Prime Ministers and Some Others Part 7

"Yet, since I first could cast a shade, Did never creature pa.s.s, So slightly, musically made, So light upon the gra.s.s."

Her mental const.i.tution corresponded to her physical frame; she was the brightest of companions and the most sympathetic of friends.

She shared to the full her husband's zeal for the popular cause, and stimulated his efforts for social as well as political reform.

From the earliest days of their married life, Lord and Lady G.o.derich made their home a centre and a rallying-point for all the scattered forces which, within the Liberal party or beyond its pale, were labouring to promote the betterment of human life. There the "Christian Socialists," recovering from the shocks and disasters of '48, re-gathered their shattered hosts, and reminded a mocking world that the People's Cause was not yet lost. There was Maurice with his mystical eloquence, and Kingsley with his fiery zeal, and Hughes and Vansittart and Ludlow with their economic knowledge and powerful pens. They were reinforced by William Edward Forster, a young Radical M.P., whose zeal for social service had already marked him out from the ruck of mechanical politicians; and from time to time Carlyle himself would vouchsafe a growl of leonine approval to enterprises which, whether wise or foolish, were at least not shams.

In 1852 the Amalgamated Society of Engineers conducted in London and Lancashire a strike which had begun in some engineering works at Oldham. The Christian Socialists gave it their support, and Lord G.o.derich subscribed 500 to the maintenance of the strikers.

But, although he lived in this highly idealistic society, surrounded by young men who saw visions and old men who dreamed dreams, Lord G.o.derich was neither visionary nor dreamer. He pa.s.sed, under Lord Russell, Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Gladstone, through a long series of practical and laborious offices. He became Secretary of State for India, and for War; and, when Lord President of the Council, attained perhaps the highest honour of his life in being appointed Chairman of the Joint Commission on American Affairs, which in 1871 saved us from the unimaginable calamity of war with the United States. Ten years later, as Viceroy of India, he made his permanent mark on the history of the British Empire; and from that day forward no Liberal Government would have been considered complete unless it could show the sanction of his honoured name. When, in February, 1886, Gladstone formed the Administration which was to establish Home Rule, Lord Ripon, who became First Lord of the Admiralty, explained his position to me with happy candour: "I have always been in favour of the most advanced thing in the Liberal Programme.

Just now the most advanced thing is Home Rule; so I'm a Home Ruler."

In the last year of Lord Ripon's life, when he had just retired from the Cabinet and the leadership of the House of Lords, he was entertained at luncheon by the Eighty Club, and the occasion was marked by some more than usually interesting speeches. It always is satisfactory to see public honours rendered, not to a monument or a tomb, but to the living man; and, in Lord Ripon's case, the honours, though ripe, were not belated. George Eliot has reminded us that "to all ripeness under the sun there comes a further stage of development which is less esteemed in the market." The Eighty Club avoided that latent peril, and paid its honours, while they were still fresh and worth having, to the living representative of a Liberalism "more high and heroical than the present age affecteth."

One could not help feeling that the audience which Lord Ripon faced when he was addressing the Club was Radical to the backbone. Radicals themselves, and eager to set the world right, they paid reverence to a Radical who, sixty years ago, was inspired by the same pa.s.sion, and in all that long stretch of time has never failed the cause.

The applause, hearty, genuine, emotional, was even more expressive than the oratory, for it was evoked by the presence of a man who, in his earliest youth, had burst the trammels of station and environment, and had sworn himself to the service of the poor, the ill-fed, and the unrepresented, in days when such devotion was far more difficult than now. It is probable that not a few of Lord Ripon's hearers, while they acclaimed his words and waved their salutations, may have added in the depths of their hearts some aspiration such as this: "When I come to my eightieth year, may I be able to look back upon a career as consistent, as unselfish, and as beneficent."

Thrice happy is the man, be he Warrior or Statesman, who, in spite of lessened activity and increasing burdens and the loss of much that once made life enjoyable, still

"Finds comfort in himself and in his cause, And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause."

V

"_FREDDY LEVESON_"

When a man has died in his eighty-ninth year, it seems irreverent to call him by his nickname. And yet the irreverence is rather in seeming than in reality, for a nickname, a pet-name, an abbreviation, is often the truest token of popular esteem. It was so with the subject of this section, whose perennial youthfulness of heart and mind would have made formal appellation seem stiff and out of place.

Edward Frederick Leveson-Gower was the third son of Granville Leveson-Gower, first Earl Granville, by his marriage with Henrietta Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of the third Duke of Devonshire.

The very names breathe Whiggery, and in their combination they suggest a considerable and an important portion of our social and political history.

I have always maintained that Whiggery, rightly understood, is not a political creed, but a social caste. The Whig, like the poet, is born, not made. It is as difficult to become a Whig as to become a Jew. Macaulay was probably the only man who, being born outside the privileged enclosure, ever penetrated to its heart and a.s.similated its spirit. It is true that the Whigs, as a body, have held certain opinions and pursued certain tactics, which were a.n.a.lysed in chapters xix. and xxi. of the unexpurgated _Book of Sn.o.bs_. But those opinions and those tactics have been accidents of Whiggery. Its substance has been relationship. When Lord John Russell formed his first Administration, his opponents alleged that it was mainly composed of his cousins, and the lively oracles of Sir Bernard Burke confirmed the allegation. A. J. Beresford-Hope, in one of his novels, made excellent fun of what he called the "Sacred Circle of the Great-Grandmotherhood." He showed--what, indeed, the Whigs themselves knew uncommonly well--that from John, Earl Gower, who died in 1754, descend all the Gowers, Levesons, Howards, Cavendishes, Grosvenors, Harcourts, and Russells, who walk on the face of the earth. Truly a n.o.ble and a highly favoured progeny. "They _are_ our superiors,"

said Thackeray; "and that's the fact. I am not a Whig myself (perhaps it is as unnecessary to say so as to say that I'm not King Pippin in a golden coach, or King Hudson, or Miss Burdett-Coutts)--I'm not a Whig; but oh, how I should like to be one!"

It argues no political bias to maintain that, in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, Toryism offered to its neophytes no educational opportunities equal to those which a young Whig enjoyed at Chatsworth and Bowood and Woburn and Holland House. Here the best traditions of the previous century were constantly reinforced by accessions of fresh intellect. The circle was, indeed, an aristocratic Family Party, but it paid a genuine homage to ability and culture. Genius held the key, and there was a _carriere ouverte aux talents_.

Into this privileged society Frederick Leveson-Gower was born on the 3rd of May, 1819, and within its precincts he "kept the noiseless tenour of his way" for nearly ninety years. Recalling in 1905 the experiences of his boyhood, and among them a sharp illness at Eton, he was able to add, "Never during my long life have I again been seriously ill." To that extraordinary immunity from physical suffering was probably due the imperturbable serenity which all men recognized as his most characteristic trait, and which remained unruffled to the end.

It is recorded of the fastidious Lady Montfort in _Endymion_ that, visiting Paris in 1841, she could only with difficulty be induced to call on the British Amba.s.sador and Amba.s.sadress. "I dined," she said, "with those people once; but I confess that, when I thought of those dear Granvilles, their _entrees_ stuck in my throat."

The "dear Granvilles" in question were the parents of the second Lord Granville, whom we all remember as the most urbane of Foreign Secretaries, and of Frederick Leveson-Gower. The first Lord Granville was a younger son of the first Marquess of Stafford and brother of the second Marquess, who was made Duke of Sutherland. He was born in 1773, entered Parliament at twenty-two, and "found himself a diplomatist as well as a politician before he was thirty years of age." In 1804 he was appointed Amba.s.sador to St. Petersburg, where he remained till 1807. In 1813 he was created Viscount Granville, and in 1824 became Amba.s.sador to the Court of France. "To the indignation of the Legitimist party in France, he made a special journey from Paris to London in order to vote for the Reform Bill of 1832, and, to their astonishment, returned alive to glory in having done so." For this and similar acts of virtue he was raised to an earldom in 1833; he retired from diplomacy in 1841, and died in 1846.

Before he became an Amba.s.sador, this Lord Granville had rented a place called Wherstead, in Suffolk. It was there that Freddy Leveson pa.s.sed the first years of his life, but from 1824 onwards the British Emba.s.sy at Paris was his home. Both those places had made permanent dints in his memory. At Wherstead he remembered the Duke of Wellington shooting Lord Granville in the face and imperilling his eyesight; at Paris he was presented to Sir Walter Scott, who had come to dine with the Amba.s.sador. When living at the Emba.s.sy, Freddy Leveson was a playmate of the Duc de Bordeaux, afterwards Comte de Chambord; and at the age of eight he was sent from Paris to a Dr. Everard's school at Brighton, "which was called the House of Lords, owing to most of the boys being related to the peerage, many of them future peers, and among them several dukes." Here, again, the youthful Whig found himself a playmate of Princes. Prince George of Hanover and Prince George of Cambridge were staying with King William IV. at the Pavilion; their companions were chosen from Dr. Everard's seminary; and the King amused his nephews and their friends with sailor's stories, "sometimes rather coa.r.s.e ones." In his holidays little Freddy enjoyed more refined society at Holland House. In 1828 his mother wrote with just elation: "He always sits next to Lord Holland, and they talk without ceasing all dinner-time."

From Brighton, Frederick Leveson was promoted in due course to Eton, where he played no games and made no friends, had poor health, and was generally unhappy. One trait of Eton life, and only one, he was accustomed in old age to recall with approbation, and that was the complete indifference to social distinctions.

"There is," he wrote, "a well-known story about my friend, the late Lord Bath, who, on his first arrival at Eton was asked his name, and answered, 'I am Viscount Weymouth, and I shall be Marquis of Bath.' Upon which he-received two kicks, one for the Viscount and the other for the Marquis. This story may not be true, but at any rate it ill.u.s.trates the fact that if at Eton a boy boasted of his social advantages, he would have cause to repent it!"

Leaving Eton at sixteen, Frederick Leveson went to a private tutor in Nottinghamshire, and there he first developed his interest in politics. "Reform," he wrote, "is my princ.i.p.al aim." Albany Fonblanque, whose vivacious articles, reprinted from the _Examiner_, may still be read in _England under Seven Administrations_, was his political instructor, and indoctrinated him with certain views, especially in the domain of Political Economy, which would have been deemed heretical in the Whiggish atmosphere of Trentham or Chatsworth.

In 1832 he made his appearance in society at Paris, and his mother wrote: "As to Freddy, he turns all heads, and his own would be if it was to last more than a week longer. His dancing _fait fureur_."

In October, 1837, he went up to Christ Church, then rather languishing under Dean Gaisford's mismanagement. Here for three years he enjoyed himself thoroughly. He rode with the drag, was President of the Archery Club, played whist, gave and received a great deal of hospitality, and made some lifelong friendships. Among his contemporaries was Ruskin, of whom his recollection was certainly depressing. "He seemed to keep himself aloof from everybody, to seek no friends, and to have none. I never met him in anyone else's rooms, or at any social gathering. I see him now, looking rather crazy, taking his solitary walks."

That Freddy Leveson was "thoroughly idle" was his own confession; and perhaps, when we consider all the circ.u.mstances, it is not surprising. What is surprising, and what he himself recorded with surprise, is that neither he nor his contemporaries paid the least attention to the Oxford Movement, then just at its height, although--and this makes it stranger still--they used to attend Newman's Sermons at St. Mary's. They duly admired his unequalled style, but the substance of his teaching seems to have pa.s.sed by them like the idle wind.

After taking a "n.o.bleman's Degree," Frederick Leveson spent an instructive year in France, admitted, by virtue of his father's position, to the society of such men as Talleyrand and Thiers, Guizot and Mole, Berryer and Eugene Sue; and then he returned to England with the laudable, though uninspiring, intention of reading for the Bar. His profession was chosen for him by his father, and the choice was determined by a civil speech of George Canning, who, staying at the British Emba.s.sy at Paris, noticed little Freddy, and pleasantly said to Lord Granville, "Bring that boy up as a lawyer, and he will one day become Lord Chancellor." As a first step towards that elevation, Frederick Leveson entered the chambers of an eminent conveyancer called Plunkett, where he had for his fellow-pupils the men who became Lord Iddesleigh and Lord Farrer.

Thence he went to a Special Pleader, and lastly to a leading member of the Oxford Circuit. As Marshal to Lord Denman and to Baron Parke, he acquired some knowledge of the art of carving; but with regard to the total result of his legal training, he remarked, with characteristic simplicity, "I cannot say I learnt much law." When living in lodgings in Charles Street, and eating his dinners at Lincoln's Inn, Frederick Leveson experienced to the full the advantage of having been born a Whig. His uncle, the sixth Duke of Devonshire, a benevolent magnifico, if ever there was one, treated him like a son, giving him the run of Devonshire House and Chiswick; while Lady Holland, the most imperious of social dames, let him make a second home of Holland House.

"I dined with her whenever I liked. I had only to send word in the morning that I would do so. Of course, I never uttered a word at dinner, but listened with delight to the brilliant talk--to Macaulay's eloquence and varied information, to Sydney Smith's exquisite joke which made me die of laughing, to Roger's sarcasms and Luttrell's repartees."

Frederick Leveson was called to the Bar in 1843, and went the Oxford Circuit in the strangely-a.s.sorted company of G. S. Venables, J. G.

Phillimore, and E. V. Kenealy. This proved to be his last stage in the antic.i.p.ated progress towards the Woolsack. Lord Granville died at the beginning of 1846, and the change which this event produced in Frederick Leveson's position can best be described in his own quaint words:

"My father was greatly beloved by us all, and was the most indulgent parent--possibly too indulgent. Himself a younger son, although I cannot say that his own case was a hard one, he sympathized with me for being one of that unfortunate cla.s.s. It may have been this feeling, combined with much affection, that made him leave me well provided for. I much question whether, if I had been left to earn my own bread by my own exertions as a lawyer, I should have succeeded."

His friends had no difficulty in answering the question, and answering it affirmatively; but the practical test was never applied, for on succeeding to his inheritance he glided--"plunged" would be an unsuitable word--into a way of living which was, more like the [Greek: scholae] of the Athenian citizen than the sordid strife of professional activity. He was singularly happy in private life, for the "Sacred Circle of the Great-Grandmotherhood" contained some delightful women as well as some distinguished men. Such was his sister-in-law Marie, Lady Granville; such was his cousin Harriet, d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland; such was his mother, the Dowager Lady Granville; and such, pre-eminently, was his sister, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, of whom a competent critic said that, in the female characters of her novel _Ellen Middleton_, she had drawn "the line which is so apt to be overstepped, and which Walter Scott never clearly saw, between _navete_ and vulgarity." Myself a devoted adherent of Sir Walter, I can yet recall some would-be pleasantries of Julia Mannering, of Isabella Wardour, and even of Die Vernon, which would have caused a shudder in the "Sacred Circle." Happiest of all was Freddy Leveson in his marriage with Lady Margaret Compton; but their married life lasted only five years, and left behind it a memory too tender to bear translation to the printed page.

Devonshire House was the centre of Freddy Leveson's social life--at least until the death of his uncle, the sixth Duke, in 1858. That unsightly but comfortable mansion was then in its days of glory, and those who frequented it had no reason to regret the past. "Poodle Byng," who carried down to 1871 the social conditions of the eighteenth century, declared that nothing could be duller than Devonshire House in his youth. "It was a great honour to go there, but I was bored to death. The d.u.c.h.ess was usually st.i.tching in one corner of the room, and Charles Fox snoring in another." Under the splendid but arbitrary rule of the sixth Duke no one st.i.tched or snored.

Everyone who entered his saloons was well-born or beautiful or clever or famous, and many of the guests combined all four characteristics. When Prince Louis Napoleon, afterwards Napoleon III., first came to live in London, his uncle Jerome asked the Duke of Devonshire to invite his _mauvais sujet_ of a nephew to Devonshire House, "so that he might for once be seen in decent society"; and the Prince, repaid the Duke by trying to borrow five thousand pounds to finance his descent on Boulogne. But the Duke, though magnificent, was business-like, and the Prince was sent empty away.

The society in which Freddy Leveson moved during his long career was curiously varied. There was his own family in all its ramifications of cousinship; and beyond its radius there was a circle of acquaintances and a.s.sociates which contained Charles Greville the diarist and his more amiable brother Henry, Carlyle and Macaulay, Brougham and Lyndhurst, J. A. Roebuck and Samuel Wilberforce, George Grote and Henry Reeve, "that good-for-nothing fellow Count D'Orsay," and Disraeli, "always courteous, but his courtesy sometimes overdone."

For womankind there were Lady Morley the wit and Lady Cowper the humorist, and Lady Ashburton, who tamed Carlyle; Lady Jersey, the queen of fashion, and the two sister-queens of beauty, Lady Canning and Lady Waterford; Lady Tankerville, who as a girl had taken refuge in England from the matrimonial advances of the Comte d'Artois; the three fascinating Foresters, Mrs. Robert Smith, Mrs. Anson, and Lady Chesterfield; and Lady Molesworth and Lady Waldegrave, who had climbed by their cleverness from the lowest rung of the social ladder to a place not very far from the top.

Beyond this circle, again, there was a miscellaneous zone, where dwelt politicians ranging from John Bright to Arthur Balfour; poets and men of letters, such as Tennyson and Browning, Thackeray and Motley and Laurance Oliphant; Paxton the gardener-architect and Hudson the railway-king; stars of the musical world, such as Mario and Grisi and Rachel; blue-stockings like Lady Eastlake and Madame Mohl; Mademoiselle de Montijo, who captivated an Emperor, and Lola Montez, who ruled a kingdom. No advantages of social education will convert a fool or a bore or a prig or a churl into an agreeable member of society; but, where Nature has bestowed a bright intelligence and a genial disposition, her gifts are cultivated to perfection by such surroundings as Frederick Leveson enjoyed in early life.

And so it came about that alike as a young man, in middle life (which was in his case unusually prolonged), and in old age, he enjoyed a universal and unbroken popularity.

It is impossible to connect the memory of Freddy Leveson with the idea of ambition, and it must therefore have been the praiseworthy desire to render unpaid service to the public which induced him to embark on the unquiet sea of politics. At a bye-election in the summer of 1847 he was returned, through the interest of his uncle the Duke of Devonshire, for Derby. A General Election immediately ensued; he was returned again, but was unseated, with his colleague, for a technical irregularity. In 1852 he was returned for Stoke-upon-Trent, this time by the aid of his cousin the Duke of Sutherland (for the "Sacred Circle" retained a good deal of what was termed "legitimate influence"). In 1854, having been chosen to second the Address at the opening of Parliament, he was directed to call on Lord John Russell, who would instruct him in his duties. Lord John was the shyest of human beings, and the interview was brief: "I am glad you are going to second the Address. You will know what to say.

Good-morning."

At the General Election of 1857 he lost his seat for Stoke. "Poor Freddy," writes his brother, Lord Granville, "is dreadfully disappointed by his failure in the Potteries. He was out-jockeyed by Ricardo."

All who knew "poor Freddy" will easily realize that in a jockeying contest he stood no chance. In 1859 he was returned for Bodmin, this time by the good offices, not of relations, but of friends--Lord Robartes and Lady Molesworth--and he retained the seat by his own merits till Bodmin ceased to be a borough. Twice during his Parliamentary career Mr. Gladstone offered him important office, and he declined it for a most characteristic reason--"I feared it would be thought a job." The gaps in his Parliamentary life were occupied by travelling. As a young man he had been a great deal on the Continent, and he had made what was then the adventurous tour of Spain. The winter of 1850-1851 he spent in India; and in 1856 he accompanied his brother Lord Granville (to whom he had been "precis-writer" at the Foreign Office) on his Special Mission to St. Petersburg for the Coronation of Alexander II. No chapter in his life was fuller of vivid and entertaining reminiscences, and his mind was stored with familiar memories of Radziwill, Nesselrode, and Todleben. "Freddy," wrote his brother, "is supposed to have distinguished himself greatly by his presence of mind when the Grande d.u.c.h.esse Helene got deep into politics with him."

A travelling experience, which Freddy Leveson used to relate with infinite gusto, belongs to a later journey, and had its origin in the strong resemblance between himself and his brother. Except that Lord Granville shaved, and that in later years Freddy Leveson grew a beard, there was little facially to distinguish them. In 1865 Lord Granville was Lord President of the Council, and therefore, according to the arrangement then prevailing, head of the Education Office.

In that year Matthew Arnold, then an Inspector of Schools, was despatched on a mission to enquire into the schools and Universities of the Continent. Finding his travelling allowances insufficient for his needs, he wrote home to the Privy Council Office requesting an increase. Soon after he had despatched this letter, and before he could receive the official reply, he was dining at a famous restaurant in Paris, and he chose the most highly priced dinner of the day. Looking up from his well-earned meal, he saw his official chief, Lord Granville, who chanced to be eating a cheaper dinner.

Feeling that this gastronomical indulgence might, from the official point of view, seem inconsistent with his request for increased allowances, he stepped across to the Lord President, explained that it was only once in a way that he thus compensated himself for his habitual abstinence, and was delighted by the facile and kindly courtesy with which his official chief received the _apologia_. His delight was abated when he subsequently found that he had been making his confession, not to Lord Granville, but to Mr. Leveson-Gower.

Looking back from the close of life upon its beginning, Freddy Leveson noted that as an infant he used to eat his egg "very slowly, and with prolonged pleasure." "Did this," he used to ask, "portend that I should grow up a philosopher or a _gourmand_? I certainly did not become the former, and I hope not the latter." I am inclined to think that he was both; for whoso understands the needs of the body has mastered at least one great department of philosophy, and he who feeds his fellow-men supremely well is in the most creditable sense of the word a _gourmand_. Freddy Leveson's dinners were justly famous, and, though he modestly observed that "hospitality is praised more than it deserves," no one who enjoyed the labours of Monsieur Beguinot ever thought that they could be overpraised. The scene of these delights was a house in South Audley Street, which, though actually small, was so designed as to seem like a large house in miniature; and in 1870 the genial host acquired a delicious home on the Surrey hills, which commands a view right across Suss.e.x to the South Downs. "Holm-bury" is its name, and "There's no place like Home-bury" became the grateful watchword of a numerous and admiring society.

People distinguished in every line of life, and conspicuous by every social charm, found at Holm-bury a constant and delightful hospitality. None appreciated it more thoroughly than Mr. and Mrs.

Gladstone, whose friendship was one of the chief happinesses of Freddy Leveson's maturer life. His link with them was Harriet, d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland, who, in spite of all Whiggish prejudices against the half-converted Tory, was one of Gladstone's most enthusiastic disciples. In "Cliveden's proud alcove," and in that sumptuous villa at Chiswick where Fox and Canning died, Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone were her constant guests; and there they formed their affectionate intimacy with Freddy Leveson. Every year, and more than once a year, they stayed with him at Holmbury; and one at least of those visits was memorable. On the 19th of July, 1873, Mr. Gladstone wrote in his diary:

"Off at 4.25 to Holmbury, We were enjoying that beautiful spot and expecting Granville with the Bishop of Winchester,[*] when the groom arrived with the message that the Bishop had had a bad fall. An hour and a half later Granville entered, pale and sad: 'It's all over.' In an instant the thread of that precious life was snapped, We were all in deep and silent grief."

[Footnote *: Samuel Wilberforce.]

And now, for the sake of those who never knew Freddy Leveson, a word of personal description must be added. He was of middle height, with a slight stoop, which began, I fancy from the fact that he was short-sighted and was obliged to peer rather closely at objects which he wished to see. His growing deafness, which in later years was a marked infirmity--he had no others--tended to intensify the stooping habit, as bringing him nearer to his companions voice. His features were characteristically those of the House of Cavendish, as may be seen by comparing his portrait with that of his mother.

His expression was placid, benign, but very far from inert; for his half-closed eyes twinkled with quiet mirth. His voice was soft and harmonious, with just a trace of a lisp, or rather of that peculiar intonation which is commonly described as "short-tongued."

His bearing was the very perfection of courteous ease, equally remote from stiffness and from familiarity. His manners it would be impertinent to eulogize, and the only dislikes which I ever heard him express were directed against rudeness, violence, indifference to other people's feelings, and breaches of social decorum. If by such offences as these it was easy to displease him, it was no less easy to obtain his forgiveness, for he was as amiable as he was refined. In old age he wrote, with reference to the wish which some people express for sudden death: "It is a feeling I cannot understand, as I myself shall feel anxious before I die to take an affectionate leave of those I love." His desire was granted, and there my story ends. I have never known a kinder heart; I could not imagine a more perfect gentleman.