190

HERVEY'S AFFECTATION AND EFFEMINACY.

Princess Caroline, who loves him secretly; Hervey's attentions to the queen of letters scandalize Pope, who soon afterward makes a declaration to Lady Mary. Pope writhes under a lash, just held over him by Lady Mary's hand. Hervey feels that the poet, though all suavity, is ready to demolish him at any moment, if he can; and the only really happy and complacent person of the whole party is, perhaps, Pope's old mother, who sits in the room next to that occupied for dinner, industriously spinning.

This happy state of things came, however, as is often the case, in close intimacies, to a painful conclusion. There was too little reality, too little earnestness of feeling, for the friendship between Pope and Lady Mary, including Lord Hervey, to last long. His lordship had his affectations, and his effeminate nicety was proverbial. One day being asked at dinner if he would take some beef, he is reported to have answered, "Beef? oh, no! faugh! don't you know I never eat beef, nor horse, nor curry, nor any of those things?" Poor man! it was probably a pleasant way of turning off what he may have deemed an assault on a digestion that could hardly conquer any solid food. This affectation offended Lady Mary, whose mot, that there were three species, "Men, women, and Herveys," implies a per- · fect perception of the eccentricities even of her gifted friend, Lord Hervey, whose mother's friend she had been, and the ob ject of whose admiration she undoubtedly was.

Pope, who was the most irritable of men, never forgot or forgave even the most trifling offense. Lady Bolingbroke truly said of him, that he played the politician about cabbages and salads, and every body agrees that he could hardly tolerate the wit that was more successful than his own. It was about the year 1725 that he began to hate Lord Hervey with such a hatred as only he could feel; it was unmitigated by a single touch of generosity or of compassion. Pope afterward owned that his acquaintance with Lady Mary and with Hervey was discon tinued, merely because they had too much wit for him. Toward the latter end of 1732, "The Imitation of the Second Satire of the First Book of Horace," appeared, and in it Pope attacked Lady Mary with the grossest and most indecent couplet ever printed: she was called Sappho, and Hervey, Lord Fanny; and all the world knew the characters at once.

In retaliation for this satire, appeared "Verses to the Imitator of Horace;" said to have been the joint production of Lord Hervey and Lady Mary. This was followed by a piece entitled "Letter from a Nobleman at Hampton Court to a Doctor of Divinity." To this composition Lord Hervey, its sole author, added these lines, by way, as it seems, of extenuation.

POPE'S QUARREL WITH HERVEY AND LADY MARY. 191

Pope's first reply was in a prose letter, on which Dr. Johnson has passed a condemnation. "It exhibits," he says, "nothing but tedious malignity." But he was partial to the Herveys, Thomas and Henry Hervey, Lord Hervey's brothers, having been kind to him-"If you call a dog Hervey," he said to Boswell, "I shall love him."

Next came the epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, in which every infirmity and peculiarity of Hervey are handed down in calm, cruel irony, and polished verses, to posterity. The verses are almost too disgusting to be revived in an age which disclaims scurrility. After the most personal rancorous invective, he thus writes of Lord Hervey's conversation:

"His wit all see-saw between this and that

Now high, now low-now master up, now miss-
And he himself one vile antithesis.

Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter, thus the rabbins have expressed-
A cherub's face-a reptile all the rest.

Beauty that shocks you, facts that none can trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that bites the dust."

"It is impossible," Mr. Croker thinks, "not to admire, however we may condemn, the art by which acknowledged wit, beauty, and gentle manners, the queen's favor, and even a valetudinary diet, are travestied into the most odious offenses." Pope, in two lines, pointed to the intimacy between Lady Mary and Lord Hervey:

"Once, and but once, this heedless youth was hit,
And liked that dangerous thing, a female wit."

Nevertheless, he afterward pretended that the name Sappho was not applied to Lady Mary, but to women in general; and acted with a degree of mean prevarication which greatly added to the amount of his offense.

The quarrel with Pope was not the only attack which Lord Hervey had to encounter. Among the most zealous of his foes was Pulteney, afterward Lord Bath, the rival of Sir Robert Walpole, and the confederate with Bolingbroke in opposing that minister. The "Craftsman," a paper in the Whig interest, contained an attack on Pulteney, written with great ability, by Hervey. It provoked a Reply from Pulteney. In this composition he spoke of Hervey as "a thing below contempt," and ridiculed his personal appearance in the grossest terms. A duel was the result, the parties meeting behind Arlington House, in Piccadilly, where Mr. Pulteney had the satisfaction of almost running Lord Hervey through with his sword. Luckily the poor man slipped down, so the blow was evaded, and

192

66

'THE DEATH OF LORD HERVEY: A DRAMA.

the seconds interfered: Mr. Pulteney then embraced Lord Hervey, and expressing his regret for their quarrel, declared that he would never again, either in speech or writing, attack his lordship. Lord Hervey only bowed, in silence; and thus they parted.

The queen having observed what an alteration in the palace Lord Hervey's death would cause, he said he could guess how it would be, and he produced "The Death of Lord Hervey; or, a Morning at Court; a Drama:" the idea being taken, it is thought, from Swift's verses on his own death, of which Hervey might have seen a surreptitious copy. The following scene will give some idea of the plot and structure of this amusing little piece. The part allotted to the Princess Caroline is in unison with the idea prevalent of her attachment to Lord Hervey:

ACT I.

SCENE: The Queen's Gallery. The time, nine in the morning.

Enter the QUEEN, PRINCESS EMILY, PRINCESS CAROLINE, followed by LORD LIFFORD, and MRS. PURCEL.

Queen. Mon Dieu, quelle chaleur! en vérité on étouffé. Pray open a little those windows.

Lord Lifford. Hasa your Majesty heara de news?

Queen. What news, my dear Lord?

Lord Lifford. Dat my Lord Hervey, as he was coming last night to tone, was rob and murdered by highwaymen and tron in a ditch.

Princess Caroline. Eh! grand Dieu!

Queen [striking her hand upon her knee]. Comment est-il véritablement mort? Purcel, my angel, shall I not have a little breakfast? Mrs. Purcel. What would your Majesty please to have?

Queen. A little chocolate, my soul, if you give me leave, and a little sour cream, and some fruit. [Exit MRS. PURCEL.

Queen [to Lord Lifford]. Eh bien! my Lord Lifford, dites-nous un peu comment cela est arrivé. I can not imagine what he had to do to be putting his nose there. Seulement pour un sot voyage avec ce petit mousse, eh

bien ?

Lord Lifford. Madame, on sçait quelque chose de celai de Mon. Maran, qui d'abord qu'il a vu les voleurs s'est enfin et venu à grand galoppe à Londres, and after dat a wagoner take up the body and put it in his cart. Queen [to PRINCESS EMILY]. Are you not ashamed, Amalie, to laugh? Princess Emily. I only laughed at the cart, mamma.

Queen. Oh! that is a very fade plaisanterie.

Princess Emily. But if I may say it, mamma, I am not very sorry. Queen. Oh! fie done! Eh bien! my Lord Lifford! My God! where is this chocolate, Purcel?

As Mr. Croker remarks, Queen Caroline's breakfast-table, and her parentheses, reminds one of the card-table conversation of Swift:

"The Dean's dead: (pray what are trumps?)

Then Lord have mercy on his soul!

(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.)

QUEEN CAROLINE'S LAST DRAWING-ROOM.

Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall;
(I wish I knew what king to call.)

193

Fragile as was Lord Hervey's constitution, it was his lot to witness the death-bed of the queen, for whose amusement he had penned the jeu d'esprit just quoted, in which there was, perhaps, as much truth as wit.

The wretched Queen Caroline had, during fourteen years, concealed from every one, except Lady Sundon, an incurable disorder, that of hernia. In November (1737) she was attacked with what we should now call English cholera. Dr. Tessier, her house-physician, was called in, and gave her Daffey's elixir, which was not likely to afford any relief to the deepseated cause of her sufferings. She held a drawing-room that night for the last time, and played at cards, even cheerfully. At length she whispered to Lord Hervey, "I am not able to entertain people." "For heaven's sake, madam," was the reply, "go to your room: would to heaven the king would leave off talking of the Dragon of Wantley, and release you!" The Dragon of Wantley was a burlesque on the Italian opera, by Henry Carey, and was the theme of the fashionable world.

The next day the queen was in fearful agony, very hot, and willing to take any thing proposed. Still she did not, even to Lord Hervey, avow the real cause of her illness. None of the most learned court physicians, neither Mead nor Wilmot, were called in. Lord Hervey sat by the queen's bedside, and tried to soothe her, while the Princess Caroline joined in begging him to give her mother something to relieve her agony. At length, in utter ignorance of the case, it was proposed to give her some snakeroot, a stimulant, and, at the same time, Sir Walter Raleigh's cordial; so singular was it thus to find that great mind still influencing a court. It was that very medicine which was administered by Queen Anne of Denmark, however, to Prince Henry; that medicine which Raleigh said, "would cure him, or any other, of a disease, except in case of poison."

However, Ranby, house-surgeon to the king, and a favorite of Lord Hervey's, assuring him that a cordial with this name or that name was mere quackery, some usquebaugh was given instead, but was rejected by the queen soon afterward. At last Raleigh's cordial was administered, but also rejected about an hour afterward. Her fever, after taking Raleigh's cordial, was so much increased, that she was ordered instantly to be bled.

Then, even, the queen never disclosed the fact that could alone dictate the course to be pursued. George II., with more feeling than judgment, slept on the outside of the queen's bed

all that night; so that the unhappy invalid could get no rest, nor change her position, not daring to irritate the king's temper.

The next day the queen said touchingly to her gentle, affectionate daughter, herself in declining health, "Poor Caroline! you are very ill, too; we shall soon meet again in another place."

Meantime, though the queen declared to every one that she was sure nothing could save her, it was resolved to hold a levée. The foreign ministers were to come to court, and the king, in the midst of his real grief, did not forget to send word to his pages to be sure to have his last new ruffles sewed on the shirt he was to put on that day; a trifle which often, as Lord Hervey remarks, shows more of the real character than events of importance, from which one frequently knows no more of a person's state of mind than one does of his natural gait from his dancing.

Lady Sundon was, meantime, ill at Bath, so that the queen's secret rested alone in her own heart. "I have an ill," she said, one evening, to her daughter Caroline, "that nobody knows of." Still, neither the princess nor Lord Hervey could guess at the full meaning of that sad assertion.

The famous Sir Hans Sloane was then called in; but no remedy except large and repeated bleedings was suggested, and blisters were put on her legs. There seems to have been no means left untried by the faculty to hasten the catastrophe -thus working in the dark.

The king now sat up with her whom he had so cruelly wounded in every nice feeling. On being asked, by Lord Hervey, what was to be done in case the Prince of Wales should come to inquire after the queen? he answered in the following terms, worthy of his ancestry-worthy of himself. It is diffi cult to say which was the most painful scene, that in the chamber where the queen lay in agony, or without, where the curse of family dissensions came like a ghoul to hover near the bed of death, and to gloat over the royal corpse. This was the royal dictum: "If the puppy should, in one of his impertinent airs of duty and affection, dare to come to St. James's, I order you to go to the scoundrel, and tell him I wonder at his impudence for daring to come here; that he has my orders already, and knows my pleasure, and bid him go about his business; for his poor mother is not in a condition to see him act his false, whining, cringing tricks now, nor am I in a humor to bear with his impertinence; and bid him trouble me with no more messages, but get out of my house."

In the evening, while Lord Hervey sat at tea in the queen's