Chapter VII: Part 7

The Duke took the rebuff in good part, wrote to the Chevalier reiterating his great and enduring devotion to the Jacobite cause, and, journeying with his wife to Paris, in that city at once made overtures to Horace Walpole, the British Ambassador. “I am coming to Paris, to put myself entirely under your Excellency’s protection, and hope that Sir Robert Walpole’s good nature will prompt him to save a family, which his generosity induced him to spare,” he wrote in May 1728. “If your Excellency would permit me to wait upon you for an hour, I am certain you would be convinced of the sincerity of my repentance for my former madness; would become an advocate with his Majesty to grant me his most gracious pardon, which it is my comfort I shall never be required to purchase by any step unworthy of a man of honour. I do not intend, in the case of the king’s allowing me to pass the evening of my days under the shadow of his royal protection, to see England for some years, but shall remain in France or Germany, as my friends shall advise, and enjoy country sports till all former stories are buried in oblivion. I beg of your Excellency to let me receive your orders at Paris, which I will send to your hotel to receive. The Duchess of Wharton, who is with me, desires leave to wait on Mrs Walpole, if you think proper.”

Horace Walpole received him, listened to his assurances of future loyalty, and conveyed his protestations of good behaviour to the Duke of Newcastle, who replied on 12th July:

“Having laid before the King your Excellency’s letter, giving an account of a visit you had received from the Duke of Wharton, and enclosing a copy of a letter he wrote to you afterwards upon the same occasion, I am commanded to let you know that his Majesty approves of what you said to the Duke, and your behaviour towards him; but that the Duke of Wharton has conducted himself in so extraordinary a manner since he left England, and has so openly declared his disaffection to the King and his government, by joining with and serving under his Majesty’s professed enemies, that his Majesty does not think fit to receive any application from him.”

It is unnecessary to give in detail the subsequent actions of the Duke: how, incensed by the King’s refusal, he printed in _Mist’s Journal_ a bitter satirical attack on George II. and his ministers; how he was tried for high treason for having taken up arms against his country, found guilty, outlawed, and deprived of his property; how at the eleventh hour unofficial overtures were made to him from England, which he refused to entertain unless unconditional pardon was granted him; how he stayed awhile in a monastery, a fervent devotee, and after a few weeks returned to the world to plunge into greater excesses; how he publicly proclaimed his attachment to the Pretender and the Catholic religion.

His estates being sequestrated, he was now penniless, and reduced to most miserable straits. “Notwithstanding what my Brother Madman has done to undo himself, and everybody who was so unlucky as to have the least concern with him,” wrote a friend who journeyed with him from Paris to Orleans at the beginning of June 1729, “I could not help being sensibly moved at so extraordinary a vicissitude of fortune, to see a great man fallen from that shining light, in which I have beheld him in the House of Lords, to such a degree of obscurity, that I have observed the meanest commoner decline his company; and the Jew he would sometimes fasten on, grow tired of it; for you know he is but a bad orator in his cups, and of late he has been but seldom sober.” Eventually, after overcoming great difficulties, the Duke arrived in Spain, where he joined his regiment, and endeavoured to live upon his pay of eighteen pistoles a month, and sums of money sent to him by the Pretender. He devoted his leisure to reading and to the composition of a play based on the tragic story of Mary Queen of Scots, and, after an illness of some months, he died on 31st May 1731, at the age of thirty-two, in the shelter of the Franciscan monastery of Poblet.

Such is the story of the life of Philip, Duke of Wharton, which, surely, arouses feelings of pity rather than anger. “Like Buckingham and Rochester,” says Horace Walpole, “he comforted all the grave and dull by throwing away the brightest profusion of parts on witty fooleries, debaucheries, and scrapes, which may mix graces with a great character, but can never compose one.” He had, indeed, genius, wit, humour, eloquence, rank, wealth and good looks, but because he lacked stability and principles, all his great talents went for nothing. Never was there a character more fitted to point a moral, and if the writers of Sunday school prize-books have not taken him as their text, this can only be because they are unacquainted with his history. “The great abilities of the Duke of Wharton are past dispute,” Atterbury wrote to the Pretender, in September 1736; “it is he alone who could render them less useful than they might have been.” And this was kindly put, for Atterbury might well have said that as an adherent to any cause so unreliable and faithless a person was an open danger.

For every man some excuse can be found, but while excuses for the Duke of Wharton there must be, it is, indeed, not easy to find them. His early training may have been unsuitable for a character so mercurial, and the early death of his mother and father probably removed any change of controlling him. That he was mad is a theory practical enough, for this would explain many sudden changes of opinion, and many instances of unfaithfulness, which had not even self-interest to explain them; and it seems certain that he was intoxicated with vanity. This last assumption is supported by the testimony of Pope, who has for all time put on record a character sketch of the Duke, which, in spite of the poet’s bias, must unfortunately be accepted as a portrait all too true:

“Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days,
Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise:
Born with whate’er could win it from the wise,
Women and fools must like him or he dies;
Though wondering senates hung on all he spoke,
The club must hail him master of the joke.
Shall parts so various aim at nothing new?
He’ll shine a Tully and a Wilmot too,
Then turn repentant, and his God adores
With the same spirit that he drinks and w----;
Enough if all around him but admire,
And now the punk applaud, and now the friar.
Thus with each gift of nature and of art,
And wanting nothing but an honest heart;
Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt;
And most contemptible, to shun contempt:
His passion still, to covet general praise,
His life, to forfeit it a thousand ways;
A constant bounty which no friend has made;
An angel tongue, which no man can persuade;
A fool, with more of wit than half mankind,
Too rash for thought, for action too refined:
A tyrant to the wife his heart approves;
A rebel to the very king he loves;
He dies, sad outcast of each church and state,
And, harder still, flagitious, yet not great.
Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule?
’Twas all for fear the knaves should call him fool.”

_Index_

Alvanley, William, Lord, 41, 53–55, 64, 67, 69, 99, 223

Anglesea, Lord, 19, 99

Archer, Lady, 86

Arden, Sir Pepper, 54

Argyll, Duke of, 48

Armitstead, Mrs, (Mrs Charles James Fox), 241, 245

Ashton, Hervey, 48

Atterbury, Francis, Bishop of Rochester, 266, 272, 275, 281

Aubrey, Colonel, 90

Beauclerk, Topham, 89, 226

Beckford, William, of Fonthill, 189–215

Bligh, Robert, 84

Brummell, George Bryan, 48, 55–74, 84, 85, 253

Buckinghamshire, Lady, 86

Burke, Edmund, 230, 231

Carlisle, Lord, 89, 227, 256

Carlisle, Countess of, 240

Carlyle, Dr Alexander, 173, 178

Chatham, Lord, 194, 197, 231

Cholmondeley, Lord, 90

Damer, Colonel Dawson, 48

Dashwood, Sir Francis, 168, 170

Dashwood, Sir C., 175, 176

De Ferretti, Bailli, 91

De Ros, Henry, 48

Devonshire, Duchess of, 240

D’Orsay, Count, 74, 78, 99

Draper, Daniel, 132, 136, 137, 155

Draper, Mrs Elizabeth, 129–157

Drummond, George Harley, 63

Dudley and Ward, Lord, 48, 51

Fife, Lord, 77

Fitzpatrick, General, 89

Foley, Lord, 47

Fox, Charles James, 13, 47, 57, 79, 81, 87, 89, 219–249, 253

Fox, Stephen, 224, 227

Francis, Sir Philip, 86, 87

Garland, Squire, 173

George I., 263, 264, 267

George II., 279

George III., 56, 85, 93, 107, 108, 121, 233, 235, 236, 239

George, Prince of Wales, Regent (afterwards George IV.), 13, 15, 17,
19, 23–25, 34, 47, 51, 55, 56, 58, 59, 62–66, 69–72, 82, 83, 93,
113, 121, 122, 237, 241–243, 248, 249

Gifford, Lord, 49

Gilbert, 173, 175

Gordon, Lady Margaret (Mrs Beckford), 203, 204

Greville, Charles, 54, 72, 80

Gronow, R. H., 56, 59, 74, 82, 92, 97, 223

Hall-Stevenson, John, 161–185

Hall, Colonel George Lawson, 173

Hamilton, Sir William, 202

Hanger, George, 13, 19–33

Hanger, William (“Blue”), 25–28

Henley, Rev. Samuel, 205

Hertford, Lord, 47, 89

Hewett, William, 171, 172, 177

Holland, Lord, 219, 224, 227, 229

Holmes, Martha, Duchess of Wharton, first wife of Philip, Duke of
Wharton, 255, 262, 272

Holt, Lady Jane, 274

Hood, Admiral, 240

Hughes, “Golden Ball,” 76, 77, 97

Irvine, Andrew (“Paddy Andrews”), 173, 176

James, “The Old Pretender,” 256–260, 263, 272–277

James, Mr and Mrs William, 133, 134, 135, 138, 139, 140, 151

Johnson, Dr Samuel, 14, 16, 17

Keene, Sir Benjamin, 273

Knighton, Sir William, 49

Lade, Lady, 17, 18

Lade, Sir John, 13–19, 95

Lascelles, Rev. Robert (“Panty”), 170, 174–176

Lee, Charles, 173

Lettice, Rev. John, 195, 196, 197, 201

Mackinnon, Dan, 48

Marsh, Charles, 25

Mildmay, Sir Henry, 64

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 262, 270

Montrond, Count, 91

Moore, Zachary, 169, 170

Morris, Charles, 80, 81

Mozart, 195

Musgrave, Sir Christopher, 268

Nash, “Beau,” 253

North, Lord, 232, 234, 236

O’Beirne, Maria, Duchess of Wharton, second wife of Philip, Duke of
Wharton, 274

O’Connell, Morgan, 55

Petersham, Lord, 47, 50, 51

Pickering, Mrs Elizabeth, 130, 131, 145

Pierrepoint, Henry, 48, 64

Pitt, William, 95, 195, 197, 221, 222, 230, 243, 244, 247

Pole, Wellesley, 76

Portland, Duke of, 89

“Pringello, Don,” 167, 170, 171

Queensberry, Duchess of, 197

Queensberry, Duke of, 89, 92–96

Raikes, Tom, 26, 67–69, 84

Raynal, Abbé, 139

Redding, Cyrus, 24, 32, 125, 200, 213

Rigby, Right Honourable Charles, 221

Rumbold, Sir Thomas, 79

Saye and Sele, Lord, 223

Sclater, Elizabeth. _See_ Draper, Mrs Elizabeth

Sclater, Richard, Mr and Mrs, 130, 131, 150

Sclater, Thomas Matthew, 131, 139, 142, 143, 145, 148, 156

Scroope, 173, 175

Selwyn, George, 94, 221, 227

Sefton, Lord, 89

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 57, 79, 85, 95, 221, 227

Skeffington, Sir Lumley St George, 13, 33–43, 52, 53

Smollett, Tobias George, 172

Stair, Lord, 257–259

Sterne, Lawrence, 129–157, 161–163, 169, 175, 176, 178–182, 185

Swift, Jonathan, 261, 262

Talbot, Jack, 223

Trotter, Lawson, 163, 164

Upton, General Sir Arthur, 63

Walpole, Horace, 97, 168, 224, 225, 235, 236, 269, 277, 278

Walpole, Sir Robert, 266, 271, 273

Wellington, Duke of, 72

Wharton, Philip, Duke of, 168, 253–282

Wilkes, John, 168

William III., 254, 260

William IV., 73

Wolcot, Dr (“Peter Pindar”), 24, 30, 104–126

Worcester, Lord, 48

Wray, Sir Cecil, 239, 240

Wyatt, James, 206

York, Frederick, Duke of, 24, 49, 54, 63, 77, 84, 113

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH

_IN THE PRESS_

The Linleys of Bath

By CLEMENTINA BLACK

Fully illustrated with many delightful portraits and miniatures, some of which have never before been reproduced.

The volume of memoirs which Miss Clementina Black has prepared deals with a family group, nearly all the members of which were personally interesting, and several of whom were closely connected with the social and theatrical life of the latter half of the 18th century. Thomas Linley, the father, who was a musician of distinction and probably the best singing-master whom England has produced, lived for many years in Bath, where, from their very early years, his children, all endowed with both talent and beauty, sang and played with him at his concerts. The eldest daughter, generally considered to be the finest singer and most beautiful woman of her day, married Sheridan, and when her husband entered upon the management of Drury Lane Theatre, Mr. Linley joined in the undertaking. Both in Bath and in London the family’s circle of friends was an interesting one, and many well-known names appear in the various letters. One series of these, which are now published for the first time, contains the history of the courtship of Miss Jane Linley (who married in the year 1800) and presents a vivid picture of social and family life from the point of view of a young lady in the days of Jane Austen.

As, in addition to writing good letters, the family had a habit of sitting for good portraits, their features have been recorded by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Laurence, Westall and Cosway, and the volume will be amply illustrated.

_PRICE SIXTEEN SHILLINGS NET_

Number Five John Street, Adelphi, London

_SECOND THOUSAND_

People and Questions

_By_ G. S. STREET

_Wide Crown 8vo._ _Five Shillings net_

_OPINIONS OF THE PRESS_

TIMES.--“This captivating book.”

MORNING POST.--“... the fine appreciations of Lord Randolph
Churchill, of Haydon the painter, and of Oscar Wilde. They are all
three brilliant, eloquent, and sympathetic.”

DAILY NEWS.--“Once more we welcome a volume of essays, not topical
in the narrow sense, but always apposite and actual. We welcome,
too, the work of a writer who has a scholarly sense for words, and
allows himself--and us--the luxury of a literary conscience.”

EVENING STANDARD.--“Altogether charming; we should have to mention
some great names to get a comparison with it.”

GLOBE.--“Mr. Street has something to say that is worth saying and
worth reading.”

OBSERVER.--“There is such charm, so fine a substratum of humour and
fancy, rippling through these little pieces.”

OUTLOOK.--“Where all are praiseworthy, it is difficult to
discriminate.”

NATION.--“The present volume gives proof that he has been nourished
in the best traditions of the English Essay.”

WORLD.--“Mr. Street has had the artistic restraint to give us only
his best, with the result that every essay is of the same
excellence.”

BYSTANDER (MR. ROBERT ROSS).--“We are fascinated by Mr. Street’s
inimitable style.”

GRAPHIC (MR. THOMAS SECCOMBE).--“I know of no finer literary bouquet
attainable at the present day than that which may be disengaged
from these select papers.”

ENGLISH REVIEW.--“Of a quality only too rare in these days of
commercial writing.”

Number Five John Street, Adelphi, London

End of Project Gutenberg's Some Eccentrics & a Woman, by Lewis Melville