Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, vol 1 by George Otto Trevelyan (reading the story of the TXT) 📕

Another ill-natured sentence about a Bath lady [“He would not allow me to praise a lady then at Bath; observing, ‘She does not gain upon me, sir; I think her empty-headed.’”] whom Johnson called “empty-headed” is also applied to your godmother.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: July 6, 1835.

My dear Sister,—I have been so busy during the last two or three days that I have found no time to write to you. I have now good news for you. I spoke yesterday night with a success beyond my utmost expectations. I am half ashamed to tell you the compliments which I have received; but you well know that it is not from vanity, but to give you pleasure, that I tell you what is said about me. Lord Althorp told me twice that it was the best speech he had ever heard; Graham, and Stanley, and Lord John Russell spoke of it in the same way; and O’Connell followed me out of the house to pay me the most enthusiastic compliments. I delivered my speech much more slowly than any that I have before made, and it is in consequence better reported than its predecessors, though not well. I send you several papers. You will see some civil things in the leading articles of some of them. My greatest pleasure, in the midst of all this praise, is to think of the pleasure which my success will give to my father and my sisters. It is happy for me that ambition has in my mind been softened into a kind of domestic feeling, and that affection has at least as much to do as vanity with my wish to distinguish myself. This I owe to my dear mother, and to the interest which she always took in my childish successes. From my earliest years, the gratification of those whom I love has been associated with the gratification of my own thirst for fame, until the two have become inseparably joined in my mind.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M Macaulay

London: July 8, 1831.

My dear Sister,—Do you want to hear all the compliments that are paid to me? I shall never end, if I stuff my letters with them; for I meet nobody who does not give me joy. Baring tells me that I ought never to speak again. Howick sent a note to me yesterday to say that his father wished very much to be introduced to me, and asked me to dine with them yesterday, as, by great good luck, there was nothing to do in the House of Commons. At seven I went to Downing Street, where Earl Grey’s official residence stands.

It is a noble house. There are two splendid drawing-rooms, which overlook St. James’s Park. Into these I was shown. The servant told me that Lord Grey was still at the House of Lords, and that her Ladyship had just gone to dress. Howick had not mentioned the hour in his note. I sate down, and turned over two large portfolios of political caricatures. Earl Grey’s own face was in every print. I was very much diverted. I had seen some of them before; but many were new to me, and their merit is extraordinary. They were the caricatures of that remarkably able artist who calls himself H. B. In about half an hour Lady Georgiana Grey, and the Countess, made their appearance. We had some pleasant talk, and they made many apologies. The Earl, they said, was unexpectedly delayed by a question which had arisen in the Lords. Lady Holland arrived soon after, and gave me a most gracious reception; shook my hand very warmly, and told me, in her imperial decisive manner, that she had talked with all the principal men on our side about my speech, that they all agreed that it was the best that had been made since the death of Fox, and that it was more like Fox’s speaking than anybody’s else.

Then she told me that I was too much worked, that I must go out of town, and absolutely insisted on my going to Holland House to dine, and take a bed, on the next day on which there is no Parliamentary business. At eight we went to dinner. Lord Howick took his father’s place, and we feasted very luxuriously. At nine Lord Grey came from the House with Lord Durham, Lord Holland, and the Duke of Richmond. They dined on the remains of our dinner with great expedition, as they had to go to a Cabinet Council at ten. Of course I had scarcely any talk with Lord Grey. He was, however, extremely polite to me, and so were his colleagues. I liked the ways of the family.

I picked up some news from these Cabinet Ministers. There is to be a Coronation on quite a new plan; no banquet in Westminster Hall, no feudal services, no champion, no procession from the Abbey to the Hall, and back again. But there is to be a service in the Abbey. All the Peers are to come in state and in their robes, and the King is to take the oaths, and be crowned and anointed in their presence. The spectacle will be finer than usual to the multitude out of doors. The few hundreds who could obtain admittance to the Hall will be the only losers.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: July 8, 1831.

My dear Sister,—Since I wrote to you I have been out to dine and sleep at Holland House. We had a very agreeable and splendid party; among others the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, and the Marchioness of Clanricarde, who, you know, is the daughter of Canning. She is very beautiful, and very like her father, with eyes full of fire, and great expression in all her features. She and I had a great deal of talk. She showed much cleverness and information, but, I thought, a little more of political animosity than is quite becoming in a pretty woman. However, she has been placed in peculiar circumstances. The daughter of a statesman who was a martyr to the rage of faction may be pardoned for speaking sharply of the enemies of her parent; and she did speak sharply.

With knitted brows, and flashing eyes, and a look of feminine vengeance about her beautiful mouth, she gave me such a character of Peel as he would certainly have had no pleasure in hearing.

In the evening Lord John Russell came; and, soon after, old Talleyrand. I had seen Talleyrand in very large parties, hut had never been near enough to hear a word that he said. I now had the pleasure of listening for an hour and a half to his conversation.

He is certainly the greatest curiosity that I ever fell in with.

His head is sunk down between two high shoulders. One of his feet is hideously distorted. His face is as pale as that of a corpse, and wrinkled to a frightful degree. His eyes have an odd glassy stare quite peculiar to them. His hair, thickly powdered and pomatumed, hangs down his shoulders on each side as straight as a pound of tallow candles. His conversation, however, soon makes you forget his ugliness and infirmities. There is a poignancy without effort in all that he says, which reminded me a little of the character which the wits of Johnson’s circle give of Beauclerk. For example, we talked about Metternich and Cardinal Mazarin. “J’y trouve beaucoup a redire. Le Cardinal trompait; mais il ne mentait pas. Or, M. de Metternich ment toujours, et ne trompe jamais.” He mentioned M. de St. Aulaire,—now one of the most distinguished public men of France. I said: “M. de Saint-Aulaire est beau-pere de M. le duc de Cazes, n’est-ce pas?” “Non, monsieur,” said Talleyrand; “l’on disait, il y a douze ans, que M. de Saint-Aulaire etoit beau-pere de M. de Cazes; l’on dit maintenant que M. de Cazes est gendre de M. de Saint-Aulaire.”

[This saying remained in Macaulay’s mind. He quoted it on the margin of his Aulus Gellius, as an illustration of the passage in the nineteenth book in which Julius Caesar is described, absurdly enough as “perpetuus ille dictator, Cneii Pompeii socer”.] It was not easy to describe the change in the relative positions of two men more tersely and more sharply; and these remarks were made in the lowest tone, and without the slightest change of muscle, just as if he had been remarking that the day was fine. He added: “M.

de Saint-Aulaire a beaucoup d’esprit. Mais il est devot, et, ce qui pis est, devot honteux. Il va se cacher dans quelque hameau pour faire ses Paques.” This was a curious remark from a Bishop.

He told several stories about the political men of France; not of any great value in themselves; but his way of telling them was beyond all praise,—concise, pointed, and delicately satirical.

When he had departed, I could not help breaking out into admiration of his talent for relating anecdotes. Lady Holland said that he had been considered for nearly forty years as the best teller of a story in Europe, and that there was certainly nobody like him in that respect.

When the Prince was gone, we went to bed. In the morning Lord John Russell drove me back to London in his cabriolet, much amused with what I had seen and heard. But I must stop.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Basinghall Street: July 15 1831.

My dear Sister,—The rage of faction at the present moment exceeds anything that has been known in our day. Indeed I doubt whether, at the time of Mr. Pitt’s first becoming Premier, at the time of Sir Robert Walpole’s fall, or even during the desperate struggles between the Whigs and Tories at the close of Anne’s reign, the fury of party was so fearfully violent. Lord Mahon said to me yesterday that friendships of long standing were everywhere giving way, and that the schism between the reformers and the anti-reformers was spreading from the House of Commons into every private circle. Lord Mahon himself is an exception. He and I are on excellent terms. But Praed and I become colder every day.

The scene of Tuesday night beggars description. I left the House at about three, in consequence of some expressions of Lord Althorp’s which indicated that the Ministry was inclined to yield on the question of going into Committee on the Bill. I afterwards much regretted that I had gone away; not that my presence was necessary; but because I should have liked to have sate through so tremendous a storm. Towards eight in the morning the Speaker was almost fainting. The Ministerial members, however, were as true as steel. They furnished the Ministry with the resolution which it wanted. “If the noble Lord yields,” said one of our men, “all is lost.” Old Sir Thomas Baring sent for his razor, and Benett, the member for Wiltshire, for his nightcap; and they were both resolved to spend the whole day in the House rather than give way. If the Opposition had not yielded, in two hours half London would have been in Old Palace Yard.

Since Tuesday the Tories have been rather cowed. But their demeanour, though less outrageous than at the beginning of the week, indicates what would in any other time be called extreme violence. I have not been once in bed till three in the morning since last Sunday. Tomorrow we have a holiday. I dine at Lansdowne House. Next week I dine with Littleton, the member for Staffordshire, and his handsome wife. He told me that I should meet