The widowed Augusta, who had throughout her married life exhibited much mental superiority, with great kindness of disposition, and that under circumstances of great difficulty, and sometimes of a character to inflict vexation on the calmest nature, remained in the room by the side of the corpse of her husband for full four hours, unwilling to believe in the assurances given her that he was really dead. She was then the mother of eight children, expecting to be shortly the mother of a ninth, and she was brought reluctantly to acknowledge that their father was no more. It was six in the morning before her attendants could persuade her to retire to bed; but she rose again at eight, and then, with less thought for her grief than anxiety for the honour of him whose death was the cause of it, she proceeded to the prince’s room and burned the whole of his private papers. By this action the world lost some rare supplementary chapters to a Chronique Scandaleuse.
The death of Frederick disconcerted all the measures of intriguing men, and brought about a great change in the councils of the court as of the factions opposed to the court. ‘The death of our prince,’ wrote Whitfield, ‘has afflicted you. It has given me a shock; but the Lord reigneth, and that is my comfort.’ The Duchess of Somerset, writing to Dr. Doddridge, says on the same subject: ‘Providence seems to have directed the blow where we thought ourselves the most secure; for among the many schemes of hopes and fears which people were laying down to themselves, this was never mentioned as a supposable event. The harmony which appears to subsist between his Majesty and the Princess of Wales is the best support for the spirits of the nation under their present concern and astonishment. He died in the forty-fifth year of his age, and is generally allowed to have been a prince of amiable and generous disposition, of elegant manners, and of considerable talents.’
The opposition which the prince had maintained against the government of the father who had provoked him to it was not undignified. Unlike his sire, he did not ‘hate both bainting and boetry;’ and painters and poets were welcome at his court, as were philosophers and statesmen. It was only required that they should be adverse to Walpole. Among them were the able and urbane wits, Chesterfield and Carteret, Pulteney and Sir William Wyndham; the aspiring young men, Pitt, Lyttelton, and the Grenvilles: Swift, Pope, and Thomson lent their names and pens to the prince’s service; while astute and fiery Bolingbroke aimed to govern in the circle where he affected to serve.
All the reflections made upon the death of the prince were not so simple of quality as those of the Duchess of Somerset. Horace Walpole cites a preacher at Mayfair Chapel, who ‘improved’ the occasion after this not very satisfactory or conclusive fashion: ‘He had no great parts, but he had great virtues—indeed, they degenerated into vices. He was very generous; but I hear his generosity has ruined a great many people; and then, his condescension was such that he kept very bad company.’ Not less known, and yet claiming a place here, is the smart Jacobite epitaph, so little flattering to the dead, that had all Spartan epitaphs been as little laudatory, the Ephori would have never issued a decree entirely prohibiting them. It was to this effect:
Here lies Fred,
Who was alive and is dead!
Had it been his father,
I had much rather.
Had it been his brother,
Still better than another.