Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover, volume 2 (of 2)

One event of this year brings us back to the persons and memories of the age of Caroline. Three-quarters of a century had passed away since the day when the then little Princess Amelia Sophia, who was born in Hanover, arrived in London, some three years old, at the period when her parents ascended the throne of England. She was an accomplished and a high-spirited girl, and grew into an attractive and ‘lovable’ woman. No prince, however, ever came to the feet of Amelia Sophia. She did not, nevertheless, want for lovers of a lower dignity. Walpole, in allusion to this, states of her that she was ‘as disposed to meddle’ in State matters as her elder sister Anne; and that ‘she was confined to receiving court from the Duke of Newcastle, who affected to be in love with her; and from the Duke of Grafton, in whose connection with her there was more reality.’

The latter connection is said to have been more romantic than platonic. The Princess and the Duke were given to riding out in company, conversing together in the recesses of windows, keeping together when out hunting, and occasionally losing themselves together in Windsor Forest and other places convenient for lovers to lose themselves in. This last incident in the love passages of the Princess’s life afforded great opportunity for good-natured gossips to indulge in joking, and for ill-natured gossips to indulge in affectedly indignant reproof. The Princess troubled herself very little with the remarks of others on her conduct. It was only when Queen Caroline was worked upon by the ill-natured gossips to notice and to censure the intimacy which existed between the Princess and the Duke that Amelia took the matter somewhat to heart, and wept as a young lady in such circumstances was likely to do at finding a violent end put to her violent delights. The Queen indeed threatened to lay the matter before the King, and it is said that it was only through the good and urgent offices of Sir Robert Walpole that so extreme a course was not taken.

Like her sister Anne, Amelia was rather imperious in disposition, and she never found but one man who openly withstood her. That man was Beau Nash. The Beau had fixed eleven o’clock at which dancing should cease in the rooms at Bath, where he was despotic Master of the Ceremonies. On one occasion, when the Princess was present, the hour had struck, and Nash had raised his jewelled finger, in token that the music was to stop, and the ladies were to ‘sit down and cool,’ as the Beau delicately expressed it. The imperious daughter of Caroline was not disposed to end the evening so early, and intimated to the Master her gracious pleasure that there should be another country dance. Nash looked at her with surprise. He laughed an agitated laugh, shook all the powder out of his wig in signifying his decided refusal, and, muttering something about the laws of the Medes and Persians, set down the Princess as a rather ill-bred person.

In her way she was as imperious as Nash; and as Ranger of Richmond Park she was as despotic as the Beau within his more artificial territory at Bath. She kept the park closed, sacred to the pleasure and retirement of royalty and the favoured few. There were, however, some dreadfully democratic persons at Richmond, who had a most obstinate conviction that the public had a right of passage through the park, and they demanded that the right should be allowed them. The royal Ranger peremptorily refused. Democratic cobblers immediately went to law with her, and proved that the right was with them. The Princess yielded to the counsel of her own legal advisers, and, allowing the right of passage, made a very notable concession; she planted rickety ladders against the walls, and bade the ladies and gentlemen of the vicinity pass through the park as they best could by such means. But the persevering people maintained that if they had right of passage the right must be construed in a common-sense way, and that passage implied a pass or gate by which such passage might be made. The royal lady thought the world was coming to an end when the vulgar dared thus to ‘keep standing on their rights’ in presence of a princess. She was in some measure correct; for the age of feudal royalty was coming to a close, and that great shaking-up of equality was beginning from which royalty has never perfectly recovered. The troublesome people, accordingly, kept most vexatiously to the point, and after a fierce struggle they compelled their Ranger to set open a gate whereby they might have free and constant access to their own park. Had this daughter of Caroline been a wise woman, she would have cheerfully gone through this gate with the people, and so, sharing in their triumph, would have won their love. But ‘Emily,’ as she was often called, was of quite another metal, and was so disgusted at the victory achieved by the vulgar that she threw up her office in disgust, and declared that the downfall of England commenced with the opening of Richmond Park.

The Princess offended more persons than the mere democracy by her arrogance as Ranger. The evidence of Walpole is conclusive on this subject, and is worth citing, often as I have had to quote from his lively pages. In 1752, he writes: ‘Princess Emily, who succeeded my brother in the Rangership of Richmond Park, has imitated her brother William’s unpopularity, and disobliged the whole country, by refusal of tickets and liberties that had always been allowed. They are at law with her, and have printed in the ‘Evening Post’ a strong memorial, which she had refused to receive. The high-sheriff of Surrey, to whom she had denied a ticket, but on better thought had sent one, refused it, and said he had taken his part. Lord Brooke, who had applied for one, was told he couldn’t have one; and, to add to the affront, it was signified that the Princess had refused one to my Lord Chancellor. Your old nobility don’t understand such comparisons. But the most remarkable event happened to her about three weeks ago. One Mr. Bird, a rich gentleman near the palace, was applied to by the late Queen for a piece of ground that lay convenient for a walk she was making. He replied that it was not proper for him to pretend to make a queen a present, but if she would do what she pleased with the ground he would be content with the acknowledgment of a key and two bucks a year. This was religiously observed till the era of her Royal Highness’s reign. The bucks were denied, and he himself once shut out, on pretence it was fence month (the breeding-time, when tickets used to be excluded, keys never). The Princess was soon after going through his grounds to town. She found a padlock on his gate. She ordered it to be broken open. Mr. Shaw, her deputy, begged a respite till he could go for the key. He found Mr. Bird at home. “Lord, sir, here is a strange mistake! The Princess is at the gate, and it is padlocked.” “Mistake! no mistake at all. I made the road; the ground is my own property. Her Royal Highness has thought fit to break the agreement which her royal mother made with me; nobody goes through my grounds but those I choose should.” Translate this to your Florentines,’ adds Walpole to our legate in Tuscany; ‘try if you can make them conceive how pleasant it is to treat blood royal thus.’

George II., who was more liberal, in many respects, than any of his children, save when these affected liberality for political purposes, finally anticipated the award of law by ordering the park to be thrown open to the public in the month of December 1752. But he could not have kept it closed.

Walpole speaks of the Princess Amelia as if he had never forgotten or forgiven this, or any other of her faults. According to his description, she was for ever prying impertinently into the affairs of other people; silly, garrulous, and importantly communicative of trifles not worth the telling. He paints her as arrogant and insolent; inexcusable, it would seem, in these last respects, simply because she no longer possessed either power or beauty. But these were only eccentricities; there was much of sterling goodness beneath them. She was nobly generous and royally charitable. She was a steady friend and an admirable mistress. In face of such virtues, mere human failings may be forgiven.

Walpole graphically and dramatically describes a scene at her loo-table. The year is 1762, the month December. ‘On Thursday,’ he says, ‘I was summoned to the Princess Emily’s loo. Loo she called it; politics it was. The second thing she said to me was: “How were you the two long days?” “Madam, I was only there the first.” “And how did you vote?” “Madam, I went away.” “Upon my word, that was carving well!” Not a very pleasant apostrophe to one who certainly never was a time-server. Well, we sat down. She said: “I hear Wilkinson is turned out, and that Sir Edward Winnington is to have his place. Who is he?” addressing herself to me, who sat over against her. “He is the late Mr. Winnington’s heir, madam.” “Did you like that Winnington?” “I can’t but say I did, madam.” She shrugged up her shoulders, and continued: “Winnington was originally a great Tory. What do you think he was when he died?” “Madam, I believe what all people are in place.” “Pray, Mr. Montague, do you perceive anything rude or offensive in this?” Here then she flew into the most outrageous passion, coloured like scarlet, and said: “None of your wit. I don’t understand joking on these subjects. What do you think your father would have said if he had heard you say so? He would have murdered you, and you would have deserved it.” I was quite confounded and amazed. It was impossible to explain myself across a loo-table, as she is so deaf. There was no making a reply to a woman and a princess, and particularly for me, who have made it a rule, when I must converse with royalties, to treat them with the greatest respect, since it is all the court they will ever have from me. I said to those on each side of me: “What can I do? I cannot explain myself now.” Well, I held my peace; and so did she, for a quarter of an hour. Then she began with me again, examined me upon the whole debate, and at last asked me directly which I thought the best speaker, my father or Mr. Pitt? If possible, this was more distressing than her anger. I replied, it was impossible to compare two men so different; that I believed my father was more a man of business than Mr. Pitt. “Well, but Mr. Pitt’s language?” “Madam, I have always been remarkable for admiring Mr. Pitt’s language.” At last the unpleasant scene ended; but as we were going away I went close to her and said: “Madam, I must beg leave to explain myself. Your Royal Highness has seemed to be very angry with me, and I am sure I did not mean to offend you; all that I intended to say was, that I supposed Tories were Whigs when they got places.” “Oh!” said she; “I am very much obliged to you. Indeed, I was very angry.” Why she was angry, or what she thought I meant, I do not know to this moment, unless she supposed that I would have hinted that the Duke of Newcastle and the Opposition were not men of consummate virtue, and had not lost their places out of principle. The very reverse was at that time in my head, for I meant that the Tories would be just as loyal as the Whigs when they got anything by it.’

The Princess was not ladylike in her habits. She had a fondness for loitering about her stables, and would spend hours there in attendance upon her sick horses. She of course acquired the ways of those whose lives pass in stables and stable matters. She was manly, too, in her dress. Calamette would have liked to have painted her, as that artist has painted the frock-coat portrait of Madame Dudevant (George Sand). He would have picturesquely portrayed her in the round hat and German riding-habit, ‘standing about’ at her breakfast, sipping her chocolate, or taking spoonsful of snuff. Of this she was inordinately fond, but she accounted her box sacred. A Noli me tangere was engraven on it, but the injunction was not always held sacred. Once, on one of the card-tables in the Assembly Rooms at Bath, her box lay open, and an old general officer standing near inconsiderately took a pinch from it. The indignant Princess immediately called an attendant, who, by her directions, flung the remainder of the contents of the box into the fire.

In June 1786, Walpole, then nearly a septuagenarian, borrowed a dress-coat and sword, in order to dine at Gunnersbury with the Princess. The company comprised the Prince of Wales, the Prince of Mecklenburgh, the Duke of Portland, Lord Clanbrassil, Lord and Lady Clermont, Lord and Lady Southampton, Lord Pelham, and Mrs. Howe. Some of the party retired early. Others, more dissipated, sat up playing commerce till ten. ‘I am afraid I was tired,’ says Horace. The lively old Princess asked him for some verses on Gunnersbury. ‘I pleaded being superannuated. She would not excuse me. I promised she should have an ode on her next birthday, which diverted the Prince; but all would not do. So, as I came home, I made some stanzas not worth quoting, and sent them to her by breakfast next morning.’

In the October following, the daughter of Caroline and George II. died at her house in Cavendish Square, at the east corner of Harley Street. Card-playing and charity were the beloved pursuits of her old age. Her death took place on the last day of October 1786, in the 76th year of her age. Her remains lie in Henry VII.’s chapel in Westminster Abbey.

But the decease of this aged princess appeared a minor calamity compared with the illness which now threatened the King. In presence of this the Queen forgot Mrs. Trimmer and her Sunday Schools; Gainsborough, whom she patronised; public theatricals, and private readings. The illness had been long threatening.

In the ‘Memoirs of the Court and Cabinet of George III.,’ by the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, the elder sons of Queen Charlotte are spoken of, and particularly with reference to this period immediately previous to the King’s illness, in a most unfavourable light. The Prince of Wales, we are told, like his two predecessors in the same title, was active in his opposition to the measures of the cabinet and crown. The same spirit, with as little prudence to moderate and more ill-feeling to embitter it, was as lively in the man as in the boy. The Prince was, however, at least consistent in his opposition. ‘The Duke of York,’ says Lord Bulkeley, writing to the Marquis of Buckingham, ‘talks both ways, and I think will end in opposition. His conduct is as bad as possible. He plays very deep and loses, and his company is thought mauvais ton. I am told that the King and Queen begin now to feel “how much sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have an ingrate child.” When the Duke of York is completely done up in the public opinion, I should not be surprised if the Prince of Wales assume a different style of behaviour. Indeed, I am told, he already affects to see that his brother’s style is too bad.’

Public business, as far as its transaction through ministers was concerned, became greatly impeded through the illness which had attacked the King. It had been brought on by his imprudence in remaining a whole day in wet stockings, and it exhibited itself not merely in spasmodic attacks of the stomach, but in an agitation and flurry of spirits which caused great uneasiness to the Queen, and which, both for domestic and political reasons, it was desirous should not be known.

The very attempt at concealment gave rise to various alarming reports. The best answer that could be devised for the latter was to allow the King to appear at the levée at the end of October. The Queen suffered much when this plan was resolved upon; and it had the result, which she expected, of over-fatiguing the King and rendering him worse. At the close of the levée, the King remarked to the Duke of Leeds and Lord Thurlow, the latter of whom had advised him to take care of himself and return to Windsor: ‘You then, too, my Lord Thurlow, forsake me, and suppose me ill beyond recovery; but whatever you or Mr. Pitt may think or feel, I, that am born a gentleman, shall never lay my head on my last pillow in peace and quiet as long as I remember the loss of my American Colonies.’ This loss appears to have weighed heavily on his mind, and to have been one of the great causes by which it was ultimately overthrown.

Early in November he became delirious, but the medical men, Warren, Heberden, and Sir G. Baker, could not tell whether the malady would turn, at a critical point, for life or death; or whether, if for the former, the patient would be afflicted or not with permanent loss of reason. The disease was now settled in the brain, with high fever. The Princes of the Blood were all assembled at Windsor, in the room next to that occupied by the sufferer, and a regency bestowing kingly power on the Prince of Wales was already talked of.

When the fact of the King’s illness could no longer be with propriety concealed, the alarm without the royal residence was great, and the disorder scarcely less within. The most graphic picture of the state of affairs is drawn by Lord Bulkeley. ‘The Queen,’ he says, ‘sees nobody but Lady Constance, Lady Charlotte Finch, Miss Burney, and her two sons, who, I am afraid, do not announce the state of the King’s health with that caution and delicacy which should be observed to the wife and the mother, and it is to them only that she looks up. I understand her behaviour is very feeling, decent, and proper. The Prince has taken the command at Windsor, in consequence of which there is no command whatsoever; and it was not till yesterday that orders were given to two grooms of the bedchamber to wait for the future, and receive the inquiries of the numbers who inquire; nor would this have been done if Pitt and Lord Sydney had not come down in person to beg that such orders might be given. Unless it was done yesterday, no orders were given for prayers in the churches, nor for the observance of other forms, such as stopping the playhouses, &c., highly proper (?) at such a juncture. What the consequence of this heavy misfortune will be to government, you are more likely to know than I am; but I cannot help thinking that the Prince will find a greater difficulty in making a sweep of the present ministry in his character of Fiduciary Regent than in that of King. The stocks are already fallen two per cent., and the alarms of the people of London are very little flattering to the Prince. I am told that message after message has been sent to Fox, who is touring with Mrs. Armistead on the continent; but I have not heard that the Prince has sent for him, or has given any orders to Fox’s friends to that effect. The system of favouritism is much changed since Lord Bute’s and the Princess Dowager’s time; for Jack Payne, Master Leigh, an Eton schoolboy, and Master Barry, brother to Lord Barrymore, and Mrs. Fitz, form the cabinet at Carlton House.’

The afflicted King, for a time, grew worse, then the Opposition affected to believe that his case was by no means desperate. Their insincerity was proved as symptoms of amelioration began to show themselves. Then they not only denied the fact of the King’s improved health, but they detailed all the incidents they could pick up of his period of imbecility, short madness, or longer delirium. But, in justice to the Opposition, it must be remarked that the greatest traitor was not on that side, but on the King’s. The Lord Chancellor Thurlow was intriguing with the Opposition when he was affecting to be a faithful servant of the crown. His treachery, however, was well known to both parties; but Pitt kept it from the knowledge of George III., lest it should too deeply pain or too dangerously excite him. When Thurlow had, subsequently, the effrontery to exclaim in the House of Lords, ‘When I forget my King, may my God forget me!’ a voice from one behind him is said to have murmured, ‘Forget you! He will see you d—d first.’

There was assuredly no decency in the conduct of the heir-apparent or of his next brother. They were gaily flying from club to club, party to party, and did not take the trouble even to assume the sentiment which they could not feel. ‘If we were together,’ says Lord Grenville, in a letter inserted in the ‘Memoirs,’ ‘I would tell you some particulars of the Prince of Wales’s behaviour towards the King and Queen, within these few days, that would make your blood run cold, but I dare not admit them to paper because of my informant.’ It was said that if the King could only recover sufficiently to learn and comprehend what had been said and done during his illness, he would hear enough to drive him again into insanity. The conduct of his elder sons was marked, not only by its savage inhumanity, but by an indifference to public and private opinion which distinguishes those fools who are not only without wits, but who are also without hearts. When the Parliament was divided by fierce party strife, as to whose hands should be confided the power and responsibilities of the regency, the occasion should have disposed those likely to be endowed with that supreme power to seek a decent, if temporary, retirement from the gaze of the world. Not so the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York. They kept open houses, and gaily welcomed every new ally. They were constant guests at epicurean clubs and convivial meetings. They both took to deep play, and both were as fully plucked as they deserved. There was in them neither propriety of feeling nor affectation of it.

The condition of the Queen was deplorable, and a succession of fits almost prostrated her as low as her royal husband. The Prince of Wales himself ‘seemed frightened,’ says Mr. Neville to the Marquis of Buckingham, ‘and was blooded yesterday,’ November 6, the second day of the King’s delirious condition; but as phlebotomy was a practice of this princely person when in love, one cannot well determine whether his pallor arose from filial or some less respectable affection.

Up to this time the King had grown worse, chiefly through total, or nearly total, loss of sleep. He bewailed this with a hoarse, rapid, yet kindly tone of voice; maintaining that he was well, or that to be so he needed but the blessing of sleep. The Queen paced her apartment with a painful demonstration of impatient despair in her manner; and if, by way of solace, she attempted to read aloud to her children or ladies, any passage that reminded her of her condition and prospects made her burst into tears.

Previous to the first night of the King’s delirium he conducted, as he had always been accustomed to do, the Queen to her dressing-room, and there, a hundred times over, requested her not to disturb him if she should find him asleep. The urgent repetition showed a mind nearly overthrown, but the King calmly and affectionately remarked that he needed not physicians, for the Queen was the best physician he could have. ‘She is my best friend,’ said he; ‘where could I find a better?’

The alarm became greater when the fever left the King, after he had three times taken James’s powders, but without producing any relief to the brain. The Queen secluded herself from all persons save her ladies and the two eldest Princes. These, as Lord Bulkeley said, did not announce to her the state of the King’s health with the caution and delicacy due to the wife and mother who now depended on them. This dependence was so complete that the Prince of Wales, as before said, took the command of everything at Windsor, one result of which was a disappearance of everything like order. The Queen’s dependence on such a son was rather compulsory than voluntary. When he first came down to Windsor, from Brighton, the meeting was the very coldest possible, and when he had stated whence he came her first question was when he meant to return. However, it is said that when the King broke out, at dinner, into his first fit of positive delirium, the Prince burst into tears.

The sufferer was occasionally better, but the relapses were frequent. The Queen now slept in a bed-room adjoining that occupied by the King. He once became possessed with the idea that she had been forcibly removed from the bed, and in the middle of the night he came into the Queen’s room with a candle in his hand, to satisfy himself that she was still near him. He remained half-an-hour, talking incoherently, hoarsely, but good-naturedly, and then went away. The Queen’s nights were nights of sleeplessness and tears.

In the Queen’s room could be heard every expression uttered by the King, and they were only such as could give pain to the listener. His state was at length so bad that the Queen was counselled to change her apartments, both for her sake and the King’s. She obeyed, reluctantly and despairingly, and confined herself to a single and distant room. In the meanwhile, Dr. Warren was sent for, but the King resolutely refused to see him. He hated all physicians, declared that he himself was only nervous, and that otherwise he was not ill. Dr. Warren, however, contrived to be near enough to be able to give an opinion, and the Queen waited impatiently in her apartment to hear what that opinion might be. When she was told, after long waiting, that Dr. Warren had left the castle, after communicating his opinion to the Prince of Wales, she felt the full force of her altered position, and that she was nor longer first in the castle next to the King.

The Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, some of the medical men, and other gentlemen kept a sort of watch in the room adjacent to that in which the King lay, and listened attentively to all he uttered. He surprised them, one night, by suddenly appearing among them, and roughly demanding what they were there for. They endeavoured to pacify him, but in vain. He treated them all as enemies; but not happening to see his second son, who had discreetly kept out of sight, but was present, he said, touchingly, ‘Freddy is my friend; yes, he is my friend!’ Sir George Baker timidly persuaded the poor King to return to his bed-room; but the latter forced the doctor into a corner, and told him that he was an old woman, who could not distinguish between a mere nervous malady and any other. The Prince, by sign and whispers, endeavoured to induce the other gentlemen to lead his father away. All were reluctant, and the King remained a considerable time, till at last a ‘Mr. Fairly’ took him boldly by the arm, addressed him respectfully but firmly, declaring that his life was in peril if he did not go again to bed, and at length subdued the King, who gave himself up like a wearied child. These details were eagerly made known to the Queen by the Prince with ‘energetic violence.’ Her Majesty’s condition was indeed melancholy, but at its worst she never forgot to perform little acts of kindness to her daughters and others. The conduct of the Princesses was such as became their situation. They, with their mother, had fallen from their first greatness, and the Prince of Wales was supreme master. Nothing was done but by his orders. The Queen ceased to have any authority beyond the reach of her own ladies. ‘She spent the whole day,’ says Miss Burney, ‘in patient sorrow and retirement with her daughters!’

The King expressed a very natural desire to see these daughters, but he was not indulged. Indeed, the practice observed towards him appears, if the accounts may be trusted, extremely injudicious. The public seem to have thought so; for, on stopping Sir George Baker’s carriage, and hearing from him that the King’s condition was very bad, they exclaimed, ‘More shame for you!’

The Prince of Wales was extremely desirous to remove the King from Windsor to Kew. The King was violently averse from such removal, and the Queen opposed it until she was informed that it had the sanction of the physicians. Kew was said to be quieter and more adapted for an invalid. The difficulty was, how he was to get there. Of his own will he would never go. The Prince and physicians contrived a plan. The Queen and Princesses were to leave Windsor early, and, as soon as the King should be told of their departure, his uneasiness would be calmed by an assurance that he would find them at Kew. The Queen yielded reluctantly, on being told that it would be for her consort’s advantage; and she and her daughters proceeded, without state and in profound grief, to Kew. Small accommodation did they find there; for half the apartments were locked up, by the Prince’s orders, while on the doors of the few allotted to the Queen and her slender retinue, some illustrious groom of the chambers had scratched in chalk the names of those by whom they were to be occupied! Night had set in before the King arrived. He had been wheedled away from Windsor, on promise of being allowed to see the Queen and their daughters at Kew. He performed the journey in silent content; and, when he arrived—the promise was broken! The Queen and children were again told that it was all for the best; but a night, passed by the King in violence and raving, showed how deeply he felt the cruel insult to which he had been subjected. In the meantime, preparations to name the Prince regent were going on, the King’s friends being extremely cautious that due reserve should be made for their master’s rights, in case of what they did not yet despair of—his recovery. His physicians were divided in opinion upon the point; but they all agreed that the malady, which had begun with a natural discharge of humour from the legs, had, by the King’s imprudence, been driven to the bowels, and that thence it had been repelled upon the brain. They endeavoured, without too sanguinely hoping, to bring the malady again down to the legs.

Their efforts were fruitless. Addington and Sir Lucas Pepys were more sanguine than their colleagues, of a recovery; but the condition of the patient grew daily more serious, yet with intervals of calm lucidity. It was at this juncture that Dr. Willis, of Lincoln, was called in. This measure gave great relief to the Queen; for she knew that cases of lunacy formed Dr. Willis’s specialité, and she entertained great hopes from the treatment he should adopt. The doctor was accompanied by his two sons. They were (and the father especially) fine men, full of cheerfulness, firm in manner, entertaining respect for the personal character of the King, but caring not a jot for his rank. They at once took the royal patient into their care, and with such good success—never unnecessarily opposing him, but winning, rather than compelling, him to follow the course best suited for his health—that, on the 10th of December, the Queen had the gratification to see him, from the window of her apartment, walking in the garden alone, the Willises being in attendance at a little distance from him.

There was a party who desired least of all things the recovery of the monarch. The Prince of Wales, during his father’s malady, took Lord Lothian into a darkened room, adjacent to that of the King, in order that the obsequious lord might hear the ravings of the sovereign, and depose to the fact, if such deposition should be necessary!

The year 1789 opened propitiously. On its very first morning the poor King was heard praying, aloud and fervently, for his own recovery. A report of how he had passed the night was made to the Queen every morning, and generally by Miss Burney. The state of the King varied so much, and there was so much of painful detail that it was desirable should be concealed, that the task allotted to Miss Burney was sometimes one of great delicacy. On the worst occasions she appears to have spared her royal mistress’s feelings with much tact and judgment, and her face was the index of her message whenever she was the bearer of favourable intelligence. The highest gratification experienced by the Queen at the period when hopes revived of the King’s recovery, was when she heard that her husband had remembered on the 18th of January that it was her birthday, and had expressed a desire to see her. This joy, however, was forbidden him for a time, and apparently not without reason. A short period only had elapsed after the birthday when the King suddenly encountered Miss Burney in Kew Gardens, where she had ventured to take exercise, under the impression that the sick monarch had been taken to Richmond. As it was the Queen’s desire, derived from the physicians, that no one should attempt to come in the King’s way, or address him if they did, Miss Burney no sooner became aware of whom she had thus unexpectedly encountered, than she turned round and fairly took to her heels. The King, calling to her by name, and enraptured to see again the face of one whom he knew and esteemed, pursued as swiftly as she fled. The Willises followed hard upon the King, not without some alarm. Miss Burney kept the lead in breathless affright. In vain was she called upon to stop: she ran on until a peremptory order from Dr. Willis, and a brief assurance that the agitation would be most injurious to the King, brought her at once to a stand-still. She then turned and advanced to meet the King, as if she had not before been aware of his presence. He manifested his intense delight by opening wide his arms, closing them around her, and kissing her warmly on each cheek. Poor Miss Burney was overwhelmed, and the Willises were delighted. They imagined that the King was doing nothing unusual with him in the days of his ordinary health, and were pleased to see him fulfilling, as they thought, an old observance.

The King would not relax his hold of his young friend. He entered eagerly into conversation, if that may be deemed conversation in which he alone spoke, or was only answered by words sparingly used and soothingly intoned. He talked rapidly, hoarsely, but only occasionally incoherently. His subjects of conversation took a wide range. Family affairs, political business, Miss Burney’s domestic interests, foreign matters, music,—these and many other topics made up the staple of his discourse. He was at least rational on the subject of music, for then he commenced singing from his favourite Handel, but with voice so hoarse and ill-attuned that he frightened his audience. Dr. Willis suggested that the interview should close; but this the King energetically opposed, and his medical adviser thought it best to let him have his way. He went on, then, wildly as before, but manifesting much shrewdness; showed that he was aware of his condition, and expressed more than suspicion of assaults made upon his authority during his own incapacity. He talked of whom he would promote when he was fully restored to health, and whom he would dismiss—made allusion to a thousand projects which he intended to realise, and attained a climax of threatening, with a serio-comic expression, that when he should again be King he would rule with a rod of iron.

After various attempts at interruption, the Willises at length succeeded in obtaining his consent to return to the house, and Miss Burney hastened to the Queen’s apartment to inform her of all that had passed. The Queen listened to her tale with breathless interest; made her repeat every incident; and augured so well from all she heard, that she readily forgave Miss Burney her involuntary infraction of a very peremptory law. That the Queen’s augury was well founded may be seen in the fact that, on the 12th of February following, King and Queen together walked in Kew Gardens—he, happy and nervous; she, in much the same condition; and both, as grateful as mortals could be for inestimable blessings vouchsafed to them.

During the progress of the King’s illness, while all was sombre and silent at Kew, political intrigue was loud and active elsewhere. The voice of the Queen herself was not altogether mute in this intrigue. She had rights to defend, she had spirit to assert them, and she had friends to afford her aid in enabling her to establish them.