: "There is Miss Hobart, the sweet tempered
and sincere (now become Mrs. Howard, afterwards Lady Suffolk); Miss
Howe, the giddiest of the giddy (which she lived to lament); Margaret
Bellenden, who vied in height with her royal mistress; the beautiful
Mary Bellenden, her sister, who became Duchess of Argyll; Mary Lepel,
the lovely, who became Lady Hervey; and Anne Pitt, sister of the future
Lord Chatham, and as 'like him as two drops of fire.'"

Caroline's devotion to her insignificant little lord and master, and the
eagerness with which she hastened on foot to meet him, running across
the Gardens, on his return from the Continent, have been made the
subject of satire. She was generally accompanied by her five daughters,
a pathetic little band, cramped in the fetters of royalty, so stringent
toward their sex. Portraits of two of them may be seen in the Palace.

Caroline did not die at Kensington, though her husband did, after having
survived her more than twenty years, and having in the meantime
discovered her inestimable worth. At this time the Gardens were open to
the public on Saturdays by Queen Caroline's orders, and were a favourite
parade, though, as everyone was requested to appear in "full dress," the
numbers must have been limited. The principal promenade was the Broad
Walk, which Caroline herself had caused to be made. We can picture these
ghosts of the past, with their gay silks and satins, the silver-buckled
shoes with coloured heels, the men in their long waistcoats, heavily
skirted coats, and three-cornered hats--very fine beaux, indeed; and the
women stiffly encased in the most uncomfortable garments that ever the
wit of mortal devised, holding their heads erect, lest the marvellous
pyramids, built up with such expenditure of time and money, should
topple over, and, in spite of all disadvantages, looking pretty and
piquant. It was a crowd not so far removed from us by time, so that we
can attribute to the men and women who composed it the same feelings and
sensibilities as our own. And yet they were very far removed from us in
their surroundings, for many of the things that are to us commonplace
would have been to them miraculous, so that they seem more different
from us of a hundred years later than from those who preceded them by
many hundreds of years. It is this mingling of a life we can
understand, with circumstances so different, that gives the eighteenth
century its predominant and never-dying charm