George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life

by George Augustus Selwyn

To come to more recent times, the manor house was built in 1594 by
Sir Ambrose Willoughby. From him the estate was purchased in 1597 by
Jasper Selwyn, Counsellor at Law, of Stonehouse, who was the fourth
in descent from John Selwyn, one of a Sussex family.

In 1751 the direct entail was broken by Colonel Selwyn, and the property was re-entailed on the descendants of his daughter, Mrs. Townshend, though it was left by will to George Selwyn for his life. On his death it devolved on Thomas, Lord Sydney, and has since remained in the possession of the Townshend family.** Walpole has given a description of the place in the days when he used to visit it.

** Bigland, "History of Gloucestershire," vol. ii. p. 200.

"I stayed two days at George Selwyn's house, called Matson, which lies on Robin Hood's Hill; it is lofty enough for an Alp, yet it is a mountain of turf to the very top, has wood scattered all over it, springs that long to be cascades in twenty places of it, and from the summit of it beats even Sir George Lyttleton's views, by having the city of Gloucester at its foot, and the Severn widening to the horizon. His house is small, but neat. King Charles lay here at the siege, and the Duke of York, with typical fury, hacked and hewed the window-shutters of his chamber, as a memorandum of his being there. Here is a good picture of Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in his later age, . . . and here is the very flower pot and counterfeit association for which Bishop Sprat is taken up, and the Duke of Marlborough sent to the Tower. The reservoirs on the hill supply the city. The late Mr. Selwyn governed the borough by them, and I believe by some wine too. . . .

"A little way from the town are the ruins of Lantony Priory; there remains a pretty old gateway, which G. Selwyn has begged to erect on the top of his mountain, and it will have a charming effect."*

* "The Letters of Horace Walpole," vol. ii. p. 354.

Selwyn's schooldays were passed at Eton with Gray and Walpole. In 1739 he became an undergraduate of Hertford College, Oxford, or Hart Hall as it was called. It was to Hertford also that later Charles Fox went, "a college which has in our own day been munificently re-endowed as a training school of principles and ideas very different from those ordinarily associated with the name of its greatest son." Hertford was in the middle of the eighteenth century a college where the so-called students neither toiled at books nor at physical exercise. They passed a short and merry time at the University, fashioned as nearly as might be on the mode of life of a man about town. In 1740 he was appointed to the vague-sounding office of Clerk of the Irons and Surveyor of the Meltings in the Mint, a sinecure which, after the manner of the time, required no personal attention from the holder. Even in those early days Selwyn, who went by the sobriquet of "Bosky," had many friends—not only among college boys, but in London society. "You must judge by what you feel yourself," wrote Walpole to General Conway, the soldier and statesman, on the occasion of a severe illness from which Selwyn suffered in 1741, "of what I feel for Selwyn's recovery, with the addition of what I have suffered from post to post. But as I find the whole town have had the same sentiments about him (though I am sure few so strong as myself), I will not repeat what you have heard so much. I shall write to him to-night, though he knows, without my telling him, how very much I love him. To you, my dear Harry, I am infinitely obliged for the three successive letters you wrote me about him, which gave me double pleasure, as they showed your attention for me at a time that you knew I must be so unhappy, and your friendship for him."* But then came an interval in Selwyn's academic career—if such it may be called—since he was certainly in Paris, much in want of money, at the end of 1742 and the beginning of 1743. It is probable that he had gone down from Oxford for some irregularity; he ultimately was obliged to leave the University for the same reason. For though he re-entered his college in 1744 he only remained there until the following year, when he was sent down for an irreverent jest after dinner, having taken more to drink than was good for him. His friends, especially Sir Charles Hanbury Williams and some in authority at Oxford also, thought that Selwyn was harshly treated. Whether that were so or not this was the end of his University career. It was not a promising beginning of a life, and for some years he was regarded as a good-natured spendthrift. The death of his elder brother and father however in 1751 produced a sense of responsibility, but even before this date he had been endeavouring to regain his father's goodwill. "I don't yet imagine," wrote his friend, Sir William Maynard, shortly before the death of Colonel J. Selwyn, "you are quite established in his good opinion, and if his life is but spared one twelvemonth you may have an opportunity of convincing him you are in earnest in your promises of a more frugal way of life." As too often happens the son had not time in his father's lifetime to regain his good opinion. Certainly Selwyn made no attempt to give up pleasure, though he was bent on it no doubt with a more frugal mind. He was a man of fashion and of pleasure, having his headquarters in London, paying visits now and again to great country houses as Trentham and Croome. To Bath he went as one goes now to the Riviera. In Paris too he delighted; when in the autumn of 1762 the Duke of Bedford was in France negotiating the treaty which is known in history as the Peace of Paris, it was Selwyn who accompanied the Duchess when she joined her husband. "She sets out the day after to-morrow," wrote Walpole on September 8th, "escorted to add gravity to the Embassy by George Selwyn." After the treaty was completed on February 10th of the following year, as a memento of his visit the Duke presented Selwyn with the pen with which this unpopular document was signed.* Indeed in those days he was constantly in Paris, much to the regret of his friends at home—"Do come and live among your friends who love and honour you," wrote Gilly Williams to him in the autumn of 1764, but in spite of their wishes he stayed on throughout the winter in the French capital, and when his friend Carlisle went in 1778 to America as a peace commissioner Selwyn tried to console himself for his absence by a stay in Paris. "George is now, I imagine, squaring his elbows and turning out his toes in Paris," wrote Hare to Carlisle in December of that year. Neither politics nor pleasure could prevent continual and long visits to France.

* Horace Walpole to H. S. Conway, Florence, March 25, 1741.

* Bedford Correspondence, vol. iii. P. 206.

The charming country estate and house which he had inherited from his father had little attraction for Selwyn, and to the end of his life, if he could not be in town, he preferred Castle Howard, or indeed any house where he would meet with congenial spirits. "This is the second day," he once wrote to Carlisle, "I am come home to dine alone, but so it is, and if it goes on so I am determined to keep a chaplain, for although I do not stand in need of much society, I do not relish being quite alone at this time of day."