Gracious Queen we thee implore
Go away and sin no more.
’But that effort be too great,
Go away— at any rate.
They were jeering at her. They no longer believed her. They were suggesting that she was guilty of what she had been proved innocent They had been right. She had been foolish to come— foolish, foolish. Foolish as I ever was, she thought.
She gave instructions to be driven home.
And as her carriage passed through the crowd she heard the jeering laughter.
The next day she was very ill.
‘I pray you give me the magnesia quickly,’ she cried to Lady Anne; and she mixed such a close that it was like a paste so that she had to eat it with a spoon.
‘And laudanum too,’ she added. ‘It will deaden this pain and perhaps let me sleep.’
Lady Anne was alarmed and tried to dissuade her but Caroline took the stuff and after a while slept.
A few days later she recovered and talked to Lady Anne about that humiliating experience.
‘I should never have gone. I should have listened to advice. But then I never did listen to advice, did I? I shall go to the theatre. I said I would go to see Edward Kean and I will go.’
‘Your Majesty is not well enough—’
‘Nonsense, my dear Lady Anne. I wish to see how the people treat me. They were very unkind on Coronation Day. They have changed. They quickly change, I fear. The play is Richard III. Don’t try to dissuade me, my love I must go.’
And so to Drury Lane with a fearful Lady Anne.
She fainted half way through the performance but recovered by the time the play was over. The audience was neither friendly nor unfriendly. This was Coronation time— and George was their King.
When she returned to Brandenburg House she collapsed on to her bed.
Magnesia could bring her little relief and even laudanum could not give her sleep.
‘I fear,’ she said, ‘that I am very ill.’
The doctors came and bled her. They gave her more magnesia and castor oil.
She had been ill for some time, her doctors said. It was an inflammation of the bowels which she had tried to pretend did not exist.
She sent for Willikin and embraced him.
‘You have been a great comfort to me, dear boy,’ she told him. ‘We have had some good times together, have we not?’
Willikin wept and said that was so.
‘Do not fret, my little Willikin. You will not want. I have taken care of that.’
Brougham came to her bedside and she laughed at him. She began to talk of all the places she had seen during her travels and of the strange life she had led.
She had grown animated and seemed unconscious now of pain.
‘Your Majesty is going to recover,’ said Brougham.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I shall not. Nor do I wish to. It is better for me to die. I am tired of this life.’
Believing that she would recover, he left her.
But she asked for her friends to come to her bedside. There was Willikin and Lady Anne, Sir Matthew Wood and one or two more.
‘My friends,’ she said, smiling at them. ‘Bury me in Brunswick, it is better that I should return to the home which perhaps I should never have left. In my will you will find the inscription I wish to be engraved on my coffin. Will you see that it is done?’
They assured her that it would be; and she smiled and died.
According to her wish, her body was to be buried in Brunswick, and the King, suspecting trouble as the cortege travelled through London on its way to the coast gave orders that it was not to pass through the City.
The rain was streaming down yet the people had come out in their thousands to pay their last tribute to Queen Caroline. Now that she was dead she had again become a heroine and when it was discovered that the procession was to be diverted that it might not pass through the City the crowd decided otherwise.
As it came down Kensington Gore and Knightsbridge the mob surrounded it and insisted on leading it to Temple Bar.
There was a clash between the soldiers who had been sent to guard the cortege, and in the mêlée two men were shot.
But the people had their way, and the crowds waiting in the city madly cheered the departing Queen.
She was buried in Brunswick. Willikin and Lady Hamilton were among those present. They stood solemnly thinking of her and the strange life she had led; and the words she had asked should be engraved on her coffin were: HERE LIES CAROLINE OF BRUNSWICK, THE INJURED QUEEN OF ENGLAND.
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Indiscretions of the Queen Page 37
