Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. Volume 1

by George Otto Trevelyan

My dear Sister,—The papers will scarcely contain any account of what passed yesterday in the House of Commons in the middle of the day. Grant and I fought a battle with Briscoe and O'Connell in defence of the Indian people, and won it by 38 to 6. It was a rascally claim of a dishonest agent of the Company against the employers whom he had cheated, and sold to their own tributaries. [In his great Indian speech Macaulay referred to this affair, in a passage, the first sentence of which has, by frequent quotation, been elevated into an apophthegm: "A broken head in Cold Bath Fields produces a greater sensation than three pitched battles in India. A few weeks ago we had to decide on a claim brought by an individual against the revenues of India. If it had been an English question the walls would scarcely have held the members who would have flocked to the division. It was an Indian question; and we could scarcely, by dint of supplication, make a House.">[ The nephew of the original claimant has been pressing his case on the Board most vehemently. He is an attorney living in Russell Square, and very likely hears the word at St. John's Chapel. He hears it however to very little purpose; for he lies as much as if he went to hear a "cauld clatter of morality" at the parish church.

I remember that, when you were at Leamington two years ago, I used to fill my letters with accounts of the people with whom I dined. High life was new to me then; and now it has grown so familiar that I should not, I fear, be able, as I formerly was, to select the striking circumstances. I have dined with sundry great folks since you left London, and I have attended a very splendid rout at Lord Grey's. I stole thither, at about eleven, from the House of Commons with Stewart Mackenzie. I do not mean to describe the beauty of the ladies, nor the brilliancy of stars and uniforms. I mean only to tell you one circumstance which struck, and even affected me. I was talking to Lady Charlotte Lindsay, the daughter of Lord North, a great favourite of mine, about the apartments and the furniture, when she said with a good deal of emotion: "This is an interesting visit to me. I have never been in this house for fifty years. It was here that I was born; I left it a child when my father fell from power in 1782, and I have never crossed the threshold since." Then she told me how the rooms seemed dwindled to her; how the staircase, which appeared to her in recollection to be the most spacious and magnificent that she had ever seen, had disappointed her. She longed, she said, to go over the garrets and rummage her old nursery. She told me how, in the No-Popery riots of 1780, she was taken out of bed at two o'clock in the morning. The mob threatened Lord North's house. There were soldiers at the windows, and an immense and furious crowd in Downing Street. She saw, she said, from her nursery the fires in different parts of London; but she did not understand the danger; and only exulted in being up at midnight. Then she was conveyed through the Park to the Horse Guards as the safest place; and was laid, wrapped up in blankets, on the table in the guardroom in the midst of the officers. "And it was such fun," she said, "that I have ever after had rather a liking for insurrections."

I write in the midst of a crowd. A debate on Slavery is going on in the Commons; a debate on Portugal in the Lords. The door is slamming behind me every moment, and people are constantly going out and in. Here comes Vernon Smith. "Well, Vernon, what are they doing?" "Gladstone has just made a very good speech, and Howick is answering him." "Aye, but in the House of Lords?" "They will beat us by twenty, they say." "Well, I do not think it matters much." "No; nobody out of the House of Lords cares either for Don Pedro, or for Don Miguel."

There is a conversation between two official men in the Library of the House of Commons on the night of the 3rd June 1833, reported word for word. To the historian three centuries hence this letter will be invaluable. To you, ungrateful as you are, it will seem worthless.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Smoking-Room of the House of Commons June 6, 1833.

My Darling,—Why am I such a fool as to write to a gypsey at Liverpool, who fancies that none is so good as she if she sends one letter for my three? A lazy chit whose fingers tire with penning a page in reply to a quire! There, Miss, you read all the first sentence of my epistle, and never knew that you were reading verse. I have some gossip for you about the Edinburgh Review. Napier is in London, and has called on me several times. He has been with the publishers, who tell him that the sale is falling off; and in many private parties, where he hears sad complaints. The universal cry is that the long dull articles are the ruin of the Review. As to myself, he assures me that my articles are the only things which keep the work up at all. Longman and his partners correspond with about five hundred booksellers in different parts of the kingdom. All these booksellers, I find, tell them that the Review sells, or does not sell, according as there are, or are not, articles by Mr. Macaulay. So, you see, I, like Mr. Darcy,[The central male figure in "Pride and Prejudice.">[ shall not care how proud I am. At all events, I cannot but be pleased to learn that, if I should be forced to depend on my pen for subsistence, I can command what price I choose.

The House is sitting; Peel is just down; Lord Palmerston is speaking; the heat is tremendous; the crowd stifling; and so here I am in the smoking-room, with three Repealers making chimneys of their mouths under my very nose.