In Bed with the Georgians Read online

  It did not however mean the end of attempts by those in authority to curb free expression, and one famous case involved the Prince of Wales shortly after he became Regent. A sycophantic eulogy had appeared in the Morning Post in which the Prince had been praised as a paragon of virtue and good taste, describing him as the ‘glory of his people’, and a champion of the arts. He was, in the eyes of the Tory newspaper, an ‘Adonis in loveliness’. Leigh Hunt and his brother Robert had launched a journal called The Examiner some years before, and on 22 March 1812 the paper retaliated against the praise heaped upon the Prince by describing him as ‘a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in debt and disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers, and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or the respect of posterity!’

  The Examiner also included a poem about the Prince which contained the words:

  Not a fatter fish than he

  Flounders round the polar sea.

  See the blubber at his gills

  What a world of drink he swills!

  The fact that the allegations were true was immaterial – that, in itself, was not a defence. The Prince was outraged, especially at the description of him as ‘a fat Adonis of Fifty’, and both Leigh Hunt and his brother (as printer) were tried for libel, convicted, sent to prison and fined heavily.

  By then, more and more newspapers had appeared in London with the main purpose of spreading gossip and scandal. In 1720 there were a dozen London newspapers. By 1776 there were fifty-three, and the appetite for news, or more accurately gossip, was insatiable. Publications such as The Rambler’s Magazine (not to be confused with Samuel Johnson’s The Rambler from thirty years earlier) started in 1783 with the alternative title of The Annals of Gallantry, Glee, Pleasure and the Bon Ton. In practice it was little more than a collection of titillating and voyeuristic extracts from the leading crim. con. trials of the day. In turn this encouraged the emergence of the Bon Ton Magazine – or Microscope of Folly and Fashion, which hit the streets in 1791. This was followed by collections of the ‘juicy bits’ from famous crim. con. trials, such as the anthology edited by R. Gill entitled A collection of trials for adultery, or a General History of Modern Gallantry and Divorce (1799 and 1802). These trial reports, often illustrated with obscene prints, helped develop a separate genre of erotica – and the public developed a fascination for the minutiae of the private lives of their social superiors and an obsession with their sexual exploits.

  Meanwhile, print shops became magnets for people from all social backgrounds eager to see and read what was happening. For those who were illiterate, there was always someone available who would explain the exhibits, and images of print shop windows appear under the hand of many different artists. Gillray in Very Slippy Weather, shown as Image 36, portrays an elderly gentleman – possibly Gillray himself – falling down on the wet pavement outside the print shop run by Hannah Humphrey. A small group of onlookers take no notice, because they are eagerly looking at the prints on display in the window.

  One contemporary view of the print shops is shown by Horace Walpole when writing to his friend George Montagu. As he said, ‘There is nothing new but what the pamphlet shops produce; however it is pleasant to have a new print or ballad every day’. A later observer of the London scene remarked that ‘the enthusiasm is indescribable when the next drawing appears; it is a veritable madness. You have to make your way in through the crowd with your fists …’

  The general public loved the new images and liked nothing more than being able to laugh at the portrayal of the antics of the rich and famous.

  JAMES GILLRAY, 1756–1815

  Into this world of voyeurism and salacious gossip leapt James Gillray, born around 1756. His first caricatures appeared in 1779 and he quickly developed into a most prolific and scabrous commentator on the follies of the age. Gillray produced hundreds of caricatures in his lifetime, many of them acerbic and scurrilous. They were offered for sale in the print-shop of Miss Hannah Humphrey, with whom Gillray lived. After 1806 he started to lose his eyesight and the year afterwards began to decline mentally, in time becoming insane. He attempted suicide by flinging himself from an upstairs window in 1811, an event described in The Examiner with the words “On Wednesday afternoon Mr. Gillray the caricaturist who resides at Mrs Humphrey’s, the caricature shop in St. James’s Street, attempted to throw himself out of the attic story. There being iron bars his head got jammed and being perceived by one of the chairmen who attends at White’s, the unfortunate man was extricated.” He finally died on 1 June 1815. He is perhaps best known for his political caricatures lampooning statesmen, the French, and of course George III and the royal family. He also produced a number of satirical prints lampooning the aristocracy and royalty for their sexual predilections. Image 37 shows a buxom girl pushing a wheelbarrow of carrots along Bond Street, while looking over her shoulder at an older man, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, who is tugging at her apron. He is slipping a coin into her pocket and clearly thinks he can buy her services. A more modern title might be ‘Is that a carrot in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me…?’ The Earl was a well-known womaniser, and his mistresses included Fanny Murray and Martha Ray, mentioned in Chapters Four and Seven respectively.

  Gillray was merciless in lampooning the Prince of Wales – an easy target – see Image 39. It shows the corpulent figure of the Prince, picking his teeth with a fork. He is sprawled in a chair alongside empty bottles of wine, unpaid bills, and an overflowing chamber-pot. Everything paints an unsavoury picture of the Prince’s dissolute lifestyle. Above his head is a parody of the coat of arms of the Prince of Wales, with a crossed knife and fork in the centre, and with the candles held in a wine glass and decanter. On the side table, alongside the jellies, is a small pot labelled ‘For the Piles’ , another labelled ‘For a Stinking Breath’, and a tub of pills and a decanter marked ‘Velnos Vegetable Syrup.’ No-one could accuse Gillray of being a sycophant. Given the willingness of the Prince to resort to litigation over defamatory remarks about his enormous girth (see the Leigh Hunt trial mentioned earlier) it is surprising that Gillray got away with it and avoided a spell in prison.

  Nevertheless Gillray was treading on dangerous ground with some of his satires. He was no doubt confident that he could get away with showing the Prince in bed with his favourite mistress, but implying that the Prince had married Mrs Fitzherbert (as in a print entitled ‘The Morning after Marriage’) was quite a risk. After all, the Prince had denied as much to his father the King, and Gillray was therefore imputing dishonesty on the part of the Prince.

  Other members of the royal family were also targets, as in Image 32 entitled Fashionable Contrasts and showing the large, clumsy feet of the Duke of York between the delicate ankles and tiny shoes of the Duchess. Gillray was commenting on the preoccupation of the British Press with the Duchess, endlessly going on about the daintiness of her feet – which were apparently all of six inches long. Gillray was fed up with the gushing comments about her foot size – and, after the print appeared, the sycophancy stopped immediately. However, the caricature went on to become one of Gillray’s most famous prints, synonymous with ‘unlikely coupling’ and plays on the age-old joke about the size of the male member being linked to the size of the man’s feet. Further caricatures parodying the royals and specific aristocrats on account of their misdeeds are shown in images 38–40.

  THOMAS ROWLANDSON, 1756–1827

  Thomas Rowlandson, a fine artist with more of an interest in gentle social satire than Gillray, was active from the middle of the 1780s and he often favoured pen and ink drawings before transferring the image onto a copper plate for printing. He had inherited money from a wealthy aunt, but then proceeded to gamble it all away, often sitting at the gaming tables for thirty-six hours at a stretch. Having spent his inheritance he had no choice but to make his career selling his prints and paintings. His output was prodigious a
nd he often painted the same scene on several occasions. He rarely lampooned identifiable individuals, instead commenting on human frailties and foibles in general.

  He knew that there was a ready market for crude and indecent images – what might be termed ‘top shelf ’ images of fornication, erotica and general nudity. Image 21 entitled Cunnyseurs (mentioned earlier) is a case in point. It is thought likely that the future George IV was a collector of such ‘free’ prints, but if so they were all destroyed during the reign of Queen Victoria and are no longer to be found in the Royal Collection.

  Towards the end of his life Rowlandson suffered ill health, dying at the age of 70 in 1827. In his will he left his estate of nearly £3,000 to Betsy Winter, the woman he had lived with for the previous two decades. As a bon viveur and chronicler of human excesses he was unrivalled, largely because he knew that the laugh was on him, as much as on the people he portrayed. In his lifetime he generated hundreds of images of everyday life, warts and all.

  RICHARD NEWTON, 1777–1798

  Richard Newton, who died at the age of 21, brought a youngster’s eyes to the foibles of hookers and their clients. At the age of 18, he had been commissioned to draw the illustrations for Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey through France and Italy and just before he died he illustrated Henry Fielding’s romp of a novel Tom Jones. He had taken over responsibility for running the print shop of William Holland when the latter was sentenced to prison for sedition in 1793, and it is thought possible that it was while visiting his employer in prison that Newton contracted what was termed ‘gaol fever’ (probably typhus) from which he subsequently died. Many of his drawings employ dreadful puns and lavatorial humour. A peep into Brest with a Navel Review illustrates his punning talents, shown in Image 43. Newton clearly had a dim view of the morality of parsons and clerics, as in his print entitled Which way shall I turn me? in which a vicar is torn between the pleasures of the flesh and the pleasures of the dining table (Image 44). Image 45 shows the world of the courtesan, as in Launching a Frigate with the brothel owner standing outside her house alongside a prostitute dressed up to the nines. Newton prepared the original drawing. It was then engraved by Thomas Rowlandson and was only published (by Thomas Tegg) some ten years after Newton had met his untimely end.

  ISAAC CRUIKSHANK, 1764–1811, and GEORGE CRUIKSHANK, 1792–1878

  Isaac was born in Edinburgh but spent his working life in London. He died after a drinking contest with friends, at the age of 55. Jointly with James Gillray, he worked to popularise the figure of John Bull as a symbol of Britishness. He also drew caricatures on the topic of the abolition of slavery, as well as taking frequent swipes at the excesses of the Age. Images 40 and 41 and Images 46 and 47 reflect his views on indecent fashions, whores and royal shenanigans.

  George Cruikshank, son of Isaac, was a satirical caricaturist with a reputation for being ‘the modern-day Hogarth’ because of his work illustrating the writings of Charles Dickens. He had originally been apprenticed to his father, was married twice, and after his death was found to have fathered eleven children by his mistress. Staunchly patriotic, he lampooned the French mercilessly. His print entitled Old Sherry, lampooning the adulterous George IV and his far from blameless wife, appears as Image 50.

  THEODORE LANE, 1800–1828

  The son of a painter, Theodore Lane was born into a poor family in Worcester and was apprenticed in London at the age of 14. Within five years he was exhibiting at the Royal Academy. He came to public notice making water colours and painting miniatures, before graduating to painting in oils in 1825. In the same year he published thirty-six humorous prints under the title of The Life of an Actor, dedicating the book to George IV. He had thus already allied himself to the King’s cause, and in his later prints poured scorn on the antics of Queen Caroline. Lane was merciless in depicting her friendship with the Italian Bartolomeo Pergami, a man of low birth with whom the Queen apparently lived while she was in exile in Europe. Images 48, 49 and 52 illustrate his effectiveness as a satirist. Tragically he died at the age of 28 when he fell through a skylight in Gray’s Inn Road, leaving behind a widow and three young children. His death denied future generations the chance to see what he would have made of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert….

  A host of other artists joined the party, often targeting the courtesans, the rakes and the madams who operated in London. It was a time for highly visual satire – and often it was very personal, with the targets easily identifiable. The more the prints sold, the more the public demanded new titles, and the more famous the people being satirised became. The caricaturists themselves became wealthy, happy to allow their skills to be bought by the highest bidder. Even the bile-filled Gillray was perfectly happy to pocket £200 as a secret annual ‘pension’ paid by the Tory party led by William Pitt, in exchange for the production of images taunting the Whig Opposition. After both Pitt and Fox died in 1806, Gillray went back to his previous practice of ridiculing both sides in equal measure. Similarly, George Cruikshank was so merciless in lampooning the Prince Regent that in 1820 he received a royal bribe of £100 for a pledge ‘not to caricature His Majesty in any immoral situation.’ Nevertheless, the sexual shenanigans of George IV continued to dominate the print shops, but it appears that the Prince adhered to the view that there was only one thing worse than being talked about – and that was not being talked about. Certainly he was an avid collector of caricatures featuring himself, and many remained in the Royal Collection until they were sold by George V to the Library of Congress over a hundred years later.

  (*swiving – i.e. copulation).

  Chapter Six

  Royal Scandals and Shenanigans

  GEORGE I – an incarcerated wife, a murder and a brace of mistresses.

  It has to be said: George Ludwig did not have a lot going for him when it came to qualities required to become King of Great Britain – except for one thing – he was a Protestant. Apart from that, he comes across as a heartless, unfeeling and vindictive man; someone who was perfectly willing to parade a mistress under the nose of his wife, and spend his time hunting and whoring, yet was prepared to lock his wife away for over thirty years, barred from seeing her children, because she had the temerity to take a lover. That lover was murdered, possibly with the knowledge of George Ludwig, and almost certainly by killers employed by George Ludwig’s family.

  When George had married his cousin Sophia Dorothea of Celle in 1682 he was 22 and she was 16. It was not exactly a love-match – she referred to him as ‘pig-snout’ and begged not to be forced to go through with the marriage. She fainted when she was first introduced to him. For his part, George was equally horrified, largely because he felt insulted by the fact that his bride was of illegitimate birth (although her parents did eventually marry each other). For some strange reason George’s taste in women did not extend to this vivacious, good-looking young girl with a stunning figure. It was rumoured that his preference was for a somewhat short and portly paramour – another Sophia (Sophia Charlotte von Kielmannsegg). She was the married daughter of his father’s mistress, the Countess Platten. The Countess was renowned for being particularly generous with her favours and there is no certainty as to which of her many lovers fathered Sophia, but the public were convinced that Sophia and George shared the same father. The relationship, if true, meant that George was having an incestuous relationship with his half-sibling.

  George’s marriage was arranged by the two prospective mothers-in-law purely for financial and dynastic reasons – George’s mother was the Duchess Sophia of Hanover, and she was keen to get her hands on the very substantial dowry on offer, payable in annual instalments. As the duchess wrote to her niece:

  One hundred thousand thalers a year is a goodly sum to pocket, without speaking of a pretty wife, who will find a match in my son George Louis, the most pig-headed, stubborn boy who ever lived, who has round his brains such a thick crust that I defy any man or woman ever to discover what is in them. He does not care much f
or the match itself, but one hundred thousand thalers a year have tempted him as they would have tempted anybody else.

  The marriage was doomed. George treated his new bride with contempt, humiliated her in public, and was constantly arguing. But despite his ‘extra-curricular activities’ he managed to sire a son and a daughter by Sophia: George Augustus, born 1683, who went on to become King George II of Great Britain; and Sophia Dorothea, born 1686, later to become the wife of King Frederick William I of Prussia, and mother of Frederick the Great. However, Sophia was more and more abandoned by George – she had done her duty by producing a male heir, and he fell back on his other amorous pursuits. Faced with such a loveless environment, Sophia developed a friendship with a Swedish Count by the name of Philip Christoph von Königsmarck. The Count had a penchant for writing somewhat indiscreet letters to Sophia, and soon they became lovers. A huge number of particularly torrid letters fell into the wrong hands (in other words they were intercepted or stolen) and ended up with Sophia’s father-in-law, and by 1694 the affair had become extremely public knowledge. George was incandescent with rage and physically attacked his wife, attempting to strangle her before he was pulled off by male attendants. His parting shot was that he never wished to see her again – and he never did.

  Sophia and the Swedish count decided to elope, but their plans were intercepted. Having enjoyed one last tryst with his inamorata, the Count was ambushed and killed by members of the palace guard. Sophia was placed under house arrest and a ‘kangaroo court’ was held. It found her guilty of malicious desertion – a finding which had the dual advantage of ensuring that the dowry payments from her parents would be maintained, while avoiding those awkward questions about the paternity of her children which might have arisen if she had been publicly declared to have been an adulterer. In December 1694 the marriage was dissolved. Her children were then aged 11 and 8. They were taken away from her and she was banished to the Castle of Ahlden, never to see her offspring ever again. She remained, incarcerated at Ahlden, for thirty-three years until her death in 1726. When she lay dying with kidney failure she sent a letter to George, in which she predicted that he too would be dead within the year. Delivered posthumously, it cursed him from the grave, and a popular story has it that within a week of opening the letter, George was indeed dead.