Lord Hervey
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rheinsbergThis is a write-up by selenak of Robert Halsband's biography Lord Hervey: Eighteenth-Century Courtier.
Main write-up
This biography was published in 1974, less than a decade after homosexuality between consenting adults got legal in Britain, and sometimes, you can tell, in that Halsband gives the impression that previous accounts of Hervey either attacked him as a gay or bisexual man or defended him as a straight man, but that defending him as a bi man whose two most passionate love affairs were with men is new. He uses a lot of primary sources re: Hervey's private life - i.e. letters -, and knows his way around Georgian England; a bit less so in the rest of Europe. I already mentioned elsewhere that Émilie simply shows up as Voltaire's mistress and helpmeet, not as a scientist, and that he he repeats the Horowitz-mocked mistake of relying exclusively on English sources re: the Hannover family relationships, hence George I's illegitimate sister showing up as his mistress. We're also assured that Sophie of Hannover wanted to be Queen of England all her life and missed it barely. Having read the Sophie Charlotte biography by Barbara Beuys which is actually more a Sophie of Hannover biography: not so much. Not least because Sophie was in fact older than Queen Anne and didn't expect to outlive her. Besides, she really wasn't keen of having to move to England in her old age. She had ruled Hannover far more than her husband, the eternally holidaying in Venice Ernst August had done, and Sophie Charlotte was her favourite child; visiting her and having SC visit Hannover was easy, but not so much if she'd been in England. She would have to count on not being back in what had been her home for decades within her life time, and for what? Getting crowned on an island where it rained all the time and where she didn't know anybody because Cousin Anne hadn't wanted any of the Hannovers to set foot on the island as long as she was still alive, then live with her old age rheumatism in those droughty palaces instead in the nice modern one that had been built by her when young? Yeah, no. She was pleased that the claim went down her line and that her son would end up as King, sure. But it's just so very Anglosaxon to iimagine that every would regard becoming Queen of England as the best thing ever.
(Mind you: the Brits of the era did, of course, agree, and that was one reason why they were so upset that Georges 1 and 2 in their turn kept going back to Hannover for part of the year during their respective reigns.)
The reliance on English sources becomes mingled with subject partisanship when it comes to the two family soap operas of this biography, neither of which features a Hohenzollern. Because our hero Jack Hervey, who incidentally started his life as a younger son (his older brothers then died in adulthood, making him Lord Hervey, but he himself died before his father, which is why Dad is Lord Bristol and Hervey is not), spent his first two decades as the favourite child of both his parents - but when he married, his mother, Lady Bristol, inexplicably (for our biographer Halsband) takes against him and spends the next years until her death not just as the mother-in-law but the mother from hell, going from critisizing her son's wife to critisizing him as well to outright reviling him and bitching whenever he and the wife bring the kids to spend some time at the family seat. (Halsband admits this might be connected to Lady Bristol having 17 children, some of which were still children when Hervey started to produce his own.) This maternal dislike is presented as vile and unreasonable and in no way justified by the biographer.
Meanwhile, the other family soap is of course that of House Hanover. Where Queen Caroline also goes from critiquing to outright loathing Fritz of Wales (unlike in the Bristol-Hervey case, she's here following the example of her husband), cursing him at every opportunity and considering capable of anything, from trying to foist a bought baby on the succession to tying to poison her. In this case, however, Halsband presents this as entirely understandable and justified. When Caroline tells Hervey - according to Hervey - she wishes he was her son and that his horrid mother had Fritz of Wales instead, Halsband goes: HARD SAME. At no point does he mention that Fritz of Wales' enstrangement from his parents might have had something to do with the fact he hadn't seen either of them for fourteen years when at last called to England after George I's death, or that they made it blatantly obvious they would prefer Billy the future Butcher Cumberland as next king. The blatant contradiction between Caroline on the one hand complaining about Fritz of Wales fucking around and on the other telling stories he was impotent is not pointed out. When Fritz of Wales finally marries (the reason why he's not married already is not mentioned anywhere in the biography - the only Hohenzollern mentioned is Fritz of Prussia, and solely in the Algarotti context), and his parents don't like their daughter-in-law, with Caroline considering Augusta as woefully uneducated and not refined enough for a future queen (where have I heard this before?), this is again presented as entirely rational. Unlike Lady Bristol's bitching about Molly Lepel. And at no point does our biographer wonder whether the bad ending of Hervey's three years relationship with Fritz of Wales, as well as his own mother's attitude towards him, might play into how he chooses to remember his conversations with Queen Caroline (who is the only British Royal he likes in his memoirs) when writing down said memoirs in the last few years of his life.
Partisanship thus established, I still thought this was a very readable biography, doing a good job explaining all the inner English political machinations and literary feuds that take up much of Hervey's life and giving a good impression of Hervey's personality and those around him. It's also defensive against centuries of both satire and moral censure. A good example of Halsband's attitude is the opening sentence and its footnote. Opening sentence:
This world consists of men, women, and Herveys', a remark by his friend Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, indicates Lord Hervey's uniqueness, his complex and enigmatic character.*
* A variant of the phrase by Horace Walpole is more limited and more provocative - that there were three sexes : men, women, and Herveys.
John "Jack" Hervey starts out as a clever but sickly child, as opposed to his healthy siblings, which accounts for some of the parental doting, which is also a great contrast to how things later developed with his mother (though Dad remained doting): His feeble health made his parents dote on him all the more. When Hervey (père) had to be at Newmarket he asked his wife not to let 'pretty Jack forgett his affectionate papa'. Solicitously she moved into the nursery to be near him at night when he was not sleeping well. She reported to Hervey one day their son called for his dear Papa; he cryd and would not be quiet in the morning till they carried him into your dressing-room, and then he went directly to your closet door, knocking and calling upon you to let him in'.
It was Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (again, from The Favourite), who got Hervey Senior the peerage that made him Lord Bristol, and the Herveys were loyal whigs thereafter, committing themselves to Team Hannover in the succession early on (Lord Bristol bought a golden medallion of Sophie of Hannover, and gifted Georg Ludwig with a racehorse, that kind of thing). Young Jack had the traditional upper class upbringing, complete with public school (Westminster). Now, as mentioned elsewhere, when George I. arrived in England he had no Queen, so the all courtly appointments for ladies of the nobility had to limit themselves to his daughter-in-law, Caroline, and Lady Bristol managed to become a lady of the bedchamber, thus starting the Herveys/Hannovers family association. Small detail that cracked me up; when when of Caroline's German ladies in waiting said to the new English ones that should held up their heads, stand straights and held out their breasts instead of looking downwards all the time, she got the disdainfull reply: We show our Quality by our Birth and Titles, Madam, and not by sticking out our Bosoms".
("Brust raus, Bauch rein" was even said in my childhood. It's a thing! But not in England.)
While the Hannover soap starts (remember, George I and future G2 hated each other just like G2 and Fritz of Wales later would), which means rival courts, young Jack goes on the Grand Tour, and, being a good future courtier, after months in Paris does a stop in Hannover where he takes the time to meet and make much of little Fritz (not yet of Wales, because future G2 was G of Wales). As does Lady Mary, who is there at the same time, remember, en route to Turkey. Kid Hannover Fritz gets a way better press from Hervey and Halsband than later Fritz of Wales, for: The princeling, nine years old when Hervey met him,was an agreeable-looking boy, with the light blond hair of his mother. He was surprisingly quick and polite in conversation, and seemed to have an abundance of wit and good sense far beyond his years. Hervey had been sent to Hanover simply to ingratiate himself with the Prince. As his father put it: 'when you see and are sure ye foundation in Prince Frederick’s favour ... is laid as indelibly as you know I woud have it, and I know you are capable of contriveing, you may think of returning homewards.'
Jack actually wanted to go to Italy next, but Dad insisted he should come home, and Dad was paying, so home he went, and fell in love with Maria "Molly" Lepel, a maid of honor: She evidently charmed everyone at court, where she bore the nickname of Schatz ( treasure), a sign that the German contingent thought well of her too. (Molly's father had come to England as part of George of Denmark's entourage - he had been Queen Anne's husband - and remained there after his master's death. He was, in fact, a cousin to Lepel the Küstrin commander.) Why do we know it was a love match? Because neither of his parents approved, though Dad came around (while noting he'd have preferred Jack to marry someone rich, like the daughter of the Duke of Rutland). At first, Hervey was very honeymoon-minded, as the eyerolling testimony of his friend Lady Mary in a letter to her sister Frances testifies, where she talks of the 'ardent affection that Mrs. Hervey and her dear spouse took to me. They visited me twice or thrice a day, and were perpetually cooing in my rooms.
Molly gets pregnant, produces a first child, and Jack makes the acquaintance of one William Pulteney, up and coming politician in the Whig party. This is a a fateful event because eventually Jack will have to decide between Pulteney and rival up and coming political star Robert Walpole, and will go for Walpole. Which Pulteney takes very badly indeed; there's a duel ahead. But first Jack has to go into politics for real because older brother Carr has lost the Hervey parliamentary seat, and Jack needs to win it back. Which he does. Meanwhile, Carr invests in the ruinous "South Sea Bubble" (financial speculation desaster of the era), ends up broke, and dies young. Which makes Jack Lord Hervey.
The honeymoon period with his wife was over. She was still considered a beauty, and it was noted she didn't take a lover (unlike him); Charles Hanbury Williams (future envoy and Fritz disliker) said that she was incapable of love; her 'total, real indifference to mankind has hindered her ever having a lover'. But, says Halsband: fthis is too worldly, too Chesterfieldian, an explanation for her not taking a lover. Instead, it proves her consistency of character; since she had married Hervey for love she remained faithful to him.
Meanwhile, Hervey had met one young Henry Fox. And fell for him. Henry liked Hervey a lot but "charmingly rebuffed him" as a lover, which was lucky for Hervey, because then he met Henry's brother Stephen and really fell for him. Stephen Fox turned out to be his most enduring male relationship, and he was certainly, unabashedly, passionately in love. (He remained friends with Henry as well, though, until his relationships with both Foxes fell apart in the last few years of his life.) What Halsband quotes from the letters also show how a gay relationship between two upper class men (both MPs) develops:
But he reveals himself as more than an epistolary virtuoso in his letters to Stephen.
“For my own Part,' he later confessed to him, “my Mind never goes naked but in your territorys. 'I won't tell you,' he continues in his letter of 1 June ), “how I feel every time I goe through St. James's Street because I don't love writing unintelligibly ; & the more faithful the description was, the farther one of your temper way of thinking would be from comprehending what it meant. I might as well talk to a blind man of Colours, an Atheist of Devotion, or an Eunuch of f-." And then, teasing Stephen more directly : “ That regret for the Loss of any body one loves & likes is a sort of Sensation you have merit enough to teach, tho' I believe you'll never have merit enough to learn it.' His intent was obviously to encourage Stephen to deny that accusation ; and, as can be judged by the rapid progress of their friendship, Stephen was willing both to love and to like.
This then turns into: “I must see you soon," he impatiently writes (on 15 November ); 'I can't live without You; Choice, tast[e], Habit, prejudice, Inclination, Reason & every thing that either does or ought to influence one's thoughts or one's actions makesmine center in & depend on You. Adieu, le plus aimable & le plus aimé qu'il y est au monde.'
Since Hervey is still sickly -one reason why he becomes a vegetarian and swears by milk - he uses this to go on another continental tour, this time to Italy, but not alone: Stephen went with him. (Molly remained at home with an increasing amount of kids and the mother-in-law from hell.) En route back from Italy, Hervey renews his friendship with Voltaire (whom he'd met earlier when Voltaire had been in England); this includes showing Voltaire his poetry and asking his opinion of it. (I sense a theme.) Coming back to England, things get even better for Hervey, because G1 has died, and not only does Hervey become now Queen Caroline's Chamberlain but he also is asked by her to keep an eye on Fritz of Wales, summoned to England at last. Fritz of Wales takes to Hervey like a duck to water; but Horowitz was wronging Hervey when saying Hervey put his relationship with Stephen on hold for that, because he continues to write beautiful love letters to Stephen. He just writers letters to Fritz of Wales signed "your Hephaistion" as well. (And Fritz of Wales writes "'My Dear Hervey, I reciev'd Sunday evening your Letter from Salisbury, & am mighty sensible that fatigue at one Side, & pleasures, Balls, and fine Ladys at another side did not make you forget Orestes, the warm Orestes, to his Dear Pilades.') (Not bad English for a guy who until recently spent his entire life in Hannover, btw.)
And that's when the Walpole versus Pulteney choice happens. Pulteney doesn't take it well. He actually slanders Hervey in print: But you seem, pretty Sir, Pulteney now writes, 'to take the Word Corruption in a limited Sense and confine it to the Corrupter-- Give me Leave to illustrate This by a parallel Case – There is a certain, unnatural, reigning Vice (indecent and almost shocking to mention). It is well known that there must be two Parties in this Crime; the Pathick and the Agent; both equally guilty. Ineed not explain These any farther.' In other words,having called Hervey a hermaphrodite the eighteenth -century term for homosexual — Pulteney now, by innuendo, accuses him of homosexual practices.
This is serious. Not least because yes, it takes two parties, and Hervey is hanging out with the Prince of Wales. And homosexuality at least according to the law is still a crime punishable by the death penalty. So ignoring and doing nothing is not an option if he wants to keep his office with the Queen. So he challenges Pulteney to a duel - with swords, not pistols - and they go through with it, which ends in a stalmate where both parties are injured and declare themselves satisfied. However, Pulteney is not yet done, because now Hervey gets satirized as someone who doesn't have the guts for a manly killing. This, presumably, is another reason why he's so touchy when Fritz of Wales, simultanously called impotent by his parents (according to Horowitz, Halsband doesn't point this out), starts an affair with Hervey's mistress (whom he had in addition to everyone else), Miss Vane. Cue illegitimate kid, Hervey mortally insulted, and the Fritz of Wales relationship ended. Fritz of Wales is now the worst, and Hervey completely sympathizes with Queen Caroline on this account.
The relationship with Stephen Fox, otoh, remains solid until Stephen needs to do something about his finances, about a decade after he and Hervey have cemented their relationship by going to Italy together. Stephen gets married to a thirteen years old heiress. Unlike poor Barbara Mitchell, this child bride doesn't give birth until more than a decade later, so let's hope the marriage wasn't consumated until then, either. But this marriage does start the point where Hervey and Stephen become more friends than lovers. Otoh, Hervey's friendship with Lady Mary intensifies, not least because they both gets attacked by Alexander Pope and team up with a counter satire (see Lady Mary's biography).
Incidentally, as an example of Hervey's style as a poet:
For Courts are only larger Familys,
The Growth of each, few Truths, & many Lyes;
Like you we lounge, & feast, & play, & chatter;
In private Satirize, in Publick flatter.
When Hervey isn't getting cursed by his mother, he's comiserating with Queen Caroline about her cursed son or exchanging quips with Lady Mary. And then there's Voltaire:
Hervey's friendship for Voltaire the man did not prevent him from criticizing Voltaire the writer. When he read the tragedy Zaire (early in 1733) and sent a copy to Henry Fox, he was certain that like himself Fox would "have some Compassion for a silly Christian [heroine) as well as the greatest regard, Esteem, & Affection for a noble, good, tender & charming Mahometan' who through a tragic misunderstanding kills her. He was irritated, though, by Voltaire's dedication of the play to Edward Falkener, English merchant. In France it was regarded as scandalous because it was addressed not only to a commoner but to a foreign one at that. Hervey told Henry Fox that he thought it "bad, false, & impertinent ... by a superficial Frenchman to an Englishman, & the Dedicator pretends to be better acquainted with our Country, our Manners, our Laws, & even our Language than the Dedicatee'.
What could have aroused such a violent opinion ? In the dedicatory epistle, after praising the high rank and regard the mercantile class enjoyed in England, Voltaire continues : 'I know very well that this profession is despised by our petits-maîtres ; but you also know that our petits -maîtres and yours are the most ridiculous species that proudly crawl on the face of the earth'. This, rather than the general remarks about French and English theatre, could have been offensive to one who was certainly closer to being a petit-maître than a man of commerce.
No kidding. Voltaire: never fails to piss people off. However, he writes rec letters for visiting Italians, and lo, Algarotti enters the scene. Love triangle ensues. Hervey's side of it is far less self assured than one would think, having read through Lady Mary's letters.
'In any case,' he assures him, 'if you stay or if you go, do not forget me, my dear, for I will never forget you all my life ... you are too clear-sighted to have any need of instruction in things less obvious than the affection I feel for you, & I will not say more than you know, but much less than I feel, when I assure you simply that at present the thing in the world that I wish most for is to be able to keep you in England for the rest of your life, with the same advantage & pleasure to you that I would find here myself. (...)
To celebrate Algarotti's last evening in London he invited him to supper, but Algarotti declined because (he said ) he had promised to sup with Martin Folkes. But Àlgarotti lied, perhaps to spare his friend any pangs of jealousy. He spent his last evening in London with Lady Mary. After Algarotti's departure Hervey suffered so keenly that his friends complained ofhis moodiness, and he frankly admitted the cause. He was annoyed besides that Algarotti had lied about the supper on the eve of his departure. For Lady Mary now boasted to everybody, Hervey reports to him, that she had been like Caesar in her conquest - which was, he adds, an insult to Algarotti's memory. Instead of resenting Algarotti's duplicity he resented Lady Mary's having benefited by it. Her physical charms were far inferior to her intellectual ones, he reminds him. 'How fortunate you are then to be gone ! The absence that brings sadness to every other Lover will fulfill your Happiness, for she will speak to your Eyes & not appea rbefore them ; she will not destroy with her countenance the impression she will make by her mind. “But I am speaking too much of her,' he checks himself, 'now I must say a word about myself. I cannot say anything, however, on this Subject but what you already know, that is to say that I love you with all my Heart, & I beg you never to forget the affection Ihave for you,nor to let the affection you have for me grow weaker.'
Yet how differently Lady Mary regarded herself !-- not as conquering Caesar but as Dido abandoned by her wandering Aeneas. “ I am a thousand times more to be pitied than the sad Dido, and I have a thousand more reasons to kill myself', she tells Algarotti in her second letter soon after his departure. (...)
What could have been Algarotti's thoughts upon receiving such effusions from his two English admirers ? He did not have to send letters to keep the flames of their love ablaze. A fortnight after his departure Hervey still missed him so painfully that he mourned his great loss to Henry Fox, hardly disguising his emotions, while staying at Kensington' in this House ( triste Sejour) & generally seeing or thinking of the same thing. Adieu. I write like a Fool, think like a Fool, talk like a Fool, act like a Fool, & have every thing of a Fool but the Content of one.'
(...)
The passion that Hervey and Lady Mary felt for Algarotti aroused in them very different feelings towards each other, jealousy on his part, helplessness on hers. He boasted to her that Algarotti had written to him from Francc, while she had not heard from him two weeks later, although he had promised to write from Calais. 'How unhappy I am ! she exclaims to him (in her fourth letter), and what a stroke of Mercy a stroke of Lightning would be at this moment!' More calmly, she tells him thatshe will see Lord Hervey, who should have had news of him.
When she tried several times to arrange an appointment with Hervey he cruelly evaded her, until by accident he met her at Lady Stafford's, where she extracted from him a promise to meet her in two days' time. Although he again tricd to put her off, on the appointed evening she appcared (with a little ugly singer as chaperone ), and stayed until one in the morning. 'While she was with me,' Hervey tells Algarotti, "she tried thousands of different ways to make me talk of you, & I would not even mention your name. At the same time she told me a thousand deliberate lies & a thousand accidental truths ; & instead of finding out several things without saying anything, as she intended, she told me all without learning anything.' Nor does he forget to reassure Algarotti that however ridiculous and unstable Lady Mary is ( she was as drunk before as wine can make one, & you have added Gin ”), he himself is unswerving in his devotion. 'Adieu. Preserve me in your esteem. I love you too much,my dear, not to strive all my life to deserve you.'
How much more generous, in this instance, was Lady Mary in telling Algarotti of that same evening: when she had sent word to Lord Hervey that she wished to speak to him, 'You may believe (with his politeness) I saw him soon after, and then I was in allmost as much difficulty to draw from him what I had a mind to know ; that is, whither you were arriv'd safe at Paris ?' Hervey told her 'that after so much neglect as I had shewn him he could not fancy I would honnour him with a message, except I had some thing to demand of him that I thought of importance to myselfe, and very generously made me all sort of offers of Services and assurances of obeying my commands, reasonable or unreasonable.'
It is really a relief when Hervey gets a grip on himself again. Helped, no doubt, by Algarotti visiting England after Lady Mary had gone to Italy to reunite with him, but Hervey - still agog about Algarotti - now is kind and without unbecoming Schadenfreude in his letters. However: FW dies, Fritz writes, and Algarotti leaves so quickly that half his luggage has to be sent after him. Hervey won't see him again.
He also loses his royal patron, Queen Caroline, in the aftermath of Fritz of Wales producing his first legitimate offspring (remember the saga of the birth at St. James to avoid his parents being present?). Hervey is not yet out of a job; grieving G2 even makes him the Lord Privy Seal, which is a major promotion. But this doesn't last forever, for Robert Walpole finally is ousted as PM, and that means a reshuffling of the entire cabinet. G2, to his credit, tries to sweeten Hervey's departure first by offering him some nice retirement honors. Hervey wants to remain Lord Privy Seal. (That was Thomas Cromwell's title in Henry VIII's day!) After various attempts at persuasion, G2 gets angry, argument ensues, and Hervey is fired without retirement honors. Writing secret trashy tell all memoirs is only so much help, especially since his relationships first with Henry and then Stephen Fox fall apart as well, and his physical health, never great, goes to ruin entirely. The relationship with Lady Mary, post initial Algarotti triangle, remains good, but she's far away (currently in Avignon), and letters take so long. Hervey dies in bitterness, but not before dictating his last will (see earlier comment). Our biographer points out his memoirs are still the best, and then gives us an "where are they now?" culminating with the Lady Mary letter to Algarotti and the comforting idea of Hervey's version of paradise.
In conclusion: Lehndorff had far less personal drama, but I think he had the better life, for all the unfilfilled ambition. But Hervey is certainly story worthy, and also quite quotable.
Franz Stephan
Quick excerpt from the Lord Hervey biography, because Hervey met Franz Stephan when FS was on his grand tour (which, remember, took him as far as England where he joined a Free Mason Lodge):
Hervey carefully and dispassionately observed him. 'a pretty figure of a man', he reported to Stephen (Stephen Fox, Hervey's lover), tho low and rather thick, ill made & worse dressed. He wears his own hair, has a very handsome face, like the King of France, but a more sensible, more lively & more good natured countenance. He seems very easy & very well bred.'(...)
Hervey's first favourable impression was strengthened: the more he saw the Duke the more he liked him. 'He is very well bred, with more nicety, more ease and more more constant presence of Mind than any Body I ever met & has the most beautiful, most sweet & most sensible Countenance I ever beheld.'
ETA: Good lord, more Franzl fanboying. Bear in mind that Hervey at this poinst is a) married and producing kids, b) having an affair with great love of his life Stephen Fox, and c) hanging out with Fritz of Wales and writing to him letters signed "your Hephaistion".
The day before leaving, (Franz Stephan) walked in Kensington Gardens in the morning with the Queen and her suite (including Hervey) until it began to rain. They all returned to St. James at full gallop in open chaises, wet to the skin and bespattered with mud like stage-coached postillons. On 8 December he boarded his yacht at Greenwich, 'regretting and regretted'. Hervey, who too easily observed the flaws of everyone he met, could find none in this paragon: he still thought him handsome, cheerful, sensible, well bred and obliging: 'Never any Body had the good Fortune of pleasing to universally.' The Duke's departure, he told Lord Bateman, had 'put the town in universal mourning: it is the Fashion for the Women to cry.' He was not exaggarating, for he had evidence close at hand. 'The Duke of Lorraine has carried the hearts of all our fine ladies away with him', Lady Stratford wrote (more than two weeks later); 'Lady Hervey has cried every day since his departure and says she can't enjoy anybody's company now that agreeable creature is gone.
Hervey and Algarotti
Mind you, the Hervey bio told me Algarotti was as late with his letters to Hervey sometimes as he was with his to Lady Mary, but Hervey still had at that point other people in his life:
By then Algarotti was in Milan revising his Newtonian dialogues for the printer; and when Hervey received a reply (two months later) it said nothing of the book, but its other news was pleasing enough to him. He answered it the same day it came:
'As to all you say of the regard you retain for me, whether it be the effect of your Taste your Partiallity Imust either way be pleased with it', for he regards Algarotti as 'one whom of all the men I ever was acquainted with I should most wish to engage' and the best Companion I ever met with. His long letter, full of strained wit, Latin quotations, and English verse, ends simply and personally with 'Adio Carissimo'.
His other friend whom he had once called Carissimo was not so distant as the Italian. Although Stephen Fox, who was not yet living with his child -wife, stayed in Somerset, Hervey kept their friendship alive with his letters— chatty or motherly or gossipy. Once he was stung to stronger expression when Stephen asked whether he felt neglected or forgotten. No, he insists, for he should certainly impute it to chance, inadvertence, or laziness.
'I have loved you ever since I knew you,' he continues, 'which is now many years, so much better than most People are capable of loving any thing, that for your own sake at least, you would not nor could not, I am sure--there is so great a Pleasure in being so well beloved -be insensible of it & consequently not desire to preserve it.' His declaration breathes an air of sincerity : 'I only wish it was in my power to show you how well I love you, that all your Pleasures & Wishes depended on me only, & if they did you would find your-self never deprived of the one, or disappointed of the other.' Compared to Algarotti, Stephen was closer to the core of his emotionalbeing ; and although they had grown apart their love was firmly rooted. Hervey's nature and tastes were ample enough to encompass such intense friendships with two such disparate men.
Hanover family drama
Oh, and because the initial write up doesn't include just how dysfunctional the Hannover soap gets, have this (and keep in mind Halsband never doubts that Hervey's is the true version of the tale):
On his expulsion from his father's palaces in September 1737 the Prince of Wales rented a house in St. James's Square and for his summer residence Cliveden in Buckinghamshire. His followers, as much as they could, tried to make political capital of his situation. At a performance of Cato that he attended at Drury Lane ( on 4 October) he was loudly cheered ; and that frigid tragedy was warmed by politics as it had been during its first run on the eve of the Hanoverian succession. The letters he had written to his parents were circulated in slightly edited versions to show him in a more sympathetic light. To counteract this propaganda, his parents determined to print all the letters and messages that had passed between them since the night of the Princess's accouchement; and at the Queen's request Hervey translated them from French into English, accomplishing his task in one day. He was particularly gratified to beable to prove, by authority of the Government, that the Prince was a liar.(...)
(Voltaire doctoring his Madame Denis letters re: Fritz: in the best royal tradition.)
Then Caroline dies, but not without this bit of emotional bloodletting:
From the Prince of Wales came messages, which were relayed through Hervey, asking if he might see his mother. The King, when he found out, was indignant - a scoundrel's trick, he raged, the Prince wanted to insult his poor dying mother. 'No, no ! he shall not come and act any of his silly plays here, false, lying, cowardly, nauseous, puppy.' (...)
The Queen had no desire to see her hateful son, and even made the King promise that should she ever talk of seeing him the King must assume that she was not in her right mind and refuse her request. When she talked of dying, she sometimes exclaimed, 'At least I shall have one comfort in having my eyes eternally closed I shall never see that monster again.' That, at least, is Hervey's version of this startling illustration of how imminent death did not dissolve the Queen's hatred. Or perhaps it did, for another account alters the picture without necessarily contradicting Hervey's : that the Queen sent her blessing and a message of forgiveness to her son, at the same time telling Walpole that she would have been pleased to see him but feared it might embarrass and irritate the King.
Fritz: See, and you all sniggered when I told Mitchell how much more harmonious our family is when compared to the Hannover cousins. At least Dad called me his worthy successor when he was dying, and Mom adored me.
Oh, have some more quotes, from when Fritz enters the saga:
Algarotti and Frederick, of equal ages and similar tastes, were immediately attracted to each other. The Prince was 'the lover and the favourite of the Muses', Algarotti boasted to Hervey, and 'the most intelligent and most amiable of men', who when he ascended the throne would prove to be one of the greatest of sovereigns. The two travellers then made their way to Hamburg to board the Augusta for their return to England. Algarotti had time for a last letter to Hervey : 'I fervently invoke that blustering East wind, so much an enemy to your countrymen, to blow soon, and waft me speedily to your Lordship at St. James's. I believe, my Lord, that I do not presume too much upon your friendship for me, in flattering myself, that, in your fine Park, " a votive heifer is fattening against (my] return."
(Bear in mind that he simultaneously writes to Mitchell wanting him to be the tastiest dish at supper.) And then FW dies:
My dear Algarotti,' wrote the new King of Prussia a few days later,'my destiny has changed. I await you impatiently ; don't let me languish for you.' The intimate, impatient summons made deep impression on Algarotti. (He did not know, however, that Frederick had sent exactly the same note to his old tutor.) But the handsome Baron Keyserlingk, Frederick's prime favourite, added some verse to Algarotti's summons:
Come, Algarotti, from the shores of the Thames,
To share with us our fortunate destiny.
Hasten your journey to these agreeable places;
You will find here Liberty as the motto.
Algarotti departed for Berlin in such haste that he left some of his belongings at Hervey's house, clothes as well as furs (probably acquired during his visit to Russia ); and since his funds were low, he borrowed money from Lady Hervey for his journey.
So not even Hervey but Hervey's wife paid for the journey. You can't make these people up.
Hervey's will
You can imagine I had a strange sense of deja vue when I got the the end of the Hervey biography. His political career is in tatters, his relationship with Stephen Fox ditto, his bff Lady Mary is in Italy; Hervey is majorly depressed, and writing famously bitchy secret memoirs evidently is not enough to vent, because (oh, Lord Bristol is his father, who outlived Hervey):
A week later he decided to draw up his will. Not strong enough to write, he dictated it, and then read it over twice to correct the spelling. Most of its provisions were conventional enough : his eldest son to be sole heir and executor, annuities to all his children, dowries of £ 5,000 for his eldest unmarried daughter, Mary, and £ 4,000 each to the two other girls, annuities to his housekeeper and to his valet. But the bequest to his wife was astonishing: she could have only what he was obliged to leave her by the terms of their marriage contract, and nothing more ; and while she could dispose of some things at her death, she must give security for all the money, silver, and jewels, and bequeath them to one of her children born during wedlock.
The same day that he dictated and corrected his will he wrote a brief letter (evidently in his own hand) addressed to Mrs. Strangways Horner. 'Dear Madam,' it runs, 'If you have a mind to shew any Regard to my Memory fullfill this my last Request & take my Daughter Miss Mary Hervey to live with You. She is very well disposed & will continue so living with one of your excellent Principles & real honest worth. I love and honour You. Adieu.' He gave the letter to his daughter with instructions that she deliver it to Mrs. Horner after his death. That event was not far off. By mid-July he was dangerously ill, and on 5 August he died. His father showed his love for him even at the burial a week later in the Ickworth church, for instead of a woollen shroud to clothe the corpse, as the law required, Lord Bristol chose another cloth (probably linen ) and paid a fine of £ s. The only other member of the Hervey family who enjoyed this posthumous luxury was Lord Bristol bimself. (...)
His will was the chief topic of conversation in London, particularly its provisions for Lady Hervey. No one knew why he had treated her in such a way; and it was said that he had refused to see her for many weeks before he died. Because of her modest jointure - only £ 300 a year — she would have to live with Lord Bristol, no great hardship since they were devoted to each other. Then, after the will had been read, early in September Mrs. Horner was startled by a visit from Mary Hervey with a letter from her late father. When Mrs. Horner overcame her surprise she sent a copy of the letter to Lady Hervey, assuring her that she was an 'utter Stranger to the Purport' before she was informed of it by Miss Hervey, and that for many reasons she could not comply with its request. Lady Hervey displayed impeccable tact in thanking Mrs. Horner for her considerate letter : 'I am not surpriz'd at any proof of Esteem given you by My Dear late Lord, knowing the great Friendship he had for you, Madam ; and I am as little so at the very right Manner in which you have acted on this Occasion.'
Lady Hervey remained the most considerate of wives.
Keep in mind Lady Hervey, formerly Maria "Molly" Lepel, had not been an arranged marriage, she'd been Hervey's choice, a love match. She also had done all a wife of their time was expected to; befriended his friends, supported him through think and thin; she even, during an earlier crisis in his relationship with Stephen Fox, had invited Stephen for the summer to their country seat, then discreetly withdrew and went elsewhere so they could be alone together and work it out. And if she in turn ever cheated on Hervey, no one ever knew. And yet.
"When feeling miserable, there's always your wife to punch down to" seems to be an 18th century maxim. Ugh.
Hervey, Vane, and Fritz of Wales
Anne Vane, the lady who was first Hervey's and than Fritz' of Wales' mistress, gets a lot of bad (satiric) press in her time and even from Halsband some authorial condescension and hostility. Check it out:
Could she have been so repulsive as Lord Egmont describes her -a fat and ill-shaped dwarf, with nothing good to recommend her, neither sense nor wit ? She was, besides, probably marked by smallpox. The Prince's passion for women was wittily analysed by Horace Walpole : "like the rest of his race, beauty was not a necessary ingredient. Miss ( Vane], whom he had debauched without loving, and who had been debauched without loving him so well as either Lord Harrington or Lord Hervey, who both pretended to her first favours, had no other charms than of being a Maid of Honour, who was willing to cease to be so upon the first opportunity.
However much others may have disapproved or sneered, the Prince was proud of his battered conquest, and commanded his courtiers to treat her with respect when they visited her.
Hervey innocently maintained his precious friendship with the Prince through the autumn (1731), either through spirited letters from Redlinch or in his company, until it took a new, dramatic turn. He fretted for a whole week ( in mid-December ) before confiding in Stephen : 'that Fool the Prince plagues my Heart out. He is as false too as he [is ] silly, & appears every thing he is not by turns, but wise ; yet the Mask of common -sense, if he knew how to get it, would disguise him more than any other; he could put on nothing so unnatural, nothing so unlike.'
Unfortunately Hervey could not be more explicit, 'for Paper is as great a Blab as a human Creature'. So intense was his indignation that he revealed to his father that he had been deceived and betrayed by a friend whom hereally loved - though he worded it so cautiously, in fear of post-office prying, that his father remained uncertain who that friend was.
He could be more explicit with Stephen because they used a cipher for the Prince's name; and on Christmas Day, with feelings far from charitable, he raged again : 'I have almost every Day fresh Instances of the Falschood as well as the Folly of [the Prince], & since it is impossible to correct the first, wherever it is so natural, I am not very solicitous as you may imagine to rectify the Errors of the Last.'
Now keep in mind that the same Hervey who rages here about Miss Vane and the Prince betraying him with each other is a) a married man whose wife is pregnant as well and will give birth only a month after Miss Vane does, and b) also still having his grand affair with Stephen, whose jealousy he had to soothe just a few months before Fritz of Wales starts his affair with Miss Vane:
But in an unguarded moment, or with a miscalculated confession, he told Stephen that he wished he could love the Prince as well as he loved Stephen. How Stephen reacted can be inferred from Hervey's distraught apology, sent only ten minutes after he had read his reply : 'The Tears you speak of are at this Distance so infectious that I hardly see the Words I write.' He reassures him, in themost abject terms, of his unalterable love. In wishing to love the Prince so well he had' ly'd egregiously; I am as incapable of wishing to love any Body else so well, as I am of wishing to love You less. God forbid any Mortal should ever have the power over me you have, or that you should ever have less. ... Adieu,if Iwas to fill a thousand Reams of paper it would be only aiming in different phrases & still imperfectly to tell you the same thing, & assure you that since I first knew you I have been without repenting & still am & ever shall be undividedly & indisolubly Yours.' Stephen could hardly have hoped for a more reassuring declaration.
The lovers' misunderstanding ended a few days later, when Hervey pronounced an end to it: 'you offended imprudently, I resented it extravagantly ; you repented agreably, I forgave you willingly, & the whole has concluded ... my satisfaction ... Absent or present, sleeping or waking, sick or well, in Crouds or alone, You are generally upermost in my Thoughts; the Cause of every uneasyness I suffer at present & the Object of & hope of pleasure I form for the future.' His emotion was so strong it overflowed in a long, philosophical poem he sent to Stephen from Hampton Court, regretting his life spent in the 'glare of courts, and luxury of state', wasting precious hours away from his beloved friend.
In conclusion, Hervey, it looks like you were with Fritz of Wales mostly for career reasons, and had no problem sleeping with three different people at the same time (your wife, Miss Vane and Stephen), so crying "betrayal!" when Fritz of Wales has sex with Miss Vane is really another case of spectacular double standard. Of course, a key document is missing, for:
The full story of Hervey's friendship and enmity with the Prince of Wales is probably lost forever. His private memoirs of the court of George II (...) contain a frank and full account of his association with the various members of the Royal Family from the King's accession in 1727 to the Queen's death ten years later. When the autograph manuscript and a copy of it passed on to Hervey's grandson, the first Marquess of Bristol, he tore out and destroyed a long section — from May 1730 to the late summer of 1732, the precise period of Hervey's intimacy and quarrel with the Prince of Wales. His motive must have been to protect George III's father as well as his own grandfather. The fact that he allowed other scandalous revelations (Miss Vane as Hervey's mistress, for example ) to remain in the copy of thememoirs is evidence that what he read and destroyed for the years 1730 to 1732 he regarded as far too shocking to remain among his family papers in either the autograph or the copy.
And of course, the whole episode gets extra soapy when Queen Caroline uses it as an excuse to spread the impotence or infertility rumors about her son, or, as Halsband, who, remember, is firmly team Queen and Hervey here, puts it:
At the time of the Prince's marriage a few years later the Queen begged Hervey to tell her whether her son was even capable of having a child. As for those of little Vane,* you know, my dear Lord,' she insisted, 'I have a thousand times told you that I was always sure they were yours ; and if I wanted further proof of their being so, your son William whom you so reluctantly brought to me this summer would have convinced me of it, because if he had been twin-brother to little Fitzfrederick, he could not have been more like him.' On another occasion the Queen insisted that the Prince was so solicitous of fathering a child by Miss Vane that he had asked Hervey to perform the necessary service for him ; and although Hervey swore a thousand times that it was not true, the Queen refused to believe him. It is a question that can have no absolute answer, certainly not two centuries later ; but the paternity may be awarded to the Prince for one decisive reason : he himself was convinced of it.
One could also add: he had no problem getting his wife Augusta pregnant, several times. And Miss Vane had another child by him before the liason ended; at this point Hervey was no longer an option. Neither it nor Little Fitzfrederick, alas, did outlive their childhood.
More soap opera:
Once Miss Vane's position as the Prince of Wales's mistress was conspicuously secure, Hervey's emotions shifted from jealousy (for having been betrayed) to resentment, far more intense, that she had induced the Prince to discard him as intimate adviser in favour of Dodington. He determined in April 1732 to revive the Prince's friendship for him , and went about it in a foolhardy fashion . Since Miss Vane had ruined that friendship , he reasoned, then she could restore it.He composed a letter and asked his brother-in -law Bussy Mansel to take it to her, telling him that it merely recommended a midwife. Actually it castigated her for the ill service she had done him with the Prince , and threatened that if she did not repair the breach he would divulge what he knew ofher, and use her as she deserved .Upon reading this scathing letter she fell into hysterics ; and Mansel, when he read it, swore he would kill Hervey for deceiving him by making him the messenger of such an affront. To prevent murder Miss Vane then told the Prince of the letter, and he somehow placated Mansel but bitterly resented Hervey's ill treatment of his mistress. The King, Queen , and Walpole, when they heard of it, were also incensed with Hervey for his interference in a Royal pastime.
Aware too late of his iinprudence, Hervey tried to make amends. The King and Queen (and of course Walpole ) were satisfied by his penitence but not the Prince, who ( in Hervey's opinion ) ‘never forgot an injury or remembered an obligation ”. Their friendship was never restored .
As opposed to the relationship between Hervey and Miss Vane. Now you'd think after that letter, he'd have been the last man she'd ever want to see again, but lo and behold, some years later:
When he had heard of his mother's gift of the gold snuff -box (Fritz of Wales) announced that it was less to favour Hervey than to insult and outrage him , and that it was shocking for his mother to favour a man who the whole world knew had been impertinent to him and had threatened his mistress.
For that reason, he told his sisters, he seldom visited the Queen. They replied that it was strange he should think of choosing his mother's companions as a condition of his paying his respects. Hervey's favour with the Queen thus widened the breach between himself and the Prince as well as between the Prince and his mother.
But Hervey's relationship with Miss Vane had undergone a radical change in the opposite direction . Following their quarrel, when they had met among company and he had tried to speak to her she refused --- with the haughtiness of an injured princess — to bestow a glance or a word on him , though he addressed her in the most suppliant manner. After meeting in public places , however , they discovered that they wanted (in Hervey's words) ' to forget their past enmity, and renew their past endearments , till from ogling they came to messages, from messages to letters, from letters to appointments, and from appointments to all the familiarities in which they had formerly lived , both of them swearing that there never had been any interruption in the affection they bore to each other, though the effects of jealousy and rage had often made them act more like enemies than lovers'. This revival of their love affair had come about by the summer of 1734 .
At first they met in an out of the way coffee-house , and then , after Miss Vane took a house at Wimbledon (for her son's health ), she came to town secretly once a week and they met at her house there, often passing the whole night together. Although they realized it was very indiscreet their 'mutual inclination to meet forced them to this dangerous course
Their renewed friendship and liaison arose from other reasons as well. Through Miss Vane, Hervey discovered that Bubb Dodington , the Prince's chief adviser, was being displaced by others , particularly Lord Chesterfield — a clear sign that the Prince was drawing closer to the political Opposition . She would thus be able to transmit useful information to him . Her renewed taste for him could have been stimulated by the Prince's gradual distaste for herself ; a year earlier, London gossip claimed that he had fathered a child on her chambermaid , for whom he then bought a house, and that he had tried unsuccessfully to gain the favours of an Italian opera singer. The renewed alliance of Miss Vane and Hervey, then, was based on love, jealousy, and politics intriguingly mixed.
It's worth bearing in mind, though, that Halsband's sole source for these subsequent shenanigans (i.e. all that happened after the initial fallout between Hervey and the Prince over Miss Vane, for which he quotes letters and satiric poems by all the other London wits) is Hervey himself in his trashy tell all memoirs.
selenak of Robert Halsband's biography Lord Hervey: Eighteenth-Century Courtier.Main write-up
This biography was published in 1974, less than a decade after homosexuality between consenting adults got legal in Britain, and sometimes, you can tell, in that Halsband gives the impression that previous accounts of Hervey either attacked him as a gay or bisexual man or defended him as a straight man, but that defending him as a bi man whose two most passionate love affairs were with men is new. He uses a lot of primary sources re: Hervey's private life - i.e. letters -, and knows his way around Georgian England; a bit less so in the rest of Europe. I already mentioned elsewhere that Émilie simply shows up as Voltaire's mistress and helpmeet, not as a scientist, and that he he repeats the Horowitz-mocked mistake of relying exclusively on English sources re: the Hannover family relationships, hence George I's illegitimate sister showing up as his mistress. We're also assured that Sophie of Hannover wanted to be Queen of England all her life and missed it barely. Having read the Sophie Charlotte biography by Barbara Beuys which is actually more a Sophie of Hannover biography: not so much. Not least because Sophie was in fact older than Queen Anne and didn't expect to outlive her. Besides, she really wasn't keen of having to move to England in her old age. She had ruled Hannover far more than her husband, the eternally holidaying in Venice Ernst August had done, and Sophie Charlotte was her favourite child; visiting her and having SC visit Hannover was easy, but not so much if she'd been in England. She would have to count on not being back in what had been her home for decades within her life time, and for what? Getting crowned on an island where it rained all the time and where she didn't know anybody because Cousin Anne hadn't wanted any of the Hannovers to set foot on the island as long as she was still alive, then live with her old age rheumatism in those droughty palaces instead in the nice modern one that had been built by her when young? Yeah, no. She was pleased that the claim went down her line and that her son would end up as King, sure. But it's just so very Anglosaxon to iimagine that every would regard becoming Queen of England as the best thing ever.
(Mind you: the Brits of the era did, of course, agree, and that was one reason why they were so upset that Georges 1 and 2 in their turn kept going back to Hannover for part of the year during their respective reigns.)
The reliance on English sources becomes mingled with subject partisanship when it comes to the two family soap operas of this biography, neither of which features a Hohenzollern. Because our hero Jack Hervey, who incidentally started his life as a younger son (his older brothers then died in adulthood, making him Lord Hervey, but he himself died before his father, which is why Dad is Lord Bristol and Hervey is not), spent his first two decades as the favourite child of both his parents - but when he married, his mother, Lady Bristol, inexplicably (for our biographer Halsband) takes against him and spends the next years until her death not just as the mother-in-law but the mother from hell, going from critisizing her son's wife to critisizing him as well to outright reviling him and bitching whenever he and the wife bring the kids to spend some time at the family seat. (Halsband admits this might be connected to Lady Bristol having 17 children, some of which were still children when Hervey started to produce his own.) This maternal dislike is presented as vile and unreasonable and in no way justified by the biographer.
Meanwhile, the other family soap is of course that of House Hanover. Where Queen Caroline also goes from critiquing to outright loathing Fritz of Wales (unlike in the Bristol-Hervey case, she's here following the example of her husband), cursing him at every opportunity and considering capable of anything, from trying to foist a bought baby on the succession to tying to poison her. In this case, however, Halsband presents this as entirely understandable and justified. When Caroline tells Hervey - according to Hervey - she wishes he was her son and that his horrid mother had Fritz of Wales instead, Halsband goes: HARD SAME. At no point does he mention that Fritz of Wales' enstrangement from his parents might have had something to do with the fact he hadn't seen either of them for fourteen years when at last called to England after George I's death, or that they made it blatantly obvious they would prefer Billy the future Butcher Cumberland as next king. The blatant contradiction between Caroline on the one hand complaining about Fritz of Wales fucking around and on the other telling stories he was impotent is not pointed out. When Fritz of Wales finally marries (the reason why he's not married already is not mentioned anywhere in the biography - the only Hohenzollern mentioned is Fritz of Prussia, and solely in the Algarotti context), and his parents don't like their daughter-in-law, with Caroline considering Augusta as woefully uneducated and not refined enough for a future queen (where have I heard this before?), this is again presented as entirely rational. Unlike Lady Bristol's bitching about Molly Lepel. And at no point does our biographer wonder whether the bad ending of Hervey's three years relationship with Fritz of Wales, as well as his own mother's attitude towards him, might play into how he chooses to remember his conversations with Queen Caroline (who is the only British Royal he likes in his memoirs) when writing down said memoirs in the last few years of his life.
Partisanship thus established, I still thought this was a very readable biography, doing a good job explaining all the inner English political machinations and literary feuds that take up much of Hervey's life and giving a good impression of Hervey's personality and those around him. It's also defensive against centuries of both satire and moral censure. A good example of Halsband's attitude is the opening sentence and its footnote. Opening sentence:
This world consists of men, women, and Herveys', a remark by his friend Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, indicates Lord Hervey's uniqueness, his complex and enigmatic character.*
* A variant of the phrase by Horace Walpole is more limited and more provocative - that there were three sexes : men, women, and Herveys.
John "Jack" Hervey starts out as a clever but sickly child, as opposed to his healthy siblings, which accounts for some of the parental doting, which is also a great contrast to how things later developed with his mother (though Dad remained doting): His feeble health made his parents dote on him all the more. When Hervey (père) had to be at Newmarket he asked his wife not to let 'pretty Jack forgett his affectionate papa'. Solicitously she moved into the nursery to be near him at night when he was not sleeping well. She reported to Hervey one day their son called for his dear Papa; he cryd and would not be quiet in the morning till they carried him into your dressing-room, and then he went directly to your closet door, knocking and calling upon you to let him in'.
It was Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (again, from The Favourite), who got Hervey Senior the peerage that made him Lord Bristol, and the Herveys were loyal whigs thereafter, committing themselves to Team Hannover in the succession early on (Lord Bristol bought a golden medallion of Sophie of Hannover, and gifted Georg Ludwig with a racehorse, that kind of thing). Young Jack had the traditional upper class upbringing, complete with public school (Westminster). Now, as mentioned elsewhere, when George I. arrived in England he had no Queen, so the all courtly appointments for ladies of the nobility had to limit themselves to his daughter-in-law, Caroline, and Lady Bristol managed to become a lady of the bedchamber, thus starting the Herveys/Hannovers family association. Small detail that cracked me up; when when of Caroline's German ladies in waiting said to the new English ones that should held up their heads, stand straights and held out their breasts instead of looking downwards all the time, she got the disdainfull reply: We show our Quality by our Birth and Titles, Madam, and not by sticking out our Bosoms".
("Brust raus, Bauch rein" was even said in my childhood. It's a thing! But not in England.)
While the Hannover soap starts (remember, George I and future G2 hated each other just like G2 and Fritz of Wales later would), which means rival courts, young Jack goes on the Grand Tour, and, being a good future courtier, after months in Paris does a stop in Hannover where he takes the time to meet and make much of little Fritz (not yet of Wales, because future G2 was G of Wales). As does Lady Mary, who is there at the same time, remember, en route to Turkey. Kid Hannover Fritz gets a way better press from Hervey and Halsband than later Fritz of Wales, for: The princeling, nine years old when Hervey met him,was an agreeable-looking boy, with the light blond hair of his mother. He was surprisingly quick and polite in conversation, and seemed to have an abundance of wit and good sense far beyond his years. Hervey had been sent to Hanover simply to ingratiate himself with the Prince. As his father put it: 'when you see and are sure ye foundation in Prince Frederick’s favour ... is laid as indelibly as you know I woud have it, and I know you are capable of contriveing, you may think of returning homewards.'
Jack actually wanted to go to Italy next, but Dad insisted he should come home, and Dad was paying, so home he went, and fell in love with Maria "Molly" Lepel, a maid of honor: She evidently charmed everyone at court, where she bore the nickname of Schatz ( treasure), a sign that the German contingent thought well of her too. (Molly's father had come to England as part of George of Denmark's entourage - he had been Queen Anne's husband - and remained there after his master's death. He was, in fact, a cousin to Lepel the Küstrin commander.) Why do we know it was a love match? Because neither of his parents approved, though Dad came around (while noting he'd have preferred Jack to marry someone rich, like the daughter of the Duke of Rutland). At first, Hervey was very honeymoon-minded, as the eyerolling testimony of his friend Lady Mary in a letter to her sister Frances testifies, where she talks of the 'ardent affection that Mrs. Hervey and her dear spouse took to me. They visited me twice or thrice a day, and were perpetually cooing in my rooms.
Molly gets pregnant, produces a first child, and Jack makes the acquaintance of one William Pulteney, up and coming politician in the Whig party. This is a a fateful event because eventually Jack will have to decide between Pulteney and rival up and coming political star Robert Walpole, and will go for Walpole. Which Pulteney takes very badly indeed; there's a duel ahead. But first Jack has to go into politics for real because older brother Carr has lost the Hervey parliamentary seat, and Jack needs to win it back. Which he does. Meanwhile, Carr invests in the ruinous "South Sea Bubble" (financial speculation desaster of the era), ends up broke, and dies young. Which makes Jack Lord Hervey.
The honeymoon period with his wife was over. She was still considered a beauty, and it was noted she didn't take a lover (unlike him); Charles Hanbury Williams (future envoy and Fritz disliker) said that she was incapable of love; her 'total, real indifference to mankind has hindered her ever having a lover'. But, says Halsband: fthis is too worldly, too Chesterfieldian, an explanation for her not taking a lover. Instead, it proves her consistency of character; since she had married Hervey for love she remained faithful to him.
Meanwhile, Hervey had met one young Henry Fox. And fell for him. Henry liked Hervey a lot but "charmingly rebuffed him" as a lover, which was lucky for Hervey, because then he met Henry's brother Stephen and really fell for him. Stephen Fox turned out to be his most enduring male relationship, and he was certainly, unabashedly, passionately in love. (He remained friends with Henry as well, though, until his relationships with both Foxes fell apart in the last few years of his life.) What Halsband quotes from the letters also show how a gay relationship between two upper class men (both MPs) develops:
But he reveals himself as more than an epistolary virtuoso in his letters to Stephen.
“For my own Part,' he later confessed to him, “my Mind never goes naked but in your territorys. 'I won't tell you,' he continues in his letter of 1 June ), “how I feel every time I goe through St. James's Street because I don't love writing unintelligibly ; & the more faithful the description was, the farther one of your temper way of thinking would be from comprehending what it meant. I might as well talk to a blind man of Colours, an Atheist of Devotion, or an Eunuch of f-." And then, teasing Stephen more directly : “ That regret for the Loss of any body one loves & likes is a sort of Sensation you have merit enough to teach, tho' I believe you'll never have merit enough to learn it.' His intent was obviously to encourage Stephen to deny that accusation ; and, as can be judged by the rapid progress of their friendship, Stephen was willing both to love and to like.
This then turns into: “I must see you soon," he impatiently writes (on 15 November ); 'I can't live without You; Choice, tast[e], Habit, prejudice, Inclination, Reason & every thing that either does or ought to influence one's thoughts or one's actions makesmine center in & depend on You. Adieu, le plus aimable & le plus aimé qu'il y est au monde.'
Since Hervey is still sickly -one reason why he becomes a vegetarian and swears by milk - he uses this to go on another continental tour, this time to Italy, but not alone: Stephen went with him. (Molly remained at home with an increasing amount of kids and the mother-in-law from hell.) En route back from Italy, Hervey renews his friendship with Voltaire (whom he'd met earlier when Voltaire had been in England); this includes showing Voltaire his poetry and asking his opinion of it. (I sense a theme.) Coming back to England, things get even better for Hervey, because G1 has died, and not only does Hervey become now Queen Caroline's Chamberlain but he also is asked by her to keep an eye on Fritz of Wales, summoned to England at last. Fritz of Wales takes to Hervey like a duck to water; but Horowitz was wronging Hervey when saying Hervey put his relationship with Stephen on hold for that, because he continues to write beautiful love letters to Stephen. He just writers letters to Fritz of Wales signed "your Hephaistion" as well. (And Fritz of Wales writes "'My Dear Hervey, I reciev'd Sunday evening your Letter from Salisbury, & am mighty sensible that fatigue at one Side, & pleasures, Balls, and fine Ladys at another side did not make you forget Orestes, the warm Orestes, to his Dear Pilades.') (Not bad English for a guy who until recently spent his entire life in Hannover, btw.)
And that's when the Walpole versus Pulteney choice happens. Pulteney doesn't take it well. He actually slanders Hervey in print: But you seem, pretty Sir, Pulteney now writes, 'to take the Word Corruption in a limited Sense and confine it to the Corrupter-- Give me Leave to illustrate This by a parallel Case – There is a certain, unnatural, reigning Vice (indecent and almost shocking to mention). It is well known that there must be two Parties in this Crime; the Pathick and the Agent; both equally guilty. Ineed not explain These any farther.' In other words,having called Hervey a hermaphrodite the eighteenth -century term for homosexual — Pulteney now, by innuendo, accuses him of homosexual practices.
This is serious. Not least because yes, it takes two parties, and Hervey is hanging out with the Prince of Wales. And homosexuality at least according to the law is still a crime punishable by the death penalty. So ignoring and doing nothing is not an option if he wants to keep his office with the Queen. So he challenges Pulteney to a duel - with swords, not pistols - and they go through with it, which ends in a stalmate where both parties are injured and declare themselves satisfied. However, Pulteney is not yet done, because now Hervey gets satirized as someone who doesn't have the guts for a manly killing. This, presumably, is another reason why he's so touchy when Fritz of Wales, simultanously called impotent by his parents (according to Horowitz, Halsband doesn't point this out), starts an affair with Hervey's mistress (whom he had in addition to everyone else), Miss Vane. Cue illegitimate kid, Hervey mortally insulted, and the Fritz of Wales relationship ended. Fritz of Wales is now the worst, and Hervey completely sympathizes with Queen Caroline on this account.
The relationship with Stephen Fox, otoh, remains solid until Stephen needs to do something about his finances, about a decade after he and Hervey have cemented their relationship by going to Italy together. Stephen gets married to a thirteen years old heiress. Unlike poor Barbara Mitchell, this child bride doesn't give birth until more than a decade later, so let's hope the marriage wasn't consumated until then, either. But this marriage does start the point where Hervey and Stephen become more friends than lovers. Otoh, Hervey's friendship with Lady Mary intensifies, not least because they both gets attacked by Alexander Pope and team up with a counter satire (see Lady Mary's biography).
Incidentally, as an example of Hervey's style as a poet:
For Courts are only larger Familys,
The Growth of each, few Truths, & many Lyes;
Like you we lounge, & feast, & play, & chatter;
In private Satirize, in Publick flatter.
When Hervey isn't getting cursed by his mother, he's comiserating with Queen Caroline about her cursed son or exchanging quips with Lady Mary. And then there's Voltaire:
Hervey's friendship for Voltaire the man did not prevent him from criticizing Voltaire the writer. When he read the tragedy Zaire (early in 1733) and sent a copy to Henry Fox, he was certain that like himself Fox would "have some Compassion for a silly Christian [heroine) as well as the greatest regard, Esteem, & Affection for a noble, good, tender & charming Mahometan' who through a tragic misunderstanding kills her. He was irritated, though, by Voltaire's dedication of the play to Edward Falkener, English merchant. In France it was regarded as scandalous because it was addressed not only to a commoner but to a foreign one at that. Hervey told Henry Fox that he thought it "bad, false, & impertinent ... by a superficial Frenchman to an Englishman, & the Dedicator pretends to be better acquainted with our Country, our Manners, our Laws, & even our Language than the Dedicatee'.
What could have aroused such a violent opinion ? In the dedicatory epistle, after praising the high rank and regard the mercantile class enjoyed in England, Voltaire continues : 'I know very well that this profession is despised by our petits-maîtres ; but you also know that our petits -maîtres and yours are the most ridiculous species that proudly crawl on the face of the earth'. This, rather than the general remarks about French and English theatre, could have been offensive to one who was certainly closer to being a petit-maître than a man of commerce.
No kidding. Voltaire: never fails to piss people off. However, he writes rec letters for visiting Italians, and lo, Algarotti enters the scene. Love triangle ensues. Hervey's side of it is far less self assured than one would think, having read through Lady Mary's letters.
'In any case,' he assures him, 'if you stay or if you go, do not forget me, my dear, for I will never forget you all my life ... you are too clear-sighted to have any need of instruction in things less obvious than the affection I feel for you, & I will not say more than you know, but much less than I feel, when I assure you simply that at present the thing in the world that I wish most for is to be able to keep you in England for the rest of your life, with the same advantage & pleasure to you that I would find here myself. (...)
To celebrate Algarotti's last evening in London he invited him to supper, but Algarotti declined because (he said ) he had promised to sup with Martin Folkes. But Àlgarotti lied, perhaps to spare his friend any pangs of jealousy. He spent his last evening in London with Lady Mary. After Algarotti's departure Hervey suffered so keenly that his friends complained ofhis moodiness, and he frankly admitted the cause. He was annoyed besides that Algarotti had lied about the supper on the eve of his departure. For Lady Mary now boasted to everybody, Hervey reports to him, that she had been like Caesar in her conquest - which was, he adds, an insult to Algarotti's memory. Instead of resenting Algarotti's duplicity he resented Lady Mary's having benefited by it. Her physical charms were far inferior to her intellectual ones, he reminds him. 'How fortunate you are then to be gone ! The absence that brings sadness to every other Lover will fulfill your Happiness, for she will speak to your Eyes & not appea rbefore them ; she will not destroy with her countenance the impression she will make by her mind. “But I am speaking too much of her,' he checks himself, 'now I must say a word about myself. I cannot say anything, however, on this Subject but what you already know, that is to say that I love you with all my Heart, & I beg you never to forget the affection Ihave for you,nor to let the affection you have for me grow weaker.'
Yet how differently Lady Mary regarded herself !-- not as conquering Caesar but as Dido abandoned by her wandering Aeneas. “ I am a thousand times more to be pitied than the sad Dido, and I have a thousand more reasons to kill myself', she tells Algarotti in her second letter soon after his departure. (...)
What could have been Algarotti's thoughts upon receiving such effusions from his two English admirers ? He did not have to send letters to keep the flames of their love ablaze. A fortnight after his departure Hervey still missed him so painfully that he mourned his great loss to Henry Fox, hardly disguising his emotions, while staying at Kensington' in this House ( triste Sejour) & generally seeing or thinking of the same thing. Adieu. I write like a Fool, think like a Fool, talk like a Fool, act like a Fool, & have every thing of a Fool but the Content of one.'
(...)
The passion that Hervey and Lady Mary felt for Algarotti aroused in them very different feelings towards each other, jealousy on his part, helplessness on hers. He boasted to her that Algarotti had written to him from Francc, while she had not heard from him two weeks later, although he had promised to write from Calais. 'How unhappy I am ! she exclaims to him (in her fourth letter), and what a stroke of Mercy a stroke of Lightning would be at this moment!' More calmly, she tells him thatshe will see Lord Hervey, who should have had news of him.
When she tried several times to arrange an appointment with Hervey he cruelly evaded her, until by accident he met her at Lady Stafford's, where she extracted from him a promise to meet her in two days' time. Although he again tricd to put her off, on the appointed evening she appcared (with a little ugly singer as chaperone ), and stayed until one in the morning. 'While she was with me,' Hervey tells Algarotti, "she tried thousands of different ways to make me talk of you, & I would not even mention your name. At the same time she told me a thousand deliberate lies & a thousand accidental truths ; & instead of finding out several things without saying anything, as she intended, she told me all without learning anything.' Nor does he forget to reassure Algarotti that however ridiculous and unstable Lady Mary is ( she was as drunk before as wine can make one, & you have added Gin ”), he himself is unswerving in his devotion. 'Adieu. Preserve me in your esteem. I love you too much,my dear, not to strive all my life to deserve you.'
How much more generous, in this instance, was Lady Mary in telling Algarotti of that same evening: when she had sent word to Lord Hervey that she wished to speak to him, 'You may believe (with his politeness) I saw him soon after, and then I was in allmost as much difficulty to draw from him what I had a mind to know ; that is, whither you were arriv'd safe at Paris ?' Hervey told her 'that after so much neglect as I had shewn him he could not fancy I would honnour him with a message, except I had some thing to demand of him that I thought of importance to myselfe, and very generously made me all sort of offers of Services and assurances of obeying my commands, reasonable or unreasonable.'
It is really a relief when Hervey gets a grip on himself again. Helped, no doubt, by Algarotti visiting England after Lady Mary had gone to Italy to reunite with him, but Hervey - still agog about Algarotti - now is kind and without unbecoming Schadenfreude in his letters. However: FW dies, Fritz writes, and Algarotti leaves so quickly that half his luggage has to be sent after him. Hervey won't see him again.
He also loses his royal patron, Queen Caroline, in the aftermath of Fritz of Wales producing his first legitimate offspring (remember the saga of the birth at St. James to avoid his parents being present?). Hervey is not yet out of a job; grieving G2 even makes him the Lord Privy Seal, which is a major promotion. But this doesn't last forever, for Robert Walpole finally is ousted as PM, and that means a reshuffling of the entire cabinet. G2, to his credit, tries to sweeten Hervey's departure first by offering him some nice retirement honors. Hervey wants to remain Lord Privy Seal. (That was Thomas Cromwell's title in Henry VIII's day!) After various attempts at persuasion, G2 gets angry, argument ensues, and Hervey is fired without retirement honors. Writing secret trashy tell all memoirs is only so much help, especially since his relationships first with Henry and then Stephen Fox fall apart as well, and his physical health, never great, goes to ruin entirely. The relationship with Lady Mary, post initial Algarotti triangle, remains good, but she's far away (currently in Avignon), and letters take so long. Hervey dies in bitterness, but not before dictating his last will (see earlier comment). Our biographer points out his memoirs are still the best, and then gives us an "where are they now?" culminating with the Lady Mary letter to Algarotti and the comforting idea of Hervey's version of paradise.
In conclusion: Lehndorff had far less personal drama, but I think he had the better life, for all the unfilfilled ambition. But Hervey is certainly story worthy, and also quite quotable.
Franz Stephan
Quick excerpt from the Lord Hervey biography, because Hervey met Franz Stephan when FS was on his grand tour (which, remember, took him as far as England where he joined a Free Mason Lodge):
Hervey carefully and dispassionately observed him. 'a pretty figure of a man', he reported to Stephen (Stephen Fox, Hervey's lover), tho low and rather thick, ill made & worse dressed. He wears his own hair, has a very handsome face, like the King of France, but a more sensible, more lively & more good natured countenance. He seems very easy & very well bred.'(...)
Hervey's first favourable impression was strengthened: the more he saw the Duke the more he liked him. 'He is very well bred, with more nicety, more ease and more more constant presence of Mind than any Body I ever met & has the most beautiful, most sweet & most sensible Countenance I ever beheld.'
ETA: Good lord, more Franzl fanboying. Bear in mind that Hervey at this poinst is a) married and producing kids, b) having an affair with great love of his life Stephen Fox, and c) hanging out with Fritz of Wales and writing to him letters signed "your Hephaistion".
The day before leaving, (Franz Stephan) walked in Kensington Gardens in the morning with the Queen and her suite (including Hervey) until it began to rain. They all returned to St. James at full gallop in open chaises, wet to the skin and bespattered with mud like stage-coached postillons. On 8 December he boarded his yacht at Greenwich, 'regretting and regretted'. Hervey, who too easily observed the flaws of everyone he met, could find none in this paragon: he still thought him handsome, cheerful, sensible, well bred and obliging: 'Never any Body had the good Fortune of pleasing to universally.' The Duke's departure, he told Lord Bateman, had 'put the town in universal mourning: it is the Fashion for the Women to cry.' He was not exaggarating, for he had evidence close at hand. 'The Duke of Lorraine has carried the hearts of all our fine ladies away with him', Lady Stratford wrote (more than two weeks later); 'Lady Hervey has cried every day since his departure and says she can't enjoy anybody's company now that agreeable creature is gone.
Hervey and Algarotti
Mind you, the Hervey bio told me Algarotti was as late with his letters to Hervey sometimes as he was with his to Lady Mary, but Hervey still had at that point other people in his life:
By then Algarotti was in Milan revising his Newtonian dialogues for the printer; and when Hervey received a reply (two months later) it said nothing of the book, but its other news was pleasing enough to him. He answered it the same day it came:
'As to all you say of the regard you retain for me, whether it be the effect of your Taste your Partiallity Imust either way be pleased with it', for he regards Algarotti as 'one whom of all the men I ever was acquainted with I should most wish to engage' and the best Companion I ever met with. His long letter, full of strained wit, Latin quotations, and English verse, ends simply and personally with 'Adio Carissimo'.
His other friend whom he had once called Carissimo was not so distant as the Italian. Although Stephen Fox, who was not yet living with his child -wife, stayed in Somerset, Hervey kept their friendship alive with his letters— chatty or motherly or gossipy. Once he was stung to stronger expression when Stephen asked whether he felt neglected or forgotten. No, he insists, for he should certainly impute it to chance, inadvertence, or laziness.
'I have loved you ever since I knew you,' he continues, 'which is now many years, so much better than most People are capable of loving any thing, that for your own sake at least, you would not nor could not, I am sure--there is so great a Pleasure in being so well beloved -be insensible of it & consequently not desire to preserve it.' His declaration breathes an air of sincerity : 'I only wish it was in my power to show you how well I love you, that all your Pleasures & Wishes depended on me only, & if they did you would find your-self never deprived of the one, or disappointed of the other.' Compared to Algarotti, Stephen was closer to the core of his emotionalbeing ; and although they had grown apart their love was firmly rooted. Hervey's nature and tastes were ample enough to encompass such intense friendships with two such disparate men.
Hanover family drama
Oh, and because the initial write up doesn't include just how dysfunctional the Hannover soap gets, have this (and keep in mind Halsband never doubts that Hervey's is the true version of the tale):
On his expulsion from his father's palaces in September 1737 the Prince of Wales rented a house in St. James's Square and for his summer residence Cliveden in Buckinghamshire. His followers, as much as they could, tried to make political capital of his situation. At a performance of Cato that he attended at Drury Lane ( on 4 October) he was loudly cheered ; and that frigid tragedy was warmed by politics as it had been during its first run on the eve of the Hanoverian succession. The letters he had written to his parents were circulated in slightly edited versions to show him in a more sympathetic light. To counteract this propaganda, his parents determined to print all the letters and messages that had passed between them since the night of the Princess's accouchement; and at the Queen's request Hervey translated them from French into English, accomplishing his task in one day. He was particularly gratified to beable to prove, by authority of the Government, that the Prince was a liar.(...)
(Voltaire doctoring his Madame Denis letters re: Fritz: in the best royal tradition.)
Then Caroline dies, but not without this bit of emotional bloodletting:
From the Prince of Wales came messages, which were relayed through Hervey, asking if he might see his mother. The King, when he found out, was indignant - a scoundrel's trick, he raged, the Prince wanted to insult his poor dying mother. 'No, no ! he shall not come and act any of his silly plays here, false, lying, cowardly, nauseous, puppy.' (...)
The Queen had no desire to see her hateful son, and even made the King promise that should she ever talk of seeing him the King must assume that she was not in her right mind and refuse her request. When she talked of dying, she sometimes exclaimed, 'At least I shall have one comfort in having my eyes eternally closed I shall never see that monster again.' That, at least, is Hervey's version of this startling illustration of how imminent death did not dissolve the Queen's hatred. Or perhaps it did, for another account alters the picture without necessarily contradicting Hervey's : that the Queen sent her blessing and a message of forgiveness to her son, at the same time telling Walpole that she would have been pleased to see him but feared it might embarrass and irritate the King.
Fritz: See, and you all sniggered when I told Mitchell how much more harmonious our family is when compared to the Hannover cousins. At least Dad called me his worthy successor when he was dying, and Mom adored me.
Oh, have some more quotes, from when Fritz enters the saga:
Algarotti and Frederick, of equal ages and similar tastes, were immediately attracted to each other. The Prince was 'the lover and the favourite of the Muses', Algarotti boasted to Hervey, and 'the most intelligent and most amiable of men', who when he ascended the throne would prove to be one of the greatest of sovereigns. The two travellers then made their way to Hamburg to board the Augusta for their return to England. Algarotti had time for a last letter to Hervey : 'I fervently invoke that blustering East wind, so much an enemy to your countrymen, to blow soon, and waft me speedily to your Lordship at St. James's. I believe, my Lord, that I do not presume too much upon your friendship for me, in flattering myself, that, in your fine Park, " a votive heifer is fattening against (my] return."
(Bear in mind that he simultaneously writes to Mitchell wanting him to be the tastiest dish at supper.) And then FW dies:
My dear Algarotti,' wrote the new King of Prussia a few days later,'my destiny has changed. I await you impatiently ; don't let me languish for you.' The intimate, impatient summons made deep impression on Algarotti. (He did not know, however, that Frederick had sent exactly the same note to his old tutor.) But the handsome Baron Keyserlingk, Frederick's prime favourite, added some verse to Algarotti's summons:
Come, Algarotti, from the shores of the Thames,
To share with us our fortunate destiny.
Hasten your journey to these agreeable places;
You will find here Liberty as the motto.
Algarotti departed for Berlin in such haste that he left some of his belongings at Hervey's house, clothes as well as furs (probably acquired during his visit to Russia ); and since his funds were low, he borrowed money from Lady Hervey for his journey.
So not even Hervey but Hervey's wife paid for the journey. You can't make these people up.
Hervey's will
You can imagine I had a strange sense of deja vue when I got the the end of the Hervey biography. His political career is in tatters, his relationship with Stephen Fox ditto, his bff Lady Mary is in Italy; Hervey is majorly depressed, and writing famously bitchy secret memoirs evidently is not enough to vent, because (oh, Lord Bristol is his father, who outlived Hervey):
A week later he decided to draw up his will. Not strong enough to write, he dictated it, and then read it over twice to correct the spelling. Most of its provisions were conventional enough : his eldest son to be sole heir and executor, annuities to all his children, dowries of £ 5,000 for his eldest unmarried daughter, Mary, and £ 4,000 each to the two other girls, annuities to his housekeeper and to his valet. But the bequest to his wife was astonishing: she could have only what he was obliged to leave her by the terms of their marriage contract, and nothing more ; and while she could dispose of some things at her death, she must give security for all the money, silver, and jewels, and bequeath them to one of her children born during wedlock.
The same day that he dictated and corrected his will he wrote a brief letter (evidently in his own hand) addressed to Mrs. Strangways Horner. 'Dear Madam,' it runs, 'If you have a mind to shew any Regard to my Memory fullfill this my last Request & take my Daughter Miss Mary Hervey to live with You. She is very well disposed & will continue so living with one of your excellent Principles & real honest worth. I love and honour You. Adieu.' He gave the letter to his daughter with instructions that she deliver it to Mrs. Horner after his death. That event was not far off. By mid-July he was dangerously ill, and on 5 August he died. His father showed his love for him even at the burial a week later in the Ickworth church, for instead of a woollen shroud to clothe the corpse, as the law required, Lord Bristol chose another cloth (probably linen ) and paid a fine of £ s. The only other member of the Hervey family who enjoyed this posthumous luxury was Lord Bristol bimself. (...)
His will was the chief topic of conversation in London, particularly its provisions for Lady Hervey. No one knew why he had treated her in such a way; and it was said that he had refused to see her for many weeks before he died. Because of her modest jointure - only £ 300 a year — she would have to live with Lord Bristol, no great hardship since they were devoted to each other. Then, after the will had been read, early in September Mrs. Horner was startled by a visit from Mary Hervey with a letter from her late father. When Mrs. Horner overcame her surprise she sent a copy of the letter to Lady Hervey, assuring her that she was an 'utter Stranger to the Purport' before she was informed of it by Miss Hervey, and that for many reasons she could not comply with its request. Lady Hervey displayed impeccable tact in thanking Mrs. Horner for her considerate letter : 'I am not surpriz'd at any proof of Esteem given you by My Dear late Lord, knowing the great Friendship he had for you, Madam ; and I am as little so at the very right Manner in which you have acted on this Occasion.'
Lady Hervey remained the most considerate of wives.
Keep in mind Lady Hervey, formerly Maria "Molly" Lepel, had not been an arranged marriage, she'd been Hervey's choice, a love match. She also had done all a wife of their time was expected to; befriended his friends, supported him through think and thin; she even, during an earlier crisis in his relationship with Stephen Fox, had invited Stephen for the summer to their country seat, then discreetly withdrew and went elsewhere so they could be alone together and work it out. And if she in turn ever cheated on Hervey, no one ever knew. And yet.
"When feeling miserable, there's always your wife to punch down to" seems to be an 18th century maxim. Ugh.
Hervey, Vane, and Fritz of Wales
Anne Vane, the lady who was first Hervey's and than Fritz' of Wales' mistress, gets a lot of bad (satiric) press in her time and even from Halsband some authorial condescension and hostility. Check it out:
Could she have been so repulsive as Lord Egmont describes her -a fat and ill-shaped dwarf, with nothing good to recommend her, neither sense nor wit ? She was, besides, probably marked by smallpox. The Prince's passion for women was wittily analysed by Horace Walpole : "like the rest of his race, beauty was not a necessary ingredient. Miss ( Vane], whom he had debauched without loving, and who had been debauched without loving him so well as either Lord Harrington or Lord Hervey, who both pretended to her first favours, had no other charms than of being a Maid of Honour, who was willing to cease to be so upon the first opportunity.
However much others may have disapproved or sneered, the Prince was proud of his battered conquest, and commanded his courtiers to treat her with respect when they visited her.
Hervey innocently maintained his precious friendship with the Prince through the autumn (1731), either through spirited letters from Redlinch or in his company, until it took a new, dramatic turn. He fretted for a whole week ( in mid-December ) before confiding in Stephen : 'that Fool the Prince plagues my Heart out. He is as false too as he [is ] silly, & appears every thing he is not by turns, but wise ; yet the Mask of common -sense, if he knew how to get it, would disguise him more than any other; he could put on nothing so unnatural, nothing so unlike.'
Unfortunately Hervey could not be more explicit, 'for Paper is as great a Blab as a human Creature'. So intense was his indignation that he revealed to his father that he had been deceived and betrayed by a friend whom hereally loved - though he worded it so cautiously, in fear of post-office prying, that his father remained uncertain who that friend was.
He could be more explicit with Stephen because they used a cipher for the Prince's name; and on Christmas Day, with feelings far from charitable, he raged again : 'I have almost every Day fresh Instances of the Falschood as well as the Folly of [the Prince], & since it is impossible to correct the first, wherever it is so natural, I am not very solicitous as you may imagine to rectify the Errors of the Last.'
Now keep in mind that the same Hervey who rages here about Miss Vane and the Prince betraying him with each other is a) a married man whose wife is pregnant as well and will give birth only a month after Miss Vane does, and b) also still having his grand affair with Stephen, whose jealousy he had to soothe just a few months before Fritz of Wales starts his affair with Miss Vane:
But in an unguarded moment, or with a miscalculated confession, he told Stephen that he wished he could love the Prince as well as he loved Stephen. How Stephen reacted can be inferred from Hervey's distraught apology, sent only ten minutes after he had read his reply : 'The Tears you speak of are at this Distance so infectious that I hardly see the Words I write.' He reassures him, in themost abject terms, of his unalterable love. In wishing to love the Prince so well he had' ly'd egregiously; I am as incapable of wishing to love any Body else so well, as I am of wishing to love You less. God forbid any Mortal should ever have the power over me you have, or that you should ever have less. ... Adieu,if Iwas to fill a thousand Reams of paper it would be only aiming in different phrases & still imperfectly to tell you the same thing, & assure you that since I first knew you I have been without repenting & still am & ever shall be undividedly & indisolubly Yours.' Stephen could hardly have hoped for a more reassuring declaration.
The lovers' misunderstanding ended a few days later, when Hervey pronounced an end to it: 'you offended imprudently, I resented it extravagantly ; you repented agreably, I forgave you willingly, & the whole has concluded ... my satisfaction ... Absent or present, sleeping or waking, sick or well, in Crouds or alone, You are generally upermost in my Thoughts; the Cause of every uneasyness I suffer at present & the Object of & hope of pleasure I form for the future.' His emotion was so strong it overflowed in a long, philosophical poem he sent to Stephen from Hampton Court, regretting his life spent in the 'glare of courts, and luxury of state', wasting precious hours away from his beloved friend.
In conclusion, Hervey, it looks like you were with Fritz of Wales mostly for career reasons, and had no problem sleeping with three different people at the same time (your wife, Miss Vane and Stephen), so crying "betrayal!" when Fritz of Wales has sex with Miss Vane is really another case of spectacular double standard. Of course, a key document is missing, for:
The full story of Hervey's friendship and enmity with the Prince of Wales is probably lost forever. His private memoirs of the court of George II (...) contain a frank and full account of his association with the various members of the Royal Family from the King's accession in 1727 to the Queen's death ten years later. When the autograph manuscript and a copy of it passed on to Hervey's grandson, the first Marquess of Bristol, he tore out and destroyed a long section — from May 1730 to the late summer of 1732, the precise period of Hervey's intimacy and quarrel with the Prince of Wales. His motive must have been to protect George III's father as well as his own grandfather. The fact that he allowed other scandalous revelations (Miss Vane as Hervey's mistress, for example ) to remain in the copy of thememoirs is evidence that what he read and destroyed for the years 1730 to 1732 he regarded as far too shocking to remain among his family papers in either the autograph or the copy.
And of course, the whole episode gets extra soapy when Queen Caroline uses it as an excuse to spread the impotence or infertility rumors about her son, or, as Halsband, who, remember, is firmly team Queen and Hervey here, puts it:
At the time of the Prince's marriage a few years later the Queen begged Hervey to tell her whether her son was even capable of having a child. As for those of little Vane,* you know, my dear Lord,' she insisted, 'I have a thousand times told you that I was always sure they were yours ; and if I wanted further proof of their being so, your son William whom you so reluctantly brought to me this summer would have convinced me of it, because if he had been twin-brother to little Fitzfrederick, he could not have been more like him.' On another occasion the Queen insisted that the Prince was so solicitous of fathering a child by Miss Vane that he had asked Hervey to perform the necessary service for him ; and although Hervey swore a thousand times that it was not true, the Queen refused to believe him. It is a question that can have no absolute answer, certainly not two centuries later ; but the paternity may be awarded to the Prince for one decisive reason : he himself was convinced of it.
One could also add: he had no problem getting his wife Augusta pregnant, several times. And Miss Vane had another child by him before the liason ended; at this point Hervey was no longer an option. Neither it nor Little Fitzfrederick, alas, did outlive their childhood.
More soap opera:
Once Miss Vane's position as the Prince of Wales's mistress was conspicuously secure, Hervey's emotions shifted from jealousy (for having been betrayed) to resentment, far more intense, that she had induced the Prince to discard him as intimate adviser in favour of Dodington. He determined in April 1732 to revive the Prince's friendship for him , and went about it in a foolhardy fashion . Since Miss Vane had ruined that friendship , he reasoned, then she could restore it.He composed a letter and asked his brother-in -law Bussy Mansel to take it to her, telling him that it merely recommended a midwife. Actually it castigated her for the ill service she had done him with the Prince , and threatened that if she did not repair the breach he would divulge what he knew ofher, and use her as she deserved .Upon reading this scathing letter she fell into hysterics ; and Mansel, when he read it, swore he would kill Hervey for deceiving him by making him the messenger of such an affront. To prevent murder Miss Vane then told the Prince of the letter, and he somehow placated Mansel but bitterly resented Hervey's ill treatment of his mistress. The King, Queen , and Walpole, when they heard of it, were also incensed with Hervey for his interference in a Royal pastime.
Aware too late of his iinprudence, Hervey tried to make amends. The King and Queen (and of course Walpole ) were satisfied by his penitence but not the Prince, who ( in Hervey's opinion ) ‘never forgot an injury or remembered an obligation ”. Their friendship was never restored .
As opposed to the relationship between Hervey and Miss Vane. Now you'd think after that letter, he'd have been the last man she'd ever want to see again, but lo and behold, some years later:
When he had heard of his mother's gift of the gold snuff -box (Fritz of Wales) announced that it was less to favour Hervey than to insult and outrage him , and that it was shocking for his mother to favour a man who the whole world knew had been impertinent to him and had threatened his mistress.
For that reason, he told his sisters, he seldom visited the Queen. They replied that it was strange he should think of choosing his mother's companions as a condition of his paying his respects. Hervey's favour with the Queen thus widened the breach between himself and the Prince as well as between the Prince and his mother.
But Hervey's relationship with Miss Vane had undergone a radical change in the opposite direction . Following their quarrel, when they had met among company and he had tried to speak to her she refused --- with the haughtiness of an injured princess — to bestow a glance or a word on him , though he addressed her in the most suppliant manner. After meeting in public places , however , they discovered that they wanted (in Hervey's words) ' to forget their past enmity, and renew their past endearments , till from ogling they came to messages, from messages to letters, from letters to appointments, and from appointments to all the familiarities in which they had formerly lived , both of them swearing that there never had been any interruption in the affection they bore to each other, though the effects of jealousy and rage had often made them act more like enemies than lovers'. This revival of their love affair had come about by the summer of 1734 .
At first they met in an out of the way coffee-house , and then , after Miss Vane took a house at Wimbledon (for her son's health ), she came to town secretly once a week and they met at her house there, often passing the whole night together. Although they realized it was very indiscreet their 'mutual inclination to meet forced them to this dangerous course
Their renewed friendship and liaison arose from other reasons as well. Through Miss Vane, Hervey discovered that Bubb Dodington , the Prince's chief adviser, was being displaced by others , particularly Lord Chesterfield — a clear sign that the Prince was drawing closer to the political Opposition . She would thus be able to transmit useful information to him . Her renewed taste for him could have been stimulated by the Prince's gradual distaste for herself ; a year earlier, London gossip claimed that he had fathered a child on her chambermaid , for whom he then bought a house, and that he had tried unsuccessfully to gain the favours of an Italian opera singer. The renewed alliance of Miss Vane and Hervey, then, was based on love, jealousy, and politics intriguingly mixed.
It's worth bearing in mind, though, that Halsband's sole source for these subsequent shenanigans (i.e. all that happened after the initial fallout between Hervey and the Prince over Miss Vane, for which he quotes letters and satiric poems by all the other London wits) is Hervey himself in his trashy tell all memoirs.
