It has been well said of Selwyn by a statesman of to-day that he was a good friend, a fact never better exemplified than in his friendship with Carlisle. In his affairs he took a greater interest than would be expected of the nearest of relatives, and with this he united a singularly warm and open-hearted affection not only for Carlisle but for his family. It lasted to the day of his death. There was between them, as Pitt said of his relations with Wilberforce, a tie of affection and friendship—simple and ingenuous and unbreakable.
The nobleman who has been referred to simply as Lord Carlisle had many of the qualities that mark a leader of men. He did not attain, however, to the eminence as a statesman, man of letters, or in society which had once been expected of him.
He succeeded to the earldom when ten years of age, following a father who had shown no disposition for any activities beyond those of a respectable country gentleman. His grandfather, Charles, third Earl of Carlisle, had, however, filled an important place in his day. His local influence in the North was great, and he' was a man of sufficient capacity and ambition to become a personage of some position in politics and at court.
There was never a time in English history when the possession of an ancient name and wide estates gave greater opportunities for taking a large share in public affairs than when the fifth Earl attained his majority. It was natural, therefore, that a young man who was recognised by his friends as above the average should be regarded as a person of unusual political promise.
In 1775 an offer was made to him of the sinecure post of Lord of the Bedchamber. He declined it, on the openly declared ground that the position of an official at Court was such as "damps all views of ambition which might arise from that quarter." But in 1778 there came an opportunity of satisfying his public spirit and ambition by crossing the Atlantic as a peace commissioner to America.
It is a curious historical fact that this mission appears to have been partially, if not entirely, originated by Carlisle himself. The story of its inception and the outlines of its progress are told by Carlisle in a letter preserved at Castle Howard, which he addressed to his friend and former tutor, Mr. Ekins. It is doubtful if the King ever really hoped or intended that Carlisle's mission should have a successful issue. It ended, as history has told, in absolute failure. Carlisle returned home with the barren honour of good intentions.
The trying work which he had undertaken entitled Carlisle, however, to posts of importance at home, and he subsequently filled the high office of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, under the administration of Lord North. When on the resignation of Lord Shelburne, in the year 1783 the memorable and short-lived coalition between Fox and North was formed, Carlisle became one of the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal. With the fall of the Ministry on Fox's India Bill in the same year, Carlisle's official life ended. No public man who attains to Cabinet rank can be regarded as a failure, and it may be that he was satisfied with what he had achieved by the age of five-and-thirty. With a versatility and serenity rare among those who have once felt the pleasure and excitement of political power and responsibility, he turned to literature, and at Castle Howard and Naworth he produced poems and dramas which, in spite of Byron's sharp attack, who thus avenged himself for the inattention of his guardian on his entrance to public life,* though they have had no posthumous fame, gave him a reputation in his day as a man of letters, which was probably a higher satisfaction than would have been the rewards of a political career alone. And it threw him into closer connection with men of literary and artistic tastes and aims. Of his writings the poem addressed to Reynolds on his resignation of the Presidency of the Royal Academy is perhaps that which is best worth recollecting. Carlisle's cultivated mind made him always a liberal patron, and at the sale of the celebrated Orleans collection of paintings he bought the greater part.
* Carlisle and Byron were not only guardian and ward, but were nearly related; it is a singular fact that Carlisle declined to introduce him in the house of Lords.
Selwyn's letters open with the departure of Lord Carlisle for the Continent. The young peer was then not quite twenty, but had fallen desperately in love with Lady Sarah Bunbury. This beautiful and attractive woman had half London at her feet, including the King. For obvious constitutional reasons it was impossible for him to marry her, but day after day the town told how he used to ride to and fro in front of Holland House to catch a glimpse of Lady Sarah. At the drawing room after the royal marriage, at which, by the wish of the King, she was first bridesmaid, Lord Westmoreland, who was an adherent of the Stuarts, knelt to Lady Sarah, mistaking her for the Queen. Selwyn said "the lady in waiting should [must] have told him that she was the Pretender."*
* "Memoirs of third Duke of Grafton," p. 33.