Perilous Question

by Antonia Fraser

  The King remained extremely supportive of Wellington, and even bravely offered to take him back from the Guildhall in his own carriage, which would have exposed the royal person to abuse intended for the politician; yet one thing had to be faced. The obstacle of Wellington’s unflinching denunciation remained. As even the loyal Mrs Arbuthnot admitted: ‘The grand difficulty is the question of reform.’38

  It was hardly to be expected that the Whigs outside Parliament would remain quiescent during these tempestuous times. Whether it was a dinner given by Brougham or a providential meeting between leading Whigs when riding in the park (the contemporary equivalent of jogging) or the biggest Opposition meeting yet held at the house of Lord Althorp on 13 November, there was a universal feeling that the chase was on. For one thing the Huskissonite Tories had been obliged at last to recognize that their views were closer to the Whigs than those of their parliamentary leader and gave an official welcome to Reform, so long as the terms were kept general. The Whig motion agreed on 13 November was certainly general enough, as it took into consideration ‘the state of representation of the people in Parliament’ with a view to unspecified action ‘to remedy such defects as may appear therein’.39

  Two days later, in a vote in the House of Commons on this mild motion, the Government was defeated – coincidentally there was a fire at Wellington’s country palace of Stratfield Saye in Hampshire, among other ramping depredations of a Swing type. Immediately Lord Grey, with his penchant for addressing a female audience in private, wrote to Princess Lieven about the vote: ‘You desired me to send you anything piquant. What do you think of this?’ The vote actually went against the Government by 233 to 204 votes; the county Members voting 47 to 15 against. As for the Ultra Tories, in the key defection three-quarters of them voted against their own Government. The MP John Wilson Croker, trenchant and brilliant in equal measure, wrote succinctly in his Diary: ‘We are out.’ Young Lord Durham, Grey’s handsome, impetuous son-in-law, put it even more crudely: ‘We gave them a good licking.’40

  Wellington maintained to the end that aloofness from popular reality which, it might be argued, had been responsible for the crisis in the first place. On the night of the vote he was at Apsley House giving a dinner. At 10 p.m. he asked the Marquess of Worcester, heir to the Duke of Beaufort, to go down to the House and find out the majority – the majority for the Government, that is. Worcester was bowling down St James’s in a cabriolet when a friend called out to him:

  ‘You are too late, the division has taken place.’

  ‘Well, what are the numbers?’

  ‘233 to 204,’ was the simple reply.

  Worcester, satisfied, duly turned back to Apsley House. He related the exact totals to the Duke, still imagining the vote had gone in the Government’s favour. Wellington in turn jumped to the same erroneous conclusion and exclaimed: ‘What! No more? I don’t understand it.’41

  The delusion persisted. The Countess of Jersey was a powerful Tory hostess whose hauteur frightened all but the bravest hearts – Disraeli would introduce her as ‘Queen Sarah’ in his novel Endymion. She went on to a reception at Princess Lieven’s and denounced a guest there for suggesting that the Government had been defeated. When she finally learnt the truth, Lady Jersey burst into tears. There is evidence that Wellington himself was taken aback. Princess Lieven boldly asked him:

  ‘Why did you let it come about unless you meant it to end like this?’

  ‘Devil take me, no!’ Wellington replied.

  He was ‘absolutely surprised’ when told they were beaten. When the Princess questioned Peel about it at dinner, the consummate politician indicated that Wellington had been far too explicit: ‘one may do everything, but one should not say everything’.42

  The next morning, early, Wellington resigned. In the afternoon the King sent for Lord Grey to form a government. As The Times put it: ‘There has not been, within our memory, a resignation of an entire Cabinet, upon which public opinion may be said to have borne so directly and so powerfully.’ What a change in that opinion His Grace the Duke had experienced within a single fortnight, ‘which he had the misfortune to produce by his own words’.43

  * J.R.M. Butler, in his seminal study The Passing of the Great Reform Bill, first published in 1914, largely written in 1912, wrote of this period that the word democracy occupied the position which ‘Socialism holds today’.29 It was understood to mean ‘something vaguely terrible which might “come” and would “come”’. A more recent comparison might be to the word Communism in the USA in the McCarthyite era.

  * It was a custom abandoned by King Edward VII at the beginning of the twentieth century.

  * Although the word ‘liberal’ was not quite so pejorative as ‘democratic’ in the early nineteenth century, it did not always have the modern connotation. It will however be used from time to time as an adjective.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BELIEVING IN THE WHIGS

  ‘The Tories believe in the divine right of Kings and the Whigs believe in the divine right of noblemen and gentlemen’ –

  Thomas Dolby, The Cyclopedia of Laconics, c. 1832

  The Whig world from which the new Government sprang was one of wealth and privilege. The Duke of Devonshire was perhaps the wealthiest of all, with an income of over £400,000 a year (roughly £40 million); but in acreage owned many of the individual Whigs were fabulously well endowed. This was an age when the average man left nothing, or at least nothing probate statistics considered property.1 Compared to this, the wealth of the Whigs set them apart even if there were exceptions like Lord John Russell, a younger son, who was dependent on salaries and legacies. But Lord Grey was a substantial landowner, for all that the demands of a large family produced financial difficulties from time to time. Lord Althorp would inherit £160,000 (£16 million) from his father at the end of this period, together with enormous land interests spread across various counties, producing a vast income. Lord Holland’s immense London properties added value to his fortune.

  The Whig world was also one where a concept of public duty coexisted with a healthy sense that the Whigs need not abandon all thoughts of self-advantage in order to fulfil their noble ideals. No more than any other political party – or politician – were the Whigs free from ambition. Since worlds of wealth and privilege inevitably incur the opprobrium of those who dwell outside them, there were many sneers on this subject. The Tories, ran one contemporary saying, believed in the divine right of Kings; the Whigs believed in the divine right of noblemen and gentlemen – that is to say, the Whigs. Like many sneers, this contained a particle of the truth but not the whole truth. Another tale summed up that complacency which Whigs did tend to feel: a little girl asked her mother, ‘Mamma, are Tories born wicked, or do they grow wicked afterwards?’ To which the mother replied, ‘They are born wicked and grow worse.’2

  It would however be fairer to say, as the convinced Tory Croker observed to Brougham long after the struggle was over, that there were two antagonistic principles at the root of all government – stability and experiment. The former was Tory and the latter Whig. A Whig like the Anglo-Irish Lord Duncannon, for example, grew up with a philosophy of a duty to govern, along with the feeling of a right to do so. Perhaps Charles James Fox, the Whig hero who had died in 1806, put it best when he talked of ‘something being due to one’s station in life, something to friendship, something to the country’.3

  That was the good side of the Whig philosophy; of course it had another side, as when the grandee Lord Holland, who had been at Harrow, criticized the self-educated – among whom so many of the Radicals including Francis Place would have to be included. They were, he thought, ‘peculiarly conceited and arrogant and apt to look down on the generality of mankind from their being ignorant of how much other people knew, not having been at public schools’. There were satires aplenty on the subject of the Whigs; a verse about the ‘Young Whig’ declared:

  He talks quite grand of Grant and Grey;

 
He jests at Holland House;

  He dines extremely every day

  On ortolans and grouse.4

  Returning to their good qualities, the Whigs were loyal to each other, never leaving a friend in the lurch according to Emily Cowper, mistress and later wife of Lord Palmerston. The celebrated Francis Jeffrey of the Edinburgh Review drew attention to their ‘frankness, cheerfulness, and sweet-blooded courage’. The painter Haydon summed up the general feeling of reluctant admiration: there was ‘nothing like ’em when they add intelligence to breeding’.5

  Obviously men who shared these ideals formed a powerful network. It was all the more powerful for the intricate connections of blood which bound them together and led, inevitably, to that charge of nepotism already mentioned in connection with Grey.* It was perfectly accurate to describe them as ‘the Great Grandmotherhood’, given the fact that the (Althorp) Spencers, Russells, (Duncannon) Bessboroughs and Devonshires all had descent from Lavinia Countess Spencer in common. As Lord Melbourne admitted, the Whigs really did all seem to be cousins.6

  Such connections were continued into the younger generations: Duncannon’s son married Lord Durham’s daughter (who was herself a granddaughter of Lord Grey, since Durham had married Lady Louisa Grey in 1816), Duncannon and Althorp were first cousins, as were Althorp and the Duke of Devonshire. An addiction to family connections was as much part of the Whig philosophy as sport – racing and cricket – agriculture on their great estates or indeed that enlightened Francophilia. It was the latter which had years ago made them among those gravely disappointed in the outcome of the French Revolution. Sydney Smith chose to refer to the absolute monarch Louis XIV as ‘that old Beast’, which was amusing, but left the problem of Robespierre’s terror-enforced rule unsolved.7

  Whigs were characterized not only by their wealth but also their great houses; some of these, such as Devonshire House and Lansdowne House, were in London. Most famously Holland House lay in Kensington, just outside the official boundaries of London. Lady Holland herself waxed eloquent on the subject of the ‘fresh air, verdure and singing birds’ to be found surrounding the Jacobean dwelling after ‘the dense vapours, gas lights and din of London’; the ‘evil-smelling and dismal’ atmosphere of the capital, due to the effects of coal and steam, being a favourite source of complaint at the time among great ladies.8 In this semi-rural – but highly political – paradise, guests often found it convenient to spend the night after dining, with the increased intimacy that involved. Furthermore King William, whose visits to London houses were subject to etiquette, could dine freely at Holland House as being technically in the country.

  In another way there was an outsider quality to Holland House. Years ago the beautiful, bold Elizabeth Vassall, already the wife of another man, had captured the heart of the young Lord Holland. His lines ‘All eyes are Vassals: Thou alone a Queen’ summed up his lifelong devotion to this mesmerizing and capricious woman, then the wife of Sir Godfrey Webster.9 Divorce and remarriage followed but not before an illegitimate son, named for his celebrated Fox great-uncle, had been born to the couple.

  To her husband, Elizabeth Holland remained Cleopatra: (‘I loved you much at forty four/I love you better at three score,’ he wrote). To others she was genuinely terrifying: Sydney Smith suggested that London apothecaries should prepare a special draught of medicine for those frightened by Lady Holland. Nevertheless, many young men of promise such as Macaulay benefited from her patronage and she was adept at picking such for her salon. Macaulay described her to his sister as ‘a great lady, fanciful, hysterical and hypochondriacal’, at once ‘ill-natured and good-natured, afraid of ghosts and not of God’; he compared her to Queen Elizabeth when old. The word ‘womanly’, she once told the young MP, was one she hated since it was always used as a term of reproach. Macaulay commented that it was hardly likely to apply to her . . . All the same Lady Holland had an acute political eye and also, one might say, an eye for the main chance: her immediate reaction to the accession of Louis-Philippe was to enlist Talleyrand, the new French Ambassador, to supervise the sending of the chic muslin caps she required from France.

  At Holland House there was a subliminal feeling that the usual rules did not apply; perhaps it originated with Lady Holland’s dubious position as a divorced woman (not being received at Court, for example). This might apply to the hospitality itself: the hostess, treating her homme d’affaires the librarian Dr John Allen as ‘a negro slave’, made and unmade seating arrangements according to whim; fifteen people regularly sat at a table intended for nine – although it was probably more important to the guests that the cheeses at Holland House were proverbially excellent. As for Holland himself, contemporaries agreed that he was a man of rare charm; even if his Foxite physical appearance, with his heavy brows and equally weighty figure, made him resemble ‘a turbot on its tail’ when he wore a white tie. Devoted as he might be to the memory of Fox, he was an equally loyal supporter of Lord Grey. Indeed, he penned his own self-effacing epitaph, found after his death:

  Nephew of Fox, and friend of Grey,

  Enough my mead of fame . . .

  In sum, the sheer exciting enterprise of society at Holland House, as well as the host and hostess, made it a vital element in the Whig world.10

  Other Whig houses were in the country proper, ready for the round of sporting visits at the appropriate seasons which could also be the occasion of political planning. There was for example Bowood, the house of the Marquess of Lansdowne in Wiltshire; Woburn, the seat of the Duke of Bedford; the great houses of Lord Fitzwilliam at Wentworth Woodhouse and Lord Spencer at Althorp in Northamptonshire; and there was Holkham, lived in by the intelligent, liberal-minded agriculturalist Thomas Coke of Norfolk. These houses were of course centres of political influence in another sense, in that the owners would through their position be nominating MPs to seats.

  The Whigs also benefited from the development of the Club system in London following the Napoleonic Wars.11 The busy, enjoyably exclusive gatherings which took place at Brooks’s Club, originally a gambling club, could not fail to be extremely influential given the long years of Whig Opposition. Of course the clique within it incurred hostility, as cliques do: Francis Place, for example, referred with scorn to the ‘half dandy, half idiot fashionable people’ who sometimes condescended to notice their so-called inferiors.12 It was significant in this context that the Carlton Club (originally the Tory Club) was only founded in the atmosphere of potential Tory defeat of March 1832; it had the laudable ambition ‘to be the best in London’, an implied answer to the success of the Whig powerhouse Brooks’s or White’s Club nearby whose membership was frequently said to be politically ‘indiscriminate’.*

  Not every Club was avowedly political; the Athenaeum, for example, the inspiration of John Wilson Croker, had a different aim: Croker considered that ‘literary men and artists’ required ‘a place of rendez-vous also’, so that, with the exception of bishops and judges, there had to be a publication of sorts to qualify for membership. In principle this was the beginning of what has been described as ‘the Golden Age of the Clubs’ fanning out from the intense interest of the Whigs in such associations.13 It was the principle of association which was being underlined, just as the working classes and even middle classes – notably Thomas Attwood – were beginning to discover the same principle in the formation of unions.

  As Grey came to form his Government, the first real drama which occurred centred on Henry Brougham. There were two complications. The first concerned the high income which Brougham earned, not supplemented by landed wealth. Offered the post of Attorney-General in the House of Commons, he declared himself unable to accept on the grounds that he might one day lose his seat, and thus be condemned to penury. Then there was the question of the leadership of the House of Commons: the Whigs were adopting one of their new heroes in Lord Althorp at their head – as with many English heroes, an unlikely one – and it was not felt helpful to have Brougham diminishing his authority. This p
ut the emphasis on the post of Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords: highly paid and with a lifetime pension at the end of it, this position of immense distinction would surely suit Brougham. But would it suit the Whigs to have the dazzling but unstable Brougham thus elevated – would it suit the King and country? It could be argued that this was not necessarily a political role and there is evidence that some efforts were made towards retaining the Tory Lord Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst.14

  This remarkable self-made man, born in America but brought up in England, the son of the painter John Singleton Copley, added to a handsome appearance a speaking voice whose ‘rich, melodious tone’ reminded some hearers of Mephistopheles in Faust. Lyndhurst was famous for the cunning of his persuasive arguments coupled with a fabled air of sincerity; he was certainly a brilliant lawyer, even if the sincerity was sometimes in doubt. Lyndhurst was also one of those who had spoken up against Catholic Emancipation, describing the Roman Catholic religion in 1827 as ‘one of encroachment’. Yet for a moment in mid-November it seemed that Lyndhurst might be retained especially as he, like Brougham without inherited wealth to back him, feared to lose his £10,000 a year salary as Lord Chancellor.

  There was furthermore a private complication in the shape of Lady Lyndhurst. There were two aspects to Dolly Lyndhurst’s public reputation. On the one hand her striking looks were generally admired: extremely handsome and so dark, according to Creevey, that she was ‘very near a woman of colour’, Dolly was compared to portraits by Leonardo da Vinci. On the other hand her character was rather less favourably judged: ‘an underbred creature,’ thought Maria Edge-worth; all the better-bred ladies hated her. There were rumours of affairs, including a scandalous one with the royal Duke of Cumberland, and a current one with Lord Dudley, and even an unpleasant implication that Lyndhurst was not totally put out by such a situation. Among her admirers was said to be Lord Grey who, despite his domestic bliss, was never one to cut and run where a predatory pretty face was concerned and frequently sat, apparently enchanted, by her side at receptions. Lord Ellenborough recorded in his Diary that it was a misfortune for Lyndhurst to have such a wife ‘and be led by her . . . to acts which discredit him’. As to Dolly’s feelings for Lyndhurst, Greville reported that she detested him as a husband while desiring him as a partner.15