Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His Letters — John Shaqi
Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His LettersWalpole, Horace
General
Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His Letters
Walpole, Horace
Walpole, Horace, 1717-1797 -- Correspondence
Anne Hamilton, Lady Essex Kerr (daughters of Dukes of Richmond,
Bedford, Manchester, Portland, Hamilton, and Roxburgh); and
four daughters of the Earls of Albemarle, Brook, Harcourt, and
Ilchester,--Lady Elizabeth Keppel, Louisa Greville, Elizabeth
Harcourt, and Susan Fox Strangways: their heads crowned with
diamonds, and in robes of white and silver. Lady Caroline
Russell is extremely handsome; Lady Elizabeth Keppel very
pretty; but with neither features nor air, nothing ever looked
so charming as Lady Sarah Lenox; she has all the glow of beauty
peculiar to her family. As supper was not ready, the Queen
sat down, sung, and played on the harpsichord to the Royal
Family, who all supped with her in private. They talked of the
different German dialects; the King asked if the Hanoverian was
not pure--‘Oh, no, sir,’ said the Queen; ‘it is the worst of
all.’--She will not be unpopular.
“The Duke of Cumberland told the King that himself and Lady
Augusta were sleepy. The Queen was very averse to leave the
company, and at last articled that nobody should accompany her
but the Princess of Wales and her own two German women, and
that nobody should be admitted afterwards but the King--they
did not retire till between two and three.
“The next morning the King had a Levee. After the Levee there
was a Drawing-Room; the Queen stood under the throne: the women
were presented to her by the Duchess of Hamilton, and then the
men by the Duke of Manchester; but as she knew nobody, she
was not to speak. At night there was a ball, drawing-rooms
yesterday and to-day, and then a cessation of ceremony till
the Coronation, except next Monday, when she is to receive the
address of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, sitting on the throne
attended by the bridesmaids. A ridiculous circumstance happened
yesterday; Lord Westmoreland, not very young nor clear-sighted,
mistook Lady Sarah Lenox for the Queen, kneeled to her, and
would have kissed her hand if she had not prevented him. People
think that a Chancellor of Oxford was naturally attracted by
the blood of Stuart. It is as comical to see Kitty Dashwood,
the famous old beauty of the Oxfordshire Jacobites, living in
the palace as Duenna to the Queen. She and Mrs. Broughton, Lord
Lyttelton’s ancient Delia, are revived again in a young court
that never heard of them. There, I think you could not have
had a more circumstantial account of a royal wedding from the
Heralds’ Office. Adieu!
“Yours to serve you,
“HORACE SANDFORD,
“Mecklenburgh King-at-Arms.”
The Coronation of the King and Queen took place on the 22nd of
September, 1761, a fortnight after their marriage. Walpole writes to
Mann:
“Strawberry Hill, Sept. 28, 1761.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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