CHAPTER XXV
LAST YEARS
The King's health was a matter of great anxiety to the royal physicians, even after his recovery in 1789, and during the hot weather of the following year their watchfulness had to be redoubled. "The present object of the doctors was to prevent the King from dozing during the day, and also to try and keep him from brooding over things too closely. The French Revolution was going on, and affairs in that country were becoming very serious. Holland, too, was unsettled, and they were very anxious that his Majesty should be called upon to do as little business as possible. The King could not be on horseback after twelve o'clock, as the heat of the sun on his head was much feared. The Queen, therefore, had three double carriages made with cane bodies, and covered in with silk or oilskin, according to the weather, and thus they were enabled to pay noon visits to the sweet country seats near at hand, and beguile the time until dinner, at four."[300] This trouble passed in due course, and it seemed as if George was in thoroughly good health, and likely to continue so indefinitely. "It is impossible to describe to you how perfectly well the King is," Lord Auckland wrote to Morton Eden on December 12, 1791. "He is quite an altered man, and not what you knew him even before his illness. His manner is gentle, quiet, and, when he is pleased, quite cordial. He speaks, even of those who are opposed to his government, with complacency, and without sneer or acrimony. As long as he remains so well, the tranquillity of this country is on a rock, for the public property is great and the nation is right-minded, and the commerce and resources are increasing."[301]
Years passed without any mental trouble, but gradually events happened that preyed upon the mind of the King, who, now no longer a young man, was less able to resist them. For a long time he had been perturbed by the unhappy relations between the Prince and Princess of Wales and, when in 1801 Pitt demanded permission to introduce a measure for the emancipation of the Catholics, he brooded over the matter until his mind became again unhinged.[302] On February 15 he took a severe cold, always the first symptom of one of his attacks—but this apparently gave way to treatment. "As for my cold, it is well," he said then to Lord Chatham; "but what else I have, I owe to your brother." On the 22nd inst., however, his mind wandered, and on the following day he was unconscious until evening when he exclaimed, "I am better now, but I will remain true to the Church—I will remain true to the Church,"[303] and anathematized Pitt and other ministers favourable to the obnoxious measure. He was seriously ill on March 2, but from that day grew slowly better, and on the 6th instructed Dr. Willis to write to the minister. "Tell him I am now quite well—quite recovered from my illness; but what has he not to answer for who is the cause of my having been ill at all?" It was then that Pitt, much perturbed and perplexed, told George he would never re-introduce the subject during his reign, whereupon the King exclaimed joyfully, "Now my mind will be at ease!"[304] He received in person and with much kindliness the resignation of Pitt on March 14, and handed the seals of office to Henry Addington.
The excitement attendant upon these political events caused a relapse, and George remained for some time at Kew under the care of the Willises. "I'm very, very sorry the poor King has been, and continues ill, for it has been and will be a public calamity from its consequences, but exclusive of public ills among which the loss of Lord Cornwallis here is irreparable, the private misfortunes of the royal family goes to one's heart," Lady Sarah Napier wrote from Dublin to Lady Susan O'Brien on April 20, 1801. "Great people suffer sorrow doubly; poor souls, they are not made to it, till it comes with violence, and then it drives to indifference or despair."[305] In May those who were allowed to see George inclined to the belief that he was well, but the Duke of Clarence declared that "he pitied the (royal) family, for he saw something in the King that convinced him he must soon be confined again." Still, in spite of this distressing prognostication, on May 25 Dr. Thomas Willis was able to send an assuring report to Lord Eldon: "This morning I walked with his Majesty, who was in a perfectly composed and quiet state. He told me, with great seeming satisfaction, that he had a most charming night, 'he could sleep from eleven to half after four,' when, alas! he had but three hours sleep in the night, which, upon the whole, was passed in restlessness—in getting out of bed, opening the shutters, in praying violently, and in making such remarks as betray a consciousness of his own situation, but which are evidently made for the purpose of concealing it from the Queen. He frequently called out, 'I am perfectly well, and my Queen, my Queen has saved me.'"[306] However, the improvement was not sustained, for on June 12 Willis wrote in a different strain: "His Majesty still talks much of his prudence, but shows none. His body, mind, and tongue are all upon the stretch every minute; and the manner in which he is now expending money, which is so unlike him when well, all evince that he is not so right as he should be."[307] A few days later, however, the King pronounced himself well when he, who hated the Willises, father and son, dismissed from attendance Dr. Robert Willis, and, in spite of the Lord Chancellor's remonstrances, declined to reinstate the physician.
"Kew, June 21, 1801.
"The King would not do justice to the feelings of his heart, if he an instant delayed expressing his conviction of the attachment the Lord Chancellor bears him, of which the letter now before him is a fresh proof; but at the same time he cannot but in the strongest manner decline having Dr. Robert Willis about him. The line of practice followed with great credit by that gentleman, renders it incompatible with the King's feelings that he should—now by the goodness of Divine Providence restored to reason—consult a person of that description. His Majesty is perfectly satisfied with the zeal and attention of Dr. Gisborne, in whose absence he will consult Sir Francis Milman, but cannot bear consulting any of the Willis family, though he will ever respect the character and conduct of Dr. Robert Willis. No person that ever had a nervous fever can bear to continue the physician employed on the occasion; and this holds much more so in the calamitous one that has so long confined the King, but of which he is now completely recovered.
"George R."[308]
"The subject of the Princess of Wales is still in the King's mind, to a degree that is distressing, from the unfortunate situation of the family," Princess Elizabeth wrote to Dr. Thomas Willis during the illness of her father, who was no sooner able to go out than he visited his persecuted daughter-in-law. "The first time he rode out after his illness he rode over Westminster Bridge to Blackheath, never telling any one where he was going till he turned up to the Princess's door. She was not up, but jumped out of bed, and went to receive him in her bed-gown and night-cap. He told Lord Uxbridge that the Princess had run in his head during his illness perpetually, and he had made a resolution to go and see her the first time he went out, without telling anybody."[309] After this visit George went to Weymouth, returning to London on October 29 to open Parliament in person, after which he settled down at Windsor, where at the end of November Lord Malmesbury visited him. "I was with the King nearly two hours. I had not seen him since the end of October, 1800—of course not since his last illness. He appeared rather more of an old man, but not older than men of his age commonly appear. He stoops rather more, and was apparently less firm on his legs; but he did not look thinner, nor were there any marks of sickness or decline in his countenance or manner. These last were much as usual—somewhat less hurried and more conversable; that is to say, allowing the person to whom he addressed himself more time to answer and talk than he used to do when discussing on common subjects, on public or grave ones." [310]
This illness aged him considerably, and though henceforth he lived very quietly and almost entirely secluded at Windsor, "his health, both as regards his bodily ailments, and the state of his mind, became daily more and more unsatisfactory." [310] Indeed, it is a moot point if he was ever for any length of time quite well after this year, and even during the periods when he was free from a suspicion of his malady, the fear of its recurrence undoubtedly influenced his whole life. It was not until 1804, however, that he was again seriously ill, and then the attack was probably precipitated by his furious indignation at the publication of some of his letters by the Prince of Wales, though this fact was, of course, suppressed in the physician's report.[311] "The fact is I believe, as I have always done, that the regal function will never more be exercised by him," Creevey wrote on April 2: and on May 2 stated, "I feel certain he is devilish bad."[312] A regency was again in sight, but to the general surprise George recovered, and early in May was able to drive through the streets by the side of the Queen, but after this, as General Harcourt told Lord Malmesbury, he was "in looks, manners, conduct, and conversation, quite different from what he had been before his illness."[313]