And the popular answer was:—“Like the nation, against him.”
The danger over, the Queen confided her feelings to her almost inseparable companion the Vice-Chamberlain, Lord Hervey; after telling him of her affection for him—it was a motherly affection, she was fifty-three,—and the pleasure his society gave her she added:
“You and yours should have gone with me to Somerset House[38] and though I have neither so good an apartment there for you as you have here, nor an employment worth your taking, I should have lodged you as well as I could, and given you at least as much as you have now from the King.”
The Queen, however, wrote a very dutiful and tender letter to the King, full of art and flattery, but it seems to have touched George’s heart deeply; perhaps in those twelve hours of tossing in the storms of the Channel, the little man had thought seriously of the foolishness of leaving so good a wife, that in the search after happiness, he was leaving the substance in Caroline—and she was certainly substantial—for the elusive shadow in the Walmoden; anyhow he wrote his Queen a most remarkable letter of thirty pages, more the effusion of an eager lover than an old man for his wife.
“In spite of all the danger I have incurred in this tempest, my dear Caroline,” he wrote, “and notwithstanding all I have suffered, having been ill to an excess which I thought the human body could not bear, I assure you that I would expose myself to it again and again to have the pleasure of hearing the testimonies of your affection, with which my position inspired you. This affection which you testify for me, this friendship, this fidelity, the inexhaustible goodness which you show for me, and the indulgence which you have for all my weaknesses, are so many obligations, which I can never sufficiently recompense, can never sufficiently merit, but which I also can never forget.”[39]
Certainly the storm had shaken the little man very much and left him in a condition which would have proved weak in the crisis which arose after his return, had he not been supported on the one hand by Walpole and on the other by his ever scheming Queen.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] This has been denied.
[38] Her jointure House.
[39] This is the pretty original French:—