Many nick names were from time to time bestowed upon George IV in his earlier years.   He was called Ben after the fat porter at Carlton House and The Rising Sun an obvious allusion to his approaching regency but best of all was the sobriquet bestowed upon him in an inspired moment by the Earl of Thanet Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

That fitted him admirably for he was pinchbeck from top to toe a theatrical figure stalking in the fierce light that beats upon a throne without real dignity real good nature or real affection a cruel husband a false friend a faithless lover untrue to the one woman to whom he believed himself devoted.

Devoid of generosity as of loyalty even his friends wives were not safe from his amorous advances his friends however were not always complaisant and once at least his Royal Highness was so maltreated that he was compelled to take to his bed and to save appearances by giving out he was suffering from a sprain whereas what injury he suffered was the result of a thrashing.

Liberal allowance must always be and indeed is always made for the temptations that hover round royalty and in spite of his rake helly youth there were many who hoped that in days to come this Prince might prove himself another Henry V.

By right of birth George Prince of Wales was the official leader of society but as a matter of fact he was more than the titular head of the fashionable world and it was not entirely owing to the accident of rank that he took his place among the exquisites.  His title of The First Gentleman of Europe was bestowed upon him not as heir apparent to the crown of Great Britain Ireland and Hanover but in consideration of his undoubted personal qualities.

It is true that the qualities he possessed would certainly not have secured for him any distinction other than notoriety in these more democratic days when even kings have to shield their vices from the public gaze but in the last decades of the eighteenth and the first decades of the nineteenth centuries society forgave in one so nobly born dishonesty in the ordinary transactions of life brutality to a wife disloyalty to a mistress the casting off of friends drunkenness and general debauchery and praised him highly because he bowed gracefully was handsome and possessed of the bel air as many susceptible women knew to their cost and dressed if not in the best taste at least extravagantly.

The beaux of the day accepted him as one of themselves on the day he made his first official appearance in society for on that auspicious occasion he wore a shoe buckle of his own invention which a contemporary has placed on record was an inch long and five inches broad reaching almost to the ground on either side of the foot.  The heir apparent who could invent such an ornament was worthy even of the companionship of a Sir Lumley Skeffington.

No better introduction to polite circles could have been devised but if any doubt survived as to whether the Prince was worthy to be enrolled amongst that select body of dandies which arrogated to itself the direction of the fashionable world this was soon dispelled by the costume he donned at the first Court ball he attended.   His coat was pink silk with white cuffs we are told his waistcoat white silk embroidered with various coloured foil and adorned with a profusion of French paste his hat was ornamented with two rows of steel beads five thousand in number with a button and loop of the same metal and cocked in a new military style.

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Beaux of the Regency

The niche that the Beaux of the Regency still occupy in the minds of most people though not perhaps in their esteem shows clearly that folly as well as wisdom or art or beauty may bring in its train a considerable and enduring fame. Yet while to day the names of Brummell, Petersham, Alvanley and the rest are household words in the vocabulary of those who have but dipped lightly into the social annals of the Georgian era it is astonishing how little is known of any of these men with possibly the sole exception of Brummell.

WITH 53 PORTRAITS CARICATURES AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS INCLUDING 2 IN COLOUR

This is a scanned copy of the book printed in 1908. Scanning errors based on book damage may occur.