Kenna's Kingdom: a Ramble Though Kingly Kensington
Brown, R. Weir
1881
CHAPTER XII. HOLLAND HOUSE.
CHAPTER XII. HOLLAND HOUSE.
With the Foxes, commences a new era in the history of the mansion. This family settled here about the middle of the eighteenth century, and the house remains in their hands at present. The founder of the House of Fox, a House afterwards dignified with the title of Holland, was Stephen, a choir-boy in Salisbury Cathedral, perhaps, at first, a footman, but afterwards employed in a much higher position in the household of Lord Percy, Chamberlain to the King. Stephen became an adherent of the exiled House of Stuart, and was fortunate enough to be first to announce the death of Oliver Cromwell to Charles the Second. When Charles returned to our island a place was | |
227 | found for Stephen, and from that time he rose surely and swiftly, holding office under no less than four sovereigns-Charles II., James II., William III., and . There are still preserved in Holland House two chests, popularly termed Stephen Fox's money chests, perhaps used for keeping official papers. But Stephen has no further connection with Holland House than as the founder of the family, and it is to his second son, Henry, that we must turn as the first Fox who actually possessed the mansion. |
Henry Fox occupies a prominent position among the statesmen of the eighteenth century. He was possessed of many natural advantages, but hampered also by many natural disadvantages. His figure was ungraceful, his manner awkward, while when he spoke in public he often stammered and hesitated, and his features were forbidding almost to repulsiveness. Pitt once declared that he looked as if he had murdered some one under a hedge; Pitt with his graceful figure and fluent high toned oratory could well afford to ridicule his rival on such points. But in some qualities Henry Fox was superior, far superior, to William Pitt, the great commoner. His accuracy, his power | |
228 | of arrangement, his manly sense, his wit, discernment and satirical talent, were of the highest order. Fox, indeed, we think, narrowly missed being a very great statesman, perhaps a greater statesman than Pitt himself. Want of settled principles and want of political honesty were the great deficiencies in his character. He had been bred in the political school of Sir Robert Walpole, whose cardinal maxim was, that every man had his price. Fox had the highest opinion of Sir Robert, and of all his pupils he was the one who in corruption and bribery most out-Walpoled Walpole. He behaved in a manner which would not be tolerated for a week in our own times, and which even in the far less scrupulous age in which he lived was regarded by the great mass of the people with disapprobation and disgust. No one had confidence in him. He was a cool, calculating, selfish politician; "without any notion of or regard for the public good or the constitution." The tenacity with which he clung to office was extraordinary. Walpole made him a Lord of the Treasury and afterwards Secretary of War. This latter place he managed to retain when Walpole was driven from office by Carteret, when the ministry |
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of Carteret was succeeded by the ministry of Henry
Pelham, and when Henry Pelham's brother, the Duke
of Newcastle, was at the head of the State. In June,
, he was very nearly forming a ministry in conjunction with Lord Waldegrave; but popular feeling
was in favour of Pitt, on whom the City Companies
"rained gold boxes." Fox deemed it wiser to abandon the attempt, and the first administration of Pitt
the Elder was formed, in which Fox accepted the
subordinate but lucrative post of Paymaster of the
Forces. This post he held during the two Whig administrations of Pitt, during the Tory government of
Bute, and again under Grenville, the Whig. The
Universal Magazine, for , somewhat ironically congratulates Fox on his choice of the safer if
less honourable post.
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The poet congratulates him on having chosen the golden mean, on having preferred a substantial patent of office to " tasselled gowns and ribbands blue." The golden mean he further informs us is not a hut, | |
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He advises him to
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The greatest event of the year, greater than the loss of Minorca, or the execution of Admiral Byng for losing it, greater than the disasters in India, or the famine at home is that
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After some allusions to the "well-mown grass and the fair lawn extending wide," the poet concludes with advice that
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The author, it will be observed, seems particularly struck with the snugness of the place. | |
In politics, Fox was perfectly fearless. He it was, who in direct opposition to the wishes of the nation, carried the Peace of Paris in , and this he did with the understanding that a peerage was to be the reward of his services. That honour, grudgingly given, was the title of Lord Holland, which he took from , having purchased the mansion shortly before. Still, Fox was not satisfied, he appears to have expected an earldom, and some four years later applied to his ancient rival and enemy, William Pitt, now Lord Chatham, for that favour. It was not granted. Two years after his elevation to the peerage, he resigned the Paymastership of the Forces, and retired completely into private life. He carried with him the unsparing hatred of the public. Their opinion is well typified by the verses of Gray, suggested by a view of the mimic ruins which Lord Holland, now eccentric, and lavish in gratifying his eccentricities, had erected at Kingsgate in the Isle of Thanet. | |
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We need scarcely say that Fox was far from deserving such harsh epithets, and that the poet has exaggerated, but Lord Holland himself complains of the desertion of his friends in the following verses:
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Strange to say, Rigby was the most worthless of all his friends. | |
It is with considerable relief that we turn from Lord Holland as he appears in English political history, to Henry Fox as he appears in his home life. In that private life he displayed the same fearlessness, good sense and humour that distinguished him as a politician, and he was besides the most devoted of husbands and the most fond of fathers. The history of his marriage contains ample materials for a three volume novel. He had the audacity to fall in love with Lady Caroline, eldest daughter of the Duke of Richmond, and he had the good fortune to find his love returned. The parents of the young lady were furious at the presumption of a younger son of an upstart house, but the lovers did not wait to obtain their sanction. In the month of , a month when, according to the Spectator, Cupid exercises a more than usual power, Lady Caroline eloped with Mr. Fox; shortly before the elopement took place, her parents had arranged to present her to an eligible suitor, but the young lady in desperation shaved off her eyebrows. The presentation was deferred, and before it | |
234 | could take place, Lady Caroline Lennox was Lady Caroline Fox. Then there was hub-bub and weeping among the aristocratic Richmonds, the illegitimate descendants of Charles the Second, and among their friends. Letters of condolence came in from every side, even from the brother of the culprit himself. Horace Walpole, indeed, having heard that the Duke and Duchess made it a point that none of their friends should visit the newly married couple, sent word that he would therefore pay them his compliments as soon as possible, and another wit, Hanbury Williams, congratulated Fox with more sincerity on having made a very prudent match. The "unfortunate affair" was discussed everywhere. Lord Carteret said that in passing through the rooms of he encountered two statesmen discussing the awful intelligence in a manner which made him fancy that our fleets and armies were beat, or were betrayed into the hands of the French, instead of two people married to each other against their parents' consent. That consent was at length tardily and reluctantly given, and not until four years after the marriage. Lady Caroline was an excellent wife, Henry Fox an excellent husband, |
235 | and their union a most happy one in all respects. Their domestic happiness continued until the death of Lord Holland, thirty years after. Lady Caroline survived him but twenty-five days. Lord Holland died at , and one of his dying injunctions was at the same time one of his best "bon mots." His friend, Selwyn, was renowned for his wit and eccentricities. Among the latter was his morbid taste for funerals, coffins, corpses, and executions. Fox's remark on hearing that Selwyn had called to inquire after him, was, "If Mr. Selwyn calls again, let him in; if I am alive, I shall be very glad to see him, and if I am dead, he will be very glad to see me." The good qualities of Henry Fox are so numerous as to incline us to forget his political failings; failings which it must be remembered were the failings of the age in which he lived and the political school to which he belonged. His fearlessness in avowing his own want of political morality, probably gained him a worse character than the deficiency itself. He looked on politics as a trade in which the chief object was the acquisition of wealth, honours, and estates, and his political career, regarded |
236 | from his own point of view, was a success. The following estimate formed by an anonymous writer of his character, may induce us to forget the bitterness expressed in the lines quoted above from Gray.-" He was an excellent husband, a most indulgent father, a kind master, a courteous neighbour." |
