The Prince was delighted. When the Prime Minister consulted him he was truly playing the King.
The golden September days were passing. Each day Caroline wondered whether there would be news of the King's return. But he stayed on in Hanover and left them free to enjoy the blessing of his absence.
To the Prince's great joy, Townsend, with whom he was now on excellent terms, suggested that he make a tour of the countryside. He had seen little of England, except during his journey from the coast to London on his arrival and the English liked to see their sovereigns.
Townsend was already talking to him as though he were the King and he was thinking of himself as such.
The Prince immediately began making his preparations.
"There is but von thing that grieves me," he said. "You, my tear, vill not come vith me."
"You vill manage very veil on your own," Caroline told him.
"It vould have been happier for me if I could have had my tear vife beside me."
"I shall be thinking of you ... all the time. And you see I am in no condition to come vith you."
"Take care of yourself. I vill give Mrs. Howard very special instructions."
"You need not. She is the best of vomen."
The Prince smiled at her gratefully. It seemed there was nothing to spoil his pleasure.
And what joy it was to travel through the countryside of Hampshire, Sussex and Kent where the people lined the roads to cheer him as he rode by and he told himself and his attendants that he would never tire of smiling for the English people.
To signal his approach bonfires were lighted all along his route and girls with flowers and leaves came out to dance in his path. At Portsmouth he was entertained at military as well as naval reviews. He went aboard the finest of the ships and guns were fired in his honour.
His eyes shining with sentiment, he told those who welcomed him that he had never been so happy in his life. He loved England; he loved the English people; he was English; he would not have it otherwise. Every drop of blood in his veins was English; he had inherited it through his grandmother.
He would never willingly leave England; the best and lovingest people in the world were the English.
He loved the English and the English loved him.
He was different from his dour old father, said the people; let that old fellow stay in Germany with his Maypole and Elephant, let him stuff himself with sausages and sauerkraut. His son was quite different. He was English, although he spoke with an atrocious German accent. He was one of them because he was determined to be.
So the bonfires were lighted; and the people sang and danced; and the theme of the day was "God Bless the Prince of Wales".
October was well advanced by the time he returned in triumph to Hampton. He found Caroline delighted to see him, eager to hear of his triumphs; but although she was more heavily pregnant than ever, there was no sign that her confinement was imminent.
Bothmer sat in his apartments writing to the King, to Bernstorff and to Robethon.
"The Prince," he wrote, "has become the King. The Prime Minister confers with him. Townsend has in fact become his man. His Highness has just returned to Hampton from a royal progress through Hampshire, Kent and Sussex. He is treated as the ruler of the realm."
Caroline was delighted and yet apprehensive. The more popular the Prince became the more determined the King would be to suppress him. Their only hope to go on living this delightful existence was for the King to discover that he loved Hanover so much he would stay there.
She believed there might be a faint possibility that he would. She prayed that it might come true. But while his father lived George Augustus could not be King. Still, to live as pleasantly as they had been living for this wonderful summer would be very delightful while they waited.
Yet as the days grew shorter her apprehension grew. There were no longer charming afternoons in the pavilion. The wind was too chilly. Walks had to be taken early in the afternoon if she was to be back in her apartments by dusk. It was not so exciting playing cards by candle-light as in the fresh air.
It cannot go on, of course, she thought sighing.
News came from Hanover which saddened her.
Leibniz had approached the King and begged leave to come to England and this had been curtly refused. Poor Leibniz! He had been unpopular enough in the past but he was more so now. Then he had merely been disliked as a man of intellect and a friend of the Princess's, when the King had considered her to be an unimportant woman whose only function was to bear children. Now he would know that she was not so stupid. Bothmer would have reported how Townsend had first approached her; and she would have her full share of the King's animosity.
Leibniz had not been wise to approach the King at such a time.
"The King has been so incensed by what was happening at home," she read, "that he could not endure to look on Leibniz who has always been a supporter of the Princess of Wales. He turned his back on him and in consequence of this action Leibniz had no alternative but to leave court."
Poor lonely old Leibniz, whose only fault was that he was loyal to his old pupil and that he was a man of wit and understanding! So he had gone to his home in Hanover and lived there. He had left Court for ever and he despaired of ever coming to England.
Caroline pictured him, thinking of all those talks he had had with the Electress Sophia when she had embued him with her love of a country neither of them had ever seen.
He was heartbroken—deprived of his work, deprived of his friends, despised because he had a good brain and liked to use it.
Could a man die of a broken heart? Perhaps, thought Caroline, for Leibniz had died in Leibnizhaus, his house in Han-ver, and had been buried quietly, for the King had had no wish that he should be remembered.
"He was buried," ran the letter, "more like a robber than an ornament to his country."
Dear Leibniz who had tutored her, who had reproved her, and who had loved her!
It was another link with the old life broken; and at the same time it was an evil augury for the future.
George was harsh to those he believed did not serve him well. So poor Leibniz had suffered.
How much more harsh he would be to those who had deliberately flouted him—his own son and daughter-in-law I What would happen when he returned? That was what Caroline wondered as she sat awaiting the first signs of her child's arrival on those rapidly shortening days.
The crimson-decked barge made its way slowly up the river. On the banks the people cheered while the Prince, his hand on his heart, bowed and smiled, and the Princess, who looked as though she might give birth at any moment, sat back, with smiles as gracious as those of the Prince. The young Princesses, Anne, Amelia and Caroline, were with their mother and there was a special cheer for them; and on the elaborately decorated barge it was possible to catch a glimpse of those rival beauties.
Molly Lepel and Mary Bellenden, and of Sophie Howes of whom many verses had been written, of Henrietta Howard, the Prince's mistress, who was on the best of terms with the Princess, and of other personalities of the Court.
If the last month had been a foretaste of what the future reign would be like the people certainly would not mourn the passing of George I.
Caroline was a little sad. She had wanted to lie in at Hampton but Townsend had warned her that the child she was going to bear could be an heir to the throne, and heirs to the throne were not born at Hampton. The last thing Caroline wanted to do was ignore English custom, so regretfully she gave up the idea of staying at Hampton, and she could not throw off this feeling of sadness because she knew that when she left the Thames-side mansion, with its scarlet-bricked walls and its magnificent state apartments, and most delightful of all its gardens with its fountains and flowers, its greens and pavilions, its wilderness and maze, she was leaving more than a country house. This was the end of a phase—the most delightful phase of her life.