The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I (20 page)

In October 1714 Peter Wentworth, brother of the Earl of Stafford, complained that although the Hanoverian courtiers and ministers who had accompanied George and Melusine ‘pretend to have nothing to do with the English affairs . . . yet from the top to the Bottom they have a great stroak in recommend[ing] Persons that are fit to serve his Majesty. Most, nay All the Addresses are made to Mons. Bothmar he having been so long in England is suppos’d to know all the English.’
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The English courtiers, more or less unanimously, resented the Hanoverian influence at court.

Hanoverians and English alike were open to bribes. At the English court in the early eighteenth century everybody, from the
lowliest footman to the king himself, could be bribed. It was endemic and habitual. In April 1719 William Byrd, a Virginian who spent two years in London and was a regular visitor to court, wrote in his diary that Lord Islay ‘advised me to bribe the German [Bernstorff] to get the governorship of Virginia and told me he would put me in the way’.
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Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, as mistress of the robes to Queen Anne, was quite open about the places that were in her gift:

I gave the place of waiter in the Robes to Mr Curtis who married a woman that had served my children; I gave another place of the same kind to Mr Forster who was then in the service of the Duke of Marlborough and I made William Lovegrove coffer bearer who was also in the service of the Duke of Marlborough . . . I gave also a place of Coffer Bearer to Mr Woolrich and another place of Groom of the Wardrobe to Mr Hodges who were both servants in the family . . . Besides these I made Mrs Abrahal . . . the Queen’s starcher and settled £100 a year upon her from the time of the Queens first allowing me to regulate the office of the Robes . . . I gave also the place of Sempstress, to Mrs Rhansford . . .
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We do not know whether money changed hands for these posts or if they were simply rewards for loyal servants. But elsewhere in her memoirs she admitted selling the place of a page of the backstairs for £400.
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Similarly James Brydges, Duke of Chandos, cultivated the German ministers, Melusine and Sophia Charlotte for preferment, and he oiled the wheels with bribes. In August 1714 he gave Bothmer 250 lottery tickets, and in September he sent 400 guineas to Robethon to gain a placement for an old friend.
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He sent Sophia Charlotte £3,000, and a beautiful ring to her daughter. According to Beattie, between 1715 and 1720 he paid out at least £25,104 to
the Germans at court. Amongst others, Melusine received £9,500, Sophia Charlotte £9,545, Bernstorff £2,909, and Bothmer £1,350.

Bonet, the Prussian envoy, has left us with a very telling description of the ‘cloak and dagger’ way in which George’s business was conducted during the first year of his reign:

It is at present a secret that the first knowledge of all affairs comes to the [English] ministers of State from Bernstorff and Bothmer, but it is uncertain how much longer this can be continued when this fact becomes known: to avoid causing embarrassment every evening the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Townshend go, under cover of night, to the house of the latter, and this quadrumvirate rules all . . .

On George’s household, Bonet continues: ‘he has not yet nominated a Keeper of the Privy Purse, where he has between £26,000 a year, in order that none can enter so easily into the secrets of his expenses and outlay; Baron Bothmer does the office in secret.’
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George was financially austere compared with his father, and the ministers he had inherited from Ernst August had amassed their fortunes before George became Elector. Bernstorff had grown rich through the generosity of George’s uncle, Duke George William, and not through service to Hanover. All hoped to do well in England. Görtz even asked Sir John Vanbrugh for a house in his capacity as comptroller of the Office of Works. He was taken aback when Vanbrugh, a little shocked at his audacity, replied that there was none in George’s gift.
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If the hard evidence for bribes is a little thin (Brydges provides us with the only solid report, verified by his account books), enough credible contemporaries – Walpole, Townshend, Craggs etc. – spoke of it for us to assume that there is truth in the claims. In 1716 Townshend accused Robethon of ‘having nothing in his
view but raising a vast estate for himself’. Townshend’s accusations grew: the following year he circulated reports that Robethon had requested £40,000 from George’s English ministers to be shared out amongst the members of the Hanoverian Chancery – £20,000 for Bernstorff, £10,000 for Bothmer, and £5,000 each for himself and Schütz.
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Perhaps Townshend’s tales were motivated by sour grapes, and his claim that Bothmer would not ‘be satisfied till he has got the Ministry and Treasury into such hands that will satisfy his avarice’.
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It was not so much that bribes were being taken that offended the English ministers, but that they were being taken by Hanoverians. They preferred to keep the age-old system of patronage firmly within British hands. When Bothmer purchased an estate in Mecklenburg in 1723 its possible cost (some thought as much as £36,000) prompted feverish speculation amongst ministers who resented that the property had probably been paid for with British bribe money.
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For the Germans it was an easy way of supplementing income in comparatively expensive England. Even the affable James Craggs the younger, a staunch Hanoverian who held several posts with both George and Georg August and who had joined the Whig Hanoverian Club before George’s accession, found the Hanoverians gratuitously greedy – ‘I have remarked that there is no distinction of person or circumstances. Jacobites, Tories, Papists, at the Exchange or in Church, by Land or Sea, during the Session or in the Recess, nothing is objected to provided there is money.’
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But although the Germans tried their utmost to exploit the system, they were not as successful as their detractors claimed. There was a political motive behind much of the criticism. The Germans were vilified by the Tory press and pamphleteers because they were foreign, and because they were not Stuarts. As much as anything, the taking of bribes provided an excellent excuse to
attack them. But it must be admitted that in their satirizing of Melusine for her venality, they had a point. She was as willing as the next to take money for favours.

In July 1716 Mary Cowper recorded in her diary: ‘Everybody believes that the Duchess of Munster [Melusine] had 5,000l. for making Lord St John [the father of the Tory Lord Bolingbroke, who had fled to France] a Lord.’
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Melusine, together with young Melusine, was also suspected of using her influence, in return for hard cash, for obtaining the Order of the Garter for the dukes of Kent and Newcastle.

Although she was as assured as possible of George’s affections, given that they were unmarried and their children illegitimate, Melusine was insecure about her finances all her life. Her parents had lifted themselves out of genteel poverty with a great deal of effort, and these actions defined her attitude to money. She spent a lot because she was extremely generous, particularly towards her family, and she gave a lot to charity. She and Johann Matthias were obliged to support their financially inept brother Daniel Bodo, with his obsessive alchemy experiments and his squandering of the family fortunes.

She gave presents of money to her sisters’ husbands who had acknowledged the paternity of her daughters. But forever in her mind was the thought that George might cast her aside and that she and the girls would be destitute. That is not to say that George was not concerned for her financial future. An Imperial diplomat estimated that her pension from George was £7,500 per annum, paid from his Hanoverian and not his English resources. According to the same source she also had ‘another secret pension, as also further perquisites . . .’
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Furthermore contemporaries gossiped that on Kielmansegg’s death, Melusine received the salary of Master of the Horse, although this is unlikely as Sophia Charlotte’s husband had received no salary from the post during the time that he had held it. In 1722
George granted her the patent for the Irish coinage, which she sold for £10,000 to William Wood – this would lead to one of the greatest scandals of George’s reign. And in 1723 George wrote a will, witnessed by Walpole, leaving her £22,986.2s.2d. We have evidence that George told Melusine about the bequest.
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But despite a generous annual allowance from George her fear of poverty led her to accept money and presents from often suspect individuals. It is unlikely that she betrayed her feelings to George, but they are evident in the surviving letter of Johann Matthias to their mutual friend Fabrice, as described above. Her lack of security made her unhappy, and it caused the sibling she was closest to to worry for her.

Sophia Charlotte was also ridiculed for accepting bribes and frittering away her money. She was said to have received £40,000 from her mother, Klara Platen, which quickly disappeared in a flurry of fripperies.

On arrival in England she and her husband Johann Adolf lived in grand style, as befitting his position as Master of the Horse, but because he was not English he was unable to draw the salary his post commanded. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Sophia Charlotte’s regular correspondent, gossiped that the gorgeous jewellery she inherited from her mother was worth a fortune, but Hatton argues that it was not as valuable as has been suggested. When Johann Adolf died in 1717 her circumstances changed. George gave her a pension of £2,000 a year, but she was obliged to give up her official apartments to move to a house in Great George Street, near St James’s Park.
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Her staff was relatively small, and she must have been helped enormously by her £10,000 lottery win.
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She had five children to support and obviously considered any cash that came her way in return for favours as a vital part of her income in her reduced circumstances.

Sophia Charlotte evidently enjoyed herself in England, and kept a lively salon. Despite her reputation for greed, she was liked by
nearly everyone, with the notable exceptions of Melusine and Caroline. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu certainly preferred the more exuberant Sophia Charlotte to Melusine, and said of her:

She had a greater vivacity in conversation than ever I knew in a German of either sex. She loved reading, and had a taste of all polite learning. Her humour was easy and sociable. Her constitution inclined her to gallantry. She was well bred and amusing in company. She knew how both to please and be pleased, and had experience enough to know it was hard to do either without money.

Liselotte remarked in a letter to Louise in 1716: ‘Does Mme de Kielemansegg now speak English as well as she does French? Few Germans write French as well as she does . . .’
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Melusine’s perceived venality quickly permeated the popular consciousness. A story exists, possibly apocryphal, of Melusine and Sophia Charlotte taking a carriage ride together soon after their arrival in England, and being confronted by an angry crowd. Evidently Melusine, in her heavily accented English, asked the mob: ‘Good people, why do you plague us so? We have come for your own goods.’ She meant for their benefit but the crowd replied: ‘Yes, and for our chattels too.’
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As Melusine’s reputation for corruption grew, so her detractors’ pens grew sharper. The Duke of Wharton referred to her as ‘the Concubine, who had hoarded up heaps of Treasure, while she was Mistress’ to George.
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Alexander Pope attacked Melusine in his poem ‘Phryne’, which means ‘Toad’ in Greek. Here, she is seen as the conduit to power, accepting bribes from any who care to make use of her. The academic Kathleen Mahaffey notes that ‘few of the court circle would have failed to recognise this character [Phryne] as belonging to . . . Melusina . . . the chief port of entry for all who desired preferment and access to the King.’ The poem is worth quoting in full:

Phryne had Talents for Mankind,

Open she was, and unconfin’d

Like some free Port of Trade.

Merchants unloaded here their Freight,

And Agents from each foreign State,

Here first their Entry made.

Her Learning and good Breeding such,

Whether th’ Italian or the Dutch,

Spaniard or French came to her;

To all obliging she’d appear:

’Twas Si Signior, twas Yaw Mynheer,

’Twas S’il vous plait, Monsieur.

Obscure by Birth, renown’d by Crimes,

Still changing Names, Religions, Climes,

At length she turns a Bride:

In Di’monds, Pearls, and rich Brocades,

She shines the first of batter’d Jades,