FINIS.
Under the date of March 6th, 1751, Bubb Doddington--who had entered the
Prince’s household in July, 1749--writes in his Diary:
“Went to Leicester House where the Prince told me he had catched cold
the day before at Kew, and had been blooded.”[73]
The full history of the catching of the cold was as follows:--
It seems that at the commencement of this year the Prince had had
an attack of pleurisy from which he had not entirely recovered.
Nevertheless he was most careless of his health, a habit he had derived
from his father, who on one occasion, when he refused to nurse himself
was asked by Walpole:
“Sir, do you know what your father died of? Thinking he could not die!”
Frederick in this way certainly partook of this attribute of George the
Second.
In addition to the attack of pleurisy, the Prince had during the
previous year had a severe fall from his horse, which had left him
ailing. It cannot be doubted that his constitution had been showing
signs of breaking down for some months before the attack of pleurisy in
the winter.
However, on the 5th of March, 1751, he attended at the House of Lords
to hear his father give his sanction to some Acts of Parliament.
This ceremony concluded, the Prince left the hot Chamber, no doubt
overcrowded and stuffy, and came out into the cold March wind,
proceeding to Carlton House in his chair with the windows down. In
other words sitting in a thorough draught. This was not sufficient;
at Carlton House he took off his heavy ceremonial suit, and replaced
it by light unaired clothing. He appears then to have hurried off to
Kew, and there walked about the Gardens in a cold wind for three hours.
Returning to Carlton House he lay upon a couch in a room without a
fire, with the windows open.
It appears that the Earl of Egmont, who was a member of his household,
came into the room, and finding him there reasoned with him on the risk
he was running, no doubt knowing full well that the Prince was in a
weak state of health.
Frederick simply laughed at the idea of danger, and finally went over
to Leicester House.
It is not surprising that when Mr. Doddington called there the next
day, he found him very ill.
But not so ill as to warrant him calling there again the day following.
He went, however, on March 8th, and this is the entry he made of the
visit in his diary:
“March 8th. The Prince not recovered. Our passing the next week at Kew
put off.”
Doddington did not consider the Prince ill enough for a visit on the
9th, but he went there again on the 10th.
“At Leicester House. The Prince was better and saw company.”
Incredible as it may appear, the Prince seems to have gone out to
supper at Carlton House on the 12th, and relapsed of course.
Doddington did not go again until the 13th, and then he recorded the
following:--
“At Leicester House. The Prince did not appear, having a return of a
pain in his side.” And no wonder!
This pain in his side was the worst symptom of the Prince’s illness,
had the doctors but known it; but the diagnosis of a case in those days
must have been a very rough and ready affair.
It has been mentioned that some years before Frederick had received a
blow on the chest from a cricket ball--some say a tennis ball--while
playing on the lawn at Cliefden. It had caused him some pain, but, as
usual, he had neglected it, and some trouble had formed there; trouble
perhaps, fostered by the abundance of the _bons-pères_ the Prince was
in the habit of drinking in the custom of the time. Now on the 13th of
March Doddington records that the Prince had a return of a pain in his
side. This was doubtless the old spot injured by the cricket ball.
Doddington was evidently now getting alarmed--and he had reason for it,
for all his hopes and many ambitions were centred in the Prince--he
went to Leicester House the next day and writes down carefully the
result of his visit.
“14. At Leicester House. The Prince asleep--twice blooded, and with a
blister on his back, as also on both legs, that night.”
He was there again on the 15th.
“The Prince ... and was out of all danger.”
“16. The Prince without pain or fever.”
It is told that in this painless interval, Frederick did that, which
perhaps he had been longing to do in those weary days and nights of
suffering. He sent for his eldest son George. Then when the boy came,
in his state of weakness, his mind seemed to revert to the unkindness
of his own father and the bitterness that unkindness had mingled with
his life. With his arms round the child he dearly loved, and with the
boy’s fair head drawn down to his own, he said these touching words:--
“Come, George, let us be good friends while we are permitted to be so.”
He had evidently, in his mind, the fear that his father would sooner or
later come between him and his boy.
The Prince is said to have had three physicians in attendance on him,
of whom Dr. Lee was one, and two surgeons, Wilmot and Hawkins, to do
the copious blood letting, which doubtless drained away his strength.
But of these five doctors not one saw the imminent danger he was in.
Doddington, however, was still anxious, and was at the Prince’s again
on the 17th.
“Went twice to Leicester House. The Prince had a bad night, till one
this morning, then was better, and continued so.”
He was there again on the 18th.
“The Prince better and sat up half an hour.”
The general impression then was that Frederick was recovering, and
Doddington did not call again the next day at all. Cards were indulged
in by the members of the Prince’s family and some of the household in
an adjacent room, and Frederick’s faithful follower Desnoyers, the
French dancing-master and violinist, was admitted to soothe the invalid
with his beautiful music. He sat by the bed and played to him with that
wonderful touch for which he was celebrated.
It is not difficult to reconstruct that scene on the evening of the
20th of March. Doddington had called at Leicester House at three
o’clock in the afternoon, and had been told that the Prince was much
better and had slept eight hours the night before. Doddington had gone
off quite satisfied to the House of Commons.
But now it is evening, late evening, past nine o’clock, the Prince is
lying thoughtful in his high four-post bedstead. The room is lighted
by wax candles, their glare shaded from his eyes by the curtains of the
bed; by his bedside is the old French dancing-master, violin in hand
playing some soft melody which Frederick loves; this soft strain is
broken occasionally by the voices of the card players in an adjoining
room.
Stealing about the large room with soft tread are the pompous doctors,
the _ignorant_ doctors, who declared their patient to be getting well.
Stately bewigged powdered men these, with silver topped canes
carried almost as wands of office; ready at a moment’s notice to
draw the lifeblood from their patient, or to order their dispensers
in attendance on them in a room hard by to pound up a nauseous drug,
in a great mortar, to be administered crude in a revolting draught
without any attempt to conceal its horrid taste, for medicine was
not administered in those days, in attractive tinctures, with every
bitterness covered by some subtle flavouring; it was taken usually in
the form of a gritty, stringy draught which turned the stomach of the
patient.
But around the sick chamber flitted the young wife of Frederick; she
was only thirty-two then, and the mother of eight children, which
number was very soon to be increased to nine. She was a most devoted
wife and scarcely left him, it is said, during his illness.
There Frederick lay thinking, with the soft notes of the violin
floating around him, and the jarring laughter of the card players
breaking in upon him at times. Perhaps he was thinking of his boy
George as the music moved him, as it will an artistic nature.
“Come, George, let us be good friends while we are permitted to be so!”
A clock has just struck the half hour after nine; perhaps the last
thought in Frederick’s mind, as he is lying there listening to
Desnoyer’s music, is of the God he is so soon to meet. The hand of the
clock creeps on to the quarter; it is nearly a quarter to ten.
Suddenly the music stops. Frederick is taken with a violent fit of
coughing; when it ceases, Dr. Wilmot comes to the bedside.
“I trust Your Royal Highness will be better now, and pass a quiet
night.”
The Princess comes to the foot of the bed and leans over it; Dr.
Hawkins approaches the Prince with a candle and gazes anxiously at him;
at last he sees something which alarms him, the cough breaks out again
with increased violence, Desnoyer places his arms round the Prince and
raises him in the bed to relieve him, as he does so the Prince shivers
and cries out:--
“Je sens la mort!” (I feel death.)
Desnoyers alarmed, cries out to the Princess at the foot of the bed:--
“Madame, the Prince is going.” She rushes round to the head of the bed
and bends over her husband.
It is over; he is dead.
And from the next room comes a burst of laughter from the card players.
FOOTNOTES:
[73] Just previous to this visit, Doddington had been much engaged
in a Motion made in the House of Commons by Townshend, the Prince’s
Groom of the Bedchamber, and seconded by a Colonel Haldane concerning a
military scandal, which shows that the name of Haldane was not unknown
in military debates then.