I paid for tuning the harpsichord, food for their birds, and many other little things belonging to their Royal Highnesses, which were too trifling to mention, which whilst the Duke was with them came to £50 per annum.
Their Royal Highnesses had each a page of honour and gentleman usher at £100 sallary.
Each one had a dresser at £50, and one chambermaid, I do not know at what sallary.
Also one page of the backstairs.
The Princesses used the Queen’s coaches, footmen and grooms.”
The Princesses led singularly idle, purposeless lives; Anne and Amelia chiefly occupied themselves with card-playing and the petty intrigues of the court, and the way their father treated them led them early to lie and practise the arts of dissimulation. Even Princess Caroline, when we have credited her with all the virtues, remains a colourless nonentity. The Princesses always appeared at court festivities and took part in whatever was going on, and the Queen would often relax some of the stiffness of etiquette for the benefit of the young people. For instance, sometimes after the evening drawing-rooms she would turn the function into a ball. We read:—
“On Monday night His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal opened a ball at Court with a minuet, and afterwards they danced several set dances with several of the quality till between four and five o’clock next morning. Her Majesty was richly dressed, and wore a flowered muslin hood with an edging. The Princess Royal had the like, which makes it believed that muslins will come into fashion. There never was seen so great an appearance, either for number or magnificence as on the like occasion.”[36]
Nor was the King to be outdone in the splendour of his attire; indeed he outshone the Queen, for he loved dress and display far more. We read: “His Majesty appeared in a suit of crimson velvet with gold buttons and button holes, sleeves faced with rich tissue, and a waistcoat of the same.”
The great days at court were the royal birthdays. The birthdays of the Prince of Wales and all the royal children were duly celebrated. The Queen’s birthdays were always largely attended, and so were the King’s at the beginning of the reign. But after his visits to Hanover he became very unpopular, and he noted with ire that not only was the attendance meagre at his drawing-rooms, but there were no new clothes for the occasion. If any of the great nobility absented themselves from the drawing-rooms for any time, as some occasionally thought fit to do, they were generally conciliated by the Queen and persuaded to put in an appearance again. The birthday drawing-rooms were chiefly remarkable for the splendour of the clothes, every one appearing in his best, and even the royal footmen being arrayed in new liveries. “There was his Majesty in scarlet and gold,” writes a correspondent; “the Duke of Cumberland in blue trimmed with silver; the Princess Anne in silver and colours of yellow; the Princess Louisa in a dark green velvet, embroidered in gold; my Lady Browne in scarlet, with great roses not unlike large silver soup plates, made in an old silver lace, and spotted all over her gown.”
But these were great occasions; in the ordinary way the private life of the court was dull, even in these early days of the reign, and there was little doing except ombre or quadrille. Peter Wentworth, who was now one of the Queen’s equerries and was sometimes in attendance on the Prince of Wales and sometimes on the Princess Royal, gives a fair description of how the Royal Family spent their evenings. Writing to his brother Lord Strafford, he says:—