Conducting one’s life with visible probity was a duty incumbent upon all Christians; but George and Charlotte believed it had particular force and meaning for royalty. Their strict public adherence to a code of conduct defined by duty, fidelity and family virtues reinforced those values in the minds of all who respected them and their office. Their behaviour, they believed, had the potential to influence their subjects in the most significant way imaginable. Instilling these ideas in the minds of their children was therefore of the very first importance, if they, in their turn, were to act as examples of moral leadership. It was for this reason that the king described as the most important aim of his children’s education ‘the making of them Christians and useful members of society’.20
Christian teaching on the value of humility was considered, by both king and queen, to be especially significant for those of high rank. It reminded princes that their status was not due to any innate superiority, but a gift from God, who expected great things from those on whom He had chosen to bestow it. ‘For what is man to man?’ wrote Charlotte to her eight-year-old son. ‘We are all equal and become only of consequence by setting good examples to others.’21 For the king, belief offered an astringent reminder that, before God, princely pretension and grandeur counted for nothing. In the Creator’s eyes, ‘all men are judged by their conduct, not their birth’.22
The levelling egalitarianism of religion was a powerful antidote to the sense of self-importance that George believed tainted the upbringing of so many royal children. Some time in the 1760s, as the nursery filled up with babies, he composed a short memorandum titled ‘a Sketch of the education I mean to give my sons’. It was concerned less with the details of formal curricula than with the far more significant task of what Mme Beaumont had called ‘the formation of the heart’; it was dominated by the king’s conviction that ‘the most severe trials a prince has to combat are those occasioned by his rank’.23 Remembering perhaps the painful uncertainties of his own youth, the ‘Sketch’ shows George as hoping above all else to shield his children from the damaging consequences of court life. His particular obsession was flattery. He had clearly taken to heart the warnings contained in the ‘Instructions’ his own father had written for his benefit a generation ago, which had urged him to value the rarity of a candid friend above the crowds of smooth-tongued flatterers. Such people, unless checked or controlled, soon overpowered the natural modesty of a young mind, fostering instead unrealistic pride and ultimately placing their deluded victim firmly in the hands of his seducers. In this, as in so much else, the king was in complete agreement with his wife. ‘Disdain all flattery,’ Charlotte exhorted her eldest son. ‘It will corrupt your manners and render you contemptible before the world.’24
Although a properly instilled Christian humility was, in the king’s eyes, one of the most powerful defences against the flatterer’s arts, he speculated whether even this would be enough to protect a vulnerable young prince. Perhaps more drastic measures might be necessary. He mused in the ‘Sketch’ if ‘the most efficacious means of destroying this dangerous charm’ would be to remove him altogether from the source of the contagion, ‘keeping him perhaps distant from courts’. George even wondered if it might be possible ‘to hide his rank from him, till he shall possess virtue enough to be frightened at being acquainted with it’, although he was enough of a realist to concede that this most Rousseauian idea was unlikely to work in practice. ‘Custom, that most powerful of tyrants, will never allow it to be adopted.’25
The ‘Sketch’, with its deep-seated anxiety about the malign nature of the wider world, its desire to protect innocence from the wiles of ill-disposed, self-interested parties, and its suspicion of the court, confirms the king as very much his mother’s son. Like Augusta, he saw the best kind of royal upbringing as one which put as much distance as possible between royal children and direct experience of the life that was to be their eventual destiny. This meant that, in some respects, the regimen of his children echoed that of himself and his siblings – isolated, protected and very self-contained. It is true that, especially in the first years of their marriage, George and Charlotte were far more curious about the world than Augusta had ever been; they read more, talked more and thought more, creating around themselves a far livelier atmosphere than the sombrely defensive gloom that had been the hallmark of so much of the king’s youth. But for all their greater engagement with life beyond the narrow confines of the court, both king and queen shared something of Augusta’s prime directive of protect and survive. Their deepest instincts were to shelter their children for as long as possible from the consequences of their birth, and to mould their characters to give them the most formidable armoury against the snares and wiles that would inevitably beset them.
Though their intentions were good, the heavy-handed, unbending severity with which they were so often delivered did not always encourage affectionate feelings between George and Charlotte and their children. This was particularly true of the king and his sons. The terms of the emotional engagement between the boys and their father were set by the king’s firm intention to see them cultivate the moral character he believed was essential for their future public roles. No tender feelings were to be spared in achieving this end. His distrust of flattery coupled with his obsessive desire to nurture humility and self-knowledge in his sons meant that George proved implacable in acquainting each of them with what he called ‘his own weakness, his own ignorance’. The memory of the misery he had himself endured as a boy, perpetually mired in doubt and fear, only too aware of the yawning gap between the reality and the ideal of what was expected of him, evaporated under the intensity of his conviction. Uncomfortable recollections of his own youthful failures were relegated to the past, and rarely informed the treatment of his sons. He was quick to condemn and slow to praise, unrelenting in his judgements, and insistent in his criticism. He had no doubt that strictness was in the best interests of the princes, believing that it was one of the principal duties of a father; but it is also true that he took a rather gloomy satisfaction in his severity, always finding it easier to complain than to celebrate. Once the princes had advanced out of the nursery and into the schoolroom, their father seemed to them a very different character from the cheerful man who had once romped with them on the carpet.
The king’s intention to equip his sons with values more authentic than those of the fashionable world was expressed not only in the detached rigour that increasingly characterised his relationship with them, but also in the details of the grand project he devised for their education. In an attempt to counter the artificiality of court life, the princes were to spend a great deal of their time outside with their father. The king liked being outdoors, both on horseback and as an enthusiastic and resilient walker, and he hoped to inspire in his sons a similar love for rural pursuits. As soon as they were old enough, the princes accompanied the king on his more manageable rides, and soon became highly competent horsemen. They were also expected to take regular exercise in the gardens of the royal palaces, with no indulgence granted for bad weather. Lady Mary Coke recalled without pleasure the doleful walks she had made with the princes, ‘round the garden in the rain’, her formal court dress becoming more and more bedraggled in the wet.26
The family’s regular retreat to Kew made it possible for the boys to follow an even wider programme of practical, outdoor education. Each of the princes was given a small plot of land which he was personally required to cultivate. They ‘sewed it with wheat, attended the growth of their little crop, weeded, reaped and harvested solely by themselves’. As a boy, their father had farmed his own little garden under Frederick’s watchful eye, and he was keen to see his sons follow in his footsteps. The project would have been enthusiastically endorsed by Rousseau, who argued that honest toil nurtured health and hardiness in the young, connected them to the natural world, and fostered understanding between the different social orders. This was considered particularly important for princes. ‘They
were brought to reflect from their own experience,’ wrote a contemporary commentator approvingly, ‘on the various labours and attentions of the husbandman and the farmer.’ The boys ground the wheat themselves, ‘and attended to the whole process of making it into bread’. The resulting loaf was served to the king and queen, ‘who partook of this philosophical repast; and beheld with pleasure the very amusements of their children rendered the source of knowledge’.27 In reality, agricultural pursuits were far more to the king’s taste than to those of his sons. They hated their enforced engagement with the land, and never shared the passion for farming that George developed as he grew older.
Another way to make the princes hardy and fit was through their diet, the regulation of which the king took very seriously. George struggled to keep his own weight under control and, as soon as they were out of the nursery, he imposed a similarly careful regime on his sons, most of whom shared the family propensity to fatness. The Prince of Wales and his brothers began the day with milk ‘and dry toast of the statute bread’. Lunch was a simple, single course of meat and vegetables. At dinner, the main meal of the day, they were allowed soup ‘when not very strong or heavy’ and ‘any plain meat without fat’. Fish was served ‘without butter, using the shrimps strained from the sauce, or oil and vinegar’. For pudding, ‘they eat the fruit of the tart, without the crust’. On ‘every other Monday’, when the princes had their bath (‘in a tub of tepid water’), there was no time for supper, which meant that they were allowed instead ‘one glass of any sort of wine, which they chose, after dinner’.28
If not exactly a model of Rousseauian frugality, the princes’ fare was far less extravagant and showy than that served at other royal and aristocratic tables. Some dishes were strictly forbidden: at a formal dinner, the young Prince of Wales once asked to be served a helping of roast beef, but in keeping with his father’s orders, this was not permitted. Despite his bitter complaints, he was given instead ‘some nasty veal’ which he claimed to detest. As was so often the case, the king’s apparent readiness to deny his children what they wanted arose from genuine concern for their welfare. He was keen to ensure they ate only the most wholesome food, and was active in seeking out anything he thought would do them good. When the Duke of Montagu told him that his own family had benefited from ‘making a healthy breakfast of oatmeal porridge every day’, George ‘instantly requested the duke to order some for him’.29 A steady supply of porridge, however, may not have compensated, in his sons’ eyes at least, for the denial of more lavish treats. For unexpected pleasures the princes soon learnt to look elsewhere. A dependable supplier of the occasional good time was their elderly great-aunt, Princess Amelia, the last surviving daughter of George II. An unmarried, card-playing diner-out of independent mind, she delighted in offering the boys afternoons of games, music and edible delights, ‘tables covered with all sorts of fruit, biscuits, etc.’, which, unsurprisingly, they all ‘ate very heartily’.30
Alongside their demanding programme of outdoor pursuits, the princes continued to follow the intensive course of formal study mapped out for them by the king. It left them little free time, especially when lessons in dancing and fencing were added to their evening schedule. As the eldest boys grew older, more subjects were added to an already exhaustive list, and new tutors employed to teach them. Dr Hurd, Bishop of Lichfield, took charge in 1776, teaching philosophy, law and the study of government. He was ‘a stiff, cold but correct gentleman’, with a manner ‘that endeared him highly to devout old ladies’; but he was also perceptive in his assessment of his principal charge. He found the teenage Prince of Wales clever, but lazy; and glimpsed something slippery and elusive under his graceful façade. ‘He will either turn out the most polished gentleman, or the most accomplished blackguard in Europe,’ he commented on being asked to predict the prince’s future. ‘Or possibly,’ he added presciently, ‘an admixture of both.’31
Most observers would have agreed with Lady Mary’s Coke’s assessment that the prince was by some degree the most intelligent and self-assured of all the siblings. The Duchess of Northumberland watched him make a formal appearance at court when he was only ten. He had grown three inches in a year, she noted, and was now ‘manly, well made, has a great air of his grandfather, holds up his head very straight, and with one hand on his sword, and the other in his bosom, stands in the exact attitude of George II’. It was true that he was still not as good-looking as his younger brother, but in every other respect he was universally regarded as the high-achiever of the family. ‘Prince Frederick is tall and handsome,’ reported the duchess, ‘but has neither the dignity nor the grace of his brother.’32 For those who liked him, and succumbed to his undoubted charm, the young George was regarded as a master of all the polite skills, well read, an excellent dancer, sharing the family passion for music and a proficient performer on the piano and cello. When the envoy from the newly independent American states met him at court, he was struck by the prince’s easy command of European languages, and amazed to discover he also read Hebrew.33
Whilst some praised his accomplishments, however, his father remained resolutely unimpressed. By the time the prince had reached maturity, the king’s disappointment and disapproval were fixed and irrevocable. In a long letter of reproach written to his eldest son two days after his eighteenth birthday, George had nothing to offer but criticism of what he considered the prince’s lacklustre performance, both as a scholar and as a man. He had no doubt of his son’s innate intellectual ability, but as he prepared to graduate from the schoolroom, his final assessment of his son’s achievements was gloomy: ‘Your own good sense must make you feel that you have not made that progress in your studies which, from the ability and assiduity of those placed about you, I might have had reason to expect.’ His French and Latin were satisfactory, but in German, ‘your proficiency is certainly very moderate’. He had read only ‘cursorily’ amongst ancient and modern historians, and had no ‘comprehensive knowledge of the Constitutions, laws, finances, commerce etc. of these kingdoms, and of the relative situation as to those points of our rival neighbours, and of other European states’.
If the prince had failed to live up to his father’s expectations intellectually, his shortcomings were even more apparent in the spiritual dimension of his education. ‘I fear,’ pronounced the king with dour accuracy, ‘your religious duties are not viewed through that happiest of mediums, a gratitude to the Great Creator, and a resolution to the utmost of your power to obey His will as conveyed to us in the Scriptures.’ The prince’s private behaviour – his financial extravagance, his love of luxury, his burgeoning interest in drink, gambling and, above all, women – bore ample testimony to his wilful disregard for Christian principles. But what most concerned the king was his son’s failure to grasp what his rank required of him, and why his moral shortcomings were of such significance. ‘Everyone in this world has his peculiar duties to perform, and that good or bad example set by those in the higher stations must have some effect on the general conduct of those in inferior ones.’ The prince’s obstinate disregard of this essential truth boded ill for his future role, in his father’s eyes.
As ever, the king insisted that his closely argued pages of criticism were intended only for his eldest son’s good. ‘Believe me, I wish to make you happy, but the father must, with that object in view, not forget that it is his duty to guide his child to the best of his ability through the rocks that cannot but naturally arise in the outset of youth.’34 However, the recipient of the letter, which was but the latest in a lifetime of admonitory missives, ascribed it to a very different cause. A few years later, the prince assured his friend James Harris that the king ‘hates me; he always did, from seven years old’.35
The prince was a volatile character, with a propensity for theatrical declarations and dramatic emotional gestures, but in this case there was a grain of truth in his assertion. By the time he was twenty, it had become impossible either to deny or ignore the fundamental lack of
sympathy between father and son which, exacerbated by the prince’s provocative behaviour, turned into mutual incomprehension and resentment. In 1781, the king was obliged to pay the huge sum of £5,000 to retrieve from the actress Mary Robinson a cache of embarrassing love letters written to her by the infatuated nineteen-year-old prince. This was a profound humiliation for a man whose own life was governed by unbending moral principle, as well as a very public declaration of his failure to pass on such values to his heir. The prince’s association with leading figures from the political opposition was a further gesture of insult to his father, which added to the king’s political difficulties. In both his private and public actions, his eldest son seemed determined to cause him pain. ‘Your love of dissipation has for some months been with enough ill-nature trumpeted in the public papers,’ complained the king, ‘and there are those ready to wound me in the severest place by ripping up every error they may be able to find in you.’36 By the time the prince had reached his majority, George’s disappointment in his apparently feckless heir was bitter and undisguised.
The Prince of Wales must bear some of the responsibility for the bad-tempered collapse of the relationship between himself and his father. Much of what the king said about him was true. He was lazy and lacked application, he preferred his own pleasure to hard work, and his sense of honesty was fluid at best, usually shaped to serve his own ends. His behaviour often seemed calculated to enrage and disappoint in equal measure. However, if some of the fissures in their relationship were created by the prince, others were the responsibility of the king. George had never found a way to love his heir, as he had loved his other children when they were small. This coolness, the absence of paternal affection felt by the prince, was to set the tone of their dealings with each other for the rest of their lives. Lady Mary Coke heard in 1768, when the prince was five, that for all his winning ways he was ‘not a favourite with the king and queen’.37 That role was taken by Frederick, who could do no wrong in his father’s eyes, and whom the king always described – with tactlessly wounding accuracy, and in words never used about his heir – as ‘my dearest son’.38 As a child, the king had seen his own younger brother Edward preferred at his expense by his parents, but had clearly learnt nothing from the experience. He made no secret of his devotion to Frederick, who was thought to resemble him closely in both looks and personality. The failings of the Prince of Wales were seen all the more clearly when contrasted with his brother’s virtues. Where the young George was verbose and ineffectual, Frederick was stoic and unflappable; where the prince was mercurial, Frederick was measured; where the prince was clever and witty, Frederick was as plain-speaking, dogged and determined as the king himself.
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