WALPOLE'S REMINISCENCES.

["His Reminiscences of the Reigns of George I. and George 11., make us better acquainted with the manners of these princes and their courts than we should be after perusing a hundred heavy historians; and futurity will long be indebted to the chance which threw into his vicinity, when age rendered him communicative, the accomplished ladies to whom these Anecdotes were communicated."]

Quarterly Review, Sept. 1818.

XXIX. GEORGE I.

As I was the youngest by eleven years of Sir Robert Walpole's children by his first wife, and was extremely weak and delicate, as you see me still, though with no constitutional complaint till I had the gout after forty; and as my two sisters were consumptive and died of consumptions; the supposed necessary care of me (and I have overheard persons saying, "That child cannot possibly live," so engrossed the attention of my mother, that compassion and tenderness soon became extreme fondness and as the infinite good-nature of my father never thwarted any of his children, he suffered me to be too much indulged, and permitted her to gratify the first vehement inclination that ever I expressed, and which, as I have never

since felt any enthusiasm for royal persons, I must suppose that the female attendants in the family must have put into my head, to long to see the King. This childish caprice was so strong, that my mother solicited the Duchess of Kendal to obtain for me the honour of kissing his Majesty's hand before he set out for Hanover. A favour so unusual to be asked for a boy of ten years old, was still too slight to be refused to the wife of the first minister for her darling child; yet not being proper to be made a precedent, it was settled to be in private and at night.

Accordingly, the night but one before the King began his last journey, my mother carried me at ten at night to the apartment of the Countess of Walsingham, on the ground-floor towards the garden at St James's, which opened into that of her aunt the Duchess of Kendal; apartments occupied by George II. after his Queen's death, and by his successive mistresses, the Countesses of Suffolk and Yarmouth.

Notice being given that the King was come down to supper, Lady Walsingham took me alone into the Duchess's anteroom, where we found alone the King and her. I knelt down, and kissed his hand. He said a few words to me, and my conductress led me back to my mother.

The person of the King is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him but yesterday. It was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins; not tall, of an aspect rather good than august, with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches of snuff-coloured cloth, with stockings of the same colour, and a blue riband over all. So entirely was he my object

that I do not believe I once looked at the Duchess; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I remember that just beyond his Majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill-favoured old lady; but I did not retain the least idea of her features, nor know what the colour of her dress was.

and

My childish loyalty, and the condescension in gratifying it, were, I suppose, causes that contributed very soon afterwards to make me shed a flood of tears for that Sovereign's death, when with the other scholars at Eton college I walked in procession to the proclamation of the successor; which (though I think they partly fell because I imagined it became the son of a prime-minister to be more concerned than other boys,) were no doubt imputed by many of the spectators who were politicians, to my fears of my father's most probable fall, but of which I had not the smallest conception; nor should have met with any more concern than I did when it really arrived in the year 1742, by which time I had lost all taste for courts, and princes, and power, as was natural to one who never felt an ambitious thought for himself.

It must not be inferred from her obtaining this grace for me, that the Duchess of Kendal was a friend to my father. On the contrary, at that moment she had been labouring to displace him, and introduce Lord Bolingbroke into the administration; on which I shall say more hereafter.

It was an instance of Sir Robert's singular fortune, or evidence of his talents, that he not only preserved his power under two successive monarchs, but in spite of the efforts of both their mistresses to remove him. It was perhaps still more remarkable, and an instance unparalleled, that Sir

Robert governed George the First in Latin, the King not speaking English, and his minister no German, nor even French. It was much talked of, that Sir Robert, detecting one of the Hanoverian ministers in some trick or falsehood before the King's face, had the firmness to say to the German, "Mentiris, impudentissime!" The goodhumoured monarch only laughed, as he often did when Sir Robert complained to him of his Hanoverians selling places, nor would be persuaded that it was not the practice of the English court; and which an incident must have planted in his mind with no favourable impression of English disinterestedness. "This is a strange country !" said his Majesty; "the first morning after my arrival at St James's, I looked out of the window, and saw a park with walks, a canal, &c. which they told me were mine. The next day Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my park, sent me a fine brace of carp out of my canal; and I was told I must give five guineas to Lord Chetwynd's servant for bringing me my own carp out of my own canal in my own park !"

*

George the First, while electoral prince, had married his cousin the Princess Dorothea, only child of the Duke of Zell; a match of convenience to reunite the dominions of the family. Though she was very handsome, the prince, who was extremely amorous, had several mistresses; which provocation, and his absence in the army of the confederates, probably disposed the princess to indulge some degree of coquetry. At that moment arrived at Hanover the famous and beautiful Count Konismark, the charms of whose person

ought not to have obliterated the memory of his vile assassination of Mr Thynne. His vanity, the beauty of the electoral princess, and the neglect under which he found her, encouraged his presumption to make his addresses to her, not covertly; and she, though believed not to have transgressed her duty, did receive them too indiscreetly. The old elector flamed at the insolence of so stigmatized a pretender, and ordered him to quit his dominions the next day. The princess, surrounded by women too closely connected with her husband, and consequently enemies of the lady they injured, was persuaded by them to suffer the count to kiss her hand before his abrupt departure; and he was actually introduced by them into her bedchamber the next morning before she rose. From that moment he disappeared; nor was it known what became of him, till on the death of George I., on his son the new king's first journey to Hanover, some alterations in the palace being ordered by him, the body of Konismark was discovered under the floor of the electoral princess's dressing. room-the count having probably been strangled there the instant he left her, and his body secreted. The discovery was hushed up; George II. intrusted the secret to his wife Queen Caroline, who told it to my father; but the King was too tender of the honour of his mother to utter it to his mistress; nor did Lady Suffolk ever hear of it, till I informed her of it several years afterwards. The disappearance of the count made his murder suspected, and various reports of the discovery of his body have of late years been spread, but not with the authentic circumstances.