ページの画像
PDF
ePub

stormy were the debates in Parliament on this question of the allowance, that he from very shame determined to forego the salary, but when he communicated this resolve to the regent, that royal man became furious.

[ocr errors]

So, sir,' he said with a sneer, 'you would be popular at our expense !' The duke then changed his mind, and the sum was granted by Parliament; but he did not receive it for more than two years, when his royal father died.

To the public at large His Majesty had long ceased to exist: for years his lucid intervals had been rare, but his fits of frenzy had fortunately been rarer yet. Totally blind and deaf, almost deserted by his wife in the last years of her life, and by his children, worn and stooped, his white hair hanging on his shoulders, his silver beard sweeping his chest, he wandered purposelessly from room to room, in the suite of apartments allotted to him in his royal palace at Windsor, a desolate and melancholy figure. Waterloo had been lost and won; the idol of the French idolatry, the fear of Europe, had fallen from his high estate; the Bourbons once more sat on the throne of France; the Princess

CONDITION OF THE KING.

279

Charlotte had wedded and died; the Royal princesses had been given in marriage; the princes had taken to themselves wives; the queen and Duke of Kent had passed away, and yet of all these events the king had remained wholly unconscious-all the world was to him a blank.

On one occasion, during one of his lucid intervals, he received a visit from the queen, now an unusual thing. Her Majesty found him singing a hymn in a quavering mournful voice, whilst he accompanied himself on the harpsichord, a favourite instrument of his. When he had ceased, he hesitated for a moment, and went slowly down on his knees, when he prayed for Her Majesty, then for his family, and the nation, concluding with a touching petition for himself, that it might please God to avert his heavy calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to submit; after which he burst into tears, and his brief gleam of reason vanished, leaving him once more in mental darkness. At times he would hold imaginary conversations with statesmen, long since dead and gone; and on other occasions he lost all sense of his own identity, and believed himself dead.

'I must have a new suit of clothes,' he would say, and I will have them black in memory of George the Third, he was a good man.'

One of his daughters, the Princess Elizabeth, speaking of him in her correspondence, says, 'He considers himself no longer an inhabitant of this world, and often, when he has played one of his favourite tunes, observes that he was very fond of it when he was in the world. He speaks of the Queen and all his family, and hopes they are doing well now, for he loved them very much when he was with them.'

Towards the middle of January, 1820, it became evident to his doctors that his life was not destined to be of much longer duration, and his family were prepared for news of his expected demise. He lingered, however, till the 29th of the month, when the solemn toll of the great bell of St. Paul's announced to his subjects that their sovereign was no more. He died calmly, but without recovering his reason during his last hours-the only one of his sons present at the dread moment being the Duke of York. He had reigned over sixty years, and had entered into his eighty-second year.

CHAPTER VIII.

Schemes for a Royal Divorce-The Princess Abroad-The Milan Commission-The New Queen-Her Journey to London-The Trial begins-Lord John Russell's Hint to His Majesty-Italian Witnesses going to Westminster -Accusations against the Queen-Bergami in the Tent-Result of the Trial and General RejoicingsPublic Feeling against the King-Pamphlets and Ballads-The Broad-faced Naval Gentleman.

A

LL this while the one predominant thought

which seized and held forcible possession. of the regent's brain, was how he should rid himself of the spouse who was not of his bosom. But four months after her departure from England, Brougham, in writing to Earl Grey, says, • Certain it is that some movements towards a divorce have been in discussion at least at Carlton House ;' but the hour for the execution of this treasured scheme was not yet at hand, and meanwhile the royal man bided his time, and plotted his plots.

On leaving England the princess had gone to Brunswick, where after tarrying for some time at her brother's court, and relieving her purse of a considerable sum for his benefit, she betook herself to Germany, and from thence to Italy, the land she had selected as that of her future residence. From time to time during her absence abroad, rumours reached England of acquaintances she had made unworthy of her notice as a British princess; of her characteristic familiarity with strangers; of her love of gaiety; and of her general carelessness of behaviour. Repudiated by her husband, separated from her child-at first by royal command, and then by death-bereft of friends, homeless and a wanderer, she grew reckless, and her indiscretions were construed by the spies who surrounded her into serious crimes.

'From the first moment she quitted British ground,' as the Times subsequently stated, 'she was dogged and tracked by a band of lurking villains who were set to spy out all her actions, with the certainty that, if they could either find or impute crime, they should also find ready

« 前へ次へ »