HAMPTON COURT, TEMP. GEORGE II.
Hampton Court, more than any other royal palace, has memories of Queen Caroline, and many of its rooms remain to this day much as she left them. The Queen’s dressing-room is almost the same as it was one hundred and seventy years ago; her high marble bath on one side of the room may still be seen, and on the other side is the door that led to her private chapel. Under Caroline’s supervision Hampton Court was altered in many ways, and in some improved. The great staircase was completed and decorated; the Queen’s presence chamber and the guard chamber were altered in a way characteristic of the early Georgian period. The public dining room, which is one of the finest rooms in the palace, was also redecorated, and the massive chimney-piece of white marble which bears the arms of George the Second was placed in it. Nor did the Queen confine her alterations only to the palace. She had a passion for gardening, especially landscape gardening, and the grounds of Hampton Court were considerably changed under her supervision. It was she who substituted wide sweeping lawns for the numerous fountains and elaborate flower beds which until then had ornamented the great fountain garden. Her alterations in many respects were severely criticised.[14]
Both the King and the Queen had pleasant memories of the place where they had celebrated their only regency when Prince and Princess of Wales. The summer after the coronation they came to Hampton Court for some time, and, as long as the Queen lived, a regular practice was made of spending at least two months there every summer. From Hampton Court the King did a great deal of stag hunting; he was especially fond of the pleasures of the chase and would not forego them on any account. His enthusiasm was not shared by the lady members of the royal household. “We hunt,” writes Mrs. Howard from Hampton Court to Lady Hervey, “with great noise and violence, and have every day a very tolerable chance to have a neck broke;”[15] and her correspondent, writing of the same subject, declares her belief that much of Mrs. Howard’s illness was due to this violent riding. The following is a description of one of these expeditions:—
“On Saturday their Majesties, together with their Royal Highnesses the Duke (of Cumberland) and the Princesses, came to the new park by Richmond from Hampton Court and diverted themselves with hunting a stag, which ran from eleven to one, when he took to the great pond, where he defended himself for half an hour, when he was killed. His Majesty, the Duke, and the Princess Royal hunted on horseback, her Majesty and the Princess Amelia in a four-wheeled chaise, Princess Caroline in a two-wheeled chaise, and the Princesses Mary and Louisa in a coach. Her Majesty was pleased to show great condescension and complaisance to the country people by conversing with them, and ordering them money. Several of the nobility attended, amongst them Sir Robert Walpole, clothed in green as Ranger. When the diversion was over their Majesties, the Duke, and the Princesses refreshed themselves on the spot with a cold collation, as did the nobility at some distance of time after, and soon after two in the afternoon returned to Hampton Court.”[16]
The Queen always accompanied the King in her chaise, but she cared nothing for the sport. She took with her her vice-chamberlain, Lord Hervey, “who loved hunting as little as she did, so that he might ride constantly by the side of her chaise, and entertain her whilst other people were entertaining themselves by hearing dogs bark, and seeing crowds gallop”.[17] The King cared only for stag-hunting and coursing; he affected to despise fox-hunting, though the sport was very popular among his subjects. Once, when the Duke of Grafton said he was going down to the country to hunt the fox, the King told him that: “It was a pretty occupation for a man of quality, and at his age to be spending all his time in tormenting a poor fox, that was generally a much better beast than any of those that pursued him; for the fox hurts no other animal but for his subsistence, while those brutes who hurt him did it only for the pleasure they took in hurting.” The Duke of Grafton said he did it for his health. The King asked him why he could not as well walk or ride post for his health; and added, if there was any pleasure in the chase, he was sure the Duke of Grafton can know nothing of it; “for,” added his Majesty, “with your great corps of twenty stone weight, no horse, I am sure, can carry you within hearing, much less within sight, of the hounds.”[18]
At Hampton Court, as at St. James’s, the King and Queen dined in public on Sundays, and the people came in crowds to see the sight. On one of these occasions an absurd incident took place. “There was such a resort to Hampton Court last Sunday to see their Majesties dine,” writes a news-sheet, “that the rail surrounding the table broke, and causing some to fall, made a diverting scramble for hats and wigs, at which their Majesties laughed heartily.”[19] On private evenings at Hampton Court the only amusement was cards, but now and then the King and Queen held drawing-rooms, in the audience chamber.[20] Often in summer, when the nights were fine, the Queen and her ladies would go out and walk in the gardens. We may picture her pacing up and down the avenues of chestnut and lime in the warm dusk, or viewing from the gardens the beautiful palace bathed in the moonbeams. So little is changed to-day that it requires no great effort of the imagination to re-people Hampton Court with the figures of the early Georgian era.
One of the most prominent personages at the Court of Queen Caroline was her favourite, Lord Hervey, whom she had now appointed her vice-chamberlain, and who enjoyed her fullest confidence. The Queen delighted to have him about her at all times, and would converse with him for hours together, asking him questions about a hundred and one things, and laughing at his clever talk. Lord Hervey was a man of considerable wit and ability, and undoubtedly an amusing companion. But he was a contemptible personality, diseased in body and warped in mind, incapable of taking a broad and generous view of any one or anything; ignorant of lofty ideals and noble motives himself, he was quite unable to understand them in others, and always sought some sordid or selfish reason for every action. The Queen, however, overlooking his faults, with which she must have been familiar, and his effeminacies and immoralities, of which she could not have been ignorant, believed that he was a faithful servant to her, and trusted him in no ordinary degree. As a sign of her favour she increased his salary as vice-chamberlain by £1,000 a year, allowed him considerable patronage, which was worth a good deal more, and made him many valuable presents. She treated him rather as a son than as a subject. “It is well I am so old,” she used to say (she was fourteen years Hervey’s senior), “or I should be talked of over this creature.” No one, however, ever talked scandal of her Majesty, though some doubted her judgment in choosing her friends, and it must be confessed that she was unwise in admitting Hervey to so many of her secrets. Notwithstanding that she heaped favours upon him, he repaid her with ingratitude, and when she was dead endeavoured to befoul her memory. But to the Queen’s face he was a fawning and accomplished courtier, and expressed the greatest zeal in her service.
Hervey had a nimble and superficial pen, and sometimes employed himself in writing anonymous pamphlets in defence of the Government and Court against members of the Opposition. A great many of these anonymous pamphlets were showered upon the town at this time, and Pulteney chancing to come across one of them, entitled Sedition and Defamation Displayed, which attacked him and Bolingbroke in no measured terms, thought it was from Lord Hervey’s pen (it afterwards turned out to be not so), and wrote a violent answer, also anonymous, called A Proper Reply to a Late Scurrilous Libel. This pamphlet abused Walpole, and by implication the Court, and applied several opprobrious epithets to Hervey, speaking of him by his nickname “Lord Fanny,” describing him as “half-man and half-woman,” and dwelling malignantly on his peculiar infirmities. The pamphlet was warmly resented at court. Like many who set no bounds to their own malice, Hervey was extremely sensitive to attack, and wishing to curry favour with the King and Queen he wrote to Pulteney to know if he were the author of the pamphlet. Pulteney answered that he would inform him on that point if Hervey would tell him first whether he was the writer of Sedition and Defamation Displayed. Hervey sent back word to say that he had not written the pamphlet, and again demanded an answer to his question. Pulteney returned a defiant message saying that “whether or no he was the author of the Reply he was ready to justify and stand by the truth of every word of it, at what time and wherever Lord Hervey pleased”. This was tantamount to a challenge, and Hervey, though not given to duelling, could not in honour ignore it. A duel was arranged. “Accordingly,” writes an eye-witness,[21] “on Monday last, between three and four in the afternoon, they met in Upper St. James’s Park, behind Arlington Street, with their two seconds, who were Mr. Fox and Sir J. Rushout. The two combatants were each of them slightly wounded, but Mr. Pulteney had once so much the advantage of Lord Hervey that he would have infallibly run my lord through the body if his foot had not slipped, and then the seconds took the occasion to part them. Upon which Mr. Pulteney embraced Lord Hervey, and expressed a great deal of concern at the accident of their quarrel, promising at the same time that he would never personally attack him again, either with his mouth or his pen. Lord Hervey made him a bow without giving him any sort of answer, and, to use a common expression, thus they parted.” Sir Charles Hanbury Williams wrote some lines on this duel, in which, addressing Pulteney, he says:—
Lord Fanny once did play the dunce,