Historical Characters: Mackintosh, Talleyrand, Canning, Cobbett, Peel

by Baron Henry Lytton Bulwer Dalling and Bulwer

“Now, then,” he says, in describing this period of his life, “the book-learning was forced upon us. I had a farm in hand; it was necessary that I should be constantly informed of what was doing. I gave all the orders, whether as to purchases, sales, ploughing, sowing, breeding—in short, with regard to everything, and the things were in endless number and variety, and always full of interest. My eldest son and daughter could now write well and fast. One or the other of these was always at Botley, and I had with me—having hired the best part of the keeper’s house—one or two besides, either their brother or sister. We had a hamper, with a lock and two keys, which came up once a week or oftener, bringing me fruit and all sorts of country fare. This hamper, which was always at both ends of the line looked for with the most lively interest, became our school. It brought me a journal of labours, proceedings, and occurrences, written on paper of shape and size uniform, and so contrived as to margins as to admit of binding. The journal used, when my eldest son was the writer, to be interspersed with drawings of our dogs, colts, or anything that he wanted me to have a correct idea of. The hamper brought me plants, herbs, and the like, that I might see the size of them; and almost every one sent his or her most beautiful flowers, the earliest violets and primroses and cowslips and bluebells, the earliest twigs of trees, and, in short, everything that they thought calculated to delight me. The moment the hamper arrived, I—casting aside everything else—set to work to answer every question, to give new directions, and to add anything likely to give pleasure at Botley.

“Every hamper brought one letter, as they called it, if not more, from every child, and to every letter I wrote an answer, sealed up and sent to the party, being sure that that was the way to produce other and better letters; for though they could not read what I wrote, and though their own consisted at first of mere scratches, and afterwards, for a while, of a few words written down for them to imitate, I always thanked them for their pretty letter, and never expressed any wish to see them write better, but took care to write in a very neat and plain hand myself, and to do up my letter in a very neat manner.

“Thus, while the ferocious tigers thought I was doomed to incessant mortification, and to rage that must extinguish my mental powers, I found in my children, and in their spotless and courageous and affectionate mother, delights to which the callous hearts of those tigers were strangers. ‘Heaven first taught letters for some wretch’s aid.’ How often did this line of Pope occur to me when I opened the little fuddling letters from Botley. This correspondence occupied a good part of my time. I had all the children with me, turn and turn about; and in order to give the boys exercise, and to give the two eldest an opportunity of beginning to learn French, I used for a part of the two years to send them for a few hours a day to an abbé, who lived in Castle Street, Holborn. All this was a great relaxation to my mind; and when I had to return to my literary labours, I returned fresh and cheerful, full of vigour, and full of hope of finally seeing my unjust and merciless foes at my feet, and that, too, without caring a straw on whom their fall might bring calamity, so that my own family were safe, because—say what any one might—the community, taken as a whole, had suffered this thing to be done unto us.

“The paying of the workpeople, the keeping of the accounts, the referring to books, the writing and reading of letters, this everlasting mixture of amusement with book-learning, made me, almost to my own surprise, find at the end of two years that I had a parcel of scholars growing up about me, and, long before the end of the time, I had dictated my Register to my two eldest children. Then there was copying out of books, which taught spelling correctly. The calculations about the farming affairs forced arithmetic upon us; the use, the necessity of the thing, led to the study.

“By and by we had to look into the laws, to know what to do about the highways, about the game, about the poor, and all rural and parochial affairs.

“I was, indeed, by the fangs of government defeated in my fondly-cherished project of making my sons farmers on their own land, and keeping them from all temptation to seek vicious and enervating enjoyments; but those fangs—merciless as they had been—had not been able to prevent me from laying in for their lives, a store of useful information, habits of industry, care, and sobriety, and a taste for innocent, healthful, and manly pleasures. The fiends had made me and them penniless, but had not been able to take from us our health, or our mental possessions, and these were ready for application as circumstances might ordain.”

VII.

At length, however, Cobbett’s punishment was over; and his talents still conferred on him sufficient consideration to have the event celebrated by a dinner, at which Sir Francis Burdett presided. This compliment paid, Cobbett returned to Botley and his old pursuits, literary and agricultural. The idea of publishing cheap newspapers, under the title of “Twopenny Trash,” and which, not appearing as periodicals, escaped the Stamp Tax, now added considerably to his power; and by extending the circulation of his writings to a new class,—the mechanic and artisan, in urban populations,—made that power dangerous at a period when great distress produced general discontent—a discontent of which the government rather tried to suppress the exhibition, than to remove the causes. Nor did Cobbett speak untruly when he said, that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, and the passing of the celebrated “Six Acts,” in the year 1817, were more directed against himself than against all the other writers of sedition put together. But notwithstanding the exultation which this position gave him for a moment, he soon saw that it was one which he should not be able to maintain, and that the importance he had temporarily acquired had no durable foundation. He had no heart, moreover, for another midsummer’s dream in Newgate. Nor was this all. Though he had not wanted friends or partisans, who had furnished him with pecuniary aid, his expenses had gone far beyond his means; and I may mention as one of the most extraordinary instances of this singular person’s influence, that the debts he had at this time been allowed to contract amounted to no less than £34,000, a sum he could not hope to repay.

For the first time his ingenuity furnished him with no resource, or his usual audacity failed him; and with a secrecy, for which the state of his circumstances accounted, he made a sudden bolt (the 28th of March, 1817) for the United States, informing his countrymen that they were too lukewarm in their own behalf to justify the perils he incurred for their sakes; and observing to his creditors that, as they had not resisted the persecutions from which his losses had arisen, they must be prepared to share with his family the consequences of his ruin.

Sir Francis Burdett had been for many years, as we have seen, his friend and protector, and had but recently presided at the festival which commemorated his release from confinement; but Sir Francis Burdett was amongst those from whom Cobbett had borrowed pretty largely; and though the wealthy baronet could scarcely have expected this money to be repaid, yet, having advanced it to a political partisan, he was not altogether pleased at seeing his money and his partisan slip through his fingers at the same time; and made some remarks which, on reaching Cobbett’s ears, irritated a vanity that never slept, and was only too ready to avenge itself by abuse equally ungrateful and unwise.