Introduction
Never in modern times has a sovereign died so unlamented, nor has the person of the monarch retained so little respect after death, as King George IV in 1830. Robert Huish's venomous biography of 1830-1 declared of the late King that, 'with a personal income 'exceeding the national revenue of a third-rate power, there appeared to be no limit to his desires, nor any restraint to his profusion', and concluded that George IV contributed more 'to the demoralisation of society than any prince recorded in the pages of history'.
George Augustus Frederick, 21st Prince of Wales, was born on 12 August 1762. Even his birth was dogged by the sort of absurdity which was to dominate his life, as the attending courtier, the Earl of Huntingdon, promptly pronounced the newborn heir to be a girl. And as Prince of Wales and, after 1811, Regent for his increasingly ailing and mad father George III, George was not to prove, as one royal apologist piously hoped at the beginning of his Regency, 'a great king - the lover of his people - the protector of liberty and defender of the laws - as bright, if not brighter, than any of his predecessors'. Although one of the most gifted of royal princes, his obsessive self-interest and vast expenditure on palaces and pictures, militaria and mistresses, parties and pageants meant that, by the time of his accession to the throne in 1820, he had become a byword for senseless extravagance and a national joke.
'Even his birth was dogged by the sort of absurdity which was to dominate his life'
As Prince, Regent and King, George IV strove to fashion an idealised image of himself that increasingly bore little relation to reality. His glittering art collections and over-ambitious building programmes; the colourful, pseudo-historic pageants he devised for his coronation of 1821 and his visit to Edinburgh of 1822; his fascination with soldiering and with the trappings and symbols of military success (though his father never allowed him to be responsible for more than a pet regiment stationed at home) - all these testified to his seemingly inexhaustible desire to promote himself to a place in the nation's hearts which his dismal conduct had signally failed to win. Depressed by his evident failure to reinvent himself, as monarch (1820-30) the ailing King simply withdrew into a fantasy world of laudanum and alcohol.
George IV's undoubted charm, his evident wit, his innate aesthetic sense, his enthusiasm and his imagination still left him ill-equipped to rise to the challenge of a nation daily growing in self confidence and wealth. His self-indulgence and short attention span, together with his evident ability to abandon political principles and to forget friendships with barely a backward glance, won him little praise. One obituary of George IV attested that, 'At an age when generous feelings are usually predominant, we find him absorbed by an all-engrossing selfishness; not merely careless of the feelings of others, but indulging in wanton cruelty'. While this judgement is harsh, George had certainly been heedless of the feelings even of those closest to him. The obituarist's subsequent comment that 'George IV was essentially a lover of personal ease' - and that 'during the later years of his life, a quiet indulgence of certain sensual enjoyments seemed the sole object of his existence' - is difficult to fault.
Published: 201-05-01
Bookmark with:
What are these?