5. Prince of Wales to Duke of Wellington, quoted in Hibbert, Regent and King, p. 293.
6. Ibid., p. 26.
7. Ibid., p. 233.
8. James Stanier Clarke to Jane Austen, quoted in Kristin Flieger Samuelian, Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal and Monarchy in Print, 1780–1821 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 1.
9. Charles Saumarez Smith, The National Gallery: A Short History (London: Frances Lincoln, 2009), pp. 19–28.
10. Reeve (ed.), Greville Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 240.
11. Ibid., p. 247.
12. George Thomas [Keppel], Earl of Albemarle, Fifty Years of My Life (London: Macmillan, 1877), p. 18.
13. Francis Bamford and the Duke of Wellington (eds), The Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot, 1820–1832, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1950), p. 369.
14. W. H. Pyne, The History of the Royal Residences of Windsor Castle, St James’s Palace, Carlton House, Kensington Palace, Hampton Court, Buckingham House, and Frogmore, vol. 3 (London: A. Dry, 1819), ‘The History of Carlton-House’, pp. 90–92.
15. Alexandra Loske, ‘The Decorative Scheme of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton: George IV’s Design Ideas in the Context of European Colour Theory, 1765–1845’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 2014, p. 172.
16. Ibid., p. 171.
17. Louis J. Jennings (ed.), The Correspondence and Diaries of the Late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker … Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1884), p. 125; Dorothea Lieven, quoted in Hibbert, Regent and King, p. 126; Reeve (ed.), Greville Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 54.
18. Reeve (ed.), Greville Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 49.
19. Duke of Wellington and Henry Brougham, quoted in Hibbert, Regent and King, p. 102.
20. Lady Brownlow, quoted in Percy Fitzgerald, The Life of George the Fourth, vol. 2 (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1881), pp. 155–6.
21. James Chandler, England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 21, n. 43.
5. KING AT LAST
1. George Canning, quoted in Kevin Gilmartin, Writing against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain, 1790–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 146.
2. Reeve (ed.), Greville Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 12.
3. Ibid., p. 23.
4. Ibid., p. 31.
5. Hibbert, Regent and King, p. 153.
6. Ibid., p. 187.
7. Anthony Powell (ed.), Barnard Letters, 1778–1824 (London: Duckworth, 1928), p. 291.
8. Duke of Wellington, quoted in Hibbert, Regent and King, p. 229.
9. Ibid.
10. John Prebble, The King’s Jaunt: George IV in Scotland, August 1822: ‘One and Twenty Daft Days’ (London: Collins, 1988), p. 364.
11. Reeve (ed.), Greville Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 99.
12. Duke of Wellington, quoted in Hibbert, Regent and King, pp. 308–9.
13. Duke of Wellington, Despatches, Correspondence, and Memoranda, vol. 5, 1873, p. 518.
14. George IV, quoted in Lionel G. Robinson (ed.), Letters of Dorothea Lieven during her Residence in London, 1812–1834 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902), p. 187.
15. Reeve (ed.), Greville Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 189.
16. Ibid., p. 209.
17. Hibbert, Regent and King, p. 335.
18. Ibid., p. 338.
19. Reeve (ed.), Greville Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 1.
Further Reading
It seems at first sight surprising that there are so few biographies of George IV, and that the definitive account remains that of Christopher Hibbert, published in full in two volumes in 1972 and 1973. But there are perhaps two good reasons for this. In the first place, George IV was a monarch whose reputation was low during his reign and never really improved. In the second, the destruction of his collections of bits and pieces and, surely, of much of his private correspondence, both incoming and outgoing, meant that his inner world of emotion and belief is surprisingly hard to reproduce. My own attempts to track down material in some remote or undiscovered corner of the Royal Archive were fruitless. The cull started with the Duke of Wellington soon after George’s death. It was probably continued by exasperated royal servants, particularly those of Queen Victoria, who had little time for her uncle. George’s letters and his tat, his wardrobe and his jottings seem all to have been burned or binned, leaving only letters to his family, official correspondence and some correspondence that came back to him, from Maria Fitzherbert, for instance. Archives like that of Charles James Fox, which might have contained a good deal of material both by and about him, were also destroyed. Those who seek to preserve reputations generally obliterate the objects of their veneration. Without the personal, the person disappears.
Contemporary accounts of the period remain some of the most vivid. Nathaniel Wraxall’s rambling and often mendacious memoirs, in many editions, are gripping. Greville’s Memoirs offer good closeup observations of politicians and public figures. The Byron industry is still unstoppable, with interest now centred on the women of the Byron and Shelley circles, and on the mathematical and scientific world of Babbage and Ada Lovelace, most recently in Miranda Seymour’s In Byron’s Wake (2018). Leslie Marchand’s three-volume Byron: A Biography (1957), though fatally dated in the pass it gives the poet’s attitudes to women, is still a great read, as are Byron’s own letters.
Other members of the royal family, besides George, have belatedly come to the attention of biographers. Flora Fraser’s The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline (1996) was the first modern work to tell Caroline’s side of the sorry marital story of the mismatched couple. Janice Hadlow’s The Strangest Family (2014) lays bare the sad lives of George IV’s siblings. Flora Fraser’s Princesses (2004) concentrated on George’s sisters, while my own A Royal Affair (2006) put the lives of George III and his siblings in the contexts of the European Enlightenment and the American Revolution.
After years of neglect, the period between the French Revolution and the Victorian age in Britain is now getting the attention it deserves. Alongside existing histories of London by Gerry White and Roy Porter, to name two of the best, we now have more detailed analysis of the mores and life of the city in this period, in particular Vic Gatrell’s City of Laughter (2006), Ben Wilson’s Decency and Disorder (2007) and Dan Cruikshank’s The Secret History of Georgian London (2009). The wider social and economic changes of the period are explored in Richard Holmes’s The Age of Wonder (2008) and Jenny Uglow’s In These Times (2015). Putting Britain in a global context and decentring national history is valuable and necessary; Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Revolution (1962) started this process, while Christopher Bayly’s The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (2004) offers a revisionist account from a different political perspective.
Perhaps the most exciting developments in historiography to enter the realm of public history are coming in the fields of imperial and environmental history, where the costs, both psychic and economic, of empire and industrialization are finally being totted up. The brilliant work of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership at University College London, led by Catherine Hall, has lifted the veil from the extent of wealth extraction from the British Empire, and the uses to which it was put. New work on the British in India is finally ripping away the cosy view of empire which for far too long has dominated narrative writing on the subject. Environmental history, which is putting the natural world and the whole earth back into the history of humankind, will have much to say on the period covered by this short book, when a new era in human history, the Anthropocene, was unwittingly inaugurated, and a series of changes begun beside which the lives of monarchs are just the dances of fleas.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Stuart Proffitt for commissioning this book and editing it in his inimitable way and with his now famous blue pen, the sight of which, instead of striking the usual trepidation, was a tonic. I like to think of
myself as well disposed towards modern electronic editing and its concomitant saving of trees and printing ink; but for a dyslexic writer the visual is still easiest. I went through the copy-edited manuscript with paper and screen side-by-side.
I would also like to thank the staff of the Royal Archive and the Royal Collection, in particular Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, who gave me the benefit of his knowledge of George IV’s taste in painting and of the Royal Picture collection in its entirety. His understanding of George IV’s taste greatly enhanced my own, and I have gratefully used it in describing George’s acquisitions when he was Prince of Wales and the improvements and hanging of the collection at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle when he was king.
I would like to thank the staff at Penguin, in particular Ben Sinyor and Anna Hervé, along with Kate Parker and Stephen Ryan, and Cecilia Mackay who undertook the picture research. They have suffered my weak spelling and generally cavalier attitude to grammar with fortitude and good humour. Finally I would like to thank those who have tilled this field before me, especially Jenny Uglow, Janice Hadlow, Flora Fraser and the late Christopher Hibbert.
Index
Africa 48, 78
Alexander I, Tsar 77
Amelia, Princess 59
America 9–10, 12, 20, 21, 22, 48, 50
Arbuthnot, Harriet 69
Armitstead, Elizabeth 21
Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, Princess 17
Augustus, Prince, Duke of Sussex 93
Austen, Jane 66
Baring, Sir Thomas 70
Bird, Edward 71
Birmingham 49
Blackheath 53, 58, 59
Blücher, Field Marshal 77
Boehm, Mrs 78
Bolton, Charles Powlett, Duke of 40
Boston 9–10
Brighton 27, 33, 54, 83
Brighton Royal Pavilion 33, 54, 66, 70, 71–5, 91, 98
British Guiana 79
Bristol 49
British Museum 66
Brougham, Henry 76, 83, 84, 85
Brummell, Beau 68, 72
Brunswick 44, 86
Brussels 88
Buckingham House 8, 14
Buckingham Palace 64–5, 69, 70, 71–2, 77, 90, 91, 98
Burke, Edmund 37
Byron, Lord 65, 80
Canning, George 82, 92
Cape Colony 78
Carême, Antonin 74
Caribbean, the 49
Carlisle, Frederick Howard, Earl of 37
Carlton House 17, 22, 30, 32, 38, 55, 57, 62–3, 66, 69, 70, 90, 91
Caroline, Queen 42, 43–7, 47–8, 52–3, 57–9, 83–94
Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark 10, 18, 86
Castle Howard 37
Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Viscount 85
Ceylon 79
Charlotte, Princess of Wales 52, 53, 57–8, 75–6
Charlotte, Queen 3, 6–7, 8, 36, 46, 46–7, 86
China 50
Clarence House 77
Clarke, James Stanier 66
Conyngham, Elizabeth, Marchioness 75, 87, 91, 96
Copenhagen 10
Crace, John and Frederick 73
Croker, John Wilson 74
Crouch, Anna Maria 40
Cumberland House 19
Denmark 10, 18
Douglas, Sir John 58–9
Douglas, Lady Charlotte 58–9
Dover 77, 83
Dublin 87
Dunning, John 21
Edinburgh 89
Edward, Prince, Duke of Kent 76
Eldon, John Scott, Earl of 56
Elizabeth Charlotte of Bavaria, Princess Palatine 65
Elliott, Grace Dalrymple 26
Fenton, Lavinia 40
Finch, Lady Charlotte 9
Fitzherbert, Maria 29–34, 40, 41, 51, 53–4, 55–7, 63, 85, 97
Fitzwilliam, William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, Earl 37, 55
Fox, Charles James 20–2, 29, 34, 35–6, 39, 40, 55, 92
France 12, 19, 30, 31, 38–40, 48, 50, 51, 54–5, 55, 68, 76–8
Frederick, Prince, Duke of York 11–13, 14, 22, 36, 37, 43, 75
Frederick, Prince of Wales 4
Frederick William III, King of Prussia 77–8
George I, King 4
George II, King 4, 8
George III, King 3, 4, 6–8, 10–11, 12–13, 14, 15, 16–19, 21–3, 27, 30, 33, 34–7, 38, 39, 42, 44, 48, 51–2, 52–3, 55, 58–60, 61, 62–3, 83
George IV, King: birth 3; relationship with father 3, 4, 12–13, 15, 18–19, 22–3, 33, 38, 47, 58; status 3–4; lack of purpose 5–6; background 6–8; siblings 6; childhood 8; appearance 8–9, 13, 89–90; education 9, 11–12; upbringing 11–14, 24; as Prince of Wales 3–4, 4, 5–6, 11–23, 24–41, 43–7, 52–60; cartoonists’ portrayals 14; own establishment 14, 16–17; character 15, 15–16, 19, 24, 61; weight 16, 54, 68, 89, 90; attains majority 16–17; income 16–17, 34, 91; George III’s codes of behaviour 18–19; rebellion 19; political involvement 19–21; extravagance 22, 62–3; love life 24–7, 28; the Regency Crisis 34–7; private life 27–8; health 28–9, 90; marriage to Maria Fitzherbert 29–34, 40, 85; debts 31, 40, 62; finances 31, 33–4; drinking 37, 54; womanizing 37, 40–1, 45, 53–4; portrayal as A Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion 38; and the French Revolution 39–40; breaks with Maria Fitzherbert 41–2; marriage to Caroline of Brunswick 42, 43–7; relationship with Caroline 46–7, 52–3, 57–8, 83–94; relationship with press 4–5, 47–8; correspondence 50–1; separation from Caroline 52–3; renews relationship with Mrs Fitzherbert 53–4; relationship with Princess Charlotte 57–8; appointed Regent 60; as Regent 3–4, 61–81; pension bill 63; patronage 63–4; interest in music 64–5; reading 65–6; clothing 67–8; habit of accumulation 68–9; Armoury 69; painting collection 70–1; death of Princess Charlotte 75–6; and the Peterloo Massacre 79–80; accession 83; reign 83–96; and Caroline’s trial 84–5; coronation 85; and death of Caroline 86–7; Irish tour 87–8; Wilkie portrait 89; expenses 91; and Catholic Relief Act 92–5, 98; health declines 95–6; death 3, 96–7; will 85, 97; obituary 3; funeral 97–8; legacy 98–9
Gillray, James 38
Glasgow 49
Goderich, Frederick John Robinson, Viscount 92
Godwin, William 80
Göttingen 89
Greenwich 45
Grenville, William Wyndham, Baron 55
Greville, Charles 74, 74–5, 82–3, 83, 90–1, 95–6, 98
Grey, Charles, Earl 55, 84, 99
Grosvenor, Richard, Earl 10
Halford, Sir Henry 97
Hamilton, Mary 24–5
Hanover 14–15, 88, 88–9, 93
Harris, James later Earl of Malmesbury) 15, 44–6
Harwich 86
Helsingør 10, 18
Henry, Prince, Duke of Cumberland 10–11, 19, 27
Hertford, Isabella Ingram-Seymour-Conway, Marchioness of 53–4, 56, 63, 75
Hertford, Francis Ingram-Seymour-Conway, Marquess of 56
Hillisberg, Louise 54
Holdernesse, Robert Darcy, Earl of 11
Holland, Henry 54
Holland, Elizabeth Vassall Fox, Baroness 16, 55
Holland, Henry Vassall-Fox, Baron 29, 30, 55
Holyhead 86
Horton, Anne 19
Hotham, Colonel 31, 33
Howth 86–7
Hunter, Richard 35
India 49, 50, 78
Ireland 48–9, 51–2, 86, 87–8, 92–3
James II, King 66, 87
Jersey, Frances Villiers, Countess of 41, 46, 53–4
Johnson, Joseph 80
Jones, Robert 73
Jordan, Dorothy 76
Kensington Palace 8
Kew Palace 11–14, 15, 73
Knighton, Sir William 91, 96–7
Kronborg Castle 10, 18
Laeken 88
Lamb, Charles 4–5
Leipzig 77
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Prince 75,
76
Lieven, Dorothea, Princess 65, 74
Liverpool 49
Liverpool, Robert Jenkinson, Earl of 62, 78, 91, 92
London 6, 25, 37, 49, 63–4, 77, 80, 84–5, 90, 98
Louis XVI, King of France 39, 40, 55
Louis XVIII, King of France 77
Lunardi, Vincenzo 64
Macalpine, Ida 35
Malibran, Maria 96
Manchester 49
Massereene, Countess of 54
Mauritius 79
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Charles, Duke of 6
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Charles, Prince (later Duke) of 7, 8, 44
Melbourne, William Lamb, Viscount 47
Metternich, Prince 74, 77
Meyer, Madame de 54
Moira, < Francis Rawdon-Hastings, > Earl of 55, 61
Montague House 58
Moscow 77
Napoleon 48, 65–6, 76–8
Nash, John 72–3
Nepal 78
North, Frederick, Lord 17–8, 21, 27
O’Connell, Daniel 87, 88, 92–3
Oldenburg, Grand Duchess Catherine of 77
Ord, James 32
Payne, Captain J. W. 37, 42
Peel, Robert 91–2
Perceval, Spencer 60, 61
Percy, Major < Henry > 78
Pergami, Bartolomeo 84
Peterloo Massacre 49, 79–80, 80–1, 81, 82
Pitt, William (the Younger) 22, 35–6, 40, 48, 49, 51–2, 55
Platov, Count Matvei 77
Priestley, Joseph 80
Prussia 48, 77
Rembrandt 70–1
Reynolds, Sir Joshua 70
Robinson, Mary 26–7
Robinson, Peter Frederick 54
Rossini, Gioachino 64–5
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 9, 12
Russia 77
St Albans 10
St James’s Palace 45–6, 96
St Lucia 79
Scotland 89, 90–1
Scott, Sir Walter 66, 81, 89
Seymour, Lady Horatia 55–6
Seymour, Mary 55–7
Sezincote House 73
Shelley, Percy Bysshe 63, 80–1
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 55
Slane Castle 87
Smythe, Mary Anne 32
Spain 77
Steen, Jan 71
Strelitz 6, 7