To recap previous week’s blogs about Priny, the prince has built himself a couple of homes, secretly married Mrs. Fitzherbert, gotten kicked to the couch when he wouldn’t fess up to the world that he’d married her because he didn’t want to lose the throne, weaseled his way back into her good graces, and now runs off to London for some carousing with his brother. Mr. Al, take it away.
Accompanying the Duke and Prinny to London was the head of the Dukes household, Major-General Richard Grenville. This is what he had to say about the trip. They were “totally guided by the Prince of Wales.” Also that they were “thoroughly initiated into all the extravagances and debaucheries of this most virtuous metropolis.” In for a penny, in for a pound seemed to be Prinny’s view of things.
An M.P. (Member of Parliament) for Sutherlandshire had this to add; “The Prince has taught his brother to drink in the most liberal and copious way, and the Duke, in return, has been equally successful in teaching his brother to lose his money at all sorts of play-quinze, hazard, ect. To the amount, as we are told, of very large sums.” The Prince had found his groove once more.
The timing could hardly have been worse. Although no time was a good time for The Prince to fall off the wagon, this particular episode happened to coincide with another unfortunate event. His Majesty went off his nut. It was October 1788. While it was not the first time the King had had one of his “episodes”, it was by far the worst.
For several weeks he had been in excruciating pain, mainly in his digestive tract; but also in his back and legs. The doctors gave him laudanum, an opium extract, for the pain. This caused constipation, which worsened the intestinal pain. So they gave him castor oil and senna to…um…open the sluice gates again.
More pain. More laudanum. More constipation. More castor oil, ect. As if all this were not enough, the Kings behavior was becoming, to put it mildly, erratic. His sense of duty would not allow him to put off official business. He kept at his paperwork until his handwriting, never his strong point to begin with, became totally unreadable.
On October 24, he insisted at appearing at the levee at St. James Palace to, in his words, “stop further lies and any fall in the stocks.” The stocks would have been better off had he not done so. His Majesty looked like death warmed over a can of sterno.
His clothes were a mess, his coordination was way off, and his speech was fast and slurred. The whites of his eyes had turned yellow, he had a very visible rash and his feet had so swollen that, combined with his bad coordination, he was reeling like a drunken sailor. Or like his eldest child, though I doubt that anyone made that comparison to his face. By the time he returned to Windsor Castle, the stocks, and everyone else, were completely alarmed.
The papers tried to spin it in the most non-alarming way they could. The Morning Post said it was a “dropsical disorder.” But, it added, “By no means of the alarming kind.” Gentleman’s Magazine informed its readers that it was just “A regular fit of the gout.” If only. The people closest to the King and Queen were under no illusions.
Fanny Burney, Queen Charlotte’s Keeper of the Robes, wrote in her journal that his Majesty was “all agitation, all emotion.” He was talking a mile a minute about whatever popped into his head and he couldn’t sleep. Although the Queen tried to put a good face on it, she was at a loss to understand what was happening.
The fact that no doctors could be found who could explain it caused her even greater grief. It is, in fact, still debated what exactly was wrong with George the III. Most experts come down on the side of a hereditary metabolic disorder known as porphyria.
The mother of George the First transmitted it to the Hanoverians. She was the granddaughter of James the First. The Stuarts had been severely afflicted by this disease, which is characterized by severe abdominal pain, discolored urine, neuritis, and weakness of the limbs. Mental manifestations include hysteria, rambling speech, hallucinations and some elements of paranoia and schizophrenia. Those of the 18th century, presented with a person thus afflicted, could be forgiven for thinking that person mad as a hatter.
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