A sleepless night (no reason: the hotel is lovely) makes for more Hervey, volume 2. To explain some of tihe following passages I have to point out 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. *g*)
Okay, onwards: G2 keeps irritating his English subjects with visiting Hannover, remember. On one such visit, his English mistress, Lady Sussex, 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 xpectations; 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 verydifferently 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, and Mildred, if you do get around to writing Fritz in G2's presence, imagine how the Hannover and Germany praise goes down then. :)
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 sisters 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 the third Schulenburg sister as well. He could be right. Anyway, how come we haven't heard of her before? ETA: Also: didn't Lord Chesterfield help Peter Keith leave Amsterdam hidden as part of his entourage? If Chesterfield was married to a Schulenburg sister, that means he's distantly related to the Kattes, thus also justifying imaginary descendant's name of Philip Stanhope in "Zeithain". Anyway: I propose someone should filk "The Schuyler Sisters" to "The Schulenburg Sisters" /ETA
Speaking of mistresses: 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 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, 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?
Hervey's Memoirs: Those Germans!
Okay, onwards: G2 keeps irritating his English subjects with visiting Hannover, remember. On one such visit, his English mistress, Lady Sussex, 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 xpectations; 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 verydifferently 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, and Mildred, if you do get around to writing Fritz in G2's presence, imagine how the Hannover and Germany praise goes down then. :)
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 sisters 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 the third Schulenburg sister as well. He could be right. Anyway, how come we haven't heard of her before?
ETA: Also: didn't Lord Chesterfield help Peter Keith leave Amsterdam hidden as part of his entourage? If Chesterfield was married to a Schulenburg sister, that means he's distantly related to the Kattes, thus also justifying imaginary descendant's name of Philip Stanhope in "Zeithain". Anyway: I propose someone should filk "The Schuyler Sisters" to "The Schulenburg Sisters" /ETA
Speaking of mistresses: 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 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, 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?