Beaux and Belles of England

M >> Mary Robinson >> Beaux and Belles of England

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It was not until two or three days after tranquillity had been restored
that Lord George Gordon was apprehended. Ministers were justly
reproached for not having sent him to the Tower on the 2d of June, when
he had assembled and excited the mob to extort compliance with their
wishes from the House of Commons. Such a step, when the House was
surrounded by multitudes, and when, every moment, it was expected that
the door would be broken open, would have been hazardous; had that
occurred, Lord George would have suffered instant death. General Murray,
afterward Duke of Atholl, held his sword ready to pass it through Lord
George's body the instant the mob rushed in. The Earl of Carnarvon, the
grandfather of the present earl, followed him closely with the
same intent.

The indignation of the insulted Commons was extreme, and the distress
and displeasure of Lord George's own family doubtless excessive. The
House of Commons had never been thus insulted before. It is difficult to
determine what could be Lord George's motives for the conduct which led
to these awful results, during the whole of which he preserved a
composure that bordered on insensibility; he was a perfect master of
himself whilst the city was in flames. Much may be laid to fanaticism,
and the mental derangement which it either produced or evinced. When too
late he tried in vain to abate the fury he had excited, and offered to
take his stand by Lord Rodney's[55] side when the Bank was attacked, to
aid that officer, who commanded the Guards, in its defence.

Lord George then lived in Weibeck Street, Cavendish Square, and
tradition assigns as his house that now occupied by Mr. Newby, the
publisher, No. 30, and for many years the house of Count Woronzoff, the
Russian ambassador, who died there. Lord George there prepared for his
defence, which was entrusted to the great Erskine, then in his prime,
or, as he was called in caricatures, with which the shops were full,
from his extreme vanity, _Counsellor Ego_. In February, 1781, the trial
took place, and Lord George was acquitted. He retired to Birmingham,
became a Jew, and lived in that faith, or under the delusion that he did
so. The hundreds who perished from his folly or insanity were avenged in
his subsequent imprisonment in Newgate for a libel on Marie Antoinette,
of which he was convicted. He died a very few years after the riots of
1780, in Newgate, generally condemned, and but little compassionated.

It appears from the letters addressed by Doctor Beanie to the Duchess of
Gordon, that she was not in London during the riots of June, 1780. The
poet had been introduced to her by Sir William Forbes, and frequently
visited Gordon Castle. We find him, whilst London was blazing, sending
thither a parcel of _Mirrors_, the fashionable journal, "Count Fathom,"
"The Tale of a Tub," and the fanciful, forgotten romance by Bishop
Berkeley, "Gaudentio di Lucca," to amuse her solitude. "'Gaudentio,'" he
writes, "will amuse you, though there are tedious passages in it. The
whole description of passing the deserts of Africa is particularly
excellent." It is singular that this dream of Bishop Berkeley's of a
country fertile and delicious in the centre of Africa should have been
almost realised in our own time by the discoveries of Doctor
Livingstone.

To his present of books, Doctor Beattie added a flask of whisky, which
he sealed with his usual seal, "The three graces, whom I take to be your
Grace's near relations, as they have the honour, not only to bear one of
your titles, but also to resemble you exceedingly in form, feature, and
manner. If you had lived three thousand years ago, which I am very glad
you did not, there would have been four of them, and you the first. May
all happiness attend your Grace!"

This graceful piece of adulation was followed by a tender concern for
"her Grace's" health. A sportive benediction was offered whilst the
duchess was at Glenfiddick, a hunting seat in the heart of the Grampian
Hills--a wild, sequestered spot, of which Doctor Beattie was
particularly fond.

"I rejoice in the good weather, in the belief that it extends to
Glenfiddick, where I pray that your Grace may enjoy all the health and
happiness that good air, goats' whey, romantic solitude, and the society
of the loveliest children in the world can bestow. May your days be
clear sunshine; and may a gentle rain give balm to your nights, that the
flowers and birch-trees may salute you in the morning with all their
fragrance! May the kids frisk and play tricks before you with unusual
sprightliness; and may the song of birds, the hum of bees, and the
distant waterfall, with now and then the shepherd's horn resounding from
the mountains, entertain you with a full chorus of Highland music! My
imagination had parcelled out the lovely little glen into a thousand
little paradises; in the hope of being there, and seeing everyday in
that solitude, what is

'Fairer than famed of old, or fabled since,
Of fairy damsels, met in forests wide
By errant knights.'

But the information you received at Cluny gave a check to my fancy, and
was indeed a great disappointment to Mrs. Beattie and me; not on account
of the goats' whey, but because it keeps us so long at such a distance
from your Grace."

When at Gordon Castle, the duchess occupied herself with pursuits that
elevated whilst they refreshed her mind. She promised Doctor Beattie to
send him the history of a day. Her day seems to have been partly engaged
in the instruction of her five daughters, and in an active
correspondence and reading. It is difficult to imagine this busy,
flattered woman reading Blair's sermons--which had then been recently
published--to her family on Sundays; or the duke, whom Doctor Beattie
describes as "more astronomical than ever," engrossed from morning to
night in making calculations with Mr. Copland, Professor of Astronomy in
Marischal College, Aberdeen. Beattie's letters to the duchess, although
too adulatory, were those of a man who respects the understanding of the
woman to whom he writes. The following anecdotes, the one relating to
Hume, the other to Handel, are in his letters to the Duchess of Gordon,
and they cannot be read without interest.

"Mr. Hume was boasting to the doctor (Gregory) that among his disciples
he had the honour to reckon many of the fair sex. 'Now tell me,' said
the doctor, 'whether, if you had a wife or a daughter, you would wish
them to be your disciples? Think well before you answer me; for I assure
you that whatever your answer is, I will not conceal it.' Mr. Hume, with
a smile and some hesitation, made this reply: 'No; I believe skepticism
may be too sturdy a virtue for a woman.' Miss Gregory will certainly
remember she has heard her father tell this story."

Again, about Handel:

"I lately heard two anecdotes, which deserve to be put in writing, and
which you will be glad to hear. When Handel's 'Messiah' was first
performed, the audience were exceedingly struck and affected by the
music in general; but when the chorus struck up, 'For the Lord God
Omnipotent reigneth,' they were so transported that they all, together
with the king (who happened to be present), started up, and remained
standing till the chorus ended; and hence it became the fashion in
England for the audience to stand while that part of the music is
performing. Some days after the first exhibition of the same divine
oratorio, Mr. Handel came to pay his respects to Lord Kinnoul, with whom
he was particularly acquainted. His lordship, as was natural, paid him
some compliments on the noble entertainment which he had lately given
the town. 'My lord,' said Handel, 'I should be sorry if I only
entertained them--I wish to make them better.'"

Beattie's happiest hours are said to have been passed at Gordon Castle,
with those whose tastes, in some respects differing from his own, he
contributed to form; whilst he was charmed with the beauty, the wit, the
cultivated intellect of the duchess, and he justly appreciated her
talents and virtues. Throughout a friendship of years her kindness
was unvaried;

"Ne'er ruffled by those cataracts and breaks
Which humour interposed too often makes."

The duchess felt sincerely for poor Beattie's domestic sorrows; for the
peculiarities of his wife, whom he designated as "nervous;" for the
early death of his son, in whom all the poet's affections were bound up,
and to whose welfare every thought of his was directed.

One would gladly take one's impressions of the Duchess of Gordon's
character from Beattie, rather than from the pen of political writers,
who knew her but as a partisan. The duchess, according to Beattie, was
feelingly alive to every fine impulse; demonstrative herself, detesting
coldness in others; the life of every party; the consoling friend of
every scene of sorrow; a compound of sensibility and vivacity, of
strength and softness. This is not the view that the world took of her
character. Beattie always quitted Gordon Castle "with sighs and tears."
It is much to have added to the transient gleams of happiness enjoyed by
so good and so afflicted a man. "I cannot think," he wrote, when under
the pressure of dreaded calamity--that of seeing his wife insane; "I am
too much agitated and _distrait_ (as Lord Chesterfield would say) to
read anything that is not very desultory; I cannot play at cards; I
could never learn to smoke; and my musical days are over. My first
excursion, if ever I make any, must be to Gordon Castle."

There he found what is indispensable to such a man--congeniality.
Amusement was not what he required; it was soothing. It was in the
duchess's presence that he wrote the following "Lines to a Pen:"
"Go, and be guided by the brightest eyes,
And to the softest hand thine aid impart;
To trace the fair ideas as they arise,
Warm from the purest, gentlest, noblest heart;"
lines in which the praise is worth more than the poetry. The duchess
sent him a copy by Smith of her portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, a
picture to which reference has been already made.

In 1782 the duchess grieved for the death of Lord Kaimes, for whom she
had a sincere friendship, although the religious opinions of that
celebrated man differed greatly from those of Beattie. Lord Kaimes was
fifty-six years an author, in company with the eccentric Lord Monboddo,
the author of the theory that men have had tails. Lord Kaimes passed
some days at Gordon Castle shortly before his death. Monboddo and he
detested each other, and squabbled incessantly. Lord Kaimes understood
no Greek; and Monboddo, who was as mad and as tiresome about Greek and
Aristotle, and as absurd and peculiar on that score as Don Quixote was
about chivalry, told him that without understanding Greek he could not
write a page of good English. Their arguments must have been highly
diverting. Lord Kaimes, on his death-bed, left a remembrance to the
Duchess of Gordon, who had justly appreciated him, and defended him from
the charge of skepticism. Lord Monboddo compared the duchess to Helen of
Troy, whom he asserted to have been seven feet high; but whether in
stature, in beauty, or in the circumstances of her life, does
not appear.

The happiness of the duchess was perfected by the blessings granted to
her in her family. In 1770 the birth of her eldest son George, long
beloved in Scotland whilst the Marquis of Huntley, took place. Doctor
Beattie describes him as "the best and most beautiful boy that ever was
born." He proved to be one of the most popular of the young nobility of
that period. Doctor Beattie strongly advised the duchess to engage an
English tutor, a clergyman, for him, recommended either by the
Archbishop of York, or by the Provost of Eton. When it afterward became
a question whether the young heir should go to Oxford or to Cambridge,
the doctor, who seems to have been a universal authority, allowed that
Cambridge was the best for a man of study, whilst Oxford had more dash
and spirit in it: so little are matters altered since that time.

Fifteen years appear to have elapsed before the birth of a second son,
Alexander. Both these scions of this ducal house became military men:
the young marquis was colonel of the Scots Fusileer Guards, and served
in the Peninsular war, and was eventually Governor of Edinburgh Castle.
Long was he remembered by many a brother officer, many an old soldier,
as a gallant, courteous, gay-hearted man; with some of the faults and
all the virtues of the military character. He married late in life
Elizabeth, daughter of Alexander Brodie, Esq., of Arnhall, N. B., who
survived him. Lord Alexander Cordon died unmarried; but five daughters
added to the family lustre by noble and wealthy alliances.

Wraxall remarks "that the conjugal duties of the Duchess of Gordon
pressed on her heart with less force than did her maternal solicitudes."
For their elevation she thought, indeed, no sacrifice too great, and no
efforts too laborious. In the success of her matrimonial speculations
she has been compared to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who numbered
among her sons-in-law two dukes and three earls. But the daughters of
the proud Sarah were, it has been observed, the children of John
Churchill, and on them were settled, successively, Blenheim and the
dukedom. The Ladies Gordon were portionless, and far less beautiful than
their mother. To her skilful diplomacy alone were these brilliant
fortunes owing.

Lady Charlotte, the eldest, was eighteen years of age when her mother
first entertained matrimonial projects for her, and chose for their
object no less a personage than Pitt, then prime minister. Her schemes
might have proved successful had not Pitt had that sure impediment to
maternal management,--a friend. This friend was the subtle Henry Dundas,
afterward Lord Melville; one of those men who, under the semblance of
unguarded manners and a free, open bearing, conceal the deepest designs
of personal aggrandisement. Governing India, governing Scotland, the
vicegerent in Edinburgh for places and pensions, Dundas was looking
forward to a peerage, and kept his eye steadily on Pitt, whom he guided
in many matters, adapting his conduct and his conversation to the
peculiar tone of the minister's mind. Flattery he never used--dictation
he carefully avoided; both would have been detrimental to his influence
with the reserved statesman.

Pitt was by no means calculated to win the affection of a blooming girl
of eighteen, who, whatever Wraxall may have thought, lived to be one of
the most beautiful and graceful women of her time. Many years ago,
during the life of Sir Thomas Lawrence, his portrait of the Duchess of
Richmond, formerly Lady Charlotte Cordon, was exhibited at Somerset
House. So exquisite were the feminine charms of that lovely face, so
elegant the form he had portrayed, that all crowded to look upon that
delineation of a woman no longer young; whilst beauties in the bloom of
youth were passed by as they hung on the walls in all the glowing
colours of girlhood.

On most intimate terms with the duchess, Pitt seems to have been touched
with the attractions of Lady Charlotte, and to have paid her some
attentions. He was one of the stiffest and shyest of men, finely formed
in figure, but plain in face; the last man to be fascinated, the last to
fascinate. Drives to Dundas's house at Wimbledon when Pitt was there;
evenings at home, in easy converse with these two politicians; suppers,
at which the premier always finished his bottle, as well as the hardier
Scotchman, failed to bring forward the reserved William Pitt. The fact
was, that Dundas could not permit any one, far less the Duchess of
Gordon, to have the ascendency over the prime minister that so near a
relationship would occasion. He trembled for his own influence. A
widower at that time,--his wife, a Miss Rennie of Melville, who had been
divorced from him, being dead,--he affected to lay his own person and
fortune at Lady Charlotte's feet. Pitt instantly retired, and the
sacrifice cost him little; and Dundas's object being answered, his
pretensions also dropped through. Two years afterward, Lady Charlotte
became the wife of Colonel Lennox, afterward Duke of Richmond, and in
the course of years the mother of fourteen children; one of whom, Henry
Adam, a midshipman, fell overboard from the _Blake_ in 1812, and was
drowned. According to Wraxall, the Duke of Richmond had to pay the
penalty of what he calls "this imprudent, if not unfortunate marriage,"
being banished to the snowy banks of St. Lawrence under the name
of governor.

In modern times, our young nobility of promise have learned the
important truth, ably enforced by Thomas Carlyle, that work is not only
man's appointed lot, but his highest blessing and safeguard. The rising
members of various noble families have laid this axiom to heart; and,
when not engaged in public business, have come grandly forward to
protect the unhappy, to provide for the young, to solace the old. The
name of Shaftesbury carries with it gratitude and comfort in its sound;
whilst that of him who figured of old in the cabal, the Shaftesbury of
Charles II's time, is, indeed, not forgotten, but remembered with
detestation. Ragged schools; provident schools; asylums for the aged
governess; homes in which the consumptive may lay their heads in peace
and die; asylums for the penitent; asylums for the idiot; homes where
the houseless may repose,--these are the monuments to our Shaftesbury,
to our younger sons. The mere political ascendency--the garter or the
coronet--are distinctions which pale before these, as does the moon when
dawn has touched the mountains' tops with floods of light. As lecturers
amid their own people, as the best friends and counsellors of the
indigent, as man bound to man by community of interests, our noblemen in
many instances stand before us--Catholic and Protestant zealous alike.

"Jock of Norfolk" is represented by a descendant of noble impulses.
Elgin, Carlisle, Stanley--the Bruce, the Howard, the Stanley of former
days--are our true heroes of society, men of great aims and
great powers.

The Duchess of Gordon was indefatigable in her ambition, but she could
not always entangle dukes. Her second daughter, Madelina, was married
first to Sir Robert Sinclair; and secondly, to Charles Fyshe Palmer,
Esq., of Luckley Hall, Berkshire. Lady Madelina was not handsome, but
extremely agreeable, animated, and intellectual. Among her other
conquests was the famous Samuel Parr, of Hatton, who used to delight in
sounding her praises, and recording her perfections with much of that
eloquence which is now fast dying out of remembrance, but which was a
thing _a part_ in that celebrated Grecian. Susan, the third daughter of
the duke and duchess, married William, Duke of Manchester, thus becoming
connected with a descendant of John, Duke of Marlborough.

Louisa, the fourth daughter, married Charles, second Marquis Cornwallis,
and son of the justly celebrated Governor of India; and Georgiana, the
fifth and youngest, became the wife of John, the late Duke of Bedford.

Such alliances might have satisfied the ambition of most mothers; but
for her youngest and most beautiful daughter, the Duchess of Bedford,
the Duchess of Cordon had even entertained what she thought higher
views. In 1802, whilst Buonaparte was first consul, and anticipating an
imperial crown, the Duchess of Gordon visited Paris, and received there
such distinctions from Napoleon Bonaparte, then first consul, as excited
hopes in her mind of an alliance with that man whom, but a few years
previously, she would probably have termed an adventurer!

Paris was then, during the short peace, engrossed with fetes, reviews,
and dramatic amusements, the account of which makes one almost fancy
oneself in the year 1852, that of the _coup d'etat_, instead of the
period of 1802. The whirlwinds of revolution seemed then, as now, to
have left all unchanged; the character of the people, who were still
devoted to pleasure, and sanguine, was, on the surface, gay and buoyant
as ever. Buonaparte holding his levees at the Tuileries, with all the
splendour of majesty, reminds one of his nephew performing similar
ceremonies at the Elysee, previously to his assuming the purple. All
republican simplicity was abandoned, and the richest taste displayed on
public occasions in both eras.

Let us picture to ourselves the old, quaint palace of the Tuileries on a
reception day then; and the impression made on the senses will serve for
the modern drama; be it comedy, or be it tragedy, which is to be played
out in those stately rooms wherein so many actors have passed and
repassed to their doom.

It is noon, and the first consul is receiving a host of ambassadors
within the consular apartment, answering probably to the "_Salle des
Marechaux_" of Napoleon III. Therein the envoys from every European
state are attempting to comprehend, what none could ever fathom, the
consul's mind. Let us not intermeddle with their conference, but look
around us, and view the gallery in which we are waiting until he, who
was yesterday so small, and who is to-day so great, should come forth
amongst us.

How gorgeous is the old gallery, with its many windows, its rich roof,
and gilded panels! The footmen of the first consul, in splendid
liveries, are bringing chairs for the ladies who are awaiting the
approach of that schoolmaster's son; they are waiting until the weighty
conference within is terminated. Peace-officers, superbly bedizened, are
walking up and down to keep ladies to their seats and gentlemen to the
ranks, so as to form a passage for the first consul to pass down. Pages
of the back stairs, dressed in black, and with gold chains hanging
around their necks, are standing by the door to guard it, or to open it
when he on whom all thoughts are fixed should come forth.

But what is beyond everything striking is the array of Buonaparte's
aids-de-camp,--fine fellows, war-worn,--men such as he, and he alone,
would choose; and so gorgeous, so radiant are their uniforms, that all
else seem as if in shadow in comparison.

The gardens of the Tuileries meantime are filling with troops whom the
first consul is going to review. There are now Zouaves there; but these
are men whom the suns of the tropics hate embrowned; little fellows,
many of them, of all heights, such as we might make drummers of in our
stalwart ranks; but see how muscular, active, full of fire they are;
fierce as hawks, relentless as tigers. See the horse-soldiers on their
scraggy steeds; watch their evolutions, and you will own, with a young
guardsman who stood gazing, fifty years afterward, on the troops which
followed Napoleon III into Paris, that "they are worth looking at."

The long hour is past; the pages in black are evidently on the watch;
the double door which leads into the _Salle des Marechaux_ is opened
from within; a stricter line is instantly kept by the officers in the
gallery. Fair faces, many an English one among them, are flushed. Anon
he appears, whilst an officer at the door, with one hand raised above
his head and the other extended, exclaims, "_Le Premier Consul_."

Forth he walks, a firm, short, stolid form, with falling shoulders
beneath his tight, deep-blue frock. His tread is heavy rather than
majestic,--that of a man who has a purpose in walking, not merely to
show himself as a parade. His head is large, and formed with a
perfection which we call classic; his features are noble, modelled by
that hand of Nature which framed this man "fearfully," indeed, and
"wonderfully." Nothing was ever finer than his mouth--nothing more
disappointing than his eye; it is heavy, almost mournful. His face is
pale, almost sallow, while--let one speak who beheld him--"not only in
the eye, but in every feature, care, thought, melancholy, and meditation
are strongly marked, with so much of character, nay, genius, and so
penetrating a seriousness, or rather sadness, as powerfully to sink into
an observer's mind."

It is the countenance of a student, not of a warrior; of one deep in
unpractical meditation, not of one whose every act and plan had then
been but a tissue of successes. It is the face of a man wedded to deep
thought, not of the hero of the battle-field, the ruler of assemblies;
and, as if to perfect the contrast, whilst all around is gorgeous and
blazing, he passes along without a single decoration on his plain dress,
not even a star to mark out the first consul. It is well; there can but
be one Napoleon in the world, and he wants no distinction.

He is followed by diplomatists of every European power, vassals, all,
more or less, save England; and to England, and to her sons and
daughters, are the most cherished courtesies directed. Does not that
recall the present policy?

By his side walks a handsome youth whom he has just been presenting to
the Bavarian minister,--that envoy from a strange, wild country, little
known save by the dogged valour of its mountaineers. The ruler of that
land, until now an elector, has been saluted king by Napoleon
the powerful.

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