The acclamation from Ignatius’s family was sincere, and tinged with admiration, John Poyntz, Fifth Earl Spencer, writing to his uncle’s superior:
I assure you that, much as I may have differed from my uncle on points of doctrine, no one could have admired more than I did the beautiful simplicity, earnest religion, and faith of my uncle. For his God he renounced all the pleasures of the world; his death, sad as it is to us, was, as his life, apart from the world but with God.
His family will respect his memory as much as I am sure you and the brethren of his Order do.
16. The Red Earl and the Fairy Queen
John, Fifth Earl Spencer, was the only son from the first marriage of Frederick, Fourth Earl Spencer and Elizabeth Poyntz. He was born in October 1835 at Spencer House, and received as a second name the surname of his mother’s family. My grandfather always referred to him as ‘Uncle Poyntz’, but, to the rest of those who have ever needed to invoke his memory, he has become known as ‘the Red Earl’, on account of his vast auburn beard.
Sent away to be educated at Harrow, the then Viscount Althorp was there when he learned of his frail mother’s death, writing to his father with a maturity far exceeding his fifteen years: ‘The sermon we had from the Bishop of Ripon yesterday was very consoling; to think of the hope of the blessed saints (and among them my dear mother) hovering about and seeing the world from Heaven in all its vicissitudes.’
It was while at Harrow that he experienced a moment that he recalled in old age as being one of the most awkward in his life. The Prince of Wales — Queen Victoria’s son, later Edward VII — came to visit the school, and John was one of the pupils chosen by the headmaster to be present in the Vaughan Library. The Prince stopped to look at a book that minuted the school debating society’s recent topics. By chance, he opened it on a page which recorded a debate, “‘That regicide is justifiable”, moved by Viscount Althorp’. It was noted by those present that John Althorp was extremely distressed, but the Prince said nothing, merely smiling. It was not an occasion that the future Red Earl was ever to forget.
After his death, a contemporary of John’s wrote that as a Harrovian he was ‘a general favourite and much respected. In boyhood, as all through his life, his manners were delightful, genial, friendly, perfectly simple.’
John’s education was identical to that of his grandfather, George John, in that he went from Harrow to Trinity College, Cambridge. There the similarities ended, for John showed none of the intellectual promise that had marked out George John as an exceptional undergraduate. Indeed, John’s tutor advised him against taking an ordinary degree, suggesting that he would not attain one; so he plumped for a nobleman’s one instead.
After graduating in 1857, John stood as Whig candidate for the southern division of Northamptonshire. He was not ashamed to play on his family associations and traditions, writing to voters an electioneering letter, dated 6 March, which said: ‘It will not be, as you know, the first time that one of my name has aspired to this honour, & I am glad to be able to come forward on the same general liberal principles which my Uncle the late Lord Spencer [Jack] held when Member for this county.’
The Whig or Liberal interest of Northamptonshire had not been represented in Parliament since Jack Althorp had succeeded to his seat in the House of Lords, a generation earlier. However, the news brought to Frederick Spencer, resting on a bench in front of Althorp, was of his son’s electoral success.
John had little interest in culture, and he eschewed the conventional Grand Tour for a trip to the United States. He set off in July 1857, on a ship that was also carrying the American showman Phineas Taylor Barnum (John reported to his father that he was ‘full of tricks and jokes’), and for three months travelled across the States, dipping into Canada.
John’s observations of tensions and prejudices in the run-up to the American Civil War proved highly perceptive. In New York, where he went after arriving in Boston, he first encountered ‘the terrible thundercloud ever ready to explode and separate the North and South’ — the different attitudes to slavery. The observation of this young English aristocrat was that:
Things are now comparatively quiet but the press keep up a warfare of the most violent and agitating description; the Northernmen are so imprudent and the Southern so obstinate that if any more agitation takes place in the North, I fear the consequences may be very serious: the ill feeling is so great that many of the Southerners who used to fly with their families to the New England watering places from the awful heat of the South, now prefer going to Europe or even remaining in their dangerous homes to coming among the Northern people.
John was concerned that Northern interference, although understandable to him as an opponent of slavery, might actually prove to be counter-productive. He was convinced that the Southern slave owner would become more obstinate, and fight harder to preserve the practice of slavery when, otherwise, it would die out naturally as a result of economic forces. As he wrote to his father:
Missouri has returned a Republican, and they there have found out how much more profitable free is to slave labour. This will be the real means of overturning slavery, the tide of emigration throws free labour nearer the slave states, and the marked difference in the wealth and prosperity of two districts so differently cultivated is the strongest argument to the Slave owner against his favourite institution, for it touches the pocket.
He was aware that the question of slavery’s continuation was bound up in the voracious appetite of British industrial might. While on board the ferry Baltic, sailing between Memphis and Natchez on the Mississippi, he wrote to his father:
The fact is that, we in England are the great indirect supporters of Slavery for Manchester and the Cotton Manufactories require so much raw Material and that can only be supplied by Black labour, for the white never can stand the Southern climate: but this does not prove that the labour must be slave labour. Free black labour is I feel sure available, if the negro is trained for independence, but now the Planters are prejudiced and obstinate. They dare not educate their Slaves because once intelligent and enlightened, they will cast off their Slavery; the result of this will be that one fine day Emancipation will be forced upon them, [and] they will have a dependent helpless set around them with no prospect of improvement for many years ...
As well as grappling with profound matters of human rights versus those of socio-economic forces, John was also intrigued by a more mundane matter: the differences and similarities between the North American and the Englishman. His views are those of a young man from an extremely sheltered and privileged upbringing. One can feel him struggling to come to grips with the very different emphases placed on everything from diction to courting, while attempting to remain broadminded, aware as he was that he was merely a guest in this continent, an ocean away from home.
Again writing to his father, John described how,
It is curious how superior the Lady seems in manners to the Man, a few of the men are what we should call gentlemanlike in manner and talk as we do but most men have the twang and are unmistakably not Englishmen, whereas the best American ladies could often be taken for Englishwomen. I do not though dislike the men. Far from it, they are kindness itself, VERY WELL educated and when you get over their short manner and their nasal talk you find them very agreeable ...
Having passed his adolescence in the stultifying formality of early Victorian British high society, John was particularly struck by the apparent freedom enjoyed by the unmarried women of North America. There is no record of how Frederick Spencer reacted to the following passage from his son and heir, extolling the sort of freedom that the Fourth Earl would doubtless have considered both disgraceful and provocative:
The liberty young ladies have seems strange, but I believe it is a wise plan. They get to learn the tricks of the world by themselves before they marry, become much better managers of husbands and themselves than if tied too closely to their chaperone, and they say such a thing as a girl goi
ng wrong is never known, and they evidently make most loving and devoted wives ...
John would return to the United States several decades later, one of the grand old men of British society and politics. However, the 1857 trip was his last venture abroad as Viscount Althorp. Moreover, he was destined never to make a mark in the House of Commons, since his father, Frederick, died soon after John’s return to England at the end of the year.
His first consideration was what to do with his stepmother, the 32-year-old ‘Yaddy’, so recently delivered of her second child, Bobby. Sarah, Lady Lyttelton, Frederick’s sister and governess to the royal children, was keen to get Yaddy out of Althorp and ready to contemplate remarriage, so that she could be sidelined by the Spencer family at the earliest opportunity. Known for her charm throughout her early years, Sarah now revealed a waspish side that became more pronounced in her middle and old age:
She will, I think, be removed from many little temptations to interference and worreting by not being actually at Althorp. She will, I daresay, always be more or less a trial ... Much will depend on the footing upon which you put your intercourse with her at first starting. There should be no fixed habit of daily meetings nor any UNDERSTOOD RULE of inviting her on every occasion — that you often wish to be alone ...
There was no obvious justification for such a harsh attitude towards somebody as inoffensive and essentially good as Yaddy Spencer. Sarah may have been driven by a misguided loyalty to the memory of her brother’s first wife, Elizabeth. Whatever the reason, Yaddy proved to be no trouble to the new Earl Spencer, devoting her remaining years to her and Frederick’s two children, to charitable works, and to remaining a thoroughly respected Northamptonshire lady. John’s affection for his stepmother is shown by a will he drew up in the 1870s, in which he bequeathed an allowance of 200 per year to Yaddy, ‘as a mark of my great love and esteem for her, and a return inadequate as it is for the obligations I feel for the devoted love to her husband my father and her Motherly kindness to my sister and myself’.
Yaddy’s death, twenty years after Frederick’s, saw her still single, in defiance of Sarah’s assumption that she would quickly remarry. She had worn black throughout her widowhood, living quietly at Guilsborough Hall, where she died. John arranged for her body to be brought the few miles back to Althorp, where his stepmother lay in state in the Saloon, the doors draped in dark-blue curtains embroidered with the Spencer ‘S’ in gold, and hot-house plants surrounding the coffin itself. From there it was removed to Brington, on foot, Yaddy’s insistence on the plainest and least expensive funeral possible being obeyed; as was her request that her coffin not be screwed down for two days after her death had been pronounced, in case she came alive again.
Among the chief family mourners was John’s beautiful wife, Charlotte, who was known, in dual reference to her looks and to the poem by Edmund Spenser, as ‘Spencer’s Fairy Queen’.
Charlotte Frances Frederica Seymour was a cousin of her husband’s stepmother, as well as being the youngest of the three daughters of Lady Augusta and Frederick Seymour. Her maternal grandfather was the First Marquess of Bristol, and she spent much of her childhood at Ickworth, the Bristols’ estate in Suffolk. Her two elder sisters, Lilah, later Lady Clifden, and Augusta, who married Lord Charles Bruce, were also celebrated beauties, each being blessed with a wonderful complexion, dazzling eyes, a neat aquiline nose and exquisite lips. Of Charlotte it was said: ‘There was probably never a face that so reproduced and reflected the goodness, the inherent nobleness of nature, the inward beauty of the soul, so much as hers.’
Charlotte had met John Althorp early in 1854. Both their families were frequent guests at the Hampton Court home of the Dowager Lady Clinton, their mutual aunt. There was much family rejoicing when John summoned up the courage in May 1858 to ask Charlotte to marry him. On the day of the engagement, Charlotte humbly wrote of her fiancé: ‘He is so good and everything that I could possibly hope for, that I feel it is far more than I deserve.’ The wedding took place on 8 July 1858, at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, despite John still being in mourning for Frederick, his father.
Charlotte introduced her new husband to her passion for travel, but the Red Earl was always happier among his ancestral acres than elsewhere. Before they set off on a nine-month honeymoon, he wrote to Charlotte: ‘I wonder whether we shall be satiated with our foreign expedition or get the contrary desire of always travelling? I do not know what you think but I am always happier at home and settled ... but I may be converted by you and we may become roamers; I hope not.’
The irony of the remark was to become evident as the Red Earl’s political life took on an energy of its own, involving him in extended tours of duty overseas. For now, he carried on with the obligations of a courtier that his father had found so irksome. At first, the Red Earl was Groom of the Stole to Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort, from 1859. However, he had held the position for only a short time when he received a letter from Lady Mary Biddulph, wife of the Master of the Queen’s Household, sent in haste from Windsor:
I write one line from my Husband’s room in the Castle, to tell you VERY VERY bad news — All the household have just been up to the Prince’s room to see for the last time him who is fast sinking — The doctors say there is no hope — not the slightest — of his Royal Highness’s life being spared, but none can say how long it may go on — The Queen is composed and perfectly aware of the state of the case.
Albert died later that night.
The following year, the Red Earl was asked to become Groom of the Stole to the Prince of Wales — the man in front of whom he had experienced crimson embarrassment as a schoolboy. Extending the invitation on Queen Victoria’s behalf, Sir Charles Phipps wrote: ‘Her Majesty attaches much importance to the appointment in His Royal Highness’ Household being fulfilled by Gentlemen of acknowledged high character in every respect ...’ The Red Earl remained Groom of the Stole to the Prince for six years, when he took up an active role in politics.
As early as 1866 the Red Earl was first sounded out by fellow Whig grandees as a possible leader of the party. Lord Elcho tried to persuade him to accept the challenge with a stirring letter:
You have a hereditary title to the headship of the Whig or Constitutional as opposed to the democratic Liberals. You have station, wealth, and a large well known Whig house in the centre of London. Personally you are very popular. You have plenty of ability and business experience ... In taking this position you would be doing a great public service ... You would at the same time, if ambitiously inclined, be doing the best thing for yourself.
But the Red Earl was devoid of personal ambition. As one of his parliamentary colleagues was to note,
No man of high social station or low was ever more disinterested, more unselfish, more free from the defects incident to either patrician pride or plebeian vanity. He was of too lofty a nature to have a trace of the covetousness of place that disfigured the patrician Whig caste even down to such days as these.
It was therefore in character for him to reply to Elcho as he did:
Though I entered Parliament very young, various things, my father’s death, my Court appointment, my journeys abroad, have taken me away from active Politics.
I have no experience of official life; I have never publicly handled any question of general Politics.
I thus, though anxious to be of some political use to the country, feel strongly my need of experience without which I should have no confidence in myself.
By the time he rejected the Whig leadership, at the age of thirty-one, the Red Earl had already become a Knight of the Garter, an honour usually reserved for much older men, after a lifetime of distinguished public service. It was, again, something he had sought to avoid, claiming it was an award he had done little to merit. However, the Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister, Palmerston, pressed him to accept; the Prince particularly so. He had recommended the Red Earl for the Garter when the latter was only twenty-nine, so impresse
d was he by his steady, sincere personality. Edward also wanted Spencer’s public-spirited generosity to be acknowledged: in 1864, the Red Earl had decided to give Wimbledon Common to the nation.
It was a gift of such importance that it warranted its own Act of Parliament to enshrine it in the nation’s annals for all time. The Act stipulated that the section of the common situated between the Kingston Road and Wimbledon Village must, in perpetuity, be a public park with its own lodges. The magazine Punch celebrated the Red Earl’s munificence in its issue of late November 1864:
There is for us, and shall be, one retreat
If but the only, saved stucco-free;
Wimbledon, ever more for pilgrims’ feet
Kept sacred, noble Spencer, thanks to thee!
Thy generous charter gives us scope to flee
Still thither from the hubbub and the heat.
While the Red Earl was establishing himself as a man of spotless character in public life, at home Charlotte was showing herself to be a natural chatelaine of Althorp and of Spencer House. In April 1859 the newly married couple had returned from their honeymoon to a rapturous welcome from the tenants and labourers of their 27,000 acre estates. The Red Earl wrote to his sister with pride that: ‘Charlotte was delighted & did her part admirably, her reception was most cordial and enthusiastic.’
Charlotte’s charm and elegance, combined with her down-to-earth nature and her genuine love for her husband, entranced the people of Northamptonshire. However, these attributes were sources of aggravation for the increasingly cantankerous Sarah, Lady Lyttelton. In November 1861, the ageing Spencer aunt took it upon herself to deliver a rebuke to Charlotte. It must have been all the more devastating, given the pretence at civility that shrouded the rude attack on a young woman trying to establish a home for herself and her husband. The letter started: ‘Now my dear kind niece, you are going to pay a fine for being so very kind and dear, and encouraging me to be afraid of nothing when I have a hint to give or a bit of advice to lay before you ...’ Sarah then recounted how, while staying with friends, she had been dismayed to hear, ‘quite in a roundabout and unexpected way’, that Charlotte was
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