From a portrait by H. Eldridge
QUEEN CHARLOTTE
Queen Charlotte had been ailing for a long time. "The severe affliction and constant anxiety she was in was probably the cause, and from this time (1789) her Majesty's health was less uniformly good," wrote Mrs. Papendiek. "The dropsy, which had been floating in her constitution since the birth of Prince Alfred, now made its deposit, and caused her at times much suffering." She had been much upset by the King's various outbreaks of violence in 1804, and was, indeed, so alarmed that thereafter she saw little of him. "The Queen lives upon ill terms with the King. They never sleep or dine together; she persists in living entirely separate," wrote Lord Colchester; and Lord Malmesbury recorded: "The Queen will never receive the King without one of the Princesses being present; never says in reply a word. Piques herself on this discreet silence, and when in London, locks the door of her white-room—her boudoir—against him." On April 23, 1817, she was seized with a severe spasmodic attack, but with indomitable endurance she continued to hold Drawing-rooms and was present at the royal weddings that took place during the year. She was anxious to be taken to Windsor, but the step was long delayed, and she never got further than Kew, where she died after a lingering and painful illness, on November 16, 1818.
In that year Byron wrote, "the poor good King may live to 200; he continues in good bodily health, and is perfectly happy, conversing with the dead, and sometimes relating pleasant things. They say it is a most charming illusion."[339]
Early in January, 1820, it became known that the old King was unwell, and though a reassuring bulletin was issued—"His Majesty's disorder has undergone no sensible alteration. His Majesty's bodily health has partaken some of the infirmities of age, but has been generally good during the last month"—it was still believed that he would not recover. He could not get warm, his food did not nourish him, and his frame grew more and more emaciated; but it was not until January 27, when for the first time he kept his bed, that the physicians pronounced his life in danger. Two days later death claimed him. "A few minutes before this venerable monarch expired, he extended his arms, and bade his attendants raise him up—the doctors signified to his attendants not to do so, in the supposition that the effort would extinguish life,—but upon his repeating the request, they obeyed, and he thanked them. His lips were parched, and occasionally wetted with a sponge. He, with perfect presence of mind, said: 'Do not wet my lips but when I open my mouth.' And when done he added, thank you, it does me good.'"[340]
So on January 29, 1820, died George III in the sixtieth year of his reign, and at the patriarchal age of eighty-one, unhonoured and unsung, the monarch of the greatest country that the world has yet seen, yet unenvied by the lowest of his subjects. "What preacher need moralize on this story; what words save the simplest are requisite to tell it? It is too terrible for tears." So runs Thackeray's exquisite passage on the downfall of George III, with which this work may fittingly conclude. "The thought of such misery smites me down in submission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser of Life, death, happiness, victory.... Low he lies, to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest: dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne, buffeted by rude hands; with his children in revolt; the darling of his old age killed before him untimely; our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, 'Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little!'
'Vex not his ghost—Oh! let him pass—he hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer!'
Hush! Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, trumpets, a mournful march! Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy!"