In 1825, at a cost of £840, his father bought him a commission in the Tenth Hussars. A year later, at even greater expense, he bought a promotion to the rank of lieutenant. The regiment was based in Leicestershire in December 1826 when Stephens received news of his father’s inheritance. As he obtained leave and hurried home to London, the government was arranging to send troops to Portugal to help keep the peace in a country which was on the brink of civil war.
The Tenth Hussars formed the cavalry brigade; two squadrons sailed for Lisbon, a third was stationed in Ipswich as a depot. Overlooked for the service squadrons because of his absence in London, Stephens was the only lieutenant to remain in England. He travelled to Ipswich in January 1827 and remained there for thirteen months until the service squadrons returned from Portugal.
In January 1828, his father gave up the house in Devonshire Place and acquired a much grander property in Portman Square. This was a prestigious address comprising ‘forty noble houses’ occupied by two dukes, six earls, one viscount, four lords, and assorted knights, baronets, honourables and titled widows. Number 32, which Charles rented for £600 a year, had previously been the home of Lady Anne Hamilton, lady-in-waiting to Queen Caroline.
It was a much diminished family that moved into their new home. Stephens’s eldest sister had died in 1817 (aged fourteen), followed by his mother in 1820 and his second sister in 1824 (aged nineteen). His two surviving sisters, Louisa and Sophia, were now in great demand by young men eager to marry into money. As Charles boasted to his elder brother in Cornwall:
Among the many offers of marriage made to my daughters, a number have been from young noblemen, one of them an earl for Louisa which, if she had fancied, she might have been a countess at this moment, and this besides other noblemen who have offered for her and also for her sister, among whom are some of the first families of rank.
Charles had hoped to be a peer himself by this time, hopes dashed when Lord Liverpool, the prime minister, suffered a massive stroke in April 1827 and was found paralysed and unconscious on the floor. Lord Liverpool had admired Charles’s intellect and, as news of his inheritance spread through London society, he had offered him a peerage:
Before Lord Liverpool was seized with the violent attack with which he lays so dangerously ill, I had the offer of being made a peer and Stephens a baronet. I refused the offer without hesitation and left it to my son to accept the baronetcy or not as he might like. He also refused the offer and my daughters appeared well pleased that we had declined, observing that ostentatious honours were of no good.
Charles was making the best of the situation. He would have loved a peerage but had declined in a show of humility, assuming that the prime minister would remain in power and make the offer for a second time. This was unwise for Lord Liverpool never regained his faculties. He was replaced by George Canning and then by the Duke of Wellington, men with whom Charles had little acquaintance.
Stephens sold his commission in the spring of 1828, preferring to spend his father’s fortune in a life of leisure. Six months later, he and his family left London to spend several weeks in Brighton. They were staying in the Albion Hotel on the seafront when his youngest sister Sophia – who had been in the best of health and spirits – suffered a sudden brain haemorrhage and died on 1 November. She was nineteen years old.
Two days later, at five o’clock in the morning, a carriage-hearse left the Albion Hotel to carry Sophia’s body home to London where she was buried with her mother and sisters in a private vault under St Marylebone church. ‘The shock to the family,’ wrote a newspaper in Brighton, ‘has been enervatingly great.’
5
THE PARVENU
Lyne Stephens, hail! From Thames to Coaly Tyne,
Our land can boast no better soul than thine.
Poem quoted in The Sporting Review, September 1846
Five months after Sophia’s death, Charles opened his London mansion to society, hosting the first of many grand dinners with food served on plates of solid silver. ‘The Portman Square house soon had a name for good dinners,’ wrote one of his nephews. ‘The Duke of Cambridge considered the cook “not bad”, Lord Eldon found no fault, and the newspapers would announce when the Lyne Stephens dinners for the London season had commenced.’1
While his father entertained high society in Portman Square, Stephens became a young man-about-town. He frequented the theatre, was a founder member of the Garrick Club, and was elected to Crockford’s, the gambling house in St James’s Street which opened in 1828. Captain Gronow – who would accompany Yolande and Edward Ellice to the Star and Garter in Richmond – described Crockford’s in its early days:
A supper of the most exquisite kind … accompanied by the best wines in the world, together with every luxury of the season, was furnished gratis. The members of the club included all the celebrities of England, from the Duke of Wellington to the youngest Ensign of the Guards. At the gay and festive board, which was constantly replenished from midnight to early dawn, the most brilliant sallies of wit, the most agreeable conversation, the most interesting anecdotes, interspersed with grave political discussions, and acute logical reasoning on every conceivable subject, proceeded from the soldiers, scholars, statesmen, poets, and men of pleasure, who, when the balls and parties were at an end, delighted to finish their evening with a little supper and a good deal of hazard at old Crockey’s.2
During the first two seasons of the club, a total of £300,000 changed hands, much of it into the pockets of William Crockford, a man who had started life as a London fishmonger. Fortunes were won and lost, particularly on the hazard table where stakes of £1000 were placed on the fall of the dice. As Gronow described it:
Who that ever entered that dangerous little room can ever forget the large green table with the croupiers with their suave manners, sleek appearance, stiff white neckcloths, and the almost miraculous quickness and dexterity with which they swept away the money of the unfortunate punters.3
Stephens was an enthusiastic player at the hazard table, building up significant debts which had to be subsidised by his father. When The Satirist summed up the betting season at Crockford’s in July 1832, he was listed as one of the main losers:
As the season for play is drawing to a close … our readers may be curious to learn who have been winners and who losers. Among the successful winners of the season, we may instance Lord Queensberry … Tom Duncombe and Count d’Orsay. In the list of losers are the Duke of Buccleugh, Lords Castlereagh, Ranelagh, Allen and Tullamore … and Lyne Stephens.
He also took up country pursuits. He attended shooting parties. He bought a string of racehorses and appeared at all the important race meetings of the season. He spent the winter riding to hounds with the Quorn Hunt in Melton Mowbray, the most fashionable and expensive hunt in the country. According to Nimrod, a sporting journalist:
A winter in Leicestershire is the passe-partout that leads to the best society in the world. When turned out of the hands of his valet, the Meltonian fox-hunter presents the very beau ideal of his caste. The exact fit of his coat, his superlatively well-cleaned leather breeches and boots, and the high breeding of the man can seldom be matched elsewhere.4
Stephens had learnt to enjoy hunting in 1826 when the Tenth Hussars was based in Leicestershire. ‘The Tenth has placed fox-hunting above all sports,’ wrote a fellow officer. ‘It gives a quick eye, knowledge of terrain, the requisite dash and going straight.’ During his first three seasons in Melton Mowbray, he stayed at the George Hotel which offered high standards of comfort and had an excellent cook; he also dined at the Old Club which held banquets several nights a week.
Before Stephens left London for his first winter in Melton Mowbray, his father signed an agreement with Sir John Osborn to rent Chicksands Priory in Bedfordshire. A religious house of the Gilbertine order, the Priory dated from the mid-twelfth century and was acquired by the Osborn family after the dissolution of the monasteries. During the autumn and winter of 1829, Charles made
plans to redecorate the house and build a new stable block. In the spring, he made arrangements for the marriage of his only surviving daughter, Louisa, to Captain Charles Bulkeley of the Life Guards.
The marriage took place in St Mary’s, Bryanston Square, on 1 June 1830. Bulkeley was already a rich young man and, as he departed on honeymoon, his wealth was increased by a dowry worth £20 million in today’s money. ‘Chicksands is let to Mr Lyne Stephens, who is building stables and otherwise doing a great deal to the house,’ wrote an elderly lady in Bedfordshire a few days after the wedding. ‘He certainly has a million of money. Married his daughter last week and only gave her £200,000.’
Less than four weeks later, the death of George IV provided an opportunity for Stephens to become a member of parliament. It was a time of increasing demand for reform. Despite the changes of the Industrial Revolution, parliament remained in the hands of the land-owning classes. Charles’s home county of Cornwall returned forty-four members, while the industrial towns of England had no members at all. In the boroughs of England, seats were bought and voters bribed, while the growing middle classes had no voice in electing their representatives.
The king’s death increased the clamour for change. There were fears of revolution if parliament remained unreformed for much longer, fears fostered by the July Revolution in France which catapulted Yolande to fame and toppled the Bourbon monarchy. Although the prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, opposed reform of any kind, the mood of the people soon led to a general election.
Charles was eager that his son should stand for parliament, an aim encouraged by a neighbour in Portman Square, George Tudor, who was standing for Barnstaple in north Devon where the two sitting members had decided not to contest their seats. On 14 July, Stephens and his father drafted a letter to ‘the worthy and independent freemen of the Borough of Barnstaple’:
I hasten to offer myself as a candidate for the honour of representing your ancient and respectable Borough. Totally unconnected with any political party, I come forward with perfectly independent principles. A firm attachment to our excellent Constitution, and a steady and loyal devotion to the welfare and best interests of my country, are the grounds on which I venture to solicit your support. Should I be so fortunate as to succeed in the high object of my ambition … I will most anxiously endeavour to prove myself worthy of your choice by a careful attention to your local interests, a strict regard to retrenchment and economy in the public expenditure, and a conscientious performance of my duties in Parliament.5
He visited Barnstaple a few days later, stopping at the almshouse to make a donation of £10 before canvassing the town and making ‘a manly and eloquent speech’ at the Castle Inn. At the election on 2 August, he topped the poll with 370 votes; George Tudor came second with 332.
It had cost Charles £5,130 (£530,000) for his son to enter parliament, £1,400 in today’s money for every man who voted for him. Half of them lived outside Barnstaple, mostly in London. Their expenses amounted to £2,200; voters in the town were entertained at an additional £1,730; the election dinner cost £500; lodgings for Stephens and his valet were estimated at £200; and a further £500 was spent on agents and managers.
Three weeks after the election, Charles left London for his first autumn season in Chicksands, accompanied by Louisa and her husband who had returned from honeymoon to live with him in Portman Square. Stephens remained in London as parliament had been summoned to meet on 14 September; it was then prorogued and he joined his family at Chicksands to host a shooting party. At the end of the month, he returned to London, was sworn in as a member of parliament, and attended the House on 2 November when the Commons began to debate the King’s Speech.
Stephens allied himself with the ultra-Tories, a right-wing faction which opposed Catholic emancipation and had split from the government in protest at the passing of the Catholic Relief Act in 1829. On 15 November, he was one of twenty-nine members who voted against the government in a division on the Civil List. This led to a government defeat. Wellington resigned, Lord Grey took the helm of a new Whig government, and during the winter of 1830/31, the Whigs worked in secret on plans to reform the representation of the country.
In late November, Stephens left London for Melton Mowbray and remained there for almost four months. As a result, he missed the dramatic sitting on 1 March 1831 when the paymaster-general, Lord John Russell, introduced the Reform Bill in the House of Commons.
It was six o’clock in the evening. The chamber was packed and the atmosphere electric. How widely would the bill extend the franchise? How many boroughs would be purged as land-owning peers lost their right to control seats in parliament? Soon the members learned that sixty boroughs would be abolished, while a further forty-six would lose one of their members. As Russell announced the names of the condemned boroughs, he was greeted by shouts of laughter from men unable to believe that such huge change was possible. ‘More yet,’ said Russell, smiling, before listing the boroughs which would have reduced representation.
Stephens also missed the first reading of the bill on 14 March, despite having been summoned to appear that day in the Commons. He arrived in London two days later and was present in the House when the bill was read for a second time during the evening of the 22nd.
The debate lasted for much of the night. The vote was taken shortly before three o’clock in the morning and, when the Speaker announced the numbers, it was learnt that the bill had been passed by just one vote: 302 votes to 301, the fullest House in parliamentary history. As an ultra-Tory, Stephens had voted against the bill, despite a petition from the voters of Barnstaple asking him to support it.
Five days later, he attended one of his father’s grand dinners before returning to Melton Mowbray to enjoy the last few days of the hunting season. He was back in London when parliament reassembled on 18 April and the Reform Bill went into committee. The following day, after the government was defeated on a motion affecting the bill, Lord Grey asked William IV to dissolve parliament and allow him to obtain a larger majority in a general election.
At first the king refused but, on 21 April, he changed his mind. Next morning, he ordered the royal robes to be prepared and the crown sent over from the Tower of London. Appropriately dressed, he set out for Westminster in the early afternoon, cannons firing to signal his approach. Parliament had been forewarned of his intentions and the Commons was in uproar:
The Speaker was agitated and several members were not collected enough to receive his decisions with the usual deference. Honourable members turned upon each other, growling contradictions. The spokesman of the opposition gained a hearing but, as soon as he was in full flow, boom! came the cannon which told that the King was on his way, and the roar drowned the conclusion of his sentence. Not a word more was heard for the cheers, cries and shouts of laughter, all put down at regular intervals by discharges of artillery.6
On entering the Lords, the king asked that the Commons be summoned and the members rushed in ‘very tumultuously’. Flushed by the drama, his crown sitting awry on his head, the king read his speech and promptly returned to his carriage.
As the country prepared for a general election in May on the single issue of ‘The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill’, Stephens decided not to defend his seat. Opinion was overwhelmingly in favour of reform and he had no hope of re-election. As a flyer in Barnstaple put it:
We will not lend our support to any individual who has opposed the progress of the Reform Bill, and we will frustrate all attempts to continue those infamous and fraudulent practices which have hitherto stigmatised this borough as the nest of fraud and corruption.7
Stephens’s sister Louisa was now three months pregnant with her first child. To protect her from the jolting of a carriage journey to Chicksands, the family remained in Portman Square until her baby was born in October. In a cruel twist of fate after the early deaths of her three sisters, Louisa was infected during the birth and she died a few weeks later. In desp
air at the loss of his fourth daughter, Charles asked his son-in-law to continue to live with him; with Stephens absent for several months every winter, he needed the company of Bulkeley and his infant granddaughter.
At the end of the month, Stephens returned to Melton Mowbray where he had recently teamed up with two brothers, William Massey Stanley and Rowland Errington, to form the New Club in premises opposite the George Hotel. Here the three men lived together and, as they employed one of the best chefs in the country (Francatelli, who later became chef at Crockford’s), the club became renowned for its dinners.
In the spring of 1833, eighteen months after Louisa’s death, Stephens persuaded his father to build him a stable block in Melton Mowbray, together with a coach-house and groom’s accommodation, at a total cost of £2,000 (£215,000). There were ‘summering yards and sheds, properly fenced off, and a large exercising yard, the whole comprising 2,769 yards of ground … the most complete establishment of the kind in the Midland counties’.8
The buildings, which boasted the Lyne Stephens coat of arms in a prominent position above the hayloft, were completed in October. As his grooms and stable boys transferred his horses to their new accommodation, Stephens visited the dealers to increase his stock of thoroughbreds. Soon his stables contained eighteen horses and, with partitions of polished mahogany and a livery of green blankets embroidered in gold, they became renowned as the most luxurious in the town.
Later that winter he sat for the artist Francis Grant, who was working on a scene in the breakfast room of the Old Club. The painting, known as The Melton Breakfast, was commissioned by Rowland Errington, the newly appointed master of the Quorn hounds. It portrays a number of notable Meltonians. Stephens is depicted at the back of the group, sitting eagerly but unobtrusively on a sofa, while Errington, Massey Stanley and several men of title are engaged in various activities in the foreground. According to the Morning Post, ‘the attitudes are all natural and easy, and the turn-out just what you might expect to see at Melton … a spirited and gentlemanly representation of men about to engage in a spirited and gentlemanly amusement’.9
The Beauty of Her Age: A Tale of Sex, Scandal and Money in Victorian England Page 5
