George III, King of Great Britain, 1738-1820; Great Britain -- History -- George III, 1760-1820
The first proof of the agreeable alteration in his people's feelings
towards him was made clear to the King, when, by his physician's advice,
he left Windsor in June 1789 for Weymouth. That seaside resort went mad
with loyalty, and so great was the enthusiasm that in the parish church
of Lyndhurst "God save the King" was substituted for a psalm. "The
preparations of festive loyalty were universal," Miss Burney has
written. "Not a child could we meet that had not a _bandeau_ round its
head, cap, or hat, of 'God save the King'; all the bargemen wore it in
cockades, and even the bathing-women had it in large coarse girdles
round their waists. It is printed in golden letters upon most of the
bathing-machines, and in various scrolls and devices it adorns every
shop and almost every house in the two towns ... Melcombe Regis and
Weymouth. The King bathes, and with great success; a machine follows the
royal one into the sea, filled with fiddlers, who play 'God save the
King,' as his Majesty takes his plunge!"[291]
[291] _Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay._
At Weymouth, George bathed, rode, paid visits to various towns and
country seats in the neighbourhood, went to the little theatre, and was
everywhere welcomed with a heartiness to which he had been a stranger
since the first months of his reign. The life of the Court there was, of
course, very quiet. "The King's bathing agreed beyond anything with
him," Mrs. Harcourt wrote, "the Princess also looks well, but the Queen
looks, I think, very ill, and by all accounts has been so low and
languid that nothing but real illness can account for it. She always
appears to me to look worse and worse every time I have seen her for the
last half-year. Her foot is bad, but she walks a little. They have no
society at all but those you know of. Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville are
here, but never asked in. The party has always been the Queen, Princess
Royal, Lord Chesterfield and General Harcourt at casino; Princess
Elizabeth, Lady Mary, Lady Caroline, Colonel Gwyn at cribbage; the King,
Colonel Garth, and Lord Chesterfield at piquet. Lord and Lady Courtoun
and Princess Augusta have hitherto played at piquet, but now I make a
fourth. On Sunday, at eight, we all went to the rooms, which is, without
exception, the oddest ceremony I ever saw. A very large room, two or
three hundred people, none of which, except the two Lady Beauclerks and
three or four men, one ever heard of. It is a circle like a drawing-room
exactly, and there they stand--or walk, if they can--for about
half-an-hour; then go into the card room, which opens into it, and where
there are two or three tables. The King and Queen or Princesses play,
the people all walking by the door, and looking in, but not coming in.
The King walked about a little more; and they all went away at
ten."[292]
[292] Quoted in Fitzgerald: _The Good Queen Charlotte_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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