The days passed at this court with a dreary monotony which drove the young princes from home, and was in part responsible for their turning out so badly. In the evening the King either played his game of backgammon or had his evening concert, during which he always nodded, while the gentlemen-in-waiting almost yawned themselves to death in the ante-room.
The family took their daily walk in Windsor Park; the people crowded round quite familiarly, and the Eton boys thrust their chubby cheeks under the crowd's elbows. The open-air music over, the King never failed to take his cocked hat off and salute his band, and say, "Thank you, gentlemen."
What Dane can fail to be reminded by these scenes of Frederick VI.'s walks and sails as Chief Admiral in the grounds of Frederiksberg! Like our Danish monarch, George III. won the affections of the people by the simplicity of his habits and his shabby coat. Equally applicable to King George is Orla Lehmann's remark about Frederick VI., "that his simplicity, both of mind and behaviour, and his kindly interest in the well-being of individuals were regarded as compensations for his failings as a statesman and ruler." But indeed there were not many who detected these last. To the great majority of his subjects old George seemed a very wise statesman and very powerful sovereign. There is a famous print of him (by Gillray) which represents him—in the old wig, in the stout old hideous Windsor uniform—as the King of Brobdingnag, peering at a little Gulliver, whom he holds up in one hand, whilst in the other he has an opera-glass, through which he surveys the pigmy. And who, think you, is the little Gulliver? He wears a cocked-hat and the little grey Marengo coat.
Danish readers will remember an old picture, a photographic reproduction of which was very popular some years ago. It was called "The Well-beloved Family," and represented Frederick VI. taking a walk with his whole family, from eldest to youngest. Is not the following picture (from the pages of Miss Burney) of one of the afternoon walks at Windsor its exact counterpart? "It was really a mighty pretty procession. The little Princess Amelia, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and fan, walked on alone and first, highly delighted with the parade, and turning from side to side to see everybody as she passed; for all the terracers stand up against the walls, to make a clear passage for the royal family the moment they come in sight. Then followed the King and Queen, no less delighted with the joy of their little darling. The Princess Royal leaning on Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, the Princess Augusta holding by the Duchess of Ancaster, the Princess Elizabeth led by Lady Charlotte Bertie, followed. General Bude and the Duke of Montague, and Major Price as equerry, brought up the rear of the procession." What a charming picture! exclaims Thackeray. Whilst the procession passes, the band plays its old music, the sun lights up the ancient battlements, the rich elms, the royal standard drooping from the great tower, and the loyal crowd, whom the charming infant caresses with her innocent smiles.
This is the domestic idyll which in public life has its counterpart in the King's passionate determination to oppress North America, oppose the French Revolution, annihilate the Irish Church, and maintain negro slavery with all its horrors. But the idyllic family life was at an end before the century was out. In 1788 the King had his first attack of insanity, and even then the question of the Regency of the Prince of Wales, which was not finally determined until 1810, was discussed with an extraordinary display of passion. The Opposition believed that if they could procure the appointment of the Prince of Wales as Regent, they would be able to keep the Tories out of power for a lengthy period. But the character and morals of the Prince were so repugnant to the great majority of the nation that his accession to power was regarded with dread. However, before the Regency Bill was actually proceeded with, Pitt was in a position to lay before Parliament a medical bulletin informing his subjects of the probable speedy and complete restoration of their King's health. The Prince's disappointment was great, and his having displayed anything but proper filial feeling during the King's illness made it difficult for him to disguise it. He had a talent for mimicry, and had amused the witty and profligate men and women who were his constant companions by taking off, as the saying was, the gestures and actions of his insane father. This alone is sufficient to show his character—the character of the man who, on account of a certain outward polish, went by the name of "the first gentleman in Europe."
Even though he retained it only for a short time, one cannot but admire the cleverness with which this Prince managed to win the friendship of many of the most gifted men of the day. Burke and Fox and Sheridan were his associates. Certainly, as Thackeray says, it was not his opinions about the constitution, or about the condition of Ireland, which they cared to hear—that man's opinions, indeed! But he talked with Sheridan of dice, and with Fox of wine; those were interests which the fool and the geniuses had in common; and Beau Brummell's friend and rival was an authority among the fashionable men of the day on such questions as the suitable button for a waistcoat and the best sauce for a partridge. He even attached Moore to himself for a short time. From the tone of a letter which Moore writes to his mother in June 1811 (Memoirs, i. 225), we understand plainly that he feels flattered by the Prince Regent's "cordial familiarity." And the same is true for a moment of Byron; his letter of reconciliation to Sir Walter Scott shows how susceptible he was to the Regent's flatteries on the subject of Childe Harold. And Scott himself! Good, honourable gentleman though he was, in his capacity of obstinate Tory he was always the Regent's faithful liegeman. And when the latter, as King George the Fourth, came to Scotland (where he figured in the dress of a Highland chief, with his fat legs bared and a kilt round his enormous body, as satirically described by Byron at the end of The Age of Bronze), Scott went on board the royal yacht to welcome him, seized a glass from which his Majesty had just drunk, begged to be allowed to keep it, vowed that it should remain for ever as an heirloom in his family, clapped it in his pocket, and, finding an unexpected guest when he went home, sat down upon it, and was quickly and painfully reminded of the royal keepsake. Scott continued faithful to George IV. long after Moore had riddled him with the darts of his wit, and Byron lashed him with his savage epigrams, and after even Brummell, walking in Hyde Park, had looked at him through his eye-glass and asked the Prince's companion, "Who is your fat friend?"
For the insinuating heir-apparent in time became extremely corpulent. The life he led, the perpetual feasting and drinking bouts, produced such a habit of body that at last he could not walk. When he was to drive out, a board was put out at the window, and down it he was slid into his carriage. While the starving weavers in Glasgow and Lancashire were crying aloud to Heaven, he was arranging magnificent festivities, and receiving the exiled Bourbon as Louis XVIII. "The child is father of the man," says Wordsworth. George IV. signalised his entrance into society by a feat worthy of his future life. He invented a new shoe-buckle. It was an inch long and five inches broad. "It covered the whole instep, reaching down to the ground on either side of the foot." At his first appearance at a court ball his coat was, we read, of pink silk, with white cuffs; his waistcoat, white silk, embroidered with various-coloured foil, and adorned with a profusion of French paste. His hat was ornamented with a profusion of steel beads, five thousand in number, with a button and loop of the same metal, and cocked in a new military style.
A military style, indeed! It exactly suited the head that wore it. This head was full, at the time its owner began housekeeping in his splendid new palace of Carlton House, of vague projects of encouraging literature, science, and the arts; and for a moment it seemed as if they were really to be carried out—when at the Prince Regent's table Sir Walter Scott, the best raconteur of his time, with loyal devotion and real generosity poured forth humorous, whimsical stories from his inexhaustible store, or Moore sang some of his sweet Anacreontic songs, or Grattan, Ireland's proud leader, contributed to the entertainment his wondrous eloquence, fancy, and feeling. But how soon did these men make way for a company much better suited to the Prince—French cooks, French ballet-dancers, horse-jockeys, buffoons, procurers, tailors, boxers, jewellers, and fencing-masters! With such people he spent the time left him by his mistresses and his bacchanalian orgies. He showed his love for art and his taste by purchasing at extravagant prices whole cart-loads of Chinese monstrosities. It was but natural that this royal bel esprit, when he came into power, should quarrel with the clever Whigs whose society he had sought. He suddenly wheeled round and became a Tory.
Four of the European monarchs of the first half of this century—Ludwig I. of Bavaria, Frederick William IV. of Prussia, Christian VIII. of Denmark, and this English Prince Regent—bear a strong resemblance to each other. They are the four reigning reactionary dilettanti. In England, as in Denmark, literary dilettantism succeeds patriarchal simplicity. In the case we are at present considering, it was combined with shocking morals and an almost incredible indolence. In March 1816, fifty-eight prisoners under sentence of death were lying in Newgate prison waiting until the Prince Regent's amusements and distractions should allow him time to sign their death-warrants or their pardons, and many of them had lain there since December. In vain did Brougham make his terrible attack in Parliament upon those "who, when the gaols were filled with wretches, could not suspend for a moment their thoughtless amusements to end the sad suspense between life and death." In connection with this subject, Moore's satires in The Twopenny Post-Bag are well worth reading. They show plainly that the sweet Irish song-bird had beak and claws. In The Life of Sir Walter Scott we read with what a good-humoured smile the Regent, in 1815, could refer to and quote the verses by Moore which describe his table as loaded with fashion-journals on the one side and unsigned death-warrants on the other. The satire of the verses was only too well deserved, but was of little avail. As early as 1812 Castlereagh had said, in a speech in Parliament: "It would be impossible for his Royal Highness to disengage his person from the accumulating pile of papers that encompass it." In "The Insurrection of the Papers," Moore puts it thus:—
"On one side lay unread Petitions,
On t'other hints from five Physicians;
Here tradesmen's bills,—official papers,
Notes from my Lady, drams for vapours—
There plans of saddles, tea and toast,
Death-warrants, and the Morning Post."