Chapter IV: Appendix: A. Members of Parliament, 316 (2)

Fitzpatrick, the intimate friend of Fox and the uncle of Lord Holland, was, like Fox, fond both of the classics and of gambling. He was an amateur actor and a wit. He had made an impressive speech in 1796 in favour of Lafayette, then a prisoner in Austria, and now visited him at La Grange. In 1806 he became Secretary for War. John Leslie Foster became an Irish Judge and lived till 1842. Philip Francis, the Indian councillor commonly regarded as the author of the _Letters of Junius_, escorted three of his children, Philip, Elizabeth, and Harriet, who went on to Nice for the benefit of Harriet’s health. We have no letters from Francis himself, but young Philip tells us that Bonaparte renewed (?) acquaintance with his father and was very civil. He likewise tells us that at Madame Bonaparte’s reception he saw Bonaparte, after watching her play for some time from behind her chair, drop a purse into her lap as he moved away. Francis, with his daughter Catherine, was again in Paris in January 1803, apparently from alarm at the miscarriage of letters from Nice, and while there heard of Harriet’s death. The Miss Berrys had been very kind to her. Francis had twice visited Paris in 1791, and his son had learned French at Rouen in the summer of 1792.[44] Lord Granville Leveson-Gower became the first Earl Granville and Ambassador to France. His son we all remember as Foreign Secretary. Graham, the Ripon Graham, was the father of Sir James Graham the statesman. Hare, who sat from 1781 to 1804 for the Duke of Devonshire’s borough of Knaresborough, was a wit and a classical scholar who broke down in his maiden speech and thenceforth remained silent. He went to Paris for his health or fell ill when there, and Fox called on the invalid, who died shortly after his return. Jekyll, too, who had visited France in 1775, was a famous wit and a great diner-out. He also sat for a pocket-borough from 1787 to 1816, but his wit did not come out in his frequent speeches. The Prince Regent, fond of good talkers, made him in 1805 his Solicitor-General, and procured for him a commissionership in lunacy and a mastership in Chancery.

Johnston had been British Resident at Lucknow, and was an authority on India. Kinnaird, who in 1803 succeeded to the peerage, being intimately connected with the Bonapartists, had information in 1817 of Cantillon’s intended attack on the Duke of Wellington, and sent him an anonymous warning. He and his wife afterwards went to Paris to give information on the subject, and the latter was arrested as an accomplice. Kinnaird naturally complained of this as a violation of a virtual safe-conduct. He had been expelled from France in the previous year as a political intriguer. He eventually lived in Italy on an allowance from his creditors.[45] Long, afterwards Lord Farnborough, had been Secretary to the Treasury, became a Commissioner of the Treasury in 1804, and in 1806 was made Secretary for Ireland. He had written pamphlets on the French Revolution in 1795. Eventually he was known as an art connoisseur, and George iv. sought his advice on architecture. His father-in-law, Sir Abraham Hume, accompanied him.

Lord Lovaine in 1830 succeeded his father as Earl of Beverley, and eventually in 1865, two years before his death, became Duke of Northumberland. He was the father of the Duke who adopted Irvingism and married Henry Drummond’s daughter. He went on to Naples with his newly married wife, Louisa Wortley, and his father, and on their return they found themselves, as we shall see, prisoners. Macpherson had in 1785 been Governor-General of India. Sir C. Morgan became Judge-Advocate. Lord Morpeth became Earl of Carlisle and father of the distinguished statesman. Nicholl, a frequent speaker and a strenuous opponent of the war with France, had visited that country in 1788–1789 and had made the acquaintance of the Abbé Raynal and other economists. Paget, afterwards Sir Edward Paget, son of the Earl of Uxbridge, was destined, as we shall find, to pay a second and involuntary visit. He had already served in Flanders, Minorca, and Egypt. He had been one of the hostages given to the French at Cairo till they embarked in July 1801. He afterwards served in Sicily and the Peninsula and was Governor of Ceylon. Parnell was the great-uncle of the Home Rule leader. He became Secretary for War, Paymaster-General, and Treasurer of the Navy, and in 1841 was created Lord Congleton. Lord Henry Petty, Chancellor of the Exchequer at the age of twenty-five, and Pitt’s successor in the representation of Cambridge University (where he defeated Lord Palmerston), became on his brother’s death in 1809 Marquis of Lansdowne. After filling various high offices he survived till 1863 to the age of eighty, the Nestor of the House of Lords. Pollen, the accomplished son of a Surrey clergyman, had by one vote defeated the Duke of Norfolk’s nominee at Leominster. He afterwards raised a corps of Fencibles, whom he accompanied to Nova Scotia. On his way home in 1808, after several years’ travel in Russia and other countries, he was wrecked and drowned off Memel at the age of thirty-two. His wife applied for permission to return home through France, but the favourable answer being delayed, she embarked at Königsberg for England.[46] St. John, as we have seen, was the companion of Fox, and afterwards succeeded to a peerage. Scott was the elder son of Lord Chancellor Eldon, but predeceased his father, leaving a son to succeed to the title.

John Spencer Smith, page in his youth to Queen Charlotte, was a diplomatist. He was asked by Napoleon whether he was not Sidney Smith’s brother, and Napoleon, on being answered in the affirmative, rejoined, ‘He is a good fellow and a good officer.’ Spencer Smith had been _chargé d’affaires_ at Constantinople from 1796 to 1799, and there was a legend of his having married a rich Turkish widow. The truth is, his wife was daughter of the Austrian Baron Ratzbael. While staying at Venice for her health with her two sons in 1806, she was arrested as an alleged spy, and was to have been sent on to Valenciennes, but at Brescia, through the Marquis di Salvo, a friendly Sicilian, she escaped by a ladder from the window and made her way first to Austria and Russia, and ultimately to England.[47] Napoleon had at the same time tried to arrest her husband, then Ambassador at Würtemberg, but burning his papers he fled in time. Occupying himself with archæology, Smith ultimately settled at Caen, where he died.

William Smith interests us as the grandfather of Miss Florence Nightingale, and also of George Eliot’s friend, Barbara Smith, Madame Bodichon, whose husband introduced the eucalyptus into Algeria. He is said to have been the only English Nonconformist in the Parliament of 1802, and his name was given to an Act of 1819, which relieved Unitarians from speaking of the Trinity in the marriage-service responses. Lord Hardwicke’s Act of 1752, while repressing irregular marriages, had inflicted a grievance on Dissenters by requiring all marriages except those of Quakers and Jews to be solemnised in churches. Smith, in 1822, tried to follow up his success of 1819 by introducing civil marriage, but his bill, though passing through the Commons, was shelved in the Lords, so that it was not till 1836 that Lord John Russell revived and carried it. A London merchant, Smith had sat for Sudbury and Camelford. On his standing in 1802 for Norwich, where Dissenters were and still are numerous, Thomas Grenville, foreseeing that he would oust Windham, directed his brother the Duke of Buckingham to return Windham for St. Mawes. ‘Smith,’ said Grenville, ‘was cooping up voters in barns and houses, where they are kept drunk till the day of poll; and in short, trying all the means of mischief that his fertile talents can supply in the mysteries of electioneering.’[48] Smith, who was much respected, sat for Norwich till his death in 1835, and was succeeded by his son, Benjamin Smith.

Sturt, member for Bridport since 1784, was bred to the sea, but came unexpectedly into possession of the family estate in Dorsetshire. He retained, however, his liking for the water, had a narrow escape in a cutter race, and in 1800 was awarded the Humane Society’s medal for rescuing a man from drowning. He now went to stay at Havre. In 1801 he had obtained £100 damages from the Marquis of Blandford, son of the Duke of Marlborough, for the seduction of his wife, Lady Mary Anne Ashley, daughter of the Earl of Shaftesbury, whom he had married in 1788. The damages were small because Sturt himself had had an intrigue with Madame Krumholz, a famous harpist. Sturt’s sister, and he himself doubtless, had known Madame Dubarry on her visit to London in search of her stolen jewels. His nephew and namesake was an eminent Australian explorer. His grandson was in 1876 created Lord Alington.

The brothers Thellusson were sons of the Swiss merchant Pierre Thellusson, who settled in England, married in 1761 Anne Woodford of Southampton, and died in 1797, leaving a strange will, by which two-thirds of his property was to accumulate until the death of his nine then living descendants for the benefit of the eldest male descendant of his three sons. The sons disputed the will, but it was pronounced valid, though an Act of 1800 prevented any similar eccentricities. The testator’s object, moreover, deservedly failed, for the litigation of 1856–1859 on the construction of the will devoured a large portion of the inheritance, which meanwhile had not inordinately increased. In visiting Paris the Thellussons may have hoped to recover money due to their father, for he had been French Consul in London, and was denounced by John Oswald at the Jacobin Club on the 30th September 1792, on the authority of Paine and Frost, as a vilifier of the Revolution and a friend of Pitt. Thellusson, Oswald alleged, had refused to forward consignments of arms to France. If we are to believe a scurrilous pamphlet by Rutledge, Necker, who was originally clerk to Thellusson’s brother George in Paris, made the acquaintance of his future wife, Suzanne Curchod, through her being governess to the children of the Thellussons’ sister, Madame de Vermeron. Fournier[49] suggests that the testator’s object was not for the money to accumulate, but to meet the possible claims of descendants of guillotined Frenchmen who had intrusted funds to him; but this is obviously far-fetched. The eldest son, who did not visit Paris, was in 1806 created Lord Rendlesham.

Thompson, if, as seems probable, the same man as the M.P. for Midhurst 1807–1818, was the father of General Thomas Perronet Thompson, M.P., the free-trade orator. Tierney spent the summer and autumn of 1802 at Boulogne, but did not go on to Paris. One would have expected him, however, to search there for traces of his father, who died during the Revolution after thirty years’ residence in that capital. Tyrrwhitt was secretary to the Prince of Wales, and was afterwards Usher of the Black Rod. He was knighted in 1814. Villiers, eventually third Earl of Clarendon, was famous for telling long-winded stories. He was Envoy to Portugal from 1808 to 1810, and was uncle to the diplomatist of our own time. On his honeymoon in 1791, on his way to Rome, he saw the French king and queen dine in public at the Tuileries. Coulson Walhope, son of the Earl of Portsmouth, was on his honeymoon trip, from which, as we shall see, he never returned. Sir Thomas Wallace had previously visited Italy. He subsequently held various public posts, and in 1828 became Lord Wallace. Wyndham was brother of Lord Egremont; his other brother William, ambassador at Florence, had visited Paris in 1791. Lord Yarmouth, son and successor of the Marquis of Hertford, was destined to be depicted in _Vanity Fair_ as Lord Steyne and in _Coningsby_ as Lord Monmouth. He had in 1798 married Maria Fagniani, putative daughter of John Baptist Fagniani. Her paternity was claimed both by George Selwyn and the Marquis of Queensberry, commonly known as ‘Old Q.’ The latter bequeathed his property to Lord and Lady Yarmouth, a codicil which reduced the amount to £250,000 being declared invalid.

Eight of these M.P.’s, Erskine, Fitzpatrick, Francis, Jekyll, St. John, William Smith, Lord R. Spencer, and Thompson had voted with Fox in 1794 for peace with France.

Several ex-M.P.’s may be here mentioned. Passing over Beckford, of whom we shall speak hereafter, there was Philip Champion de Crespigny, King’s Proctor, who sat for Sudbury in 1796. Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh had sat in two Parliaments for Portsmouth. Sir Abraham Hume, an F.R.S., had represented Petersfield from 1774 to 1780. He collected old paintings, fossils, and minerals, and ultimately published a biography of Titian. Sir Elijah Impey, ex-Chief-Justice of Bengal, had sat for New Romney in 1790. He was solicitous of recovering money invested in the French funds, and Madame Grand is said to have welcomed his arrival as likely to facilitate proof of the divorce required for her marriage to Talleyrand, for Impey had tried Grand’s suit against her. Sir John Ingilby was elected for East Retford in 1781. Temple Luttrell, who sat for Melbourne Port from 1774 to 1780, was son of Lord Irnham and brother to the Earl of Carhampton. His sister Anne, widow of Christopher Horton, had married the Duke of Cumberland, so that when Luttrell was arrested at Boulogne in 1793 he was styled George III.’s brother-in-law. In 1789, as a member of the Jamaica Council, he drew up a remonstrance to Parliament against the suppression of the slave-trade. He had shown more enlightenment in the House of Commons in advocating conciliation to the American colonies and in predicting their indomitable resistance. Matthew Montagu, nephew and heir of the great society leader Elizabeth Montagu (_née_ Robinson), to whose gatherings the term blue-stocking was first applied, had sat in Parliament from 1786 to 1790 and was destined to re-enter it in 1806. In 1820 he succeeded his brother as Lord Rokeby. Richard Oliver had in 1790 represented the County Limerick, for which his son now sat; we shall hear of him again. William Maule Ramsay, younger son of the Earl of Dalhousie, regained his seat in Parliament in 1805. In 1831 he was created Lord Panmure, and afterwards succeeded his cousin in the title of Lord Dalhousie. We shall hear of him, too, again. Henry Seymour, a kinsman of the Duke of Somerset, had been the penultimate lover of Madame Dubarry.[50] He arrived with his daughter Georgina, widow of Comte de Durfort, as early as the 1st November 1801, but did not think it necessary or feasible, it seems, to claim the restitution of his private papers, confiscated on his flight in 1792. Even if he had claimed them he would have missed a bundle of Madame Dubarry’s love-letters, which had somehow been abstracted, and was discovered many years afterwards in a Paris bookstall. Possibly having been registered as an _émigré_, as though a foreigner could logically be so treated, he feared that to claim his papers might have entailed a denial of his right to revisit France. His French wife, whom he had dismissed on good grounds, was probably the ‘Lady’ Seymour who in 1806 was living on a handsome income at Cleves. Sir Robert Smyth, who had been unseated at Cardigan in 1775, but had sat for Colchester in 1785–1790, had, like Luttrell, suffered imprisonment in Paris during the Revolution, but through Paine, with whom his wife corresponded while he was in prison, had in 1796 obtained a passport for Hamburg. He now returned to Paris to open a bank, but making a journey back to London he suddenly died there in April 1802.

Prospective M.P.’s may here be mentioned. There was Lord Althorp, who, just of age, was sent by his father Earl Spencer, the great bibliophile, to France and Italy in order to cease running into debt and to acquire polish; but he refused to go into Continental society, was bored by pictures, and came home as unmannerly as ever, without having even learned French. He nevertheless developed into a prominent Whig statesman, and was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Grey Cabinet. His accession to the Upper House in 1835 gave William IV. a pretext for dismissing the ministry. He then retired into private life. Alexander Baring, son of Sir Francis and afterwards Lord Ashburton, sat in the House of Commons from 1806 to 1835, was President of the Board of Trade in 1834, and in 1842 negotiated the Maine Boundary Treaty with America. A Mr. Benyon was probably Benjamin Benyon, M.P. for Stafford in 1819. Lord Blayney, who in 1806 was returned for Old Sarum, was shortly destined to revisit France against his will. Sir Charles Burrell, another visitor, was elected in the same year for Shoreham. Arthur Harrington Champernowne, elected for Saltash in 1806, was a friend of Samuel Rogers. Cæsar Colclough, who, imprisoned in 1793–1794,[51] had apparently remained in France, became in 1818 M.P. for Wexford. William Congreve, the inventor of the rocket bearing his name, became in 1812 member for Gatton, and in 1814 succeeded to his father’s baronetcy. Sir Arthur Chichester sat for Carrickfergus in 1812. General Sir Charles Grogan Craufurd, son of Sir Alexander and nephew of Quintin Craufurd, translated Tieck’s _History of the Seven Years’ War_, and in 1800 had married the Dowager-Duchess of Newcastle. Sent as Commissioner to the Austrian army, he was wounded, and resigned his post in favour of his brother Robert, M.P. for East Retford in 1806. He died in 1821.

Lord Duncannon, who in 1844 succeeded his father as Earl of Bessborough, but in 1802 was only just of age, supported Catholic Emancipation, introduced O’Connell to the House of Commons when he refused to take the oath, and helped to frame the Reform Bill. In 1831 he was Commissioner of Woods and Forests; in 1834 he was called up to the Lords, and from 1846 till his death in 1848 he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Robert Ferguson of Raith was a Scottish member in 1806–1807 and again in 1831–1841. Of him we shall hear, not to his credit. Hudson Gurney, a Norwich banker, of a famous Quaker family, had an uncle Bartlett Gurney, F.S.A., who in 1796 all but defeated Windham at Norwich. Bartlett had turned Unitarian, but in 1803 was buried with the Quakers. Hudson also renounced Quakerism, or rather Quakerism renounced him, on account of his contributing to the war patriotic fund of 1804, yet friendly relations were afterwards revived. He sat in six parliaments, and died in 1864 at the age of eighty-nine. I remember seeing him as a corpulent old man, who had to be lifted in and out of his carriage.

William Haldimand, son of a Swiss merchant settled in London, was so precocious a financier that at twenty-five years of age--seven years after his Paris visit--he became a director of the Bank of England. His brother, who accompanied him, apparently died young. William represented Ipswich from 1820 to 1826. He was munificent in his gifts to charities and to the Greek war of liberation. In 1828 he retired to Lausanne, and on his death in 1862 bequeathed most of his property to a blind asylum there. His sister was Mrs. Marcet, the friend of Sydney Smith, and well known as a populariser of science and political economy. Hugh Hamersley, M.P. for Helston in 1812, will come under another category. Richard Heber, elder brother of the bishop, and a great book-collector, was member for Oxford University from 1821 to 1826. Sir Thomas Liddell, elected for Durham in 1806, became Lord Ravensworth and father of a Dean of Christchurch. James Mackintosh, who in 1813, on his return from Bombay, where he had been recorder, was elected for Nairn, and retained the seat till his death in 1832, was the author of the famous answer to Burke. Napoleon, unaware that he had since ‘abhorred, abjured, and for ever renounced the French Revolution, the greatest scourge of the world, and the chief stain upon human annals,’ complimented Mackintosh on his pamphlet,--or rather intended to have done so--for the order of presentations having been altered he addressed the compliment to some other Englishman. Shortly after his return Mackintosh defended Peltier, prosecuted for libelling Napoleon. Viscount Maitland, afterwards Earl of Lauderdale, was returned for Camelford in 1806. William (afterwards Sir William) Oglander sat for Bodmin. Viscount Ossulston sat for Berwick in 1820. Samuel Romilly, who in 1806 became Solicitor-General and M.P. for Queensborough, was the great advocate of the mitigation of the penal code, so as to limit capital punishment to cases of murder. He had seen Paris in August 1789. Sir William Rowley represented Suffolk in 1812, Sir Thomas Turton, Southwark in 1810–1820, and Sir Walter Stirling, St. Ives in 1807. William Young, whose father wrote a history of Athens, sat for St. Mawes and became Governor of Tobago.

There was a perfect swarm of peers and peers’ sons;[52] the elderly or middle-aged anxious to see how Paris looked after the Revolution, the younger eager to make acquaintance with it. Some, moreover, were on their way to Italy, for Lemaitre found at Naples, in February 1803, Lords Aberdeen, Mount Cashell, Grantham, Althorp, Brooke, and Beverley, besides Sir Charles Douglas, Sir Thomas Tancred, and the Cheshire Egertons, with Lady Hester Stanhope in their charge. The Dowager-Duchess of Cumberland, whose marriage led to the Royal Marriage Act, a widow since 1790, was also on her way to Nice, but stayed a month in Paris for medical advice. According to the _Times_ she paid a hundred guineas a month for second-rate apartments, and not having been presented at the Court of St. James’s was not received by Madame Bonaparte, although previously to the Revolution she had been treated at Metz as a royal personage.

The Duke of Bedford interests us chiefly as the father of Lord John Russell, then a boy of eleven, who was left behind with his two brothers at school. The Duke was not a stranger to France. In March 1788 he and his wife, the latter on the verge of her confinement, were staying at Montpellier and waiting for that event. Her father, Viscount Torrington, who was apparently living in Paris, wrote to Louis XVI.’s Minister of the Household to ask what should be done to certify the expected birth. This was of some importance, for the traveller’s elder brother was unlikely to marry. The Minister advised him to call in two local notaries, adding that it might be well to get a certificate also from the British Embassy at Paris.[53] The child was born on the 13th May, and became heir to the Duke of Bedford, for his father had in March 1802 succeeded his brother, who bequeathed £5000 to Fox. He had learned French when a youth at Orleans, together with the Duke of Cleveland, and the Duke of Dorset then took them both to Versailles, where Marie Antoinette played billiards with them. Both went on to Rome where they went to Cardinal York’s weekly receptions. Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh was now his travelling companion. The Duke’s arrival on the 20th April 1803 was considered a sign of the duration of peace, but he apparently went over to fetch the Duchess of Gordon and her daughter Lady Georgina, whom he, a widower since October 1801, took for his second wife five weeks after his return. Georgina had been engaged to his deceased brother, who left her a lock of his hair, and her mother made her go into mourning for him, saying, ‘It is a feather in a girl’s cap to have been intended for the Duke of Bedford.’[54] The Duchess was reported to have said that she hoped to see Napoleon breakfast in Ireland, dine in London, and sup at Gordon Castle, but this is a manifest invention. There may be more truth in the story that she obtained recruits in 1794 for her son’s Highland regiment (now the 2nd Gordon Highlanders) by placing a shilling between her lips to be kissed by them, yet this seems a variation of the Duchess of Devonshire’s kiss to a Westminster elector. She died in 1812. As for her daughter Georgina, who had an illness in Paris, she was a great dancer, and frequently danced, as Napoleon told Lord Ebrington at Elba in 1814, with his step-son Eugène Beauharnais. The _Times_, indeed, insinuated that she set her cap at the step-father himself. ‘It is certain,’ said that journal on the 12th January 1803,

‘that some of our travelling Nudes of Fashion intended to
conquer the Conqueror of the Continent. What glory would it
have brought to this Country, if it could have boasted of
giving a Mistress, or a Wife, to the First CONSUL. How
pretty would sound Lady G---- (we mean Lady GODIVA)
BONAPARTE?’

Wraxall’s story that the Duchess wanted to wed her daughter to Eugène is confirmed by Maurice Dupin, George Sand’s father, who met them at a dinner-party, and wrote to his mother that they were in love with each other, but that Napoleon would not listen to the match. Georgina, he added, was reputed a beauty, but like Eugène lacked a good mouth and teeth.[55]

The Duke of Newcastle, afterwards famous for justifying the eviction at Newark of forty tenants who refused to vote for his nominee by saying, ‘May I not do what I will with my own?’ was destined to give Gladstone his first seat in the House of Commons; which Gladstone, however, resigned in 1846 on joining Peel in free-trade. The Duke was yet only a youth of seventeen, in charge of his step-father Sir Charles Craufurd, who has been already mentioned. The Duke of Somerset deserves notice only as the father of the Duke of our time, who was first Lord of the Admiralty and an agnostic writer.

The Marchioness of Donegal was accompanied by her sisters Mary and Philippa Godfrey, friends of Thomas Moore. The Marquis and Marchioness of Tweeddale (she was daughter of Lord Lauderdale) took with them their young son, Lord James Hay.

Of the Earls, Aberdeen--Byron’s ‘travelled thane, Athenian Aberdeen’--was the future Prime Minister of 1852. His six weeks in Paris were said to have cost him £3000. Lady Bessborough had been at school at Versailles before the Revolution, and had been noticed by Marie Antoinette. Beverley, a son of the Duke of Northumberland, had been created a peer in 1790. He had distinguished himself by his courage during the riots of 1780, and we have already heard of his son. Cadogan had divorced his wife in 1796, so that she travelled by herself. Camelford had refused to illuminate for the peace, and his house had consequently been sacked. He pretended in 1801 to be an American named Rushworth, but was arrested, and after some days expelled. In March 1803 he again landed at Calais, but was discovered and apprehended, for he was said to have boasted in London that he would kill Bonaparte. He wrote, however, from the Temple prison an abject letter to Napoleon, pleading that his mother would die if she heard of his arrest. He also threw out of the window a letter to Lord Grenville, which the picker-up was requested to forward, but it was intercepted. He was sent to Boulogne and shipped to England.[56] Jackson was afraid of his committing suicide, so that he must have shown symptoms of the mental derangement which led in 1804 to a fatal duel with Captain Best. He was reputed to be the best shot in England. Carhampton had in 1796 been commander-in-chief in Ireland. It was reported that incensed at having, in company with other English, to wait three hours in an anteroom without chairs, before being received by Talleyrand, he went next day to the Tuileries in colonel’s uniform without epaulettes. Bonaparte asked him therefore whether he was a militia officer. ‘No,’ he proudly replied. ‘Then what is your rank in the army?’ ‘I was Commander-in-Chief when the French army under General Hoche endeavoured to land in Ireland.’[57] It was scarcely fair of Carhampton thus to retaliate on Napoleon for Talleyrand’s discourtesy.

Cavan had just returned from Egypt, where he had commanded a division under Abercromby. The Cholmondeleys had been in Paris in 1791, their son and heir being born there. We shall hear presently of their equipages. The Countess (afterwards Marchioness) Conyngham is notorious for her _liaison_ with George IV. Egremont was long a prominent figure in London society, but is more deserving of notice as one of the earliest patrons of Turner the artist. Elgin, of marble fame, was on his way home from the Constantinople embassy. We shall have to speak hereafter of his wife and her paramour Ferguson. Fife, afterwards a distinguished general in the Peninsular War, wounded at Talavera and Cadiz, was great-uncle of the present Duke of Fife. Fitzwilliam had in 1794 been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, where his three months’ rule was looked back to with regret. Lady Granard, sister of the Earl of Moira, on her honeymoon in 1780 had seen Cardinal York, and had also witnessed a review by Frederic II. Guilford was the son of the Lord North who lost us our American colonies. He stayed seven months, and would have remained longer but for the rupture.

Lady Kenmare (Mary, daughter of Michael Aylmer) was known for her Sunday evening receptions in London, and for a romantic story of her husband’s attachment to her before his first wife’s death, or even before his first marriage. A Gerald Aylmer, who also visited Paris, was probably her kinsman. The Countess of Kingston, who must not be confused with the Duchess of Kingston, the notorious bigamist, was accompanied by two unmarried daughters, probably also by her other daughter, Lady Mount Cashell. One of these daughters had in 1798 been the occasion of a duel in which her brother shot his adversary. Lady Lanesborough, daughter of the Earl of Belvedere, had, as we shall see, found a second and plebeian husband. Lauderdale had witnessed and sympathised with the Revolution, Dr. (father of Sir John) Moore then accompanying him as physician. His Whig opinions had made him lose his seat as a Scottish representative peer in the House of Lords, and his anxiety for the maintenance of peace made Whitworth shut his door to him as one of ‘our rascally countrymen.’[58] His son, moreover, a youth of eighteen, styled himself ‘citizen’ Maitland.[59] Minto, the Gilbert Elliot who, ward of David Hume, was at school with Mirabeau, and was consequently sent over in 1790 to bribe him into keeping France neutral in our threatened quarrel with Spain over Nootka Sound, had been Governor of Corsica. He was one of the earliest visitors, was on his way home from the Vienna Embassy, and was destined to be Viceroy of India. Mount Edgecumbe was an amateur actor and musical composer. His wife,[60] with their young daughter Emma Sophia, afterwards Countess Brownlow and writer of _Reminiscences of a Septuagenarian_, had previously been to Spa, where she met the Duchess of Gordon, the Conynghams, the Bradfords, Charles and Lady Charlotte Greville, and Dudley and Lady Susan Ryder. She had a serious illness in Paris. Lord Oxford had a great admiration for Napoleon and also for Murat. His wife, who required change of climate, was very handsome, though not rivalling Madame Tallien. Pembroke was the father of Sidney Herbert, the statesman of our time, and in 1806 was Ambassador at Vienna. He stayed three months, and being an excellent observer and a patient listener, his account of Paris was eagerly sought for. Shaftesbury, uncle of the philanthropist of our day, took his wife, a daughter of Sir John Webb, and their daughter. Winchilsea was the father of the fanatical Orangeman who in 1829 fought a duel, on account of Catholic Emancipation, with Wellington, but happily without bloodshed. Viscount Falkland, less fortunate, was killed in a duel in 1809. Viscountess Maynard was the notorious Nancy Parsons whom Lord Maynard had married in 1766, in spite of her antecedents. She had been a widow since 1775, and had been the mistress of the late Duke of Bedford, who, by his will, continued his annuity to her of £2000. Lord Monck, who took over his wife and two daughters, was the grandfather of the Viceroy of Canada. He died shortly after his return, in June 1802. Viscount Strangford was afterwards Ambassador at Lisbon, Stockholm, Constantinople, and St. Petersburg, and translated Camoëns’ _Lusiad_. Moore, Rogers, and Croker were among his friends.

We now come to the lowest grade of the peerage. Barrington, leaving a wife behind, but taking a mistress with him, probably went, from what we afterwards hear, to escape his English creditors; but we shall find that he got into debt in France. Blayney has been already mentioned among prospective M.P.’s, for, being an Irish peer like Palmerston, he was eligible for the Lower House. Cahir, who crossed over as early as June 1801, was afterwards created Earl of Glengall; he remained till April 1802. Invitations to Madame Bonaparte’s receptions were commonly obtained through his wife’s good offices. Lady Carington was the wife of one of Pitt’s banker peers. There was a rumour that Pitt intended to marry her eldest daughter. It was her grandson who, in 1872, having horsewhipped Grenville Murray on the steps of the Reform Club on account of a scurrilous article on his family in _Broad Arrow_, was convicted of assault at Clerkenwell sessions, but was simply bound over to keep the peace. Murray shortly afterwards became an outlaw. Cloncurry in 1859 published his reminiscences. He was accompanied by his three sisters, of whom more anon. He dined with Napoleon, and made acquaintance with Kosciusko, Helen Williams, and Madame Récamier. He invited the two Emmets to dinner the day before Robert’s return to Ireland, from which he could not be dissuaded. Cloncurry in the winter of 1802 proceeded to Italy, where he presented a telescope to Cardinal York, who gave him one of his medals, and he returned home after the rupture by way of Germany.[61] Lady Crofton, widow of Sir Thomas Crofton, was a baroness in her own right. Her daughter Frances accompanied her. Grantham, who was on his way to Italy, in 1833 succeeded his aunt in the De Grey earldom. He was first Lord of the Admiralty in 1834–1835, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1841–1844, was a collector of sculptures, was President of the Institution of British Architects, and published _Characteristics of the Duke of Wellington_. He was uncle of the present Marquis of Ripon, ex-Viceroy of India. Holland, who had seen Paris in 1791, protested in 1815 against Napoleon’s captivity at St. Helena, and Lady Holland, the divorced wife of Sir Godfrey Webster, forwarded the prisoner books, in gratitude for which kindness Napoleon sent her an antique diamond presented to him by the Pope. Lady Holland’s receptions were afterwards famous. Hutchinson had succeeded Sir Ralph Abercromby in Egypt. On his brother’s death he became Earl of Donoughmore. In the autumn of 1789 he had applied at Paris for an escort to go and rejoin his family near Amiens, disturbances having broken out there, but was told that order had been restored. He was Lafayette’s aide-de-camp from 1789 to 1792. Northwick was an art connoisseur. Stawell was Surveyor of Customs for the Port of London.

Of the eldest sons or other successors of peers, Eardley deserves notice on account of the history of his family. Sampson Gideon, a Portuguese Jew, made a fortune in London, and as a reward for financial services obtained a baronetcy, not for himself, for a Jew was then deemed ineligible, but for his son, then at Eton, at the age of fifteen. That son, Sampson the second, was brought up a Christian by his English mother, and was nicknamed ‘Mr. Pitt’s Jew.’ In 1789 he was made an Irish peer as Lord Eardley, a title explained by his having married, in 1766, Maria, the daughter of Sir John Eardley Wilmot, Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas. He was elected first for Coventry and afterwards for Wallingford, but retired in 1802. He had two sons, Sampson and William; the former was the visitor to Paris, but both died before their father, with whom the peerage expired in 1824. His three daughters married Lord Say and Sele, Sir Culling Smith, M.P., and Colonel Childers. Childers, the well-known member of the Gladstone Cabinet, was doubly descended from Pitt’s Jew, for his father was an Eardley Childers, and his mother a Culling Smith. Colonel Molesworth was drowned with his wife on his way to the Cape in 1815.

The younger sons of peers comprised Arthur Annesley (son of Viscount Annesley), Lord William Bentinck, afterwards Viceroy of India (Duke of Portland), William Brodrick (Viscount Midleton), Lord John Campbell (Duke of Argyll), Lord George Cavendish (Duke of Devonshire), Robert Clifford (Lord Clifford), Colonel Robert Clive (Lord Clive), Edward Spencer Cowper (Earl Cowper), Keppel Craven (Lord Craven), Francis Cust (Earl Brownlow), Henry Dillon (Viscount Dillon), Lord Robert Stephen Fitzgerald (Duke of Leinster), Lord Archibald Hamilton (Duke of Hamilton), William Hill (Lord Berwick), John King (Lord King), George Knox (Lord Northland), Lord Frederic Montagu (Duke of Manchester), Augustus John Francis Moreton (Earl of Ducie), Arthur Paget (Lord Uxbridge), Henry Pierrepont (Viscount Newark), Lord Arthur Somerset (Duke of Beaufort), John Talbot (Baroness Talbot de Malahide), and John Trevor (Viscount Hampden). Charles James Fox, Edward Paget, General Fitzpatrick, Lord Robert Spencer, and Charles Wyndham, have been already mentioned as M.P.’s.

There were also several daughters of peers. Lady Elizabeth Foster, widow of John Thomas Foster, M.P., was daughter of the Earl of Bristol, and there were strange stories of her relations with the Duke of Devonshire. According to the generally accepted version[62] the Duchess, famous in election annals, was forced by her parents, at sixteen years of age, to marry the Duke, though she was in love with the Duke of Hamilton, who killed himself in despair. She refused, however, to allow him the rights of a husband, and Lady Elizabeth Foster, living harmoniously with them, had several children by the Duke, who were brought up under an assumed name. In 1789, however, the Duchess losing £100,000 at play at Spa, the Duke went over and paid her debts on condition of consummating the marriage. The result was the birth of a son and heir at Paris in January 1790. The Duchess died in 1806, and three years afterwards Lady Elizabeth agreed to marry the widower. Gainsborough painted her as Lady Foster in the picture mysteriously stolen in London in 1875 and recovered in America in 1900. She was now accompanied to Paris by her legitimate son, Augustus John Foster, who was just of age. In 1811 he was sent as Envoy to Washington, in 1814 to Copenhagen, and in 1824 to Turin. In 1831 he received a baronetcy. Lady Isabel Style, daughter of Lord Powerscourt, and widow since 1774 of Sir Charles Style, had been a prisoner in France in 1793, and now revisited France. Lady Anne Saltmarsh was daughter of the Earl of Fingall. Lady Hester Stanhope, daughter of Earl Stanhope, who was not yet her uncle Pitt’s housekeeper, was, to avoid a stepmother, travelling with the Egertons, probably Sir Peter Warburton Egerton.

There was also Lady Mary Whaley, _née_ Lawless, the widow since 1800 of an Irish M.P., nicknamed Jerusalem Whaley, for, having said in joke that he was going to Jerusalem, he won a bet (of £15,000 it is said) that he would really go thither. At sixteen years of age this Thomas Whaley, inheriting £15,000 from his father, was sent to Paris with a ‘bear-leader’ to learn French. He there bought a town and country house, kept a pack of hounds, entertained company, and gambled, losing £14,000 at a sitting. He returned to Ireland, compounded with his creditors, and squandered the Jerusalem bet money. He revisited Paris in 1791, and witnessed the King’s return from Varennes. He became a cripple for life by jumping from a drawing-room window on to the roof of a passing hackney-coach, or, as we should now say, cab.[63] He gambled at Newmarket, Brighton, and London, and eventually settled in the Isle of Man, where he brought up an illegitimate family.[64] He married, in January 1800, Lady Mary Catherine Lawless, daughter of Lord Cloncurry, but died in the following November. His widow lived till 1831. She was accompanied by her sister, Lady Valentia Lawless, who afterwards married Sir Francis Burton, Lord Conyngham’s half-brother, and by Lady Charlotte, who became Lady Dunsany. There was likewise a Lady Giffard, probably Lady Charlotte Courtenay, daughter of the Earl of Devon, who in 1788 had married Thomas Giffard of Chillington, Staffordshire. Lady Charlotte Greville, _née_ Charlotte Bentinck, daughter of the Duke of Portland, was there with her husband Charles Greville, father of the diarist. Miss Caroline Vernon, maid of honour to the Queen, was a daughter of Lord Vernon and died in 1815. Lady Catherine Beauclerk was daughter of the Duke of St Albans.

The baronets included, besides several already mentioned, William Call, John Chichester, Simon Clark, John Coghill, William Cooper, James Craufurd, Herbert Croft, Thomas Clavering, Michael Cromie, George Dallas, James De Bathe, Beaumont Dixie, N. Dukinfield, Alexander Grant, John Honywood, John Hope, John Ingilby, William James, Richard Jodrell, Thomas Lavie, John Morshead, George Prescott, George Shipley, Charles Talbot, Thomas Tancred, Grenville Temple, Henry Tichborne, Thomas Webb, Robert John Wilmot, and Charles Wolseley.

Some of these will be mentioned hereafter. At present we need speak only of Sir Charles Wolseley, who, like Sir Francis Burdett, boxed the political compass. He witnessed, and apparently took part in, the capture of the Bastille. In 1819 the Birmingham Radicals nominated him their so-called ‘legislatorial attorney,’ and in the following year he was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment for a seditious speech at Stockport. He ultimately gave up political life, embraced Catholicism in 1837, and died in 1846.

Then there were also sons of baronets: William Abdy, who succeeded to the title in July 1803, Ashby Apreece, who predeceased his father in 1807, Alexander Don, Charles Jerningham, Raymond Pelly, John Wombwell, formerly a merchant at Alicante, Ralph Woodford, afterwards Governor of Bermuda, John Broughton, and William Oglander, who, already mentioned, succeeded to the title in 1806, while there were two future baronets, Thomas Hare and Charles Cockerell.

Next to legislators and aristocrats, military men were the most numerous class of visitors. Some passed through Paris on their way home from Egypt, which had just been evacuated, and others were actuated not so much by curiosity or love of dissipation as by professional duty, for they did not know how soon they might not have to encounter Bonaparte’s legions. Of this swarm of visitors I can only mention a few. There were the two sons of Sir Ralph Abercromby, who had been killed at Alexandria. The elder was General George already mentioned, who, eventually succeeding his mother in the peerage, became Lord Abercromby. The younger, Colonel Sir John, served with distinction, but died at forty-four years of age without reaching the highest grade. Sir Charles Ashworth became a general. Captain Benjamin Bathurst, son of the Bishop of Norwich, then eighteen years of age, was the diplomatist who in 1809 mysteriously disappeared on returning from a mission to Vienna. Napoleon was accused of having him murdered, but the probability is that he was killed for the sake of his valuables by the ostler of a German inn who was afterwards unaccountably affluent. His daughter Rose, at the age of seventeen, was drowned at Rome in 1824 by her horse slipping backwards into the Tiber, and his brother in a race at Rome was killed by a fall from his horse. Three disasters in one family.

William Bosville, commonly styled Colonel, though he had only been a lieutenant in the Guards, must be ranked with soldiers for want of any other suitable category, though he was more wit than soldier. He had, however, served in the American War. He dined every Sunday with Horne Tooke, and, as we have seen, accompanied Sir F. Burdett, whose election he had zealously promoted. He dressed like a courtier of George II.’s time. He visited Cobbett in prison and presented him with £1000. Paine, on reaching the United States, sent a message to ‘my good friend Bosville.’ Francis Burke, who had been in the Franco-Irish brigade, became a British general.

General James Callender had served in the Seven Years’ War and had been Secretary to the Paris Embassy under the Duke of Dorset, who, on his recall in October 1789, deputed him to wind up his accounts. He had more recently been Inspector-General at Naples, and had been sent by Nelson to the Ionian Islands, where he remained till the peace. While in Paris he made the acquaintance of a Madame Sassen, a German, and on being detained he sent her to Scotland with a power of attorney, styling her his beloved wife, to see after his affairs. When released, however, he denied having married her, and the Court of Session declared the marriage not proven, but awarded the lady £300 damages. This latter decision was annulled by the House of Lords, and the lady passed the rest of her life in fruitless litigation. Callender, who married three times, died in 1832 at the age of eighty-seven. The French Police Register describes him, the reason why is not obvious, as a swindler. On succeeding in 1810 to the estates of his cousin, Sir Alexander Campbell, he assumed the baronetcy also, but without right to it.[65] General John Francis Cradock had served in India and in Egypt, was destined to serve in Spain, and in 1819 became Lord Howden. He altered the spelling of his name to Caradoc. His son, aide-de-camp to Wellington in Paris in 1814, and afterwards military _attaché_ at the Paris Embassy, there married in 1830 the widow of the Russian General Bagration, an ex-mistress of Metternich. In July 1830 he was deputed by the Duke of Orleans to follow the fugitive Charles X. and ask him to confide to him his grandson that he might be proclaimed king. Charles was inclined to consent, but the child’s mother, the Duchess of Berri, dissuaded him, not thinking that her boy would be in safe keeping. On Caradoc reporting his failure Louis Philippe accepted the crown.

James Ferrier, brother of Susan the novelist, had figured in the siege of Seringapatam, and was questioned about it by Napoleon, always interested in India, which he thought he should have conquered but for Sir Sidney Smith and Acre. ‘When he speaks,’ Ferrier wrote home to his sister, ‘he has one of the finest expressions possible.’ General Dalrymple had visited Paris in 1791. General Henry Edward Fox was a brother of the great statesman. He was on his way home from Egypt, where he had refused to allow Lord Cavan to ship Cleopatra’s needle.[66] Cavan had dug it out of the sand of centuries and set it upright, but Fox seems to have thought Cavan’s love of antiquities an absurd craze, and the needle consequently had to wait seventy years for transport to England. Afterwards Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, Ambassador at Palermo, and Governor of Portsmouth, Fox was accompanied by his son Stephen, also destined for diplomacy. General George Higginson, who married in 1825 a daughter of Lord Kilmorey, lived till 1866, and his widow reached the age of ninety-eight, surviving till 1890. General Baron Charles Hompesch was a Hanoverian in the English service. Very shortsighted, in 1806 he brushed against a man named Richardson and two ladies in a London street, and a duel ensued, in which his antagonist was wounded. On his death in 1822, at the age of sixty-six, he could boast of having taken part in three sieges, seven pitched battles, and thirteen minor engagements. Robert Lovelace, probably a son of Robert Lovelace of Clapham, was reminded by Napoleon that he bore the name of Richardson’s hero. Napoleon at eighteen had devoured _Clarissa Harlowe_, but at St. Helena he found it unreadable.

General John Money served in America under Burgoyne, and not finding employment at home had fought for the Belgian insurgents in 1788, had joined the French army in 1792, and had witnessed the capture of the Tuileries. The German Œlsner, who met him at Verdun in October 1792, describes him as a thoroughly English Hotspur (_degenkopf_).[67] In 1761, aide-de-camp to General Townshend, he was famed for standing on a horse’s back without a saddle and then leaping with it at full speed over a five-barred gate. Hyde Park was the scene of his feats of horsemanship. He had a perilous balloon ascent in 1785, being nearly drowned in the North Sea. George Monro, probably a son of Sir Harry Monro, M.P., was apparently the Captain George Monro who was sent to Paris in September 1792 to send reports after the suspension of diplomatic relations.[68] He had to pretend to fraternise with the British Jacobins in Paris, but he became suspected and left in January 1793. In 1796 he complained that though promised a handsome provision no fresh post had been conferred on him.[69] General George Morgan, who went on to Nice, had been Commander-in-Chief in India, Sir Hildebrand Oakes, afterwards Governor of Malta, had served in America and Egypt. Captain Charles John O’Hara was doubtless one of the illegitimate sons of the general who should have married Mary Berry, and who was captured by the French at Toulon in 1793. Captain Samuel Owens was an equerry to George III. Major William Norman Ramsay had served in Egypt, was afterwards in the Peninsula, and was killed at Waterloo. Colonel John Rowley, of the Engineers, was an F.R.S. and inspector-general of fortifications. He became a general in 1821, and died in 1824. General Sir Charles Shipley, a distinguished military engineer, became in 1813 Governor of Granada. Colonel Edward Stack, a native of Kerry, had served in the Franco-Irish brigade before the Revolution, had been aide-de-camp to Louis XV., and had accompanied Lafayette to America. He was on board Paul Jones’s _Bonhomme Richard_ when it captured the _Serapis_. He belonged to the orders of St. Louis and Cincinnatus. He joined the _émigrés_ at Coblentz, but afterwards entered the English army, in which he rose during his detention in France to be major-general. He was arrested as a spy in May 1803, but was liberated on parole. If his age is correctly registered as forty-five in 1802, he was seventy-six at his death at Calais in 1833.

Captain Francis Tulloch, of the Artillery, had in singular circumstances made the acquaintance of Chateaubriand. Converted to Catholicism in London in 1790 by the Abbé Nagot, he had been induced to resign his commission and to sail with Nagot and three other priests from St. Malo for Baltimore, in order to become a priest and settle in America. Chateaubriand, a fellow-passenger, remonstrated with him, urging that, however ardent a Catholic, he ought not to abandon his family and his profession. The young man seemed to listen to him, but the priests recovered their ascendency, and on reaching port he left with them, not even bidding Chateaubriand farewell. He must, nevertheless, have changed his purpose, for in 1802 he was still in the army, and he eventually married and had seven children, two of whom wedded French noblemen. In 1822 Tulloch renewed acquaintance with Chateaubriand, then Ambassador at London. In 1827 there were family differences among his children, which gave rise to recriminatory pamphlets. Lastly, there was John Alexander Woodford, son of Sir Ralph Woodford (afterwards Governor of Trinidad, Envoy to the Hanse towns, and to Denmark). He was apparently the Colonel Woodford who in 1815 began digging up the bones of the killed at the battle of Agincourt, exciting such a commotion in the district that the French Government asked the Duke of Wellington to stop him.