“Madam,
“May I yet humbly presume to entreat your Majesty’s patience for a few added lines, to say that the address which I now most respectfully lay at your Majesty’s feet was drawn up two months ago, when first I felt so extreme a weakness as to render the smallest exertion a fatigue? While I waited, however, for firmness to present it, I took the bark, and found myself, for some time, so much amended, that I put it aside, and my father, perceiving me better, lost his anxious uneasiness for my trying a new mode of life. But the good effect has, of late, so wholly failed, that an entire change of air and manner of living are strongly recommended as the best chance for restoring my shattered health. We hold it, therefore, a point of that grateful duty we owe to your Majesty’s goodness and graciousness, to make this melancholy statement at once, rather than to stay till absolute incapacity might disable me from offering one small but sincere tribute of profound respect to your Majesty,—the only one in my power—that of continuing the high honour of attending your Majesty, till your Majesty’s own choice, time, and convenience nominate a successor.”
THE KEEPER OF THE ROBES’ CONSTERNATION.
Mrs. Schwellenberg took the memorial, and promised me her services, but desired to know its contents. I begged vainly to be excused speaking them. She persisted, and I then was compelled to own they contained my resignation.
How aghast she looked!—how inflamed with wrath!—how petrified with astonishment! It was truly a dreadful moment to me. She expostulated on such a step, as if it led to destruction, she offered to save me from it, as if the peace of my life depended on averting it and she menaced me with its bad consequences, as it life itself, removed from these walls, would become an evil.
I plainly recapitulated the suffering state in which I had lived for the last three months; the difficulty with which I had waded through even the most common fatigues of the day; the constraint of attendance, however honourable, to an invalid; and the impracticability of pursuing such a life, when thus enfeebled, with the smallest chance of ever recovering the health and strength which it had demolished.
To all this she began a vehement eulogium on the superior happiness and blessing of my lot, while under such a protection; and angrily exhorted me not to forfeit what I could never regain.
I then frankly begged her to forbear SO painful a discussion, and told her that the memorial was from my father as well as myself—that I had no right or authority to hesitate in delivering it—that the queen herself was prepared to expect it—and that I had promised my father not to go again to Windsor till it was presented. I entreated her, therefore, to have the goodness to show it at once.