FROM the pencil of Rowlandson the caricaturist, who with his friend Wigstead, a Bow Street magistrate, went a trip to Brighton in 1789, we have an excellent picture of the Pavilion, as it then was, and a view of the Steyne.
Their opinion of the building is that 'the tout ensemble is, in short, perfect Harmony. The whole was executed by Mr. Holland, under the immediate inspection and Direction of Mr. Weltjie, whose Attachment to his Royal Master was faithful and disinterested.' In the same book Rowlandson gives us a sketch of the beach at Brighton at the same period.
On July 23, 1790, the Prince went to Brighton for the season, being preceded by a day or two by the Duke of York, and his birthday was kept on August 17 in a most festive fashion, immortalized in verse in the Sussex Weekly Advertiser of August 23:
'Hail Brighton's Down! Your velvet green,
Hill, ocean, dale, each varying scene,
The distant flock, the sloping mount,
And spring, of sparkling Health, the fount;
But chief, the dimpling Sea, where lave
A thousand Naiads in the wave.
Whilst, rising from th' abyss below,