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He almost invariably took his meals in his private apartment with the Queen, and these repasts—though this is certainly not to the discredit of their Majesties-were of the simplest. A more temperate couple there was not in the kingdom. Still, the public thought it the duty of Royalty to make some sort of display-bread and circuses are an inalienable right of the subject. The result was a flood of lampoons, one of which may be quoted:

Cæsar, the mighty King who sway'd

The sceptre, was a sober blade;

A leg of mutton and his wife

Were the chief comforts of his life.

The Queen, compos'd of different stuff,
Above all things ador'd her snuff,
Save gold, which in her great opinion,
Alone could rival snuff's dominion.

One of the few relaxations that their Majesties allowed themselves was a reading from Shakespeare. Mrs. Siddons was generally sent for, but was always kept standing during the entertainment, which want of consideration was duly pilloried by "Peter Pindar":

Ready to drop to earth, she must have sunk,
But for a child that at the hardship shrunk—
A little prince, who marked her situation,
Thus, pitying, pour'd a tender exclamation :
"La Mrs. Siddons is quite faint indeed,
How pale I'm sure she cannot read :

She somewhat wants, her spirits to repair,
And would, I'm sure be happy in a chair."
What follow'd? Why, the r-y-l pair arose
Surely enough, one fairly may suppose !
And to a room adjoining made retreat,

To let her, for one moment, steal a seat.

The Ladies of the Bedchamber were the Duchess of Hamilton, the Countess of Effingham, the Countess of

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Northumberland, the Countess of Egremont, the Viscountess Weymouth, and the Viscountess Bolingbroke. Beyond these, in her early days in England, the Queen saw no one but the King. "This continued till the first child, the Prince of Wales, was born," Mrs. Harcourt noted in her Diary, "then the Nurse and Governess, Lady Charlotte Finch, coming into the room was a little treat; but they had still for years no other society, till by degrees the Ladies of the Bedchamber came far more frequently, and latterly the society, for various reasons— the children growing up, the journeys, etc.—was much increased. Expecting to be a Queen of a gay Court, finding herself confined in a convent, and hardly allowed to think without the leave of her husband, checked her spirits, made her fearful and cautious to an extreme, and when the time came that amusements were allowed, her mind was formed to a different manner of life."

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This solitude, it must be remembered in mitigation of her faults, was forced upon Charlotte when she was only seventeen. Like a good wife, however, she found good and sufficient reasons for the seclusion in which George immured her. "I am most truly sensible," she said, of the dear King's great strictness, at my arrival in England, to prevent my making acquaintances, for he was always used to say that, in this country, it was difficult to know how to draw a line on account of the politics of the country, and that there never could be kept up a society without party, which was always dangerous for any woman to take part in, but particularly so for the royal family; and with truth do I assure you that I am not only sensible that he was right, but I feel thankful for it from the bottom of my heart." The King presumably liked this quiet life, since it was his own choice. The Queen, however, when still

in her teens and then in the early twenties, must have hankered, girl-like, after some brightness and variety, in fact, there is little doubt that she was far from happy for many years. George was as much a martinet in his treatment of his Consort as in the discipline he ordained for his children.'

This was very loyal of the Queen, but there is no doubt that their mode of living, to which she became accustomed, had the deplorable effect of her endeavouring to bring up her children in the same isolation, with what disastrous results is well known.

The Queen as a bride read English every morning with Dr. Majendie. On her arrival in England she was almost totally unacquainted with the language, which gave an opening for the bitter wit of Lady Townshend, who, on hearing that Lady Northumberland had been appointed a Lady of the Bedchamber, remarked: "It is a proper appointment, for, as the Queen knows no English, that lady will teach her the vulgar tongue." Later in the day Charlotte did some needlework, and then walked with the King. In the evening in the country there was some singing or a game of cards; in town, an occasional visit to the theatre.

Presently, of course, there was the royal nursery, to which Charlotte could and did devote herself. She saw the children bathed in the morning, and visited the schoolroom. As they grew up, the elder boys and girls were allowed to breakfast occasionally with their parents, and once a week the entire family went to

1George, Prince of Wales (1762-1830); Frederick, Duke of York (1763–1830); William, Duke of Clarence (1765-1837); Charlotte, afterwards Queen of Würtemberg (1766-1828); Edward, Duke of Kent (1767-1820); Augusta (1768-1840); Elizabeth, afterwards Princess of Hesse-Homburg (1778-1840); Ernest, Duke of Cumberland (1771-1851); Augustus, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843); Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge (1774-1850); Mary, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester (1776-1857); Sophia (1777– 1848); Octavius (1779-83); Alfred (1780-82); Amelia (1782-1810).

Richmond. But it was always the King and Queen and the Princes and Princesses who went; not father and mother and sons and daughters. George was always a stickler for etiquette, even in the home circle.

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A good woman, a good wife, a tender mother, and an unmeddling Queen," Lord Chesterfield wrote of her; but Leigh Hunt, less courtier-like, wrote her down as a "plain, penurious, soft-spoken, decorous, bigoted, shrewd, overweening personage." She was jealous of the King's family, and when his sister, the Duchess of Brunswick, visited England she provided for her accommodation miserable little house in Pall Mall," and was careful that the Duchess should never see her brother alone. Friends Charlotte had none; but by her harshness, she created many enemies.

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As the children grew up the Queen's troubles increased. The boys, without exception, were wild-a not unnatural reaction to the hard discipline to which they had been subjected. George, Prince of Wales, was, in his earlier years, her favourite; Frederick, Duke of York, the best beloved of the King; but, once they were given their own establishments, they rarely went to Court except on ceremonial occasions. Nor, when they married, was there anything approaching intimacy between their Princesses and the King and Queen. Charlotte's attitude towards the Princess of Wales. which will presently be set out, was especially scandalous

The affection of the Queen for her eldest son scarcely survived the struggle for the Regency. In 1765 she had been appointed, with a Council, to execute the necessary functions of the provisional government, now in 1788 she expected the same treatment. This was foolish, because in 1765 the Prince of Wales was an infant, and now he was six-and-twenty, an age when

by law he was regarded as capable of administering the realm over which, in the ordinary course of nature, he would one day reign. The care of the King's person was entrusted to Charlotte, but she wanted a share in the government of the country, and this was denied her. There were scenes between the Prince of Wales in which she behaved violently. "To my extreme astonishment," His Royal Highness remarked subsequently, "she condescended to a species of warmth of reproaches into which nothing could have surprised or betrayed Her Majesty but a degree of passion which I had never witnessed or believed before to exist in Her Majesty." The Duke of York, who was present on one of these occasions, was actually moved to say to his mother, "I believe, Madam, you are as much deranged as the King." Probably Charlotte realised that, if the Prince of Wales became Regent, she would, to all intents and purposes, be shelved for the rest of her life-a prospect naturally not at all to her liking, and one against which she struggled with all the forces at her command.

She is playing the devil, and has all this time been at the bottom of the cabals and intrigues against the Prince," Sir Gilbert Elliot wrote. "It is believed that she was ready to accept the Regency, if the Prince has been advised to refuse it." When the King became permanently deranged in 1810, of course the trouble with the Queen did not arise again.

As the years passed, less and less was heard of the Queen, who sunk deeper and deeper into seclusion at the Palace at Kew, where her death, in 1818, passed almost unnoticed.

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