[23] [The first act of Ernest, King of Hanover, on his accession, was to suspend the Hanoverian Constitution, and to prosecute the liberal Professors of Göttingen.]
To-day we[24] went to see the house Mr. Gregory is building, five miles from here. He is a gentleman of about 12,000ℓ. a year, who has a fancy to build a magnificent MR. GREGORY’S HOUSE AND ESTATE. house in the Elizabethan style, and he is now in the middle of his work, all the shell being finished except one wing. Nothing can be more perfect than it is, both as to the architecture and the ornaments; but it stands on the slope of a hill upon a deep clay soil, with no park around it, very little wood, and scarcely any fine trees. Many years ago, when he first conceived this design, he began to amass money and lived for no other object. He travelled into all parts of Europe collecting objects of curiosity, useful or ornamental, for his projected palace, and he did not begin to build until he had accumulated money enough to complete his design. The grandeur of it is such, and such the tardiness of its progress, that it is about as much as he will do to live till its completion; and as he is not married, has no children, and dislikes the heir on whom his property is entailed, it is the means and not the end to which he looks for gratification. He says that it is his amusement, as hunting or shooting or feasting may be the objects of other people; and as the pursuit leads him into all parts of the world, and to mix with every variety of nation and character, besides engendering tastes pregnant with instruction and curious research, it is not irrational, although he should never inhabit his house, and may be toiling and saving for the benefit of persons he cares nothing about. The cottages round Harlaxton are worth seeing. It has been his fancy to build a whole village in all sorts of strange fantastic styles. There are Dutch and Swiss cottages, every variety of old English, and heaps of nondescript things, which appear only to have been built for variety’s sake. The effect is extremely pretty. Close to the village is an old manor house, the most perfect specimen I ever saw of such a building, the habitation of an English country gentleman of former times, and there were a buff jerkin and a pair of jack boots hanging up in the hall, which the stout old Cavalier of the seventeenth century (and one feels sure that the owner of that house was a Cavalier) had very likely worn at Marston Moor or Naseby.
[24] The Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Salisbury, Lord Exeter, Lord Wilton, Lady Adeliza Manners, Lords Aberdeen, FitzGerald, J. Manners, and myself.
To-day (the cook told me) nearly four hundred people will dine in the Castle. We all went into the servants’ hall, where one hundred and forty-five retainers had just done dinner and were drinking the Duke’s health, singing and speechifying with vociferous applause, shouting, and clapping of hands. I never knew before that oratory had got down into the servants’ hall, but learned that it is the custom for those to whom ‘the gift of the gab’ has been vouchsafed to harangue the others, the palm of eloquence being universally conceded to Mr. Tapps the head coachman, a man of great abdominal dignity, and whose Ciceronian brows are adorned with an ample flaxen wig, which is the peculiar distinction of the functionaries of the whip. I should like to bring the surly Radical here who scowls and snarls at ‘the selfish aristocracy who have no sympathies with the people,’ and when he has seen these hundreds feasting in the Castle, and heard their loud shouts of joy and congratulation, and then visited the villages around, and listened to the bells chiming all about the vale, say whether ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ would be promoted by the destruction of all the feudality which belongs inseparably to this scene, and by the substitution of some abstract political rights for all the beef and ale and music and dancing with which they are made merry and glad even for so brief a space. The Duke of Rutland is as selfish a man as any of his class—that is, he never does what he does not like, and spends his whole life in a round of such pleasures as suit his taste, but he is neither a foolish nor a bad man, and partly from a sense of duty, partly from inclination, he devotes time and labour to the interest and welfare of the people who live and labour on his estate. He is a Guardian of a very large Union, and he not only attends regularly the meetings of Poor Law Guardians every week or fortnight, and takes an active part in their proceedings, but he visits those paupers who receive out-of-door relief, sits and converses with them, invites them to complain to him if they have anything to complain of, and tells them that he is not only their friend but their representative at the assembly of Guardians, and it is his duty to LIFE AT BELVOIR. see that they are nourished and protected. To my mind there is more ‘sympathy’ in this than in railing at the rich and rendering the poor discontented, weaning them from their habitual attachments and respects, and teaching them that the political quacks and adventurers who flatter and cajole them are their only real friends.
We had a great ball last night, opened by the Duke of Rutland and Duchess of Sutherland, who had to sail down at least a hundred couple of tenants, shopkeepers, valets, and abigails. The Duke of Newcastle gave the Duke’s health at dinner instead of the Duke of Wellington, who generally discharges that office. He made a boggling business of it, but apologised in sufficiently handsome terms for being spokesman instead of the Duke of Wellington. The Duke of Rutland made a very respectable speech in reply, and it all went off swimmingly. To-day I went to see the hounds throw off; but though a hunter was offered to me would not ride him, because there is no use in risking the hurt or ridicule of a fall for one day. A man who goes out in this casual way and hurts himself looks as foolish as an amateur soldier who gets wounded in a battle in which he is tempted by curiosity to mingle. So I rode with the mob, saw a great deal of galloping about and the hounds conveniently running over hills and vales all in sight, and then came home. They said a thousand people were out, many attracted by the expectation of the Duke of Wellington’s appearing, but he was rheumatic and could not come out. He is incessantly employed in writing military statements and memoranda, having been consulted by the Government, or probably by Lord Hill on behalf of the Government, both on this Canadian question, and on the general government of the army, and he will take as much pains to give useful advice to Melbourne’s Government as if he and Peel were in office. There never was a man who so entirely sank all party considerations in national objects, and he has had the glory of living to hear this universally acknowledged. Brougham said of him, ‘That man’s first object is to serve his country, with a sword if necessary, or with a pick-axe.’ He also said of the Duke’s Despatches, ‘They will be remembered when I and others (mentioning some of the most eminent men) will be forgotten.’ Aberdeen told the Duke this, and he replied with the greatest simplicity, ‘It is very true: when I read them I was myself astonished, and I can’t think how the devil I could have written them.’ This is very characteristic, very curious from a man who has not one grain of conceit in his disposition; but really great men are equally free from undue vanity or affected modesty, and know very well the value of what they do.
Last night I sat next to Lord FitzGerald at dinner, who said that if ever his memoirs appeared (he did not say that any existed) they would contain many curious things, and among them the proofs that the events which were supposed to have been the proximate cause of the Catholic question being carried were not the real cause, and that the resolution of the Duke of Wellington is traceable to other sources, which he could not reveal.
Melton, January 7th, 1838 (Lord Wilton’s house)
I came here to-day from Belvoir. Last night the Duke of Wellington narrated the battle of Toulouse and other Peninsular recollections. All the room collected round him, listening with eager curiosity, but I was playing at whist and lost it all. FitzGerald said to me that he had a great mind to write upon Ireland, and make a statement of the conduct of England towards Ireland for ages past; that he had mentioned his idea to Peel, who had replied, ‘Well, and if you do, I am not the man to object to your doing so.’ This he meant as a trait of his fairness and candour; but the fact is that it is Peel’s interest that all Irish questions should be settled, and he would rejoice at anything which tended to accelerate a settlement, and I am no great believer in his fairness. I was struck with a great admiration for Peel during his hundred days’ struggle, when he made a gallant fight; but this has very much cooled since that time.
FitzGerald said one thing in conversation with me of which I painfully felt the truth, that an addiction to worthless or useless pursuits did an irretrievable injury to the REFLEXIONS. mental faculties. It is not only the actual time wasted which might have been turned to good account; the slender store of knowledge acquired on all subjects instead of the accumulation which there might have been; but, more than these, the relaxation of the mental powers till they become incapable of vigorous exertion or sustained effort:—
Quoniam medio de fonte leporum
Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat:
Aut quum conscius ipse animus se forte remordet
Desidiose agere ætatem, lustrisque perire.