ome curious pictures of
the manner in which the morning prayers were commonly said to Queen
Caroline. The Queen was being dressed by her ladies in her bedroom;
the door of the bedroom was left partly open, the {115} chaplain read
the prayers in the outer room, and had to kneel, as he read them,
beneath a great painting of a naked Venus; and just within the
half-open bedroom door her Majesty, according to Horace Walpole, "would
frequently stand some minutes in her shift, talking to her ladies."

Robert Walpole was the first to discover the real and the very serious
nature of the Queen's malady. He was often alone with her for the
purpose of arranging as to the course of action which they were to
prevail upon the King to believe to be of his own inspiration, and
accordingly to adopt. Shortly after the death of Walpole's wife he was
closeted with the Queen. Her Majesty questioned him closely about the
cause of his wife's death. She was evidently under the impression that
Lady Walpole had died from the effects of a peculiar kind of rupture,
and she put to Walpole a variety of very intimate questions as to the
symptoms and progress of the disease. Walpole had long suspected, as
many others had, that there was something seriously wrong with the
Queen. He allowed her to go on with her questions, and he became
satisfied in his own mind that the Queen herself was suffering from the
disorder about which she was so anxious to be told.

On August 26, 1737, it was reported over London that the Queen was
dead. The report was unfounded, or at least premature. Caroline had
had a violent attack, but she rallied and was able to go about again at
Hampton Court with the King. On Wednesday, November 9, 1737, she was
suddenly stricken down, and this was her death-stroke. She did not die
at once, but lingered and lingered.

There are few chapters of history more full of strange, sardonic
contrast, and grim, ghastly humor, than those which describe these
death-bed scenes. The Queen, undergoing a succession of painful
operations; now groaning and fainting, now telling the doctors not to
mind her foolish cries; now indulging in some chaff with them--"Is not
Ranby [the surgeon] sorry it isn't his own cross old wife he is cutting
up?"--the King sometimes blubbering, and sometimes telling his dying
wife that her staring eyes {116} looked like those of a calf whose
throat had been cut; the King, who, in his sudden tenderness and grief,