the Sovereign and the new
Court and chanted even in their hearing in the public streets."

It is mentioned in _Walpoliana_ that "this couple of rabbits, the
favourites, as they were called, occasioned much jocularity on their
first importation." Some of the jocularity was aroused by their
appearance. The style of beauty, or what passed for beauty, in each
country was markedly different. Hear Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writing
from Hanover in December, 1716: "I have now got into the regions of
beauty," she told Lady Rich. "All the women have literally rosy cheeks,
snowy foreheads and bosoms, jet eye-brows, and scarlet lips, to which
they generally add coal-black hair. These perfections never leave them
till the hour of their death, and have a very fine effect by candle-light,
but I could wish they were handsome with a little more variety. They
resemble one another as much as Mrs. Salmon's Court of Great Britain,
and are in much danger of melting away by too near approaching the fire
which they for that reason carefully avoid, though it is now such
excessively cold weather, that I believe they suffer extremely by that
piece of self-denial."

The Duchess of Kendal at the time of the accession of George I was
forty-seven years of age. The King's mother, the Electress Sophia, had
commented on her to Mrs. Howard: "Look at that mawkin, and think of her
being my son's passion." If a family portrait, now in the possession of
Count Werner Schulenburg, may be trusted, she was what is called "a fine
figure of a woman"; she had blue eyes and fair hair. She was so tall
that she was nicknamed in England "the May-pole." She was certainly
determined to make the most of her opportunities, and the more eager
because at the beginning of the reign she was very doubtful whether
George I would not have hurriedly to retire to Hanover for good and all.
So doubtful of the likelihood of the duration of the Hanoverian line in
this country was she that at first she declined to accompany the
Elector, and she only changed her mind when she found the Baroness von
Kielmansegg had decided to go to England. She was in high favour with
George, and took every advantage of her influence. She left an immense
fortune, which was acquired in ways into which an eulogistic biographer
of the lady would not enquire. Certainly, she received for her good
offices large sums of money from the promoters of the South Sea Act, she
accepted bribes to secure peerages, and,