(116) That woman, who had risen to greatness and independent wealth by the weakness of another Queen, forgot, like Duc d’Epernon, her own unmerited exultation, and affected to brave successive courts, though sprung from the dregs of one.  When the Prince of Orange came over to marry the Princess Royal, Anne, a boarded gallery with a penthouse roof was erected for the procession from the windows of the great drawing-room at St. James’s cross the garden to the Lutheran chapel in the friary.  The Prince being indisposed, and going to Bath, the marriage was deferred for some weeks, and the boarded gallery remained, darkening the windows of Marlborough House.  The Duchess cried, “I wonder when my neighbour George will take away his orange-chest!”—­which it did resemble.  She did not want that sort of wit,* which ill-temper, long knowledge of the world, and insolence can sharpen-and envying the favour which she no longer possessed, Sir R. Walpole was often the object of her satire.  Yet her great friend, Lord Godolphin, the treasurer, had enjoined her to preserve very different sentiments.  The Duchess and my father and mother were standing by the Earl’s bed at St. Albans as he was dying.  Taking Sir Robert by the hand, Lord Godolphin turned to the Duchess, and said, “Madam, should ’you ever desert this young man, and there should be a possibility of returning from the grave, I shall certainly appear to you.”  Her grace did not believe in spirits.

* Baron Gleicken, minister from Denmark to France, being at Paris soon after the King his master had been there, and a French lady being so ill-bred as to begin censuring the King to him, saying, “Ah!  Monsieur, c’est une t`ete!"-"Couronn`ee,” replied he instantly, stopping her by so gentle a hint.

(117) Amelia Sophia, wife of the Baron de Walmoden, Created Countess of Yarmouth in 1739.

(118) For an interesting account of the death of George the Second, on the 24th of October, 1760, and also of his funeral in Westminster Abbey, see Walpole’s letters to Mr. Montagu on the 25th of that month, and of the 13th of November.-E.

CHAPTER VIII.

George the Second’s Daughters-Anne, Princess of Orange-Princess Amelia-Princess Caroline-Lord Hervey-Duke of Cumberland.

I am tempted to drain my memory of all its rubbish, and will set down a few more of my recollections, but with less method than I have used in the foregoing pages.

I have said little or nothing of the King’s two unmarried daughters.  Though they lived in the palace with him, he never admitted them to any share in his politics; and if any of the ministers paid them the compliment of seeming attachment, it was more for the air than for the reality.  The Princess Royal, Anne, married in Holland, was of a most imperious and ambitious nature; and on her mother’s death, hoping to succeed to her credit, came to Holland on pretence of ill health; but the King, aware of her plan, Was so offended that he sent her to Bath as soon as she arrived, and as peremptorily back to Holland-I think, without suffering her to pass two nights in London.