Kenna's Kingdom: a Ramble Though Kingly Kensington
Brown, R. Weir
1881
CHAPTER XIII. HOLLAND HOUSE.
CHAPTER XIII. HOLLAND HOUSE.
IN the Joshua Room at , a room hung with the works of the great portrait painter, is a picture of the first Lord Holland. In this portrait the features are coarse but not unpleasing, and the face is full of power. In this room also hangs one of Sir Joshua Reynolds' most famous pictures, containing the portraits of Lady Sarah Lennox (the sister of Lady Holland), who is leaning out of a window at , and those of her nephew Charles James Fox, and his cousin Lady Susan Strangeways. Each of these persons contributes a link to the chain of history. To commence with Lady Sarah, who as one of 's favourite sitters, | |
238 | and also as the most graceful of the three figures, demands primary consideration, even if chronology did not, as it does, furnish another powerful argument in her favour. The great event in Lady Sarah's life is George the Third's attachment for her. In her childhood she attracted the notice of that monarch's grandfather, George the Second. It is said that the little girl was walking with her aunt and governess in Kensington Gardens on one of the days when the Royal Family promenaded on the broad walk. The little Lady Sarah, with childish naivete, suddenly broke from her conductress and bounding up to the King, asked him in French, how he did, and remarked what a large and beautiful palace he had. George the Second, amused and interested, frequently had the little Lady Sarah brought to the palace for his amusement. On one occasion, so her son tells us, the King in the midst of a romp, caught hold of the little girl and depositing her in a large china jar shut down the cover, while she beguiled her momentary confinement by breaking out into the popular French song of "Malbruc." In consequence of her mother's death she was placed under the charge of her elder sister who re |
239 | sided in Ireland, and did not return to until the age of thirteen. The King soon afterwards expressed a wish to see his little playmate, but was much disappointed to find that the five year old romp had become a demure, timid, though very pretty girl. " Pooh !" said George the Second, "she's grown quite stupid." But his grandson and heir, the Prince of Wales, thought otherwise, and fell headlong in love with her, a love which lasted until he became King, when he seems seriously to have thought of making her Queen. Lady Sarah, for whatever reason, does not appear to have encouraged his advances, and his advisers almost unanimously dissuaded him from such an unusual step. Henry Fox, indeed, not yet Lord Holland, hoped that his sister-in-law might become Queen of England. According to Horace Walpole, when he went to the seaside "he left her at Holland House, where she appeared every morning in a field close to the great road (where the Kirg passed on horseback) in a fancied habit, making hay." But this royal love idyll was soon at an end. King George bebecame the husband of Charlotte of Mecklenburgh Strelitz, and Lady Sarah the wife of the black-leg, Sir |
240 | Charles Bunbury, M.P. Lady Sarah was probably the heroine of the song, "On Richmond Hill there lives a lass," and is described by her brother-in-law as being prettier than any other girl he ever saw. |
The remaining female figure in 's picture is equally the subject of a Love Romance, and it is again disparity of rank that gives interest to the story, only this time the advantage of position is on the side of the lady. Lady Susan was niece to the first Lord Holland, and spent much of her time at Holland House. Between her and Lady Sarah a great intimacy existed, and on the marriage of George the Third, the latter wrote to her friend to tell her she had luckily never loved but only liked the King, and that the title had never weighed anything with her. When they were both quite young, Walpole gives us an account of some private theatricals at , in which the two girls and Charles James Fox acted together. | |
Lady Susan seems to have preserved a penchant for the drama, for not long after the end of the loveepisode between the King and her friend, the world of fashion was startled by the news that Lord Holland's | |
241 | niece had eloped with a well-known actor named O'Brien. About a week before this finale, her father, Lord Ilchester, had discovered the attachment. A few days later Lady Susan became of age, and on the day following her birthday, walked down stairs accompanied by her footman, and said she was going to breakfast with Lady Sarah. Once in the street she sent back the footman to fetch something she professed to have left behind, saying she would wait until his return. "O'Brien was waiting in a hackney coach, which she got into, and they went to Covent Garden Church and were married." Actors were not much thought of socially in those days, and Horace Walpole declares it would have been better if the man had been what the young lady's grandfather, Stephen Fox, is said to have been, a footman, because "an actor is too well known to be smuggled in among gentlefolks." |
The married life of the couple, passed in America, was more happy and respectable than that of Lady Sarah and her black-leg baronet. But there was of course an outcry among the fashionables of that age, and a recent authoress, a connection of the Fox's | |
242 | seems inclined to look upon the social desolation thus brought into the house of Fox, as a Divine retribution for the similar degradation inflicted by Henry Fox on the house of Lennox twenty years before. At all events there appears to have been a fatality for unequal matches at , and it is sad to think that such men as Addison and Henry Fox, the one a mere poet, the other at the time of his marriage a mere statesman, should have married, the one the widow of an Earl; the other the daughter of a Duke; and that worst of all, a popular actor should have run away with the granddaughter of a footman ! |
Let us turn to the third and last figure in the picture-the portrait of Charles James Fox, second son of the first Lord Holland. A century ago this name would have awakened such an echo of enthusiasm and party feelings as is now hard to realise. To-day the name falls somewhat coldly on the world; yet, if we were to judge by the contemporary fame which celebrities have enjoyed, Charles James Fox is the most distinguished of the many distinguished men who are associated with the old manor of Sir Walter Coope. That association, however, is | |
243 | principally confined to Charles' childhood. The future statesman was a spoilt child. We have noticed how kind and indulgent a father was the first Lord Holland-sometimes this indulgence was carried too far. Once a wall had been condemned, and Lord Holland had promised his son, Charles, that he should see it pulled down: but it happened that the wall was demolished and rebuilt during the boy's absence, Lord Holland, to keep his promise, had the newly raised portion knocked down for the edification of his son. The sacredness of a promise may be pleaded in excuse for the father's compliance, but in other cases no such justification can be alleged. Once Charles expressed a wish to smash a watch, "Well," said Lord Holland, "if you must-you must," and the watch was smashed. Once again, Charles had the temerity to burn an important dispatch which Lord Holland had prepared in his official capacity as Secretary of State, and which did not meet with the approval of his critical and wayward son. The offence was unpunished and unreproved by the over-indulgent father As Charles Fox grows older, we at see less of him. One day he and a friend walked |
244 | thither from Oxford,-fifty miles on a hot day; on arriving Charles addressed his father, who was drinking his coffee: "you must send half-a-guinea or a guinea, without loss of time, to the ale-house keeper at Nettlebed, to redeem the gold watch you gave me some years ago, and which I have left in pawn there for a pot of porter." The child was father to the man, and Fox was in after-life distinguished almost as much for his reckless extravagance as for his Parliamentary eloquence. That eloquence, which, though as yet immature, showed promise of rare excellence, was at first displayed on the Tory side of the House, for Charles James Fox and his elder brother Stephen both entered Parliament as adherents of their father's old party. In the affair of Wilkes and the Middlesex election, his voice and vote were found on the unconstitutional side. In the year following () he took office as a Junior Lord of the Admiralty, resigned two years later, again took office as one of the Lords of the Treasury in , and in the February of the year ensuing was dismissed. In that year, it will be remembered, Lord Holland died. His son, dismissed by one party, took refuge with the other, and if we |
245 | cannot but ascribe this sudden change partly to motives of pique, it must on every hand be admitted that Fox at length found himself in the party most suitable to his nature and views. Gibbon, at the time of Fox's resignation of the Junior Lordship of the Admiralty, wrote as follows: " Yesterday, Charles Fox resigned the Admiralty. He has commenced patriot, and is already attempting to pronounce the words country, liberty, corruption, and so forth,-with what success time will determine." If we turn to the inscription on the cast of Westmacott's statue of Fox in the Garden of , we shall find the following answer to the above question. " Charles James Fox, whom all nations unite in esteeming to have been the chief man of the people; " an answer may be equally found in the flattering verdict of Sidney Smith, who says that "the great feature of Mr. Fox's life was the long and unwearied opposition which he made, to the low cunning, the profligate extravagance, the sycophant mediocrity, and the stupid obstinacy, of the English Court." It was in this eventful year ( 774) of Fox's life that this opposition commenced. And it was literally a " long and unwearied opposition," for, with the |
246 | exception of the few months in when Fox was Foreign Secretary in the Rockingham Ministry, the few months of his coalition with Lord North in the ensuing year, and the few months before his death, in , when he was Foreign Secretary in the Grenville Ministry, he occupied the Opposition Benches for the remaining thirty-two years of his life. The only time during that period in which he can be charged with having deserted his principles is during his coalition with Lord North, and that charge appears to us but too true. Twelve months before that coalition, Fox, inveighing against North in the House of Commons, uttered the following words: "From the moment when I shall make any terms with one of them, I will rest satisfied to be called the most infamous of mankind. I could not, for an instant, think of a coalition with men who, in every public and private transaction as Ministers, had shown themselves void of every principle of honour and honesty. In the hands of such men I would not trust my honour even for a minute." Within less than a year Fox placed his honour in the hands of the chief of these men for an indefinite period; a period, however, destined to last for little more than a twelve |
247 | month, the "coalition" Ministry being replaced by that of Fox's younger and more successful rival, William Pitt, who put an end to "this ill-omened and unnatural marriage." With these two exceptions, his change of opinions in , and his coalition with North in , the political life of Fox was throughout consistent. The first of these changes needs no excuse; every man has a right to alter his opinion; the second we are afraid cannot be so easily justified. |
The Coalition Ministry was of short duration. In the December of the following year, Fox found himself once more in opposition, and his younger rival, William Pitt, at the head of the State. But Fox, in opposition, was more successful than was Pitt, during the latter portion of his Ministry, in power. His name was already revered as the champion of liberty in America. During the unfortunate war between England and that country, he had not hesitated to espouse the cause of the revolted Colonies, and had even gone so far as to bitterly revile the citizens of Manchester and the people of Scotland, who had been foremost in subscribing sums to raise new regiments for the support of what they considered the national honour, and Fox | |
248 | as the national disgrace. If Fox saw with perfect clearness the absurdity and wrong of the War, he might yet have pardoned, instead of reviled, the spirit which found it impossible to rejoice in national defeat, even though suffered in an unrighteous cause. With regard to the justice of Fox's views on the War itself there can be little question. Not so with regard to the justice of his views on another and more momentous struggle--that of England and of Europe against the mad ambition of the First Napoleon. But to Charles Fox, Napoleon was an angel of liberty, and the English Statesman soon became almost as popular in France, with which his country was engaged in a desperate struggle to assert her freedom, as he had been in America, when England had attempted to tyrannize over the Colonists. " To ape Mr. Fox," says a writer on the Georgian Era, "was now the fashion at Paris; his dress, his mode of speaking, nay, his very dinners were imitated. It was the fashion to be a thinking manto think like Fox." |
In , Pitt, worn out by the disasters which threatened to transform the map of Europe into one | |
249 | huge France, died, and the " Ministry of all the Talents" succeeded him. In that Ministry Fox was Foreign Secretary, but before the year was out, he, too, was in the grave. He was still, comparatively speaking, young when he died-fifty-eight years of age; but perhaps his early death was no misfortune to his fame, for it is hard to see what part the professed champion of liberty and the devoted admirer of Napoleon could have taken in the great struggle between Liberty and Napoleon, which forms European History during the commencement of the nineteenth century. |
The virtues of the second son of Lord Holland were those in which his father had been wanting-sincerity of purpose, political consistency, unselfishness, freedom from mercenary considerations. But he wanted the sound good sense, the profound insight into men and manners, the statesmanship, and the shrewd foresight, which rendered the first Lord Holland so remarkable a man. Charles James Fox is by far the more popular of the two; we are inclined to think Henry Fox was the more talented. Charles James Fox's principal gift was his oratory, and there can be no doubt that | |
251 |
anything but praiseworthy, and probably nothing so
much weakened the effect of the principles which he
enunciated in his clear and sparkling eloquence, as the
knowledge of his dissolute and extravagant conduct.
As he grew older, his habits became more settled and
domestic, and his courteous manners, and many
generous and amiable qualities, endeared him to a
large circle of sincere friends. The account of his
death-bed is touching, as such accounts usually are,
but more, it shows that whatever may have been the
case in his youth, at the time of his death he was on
the most affectionate terms with his wife. If we mentally translate the word patriot by "cosmopolitan,"
we shall find the following poetical estimate of his
character not a very untrue one:
|
His heart, indeed, was the best part about him, and was a very sensitive one. Not long before his death he paid a visit to the home of his boyhood, and noticed observingly and affectionately all the well-remembered spots at . | |
250 | he was one of the most brilliant debaters, and one of the most successful orators, that England has ever seen. As an author he did not succeed; his " History of James the Second," of which much was hoped, was a failure, and is now little read. But it was in private life that Charles Fox was principally loved. True, he was a reckless spendthrift-an untiring gambler; "a man of pleasure, ruined by the dice-box and the turf," yet his many generous, open-hearted, and congenial qualities, endeared him to friends and enemies alike. His ideas were free and extensive, and he never feared to embrace the side of liberty, wherever he believed it to be, though, unfortunately, he sometimes mistook the shadow for the name, and saw a liberator in Napoleon the First. |
His enthusiasm, indeed, frequently made him forget that patriotism, like most virtues, may be practised as well at home as abroad, and he did not scruple to grieve openly at British victories, and exult at British defeats-an extent of cosmopolitan philosophy which borders very closely on unpatriotism. What he believed to be right he did, earnestly and heartily, fearless of all consequences. As a young man his private life was | |
