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.