The court was essentially a homely court. The two sovereigns fed thousands of the poor in Windsor Park, and looked on at the feasting. The Queen went shopping to Brighton fancy fairs, and when on one occasion she bent to pick up the ‘reticule’ which an infirm old lady had dropped, as much was made of it as of the incident of King Francis, who picked up (or did not pick up) Titian’s pencil, and handed it to that sovereign gentleman among artists. Then the new sovereigns paid more private visits than any pair who had hitherto occupied the British throne. While the Queen called on Sir David and Lady Scott at Brighton, her royal husband, with whom she had just previously been walking on the Esplanade, would suddenly appear at the door of some happy but disconcerted old admiral, and invite the veteran and his wife to dinner. To the hearty ‘Come along, directly,’ if there was a glance from the lady at her toilet, the citizen King would encourage her by an intimation never to mind it, for he and his wife were quiet people; ‘and, indeed,’ as he once remarked, ‘the Queen does nothing after dinner but embroider flowers.’ Which, indeed, was true enough, and, to tell the truth, very dull did the finer people find it. The consequence of this familiarity of the sovereigns with their humbler friends was a rather audacious familiarity ventured upon by people who left their queer names in the book at the King’s door, and more than once successfully passed it, and penetrated to the Queen’s drawing-room. This evil, however, was soon remedied. There were other matters Queen Adelaide was bold enough to, at least, attempt to remedy. Indecorousness of dress in a lady she would censure as sharply as Queen Charlotte; and if, when Mrs. Blomfield appeared at her first drawing-room in a ‘train of rich immortal velvet,’ as the fashionable chroniclers of the day called it, she did not even hint surprise, it was, perhaps, out of respect for the successor of the Apostles, of whom that good but richly velvetted lady was the honoured wife. The letter-writers who dealt with court incidents at the period of the accession of this domestic couple tell of various illustrations of the simplicity of the new sovereigns. When the Duke of Norfolk had an interview with William IV. at Bushey, on the affair which had brought him thither being concluded, the King declared he must not leave the house without seeing the Queen; and, thereupon ringing the bell, he bade the official who answered the summons to ‘tell the Queen I want her.’