King Leviathan
Philip Ziegler
George IV Regent And King, Christopher Hibbert (Allen Lane £4.25)
"Not a fatter fish than he Flounders round the polar sea, See his blubbers — at his gills What a world of drink he swills Name or title what has he?
Is he Regent of the sea?
By his bulk and by his size, By his oily qualities, This (or else my eyesight fails), This should be the Prince of Whales."
Thus Charles Lamb on the Prince Regent, lines written at more or less the date at which Christopher Hibbert's second volume of his biography begins. The comment was mild indeed in comparison to most of the abuse then being heaped on the royal monster. In the early years of the Regency George's reputation was at its lowest. He was derided where he was not detested, and despised even by those who owed him most. It is the great strength of this book that the author has made from so obscene a dummy a being recognisably, indeed spectacularly human.
This is very much a personal biography. Not for Mr Hibbert the nice calculations of party strengths or careful analyses of international problems over which his hero so often cogitated. With some monarchs the approach might pall — at any rate if extended over the eight hundred pages odd provided by the two volumes of this work. With George IV it has succeeded triumphantly. This book is a delight to read, an enormously enjoyable and skilful portrait which is convincing in all its details. The main credit for this, of course, goes to the author, whose delight in his hero's grotesqueries and artistry in portraying them, never stifles the realisation that here was a mortal who bled if pricked and died if poisoned. Some. credit, however, should .go to George himself who, by his extravagance, has provided a target on which even the lamest Writer should score a hit and Mr Hibbert has notched up a resounding bullseye.
Extravagance was indeed George's trademark in all he did. Extravagance in his clothes: "Opera pelisses, astrakhan Polish caps, silk bathing gowns, white beaver morning gowns made 'extra wide and very long,' nch gold marmalouk sword belts, rich Muscovy sable muffs, prime doe pantaloons, 'superfine scarlet flannel under waistcoats lined with fine callico ' . . ." One blue silk coat alone, reported Maria Edgeworth, had cost six hundred pounds by the time a tailor and two assistants had worked on it at Windsor for three weeks. Extravagance in his building: at Carlton House, that miracle of elegance, built on an overdraft and destroyed on a whim; at the Royal Lodge, Windsor, a cottage that grew and grew and grew; at the Marine Pavilion, Brighton — in the celebrated Phrase, as if St Paul's had gone down to the sea and pupped —; above all in that Concorde among palaces, Windsor Castle. Wyatt Originally estimated the cost of this at £125,000 but raised his figure when he heard that the government were thinking of £150,000. Twice as much was quickly spent, and the estimate rose to £600,000. When expenditure reached £800,000 and another £100,000 was asked for, the House of Commons struck and, though the money was found in the end, the grumbling King had to Put up with much less than the castle of his dreams.
He was extravagant in his loves, endlessly Protesting eternal devotion and sighing out his passion, refusing to allow the fat and vulgar Lady Conyngham to leave him even when her eldest son was dying. He was extravagant in his hates, whether it was his "Bedlam bitch of a Queen" or one of the many politicians — Canning, Wellington, or the "absurd, weak and disgusting" Liverpool — who at one time or another fell short of his expectations. Once in his bad books a man could do nothing right. Poor Canning found himself denounced for "wanting me to have the King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands to dinner! As if I would sit at table with such a pair of damned cannibals."
He was extravagantly sensitive; hiding himself at Windsor so that no one should see his bloated body and distorted limbs, seeing affronts in the most harmless of remarks and morbidly scrutinising the behaviour of his current favourite in the fear of finding hints of disloyalty. He was extravagantly greedy, even on his death bed breakfasting on "a pigeon and beefsteak pie of which he ate two pigeons and three beef-steaks, three parts of a bottle of Mozelle, a glass of dry champagne, two glasses of port and a glass of brandy." Even in his illnesses he was extravagant, suffering by 1828 from gouty inflammation of the hand and arms, spasms, piles, inflammation of the bladder, dropsy and various other ailments. At his death he was "enormous, like a featherbed," while the dropsied swelling in his legs made them "hard as stone."
The devastating verdict of The Times is well known: "There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased King. What eye has wept for him? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow . . . for that Leviathan of the haut ton, George IV?" Was this too brutal? Wisely Mr Hibbert does not commit himself, yet he offers some evidence to suggest it was. George was a good and kind master, who could put himself to great trouble to comfort a servant in distress. He was generous — usually, it %true, with other people's money, but also with his own time and energies. He was humane and even compassionate, frequently intervening to save criminals from the gallows or to mitigate their punishment. "He had some wit and great penetration,"
wrote Princess Lieven. "He adorned the subjects he touched, he knew how to listen; he was very polished." He was a loving brother to his sisters and rightly adored by them. Finally, his taste was rarely at fault and was
sometimes inspired. Jane Austen was his favourite novelist and he had a set of her books in every residence. Emma was dedicated to him at his own suggestion. No man can be all bad who appreciates Emma.
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