Queen's House (6 page)

George III was to make a double break with the past. First, unlike his grandfather and great-grandfather, he was proud to consider himself British. He spoke German fluently and looked Hanoverian, being tall, well built and fair-haired, but he was rooted in England. In fact, although being Elector of Hanover, he never visited his German kingdom. Second, there would be no mistresses in George III's palace.

Among the many problems that faced the young King at the beginning of his reign there were two personal concerns to be dealt with: he had to choose a wife and a home.

The young King was handsome and virile but he had reached the age of twenty-two without attracting scandal – a remarkable feat at that time. His mother had kept a watchful eye on him and Bute, who was himself happily married, regarded it as his duty to guide the King not only politically but also in his domestic life. He became George III's chief minister and he steered him away from what he considered would be an unfortunate marriage. So the King regretfully resisted the temptation to propose to a delectable young woman, Lady Sarah Lennox, in favour of a traditional dynastic marriage with a foreign princess.

Royal marriages were affairs of state, arranged to establish alliances and suit the political needs of the time. So many a young bride left her country to live ‘amid the alien corn'. If they were lucky they spoke the language of their new home or could bring some of their own people with them.

George III's mother, a princess of Saxe-Gotha, had come to England as a girl of sixteen still clutching her doll. James I had married Anne of Denmark; his son Charles I had strengthened his relations with France by marrying Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV. Charles II had married Catherine of Braganza; his brother James took as his second wife Mary of Modena. Dutch William of Orange married James II's elder daughter, Princess Mary, and his younger daughter, Princess Anne, had married George of Denmark. The Hanoverians looked to
Germany for their wives and mistresses. So an international network spread, each marriage bringing different traditions to the palaces of Britain.

Prince George's mother and grandfather had argued over the merits of princesses from different families in the small states that constituted what is now modern Germany. In 1761 George was to choose for himself. Guided by Lord Bute and with the advice of the Hanoverian minister in London, Baron Philip Adolphus von Munchhausen, he considered the list of possible candidates among the German Protestant princesses. No Roman Catholic could be considered. One by one the princesses were rejected, some, like the princesses of Anhalt Dessau, because of a reputation for ‘galanterie'. Princess Augusta's favourite, her niece Princess Frederica of Saxe-Gotha, was said to be marked by smallpox and deformed. Princess Philippina of Brandenburg-Schwedt was opinionated and unattractive; Princess Caroline of Hesse-Darmstadt had a foul temper. Finally the choice fell on seventeen-year-old Princess Sophie Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. In the royal European network she was his third cousin. Further enquiries were made and it was reported that she was healthy, pleasant, with ‘
le meilleur coeur du monde.
' No one claimed that she was a beauty, but she played the harpsichord well and sang and danced ‘
à la merveille.
' She spoke no English but had some French and had received a plain education in the Protestant convent at Herford, Westphalia. Bute now sent his friend and fellow Scot, Colonel David Graeme, to make a final assessment and to arrange the marriage. The colonel was charmed by the girl, who ‘fixed the love and esteem of everyone who is acquainted with her'.

Princess Charlotte's father, the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had died eleven years earlier and had been succeeded by her brother Charles. When Graeme arrived at the little castle in the remote north German dukedom, the family were in great distress. Princess Charlotte's mother was dying, but in her last conscious moments she was able to give her consent. The Princess's agreement was taken for granted. It was not every day that a proposal from the King of England dropped from the skies.

The King now moved ‘in a great hurry' with a characteristic im
patience. On 8 July he called a Privy Council and informed them of his decision; emphasizing the fact that Charlotte's family had shown the firmest zeal for the Protestant religion.

Since his Coronation had already been planned for 22 September, he was relieved that Duke Charles did not allow his mother's death to delay the marriage long. On 16 August Princess Charlotte presided over a farewell banquet in the Palace of Neustrelitz. Those who had feared that Princess Charlotte, in her inexperience, would be unable to uphold the dignity of her new status were surprised to see her easy composure. The next day she set off on a rugged journey and storm-tossed crossing that would test her endurance further. It was not until Monday 7 September that she landed at Harwich, rested a night at Lord Abercorn's house at Witham and then was rushed with a splendid cavalcade through crowded London streets to be received at the garden gate of St James's Palace by the King and royal family. She was to be married at ten o'clock that same night.

On the night of her arrival the King took Princess Charlotte to see an Aladdin's cave of fabulous jewels, among them those she was to wear at the marriage ceremony, ‘a stomacher of diamonds, worth three score thousand pounds'; ‘a little cap of purple velvet quite covered with diamonds, a Diamond aigrette in form of a Crown, 3 dropped diamond ear rings & Diamond necklace'. George II had bequeathed the Hanoverian jewellery to be shared between George III and his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, and the King had bought the Duke's share.

So, arrayed in a gown of white and silver, weighed down on a stifling hot night by ‘an endless mantle of violet coloured velvet, lined with ermine, fastened on the shoulder by a bunch of large pearls' and accompanied by ten bridesmaids glittering in gowns of white silk embroidered with diamonds, Princess Charlotte was led by the King's brothers, the Duke of York and Prince William, later Duke of Gloucester, to meet her bridegroom, a handsome figure in ‘a stuff of a new manufacture, the ground silver with embossed plate and frosted silver'.
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She had come through three disturbing months, during which she had endured with astonishing equanimity the death of her mother, her farewell to her home, her stormy voyage and now the glittering Court
at the Palace of St James. Not surprisingly she trembled on her arrival. ‘
You
may laugh,' she whispered to the Duchess of Hamilton, one of her Ladies of the Bedchamber; ‘you have been married twice; but it is no joke to me.'

Even that well-informed old gossip Horace Walpole was impressed. In a letter to his friend, the British Envoy at Florence, he praised her good sense and charm.

Is this bad proof of her sense? On the journey they wanted to curl her toupet. ‘No, indeed,' said she, ‘I think it looks as well as those of the ladies that have been sent for me: if the King would have me wear a periwig, I will; otherwise I shall let myself alone.' The Duke of York gave her his hand at the garden-gate: her lips trembled, but she jumped out with spirit. In the garden the King met her; she would have fallen at his feet; he prevented and embraced her, and led her into the apartments, where she was received by the Princess of Wales and Lady Augusta: these three Princesses only dined with the King. At ten the procession went to chapel, preceded by unmarried daughters of peers, peers, and peeresses in plenty. The new Princess was led by the Duke of York and Prince William; the Archbishop married them; the King talked to her the whole time with great good humour, and the Duke of Cumberland gave her away. She is not tall, nor a beauty; pale, and very thin; but looks sensible, and is genteel. Her hair is darkish and fine; her forehead low, her nose very well, except the nostrils spreading too wide; her mouth has the same fault, but her teeth are good. She talks a good deal, and French tolerably; possesses herself, is frank, but with great respect to the King. After the ceremony, the whole company came into the drawing-room for about ten minutes, but nobody was presented that night.
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In three short months Charlotte had been transformed from a quiet and plain princess of an obscure and remote German dukedom to be Queen of England, with her own two dower houses, Somerset House in London and the White House at Kew.

She had an immense household of her own. The Duke of Manchester was her Lord Chamberlain, the Duchess of Ancaster her Mistress of the Robes. She had

two vice-Chamberlains, two Gentleman Ushers of the Privy Chamber, three gentleman ushers daily waiters, three gentleman ushers quarterly waiters, two
pages of the Presence Chamber, four pages of the backstairs, physicians, surgeons and apothecaries, ‘an operator for the teeth', six Ladies of the Bedchamber, six Maids of Honour and six Women of the Bedchamber.
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Her ‘mistress laundress, sempstress & starcher' was an elderly daughter of a nobleman.

Since Queen Charlotte spoke no English, it was with great relief that she turned to the two ladies she had brought from Germany, the ferocious Elizabeth Schwellenberg and Louisa Hagedorn. Although the King had discouraged the introduction of foreign attendants, he did allow her to bring one of her household, Frederick Albert. This highly intelligent and cultured man was to remain her faithful servant for the rest of his life.

It was an exceptionally happy marriage, for which the King thanked his ‘dearest friend' Bute most effusively. Now it was Queen Charlotte who took his old mentor's place. After a brief, unsuccessful spell as the King's Prime Minister, Bute retired and the Queen gave the King the warm companionship that his affectionate nature demanded. Years later, during the black period of his ill health, he could say, ‘The Queen is my best friend.' And though, when illness loosened his tongue, he revealed a suppressed lust for Lady Pembroke, whom he called Queen Esther, he remained steadfastly faithful and doting.

The King's choice of a palace was equally happy – at least for the first years. There were a number of alternatives. There had been, in the past, plans to build a new palace in St James's Park – one architect even suggesting diverting the canals around Buckingham House so that there could be a ceremonial water approach. The old Whitehall Palace on the Thames had been destroyed by fire in 1698, and only the Banqueting House remained, and it could have been rebuilt; Somerset House on the Strand, with a superb terrace overlooking the Thames, the traditional dower house for royal consorts, could have been enlarged. As a bachelor the King had lived at Savile House next door to his mother's mansion in Leicester Square, and his father, when Prince of Wales, had also bought Carlton House in London. Then there was Hampton Court, beloved of William III and Queen Mary, but George III, it was said, had never forgotten unhappy times there when his grandfather, George
II, had boxed his ears. Windsor Castle was not in good condition at this time, as a visitor reported on 16 August 1766: ‘the castle furniture was old and dirty, most of the best pictures removed to the Queen's Palace and the whole kept so very unneat that it hurts one to see almost the only place in England worthy to be styled our King's Palace, so totally neglected'.
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The same was said of the official London royal residence, St James's Palace, which George III disliked intensely: he said it was a ‘dust trap', and ‘too near the road'. And there were so many disturbing echoes from the past: those ‘leper maydens', the tragic Anne Boleyn whose initials were still there, entwined with Henry VIII's in the brickwork. From here Charles I had taken his last walk through the park to his execution in Whitehall. The Palace had been neglected since the death of his grandmother, Queen Caroline; the room in which she had died was still untouched, the dead wood still in the grate. George II's mistress, the Hanoverian Countess Walmoden, still lived in the room next to the old King's. This was no home for a young bride.

But it had to serve for the first year. The King pensioned off the Countess, turned her room into his library and refurbished a suite of rooms for Queen Charlotte in delicate blue and white. Their first child, Prince George – later George IV – was born at St James's Palace (Prince Alfred, their youngest son, and Princess Amelia were born at Windsor, but the rest of their fifteen children were to be born at Buckingham House). Henceforward St James's Palace was used for official entertaining – for the levees and drawing rooms that were regular features of Court life. Foreign ambassadors are still today accredited to the Court of St James.

Then the King gave all his attention to their new home, the elegant, red-brick Buckingham House at the end of the Mall. He wanted a new home away from his official residence. Buckingham House, he hoped, would be his retreat, his ‘
rus in urbe,
' where he could live the life he really wanted – that of a cultured gentleman with books, paintings, music and gardens, amid a large, happy family.

In the first two years of their marriage the King and Queen slipped away as often as possible to supervise the refurbishment of Buckingham House, or ‘the Queen's House', as it was now called. Horace Walpole
wrote to a friend: ‘The King & Queen are settled for good & all at Buckingham House: and are stripping the other palaces to furnish it … they have already fetched pictures from Hampton Court, which indicates their never living there.'
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When George III bought Buckingham House it was much as it had been left by the Duchess of Buckingham. Contemporary illustrations show the elegance of the entrance to the red-brick house. As Buckingham had described:

The Avenues to the house are along St James's Park, through rows of goodly elms on one hand and gay flourishing limes on the other, that for coaches, this for walking; with the Mall lying between them. This reaches to my iron palisade that encompasses a square court, which has in its midst a great basin with statues and water works.