[9] Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters and Works. Edited by Lord Wharncliffe.
CHAPTER III.
THE COURT OF QUEEN CAROLINE.
The court of King George the Second and Queen Caroline was conducted on a larger scale than any court England had known since the days of Charles the Second, though it lacked much of the gaiety and more of the grace that enlivened and adorned the court of the Merry Monarch. George the Second was a great lover of show, but he had neither wit nor good taste, and when he assumed the crown he seemed to think that he ought also to assume a stiffness and pomposity of manner to maintain his regal dignity. Like all German princes he was a great stickler for etiquette, and he modelled his court not only on Versailles, which then served as a pattern for all the courts of Europe, but imported to it some of the dulness of Herrenhausen, and further regulated it with strict regard to English precedents in previous reigns. The court officials were often very hard put to it to unearth them. But the King was exceedingly precise and resented the most trifling breach of etiquette as a reflection on his royal dignity. He was a great authority on dress and ceremonial; he could tell to a hair’s-breadth the precise width of the gold braid which should adorn the coat of a gentleman of the bedchamber, and recall with accuracy the number of buttons required for the vest of a page of the backstairs. The Queen encouraged and applauded his bent in this direction; it occupied his mind and left her free to arrange with Walpole the weightier affairs of the nation.
Leicester House was given up and the court made St. James’s Palace its headquarters in London. All the Hanoverian mistresses and favourites who had occupied apartments there during the last reign were turned out without ceremony. The court of Queen Caroline was more select than that of George the First. Drunkenness was still a venial offence, but it was not approved of in the royal presence, and women of notoriously ill repute were no longer received at St. James’s. When the court was at St. James’s, drawing-rooms were held several times a week, public days as they were called, and the King and Queen gave frequent audiences besides. Court balls often took place, and at the evening drawing-rooms cards and high play were still in vogue. Every movement of the King and Queen in public was made the occasion of ceremonial; they attended divine service at the Chapel Royal in state; they walked in St. James’s Park followed by a numerous suite, the way kept clear by guards; they seldom drove out unless preceded by an escort; their visits to the theatre or opera were always announced beforehand, and their coming and going made the occasion of a spectacle. The people, with whom the pomp and circumstance of Royalty is always popular, loved these sights mightily, and all classes were pleased that there was once more a court in London. The King and Queen also revived the custom of dining in public on Sundays. One of the large state rooms of St. James’s Palace was set apart for the occasion, and at a flourish of trumpets the King and Queen and the Royal Family entered and sat down to table in the centre of the room surrounded by the officers of the household. The courses were served with much ceremony on bended knee. The table was decked with magnificent plate and a band played during dinner. The enclosure was railed around, and the public were admitted by ticket, and allowed to stand behind the barriers and watch the royal personages eat, a privilege of which they freely availed themselves. After dinner the King and Queen withdrew to their apartments, their going, as their coming, being made the occasion of a procession.
One of the first acts of the new King and Queen was to make a tour of the royal palaces, which had been practically closed to them since their rupture with George the First. The old King had disliked Windsor and rarely went there, its grandeur oppressed him, and he and his German mistresses felt out of their element in a place steeped in traditions essentially English. George the Second did not care for Windsor any more than his sire, and excused himself from going there often on the ground that it was too far from London. He visited the castle chiefly for the purpose of hunting in the forest. But Caroline loved royal Windsor greatly, and used to go there during the King’s absences at Hanover. In one of the recesses of the picture gallery, now the library, she arranged an extensive and valuable collection of china; the collection was afterwards dispersed, but some of the china remains at Windsor Castle until this day, and is the only relic of Queen Caroline’s occupation.[10]
The King and Queen paid their first visit to Windsor in the autumn of 1728, and great preparations were made to welcome them to the royal borough. “Last Saturday,” we read, “when their Majesties arrived at Windsor, the Mayor, aldermen, and capital burgesses were ready in their formalities to receive them, and the balconies were hung with tapestry and vast crowds of spectators, but their Majesties came the Park way. The King and Queen walked in the Park till dinner time. The next day their Majesties dined in public, when all the country people, whether in, or out of, mourning, were permitted to see them.”[11] On this occasion George the Second assumed his stall in St. George’s Chapel as Sovereign of the Order of the Garter, and made his offering at the altar. The Queen, with the Duke of Cumberland, the Princess Royal, and the Princesses Caroline, Mary and Louisa, were present, and the Queen was seated under a canopy erected on the south side of the choir. A ball was given in the evening. The royal pair hunted the stag in Windsor Forest frequently during the visit, and on one occasion remained out until nine o’clock at night, and on another hunted all day through the rain, chasing the stag as far as Weybridge. The Queen followed the hounds in a chaise with one horse, in the same way that Queen Anne used to hunt in Windsor Forest. During their sojourn at Windsor the King and Queen received one Mrs. Joy, “a widow lady in the ninety-fourth year of her age, who had kissed Charles the First’s hand; she was very graciously received”.[12] The Queen celebrated her first visit to Windsor by giving £350 at Christmas for releasing insolvent debtors confined in the town and castle gaol—her favourite form of charity. The prisoners, to the number of sixteen, were set free.
Kensington was George the Second’s favourite palace, as it had been his father’s. King George the First rebuilt the eastern front and added the cupola. He also improved the interior, notably by making the grand staircase. Then, as now, Kensington Palace was an irregular building with little pretence to beauty and none to grandeur. But our first Hanoverian kings loved it; its homeliness reminded them of Herrenhausen. The Kensington promenades were now revived, and the King and Queen accompanied by the Royal Family would pace down the walks between an avenue of bowing and smiling courtiers. Throughout this reign, and far into the next, Kensington Gardens formed a fashionable resort, and with the promenades are associated many of the great names of the eighteenth century. People were admitted to the gardens by ticket obtainable through the Lord Chamberlain. Thus the promenades developed into a sort of informal court and were much resorted to by persons who did not attend drawing-rooms and levées in the ordinary way, as well as by those who did. The King and the Queen on these morning walks would make many a person happy by singling him out from the crowd with a bow, a smile, or the honour of a few words; or, on the other hand, they would plunge many an aspirant to Court favour into gloom by ignoring him. The origin of these promenades may be traced to the daily walks of the Electress Sophia in the gardens of Herrenhausen, when she used to give audience to her supporters. Like the old Electress, her grandson and his Queen were great walkers. The little King used to walk very fast, with a curious strutting step, and generally forged ahead, leaving his taller and stouter consort to pant along behind him. In a political skit of the day there is an amusing reference to Caroline’s custom of dropping behind her husband. It is headed: “Supposed to be written on account of three gentlemen being seen in Kensington Gardens by the King and Queen while they were walking”. It was written either by Pulteney or Chesterfield, and these two were doubtless represented in it, the third being Wyndham or Bolingbroke. “The great river Euphrates” is the Serpentine, which Caroline created out of a string of ponds. It runs:—
“Now it came to pass in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, in the eighth month, of the sixth year, the beginning of hay harvest, that the King and Queen walked arm in arm in the gardens which they had planted on the banks of the river, the great river Euphrates, and behold there appeared on the sudden three men, sons of the giants. Then Nebuchadnezzar the King lifted up his voice and cried: ‘Oh men of war, who be ye, who be ye, and is it peace?’ They answered him not. Then spake he and said: ‘There is treachery, oh my Queen, there is treachery,’ and he turned his face and fled. Now when the Queen had seen what had befallen the King she girt up her loins and fled also, crying: ‘Oh my God!’ So the King and Queen ran together, but the King outran her mightily, for he ran very swiftly; neither turned he to the right hand nor the left, for he was sore afraid where no fear was, and fled when no man pursued.”
The King and Queen probably saw Pulteney, Chesterfield and Bolingbroke coming towards them, and as they were no doubt just then opposing some pet measure of Walpole and of the court, the King not wishing to receive their salutations, and not caring to ignore them, turned on his heel, and, followed by the Queen, hurried off as fast as he could.
Richmond Lodge had now become Caroline’s personal property, and the Queen continued to be very fond of it, and spent large sums of money in enlarging the gardens. Soon after Caroline became Queen she gave £500 for railing and improving Richmond Green, and we read: “A subscription is set on foot among the inhabitants of the town of Richmond for erecting the effigy of her Majesty in the middle of the green”.[13] But this intention was apparently never carried out. The Queen also had a cottage at Kew where she often drove to breakfast from Richmond. She gave the use of it to her favourite, Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady Sundon.