(Fanny Burney to Dr. Burney.) Gloucester Rowe, Weymouth, July 13, 1789. My dearest padre’s kind letter was most truly welcome to me. When I am so distant, the term of absence or of silence seems always doubly long to me.
The bay here is most beautiful; the sea never rough, generally calm and gentle, and the sands perfectly smooth and pleasant. I have not bathed, for I have had a cold in my head, which I caught at Lyndhurst, and which makes me fear beginning; but I have hopes to be well enough to-morrow, and thenceforward to ail nothing more. It is my intention to cast away all superfluous complaints into the main ocean, which I think quite sufficiently capacious to hold them; and really my little frame will find enough to carry and manage without them....
His majesty is in delightful health, and much-improved spirits. All agree he never looked better. The loyalty of all this place is excessive; they have dressed out every street with labels of “God save the king:” all the shops have it over the doors: all the children wear it in their caps, all the labourers in their hats, and all the sailors in their voices, for they never approach the house without shouting it aloud, nor see the king, or his shadow, without beginning to huzza, and going on to three cheers. The bathing-machines make it their motto over the windows; and those bathers that belong to the royal dippers wear it in bandeaus on their bonnets, to go into the sea; and have it again, in large letters, round their waists, to encounter the waves. Flannel dresses, tucked up, and no shoes nor stockings, with bandeaus and girdles, have a most singular appearance, and when first I surveyed these loyal nymphs it was with some difficulty I kept my features in order. Nor is this all. Think but Of the Surprise of his majesty when, the first time of his bathing, he had no sooner popped his royal head under water than a band of music, concealed in a neighbouring machine, struck up “God save great George our king.”
One thing, however, was a little unlucky,—when the mayor and burgesses came with the address, they requested leave to kiss hands: this was graciously accorded; but, the mayor advancing, in a common way, to take the queen’s hand, as he might that of any lady mayoress, Colonel Gwynn, who stood by, whispered, “You must kneel, sir!” He found, however, that he took no notice of this hint, but kissed the queen’s hand erect. As he passed him, in his way back, the colonel Said, “You should have knelt, Sir!”
“Sir,” answered the poor mayor, “I cannot.”
“Everybody does, sir.”
“Sir,—I have a wooden leg!”
Poor man! ’twas such a surprise! and such an excuse as no one could dispute. But the absurdity of the matter followed—all the rest did the same; taking the same privilege, by the example, without the same or any cause!