Jack Hervey also returned full of enthusiasm
for the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II., and the Princess; and
that visit influenced his destiny.
He now proposed making the grand tour, which comprised Paris, Germany,
and Italy. But his mother again interfered: she wept, she exhorted, she
prevailed. Means were refused, and the stripling was recalled to hang
about the court, or to loiter at Ickworth, scribbling verses, and
causing his father uneasiness lest he should be too much of a poet, and
too little of a public man.
Such was his youth: disappointed by not obtaining a commission in the
Guards, he led a desultory butterfly-like life; one day at Richmond with
Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales; another, at Pope's villa, at
Twickenham; sometimes in the House of Commons, in which he succeeded his
elder brother as member for Bury; and, at the period when he has been
described as forming one of the quartett in Queen Caroline's closet at
St. James's, as vice-chamberlain to his partial and royal patroness.
His early marriage with Mary Lepel, the beautiful maid of honour to
Queen Caroline, insured his felicity, though it did not curb his
predilections for other ladies.
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