In 1814 the Prince Regent had a narrow escape for his life. On one of his evenings of ennui he sent for George Colman to come from the King’s Bench, where he was a prisoner, to amuse him. Court jester and prince, they passed the night, drinking and fooling, till six o’clock, when his Highness was carried to bed in an apoplexy, from which he only recovered at the cost of seven and twenty ounces of blood! He was as near death at this critical juncture as a man could be and yet live. His constitution, however, carried him through. When the allied sovereigns entered London he was ready for all the duties and eager for all the pleasures that the occasion offered; but he shocked some people on one occasion by presiding at a public dinner on a Sunday.
That English society wanted refinement in the first decade of the present century is not to be disputed. When Mr. Jackson returned from long diplomatic service abroad in 1806, he dined one day at Lord Westmoreland’s. The guests were chiefly Russians. They were as much out of their element in English society as the young diplomatist says he was after the sociability, ease, and elegance of the society at foreign courts to which he had so long been accustomed.
Some of that foreign society was quite as free as it was easy. Jackson and other Englishmen at the Prussian court were admitted to the morning toilette of Madame de Vos, the King of Prussia’s grande maîtresse. While under the hands of her hairdresser she laughed and flirted with the English lords and gentlemen, who paid tribute to her beauty by making her presents of wine and tea, and other English matters, which she greedily accepted. There are three things, says the Welsh proverb, which always swallow and are never satisfied—the grave, the sea, and a king’s concubine.
Austerlitz killed Pitt as surely as Trafalgar killed Nelson. Each died for his country, but that country mourned more deeply for the great admiral, stricken down in the battle where he was the victor, than it did for the great minister who died of a broken heart. The last book he read, at Bath, was Miss Owenson’s (Lady Morgan’s) ‘Novice of St. Dominic.’ That now unreadable romance, Pitt said, he could not lay down till he had finished it, and thence did the ‘Novice’ come to be the rage for a time. People almost fought to obtain it at the libraries, and nothing in literature was talked of but a book which has long since fallen out of literature and of memory altogether. People, too, fought for another novel, ‘A Winter in London,’ in which fashionable life was illustrated by an incapable whose name and whose work are equally wrapt in oblivion.
Fox did not long survive his great rival Pitt. He died on the 13th of September, 1806. A week previously, when he was already dying, he transacted public business. He gave an audience in his bedroom to George Jackson, with instructions as to how the latter was to act on his new mission to Germany. There was a mixture of the solemn and the ludicrous in the scene. When Jackson was announced Mrs. Fox, in complete deshabille, was in the room. In her flurry she slipped into a closet, and, as the interview was prolonged, the lightly-draped lady kept signalling to Mr. Fox, as if he alone could hear her, by little coughs and murmurs, to warn him not to over-exert himself, or to dismiss the envoy, that she might be set free. At a moment when there was a pause in the conversation between the minister and his agent the fair captive tapped at the panel, asked if the young gentleman was not gone, and complained of being cold. The dying statesman looked at Jackson with a languid smile, and with friendly wishes bade him farewell—as it proved, for ever.
Descending to minor legislators, we meet with an Irish M.P., who, being told that the favour he asked would be granted on condition of his supporting government, replied that he would not give his constant support for so paltry a favour. The Irish member obtained the favour, and voted twice for government in payment for it. This was better diplomacy than Sir Charles Stuart’s (Marquis of Londonderry), who, when named to a post in Germany, told people that he was going to Spain, by way of being diplomatic. We were unlucky in our leading diplomatists generally at that time. Lord Aberdeen may serve as an example. He went to Toplitz, as English ambassador, and had the bad taste and idiotic indiscretion to say one day, openly at dinner, that he could not bear the undertaking, and would not go on with it to keep the crowns on the allied heads! One qualification was necessary to even a decently moderate success, namely, the ability to speak French; but Lord Aberdeen not only could not speak two words of French, but had the folly to tell everybody who addressed him in that language that he hated it. There was in some persons as much bad taste in acts as there was in others in words; and it is not without surprise that we hear of gentlemen sightseers who would pass the morning amid the horrors of a field of recent battle, and the evening at the play, philandering with ladies and talking an infinite deal of nothing. On another occasion, we hear of the gayest and most gigantic of picnics, where luxury abounded, while, within a few miles, French soldiers were dropping dead with hunger as they slowly retreated.
Mrs. Fitzherbert was in the early part of the century the Queen of Brighton, if not of England, and she was popularly called ‘Mrs. Prince.’ She certainly was one of the most queen-like women that ever lived; and stood in favourable contrast with Lady Holland, who is justly described as fussy, almost rude, straining at effect, and losing it in the very effort. There was another lady then in England striving to be effective, Madame de Staël; and she (who horrified Henry Brougham) was pronounced by female critics as ‘too anxious to glitter to be intrinsically good.’ A still more remarkable woman of that day was Lady Caroline Lamb. She was at a party at Lady Heathcote’s, had been flirting and quarrelling with Lord Byron, and therefore ‘stabbed herself with a knife at supper, so that the blood flew about her neighbours.’ When she came to, after a faint, a glass of water was handed to her, but she smashed the glass and cut herself with the pieces. ‘A little discipline,’ said Francis Jackson, ‘will bring these school-girl fancies into order.’ A good deal of disorder was to be found at breakfast as well as at supper-tables. Lady Caroline Hood was, probably, counselled not to go to the Regent’s ‘breakfast’; but ladies will, under certain circumstances, disregard friends and doctors also. Lady Caroline went, and had only herself to blame when she had to be carried away wrapped up in blankets.
Mrs. Fitzherbert’s conduct at Brighton was not always in the best taste. Mrs. Gunn, the bathing-woman, invariably addressed her as ‘Mrs. Prince’; but the latter did not live at the level of that dignity. She held afternoon gossips in her little drawing room, hung with black profiles (her salon aux silhouettes). Only guests of distinction were admitted here to exchange the stories of the day for piquant anecdotes and a cup of tea. There, too, M. le Prince was a subject of discussion. His sayings and doings were pretty freely handled. It was all done with gusto and elicited much mirth; but some visitors, who were glad to be there, professed to think it all very naughty and in the worst taste.
The fair one who had the reputation of being fairest where all were fair—the reigning queen of beauty in fact—was Miss Rumbold, daughter of Sir George. She was a ‘dashing’ beauty; but if to be beautiful was not common, to be dashing was to be fashionable. Accordingly, we find Miss Rumbold attended so little to the hints and admonitions of the Bishop of Durham, that the love of showing off an amazingly fine ankle prevented more than one offer from among the crowd of her adorers. The same pretty vanity was strong in the Princess Charlotte, at a later period, but Prince Leopold was not kept thereby from being a suitor. It may be concluded that gentlemen were, after all, not so particular as the adorers of Miss Rumbold, if Texier truly said of his daughter (whose beauty he was always praising in her presence) that there were five hundred lords, any one of whom would have been the happiest of men to have her for his own.
The utmost regularity was not incompatible with much eccentricity in many of the foremost individuals of the time. One of them, the Duke of Bedford, arranged his movements for a whole year in advance; and if one went wrong, his Grace was put out for six or eight months together. The silent Duke was under the thumb of his rattling Duchess, who used to laugh at his announcement, on starting for a long journey, of the precise moment of his return, and what dishes were to be ready for him on his arrival. He would be there, D.V., of course; but in any case, there he would be. The Duchess was as irregular as the Duke was the opposite. His obedience to her was that of Jerry Sneak. She would cry out in a room full of people, Johnny, do this; Johnny, do that; Johnny, I did not see you bow to such a person! Speak to him directly, and speak German, Johnny—and Duke Johnny answered not, but like a good boy, unhesitatingly obeyed.