Fitzherbert, Maria Anne, 1756-1837; George IV, King of Great Britain, 1762-1830
The Hon. George Hanger (afterwards the fourth and last Lord Coleraine)
was at one time an especial friend of the Prince. He was educated
at Eton and Göttingen, and was for some little time an officer in
the first regiment of foot guards, which regiment he soon left in
disgust at someone being promoted over his head. He then received
an appointment from the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel as Captain in the
Hessian Jäger Corps, then serving in America, and he was with this
corps throughout the war. He, afterwards (in 1782), was made a Major
in Tarleton's Light Dragoons, which was disbanded the following year,
and he retired on half-pay. It was then that he joined the Prince's
set, and received the appointment of equerry at a salary of £300 per
annum, and this, combined with raising recruits for the East India
Company, enabled him for a time to vie with the jovial crew with which
he associated. But evil days fell upon him, and he dwelt in the
King's Bench Prison from June 2, 1798, to April, 1799, and in 1800
set up for a time as a coal-merchant, and was nicknamed the Knight of
the Black Diamond. He appears in many of Gillray's caricatures, but
the most savage pictorial satire on him (by Cruickshank) was issued
with the _Scourge_ for November 2, 1812, where he is represented as
a tall, full-faced man, wearing a long drab-coloured coat with a
cape, and a star upon his right breast. Each of his arms encircles a
gin-drinking old woman, and at his feet, one of which is cloven like
a satyr's, sprawls a young woman who applies a bottle to her lips. A
dandy, standing near, inspects the scene through his quizzing glass,
and observes: 'Hang her! She's quite drunk.' A label issuing from the
mouth of the principal person makes him observe: 'As for me, my name is
sufficient; I am known by the title of the Paragon of Debauchery, and I
only claim to be the [Prince]s _Confidential Friend_.' The letterpress
description of the caricature contains the following illustrative
paragraph:
[Illustration: GEORGEY IN THE COAL-HOLE.]
'A tall, strapping-looking person, shabbily, but buckishly attired,
with a peculiar cast of countenance, now stepped forward, and cried
out, "My _name_ is sufficient. Whoever has heard of ---- must know that
I am without a rival in the annals of debauchery. I claim no higher
honour than to be my _Prince's friend_."'
On the death of his brother, on December 11, 1814, he succeeded to the
title of Lord Coleraine, but he never assumed the title, and disliked
being addressed by it. On his death, unmarried, on March 31, 1824, at
the age of seventy-three, the barony of Coleraine became extinct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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