little sympathy in those dissolute times. But even apologies very ingenious, we also think it in this case we must regret that she had not de- more probable that the motives he suggests

voured her own humiliation and sorrow in abso

lute silence, and submitted discreetly, and without operated in conjunction with the one which confidants, to what she could not effectually resist. he is disposed to reject, than that the But neither the selfish motives imputed by former "main motive for the Queen's complaiwriters, nor the extenuating circumstance of expe- sance" escaped such observers as Hervey diency which I thus venture to suggest, can in any and Sir Robert Walpole-for it is Sir Rodegree excuse the indulgence and even encourage- bert's opinion most undoubtedly that we ment given, as we shall see, on her death-bed to have reflected both in Horace Walpole's the King's vices; and we are forced, on the whole, Reminiscences and in Lord King's Diary. to conclude that moral delicacy as well as Chris

tian duty must have had very little hold on either But though Mr. Croker, like an illustrious her mind or her heart. I have ventured to say countryman, of his, " goes on refining,” (vol. ii., p. 528, note) that she had read and and is perhaps as fond of historical doubts argued herself into a very low and cold species of and theories as Queen Caroline was of SoChristianity; but Lord Chesterfield (who, how cinian metaphysics, we are far from supposever, personally disliked her) goes farther and ing that he has in this curious Preface says,After puzzling herself with all the whimsies and fantastical speculations of different sects, clusions on the point before us. given us an exhaustive summary of his conThe text she fixed herself ultimately in deism-believing in a future state. Upon the whole the agreeable of Hervey proceeds from the first page to woman was liked by most people, while the Queen the last in the unhesitating belief that love was neither esteemed, beloved, nor heeded by any of power was Queen Caroline's ruling pasone but the King.”—Preface, p. lxv.

sion, and, if everybody has some ruling passion, what else could have been hers? As both Hervey and Chesterfield were in- She was never even suspected of what the fidels themselves, we might not have trust- poet makes the only other ruling passion in ed implicitly to their representations of the her sex. And if this was not the pleasure Queen's religion; but there is most abun- of her life, every one who lays down this dant evidence to support Mr. Croker's own book will ask what it was that could have measured language, and no one can object made life endurable to this " very clever to the manner in which he connects this woman ?""* question with the one immediately before When Hervey became Vice-Chamberhim. As to his regret that the Queen did lain, the King was forty-seven years of age not "submit without confidants"-if she the Queen was her husband's senior by had done so, what could we have ever six months-Walpole was fifty-four. Beknown of the "humiliation and sorrow" tween pens and pencils we are all familiar that she had to devour? Must it not have enough with the outward aspect and bearbeen the natural conclusion that she either ing of the higher figures in his group :disbelieved the facts, or was indifferent to Walpole the most dexterous and the most

And then, no doubt, if we could successful of English ministers, with a have known that she did suffer intensely, broad, florid, square-like face, a clumsy, but had pride enough to suppress all within gross figure set off with a blue ribbon, a her own bosom, the result would have been strong Norfolk accent--" certainly," says a more heroical impression-but would Mr. | Hervey, a very ill-bred man"--addicted Croker have preferred a tragedy queen to to and glorying in the lowest low-comedy the true, authentic, flesh and blood Queen strain of wit and merriment:--George H., Caroline? Would he have preferred that with something of the countenance that merely in an artistical point of view? Far still lives among his descendants-the open more, in the reality of the matter? When blue eye, the well-formed nose, and the tragedy queens are involved in sufferings of fresh sanguine complexion-but wanting this sort, the results are apt to be serious. advantages that have been supplied from It will not be apprehensions of separation subsequent alliances of the race; his figure or divorce, or even the downfall of a dynas- short, but wiry, well knit, and vigorousty, new or old, that will chain up one of his manner abrupt, brusque, even when he them in "absolute silence." A tragedy chose to be gallant in ladies' bower-more will have its fifth act. We for our part

are well contented to have the character as

We have been speaking of tragedies. The

de Praslin's bedside was that delicate specimen of

it was, rather than any grandiose embel- book that was found dabbled with blood by Madame lishment of it-any fantastical ideal; and Mrs. Gore's skill, entitled " Mrs. Armytage; or, Fethough we think Mr. Croker's conjectural male Domination."

vain;

You govern no more than Don Philip of Spain.
Then if you would have us fall down and adore
you,
Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before

you.

of the martinet than the monarch; chole- | You may strut, dapper George, but 't will all be in ric, opinionative, sensitive, and jealous of temper-but with a fund of good sense at bottom, and perfect courage and honesty; from vanity and long indulgence the slave of that vice which had degraded the far superior talents of Henry II., Edward I., Edward IV., and Charles II.-but, unlike the "Her predominant passion was pride, and the ablest of these, seldom allowing any influ- darling pleasure of her soul was power; but ence connected with such errors to affect his she was forced to gratify the one and gain the exercise of patronage, and never at all to painful regime. She was at least seven or eight other, as some people do health, by a strict and affect his policy and administration as hours tête-à-tête with the King every day, during King; with a strong natural predilection which time she was generally saying what she for his native electorate, its people, its did not think, and assenting to what she did not manners, and its peculiar interests and believe, praising what she did not approve; for occasionally in word and in writing betray- they were seldom of the same opinion, and he too ing such feelings to a very unwise extent: fond of his own for her ever at first to dare to conbut as to them, as on all other subjects but trovert it-consilii quamvis egregii quod ipse non afferet inimicus: she used to give him her opinion one, quickly reducible to reason and dis-as jugglers do a card, by changing it imperceptibly, cretion through the patient tact of his and making him believe he held the same with that Queen, who never had any rival in his con- he first pitched upon. But that which made these fidence any more than in his esteem-nay, tête-à-têtes seem heaviest was that he neither liked never even as a woman had any real rival reading nor being read to (unless it was to sleep): in his affection-not even now, when years she was forced, like a spider, to spin out of her own bowels all the conversation with which the had done their usual work on that once fly was taken. To contradict his will very loveable person, and neither form nor directly, was always the way to strengthen it; and complexion were much caricatured in Lady to labour to convince, was to confirm him. BeMary Wortley's picture of her, (Works, sides all this, he was excessively passionate, and vol. iii., p. 424)his temper upon those occasions was a sort of iron reversed, for the hotter it was the harder it was to bend, and if ever it was susceptible of any impression, it was only when it was quite cool.

"Superior to her waiting nymphs, As lobster to attendant shrimps."

The following passages occur early:

For all the tedious hours she spent her single consolation was in reflecting that people in coffeehouses and ruelles were saying she governed this country.

His design at first was as Boileau says of Louis XIV.,

Seul, sans ministre, à l'exemple des Dieux,
Faire tout par sa main et voir tout de ses yeux.

She managed this deified image as the heathen priests used to do the oracles of old, when, kneeling and prostrate before the altars of a pageant god, they received with the greatest devotion and reverence those directions in public which they had before instilled in private. And as these idols consequently were only propitious to the favourites of the augurers, so nobody who had not tam-He intended to have all his ministers in the nature pered with our chief priestess ever received a favor- of clerks, not to give advice, but to receive orders; able answer from our god: storms and thunder but it was very plain that the Queen had subverted greeted every votary that entered the temple with- all his notions. . . . . .Instead of betraying (as out her protection; calms and sunshine those who formerly) a jealousy of being thought to be governobtained it. The King himself was so little sened by Sir Robert--instead of avoiding every opsible of this being his case, that one day enu- portunity of distinguishing and speaking to him in merating the people who had governed this coun- public-he very apparently now, if he loved any try in other reigns, he said Charles I. was govern- body in the world besides the Queen, had not only ed by his wife; Charles II. by his mistresses: an opinion of the statesman, but an affection for King James by his priests; King William by his the man. When Lord Hervey (often to try him) men-and Queen Anne by her women-favor gave him accounts of attacks that had been made ites. His father, he added, had been by anybody on Sir Robert in the House, and the things Sir Rothat could get at him. And at the end of this com-bert had said in defence and retaliation, the King pendious history of our great and wise monarchs, would cry out, with colour flushing into his cheeks, with a significant, satisfied, triumphant air, he tears sometimes in his eyes, and with a vehement turned about, smiling, and asked And who do oath, He is a brave fellow; he has more spirit they say governs now?-The following verses than any man I ever knew? The Queen always will serve for a specimen of the strain in which joined in chorus: and Lord Hervey, in these parthe libels and lampoons of these days were com-tial moments, never failed to make the most he posed:could of his friend and patron's cause."

The following little sketch of the import- ed by the voice of the people to dismiss a man ant evening (9th April, 1733) on which whom her private voice had so long condemned." Walpole found himself compelled to give up-Vol. I., p. 213.

his Excise Bill is among the first in which. all the three principal figures appear:

It was in the same year, 1733, that the first marriage among the royal progeny was "As soon as the whole was over, Lord Her- negotiated, and the details of the whole vey went to the Queen to acquaint her with what affair are given in the most pungent style had passed. When Lord Hervey at his first com- of the favorite "at the ear of Eve." The ing into the room shook his head and told her the candidate for the hand of the Princess numbers, the tears ran down her cheeks and for Royal (Anne) was the young Prince of some time she could not utter a word; at last she Orange, whose position in his own country said It is over, we must give way; but, pray, tell

me a little how it passed.' Lord Hervey said it was then uneasy and unsatisfactory, for he was not to be wondered at that opponents to this had not obtained the stadtholderate of Bill should increase when everybody now believ- Holland, and, his property being overbured that my Lord Bolingbroke's party at St. James's) dened, he had but a free income of 12,0001. was more numerous than at Dawley. a-year. The tone of the English Court Whilst he was saying this the King came in, and and of Walpole's adherents in Parliament the Queen made Lord Hervey repeat all he had been saying. The King heard willingly, but that was, that the King listened to the proposal night said very little; he asked many questions, purely out of his anxiety to strengthen the but was much more costive than usual in his com- Protestant succession, and to renew the ments upon the answers; however, when he ask- alliance with the race of "the great delivered if he could remember some of those who had er;" but, says our author:swelled the defection that day, as Lord Hervey repeated the names, his Majesty tacked remarks to them:-Lord James Cavendish, a fool; Lord Charles Cavendish, he is half mad? Sir William Lowther, a whimsical fellow; Sir Thomas Prendergast, an Irish blockhead; Lord Tyrconnel, a puppy that never votes twice together on the same side.' There were more in the same

6

style. As soon as Lord Hervey was dismissed, he went to Sir Robert Walpole's, who had assembled

about a dozen friends to communicate the resolu tion taken. After supper, when the servants were gone, Sir Robert opened his intentions with a sort of unpleased smile, and saying, This dance it will no farther go; the turn my friends will take will be to declare that they have not altered their opinion, but that the clamor that has been raised makes it necessary to give way.'

On

this text he preached for some time to this select band of his firmest friends, and then sent them to bed to sleep if they could.”—Vol. I., p. 198.

66

Hervey adds:

"The true reason for this match was, that there

was no other for the Princess in all Europe, so that her Royal Highness's option was not between this Prince and any other, but between a husband and no settlement at all.

and no husband-between an indifferent settlement

"The Princess Royal's beauties were a lively clean look and a very fine complexion, though she was marked a good deal with the smallpox. The Prince of Orange's figure, besides his being almost a dwarf, was as much deformed as it was possible for a human creature to be; his countenance

sensible, but his breath more offensive than it is These defects, unrecompossible to imagine. comforts of great riches, made the situation of the pensed by the éclat of rank or the more essential poor Princess so much more commiserable; for as tution made her, I believe, now and then rememher youth and an excellent warm animated constiber she was a woman, so I can answer for her that natural and acquired pride seldom or never let her forget she was a Princess; and as this match gave her little hope of gratifying the one, so it afforded as little prospect of supporting the other. Many thought that the Queen imagined her There is one of two inconveniences that generally power with the King depended at this time on her attends most marriages: the one is sacrificing all being able to maintain Sir Robert Walpole, conse-consideration of interest and grandeur for the sake quently that she looked on his cause as her own; of beauty and an agreeable person; and the other, but these conjectures were mistaken: the Queen that of sacrificing all consideration of beauty and knew her own strength with the King too well to person to interest and grandeur. This match most be of this opinion. The future Ministry would unfortunately conciliated the inconveniences of certainly have been of her nomination, in case both these methods of marrying; however, as of a change, as much as the present, and if they she apprehended the consequences of not being had subsisted, as much at her devotion, for had married at all must one time or other be worse she found them less so, their reign would not have than even the being so married, she very prudentbeen long. But it is very probable her pride might ly submitted to the present evil to avoid a greater be somewhat concerned to support a minister look- in futurity. For my part (said the Queen), I ed upon in the world as her creature, and that she never said the least word to encourage or to dismight have a mind to defeat the hope Lady Suffolk suade; as she thought the King looked upon it as might have conceived of being able to make a proper match, she said, if it was a monkey, she any advantage of the King's seeing himself reduc- would marry him."-Vol. I., p. 274.

We reach presently the ceremonial of the shortly before (1732) "lain in with little nuptials, from the procession to the Chapel mystery in St. James's palace and the child Royal at St. James's to the solemn inspec- was publicly christened Fitz-Frederick tion of the bedding by the whole royal Vane :”— family and the lords and ladies of the household-which last custom was first "honored in the breach" at the marriage of George III. :

·

"Here it was, by being closeted two or three hours with the Prince of Orange, Lord Hervey found his bride had already made him so well acquainted with this Court, that there was nobody belonging to it whose character, even to the most "The Prince of Orange was a less shocking minute particulars, was not as well known to him and less ridiculous figure in this pompous proces- as their face. The Prince of Orange had a good sion and at supper than one could naturally have deal of drollery, and whilst Lord Hervey was deexpected such an Æsop, in such trappings and livering the compliments of St. James's to him, he such eminence, to have appeared. He had a long asked him smiling, what message he had brought peruke that flowed all over his back, and hid the from the Prince of Wales? Lord Hervey said his roundness of it; and as his countenance was not departure was so sudden that he had not seen the bad; there was nothing very strikingly disagree- Prince. If you had' (replied the Prince of able. But when he was undressed, and came in Orange), it would have been all one, since he his nightgown and nightcap into the room to go to was not more likely to send his sister a message bed, the appearance he made was as indescribable than he was to make your Lordship his ambassaas the astonished countenances of every body who dor.' Lord Hervey was a good deal surprised to beheld him. From the shape of his brocaded gown, and the make of his back, he looked behind as if he had no head, and before as if he had no neck and no legs. The Queen, in speaking of the whole ceremony next morning alone with Lord Hervey, when she came to mention this part of it, said, Ah! mon Dieu! quand je voyois entrer ce monstre pour coucher avec ma fille, j'ai pensé m'évanouir; je chancelois auparavant, mais ce coup là m'a assommée. Dites moi, my Lord Hervey, avez vous bien remarqué et considéré ce In the second volume there' occurs a monstre dans ce moment? et n'aviez vous pas bien chasm which, the editor says, marks propitié de la pauvre Anne? Bon Dieu! c'est trop bably the detail of Hervey's intrigue, quarsot en moi, mais j'en pleure encore.' Lord Hervey

hear the Prince of Orange speak so freely on this subject, and did not think it very discreet in him. The Prince, however, went on, and talked of Miss Vane, and bade Lord Hervey not to be too proud of that boy, since he had heard from very good authority it was the child of a triumvirate, and that the Prince of Wales and Lord Harrington had full as good a title to it as himself."—Vol. I., pp. 328, 329.

These sentences have been

turned the discourse as fast as he was able. He rel, and subsequent reconciliation with this only said 'Oh! Madam, in half a year all persons Miss Vane. are alike; the figure of the body one's married to, spared :like the prospect of the place one lives at, grows so familiar to one's eyes that one looks at it me- "The manner of the reconciliation was from chanically without regarding either the beauties or their seeing one another in public places, and their deformities that strike a stranger.' One may, mutually discovering that both had a mind to forand I believe one does (replied the Queen) grow get their past enmity-till from ogling they came blind at last; but you must allow, my dear Lord to messages; from messages to letters; from letHervey, there is a great difference, as long as one ters to appointments; and from appointments to sees, in the manner of one's going blind.' The all the familiarity in which they had formerly sisters spoke much in the same style as the mother, with horror of his figure, and great commiseration of the fate of his wife."--Vol. I., pp. 310, 311

lived: for when two people have a mutual inclination to meet, I never knew any objection that might arise in their own minds prevent their aiming at it, or any foreign obstacle hinder their accomplishing it."-Vol. II., p. 20.

The honeymoon party being windbound for a short time at Gravesend, Hervey repairs thither, and is not a little surprised Hervey was her great adviser in her negoti to find how completely in the course of a ations about money with the Prince of few days the blooming bride had let her Wales, when his Royal Highness was about "monkey" into all the dessous des cartes to be married (in 1736), and he takes the of St. James's. We have here the first opportunity of recording the letters, dicallusion to what was, it seems, the main tated by himself, with which she pestered cause of the hatred between Frederick Prince the Prince !-a crowning aggravation when of Wales and Lord Hervey, namely, their the truth came out for, as kind Lady rivalry, or rather their community of suc- Mary sings of tying "a cracked bottle to a cess, in the loves of one of the Queen's puppy's tail"—

maids of honor, Miss Vane, sister of the first Lord Darlington. This nymph had

For that is what no soul will bear,

From Italy to Wales!"

Miss Vane's child died a year after, and telling her it was the Prince, the Queen, not misshe very soon. All this story Lord Her-tress of herself, and detesting the exchange of the vey tells in his Memoirs, which he be- son for the daughter, burst out anew into tears, queathed to his "amicable" wife-and and cried out, Oh my God, this is too much. However, she was soon relieved from this irksome which she transmitted in statu quo to his company by the arrival of the King, who, finding

and her children.

Hervey's sketches of his royal rival would, of course, be taken cum grano salis, but, if he reports accurately the conversation of the Prince's own parents and sisters, his view was entirely the same as theirs. He says.

this unusual guest in the gallery, broke up the breakfast, and took the Queen out to walk. Whenever the Prince was in a room with the King, it put one in mind of stories one has heard of ghosts that appear to part of the company and are though the King passed him ever so often or ever invisible to the rest: wherever the Prince stood, so near, it always seemed as if the King thought the place the Prince filled a void space."--Vol. I., P. 412.

"The Prince's best qualities always gave one a degree of contempt for him; his carriage, whilst it seemed engaging to those who did not examine In a preceding page we had a small it, appearing mean to those who did. He was indeed as false as his capacity would allow him to allusion to the Queen's jealousy of her The first be, and was more capable in that walk than in any famous Mistress of the Robes. other-never having the least hesitation, from of these volumes affords a much clearer hisprinciple or fear of future detection, in telling any tory of that lady than could be extracted lie that served his present purpose. He had a from the "Suffolk Correspondence," and much weaker understanding, and, if possible, a all the works of Horace Walpole, Chestermore obstinate temper, than his father. Had he had field, &c., &c., to boot. We shall extract should have had compassion for him in the situa- only a few passages, in which Hervey detion to which his miserable poor head soon re- scribes the feelings and conduct of Queen duced him; for his case, in short, was this:-he Caroline in reference to this first avowed had a father that abhorred him, a mother that de- favorite of her husband. At his accession spised him, sisters that betrayed him, a brother set (1727) George II. was a man of forty-four up against him, and a set of servants that were neither of use to him nor desirous of being so."Vol. I., p. 298.

one grain of merit at the bottom of his heart, one

The amiable state of relations between

and Mrs. Howard (in 1733 Countess of Suffolk) had reached the serious æra of forty

"an age not proper to make conquests, though the Prince and the rest of the family is hit perhaps the most likely to maintain them, as the off in the miniature below. The Princess levity of desiring new ones is by that time geneRoyal has been paying a visit to her pa- rally pretty well over, and the maturity of those rents in the year after her marriage, 1734, qualities requisite to rivet old ones in their fullest and is now about to return to Holland-perfection; for when beauty begins to decay, wovery unwillingly, for it had been her and men commonly look out for some preservative her mother's earnest wish that she should remain here for her accouchement, but that was overruled on representations from the Hague :

charms to substitute in its place; they begin to change their notion of their right to being adored, into that of thinking a little complaisance and some good qualities as necessary to attach men as a little beauty and some agreeable qualities are to allure them. Mrs. Howard's conduct tallied exactly "After a consultation of physicians, midwives, with these sentiments; but notwithstanding her and admirals, it was determined she should em- making use of the proper tools, the stuff she had bark at Harwich. The Queen was concerned to to work with was so stubborn and so inductile part with her daughter, and her daughter as unaf- that her labor was in vain, and her situation would fectedly concerned to exchange the crowds and have been insupportable to any one whose pride splendor of this Court for the solitude and ob- was less supple, whose passions less governable, scurity of her own. Lord Hervey led her to her and whose sufferance less inexhaustible; for she coach. She had Handel and his opera so much was forced to live in the subjection of a wife with at heart, that even in these distressful moments she all the reproach of a mistress; to flatter and ma spoke as much upon his chapter as any other. In nage a man who she must see and feel bad as an hour after Lord H. was sent for as usual to the little inclination to her person as regard to her adQueen. Lord H. found her and the Princess Caro- vice; and added to this she had the mortification line together, drinking chocolate, drowned in tears, of knowing the Queen's influence so much supeand choked with sighs. Whilst they were endea-rior to hers, that the little show of interest she voring to divert their attention by beginning a con- maintained was only a permitted tenure dependent versation with Lord Hervey on indifferent subjects, on a rival who could have overturned it any hour the gallery door opened, upon which the Queen she pleased. But the Queen, knowing the vanity said, Is the King here already? and, Lord H. of her husband's temper, and that he must have