Marquesses under the Microscope
And the marquesses came off even worse. The eccentric Marquess of Waterford is celebrated for his knocker-hunting exploits in the very first number. The Marquess of Hertford—the original of Thackeray's Marquess of Steyne in Vanity Fair—is subjected to posthumous obloquy, à propos of the claim of his valet on his executors, who "were compelled to bring the dead Marquess into Court, that the loathsome dead may declare the greater loathsomeness of the living." The Marquess of Londonderry came under the lash not merely as a rapacious coal-owner, but as a bad writer: "the most noble but not the most grammatical Marquess." So again we are informed respecting the Marquess of Normanby's novels that "they have just declared a dividend of 2½d. in the pound, which is being paid at all the butter shops." One has to wait for nearly ten years for acknowledgment of virtue in the marquisate, but then it is certainly handsome. The occasion was the entrance into power of the Derby-Disraeli (or "Dilly-Dizzy") Cabinet:—
THE MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE AND THE NEW MINISTRY
The first act of the Ministry in the House of Lords was done with the worst of grace. The Marquis of Lansdowne took farewell of office and of official life. And who was there, among the new men, to do reverence to the unstudied yet touching ceremony? Nobody, save the Earl of Malmesbury. The Times says, and most truly:
"A public life, which has literally embraced the first half of this century, and which last night was most gracefully concluded, deserved an ampler and richer tribute than our new Foreign Secretary seemed able to bestow."
Nothing could be colder, meaner, and certainly more foreign to the heartiness of English generosity than the chip-chip phrases of Lord Malmesbury. It is such men as the Marquis of Lansdowne who are the true strength of the House of Lords. He is a true Englishman. In fifty years of political life his name has never been mixed with aught mean or jobbing. In the most tempestuous times, his voice has been heard amongst the loudest for right. In days when to be a reformer was to take rank a little above a fanatic and a public despoiler, the Marquis of Lansdowne struck at rotten boroughs. He has ever been a patriot in the noblest sense. And there was nobody but cold-mouthed Malmesbury to touch upon his doings? So it is!
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past.