George IV: The Grand Entertainment
Steven Parissien
John Murray £25, pp462
Buy it at a discount at BOL
George IV has often been deplored, and at length; in the long line of terrible English kings, he can easily be turned into a monster by a serious-minded historian. He was vain, extravagant, lecherous, hideous and childish; in short, there is no difficulty in mounting the case for the prosecution.
Nevertheless, there are things to be said in his defence, few of which are granted by the author of this startlingly abusive biography. He was a determined patron of the arts, and some of his most extravagant projects are still with us, adding some beauty to our lives; some of his worst behaviour was occasioned by circumstances which would try the patience of a saint; his beliefs were not just his wilfulness, but shared by his age. I have a soft spot for him; sandwiched between his serious father, George III, and his serious niece, Victoria, he seems like a Brighton Vathek. He gave a line of Germany country squires a much needed air of disgraceful glamour.
To a large degree, it was all George III's fault. By the age of 23, the Prince of Wales had run up debts of £269,878. It was not just that, following Mandeville's economic theories, every rich Englishman knew it was his duty to feed the poor workman by building gigantic gilded palaces; the Prince of Wales just knew he had an obligation to live up to his station. 'Would your Lordship,' he shakily wrote to the Groom of the Stole in 1784, 'with your ideas of propriety, have the Prince of Wales the Heir of Apparent [sic] to the Crown, dismiss his servants, sell his horses, and part, in short, with every magnificence annexed to his situation in life? It wd be improper for me to live with a less degree of magnificence than I hitherto have done.'
This is not something which we have much patience for; indeed, Steven Parissien doesn't even quote this letter. But it is important to understand this when reading the eye-stretching accounts of the Prince of Wales's wardrobe - £1,350 on a single Highland outfit, including 61 yards of satin. Most of all, we must bear this sense of propriety in mind when going round that splendid mirage, the Royal Pavilion at Brighton. Parissien obviously doesn't like it that much, making you wonder what on earth he is doing writing a biography of the king.
The book dwells ceaselessly on the king's incredible obesity, but for me it is less illuminating than E.A. Smith's careful, sympathetic biography of last year. It is unfair to ridicule George for saying: 'I will not allow these maidservants to look at me when I go in and out' - that was the etiquette of his father's court. What would be more interesting is an account of what, in his legacy, proved valuable and even what he most hoped, magnificent.
