All language subtitles for BBC Elegance and Decadence The Age of the Regency 1of3 Portrait of a Prince Warts and All.srt - eng(2)

'Here's a question for you. When was
Britain at its most elegant

'and most decadent,

'its most stylish and most radical?'

ORCHESTRAL DANCE MUSIC

'I'd argue for the decade
of the Regency,

'between 1811 and 1820.

'It was a time when people
could feel their world

'being totally transformed.'

It was one of those rare moments,
a bit like the 1960s,

when there were really big changes
in culture and society,

all coming together
in a great burst of energy.

The Battle of Waterloo was won.

London was redesigned.

Turner and Constable were painting,

and the waltz was introduced.

In this series I'll be exploring
this fabulous decade

through painting, writing,
architecture, fashion.

And at the heart of the Regency
is the puzzle that is George,

the naughty Prince Regent himself.

He loved garish excess,

yet he presided over
an age of elegance.

'He only ever fought his wife,
and never set foot on a battlefield,

'yet he beat Napoleon!
People called him a fat old fool,

'so how did he end up giving
his name to an era and a style

'that stand as the high point
of British sophistication?'

There's a lot more to the Regency
than just Mr Darcy, you know.

CANNONS BOOMING

TRUMPET PLAYING MARTIAL FANFARE

'My name is Lucy Worsley,

'and I'm a historian.'

'I have rather an exciting job
as chief curator

'at Historic Royal Palaces.'

Hello, Kew Palace people.
Hello. Hello, hello, hello.

'Today I'm catching up with
our new team at Kew Palace,

'and yes, they do wear
these Regency outfits on duty.

'This place has close connections
to the Prince Regent

'and his family.'

What do visitors know or think about
George, the Prince Regent, then?

It's generally negative, I'd say.

This little girl came in. She said,

"Sad, bad, mad and fat."
THEY LAUGH

'It's here
that the Regency story begins.'

If you want to understand
the colourful and flamboyant age

of the Regency, then, you need to
look at the Prince Regent himself.

George really set the tone
of the age,

and he was
a notoriously extravagant character.

George was hugely self-indulgent.

He had a limitless appetite
for food, clothes,

shopping and women.

Now, I think this was in response
to his childhood,

which was very simple, very frugal,

and he spent it partly here
at Kew Palace.

# Shall I tell you about my life?

# They say I'm a man of the world...

'The current furnishings reflect the
tastes of George's modest parents,

'for whom this house
was a favourite residence.'

# I've seen lots of pretty girls #

'Little George's father,
King George III,

'preferred plain boiled eggs
to lavish banquets,

'and he tried to drum
the same sense of moderation

'into his eldest son.'

This is a set of tiny little stays.
It's like a corset for a baby.

And George was put into these
so he would grow up

with a straight figure.

His father knew that fatness
ran in the family,

and he wanted George to grow up
healthy and strong.

It was part of the discipline
of the nursery.

George had a restricted diet.
There were days without meat.

Sometimes George
was served a fruit tart,

but he was only allowed to eat
the boring fruit in the middle,

not the tasty crust around the edge.

Even George's games
had an educational purpose.

You see this jigsaw,
made for him to play with?

At the same time, he was supposed
to learn the geography of Ireland.

He had a very strict timetable
of lessons.

They went on till 8:00 or 8:30
in the evening,

and although he was quite clever,
his great problem was laziness,

and his tutors
tried to beat it out of him

using a long and snaky whip.

But this harsh regime
had the opposite effect

of what was intended. George
just grew increasingly wayward

and resentful.
By the time he was 15,

one of his tutors said
one of two things might happen -

either he would become
"the most polished gentleman",

or he'd become "the most
accomplished blackguard in Europe".

As soon as he could escape
his controlling parents,

the young George went wild.

There were numerous
discarded mistresses.

George wasn't above using
the threat of suicide

to get a girl to give in
to his demands.

There was even an illegal marriage
to a Mrs Fitzherbert -

a Catholic, no less.

The prince set up home
and a rival court at Carlton House,

but he ran up debts
of over half a million pounds.

In order to pay them off, he agreed
to marry Caroline of Brunswick.

They hated each other.

George was revolted by her very
relaxed attitude to personal hygiene

and Caroline eventually won herself
a racy reputation

that rivalled her husband's.

On the top floor at Kew Palace
are the rooms

that once belonged to
George's younger sisters.

They've been left untouched
since the time of the Regency.

George's brothers escaped,
into the army and into the arms
of mistresses.

But his sisters
were kept close to their father.

'This is the bedroom
of the youngest, Princess Amelia.'

The medieval fireplace
is a typical choice

for a girl
who was fond of fantasy and fairies.

Amelia was the favourite
of her father, George III.

'Like him, she'd had long battles
with illness -

'in her case, tuberculosis.

'In a bizarre way,
it was this sickly girl

'who was responsible
for the birth of the Regency.'

In November 1810,
poor Princess Amelia died,

and this was a terrible blow
to her father, George III.

For many years he'd been suffering
from these recurrent bouts

of what his contemporaries
thought of as madness.

Today we know it was
the physical illness, porphyria.

And his grief at Amelia's death
sent him over the edge.

The next day he had to be restrained
in his straitjacket.

So Parliament passed a bill
appointing his son George,

Prince of Wales,
as Prince Regent, or acting king,

on his father's behalf.

George was sworn in as regent
on the 6th of February 1811,

and the Regency officially began.

Although the term "Regency"
is often used to cover the period

from the late 18th century
right up to the Victorians,

George's actual regency
lasted just nine years,

from 1811 to 1820.

As regent,
George was not quite a king.

'There was no coronation,
and his office would disappear

'the moment his father recovered.
As for George's personal life,

'it would have been tragic
if it wasn't so funny.'

'People called him
"the Grand Entertainment".'

George had the misfortune
to live through the golden age

of British satirical caricatures.

Practically as events unfolded,
artists sketched them,

made cheap prints,
and these images went viral.

He was brilliant fodder for artists
like Gillray and Cruikshank,

because of his weight,
because of his difficult wife,

and because of his endless
procession of matronly mistresses.

During the Regency,
you could catch up on
the Prince Regent's latest antics

just by looking in
a print-shop window.

'Sometimes
George even bribed cartoonists

'not to publish images that he found
particularly hurtful.'

This one's pretty straightforward.

The Prince of Wales
is shown as a whale,

and he appears to have seduced this
mermaid. They're exchanging glances.

Being regent must have been like
wearing a "kick me" sign.

The real king was still alive,

meaning George lacked the full props
and dignity of monarchy.

There's no crown
in these caricatures.

A red field marshal's jacket
identifies George

as the pratfalling fat man.

This is the scene
outside the prince's mansion,

Carlton House, just after
the huge party he held in 1811

to commemorate the start
of the Regency.

Afterwards
the grounds were opened up,

and it's said that 30,000 people
turned up and tried to get in.

There was such a crush
that one lady broke her leg.

Here's a lady being trampled upon,

and some other ladies
accidentally lost their clothes.

Here we've got a group
of ordinary people

who did make it inside
Carlton House,

and they've been confronted with
the prince's amazing dining table,

laid out for the feast
with this dinner service

that cost £60,000.

This character is saying, "Oh, Sue,

I don't think I'd like
that dry champagne,

but if I could have a bit of beer
in that there gilded gold thing,

that would be
dreadfully nice indeed."

But there was another side
to George.

Inside Carlton House,
he was building up an immense hoard

of art and furnishings,
a collection that I believe

was the great passion of his life.

'Carlton House no longer exists,

'and its treasures
are long dispersed,

'but in the Queen's Gallery, part of
his collection has been reunited

'for an exhibition.'

It gives us an idea
of what those revellers

at the Carlton House fete
might have seen.

'Kathryn Jones,
a curator at the Royal Collection,

'showed me
some of George's treasures.'

These are some of
my favourite objects.

They're designed
for cooling wine glasses,

so they would have been filled
with ice,

and you could rinse your glass
between different wines.

That's brilliant! I need one.
They're fantastic.

Sadly they've fallen out of fashion.
If I put my gloves on,

I can show you the salt-cellar.
It's in the form of a... A merman.

..a mer-man carrying a shell,
and if you take out the spoon,

that's also in the shape of a shell,

and then at the end
you have Neptune's trident,

so very appropriate for sea salt.
Would these pieces have been used

at the giant party at Carlton House

to celebrate the start
of the Regency? That's right.

The first delivery was made in 1811,
and all these pieces

would have been used
at that amazing dinner.

So it was an extraordinary service,

and it's still used
by the queen today.

That's brilliant.
It looks gold, but it isn't, is it?

No, that's right. It's silver gilt,
and some of the pieces,

when they first came into
the collection, were plain silver,

and gradually during the Regency
more and more pieces were gilded,

and I think this was partly
an aesthetic thing.

There were
so many disparate elements,

he wanted to join them together.

But it's also in direct rivalry
with Napoleon.

Funnily enough, at Napoleon's
imperial court across the Channel,

the emperor had just bought
a silver-gilt dining service.

George was setting himself up
as a rival ruler and connoisseur.

He was waging his own personal war
through interior decoration.

Carlton House was filled with
18th-century Sevres porcelain.

This was another "up yours"
to Boney -

the firm who made it had been owned
by the fallen French royal family.

George also collected paintings
of the court at Versailles,

and portraits of Cardinal Richelieu,
and also of Louis XIII.

'But his taste wasn't just
restricted to this French bling.'

So, tell me about this one.

This is really the jewel
in George IV's collection.

It's obviously a Rembrandt.

It's known as
The Shipbuilder And His Wife,

and it was the most expensive
painting George ever bought.

It cost 5,000 guineas in 1811.

Do we know where this
would have been in Carlton House?

Yes, we do. We have a visual record
of it, in fact.

It's in one of the watercolours
of 1816 of the Blue Velvet Room,

and he displayed it with specific
Sevres vases of this blue colour.

Do you think this taste
for Dutch paintings

meant that he was a man
who genuinely loved art?

Cos they're not showy, are they?
No. It's not really what you expect,

and to have something like this
in his collection

shows that this was the pinnacle
of things that were on the market
at that time.

'The Regency was an age in which
art and culture mattered,

'and this agenda was set
by the man at the top.

'But there was a practical side to
being an art-loving royal patron.

'In your portraits,
you could spin an image

'to counterbalance
those cruel caricaturists,

'and George's chief flatterer

'was one of
the greatest English portraitists,

'Thomas Lawrence.'

When Lawrence painted George
in his red field marshal's uniform,

critics sneered
at the way the painter

had transformed an overweight,
balding 50-something

into a well fleshed Adonis.

Jonathan Yeo
paints the rich and powerful

of the 21st century.

'I showed him one of Lawrence's
unfinished portraits of George,

'to learn how the idealised images
of the regent were created.'

I've always thought of this
as a really flattering image.

Is that how you see it?
Er, it is quite flattering.

It looks like it's been done
for a coin or something like that.

He's facing this way, but
the perspective is slightly skewed

and he's very side-on. If you cut
that out and do it in profile,

that's one way of avoiding showing
if someone's overweight.

You see this skin here?
That's the whitest part of the skin.

Has he highlighted that
because that's smooth,

and so these wrinkles
are more sort of hidden

in the eye-socket
and in the shadow there?

Ah, it's a flattering angle.
It's sort of Hollywood lighting.

Yeah. All the Hollywood movie stars
would look around

to find where the light
was in front of you and above,

because it gets rid of wrinkles
whichever angle it's coming from.

The hair looks
quite artfully arranged.

It's quite a contemporary look.
It looks like Justin Bieber.

It does a bit. The lips are very red,

and it almost looks like he's wearing
makeup in it. He was known to. Ah!

Nowadays we have photography. We know
what people actually look like,

so people tend not to lean on you
to make them look fantastic.

In those days, if the painter was the
only person to record how you looked,

there was nothing to stop you
rewriting history.

In fairness to the regent, looking
like a leader was really important.

'As the Regency was getting started,

'Napoleon was at the height
of his powers,

'and we'd been slogging away
against France, our old enemy,

'almost continuously
for a generation.'

We'd been fighting the French
for the best part of 20 years,

and they were winning. The English
Channel was just the thin blue line

protecting us
from Boney's evil empire.

Napoleon basically controlled
the whole of Europe,

through puppet governments, direct
rule and favourable alliances,

and he'd set up a trade blockade
against the British

that went all the way
from Spain in the west

to Russia in the east.

A side effect of the war was
that travel and trade with Europe

became impossibly restricted.

The heyday of the Grand Tour
was long gone.

'Before, we'd looked up
to French and Italian culture,

'but now it was out of bounds.'

So we couldn't trade
with the continent,

and you couldn't visit it either,

unless you were going to take
your chances as a soldier.

Instead we looked inwards,
into our own little island,

to feed our imaginations.

Britain's enforced stay-cation
was made tolerable, though,

by the cult of the picturesque.

It won legions of followers
from the end of the 18th century.

Regency types could be found
with their sketchbooks out

at every ruined abbey
and beautiful vista.

Locals complained that England had
become the country house of London.

Getting back to nature
wasn't everybody's cup of tea.

This is a very amusing spoof
of the picturesque

which came out in 1812.
It's called The Tour Of Dr Syntax

In Search Of The Picturesque.

It was so popular,
it went through five editions

in the first year.

Dr Syntax's adventures
are told through verse

and beautiful illustrations
by Thomas Rowlandson.

Syntax is a schoolmaster,
and also a bit of a bore.

With his horse Grizzle,
he endures many of the perils

facing
the Regency picturesque-hunter.

The story is that Dr Syntax
wants to make some extra money

in the summer holidays,
so he decides to make a tour

of the Lake District, and write
an illustrated book about it

to sell to armchair travellers. He
thinks he can make a lot of money.

As he puts it, "I'll ride and write,
and sketch and print,

And thus create a real mint."

"I'll prose it here,
I'll verse it there,

And picturesque it ev'ry where."

In this picture,
he's been sketching a ruined castle,

but he's slipped over
and he's falling back into the lake,

and I think his horse
is laughing at him.

He often seems to be
being laughed at by animals.

In this one,
he's been tied to a tree

by some highwaymen,

and he's having to be rescued
by some ladies.

So it's just one disaster
after another for Dr Syntax,

but he takes it all
terribly seriously,

and in this picture he's telling
everybody about his tour,

and everybody has fallen asleep,

except for one couple
who are squeezing each other
and having a good time.

Silly old Dr Syntax! What a twit.

The artists and amateur sketchers
longing for the continent

found the flavour
of Southern France and Italy

in one particular corner of England.

During the Napoleonic Wars,

British artists
felt that the Southwest

was the next best thing
to the Mediterranean.

Down here, they felt
that the colours were warmer

and the light was more intense.

One man who certainly agreed
was Joseph Mallord William Turner.

'In 1811, a firm of engravers
commissioned him

'to paint a tour of the south coast,

'to feed the market
for picturesque prints.

'So Turner spent that summer
journeying around the Southwest.

'At Ivybridge in Devon,

'Turner captured
a languid late-summer afternoon.'

We often think of him
as a kind of early Impressionist,

but he also documented
everyday life.

The Regency Turner
liked his landscapes inhabited,

with lots of dirty detail.

His own coach would have changed
its horses here at Ivybridge,

just like the one in the picture.

Here's the mail coach
about to leave.

It's yellow.
It's got the red wheels.

Everybody's getting on board.

But this figure here,
he's going, "Wait for me!"

He's about to miss it.
Now, was he an artist

who'd been sketching for too long,

or had he spent too long
with this mysterious female figure

off in the woods?
We just don't know.

Hang on! Wait for me!

This image, like the others
from Turner's tour,

was eventually engraved,
and filled up the libraries

of the Regency middle class.

'Using the original sketches
and watercolour,

'Professor Sam Smiles took me
through Turner's artistic process.'

Now, I can hardly believe
that these scribbles here

resulted in that beautiful
completed, finished work of art.

And that's because neither you nor I
have his acute visual memory.

What Turner had managed to produce,
over years of training,

was a graphic system,
a way of drawing,

which allowed him to capture
the essence of a scene

with marks that meant a lot to him,
but to you and me, looking at them,
perhaps meant considerably less.

I'm particularly struck
by this Christmas tree.

It looks like a pictogram, yet here
it is, a beautiful-looking thing.

Absolutely - things he observes
that nobody else bothered to record.

I mean, the picture we're looking at
looks like peaceful England,

an absolute idyll
of tranquillity and relaxation.

But as he moved along
the coastal strip,

he found the ports
with Men of War in them,

marines and sailors,
the army making preparations...

This was a country readying for war.

Even though Trafalgar
was a few years in the past,

Napoleon still represented
a major threat.

There was still a real danger of
invasion, wasn't there? Absolutely.

'Forts like this one
protecting Plymouth

'guarded many of the settlements
that Turner visited in 1811.

'And the paintings that came out of
his south-coast journeys

'are shot through with the sense
of a country at war.'

At St Mawes in Cornwall,

Turner saw at first hand
the effect of the war

on the pilchard industry.
With the continent closed for trade,

much of the industry's market
was inaccessible.

Instead, the pilchards
are left to rot on the beach,

to be sold as manure.

Even this innocuous watercolour
of the Dorset coast

has a sinister undertone.

Is it me, or does that wagon
look a bit like a field gun?

'The landscape around Plymouth
impressed Turner so much

'that he returned several times
in the early years of the Regency.

'He thought that it hardly seemed
to belong to this island.

'And a favourite location
was the popular picnic spot

'of Mount Edgecombe.'

Turner did the sketch which
this watercolour was based on

somewhere pretty near to here.
You can recognise the River Tamar.

Here are a great load of ships
from the navy.

We've still got ships down there,
but the really special thing

he's shown us
is this party of sailors,

who are going back
at the end of a day's shore leave.

They've obviously had a great time.
They've met up with some ladies.

This gentleman with the wooden leg
is playing his violin,

and now they're going home,
except for this couple,

who are going off into the woods
to do who knows what.

So as well as giving us
topography and landscape,

Turner's given us a record
of an afternoon of enjoyment

200 years ago.

The sailors had every right
to enjoy their afternoon off.

'For years
they'd been fighting Napoleon,

'one of history's
most formidable warriors.'

The same can't be said
of the Prince Regent.

George had absolutely zero
battlefield experience,

but he still thought of himself
as Boney's opposite number.

For years, George had begged his
father to be allowed to go and fight

without success.
Now he was too old to be of any use,

apart from ceremonial duties.

If he couldn't face Boney in battle,

George could at least
try to outdo him

with flashy military outfits.
This regimental jacket of his

shows that he loved
to look like a soldier,

if only an ornamental one.

George was helped
by London's best tailors,

including Jonathan Meyer,
who founded Meyer & Mortimer.

'200 years on,
this firm is still going,

'and they're going to let me
have a peek

'at their Regency account books.'

Hi, Brian. Hello, there.
Can I have a look at your ledger?

Yes, of course. Thank you.

Here we are. Thank you very much.

There we go. Beautiful!

This is a pretty extraordinary book,

and this page here
lists all the items

which have been bought
by the Prince of Wales,

and they just fit in with
what you expect

of his extravagant,
over-the-top character.

He is buying quite a lot
of rich gold royal cord,

I imagine to decorate a uniform,
something like that.

And here we have... He's bought
54 rich gold fringed tassels

to swing off things.

Over on this page...
This is really interesting.

Here you can see
clothes being altered

to suit his body-size and shape.

Here we have the altering
of a yellow waistcoat,

"made higher in the neck
and adding lace".

Now, that sounds to me like
to disguise the double chins.

And here we've got "enlarging
a regimental jacket in the breast".

It wouldn't do up!
And this is a theme.

Throughout the accounts,
things are being enlarged,

being lengthened, being made bigger,
to fit his rather plump body.

As you flick through the pages,

what strikes you
is the huge number of things

that George is buying.
Clearly he's a shopaholic.

And when I say buying, he's
not necessarily paying for them.

The debt mounts up.

It's £156 at the bottom
of this page.

It's not paid off.
It's carried forwards.

£300 over here.

Then, flicking through the book,

we get a grand total of £490
that he owes to the tailors.

That's a hefty tab - the best part
of £30,000 in today's money.

I feel a bit sorry for Mr Meyer.

The prince liked to think of himself
as a man of style,

a leader of military fashion.

But for civilian wear,
he could be found squeezing himself

into the look set by his friend
Beau Brummell...

..the famous dandy.

Brummell's opinion mattered so much

that once, when he criticised
the cut of George's coat,

the poor old prince
burst into tears.

Brummell is credited with
inventing the suit,

and with it the dashing tailored
look of the English gentleman.

'I wanted to know
what it was about Brummell

'that made people spend
several hours a day

'watching him get dressed.

'So I asked his biographer,
Ian Kelly.'

I'm sorry, but to spend three hours
a day preening yourself

seems really effeminate to me.
How dare you?

Um, yeah. Well, in theory,
the clothes are meant to express

a sort of uber-masculinity,
a more stated masculinity.

To be "a dandy" was much nearer
the modern American coinage

of being "a dude".
It was about a new way

of being a British gentleman,

which was to do with reserve

and sang-froid, stiff upper lip,
all that sort of thing.

Well, I don't care
if it's supposed to be just for men,

because I want to experience
a Brummell-type suit for myself.

I'm super-keen to channel
a bit of butch Regency style.

So, it's supposed to make me feel
cool and masculine?

Obviously, as a gentleman,
I can't possibly watch a lady dress,

even if you're dressing as a man.
I'll go practise with my canes.

You fiddle with your canes.

'For a Regency dandy, getting
dressed was a performance art.

'But I'm pretty sure it's not going
to take me half a day to get ready.'

Dah-daah! Hey!

I couldn't do myself up at the back.
Can you give me a hand, valet?

Let me be your man.
Thank you, Jeeves.

OK...

Now, tell me when you can't breathe
any more,

or don't. Mm-hm. That's not too bad.

Tell me about these trousers
that I'm wearing.

These are rather interesting. It's
a footnote in the history of fashion,

but a rather important claim to fame
of Brummell and the Regency.

Brummell is the man
who invents trousers,

as gentlemen wore breeches
and stockings before this period,

He imported these from the Hussars.
You've got understraps
to keep the trouser tight.

And these look like girls' shoes,

but they're Regency men's
dancing pumps.

Yeah! They're a very butch item.

What's next? Is it cravats?
It has to be the cravat.

This is the key item.
Chin up! Very important.

A beautifully tied cravat
was the most important part

of the dandy's uniform.
It had to be scrupulously spotless.

Brummell sent his to the country
to be washed,

so that his laundry
wouldn't be tainted by London soot.

The trick is to keep it
as tight and as high

as you can possibly bear,

so, when your face
begins to turn blue,

then we know we've got it too tight.

But I'm relatively pleased and proud
of that.

It's meant to look like a perfect
cylinder of white. There we go.

We're allowed one declension,
as it was known.

The valet places his finger here,
and you lower your chin.

And that, in theory, stays in place

until we tie the next cravat
or the next dressing.

SHE LAUGHS

It looks better than it feels.
It's pretty uncomfortable.

On the positive note, though, you're
obliged to hold yourself better.

Built-in hauteur.
I feel like my nose is in the air.

That, too.
It's one of the supposed origins

of "toff" and "toffee-nosed",
because this obliges you

to keep your nose in the air, but
especially if you're in any danger

of dribbling anything brown
from snuff-taking,

which is a pretty disgusting thought.
That's really disgusting.

So the toffee-nose
is brown snot from snuff-taking,

and you've got to keep your nose up
so it doesn't spoil your cravat.

So much for the age of elegance.

SONG: "Dandy"
by the Kinks

# Dandy, Dandy

# Where you gonna go now?

# Who you gonna run to?

# All your little life

# You're chasing all the girls

# They can't resist your smile

# Oh, oh, they long for Dandy #

London's St James's
was Dandy Central.

Previous generations of young men

had been able to explore Europe
on a Grand Tour,

but gentlemen of leisure,
in the early years of the Regency,

spent much of their lives
within a quarter of a mile

of St James's Palace.

White's is a club where, it's said,
people have died from exclusion,

and Brummell used to inspect
the promenading dandies

from its bow window.
A stone's throw away,

there was Gentleman Jackson's
boxing gym,

where a bit of man-on-man action

could while away
the long idle hours.

Brooks's, which counted the regent
as a member,

was famous for its gambling,
with fortunes won and lost

at its gaming tables.

And this rather forgettable
modern building

stands on the site
of the most exclusive night spot

in the whole of St James's.

Right here is the site
of Almack's club.

This is the holy of holies.
This is the most exclusive club

in Regency London.
It's where Beau Brummell insisted

that men were dressed
in a strict uniform

of white and black,
or white and sometimes blue-black,

but certainly a strict monochrome.

There's an image here
from a contemporary novel

of what it would have looked like
in those days, a ball at Almack's.

They're having a dance,
and unlike some of the other clubs,

at this one,
the ladies were in charge.

Absolutely. It was a series
of terrifying dragons,

royal and aristocratic ladies,
who decided who was allowed in

and who wasn't, who was suitable
for their daughters or not.

And, yes,
there's a lot of cartoons and ditties

on exactly that terrifying issue.
Aha! I know one.

If to Almack's you belong,

like a monarch, you can do no wrong.

But if you're expelled
on a Wednesday night,

by Jove, you can do nothing right!
HE CHUCKLES

'An evening's entertainment
could be rounded off

'with a visit to one of the
many brothels down the alleys

'just off St James's Street.'

But syphilis was rife,

and would eventually
claim Brummell himself.

Syphilis manifests
in all sorts of ways,

including a sort of bipolar disorder,

and Brummell gambles away
all his money,

and publicly insults the
Prince of Wales. He was rude to him?

Astonishingly, yeah. The Prince
Regent turned up at a party,

appeared to ignore Beau Brummell,
cut him, as they said in the Regency,

and Brummell turned to
a mutual friend and said,

"So, Alvanley,
who's your fat friend?"

about the Prince Regent.
Meaning the Prince Regent? Yeah!

And very soon, all the creditors
were on his back.

He fled to France,
spent the last 20 years of his life

in penury, eventually insane,
and in an asylum.

It's a kind of
a Greek arc of a story.

So the story of Beau Brummell
is pride followed by a fall.

Well, the Victorians
liked to think so, certainly.

Actually, I think it's tailoring
followed by syphilis.

HE LAUGHS

'Brummell showed that access
to the regent's circle

'could brutally be cut short.
But those on the outside

'sometimes made the best of it,
creating an alternative legacy

'of real value.'

At the very start of the Regency,

and just near here
on Dulwich Common,

a dandy fell off his horse.

His name was Francis Bourgeois,
and he was an owner of paintings -

no less than 370 paintings,
and some very, very good ones, too.

A few weeks later
he died of his injuries,

and his death set in motion
a sequence of events

that would really change
the British attitude to art -

not only how it was looked at,

but also who could see it.

'Bourgeois had considered leaving
the collection

'to the British Museum,
but he wasn't part of the regent's
charmed circle,

'and he felt the museum
was run by snobs.

In a final two fingers
to the Establishment,

he left his collection
to Dulwich College,

and the architect John Soane
built a new picture gallery

especially to house it.

'Bourgeois' will insisted that
his paintings be available

'"for the inspection of the public",
which makes Dulwich Picture Gallery

'the first purpose-built
public art gallery in Britain.'

The bulk of the paintings
still on the wall,

including Rembrandts and Raphaels,

come from Bourgeois' bequest
of 1811.

'To ensure the gallery's visitors
don't forget his generosity,

'Bourgeois is actually buried
in the building.

'He's in a mausoleum
next to his business partner -

'some say partner in every sense -
Noel Desenfans.'

It was difficult for them.
People were slightly dismissive.

They thought Desenfans
was pretentious,

and they thought Bourgeois
was a fool,

which quite clearly he wasn't.
He was a dandy, though,

and people laughed at him
for his buckskins

and his polished boots and his hair,
all modelled, of course,

on the Prince Regent.

'Ian Dejardin
is the current director

'of Dulwich Picture Gallery.'

I love the whole idea that this
place is a couple of outsiders

cocking a snook
at the Establishment.

Well, I think that's what it was.
I think it's what it was.

In Francis Bourgeois' will, there is
just this little tiny snippet

of a phrase. He says that
the paintings are to be on display

"for the inspection of the public".

And you read that, and you think,
"Well, obviously."

But no-one had said that before.

This is a really big step forwards,
that it's a public art gallery.

It's incredibly significant.

We're 13, 14 years before
the National Gallery,

so we were it.
We were the national gallery

for many years, really.

The government
had long been under pressure

to establish a national
public-art collection.

'Dulwich showed what could be done.

'The official National Gallery
was founded in the 1820s,

'encouraged by the arts-loving
George as King George IV.

'The columns on the portico
were even recycled

'from his palace, Carlton House,
after it was demolished.'

Another voice raised in support
of the National Gallery

was that of Thomas Lawrence,
George's one-man PR machine.

Lawrence knew very well how art
could transform the life

of an ordinary boy. Painting had
taken him from humble beginnings

to the very top of society.

His meteoric rise started
while he was still a child

in the market town of Devizes.

A little town in Wiltshire
might seem quite a surprising place

for a society portrait painter
to grow up,

but Devizes was a key stopping point
on Britain's busiest coach route

from London through to Bath.

So the whole of fashionable London
came here.

If they wanted a meal
or a bed for the night,

they stopped at this inn, which was
run by the young painter's father,

Thomas Lawrence senior.

Picture the scene. It's the 1770s.

You've just arrived here
at the Bear Inn.

You've got off a stagecoach.
You're tired, you're hungry.

But the landlord,
Thomas Lawrence senior,

as he offers you a drink,

he says, "Would you like to see
my ten-year-old son reciting a poem

or taking your portrait?"

This may have sounded like
a bit of a bore,

but if you chose the poem, the
boy would leap up onto the table,

recite from Milton.
That was pretty good,

but if you handed over your guinea
for your portrait,

you'd have quickly realised that
you were in the hands of a genius.

The actor David Garrick,
who'd witnessed

both of the boy's party tricks,
said he couldn't work out

whether the young Lawrence's future
lay with the pencil

or the stage.

'In 2011,
I visited the first exhibition

'of Lawrence's work in 30 years,
at the National Portrait Gallery.

'He's long been a neglected artist,

'but in his own time, he was
the world's top portrait painter.

'Lawrence produced THE visual record
of the vanished world

'of Regency society.

'He particularly enjoyed painting
wealthy and beautiful women,

'and the ladies enjoyed
his attentions.

'Even the regent's matronly sister
is shooting us a saucy look.'

There's a rather brilliant
contemporary review

of this painting here,
of Lady Selina Meade.

It just goes, "Ha, it's Lady
Selina Meade, very tasty indeed."

Lawrence was clearly a very
attractive, flirtatious,

smooth individual.
One of his friends said

that if you got a letter from him
saying, "Yes, I can come to dinner,"

it felt like you were getting
a love letter.

This is Mrs Isabella Wolff.
She became a sort of muse to him,

and he spent
the best part of 15 years

finishing this portrait.

As well as producing
an amazing painting together,

it's also said that they produced
an illegitimate child.

There was an awful lot of gossip
about what went on

at Lawrence's sittings. In 1806,

he was suspected
of getting too friendly

with Caroline,
the Princess of Wales,

during late-night portrait sessions.

Lawrence had to sign
a written affidavit

that nothing had happened,
and that the door had been unlocked

at all times.

'George himself seems to have had
ambivalent feelings

'about Lawrence's relationship
with his wife,

'but he overcame his misgivings
when he realised

'that Lawrence
could make him look fantastic.'

In 1815,
with the Battle of Waterloo,

the Napoleonic Wars
finally came to an end.

The Allies,
with Britain in the lead,

were victorious at last.

George celebrated
the end of the wars

by commissioning Lawrence to paint
the Allied kings and commanders,

and rewarded him with a knighthood.

The innkeeper's boy
was now Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Painting the Allied leaders
would keep Lawrence busy

for many years to come.

The end of the fighting would affect
the British profoundly.

'The sense of a closed,
isolated island evaporated,

'and slowly the narrow world
of the dandies and St James's

'would disappear. It was replaced
by a hunger for continental travel.'

SONG: "La Mer"
by Charles Trenet

# La mer

# Qu'on voit danser

# Le long des golfes clairs...

'The later years of the Regency
would see Romantic poets

'darting about Europe, and Turner
discovering the light of Venice.

'Those who couldn't get away
could always read about it

'in the countless travelogues
now being published.

'Voyagers wrote of the warm welcome
they received from everybody

'except the French,
who greeted the British

'with vindictive irritation.'

So, this is a really exciting moment
for the British.

They've beaten Napoleon,

their country is
the reigning European superpower.

They want to go and see
for themselves

what their army
has been fighting over.

# Voyez

# Pres des etangs

# Ces grands roseaux mouilles #

Many tourists made a detour for
the battlefield of Waterloo itself,

a victory described
by the Duke of Wellington

as "the nearest-run thing
you ever saw in your life".

The Battle of Waterloo
was on the 18th of June 1815.

By the 19th of June, the battlefield
was already a visitor attraction.

An eye witness reports
a carriage full of people

coming out from Brussels.
They all got out,

and they examined the field.

Within a few months it had become
a regular day-out destination.

There were hordes of guides
to show you around.

There were lots of little boys
selling gruesome relics

of the fallen,
such as hair and bones.

'The main feature
of the battlefield now

'is the Lion's Mound.
Built in the 1820s,

'nearly 400,000 square metres
of battlefield earth

'were shifted to build
this observation point.'

The contours of the land
have been levelled out a bit

from what the earliest visitors
would have seen,

because so much earth was scooped up
to make this big hill.

As the Duke of Wellington said,
"They've ruined my battlefield!"

'The remains of Hougoumont Farm
were a particular draw

'for the early tourists.'

'This was the scene
of some of the most bitter fighting,

'as the French had repeatedly tried
to storm the gates

'of the British-held enclave.

'Early visitors,
in the months after the battle,

'recorded stepping over
mouldy human remains

'and patches of charred earth
where bodies had been burned.'

When the painter Turner visited,
he carefully sketched the locations

where the greatest numbers
had fallen.

Back in England, he painted this -

The Field Of Waterloo.

It's the night of the battle,
and storm clouds fill the sky.

Hougoumont Farm is in flame.

A flare warns that there are
scavengers on the battlefield.

Many of the injured were robbed
and then killed by these looters.

People are searching for
their loved ones.

The dying and the dead,
the French and the English,

are just an intermingled clump
of bodies.

'Lord Byron,
the Regency's sharpest chronicler,

'made the journey here in 1816.

'A year after the battle,
the site had been tidied up.'

Byron found it really hard
to reconcile

his imagined visions of carnage
with what he actually saw -

fertile fields
returning to farmland.

And this is an idea that
he incorporated into the canto

of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
that he was writing at the time -

"As the ground was before,
thus let it be.

"How that red rain
hath made the harvest grow!"

Like many other sightseers, Byron
couldn't resist the opportunity

to buy some souvenirs, and he
mailed them back to his publisher

in St James's.

And these are some of
the actual spoils of war,

which Byron sent back to his
publisher, John Murray, still here.

Let's have a look.

Ah! Now, we know
that he sent back some cockades,

and these are red, white and blue
French Napoleonic badges

made out of leather. Oh, look at
the little eagle on the top there!

And these would have been
a very powerful sight

in the early 19th century.
To see that

would have been like looking at
a swastika today.

It would have given
that sense of fear

to a good, respectable
English person.

This symbolises Boney, the enemy.

Ooh, look!

You wouldn't call that a bullet,
would you? It's a piece of shot.

That could do some damage.

I'm just wondering
what's on that now.

That could be a bit of French blood.

And another badge.

These things look like
a load of trinkets,

and they are, in one sense,
but in another sense,

these all belonged to
real individuals

who probably gave their lives
on the battlefield of Waterloo.

There's something quite sinister
about them.

'Hidden away in a churchyard
in Plymouth

'lies an odd little postscript
to the war with Napoleon.'

This grave belongs to one of
the strangest casualties

of the Napoleonic Wars. He was
killed after the Battle of Waterloo.

The fighting was over.
His name was John Boynes,

and he was a stonemason
who worked in the dockyards.

And it says here
he was "unfortunately drowned"

returning from a trip
to see Bonaparte

out in Plymouth Sound. It was 1815.
He was 35 years old.

Napoleon had surrendered
to the captain of the British ship

HMS Bellerophon, then moored
off the west coast of France.

The ship took Boney to Torbay,
and then to Plymouth Sound,

where she waited around a bit

while the government decided
what to do with him.

It was supposed to be a secret
that Bonaparte was on board,

but one of the crew
put a message into a bottle

and slipped it out
to a passing ship,

so the news was out.
Once this had happened,

Bonaparte was allowed to take a walk
on the deck

at six o'clock in the evening.
He could be seen for miles around

up there, and every boat in Plymouth
got on the water

to try to get a closer look.

Normally there wouldn't have been
anything remarkable

about a naval vessel in Plymouth
Sound. But this was Napoleon,

the most famous man in Europe!

Hello! Thank you.

Thanks very much.

The commotion made the authorities
rather jittery.

The captain of the Bellerophon,
Captain Maitland,

recorded, on the 30th of July,
that there were more than a thousand

of these little boats
come to see Napoleon.

The guard boats from the big ship
tried to disperse the crowd

by ramming them, with such force
that some of the smaller vessels

nearly capsized.

Among them were two artists
who captured the bizarre scene

for posterity.

John James Chalon
gave us a panorama,

complete with surrounding boats
and the people straining
to get a closer view.

They were really excited
to see Britain's mortal enemy,

the man who'd directly affected
the lives of everyone in Plymouth.

He was repellent but fascinating.

The artist who gave us the close-up
was Charles Lock Eastlake.

Eastlake was able to get his boat
right up close to Napoleon.

He took a few rapid sketches
on the spot,

and later he turned them into
a full-length portrait.

The fallen emperor
looks a bit dishevelled,

but he still seems to command
the respect of a British sailor.

Is Napoleon looking out
at the crowds,

or is he thinking about
his own gloomy future?

This picture made Eastlake's name.

He would go on to a glorious career,

eventually becoming president
of the Royal Academy.

There was one person notably absent

from Napoleon's final public
appearance - the Prince Regent.

By this stage, Napoleon had been
writing him personal letters,

It would have been relatively easy
for George to come to Plymouth,

but he stayed away. I think that,
even with Napoleon defeated,

he still felt
he would have been overshadowed.

'Napoleon never did get
a personal hearing from the regent.

'After ten days,
he was sent to permanent exile

'in the South Atlantic.

'George, meanwhile,
was left with a Bonaparte fixation

'from which
he never really recovered.

'He set about acquiring objects
that connected him with Napoleon,

'and some still remain
at Buckingham Palace.'

This amazing cloak was retrieved
from Napoleon's coach

on the battlefield of Waterloo,

and it ended up
in George's clutches.

There's a Napoleon theme
in his commissions.

'At the end of the Marble Hall
in Buckingham Palace

'is Mars And Venus by Canova,
Napoleon's favourite sculptor.

'Oddly enough,
at the end of the wars,

'he became
George's favourite sculptor too.

'George secured this particular work

'when he presented Canova
with a snuffbox

'containing a £500 note.'

But the prize
in George's collection was this.

This sensational thing here

is called
the Table Of The Grand Commanders.

Here's Alexander the Great.

Here are other generals
of antiquity.

It's pretty much
made out of porcelain.

It was made for Napoleon,

and a couple of years
after the Battle of Waterloo,

it was given as a gift
by the restored king of France

to George. He treasured it. It was
one of his favourite possessions.

And when he had himself painted
by Thomas Lawrence,

this table appears
in the background,

in what becomes the definitive image
of George as regent,

and then as king.

With a few slight alterations,
this would be the basis

of all George's later
state portraits.

Lawrence reproduced the painting
so often

that he was still knocking them out
even when he was on his deathbed.

To George, this isn't just a table.

It's a symbol of all his feelings
about Napoleon.

The message is pretty clear -
this used to belong to Napoleon.

Napoleon's been beaten.
It now belongs to George.

George himself
is the grand commander.

'When George eventually became king
in 1820,

'he would rebuild Windsor Castle
as Gothic fantasy.

'And in its design,
he included a space

'in which his victory over Napoleon
could live forever.

'This is the Waterloo Chamber,

'where the collaboration between
George and his spin-meister,

'Thomas Lawrence,
is finally played out.

The room was originally
a medieval courtyard.

It was closed over,
to recall the hulk of a ship.

But it's what's on the walls
that really grabs our attention.

Now, this has to be one of
the most fabulous rooms in Europe.

George's big rivals
as royal art patrons

were Henry VIII and Charles I,

but neither of them did anything
on the scale of this.

There are more than 25 portraits
here by Sir Thomas Lawrence,

and these are the men who brought
you the victory of Waterloo.

We've got sovereigns,
we've got statesmen,

we've got the actual commanders
of the armies,

and they're shown
in a really theatrical manner.

They're all larger than life,
and they loom down at us

from the walls. I'd say
it was like being in their presence,

but it isn't -
it's better than that.

'In the later years of the Regency,
Lawrence travelled around Europe,

'hanging out
at diplomatic conferences

'and painting everyone
on George's wish list.

'He returned laden down
with unfinished portraits,

'and he kept polishing them up
throughout the 1820s.

'There's something unreal
about this room.

'It doesn't reflect
the grim reality of Waterloo.

'Rather, it shows what the man
who commissioned it

'desperately wanted to be true.
This is George's room.'

This is how he saw himself,

as a warrior king
in a chivalric court.

But what's kind of glossed over here

is the fact that he wasn't
at any of the battles.

He was always safe
on the other side of the Channel.

He seems to have forgotten this fact
as time went on.

He would sometimes amaze people
by talking about Waterloo

as if he'd been present,
and there was another battle,

the Battle of Salamanca,

where he claimed
to have led a cavalry charge

at the vital moment when things
were looking very black indeed.

Wellington's generals,
who really had been present,

often injured,
and in some cases killed,

are hidden away in dark corners,

as if they're not allowed to intrude
upon George's fantasy.

This room was only completed after
George and Lawrence were both dead,

but it captures the high point
of George's regency.

Here the Prince Regent was working
with an extraordinary painter

that's really like
the Regency period itself.

It's a unique mix
of appearance and reality.

They've fused together into
something that's not quite the truth

but it's spectacular all the same.

'Next time, we explore
the Regency's greatest legacy -

'the rebuilding of Britain
in the aftermath of Waterloo.

'As we'll discover,
George wasn't alone

'in wanting to live
in a world of make-believe.'

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