But for all that Hervey doesn't like G2, 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 on his Grand Tour) 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 Horowitz 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 G2, "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 Eoyal, 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.
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 ;
Wow. Even accounting for Hervey maybe not being the most reliable narrator here... gosh.
That analysis of his motives in third person is really... something. I gotta say that it does not inspire me to think of him as more reliable than I thought of him before.
I mean, Hervey by no means makes this hostility within the Royal family up. The other bitchy memoirist of the period, Walpole, backs him up there, with the one significant difference that Walpole claims Caroline sent a secret message to Fritz of Wales on her deathbed that she forgives him (so she could die in peace), but that she couldn't allow him in her presence because it would upset G2, whereas Hervey is insistent Caroline hated her eldest till her dying breath. And of course just as with the arguments between G1 and G2, the ones between FoW and his parents made it into various ambassadorial reports. Where I'm a tad sceptical is Hervey's analysis of his own motives, but not in the sense that he's consciously lying.
Now, FoW even when you assume bias was by no means fault-free, but it's the divergence between the rethoric employed - the authors of the "Hephaistion" essay point out Hervey's decriptions occasionally borrow from Tacitus on Tiberius and Nero - and what's actually there that is so startling. Rethoric aside, what FoW is guilty of:
- pre-marriage, having mistresses, as most bachalor (or married) princes, FW aside, did. Possibly also post marriage, depending on whether you think he and Lady Archivald Hamilton had a thing and kept carrying on. (BTW, her wiki entry lists her as his mistress, whereas her son's wiki entry is far more cautious and says "possible", as in: His mother was a favourite, and possibly a mistress, of the Prince of Wales and William grew up with his son George III, who would call him his "foster brother". (Citation given here, a biography of Sir William Hamilton.) (BTW, if you're wondering why G3 calling Sir William "foster brother" did not help Sir William's widow Emma many a year later, by then G3 had his second and lasting diagnosis of madness and was locked away.)
- feuding with his sister and parents about Handel, supporting a rival opera
- wanting a higher budget, like the one his father used to get as Prince of Wales
- drifting towards the parliamentary opposition, to the point where he tries to use Parliament to force his father to give him a higher budget
- not refering to the Queen in his letters to the King (classified as a sign of disrespect by his parents)
- pretending to respect and love his parents in publich when he does not.
- The stunt he pulled with Augusta in labor, inflicting the one and a half hour drive on her rather than let her give birth at Hampton Court.
Only the last one is truly terrible (imo, as always), and Augusta would have been the one with a right to complain and condemn, not the parents who spent the entire pregnancy doubting the baby was real. It's clearly a case of another catastrophic feedback loop, where Fritz of Wales after fourteen years of absence shows up a stranger, can't connect with a family who doesn't really want him to be there (though I doubt they hated him from the get go), and eventually gives up trying and becomes hostile in turn, which furthers everyone's aversion towards him.
Meanwhile, despite groving up in Hannover, he really did his best to fit in, to become English, using only this language when talking to Brits, not French, and during his friendship with Hervey co-writing a play in it. (A bad play, but that's besides the point). Later when he was a father he ensured that English was the children's first language (hence G3 being the first Hannover monarch who actually spoke English as his native language). The friends he chose were from Britain, not from the Germans at court. But that made his parents even more suspicious of him.
I mean he was kinda wrong there ...although this link makes it sound like he was fine with Handel, just not with Handel's opera company? Which makes a lot more sense to me, honestly. (And which Hervey's excerpt does not make clear at all!)
not refering to the Queen in his letters to the King (classified as a sign of disrespect by his parents)
Whoa. This is the kind of thing that getting upset about is just so textbook dysfunctional family that it pulled me up short reading it. Yeah, I can totally see what you call the catastrophic feedback loop happening, where at some point everyone just gets so hostile to everyone else that no one is willing to give anyone else even kind of the benefit of the doubt. Gah!
Meanwhile, despite groving up in Hannover, he really did his best to fit in, to become English, using only this language when talking to Brits, not French, and during his friendship with Hervey co-writing a play in it. (A bad play, but that's besides the point). Later when he was a father he ensured that English was the children's first language (hence G3 being the first Hannover monarch who actually spoke English as his native language). The friends he chose were from Britain, not from the Germans at court.
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timeasmymeasure
Hervey's Memoirs: Who's the worst Fritz of them all?
Date: 2020-09-19 02:07 pm (UTC)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 Horowitz 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 G2, "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 Eoyal, 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.
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: Who's the worst Fritz of them all?
Date: 2020-09-27 04:18 am (UTC)Wow. Even accounting for Hervey maybe not being the most reliable narrator here... gosh.
That analysis of his motives in third person is really... something. I gotta say that it does not inspire me to think of him as more reliable than I thought of him before.
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: Who's the worst Fritz of them all?
Date: 2020-09-27 06:25 am (UTC)Now, FoW even when you assume bias was by no means fault-free, but it's the divergence between the rethoric employed - the authors of the "Hephaistion" essay point out Hervey's decriptions occasionally borrow from Tacitus on Tiberius and Nero - and what's actually there that is so startling. Rethoric aside, what FoW is guilty of:
- pre-marriage, having mistresses, as most bachalor (or married) princes, FW aside, did. Possibly also post marriage, depending on whether you think he and Lady Archivald Hamilton had a thing and kept carrying on. (BTW, her wiki entry lists her as his mistress, whereas her son's wiki entry is far more cautious and says "possible", as in: His mother was a favourite, and possibly a mistress, of the Prince of Wales and William grew up with his son George III, who would call him his "foster brother". (Citation given here, a biography of Sir William Hamilton.) (BTW, if you're wondering why G3 calling Sir William "foster brother" did not help Sir William's widow Emma many a year later, by then G3 had his second and lasting diagnosis of madness and was locked away.)
- feuding with his sister and parents about Handel, supporting a rival opera
- wanting a higher budget, like the one his father used to get as Prince of Wales
- drifting towards the parliamentary opposition, to the point where he tries to use Parliament to force his father to give him a higher budget
- not refering to the Queen in his letters to the King (classified as a sign of disrespect by his parents)
- pretending to respect and love his parents in publich when he does not.
- The stunt he pulled with Augusta in labor, inflicting the one and a half hour drive on her rather than let her give birth at Hampton Court.
Only the last one is truly terrible (imo, as always), and Augusta would have been the one with a right to complain and condemn, not the parents who spent the entire pregnancy doubting the baby was real. It's clearly a case of another catastrophic feedback loop, where Fritz of Wales after fourteen years of absence shows up a stranger, can't connect with a family who doesn't really want him to be there (though I doubt they hated him from the get go), and eventually gives up trying and becomes hostile in turn, which furthers everyone's aversion towards him.
Meanwhile, despite groving up in Hannover, he really did his best to fit in, to become English, using only this language when talking to Brits, not French, and during his friendship with Hervey co-writing a play in it. (A bad play, but that's besides the point). Later when he was a father he ensured that English was the children's first language (hence G3 being the first Hannover monarch who actually spoke English as his native language). The friends he chose were from Britain, not from the Germans at court. But that made his parents even more suspicious of him.
Re: Hervey's Memoirs: Who's the worst Fritz of them all?
Date: 2020-10-01 05:26 am (UTC)I mean he was kinda wrong there...although this link makes it sound like he was fine with Handel, just not with Handel's opera company? Which makes a lot more sense to me, honestly. (And which Hervey's excerpt does not make clear at all!)not refering to the Queen in his letters to the King (classified as a sign of disrespect by his parents)
Whoa. This is the kind of thing that getting upset about is just so textbook dysfunctional family that it pulled me up short reading it. Yeah, I can totally see what you call the catastrophic feedback loop happening, where at some point everyone just gets so hostile to everyone else that no one is willing to give anyone else even kind of the benefit of the doubt. Gah!
Meanwhile, despite groving up in Hannover, he really did his best to fit in, to become English, using only this language when talking to Brits, not French, and during his friendship with Hervey co-writing a play in it. (A bad play, but that's besides the point). Later when he was a father he ensured that English was the children's first language (hence G3 being the first Hannover monarch who actually spoke English as his native language). The friends he chose were from Britain, not from the Germans at court.
I find that rather endearing :)