The Prince Regent turned King George IV
George IV painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence
1811 to 1830 during the reign of George, Prince of Wales as Regent for his ailing father and the years of his own rule as King George IV. George ruled over a period of ideals, were all was possible even if it was fleeting.
To most it was a time of careless excess that gave rise to the Brighton Pavilion and its stable done to resemble Indian grand castles Jane but for me it will always be Austen’s timeless novels and rise of the romantics.
It was also the time of Keats and his longing to create poetry that would express heart and lust, of Shelley’s questionable conduct and the Duke of Clarence ten illegitimate children with the talented actress Mrs. Jordan. Of that awful business concerning Frederick, Duke of York being made to leave the army after it was discovered by Parliament that his mistress Mary Anne Clarke was selling military promotions.
Not one to be outdone by the rotten royal dukes the Regent built a pleasure palace in Brighton he could not afford and separated from his reckless wife to covert with demanding married ladies. Of Byron’s rumored affair with his half-sister, his marriage to the priggish Anne Isabella and his subsequent exile but it wasn’t only the gentlemen who were behaving badly.
Lady Caroline Lamb had her part in Byron's undoing, what with her adherent pursuit that bordered on predatory. Sending him, clippings of her pubic hair and mooning over him though he turned her over for the Countess of Oxford a lady’s who children were rumored to have so many different fathers they were called the Harleian Miscellany.
Then there was the Wilson sisters, three successful courtesans acquainted with gentlemen from the divine Duke of Wellington to that stylish dandy George ‘Beau’ Brummell. Oh, and of the religious charlatan Hannah More who found success in terrifying the masses with her pious rhetoric.
All that and there was also a war, a murdered Prime Minister, and the locomotive. We will dissect it, see if we can't unearth the cause for the decline of England's Romanticism.
To most it was a time of careless excess that gave rise to the Brighton Pavilion and its stable done to resemble Indian grand castles Jane but for me it will always be Austen’s timeless novels and rise of the romantics.
It was also the time of Keats and his longing to create poetry that would express heart and lust, of Shelley’s questionable conduct and the Duke of Clarence ten illegitimate children with the talented actress Mrs. Jordan. Of that awful business concerning Frederick, Duke of York being made to leave the army after it was discovered by Parliament that his mistress Mary Anne Clarke was selling military promotions.
Not one to be outdone by the rotten royal dukes the Regent built a pleasure palace in Brighton he could not afford and separated from his reckless wife to covert with demanding married ladies. Of Byron’s rumored affair with his half-sister, his marriage to the priggish Anne Isabella and his subsequent exile but it wasn’t only the gentlemen who were behaving badly.
Lady Caroline Lamb had her part in Byron's undoing, what with her adherent pursuit that bordered on predatory. Sending him, clippings of her pubic hair and mooning over him though he turned her over for the Countess of Oxford a lady’s who children were rumored to have so many different fathers they were called the Harleian Miscellany.
Then there was the Wilson sisters, three successful courtesans acquainted with gentlemen from the divine Duke of Wellington to that stylish dandy George ‘Beau’ Brummell. Oh, and of the religious charlatan Hannah More who found success in terrifying the masses with her pious rhetoric.
All that and there was also a war, a murdered Prime Minister, and the locomotive. We will dissect it, see if we can't unearth the cause for the decline of England's Romanticism.
I hope you are have a lovely week
Simone
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