Note 13 — Chapter II · 1799-1801.

We now know pretty intimately the whole Court of Brunswick, as Lord Malmesbury found it on occasion of his mission to seek there a wife for the Prince of Wales, some five years before the above was written.—(See his Diaries and Correspondence, vol. iii.) I have been interested to observe the almost exact coincidence of his judgment in respect of all the persons who composed that Court with what is written here. It is true that, having actually to transact important business with the Duke, he saw the real weakness and vacillation of his character, as a woman with no such opportunities was not likely to do. But of the Duchess Dowager he writes, ‘Nothing can be so open, so frank, and so unreserved as her manner; nor so perfectly good-natured and unaffected’ (vol. iii. p. 155). In another place, ‘The Hereditary Prince and Princess vastly friendly; she a most admirable character, all sense and judgment; he little of either, but very harmless and good-natured’ (p. 188). The Princess Augusta, Abbess of Gandersheim, he describes as ‘clever in the Beatrix way’ (p. 159), ‘clever, artful, and rather coming’ (p. 165).—Ed.