George II of England and his queen, Caroline, had no use for their son Frederick, Prince of Wales, who returned in 1733 from schooling in his grandfather’s home city or state of Hanover, Germany. He had no use for them either, and some close observers were worried, including Lord Hervey, who discusses it in his Memoirs.
The prime minister, Robert Walpole, urged the parents to make it up with the son, whom their enemies would play against them, but they said no, you don’t know him like we do — and he did turn out a nasty fellow before his death in 1751, nine years before his father’s. There was no use being nice to him, they said; it will only make him worse.
Hervey had already tried, with some success, to mollify the son, whom he had served as advisor. It was a no-win situation, he told him. The king has many enemies, and you all have much to lose, nothing to gain. The prince seemed to take it to heart. Would the parents do so too, if some dared to tell them about the enemies in their midst? Hervey thought so and told Walpole as much.
Walpole agreed that the king should use “supple insinuating arts” to make friends, rather than engage in such a “fierte” — “wildness” or “fierceness” — involving his son and heir, and should cease his “awkward, simple, and proud conduct.” But he was buttering no one up, nor was he spreading cash around, and so no one had a good word for him, in and out of the palace. He had neither “address” enough to do the first nor “liberality” enough to do the latter.
But Walpole would “not dare to tell them of the ticklish situation they are in,” said Hervey, warning him that when matters went bad, he and other ministers would get the blame.
At this point the two interrupted by the Duke of Newcastle, who entered “with as much alacrity and noise as usual . . . in his hand a bundle of papers as big as his head and with little more in them.”
In any case, Hervey eventually warned the royal couple by reporting what he said he heard others say, having got their acquiescence in his not revealing his sources, which were nonexistent. In this way he could give his own ideas as if they were others’ and thus escape censure.
Blithe Spirit 
This Prince of Wales was (if memory serves me) destined to become George III, who stumbled into the loss of the American colonies. For this, he became popular on the West side of the Atlan-tic, but won no popularity at all on the East side.
We Yankees took George to tea. He took us to independence. Thank you George.
Dick — No, the prince of Wales in this item was Frederick, who died before his father. Our George III was his brother.
— Ed.
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