THE CAREER OF CONSTANCE.--REAL STATE OF HER FEELINGS TOWARDS
GODOLPHIN.--RAPID SUCCESSION OF POLITICAL EVENTS.--CANNING’S
ADMINISTRATION.--CATHOLIC QUESTION.--LORD GREY’S SPEECH.--CANNING’S
DEATH.
While in scenes like these, alternated with more refined and polished
dissipation, Godolphin lavished away his life, Constance, became more
and more powerful as one of the ornaments of a great political party.
Few women in England ever mixed more actively in politics than Lady
Erpingham, or with more remarkable ability. Her friends were out of
office, it is true; but she saw the time approaching rapidly when their
opinions must come into power. She had begun to love, for itself, the
scheming of political ambition, and in any country but England she
would have been a conspirator, and in old times might have risen to be
a queen; but as it was, she was only a proud, discontented woman. She
knew, too, that it was all she could be--all that her sex allowed her
to be--yet did she not the less straggle and toil on. The fate of her
father still haunted her; her promise and his death-bed still rose oft
and solemnly before her; the humiliations she had known in her
early condition--the homage that had attended her later career--still
cherished in her haughty soul indignation at the faction he had
execrated, and little less of the mighty class which that faction
represented. The system of “fashion” she had so mainly contributed
to strengthen, and which was originally by her intended to build up a
standard of opinion, independent of mere rank, and in defiance of mere
wealth, she saw polluted and debased by the nature of its followers,
into a vulgar effrontery, which was worse than the more quiet dulness
it had attempted to supplant. Yet still she was comforted by the thought
that through this system lay the way to more wholesome changes. The
idols of rank and wealth once broken, she believed that a pure and sane
worship must ultimately be established. Doubtless in the old French
regime there were many women who thought like her, but there were none
who acted like her--deliberately, and with an end. What an excellent,
what a warning picture is contained in the entertaining Memoirs of Count
Segur! how admirably that agreeable gossip develops the state of
mind among the nobility of France!--“merry censurers of the old
customs”--“enchanted by the philosophy of Voltaire”--“ridiculing the old
system”--“embracing liberality as a fashion,” and “gaily treading a soil
bedecked with flowers, which concealed a precipice from their view!”
In England, there are fewer flowers, and the precipice will be less
fearful.
A certain disappointment which had attended her marriage with Godolphin,
and the disdainful resentment she felt at the pleasures that allured him
from her, tended yet more to deepen at once her distaste for the habits
of a frivolous society, and to nerve and concentrate her powers of
political intrigue. Her mind grew more and more masculine; her dark
eye burnt with a sterner fire; the sweet mouth was less prodigal of its
smiles; and that air of dignity which she had always possessed, grew
harder in its character, and became command.
This change did not tend to draw Godolphin nearer to her. He, so
susceptible to coldness, so refining, so exacting, believed fully
that she loved him no more--that she repented the marriage she had
contracted. His pride was armed against her; and he sought more eagerly
those scenes where all, for the admired, the gallant, the sparkling
Godolphin, wore smiles and sunshine.
There was another matter that rankled in his breast with peculiar
bitterness. He had wished to raise a large sum of money (in the purchase
of some celebrated works of art), which could only be raised with Lady
Erpingham’s consent. When he had touched upon the point to her, she
had not refused, but she had hesitated. She seemed embarrassed, and, he
thought, discontented. His delicacy took alarm, and he never referred
to the question again; but he was secretly much displeased with her
reluctant manner on that occasion. Nothing the proud so little forget
as a coolness conceived upon money matters: In this instance, Godolphin
afterwards discovered that he had wronged Constance, and misinterpreted
the cause of her reluctance.
Yet as time flew on for both, both felt a yearning of the heart towards
each other; and had they been thrown upon a desert island--had there
been full leisure, full opportunity, for a frank unfettered interchange
and confession of thought--they would have been mutually astonished to
find themselves still so beloved, and each would have been dearer to the
other than in their warmest hour of earlier attachment. But when once,
in a very gay and occupied life, a husband and wife have admitted
a seeming indifference to creep in between them, the chances are a
thousand to one against its after-removal. How much more so with a
wife so proud as Constance, and a husband so refining as Godolphin!
Fortunately, however, as I said before, the temper of each was
excellent; they never quarrelled; and the indifference, therefore,
lay on the surface, not at the depth. They seemed to the world an
affectionate couple, as couples go; and their union would have been
classed by Rochefoucauld among those marriages that are very happy--il
n’y a point de delicieux.
Meanwhile, as Constance had predicted, the political history of the
country was marked by a perpetual progress towards liberal opinions.
Mr. Canning was now in office; the Catholic Question was in every one’s
mouth.
There was a brilliant meeting at Erpingham House; those who composed
it were of the heads of the party: but there were divisions amongst
themselves; some were secretly for joining Mr. Canning’s administration;
some had openly done so; others remained in stubborn and jealous
opposition. With these last was the heart of Constance. “Well, well,
Lady Erpingham,” said Lord Paul Plympton, a young nobleman, who had
written a dull history, and was therefore considered likely to succeed
in parliamentary life--“well, I cannot help thinking you are too severe
upon Canning: he is certainly very liberal in his views.”
“Is there one law he ever caused to pass for the benefit of the working
classes? No, Lord Paul, his Whiggism is for peers, and his Toryism for
peasants. With the same zeal he advocates the Catholic Question and the
Manchester Massacre.”
“Yet, surely,” cried Lord Paul, “you make a difference between the
just liberality that provides for property and intelligence, and
the dangerous liberality that would slacken the reins of an ignorant
multitude.”
“But,” said Mr. Benson, a very powerful member of the Lower House, “true
politicians must conform to circumstances. Canning may not be all we
wish, but still he ought to be supported. I confess that I shall be
generous: I care not for office, I care not for power; but Canning is
surrounded with enemies, who are enemies also to the people: for that
reason I shall support him.”
“Bravo, Benson!” cried Lord Paul.
“Bravo, Benson!” echoed two or three notables, who had waited an
opportunity to declare themselves; “that’s what I call handsome.”
“Manly!”
“Fair!”
“Disinterested, by Jove!”
Here the Duke of Aspindale suddenly entered the room. “Ah, Lady
Erpingham, you should have been in the Lords to-night; such a speech!
Canning is crushed for ever!”
“Speech! from whom?”
“Lord Grey--terrific: it was the vengeance of a life concentrated into
one hour; it has shaken the Ministry fearfully.”
“Humph!” said Benson, rising; “I shall go to Brooks’s and hear more.”
“And I too,” said Lord Paul.
A day or two after, Benson in presenting a petition, alluded in terms
of high eulogy to the masterly speech made “in another place:” and Lord
Paul Plympton said, “it was indeed unequalled.”
That’s what I call handsome. Manly!
Fair!
Disinterested, by Jove!
And Canning died; his gallant soul left the field of politics broken
into a thousand petty parties. From the time of his death the two
great hosts into which the struggles for power were divided have never
recovered their former strength. The demarcation that his policy had
tended to efface was afterwards more weakened by his successor, the Duke
of Wellington; and had it not been for the question of Reform that again
drew the stragglers on either side around one determined banner, it
is likely that Whig and Tory would, among the many minute sections and
shades of difference, have lost for ever the two broad distinguishing
colours of their separate factions.
Mr. Canning died; and now, with redoubled energy, went on the wheels of
political intrigue. The rapid succession of short-lived administrations,
the leisure of a prolonged peace, the pressure of debt, the writings
of philosophers, all, insensibly, yet quickly, excited that popular
temperament which found its crisis in the Reform Bill.