Lord Hervey: Memoirs
Sep. 26th, 2020 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenak posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
rheinsbergOr, to give them their full title: "Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, by John, Lord Hervey". Edited by the Honorable John Wilson Croker, a very Victorian gentleman. When reporting that Hervey's grandson censored the memoirs before entrusting them to family outsiders by removing, notoriously, the part dealing with the time between May 1730 and summer of 1732, i.e. anything covering the close relationship between Hervey and Frederick "Fritz", Prince of Wales before their falling out and Hervey vowing undying hatred, he adds that not only can he understand the grandson in question, he also sees it as his mission to protect us readers from too much Rokoko grossness and wishes only he could spare us more. A non-bowlderized edition of Hervey's memoirs does exist, but not copyright free, which is why we went for this one, after first Horowski in his "Das Europa der Könige" and then Halsband in his Hervey biography made me very curious indeed about the English Lehndorff. Sorry, I couldn't resist; actually a British author I recently read did refer to Lehndorff as "The Prussian Hervey, though without that lord's malice or style". Reading through two volumes of Hervey's memoirs, I could see their point. (Though really, no question as to which bisexual Queen's Chamberlain who is fixated on a prince I'd rather go out with...)
So: Hervey can coin a phrase, and is viciously hilarious. Alas for our purposes, he thinks G2's insistence of seeing himself as a German prince and being involved in German and continental politics is a waste of time at best and a danger to England at worst, involving the Brits in continental battles and always on the wrong side. (The Imperial one.) Hervey dies in the early 1740s, remember, so for him German = mostly the creaky old HRE and its politics. He hasn't got much time or attention for FW and Prussia, and of course the years 1730 - 32 are missing. But there are bits on the G2 & FW relationship, and what there is is hilarious. (It also tells us that if Fritz had ever made it to England, he would have had the weirdest sense of deja vu...)
Despite finding Empire politics boring, Hervey does provide some context:
To oppose the execution then of the Vienna Treaty made between the Emperor and Spain, France and England formed the Hanover Treaty, September 3, 1727, when the late King (i.e. G1) was at Hanover. As soon as this treaty was concluded, to which England, France, and Prussia were the original contracting parties, copies of it were sent to all the Courts and little States in Europe ; and whilst the Emperor and Spain were soliciting, on one hand, for accessions to their Treaty of Vienna, England and France were, on the other, strengthening, by as many powers as they could list, the alliance of Hanover.
The defection of the King of Prussia from the latter was a sudden turn, and proceeded partly from a fear of his superior, the Emperor, and partly from a sullen, envious hatred he bore to his father-in-law, the King of England, who, from the time of his advancement to that crown, sank in his son-in-law's favour, just in the same proportion as he rose above him in grandeur. This was a great loss to the allies of Hanover, the King of Prussia having a standing force of 70,000 men. The forces of Spain were about 60,000, besides their naval power ; and the army of the Emperor in all, after the new levies, about 200,000. Muscovy was the only considerable power, besides Prussia, that acceded to the Treaty of Vienna ; for whilst the Czarina alone obliged herself, in case of a rupture, to furnish 30,000 men, the Electors of Bavaria, Cologne, and Treves, besides several other little German Princes that his Imperial Majesty had bullied, cajoled, or bought into his party, could muster no more than 27,000.
While Prince of Wales, future G2 had remained in Britain, but once he was G2, he irritated his English subjects by spending part of his time in Hannover, like his father had done:
Whilst the King was at Hanover he had several little German disputes with his brother of Prussia, the particulars of which being about a few cart-loads of hay, a mill, and some soldiers improperly enlisted by the King of Prussia in the Hanoverian state, I do not think them worthy of being considered in detail ; and shall say nothing further about these squabbles than that, first or last, both of them contrived to be in the wrong. And as these two princes had some similar impracticabilities in their temper, so they were too much alike ever to agree, and from this time forward hated one another with equal imprudence, inveteracy, and openness.
It was reported, and I believe not without foundation, that our Monarch on this occasion sent or would have sent a challenge of single combat to his Prussian Majesty; but whether it was carried and rejected, or whether the prayers and remonstrances of Lord Townshend prevented the gauntlet being actually thrown down, is a point which to me at least has never been cleared.
There was another subject of dispute between the Kings of England and Prussia, which I forgot to enumerate, though it was the only one really of consequence, and that was with regard to the affairs of Mecklenburg. The short statement of their differences on this article was, whether the Prussian or Hanoverian troops (both ordered into Mecklenburg by a decree of the Aulic Council) should have the greatest share (under the pretence of keeping peace) in plundering the people and completing the ruin of that miserable duchy, already reduced to such a state of calamity by the tyrannical conduct of their most abominable, deposed, or rather suspended duke.
It's time for (another) War of the Polish Succession. As a reminder: France backs Louis XV's father-in-law, Stanilaus Lescyinski; Mt's Dad the Emperor backs August the Strong's son, future August III. FW is technically obliged to back both in his dual capacity of Elector of Brandenburg and King of Prussia. Then there's the battle of Philippsburg where no one does much but where Fritz, FW and old Prince Eugene are on one side and the Duc de Richelieu (and Voltaire as a tourist) on the other. G2 wants to join the war effort. His PM, Robert Walpole, and Hervey really really want Britain to stay out of hit.
During these transactions abroad, the King was in the utmost anxiety at home. The battles of Bitonto and Parma, the surrender of Philipsburg, and the bad situation of the Emperor's affairs in every quarter, gave his Majesty the utmost solicitude to exert himself in the defence of the House of Austria, and to put some stop to the rapid triumphs of the House of Bourbon.
For though the King was ready to allow all the personal faults of the Emperor, and was not without resentment for the treatment he himself had met with from the Court of Vienna, yet his hatred to the French was so strong, and his leaning to an Imperial cause so prevalent, that he could not help wishing to distress the one and support the other, in spite of all inferior, collateral, or personal considerations.
In all occurrences he could not help remembering that, as Elector of Hanover, he was a part of the Empire, and the Emperor at the head of it ; and these prejudices, operating in every consideration where his interest as King of England ought only to have been weighed, gave his Minister, who consulted only the interest of England, perpetual difficulties to surmount, whenever he was persuading his Majesty to adhere solely to that.
The King's love for armies, his contempt for civil affairs, and the great capacity he thought he possessed for military exploits, inclined him still with greater violence to be meddling, and warped him yet more to the side of war. He used almost daily and hourly, during the beginning of this summer, to be telling Sir Robert Walpole with what eagerness he glowed to pull the laurels from the brows of the French generals, to bind his own temples ; that it was with the sword alone he desired to keep the balance of Europe, that war and action were his sole pleasures ; that age was coming fast upon him ; and that, if he lost the opportunity of this bustle, no other occasion possibly might offer in which he should be able to distinguish himself, or gather those glories which were now ready at his hand. He could not bear, he said, the thought of growing old in peace, and rusting in the cabinet, whilst other princes were busied in war and shining in the field; but what provoked him most of all, he confessed, was to reflect that, whilst he was only busied in treaties, letters, and despatches, his booby brother, the brutal and cowardly King of Prussia, should pass his time in camps, and in the midst of arms, neither desirous of the glory nor fit for the employment ; whilst he, who coveted the one and was trained for the other, was, for cold prudential reasons, debarred the pleasure of indulging his inclination, and deprived of the advantage of showing his abilities.
See what I mean about deja vu?
But the circumstance that gave Sir Robert Walpole the most trouble of all was that with regard to the war he found the Queen as unmanageable and opinionated as the King. There are local prejudices in all people's composition, imbibed from the place of their birth, the seat of their education, and the residence of their youth, that are hardly ever quite eradicated, and operate much stronger than those who are influenced by them are apt to imagine ; and the Queen, with all her good sense, was actuated by these prejudices in a degree nothing short of that in which they biased the King.
Wherever the interest of Germany and the honour of the Empire were concerned, her thoughts and reasonings were often as German and Imperial as if England had been out of the question ; and there were few inconveniences and dangers to which she would not have exposed this country rather than give occasion to its being said that the Empire suffered affronts unretorted, and the House of Austria injuries unrevenged, whilst she, a German by birth, sat upon this throne an idle spectatress, able to assist and not willing to interpose.
More about Queen Caroline elsewhere. But Hervey's general attitude with its "why are they so German?" ness was widely shared among the British politicians and makes me think Heinrich wasn't wrong when in his RPG with AW when assuming Britain would not have been willing to go to total war for Hannover. Speaking of the family seat, G2 making another trip there is the occasion of the last Prussia mention in volume 1, as his PM tries to argue him into not going. It's the mid 1730s:
Neither would it have been a very agreeable incident for the King of Great Britain, after a month's residence at Hanover, to be running back again through Westphalia to England with seventy thousand Prussians at his heels ; and yet, considering the terms he and the King of Prussia were upon at present, this might easily have happened, and was suggested by Sir Robert Walpole to deter his Majesty from this expedition ; but to their remonstrances his Majesty always answered, "Pooh!" and "Stuff!" or, " You think to get the better of me, but you shall not ;" and, in short, plainly showed that all efforts to divert him from this expedition would be fruitless.
You know what's nearly totally missing (unless it was in the censored by grandson passages)? The endless marriage negotiatioins for Fritz and Wilhelmine. There's one single aside about some there being some idea to marry Fritz of Wales to "a daughter of Prussia", and that's it. Otherwise, the entire rigmorale is of zero interest to Hervey. He does provide us with more quotes on G2 ranting about his Prussian brother-in-law and cousin in volume 2, near the end, after Caroline has died and G2 keeps spilling his guts to Hervey.
To understand the next bit, it's important to recall that G2's aunt was Sophie Charlotte of Hannover (daughter of Sophie of Hannover through whom the entire claim to the English throne went); Sophie Charlotte was not just the mother of FW of Prussia but foster mother of Caroline, and was generally praised as not just one of the most beautiful but definitely one of the best educated and smartest women of her time, with none other than Leipniz as one of her biggest admirers. Which is why I find this statement, err, interesting:
Of his aunt, the Queen of Prussia, too he spoke well, who, by what I heard from others, and particularly the Queen, was a very vain, good-for-nothing woman.
Et tu, Caroline? You owe your education to her, among other things. I feel let down. On to the next Queen of Prussia. G2's sister is of course Sophia Dorothea the younger, wife of FW, and on her, grieving G2 apparently had this to say in 1737:
For his sister, the present Queen of Prussia, he had the contempt she deserved, and a hatred she did not deserve.
WTF? For both Hervey and G2. Hervey having zilch interest in the Prussians per se, and dying when Fritz is still busy conquering Silesia, I don't see how he'd have any motive to make this up. But see: Hervey never met SD. He visited Hannover only once, as a young man on his Grand Tour (when he first encountered nine years old Fritz of Wales), and I don't think she was visiting Hannover as well on that occasion. Prussia, he didn't visit at all. So what is this estimation - that SD deserved contempt but not hate - based on? Perhaps all that begging for the English marriages struck him as pathetic, even if he didn't care enough to note it down, but that's the only thing I can think of.
(Now of course SD with her own treatment of her children provides enough reasons to dislike her, but Hervey seems to know nothing about this.) (Given his own parenting style, I don't see G2 objecting here, either.)
As to why G2 should have contempt and hate for his sister: search me. It's not like she was madly in love with FW and rejecting her family of birth, au contraire. I'm almost starting to come around to Fritz of Prussia's pov on Hannover versus Hohenzollern, but luckily a recent reread of Ziebura's Hohenzollern biographies reminded me how wrong that would be. Back to Hervey:
What he thought and said of the King of Prussia was much the same as what the King of Prussia thought and said of him ; that he was a proud, brutal, tyrannical, wrong-headed, impracticable fellow, who loved nobody and would use everybody ill that was in his power. How far these two Kings were in the right in this point, or how little they were so in every other, is not my business here to determine.
Meaning: peas in a pod. Again, having read through both volumes of Hervey's memoirs, my speculation re: G2 pleading with the other European monarchs for Fritz' life in 1730 is that it was mostly because if he didn't get to kill his son, FW certainly wouldn't. And speaking of murder: if Fritz and Wilhelmine had made those marriages, do want to place any bets on when things would have gotten violent? (Provided most circumstances stay the same.) Would Fritz of Prussia have had the fatal relationship and fallout with Hervey instead of Fritz of Wales? Would Caroline and G2 have accused Wilhelmine, too, of faking her pregnancy because their oldest surely can't sire a child? Would Fritz of Prussia have killed Fritz of Wales for taking Wilhelmine in labor for a one and a half hour drive because he didn't want his parents to be present at the birth? Place your bets!
So much for the Prussians. I get to the next part of family feuding, a word about linguistics. Since the Hannovers are a part of German high nobility, they mostly talk to each other in French, and in German only if they don't want Hervey to understand them. (Hervey, like 99% of English people, does not speak German.) You may have gathered Hervey isn't much impressed with his German overlords, though he doesn't limit his not impressedness by royalty to the House of Hannover (or of Brandenburg). He thinks the lot of them are rubbish:
For my own part, I have the conduct of princes in so little veneration, that I believe they act yet oftener without design than other people, and are insensibly drawn into both good and bad situations without knowing how they came there. (...) I think most of these political contenders for profit and power are, like Catiline and Caesar, actuated by the same principles of ambition and interest, and that as their success determines their characters, so accident determines their success. Had Csesar fallen in the plains of Pharsalia, like Catiline in those of Pistoia, they had both been remembered in the same manner; the different fortune of those battles is what alone constitutes the different characters of these two men, and makes the one always mentioned as the first and the other as the last of mankind.
On the other hand, he's also fiercely ambitious, which means being tight with the PM, Sir Robert Walpole, having a court office and cultivating his ties with the rest of the royal family is important to him. The one he is a bit impressed with, though not uncritically so, is Queen Caroline.
Hervey on the coronation of G2 and Queen Caroline:
In October the ceremony of the Coronation was performed with all the pomp and magnificence that could be contrived ; the present King differing so much from the last, that all the pageantry and splendour, badges and trappings of royalty, were as pleasing to the son as they were irksome to the father. The dress of the Queen on this occasion was as fine as the accumulated riches of the City and suburbs could make it ; for besides her own jewels (which were a great number and very valuable) she had on her head and on her shoulders all the pearls she could borrow of the ladies of quality at one end of the town, and on her petticoat all the diamonds she could hire of the Jews and jewellers at the other; so that the appearance and the truth of her finery was a mixture of magnificence and meanness not unlike the eclat of royalty in many other particulars when it comes to be nicely examined and its sources traced to what money hires or flattery lends.
You may gather from this that contrary to what Halsband told me in his biography, Hervey writes critical stuff about Queen Caroline as well as about the rest of the family. This upsets Croker in the introduction, not least because Hervey also insists he loved the Queen and she loved him. Though our Victorian editor is most upset about what Hervey presumably didn't mean critically at all, to wit, Caroline a) despising her oldest son, and b) having no problem with her husband's mistresses. Speaking of whom, remember Lady Suffolk, who started out as Mrs. Howard and whom G2 took as an English mistress when he was still Prince of Wales when his Dad G1 upset people by bring a German mistress along? Whom G2 visited strictly by the hour and was more dutiful than affectionate towards as opposed to his wife? This is how Hervey introduces her:
She was civil to everybody, friendly to many, and unjust to none : in short, she had a good head and a good heart, but had to do with a man who was incapable of tasting the one or valuing the other.
Meanwhile, Queen Caroline:
Her predominant passion was pride, and the darling pleasure of her soul was power; but she was forced to gratify the one and gain the other, as some people do health, by a strict and painful regime, which few besides herself could have had patience to support, or resolution to adhere to. She was at least seven or eight hours tute-a-tcte with the King every day, during which time she was generally saying what she did not think, assenting to what she did not believe, and praising what she did not approve ; for they were seldom of the same opinion, and he too fond of his own for her ever at first to dare to controvert it (" consilii quamvis egregii quod ipse non afferret, inimicus :"— " An enemy to any counsel, however excellent, which he himself had not suggested." — Tacitus) ;'' she used to give him her opinion as jugglers do a card, by changing it imperceptibly, and making him believe he held the same with that he first pitched upon. But that which made these tete-a-tetes seem heaviest was that he neither liked reading nor being read to (unless it was to sleep) : she was forced, like a spider, to spin out of her own bowels all the conversation with which the fly was taken. However, to all this she submitted for the sake of power, and for the reputation of having it ; for the vanity of being thought to possess what she desired was equal to the pleasure of the possession itself. But, either for the appearance or the reality, she knew it was absolutely necessary to have interest in her husband, as she was sensible that interest was the measure by which people would always judge of her power. Her every thought, word, and act therefore tended and was calculated to preserve her influence there ; to him she sacrificed her time, for him she mortified her inclination ; she looked, spake, and breathed but for him, like a weathercock to every capricious blast of his uncertain temper, and governed him (if such influence so gained can bear the name of government) by being as great a slave to him thus ruled, as any other wife could be to a man who ruled her. For all the tedious hours she spent then in watching him whilst he slept, or the heavier task of entertaining him whilst he was awake, her single consolation was in reflecting she had power, and that people in coffeehouses and ruelles were saying she governed this country, without knowing how dear the government of it cost her.
This was not how G2 saw it, of course:
The King himself was so little sensible of this being his case, that one day enumerating the people who had governed this country in other reigns, he said Charles I. was governed by his wife ; Charles II. by his mistresses ; King James by his priests ; King William by his men—and Queen Anne by her women—favourites. His father, he added, had been by anybody that could get at him. And at the end of this compendious history of our great and wise monarchs, with a significant, satisfied, triumphant air, he turned about, smiling, to one of his auditors, and asked him—"And who do they say governs now?"
Whether this is a true or a false story of the King, I know not, but it was currently reported and generally believed. The following verses will serve for a specimen of the strain in which the libels, satires, and lampoons of these days were omposed :
—
" You may strut, dapper George, but 't will all be in vain ;
We know 'tis Queen Caroline, not you, that reign—
You govern no more than Don Philip of Spain.
Then if you would have us fall down and adore you,
Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before you." '
If Caroline is the sometimes shady but mostly impressive heroine of these memoirs, there's no question as to who's the villain, and no, it's not her husband. A quick reminder of the quintessential Fritz of Wales facts: when the rest of the family moved to Britain, he was seven and left in Hannover. He wouldn't see his parents or siblings again for the next fourteen years, during which time his parents had another son - the future "Billy the Butcher", William, Duke of Cumberland - and blatantly would have preferred that one to inherit. After G1 died, Fritz of Wales finally was allowed on British shore, befriended Hervey, Hervey signed his letters to the prince "your Hephaistion" (claiming the identity of Alexander the Great's bff and lover for himself) while Fritz of Wales compared them to Orestes and Pylades... and then they had a terrible breakup, after which Hervey and the rest of the royal family compete describing Fritz of Wales as the scum of humanity. So here's Hervey on the love rat, Fritz of Wales:
The Prince's character at his first coming over, though little more respectable, seemed much more amiable than, upon his opening himself further and being better known, it turned out to be ; for though there appeared nothing in him to be admired, yet there seemed nothing in him to be hated—neither anything great nor anything vicious ; his behaviour was something that gained one's good wishes, though it gave one no esteem for him ; for his best qualities, whilst they prepossessed one the most in his favour, always gave one a degree of contempt for him at the same time ; his carriage, whilst it seemed engaging to those who did not examine it, appearing mean to those who did : for though his manners had the show of benevolence from a good deal of natural or habitual civility, yet his cajoling everybody, and almost in an equal degree, made those things which might have been thought favours, if more judiciously or sparingly bestowed, lose all their weight. He carried this affectation of general benevolence so far that he often condescended below the character of a Prince; and as people attributed this familiarity to popular, and not particular motives, so it only lessened their respect without increasing their good will, and instead of giving them good impressions of his humanity, only gave them ill ones of his sincerity. He was indeed as false as his capacity would allow him to be, and was more capable in that walk than in any other, never having the least hesitation, from principle or fear of future detection, in telling any lie that served his present purpose. He had a much weaker understanding, and, if possible, a more obstinate temper, than his father ; that is, more tenacious of opinions he had once formed, though less capable of ever forming right ones.
Had he had one grain of merit at the bottom of his heart, one should have had compassion for him in the situation to which his miserable poor head soon reduced him ; for his case, in short, was this :—he had a father that abhorred him, a mother that despised him, sisters that betrayed him, a brother set up against him, and a set of servants that neglected him, and were neither of use, nor capable of being of use to him, nor desirous of being so.
There, there, Hervey. Celebrity break-ups are the worst, we know. Have a glass with Voltaire. The family feduing will get far worse, but first, have a relatively harmless (unless you're Händel) example of the musical kind.
The Princess Royal is the oldest daughter, Anne, married to William of Orange (not that one, another one). Like the rest of the family, see above, an enemy of her brother Fritz of Wales after he showed up as an adult and, confronted with the unavoiidable fact none of the rest of the family wants him there, drifts towards the opposition (which, btw, all the Hannover Prince of Waleses were prone to do):
Another judicious subject of his enmity was her supporting Handel, a German musician and composer (who had been her singing master, and was now undertaker of one of the operas), against several of the nobility who had a pique with Handel, and had set up another person to ruin him ; or, to speak more properly and exactly, the Prince, in the beginning of his enmity to his sister, set himself at the head of the other opera to irritate her, whose pride and passions were as strong as her brother's (although his understanding was so much weaker), and could brook contradiction, where she dared to resent it, as little as her father. What I have related may seem a trifle ; but though the cause was indeed such, the effects of it were no trifles. The King and Queen were as much in earnest upon this subject as their son and daughter, though they had the prudence to disguise it, or to endeavour to disguise it, a little more. They were both Handelists, and sat freezing constantly at his empty Haymarket Opera, whilst the Prince with all the chief of the nobility went as constantly to that of Lincoln's Inn Fields. The affair grew as serious as that of the Greens and the Blues under Justinian at Constantinople; an anti-Handelist was looked upon as an anticourtier ; and voting against the Court in Parliament was hardly a less remissible or more venial sin than speaking against Handel or going to the Lincoln's Inn Fields Opera. The Princess Royal said she expected in a little while to see half the House of Lords playing in the orchestra in their robes and coronets ; and the King—though he declared he took no other part in this affair than subscribing lOOO pound. a-year to Handel—often added at the same time that " he did not think setting oneself at the head of a faction of fiddlers a very honourable occupation for people of quality ; or the ruin of one poor fellow [Handel] so generous or so good-natured a scheme as to do much honour to the undertakers, whether they succeeded or not ; but the better they succeeded in it, the more he thought they would have reason to be ashamed of it." The Princess Royal quarrelled with the Lord Chamberlain for affecting his usual neutrality on this occasion, and spoke of Lord Delaware, who was one of the chief managers against Handel, with as much spleen as if he had been at the head of the Dutch faction who opposed the making her husband Stadtholder.'
Before I get to the next point, I should mention that Hervey, whenever he shows up in his own tale as an acting character, writes of himself in the third person, i.e. "Lord Hervey did this" or "then Lord Hervey said to the Queen", etc. A la Caesar in the Gallic Wars. Confusingly, though, he also writes in the first person - i.e. "I heard this from Sir Robert directly" or "I was present when the King said this" etc. I'm not sure whether he wanted his readers to believe a third party - an unnamed historian - was writing these memoirs; after all, he knew they wouldn't and couldn't be published within his own life time, and probably not for some time hereafter. Or maybe it was just a stylistic device, understood by readers of the time; I'm not sure, since none of the other 18th Century memoirs I've read so far employ it. (Certainly not Voltaire's.)
Okay, onwards: G2 keeps irritating his English subjects with visiting Hannover, remember. On one such visit, his English mistress, Lady Suffolk, gets married again despite being in her 40s. G2 hears about it from Caroline via letter, drags out his time in Hannover, and comes back with a German (!) mistress, Madame Waldmoden, the ultimate insult. This causes Lord Hervey to muse thusly.
Whilst the late King lived, everybody imagined this Prince loved England and hated Germany ; but from the time of his first journey, after he was King, to Hanover, people began to find, if they had not been deceived in their former opinion, at least they would be so in their expectations; and that his thoughts, whatever they might have been, were no longer turned either with contempt or dislike to his Electoral dominions.
But after this last journey Hanover had so completed the conquest of his affections, that there was nothing English ever commended in his presence that he did not always show, or pretend to show, was surpassed by something of the same kind in Germany. No English or even French cook could dress a dinner; no English confectioner set out a dessert ; no English player could act ; no English coachman could drive, or
English jockey ride; nor were any English horses fit to be drove or fit to be ridden; no Englishman knew how to come into a room, nor any Englishwoman how to dress herself; nor were there any diversions in England, public or private ; nor any man or woman in England whose conversation was to be borne—the one, as he said, talking of nothing but their dull politics, and the others of nothing but their ugly clothes. Whereas at Hanover all these things were in the utmost perfection: the men were patterns of politeness, bravery, and gallantry; the women of beauty, wit, and entertainment; his troops there were the bravest in the world, his counsellors the wisest, his manufacturers the most ingenious,
his subjects the happiest; and at Hanover, in short, plenty reigned, magnificence resided, arts flourished, diversions abounded, riches flowed, and everything was in the utmost perfection that contributes to make a prince great or a people blessed. (...)
In truth he hated the English, looked upon them all as king-killers and republicans, grudged them their riches as well as their liberty, thought them all overpaid, and said to Lady Sundon one day as she was waiting at dinner, just after he returned from Germany, that he was forced to distribute his favours here very differently from the manner in which he bestowed them at Hanover ; /that there he rewarded people for doing
their duty and serving him well, but that here he was obliged to enrich people for being rascals, and buy them not to cut his throat.
The Queen did not always think in a different style of the English, though she kept her thoughts more to herself than the King, as being more prudent, more sensible, and more mistress of her passions ; yet even she could not entirely disguise these sentiments to the observation of those who were perpetually about her, and put her upon subjects that betrayed her into revealing them.
Hervey was a satirist, so I'm taking this a pinch of salt and the awareness that G2 believing some things were better in Hannover would already been taken as Britain bashing by most Brits, given their idea of England as the climax of civilisation. This said, I still find it amusing.
Caroline, btw, never goes with G2 to Hannover; she stays because he always makes her regent in his absence. (Never Fritz of Wales.) Which she thoroughly enjoys. Hervey, ever ready to share scandal, can't report one more about Madame W. other than that he can't understand what G2 sees in her, so he turns towards another German lady in G2's entourage and claims one of "Aunt" Melusine's daughters has also been getting it on with not one, but two Georges and Fritz of Wales:
This Madame d'Elitz was a Schulemberg, sister to my Lady Chesterfield—a very handsome lady, though now a little in her decline, with a reat deal of wit, who had had a thousand lovers, and had been catched in bed with a man twenty years ago, and been divorced from her husband upon it. She was said to have been mistress to three generations of the Hanover family — the late King, the present, and the Prince of Wales before he came to England, which was one generation more than the Duchess of Valentinois " (mistress to Henry II.) could boast of in France. The present King had quitted Madame d'Elitz for Madame Walmoden, upon which a quarrel ensued between the two ladies, and the King thereupon had turned Madame d'Elitz out of the palace the year before; just therefore when the King set out for Hanover this year, Madame d'Elitz set out for England, where she now was with her aunt and sister, the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Chesterfield.
Note from our Victorian editor Croker: Hervey is wrong about Diane de Poitiers having slept with Francis I. of France as well as his son Henry II (the one married to Catherine de' Medici), that was slander, and he's probably slandering this Schulenburg sister as well.
Meanwhile, the combined forces of the salon identified "Madame d'Elitz" as Anna Luise von der Schulenburg, Countess of Dölitz, like her sister Petronella (married to Lord Chesterfield) an illegitimate daughter of G1 and Melusine von der Schulenburg (Duchess of Kendal). (Her entire genealogy as well as connection to the Kattes explained here.) Now you'd think since Hervey reports her as mistress to G1, G2 and Fritz of Wales, he'd mention this would have been triple incest. While it's not impossible that Victorian editor Croker edited this out, or Hervey's grandson did, something else strikes me as far more likely, especially since there is precedent: Hervey, who got bored to tears whenever G2 (whose hobby was genealogy) started with who was related to whom, and who didn't speak German, made the same mistake the British nobility had made when G1 arrived in England with one mistress (Meliusine) and one illegitimate half sister (Sophia von Kielmanssegg) - they assumed the other woman having familiarly with the Hannovers who was evidently not a wife had to be a mistress and didn't consider that one of the few Hannover virtues of the early generations was that they actually did include their illegitimate offspring in their lives. Presumably seeing the non-royal Döltz hang out with three generations of Hannovers led Hervey to the same wrong conclusion.
Another German/English culture clash reported by Hervey involves fox hunting and was probably G2's finest moment. I mentioned this in my Horowski review, but Hervey provides the original quote:
When the Duke of Grafton notified his design to go into the country, the King told him it was a pretty occupation for a man of quality, and at his age, to be spending all his time in tormenting a poor fox, that was generally a much better beast than any of those that pursued him; for the fox hurts no other animal but for his subsistence, whilst those brutes who hurt him did it only for the pleasure they took in hurting. The Duke of Grafton said he did it for his health. The King asked him why he could not as well walk or ride post for his health ; and said, if there was any pleasure in the chase, he was sure the Duke of Grafton could know nothing of it; "for," added his Majesty, "with your great corps of twenty stone weight, no horse, I am sure, can carry you within hearing, much less within sight, of your hounds." This last dialogue I was present at.
As the 1730s go on, relations between Fritz of Wales and his parents go from bad to worse. Hervey proves that modern day gossip columnists have nothing on him as he shares with his his estimation of various mistresses and the wife:
G2 makes it known Fritz of Wales should finally tie the knot, and he's found an ideal bride while in Hannover: 17 years old Augusta von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Queen Caroline adds he should ditch the girlfriend with the child she refuses to believe is her son's. Fritz of Wales, who is about to break up with Miss Vane anyway and according to Hervey has been eying another mistress, takes this parental news and commands well for a change and sends his flunky Lord Baltimore to Miss Vane, with a proposal that she should marry Lord Baltimore and get a pension, thus being cared for, but that it would be tactful to his future bride if she and Baltlimore were to travel abroad for a while. The kid, however, should stay here (and he swears he'll continue to take care of it). Miss Vane upon Hervey's advice and using Hervey as ghostwriter fires off an indignant letter that he's breaking her heart and no way will she leave the country her child is in and what kind of thrifty bastard is he anyway? The upshot of this is that the Lord Baltlimore marriage is off the table, Miss Vane gets a larger pension in her own name and doesn't have to leave the country. Alas, she then goes to Bath to enjoy the spa and dies. Little Fitzfrederick also dies with just a week distance. Hervey grudgingly admits Fritz of Wales seemed more distressed about this than anyone had thought him capable of being.
On to Lady Archibald Hamilton, according to Hervey the new mistress of the love rat. (Again, it's worth keeping in mind that the same Hervey who is writing all this managed to juggle his own wife, Miss Vane, Stephen Fox and Fritz of Wales.)
Lady Archibald Hamilton was not young, had never been very pretty, and had lost at least as much of that small share of beauty she once possessed as it is usual for women to do at five-and-thirty, after being the mother of ten children. Her husband, Lord Archibald Hamilton, was a Scotchman, uncle to the Duke of Hamilton, a Lord of the Admiralty, and of so quiet, so secure, and contented a temper, that he seemed cut out to play the passive character his wife and the Prince had graciously allotted him. His wife was cunning, and had just sense enough to make that cunning useful to her, when employed to work on such a husband as Lord Archibald Hamilton, and such a lover as the Prince of Wales ; and succeeded perfectly well in flattering the first into an opinion of her virtue, and the latter into an admiration of her beauty and understanding, which she facilitated by the much easier task of making the Prince believe she was entirely captivated by his.
But as there always are some people who doubt of the most notorious intrigues, as well as others who make no doubt of what only themselves believe, so there were some few who thought, or, I rather believe, affected to think, that this commerce between Lady Archibald Hamilton and the Prince was merely platonic, though stronger symptoms of an affaire faite never appeared on any pair than were to be seen between this couple. He saw her often at her own house, where he seemed as welcome to the master as the mistress ; he met her often, too, at her sister's; walked with her day after day for hours together tete-a-tete in a morning in St. James's Park ; and whenever she was at the drawing-room (which was pretty frequently), his behaviour was so remarkable that his nose and her ear were inseparable(...)
And you thought Voltaire was bitchy about Fritz and Fredersdorf. Lady Archibald Hamilton - incidentally the mother of Sir William Hamilton, future participant in one of the most famous menage a trois of the 18th century, involving national hero Horatio Nelson and Sir William's wife Emma as well as himself - becomes lady-in-waiting to the new bride, Augusta. Augusta has gotten one of those long distance royal marriages where a substitute gets send and brings the bride home, to which, Lord Delaware:
Lord Delaware, if the King chose him to prevent the Prince's having any jealousy of his future bride's affections being purloined on the way by him who was sent to attend her to England, was the properest man his Majesty could have pitched upon ; for, except his white staff and red riband, as Knight of the Bath, I know of nothing belonging to the long, lank, awkward person of Lord Delaware that could attract her eyes ; nor do I believe there could be found in any of the Goth or Yandal courts of Germany a more unpolished ambassador for such an occasion.
Augusta, poor girl, arrives in Britain and throws herself on the ground before the King and Queen, which wins them over for a few days at least. Hervey, however, is not impressed:
She could speak not one word of English, and few of French; and when it was proposed the year before to her mother, when this match was resolved upon, that she should be taught one of these languages, her mother said it must be quite unnecessary, for the Hanover Family having been above twenty years on the throne, to be sure most people in England spoke German (and especially at Court) as often and as well as English. A conjecture so well founded that I believe there were not three natives in England that understood one word of it better than in the reign of Queen Anne.
Hervey, I think that says rather more about British nobility than it does about Augusta's Mom's assumptions.
The Princess was rather tall, and had health and youth enough in her face, joined to a very modest andgood-natured look, to make her countenance not disagreeable; but her person, from being very ill-made, a good deal awry, her arms long, and her motions awkward, had, in spite of all the finery of jewels and brocade, an ordinary air, which no trappings could cover or exalt.
Now if you think only women who have sex with Fritz of Wales are the objects of Hervey's scorn, you're mistaken. He's just as malicious about the woman who would have married Fritz of Prussia if the endless negotiations had worked out, to wit, Princess Amalie (as her mother calls her) or Emily (as Hervey calls her). The only princess Hervey likes is Princess Caroline, but as for Amalia/Emily/Amalie:
The Queen used to speak to Lord Hervey on this subject with as little reserve when the Princess Caroline was present, as when alone ; but never before the Princess Emily, who had managed her affairs so well, as to have lost entirely the confidence of her mother, without having obtained the friendship of her brother; by trying to make her court by turns to both, she had by turns betrayed both, and at last lost both. Princess Emily had much the least sense, except her brother, of the family, but had for two years much the prettiest person. She was lively, false, and a great liar ; did many ill offices to people, and no good ones; and, for want of prudence, said as many shocking she said disagreeable ones behind their backs. She had as many enemies as acquaintances, for nobody knew her without disliking her.
Lord Hervey was very ill with her : she had first used him ill, to flatter her brother, which of course had made him not use her very well ; and the preference on every occasion he gave her sister, the Princess Caroline, completed their mutual dislike. Princess Caroline had affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness without levity, and . prudence without falsehood.
So much for the maybe Queen of Prussia. I should say here she sounds far more amiable in her wiki entry, which is the only other thing I've read about her. Who knows?
But for all that Hervey doesn't like G2 and isn't much impressed with the extended family, Queen Caroline and Princess Caroline the younger aside, he drops the occasional oddly endearing anecdote as well, like the fox hunting dialogue. The Fritz of Wales bashing from him and everyone showing up in these memoirs, though, is absolutely relentless. Our Victorian editor just throws up his hands and says he has no idea just why both parents hated FoW so much even before he joined forces with the opposition and thus gave them cause, even before he arrived in England and was still a youngster in Hannover and according to visitors (including, btw, Hervey himself on his Grand Tour, writing letters home) an amiable, bright child with a lot of charm.
Now, Fritz of Wales' budget is much less than what his father G2 used to get when he'd been Fritz of Wales, and when this still doesn't change after marriage, he doesn't just keep asking his parents for more, no, he tries to get his budget heightened via parliament. This scheme doesn't work, partly Sir Robert Walpole and Hervey work against it. (Hervey asks for a peerage for Stephen Fox from Walpole given that Stephen did his best to cajole his parliamentary colleagues to side with the King, not the Prince, and for some thank you money for Henry Fox, who did the same.) Meanwhile, FW's rants against Fritz are completely matched by Queen Caroline's words about her son and his attempt to make common cause with MPs:
"My God," says the Queen, " popularity always makes me sick ; but Fritz's popularity makes me vomit. I hear that yesterday, on his side of the house, they talked of the King's being cast away with the same sang-froid as you would talk of a coach being overturned ; and that my good son strutted about as if he had been already King. Did you mind the air with which he came into my drawing-room in the morning, though he does not think fit to honour me with his presence or ennui me with his wife's of a night?"
Events come to a head when Augusta gets pregnant and Caroline tells everyone she thinks Augusta is faking it, and will substitute a bought baby, and then Fritz of Wales refuses to tell his parents when the birth is expected when G2 orders him and Augusta to Hampton Court, and when his wife gets into labor, insists on taking her to St. James. (Which however you look at it was an incredibly selfish jerk move - that drive with a woman in labor must have been hell - but of course Hervey doesn't think all the relentless hate from the rest of the family might have given Fritz of Wales the inspiration of not wanting his parents present at the kid's birth. As mentioned in my Horowski write up, the baby is a sickly girl which, Caroline says, is the only reason why believes it's Augusta's baby after all. She's nice to Augusta when she visits but doesn't say a word to Fritz of Wales. The rupture between son and parents is now complete. Letters are exchanged. Some courtiers try to mediate, but:
Lord Essex telling, and asking, at the same time, if he should call one of the Ministers, the Queen said, " For what? to give an answer to Fritz ? Does the King want a Minister to tell him what answer he likes to give to his son ? or to call a council for such a letter, like an aifair d'etat?"
In between everything else, an old plan gets revived - separating Hannover and Britain, with giving one to Caroline's and G2's fave William, future Billy the Butcher. Says our editor in a footnote:
George I., in his enmity to George II., entertained some idea of separating the sovereignty of England and Hanover (Coxe^s Walpole, p. 132) ; and we find from Lord Chancellor King's ' Diary,' under the date of June, 1725, " a negotiation had been lately on foot in relation to the two young Princes, Frederick and William. The Prince (George II.) and his wife were for excluding Prince Frederick, but that after the King and the Prince he should be Elector of Hanover, and Prince William King of Great Britain ; but that the King said it would be unjust to do it without Prince Frederick's consent, who was now of an age to judge for himself, and so the matter now stood " (Campbell's ' Chancellors,' iv. 318). Sir Robert Walpole, who communicated this to the Chancellor, added that he had told George I. that " if he did not bring Prince Frederick over in his life-time, he would never set his foot on English ground." This early enmity of his parents to Frederick Lord Campbell cannot explain ; " but the Prince had his revenge by perpetually disturbing the government of his father till, in 1751, the joyful exclamation by George II was uttered, ' Fritz is dead!' "—ib.
Which Hervey, who died in the early 1740s, didn't live to see. (Nor Fritz of Wales as a father even his enemies couldn't bash; FoW raised his children - he had nine all in all - with English as their first language, he gave them all a bit of the garden in his estate they were to garden themselves as they wanted, which started a life long passion in future G3, "Farmer George", and he played with them and encouraged them with music.) What he did live to see where endless "We hate Fritz" parties with the other royals:
The Princess Caroline, who loved her mother and disliked her brother in equal and extreme degrees, was in much the same state of mind as the Queen ; her consideration and regard for her mother making her always adopt the Queen's opinions, as well as share her pleasures and her afflictions. They neither of them made much ceremony of wishing a hundred times a day that the Prince might drop down dead of an apoplexy— the Queen cursing the hour of his birth, and the Princess Caroline declaring she grudged him every hour he continued to breathe ; and reproaching Lord Hervey with his weakness for having ever loved him, and being fool enough to think that he had been ever beloved by him, as well as being so great a dupe as to believe the nauseous beast (those were her words) cared for anybody but his own nauseous self—that he loved anything but money—that he was not the greatest liar that ever spoke—and would not put one arm about anybody's neck to kiss them, and then stab' them with the other, if he could censored passageShe protested that from the time he had been here six months—so early had she found him out—she had never loved him better or thought better of him than at that moment.'
At this point it must have occurred to Hervey that future readers might doubt how reliable he is re: Fritz of Wales, so he does some self analysis about his motives, in the third person:
The truth is, if his temper was susceptible of provocation, he might, without being capable of feeling long provoked at the same circumstance, have continued long warm in his resentment against the Prince, since scarce a day passed without some new lie the Prince had made of him during the quarrel, as well as some virulent thing he now said of him, being reported to Lord Hervey by the Queen or the Princess Caroline, who both hated the Prince at this time to a degree which cannot be credited or conceived by people who did not hear the names they called him, the character they gave him, the curses they lavished upon him, and the fervour with which they both prayed every day for his death.
It would be endless to endeavour to repeat all the lies Lord Hervey at this time heard the Prince had coined of him, but one or two of the most remarkable I will insert. The Prince told the Queen and all his sisters that Lord Hervey had told him everybody said his Royal Highness was known to have such a partiality for the Princess Royal, and to be so incapable of concealing anything from her, that nobody doubted (Note from Editor - lines stricken out in manuscript by grandson).
Another was that Lord Hervey, from the moment he first came about him, had been always endeavouring to give him ill impressions of the Queen and all his sisters ; to blow him up against his father and a hundred times endeavoured to persuade him to make a party to move for his 100,000?. a-year in Parliament as well as brought offers to him from people in the Opposition, and made use of Miss Vane's interest to get them accepted.
I do not relate these things as any justification of Lord Hervey's conduct at this time ; for if personal resentment, and a desire to vex and mortify the Prince,- had any share in his views and counsels at this juncture, I own he is not justifiable, as nothing can justify the meanness of a man of sense desiring, from a principle of revenge, to hurt those by whom he has been injured, further than self-preservation requires, or the silly received laws of mistaken customary honour enjoin: but take this particular (with regard to the Prince) out of Lord Hervey's character, and I believe it would be impossible to give another instance of the same sort of wrong to anybody in any part of his conduct ; though few people had more enemies, or had reason to be irritated against more people, if being abused is allowed to be a reason.
Yes, Hervey, I'm sure you were the milk of human kindness otherwise. Good grief.
The big climax of the memoirs and their finale are Queen Caroline's death and the immediate aftermath. Hervey ends his memoirs there, and like the essay says, for all that their title refers to the reign of George II, they should really be titled "reign of Caroline", for she is the central character in his narrative. She died a terrible death.
Since her last pregnancy, Caroline had suffered from an umbilical hernia, or a hole in her belly, and couldn’t bear to have anything tight around her middle. Nor could she bear to have anyone know about such an embarrassing disorder, and she always kept on her shift when being undressed by her ladies. Finally, in 1737, a bit of her bowel popped out through that hole, and she could not disguise the fact that she was seriously ill. Her doctors should have pushed that loop of bowel back inside and hoped that the hole would heal, but instead they made a terrible error. They cut it off. Now Caroline’s digestive system was destroyed, and she took ten days to die. Incidentally, I had to look up the medical details, because our Victorian editor childes Hervey for providing them (about a lady! and a Queen!) and proudly announces he protects us readers from them as much as he can. What's still there is all the surrounding drama, which took place shortly after Fritz of Wales had that big break with his parents due to way his first legitimate daughter was born. When he heard about the Queen's state of health, he tried to see her, but no dice. Hervey of course thinks he was probably popping the champagne in anticipation and faking all filial feelings. FoW's parents heartily agree, as mentioned in my write-up of the Halsband biography. Here's a passage from shortly before Caroline's illness is discovered:
Lord Hervey took occasion upon this subject, among many other things, to say, he did not believe there ever was a father and a son so thoroughly unlike in every particular as the King and the Prince, and enumerated several points in which they differed, as little to the advantage of the Prince as to the dispraise or displeasure of the King. The King said he had really thought so himself a thousand times, and had often asked the Queen if the beast was his son. Lord Hervey said that question must be to very little purpose, for to be sure the Queen would never own it if he was not. The King said the first child generally was the husband's, "and therefore," says he, "I fancy he is what in German we call a Weckselbalch; (Hervey's spelling; it's actually "Wechselbalg") I do not know," continued he, " if you have a word for it in English : it is not what you call a foundling, but a child put in a cradle instead of another."
" That is a changeling," replied Lord Hervey. The King was extremely pleased with this translation, and said, " I wish you could prove him a changeling in the German sense of the word as easily as anybody can prove him so in the other ;—though the Queen was a great while before her maternal affection would give him up for a fool, and yet I told her so before he had been acting as if he had not common sense."
Lord Hervey said the Queen had often last year done the honours of his Royal Highness's understanding to him, and was very loth to give it quite up, but that of late he had not perceived she had any hope left of disguising it. "My dear Lord," replied the Queen, ' " I will give it you under my hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest ass and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and I that I most heartily wish he was out of it."
And so on, and so forth. Now, you may recall G2 had had a terrible relationship with his own father, G1, so FoW and/or his advisors get the idea to publish some letters between G1 and future G2 when G2 was Prince of Wales, with the implication: Hypocrite much? Considering most of said letters were burned by Caroline when G2 became King, the Royals think that Fritz must have gotten those letters from the Duchess of Kendal. (Aka Aunt Melusine to Katte, mistress of G1.) Otoh, Hervey thinks Fritz must have a spy in the palace, because the letters published are just those three not burned. In any event, he thinks they just demonstrate that G1 was a way harsher father, since he temporarily took G2's children from him during their biggest argument, while G2 generously declared he wouldn't do that to FoW.
During Caroline's ten days of dying, Hervey and the Royals, minus Fritz and Augusta who aren't allowed access, spend most at the time in Caroline's bed room or next door. This temporarly makes Hervey soften on the King, but not so much is second least favourite Hannover offspring, Emily/Amalia, quondam intended for Fritz of Prussia. An illustration in the following scene (re: storm - G2 and Emily are referencing G2 during his most recent return from Hannover being caught in a tempest across the channel):
One night whilst the Queen was ill, as (G2) was sitting in his nightgown and nightcap in a great chair, with his legs upon a stool, and nobody in the room with him but the Princess Emily, who lay upon a couch, and Lord Hervey, who sat by the fire, he talked in this strain of his own courage in the storm and his illness, till the Princess Emily, as Lord Hervey thought, fell fast asleep, whilst Lord Hervey, as tired as he was of the present conversation and this last week's watching, was left alone to act civil auditor and adroit courtier, to applaud what he heard, and every now and then to ask such proper questions as led the King into giving some more particular detail of his own magnanimity. The King, turning towards Princess Emily, and seeing her eyes shut, cried, "Poor good child! her duty, affection, and attendance on her mother have quite exhausted her spirits." And soon after he went into the Queen's room. As soon as his back was turned. Princess Emily started up, and said, " Is he gone ? How tiresome he is!"
Lord Hervey, who had no mind to trust her Royal Highness with his singing her father's praises in duetto with her, replied only, " I thought your Royal Highness had been asleep." " No," said the Princess Emily ; " I only shut my eyes that I might not join in the ennuyant conversation, and wish I could have shut my ears too. In the first place, I am sick to death of hearing of his great courage every day of my life ; in the next place, one thinks now of Mama, and not of him. Who cares for his old storm ? I believe, too, it is a great lie, and that he was as much afraid as I should have been, for all what he says now ; and as to his not being afraid when he was ill, I know that is a lie, for I saw him, and I heard all his sighs and his groans, when he was in no more danger than I am at this moment. He was talking, too, for ever of dying, and that he was sure he should not recover." All this, considering the kind things she had heard the King say the minute before, when he imagined her asleep. Lord Hervey thought a pretty extraordinary return for her to make for that paternal goodness, or would have thought it so in anybody but her ; and looked upon this openness to him, whom she did not love, yet less to be accounted for, unless he could have imagined it was to draw him in to echo her, and then to relate what he said as if he had said it unaccompanied.
Whilst she was going on with the panegyric on the King which I have related, the King returned, upon which she began to rub her eyes as if she had that instant raised her head from her pillows, and said, "I have really slept very heartily. How long had Papa been out of the room ?" The King, who had very little or rather no suspicion in his composition, took these appearances for realities, and said, " It is time for us all to take a little rest. We will all go to bed, for by staying here we do the poor Queen no good, and ourselves hurt." And so dismissing Lord Hervey, they all retired.
You already know the famous "Marry again after my death"/ "No, I will have mistresses!" exchange in French between Caroline and G2, for which Hervey is the source. G2 was truly distraught upon her death, and mistresses or not, remained so. Caroline's coffin and later his own are of the kind where you can draw one of the walls back once both are laid next to each other; he wanted their dust to mingle. (Caroline died in 1737; G2 in 1761). Grieving Caroline together makes him bond with Hervey (enough so Hervey ends up being appointed Lord Privy Seal), and thus Hervey gets treated to G2's reflections on his German relations. I already quoted the Prussia-relevant gossip at the start of this entry. Here's one more reflection, or rather, the lack of same, if you believe Hervey. A reminder: G2's mother was Sophia Dorothea the older, locked up for 30 years for her affair with (probably murdered) Count Königsmarck, and dying in prison. The "Reminscences" are by Horace Walpole, son of Sir Robert Walpole and the other great bitchy memoirist of the Georgian era:
The King often said, and to many people at this time, that not only he and his family should have a great loss in the Queen's death, but the whole nation: and would instance occasions where he owned her good sense and good temper had kept his passions within bounds which they would otherwise have broken. And during this retirement (in which he was infinitely more talkative than I ever knew him at any other time of his whole life) he discoursed so constantly and so openly of himself, that if anybody had had a mind to write the memoirs of his life from his cradle to the present moment, the Princesses and Lord Hervey could have furnished them with materials of all the occurrences, transactions, and anecdotes, military, civil, amorous, foreign, and domestic, that could be comprehended in such a work, from his own lips : excepting what related to his mother, whom on no occasion I ever heard him mention, not even inadvertently or indirectly, any more than if such a person had never had a being. (*)
*Footnote by Victorian editor Croker: This is remarkable, and seems hardly reconcilable with the strong opinion of her innocence and the affectionate regard for her person attributed to him in the Reminiscences. "The second George loved his mother as much as he hated his father ; and purposed, it was said, if she had survived, to have brought her over and declared her Queen-Dowager. Lady Suffolk told me her surprise on going to the new Queen the morning after George I.'s death, at seeing hung up in the Queen's dressing-room the whole-length of a lady in royal robes, and in the bed-chamber a half-length of the same person, which Lady Suffolk had never seen before." They were of his mother, which the Prince had till then kept concealed.
Whom to believe? Well, Hervey knew the royals better than younger Walpole, who had the story second hand from Lady Suffolk; otoh Hervey made mistakes re: Kielsmansegg and Döltz and was prone to tune out when G2 went on too long about family business. Or perhaps both are true: young future G2 had kept those portraits of his banished and imprisoned mother and hung them up once G1 was dead, but he didn't talk about her. If nothing else, he would have shared such a behavior with an earlier British monarch, Elizabeth I., supposedly mentioned her executed mother, Anne Boleyn, only two or three times in her long life, if at all, yet when she died it turned out the ring she was always wearing had Anne's miniature portrait in it.
And thus I wrap up my choice of quotes from the immensely entertaining memoirs of Lord Hervey, disser extraordinaire.
So: Hervey can coin a phrase, and is viciously hilarious. Alas for our purposes, he thinks G2's insistence of seeing himself as a German prince and being involved in German and continental politics is a waste of time at best and a danger to England at worst, involving the Brits in continental battles and always on the wrong side. (The Imperial one.) Hervey dies in the early 1740s, remember, so for him German = mostly the creaky old HRE and its politics. He hasn't got much time or attention for FW and Prussia, and of course the years 1730 - 32 are missing. But there are bits on the G2 & FW relationship, and what there is is hilarious. (It also tells us that if Fritz had ever made it to England, he would have had the weirdest sense of deja vu...)
Despite finding Empire politics boring, Hervey does provide some context:
To oppose the execution then of the Vienna Treaty made between the Emperor and Spain, France and England formed the Hanover Treaty, September 3, 1727, when the late King (i.e. G1) was at Hanover. As soon as this treaty was concluded, to which England, France, and Prussia were the original contracting parties, copies of it were sent to all the Courts and little States in Europe ; and whilst the Emperor and Spain were soliciting, on one hand, for accessions to their Treaty of Vienna, England and France were, on the other, strengthening, by as many powers as they could list, the alliance of Hanover.
The defection of the King of Prussia from the latter was a sudden turn, and proceeded partly from a fear of his superior, the Emperor, and partly from a sullen, envious hatred he bore to his father-in-law, the King of England, who, from the time of his advancement to that crown, sank in his son-in-law's favour, just in the same proportion as he rose above him in grandeur. This was a great loss to the allies of Hanover, the King of Prussia having a standing force of 70,000 men. The forces of Spain were about 60,000, besides their naval power ; and the army of the Emperor in all, after the new levies, about 200,000. Muscovy was the only considerable power, besides Prussia, that acceded to the Treaty of Vienna ; for whilst the Czarina alone obliged herself, in case of a rupture, to furnish 30,000 men, the Electors of Bavaria, Cologne, and Treves, besides several other little German Princes that his Imperial Majesty had bullied, cajoled, or bought into his party, could muster no more than 27,000.
While Prince of Wales, future G2 had remained in Britain, but once he was G2, he irritated his English subjects by spending part of his time in Hannover, like his father had done:
Whilst the King was at Hanover he had several little German disputes with his brother of Prussia, the particulars of which being about a few cart-loads of hay, a mill, and some soldiers improperly enlisted by the King of Prussia in the Hanoverian state, I do not think them worthy of being considered in detail ; and shall say nothing further about these squabbles than that, first or last, both of them contrived to be in the wrong. And as these two princes had some similar impracticabilities in their temper, so they were too much alike ever to agree, and from this time forward hated one another with equal imprudence, inveteracy, and openness.
It was reported, and I believe not without foundation, that our Monarch on this occasion sent or would have sent a challenge of single combat to his Prussian Majesty; but whether it was carried and rejected, or whether the prayers and remonstrances of Lord Townshend prevented the gauntlet being actually thrown down, is a point which to me at least has never been cleared.
There was another subject of dispute between the Kings of England and Prussia, which I forgot to enumerate, though it was the only one really of consequence, and that was with regard to the affairs of Mecklenburg. The short statement of their differences on this article was, whether the Prussian or Hanoverian troops (both ordered into Mecklenburg by a decree of the Aulic Council) should have the greatest share (under the pretence of keeping peace) in plundering the people and completing the ruin of that miserable duchy, already reduced to such a state of calamity by the tyrannical conduct of their most abominable, deposed, or rather suspended duke.
It's time for (another) War of the Polish Succession. As a reminder: France backs Louis XV's father-in-law, Stanilaus Lescyinski; Mt's Dad the Emperor backs August the Strong's son, future August III. FW is technically obliged to back both in his dual capacity of Elector of Brandenburg and King of Prussia. Then there's the battle of Philippsburg where no one does much but where Fritz, FW and old Prince Eugene are on one side and the Duc de Richelieu (and Voltaire as a tourist) on the other. G2 wants to join the war effort. His PM, Robert Walpole, and Hervey really really want Britain to stay out of hit.
During these transactions abroad, the King was in the utmost anxiety at home. The battles of Bitonto and Parma, the surrender of Philipsburg, and the bad situation of the Emperor's affairs in every quarter, gave his Majesty the utmost solicitude to exert himself in the defence of the House of Austria, and to put some stop to the rapid triumphs of the House of Bourbon.
For though the King was ready to allow all the personal faults of the Emperor, and was not without resentment for the treatment he himself had met with from the Court of Vienna, yet his hatred to the French was so strong, and his leaning to an Imperial cause so prevalent, that he could not help wishing to distress the one and support the other, in spite of all inferior, collateral, or personal considerations.
In all occurrences he could not help remembering that, as Elector of Hanover, he was a part of the Empire, and the Emperor at the head of it ; and these prejudices, operating in every consideration where his interest as King of England ought only to have been weighed, gave his Minister, who consulted only the interest of England, perpetual difficulties to surmount, whenever he was persuading his Majesty to adhere solely to that.
The King's love for armies, his contempt for civil affairs, and the great capacity he thought he possessed for military exploits, inclined him still with greater violence to be meddling, and warped him yet more to the side of war. He used almost daily and hourly, during the beginning of this summer, to be telling Sir Robert Walpole with what eagerness he glowed to pull the laurels from the brows of the French generals, to bind his own temples ; that it was with the sword alone he desired to keep the balance of Europe, that war and action were his sole pleasures ; that age was coming fast upon him ; and that, if he lost the opportunity of this bustle, no other occasion possibly might offer in which he should be able to distinguish himself, or gather those glories which were now ready at his hand. He could not bear, he said, the thought of growing old in peace, and rusting in the cabinet, whilst other princes were busied in war and shining in the field; but what provoked him most of all, he confessed, was to reflect that, whilst he was only busied in treaties, letters, and despatches, his booby brother, the brutal and cowardly King of Prussia, should pass his time in camps, and in the midst of arms, neither desirous of the glory nor fit for the employment ; whilst he, who coveted the one and was trained for the other, was, for cold prudential reasons, debarred the pleasure of indulging his inclination, and deprived of the advantage of showing his abilities.
See what I mean about deja vu?
But the circumstance that gave Sir Robert Walpole the most trouble of all was that with regard to the war he found the Queen as unmanageable and opinionated as the King. There are local prejudices in all people's composition, imbibed from the place of their birth, the seat of their education, and the residence of their youth, that are hardly ever quite eradicated, and operate much stronger than those who are influenced by them are apt to imagine ; and the Queen, with all her good sense, was actuated by these prejudices in a degree nothing short of that in which they biased the King.
Wherever the interest of Germany and the honour of the Empire were concerned, her thoughts and reasonings were often as German and Imperial as if England had been out of the question ; and there were few inconveniences and dangers to which she would not have exposed this country rather than give occasion to its being said that the Empire suffered affronts unretorted, and the House of Austria injuries unrevenged, whilst she, a German by birth, sat upon this throne an idle spectatress, able to assist and not willing to interpose.
More about Queen Caroline elsewhere. But Hervey's general attitude with its "why are they so German?" ness was widely shared among the British politicians and makes me think Heinrich wasn't wrong when in his RPG with AW when assuming Britain would not have been willing to go to total war for Hannover. Speaking of the family seat, G2 making another trip there is the occasion of the last Prussia mention in volume 1, as his PM tries to argue him into not going. It's the mid 1730s:
Neither would it have been a very agreeable incident for the King of Great Britain, after a month's residence at Hanover, to be running back again through Westphalia to England with seventy thousand Prussians at his heels ; and yet, considering the terms he and the King of Prussia were upon at present, this might easily have happened, and was suggested by Sir Robert Walpole to deter his Majesty from this expedition ; but to their remonstrances his Majesty always answered, "Pooh!" and "Stuff!" or, " You think to get the better of me, but you shall not ;" and, in short, plainly showed that all efforts to divert him from this expedition would be fruitless.
You know what's nearly totally missing (unless it was in the censored by grandson passages)? The endless marriage negotiatioins for Fritz and Wilhelmine. There's one single aside about some there being some idea to marry Fritz of Wales to "a daughter of Prussia", and that's it. Otherwise, the entire rigmorale is of zero interest to Hervey. He does provide us with more quotes on G2 ranting about his Prussian brother-in-law and cousin in volume 2, near the end, after Caroline has died and G2 keeps spilling his guts to Hervey.
To understand the next bit, it's important to recall that G2's aunt was Sophie Charlotte of Hannover (daughter of Sophie of Hannover through whom the entire claim to the English throne went); Sophie Charlotte was not just the mother of FW of Prussia but foster mother of Caroline, and was generally praised as not just one of the most beautiful but definitely one of the best educated and smartest women of her time, with none other than Leipniz as one of her biggest admirers. Which is why I find this statement, err, interesting:
Of his aunt, the Queen of Prussia, too he spoke well, who, by what I heard from others, and particularly the Queen, was a very vain, good-for-nothing woman.
Et tu, Caroline? You owe your education to her, among other things. I feel let down. On to the next Queen of Prussia. G2's sister is of course Sophia Dorothea the younger, wife of FW, and on her, grieving G2 apparently had this to say in 1737:
For his sister, the present Queen of Prussia, he had the contempt she deserved, and a hatred she did not deserve.
WTF? For both Hervey and G2. Hervey having zilch interest in the Prussians per se, and dying when Fritz is still busy conquering Silesia, I don't see how he'd have any motive to make this up. But see: Hervey never met SD. He visited Hannover only once, as a young man on his Grand Tour (when he first encountered nine years old Fritz of Wales), and I don't think she was visiting Hannover as well on that occasion. Prussia, he didn't visit at all. So what is this estimation - that SD deserved contempt but not hate - based on? Perhaps all that begging for the English marriages struck him as pathetic, even if he didn't care enough to note it down, but that's the only thing I can think of.
(Now of course SD with her own treatment of her children provides enough reasons to dislike her, but Hervey seems to know nothing about this.) (Given his own parenting style, I don't see G2 objecting here, either.)
As to why G2 should have contempt and hate for his sister: search me. It's not like she was madly in love with FW and rejecting her family of birth, au contraire. I'm almost starting to come around to Fritz of Prussia's pov on Hannover versus Hohenzollern, but luckily a recent reread of Ziebura's Hohenzollern biographies reminded me how wrong that would be. Back to Hervey:
What he thought and said of the King of Prussia was much the same as what the King of Prussia thought and said of him ; that he was a proud, brutal, tyrannical, wrong-headed, impracticable fellow, who loved nobody and would use everybody ill that was in his power. How far these two Kings were in the right in this point, or how little they were so in every other, is not my business here to determine.
Meaning: peas in a pod. Again, having read through both volumes of Hervey's memoirs, my speculation re: G2 pleading with the other European monarchs for Fritz' life in 1730 is that it was mostly because if he didn't get to kill his son, FW certainly wouldn't. And speaking of murder: if Fritz and Wilhelmine had made those marriages, do want to place any bets on when things would have gotten violent? (Provided most circumstances stay the same.) Would Fritz of Prussia have had the fatal relationship and fallout with Hervey instead of Fritz of Wales? Would Caroline and G2 have accused Wilhelmine, too, of faking her pregnancy because their oldest surely can't sire a child? Would Fritz of Prussia have killed Fritz of Wales for taking Wilhelmine in labor for a one and a half hour drive because he didn't want his parents to be present at the birth? Place your bets!
So much for the Prussians. I get to the next part of family feuding, a word about linguistics. Since the Hannovers are a part of German high nobility, they mostly talk to each other in French, and in German only if they don't want Hervey to understand them. (Hervey, like 99% of English people, does not speak German.) You may have gathered Hervey isn't much impressed with his German overlords, though he doesn't limit his not impressedness by royalty to the House of Hannover (or of Brandenburg). He thinks the lot of them are rubbish:
For my own part, I have the conduct of princes in so little veneration, that I believe they act yet oftener without design than other people, and are insensibly drawn into both good and bad situations without knowing how they came there. (...) I think most of these political contenders for profit and power are, like Catiline and Caesar, actuated by the same principles of ambition and interest, and that as their success determines their characters, so accident determines their success. Had Csesar fallen in the plains of Pharsalia, like Catiline in those of Pistoia, they had both been remembered in the same manner; the different fortune of those battles is what alone constitutes the different characters of these two men, and makes the one always mentioned as the first and the other as the last of mankind.
On the other hand, he's also fiercely ambitious, which means being tight with the PM, Sir Robert Walpole, having a court office and cultivating his ties with the rest of the royal family is important to him. The one he is a bit impressed with, though not uncritically so, is Queen Caroline.
Hervey on the coronation of G2 and Queen Caroline:
In October the ceremony of the Coronation was performed with all the pomp and magnificence that could be contrived ; the present King differing so much from the last, that all the pageantry and splendour, badges and trappings of royalty, were as pleasing to the son as they were irksome to the father. The dress of the Queen on this occasion was as fine as the accumulated riches of the City and suburbs could make it ; for besides her own jewels (which were a great number and very valuable) she had on her head and on her shoulders all the pearls she could borrow of the ladies of quality at one end of the town, and on her petticoat all the diamonds she could hire of the Jews and jewellers at the other; so that the appearance and the truth of her finery was a mixture of magnificence and meanness not unlike the eclat of royalty in many other particulars when it comes to be nicely examined and its sources traced to what money hires or flattery lends.
You may gather from this that contrary to what Halsband told me in his biography, Hervey writes critical stuff about Queen Caroline as well as about the rest of the family. This upsets Croker in the introduction, not least because Hervey also insists he loved the Queen and she loved him. Though our Victorian editor is most upset about what Hervey presumably didn't mean critically at all, to wit, Caroline a) despising her oldest son, and b) having no problem with her husband's mistresses. Speaking of whom, remember Lady Suffolk, who started out as Mrs. Howard and whom G2 took as an English mistress when he was still Prince of Wales when his Dad G1 upset people by bring a German mistress along? Whom G2 visited strictly by the hour and was more dutiful than affectionate towards as opposed to his wife? This is how Hervey introduces her:
She was civil to everybody, friendly to many, and unjust to none : in short, she had a good head and a good heart, but had to do with a man who was incapable of tasting the one or valuing the other.
Meanwhile, Queen Caroline:
Her predominant passion was pride, and the darling pleasure of her soul was power; but she was forced to gratify the one and gain the other, as some people do health, by a strict and painful regime, which few besides herself could have had patience to support, or resolution to adhere to. She was at least seven or eight hours tute-a-tcte with the King every day, during which time she was generally saying what she did not think, assenting to what she did not believe, and praising what she did not approve ; for they were seldom of the same opinion, and he too fond of his own for her ever at first to dare to controvert it (" consilii quamvis egregii quod ipse non afferret, inimicus :"— " An enemy to any counsel, however excellent, which he himself had not suggested." — Tacitus) ;'' she used to give him her opinion as jugglers do a card, by changing it imperceptibly, and making him believe he held the same with that he first pitched upon. But that which made these tete-a-tetes seem heaviest was that he neither liked reading nor being read to (unless it was to sleep) : she was forced, like a spider, to spin out of her own bowels all the conversation with which the fly was taken. However, to all this she submitted for the sake of power, and for the reputation of having it ; for the vanity of being thought to possess what she desired was equal to the pleasure of the possession itself. But, either for the appearance or the reality, she knew it was absolutely necessary to have interest in her husband, as she was sensible that interest was the measure by which people would always judge of her power. Her every thought, word, and act therefore tended and was calculated to preserve her influence there ; to him she sacrificed her time, for him she mortified her inclination ; she looked, spake, and breathed but for him, like a weathercock to every capricious blast of his uncertain temper, and governed him (if such influence so gained can bear the name of government) by being as great a slave to him thus ruled, as any other wife could be to a man who ruled her. For all the tedious hours she spent then in watching him whilst he slept, or the heavier task of entertaining him whilst he was awake, her single consolation was in reflecting she had power, and that people in coffeehouses and ruelles were saying she governed this country, without knowing how dear the government of it cost her.
This was not how G2 saw it, of course:
The King himself was so little sensible of this being his case, that one day enumerating the people who had governed this country in other reigns, he said Charles I. was governed by his wife ; Charles II. by his mistresses ; King James by his priests ; King William by his men—and Queen Anne by her women—favourites. His father, he added, had been by anybody that could get at him. And at the end of this compendious history of our great and wise monarchs, with a significant, satisfied, triumphant air, he turned about, smiling, to one of his auditors, and asked him—"And who do they say governs now?"
Whether this is a true or a false story of the King, I know not, but it was currently reported and generally believed. The following verses will serve for a specimen of the strain in which the libels, satires, and lampoons of these days were omposed :
—
" You may strut, dapper George, but 't will all be in vain ;
We know 'tis Queen Caroline, not you, that reign—
You govern no more than Don Philip of Spain.
Then if you would have us fall down and adore you,
Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before you." '
If Caroline is the sometimes shady but mostly impressive heroine of these memoirs, there's no question as to who's the villain, and no, it's not her husband. A quick reminder of the quintessential Fritz of Wales facts: when the rest of the family moved to Britain, he was seven and left in Hannover. He wouldn't see his parents or siblings again for the next fourteen years, during which time his parents had another son - the future "Billy the Butcher", William, Duke of Cumberland - and blatantly would have preferred that one to inherit. After G1 died, Fritz of Wales finally was allowed on British shore, befriended Hervey, Hervey signed his letters to the prince "your Hephaistion" (claiming the identity of Alexander the Great's bff and lover for himself) while Fritz of Wales compared them to Orestes and Pylades... and then they had a terrible breakup, after which Hervey and the rest of the royal family compete describing Fritz of Wales as the scum of humanity. So here's Hervey on the love rat, Fritz of Wales:
The Prince's character at his first coming over, though little more respectable, seemed much more amiable than, upon his opening himself further and being better known, it turned out to be ; for though there appeared nothing in him to be admired, yet there seemed nothing in him to be hated—neither anything great nor anything vicious ; his behaviour was something that gained one's good wishes, though it gave one no esteem for him ; for his best qualities, whilst they prepossessed one the most in his favour, always gave one a degree of contempt for him at the same time ; his carriage, whilst it seemed engaging to those who did not examine it, appearing mean to those who did : for though his manners had the show of benevolence from a good deal of natural or habitual civility, yet his cajoling everybody, and almost in an equal degree, made those things which might have been thought favours, if more judiciously or sparingly bestowed, lose all their weight. He carried this affectation of general benevolence so far that he often condescended below the character of a Prince; and as people attributed this familiarity to popular, and not particular motives, so it only lessened their respect without increasing their good will, and instead of giving them good impressions of his humanity, only gave them ill ones of his sincerity. He was indeed as false as his capacity would allow him to be, and was more capable in that walk than in any other, never having the least hesitation, from principle or fear of future detection, in telling any lie that served his present purpose. He had a much weaker understanding, and, if possible, a more obstinate temper, than his father ; that is, more tenacious of opinions he had once formed, though less capable of ever forming right ones.
Had he had one grain of merit at the bottom of his heart, one should have had compassion for him in the situation to which his miserable poor head soon reduced him ; for his case, in short, was this :—he had a father that abhorred him, a mother that despised him, sisters that betrayed him, a brother set up against him, and a set of servants that neglected him, and were neither of use, nor capable of being of use to him, nor desirous of being so.
There, there, Hervey. Celebrity break-ups are the worst, we know. Have a glass with Voltaire. The family feduing will get far worse, but first, have a relatively harmless (unless you're Händel) example of the musical kind.
The Princess Royal is the oldest daughter, Anne, married to William of Orange (not that one, another one). Like the rest of the family, see above, an enemy of her brother Fritz of Wales after he showed up as an adult and, confronted with the unavoiidable fact none of the rest of the family wants him there, drifts towards the opposition (which, btw, all the Hannover Prince of Waleses were prone to do):
Another judicious subject of his enmity was her supporting Handel, a German musician and composer (who had been her singing master, and was now undertaker of one of the operas), against several of the nobility who had a pique with Handel, and had set up another person to ruin him ; or, to speak more properly and exactly, the Prince, in the beginning of his enmity to his sister, set himself at the head of the other opera to irritate her, whose pride and passions were as strong as her brother's (although his understanding was so much weaker), and could brook contradiction, where she dared to resent it, as little as her father. What I have related may seem a trifle ; but though the cause was indeed such, the effects of it were no trifles. The King and Queen were as much in earnest upon this subject as their son and daughter, though they had the prudence to disguise it, or to endeavour to disguise it, a little more. They were both Handelists, and sat freezing constantly at his empty Haymarket Opera, whilst the Prince with all the chief of the nobility went as constantly to that of Lincoln's Inn Fields. The affair grew as serious as that of the Greens and the Blues under Justinian at Constantinople; an anti-Handelist was looked upon as an anticourtier ; and voting against the Court in Parliament was hardly a less remissible or more venial sin than speaking against Handel or going to the Lincoln's Inn Fields Opera. The Princess Royal said she expected in a little while to see half the House of Lords playing in the orchestra in their robes and coronets ; and the King—though he declared he took no other part in this affair than subscribing lOOO pound. a-year to Handel—often added at the same time that " he did not think setting oneself at the head of a faction of fiddlers a very honourable occupation for people of quality ; or the ruin of one poor fellow [Handel] so generous or so good-natured a scheme as to do much honour to the undertakers, whether they succeeded or not ; but the better they succeeded in it, the more he thought they would have reason to be ashamed of it." The Princess Royal quarrelled with the Lord Chamberlain for affecting his usual neutrality on this occasion, and spoke of Lord Delaware, who was one of the chief managers against Handel, with as much spleen as if he had been at the head of the Dutch faction who opposed the making her husband Stadtholder.'
Before I get to the next point, I should mention that Hervey, whenever he shows up in his own tale as an acting character, writes of himself in the third person, i.e. "Lord Hervey did this" or "then Lord Hervey said to the Queen", etc. A la Caesar in the Gallic Wars. Confusingly, though, he also writes in the first person - i.e. "I heard this from Sir Robert directly" or "I was present when the King said this" etc. I'm not sure whether he wanted his readers to believe a third party - an unnamed historian - was writing these memoirs; after all, he knew they wouldn't and couldn't be published within his own life time, and probably not for some time hereafter. Or maybe it was just a stylistic device, understood by readers of the time; I'm not sure, since none of the other 18th Century memoirs I've read so far employ it. (Certainly not Voltaire's.)
Okay, onwards: G2 keeps irritating his English subjects with visiting Hannover, remember. On one such visit, his English mistress, Lady Suffolk, gets married again despite being in her 40s. G2 hears about it from Caroline via letter, drags out his time in Hannover, and comes back with a German (!) mistress, Madame Waldmoden, the ultimate insult. This causes Lord Hervey to muse thusly.
Whilst the late King lived, everybody imagined this Prince loved England and hated Germany ; but from the time of his first journey, after he was King, to Hanover, people began to find, if they had not been deceived in their former opinion, at least they would be so in their expectations; and that his thoughts, whatever they might have been, were no longer turned either with contempt or dislike to his Electoral dominions.
But after this last journey Hanover had so completed the conquest of his affections, that there was nothing English ever commended in his presence that he did not always show, or pretend to show, was surpassed by something of the same kind in Germany. No English or even French cook could dress a dinner; no English confectioner set out a dessert ; no English player could act ; no English coachman could drive, or
English jockey ride; nor were any English horses fit to be drove or fit to be ridden; no Englishman knew how to come into a room, nor any Englishwoman how to dress herself; nor were there any diversions in England, public or private ; nor any man or woman in England whose conversation was to be borne—the one, as he said, talking of nothing but their dull politics, and the others of nothing but their ugly clothes. Whereas at Hanover all these things were in the utmost perfection: the men were patterns of politeness, bravery, and gallantry; the women of beauty, wit, and entertainment; his troops there were the bravest in the world, his counsellors the wisest, his manufacturers the most ingenious,
his subjects the happiest; and at Hanover, in short, plenty reigned, magnificence resided, arts flourished, diversions abounded, riches flowed, and everything was in the utmost perfection that contributes to make a prince great or a people blessed. (...)
In truth he hated the English, looked upon them all as king-killers and republicans, grudged them their riches as well as their liberty, thought them all overpaid, and said to Lady Sundon one day as she was waiting at dinner, just after he returned from Germany, that he was forced to distribute his favours here very differently from the manner in which he bestowed them at Hanover ; /that there he rewarded people for doing
their duty and serving him well, but that here he was obliged to enrich people for being rascals, and buy them not to cut his throat.
The Queen did not always think in a different style of the English, though she kept her thoughts more to herself than the King, as being more prudent, more sensible, and more mistress of her passions ; yet even she could not entirely disguise these sentiments to the observation of those who were perpetually about her, and put her upon subjects that betrayed her into revealing them.
Hervey was a satirist, so I'm taking this a pinch of salt and the awareness that G2 believing some things were better in Hannover would already been taken as Britain bashing by most Brits, given their idea of England as the climax of civilisation. This said, I still find it amusing.
Caroline, btw, never goes with G2 to Hannover; she stays because he always makes her regent in his absence. (Never Fritz of Wales.) Which she thoroughly enjoys. Hervey, ever ready to share scandal, can't report one more about Madame W. other than that he can't understand what G2 sees in her, so he turns towards another German lady in G2's entourage and claims one of "Aunt" Melusine's daughters has also been getting it on with not one, but two Georges and Fritz of Wales:
This Madame d'Elitz was a Schulemberg, sister to my Lady Chesterfield—a very handsome lady, though now a little in her decline, with a reat deal of wit, who had had a thousand lovers, and had been catched in bed with a man twenty years ago, and been divorced from her husband upon it. She was said to have been mistress to three generations of the Hanover family — the late King, the present, and the Prince of Wales before he came to England, which was one generation more than the Duchess of Valentinois " (mistress to Henry II.) could boast of in France. The present King had quitted Madame d'Elitz for Madame Walmoden, upon which a quarrel ensued between the two ladies, and the King thereupon had turned Madame d'Elitz out of the palace the year before; just therefore when the King set out for Hanover this year, Madame d'Elitz set out for England, where she now was with her aunt and sister, the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Chesterfield.
Note from our Victorian editor Croker: Hervey is wrong about Diane de Poitiers having slept with Francis I. of France as well as his son Henry II (the one married to Catherine de' Medici), that was slander, and he's probably slandering this Schulenburg sister as well.
Meanwhile, the combined forces of the salon identified "Madame d'Elitz" as Anna Luise von der Schulenburg, Countess of Dölitz, like her sister Petronella (married to Lord Chesterfield) an illegitimate daughter of G1 and Melusine von der Schulenburg (Duchess of Kendal). (Her entire genealogy as well as connection to the Kattes explained here.) Now you'd think since Hervey reports her as mistress to G1, G2 and Fritz of Wales, he'd mention this would have been triple incest. While it's not impossible that Victorian editor Croker edited this out, or Hervey's grandson did, something else strikes me as far more likely, especially since there is precedent: Hervey, who got bored to tears whenever G2 (whose hobby was genealogy) started with who was related to whom, and who didn't speak German, made the same mistake the British nobility had made when G1 arrived in England with one mistress (Meliusine) and one illegitimate half sister (Sophia von Kielmanssegg) - they assumed the other woman having familiarly with the Hannovers who was evidently not a wife had to be a mistress and didn't consider that one of the few Hannover virtues of the early generations was that they actually did include their illegitimate offspring in their lives. Presumably seeing the non-royal Döltz hang out with three generations of Hannovers led Hervey to the same wrong conclusion.
Another German/English culture clash reported by Hervey involves fox hunting and was probably G2's finest moment. I mentioned this in my Horowski review, but Hervey provides the original quote:
When the Duke of Grafton notified his design to go into the country, the King told him it was a pretty occupation for a man of quality, and at his age, to be spending all his time in tormenting a poor fox, that was generally a much better beast than any of those that pursued him; for the fox hurts no other animal but for his subsistence, whilst those brutes who hurt him did it only for the pleasure they took in hurting. The Duke of Grafton said he did it for his health. The King asked him why he could not as well walk or ride post for his health ; and said, if there was any pleasure in the chase, he was sure the Duke of Grafton could know nothing of it; "for," added his Majesty, "with your great corps of twenty stone weight, no horse, I am sure, can carry you within hearing, much less within sight, of your hounds." This last dialogue I was present at.
As the 1730s go on, relations between Fritz of Wales and his parents go from bad to worse. Hervey proves that modern day gossip columnists have nothing on him as he shares with his his estimation of various mistresses and the wife:
G2 makes it known Fritz of Wales should finally tie the knot, and he's found an ideal bride while in Hannover: 17 years old Augusta von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Queen Caroline adds he should ditch the girlfriend with the child she refuses to believe is her son's. Fritz of Wales, who is about to break up with Miss Vane anyway and according to Hervey has been eying another mistress, takes this parental news and commands well for a change and sends his flunky Lord Baltimore to Miss Vane, with a proposal that she should marry Lord Baltimore and get a pension, thus being cared for, but that it would be tactful to his future bride if she and Baltlimore were to travel abroad for a while. The kid, however, should stay here (and he swears he'll continue to take care of it). Miss Vane upon Hervey's advice and using Hervey as ghostwriter fires off an indignant letter that he's breaking her heart and no way will she leave the country her child is in and what kind of thrifty bastard is he anyway? The upshot of this is that the Lord Baltlimore marriage is off the table, Miss Vane gets a larger pension in her own name and doesn't have to leave the country. Alas, she then goes to Bath to enjoy the spa and dies. Little Fitzfrederick also dies with just a week distance. Hervey grudgingly admits Fritz of Wales seemed more distressed about this than anyone had thought him capable of being.
On to Lady Archibald Hamilton, according to Hervey the new mistress of the love rat. (Again, it's worth keeping in mind that the same Hervey who is writing all this managed to juggle his own wife, Miss Vane, Stephen Fox and Fritz of Wales.)
Lady Archibald Hamilton was not young, had never been very pretty, and had lost at least as much of that small share of beauty she once possessed as it is usual for women to do at five-and-thirty, after being the mother of ten children. Her husband, Lord Archibald Hamilton, was a Scotchman, uncle to the Duke of Hamilton, a Lord of the Admiralty, and of so quiet, so secure, and contented a temper, that he seemed cut out to play the passive character his wife and the Prince had graciously allotted him. His wife was cunning, and had just sense enough to make that cunning useful to her, when employed to work on such a husband as Lord Archibald Hamilton, and such a lover as the Prince of Wales ; and succeeded perfectly well in flattering the first into an opinion of her virtue, and the latter into an admiration of her beauty and understanding, which she facilitated by the much easier task of making the Prince believe she was entirely captivated by his.
But as there always are some people who doubt of the most notorious intrigues, as well as others who make no doubt of what only themselves believe, so there were some few who thought, or, I rather believe, affected to think, that this commerce between Lady Archibald Hamilton and the Prince was merely platonic, though stronger symptoms of an affaire faite never appeared on any pair than were to be seen between this couple. He saw her often at her own house, where he seemed as welcome to the master as the mistress ; he met her often, too, at her sister's; walked with her day after day for hours together tete-a-tete in a morning in St. James's Park ; and whenever she was at the drawing-room (which was pretty frequently), his behaviour was so remarkable that his nose and her ear were inseparable(...)
And you thought Voltaire was bitchy about Fritz and Fredersdorf. Lady Archibald Hamilton - incidentally the mother of Sir William Hamilton, future participant in one of the most famous menage a trois of the 18th century, involving national hero Horatio Nelson and Sir William's wife Emma as well as himself - becomes lady-in-waiting to the new bride, Augusta. Augusta has gotten one of those long distance royal marriages where a substitute gets send and brings the bride home, to which, Lord Delaware:
Lord Delaware, if the King chose him to prevent the Prince's having any jealousy of his future bride's affections being purloined on the way by him who was sent to attend her to England, was the properest man his Majesty could have pitched upon ; for, except his white staff and red riband, as Knight of the Bath, I know of nothing belonging to the long, lank, awkward person of Lord Delaware that could attract her eyes ; nor do I believe there could be found in any of the Goth or Yandal courts of Germany a more unpolished ambassador for such an occasion.
Augusta, poor girl, arrives in Britain and throws herself on the ground before the King and Queen, which wins them over for a few days at least. Hervey, however, is not impressed:
She could speak not one word of English, and few of French; and when it was proposed the year before to her mother, when this match was resolved upon, that she should be taught one of these languages, her mother said it must be quite unnecessary, for the Hanover Family having been above twenty years on the throne, to be sure most people in England spoke German (and especially at Court) as often and as well as English. A conjecture so well founded that I believe there were not three natives in England that understood one word of it better than in the reign of Queen Anne.
Hervey, I think that says rather more about British nobility than it does about Augusta's Mom's assumptions.
The Princess was rather tall, and had health and youth enough in her face, joined to a very modest andgood-natured look, to make her countenance not disagreeable; but her person, from being very ill-made, a good deal awry, her arms long, and her motions awkward, had, in spite of all the finery of jewels and brocade, an ordinary air, which no trappings could cover or exalt.
Now if you think only women who have sex with Fritz of Wales are the objects of Hervey's scorn, you're mistaken. He's just as malicious about the woman who would have married Fritz of Prussia if the endless negotiations had worked out, to wit, Princess Amalie (as her mother calls her) or Emily (as Hervey calls her). The only princess Hervey likes is Princess Caroline, but as for Amalia/Emily/Amalie:
The Queen used to speak to Lord Hervey on this subject with as little reserve when the Princess Caroline was present, as when alone ; but never before the Princess Emily, who had managed her affairs so well, as to have lost entirely the confidence of her mother, without having obtained the friendship of her brother; by trying to make her court by turns to both, she had by turns betrayed both, and at last lost both. Princess Emily had much the least sense, except her brother, of the family, but had for two years much the prettiest person. She was lively, false, and a great liar ; did many ill offices to people, and no good ones; and, for want of prudence, said as many shocking she said disagreeable ones behind their backs. She had as many enemies as acquaintances, for nobody knew her without disliking her.
Lord Hervey was very ill with her : she had first used him ill, to flatter her brother, which of course had made him not use her very well ; and the preference on every occasion he gave her sister, the Princess Caroline, completed their mutual dislike. Princess Caroline had affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness without levity, and . prudence without falsehood.
So much for the maybe Queen of Prussia. I should say here she sounds far more amiable in her wiki entry, which is the only other thing I've read about her. Who knows?
But for all that Hervey doesn't like G2 and isn't much impressed with the extended family, Queen Caroline and Princess Caroline the younger aside, he drops the occasional oddly endearing anecdote as well, like the fox hunting dialogue. The Fritz of Wales bashing from him and everyone showing up in these memoirs, though, is absolutely relentless. Our Victorian editor just throws up his hands and says he has no idea just why both parents hated FoW so much even before he joined forces with the opposition and thus gave them cause, even before he arrived in England and was still a youngster in Hannover and according to visitors (including, btw, Hervey himself on his Grand Tour, writing letters home) an amiable, bright child with a lot of charm.
Now, Fritz of Wales' budget is much less than what his father G2 used to get when he'd been Fritz of Wales, and when this still doesn't change after marriage, he doesn't just keep asking his parents for more, no, he tries to get his budget heightened via parliament. This scheme doesn't work, partly Sir Robert Walpole and Hervey work against it. (Hervey asks for a peerage for Stephen Fox from Walpole given that Stephen did his best to cajole his parliamentary colleagues to side with the King, not the Prince, and for some thank you money for Henry Fox, who did the same.) Meanwhile, FW's rants against Fritz are completely matched by Queen Caroline's words about her son and his attempt to make common cause with MPs:
"My God," says the Queen, " popularity always makes me sick ; but Fritz's popularity makes me vomit. I hear that yesterday, on his side of the house, they talked of the King's being cast away with the same sang-froid as you would talk of a coach being overturned ; and that my good son strutted about as if he had been already King. Did you mind the air with which he came into my drawing-room in the morning, though he does not think fit to honour me with his presence or ennui me with his wife's of a night?"
Events come to a head when Augusta gets pregnant and Caroline tells everyone she thinks Augusta is faking it, and will substitute a bought baby, and then Fritz of Wales refuses to tell his parents when the birth is expected when G2 orders him and Augusta to Hampton Court, and when his wife gets into labor, insists on taking her to St. James. (Which however you look at it was an incredibly selfish jerk move - that drive with a woman in labor must have been hell - but of course Hervey doesn't think all the relentless hate from the rest of the family might have given Fritz of Wales the inspiration of not wanting his parents present at the kid's birth. As mentioned in my Horowski write up, the baby is a sickly girl which, Caroline says, is the only reason why believes it's Augusta's baby after all. She's nice to Augusta when she visits but doesn't say a word to Fritz of Wales. The rupture between son and parents is now complete. Letters are exchanged. Some courtiers try to mediate, but:
Lord Essex telling, and asking, at the same time, if he should call one of the Ministers, the Queen said, " For what? to give an answer to Fritz ? Does the King want a Minister to tell him what answer he likes to give to his son ? or to call a council for such a letter, like an aifair d'etat?"
In between everything else, an old plan gets revived - separating Hannover and Britain, with giving one to Caroline's and G2's fave William, future Billy the Butcher. Says our editor in a footnote:
George I., in his enmity to George II., entertained some idea of separating the sovereignty of England and Hanover (Coxe^s Walpole, p. 132) ; and we find from Lord Chancellor King's ' Diary,' under the date of June, 1725, " a negotiation had been lately on foot in relation to the two young Princes, Frederick and William. The Prince (George II.) and his wife were for excluding Prince Frederick, but that after the King and the Prince he should be Elector of Hanover, and Prince William King of Great Britain ; but that the King said it would be unjust to do it without Prince Frederick's consent, who was now of an age to judge for himself, and so the matter now stood " (Campbell's ' Chancellors,' iv. 318). Sir Robert Walpole, who communicated this to the Chancellor, added that he had told George I. that " if he did not bring Prince Frederick over in his life-time, he would never set his foot on English ground." This early enmity of his parents to Frederick Lord Campbell cannot explain ; " but the Prince had his revenge by perpetually disturbing the government of his father till, in 1751, the joyful exclamation by George II was uttered, ' Fritz is dead!' "—ib.
Which Hervey, who died in the early 1740s, didn't live to see. (Nor Fritz of Wales as a father even his enemies couldn't bash; FoW raised his children - he had nine all in all - with English as their first language, he gave them all a bit of the garden in his estate they were to garden themselves as they wanted, which started a life long passion in future G3, "Farmer George", and he played with them and encouraged them with music.) What he did live to see where endless "We hate Fritz" parties with the other royals:
The Princess Caroline, who loved her mother and disliked her brother in equal and extreme degrees, was in much the same state of mind as the Queen ; her consideration and regard for her mother making her always adopt the Queen's opinions, as well as share her pleasures and her afflictions. They neither of them made much ceremony of wishing a hundred times a day that the Prince might drop down dead of an apoplexy— the Queen cursing the hour of his birth, and the Princess Caroline declaring she grudged him every hour he continued to breathe ; and reproaching Lord Hervey with his weakness for having ever loved him, and being fool enough to think that he had been ever beloved by him, as well as being so great a dupe as to believe the nauseous beast (those were her words) cared for anybody but his own nauseous self—that he loved anything but money—that he was not the greatest liar that ever spoke—and would not put one arm about anybody's neck to kiss them, and then stab' them with the other, if he could censored passageShe protested that from the time he had been here six months—so early had she found him out—she had never loved him better or thought better of him than at that moment.'
At this point it must have occurred to Hervey that future readers might doubt how reliable he is re: Fritz of Wales, so he does some self analysis about his motives, in the third person:
The truth is, if his temper was susceptible of provocation, he might, without being capable of feeling long provoked at the same circumstance, have continued long warm in his resentment against the Prince, since scarce a day passed without some new lie the Prince had made of him during the quarrel, as well as some virulent thing he now said of him, being reported to Lord Hervey by the Queen or the Princess Caroline, who both hated the Prince at this time to a degree which cannot be credited or conceived by people who did not hear the names they called him, the character they gave him, the curses they lavished upon him, and the fervour with which they both prayed every day for his death.
It would be endless to endeavour to repeat all the lies Lord Hervey at this time heard the Prince had coined of him, but one or two of the most remarkable I will insert. The Prince told the Queen and all his sisters that Lord Hervey had told him everybody said his Royal Highness was known to have such a partiality for the Princess Royal, and to be so incapable of concealing anything from her, that nobody doubted (Note from Editor - lines stricken out in manuscript by grandson).
Another was that Lord Hervey, from the moment he first came about him, had been always endeavouring to give him ill impressions of the Queen and all his sisters ; to blow him up against his father and a hundred times endeavoured to persuade him to make a party to move for his 100,000?. a-year in Parliament as well as brought offers to him from people in the Opposition, and made use of Miss Vane's interest to get them accepted.
I do not relate these things as any justification of Lord Hervey's conduct at this time ; for if personal resentment, and a desire to vex and mortify the Prince,- had any share in his views and counsels at this juncture, I own he is not justifiable, as nothing can justify the meanness of a man of sense desiring, from a principle of revenge, to hurt those by whom he has been injured, further than self-preservation requires, or the silly received laws of mistaken customary honour enjoin: but take this particular (with regard to the Prince) out of Lord Hervey's character, and I believe it would be impossible to give another instance of the same sort of wrong to anybody in any part of his conduct ; though few people had more enemies, or had reason to be irritated against more people, if being abused is allowed to be a reason.
Yes, Hervey, I'm sure you were the milk of human kindness otherwise. Good grief.
The big climax of the memoirs and their finale are Queen Caroline's death and the immediate aftermath. Hervey ends his memoirs there, and like the essay says, for all that their title refers to the reign of George II, they should really be titled "reign of Caroline", for she is the central character in his narrative. She died a terrible death.
Since her last pregnancy, Caroline had suffered from an umbilical hernia, or a hole in her belly, and couldn’t bear to have anything tight around her middle. Nor could she bear to have anyone know about such an embarrassing disorder, and she always kept on her shift when being undressed by her ladies. Finally, in 1737, a bit of her bowel popped out through that hole, and she could not disguise the fact that she was seriously ill. Her doctors should have pushed that loop of bowel back inside and hoped that the hole would heal, but instead they made a terrible error. They cut it off. Now Caroline’s digestive system was destroyed, and she took ten days to die. Incidentally, I had to look up the medical details, because our Victorian editor childes Hervey for providing them (about a lady! and a Queen!) and proudly announces he protects us readers from them as much as he can. What's still there is all the surrounding drama, which took place shortly after Fritz of Wales had that big break with his parents due to way his first legitimate daughter was born. When he heard about the Queen's state of health, he tried to see her, but no dice. Hervey of course thinks he was probably popping the champagne in anticipation and faking all filial feelings. FoW's parents heartily agree, as mentioned in my write-up of the Halsband biography. Here's a passage from shortly before Caroline's illness is discovered:
Lord Hervey took occasion upon this subject, among many other things, to say, he did not believe there ever was a father and a son so thoroughly unlike in every particular as the King and the Prince, and enumerated several points in which they differed, as little to the advantage of the Prince as to the dispraise or displeasure of the King. The King said he had really thought so himself a thousand times, and had often asked the Queen if the beast was his son. Lord Hervey said that question must be to very little purpose, for to be sure the Queen would never own it if he was not. The King said the first child generally was the husband's, "and therefore," says he, "I fancy he is what in German we call a Weckselbalch; (Hervey's spelling; it's actually "Wechselbalg") I do not know," continued he, " if you have a word for it in English : it is not what you call a foundling, but a child put in a cradle instead of another."
" That is a changeling," replied Lord Hervey. The King was extremely pleased with this translation, and said, " I wish you could prove him a changeling in the German sense of the word as easily as anybody can prove him so in the other ;—though the Queen was a great while before her maternal affection would give him up for a fool, and yet I told her so before he had been acting as if he had not common sense."
Lord Hervey said the Queen had often last year done the honours of his Royal Highness's understanding to him, and was very loth to give it quite up, but that of late he had not perceived she had any hope left of disguising it. "My dear Lord," replied the Queen, ' " I will give it you under my hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest ass and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and I that I most heartily wish he was out of it."
And so on, and so forth. Now, you may recall G2 had had a terrible relationship with his own father, G1, so FoW and/or his advisors get the idea to publish some letters between G1 and future G2 when G2 was Prince of Wales, with the implication: Hypocrite much? Considering most of said letters were burned by Caroline when G2 became King, the Royals think that Fritz must have gotten those letters from the Duchess of Kendal. (Aka Aunt Melusine to Katte, mistress of G1.) Otoh, Hervey thinks Fritz must have a spy in the palace, because the letters published are just those three not burned. In any event, he thinks they just demonstrate that G1 was a way harsher father, since he temporarily took G2's children from him during their biggest argument, while G2 generously declared he wouldn't do that to FoW.
During Caroline's ten days of dying, Hervey and the Royals, minus Fritz and Augusta who aren't allowed access, spend most at the time in Caroline's bed room or next door. This temporarly makes Hervey soften on the King, but not so much is second least favourite Hannover offspring, Emily/Amalia, quondam intended for Fritz of Prussia. An illustration in the following scene (re: storm - G2 and Emily are referencing G2 during his most recent return from Hannover being caught in a tempest across the channel):
One night whilst the Queen was ill, as (G2) was sitting in his nightgown and nightcap in a great chair, with his legs upon a stool, and nobody in the room with him but the Princess Emily, who lay upon a couch, and Lord Hervey, who sat by the fire, he talked in this strain of his own courage in the storm and his illness, till the Princess Emily, as Lord Hervey thought, fell fast asleep, whilst Lord Hervey, as tired as he was of the present conversation and this last week's watching, was left alone to act civil auditor and adroit courtier, to applaud what he heard, and every now and then to ask such proper questions as led the King into giving some more particular detail of his own magnanimity. The King, turning towards Princess Emily, and seeing her eyes shut, cried, "Poor good child! her duty, affection, and attendance on her mother have quite exhausted her spirits." And soon after he went into the Queen's room. As soon as his back was turned. Princess Emily started up, and said, " Is he gone ? How tiresome he is!"
Lord Hervey, who had no mind to trust her Royal Highness with his singing her father's praises in duetto with her, replied only, " I thought your Royal Highness had been asleep." " No," said the Princess Emily ; " I only shut my eyes that I might not join in the ennuyant conversation, and wish I could have shut my ears too. In the first place, I am sick to death of hearing of his great courage every day of my life ; in the next place, one thinks now of Mama, and not of him. Who cares for his old storm ? I believe, too, it is a great lie, and that he was as much afraid as I should have been, for all what he says now ; and as to his not being afraid when he was ill, I know that is a lie, for I saw him, and I heard all his sighs and his groans, when he was in no more danger than I am at this moment. He was talking, too, for ever of dying, and that he was sure he should not recover." All this, considering the kind things she had heard the King say the minute before, when he imagined her asleep. Lord Hervey thought a pretty extraordinary return for her to make for that paternal goodness, or would have thought it so in anybody but her ; and looked upon this openness to him, whom she did not love, yet less to be accounted for, unless he could have imagined it was to draw him in to echo her, and then to relate what he said as if he had said it unaccompanied.
Whilst she was going on with the panegyric on the King which I have related, the King returned, upon which she began to rub her eyes as if she had that instant raised her head from her pillows, and said, "I have really slept very heartily. How long had Papa been out of the room ?" The King, who had very little or rather no suspicion in his composition, took these appearances for realities, and said, " It is time for us all to take a little rest. We will all go to bed, for by staying here we do the poor Queen no good, and ourselves hurt." And so dismissing Lord Hervey, they all retired.
You already know the famous "Marry again after my death"/ "No, I will have mistresses!" exchange in French between Caroline and G2, for which Hervey is the source. G2 was truly distraught upon her death, and mistresses or not, remained so. Caroline's coffin and later his own are of the kind where you can draw one of the walls back once both are laid next to each other; he wanted their dust to mingle. (Caroline died in 1737; G2 in 1761). Grieving Caroline together makes him bond with Hervey (enough so Hervey ends up being appointed Lord Privy Seal), and thus Hervey gets treated to G2's reflections on his German relations. I already quoted the Prussia-relevant gossip at the start of this entry. Here's one more reflection, or rather, the lack of same, if you believe Hervey. A reminder: G2's mother was Sophia Dorothea the older, locked up for 30 years for her affair with (probably murdered) Count Königsmarck, and dying in prison. The "Reminscences" are by Horace Walpole, son of Sir Robert Walpole and the other great bitchy memoirist of the Georgian era:
The King often said, and to many people at this time, that not only he and his family should have a great loss in the Queen's death, but the whole nation: and would instance occasions where he owned her good sense and good temper had kept his passions within bounds which they would otherwise have broken. And during this retirement (in which he was infinitely more talkative than I ever knew him at any other time of his whole life) he discoursed so constantly and so openly of himself, that if anybody had had a mind to write the memoirs of his life from his cradle to the present moment, the Princesses and Lord Hervey could have furnished them with materials of all the occurrences, transactions, and anecdotes, military, civil, amorous, foreign, and domestic, that could be comprehended in such a work, from his own lips : excepting what related to his mother, whom on no occasion I ever heard him mention, not even inadvertently or indirectly, any more than if such a person had never had a being. (*)
*Footnote by Victorian editor Croker: This is remarkable, and seems hardly reconcilable with the strong opinion of her innocence and the affectionate regard for her person attributed to him in the Reminiscences. "The second George loved his mother as much as he hated his father ; and purposed, it was said, if she had survived, to have brought her over and declared her Queen-Dowager. Lady Suffolk told me her surprise on going to the new Queen the morning after George I.'s death, at seeing hung up in the Queen's dressing-room the whole-length of a lady in royal robes, and in the bed-chamber a half-length of the same person, which Lady Suffolk had never seen before." They were of his mother, which the Prince had till then kept concealed.
Whom to believe? Well, Hervey knew the royals better than younger Walpole, who had the story second hand from Lady Suffolk; otoh Hervey made mistakes re: Kielsmansegg and Döltz and was prone to tune out when G2 went on too long about family business. Or perhaps both are true: young future G2 had kept those portraits of his banished and imprisoned mother and hung them up once G1 was dead, but he didn't talk about her. If nothing else, he would have shared such a behavior with an earlier British monarch, Elizabeth I., supposedly mentioned her executed mother, Anne Boleyn, only two or three times in her long life, if at all, yet when she died it turned out the ring she was always wearing had Anne's miniature portrait in it.
And thus I wrap up my choice of quotes from the immensely entertaining memoirs of Lord Hervey, disser extraordinaire.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-26 09:21 pm (UTC)Do you have a link to a non-bowdlerized, unabridged one? I admit I wasn't seriously looking, since the Victorian one would be free and immediate, but if there is one that's more modern and isn't abridged down to 200 pages like the one I found, I can try my Google-fu to see if it's feasible to make it available to you. :)
I'm still hoping the one by the authors of the Hephaestion article gets published sooner rather than later!
no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 03:24 pm (UTC)Speaking of additions to the library, the tracking info informs me 3 volumes of Lady Mary letters are supposed to be delivered in the next hour or so, though it will most likely take me some days to get them all digitized.
ETA: They arrived while I still had this tab open, and alas, the company that was supposed to send me volume 3 sent me volume 1. Curses! I will try to get a replacement, but I may only be able to get a refund. :/ But we do have volumes 1 and 2, which go up to 1751.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-27 03:34 am (UTC)This is still my favorite part. We make such a good team!
no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-04 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-05 07:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-08 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-08 09:42 am (UTC)