Country Homes: Ickworth

Location: Suffolk
Famous Inhabitants: Bess Foster, John Hervey
Website: National Trust

Book Review: The Courtiers

In English history, it took two trial runs with King Georges before the English finally had one who wanted to stay in their ruling country full-time.  King George III and his large family made their home in what is now the main palaces of the current royal family, Windsor and Buckingham Palace.  But before these were the palaces of choice, it was Kensington Palace that King George I and II would make their English home.  With them came a whole slew of courtiers with their various personalities, stories, and best of all: gossip.  Some of these courtiers are immortalized on the very walls of Kensington; they stare at all visitors of the palace, judging them from above as they ascend the stairs.  Chief Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces, Lucy Wolsey, gives voice to some of those very faces in her newest book, The Courtiers: Splendor and Intrigue in the Georgian Court at Kensington Palace.  The good people of Walker & Company were kind enough to give me a copy of the book and I was only a few pages in before I was hooked!

Undertaking a nonfiction book on the personalities of key Kensington courtiers from the reigns of George I and II is no small feat.  The Courtiers is a testament to Worsley's skill as a curator for she seamlessly combines multiple biographies, court stories, and family trees chronologically into a captivating tapestry of court intrigue.  Normally I am used to this sort of information delivered to me in the form of a blog or a hard to follow book, but after years of configuring exhibitions for diverse audiences Worsley has learned a trick or two.  The Courtiers begins in George I's court and progresses through to the death of George II.  Each chapter is is centered around a court figure or figures and their antics, while at the same time giving a concise history of all the goings-on of Kensington.

But is Kensington court in the early eighteenth century scandalous enough for us? Oh it most certainly is!  This is the playground of John Hervey we are speaking of after all.  Not only will you find out why King George II wanted his own mistress, Henrietta Howard, fired from court, but also his embarrassing and rather un-kingly demise.  What insane measures did Prince Frederick take in order to hide his wife's child labor from his own mother?  The answer will leave your jaw gaping!

The Courtiers is a true delight.  The scandalous tales are just what we have come to expect from the eighteenth century and Worsley is the perfect tour guide to introduce audiences to them.  I will be happily recommending this book to all my history-junky friends; of course I had been doing that before I had even got halfway through the book!  The Courtiers is out now in both the UK and US so drop your fans and fetch your coachman to bring you, post-haste, to your local bookshop and pick it up today!

The Hervey Files: John 2nd Baron Hervey

"When God created the human race he created men, women, and Herveys"
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Upon first glance, John Hervey was your run of the mill Georgian aristocrat. He gambled, drank, and could be found both at the horse races and in between the sheets of a young lady's bed. He was a fop, or macaroni, who wore the most extreme and effeminate fashions, even opting to whiten his face as was fashionable for ladies to do. To complicate the normally complicated practice of sleeping with many women, Hervey's appetite called for more, so men tended to also be on the menu.

Yes, Hervey's appetite knew no bounds. His own marriage was the result of a secret courtship followed by a secret ceremony. He was said to have affairs with both Lady Mary Wortly Montagu and the king's own daughter, Princess Caroline. When Hervey died, Caroline retreated from society and was so depressed she wanted to die. But slimy Hervey was not averse to keeping his affairs in the family; it is also rumored that he slept with Caroline's own brother, Frederick Prince of Wales. That is what should have put her in a depression! Hervey didn't stop there with his family affairs! He had a relationship with Henry Fox (yes, Charles James' father) and then tossed him aside for his older brother, Stephen whom he had a long-standing relationship with. He even signed his letters to Stephen, "your wife."

Alexander Pope hated Hervey (perhaps because he was in love with Lady Hervey at one point) and his nickname for him was "Sporus," whom was the youth Emperor Nero castrated so that he could marry him. Pope went as far as writing a poetic dedication to his enemy:

...Amphibious Thing! that acting either Part,
The trifling Head, or the corrupting Heart!
Fop at the Toilet, Flatt'rer at the Board,
Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord.

Apparently, Hervey's wooings couldn't attract everyone.