After breakfast, the King would either return to his study, or go riding or hunting, two forms of exercise to which he was very partial. Until his illness prevented him, he never missed going with the whole of his family to the races at Ascot Heath, at which place he gave a plate of a hundred guineas, to be run for on the first day by such horses as had hunted regularly with his own hounds the preceding winter. While the King had the business of state and hunting with which to occupy himself, his consort was less fortunate, for her husband never mentioned public affairs in her presence, and let her understand from the first that this would always be so. Five years after the Royal marriage, Chesterfield remarked, "The King loves her as a woman, but I verily believe has not yet spoken one word to her about business"; and long after Lord Carlisle stated, "The King never placed any confidence whatever in the Queen as to public affairs, nor had she any power either to injure or serve any one. In this respect he treated her with great severity." However, as time passed and children came to her, she found some occupation--as well as much anxiety. "The Queen would have two physicians always on the spot to watch the constitutions of the royal children to eradicate, if possible, or at least to keep under, the dreadful disease, scrofula, inherited from the King," Mrs. Papendiek, assistant-keeper of the Wardrobe and Reader to her Majesty, has told us. "She herself saw them bathed at six every morning, attended the schoolroom of her daughters, was present at their dinner, and directed their attire, whenever these plans did not interfere with public duties, or any plans or wishes of the King, whom she neither contradicted nor kept waiting a moment under any circumstances."[242] As the children grew up, the elder were sometimes allowed to breakfast with their parents, who once a week went with the entire family to Richmond Gardens; but the intercourse was strictly regulated, and the little boys and girls were never allowed to forget that their mother and father were the King and Queen of England. Charlotte tried to find pleasure in her trinkets, and she told Miss Burney how much she liked the jewels at first. "But how soon that was over!" she sighed. "Believe me, Miss Burney, it is the pleasure of a week--a fortnight at most, and to return no more. I thought at first I should always choose to wear them; but the fatigue and trouble of putting them on, and the care they required, and the fear of losing them, believe me, ma'am, in a fortnight's time I longed again for my earlier dress."[243] The poor woman had not even the satisfaction of being popular with her subjects, for the public, which did not love minor German royalties, had not at the first shown any great enthusiasm for the Queen, and such favour as she had found in their eyes very soon declined. [242] _Journals._ [243] _Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay._