Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court (67 page)

The coming man: the talented and bumptious William Kent, with his actress-mistress, Elizabeth Butler. William Kent, ‘very hot and very fat’, eventually died of ‘a life of high feeding and much inaction’.

 

Herrenhausen: the beautiful garden palace outside Hanover where George I invested much money and effort. He missed this place dreadfully when he inherited the crown of Great Britain, and was travelling back to it at the very moment of his death. Below is his mausoleum, overlooking his beloved gardens.

 

 

George I’s wife had a prolonged and flagrant extra-marital affair with a Swedish count. Legend tells that George I had his wife’s lover murdered, and the body thrown into the River Leine at this very spot. George I’s son, George II, never saw his mother again after she was imprisoned for adultery.

 

Mustapha and Mohammed in the garden of a German hunting lodge. Born in the Ottoman Empire, the king’s two Turks were captured in war and taken to Hanover, where they converted to Christianity and entered royal service. In the final stage of an amazing journey, they came with George I to Kensington Palace in 1714. One of Mohammed’s tasks was to treat the king’s haemorrhoids, and Mustapha administered his laxatives.

Flawed but fascinating, George II and Queen Caroline were real human beings trapped in their royal roles. George II could fly off the handle but could write a good love letter, while Caroline, fat and funny, was the cleverest queen consort ever to sit on the throne.

 

Frederick, Prince of Wales and his sisters. These are the three ‘little princesses’, Anne, Amelia and Caroline, whom George I snatched from their parents during the terrific quarrel of 1717. Goggle-eyed and musical Fred, so passionately hated by his parents, performs with his sisters in the garden of Kew Palace.

 

William Hogarth’s painting of a theatrical performance, with Queen Caroline’s younger daughters in the audience. The lady reaching down to the floor is Mary Deloraine. She was a later mistress of George II’s: sad, selfish and a hopeless alcoholic.

 

 

John Hervey, holding his ceremonial purse of office as Lord Privy Seal. He was the vicechamberlain of the court and had many vices, including chronic indiscretion. He abandoned his beautiful wife Molly in favour of an unhappy series of male lovers.

 

John Hervey’s letter book has had thirteen pages mysteriously cut out. A pr udish Victorian descendant probably wished to destroy the evidence of his affairs with men.

 

Peter the Wild Boy’s collar shows his name and address so that strangers could bring him home.

 

The strangest royal love triangle in history. In one corner, Queen Caroline. In later life the immensity of her bosom was legendary. When she sat for this portrait in 1735, aged 52, she was already suffering in secret from the umbilical hernia of which she would die two years later.