By George! Prince George and His Sticky Wicket

And now I return you to the gentle mercies of Mr. Al’s take on history.

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Taking to heart the old adage about rolling stones and moss, Mrs. Fitzherbert traveled to Aix-la-Chapelle. From there she traveled to Holland, then Antwerp, then Paris and finally, Switzerland. It was there that she met up with the Prince’s fun loving uncle, the Duke of Gloucester. What they did together is not recorded.

The Duke did write that he found her “A most amiable and esteemable lady.” He went on to declare that he would “do all in his power to make her long exile as bearable as possible.” Given the fact that the King had more or less banished his brother from England for his boozing, brawling, gambling and habitual skirt chasing, it is left up to you, gentle reader, to imagine how he tried to entertain Mrs. Fitzherbert.

The Prince, by order of the King, could not leave the country. As Mrs. Fitzherbert well knew. This left the lad in a most pitiable state. He wrote letter after letter to dad begging permission. Each letter received the same answer. No. He was careful never to mention why he wanted to leave the country. Alas, what he did not want dad to learn from his own lips, or pen, as the case may have been, dad learned from the London newspapers. The Prince and his sticky wicket was the talk of the town.

If the Prince could not be with his true love, he would do the next best thing. He would write letters. Long, rambling, semi-coherent letters. The first was eighteen pages long. One ran to forty-two pages. In one extraordinary document, only thirty-seven pages, he wrote, “Oh save me, save me, save me on my knees I conjure you from myself.”

I’ll bet that made an impression. He went on; “Come then, Oh! Come, dearest of wives, best and most adored of women, come and for ever crown with bliss him who will through life endeavor to convince you by his love and attention of his wishes to be the best of husbands and who will ever remain until the last moments of his existence, unalterably thine.”

Yowza! He did go on. He signed this love note, “Her lover and her husband, titles he would not exchange for the possessions of the whole universe.”

One suspects that Mrs. Fitzherbert wished the Prince possessed a little emotional equilibrium. The Prince wrote so many letters and sent so many emissaries to France to carry them to his One True Love that a problem developed. The French government became suspicious of all the activity and chucked some of these fellows into prison on suspicion of being spies.

Of course, he could not spend all his time writing. Writing, after all, is a very solitary pursuit. The Prince needed an audience. He also needed a Fitzherbert substitute until he could once again be with the real thing. The Prince was rather flexible in that respect.

One of these substitutes was Lady Bamfylde. Nothing is known about her beyond her fifteen minutes of fame with the Prince. Noted one observer, “She is grown fat, old and ugly but his Royal Highness is not noted for his taste in females.” Ouch. There were others as well. There was also the usual riotous behavior, heavy drinking, all night partying and gazillion course dinners. And if that ever became dull, he had Carlton House to re-decorate.

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Ah, the life of devotion.

Thank you Mr. Al.