, but it never occurred to George to entertain the idea of leaving
Madame Walmoden to go and pay a visit to his daughter. Out of Madame
Walmoden's presence his thoughts appear to have flown at once back to
his wife. To her he wrote, not in the mere language of conjugal
affection and sympathy, but with the passionate raptures of young love
itself. The Queen was immensely proud of this letter, although she
took care to say that she believed she was not unreasonably proud of
it. She showed it to Walpole and to Hervey, who both agreed that they
had a most incomprehensible master. Walpole was a very shrewd and
keen-sighted man, but he did not understand Queen Caroline or her
feeling towards her husband. He had told Hervey more than once that he
did not know whether the Queen hated more her son or her husband; and,
indeed, he said there was good reason why she should hate the husband
the more of the two, seeing that he had treated her so badly while she
had been all devotion to him. The love of a woman is not always
governed by a sense of gratefulness. There are women whose hearts are
like the grape, and give out their best juices to him who tramples on
them. If anything is certain in all the coarse and dreary story of
that Court, it is that Queen Caroline adored her husband--that she was
too fond of her most filthy bargain.

[Sidenote: 1737--A fickle, inconsiderate Prince]

The danger in which George had been, and out of which he had escaped,
did not in any way soften the hearts of King and prince, of father and
son, towards each other. The prince still occupied a suite of rooms in
St. James's Palace, and the King and he met on public occasions, but
they never spoke. The Queen was even more constant in her hatred to
the prince than the King himself. It does {77} not seem possible to
find out how this detestation of the son by the mother ever began to
fill the Queen's heart. She was not an unloving mother; indeed, where
her affection to the King did not stand in the way, she was fond and
tender to nearly all her children. But towards her eldest son she
seems to have felt something like a physical aversion. Then, again,
the King was a dull, stupid, loutish man, over whose clouded faculties
any absurd prejudice or dislike might have settled unquestioned; but
Caroline was a bright, clever, keen-witted woman, who asked herself and
others why this or that should be. She must have many times questioned
her own hear