This royal mention brings us once more, for a little space, to our background of kings. Of the old monarch, George III., we have had frequent and full glimpses. We wish to know something now of that new prince (whom we saw in our Scott chapter), but who in 1810, when his father’s faculties failed altogether, became Regent; and we wish to learn what qualities are in him and under what training they developed.
The old father had a substructure of good, hard sense that showed itself through all his obstinacies; for instance, when Dr. Markham, who was appointed tutor to his two oldest sons—Prince of Wales and Duke of York—asked how he should treat them, the old king said: “Treat them? Why, to be sure, as you would any gentleman’s sons! If they need the birch, give them the birch, as you would have done at Westminster.” But when they had advanced a bit, and a certain Dr. Arnold (a later tutor) undertook the same regimen, the two princes put their forces together and gave the doctor such a drubbing that he never tried birch again. But it was always a very close life the princes led in their young days; the old king was very rigorous in respect of hours and being out at night. By reason of which George IV. looked sharply after his opportunities, when they did come, and made up for that early cloisterhood by a large laxity of regimen.[42] Indeed, he opened upon a very glittering career of dissipations—the old father groaning and grumbling and squabbling against it vainly.
It was somewhere about 1788 or 1789, just when the French Revolution was beginning to throw its bloody foam over the tops of the Bastille, that temporary insanity in the old King George III. did for a very brief space bring the Prince into consequence as Regent. Of the happening of this, and of the gloom in the palace, there is story in the diary of Madame D’Arblay,[43] who was herself in attendance upon the Queen. If, indeed, George III. had stayed mad from that date, and the Prince—then in his fullest vigor, and a great friend of Fox and other Liberal leaders—had come to the full and uninterrupted responsibility of the Regency, his career might have been very different. But the old king rallied, and for twenty years thereafter put his obstinacies and Tory caution in the way of the Prince, who, with no political royalties to engage him, and no important official duties (though he tried hard to secure military command), ran riot in the old way. He lavishes money on Carlton House; builds a palace for Mrs. Fitzherbert; coquets with Lady Jersey; affects the fine gentleman. No man in London was prouder of his walk, his cane, his club nonchalance, his taste in meats, his knowledge of wines, ragoûts, indelicate songs, and arts of the toilette. Withal, he is well-made, tall, of most graceful address, a capital story-teller, too; an indefatigable diner-out; a very fashion-plate in dress—corsetted, puffed out in the chest like a pouter pigeon; all the while running vigorously and scandalously in debt, while the father is setting himself squarely against any further parliamentary grant in his favor. There are, however—or will be—relentings in the old King’s mind, if “Wales” will promise to settle down in life and marry his cousin, Caroline of Brunswick—if, indeed, he be not already married to Mrs. Fitzherbert, which some avow and some deny. It does not appear that the Prince is very positive in his declarations on this point—yes or no. So he filially yields and accedes to a marriage, which by the conditions of the bargain is to bring him £70,000 to pay his debts withal. She is twenty-seven—a good-looking, spirited Brunswicker woman, who sets herself to speaking English—nips in the bud some love-passages she has at home, and comes over to conquer the Prince’s affections—which she finds it a very hard thing to do. He is polite, however; is agreeably disposed to the marriage scheme, which finds exploitation with a great flourish of trumpets in the Chapel Royal of St. James. The old King is delighted with his niece; the old Queen is a little cool, knowing that the Prince does not care a penny for the bride, and believing that she ought to have found that out.
She does find it out, however, in good time; and finds out about Mrs. Fitzherbert and her fine house; and does give her Prince some very severe curtain lectures—beginning early in that branch of wifely duty. The Prince takes it in dudgeon; and the dudgeon grows bigger and bigger on both sides (as such things will); finally, a year or more later—after the birth of her daughter, the Princess Charlotte—proposals for separation are passed between them (with a great flourish of diplomacy and golden sticks), and accepted with exceeding cordiality on both sides.
Thereafter, the Prince becomes again a man about town—very much about town indeed. Everybody in London knows his great bulk, his fine waistcoats, his horses, his hats and his wonderful bows, which are made with a grace that seems in itself to confer knighthood. For very many years his domestic life,—what little there was of it,—passed without weighty distractions. His Regency when established (1811) was held through a very important period of British history; those great waves of Continental war which ended in Waterloo belonged to it; so did the American war of 1812; so did grave disaffection and discontent at home. He did not quarrel with his cabinets, or impede their action; he learned how to yield, and how to conciliate. Were it only for this, ’tis hardly fair to count him a mere posture-master and a dandy.
He loved, too, and always respected his old mother, the Queen of George III.;[44] loved too,—in a way—and more than any other creature in the world except himself, that darling daughter of his, the Princess Charlotte, who at seventeen became the bride of Leopold, afterward King of Belgium,—she surviving the marriage only a year. Her memory is kept alive by the gorgeous marble cenotaph you will see in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.
It was only when George IV. actually ascended the throne in 1820 that his separated wife put in a disturbing appearance again; she had been living very independently for some years on the Continent; and it occurred to her—now that George was actually King—that it would be a good thing, and not impinge on the old domestic frigidities, to share in some of the drawing-room splendors and royalties of the British capital. To George IV. it seemed very awkward; so it did to his cabinet. Hence came about those measures for a divorce, and the famous trial of Queen Caroline, in which Brougham won oratorical fame by his brilliant plea for the Queen. This was so far successful as to make the ministerial divorce scheme a failure; but the poor Queen came out of the trial very much bedraggled; whether her Continental life had indeed its criminalities or not, we shall never positively know. Surely no poor creature was ever more sinned against than she, in being wheedled into a match with such an unregenerate partaker in all deviltries as George IV. But she was not of the order of women out of which are made martyrs for conscience’s sake. It was in the year 1821 that death came to her relief, and her shroud at last whitened a memory that had stains.
A Scholar and Poet.
We freshen the air now with quite another presence. Yet I am to speak of a man whose life was full of tumult, and whose work was full of learning and power—sometimes touched with infinite delicacy.