It was on the Porteous Riots that Sir Walter Scott wrote his celebrated novel, The Heart of Midlothian. He introduces Queen Caroline in connection with Jeannie Deans, who walked all the way from Edinburgh to London to plead the cause of her sister, Effie Deans, who was sentenced to death according to Scottish law for concealing the birth of her illegitimate child. The father of this child, according to Scott’s romance, was Robertson, the prisoner who had escaped, and who was supposed to have headed the mob against Porteous. Of course, in a novel a good deal of fiction is reared on a slender basis of fact, and Scott makes some little mistakes. For example, in the Queen’s interview with Jeannie Deans he makes Lady Suffolk be in attendance, instead of Lady Sundon (Mrs. Clayton), whereas Lady Suffolk had left the court two years before; he also places the Queen’s palace at Richmond, where the interview took place, in Richmond Park, whereas it was in Richmond Gardens. But this much at least is true, and may be quoted as one of the many instances of the Queen’s kindness of heart. A certain Scottish peasant woman named Helen Walker actually did walk from Edinburgh to London, to plead with the Queen-Regent on behalf of her sister, then lying under sentence of death in the Tolbooth in Edinburgh. The sister, who was called Isabella, or Tibbie Walker, had secretly given birth to an illegitimate child, which shortly afterwards died, and by the Scottish law of those days she was adjudged, by wilfully concealing her condition, to have been guilty of its death. At the trial of this wretched girl, her sister Helen, a rigid Presbyterian, was unwillingly the principal witness against her sister. When she was asked whether Tibbie, whom she dearly loved, had ever made known to her the fact of her condition, she refused to perjure herself by saying that she had, saying: “It is impossible for me to swear a falsehood”; and thus gave away her sister’s sole chance of release. According to the Scottish law, six weeks had to elapse between the sentence and the execution, and in that time Helen Walker got up a petition praying the Queen for her sister’s reprieve, signed by some of the principal residents in Edinburgh, and armed with this she made her way to London on foot. Arrived there she presented herself, clad in tartan plaid and country attire, before John, the great Duke of Argyll, who was regarded in Scotland as a protector of the poor. To him she made appeal. The Duke of Argyll told the whole story to the Queen, who was so much touched at the girl’s honesty in refusing to perjure herself, and her sisterly devotion in making this long pilgrimage, that she granted the pardon at once, and Helen Walker returned with it to Edinburgh in time to save her sister. She had trusted “in the Almighty’s strength,” she said. Whether the Queen gave audience to Helen Walker or not is uncertain (it would have been characteristic of her if she had done so), but the other facts of the case are well authenticated.
These exciting public events kept the Queen-Regent busy throughout the summer and early autumn, and gave her less time to think about her private troubles. But when the time drew near for the King to return to England, and he still lingered at Hanover, she became anxious; and when he wrote to say that he could not be back in England for his birthday, October 30th, as he had always done before, her tolerance and endurance began to give way. She took his absence on his birthday as a personal slight to herself, a sign to all the world that her influence over him had waned, owing to his passion for another. Her letters to the King, which were usually of great length, giving him full details of everything which took place, now became fewer and shorter, and no doubt abated proportionately in warmth.
Walpole and the Queen had hitherto affected to treat the King’s affair with Madame Walmoden as a joke, but now they recognised that it was beyond a joke and might become a public danger as it already was a public scandal. They therefore put affectation aside and looked the matter in the face. Walpole repeated, with even greater frankness, the views he had expressed on the subject some time before, and he told the Queen that she could no longer keep the King to her side by the arts and charms she had employed when she was a younger woman. He therefore recommended that she should maintain her influence by accepting the situation and making the best of it. Since the King would not live anywhere long without his Walmoden, the Queen must go so far as to ask him to bring her to England. The Queen wept bitterly when the Prime Minister gave her this advice, but at last declared that she would do as he suggested. Walpole, profligate and cynical though he was, had his doubts at first whether the Queen, as a wife and a woman, would carry her complaisance thus far. Two or three days after, when he met her walking in the gardens at Richmond, she taxed him with not believing that she would keep her promise. Walpole replied: “Madam, your Majesty in asking if I disbelieved you, would put a word into my mouth so coarse that I could not give it place even in my thoughts, but if you oblige me to answer this question I confess I feared”. “Well,” replied the Queen, “I understand what ‘I feared’ means on this occasion. To show you that your fears were ill-founded I have considered what you said to me, and am determined this very day to write to the King just as you would have me, and on Monday when we meet at Kensington you shall see the letter.” Accordingly Caroline wrote the letter and despatched it to her faithless husband, assuring him that she had nothing but his happiness at heart, and urging him to bring the Walmoden to England if such a step would conduce to it. Heaven knows what mortification and anguish the Queen suffered before she brought herself to write that letter. She has been greatly blamed by the moralists for writing it, but the great excuse that can be urged for her is that her action was strongly dictated by political expediency, for the King’s prolonged absence at Hanover was bringing his throne into peril.
The Queen went further in her abasement, and even considered the possibility of taking Madame Walmoden into her personal service in the same position that Lady Suffolk had occupied, and so throwing an air of respectability over the arrangement. But from this Walpole dissuaded her, pointing out that it would deceive no one, and defeat its object, for the world would be scandalised if the Queen made the King’s mistress one of her servants, which he said was a different thing from the King’s making one of the Queen’s servants his mistress, as had been done in the case of Lady Suffolk—a nice distinction. The King was delighted with his Queen’s complaisance, and soon sent her an answer many pages long, in which he praised her to the skies. He said that he wished to be everything that she would have him to be, but she knew his nature, and must make allowances for it. “Mais vous voyez mes passions ma chère Caroline! Vous connaissez mes foiblesses, il n’y a rien de caché dans mon cœur pour vous, et plût à Dieu que vous pourriez me corriger avec la même facilité que vous m’approfondissez! Plût à Dieu que je pourrais vous imiter autant que je sais vous admirer, et que je pourrais apprendre de vous toutes les vertus que vous me faites voir, sentir, et aimer!” The King then gave for the Queen’s delectation a detailed description of the Walmoden’s personal charms, over which Caroline must have made a wry face. He desired that Lady Suffolk’s lodgings should be made ready for her, as she would avail herself of the Queen’s kind permission to make her home in England. The Queen showed the King’s letter to Walpole, and said: “Well now, Sir Robert, I hope you are satisfied. You see this minion is coming to England.” But Walpole shook his head, and said that he did not believe she would come, for she was afraid of the Queen. He had probably received advices from his brother Horace at Hanover telling him that Madame Walmoden was not such a fool as they thought her. His surmise proved correct, for, though the Queen made ready the lodgings, the Walmoden thought discretion the better part of valour, and remembering the fate of Lady Suffolk, wisely elected to stay at Hanover.
The question whether Madame Walmoden would come or not agitated the court, especially the Queen’s household. Some declared that it would be an outrage and do infinite harm; others inclined to the opinion that it would be better to bring her over, for if she kept the King so long in Hanover, thus exasperating the English people, he would go there once too often, and the nation would never let him come back. The scandal gradually filtered down through the court to the people. They did not understand why the King’s absence should be so prolonged, and sought a cause. No one wanted him back for his own sake, but it was said that trade suffered because the King was not in London, and the disaffected seized upon his predilection for Hanover as a pretext for their disaffection. Many honest people pitied the Queen, a virtuous matron, they declared, who should not be used so ill, and they thought it was ridiculous for the King at his age, close on sixty, with a wife and family, to be playing the gallant, when he ought to be setting an example to the nation. The most extraordinary bills and satires were printed and posted up in different parts of the town; one ran to this effect:—
“It is reported that his Hanoverian Majesty designs to visit his British dominions for three months in the spring.”
On the gate of St. James’s Palace a more daring bill was posted:—
“Lost or strayed out of this house a man who has left a wife and six children on the parish; whoever will give any tidings of him to the church-wardens of St. James’s parish, so that he may be got again, shall receive four shillings and sixpence reward. N.B.—This reward will not be increased, nobody judging him to deserve a crown.”
One day in the City an old broken-down horse was turned out with a ragged saddle on its back, and a woman’s pillion stuck up behind it. On the horse’s forehead was fastened this inscription: “Let nobody stop me, I am the King’s Hanoverian equipage going to fetch his Majesty and his w—— to England.”
In the autumn the Queen removed her court from Hampton Court to Kensington. The King sent her word from Hanover that she could go to St. James’s if she liked, but as she was afraid of arousing his jealousy by keeping too much state, or perhaps because she did not care to show herself much in public under present circumstances, she declined, and only went to St. James’s to celebrate the King’s birthday. The displeasure at his absence was very marked at the birthday drawing-room; the attendance was meagre, and the clothes positively shabby. The Queen affected to notice nothing unusual, but the Prince of Wales openly expressed his approval of these signs of dissatisfaction, and deliberately played on his sire’s unpopularity to make himself more popular. But though the Queen was outwardly calm she was inwardly much concerned, and she made representations so urgent to the King that at last he gave the long-deferred orders for the royal yacht to set out for Holland.