The King’s illness proved temporary; but he had troubles enough to keep his mind in a continual agitation. On the 26th of May, 1804, Lord Malmesbury thus writes:—
‘The King calls the Grenvilles “the brotherhood;” says “they must always either govern despotically or oppose government violently.” Duke of Portland has little doubts of the King’s doing well; quiet will set him right and nothing else; he has been fatigued by being too much talked to on the new arrangements.... Lady Uxbridge, at half-past two, very uneasy about the King; said his family were quite unhappy, that his temper was altered. He had just dismissed his faithful and favourite page (Brown), who had served him during his illness with the greatest attention. Quiet and repose were the only chance. She said the Chancellor was to go to Windsor with him, which she was glad of. King has stipulated, before he went to Windsor, that he would not go to chapel, nor on the terrace, nor take long rides. Lady Uxbridge thinks Dr. Symonds an unfit man; that the Willises, and particularly the clergyman Willis, was a more proper person to be about the King when he was getting well; so thinks Mrs. Harcourt.’
The next day we find the following entry in the diary:—‘Sunday, May 27. Mrs. Harcourt confirms all that Lady Uxbridge had told me; that the King was apparently quite well when speaking to his ministers or those who kept him a little in awe, but that towards his family and dependents his language was incoherent and harsh, quite unlike his usual character. She said that Symonds did not possess in any degree the talents required to lead the mind from wandering to steadiness; that in the King’s two former illnesses this had been most ably managed by the Willises, who had this faculty in a wonderful degree, and were men of the world who saw ministers and knew what the King ought to do; that the not suffering them to be called in was an unpardonable proof of folly (not to say worse) in Addington, and that now it was impossible, since the King’s aversion was rooted; that Pitt judged ill in leaving the sole disposal of the household to the King; that this sort of power in his present weak (and, of course, suspicious) state of mind had been exercised by him most improperly; he had dismissed and turned away and made capricious changes everywhere, from the lord-chamberlain to the groom and footman; he had turned away the Queen’s favourite coachman, made footmen grooms, and vice versâ, and what was still worse, because more notorious, had removed lords of the bedchamber without a shadow of reason; that all this afflicted the royal family without measure; that the Queen was ill and cross; the princesses low, depressed, and quite sinking under it; and that unless means could be found to place some very strong-minded and temperate persons about the King he would either commit some extravagance or he would, by violent carelessness and exercise, injure his health and bring on a deadly illness. I asked where such a man did exist or had existed. She said none she knew of; that Smart, when alive, had some authority over him; that John Willis, the clergyman, also had acquired it, but in a very different way; the first obtained it from regard and high opinion, the other from fear; that, as was always the case, cunning and art kept pace in the King’s character with his suspicions and misgivings, and that he was become so very acute that nothing escaped him. Mrs. Harcourt ended her recital by great recommendations of secrecy, and submitting it to me whether I would or would not state it to Mr. Pitt. I asked her if the Chancellor knew it. She said all: he is the only person who can in any degree control the King: he is the best man possible, and when he is near, things go on well. I said in that case Mr. Pitt must know it; and if he knew it, would, if he could, apply a remedy; and that if he did not I must suppose he was at a loss what to do, and that the hearing what he already knew from me would be useless to him and look like a pushing intrusion on my part. After her Lord Pembroke came into my room, and asked me whether I was aware of what was passing at the Queen’s House; and he then repeated, but in a still stronger manner and with additional circumstances, what I had before heard. We then both dwelt on the very serious and dangerous consequences to which it might lead, and in vain sought about for a remedy.’
And again, on the 1st of June, we find Lord Malmesbury recording as follows:—‘General Harcourt, who came to me in the evening from the Queen’s House, gave me a most comfortable account of the King. He had seen him often and for a long time, and that he was, in looks, manner, conduct, and conversation, quite different from what he had been since his illness—very different indeed from what he was at Windsor; and General Harcourt, who is not a sanguine man, really seemed to think most favourably of the King.’
Some of the King’s acts smacked rather of a humorous eccentricity than anything worse. Thus, early in this month, when Lord Pelham carried his seals of office to the Queen’s House to deliver them up to the King, the latter said, ‘Before I can allow you to empty your hands you must empty mine;’ and therewith he thrust upon him the stick of captain of the yeomen of the guard. Lord Pelham looked as much horrified as if his Majesty had offered to knight him, and the poor sovereign, remarking this, observed to him encouragingly, ‘It will be less a sinecure than formerly, as I intend living more with my great officers.’ The noble lord was too awkwardly placed and had too much respect for the King to return the unwelcome stick. There was something additionally comical in the circumstance in this: Pitt was hurt at his Majesty thinking of conferring an office without previous communication with him; and Pelham was hurt at Pitt’s having entrapped him, as he supposed, into the not very exalted office of captain of the yeomen.
The poor monarch had in reality enough provocation at home, to say nothing of the anxieties caused him by the aspect of foreign affairs, to render irritable, if not to throw off its balance, a mind so unhinged and ill at ease as his own. It was at this period that a contest was going on between him and the Prince of Wales relative to the residence and education of the Princess Charlotte. The Monarch, with much reason, wished her to reside at Windsor, there to be educated in the character of ‘a queen that is to be.’ The Prince opposed the proposition for the opposition’s sake, being also moved thereto by advisers who belonged to the party in Parliament adverse to the crown. It was very much feared that if his wishes were really disregarded the consequences to his health would be serious. The Prince himself hardly knew his own mind, and perhaps had no well-grounded opinion upon the matter at all.
‘The two factions,’ says Lord Malmesbury, ‘pulled different ways. Ladies Moira, Hutchinson, and Mrs. Fitzherbert were for his ceding the child to the King; the Duke of Clarence and Devonshire House most violent against it, and the Prince was inclined to the faction he saw last. In the Devonshire House cabal Lady Melbourne and Mrs. Fox act conspicuous parts, so that the alternative for our future Queen seems to be whether Mrs. Fox or Mrs. Fitzherbert shall have the ascendancy.’
Father and son had an interview. After a whole year’s estrangement, for one day child and parent agreed tolerably well; but they did not long continue to be of one mind. The conduct of the Prince was insulting to the authority of the King and to his office as father. To some extremely sensible remarks on the educational plan best calculated to promote the welfare and happiness of the Princess, her father, the Prince of Wales, returned an answer so improperly worded that the Chancellor declined to present it to the King. The latter was made irritable and ill at no answer having reached him from the Prince, and he was only beguiled into patience by being misinformed that the Prince had misconceived the King’s letter, and that it was necessary to set him right on the misconceived points before a reply could be expected.
The Queen was rendered more anxious than any other member of the royal family, of whom Lord Malmesbury simply records that ‘the sons behave tolerably, the princesses most perfectly.’ At this time the Queen, with all her natural anxiety, exhibited some strangeness of conduct. ‘She will never receive the King,’ says the noble diarist just quoted, ‘without one of the princesses being present; piques herself on this discreet silence, and, when in London, locks the door of her white room (her boudoir) against him. The behaviour of the Queen alarms me more than all the other of Mrs. Harcourt’s stories; for if the Queen did not think the King likely to relapse she would not alter in her manners towards him, and her having altered her manners proves that she thinks he may relapse.’
If the royal invalid thus met with scant courtesy at the hands even of his consort, whose fears made her unkind, he received still less at the hands of some of his servants. For instance, when Addington, Lord Sidmouth, broke with Pitt, and repaired to the King to surrender the key of the council-box (he had been president of the council), the King told him, somewhat angrily, ‘You must not give it to me, but to Lord Hawkesbury.’ The retiring statesman excused himself on the ground that he and Lord Hawkesbury were not on speaking terms; to which George wisely enough rejoined that that was no affair of his. He would thereupon have ended the audience, but Addington remained talking to and at him for an hour, and so fatigued and displeased him, that when the King returned to his family (the scene passed at Windsor), he said, ‘That —— has been plaguing me to death!’ It was soon after this occurrence that Pitt’s administration was broken up by the death of the great statesman, and Lord Grenville and Fox came in as chiefs of the cabinet of ‘All the Talents.’ The Prince of Wales is recorded as having gone most heartily and unbecomingly with them; lowering his dignity by soliciting offices and places for his dependents, and by degrading himself to the ‘size of a common party-leader.’