fabrications.
To Berlin accordingly George the First came. He arrived at Charlottenburg on the evening of October 7th, where the King and Queen and the whole court were assembled to welcome him. Wilhelmina was presented to her grandfather from England. “He embraced me,” she says, “and said nothing further than ‘She is very tall; how old is she?’ Then he gave his hand to the Queen, who led him to her room, all the princes following. No sooner had he reached her room than he took a candle, which he held under my nose, and looked at me from top to toe. I can never describe the state of agitation I was in. I turned red and pale by turns; and all the time he had never uttered one word.” Presently the King left the room to confer with his daughter, and Wilhelmina was left alone with the English suite, including my Lords Carteret and Townshend, who at once began their inspection by talking to her in English. She spoke English fluently, and after she had talked to them for more than an hour, the Queen came and took her away. “The English gentlemen,” said Wilhelmina, “said I had the manners and bearing of an English woman; and, as this nation considers itself far above any other, this was great praise.”