Regent and King
. George the Fourth. By Roger Fulford. (Duckworth. Os.) Mn. FULFORD has not wished to add to the number of" wine, women and song" biographies of George IV, but to present " an intelligible picture," based on a firm refusal to take much notice of what Whig historians have written. This is, no doubt, a laudable design, but the result is not very exciting. George IV emerges as a dull debauchee, instead of a thrillingly wicked one ; he was a delightful host at a dinner party, a king who knew nothing about politics, a man with a smattering of culture which made his conversation interesting, and a taste which ran to furniture and Walter Scott. He did, indeed, collect some good pictures, of which the details are not given (menus of dinners, descriptions of candles and other decorations are considered more important) and was the donor to the nation of the King's Library at the British Museum, consisting chiefly of the books his father had . collected.
Mr. Fulford has "deliberately not sought unpublished manuscripts" for a variety of reasons which may or may not commend themselves. Since he makes no pretence at
'research, we presume that he was more °intent to produce
work of art than an essay in history, from the motives that moved Lytton Strachey. We can, therefore, pass by as insignificant the old' gibe about George II destroying his father's will (which he did under the best political advice both at home and abroad), and prepare to embark on an exciting adventure. Unfortunately, though Mr. Fulford covers the ground with tact and humour, our literary ex- pectations are sometimes disappointed :
" At 2.30 there was supper, for which the Comte de Lisle, who, like every Bourbon, was fond of his food, had been evincing some signs of impatience. The supper-table for the principal guests was 200 feet long, and ran straight through the whole length of the Gothic conservatory and the dining-room. The architecture of the conservatory', picked out with innumerable colouied lights placed in the niches, was set off to the best advantage. In the middle of the table, and raised six inches above it, flowed a stream of water, supplied by 'a silver fountain, which played in front Of the Prince.. The banks of the stioarri were decorated With green .rrios and flowers, a few fanciful bridges were thrown across it, and gold and silyer, fish swam in if. The Prince sat in a plain mahogany chair with a leather back : on his right hand sat . . ."
. The monarch who planned this is the sort of monarch Mr. Fulford admires: he revived the magnificence of royalty after a century of dull Hanoverian domesticity: Ile would
have done better still had not his unimaginative father been so niggardly. Yet we may ask why George III, who had, as he complained, a very large family to provide for, who himself, with the greatest frugality, could not always make both ends of the civil list meet,- and 'who was already giving the prince far more than he himself had had, should have demanded more from Parliament for a son who piled debt on • debt in the cause ,of fantastic architecture and. furniture in dubious taste ? Mr. Pafford, it will be felt,- is a little unfair to George III, as indeed he is to Queen Charlotte.
. A king, however bad a politician, cannot be altogether .divorced from his job, yet we gather no vivid picture of what was really happening in the political circles of those days, nor do we gain any insight into the significance of such an -appointment as that of Canning either as Secretary or Prime Minister. Nor are we shown the background of misery which provided such a brilliant foil for the splendid fetes a Prin&, Regent, and King. When we incet such a- dictum as "He finally decided to try to form a coalition, which inevitably commends itself to Royal minds, but seldom to the country," we at once ask- ourselves whether George III rapturously accepted the Fox-North coalition of 1783, or the Ministry of All the Talents of 1806, and whether the country showed its horror of coalitions in 1031.
It will be admitted that Mr. Fulford exhibits a great deal of common sense when dealing with George IV's relations with women, but whether common sense is the right attitude to adopt towards excess is a debatable question. In eschewing the comic Mr. Fulford has deprived himself of one or to . Opportunities of revealing the princely mind, as for instanee, . when he professed himselfshocked to find his brother Augustus actually living in the same house as his wife; Lady Augusta Murray ; very pretty this affectation of horror from one who bad Married. Mrs....Fitzherbert Augustus was at once invited
to the chaste precincts of Carlton House. By 'taking up this attitude Mr. Fulford has indeed given us a book somewhat different from the usual run of books on George IV, but it cannot be said that he has given us a view of the monarch which will make us change our minds about him, if we are at all familiar with -the period.- But if, as seems likely, Thaekeray's absurd travesty still holds the field in the popular mind, it is just as well that the Book Society should have made this volume its choice, since though it is not a brillia4 piece of literature, it shows that the Regent was, after all,
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