The day which opened with a sort of despair, closed with a faint prospect of hope. The surgeons declared that the mortification had not progressed; and Lord Hervey does not scruple to infer that it had never begun, and that the medical men employed were, like most of their colleagues, profoundly ignorant of that with which they professed to be most deeply acquainted. The fairer prospect was made known to the Queen, in order to encourage her, but Caroline was not to be deceived. At twenty-five, she remarked, she might have dragged through it, but at fifty-five it was not to be thought of. She still superstitiously looked to the Wednesday as the term of her career.
All access to the palace had been denied alike to the Prince of Wales and to those who frequented his court; but in the confusion which reigned at St. James’s some members of the prince’s family, or following, did penetrate to the rooms adjacent to that in which lay the royal sufferer, under pretence of an anxiety to learn the condition of her health. Caroline knew of this vicinity, called them ‘ravens’ waiting to see the breath depart from her body, and insisted that they should not be allowed to approach her nearer. Ample evidence exists that the conduct of the Prince of Wales was most unseemly at this solemn juncture. ‘We shall have good news soon,’ he was heard to say, at Carlton House: ‘we shall have good news soon; she can’t hold out much longer!’ There were people who were slow to believe that a son could exult at the idea of the death of his mother. These persons questioned his ‘favourite,’ Lady Archibald Hamilton, as to the actual conduct and language adopted by him; and at such questions the mature mistress would significantly smile, as she discreetly answered: ‘Oh, he is very decent!’
The prospect of the Queen’s recovery was quite illusory and short-lived. She grew so rapidly worse, that even the voices of those around her appeared to disturb her; and a notice was pinned to the curtain of her bed, enjoining all present to speak only in the lowest possible tones. Her patience, however, was very great: she took all that was offered to her, however strong her own distaste; and when operations were proposed to her, she submitted at once, on assurance from the King that he sanctioned what the medical men proposed. She did not lose her sprightly humour even when under the knife; and she once remarked to Ranby, when she was thus at his mercy, that she dared say he was half sorry it was not his own old wife he was thus cutting about. But the flesh will quiver where the pincers tear; and even from Caroline terrible anguish would now and then extort a groan. She bade the surgeons, nevertheless, not to heed her silly complaints, but to do their duty irrespective of her grumbling.
All this time there does not appear to have been the slightest idea in the mind either of the sufferer or of those about her that it would be well were Caroline enabled to make her peace with God. The matter, however, did occupy the public thought; and public opinion pressed so strongly, that, rather than offend it, Walpole himself recommended that a priest should be sent for. The recommendation was made to the Princess Amelia, and in the obese minister’s usual coarse fashion. ‘It will be quite as well,’ he said, ‘that the farce should be played. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Potter) would perform it decently; and the princess might bid him to be as short as she liked. It would do the Queen neither harm nor good; and it would satisfy all the fools who called them atheists, if they affected to be as great fools as they who called them so!’
Dr. Potter accordingly was summoned. He attended morning and evening. The King, to show his estimation of the person and his sacred office, invariably kept out of his wife’s apartment while the archbishop was present. What passed is not known; but it is clear that the primate, if he prayed with the Queen, never administered the sacrament to her. Was this caused by her irreconcilable hatred against her son?
It is said that her Majesty’s mistress of the robes, Lady Sundon, had influenced the Queen to countenance none but the heterodox clergy. Her conduct in her last moments was consequently watched with mingled anxiety and curiosity by more than those who surrounded her. The public generally were desirous of being enlightened on the subject. The public soon learned, indirectly at least, that the archbishop had not administered to the Queen the solemn rite. On the last time of his issuing from the royal bedchamber, he was assailed by the courtiers with questions like this:—‘My lord, has the Queen received?’ All the answer given by the primate was, ‘Gentlemen, her Majesty is in a most heavenly frame of mind.’ This was an oracular sort of response; and it may be said that if the Queen was in a heavenly frame of mind, she must have been at peace with her son, as well as with all men, and therefore in a condition to receive the administration of the rite with profit and thankfulness. It was known, moreover, that the Queen was not at peace with her son, and that she had not ‘received;’ she, therefore, could not have been, as the archbishop described her, ‘in a most heavenly frame of mind.’ All that the public knew of her practical piety was, that the Queen had been accustomed, or said she had been accustomed, to read a portion of Butler’s ‘Analogy’ every morning at breakfast. It was of this book that Bishop Hoadly remarked, that he could never even look at it without getting a head-ache.
Meanwhile, the King, who kept close in the palace, not stirring abroad, and assembling around him a circle of hearers, expatiated at immense length upon the virtues and excellences of the companion who was on the eve of departure from him. There was no known or discoverable good quality which he did not acknowledge in her; not only the qualities which dignify woman, but those which elevate men. With the courage and intellectual strength of the latter, she had the beauty and virtue of the former. He never tired of this theme, told it over again and again, and ever at an interminable length. The most singular item in his monster dissertation was his cool assurance to his children and friends that she was the only woman in the world who suited him for a wife; and that, if she had not been his wife, he would rather have had her for his mistress than any other woman he had ever seen or heard of.
This was the highest possible praise such a husband could bestow; and he doubtless loved his wife as well as a husband, so trained, could love a consort. His own sharp words to her, even in her illness, were no proof to the contrary; and amid tokens of his uncouth tenderness, observing her restless from pain, and yet desirous of sleep, he would exclaim, ‘How the devil can you expect to sleep when you never lie still a moment?’ This was meant for affection; so, too, was the remark made to her one morning when, on entering her room, he saw her gazing, as invalids are wont to gaze, idly on vacancy, ‘with lack-lustre eye.’ He roughly desired her to cease staring in that disagreeable way, which made her look, he said, with refined gallantry, just like a calf with its throat cut!
His praise of her, as Lord Hervey acutely suggested, had much of self-eulogy in view; and when he lauded her excellent sense, it had especial reference to that exemplification of it when she was wise enough to accept him for a husband. He wearied all hearers with the long stories which he recounted both of Caroline and himself, as he sat at night, with his feet on a stool, pouring out prosily his never-ending narrative. The Princess Amelia used to endeavour to escape from the tediousness of listening by pretending to be asleep, and to avenge herself for being compelled to listen by gross abuse of her royal father when he left the room—calling him old fool, liar, coward, and a driveller, of whose stories she was most heartily sick.
And so matters went on, progressively worse, until Sunday the 20th—the last day which Caroline was permitted to see upon earth. The circumstances attending the Queen’s death were not without a certain dignity. ‘How long can this last?’ said she to her physician, Tessier. ‘It will not be long,’ was the reply, ‘before your Majesty will be relieved from this suffering.’ ‘The sooner the better,’ said Caroline. And then she began to pray aloud: and her prayer was not a formal one, fixed in her memory by repeating it from the Book of Common Prayer, but a spontaneous and extemporary effusion, so eloquent, so appropriate, and so touching, that all the listeners were struck with admiration at this last effort of a mind ever remarkable for its vigour and ability. She herself manifested great anxiety to depart in a manner becoming a great Queen; and as her last moment approached, her anxiety in this respect appeared to increase. She requested to be raised in bed, and asked all present to kneel and offer up a prayer in her behalf. While this was going on she grew gradually fainter; but, at her desire, water was sprinkled upon her, so that she might revive, and listen to, or join in, the petitions which her family (all but her eldest son, who was not present) put up to Heaven in her behalf. ‘Louder!’ she murmured more than once, as some one read or prayed, ‘Louder, that I may hear.’ Her request was complied with; and then one of her children repeated audibly the Lord’s Prayer. In this Caroline joined, repeating the words as distinctly as failing nature would allow her. The prayer was just concluded when she looked fixedly for a moment at those who stood weeping around her, and then uttered a long-drawn ‘So——!’ It was her last word. As it fell from her lips the dial on the chimney-piece struck eleven. She calmly waved her hand—a farewell to all present and to the world; and then tranquilly composing herself upon her bed, she breathed a sigh, and so expired. Thus died Caroline; and few Queens of England have passed away to their account with more of mingled dignity and indecorum.