“The figures her Majesty has ordered for Merlin’s Cave are placed therein, namely: (1) Merlin at a table with conjuring books and mathematical instruments, taken from the face of Mr. Ernest, page to the Prince of Wales; (2) King Henry the Seventh’s Queen, and (3) Queen Elizabeth, who came to Merlin for knowledge; the former from the face of Mrs. Margaret Purcell, the latter from Miss Paget’s; (4) Minerva, from Mrs. Poyntz’s; (5) Merlin’s secretary, from Mr. Kemp’s, one of his Royal Highness the Duke’s grenadiers; and (6) a witch, from a tradesman’s wife at Richmond. Her Majesty has ordered also a choice collection of English books to be placed therein.”[111]
The people were much interested in Merlin’s Cave, and as soon as it was finished the Queen threw it open to the public on certain days, and crowds applied for admission. Similar imitations of this pleasure house sprang up all over the country, despite its doubtful taste. So pleased was the Queen with the cave that she erected another house hard by, and called it “The Hermitage”. It was built to resemble a rude building overgrown with moss, and was entered, incongruously, by an enormous gilt gateway. Merlin’s Cave, the Hermitage, and the improvements in the house and gardens at Richmond were expensive luxuries, so expensive that the Queen was unable to pay for them out of her income. But Walpole humoured her in these hobbies, and made her several little grants from the Treasury, of which no one was the wiser.
In October the time arrived for the King to tear himself away from Hanover and his Walmoden. It was necessary for him to be back in London by October 30th to keep his birthday. He delayed until he could delay no longer, and, when he had at last to tear himself away, he promised his mistress that under any circumstances he would be with her next year by May 29th. The Walmoden, between smiles and tears, publicly pledged her royal lover a happy return on May 29th, at a farewell banquet the night before his departure. It was a rash promise for the King to make, for he had hitherto only visited Hanover once in three years; and even so, not without protest from his English advisers.
George the Second set out from Hanover on Wednesday, October 22nd, and arrived at Kensington the following Sunday. The Queen, who had long been expecting him, received the news just after she returned from morning chapel. She at once summoned her court, and went on foot to meet him at the great gate. When the King stepped out of his coach she stooped and kissed his hand, and he gave her his arm and led her into the palace. It was only on the occasion of a return from Hanover that the King offered the Queen his arm; he probably did so in consideration of her holding the office of Regent, which she had not yet resigned into his hands. The King held a small reception immediately after his arrival, but the Queen, who saw that he was ill, soon dismissed the company. The King had in fact tired himself by travelling too fast, and for the next few days he was exceedingly unwell; he was also exceedingly irritable, and every one who came near him, from the Queen downwards, incurred his wrath. He loudly lamented his beloved Hanover and abused England. “No English or even French cook could dress a dinner; no English confectioner set out a dessert; no English player could act; no English coachman could drive or English jockey ride, nor were any English horses fit to be drove or fit to be ridden; no Englishman knew how to come into a room, nor any English woman how to dress herself.”[112] All this and much more from the King of England!
The Queen had to bear the brunt of his ill-humour, and, what was worse, had to endure the fear that her influence over him was on the wane. His manner towards her had completely changed; nothing she could say, or do, was right, in little things or great. Among other trifles he noticed that the Queen had taken some bad pictures out of one of the rooms at Kensington, and replaced them by good ones. The King, who knew nothing of art, and cared less, for the mere sake of finding fault, made this a pretext for thwarting his wife. He peremptorily ordered Lord Hervey to have the new pictures taken away and the old ones replaced. This was impossible, for some of the pictures had been destroyed and others sent to Windsor. But Lord Hervey did not dare tell the King so; he demurred a little and asked the King if he would allow two Vandykes at least to remain, to which George answered: “I suppose you assisted the Queen with your fine advice when she was pulling my house to pieces and spoiling all my furniture: thank God, at least she has left the walls standing! As for the Vandykes, I do not care whether they are changed or no, but for the picture with the dirty frame over the door, and the three nasty little children, I will have them taken away and the old ones restored; I will have it done too to-morrow morning before I go to London, or else I know it will not be done at all.” “Would your Majesty,” said Lord Hervey, “have the gigantic fat Venus restored too?” “Yes, my lord; I am not so nice as your lordship. I like my fat Venus much better than anything you have given me instead of her.”
Lord Hervey says that he thought that “if his Majesty had liked his fat Venus as well as he used to do, there would have been none of these disputations”. He told the Queen next morning what had passed. She pretended to laugh but was evidently annoyed, and began to wonder how she could obey the King’s commands. “Whilst they were speaking the King came in, but by good luck, said not one word of the pictures: his Majesty stayed about five minutes in the gallery; snubbed the Queen, who was drinking chocolate, for being always stuffing; the Princess Emily for not hearing him; Princess Caroline for being grown fat; the Duke [of Cumberland] for standing awkwardly; Lord Hervey for not knowing what relation the Prince of Sultzbach was to the Elector Palatine: and then carried the Queen to walk, and be resnubbed, in the garden.”
The Queen was very much perturbed by the King’s altered behaviour towards her, and she took Sir Robert Walpole into her confidence, and asked him what was to be done. Walpole spoke to her with a frankness positively brutal. He told her that since the King had tasted “better things,” presumably the Walmoden, it could not be other than it was; he reminded the Queen that she was no longer young, and said that “she should no longer depend upon her person, but her head, for her influence, as the one would now be of little use to her, and the other could never fail her.” No woman likes to be told that her personal charms are gone, and Walpole made this advice the more unpalatable by recommending the Queen to send for Lady Tankerville, a good looking but stupid woman, to fill the place left vacant by Lady Suffolk. He told the Queen that it was absolutely necessary that the King should have some one to amuse him, “as he could not spend his evenings with his own daughters after having tasted the sweets of passing them with other people’s”; therefore, it would be much better that he should have some one chosen by the Queen than by himself. Lady Deloraine, who was the other likely candidate for the royal favour, and whom the King had often noticed when she was governess to the young Princesses, Walpole regarded as a dangerous woman, and therefore preferred Lady Tankerville.
The Queen resented this advice in her heart, and was deeply hurt; but on the surface she took it well enough, laughing the matter off as was her wont. She was not above making some bitter jokes upon the situation in which she found herself. When she was dressed for the King’s birthday drawing-room, she pointed to her head-dress and said: “I think I am extremely fine too, though un peu à la mode; I think they have given me horns.” Whereupon Walpole burst into a coarse laugh, and said he thought the tire-woman must be a wag. The Queen laughed too, but flushed angrily.
At this same birthday drawing-room the King noticed that it was poorly attended, and those who came were indifferently dressed, a sure sign of his unpopularity. The King, unpopular before, had disgusted his English subjects by his long stay in Hanover, and by the new ties he had formed there, for the people had had enough of German mistresses under George the First. Many of the great noblemen, even the officers of state, showed their resentment in a diplomatic manner by absenting themselves from court and retiring into the country. This made the King angrier than ever, and his manner towards the Queen, who was the only person upon whom it was safe for him to vent his displeasure, became harsher than before. She bore it uncomplainingly, until one morning when he was unreasonable beyond endurance she said half in jest, though with tears in her eyes, that she would get Walpole to put in a word in her favour, as nothing she now did was right. The King flew into a passion, and asked her what she meant by such complaints. “Do you think,” he said, “I should not feel and show some uneasiness for having left a place where I was pleased and happy all day long, and being come to one where I am as incessantly crossed and plagued?” This was a little too much for the Queen, who for once lost her self-control and turned upon her tormentor. “I see no reason,” she said, “that made your coming to England necessary; you might have continued there, without coming to torment yourself and us: since your pleasure did not call you, I am sure your business did not, for we could have done that just as well without you, as you could have pleased yourself without us.” Thereupon the King, who was as much astonished as Balaam was when his ass spake, went out of the room, and banged the door.
The King endeavoured to propitiate the Queen by making her a present of some horses from Hanover. This was a poor sort of gift, as by it he charged the expense of the horses on her establishment, and used them himself; most of his presents were of this nature. As she did not accept the gift with becoming gratitude, he fell foul of Merlin’s Cave, which had just been completed. The Queen told him that she heard the Craftsman had abused her hobby. “I am very glad of it,” said the King, “you deserve to be abused for such childish silly stuff, and it is the first time I ever knew the scoundrel in the right.” This conversation took place in the evening, when the King was always peculiarly irascible. He formerly spent two or three hours of an evening in Lady Suffolk’s apartments, snubbing and worrying her, but since that lady had retired, and no one as yet was found to take her place, he had perforce to spend it with his wife and daughters, and vent his ill-humour on them. The same evening that he abused Merlin’s Cave, he found fault with the Queen for giving away money to servants when she went to visit the nobility in London. The Queen defended herself by saying that it was the custom, and appealed to Lord Hervey, who said it was true that such largess was expected of her Majesty. The King retorted: “Then she may stay at home as I do. You do not see me running into every puppy’s house, to see his new chairs and stools. Nor is it for you,” said he, turning to the Queen, “to be running your nose everywhere, and trotting about the town to every fellow that will give you some bread and butter, like an old girl that loves to go abroad, no matter whether it be proper or no.” The Queen, who was knotting, flushed, and tears came into her eyes, but she answered nothing. Lord Hervey somewhat officiously said that the Queen had a love of pictures, whereat the King turned to the Queen and poured forth a flood of abuse in German. She made no reply, but knotted faster than ever until she tangled her thread and snuffed out one of the candles in her agitation, whereupon the King, falling back into English, began to lecture her on her awkwardness. This may be taken as a specimen of the way the Royal Family spent their evenings for some weeks after the King’s return from Hanover.