Our Tempestuous Day by Carolly Erickson

First published: 1986

Type of work: History

Time of work: 1810-1820

Locale: Great Britain

Principal Personages:

• George III, the king of Great Britain from 1760 to 1820
• George, the prince of Wales and Regent from 1810 until 1820
• Arthur Wellesley, the duke of Wellington and the victor over Napoleon
• Hannah More, a writer on religious and moral subjects
• George Gordon, Lord Byron, a poet of the Romantic period

Form and Content

A medievalist, Carolly Erickson has written several biographies of the major figures of Tudor England, including Henry VIII and his two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, as well as Henry’s second wife and the mother of Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn. As a biographer, Erickson has been drawn to women, or in the case of Henry VIII, a figure whose power and influence directly determined the fates of six wives. Her focus in those biographies has been less on matters of state, of high diplomacy and international conflict, than upon the upbringing and the private lives of her subjects. Those issues are of greater significance to the author than the constitutional concerns so often the center of Tudor biographies. In Our Tempestuous Day: A History of Regency England, Erickson carries her interest in English history into the early nineteenth century. Instead of a royal biography, the author tells the tale of the ten-year period from 1810 to 1820.

George III celebrated his Golden Jubilee in 1810. The king had suffered from periods of mental instability in the past, however, and in his jubilee year, he suffered another relapse. This time he did not recover, and a regent was chosen to rule in his place, until his death in 1820. It was a divided era and a crucial one for Great Britain. What concerns Erickson was the deep-seated conflicts and fissures within that British world. The opulence and riches of the royals and members of the aristocracy contrasted with the poverty of many. The immoral and amoral sexual behavior of the ruling class conflicted with the developing moral imperatives of the middle classes. The political system, controlled by the landed aristocracy, was under attack by both the industrial middle classes and the newly emerging factory workers, with their demands for radical reforms. It was a world of artistic beauty in contrast with much ugly violence—political riots and public executions.

The regent was George III’s eldest son, George, the prince of Wales. The Hano-verian rulers had always had difficult relations with their future heirs, and the current king and his son were no exceptions. George III, nicknamed Farmer George, was a man of limited abilities, but the hardworking monarch had come to personify traditional social and familial values. Prince George could not have been more different. Gross in size and engrossed in art and architecture, given to gambling and self-indulgence, the prince was in chronic difficulties. His private life was chaotic, his public life was irresponsible, and in 1810 he became regent.

It was a most difficult time. Britain had been at war with revolutionary and Napoleonic France for more than a generation. There was little leadership from the politicians of the day, and Prince George added nothing. His attitude toward his position as regent was similar to that Renaissance pope who commented, “God has given us the papacy so let us enjoy it.” George intended to enjoy his time of glory. His brothers were of no assistance; they were as dissolute and irresponsible as the prince himself. Rarely has the royal family been in worse odor with the British public.

Erickson takes the title of her history from a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, who in 1819 savagely attacked British society:

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king;Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flowThrough public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A people starved and stabbed in th’untilled field;An army, whom liberticide and preyMakes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay’Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Are graves from which a glorious Phantom mayBurst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

It is the story of those tempestuous ten years that Erickson has chosen to tell.

Context

As an American writer, Carolly Erickson is unique. Although a professionally trained historian who initially taught at the university level, she became a full-time writer instead of remaining within academe. Erickson is thus closer to the British paradigm of women historians than to any model in the United States. Her career is similar to such English writers as Elizabeth Longford, the biographer of Queen Victoria and the duke of Wellington; her daughter Antonia Fraser, who has written about Charles II and Oliver Cromwell; and Cecil Woodham-Smith, the biographer of Charles I and a historian of the English civil war.

Erickson, a medievalist by training, has also chosen only European subjects, primarily British. Bloody Mary, The Great Harry, The First Elizabeth, and Mistress Anne chronicled the major figures of sixteenth century Tudor England. Our Tempestuous Day took Erickson into the early nineteenth century. She has written other royal biographies, such as Bonnie Prince Charlie (1989) and To the Scaffold: The Life of Marie Antoinette (1991). The latter is not a British figure, but the era of the French Revolution does approximate in time the era of the regency.

Generally, Erickson’s subjects have been women, and her focus has been primarily on their private rather than public lives. Her male figures are individuals whose personal and private lives have been paramount in explaining their careers—Henry VIII, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and George, prince of Wales and regent. Critics have complained, however, that by concentrating upon the personal characteristics of her characters she slights the broader context and historical issues. Her more recent works, including Our Tempestuous Day, have not received the favorable and extensive reviews of some of her earlier studies, and as a result Erickson’s influence on women writers and on women’s issues has perhaps been lessened.

Bibliography

Casada, James A. Review of Our Tempestuous Day. Library Journal 111 (January, 1986): 82. Casada, an academic historian, is generally pleased with Erickson’s study, but he criticizes the work for its lack of discussion of the Industrial Revolution and Wesleyanism.

Guthrie, Margaret E. Review of To the Scaffold, by Carolly Erickson. The New York Times Book Review, June 2, 1991, 20. The reviewer enjoyed this biography of Marie Antoinette but wished that more had been included on the structure of the French court and government.

Hibbert, Christopher. “Hero in a Ragged Kilt.” The New York Times Book Review, January 8, 1989, 16. Hibbert, a British historian, reviews Erickson’s Bonnie Prince Charlie. He praises the work but notes that there is little new in Erickson’s account and that four biographies of the subject had been published earlier in 1989.

Mason, Deborah. Review of Our Tempestuous Day. The New York Times Book Review, June 29, 1986, 24-25. The reviewer approves of Erickson’s lively account of Regency England, with its paradoxical mix of beauty and ugliness, commenting that the work “read like a whopping good novel.”

Mellor, Anne K. Review of Our Tempestuous Day. Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 30, 1986, 5. Mellor, an English professor, praises Erickson for her knowledge of fashion and architecture and for her portrayal of Peterloo and the London crowds. She argues, however, that Erickson lacks a coherent thesis.