A ROYAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND
FLAMBOYANT, extravagant and hedonistic, King George IV surpassed all his predecessors with the lavishness of his lifestyle. No building in England defines a monarch more than the magnificent Royal Pavilion in Brighton, a breath-taking palace with every colourful ornamentation possible, which remains today as a glorious gilded symbol of the king who wanted to impress. Walk through the doors of the exotic pleasure dome and you immediately enter this Regency monarch’s world.
It is a world that George created for himself, for he found the court of his father, King George III, stifling. In adulthood, he and his brother Frederick became rebels, and the
Duke of Wellington once described them as “the damnedest millstones about the necks of any government that can be imagined”.
It was an accurate observation. Whereas their father was very much the quiet family man, George and Frederick wanted to be stylish men of fashion, craving “wine, women and song”.
Prince George was born at
St James’s Palace on August 12, 1762, the eldest of 15 children. His father was initially told that the child was a girl and went into the bedchamber to see his daughter, only to discover that the baby was in fact a “strong, large, pretty boy”. The infant prince, baptised George Augustus Frederick, was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester when less than a week old.
His education included studying
languages and he was fluent in
French, Italian and German. He particularly enjoyed the arts, learned to play the cello, was a good dancer and a bass singer, and to please his father he also studied agriculture. He was not, however, a model student and at times could be idle and a great practical joker. When George was fifteen, his tutor remarked, “He will either be the most polished gentleman, or the most accomplished blackguard in Europe, possibly both.”
George was witty and a good mimic, and his social circle increased as a young man. Soon alcohol and gambling became features of his life and his behaviour became increasingly immoral. His friends included opposition politicians such as Charles James Fox, whom the King considered to be a bad influence on his son. Fox taught the prince how to swear in three languages!
George soon became a spendthrift, buying what he wanted without any thought to the financial consequences, spending £10,000 a year on clothes. He would spend over £20 a week on perfumes, powders and face creams, and once spent £130,000 at a silversmith. On another occasion, when he wanted a walking stick, he ended up buying 32 rather than one.
Although his father warned the Prince continually about his reckless behaviour, constant partying and extravagance, his mother, Queen Charlotte, was probably a greater influence. She loved fine clothes and enjoyed dressing George up in theatrical-style costumes when he was a boy. Her London home, the Queen’s House (now Buckingham Palace), was elegantly and extravagantly decorated, and she loved the Oriental style. His love of rich fabrics and objets d’art certainly came from her.
At the age of twenty-one, George was given Carlton House in London’s Pall Mall, next to St James’s Park, as his official residence, and £60,000 to refurbish it. Typically, the Prince had the property extended and lavishly decorated at a cost of over £160,000.
Some of the decoration at Carlton House was to be recreated later in the Royal Pavilion. By this time, his debts were so great that they had to be settled by Parliament to avoid a public embarrassment.
In his early twenties, George made the seaside town of Brighton fashionable when he rented a home there, a then modest farmhouse in the Old Steine. His health was already beginning to suffer due to overindulgence, and his physician had suggested that some sea air would be of benefit. As fashionable society followed the Prince down to the Sussex coast, Brighton was nicknamed “London by the Sea”.
On his first visit, the Prince attended a ball. It was noted that he was tall and good looking with “high colour and powdered hair”, and he wore “an exquisitely cut embroidered silk coat, ablaze with French paste buttons, and carried a laced cocked hat, lavishly ornamented with steel beads”.
By 1787 the Prince had commissioned architect Henry
Holland to enlarge the farmhouse, originally calling it Marine Pavilion. Over the next 35 years, with additional designs by John Nash, the Pavilion was further extended, decorated and furnished in a mix of Chinese and Indian styles, the exterior topped with domes and minarets.
George was probably at his happiest in Brighton, where he could ride on the South Downs, go to the races, walk without being troubled by people and go dipping in the sea from a bathing machine. In 1784 he was famously introduced to Mrs Maria Fitzherbert, who was to become the love of his life. She had her own home, Steine House, built in Brighton in 1804 and it reputedly had a secret tunnel through to the Royal Pavilion, although one has never been uncovered.
Twice widowed and six years older than George, Maria Fitzherbert became concerned about her reputation. She was not prepared to be simply a mistress. For her, it was marriage or nothing. As this seemed impossible, she planned to leave the country to escape from the situation. The infatuated Prince faked a suicide attempt to demonstrate the depth of his love and Maria was so shocked that she relented and agreed to marry him.
On December 15, 1785 George and Maria secretly married in the drawing room of her house in London’s Park Street. The marriage was subsequently declared invalid by the Church of England as it was without the King’s consent which was required by the Royal Marriages Act. Plus Maria was a Roman Catholic, which under the Act of Settlement would have removed the Prince from the line of succession. Although they knew their marriage was unrecognised, they lived openly together.
By this time, George’s debts had spiralled out of control and were in the region of a quarter of a million pounds. Having learned of his son’s illegal marriage, the King refused to settle the debts and it was left to Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger to sort out the mess.
He tried to avoid a scandal by, once again, getting Parliament to pay the debts if the King agreed to contribute, but it was impossible to stop George spending money. Within 10 years his debts totalled nearly £650,000.
In 1788 King George III suffered his first major mental breakdown. During a dinner at Windsor Castle that November he attacked George and tried to throttle him. Although we now know that George III’s condition was
> more likely of physical origin than mental, his eldest son’s behaviour cannot have helped his state of mind. It is said that the Prince sat for two nights beside his father’s bed, hoping that he would die, but in the New Year the King fully recovered.
Public opinion was that Prince George had behaved badly towards his father and his popularity plummeted. It is largely down to the Prince maligning his father that many came to believe that King George III was permanently insane, rather than having episodic periods of ill health.
As George’s debts mounted, the King eventually said that he would pay them if the Prince agreed to settle down and marry a royal bride. George was left with no option and, in 1795, agreed to marry his cousin, the German princess Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttell, on the understanding his debts would be cleared on their wedding day. Such was the extraordinary arrangement that George and Caroline became engaged without ever having met!
When they were finally introduced, it was hate at first sight. “I am not well,” said George on seeing his future bride for the first time, “pray, get me a glass of brandy.” She was equally unimpressed, feeling that the portraits she had seen of him beforehand were over flattering. It is said that Caroline dressed badly and her personal hygiene left something to be desired.
Still, they duly married at the
Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace on the evening of April 8, 1795. George became inebriated before the ceremony. It was reported that he was eventually so drunk that on his wedding night he collapsed with his head in a fireplace and fell asleep.
In the years that followed, George had dalliances with various society ladies including Lady Jersey, Lady Conyngham and Lady Hertford, but his heart remained with Maria. Theirs was a tempestuous relationship. For a period he turned against Mrs Fitzherbert, telling friends that he thought of her with “feelings of disgust and horror”. She in turn tried to blackmail him, threatening to release private documents to the public unless George continued to pay her an annuity. Yet, by the end of his life, their close affection appeared undimmed and some historians believe that she and the king had at least one child together.
George and Caroline also had a child: Princess Charlotte, born nine months after their wedding. Charlotte became extremely popular with the British public. At the age of twenty she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield, later King of the Belgians, but died during childbirth in November 1817 following a 50-hour labour.
The nation mourned her loss. Poet Lord Byron wrote from Venice, “The death of the Princess Charlotte has been a shock even here, and must have been an earthquake at home.”
Haberdashers ran out of black cloth in England as so many people went into mourning. Many businesses closed for a fortnight as a mark of respect, and large quantities of memorial souvenirs were produced to mark the passing of “the pride and hope of England”. George was grief-stricken and he withdrew from public life for several months.
Charlotte’s rooms can still be seen at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. Her wedding dress was cherished and is today owned by Queen Elizabeth II and is the oldest surviving wedding gown in British royal history.
George and Caroline’s marriage was a disaster and he tried unsuccessfully to divorce her, accusing her of adultery and issuing a Bill of Pains and Penalties to try and bring the marriage to an end. During a debate on this in the House of Lords,
Caroline declared that she had only committed adultery once, when she went to bed with “Mrs Fitzherbert’s husband”!
By 1811 King George III’s health had deteriorated further and it became clear that he no longer had the mental capacity to reign. George, as the eldest son and heir, became Prince Regent – to reign on his father’s behalf. With a poor reputation by this time, his elevated position did nothing to improve his popularity and we have been left with an image of a derided figure, generally known as “Prinny”, who was constantly lampooned by the cartoonists and satirists of his day.
As Prince Regent, George undid much of the good work achieved by his father and it would be up to future kings and queens to restore the respectable image of the monarchy. In the early 18th century, England was suffering financially through costly wars with France, and many people were experiencing poverty as machinery developed during the Industrial Revolution led to unemployment, particularly in manufacturing. Prinny’s extravagant lifestyle did nothing to endear him to the public. As he rode through the streets of London, people would jeer at his carriage and throw rotten vegetables and stones.
He finally succeeded his father on January 28, 1820, to become King George IV. One of his first acts as monarch was to have Caroline’s name excluded from prayer books in prayers for the King, Queen and Royal
Family. When Napoleon Bonaparte died in May 1821, a courtier went immediately to the King declaring, “I have, Sir, to congratulate you. Your greatest enemy is dead.” Wrongly assuming that he meant Caroline, George replied, “Is she, by God?”
The Coronation took place at Westminster Abbey in July 1821 and he wanted it to be as spectacular as possible, spending £24,000 on robes and a further £54,000 on his crown. Caroline tried to gatecrash the ceremony, but was forbidden entry because she did not have an invitation. By this time she had been living in Italy with her lover, Bartolomeo Pergami, since 1814, and was not regarded by the British people as Queen.
Neither had she smartened up her appearance in the intervening years, as a popular rhyme at the time went: Queen, Queen Caroline,
Dipped her hair in turpentine; Combed her hair
With the leg of a chair,
And stuck a toothpick in her ear. Caroline could have proved a thorn in the new King’s side, but she died just 19 days after the Coronation. She was buried in her native Brunswick, but her wish that the plate on her coffin be inscribed with “Caroline of Brunswick, the injured Queen of England” was refused by the King.
As monarch, George proved difficult for his government to deal with, as he was extremely single-minded and
became belligerent if he did not get his own way. Parliament was nevertheless productive during his reign, promoting free trade and reducing the cost of living. Trade unions were legalised, and there was a repeal of religious discrimination in 1829 which enabled Catholics to become Members of Parliament.
One remarkable development during George IV’s reign was the railways. In 1825 the Stockton and Darlington railway opened, followed by the Liverpool and Manchester lines, the start of a network that would soon transform travel across England. Improved transport in turn benefited trade and industry.
As well as building the Royal Pavilion, George also made changes to Windsor Castle to give it a gothic style to appear more imposing. He also virtually rebuilt what is now Buckingham Palace, turning it into a U-shaped building with a forecourt and triumphal arch, at a cost of over £496,000.
Areas of London were built in his name as Prince Regent, and the architect John Nash was responsible for Regent Street and Regent’s Park. Today we refer to styles of architecture and furniture that became popular at this period as “Regency”.
Whilst we tend to think of stately homes and palaces being open to the public as a modern practice, in June 1811 George actually allowed people to view his Carlton House home in London. Every half an hour, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m,. they were let in, 200 at a time, with 30,000 people queuing to see the royal splendour. So great were the crowds that many got injured in the crush.
In 1823 he donated his father’s vast collection of books to the nation, which became the British Library. George himself loved the novels of Jane Austen, was the first to buy Sense and Sensibility before it was advertised to the public, and Austen dedicated her novel, Emma, to him. George also encouraged his government to purchase the Old Master paintings collected by philanthropist John Julius Angerstein, from which London’s National
Gallery developed.
By the time he was in his sixties, George had ballooned in weight and his health suffered as a result. A dinner at the Royal Pavilion reputedly had 900 dishes, created by his chef Carême, including two of George’s favourites: meringue and syllabub. Diarist Thomas Creevey recorded that George’s belly “now reaches his knees”, and years of over-indulgence left the King with agonising gout. A corset made for him in 1824 had a 50-inch waist. In 1830 it was recorded that he weighed 20 stone. He was now blind in one eye due to a cataract and suffered badly with gallstones, dropsy and bladder problems, but his appetite remained undiminished.
“I heard of the King this morning,” the Duke of Wellington wrote in a letter. “What do you think of his breakfast yesterday morning for an invalid? A pigeon and beef steak pye, of which he eat two pigeons and three beef steaks. Three parts of a bottle of Mozelle, a glass of dry Champagne, two glasses of port and a glass of brandy!”
A letter from Mrs Fitzherbert, wishing him well during this period of ill health, seemed to cheer him and he slept with it under his pillow.
He died at Windsor in the early hours of June 26, 1830, from a burst blood vessel, having raised his hand to his chest, saying, “Good God, what do I feel? This must be death!” Pinned to his nightshirt was a miniature of Maria Fitzherbert. He had requested that this portrait be placed in his coffin and it was hung around his neck before the funeral at St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
George’s immediate heirs were his brother, William, who now became King, and his niece, Victoria. Queen Victoria later recalled meeting George IV when she was a young girl and having to kiss him. She described the incident as “too disgusting, because his face was covered in greasepaint.”
It was found after his death that George IV had been a hoarder, keeping most of his clothes from the age of 18 and many bundles of love letters and locks of hair from his paramours. Alas, much of this was consigned to the fire and is gone for ever.
Fortunately, a few choice items remain, such as a pair of breeches, a nightshirt, a colourful floral dressinggown known as a banyan, and his 16-feet-long Coronation robe, which give us just a tantalising glimpse of this extraordinary monarch.
More than anything else, the Royal Pavilion is a glittering memorial to his colourful style and extravagant tastes.
PAUL JAMES