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brighton in history
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Maria Fitzherbert
The love of George IV’s life
they met. She liked dancing and music, and had a
sometimes cruel. He dumped her twice for other
‘lively’ sense of humour, biographer James Mun-
women. He was not above using suicide threats
son notes, but was also a ‘woman of considerable
to win her, or to win her back. He coaxed her into
pride,’ who cared strongly about propriety and
a secret wedding, then humiliated her by getting
respectability. It was marriage or nothing.
a friend to publicly deny it had happened. He re-
By law, no-one married to a Catholic could suc-
peated the humiliation by marrying again, as if she
ceed to the throne, and Prince George was first
had merely been his mistress. Yet she was clearly
in line. This should have put him off, but, after
the love of his life, and he risked the throne to be
they met in March 1784, he began a reckless and
with her. And she seems to have loved him too. It
relentless courtship. She planned to go to Europe
was, as one book on Mrs Fitzherbert points out, ‘a
to avoid his attentions; when he heard this, he
very strange love story’.
‘stabbed himself and made out that it was a suicide
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attempt,’ biographer Saul David notes.
“I read that his education consisted of quite a lot
She went to Europe anyway. George ‘cried by
of floggings,” Royal Pavilion guide Louise Peskett
the hour,’ according to a contemporary account,
says. “That’s what his father thought would make
‘rolling on the floor, striking his forehead, tearing
his sons into good upstanding men. But, if we look
his hair, falling into hysterics…’ He wrote her
at his upbringing in 21st-century eyes, basically
frequent, passionate letters, sometimes threatening
he was an abused child who had a very remote
suicide. She resisted for more than a year.
relationship with his parents.
“I’d have thought if you fake suicide and batter
“And, sure enough, he became a person who
someone with letters and send messengers all over
couldn’t control his impulses very well, who
Europe for them…” Peskett says, “you’d think,
seemed to have problems with addiction, we’d
after a couple of months he would have thought
call it these days. Back then he was just a person
‘oh, ok then, never mind’. She must have really
who drank and spent lots of money and took lots
meant a lot to him.
of laudanum and things. These days, it would be
“I think she genuinely did like him, but her feet
ringing alarm bells; we’d say ‘that’s a person with
were on the ground. She was older and more ex-
problems’.”
perienced, she could see the bigger picture and the
Prince George was reckless with money, impulsive,
problems it could cause, and put her good sense
melodramatic, and sometimes selfish. But he was
before her heart.”
also intelligent, witty, charming and sociable. Tall
Nonetheless, they married in December 1895, in
and handsome in his youth, he had a series of
secret. Their relationship status became a popular
lovers, all of whom were content to be mistresses.
subject of gossip. The prince manipulated his
Maria Fitzherbert wasn’t.
friend, the MP Charles Fox, to deny the marriage
She was six years older than him, a convent-edu-
in Parliament; George then went to Mrs Fitz-
cated Catholic who’d been widowed twice before
herbert and claimed to be astonished at what Fox
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had said. A witness claimed: ‘Maria
turned very pale, and made no reply.’
She refused to see George for some
time, which made him so distressed
that his health suffered.
After she took him back, they went
to Brighton for the summer of
1786, where they were ‘a picture of
romantic contentment,’ according to
a magazine called Royal Romances. ‘In
those brief but happy months, the
prince appeared to be a reformed
character. He drank only moderately,
gambled hardly at all, and entertained quietly.’
In the next few years, they spent a
lot of time together in Brighton. “It
was one of the places they escaped
to,” Peskett says, “where they could
sort of play at domestic bliss: ‘we’re
just an ordinary married couple’,
enjoying life and being very cosy and
everything.”
However, things were going less
well by late 1793, Saul David notes.
She had ‘long disapproved of his
dissolute lifestyle and disreputable
friends’. He was so extravagant that
she ‘often had to lend him money’.
He frequently cheated on her.
One of his mistresses, Lady Jersey,
convinced the Prince ‘that his unpopularity with the people was due
to Mrs Fitzherbert and her religion,’
biographer Valerie Irvine writes.
‘She also told him that Maria had
Illustration by Joda jonydaga.weebly.com
He lied to her and cheated on her and was
been heard to say she was only interested in his rank, not in his
person.’ In June 1794, the prince dumped his wife by letter.
By this point, George’s debts were enormous, and ‘in return for
financial help, the king insisted that he should marry a Protestant
princess,’ the Dictionary of British History notes. So, in 1795,
he wed Caroline of Brunswick, who he didn’t really like. They
separated the following year.
After another series of ‘increasingly desperate’ overtures, Mrs
Fitzherbert took him back around 1800, Saul David notes. She
had been looking after a child called Minney Seymour, and “it
sounds like they had quite a happy domestic few years, playing
parents with this little girl, in some kind of domestic bliss,”
Peskett says.
When Minney’s parents died, there was a custody battle between
her family and Mrs Fitzherbert, who was devoted to the child.
Minney’s relatives Lord and Lady Hertford helped Maria; they
became the child’s legal guardians, and let Mrs Fitzherbert keep
her.
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