He was there again on the 18th.
“The Prince better and sat up half an hour.”
The general impression then was that Frederick was recovering, and Doddington did not call again the next day at all. Cards were indulged in by the members of the Prince’s family and some of the household in an adjacent room, and Frederick’s faithful follower Desnoyers, the French dancing-master and violinist, was admitted to soothe the invalid with his beautiful music. He sat by the bed and played to him with that wonderful touch for which he was celebrated.
It is not difficult to reconstruct that scene on the evening of the 20th of March. Doddington had called at Leicester House at three o’clock in the afternoon, and had been told that the Prince was much better and had slept eight hours the night before. Doddington had gone off quite satisfied to the House of Commons.
But now it is evening, late evening, past nine o’clock, the Prince is lying thoughtful in his high four-post bedstead. The room is lighted by wax candles, their glare shaded from his eyes by the curtains of the bed; by his bedside is the old French dancing-master, violin in hand playing some soft melody which Frederick loves; this soft strain is broken occasionally by the voices of the card players in an adjoining room.
Stealing about the large room with soft tread are the pompous doctors, the ignorant doctors, who declared their patient to be getting well.
Stately bewigged powdered men these, with silver topped canes carried almost as wands of office; ready at a moment’s notice to draw the lifeblood from their patient, or to order their dispensers in attendance on them in a room hard by to pound up a nauseous drug, in a great mortar, to be administered crude in a revolting draught without any attempt to conceal its horrid taste, for medicine was not administered in those days, in attractive tinctures, with every bitterness covered by some subtle flavouring; it was taken usually in the form of a gritty, stringy draught which turned the stomach of the patient.
But around the sick chamber flitted the young wife of Frederick; she was only thirty-two then, and the mother of eight children, which number was very soon to be increased to nine. She was a most devoted wife and scarcely left him, it is said, during his illness.
There Frederick lay thinking, with the soft notes of the violin floating around him, and the jarring laughter of the card players breaking in upon him at times. Perhaps he was thinking of his boy George as the music moved him, as it will an artistic nature.
“Come, George, let us be good friends while we are permitted to be so!”