The Third George: (Georgian Series) (46 page)

‘I am here,’ she told him, ‘and shall be with you as long as you need me.’

He began to weep quietly; the tears splashing on to his nightgown.

‘Good Charlotte,’ he said. ‘Ours was a good marriage. Good Charlotte.’

He would not go; he went on talking without ceasing. Charlotte dared not move for fear his kindly mood turned to one of violence and it was half an hour before his attendants heard him and came to take him back to his bed.

*

There was a brooding silence throughout the castle. The ladies of the Queen’s household lay sleepless in their beds. One fact was clear to them all, and it could no longer be denied: The King was mad.

In her room Fanny Burney could endure the suspense no longer.

At six o’clock she rose and, dressing hastily, went out into the draughty corridors.

The pages were all sleepless. Everyone was waiting tensely for what was going to happen now.

She went back to her room; she was cold, not only because it was always cold in the castle corridors where there was enough wind someone had said to sail a man-o’-war. She had not been there very long when she received a summons from the Queen, and she hastily went to the bedchamber where she found Charlotte sitting up in bed, pale and fearful.

‘Ah, Miss Burney,’ said Charlotte. ‘How are you today?’

Fanny was so moved that she burst into tears. And to her amazement the Queen did the same.

For some minutes they both wept unrestrainedly.

Then the Queen said: ‘I thank you, Miss Burney. You have made me cry. It is a great relief to me. All this night long I have wanted to cry and been unable. I feel better now. I think I will get up.’

While the Queen was at her toilet they could hear the King talking incessantly in the next room.

Another fearful day had begun.

*

There was no hope now of hiding the fact that the King was deranged.

The whole country was talking of it and what this would mean. There was to be a Regency. The King would be replaced by his son.

Pitt was trying to make the Regency a restricted one; Fox and Sheridan were trying to get full powers for the Prince of Wales; and meanwhile the King’s doctors were wrangling together over the treatment he should receive. The King was removed from Windsor to Kew; he was not allowed to shave himself or have a knife at dinner. Once he tried to throw himself out of a window; then he would give himself up to praying and talking of religion. At times his struggling body was forced into a straitjacket. The fashionable Dr Warren was called in; and it was said that he was a friend of the Prince of Wales and was there to serve his ends. The King disliked him and the Queen feared him. And she feared the King.

The King suddenly began to talk of women and seemed obsessed by them. He who had lived such a determinedly respectable life now seemed to be living an erotic one in his thoughts.

‘You are the man who took Sarah Lennox away from me,’ he cried to a harmless footman. ‘Yes you were, eh? What?’

The man fled in fear of his life.

But the obsession with women marked a new phase. The King was now having periods of lucidity. He knew he had been ill, he knew the nature of his illness; he was sad because of it, but during those periods when he was aware he had suffered derangement his mind was sane again.

The lucidity would pass. He saw Elizabeth Pembroke and from the mind over which he had lost control came the imaginings of years. He believed he had divorced Charlotte; he believed he was married to Elizabeth. He addressed her as Queen Elizabeth and attempted to make love to her.

The barriers he himself had set up had crumbled. He was the man he would have been had he not suppressed that man.

He thought of women … women … women.

Then came the clarity; but Elizabeth was still there. He was married to Charlotte, of course – plain, unexciting Charlotte who had nevertheless borne him fifteen children. And he wanted Elizabeth.

He caught Elizabeth in a corridor. She must be his mistress, he told her. She must name anything she wanted and it should be hers.

Elizabeth talked to him gently, kindly, trying to turn his mind away from the subject.

*

The King’s health was improving. The lucid periods were more frequent and of longer duration.

The King is going to recover, said his friends.

Three doctors had signed a bulletin announcing the entire cessation of His Majesty’s illness.

*

The King was restored. His illness had made him popular once more. The people wanted to show him that they were pleased by his recovery. The city of London was ablaze with lights even as far out as Tooting; and between Greenwich and Kensington the lights blazed forth.

Everyone was singing ‘God Save the King’; and the ladies who served at White’s Club had ‘God Save the King’ worked in gold letters on their caps. There were services at St Paul’s, rejoicing everywhere.

The King was to go to Weymouth to recuperate and Weymouth was determined to vie with London in welcoming the King.

The town was lighted from end to end and at every few yards the bands blared forth ‘God Save the King’.

Everyone wanted to tell George how pleased they were that he was well again. All the bathers on the seashore wore ‘God Save the King’ on their caps and when George left his machine to step into the sea a band would strike up the national anthem.

It was all very gratifying, said the King’s friends.

But the King looked to the future with sad eyes. There were times when his mind would be in a whirl, when he wanted to talk and never stop; there were thoughts of women in his mind … all the beautiful women he had missed and dreamed of.

He knew that there were occasions when he was wavering between lucidity and insanity, and in his heart he was aware that what had happened before would happen again. It was inevitable. He was trying to hold it off, but he was not strong enough.

And he looked at Charlotte and saw a little old woman – for this had aged her, even as it had him – a dowdy little old woman.

Poor Charlotte! he thought. What is she thinking now?

He would not ask her. He dared not ask her.

The people were singing:

Our prayers are heard, and Providence restores

A Patriot King to bless Britannia’s shores.

The people were easily moved. They loved one day and hated the next.

A patriot King who had lost America, who had given them the Prince of Wales, who had been mad for a while … and would be so again.

Ah! He had said it. It was the thought that stayed with him and which he knew would come true.

He would be known as the King who was mad.

Charlotte was thinking: What will become of us? This is not the end. It is the beginning.

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First published 1969 by Robert Hale & Company

© Jean Plaidy 1969

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