You'll spot that 'twas just as I feared,
That photo had quite disappeared;
So I went back, and found it
Then caught it and bound it -
until on my screen it appeared.
It's behaviour I'd found really weird! Although fairly typical of that miserable monarch, the late (and not much lamented) King George IV.
10 comments:
You need to stick the pictures in with photo corners and UHU Mike.
George looks more like Superman and would even more atop a chimney. I am a fan of Superman soup (old ham with capon)
Sounds like truly fortifying sustenance Rog. (Maybe capon sounds a bit sissy but old roosters can be awfully tough and stringy)
In my pre-teen youth I bought a George IV half-crown from Billy Lagoda for six-pence; the profit disposed me to think kindly of 'Prinny' but his contemporaries seem less impressed...
Wikipedia reports:- King George IV’s last years were marked by increasing physical and mental decay and withdrawal from public affairs. Privately a senior aide to the king confided to his diary "A more contemptible, cowardly, selfish, unfeeling dog does not exist ... There have been good and wise kings but not many of them ... and this I believe to be one of the worst."
On George's death The Times captured elite opinion succinctly: "There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased king. What eye has wept for him? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow? ... If he ever had a friend – a devoted friend in any rank of life – we protest that the name of him or her never reached us."
During the political crisis caused by Catholic emancipation, the Duke of Wellington said that George was "the worst man he ever fell in with his whole life, the most selfish, the most false, the most ill-natured, the most entirely without one redeeming quality",but his eulogy delivered in the House of Lords called George "the most accomplished man of his age" and praised his knowledge and talent. Wellington said later, George was "a magnificent patron of the arts ... the most extraordinary compound of talent, wit, buffoonery, obstinacy, and good feeling — in short a medley of the most opposite qualities, with as great a preponderence of good, that I ever saw in any character in my life."
Eulogies of Kings are not to be taken literally.
Thank you Rog. I'll remember the tip about photo corners and UHU. I wish I was a communications expert like you.
Crowbard - "King John was not a good King,
He had his little ways,
And sometimes no one spoke to him for days and days and days". However, leaving King John aside, our only Monarch who could rival (and probably beat) George IV as a nasty piece of work would, in my opinion be King James II of England (James VII of Scotland).
'How very unlike the home life of our own dear Queen' as someone said (in Queen Victoria's reign) after seeing a performance of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
P.s. Crowbard, ref your mention of Billy Lagoda, don't know if I told you, but he died earlier this year, just short of his hundredth birthday.
P.p.s. Just had an email from Sue Hammons(?), daughter of cousin Betty Williamson. Betty has died, after a six month's battle with cancer.
P.p.p.s. Crowbard - I fear I'm starting to sound rather like Ann's Auntie Violet, who always passed on bad news, and generally took a dim view of most things (a female Eeyore). Sorry.
Good Kings are hard to come by, Mike. Off-hand I rather esteemed Farmer George when he was sane, and I believe George VI made a pretty good fist of the rough hand he was dealt. But by George we've had some Queens worthy of the title from Cartumandia and Boudicca to Bess and Viccy and on to our present monarch; God Bless The Ladies.
Re your p.p.p.s.
Man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upwards. Being dead ain't half as bad as waitin' for it to happen....
On the other hand one who fails to rejoice at being alive should stop waiting for it to happen and get out a bit.
Crowbard - Ref your remarks on Monarchs; quite agree with you, especially with regard to the Ladies.
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