Identity Politics

Morris's ambitious book seeks to untangle an incredibly knotty topic: how the private lives of powerful figures became a matter for national concern during the eighteenth century, and, conversely, how public scrutiny affected the private lives of statesmen. Morris examines how one's personal life was viewed as an arbiter of one's ability to govern—both for monarchs and politicians. "No longer God's vicegerents, monarchs and their heirs apparent had become political players, and thus had to share the public stage and the representational realm with members of both Houses" (16). They had, in other words, to prove their fitness to rule, a factor that had become more and more important since the messy reign of Charles I, and even more pressing given the catastrophic consequences of Louis XVI's incompetence over the Channel.

Morris provides much detail of the press coverage of comparable events across the course of the century, focusing especially on contrasting the courts of Georges II and III, and identifying a trend toward presenting news as "human-interest stories" (210). Reports of the wedding of Princess Anne to William IV of Orange (March 1734), for example, "stressed its political and downplayed its personal aspects" (107), whereas, during the betrothal of the next princess royal, in 1797, "the press made ribald jokes about the dynastic aspect of the match and treated Princess Charlotte as if she were a local village girl rather than a diplomatic asset" (109). Morris finds that, on all sides, "The print cultures of their eras used notions of personal character to further partisan interests" (5). Moreover, then as now, "selective reporting" was rife (7). In effect, Morris argues that politicians and royals, equally, "became fictionalized and richly imagined like characters in novels as multiple publics observed and discussed their images" (10). With the rise of the novel genre, individual lives became public stories to tell.

Morris explains that George III sought, in a way his Hanoverian predecessors had not, to promote himself publicly as a loving family man. This had consequences for those around him in politics. In order to be a political success, a man had to maintain a public image of domestic virtuousness, while privately remaining, in Samuel Johnson's term, "clubbable." The key was getting the balance right. "Domestic devotion was admirable as long as it did not render a man a boring homebody. Sexual irregularities were tolerable as long as they did not affect a man's physical and emotional accessibility to other members of his party" (97). Personal politics, and notions of masculinity, were riddled with contradictions; a reputation for domestic bliss was valorized, but so too was prowess at womanizing and gaming. To elucidate her point about male hypocrisy when it came to balancing the familial with the clubbable, Morris draws on the case of Sir Gilbert Elliot, who wrote "heart-tugging love letters" to his wife, while keeping an adulterous second family secreted away, and making passes at various women, including Lady Elizabeth Webster, later Lady Holland (86–87). The latter railed against his insincerity: as she wrote in her diary, on 14 February 1794, he merely "affects great conjugal felicity" (86). Both the "increase in heterosociability and close male bonding … remained essential to political success," so that "In spite of growing condemnation of extramarital liaisons and sharper scrutiny by newspapers, politicians' shared intrigues could forge lifelong allegiances" (133). As an overview of how masculinity was constructed in Georgian politics, Morris's book must surely become essential reading.

Financial, as well as sexual, continence was also a national concern. Morris details the relationship between personal and national economy (135–73), taking the example of the Prince of Wales (later George IV) to illustrate the paradoxical attitude toward his extravagance. Ministerial and Opposition newspapers both praised the Prince's elegance in some contexts, but condemned its expense in others (158). The Times and the Morning Post, for instance, gushed over the spectacular diamond sword he wore to the queen's birthday in 1791—an item that...