ROYAL FAMILY AFFAIRS.
[Sidenote: 1736--The Sovereign of Hanover]
George, and his wife Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea, had a somewhat large
family. Their eldest son, Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales and Duke of
Gloucester, was born on January 20, 1706. Two other sons died, one the
moment after his birth, the other after scarcely a year of breath.
William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, was born in 1721. There were
five daughters: Anne, Amelia or Emily, Caroline, Mary, and Louisa. The
Princess Caroline seems to have been by far the most lovable of the
whole family. She inherited much of her mother's cleverness without
her mother's coarseness. "Princess Caroline," says Lord Hervey, "had
affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness
without levity, and prudence without falsehood." Her figure indeed is
one of the bright redeeming visions in all that chapter of Court
history. She stands out among the rough, coarse, self-seeking men and
women somewhat as Sophy Western does among the personages of "Tom
Jones." Her tender inclination towards Lord Hervey makes her seem all
the more sweet and womanly; her influence over him is always apparent.
He never speaks of her without seeming to become at once more manly and
gentle, strong and sweet. Of the other princesses, Emily had perhaps
the most marked character, but there would appear to have been little
in her to admire. Hervey says of her that she had the least sense of
all the family, except, indeed, her brother Frederick; and we shall
soon come to appreciate the significance of this comparison.
{39}
Frederick, the eldest son, like George the Second himself, had not been
allowed to come to England in his early days. The young prince was in
his twenty-second year when, on the accession of his father to the
throne, he was brought over to this country and created Prince of
Wales. At that time he was well spoken of generally, although even
then it was known to every one that he was already addicted to some of
the vices of his father and his grandfather. The Court of Hanover was
not a good school for the training of young princes. The sovereign of
Hanover was a positive despot, both politically and socially.
Everything had to be done to please him, to amuse him, to conciliate
him. The women around the Court were always vying with each other to
see who should most successfully flatter the King, or, in the King's
absence, the Royal Prince. It was intellectually a very stupid Court.
Its pleasures were vulgar, its revels coarse, its whole atmosphere
heavy and sensuous. Frederick was said, however, to have given some
evidence of a more cultivated taste than might have been expected of a
Hanoverian Crown Prince. He was said to have some appreciation of
letters and music. When he settled in London he very soon began to
follow the example of his father and his grandfather; he threw his
handkerchief to this lady and to that, and the handkerchief was in
certain cases very thankfully taken up. Some people said that he
entered on this way of life not so much because he really had a strong
predilection for it as because he thought it would be unbecoming of the
position of a Prince of Wales not to have an adequate number of women
favorites about him; so he maintained what seemed to him the dignity of
his place in society and in the State.
The prince's character at his first coming over, says Hervey in his
pleasantest vein, though little more respectable, seemed much more
amiable than, upon his opening himself further and being better known,
it turned out to be; for, though there appeared nothing in him to be
{40} admired, yet there seemed nothing in him to be hated--neither
anything great nor anything vicious; his behavior was something that
gained one's good wishes though it gave one no esteem for him. If his
best qualities prepossessed people in his favor, yet they always
provoked contempt for him at the same time; for, though his manners
were stamped with a good deal of natural or habitual civility, yet his
habit of cajoling everybody, and almost in an equal degree, made what
might have been thought favors, if more sparingly bestowed, lose all
their weight. "He carried this affectation of general benevolence so
far that he often condescended below the character of a prince; and, as
people attributed this familiarity to popular and not particular
motives, so it only lessened their respect without increasing their
good-will, and, instead of giving them good impressions of his
humanity, only gave them ill ones of his sincerity. He was indeed as
false as his capacity would allow him to be, and was more capable in
that walk than in any other, never having the least hesitation, from
principle or fear of future detection, of telling any lie that served
his present purpose. He had a much weaker understanding and, if
possible, a more obstinate temper than his father; that is, more
tenacious of opinions he had once formed, though less capable of ever
forming right ones. Had he had one grain of merit at the bottom of his
heart, one should have had compassion for him in the situation to which
his miserable poor head soon reduced him, for his case in short was
this: he had a father that abhorred him, a mother that despised him,
sisters that betrayed him, a brother set up against him, and a set of
servants that neglected him, and were neither of use nor capable of
being of use to him, nor desirous of being so."
[Sidenote: 1736--Resolved on a marriage]
The King's eldest daughter, Anne, was married soon after Frederick's
coming to England. Up to the age of twenty-four she had remained
unmarried, a long time for a princess to continue a spinster. Many
years before, she had had a good chance of marrying Louis the Fifteenth
{41} of France. George was anxious for the marriage; the Duc de
Bourbon, then minister to Louis, had originated the idea; Anne was only
sixteen years old, and would no doubt have offered no objection. But
the scheme fell through because when it was well on its way somebody
suddenly remembered, what every one might have thought of before, that
if the English princess became Queen of France she would be expected to
conform to the religion of the State. Political rather than religious
considerations made this settle the matter in the English Court.
George and Caroline had certainly no prejudices themselves in favor of
one form of religion over another, or of any form of religion over
none; but, as they held the English Crown by virtue of their at least
professing to be Protestants, and as the Pretender would most assuredly
have got that Crown if he had even professed to be a Protestant, it did
not seem possible that they could countenance a change of Church on the
part of their daughter. Years passed away and no husband was offering
himself to Anne. Now at last she was determined that she would wait no
longer. Suddenly the Prince of Orange was induced to ask her to be his
wife. She had never seen him; he was known to be ugly and deformed;
King George was opposed to the proposition, and told his daughter that
the prince was the ugliest man in Holland. Anne was determined not to
refuse the offer; she said she would marry him if he were a Dutch
baboon. "Very well," retorted the King, angrily; "you will find him
baboon enough, I can tell you."
The princess persevered, however; she was as firmly resolved to get
married as Miss Hoyden in Vanbrugh's "Relapse." The King sent a
message to Parliament announcing the approaching marriage of his
daughter to the Prince of Orange, and graciously intimating that he
expected the House of Commons to help him to give the princess a
marriage-portion. The loyal Commons undertook to find eighty thousand
pounds, although George was surely rich enough to have paid his
daughter's dowry out {42} of his own pocket. George, however, had not
the remotest notion of doing anything of the kind. The Bill was run
through the House of Commons in a curious sort of way, the vote for the
dowry being thrown in with a little bundle of miscellaneous votes, as
if the House of Commons were rather anxious to keep it out of public
sight, as indeed they probably were. The bridegroom came to England in
November, 1732, and began his career in this country by falling very
ill. It took him months to recover, and it was not until March 24,
1733, that the marriage was celebrated. It must have been admitted by
Anne that her father had not misrepresented the personal appearance of
the Prince of Orange. The Queen shed abundance of tears at the sight
of the bridegroom, and yet could not help sometimes bursting into a fit
of laughter at his oddity and ugliness. Anne bore her awkward position
with a sort of stolid composure which was almost dignity. To add to
the other unsatisfactory conditions of the marriage, the prophets of
evil began to point to the ominous conjuncture of names--an English
princess married to a Prince of Orange. When this happened last, what
followed? The expulsion of the father-in-law by the son-in-law. Go
to, then!
[Sidenote: 1736--Massachusetts Bay retaliates]
On the same day on which the House of Commons voted the grant of the
princess's dowry, a memorial from the council and representatives of
the colony or province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England, was
presented and read from the table. The memorial set forth that the
province was placed under conditions of difficulty and distress owing
to a royal instruction given to the governor of the province
restraining the emission of its bills of credit and restricting the
disposal of its public money. The memorial, which seems to have been
couched in the most proper and becoming language, prayed that the House
would allow the agent for the province to be heard at the bar, and that
the House, if satisfied of the justice of the request, would use its
influence with the King in order that he might be graciously pleased to
withdraw {43} the instructions as contrary to the rights of the charter
of Massachusetts Bay, and tending in their nature to distress if not to
ruin the province. The House of Commons treated this petition with the
most sovereign contempt. After a very short discussion, if it could
even be called a discussion, the House passed a resolution declaring
the complaint "frivolous and groundless, a high insult upon his
Majesty's Government, and tending to shake off the dependency of the
said colony upon this kingdom, to which by law and right they are and
ought to be subject." The petition was therefore rejected. To the
short summary of this piece of business contained in the parliamentary
debates the comment is quietly added, "We shall leave to future ages to
make remarks upon this resolution, but it seems not much to encourage
complaints to Parliament from any of our colonies in the West Indies."
Not many ages, not many years even, had to pass before emphatic comment
on such a mode of dealing with the complaints of the American colonies
was made by the American colonists themselves. Massachusetts Bay took
sterner measures next time to make her voice heard and get her wrongs
redressed. Just forty years after the insulting and contemptuous
rejection of the petition of Massachusetts Bay, the people of Boston
spilled the stores of tea into Boston harbor, and two years later still
"the embattled farmer," as Emerson calls him, stood up to the British
troops at Lexington, in Massachusetts, and won the battle.
On Wednesday, May 30th, the second reading of the Bill for the
princess's dowry came on in the House of Lords. Several of the peers
complained warmly of the manner in which the grant to the princess had
been stuck into a general measure disposing of various sums of money.
It was a Bill of items. There was a sum of 500,000 pounds for the
current service of the year. There was 10,000 pounds by way of a
charity "for those distressed persons who are to transport themselves
to the colony of Georgia." There was a vote for the repairing of an
old church, and there {44} were other votes of much the same kind; and
amid them came the item for the dowry of the Royal Princess. The Earl
of Winchelsea complained of this strange method of huddling things
together, and declared it highly unbecoming to see the grant made "in
such a hotch-potch Bill--a Bill which really seems to be the sweepings
of the other House." The Earl of Crawford declared it a most indecent
thing to provide the marriage-portion of the Princess Royal of England
in such a manner; "it is most disrespectful to the royal family." The
Duke of Newcastle could only say in defence of the course taken by the
Government that he saw nothing disrespectful or inconvenient in the
manner of presenting the vote. Indeed, he went on to argue, or rather
to assert, for he did not attempt to argue, that it was the only way by
which such a provision could have been made. It could not well have
been done by a particular Bill, he said, because the marriage was not
as yet fully concluded. But the resolution of the House of Commons was
that out of the money then remaining in the receipt of the Exchequer
arisen by the sale of the lands in the island of St. Christopher's his
Majesty be enabled to apply the sum of 80,000 pounds for the
marriage-portion of the Princess Royal. What possible difficulty there
could be about the presenting of that resolution in the form of a
separate Bill, or how such a form of presentation could have been
affected by the fact that the marriage had not yet actually been
concluded, only a brain like that of the Duke of Newcastle could
settle. Of course the Bill was passed; each noble lord who criticised
it was louder than the other in declaring that he had not the slightest
notion of opposing it. "I am so fond," said the Earl of Winchelsea,
"of enabling his Majesty to provide a sufficient marriage-portion for
the Princess Royal that I will not oppose this Bill." There was much
excuse for being fond of providing his Majesty in this instance, seeing
that the money was not to be found by the tax-payers. Probably the
true reason why the grant was asked in a manner which would not be {45}
thought endurable in our days, was that the Government well knew the
King himself cared as little about the marriage as the people did, and
were of opinion that the more the grant was huddled up the better.
[Sidenote: 1736--A projected double alliance]
We get one or two notes about this time that seem to have a forecast of
later days in them. An explosion of some kind takes place in
Westminster Hall while all the courts of justice were sitting. No
great harm seems to have been done, but the event naturally startled
people, and was instantly regarded as evidence of a Jacobite plot to
assassinate somebody; it was not very clear who was the particular
object of hatred. Walpole wrote to his brother, telling him of the
explosion, and adding, "There is no reason to doubt that the whole
thing was projected and executed by a set of low Jacobites who talked
of setting fire to the gallery built for the marriage of the Princess
Royal" by means of "a preparation which they call phosphorus, that
takes fire by the air." About the same time, too, we hear of an
outbreak of anti-Irish riots in Shoreditch and other parts of the east
end of London. The "cry and complaint" of the anti-Irish was, as
Walpole described the matter, that they were underworked and starved by
Irishmen. Numbers of Irishmen, it would seem, were beginning to come
over to this country, not merely to labor in harvesting in the rural
districts, as they had long been accustomed to do, but undertaking work
of all kinds at lower wages than English workmen were accustomed to
receive. "The cry is, Down with the Irish," Walpole says; and Dr.
Sheridan, Swift's correspondent, proclaiming in terms of humorous
exaggeration his desire to get out of Cavan, protests that, failing all
other means of relief, "I will try England, where the predominant
phrase is, Down with the Irish."
George had at one time set his heart upon a double alliance between his
family and that of King Frederick William of Prussia. The desire of
George was that his eldest son, Frederick, should marry the eldest
daughter of the Prussian King, and that the Prussian King's eldest {46}
son should marry George's second daughter. The negotiation, however,
came to nothing. The King of Prussia was prevailed upon to make
objections to it by those around him who feared that he might be
brought too much under the influence of England; and, indeed, it is
said that he himself became a little afraid of some possible
interference with his ways by an English daughter-in-law. The only
interest the project has now is that it put the two kings into bad
humor with each other. The bad humor was constantly renewed by the
quarrels arising out of the King of Prussia's rough, imperious way of
sending recruiting parties into Hanover to cajole or carry off gigantic
recruits for his big battalions. So unkingly did the disputation at
last become that George actually sent a challenge to Frederick William,
and Frederick William accepted it. A place was arranged where the
royal duellists, each crossing his own frontier for the purpose, were
to meet in combat. The wise and persistent opposition of a Prussian
statesman prevailed upon Frederick to give up the idea, and George too
suffered himself to be talked into something like reason. It is almost
a pity for the amusement of posterity that the duel did not come off.
It would have almost been a pity, if the fight had come off, that both
the combatants should not have been killed. The King of Prussia and
the King of England were, it may safely be said, the two most coarse
and brutal sovereigns of the civilized world at the time. The King of
Prussia was more cruel in his coarseness than the King of England. The
King of England was more indecent in his coarseness than the King of
Prussia. For all their royal rank, it must be owned that they were
_arcades ambo_--that is, according to Byron's translation, "blackguards
both."
[Sidenote: 1736--Following the ways of his ancestors]
The fight, however, did not come off, and George had still to find a
wife for his eldest son. She was found in the person of the Princess
Augusta, sister of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha. The duke gave his consent;
the princess offered no opposition, and indeed would not have been {47}
much listened to if she had had any opposition to offer. King George
wished his son to get married to anybody rather than remain longer
unmarried; and the prince, who had tried to make a runaway match with a
young English lady before this time, appeared to be absolutely
indifferent on the subject. So the Princess Augusta was brought over
to Greenwich, and thence to London, and on April 28, 1736, the marriage
took place. The princess seems to have been a very amiable,
accomplished, and far from unattractive young woman. The Prince of
Wales grew to be very fond of her, and to be happy in the home she made
him. He continued, of course, to follow the ways of his father and his
grandfather, and had his mistresses as well as his wife. The Prince of
Wales would probably have thought he was not acting properly the part
of royalty if he had been contented with the companionship of one
woman, and that woman his wife. His wife had to put up with the palace
manners of the period. Frederick had at one time been noted for his
dutiful ways to his mother; but more lately the mother and son had
become hopelessly estranged. George hated Frederick, and the hatred of
the mother for the son seemed quite as strong as that of the father.
A courtly chronicler and genealogist, writing at a period a little
later, describes George the Second as in the height of glory, a just
and merciful prince, but dryly adds, "He resembles his father in his
too great attachment to the electoral dominions." So indeed he did.
The whole policy of his reign was affected or controlled by his love
for Hanover, or, at least, his love for his own interest in Hanover.
He had no patriotic or unselfish attachment to the land of his ancestry
and his birth; he was incapable of feeling any such exalted emotion.
But the electoral dominions, which were his property, he clung to with
ardor, and Hanover was the garden of the pleasures he enjoyed most
highly. He never could understand English ways. He once scolded an
English nobleman, the Duke of Grafton, for his delight in the hunting
field. It was a {48} pretty occupation, the King said, for a man of
the duke's years, and of his rank, to spend so much of his time in
tormenting a poor fox, that was generally a much better beast than any
of those that pursued him; for the fox hurts no other animal but for
his subsistence, while the brutes who hurt the fox did it only for the
pleasure they took in hurting. One might admire such a declaration if
it could be thought to come from a too refined and sensitive humanity.
An eccentric, but undoubtedly benevolent, member of the House of
Commons declared, in a speech made in that House some years ago, that
he only once joined in a hunt, and then it was only in the interest of
the fox. George had no such feeling; he simply could not understand
the tastes or the sports of English country life.
[Sidenote: 1736--To Hanover at all hazards]
George came back from an expedition to Hanover in a very bad humor. He
hated everything in England; he loved everything in Hanover. It was
with the uttermost reluctance that he dragged himself back from the
place of his amusements and his most cherished amours. He had lately
found in Hanover a new object of adoration. This was a Madame
Walmoden, a fashionable young married woman, with whom George had
fallen headlong into love. He wrote home to his wife, telling her of
his admiration for Madame Walmoden, and describing with some minuteness
the lady's various charms of person. He induced Madame
Walmoden--probably no great persuasion was needed--to leave her husband
and become the mistress of a king. George, it is said, paid down the
not very extravagant sum of a thousand dollars to make things pleasant
all round. During his stay in Hanover he and his new companion behaved
quite like a high-Dutch Antony and Cleopatra. They had revels and
orgies of all kinds in the midst of a crowd of companions as refined
and intellectual as themselves. George had paintings made of some of
these scenes, with portrait likenesses of those who took a leading part
in them, and these paintings he brought home to England, and was
accustomed {49} to exhibit and explain to the Queen, or to anybody else
who happened to be in the way. But he did not as yet venture to bring
Madame Walmoden to England; and his having to part with her threw him
into a very bad temper. The curious reader will find an amusing, but
at the same time very painful, account of the manner in which George
vented his temper by snubbing his children and insulting his wife. The
Queen bore it all with her wonted patience. George had made a promise
to get back to Hanover very soon to see his beloved Madame Walmoden.
Walpole restrained him for a long time, which made the King more and
more angry. Once, when the Queen was urging him to be a little more
considerate in his dealings with some of the bishops, the King of
England, Defender of the Faith, told her he was sick of all that
foolish stuff, and added, "I wish with all my heart that the devil may
take all your bishops, and the devil take your minister, and the devil
take the Parliament, and the devil take the whole island, provided I
can get out of it and go to Hanover." Caroline herself could be sharp
enough in her tone with the bishops sometimes, but the manners of the
King seemed to her to go beyond the bounds of reason.
The King was determined to get back to Hanover by a certain date.
Walpole swore to some of his friends that the King should not go. The
King did go, however, and left the Queen to act as regent of the
kingdom during his absence. This time George was to be absent from his
wife on his birthday, and the poor Queen took this bitterly to heart.
She consulted Walpole, and Walpole was frank, although on this
particular occasion he does not seem to have been coarse. He reminded
the Queen that she was ceasing to be young and attractive, and, as it
was necessary that she must keep a hold over the King's regard, he
strongly urged her to write to George and ask him to bring Madame
Walmoden over to England with him. Even this the Queen, after some
moments of agonized mental struggle, consented to do. She wrote to the
{50} King, and she began to make preparations for the suitable
reception of the new sultana. She carried her complacency so far as
even to say that she would be willing to take Madame Walmoden into her
own service. Even Walpole thought this was carrying humbleness too
far. "Why not?" poor Caroline asked; was not Lady Suffolk, a former
mistress of the King, in the Queen's employment? Walpole pointed out,
with the worldly good-sense which belonged to him, that public opinion
would draw a great distinction between the scandal of the King's making
one of the Queen's servants his mistress and the Queen's taking one of
the King's mistresses into her service.
[Sidenote: 1736--Handelists and anti-Handelists]
The quarrels between the Prince of Wales and the other members of the
royal family kept on increasing in virulence. The prince surrounded
himself with the Patriots, and indeed openly put himself at their head.
The King and Queen would look at no one who was seen in the
companionship of the prince. The Queen is believed to have at one time
cherished some schemes for separating the Electorate of Hanover from
the English Crown, in order that Hanover might be given to her second
son. With the outer public the Prince of Wales seems to have been
popular in a certain sense, perhaps for no other reason than because he
was the Prince of Wales and not the King. When he went to one of the
theatres he was loudly cheered, and he took the applause with the
gratified complacency of one who knows he is receiving nothing that he
has not well deserved. He would appear to have been continually
posturing and attitudinizing as the young favorite of the people. The
truth is that the people in general knew very little about the prince,
and knew a good deal about the King, and naturally leaned to the side
of the man who might at least turn out to be better than his father.
Even the seraphic realms of music were invaded by the dispute between
the adherents of the King and the adherents of the prince. The King
and Queen were supporters {51} of Handel, the prince was against the
great composer. The prince in the first instance declared against
Handel because his sister Anne, the Princess of Orange, was one of
Handel's worshippers, therefore a great number of the nobility who
sided with the prince set up, or at least supported, a rival
opera-house to that in which Handel's music was the great attraction.
The King and Queen, Lord Hervey tells, were as much in earnest on this
subject as their son and daughter, though they had the prudence to
disguise it, or to endeavor to disguise it, a little more. They were
both Handelists, "and sat freezing constantly at his empty Haymarket
opera, whilst the prince, with all the chief of the nobility, went as
constantly to that of Lincoln's Inn Fields." "The affair," Hervey
adds, "grew as serious as that of the Greens and the Blues under
Justinian at Constantinople; an anti-Handelist was looked upon as an
anti-courtier, and voting against the Court in Parliament was hardly a
less remissible or more venial sin than speaking against Handel or
going to the Lincoln's Inn Fields Opera." Hervey was a man of some
culture and some taste; it is curious to observe how little he thought
of the greatest musician of his time, one of the very greatest
musicians of all time. The London public evidently could not have been
gifted with very high musical perception just then. Indeed, later on,
when Handel brought out his "Messiah," it was met with so cold and
blank a reception in London that the composer began to despair of the
English public ever appreciating his greatest efforts. He made up his
mind to try his "Messiah" in Ireland. He went to Dublin, and there
found a splendid reception for his masterpiece, and he remained there
until the echo of his great success had made itself heard in England,
and he then came back and found his welcome in London. This, however,
is anticipating. At present we are only concerned with the fact, as
illustrating the existing condition of things in London, that to be an
admirer of Handel was to be an enemy of the Prince of Wales, and not to
be an {52} admirer of Handel was to be an enemy of the King. The feud
ran so high that the Princess Royal said she expected in a little while
to see half the House of Lords playing in the orchestra in their robes
and coronets. She herself quarrelled with the Lord Chamberlain for
preserving his usual neutrality on this occasion, and she spoke of Lord
Delaware, who was one of the chief managers against Handel, "with as
much spleen as if he had been at the head of the Dutch faction who
opposed the making her husband Stadtholder." It seems needless to say
that George himself had no artistic appreciation of Handel. He
subscribed one thousand a year to enable Handel to fight his battle,
but he talked over the matter with unenthusiastic prosaic common-sense.
He said he "did not think setting one's self at the head of a faction
of fiddlers a very honorable occupation for people of quality, or the
ruin of one poor fellow so generous or so good-natured a scheme as to
do much honor to the undertakers, whether they succeeded in it or not;
but, the better they succeeded in it, the more he thought they would
have reason to be ashamed of it." There were some gleams of manhood
shining through George still, and he could appreciate fair play
although he could not quite appreciate Handel. For the ruin of one
poor fellow! The poor fellow was Handel. The faction of fiddlers that
could ruin that poor fellow had not been found in the world, even if we
were to include Nero himself among the number. One poor fellow! We
wonder how many sovereigns living in George's time the world could have
spared without a pang of regret if by the sacrifice it could secure for
men's ennobling delight the immortal music of Handel.
[Sidenote: 1736--William Pitt]
On April 29, 1736, an event of importance took place in the House of
Commons; the event was a maiden speech, the speech was the opening of a
great career. The orator was a young man, only in his twenty-eighth
year, who had just been elected for the borough of Old Sarum. The new
member was a young officer of {53} dragoons, and his name was William
Pitt. Pitt attached himself at once to the fortunes of the Patriot, or
country, party, and was very soon regarded as the most promising of
Pulteney's young recruits. His maiden speech was spoken of and written
of by his friends as a splendid success, as worthy of the greatest
orator of any age. Probably the stately presence, the magnificent
voice, and the superb declamation of the young orator may account for
much of the effect which his first effort created, for in the report of
the speech, such as it has come down to us, there is little to justify
so much enthusiasm; but that the maiden speech was a signal success is
beyond all doubt. A study of the history of the House of Commons will,
however, make it clear, that there is little guarantee, little omen
even, for the future success of a speaker in the welcome given to his
maiden speech. Over and over again has some new member delighted and
thrilled the House of Commons by his maiden speech, and never delighted
it or thrilled it any more. Over and over again has a new member
failed in his maiden speech, failed utterly and ludicrously, and turned
out afterwards to be one of the greatest debaters in Parliament. Over
and over again has a man delivered his maiden speech without creating
the slightest impression of any kind, good or bad, so that when he sits
down it is, as Mr. Disraeli put it, hardly certain whether he has lost
his Parliamentary virginity or not; and a little later on the same man
has the whole House trembling with anxiety and expectation when he
rises to take part in a great debate. On the whole, it is probable
that the chances of the future are rather in favor of the man who fails
in his maiden speech. At all events, there is as little reason to
assume that a man is about to be a success in the House of Commons
because he has made a successful maiden speech as there would be to
assume that a man is to be a great poet because he has written a
college prize poem. The friends of young William Pitt, however, were
well justified in their expectations; and the magic of {54} presence,
voice, and action, which led to an exaggerated estimate of the merits
of the speech, threw the same charm over the whole of Pitt's great
career as an orator in the House of Commons.
[Sidenote: 1736--Pitt--Pulteney]
Pitt came of a good family. His grandfather was the Governor of Madras
to whom Mary Wortley Montagu more than once alludes: the "Governor
Pitt" who was more famous in his diamonds than in himself, and whose
most famous brilliant, the Pitt diamond, was bought by the Regent Duke
of Orleans to adorn the crown of France. William Pitt was a younger
son, and was but poorly provided for. A cornet's commission was
obtained for him. The family had the ownership of some parliamentary
boroughs, according to the fashion of those days and of days much later
still. At the general election of 1734 William Pitt's elder brother
Thomas was elected for two constituencies, Okehampton and Old Sarum.
When Parliament met, and the double return was made known to it, Thomas
Pitt decided on taking his seat for Okehampton, and William Pitt was
elected to serve in Parliament for Old Sarum. He soon began to be
conspicuous among the young men--the "boy brigade," who cheered and
supported Pulteney. William Pitt was from almost his childhood
tortured with hereditary gout, but he had fine animal spirits for all
that, and he appears to have felt from the first a genuine delight in
the vivid struggles of the House of Commons. He began to outdo
Pulteney in the vehemence and extravagance of his attacks on the policy
and the personal character of the ministers. His principle apparently
was that whatever Walpole did must _ipso facto_ be wrong, and not
merely wrong, but even base and criminal. Walpole was never very
scrupulous about inflicting an injury on an enemy, especially if the
enemy was likely to be formidable. He deprived William Pitt of his
commission in the army. Thereupon Pitt was made Groom of the
Bedchamber to the Prince of Wales. When the address was presented to
the King on the occasion of the prince's marriage with the Princess of
{55} Saxe-Gotha, it was Pulteney, leader of the Opposition, and not
Walpole, the head of the Government, who moved its adoption. It was in
this debate that William Pitt delivered that maiden speech from which
so much was expected, and which was followed by so many great orations
and such a commanding career. As yet, however, William Pitt is only
the enthusiastic young follower of Pulteney, whom men compare with, or
prefer to, other enthusiastic young followers of Pulteney. Even those
who most loudly cried up his maiden speech could have had little
expectation of what the maturity of that career was to bring.
{56}