Memoir of, and anecdotes about, George Hanger.
THE HON. GEORGE HANGER (afterwards the fourth and last Lord Coleraine) was at one time an especial friend of the Prince. He was educated at Eton and Göttingen, and was for some little time an officer in the first regiment of foot guards, which regiment he soon left in disgust at someone being promoted over his head. He then received an appointment from the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel as Captain in the Hessian Jäger Corps, then serving in America, and he was with this corps throughout the war. He, afterwards (in 1782), was made a Major in Tarleton's Light Dragoons, which was disbanded the following year, and he retired on half-pay. It was then that he joined the Prince's set, and received the appointment of equerry at a salary of £300 per annum, and this, combined with raising recruits for the East India Company, enabled him for a time to vie with the jovial crew with which he associated. But evil days fell upon him, and he dwelt in the King's Bench Prison from June 2, 1798, to April, 1799, and in 1800 set up for a time as a coal-merchant, and was nicknamed the Knight of the Black Diamond. He appears in many of Gillray's caricatures, but the most savage pictorial satire on him (by Cruickshank) was issued with the Scourge for November 2, 1812, where he is represented as a tall, full-faced man, wearing a long drab-coloured coat with a cape, and a star upon his right breast. Each of his arms encircles a gin-drinking old woman, and at his feet, one of which is cloven like a satyr's, sprawls a young woman who applies a bottle to her lips. A dandy, standing near, inspects the scene through his quizzing glass, and observes: 'Hang her! She's quite drunk.' A label issuing from the mouth of the principal person makes him observe: 'As for me, my name is sufficient; I am known by the title of the Paragon of Debauchery, and I only claim to be the [Prince]s Confidential Friend.' The letterpress description of the caricature contains the following illustrative paragraph:
GEORGEY IN THE COAL-HOLE.
'A tall, strapping-looking person, shabbily, but buckishly attired, with a peculiar cast of countenance, now stepped forward, and cried out, "My name is sufficient. Whoever has heard of —— must know that I am without a rival in the annals of debauchery. I claim no higher honour than to be my Prince's friend."'
On the death of his brother, on December 11, 1814, he succeeded to the title of Lord Coleraine, but he never assumed the title, and disliked being addressed by it. On his death, unmarried, on March 31, 1824, at the age of seventy-three, the barony of Coleraine became extinct.
Huish tells several stories about Hanger.[27] 'It is well known that the above-mentioned person was the particular companion of his late Majesty, when Prince of Wales, and many of the youthful improprieties which he committed were ascribed, by the King, to the company which he kept; and, particularly, to the society of Sheridan and Major Hanger. On a particular occasion, when the latter was raising recruits, the King, hearing that the Prince was taken from place to place, by him and others in high life, collecting mobs, and throwing money to them in large quantities, for the sake of creating the fun of seeing a scramble, and other worse purposes, he, with much feeling, exclaimed, "D—n Sherry, and I must hang—hang—Hanger, for they will break my heart, and ruin the hopes of my country."'
The following will be read as a rich treat to the lovers of fun and mischief: it shows the extraordinary gaiety of the Prince of Wales's disposition, and the familiar manner in which he lived with his companions: