Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. Volume 1

by George Otto Trevelyan

London: July 8, 1831.

My dear Sister,—Since I wrote to you I have been out to dine and sleep at Holland House. We had a very agreeable and splendid party; among others the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, and the Marchioness of Clanricarde, who, you know, is the daughter of Canning. She is very beautiful, and very like her father, with eyes full of fire, and great expression in all her features. She and I had a great deal of talk. She showed much cleverness and information, but, I thought, a little more of political animosity than is quite becoming in a pretty woman. However, she has been placed in peculiar circumstances. The daughter of a statesman who was a martyr to the rage of faction may be pardoned for speaking sharply of the enemies of her parent; and she did speak sharply. With knitted brows, and flashing eyes, and a look of feminine vengeance about her beautiful mouth, she gave me such a character of Peel as he would certainly have had no pleasure in hearing.

In the evening Lord John Russell came; and, soon after, old Talleyrand. I had seen Talleyrand in very large parties, but had never been near enough to hear a word that he said. I now had the pleasure of listening for an hour and a half to his conversation. He is certainly the greatest curiosity that I ever fell in with. His head is sunk down between two high shoulders. One of his feet is hideously distorted. His face is as pale as that of a corpse, and wrinkled to a frightful degree. His eyes have an odd glassy stare quite peculiar to them. His hair, thickly powdered and pomatumed, hangs down his shoulders on each side as straight as a pound of tallow candles. His conversation, however, soon makes you forget his ugliness and infirmities. There is a poignancy without effort in all that he says, which reminded me a little of the character which the wits of Johnson's circle give of Beauclerk. For example, we talked about Metternich and Cardinal Mazarin. "J'y trouve beaucoup a redire. Le Cardinal trompait; mais il ne mentait pas. Or, M. de Metternich ment toujours, et ne trompe jamais." He mentioned M. de St. Aulaire,—now one of the most distinguished public men of France. I said: "M. de Saint-Aulaire est beau-pere de M. le duc de Cazes, n'est-ce pas?" "Non, monsieur," said Talleyrand; "l'on disait, il y a douze ans, que M. de Saint-Aulaire etoit beau-pere de M. de Cazes; l'on dit maintenant que M. de Cazes est gendre de M. de Saint-Aulaire." [This saying remained in Macaulay's mind. He quoted it on the margin of his Aulus Gellius, as an illustration of the passage in the nineteenth book in which Julius Caesar is described, absurdly enough as "perpetuus ille dictator, Cneii Pompeii socer".] It was not easy to describe the change in the relative positions of two men more tersely and more sharply; and these remarks were made in the lowest tone, and without the slightest change of muscle, just as if he had been remarking that the day was fine. He added: "M. de Saint-Aulaire a beaucoup d'esprit. Mais il est devot, et, ce qui pis est, devot honteux. Il va se cacher dans quelque hameau pour faire ses Paques." This was a curious remark from a Bishop. He told several stories about the political men of France; not of any great value in themselves; but his way of telling them was beyond all praise,—concise, pointed, and delicately satirical. When he had departed, I could not help breaking out into admiration of his talent for relating anecdotes. Lady Holland said that he had been considered for nearly forty years as the best teller of a story in Europe, and that there was certainly nobody like him in that respect.

When the Prince was gone, we went to bed. In the morning Lord John Russell drove me back to London in his cabriolet, much amused with what I had seen and heard. But I must stop.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Basinghall Street: July 15 1831.

My dear Sister,—The rage of faction at the present moment exceeds anything that has been known in our day. Indeed I doubt whether, at the time of Mr. Pitt's first becoming Premier, at the time of Sir Robert Walpole's fall, or even during the desperate struggles between the Whigs and Tories at the close of Anne's reign, the fury of party was so fearfully violent. Lord Mahon said to me yesterday that friendships of long standing were everywhere giving way, and that the schism between the reformers and the anti-reformers was spreading from the House of Commons into every private circle. Lord Mahon himself is an exception. He and I are on excellent terms. But Praed and I become colder every day.

The scene of Tuesday night beggars description. I left the House at about three, in consequence of some expressions of Lord Althorp's which indicated that the Ministry was inclined to yield on the question of going into Committee on the Bill. I afterwards much regretted that I had gone away; not that my presence was necessary; but because I should have liked to have sate through so tremendous a storm. Towards eight in the morning the Speaker was almost fainting. The Ministerial members, however, were as true as steel. They furnished the Ministry with the resolution which it wanted. "If the noble Lord yields," said one of our men, "all is lost." Old Sir Thomas Baring sent for his razor, and Benett, the member for Wiltshire, for his night-cap; and they were both resolved to spend the whole day in the House rather than give way. If the Opposition had not yielded, in two hours half London would have been in Old Palace Yard.