By George! It’s the Bitter End

Alas. This week’s installment of By Geroge!, Mr. Al’s discussion of the life and times of George IV, brings this series to an end. Thank you for well over a year fo entertaining history, Mr. Al. There will be other series in the future. Drop by next week to discuss it.
Among all the paraphernalia acquired over a lifetime of profligate spending were packets of love letters. Big packets of love letters. And among the letters were found “quantities of womans gloves, and locks of womens hair of all colors and lengths, some having powder and pomatom yet sticking to them.” Interestingly, he made copies of the letters he sent; “Descriptive of the most furious passion.”

Passionate they may have been, brief they were not. Much of it was between The Prince and Mrs Fitzherbert. The letters that had passed between the Prince Regent and Lady Jersey had already been destroyed by her executor. Mrs Fitzherbert was asked to return the letters she had received from His Highness. She insisted on retaining some of them, particularly those that established her marriage. These letters went into a safe deposit box in a London bank and were not re-discovered until 1905. They then passed into the Royal Archives.

Lady Conyngham no doubt had her letters as well. Though, perhaps, not as many as Mrs Fitzherbert and Lady Jersey. After all, Lady Conyngham actually moved in with His Majesty. Her and her entire family, husband and all.

Letters were not the only thing she kept for herself. “According to current gossip, she was alleged to have taken whole wagon loads of treasure into the obscurity which thereafter surrounded her until her death in 1861, a widow of 91, at her country house in Kent.

Of the letters that Mrs Fitzherbert surrendered, these were burned by the Duke of Wellington and Mrs Fitzherbert’s friend, Lord Abermarle in Mrs Fitzherbert’s fireplace. “There were so many of them that after several hours work Wellington said to Albermarle, “I think, my Lord, we had better hold our hand for a while or we shall set the old womans chimney on fire.”

It seems ironic that the man who was, arguably, the most dissolute monarch in English history would also be the one to leave the most enduring and popular monuments. Regent’s Park, Oxford Circus, Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace, Carlton House Terrace, (Carlton House itself was torn down in the King’s lifetime) Brighton Pavilion, Windsor Castle.

The arts flourished under George IV as they never had before under the Hanoverians. Writers as diverse as Jane Austen and Lord Byron found large audiences as well as royal approval. During George’s reign British landscape and portrait painting reached heights never to be equaled . Landseer, Lawrence and Gainsborough grew deservedly rich with their works.

All of the treasures that he had collected had to be dealt with. Something had to be done with them. Something, that is, besides handing them over to Lady Conyngham. While many works were to remain in the royal palaces, many more went to the British Museum. King William was happy to be rid of them. He had no use for his brother’s “knicknackery.” As he said while examining a painting in his brothers collection. “Aye, it might be pretty. Damned expensive taste though.”

Such “knicknackery” still dazzles visitors to the British Museum. I think the Duke of Wellington, who knew him as well as anyone over the course of his reign, probably put it best. “He was indeed the most extraordinary compound of talent, wit, buffoonery, obstinacy and good feeling-in short a medley of the most opposite qualities, with a great preponderance of good-that I ever saw in any character in my life.”

But the final word I shall leave to Prince Tallyrand, who, I think, really summed him up. “Kings nowadays are always looking for popularity, a pointless pursuit. King George IV was un roi grand seigneur. There are no others left.

— Mr. Al