DOI article:
Beerbohm, Max: A note on George the Fourth
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27812#0254
2jo A Note on George the Fourth
and it is only at the music halis that we are privileged to see
strong men. We are born into a poor, weak age. We are not
strong enough to be wicked, and the Nonconformist Conscience
makes cowards of us aH.
But this was not so in the days when George was walking by
his tutor's side in the gardens of Kew or of Windsor. London
must have been a splendid place in those days—full of life and
colour and wrong and revelry. There was no absurd press nor
vestry to see that everything should be neatly ordered, nor to
protect the poor at the expense of the rich. Every man had to
shift fqr himself and, in consequence, men were, as Mr. Clement
Scott would say, manly, and women, as Mr. Clement Scott would
say, womanly. A young man of wealth and family in that period
found open to him a vista of such license as had been unknown to
any since the barbatuli of the Roman Empire. To spend the
early morning with his valet, gradually assuming the rich apparel
that was not then tabooed by a false sumptuary standard ; to
saunter round to White's for ale and tittle-tattle and the making
of wagers ; to attend a " drunken dejeuner " in honour of " la
tres belle Rosaline " or the Strappini ; to drive a friend out into
the country in his pretty curricle, " followed by two well-dressed
and well-mounted grooms, of singular elegance certainly," and stop
at every tavern on the road to curse the host for not keeping better
ale and a wench of more charm ; to reach St. James' in time for
a random toilet and so off to dinner. Which of aar dandies could
survive a day of pleasures such as this ? Which would be ready,
dinner done, to scamper off again to Ranelagh and dance and skip
and sup in the rotunda there ? Yet the youth of this period would
not dream of going to bed before he had looked in at White's or
Crockford's for a few hours' faro.
This was the kind of life that young George found opened to
him,
and it is only at the music halis that we are privileged to see
strong men. We are born into a poor, weak age. We are not
strong enough to be wicked, and the Nonconformist Conscience
makes cowards of us aH.
But this was not so in the days when George was walking by
his tutor's side in the gardens of Kew or of Windsor. London
must have been a splendid place in those days—full of life and
colour and wrong and revelry. There was no absurd press nor
vestry to see that everything should be neatly ordered, nor to
protect the poor at the expense of the rich. Every man had to
shift fqr himself and, in consequence, men were, as Mr. Clement
Scott would say, manly, and women, as Mr. Clement Scott would
say, womanly. A young man of wealth and family in that period
found open to him a vista of such license as had been unknown to
any since the barbatuli of the Roman Empire. To spend the
early morning with his valet, gradually assuming the rich apparel
that was not then tabooed by a false sumptuary standard ; to
saunter round to White's for ale and tittle-tattle and the making
of wagers ; to attend a " drunken dejeuner " in honour of " la
tres belle Rosaline " or the Strappini ; to drive a friend out into
the country in his pretty curricle, " followed by two well-dressed
and well-mounted grooms, of singular elegance certainly," and stop
at every tavern on the road to curse the host for not keeping better
ale and a wench of more charm ; to reach St. James' in time for
a random toilet and so off to dinner. Which of aar dandies could
survive a day of pleasures such as this ? Which would be ready,
dinner done, to scamper off again to Ranelagh and dance and skip
and sup in the rotunda there ? Yet the youth of this period would
not dream of going to bed before he had looked in at White's or
Crockford's for a few hours' faro.
This was the kind of life that young George found opened to
him,