Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (53 page)

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Prince of Wales, demanded to be shown drafts. On one occasion,

she insisted that the phrase “much disturbed” be replaced with “less

calm” (quoted in Macalpine and Hunter 68; see also
History and

Proceedings of the Lords and Commons
198–99).

21. Fox’s biographer argues that his actions during the regency crisis

were motivated, from first to last, by a conviction that the King

would never recover (Mitchell 80).

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22. David Craig points out that criticism of the Prince’s profligacy

reflects a belief that he was behaving more like an aristocrat than a

future monarch and conseq uently that “the monarchy was part of

the wider problems of aristocratic vice and ‘old corruption’ ” (“The

Crowned Republic?” 180).

23. Fox was Chancellor of the Exchequer in August of 1783 when George

came of age. He successfully negotiated an annuity for the Prince of

50,000 pounds, plus revenues, half of which was earmarked to pay

off his debts (Hibbert,
George IV
32). The Prince soon outspent this

allotment on lavish renovations to Carlton House and on the main-

tenance of Mrs. Fitzherbert.

24. Michael Gamer and Terry F. Robinson cite dialogue that accom-

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panied an engraving in the inaugural issue of
The Rambler’s
maga-

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zine, among three famous courtesans, “Perdita” Robinson, “Dally

the Tall” (Grace Dalrymple Elliott), and “the Bird of Paradise”

(Mrs. Gertrude Mahon). By January of 1783, Robinson and Elliott

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had been—and were no longer—mistresses of the Prince. A third

royal ex-mistress, Mrs. Elizabeth Armistead (“the Armistead”)

appeared frequently in
The Rambler’s
(“Mary Robinson” 223–25).

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25. Mitchell points out that George had promised him, days before

the wedding, that he had nothing to worry about. Conseq uently,

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“[e]ncouraged by the Prince, he had assured the House of Commons

that truth was falsehood. Relations between the two men were never

wholly repaired” (90).

26. Rolle proposed an amendment to the Regency Bill that would dis-

qualify not only a regent who “shall at any time marry a Papist” but

also one who “shall at any time be proved to be married, in fact or in

law to a Papist” (
History and Proceedings
384).

27. The Prince takes her right hand in his left, a possible reminder that

he is marrying a commoner. Princess Caroline’s biographer, Flora

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Fraser, quotes a 1798 letter from Princess Mary to her brother,

by this time married to and already estranged from his cousin of

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Brunswick, in which she refers to Mrs. Fitzherbert as “ ‘your amiable

left hand (as you call her).’ In a morganatic, or unequal, marriage, in

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German—but not in English—law, where a person of exalted rank

married a social inferior, the bridegroom gave the bride his left hand.

Since his marriage to Princess Caroline, the Prince had apparently

come to think of his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert as ‘in this mor-

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ganatic style’ ” (Fraser 118). In his pamphlet on the secret marriage,

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A Letter to a Friend, on the Reported Marriage of his Royal Highness

the Prince of Wales
, Horne Tooke makes much of “[t]his degrading

notion” that a marriage between a royal and a commoner is improper

and calls it “a ridiculous phantom imported into this land only with

the House of Hanover” (10). Rolle cites Hooke’s pamphlet as evi-

dence that the marriage took place during debates in the House

(
History and Proceedings
296).

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28. Lord Grenville wrote in a letter to his brother that “[a]n explanatory

question was put to him which it took him about an hour and a half

to settle; whether, as far as experiences enabled him to judge, he

thought it more probable that the King would or would not recover”

(
Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third
II. 31). In the

printed transcript, this is the second question asked, and Warren’s

answer is careful but relatively concise and not discouraging. If it

took him ninety minutes to frame it, or to reach his conclusion, read-

ers would never know it: “The Hopes of His Majesty’s Recovery must

depend on the Probability of Cure; and that can only be judged of

by what has happened to others in similar Cases; and, as the Majority

of others have recovered, there is a Probability that His Majesty may

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recover likewise” (
Report from the Committee Appointed to Examine

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the Physicians Who Have Attended His Majesty during his Illness
3).

When asked, “Has the greater Number of Persons recovered, whose

Disorder has lasted, without Signs of Convalescence, as long as that

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of His Majesty has already done?” He answers, “Yes” (
Report
6).

29. Hanger was often depicted holding a cudgel. In
The April Fool, or, the

Follies of a Night
he uses it as an impromptu musical instrument in an

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imagined charivari for the Prince and Mrs. Fitzherbert.

30. John Boyne’s 1784
The Adventure of Prince Pretty Man
(BM Satires

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6468), mentioned in the previous chapter, is an example, as is his

1783
Falstaff and his Prince
(BM Satires 6231).

31. In the eight-volume collection of Shakespeare’s plays published in

1757, this scene takes place toward the end of act 4 and corresponds

to scene 2 of the folio version (
The Second Part of King Henry IV
4,

252–62). In Gravelot’s accompanying illustration, the dying King,

still crowned, sits up in bed, discoursing to his son, who kneels

beside him, hands outstretched toward a second crown that lies on

the bed (180).

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32. The stability of the King’s mental state is reinforced by the orderli-

ness of the bedclothes. In contemporary reports of the King’s illness,

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bed is often the site of both violent disorder and violent manage-

ment. The King jumps up and down in bed; he removes bedclothes

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and hides them, replaces his nightcap with a pillowcase, and imag-

ines that a pillow is his infant son Octavius, dead for five years. In

attempts to control him, his attendants swaddled him in bed linens

and tied him to bedposts (Macalpine and Hunter 64, 42, 51, 68).

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In the engraving, however, the bed is relatively neat; the King lies

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calmly beneath the coverings, in dressing gown and nightcap. It is

his interrupting son who oversets tables and spills wine.

33. Many of the treatments used at that time, particularly blister-

ing, were founded on theories of humoral pathology, that is, that

humans are composed of four humors—black bile, yellow bile,

phlegm, and blood—and that disorders are caused by an overabun-

dance of one humor or the irregular migration of a humor from its

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proper seat. A letter written by Lord Grenville in late 1788 outlines

both the pathology and the treatment through which physicians

attempted to make sense of the King’s illness: “The cause to which

they all agree to ascribe it, is the force of a humour which was

beginning to show itself in the legs, when the King’s imprudence

drove it from thence into the bowels; and the medicines which

they were then obliged to use for the preservation of his life, have

repelled it upon the brain.” He then explains that “[t]he physicians

are now endeavouring, by warm baths, and by great warmth of

covering, to bring it down again into the legs, which nature had

originally pointed out as the best mode of discharge” (
Memoirs of

the Court and Cabinets
6–7).

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34. Hibbert notes that the Prince “fell seriously ill” in 1781, “and for

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two days his physician . . . felt much alarmed for him. . . . He was com-

pelled to remain in his bedchamber for a fortnight, his face covered

with red, eruptive blotches”—probably the “scrofulous humour”

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about which Walpole writes (Hibbert,
George IV
24). Macalpine and

Hunter posit that George IV’s health throughout his life was much

worse than was publicly known. Drawing from his correspondence,

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they conclude that “[f]rom the age of twenty he had attacks of spasms

in the chest, abdominal colic, pain and weakness in his limbs, insom-

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nia, fast pulse, lowness of spirits, states of excitement and ‘shattered

nerves’, and was left languid, wasted and weak” (230–31).

35. “Excess alcohol consumption,” Macalpine and Hunter point out, is

a known precipitant, “and attacks may be prevented by avoiding” it

(174). They suggest that the severity of the King’s attacks, despite his

asceticism, may indicate that he had “a particularly virulent form of

the disease” (174).

36. Warburton brought out a collected edition in 1747; its copious

footnotes are largely corrections or refutations of previous editors

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(
Shakespeare Domesticated
24). Colin Franklin writes about the

“ever-lengthening footnote game” (
Shakespeare Domesticated
4) in

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the eighteenth-century reading editions of Shakespeare after Pope

and adds that the debates carried out in footnotes “assumed the char-

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acter of correspondence in a journal” (5). The 1604 Quarto
Hamlet

has “safty” [sic], and a 1768 edition that claims on its title page to

be “From Mr. Pope’s Edition” also uses “safety” but adds an article

to make the line scan: “The safety and the health of the whole State”

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(1. 5). “Inferior” for “unvalued” seems to be the engraver’s choice,

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as it does not appear in any edition of the play.

37. “holy,
n
.”
The Oxford English Dictionary
. 2nd ed. 1989.
OED

Online
. Oxford University Press. December 8, 2009.

dictionary.oed.com
>. The OED gives inviolability as a second definition for sanctity and quotes Zempoalla from Dryden’s 1665
The

Indian Queen
(III. i): princes are “sacred” only “whilst they are free;

But Power once lost, farewel their Sanctity” (“sanctity,
n
.”
The Oxford

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English Dictionary
. 2nd ed. 1989.
OED Online
. Oxford University

Press. December 8 2009. <
http://dictionary.oed.com
>).

38. This makes it a telling choice for Laertes to use in his speech to

Ophelia: her sanctity cannot withstand the larger imperative to keep

the state whole.

39. This line appears on the Folio but not in the Quarto.

40. “sanity,
n
.”
The Oxford English Dictionary
. 2nd ed. 1989.
OED

Online
. Oxford University Press. December 8, 2009. <
http://

dictionary.oed.com>
.

41. It must have been tempting for satirists of the regency crisis to quote

once again from
The Winter’s Tale
. In Act 4, a disguised Polixenes

asks Florizel how he can have contracted so unequal an alliance with-

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