An amusing account
of the royal visit is given by Fanny Burney. The King was so pleased
with the place that he stayed eleven weeks, and by his unaffected
buorgeois manner and approachableness quickly gained the enthusiastic
loyalty of his Dorset subjects. Miss Burney's most entertaining
reminiscence of the visit is the oft-repeated account of the King's
first dip in the sea. Immediately the royal person "became immersed
beneath the waves" a band, concealed in a bathing machine struck up
"God save Great George our King." Weymouth is in possession of a
keepsake of these stirring times in the statue of His Hanoverian
Majesty that graces(?) the centre of the Esplanade. It is to be hoped
that the town will never be inveigled into scrapping this memorial,
which for quaintness and unconscious humour is almost unsurpassed. A
subject of derisive merriment to the tripper and of shuddering aversion
for those with any aesthetic sense, it is nevertheless an interesting
link with another age and is not very much worse than some other
specimens of the memorial type of a more recent date.
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