Behind Bubb’s back Frederick was apt to laugh at the easy manner in which he had been allowed to take his winnings. The fool was really paying for the privilege of calling the Prince of Wales his friend.

Frederick was important. Bolingbroke said so. He was ill-treated by his father, but it would not always be so. Soon he would be found a wife; his debts would be paid and his father would be forced to give him an income commensurate with his position.

Frederick was beginning to realize his own importance and changing subtly from the young man who had come to England eager to make himself pleasant and popular.

Townshend had asked for a place in his household and got it. That, thought Frederick, would be a blow to his father and old Walpole. Occasional meetings with Bolingbroke, listening to commiseration on his ill-treatment, planning for better days—all this was changing Frederick.

Now his greatest pleasure was to bring discomfort and embarrassment to his parents.

So on these occasions when Anne entertained in Soho Square he made it clear that he liked as many members of Parliament as possible to call on his mistress. They were received with flattering pleasure and more and more were flocking to these gatherings.

The fact that Walpole was uneasy was a great delight to his enemies, who said that it was the same story all over again. Once the present King had held a second Court in Leicester House in defiance of his Father’s at St James’s.

Now here was Frederick Prince of Wales defying his father.

Anne, the Prince beside her, was telling Bubb what a pleasant gathering it was and how pleased she was to see so many of the King’s Court with them.

‘There might have been more,’ said Bubb, ‘but half the Court is at the Haymarket.’

‘Oh, Handel! ‘ cried Anne. ‘That is the Princess. She says he is the finest musician in the world. But some seem to like the Italian. I myself for one.’

‘Buononcini is a fine musician,’ said Bubb. ‘How does he compare with Handel? His Highness will tell us, doubtless.’

‘They are different,’ said Frederick. ‘Handel is so German and Buononcini typically Italian.’

‘I suppose I am very stupid with no taste,’ sighed Anne. ‘Am I, my love? I find Handel a bore.’

‘You could never be stupid,’ said Frederick, kissing her hand.

‘No,’ pouted Anne. ‘Look how I produced my adorable FitzFrederick.’

‘And,’ whispered some malicious voice, ‘deluded Fred into thinking he was his.’

But no one heard or even cared to listen, for so many of those present believed it would be profitable to support the Prince’s party, as no one had a chance of breaking into Walpole’s.

‘Buononcini is a fine musician,’ said the Prince.

Then everyone began comparing him with Handel and declaring that Handel was heavy, obsessed with religious subjects, and above all dull. Buononcini’s was gay, as music should be. It was a mistake to delude oneself into thinking that because music was dull it was good.

And the King and the Queen and Princess Anne doted on Handel.

‘Buononcini should set up in opposition,’ said Bubb. ‘I’d wager Handel would still command the bigger audience.’ ‘What will you wager?’ asked Frederick.

Two thousand.’

‘Make it five and I’ll take you on.’

Dodington agreed and the bet was made. When the Prince betted others must too and that evening nothing else was talked of but Italian and the German musicians—not so much their merits but who could draw the bigger crowds, for that was to be the test.

Buononcini must have his rival theatre, but it was not difficult to obtain backers for a proposition so favoured by the Prince.

Soon at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields Buononcini’s operas were being performed in rivalry with Handel’s at the Haymarket.

The Princess Royal was furious, seeing in this her brother’s hatred of herself and his parents; and that he should direct this against her beloved music master was more than she could bear.

‘It will be useless,’ she stormed to Amelia and Caroline.

‘Lincoln’s Inn will never rival the Haymarket. And how can anyone in his senses compare the Italian with great Handel?’

But music had little to do with the affair. The King’s Court was dull; the Prince’s was becoming more lively. To it went all the rebels, all the young who wanted a change; and the way in which they could show their willingness to follow the Prince was to go to the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Anne was desperate; she implored her parents to come with her to the opera.

‘Frederick is deliberately flouting us all,’ she declared; and the Queen agreed with her.

As for the King, he had hated his son from the first and he was ready to make a state occasion of a visit to the Haymarket.

And each week it became more and more obvious that the audience at the Haymarket was growing less and less and that at Lincoln’s Inn Fields greater.

There came a night when the King, the Queen, with the Princesses and young William, all seated in the royal box, were the only audience for the Handel opera.

To make this more humiliating the roads were jammed on the way to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and as the theatre was filled to its capacity, people stood outside to wait for the Prince and his friends to leave that they might give them a cheer and shout ‘Long Live the Prince of Wales ... and Buononcini.’

The Prince had won his wager. The King was mightily discomfited; Handel and the Haymarket were in financial difficulties; and Walpole and the Queen were worried.

This was the full cycle.

The Prince of Wales had now come into the open as the enemy of the King and Queen.

Sarah Churchill’s Bargain

THERE was a woman who watched the antics of the Court with malicious pleasure. She was one of the richest women in England and had at one time been the most powerful. This was Sarah, the widowed Duchess of Marlborough.

Her husband had died in 1722 and since then she had lost the zest for life except when she was quarrelling. Consequently she gave herself up to this, which was to her an exciting pastime.

She had had a glorious quarrel with John Vanbrugh over the building of Blenheim; she had others with all the members of her family in turn and especially her only two living daughters. She had turned her attention to her grandchildren and the story was current that she had blacked the face on a painting of Anne Egerton, her granddaughter, and scrawled beneath it: ‘She is blacker within.’ She had quarrelled with Lord Sunderland, her son-in-law, because he had remarried; she had indulged in several lawsuits, but these were minor matters and Sarah could not forget the days when as chief adviser to Queen Anne she had been at the centre of the nation’s affairs. That was where she longed to be and only that could give her something to live for now that her husband, her dear Marl, was no more.

Therefore she must quarrel with the most important man in the country; and no quarrel meant quite so much to Sarah as her quarrel with Sir Robert Walpole.

It was galling for her, who had been the wife of the greatest General of his age, who had ruled him and ruled Queen Anne, to find that Walpole dismissed her as a silly old woman of no importance to him. Gone were the days when she could have marched into action against him, could have undermined his power, could have set her own men around him to pull him down. Now she was just a feeble old woman, or so they thought.

Marlborough was dead and she had to be doing something all the time to forget that depressing fact. The only time when her face softened, when she felt lonely and defenceless was when she thought of him in the days of his prime—the handsomest man alive she had thought, and a genius among his fellows—and remembered then that he was gone for ever.