One Sketch #116) The Prince Regent

After Thomas Lawrence

A Prince he was
But when he had the chance
To be a husband too,
Well, he was pants.

I couldn’t resist this one. In another life, 11 years ago, I played in the UK’s highbrow quiz show “Mastermind”. If you’ve never seen it, the contestants – called contenders for the purposes of the show – nominate a specialist subject to be quizzed upon. Each in turn sits in a black interrogation chair for two minutes and tries to answer questions on their own subject. After each contender has done this, they return to the chair in turn for another two minutes to answer general knowledge questions. The contender who has answered the greatest number of questions correctly wins. Well, it’s a tiny bit more complicated than this, but that’s the gist. For my semi final appearance I chose “The Prince Regent – later King George IV” as a specialist subject. Today, 19^th July, is the 197^th anniversary of his coronation. 

George’s Coronation was one of the more eventful in British history. As Prince of Wales, George rightly had the reputation of a terrible spendthrift, gambler, womaniser and generally a drain on the country’s resources. It didn’t help that this was all happening at the same time as revolution in France. He did make an illegal marriage to the Catholic widow Maria Fitzherbert in the 1780s – a marriage invalid in British law due to the Royal Marriages Act. However in 1795 he was faced by an ultimatum from his father, the King, that he must make a suitable marriage to provide an heir in order for the King and Parliament to clear his debts. The Prince faced the selection of his bride from the suitable European protestant princesses, and remarkably he delegated the selection to his current mistress, the Countess of Jersey. She in turn selected probably the least appropriate person ever to be married to a man like George, his own first cousin, Caroline of Brunswick. 

Caroline’s mother was George III’s favourite sister. The younger George was not the least bit attracted to Caroline, probably, one would think, because she resembled him physically, being relatively short, overweight with a propensity to obesity, and possessed of the Hanoverian slightly bulging eyes. Reputedly he asked for a medicinal brandy immediately upon seeing her for the first time in the flesh. The plausible story is that he slept with her on their wedding night, and never again. Whether that is true or not, Caroline very quickly became pregnant with their only child, Princess Charlotte.

Very soon after the marriage and the birth of Princess Charlotte it was clear to all that they were leading separate lives, a fact which soon became official. George went so far as to accuse Caroline of giving birth to an illegitimate child. The subsequent enquiry seemed to disprove this, but it did establish that Caroline’s behaviour had become as wild and sexually indiscreet as her husband’s. King George III took over the care of Princess Charlotte. With access to her daughter severely restricted, the Prince of Wales also saw to it that Caroline was socially excluded. People who attended her parties could expect to never again be invited to the Prince’s far more lavish and prestigious entertainments.  Eventually the Foreign Secretary of the time, Lord Castlereagh offered Caroline an annual settlement in return for her leaving the country. Caroline moved to Italy, and never saw Charlotte, who died in childbirth in 1817, again. She only  learned of Charlotte’s death from a visiting courtier, since Prince George was determined not to tell her the news.

There was no question of getting a divorce while King George III was still alive, even though the Prince, who was Regent from 1811 until 1820, had effectively assumed all the duties of the King. When George III died though, George IV immediately set out to obtain a divorce from Caroline. Even for the King this was an exceptionally difficult thing to achieve, requiring an Act of Parliament. Caroline, pushing her luck, had returned to the UK on George III’s death, intent on being treated as the rightful queen. By the law and ancient custom of the land, Caroline had become Queen on George’s accession, and she was determined to assert her rights to the title’s privileges. Caroline proved immensely popular with the London masses, primarily one suspects because they thought that anyone so hated by the hated George IV was worth supporting, rather than through her own intrinsic qualities. Jane Austen herself said as much. This convinced George that he would fail to obtain his divorce through Parliament. 

George had his revenge, though. He declared that Caroline would be barred from his coronation, on 19^th July 1821. Caroline actually made several attempts to enter Westminster Abbey on the day, but each time she was turned away by guards and officials who had been specially posted on the King’s orders. Eventually she was forced to admit defeat. Almost as if she was acting according to a prearranged script, Caroline took ill that very night, and died within three weeks. As per her instructions she was buried in Brunswick, in a coffin with a simple inscription referring to her as “The Injured Queen of England”.

When you read about historical figures such as George and Caroline, it can be difficult to remember that these were real people, real human beings with real human feelings. It’s very easy to feel very sorry for Caroline, and she does deserve some sympathy, to an extent. Only to an extent, though. Caroline, once it became clear that her husband was no longer going to be a husband to her, didn’t shrink into the background and meekly accept her lot. She decided that what was sauce for the gander could be sauce for the goose as well, and this at a time when different moral standards were applied to the sexes. Yes, both a husband and wife if they were rich and privileged enough could choose to take a lover, but woe betide the lady who sought to flaunt this like a man could.

While on one hand I admire Caroline for going her own way and not just accepting the raw deal that this arranged marriage had offered her, I really rather think she made her own bed with her actions after George became King. We can’t really know Caroline’s feelings about her daughter Charlotte, and how badly she was affected by their separation and Charlotte’s tragic death. But after Charlotte died, in many ways the life Caroline had between 1817 and 1820 was rather enviable. She had been given a generous annuity. £35,000 a year is enough to live on now. Back in the 1800s it amounted to a fortune, and not a small one at that. In return all she was expected to do was stay out of the country, stay out of George’s life, and try not to embarrass herself or him too much. While one can understand that the realisation that she had now become Queen might have certainly made her think again about her situation, the idea that George would ever even accept her as Queen, let alone allow her to be crowned such is a display of hubris, or at the very least an inability to see things as they really were. She’d accepted Castlereagh’s deal in the first place, and breaking its terms in this way was never going to bring success. So I find it difficult to be sympathetic towards her in this last year of her life.

As for George, I find him a fascinating and very contradictory character. He was a wilful man for all of his life a man for whom his own ego and wants were his own little god. He was a persistent debtor, to whom the concept of living within one’s means was unknown. For example, he squandered huge amounts on his white elephant Royal Pavilion at Brighton, while people starved to death in different parts of the country. He was very vain, and sexually incontinent. Normal behaviour for the Prince would be at the very least described as sexual harassment in the present day and age. As the young Prince of Wales his behaviour during his father’s first bout of dementia in the 1780s was disgraceful. As a friend he could be extremely disloyal. Prior to becoming Regent his closest political friend was the radical MP Charles James Fox. Immediately on becoming Regent, George dropped Fox like a hot potato, and revealed his true, reactionary colours. As King his attitude to the relaxation of laws against Roman Catholics was particularly reprehensible. His attitude towards his wife, whom he viewed, at best, as a baby making machine, and whom he discarded as soon as she had fulfilled this function, is rightly condemned. 

And yet.

This is in no way an excuse for George’s faults, but the fact is that he did contribute to the lasting cultural heritage of the United Kingdom. For example, he had a large hand in the genesis of the institutions that became the British Museum, the British Library and the National Gallery. For such an infuriatingly self-centred and wilful person, he had great taste. Certainly in terms of art and literature, if not in architecture. Despite her personal antipathy towards him, Jane Austen still dedicated “Emma” to him, while Sir Walter Scott stage managed his triumphant visit to Scotland as King. Even in terms of architecture, while the Brighton Pavilion might not be everyone’s cup of tea (I personally love it) his patronage of John Nash resulted in the building of Regent Street, one of the most elegant streets in the whole of the capital.