Kendal House, near Twickenham. [Sidenote: 1727--The raven] Even such a man as George the First may become invested by death with a certain dignity and something of a romantic interest. Legends are afloat concerning the King's later days which would not be altogether unworthy the closing hours of a great Roman emperor. George had his melting moments, it would seem, and not long before his death, being in a pathetic mood, he gave the Duchess of Kendal a pledge that if he should die before her, and it were possible for departed souls to return to earth and impress the living with a knowledge of their presence, he, the faithful and aged lover, would come back from the grave to his mistress. When the Duchess of Kendal returned to her home near Twickenham she was in constant expectation of a visit in some form from her lost adorer. One day while the windows of her house were open, a large black raven, or bird of some kind--raven would seem to be the more becoming and appropriate form for such a visitor--flew into her presence from the outer air. The lamenting lady assumed at once that in this shape the soul of King George had come back to earth. She cherished and petted the bird, it is said, and lavished all fondness and tenderness upon it. What {267} became of it in the end history does not allow us to know. Whether it still is sitting, like the more famous raven of poetry, it is not for us to guess. Probably when the Duchess herself expired in 1743, the ghastly, grim, and ancient raven disappeared with her. Why George the First, if he had the power of returning in any shape to see his mistress, did not come in his own proper form, it is not for us to explain. One might be disposed to imagine that in such a case it would be the first step which would involve the cost, and that there would be no greater difficulty for the departed soul to come back in the likeness of its old vestment of clay than to put on the unfamiliar and somewhat inconvenient form of a fowl. Perhaps the story is not true. Possibly there was no raven or other bird in the case at all. It may be that, if a black raven did fly in at the Duchess of Kendal's window, the bird was not the embodied spirit of King George. For ourselves, we should be sorry to lose the story. Neither the King nor the mistress could afford to part with any slight clement of romance wherewithal even legend has chosen to invest them. Another story, which probably has more truth in it, adds a new ghastliness to the circumstances of George's death. On November 13, 1726, some seven months before that event, there died in a German castle a woman whom the gazette of the capital described as the Electress Dowager of Hanover. This was the unfortunate Princess Sophia, the wife of George. Thirty-two years of melancholy captivity she had endured, while George was drinking and hoarding money and amusing himself with his seraglio of ugly women. She died protesting her innocence to the last.