to marry her, and received from him a reply, “Make yourself easy, my
dear friend! Believe me, the world will soon be convinced that not only
is there not, but never was, any grounds for these reports, which have
been so malevolently circulated.” On the strength of this letter, when
the question was raised in the House of Commons in a debate on the
Prince’s debts, Fox denied the marriage, only to be told by a relative
of the lady at Brooks’s Club, within an hour of his speech, that the
marriage had taken place! It is said that the statesman was furious
at the deception that had been practised upon him; but doubtless his
sense of humour came to his rescue: one can imagine him shrugging his
shoulders with his almost imperturbable good humour, as he reflected
that while his position as a dupe was distressing, what must be the
feeling of him who had duped him. It was, indeed, a case of the biter
bit! Perhaps, too, he was amused at having saved the Prince _malgré
lui_; and certainly it is to his credit that “when urged by his friends
to undeceive Parliament, and thus vindicate himself in the opinion of
the country, he refused to do so at the expense of the heir to the
monarchy.” But there was on his part a coldness towards the Prince for
some time, and he never again trusted that royal personage.
It is impossible within the limits of this paper to discuss Fox’s
subsequent political career, or to make more than an allusion to
the attacks on Warren Hastings during the famous impeachment, to
his advocacy of the Prince as the rightful Regent during the King’s
illness, and his opposition to many of Pitt’s measures. His remark on
hearing of the taking of the Bastille has become historic: “How much is
this the greatest event that ever happened in the world, and how much
the best”; but he never approved of the excesses that followed, and he
was opposed to all absolute forms of government, and not more averse to
an absolute monarchy or an absolute aristocracy than to an absolute
democracy. From 1792 for five years he seldom attended Parliament,
but devoted himself chiefly to the composition of his “History of the
Revolution of 1688.” In 1798 his name was erased from the list of
Privy Councillors because at a dinner he proposed the toast of “Our
Sovereign, the people.” Later he went abroad, had an interview with
Napoleon, and on his return, in 1803, in a magnificent speech advocated
a peace with France. On Lord Addington’s resignation in the following
year it was proposed that Fox should be a member of the new Cabinet,
but the King intervened to make Pitt promise, firstly, never to support
Catholic Emancipation, and, secondly, to exclude Fox from office.
However, two years later, Fox accepted the portfolio of the Foreign
Office under Grenville, in the “Ministry of all the Talents.” He made
his last appearance in the House of Commons on 10th June 1806, to move
a resolution preparatory to introducing a Bill for the suppression of
the slave trade.
“So fully am I impressed with the vast importance and necessity
of attaining what will be the object of my motion this night” (he
concluded his farewell speech) “that if, during the almost forty years
that I have had the honour of a seat in Parliament, I had been so
fortunate as to accomplish that, and that only, I should think I had
done enough, and could retire from public life with comfort and the
conscious satisfaction that I had done my duty.”
A few days after, he was taken ill at the house of the Duke of
Devonshire at Chiswick, and it was soon apparent that his last hours
were near. He was no believer in religion, but, to please his wife,
he consented to have prayers read, though he “paid little attention
to the ceremony, remaining quiescent merely, not liking to refuse any
wish of hers, nor to pretend any sentiments he did not entertain.” “I
die happy,” he said to his wife, “but I pity you.” He died on 13th
September, and was interred in Westminster Abbey, immediately adjoining
the monument of Lord Chatham, and close by the grave of William Pitt,
his great rival, who had predeceased him by a few months.
As a constructive statesman, Charles James Fox had but little
opportunity to shine.
“Charles is unquestionably a man of first rate talents, but so
deficient in judgment as never to have succeeded in any object during
his whole life” (said his “candid friend,” Boothby). “He loved only
three things, women, play, and politics. Yet at no period did he ever
form a creditable connection with a woman. He lost his whole fortune at
the gaming table; and, with the exception of about eleven months of his
life, he has remained always in opposition.”
This is a severe pronouncement upon a great man, who was a great orator
and a splendid debater.
“Fox delivered his speeches without previous preparation, and their
power lay not in rhetorical adornments, but in the vigour of the
speaker’s thoughts, the extent of his knowledge, the quickness with
which he grasped the significance of each point in debate, the
clearness of his conceptions, and the remarkable plainness with which
he laid them before his audience” (says Professor Harrison). “Even in
the longest speeches he never strayed from the matter in hand; he never
rose above the level of his hearers’ understanding, was never obscure,
and never bored the House. Every position that he took up he defended
by a large number of shrewd arguments, plainly stated and well ordered.”
His voice was poor, his actions ungainly, and he did not become fluent
until he warmed with his subject; but in attack generally, and
especially in connection with the American War, Grattan thought him the
best speaker he had ever heard. Burke said he was “the most brilliant
and accomplished debater that the world ever saw”; Rogers declared he
“never heard anything equal to Fox’s _speeches in reply_”; while, when
someone abused one of Fox’s speeches to Pitt, the latter remarked,
“Don’t disparage it; nobody could have made it but himself.”
Fox, however, did not lay undue stress on eloquence, and in a
well-known speech declared that one sometimes paid too dearly for
oratory.
“I remember” (he said) “a time when the whole of the Privy Council came
away, throwing up their caps, and exulting in an extraordinary manner
at a speech made by the present Lord Rosslyn (Alexander Wedderburn),
and an examination of Dr Franklin (before the Privy Council on the
letters of Hutchinson and Oliver, the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor
of Massachusetts), in which that respectable man was most uncommonly
badgered. But we paid very dear for that splendid specimen of
eloquence, and all its attendant tropes, figures, metaphors, and
hyperbole; for then came the Bill, and in the end we lost all our
American colonies, a hundred millions of money, and a hundred thousand
of our brave fellow subjects.”
Fox made mistakes occasionally, as when he asserted the _right_ of the
Prince of Wales to the Regency; but he was distinguished in the House
of Commons for his “hopeful sympathy with all good and great causes.”
In a day when politicians were not especially enlightened, he was a
supporter of Parliamentary reform, a champion of Catholic Emancipation,
and an opponent of the slave trade; and, indeed, it was by his advocacy
of these measures that he earned the enmity of the King, and thus was
prevented from carrying out these beneficial schemes.
It has already been admitted that he was a spendthrift, and had a
passion for gaming which, when taxed with it by Lord Hillsborough in
the House of Commons, he designated as “a vice countenanced by the
fashion of the times, a vice to which some of the greatest characters
had given way in the early part of their lives, and a vice which
carried with it its own punishment.” His weaknesses, however, were
more than balanced by his many splendid qualities. He was a noble
antagonist, and when Pitt made his first speech, and someone remarked
he would be one of the first in Parliament, “He is so already,” said
Fox. Which recalls the story of the Prince of Wales’ remark, on hearing
of the death of the Duchess of Devonshire: “Then we have lost the
best-bred woman in England.” “Then,” said the more generous Fox, “we
have lost the kindest heart in England.”
Fox was a great-hearted man, with a beautiful disposition, high
spirits, unbounded good-humour, delightful conversation, a great
affection for his friends, an undeniable loyalty to those who trusted
him; and these qualities, combined with his great natural abilities and
an indisputable charm, made him a great, commanding and fascinating
figure. Gibbon, a political opponent, said he possessed “the powers of
a superior man, as they are blended in his attractive character, with
the softness and simplicity of a child,” adding that “perhaps no human
being was ever more perfectly exempt from the taint of malevolence,
vanity or falsehood”; but the greatest tribute came from Burke, who
described him simply and, perhaps, sufficiently as “a man made to be
loved.”
Philip, Duke of Wharton
In the history of every country a few figures stand out conspicuous,
not necessarily for ability or virtue, or even vice, but through the
power of a dominating personality or the strangeness of their career.
In the Georgian annals of England in the forefront of these heroes of
romance stands, head and shoulders above the rest, Charles James Fox,
whose genius and fascinations, indeed, whose very faults, seize the
imagination, and hold it captive, a willing prisoner; but there are
others, minor lights to this great star, yet still shining so brightly
as to dazzle the sober senses of twentieth-century social historians,
a body not given unduly to hero-worship. Such a one was Brummell,
another was “Beau” Nash, both arbiters of fashion, veritable kings in
the eyes of their contemporaries; a third was Elizabeth Chudleigh,
Countess of Bristol, Duchess of Kingston, greater still as Beatrix,
queen of hearts, in “Esmond”; and to a place in this gallery of
adventurous spirits none can deny the right of Philip, Duke of Wharton,
Richardson’s Lovelace, gallant, wit, statesman, satirist, poet and
pamphleteer, like Dryden’s Zimri, “everything by starts and nothing
long,” a man who threw away great gifts, honour, loyalty and love, as
freely, and with as little regard for consequences, as Fox squandered
his gold.
Philip, born on Christmas Eve, 1698, was the only son of Thomas, fourth
Baron Wharton, by his second wife, Lucy, daughter of Lord Lisburne, who
in that year was a toast at the Kit-Cat Club:
“When Jove to Ida did the gods invite,
And in immortal toastings pass’d the night,
With more than bowls of nectar were they blest,
For Venus was the Wharton of the feast!”
Lord Wharton--for his services to William III. created in 1706 earl,
when his heir became known as Viscount Winchendon--was not only a
pleasure-loving man, but also a strenuous politician. He, imbued with
the idea that his boy, in his turn, might add further laurels to the
family name, with this object in view kept a more than paternal eye
upon the direction of the youngster’s studies. To his parents’ great
joy, Philip gave signs of precocious cleverness, and it was decided to
have him educated by private tutors, instructed, after their pupil was
well grounded in the classics, to teach him in a very thorough manner
the history of Europe, with, of course, special reference to that of
his own country; and to train him as an orator by making him read and
recite passages from Shakespeare and from the great speeches of the
most eloquent statesmen of that and bygone ages.
Philip evinced much readiness, and diligently applied himself to his
studies; but his father’s love of pleasure was in his blood, and while
for some time he submitted to the company of his teachers, with little
or no relaxation from his books, at last, as was only to be expected
from a high-spirited lad, he broke over the traces. Handsome and
graceful, he found his pleasure with women: a fault which his father,
now created Marquis of Wharton, could overlook in consideration of his
son’s promise in other directions. However, the young man destroyed
all the Marquis’s hope of an alliance with some lady of high rank and
vast wealth by secretly espousing, at the Fleet, on 2nd March 1715,
when he was in his seventeenth year, Martha, the penniless daughter
of Major-General Holmes--a proceeding that the Marquis took so much
to heart that, it was said, his death six weeks later was directly
attributable to his grief and anger.
The effects of this madcap escapade might not have been very serious,
for there was nothing to be urged against the girl except her lack
of money and great connections, if the accomplished fact had been
recognised in the right spirit by the young husband’s family; in
which case, it is more than probable, his career might have been very
different. As it was, however, his mother and his father’s trustees,
Lord Dorchester, Lord Carlisle, and Nicholas Lechmere, thought it
advisable temporarily to separate man and wife, and sent the Marquis
abroad in charge of a French Protestant.
In this uncongenial company Philip visited Holland and Hanover and
other German courts, and eventually settled down at Geneva. There he
remained for a while, galled by the restrictions upon his personal
liberty by the tutor, and infuriated by the inadequacy of the income
allowed him by his trustees. The latter annoyance he overcame by
raising money at, of course, exorbitant interest; the former by the
simple expedient of running away from Geneva without his companion,
who, a few hours after the flight of his charge, received from the
latter a note: “Being no longer able to bear your ill-usage, I have
thought proper to be gone from you; however, that you may not want
company, I have left you the bear, as the most suitable companion in
the world that could be picked out for you!”
[Illustration: _Philip, Duke of Wharton_]
The Marquis made his way to Lyons, where he arrived on 13th October
1716, and from there he sent a complimentary letter to the son of
James II. at Avignon, and with the letter, as a present, a magnificent
horse. The Pretender, delighted by the prospect of being able to detach
from the Hanoverian interest even an eighteen-year-old marquis,
and especially the son of that very pronounced Whig, Thomas Wharton,
graciously despatched one of his Court to invite Philip to Avignon.
There the lad went, stayed a day and night, and received from his
host the dangerous compliment of an offer of the title of the Duke of
Northumberland, after which, to make matters worse, he repaired to
St Germain’s to pay his respects to Mary, Queen Dowager of England.
The folly of his actions is the most remarkable thing about them.
Had he been attached to the cause of the Chevalier de St George, the
visits would have been natural; had he even desired, as so many had
done, to be sufficiently attentive to the Prince so as to be free
from molestation in case the latter should ever ascend the throne of
England, the visits would have been explicable; but since he was not a
Jacobite, and, if not too honest, at least too careless of his personal
interest to be a “trimmer,” the only solution of the matter is that his
actions were dictated by a spirit of revolt, the not unnatural reaction
on escaping from custody.
How little the Marquis meant by his visits--which, in after days, he
declared were mere personal courtesies--may be deduced from the fact
that, as soon as he arrived at Paris, he called on Lord Stair, the
English Ambassador--at whose table, it is said, in a drunken frolic he
proposed the health of the Pretender! At a time when it was a matter of
vital importance to know who was for and against the home Government,
and when a fortune was spent on spies, Lord Stair, of course, knew that
the Marquis had been to Avignon and St Germain’s; but if he did not
close his ears to the tales of the young man’s doings, at least he did
not avert his countenance from him. On the contrary, he received him
with every attention, realising that here was, so to speak, a brand
to be plucked from the burning. The lad was only eighteen, and so
indiscretions might be dismissed as of no importance; whereas to dwell
on them unduly would perhaps turn him into a Jacobite. Therefore much
show of kindness was diplomatic, coupled, Lord Stair thought, with a
trifle of admonition.
However, when the Ambassador began to utter a word in season, the
Marquis did not show himself amenable to advice. Indeed, when Lord
Stair, extolling the virtues of his guest’s father, said, “I hope you
will follow so illustrious an example of fidelity to your Prince and
love to your country,” the Marquis retorted, “I thank your Excellency
for your good counsel, and as your Excellency had also a worthy and
deserving father, I hope that you will likewise copy so bright an
original and tread in all his steps”--which reply, though showing
a keen sense of humour, was brutal, for the first Lord Stair had
unhesitatingly betrayed his sovereign!
As a matter of fact, the Marquis would tolerate no interference,
and when a friend, whether or not set to task by Lord Stair has not
transpired, expostulated with him for having abandoned the principles
of his father, “I have pawned my principles,” he said jauntily, “to
Gordon, the Pretender’s banker, for a considerable sum; and till I have
the money to repay him, I must be a Jacobite; but,” he added, “as soon
as I have redeemed them, I shall be a Whig again!”
Perhaps this remark was conveyed to the Marquis’s trustees, for it
is to be presumed that the Marquis’s financial obligations were
discharged, since on his arrival in Ireland at the beginning of 1717
the Government seems to have connived at his taking his seat as Marquis
Castlereagh, in the Irish House of Lords, though only in his nineteenth
year--“which,” Budgell wrote to Mr Secretary Addison, “is the highest
compliment that could have been paid to him.” Here Philip showed an
apparently earnest desire to atone for his misdemeanours abroad, and
his great talents made the task easy. He took a prominent part in
debate, sat on committees, and in his official capacity conducted
himself so that the British Government, congratulating themselves on
their tact in having made light of his doings in France, thought it
well to endeavour to bend him still more closely to their interests, by
bestowing on him, perhaps as a set-off against the ducal title offered
by the Pretender, an English dukedom.
“As it is the honour of subjects, who are descended from an illustrious
family, to imitate the great examples of their ancestors, we esteem it
no less our glory, as a King, after the manner of our predecessors,
to dignify eminent methods by suitable rewards,” so ran the preamble
to the patent. “It is on this account that we confer a new title
on our right trusty and entirely beloved cousin, Philip Marquis of
Wharton and Malmesbury, who though he be born of a very ancient
noble family, wherein he may reckon as many patriots as forefathers,
has rather chosen to distinguish himself by his personal merit.
The British nation, not forgetful of his father lately deceased,
gratefully remember how much their invincible King William III. owed
to that constant and courageous assistor of the public liberty and the
Protestant religion. The same extraordinary person deserved so well of
us, in having supported our interests by the weight of his councils,
the force of his wit, and the firmness of his mind, at a time when
our title to the succession of this realm was endangered; that in the
beginning of our reign we invested him with the dignity of a Marquis,
as an earnest of our royal favour, the farther marks whereof we were
prevented from bestowing by his death, too hasty, and untimely for
his King and Country. When we see the son of that great man, forming
himself by so worthy an example, and in every action exhibiting a
lively resemblance to his father; when we consider the eloquence which
he has exerted with so much applause in the parliament of Ireland;
and his turn and application, even in early youth, to the serious and
weighty affairs of the public, we willingly decree him honours, which
are neither superior to his merits, nor earlier than the expectation of
our good subjects.”
Vanity, it is generally assumed, was the moving spirit of the new Duke
of Wharton, and it seems that to have earned a dukedom at twenty years
of age temporarily lulled that passion, for, after the bestowal of that
high honour, the recipient seems to have rested on his oars, and for
the next year to have abandoned himself to unbridled excesses in drink
and profligacy. “Aye, my lord,” said Swift, who admired his talents,
when his Grace had been recounting some of his frolics to the Dean
of St Patrick’s, “Aye, my lord, you have had many frolics; but let me
recommend you one more: take a frolic to be virtuous; I assure you it
will do you more honour than all the rest!”
Whether caused by Swift’s words, or whether it was the swing of the
pendulum, on coming of age Philip made a complete change in his mode of
living, and for a while led a decent private life. “The Duke of Wharton
has brought his Duchess to town, and is fond of her to distraction; to
break the hearts of all the other women that have any claim on his,”
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote to her sister, Lady Mar. “He has public
devotions twice a day, and assists at them in person with exemplary
devotion; and there is nothing pleasanter than the remarks of some
great pious ladies on the conversion of so great a sinner.” How long
this period of conjugal fidelity might have endured is uncertain, but
it was brought to an untimely end when the Duchess, in defiance of her
husband’s command, came from Winchendon to London, bringing with her
their child, the twelve-months’ old Earl of Malmesbury, who in the
metropolis caught smallpox and died. This, it is said by all loyal
biographers, so affected his Grace that, regarding the bereavement as
caused by the violation of his wishes, he could not bear the sight of
his wife. Persons less prone to sentiment than biographers may perhaps
see in this yet another swing of the pendulum.
If the Duke’s private life was for a while exemplary, the same cannot
at any time be said of his political career. A young man may change his
opinion once without giving serious offence, he may even be forgiven
for reverting to his earlier beliefs, but he can expect but scant mercy
if he chops and changes with every breath of wind. At Avignon Philip
had accepted a title from the Pretender, in Ireland he had accepted
a dukedom from George I. as a reward for his vigorous support of the
ministry; but now, when he took his seat in the English Parliament,
to the general astonishment, he threw himself into uncompromising
opposition.
The report of his great talents, his brilliant oratory, and his
powers as a debater had reached Westminster, where his appearance was
eagerly awaited, and he felt it incumbent upon him to show that rumour
had not magnified his gifts; on 24th April 1720 he took part in a
debate on a Bill to give further powers to the South Sea Company, and
made a magnificent onslaught not only on this proposal, but on the
entire policy of the Government, concluding with a terrible attack
on Lord Stanhope, whom he accused of having made, or at least of
having fostered, the breach between the King and the Prince of Wales,
comparing him to Sejanus, “that evil and too powerful minister who made
a division in the Imperial party, and rendered the reign of Tiberius
hateful to the Romans.” Lord Stanhope was not the man to sit quiet
under such castigation, and he turned the tables on his assailant with
undoubted dexterity. “The Romans were most certainly a great people,
and furnished many illustrious examples in their history, which ought
to be carefully read,” he said in reply. “The Romans were likewise
universally allowed to be a wise people, and they showed themselves to
be so in nothing more than by debarring young noblemen from speaking in
the Senate till they understood good manners and propriety of language;
and as the Duke has quoted an instance from this history of a bad
minister, I beg leave to quote from the same history an instance of a
great man, a patriot of his country, who had a son so profligate that
he would have betrayed the liberties of it, on which account his father
himself had him whipped to death.”