Continuing the discourse later in private with Sir Robert Walpole, she
pretended that she had not yet yielded to the King’s importunities,
and remarked that “she was not of an age to act like a vain or a
loving fool, but if she did consent she would be well paid.” She added
naively to Sir Robert--who himself had a mistress, the well known Miss
Skerrett, whom he adored and afterwards married--“nothing but interest
should bribe her; for as to love she had enough of that, as well as
a younger man at home; and that she thought old men and Kings ought
always to be made to pay well!” Her empty head and want of morals led
her to boast freely at this time; she confided in the well known Lady
Sundon, with whom she had a very slight acquaintance, that the King
had been very importunate these two years, and had often told her how
unkind she was to refuse him, that it was mere crossness, for that he
was sure her husband (Mr. Wyndham, who was sub-governor to the Duke of
Cumberland) would not take it at all ill.
She made a similar communication to Lord Hervey, abruptly one day at
Richmond, at this time before a room full of people: “Do you know the
King has been in love with me these two years?” she queried.
At which Lord Hervey, rather taken aback, answered, to turn the
conversation, “Who is not in love with you?”
He himself certainly was not, for this is how he sums her up in his
Memoirs:
“Her Ladyship was one of the vainest as well as one of the simplest
women that ever lived; but to this wretched head there was certainly
joined one of the prettiest faces that ever was formed, which, though
she was now five and thirty,[43] had a bloom upon it too, that not
one woman in ten thousand has at fifteen.” This was Horace Walpole’s
opinion of Lady Deloraine: “A pretty idiot, with most of the vices of
her own sex, and the additional one of ours--drinking.
“Yet this thing of convenience on the arrival of Lady Yarmouth, Madame
Walmoden, put on all that dignity of passion, which even revolts real
inclination.”
Lady Deloraine, however, went on her way rejoicing at this time, and as
the summer wore on and the King showed no signs of returning to Hanover
and Madame de Walmoden, openly boasted that she was keeping him in
England.
She did not, however, appear to derive much substantial profit from her
position, as the following incident, related by Sir Robert Walpole to
the Queen, will show; neither had the King forgotten Madame de Walmoden.
George had ordered Walpole one day to buy one hundred lottery tickets,
and to charge the amount, £1,000, to the Secret Service Fund, an
atrocious robbery of the public!
Walpole, having carried out his commission without a murmur, confided
the transaction to Lord Hervey, mentioning that it was for the King’s
favourite.
Hervey, thinking he meant Lady Deloraine, commented: “I did not think
he went so deep there,” referring to the amount.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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