In1734 there had been a fiercely contested General Election, and Thomas Pitt had been returned for both Okehampton and Old Sarum. He elected to sit for Okehampton, and nominated his brother, William, together with his brother-in-law, Nedham, for the other borough. So, on February 18, 1735, William was returned Member for the notorious borough of Old Sarum; an area of about sixty acres of ploughed land, on which had once stood the old city of Salisbury, but which no longer contained a single house or a single resident. The electorate consisted of seven votes. When an election took place the returning officer brought with him a tent, under which the necessary business was transacted.[91]
To such a constituency it was superfluous, and indeed impossible, to offer an election address, or an exposition of policy. But William's politics could not be other than those of his brother and nominator, though it would seem that Thomas conformed to William rather than William to Thomas. We have seen some indications in his letters to Ann that Thomas had been favourable to Sir RobertWalpole, and that so late as November 1734. But it seems probable that William, who was united in private friendship with Lyttelton and the Grenvilles, was drawn to them by political sympathy as well, and was thus in agreement with the fiercest section of the Opposition. By the time that William was elected, Thomas, who was connected with the same group by marriage, must also have thrown in his political lot with it, or he would not have nominated his brother. For William, though only a cornet of horse, was known to be an enemy, and a redoubtable enemy, to the Minister. On this point we have clear evidence in a remarkable statement by Lord Camelford, which will be quoted later.
William's political opinions were then, we may safely suppose, the result of family connection, for through his brother and his own friendships he was closely united with that band of politicians who met and caballed at Stowe, the stately residence of Lord Cobham. There he was a visitor for the first time this year (1735). His stay lasted not less than four months, from the beginning of July to the end of October. He could scarcely have remained so long without being enrolled in this small but important group, even had he not been enlisted already. But he was probably a recruit before his visit began. His brother, as we have seen, had married Christian Lyttelton, Cobham's niece; George, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, was her brother, and Cobham's nephew, as well as William's intimate friend; Richard and George Grenville, the first of whom is better known as Lord Temple, and the second as a laborious but intolerable prime minister, were Cobham's nephews; Richard, indeed, was his heir. A family connection wasthus formed, which, at first held up to ridicule under the nickname of 'Cobham's cubs,' or 'The Cousins,' or 'The Boy Patriots,' was to be for the next thirty years a notable factor in political history, and a sinister element in Pitt's career.
So it may be well here to turn aside for a moment to consider these Grenvilles, who exercised so singular and baleful an influence on Pitt, and indeed on public affairs in general. For from the moment that Pitt became their brother-in-law, he was adopted as one of the brotherhood and choked in their embraces. From this mortal entanglement he emancipated himself too late. It was then patent how different his career would have been had he had a man of common-sense at his elbow, or at least an unselfish adviser. George Grenville, however, complained on his side that the connection had been fatal to the peace and happiness of the Grenvilles.[92]
Who was the chief of this combination? Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham, best remembered as the 'brave Cobham' to whom Pope addressed his first Epistle and as the founder of the dynasty and palace of Stowe, was not merely a soldier who had served with distinction under Marlborough, but a fortunate courtier on whom the House of Hanover had heaped constant and signal honours. He was created first a Baron, then a Viscount, Constable of Windsor Castle, Governor of Jersey, a Privy Councillor, Colonel of the First Dragoons, and was afterwards to become a Field Marshal and Colonel of the Horse Guards. He had, hints Shelburne, some of the Shandean humour of Marlborough's veterans, but his portrait shows a keen,refined, perhaps sensitive countenance; he was also something of a bashaw.[93]Sated with military honours, and always a staunch Whig, he had now taken to conspicuous politics and splendour; politics exacerbated by a personal slight, and splendour displayed in sumptuous hospitality, princely buildings, and lavish magnificence of gardens. These, laid out under the supervision of Lancelot Brown, extended at last to not less than four hundred acres. Here he erected pavilions and shrines in the fashion of those times; the most daring of which was one to commemorate his friendships, with which politics had made sad havoc before the temple was completed. Here he kept open house in the spacious and genial fashion of that time, and entertained Pope, Congreve, Bolingbroke, Pulteney, the wits as well as the princes of the day. From these pleasing cares he had recently been diverted by one of those needless affronts which seem so inconsistent with the robust and genial character of Walpole, but to the infliction of which Walpole was singularly prone. On account of his opposition to the Excise Bill, Cobham had been deprived of his regiment, the same, by-the-bye, in which Pitt was a subaltern. Stung to political ardour by this insult, he had begun to form a faction of violent opposition, of which his nephews and their friends were the nucleus. Thus began that formidable influence which had its home and source at Stowe for near a century afterwards, and which for three generations patiently and persistently pursued the ducal coronet which was the darling object of its successive chiefs.
Cobham, then, founded the family, and, so long as helived, directed their operations, with too much perhaps of the spirit of a martinet. When he died his fortune and title passed to his sister, afterwards, as we shall see, Countess Temple in her own right, the mother of the Grenvilles with whom we are concerned.
There were originally five Grenville brothers: Richard, George, James, Henry, and Thomas. Three of these, however, are outside our limits. Thomas, a naval officer of signal promise, was killed in action off Cape Finisterre in May 1747. James and Henry were cyphers, not ill provided for at the public charge. Both seem to have broken loose at one time from the tyranny of the brotherhood: James at first siding with Richard against George in 1761; and Henry, whom we find Richard anxious, on opposite grounds it is to be presumed, to oust from the representation of Buckingham in 1774. James, who, says Horace Walpole, 'had all the defects of his brothers and had turned them to the best account,' was Deputy Paymaster to Pitt; and Henry was a popular Governor of Barbadoes, as well as Ambassador at Constantinople for four years, after which both subsided into the blameless occupation of various sinecures.
Never, indeed, was family so well provided for during an entire century as the Temple-Grenvilles. Although the system by which the aristocracy lived on the country was not carried nearly as far in Great Britain as in the France of the fourteenth Louis and his successor, yet it had no inconsiderable hold. Even the austere George, though averse in Burke's expressive language to 'the low, pimping politics of a Court,' did not disdain, when Prime Minister, to hurry to the King to announcethe death of Lord Macclesfield and secure for his son, afterwards Marquis of Buckingham, the reversion of the Irish Tellership of the Exchequer thus vacated;[94]nor, a few months later, to obtain the grant of a lighthouse as a provision for his younger children.[95]The Tellership, held as it was under the unreformed conditions, was a place of vast emolument; it is not now easy to compute the amount.[96]Nor is it necessary for the purpose of this book to follow up these details. Cobbett reckoned from returns furnished to the House of Commons that this Lord Buckingham and his brother Thomas, the sons of George Grenville, had in half a century drawn 700,000l.of public money, and William, another brother, something like 200,000l.more. These figures, of course, are open to dispute, but they indicate at least that the revenues from public money of this family of sinecurists must have been enormous. Of English families the Grenvilles were in this particular line easily the first. Had all sinecurists, it may be said in passing, spent their money like the younger Thomas, who returned far more than he received by bequeathing his matchless library to the nation, the public conscience would have been much more tender towards them.
Nor was it need that drove them thus to live upon the public, for the private wealth of the family was commanding; it was the basis of their power. Richard by the death of his mother was said to have become the richest subject in England.[97]And, as time went on, his possessions swelledand swelled. The estates of Bubb[98]devolved upon him. Heiresses brought their fortunes. There seemed no end to this prosperity, and it was all utilised steadily and ceaselessly to extend the political influence of the family.
So all the brothers, even the sailor Thomas, were brought into the House of Commons; and, with their connections and their discipline, so long as this was preserved, formed a redoubtable political force. They were not only a brotherhood but a confraternity. What is really admirable indeed is the pertinacity and concentration of this strange, dogged race, and their devotion, indeed subjection, to their chief; they were a political Company of Jesus. Their objects were not exalted, but from generation to generation, with a patience little less than Chinese, they pursued and ultimately attained what they desired. They were of course unpopular, because their scheme was too obvious; but they knew the value of popularity, and attempted it with pompous and crowded entertainments. They were not brilliant; but in every generation they had a man of sufficient ability, two prime ministers among them, to further their cause. They built, no doubt, on inadequate foundations, but these lasted just long enough to enable the structure to be crowned. It is a singular story; there is nothing like it in the history of England; it resembles rather the persistent annals of the hive.
The career of Pitt is concerned with only two of these Grenvilles, Richard and George. These two men had this at least in common, an amazing opinion of themselves. They were in their own estimation as good as or betterthan any one else. They resented the slightest idea of any disparity between themselves and Pitt. On what this prodigious estimate was founded we shall never know; we can only conjecture that it was the combination of fortune and family with some ability that made them deem their position at least equal to his. When Pitt had raised Britain from abasement to the first position in the world, when he was indisputably the greatest orator and the greatest power in the country, the Grenvilles considered themselves at the least as Pitt's equals, and him as only one and not the first of a triumvirate. In 1769, when Pitt was reconciled to them, Temple trumpeted the 'union of the three brothers' as the greatest fact in contemporary history. As the alliance of a man of genius with great parliamentary influence and powers of intrigue it was undoubtedly a political fact of note. But any disparity between the three personalities never occurs to Temple. In 1766, he writes: 'If a lead of superiority was claimed (on the part of Pitt) it was rejected on my part with an assertion of my pretensions to an equality.' And again: 'I claimed an equality, and have no idea of yielding to him.... a superiority which I think it would be unbecoming in me to give.' Poor forgotten Temple! With such superb scorn did he reject the offer of the First Lordship of the Treasury, with the nomination of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer and the whole Board of Treasury, when offered by the first man in Europe. An hallucination of the same kind was observed in the brothers of Napoleon. But in that case it was only noted by cynical contemporaries, in this it was proclaimed on the housetops.
Of Richard, the eldest, who became, as will be seen,Earl Temple, a competent and laborious critic has said that he was one of the 'most straightforward, honest, and honourable men of his age.' The age, no doubt, was not famous for public men of this type; but it was not so barren as this judgment would imply. And indeed it is difficult to discern the grounds on which it is based. To the ordinary student Temple, we imagine, will always appear a selfish and tortuous intriguer, who hoped to utilise his brother-in-law's genius and popularity for practical objects of his own. But he had other resources of a more questionable kind. He delighted in the subterranean and the obscure. 'This malignant man,' says Horace Walpole with truth and point, 'worked in the mines of successive factions for over thirty years together.' He was in constant communication with Wilkes, whom he supplied with funds. He was an active pamphleteer. So well were his methods understood that he acquired the dubious honour of a candidature for the authorship of Junius. It is almost certain at any rate that he was one of the few confidants of that remarkable secret. But his wealth and strategy and borough power were all concentrated on selfish and personal objects. As head of the Grenvilles, his design was that the Grenvilles and their connections and all other influences that he could bring to bear should co-operate for the elevation of the family in the person of its chief. For this purpose his brother-in-law, Pitt, was a priceless asset. But all the family had to serve. All of them were put into the House of Commons; and, it may be added, into the Privy Council, except Thomas, the sailor, who was prematurely removed by death. George, who under Pitt and Temple only enjoyed subordinate office,was for a time lured from the family allegiance by Bute with the offer of a Secretaryship of State and the reversion of the headship. But George himself was eventually brought into line.
Temple's aims were simple and material; from the first moment that we discern him he is pursuing them with persistent but intemperate ardour. Hardly was Cobham's body cold, Cobham, his uncle and benefactor, to whom he owed everything, when we find Temple urging that his mother, Cobham's sister and heiress, should be made a Countess in her own right, with descent, of course, to himself. Cobham died on September 13; on September 28 Temple applied for this title. Even Newcastle, the most hardened of political jobbers, was shocked at his precipitation, and suggested a postponement, on the ground of common decency. Temple brushed this objection aside with contempt. He wished the thing done at once, and done it was.
Hardly had he thus been ennobled when we find him signalising his new rank by a filthy trick more suited to a barge than a court. At a reception in his own house, presided over by his charming and accomplished wife, Lord Cobham, as he was now styled, spat into the hat which Lord Hervey held in his hand. This feat Cobham had betted a guinea that he would accomplish. Hervey behaved with temper and coolness. Cobham took the hat and wiped it with profuse excuses, trying to pass the matter off as a joke; but after some days of humiliation he had to write an explicit apology with a recital of all his previous efforts to appease Hervey's resentment.[99]Suchdiversions, Lady Hester Stanhope declares, were common at Stowe. She narrates one scarcely less nauseous.[100]
Having obtained the earldom, his next object was the Garter. George II. detested him, and refused the request with asperity. So Pitt had to be brought in. Pitt was then all-powerful, for this was the autumn of 1759. He wrote a note full of sombre menace to Newcastle, and demanded the Garter for Temple as a reward for his own services; but still the King refused. Then the last reserves were brought into play. Temple resigned the Privy Seal on the ground that the Garter was denied. Pitt had at the same time a peremptory interview with Newcastle. The King had to yield, but could not repress his anger. He threw the ribbon to Temple as a bone is thrown to a dog. But delicacy, as we have seen, did not trouble Temple in matters of substance, and he was satisfied.
Having obtained these two objects of ambition, he now played for a dukedom. This ambition, suspected presumably in Cobham, had been the subject of epigram so early as 1742.[101]It was avowed, according to Walpole, in 1767, and, indeed, no other explanation seems adapted to his various proceedings at critical junctures. Thus, when in June 1765, George III. and his uncle Cumberland tried to form a Pitt ministry, but found that an absolute condition of such a ministry was that Temple should be First Lord of the Treasury, Temple refused on various flimsy pretexts. When these were surmounted, he declared that 'he had tender and delicate reasons' whichhe did not explain to the King, or, apparently, to Pitt.[102]That this unwonted delicacy and tenderness were concentrated on the superior coronet appears from the negotiation carried on by Horace Walpole in 1767, when Lord Hertford assured him of the fact that Lord Temple's ambition was now a dukedom.[103]It is not doubtful that this had now become the central preoccupation of his life, and the hereditary object of the family combination. At first sight it would seem improbable that Pitt was aware of it, for the simple reason that he would probably have made efforts to obtain it from the King. On the other hand, it is unlikely that Temple, in the affair of the Garter, having found the inestimable value of Pitt's pressure on George II., could have foregone the effort to exercise it on George III. On the whole, the most plausible conjecture appears to be that Pitt was unsuccessfully sounded by his brother-in-law. All that we know is, that when Pitt finally determined to undertake the ministry without Temple, they had a heated interview, which seems to have left deep marks on Pitt's nerves and health, but whether it turned on Temple's particular ambition or not can now only be matter for surmise.
The death of Temple made no difference to the family ambition. His nephew made violent, even frantic, but ineffectual efforts to obtain the title through Chatham's son. Nor were other means of aggrandisement neglected. By marriage there accrued the fortunes of Chambers, Nugent, Chandos, and, by some other way, that of Dodington. Acre was added to acre and estate to estate,often by the dangerous expedient of borrowed money, until Buckinghamshire seemed likely to become the appanage of the family. Borough influence was laboriously accumulated and maintained. Nor were nobler possessions disdained. Rare books and manuscripts, choice pictures, and sumptuous furniture were added by successive generations to the splendid collections of Stowe. Finally, in the reign of George IV., and in the time of Temple's great-nephew, the object was attained. Lord Liverpool acquired the support of the Grenville parliamentary influence by an almost commercial compact, Louis XVIII. added his instances, and Buckingham became a duke. From that moment the star of the family visibly paled. Eight years afterwards the duke had to shut up Stowe, and go abroad. Less than twenty years from then the palace was dismantled, its treasures were dispersed, the vast estates sold, and the glories of the House, built up with so much care and persistence, vanished like a snow-wreath.
But all this is beyond our narrative. At this time all these ambitions are concealed, there is nothing visible but cordiality, the genial flow of soul, and brotherly love. Pitt's early letters to George Grenville are among the easiest and most human that he ever wrote: he wrote nothing more unaffectedly tender than two letters he sent in September and October 1742, to George, then abroad for his health. Richard and George Grenville, Lyttelton and William Pitt, with their set, form one of those engaging companionships of youth, when high spirits, warm affections, and the dayspring of life combine to animate a friendship without guile or suspicion.
Then come separation, marriage, new interests, newambitions, and the paths diverge, perhaps till sunset. So it was with these young men. They all at times quarrelled, even the kindly Lyttelton was driven to separation. Later, again, they all came together again in some fashion or another, with the exception, perhaps, of George, whose obstinate self-love when wounded could never be healed.
But now all was dawn and blossom and smiles. The friends are full of banter. Their politics are half a frolic. Life is all before them. Its conditions will harden them presently, and they will wrangle and snarl, and have their quarrels and huffs. But that is not yet; not even a coming shadow is visible. Still, even now, it is necessary to indicate the nature and consequences of Pitt's absorption into the cousinhood.
Itis here that his public career begins. His lot was cast in stirring times. For the year of his entry into Parliament was the fourteenth of Walpole's long administration, and it was not difficult to see menacing cracks in the structure. The Minister himself seems to have been aware that his position was critical; and at the general election in the previous year he had spared no exertions to secure a majority. In his own county of Norfolk, 10,000l.had been spent in support of his candidates without averting their defeat: from his own private means he is said, no doubt with gross exaggeration, to have expended no less than 60,000l.Figures like these, however swollen by rumour, denote the intensity of the struggle. But in spite of all, his losses were considerable. Even Scotland, in those days the hungry dependant of all Governments, was shaken in her allegiance. And, though he gained the victory, the toughness of the contest betokened clearly that his stability was seriously impaired, and that the country was weary of his domination.
For this there were many obvious causes. One, of course, was the universal unpopularity of the Excise scheme. It was also one of the moments in our history when the country is uneasily conscious of weakness and possible humiliation abroad, and when the silent and passive interests of peaceweigh lightly in the balance against the smarting burden of wounded self-respect. But the most operative cause lay in Walpole himself.
There is no enigma about Walpole. He sprang from near a score of generations of Norfolk squires who had spent six hundred years in healthy obscurity and the simple pleasures of the country. None of them apparently had brains, or the need of them. From these he inherited a frame hardy and robust, and that taste for the sports of the field that never left him. He had also the advantage of being brought up as a younger son to work, and thus he gained that self-reliant and pertinacious industry which served him so well through long years of high office. From the beginning to the end he was primarily a man of business. Had he not been a politician it cannot be doubted that he would have been a great merchant or a great financier. And, though his lot was cast in politics, a man of business he essentially remained. This is not to say that he was not a consummate parliamentary debater, for that he must have been. But it is to suggest that the key to Walpole's character as Prime Minister lies in his instincts and qualifications as a man of business. His main tendency was not, as with Chesterfield and Carteret and Bolingbroke, towards high statesmanship. His first object was to carry on the business of the country in a business spirit, as economically and as peacefully as possible. His chief preoccupation apart from this was the keeping out of the rival house of Stuart, which would not have employed the firm of Walpole and the Whigs to keep their accounts. It is quite possible that as a patriot he may have also dreaded the probable evils of the Stuart dynasty. Butthe first reason is amply sufficient. The corruption of which he was undoubtedly guilty, but of which he was by no means the inventor, he perhaps considered as the commission due to customers; or else he may have argued, 'these men have to be bought by somebody, let us do it in a business-like way.' His merciless crushing of any rivals was simply the big firm crushing competition, a familiar feature of commerce. His carrying on a war against Spain in spite of his own conscientious disapproval can only be satisfactorily explained on the same hypothesis. The nation would have war: well, if it must, he could carry it on more cheaply, and limit its mischief more effectually than any other contractor. Moreover, Walpole had all along been the merchants' man. He had given them peace and wealth. Now for commercial purposes they wanted war and he had to gratify them. They had been the main backers of his administration, the deprivation of their support would have left him bare; so when they turned round he had to follow, with scarcely the appearance of leadership.
In these days we should undoubtedly condemn any statesman who declared a war of which he disapproved. Lord Aberdeen morbidly and unjustly accused himself of this offence, and refused to be comforted. That is the other extreme to Walpole's position. But we must remember the political morality of those times. Was there then living a statesman who would have acted differently? From this sweeping question we cannot except Pitt, who was bitterly denouncing Walpole for his pacific attitude, and had afterwards to confess that Walpole had been right.
We regard Walpole, then, first and foremost as a manof business, led into the great error with which history reproaches him by his brother men of business. Still, his qualities in that capacity would not have maintained him for years as Prime Minister. They proved him to be a hard-working man with practical knowledge of affairs and strong common sense; a sagacious man who hated extremes. He had besides the highest qualities of a parliamentary leader. Of imagination, unless it may be inferred from his palace and picture gallery, he seems to have been totally destitute. But he had dauntless courage and imperturbable temper.
To his courage George II., who was not profuse of praise, gave ardent testimony. 'He is a brave fellow,' he would cry out vehemently, with a flush and an oath, 'he has more spirit than any man I ever knew;' a compliment ill-requited by Sir Robert, who declared that his master, if he knew anything of him, was, 'with all his personal bravery, as great a political coward as ever wore a crown.' Early in his career as Prime Minister Sir Robert, who had the art, rare among eighteenth century politicians, of inditing pointed and pregnant letters, had written to an Irish Viceroy: 'I have weathered great storms before now, and shall not be lost in an Irish hurricane.'[104]This was no vain boast; it was the spirit in which he habitually conducted affairs. In truth Walpole's courage stands in no need of witness, it speaks for itself; his very defects arose from it or prove it. His jealousy of ability which deprived him of precious allies and compelled him to fight single-handed, his intolerance of independence in his party which had the same effect, all show thedauntless self-confidence of the man. He wanted no competitors, no dubious allies, no assistance but that of unflagging votes or diligent service; for all else he relied on himself alone.
This great Minister had all the defects of his qualities as well as one which seemed curiously alien to them. Part of his strength lay in a coarse and burly, if cynical, geniality. His temper, as we have said, was imperturbable; we shall see this even in the closing scene of his ministry; it was even cordial, and sometimes boisterous. He loved to seem rather a country gentleman than a statesman. He seemed most natural when shooting and carousing at Houghton, or carousing and hunting at Richmond. But his appearance was deceptive; he was what the French would call 'un faux bonhomme,' a spurious good fellow. Good nature perhaps could hardly have survived the desperate battles and intrigues in which this hard-bitten old statesman had been engaged all his life. And so under this bluff and debonair exterior there was concealed a jealousy of power, passing the jealousy of woman, and the ruthless vindictiveness of a Red Indian. To the opposition of his political foes he opposed a stout and unflinching front which shielded a gang of mediocrities; with these enemies he fought a battle in which quarter was neither granted nor expected. But his own forces were kept under martial law; anything like opposition or rivalry within his ranks he crushed in the relentless spirit of Peter the Great. By these methods he had not merely maintained an iron discipline among his own supporters, but had himself constructed by alienation and proscription the opposition to his administration, an opposition whichcomprised consummate abilities and undying resentments. For he had driven from him and united in a league of implacable revenge almost all the men of power and leading in Parliament. Politics to them were embodied in one controlling idea; how to compass the fall, the ruin, the impeachment of Walpole. The undaunted Minister faced them with confident serenity, though they were not enemies to be disdained. Pulteney, Wyndham, Chesterfield, and Carteret were men of the highest ability and distinction. Barnard and Polwarth, Shippen and Sandys, were from character or intellect scarcely less redoubtable. Behind them lurked Bolingbroke, excluded, indeed, from Parliament by the vigilant detestation of Walpole, but guiding and inspiring from his enforced retirement, the seer and oracle of all the Minister's enemies, for—
'Princely counsel in his face yet shone,Majestic, though in ruin.'
'Princely counsel in his face yet shone,Majestic, though in ruin.'
Prominent among these stately combatants was an anomalous figure with a brain as shallow and futile as St. John's was active and brilliant, but by the nature of things as formidable as Bolingbroke was impotent, Frederick Prince of Wales. For Frederick was soon to add to the second position in the country the leadership of the Opposition. The King's health was supposed to be precarious, though he lived cheerfully and not ingloriously for another quarter of a century. And the Heir Apparent, feeling conscious of his advantages, and determined to assert himself, became the complacent puppet of all the factions opposed to his father's Government. His Court, indeed, resembled that famous cave to which were gathered everyone that was discontented and every one that was in distress. All who had been spurned or ousted by Walpole, all who were under the displeasure of the King, all who saw little prospect of advancement under the present reign, hastened to rally round the Heir Apparent. He was soon to employ Pitt about his person. It is well, then, to pause a moment and consider this prominent and formidable figure.
Frederick, Prince of Wales, is one of the idle mysteries of English history. The problem does not lie in his being a political leader, in spite of the general contempt in which he was held by his contemporaries and associates; for an heir-apparent to the Crown can always, if he chooses, be a factor in party politics, though it is scarcely possible that his intervention can be beneficial. But no circumstance known to us can explain the virulence of aversion with which the King and Queen regarded him, which was so intense as to be almost incredible. They were both good haters, and yet they hated no one half so much as their eldest son. His father called him the greatest beast and liar and scoundrel in existence. His mother and his sister wished hourly to hear of his death. This violence of unnatural loathing is not to be accounted for by any known facts. Frederick was a poor creature, no doubt, a vain and fatuous coxcomb. But human beings are constantly the parents of coxcombs without regarding them as vermin. The only conjecture in regard to the matter which seems to furnish adequate ground for these feelings is that the King was bred in the narrow school of a little German State, where, though nothing less than affection was expected between a prince and his heir, discipline was rigidly observed; so that the conduct of Frederick, in assuming a position independentand defiant of his father, and in openly heading an opposition to his Government, was an offence the more unspeakable and unpardonable as it had been absolutely beyond the limits of Hanoverian contemplation. There was, it must be confessed, an hereditary predisposition to this parental relation. The King himself, when Prince of Wales, had been placed under arrest by his father for the somewhat venial offence of insulting the Duke of Newcastle. He had submitted himself to his disgrace, and his opposition had only been passive and inarticulate; he had never dreamed of forming a faction hostile to the Crown. His only real crimes had been his right of succession and a fictitious popularity founded on dislike of his father's mistresses. And yet his father hated him almost as much as father ever hated son. It was reserved for George II. to discover a deeper abhorrence for his own heir. With his views of absolute authority, a peculiar degree of detestation had to be discovered for a Prince of Wales who had not merely the inherent vice of heirship apparent but the gratuitous offence of an active opposition which his father deemed flagrant rebellion. Given violent temper, ill manners, and a sort of family tradition, the cause of wrath can best be thus explained.
Beyond this we know nothing for certain, and presumably shall never know more. There are some facts, but they are insufficient.
It is said that as a mere boy he gamed and drank and kept a mistress. By this last scandal the royal family was enabled to present to the world the unedifying spectacle of grandfather, father, and son simultaneously living under these immoral conditions; and all three, itis said, successively with the same woman. But these facts alone would certainly not have accounted for his father's displeasure. Again, it is narrated that when his tutor complained of him his mother said that these were page's tricks. 'Would to God they were, madam,' replied the tutor, 'but they are rather the tricks of lackeys and knaves.' And tricky Frederick undoubtedly was from the beginning to the end. But trickiness, though it was not among the King's faults, and though it would excite his just contempt, cannot alone have caused the intensity of his hatred.
One if not two of Frederick's escapades were concerned with designs of marriage. He was discovered on the point of concluding a secret alliance with Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia, with whom he professed himself in love, and who afterwards became known to us as Margravine of Bareith; on another occasion it is said that he was lured by a dowry of 100,000l.into a betrothal with Lady Diana Spencer, grand-daughter of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. Both these affairs were interrupted at the last moment. In both cases the King was irritated by the underhand proceedings of his son, and by the total lack of a confidence which, as he probably omitted to remember, he had done nothing to gain. But his crowning outrage was a monkey-trick, both wanton and barbarous. When he had at last married a princess of his father's choice, and his wife was seized with the first pangs of maternity in the King's palace of Hampton Court, he hurried her off, in her agony and in spite of her entreaties, to St. James's. At any moment of the journey a catastrophe might have occurred. What the motive was for this cruel and unmeaning escapade cannot be guessed,for his own explanations were futile. It was said that his father suspected him of an intention to foist a spurious child on his family and that he resented the suspicion. If that were so his action was exactly suited to confirm it. Whatever his purpose may have been, the King and Queen, from whom the imminence of the Princess's situation had been carefully concealed, were naturally and grossly insulted. The King banished him from his palace and presence, and forbade the Court to all who should visit him. Nor was there ever an approach to reconciliation or forgiveness in the fourteen years that the Prince had yet to live. The King would receive him at Court and would express the hope that his wife was in good health; that was the extent of their relations. But though this was the culminating point of his known misconduct, it would almost seem that there was some more occult reason which we do not know. We only guess at its existence from the record of Lord Hardwicke. At the time of this last scandal 'Sir Robert Walpole,' says the Chancellor, 'informed me of certain passages between the King and himself, and between the King and the Prince, of too high and secret a nature even to be trusted to this narrative; but from thence I found great reason to think that this unhappy difference between the King and Queen and His Royal Highness turned upon some points of a more interesting and important nature than have hitherto appeared.'[105]There, then, is the mystery, without a key, with no room even for conjecture. But the cause must have been dire that evoked so deadly a passion of hatred between parents and son.
Those who care to read in detail the coarse and violent expressions of this unnatural repulsion may glut their appetite in Lord Hervey's memoirs. One or two such passages will serve as specimens of the rest. The Queen and Princess Caroline, Frederick's sister, made no ceremony of wishing a hundred times a day that the Prince might drop down dead of an apoplexy. Princess Caroline, who, Hervey tells us, 'had affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness without levity, and prudence without falsehood,' who was in a word an exemplary and charming person, declared that she grudged him every hour he had to breathe, and reproached Hervey with being 'so great a dupe as to believe the nauseous beast' (those were her words) 'cared for anything but his own nauseous self, that he loved anything but money, that he was not the greatest liar that ever spoke.' The Queen, not to be outdone, declared that she would give it under her hand 'that my dear firstborn is the greatest ass, and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and that I most heartily wish he was out of it.'[106]Even on her deathbed she could not be brought to receive or forgive him. If Lord Hervey, his bitter enemy, can be credited, this obduracy was not at the last without justification. Lord Hervey declares that the Prince crowded the Queen's anteroom with his emissaries to convey to him the earliest information of her condition. As the bulletins of the Queen's decline reached him, he would say, 'Well, now we shall have some good news; she cannot hold out much longer.' All this need not be literally believed, but it affords a picture of familyrancour which can scarcely have been equalled in the history of mankind.
From the time of the public quarrel with his parents the Prince of Wales gave himself up to political opposition. He wielded, indeed, formidable weapons of offence. His father was avaricious, secluded, and disliked; Frederick laid himself out to be thought generous, accessible, and popular. He knew well that every symptom of national affection for himself was a stab to the King. He and his family, at a time when French fashions were all the rage, ostentatiously wore none but English goods. He trained his children to act Addison's Cato. Nor did he disdain more social arts. He would go to fairs, bull-baitings, races, and rowing matches; he would visit gipsy encampments; he became familiar to the people. He would assist at a fire in London, amid shouts from the mob, as he and his court alleged, of 'Crown him! crown him!' At Epsom there is a tradition that when living there he fought a chimney-sweep with his fists, and erected a monument in generous acknowledgment of his own defeat.
In private life he was essentially frivolous. When his father's troops were besieging Carlisle, the Prince had a model of the citadel made in confectionery, while he and the ladies of the court bombarded it with sugar-plums. This seems emblematic of his whole career.
But his main and favourite diversion had a graver aspect: it lay in political cabals of which he was the puppet and the figurehead, and in forming futile ministries and policies for his own reign. Of these last a curious example is preserved among the Bedford Papers.[107]
All political malcontents of the slightest importance were sure of a cordial reception at Leicester House or Kew. There all could warm their wants and disappointments with the sunshine of royal patronage and the cheering prospect of a new reign. 'Remember that the King is sixty-one, and I am thirty-seven,'[108]said Frederick, and this calculation coloured his whole life. The future was freely discounted and anticipated in the Prince's circle, so that there, as in the Court of the Pretender, the faithful adherent might receive some high office to be enjoyed after the death of the King, but with this substantial difference: that whereas what James distributed were shadows, the awards of Frederick required only common good faith and the death of an old man to make them realities. Bubb for example, the most avid and unabashed of political harlots, gravely kissed his patron's hand for a Secretaryship of State, and, according to Walpole, a dukedom, immediately afterwards nominating his under-secretary, to show the solidity of the arrangement. Henley, who was afterwards under different circumstances to be Chancellor, was grievously disappointed to find that Dr. Lee was to have the seals. And so they snapped and snarled over the spoils, while the Prince complacently made his appointments, and apportioned the functions of the future. So far as he was concerned it was all barren enough. His little projects, his little ambitions, his little ministries, his political post-obits, were all cut short by the sudden shears of Death. His councillors and followers were scattered to the winds, and Bubb had to hasten to make his peace with the powers that be, and to exchange his contingent Secretaryship ofState for an actual Treasurership of the Navy. The Prince's other post-obits, his debts, were, it would seem, never paid.[109]
To sum up, with regard to Frederick we have a few certain facts: the hatred of his parents and sisters, and a singular unanimity of scorn from his contemporaries. There is not perhaps in existence a single favourable testimony. We have many portraits, one at Windsor of an innocent lad in a red coat playing the violoncello with his sisters, which is pleasant enough; the later ones all stamped with a pretentious silliness which affirms the verdict of his own day. Then we have the mysterious intimation of Lord Hardwicke of some deep and sinister cause for the alienation of his parents. This, however, unsupported and unexplained, carries us no further, and is merely an excuse for the unnatural aversion of his family. Beyond that mystery, the word 'fatuous' seems exactly to embody all that we know of this prince; his appearance, morals, manners, and intellect are all summed up in that single expression.
On the other hand, there are traits of generosity which are recorded, there is his apparent popularity, there is the general grief for his death; but it may well be surmised that it was not difficult for the son of George II. and the grandson of George I. to be popular and regretted. On the whole, may we not conclude that the arbitrary discipline of Hanover in early life made him incurably tricky and untruthful, that he was an empty and frivolous coxcomb, but not without kindly instincts; and that his weaknesses and frailties, whatever they may have been, laid a grave responsibility on the parents who reared and cursed him?
Duringhis first session of Parliament, Pitt never opened his mouth: indeed, his only public performance was to tell in a division. In 1736 he became better known. He supported an address of congratulation to the Crown on the marriage of the Prince of Wales. This formal and complimentary speech has been absurdly scrutinised because of the speaker's subsequent fame, and much has been read into it which no impartial reader can now discern. A notorious eulogy describes it as superior even to the models of ancient eloquence. Others read into it piercing innuendoes and vitriolic sarcasm. All this was discovered, long after its delivery, by the light of Pitt's later achievements. It is said that George II. never forgave it. But George II.'s hatred of Pitt is more easily accounted for by other offences. It is rumoured that Walpole shuddered when he heard it, and said, 'We must muzzle that terrible cornet of horse.' The ordinary reader sees in the reported speech nothing which would provoke admiration or alarm in anybody were it attributed to any one who had remained obscure. But the report, though elaborate, was probably inaccurate; the speech may have been more vicious than appears; it must, at any rate, have been something very different from smooth platitudes on a royal marriage that would have made Walpole tremble, if indeed Walpole was liable toany such emotion. The truth, no doubt, is that the graces of voice, person, and delivery marvellously embellished this maiden effort, and produced a striking effect on the audience.
But, whatever its intrinsic merits, the success of this speech was immeasurably enhanced, if not altogether secured, by Walpole's action. It may indeed be said to have been made famous by the penalty which followed it rather than by its own merits. He deprived the young orator and cornet of his commission.