Kew Gardens

In the Memoirs of Mrs. Papendiek, whose husband and father were Court pages, and who was brought up at Kew, it is mentioned that during the “No Popery” riots the children were sent away to Kew, while the King stayed at his post in London, showing courage and spirit, but would ride down between four and seven in the morning for a peep at his darlings, brought up to their parents’ early hours. Other reminiscences give glimpses of the royal domesticity and rusticity, not so dull to all tastes as to those of a man about town like Thackeray. One lad, John Rogers, who lived into Victoria’s reign, remembered seeing the young King, shut out of Richmond Lodge after a morning walk, tapping at the window in vain, till at last he contrived to open one and push himself in head foremost. In the country, George and Charlotte were up at six, and breakfasted with their children about them. They often dined with the children, too; later on the King took to early dinners that scandalised his guests by the simplicity of mutton and turnips. His usual drink was a sort of lemonade known in the household as King’s cup. In an age of intemperance and riots, he preferred sobriety, the morning dew, and the open air, with plenty of exercise to keep down his fat. The lucky children had all Kew Gardens to play in; and once a week the whole family made a regular promenade through the Richmond grounds. When he went further afield, George loved Paul-prying into the cottages of his poorer neighbours, showing an interest in their petty affairs, and pouring out upon them more questions than could be answered, such as that famous one, how the apple got into the dumpling? Though the London mob, at different times, were insolent to both sovereigns, they never lost popularity at Kew. When they next visited it after the King’s escape from assassination by a mad woman, the road over Kew Green was found crowded by all the inhabitants, “lame, old, sick, blind, and infants,” with a band of musicians “who began _God Save the King!_ the moment they came on the Green, and finished it with loud huzzas”--a neighbourly demonstration that moved the Queen to tearfully declaring, “I shall always love little Kew for this.” George succeeded to his mother’s interest in Kew Gardens, now enlarged and improved as will be told in another chapter. He also carried on a large home-farm that extended into the parish of Mortlake, while the Old Deer Park was turned into pasture for a flock of merino sheep which he imported into England. The young princes were brought up to the same tastes. Before getting into their teens, the two eldest had a plot of ground given them, where, _à la_ Sandford and Merton, they planted a crop of corn, weeded, reaped, thrashed and ground it with their own hands, and saw it made into bread, of which the whole family duly partook. Up till our own time was standing in Kew Gardens a miniature structure said to have been built by the princes as part of their apprenticeship to life. In the present Kew Palace are preserved specimens of their early writing, George’s copy being _Conscious Innocence_, while Frederick traces very creditably the sentiment, _Aim at Improvement_. It was not through parental indulgence if these boys grew to despise such innocent pursuits. Queen Charlotte taught them herself in their A B C stage: and when they were given over to tutors, the order was that they should be treated like ordinary scholars, flogged if they deserved it, and so forth. The rod seems not to have been spared on him who was to become the Lord’s anointed; and his education in the classics prospered better than his father’s. The notorious Dr. Dodd, who came to be hanged for forgery, was at one time proposed as the Prince of Wales’s tutor. He was brought up with his next brother Frederick, who, till created Duke of York, bore in boyhood the foreign title of Bishop of Osnaburgh, and had been made a Knight of the Bath in the nursery. The little Bishop did not take kindly to books; but in later life George IV. could pose as a scholar before the courtly wits about him; even in his teens he corrected his Governor, Lord Bruce, on a false quantity, so mortifying the noble pedagogue that he gave in his resignation. There is another story, perhaps recorded by Signor Ben Trovato, that in the Prince’s later life an uncourtly Provost of Eton mentioned Homer to him as “an author with whom your Royal Highness is probably not much acquainted,” to which H.R.H. suavely replied that he had forgotten a good deal of his Homer, but remembered one line, and went on to quote _Il._ i. 225, which, for readers in the same case as to Homer, may be rendered by Dryden’s version, “Dastard and drunken, mean and insolent”--epithets that too well fitted the rebuked pedant in question. The Eton boys of that day, for whom the _summum supplicium_, according to Henry Angelo’s _Memoirs_, was not over six cuts of a birch, would appear to have been handled in less Spartan fashion than were the King’s sons in their private schoolroom. The Princess Sophia told Miss Amelia Murray that she had seen her eldest brothers, at thirteen and fourteen, held by the arms to be flogged with a long whip. But once the naughty boys are said to have turned against one of their severe masters, using upon him the rod he proposed for them. This story may have suggested a scene in Thackeray’s _Virginians_, as it might have been prompted by one in _Roderick Random_, or a variant in _The Fool of Quality_, a very long and edifying romance of the Sandford and Merton school, which had a vogue at this period. The Queen held no high opinion of novel-reading; and if her sons studied the works of Smollett, it would perhaps be on the sly, as must have been a good many doings in that family. We know how these carefully educated princes had more of Merton than of Sandford in their disposition; then they soon found flatterers and courtiers to set them against their strict training, and to curry favour with a future sovereign. Childish mischief may excuse the freak of the boy Prince of Wales saluting his father with the hated cry of “Wilkes and Liberty!” But it was a serious matter when the second son was precociously found playing the Don Juan with a cottage beauty. That scapegrace Bishop is accused of leading his elder brother into wrong-doings for which he perhaps needed no prompter. Their uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, was another bad counsellor, who delighted in debauching his nephews out of ill will to the moral King. A worse companion, later on, would be the notorious Duke de Chartres, afterwards _Égalité_ Orleans, who brought to London French-polished vices to exchange for English jockeyism. The Prince of Wales, like his father, was fond of music, and, if flattery may be trusted, made no despicable performer. Mrs. Papendiek, having the same tastes, can give us some glimpse of his hobbledehoy recreations. What with the goings on of the Prince of Wales at the Lodge, the fun with Fischer, the celebrated oboe player, and the various amusements in which I was engaged, the season was one of gaiety, mirth, and enjoyment. The well-known bet of five guineas between Bach and Fischer was made in the presence of his Royal Highness and of us all. The bet was that Fischer could not play his own minuet. He was a very nervous man, and after allowing him to get through a few bars, Bach stood before him with a lemon in his hand, which he squeezed so that the juice dropped slowly. Then he bit another so that the juice ran out of his mouth freely. Fischer tried once or twice to get rid of the water that must, on such a sight, fill the mouth; but not being able to conquer the sensation, he was obliged to own himself beaten.… Another joke was played off upon poor Fischer this merrymaking season, to this effect: After the concert, which Fischer attended twice a week at Richmond or at Kew, wherever the King and Queen were, he used eagerly to seize upon the supper before he went to London. Upon one occasion, the Prince came in and said, “I have ordered something that I know you like,” a dish was brought in, and when the cover was lifted, out jumped a rabbit. Germans have a particular dislike to that animal in every shape and form; therefore it is easy to conjecture poor Fischer’s state of mind. This joke cost him only the loss of his supper, but many nights succeeded before he could be prevailed on to again enter the eating-room. Making a butt of a dependent seems no princely pastime; but this lady has worse to tell us of the “First Gentleman in Europe’s” amusements at the age of sixteen. “Much do I lament to add that some of those about the young princes swerved from principle, and introduced improper company when their Majesties supposed them to be at rest, and after the divines had closed their day with prayer.” The first open scandal about the Prince was his intrigue with the unfortunate “Perdita” Robinson, who turned many a head beside his by her acting in _The Winter’s Tale_. We know very little about that episode except what the lady thinks fit to tell us in her Memoirs. The boy lover, not yet eighteen, was so closely kept at Kew that for some time he had to content himself with ardent letters. At length an interview was arranged under circumstances which suggest that the tutorial turnkeys must have been in the way of nodding over their port. Lord Malden, who played Leporello in this amour, brought Perdita to an inn on the island between Kew and Brentford, to await the signal that should invite them to cross. The handkerchief was waved on the opposite shore; but the signal was, by the dusk of the evening, rendered almost imperceptible. Lord Malden took my hand, I stepped into the boat, and in a few minutes we landed before the iron gates of old Kew Palace. The interview was but of a moment. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York (then Bishop of Osnaburg) were walking down the avenue. A few words, and those scarcely articulate, were uttered by the Prince, when a noise of people approaching from the palace startled us. The moon was now rising; and the idea of being overheard, or of his Royal Highness being seen out at so unusual an hour, terrified the whole group. After a few more words of a most affectionate nature uttered by the Prince, we parted, and Lord Malden and myself returned to the island. The Prince never quitted the avenue, nor the presence of the Duke of York, during the whole of this short meeting. Alas! my friend, if my mind was before influenced by esteem, it was now awakened to the most enthusiastic admiration. The rank of the Prince no longer chilled into awe that being who now considered him as the lover and the friend. The graces of his person, the irresistible sweetness of his smile, the tenderness of his melodious yet manly voice, will be remembered by me till every vision of this changing scene shall be forgotten. [Illustration: LOOKING UP THE THAMES] Repeated assignations, she says, followed “at this romantic spot,” where now the party took courage to continue their walks till past midnight. Prince Frederick and Lord Malden, we are to know, were always there to play gooseberry. The lady wore a dark-coloured dress, and the gentlemen were disguised in greatcoats, except that harum-scarum Bishop, who would make his companions uneasy by showing himself in an unclerical buff coat, “the most conspicuous colour he could have selected for an adventure of this nature.” The tutors having got into their nightcaps by midnight, one supposes, these moonlight ramblers even ventured on a little music as the food of love, Frederick being the minstrel whose tones, “breaking on the silence of the night, have often appeared to my entranced senses like more than mortal melody.” It is clear that Perdita does not tell the whole story. Mrs. Papendiek, well up in the gossip of the backstairs, roundly asserts that two officials who had been about these princes from childhood, “privately overlooked the domestic vices and irregularities of their young charge,” and that they smuggled Mrs. Robinson through a back gate to the Prince of Wales’s apartments. The beautiful actress, who was a poetess, too, _à ses heures_, might well be dazzled by those shining personalities. The Prince vowed unalterable love till death; and the most convincing of his _billets-doux_ was a bond promising to pay Perdita £20,000 at his majority. Perhaps he was sincere for the moment; but we know what such callow vows come to. When, at eighteen, he became to some extent his own master, this unhappily married woman was taken into keeping, and for a time cut a notorious dash before the footlights of society. After Florizel grew tired of her, Perdita’s gushing sentimentality did not overlook businesslike considerations. She let the King buy up the Prince’s letters for £5000; and his bond was commuted for a pension of £400. But, these profits swallowed up by debts and extravagant habits, the poor creature fell into bad health and hasty authorship. Paralysed and harassed, she died in 1800, buried by her own desire, “for a particular reason,” in Old Windsor Churchyard, where her tomb may be seen fenced in with spiked railings to defend it from the body-snatchers that infested those river-side graveyards; and on it may be read an oft-quoted epitaph idealising the painful facts of her career. At Richmond lived Mrs. Fitzherbert, the Prince of Wales’s more lasting flame, to whom he appears to have been honestly, if illegally, married. When this Prince was launched upon the wicked world, and the Bishop _in partibus_ had been sent off to finish his education abroad, the royal pair still had their quiver full of youngsters, who for twenty years came so fast as to be cue for Horace Walpole’s jesting prophecy that “London will be like the senate of old Rome, an assembly of princes.” Besides others who died young, there were the princes afterwards known as Dukes of Clarence, Kent, Cumberland, Sussex, and Cambridge, and the Princesses Charlotte, Augusta, Mary, Elizabeth, Sophia, and little Amelia, the darling of her father. Where all these children were stowed away, one cannot always make out clearly: we hear of the Princes William and Edward living with their tutors in what is now Cambridge Cottage, and two of the younger boys in a house at the top of the Green. Lady Charlotte Finch, governess to the princesses, had a separate house near the river; then another is spoken of as the “Princess Elizabeth’s house.” Kew House itself was a scrimply inconvenient mansion, for which the royal household made a tight fit even in its state of reduced ceremony. Pictures of it when it was the Princess Dowager’s villa, show a square, plain front with two one-storied wings, from which in all thirty-two windows look straight out upon the lawn. At that time it bore the _alias_ of “The White House.” Miss Burney describes it as a labyrinth of stairs and passages, where at first she continually lost herself among the “small, dark, and old-fashioned” rooms. It is in 1786 that a search-light comes to be turned upon this semi-private life by the diary of a then most popular novelist. At the end of the year before, Fanny Burney had been staying with her venerable friend, Mrs. Delaney, at Windsor, when one afternoon into the drawing-room walked, unannounced, a burly man in black with a star on his breast. Even the short-sighted visitor hardly needed to be told who he was. As every one in the room drew back out of the way, she was for slipping off; but the King asked in a loud whisper, “Is that Miss Burney?” and after good-naturedly giving her time to recover from her modest confusion, entered upon a conversation of questions, punctuated with _what, whats_, in which he showed himself very inquisitive as to how she had come to write and print _Evelina_. The Queen soon followed, to whom George introduced her by repeating their conversation; and Miss Burney went to bed enraptured with her new acquaintances. Further interviews followed, which only increased her admiration, though the satirist rather than the courtier peeps out in her account of directions given her for behaviour in the presence of royalty. Her demeanour certainly gave satisfaction in the royal circle, for a few months afterwards she was offered the post of one of the Queen’s dressers, which she accepted after some modest misgiving. We remember Macaulay’s indignation, “That with talents which had instructed and delighted the highest living minds, she should now be employed only in mixing snuff and in sticking pins; that she should be summoned by a waiting-woman’s bell to a waiting-woman’s duties; that she should pass her whole life under the restraints of a paltry etiquette, should sometimes fast till she was ready to swoon for hunger, should sometimes stand till her knees gave way with fatigue, that she should not dare to speak or move without considering how her mistress might like her words and gestures.” This engagement was certainly a mistake on both sides: Miss Burney might have found more congenial employment; and the Queen could have had a better dresser. But Macaulay, after his manner, has rather over-emphasised the evils of her lot in the royal service. She certainly took it as a rise in the world, and to her father it seemed dazzling good fortune. The remuneration offered her, with the chance of further favour, might well have satisfied even successful novelists of that day, few among whom would not have jumped at such admission to the skirts of Court life. Her year’s salary, £200, was almost as much as she got from her second novel, and far more than the proceeds of her first one; then Macaulay slurs over the Queen’s generosity in presents. To look at the matter in no mere terms of pay, literature probably lost little by her laying down the pen for a time; her best work had been done in _Evelina_; _Cecilia_ was a falling off; and _Camilla_, written after her experience of service, did not deserve the pecuniary success won for it, in part, by royal patronage. In her diary, Miss Burney herself makes little serious complaint but of the ill-tempered tyranny of her senior colleague, Mrs. Schwellenberg. Court life soon ceased to be a little heaven below for her; but she had distractions in royal journeys to Oxford, Cheltenham, Weymouth, seats at the trial of Warren Hastings, glimpses of great folks, and even spells of moral flirtation with at least one gentleman of the household, not to speak of rather troublesome attentions from another who was a married man. She cannot say too much of the kindness of the King and the princesses; and if her “sweet Queen” proved sometimes an inconsiderate mistress, it was from want of thought rather than a hard heart. The confinement upon which Macaulay lays such stress was no stricter than that of most domestic ladies, who had not Windsor Park and Kew Gardens to walk in. Had she been more robust, the novelist might have lived on to become a second Mrs. Delaney in the royal esteem. But her health broke down, and after five years’ genteel servitude she retired on a pension of a hundred pounds. During these years the Court had its summer head-quarters at Windsor. Every second week, the “Royals” spent from Tuesday to Friday at Kew, using this as a half-way house for St. James’s, where on Thursdays the Queen held her fortnightly drawing-rooms. This was Miss Burney’s hardest job. She had to be up at six on drawing-room days, with hardly time for breakfast, to help in dressing the Queen, who put on most of her finery at Kew, the “tippet and long ruffles” being carried in paper to save them from dust; then the final touches were added at St. James’s, where, after the function, the idol had to be undecked--in all, three laborious attendances and two journeys, from which the tired keeper of the robes got back to dinner not till nearly seven o’clock, as then seemed a very late hour. In winter, when the Court moved to London, there would be no going to Kew, which indeed was not fitted up as a cold weather residence. When it came to be occupied for months during the King’s illness, strips of carpet and sandbags had to be provided to make the princesses tolerably comfortable. All the luxury of this house was outside, in its spacious gardens. But the want of state was made up for by the more home-like life of Kew, though that had also its disadvantages; the ladies and gentlemen were not free to see their friends where the King and his younger children might at any time come wandering along the passages and poking into the small rooms. There was not even a chapel in the house; and when the Royal Family happened to spend a Sunday here by some chance, they heard prayers in a private room, through the door of another, where the chief attendants took their place, the servants being edified in an outer apartment, which reminds us of the complaint of one of Queen Anne’s chaplains that he had “to whistle the Gospel through the keyhole.” It was later that George III. fitted Kew Church with a gallery to serve as royal pew. Towards the end of 1788, this routine was painfully broken upon by the King’s illness, which began during one of his temporary stays at Kew, prolonged then for more than a week, to the great discomposure of the household, ill-provided with clothes, or with books in Miss Burney’s case. The cause of the attack was said to be His Majesty’s sitting in wet stockings; but for some time back signs of strangeness had been noted in him, who had enough to disorder his mind in the conduct of his eldest sons, and in his brooding over the loss of the American Colonies. Miss Burney’s diary gives a vivid picture of those wretched days at Kew, when no one felt sure what to say, and some, like herself, hardly knew what to think of the rumours that filled the house. The King was noisy and voluble beyond his wont, talking himself hoarse in his assurances that there was not much the matter with him, mingled with complaints that he could not sleep. More than once Miss Burney found the Queen in tears. Charlotte had good reason for anxiety: she must have been aware of the character of a similar attack near the beginning of the reign, which had passed off so quickly that it could be hushed up. By October 25, George seemed so much better that he moved to Windsor, where his restlessness and weakness grew worse again. He obstinately insisted on going out to hunt as usual in the November weather, yet he had to confess that all at once he had become an old man. A few days later there was a terrible commotion in the family. It leaked out that at dinner the King had broken into positive delirium, seizing his eldest son by the collar and pushing him against the wall. The Prince is said to have burst into tears, while the Queen had a fit of hysterics. Her husband could with difficulty be persuaded to spend the night in a separate room, from which all night long she heard his ravings, now no secret to any one in the house. The King’s death being looked on as imminent, the Prince of Wales at once took command of the misery and confusion at Windsor. His heartless conduct during his father’s illness is matter of history, as also the bitter struggle between his faction and Pitt’s Ministry on the Regency question, the former maintaining the very unwhiggish doctrine that royal authority should pass, in the circumstances, into the Heir Apparent’s hands, while the Tories would make him Regent only with the sanction of Parliament, and under restrictions. The rabble was now on the King’s side; and all respectable persons, not being partisans or place-hunters, were disgusted by the profligate Prince’s conduct. The doctors attending the King had been threatened with popular violence if his illness proved fatal. Their case was a hard one, as not only would the royal patient not always take their remedies nor even see them, but they were treating a complaint then ill understood even by physicians who professed special experience in it. It is said that poor George was put in a strait-waistcoat, chained to the wall, and actually struck by one of his keepers, which would be quite after the practice of that day. But the stories of his harsh treatment are somewhat dubious, for the notion that he was being ill-used often figured among his delusions. At the end of November the doctors determined on removing him to Kew, where he could get exercise in the privacy of the Gardens. The King angrily refused to leave Windsor, and had to be coaxed away by a promise that he should see his wife and children, gone on before him. “Princes, equerries, physicians, pages--all conferring, whispering, plotting and caballing, how to induce the King to set off!” noted Miss Burney, who accompanied her mistress on their hasty flitting to Kew House, where the Prince of Wales had written in chalk over each room the name of its occupant. Everybody had to put up with the discomfort of being crowded together in that ill-furnished mansion. The only good rooms were given up to the King, those above being left empty that he might not be disturbed. Part of the household overflowed into the Prince of Wales’s house opposite; the younger children being lodged in their usual quarters on Kew Green. Pent up closely with “the Schwellenberg,” Miss Burney had her full share of troubles; but her womanly devotion rose to the occasion, and she declares that “not even the £20,000 prize in the lottery could, at this time, draw me from this melancholy scene.” She had the satisfaction of being employed, every morning, to carry the physicians’ report to the Queen, who, by her enemies, was accused of doctoring those bulletins to give the most favourable view of symptoms on which, for once, doctors differed. The Prince of Wales and his partisans listened rather to those big-wigs of the profession that were most gravely shaken over a case they did not understand. They perhaps agreed best in looking askance on an outsider called in upon the removal to Kew. This was the Rev. Mr. Willis, who at Lincoln, and in a private asylum of his own, had shown the benefit of a more rational treatment of the insane. Though he had a medical degree, he was belittled as a quack by many members of a guild apt to suspect innovators; but his success had been so notable that he was now employed, with his sons, trained in his methods, to be constantly about the King. From the first he took a hopeful view of the case; and when, with occasional interference, he was allowed to have his way, it soon appeared that he was the right man in the right place. His secret seems to have been a mixture of kindness and firmness; but perhaps he was not above using nostrums of his own. Mrs. Papendiek, whose husband was in attendance, says that one of the remedies used was musk, the smell of which the King could not bear, but the doctor insisted on it as efficacious. He took the responsibility of giving the King a razor to shave himself, for which he was afterwards denounced almost as compassing _Lèse-majesté_; but on all such questions he stipulated for leave to go by his own experience and judgment. Had this been in the era of newspaper kodaking, we should no doubt have fuller details of the King’s madness, as to which more or less doubtful stories leak out in the memoirs and letters of the day. He is described as wanting to climb the Pagoda, and on being thwarted, throwing himself sulkily on the ground, from which it took four or five men three-quarters of an hour to raise him. Another day he tried to throw himself out of a window. The worst symptom was his incessant garrulity: he would go on talking for hours about everything or nothing. One of the doctors once found him translating the Court Calendar into doggerel Latin. The most pathetic story is that of his being overheard earnestly praying for his recovery. At times he showed touches of humour and shrewdness. He managed, though it had been forbidden, to get hold of a copy of _King Lear_, Dr. Willis not being strong in literature; and when his elder daughters were first allowed to visit him, he told them “I am like poor Lear; but thank God! I have no Regan, no Goneril, but three Cordelias.” Once he reproached Willis with having given up his sacred calling for profit; and when the reverend doctor excused himself on the precedent of Christ healing demoniacs, “Yes,” said the King, “but He did not get seven hundred a year for it!” The Willises, by the way, afterwards complained of their remuneration, whatever it was; but their treatment of George III. made an excellent advertisement for the family, one of whom was sent for to Lisbon in the case of a mad Queen of Portugal. They seem to have given some offence in the household by the position they had to assume. Great was flunkey indignation when four of Dr. Willis’s keepers were raised to brevet-rank as pages, that after his recovery they might remain beside the King in case of a relapse. About that time several of the regular pages seem to have been dismissed or disgraced, it is said for carrying tales to the Prince of Wales. These “pages,” of course, had now grown into adult servants above mere menial rank, such beardless boys as figure in history and romance being distinguished as “pages of honour.” [Illustration: THE PAGODA] Poor Miss Burney was so worn out that one of the doctors, noticing her wan looks, insisted on her taking daily exercise, such as was the prescription for the King. As the orders were to keep every one out of his way, she made a point of inquiring whether he would be in the Kew or the Richmond grounds; but once there was a misunderstanding that led to the most violent agitation of her life. While tramping her constitutional round of Kew Gardens, through the trees she saw three or four figures, whom at first her short-sighted eyes took for workmen, till she was too late aware of His Majesty’s person among them. 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 state 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, when 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 as I was able, only charging the nearest of the attendants to stand by my side. When they were within a few yards of me the King called out, “Why did you run away?”