George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life Part 1

George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life.

by E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue.

PREFACE

IN the histories and memoirs of the eighteenth century the name of George Selwyn often occurs. The letters which he received have afforded frequent and valuable material to the student of the reign of George the Third. A large number of these were published by the late Mr. Jesse in the four volumes ent.i.tled "George Selwyn and his Contemporaries." Except, however, that Selwyn was regarded as the first humourist of his time, little was known about him, for scarcely any letters which he wrote had until recently been found.

But in the Fifteenth Report of the Historical Ma.n.u.script Commission there were printed, amongst a ma.s.s of other material, more than two hundred letters from his untiring pen which had been preserved at Castle Howard. No one who has had an opportunity of examining the originals can fail to recognise the skill and labour with which the Castle Howard correspondence of Selwyn--wanting in most instances the date of the year--was arranged by Mr. Kirk on behalf of the Commission.

A correspondence, however, which ill.u.s.trates vividly phases of an interesting and important period of English history, appeared to be deserving of presentation to the public in a separate volume, and with the explanations necessary to make the allusions in it fully understood.

A selection has therefore, in the following pages, been made from the Castle Howard letters. The aim of the editors has been to choose those which appeared most interesting and representative, and to place them in definite groups, supplementing them with such a narrative, remarks, and notes as would, without enveloping the correspondence in a quant.i.ty of extraneous material, enable the whole to present the life of Selwyn, and at the same time add another to the pictures of the age in which he lived.

The dates of the letters are those ascribed to them by Mr. Kirk.

The frequently incorrect spelling of proper names has not been altered.

The editors desire cordially to thank Lord Carlisle, not only for the permission to publish this correspondence, but for the kind a.s.sistance which he has given in other ways to the undertaking.

E. S. R. H. C.

November, 1899.

CHAPTER 1. GEORGE SELWYN--HIS LIFE, HIS FRIENDS, AND HIS AGE

During the latter half of the eighteenth century no man had more friends in the select society which comprised those who were of the first importance in English politics, fashion, or sport, than George Selwyn. In one particular he was regarded as supreme and unapproachable; he was the humourist of his time. His ban mots were collected and repeated with extraordinary zest. They were enjoyed by Members of Parliament at Westminster, and by fashionable ladies in the drawing-rooms of St. James's. They were told as things not to be forgotten in the letters of hara.s.sed politicians. "You must have heard all the particulars of the Duke of Northumberland's entertainment," wrote Mr. Whateley in 1768 to George Grenville, the most hardworking of ministers; "perhaps you have not heard George Selwyn's bon mot."* But as usually happens when a man becomes known for his humour jokes were fathered on Selwyn, just as half a century later any number of witticisms were attributed to Sydney Smith which he had never uttered. It was truly remarked of Selwyn at the time of his death: "Many good things he did say, there was no doubt, and many he was capable of saying, but the number of good, bad, and indifferent things attributed to him as bon mots for the last thirty years of his life were sufficient to stock a foundling hospital for wit."*

* Grenville Correspondence, vol. 11. p. 372.

* Gentleman's Magazine, 1791, p. 94.

It is therefore not surprising that Selwyn has been handed down to posterity as a wit. It is a dismal reputation. Jokes collected in contemporary memoirs fall flat after a century's keeping; the essential of their success is spontaneity, appropriateness, the appreciation even of their teller, often also a knowledge among those who hear them of the peculiarities of the persons whom they mock. When we read one of them now, we are almost inclined to wonder how such a reputation for humour could be gained. Wit is of the present; preserved for posterity it is as uninteresting as a faded flower, nor can it recall to us memories sunny or sad. But Selwyn was a man who while filling a conspicuous place in the fashionable life of the age was also so intimate with statesmen and politicians, and so thoroughly lives in his correspondence, that in following his life we find ourselves one of that singular society which in the last half of the eighteenth century ruled the British Empire from St. James's Street.

Selwyn's life, though pa.s.sed in a momentous age, was uneventful, but the course of it must be traced.

George Augustus Selwyn, second son of Colonel John Selwyn, of Matson, in Gloucestershire, and of Mary, daughter of General Farrington, of Kent, was born on the 11th of August, 1719. His father, aide-de-camp to Marlborough and a friend of Sir Robert Walpole, was a man of character and ability, well known in the courts of the first and second Georges. Selwyn, however, probably inherited his wit and his enjoyment of society from his mother, who was Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte. Horace Walpole writes of her as "Mrs. Selwyn, mother of the famous George, and herself of much vivacity, and pretty."

Selwyn's elder brother died in 1751, and grief at his loss seems to have hastened the death of his father, which occurred in the same year.

His sister Albinia married Thomas Townshend, second son of Charles Viscount Townshend. By this marriage the families of Selwyn and Walpole were connected.

The home of the family was at Matson, a village two and a half miles south-east of Gloucester, on the spurs of the Cotswold hills, looking over the Severn valley--once called Mattesdone. There is a good deal of obscurity as to the ownership of the manor in mediaeval times, but it appears to have been in the possession of what may popularly speaking be called the family of Mattesdone. The landowner described himself by the place; "Ego Philippus de Mattesdone" are the words of an ancient doc.u.ment preserved among the records of the Monastery of St. Peter at Gloucester.*

* "Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestria,"

edited by W. Hart, vol. i. p. 100.

To come to more recent times, the manor house was built in 1594 by Sir Ambrose Willoughby. From him the estate was purchased in 1597 by Jasper Selwyn, Counsellor at Law, of Stonehouse, who was the fourth in descent from John Selwyn, one of a Suss.e.x family.

In 1751 the direct entail was broken by Colonel Selwyn, and the property was re-entailed on the descendants of his daughter, Mrs.

Townshend, though it was left by will to George Selwyn for his life.

On his death it devolved on Thomas, Lord Sydney, and has since remained in the possession of the Townshend family.** Walpole has given a description of the place in the days when he used to visit it.

** Bigland, "History of Gloucestershire," vol. ii. p. 200.

"I stayed two days at George Selwyn's house, called Matson, which lies on Robin Hood's Hill; it is lofty enough for an Alp, yet it is a mountain of turf to the very top, has wood scattered all over it, springs that long to be cascades in twenty places of it, and from the summit of it beats even Sir George Lyttleton's views, by having the city of Gloucester at its foot, and the Severn widening to the horizon. His house is small, but neat. King Charles lay here at the siege, and the Duke of York, with typical fury, hacked and hewed the window-shutters of his chamber, as a memorandum of his being there.

Here is a good picture of Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in his later age, . . . and here is the very flower pot and counterfeit a.s.sociation for which Bishop Sprat is taken up, and the Duke of Marlborough sent to the Tower. The reservoirs on the hill supply the city. The late Mr. Selwyn governed the borough by them, and I believe by some wine too. . . .

"A little way from the town are the ruins of Lantony Priory; there remains a pretty old gateway, which G. Selwyn has begged to erect on the top of his mountain, and it will have a charming effect."*

* "The Letters of Horace Walpole," vol. ii. p. 354.

Selwyn's schooldays were pa.s.sed at Eton with Gray and Walpole. In 1739 he became an undergraduate of Hertford College, Oxford, or Hart Hall as it was called. It was to Hertford also that later Charles Fox went, "a college which has in our own day been munificently re-endowed as a training school of principles and ideas very different from those ordinarily a.s.sociated with the name of its greatest son." Hertford was in the middle of the eighteenth century a college where the so-called students neither toiled at books nor at physical exercise. They pa.s.sed a short and merry time at the University, fashioned as nearly as might be on the mode of life of a man about town. In 1740 he was appointed to the vague-sounding office of Clerk of the Irons and Surveyor of the Meltings in the Mint, a sinecure which, after the manner of the time, required no personal attention from the holder. Even in those early days Selwyn, who went by the sobriquet of "Bosky," had many friends--not only among college boys, but in London society. "You must judge by what you feel yourself," wrote Walpole to General Conway, the soldier and statesman, on the occasion of a severe illness from which Selwyn suffered in 1741, "of what I feel for Selwyn's recovery, with the addition of what I have suffered from post to post. But as I find the whole town have had the same sentiments about him (though I am sure few so strong as myself), I will not repeat what you have heard so much. I shall write to him to-night, though he knows, without my telling him, how very much I love him. To you, my dear Harry, I am infinitely obliged for the three successive letters you wrote me about him, which gave me double pleasure, as they showed your attention for me at a time that you knew I must be so unhappy, and your friendship for him."* But then came an interval in Selwyn's academic career--if such it may be called--since he was certainly in Paris, much in want of money, at the end of 1742 and the beginning of 1743. It is probable that he had gone down from Oxford for some irregularity; he ultimately was obliged to leave the University for the same reason. For though he re-entered his college in 1744 he only remained there until the following year, when he was sent down for an irreverent jest after dinner, having taken more to drink than was good for him. His friends, especially Sir Charles Hanbury Williams and some in authority at Oxford also, thought that Selwyn was harshly treated. Whether that were so or not this was the end of his University career. It was not a promising beginning of a life, and for some years he was regarded as a good-natured spendthrift. The death of his elder brother and father however in 1751 produced a sense of responsibility, but even before this date he had been endeavouring to regain his father's goodwill. "I don't yet imagine," wrote his friend, Sir William Maynard, shortly before the death of Colonel J. Selwyn, "you are quite established in his good opinion, and if his life is but spared one twelvemonth you may have an opportunity of convincing him you are in earnest in your promises of a more frugal way of life." As too often happens the son had not time in his father's lifetime to regain his good opinion.

Certainly Selwyn made no attempt to give up pleasure, though he was bent on it no doubt with a more frugal mind. He was a man of fashion and of pleasure, having his headquarters in London, paying visits now and again to great country houses as Trentham and Croome. To Bath he went as one goes now to the Riviera. In Paris too he delighted; when in the autumn of 1762 the Duke of Bedford was in France negotiating the treaty which is known in history as the Peace of Paris, it was Selwyn who accompanied the d.u.c.h.ess when she joined her husband. "She sets out the day after to-morrow," wrote Walpole on September 8th, "escorted to add gravity to the Emba.s.sy by George Selwyn." After the treaty was completed on February 10th of the following year, as a memento of his visit the Duke presented Selwyn with the pen with which this unpopular doc.u.ment was signed.* Indeed in those days he was constantly in Paris, much to the regret of his friends at home--"Do come and live among your friends who love and honour you," wrote Gilly Williams to him in the autumn of 1764, but in spite of their wishes he stayed on throughout the winter in the French capital, and when his friend Carlisle went in 1778 to America as a peace commissioner Selwyn tried to console himself for his absence by a stay in Paris. "George is now, I imagine, squaring his elbows and turning out his toes in Paris," wrote Hare to Carlisle in December of that year. Neither politics nor pleasure could prevent continual and long visits to France.

* Horace Walpole to H. S. Conway, Florence, March 25, 1741.

* Bedford Correspondence, vol. iii. P. 206.

The charming country estate and house which he had inherited from his father had little attraction for Selwyn, and to the end of his life, if he could not be in town, he preferred Castle Howard, or indeed any house where he would meet with congenial spirits. "This is the second day," he once wrote to Carlisle, "I am come home to dine alone, but so it is, and if it goes on so I am determined to keep a chaplain, for although I do not stand in need of much society, I do not relish being quite alone at this time of day."

All this time he was a Member of Parliament. There is a little village of small red cottages with thatched roofs lying among the Wiltshire downs between Savernake Forest and Andover. It is called Ludgershall, and has a quiet out-of-the-world look. In the eighteenth century it was a pocket borough, returning two Members to Parliament, and was the property of the Selwyn family. The representation was as much in their hands as the trees in the adjoining fields. In 1747 George Selwyn had found it convenient to enter the House of Commons. In Ludgershall there were no const.i.tuents to take him to task; to be able to go to Westminster when he wished added to the variety of life. It kept him in touch with the politicians and statesmen of St. James's Street, and it made him a marketable quant.i.ty--his price was another sinecure, the place of Paymaster of the Works. But this he did not receive until he had inherited the family property, which gave him a hold on the city of Gloucester. For this city he was a Member from 1754 to 1780, when, losing his seat at the general election, he gladly returned to his former const.i.tuency. The seat at Ludgershall was never in the nature of a true political representation, and even when Member for Gloucester Selwyn seems to have attended but little to the House of Commons. He was one of a legion of sinecures--a true specimen of the place-man of the age. Possessed of some political influence, he was able to find in politics a means of increasing his income. It would be absurd to censure him because he was a sinecurist; he was acting according to the customs of the time. The man who in the reign of George III. had the opportunity of obtaining posts which carried with them salaries and no duties would have been regarded as Quixotic if he had thrown such opportunities away. In this Selwyn is thoroughly representative of his time, and his frequent anxiety lest he should be deprived of his offices is indicative of an apprehension which was felt by many others.

Yet, sinecurist as he was, Selwyn often regarded his position as a hard necessity, especially when he was driven into the country to look after his const.i.tuents. He would then heartily wish himself out of Parliament: the sorrows of a sinecurist might well be the t.i.tle of some of the letters written from Matson.

Selwyn's was a life devoid of stirring incidents, and from the date at which his correspondence with Lord Carlisle begins the course of his days is indicated in his letters. It is sufficient, therefore, to state that he died at his house in Cleveland Row, St. James's, on the 25th of January, 1791, still a Member of Parliament, in the place where his life had been pa.s.sed and among his innumerable friends.

In one sense his life had been solitary, for he was never married; but an unusual love for the young which was a charming and remarkable characteristic, singularly opposed to many of his habits, had been centred on the child whom he called Mie Mie,* the daughter of an Italian lady, the Marchesa f.a.gniani, who was for some time in England with her husband. The origin of Selwyn's interest in the child is obscure, but the story of his affection is striking and unusual.

From a letter written by the Marchesa f.a.gniani to Selwyn in 1772 it is evident that Mie Mie, then about a year old, had been with him for some months, and in 1774 Lord Carlisle congratulates him upon the certainty of the child's remaining with him. The first mention of her in these letters occurs under date of July 23, 1774, where we have a picture of Selwyn, drawn by himself. He is sitting on his steps, the pretty, foreign-looking child in his arms, pleased at the attention she attracts. When she was four she was taken to pay visits with him; but it is difficult at this time to know if he or the Earl of March had charge of her.

* Maria f.a.gniani (1771-1856). She was married in 1792, the year after Selwyn's death, to the Earl of Yarmouth, afterwards third Marquis of Hertford. She led a life of pleasure (1802-7), travelling on the continent with the Marshal Androche. She had three children, and died at Rue Tailbout, Paris.

Such interest in a young child naturally occasioned remark in London society, and the question of her paternity has never been clearly settled; in the gossip of the time both the Duke of Queensberry and Selwyn were said to be her father. The characters of the two men, however, and various points in their correspondence, seem to fix this relation upon the Duke of Queensberry. Selwyn's interest was that of a man who though without children had a strong and unusual affection for the young. He looked forward to the pleasure her development and education would be to him, and to the solace of her companionship in old age. She enlisted his sympathy and devotion.

From the first time he saw her he wished to adopt her, and until the end of his life she was first in his thought, and all his circle approved of his little friend.

He soon made provision for her in his will, writing to Lord Carlisle July 26, 1774, that he must no longer delay in securing her future.

In 1776 he placed her at school. After infinite trouble, Campden House was chosen, where every day he either saw her or received communications from the schoolmistress relative to her health, comfort, and happiness.

"Mrs. Terry presents her compliments to Mr. Selwyn; has the pleasure to a.s.sure him that dear Mademoiselle f.a.gniani is as well to-day as her good friend could possibly wish her to be. She is this minute engaged in a party at high romps."

"Mrs. Terry presents her best compliments to Mr. Selwyn; is very sorry to find that he is so uneasy. The dear child's spirits are not depressed. She is very lively; ate a good dinner; and behaves just like other children. She hopes Mr. Selwyn will make no scruple of coming to-morrow morning, or staying his hour, or more if he likes it; she will then talk to him about the head; but in the meantime begs he will not suppose that the dear child suffers by his absence, or that anything is neglected; for if Mrs. Terry thought Mr. Selwyn could suppose such a thing, she would wish to resign the charge. She begs he will come to-morrow."

Mie Mie was a disturbing element, if also a satisfaction, in Selwyn's life, for at all times overhanging present pleasure in her company was the dread of losing her. In August of 1776 the Marchesa f.a.gniani and her husband came to England. Selwyn had a fairly satisfactory interview, in which it was settled that the child should not leave him for a year. Before the time had expired he was exhausting every means to procure a longer delay; he even applied to the Austrian Amba.s.sador that the Governor of Milan should use his influence with the family; but her return was insisted upon, and in August of 1777 Mie Mie left England to join her parents in Paris.

The most careful and elaborate arrangements were made by Selwyn for her safety and comfort while travelling, and a list of the houses where stops were to be made given to faithful attendants.