When the South Sea Bubble rose to dazzle all eyes with its iridescent splendours, it was she more than any other who blew it.  She was the witch behind the scenes of the South Sea and many another bubble Company, whether its object was to “carry on a thing that will turn to the advantage of the concerned,” “the breeding and providing for natural children,” or “for planting mulberries in Chelsea Park to breed silk-worms.”

Every day of this wild, insane gamble, which wrecked thousands of homes, and filled hundreds of suicides’ graves, brought its stream of gold to her exchequer; and when the bubbles burst in havoc and ruin she smiled and counted her gains, turning a deaf ear to the storm of execration that raged against her outside the palace walls.  She knew that she had played her cards so skilfully that all the popular rage was impotent to harm her.  Only one of her many puppets—­Knight, the Treasurer of the South Sea Company—­could be the means of doing her harm.  If he were arrested and told all he knew, impeachment would probably follow, with a sentence of imprisonment and banishment.  But the crafty German was much too old a bird to be caught in that way.  She packed Knight off to Antwerp; and, through the influence of her friend, the German Empress, the States of Brabant refused to give him up to his fate.

The Duchess of Kendal was now at the zenith of her power and splendour.  While Sophia Dorothea, the true Queen of England, was pining away in solitude in distant Ahlden, the German “Maypole” was Queen in all but name, ruling alike her senile paramour and the nation with a tactful, if iron hand.  It is said that she was actually the morganatic wife of George, that the ceremony had been performed by no less a dignitary than the Archbishop of York; but, whether this was so or not, it is certain that this “old and forbidding skeleton of a giantess” was more England’s Queen than any other Consort of the Georges.

She was present at every consultation between the King and his Ministers—­indeed the conferences were invariably held in her own apartments, every day from five till eight.  She understood and humoured every whim of her Royal partner with infinite tactfulness, to the extent even of encouraging his amours with young and attractive women, while she herself, to emphasise her platonic relations with him, affected an extravagant piety, attending as many as seven Lutheran services every Sunday.  The only rival she had ever feared—­and hated—­Madame Kielmansegg, had long passed out of power, and as Countess of Darlington was too much absorbed in pandering to her mountain of flesh, and filling her pockets, to spare a regret for the Royal lover she had lost.

When George, on hearing of the death of his unhappy wife, Sophia Dorothea, set out on his last journey to Hanover, his only companion was the Duchess of Kendal, the woman to whose grim fascinations he had been loyal for more than forty years; and it was she who closed his eyes in the Palace of Osnabrueck, in which he had drawn his first breath sixty-seven years earlier.