Lady Hester went on: “What a mean fellow the Prince was, doctor! I believe he never showed a spark of good feeling to any human being. How often has he put men of small incomes to great inconvenience, by his telling them he would dine with them and bring ten or a dozen of his friends with him to drink the poor devils’ champagne, who hardly knew how to raise the wind, or to get trust for it! I recollect one who told me the Prince served him in this way, just at the time when he was in want of money, and that he did not know how to provide the dinner for him, when luckily a Sir Harry Featherstone or a Sir Gilbert Heatchcote or some such rich man bought his curricle and horses, and put a little ready money into his pocket. ‘I entertained him as well as I could,’ said he, ‘and a few days after, when I was at Carlton House, and the Prince was dressing between four great mirrors, looking at himself in one and then in another, putting on a patch of hair and arranging his cravat, he began saying that he was desirous of showing me his thanks for my civility to him. So he pulled down a bandbox from a shelf, and seemed as if he was going to draw something of value out of it. I thought to myself it might be some point-lace, perhaps, of which, after using a little for my court-dress, I might sell the remainder for five or six hundred guineas: or perhaps, thought I, as there is no ceremony between us, he is going to give me some banknotes. Conceive my astonishment, when he opened the bandbox, and pulled out a wig, which I even believe he had worn. ‘There,’ said he, ‘as you are getting bald, is a very superior wig, made by—I forget the man’s name, but it was not Sugden.’ The man could hardly contain himself, and was almost tempted to leave it in the hall as he went out. Did you ever hear of such meanness? Everybody who had to do with him was afraid of him. He was sure to get a horse, or a vis-à-vis, or a something, wherever he went, and never pay for them. He was a man without a heart,[9] who had not one good quality about him. Doctor,” cried Lady Hester, “I have been intimate with those who spent their time with him from morning to night, and they have told me that it was impossible for any person who knew him to think well of him.[10]”
“Look at his unfeeling conduct in deserting poor Sheridan! Why, they were going to take the bed from under him whilst he was dying; and there was Mrs. Sheridan pushing the bailiffs out of the room. That amiable woman, too, I believe, died of grief at the misery to which she was reduced. The Prince had not one good quality. How many fell victims to him! Not so much those who were most intimate with him—for they swallowed the poison and took the antidote—they knew him well: but those were the greatest sufferers who imitated his vices, who were poisoned by the contagion, without knowing what a detestable person he was. How many saw their prospects blasted by him for ever!”
Lady Hester continued: “Oh! when I think that I have heard a sultan” (meaning George IV.) “listen to a woman singing Hie diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon, and cry, ‘Brava! charming!’—Good God! doctor, what would the Turks say to such a thing, if they knew it?
“There was Lord D., an old debauchee, who had lost the use of his lower extremities by a paralytic stroke—the way, by the by, in which all such men seem to finish; nay, I believe that men much addicted to sensuality even impair their intellects too—one day met me on the esplanade, and, in his usual way, began talking some very insipid stuff about his dining with the Prince, and the like; when James, who overheard the conversation, made an impromptu, which exactly described one of the Prince’s dinners; and, though I don’t recollect it word for word, it was something to this effect:—
‘With the Prince I dine to-day:
We shall have prodigious fun.
I a beastly thing shall say,
And he’ll end it with a pun.’
“I remember the Prince’s saying to Lord Petersham, ‘What can be the reason that Lady Hester, who likes all my brothers, does not like me?’ Lord P. told me this, and I replied—If he asks me, I will have an answer ready for him, and that is, ‘When he behaves like them I shall like him, and not before.’ I loved all the princes but him. They were not philosophers, but they were so hearty in their talking, in their eating, in all they did! They would eat like ploughmen, and their handsome teeth would” (here she imitated the mastication of food, to show me how) “at a pretty rate.
“The Prince is a despicable character. He was anxious enough to know me whilst Mr. Pitt was alive; but the very first day of my going to court, after Mr. Pitt’s death, he cut me, turning his back on me whilst I was talking to the Duke of Richmond.