Here is another mention of the Chamberlain: ‘Newcastle stood before me both day and night. If I had not seen his face I should have known who it was, it being his peculiarity to turn his back upon those he has any obligations to.’ Another incident in Lady Cowper’s Court life shows the Princess of Wales could be flippant as well as capricious, but her attendant was a match for her. ‘She had a mind to be out of humour with me, and put on a frown. The King turned his back to me who was playing. But a sudden curiosity took him, and he turned his face round, and had his eyes fixed on me all night so intently, without being angry, that it was talked about. The Princess said to me next morning, that the King could not help liking me as well as ever; and that she saw plainly by his manner that I could do what I pleased, and that it was my own fault if I did not rule them all. I answered, for the thing itself I did not believe it at all, and, supposing it were true, power was too dear bought when one was to do such dishonourable work for it.’
_July 5._—‘My waiting concluded without my having had any opportunity of saying one word to the Princess alone, without the door being open;’—her Royal mistress, whom she so much loved, and by whom, but a short time ago, she had been trusted, and consulted on every subject, public or private. It is probable Lady Cowper found much truth in a passage in one of the Duchess of Marlborough’s letters to her, though, as far as one could tell, her Grace’s taste did not always incline to private life! ‘I don’t wonder that you find it melancholy to be away from your Lord and children, for though the Princess is very easy and obliging,’—this was as early as 1716,—‘I think any one who has common sense or honesty must needs be weary of everything one meets with at Court. I have seen a good many, and lived in them many years, but I protest I was never pleased but when I was a child; and after I had been a maid of honour some time at fourteen I wished myself out of the Court as much as I wished to come into it before I knew what it was.’
We have been tempted step by step into lengthening our record of Mary, the first Countess Cowper, not only because we have authentic records of herself, and the Court she adorned, from her own pen, but because in those records we find so much nature and simplicity of style, so many evidences of her sterling qualities, her many accomplishments and excellent judgment, the whole tempered by playful sallies and pardonable petulance. A modest and well-conducted woman in a vicious Court, and uncontaminated by the immorality of those with whom she was compelled to associate; the worthy wife of a good and great man, whose loss she could not endure. She closed his eyes, and four months afterwards she once more lay by his side in their last resting-place.
