Farmer George Volume I Part 5

[82] Philip Yorke (1690-1764), created Baron Hardwicke 1773; Lord Chancellor 1737; created Earl of Hardwicke 1754.

As the latter proposal had not been made a condition of the grant, ministers were non-plussed. "Was the gift to be revoked, because the Prince had natural affection? Was the whole message to be carried into execution, and a young man, of age by Act of Parliament, to be taken by force, and detained a prisoner in the palace? What law would justify such violence? Who would be the agents of such violence? His Majesty himself and the late Prince of Wales had furnished the Prince with precedents of mutinying against the crown with impunity. How little the ministers, who had planned the first step, knew what to advise for the second, was plain, from their giving no further advice for about a month, and from the advice which they did give then, and from the perplexity in which they remained for two months more, and from the ignominious result of the whole transaction, both to the King and to themselves at last."[83]

[83] Walpole: _Memoirs of George II_.

The King's offer had been made at the end of May or the beginning of June, 1756, and the Prince of Wales, acting under his mother's instructions, had followed up his second victory by carrying the war into the enemy's camp, and expressing a desire that Lord Bute should be appointed his Groom of the Stole. In July a second message in the King's name was sent to the heir-apparent to inquire if he still adhered to his desire to remain with his mother and to the demand for the appointment of Lord Bute. This, intended as a warning or threat, failed of its intended effect, for the Prince replied: "That since the King did him the honour to ask him the question, he did hope to have leave to continue with his mother, as her happiness so much depended on it--for the other point, he had _never directly_ asked it--yet, since encouraged, he would explain himself; and from the long knowledge and good opinion he had of Lord Bute, he did desire to have him about his person."

After this, there was nothing for it but surrender on the part of the ministers, who could not but admit to themselves that they had played the game and lost it. Lord Waldegrave was relieved from the post of Governor, much to his pleasure, for he had found his servitude uncongenial; and to the delight of the Princess Dowager, who had unreasonably regarded him as a spy, and also of the Prince of Wales, who had no liking for him, and subsequently denounced him as "a depraved, worthless man, well-intentioned, but wholly unfit for the situation in which he was placed." The King accepted Lord Waldegrave's resignation with regret; and consented to bestow the gold key on Lord Bute only with great reluctance--indeed, so strong was his feeling in the matter that he refused to give the insignia of office himself as was usual, and sent it by the Duke of Grafton, who slipped it into the pocket of the recipient, and advised him to show no offence.

Bute kissed hands as Groom of the Stole in October, at the same time as the other members of the Prince of Wales's new establishment, in which Lord Huntingdon was Master of the Horse, Lord Euston, Lord Pembroke, and Lord Digby, Lords of the Bedchamber; Lord Bathurst, treasurer; Hon. S.

Masham, Auditor; and Hon. James Brudenel, Master of the Robes. Andrew Stone was appointed Secretary, and his first duty was to carry out his master's wish that George Scott should not be retained in the Household.

"The reason given for his exclusion was, his having talked with contempt of the Prince's understanding, and with freedom of the Princess's conduct. The truth was, Scott was a frank man, of no courtly depth, and had indiscreetly disputed with Lord Bute, who affected a character of learning."[84] This prejudice was unfortunate, for, according to Rose, Scott, though no courtier, was the sort of man who should have been kept by George about his person. "I never knew a man more entirely blameless in all the relations of life; amiable, honourable, temperate, and one of the sweetest dispositions I ever knew."[85] But he was too clear-sighted to be a welcome person in court circles and his lack of deference to the fetish set up by the Princess Dowager was in her eyes unpardonable.

[84] Walpole: _Memoirs of George II_.

[85] Rose: _Diary_. Scott was subsequently appointed a Commissioner of Excise.

From the appointment of his Household in 1856 so uneventful was the life of the Prince of Wales that there is nothing to record of the years intervening until he ascended the throne, to which he was called suddenly. On October 25, 1760, George II rose at the usual hour, seemingly in good health; but, as the page left the room after breakfast, he heard a noise, and found the King had fallen from his chair to the floor. "Call Amelia," said the monarch; and instantly expired.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

_Photo by Emery Walker_

_Portrait by Allan Ramsay_

GEORGE III IN HIS CORONATION ROBES]

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW KING

The King is dead! Long live the King!

George II has given place to George III, and those who had prostrated themselves before the former were now anxious to pay court to his successor. Yet those who had at heart the welfare of their country trembled at the thought that the throne, with all the influence appertaining thereto, had pa.s.sed to an ignorant, narrow-minded lad; and reviewing the young king's training, and his mediocre gifts, it must be admitted that the fear was not unreasonable.

The Princess Dowager's plan of isolating the Prince of Wales from companions of his own age, while it had kept him from evil counsellors, had resulted only too obviously in making him a very dull young man. His mother admitted he was "shy and backward; not a wild dissipated boy, but good-natured and cheerful, with a serious cast upon the whole;"[86] and unfortunately the mode of life imposed upon him during his minority tended to develop that serious cast at the expense of other qualities.

Bubb Dodington, a keen observer, noticed this trait so early as 1752, and asked the Princess Dowager what she thought the real disposition of the Prince to be. "She said that I knew him almost as well as she did; that he was very honest, but she wished that he was a little more forward, and less childish at his age: that she hoped his preceptors would improve him. I begged to know what methods they took; what they read to him, or made him read; and whether he showed any particular inclination to any of the people about him. She said she did not well know what they taught him; but, to speak freely, she was afraid not much: that they were in the country and followed their diversions, and not much else that she could discover: that we must hope it would be better when we came to town. I said that I did not much regard books, that what I the most wished was that his Royal Highness should begin to learn the usages and knowledge of the world; be informed of the general frame and nature of this government and const.i.tution, and of the general course and manner of business, without descending into minutias."[87]

[86] Bubb Dodington: _Diary_.

[87] Bubb Dodington: _Diary_.

The young Prince of Wales's amus.e.m.e.nts had been few. He was sometimes permitted to play a round card game, called Comet, with his mother and brothers and sisters; and the Princess Dowager showed more liberality of mind than was usual with her by declaring that "she liked the Prince should now and then amuse himself at small play, but that princes should never play deep, both for the example and because it did not become them to win great sums."[88] A greater delight of the Prince was to take part in amateur theatricals, an indulgence sometimes granted as the practice might accustom him to the public speaking that must later fall to his lot. This was of great value to him for, while in conversation his utterance was rapid, on public occasions he spoke so distinctly and with such dignity that Quin, hearing his first Speech from the throne, exclaimed delightedly: "Ay! 'twas I that taught the boy to speak!" But George was not fond of delivering or listening to orations. "I am sure that the rage for public speaking, and the extravagant length to which some of our more popular orators carry their harangues in Parliament, is very detrimental to the national business," he expressed his opinion after he ascended the throne, "and I wish that it may not, in the end, prove injurious to the public peace."[89]

[88] Bubb Dodington: _Diary_.

[89] Galt: _George III, his Court and Family_.

In spite of these occasional relaxations, the family circle at Leicester House was far from bright, and Dodington has recorded how in November, 1753, he was summoned to wait upon the Princess Dowager, and how, instead of the small party and a little music he expected, he found no one but her Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, Prince Edward and Princess Augusta, all in undress. They sat round the fire, and Dodington and the Princess talked of familiar occurrences "with the ease and unreservedness and unconstraint, as if one had dropped into a sister's house that had a family, to pa.s.s the evening," but agreeable as it was to Dodington, he could not refrain from wis.h.i.+ng, "that the Princess conversed familiarly with more people of a certain knowledge of the world."[90] But even Dodington seldom saw the Prince of Wales, and, though George II showed no disposition to keep his successor in the background, the latter spent much of his time in, perhaps not entirely voluntary, retirement at Kew, where his mother was making "a collection of exotic plants, the precursor of the present Royal Botanical Gardens, on a scale of liberal munificence, besides continuing to erect, under the superintendence of Sir William Chambers, the various ornamental gardens, originally planned by the deceased Prince."[91] Horticulture had little charm for the Prince of Wales, who was, however, attracted by agricultural science, and took an active interest in the farming of his land, tastes which subsequently he endeavoured in vain to inculcate in his sons, and secured for him the nickname that still clings to him.[92]

[90] Bubb Dodington: _Diary_.

[91] Galt: _George III, his Court and Family_.

[92] According to John Galt, George III wrote several letters signed Ralph Robinson and dated from Windsor, to Arthur Young for the latter's _Annals of Agriculture_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From the Oxford Magazine_

THE b.u.t.tON MAKER]

George found some pleasure in trifling mechanical occupations, and had a watch made from his own designs by Arnold, of which a description is extant. "It was rather less than a silver twopence, yet contained one hundred and twenty different parts: the whole weighed between five and six pennyweights." Later in life he amused himself in turning on the lathe, and it was declared by the satirists that the royal ingenuity eventually went so far as to construct a b.u.t.ton. Certainly for a long time he figured in caricature as "the royal b.u.t.ton-maker"; and it was in this capacity an anonymous versifier congratulated him upon the success of his army in America.

"Then shall my lofty numbers tell Who taught the royal babes to spell And sovereign art pursue To mend a watch, or set a clock, New pattern shape for Hervey's frock, Or b.u.t.tons made at Kew."[93]

[93] _The New Foundling Hospital for Wit._

George III as Prince of Wales saw nothing of the outside world, and even when in 1759 he was allowed to make an excursion beyond the limits usually imposed upon him, it took the form of a private trip through Scotland, when, preserving the strictest _incognito_, he paid visits to Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Isle of Bute and a few other places, accompanied only by Lord Bute and two servants.

It may here be remarked that no English king travelled less than George III, who during the whole of his long life rarely visited any part of his dominions.

"Our sons some slave of greatness may behold, Cast in the genuine Asiatic mould, Who of three realms shall condescend to know No more than he can spy from Windsor's brow."[94]

[94] _Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers._

He never went to Hanover or Scotland or Ireland or Wales, and in England his longest journeys were to Cheltenham, Weymouth, and Portsmouth, which latter town he visited twice, but solely to make an official inspection of a battles.h.i.+p.

"There shall he see, as other folks have seen, That s.h.i.+ps have anchors, and that seas are green; Shall count the tackling trim, the streamers fine, With Bradshaw prattle, and with Sandwich dine; And then row back, amidst the cannon's roar, As safe, as sage, as when he left the sh.o.r.e."[95]

[95] _Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers._

"To tell you the honest truth," Ernest, King of Hanover, said in 1845; "the impression on my mind has ever been that it was a very unfortunate circ.u.mstance for my father that he was kept as it were, aloof, not only from his brothers, but almost from all young men of his own age; and this I saw evident marks of almost daily."[96] Indeed, the unhappy relations of George III with his sons must in great part be attributed to the isolation of the King's early years: never having been permitted to indulge in the pleasures of youth, he could in later years make no allowance for such follies in others. It comes as a relief to find that George III when Prince of Wales did commit one stupid, boyish prank: when a tutor reproved him and told him he must stick closer to his work, he put pitch on the tutor's chair, thus making the pedagogue stick closer to his seat.

[96] "Secluded from the world, attached from his infancy to one set of persons and one set of ideas, he can neither open his heart to new connexions, nor his mind to better information. A character of this sort is the soil fittest to produce that obstinate bigotry in politics and religion which begins with a meritorious sacrifice of the understanding, and finally conducts the monarch and the martyr to the block."--Junius, May 28, 1770.

Some lads who, from one cause or another, see little society, derive knowledge of the world from books, but George was not one of these. He did not learn easily, and he had not been helped by an extensive or thorough education. His knowledge of Latin or Greek was negligible, and Huish's statement that at an early age the Prince "correctly understood the history of modern times and the just relations of England with the other states" makes too great a strain upon our credulity. It is true that in support of his view Huish prints a list of t.i.tles of plays that the Prince is said to have selected to show the condition of various states and persons; but though, as a matter of fact this has little to recommend it as an intellectual exercise, it is unlikely the youth performed even this task without a.s.sistance.[97] It may be conceded, however, that he read with more or less understanding the history of England, France and Germany; and that he could speak the language of these countries with fluency. He wrote English with little show of acquaintance with grammar and never could spell correctly, while his general knowledge was lamentably slight, and in spite of fulsome biographers, books never had any attraction for him. "He never delighted in study, nor ever pa.s.sed much of his time in sedentary occupations, calculated to improve his mind, after his accession to the crown,"

Wraxall admits frankly. "A newspaper which he commonly took up after dinner, and over which, however interesting its contents might be, he usually fell asleep in less than half-an-hour, const.i.tuted the ordinary extent of his application."[98] He was in truth a dull lad, and Thackeray was probably right in his belief that "the cleverest tutors in the world could have done little probably to expand that small intellect, though they might have improved his taste and taught his perceptions some generosity."[99]

[97] Russia, _The Maiden Queen_; Germany, _The Rivals_; Genoa, _All's Well that Ends Well_; Spain, _The Ambitious Stepmother_; Prussia, _The Inconstant, or, The Way to Win Him_; France, _The Busy-Body, Rather the Way of the World_; Sweden, _She Would if She Could_; Denmark, _As You Like It_; The Dutch, _The Medley; or, Nature Will Prevail_; Flanders, _How Happy Could She Be With Either_; King of Sardinia, _The Spartan Hero_; Stanislaus, _An Old Man Taught Wisdom_; Don Philip, _Much Ado About Nothing_; The Young Pretender, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_.

[98] _Recollections and Reflections._

[99] _The Four Georges._

Yet those who expected the worst from the new King were pleasurably disappointed, for, though he never became a great monarch, he developed unsuspected good qualities. In earlier days his indolence had brought upon him a severe reproof from George Scott, who, when his Royal Highness excused his own want of application on the score of idleness, said, cruelly perhaps, but certainly with truth: "Sir, _yours_ is not idleness; your brother Edward is _idle_, but you must not call being asleep all day being idle." On his accession to the throne, George III became suddenly industrious, at once endeavoured to understand public business, and showed himself willing to learn. Indeed, he had always been desirous to improve his mind, and it has been told how when he and Prince Edward once went by water to Woolwich he did not make a _gala_ day of it, as his brother did, and as most other boys would have, "but paid a marked attention to everything useful and curious, taking a view of the several works in the dockyard, seeing the manner of forging an anchor, or making sails, etc."[100]