Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court (23 page)

On the king’s sixty-seventh birthday in May, John Hervey complained that ‘the occurrences of all the Birthdays are alike’. There was ‘a great crowd, bad music, trite compliments upon new garments … a ball with execrable dancers’.
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The king’s reign seemed somehow to be winding down. A few days later, on 3 June, he made his departure from England, intending to spend the summer in Hanover.
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George I travelled as usual by boat across the Channel and embarked upon the wearisome three-day coach ride towards Hanover. On the evening of 9 June 1727, he had a large and varied range of dishes for supper in the town of Delden, which is situated in the modern Netherlands. One theory had it that the melons he’d eaten at Delden caused the ‘indigestion’ that would play havoc with his body the following day, while an ‘excess of strawberries and oranges’ was proposed as an alternative hazard to an elderly digestive system.
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Mustapha would have known exactly what George I had eaten, for he was present as usual to look after the king. He was later able to inform the doctors that during the night the king had in fact visited the toilet several times and had not required any of his usual laxatives.
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The next morning, George I drank a cup of hot chocolate
before continuing his journey. Despite evident discomfort, he was determined to make progress towards Hanover. Mustapha was once again at hand when, later that day, the king collapsed completely. Everyone thought that he’d experienced a ‘violent cholick of which he suffer’d very much’.
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Rather than a digestive disorder, though, this event in the coach was probably a second and even greater stroke, for ‘his hand fell down as if lifeless, and his tongue hung out of his mouth’.
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Instead of stopping, though, the king shouted at the coachmen to drive on in the direction of Hanover, the place that he had never really wanted to leave.

When he reached the town of Osnabrück later that day, George I finally admitted that he was unable to continue travelling towards home. He died there at about one in the morning of 11 June 1727. His last words were reported to be
‘C’est fait de moi
[I’m done].’ This final thought was as bald, factual, drab – and yet as honest and unpretentious – as the king himself had been.
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Melusine was summoned to the deathbed as soon as possible, but arrived too late to see her long-time lover alive. She was distraught and inconsolable, laid low by ‘the signs of extreme grief’.
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The king’s cadaver was ceremoniously carried from Osnabrück along the rough road to Hanover. His funeral procession entered the town late at night, with servants on horseback carrying lighted flambeaux. Even Hanover’s traditionally unemotional and phlegmatic townsfolk were moved to great grief at the sight. Despite the late hour, ‘there was a great concourse of people from all parts to see, with tears in their eyes, this last honour paid to their late sovereign, once the joy and delight of his subjects’.
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The natives of Hanover mourned their born ruler much more than did his adopted British subjects. 

George I’s corpse was eventually taken on to Herrenhausen, and lies today in the Hanoverian royal mausoleum, cloaked by oaks and situated on a rise looking out over his beloved gardens.

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Back in London, the wigs and silver and crockery for the king’s
daily use were divided up among the former servants of his bedchamber.
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Now Prince George Augustus would become King George II, and Caroline his queen. The palaces of Kensington and St James’s were theirs at last, and the battle between father and son was finally won. Yet there must have been a bleak streak in Prince George Augustus’s victory: any lingering hope of a tender reconciliation between himself and his father was now extinguished.

With the king’s death, Peter Wentworth found himself once again changing employer. He remained at Kensington Palace as an equerry in Queen Caroline’s household. This was his fourth royal job, as he’d served a prince, another queen and a king already.

Luckily, Wentworth had admired his new mistress ever since their very first encounter. It had taken place in the drawing room soon after Princess Caroline’s arrival in England. Thanks to a kindly act of the Lord Chamberlain, Wentworth was beckoned through the crowd ‘to kiss her Highness’s hand; she repeated my name aloud and smilingly gave me her hand’.
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Perhaps, like another lowly courtier introduced to Caroline, Wentworth found her compliments so ‘very gracious that they confounded’ him, and ‘blunder’d out a great deal of nonsense’ in reply.
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And now Peter Wentworth, like Peter the Wild Boy, found himself entering the special cadre of those whom Caroline cherished. She worked a kind of magic upon her favourite servants, drawing them into the circle of her charm, allowing them to see both her abundant affection for them and her private pain.

While many people lined up to puff and praise the new queen, Caroline was not universally liked outside her household. She presented such a graceful, gracious front to the world that some people distrusted it. Unlike her husband, who could not hide his feelings and would ‘kick whilst he obliged’, Caroline ‘would stroke while she hated’.
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But her bright and easy social manner disguised a certain vulnerability. She was constantly begged for one favour or another, and had to defend herself against the draining strain of making constant refusals. Viscountess Falmouth, for
example, was thrown into a frenzy by the news that Caroline might ‘add some new ladies’ to her household, and begged for a personal appointment to put her case for a position. ‘I own to you’, she wrote in desperate hope, ‘I have been in such anxiety of mind, that I have not slept one wink all night.’
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Caroline may have been devious, guilty of empty smiles and empty words, but she needed to protect her vitality from these exhausting applications for help. When one lady arrived to beg for a rebel’s life, Caroline ‘could not bear to see her, but hastened out of ye drawing room into her own rooms and cried’.
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It was this, her softer side, which really made people fall in love with the queen. ‘I am so charmed with her good nature and good qualities’, wrote one devoted lady-in-waiting, ‘that I shall never think I can do enough to please her.’
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And now, as Peter Wentworth’s and Caroline’s paths converged, new hope was in sight for the unfortunate equerry. Ever since Caroline had ‘smilingly’ given him her hand, he had liked the princess, and in her service he would become her slave. He aspired to be one of the chosen few with whom Caroline would relax and become intimate. And, as a result, he resolved ‘never to be concern’d in liquor again’.
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Queen Caroline offered Wentworth no promotion and no extra money. But she gave him something much more valuable: sympathy and attention. She told Wentworth that she didn’t believe the occasional and perilous ‘idle stories’ of his being drunk on duty, because, as he said, ‘she sees me every day sober’.

Her kind words soothed his spirit: ‘Her Majesty has told me she knows none of my misfortunes has been my fault … She has said she pities me from her soul, & that I deserve a better fortune.’
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The neglected equerry had entered a warm new world.