Meanwhile the prince was of himself doing little that could tend to anything else than widen the breach already existing between him and his family. He spoke aloud of what he would do when he came to be King. His intentions, as reported by Caroline, were that she, when she was Queen-dowager, should be ‘fleeced, flayed, and minced.’ The Princess Amelia was to be kept in strict confinement; the Princess Caroline left to starve; of the little princesses, Mary and Louisa, then about fourteen and thirteen years of age, he made no mention; and of his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, he always spoke ‘with great affectation of kindness.’
Despite this imprudent conduct, endeavours continued to be made by the prince and his friends, in order to bring about the reconciliation which nobody seemed very sincere in desiring. The Duke of Newcastle had implored the Princess Amelia, ‘For God’s sake!’ to do her utmost ‘to persuade the Queen to make things up with the prince before this affair was pushed to an extremity which might make the wound incurable.’ The Queen is said to have been exceedingly displeased with the Duke of Newcastle for thus interfering in the matter. The Princess of Wales, however, continued to write hurried and apparently earnest notes to the Queen, thanking her for her kindness in standing godmother to her daughter, treating her with ‘Your Majesty,’ and especially defending her own husband, while affecting to deplore that his conduct, misrepresented, had incurred the displeasure of their Majesties. ‘I am deeply afflicted,’ so runs a note of the 17th of September, ‘at the manner in which the prince’s conduct has been represented to your Majesties, especially with regard to the two journeys which we made from Hampton Court to London the week previous to my confinement. I dare assure your Majesties, that the medical man and midwife were then of opinion that I should not be confined before the month of September, and that the indisposition of which I complained was nothing more than the cholic. And besides, madam, is it credible, that if I had gone twice to London with the design and in the expectation of being confined there, I should have returned to Hampton Court? I flatter myself that time and the good offices of your Majesty will bring about a happy change in a situation of affairs, the more deplorable for me inasmuch as I am the innocent cause of it,’ &c.
This letter, delivered as the King and Queen were going to chapel, was sent by the latter to Walpole, who repaired to the royal closet in the chapel, where Caroline asked him what he thought of this last performance? The answer was very much to the purpose. Sir Robert said, he detected ‘you lie, you lie, you lie, from one end of it to the other.’ Caroline agreed that the lie was flung at her by the writer.
There was as much discussion touching the reply which should be sent to this grievously offending note as if it had been a protocol of the very first importance. One was for having it smart, another formal, another so shaped that it should kindly treat the princess as blameless, and put an end to further correspondence, with some general wishes as to the future conduct of ‘Fritz.’ This was done, and the letter was despatched. What effect it had upon the conduct of the person alluded to may be discerned in the fact that when, on Thursday, the 22nd of September, the prince and princess received at Carlton House the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London, with an address of congratulation on the birth of the Princess Augusta, the lords of the prince’s present council distributed to everybody in the room copies of the King’s message to the prince, ordering him to quit St. James’s, and containing reflections against all persons who might even visit the prince. The lords, particularly the Duke of Marlborough and Lords Chesterfield and Carteret, deplored the oppression under which the Prince of Wales struggled. His highness also spoke to the citizens in terms calculated—certainly intended—to win their favour.
He did not acquire all the popular favour he expected. Thus, when, during the repairs of Carlton House, he occupied the residence of the Duke of Norfolk, in St. James’s Square—a residence which the duke and duchess refused to let to him, until they had obtained the sanction of the King and Queen—‘he reduced the number of his inferior servants, which made him many enemies among the lower sort of people.’ He also diminished his stud, and ‘farmed all his tables, even that of the princess and himself.’ In other words, his tables were supplied by a cook at so much per head.
His position was one, however, which was sure to procure for him a degree of popularity, irrespective of his real merits. The latter, however, were not great nor numerous, and even his own officers considered their interests far before those of him they served—or deserted. At the theatre, however, he was the popular hero of the hour, and when once, on being present at the representation of ‘Cato,’[37] the words—
When vice prevails and impious men bear sway,
The post of honour is a private station—
were received with loud huzzas, the prince joined in the applause, to show how he appreciated, and perhaps applied, the lines.
Although the King’s alleged oppression towards his son was publicly canvassed by the latter, the prince and his followers invariably named the Queen as the true author of it. The latter, in commenting on this filial course, constantly sacrificed her dignity. ‘My dear lord,’ said Caroline, once, to Lord Hervey, ‘I will give it you under my hand, if you have any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born is the greatest ass, and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast, in the whole world, and that I most heartily wish he was out of it!’ The King continued to treat him in much the same strain, adding, courteously, that he had often asked the Queen if the beast were his son. ‘The Queen was a great while,’ said he, ‘before her maternal affection would give him up for a fool, and yet I told her so before he had been acting as if he had no common sense.’ While so hard upon the conduct of their son, an entry from Lord Hervey’s diary will show us what was their own: the King’s with regard to decency, the Queen’s with respect to truth.