Second Parson: “Good Lord deliver us!”
Queen: “I pray, my good Lady Sundon, shut a little that door; those creatures pray so loud, one cannot hear oneself speak.” [Lady Sundon goes to shut the door.] “So, so, not quite so much; leave it enough open for those parsons to think we may hear, and enough shut that we may not hear quite so much.”
The King seldom honoured these morning levées of his Queen with his presence, for he disliked cosmopolitan gatherings, but sometimes he would strut in and clear out the crowd with scant ceremony. On one occasion he came into the room while the Queen was dressing, and seeing that his consort’s bosom was covered with a kerchief, he snatched it away, exclaiming angrily to Mrs. Howard who was in waiting: “Is it because you have an ugly neck yourself that you love to hide the Queen’s”? The Queen’s bust was said by sculptors to have been the finest in Europe.
The Queen was pleased with Mrs. Howard’s submission in the matter of the basin, and by way of marking her appreciation, she did her the honour of dining with her at her new villa at Marble Hill—that famous villa of which Lords Burlington and Pembroke designed the front, Bathurst and Pope planned the gardens, and Swift, Gay and Arbuthnot arranged the household. But the Queen would allow Mrs. Howard no political influence. Compton and Pulteney, Bolingbroke and other Opposition leaders who had trusted to her found that they had leant on a broken reed. Indeed Mrs. Howard’s goodwill seemed fatal to all her friends. It was through her, unwittingly, that Lord Chesterfield lost the favour of the Queen, though Walpole’s jealousy, and the remembrance the Queen had of his mocking her in the old days at Leicester House, had something to do with it.
Chesterfield, who had been appointed in the last reign Ambassador at the Hague, came over to England some little time after King George the Second ascended the throne to see his friends and pay his respects to their Majesties. He at once repaired to Walpole, who said to him jealously: “Well, my Lord, I find you have come to be Secretary of State”. Lord Chesterfield declared that he had no such ambition, but he said: “I claim the Garter, not on account of my late services, but agreeably with the King’s promise to me when he was Prince of Wales; besides, I am a man of pleasure, and the blue riband would add two inches to my size”. The King kept his word, and Chesterfield was given the Garter, and also the sinecure of High Steward of the Household. All would have gone well with him if he had not been so unfortunate as to get again into the Queen’s bad books. “The Queen,” says Horace Walpole, “had an obscure window at St. James’s that looked into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at night, which looked upon Mrs. Howard’s apartment. Lord Chesterfield, one Twelfth-night at Court, had won so large a sum of money that he thought it imprudent to carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with the mistress. Thus the Queen inferred great intimacy; thenceforward Lord Chesterfield could obtain no favour from Court.” The sum which Lord Chesterfield was said to have won on this occasion was £15,000, which gives some idea of the high play then in vogue. But he lost far more than he gained—the Queen’s goodwill, without which no statesman could hold place in the councils of the King.
FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER III:
[10] After Queen Caroline’s death George II. rarely went to Windsor, and so neglected the Castle that when George III. ascended the throne it was found to be in a ruinous condition.
[11] Stamford Mercury, 19th September, 1728.
[12] Daily Post, 27th December, 1728.
[13] Country Journal, 22nd June, 1728.