State of Kew Palace—Dr. Willis and his Son called in—Progress under the New Doctors—Party Spirit—The Regency Question—Attacks on the Queen—Fluctuations in the King’s State—Violence of Burke—Extraordinary Scene between the King and Miss Burney in Kew Gardens—Marked Improvement of the King—The Regency Bill postponed—The King informs Miss Burney of his Recovery—The Restoration—Demonstrations of Joy—Return to Windsor—Old Routine resumed—Reaction.
The beginning of December saw the diminished and imprisoned household suffering under an increase of apprehensions. The condition of the King became even more alarming; the Queen began to sink as she had not done before. From the outer world came sinister rumours, the duration of the malady threatening a Regency—‘a word,’ says Fanny, ‘which I have not yet been able to articulate.’ Inside, the palace at Kew was ‘in a state of cold and discomfort past all imagination.’ It had never been a winter residence, and there was nothing prepared to fit it for becoming one. Not only were the bedrooms of the Princesses without carpets, but so out of repair was the building, that a plentiful supply of sandbags had to be provided to moderate the gales that blew through the doors and windows. The parlour in which Miss Burney had to sit with the Schwellenberg was carpetless, chilly, and miserable; and even this was locked in the morning on Fanny’s admission of having used it before breakfast; Cerbera barking out that, ‘when everybody went to her room, she might keep an 231inn—what you call hotel.’ These domestic inconveniences endured for some time. By degrees, however, the worst of them were obviated. The bare boards were wholly or partially covered; the apartments allotted to the family were refurnished and redistributed; and Miss Burney was no longer exposed to the cold damps of a dark passage while awaiting the page who brought her for the Queen the first news of how the night had been passed by the patient.
Hitherto no progress had been made towards a successful treatment of the King’s malady. In the early days of December, however, even the Queen felt it useless to disguise any longer the nature of the attack, and experts in mental disease were accordingly added to the staff of physicians. Fortunately, a right choice was made at the first trial. The new advisers selected were Dr. Francis Willis, a clergyman who for twenty-eight years had devoted himself to the cure of lunacy, and his son, Dr. John Willis, who was associated with him in practice. The arrival of these two country practitioners—they came from Lincolnshire—revived the hopes which the Court physicians, by their dissensions and general despondency, had well-nigh destroyed. Though decried by the regular faculty as interlopers, if not charlatans, the Doctors Willis took the hearts of all at Kew Palace by storm. Mr. Digby pronounced them ‘fine, lively, natural, independent characters.’ Miss Burney, on making their acquaintance, heartily re-echoed this praise:
“I am extremely struck with both these physicians. Dr. Willis is a man of ten thousand; open, honest, dauntless, light-hearted, innocent, and high-minded: I see him impressed with the most animated reverence and affection for his royal patient; but it is wholly for his 232character—not a whit for his rank. Dr. John, his eldest son, is extremely handsome, and inherits, in a milder degree, all the qualities of his father; but living more in the general world, and having his fame and fortune still to settle, he has not yet acquired the same courage, nor is he, by nature, quite so sanguine in his opinions. The manners of both are extremely pleasing, and they both proceed completely their own way, not merely unacquainted with Court etiquette, but wholly, and most artlessly, unambitious to form any such acquaintance.”
The new doctors at once modified the treatment to which the King had been subject, and the effects of the change were speedily apparent:
“December 11th.—To-day we have had the fairest hopes; the King took his first walk in Kew garden! There have been impediments to this trial hitherto, that have been thought insurmountable, though, in fact, they were most frivolous. The walk seemed to do him good, and we are all in better spirits about him than for this many and many a long day past.”
It was not to be expected that the advance to restoration would proceed without break or check. On the 17th we have the entry: ‘My account this morning was quite afflictive once more;’ but under date of the 22nd we read: ‘With what joy did I carry this morning an exceeding good account of the King to my royal mistress! It was trebly welcome, as much might depend upon it in the resolutions of the House concerning the Regency, which was of to-day’s discussion;’ and in some notes summing up the remaining days of the year, we have: ‘The King went on, now better, now worse, in a most fearful manner; but Sir Lucas Pepys never lost sight of hope, and the management of Dr. Willis and his two 233sons[96] was most wonderfully acute and successful. Yet, so much were they perplexed and tormented by the interruptions given to their plans and methods, that they were frequently almost tempted to resign the undertaking from anger and confusion.’
The new year opened amid the same alternations of progress and relapse. In society, the war of politics took a new departure from the King’s derangement. Supporters of the Administration were confident of his speedy recovery; the Opposition were indefatigable in spreading the belief that his disorder was incurable. The animosity on both sides rose to a height which had not been equalled even at Pitt’s first entrance into office. ‘It is a strange subject,’ wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘for party to insist upon, and disgraceful to the country that it should be so; but so it is.’ Uneasiness and uncertainty prevailed everywhere. Some of Miss Burney’s best friends began to be dismayed at her position, and at the prospect before her. Her sister Charlotte, now Mrs. Francis, wrote from Norfolk, urging that Dr. Burney’s consent should be obtained to her resignation, and offering her, on behalf of Mr. Francis and herself, a permanent residence in their house. Evidently, Fanny’s family regarded her as a helpless person, requiring to be looked after and taken care of. Her faith, however, in the comforting predictions of the Willises and Sir Lucas Pepys remained unshaken, and she would not hear of quitting her post.
A fresh trouble had by this time arisen. The Queen could not escape becoming involved in the strife of parties. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York were naturally impatient to push their afflicted father from his seat. 234What they wanted in brains was amply supplied by the combined genius of the Whig leaders—by Fox, and Burke, and Sheridan—all embittered at having been so often checkmated by the young statesman whom they had flouted as a mere boy. What the Princes lacked in tenacity of purpose was driven into them by the incessant cry of myriad place-hunters, yelling like famished wolves. The first thought of the faction was how to clutch power as soon as might be; their second, how to engross it as exclusively as possible. No scruple was made of declaring that all places would be vacated and refilled, even if the Regency were to last only a single day.[97] That there would be a complete change of Administration was a matter of course. But beyond this, changes were meditated in the army, and other departments of the State, which it was known must grievously offend the King, should they come to his knowledge. Among other promotions, every colonel in favour with the Prince or the Duke was to be raised to the rank of Major-General. Mrs. Fitzherbert, it was said, was to be created a Duchess.[98]
Next to Pitt and his colleagues, the chief obstacle to the speedy execution of these notable projects was Queen Charlotte. It was not to be expected that a wife would be as ready as the heir-apparent to believe in the confirmed insanity of the head of the house. It was excusable, to say the least, that one who for more than twenty-eight years had filled, without reproach, the station of Queen Consort, should object to be effaced with her lord, until the necessity for his seclusion was unmistakably demonstrated. And when discord raged in the medical council, when Dr. Warren pronounced the King 235to be ‘rather worse’ than he had been at Windsor, while to Sir Lucas and the specialists, as well as to ordinary observers, his condition appeared most hopeful, she might surely be pardoned for leaning to the favourable view. Partisans, however, were too excited to listen to reason. The clergyman from Lincolnshire was denounced in the Opposition newspapers as a mere empiric and creature of Pitt. The most scurrilous abuse was heaped upon the Queen. Both in the press, and in the House of Commons, she was accused of being in league with Willis to misrepresent the state of the King’s health, in order to prevent the Prince, her son, from being invested with the authority of Regent. Pitt, having no option but to propose a Regency, was proceeding with the utmost caution, and seeking to lay on the expectant Viceroy several restrictions, which his character seemed to call for, and which assuredly have not been disapproved by the judgment of posterity. Besides limiting the Prince’s power to confer peerages and pensions, and to alienate royal property, the Premier recommended that the care and management of the King’s person, as well as the appointments in the household, should be entrusted to the Queen. Perhaps no part of the Government’s plan aroused more angry hostility than this. ‘How would the King on his recovery,’ demanded Burke in Parliament, ‘be pleased at seeing the patronage of the Household taken from the Prince of Wales, his representative, and given to the Queen? He must be shocked at the idea.’ Allusions to these attacks on one who so little deserved them occur in Miss Burney’s Diary about this time:
“January 10th.—The King again is not so well; and new evidences are called for in the House, relative to his state. My poor Royal Mistress now droops. I grieve—grieve 236to see her!—but her own name and conduct called in question! Who can wonder she is shocked and shaken? Was there not enough before, firmly as she supported it?
“11TH.—This morning Dr. John gave me but a bad account of the poor King. His amendment is not progressive; it fails, and goes back, and disappoints most grievously; yet it would be nothing were the case and its circumstances less discussed, and were expectation more reasonable.
“12TH.—A melancholy day: news bad both at home and abroad. At home, the dear, unhappy King still worse; abroad, new examinations voted of the physicians! Good Heaven! what an insult does this seem from Parliamentary power, to investigate and bring forth to the world every circumstance of such a malady as is ever held sacred to secrecy in the most private families! How indignant we all feel here no words can say.”
Macaulay is very severe on poor Miss Burney for the want of correct constitutional principles shown in this last entry. He cites the passage to prove that the second Robe-Keeper’s ‘way of life was rapidly impairing her powers of reasoning and her sense of justice;’ that, as he elsewhere says, this existence was as incompatible with health ‘of mind as the air of the Pomptine Marshes with health of body.’ The critic is perfectly right in stating that the motion which roused indignation at Kew was made by Mr. Pitt, who was regarded as the King’s champion, though he should have added that it was brought forward in response to a challenge from the Opposition. But Miss Burney felt as a woman, and wrote as a woman, not as a politician. Had she been a politician, she would still have been entitled to the indulgence 237which was being claimed and abused by every speaker and journalist on the side opposed to the Court. Consider the debates and the scandalous charges that she read daily in the newspapers. And if she erred, she erred in company with a large number of other heretics who should have been far better fortified in sound doctrine than herself. If the atmosphere of the palace was unwholesome, it was much less contaminating than the malaria of Carlton House. If the novelist was wrong in thinking that the House of Commons ought not to concern itself with the details of the King’s illness, what is to be said of the eminent Whigs who maintained that the Legislature had nothing to do with any question relating to the disposition of the regal authority? What shall be said for Alexander Wedderburn, then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and afterwards Lord Chancellor, who advised the Prince of Wales to seize on the Regency without consulting either House of Parliament? Or what can be urged for Fox himself, who asserted his patron’s right to take this course, in the very face of the assembled Commons? ‘It is melancholy,’ says Macaulay, ‘to see genius sinking into such debasement.’ What words, then, shall we apply to Edmund Burke, who scandalized both sides of the House by declaring that ‘the Almighty had hurled the monarch from his throne, and plunged him into a condition which drew down upon him the pity of the meanest peasant in his kingdom’? Miss Burney, still feeling and writing as a woman, could not accuse her old friend Burke of being debased, though she sadly laments over him as ‘that most misguided of vehement and wild orators.’[99] Such was the virulence engendered in a spectator of the misery at Court by associating with Leonard Smelt and Colonel Digby.
238
“Kew Palace, Monday, February 2nd.—What an adventure had I this morning! one that has occasioned me the severest personal terror I ever experienced in my life.
“Sir Lucas Pepys still persisting that exercise and air were absolutely necessary to save me from illness, I have continued my walks, varying my gardens from Richmond to Kew, according to the accounts I received of the movements of the King. For this I had her Majesty’s permission, on the representation of Sir Lucas.
“This morning, when I received my intelligence of the King from Dr. John Willis, I begged to know where I might walk in safety. ‘In Kew Gardens,’ he said, ‘as the King would be in Richmond.’
“‘Should any unfortunate circumstance,’ I cried, ‘at any time, occasion my being seen by his Majesty, do not mention my name, but let me run off without call or notice.’
“This he promised. Everybody, indeed, is ordered to keep out of sight.
“Taking, therefore, the time I had most at command, I strolled into the gardens. I had proceeded, in my quick way, nearly half the round, when I suddenly perceived, through some trees, two or three figures. Relying on the instructions of Dr. John, I concluded them to be workmen and gardeners; yet tried to look sharp, and in so doing, as they were less shaded, I thought I saw the person of his Majesty!
“Alarmed past all possible expression, I waited not to know more, but turning back, ran off with all my might. But what was my terror to hear myself pursued!—to hear the voice of the King himself loudly and hoarsely calling after me, ‘Miss Burney! Miss Burney!’
“I protest I was ready to die. I knew not in what 239state he might be at the time; I only knew the orders to keep out of his way were universal; that the Queen would highly disapprove any unauthorised meeting, and that the very action of my running away might deeply, in his present irritable state, offend him. Nevertheless, on I ran, too terrified to stop, and in search of some short passage, for the garden is full of little labyrinths, by which I might escape.
“The steps still pursued me, and still the poor hoarse and altered voice rang in my ears:—more and more footsteps resounded frightfully behind me,—the attendants all running, to catch their eager master, and the voices of the two Doctor Willises loudly exhorting him not to heat himself so unmercifully.
“Heavens, how I ran! I do not think I should have felt the hot lava from Vesuvius—at least, not the hot cinders—had I so run during its eruption. My feet were not sensible that they even touched the ground.
“Soon after, I heard other voices, shriller, though less nervous, call out, ‘Stop! stop! stop!’
“I could by no means consent: I knew not what was purposed, but I recollected fully my agreement with Dr. John that very morning, that I should decamp if surprised, and not be named.
“My own fears and repugnance, also, after a flight and disobedience like this, were doubled in the thought of not escaping: I knew not to what I might be exposed, should the malady be then high, and take the turn of resentment. Still, therefore, on I flew; and such was my speed, so almost incredible to relate or recollect, that I fairly believe no one of the whole party could have overtaken me, if these words, from one of the attendants, had not reached me, ‘Doctor Willis begs you to stop!’
“‘I cannot! I cannot!’ I answered, still flying on, 240when he called out, ‘You must, ma’am; it hurts the King to run.’
“Then, indeed, I stopped—in a state of fear really amounting to agony. I turned round, I saw the two Doctors had got the King between them, and three attendants of Dr. Willis’s were hovering about. They all slackened their pace, as they saw me stand still; but such was the excess of my alarm, that I was wholly insensible to the effects of a race which, at any other time, would have required an hour’s recruit.
“As they approached, some little presence of mind happily came to my command: it occurred to me that, to appease the wrath of my flight, I must now show some confidence: I therefore faced them as undauntedly ............