"A poor man was found hanging in a gentleman"s stables at Bungay, in Norfolk, by a person who cut him down, and running for a.s.sistance, left his penknife behind him. The poor man recovering, cut his throat with the knife; and a river being nigh, jumped into it; but company coming, he was dragged out alive, and was like to remain so."
"The Honourable Thomas Finch, brother to the Earl of Nottingham, is appointed amba.s.sador at the Hague, in the room of the Earl of Chesterfield, who is on his return home."
"William Cowper, Esq., and the Rev. Mr. John Cowper, chaplain in ordinary to her Majesty, and rector of Great Berkhampstead, in the county of Hertford, are appointed clerks of the commissioners of bankruptcy."
"Charles Creagh, Esq., and -- Macnamara, Esq., between whom an old grudge of three years had subsisted, which had occasioned their being bound over about fifty times for breaking the peace, meeting in company with Mr.
Eyres, of Galloway, they discharged their pistols, and all three were killed on the spot-to the great joy of their peaceful neighbours, say the Irish papers."
"Wheat is 26_s._ to 28_s._, and barley 20_s._ to 22_s._ a quarter; three per cents, 92; best loaf sugar, 9-1/4_d._; Bohea, 12_s._ to 14_s._; Pekoe, 18_s._, and Hyson, 35_s._ per pound."
"At Exon was celebrated with great magnificence the birthday of the son of Sir W. Courtney, Bart., at which more than 1,000 persons were present. A bullock was roasted whole; a b.u.t.t of wine and several tuns of beer and cider were given to the populace. At the same time Sir William delivered to his son, then of age, Powdram Castle, and a great estate."
"Charlesworth and c.o.x, two solicitors, convicted of forgery, stood on the pillory at the Royal Exchange. The first was severely handled by the populace, but the other was very much favoured, and protected by six or seven fellows who got on the pillory to protect him from the insults of the mob."
"A boy killed by falling upon iron spikes, from a lamppost, which he climbed to see Mother Needham stand in the pillory."
"Mary Lynn was burned to ashes at the stake for being concerned in the murder of her mistress."
"Alexander Russell, the foot soldier, who was capitally convicted for a street robbery in January sessions, was reprieved for transportation; but having an estate fallen to him, obtained a free pardon."
"The Lord John Russell married to the Lady Diana Spencer, at Marlborough House. He has a fortune of 30,000_l._ down, and is to have 100,000_l._ at the death of the d.u.c.h.ess Dowager of Marlborough, his grandmother."
"March 1 being the anniversary of the queen"s birthday, when her Majesty entered the forty-ninth year of her age, there was a splendid appearance of n.o.bility at St. James"s. Her Majesty was magnificently dressed, and wore a flowered muslin head-edging, as did also her Royal Highness. The Lord Portmore was said to have had the richest dress, though an Italian Count had twenty-four diamonds instead of b.u.t.tons."
New clothes on the birthday were the fashion for all loyal people. Swift mentions the custom several times. Walpole is constantly speaking of it; laughing at the practice, but having the very finest clothes from Paris, nevertheless. If the king and queen were unpopular, there were very few new clothes at the Drawing-room. In a paper in the _True Patriot_, No. 3, written to attack the Pretender, the Scotch, French, and Popery, Fielding supposes the Scotch and the Pretender in possession of London, and himself about to be hanged for loyalty,-when, just as the rope is round his neck, he says: "My little girl entered my bedchamber, and put an end to my dream by pulling open my eyes, and telling me that the tailor had just brought home my clothes for his Majesty"s birthday." In his _Temple Beau_, the beau is dunned for a birthday suit of velvet, 40_l._ Be sure that Mr.
Harry Fielding was dunned too.
The public days, no doubt, were splendid, but the private Court life must have been awfully wearisome. "I will not trouble you," writes Hervey to Lady Sundon, "with any account of our occupations at Hampton Court. No mill-horse ever went in a more constant track, or a more unchanging circle; so that by the a.s.sistance of an almanac for the day of the week, and a watch for the hour of the day, you may inform yourself fully, without any other intelligence but your memory, of every transaction within the verge of the Court. Walking, chaises, levees, and audiences fill the morning. At night the king plays at commerce and backgammon, and the queen at quadrille, where poor Lady Charlotte runs her usual nightly gauntlet, the queen pulling her hood, and the Princess Royal rapping her knuckles. The Duke of Grafton takes his nightly opiate of lottery, and sleeps as usual between the Princesses Amelia and Caroline. Lord Grantham strolls from one room to another (as Dryden says), like some discontented ghost that oft appears, and is forbid to speak; and stirs himself about as people stir a fire, not with any design, but in hopes to make it burn brisker. At last the king gets up; the pool finishes; and everybody has their dismission. Their Majesties retire to Lady Charlotte and my Lord Lifford; my Lord Grantham, to Lady Frances and Mr. Clark: some to supper, some to bed; and thus the evening and the morning make the day."
The king"s fondness for Hanover occasioned all sorts of rough jokes among his English subjects, to whom _Sauerkraut_ and sausages have ever been ridiculous objects. When our present Prince Consort came among us, the people bawled out songs in the streets indicative of the absurdity of Germany in general. The sausage-shops produced enormous sausages which we might suppose were the daily food and delight of German princes. I remember the caricatures at the marriage of Prince Leopold with the Princess Charlotte. The bridegroom was drawn in rags. George III"s wife was called by the people a beggarly German d.u.c.h.ess; the British idea being that all princes were beggarly except British princes. King George paid us back. He thought there were no manners out of Germany. Sarah Marlborough once coming to visit the princess, whilst her Royal Highness was whipping one of the roaring royal children, "Ah!" says George, who was standing by, "you have no good manners in England, because you are not properly brought up when you are young." He insisted that no English cooks could roast, no English coachman could drive: he actually questioned the superiority of our n.o.bility, our horses, and our roast beef!
Whilst he was away from his beloved Hanover, everything remained there exactly as in the prince"s presence. There were 800 horses in the stables, there was all the apparatus of chamberlains, Court-marshals, and equerries; and Court a.s.semblies were held every Sat.u.r.day, where all the n.o.bility of Hanover a.s.sembled at what I can"t but think a fine and touching ceremony. A large armchair was placed in the a.s.sembly-room, and on it the king"s portrait. The n.o.bility advanced, and made a bow to the armchair, and to the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and spoke under their voices before the august picture, just as they would have done had the King Churfurst been present himself.
He was always going back to Hanover. In the year 1729, he went for two whole years, during which Caroline reigned for him in England, and he was not in the least missed by his British subjects. He went again in "35 and "36; and between the years 1740 and 1755 was no less than eight times on the Continent, which amus.e.m.e.nt he was obliged to give up at the outbreak of the Seven Years" War. Here every day"s amus.e.m.e.nt was the same. "Our life is as uniform as that of a monastery," writes a courtier whom Vehse quotes. "Every morning at eleven, and every evening at six, we drive in the heat to Herrenhausen, through an enormous linden avenue; and twice a day cover our coats and coaches with dust. In the king"s society there never is the least change. At table, and at cards, he sees always the same faces, and at the end of the game retires into his chamber. Twice a week there is a French theatre; the other days there is play in the gallery. In this way, were the king always to stop in Hanover, one could make a ten years" calendar of his proceedings; and settle beforehand what his time of business, meals, and pleasure would be."
The old pagan kept his promise to his dying wife. Lady Yarmouth was now in full favour, and treated with profound respect by the Hanover society, though it appears rather neglected in England when she came among us. In 1740, a couple of the king"s daughters went to see him at Hanover; Anna, the Princess of Orange (about whom, and whose husband and marriage-day, Walpole and Hervey have left us the most ludicrous descriptions), and Maria of Hesse-Ca.s.sel, with their respective lords. This made the Hanover Court very brilliant. In honour of his high guests, the king gave several fetes; among others, a magnificent masked ball, in the green theatre at Herrenhausen-the garden theatre, with linden and box for screen, and gra.s.s for a carpet, where the Platens had danced to George and his father the late sultan. The stage and a great part of the garden were illuminated with coloured lamps. Almost the whole Court appeared in white dominos, "like," says the describer of the scene, "like spirits in the Elysian fields. At night, supper was served in the gallery with three great tables, and the king was very merry. After supper dancing was resumed, and I did not get home till five o"clock by full daylight to Hanover. Some days afterwards we had in the opera-house at Hanover, a great a.s.sembly.
The king appeared in a Turkish dress; his turban was ornamented with a magnificent agraffe of diamonds; the Lady Yarmouth was dressed as a sultana; n.o.body was more beautiful than the Princess of Hesse." So, while poor Caroline was resting in her coffin, dapper little George, with his red face and his white eyebrows and goggle-eyes, at sixty years of age, is dancing a pretty dance with Madame Walmoden, and capering about dressed up like a Turk! For twenty years more, that little old Bajazet went on in this Turkish fashion, until the fit came which choked the old man, when he ordered the side of his coffin to be taken out, as well as that of poor Caroline"s who had preceded him, so that his sinful old bones and ashes might mingle with those of the faithful creature. O strutting Turkey-c.o.c.k of Herrenhausen! O naughty little Mahomet! in what Turkish paradise are you now, and where be your painted houris? So Countess Yarmouth appeared as a sultana, and his Majesty in a Turkish dress wore an agraffe of diamonds, and was very merry, was he? Friends! he was your fathers" king as well as mine-let us drop a respectful tear over his grave.
He said of his wife that he never knew a woman who was worthy to buckle her shoe: he would sit alone weeping before her portrait, and when he had dried his eyes, he would go off to his Walmoden and talk of her. On the 25th day of October, 1760, he being then in the seventy-seventh year of his age, and the thirty-fourth of his reign, his page went to take him his royal chocolate, and behold! the most religious and gracious king was lying dead on the floor. They went and fetched Walmoden; but Walmoden could not wake him. The sacred Majesty was but a lifeless corpse. The king was dead; G.o.d save the king! But, of course, poets and clergymen decorously bewailed the late one. Here are some artless verses, in which an English divine deplored the famous departed hero, and over which you may cry or you may laugh, exactly as your humour suits:-
While at his feet expiring Faction lay, No contest left but who should best obey; Saw in his offspring all himself renewed; The same fair path of glory still pursued; Saw to young George Augusta"s care impart Whate"er could raise and humanize the heart; Blend all his grandsire"s virtues with his own, And form their mingled radiance for the throne- No farther blessing could on earth be given- The next degree of happiness was-heaven!
If he had been good, if he had been just, if he had been pure in life, and wise in council, could the poet have said much more? It was a parson who came and wept over this grave, with Walmoden sitting on it, and claimed heaven for the poor old man slumbering below. Here was one who had neither dignity, learning, morals, nor wit-who tainted a great society by a bad example; who in youth, manhood, old age, was gross, low, and sensual; and Mr. Porteus, afterwards my Lord Bishop Porteus, says the earth was not good enough for him, and that his only place was heaven! Bravo, Mr.
Porteus! The divine who wept these tears over George II"s memory wore George III"s lawn. I don"t know whether people still admire his poetry or his sermons.
George The Third
We have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To read the mere catalogue of characters who figured during that long period, would occupy our allotted time, and we should have all text and no sermon. England has to undergo the revolt of the American colonies; to submit to defeat and separation; to shake under the volcano of the French Revolution; to grapple and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy Napoleon; to gasp and rally after that tremendous struggle. The old society, with its courtly splendours, has to pa.s.s away; generations of statesmen to rise and disappear; Pitt to follow Chatham to the tomb; the memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson"s and Wellington"s glory; the old poets who unite us to Queen Anne"s time to sink into their graves; Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise; Garrick to delight the world with his dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean to leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished theatre. Steam has to be invented; kings to be beheaded, banished, deposed, restored. Napoleon to be but an episode, and George III is to be alive through all these varied changes, to accompany his people through all these revolutions of thought, government, society; to survive out of the old world into ours.
When I first saw England, she was in mourning for the young Princess Charlotte, the hope of the empire. I came from India as a child, and our ship touched at an island on the way home, where my black servant took me a long walk over rocks and hills until we reached a garden, where we saw a man walking. "That is he," said the black man: "that is Bonaparte! He eats three sheep every day, and all the little children he can lay hands on!"
There were people in the British dominions besides that poor Calcutta serving-man, with an equal horror of the Corsican ogre.
With the same childish attendant, I remember peeping through the colonnade at Carlton House, and seeing the abode of the great Prince Regent. I can see yet the Guards pacing before the gates of the place. The place? What place? The palace exists no more than the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It is but a name now. Where be the sentries who used to salute as the Royal chariots drove in and out? The chariots, with the kings inside, have driven to the realms of Pluto; the tall Guards have marched into darkness, and the echoes of their drums are rolling in Hades. Where the palace once stood, a hundred little children are paddling up and down the steps to St.
James"s Park. A score of grave gentlemen are taking their tea at the Athenaeum Club; as many grizzly warriors are garrisoning the United Service Club opposite. Pall Mall is the great social Exchange of London now-the mart of news, of politics, of scandal, of rumour-the English forum, so to speak, where men discuss the last dispatch from the Crimea, the last speech of Lord Derby, the next move of Lord John. And, now and then, to a few antiquarians, whose thoughts are with the past rather than with the present, it is a memorial of old times and old people, and Pall Mall is our Palmyra. Look! About this spot, Tom of Ten Thousand was killed by Konigsmarck"s gang. In that great red house Gainsborough lived, and Culloden c.u.mberland, George III"s uncle. Yonder is Sarah Marlborough"s palace, just as it stood when that termagant occupied it. At 25, Walter Scott used to live; at the house, now No. 79, and occupied by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, resided Mrs. Eleanor Gwynn, comedian.
How often has Queen Caroline"s chair issued from under yonder arch! All the men of the Georges have pa.s.sed up and down the street. It has seen Walpole"s chariot and Chatham"s sedan; and Fox, Gibbon, Sheridan, on their way to Brookes"s; and stately William Pitt stalking on the arm of Dundas; and Hanger and Tom Sheridan reeling out of Raggett"s; and Byron limping into Wattier"s; and Swift striding out of Bury Street; and Mr. Addison and d.i.c.k Steele, both perhaps a little the better for liquor; and the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York clattering over the pavement; and Johnson counting the posts along the streets, after dawdling before Dodsley"s window; and Horry Walpole hobbling into his carriage, with a gimcrack just bought out at Christie"s; and George Selwyn sauntering into White"s.
In the published letters to George Selwyn we get a ma.s.s of correspondence by no means so brilliant and witty as Walpole"s, or so bitter and bright as Hervey"s, but as interesting, and even more descriptive of the time, because the letters are the work of many hands. You hear more voices speaking, as it were, and more natural than Horace"s dandified treble, and Sporus"s malignant whisper. As one reads the Selwyn letters-as one looks at Reynolds"s n.o.ble pictures ill.u.s.trative of those magnificent times and voluptuous people-one almost hears the voice of the dead past; the laughter and the chorus; the toast called over the br.i.m.m.i.n.g cups; the shout at the racecourse or the gaming-table; the merry joke frankly spoken to the laughing fine lady. How fine those ladies were, those ladies who heard and spoke such coa.r.s.e jokes; how grand those gentlemen!
I fancy that peculiar product of the past, the fine gentleman, has almost vanished off the face of the earth, and is disappearing like the beaver or the Red Indian. We can"t have fine gentlemen any more, because we can"t have the society in which they lived. The people will not obey: the parasites will not be as obsequious as formerly: children do not go down on their knees to beg their parents" blessing: chaplains do not say grace and retire before the pudding: servants do not say "your honour" and "your worship" at every moment: tradesmen do not stand hat in hand as the gentleman pa.s.ses: authors do not wait for hours in gentlemen"s ante-rooms with a fulsome dedication, for which they hope to get five guineas from his lordship. In the days when there were fine gentlemen, Mr. Secretary Pitt"s under-secretaries did not dare to sit down before him; but Mr.
Pitt, in his turn, went down on his gouty knees to George II; and when George III spoke a few kind words to him, Lord Chatham burst into tears of reverential joy and grat.i.tude; so awful was the idea of the monarch, and so great the distinctions of rank. Fancy Lord John Russell or Lord Palmerston on their knees whilst the sovereign was reading a dispatch, or beginning to cry because Prince Albert said something civil!
At the accession of George III, the patricians were yet at the height of their good fortune. Society recognized their superiority, which they themselves pretty calmly took for granted. They inherited not only t.i.tles and estates, and seats in the House of Peers, but seats in the House of Commons. There were a mult.i.tude of Government places, and not merely these, but bribes of actual 500_l._ notes, which Members of the House took not much shame in a.s.suming. Fox went into Parliament at 20: Pitt was just of age: his father not much older. It was the good time for Patricians.
Small blame to them if they took and enjoyed, and over-enjoyed, the prizes of politics, the pleasures of social life.
In these letters to Selwyn, we are made acquainted with a whole society of these defunct fine gentlemen: and can watch with a curious interest a life, which the novel-writers of that time, I think, have scarce touched upon. To Smollett, to Fielding even, a lord was a lord: a gorgeous being with a blue ribbon, a coroneted chair, and an immense star on his bosom, to whom commoners paid reverence. Richardson, a man of humbler birth than either of the above two, owned that he was ignorant regarding the manners of the aristocracy, and besought Mrs. Donnellan, a lady who had lived in the great world, to examine a volume of _Sir Charles Grandison_, and point out any errors which she might see in this particular. Mrs. Donnellan found so many faults, that Richardson changed colour; shut up the book; and muttered that it were best to throw it in the fire. Here, in Selwyn, we have the real original men and women of fashion of the early time of George III. We can follow them to the new club at Almack"s: we can travel over Europe with them: we can accompany them not only to the public places, but to their country-houses and private society. Here is a whole company of them; wits and prodigals; some persevering in their bad ways; some repentant, but relapsing; beautiful ladies, parasites, humble chaplains, led captains. Those fair creatures whom we love in Reynolds"s portraits, and who still look out on us from his canvases with their sweet calm faces and gracious smiles-those fine gentlemen who did us the honour to govern us; who inherited their boroughs; took their ease in their patent places; and slipped Lord North"s bribes so elegantly under their ruffles-we make acquaintance with a hundred of these fine folks, hear their talk and laughter, read of their loves, quarrels, intrigues, debts, duels, divorces; can fancy them alive if we read the book long enough. We can attend at Duke Hamilton"s wedding, and behold him marry his bride with the curtain-ring: we can peep into her poor sister"s death-bed: we can see Charles Fox cursing over the cards, or March bawling out the odds at Newmarket: we can imagine Burgoyne tripping off from St. James"s Street to conquer the Americans, and slinking back into the club somewhat crestfallen after his beating: we can see the young king dressing himself for the Drawing-room and asking ten thousand questions regarding all the gentlemen: we can have high life or low, the struggle at the Opera to behold the Violetta or the Zamperini-the Macaronis and fine ladies in their chairs trooping to the masquerade or Madame Cornelys"s-the crowd at Drury Lane to look at the body of Miss Ray, whom Parson Hackman has just pistolled-or we can peep into Newgate, where poor Mr. Rice the forger is waiting his fate and his supper. "You need not be particular about the sauce for his fowl," says one turnkey to another: "for you know he is to be hanged in the morning." "Yes," replies the second janitor, "but the chaplain sups with him, and he is a terrible fellow for melted b.u.t.ter."
Selwyn has a chaplain and parasite, one Dr. Warner, than whom Plautus, or Ben Jonson, or Hogarth, never painted a better character. In letter after letter he adds fresh strokes to the portrait of himself, and completes a portrait not a little curious to look at now that the man has pa.s.sed away; all the foul pleasures and gambols in which he revelled, played out; all the rouged faces into which he leered, worms and skulls; all the fine gentlemen whose s...o...b..ckles he kissed, laid in their coffins. This worthy clergyman takes care to tell us that he does not believe in his religion, though, thank Heaven, he is not so great a rogue as a lawyer. He goes on Mr. Selwyn"s errands, any errands, and is proud, he says, to be that gentleman"s proveditor. He waits upon the Duke of Queensberry-old Q.-and exchanges pretty stories with that aristocrat. He comes home "after a hard day"s christening", as he says, and writes to his patron before sitting down to whist and partridges for supper. He revels in the thoughts of ox-cheek and burgundy-he is a boisterous, uproarious parasite, licks his master"s shoes with explosions of laughter and cunning smack and gusto, and likes the taste of that blacking as much as the best claret in old Q."s cellar. He has Rabelais and Horace at his greasy fingers" ends. He is inexpressibly mean, curiously jolly; kindly and good-natured in secret-a tender-hearted knave, not a venomous lickspittle. Jesse says, that at his chapel in Long Acre, "he attained a considerable popularity by the pleasing, manly, and eloquent style of his delivery." Was infidelity endemic, and corruption in the air? Around a young king, himself of the most exemplary life and undoubted piety, lived a Court society as dissolute as our country ever knew. George II"s bad morals bore their fruit in George III"s early years; as I believe that a knowledge of that good man"s example, his moderation, his frugal simplicity, and G.o.d-fearing life, tended infinitely to improve the morals of the country and purify the whole nation.
After Warner, the most interesting of Selwyn"s correspondents is the Earl of Carlisle, grandfather of the amiable n.o.bleman at present Viceroy in Ireland. The grandfather, too, was Irish Viceroy, having previously been treasurer of the king"s household; and, in 1778, the princ.i.p.al commissioner for treating, consulting, and agreeing upon the means of quieting the divisions subsisting in his Majesty"s colonies, plantations, and possessions in North America. You may read his lordship"s manifestos in the _Royal New York Gazette_. He returned to England, having by no means quieted the colonies; and speedily afterwards the _Royal New York Gazette_ somehow ceased to be published.
This good, clever, kind, highly-bred Lord Carlisle was one of the English fine gentlemen who were wellnigh ruined by the awful debauchery and extravagance which prevailed in the great English society of those days.
Its dissoluteness was awful: it had swarmed over Europe after the Peace; it had danced, and raced, and gambled in all the Courts. It had made its bow at Versailles; it had run its horses on the plain of Sablons, near Paris, and created the Anglomania there: it had exported vast quant.i.ties of pictures and marbles from Rome and Florence: it had ruined itself by building great galleries and palaces for the reception of the statues and pictures: it had brought over singing-women and dancing-women from all the operas of Europe, on whom my lords lavished their thousands, whilst they left their honest wives and honest children languishing in the lonely, deserted splendours of the castle and park at home.
Besides the great London society of those days, there was another unacknowledged world, extravagant beyond measure, tearing about in the pursuit of pleasure; dancing, gambling, drinking, singing; meeting the real society in the public places (at Ranelaghs, Vauxhalls, and Ridottos, about which our old novelists talk so constantly), and outvying the real leaders of fashion, in luxury, and splendour, and beauty. For instance, when the famous Miss Gunning visited Paris as Lady Coventry, where she expected that her beauty would meet with the applause which had followed her and her sister through England, it appears she was put to flight by an English lady still more lovely in the eyes of the Parisians. A certain Mrs. Pitt took a box at the opera opposite the countess; and was so much handsomer than her ladyship, that the parterre cried out that this was the real English angel, whereupon Lady Coventry quitted Paris in a huff. The poor thing died presently of consumption, accelerated, it was said, by the red and white paint with which she plastered those luckless charms of hers. (We must represent to ourselves all fashionable female Europe, at that time, as plastered with white, and raddled with red.) She left two daughters behind her, whom George Selwyn loved (he was curiously fond of little children), and who are described very drolly and pathetically in these letters, in their little nursery, where pa.s.sionate little Lady f.a.n.n.y, if she had not good cards, flung hers into Lady Mary"s face; and where they sat conspiring how they should receive a new mother-in-law whom their papa presently brought home. They got on very well with their mother-in-law, who was very kind to them; and they grew up, and they were married, and they were both divorced afterwards-poor little souls! Poor painted mother, poor society, ghastly in its pleasures, its loves, its revelries!
As for my lord commissioner, we can afford to speak about him: because, though he was a wild and weak commissioner at one time, though he hurt his estate, though he gambled and lost ten thousand pounds at a sitting-"five times more," says the unlucky gentleman, "than I ever lost before;" though he swore he never would touch a card again; and yet, strange to say, went back to the table and lost still more: yet he repented of his errors, sobered down, and became a worthy peer and a good country gentleman, and returned to the good wife and the good children whom he had always loved with the best part of his heart. He had married at one-and-twenty. He found himself, in the midst of a dissolute society, at the head of a great fortune. Forced into luxury, and obliged to be a great lord and a great idler, he yielded to some temptations, and paid for them a bitter penalty of manly remorse; from some others he fled wisely, and ended by conquering them n.o.bly. But he always had the good wife and children in his mind, and they saved him. "I am very glad you did not come to me the morning I left London," he writes to G. Selwyn, as he is embarking for America. "I can only say, I never knew till that moment of parting, what grief was." There is no parting now, where they are. The faithful wife, the kind, generous gentleman, have left a n.o.ble race behind them: an inheritor of his name and t.i.tles, who is beloved as widely as he is known; a man most kind, accomplished, gentle, friendly, and pure; and female descendants occupying high stations and embellishing great names; some renowned for beauty, and all for spotless lives, and pious matronly virtues.
Another of Selwyn"s correspondents is the Earl of March, afterwards Duke of Queensberry, whose life lasted into this century; and who certainly as earl or duke, young man or greybeard, was not an ornament to any possible society. The legends about old Q. are awful. In _Selwyn_, in _Wraxall_, and contemporary chronicles, the observer of human nature may follow him, drinking, gambling, intriguing to the end of his career; when the wrinkled, palsied, toothless old Don Juan died, as wicked and unrepentant as he had been at the hottest season of youth and pa.s.sion. There is a house in Piccadilly, where they used to show a certain low window at which old Q. sat to his very last days, ogling through his senile gla.s.ses the women as they pa.s.sed by.
There must have been a great deal of good about this lazy, sleepy George Selwyn, which, no doubt, is set to his present credit. "Your friendship,"
writes Carlisle to him, "is so different from anything I have ever met with or seen in the world, that when I recollect the extraordinary proofs of your kindness, it seems to me like a dream." "I have lost my oldest friend, and acquaintance, G. Selwyn," writes Walpole to Miss Berry: "I really loved him, not only for his infinite wit, but for a thousand good qualities." I am glad, for my part, that such a lover of cakes and ale should have had a thousand good qualities-that he should have been friendly, generous, warm-hearted, trustworthy. "I rise at six," writes Carlisle to him, from Spa (a great resort of fashionable people in our ancestors" days), "play at cricket till dinner, and dance in the evening, till I can scarcely crawl to bed at eleven. There is a life for you! You get up at nine; play with Raton your dog till twelve, in your dressing-gown; then creep down to White"s; are five hours at table; sleep till supper-time; and then make two wretches carry you in a sedan-chair, with three pints of claret in you, three miles for a shilling."
Occasionally, instead of sleeping at White"s, George went down and snoozed in the House of Commons by the side of Lord North. He represented Gloucester for many years, and had a borough of his own, Ludgershall, for which, when he was too lazy to contest Gloucester, he sat himself. "I have given directions for the election of Ludgershall to be of Lord Melbourne and myself," he writes to the Premier, whose friend he was, and who was himself as sleepy, as witty, and as good-natured as George.
If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men"s failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal"s natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle? In these letters of Lord Carlisle"s from which I have been quoting, there is many a just complaint made by the kind-hearted young n.o.bleman of the state which he is obliged to keep; the magnificence in which he must live; the idleness to which his position as a peer of England bound him. Better for him had he been a lawyer at his desk, or a clerk in his office;-a thousand times better chance for happiness, education, employment, security from temptation. A few years since the profession of arms was the only one which our n.o.bles could follow. The Church, the Bar, medicine, literature, the arts, commerce, were below them. It is to the middle cla.s.s we must look for the safety of England: the working educated men, away from Lord North"s bribery in the senate; the good clergy not corrupted into parasites by hopes of preferment; the tradesmen rising into manly opulence; the painters pursuing their gentle calling; the men of letters in their quiet studies; these are the men whom we love and like to read of in the last age. How small the grandees and the men of pleasure look beside them! how contemptible the story of the George III Court squabbles are beside the recorded talk of dear old Johnson! What is the grandest entertainment at Windsor, compared to a night at the club over its modest cups, with Percy and Langton, and Goldsmith, and poor Bozzy at the table? I declare I think, of all the polite men of that age, Joshua Reynolds was the finest gentleman. And they were good, as well as witty and wise, those dear old friends of the past. Their minds were not debauched by excess, or effeminate with luxury. They toiled their n.o.ble day"s labour: they rested, and took their kindly pleasure: they cheered their holiday meetings with generous wit and hearty interchange of thought: they were no prudes, but no blush need follow their conversation: they were merry, but no riot came out of their cups. Ah! I would have liked a night at the "Turk"s Head", even though bad news had arrived from the colonies, and Doctor Johnson was growling against the rebels; to have sat with him and Goldy; and to have heard Burke, the finest talker in the world; and to have had Garrick flashing in with a story from his theatre!-I like, I say, to think of that society; and not merely how pleasant and how wise, but how _good_ they were. I think it was on going home one night from the club that Edmund Burke-his n.o.ble soul full of great thoughts, be sure, for they never left him; his heart full of gentleness-was accosted by a poor wandering woman, to whom he spoke words of kindness; and moved by the tears of this Magdalen, perhaps having caused them by the good words he spoke to her, he took her home to the house of his wife and children, and never left her until he had found the means of restoring her to honesty and labour. O you fine gentlemen! you Marches, and Selwyns, and Chesterfields, how small you look by the side of these great men! Good-natured Carlisle plays at cricket all day, and dances in the evening "till he can scarcely crawl", gaily contrasting his superior virtue with George Selwyn"s "carried to bed by two wretches at midnight with three pints of claret in him". Do you remember the verses-the sacred verses-which Johnson wrote on the death of his humble friend, Levett?
Well tried through many a varying year, See Levett to the grave descend; Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend.
In misery"s darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh, Where hopeless anguish poured the groan, And lonely want retired to die.
No summons mocked by chill delay, No petty gain disdained by pride, The modest wants of every day The toil of every day supplied.
His virtues walked their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void: And sure the Eternal Master found His single talent well employed.