In Bed with the Georgians

by Rendell, Mike;

  Cartoonists mocked them constantly, and the King was determined to end the humiliation by pressing for a divorce. He was, however, keen to avoid a court case in which salacious details of his own infidelities would be placed in the spotlight. The King had ordered a commission of enquiry which travelled to Milan and sought to interrogate the house servants in order to establish that adultery had taken place. The commissioners returned to London with two sacks of incriminating evidence and handed these in to Parliament. George IV called for the two green bags containing evidence of his wife’s adultery to be placed before the House of Commons and House of Lords. Cruikshank, along with many others, saw this as ‘the kettle calling the pot black’ and shows the King as having a much larger ‘sack of evidence’ than his Queen (see Image 50).

  The House conducted what was in effect a public trial of Caroline. All the messy details came out but the public was appalled at the hypocrisy of the situation. Tens of thousands signed a petition in favour of the Queen. Civil unrest was increasing, and the new King was hugely unpopular. The Bill before Parliament, stripping the Queen of her title, was dropped and instead Caroline was offered £50,000 per annum to resume her European exile. But when her husband planned his coronation, which took place on 19 July 1821 at Westminster Abbey, Caroline decided that, as she was technically still the wife of the new monarch, she should be recognized as such at this public ceremony. George IV banned her from the coronation. Nevertheless she turned up with her entourage and tried unsuccessfully to force access, finally being turned away at bayonet point. Although she was jeered by the watching hordes on account of her undignified behaviour, it did nothing to endear the new King to his subjects.

  Later that same day Caroline fell ill. Rumours leaked out that she had been poisoned – and Caroline was convinced that this was the case. When she died, just three weeks later, the exact cause of death was unproved. Maybe she had cancer, or maybe the King had indeed given orders to be rid of her. What is clear is that there was an attempt by the establishment to prevent a funeral procession passing through the City of London, en route to the port of Harwich so that she could be buried in her native Brunswick. The public were having none of this insult to her memory, and tore down the barriers put up by the authorities. The mob insisted that the cortege should process through Westminster and central London, and in the chaos which ensued, the army charged the crowds with sabres drawn, attempting to disperse it. Granite setts from the roads were dug up and hurled at the soldiers, and two members of the public were killed. So much for a dignified end to a sad and tawdry story.

  The King reigned for ten years – a decade in which he became more and more withdrawn from public life. All that eating and drinking had taken its toll: he had been grossly overweight for years, and by 1824 had a waist measurement of 50in. He suffered from gout as well as from breathing difficulties and possibly from laudanum poisoning. The extravagance and debauchery of the King made him almost universally despised – writers and commentators at the time were enraged by him because, as mentioned earlier, he sued one of their number, Leigh Hunt, for criminal libel and was awarded £500 damages. Leigh Hunt had called the grossly overweight Prince ‘fat’. The description of him as an overweight lecherous drunkard and wastrel was not only self-evidently true, but the Press was also outraged that the courts were prepared to overlook the obvious, and to kow-tow to his Royal Highness in a most shameful way.

  Meanwhile the middle classes were fed-up with their taxes being used to fund the King’s reckless expenditure; the poor loathed him because he was cavorting at a time when they were starving as a result of the food shortages and rampant inflation which marked the period of the Napoleonic Wars. When he died in 1830 The Times reported that ‘There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased king’.

  By then, he had already outlived his brother Frederick, Duke of York. He is remembered, not for being Commander-in-Chief of the British army, but for the nursery rhyme about marching his men up to the top of the hill, and marching them down again. Curiously, he was originally destined for the Church, having been made a bishop at the tender age of six months. But a life of drunken debauchery was more attractive to Frederick than anything religion could offer. He had married the smallpoxravaged Princess Frederica of Prussia in 1791 but although they were technically married for nearly thirty years, the actual number of nights spent under the same roof could be counted on one hand. She preferred the company of her menagerie of monkeys, dogs and the odd kangaroo to that of her corpulent drunkard of a husband, and who can blame her?

  After a number of mistresses, the Duke of York eventually moved in with the wonderfully corrupt Mary Anne Clarke, a lady who was renowned for having dispensed her favours amongst great swathes of the nobility. It may be ungallant to say that, having married a stone-mason, she resembled a foundation stone (always getting laid). She set about making money by using her royal connection to sell army commissions. She was not particularly discreet about it, and gave evidence before the House of Commons that the sale of commissions was done with the full knowledge of the Prince, who promptly resigned as Commander in Chief. Well, for a while, because eventually he was reinstated, thereby proving that you cannot keep a bad man down. Isaac Cruikshank had brought the scandal into the public domain with his scathing print The Modern Circe (see Image 57). It shows Mrs Clarke wearing the voluminous military cape belonging to the Duke of York, offering cover to a host of diminutive soldiers, civilians and clergymen, all with their arms out-stretched. They represent all the people who had been helped by her to benefit from the corrupt sale of commissions, ecclesiastical livings, and so on.

  Mrs Clarke threatened to reveal the Duke’s love letters, unless she was paid a small fortune to keep quiet. He paid up. Not inclined to brevity, in 1809 she published The Authentic and Impartial Life of Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke, Including Numerous Royal and Other Original Letters, and Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons, Which Have Escaped Suppression, with a Compendious View of the Whole Proceedings, Illustrative of the Late Important Investigation of the Conduct of His Royal Highness the Duke of York, &C. &C. and a Curious Poem. Other kiss-and-tell revelations led to her being hauled off to Court for libel: she was imprisoned for nine months. She withdrew to France and died in 1852 aged 76.

  The Duke of York died childless in 1827. Three years later the King also died, largely unloved, and was succeeded to the throne by his younger brother William, Duke of Clarence.

  WILLIAM IV – the sailor king.

  It is difficult to be fair about the man who went on to become William IV: he had the same mistress, Dorothea Jordan, for twenty years, sired ten children by her, and then when pressure was brought to bear to produce a male heir, promptly ditched his ‘wife of the left hand’ in order to marry a woman eighteen years his junior.

  He had started as he meant to go on: allegedly raping a maid in the employment of his mother the Queen when he was just 14. When his father, George III, decided that the navy would make a man of him, he was posted to the West Indies, whereupon he became an unrivalled expert on the goings-on in the brothels of Jamaica. He had a particular penchant for young black girls, a fact which did not pass the notice of James Gillray. Nauticus in Image 58 is fairly bland, with its comment that his lips were so kissable, but Wouski (Image 59) shows him in a hammock with his legs wrapped around an adoring native girl. Shown exhibiting a generous amount of cleavage, maybe she represents one of many who caused him to contract venereal disease. He spent his time whoring and drinking to excess, and even lived openly for a while with a known prostitute.

  In time he fell for the charms of Dorothea Jordan. She was a famous actress, renowned for having the best legs in the business, with a string of lovers behind her. Her surname was actually ‘Bland’ and there is no evidence that there ever was a ‘Mr Jordan’. The name was a godsend to the caricaturists, because a ‘jordan’ was another name for a chamber pot. Cue endless jokes combining lavatorial humour and sexua
l puns. Image 40 is a caricature by Gillray entitled The Devil to Pay – The Wife Metamorphosed, or Neptune reposing after fording the Jordan. It shows Dorothea relaxing in bed with the Duke. She exclaims ‘What pleasant dreams I have had tonight. Methought I was in Paradise…’ The Duke of Clarence sleeps contentedly. The chamber pot under the bed is inscribed with the far from complimentary words ‘Public Jordan – open to all parties.’ In a similar vein, The Tar and the Jordan (Image 61) shows the sailor prince crowned with a chamber pot, rushing past a group of complaining women, with the words ‘Why, what a rout is here about a Damn’d crack’d bum-boat.’ Another cracked chamber pot is being dragged along the street, tied to the Prince’s wrist by a piece of string, while a startled flock of sheep run towards their drover.

  In 1791 Dorothea moved in with the Prince at Bushy House, while still occasionally appearing on stage. In an era before birth control she seemed to spend much of her time producing royal bastards, all of them given the surname ‘FitzClarence.’ But all the royal dukes started to come under pressure to do the right thing and get married – none of them had produced a legitimate heir. So the Duke of Clarence got rid of Dorothea, offering her a yearly payment in return for her agreeing not to go on the stage. She accepted – she had little choice – and in return she was allowed custody of the daughters (but not the sons). Three years later she broke her side of the bargain, in order to try and raise money to help her spendthrift son-in-law. The Prince heard that she had resurrected her acting career, and tried to stop her annuity altogether and forced her to surrender custody of the girls. Dorothea fled to Paris in 1815 to avoid her creditors, and she died in utter penury just one year later.

  Meanwhile William was scouring Europe looking for a suitable girl to marry – difficult, since many had either seen or heard of this un-prepossessing man with somewhat loathsome behaviour. He seems to have employed something of a scatter-gun approach to proposing marriage: eventually, after what were rumoured to be eighteen refusals, he found someone willing to take him on in marriage. She was Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, unkindly described as being ‘frightful, very ugly with a horrid complexion.’ She had never met the groom when she arrived in Britain in 1818, to be confronted with the news that hers was to be part of a double wedding. The ‘twofor-the-price-of-one’ deal saw both William and his younger brother Edward, Duke of Kent, marry girls who between them spoke not one word of English. The wedding service and the vows were therefore printed in German, but with phonetic sub-titles in English.

  Once he succeeded his brother to the throne, William actually achieved a measure of popularity – not because he was any good, but because he was seen as being not quite as revolting as his predecessor. When he died in 1837, The Spectator recorded the view that ‘His late Majesty, though at times a jovial and, for a king, an honest man, was a weak, ignorant, commonplace sort of person’.

  William was followed onto the throne by his niece Victoria. In practice she was the only legitimate offspring produced by the seven sons of George III. Apart from Edward, Duke of Kent, not one had a legitimate heir still living when William IV died. Charles Williams, caricaturist, had shown the Dukes of Clarence, Cumberland and Cambridge, together with their wives, in a cartoon called A scene in the new farce called the rivals – or, A visit to the heir presumptive. It came out in 1819, the year Victoria was born and is available in both the Royal Collection and at the British Museum. In it, the royal princes discuss their prospects of producing a male heir. (‘I’ll try again, and a boy too, I’ll warrant’ and ‘Don’t be in haste, I shall soon put you all out – my dear Duchess assures me it will be a boy. You will never have another one – it is all over at your house!’ while another Duke exclaims ‘…our labour is all in vain…’

  In the event, none of them produced a male heir and the crown passed to Queen Victoria in 1837.

  One other brother is worthy of mention – George III’s son Ernest. He was perhaps the most hated of the lot, suspected of rape, murder and more besides. The public loathed the Prince, and were prepared to believe that his depravity stretched as far as incest. His sister Sophia was widely rumoured to be pregnant in 1800. Cloistered away in the convent-like but hormone-charged atmosphere of the royal palace, she can rarely have come into contact with any other males, and perhaps this is how the rumour came about. It was suggested that she may have gone away to Weymouth to give birth to her child away from prying eyes – and that even her father, the King, was not told of her condition for fear that the news would trigger off one of his attacks of madness.

  Stories emerged that the baby’s father was an equerry by the name of Thomas Garth. He was thirty-three years her senior, with a large port-wine birthmark on his face, and sounded an unlikely bed-mate for the sickly Princess. He may just have been a ‘fall guy’, prepared to take the blame because he was willing to deflect the public from the scandalous truth that the real father of the child was her own brother, Ernest. It was alleged that Ernest had tried to rape Sophia on more than one occasion. However, it has to be said that much of the bile aimed at the Prince was politically motivated, always reaching a crescendo when he was in Britain, and diminishing when he returned to his beloved Hanover, where he became King in 1837. But the rumours about the Prince siring his sister’s child gained currency in 1829 when a man claiming to be the offspring of the union came forward with letters which allegedly incriminated the royal family. His attempt at blackmail failed, but the story helped fuel the fire of gossip and public criticism of the Prince. Sophia for her part went blind and lived to the ripe old age of 70, while Ernest soldiered on until his death in 1851. He had been a thorn in the side of his niece Queen Victoria, claiming that the jewellery belonging to his mother Queen Charlotte should pass to him as the eldest surviving male heir. Victoria refused to hand over the jewels on the basis that they belonged to the Crown – the British Crown – and took great delight in wearing them ostentatiously on every possible occasion. It was only when her hated uncle died that she reluctantly returned the jewels to Hanover.

  His death on 18 November 1851 was noted in The Times with the words ‘the good that can be said of the Royal dead is little or none.’

  In general, all that you can say of the royal brothers is that their love of fornicating was not at issue. Their tastes in women were varied and unconstrained, but no-one could accuse them of running their private lives in order to give a good example to the lesser orders. George III may have set out to give a good example, but his sons had no such inhibitions. And what was good enough for them was good enough for their coterie of hangers on – mostly aristocrats with the money and lifestyle to keep pace with their royal drinking partners.

  Chapter Seven

  Adulterous Aristocrats

  Brooks’ Club still has a record of the bet made in 1785 by Lord Cholmondeley with Lord Derby to the effect that ‘Lord Ch…y’ would join what would these days be termed the Mile High Club. There is no record of how close ‘Lord Ch….y’ got to winning his bet, or whether ‘Mrs E…t’ went along with the idea. She was Grace Dalrymple Elliot, with whom his Lordship had a lengthy affair. The wager demonstrates the very open nature of such conquests, as well as showing the popularity of ever more adventurous and obscure places where sex might take place.

  MARY ELIZABETH BOWES – like Mother, like son.

  Mary Elizabeth Bowes was one of those figures the public loved to hate – somewhat unfairly. It was not her fault that her father had made an obscene amount of money out of coal-mining, or that he died when she was 11 years old, leaving her as one of the wealthiest heiresses in the whole of Europe. She is believed to have inherited a fortune estimated as being between £600,000 and £1,040,000 in 1760. Her father was a notorious rake and libertine, but Mary turned out to be far from frivolous – she loved botany and devoted much of her time and money to building glass-houses and studying plants, and growing exotic species. She was outspoken and was something of an intellectual. Various suitors were lined up for her
but were turned down until, on her eighteenth birthday, she married the Earl of Strathmore. It was a magnificent affair – her trousseau alone cost £3,000. Her mother gave her a diamond stomacher costing £10,000 and other diamonds worth £7,000. In addition she had her pick from a green landau, a blue landau, a blue post-coach and a stone-coloured chaise, all of them with a full set of horses and liveried staff. The Earl quickly realized what a handful he had taken on board – why, she loved her cats and dogs more than him! Nevertheless, she bore him five children. The newspapers had a field day, in particular criticising her for her harsh treatment of the Earl’s son, who she would beat regularly. One caricature entitled Lady Termagant Flaybum shows her, birch in hand, about to administer a beating which was apparently so frequent that it ‘caused great annoyance to the neighbourhood’ of their home at Forty Grosvenor Square.

  The marriage was not to last long – the Earl was sickly and developed tuberculosis, but before he died in 1776, en route to Lisbon to try a cure in the warm airs of Portugal, he wrote a farewell letter home to his wife. It was largely devoid of any affection, but urged her to try and protect her inheritance by tying it up in trust for her children. For once in her life, it turned out that she did as she was told, and she assigned most of her life interests to trustees for the benefit of her children.

  Aged 27, Mary sought solace in a relationship with George Gray. He was a nabob (an Englishman who had gone to India to make his fortune). Unfortunately Gray had lost whatever fortune he had, and was keen to marry the merry widow. She resisted his entreaties, but nevertheless managed to get herself pregnant by him not once but on at least three different occasions. In her diary she recorded the foul black liquid which she drank in order to terminate each of the pregnancies. She was happy, living at Chelsea, with her vineries and hothouses and had no wish to give up all her independence for married servitude.