WORLD-FAMOUS ADVENTURESS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 89, 31 August 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

WORLD-FAMOUS ADVENTURESS

THE MAYPOLE DUCHESS. Tim Duchess of Kendal nicknamed '"The Maypole" because of her exceeding tallness—was perhaps more bitterly hated by the English people than any other Royal favorite before or since. King George the First brought her over with ■him from Hanover, and a roar of execration went up against her from the mob, with whom the Monarchy, and everything pertaining to it, was at that time intensely unpopular. She had landed at Greenwich and travelled up to London by coach, and all the way the jeers and insults of the populace Maypole could stand it no longer. Sticking her head out of the carriage window, she shouted angrily in her broken guttural English: "Good peoples, vy you abuse us? Ve only goni for all your goods." "And for all our chattels, too, confound you," retorted a wag in the crowd. A burst of laughter punctuated this apt answer, in the midst of which the Maypole collapsed back upon her seat like a suddenly shut-up telescope. She was, however, more than a little angry, and complained bitterly to her Royal lover. "Never mind," replied King George grimly, "we will take them at their word. From to-day you shall receive an allowance of £7500 a year." The Maypole clapped her hands delightedly. The next instant, though, her face fell. "That is all right, but where is the money coming from?" she enquired dubiously. "Out of the British Treasury," the King made answer. And as he said, so it was. Her pension was paid her regularly until her death, thirty years later. So that that single ill-timed jest of an unknown wag cost the taxpayers of England no less a sum than £225,000.

Money alone, however, was not enough to satisfy the Maypole's greed. A week or two later she came to the King with a fresh tale of trouble. Her complaint this time was against the Countess of Suffolk, who had alluded to her, in her hearing, as "that mawkin."

'"Never mind," replied the King soothingly, "she is only a countess. I will make you a duchess." A day or two later her patent of nobility was sealed, signed and delivered, and she became entitled to call herself Baroness of Duiulalk, Countess and Marchioness of Dungannon, and Duchess of

Munster, in the peerage of Ireland, and Baroness of Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and Duchess of Kendal, in the peerage of England. She chose to be known by the latter title. INSULTED BY A DRAYMAN.

But the more the King favored her, the more the people hated her. A common method of showing their contempt was to purposely block the road in frpnt of her carriage whenever she ventured to drive out through the London streets. Once a brewer's dray drew his dray right across the Strand when he saw her coming. The newly-created Duchess loaned out of the window and asked him angrily what he meant by behaving thus towards a lady of quality. "Lady—of quality!" sneered the drayman.

"Certainly!" replied the Duchess. '•'Can't you see my arms on the carriage door ?"

"Yes," was the crushing retort, "I can, and a very coarse, dirty pair of arms thev are!"

All London laughed when they heard of this incident, the more so because the Maypole was not remarkable for her personal cleanliness. Indeed, it was of her that the story was originally told anent the woman who saw no good in washing her hands, "because they would be just as dirty again to-morrow." But, if the English hated and ridiculed the Maypole, the Maypole took her revenge in robbing the English people. Never was any Royal mistress so rapacious as this gaunt giantess. True, cor rnption was rampant at the time. King George's other favorites—Ann Brett, the Countess of Darlington, and the rest of the precious gang—stole with both hands, but their pilferings were as nothing by comparison with those of the Duchess of Kendal.

She sold titles, appointments, State secrets, anything that had a market value. The Royal prerogative of pardon for criminals was even made a subject of barter and exchange, £IO,OOO being paid her bv one wealthy malefactor in order to be able to escape the penalty of his misdeeds.

She had a regular scale of prices for preferment in the Army and the Church —so much for a colonelcy, so much for a bishopric. She obtained from the King a monopoly to supply Ireland with its copper coinage, by which she reaped enormous sums.

At her bidding her Royal lover enlarged Kensington Gardens at the expense of Hyde Park, so that she might have more room for her daily airings; and he talked of turning St. James' Park into a kitchen .garden for her to grow artichokes in. of which vegetable she was inordinately fond. Popular clamor rose so high over this latter step, however, that the order was countermanded, at which the Maypole was exceedingly angry. KING GEORGE'S TALE OF WOE. The King shrugged his shoulders and tried to console her for her disappointment bv telling her of his own troubles. '•They are a strange people, these English," he said, "and their country is a very odd country. Why, on the very first morning of my arrival at St. James' I looked out of the window and saw a park with walls and a canal, which they told me were mine. The next day Lord Chetwvnd, the ranger of my park, sent me a brace of carp out of my canal, and I was told I must give five guineas to his servant for bringing me my own carp out of my own canal in my own park. So yon see. my dear," concluded his Majesty, with sly emphasis, "that, even if you were allowed to grow artichokes there, they might possibly cost you more than they were worth." At this time the Maypole was past fifty. What little of good looks she had ever possessed had long since fled. Neither was her figure anything to boast of. Tndeed, a contemporary, and possibly prejudiced, writer reters to her as a "gaunt and forbidding skeleton of a giantess." Nevertheless, there is no doubt but that George was genuinely attached to her. "She was," savs one authority, "as much a queen as ever there was in England." Even the King's Ministers could not obtain audience of the King upon affairs of State save by permission, and in the presence, of the King's mistress. Tt was a humiliating position for the chosen representatives of a great and free people; yet there was no help for it. Tito Duchess was all-powerful. Abuse was showered upon her in pamphlets and in the Press: but it was mostly anonymous abuse, for woebetide the authors of these scurrilous attacks if they were found out.

"England is being ruined by a trull fa wanton), and an ugly old trull at that," wrote one journalist, greatly daring, over his own name, He was promptly arrested, heavily fined, and sentenced,

in addition, to a long term of imprisonment. Apart from her rapacity, which of itself made her a host of enemies, much of the Maypole's unpopularity was due to the fact that the people blamed her for coining between George and hi* rightful wife, the beautiful anil high-spirited Sophia Dorothea, to whom the Duchess has acted in the capacity of maid-of-lioii or. Driven to desperation by her husband's open infidelity, this unhappy woman sought refuge in an intrigue with Konigsmrack, a handsome adventurer. Detection followed, Konigsmarck was murdered as he was coming from her chamber at midnight, and the young Queen was shut up in prison for the remainder of her life—thirty-two long years. The King would have had her executed but for the prediction made to him ill his youth by a gipsy fortune-teller, to the effect that he had better take care of his wife, "as be would not survive her a year." This prophecy was exactly fulfilled. George dying a few months after his unhappy consort. The Duchess of Kendal was not by his side at the time; and when news of the event was brought to her by a courier, she acted like a mad woman, Her influence for evil was now, of course, at an end. She retired to Kenday House, Twickenham, where she lived for the remainder of her days, attended by a "'familiar" in the shape of a large black raven, which she persisted in regarding as being the spirit of her departed lover. The bird flew into the window one evening at dusk and settled upon the bust of the King, and the Duchess cherished it ever afterwards and provided for it in her will. She also asserted, and apparently believed, that the bird used to hold converse with her in the silent watches of the night. It was this circumstances that suggested to Edgar Allen Poe his splendid poem of "The Raven." Kendal House, where she died, was sold by her executors and converted into a tea-garden. The grounds were very extensive, and, the story getting about that a large treasure had been buried there by the secretive and avaricious old woman, numbers of people came there to dig. They were permitted to do so by the proprietor, who, however, charged them half-a-guinea a day for the privilege. It was a profitable investment for him; more so, indeed, than for the treasure seekers, all of whom went away disappointed.