A FORGOTTEN PRINCE OF WALES.

National Portrait Gallery. Emery Walker.
FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES, AND HIS SISTERS AT KEW.

A FORGOTTEN
PRINCE OF WALES

BY
CAPTAIN HENRY CURTIES
Author of “When England Slept,” etc., etc.

LONDON
EVERETT & CO., LTD.
42 ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C.

Dedicated by permission
to
His Grace the Duke of Argyll, K.G.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A FORGOTTEN PRINCE OF WALES.

CHAPTER I.
Which Seizes upon the Prince as he comes into the World.

On the fourth day of cold February in that cold town of Hanover, in the year 1707, of a brilliant and beautiful young mother, in the great palace on the little river Leine, was born—perhaps it would be more correct to say crept into the world, for there was so little noise about it—a Prince of whom in after years his father remarked: “My dear first-born is the greatest ass and the greatest liar and the greatest canaille and the greatest beast in the whole world, and I heartily wish he was out of it.”[1] If this worthy parent—who by-the-bye was no less a personage than King George the Second of England at the time of speaking—had any reason or truth in this most fatherly comment with its charitable tail-piece by way of benediction, then must this little German potentate—by accident King of England—have been gifted in addition to his other fine and gentlemanly qualities of perception, with the power of divining the future, for his dislike, nay, his inveterate hatred, of this little vaunted first-born son commenced at his earliest years. Why, the good God alone knows, for certainly none of His creatures have ever up to the present time succeeded in discovering the cause.

The beautiful young mother then, Caroline, a Princess of Brandenburg-Ansbach, commonly called “Caroline of Ansbach,” married but a year to her George Augustus—only the Electoral Prince[2] at that time—lay happy in her bed in the palace, with her baby beside her, whilst the cold river ran without and the winter winds blew among the dear orange trees in the gardens she was so fond of two miles away at Herrenhausen, and very few people in Hanover and still fewer in England knew that a possible future Prince of Wales had been born into the world, for perhaps after all, very few people very much cared. Anne of England was still on the throne.

So quiet had this matter been kept and so great a surprise was the event that Howe, the English Envoy, wrote home in the following strain:—

“This Court having for some time past almost despaired of the Princess Electoral being brought to bed, and most people apprehensive that her bigness, which has continued for so long, was rather an effect of a distemper than that she was with child, her Highness was taken ill last Friday at dinner, and last night, about seven o’clock, the Countess d’Eke, her lady of the bedchamber, sent me word that the Princess was delivered of a son.”[3]

On the 25th February Howe writes again complaining bitterly like a wicked fairy in a children’s tale, that he has not been invited to the christening which had taken place a few days after the birth in the young mother’s bedroom, when the child had received the names of Frederick Louis. Furthermore, he had not been allowed to see the baby—and presumably to kiss it—until ten days later! This visit, however, appears to have mollified him, for he bursts forth into description: “I found the women,” he says, “all admiring the largeness and strength of the child.”

One can see them doing it, and the dry old Envoy—it is presumed he was a bachelor as he makes no mention of his wife—looking on, and as much at sea with regard to the “points” of a fine baby as a midwife would be at a horse show.

But this unusual secrecy about the birth—which was attributed to the child’s grandfather the Elector, afterwards George the First of England, who was not on the best of terms with Anne our reigning Queen—had another aspect. It was an age of suspicion, suspicion especially of substituted heirs, and the foolishness of not inviting the English Envoy to the birth according to custom, revolting as it would have been to a young modest wife, might have seriously prejudiced the child’s future had he not been born with, and had to struggle against, so many of those distinctive bad qualities so carefully nurtured and indulged by his father and grandfather. On a later occasion his father remarked to his mother a propos of these: “Mais vous voyez mes passions ma chère Caroline. Vous connaissez mes foiblesses.” Yes, that affectionate and long-suffering lady did know his “foiblesses” before she had been his wife very long. Thoroughly to appreciate the nest into which this unfortunate little Prince was born and christened, it is necessary to turn for a moment to the habits and customs of his father and grandfather.

Taking the latter first, the Elector and future King of England was in the habit of retaining without any concealment whatever a minimum of three mistresses. These ladies, this considerate old father-in-law expected his son’s wife to receive and treat with civility, and strange to say Caroline the Princess Electoral did it. Poor soul! She had much more than that to wink at on her own account before long owing to the before-mentioned “foiblesses” of her little husband.

The chief of her father-in-law the Elector’s little harem was a lady of the name of Schulemburg, of an ancient but poor family, who had occupied her exalted position almost from a very plain girlhood, and whose name became subsequently very well known in England.

The first George never distinguished himself as a seeker after beauty. The Schulemburg is described as a tall, thin person, quite bald, wearing a very ugly red wig, and with an uncomely face much marked with the smallpox. This disfigurement she endeavoured to cover with paint with shocking results.

The lady occupying the second position in the seraglio who bore the euphonic name of Kielmansegge, and was the separated wife of a Hamburg merchant, was of exactly opposite dimensions, bulking large with great unwieldiness, she, however, had no need to redden her cheeks, being gifted by Nature with a plenteous colour which she vainly endeavoured to assuage with layers of white powder.

The advent of this Ruler in public with either or both of these fascinating ladies under his immediate protection must have added considerably to his Electoral dignity.

The third of this honourable trio was, strange to say, a beautiful young woman, the Countess Platen, married to a man whose family seems to have provided courtesans for princes for generations, but it was so far to the Count Platen’s credit that when his wife openly became the Elector’s mistress he separated from her. This lady seems to have simply thrust herself into the old Elector’s arms, and appears for a time, at least, to have absorbed most of his superfluous elderly affection.

But about the time that little Prince Frederick Louis, the subject of these Memoirs, was about two years old, a little sister—Anne, named apparently after the Queen of England—having joined him in the nursery, a certain couple of adventurers—for they were nothing better—Henry Howard, third son of the Earl of Suffolk, with his pretty but unscrupulous wife Henrietta, made their appearance at the Court of Hanover. They had come, like many others from England, to throw in their lot with the Elector and his chances of becoming King of England, which at that time were none too sure, but still a good sporting chance.

Henry Howard and his wife had come like the others to better their fortunes, which apparently in their case had arrived at that stage when they could not well be much worse.

It is reported that so short of money were they on their arrival that Mrs. Howard had to cut off her beautiful hair and sell it—her glory!—to provide a conciliatory banquet for some powerful Hanoverian acquaintances. One can almost add a tear to those she surely shed over the shorn locks in private. But the loss of her hair does not appear to have handicapped her in any way from the point of view of fascination. She quickly ingratiated herself with the Elector’s aged mother, Sophia, granddaughter of James the First of England, and Protestant heiress of England by Act of Parliament, talked English with her, and became one of her intimate friends. From this, it was but a step to the favour of Caroline, the wife of the Elector’s son, and Mrs. Hettie Howard was by no means the kind of lady to let grass grow under her feet. She was said to be a great adept at flattery, knowing just how much to tickle the ears of Royalty with Electoral Royalty. She tickled to such effect that she soon became one of the Princess’s ladies-in-waiting, and as such no doubt had the privilege of dandling our Prince Frederick as an infant in her arms.

But apparently she had not as yet hit her mark; it was at the heart of the little Prince’s father that her darts were aimed, and certainly never was a target more ready to receive them. George Augustus had ever posed as a lady’s man, yet this incident was possibly the first which opened the eyes of his young wife to his subsequently deplored “foiblesses.” The Electoral Prince followed in the exemplary footsteps of his father, the Elector; he started the nucleus of a harem, and Mrs. Hettie Howard obligingly became the nucleus! One more good example to set before the little Prince when his eyes—and ears—should open to understand the wicked things of this world!

The comment of George Augustus’s aged grandmother the Electress on this arrangement—with which, by-the-bye, she was rather pleased—was quite German and appropriate. “Ah!” she remarked, “it will improve his English.”

Though the position of the House of Hanover at this time with regard to the throne of England was considered to be good, yet it was by no means sure. The two following letters will, perhaps, throw some light on the period.

The first is from Leibnitz, a savant attached to the Court of Hanover, but at that time in Vienna, and is addressed to Caroline, the Electoral Princess, whom he had known as a brilliant girl under the wing of her aunt Sophia Charlotte, sister of George, at the Court of Berlin.

“Vienna,
“December 16th, 1713.

“I have not troubled your Highness with letters since I left Hanover, as I had nothing of interest to tell you, but I must not neglect the opportunity which this season gives me of assuring your Highness of my perpetual devotion, and I pray God to grant you the same measure of years as the Electress enjoys, and the same good health. And I pray also that you may one day enjoy the title of Queen of England so well worn by Queen Elizabeth which you so highly merit.

“Consequently, I wish the same good things to his Highness, your Consort, since you can only occupy the throne of that great Queen with him. Whenever the gazettes publish favourable rumours concerning you and affairs in England, I devoutly pray that they may become true; sometimes it is rumoured here that a fleet is about to escort you both to England, and a powerful alliance is being formed to support your claims. I have even read that the Tsar is only strengthening his navy in order to supply you with Knights of the Round Table. It is time to translate all these rumours into action, as our enemies do not sleep. Count Gallas, who is leaving for Rome in a few days, tells me that well-informed people in England think that the first act of the present Tory Ministry will be to put down the Whigs, the second to confirm the peace, and the third to change the law of succession. I hear that in Hanover there is strong opposition to all this. I hope it may be so with all my heart.”

The Princess Caroline’s reply.

“Hanover,
“December 27th, 1713.

“I assure you that of all the letters this season has brought me, yours has been the most welcome. You do well to send me your good wishes for the throne of England, which are sorely needed just now, for in spite of all the favourable rumours you mention, affairs there seem to be going from bad to worse. For my part (and I am a woman and like to delude myself) I cling to the hope that, however bad things may be now, they will ultimately turn to the advantage of our House. I accept the comparison which you draw, though all too flattering, between me and Queen Elizabeth as a good omen. Like Elizabeth, the Electress’s rights are denied her by a jealous sister with a bad temper[4], and she will never be sure of the English crown until her accession to the throne. God be praised that our Princess of Wales[5] is better than ever, and by her good health confounds all the machinations of her enemies.”

Poor young Princess Caroline, “the Pure, the Great, the Illustrious,” as Mr. Wilkins calls her. She must, but for her children, have found it none too cheerful in that dreary old Leine Schloss by the river, about which clung the then unsolved mystery of the disappearance of Königsmarck, the lover of the Princess Sophie Dorothea—her husband’s mother—as he left that lady’s chamber and was seen no more. A mystery which remained a mystery until years after when, the floor of an adjoining room being taken up, his body was found beneath.

But apart from this it must have been a dreary life for a young girl, a life of looking on at much over-eating, and over-drinking perhaps, too. A life of low sordid immorality going on under her very nose in which her husband and his father played leading parts; a life in which the higher side of her nature was never called upon, except for the almost habitual display of charity and forbearance to others.

LEINE PALACE, HANOVER.
Birthplace of Frederick, Prince of Wales.

Yet the higher nature was there despite her faults which were many; she possessed the pure gold of a good heart, which saw her through many trials and temptations, and left her, but for her conduct to her eldest son—and some of her correspondence—a clean name in history.

But other more stirring thoughts soon filled the young mother’s head than the frailties of her husband’s family, for when the sum of her nursery reached four and the little Prince Frederick was in his eighth year, the fruit of her hopes ripened, Queen Anne of England died, and a lucky turn of politics in favour of the Whigs, laid open to her the road to a throne.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. XX., p. 235. This remark is attributed to both his father and mother.

[2] The Electoral Prince was the eldest son of the elector.

[3] Howe’s Despatch. Hanover, 5th Feb., 1707. From this it must be seen clearly that the Prince was born on February 4th, not on February 5th, as it has been stated.

[4] Queen Anne.

[5] The Electress Sophia, her husband’s grandmother.

CHAPTER II.
The Falling in of a Great Legacy.

On the 18th of June, 1714, the Heiress of England, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, the aged mother of that Prince Elector, who afterwards became George the First of England, and granddaughter of James the First having dined in public with her son, that is to say having taken her big German mid-day meal in the presence of the Court, went forth on the arm of her granddaughter-in-law, the Electoral Princess Caroline, to take the summer air in the beautiful gardens of the Palace of Herrenhausen.

Much had occurred during the previous twenty-four hours to upset the “Heiress of Britain” as she was proud to be called, far too much worry for an old lady in her eighty-fourth year. Even at that advanced age the glamour of the English crown fascinated her. Perhaps it was the long drawn out hope of many years, the hope that possibly had been ever before her eyes since the flight of James the Second.

She had received a letter on the previous day written by the hand of Queen Anne herself in which that royal lady had distinctly told her in the most peremptory manner in answer to a supplication to that effect, that she objected to have any member of the Electoral family in her dominions during her lifetime.

This had been a crushing blow. The old Electress had schemed, and schemed as she imagined successfully, to establish her grandson George Augustus, the Electoral Prince, with his wife in England. This would have been a masterly stroke worthy of the universal reputation for policy of so grand an old lady, and would have been as it were the planting of one foot on the land she looked upon as her rightful heritage, but fate and Queen Anne decided differently. The latter had left no room for doubt about her intentions. Writing to her confidant Leibnitz, on the 17th June, the Electoral Princess Caroline said on the subject of this letter and others:

“We were in a state of uncertainty here until yesterday, when a courier arrived from the Queen with letters for the Electress, the Elector, and the Electoral Prince, of which I can only say that they are of a violence worthy of my Lord Bolingbroke.”[6]

It is perfectly certain that Queen Anne had made herself exceedingly objectionable as even a Queen can at times, and had not possibly stayed to choose her words. Be that as it may, she had succeeded in entirely upsetting the equanimity of her “good cousin” the Electress.

The old lady issuing from the Palace, where possibly she had dined more amply than was judicious—for she was a great eater—leant on the arm of her beloved Catherine and harped as ladies of her age will do on the string of her treatment by her kinswoman Anne. It is said that she became greatly excited and walked very fast, as she spoke of her imagined wrongs. They bent their steps towards the celebrated orangery, where the Princess and the attendants with them noticed the Electress turn very white; then the next moment she fell forward in a swoon.

The cries of the attendants quickly brought to her aid her son the Elector who was not far off, and he placed some poudre d’or—evidently a restorative—in her mouth. But she was beyond the power of earthly restoratives; she was carried into the Palace and in the barbarous custom of the time bled, but very little blood came[7]; she was dead! as the doctors said, from apoplexy.

Thus did this great Princess, to whom our own late Queen, Victoria, her descendant, has been so often likened, miss by a little over six weeks the great goal of all her long years of ambition, the throne of England, for Queen Anne died on the 1st of August following.

It is extraordinary that after the lapse of six generations a descendant so like her should fill that throne after which she had striven so long and so wisely for her family.

Her son George was now the “Heir of Britain” in her place; an heirship which was to very soon resolve itself into possession, for within a few weeks began that celebrated crisis in England between Oxford and Bolingbroke which from the virulence of the discussions at the Councils absolutely broke down Queen Anne’s health and killed her.

She departed this life on the 1st of August, 1714, almost her last intelligible words being of her brother, the Pretender: “My brother! Oh! my poor brother. What will become of you?”

On July 31st, Craggs, a creature of the Whig Government, had been despatched to Hanover to convey the news that the Queen of England was dying.

Craggs reached Hanover on August 5th—a journey then apparently of six days—but his performance, though accomplished, one can imagine, with all haste, was entirely eclipsed by that of one Godike, secretary to Bothmar, the Hanoverian Envoy to England, who, despatched by his master on August 1st, the day of the Queen’s death, arrived at Hanover on the 5th, the same day as Craggs, and proceeding direct to the Palace of Herrenhausen, conveyed the news to the Elector before any of the other messengers from England arrived.

It was this enterprising Bothmar who really decided George in accepting the British Crown, for had not his reports from London been satisfactory as to the feeling of the people, or at any rate as to the absence of hostility to the Elector on their part, it is very unlikely that George would have left his beloved Herrenhausen at all, and England might to-day have been ruled by a Stuart King.

“The late King,” wrote Dean Lockier after the death of George the First, “would never have stirred a step if there had been any strong opposition.”[8]

But there was no disturbance, the people of London at any rate were quiet, probably in a state of expectancy, and the preparations of the Elector and his family for a move to England commenced forthwith.

Nevertheless, the new King of England did not hurry himself to take possession of his dominions; he had been there thirty-four years before on a matrimonial venture, of which the late Queen Anne, then Princess of York, was the object, and he apparently cherished no pleasant recollections of the visit, which had proved a dismal failure.

However, he started a month after the death of Queen Anne for the Hague, there to embark for England, and he took with him a numerous following of Hanoverians in which was Bernstorff, his Prime Minister, and two-thirds of his seraglio, i.e., the Ladies Schulemburg and Kielmansegge. It is not surprising that with his Eastern proclivities he took also a couple of Turks by name Mustapha and Mahomet, but whether these two last were eunuchs, in attendance on the two ladies of the harem or not is not mentioned in history.

To his son, the Electoral Prince, George gave the command to travel with him, the Princess Caroline was to follow in a month with all her children except one. Little Prince Frederick Louis, the subject of these Memoirs, by his grandfather’s command, was to remain behind in Hanover, a child of seven, alone and separated from the rest of his kindred.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The Electoral Princess Caroline to Leibnitz, Hanover, 17th June, 1714. From Wilkins’ “Caroline.”

[7] D’Alais’s Despatch. Hanover, 22nd June, 1714. Wilkins’ “Caroline.”

[8] Wilkins’ “Caroline.”

CHAPTER III.
The Prince at the Age of Nine.

The new King, George the First of England, having departed with his train, and a month after the Princess Caroline—soon to become Princess of Wales—following with all the other children, little Frederick Louis, then in his eighth year, was left alone at Herrenhausen under the guardianship of his great-uncle Ernest Augustus and controlled by various governors and tutors.

One can imagine the little lonely boy wandering through the deserted corridors of the Palace of Herrenhausen and picturing the figures of those dearest to him, those who had left him and whose faces he was not to see again for many a long year. In the early days of that separation one can picture the child in the orange walks of the beautiful grounds in the warm autumn time and looking and longing for his mother—she was a good and affectionate mother to him then—whose face he was not to see again for nearly fourteen years. During the next two years while the excitement of the Pretender’s invasion was passing in England, the little Prince lived the ordinary life of a child, but with the difference from ordinary children that he must have been an exceedingly lonely child. That he was without companions of his own age is quite certain from what followed. From his great-uncle it is unlikely that he received much sympathy, if that Prince partook of the nature of his brother the King-Elector George. But there was one left behind there who possibly showed him some kindness—although there is not a vestige of evidence to show that she did—and that was the beautiful Countess Platen, the mistress of the King who was left behind on account of the religion she professed, and because Bernstorff, the Hanoverian Prime Minister, was jealous of her influence over the King.

So for two years the little Prince lived his child’s life and nothing was recorded of him. Then we hear of him from two sources: from Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu, who visited Hanover in 1716, like many other English in the train of the King, and from his governor who reported upon his conduct to his mother about this time.

The former of these who could be trusted—for Lady Mary was no Court sycophant and lied to no one—writes as follows of Frederick:—

“Our young Prince, the Duke of Gloucester”—he had just received that title from his grandfather, but the patent never passed the Seal—“has all the accomplishments which it is possible to have at his age, with an air of sprightliness and understanding, and something so very engaging and easy in his behaviour that he needs not the advantage of his rank to appear charming. I had the honour of a long conversation with him last night before the King came in. His governor retired on purpose, as he told me afterwards that I might make some judgment of his genius by hearing him speak without constraint, and I was surprised by the quickness and politeness that appeared in everything that he said, joined to a person perfectly agreeable, and the fine fair hair of the Princess.”

So much for little Prince Frederick at the age of nine. It may be here explained that his mother Caroline, Princess of Wales, had beautiful fair hair and a lovely skin; she was said also to possess the finest bust in Europe.

But from the very favourable account of Lady Mary we have to turn to the other, that of his governor, and that is far from flattering. Indeed, in this record we shall be continually turning from good report to evil report, and from evil report back again to the good. It will be necessary later to draw a line and divide the makers of these reports into two distinct parties, the prejudiced and interested, the unprejudiced, those who had nothing to gain by vilifying him.

But on the occasion we refer to, the governor of the young Prince had a good deal to say; he spoke with feeling, as one who had suffered, and most probably he had: he reveals a very pitiable state of affairs.

His complaints were embodied in a letter to Prince Frederick’s mother, and were as follows; he was a precocious youth—it must be remembered he was only nine years old—he already gambled and drank.

The Princess of Wales, however, made light of the matter.

“Ah,” she answered, “I perceive that these are the tricks of a page.”

To which his irate governor responded:

“Plût à Dieu, madame,” he virtuously answered, “these are not the tricks of a page; these are the tricks of a lacquey and a rascal!”

It is pretty certain that young as the boy was his life was developing on the same lines as his father and grandfather, for which their bad example and the lonely state in which he lived was undoubtedly accountable.

George the First, however, when he visited Hanover in 1716 found no fault with his grandson. He appears to have been one of the few friends the boy had. He evidently approved of him in every way whether he knew of the child’s growing bad habits or not. He was especially pleased that he held courts and levees at Herrenhausen in his absence and as a mark of his general approval created the boy Duke of Gloucester, but as it has been already stated the patent never passed the Seal, probably because the title chosen had proved a very unlucky one in former cases.

A propos of this visit of King George to Hanover—the first since his accession to the English throne two years before—Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu writes:—

“This town is neither large nor handsome, but the palace capable of holding a greater Court than that of St. James’s. The King has had the kindness to appoint us a lodging in one part, without which we should be very ill-accommodated, for the vast number of English crowds the town so much it is very good luck to get one sorry room in a miserable tavern.... The King’s company of French comedians play here every night; they are very well dressed, and some of them not ill actors. His Majesty dines and sups constantly in public. The Court is very numerous, and its affability and goodness make it one of the most agreeable places in the world.”[9]

Lady Mary writes again to another friend:

“I have now got into the region of beauty. All the women have literally rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and bosoms; jet eyebrows and scarlet lips, to which they generally add coal black hair. These perfections never leave them until the hour of their deaths, and have a very fine effect by candlelight. But I could wish them handsome with a little more variety. They resemble one of the beauties of Mrs. Salmon’s Court of Great Britain,[10] and are in as much danger of melting away by approaching too close to the fire, which they for that reason, carefully avoid, though it is now such excessive cold weather that I believe they suffer extremely by that piece of self-denial.”

This bit of satire apparently was directed at the Hanoverian ladies’ excessive fat.

But Lady Mary was charmed with Herrenhausen.

“I was very sorry,” she writes, “that the ill weather did not permit me to see Herrenhausen in all its beauty, but in spite of the snow I think the gardens very fine. I was particularly surprised at the vast number of orange trees, much larger than any I have ever seen in England, though this climate is certainly colder.”[11]

It appears from the account in Mr. Wilkins’ “Caroline the Illustrious,” that King George enjoyed himself immensely during this 1716 visit to Hanover, and that he found much pleasure in the society of the beautiful but unscrupulous Countess Platen, from whom he had been separated for two years. Lady Mary Montagu herself, too, was not without favour in His Majesty’s eyes. The King-Elector, however, had also brought with him the remainder of the harem, viz., Schulemburg and Kielmansegge, with the two Turks presumably to look after them.

Yet with all this trouble around him King George found life pleasurable. In the above account Lord Peterborough, who was in his suite, is represented as remarking of him that “he believed he had forgotten the accident which happened to him and his family on the 1st August, 1714.”

But time passed on, and the King returned once more to England, leaving his little nine-year-old grandson to the tender care, officially, of his brother Ernest Augustus and his governors, but unofficially to the society of such grooms and hangers-on of the palace who could throw themselves, to the boy’s ruin, in his way.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu to the Countess of Bristol, 25th November, 1716. Wilkins’ “Caroline.”

[10] A celebrated waxwork show in London at that time.

[11] Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu to the Lady Rich, Hanover, 1st December, 1716. From Wilkins’ “Caroline.”

CHAPTER IV.
In which England gets a New King and Queen.

George the First died on the 10th of June, 1727, while in a travelling carriage ascending a hill near Ippenburen on the road to Hanover, of a fit brought on by a too-free indulgence in melons. These he unfortunately ate on the previous night while supping at the house of a local nobleman, the Count de Twittel.

He was succeeded by his son George, Prince of Wales, who was born at Hanover the 30th October, 1683, of Sophia, Princess of Luneberg Zell, his father’s uncrowned Queen. Thus Caroline, the mother of our Prince Frederick, exchanged her position of Princess of Wales for that of Queen of England.

The Princess of Wales had been a success in England from the very first; a success which was not to be wondered at if the following description of her is correct:—

“She still retained her beauty. She was more than common tall, of majestic presence, she had an exquisitely-modelled neck and bust, and her hand was the delight of the sculptor. Her smile was distinguished by its sweetness and her voice was rich and low. Her lofty brow, and clear, thoughtful gaze showed that she was a woman of no ordinary mould. She had the royal memory, and, what must have been a very useful attribute to her, the power of self-command; she was an adept in the art of concealing her feelings, of suiting herself to her company, and of occasionally appearing to be what she was not. Her love of art, letters and science, her lively spirits, quick apprehension of character, and affability were all points in her favour. She had, too, a love of state, and appeared magnificently arrayed at Court ceremonials, evidently delighting in her exalted position and fully alive to its dignity.”[12]

To the Princess’s attractions were added those of her maids of honour: all “Well-born, witty and beautiful, and not out of their teens.”

First of these, par excellence, was Mary Bellenden, daughter of John second Lord Bellenden. To the fascinating charms of her person which were undeniable was added an exceedingly lively disposition. She is thus referred to in an old ballad dealing with the quarrel between George the First and the Prince of Wales, when the Prince and all his household received notice to quit St. James’s:

“But Bellenden we needs must praise

Who as down the stairs she jumps;

Sings over the hills and far away,

Despising doleful dumps.”

She did not escape the unwelcome attentions of the Prince of Wales to whom sprightly fresh young English girls were a novelty after the heavy Fraus of Hanover, though his wife Caroline was certainly an exception.

It is stated by Coxe in his “Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole” that he sent his abominable propositions to Mary Bellenden by Mrs. Howard, the before-mentioned “nucleus” of his harem who had accompanied him to England, and that the pure-minded Mary very properly snubbed both him and his messenger—who was nothing more than a procuress if she really carried the message—for their pains.

Coxe then states that the Prince being rejected by Miss Bellenden fell in love with Mrs. Howard, but he could not, of course, have been aware that the liaison between the Prince and this lady began in Hanover.

This seduction or attempted seduction of the maids of honour appears, as will be seen later, to have been quite a recognised pastime at Court, in which the Prince of Wales of the moment took an active part; but all honour be to sweet Mary Bellenden who preserved her good name, became Duchess of Argyle, and handed a pure record down to posterity.

This young lady appears to have possessed a particular charm and fascination, both from her beauty and her sparkling wit and high spirits. Horace Walpole states that the palm was awarded “above all for universal admiration to Miss Bellenden. Her face and person were charming, lively she was even to étourderie, and so agreeable that she was never afterwards mentioned by her contemporaries but as the most perfect creature they had ever seen.”

Gay, the poet, refers to la belle Bellenden more than once.

So well I’m known at Court

None asks where Cupid dwells:

But readily resort

To Bellendens or Lepels.

—Gay’s Ballad of “Damon and Cupid.”

It has been said that this young lady was the subject of improper advances from the Prince of Wales, which were rejected. Snubbing, however, seemed to have but little effect on the Heir-Apparent; he pressed his attentions upon her in the following elegant and gentlemanly manner.

Mary Bellenden, like many others who live in the atmosphere of Courts, suffered almost chronically from what is called “Living in Short Street”; she was always hard up.

The refined George being well aware of this, in common, probably, with most of the household, took upon himself one evening to sit beside the beautiful Bellenden, and taking out his purse—one of those long silk net affairs, no doubt—commenced to count out his guineas as a gentle hint that he was prepared to settle Mary’s outstanding bills—which may have been particularly pressing at the time—a quid pro quo being understood.

MARY BELLENDEN,
4th Duchess of Argyll.
Copied for this book by the kindness of the present Duke from the Gallery at Inveraray.

Miss Bellenden bore the telling of his guineas once, but when he began to count them again she remonstrated.

“Sir,” she cried, “I cannot bear it; if you count your money any more, I will go out of the room.”

The delicate-minded George, fresh from the mercenary and accommodating ladies of Herrenhausen, was not abashed at this rejoinder; he jingled his guineas against Mary’s pretty little ear. The result was exactly what it should have been. Mary rose with sparkling eyes and cheeks aflame, and with one well-directed blow, sent his purse and his guineas flying across the room; then Mary, probably aghast at her act, ran away.

Another way of showing her contempt of her royal admirer was to stand with crossed arms in his presence. Later she wrote on this subject to Mrs. Howard, with whom she appeared to have formed a close intimacy; she was recommending a new maid-of-honour to her care:

“I hope you will put her a little in the way of behaving before the Princess, such as not turning her back; and one thing runs mightily in my head, which is, crossing her arms, as I did to the Prince, and told him I was not cold but liked to stand so.”[13]

But Miss Bellenden was in love, which is the greatest safeguard against such persons as the little German Prince of Wales. She loved a certain groom of the bedchamber to the Prince, Colonel John Campbell, some years later Duke of Argyle. But here George showed a little of the noblesse which one expects from a descendant of Edward the Third.

Finding that Mary Bellenden was in love, though he did not know the object of her affections, he showed no ill-feeling, but asked a pledge from her that she would not marry without informing him, and in return he would give her and her future husband his favour. But Mary had lived much at Court, and mistrusted princes.

A year or two later she secretly married Colonel Campbell, and was no doubt very happy, but certainly impecunious in that long interval before she became a Duchess. In 1720 she writes to her friend Mrs. Howard, from Bath, and good and pure woman and loving wife though she was, her letter is a fair sample of the free and easy, not to say broad, style of even virtuous ladies of the period.

“Oh! God,” she writes, “I am so sick of bills; for my part I believe I shall never be able to hear them mentioned without casting up my accounts—bills are accounts you know. I do not know how your bills go in London, but I am sure mine are not dropped, for I paid one this morning as long as my arm and as broad as my....

“I intend to send you a letter of attorney, to enable you to dispose of my goods before I may leave this place—such is my condition.”

But there were other maids-of-honour only a little less charming. There was Margaret Bellenden, of whom Gay wrote.[14] Mary’s sister or cousin, almost as beautiful, and Mary Lepel who was raved about by such excellent critics as Gay, Pope and Voltaire, not to mention the courtiers Chesterfield and Bath.

She appears to have been of a more stately style of beauty than Mary Bellenden, and of a more staid disposition.

Then there was Bridget Carteret, niece of Lord Carteret, who was fair and petite. The oldest of them all was “prim, pale Margaret Meadows,” who seems to have done her best to keep them all in order, but had terrible difficulty with giddy Sophia Howe, who was the daughter of John Howe by Ruperta, a natural daughter of Prince Rupert, brother of the old Electress Sophia, which fact was probably the reason of her appointment as maid-of-honour to the Princess of Wales. She was up to all sorts of mischief, and among other enormities was given to laughing in church, which is not to be wondered at when we consider that the King and the other Royalties were accustomed to talk all the time.

Sophia Howe was, however, reproached for her laughing by the Duchess of St. Albans, who told her “she could not do a worse thing.” To this she pertly answered—and one can almost hear her saying it—“I beg your Grace’s pardon, I can do a great many worse things.”

This conduct of the maids-of-honour—accompanied by much ogling and smiling at gallants, however, at last aroused the ire of Bishop Burnet, who complained to the Princess of Wales, and requested that their pew should be boarded up so that they could not see over. This from the Bishops importunity being at last done, provoked the following verses in retaliation from one of the young ladies’ admirers, supposed to be Lord Peterborough:

Bishop Burnet perceived that the beautiful dames

Who flocked to the Chapel of hilly St. James

On their lovers alone their kind looks did bestow,

And smiled not on him while he bellowed below.

To the Princess he went with pious intent,

This dangerous ill to the Church to prevent;

“Oh, Madam,” he said, “our religion is lost,

If the ladies thus ogle the knights of the toast.

These practices, Madam, my teaching disgrace,

Shall laymen enjoy the first rights of my place?

Then all may lament my condition so hard,

Who thrash in the pulpit without a reward.

Then, pray, condescend such disorders to end,

And to the ripe vineyard the labourers send

To build up the seats that the beauties may see

The face of no bawling pretender but me.”

The Princess by rude importunity press’d,

Though she laughed at his reasons, allowed his request;

And now Britain’s nymphs in a Protestant reign

Are box’d up at prayers, like the virgins of Spain.

It is not surprising to find that during the reign of George the First his mistresses Schulemburg and Kielmansegge were much in evidence. They were particularly hated by the populace, also the Turks Mustapha and Mahomet, possibly on account of their association with them; but these latter infidels also appear to have had the honour of dressing and undressing their master the King.

The Court of George the First had not by any means been a refined one; the old King greatly loved the society of ladies who were not over particular in their conversation.

The following, taken from Mr. Wilkins’ “Caroline,” will illustrate this. Lady Cowper, who was extremely proper, writes of an entertainment at Court:

“Though I was greatly diverted and there was a good deal of music, yet I could not avoid being uneasy at the repetition of some words in French which the Duchess of Bolton said by mistake, which convinced me that the two foreign ladies” (presumably Schulemburg and Kielmansegge) “were no better than they should be.”

It appears that the Court of this King was graced or disgraced by the presence of many such ladies. One night three mistresses of former Kings met there: the Duchess of Portsmouth, the particular lady of Charles the Second; Lady Orkney, who occupied a similar position with regard to William the Third; and old Lady Dorchester, the favourite of James the Second. The latter was evidently a lady to her finger tips.

“Who!” she exclaimed, “would have thought that we three w...s should have met here?”

Of the Duchess of Bolton, who was a lady also rather free of speech, the following anecdote is related.

She was very fond of the play, and recommending anything especially good to the old King. On this occasion she was telling him of Colley Cibber’s “Love’s Last Shift,” the title of which conveyed nothing to His Majesty. He asked her to put it into French. The Duchess, who was fond of a joke, replied gravely: “La dernière chemise de l’ amour,” whereat the King laughed heartily.

The lovely Duchess of Shrewsbury was another of the King’s favourite companions, of whom the prim Lady Cowper—herself much admired by His Majesty, who did not always express his admiration in the most refined terms—said as follows:

“Though she had a wonderful art of entertaining and diverting people, would sometimes exceed the bounds of decency.”

But as it has been before stated, the favourites of the King who excited the most resentment of the populace—who were very free in expressing their opinion—were Schulemburg and Kielmansegge.

On one occasion Schulemburg was so beset by the crowd that she ventured to argue with them, and thrust her red wig and painted face out of her coach to address them in the best English she had.

“Goot pipple,” she exclaimed, “what for you abuse us, we come for all your goots?”

“Yes, d..n ye,” added a man in the mob, “and for all our chattels, too.”

When the Duke of Somerset, in 1715, resigned the Mastership of the Horse as a protest against the arrest of his son-in-law, Sir William Wyndham, Schulemburg, who was nothing if not a daughter of the horse-leech, suggested that the office should be left vacant and the salary, £7,500 per annum, paid to her. To the disgust of the nation the King complied with her wish.

It does not say much for the dignity of the Court in those days that some of the leading Whig nobility and even their wives and daughters filled the rooms of these two old harridans at St James’s, which apartments were placed respectively at opposite ends of the Palace, with those of the King conveniently between them to keep peace, for they hated each other as much as their friend the Devil detests holy water.

The lives of the Prince and Princess of Wales had been exceedingly gay, especially during the absence of George the First in Hanover.

They extended a liberal hospitality, keeping almost open house, with the object no doubt of securing popularity against the time when they should be King and Queen.

Hampton Court appears to have been a very favourite summer residence of theirs, the river offering a convenient mode of progression. In the summer of 1716 they proceeded to Hampton Court in state barges hung with crimson and gold, and preceded by a band of music.

Here at this riverside Palace they collected a brilliant throng of the wittiest, the most learned, and most important of all from the point of view of a Court, the most beautiful.

At the death of George the First the kingdom was ruled by his minister, Sir Robert Walpole, son of a Norfolk squire, Walpole of Houghton, to which estate they had in comparatively recent years removed from Walpole in the Marshland of Norfolk, from which latter place they evidently had originally derived their name.

George the First being able to speak little or no English, and Sir Robert Walpole being innocent of French, Latin proved to be the only tongue in which they could converse, so that Walpole was in the habit of remarking that he governed the kingdom by means of bad Latin, the bad Latin possibly of his Eton days, though he certainly completed his education at King’s College, Cambridge.

At about the age of twenty-five Walpole had married a beautiful girl, Catherine, daughter of John Shorter, Esquire, of Bybrook, Kent, and very soon after succeeding his father, old hard-drinking Squire Walpole, in the family estate he entered Parliament for the rotten borough of Castle Rising, which used to return two members to Parliament to half-a-dozen electors.

He soon made a name in the House of Commons, and from that time forward it was indelibly stamped upon the politics of England.

Unfortunately, Walpole was much given to wine and women, despite his beautiful wife; in fact, she was not far behind him on her part in receiving the attentions of the opposite sex. She is said to have had liaisons with Lord Hervey, and also with the little Prince of Wales, adding one more to his long list of “foiblesses.” It is almost incredible to believe, as it has been stated, that Robert Walpole lent himself to this intrigue of his wife’s to curry favour with the Prince.

Be this as it may, it stood him in poor stead on the death of George the First, for when he presented himself to the new King, who was at the time at the Palace of Richmond, and having broken the news of the old King’s death and kissed hands, asked who should draw up the declaration to the Privy Council, he was abruptly told by the new monarch to go to Sir Spencer Compton, who was his treasurer as Prince of Wales.

It was not until after some days of very painful suspense that Walpole, through the good offices of the new Queen, Caroline, who had a great belief in his talents as a financier, was sent for and reappointed First Lord Commissioner of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. As a matter of fact of course they could not do without him.

But in all the years that passed from the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty in 1714 to the death of George the First, in 1727, it is almost incredible to believe that Caroline could have forgotten her first-born son in Hanover, whom at this time she had not seen for thirteen years.

Whatever the origin of the dislike—nay hatred—was which unnaturally grew up between this son and his parents, it must have begun at an early period. Its nature will now be never known in all probability, but it must have been a most extraordinary revulsion of feeling which caused such a woman as Caroline, kind-hearted, intellectual, in every other respect a perfect mother, to turn against the first child she had held to her bosom.

Some say that Caroline’s affection had been absorbed by her younger son William, Duke of Cumberland, who was born in England, and who extraordinarily resembled her, and this theory takes colour when considering the fact that the Prince and Princess up to the time of his birth had continually urged George the First to allow Prince Frederick to come to England, but after the arrival of the new Prince no further requests were made in this direction, but all their hopes and ambitions for the future seemed centred in Prince William, for whom it is said they would gladly have secured the throne of England if they had been able, leaving the Electorate of Hanover for Frederick.

It was very unnatural, but such freaks do occur, though they do not reflect any honour upon those by whom they are affected, but even this answer would be no solution to the question of the reason for the deep-seated hatred for their eldest son which took possession of King George the Second and his Queen at a later period. It will ever remain a mystery.

Lord Hervey, with a great deal of parade, affected to be in possession of the secret, and left certain directions to those who came after him about its disclosure in his papers, but it is very difficult to believe that this nobleman was cognizant of the reason which caused a father and mother—the latter certainly of an affectionate nature—to turn against a child of nine.

The reason probably lies far deeper.

But if Prince Frederick was forgotten by his father and mother, he was certainly not overlooked by the English people.

“Clamours,” it was said soon after the accession of George the Second, “were justly raised in England that the Heir-Apparent had received a foreign education and was detained abroad as if to keep alive an attachment to Hanover in preference to Great Britain.

“The Ministers at length ventured to remonstrate with the King on the subject, and the Privy Council formally represented the propriety of his residence in England.”[15]

George the Second, however, and his Queen—who with Walpole really ruled the kingdom—stuck out as long as they possibly could against bringing Prince Frederick over, and in the King’s case there was an additional reason for obstinacy. He had been a most undutiful son himself, and realised what an exceedingly sharp thorn in his side Frederick might become if he took that same line also.

But while the King and Queen were trying to make up their minds to send for their first-born, certain events occurred in Hanover which materially hastened their decision.

National Portrait Gallery.Spooner & Co.
GEORGE II.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Wilkins’ “Caroline the Illustrious.”

[13] Suffolk Letters. Wilkins.

[14] “Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land, and smiling Mary soft and fair as down.”

[15] Coxe’s “Walpole.”

CHAPTER V.
A Double Event Which Did Not Come Off.

In the reign of George the First there had commenced an important negotiation between that King and Frederick William, King of Prussia, having for its object the union of the two royal houses by a double marriage, Prince Frederick Louis, King George’s grandson, was to wed with Wilhelmina, the Princess Royal of Prussia; the Prince Royal of Prussia was to marry the Princess Amelia, sister of Prince Frederick, afterwards Frederick the Great.

This arrangement had been most eagerly fostered by Sophia Dorothy, daughter of George the First, who had espoused the King of Prussia; the negotiations had reached such a successful stage that King George had promised that the nuptials of his grandson with the Princess Wilhelmina should be celebrated at his next visit to Hanover, but his death had prevented the fulfilment of his promise.

There had also been another reason which had tended to delay the marriage, and this had been the sudden secession of King Frederick William of Prussia from the Treaty of Hanover, and this had greatly offended his father-in-law, King George of England.

Other obstacles cropped up, too, at the accession of George the Second, who had, from his earliest years, conceived an intense dislike for his cousin, the Prussian King. This was the subject of a most intense regret on Queen Sophia Dorothy’s part, who had schemed for the union of her daughter Wilhelmina with Prince Frederick for years.

As for Prince Frederick himself, there is little doubt that although he had never seen her, yet he had in a romantic way fallen in love with his cousin Wilhelmina. This was quite a natural phase of his sanguine, artistic character. One can quite understand that his aunt, the Queen of Prussia, had not neglected any of those little manœuvres by which the hearts of young men are moved. She was simply a match-making mother, and was quite cognizant of the fact that Frederick would, if he lived, inherit the Crown of England.

In addition, there was another very strong reason why she should use every endeavour to get her two children settled and away, and that was the extreme brutality of their father, the Prussian King, towards them, who even did not scruple to beat them severely.

If, however, Prince Frederick had fallen in love with the Princess Wilhelmina’s miniature—no doubt the Prussian Queen saw that he had a good one—the Princess, if her Memoirs are to be believed, had conceived no passion for him, but against this she certainly showed feeling when the dénouement came, as women will when they lose a lover.

Her mother had argued with her as to the advantages of the match, as no doubt royal mothers will:

“He is a good-natured Prince,” she urged, “kind-hearted, but very foolish; if you have sense enough to tolerate his mistresses, you will be able to do what you like with him.”

This art of “tolerating mistresses” seems to be an accomplishment which has been much sought after both by ancient and modern Queens. But this was hardly the kind of argument to foster a romantic passion; yet, on the other hand, Frederick had not exactly constituted himself by reputation the perfect lover.

Left alone in Hanover, almost in regal state, as it was understood there, for he held all the Levees and Courts in the absence of his grandfather, he had run very wild, which was no more than could have been expected under the circumstances.

But for the periodical visits of his grandfather from England, Frederick seems to have been left very much to himself, and with such brilliant examples before him as his father and grandfather, it is not at all to be wondered at that he had mistresses and made a fool of himself generally.

He appears, however, to have been very good friends with his grandfather, King George, and to have taken his part against his father and mother in the quarrels which arose between them and which formed one of the principal scandals of the Court of St. James’s. This conduct on his part did not tend to endear him to his parents, but no doubt he felt himself aggrieved at being left so long neglected in Hanover, and, in addition, he only heard his grandfather’s version of the quarrels.

Prince Frederick then being turned twenty-one, and imagining himself to be passionately in love with his cousin Wilhelmina, could ill brook the diplomatic delays of his father and grandfather.

It must have been a heavy blow to his hopes when the latter died on his way to Hanover, and his promise to have the nuptials of Frederick and Wilhelmina celebrated on his arrival of course fell to the ground. Neither did his successor, George the Second, seem at all in a hurry to have the marriage solemnized, and the delay to a young man of Frederick’s temperament must have been very galling.

It is not at all surprising, therefore, that after waiting more than a year after the death of George the First, he took the matter into his own hands. He determined to get married to his cousin without consulting anyone. For this purpose he contrived an elaborate scheme, and eventually despatched to Berlin a certain trusty Hanoverian officer named La Motte or La Mothe.

This man was charged with a mission to a certain Sastot, a chamberlain of the Queen of Prussia, and probably one who had acted as an agent for her in this matter before. The story cannot be better given than in the very words of the young lady herself, Princess Wilhelmina, as recorded in her diary. La Motte made his appearance at the house of Sastot, and communicated to him the following intelligence:

“I am the bearer of a most important confidential message. You must hide me somewhere in your house that my arrival may remain unknown, and you must manage that one of my letters reaches the King.”

Sastot promised, but asked if his business were good or evil.

“It will be good if people can hold their tongues,” replied La Motte, “but if they gossip it will be evil. However, as I know you are discreet, and as I require your help in obtaining an interview with the Queen, I must confide all to you.

“The Prince Frederick Louis intends being here in three weeks at the latest. He means to escape secretly from Hanover, brave his father’s anger, and marry the Princess.”

Surely this was a most romantic proposal for the good Sastot to listen to!

“He has entrusted me,” proceeded La Motte, “with the whole affair, and has sent me here to find out if his arrival would be agreeable to the King and Queen, and if they are still anxious for this marriage. If she is capable of keeping a secret, and has no suspicious people about her, will you undertake to speak to the Queen on the subject?”

That very night the Chamberlain Sastot went to the Queen and confided the weighty secret to her as he had promised La Motte.

To the Queen, who had been scheming for years for this very object, Sastot could not well have brought better news.

“I shall at length see you happy and my wishes realized at the same time; how much joy at once.”

Such are the words which the Princess Wilhelmina records of her mother when breaking the news to her.

But the Princess, according to her own account, was by no means overjoyed at the intelligence:

“I kissed her hands,” says Wilhelmina, “which I covered with tears!”

“You are crying!” my mother exclaimed, “what is the matter?”

Here Wilhelmina becomes a little double-faced.

“I would not disturb her happiness,” she writes, “so I answered:

“The thought of leaving you distresses me more than all the crowns of the world could delight me.

“The Queen was only the more tender towards me in consequence, and then left me. I loved this dear mother truly, and had only spoken the truth to her,” she continues, “she left me in a terrible state of mind. I was cruelly torn between my affection for her and my repugnance for the Prince, but I determined to leave all to Providence, which should direct my ways.” Very pious of the Princess indeed!

The Queen, however, went on her way rejoicing, knowing, perhaps, rather more of her daughter’s disposition and therefore troubling less about her tears.

She was evidently brimming over with high spirits at the Reception which she held that very evening, a most unlucky Reception for her schemes as it turned out. This excellent match-making aunt of Prince Frederick was fated to suffer a terrible disappointment that evening. In a burst of almost incredible confidence she told Bourguait, the English Envoy, the whole plan of Prince Frederick!

The Envoy was astounded at the communication, and asked if it were true.

“Certainly,” replied the Queen, “and to show you how true it is, he has sent La Motte here, who has already informed the King of everything.”

“Oh, why does Your Majesty tell me this? I am wretched, for I must prevent it!” exclaimed Bourguait.

“Why?” asked the dismayed Queen.

“Because I am my Sovereign’s Envoy; because my office requires of me that I should inform him of so important a matter. I shall send off a messenger to England this very evening. Would to God I had known nothing of all this!”

He was as good as his word, and the messenger went off that night despite the Queen’s tears.

A good strong man this Bourguait; one not to be moved from his duty by even a Queen, for she no doubt left no stone unturned to divert him from a purpose which would render abortive her years of scheming.

The effects of the message to England were startling.

King George the Second and his Queen Caroline, who had kept their eldest son away from England for fourteen years, and had resisted every persuasion of their Ministers to bring him over, hesitated no longer; a Colonel Lorne was despatched at once to Herrenhausen to bring the Prince to London. He lost no time on the journey, and appeared at Herrenhausen while a ball given by Prince Frederick was in progress. This function, however, interfered in no way with Colonel Lorne’s commands; he induced the Prince to leave Herrenhausen that very night with but one attendant, and Frederick turned his back upon a home which had sheltered him for many years, although it was in a sense no home at all, and in this life saw it no more.

But when the news of the King of England’s coup and the departure of the Prince reached Berlin, the Royal Palace became no fit place for Christians to live in.

The Queen took to her bed, and the Princess Wilhelmina, like other young ladies when they lose their lovers, fainted away, only to come to, apparently and write in her diary “the whole thing was a plot of George the Second,” which sounds very much like the remark of an angry and disappointed young lady, instead of one who wished us to believe that she was inspired with repugnance for Prince Frederick.

Her father, the King, however, who was in a towering rage at the course events had taken, was evidently not in the habit of wasting a good fit of temper on mere fuming. He appeared on the scene and soundly thrashed both Wilhelmina and her brother Frederick, Mr. Wilkins says, “in a shocking manner.”

And the double marriage scheme ended thus ignominiously!

CHAPTER VI.
The Prince and the London of 1728.

Prince Frederick, accompanied by Colonel Lorne and a single servant, traversed Germany and Holland as a private gentleman, and embarked at Helvetsluis for England in the first days of December, 1728.

Never has a tamer arrival of an Heir-apparent been chronicled in history than this coming of the Prince to London. Here is the brief notice of it in the Daily Post of the 8th December, 1728:

“Yesterday His Royal Highness Prince Frederick came to Whitechapel about seven in the evening, and proceeded thence privately in a hackney coach to St. James’s. His Royal Highness alighted at the Friary, and walked down to the Queen’s backstairs, and was there conducted to Her Majesty’s apartment.”

There! no reception of any sort, no guards turning out, no escort, no tap of drum! It was more like the coming of the Court hairdresser to curl Her Majesty’s wig!

It is said, however, that his mother received him amiably,—after fourteen years’ separation! His father, however, treated him with great harshness. “George,” says Mr. Wilkins, “had an unnatural and deep-rooted aversion to his eldest son, whom he regarded as necessarily his enemy.”

Certainly the boy—for he was little more—had come home in a sort of disgrace, he had been detected in scheming to run away with a young lady, but he had been checkmated, and the matter was ended. Certainly if there grew up in the after time a feeling of resentment against his parents in the Prince’s heart, he had some reason for it. It is agreed on all hands that he never had a chance, and that which might have proved a loving nature—and it was a loving nature as will be shown later on—was warped by ill-treatment and neglect into callousness and depravity.

To a Prince naturally of a nervous and shy disposition this reception in a strange land must have been most painful, especially when one remembers that most of the slights were received from those who ought to have shown him the most affection and consideration.

Lord Hervey gives an insight into the kind of life he led when he first arrived. He says:

“Whenever the Prince was in the room with him (i.e., the King) it put one in mind of stories that one has heard of ghosts that appear to part of the company but are invisible to the rest; and in this manner, wherever the Prince stood, though the King passed him ever so often, or ever so near, it always seemed as if the King thought the Prince filled a void of space.”

According to Mr. Wilkins, “the Prince did not dine in public at St. James’s the Sunday after his arrival, but the Queen suffered him to hand her into her pew at the Chapel Royal, and this was his first appearance at the English Court.”

One can imagine those naughty maids-of-honour in their boarded-up pew in the gallery—perhaps poor Anne Vane there with them—saying anything but their prayers at their enclosed condition, which prevented them having a good look at the Prince. But if they did happen to catch a glimpse of him this is what they saw according to a contemporary letter of Lady Bristol, who describes him as “the most agreeable young man it is possible to imagine, without being the least handsome, his person little, but very well made and genteel, a loveliness in his eyes which is indescribable, and the most obliging address that can be conceived.”

Her account of him, however, falls far short of that which is generally accepted as being a description of his appearance in Smollett’s “Peregrine Pickle,” which depicts him at a Court ball; but as this was evidently some time after his arrival—as it is an event connected with his intrigue with Miss Vane—it is quite likely that he may have had time to add to his stature by natural growth. At a later period he was distinctly and creditably described as being tall. This is Smollett’s version:

“He was dressed in a coat of white cloth, faced with blue satin embroidered with silver, of the same piece with his waistcoat; his fine hair hung down his back in ringlets below his waist; his hat was laced with silver and garnished with a white feather; but his person beggared all description: he was tall and graceful, neither corpulent nor meagre, his limbs finely proportioned, his countenance open and majestic, his eyes full of sweetness and vivacity, his teeth regular, and his pouting lips of the complexion of the damask rose. In short, he was formed for love and inspired it wherever he appeared; nor was he a niggard of his talents, but liberally returned it, at least what passed for such; for he had a flow of gallantry for which many ladies of this land can vouch from their own experience.”

It must be remembered in reading above description of him, that he inherited his mother’s beautiful fair hair and complexion.

The Court poets were not behindhand with their fulsome verses concerning him, of which this is a sample:

“Fresh as a rosebud newly blown and fair

As opening lilies: on whom every eye

With joy and admiration dwells. See, see,

He rides his docile barb with manly grace.

Is it Adonis for the chase arrayed?

Or Britain’s second hope?”

Britain’s first hope apparently was George II.

But probably as regards his appearance when he first came to England, Lady Bristol was nearest the mark, though there is no doubt that from this time forward he steadily improved both in stature and in handsomeness of person. Another description of him which will appear in due course will give an idea of the dignity and stateliness to which he attained in his maturer years.

Prince Frederick came from the obscure old town of Hanover with its narrow streets and tall gabled houses to what was then, as it is now, one of the great capitals of the world, London. But yet a very different London to that of our own time. A London of streets narrow and paved with cobbles, unlit save for a few dim swinging oil lamps held across the streets by ropes, leaving the intervening spaces in darkness, so that in winter time a man with a link or torch was an absolute necessity.

The busy London, the shopping London lay principally between Fleet Street and the end of Cheapside. Ludgate Hill was an especially favourite place for dress-buying ladies. As for what we call the “West End” it did not exist, Westminster being a separate town, and between it and London City large expanses of waste land.

Mr. Wilkins gives a good account of the Court and its environs. He says:

“The political and fashionable life of London collected round St. James’s and the Mall. St. James’s Park was the fashionable promenade; it was lined with avenues of trees, and ornamented with a long canal and a duck pond. St. James’s Palace was much as it is now, and old Marlborough House (the residence at that time of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough) occupied the site of the present one; but on the site of Buckingham Palace stood Buckingham House, the seat of the powerful Duke of Buckingham, a stately mansion which the Duke had built in a ‘little wilderness full of blackbirds and nightingales.’ In St. James’s Street were the most frequented and fashionable coffee and chocolate houses, and also a few select ‘mug houses.’ Quaint signs, elaborately painted, carved and gilded, overhung the streets and largely took the place of numbers; houses were known as ‘The Blue Boar,’ ‘The Pig and Whistle,’ ‘The Merry Maidens,’ ‘The Red Bodice,’ and so forth.”

Piccadilly was practically a country road with a few mansions here and there. It ended in Hyde Park, then a wild heath.

Marylebone on the west, and Stepney on the east, were distinct villages some distance away; while as for the south, London appears to have ended at London Bridge, although the “Old Tabard” Inn in the Borough must certainly have existed at that time.

Bloomsbury, Soho and Seven Dials were fashionable suburbs, occupying, perhaps, much the same position as Kensington did fifty years ago. Grosvenor Square had been begun some twelve years, and was probably fairly covered by houses.

The most popular and agreeable mode of communication between London and the Court was by the Thames, and a stately barge with liveried rowers was as much a part of a nobleman’s equipment as his carriage or his “chair.” Very pretty must have been the appearance of the Thames at that time, although there was no Thames Embankment to view it from.

The streets at night were manifestly unsafe, being infested by a description of drunken young blackguards known as “Mohocks,” who apparently “squared” the equally drunken watchmen, and insulted women with impunity.

The public conveyance seems to have been of much the same description as that which one recollects in one’s youth in the shape of the ancient growler, musty and full of damp straw to keep the feet warm, but represented then by a rumbling old disused coach, very mouldy, with straw as above, and in which it must have been a great treat to traverse the irregular cobbles of the metropolitan streets. But with all its drawbacks London of 1728 rose immeasurably superior to London of the twentieth century in one respect, and one respect only. It had no fogs.

The streets apparently rang with more or less agreeable cries of itinerant traders, among which the still familiar cry of the milkman—or perhaps milk-girl—and the tinkle of the muffin bell must even then have been well established. There were, however, other street cries which are unknown to us in the present day, those of the professional rat-catcher and the street gambler, which latter apparently stood in the gutter and rattled a dice-box as an invitation to passers by to come and have a throw, an invitation which, in all probability, ended in disaster to the unwary who accepted it.