What? – What? – What?
1 Introduction: King George III (1738–1820) and Later Modern English
King George III (1738–1820) invites linguistic investigation for many reasons. He was not only the first Hanoverian monarch to have been born and raised in England, and thus to have spoken English from birth (ODNB Cannon 2004/2009), but his long reign (1760–1820) was both context and catalyst for some defining elements of the development of Later Modern English (LModE). The standardisation of English was intensifying at the beginning of his reign, with the codification of increasingly prescriptive norms (see Beal Reference Beal2004: 12; Tieken-Boon van Ostade Reference Tieken-Boon van Ostade2009: 11). Moreover, British and American linguistic norms were to diverge as one outcome of the American War of Independence (1775–83). In my association of George with these developing linguistic standards, I do not enter debates about his ‘responsibility for the breach with America’ (Ditchfield Reference Ditchfield2002: 119); nor will I begin debates about his linguistic influence, e.g. by interpreting corpus-based trends in his grammar or spelling. This article instead draws on contemporary anecdotes about George III, and interprets the metalanguage that constructed popular perceptions of the king's language. Common conceptions and representations of language have become the subject of great interest to sociolinguists, as they sketch a background against which language is actually used, and the specific sociocultural situations and stakes of particular ideologies (e.g. Coupland & Jaworski Reference Coupland, Jaworski, Jaworksi, Coupland and Galasiński2004: 36–7; Niedzielski & Preston Reference Niedzielski and Preston2000: 309). I am particularly interested in what we can infer about the ongoing standardisation of Later Modern English from the metalanguage of King and Nation, King and Individual, and King and Class.
The anecdotes of course also reflect shifting public opinion of the king through the course of his reign. Upon his accession, the king himself attempted to direct metalanguage revolving around issues of nationalism: he made patriotic claims for his own Englishness as a patron of codifiers, for instance, exploiting the authenticity and authority of the newly standardising vernacular, and in such public ceremonies as his wedding. Public appreciation of the king's domesticity and other virtues was ultimately to help the king and the British monarchy to survive potentially revolutionary times in the 1790s, but for the first decades of his reign the king was frequently vilified, not least for a despotism popularly attributed to the influence of his Scottish ex-tutor and eventual prime minister John Stuart, the third earl of Bute (1713–92). By the 1780s, the king's verbal tics were well known to satirists; in the metalanguage used of the king as an individual, however, his idiolect could also humanise him. Indeed, by his death in 1820, the ‘farmer’ king was favourably represented as talking incognito with dialect-speaking agricultural labourers, in a few of many nostalgic anecdotes frequently reprinted in newspapers and popular biographies. The labourers’ dialect indexes their lower class and therefore the gulf between them and the king, but I argue that these dialogues also demonstrate and celebrate the monarch's common touch. Indeed, we might infer some social meanings of non-standard English from these anecdotes about the king's idiolect and his engagement with speakers of dialect. In Romanticism and the Rise of English, Elfenbein has argued that in the context of standardisation, vernacular dialects could index ‘vitality’ and ‘energy’ for literary authors (2009: 15). This article reminds us that non-standardised English could also be appropriated by journalists and popular biographers, and in the context of a dialogue used to signal an interlocutor's ability to bridge ‘the supposedly superficial differences of language to find the human essence beneath’ (Elfenbein Reference Elfenbein2009: 90).
2 King and Nation: Hanoverians in Britain and the status of English internationally
2.1 The throne speech: ‘Born and educated in this country I glory in the name of Britain’
George III was king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and king of Hanover. Sketching his biography provides historical context as well as exemplifying key aspects of the status of English: in the early years of his reign, the king strategically proclaimed himself as native to Britain, both appropriating and enhancing the rising status of the English language. In a passage he himself added to his first throne speech on 18 November 1760 (e.g. Walpole [Reference Walpole1760–72] 2000: I, 18–19), George emphasised and celebrated his native origins and education:
Born and educated in this country I glory in the name of Britain; and the peculiar happiness of my life will ever consist in promoting the welfare of a people whose loyalty and warm affection to me I consider as the greatest and most permanent security of my throne. (BL. Add. 32684 fol. 121, quoted in Black Reference Black2006: 44)
George's performance of patriotism here needs to be contextualised in British history. He held the throne because in 1688 the Catholic James II had been deposed by his Protestant daughter and son-in-law, and because in 1714 the Act of Settlement had brought the Protestant but German-speaking George I (1660–1727) to the throne, despite some support for James II's son, James Stuart (1688–1766), and in turn for his son Charles (1720–88). The 1715 and 1745 Jacobite rebellions were challenges – albeit unsuccessful ones – to the legitimacy of the Protestant but German-speaking Hanoverians.
The king used English to enhance his political legitimacy, already entrenched by his English birth and by the failure of the 1745 rebellion. George's elder contemporary Horace Walpole (1717–97) asserts the king's legitimacy as a background for his critical Memoirs of his reign:
Being the first of his line born in England, the prejudice against his family as foreigners, ceased in his person. Hanover was no longer the native soil of our princes; consequently attachment to the electorate was not likely to govern our councils, as it had done in the last two reigns. This circumstance too of his birth shifted the unpopularity of foreign extraction from the House of Brunswick to the Stuarts. (Walpole [Reference Walpole1760–72] 2000: I, 6; quoted by Carretta Reference Carretta1990: 41)
The young king's public patriotism had been instilled by his father, Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales (1707–51), himself born in Hanover. Frederick's own pragmatic patriotism is perhaps most memorably exemplified by his commissioning of the masque in which ‘Rule, Britannia!’ appeared (ODNB Kilburn 2004/2009; see also Ditchfield Reference Ditchfield2002: 138). Anticipating criticism, Frederick promoted his son's patriotism from an early age, a strategy that seems particularly prudent given his own untimely death in 1751. Published in the Gentleman's Magazine (1749: 37), it was public knowledge that George, even as a ten-year-old at two removes from the throne, had spoken a patriotic new prologue to a royal performance of Addison's Cato:
What, tho’ a boy! It may with truth be said, A boy in England born, in England bred. (Quoted by ODNB Cannon 2004/2009)
Moreover, concluding what Cannon calls his ‘political testament’ drafted in 1749, Frederick had advised his son to ‘convince the nation that you are not only an Englishman born and bred, but that you are also this by inclination’ (quoted by ODNB Cannon 2004/2009). With a throne speech that emphasised both his native birth and especially his explicit intention to promote the welfare of his people, George was explicitly signalling a political shift away from Hanover (Ditchfield Reference Ditchfield2002: 23). The passage he added to his first throne speech is significant in emphasising not merely his native birth (and, implicitly, language) but especially its political implications. The king's use of Britain showed the canny understanding that a correspondence should be drawn between the king's English and his entire kingdom: the appeal beyond England of the broader term Britain can be illustrated by the Irish Thomas Sheridan's British Education (1756), for instance. The word also signalled his intended rejection of party politics, by favouring the nation (Ditchfield Reference Ditchfield2002: 138; Black Reference Black2006: 10, 49–50).
The king's speech was generally well-received. The House of Lords was duly moved to thank the king: ‘your satisfaction in having received your birth and education amongst us’ had ‘cast ‘lustre . . . upon the name of Briton’ (quoted by Holt Reference Holt1820: I, 19). Indeed, although Britain clearly appeared in the draft manuscript (Black Reference Black2006: 44), in transcriptions the word Briton often appears, as is evident for instance in Holt's and other memoirs of the king and his reign (see Carretta Reference Carretta1990: 301). Whether they had seen the speech as emphasising the individual king or his subjects, many Britons responded favourably to it (e.g. Ditchfield Reference Ditchfield2002: 50). The king kept his promised attachment to his country in that he never visited Hanover and never even left England (Ditchfield Reference Ditchfield2002: 24).
The king's claims nevertheless came under immediate metalinguistic attack, when some interested critics interpreted apparent Scotticisms in his speech as reflecting political bias (Hibbert Reference Hibbert1998: 77; Black Reference Black2006: 46). Telling elements of the throne speech were felt to betray the influence of his Scottish ex-tutor and eventual prime minister Lord Bute. Although the king on the day of his accession had reached out to the Whig coalition ministers William Pitt (the elder, 1708–78) and Thomas Pelham-Holles, the Duke of Newcastle (1693–1768), both were quick to see Bute's influence on the king and to resent his presence at the first Privy Council meeting (Brooke Reference Brooke1972: 76). A primary issue was the prospect of peace in what would eventually be known as the Seven Years’ War. Eventually resigning over it on 5 October 1761, in October 1760 Pitt resented Bute's description of the current ‘bloody war’ in his draft of the king's address to the Privy Council, and requested emendations that would justify his ministry's ‘expensive but just and necessary war’ and would commit the country to make peace only ‘in concert with our allies’ (Brooke Reference Brooke1972: 75).
As the balance of political power was shifting, suspicious ministers listened for Bute's influences in the young king's English. It was noted that in his throne speech George had not used the words England or Englishman; the then Treasurer the Duke of Newcastle interpreted the term Briton as reflecting Bute's influence:
‘I suppose you will think Briton remarkable’, the Duke of Newcastle wrote to Lord Hardwicke, ‘It denotes the author to all the world’. (Quoted in Hibbert Reference Hibbert1998: 77)
Moreover, the king's stress in his throne speech on the first syllables of the words allies and revenues was interpreted as Scottish and as additional proof of Bute's influence on the king's political thinking:
He was much admired but thought to have too much studied action and it was observed that he laid the accent on the first syllable of Allys and Revenues, which is after the Scottish pronounciation. (Henry Fox, BL Add. 51439 fol. 10, quoted by Black Reference Black2006: 46)
Indeed, by 1762 the king had chosen Bute as his first lord of the Treasury. According to Hibbert (Reference Hibbert1998: 77), selecting a minister was the primary source of the monarch's power; this power was constrained only by that minister's ability to manipulate Parliament. Bute was widely believed to have instilled George with ‘Scottish principles of Stuart despotism’ as both his former tutor and his present minister (e.g. Carretta Reference Carretta1990: xv).Footnote 2 For the king's critics, his patriotic claims to a government above party were exposed by what they believed were his aspirations to autocracy (Brooke Reference Brooke1972: 91–2; Black Reference Black2006: 49–50). Although Bute held office for only a year, the young king's intimacy with him ruined the enthusiasm upon his accession and contributed to his unpopularity through the 1780s.
Whig politicians similarly interpreted the king's lexical stress on the initial syllables of words like allies and revenues as betraying Bute's influence and thus the king's lack of integrity. It is instructive to contextualise this anecdote linguistically as well as politically. From private criticism of the king we might infer that public discourse was felt to require standard English. More generally in the period, we can infer the cultural influence of Scots, and anxiety about it. In fact, the king's diction was not necessarily even Scottish: the category of words containing ally and revenue has been characterised by variation and change in lexical stress through this period (MacMahon Reference MacMahon and Romaine1998: 492–517), and in modern standard usage, both words now have syllable-initial stress. Moreover, Fox was not the only one of his contemporaries to interpret a seemingly non-standard feature of public language as signifying Scottish infiltration of high culture: writing anonymously in his new Critical Review (est. 1756), its Scottish editor Tobias Smollett mistakenly inferred Scottish authorship of Joseph Warton's anonymously published Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope from what had been incorrectly enregistered as the diagnostically ‘Scottish’ verb adduce (for a summary see Percy 2010: 76). Critics’ over-enthusiastic identification of salient variants as Scottish underscores the considerable influence of Scots on British public life (Jones Reference Jones and Hickey2010: 222) as well as the necessity of using standard English in public life.
2.2 The public husband: English in the marriage ceremony
The new king also made claims for his Englishness by insisting on English for his wedding ceremony in 1761 to the young Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744–1818). English language and literature were attracting interest on the Continent, as Tieken-Boon van Ostade (this issue) has shown. However, the status of English relative to French at this period can be illustrated with reference to George's consort Charlotte, who before their marriage had not learned English (e.g. Brooke Reference Brooke1972: 84). Charlotte came from one of the smaller courts of Europe (Brooke Reference Brooke1972: 80–1, 85). Even if she had had as poor an education as Walpole claimed ([Reference Walpole1760–72] 2000: I, 49–50), she was described by contemporaries as speaking French ‘middling well’ (quoted in Sedgwick 1960: 376) or ‘tolerably’ (Horace Walpole quoted in Hibbert Reference Hibbert1998: 40). Throughout her life, she used French as a lingua franca, for instance writing to her brother in it (Hibbert Reference Hibbert1998: 103). As a young woman, she is represented as learning about her marriage in French (Papendiek Reference Papendiek1887: I, 5–6) and even as uttering a French exclamation at the sight of her nine bejewelled British bridesmaids (Hibbert Reference Hibbert1998: 46; e.g. Galt 1820: I, 221–2). Indeed, according to Hedley, any of Charlotte's initial conversational difficulties in England reflected the dubious standards of the French spoken at George's court (Hedley Reference Hedley1975: 61–2). Claims of poor French in the British court further reinforce the image of British cultural inferiority: while Charlotte was not expected to have good English, the British were expected to have good French.
The importance to George of using English in Britain is clear from his insistence on using it for the marriage ceremony, despite the couple's common knowledge of German, Charlotte's ignorance of English (Black Reference Black2006: 144–5) and the secondary status of English as a European royal language. There was no clear precedent for the form of a service; George was the first unmarried monarch to ascend the throne since Charles II in 1660 (Brooke Reference Brooke1972: 80). The queen did not even have time to consult the German translation of the service obtained for her by the archbishop: when prompted, she said simply ‘“Ich will”’ (Hibbert Reference Hibbert1998: 46; Black Reference Black2006: 145). The couple's public visit to the theatre two days later must have been for similarly performative purposes, if also for George's enjoyment (Black Reference Black2006: 174). However, despite contemporaries’ sense of her French as merely ‘middling’ or ‘tolerabl[e]’, the queen is agreed to have learned English both quickly and well (ODNB Campbell Orr 2004/2009). Some memoirs of the king published after his death in 1820 link the speed of her mastery of the language with the king's insistence that the queen bring only two of her own attendants to England (Brooke Reference Brooke1972: 82–3; e.g. ‘Percy & Percy’ Reference Percy and Percy1820: IV, 45). But some accounts also stress the queen's disciplined time-management and the devotion of her husband in supplementing her instruction from Dr John James Majendie (1709–82) (e.g. Galt 1820: I, 267; Huish Reference Huish1821: 283). Such earnest domesticity was eventually to become part of the idealised public image of monarchy: the king's fidelity to his wife contrasted strongly with that of his brothers and sons (e.g. ODNB Campbell Orr 2004/2009).
2.3 Dedicatee and patron of codifiers
The king also staked his claim to Englishness by actively allying himself with the national language and dictionaries through patronage. English had been cultivated well before his reign, and codifiers had been courting royal support long before George (Lancashire Reference Lancashire, Lynch and McDermott2005). Hopeful codifiers had linked royalty with English; some further flattered their dedicatees by enhancing the status of the vernacular. Dedicating his Royal Universal British Grammar and Vocabulary to George (as Prince of Wales) for the use of his youngest siblings in Reference Farro1754, Daniel Farro repeated the phrase ‘British Dominions’ at least five times in the paratext and thus flattered the future ruler by representing his language as international and imperial (1754: iii–v, ix, xiii). In the dedication to his British Grammar (Reference Buchanan1762), the Scot James Buchanan informed George's new queen Charlotte that English was ‘the Language of the bravest, wisest, most powerful, and respectable Body of People upon the Face of the Globe’ (n.p.). This claim of political superiority might be undermined by the fact that in 1762 the Seven Years’ War with France had not yet concluded. By describing the domain of English as Britain and by linking the words English and royal, the titles of these texts certainly dignified English.
In their roles as dedicatees of codifying texts, George and his consort played somewhat passive roles in the standardisation of English. However, George III differed from his predecessors by giving pensions to codifiers: to the lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709–84) and to the elocutionary lecturer Thomas Sheridan (1719?–88), author of such works as British Education (1756). Having published the first edition of his Dictionary during George II's reign in 1755, Johnson received an annual pension of £300 from George III in 1762 (ODNB Rogers 2004/2009). Here George was supporting a previous patriotic endeavour and arguably associating himself with an English language that the act of the award constructed as already risen in status. Not everyone associated Johnson's pension with George's support of the language, as can be inferred from a contemporary satirical print: Johnson is represented as worshipping a ‘Golden Image’ and offering to teach English to ‘His Lordship’, whom we are to infer is George's Scottish advisor Bute because of the bust adorning a thistle-festooned column (Carretta Reference Carretta1990: 102–4). From this perspective, Johnson's pension is a reward not for past services rendered to English but for future services rendered to government propaganda; for some, Johnson himself inferred this from his own definitions, a pension for instance being given ‘to a state hireling for treason to his country’ (Johnson 1755, s.v. pension; e.g. ‘Percy & Percy’ Reference Percy and Percy1820: IV, 55). Less ambiguous evidence of the king's sincere interest in the English language may be inferred from the £200 pension he granted the Irish elocutionary lecturer Sheridan (Benzie Reference Benzie1972: 29). Sheridan had long promoted the ideology of a standard British accent in lectures and such publications as British Education (Benzie Reference Benzie1972: 9–11; Jones Reference Jones and Hickey2010: 226; ODNB Thomson 2004), but was not to publish his (long) projected pronunciation dictionary until 1780.
George and the royal family evidently inspired further codification of the vernacular. As Tieken-Boon van Ostade has noted (personal communication, 2012), the earliest usage guide to English contained an open letter ‘to the King’ in which he suggests founding an English Academy (Baker Reference Baker1770: i). And Ann Murry's Mentoria, which contained a chapter ‘On the practical use of grammar’, was dedicated ‘by permission’ to George and Charlotte's eldest daughter, the Princess Royal (1778: t.p.). An English Academy was never founded. But to what extent did the king ally himself with English as a father and educator?
2.4 Educator: English usage in the royal schoolroom and later modern Europe
Just as the king assisted his wife's instruction in English, so the couple were engaged in educating their many children. When the Scotsman James Beattie (1735–1803) visited London in 1773, Dr Majendie told him that ‘both the King and she are attentive to the education of their children to a degree which nothing can exceed’ (Beattie [Reference Beattie and Walker1773] 1946: 54). When George Prince of Wales was born in 1762, Lady Charlotte Finch was engaged as royal governess: Finch, along with the sub-governess Mrs Cotesworth, became responsible for the girls until they turned twenty-one and for the boys until they were set up in their own establishments (ODNB Shefrin 2004/2009; Fraser Reference Fraser2004: 22–3; Loussouarn Reference Loussouarn, Baudino, Carré and Révauger2005: 50). The girls acquired a dedicated English teacher in 1771, when the death of the king's sister allowed the two eldest princes space for their own establishment (Hibbert Reference Hibbert1972: 4; Fraser Reference Fraser2004: 22–3): Frederica Planta was hired in July 1771 (Skedd Reference Skedd1997: 207; Fraser Reference Fraser2004: 22–3). Although Planta is quoted as reporting favourably on the progress of the Prince of Wales (1762–1830) (Smith Reference Smith1999: 8), Hibbert's claim that it was by Planta that the five-year-old prince ‘had been taught the rudiments of English grammar’ (1972: 3) is chronologically inconsistent with the date of Planta's hiring. There is direct evidence that the king cared about his sons’ command of the vernacular, however. In a manuscript plan for the naval education of Prince William (1765–1837) drafted sometime in the spring of 1779, William was to cultivate the ‘facility’ and ‘elegance’ in his English ‘essential to the character of a gentleman’; moreover, his tutor was duly given permission to ‘correct the orthography, and perhaps the style’ of his letters (George III Reference George and Aspinall1962–70: V, 656). The royal children studied their native language formally in a household that was attentive to the concept of correctness.
English was important to King George: in his 1773 conversation with Beattie he sought the Scotsman's agreement that standards in English were declining, and (like many) praised the Spectator (1711–12) as one of the ‘best standards of the language’ (1946: 87). Thanks to a chain of posthumous biographies, the king's interest in good English was known publicly to his subjects: Beattie's private interview was reported in sources like the Percy Anecdotes (Reference Percy and Percy1820: 93; Williams Reference Williams1820: 123–4). But it is beyond the scope of this article to compare the king's English with his subjects’, or to relate royal usage to the prescriptive norms increasingly articulated near the beginning of his reign. It is my impression that contemporary prescriptive norms may not have been much emphasised or sufficiently salient.Footnote 3 As itemised in the sale catalogue of Queen Charlotte's library (Christie's 1819: 52), the collection contained many works on language and languages but relatively few school grammars of English. In addition to Buchanan's British Grammar (no. 1576), perhaps the presentation copy, the only other school grammar is the 1764 edition of Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) (no. 1577). Lowth's grammar was the most important of the period; he had also been a royal chaplain since 1757 (ODNB Mandelbrote 2004/2008), and as Tieken-Boon van Ostade (personal communication, 2012.) has suggested, might have presented the king and queen with a copy, just as he had of Isaiah.
The sources of some of the rules in Lowth's grammar raise interesting questions about their accessibility for the royal children. Tieken-Boon van Ostade (Reference Ingrid, Kemenade and Los2006: 551) has observed that many of the rules in his grammar reflect less Lowth's own usage than the imagined practice of his social superiors. Moreover, studies of such variants as you was reveal both considerable variation in usage as well as the slow influence of proscription. Lowth along with his less influential contemporary Priestley was the first codifier to proscribe you was (Tieken-Boon van Ostade Reference Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Lenz and Mohlig2002: 98–9); Lowth's influence might well have contributed to its eventual recession from standard English. According to Laitinen (Reference Laitinen, Nurmi, Nevala and Palander-Collin2009: 208, 215), it was ‘avoided by the upper ranks’ and correlated by Austen with a ‘vulgar’ character like Lucy Steele. However, the form continued to be used in the letters of literary men like Cowper and Gray (Austin Reference Austin, Stein and Tieken-Boon van Ostade1994: 291) and of Lowth himself, and was not uniformly condemned by subsequent codifiers (Tieken-Boon van Ostade Reference Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Lenz and Mohlig2002: 90–1). Indeed, in the first edition of a pedagogical publication dedicated ‘by permission’ to the Princess Royal (the eldest princess), Ann Murry's eponymous Mentoria stigmatises ‘when my aunt and I was there’ but implicitly recommends ‘when was you at the play?’ (Murry Reference Murry1778: 23, Reference Murry1779: 23; see Tieken-Boon van Ostade Reference Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Lenz and Mohlig2002: 99). Although ‘was you’ gets corrected to ‘were you’ in the next and subsequent editions (1780: 23, 1782: 24), the earlier error as well as a handwritten strikeout in the 1782 copy digitised on ECCO emphasise that variable usage must have made rules confusing. It is thus unsurprising that you was appears in the letters of George III's children: writing to her brother the Prince of Wales in 1793, Princess Augusta asserts that ‘I hope you was able to Keep William from the House of Lords’ (RA GEO/ADD10/4). Moreover, in other private letters by the British-born princesses it is easy to find examples of other stigmatised forms: ‘I now write by the light of the fire laying on the ground’ (The Princess Royal 1777, RA GEO/ADD15/953), and ‘I was a Doing my French lesson & I could not leave off for to write’ (Princess Augusta Sophia 1781, quoted in Hamilton Reference Hamilton, Anson and Anson1925: 50). A more systematic study of the royal letters would establish correlations between variants and such factors as date and addressee: the girls’ language incorporates more ‘correct’ forms over time, and some of these variants might have been coded as informal as well as non-standard (Tieken-Boon van Ostade Reference Ingrid, Kemenade and Los2006: 546).
2.5 English among the modern languages in the royal schoolroom
The education of George's children more clearly highlights the importance of modern languages in later modern Europe. As Augusta's French lesson suggests, any English taught formally to the royal children must have been a foundation for learning other languages. Indeed, perhaps the timing of Miss Planta's hiring in 1771 and certainly her particular qualifications suggest that even for the patriotic king of England, English had lower status than other modern languages. In an 1802 letter, the Princess Royal recollected that a dedicated English teacher was not hired until there were seven or eight children and until the sub-governess, Mrs Cotesworth, had become incapacitated (Fraser Reference Fraser2004: 23); according to Loussouarn (Reference Loussouarn, Baudino, Carré and Révauger2005: 50), she retired in 1772. Moreover, according to Elizabeth Planta (writing in French to Lady Strathmore), her sister Frederica was hired to teach the girls ‘lire Anglois d'abord et les autres langues ensuite “to read first English, and then other languages after that”’ (Fraser Reference Fraser2004: 24; Planta Reference Planta1771). Another contemporary identifies Planta's qualifications for the ‘important trust’ of teaching English to the royal children as her piety and her learning, and in particular her being ‘mistress of 7 languages’ at the age of twenty-three (Campbell Reference Campbell1774, quoted in Fraser Reference Fraser2004: 24). Elizabeth Planta's French correspondence and Mary Campbell's praise of Frederica confirm both the importance and the labour of mastering modern languages.
The presence of French and German in the curricula of the royal boys and girls (e.g. Hibbert Reference Hibbert1972: 6; Smith Reference Smith1999: 8; Fraser Reference Fraser2004: 16, 37–8, 54) anticipates their futures as European public figures. In 1786, the younger princes Ernest (b. 1771), Augustus (b. 1773) and Adolphus (b. 1774) went abroad to Göttingen for a university education. The king was eager to learn ‘which of the three is able the soonest to converse in [German] with fluency’ (Duke of Sussex Correspondence 29 August 1786: RA GEO/ADD9/15). Written in English, his hectoring letters suggest the importance of Hanover to its absentee Elector George, and of multilingual facility for elite young men – but also it seems to point to its neglect in practice. Although all of the royal children had been taught German, and the king proudly informed a visiting German authoress that all of them spoke German (la Roche Reference la Roche and Williams1933: 200), not all of them had managed to master it. When the Prince of Wales turned eighteen, he was criticised by his father for neglecting religion and his studies, especially German (Smith Reference Smith1999: 11). Youthful study does not guarantee adult competence.
Princes Ernest and Adolphus eventually learned and used their German, becoming king and viceroy of Hanover respectively. But biographies of George III's children remind us also that the conventional children's curriculum does not always directly relate to the adult's real life. For instance, the king insisted that Prince William (b. 1765) learn Latin, despite being destined from a young age for the navy (George III Reference George and Aspinall1962–70: V, 656). Having demonstrated ‘an unconquerable aversion to Latin’, William was eventually sent resentfully to Hanover for lessons in German and French to complete his naval education (Hibbert Reference Hibbert1998: 361; ODNB Brock 2004/2008). And the adult lives of many of George's other children, subject to the Royal Marriages Act, must not have accorded with their childish hopes. Married at thirty, the Princess Royal was the first of George's daughters to escape the ‘Nunnery’ (ODNB Purdue 2004/2009). She had learned German well: according to Frances Burney (1752–1840), who served at court from 1786 to 1791, she and Princess Augusta had a ‘German’ dresser, ‘to assist their study of that language: which, in their future destinations, may prove essential to them’ (12–15 August 1786; Burney 2011: I, 94). And once she became the second wife of the 42-year-old Prince Friedrich of Württemberg, the Princess Royal was able to use her German in a more public setting. However, until her marriage, she used her fluent German to label her mother's library books (2 August 1786; Burney 2011: I, 57–8), to converse privately with her mother, for instance during the king's first attack of madness in 1788 (5 November 1788, ed. Barrett 1842: IV, 281), and to give advice about learning German to her brother Augustus (Duke of Sussex correspondence 26 July 1786: RA GEO/ADD9/10; 20 January 1787: RA GEO/ADD9/20). Similarly, German was used by the king and queen for private conversations (e.g. Hibbert Reference Hibbert1998: 103; Burney 2011: I, 75 [6 August 1786]; see also 16n72). For multilingual individuals, the relation between English and other languages requires specific contextualisation.
In conclusion, the status of English for King George III and individual members of his family cannot be assessed out of context. Despite the ongoing superiority of modern languages like French in the aristocratic European schoolroom and the utility of German for private royal conversations in the British court, in the British public sphere the young king insistently used and identified with English. By establishing and exploiting an indirect correspondence between language, education and nation, the young king had sought to demonstrate that he was allied not with a political faction but with the nation (Ditchfield Reference Ditchfield2002: 138; Black Reference Black2006: 10).
3 King and man: idiolects and individuality
The young king ‘brought’ a ‘reputation for virtue’ to the throne in 1760, but lost much of his popularity thereafter. The recovery of his reputation reflected political issues as well as his recovery from ‘madness’ and from an attempted assassination. According to Ditchfield (Reference Ditchfield2002: 138), it was by ‘the general election of 1784’, discussed in this section, that the king had clearly ‘recovered much of [his] reputation’; Colley (Reference Colley1984: 102) dates the ‘shift in the royal image’ from 1786. Regardless of when exactly it happened, this shift can be illustrated by metalanguage about the king's idiolect: his repetitive ‘What, what?’ is still well-known, for instance in Alan Bennett's 1991 play The Madness of George III.
As a public speaker, George was well regarded. He had received elocution lessons from the actor James Quin, who is recorded as taking credit for the young king's delivery of his first throne speech: ‘boasting, “It was I that taught the boy to speak”’ (e.g. Williams Reference Williams1820: 12, 46; Cobbin Reference Cobbin1820: 6; Galt 1820: I, 111; ‘Percy & Percy’ Reference Percy and Percy1820: 12; Holt Reference Holt1820: I, 12; Hibbert Reference Hibbert1998: 9). In private conversation, however, the king was often represented as rushing and repeating words, especially ‘What? What? What?’ The king's biographer Brooke claims that ‘this method of questioning people was developed for use at court in order to get them to talk’ (1972: 296). The king's insistent questioning of court visitors, as well as the incognito visits to Windsor workers analysed above, do suggest a human desire for connection, understandable given the ‘confined limits of a court’ documented by Frances Burney (2–post 6 October, Reference Burney and Sabor1786; ed. Sabor 2011: I, 199) during her service to the queen.
Burney's private account of a conversation with the king in 1785 had been informed by a recent representation of his speech. She creates an image of an interested interlocutor: the king repeated words like ‘What?’ while eliciting information about her composition and publication of Evelina:
‘But what? – what? – how was it?’
‘Sir’ – cried I, not well understanding him.
‘How came you – how happened it – what? – what?’
‘I – I only wrote, sir, for my own amusement, – only in some odd, idle hours.’
(16 December 1785, Burney Reference Burney and Barrett1842: II, 375)
Burney claims to have found a response difficult: she represents herself as confused by the question's incoherence and apparently embarrassed by her recollection of its representation in recent satire.
I hesitated most abominably, not knowing how to tell him a long story, and growing terribly confused at these questions; – besides, – to say the truth, his own ‘what! what?’ so reminded me of those vile Probationary Odes, that, in the midst of all my flutter, I was really hardly able to keep my countenance. (Burney Reference Burney and Barrett1842: II, 375)
According to Burney, it was difficult interacting with the king as an individual in part because of her familiarity with the caricature.
For Burney and likely many others, the king's idiolect now directly alluded to his successful interference with the passage of the India Bill in 1783. What Burney termed the ‘vile’ and satirical Probationary Odes had been prompted by the death of the poet laureate William Whitehead in April 1785 (see e.g. Hill Reference Hill1912: 7). In one ode, attributed to ‘Major John Scott, M.P.’Footnote 4 and agent of the East India Company, inarticulate English is thematised and epitomised with (among other things) the king's ‘What? What? What?’:
Methinks I hear,
In accents clear,
Great Brunswick's voice still vibrate on my ear –
What? – What? – What?
Scott! – Scott! Scott!
Hot! – hot! – hot!
What? – what? – What? (‘Hawkins’ [Reference Hawkins1785]: 49)
Both Scott and the king had been opposed to the India Bill, proposed by the prominent coalition minister Charles James Fox in the wake of the loss of America as an attempt to transfer ‘the political responsibilities of the East India Company to a body of commissioners sitting in London, appointed first by Parliament and consequently by the Crown’ (Brooke Reference Brooke1972: 250). The political context itself involved inarticulate English: in comparison to the oratorical brilliance of the bill's supporters, who included Fox and Edmund Burke, Major Scott had a ‘lack of rhetorical skill’ that nevertheless struck sympathetic listeners as sincere (Staves Reference Staves1995: 191–2). Opponents of the bill represented it as taking ‘the patronage of India . . . from the Company’ and giving it to Fox (see Brooke Reference Brooke1972: 250–5). The bill's failure mostly reflected the king's last-minute intervention in the House of Lords. While this probationary ode mocks the king's English and recalls his ‘unscrupulous’ and debatably ‘unconstitutional’ interference in politics (see Brooke Reference Brooke1972: 254–5), allying him with Scott also sharpens the focus on an incoherence that could symbolise sincerity.
Tyrant or man? In his survey of George III and the Satirists, Carretta implies that this ode was influential: the king's ‘characteristically stammering speech . . . quickly became one of the satirists’ most economical ways to tag royal allusions’ (1990: 268). For instance, in one print the tag ‘Nimrod What What What’ links the king's genuine passion for hunting with the traditional tyranny of Nimrod (280); in The Royal Dairy, published in the wake of the French Revolution in 1792, attacks on royal greed are presented in the context of George's love of labour and farming: ‘“What What What Come my Lads hold up your Pitchers”’ (294). Yet in Carretta's analysis, ridicule of such ‘foibles’ (294) as the king's speech emphasises a kind of ‘familiarity’ that would ultimately serve to reconnect king and subject, ‘breed[ing] identification as well as contempt. Domestication of the regal image brought the viewer up to the king's level as much as it brought the king down to his subjects’ (294). In The Royal Dairy, for instance, the significance of the monarch's activities is revealed by the telling comment of one of the crowd: ‘“Oh Lud Oh Lud he is nothing but a Man”’ (quoted in Carretta Reference Carretta1990: 294). Indeed, Carretta treats all of these examples in his book's final chapter, in which George's resurgence in popularity with his people is linked to the satirists’ mockery of his speech. While the king's idiolect was a handy tool for caricaturists and satirists, Carretta has argued that for the wider public this familiarity bred ‘identification as well as contempt’ (1990: 294). The king's idiolect signalled his ordinary humanity, both through his interest in others and, via a topical poem, his virtuous opposition to libertines like the politician Charles James Fox, the architect of the (unsuccessful) India Bill.
4 King and class: indexing the (non-)standard in posthumous anecdotes of the man
4.1 Posthumous anecdotes of the ‘private’ man
Anecdotes about George and his family, disseminated in sources like newspapers and especially in posthumous memoirs, reflect the role of his so-called private life in his public image. Colley (Reference Colley1984: 104, 113, 124) indeed claims that it was the king's ‘steady background of domestic responsibility’ ‘in the midst of national flux and humiliation’ that nourished his popularity; at its end, his ‘uniquely long reign had become the symbol of Britain's . . . singular success in resisting French domination’. Reflecting public interest in ‘private’ royal figures, the more popular anecdotes reflecting the king's popularity later in his reign and subjects’ nostalgia at his death additionally disseminate implicit and perhaps conflicting ideologies about standard English. Often incognito, the king is able to converse with anyone: in these anecdotes language variety indexes class and distinguishes the king from some dialect-speaking subjects. The king's standard English, essential in political discourse, is universally understood in the kingdom. But it is his interactions with dialect speakers and his idiosyncratic repetition of words and phrases that for posthumous biographers are proof of the man's humanity.
4.2 The king as man: dialect and authenticity
Even ‘private’ interactions were to some extent public and performative: promenades in Weymouth and Windsor helped the king shape his winning image as a virtuous family man in touch with his subjects, and indeed according to Carretta (Reference Carretta1990: xv), George III was the ‘first British monarch to have a public family life’. In his autobiography, the Windsor bookseller Charles Knight nostalgically recollected ‘the old familiar intercourse of the Sovereign with his people’ (Reference Knight1864–5: I, 92), the king's ‘extraordinary faculty of recognising everybody, young or old’ (37) and his communicative engagement with ‘the rapid question and the ready joke’ (62). The constraints of public life were evident to spectators: Knight describes the family as ‘for ever in the public eye’ (35), in a ‘glass house’ (36): the castle terrace was open to all (34, 41). Further effects of public life on the royal family were documented by Burney during her service to the queen from 1786 to 1791. Evidently in quest of genuine connection with the outside world, the king (Harcourt Reference Harcourt1871–2: 55) and queen were avid readers of newspapers (24 July 1786, Burney 2011: I, 35; 4 August 1786, Burney 2011: 73–4), and were desperate for conversation. Indeed, when beginning her duties at the royal court, Burney was warned by her fellow courtier Mrs Delany that ‘when the Queen or the King speaks to you, not to answer with mere monosyllables . . . The Queen says there is nothing she loves so much as conversation, and nothing she finds so hard to get’ (December 1785, Burney Reference Burney and Barrett1842: II, 369; quoted by Brooke Reference Brooke1972: 296). But as Burney's writings indicate, these desires for connection were often undermined by court protocols. When Burney was requested to read Colman's comedy Polly Honeycomb aloud, for instance, the convention of listening silently even between acts made the experience unpleasantly awkward, at least for Burney (2 March 1790, Burney Reference Burney and Barrett1842: V, 96–7). The social constraints of court life are highlighted by contrast with Burney's descriptions of the colourful language and ‘unbounded openness and careless ease’ of the sailor-prince William, Duke of Clarence, on his boisterous visits to court (May 1789, Burney Reference Burney and Barrett1842: V, 24; June 1791, Burney Reference Burney and Barrett1842: V, 205–6). Burney's records were private, published after her death in 1840 by her niece Charlotte Barrett (Burney Reference Burney and Barrett1842–6; ODNB Rogers 2004/2010).
In contrast with Burney's journals, anecdotes about the king's anonymous wanderings on his Windsor estate were well disseminated, for instance in posthumous biographies of the king and what Galt (1820: II, 295) calls ‘the public prints’; it's beyond the scope of this article to trace their publication (for overviews, see Brooke Reference Brooke1972: 297; Hibbert Reference Hibbert1998: 198–9; Ditchfield Reference Ditchfield2002: 4–21). While one anecdote involves two boys from Eton (e.g. Cobbin Reference Cobbin1820: 79; ‘Percy & Percy’ Reference Percy and Percy1820: 156), others reflect the king's interest in farming and represent his interactions with labourers while wandering incognito on his Windsor estates. In two supposedly verbatim conversations, the early-rising king's standard English is contrasted with the dialect speech of lazy labourers, in one anecdote of a ‘pig boy’ blocking a gate (e.g. Galt 1820: II, 295–6; Holt Reference Holt1820: I, 298; Huish Reference Huish1821: 379–80, 641; ‘Percy & Percy’ Reference Percy and Percy1820: 101–2; Williams Reference Williams1820: 225) and in another of his own grooms ‘disputing . . . very loudly’ on the topic of who ‘makes the best purl in Windsor’ while the king is making his customary ‘early visit to his Mews’ (e.g. Galt 1820: II, 295–6; Holt Reference Holt1820: I, 458; Huish 1820: 318; Williams Reference Williams1820: 223–4).
These anecdotes must have been even more widely disseminated, as the ‘pig boy’ incident is reported in at least three newspapers in the British Newspapers 1600–1900 database after his death on 29 January 1820: the Morning Chronicle (12 February 1820), the Caledonian Mercury (17 February 1820) and the Royal Cornwall Gazette, Falmouth Packet & Plymouth Journal (19 February 1820). Although the ‘purl’ and the ‘pig boy’ anecdotes do not always appear together, they can co-occur, for instance in Williams (Reference Williams1820: 223–5), where they illustrate the king's deep-rooted ‘habits of industry and early rising’ and in Galt (1820: II, 295–6), who explicitly highlights the king's interactions with ‘persons even in the humblest sphere of life’:
Whilst these sheets are in the press, the public prints are teeming with anecdotes of the same nature, out of which we may select two in reference to persons even in the humblest sphere of life. It is related, that the King, some years back, walking unattended round his farm, observed a clownish boy lounging over a gate, which he was in no hurry to open to the royal pedestrian. The King, in his customary abrupt but kind manner, asked, ‘Well, boy, who are you?’ ‘I be a pig boy,’ replied the ill-mannered urchin. ‘Who do you work for?’ ‘I has no work at present: they won't employ me.’ ‘Why not?’ asked the monarch. ‘Because all the land about here belongs to Georgy, and they don't want I.’ ‘Georgy! Georgy! Who is Georgy?’ demanded His Majesty. ‘Whoy, he be King, and lives up at castle there, but he does no good for I.’ The humane and considerate monarch, amused with the boy's simplicity, and feeling for his situation, instantly gave him a memorandum for his farming bailiff, which procured him employment, and taught him better to appreciate the merits of ‘Georgy.’
One other anecdote of the same nature shall close. It is well known, that whilst His Majesty was in good health, it was his constant custom, when at Windsor, to pay an early visit to his Mews, if not to mount, to look at and pat his favorite horses. One morning, on entering, the grooms were disputing one with the other very loudly, so that the King for a short time was unnoticed. ‘I don't care what you say, Robert,’ said one, ‘but every one else agrees that the man at the Three Tuns makes the best purl in Windsor.’ ‘Purl, purl,’ said the King, quickly; ‘Robert, what's purl?’ This was explained to be warm beer, with a glass of gin, &c. His Majesty listened attentively, and then turning round, said, loud enough to be heard by all, in the way of admonishing, ‘I dare say very good drink; but, grooms, too strong for the morning; never drink in a morning.’ Eight or nine years after this, His Majesty happened to enter the stables much earlier than usual, and found only a young lad, who had recently been engaged, and to whom the King was unknown. ‘Boy, boy,’ said he, ‘where are the grooms; where are the grooms?’ ‘I don't know, sir; but they will soon be back, because they expect the King.’ ‘Ah, ah,’ said he, ‘then run, boy, and say, the King expects them; run boy to the Three Tuns; they are sure to be there, for the landlord makes the best purl in Windsor.’ (Galt 1820: II, 295–6)
Indeed, it is his interaction with humble speakers that marks both the king's ability to bridge the distance between himself and his subjects and thus his humanity; in these anecdotes, regional speech must therefore possess an authenticity that recalls the Romantic poet Wordsworth's appropriation of the real language of men (see Elfenbein Reference Elfenbein2009: passim).
Language in these particular anecdotes marks the initial distance between the king and these non-labouring labourers. The pig boy invariably uses invariant be in the present tense: ‘I be a pig boy’ marks his rusticity and his distance from the king; the pig boy is sometimes explicitly ‘from the low country’ (Holt Reference Holt1820: I, 298; Huish Reference Huish1821: 380; ‘Percy & Percy’ Reference Percy and Percy1820: 101; Williams Reference Williams1820: 225) though not always (Galt 1820: II, 295–6; Huish 1820: 641). Unaware of his interrogator's identity, the pig boy also refers to the king as ‘Georgy’; I would argue that this colloquialism marks the pig boy's ignorance while also acknowledging the king's humanity. In different versions, phonology, articles, verb inflections and pronoun case continue to signal a labouring-class speaker:
‘Whoy, he be King, and lives up at castle there, but he does no good for I’ (Galt 1820: II, 295)
‘He be the king, and live in the castle, but he does no good for me’ (Huish Reference Huish1821: 380)
In the ‘purl’ anecdote, the king's grooms speak more correctly than the pig boy, but use a word that is unfamiliar to the king.
One morning, on entering, the grooms were disputing one with the other very loudly, so that the King for a short time was unnoticed. ‘I don't care what you say, Robert,’ said one, ‘but every one else agrees that the man at the Three Tuns makes the best purl in Windsor.’ ‘Purl, purl,’ said the King, quickly: ‘Robert, what's purl?’ This was explained to be warm beer, with a glass of gin, &c. (Galt 1820: II, 296)
In these particular anecdotes, the king and his rustic interlocutors are also distinguished by their relative industriousness, though in Galt's version of the ‘pig boy’ encounter he does not mention the king's ‘general custom to rise early, and walk about his farms’. In each anecdote the king makes efforts to keep his rustic subjects well employed, finding a job for the sedentary pig boy and urging his grooms to ‘never drink in a morning’. In these contexts the king's English is associated not only with industriousness but with a superior awareness, the ability to bridge social gaps, and the ability to transform others – and himself. Indeed, in the ‘purl’ anecdote he is represented as being able to learn that new word and ‘eight or nine years after this’ teach it to a new young groom – who cannot learn it from his peers because they are likely to be drinking purl at the Three Tuns. ‘“Ah, ah,’ said he, ‘then run, boy, and say, the King expects them; run boy to the Three Tuns; they are sure to be there, for the landlord makes the best purl in Windsor”’ (Galt 1820: II, 296). Although regional speakers can understand the king, his industrious incognito expeditions around Windsor mean that it is his English that is associated with a perspective of superior knowledge. However, it is not the king's English but the pig boy's non-standard dialect speech that marks the king's desire and ability to communicate with ‘persons even in the humblest sphere of life’. Indeed, the ‘purl’ anecdote also represents the king as speaking idiosyncratically, by repeating his own words: “‘run boy . . . run boy’”. As we have seen, this repetition had become popular shorthand for the king's speech during his lifetime.
5 Concluding summary
As a native-born royal from a foreign family, George III (like his father Frederick Prince of Wales before him) sought early authority as the king of Britain by ‘exploit[ing]’ and ‘expand[ing]’ what Colley has called existing ‘organized patriotism’ at a time of imperial expansion (1984: 98–9, 102). The king performed linguistic Englishness in such contexts as his throne speech and his wedding, and patronised already popular codifiers and standardisers of English. In contrast, later representations of him with idiosyncratic speech or in dialogue with dialect speakers helped to craft his more lasting public image as an ordinary man, able to bridge the social gulfs mapped by linguistic difference. To some extent these different images reflect the king's long reign, which began in the neoclassical era of prescriptivism yet ended in the Romantic era. These images also reflect the difference between an individual's public and private speech. Indeed, the need for idiosyncratic or dialect speech to mark an individual's humanity is perhaps an inevitable consequence of standardisation and what Elfenbein (Reference Elfenbein2009: 34, 80) has summarised as the ‘exhaustion’ or ‘metaphoric deathiness’ of linguistic ‘purification’ and ‘refinement’. Images of George's speech as king and as man reflect different registers of English in the later modern era of standardisation.
