Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

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HAMPTON COURT
Queen Caroline, living her hard life in those fine
rooms that look out upon the Fountain Garden, was,
with all her coarseness,a very different woman from the
Schulenberg or the Kilmansegge, or the " avaricious
fury of a niece " Lady Walsingham, or Lady Deloraine
with her utter disregard of self-respect, or Madame de
Walmoden, or even the good-natured, kind-hearted
Lady Suffolk. She was a stateswoman, not a mere
leader of a court.
Youmay strut, dapper George,but 'twillallbe in vain;
We know 'tis Queen Caroline,not you that reign —
You governno more than Don Philip of Spain.
Then if you would have us fall down and adore you,
Lock up your fat spouse, as your daddid before you."
Yet very different was her life to that of Elizabeth
Farnese, to whom thissquib compared her. Elizabeth's
was a servitude,but Caroline's was slavery. George's
" fat Venus " was snubbed, and bullied, and worried
night and day. Hour after hour she must listen to
her husband's silly gasconading, or his immoral tales,
or his ill-tempered condemnation of everything and
every person that did not suit his humour.
Lord Hervey tells a story of the change in the
pictures in the great drawing-room at Kensington as
an instance of the " accumulated trifles " that marked
his ill-temper and insolence; and he ends it by a
picture of a typical morning scene.1 " His Majesty
stayed about five minutes in the gallery, snubbed the
Queen, who was drinking chocolate, for being always
1 Memoirs, vol.ii. p. 35.