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EMMA DARWIN
A CENTURY OF FAMILY LETTERS
1792-1896
VOLUME I
CHAPTER XVI
1830—1831
Lady Mackintosh's death—Sir James Mackintosh a member of the Board of Control—Hensleigh Wedgwood engaged to Fanny Mackintosh—Elizabeth in London—The second reading of the Reform Bill—A meeting between Wordsworth and Jeffrey—Josiah Wedgwood defeated at Newcastle—Edward and Adèle Drewe—Fear of cholera—Mrs Patterson and Countess Guiccioli.
LADY MACKINTOSH had left home in the autumn of 1829, and after staying in Paris for a time, went to Chêne to be with her sister Jessie. She died there on the 6th May, 1830, from what appeared to have been a paralytic seizure.
Madame Sismondi to her sister Mrs Josiah Wedgwood.
[CHÊNE], May 25th, 1830.
[After speaking of Lady Mackintosh's illness.]
She was, too, so little demonstrative herself that one could never shew her the little caressing tendernesses that others are continually exciting and which she seemed to disdain, tho" I have reason to think she did not in reality, but would have been cheered and comforted in accepting. One evening that we had been sitting up together very late.... Harriet [Surtees] affected to leave her by herself at that hour, threw her arms round her neck and kissed her as she wished her good night. She never answered, never returned it, never looked at her. Yet the next morning she told me she had felt it tenderly. Her faults of temperament were redeemed by many great and noble virtues, and I cannot but think her death, thus sudden and without suffering, is a most merciful dispensation. She could neither make herself nor others happy, and I dreaded the future (which must necessarily have darkened more and more on her as she advanced) so much, that it seems to me as if a great evil was withdrawn from me, in its being denied to her. If she could have got Fanny [her daughter] out to her I think she had some vague notion of never returning. The suspicion of this, that the pains in her limbs were exaggerated for this purpose, made me slow to perceive her real ails and hardened my feelings towards her. The event has shown how unjust I was in my suspicions, and I now believe she made very light of the fore-running symptoms of her terrible disorder. Here, dearest Bessy, is my remorse, and that is really my sorrow for her, and not that she has escaped from a life her many virtues and her great means of happiness failed of making happy to her. The disorder had been stealing on all the winter and was clearly no one stroke....
Mrs Josiah Wedgwood to her sister Madame Sismondi.
MAER, 17 June, 1830.
... I feel exactly as you do. I go back to think over what I could have done to have made her happier, and I am sad when I think that she was less cordial to me the last year, and that I might have done more for her. But for you, my beloved, it is the hardest thing in the world that you should suffer from these feelings. If any suspicion crossed your thoughts that there was more perverseness than malady in our poor sister's state, it must have been involuntary, and if you never gave it vent to herself, it cannot be a matter of reproach to you. I am witness that as far as one could judge from her letters she was perfectly satisfied with everything at your house, and I grieve now at having burnt her last letter, because it was written in so cheerful a mood that I should now derive comfort in reading it, perfectly collected and expressing but one regret that Fanny had not joined her....
In November, 1830, Sir James Mackintosh, after being often passed over, was offered by Lord Grey an appointment as member of the Board of Control1—a place that his friends thought unworthy of his talents. Charles Greville wrote: "If he had not been a man 'whom no sense of wrongs could move to vengeance" he would have flung the India Board in Lord Grey's face when he was insulted with the offer of it."2 And Jessie Sismondi wrote (5 Feb., 1831): "I felt bitterly the place his friends had found for him, and shed tears, not of a soft nature for him, but of rage against his soi-disant friends. His has been a life sown thick with mortifications, notwithstanding that he was gifted high enough to have bid defiance at least to that feeling."
1 The home government of the East India Company consisted of the Court of Proprietors, the Court of Directors, and the Board of Control. The President of the Board of Control might be called Secretary of State for the affairs of India, and practically conducted the business, but rarely calling upon his colleagues for assistance.
2 Greville's Diaries, Vol. iii., p. 317.
Mrs Josiah Wedgwood to her sister Madame Sismondi.
THE HILL. [The John Wedgwoods" house near Abergavenny.] Nov. 22, 1830.
I am coming now into order, my dearest Jessie, and this is very near my old days for writing, but I have left your last letter in my desk at home, so that if any part of it requires an answer, it must stand over to next month. Meantime I shall begin telling. We are all agog about the late extraordinary change of Ministry,3 it was such a surprize that I don't think anyone on either side expected it the least, nor I suppose would it have happened if his Highness's troops had been sufficiently upon guard, as in that case they would not have been in a minority. I shall run the risk of tiring you by repetition in naming the new Ministry as they now are, but nobody can guess how long it may stand. Fanny [Allen] had a letter from Mackintosh last night, and I will copy what he says for your information, he is now in little lodgings in Madox Street:
"Never was there an event so singular as the overthrow of the Duke by the first resolution1 of a H. of C. chosen under his reign. It is probable that if he and his accomplices had done their worst, they might have delayed it. But from despairing of more than a fortnight's painful struggle it is likely that they were wearied into submission. Some of the minority were so stupid as not to be aware of the consequence of their votes to their friends in power. Brougham has in the last 18 days shown his strength and his lunacy. He had a dreadful scene with Lord Grey the exact object of which I could not make out. But after an altercation so violent, and such language of disregard towards the new ministers in the H. of C. by B., it was thought impossible that he should now join them. At ten o'clock last night I received a note from Lady Holland closing with these words, marked as I shall mark them. Brougham is Chancellor!!! Brougham's possession of the Great Seal has, I am told by Dr Holland, produced the most intense alarm among lawyers and parsons. With him he brings rashness and odium, but without him in either house there could not have been a fortnight's administration. Lord Melbourne, a lazy and singular man, will be a bad secretary in the Home department.... Every living soul thinks that Lyndhurst would have been a scandal."
3 The resignation of the Duke of Wellington's Tory Ministry, 16 Nov., and the formation of the Whig Ministry under Lord Grey, which ultimately carried the great Reform Act. Lord Grey became Prime Minister 17 Nov.
So far Mackintosh's letter, which I have copied thinking it would at once let you into the state of things, and as I suppose it is confidential you may perhaps avoid quoting M.'s name to any English or foreigners who would repeat him over again. I must add that M. himself has the appointment of a seat in the Board of Control under Charles Grant, who is President. This last is not quite as we could have wished for him, but it is £1,500 per an., and it would be senseless to grumble at getting the £10,000 prize in the Lottery because we do not get the £20,000; and he will have solid comfort, and leisure in his present appointment. They now talk of taking a furnished house for a year, and I hope they will not launch out too much at first, as considering the "alacrity in sinking" that the Whigs possess, another turn of the wheel may again put them at the bottom.
1 The motion by Sir Henry Parnell on the Civil List, which was carried against Wellington's Ministry on 15 Nov., by a majority of 29. The new Parliament had been elected on the death of George IV. whilst Wellington was Prime Minister.
My coming here was a start of my own. Caroline [Drewe] is in good spirits for her. She has been much gratified by Edward's affectionate and really proper behaviour on many occasions, and I am sure it will be a very great increase to her happiness to have him and his children and Adèle at Grange. Edward is quite adored (Car. says) in the neighbourhood by all his poor tenants and neighbours, from his gracious manners, shaking hands with them after Church, etc. In short he seems to have done all he had to do in the best possible way....
He had recently inherited the Grange estate. Apropos to some trouble he got into from following his brother-in-law Baron Alderson's advice, Bessy wrote (27 Dec., 1830): "I have more than once observed that advice does mischief, I suppose because the adviser feels no responsibility and therefore shabby feelings operate without the drawback of self-reproach."
In 1831 Hensleigh became formally engaged to his cousin Fanny Mackintosh. The following letter from Elizabeth was written during a visit to the Mackintoshes. Mrs Rich, a daughter of Mackintosh by his first wife, was now a widow and lived with him. Her husband had died at Shirâz, and Mrs Rich's hair went snowy white, it was said, the night after his death.
Elizabeth Wedgwood to her aunt Madame Sismondi.
14, GREAT CUMBERLAND STREET, March 27, 1831.
MY DEAR JESSIE,
I have been here enjoying myself very much these last five weeks. It has been a most interesting time to be at head quarters, and very pleasant quarters they are. Sir James, in spite of being up almost every night till near 4 o'clock, looks quite a different man from what he was last year, and says himself that he has not felt so well for six years.
The two nights of the struggle on the second reading of the Reform Bill, Fanny [Mackintosh] went down to Mrs Robert Grant's, which is in George Street just by the House of Commons, to be at hand to hear the result, and to receive bulletins from the Thorntons in the ventilator. It was amusing to see how interested even Mrs R. G.'s servants were—the housemaid coming in "if you please ma'am John has just been over, and Lord Mahon was speaking against." I sat up for them at home as long as I could, but could not last till 4 in the morning; but even at that hour there was a crowd about the House of Commons who cheered the reform members as they came out. I have never seen near so much of Mrs Rich before and I like her very much. She must once, I am sure, have been a very lively person, and now is one of the most agreeable people in a tête-à-tête I ever saw. She is quite cheerful and talks more before her father than she used to do. She has her own line of acquaintance among whom she is very much engaged. She has taken me four Fridays to hear Mr Scott1 (whom she delights in) preach in Miss Farrer's2 drawing room. I now despair of much liking him, which I should like to be able to do as much as she does; but he seems to me to try too much to put things in an uncommon point of view, and to get into regions that we can know nothing about. He prays, and reads a chapter and then speaks his discourse, which is certainly a very striking piece of oratory. Another little society of five or six ladies that Mrs Rich belongs to meet once a week to read the Bible and pray together; in short I think it is growing into a very religious world. The only thing I think is a pity is the number of people who believe in the Scotch miracles [Edward Irving], and the number of people who perform them. There are at least half a dozen other people, some maid servants and some ladies, who speak with tongues, besides the Port Glasgow people, and when Mrs Rich gives one the accounts with the solemnity of perfect belief in them herself, one is almost infected by it oneself.
1 Alexander John Scott (1805—1866) had been a minister of the Scotch church, and at one time an assistant of Edward Irving. He was ejected from the pastorate of the Scotch church at Woolwich, but remained there some years preaching to a little congregation of his own disciples. Later he became the first Principal of Owens College, Manchester. He was a man of great mental power, great learning, and a singularly impressive personality, as we know from the testimony of various notable persons, Carlyle, Bunsen, Frederick Maurice, George Macdonald, Fanny Kemble, and others.
2 Aunt of the first Lord Farrer.
Fanny had a grand dinner yesterday, Bishop Copleston,1 Sir T. Denman (whom I admire very much—he has all the dignity of virtue in his look and manner), Jeffrey, Lord Nugent and Sheil, and for ladies Lady Gifford and Miss Thornton. There was a party in the evening too which was made memorable by bringing Wordsworth and Jeffrey together. When Sir James proposed to Mr Wordsworth to introduce them to one another he did not agree to it: "We are fire and water," he said, "and if we meet we shall only hiss—besides he has been doing his utmost to destroy me." "But he has not succeeded,"2 Sir James said, "and he really is one of your greatest admirers," and upon that he took Mr Wordsworth by the shoulders and turned him round to Jeffrey and left them together. They immediately began talking, and Sir James came very proud to tell us what he had done, and to fetch us to see them; and Mr Wordsworth looked very happy and complacent. Mr Lockhart said it was the best thing he ever saw done. The two enemies liked one another's company so much, that when the rest of the party broke up at past 11, they remained talking together with Sir James, discussing poets, orators, and novelists, till one o'clock, with Mr Sheil listening with all his ears, and Mr Empson1 and Fanny and Uncle Baugh as audience. I, alas! was obliged to carry my head to bed. Sir James enjoyed his two hours" talk very much.
1 William Empson (1791—1852), Editor of the Edinburgh Review from 1847 and successor to Mackintosh as Professor of "Polity and the Laws of England" at Haileybury. Brougham called him a bad imitation of Macaulay.
The grand dinner was as follows: Bishop Copleston (of Llandaff), 1776—1849, was a strong Tory, famous for his bodily strength and activity. He wrote a parody on the early numbers of the Edin. Rev. "full of the finest irony." Sir Thomas Denman (1779—1854), Attorney-general, afterwards Lord Chief Justice. He was "gifted with a handsome face, a winning, though shy, manner, an exquisite voice, and a tall and active figure." The well-known Francis Jeffrey (1773—1850), founder of the Edin. Rev., and then Lord Advocate in Lord Grey's ministry. Lord Nugent (1788—1850), younger son of the first Marquis of Buckingham, M.P. for Aylesbury, an extreme whig and supporter of Queen Caroline. Richard Lalor Sheil (1791—1851), dramatist and Irish politician. The ladies were also distinguished. Lady Gifford, the eldest of the handsome Miss Drewes, and Marianne Thornton, a woman of remarkable character, one of the well-known Thorntons of Clapham, handsome, dignified, witty, and an admirable talker.
2 Wordsworth would of course think of Jeffrey as the man who had done all that critical authority could do to bring to naught the work of his life. It may be said that Jeffrey is now best remembered by the "This will never do!" with which (seventeen years before this time the Edinburgh Review had saluted the appearance of the Excursion. He had heaped like contempt on the two little volumes of 1807 wherein the world had read for the first time the Ode to Duty, the Song of the Feast of Brougham Castle, and the Ode on Intimations of Immortality.
My father is attending the Canal meetings in New Palace Yard. He has got his little mare with him, which makes him take it very patiently and prevents his falling sick. He is going down to Maer and his Water-works the end of this week, but I mean to let him go without me. Now I am in this bustle I like to stay and see a little more of it. But the thing I am most anxious to hear is the debate on Tuesday on Slavery. Macaulay's speech on the reform bill almost made me cry with admiration, and I expect his speech on so much more interesting a subject to be the finest thing that ever was heard. It is most unfortunate for this question that it should come on now. Who has leisure to listen to the still small voice of justice in the midst of such a turmoil? And what ought this nation to expect at the hand of God but calamities and disgraces as long as we will not hear it, and suffer those daily murders to go on? Fanny has just been reading a little of one of Jeffrey's reviews of Wordsworth, and W. really shewed no small degree of placability in his good fellowship with him last night....
In the spring of 1831 Josiah Wedgwood stood for Newcastle-under-Lyme.
Mrs Josiah Wedgwood to her sister Emma Allen. (At Mrs Holland's, New Norfolk St., Park Lane.)
MAER, May 11, 1831.
... I thank you very much, my dear sisters, for the warmth with which you have taken up our cause. I am not less warm on yours and if you [John Allen] had come in at Pembroke, I should have been consoled for being thrown out at Newcastle. As it is, I think Jos is very little disappointed; it is not a pleasant situation to be baffled, but it was so much on public grounds that he stood, that his personal feeling is not much, and I believe what he has belongs to the gentlemen who have brought him in. However the election was carried on with no unnecessary expense, as it seemed by mutual understanding, as there was no treating, and the out-voters were not brought in; so that I hope there has not been much money thrown away.... I fully expect that we shall be members for Stoke upon Trent,1 i.e. the Potteries, and if we are it will be a much pleasanter seat. Jos had not before this quite made up his mind to accept it if it should be offered him, but what has lately passed has settled that part of the question; and, if I live so long, I shall like to be obliged to spend some part of every year in London. But I have great misgivings that I may not, and though it does not in any degree lower my spirits, it gives me a degree of uncertainty as to worldly matters that flattens hope. If it would please God to give me brighter hopes instead, I should be happy, and that I hope will come nearer and nearer as I approach the confines. One of my dearest earthly hopes is now to see Jessie [Sismondi] and my castle is to meet her at Paris, or to return with her if she comes to England which I hope she will do.... I feel a little flat this week after the excitement of the last, but ça ira. Farewell, my dear Emma, with warmest love to you all.
1 The expectation was that in the Reform Bill the Potteries would be given a seat and that Josiah Wedgwood would be the first member elected.
Mrs Josiah Wedgwood to her daughters Fanny and Emma.
MAER, May 20th, 1831.
MY DEAR GIRLS,
... I feel very grateful to Mrs Holland for the pleasant visit you have had with her, and to her good-natured daughters for promoting your pleasure so much as they have done. We have now pretty well done with our Newcastle bustles, as they were yesterday finished by a dinner given to your father by the Mayor and Burgesses, from which they did not come home till near 12 o'clock. There dined about 90, and they were drinking toasts and cheering all the evening. Harry and Frank dined there, and had their healths drunk and returned thanks in neat speeches, etc. Frank had one compliment paid him, for his canvassing accomplishments, which I did not expect, viz. that he was so good a canvasser that the gentleman who spoke believed that if it had been for himself, he would have been returned—voilà!
We have beautiful summer weather now, which I mention for the honour of Staffordshire, as it sometimes lies under a bad name for weather. I have had a delightful letter from your aunt Caroline [Drewe] giving a glorious account of Edward's entry into his own country, and of the delight given and received by Adèle on the occasion, who looked, she said, quite lovely when she was introduced to his tenants, and received them charmingly.
Mr Hulme comes here regularly every Sunday, and dines after evening service. His conversation is too like Blackwood's Magazine, but he is cheerful and we don't mind him. Gipums is getting larger, and I am beginning to sigh over the puppies who are so soon to meet a watery grave, mais que faire?...
After this the Edward Drewes appear no more in these pages, although there are casual allusions in various letters to their prosperous and happy life, and one in especial speaks of their paying a visit to the Pembrokeshire relations, travelling there with four horses in great style.
The girls were brought home from London by their father, and Bessy wrote that "they have had their fill of amusements and going about, and to crown all are very glad to come home."
Madame Sismondi to her sister Mrs Josiah Wedgwood.
CHÊNE, Oct. 20 [1831].
... Sis now looks forward to the visit [to Cresselly] with pleasure, I with delight. My poor little Sad perhaps yet does not know of it, for yesterday when I almost expected to see her, her six weeks being terminated, came a letter with the postmark Conegliano. Judge if I was not in a passion; Miss Smith,1 my evil genius, had lost her passport—delayed to send back to Venice for a new one—then she is oftener ill than well, sets off at 11 in the morning instead of 8, as she promises over night, or 6, as any reasonable voiturier traveller would do. I feel as I do sometimes in my sleep when I cannot put my cloaths on.... We must travel voiturier, which among many conveniences and suitablenesses has its plagues for an impatient spirit. We shall be at Paris about the 13th, stay three or four days there ... [reaching] Cresselly, my beloved Cresselly, about 1st Dec. This is giving as short delays as we can with such slow going. We pass all Dec. there, and then, alas, begins our long journey back. Will you not, beloved Bessy, with Elizabeth and Charlotte return with us to Paris? We will cherish you as the apple of our eye, take such care of you, go as slow as you please in vetturino, which is no fatigue. I live in hopes all this may be done, and I am as happy as a princess, and think no more about the cholera, or tumults, or war, of which two last, to say the truth, I had never any fear. I am making my preparations, and heaven grant us a happy meeting. If you expect I can write sense to-day you are very much mistaken, my own dear Bessy, I can do no such thing for thinking of your sweet sweet face and your dear dear voice, and a thousand other things which all finish in a prayer for our happy meeting. I told John I should write no more to anyone, for I can write no more than a fool when the prospect of, seeing them is close before my nose; so I might as well have spared your purse to-day, but your letter gave me an ecstacy so you must take its consequences.
1 Miss Patty Smith, eldest daughter of William Smith, M.P. for Norwich, who was travelling with Harriet Surtees.
We have had, after a dropping summer, the most beautiful autumn I ever remember to have seen. I do not exaggerate when I say I never stirred out without an ecstacy. The warm golden colours at home, the gilded snow and blue in the distance, gave such a view that every walk became a prayer. But Harriet in Italy has not had this weather. She had little sun even at Venice. We have besides had that phenomenal light after sunset which no one has explained, and which has been so bright in Italy as to give superstitious awe and fear to the people. Here it has only been very lovely, very transparent, very deep red, or orange that has remained long after the moon was up, and almost tamed its brightness. In the west was the golden light the other evening, and in the east the silver as we returned home between 6 and 7.
We had two and twenty carriages in our little courtyard last night and more [guests] than I could reckon in our salon, in which were [people] of all nations, but of Englishmen only two, Jos's friend Mr Chetwynd and his friend Mr Lamb, whom we saw act the other night very well and in a very pretty, indeed more than pretty, theatre. Mr Chetwynd was Henry IVth superbly dressed. We had several Polonais last night. We had some perfectly delicious singing from the Prince Belgiojoso—how I wished for Elizabeth and Charlotte! He wanted so much some ladies or men to sing beside himself to keep him in countènance. He will never come now the same evening with the Countess Guiccioli for fear of being made to sing with her, which, altho" she has a superb voice, he cannot bear to do. If you will be a good girl and come to Paris, you shall hear him too. The preceding Wednesday I had the hard little Mrs Patterson too.1 Guiccioli, who had been very intimate with her at Florence, seeing one person in a room full of strangers, crossed it eagerly to speak to her; the hard little woman turned her back on her eager accost, with a rudeness remarked by everybody in such a little room, and the Guiccioli was so overcome, not being well before, that I thought she would have fainted. Her hand was bathed in a cold sweat. I gave her some wine and water, pretending that it was the terror of singing. I sent a young Frenchman to scold her [Mrs Patterson], and ask her why she did such a thing. She said "Oh it is not for her conduct with Lord Byron, that I have nothing to do with—but she is such a hard little cold dry-hearted woman, I could give you a thousand little odious traits of her"!! Who ever knows themselves?...
1 Elizabeth Patterson, daughter of a merchant in Baltimore, ex-wife of Jerome Bonaparte. The marriage was declared null by Napoleon, and Jerome was forced to marry Catherine, daughter of the King of Würtemberg.
