The Strangest Family: The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians. Janice Hadlow

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СКАЧАТЬ florid imperturbability whose prominent blue eyes gaze so resolutely from later portraits. Although he was not conventionally handsome, the Duchess of Northumberland, who knew him well, described him tactfully as ‘tall and robust, more graceful than genteel’. The family tendency towards fat, against which George struggled diligently throughout his life, meant that he would never look the part of either romantic hero or fashion plate. He had strong, white teeth, evidently enough of a rarity, even in aristocratic circles, to merit approving comment by a number of observers. His hair, when neither powdered nor hidden beneath a wig, was considered one of his best points. It was, the duchess recorded, ‘a light auburn, which grew very handsomely to his face’. She also admired his clear and healthy complexion, but noted that in common with others of his age, ‘he had now and then a few pimples out’. For the duchess, however, it was George’s demeanour that mattered more. ‘There was a noble openness in his countenance, blended with a cheerful good-natured affability,’ which trumped his prosaic appearance and even gave him a certain fugitive charm.23 The portrait that best captures the elusive quality of George’s appeal was made a few years before his accession by the Swiss painter Jean-Etienne Liotard. Delicately rendered in pastels, it does not flatter – the man George would later become is visible in the round lineaments of his face, the fullness of his mouth and the protuberance of his eyes – but it captures brilliantly the clear-eyed, healthy, pink-and-white freshness of his youthful self.

      George’s looks were only part of the story. In the opening weeks of his reign, admiration for the new king’s ‘open and honest countenance’ was exceeded only by approval of the unstudied excellence of his behaviour. Everyone who saw him in the immediate aftermath of his grandfather’s death commented on the considerate correctness of all his actions. ‘He has behaved with the greatest propriety, dignity and decency,’ observed Walpole.24 He knew how to carry himself respectfully at solemn moments, but onlookers were also struck by his ability to strike a lighter note. His unforced, natural warmth of character was particularly admired. Lady Susan Fox-Strangways, who saw him often at court, approvingly observed in him ‘a look of happiness and good humour that pleases everyone – and me in particular’.25

      The grace and cheerfulness that George displayed in these days of excitement and promise were more than the temporary product of a moment; he was an essentially good-hearted man, who tried to observe the decencies of gentlemanly behaviour even in the darkest and most trying times of his reign. However, the polite, easy candour celebrated by so many observers in those early days was only part of who he really was. There was a sombre, more thoughtful cast to his character, which Liotard’s portrait caught as acutely as it did the new-minted freshness of his features. The young George stares watchfully out from the canvas, with an air of wary self-containment. This is a serious man, with a serious purpose in mind – there is no hint of frivolity or light-heartedness in his measured expression. For all its tenderness, it is also an image of quiet, sustained – even steely – determination; and it was a better indicator of what lay in George’s mind as he contemplated the future than all the benign gestures with which he navigated the immediate aftermath of his grandfather’s death. For George III came to the throne determined to do more than merely replace George II. He aspired to be not just the next king, but a new kind of king.

      As heir to the crown, George had spent much of his youth transfixed by the inevitability of his destiny, trying to comprehend what was expected of him. What was the true purpose of kingship in the modern world? Why had he been called upon to undertake this extraordinary and unasked-for burden? How could he discharge it as providence intended, fulfilling his duty to God, to himself and to his subjects? The answers to these questions, he eventually concluded, encompassed far more than the narrowly political concerns that had absorbed the energies of his predecessors. Their obsession with the day-to-day management of political business, the ups and downs and ins and outs of ministerial fortunes, had obscured the unique and singular meaning of sovereignty. The job of a king, George had decided, was no less than to graft moral purpose on to the nation’s polity. It was his role to act as the conscience of the country, and the guardian of its true interests. He was, George believed, the active agent of principle in public life, a figure intimately connected with the daily workings of politics and yet with a significance far beyond them. It was his duty to remind politicians what the point of politics was and, through his interventions and understanding, to direct them beyond their personal and party interests towards a larger and more lasting common good.

      This interpretation of his task did more than influence George’s public life; it also profoundly shaped his sense of his duties as a private man. How could a king act as a moral compass to others if he did not live a moral life himself? George’s idea of kingship thus reached far beyond a purely public dimension; it contained within itself a powerful personal imperative too. There was a direct connection between his actions in the political world and his conduct at home. He could not act as a force for good in the national interest if he was unable to live by right principles in his private life.

      George’s desire to see these ideas reflected in his actions as king was to put a great deal of pressure on the established order of politics in the years immediately after his accession; but it was their impact on the intimate world of the royal family that would prove far more revolutionary and of much greater lasting significance. He knew that to deliver the moral authority he needed to justify his vision, he would need to create a new kind of family life for himself. This meant redefining the personal relationships at its heart, reshaping what it meant to be a royal husband, wife, son or daughter. This would involve a greater emphasis on meeting high moral standards, a greater stress on duty, obligation and conscience. But he would also attempt to introduce into these roles something of the human warmth and emotional authenticity he believed non-royals found in them, hoping to provide for his wife and his children the solace and affection that seemed so singularly lacking in the lives of his immediate predecessors.

      Because in becoming a new kind of king, George recognised that he would also have to become a new kind of Hanoverian. He understood that his idea of kingship required him to turn his back on his family’s past, rejecting a malign inheritance of emotional dysfunction that had been handed down from generation to generation. Both his great-grandfather, George I, and grandfather, George II, had hated their sons with a passion bordering on madness. None of his male relations had been faithful to his wife. Every Hanoverian prince kept a succession of mistresses with scant concern for the feelings of his spouse, who responded with either mute resignation or loud and furious cries of dismay. The children of these unhappy unions were, unsurprisingly, rarely happy themselves. Drawn into feuds between their parents, they were angry, jealous and disaffected. They schemed and quarrelled between themselves and seemed destined to repeat the behaviour that had destroyed any chance of contentment for their parents. As George saw it, this legacy of amoral, cynical behaviour had warped and corrupted the Hanoverians, crippling their effectiveness as rulers and making their private lives miserable. It had made them bad kings and bad people. It had set husband against wife, father against son, sister against brother. It had thwarted their ambitions and corrupted their affections, leaving in its wake nothing but bitterness.

      George planned to put an end to the whole painful cycle. On the very day he became king, he sent for his uncle, William, Duke of Cumberland, the victor of Culloden, with whom he had had many differences in the past, and announced his intention to outlaw the old habits of spite and bad faith. Walpole heard that George had been most explicit in signalling the magnitude of the change, telling the duke that ‘it had not been common in their family to live well together, but that he was determined to live well with all his family’.26 It was such a public declaration that everyone appreciated its significance.

      George’s intention to reform the way his family related to one another underpinned all the decisions he made about his private life in the years that followed. It dictated his choice of a wife, and shaped the ambitions he had for their relationship within marriage. It influenced his attitude to fatherhood, and was the foundation СКАЧАТЬ