The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I (18 page)

Coffee-house culture provided the perfect environment where Melusine and George could be mercilessly caricatured. In 1695 the Licensing Act, which demanded pre-publication censorship, had been allowed to lapse, leading to a flowering of the British press. (As England had relaxed its censorship laws, so autocratic Hanover increased its efforts to stifle a free press.) Britain’s essayists and satirists were among the most talented in Europe, and Melusine’s alleged crimes did not escape their pens. Swift, Pope and Gay did as much as anyone to destroy her reputation.

She and George were derided in publications such as the
Daily Courant
and the
Evening Post
, and Melusine was also a natural target for the hostile Jacobite press, as can be seen in a popular ballad entitled ‘An Excellent New Ballad’, dating sometime between 1716 and 1719 and referring to her as ‘Munster’ – Melusine was created Duchess of Munster in 1716. This particular ballad uses the popular anti-Hanoverian sentiment of comparing George to a turnip – the Hanoverians had introduced the turnip to Britain and they were often accused of eating nothing else. It also vilifies George for taking a throne he had no right to, for leaving Sophia Dorothea behind to rot in her lonely prison, and for surrounding himself with ‘Turks and Germans’. His crimes are committed with ‘Munster’ (Melusine) on his knee:

An Excellent New Ballad

To the Tune of, ‘A Begging we will go,’ etc.

I am a Turnip Ho-er,

As good as ever ho’d;

I have hoed from my Cradle,

And reap’d where I ne’er sow’d.

And a Ho-ing I will go, etc.

For my Turnips I must Hoe.

With a Hoe for myself,

And another for my Son;

A Third too for my Wife –

But Wives I’ve two, or None.

And a Ho-ing we will go, etc . . .

. . . I’ve pillag’d Town and Country round,

And no Man durst say, No;

I’ve lop’d off Heads, like Turnip-tops,

Made England cry, High! Ho!

And a Ho-ing I will go, etc . . .

. . . To Hannover I’ll go, I’ll go,

And there I’ll mery be;

With a good Hoe in my right Hand,

And Munster on my Knee.

And a Ho-ing I will go, etc.

Come on, my Turks and Germans,

Pack up, pack up, and go,

Let J————s take his Scepter,

So I can have my Hoe.

And a Ho-ing we will go, etc . . .
¹⁷

Melusine was also lampooned for the misconception that she was part of George’s ‘harem’, together with Sophia Charlotte and Countess Platen. And another publication irreverently called Melusine and Sophia Charlotte ‘two big blousy German women’.
¹⁸

The
Weekly Journal
of May 1721 spat bile at her. Its editorial lamented that ‘we are ruined by . . . parasites, bawds, whores, nay, what is more vexatious, old ugly whores! Such as could not find entertainment in the most hospitable hundreds of old Drury? . . .’
¹⁹

In 1720, on the eve of George’s departure for Hanover, Samuel Wesley, brother of John Wesley, penned a singularly unattractive sketch of Melusine. The poem was set against the background of George’s appointments for his regency council while he was out of the country, and it imagines a conversation between George and Melusine:

As soon as the wind it came fairly about,

That kept the king in and his enemies out,

He determined no longer confinement to bear;

And thus to the Duchess his mind did declare:

Quoth he, my dear Kenny [Kendal], I’ve been tired a long while,

With living obscure in this poor little isle.

And now Spain and Pretender have no more enemies to spring

I’m resolved to go home and live like a king.

The Duchess approves of this, describes and laughs at all the persons nominated for the Council of Regency, and concludes:

‘On the whole, I’ll be hanged if all over the realm

There are thirteen such fools to be put to the helm!

So for this time be easy, nor have jealous thought,

They ha’n’t sense to see you, nor are worth being bought.’

‘’Tis for that (quoth the King, in very bad French),

I chose them for my regents, and you for my wench.

And neither, I’m sure, will my trust e’er betray,

For the devil won’t take you if I turn you away.’
²⁰

Melusine was vilified for her unattractiveness, George for his stupidity – he only speaks ‘very bad French’. This is a complete falsehood. His French was as fluent as his German. The pair are portrayed mocking the kingdom they rule. If these damning reports from the Tory press hurt Melusine, we have no way of knowing. Nothing is recorded.

10.
Palaces

Nothing is more beautiful than the road from London to Kensington, crossing Hyde Park. It is perfectly straight and so wide that three or four coaches can drive abreast. It is bordered on either side by a wide ditch, and has posts put up at even distances, on the tops of which lanterns are hung and lamps placed in them, which are lighted every evening when the Court is at Kensington.

Saussure,
A Foreign View
¹

For thirteen years Melusine enjoyed life in England’s palaces, which were amongst the most sublime in Europe. St James’s became much less crowded when Caroline, Georg August and their retinue were forcibly moved out and took up residence at Leicester House in 1717. The palace was enlarged and redecorated by Sir Christopher Wren and William Kent, an artist who enjoyed huge favour under both George and Georg August, but there was no grand scheme to redesign it, although St James’s was their main London home. It was rather a policy of ‘piecemeal alteration and adaptation’. A frustrated Vanbrugh submitted hopeful drawings for a grand new palace, but George was not keen, preferring to expend his time and imagination on redesigning Kensington.

George and Melusine saw no romance in St James’s and the building work they carried out was mostly for practical purposes. According to the editor of
The History of the King’s Works
, building was one of ‘orders for new backstairs, laundries, wardrobes and dressing-rooms for members of the Court; alterations to guard-rooms, kitchens, stables and wine-cellars; of the gradual encroachment on the Tudor courtyards which is so apparent in the eighteenth-century surveys of the palace’.
²

Melusine had the use of the best apartments in the palace, apartments that were, according to Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, later occupied by a mistress of George II, Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk. They overlooked the garden and George insisted on their refurbishment, ordering a new parquet floor on his accession and authorizing works costing over £4,000 for the years between 1717 and 1723.

George also ensured that his other close confidantes were comfortable. Sophia Charlotte’s lodgings were refurbished – she was noted in the accounts as ‘Madame Kilmansack’ and it is interesting that the accounts do not mention her husband, leaving us to wonder as to whether or not they cohabited. The apartments of the Turkish servants Mustapha and Mehemet were also improved, along with those that housed Baron Hattorf, George’s Cabinet secretary, his tailor, and his fool Ulrich, of whom he was reportedly very fond. Money was exchanged for Ulrich when he arrived in England. Although he was ostensibly a gift from the Duke of Saxe Gotha, the duke’s envoy was given £330 for him.

In keeping with the practical nature of the building works, Melusine had a large laundry ‘with vaults beneath and rooms above’ built in 1723, at a cost of over £2,000.
³
George indulged in a new library and a smoking room.

Tragically, in 1809 fire ripped through the palace, destroying nearly all of the building undertaken by George and Melusine. Today nothing remains of her lovely rooms facing the garden.

Hampton Court, their summer home, was the palace furthest from London, standing on the river about twelve miles from the capital. The writer César de Saussure was impressed. He wrote to his family: ‘Had he [William III] lived longer, he would have made the palace of Hampton Court one of the most beautiful in Europe, for he was very fond of it and greatly embellished it.’
⁴

Sir Christopher Wren as Master of the King’s Works had been responsible for the extensive rebuilding programme initiated by William and Mary, demolishing much of the Tudor palace and replacing it with a large, modern mansion more in keeping with William’s Dutch tastes. He was particularly fond of large, light spaces and indoor plumbing. Work more or less ceased with Mary’s death in 1694 and by the time George and Melusine arrived Hampton Court was effectively two palaces. The remains of the
magnificent Tudor building were at the front – a building so sublime that its beauty had compelled Henry VIII to steal it from Cardinal Wolsey – with the more modern and rather pedestrian structure, the work of Wren’s dotage, welded to it, facing the river.

George commissioned Sir John Vanbrugh to complete the Queen’s Apartments, designed by Wren for Mary, for Georg August and Caroline. Wren, a victim of political infighting, was dismissed from his post at the King’s Works in 1718, at the age of eighty-six, and replaced by William Benson.

Melusine’s detractors have accused her of having a hand in Wren’s dismissal. One anti-Hanoverian historian of the early twentieth century argues that Wren was sacked because he ‘refused to allow her to mutilate Hampton Court with her execrable taste, and in revenge she sold his place to William Benson’.
⁵
The historian goes on to claim that ‘Frog Walk’ at Hampton Court was actually a corruption of ‘Frau’ walk, so named because George used to walk there with Melusine and Sophia Charlotte.
⁶
I have found no evidence to substantiate either claim.

Wren’s dismissal probably had far more to do with his age – he was eighty-two when George ascended the throne – and his close association with the Tories during Anne’s reign. According to his biographer, Lisa Jardine, that he kept his position at the Board of Works during the early days of George’s reign was ‘something of a courtesy’.

Wren came to live on Hampton Court Green on his retirement. The nation that seemed to forget him with his dismissal honoured him in death. He was buried, very simply, in the crypt at St Paul’s Cathedral beneath a black marble slab, with an inscription on a nearby wall reading: ‘Si monumentum requiris, circumspice’– ‘If you seek his monument, look around you.’

George held full court at Hampton Court in the summer of 1718, and the palace’s partial Tudor backdrop created a fabulous
theatre for the balls, masques, plays and games. But after 1720 Hampton Court was more or less abandoned by Melusine and George. Suburban Kensington, possibly because it reminded them of Herrenhausen, became the home they delighted in most. It was only when Georg August took the throne in 1727 as George II that Hampton Court enjoyed one last royal hurrah.

In a strange repetition of history, George II had a terrible relationship with his eldest son, Frederick. When Frederick’s wife, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, went into labour at Hampton Court, her husband dragged her away in the middle of the night to St James’s, where she gave birth at once to a daughter, who died shortly afterwards. George II was furious at his son’s negligence. Thereafter he and Caroline found the palace distasteful and full of unhappy memories. After Caroline died a few months later George never set foot there again.
⁷
Ten years later Hampton Court was abandoned by English monarchs for the last time.

According to the editor of
The King’s Works
, little was done at Windsor during George’s reign. George and Melusine rarely visited William the Conqueror’s great fortress on the banks of the Thames; it was largely ignored. There was a brief flurry of activity in 1724 when they spent the summer there. The royal visit led to repairs and redecoration, but they did not stay in the castle itself, preferring, like Queen Anne before them, a small house in its grounds. There was one specific instruction regarding Melusine’s accommodation: ‘a new way to be made out of the Duchess of Kendall’s apartment in Windsor Castle into the Terrass walk, and a new doore to be hung at the top of her stairs leading down to the Terrass; likewise a pair of stairs to be made to the great roome in the Devill’s Tower, which is to be fitted up for the use of the Board of Green Cloth.’
⁸
Melusine, like George, loved to walk, and she required immediate access to open spaces.