The Young Melbourne & Lord M Page 2

  But it was always a garden plant, a civilized growth. Whatever their eccentricities, the Whig nobles were never provincial and never uncouth. They had that effortless knowledge of the world that comes only to those, who from childhood have been accustomed to move in a complex society; that delightful unassertive confidence possible only to people who have never had cause to doubt their social position. And they carried to the finest degree of cultivation those social arts which engaged so much of their time. Here we come to their outstanding distinction. They were the most agreeable society England has ever known. The character of their agreeability was of a piece with the rest of them; mundane, straightforward, a trifle philistine, largely concerned with gossip, not given to subtle analyses or flights of fancy. But it had all their vitality and all their sense of style. It was incomparably racy and spontaneous and accomplished; based solidly on a wide culture and experience, yet free to express itself in bursts of high spirits, in impulses of appreciation, in delicate movements of sentiment, in graceful compliments. For it had its grace; a virile classical grace like that of the Chippendale furniture which adorned its rooms, lending a glittering finish to its shrewd humour, its sharp-eyed observation, its vigorous disquisitions on men and things. Educated without pedantry, informal but not slipshod, polished but not precious, brilliant without fatigue, it combined in an easy perfection the charms of civilization and nature. Indeed the whole social life of the period shines down the perspective of history like some masterpiece of natural art; a prize bloom, nurtured in shelter and sunshine and the richest soil, the result of generations of breeding and blending, that spreads itself to the open sky in strength and beauty.

  It was at its most characteristic in the middle of the century, it was at its most dazzling towards its close. By 1780 a new spirit was rising in the world. Ossian had taught people to admire ruins and ravines, Rousseau to examine the processes of the heart; with unpowdered heads and the ladies in simple muslin dresses, they paced the woods meditating, in Cowper-like mood, on the tender influences of nature. Though they kept the style and good sense of their fathers, their sympathies were wider. At the same time their feelings grew more refined. The hardness, which had marred the previous age, dwindled. Gainsborough, not Hogarth, mirrored the taste of the time; sensibility became a fashionable word. For a fleeting moment Whig society had a foot in two worlds and made the best of both of them. The lucid outline of eighteenth-century civilization was softened by the glow of the romantic dawn.

  Dawn—but for them it was sunset. The same spirit that tinged them with their culminating glory was also an omen of their dissolution. For the days of aristocratic supremacy were numbered. By the iron laws which condition the social structure of man’s existence, it could only last as long as it maintained an economic predominance. With the coming of the Industrial Revolution this predominance began to pass from the landlords to other ranks of the community. Already by the close of the century, go-ahead manufacturers in the north were talking of Parliamentary reform; already, in the upper rooms of obscure London alleys, working men met together to clamour for liberty, equality, and fraternity. Within forty years of its zenith, the Whig world was completely swept away. Only a few survivors lingered on to illustrate to an uncomprehending generation the charm of the past. Of these the most distinguished was William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne.

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  1 Pitt diverged from the Whigs in later life: but he was brought up among them; and is, so far, representative of the Whig tradition.

  Part I

  Chapter One

  The Lamb Family

  Oddly enough, he did not come from an aristocratic family. By the stringent standards of the age the Lambs were parvenus. Their fortunes had been founded three generations before, by Peniston Lamb, an attorney of humble origin in Nottinghamshire, who died leaving a fortune of £100,000. His heir, a nephew called Matthew, was even more successful. With the help of his legacy he married an heiress, bought a country place, entered the House of Commons, and eventually acquired a baronetcy. Here the family progress seemed likely to stop: his son, Sir Peniston Lamb, was a less effective personality. He makes his first appearance on the stage of history as a young man of fashion writing to his mistress, the notorious Mrs. Sophia Baddeley. “I send you a million kissis, remember I love you Satterday, Sunday, every day . . . I hope you will get the horsis, but I beg you will not be so ventersum, as there are bad horsis, but will get one quite quiet . . . pray destroy all letters lest anyone should find them by axcedent.” Mrs. Baddeley found the author of these artless communications child’s play. She deceived him often and flagrantly; but he always believed her protestations of innocence, and seldom visited her without bringing a £200 bill in his pocket as a present. Indeed his only noticeable characteristic seems to have been a capacity for getting rid of money. Handsome, festive and foolish, his main occupation was to squander the guineas laboriously accumulated for him by his forefathers. His money raised him to the peerage of Ireland as first Baron Melbourne, and procured him a seat in Parliament. But during the forty years he spent there, he only opened his mouth once. Such energy as he possessed was fully employed in drinking port, following the hounds, and playing faro at Almack’s Club.

  However, any deficiencies on his part were more than made up for by his wife. Elizabeth Milbanke, Lady Melbourne, was one of the most remarkable women of her age. Not that she was original. On the contrary, she was a typical eighteenth-century woman of the world: but with all the qualities of her type intensified to the highest degree. She was very beautiful in the style approved by her contemporaries; “a fine woman,” with a clear-cut mouth, challenging dark eyes, and a figure moulded in the shapely contours which stirred the full-blooded desires of the gentlemen of Brooks’s Club. Nor did they find her a disappointment on closer acquaintance. Her temperament was as full-blooded as their own; and she was even more satisfactory as a companion than she was as a lover. It was not exactly that she had charm: there was nothing appealing about her, nothing intoxicating, nothing mysterious. The cool, astringent atmosphere exhaled by her personality suggested prose rather than poetry. But it was singularly agreeable prose, at once soothing and stimulating. She could be amusing in a direct, caustic way; and she understood the art of getting on with men completely. Level-tempered and rational, she found scenes and caprices as tiresome as they did. After the unaccountable moods of stormier sirens, it was infinitely delightful to find oneself “laughing away an hour” on the sofa of her sitting-room in Melbourne House, with Lady Melbourne—Lady Melbourne, who could be depended upon never to be touchy, or exacting, or shocked, or low-spirited, who did not expect men to be monogamous, and who never asked an awkward question. She seemed to combine the social merits of both sexes, to possess, at the same time, male robustness and feminine tact, a woman’s voluptuousness and a man’s judgment. Moreover, she had an unusual power of entering into a man’s interests. She disliked talking about herself: “no man is safe with another’s secrets, no woman with her own,” she once remarked. But she threw herself whole-heartedly into other people’s problems; was always ready to listen sympathetically to a man’s complaints about wives and political leaders, to advise him about how to manage a mistress, or an estate agent. And excellent advice it was too: Lady Melbourne’s masculine point of view was the product of a masculine intelligence. By choice it showed itself in practical affairs; her friends noted with irritation that she was the only woman who made her garden a paying concern. But if she did turn her attention to other matters—to politics, for instance—her opinion was always shrewd and judicious. In a positive, plain-sailing way she was a very able woman. And, within the limits of her experience, she had an uncommon knowledge of life. No one had a clearer understanding of the social machine, no one could give a man a more accurate idea of the forces to be reckoned with in planning a career; no one could tell one better how to satisfy one’s desires without offending convention. Deliberately to defy
it was, in her eyes, as silly as deliberately to defy the law of gravity. “Anyone who braves the opinion of the world,” she used to say, “sooner or later feels the consequences of it.”

  Her character was in keeping with the rest of her. She had the virtues of her common sense and her full-bloodedness. Though pleasure-loving she was not shallow. Her vigour of spirit showed itself also in her feelings. She cared for few people; but these she loved with a strong, unegotistic affection that could be absolutely depended upon. No effort was too great that might advance their interests. Yet, her feelings were always controlled by her judgment. In the most vertiginous complications of intrigue and dissipation, Lady Melbourne could be relied on to remain dignified and collected. And reasonable; her philosophy taught her that the world must be kept going. And to ensure its smooth working she was always prepared to make sacrifices. She had strong dislikes, but could suppress them in the cause of common peace: even though a woman might have lovers, it was no excuse, in her view, for her neglecting her duty to her family, or acting in such a way as to outrage social standards.

  All the same it is impossible to approve of Lady Melbourne. Her outlook was both low and limited. To her the great world of rank and fashion was the only world; and she saw it as a battle ground in which most people fought for their own ends. Nor was hers an amiable cynicism. She was good-tempered, not good-natured; suave, but not soft. Her laughter was satirical and unfeeling, she could not resist a wounding thrust. And, on the rare occasions she judged it wise to lose her temper, she was both relentless and brutal. Indeed, in spite of her polish, there was something essentially coarse-fibred about her. She cared little what others did so long as they kept up appearances. And herself, if she found it convenient, would plot and make use of people without compunction.

  But all her qualities, good and bad, were subordinated to one presiding motive, ambition. Since to her this world was the only one, its prizes seemed to her the only objects worth having. And her whole life was given up to getting them for herself and for her family. To this end she dedicated her beauty, her brains and her energy: it was for this she learned to be sagacious and smiling, tactful and dignified, ruthless and cunning. A single purpose united every element in her personality. Here we come to the secret of her eminence. It was not that she was more gifted than many of her rivals, but that her gifts were more concentrated. Amid a humanity frustrated by conflicting aspirations and divided desires, Lady Melbourne stood out all of a piece; her character, her talents, moved steadily and together, towards the same goal. One might suspect her, but one could not withstand her will. And so smoothly did life move under her sway, her judgment evinced so rational a grasp of reality, that in the end she generally brought one round to her view.

  From the first she was successful. Her birth was higher than her husband’s; Sir Ralph Milbanke, her father, was the head of an old Yorkshire county family. But it was early clear that his daughter was marked for a more brilliant destiny than could be achieved in provincial Yorkshire. Before she was seventeen she had married Lord Melbourne and his fortune, had established herself in his splendid family mansion in Piccadilly—it occupied the site where the Albany stands now—had re-decorated it in white and gold, and had begun her siege of London. Her chief weapon, naturally enough, was her power over men. She could not, indeed, make much of Lord Melbourne. “I am tired to death,” he writes to Mrs. Baddeley, “with prancing about with my Betsy a-shopping.” And shopping was about all he was good for. When he had bought her some diamonds and paid for the gold paint, he had done all that a reasonable woman could expect of him. However there were other men in the world; and Lady Melbourne lost no time in making their acquaintance. Characteristically she contrived that those she selected for peculiar favours should be both agreeable and useful. During the course of her career her name was to be coupled with the fashionable Lord Coleraine and the powerful Duke of Bedford. But the most important man in her life was Lord Egremont. He was a worthy counterpart to her. Except that he did not care for politics, George Wyndham, third Baron Egremont, was the pattern grand seigneur of his time. At once distinguished and unceremonious, rustic and scholarly, he spent most of his time at his palace of Petworth in a life of magnificent hedonism, breeding horses, collecting works of art, and keeping open house for a crowd of friends and dependants. He had the eccentricities of his type. Too restless to remain in any one place for more than five minutes, he would suddenly appear in the room where his guests were sitting, smiling benevolently and with his hat on; would make a few genial remarks often revealing considerable erudition, and then go away; an hour or two later he would reappear, continue the conversation just where he had left it off, and after another few minutes, vanish again. He had a number of children by various mistresses; but he never married, largely, it was thought, owing to the influence of Lady Melbourne. How their connection arose is not known. Scandal had it that he bought her from Lord Coleraine for £13,000, of which she took a share. It is an unlikely story; he was attractive enough to win her on his own merits and she seems to have been genuinely devoted to him. All we know for certain is that by 1779 Lord Egremont was established as her most trusted adviser and chief lover. What Lord Melbourne thought of his Betsy’s amorous activities is also obscure. People noticed that he did not seem to like his wife’s friends. But he was not the man to make an effective protest; moreover, Lady Melbourne always took particular care never to put him in an awkward position.

  However, she did not look exclusively to men for her advancement. It is the measure of her perspicacity that she realized that the security of a woman’s social position depends on the support given her by her own sex. And she set her wits to get it. So successfully, that within a few years of coming to London she had become a close friend of the most famous fashionable leader of the day, the ravishing Duchess of Devonshire. It was an unnatural intimacy. For one thing Lady Melbourne was essentially a man’s woman; it was only with men that she felt sufficiently sure of her ground to be her robust self; with women she was at best no more than smooth and pleasant. Further, the Duchess was her opposite in every respect, refined, imprudent and emotional. But affinity of the spirit is not so necessary for friendship in the rush of fashionable life, as in soberer circles. It is enough to be agreeable and to enjoy the same pleasures. Lady Melbourne passed both these tests easily: besides, her discretion combined with her interest in other people’s doings to make her the perfect confidante of the poor Duchess’s tangled romances. When the outraged Duke banished her for some months to France, it was Lady Melbourne whom she chose to keep her in touch with her disconsolate lover, Mr. Grey.

  What with the Duchess and Lord Egremont, Lady Melbourne’s path was now easy. From the records of the day we catch glimpses of her during her dazzling progress; driving surrounded by gentlemen on horseback amid the shelving glades of her country home at Brocket; piquant in the costume of a macaroni at a masquerade at the Pantheon; adjusting her feathers before the glass while she discusses stocks and shares with Horace Walpole; dancing, “to his great delight, though in rather a cow-like style,” with the Prince of Wales. For in 1784 she made her most distinguished conquest; she captured the affections of the future George IV. It was not for long—it never was with him. But Lady Melbourne saw to it that, even when all was over, they remained firm friends. In the meantime she took the opportunity to get Lord Melbourne made a Lord of the Bedchamber. Already in 1781 he had, by her efforts, been raised to a Viscounty. Even in the flush of her triumphs, she never forgot to use them for the acquisition of more lasting benefits. By 1785 she was securely fixed in that social position for which she had worked so hard.