separated, and that she had invited the Chancellor very often lately, to try and accomplish it, but they were stupid, and told her it could not be done. It appeared to me that, at this time, her Royal Highness's mind was bent upon the accomplishment of this purpose; and it would be found, I think, from Lord Eldon and the others, that she pressed this subject close upon them, whenever they were at Montague House; for she told me more than once she had.* Her Royal Highness, before she put the letter by, said, "I always keep this, for it is ever necessary, I will go into the House of Lords with it myself. The Prince of Wales desires me in that letter to choose my own plan of life, and amuse myself as 11.ke; and also when I lived in Carlton House, he often asked me why I did not select some particular gentleman for my friend, and was surprised I did not." She then added, "I am not treated at all as a Princess of Wales ought to be. As to the friendship of the Duke of Gloucester's family, I understand that Prince William would like to marry either my daughter or me, if he could. I now, therefore, am desirous of forming a society of my own choosing, and I beg you always to remember, all your 'life, that I shall always be happy to see you. I think you very discreet, and the best woman in the world, and I beg you to consider the Tower always as your own; there are offices, and you might almost live there, and if Sir John is ever called away, do not go home to your family; it is not pleasant after people have children, therefore always come to my Tower. I hope to see you there very soon again. The Prince has offered me sixty thousand, if I'll go and live at Hanover; but I never will. This is the only country in the world to live in." She then kissed me, and I took my leave.

While I had been in the round Tower in Montague House, which only consists of two rooms and a closet on a floor, I had always my maid and child slept within my room, and Sir John was generally with me; he and ali my friends having free permission to visit. Mr. Cole (the page) slept over my room, and a watchman went round the Tower all night. Upon my return home, the same apparent friendship continued, and in one of her Royal Highness's visits she told me, she was come to have a long conversation with me, that she

*The Chancellor may now, perhaps, be able to grant her request.

N. B. The passage contained in this Note is, in the authenticated Copy transmitted to the Priness of Wales, placed in the margin.

had been in a great agitation, and I must guess what had happened to her. I guessed a great many things, but she said no to them all; and then said I gave it up, for I had no idea what she could mean, and therefore might guess my whole life without success. "Well then, I must tell you," said her Royal Highness, 5 but I am sure you know all the while. I thought you had completely found me out, and therefore I came to you, for you looked droll when I called for ale and fried onions and potatoes, and when I said I eat tongue and chickens at my breakfasts; that I was as sure as my life you suspected me; tell me honestly did you not?" I affected not to understand the Princess at all, and did not really comprehend her. She then said, "Well, I'l tell; I am with child, and the child came to life when I was breakfasting with Lady Willoughby. The milk flowed up into my breast so fast, that it came through my muslin gown, and I was obliged to pretend that I had spilt something, and go up stairs to wipe my gown with a napkin, and got up stairs into Lady Willoughby's room, and did very well, but it was an unlucky adventure."

I was indeed most sincerely concerned for her, conceiving it impossible but she must be ruined, and I expressed my sorrow in the strongest terms, saying, what would she do? she could never carry such an affair through; and I then said, I hoped she was mistaken. She said no, she was sure of it, and these sort of things only required a good courage; that she would manage very well; but though she told me she would not employ me in the business, for I was like all the English women, so very nervous, and she had observed me so frightened a few days past, when a horse galloped near me, that she would not let me have any thing to do for the world. The Princess added, "You will be surprised to see how well I manage it, and I am determined to suckle the child myself" I expressed my great apprehensions, and asked her what she would do if the Prince of Wales seized her person when she was a wet nurse? She said she would never suffer any one to touch her person. She laughed at my fears, and added, "You know nothing about these things; if you had read Les Avantures du Chevalier de Grammont, you would know better what famous tricks Princesses and their ladies played then, and you shall and ous read the story of Catherine Parr and a Lady Douglas of those times; have you never heard of it?" She then related it, but as I never had heard of it, I looked upon it as her own invention to reconcile my mind to these

kind of things. After this we often met, and the Princess often alluded to her situation and to mine, and one day as we were sitting together upon the sofa, she put her hand upon her stomach, and said, laughing, "Well, here we sit like Mary and Elizabeth, in the Bible." When she was bled, she used always to press me to be bled, and used to be quite angry that I would not, and whatever she thought good for herself, always recommended to me. Her Royal Highness now took every occasion to estrange me from Sir John, by laughing at him, and wondering how I could be content with him; urged me constantly to keep my own room, and not to continue to sleep with him, and said, if I had any more children she would have nothing more to say to me. Her design was evident, and easily seen through, and consequently averted. She naturally wished to keep us apart, lest in a moment of confidence I should repeat what she had divulged, and if she had estranged me from my husband, she kept me to herself. I took especial care, therefore, that my regard for him should not be undermined. I never told him her situation, and, contrary to her wishes, Sir John and I remained upon the same happy terms we always had.

It will scarcely be credited (nevertheless it is strictly true, and those who were present must avow it, or perjure themselves), what liberty the Princess gave both to her thoughts and her tongue, in respect to every part of the Royal Family. It was disgusting to us beyond the power of language to describe, and upon such occasions we always believed and hoped she could not be aware of what she was talking about, otherwise common family affection, common sense, and common policy, would have kept her silent. She said before the two Fitzgeralds, Sir Sidney Smith, and ourselves, that when Mr. Addington had his house given him, his Majesty did not know what he was about, and waved her hand round and round her head, laughing, and saying, "Certainly he did not; but the Queen got twenty thousand, so that was all very well.". We were all at a loss, and no one said any thing. This was at my own house one morning; the rest of the morning passed in abusing Mr. Addington (now Lord Sidmouth), and her critiques upon him closed by saying, "It was not much wonder a peace was not lasting, when it was made by the son of a quack doctor." Before Miss Hamond, one evening at my house, she said, "Prince William is going to Russia, and there is to be a grand alliance with a Russian Princess, but it is not very likely a Russian Princess will marry the grandson of a washer

woman." Sir Sidney Smith, who was present, begged her pardon, asserted it was not so, and wished to stop her, but she contradicted him, and entered into all she knew of the private history of the Duchess's mother, saying, "she was literally a common washerwoman, and the Duchess need not to take so much pains and not expose her skin to the open air, when her mother had been in it all the day long." When she was gone, Sir John was very much disgusted, and said, her conversation bad been so low and ill-judged, and so much below her, that he was perfectly ashamed of ker, and she disgraced her station. Sir Sidney Smith agreed, and confessed he was astonished, for it must be confessed she was not deserving of her station. After the Duke of Kent had been so kind as to come and take leave of her, before he last left England, upon the day I mention ed, she delivered her critique upon his Royal Highness, saying-" He had the manners of a Prince, but was a disagreeable man, and not to be trusted, and that his Majesty had told him, 'Now, Sir, when you go to Gibraltar, do not make such a trade of it as you did when you went to Halifax."" The Princess repeated, 66 upon nry honour it is true; the King said, 'do not make such a trade of it.'" She went on to say, "the Prince at first ordered them all to keep away, but they came now sometimes; however, they are no loss, for there is not a man among them all whom any one can make their friend."

As I was with the Princess one morning in her garden-house, his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland waited upon her. As soon as he was gone she said, "he was a foolish boy, and had been asking her a thousand foolish questions." She then told me every word of his secrets, which he had been telling her; in particular, a long story of Miss Keppel, and that he said, the old woman left them together, and wanted to take him in, and therefore he had cut the connexion. She said she liked his countenance best, but she could trace a little family likeness to herself; but for all the rest they were very ill-made, and had plumb-pudding faces, which she could not bear. His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge was next ridiculed. She said, "he looked exactly like a serjeant, and so vulgar with his ears full of powder." This was her Royal Highness's usual and favourite mode of amusing herself and her company. The conversation was always about men, praising the English men, reviling all English women, as being the ugliest creatures in the world, and the worst, and always engaged in some project or other, as the impulse of the moment might

prompt, without regard to consequences or ap pearances. Whether she amused other people in the same way, I know not, but she chose to relate to me every private circumstance she knew relative to every part of the Royal Family, and also every thing relative to her own with such strange anecdotes, and circumstantial accounts of things that never are talked of, that I again repeat, I hope I shall never hear again; and I remember once in my lyingin-room, she gave such an account of Lady Anne Wyndham's marriage, and all her husband said on the occasion, that Mrs. Fitzgerald sent her daughter out of the room, while her Royal Highness finished her story.

Such was the person we found her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, and as we continued to see her character and faults, Sir John and myself more and more, daily and hourly, regretted that the world could not see her as we did, and that his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales should have lost any papularity, when, from her own account (the only account we ever had) she was the aggressor from the beginning, herself alone; and I, as an humble individual, declare, that from the most heartfelt and unfeigned conviction, that I believe if any other married woman had acted as her Royal Highness had done, I never yet have known a man who could have endured it; and her temper is so tyrannical, capricious, and furious, that no man on earth will ever bear it; and, in private life, any woman who had thus played and sported with her husband's comfort and her husband's popularity, would have been turned out of her house, or left by herself in it, and would deservedly have forfeited her place in society. I therefore again beg leave to repeat, from the conviction of my own unbiassed understanding, and the conviction of my own eyes, no human being could live with her, excepting her servants for their wages; and any poor unfortunate woman, like the Fitzgeralds, for their dinner; and I trust and hope her real character will some time or another be displayed, that the people of this country may not be imposed upon.

The Princess was now sometimes kind and at others churlish, especially if I would not fall into her plans of ridiculing Sir John. About this time, one day at table with her, she began abusing Lady Rumbold (whom she had invited to see her a few days before, to give her letters of recommendation, if she went to Brunswick), and as the abuse was in the usual violent vulgar style, and I had never seen Lady Rumbold but that one morning when she was her Royal Highness's guest, and cared nothing about her, I did not

join in reviling her and Miss Rumbold. Sir Sidney Smith was present, and as there appeared a great friendship between the Rumbolds and him, I thought it not_civil to him to say any thing, and one always conceives, in being quite silent, one must be safe from offending any party. I was, however, mistaken; for, observing me quite silent, she looked at me in a dreadful passion, and said, "Why don't you speak, Lady Douglas? I know you think her ugly as well as us-a vulgar common milliner; Lord Heavens! that she was; and her daughter looks just like a girl that walks up the street." I suppose she expected by this thundering appeal, to force me to join in the abuse; but it had a contrary effect upon me. I chose to judge entirely for myself, and I was determined I would not: therefore, when she had raved until she could go on no longer, I said I did not think her ugly; it was a harsh term.-I thought her manner very bad, and that she was very ill dressed: but when young, I thought she must have been a pretty woman. This was past her power of enduring, which I really did not know, or I would have remained silent. She fixed her eyes furiously upon me, and bawled out, "Then you're a liar, you're a liar, and the little child you're going to have will be a liar." I pushed my plate from me, eat no more, and remained silent, and my first impulse was to push back my chair and quit the house, but the idea that I should break up the party from table, and make a confusion, and also my not being able to walk home, and my carriage not being ordered until night, left me in my chair. The conversation was changed; at last Sir Sidney said again, “Well, these ladies have had a severe trimming, they had better not have come to Blackheath; and there sits poor Lady Douglas, looking as if she were going to be executed." As I was very far advanced in my pregnancy, it agitated me greatly, and I remained aloof and very shy all the evening. When I afterwards wrote to Sir Sidney Smith for Sir John, upon some common occurrence, I said, "I do not like the Princess's mode of treating her guests; her calling me a liar was an unpardonable thing, and if she ever speaks upon the subject to you, pray tell her I did not like it, and that if I had been a man, I would have rather died than have endured it; that it is a thing which never, by any chance, occurs to a lady; on a repetition of it I will give up her acquaintance." It seems Sir Sidney Smith spoke to the Princess on the subject; for two days before I was confined, she made me a morning visit with the two Fitzgeralds, and, after having sat a short time, said, "I