"Having had rather a smart bilious attack, which, by the goodness of Divine Providence, is quite removed," the King wrote to the Bishop of Worcester on June 8, "Sir George Baker has strongly recommended me to the going for a month to Cheltenham, as he thinks the water efficacious on such occasions, and that an absence from London will keep me free from certain fatigues that attend long audiences."[239] The departure was postponed until July 12, when the King went with the Queen and the Princesses to Cheltenham, where he stayed at Bay's Hill Lodge, the seat of the Earl of Fauconberg. From there he made excursions to Tewkesbury, Gloucester, Worcester[240] and some other places; but neither the change nor the waters benefited him, and on August 16, the royal family returned to Windsor.
Miss Burney has told us how the King was very sensible of the great change there was in himself, and how he said to Lady Effingham, when she came to visit him, "You see me, all at once, an old man." Slowly but surely the disorder increased, and it became more and more obvious that his intellect was affected.[241] Then, on October 16, he went out in the dew, and instead of changing his damp shoes and stockings, he rode to town in them, and held a levée. It was clear that he had caught cold, and on his return to Kew the Queen begged him to take a cordial, but instead he ate a pear and drank a glass of cold water, after which he felt unwell, and went to bed earlier than usual. "About one in the morning," Sir Gilbert Elliot has recorded, "he was seized violently with a cramp or some other violent thing in the stomach which rendered him speechless, and was all but. The Queen ran out in great alarm in her shift, or with very little clothes, among the pages, who, seeing her in that situation, were at first retiring out of respect, but the Queen stopped them, and sent them instantly for the apothecary at Richmond, during which time the King had continued in the fits and speechless. The apothecary tried to make him swallow something strong, but the King, who appeared not to have lost his senses, still liked a bit of his own way, and rejected by signs everything of that sort. They contrived, however, to cheat him, and got some cordial down in the shape of medicine, and the fit went off."
After this, George was never really well until the attack had run its course. He slept but little, talked unceasingly and only stopped when actually exhausted, and was very weak. "I cannot get on without it," he said, showing a walking stick, "my strength seems diminishing hourly." On October 22, Sir George Baker informed ministers that the King's condition was critical yet "to stop further lies and any fall of the stock,"[242] he held a levée on the 24th, when, however, his disordered dress and vacant manner left no doubt as to the nature of his malady. On the following Sunday at church, in the middle of the sermon he started up and embraced the Queen and the Princesses in a frantic manner, exclaiming, "You know what it is to be nervous." A day or two later, after a private concert, he went up to Dr. Ayrton, and laying his hand on the musician's shoulder, "I fear, Sir," he said, "I shall not long be able to hear music: it seems to affect my head and it is with difficulty I bear it," and then added softly, "Alas! the best of us are but frail mortals."[243] About the same time, after a long ride, he burst into tears, and exclaimed, "I wish to God I may die, for I am going to be mad."
We are indebted to Philip Withers for our knowledge of the King's first attack. "My office places me at the fountain head of information," he has written. "As senior Page of the Presence my apartment is situated between the grand Anti-chamber and the Closet of Private Audience. In each room there is a door of communication with my apartment, and I am constantly prepared to execute commands. The doors of my apartment open near the fireplaces of the Closet and Anti-chamber; and as there is a current of air passing through the doors (for they are opposite to each other) the Fireplaces are defended by lofty, magnificent screens so that either door may be left a little open without being noticed. In the common course of things I am accustomed to disregard both the company and conversation; and, indeed, it would be highly indecent."[244] That Withers was an unscrupulous fellow is obvious, for he was scoundrel enough to turn a dishonest penny by publishing the secrets he acquired by eavesdropping; but, in spite of the way it was obtained, his testimony is valuable. He was, however, an ingenuous youth, and after stating in his narrative that there was abroad a suspicion that the disease was hereditary, he begs that people "will forbear to credit an opinion in which so many innocent and amiable children are interested." "I do not deny the possible existence of hereditary disease," he continues. "In all ages of the world, and among every complexion of men, the opinion has been corroborated by fact. But what forbids our hoping better things in the case before us? Who will have the temerity to aver on oath that His Majesty's complaint is not the Gout, or some kindred disorder, unhappily driven to the seat of intelligence?" Withers has related how, about this time, the King and Queen, with himself in attendance, were driving one day through Windsor Park, when the King stopped the horses, and, crying, "There he is," alighted. His Majesty then approached an oak, and when within a few yards of it, uncovered and advanced, bowing with the utmost respect, and then, seizing one of the lower branches, shook it heartily, as one shakes the hand of a friend. The Queen turned pale and after a terrified pause told Withers to dismount and tell the King that her Majesty desired his company. From the words that were uttered, the page learnt that George imagined he was discussing European politics with the King of Prussia!
After this distressing episode, there ensued a period of fluctuation, when occasional paroxysms were succeeded by intervals of clear understanding, during which everybody at Windsor went about in fear and trembling, not knowing what would happen next. The Queen was almost overpowered with terror. "I am affected beyond all expression in her presence to see what struggles she makes to support her serenity," Miss Burney wrote on November 3. "To-day she gave up the conflict when I was alone with her, and burst into a violent fit of tears. It was very, very terrible to see."[245] At this critical moment Sir George Baker was far from well, and, feeling unable to undertake the entire charge of the royal invalid, and perhaps disinclined to take upon himself the entire responsibility, called in Dr. Warren, whom, however, the King declined to receive. "Dr. Warren was then placed where he could hear his voice, and all that passed, and receive intelligence concerning his pulse, etc., from Sir George Baker."[246]
Dr. Warren came to the conclusion that the disorder under which the King laboured was an absolute mania, and wholly unconnected with fever, which statement of the case he had later to announce to the sufferer. On November 5, the King broke out in violent delirium at dinner, flew at the Prince of Wales, clutched him by the throat, and threw him against a wall, crying, he would know how to dare keep the King of England from speaking his mind. That night George was hopelessly mad; his physical as well as his mental health was impaired, and his life despaired of. "The doctors say it is impossible to survive it long, if his situation does not take some extraordinary change in a few hours," Sheridan was informed. "Since this letter was begun, all articulation even seems to be at an end with the poor King; but, for the two hours preceding, he was in a most determined frenzy."[247] After a time he slept, and when he awoke the fever had somewhat abated, but he had still all the gestures and ravings of the most confirmed maniac, and a new noise in imitation of the howling of a dog. Then he became calmer and talked of religion, and declared himself inspired, but soon relapsed into a turbulent and incoherent state, and tried to jump out of a window.[248] On November 9 a rumour ran through the city that the King was dead, but on the 12th orders were sent to the office of the Secretary of State that it should be notified to foreign courts that no apprehensions were entertained of immediate danger of the King's life. On November 16 a public prayer was offered in all churches for his recovery.
The physicians in attendance had been divided upon the question of the possibility of the King's physical recovery, but they were in agreement as to the unlikelihood of his regaining his reason. The first ray of hope came on November 19 from Sir Lucas Pepys, who declared that there was "nothing desponding in the case," but advised stronger measures, the denial of dangerous indulgences, and greater quiet. In spite of this pronouncement, on the following day Dr. Warren had the unpleasant task to inform the King he was regarded as incapable of transacting business of any kind. "To-day, I have heard, is fixed upon to speak reason to One who has none," George Selwyn wrote to Lady Carlisle on November 20. "Dr. Warren, in some set of fine phrases, is to tell his Majesty that he is stark mad, and must have a straight waistcoat. I am glad I am not chosen to be that Rat who is to put the bell about the Cat's neck. For if it should please God to forgive our transgressions, and restore his Majesty to his senses, for he can never have them again till we grow better, I suppose, according to the opinion of churchmen, who are perfectly acquainted with all the dispensations of Providence, and the motive of His conduct; I say, if that unexpected period arrives, I should not like to stand in the place of that man who has moved such an Address to the Crown."[249]
The favourable opinion of Sir Lucas Pepys was confirmed by Dr. Addington, who, called in on November 26, was the only physician of all those consulted who had experience of mental cases, and even he was not professedly a practitioner in them. For some reason Dr. Addington discontinued his attendance after a few days, and then at last it was deemed imperative to add to the medical staff some one skilled in the treatment of insanity. Why this had not been done before is inexplicable except on the hypothesis that secrecy was essential in the public interest;[250] but now a summons was sent to the Rev. Dr. Francis Willis.
It was decided, further, for the sake of greater quiet, to move the King to Kew, but at first this seemed impossible unless violence were used, for he resolutely refused to leave Windsor. Eventually the object was achieved by strategy. "The poor Queen was to get off in private: the plan settled between the princes and physicians was, that her Majesty and the princesses should go away quietly, and then that the King should be told that they were gone, which was the sole method they could devise to prevail with him to follow. He was then to be allured by a promise of seeing them at Kew; and, as they knew he would doubt their assertion, he was to go through the rooms and examine the house himself."[251] This was done on November 29, and the King established himself at Kew in the ground floor rooms that look towards the garden. The bribe was not paid, however, and the anger it aroused in him produced the worst results. Indeed, his separation from the Queen was in his lucid hours one of his greatest troubles. "She is my best friend; where could I find another?" he asked on one occasion; and at another time complained bitterly, "I am eight-and-twenty years married, and now have no wife at all; is not that hard?"
Dr. Willis was the incumbent of a Lincolnshire living, and, having taken a medical degree at Oxford, he frequently acted as physician to his parishioners. He was especially successful in treating mental cases, and when this became known, so many persons from all parts of England came to him that at last he founded an asylum at Gretford, where, it is said, he never at any time had less than thirty cases under his care.[252] When Willis took up his quarters at Kew on December 6, the King asked him if he, who was a clergyman, was not ashamed of himself for exercising such a profession, "Sir," said the specialist, "our Saviour Himself went about healing the sick." "Yes," retorted George, "but He had not £700 for it."[253] Willis, who was at this time seventy years of age, seems to have won golden opinions at Court, except from some of his colleagues who inclined to regard his methods as more in place with the quack than with the qualified practitioner. "In the practical knowledge of insanity, and the management of the insane, Willis was unquestionably in advance of his associates," Dr. Ray has written, "but following the bent of his dictatorial habits, he often spoke without meaning his words, and often overstepped the limits of professional etiquette."[254] Miss Burney thought him "a man in ten thousand, open, honest, dauntless, lighthearted, innocent, and high-minded;" "an upright, worthy man, gentle and humane in his profession, and amiable and pious as a clergyman," said Mrs. Papendiek; while Wraxall thought Willis "seemed to be exempt from all the infirmities of old age, and his countenance, which was very interesting, blended intelligence with an expression of placid self-possession."[255]