The Young Melbourne & Lord M

by The Young Melbourne

  In a bitter-sweet mood of recollection, he mused on the time when it was still alight. His mind tended, as the eventless rural days succeeded one another, more and more to dwell in the past. It was natural that it should at Brocket. The chintz-curtained bedrooms, the gilded, elegant saloon, the leather-scented quiet of the library, the park with its grassy vistas and the swans sweeping down on thunderous wing to settle in the river reeds—all these were heavy with memories for him, memories stretching back as far as he could remember at all. Not a phase of his earlier life but was connected with Brocket. There on his holidays from school, he had romped and ridden with Pen and Fred and “that little devil Emily”; there he had argued and laughed with Lady Melbourne; there he had learnt to study and to meditate; within these walls had been enacted much of the long drawn-out ironical tragedy of his marriage, from its rapturous, troubled honeymoon, to the muted pathos of Caroline’s last days. He spoke of her sometimes, and also of his mother. The most important figures in his life had always been women, these two pre-eminently. As he brooded on the past, it was their ghosts who stole forth most often to stand beside his chair. With them came another’s, whom he had loved perhaps more tenderly than either. She was not dead, though as irrecoverably lost to him as if she were. At the thought of her, visions of youth and childhood vanished; Brocket faded as Windsor rose before his mental eye; and once more the tears gathered to prick his eyelids and trickle down his withered cheeks.

  In 1846 an event took place which roused him from his reveries once again to make an active appearance on the contemporary political scene. Peel changed the declared opinions of a lifetime and came out against the Corn Laws. By so doing his split his Party. If the Whigs chose to ally themselves with the infuriated right wing of the Tories, they had a chance of turning the Government out. It would be an unscrupulous act on their part to do so, for up till then they had been in favour of modifying the Corn Laws themselves. Oppositions, however, like turning Governments out, and the Whig leaders were tempted. They held a meeting to discuss the subject. Melbourne struggled up to London to attend it. The arguments veered this way and that; suddenly, and for the first time that day, his voice, now slow and halting, made itself heard. “My Lords,” he said, “it’s a damn thing that Peel should have repealed the duty on foreign corn. But he has done it and the consequences are that you will all have to vote for it.” He had gone to the heart of the matter. Whatever the immediate political advantage, there was no doubt that the Whigs would be disastrously discredited if they voted for the Ultra-Tories. After Melbourne had spoken, no one had the effrontery to suggest that they should do so. For the last time the flame of his energies had flickered up to exhibit a flash of his old penetrating shrewdness. It was not bright enough, however, to persuade his colleagues into thinking him once again fit for office. Alas, Melbourne still did not realize this. The Tory Government fell: and buoyed up by his passionate desire to return to the Queen, he hoped that he might be offered, if not the premiership, at least some less onerous office like that of Lord Privy Seal. Hopefully he waited. Then came a letter from the Queen tactfully explaining that she had not called upon his services because she thought his health would not stand the strain. Melbourne wrote back assuring her that of course and as always she was right. But for a short time at any rate he was acutely disappointed.

  His friends noticed it. For it was another effect of his disintegration that he found it harder and harder to hide his feelings. The old characteristic urbanity of demeanour would be suddenly broken by outbursts of nervous agitation. In the same year he was dining one evening at Windsor: the conversation turned on Peel’s volte-face. This had shocked Melbourne very much: to throw over party and loyal colleagues for the sake of a doctrine, and an economic doctrine at that, was the last sort of thing with which he could sympathize. “Ma’am, it’s a damn dishonest act,” he burst out. At once amused and embarrassed by his violence, the Queen laughed and tried to change the subject. But Melbourne was by now too upset to be diverted from his course even by the Queen herself. The company sat awkward and silent as, confusedly and frantically, he continued to rail against Peel and his anti-Corn Law activities.

  Back at Brocket he at last resigned himself to accept the fact that his day was done. But resignation did not mean tranquillity of spirit. Melbourne never attained the famed serenity of old age. Few people do. Serenity implies an ability to rise above trouble, whereas age and weakness generally make people more susceptible to it. Certainly Melbourne was. He had been born with a high-strung, sensitive, vulnerable temperament, but he had early learnt to control it by the exercise of a cool, sensible judgment. Now his power of judgment was decaying along with his other faculties. He, once so conspicuous for his robust indifference to petty causes of annoyance, became an easy prey to fits of worry about ills, trifling or imaginary. Sometimes he fancied for no reason that a friend had turned against him; sometimes he was seized with a sudden fear that he was ruined; sometimes—and this was the strangest of all in him—he worried about his reputation. A newspaper would quote, slightly inaccurately, some public utterance of his. With trembling, laborious hand he wrote off asking that it might be immediately corrected. In 1848 it somehow came out that in 1832 Tom Young had written a letter from the Home Office to the leader of the Birmingham League encouraging them to raise an insurrection if reform broke down. This revelation should not have distressed Melbourne much. Young had written the letter without his knowledge; and, anyway, who cared about 1832 now? But Melbourne was so upset, lest in some way he should be held responsible, that for a day or two he was actually ill.

  It would be a mistake, however, to think of this final phase of Melbourne’s earthly existence as all trouble and gloom. There was more of twilight than black darkness about it. If old age led him to worry easily, it also made him forget his worries soon; and much of the time he did not worry at all. His attacks of acute depression, too, seem to have grown rarer as his vital forces weakened. Strangers who came to Brocket found Lord Melbourne a genial, tranquil old gentleman. And a very agreeable one as well. He spent most of the day in his bedroom, but if a visitor came to stay, he would bestir himself to come down to dinner; and afterwards for an hour or two the company would be treated to a display—faint and fatigued, no doubt, in comparison with those that had dazzled society in his heyday, but still delightful—of his racy, whimsical, accomplished conversational art.

  So two years slipped by. Then in November, 1848, he was suddenly taken dangerously ill. After two days racked by convulsive fits, he gradually became unconscious. Lady Palmerston, coming into his room on 24th November to see how he was, found him sleeping. In the pale light of the autumn day, his countenance, still beautiful in spite of the ravages that time and suffering had wrought upon it, wore an extraordinary look of contentment and resignation and peace. He lay for thirty-six hours more, with the life silently ebbing away within him. Then, at six o’clock on the following evening, he gave a long, soft sigh, and died. A few days later his body was borne through the leafless Hertfordshire lanes to be buried quietly near Caroline’s in the neighbouring country church-yard of Hatfield.

  The proper formalities were observed. Palmerston wrote announcing the sad news to the Queen; the Queen sent her condolences to Lady Palmerston; and a lengthy, if unenthusiastic, estimate of Melbourne’s character and achievements appeared in The Times. But, in fact, his death made little stir. The world was changing fast in the nineteenth century. And, though he was only sixty-nine when he died, he had outlived his time.

  List of Authorities

  The Bessborough Papers.

  The Bowood Papers.

  The British Museum Papers.

  The Broadlands Papers.

  The Chatsworth Papers.

  The Hatherton Papers.

  The Holland House Papers.

  The Howick Papers.

  The Lamb Papers, in the possession of the Dowager Lady Salisbury.

&nb
sp; Lord Melbourne’s Papers.

  The Panshanger Papers.

  The Windsor Papers.

  acland, alice. Caroline Norton.

  airlie, mabell countess of. In Whig Society.

  airlie, mabell countess of. Lady Palmerston and Her Times.

  aspinall, arthur. Lord Brougham and the Whig Party.

  baddely, sophia. Memoirs.

  berry, miss mary. Extracts from Journal and Correspondence.

  blessington, countess of. Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington.

  brougham, henry, 1st baron. Life and Times of Brougham.

  broughton, lord. Recollections of a Long Life.

  bury, lady charlotte. Diary illustrative of the times of George IV.

  byron, lord. Collected Poems.

  byron, lord. Letters and Journals.

  campbell, lord. Life of.

  canning, george. Some Official Correspondence.

  carlyle, thomas. Letters.

  clark, g. k. Peel and the Conservative Party, 1832–1841.

  cole, g. d. h. History of Trade Unionism.

  cole, g. d. h. Life of William Cobbett.

  cole, g. d. h. Life of Robert Owen.

  crawford——. Victoria, Queen and Ruler.

  Creevey Papers.

  creston, dormer. The Youthful Queen Victoria.

  dallas, robert. Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron.

  d’arblay, madame. Diary and Letters.

  darwin, emma. A Century of Family Letters.

  disraeli. Coningsby.

  disraeli. Sybil.

  dudley, john william ward, earl. Letters to “Ivy.”

  dunckley, henry. Lord Melbourne.

  eden, emily. Letters.

  fonblanque, e. Life and Letters of Albany Fonblanque.

  foster, vere. The Two Duchesses.

  fulford, roger. George IV.

  fulford, roger. Life of the Prince Consort.

  fulford, roger. Royal Dukes.

  galt, john. Life of Byron.

  gerard, frances. Some Fair Hibernians.

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  Greville Memoirs.

  guedalla, philip. Palmerston.

  guizot, g. f. Memoirs.

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  hammond, j. l. The Village Labourer, 1760–1832.

  harward, abraham. Sketches of Eminent Statesmen and Writers.

  haydon, benjamin. Diaries of.

  holland, elizabeth, lady. Journal, 1791–1811.

  holland, lord. Memoirs of the Whig Party during my Time.

  ilchester, earl of. Chronicles of Holland House, 1820–1900.

  ilchester, earl of. Home of the Hollands, 1605–1820.

  jenkins, elizabeth. Lady Caroline Lamb.

  jerdan, william. Autobiography.

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  kebbel, t. e. Life of the Earl of Derby.

  kemble, fanny. Records of a Girlhood.

  lamb, lady caroline. Glenarvon.

  lee, dr. robert. Extracts from Diary.

  le marchant. Memoirs of Viscount Althorp.

  lennox. Life and Letters of Sarah.

  leveson-gower, granville. Private Correspondence.

  lieven, princess. Letters of.

  lyttelton, sarah spencer, lady. Correspondence.

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  macaulay, lord. Critical and Historical Essays.

  mccullagh-torrens, w. t. Memoirs of Melbourne.

  malmesbury, lord. Memoirs.

  markham, violet. Paxton and the Bachelor Duke.

  martineau, harriet. Autobiography.

  maurois, andre. Disraeli.

  mayne, e. c. Byron.

  mayne, e. c. Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Byron.

  medwin, thomas. Conversation of Byron at Pisa.

  melbourne, lord. Letters and Papers, edited by Lloyd Sanders.

  monypenny and buckle. The Life of Disraeli.

  moore, thomas. Memoirs, journal and correspondence.

  morgan, lady. Memoirs, autobiography, diaries and correspondence.

  new, c. w. Lord Durham, a biography.

  newman, bertram. Lord Melbourne.

  norton, caroline. English Laws for Women.

  perkins, j. A Life of Mrs. Norton.

  prestige, g. l. Life of Charles Gore.

  quennell, peter. Byron: the Years of Fame.

  reid, s. j. The Life and Letters of the 1st Earl of Durham, 1792–1840.

  russell, g. w. e. Collections and Recollections.

  russell, lord john. Early Correspondence.

  sadleir, michael. Bulwer and his Wife.

  sanders, lloyd c. The Holland House Circle.

  selwyn, george a. His Letters and his Life.

  shelley, frances winckley, lady. Diary of.

  sichel, walter. Sheridan.

  smiles, samuel. A Publisher and His Friends.

  smith, sidney. Letters and Works.

  stockmar, baron. Memoirs.

  stokes, hugh. The Devonshire House Circle.

  strachey, lytton. Queen Victoria.

  temperley, h. w. v. Life of Canning.

  tolpuddle. The Martyrs of, 1834–1934.

  trevelyan, g. m. British History in the nineteenth century.

  trevelyan, g. m. Life and Letters of Macaulay.

  trevelyan, g. m. Lord Grey of the Reform Bill.

  victoria, queen. The Correspondence of, edited by Viscount Esher.

  victoria, queen. The girlhood of, edited by Benson and Esher.

  victoria, queen. Letters.

  wallas, g. The Life of Francis Place.

  walpole, horace. Letters.

  walpole, sir spencer. History of England from the conclusion of the great war in 1815.

  walpole, sir spencer. Life and Letters of Lord John Russell.

  webster, g. k. The Foreign Policy of Palmerston, 1830–1841.

  whately, e. j. Life and Correspondence of Archbishop Whately.

  wilberforce, r. i. Life of William Wilberforce.

  wilson, harriette. Memoirs.

  wraxall, sir nathaniel. Posthumous Memoirs of his own Time.

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  Copyright

  Parts I, II and III first published in 1939 under the title of

  The Young Lord Melbourne by Constable and Co. Ltd.

  Part IV first published in 1954 under the title of Lord M by Constable and Co. Ltd.

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