Tag Archives: Edinburgh

George IV Visit to Scotland

Updated on August 8, 2018 by diane

At the end of the month I will be traveling to Scotland with Kristine Hughes Patrone of Number One London Tours. We’ll be joining her Scottish Writers Retreat in Glasgow the second week, but first we’ll visit Edinburgh and sites between.

In August 1822 there was another momentous visit to Edinburgh. George IV traveled to Edinburgh on the first visit by a reigning monarch since King Charles I in 1633. The visit was encouraged by government ministers, because they wanted to keep Prinny from attending the Congress of Verona where the fate of post-Napoleonic war Europe was being decided.

There was another good reason for the visit, though. Scotland had been humming with unrest and the government was eager to avoid the revolutions that had rocked America and France. Even though George IV was rather unpopular, his visit was promoted by none other than Sir Walter Scott, who had been invited to dine with the King after the release of his popular novel, Waverley, which presented a romantic view of the Scottish Highlands that must have captivated Prinny as well as the general public.

Sir Walter Scott worked with others to plan the royal visit which was filled with the sort of pageantry that Prinny loved. Scott persuaded Prinny that he was entitled to call himself a Highlander, because of his Stuart bloodline. The King promptly ordered a highland outfit of bright red Royal Tartan, which he is shown wearing in the idealized portrait by David Wilkie.

I will be flying from London to Edinburgh, but Prinny arrived for his visit by ship and was met with the promised celebrations that had sent lowlanders and highlanders scrambling for the proper kilts. The celebrations lasted a little more than two weeks, almost exactly the amount of time I’ll be in Scotland. It also rained a lot and I am hoping that is not true for my visit.

I’ll be thinking of Prinny as I walk in his footsteps, walking the Royal Mile from Holyrood to Edinburgh Castle.

I just hope I won’t be carrying an umbrella?

Have you visited Edenburgh? What should we not miss seeing?

Read Diane’s latest!
A Lady Becomes a Governess, July 2018, Book 1 in the Governess Swap Series
Available now from online vendors.

Posted in History | Tagged Edinburgh, george iv, Holyrood, Sir Walter Scott | 1 Reply

Books I Forgot I Had

Updated on January 18, 2010 by diane

I’m up to 361 catalogued books so far, with about 8 shelves to go. This is not counting my fiction books, though.

So far I’ve found five books with duplicates:

The Country House and How It Worked
Con Men and Cutpurses: Scenes from the Hogarthian Underworld
Regency London by Stella Margetson
All You Needed to Know About What Materials Were Used When, With What Colors and Gems, Through the Ages (by Marisa Jones for the San Diego RWA Chapter)
Waterloo by David Howarth (a Pitkin book)

I’ll donate these to the Beau Monde Conference’s Silent Auction and hope that my Book Collector software keeps me from buying duplicates as often as I do!

I also discovered lots of books I forgot I had! (I’m a sad case, I know…) Some of them are very old and some…I just forgot.

Memorials Of St. James ‘s Street Together With The Annals Of Almack’s (1922)
A quote:

St. James’s Street, which sheltered Waller and Pope and Byron; where Maclean, the highwayman, lodged cheek by jowl with the “quality” whom he robbed; where Wolfe once stayed and wrote to Pitt asking for employment in 1758; and where Gillray threw himself out of a window; where the clubs and coffee houses took in and gave forth half the intellect and aristocracy of the land; where Dr Johnson, requiring a pair of shoe-buckles, came to the shop of Wirgman, here, to get them, as faithfully recorded by Boswell—St James’s Street is, notwithstanding its famous habitués and its notable events, as much associated with the name of Betty, the fruit woman, as with that of any other person during the eighteenth century.

Byng’s Tours
“Every summer for ten years, the Hon John Byng set off on a tour of England or Wales. He sampled the landscape and history of the countryside, visited houses and sketched ruins. This book contains his journals.”

Edinburgh In The Nineteenth Century Or Modern Athens Displayed In A Series Of Views
(follow the link to the google books version)