The Prince of Pleasure Life during the reign of George IV (1820–1830) In 1820, The Black Book: an exposition of abuses in church and state, remarked that George IV ‘always appeared to us nothing more than a man of pleasure, whom the accident of birth had made a king’. As Prince of Wales, George was notorious as a fashionable man, who indulged his passions for gambling, alcohol, and sex. When the Prince turned 21, in 1783, George III discharged his son’s debts and provided Above: Images of George IV and Mary Robinson, who later wrote about her relationship that ‘However flattering it might have money for furnishing a household at Carlton been to female vanity to know that the most admired and most accomplished Prince in Europe was devotedly attached to me; however dangerous to the heart such idolatry as his Royal Highness, during many months, professed in almost daily letters, which House. George went on to spend lavishly were conveyed to me by Lord Malden, still I declined any interview with his Royal Highness. I was not insensible to all his powers of attraction; I thought him one of the most amiable of men. There was a beautiful ingenuousness in his language, a warm and renovating Windsor Castle and enthusiastic adoration, expressed in every letter, which interested and charmed me’ in Memoirs of Mary Robinson: ‘Perdita’ by Mary Robinson and J Fitzgerald Molloy (1894). Central Store DA538.A35 building the at Below: A letter from E. Napean, Horse George was a particular fan of the theatre. Guards [London], expressing the Prince as a seaside retreat. of Wales’s concerns about the indiscreet After meeting the actress Mary Robinson in 1779, behaviour of a man who was formerly In January 1821, Lady Frances the hairdresser of Mrs FitzHerbert, and Bentinck described the the two became lovers. Mary was famous for her asking whether he ought to be sent out role as Perdita in The Winter’s Tale and George of the Pavilion as ‘the offspring of a country; 16 described himself as Florizel, her princely suitor. December Marriage between a Mosque 1794. He set up an establishment for Mary but finished Portland Above: Political satirist John Doyle mocked George IV’s (Welbeck) economics in the cartoon ‘A Great Economist’ and a Pagoda’. the relationship abruptly in 1783. Mary was a Collection, from Political Sketches of John Doyle (HB) Pw F 7397 (c.1829). Special Collection, O/S X NC1479.D62.A4 talented poet, but found that her notoriety as the King’s mistress overshadowed her literary accomplishments. On 15 December 1785, George secretly married the Catholic Maria Fitzherbert, whom he had met at the opera the previous year. The marriage was forbidden under the Act of Succession and the Royal Marriages Act. He abandoned Maria when Parliament promised to write off his £600,000 debts in exchange for marrying Princess in 1795. However, the relationship later resumed and George’s Will dated 1796 specified that he should be buried wearing a portrait miniature of Maria, Above: Comments on the state of Royal expenditure in The Black Book: an Top: Blue Velvet Room, Carlton House; 1816. Private Collection exposition of abuses in church and state, courts of law, municipal corporations, Middle: The Banqueting Room, Royal Pavilion; 1824. Private Collection ‘the wife of my heart and soul’. and public companies: with a précis of the House of Commons, past, present, Bottom: The Grand Stair Case; Buckingham House; 1817. and to come, edited by John Wade. (London, 1820). Special Collection, DA 540.W2 Private Collection Designed by UoN Design

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