After his father’s death in 1820, George ascended the throne as George IV, and his personal antics continued to swell in direct relationship to his waistline as he unsuccessfully attempted a divorce from his legal wife, the Princess Caroline of Brunswick. This very public affair soured whatever popularity he may have had with the public.
His extravagant coronation can be marked by his coronation crown, which was adorned with 12,314 hired diamonds. The new king acquired the large blue diamond that would become known as the Hope Diamond. It had been looted from the French crown jewels in 1792. The gem turned up in England as a recut stone, after the statute of limitations had run out in 1812, in the possession of a diamond merchant. George IV purchased the stone in 1820.
On George’s death in 1830, the London Times editorialized that “there never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased king.” An interesting and telling commentary regarding a monarch who had effectively been on the throne for nearly twenty years.
There are numerous statues of the self-indulgent George IV, many of which were erected during his reign, including a bronze statue of him on horseback in Trafalgar Square, London, and another outside the Royal Pavilion in Brighton.
Although the series of kings named George have a style named after them, it is interesting to note that one of those kings, who ruled in his own right a mere nine years, had an entire style—in both architecture and fashion—attributed to his tastes. Regency architectural style is marked by residences typically built as terraces or crescents, with multiple homes joined together to resemble one great mansion. Elegant wrought-iron balconies and bow windows came into fashion during this period. Regency interiors were typically filled with exceedingly elegant furniture, vertically striped wallpaper, painted decorative effects such as marbling or stenciling, lavish draperies covering both windows and walls, and indoor potted plants.
Regency clothing for men was typified by the famous dandy Beau Brummell and his simple—but always elegant and perfect!—clothing. The empire silhouette reigned for women’s gowns.
George IV may have lacked morals, manners, and restraint, but he certainly had style.
The ongoing scandal of George IV’s treatment of his wife, Caroline of Brunswick (1768–1821), Princess of Wales and later Queen Caroline, was more than equaled by Caroline’s own peccadilloes. George’s complaints of her personal hygiene seem to have been justified, yet she was also a kind woman, adopting and fostering out nearly a dozen children and engendering loyalty and devotion from people in many quarters.
Her rapid decline over the course of two weeks in July–August 1821, combined with the fact that her body swelled grotesquely and turned black within two hours of death, led many to conclude that Caroline had in fact been poisoned to death. Her physicians speculated that she may have had an intestinal obstruction. Modern medical opinion concludes that she likely died of natural causes, possibly a tumor with the complication of a blood infection, which would account for the blackening of her body, but the exact cause of her death remains unknown.
In any case, a poison rumor creates great fiction, and I chose to use it in my story.
The Prince Regent may have cast aside Maria Fitzherbert (1756–1837) to disastrously marry his cousin, but it was Fitzherbert who won in the end. Their on-again, off-again relationship lasted for more than twenty years, and she did indeed take up residence in a house merely a stone’s throw from the Royal Pavilion. After their final break in 1811, she retired into private life with a £6,000 annuity (worth around $6 million in today’s money, not shabby). Interestingly, Maria remained greatly respected by society and other members of the royal family for the rest of her life. In her will, Maria outlined her two principal beneficiaries, Mary Ann Stafford-Jerningham and Mary Georgina Emma Dawson-Damer, who were nominally the daughters of other people but to whom Maria wrote that she had “loved them both with the ... affection any mother could do, and I have done the utmost in my power for their interests and comfort.” Presumably, these were George’s children, since there is no evidence of children from either of her first two marriages.
Lady Isabella Hertford (1759–1834) was the Prince Regent’s mistress from 1807 to 1819. The Prince Regent really did give her a Gainsborough portrait of his youthful mistress Maria Robinson as a gift. The painting now resides in the Hertfords’ London home, now known as the Wallace Collection museum.
Lady Elizabeth Conyngham (1769–1861) picked up where Lady Isabella left off, serving as the king’s mistress from 1819 until his death in 1830. Both she and Lady Hertford shared the same appreciation for money, rank, and favors. Both women also had compliant husbands, who seemed to not mind their wives’ activities if it meant furthering the family’s social position. Especially in the case of Lady Conyngham, who had multiple love affairs even prior to that with the king, including Lord Ponsonby and the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. George gave Lady Elizabeth expensive clothes and jewels, and her husband successive titles. Lord Conyngham rose from viscount to earl to marquess in only twenty years. In return, Lady Elizabeth kept the aging king amused. She did attempt to instill more spirituality in her sovereign. After the king’s sudden death in 1830, Lady Conyngham fled to Paris for a time, then returned to England. She died near Canterbury in 1861, at the ripe old age of ninety-two.
John Nash (1752–1835), born rather inconspicuously to a millwright, had a rather lackluster career before coming to the notice of the Prince Regent. Although Nash had a distinguished schooling under the eminent Palladian architect Sir Robert Taylor, he was never a learned student of the Classical Orders and rebelled against them, preferring his own version of the Picturesque style. His early career was marked by scattered commissions all across England, Wales, and Ireland, as well as by a financial calamity when he tried his hand at London real estate speculation.
Although Nash designed so many country houses, cathedrals, and castles that his entire body of work is still not documented, it is his skill as a city planner where his talent truly shone. With the Prince Regent’s passionate support, Nash created a master plan to develop Marylebone Park, an area that stretched from St. James’s northwards, and included Regent Street, Regent’s Park, and all of the surrounding streets, terraces, and homes.
Although named for him, Regent Street was in no way the Prince Regent’s idea. However, he did give it enthusiastic support, viewing it as an achievement that would “quite eclipse Napoleon,” a sentiment that would have garnered popular support of the time. Ironically, Regent Street was designed from the beginning to be not only a direct connection from Carlton House to a royal park, as well as a convenient route for inhabitants of the West End to reach the Houses of Parliament and the social whirl of St. James, but also as a pleasurable shopping district for the ton members of society, and was therefore an accurate reflection of the prince’s character.
Although Regent Street is still a famous shopping district, most of Nash’s buildings have since been replaced, except for All Souls Church. This early nineteenth-century church stands oddly against the backdrop of the very modern BBC Broadcasting House.
Nash was also a director of the Regent Canal Company, established in 1812, to provide a canal link from west London to the Thames River in the east. Other notable commissions included a remodeling of Buckingham House (later Buckingham Palace), the Marble Arch, Trafalgar Square, St. James’s Park, Haymarket Theatre, Carlton House Terrace, and All Souls Church, Langham Place.
But Nash’s lasting achievement was his work on the Royal Pavilion, the Prince Regent’s extravagant palace in the seaside resort town of Brighton, East Sussex.
Nash wasn’t given the work of transforming the Royal Pavilion until 1815, although it better suited my story for it to start three years earlier. Henry Holland redesigned the existing farmhouse into the first incarnation of a “pavilion” for the Prince Regent in 1787, and the nucleus of that building still remains today. Nash’s expensive and extravagant additions and renovation
s would last until 1823. The king confessed that he cried for joy when he contemplated the Pavilion’s splendors. Interestingly, George IV only made two subsequent visits to the palace, in 1824 and 1827.
John Nash was well-known as very good-natured and civil to all around him. Although he was characterized as having “a face like a monkey’s,” he was also clever and amusing, as well as self-deprecating. He also completely disregarded social barriers and assumed he would be welcome at all levels of society. He usually was, attracting work from both landed aristocrats with inherited fortunes and the nouveau-riche.
After George IV’s death in 1830, Nash was dismissed on grounds of profligacy from his work on remodeling Buckingham House. The pain of this public humiliation was too much for him. He suffered a stroke, and retreated to his favorite home, East Cowes Castle, on the Isle of Wight, where he never really recovered, dying bedridden at the age of eighty-three in 1835.
Although England had guilds for nearly every profession under the sun, there was no guild for architects and they were not formally licensed to do business. Nor was there any formal training or schools dedicated to the study of architecture. Someone simply studied under a respected architect long enough until he was able to secure his own commissions. Nash studied for ten years under Robert Taylor.
Mary Ann Bradley (1773–1851) was, by all accounts, a vivacious and beautiful woman when Nash married her and took her five children under his wing in 1798. All of her papers were later burned, but there is evidence—including a plethora of later political cartoons showing a corpulent prince and his equally corpulent mistress, Mrs. Nash—to suggest that she was indeed the Prince Regent’s mistress for many years and that all of her children were actually his. Did Nash and George IV have an agreement whereby Nash would house Mary Ann and her children in exchange for preferential building contracts?
Regardless, Nash’s household and way of life demonstrated inexplicable affluence from 1798 on, and he did become the prince’s favorite architect.
After her husband’s death in 1835, Mary Ann Nash moved permanently to Hampstead, where she lived with her daughter, Anne, until her own death in 1851.
Frederick Crace (1779–1859) and Robert Jones (about whom little is known) were artist-designers heavily involved in Nash’s rebuilding of the Marine Pavilion into the Royal Pavilion, with Crace beginning work in 1815 and Jones joining the project in 1817. Most of the major rooms (the Banqueting Room, the Saloon, the Red Drawing Room, and the King’s Apartments) were designed by Jones, while Crace undertook the Music Room and the Banqueting Room Galleries. Both men were in complete sync with Nash’s and the prince’s desire to create a magnificent setting for the man who became George IV. My portrayal of Crace’s personality is a complete invention.
The Prince Regent greatly admired Jane Austen (1775–1817) and kept a set of her books at each residence. The admiration was not mutual. In fact, in once referring to Princess Caroline, Jane said, “I hate her husband,” and, “I am resolved at least always to think that she would have been respectable, if the Prince had behaved tolerably by her at first.” But in November 1815 (I pushed the date up to May to better suit my story), George’s librarian, James Stanier Clarke (1766–1834), invited Jane to visit the prince’s London residence, Carlton House, and hinted very directly that Jane should dedicate her forthcoming novel, Emma, to the prince. How could she refuse?
Later, Clarke sent Jane a letter thanking her on behalf of the Regent for his copy of Emma and also providing suggestions as to what European royal houses she might want to dedicate future novels, as well as what topics she should pursue in her writing. Jane later wrote Plan of a Novel, according to Hints from Various Quarters, a satire on how to outline the “perfect” novel, based on Clarke’s many suggestions.
For the purposes of my own novel, which was fortunately not under the influence of someone like the Prince Regent’s librarian, I chose to let Clarke press Jane to dedicate Emma to the Prince Regent, as well as make his infamous “recommendations” to her, all in one sitting.
Jane never viewed her novels as romances, as we do today. Rather she saw them as contemporary commentary on the values and social customs of nineteenth-century English country families. In other words, she wrote what she knew.
The second Lady Derby, née Elizabeth Farren (c. 1759–1829), was a stage actress who caught the eye of the rather squat and unattractive Derby. He married her with indecent haste after the death of his first wife, also Elizabeth, who left him for John Frederick Sackville, the Duke of Dorset, after many years of a miserable marriage. Derby was besotted with his second Elizabeth, though, and together they had four children.
Lord and Lady Derby did indeed reside at number 23 Grosvenor Square, that square being one of the most fashionable locations in London. The earliest, seventeenth-century, houses there were built as three main stories plus an attic, but most were rebuilt in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, generally acquiring an extra story. Robert Adam rebuilt the Earl of Derby’s home, and it is regarded as one of the architect’s finest works.
On a personal note, I was in London on September 11th and attended a memorial service three days later at Grosvenor Square, where the U.S. Embassy is now located. As of this writing, it has been ten years since that event, and I am still deeply grateful to the British for their outpouring of kindness and love to a pair of stranded Americans in their city. The memorial service was very moving, especially coupled with the great respect the people of London showed by silencing their cars at noon in a show of sympathy. I shall never forget it.
The Regency era, for all of its fancy balls and elegant manners, was a time of great social unrest in Britain, marked by periods of famine, chronic unemployment, and parliamentary abuses. The economic depression was especially felt in the cloth industry, among textile weavers and spinners, who saw their wages plummet by nearly 70 percent.
Cloth manufacture remained an extremely laborious, time-intensive process until the advent of early nineteenth-century machinery. Merely turning the flax plant into linen involved over twenty different steps, which I simplified for the purposes of this book. It is interesting to note that today’s political term of “heckling” is derived from this industry. The flax hecklers of Dundee, Scotland, established a reputation as radical agitators. The heckling shops were places of ferocious debate over the day’s news while working. Eventually, the hecklers moved their arguments from their shop floors to public meetings, where they would bait politicians with questions to comb out truths that might otherwise be concealed; hence the activity became known as heckling.
The Luddites were British textile craftsmen who created a social movement to protest the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt was destroying their way of life and leaving them without work. These protests frequently took the form of smashing the new, automated machinery used in cloth finishing but occasionally became more violent. The Luddites took their name from Ned Ludd, a weaver who is presumed to be responsible for breaking two knitting frames in a fit of rage in the late 1700s. The new movement in 1812 adopted Ned Ludd as their mythical leader. The term “Luddite” has come to be synonymous with anyone who opposes, or fears, the advancement of technology.
George Mellor was one of many men nicknamed “King Ludd.” His attack on Cartwright’s mill was indeed greeted by the mill owner’s men pouring acid containers from the roof.
The 1815 passage of the Corn Laws, which covered not only corn but various grains and cereal crops, placed an import tariff on foreign crops. Prices had dropped dramatically following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and the intent was to protect the profits of British farmers. The result, however, was disastrous, since it prevented any foreign grains from being imported until the domestic price reached a certain level, resulting in grain shortages and, consequently, rioting and strikes.
Matters were further worsened by the dreadful harvest in 1816, following the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, which resulted in the
“year without a summer.” People were especially hard hit in the north and places like Wales, and refugees poured into London, looking for relief.
There was great opportunity in times of such uneasiness for extremists like Arthur Thistlewood (1774–1820) and Henry Hunt (1773–1835). Thistlewood spent time in France during that revolution and sought to import those radical ideas into Britain. His goal was an immediate, bloody overthrow of the government. His claims of great genius are true, and my description of him on the scaffold chewing an orange, singing, and telling the hangman to “do it tidy” is also accurate. Thistlewood was the mastermind behind the violent, but ultimately harebrained, Cato Street Conspiracy, through which he took many others to the gallows with him.
Hunt was a charismatic speaker and agitator who advocated parliamentary reform and repeal of the Corn Laws. He was at the forefront of many events like the Spa Field Riots.
The Peterloo Massacre was an unfortunate event in British history. An assembly of about sixty thousand people was formed at St. Peter’s Field in Manchester to demand parliamentary reform. Unlike many other protests, the organizers were determined that this would be a peaceable gathering, and this was reflected in its attendance by a large number of women and children. Unfortunately, the local magistrates assumed the worst, which was not completely unreasonable based on other rioting going on around the country, and called in the military. A detachment of horse artillery attempted to calmly disperse the crowd, but the horses became frightened, and chaos ensued. When it was over, eighteen people had been killed and around five hundred were wounded, many of them women. Journalists on the scene were quick to publish stories about the carnage, with James Wroe of the Manchester Observer nicknaming the event Peterloo, a cross between “St. Peter’s Field” and “Waterloo.”
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