Princesses (36 page)

Quiet was what the King needed now, and a week after he had first felt symptoms he confided in Thomas Willis, ‘I do feel myself very ill.' Sunday, 22 February 1801 saw the arrival of the Reverend's ‘medical' brother Dr John Willis and of four burly ‘keepers' from Dr Thomas Warburton's asylum, both sanctioned by the Duke of York and Addington. Following the pattern of years before, the Opposition began their ‘speculating, anticipating and
arranging'
of Cabinet posts in the new regency government they felt would soon ensue. For on 27 February Dr Willis, according to the Prince of Wales, ‘not only thought that the King could not understand what he read, were he disposed to read but that he could not, to the best of his judgement, know a single letter'. How then could he sign his royal assent to public acts? Pitt's resignation and Addington's substitution as prime minister still needed the King's confirmation. Russia was establishing an Armed Neutrality league in the Baltic to menace British shipping as she attempted to violate French commerce there. And at a time when Austria and France had made peace, and the Continent was at last quiet – albeit in the stranglehold of France – there was a growing appetite in
England
for peace. If the King were incapacitated, who would commission the preliminary discussions with France on that delicate subject?

The King's very existence rather than just his sanity seemed in doubt on 2 March. The princesses gathered with the rest of the family at the Queen's House, expecting his fever to end in death. But a stray suggestion from Addington, of putting a pillow of warm hops under the invalid's head, had a miraculous effect. The King slept, he grew stronger. He ‘cries at almost
anything',
the doctors wrote, and he still ‘became so puzzled' – when reading state papers – ‘that he grew hurried and angry'. But they wrote their final bulletin, predicting complete recovery, on 11 March, and the King accepted Pitt's resignation on the 14th. He even accepted,
through
the unorthodox medium of the Reverend Thomas, the need for proposals of peace, and signed them. Princess Augusta wrote with relief to Lady Harcourt on 16 March: ‘We are as well as can be
expected,
considering what we have gone through – and though all the great distress and horror
is now over, we now feel much oppressed from fatigue of mind and hurry of
spirits.'
Her mother hoped to see Lady Harcourt the following day, she went on. ‘But of course it depends upon the hours we spend with the King or when we are in expectation of being sent for.'

The Queen held a drawing room on 26 March at the Prime Minister's insistence and much to the King's displeasure, when he found that Dr Willis had so blistered his legs that morning that he could not appear. Princess Augusta later recalled her own anguish at this time: ‘When I was very miserable and unhappy at St James's last winter I told Lord Harcourt that I never would be happy again. And he was so very good as to say, “O fie, le bon temps viendra.” And I was so obliged to him and so incredulous and so low that I could only say, “God knows!” To which he again replied, “He does know best and does best for us all.” I always tried to think so, but my mind was too oppressed then to say more.'

In the meantime, while the King's mind was wandering, King Frederick William III of Prussia had issued a proclamation declaring that he was compelled to take ‘efficacious measures' against Hanover, and Prussian troops duly occupied the King of England's beloved, if obscure German Electorate.
Adolphus,
leaving his house on the Leinestrasse in Hanover, was back in England by mid-April 1801, where he found his father recovering – but once more in confinement and in rooms that had originally been prepared at Kew House for his own arrival. The King was there alone with the Willises and their keepers. The Queen and the princesses, in deep distress,
lived
across the way at the Dutch House, or Prince of Wales's House.

The King had seen his eldest son on 15 April for the first time in a month, and
received
him with ‘every mark of love and
fondness',
speaking of his happiness in embracing him on the day he dismissed Dr Willis's keepers. He knew of Nelson's victory in the struggle for domination of the Baltic, when that Admiral destroyed the Danish fleet in their own harbour of Copenhagen. But ‘of the condition of Hanover none had ventured to talk to him', and he repeatedly declared he was a dying man, and determined to go abroad to Hanover and make over the government to the Prince. The Queen and Prime Minister between them became so agitated by his behaviour that, only days after he had embraced his son and celebrated his freedom, the Willises cornered him on 20 April at Kew, where he had gone to convalesce at the Prince of Wales's House. While the church bells rang on the Green summoning the inhabitants to hear the prayers of thanks for the King's recovery, the eager doctors imposed on the object of those prayers their will and the straitjacket. ‘I will never
forgive
you as long as I live,' said the King. From April to late May he recovered slowly at Kew House, seeing nobody but the Willises – not even his son Adolphus, who inhabited the same house. The Willises were his constant companions as he walked round the gardens or signed official documents. Even after he was better, they stayed until the end of June on Kew Green to supervise him.

During this time the King took the interests of the Princess of Wales and her rights over her daughter almost painfully to heart. Elizabeth wrote to Dr Willis after a visit to her father in June 1801, when the princesses and the Queen, who camped at the Prince of Wales's House, were at last allowed to see their father, now he was recovered: ‘The subject of the Princess is still in the King's mind to a degree that is distressing from the unfortunate
situation
of the family.' He meant to build the Princess another wing to her house at Blackheath, and take care of Princess Charlotte himself. But the Princess of Wales had spoken to Elizabeth in some alarm about all the schemes the King had for her. He was ‘heated and
fatigued',
Elizabeth said ominously. Dr Robert Willis, a third Willis brother called in, said that there was an increase in ‘hurry', and his brother Thomas concurred in this opinion: ‘His body, mind and tongue are all upon the stretch every minute …' But the King was set in his mind, not only to spend a period of convalescence at the Lodge at Weymouth which he had finally bought from his brother the Duke of Gloucester now that his confinement was ended, but to lend his support to his niece the Princess of Wales in her battles with her husband the Prince. Days after he had reconciled with his son on his first recovery, Glenbervie reported, the King rode down to Storey's Gate and over Westminster Bridge to visit the Princess at Blackheath with only the Duke of Cumberland and two equerries in attendance. ‘She had just breakfasted and was still in bed, and was very much surprised when they brought her word the King was at the door …' She arose immediately and went down to hear from the King ‘his entire approbation of her conduct and his affection for her'.

One cannot exclude the possibility that the King's hostess left a bedfellow when she went to greet her father-in-law. Princess Sophia wrote to Miss Garth from Weymouth in the summer of 1801, expressing a new caution about her sister-in-law, whose independent ways at Blackheath were leading to rumours of love affairs. ‘I think it a blessing you are not mixed in her [the Princess of Wales's] confidence, as you can never be blamed; once and once only, and that was at Kew, Elizabeth said she thought the Pss confided in you; I ventured at random to say I thought not… as to the Pss I never name her to my
sisters …'

Meanwhile the King's virtuous eldest daughter, the Duchess of Württemberg, had returned to her husband's Duchy after a year in exile, and she recorded, ‘I shall never forget the way in which they received me; the whole road from Lourch [Lorch] to Ludwigsburg was crowded with people. The Duke and his sons came three miles to meet me. Words can but feebly express the gratitude we feel to the Almighty for having restored us to our home.' The
kangaroos
came safely home, too, and very shortly, none the worse for their journey, provided two young joeys for the admiration of the citizens of Ludwigsburg.

Royal thought fondly of her niece in England and wrote, ‘Pray tell little Charlotte that I send her a fan and when I go to Stuttgart shall not fail to bespeak some silver toys if she continues a good
girl.'
But on hearing from General Melius, her husband's envoy to England, of her niece's ‘musical genius, speaking and repeating French well, and of her pretty manner', she was a little hurt that ‘she displayed all these accomplishments without showing any
timidity.'
In Württemberg the Duchess continued to supervise the education of ‘the children', as she called her teenage stepchildren – Catherine, ‘who certainly puts me much in mind of dear Elizabeth and has a very amiable good heart', and Paul, who was ‘a very comical boy and, in my partial
eyes,
his manners are like Adolphus's'.

The Duchess's delight now was in the gardens and grounds of Ludwigsburg: ‘After having been so many months deprived of flowers I feel double pleasure in attending to them and to a very pretty aviary the Duke has been so good as to build for me and to fill with common birds, as I object much to fine foreign ones which would not give me more pleasure and would cost much more
trouble.'
But all the delights to be savoured on her return from exile paled beside the arrival of a letter her father wrote her from Weymouth, three days after the Willises and keepers had been dismissed for good. ‘It diffused on my whole countenance such a look of happiness that the first question my children asked me was what had given me so much pleasure, that they might share in it.'

Information that the King had ‘taken to botany' led the Duchess to rejoice: ‘You will find it a constant source of
amusement.'
She had herself bought a garden at Ludwigsburg of seven acres, with a house – ‘though in good repair, like old
Frogmore
and I have made it very comfortable by papering some of the rooms'. And she now tried to ‘acquire some fresh knowledge every day', having a good gardener who understood both kitchen and flower garden, and a greenhouse and hothouse, ‘for flowers all winter long'.

Furthermore, the Duke increasing her land with the gift of an adjacent three-acre field, the Duchess was able to make hay three times that year, and feed the two Swiss cows she established there – and a calf born that September. But she worried, as a good Duchess should, about the field mice which threatened the potato harvest. Some farmers let their hogs into the fields to devour the mice, but then they ran the risk of swine fever. In graceful compliment to her father, she observed, ‘Your Majesty having taken so much to farming is very much admired abroad and looked on as one of the great causes of the improvements in England.'

At Stuttgart in the late autumn, the Duchess occupied herself with copying some dogs from Ridinger engravings, after a spell of damp weather had prevented her drawing or
working
– ‘it gives me violent
headaches.'
She showed her work to the Stuttgart engraver Müller, and ‘he appears satisfied with those I have finished of late, which encourages me very much to
apply [myself]'
. At her new house, the Matildenhof, Royal began also to paint the celebrated Ludwigsburg porcelain with images derived from the engravings of Ridinger and others. The palaces of Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg filled with her painted and gilded products – cups, vases, plates and even plaques set into furniture.

The Duke had given her two very fine flower paintings, which, she believed, were by Breughel. ‘I intend to attempt to copy them but whether it will be in colours or in black and white I am not yet determined.' She was delighted with a visit that she had had in November from Lord Minto, the British Minister at Vienna. ‘Indeed,' she declared then, ‘it is impossible for those who have not been parted from their family to imagine the joy one
feels
at meeting with anybody who can give some account of all those one loves. I am like an infant on those
occasions …'
She pressed the diplomat to take home to her father an account of her house at Ludwigsburg, her ‘favourite spot'. If possible, she contrived to spend one day there every week ‘and watch a little my workmen, who grow very idle if they are not
followed.'

But she had other business in December 1801 which she hoped another British diplomat – Lord Cornwallis, envoy to the Peace of Amiens deliberations – could bring forward: ‘Though I understand Great Britain does not intend to interfere publicly in the interest of the Continent … one word from your Majesty would have great effect and be highly flattering to the Duke, who is much attached to you and has been one of the greatest sufferers by the war.' The Duke was still waiting for the restitution of territory and financial recompense he had been promised at the Lunéville peace earlier that year.

At Weymouth meanwhile Royal's sisters endured long weeks of ennui, going to the playhouse nearly every night, and sailing on the days the King bathed, so as not to fatigue him, although they would rather have walked or ridden. But, as Sophia wrote on 25 July to Lady Harcourt, they did not complain. ‘How trifling are our amusements when compared with the blessing of his returning health; all that should be put aside; no self in the case, and his health be our only object … there never existed so good a man, a husband and a father.' By the end of the summer the King had recovered, but he looked an old man, stooped and less firm on his legs when, on 1 October 1801, he signed the preliminary articles of peace between England and France.

Princess Augusta in London wrote to Lady Harcourt with relief and regret mixed:

On Sunday I read a letter from my sister [Royal] in good
spirits,
and all happiness at the Peace – I, who am prudence itself, answered her yesterday that I was glad she was so happy, and that the telegraph had brought her such good news – but did not tell her what I will tell you, that she feels like an inhabitant of the Continent and I, like a proud Islander. Talk of the Continent now! It's all chatter and as good as mouldy cheese.