The Resolution of Farmer George

"George, be a king!" his mother commanded him, and no one can say that George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick and Lueneburg, Arch-Treasurer and Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, has not done his best. The first English-born monarch since Queen Anne died more than 60 years ago, George proudly proclaimed in his first speech from the throne that he "gloried in the name of Briton."* Yet paradoxically, his patriotism, combined with the dogmatic, unyielding temperament he has shown since childhood, has torn apart the British Empire he inherited 16 years ago.

George, now 38, was only twelve when his father Frederick, Prince of Wales, died in 1751 from internal injuries caused by a blow from a cricket ball. A scheming, irascible man, Frederick was totally alienated from his own parents, George II and Queen Caroline ("If I was to see him in hell," Caroline said of her son, "I should feel no more for him than I should for any other rogue that ever went there"). He saw little more of young George, who never speaks of him even now.

After Frederick's death, George's mother, the domineering Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, took on the full responsibility for his upbringing. She gave him her own self-righteousness and kept him away from other boys, who she felt might corrupt him. Princess Augusta was equally stern with George's four brothers. Seeing the young Duke of Gloucester in an unhappy mood one day, she sharply asked why he was so silent. "I am thinking," he told her. "Thinking, Sir! And of what?" she demanded. "I am thinking," he replied, "that if ever I have a son I will not make him so unhappy as you make me."

One of George's tutors, Lord Waldegrave, writes that the young prince had commendable resolution but far too much obstinacy. Adds Waldegrave: "He has great command of his passions, and will seldom do wrong--except when he mistakes wrong for right." Lacking a father, George has always depended on older men for advice. Passionately attracted as a youth to the beautiful Lady Sarah Lennox, he let Lord Bute, his mother's favorite adviser and his own mentor, talk him out of marriage. "I submit my happiness to you," he wrote Bute, "who are the best of friends, whose friendship I value if possible above my love for the most charming of her sex." When Bute said no, George and his advisers agreed on Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, sight unseen.

George is said by those who were present to have winced at his first glimpse of his exceedingly homely bride-to-be, but true to his fashion, he gamely said his marriage vows a few hours after her arrival.

Unlike the first two Hanoverian Kings, both of whom kept mistresses, George has been a devoted husband and father. Up at 6, he attends chapel with Charlotte and their eleven children at 8. A firm believer in hard exercise, he rides every day, rain or shine, for three or four hours and often ends the evening with several hours of simple country dancing. His other habits are equally Spartan. Lunch is usually nothing more than tea and bread and butter; dinner is often boiled mutton and turnips, washed down with barley water. He dresses plainly, and he will not even allow a rug on his bedroom floor, calling such a luxury an effeminacy.

As hard-working as he is, George does not have a nimble intelligence, and his personal tastes run toward the mediocre--and mediocrities. His favorite poet, for example, is James Beattie, a Scot who writes romantic sentimental verse ("When in the crimson cloud of even,/ The lingering light decays,/ And Hesper on the front of Heaven/ His glistering gem displays"). He loves the theatre, but would much rather see a pantomime or farce than Shakespeare, who is not one of his favorites. He is suspicious of all innovations and innovators. To give him his due, however, he seems to recognize his intellectual shortcomings, and has been heard to complain that his early education was sadly neglected. Still, despite the neglect and his mother's obvious harshness, George and Charlotte dutifully visited the old lady at her residence in Carlton House three times a week until her death in 1772.

Sophisticated Londoners jest about the dullness of George and his court. The King has no small talk, and for want of anything better to say, he is likely to end half his conversations with a hearty "What? What?" and the other half with a "Hey? Hey?" Still, George is pleased by every sign of his personal popularity with ordinary Englishmen--at least until the start of the war--and he enjoys the nickname, based on his love of rural outings, "Farmer George."

If he is the first truly English King since Charles II, George is also the first King since the fallen Stuarts to rule as well as reign. His grandfather would content himself with such trivia as choosing military uniforms and mastering the intricacies of court etiquette --leaving matters of policy to his Prime Minister, the great Robert Walpole. George III, by contrast, has chosen a First Minister he can dominate, the fat, indolent Lord North, and he involves himself in all kinds of matters, from the appointment of an obscure curate to a country parish to the planning of future military campaigns in the Colonies.

George views the American Rebellion as an almost personal affront. There are no grays in his view, only stark blacks and whites, wrongs and rights. Over and over, he emphasizes that "those deluded people" have forgotten their duty, to him and to England. "Every means of distressing America must meet with my concurrence," he wrote Lord North last year, "as it tends to bringing them to feel the necessity of returning to their duty." He quoted to North with approval the opinion of Major General Frederick Haldimand, one of the government's leading experts on America, that "nothing but force can bring them to reason ... and till they have suffered for their conduct, it would be dangerous to give ear to any propositions they might transmit."

This year he urged quicker military action against the Rebels on Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, adding that "we must show that the English lion when roused has not only his wonted resolution, but has added the swiftness of the race horse." A more compromising or less obstinate man might yet regain the Colonists' loyalty, but George, who is in many ways a model King, lacks a very important royal virtue --flexibility.

*On Anne's death, Parliament awarded the Crown to the nearest Protestant heir, James I's great-grandson George, Elector of Hannover, and great-grandfather of the present King.

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