Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (60 page)

than Edmund’s” (86).

64. In this configuration Henry Crawford becomes the means of his fan-

tasy fulfillment. By marrying Fanny, he will simply cement Edmund’s

access to her as now legally sister as well as cousin.

65. Her sophistry once again resembles Byron’s, in his wife’s representa-

tion: “He has said that a wife was only culpable towards her husband

if her infidelity were practised openly—that the right or wrong con-

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sisted merely in its being known” (quoted in Elwin 349).

66. Lady Byron, as Christensen notes, steadfastly refused to make pub-

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lic “the real grounds of difference between Lord B. and myself,”

insisting that to do so “would be extremely improper” (quoted in

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Elwin 426). She and her family disclaimed any responsibility for the

rumors—of either sodomy or incest or both—that the separation

gave rise to.

67. In a letter to Byron shortly after she left him, Lady Byron cautioned

yright material fr

him, “Don’t give yourself up to the abominable trade of versifying—

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nor to brandy—nor to any thing or any body that is not
lawful &

right
” (quoted in Elwin 351).

68. For Elledge, the poem is “a portrait of indecision” (43). As “a sort

of commemoration of the signing,” of the separation agreement, “it

admits and enjoys the legal shelter of the fact” (44). Nonetheless,

its “antithetical tensions” (43) make it a “bipolar” response to the

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N o t e s

separation (48), one that “charts the depth and configurations of the

poet’s ambivalence both toward reconciliation with his wife and more

broadly toward relationship itself” (43). Eisner offers both the poem

and its reception as evidence that “scandalous celebrity is not lyric inti-

macy’s opposite but rather its very ground” (24). He reads “Fare Thee

Well!” as a gesture of intimacy between poet and reader, as much as

between poetic speaker and auditor. As such, it “is split between per-

formative action and commemoration: it wants both to
be
the separa-

tion and to memorialize the separation that gives rise to it” (28).

69. “The final stanza hints that Byron’s own declaration of farewell

is what disunites the couple: the poem insists that this is all Lady

Byron’s fault and at the same time arrogates to his own (disunited)

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words the power to make the separation” (Eisner 29–30). In
Byron

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and Romanticism
, Jerome McGann concentrates on the contingent

meanings of the text: as a “
sentimental
poem” when it circulated

privately and its meaning was under Byron’s management, and as

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a “
hypocritical
poem” when it was published in the
Champion
, set

opposite the much harsher “A Sketch” and accompanied by “a long

editorial commentary denouncing Byron’s character as well as his

lioteket i

politics, and explicitly ‘reading’ the two poems as evidence of his

wickedness” (84). McGann reads “Fare Thee Well!” in all its versions

sitetsbib

as “a kind of metapoem, a work which foregrounds Byron’s ideas

about what poetry actually is and how it works” (85).

70. This is presumably why Lockhart still refers to it, six years later, as a

“quarrel.”

71. Eisner points to the number of poetic responses generated after the

publication of the poem in
The Champion
as evidence that “[r]eaders

did more than denounce or defend Byron’s character; they demon-

strated not just idle curiosity but an emotional stake in the matter,

taking sides by identifying with one or both parties” (31).

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72. Lockhart condemns Byron’s “beastliness” in introducing “her

Ladyship” into
Don Juan
—“[I]ndeed, if I be not much mistaken,

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you have said things in that part of the poem, for which, were I her

brother, I should be very well entitled to pull your nose” (108). But

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this ungentlemanly behavior is tempered by the quality of the poem.

Calling it
“out of all sight the best of your works; it is by far the

most spirited, the most straightforward, the most interesting, and

the most poetical” (82), he adds, “I had really no idea what a very

yright material fr

clever fellow you were till I read Don Juan” (93).

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73. This is the message of a late engraving by Lane, titled
The Grand

Coronation of Her Most Graceless Majesty C-R-L-E Columbina the first

Queen of all the Radicals &c &c &c July 19 1821
(BM Satires 14205),

in which an especially corpulent Caroline, legs splayed, appears to be

in danger of falling off her throne. In her hand she holds a scepter

topped with a figurine of George IV, while on her head, precariously

balanced, is an overflowing slop jar for a crown.

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N o t e s

221

Conclusion: The Late Queen and

the Progress of Royalty

1. Unless otherwise indicated, the prints have all been attributed to

Lane. In the top row, moving from left to right, are
The Caroline

Column
(BM Satires 14129);
Delicious Dreams
(BM Satires 14175);

The Time Piece
(Isaac Cruikshank, BM Satires 13738);
Design for

a New Coat of Arms
(De Vinck 10432);
Caroline Fair
(BM Satires

14170);
The Effusions of a Troubled Brain
(BM Satires 14196), and

Cruikshank’s
The Radical Ladder
(BM Satires 13895.A). The cen-

ter two rows are split horizontally and divided into fourteen pan-

els. In row one of the center, moving left to right, are
Bergami’s

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Little Darling
(BM Satires 14112);
A Pas de Deux, or, Love at First

Sight
(BM Satires 14183);
The Choice of Hercules
(BM Satires 14184);

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An Arm-Full of Love
(BM Satires 14176);
Winding up to a Pitch,

or The Automaton Scaramouche
(BM Satires 14120);
The Como-cal

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Hobby
(BM Satires 14171);
A Gentle Jog into Jerusalem
(BM Satires

Undescribed);
Travelling Tête à Tête!
(De Vinck 10449);
Dignity!

(BM Satires Undescribed);
Tent-ation
(De Vinck 10448);
A Knight

lioteket i

Comp anion of the Bath
(BM Satires 14188);
The Modern Genius of

History at her Toilet
(De Vinck 10435);
National Love!
(De Vinck

sitetsbib

10440), and
Modesty!
(BM Satires 14190). In row two of the center,

left to right, are,
The Long and the Short of the Tale, or, the Whole of the

Concern
(BM Satires 14103);
Bat, Cat, and Mat
(De Vinck 10441);

A Parting Hug at St. Omer
(De Vinck 10438);
A Wooden Substitute,

or, Any Port in a Storm
(BM Satires 14109);
Moments of Pleasure
(BM

Satires 13989);
A Man of the Woods, or the Cat-o’-mountain
(BM

Satires 14131);
The Q – -n’s Ass in a Band-box
(BM Satires 14110);

An Old Friend with a New Face or the Baron in Disguise
” (BM Satires

14192);
Meditations at Brandyburgh, or an Address to the Sun
(BM

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Satires 14191);
Dido in Despair
(BM Satires 14144);
The Whole Truth

(De Vinck 10419);
A Going! A Going!
(G. Cruikshank, BM Satires

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14147);
Returning Justice lifts aloft her Scale
(BM Satires 14189),

and
Broom and Wood
(BM Satires 14146). In the bottom row, left

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to right, are
Grand Entrance to Bamboozl’Em
(BM Satires 14122);

Steward’s Court of the Manor of Torre Devon
(BM Satires 14013);

A late Arrival at Mother Wood’s
(BM Satires 13734);
The Royal

Extinguisher
(Cruikshank, BM Satires 14145);
The King’s Head ver-

yright material fr

sus Mother Red-Cap
(no catalogue number available);
Brass Founders

(BM Satires 14119), and
Lucifera’s Procession
(BM Satires 14182).

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An Arm-full of Love
and
The Choice of Hercules,
although attributed

to Lane, may be by a different artist. The expressions on the faces of

both figures are more broadly drawn and cartoonish than in Lane’s

typical engravings. Caroline is dressed differently, moreover, wearing

lots of petticoats and boots, rather than the characteristic Regency-

style décolletage and slippers of Lane’s engravings. in
The Choice of

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N o t e s

Hercules,
she is décolleté, but her breasts are grotesquely pendulous,

rather than nearly globular, as they are in Lane’s depictions.

2. The shop was originally owned by Hannah Humphrey, Gillray’s

exclusive publisher for most of his career. When she died in 1818, her

nephew George Humphrey inherited the business.

3. Marcus Wood points out that concise mottoes or headlines like these

reduced “complex issues to captions or even to single words” and led

to “effects of stark condensation” (171).

4. The picture may have been commissioned for the pamphlet. There

is none of the usual publication information at the bottom, and the

date given in the Dorothy George catalogue is the same as the date

of the pamphlet’s publication (233–34).

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5. Prints in this series include
The Modern Genius of History
,
Dignity!

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and
Modesty!
as well as
Installation of a Knight Companion
and

Travelling Tête à Tête!

6. Flora Fraser describes Caroline’s “ill-fated attempt” to attend her

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husband’s coronation: “Turned away from entrance after entrance,

she uttered her poignant cry to the sentry at Westminster Hall, ‘Let

me pass; I am your Queen.’ It was then that the pages slammed the

lioteket i

door in her face—a resounding affront which, more than all the

magnificent show devised by King George IV, gave his Coronation

sitetsbib

its place in history” (456).

7. “How happy could I be with either” recalls Robinson’s “This is

the Lad I’ll kiss most sweet” in Gillray’s
The Thunderer
in asso-

ciating female desire with ease of access. Robinson’s choice of

Tarleton contrasts with Caroline’s childlike inability to choose,

giving her perhaps a degree more agency, despite the print’s overt

misogyny.

8. Fox clasps his hands together and looks earnestly at Robinson, one

knee thrust forward as if about to kneel, and says, “Sweet Robenet

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your Eyes Jet your Teeth are lily White your Cheeks are Roses Lips

are Poses and your Nose is Wonderous [sic] Bright.”

.palgra

9. The Prince’s posture manages to suggest both autoeroticism and

impotence. He clasps a dead tree trunk, with the other hand caress-

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ing one blasted limb that juts suggestively upward.

10. This same suggestive placing of the miniature is in
The Long and

the Short of the Tale
in the first group of four prints. The length of

the ribbon emphasizes Caroline’s shortness (Pergami’s miniature of

yright material fr

her hangs only to his breast), although the fact that Pergami’s face

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appears at crotch level draws attention to more than height.

11. The Wardenship of St. Catherine’s (or St. Katherine’s) hospital was in