Did you mark the airs
with which he came into my drawing-room in the morning? though he does
not think fit to honour me with his presence, or _ennui_ me with his
wife's, of an evening? I felt something here in my throat that swelled
and half-choked me.'
Poor Queen Caroline! with such a son, and such a husband, she must have
been possessed of a more than usual share of German imperturbability to
sustain her cheerfulness, writhing, as she often was, under the pangs of
a long-concealed disorder, of which eventually she died. Even on the
occasion of the king's return in time to spend his birthday in England,
the queen's temper had been sorely tried. Nothing had ever vexed her
more than the king's admiration for Amelia Sophia Walmoden, who, after
the death of Caroline, was created Countess of Yarmouth. Madame Walmoden
had been a reigning belle among the married women at Hanover, when
George II. visited that country in 1735. Not that her majesty's
affections were wounded; it was her pride that was hurt by the idea that
people would think that this Hanoverian lady had more influence than she
had. In other respects the king's absence was a relief: she had the
_eclat_ of the regency; she had the comfort of having the hours which
her royal torment decreed were to be passed in amusing his dulness, to
herself; she was free from his 'quotidian sallies of temper, which,' as
Lord Hervey relates, 'let it be charged by what hand it would, used
always to discharge its hottest fire, on some pretence or other, upon
her.
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