The evenings at St. James’s were spent in the same way as those at Kensington.

Quadrille formed her majesty’s pastime, and, whilst Lord Hervey played pools of cribbage with the Princess Caroline and the maids of honour, the Duke of Cumberland amused himself and the Princess Amelia at ‘buffet.’  On Mondays and Fridays there were drawing-rooms held; and these receptions took place, very wisely, in the evening.

Beneath all the show of gaiety and the freezing ceremony of those stately occasions, there was in that court as much misery as family dissensions, or, to speak accurately, family hatreds can engender.  Endless jealousies, which seem to us as frivolous as they were rabid; and contentions, of which even the origin is still unexplained, had long severed the queen from her eldest son.  George II. had always loved his mother:  his affection for the unhappy Sophia Dorothea was one of the very few traits of goodness in a character utterly vulgar, sensual, and entirely selfish.  His son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, on the other hand, hated his mother.  He loved neither of his parents:  but the queen had the preeminence in his aversion.

The king, during the year 1736, was at Hanover.  His return was announced, but under circumstances of danger.  A tremendous storm arose just as he was prepared to embark at Helvoetsluys.  All London was on the look out, weather-cocks were watched; tides, winds, and moons formed the only subjects of conversation; but no one of his majesty’s subjects was so demonstrative as the Prince of Wales, and his cheerfulness, and his triumph even, on the occasion, were of course resentfully heard of by the queen.

During the storm, when anxiety had almost amounted to fever, Lord Hervey dined with Sir Robert Walpole.  Their conversation naturally turned on the state of affairs, prospectively.  Sir Robert called the prince a ‘poor, weak, irresolute, false, lying, contemptible wretch.’  Lord Hervey did not defend him, but suggested that Frederick, in case of his father’s death, might be more influenced by the queen than he had hitherto been.  ‘Zounds, my lord!’ interrupted Sir Robert, ’he would tear the flesh off her bones with red-hot irons sooner!  The distinctions she shows to you, too, I believe, would not be forgotten.  Then the notion he has of his great riches, and the desire he has of fingering them, would make him pinch her, and pinch her again, in order to make her buy her ease, till she had not a groat left.’

What a picture of a heartless and selfish character!  The next day the queen sent for Lord Hervey, to ask him if he knew the particulars of a great dinner which the prince had given to the lord mayor the previous day, whilst the whole country, and the court in particular, was trembling for the safety of the king, his father.  Lord Hervey told her that the prince’s speech at the dinner was the most ingratiating piece of popularity ever heard; the healths, of course, as usual.