day to do, in any detail a history of George’s career, during the time
when he was successively Prince of Wales and Regent and King. Merely
is it my wish at present to examine some of the principal accusations
that have been brought against him, and to point out in what ways he
has been harshly and hastily judged. Perhaps the greatest indignation
against him was, and is to this day, felt by reason of his treatment
of his two wives, Mrs. Fitzherbert and Queen Caroline. There are some
scandals that never grow old, and I think the story of George’s married
life is one of them. I can feel it. It has vitality. Often have I
wondered whether the blood with which the young Prince’s shirt was
covered when Mrs. Fitzherbert first was induced to visit him at Carlton
House, was merely red paint, or if, in a frenzy of love, he had truly
gashed himself with a razor. Certain it is that his passion for the
virtuous and obdurate lady was a very real one. Lord Holland describes
how the Prince used to visit Mrs. Fox, and there indulge in “the most
extravagant expressions and actions--rolling on the floor, striking
his forehead, tearing his hair, falling into hysterics, and swearing
that he would abandon the country, forego the crown, &c.” He was indeed
still a child, for royalties, not being ever brought into contact with
the realities of life, remain young longer than most people. He had a
truly royal lack of self-control, and was unable to bear the idea of
being thwarted in any wish. Every day he sent off couriers to Holland,
whither Mrs. Fitzherbert had retreated, imploring her to return to him,
offering her formal marriage. At length, as we know, she yielded to his
importunity and returned. It is difficult indeed to realise exactly
what was Mrs. Fitzherbert’s feeling in the matter. The marriage must
be, as she knew, illegal, and would lead, as Charles James Fox pointed
out in his powerful letter to the Prince, to endless and intricate
difficulties. For the present she could only live with him as his
mistress. If, when he reached the legal age of twenty-five, he were to
apply to Parliament for permission to marry her, how could permission
be given, when she had been living with him irregularly? Doubtless, she
was flattered by the attentions of the Heir to the Throne, but, had
she really returned his passion, she would surely have preferred “any
other species of connection with His Royal Highness to one leading to
so much misery and mischief.” Really to understand her marriage, one
must look at the portraits of her that are extant. That beautiful and
silly face explains much. One can well fancy such a lady being pleased
to live after the performance of a mock-ceremony with a prince for whom
she felt no passion. Her view of the matter can only have been social,
for, in the eyes of the Church, she could only live with the Prince as
his mistress. Society, however, once satisfied that a ceremony of some
kind had been enacted, never regarded her as anything but his wife.
The day after Fox, inspired by the Prince, had formally denied that
any ceremony had taken place, “the knocker of her door,” to quote her
own complacent phrase, “was never still.” The Duchesses of Portland,
Devonshire, and Cumberland were among her visitors.
Now, much pop-limbo has been talked about the Prince’s denial of
the marriage. I grant that it was highly improper to marry Mrs.
Fitzherbert at all. But George was always weak and wayward, and he
did, in his great passion, marry her. That he should afterwards deny
it officially seems to me to have been utterly inevitable. His denial
did her not the faintest damage, as I have pointed out. It was, so to
speak, an official quibble, rendered necessary by the circumstances
of the case. Not to have denied the marriage in the House of Commons
would have meant ruin to both of them. As months passed, more serious
difficulties awaited the unhappily wedded pair. The story of the
Prince’s great debts and desperation need not be repeated. It was
clear that there was but one way of getting his head above water, and
that was to yield to his father’s wishes and contract a real marriage
with a foreign princess. Fate was dogging his footsteps relentlessly.
Placed as he was, George could not but offer to marry, as his father
willed. It is well, also, to remember that George was not ruthlessly
and suddenly turning his shoulder upon Mrs. Fitzherbert. For some time
before the British plenipotentiary went to fetch him a bride from over
the waters, his name had been associated with that of the beautiful and
unscrupulous Countess of Jersey.
Poor George! Half-married to a woman whom he no longer worshipped,
compelled to marry a woman whom he was to hate at first sight! Surely
we should not judge a prince harshly. “Princess Caroline very _gauche_
at cards,” “Princess Caroline very _missish_ at supper,” are among
the entries made in his diary by Lord Malmesbury while he was at the
little German Court. I can conceive no scene more tragic than that of
her presentation to the Prince, as related by the same nobleman. “I,
accordingly to the established etiquette,” so he writes, “introduced
the Princess Caroline to him. She, very properly, in consequence of
my saying it was the right mode of proceeding, attempted to kneel to
him. He raised her gracefully enough, and embraced her, said barely
one word, turned round, retired to a distant part of the apartment,
and, calling to me, said: ‘Harris, I am not well: pray get me a glass
of brandy.’” At dinner that evening, in the presence of her betrothed,
the Princess was “flippant, rattling, affecting wit.” Poor George, I
say again! Deportment was his ruling passion, and his bride did not
know how to behave. Vulgarity--hard, implacable, German vulgarity--was
in everything she did to the very day of her death. The marriage was
solemnised on Wednesday, April 8th, 1795, and the royal bridegroom was
drunk.
So soon as they were separated, George became implected with a morbid
hatred for his wife, that was hardly in accord with his light and
variant nature, and shows how bitterly he had been mortified by his
marriage of necessity. It is sad that so much of his life should have
been wasted in futile strainings after divorce. Yet we can scarcely
blame him for seizing upon every scrap of scandal that was whispered of
his wife. Besides his not unnatural wish to be free, it was derogatory
to the dignity of a Prince and a Regent that his wife should be living
an eccentric life at Blackheath with a family of singers named Sapio.
Indeed, Caroline’s conduct during this time was as indiscreet as ever.
Wherever she went she made ribald jokes about her husband, “in such a
voice that all, by-standing, might hear.” “After dinner,” writes one
of her servants, “Her Royal Highness made a wax figure as usual, and
gave it an amiable pair of large horns; then took three pins out of her
garment and stuck them through and through, and put the figure to roast
and melt at the fire. What a silly piece of spite! Yet it is impossible
not to laugh when one sees it done.” Imagine the feelings of the First
Gentleman in Europe when such pranks were whispered to him!
For my own part, I fancy Caroline was innocent of any infidelity to
her unhappy husband. But that is neither here nor there. Her behaviour
was certainly not above suspicion. It fully justified him in trying to
establish a case for her divorce. When, at length, she went abroad,
her vagaries were such that the whole of her English suite left her,
and we hear of her travelling about the Holy Land attended by another
family, named Bergami. When her husband succeeded to the throne, and
her name was struck out of the liturgy, she despatched expostulations
in absurd English to Lord Liverpool. Receiving no answer, she decided
to return and claim her right to be crowned Queen of England. Whatever
the unhappy lady did, she always was ridiculous. One cannot but
smile as one reads of her posting along the French roads in a yellow
travelling-chariot drawn by cart-horses, with a retinue that included
an alderman, a reclaimed lady-in-waiting, an Italian Count, the eldest
son of the alderman, and “a fine little female child, about three years
old, whom her Majesty, in conformity with her benevolent practices
on former occasions, had adopted.” The breakdown of her impeachment,
and her acceptance of an income, formed a fitting anti-climax to the
terrible absurdities of her position. She died from the effects of a
chill caught when she was trying vainly to force a way to her husband’s
coronation. Unhappy woman! Our sympathy for her is not misplaced. Fate
wrote her a most tremendous tragedy, and she played it in tights. Let
us pity her, but not forget to pity her husband, the King, also. It is
another common accusation against George that he was an undutiful and
unfeeling son. If this was so, it is certain that not all the blame
is to be laid upon him alone. There is more than one anecdote which
shows that King George disliked his eldest son, and took no trouble
to conceal his dislike, long before the boy had been freed from his
tutors. It was the coldness of his father and the petty restrictions
he loved to enforce that first drove George to seek the companionship
of such men as the Duke of Cumberland and the Duc d’Orléans, each of
whom were quick to inflame his impressionable mind to angry resentment.
Yet when Margaret Nicholson attempted the life of the King, the Prince
immediately posted off from Brighton that he might wait upon his father
at Windsor--a graceful act of piety that was rewarded by his father’s
refusal to see him. Hated by the Queen, who at this time did all she
could to keep her husband and his son apart, surrounded by intriguers,
who did all they could to set him against his father, George seems to
have behaved with great discretion. In the years that follow, I can
conceive no position more difficult than that in which he found himself
every time his father relapsed into lunacy. That he should have by
every means opposed those who through jealousy stood between him and
the regency was only natural. It cannot be said that at any time did he
show anxiety to rule, so long as there was any immediate chance of the
King’s recovery. On the contrary, all impartial seers of that chaotic
Court agreed that the Prince bore himself throughout the intrigues,
wherein he himself was bound to be, in a notably filial way.
There are many things that I regret in the career of George IV., and
what I most of all regret is the part that he played in the politics
of the period. Englishmen to-day have at length decided that royalty
shall not set foot in the political arena. I do not despair that some
day we shall place politics upon a sound commercial basis, as they
have already done in America and France, or leave them entirely in the
hands of the police, as they do in Russia. It is horrible to think
that under our existing _régime_ all the men of noblest blood and
highest intellect should waste their time in the sordid atmosphere
of the House of Commons, listening for hours to nonentities talking
nonsense, or searching enormous volumes to prove that somebody said
something some years ago that does not quite tally with something he
said the other day, or standing tremulous before the whips in the
lobbies and the scorpions in the constituencies. In the political
machine are crushed and lost all our best men. That Mr. Gladstone did
not choose to be a cardinal is a blow under which the Roman Catholic
Church still staggers. In Mr. Chamberlain Scotland Yard missed its
smartest detective. What a fine voluptuary might Lord Rosebery have
been! It is a platitude that the country is ruled best by the permanent
officials, and I look forward to the time when Mr. Keir Hardie shall
hang his cap in the hall of No. 10 Downing Street, and a Conservative
working man shall lead her Majesty’s Opposition. In the lifetime of
George, politics were not a whit finer than they are to-day. I feel
a genuine indignation that he should have wasted so much of tissue
in mean intrigues about ministries and bills. That he should have
been fascinated by that splendid fellow, Fox, is quite right. That he
should have thrown himself with all his heart into the storm of the
Westminster election is most natural. But it is inverideed sad to find
him, long after he had reached man’s estate, indulging in back-stair
intrigues with Whigs and Tories. It is, of course, absurd to charge
him with deserting his first friends, the Whigs. His love and fidelity
were given, not to the Whigs, but to the men who led them. Even after
the death of Fox, he did, in misplaced piety, do all he could for Fox’s
party. What wonder that, when he found he was ignored by the Ministry
that owed its existence to him, he turned his back upon that sombre
couple, the “Lords G. and G.,” whom he had always hated, and went
over to the Tories? Among the Tories he hoped to find men who would
faithfully perform their duties and leave him leisure to live his own
beautiful life. I regret immensely that his part in politics did not
cease here. The state of the country and of his own finances, and also,
I fear, a certain love that he had imbibed for political manipulation,
prevented him from standing aside. How useless was all the finesse he
displayed in the long-drawn question of Catholic Emancipation! How
lamentable his terror of Lord Wellesley’s rude dragooning! And is
there not something pitiable in the thought of the Regent at a time
of ministerial complications lying prone on his bed with a sprained
ankle, and taking, as was whispered, in one day as many as seven
hundred drops of laudanum? Some said he took these doses to deaden the
pain. But others, and among them his brother Cumberland, declared that
the sprain was all a sham. I hope it was. The thought of a voluptuary
in pain is very terrible. In any case, I cannot but feel angry, for
George’s own sake and that of his kingdom, that he found it impossible
to keep further aloof from the wearisome troubles of political
life. His wretched indecision of character made him an easy prey to
unscrupulous ministers, while his extraordinary diplomatic powers and
almost extravagant tact made them, in their turn, an easy prey to
him. In these two processes much of his genius was uselessly spent. I
must confess that he did not quite realise where his duties ended. He
wished always to do too much. If you read his repeated appeals to his
father that he might be permitted to serve actively in the British army
against the French, you will acknowledge that it was through no fault
of his own that he did not fight. It touches me to think that in his
declining years he actually thought that he had led one of the charges
at Waterloo. He would often describe the whole scene as it appeared
to him at that supreme moment, and refer to the Duke of Wellington,
saying, “Was it not so, Duke?” “I have often heard you say so, your
Majesty,” the old soldier would reply, grimly. I am not sure that the
old soldier was at Waterloo himself. In a room full of people he once
referred to the battle as having been won upon the playing-fields of
Eton. This was certainly a most unfortunate slip, seeing that all
historians are agreed that it was fought on a certain field situate a
few miles from Brussels.
In one of his letters to the King, craving for a military appointment,
George urges that, whilst his next brother, the Duke of York, commanded
the army, and the younger branches of the family were either generals
or lieutenant-generals, he, who was Prince of Wales, remained colonel
of dragoons. And herein, could he have known it, lay the right limiting
of his life. As royalty was and is constituted, it is for the younger
sons to take an active part in the services, whilst the eldest son is
left as the ruler of Society. Thousands and thousands of guineas were
given by the nation that the Prince of Wales, the Regent, the King,
might be, in the best sense of the word, ornamental. It is not for
us, at this moment, to consider whether Royalty, as a wholly Pagan
institution, is not out of place in a community of Christians. It is
enough that we should inquire whether the god whom our grandfathers
set up and worshipped and crowned with offerings, gave grace to his
worshippers.
That George was a moral man, in our modern sense, I do not for one
moment pretend. When he died there were found in one of his cabinets
more than a hundred locks of women’s hair. Some of these were still
plastered with powder and pomatum, others were mere little golden
curls, such as grow low down upon a girl’s neck, others were streaked
with grey. The whole of this collection subsequently passed into the
hands of Adam, the famous Scotch henchman of the Regent, and in his
family, now resident in Glasgow, it is treasured as an heirloom. I
myself have been privileged to look at all these locks of hair, and I
have seen a _clairvoyante_ take them one by one, and, pinching them
between her lithe fingers, tell of the love that each symbolised. I
have heard her tell of long rides by night, of a boudoir hung with
grass-green satin, and of a tryst at Windsor; of one, the wife of a
hussar at York, whose little lap-dog used to bark angrily whenever
the Regent came near his mistress; of a milk-maid who, in her great
simpleness, thought that her child would one day be king of England;
of an arch-duchess with blue eyes, and a silly little flautist from
Portugal; of women that were wantons and fought for his favour, great
ladies that he loved dearly, girls that gave themselves to him humbly.
If we lay all pleasures at the feet of our prince, we can scarcely
hope he will remain virtuous. Indeed, we do not wish our prince to be
an exemplar of godliness, but a perfect type of happiness. It may be
foolish of us to insist upon apolaustic happiness, but that is the kind
of happiness that we can ourselves, most of us, best understand, and so
we offer it to our ideal. In Royalty we find our Bacchus, our Venus.
Certainly George was, in the practical sense of the word, a fine king.
His wonderful physique, his wealth, his brilliant talents, he gave them
all without stint to Society. His development from the time when, at
Madame Cornely’s, he gallivanted with rips and demireps, to the time
when he sat, a stout and solitary old king, fishing in the artificial
pond at Windsor, was beautifully ordered. During his life he indulged
himself to the full in all the delights that life could offer him.
That he should have, in his old age, suddenly abandoned his career
of vigorous enjoyment is, I confess, rather surprising. The royal
voluptuary generally remains young to the last. No one ever tires of
pleasure. It is the pursuit of pleasure, the trouble to grasp it, that
makes us old. Only the soldiers who enter Capua with wounded feet leave
it demoralised. And yet George, who never had to wait or fight for a
pleasure, most certainly broke up long before his death. I can but
attribute this to the constant persecution to which he was subjected by
duns and ministers, parents and wives.
Not that I regret the manner in which he spent his last years. On the
contrary, I think it was exceedingly cosy. I like to think of the King,
at Windsor, lying a-bed all the morning in his darkened room, with
all the newspapers scattered over his quilt, and a little decanter of
the favourite cherry-brandy within easy reach. I like to think of him
sitting by his fire in the afternoon and hearing his ministers asking
for him at the door and piling another log upon the fire, as he hears
them sent away by his servant. After all, he had lived his life; he had
lived more fully than any other man.
And it is right that we should remember him first as a voluptuary.
Only let us note that his nature never became, as do the natures of
most voluptuaries, corroded by a cruel indifference to the happiness
of others. When all the town was agog for the _fête_ to be given by
the Regent in honour of the French King, Sheridan sent a forged card
of invitation to Romeo Coates, the half-witted dandy, who used at this
time to walk about in absurd ribbons and buckles, and was the butt of
all the streetsters. When the poor fellow arrived at the entrance of
Carlton House, proud as a peacock, he was greeted with a tremendous
cheer from the by-standing mob, but when he came to the lacqueys he
was told that his card was a hoax, and was sent about his business.
The tears were rolling down his cheeks as he shambled back into the
street. The Regent heard later in the evening of this sorry joke,
and next day despatched a kindly-worded message, in which he prayed
that Mr. Coates would not refuse to come and “view the decorations,
nevertheless.” Though he does not appear to have treated his inferiors
with that extreme servility that is now in vogue, George was beloved
by the whole of his household, and many are the little tales that are
told to illustrate the kindliness and consideration he showed to his
valets and his jockeys and his stable-boys. That from time to time
he dropped certain of his favourites is no cause for blaming him.
Remember that a Great Personage, like a great genius, is dangerous to
his fellow-creatures. The favourites of Royalty live in an intoxicant
atmosphere. They become unaccountable for their behaviour. Either
they get beyond themselves, and, like Brummel, forget that the King,
their friend, is also their master; or they outrun the constable, and
go bankrupt, or cheat at cards in order to keep up their position, or
do some other foolish thing that makes it impossible for the King to
favour them more. Remember, too, that old friends are generally the
refuge of unsociable persons, and how great must be the temptation
besetting the head of Society to form fresh friendships, when all the
cleverest and most charming persons in the land are standing ready,
like supers at the wings, to come on and please him. At Carlton House
there was a constant succession of wits. Minds were preserved for the
Prince of Wales, as coverts are preserved for him to-day. For him
Sheridan would say his best bon-mot, and Theodore Hook contrive his
most practical jokes, his swiftest chansonette. And Fox would talk, as
only he could, of Liberty and of Patriotism, and Byron would look more
than ever like Isidore de Lara as he recited his own bad verses, and
Sir Walter Scott would “pour out with an endless generosity his store
of old-world learning, kindness, and humour.” Of such men George was a
splendid patron. He did not merely sit in his chair, gaping princely
at their wit and their wisdom, but quoted with the scholars, and
argued with the statesmen, and jested with the wits. Doctor Burney, an
impartial observer, says that he was amazed by the knowledge of music
that the Regent displayed in a half-hour’s discussion over the wine.
Croker says that “the Prince and Scott were the two most brilliant
story-tellers, in their several ways, he had ever happened to meet.
Both exerted themselves, and it was hard to say which shone the most.”
The Prince seems indeed to have been a fine conversationalist, with a
wide range of knowledge and great humour. We, who have come at length
to look upon stupidity as one of the most sacred prerogatives of
Royalty, can scarcely realise that, if George’s birth had been never
so humble, he would have been known to us as a fine scholar and wit or
as a connoisseur of the arts. It is pleasing to think of his love for
the Flemish school of painting, for Wilkie and Sir Thomas Lawrence. The
splendid portraits of foreign potentates that hang in the Banqueting
Room at Windsor bear witness to his sense of the canvas. In his later
years he exerted himself strenuously in raising the tone of the drama.
His love of the classics never left him. We know he was fond of quoting
those incomparable poets, Homer, at great length, and that he was
prominent in the “papyrus-craze.” Indeed, he inspired Society with
a love of something more than mere pleasure, a love of the “humaner
delights.” He was a giver of tone. The bluff, disgusting ways of the
Tom and Jerry period gave way to those florid graces that are still
called Georgian.
A pity that George’s predecessor was not a man, like the Prince
Consort, of strong chastening influence! Then might the bright
flamboyance which George gave to Society have made his reign more
beautiful than any other--a real renaissance. But he found London a
wild city of taverns and cock-pits, and the grace which in the course
of years he gave to his subjects never really entered into them. The
cock-pits were gilded and the taverns painted with colour, but the
heart of the city was vulgar, even as before. The simulation of higher
things did indeed give the note of a very interesting period, but how
shallow that simulation was, and how merely it was due to George’s own
influence, we may see in the light of what happened after his death.
The good that he had done died with him. The refinement he had laid
upon vulgarity fell away, like enamel from withered cheeks. It was only
George himself who had made the sham endure. The Victorian Era came
soon, and the angels rushed in and drove the nymphs away and hung the
land with reps.
I have often wondered whether it was with a feeling that his influence
would be no more than life-long, that George allowed Carlton House,
that dear structure, the very work of his life and symbol of his being,
to be rased. I wish that Carlton House were still standing. I wish we
could still walk through those corridors, whose walls were “crusted
with ormolu,” and parquet-floors were “so glossy that, were Narcissus
to come down from heaven, he would, I maintain, need no other mirror
for his _beauté_.” I wish that we could see the pier-glasses and the
girandoles and the twisted sofas, the fauns foisted upon the ceiling
and the rident goddesses along the wall. These things would make
George’s memory dearer to us, help us to a fuller knowledge of him.
I am glad that the Pavilion still stands here in Brighton. Its trite
lawns and cheeky minarets have taught me much. As I write this essay,
I can see them from my window. Last night I sat there in a crowd of
vulgar people, whilst a band played us tunes. Once I fancied I saw the
shade of a swaying figure and of a wine-red face.
Study of a Head
By an Unknown Artist
[Illustration]
A Ballad of a Nun
By John Davidson
FROM Eastertide to Eastertide
For ten long years her patient knees
Engraved the stones--the fittest bride
Of Christ in all the diocese.
She conquered every earthly lust;
The abbess loved her more and more;
And, as a mark of perfect trust,
Made her the keeper of the door.
High on a hill the convent hung
Across a duchy looking down,
Where everlasting mountains flung
Their shadows over tower and town.
The jewels of their lofty snows
In constellations flashed at night;
Above their crests the moon arose;
The deep earth shuddered with delight.
Long ere she left her cloudy bed,
Still dreaming in the orient land,
On many a mountain’s happy head
Dawn lightly laid her rosy hand.
The adventurous sun took Heaven by storm;
Clouds scattered largesses of rain;
The sounding cities rich and warm,
Smouldered and glittered in the plain.