Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/311

Rh rooms on the ground-floor of the Fountain Court—where years before he could often be seen, watch in hand, waiting for the exact moment of his visit to Lady Suffolk—and was playing commerce. The Queen sat in her rooms playing quadrille, and with her "the Princess Emily at her commerce-table, and the Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey at cribbage, just as usual." And meanwhile the poor Princess was hurried down the staircase from her apartments, which were at the end of the east front beyond the Queen's and separated from them by the public dining-room, into a coach without any one knowing.

They kept early hours in those days, for the royal party separated at ten, and every one went to bed by eleven. At half-past one the King and Queen were awoke, and told of what was happening, and by four o'clock the Queen with her daughters, the Duke of Grafton and Lord Hervey, was at Saint James's and saw the "little rat of a girl," her new-born grand-child. When she had seen it, she walked across the court to Lord Hervey's rooms and took chocolate, and she was back at Hampton by eight o'clock.

The extraordinary story, almost incredible as we read it in Lord Hervey's calmly realistic Memoirs, is not out of keeping with the amazing character of the court life at that day. The vice, and meanness, and brutality, the wit, and charm, and politeness, make a picture difficult to realise. Caroline on her death-bed, piteous sight, while George is sobbing out before her "J'aurai des maîtresses," is hardly more human