The news of the royal suggestion soon spread abroad. Amongst those who heard of it with disgust were Lord Farnborough (who is said to have learnt the design in talking, one day, with Princess Lieven) and Richard Heber. Both men bestirred themselves to prevent the King from publicly disgracing the country in that way. Lord Farnborough betook himself to a conference with the Premier, Lord Liverpool. Mr. Heber discussed the matter with Lord Sidmouth. By the ministers, public opinion upon the suggested sale was pretty strongly and emphatically conveyed to His Majesty, whatever may have been the courtliness of tone employed about it.
Conference between George IV and his Ministers on disposal of the Library.
George the Fourth, however, was not less strongly impressed by the charms of the prospective rubles from Russia. He felt that he could find pleasant uses for a windfall of a hundred and eighty thousand pounds, or so. And he fought hard to secure his expected prize—or some indubitably solid equivalent. |R. Ford, in the Quarterly Review (Dec., 1850), vol. lxxxviii, p. 143;| ‘If I can’t have the rubles,’ said the King, ‘you must find me their value in pounds sterling.’ The Ministers were much in earnest to save the Library, and, in the emergency, laid their hands upon a certain surplus which had accrued from a fund furnished some years before by France, to meet British claims for losses sustained at the date of the first French Revolution. |Comp. Minutes of Evidence taken by the Commissioners on Brit. Mus. (also in 1850), pp. 117, 118.| But the expedient became the subject of an unpleasant hint in the House of Commons. And the Government, it is said, then resorted to that useful fund, the ‘Droits of Admiralty.’ By hook or crook, George the Fourth received his ‘equivalent.’ He then sat down to his writing-table (at Brighton), to assure Lord Liverpool—in his official capacity—of the satisfaction he felt in having ‘this means of advancing the Literature of my Country.’ Then he proceeded to add:—‘I also feel that I am paying a just tribute to the memory of a Parent, whose life was adorned with every public and private virtue.’
The Executors or Trustees of King George the Third knew well what the monarch’s feelings about his Library would, in all reasonable probability, have been, had he possessed mental vigour when preparing for his last change. They exacted from the Trustees of the Museum a pledge that the Royal Library should be preserved apart, and entire.
The New Building erected for the Georgian Library.
Parliament, on its side, made a liberal provision for the erection of a building worthy to receive the Georgian Library. The fine edifice raised in pursuance of a parliamentary vote cost a hundred and forty thousand pounds. |1821–28.| It provided one of the handsomest rooms in Europe for the main purpose, and it also made much-needed arrangements for the reception and exhibition of natural-history Collections, above the books.
The removal of the Royal Library from Buckingham House was not completed until August, 1828. All who saw the Collection whilst the building was in its first purity of colour—and who were old enough to form an opinion on such a point—pronounced the receptacle to be eminently worthy of its rich contents. The floor-cases and the heavy tables—very needful, no doubt—have since detracted not a little from the architectural effect and elegance of the room itself.
Along with the printed books, and the extensive geographical Collections, came a number of manuscripts—on historical, literary, and geographical subjects.[[17]] By some transient forgetfulness of the pledge given to Lord Farnborough, the manuscripts, or part of them, were, in March, 1841, sent to the ‘Manuscript Department’ of the Museum. |Minutes of Evidence (1850), as above.| But Mr. Panizzi, then the Keeper of the Printed Books, successfully reclaimed them for their due place of deposit, according to the arrangement of 1823. Nor was such a claim a mere official punctilio.
In every point of view, close regard to the wishes of donors, or of those who virtually represent them, is not more a matter of simple justice than it is a matter of wise and foreseeing policy in the Trustees of Public Museums. The integrity of their Collections is often, and naturally, an anxious desire of those who have formed them. In a subsequent chapter (C. ii of Book III) it will be seen that the wish expressed by the representatives of King George the Third was also the wish of a munificent contemporary and old minister of his, who, many years afterwards, gave to the Nation a Library only second in splendour to that which had been gathered by George the Third.
Not the least curious little fact connected with the Georgian Library and its gift to the Public, is that the gift was predicted thirty-one years before George the Fourth wrote his letter addressed to Lord Liverpool from the Pavilion at Brighton, and twenty-eight years before the death of George the Third.