Duchess of Gontaut――Duc de Berry――Anecdotes of Lord H.――Sir Gore
Ouseley――Prince of Wales――The other princes――The Queen’s severity――Men
and women of George the Third’s time――The Herveys――Lady Liverpool’s
high breeding――Lady Hester’s declining health.
“One of Mr. Pitt’s last conversations, whilst on his death-bed, was
about Charles and James. Mr. Pitt had called me in, and told me, in a
low, feeble voice――‘You must not talk to me to-day on any business:
when I get down to Lord Camden’s, and am better, it will be time
enough then.’ He seemed to know he was dying, but only said this to
console me. ‘But now, my dear Hester,’ he continued, ‘I wish to say a
few words about James and Charles. As for Charles, he is such an
excellent young man that one cannot wish him to be otherwise than he
is; and Moore is such a perfect officer, that he will give him every
information in his profession that he can possibly require. The only
apprehension I have is on the score of women, who will perhaps think
differently of him from what he thinks of himself: but with James the
case is otherwise. He is a young man you must keep under; else you
will always see him trying to be a _joli garçon_. For Charles’s
steadiness, I do not fear; but the little one will one day or other
fall into the hands of men who will gain him over and unsettle his
political principles. You can guide him, and, so long as he is under
your care, he is safe:’ and,” added Lady Hester, “Mr. Pitt was right,
doctor; for the moment I quitted England he fell into the snares of
Lord B. and his party, and instead of being in Mr. Canning’s place,
which he might have been, he became nothing.”
Lady Hester went on: “When Charles and James left Chevening,[7] Mr.
Pitt said to Mahon (the present Earl Stanhope), ‘You know that, when
your father dies, you will be heir to a large property――whether
£15,000 a-year or £25,000 it does not much signify. Now, as far as a
house goes and having a table where your brothers may dine, I have got
that to offer. But young men in the army have a number of wants, for
their equipment, regimentals, &c., and for all this I have not the
means. You, therefore, Mahon, must do that for them; and, if you have
not money, you can always let their bills be charged to you with
interest, as is very common among noblemen until they come to their
fortune. You ought to raise a sum of money for them, and see to their
wants a little: your two brothers should not be left to starve.’
“Mahon said he would. Charles one day told me that, as a poor captain
of the army, the baggage warehouse and his tailor were rather shy of
trusting him; and if Mahon would only go and say to them――‘Do you let
my brothers have what they want, and I will be answerable for them;’
then I could get on. Mahon did that too; and, in reliance on this
arrangement, they had clothes and other things, considering him as
responsible for them. After Mr. Pitt’s death, several tradesmen
applied for their bills.”
* * * * *
So, recollecting an old peer, who had been one of Mr. Pitt’s
particular friends, I sent off James to him to his country-seat with a
letter, relating the whole business: this person immediately gave
James a draft for £2,000, with which he returned, and paid his own
and Charles’s debts.
“Well, it was agreed between Charles, James, and me, that whoever had
the first windfall should pay the £2,000. Charles died: James was not
rich enough at any time to do it; and it fell to my lot to pay it
since I have been in this country. And that was the reason of my
selling the Burton Pynsent reversion, which, you know, I did in 1820
or thereabouts; and when Mr. Murray found fault with me for my
extravagance, and said he would have no hand in the business, neither
he nor anybody else knew then why I sold it.
“When Coutts wrote me word that my brother James had been very good to
me in having given me £1,000, he did not know that the civility was
not so disinterested as he imagined. James might think he did a great
deal for me: but, let me ask you――did I not make a pretty great
sacrifice for Lord Mahon and him? I sold a pretty round sum out of the
American funds, and James took possession of about five hundred
pounds’ worth of plate of mine, and of my jewels, and of Tippoo Saib’s
gold powder-flask, worth £200, and of the cardinal of York’s present,
which, to some persons who wanted a relic of the Stuarts, was
invaluable. Then there was a portfolio, full of fine engravings of
Morghen and others, that the Duke of Buckingham bought of him: so
there was at least as much as he sent me.
“If I had not been thwarted and opposed by them all, as I have been,
and obliged to raise money from time to time to get on, I should have
been a very rich woman. There was the money I sold out of the American
funds; then there was the Burton Pynsent money, £7,000; my father’s
legacy, £10,000; the (I did not distinctly hear what) legacy, £1,000:”
and thus her ladyship reckoned up on her fingers an amount of £40,000.
“Is it not very odd that General G. and Lord G. could not leave me a
few thousand pounds out of their vast fortunes when they died? They
knew that I was in debt, and that a few thousands would have set me
up; and yet in their wills, not to speak of their lifetime, they never
gave me a single sixpence, but left their money to people already in
the enjoyment of incomes far exceeding their wants, and very little
more nearly related to them than I am. Well, all their injustice does
not put me out of spirits. The time will soon come when I shall want
none of their assistance, if I get the other property that ought to
come to me. Oh! how vexed Lady Chatham always was, when Lady Louisa V.
used to point at me, and say――‘There she is――that’s my heir.’ Lady L.
was deformed, and never thought of marrying; but Lord G. did marry
her nevertheless, and she had a child that died.
“Then there is the reversion of my grandfather’s pension of £4,000
a-year, secured for four lives by the patent: the first Lord Chatham
one, the late Lord Chatham the next, and I, of course, the third.”[8]
Nov. 14.――I saw that Lady Hester grew weaker every day, and I felt
alarmed about her. Still, whenever I had to write to the person she,
about this time, most honoured with her confidence, Mons. Guys, the
French consul at Beyrout, she would not allow me to make any further
allusion to her illness than to state simply that she was confined to
her bed-room with a cold. “I see you are afraid about me,” she said,
“but I have recovered from worse illnesses than this by God’s help and
the strength of my constitution.”
My wife sent to her to say that she or my daughter would, with
pleasure, come and keep her company, or sit up with her: this she
refused. I then offered Miss Longchamp’s services: but Lady Hester’s
pride would not allow her to expose to a stranger the meagreness of
her chamber, so utterly unlike a European apartment. It was indeed an
afflicting sight to behold her wrapped up in old blankets, her room
lighted by yellow beeswax candles in brass candlesticks, drinking her
tea out of a broken-spouted blue teapot and a cracked white cup and
saucer, taking her draughts out of an old cup, with a short wooden
deal bench by her bedside for a table, and in a room not so well
furnished as a servant’s bed-room in England.
The general state of wretchedness in which she lived had even struck
Mr. Dundas, a gentleman, who, on returning overland from India, staid
some days with her: and, as Lady Hester observed, when she told me the
story, “He did not know all, as you do. I believe he almost shed
tears. ‘When I see you, Lady Hester,’ said he, ‘with a set of fellows
for servants who do nothing, and when I look at the room in which you
pass your hours, I can hardly believe it is you. I was much affected
at first, but now I am more reconciled. You are a being fluctuating
between heaven and earth, and belonging to neither; and perhaps it is
better things should be as they are’” Lady Hester added, “He has
visited me two or three times: he is a sensible Scotchman, and I like
him as well as anybody I have seen for some years.”
November 15.――It was night, when a messenger arrived from Beyrout, and
brought a small parcel containing a superbly bound book presented to
her ladyship by the Oriental Translation Fund Society. It was
accompanied by a complimentary letter from the president, Sir Gore
Ouseley. The book was “_The History of the Temple of Jerusalem,
translated by the Rev. J. Reynolds_.” After admiring it, and turning
over the leaves, she said to me, “Look it over, and see what it is
about,” and then began to talk of Sir Gore. “I recollect, doctor,”
said she, “so well the night he was introduced to me: it was at Mr.
Matook’s (?) supper.
“You may imagine the numbers and numbers of people I met in society,
whilst I lived with Mr. Pitt, almost all of whom were dying to make my
acquaintance, and of whom I necessarily could know little or nothing.
Indeed, to the greater part of those who were introduced to me, if
they saw me afterwards, when they bowed I might return the salutation,
smile a little, and pass on, for I had not time to do more:――a
person’s life would not be long enough. Well, I recollect it was at a
party where Charles X. was present――I think it was at Lord
Harrington’s――that somebody said to me, ‘Mr. ―――― wants to know you so
much! Why won’t you let him be introduced to you?’――‘Because I don’t
like people whose face is all oily, like a soap-ball,’ answered I.
Now, doctor, upon my word, I no more knew he had made his fortune by
oil, than I do what was the colour of the paper in your saloon at
Nice; and when his friend said, ‘You are too bad, Lady Hester,’ I did
not understand what he meant. However, they told me there would be all
the royalties there, and so I consented.
“I have had an instinct all my life that never deceived me, about
people who were thorough-bred or not; I knew them at once. Why was it,
when Mr. H*******n came into a room, and took a long sweep with his
hat, and made a stoop, and I said: ‘One would think he was looking
under the bed for the _great business_;’ and all the people laughed,
and when at last Mr. Pitt said, ‘Hester, you are too bad, you should
not be personal,’ I declared ‘I did not know what he meant?’ Then he
explained to me that the man was a broken-down doctor, a fact which, I
honestly assured him, I never heard of before. But my quickness in
detecting people’s old habits is so great, that I hit upon a thing
without having the least previous intimation.
“As I passed the card-table that evening where the Comte d’Artois was
playing, he put down his cards to talk to me a little, so polite, so
well-bred――poor man! And there were the other three old dowagers, who
were playing with him, abusing him in English, which he understood
very well, because he had stopped the game. After he had resumed his
cards, I was leaning over the back of a chair facing him, reflecting
in one of my thoughtful moments on the uncertainty of human greatness
in the picture I had then before me, when I gave one of those deep
sighs, which you have heard me do sometimes, something between a sigh
and a grunt, and so startled the French King, that he literally threw
down his cards to stare at me. I remained perfectly motionless,
pretending not to observe his action; and, as he still continued to
gaze at me, some of the lookers-on construed it into a sort of
admiration on his part. This enraged Lady P., and her rage was
increased when, at every knock at the door, I turned my head to see
who was coming, and he turned his head too; for I was expecting the
royalties, and so was he: but she did not know this, and she took it
into her head that the Prince and I had some understanding between us.
“I never thought any more of the matter; but, in the course of the
evening, somebody brought Lady P. to me, and introduced her. ‘I have
longed,’ said Lady P. ‘for some time to make your acquaintance: I
don’t know how it is that we have never met; it would give me great
pleasure if I sometimes saw you at my parties,’ and so on. The next
day I had a visit from Lady P., and the day after that came her card,
and then an invitation; and, day after day, there was nothing but Lady
P. So, at last, not knowing what it meant, I said to an acquaintance,
‘What is the reason that Lady P. is always coming after me?’――‘What!
don’t you know?’ she replied: ‘why, the King of France is in love with
you?’ And this is the art, doctor, of all those mistresses: they watch
and observe if their lovers are pleased with any young person, and
then invite her home, as a lure to keep alive the old attraction.”
Here Lady Hester paused, and, after a moment, added: “How many of
those French people did I see at that time, especially at Lord H.’s!
There was the Duchess of Gontaut, who was obliged to turn washerwoman;
and even to the last, when she was best off, was obliged to go out to
parties in a hackney-coach. Why, the Duc de Berry himself lodged over
a greengrocer’s in a little street leading out of Montague Square, and
all the view he had was to lean out of his window, and look at the
greengrocer’s stall. I have seen him many a time there, when he used
to kiss his hand to me as I passed. The Duchess of Gontaut afterwards
brought up the Duke of Bordeaux. That was a woman quite admirable; so
full of resources, so cheerful, she kept up the spirits of all the
emigrants: and then she was so well dressed! She did not mind going in
a hackney-coach to dine with the Duke of Portland.
“Lord H********** scraped up a reputation which he never deserved,”
continued Lady Hester, as her reflections led her from one person to
another. “Insincere, greedy of place, and always pretending to be
careless about it, he and my lady lived in a hugger-mugger sort of a
way, half poverty half splendour, having soldiers for house servants,
and my lady dining at two with the children (saying my lord dined
out), and being waited on by a sergeant’s daughter. How often have I
seen a scraggy bit of mutton sent up for luncheon, with some potatoes
in their skins, before royalty! The princes would say to me, ‘Very
bad, Lady Hester, very bad; but there! he has a large family――he is
right to be saving.’ And then Lady H**********, with her little eyes,
and a sort of waddle in her gait (for she once had a paralytic
stroke), with a wig all curls, and, at the top of it, a great bunch of
peacock’s feathers――then her dress, all bugles, and badly put
on――horrid, doctor, horrid! and why should they have lived in such a
large house, half furnished, with the girls sleeping altogether in
large attics, with a broken looking-glass, and coming down into their
mother’s room to dress themselves!
“But to go back to Sir Gore Ouseley: it was at Mr. M.’s supper, when
getting up from the card-table, and advancing towards me, he made a
diplomatic bow, accompanied with some complimentary speech. That was
the old school, very different from the fizgig people now-a days. Just
before, the Prince had been standing in the middle of the room,
talking to some one I did not know, first pulling up the flap of his
coat to show his figure, then seizing the person he spoke to by the
waistcoat, then laughing, then pretending to whisper; and this he
continued for nearly an hour. ‘What can the Prince be talking about?’
said some one next to me: ‘He does not know himself,’ said I. Soon
after, the person who had been talking to the Prince approached the
sofa, when the mylord, who was sitting next to me, observed, ‘We have
been looking at the Prince and you; what in the world was he talking
about?’――‘He don’t know himself,’ answered his friend, ‘and I’m sure I
don’t know.’――‘That’s just what Lady Hester said,’ rejoined the first
speaker. ‘I have been wishing to make my bow to Lady Hester all the
evening,’ said the friend, who then sat down by me.”
Lady Hester went on: “What a mean fellow the Prince was, doctor! I
believe he never showed a spark of good feeling to any human being.
How often has he put men of small incomes to great inconvenience, by
his telling them he would dine with them and bring ten or a dozen of
his friends with him to drink the poor devils’ champagne, who hardly
knew how to raise the wind, or to get trust for it! I recollect one
who told me the Prince served him in this way, just at the time when
he was in want of money, and that he did not know how to provide the
dinner for him, when luckily a Sir Harry Featherstone or a Sir Gilbert
Heatchcote or some such rich man bought his curricle and horses, and
put a little ready money into his pocket. ‘I entertained him as well
as I could,’ said he, ‘and a few days after, when I was at Carlton
House, and the Prince was dressing between four great mirrors, looking
at himself in one and then in another, putting on a patch of hair and
arranging his cravat, he began saying that he was desirous of showing
me his thanks for my civility to him. So he pulled down a bandbox from
a shelf, and seemed as if he was going to draw something of value out
of it. I thought to myself it might be some point-lace, perhaps, of
which, after using a little for my court-dress, I might sell the
remainder for five or six hundred guineas: or perhaps, thought I, as
there is no ceremony between us, he is going to give me some
banknotes. Conceive my astonishment, when he opened the bandbox, and
pulled out a wig, which I even believe he had worn. ‘There,’ said he,
‘as you are getting bald, is a very superior wig, made by――I forget
the man’s name, but it was not Sugden.’ The man could hardly contain
himself, and was almost tempted to leave it in the hall as he went
out. Did you ever hear of such meanness? Everybody who had to do with
him was afraid of him. He was sure to get a horse, or a vis-à-vis, or
a something, wherever he went, and never pay for them. He was a man
without a heart,[9] who had not one good quality about him. Doctor,”
cried Lady Hester, “I have been intimate with those who spent their
time with him from morning to night, and they have told me that it was
impossible for any person who knew him to think well of him.[10]”
“Look at his unfeeling conduct in deserting poor Sheridan! Why, they
were going to take the bed from under him whilst he was dying; and
there was Mrs. Sheridan pushing the bailiffs out of the room. That
amiable woman, too, I believe, died of grief at the misery to which
she was reduced. The Prince had not one good quality. How many fell
victims to him! Not so much those who were most intimate with him――for
they swallowed the poison and took the antidote――they knew him well:
but those were the greatest sufferers who imitated his vices, who were
poisoned by the contagion, without knowing what a detestable person he
was. How many saw their prospects blasted by him for ever!”
Lady Hester continued: “Oh! when I think that I have heard a sultan”
(meaning George IV.) “listen to a woman singing _Hie diddle diddle,
the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon_, and cry,
‘Brava! charming!’――Good God! doctor, what would the Turks say to such
a thing, if they knew it?
“There was Lord D., an old debauchee, who had lost the use of his
lower extremities by a paralytic stroke――the way, by the by, in which
all such men seem to finish; nay, I believe that men much addicted to
sensuality even impair their intellects too――one day met me on the
esplanade, and, in his usual way, began talking some very insipid
stuff about his dining with the Prince, and the like; when James, who
overheard the conversation, made an impromptu, which exactly described
one of the Prince’s dinners; and, though I don’t recollect it word for
word, it was something to this effect:――
‘With the Prince I dine to-day:
We shall have prodigious fun.
I a beastly thing shall say,
And he’ll end it with a pun.’
“I remember the Prince’s saying to Lord Petersham, ‘What can be the
reason that Lady Hester, who likes all my brothers, does not like me?’
Lord P. told me this, and I replied――If he asks me, I will have an
answer ready for him, and that is, ‘When he behaves like them I shall
like him, and not before.’ I loved all the princes but him. They were
not philosophers, but they were so hearty in their talking, in their
eating, in all they did! They would eat like ploughmen, and their
handsome teeth would” (here she imitated the mastication of food, to
show me how) “at a pretty rate.
“The Prince is a despicable character. He was anxious enough to know
me whilst Mr. Pitt was alive; but the very first day of my going to
court, after Mr. Pitt’s death, he cut me, turning his back on me
whilst I was talking to the Duke of Richmond.
“As for the princesses, there was some excuse for their conduct: I do
not mean as regards myself――for they were always polite to me――but as
to what people found fault with them for. The old queen treated them
with such severity, shutting them up in a sort of a prison――at least
the Princess Sophia――that I rather pitied than blamed them.
“But look at the princes: what a family was there! never getting more
than four hours’ sleep, and always so healthy and well-looking. But
men generally are not now-a-days as they were in my time. I do not
mean a Jack M. and those of his description, handsome, but of no
conversation: they are, however, pleasant to look at. But where will
you see men like Lord Rivers, like the Duke of Dorset? Where will you
find such pure honour as was in the Duke of Richmond and Lord
Winchelsea? The men of the present generation are good for
nothing――they have no spunk in them.
“And as for women, show me such women of fashion as Lady Salisbury,
the Duchess of Rutland, Lady Stafford, and” (three or four more were
named, but they have slipped my memory). “However, doctor, I never
knew more than four fashionable women, who could do the honours of
their house, assign to everybody what was due to his rank, enter a
room and speak to everybody, and preserve their dignity and
self-possession at all times: it is a very difficult thing to acquire.
One was the old Duchess of Rutland, the others the Marchioness of
Stafford, Lady Liverpool, and the Countess of Mansfield:[11]――all the
rest of the _bon ton_ were _bosh_” (in Turkish, good for nothing).
“The Countess of Liverpool was a Hervey; and men used to say, the
world was divided into men, women, and Herveys――for that they were
unlike every other human being. I have seen Lady Liverpool come into a
room full of people; and she would bow to this one, speak to that
one, and, when you thought she must tread on the toes of a third, turn
round like a teetotum, and utter a few words so amiable, that
everybody was charmed with her. As for the Duchess of D*********, it
was all a ‘fu, fu, fuh,’ and ‘What shall I do?――Oh, dear me! I am
quite in a fright!’――and so much affectation, that it could not be
called high breeding; although she knew very well how to lay her traps
for some young man whom she wanted to inveigle into her parties, and
all that. Then there were some, with highly polished manners, who
would pass along like oil over water, smooth and swimming about: but
good breeding is very charming, doctor, isn’t it?
“The last time I saw Lady Liverpool was at Lord Mulgrave’s. The dinner
was waiting: Mr. Pitt and I had got there; but Lord Liverpool, being
long in dressing, was still behind. Everybody was looking at the door
or the window. At last his carriage was seen, and dinner was ordered.
If you had been present when Lady Liverpool entered the room, and had
marked the grace with which, whilst we were standing, she slipped in
and out among the guests, like an eel, when she turned her back,
turning her head round, speaking to this person and to that, and all
with such seasonable courtesies and compliments, it was really
wonderful. But Lady Liverpool was a Hervey, and the Herveys, as I
told you before, were a third part of the creation.
“Oh, Lord! when I think of some people, who fancy that abruptness is
the best way of approaching you――how horrid it is! I recollect one
man, a sensible man too, who came into the room with――‘Lady Hester, I
understand you are a very good judge of a leg; you shall look at mine:
see, there are muscles! they say it is an Irish chairman’s; but isn’t
it the true antique?’ Another would enter, and begin――‘What a horrid
bonnet Lady So-and-so wears; I have just seen her, and I never shall
get over it.’ A third would cry, on seeing you――‘Do you know Lord
Such-a-one is given over? He has tumbled down from a terrible height,
and is so hurt!’――‘Good God! what’s the matter?’――‘Why, don’t you
know? He has tumbled from his government:’ and then they fancy that
wit.
“Such conversations as we hear in people’s houses are, in my mind, no
conversations at all. A man who says, ‘Oh! it’s Sunday; you have been
to church, I suppose?’――or, ‘You have not been to church, I see;’ or
another, who says, ‘You are in mourning, are you not? what, is the
poor Lord So-and-so dead at last?’――and is replied to by, ‘No, I am
not in mourning; what makes you think so? is it that you don’t like
black?’――all this is perfect nonsense, in my mind. I recollect being
once at a party with the Duchess of Rutland, and a man of some note in
the world stopped me just as we entered the room. ‘Lady Hester,’ said
he, ‘I am anxious to assure you of my entire devotion to Mr. Pitt:’ so
far he got on well. ‘I had always――hem――if you――hem――I do assure you,
Lady Hester, I have the sincerest regard――hem――G――d d――n me, Lady
Hester, there is not a man for whom――hem――I esteem him beyond measure,
and, G――d d――n me――hem――if I were asked――hem――I do assure you, Lady
Hester――hem and here the poor man, who could not put two ideas
together, coming to a stand-still, the Duchess of Rutland, to relieve
his embarrassment, helped him out by saying, ‘Lady Hester is perfectly
convinced of your sincere attachment to Mr. Pitt’s interests.’ He had
a beautiful amber cane, doctor, worth a hundred guineas, that he had
sent for from Russia.”
November 16.――Lady Hester Stanhope’s features had a very pallid and
almost a ghastly look. The fits of oppression on her lungs grew more
frequent, when, from a lying posture, she would start suddenly up in
bed and gasp for breath. As she had not been beyond the precincts of
her house for some years, I suggested the increased necessity of her
getting a little fresh air, by going into her garden at least every
day. She said, ‘I will do as you desire, and if you will ride my ass
a few times to break her in, and make her gentle, I will try and ride
about in the garden: but, as for going outside my own gates, it is
impossible; the people would beset me so――you have no idea. They
conceal themselves behind hedges, in holes in the rocks, and,
whichever way I turn, out comes some one with a complaint or a
petition, begging, kissing my feet, and God knows what: I can’t do it.
I can ride about my garden, and see to my plants and flowers: but you
must break her in well for me; for, if she were to start at a bird or
a serpent, I am so weak I should tumble off.’
November 18.――I had taken some physic without consulting her, upon
which she launched out into a tirade against English doctors.
Impoverishment of the blood is a very favourite theme among people who
are well off, and who shut their eyes to the robust health of many a
labourer, whose whole sustenance amounts not to the offals of their
table. So she began――“What folly you have been guilty of in
impoverishing your blood! Look at a stupid Englishman, who takes a
dose of salts, rides a trotting horse to get an appetite, eats his
dinner, takes a cordial draught to make him agreeable, goes to his
party, and then goes to bed:――for worlds, I would not be such a man’s
wife! where is he to get a constitution? But the fault is not all
their own――part is you doctors: you give the same remedies for
everybody. If I look at the mouthpiece of my pipe” (Lady Hester was
smoking at the time) “I know it is amber; and, when I know it is
amber, I know how to clean it: but, if I did not know that, I might
attempt to clean it in some way that would spoil it: so it is with you
doctors. Not half of you can distinguish between people’s _nijems_
[stars], and what you do often does more harm than good. The
constitution you take in hand you do not well examine; and then how
can you apply proper remedies for it?”
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Lady Hester, soon after she went to live with Mr.
Pitt, was anxious that her three half-brothers should
be removed from their father’s roof, to be under her
own guidance: fearing that the line of politics which
Earl Stanhope then followed might be injurious to
their future welfare and prospects. To this end, Mr.
Rice, a trusty person, of whom mention is incidentally
made elsewhere, brought them furtively to town in a
post-chaise, and they afterwards remained under Mr.
Pitt’s protection until his death.
[8] Whether Lady Hester Stanhope was justified in
entertaining expectations of the G. property and
title, I am unable to say; but having by me a copy
of the grant to the first Lord Chatham, it is
inserted here as conclusive against her ladyship,
as far as regards the pension. The circumstances
were these:――the day following his (then Mr. Pitt’s)
resignation of office, a pension of £3,000 a-year was
settled on _himself_ and _two_ other lives, and at the
same time a title was conferred on his lady and her
issue. He resigned office Oct. 9th, 1761, and the next
published Gazette announced all these transactions.
The notification ran thus:――That a warrant be prepared
for granting to the Lady Hester Pitt, his wife, a
Barony of Great Britain, by the name, style, and
title of Baroness Chatham, to her heirs male, and
also to confer upon the said William Pitt an annuity
of £3,000 sterling during his own life, that of Lady
Hester Pitt, and her son, John Pitt. Shortly after
his death, May 11th, 1778, His Majesty sent a message
to the Commons thus:――George R.――His Majesty having
considered the address of this house, that he will be
graciously pleased to confer some signal and lasting
mark of his royal favour on the family of the late
William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and being desirous to
comply as speedily as possible with the request of his
faithful Commons, has given directions for granting
to the present Earl of Chatham, and to the heirs
of the body of the late William Pitt, to whom the
Earldom of Chatham may descend, an annuity of £4,000
per annum, payable out of the Civil List revenue; but
his Majesty, not having it in his power to extend
the effects of the said grant beyond the term of his
own life, recommends it to the house to consider of
a proper method of extending, securing, and annexing
the same to the Earldom of Chatham in such a manner as
shall be thought most effectual to the benefit of the
family of the said William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.
Signed “G. R.”
On May 20th, in the House of Commons, Mr. Townsend moved
in a committee on the king’s message――“That the sum of
£4,000 be granted to his Majesty out of the Aggregate
Fund, to commence from 5th July, 1778, and be settled
in the most beneficial manner upon the present Earl of
Chatham and the heirs of the body of the late William
Pitt, to whom the Earldom of Chatham shall descend.”
The resolution was agreed to without opposition, and
a bill was ordered to be brought in thereon, which
passed the Commons without debate.
[9] “The second day of the king’s illness, and when he was
at his worst, the P. of W. went in the evening to a
concert at Lady Hamilton’s, and there told Calonne
(the rascally French ex-minister) ‘Savez vous,
Monsieur de Calonne, que mon pere est aussi fou que
jamais.’”――_Diaries and Correspondence_, v. 4, p. 20.
[10] _Audi alteram partem_ is a maxim that holds good
wherever accusations are levelled against individuals,
illustrious or mean. Lady Hester may have maligned
the Prince from personal pique or from some other
cause; and, whilst she placed his foibles and failings
in a conspicuous point of view, may have studiously
concealed the good qualities which he possessed. Sir
Walter Scott, who read men’s characters if any body
could, has left upon record a very different opinion
of him; and, unless we suppose that Sir Walter had
motives of his own for eulogizing him, we must place
his testimony in the balance against Lady Hester’s
spite. In a letter, he describes George IV. as――“A
sovereign, whose gentle and generous disposition,
and singular manners, and captivating conversation,
rendered him as much the darling of private society,
as his heart felt interest in the general welfare of
the country: and the constant and steady course of
wise measures, by which he raised his reign to such
a state of triumphal prosperity, made him justly
delighted in by his subjects.”――_Letter from Sir W.
Scott_, p. 65, vol. ii., _Mem. of Sir Wm. Knighton,
Bart._――Paris edit. Sir Walter could not have written
worse prose if he had tried. It shows how difficult it
is to string words together on a subject where perhaps
the convictions of the heart were not altogether in
unison with the sentiments expressed.
[11] Louisa, in her own right Countess of Mansfield, is
here meant.