In vain the King offered to visit him at North End, when, he declared, he "would not talk of business, but only wanted to have the world know that he had attended him";[73] and equally fruitless were the Duke of Grafton's renewed appeals for an interview. The Earl had not even the energy to use a pen, and the replies were written by his wife. "Your duty and affection for my person, your own honour, call on you to make an effort," the King persisted in a letter on May 30. "Five minutes' conversation with you would raise the Duke of Grafton's spirits, for his heart is good. Mine, I thank God, wants no rousing. My love to my country, as well as what I owe to my family, prompt me not to yield to faction. Though none of my ministers stand by me, I cannot truckle."[74] On receipt of this, Lord Chatham yielded, and consented to see the Duke on the following day, and the meeting had the result of averting the threatened resignation of the latter, who, however, found it impossible to discuss business with the Prime Minister, whose nerves and spirits were too affected to permit of a lengthy discussion. "So childish and agitated was his whole frame," Walpole has stated, "that if a word of business was mentioned to him, tears and tremblings immediately succeeded to cheerful, indifferent conversation."[75] He was indeed entirely incapacitated, and his recovery was very slow. "Lord Chatham's state of health (I was told authentically yesterday) is certainly the lowest dejection and debility that mind or body can be in," Whately wrote on June 30. "He sits all day leaning on his hands, which he supports on the table; does not permit any person to remain in the room; knocks when he wants anything, and, having made his wants known, gives a signal without speaking to the person who answered his call to return."[76] [73] _Chatham Correspondence._ [74] _Chatham Correspondence._ [75] _Memoirs of George III._ [76] Phillimore: _Life of Lyttelton_.