GEORGE IV. [George Augustus Frederick] (1762-1830), king of Great Britain and Ireland, eldest son of George III., was born at St James's Palace, London, on the 12th of August 1762. He was naturally gifted, was well taught in the classics, learnt to speak French, Italian and German fluently, and had considerable taste for music and the arts; and in person he was remarkably handsome. His tutor, Bishop Richard Hurd, said of him when fifteen years old that he would be "either the most polished gentleman or the most accomplished blackguard in Europe--possibly both"; and the latter prediction was only too fully justified. Reaction from the strict and parsimonious style of his parents' domestic life, which was quite out of touch with the gaiety and extravagance of London "society," had its natural effect in plunging the young prince of Wales, flattered and courted as he was, into a whirl of pleasure-seeking. At the outset his disposition was brilliant and generous, but it was essentially unstable, and he started even before he came of age on a career of dissipation which in later years became wholly profligate. He had an early amour with the actress Mary ("Perdita") Robinson, and in the choice of his friends he opposed and annoyed the king, with whom he soon became (and always remained) on the worst of terms, by associating himself with Fox and Sheridan and the Whig party. When in 1783 he came of age, a compromise between the coalition ministry and the king secured him an income of £50,000 from the Civil List, and £60,000 was voted by parliament to pay his debts and start his separate establishment at Carlton House. There, under the auspices of C.J. Fox and Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, he posed as a patron of Whig politics and a leader in all the licence and luxury of gay society--the "First gentleman in Europe," as his flatterers described him as years went on. And at this early age he fell seriously in love with the famous Mrs Fitzherbert. Entry: GEORGE
Having received his degree in Strassburg, Goethe returned home in August 1771, and began his initiation into the routine of an advocate's profession. In the following year, in order to gain insight into another side of his calling, he spent four months at Wetzlar, where the imperial law-courts were established. But Goethe's professional duties had only a small share in the eventful years which lay between his return from Strassburg and that visit to Weimar at the end of 1775, which turned the whole course of his career, and resulted in his permanent attachment to the Weimar court. Goethe's life in Frankfort was a round of stimulating literary intercourse; in J. H. Merck (1741-1791), an army official in the neighbouring town of Darmstadt, he found a friend and mentor, whose irony and common-sense served as a corrective to his own exuberance of spirits. Wetzlar brought new friends and another passion, that for Charlotte Buff, the daughter of the _Amtmann_ there--a love-story which has been immortalized in _Werthers Leiden_--and again the young poet's nature was obsessed by a love which was this time strong enough to bring him to the brink of that suicide with which the novel ends. A visit to the Rhine, where new interests and the attractions of Maximiliane von Laroche, a daughter of Wieland's friend, the novelist Sophie von Laroche, brought partial healing; his intense preoccupation with literary work on his return to Frankfort did the rest. In 1775 Goethe was attracted by still another type of woman, Lili Schönemann, whose mother was the widow of a wealthy Frankfort banker. A formal betrothal took place, and the beauty of the lyrics which Lili inspired leaves no room for doubt that here was a passion no less genuine than that for Friederike or Charlotte. But Goethe--more worldly wise than on former occasions--felt instinctively that the gay, social world in which Lili moved was not really congenial to him. A visit to Switzerland in the summer of 1775 may not have weakened his interest in her, but it at least allowed him to regard her objectively; and, without tragic consequences on either side, the passion was ultimately allowed to yield to the dictates of common-sense. Goethe's departure for Weimar in November made the final break less difficult. Entry: GOETHE
EDGEWORTH, MARIA (1767-1849), Irish novelist, second child and eldest daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (q.v.) and his first wife, Anna Maria Elers, was born in the house of her maternal grandparents at Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, on the 1st of January 1767. Her early efforts in fiction were of a sufficiently melodramatic character; for she recollected one of her schoolgirl compositions, in which the hero wore a mask made of the dried skin taken from a dead man's face. Her holidays were often spent in the house of the eccentric Thomas Day, for whom she entertained a genuine respect. She had ample opportunities for society among her father's neighbours in Ireland, among whom were the second Lord Longford, whose daughter, "Kitty" Pakenham, became later duchess of Wellington, Lady Moira at Castle Forbes, and Maria's aunt, Margaret Ruxton, at Black Castle. She gained a first-hand experience of the Irish peasantry by acting as her father's assistant in the management of the estate. The Edgeworths were in Ireland from 1793 onwards through that dangerous period, and Maria's letters, always gay and natural, make very light of their anxieties and their real perils. Entry: EDGEWORTH
At that time there was a personage at the court whom Marie Antoinette particularly detested. It was the cardinal Louis de Rohan, formerly ambassador at Vienna, whence he had been recalled in 1774, having incurred the queen's displeasure by revealing to the empress Maria Theresa the frivolous actions of her daughter, a disclosure which brought a maternal reprimand, and for having spoken lightly of Maria Theresa in a letter of which Marie Antoinette learned the contents. After his return to France the cardinal was anxious to regain the favour of the queen in order to obtain the position of prime minister. In March 1784 he entered into relations with a certain Jeanne de St Remy de Valois, a descendant of a bastard of Henry II., who after many adventures had married a _soi-disant_ comte de Lamotte, and lived on a small pension which the king granted her. This adventuress soon gained the greatest ascendancy over the cardinal, with whom she had intimate relations. She persuaded him that she had been received by the queen and enjoyed her favour; and Rohan resolved to use her to regain the queen's good will. The comtesse de Lamotte assured the cardinal that she was making efforts on his behalf, and soon announced to him that he might send his justification to Marie Antoinette. This was the beginning of a pretended correspondence between Rohan and the queen, the adventuress duly returning replies to Rohan's notes, which she affirmed to come from the queen. The tone of the letters became very warm, and the cardinal, convinced that Marie Antoinette was in love with him, became ardently enamoured of her. He begged the countess to obtain a secret interview for him with the queen, and a meeting took place in August 1784 in a grove in the garden at Versailles between him and a lady whom the cardinal believed to be the queen herself. Rohan offered her a rose, and she promised him that she would forget the past. Later a certain Marie Lejay (renamed by the comtesse "Baronne Gay d'Oliva," the last word being apparently an anagram of Valoi), who resembled Marie Antoinette, stated that she had been engaged to play the role of queen in this comedy. In any case the countess profited by the cardinal's conviction to borrow from him sums of money destined ostensibly for the queen's works of charity. Enriched by these, the countess was able to take an honourable place in society, and many persons believed her relations with Marie Antoinette, of which she boasted openly and unreservedly, to be genuine. It is still an unsettled question whether she simply mystified people, or whether she was really employed by the queen for some unknown purpose, perhaps to ruin the cardinal. In any case the jewellers believed in the relations of the countess with the queen, and they resolved to use her to sell their necklace. She at first refused their commission, then accepted it. On the 21st of January 1785 she announced that the queen would buy the necklace, but that not wishing to treat directly, she left the affair to a high personage. A little while later Rohan came to negotiate the purchase of the famous necklace for the 1,600,000 livres, payable in instalments. He said that he was authorized by the queen, and showed the jewellers the conditions of the bargain approved in the handwriting of Marie Antoinette. The necklace was given up. Rohan took it to the countess's house, where a man, in whom Rohan believed he recognized a valet of the queen, came to fetch it. Madame de Lamotte had told the cardinal that Marie Antoinette would make him a sign to indicate her thanks, and Rohan believed that she did make him a sign. Whether it was so, or merely chance or illusion, no one knows. But it is certain that the cardinal, convinced that he was acting for the queen, had engaged the jewellers to thank her; that Boehmer and Bassenge, before the sale, in order to be doubly sure, had sent word to the queen of the negotiations in her name; that Marie Antoinette had allowed the bargain to be concluded, and that after she had received a letter of thanks from Boehmer, she had burned it. Meanwhile the "comte de Lamotte" appears to have started at once for London, it is said with the necklace, which he broke up in order to sell the stones. Entry: DIAMOND