The reigns of madness
QUESTION Is it true that George III was one of several mad monarchs of the late 18th Century? THE end of the 18th Century was unusual in that there were three regents in control of the thrones of Europe.
The mental illness of George III of the United Kingdom (1738-1820) began in the early 1780s, and in 1811 his son became Prince Regent.
Christian VII of Denmark (17491808) suffered a lifetime of mental health issues. He became king shortly before his 17th birthday and within a year married his 15-year- old cousin, Caroline Matilda of Great Britain and Hanover (1751-1775).
He fell under the influence of the young Dr Johann Friedrich Struensee who, by a combination of charm and heavy sedation, managed to have himself appointed secretary of the royal cabinet. He not only usurped Christian VII’s rule, but also had an affair with Caroline Matilda, much to the disgust of her brother, George III. When the queen produced a daughter, Louise Augusta, her likeness to Struensee was so marked that it caused a riot.
Not that Christian deserved much better: he spent his nights whoring on the streets of Copenhagen and sometimes attacked passers-by with a spiked club. Struensee was ousted in 1772, his position of power taken by the dowager queen, Juliana Maria, the king’s stepmother.
She secured her son, Prince Frederick, a seat in the state council and appointed his former teacher, Ove Høegh-Guldberg, as secretary of the royal cabinet.
As Christian VII’s behaviour became even more obsessive, he spent much time with Anna Catharine Beuthaken, a red-haired prostitute who liked to dress in naval uniform.
He was often found in the morning, sitting in the corner of his room in a trance. From time to time, he would beat his head against the wall, sometimes until blood flowed.
He later became obsessed with pain. He liked to watch people being tortured and would also have himself whipped or subjected to the rack. When his son, Crown Prince Frederick, reached 16, he joined a circle of discontented politicians and took the throne in 1784.
He ruled Denmark-Norway on behalf of his increasingly mentally ill father until the latter’s death of a brain aneurysm in 1808.
Maria I of Portugal (1734-1816) had the distinction of being that country’s first queen regent in 1777. She married her uncle Pedro – when crowned, he was renamed Peter III – in 1778. In May 1786, Peter III died and Maria started suffering bouts of depression and religious mania. Two years later, her eldest son, Joseph, died of smallpox and within two months her only surviving daughter, Mariana, died days after giving birth. After that, Maria sank into a state of permanent melancholia.
She fancied she saw her father’s image ‘in colour black and horrible, erected on a pedestal of molten iron, which a crowd of ghastly phantoms were dragging down’. In 1792, Portuguese ministers concluded that their queen was mad and turned to her only surviving son, João, with the request to ‘assume the direction of public affairs’. Maria lived a life of perpetual torment until her death in 1816. João continued to rule the country until his death in 1826.
Alice Hammond, Edinburgh.
QUESTION Do plants get cancer? ALL multicellular organisms are susceptible to defects in the regulation of cell proliferation that cause individual cells or groups of cells to escape normal developmental constraints and proliferate inappropriately – known as neoplasia.
In animals, such defects lead to tumour formation and cancer, and negatively impact an individual’s health. Cancer can spread from its original site by local spread, lymphatic spread to regional lymph nodes or by blood – haematogenous spread – to distant sites, known as metastasis.
Plants also develop tumours, which are composed of disorganised tissues and might inhibit plant development or function. However, as plant cells are fixed in a cell wall matrix, they are not motile and therefore metastasis cannot occur.
Most plant tumours are caused by pathogens – such as crown gall, fungal infections and geminiviruses – but tumours can also develop spontaneously, particularly in interspecific hybrid plants.
In the absence of pathogens, however, most plants are non-susceptible to neoplasia and this resistance is of interest to oncologists.
Ken Wolfe, via email.
QUESTION The Alfred Hitchcock film Young And Innocent (1937) features the 18-year-old actress Nova Pilbeam. What became of her? FURTHER to the earlier answer, an unusual episode in Nova Pilbeam’s life took place in the Eighties, when the former actress had been out of the business for 30-odd years.
Manhattan-based American artist Duncan Hannah, a protégé of Andy Warhol, became seemingly obsessed with Pilbeam, painting her many times.
He would post his pictures to her, but she steadfastly ignored him.
This only reinforced Hannah’s admiration for Pilbeam. In an interview he said: ‘She’s the plucky English schoolgirl . . . she’s got such spunk. That iconic face.’
Whether Hannah was truly obsessed or playing a clever game with the buying public is uncertain. Of his pictures, he said: ‘The strange thing is that those are the paintings that always sell first.
‘People seem to respond to her. I think they like the fact that I’m obsessed. They’re buying part of the obsession.’
Will Seintz, Liverpool.
QUESTION Why is Guinness so popular in the West Indies? WHEN special Dublin-brewed porter started arriving in the West Indies at the start of the 19th Century, it was a novelty drink that quickly caught on because of its strength.
Until then, people in the West Indies had been used to drinking fruit juices and ginger beer and for special celebrations, rum, made from the molasses created by boiling sugar cane. But there was no tradition of beer drinking.
The Guinness brewery in Dublin changed all that in 1801 when it started brewing porter for export. It had to survive long periods at sea, so it had more hops and a lighter gravity than the porter offered on the home market in Ireland. The brew was also much stronger than what was brewed for Ireland.
This porter arrived in the West Indies through the good offices of traders and sea captains – and soon local people acquired a taste for this exotic new drink, mellow and rich-bodied. In time, that taste for porter made the transition to Guinness proper.
The start of supplying the West Indian market from St James’s Gate was honoured a year ago, when Guinness launched a new beer from its craft-brewing facility. This was Guinness West Indies porter, with 6 per cent ABV, much stronger than similar Guinness products available on the home market here in Ireland.
As for the beer market in the West Indies, Guinness had it largely to itself during the 19th Century. The first local brewery in the West Indies wasn’t set up until 1918, when the Desnoes & Geddes brewery, also known as the Red Stripe brewery, started brewing.
The brewery is still going strong and today, the Caribbean Brewing Association has close on 20 full members, embracing 17 island countries in the Caribbean. Big international brewers like Diageo – owners of Guinness – and Heineken are associate members.
Each island brews its own variety of pale ale, but sometimes, stout is also brewed.
The Desnoes & Geddes brewery produces Dragon stout, while in St Vincent’s and the Grenadines, the St Vincent brewery bottles Guinness Foreign Extra Stout under licence.
Just like the avalanche of new micro-breweries in Ireland, the West Indies has seen a number of small breweries start up in recent years.
Montserrat, which is known as the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean, has so few i nhabitants now that it doesn’t have its own brewing tradition, but imported beer is still popular. From Cromwellian times in the mid-17th Century, until the end of the 18th Century, many Irish people came to Montserrat either as indentured servants or as slaves and the island still celebrates St Patrick’s Day as a public holiday.
But a huge volcanic eruption in 1995 has made the south of the island uninhabitable.
The tradition of strong porter, then stout, introduced into the West Indies over 200 years ago started the popularisation of beer in the islands but today, stronger than usual Guinness has lost none of its popularity.
Ryan Geraghty, Wicklow.