The Greville Memoirs Volume III Part 9

July 24th, 1834 {p.114}

Read Reeves' 'History of English Law,' finished Henry Taylor's 'Van Artevelde,' and read 250 lines of Virgil. 'Philip van Artevelde' is a poem of extraordinary merit, and the offspring of a vigorous and independent mind. The author, who is my particular friend, and for whom I have a sincere regard and a great admiration, took his work to Murray, who gave it to Lockhart to read. Lockhart advised Murray not to publish it, at least at his own risk, but he bestowed great encomiums on the work, and urged Taylor to publish it himself. He did so, without much expectation that it would be popular, and has been agreeably surprised to find that in a short s.p.a.ce of time a second edition is called for. With the vivacity of a sanguine disposition, and a confidence in the sterling merits of his poem, he now believes that edition will follow edition like wave upon wave, in which I fear he will be disappointed. [When the first edition was all sold, and a second called for, he made up his account with his publisher, and the balance was 37 _against_ him.--November 29th.]

August 5th, 1834 {p.115}

At Goodwood for the races, so read nothing except half of Jacquemont's Letters and a little book I picked up, the 'History of the Grand Vizier Coprogli;' called to town on Wednesday last for a Council, to swear in Mulgrave Privy Seal; went to Petworth on my way for one night. Stanley was at Goodwood, absorbed in racing, billiards, and what not; n.o.body would have guessed that all this rough and rustic gaiety covered ambition, eloquence, and powers which must make him one of the most eminent men, though his reputation is not what it was.

[Page Head: DEATH AND CHARACTER OF LORD BATHURST.]

While I was there news came of Lord Bathurst's death. He was a very amiable man and with a good understanding, though his talents were far from brilliant, a High Churchman and a High Tory, but a cool politician, a bad speaker, a good writer, greatly averse to changes, but unwillingly acquiescing in many.

He was nervous and reserved, with a good deal of humour, and habitually a jester. His conversation was generally a series of jokes, and he rarely discussed any subject but in a ludicrous vein. His conduct to Napoleon justly incurred odium, for although he was only one of many, he was the Minister through whom the orders of Government pa.s.sed, and he suffered the princ.i.p.al share of the reproach which was thrown upon the Cabinet for their rude and barbarous treatment of the Emperor at St. Helena. He had not a lively imagination, and his feelings were not excited by the contemplation of such a striking example of fallen greatness. I was Lord Bathurst's private secretary for several years, but so far from feeling any obligation to him, I always consider his mistaken kindness in giving me that post as the source of all my misfortunes and the cause of my present condition. He never thought fit to employ me, never a.s.sociated me with the interests and the business of his office, and consequently abandoned me at the age of eighteen to that life of idleness and dissipation from which I might have been saved had he felt that my future prospects in life, my character and talents, depended in great measure upon the direction which was at that moment given to my mind. He would probably have made me a Tory (which I should hardly have remained), but I should have become a man of business, and of the antagonist tastes which divided my mind that for literature and employment would have got the better of that for amus.e.m.e.nt and idleness, instead, as unfortunately happened, of the latter prevailing over the former. Though I knew Lord Bathurst so long, and was his private secretary for some years, and his family and mine have always been so intimate, I had no real intimacy with him. From what I have learnt from others I am disposed to rate his abilities more highly than the world has done. He was the friend and devoted admirer of Pitt, and a regular Tory of the old school, who felt that evil days had come upon him in his old age. When he left office with the Duke of Wellington he resolved upon finally quitting public life, and let what might happen, never to take office again. On coming to town yesterday I heard of another death--Mrs. Arbuthnot, after a short illness. The Duke of Wellington, with whom she had lived in the most intimate relations for many years, evinced a good deal of feeling, but he is accused of insensibility because he had the good taste and sense to smooth his brow and go to the House of Lords with a cheerful aspect. She was not a clever woman, but she was neither dull nor deficient, and very prudent and silent.

August 6th, 1834 {p.116}

To my office, then to the House of Lords and heard a discussion on foreign politics; not very amusing; Melbourne not so good as Grey would have been. The Duke spoke, but he looked very ill.

Walked from the House with Lord Carnarvon, who is an intelligent man, but a great alarmist and very desponding; he thinks we are going on step by step to an utter subversion of all interests and inst.i.tutions.

August 7th, 1834 {p.117}

[Page Head: IRISH t.i.tHE BILL.]

Yesterday I met the Duke of Wellington, who talked to me of Mrs.

Arbuthnot; I walked away from my office with Duncannon, who told me that O'Connell's amendment in the t.i.the Bill met with his concurrence (and in fact, though he did not exactly say as much, his connivance). He said he was sure this Bill was the only chance for the Irish Church, which he was very anxious to save and support; expressed great anxiety to make it up with O'Connell by giving him a great judicial situation, is convinced he is sincere (at the moment) in all he says, but that he is so vain and excitable and ambitious that when he returns to Ireland he forgets all he has promised or professed; the demon of agitation regains the ascendant, and he bursts into all those excesses which have made him so odious and formidable; but there is no chance of any arrangement with him, for the majority of the Government would not hear of it. I dined at the 'Travellers;'

walked to a fire in Edward Street, where I amused myself with the strange figures and groups, the glare, bustle, and noise. There was Duncannon again, a Secretary of State jostling and jostled in the mob.

August 12th, 1834 {p.117}

On Sat.u.r.day to Hillingdon, and back yesterday; pa.s.sed the night at the House of Lords, to hear the debate on the Irish t.i.the Bill.[1] At a meeting at Apsley House the Tory Lords came to an unanimous resolution to throw out the Bill, and at one or two meetings at Lambeth the bishops agreed to do the same. The debate was heavy; Melbourne very unlike Lord Grey, whose forte was leading the House of Lords and making speeches on such occasions.

Ellenborough spoke the best, I think. I hardly ever heard such unbroken fluency, and a good deal of _stuff_, too, in his speech.

Ellice and Spring Rice both told me that this decision was the most fatal and most important that had occurred for years; the latter said that no t.i.the would be paid, but that there would be no _active_ resistance. Such t.i.the property as could be seized would not be sold, because there would be no purchasers for it.

One thing is clear to me, that those Tories who are always bellowing 'revolution' and 'spoliation,' and who talk of the gradual subversion of every inst.i.tution and the imminent peril in which all our establishments are placed, do not really believe one word of what they say, and, instead of being oppressed with fear, they are buoyed up with delusive confidence and courage; for if they did indeed believe that the Church--the Church of Ireland especially--was in danger, and that its preservation was the one paramount desideratum, they would gladly avert, as far as they might, that danger by a compromise involving a very small (if any) sacrifice of principle, and which would secure to the Irish clergy, as far as human prudence, legislative sanction, and the authority of law can secure it, a permanent and a competent provision, free from the danger and the odium which have for a long time past embittered the existence of every clergyman in the country. It is a curious speculation to see what the effect will be of this vote practically in Ireland on the condition of the clergy, and upon public opinion here.

[1] [The Irish t.i.the Bill was thrown out by the House of Lords by 189 to 122.]

It is difficult to understand why the Lords did not alter the Bill in Committee and restore it to its original state, that which Ellenborough said he would not have opposed, and which had been already sanctioned by a great majority of the House of Commons upon the report of a Committee. If they had done this, either the Bill must have pa.s.sed in this less obnoxious shape or the odium of its rejection would have been thrown upon the Commons, and the Lords would undoubtedly have had an excellent case to present to the country. But if there is a wall they are sure to run their heads against it, and if there is none they build one up for the purpose. What puzzles me most is the opposition of the clergy; they are the parties most immediately and most deeply interested in this Bill, and yet the great majority of them appear to be opposed _totis viribus_ to it.

August 13th, 1834 {p.118}

[Page Head: THEODORE HOOK.]

Dined at Roehampton yesterday with Farquhar. Mrs. Norton and Mrs.

Blackwood and Theodore Hook dined there among others. After dinner he displayed his extraordinary talent of improvisation, which I had never heard but once before, and then he happened not to be in the vein. Last night he was very brilliant. Each lady gave him a subject, such as the 'Goodwood Cup,' the 't.i.the Bill;'

one 'could not think of anything,' when he dashed off and sang stanzas innumerable, very droll, with ingenious rhymes and excellent hits, 'his eye begetting occasion for his excellent wit,' for at every word of interruption or admiration, every look or motion, he indulged in a digression, always coming back to one of the themes imposed upon him. It is a _tour de force_, in which I believe he stands alone, and it is certainly wonderfully well worth hearing and uncommonly amusing.

August 14th, 1834 {p.119}

Yesterday there was a bother with the Chancellor about Lord Westmeath's case pending before the Privy Council.[2] He took it into his head (probably having been got at by Lady Westmeath or some of her friends) to have it decided forthwith, and sent to desire a Committee might be convened. Westmeath's counsel was out of town; Follett, whom he relies on, is on the Northern Circuit, but his other counsel is to be had, being at Chislehurst.

Accordingly the Chancellor desired that the case might stand over from Thursday, the day he first appointed it (giving only two days' notice), to Monday, and that it should be notified to the parties that if they did not then appear the case should go on without them. Westmeath came to me in a frenzy of rage, and said the Chancellor was the greatest of villains, and so he would tell him in the House of Lords or in the Privy Council. I begged him to hold his tongue, and I would speak to the Chancellor. So I went to the House of Lords where he was sitting, and told Lemarchant what had pa.s.sed, and that the case ought not to be thus hurried on. He thanked me very much, and said he would go to Brougham; but he soon returned, and said that the Chancellor would hear nothing, and would have the case brought on, and he therefore advised me not to give myself any further concern in it, and to leave him and Westmeath to settle it as they might. In the meantime Westmeath went down to the House of Lords, and after speaking to Wynford, whom the Chancellor had asked to attend (as he learnt from me), was going to get up in the House of Lords and attack him, and was only prevented by Wynford dragging him down by the tail of his coat. I had already spoken to Wynford, and I afterwards spoke to Lord Lansdowne, telling them that the case ought not to be hurried on in this peremptory way, and I persuaded Lord Lansdowne to set his face against it. However, in the meantime Wynford had urged the Chancellor to put it off, and not exasperate that madman, who would say or do something violent; and, whether from reason or fear, he prevailed on him.

Wynford told me that Brougham is undoubtedly mad, and so I really believe he is. While I was in the House of Lords Horne came in from the Commons, and said they had succeeded in stifling there all discussion on the rejection of the t.i.the Bill by the House of Lords. Grattan was going to introduce the subject, but was prevailed on to say nothing, and to some questions put by Major Beauclerck Althorp refused to reply.

[2] [The appellate jurisdiction in causes matrimonial was vested at this time in the King in Council. The case of Westmeath _v._ Westmeath, which was a suit for a separation and a question of alimony, came up on appeal from the Court of Arches.]

August 16th, 1834 {p.120}

[Page Head: LORD BROUGHAM.]

At a Council for the prorogation; the first time I have seen all these new Ministers in a bunch--a queer set, all things considered, to be in possession of the Palace. Great change of decoration. Duncannon, Ellice, Hobhouse, Abercromby, Mulgrave, Auckland. The King, who is fond of meddling in the Council business instead of repeating like a parrot what is put in his mouth, made a bother and confusion about a fancy matter, and I was forced to go to Taylor and beg to explain it to him, which I did after the House of Lords. The King was quite knocked up and easily satisfied, for he neither desired nor could have understood any explanations. There were not much more than half a dozen Peers in the House, but many ladies. The Chancellor went down, and, in presence of the ladies, attired in his golden robes (and especially before Mrs. P., to whom he makes love), gave a judgment in some case in which a picture of Nell Gwynne was concerned, and he was very proud of the _delicacy_ of his judgment. There never was anything like his exhilaration of spirits and good-humour. I don't know what has come to him, except it be that he has scrambled through the session and got Lord Grey out. He wound up in the House of Lords by the introduction of his Bill for a Judicial Committee there, which he prefaced by a speech exhibiting his own judicial acts, and undoubtedly making a capital case for himself as to diligence and despatch if it be all true (which I see no reason to doubt), and pa.s.sing a great eulogium upon the House of Lords as an inst.i.tution, and drawing comparisons between that House and the House of Commons (much to the disadvantage of the latter), expressing many things which are very true and just and of a highly conservative tendency. He is a strange being whom, with all his inconsistencies, one cannot but admire; so varied and prodigious are his powers. Much more are these lines applicable to him than to his predecessor on the Woolsack:--

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin part.i.tions do their bounds divide.

In a speech the other night, by way of putting his audience on a wrong scent with regard to his correspondence with Lord Wellesley, he a.s.sured them that that correspondence was on any subject but politics, and in every language except English; and Lemarchant told somebody that his most difficult employment was to correct and copy out the Chancellor's Greek epigrams to Lord Wellesley, his Greek characters being worse than his English; while Lord Wellesley sent him very neatly written and prettily composed epigrams in return. I should think Lemarchant's occupation very amusing, and that no study could be more curious than that of the mind and actions of this strange specimen of humanity.

August 19th, 1834 {p.121}

At Stoke from Sat.u.r.day, the 16th, till yesterday; had much talk with old Creevey about the Chancellor. Sefton, his great ally, so resented his conduct to Lord Grey that he was on the point of quarrelling with him, and Brougham miscalculated so far as to chuckle to Sefton himself over the improvement of his own position in the new order of things, telling him that he could more easily _manage_ Melbourne than he could Lord Grey. They are a precious set with their squabbles and _traca.s.series_. It appears that they very well knew what Brougham was from the beginning, especially Grey's womankind, who warned their father against him, but they all flattered themselves they had taken the sting out of him by getting him into the House of Lords. Creevey says that Brougham is devoured with ambition, and what he wants is to be Prime Minister, but that it is quite impossible he should for ever escape detection and not be regularly _blown up_ sooner or later. He now wants to appear on good terms with Lord Grey, and there is a dinner at Edinburgh in contemplation (at which Brougham is to preside) to be given to Lord Grey. His friends want him not to go, but he has a notion that the Scotch have behaved so well to him that he ought not to refuse the invitation. The Chancellor had intended to go junketting on the Rhine with Mrs. P., and this project was only marred by his discovering that he could not leave the country without putting the Great Seal in commission at a cost (to himself) of 1,400.

This was a larger price than he was disposed to pay for his trip, so he went off to Brougham instead.

On Sunday I went all over the private apartments of Windsor Castle, and walked through what they call the slopes to the Queen's cottage; all very splendid and luxurious. In the gallery there is a model of a wretched-looking dog-hole of a building, with a ruined tower beside it. I asked what this was, and the housekeeper said, 'The Chateau of Meiningen;' put there, I suppose, to enhance by comparison the pleasure of all the grandeur which surrounds the Queen, for it would hardly have been exhibited as a philosophical or moral memento of her humble origin and the low fortune from which she has been raised.

[Page Head: SPENCER PERCEVAL.]

As I rode into London yesterday morning I fell in with Spencer Perceval, and got off my horse to walk into town with him. He talks rationally enough till he gets on religious topics; he asked me what I thought of the state of affairs, and, after telling him my opinion of the condition and prospects of the Church, I asked him what he thought of them. He said he agreed with me as to the _status_, but his notion was 'that it all proceeded from a departure from G.o.d,' that ours was a backsliding Church, and that G.o.d had forsaken it, and that we had only to put our trust in Him, and rely entirely on Him, and He would work out the salvation of His own. We parted in the midst of the discussion, and before I had any time to get from him any explanation of the course he would recommend to those who govern in furtherance of his own theocratical principles.

There has been what is called 'a great Protestant meeting' at Dublin, at which Winchilsea was introduced to the Irish Orangemen and made one of them. It was great in one way, for there were a great many fools, who talked a great deal of nonsense and evinced a disposition to do a great deal of mischief if they can.

Winchilsea's description of himself was undoubtedly true, only it is true always and of all of them, 'that his feelings were so excited that he was deprived of what little intellect he possessed.'

August 26th, 1834 {p.123}

On Friday to Hillingdon, Sat.u.r.day to Stoke; Lord John Russell, Medem, Dedel, Tommy Duncombe, D'Orsay. Lord John and I walked to Bulstrode on Sunday; talked about the Chancellor and the Government. He said that Lord Holland was struck with Brougham's want of tact at hearing him press Lord Grey to go to a public dinner at Edinburgh _because_ he was to be in the chair; that Lord Grey did not think Brougham had been engaged _ab initio_ in a plot to get him out. Lord John talked of the House of Lords, and how it and the House of Commons were to be re-united. He thinks that the obstinacy of the House of Lords and its Tory spirit are attributable solely to the numerous creations of the last thirty or forty years.

Tommy Duncombe is the greatest political comedy going, he is engaged in a mediation between the master builders and the operatives, who have quarrelled about the unions, and an express came to him from Cubitt after dinner.

Sefton told me that Lord Grey, when he was at Windsor, had a long conversation with the King, in which his Majesty expressed no little dissatisfaction at what had recently occurred and at the present posture of his affairs. He told me that Lord Grey certainly would not have continued in office under any circ.u.mstances till Parliament met again, and that, in fact, his continual propositions to retire and expressions of consciousness of inability and unfitness had been very embarra.s.sing and annoying both to his colleagues and the King, and that the latter had evidently been tired out by them, as was proved by his not making the slightest effort to induce Lord Grey to remain when he tendered his resignation. Grey acted very handsomely in giving his proxy to Melbourne, and the reason he stayed away from the House of Lords during the latter days of the session was that he was afraid of being compelled to say something indicative of the real state of his mind and feelings with regard to past occurrences.

[Page Head: LORD WESTMEATH'S CASE.]

When I got to town yesterday, to my great astonishment I found that the Vice-Chancellor had been at the office with a peremptory mandate from the Chancellor to bring on the Westmeath case on Friday next, sent up from Brougham Hall. In my absence the summonses had been issued, but I desired them all to be recalled, and the Vice-Chancellor soon after happening to call on me, I told him what had occurred before, and that the Lord President was opposed to the cause being thus hurried on. He acquiesced, and wrote to the Chancellor to say he had heard from me that it could not be; and so it ended, but I dare say the Chancellor will be in a violent rage, which I rather enjoy than not.[3] It is very clear that he intends to exercise paramount authority over the Judicial Committee, and to consider everything connected with it at his disposal. When first he had the Privy Council Bill drawn up by one of his devils, he intended to create a new tribunal, of which he should be the head, and though he was obliged to give up his original design, he still considers himself ent.i.tled to deal with the Judicial Committee as he pleases. If the Lord President had more of the spirit that is due to the office over which he presides, he would not suffer him to interfere, and I am resolved if I can to get Lord Lansdowne to a.s.sert his own authority. The Chancellor has promised Sefton that when Mr. Blackburn, now a judge at the Mauritius, comes home, he shall be made a Privy Councillor; that Sir Alexander Johnston, who now attends the sittings of the Council, shall be dismissed, and Blackburn invited to attend instead of him, and that he shall have 400 a year (which by the Act he may). This, if it takes place, will be one of the grossest and most barefaced jobs that ever were perpetrated; but I think it can never be. What makes it worse is that Brougham introduced this clause for the express purpose of meeting Blackburn's case; so he told Sefton, but I suppose it means that he made the stipend receivable by an ex-judge in _any colony_, when the pretext for it was the power of obtaining the a.s.sistance of Indian judges.[4]