The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume Ii Part 100

(355) February 23, 1792.-ED.

(356) The greater part of Sir joshua's large fortune was left to his unmarried niece, Mary Palmer. Considerable legacies were left to his niece, Mrs. Gwatkin (Offy Palmer), and to his friend Edmund Burke. In addition to these legacies, his will provided for a number of small bequests, including one of a thousand pounds to his old servant, Ralph Kirkley. In the following summer Mary Palmer married the Earl of Inchiquin, afterwards Marquis of Th.o.m.ond. "He is sixty-nine," f.a.n.n.y writes about that time of Lord Inchiquin; "but they say he is remarkably pleasing in his manners, and soft and amiable in his disposition."-ED.

(357) He was buried in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, near the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren.-ED.

(358) The recent proclamation by the Government against the publication and sale of seditious writings. The "new a.s.sociates"

were members of the societies of sympathisers with the principles of the French Revolution, which, under such t.i.tles as "Friends of the People." "Corresponding Society," etc., were now spreading all over England.-ED.

(359) The revolutionary clubs of Paris, the Jacobins' Club in particular, gradually acquired such power as enabled them to overawe the Legislative a.s.sembly, and even, at a later date, the Convention itself. Their influence only ceased with the overthrow and death of their leader, Robespierre, in 1794.-ED.

(360) The wife and eldest daughter of Arthur Young, the well-known writer on agriculture. Mrs. Young was the sister of Dr. Burney's second Wife.-ED.

(361) "Madame de Genlis's husband, the Count de Genlis, had become Marquis of Sillery by the death of his elder brother. He was a Revolutionist and member of the Girondin party: one of the twenty-two Girondins who perished by the guillotine, October 31, 1793. Madame de Genlis (or Brulard) had come to England in October, 1791, with her young pupil, Mlle. d'Orleans (Egalite), the daughter of Philippe Egalite, Duke of Orleans, whose physicians had ordered her to take the waters at Bath.

They remained in England until November, 1792, when they were recalled to Paris by Egalite. Arriving there, they found themselves proscribed as emigrants, and obliged to quit Paris within eight-and-forty hours. They then took refuge in Flanders, and settled at Tournay where Pamela was married to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, subsequently one of the leaders in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. In Flanders Madame de Genlis enjoyed the protection of General Dumontiez, but when he became suspected, with too good reason, by the Convention, she was obliged again to take flight, and found safety at last with Mlle. d'Orleans, in Switzerland.

Pamela was the adopted daughter of Madame de Genlis; some said her actual daughter by the Duke of Orleans; but this is at least doubtful. "Circe," or "Henrietta Circe," as f.a.n.n.y afterwards calls her, was Madame de Genlis's niece, Henriette de Sercey (!), who subsequently married a rich merchant of Hamburg.-ED. VOL. 11.

(362) "Is it possible? Am I so happy? Do I see my dear Miss Burney?"

(363) Earl Macartney was sent as amba.s.sador to China in 1793, for the purpose of concluding a commercial treaty with that power.

He was unsuccessful, however, and, after spending some months in China, the emba.s.sy returned to England.-ED.

(364) "Miss French, a lively niece of Mr. Burke's." (.Memoirs of Dr. Burney, vol. iii, p. 157.)-ED.

(365) Burke was, of course, mistaken. When Wycherley died, at seventy-five (December, 1715), Mary Granville (afterwards Mrs.

Delany) was in her sixteenth year. Wycherley, it is true, married a young wife on his deathbed, but it is certain that this was not Mary Granville; indeed, if Pope's account, given in Spence's "Anecdotes," may be trusted, it was a woman of very different character.-ED.

(366) Alexander Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Loughborough, was born in or near Edinburgh in 1733. He attained distinction at the bar, and entered Parliament early in the reign of George III.

As a politician he was equally notorious for his skill in debate and his want of public principle. Previously a member of the opposition, he ratted to the Government in 1771, and was rewarded by Lord North with the Solicitor-Generals.h.i.+p. He defended Lord Clive in 1773. When Thurlow became Lord Chancellor (in 1778), Wedderburn succeeded him in the office of Attorney-General. In 1786 he was made Chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and called to the House of Peers by the t.i.tle of Baron Loughborough.

After this we find him acting as a follower of Charles Fox, and leader of the Whig party in the House of Lords. He supported Fox's views on the Regency question in 1788-9, but when the split in the Whig party on the subject of the French Revolution took place, Loughborough, like Burke, gave his support to the government. In January, 1793, he obtained the long coveted post of Lord Chancellor. He died January 1, 1805. A story goes that when the news of Loughborough's death was brought to George III., "his majesty was graciously pleased to exclaim, 'Then he has not left a greater knave behind him in my dominions.'" (Campbell's "Lives of the Chancellors," vol. vi., p. 334.)-ED.

(367) Thomas Erskine (born 1750, died 1823), "If less eminent in the law, was a far more respectable politician than Loughborough, although his parliamentary career was by no means so brilliant.

He was a consistent Whig, with the courage of his convictions.

He lost his post of Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales through his defence of Thomas Paine, author of the famous "Rights of Man," in December, 1792. Fired by the example of the French Revolutionists, the friends of liberty in England were, about this time, everywhere forming themselves into political a.s.sociations, for the purpose of promoting Parliamentary reform, and generally "spreading the principles of freedom." By the government these societies were regarded as seditious. Erskine was a member of one or more of these a.s.sociations, and one of his most brilliant triumphs at the bar was connected with the prosecution by government (October, 1794), of Hardy Thelwall and Horne Tooke for high treason, as members of one of these supposed seditious societies. The prisoners were defended by Erskine and acquitted. Erskine became Lord Chancellor in 1806 after the death of Pitt.-ED.

(368) On his own admission Erskine was a member of the Society of Friends of the People about the end of 1792-ED.

(369) With all his talents Erskine was always noted for his inordinate vanity.-ED.

(370) The famous Lord Chief justice. He died in 1793, aged eighty-eight years.-ED.

(371) Alderman Boydell's celebrated "Shakspeare Gallery" in Pall Mall, contained paintings ill.u.s.trative of Shakspeare by Reynolds, Romney, Fuseli, and many others of the most distinguished painters of the day. The entire collection, comprising one hundred and seventy works, was sold by auction by Christie, in May, 1805.-ED.

(372) For Arthur Young, see postea, vol. iii., p. 17. Bradfield Farm, his home was in Suffolk, in the neighbourhood of Bury St.

Edmunds.-ED.