George found some pleasure in trifling mechanical occupations, and had a watch made from his own designs by Arnold, of which a description is extant. "It was rather less than a silver twopence, yet contained one hundred and twenty different parts: the whole weighed between five and six pennyweights." Later in life he amused himself in turning on the lathe, and it was declared by the satirists that the royal ingenuity eventually went so far as to construct a button. Certainly for a long time he figured in caricature as "the royal button-maker"; and it was in this capacity an anonymous versifier congratulated him upon the success of his army in America.
"Then shall my lofty numbers tell
Who taught the royal babes to spell
And sovereign art pursue
To mend a watch, or set a clock,
New pattern shape for Hervey's frock,
Or buttons made at Kew."[93]
George III as Prince of Wales saw nothing of the outside world, and even when in 1759 he was allowed to make an excursion beyond the limits usually imposed upon him, it took the form of a private trip through Scotland, when, preserving the strictest incognito, he paid visits to Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Isle of Bute and a few other places, accompanied only by Lord Bute and two servants.
It may here be remarked that no English king travelled less than George III, who during the whole of his long life rarely visited any part of his dominions.
"Our sons some slave of greatness may behold,
Cast in the genuine Asiatic mould,
Who of three realms shall condescend to know
No more than he can spy from Windsor's brow."[94]
He never went to Hanover or Scotland or Ireland or Wales, and in England his longest journeys were to Cheltenham, Weymouth, and Portsmouth, which latter town he visited twice, but solely to make an official inspection of a battleship.
"There shall he see, as other folks have seen,
That ships have anchors, and that seas are green;
Shall count the tackling trim, the streamers fine,
With Bradshaw prattle, and with Sandwich dine;
And then row back, amidst the cannon's roar,
As safe, as sage, as when he left the shore."[95]
"To tell you the honest truth," Ernest, King of Hanover, said in 1845; "the impression on my mind has ever been that it was a very unfortunate circumstance for my father that he was kept as it were, aloof, not only from his brothers, but almost from all young men of his own age; and this I saw evident marks of almost daily."[96] Indeed, the unhappy relations of George III with his sons must in great part be attributed to the isolation of the King's early years: never having been permitted to indulge in the pleasures of youth, he could in later years make no allowance for such follies in others. It comes as a relief to find that George III when Prince of Wales did commit one stupid, boyish prank: when a tutor reproved him and told him he must stick closer to his work, he put pitch on the tutor's chair, thus making the pedagogue stick closer to his seat.
Some lads who, from one cause or another, see little society, derive knowledge of the world from books, but George was not one of these. He did not learn easily, and he had not been helped by an extensive or thorough education. His knowledge of Latin or Greek was negligible, and Huish's statement that at an early age the Prince "correctly understood the history of modern times and the just relations of England with the other states" makes too great a strain upon our credulity. It is true that in support of his view Huish prints a list of titles of plays that the Prince is said to have selected to show the condition of various states and persons; but though, as a matter of fact this has little to recommend it as an intellectual exercise, it is unlikely the youth performed even this task without assistance.[97] It may be conceded, however, that he read with more or less understanding the history of England, France and Germany; and that he could speak the language of these countries with fluency. He wrote English with little show of acquaintance with grammar and never could spell correctly, while his general knowledge was lamentably slight, and in spite of fulsome biographers, books never had any attraction for him. "He never delighted in study, nor ever passed much of his time in sedentary occupations, calculated to improve his mind, after his accession to the crown," Wraxall admits frankly. "A newspaper which he commonly took up after dinner, and over which, however interesting its contents might be, he usually fell asleep in less than half-an-hour, constituted the ordinary extent of his application."[98] He was in truth a dull lad, and Thackeray was probably right in his belief that "the cleverest tutors in the world could have done little probably to expand that small intellect, though they might have improved his taste and taught his perceptions some generosity."[99]