Chapter C (8)

‘I think I can sum up Lady Cowper’s leading attributes in three
words—wit, wisdom, and goodness. In the relationship of daughter,
wife, and mother she left nothing to be desired; as a hostess she was
pre-eminently agreeable, being a most delightful companion; she had
lived with all that was politically and socially distinguished in her
day, and had read all that was worth reading in modern literature. She
derived keen enjoyment from “the give and take” of discussion; her
opinions were decided, and their expression fresh and spontaneous:
into whatever well it was lowered, the bucket invariably came up
full!’

‘In her latter days, even under the pressure of failing health, her
conversational powers never flagged; she was most brilliant in the
freshness of morning, and shone conspicuously at the breakfast-table,
thereby rendering that repast far more animated than is usually the
case. Her sallies, though never ill-natured, were often unexpected and
startling, which added a zest to her discourse, and gained for her the
title of ‘The Queen of Paradox.’

Her loss was deeply felt and mourned, not only in her own family, but
in the wider range of what is termed social life.

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_No. 5._

FAMILY GROUP.

GEORGE, _third Earl Cowper; in a green coat, pink waistcoat, and
breeches_. MR. GORE, _playing on the violoncello; dark blue coat,
yellow breeches_. COUNTESS COWPER, _pale pink gown_. MRS. GORE,
_grey gown; one daughter in blue, the other in white brocade_.
MISS EMILY GORE _at the harpsichord_.

BY ZOFFANY.

COUNTESS COWPER was the daughter of Charles Gore, Esquire, of
Southampton. Her parents took her to Italy for her health, where the
family resided for a long time. Mr. Gore is supposed to have been the
original of Goethe’s ‘travelled Englishman’ in _Wilhelm Meister_. Mrs.
Delany, in one of her amusing letters, mentions the meeting of Lord
Cowper and Miss Gore at Florence, ‘when little Cupid straightway bent
his bow.’

They were married at Florence, and on that occasion Horace Walpole
condoles with Sir Horace Mann on the prospect, as he would lose so
much of the society of his great friend, Lord Cowper. Both Lady Cowper
and her husband were in high favour at the Grand-Ducal Court of
Tuscany, and the former was a great ornament of the brilliant (but by
no means straight-laced) society of the day. Miss Berry speaks in very
high terms of Miss Gore, who resided with her married sister. Three
sons were born to the Cowpers in Florence. In her later days the
Countess took up her abode at a villa a little way out of the city.
She survived her husband many years, and was said to have been
plundered by her servants. Indeed, this most interesting picture is
supposed to have been stolen at the time of her death. It was
purchased in 1845 by the Honourable Spencer Cowper (for the trifling
sum of £20), who made it a present to his brother, the sixth Earl.

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_No. 6._

KATRINE CECILIA COMPTON, WIFE OF THE PRESENT EARL COWPER.

_Dark red velvet gown._

BY EDWARD CLOFFORD.

The eldest daughter of William, present and fourth Marquis of
Northampton. Married in 1870 to the present and seventh Earl Cowper.

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_No. 7._

THE HONOURABLE WILLIAM LAMB, AFTERWARDS SECOND VISCOUNT MELBOURNE.

_As a youth. Black coat trimmed with fur._

BORN 1779, DIED 1848.

BY SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE.

WILLIAM, second Lord Melbourne, was born March 15, 1779. His father
and mother were friends of the Prince of Wales, and lived in that
brilliant Whig circle of which Fox and Sheridan were the political
ornaments, and the Duchess of Devonshire the Queen of Beauty. It is
difficult now to realise the spirit of that society, in which
dissipation and intellectual refinement were so singularly combined.
Drunkenness among the men was too frequent to be considered
disgraceful, and even those who passed for being sober took their two
or three bottles a day. Conversation was habitually interlarded with
oaths; gambling, to such an extent as to cripple the largest fortunes,
was the common amusement of both sexes; and morality in other respects
was in a low state. But joined with this there was that high sense of
personal honour, which in England, and still oftener in France, has,
at other times, been united with similar manners. There was more than
this. There was a spirit of justice and generosity—even of
tenderness—and in some cases a delicacy of feeling which we are
accustomed now to associate only with temperance and purity. There was
also a very cultivated taste, derived from a far more extensive
knowledge of the Classics than is to be found in these days; a love of
poetry and history; and, above all, an enthusiastic worship of
liberty.

How came this strange worship of liberty among this exclusive and
luxurious aristocracy? Originally, perhaps, as the result of faction.
Excluded from power and deprived of popularity by misfortunes and
mistakes, which it would take too long to mention, the Whigs had been
driven in their adversity to fall back upon their original principles.
The debating instinct of their great Parliamentary leader seized upon
the cry of liberty as a weapon of warfare in the House of Commons, and
the cause which he advocated was so congenial to his frank and
generous nature that he embraced it enthusiastically and imparted his
enthusiasm to his friends. I must not pursue these thoughts further,
but the circumstances of a man’s early life have such influence in
moulding his character that, even in such a slight sketch as this, it
may not have been out of place to call attention to the state of that
society, with its vices and its redeeming qualities, in the midst of
which William Lamb grew up.

He went to Eton in 1790, and to Cambridge in 1796. In 1797 he was
entered at Lincoln’s Inn, but without leaving Cambridge. In 1798 he
won a prize by the oration on ‘The Progressive Improvement of
Mankind,’ which was alluded to by Fox in the House of Commons.

In 1799 he went to Glasgow to Professor Millar’s, from whose house he
wrote during this and the following year several letters to his
mother, which still exist. They show the keenest interest in politics,
and an enthusiastic admiration for the French; and they are not
entirely free from a slight taint of that apparent want of patriotism
which infected the Liberal party at that time, and which did it such
irreparable damage. It is only fair to say that there is an entry
written in a notebook a few years later showing how keenly he
appreciated and lamented this political error, and throughout the
whole course of the Peninsular War he expresses the warmest wishes for
the success of the British arms, and for those of our allies in
Germany.

His career at the bar was brief and uneventful, and by the death of
his elder brother he shortly became heir-apparent to his father’s
title and property.

We now come to a most important event—important to all men—in his case
particularly so, and attended with almost unmitigated evil.

On June 3, 1805, was solemnised the marriage of William Lamb and Lady
Caroline Ponsonby. It is heartless, unnecessary, and altogether wrong
to expose the dreariness, the pain, and the ridicule of an
ill-assorted marriage. Too many particulars of this unhappy union have
already found their way into print. Lady Caroline was a woman of
ability, and, I suppose, a certain amount of charm; but nobody who
reads her works, or her letters, or the accounts of her conduct, can
doubt that she was partially insane. Of her husband it is enough to
say that whatever his faults may have been of over-indulgence at
certain times—and perhaps an occasional outbreak of passionate temper
at others—he was, on the whole, singularly tender, kind, and
considerate. He was always honourable and gentlemanlike, and he bore
his burden with a brave and manly spirit. But for twenty years his
life was embittered, his ability depressed, and even his credit with
the world temporarily impaired.

I have said that the evil which attended his marriage was almost
unmitigated; but there was one compensation. He was driven into
seclusion. Whole days were passed in his library, and it was during
these years that he acquired habits of reading which were never
afterwards abandoned, and that he accumulated much of that vast store
of learning—that large knowledge of all subjects, ancient and modern,
sacred and profane—which formed a continual subject of astonishment to
those who knew him in later life.

After endless quarrels and reconciliations, they were regularly
separated in 1825; but he occasionally visited her, and was with her
at her deathbed two years later, when they were finally reconciled, to
quarrel no more.

Though he was member of the House of Commons for many years, and
occasionally spoke, he cannot be said to have acquired any distinction
in that assembly; but his abilities had always been recognised by
leading men, as is shown by the fact that he twice refused office
during that period.

His public career began in 1827, when he accepted, in Canning’s
Administration, the post of Chief Secretary in Ireland.

It is difficult to form a just opinion of him as he appeared to his
contemporaries at this time. Mr. M’Culloch Torrens has done justice to
his high character, his clear intellect, and his broad, sound, and
sensible views of men and things. Lord Melbourne’s relations must
always feel grateful to Mr. Torrens for so clearly bringing forward
this side of his nature, and perhaps also for not attempting to
delineate those characteristics which require to be touched with a
more delicate hand. The uncontrolled flow of humour, of originality
and mischief, might easily have been perverted in the description into
buffoonery or jauntiness, from which no man was ever more free. The
paradoxes might have appeared as an ambitious effort to astonish and
to draw attention, when considered separately from the simple and
spontaneous manner in which they were uttered. They were saved from
this, as all good paradoxes are, not only by the manner, but by each
one of them containing some portion of the truth, which is generally
overlooked, and which was then, for the first time, presented to the
mind in a striking and unexpected way.

But though any attempt to describe the charm of Lord Melbourne’s
society would probably lead to disastrous failure, and must not,
therefore, be attempted, it is important to bear in mind that this
extraordinary charm was the one great feature that remained impressed
upon the minds of all who had communication with him.

Sparkling originality, keen insight into character, a rich store of
information on every subject always at hand to strengthen and
illustrate conversation, exuberant vitality, and, above all, the most
transparent simplicity of nature, these, from what I have heard, must
have been his principal characteristics. I am bound to add that he
often shocked fastidious people. He seldom spoke without swearing, and
he was often very coarse in his remarks. There was, indeed, in his
language and in his whole character, not only a wayward recklessness
which was natural to him, but a touch of cynical bitterness that
contrasted strangely with the nobleness and generosity of the original
man. The nobleness and generosity were, I say, original. The scenes
which surrounded him in his early years, and still more, that unhappy
married life to which I have already alluded, may account for the
remainder.

I must add that this charm of manner and conversation was set forth to
the utmost advantage by a beautiful voice and a prepossessing personal
appearance. He was tall, strong, and of vigorous constitution,
brilliantly handsome, even in old age, with a play of countenance to
which no picture, and certainly not this very indifferent one by
Hayter, does the smallest justice.

It may easily be believed that with such a people as the Irish a man
like this immediately became extremely popular; and the solid
abilities of a genuine statesman were speedily recognised by his
colleagues.

Even at this period, with Lord Wellesley as Viceroy, the principal
business in Ireland was transacted by the Chief Secretary, though this
Minister was not then, as he has frequently been since, in the
Cabinet. Lord Wellesley, accustomed to a far different position in
India, was occasionally somewhat sore at the false relation in which
he stood to his nominal subordinate, though this was made as endurable
as possible by the tact and fine feeling of William Lamb, who was
constantly reminding the Ministers in England of the consideration due
to a veteran statesman, whom fate had placed in so disagreeable an
office, and offering to send back despatches to be rewritten.

The short Administrations of Canning and Goderich were uneventful in
Ireland, and early in that of the Duke of Wellington, Lamb resigned.
He came away with an increased reputation. His extreme facility of
access, and his delight in talking openly with people of all parties,
had made him much liked—and even his very indiscretions seem to have
told in his favour.

On July 22, 1828, he became Lord Melbourne by the death of his father.

In Lord Grey’s Administration of 1830 he was made Home Secretary. His
appointment to so important an office without any public reputation as
a man of business, and without any Parliamentary distinction, show
conclusively what a high opinion had been formed of his abilities by
those in authority. But by the world at large he seems to have been
still looked upon as an indolent man, and to have caused some surprise
by the vigour and ability which he displayed in dealing with the very
serious disturbances which at this time broke out in many parts of the
country. This unexpected vigour, joined with the calmness and good
sense which he was already known to possess, made his reign at the
Home Office very successful; and he had an opportunity of particularly
distinguishing himself by his firmness and discretion in dealing with
a monster deputation from the Trade Unions shortly before he was
called to fill a still higher position.

In 1834, on the resignation of Lord Grey, he was sent for by the King.
He formed a Government from his existing colleagues, and from that
period, with the exception of a short interval, he remained Prime
Minister of England for seven years.

The political history of these seven years has been written over and
over again. It was a history to which the Liberal party cannot look
back with much satisfaction, and the memory of the Prime Minister
suffers unjustly in consequence. It was one of those strange periods
of reaction which are so familiar to the student of English political
life, when the country was becoming daily more Conservative in its
views and feelings. Then, as at other similar periods, the Liberals
were obstinately unwilling to believe the fact. While the bulk of the
electors were ever more and more anxious for repose, ardent
politicians were racking their brains for new stimulants, and seeking
what reforms they could propose, and what institutions they could
attack, in order to rouse the flagging energies of their supporters.
They mistook a real wish to be left quiet for a disgust at not being
led forward, and as the activity of Lord Melbourne in his Cabinet was
chiefly displayed in restraining the restlessness of the more
impetuous of his colleagues, he became responsible, in the eyes of
some, for the want of progress; while the nation at large accused him,
in common with the rest of his Government, of continually taking up,
without serious consideration or depth of conviction, any policy which
might be likely to bring a momentary popularity to the Ministry.

In regard to this last accusation, we must remember that Lord
Melbourne was only one of the governing committee of the
country—_primus inter pares_. It is a very strong and very popular
Prime Minister alone who can be more than this. His influence, as I
have said, is believed to have been a restraining one. We know the
mistakes to which he was a party, but we shall never know how many he
may have prevented.

After all said against it, this period of seven years was neither
unfruitful in wise legislation nor inglorious to the country. Without
endangering peace, we maintained the high position of England in
Europe; and though many measures were prematurely introduced, and
hastily abandoned, a long list may be made of very useful ones which
were passed.

What were Lord Melbourne’s real political convictions? Some have said
that he was in his heart a Conservative. He was undoubtedly less
advanced in his opinions than many of his colleagues, and he sometimes
exhibited a half-laughing, half-sorrowful disbelief in the result
expected by others from constitutional changes. This, coupled with a
love of mischief and a delight in startling people, made him appear
less advanced than he was—as when he said about Catholic Emancipation,
that all the wise men in the country had been on one side of the
question, and all the fools on the other, and that the fools had
turned out to be right after all; when he told some ardent reformers
that the men who originated the Reform Bill ought to be hung on a
gallows forty feet high; and when he remarked to Lord John Russell
that he did not see that there was much use in education. These
remarks, however, did not express his real convictions. His was
essentially that kind of mind which sees clearly both sides of a
question. His position would naturally have been very near the
border-line which divides the two parties, and on which it is
impossible for any public man in England permanently to stand, but it
would have been, under any circumstances, on the Liberal side of that
line.

As leader of the House of Lords he was, on the whole,
successful—certainly not the reverse. But he had the misfortune to be
opposed and most bitterly attacked, during a great part of his
Administration, by the two greatest orators of the day, and he
received little support from his own side. Of his speaking it has been
said that if it had been a little better, it would have been quite
first-rate. He never prepared a speech, and he hesitated a good deal,
except when under the influence of excitement. But at his worst he was
always plain, unpretending, and sensible; and his voice and appearance
were of themselves sufficient to command attention. When roused he
could be forcible, and even eloquent for a few minutes, and he always
gave the impression that he only wanted rousing to become so. The most
powerful of his opponents never could feel sure that he might not at
any moment receive a sudden knock-down blow, and both Brougham and
Lyndhurst more than once experienced this.

On the accession of the Queen in 1837, Lord Melbourne found himself
suddenly placed in a most trying and most responsible position. This
is the part of his career which is best known, and in which his
conduct has been most appreciated; and I do not think there is any
other instance on record of the confidential and affectionate
relations subsisting between a Sovereign and a Minister so interesting
to dwell upon. It is difficult to say to which of the two these
relations were productive of the greatest benefit. Her Majesty was
indeed fortunate in finding such a counsellor; his large-minded
fairness, his impartial appreciation of the motives and feelings of
all parties in the State—that philosophical power of seeing both sides
of a question, to which I have alluded, and which perhaps stood in his
way as a party leader,—were, under present circumstances, of unmixed
advantage. His vast political and historical knowledge supplied him
with ready information on every subject, which I need hardly say he
imparted in the most agreeable manner; and his judgment, stimulated by
the gravity of the situation, enabled him to give sound advice, at
least on all the deeper and more important matters which properly
belonged to his position. To the Minister himself this new stimulant
was invaluable. His life had never quite recovered from the blight
cast upon it in his early manhood. He had long suffered from want of
an object for which he really cared; his thoughtful temperament too
much inclined him in his serious moments to realise the vanity of all
things; but he now found a new interest which animated his remaining
years of activity, and which afterwards solaced him in illness, in
depression, and intellectual decay.

Nobly did the Queen repay this chivalrous devotion and this unselfish
solicitude for her welfare. Her clear intellect readily assimilated
his wisdom, and her truthful and just nature responded sympathetically
to his enlightened and generous views. And there was no ingratitude or
subsequent neglect to mar the harmony of the picture, for to the last
hour of his existence her kindness and attention were without a break.
Her Majesty has been fortunate in many of her advisers—fortunate more
particularly in her illustrious husband,—but such is the force of
early impression, that, perhaps, no small part of the sagacity and the
virtue which have signalised her reign may be traced to the influence
of Lord Melbourne.

This little biographical notice must now be concluded. In 1841 his
Administration came to an end. In the autumn of 1842 he had a
paralytic stroke. He recovered, and lived till 1848, and was able to
take his place in the House of Lords, and to appear in society. But
his sweet temper was soured, and his spirits became unequal; his
bright intellect was dimmed, and his peculiarities assumed an
exaggerated form. He had been so famous in earlier days for the
brilliancy of his conversation, that even after his illness people
remembered and repeated what he said. This has done his reputation
some injury, and the stories told about him do not always convey a
correct impression of his ability or his charm.

The life which I have attempted to sketch was an eventful one, and
Lord Melbourne took no small share in the movements of his time. But
it seems to have been the impression of all who met him, that he might
have done much more than he ever did, and that he was a far abler and
greater man than many who have filled a larger space in history.