“March 8th. The Prince not recovered. Our passing the next week at Kew put off.”
Doddington did not consider the Prince ill enough for a visit on the 9th, but he went there again on the 10th.
“At Leicester House. The Prince was better and saw company.”
Incredible as it may appear, the Prince seems to have gone out to supper at Carlton House on the 12th, and relapsed of course.
Doddington did not go again until the 13th, and then he recorded the following:—
“At Leicester House. The Prince did not appear, having a return of a pain in his side.” And no wonder!
This pain in his side was the worst symptom of the Prince’s illness, had the doctors but known it; but the diagnosis of a case in those days must have been a very rough and ready affair.
It has been mentioned that some years before Frederick had received a blow on the chest from a cricket ball—some say a tennis ball—while playing on the lawn at Cliefden. It had caused him some pain, but, as usual, he had neglected it, and some trouble had formed there; trouble perhaps, fostered by the abundance of the bons-pères the Prince was in the habit of drinking in the custom of the time. Now on the 13th of March Doddington records that the Prince had a return of a pain in his side. This was doubtless the old spot injured by the cricket ball.
Doddington was evidently now getting alarmed—and he had reason for it, for all his hopes and many ambitions were centred in the Prince—he went to Leicester House the next day and writes down carefully the result of his visit.
“14. At Leicester House. The Prince asleep—twice blooded, and with a blister on his back, as also on both legs, that night.”