Despite the great popularity of the excellent Duchess, the caricaturists spared neither her nor her royal father and mother-in-law. In one of the satirical prints by Gillray, the King and Queen--the latter most outrageously caricatured--are represented in ridiculous attitudes of joy: the King is fairly ‘kicking up his heels’ in ecstasy, offering eager welcome to the Duchess. The Queen is holding out her apron to receive some of the wealth and jewels which her daughter-in-law was popularly supposed to have brought with her. The latter has _her_ apron full of money, and the Duke is introducing her to his parents. The poor Duchess was soon one of the unhappiest of wives. The profligacy and shameless infidelity of her husband, to whom she had been fondly attached, disgusted her. His extravagance involved him in a ruin from which he could never relieve himself, and which his creditors never forgot. It made many a hearth cold, and it brought misery to that of the Duchess. For six years she bore with treatment from the ‘commander-in-chief’ such as no trooper under him would have inflicted on a wife equally deserving. At the end of that time the ill-matched pair separated, and the Duchess withdrew from the world; but in her retirement she forgot none of the duties which it could fairly demand of her. She was beloved by all, and was popularly and affectionately mentioned by the popular voice as ‘the poor soldier’s friend.’ She was indeed the friend of all who needed her service, and did not refuse even to give to poor ‘Monk’ Lewis the meed of admiration which his little vanity required. He was once met coming in tears from the Duchess’s drawing-room; and on intimating to his questioner that they had their source in the very kind and flattering things the Duchess had said to him, the weeper was roughly consoled by his acquaintance, with the soothing advice, to ‘Never mind, as perhaps she did not mean it!’