The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I (31 page)

Blackburne was criticized by his contemporaries for not being spiritual enough and for indulging in worldly pleasures, and it is true that while archbishop of York he failed to perform any confirmations. He was reputed to have fathered at least one illegitimate son, Thomas Hayter, bishop of Norwich. Horace Walpole wrote of Hayter as: ‘natural son of Blackburn, the jolly old Archbishop of York, who had all the manners of a man of quality, though he had been a buccaneer, and was a clergyman; but he retained nothing of his first profession, except his seraglio.’
⁶

Blackburne’s womanizing was lampooned in a verse written just after his death – ‘Priest-Craft and Lust, or, Lancelot to his Ladies, an Epistle from the Shades’ (1743) – in which he cries:

No longer thro’ the Town I range with raging Flame

To seek the Virgin Nymph or married Dame.
⁷

If anyone was going to marry George and Melusine, and assuage their fears of a disapproving Church (although a ceremony would no longer have been illegal), it was Lancelot Blackburne.

Unfortunately it is impossible to corroborate absolutely whether or not there was a marriage. There are no records of a ceremony in English or European archives, and it was only with Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1754, specifically passed to thwart secret marriages, that English law required a written record of a marriage. Before this Act was passed, verbal consent alone was enough to make a marriage valid.

But knowing how devoted Melusine and George were to one another, and the love they gave to their daughters, it is probable that once George was free to marry her at the end of 1726, a secret ceremony would have taken place, simply because the opportunity had finally arisen.

17.
Endings

In a tender mood George the First promised the Duchess of Kendal, that if she survived him, and it were possible for the departed to return to this world, he would make her a visit . . .

– Horace Walpole
¹

At the beginning of June 1727 the family departed for a holiday in Hanover. Two days before they left, the young Horace Walpole met the king. He described the encounter many years later:

How strange are the accidents of life! At ten years old I had set my heart on seeing George I – and being a favourite child, my mother asked leave for me to be presented to him, which to the first minister’s wife was granted, and I was carried by the late Lady Chesterfield [young Melusine] to his hand as he went to supper in the Duchess of Kendal’s apartment [1 June 1727]. This was the night but one before he left England for the last time . . .

For George and Melusine, possibly so recently married, it was something of a holiday. It was also an opportunity to grieve for the death of their youngest daughter Trudchen, who had died of tuberculosis in 1726 at the age of twenty-five, leaving her two sons William and George, aged two and four years old, motherless.

The entire family was devastated when Trudchen fell ill in 1723, with one newspaper reporting that she was ‘past all hopes of recovery’ in March of that year.
²
She recovered from this bout of illness however, and the family embarked on a round of spa cures and increasingly desperate visits to physicians, to no avail. There had been another death in 1726, that of Mehemet, whose association with George pre-dated Melusine’s by five years.

Today many of Mehemet’s family portraits hang in the convent at Barsinghausen, a small town near the city of Hanover, together with portraits of Melusine and Trudchen. That these portraits stand together in a remote part of the province of Hanover is
testament to the closeness of the family to Mehemet, who served George for nearly forty years.

Despite these terrible losses, they looked forward to seeing George’s only surviving sibling, Ernst August, and his daughter Sophia Dorothea in Hanover. As always, the girls, young Melusine and Louise, accompanied them.

George, in his eagerness to make good time, pressed on ahead with only Fabrice, Hardenberg and Mustafa for company. But on 20 June he suffered a stroke while still travelling through Holland. On the advice of his surgeon, George’s courtiers decided to travel on to Osnabrück, the king’s childhood home, where Ernst August was waiting for them at his palace. George managed to rouse himself on arrival to raise his hat in greeting, but he died in the early hours of 22 June, attended by Fabrice.

Melusine was not with him when he died. She arrived later in the morning, with young Melusine. The entire party left Osnabrück for Hanover the next day – and Melusine was amongst them.

George’s death deeply affected his immediate family circle. Joanne Sophie, speaking for them all, wrote that they had ‘lost a father and never would things be as in his lifetime’.
³

Caroline, now queen, wrote immediately to Melusine: ‘My first thought, my dear Duchess, has been of you . . . I know well your devotion and love for the late King . . . I hope you realise that I am your friend.’

Melusine was at a loss as to what to do with herself in the immediate wake of George’s death. There was talk of her coming home at once, and
Mist’s Weekly Journal
reported her imminent arrival on 24 June. The account ended with a note of her unpopularity in England: ‘We hear at the rejoicing on the king’s proclamation, a certain Duchess was burnt in effigy.’ But it was not until the middle of August that Melusine even contemplated leaving Germany, when
The Daily Journal
reported that: ‘The Duchess of Kendal’s heavy
baggage is put on board a ship at Hamburgh for England . . .’

But Melusine did not set foot in England until after Georg August’s coronation as George II in October. She preferred to remain in Hanover to grieve with her surviving daughters and her closest friends. In England there was no official outlet for her grief because she held no official position within the royal family.
⁴
George had loved her from the very beginning, and may well have begun to think of her as his wife soon after he divorced Sophia Dorothea in the last days of 1694, but she was not a dowager queen and she chose to stay away.

Other members of Melusine’s family attended the coronation, including her nephew the Baron von Spörken, her youngest sister’s son. We can see here how intertwined the Schulenburg and the British royal families were. But young Melusine and Louise remained with their mother; they did not attend their half-brother’s coronation.

Eventually Melusine made England her permanent home. She had bought an estate in Holstein, the Emkendorf Castle, from the Rantzau family in 1720. Now she decided to sell it. She finally disposed of the property in 1729 for 120,000 thaler, with a 4,000 thaler profit.
⁵

She sent the head of her household, Mrs Schrieder, on ahead with her belongings in the middle of September. Joanne Sophie, still with Melusine in Hanover, urged her to stay with her at her home in Kew Green on her return to England, but Melusine was adamant, as so many widows are, that she must be independent. Now she had to decide where to live. The royal palaces were no longer available to her, not even the beautiful house George had built for her at Kensington, which had been so long in its construction that Melusine still had pictures to hang and furniture to buy: she would never enjoy it amidst the full glory of her furniture, fabrics and paintings.

At the end of 1727 Melusine set in motion the purchase of a beautiful house in Grosvenor Square. No. 43 was not the grandest of the new development, but it was elegant and comfortable, and she and young Melusine made it their main London home. It apparently cost her about £5,000.
⁷
She also possibly owned a house in Portugal Row; if so she did not live in it, but relied on its rental income of £90 a year.
⁸

Whilst the work on her new house was being completed, she and young Melusine rented a house in Old Bond Street. Louise stayed behind in Hanover to sell her little palace; she would make her home with her mother and sister in England, where she eventually bought a house in Paddington. Ten years later we hear of her having such an argument with her tempestuous half-brother, now George II, when they holidayed in Hanover, that she was forced to leave Herrenhausen.

Melusine was desperately ill at the beginning of 1728; her health had been poor since her illness in 1724, and grief exacerbated it. Until the end of her life the newspapers were full of reports of her ill health. She rented the Swiss impresario John Heidegger’s house in Barnes for the summer while she recovered.

Melusine’s loss was compounded by Joanne Sophie’s decision to return to Germany. After the death of her ex-husband in June 1728, her son Albrecht Wolfgang took up his position as ruler of Schaumburg-Lippe and Joanne Sophie went too. Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk, wrote to John Gay: ‘Count La Lippe’s father is dead; by which he is become a count of the empire, and has a very great estate.’
⁶

He took with him his and Trudchen’s two young sons. It was a difficult decision for Joanne Sophie to leave her closest friend while she still mourned, but she and Melusine probably decided that the motherless boys, aged four and six, needed one of their grandmothers
to help with their upbringing. It was far more practical for Joanne Sophie, and not Melusine, to go.

In addition to the townhouse, Melusine craved a country retreat. She had often visited Joanne Sophie at her house in Kew and had grown to love it there. Now she decided to build a house nearby, in Isleworth. And in the tradition of royal mistresses who no longer had a place at court, she created a perfect Palladian villa on the banks of the Thames, called Kendal House. (Henrietta Howard, George II’s mistress, retired to Marble Hill House, the beautiful villa she built for herself on the Thames at Twickenham, when the king discarded her in 1734.)

After George’s death Melusine virtually disappears from the sources. Her political importance as a conduit to the king was gone. Now Walpole thrust his energies into courting Caroline.

Through diplomacy, empathy and kindness, Melusine managed to maintain a good relationship with George’s family after his death. Joanne Sophie notes in her extensive correspondence how kind Caroline and George were to Melusine, with Caroline, now queen, inviting her to tea on several occasions.

We see various donations to charity and increasing piety, we see her nursing Louise at Isleworth when she caught measles in 1736. In 1730 she showed her former feisty nature by pointedly asking Walpole for the money he held for her in trust from George.
⁹
She probably wanted it to build her country house. She wrote:

Sir

As his late majesty was pleased to make you my trustee, you will not wonder at this application. The little trouble I have given you on that head, is enough to convince you how great a regard I have had for your assurances. But having lately engaged in an affair that will require a large sum to complete, I hope you will now resolve to accommodate me with the money entrusted with you, my occasions demanding the whole sum. This being a private trust that must one time or other be accounted for, it may be transferred without interfering with publick business. I can easily imagine one so continually employed, may not often think of me or my affairs, but you’ll give me leave not to forget myself, especially in a thing of so great importance to me. I am, sir, your most humble servant.
¹⁰

Young Melusine was her mother’s constant companion. She acted as Melusine’s nurse during her frequent illnesses, and remained with her even after her marriage to Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, in 1733.

We do not know why young Melusine married Chesterfield, since no contemporary wrote of the marriage from her point of view and she was as discreet as her mother in not committing her emotion to paper. She was certainly an attractive prospect for him. She had the geographical convenience of living next door to him in Grosvenor Square, she was rich – her dowry was reputedly £50,000, with an additional £3,000 per annum – attractive and clever. But she was also forty years old and probably beyond an age to bear children. She was kind to her husband’s illegitimate son, but the relationship between husband and wife quickly ossified into one of courtesy. She turned a blind eye to his many mistresses, and he allowed her to spend most of her time with her mother. It was not the idyllic relationship she had witnessed between Melusine and George. Perhaps she was disappointed – she seems to have preferred her mother’s company to that of her new husband.

Chesterfield meanwhile used his wife’s enormous marriage portion to build a magnificent city mansion in South Audley Street and young Melusine moved back in with her mother soon after her marriage.

Melusine could barely tolerate her son-in-law. In turn he detested her and called her ‘a half-wit’, probably because he knew she disliked him. In her will she ensured that he was unable to touch any of the money she left to her daughter. She almost certainly knew of his mistresses, suspected that he gambled, and disapproved; on one occasion he kept a big win at Bath from her, he was so nervous of her silent wrath.
¹¹
Hervey parodied the tense state of their domestic affairs. In October 1733, just after the marriage, he wrote: ‘Lord Chesterfield has not stirred from Twickenham [Kendal House] since the declaration of his marriage. He talks, Lady Chesterfield kisses, and the Duchess of Kendal spins all day long . . . he has no resources to dissipate his boredom’.
¹²
Young Melusine seems to have barely permeated his consciousness, and we must conclude that he probably married her for her money. Chesterfield wrote extensive letters and he hardly mentions his wife in any of them. He did however write poems to his mistresses and misogynistic musings on the childlike nature of women.