The Queen’s House Read online

  The new ‘Lord Allpride’ had met his match. The new Duchess of Buckingham had fire and brilliance in her blood through her mother’s side as well as the royal blood of which she was inordinately proud. She was a fanatical Jacobite: every year on the anniversary of Charles I’s execution, she and her whole court went into the deepest mourning. Buckingham House was to become the centre of Jacobite intrigue until her death, and Birdcage Walk became known as ‘Jacobite Walk’.

  Buckingham House, in her eyes, was to be an alternative palace to outshine the dingy St James’s Palace along the Mall. What Queen Anne thought as she saw her former lover’s magnificent new home rising from the ashes of Arlington House is not known. But she was gracious enough to receive the new Duchess and, even more important, she gave Buckingham verbal permission to take a strip of St James’s Park to improve his entrance.

  The new house was built not on the old foundations but close to them – nearer to Green Park – and partly on the Mulberry Garden, whose leasehold still had seventy years to run. It faced east, overlooking St James’s Park, and Buckingham saw that, with the extra land and new alignment, it would appear that St James’s Park was part of his estate. In fact, he took over an acre of extra land from St James’s Park and the common highway, and pulled down the entrance lodge to the Park and a length of wall in order to give him a spacious forecourt and carry the road round his enclosure. The total acreage of his estate was now ‘I Rood 6 Perches’ (thirty-three acres). Queen Anne was furious at his presumption but did nothing about it.

  One of the architects employed was Captain Winde. An old soldier, elderly at this time, a man of some mettle, he was said to have taken the Duke to the roof of Buckingham House to admire the view and then threatened to throw himself – and the Duke – off the roof if he was not paid. Buckingham paid.

  Begun in 1705 and finished three years later, Buckingham House was described as a

  graceful palace, very commodiously situated at the westerly end of St James’s Park, having at one view a prospect of the Mall & other walks, and of a delightful and spacious canal; a seat not to be condemned by the greatest monarch. It consists of a mansion house, & at some distance from each end of that, conjoined by two arching galleries, are the lodging rooms for servants on the south side of the court, & opposite, on the north side the kitchen & laundry.

  The walls were brick with two ranges of pillars, of the Corinthian and Tuscan orders.

  Above these

  an acroteria of figures, standing erect and fronting the court: they appear as big as life and look noble. Mercury … Secrecy … Equity … Liberty … Truth holding the sun in his right hand and treading on a globe and Apollo with his lyre.

  On the west face were ‘Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter’. There were four Latin inscriptions in ‘capital gold characters: Sic situ laetantur lares; Rus in urbe; Spectator fastidiosus sibi molestus; and lente suscipe, cito perfice.’27*

  On its easterly side, facing the Park, was a spacious court, enclosed by a wall and a beautiful iron gate with the Duke’s coronet exquisitely represented in wrought iron. It was a place to satisfy even the proud Duchess.

  Eccentric the Duchess may have been, but she managed her difficult husband well. In a letter to the Duke of Shrewsbury, he described his contented life at Buckingham House:

  I rise now in summer, about seven o’clock in a very large bedchamber (entirely quiet, high and free from the early sun) to walk in the garden or, if raining in a Salon filled with pictures, some good, but none disagreeable; There also, in a row above them, I have so many portraits of famous persons … as are enough to excite ambition in any man less lazy, or less at ease, than myself.

  He loved the garden, not because it had any ‘vanities’ but because of the situation: ‘the noblest that can be, presenting at once to view a vast Town, a Palace & a magnificent Cathedral’. He took some exercise to make himself

  fitter for either business or pleasure … I see you smile, but I confess myself so changed … as to my former enchanting delights, that the company I commonly find at home is agreeable enough to make me conclude the evening on a delightful Terrace.

  ‘Only one thing I forgot,’ he concluded,

  though of more satisfaction to me than all the rest … and ‘tis the little closet of books at the end of that green house which joins the best apartment, which besides their being so very near, are ranked in such a method, that by its mark a very Irish footman may fetch any book I want.

  Under the windows ‘is a little wilderness full of blackbirds and nightingales’.28

  It is the best description of the Buckingham House that George III was to buy.

  Buckingham’s political ambition faded, although when the Tories returned to power in 1710, he was made Lord President of the Council and reinstated as a Privy Councillor. When Queen Anne died in 1714, however, he was removed from all his posts.

  He died at Buckingham House on 24 February 1721, and was outlived by the Duchess for twenty-two years, during which time she became more ‘fantastical’ than ever.

  She arranged a pompous funeral and a tomb in Westminster Abbey for him, preparing her own wax effigy which she wanted to be placed by his side. After his death, the Duchess made some alterations to Buckingham House, but it was still grand enough to attract George III’s grandfather when he was Prince of Wales. The Duchess, however, demanded too high a price, so he neither bought nor rented it.

  In a letter to a Mrs Howard, the Duchess named the amount of purchase-money which she required for the property:

  If their Royal Highnesses will have everything stand as it does, furniture and pictures, I will have £3,000 per annum, both run hazard of being spoiled, and the last, to be sure, will be all to be new bought whenever my son is of age. The quantity the rooms take cannot be well furnished under £10,000; but if their Highnesses will permit the pictures all to be removed, and buy the furniture as it will be valued by different people, the house shall go at £2,000 – If the Prince and Princess prefer the buying outright, under £60,000 it will not be parted with as it now stands, and all His Majesty’s revenue cannot purchase a place so fit for them nor for a less sum – The Princess asked me at the drawing room if I would sell my fine house. I answered her smiling, that I was under no necessity to part with it; yet, when what I thought was the value of it should be offered, perhaps my prudence might overcome my inclination.29

  In 1735, when she took her ailing son to Rome, she caused a sensation by demanding to be treated in France and Rome as royalty. The nineteen-year-old boy, the second legitimate offspring of the Duke of Buckingham, died in Rome in October 1735.

  Walpole saw her in December 1741: ‘The Duchess of Buckingham, who is more mad with pride than any mercer’s wife in Bedlam, came the other night to the opera “en princesse”, literally in robes, red velvet and ermine.’30

  On 14 March, Walpole gossiped ‘Princess Buckingham is dead or dying …’ The diarist Lord Hervey wrote spitefully of ‘cette folle la Duchesse de Buckingham’. Obviously Hervey did not know that she had left Buckingham House to him in her will. However, he did not live long enough to enjoy it: he died a few months after the Duchess.

  The Duchess was determined to be remembered in death as in life. As she lay dying, she sent for the funeral ceremony to check it and insisted that her staff should remain standing ‘until she was quite dead’. She must have approved the eulogy written about her before her death by her friend the poet Alexander Pope. When her husband died he wrote, ‘It seemed as tho’ his spirit was breathed into her to fulfil what he had begun to perform.’31

  Since there was no legitimate heir to the Buckingham estate, between £3,000 and £4,000 per annum of it went to the Crown, and the rest to Charles Herbert, the Duke’s natural son by a Mrs Lambert, on condition that he took the name of Sheffield; he was made a Baronet in 1755. Clearly he could not cope with so grand an inheritance: in 1754 he tried to sell Buckingham House to the trustees of the British Museum, who were looking for
a new home. His letter suggests that he had not inherited his father’s literary ability.

  My Lord

  In persuance to your commands I have considered what value to put upon my House, Gardens and Fields for which I hope if it should suit SR Hans Sloane’s Trustees they wont think Thirty Thousand Pounds to [sic] much; it having cost the old Duke twice that Sum but Fifty years ago and Mr Timbill [?] the Builder who was always reckoned an Honest able Man in his Profession valued it at more than [I ask] four years ago, since when I have layd out several Hundred Pounds in Repairing and Adorning it and I am with great Respect

  Your Lordship’s

  Most obedient

  And humble servt

  [?] Sheffield

  The trustees, however, turned down his offer.

  That the said Committee to the Number of 15 having met on the 16th Febery at Northumberland House, thought proper to waive any particular consideration of the proposal made of such Buckingham House, on the General one of the Greatness of the Sum demanded for it, the inconvenience of the situation, and other circumstances, therefore proceeded to the other offer of Montagu House … 32

  The trustees therefore decided to purchase Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the museum today.

  Eventually in 1761 Sheffield accepted George III’s offer of £28,000.* And so at last the house at the end of the Mall became the home of the royal family.

  * He had many other palaces outside London: he built Richmond Palace and extended Greenwich Palace, where three Tudor monarchs were born.

  † Traditionally Somerset House on the banks of the Thames had been assigned to the monarch’s consort as a dower house. Charles I’s wife, Henrietta Maria, had lived there, and in 1761, by Act of Parliament, it had been settled on Queen Charlotte. On 12 April 1775, Lord North brought a message from the King to Parliament asking that ‘more suitable accommodation be made for the residence of the Queen should she survive his majesty’. On 26 April Parliament agreed that ‘the Palace in which His Majesty resides, lately known by the name of Buckingham House & now called the Queen’s House be settled on the Queen in lieu of Somerset House, in case she should survive His Majesty. That… the said Palace be annexed to, & vested in the Crown of Great Britain.’ Somerset House was to be Vested in His Majesty, his heirs and successors for the purpose of erecting & establishing certain public offices’. The King was granted £100,000 towards the purchase and improvements of the Queen’s House and in consideration of the new use of Somerset House. (Source: Parliamentary History of England, House of Lords, vol. 18,15–17.)

  * The Latin may be translated as: the household gods delight in such a situation; the country in the town; the too fastidious critic harms chiefly himself; and be slow to undertake an obligation, and quick to discharge it.

  * The negotiations for the sale took some months. Arlington and the Duke of Buckingham had incorporated the old Mulberry Garden into their estate. These four acres were Crown Property and it took some time to establish the boundaries. Arlington had, never acquired the freehold: when his hundred years lease expired, this land would return to the Crown. Realising that this would make the sale more difficult, Sheffield agreed a reasonable price.

  CHAPTER TWO

  George III and Queen Charlotte

  ‘Rus in urbe’

  [the country in the town]

  Inscription around the roof of the

  Duke of Buckingham’s house1

  ‘The Queen’s House’

  On the morning of 25 October 1760, George II died at his palace at Kensington. He had outlived his wife, Caroline of Anspach, and his son Frederick, Prince of Wales, who had died nine years earlier. So it was his grandson, Prince George, who, at the age of twenty-two, became King. The young man, idealistic and dedicated, was determined to make a clean break with his predecessors. George I and George II had remained solidly German, spoke little English and were happy in Hanover at their palace of Herrenhausen. For them, possession of the English throne meant an extension of their military power in Europe. On the whole they were content to leave the running of the English government to their ministers. Both kings were openly immoral in their domestic lives. George I had divorced his wife and locked her away for life in a remote German castle, and consoled himself with his plain German mistresses. George II married a clever wife, who accepted her husband’s infidelities and led her own interesting life in her dower house, Leicester House, where she entertained writers, painters and politicians, and at Richmond.

  The new King had never known his grandmother, Caroline, but the echoes of violent family rows had reverberated through his childhood, as his father Frederick, Prince of Wales, had been detested with a paranoiac bitterness by both his own parents. He had been brought up by his mother, Augusta, dowager Princess of Wales, who had come from Germany as a young bride and had also suffered the hatred of the King and Queen. He had been tutored by a serious-minded Scot, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, his counsellor and ‘dearest friend’.

  George III was to make a double break with the past. First, unlike his grandfather and great-grandfather, he was proud to consider himself British. He spoke German fluently and looked Hanoverian, being tall, well built and fair-haired, but he was rooted in England. In fact, although being Elector of Hanover, he never visited his German kingdom. Second, there would be no mistresses in George III’s palace.

  Among the many problems that faced the young King at the beginning of his reign there were two personal concerns to be dealt with: he had to choose a wife and a home.

  The young King was handsome and virile but he had reached the age of twenty-two without attracting scandal – a remarkable feat at that time. His mother had kept a watchful eye on him and Bute, who was himself happily married, regarded it as his duty to guide the King not only politically but also in his domestic life. He became George III’s chief minister and he steered him away from what he considered would be an unfortunate marriage. So the King regretfully resisted the temptation to propose to a delectable young woman, Lady Sarah Lennox, in favour of a traditional dynastic marriage with a foreign princess.

  Royal marriages were affairs of state, arranged to establish alliances and suit the political needs of the time. So many a young bride left her country to live ‘amid the alien corn’. If they were lucky they spoke the language of their new home or could bring some of their own people with them.

  George III’s mother, a princess of Saxe-Gotha, had come to England as a girl of sixteen still clutching her doll. James I had married Anne of Denmark; his son Charles I had strengthened his relations with France by marrying Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV. Charles II had married Catherine of Braganza; his brother James took as his second wife Mary of Modena. Dutch William of Orange married James II’s elder daughter, Princess Mary, and his younger daughter, Princess Anne, had married George of Denmark. The Hanoverians looked to Germany for their wives and mistresses. So an international network spread, each marriage bringing different traditions to the palaces of Britain.

  Prince George’s mother and grandfather had argued over the merits of princesses from different families in the small states that constituted what is now modern Germany. In 1761 George was to choose for himself. Guided by Lord Bute and with the advice of the Hanoverian minister in London, Baron Philip Adolphus von Munchhausen, he considered the list of possible candidates among the German Protestant princesses. No Roman Catholic could be considered. One by one the princesses were rejected, some, like the princesses of Anhalt Dessau, because of a reputation for ‘galanterie’. Princess Augusta’s favourite, her niece Princess Frederica of Saxe-Gotha, was said to be marked by smallpox and deformed. Princess Philippina of Brandenburg-Schwedt was opinionated and unattractive; Princess Caroline of Hesse-Darmstadt had a foul temper. Finally the choice fell on seventeen-year-old Princess Sophie Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. In the royal European network she was his third cousin. Further enquiries were made and it was reported that she was healthy, pleasant, with ‘le
meilleur coeur du monde.’ No one claimed that she was a beauty, but she played the harpsichord well and sang and danced ‘à la merveille.’ She spoke no English but had some French and had received a plain education in the Protestant convent at Herford, Westphalia. Bute now sent his friend and fellow Scot, Colonel David Graeme, to make a final assessment and to arrange the marriage. The colonel was charmed by the girl, who ‘fixed the love and esteem of everyone who is acquainted with her’.

  Princess Charlotte’s father, the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had died eleven years earlier and had been succeeded by her brother Charles. When Graeme arrived at the little castle in the remote north German dukedom, the family were in great distress. Princess Charlotte’s mother was dying, but in her last conscious moments she was able to give her consent. The Princess’s agreement was taken for granted. It was not every day that a proposal from the King of England dropped from the skies.

  The King now moved ‘in a great hurry’ with a characteristic im patience. On 8 July he called a Privy Council and informed them of his decision; emphasizing the fact that Charlotte’s family had shown the firmest zeal for the Protestant religion.

  Since his Coronation had already been planned for 22 September, he was relieved that Duke Charles did not allow his mother’s death to delay the marriage long. On 16 August Princess Charlotte presided over a farewell banquet in the Palace of Neustrelitz. Those who had feared that Princess Charlotte, in her inexperience, would be unable to uphold the dignity of her new status were surprised to see her easy composure. The next day she set off on a rugged journey and storm-tossed crossing that would test her endurance further. It was not until Monday 7 September that she landed at Harwich, rested a night at Lord Abercorn’s house at Witham and then was rushed with a splendid cavalcade through crowded London streets to be received at the garden gate of St James’s Palace by the King and royal family. She was to be married at ten o’clock that same night.