Page:Reminisences of Captain Gronow.djvu/73

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Princess Charlotte at a Fête at Carlton House.
55

sive women for an elegant-minded man that could well have been found amongst German royalty. It is not my intention to recal the events of the Regency. It is well known that the Prince became eventually so unpopular as to exclude himself as much as possible from public gaze. His intimate companions, after the trial of Queen Caroline, were Lords Cunningham and Fife, Sir Benjamin Bloomfield, Sir William Macmahon, Admiral Nagle, Sir Andrew Barnard, Lords Glenlyon, Hertford, and Lowther. These gentlemen generally dined with him; the dinner being the artistic product of that famous gastronomic savant, Wattier. The Prince was very fond of listening after dinner to the gossip of society. When he became George the Fourth, no change took place in these personnels at the banquet, excepting that with the fruits and flowers of the table was introduced the beautiful Marchioness of Conyngham, whose brilliant wit, according to the estimation of his Majesty, surpassed that of any other of his friends, male or female.


The Princess Charlotte of Wales at a Fete in the Year 1813, at Carlton House.—Carlton House, at the period to which I refer, was