From Brighton, Frederick Leveson was promoted in due course to Eton, where he played no games and made no friends, had poor health, and was generally unhappy. One trait of Eton life, and only one, he was accustomed in old age to recall with approbation, and that was the complete indifference to social distinctions.
"There is," he wrote, "a well-known story about my friend, the late Lord Bath, who, on his first arrival at Eton was asked his name, and answered, 'I am Viscount Weymouth, and I shall be Marquis of Bath.' Upon which he-received two kicks, one for the Viscount and the other for the Marquis. This story may not be true, but at any rate it illustrates the fact that if at Eton a boy boasted of his social advantages, he would have cause to repent it!"
Leaving Eton at sixteen, Frederick Leveson went to a private tutor in Nottinghamshire, and there he first developed his interest in politics. "Reform," he wrote, "is my principal aim." Albany Fonblanque, whose vivacious articles, reprinted from the Examiner, may still be read in England under Seven Administrations, was his political instructor, and indoctrinated him with certain views, especially in the domain of Political Economy, which would have been deemed heretical in the Whiggish atmosphere of Trentham or Chatsworth. In 1832 he made his appearance in society at Paris, and his mother wrote: "As to Freddy, he turns all heads, and his own would be if it was to last more than a week longer. His dancing fait fureur."
In October, 1837, he went up to Christ Church, then rather languishing under Dean Gaisford's mismanagement. Here for three years he enjoyed himself thoroughly. He rode with the drag, was President of the Archery Club, played whist, gave and received a great deal of hospitality, and made some lifelong friendships. Among his contemporaries was Ruskin, of whom his recollection was certainly depressing. "He seemed to keep himself aloof from everybody, to seek no friends, and to have none. I never met him in anyone else's rooms, or at any social gathering. I see him now, looking rather crazy, taking his solitary walks."
That Freddy Leveson was "thoroughly idle" was his own confession; and perhaps, when we consider all the circumstances, it is not surprising. What is surprising, and what he himself recorded with surprise, is that neither he nor his contemporaries paid the least attention to the Oxford Movement, then just at its height, although—and this makes it stranger still—they used to attend Newman's Sermons at St. Mary's. They duly admired his unequalled style, but the substance of his teaching seems to have passed by them like the idle wind.
After taking a "Nobleman's Degree," Frederick Leveson spent an instructive year in France, admitted, by virtue of his father's position, to the society of such men as Talleyrand and Thiers, Guizot and Mole, Berryer and Eugene Sue; and then he returned to England with the laudable, though uninspiring, intention of reading for the Bar. His profession was chosen for him by his father, and the choice was determined by a civil speech of George Canning, who, staying at the British Embassy at Paris, noticed little Freddy, and pleasantly said to Lord Granville, "Bring that boy up as a lawyer, and he will one day become Lord Chancellor." As a first step towards that elevation, Frederick Leveson entered the chambers of an eminent conveyancer called Plunkett, where he had for his fellow-pupils the men who became Lord Iddesleigh and Lord Farrer. Thence he went to a Special Pleader, and lastly to a leading member of the Oxford Circuit. As Marshal to Lord Denman and to Baron Parke, he acquired some knowledge of the art of carving; but with regard to the total result of his legal training, he remarked, with characteristic simplicity, "I cannot say I learnt much law." When living in lodgings in Charles Street, and eating his dinners at Lincoln's Inn, Frederick Leveson experienced to the full the advantage of having been born a Whig. His uncle, the sixth Duke of Devonshire, a benevolent magnifico, if ever there was one, treated him like a son, giving him the run of Devonshire House and Chiswick; while Lady Holland, the most imperious of social dames, let him make a second home of Holland House.
"I dined with her whenever I liked. I had only to send word in the morning that I would do so. Of course, I never uttered a word at dinner, but listened with delight to the brilliant talk—to Macaulay's eloquence and varied information, to Sydney Smith's exquisite joke which made me die of laughing, to Roger's sarcasms and Luttrell's repartees."
Frederick Leveson was called to the Bar in 1843, and went the Oxford Circuit in the strangely-assorted company of G. S. Venables, J. G. Phillimore, and E. V. Kenealy. This proved to be his last stage in the anticipated progress towards the Woolsack. Lord Granville died at the beginning of 1846, and the change which this event produced in Frederick Leveson's position can best be described in his own quaint words:
"My father was greatly beloved by us all, and was the most indulgent parent—possibly too indulgent. Himself a younger son, although I cannot say that his own case was a hard one, he sympathized with me for being one of that unfortunate class. It may have been this feeling, combined with much affection, that made him leave me well provided for. I much question whether, if I had been left to earn my own bread by my own exertions as a lawyer, I should have succeeded."
His friends had no difficulty in answering the question, and answering it affirmatively; but the practical test was never applied, for on succeeding to his inheritance he glided—"plunged" would be an unsuitable word—into a way of living which was, more like the [Greek: scholae] of the Athenian citizen than the sordid strife of professional activity. He was singularly happy in private life, for the "Sacred Circle of the Great-Grandmotherhood" contained some delightful women as well as some distinguished men. Such was his sister-in-law Marie, Lady Granville; such was his cousin Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland; such was his mother, the Dowager Lady Granville; and such, pre-eminently, was his sister, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, of whom a competent critic said that, in the female characters of her novel Ellen Middleton, she had drawn "the line which is so apt to be overstepped, and which Walter Scott never clearly saw, between naïveté and vulgarity." Myself a devoted adherent of Sir Walter, I can yet recall some would-be pleasantries of Julia Mannering, of Isabella Wardour, and even of Die Vernon, which would have caused a shudder in the "Sacred Circle." Happiest of all was Freddy Leveson in his marriage with Lady Margaret Compton; but their married life lasted only five years, and left behind it a memory too tender to bear translation to the printed page.