Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges Part 54

At Dettingen fight I was known not to blench I butchered the Scotch, and I bearded the French:

I neither had morals, nor manners, nor wit; I wasn't much missed when I died in a fit.

Here set up my statue, and make it complete-With Pitt on his knees at my dirty old feet.

GEORGE III

Give me a royal niche-it is my due, The virtuousest king the realm e'er knew.

I, through a decent reputable life, Was constant to plain food and a plain wife.

Ireland I risked, and lost America; But dined on legs of mutton every day.

My brain, perhaps, might be a feeble part; But yet I think I had an English heart.

When all the kings were prostrate, I alone Stood face to face against Napoleon;

Nor ever could the ruthless Frenchman forge A fetter for Old England and Old George:

I let loose flaming Nelson on his fleets; I met his troops with Wellesley's bayonets.

Triumphant waved my flag on land and sea: Where was the king in Europe like to me?

Monarchs exiled found shelter on my sh.o.r.es; My bounty rescued kings and emperors.

But what boots victory by land or sea?

What boots that kings found refuge at my knee?

I was a conqueror, but yet not proud; And careless, even though Napoleon bow'd.

The rescued kings came kiss my garments' hem: The rescued kings I never heeded them.

My guns roar'd triumph, but I never heard: All England thrilled with joy, I never stirred.

What care had I of pomp, or fame, or power,- A crazy old blind man in Windsor Tower?

GEORGIUS ULTIMUS

He left an example for age and for youth To avoid.

He never acted well by Man or Woman, And was as false to his Mistress as to his Wife.

He deserted his Friends and his Principles.

He was so ignorant that he could scarcely Spell; But he had some Skill in Cutting out Coats, And an undeniable Taste for Cookery.

He built the Palaces of Brighton and of Buckingham, And for these Qualities and Proofs of Genius, An admiring Aristocracy Christened him the "First Gentleman in Europe".

Friends, respect the King whose Statue is here, And the generous Aristocracy who admired him.

Sketches Of Manners, Morals, Court And Town Life

[_Cornhill Magazine_, 1860; first edition in book form, 1861]

George The First

A very few years since, I knew familiarly a lady, who had been asked in marriage by Horace Walpole, who had been patted on the head by George I.

This lady had knocked at Johnson's door; had been intimate with Fox, the beautiful Georgina of Devons.h.i.+re, and that brilliant Whig society of the reign of George III; had known the d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry, the patroness of Gay and Prior, the admired young beauty of the Court of Queen Anne. I often thought as I took my kind old friend's hand, how with it I held on to the old society of wits and men of the world. I could travel back for sevenscore years of time-have glimpses of Brummell, Selwyn, Chesterfield and the men of pleasure; of Walpole and Conway; of Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith; of North, Chatham, Newcastle; of the fair maids of honour of George II's Court; of the German retainers of George I's; where Addison was secretary of state; where d.i.c.k Steele held a place; whither the great Marlborough came with his fiery spouse; when Pope, and Swift, and Bolingbroke yet lived and wrote. Of a society so vast, busy, brilliant, it is impossible in four brief chapters to give a complete notion; but we may peep here and there into that bygone world of the Georges, see what they and their Courts were like; glance at the people round about them; look at past manners, fas.h.i.+ons, pleasures, and contrast them with our own. I have to say thus much by way of preface, because the subject of these lectures has been misunderstood, and I have been taken to task for not having given grave historical treatises, which it never was my intention to attempt.

Not about battles, about politics, about statesmen and measures of state, did I ever think to lecture you: but to sketch the manners and life of the old world; to amuse for a few hours with talk about the old society; and, with the result of many a day's and night's pleasant reading, to try and wile away a few winter evenings for my hearers.

Among the German princes who sat under Luther at Wittenberg, was Duke Ernest of Celle, whose younger son, William of Luneburg, was the progenitor of the ill.u.s.trious Hanoverian house at present reigning in Great Britain. Duke William held his Court at Celle, a little town of ten thousand people that lies on the railway line between Hamburg and Hanover, in the midst of great plains of sand, upon the river Aller. When Duke William had it, it was a very humble wood-built place, with a great brick church, which he sedulously frequented, and in which he and others of his house lie buried. He was a very religious lord, and called William the Pious by his small circle of subjects, over whom he ruled till fate deprived him both of sight and reason. Sometimes, in his latter days, the good duke had glimpses of mental light, when he would bid his musicians play the psalm-tunes which he loved. One thinks of a descendant of his, two hundred years afterwards, blind, old, and lost of wits, singing Handel in Windsor Tower.

William the Pious had fifteen children, eight daughters and seven sons, who, as the property left among them was small, drew lots to determine which one of them should marry, and continue the stout race of the Guelphs. The lot fell on Duke George, the sixth brother. The others remained single, or contracted left-handed marriages after the princely fas.h.i.+on of those days. It is a queer picture-that of the old prince dying in his little wood-built capital, and his seven sons tossing up which should inherit and transmit the crown of Brentford. Duke George, the lucky prizeman, made the tour of Europe, during which he visited the Court of Queen Elizabeth; and in the year 1617, came back and settled at Zell, with a wife out of Darmstadt. His remaining brothers all kept their house at Zell, for economy's sake. And presently, in due course, they all died-all the honest dukes; Ernest, and Christian, and Augustus, and Magnus, and George, and John-and they are buried in the brick church of Brentford yonder, by the sandy banks of the Aller.

Dr. Vehse gives a pleasant glimpse of the way of life of our dukes in Zell. "When the trumpeter on the tower has blown," Duke Christian orders-viz. at nine o'clock in the morning, and four in the evening, every one must be present at meals, and those who are not must go without. None of the servants, unless it be a knave who has been ordered to ride out, shall eat or drink in the kitchen or cellar; or, without special leave, fodder his horses at the prince's cost. When the meal is served in the Court-room, a page shall go round and bid every one be quiet and orderly, forbidding all cursing, swearing, and rudeness; all throwing about of bread, bones, or roast, or pocketing of the same. Every morning, at seven, the squires shall have their morning soup, along with which, and dinner, they shall be served with their under-drink-every morning, except Friday morning, when there was sermon, and no drink. Every evening they shall have their beer, and at night their sleep-drink. The butler is especially warned not to allow n.o.ble or simple to go into the cellar: wine shall only be served at the prince's or councillor's table; and every Monday, the honest old Duke Christian ordains the accounts shall be ready, and the expenses in the kitchen, the wine and beer cellar, the bakehouse and stable, made out.

Duke George, the marrying duke, did not stop at home to partake of the beer and wine, and the sermons. He went about fighting wherever there was profit to be had. He served as general in the army of the circle of Lower Saxony, the Protestant army; then he went over to the emperor, and fought in his armies in Germany and Italy; and when Gustavus Adolphus appeared in Germany, George took service as a Swedish general, and seized the Abbey of Hildesheim, as his share of the plunder. Here, in the year 1641, Duke George died, leaving four sons behind him, from the youngest of whom descend our royal Georges.

Under these children of Duke George, the old G.o.d-fearing, simple ways of Zell appear to have gone out of mode. The second brother was constantly visiting Venice, and leading a jolly, wicked life there. It was the most jovial of all places at the end of the seventeenth century; and military men, after a campaign, rushed thither, as the warriors of the Allies rushed to Paris in 1814, to gamble, and rejoice, and partake of all sorts of G.o.dless delights. This prince, then, loving Venice and its pleasures, brought Italian singers and dancers back with him to quiet old Zell; and, worse still, demeaned himself by marrying a French lady of birth quite inferior to his own-Eleanor d'Olbreuse, from whom our queen is descended.

Eleanor had a pretty daughter, who inherited a great fortune, which inflamed her cousin, George Louis of Hanover, with a desire to marry her; and so, with her beauty and her riches, she came to a sad end.

It is too long to tell how the four sons of Duke George divided his territories amongst them, and how, finally, they came into possession of the son of the youngest of the four. In this generation the Protestant faith was very nearly extinguished in the family: and then where should we in England have gone for a king? The third brother also took delight in Italy, where the priests converted him and his Protestant chaplain too.

Ma.s.s was said in Hanover once more; and Italian soprani piped their Latin rhymes in place of the hymns which William the Pious and Dr. Luther sang.

Louis XIV gave this and other converts a splendid pension. Crowds of Frenchmen and brilliant French fas.h.i.+ons came into his Court. It is incalculable how much that royal bigwig cost Germany. Every prince imitated the French king, and had his Versailles, his Wilhelmshohe or Ludwigsl.u.s.t; his court and its splendours; his gardens laid out with statues; his fountains, and waterworks, and Tritons; his actors, and dancers, and singers, and fiddlers; his harem, with its inhabitants; his diamonds and duchies for these latter; his enormous festivities, his gaming-tables, tournaments, masquerades, and banquets lasting a week long, for which the people paid with their money, when the poor wretches had it; with their bodies and very blood when they had none; being sold in thousands by their lords and masters, who gaily dealt in soldiers, staked a regiment upon the red at the gambling-table; swapped a battalion against a dancing-girl's diamond necklace; and, as it were, pocketed their people.

As one views Europe, through contemporary books of travel in the early part of the last century, the landscape is awful-wretched wastes, beggarly and plundered; half-burned cottages and trembling peasants gathering piteous harvests; gangs of such tramping along with bayonets behind them, and corporals with canes and cats-of-nine-tails to flog them to barracks.

By these pa.s.ses my lord's gilt carriage floundering through the ruts, as he swears at the postilions, and toils on to the Residenz. Hard by, but away from the noise and brawling of the citizens and buyers, is Wilhelmsl.u.s.t or Ludwigsruhe, or Monbijou, or Versailles-it scarcely matters which-near to the city, shut out by woods from the beggared country, the enormous, hideous, gilded, monstrous marble palace, where the prince is, and the Court, and the trim gardens, and huge fountains, and the forest where the ragged peasants are beating the game in (it is death to them to touch a feather); and the jolly hunt sweeps by with its uniform of crimson and gold; and the prince gallops ahead puffing his royal horn; and his lords and mistresses ride after him; and the stag is pulled down; and the grand huntsman gives the knife in the midst of a chorus of bugles; and 'tis time the Court go home to dinner; and our n.o.ble traveller, it may be the Baron of Pollnitz, or the Count de Konigsmarck, or the excellent Chevalier de Seingalt, sees the procession gleaming through the trim avenues of the wood, and hastens to the inn, and sends his n.o.ble name to the marshal of the Court. Then our n.o.bleman arrays himself in green and gold, or pink and silver, in the richest Paris mode, and is introduced by the chamberlain, and makes his bow to the jolly prince, and the gracious princess; and is presented to the chief lords and ladies, and then comes supper and a bank at faro, where he loses or wins a thousand pieces by daylight. If it is a German Court, you may add not a little drunkenness to this picture of high life; but German, or French, or Spanish, if you can see out of your palace-windows beyond the trim-cut forest vistas, misery is lying outside; hunger is stalking about the bare villages, listlessly following precarious husbandry; ploughing stony fields with starved cattle; or fearfully taking in scanty harvests. Augustus is fat and jolly on his throne; he can knock down an ox, and eat one almost; his mistress Aurora von Konigsmarck is the loveliest, the wittiest creature; his diamonds are the biggest and most brilliant in the world, and his feasts as splendid as those of Versailles. As for Louis the Great, he is more than mortal. Lift up your glances respectfully, and mark him eyeing Madame de Fontanges or Madame de Montespan from under his sublime periwig, as he pa.s.ses through the great gallery where Villars and Vendome, and Berwick, and Bossuet, and Ma.s.sillon are waiting. Can Court be more splendid; n.o.bles and knights more gallant and superb; ladies more lovely? A grander monarch, or a more miserable starved wretch than the peasant his subject, you cannot look on. Let us bear both these types in mind, if we wish to estimate the old society properly. Remember the glory and the chivalry?

Yes! Remember the grace and beauty, the splendour and lofty politeness; the gallant courtesy of Fontenoy, where the French line bids the gentlemen of the English guard to fire first; the n.o.ble constancy of the old king and Villars his general, who fits out the last army with the last crown-piece from the treasury, and goes to meet the enemy and die or conquer for France at Denain. But round all that royal splendour lies a nation enslaved and ruined: there are people robbed of their rights-communities laid waste-faith, justice, commerce trampled upon, and wellnigh destroyed-nay, in the very centre of royalty itself, what horrible stains and meanness, crime and shame! It is but to a silly harlot that some of the n.o.blest gentlemen, and some of the proudest women in the world, are bowing down; it is the price of a miserable province that the king ties in diamonds round his mistress's white neck. In the first half of the last century, I say, this is going on all Europe over. Saxony is a waste as well as Picardy or Artois; and Versailles is only larger and not worse than Herrenhausen.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Two Portraits

It was the first Elector of Hanover who made the fortunate match which bestowed the race of Hanoverian Sovereigns upon us Britons. Nine years after Charles Stuart lost his head, his niece Sophia, one of many children of another luckless dethroned sovereign, the Elector Palatine, married Ernest Augustus of Brunswick, and brought the reversion to the crown of the three kingdoms in her scanty trousseau. One of the handsomest, the most cheerful, sensible, shrewd, accomplished of women was Sophia,(186) daughter of poor Frederick, the winter king of Bohemia. The other daughters of lovely, unhappy Elizabeth Stuart went off into the Catholic Church; this one, luckily for her family, remained, I cannot say faithful to the Reformed Religion, but at least she adopted no other. An agent of the French king's, Gourville, a convert himself, strove to bring her and her husband to a sense of the truth; and tells us that he one day asked madame the d.u.c.h.ess of Hanover, of what religion her daughter was, then a pretty girl of thirteen years old. The d.u.c.h.ess replied that the princess _was of no religion as yet_. They were waiting to know of what religion her husband would be, Protestant or Catholic, before instructing her! And the Duke of Hanover having heard all Gourville's proposal, said that a change would be advantageous to his house, but that he himself was too old to change.

This shrewd woman had such keen eyes that she knew how to shut them upon occasion, and was blind to many faults which it appeared that her husband the Bishop of Osnaburg and Duke of Hanover committed. He loved to take his pleasure like other sovereigns-was a merry prince, fond of dinner and the bottle; liked to go to Italy, as his brothers had done before him; and we read how he jovially sold 6,700 of his Hanoverians to the seigniory of Venice. They went bravely off to the Morea, under command of Ernest's son, Prince Max, and only 1,400 of them ever came home again. The German princes sold a good deal of this kind of stock. You may remember how George III's Government purchased Hessians, and the use we made of them during the War of Independence.

The ducats Duke Ernest got for his soldiers he spent in a series of the most brilliant entertainments. Nevertheless, the jovial prince was economical, and kept a steady eye upon his own interests. He achieved the electoral dignity for himself: he married his eldest son George to his beautiful cousin of Zell; and sending his sons out in command of armies to fight-now on this side, now on that-he lived on, taking his pleasure, and scheming his schemes, a merry, wise prince enough, not, I fear, a moral prince, of which kind we shall have but very few specimens in the course of these lectures.

Ernest Augustus had seven children in all, some of whom were scapegraces, and rebelled against the parental system of primogeniture and non-division of property which the Elector ordained. "Gustchen," the Electress writes about her second son:-"Poor Gus is thrust out, and his father will give him no more keep. I laugh in the day, and cry all night about it; for I am a fool with my children." Three of the six died fighting against Turks, Tartars, Frenchmen. One of them conspired, revolted, fled to Rome, leaving an agent behind him, whose head was taken off. The daughter, of whose early education we have made mention, was married to the Elector of Brandenburg, and so her religion settled finally on the Protestant side.

A niece of the Electress Sophia-who had been made to change her religion, and marry the Duke of Orleans, brother of the French king; a woman whose honest heart was always with her friends and dear old Deutschland, though her fat little body was confined at Paris or Marly, or Versailles-has left us, in her enormous correspondence (part of which has been printed in German and French), recollections of the Electress, and of George her son.

Elizabeth Charlotte was at Osnaburg when George was born (1660). She narrowly escaped a whipping for being in the way on that auspicious day.