of us to insist upon apolaustic happiness, but that is the kind
of happiness that we can ourselves, most of us, best understand, and so
we offer it to our ideal. In Royalty we find our Bacchus, our Venus.

Certainly George was, in the practical sense of the word, a fine king.
His wonderful physique, his wealth, his brilliant talents, he gave them
all without stint to Society. From the time when, at Madame Cornelys',
he gallivanted with rips and demireps, to the time when he sat, a stout
and solitary old king, fishing in the artificial pond at Windsor,
his life was beautifully ordered. He indulged to the full in all the
delights that England could offer him. That he should have, in his old
age, suddenly abandoned his career of vigorous enjoyment is, I confess,
rather surprising. The Royal voluptuary generally remains young to the
last. No one ever tires of pleasure. It is the pursuit of pleasure,
the trouble to grasp it, that makes us old. Only the soldiers who enter
Capua with wounded feet leave it demoralised. And yet George, who never
had to wait or fight for a pleasure, fell enervate long before his
death. I can but attribute this to the constant persecution to which he
was subjected by duns and ministers, parents and wives.

Not that I regret the manner in which he spent his last years. On the
contrary, I think it was exceedingly cosy. I like to think of the King,
at Windsor, lying a-bed all the morning in his darkened room, with all
the sporting papers scattered over his quilt and a little decanter of
the favourite cherry-brandy within easy reach. I like to think of him
sitting by his fire in the afternoon and hearing his ministers ask for
him at the door and piling another log upon the fire, as he heard them
sent away by his servant. It was not, I acknowledge, a life to kindle
popular enthusiasm. But most people knew little of its mode. For all
they knew, His Majesty might have been making his soul or writing
his memoirs. In reality, George was now 'too fat by far' to brook the
observation of casual eyes. Especially he hated to be seen by those
whose memories might bear them back to the time when he had yet a waist.
Among his elaborate precautions of privacy was a pair of avant-couriers,
who always preceded his pony-chaise in its daily progress through
Windsor Great Park and had strict commands to drive back any intruder.
In The Veiled Majestic Man, Where is the Graceful Despot of England?
and other lampoons not e