Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847

Walpole certainly had an aversion to the wits of his day, with the exception of George Selwyn; on whom he lavished a double portion of the panegyric that he deserved, as a sort of compensation for his petulance to others. His next portrait was Lord Chesterfield, the observed of all observers, "the glass of fashion, and the mould of form," a man of talent unquestionably, and a master of the knowledge of mankind, but degrading his talent by the affectation of coxcombry, and turning his knowledge into a system of polished profligacy.

Chesterfield, though not the first who had made a study of the art of nothings, was the first who publicly prided himself on its study; and while France owed her fashionable vice to a hundred sources, all England looked up to Chesterfield as the high priest of that shrine, in which time and reputation were equally sacrificed, and in which fame was to be acquired alone by folly.

Walpole's sketch was struck off when Chesterfield was sinking into the vale of years, and he exhibits that celebrated peer under the character, at once melancholy and ridiculous, of a superannuated politician and an old beau. Chesterfield, since he had given up the seals in 1748, had retired from politics; in that spirit of resignation, which, in extinguished politicians, is only a decent disguise for despair.

He had published what he called an apology for his resignation, which, as Walpole says, excited no more notice than the resignation itself. "From that time he had lived at White's, gaming, and pronouncing witticisms among the boys of quality." He then proceeds to examine the noble lord's construction, pretty much in the style of an anatomist with the subject on the table, and cuts him up with all the zeal of angry science.

"Chesterfield, early in life, announced his claim to wit, and the women believed in it. He had besides given himself out for a man of great intrigue, and the world believed in that too. It was not his fault if he had not wit, for nothing exceeded his efforts in that point. His speeches were fine, but as much laboured as his extempore sayings. His writings were every body's; that is, whatever came out good was given to him, and he was too humble ever to refuse the gift. But besides the passive enjoyment of all good productions in the present age, he had another art of reputation, which was, either to disapprove of the greatest authors of other times, or to patronize whatever was too bad to be ascribed to himself."

We then have a slight glance at his public life. His debut in diplomacy was as ambassador to Holland, where, as Walpole says, "he courted the good opinion of that economical people," by losing immense sums at play. On his return, he attached himself to Lord Townshend, an unlucky connexion; but what did him more harm still, was the queen's seeing him one Twelfth Night after winning a large sum of money at hazard, cross St. James's Court, "to deposit it with my Lady Suffolk until next morning." The queen never pardoned an intimacy there, and well she might not, Lady Suffolk's royal intimacies being perfectly notorious.

His next employment of note was the vice-royalty of Ireland; in which Walpole acknowledges that he was the most popular governor which that luckless country ever had. "Nothing was cried up but his integrity. He would have laughed at any man who had any confidence in his morality."

But Chesterfield's vice-royalty deserves better treatment than this. In Ireland he was an able governor. The man had something to do, and he did it. The lounger of the London clubs could not dawdle through the day in the midst of a fiery people full of faction, bleeding with the wounds of civil war, and indignant at the supremacy of the "Saxon."

Jacobitism, in England a fashion, was in Ireland a fury. In England a phantom of party, it was in Ireland a fierce superstition. In England a fading recollection of power lost, and a still feebler hope of favours to come, it was in Ireland a hereditary frenzy embittered by personal sufferings, exalted by fantastic notions of pedigree, and sanctioned by the secret but powerful stimulants of Rome. This was no place for a man to take his rest, unless he could contrive to sleep on thorns.

Chesterfield was thus forced to be vigorous and vigilant; to watch every symptom of disaffection, to suppress every incipient turbulence, to guide without the appearance of control, and to make his popularity the strength of a government almost wholly destitute of civil reputation or military force. But the highest panegyric is to be found in the period of his thus preserving the peace of Ireland. It was in 1745, when the Pretender was proclaimed in Edinburgh, when the Highland army was on its march to London, and when all the hopes of hollow courtiership and inveterate Jacobitism were turned to the triumph of the ancient dynasty. Yet, Ireland was kept in a state of quietude, and the empire was thus saved from the greatest peril since the Norman invasion.

An Irish insurrection would have largely multiplied the hazards of the Brunswick throne; and though we have firm faith in the power of England to extinguish a foreign invader, yet, when the question came to be simply one of the right to the crown, and the decision was to be made by civil conflict, the alienation, or the insurrection, of Ireland might have thrown an irresistible weight into the scale.

It is not our purpose, nor would it be becoming, to more than allude to the private life of this showy personage. His was not the era of either public or private morality. His marriage was contemptible, a connexion equally marked by love of money and neglect of honour; for his choice was the niece of the Duchess of Kendal, the duchess being notoriously the king's mistress, and Chesterfield obviously marrying the niece as being a probable heiress of her aunt, and also of bringing to her husband some share of the royal favour. He was disappointed, as he deserved, in the legacy; and seems to have been not much happier in the wife, who brought him no heir, and was apparently a compound of pride and dulness. He was more fortunate, however, in earning the political favour of the old Duchess of Marlborough, who left him £20,000 in her will.

Still, with all the political chicanery, and all the official squabbles of parliament, those were sportive times; and Walpole records the delay of the debate on the bill for naturalizing the Jews, as arising from the adjournment of the house, to attend private theatricals at Drury Lane, where Delaval had hired the theatre to exhibit himself in Othello! Walpole, in his pleasant exaggeration, says, that "the crowd of people of fashion was so great, that the footman's gallery was hung with blue ribands."

For some reason, which must now sleep with the author, he had an inveterate aversion to Seeker, then Bishop of Oxford, and afterwards translated to Canterbury. "The King," said he, "would not go to chapel because the Bishop of Oxford was to preach before him. The ministers did not insist upon his hearing the sermon, as they had lately upon his making him Dean of St. Paul's."

Character and popularity do not always depend upon the circumstances which alone ought to fix either. He then proceeds to hew the right reverend lord in pieces. "This bishop," says he, "who had been bred a Presbyterian and man-midwife, which sect and profession he had dropt for a season, while he was President of a Free-thinking Club, had been converted by Bishop Talbot, whose relation he married, and his faith settled in a prebend of Durham, whence he was transplanted by the queen, and advanced by her (who had no aversion to a medley of religions, which she always compounded into a scheme of heresy of her own) to the living of St. James's, vacant by the death of her favourite Arian, Dr. Clarke, and afterwards to the bishoprics of Bristol and Oxford."

Then, probably for the purpose of relieving the dark hues of this desperate portrait, he throws in a touch of praise, and tells us that Secker grew surprisingly popular in his parish of St. James's, and was especially approved of in the pulpit.

Secker's discourses, with his charges and lectures, still remain; and it is impossible to conceive any thing more commonplace in style, weaker in conception, or more thoroughly marked with mediocrity of mind. And yet it is perfectly possible to conceive such a man popular. What the multitude call eloquence, in the pulpit, is palpably different from eloquence any where else. At the bar, or in the legislature, it evidently consists in a mixture of strong sense and powerful feeling. It must exhibit some knowledge of the subject, and more knowledge of human nature. But the "sermons" which then achieved a passing popularity were characterised by nothing but by the most shallow notions in the most impotent language. The age of reasoners had passed away with Barrow, South, and Sherlock; and a studied mingling of affected simplicity and deliberate nonsense constituted the sole merits of the pulpit in the middle of the eighteenth century. Then, according to the proverb, that "when things come to the worst, they must mend," came the gentle enthusiasm of Wesley and the fierce declamation of Whitefield, both differing utterly in doctrine, practice, and principle, yet both regarding themselves as missionaries to restore Christianity, and both evidently believed by the multitude to be all but inspired. Their example, however, infused some slight ardour into the established pulpit, and its sermons were no longer dull rechauffes of Epictetus, and substitutes for the Gospel, taken from the schoolboy recollections of Plato. Secker reigned in this middle-age of the pulpit, and his performances are matchless as models of words without thought, doctrines without learning, and language that trickled through the ear without the possibility of reaching the understanding.

But Secker's faults were those of nature, which alone is to be blamed; unless we are to join in the blame the ministers who placed such a twinkling taper as a "shining light" in the church.

We do not believe in the story of his freethinking, though Walpole strongly repeats it, and gives his authority. Secker's was obviously a commonplace mind, wholly destitute of all pretension to ability, yet as obviously not disinclined to make use of those means which often constitute court favour, but which high minds disdain. He had been made Dean of St. Paul's by the Chancellor's interest, though he had been for some time in the shade at court, from being strongly suspected of cultivating the Prince's connexions at the same time; however, he achieved Canterbury at last, and, once sheltered in Lambeth, he might laugh at the jealousies of courtiers.

Walpole now bursts out into indignant virtue; exclaims that even the church has its renegades in politics, and almost compassionates the king, "who was obliged to fling open his asylum to all kinds of deserters; revenging himself, however, by not speaking to them at his levee, or listening to them in the pulpit."

In the meantime, the great source of all opposition, the dread of the successful, the hope of the defeated, the thorn in the royal side, or, to take a higher emblem, the tree of promise to all that contemptible race who trade in conscience, and live on faction,—disappeared in a moment. The heir-apparent died! The Prince of Wales had suffered from a pleurisy, but was so much recovered as to attend the king to the House of Lords. After being much heated in the atmosphere of the house, he returned to Carlton House to unrobe, put on only a light frock, went to Kew, where he walked some time, returned to Carlton House, and lay down upon a couch for three hours on a ground floor next the garden. The consequence of this rashness or obstinacy was, that he caught a fresh cold, and relapsed that night.

After struggling with this illness for a week, he was suddenly seized with an increase of his distemper. Three years before, he had received a blow on the breast from a tennis ball, from which, or from a subsequent fall, he often felt great pain. Exhausted by the cough, he cried, "Je sens la mort," and died in the arms of his valet.

The character of this prince, who was chiefly memorable as the father of George III., had in it nothing to eclipse the past age, conciliate the present, or attract honour from the future. Walpole, in his keen way, says, "that he resembled the Black Prince in nothing, but in dying before his father." "Indeed," he contemptuously adds, "it was not his fault if he had not distinguished himself by warlike achievements." He had solicited the command of the army in Scotland in the rebellion of 1745, which was of course given to his brother; "a hard judgment," says Walpole, "for what he could do, he did." When the royal army lay before Carlisle, the prince, at a great supper which he gave his court and favourites, had ordered for the dessert a model of the citadel of Carlisle, in paste, which he in person, and the maids of honour, bombarded with sugar plumbs!

The Prince had disagreed with the king and queen early after his coming to England, "not entirely," says Walpole, "by his own fault." The king had refused to pay his debts in Hanover, and "it ran a little in the blood of the family to hate the eldest son!" The queen exerted more authority than he liked, and "the Princess Emily, who had been admitted into his greatest confidence, had not," the historian bitterly observes, "forfeited her duty to the queen, by concealing any of his secrets that might do him prejudice."

Gaming was one of his passions; "but his style of play did him less honour than even the amusement." He carried this dexterity into practice in more essential points, and was vain of it. "One day at Kensington that he had just borrowed £5000 of Doddington, seeing him pass under his window, he said to Hedges, his secretary, 'that man is reckoned one of the most sensible men in England; yet, with all his parts, I have just tricked him out of £5000!'" A line from Earl Stanhope summed up his character,—"He has his father's head and his mother's heart."

A smart hit is mentioned of Pelham, who, however, was not remarkable for humour. One Ayscough, who had been preceptor to Prince George, and who had "not taught him to read English, though eleven years old," was about to be removed from the preceptorship. Lyttleton, whose sister he had married, applied to Pelham to save him. Pelham answered, "I know nothing of Dr. Ayscough—Oh, yes, I recollect, a very worthy man told me in this room, two years ago, that he was a great rogue." This very worthy man happened to be Lyttleton himself, who had then quarrelled with Ayscough about election affairs. Walpole abounds in sketches of character, and they are generally capital. Here is a kit-cat of Lord Albemarle, then ambassador in Paris. "It was convenient to him to be any where but in England. His debts were excessive, though he was ambassador, groom of the stole, governor of Virginia, and colonel of a regiment of guards. His figure was genteel, his manner noble and agreeable. The rest of his merit was the interest Lady Albemarle had with the king through Lady Yarmouth. He had all his life imitated the French manners since he came to Paris, where he never conversed with a Frenchman. If good breeding is not different from good sense, Lord Albemarle at least knew how to distinguish it from good nature. He would bow to his postilion, while he was ruining his tailor."

The prince's death had all the effect of the last act of a melo-drama. It had blown up more castles in the air, than any explosion in the history of paint and pasteboard. All the rejected of the court had naturally flocked round the heir-apparent, and never was worship of the rising sun more mortified by its sudden eclipse. Peerages in embryo never came to the birth, and all sorts of ministerial appointments, from the premier downwards, which had been looked upon as solid and sure, were scattered by this one event into thin air. Drax, the prince's secretary, who "could not write his own name;" Lord Baltimore, who, "with a great deal of mistaken knowledge, could not spell;" and Sir William Irby, the princesses' Polonius, were to be barons; Doddington, it was said, had actually kissed hands for the reversion of a dukedom!

The whole work is a picture gallery. Doddington, whose "Diary" has placed him among those authors whose happiest fate would have been to have been prohibited the use of pen, ink, and paper, is sketched to the life in a few keen and graphic lines.

"This man, with great knowledge of business and much wit, had, by mere absurdity of judgment and a disposition to finesse, thrown himself out of all estimation, and out of all the views which his large fortune and abilities could not have failed to promote, if he had preserved but the least shadow of steadiness. He had two or three times gone all lengths of flattery, alternately with Sir Robert Walpole and the prince. The latter keenly said, 'that they had met again, at last, in a necessary connexion, for no party would have any thing to do with either.'"

Why has not some biographer, curious in the dissection of human vanity, written the real life of Doddington? There could be no richer subject for a pen contemptuous of the follies of high life and capable of dissecting that compound of worldly passion and infirm principle which, in nine instances out of ten, figures in the front ranks of mankind.

Doddington had begun public life with higher advantages than most men of his time. He had figure, fortune, and fashion; he was employed early in Spain, with Sir Paul Methuen, our ambassador; where he signed the treaty of Madrid. He then clung to Walpole, whom he panegyrised in verse and adulated in prose. But Walpole thwarted his longing for a peerage, and the refusal produced his revolt. He then went over to the Opposition, and flattered the prince. But the prince had a favourite already; and Doddington failed again. He then returned to Walpole, who made him a lord of the treasury. But Walpole himself was soon to feel the chances of power; and Doddington, who was never inclined to prop a sinking cause, crossed the House again. There he was left for a while, to suffer the penalties of a placeman's purgatory, but without being purified; and, after some continuance in opposition, a state for which he was as unfitted as a shark upon the sea-shore, he crossed over again to the court, and was made treasurer of the navy. But he was now rapidly falling into ridicule; and, determining to obtain power at all risks, he bowed down before the prince. At this mimic court he obtained a mimic office, was endured without respect, and consulted without confidence. Even there he had not secured a final refuge.

The prince suddenly died; and Doddington's hopes, though not his follies, were extinguished in his grave. Such was the fate of a man of ability, of indefatigable labour, of affluent means, and confessedly accomplished in all the habits and knowledge of public life. He wanted, as Walpole observes, "nothing for power but constancy." Under a foreign government he might have been minister for life. But in the free spirit and restless parties of an English legislature, though such a man might float, he must be at the mercy of every wave.

We then have the most extraordinary man in England in his day, under review, the well-known Duke of Newcastle, minister, or possessing ministerial influence, for nearly a quarter of a century! Of all the public characters of his time, or perhaps of any other, the Duke of Newcastle was the most ridiculed. Every act of his life, every speech which he uttered, nay, almost every look and gesture, became instantly food for burlesque. All the scribblers of the empire, with some of the higher class, as Smollett, were pecking at him day by day; yet, in a Parliament where Chatham, with his powerful eloquence, Bedford with his subtle argument, Townshend with his wit, and the elder Fox with his indefatigable intrigue, were all contending for the mastery; this man, who seemed sometimes half-frenzied, and at other times half-idiotic, retained power, as if it belonged to him by right, and resigned it, as if he had given it away.

Walpole thus describes his appearance. "A constant hurry in his walk, a restlessness of place, a borrowed importance, gave him the perpetual air of a solicitor. His habit of never finishing, which proceeded from his beginning every thing twenty times over, gave rise to the famous bon-mot of Lord Wilmington: 'The Duke of Newcastle always loses half an hour in the morning, which he is running after for the rest of the day.' But he began the world with advantages:—an estate of £30,000 a-year, great borough and county interest, the heirship of his uncle, the old Duke of Newcastle, and a new creation of the title in his person." Walpole curiously describes the temperament of this singular man. "The Duke of Newcastle had no pride, though infinite self-love. He always caressed his enemies, to enlist them against his friends. There was no service that he would not do for either, till either was above being served by him.

"There was no expense to which he was not addicted, but generosity. His houses, gardens, table, and equipage, swallowed immense treasures. The sums which he owed were exceeded only by those which he wasted. He loved business immoderately, yet was always only doing it, never did it. His speeches in council and parliament were copious of words, but unmeaning. He aimed at every thing, yet endeavoured nothing. A ridiculous fear was predominant in him; he would venture the overthrow of the government, rather than dare to open a letter that might discover a plot. He was a secretary of state without intelligence, a man of infinite intrigue without secrecy or policy, and a minister despised and hated by his master, by all parties and ministers, without being turned out by any." This faculty of retaining office is evidently the chief problem in Walpole's eyes, and was as evidently the chief source of wrath, in the eyes of his crowd of clever opponents.

But the duke must have had some qualities, for which his caricaturists will not give him credit. He must have been shrewd, with all his oddity, and well acquainted with the science of the world, with all his trifling. He must have known the art of pulling the strings of parliament, before he could have managed the puppet show of power with such unfailing success. He must also have been dexterous in dealing with wayward tempers, while he had to manage the suspicious spirit, stubborn prejudices, and arrogant obstinacy of George II. It may be admitted that he had great assistance in the skill and subtlety of his brother Pelham; but there were so many occasions on which he must have trusted to himself alone, that it may well be doubted, whether to be, constantly successful, he must not have been singularly skilful, and that the personal dexterity of the minister was the true secret of his prolonged power.

We now come to Walpole's summary of the career of the two most celebrated men of his early life—his father and Bolingbroke.

Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Bolingbroke had begun, as rivals at school, lived a life of competition, and died much in the same manner, "provoked at being killed by empirics, but with the same difference in their manner of dying as had appeared in the temper of their lives,—the first with a calmness which was habitual philosophy, the other with a rage which his affected philosophy could not disguise. The one had seen his early ambition dashed with imprisonment, from which he had shot into the sphere of his rival. The other was exiled, recalled, and ruined. Walpole rose gradually to the height of power, maintained it by his single talents against Bolingbroke, assisted by all the considerable men of England; and when driven from it at last, resigned it without a stain or a censure; retiring to private life without an attempt to re-establish himself, and almost without a regret for what he had lost."

Though this was the tribute of a son to a father, it is, in all its essentials, the tribute of truth; for Walpole was, beyond all doubt, a man of great administrative abilities, remarkably temperate in the use of power, and, though violently assailed both within and without the house, neither insolent in the one instance, nor vindictive in the other. It was equally beyond a doubt, that to him was in a great degree owing the establishment of the Hanover succession. The peaceful extinction of Jacobitism, whose success would have been the renewal of despotism and popery; and that system of finance and nurture of the national resources, which prepared the country for the signal triumphs of the reign, were the work of Walpole.