Pitt introduced the physician to the King: "We have found a gentleman who has made the illness under which your Majesty is now labouring his study for some years, and we doubt not that he can render comfort, and alleviate many of the inconveniences your Majesty suffers." "Will he let me shave myself, cut my nails, and have a knife at breakfast and dinner?" asked the King who resented the precautions that had been taken; "and will he treat me as his sovereign, and not command me as a subject?" "Sir, I am a plain man, not used to courts, but I honour and respect my King;" and he won George's confidence by letting him forthwith shave himself. Willis watched the King for twenty-four hours, and then expressed his opinion that "the malady had been too long suffered to remain, but that if the constitution could bear the remedies necessary to work out the disease, he had no fear for a cure."[256]
"In the consultation which settled the respective functions", Dr. Ray has stated, "Willis was to have charge of all the domestic and strictly moral management—in accordance, however, with such general views as had been agreed upon. The medical treatment was arranged in the morning consultations, and it was understood that Willis was to take no decisive measure, either medical or moral, not previously discussed and permitted. Pepys, Gisborne and Reynolds attended, in rotation, from four o'clock in the afternoon until eleven the next morning. Warren or Baker visited in the morning, saw the King, consulted with Willis and the physicians, who had remained over night, and agreed with them upon the bulletin for the day. Willis was soon joined by his son John, whose particular function seems not to have been very definitely settled. Willis professed to regard him as equal to himself in point of dignity and responsibility, but his colleagues considered him merely as an assistant to his father. Two surgeons and two apothecaries were also retained, each one, in turn, staying twenty-four hours in the palace. The personal service was rendered by three attendants whom Willis had procured from his own establishment, and the King's pages—one attendant and one page being constantly in his room."[257]
It would be out of place in this work to enter into the details of Willis's treatment, but it may be stated that for the mode of restraint used before he came on the scene, he employed one that, while exercising a more firm coercion, was not so teasing to the patient. It has been told how when the King, convalescent, was walking through a corridor at Kew with one of his equerries, he saw a straight-jacket lying in a chair, "You need not be afraid to look at it," he said to his companion, who, somewhat embarrassed, had averted his eyes, "Perhaps it is the best friend I ever had in my life." Willis did not, however, rely entirely upon coercion, as did most of the physicians of that day in cases of insanity; but endeavoured by kindness to establish a hold upon the King. "Willis has, I understand, already acquired a complete ascendency over him," William Grenville wrote a couple of days after the mad-doctor took charge, "which is the point for which he is particularly famous."[258] Sheridan, too, remarked, in one of his speeches that Willis professed to have the gift of seeing the heart by looking at the countenance, and, with a touch of delicious humour, added, looking at Pitt, that this simple statement seemed to alarm the right honourable gentleman.
CHAPTER XXII
THE KING'S RECOVERY
When it could no longer be doubted that George was incapable of transacting business, ministers were confronted with the very difficult problem: how was the King's Government to be carried on? and their trouble was the greater because it could not be said with any certainty whether the disorder was temporary or whether it was likely to be permanent. If there was the chance of a speedy cure, then, of course, nothing need be done; but if, on the other hand, recovery was impossible, or, at best, a matter of many months, then some step must be taken, and that that step must be a regency and that in the first instance the office must be proffered to the Prince of Wales was patent to all. This was very distasteful to Pitt and his colleagues for they saw clearly that the passing of a Regency Bill would in all probability be the signal for their dismissal, since the Prince was an ally of the Whigs and the bosom friend of Fox and Sheridan, and they saw it was their interest to delay as long as possible the introduction of such a measure.
