A quaint light on the internal economy of the palace is thrown by a letter from the Queen to Lord Harcourt in 1803, that shows that the parody, "The King commands the first Lord-in-waiting to desire the second Lord to intimate to the gentleman Usher to request the page of the Antechamber to entreat the Groom of the Stairs to implore John to ask the Captain of the Buttons to desire the maid of the Still Room to beg the Housekeeper to give out a few more lumps of sugar, as His Majesty has none for his coffee, which is probably getting cold during the negotiations," had a sound basis of fact. "My Lord, I want you to exert your authority in dismissing my footman, Oby, the service as soon as possible, as his unquenchable thirst is now becoming so overpowering, that neither our absence nor our presence can subdue it any more," the Queen wrote. "Some messages of consequence being sent by him to the apothecary's, was found in his pockets when laying dead drunk in the street a few days ago, luckily enough by the Duke of Cumberland, who knowing they were for the family, sent them to Brand; I do not want him to starve, but I will not have him do any more duty. This I hope will be an example to the others; but as I write a Tipling-letter, I think it not amiss to mention that Stephenson has appeared twice a little _Bouzy_, the consequence of which was a fall from his horse yesterday, by which he was very much bruised; and the surgeon who came to bleed him at the Duke of Cambridge's House, who very humanely took him in, declared him to have been at least over dry, if not drunk. A reprimand to him will be necessary; for should it happen again he must go." [Illustration: _From a caricature published in 1786_ THE CONSTANT COUPLE] Nothing could exceed the simplicity of the private life of George and Charlotte, the regularity of which was broken only by the frequent confinements of the Queen and the King's illnesses. During the first years of her married life Charlotte every morning read English with Dr. Majendie, a task at which George sometimes assisted. She scarcely knew a word of the language of her adopted country on her arrival, which gave Lady Townshend the opportunity to remark, on hearing that Lady Northumberland had been made a Lady of the Bedchamber, that "it was a very proper appointment, for, as the Queen knew no English, that lady would teach her the vulgar tongue." The first use to which her Majesty put her newly-acquired knowledge was to address poetical effusions to her husband. "I send you verses, _said_ to be the Queen's upon the King, it seems impossible that she should write them so soon, but I fancy she wrote in French," Lady Sarah Bunbury wrote to Lady Susan O'Brien in 1764. "Whitehead or somebody translated them; whoever did, they are bad enough."[237] In spite of their lack of merit, one set of verses may perhaps be given as a curiosity:--