Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges Part 59

But when the hour of trial came, When sickness shook this trembling frame, When folly's gay pursuits were o'er, And I could sing and dance no more, It then occurred, how sad 'twould be Were this world only made for me.

The poor soul quitted it-and ere yet she was dead the agonized father was in such a state, that the officers round about him were obliged to set watchers over him, and from November, 1810, George III ceased to reign.

All the world knows the story of his malady: all history presents no sadder figure than that of the old man, blind and deprived of reason, wandering through the rooms of his palace, addressing imaginary Parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly Courts. I have seen his picture as it was taken at this time, hanging in the apartment of his daughter, the Landgravine of Hesse-Hombourg-amidst books and Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over his breast-the star of his famous Order still idly s.h.i.+ning on it. He was not only sightless: he became utterly deaf. All light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of G.o.d, were taken from him. Some slight lucid moments he had; in one of which, the queen, desiring to see him, entered the room, and found him singing a hymn, and accompanying himself at the harpsichord. When he had finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding with a prayer for himself, that it might please G.o.d to avert his heavy calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to submit. He then burst into tears, and his reason again fled.

What preacher need moralize on this story; what words save the simplest are requisite to tell it? It is too terrible for tears. The thought of such a misery smites me down in submission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch Supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser of life, death, happiness, victory. "O brothers," I said to those who heard me first in America-"O brothers! speaking the same dear mother tongue-O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse, and call a truce to battle! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest: dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne; buffeted by rude hands; with his children in revolt; the darling of his old age killed before him untimely; our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, 'Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little!' "

Vex not his ghost-oh! let him pa.s.s-he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer!

Hush, Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, trumpets, a mournful march! Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy!

George The Fourth

In Twiss's amusing _Life of Eldon_, we read how, on the death of the Duke of York, the old chancellor became possessed of a lock of the defunct prince's hair; and so careful was he respecting the authenticity of the relic, that Bessy Eldon his wife sat in the room with the young man from Hamlet's, who distributed the ringlet into separate lockets, which each of the Eldon family afterwards wore. You know how, when George IV came to Edinburgh, a better man than he went on board the royal yacht to welcome the king to his kingdom of Scotland, seized a goblet from which his majesty had just drunk, vowed it should remain for ever as an heirloom in his family, clapped the precious gla.s.s in his pocket, and sat down on it and broke it when he got home. Suppose the good sheriff's prize unbroken now at Abbotsford, should we not smile with something like pity as we beheld it? Suppose one of those lockets of the No-Popery prince's hair offered for sale at Christie's, _quot libras e duce summo invenies?_ how many pounds would you find for the ill.u.s.trious duke? Madame Tussaud has got King George's coronation robes; is there any man now alive who would kiss the hem of that trumpery? He sleeps since thirty years: do not any of you, who remember him, wonder that you once respected and huzza'd and admired him?

To make a portrait of him at first seemed a matter of small difficulty.

There is his coat, his star, his wig, his countenance simpering under it: with a slate and a piece of chalk, I could at this very desk perform a recognizable likeness of him. And yet after reading of him in scores of volumes, hunting him through old magazines and newspapers, having him here at a ball, there at a public dinner, there at races and so forth, you find you have nothing-nothing but a coat and wig and a mask smiling below it-nothing but a great simulacrum. His sire and grandsires were men. One knows what they were like: what they would do in given circ.u.mstances: that on occasion they fought and demeaned themselves like tough good soldiers.

They had friends whom they liked according to their natures; enemies whom they hated fiercely; pa.s.sions, and actions, and individualities of their own. The sailor king who came after George was a man: the Duke of York was a man, big, burly, loud, jolly, cursing, courageous. But this George, what was he? I look through all his life, and recognize but a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then nothing. I know of no sentiment that he ever distinctly uttered. Doc.u.ments are published under his name, but people wrote them-private letters, but people spelt them. He put a great "George P." or "George R." at the bottom of the page and fancied he had written the paper: some bookseller's clerk, some poor author, some _man_ did the work; saw to the spelling, cleaned up the slovenly sentences, and gave the lax maudlin slipslop a sort of consistency. He must have had an individuality: the dancing-master whom he emulated, nay, surpa.s.sed-the wig-maker who curled his toupee for him-the tailor who cut his coats, had that. But, about George, one can get at nothing actual. That outside, I am certain, is pad and tailor's work; there may be something behind, but what? We cannot get at the character; no doubt never shall. Will men of the future have nothing better to do than to unswathe and interpret that royal old mummy? I own I once used to think it would be good sport to pursue him, fasten on him, and pull him down. But now I am ashamed to mount and lay good dogs on, to summon a full field, and then to hunt the poor game.

On the 12th August, 1762, the forty-seventh anniversary of the accession of the House of Brunswick to the English throne, all the bells in London pealed in gratulation, and announced that an heir to George III was born.

Five days afterwards the king was pleased to pa.s.s letters patent under the great seal, creating H.R.H. the Prince of Great Britain, Electoral Prince of Brunswick-Luneburg, Duke of Cornwall and Rothsay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of Scotland, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.

All the people at his birth thronged to see this lovely child; and behind a gilt china-screen railing in St. James's Palace, in a cradle surmounted by the three princely ostrich feathers, the royal infant was laid to delight the eyes of the lieges. Among the earliest instances of homage paid to him, I read that "a curious Indian bow and arrows were sent to the prince from his father's faithful subjects in New York". He was fond of playing with these toys: an old statesman, orator, and wit of his grandfather's and great-grandfather's time, never tired of his business, still eager in his old age to be well at Court, used to play with the little prince, and pretend to fall down dead when the prince shot at him with his toy bow and arrows-and get up and fall down dead over and over again-to the increased delight of the child. So that he was flattered from his cradle upwards; and before his little feet could walk, statesmen and courtiers were busy kissing them.

There is a pretty picture of the royal infant-a beautiful buxom child-asleep in his mother's lap; who turns round and holds a finger to her lip, as if she would bid the courtiers around respect the baby's slumbers. From that day until his decease, sixty-eight years after, I suppose there were more pictures taken of that personage than of any other human being who ever was born and died-in every kind of uniform and every possible Court dress-in long fair hair, with powder, with and without a pigtail-in every conceivable c.o.c.ked-hat-in dragoon uniform-in Windsor uniform-in a field-marshal's clothes-in a Scotch kilt and tartans, with dirk and claymore (a stupendous figure)-in a frogged frock-coat with a fur collar and tight breeches and silk stockings-in wigs of every colour, fair, brown, and black-in his famous coronation robes finally, with which performance he was so much in love that he distributed copies of the picture to all the Courts and British emba.s.sies in Europe, and to numberless clubs, town-halls, and private friends. I remember as a young man how almost every dining-room had his portrait.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

There is plenty of biographical tattle about the prince's boyhood. It is told with what astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity he learned all languages, ancient and modern; how he rode beautifully, sang charmingly, and played elegantly on the violoncello. That he was beautiful was patent to all eyes. He had a high spirit: and once, when he had had a difference with his father, burst into the royal closet and called out, "Wilkes and liberty for ever!" He was so clever, that he confounded his very governors in learning; and one of them, Lord Bruce, having made a false quant.i.ty in quoting Greek, the admirable young prince instantly corrected him. Lord Bruce could not remain a governor after this humiliation; resigned his office, and, to soothe his feelings, was actually promoted to be an earl! It is the most wonderful reason for promoting a man that ever I heard. Lord Bruce was made an earl for a blunder in prosody; and Nelson was made a baron for the victory of the Nile.

Lovers of long sums have added up the millions and millions which in the course of his brilliant existence this single prince consumed. Besides his income of 50,000_l._, 70,000_l._, 100,000_l._, 120,000_l._ a year, we read of three applications to Parliament: debts to the amount of 160,000_l._, of 650,000_l._; besides mysterious foreign loans, whereof he pocketed the proceeds. What did he do for all this money? Why was he to have it? If he had been a manufacturing town, or a populous rural district, or an army of five thousand men, he would not have cost more. He, one solitary stout man, who did not toil, nor spin, nor fight,-what had any mortal done that he should be pampered so?

In 1784, when he was twenty-one years of age, Carlton Palace was given to him, and furnished by the nation with as much luxury as could be devised.

His pockets were filled with money: he said it was not enough; he flung it out of window: he spent 10,000_l._ a year for the coats on his back. The nation gave him more money, and more, and more. The sum is past counting.

He was a prince, most lovely to look on, and christened Prince Florizel on his first appearance in the world. That he was the handsomest prince in the whole world was agreed by men, and alas! by many women.

I suppose he must have been very graceful. There are so many testimonies to the charm of his manner, that we must allow him great elegance and powers of fascination. He, and the King of France's brother, the Count d'Artois, a charming young prince who danced deliciously on the tight-rope-a poor old tottering exiled king, who asked hospitality of King George's successor, and lived awhile in the palace of Mary Stuart-divided in their youth the t.i.tle of first gentleman of Europe. We in England of course gave the prize to _our_ gentleman. Until George's death the propriety of that award was scarce questioned or the doubters voted rebels and traitors. Only the other day I was reading in the reprint of the delightful _Noctes_ of Christopher North. The health of THE KING is drunk in large capitals by the loyal Scotsman. You would fancy him a hero, a sage, a statesman, a pattern for kings and men. It was Walter Scott who had that accident with the broken gla.s.s I spoke of anon. He was the king's Scottish champion, rallied all Scotland to him, made loyalty the fas.h.i.+on, and laid about him fiercely with his claymore upon all the prince's enemies. The Brunswicks had no such defenders as those two Jacobite commoners, old Sam Johnson the Lichfield chapman's son, and Walter Scott, the Edinburgh lawyer's.

Nature and circ.u.mstance had done their utmost to prepare the prince for being spoiled: the dreadful dullness of papa's Court, its stupid amus.e.m.e.nts, its dreary occupations, the maddening humdrum, the stifling sobriety of its routine, would have made a scapegrace of a much less lively prince. All the big princes bolted from that castle of ennui where old King George sat, posting up his books and droning over his Handel; and old Queen Charlotte over her snuff and her tambour-frame. Most of the st.u.r.dy, gallant sons settled down after sowing their wild oats, and became sober subjects of their father and brother-not ill liked by the nation, which pardons youthful irregularities readily enough, for the sake of pluck, and unaffectedness, and good humour.

The boy is father of the man. Our prince signalized his entrance into the world by a feat worthy of his future life. He invented a new s...o...b..ckle.

It was an inch long and five inches broad. "It covered almost the whole instep, reaching down to the ground on either side of the foot." A sweet invention! lovely and useful as the prince on whose foot it sparkled. At his first appearance at a Court ball, we read that "his coat was pink silk, with white cuffs; his waistcoat white silk, embroidered with various-coloured foil, and adorned with a profusion of French paste. And his hat was ornamented with two rows of steel beads, five thousand in number, with a b.u.t.ton and loop of the same metal, and c.o.c.ked in a new military style". What a Florizel! Do these details seem trivial? They are the grave incidents of his life. His biographers say that when he commenced housekeeping in that splendid new palace of his, the Prince of Wales had some windy projects of encouraging literature, science, and the arts; of having a.s.semblies of literary characters; and societies for the encouragement of geography, astronomy, and botany. Astronomy, geography, and botany! Fiddlesticks! French ballet-dancers, French cooks, horse-jockeys, buffoons, procurers, tailors, boxers, fencing-masters, china, jewel, and gimcrack merchants-these were his real companions. At first he made a pretence of having Burke and Pitt and Sheridan for his friends. But how could such men be serious before such an empty scapegrace as this lad? Fox might talk dice with him, and Sheridan wine; but what else had these men of genius in common with their tawdry young host of Carlton House? That ribble the leader of such men as Fox and Burke! That man's opinions about the const.i.tution, the India Bill, justice to the Catholics-about any question graver than the b.u.t.ton for a waistcoat or the sauce for a partridge-worth anything! The friends.h.i.+p between the prince and the Whig chiefs was impossible. They were hypocrites in pretending to respect him, and if he broke the hollow compact between them, who shall blame him? His natural companions were dandies and parasites. He could talk to a tailor or a cook; but, as the equal of great statesmen, to set up a creature, lazy, weak, indolent, besotted, of monstrous vanity, and levity incurable-it is absurd. They thought to use him, and did for awhile; but they must have known how timid he was; how entirely heartless and treacherous, and have expected his desertion. His next set of friends were mere table companions, of whom he grew tired too; then we hear of him with a very few select toadies, mere boys from school or the Guards, whose sprightliness tickled the fancy of the worn-out voluptuary. What matters what friends he had? He dropped all his friends; he never could have real friends. An heir to the throne has flatterers, adventurers who hang about him, ambitious men who use him; but friends.h.i.+p is denied him.

And women, I suppose, are as false and selfish in their dealings with such a character as men. Shall we take the Leporello part, flourish a catalogue of the conquests of this royal Don Juan, and tell the names of the favourites to whom, one after the other, George Prince flung his pocket-handkerchief? What purpose would it answer to say how Perdita was pursued, won, deserted, and by whom succeeded? What good in knowing that he did actually marry Mrs. FitzHerbert according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church; that her marriage settlements have been seen in London; that the names of the witnesses to her marriage are known. This sort of vice that we are now come to presents no new or fleeting trait of manners.

Debauchees, dissolute, heartless, fickle, cowardly, have been ever since the world began. This one had more temptations than most, and so much may be said in extenuation for him.

It was an unlucky thing for this doomed one, and tending to lead him yet farther on the road to the deuce, that, besides being lovely, so that women were fascinated by him; and heir apparent, so that all the world flattered him; he should have a beautiful voice, which led him directly in the way of drink: and thus all the pleasant devils were coaxing on poor Florizel; desire, and idleness, and vanity, and drunkenness, all clas.h.i.+ng their merry cymbals and bidding him come on.

We first hear of his warbling sentimental ditties under the walls of Kew Palace by the moonlight banks of Thames, with Lord Viscount Leporello keeping watch lest the music should be disturbed.

Singing after dinner and supper was the universal fas.h.i.+on of the day. You may fancy all England sounding with choruses, some ribald, some harmless, but all occasioning the consumption of a prodigious deal of fermented liquor.

The jolly Muse her wings to try no frolic flights need take, But round the bowl would dip and fly, like swallows round a lake,

sang Morris in one of his gallant Anacreontics, to which the prince many a time joined in chorus, and of which the burden is,-

And that I think's a reason fair to drink and fill again.

This delightful boon companion of the prince's found "a reason fair" to forgo filling and drinking, saw the error of his ways, gave up the bowl and chorus, and died retired and religious. The prince's table no doubt was a very tempting one. The wits came and did their utmost to amuse him.

It is wonderful how the spirits rise, the wit brightens, the wine has an aroma, when a great man is at the head of the table. Scott, the loyal cavalier, the king's true liegeman, the very best _raconteur_ of his time, poured out with an endless generosity his store of old-world learning, kindness, and humour. Grattan contributed to it his wondrous eloquence, fancy, feeling. Tom Moore perched upon it for awhile, and piped his most exquisite little love-tunes on it, flying away in a twitter of indignation afterwards, and attacking the prince with bill and claw. In such society, no wonder the sitting was long, and the butler tired of drawing corks.

Remember what the usages of the time were, and that William Pitt, coming to the House of Commons after having drunk a bottle of port wine at his own house, would go into Bellamy's with Dundas, and help finish a couple more.

You peruse volumes after volumes about our prince, and find some half-dozen stock stories-indeed not many more-common to all the histories.

He was good-natured; an indolent, voluptuous prince, not unkindly. One story, the most favourable to him of all, perhaps, is that as Prince Regent he was eager to hear all that could be said in behalf of prisoners condemned to death, and anxious, if possible, to remit the capital sentence. He was kind to his servants. There is a story common to all the biographies, of Molly the housemaid, who, when his household was to be broken up, owing to some reforms which he tried absurdly to practise, was discovered crying as she dusted the chairs because she was to leave a master who had a kind word for all his servants. Another tale is that of a groom of the prince's being discovered in corn and oat peculations, and dismissed by the personage at the head of the stables; the prince had word of John's disgrace, remonstrated with him very kindly, generously reinstated him, and bade him promise to sin no more-a promise which John kept. Another story is very fondly told of the prince as a young man hearing of an officer's family in distress, and how he straightway borrowed six or eight hundred pounds, put his long fair hair under his hat, and so disguised carried the money to the starving family. He sent money, too, to Sheridan on his death-bed, and would have sent more had not death ended the career of that man of genius. Besides these, there are a few pretty speeches, kind and graceful, to persons with whom he was brought in contact. But he turned upon twenty friends. He was fond and familiar with them one day, and he pa.s.sed them on the next without recognition. He used them, liked them, loved them perhaps in his way, and then separated from them. On Monday he kissed and fondled poor Perdita, and on Tuesday he met her and did not know her. On Wednesday he was very affectionate with that wretched Brummell, and on Thursday forgot him; cheated him even out of a snuff-box which he owed the poor dandy; saw him years afterwards in his downfall and poverty, when the bankrupt Beau sent him another snuff-box with some of the snuff he used to love, as a piteous token of remembrance and submission, and the king took the snuff, and ordered his horses and drove on, and had not the grace to notice his old companion, favourite, rival, enemy, superior. In _Wraxall_ there is some gossip about him. When the charming, beautiful, generous d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re died-the lovely lady whom he used to call his dearest d.u.c.h.ess once, and pretend to admire as all English society admired her-he said, "Then we have lost the best-bred woman in England." "Then we have lost the kindest heart in England," said n.o.ble Charles Fox. On another occasion, when three n.o.blemen were to receive the Garter, says _Wraxall_, "a great personage observed that never did three men receive the order in so characteristic a manner. The Duke of A. advanced to the sovereign with a phlegmatic, cold, awkward air like a clown; Lord B. came forward fawning and smiling like a courtier; Lord C. presented himself easy, unembarra.s.sed, like a gentleman!" These are the stories one has to recall about the prince and king-kindness to a housemaid, generosity to a groom, criticism on a bow. There _are_ no better stories about him: they are mean and trivial, and they characterize him. The great war of empires and giants goes on. Day by day victories are won and lost by the brave. Torn, smoky flags and battered eagles are wrenched from the heroic enemy and laid at his feet; and he sits there on his throne and smiles, and gives the guerdon of valour to the conqueror. He! Elliston the actor, when the _Coronation_ was performed, in which he took the princ.i.p.al part, used to fancy himself the king, burst into tears, and hiccup a blessing on the people. I believe it is certain about George IV, that he had heard so much of the war, knighted so many people, and worn such a prodigious quant.i.ty of marshal's uniforms, c.o.c.ked-hats, c.o.c.k's feathers, scarlet and bullion in general, that he actually fancied he had been present in some campaigns, and, under the name of General Brock, led a tremendous charge of the German legion at Waterloo.

He is dead but thirty years, and one asks how a great society could have tolerated him? Would we bear him now? In this quarter of a century, what a silent revolution has been working! how it has separated us from old times and manners! How it has changed men themselves! I can see old gentlemen now among us, of perfect good breeding, of quiet lives, with venerable grey heads, fondling their grandchildren; and look at them, and wonder at what they were once. That gentleman of the grand old school, when he was in the 10th Hussars, and dined at the prince's table, would fall under it night after night. Night after night, that gentleman sat at Brookes's or Raggett's over the dice. If, in the petulance of play or drink, that gentleman spoke a sharp word to his neighbour, he and the other would infallibly go out and try to shoot each other the next morning. That gentleman would drive his friend Richmond the black boxer down to Moulsey, and hold his coat, and shout and swear, and hurrah with delight, whilst the black man was beating Dutch Sam the Jew. That gentleman would take a manly pleasure in pulling his own coat off, and thras.h.i.+ng a bargeman in a street row. That gentleman has been in a watchhouse. That gentleman, so exquisitely polite with ladies in a drawing-room, so loftily courteous, if he talked now as he used among men in his youth, would swear so as to make your hair stand on end. I met lately a very old German gentleman, who had served in our army at the beginning of the century. Since then he has lived on his own estate, but rarely meeting with an Englishman, whose language-the language of fifty years ago that is-he possesses perfectly.

When this highly bred old man began to speak English to me, almost every other word he uttered was an oath: as they used it (they swore dreadfully in Flanders) with the Duke of York before Valenciennes, or at Carlton House over the supper and cards. Read Byron's letters. So accustomed is the young man to oaths that he employs them even in writing to his friends, and swears by the post. Read his account of the doings of young men at Cambridge, of the ribald professors, one of whom "could pour out Greek like a drunken helot", and whose excesses surpa.s.sed even those of the young men. Read Matthews's description of the boyish lordling's housekeeping at Newstead, the skull-cup pa.s.sed round, the monks' dresses from the masquerade warehouse, in which the young scapegraces used to sit until daylight, chanting appropriate songs round their wine. "We come to breakfast at two or three o'clock," Matthews says. "There are gloves and foils for those who like to amuse themselves, or we fire pistols at a mark in the hall, or we worry the wolf." A jolly life truly! The n.o.ble young owner of the mansion writes about such affairs himself in letters to his friend, Mr. John Jackson, pugilist, in London.

All the prince's time tells a similar strange story of manners and pleasure. In _Wraxall_ we find the prime minister himself, the redoubted William Pitt, engaged in high jinks with personages of no less importance than Lord Thurlow the lord chancellor, and Mr. Dundas the treasurer of the navy. _Wraxall_ relates how these three statesmen, returning after dinner from Addis...o...b.., found a turnpike open and galloped through it without paying the toll. The turnpike man, fancying they were highwaymen, fired a blunderbuss after them, but missed them; and the poet sang,-

How as Pitt wandered darkling o'er the plain, His reason drown'd in Jenkinson's champagne, A rustic's hand, but righteous fate withstood, Had shed a premier's for a robber's blood.

Here we have the treasurer of the navy, the lord high chancellor, and the prime minister, all engaged in a most undoubted lark. In Eldon's _Memoirs_, about the very same time, I read that the Bar loved wine, as well as the woolsack. Not John Scott himself; he was a good boy always; and though he loved port wine, loved his business and his duty and his fees a great deal better.

He has a Northern Circuit story of those days, about a party at the house of a certain Lawyer Fawcett, who gave a dinner every year to the counsel.

"On one occasion," related Lord Eldon, "I heard Lee say, 'I cannot leave Fawcett's wine. Mind, Davenport, you will go home immediately after dinner, to read the brief in that cause that we have to conduct to-morrow.'

" 'Not I,' said Davenport. 'Leave my dinner and my wine to read a brief!

No, no, Lee; that won't do.'

" 'Then,' said Lee, 'what is to be done? who else is employed?'

"_Davenport._-'Oh! young Scott.'

"Lee.-'Oh! he must go. Mr. Scott, you must go home immediately, and make yourself acquainted with that cause, before our consultation this evening.' "