In a Birthday Ode indiscriminate eulogy is expected, and due allowance made for the enthusiasm of the poet, but from a man with the perspicacity of Lord Chesterfield a more critical estimate of the Queen's character might have been anticipated. Leigh Hunt said Charlotte was a "plain, penurious, soft-spoken, decorous, bigoted, shrewd, overweening personage,"[245] and the truth of his description cannot be seriously impugned. That she was not fair to look upon was a misfortune more severe to herself than to others, but her domineering spirit was a sore trial to those who came into contact with her, as readers of Fanny Burney's Diary know. She was very jealous of her influence with the King, clinging to such power as it gave her with remarkable tenacity, and suspicious of those who were dear to him. Thus, when in 1772 the King's sister, the Duchess of Brunswick, visited England at the suggestion of the Princess Dowager, her mother, the Queen did not offer the Duchess the hospitality of a royal palace, but took for her "a miserable little house" in Pall Mall, and contrived that she should not see the King alone. This strange behaviour became generally known and as generally disapproved, with the result that when at this time the King and Queen visited a theatre they were received in chilling silence, but, to mark its feeling, the house vociferously cheered the Duchess of Brunswick on her entry. [245] _The Town._ Charlotte's faults, however, were probably mostly due to environment. "Bred up in the rigid formality of a petty German court, her manners were cold and punctilious: her understanding was dull, her temper jealous and petulant."[246] She seems to have had affection for the husband to whom, with all her faults, she made a good wife, although she but rarely gave any overt sign of her feeling for him. "The Queen had nobody but myself with her one morning, when the King hastily entered the room with some letters in his hand, and addressing her in German, which he spoke very fast, and with much apparent interest in what he said, he brought the letters up to her and put them into her hand. She received them with much agitation, but evidently of a much pleased sort, and endeavoured to kiss his hand as he held them. He would not let her, but made an effort, with a countenance of the highest satisfaction, to kiss her. I saw instantly in her eyes a forgetfulness at the moment that any one was present, while drawing away her hand, she presented him her cheek. He accepted her kindness with the same frank affection that she offered it; and the next moment they both spoke English, and talked upon common and general subjects. What they said I am far enough from knowing; but the whole was too rapid to give me time to quit the room; and I could not but see with pleasure that the Queen had received some favour with which she was sensibly delighted, and that the King, in her acknowledgments, was happily and amply paid."[247]