Georgian Book Reviews
Jan. 29th, 2025 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakS.G. McLean: The Bookseller of Inverness: not quite my thing, though it may very well be ideal for several friends, as it does employ various popular Jacobite tropes; it‘s set in the early 1750s, the good guys are all oppressed Scots, the English are cruel, save that one honorable Major (who alas has only two scenes with the title character, so no, you can‘t slash them), the various good people of Inverness are working together to fool the English occupiers, disguises and hair raising escapes abound. I think one reason why it didn‘t work for me was that it felt like the author couldn‘t decide who her main character should be, Ian the titular bookseller (did fight at Culloden and spent some time doing enforced labor in the colonies as a result, is back and determined to live an unpolitical life, but of course that won‘t work) or his derring-do, secret agent of the Stuarts father Hector. Another is that there is slut-shaming (of both Ian‘s mother and the woman Ian early in the novel has a sex-but-not-romance arrangement with), and honestly, I felt that both their povs (the mother is only talked about, she never shows up in person as she‘s currently „a courtesan“ in Italy) would have been more interesting than Ian and his father put together.
Oh, and when I read that there really was an aborted Jacobite plot around that time that would have involved kidnapping the (Hannover) royals en route to the theatre, with the idea that once they‘re kidnapped, Charlie and his father James can return and take the country, I thought: how was that even supposed to work? Firstly, I can‘t see „the entire“ Hannover family going anywhere in 1750, let alone to the theatre. George II and his oldest son, the soon to die (in 1751) Friedrich/Frederick, famously hated each other‘s guts. So if either of them went to the theatre, I bet the other one didn‘t. Then there‘s everyone‘s least favourite Hannover, the Duke of Cumberland, „Billy the Butcher“, victor of Culloden. Him I can see with Dad in the theatre, but again, not with Big Brother. And then there‘s the future generation of Hannovers, future George III, grandson of G2 and son of Fritz of Wales, and his two brothers (also sisters, but we‘re talking about successive candidates for the throne here). Even once Fritz of Wales was dead, future G3 did not get along with his grandfather. (Not after G2 let his son literally rot before finally giving permission to move the body for the funeral.) They certainly didn‘t share theatre visits with G2. As for Uncle Cumberland, young future G3 and his mother Augusta were convinced Uncle Cumberland had designs on the throne, and again, would not go anywhere with him. Basically, I was completely taken out of the story by trying to work out on which occasion anyone with kidnapping (or assassination) designs would have been able to get the entire (male) royal Hannover line at the same time. Speaking of….
Andrew Roberts: George III. This one has two different subtitles. The British edition says „Britain‘s most misunderstood King“, while the American edition is subtitled „The last King of America“. Either way, our author is a fan making his case, starting off on an indignant note by describing the version of George III that appears in Hamilton. I mean, I get it, the King George of Hamilton is a type, not a portrait (much like the version of Joseph II in Amadeus - both are supposed to be types of monarchs, with little or no communality to the specific monarchs they’re named after, and since they are minor characters, they don‘t need to be much more), but I also thought all this earnest indignation over a musical is somewhat overdone. This said, he‘s also serious about a more serious matter, refuting 20 of the 22 personal accusations against George III listed in the Declaration of Independence. As opposed to, say, Robert Caro in his LBJ biographies, he definitely doesn‘t believe in three dimensional opponents of his main character, and when he‘s not fuming over the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson, he‘s eviscarating Thomas Paine, gunning at Charles Fox and being utterly scornful over the „Whig Oligarchy“. Mind you, given that the Whig Party was in power for most of the century ever since Queen Anne‘s death, it‘s not that I think he‘s wrong about a couple of aristocratic Whig families having come to regard the running of the country as their personal right and fiefdom, and that a change of party in government was direly needed. (It‘s not good for ANY party to be that long in power.) But he‘s so incredibly defensive and angry at anyone critisizing his hero that much of his cast doesn‘t come across as human beings, and that is to the detriment of the book.
On the positive side, he‘s far better when using the material now available to demonstrate that young George was far from being a dunce, was a well educated student; we have his school essays, now digitized, in his handwriting and the worst that can be said was that he didn‘t much like Latin, but he - the first of the Hannovers to have English as his first language - was good with German and French, and truly interested in history, geography and the other natural sciences). I raised an eyebrow when the biographer made much of young student George in his notes on the books he reads writing that slavery could not be justified religiously and was a bad thing, because that‘s a fine sentiment, thought I, but he didn‘t do anything about it later, did he? But here I wronged Roberts, because much later whe he does discuss slavery in GB and how G3 didn‘t publicly support Pitt the Younger and Wilberforce but remained silent, he does chide him because of this. (Not least because G3 wasn‘t shy in voicing his opinion on other matters. He was a constitutional monarch, but that job had not yet been defined as it was by Elizabeth II as someone who never voices political opinions at all.)
George was, in several generations, also the sole oldest Hannover prince who had a good relationship with his father. Now partly I suspect this is because Fritz of Wales died just when George entered his teenage years, but partly it is also due to serious effort on the behalf of the unfortunate Friedrich/Frederick, who did devote some serious parent time to his son (and the other kids) and wrote a touching letter in the event of his death which does show him as a tender father. George‘s mother, Augusta, went through a complete change of image as far as the press was concerned when her husband died, through no fault of her own. Before that, she was regarded more or less as shy wallpaper. Once she was a widow, misogyny and xenophobia kicked in and now she was suddenly portrayed as a dominating bitch who surely had sex with George‘s (married) teacher, Lord Bute, a Scot (and as I remember from other 18th century reading material as well, there was a lot of anti-Scot hatred in London in particular) , with the two of them conspiring to make George either a crypto Stuart or a Catholic or both. People were carrying a petticoat and a boot around to be booed and hissed at. This was all nonsense (so says not just Roberts but other historians as well), and the bitterest part of it is that it didn‘t even let up years and years later when she was dying of throat cancer, and Bute (who had been briefly been the Prime Minister (though that title wasn‘t yet really used) for G3, with the predictable result of everyone else going spare) retired from politics and not having in the presence of either son or mother for eons. Even her coffin during her funeral procession was booed and cursed. Not, again, for anything she‘d actually done, but for a supposed affair she never had. George had visited her regularly in her illness, and how he felt about this treatment of his mother both before and after her death can be imagined. (When Augusta come to England, she‘s been 16 and landed straight into the dysfunctional Hannover feud between George II, his wife Caroline and Fritz of Wales, which notoriously included having to endure a carriage drive mid-labour from Hampton Court to Richmond because Fritz of Wales didn‘t want her to give birth anywhere near his parents. Welcome to life in Great Britain.)
As Bridgerton viewers know, George was married to another imported German princess, age 17, and literally directly of the boat (i.e. on the day of her arrival). This was Charlotte, and while the marriage was arranged, it turned into what Roberts called the sole love match of the House of Hannover in the 18th century. (I guess, if you define „love match“ as „they both loved each other, and we have it in written contemporary testimony by them and others“, because grandfather George II did love his wife, Caroline of Ansbach. Passionately and life long, mistresses not withstanding. We just don‘t know whether or not Caroline returned the feeling, or whether she was solely into power, as Lord Hervey says.) (Whereas the sincerely pious George III.did not have mistresses. Pre-Charlotte, he had a serious crush on Sarah Lennox for a while, but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him to make her his mistress, and marriage was out of the question, so that was that, and then he fell in love with his bride. George about Charlotte, early during his either first or second (more about this in a moment) mental breakdown: „The Queen is my physician, and no man can have a better; she is my friend, and no one can have a better.“ But of course the best known things about G3 are not that he was happily married, but that a) he was King when America said goodbye, and b) he had several mental breakdowns until it became permanent, which caused the necessity of a epoch-name giving Regency.
Roberts goes into great detail about the entire war of independence mess. Not much new for me there - having read Dr. Johnson‘s contemporary Taxation no tyranny! pamphlet, I am aware of the case for the crown. (Basically: after the 7 Years War, Britain was in serious debt. It didn‘t seem unreasonable to expect the American colonies to pay taxes for their own protection and administration - Roberts says none of the money actually went to Britain, it all remained within the colonies and was used for the infrastructure there - and your avarage citizen of an American colony paid in fact less tax and had far more liberties than your avarage Briton.) In fact, for my taste it was a bit too much War of Independence, and I wouldn‘t be surprised if the biography was written specifically an US audience. Speaking of the 7 Years War, what was new was Roberts pointing out that, since Bute‘s government, having made peace with France in said war, decided to classify the rest as an inner German struggle and cut of the subsidies for Prussia, and withdraw from European continental politics as much as they could, all this splendid isolation had resulted in England not having any current friends on the continent. Which did matter in the war, not just because France supported Team Rebels, but because Prussia had no intention to support anyone (those subsidies!), Spain followed France, and the smaller German principalities who did supply some soldiers wanted a lot of money for those. (Basically: Brexit is always a disaster, mes amies.)
Regarding the mental illness: the biography makes the case there might have been an early occurrence which Charlotte was able to cover up, so while no one saw the King for weeks there were rumours, but not yet about mental illness, and he recovered from this, with the next serious breakdown happening decades later. (That was the one famously dramatized by Alan Bennett in The Madness of King George.) But after the likely second one, the intervals grew shorter, and the saddest thing was that Charlotte came to a point where she couldn‘t live in the same palace with George anymore; Roberts says given George when mad could go from devoted husband to angry and abusive in a heartbeat, nobody could blame her. But it did mean ghastly Prinny, future G4, had the opportunity to present his rambling father to his friends to underline how truly mad he was.
As to the nature of the illness, I did know that the 1960s porphyria theory (which Bennett was following in his play/film) is now outdated and the current speculation is it was bi-polar disorder, with an early 20th century biographer coming up with the extravagant theory it must have been all that sex with Charlotte which in the opinion of the early 20th century guy he couldn‘t have enjoyed since she wasn‘t pretty, I kid you not. The various physical treatments attempted were all awful and useless, making things worse, though Roberts points out there really was no known treatment at the time. An additional painful aspect was that George was aware what was happening to him in the early days of his breakdowns but unable to stop it and horrified by it.
Lastly: there is no question our author is of the Tory persuasion, not just in the case of G3‘s various cabinets. The French Revolution was a menace from the get go, not just during the Terreur. France in general is always presented as scheming and manipulating. Fox with his unpatriotic wishes that first the American Rebels should win and then later with his sympathies for fraternité, liberté, egalité is a dirty traitor. The problem with long term British historiography is that Whigs wrote history while Tories made history. And so forth. It makes one go right away to Byron's Vision of Judgement in satiric protest.
Oh, and when I read that there really was an aborted Jacobite plot around that time that would have involved kidnapping the (Hannover) royals en route to the theatre, with the idea that once they‘re kidnapped, Charlie and his father James can return and take the country, I thought: how was that even supposed to work? Firstly, I can‘t see „the entire“ Hannover family going anywhere in 1750, let alone to the theatre. George II and his oldest son, the soon to die (in 1751) Friedrich/Frederick, famously hated each other‘s guts. So if either of them went to the theatre, I bet the other one didn‘t. Then there‘s everyone‘s least favourite Hannover, the Duke of Cumberland, „Billy the Butcher“, victor of Culloden. Him I can see with Dad in the theatre, but again, not with Big Brother. And then there‘s the future generation of Hannovers, future George III, grandson of G2 and son of Fritz of Wales, and his two brothers (also sisters, but we‘re talking about successive candidates for the throne here). Even once Fritz of Wales was dead, future G3 did not get along with his grandfather. (Not after G2 let his son literally rot before finally giving permission to move the body for the funeral.) They certainly didn‘t share theatre visits with G2. As for Uncle Cumberland, young future G3 and his mother Augusta were convinced Uncle Cumberland had designs on the throne, and again, would not go anywhere with him. Basically, I was completely taken out of the story by trying to work out on which occasion anyone with kidnapping (or assassination) designs would have been able to get the entire (male) royal Hannover line at the same time. Speaking of….
Andrew Roberts: George III. This one has two different subtitles. The British edition says „Britain‘s most misunderstood King“, while the American edition is subtitled „The last King of America“. Either way, our author is a fan making his case, starting off on an indignant note by describing the version of George III that appears in Hamilton. I mean, I get it, the King George of Hamilton is a type, not a portrait (much like the version of Joseph II in Amadeus - both are supposed to be types of monarchs, with little or no communality to the specific monarchs they’re named after, and since they are minor characters, they don‘t need to be much more), but I also thought all this earnest indignation over a musical is somewhat overdone. This said, he‘s also serious about a more serious matter, refuting 20 of the 22 personal accusations against George III listed in the Declaration of Independence. As opposed to, say, Robert Caro in his LBJ biographies, he definitely doesn‘t believe in three dimensional opponents of his main character, and when he‘s not fuming over the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson, he‘s eviscarating Thomas Paine, gunning at Charles Fox and being utterly scornful over the „Whig Oligarchy“. Mind you, given that the Whig Party was in power for most of the century ever since Queen Anne‘s death, it‘s not that I think he‘s wrong about a couple of aristocratic Whig families having come to regard the running of the country as their personal right and fiefdom, and that a change of party in government was direly needed. (It‘s not good for ANY party to be that long in power.) But he‘s so incredibly defensive and angry at anyone critisizing his hero that much of his cast doesn‘t come across as human beings, and that is to the detriment of the book.
On the positive side, he‘s far better when using the material now available to demonstrate that young George was far from being a dunce, was a well educated student; we have his school essays, now digitized, in his handwriting and the worst that can be said was that he didn‘t much like Latin, but he - the first of the Hannovers to have English as his first language - was good with German and French, and truly interested in history, geography and the other natural sciences). I raised an eyebrow when the biographer made much of young student George in his notes on the books he reads writing that slavery could not be justified religiously and was a bad thing, because that‘s a fine sentiment, thought I, but he didn‘t do anything about it later, did he? But here I wronged Roberts, because much later whe he does discuss slavery in GB and how G3 didn‘t publicly support Pitt the Younger and Wilberforce but remained silent, he does chide him because of this. (Not least because G3 wasn‘t shy in voicing his opinion on other matters. He was a constitutional monarch, but that job had not yet been defined as it was by Elizabeth II as someone who never voices political opinions at all.)
George was, in several generations, also the sole oldest Hannover prince who had a good relationship with his father. Now partly I suspect this is because Fritz of Wales died just when George entered his teenage years, but partly it is also due to serious effort on the behalf of the unfortunate Friedrich/Frederick, who did devote some serious parent time to his son (and the other kids) and wrote a touching letter in the event of his death which does show him as a tender father. George‘s mother, Augusta, went through a complete change of image as far as the press was concerned when her husband died, through no fault of her own. Before that, she was regarded more or less as shy wallpaper. Once she was a widow, misogyny and xenophobia kicked in and now she was suddenly portrayed as a dominating bitch who surely had sex with George‘s (married) teacher, Lord Bute, a Scot (and as I remember from other 18th century reading material as well, there was a lot of anti-Scot hatred in London in particular) , with the two of them conspiring to make George either a crypto Stuart or a Catholic or both. People were carrying a petticoat and a boot around to be booed and hissed at. This was all nonsense (so says not just Roberts but other historians as well), and the bitterest part of it is that it didn‘t even let up years and years later when she was dying of throat cancer, and Bute (who had been briefly been the Prime Minister (though that title wasn‘t yet really used) for G3, with the predictable result of everyone else going spare) retired from politics and not having in the presence of either son or mother for eons. Even her coffin during her funeral procession was booed and cursed. Not, again, for anything she‘d actually done, but for a supposed affair she never had. George had visited her regularly in her illness, and how he felt about this treatment of his mother both before and after her death can be imagined. (When Augusta come to England, she‘s been 16 and landed straight into the dysfunctional Hannover feud between George II, his wife Caroline and Fritz of Wales, which notoriously included having to endure a carriage drive mid-labour from Hampton Court to Richmond because Fritz of Wales didn‘t want her to give birth anywhere near his parents. Welcome to life in Great Britain.)
As Bridgerton viewers know, George was married to another imported German princess, age 17, and literally directly of the boat (i.e. on the day of her arrival). This was Charlotte, and while the marriage was arranged, it turned into what Roberts called the sole love match of the House of Hannover in the 18th century. (I guess, if you define „love match“ as „they both loved each other, and we have it in written contemporary testimony by them and others“, because grandfather George II did love his wife, Caroline of Ansbach. Passionately and life long, mistresses not withstanding. We just don‘t know whether or not Caroline returned the feeling, or whether she was solely into power, as Lord Hervey says.) (Whereas the sincerely pious George III.did not have mistresses. Pre-Charlotte, he had a serious crush on Sarah Lennox for a while, but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him to make her his mistress, and marriage was out of the question, so that was that, and then he fell in love with his bride. George about Charlotte, early during his either first or second (more about this in a moment) mental breakdown: „The Queen is my physician, and no man can have a better; she is my friend, and no one can have a better.“ But of course the best known things about G3 are not that he was happily married, but that a) he was King when America said goodbye, and b) he had several mental breakdowns until it became permanent, which caused the necessity of a epoch-name giving Regency.
Roberts goes into great detail about the entire war of independence mess. Not much new for me there - having read Dr. Johnson‘s contemporary Taxation no tyranny! pamphlet, I am aware of the case for the crown. (Basically: after the 7 Years War, Britain was in serious debt. It didn‘t seem unreasonable to expect the American colonies to pay taxes for their own protection and administration - Roberts says none of the money actually went to Britain, it all remained within the colonies and was used for the infrastructure there - and your avarage citizen of an American colony paid in fact less tax and had far more liberties than your avarage Briton.) In fact, for my taste it was a bit too much War of Independence, and I wouldn‘t be surprised if the biography was written specifically an US audience. Speaking of the 7 Years War, what was new was Roberts pointing out that, since Bute‘s government, having made peace with France in said war, decided to classify the rest as an inner German struggle and cut of the subsidies for Prussia, and withdraw from European continental politics as much as they could, all this splendid isolation had resulted in England not having any current friends on the continent. Which did matter in the war, not just because France supported Team Rebels, but because Prussia had no intention to support anyone (those subsidies!), Spain followed France, and the smaller German principalities who did supply some soldiers wanted a lot of money for those. (Basically: Brexit is always a disaster, mes amies.)
Regarding the mental illness: the biography makes the case there might have been an early occurrence which Charlotte was able to cover up, so while no one saw the King for weeks there were rumours, but not yet about mental illness, and he recovered from this, with the next serious breakdown happening decades later. (That was the one famously dramatized by Alan Bennett in The Madness of King George.) But after the likely second one, the intervals grew shorter, and the saddest thing was that Charlotte came to a point where she couldn‘t live in the same palace with George anymore; Roberts says given George when mad could go from devoted husband to angry and abusive in a heartbeat, nobody could blame her. But it did mean ghastly Prinny, future G4, had the opportunity to present his rambling father to his friends to underline how truly mad he was.
As to the nature of the illness, I did know that the 1960s porphyria theory (which Bennett was following in his play/film) is now outdated and the current speculation is it was bi-polar disorder, with an early 20th century biographer coming up with the extravagant theory it must have been all that sex with Charlotte which in the opinion of the early 20th century guy he couldn‘t have enjoyed since she wasn‘t pretty, I kid you not. The various physical treatments attempted were all awful and useless, making things worse, though Roberts points out there really was no known treatment at the time. An additional painful aspect was that George was aware what was happening to him in the early days of his breakdowns but unable to stop it and horrified by it.
Lastly: there is no question our author is of the Tory persuasion, not just in the case of G3‘s various cabinets. The French Revolution was a menace from the get go, not just during the Terreur. France in general is always presented as scheming and manipulating. Fox with his unpatriotic wishes that first the American Rebels should win and then later with his sympathies for fraternité, liberté, egalité is a dirty traitor. The problem with long term British historiography is that Whigs wrote history while Tories made history. And so forth. It makes one go right away to Byron's Vision of Judgement in satiric protest.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-29 07:49 pm (UTC)Basically, I was completely taken out of the story by trying to work out on which occasion anyone with kidnapping (or assassination) designs would have been able to get the entire (male) royal Hannover line at the same time.
Hee. I suppose authors don't know what details their readers are going to be nitpicking!
no subject
Date: 2025-01-30 08:48 am (UTC)And that's leaving aside the idea that if you kidnapp (or, let's be more realistic, kill) G2 and his sons and his grandsons, all of England would happily accept James and Charlie as their rulers. Yes, the Hannovers weren't personally popular at this point (weirdly enough, G3 would be later, the only Hannover king to be so), but there is a reason they came to the throne in the first place, and that reason hasn't gone away, plus the anti Scot feeling was really MONUMENTAL and as fierce as the anti English sentiment in Scotland in precisely that era. (I mean, seriously. Even a decade later, you have everyone freaking out about Lord Bute being a Scot and eagerly consuming pamphlets in which he's accused of having raised young G3 to be a crypto Catholic Stuart (!). (Meanwhile, young G3: most pious Protestant since Queen Anne, hero worships William of Orange and sees him as his royal role model.
On the more realistic side, kudos to the author, he does let Hector point out that Charlie's idea that Frederick II might support him is delusional, because Fritz might have fun annoying Uncle G2 and harboring Jacobite lords at his court, but no way, absolutely no way, is he going to provide time, money or soldiers to topple the Hannover Cousins and bring the Stuarts back.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-30 02:19 pm (UTC)that's leaving aside the idea that if you kidnapp (or, let's be more realistic, kill) G2 and his sons and his grandsons, all of England would happily accept James and Charlie as their rulers. That may have been the belief at the time? It's definitely a trope that Will Not Die in fiction, and drives me mad (along with the aforementioned 'all Scots support our Clear True King, James' narrative) Even leaving aside Charles's clear personal flaws!
no subject
Date: 2025-02-01 10:10 am (UTC)When James Boswell (a Scot) visited Voltaire, Voltaire asked him whether Boswell, who was heading towards Italy next, will try to see Charles in Rome. And then either adds, or Boswell says (the editor of the academic edition of Boswell's journals says the punctation isn't clar) in reply re: Bonnie Prince Charlie that he's a sad spectacle because "He kicks women, and he ought to be kicked".
You're right that The Bookseller of Inverness does make it clear not all Scots are Jacobites, but it doesn't allow for something like the rant of (Scottish) Andrew Bisset, the editor of (Scottish) Andrew Mitchell's reports and journals, about how the Stuarts sucked (and Bisset wasn't admirer of the House of Hannover, it really wasn't that). But mainly the reason why I couldn't warm up to it was, as I said above, that I had the feeling the book couldn't decide who the main character was, and I was actually more interested in either of the two ladies getting slut-shamed, i.e. Barbara and Ian's mother, than I was in him and Hector, and Barbara hardly shows up while the mother is only ever mentioned.
ETA: and on a more petty note: based on the title, I had expected more passion about books. Instead, the fact he was a bookseller was just relevant because that's how the book with the list of names ended up in his possession.