After all his efforts to repair the damage to his reputation, Gorge IV still couldn’t get a break with either his parents or the London press. What’s a poor boy to do? If he has the right kind of friends, go wild.
The Barrymores, Duke, Countess, and two other brothers made for colourful copy. While riding down to Brighton, they enjoyed uprooting or otherwise changing roadsigns. Another endearing trick would be to, while riding through an unsuspecting village, have the Countess scream “Murder! Rape! Unhand me you villian!” When concerned citizens chased after the carriage and forced to stop, the Barrymores would leap out and begin subjecting them to the lowest sort of vearbal abuse.
Once in Brighton, they liked to go to nice, middle class homes in the middle of the night carrying a coffin. They would then scare the hell out of the servants by announcing that they had come to collect the body of the master of the house. One of the brothers, nicknamed “Cripplegate” because of his club foot, made an impression on Mrs Fitzherbert by rideing his horse into her house and up the stairs to the garret, where he dismounted and left it there for her to deal with.
Another Barrymore, nicknamed “Hellgate”, once entertained Mrs Fitzherbert by dressing as a woman and singing a serenade beneath her bedroom window. At three in the morning. Mrs Fitzherberts reaction to all this is not recorded. But considering the effort she went to to keep The Prince in line, one could safely assume that she was not amused. The anti-prince press had a field day.
Not content to sit back while his friends dragged his name through the mud, The Prince decided to help. Very soon after Parliament voted him the money to finish Carlton House and pay his debts, he took some of the money to re-establish his raceing stable. He was soon losing stupendous sums at the track. All this, and he had barely gotten started on Brighton Pavilion.
The press may have been hounding him, but The Prince was not the least bit shy about defending himself. After one particularly blunt article appered in a newspaper, he wrote to the editor to protest against “this most infamous and shocking libelious production that ever disgraced the pen of man.” He went on to demand that these “damnedable doctrines of the hell-begotten Jacobines ought to be taken up in a very serious manner by the government and prosecuted.” Since dad and his Tory ministers WERE the government, The Prince would be ice skateing in hell before that happened.
If The Princes friends were behaveing badly in Brighton, the town seemed willing enough to let The Prince slide. Evidence of this was provided by the birthday bash the town threw for him in August, 1789. The occasion of The Princes birthday was completely ignored by mom and dad; to no ones surprise. But the town of Brighton more than made up for it.
There were donkey races, sailing races, and boxing matches where The Prince handed out the prizes. Hogsheads of ale were tapped on the town commons, a whole ox was roasted with chunks of it being cut away with a broadsword. There were fireworks that night and a torchlight procession through the middle of town to see the Prince to bed. Happy birthday Prince!
It would be the last happy event The Prince would experience for some time.
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