THE NEW KING
The King is dead! Long live the King!
George II has given place to George III, and those who had prostrated themselves before the former were now anxious to pay court to his successor. Yet those who had at heart the welfare of their country trembled at the thought that the throne, with all the influence appertaining thereto, had passed to an ignorant, narrow-minded lad; and reviewing the young king's training, and his mediocre gifts, it must be admitted that the fear was not unreasonable.
The Princess Dowager's plan of isolating the Prince of Wales from companions of his own age, while it had kept him from evil counsellors, had resulted only too obviously in making him a very dull young man. His mother admitted he was "shy and backward; not a wild dissipated boy, but good-natured and cheerful, with a serious cast upon the whole;"[86] and unfortunately the mode of life imposed upon him during his minority tended to develop that serious cast at the expense of other qualities. Bubb Dodington, a keen observer, noticed this trait so early as 1752, and asked the Princess Dowager what she thought the real disposition of the Prince to be. "She said that I knew him almost as well as she did; that he was very honest, but she wished that he was a little more forward, and less childish at his age: that she hoped his preceptors would improve him. I begged to know what methods they took; what they read to him, or made him read; and whether he showed any particular inclination to any of the people about him. She said she did not well know what they taught him; but, to speak freely, she was afraid not much: that they were in the country and followed their diversions, and not much else that she could discover: that we must hope it would be better when we came to town. I said that I did not much regard books, that what I the most wished was that his Royal Highness should begin to learn the usages and knowledge of the world; be informed of the general frame and nature of this government and constitution, and of the general course and manner of business, without descending into minutias."[87]
The young Prince of Wales's amusements had been few. He was sometimes permitted to play a round card game, called Comet, with his mother and brothers and sisters; and the Princess Dowager showed more liberality of mind than was usual with her by declaring that "she liked the Prince should now and then amuse himself at small play, but that princes should never play deep, both for the example and because it did not become them to win great sums."[88] A greater delight of the Prince was to take part in amateur theatricals, an indulgence sometimes granted as the practice might accustom him to the public speaking that must later fall to his lot. This was of great value to him for, while in conversation his utterance was rapid, on public occasions he spoke so distinctly and with such dignity that Quin, hearing his first Speech from the throne, exclaimed delightedly: "Ay! 'twas I that taught the boy to speak!" But George was not fond of delivering or listening to orations. "I am sure that the rage for public speaking, and the extravagant length to which some of our more popular orators carry their harangues in Parliament, is very detrimental to the national business," he expressed his opinion after he ascended the throne, "and I wish that it may not, in the end, prove injurious to the public peace."[89]
In spite of these occasional relaxations, the family circle at Leicester House was far from bright, and Dodington has recorded how in November, 1753, he was summoned to wait upon the Princess Dowager, and how, instead of the small party and a little music he expected, he found no one but her Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, Prince Edward and Princess Augusta, all in undress. They sat round the fire, and Dodington and the Princess talked of familiar occurrences "with the ease and unreservedness and unconstraint, as if one had dropped into a sister's house that had a family, to pass the evening," but agreeable as it was to Dodington, he could not refrain from wishing, "that the Princess conversed familiarly with more people of a certain knowledge of the world."[90] But even Dodington seldom saw the Prince of Wales, and, though George II showed no disposition to keep his successor in the background, the latter spent much of his time in, perhaps not entirely voluntary, retirement at Kew, where his mother was making "a collection of exotic plants, the precursor of the present Royal Botanical Gardens, on a scale of liberal munificence, besides continuing to erect, under the superintendence of Sir William Chambers, the various ornamental gardens, originally planned by the deceased Prince."[91] Horticulture had little charm for the Prince of Wales, who was, however, attracted by agricultural science, and took an active interest in the farming of his land, tastes which subsequently he endeavoured in vain to inculcate in his sons, and secured for him the nickname that still clings to him.[92]
From the Oxford Magazine
THE BUTTON MAKER