Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges Part 58

Whose name looks the brightest now, that of Queensberry the wealthy duke, or Selwyn the wit, or Levett the poor physician?

I hold old Johnson (and shall we not pardon James Boswell some errors for embalming him for us?) to be the great supporter of the British Monarchy and Church during the last age-better than whole benches of bishops, better than Pitts, Norths, and the great Burke himself. Johnson had the ear of the nation: his immense authority reconciled it to loyalty, and shamed it out of irreligion. When George III talked with him, and the people heard the great author's good opinion of the sovereign, whole generations rallied to the king. Johnson was revered as a sort of oracle; and the oracle declared for Church and King. What a humanity the old man had! He was a kindly partaker of all honest pleasures: a fierce foe to all sin, but a gentle enemy to all sinners. "What, boys, are you for a frolic?" he cries, when Topham Beauclerc comes and wakes him up at midnight: "I'm with you," And away he goes, tumbles on his homely old clothes, and trundles through Covent Garden with the young fellows. When he used to frequent Garrick's theatre, and had "the liberty of the scenes", he says, "all the actresses knew me, and dropped me a curtsy as they pa.s.sed to the stage." That would make a pretty picture: it is a pretty picture in my mind, of youth, folly, gaiety, tenderly surveyed by wisdom's merciful, pure eyes.

George III and his queen lived in a very unpretending but elegant-looking house, on the site of the hideous pile under which his granddaughter at present reposes. The king's mother inhabited Carlton House, which contemporary prints represent with a perfect paradise of a garden, with trim lawns, green arcades, and vistas of cla.s.sic statues. She admired these in company with my Lord Bute, who had a fine cla.s.sic taste, and sometimes counsel took and sometimes tea in the pleasant green arbours along with that polite n.o.bleman. Bute was hated with a rage of which there have been few examples in English history. He was the b.u.t.t for everybody's abuse; for Wilkes's devilish mischief; for Churchill's slas.h.i.+ng satire; for the hooting of the mob that roasted the boot, his emblem, in a thousand bonfires; that hated him because he was a favourite and a Scotchman, calling him "Mortimer", "Lothario", I know not what names, and accusing his royal mistress of all sorts of crimes-the grave, lean, demure, elderly woman, who, I dare say, was quite as good as her neighbours. Chatham lent the aid of his great malice to influence the popular sentiment against her. He a.s.sailed, in the House of Lords, "the secret influence, more mighty than the Throne itself, which betrayed and clogged every administration." The most furious pamphlets echoed the cry.

"Impeach the king's mother," was scribbled over every wall at the Court end of the town, Walpole tells us. What had she done? What had Frederick, Prince of Wales, George's father, done, that he was so loathed by George II and never mentioned by George III? Let us not seek for stones to batter that forgotten grave, but acquiesce in the contemporary epitaph over him:-

Here lies Fred, Who was alive, and is dead.

Had it been his father, I had much rather.

Had it been his brother, Still better than another.

Had it been his sister, No one would have missed her.

Had it been the whole generation, Still better for the nation.

But since 'tis only Fred, Who was alive, and is dead, There's no more to be said.

The widow with eight children round her, prudently reconciled herself with the king, and won the old man's confidence and goodwill. A shrewd, hard, domineering, narrow-minded woman, she educated her children according to her lights, and spoke of the eldest as a dull, good boy: she kept him very close: she held the tightest rein over him: she had curious prejudices and bigotries. His uncle, the burly c.u.mberland, taking down a sabre once, and drawing it to amuse the child-the boy started back and turned pale. The prince felt a generous shock: "What must they have told him about me?" he asked.

His mother's bigotry and hatred he inherited with the courageous obstinacy of his own race; but he was a firm believer where his fathers had been freethinkers, and a true and fond supporter of the Church, of which he was the t.i.tular defender. Like other dull men, the king was all his life suspicious of superior people. He did not like Fox; he did not like Reynolds; he did not like Nelson, Chatham, Burke; he was testy at the idea of all innovations, and suspicious of all innovators. He loved mediocrities; Benjamin West was his favourite painter; Beattie was his poet. The king lamented, not without pathos, in his after-life, that his education had been neglected. He was a dull lad brought up by narrow-minded people. The cleverest tutors in the world could have done little probably to expand that small intellect, though they might have improved his tastes, and taught his perceptions some generosity.

But he admired as well as he could. There is little doubt that a letter, written by the little Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz,-a letter containing the most feeble commonplaces about the horrors of war, and the most trivial remarks on the blessings of peace, struck the young monarch greatly, and decided him upon selecting the young princess as the sharer of his throne, I pa.s.s over the stories of his juvenile loves-of Hannah Lightfoot, the Quaker, to whom they say he was actually married (though I don't know who has ever seen the register)-of lovely black-haired Sarah Lennox, about whose beauty Walpole has written in raptures, and who used to lie in wait for the young prince, and make hay at him on the lawn of Holland House. He sighed and he longed, but he rode away from her. Her picture still hangs in Holland House, a magnificent masterpiece of Reynolds, a canvas worthy of t.i.tian. She looks from the castle window, holding a bird in her hand, at black-eyed young Charles Fox, her nephew.

The royal bird flew away from lovely Sarah. She had to figure as bridesmaid at her little Mecklenburg rival's wedding, and died in our own time a quiet old lady, who had become the mother of the heroic Napiers.

They say the little princess who had written the fine letter about the horrors of war-a beautiful letter without a single blot, for which she was to be rewarded, like the heroine of the old spelling-book story-was at play one day with some of her young companions in the gardens of Strelitz, and that the young ladies' conversation was, strange to say, about husbands. "Who will take such a poor little princess as me?" Charlotte said to her friend, Ida von Bulow, and at that very moment the postman's horn sounded, and Ida said, "Princess! there is the sweetheart." As she said, so it actually turned out. The postman brought letters from the splendid young King of all England, who said, "Princess! because you have written such a beautiful letter, which does credit to your head and heart, come and be Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and the true wife of your most obedient servant, George!" So she jumped for joy; and went upstairs and packed all her little trunks; and set off straightway for her kingdom in a beautiful yacht, with a harpsichord on board for her to play upon, and around her a beautiful fleet, all covered with flags and streamers, and the distinguished Madame Auerbach complimented her with an ode, a translation of which may be read in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ to the present day:-

Her gallant navy through the main, Now cleaves its liquid way.

There to their queen a chosen train Of nymphs due reverence pay.

Europa, when conveyed by Jove To Crete's distinguished sh.o.r.e, Greater attention scarce could prove, Or be respected more.

They met, and they were married, and for years they led the happiest, simplest lives sure ever led by married couple. It is said the king winced when he first saw his homely little bride; but, however that may be, he was a true and faithful husband to her, as she was a faithful and loving wife. They had the simplest pleasures-the very mildest and simplest-little country dances, to which a dozen couple were invited, and where the honest king would stand up and dance for three hours at a time to one tune; after which delicious excitement they would go to bed without any supper (the Court people grumbling sadly at that absence of supper), and get up quite early the next morning, and perhaps the next night have another dance; or the queen would play on the spinet-she played pretty well, Haydn said-or the king would read to her a paper out of the _Spectator_, or perhaps one of Ogden's sermons. O Arcadia! what a life it must have been! There used to be Sunday drawing-rooms at Court; but the young king stopped these, as he stopped all that G.o.dless gambling whereof we have made mention. Not that George was averse to any innocent pleasures, or pleasures which he thought innocent. He was a patron of the arts, after his fas.h.i.+on; kind and gracious to the artists whom he favoured, and respectful to their calling.

He wanted once to establish an Order of Minerva for literary and scientific characters; the knights were to take rank after the knights of the Bath, and to sport a straw-coloured ribbon and a star of sixteen points. But there was such a row amongst the _literati_ as to the persons who should be appointed, that the plan was given up, and Minerva and her star never came down amongst us.

He objected to painting St. Paul's, as Popish practice; accordingly, the most clumsy heathen sculptures decorate that edifice at present. It is fortunate that the paintings, too, were spared, for painting and drawing were wofully unsound at the close of the last century; and it is far better for our eyes to contemplate whitewash (when we turn them away from the clergyman) than to look at Opie's pitchy canvases, or Fuseli's livid monsters.

And yet there is one day in the year-a day when old George loved with all his heart to attend it-when I think St. Paul's presents the n.o.blest sight in the whole world: when five thousand charity children, with cheeks like nosegays, and sweet, fresh voices, sing the hymn which makes every heart thrill with praise and happiness. I have seen a hundred grand sights in the world-coronations, Parisian splendours, Crystal Palace openings, Pope's chapels with their processions of long-tailed cardinals and quavering choirs of fat soprani-but think in all Christendom there is no such sight as Charity Children's Day. _Non Angli, sed angeli_. As one looks at that beautiful mult.i.tude of innocents: as the first note strikes: indeed one may almost fancy that cherubs are singing.

Of church music the king was always very fond, showing skill in it both as a critic and a performer. Many stories, mirthful and affecting, are told of his behaviour at the concerts which he ordered. When he was blind and ill he chose the music for the Ancient Concerts once, and the music and words which he selected were from _Samson Agonistes_, and all had reference to his blindness, his captivity, and his affliction. He would beat time with his music-roll as they sang the anthem in the Chapel Royal.

If the page below was talkative or inattentive, down would come the music-roll on young scapegrace's powdered head. The theatre was always his delight. His bishops and clergy used to attend it, thinking it no shame to appear where that good man was seen. He is said not to have cared for Shakespeare or tragedy much; farces and pantomimes were his joy; and especially when clown swallowed a carrot or a string of sausages, he would laugh so outrageously that the lovely princess by his side would have to say, "My gracious monarch, do compose yourself." But he continued to laugh, and at the very smallest farces, as long as his poor wits were left him.

There is something to me exceedingly touching in that simple early life of the king's. As long as his mother lived-a dozen years after his marriage with the little spinet-player-he was a great, shy, awkward boy, under the tutelage of that hard parent. She must have been a clever, domineering, cruel woman. She kept her household lonely and in gloom, mistrusting almost all people who came about her children. Seeing the young Duke of Gloucester silent and unhappy once, she sharply asked him the cause of his silence. "I am thinking," said the poor child. "Thinking, sir! and of what?" "I am thinking if ever I have a son I will not make him so unhappy as you make me." The other sons were all wild, except George. Dutifully every evening George and Charlotte paid their visit to the king's mother at Carlton House. She had a throat complaint, of which she died; but to the last persisted in driving about the streets to show she was alive. The night before her death the resolute woman talked with her son and daughter-in-law as usual, went to bed, and was found dead there in the morning. "George, be a king!" were the words which she was for ever croaking in the ears of her son: and a king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried to be.

He did his best; he worked according to his lights; what virtue he knew, he tried to practise; what knowledge he could master, he strove to acquire. He was for ever drawing maps, for example, and learned geography with no small care and industry. He knew all about the family histories and genealogies of his gentry, and pretty histories he must have known. He knew the whole _Army __ List_; and all the facings, and the exact number of the b.u.t.tons, and all the tags and laces, and the cut of all the c.o.c.ked hats, pigtails, and gaiters in his army. He knew the _personnel_ of the Universities; what doctors were inclined to Socinianism, and who were sound Churchmen; he knew the etiquettes of his own and his grandfather's Courts to a nicety, and the smallest particulars regarding the routine of ministers, secretaries, emba.s.sies, audiences; the humblest page in the ante-room, or the meanest helper in the stables or kitchen. These parts of the royal business he was capable of learning, and he learned. But, as one thinks of an office, almost divine, performed by any mortal man-of any single being pretending to control the thoughts, to direct the faith, to order the implicit obedience of brother millions, to compel them into war at his offence or quarrel; to command, "In this way you shall trade, in this way you shall think; these neighbours shall be your allies whom you shall help, these others your enemies whom you shall slay at my orders; in this way you shall wors.h.i.+p G.o.d;"-who can wonder that, when such a man as George took such an office on himself, punishment and humiliation should fall upon people and chief?

Yet there is something grand about his courage. The battle of the king with his aristocracy remains yet to be told by the historian who shall view the reign of George more justly than the trumpery panegyrists who wrote immediately after his decease. It was he, with the people to back him, who made the war with America; it was he and the people who refused justice to the Roman Catholics; and on both questions he beat the patricians. He bribed: he bullied: he darkly dissembled on occasion: he exercised a slippery perseverance, and a vindictive resolution, which one almost admires as one thinks his character over. His courage was never to be beat. It trampled North under foot: it bent the stiff neck of the younger Pitt: even his illness never conquered that indomitable spirit. As soon as his brain was clear, it resumed the scheme, only laid aside when his reason left him: as soon as his hands were out of the strait-waistcoat, they took up the pen and the plan which had engaged him up to the moment of his malady. I believe it is by persons believing themselves in the right that nine-tenths of the tyranny of this world has been perpetrated. Arguing on that convenient premiss, the Dey of Algiers would cut off twenty heads of a morning; Father Dominic would burn a score of Jews in the presence of the most Catholic King, and the Archbishops of Toledo and Salamanca sing Amen. Protestants were roasted, Jesuits hung and quartered at Smithfield, and witches burned at Salem, and all by worthy people, who believed they had the best authority for their actions.

And so, with respect to old George, even Americans, whom he hated and who conquered him, may give him credit for having quite honest reasons for oppressing them. Appended to Lord Brougham's biographical sketch of Lord North are some autograph notes of the king, which let us most curiously into the state of his mind. "The times certainly require," says he, "the concurrence of all who wish to prevent anarchy. I have no wish but the prosperity of my own dominions, therefore I must look upon all who would not heartily a.s.sist me as bad men, as well as bad subjects." That is the way he reasoned. "I wish nothing but good, therefore every man who does not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel." Remember that he believed himself anointed by a Divine commission; remember that he was a man of slow parts and imperfect education; that the same awful will of Heaven which placed a crown upon his head, which made him tender to his family, pure in his life, courageous and honest, made him dull of comprehension, obstinate of will, and at many times deprived him of reason. He was the father of his people; his rebellious children must be flogged into obedience. He was the defender of the Protestant faith; he would rather lay that stout head upon the block than that Catholics should have a share in the government of England. And you do not suppose that there are not honest bigots enough in all countries to back kings in this kind of statesmans.h.i.+p? Without doubt the American war was popular in England. In 1775 the address in favour of coercing the colonies was carried by 304 to 105 in the Commons, by 104 to 29 in the House of Lords. Popular?-so was the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes popular in France: so was the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew: so was the Inquisition exceedingly popular in Spain.

Wars and revolutions are, however, the politician's province. The great events of this long reign, the statesmen and orators who ill.u.s.trated it, I do not pretend to make the subjects of an hour's light talk.(187) Let us return to our humbler duty of Court gossip. Yonder sits our little queen, surrounded by many stout sons and fair daughters whom she bore to her faithful George. The history of the daughters, as little Miss Burney has painted them to us, is delightful. They were handsome-she calls them beautiful; they were most kind, loving, and ladylike; they were gracious to every person, high and low, who served them. They had many little accomplishments of their own. This one drew: that one played the piano: they all worked most prodigiously, and fitted up whole suites of rooms-pretty, smiling Penelopes,-with their busy little needles. As we picture to ourselves the society of eighty years ago, we must imagine hundreds of thousands of groups of women in great high caps, tight bodies, and full skirts, needling away, whilst one of the number, or perhaps a favoured gentleman in a pigtail, reads out a novel to the company. Peep into the cottage at Olney, for example, and see there Mrs. Unwin and Lady Hesketh, those high-bred ladies, those sweet, pious women, and William Cowper, that delicate wit, that trembling pietist, that refined gentleman, absolutely reading out _Jonathan Wild_ to the ladies! What a change in our manners, in our amus.e.m.e.nts, since then!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Lord North, Mr. Fox

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke

King George's household was a model of an English gentleman's household.

It was early; it was kindly; it was charitable; it was frugal; it was orderly; it must have been stupid to a degree which I shudder now to contemplate. No wonder all the princes ran away from the lap of that dreary domestic virtue. It always rose, rode, dined at stated intervals.

Day after day was the same. At the same hour at night the king kissed his daughters' jolly cheeks; the princesses kissed their mother's hand; and Madame Thielke brought the royal nightcap. At the same hour the equerries and women in waiting had their little dinner, and cackled over their tea.

The king had his backgammon or his evening concert; the equerries yawned themselves to death in the ante-room; or the king and his family walked on Windsor slopes, the king holding his darling little princess Amelia by the hand; and the people crowded round quite good-naturedly; and the Eton boys thrust their chubby cheeks under the crowd's elbows; and the concert over, the king never failed to take his enormous c.o.c.ked-hat off, and salute his band, and say, "Thank you, gentlemen."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A Little Rebel

A quieter household, a more prosaic life than this of Kew or Windsor, cannot be imagined. Rain or s.h.i.+ne, the king rode every day for hours; poked his red face into hundreds of cottages round about, and showed that shovel hat and Windsor uniform to farmers, to pig-boys, to old women making apple dumplings; to all sorts of people, gentle and simple, about whom countless stories are told. Nothing can be more undignified than these stories. When Haroun Alraschid visits a subject incog., the latter is sure to be very much the better for the caliph's magnificence. Old George showed no such royal splendour. He used to give a guinea sometimes: sometimes feel in his pockets and find he had no money: often ask a man a hundred questions: about the number of his family, about his oats and beans, about the rent he paid for his house, and ride on. On one occasion he played the part of King Alfred, and turned a piece of meat with a string at a cottager's house. When the old woman came home, she found a paper with an enclosure of money, and a note written by the royal pencil: "Five guineas to buy a jack." It was not splendid, but it was kind and worthy of Farmer George. One day, when the king and queen were walking together, they met a little boy-they were always fond of children, the good folks-and patted the little white head. "Whose little boy are you?"

asks the Windsor uniform. "I am the king's beefeater's little boy,"

replied the child. On which the king said, "Then kneel down, and kiss the queen's hand." But the innocent offspring of the beefeater declined this treat. "No," said he, "I won't kneel, for if I do, I shall spoil my new breeches." The thrifty king ought to have hugged him and knighted him on the spot. George's admirers wrote pages and pages of such stories about him. One morning, before anybody else was up, the king walked about Gloucester town; pushed over Molly the housemaid who was scrubbing the doorsteps with her pail; ran upstairs and woke all the equerries in their bedrooms; and then trotted down to the bridge, where, by this time, a dozen of louts were a.s.sembled. "What! is this Gloucester New Bridge?"

asked our gracious monarch; and the people answered him, "Yes, your Majesty." "Why, then, my boys," said he, "let us have a huzzay!" After giving them which intellectual gratification, he went home to breakfast.

Our fathers read these simple tales with fond pleasure; laughed at these very small jokes; liked the old man who poked his nose into every cottage; who lived on plain wholesome roast and boiled; who despised your French kickshaws; who was a true hearty old English gentleman. You may have seen Gilray's famous print of him-in the old wig, in the stout old hideous Windsor uniform-as the King of Brobdingnag, peering at a little Gulliver, whom he holds up in his hand, whilst in the other he has an opera-gla.s.s, through which he surveys the pygmy? Our fathers chose to set up George as the type of a great king; and the little Gulliver was the great Napoleon.

We prided ourselves on our prejudices; we bl.u.s.tered and bragged with absurd vainglory; we dealt to our enemy a monstrous injustice of contempt and scorn; we fought him with all weapons, mean as well as heroic. There was no lie we would not believe; no charge of crime which our furious prejudice would not credit. I thought at one time of making a collection of the lies which the French had written against us, and we had published against them during the war: it would be a strange memorial of popular falsehood.

Their majesties were very sociable potentates: and the Court Chronicler tells of numerous visits which they paid to their subjects, gentle and simple: with whom they dined; at whose great country-houses they stopped; or at whose poorer lodgings they affably partook of tea and bread-and-b.u.t.ter. Some of the great folks spent enormous sums in entertaining their sovereigns. As marks of special favour, the king and queen sometimes stood as sponsors for the children of the n.o.bility. We find Lady Salisbury was so honoured in the year 1786; and in the year 1802, Lady Chesterfield. The _Court News_ relates how her ladys.h.i.+p received their Majesties on a state bed "dressed with white satin and a profusion of lace: the counterpane of white satin embroidered with gold, and the bed of crimson satin lined with white". The child was first brought by the nurse to the Marchioness of Bath, who presided as chief nurse. Then the marchioness handed baby to the queen. Then the queen handed the little darling to the Bishop of Norwich, the officiating clergyman; and, the ceremony over, a cup of caudle was presented by the earl to his Majesty on one knee, on a large gold waiter, placed on a crimson velvet cus.h.i.+on. Misfortunes would occur in these interesting genuflectory ceremonies of royal wors.h.i.+p. Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe, a very fat, puffy man, in a most gorgeous Court suit, had to kneel, c.u.mberland says, and was so fat and so tight that he could not get up again. "Kneel, sir, kneel!" cried my lord in waiting to a country mayor who had to read an address, but who went on with his compliment standing.

"Kneel, sir, kneel!" cries my lord, in dreadful alarm. "I can't!" says the mayor, turning round; "don't you see I have got a wooden leg?" In the capital _Burney Diary and Letters_, the home and Court life of good old King George and good old Queen Charlotte are presented at portentous length. The king rose every morning at six: and had two hours to himself.

He thought it effeminate to have a carpet in his bedroom. Shortly before eight, the queen and the royal family were always ready for him, and they proceeded to the king's chapel in the castle. There were no fires in the pa.s.sages: the chapel was scarcely alight; princesses, governesses, equerries grumbled and caught cold: but cold or hot, it was their duty to go: and, wet or dry, light or dark, the stout old George was always in his place to say Amen to the chaplain.

The queen's character is represented in _Burney_ at full length. She was a sensible, most decorous woman; a very grand lady on state occasions, simple enough in ordinary life; well read as times went, and giving shrewd opinions about books; stingy, but not unjust; not generally unkind to her dependants, but invincible in her notions of etiquette, and quite angry if her people suffered ill-health in her service. She gave Miss Burney a shabby pittance, and led the poor young woman a life which well-nigh killed her. She never thought but that she was doing Burney the greatest favour, in taking her from freedom, fame, and competence, and killing her off with languor in that dreary Court. It was not dreary to her. Had she been servant instead of mistress, her spirit would never have broken down: she never would have put a pin out of place, or been a moment from her duty. _She_ was not weak, and she could not pardon those who were. She was perfectly correct in life, and she hated poor sinners with a rancour such as virtue sometimes has. She must have had awful private trials of her own: not merely with her children, but with her husband, in those long days about which n.o.body will ever know anything now; when he was not quite insane; when his incessant tongue was babbling folly, rage, persecution; and she had to smile and be respectful and attentive under this intolerable ennui. The queen bore all her duties stoutly, as she expected others to bear them. At a state christening, the lady who held the infant was tired and looked unwell, and the Princess of Wales asked permission for her to sit down. "Let her stand," said the queen, flicking the snuff off her sleeve. _She_ would have stood, the resolute old woman, if she had had to hold the child till his beard was grown. "I am seventy years of age," the queen said, facing a mob of ruffians who stopped her sedan: "I have been fifty years Queen of England, and I never was insulted before."

Fearless, rigid, unforgiving little queen! I don't wonder that her sons revolted from her.

Of all the figures in that large family group which surrounds George and his queen, the prettiest, I think, is the father's darling, the Princess Amelia, pathetic for her beauty, her sweetness, her early death, and for the extreme pa.s.sionate tenderness with which her father loved her. This was his favourite amongst all the children: of his sons, he loved the Duke of York best. Burney tells a sad story of the poor old man at Weymouth, and how eager he was to have this darling son with him. The king's house was not big enough to hold the prince; and his father had a portable house erected close to his own, and at huge pains, so that his dear Frederick should be near him. He clung on his arm all the time of his visit: talked to no one else; had talked of no one else for some time before. The prince, so long expected, stayed but a single night. He had business in London the next day, he said. The dullness of the old king's Court stupefied York and the other big sons of George III. They scared equerries and ladies, frightened the modest little circle, with their coa.r.s.e spirits and loud talk. Of little comfort, indeed, were the king's sons to the king.

But the pretty Amelia was his darling; and the little maiden, prattling and smiling in the fond arms of that old father, is a sweet image to look on. There is a family picture in _Burney_, which a man must be very hard-hearted not to like. She describes an after-dinner walk of the royal family at Windsor:-"It was really a mighty pretty procession," she says.

"The little princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and fan, walked on alone and first, highly delighted with the parade, and turning from side to side to see everybody as she pa.s.sed; for all the terracers stand up against the walls, to make a clear pa.s.sage for the royal family the moment they come in sight. Then followed the king and queen, no less delighted with the joy of their little darling. The Princess Royal leaning on Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, the Princess Augusta holding by the d.u.c.h.ess of Ancaster, the Princess Elizabeth led by Lady Charlotte Bertie, followed. Office here takes place of rank," says Burney,-to explain how it was that Lady E. Waldegrave, as lady of the bed-chamber, walked before a d.u.c.h.ess;-"General Bude, and the Duke of Montague, and Major Price as equerry, brought up the rear of the procession." One sees it; the band playing its old music, the sun s.h.i.+ning on the happy, loyal crowd; and lighting the ancient battlements, the rich elms, and purple landscape, and bright greensward; the royal standard drooping from the great tower yonder; as old George pa.s.ses, followed by his race, preceded by the charming infant, who caresses the crowd with her innocent smiles.

"On sight of Mrs. Delany, the king instantly stopped to speak to her; the queen, of course, and the little princess, and all the rest, stood still.

They talked a good while with the sweet old lady, during which time the king once or twice addressed himself to me. I caught the queen's eye, and saw in it a little surprise, but by no means any displeasure, to see me of the party. The little princess went up to Mrs. Delany, of whom she is very fond, and behaved like a little angel to her. She then, with a look of inquiry and recollection, came behind Mrs. Delany to look at me. 'I am afraid,' said I, in a whisper, and stooping down, 'your Royal Highness does not remember me?' Her answer was an arch little smile, and a nearer approach, with her lips pouted out to kiss me."

The princess wrote verses herself, and there are some pretty plaintive lines attributed to her, which are more touching than better poetry:-

Unthinking, idle, wild, and young, I laughed, and danced, and talked, and sung: And, proud of health, of freedom vain, Dreamed not of sorrow, care, or pain: Concluding, in those hours of glee, That all the world was made for me.