Let us consider for a moment the character of the Sovereign whom Pitt
had set himself to bait.
George II. was first and fundamentally a German prince of his epoch.
What other could he be? And these magnates all aped Louis XIV. as their
model. They built huge palaces, as like Versailles as their means would
permit, and generally beyond those limits, with fountains and avenues
and dismally wide paths. Even in our own day a German monarch has left,
fortunately unfinished, an accurate Versailles on a damp island in a
Bavarian lake. In these grandiose structures they cherished a blighting
etiquette, and led lives as dull as those of the aged and torpid carp in
their own stew-ponds. Then at the proper season, they would break away
into the forest and kill game. Moreover, still in imitation of their
model, they held, as a necessary feature in the dreary drama of their
existence, ponderous dalliance with unattractive mistresses, in whom
they fondly tried to discern the charms of a Montespan or a La Valliere.
This monotonous programme, sometimes varied by a violent contest whether
they should occupy a seat with or without a back, or with or without
arms, represented the even tenor of their lives.
George II. was better than this training would suggest. His first
ambition indeed was to be a Lovelace, but his second was to be a
soldier. As a soldier he had the unaffected courage of the princes of
his race. George, red and angry, fighting on foot at the battle of
Dettingen, is a figure that is memorable and congenial to his British
subjects.
As a Lovelace he lives to this day, for his portraits are generally in
the posture of a coxcomb, with his face in outline wearing an
irresistible smile, only comical to the beholder now, but with which he
goes smirking into the eternities. It is not necessary to dwell on this
part of his character; after all, a shallow part, for the one woman whom
he loved was his wife. It was, however, a necessary part, vital to his
conception of an ideal monarch. His confidences to his wife on this
delicate point, though gross to us, seemed natural to him and to her,
and were probably not alien to the atmosphere in which he was reared.
Withal he bored his mistresses to death, and not impossibly they bored
him. But that did not matter; the thing had to be done; he saw himself
as in a mirror the fourteenth or fifteenth Louis; and when on the
Saturdays in summer he drove down with Lady Yarmouth and his court to
Richmond, escorted by Lifeguards kicking up the dust, to walk an hour in
the garden, dine, and return to London, he imagined himself, as Horace
Walpole tells us, the most gallant and lively prince in Europe![144]
We must admit then that he was born and bred a coxcomb, like his son.
That he was a fond father no one will allege. His pleasures were coarse
and dull. Even here one strange exception must be made. His letters to
women, in the opinion of hostile critics, were tender and even
exquisite.[145] How he came to write them we cannot know, for his
character could not make one expect a grace of this kind.
In other respects we think him underrated. Sir Robert Walpole said that
politically he was a coward. To what does this charge really amount?
That a prince who had never left Germany till he was thirty-one, who
succeeded to the throne when he was forty-four, after a life of such
severe repression that his father even entertained the idea of
transporting him to the plantations, should display that familiarity
with his position, his political relations, and a strange nation, which
alone could justify the independent action which is implied by the
phrase 'political courage,' would have been astonishing; it would indeed
have savoured of political recklessness. Walpole may have uttered the
charge in resentment for some refusal of the King's. He was, we know,
irritated at the moment by finding that the King had promised to go to
Hanover without informing him. The King no doubt blustered in private
when he yielded in public. But domestic effervescence was the only
method of relief for a Sovereign who knew his own limitations, and who
also knew that, constitutionally, he would have at last to yield to his
Minister. What is 'political courage' in a constitutional Sovereign?
What would Walpole have said had the monarch shown 'political courage'
and insisted on having his own stubborn way? 'Had he,' wrote Waldegrave,
with his usual good sense, 'always been as firm and undaunted in the
Closet as he showed himself at Oudenarde and Dettingen, he might not
have proved quite as good a king in this limited monarchy.'
His foible, we are told, was avarice. We do not know that he was mean in
his personal expenditure. Waldegrave, again, who was fair, and knew him
better than most men, declared that 'he was always just, and sometimes
charitable, though rarely generous.' He amused himself, we are told,
with counting his guineas in private. That perhaps was not a very royal
occupation, though a nursery rhyme indicates that it is; it may have
been a trick learned when he was poor, or it may have been his
substitute for those games of anxious futility now known as 'patience.'
But the real ground for the charge of avarice in the eyes of his British
subjects was that he accumulated a great treasure in Hanover. If that be
avarice, it was the avarice of the kings who made Prussia, the famous
Frederick and his father. Parsimony in such cases may well be a virtue;
and subjects may even prefer to be ruled by those who possess it rather
than by princes who rear vast and idle palaces like the Bourbons of
Spain and Naples, or live with unbridled extravagance like George IV.
But kings rarely hit the right mean; if they are generous they are
called profuse, if they are careful they are called mean. George's
avarice, if such it was, was a public-spirited avarice. He hoarded for
his own beloved country, he got as much out of his Kingdom as he could
for his Electorate; for he was a Hanoverian first and a Briton a long
way afterwards. But when Hanover needed it, he spent all his hoards on
her behalf ungrudgingly, and died poor.
We do not claim him as a great King, far from it. But we think him
unjustly and hastily condemned. It is easy in a slapdash manner to
lavish sarcasms on a King who presented many tempting opportunities for
satire. The genius of Thackeray could not resist them, small blame to
it. But the King's absurdities should not blind one to his merits. The
just critic must recognise in George II. a constant substantial
shrewdness, seasoned with humour. His sagacity made him realise his
constitutional limitations; his penetration appraised with great justice
the men by whom he was surrounded; he had to do much that he disliked
and resented, but he did it when he saw that it was necessary, not
gracefully, for he was never graceful, but without scandal. His rough
common sense constantly vented itself in the ejaculation of 'Stuff and
nonsense,'[146] which proved his command of at least one British idiom,
and not unfrequently a just appreciation of affairs. His judgment of men
was sure. He had only three ministers who were men of commanding
ability; Walpole, Carteret, and Pitt. Two of these were his especial
favourites; to the third, who had mortally offended him, he submitted.
For Newcastle he had a supreme contempt; but wisely accommodated himself
to one who was useful, who 'did his business,' to whom he was
accustomed, and whom he knew through and through. He infinitely
preferred Carteret to Pelham, but at the supreme moment he chose Pelham
in spite of Carteret. No doubt this was due largely to the influence of
Walpole, but many kings would not have followed an advice so contrary to
their own bias. He piqued himself on his knowledge of mankind, not
without reason, and Hervey depicts a scene where he reels off a
catalogue of names, and the King, tersely and unhesitatingly, gives the
character of each.
The fact is that George II. had the misfortune to keep in his inmost
circle a vigilant and deadly enemy. John Lord Hervey, the Sporus of
Pope's blighting satire, akin in mind and probably in blood to Horace
Walpole, was always with him; noting down, with spruce rancour, a
venomous pen, and some dramatic power, the random outbreaks of his
master. It is not wise to attribute literal exactitude or even general
veracity to such chronicles; the man who can commit so gross a breach of
confidence is little worthy of trust. That Hervey in the very heart of
the King's family should have sate down with a pen dipped in vitriol to
portray its most intimate aspects is perhaps our gain but his disgrace.
He was a viper warmed in the bosom of the Court, and stung it to the
full extent of his opportunity and powers. A court is considered fair
game by such reptiles. But it is hard to see why princes, who after all
are human beings, should not be allowed to some extent the same sanctity
of family life which humbler human beings claim and maintain. Hervey was
the intimate associate of the King, the confidential friend of the
Queen, the lover of one of their daughters, he was the tame cat of the
family circle. He thought it seemly to narrate their secrets in so
brutal a fashion that some more decent member of his family tore out and
destroyed the coarsest and bitterest passages. What remains is coarse
and bitter enough. It shows the King and Queen in a most unfavourable
light. But that aspect is fascinating compared to that in which he
presents himself. The story of royalty should not be a Court Circular;
but neither should it be a lampoon, written by a trusted friend. The
only excuse for him is that being devoted to the Queen, who in her way
merited his devotion, he detested the King whom he deemed unworthy of
her. But that does not help the reader who looks to him for facts. The
George II. we know is the George II. of Hervey, and Hervey's Journal
proves the writer to be unworthy of implicit credence.
Chesterfield also drew a character of the King. But when we discount
Chesterfield's studied epigrams, poised with the malignant nicety of one
who hated his subject, there is not much left for discredit.
The real crime of George II. in the eyes of his British subjects was
almost in the category of virtues, for it was his devotion to Hanover.
Innocent and natural as it was in him, it seems wonderful to us that our
fathers should have endured it. How they must have hated Popery! But
Hanover was the King's home and fatherland; all his pleasant
associations were with Hanover; there he was absolute Sovereign, and
could lead without criticism the life that he enjoyed. He could not help
being a Hanoverian any more than William III. could help being a
Hollander. The English chose their Dutch and Hanoverian Sovereigns with
their eyes open, and had no right to complain if what they desired and
obtained was somewhat bitter in digestion. Neither William nor the two
first Georges ever professed to be other than what they were; they never
for a moment simulated that they were English, they never pretended to
like England. 'He hated the English,' says Lord Hervey of George II. And
when at the first available instant they fled from Kensington and
Hampton Court to Loo or Herrenhausen, their English subjects ignored
the mortifying preference, from devotion no doubt to the Protestant
Succession; but partly also because these monarchs were profoundly
indifferent to them. With George II., it is true, these excursions were
accompanied, as in Shakespeare, by alarms; alarms only too well founded
that he would return with a pocket full of treaties for subsidies which
the British taxpayer would have to pay. But all these three kings
accurately understood their position. They knew that they were not
chosen from affection, or for their qualities, certainly not for their
attractions. They were taken as necessities, almost odious necessities,
to keep out a Romanist dynasty which represented something to the people
that was more odious still.
They entertained, then, no illusions; a bargain had been driven with
them and they would keep it; they gave their pound, or more, of flesh.
They would occupy palaces, receive civil lists, interview ministers, and
keep out the Pretender. But that did not imply a perpetual exile from
home; they intended to get as many holidays as possible; and they did.
They might be a hateful necessity for England, but England as a
necessity was almost as hateful to them. Their life in this island was
servitude, more or less penal; they only breathed by the dykes of
Holland or the waters of the Leine. If this be clearly understood, much
confusion and vituperation may be avoided. But the wonder is that the
English (for the Scots and Irish had little to do with it) should have
had the civic courage in the cause of religion and liberty to endure the
compact.
George II. then, we contend, putting his private life apart, which we
must judge by the German standard of those days, was not a bad King
under the conditions of his time and of his throne. He was perhaps the
best of the Georges; better than George I. or George IV., better as a
King than George III., though inferior no doubt in the domestic virtues.
All things considered, it is wonderful that he was as good as he was,
and he scarcely deserves the thoughtless opprobrium which he has
incurred.