The cure, however, was not yet complete. Much care was required. The King was disposed to talk on that very subject which had temporarily threatened to overthrow his intellect. And his anxiety for the Church, joined to seeing and conversing with two of his daughters before he was strong enough to argue the question connected with one, or to bear the pleasant excitement of intercourse with his family, produced a disagreeable, although not an enduring, relapse.
The Prince of Wales was the most reluctant of his family to believe in the recovery of his father, whom he openly declared as being more deranged than ever, although he might possibly be improving in bodily health. He affected to complain of being kept in ignorance of what was going on at the Queen’s House; but his ignorance arose from the little care he gave himself to become wiser.
The recovery, however, was considered genuine. The illness itself had been marked by one circumstance which distinguishes it from that under which the King suffered so severely in 1788. In the earlier attack sleep never relieved him. Not that he did not sleep well, but that it did not compose his nervous system. He would sleep indeed, soundly, but awake from it, like a giant refreshed by wine, more turbulent than ever. In the illness from which he had just recovered his sleep was healthy and refreshing, and he invariably woke from it quiet and composed.
The first persons whom he saw after his recovery were the Queen and Princesses and the Dukes of Kent and Cumberland. To the Duke of York, whom he saw alone on the 7th of March, he said, after thanking him for his kindness to his mother and sisters, ‘I saw them yesterday, because I could send them away at any time; but I wish to see you alone, and for a long time, and therefore I put it off till to-day.’ In inquiring about the Queen’s health of the Duke of York, the King expressed great solicitude for them; and the Duke acknowledged that they had suffered greatly, but added, that their chief anxiety was lest now, in getting well, he should be less careful about his health than prudence would warrant. The King confessed to having presumed too much on the strength of his constitution, but promised to be less neglectful for the future. And the conversation turned to political affairs, to the ministry, to what had been done during his malady, and at last to that question of Romanist emancipation which had so shaken his mind, as being connected with that ruin of the Church of England which he thought must follow, and which church he had sworn he would protect. Some weeks before his illness he had said to the Duke of Portland that, ‘were he to agree to it, he should betray his trust and forfeit his crown, that it might bring the framers of it the gibbet.’ He was beginning to use language almost as strong to the Duke of York, at the first introduction between father and son, after the recovery of the former. The Duke of York, however, very judiciously stopped him, with the assurance that Pitt had abandoned all idea of pressing the Catholic question, that therefore it were wise to let the discussion of it drop also; and that all political parties, who had behaved with great propriety during his illness, had now but one common anxiety—that to see him well again. ‘I am now quite well; QUITE recovered from my illness,’ remarked the King to Mr. Willis, on the occasion of directing him to write to Pitt, ‘but what has he not to answer for who has been the cause of my having been ill at all?’ Pitt was much affected by this reproach, and it is said to have influenced him to surrender the question rather than press it to the peril of the King’s health. Indeed, the King had so determinedly expressed himself on the subject that the Duke of Portland had declared that his Majesty had rather suffer martyrdom than submit to this measure.
The interview between the King and the Duke of York was followed by one between the Sovereign and the Prince of Wales. Lord Malmesbury says of the latter, that ‘his behaviour was right and proper. How unfortunate that it is not sincere, or rather that he has so effeminate a mind as to counteract all his own good qualities by having no control over his weaknesses!’
The Queen continued in a great state of anxiety touching the King’s health, notwithstanding his complete recovery having been declared. He was at times very nervous and depressed—at others, still more nervous and excited. There was less a fear of mental derangement than that his faculties might never recover their former tone. He occasionally behaved strangely in public; was too familiar with the members of the cabinet which succeeded that of which Pitt had been at the head; and, again, was too readily and profoundly affected—too soon elated or cast down—by trifles. On Thursday, the 26th of March, 1801, Lord Malmesbury writes: ‘Drawing-room to-day very crowded. Queen looking pale. Princesses as if they had been weeping. They insinuate that the King is too ill for the Queen to appear in public, and to censure her for it. Dukes of York and Cumberland there. The Prince of Wales was at the drawing-room, but behaved very rudely to the Queen.’ And yet just previously he had made an ostentatious manifestation of his delicacy. Lords Carlisle, Lansdowne, and Fitzwilliam, with Mr. Fox, informed his royal highness that they had formed a coalition, offered him their services, and proposed to hold a conference at Carlton House. The Prince is said to have pleaded, in excuse for declining all they offered, the state of the King’s health; but out of respect to his sire, he said that he should consider it his duty to inform Mr. Addington, the minister, of the nature of their proposals. This he did; and it was perhaps because he regretted the step he had taken that he behaved rudely to his royal mother in her own public drawing-room!
The King’s condition still required care and watchfulness. Thus, on the 25th of May, Dr. Thomas Willis writes to Lord Eldon:—‘The general impression yesterday, from the King’s composure and quietness, was that he was very well. There was an exception to this in the Duke of Clarence, who dined here. “He pitied the family, for he saw something in the King that convinced him he must soon be confined again.”
‘This morning I walked with his Majesty, who was in a perfectly composed and quiet state. He told me, with great seeming satisfaction, that he had had a most charming night, “he could sleep from eleven to half after four,” when, alas! he had but three hours’ sleep in the night, which upon the whole was passed in restlessness—in getting out of bed, opening the shutters, in praying violently, and in making such remarks as betray a consciousness of his own situation, but which are evidently made for the purpose of concealing it from the Queen. He frequently called out, “I am now perfectly well, and my Queen—my Queen has saved me!” While I write these particulars to your lordship I must beg to remind you how much afraid the Queen is lest she should be committed to him; for the King has sworn he will never forgive her if she relates anything that passes in the night.’
The Princess Elizabeth subsequently addressed a letter to Dr. Thomas Willis, in which she states that she has the Queen’s commands to inform him that ‘the subject of the Princess of Wales is still in the King’s mind, to a degree that is distressing, from the unfortunate situation of the family.’ The writer adds: ‘The Queen commands me to say, that if you could see her heart, you would see that she is guided by every principle of justice, and with a most fervent wish that the dear King may do nothing to form a breach between him and the Prince. For she really lives in dread of it; for, from the moment my brother comes into the room till the instant he quits it, there is nothing that is not kind that the King does not do by him. This is so different to his manner when well, and his ideas concerning the child (the Princess Charlotte) so extraordinary, that I am not astonished at mamma’s uneasiness. She took courage, and told the King that now my brother was quiet he had better leave him, as he (the Prince) had never forbid the Princess seeing the child when she pleased. To which he answered, “That doesn’t signify. The Princess shall have her child; and I will speak to Mr. Wyatt about the building of the wing to her present house.” You know full well how speedily every thing is now ordered and done.’
‘The Princess spoke to me on the conversation the King had had with her—expressed her distress; and I told her how right she was in not answering, as I feared the King’s intentions, though most rightly meant, might serve to hurt and injure her in the world.’ For a few days the symptoms ameliorated; then, on the 12th of June, Dr. Thomas Willis wrote to Lord Chancellor Eldon: ‘His Majesty still talks much of his prudence, but shows none. His body, mind, and tongue are all upon the stretch every minute; and the manner in which he is now expending money in various ways, which is so unlike him when well, all evince that he is not so right as he should be.’ The Queen, to use her own words, built her faith upon the Chancellor, and doubted not of his succeeding in everything with his Majesty. ‘He failed in some nevertheless. He urgently requested the King to allow Dr. Robert Willis to remain in attendance on him. The King hated all the Willises, and Dr. Robert not less than any of them. He concludes a note to Lord Eldon on the 21st of June by saying: ‘No person that has ever had a nervous disease can bear to continue the physician employed on the occasion. This holds much more so in the calamitous one which has so long confined the King, but of which he is now completely recovered.’