George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life

by George Augustus Selwyn

(258) The Convocation of the Notables took place the 19th of December.

(259) Armand Charles Emmanuel, Comte de Hautefort, was born in 1741; he bore the title of Grand d'Espagne through his marriage in 1761 with the Comtesse de Hochenfels de Bavere Grand d'Espagne de la premiere classe.

Richmond of to-day, with its villas and streets, a town of houses occupied by professional and business men who spend their life in London, is unlike the gay and lively resort of the last days of the eighteenth century. Then the elite of the fashionable society of England gathered on the hill and by the river as people now do on the Riviera or in Cairo. "Richmond is in the first request this summer," so wrote Walpole in the very year at which we have now arrived. "Mrs. Bouverie is settled there with a large Court. The Sheridans are there too, and the Bunburys. I go once or twice a week to George Selwyn late in the evening when he comes in from walking; about as often to Mrs. Ellis here and to Lady Cecilia at Hampton." Once in Richmond men and women stayed there walking, talking, and calling on each other, sometimes driving into London, but enjoying it as a residence, not as a mere resort for an evening's pleasure. Selwyn communicated the news of Richmond to his country friends as one does in these days when at some German Spa. It may seem to us, to whom so many opportunities of enjoyment of all kinds and in all parts of the world are open, a tame kind of life to spend days and nights strolling about a London suburb, attending assemblies, playing at cards, with now and then a visit to town or a row on the river. But our ancestors were necessarily limited in their pleasures, and to them Richmond was a God-send, especially to men like Selwyn, or Queensberry, or Walpole, who delighted in social intercourse, and liked to enjoy what they called rustic life with as much comfort as the age provided. Something of this life we have learned from Walpole's and Miss Berry's letters, but no truer picture of it can be found than in the last letters of Selwyn. To the ordinary habitues of Richmond, however, there were in 1789 and 1790 added a throng of French ladies and gentlemen. Driven from their agreeable salons in Paris, they endeavoured to make the best of life among their English friends at Richmond. Exiled among a people whose language few of them could understand, they' received little of the hospitality which had been so freely extended to English visitors in Paris. It was the last and a sad scene in that remarkable intercourse between the most cultivated people of England and France which is one characteristic of the society of both nations in the eighteenth century. This entente was destroyed by the French Revolution. Selwyn, who had figured in this international society more than most men of the age, lived to tell of its last days in the letters which he wrote during the two final years of his life.

(1789, Aug. 21?) Friday night, Richmond.—I did not come hither till to-day, because I was resolved to stay to see the Duke(260) set out, which he did this morning for Newmarket, from whence he goes with his doctor to York. He said that he should not go to Castle Howard, which I looked upon as certain as that the Princes will be there. It would have been in vain to have held out to him the temptation of seeing his goddaughter, and I know that, if I had suggested it, he would have laughed at me, which would have made me angry, who think Gertrude(261) an object worth going at least sixteen miles to see.

He was in very good spirits when he left London; and in extraordinary good humour with me. But he would not have me depend, he said, upon his going to Scotland, although he has, sent as many servants in different equipages as if he intended to stay there a twelvemonth. It was quite unnecessary to prepare me against any kind of irresolution of his. After all, I hope that he will go to Castle Howard. I believe it is just five and thirty years since we were there together, and all I know is, that I did not think then that I should ever see it so well furnished as I have since, and I will maintain that Gertrude is not the least pretty meuble that is there.

I was so unsettled while I was in London that I did not even send to make enquiries about your brother or Lady Southerland. I could not have made their party if I had been sure of their being in town. Sir R. and Lady Payne are at Lambeth. They propose coming to dine here in a few days.

I dined with Crowle and the younger Mr. Fawkner yesterday at the Duke's, and asked them many questions about poor Delme's affairs, and concerning Lady Betty. I hear that Lady Julia has been much affected with this accident. He had persuaded himself that he should die, although either Dr. Warren saw no immediate danger, or thought proper not to say so. The French, as I said before, have good reason to say that il n'est permis qu'aux medecins de mentir, and Delme certainly justified the deception, if there was any; but he had at last more fortitude or resolution as I hear than was expected. I hope that Lady Betty will be reconciled to her change of life; there must have been one inevitably, and, perhaps, that not less disagreeable.

I am unhappy that I have not yet received any account of Caroline. Mr. Woodhouse has returned my visit. I did not conceive it to be proper that Mie Mie should wait upon Mrs. Bacon till an opportunity had been offered of her being presented to her, but I shall be desirous of bringing about that acquaintance. Mrs. Webb is now with us, which is a piece of furniture here, not without its use, and which I am in a habit of seeing with more satisfaction than perhaps Mie Mie, who begins to think naturally a gouvernante to have a mauvais air. I am not quite of that opinion dans les circonstances actuelles.

No more news as yet from France. I expect to have a great deal of discourse on Tuesday with St. Foy, on the subject of this Revolution, which occupies my mind very much, although I have still a great deal of information to acquire. It may be peu de chose, but, as yet, I know no more than that the House of Bourbon, with the noblesse francoise, their revenues and privileges, are in a manner annihilated by a coup de main, as it were, and after an existence of near a thousand years; and if you are now walking in the streets of Paris, ever so quietly, but suspected or marked as one who will not subscribe to this, you are immediately accroche a la Lanterne: tout cela m'est inconcevable. But we are I am sure at the beginning only of this Roman, instead of seeing the new Constitution so quietly established by the first of September, as I have been confidently assured that it will be.

Preparations were certainly making here for her Majesty the Queen of France's(262) reception, and I am assured that if the King had not gone as he did to the Hotel de Ville, the Duke of Orleans(263) would immediately have been declared Regent. There seems some sort of fatality in the scheme of forming (sic) a Regent, who, in neither of the two kingdoms, is destine a ne pas arrive a bon part.