Lavendale spent his days between London and country, rushing backwards and forwards by coach or on horseback, as whim prompted him, and in this autumn of 1726 he seemed of all men the most whimsical. London was dull and empty, half the fashionable world was at Twickenham, and the other half at Bath; yet there was always a chance of playing deep, or of getting involved in some political plot; there were always taverns, and chocolate-houses, and clubs in full swing, and a fever of party feeling in the air, which gave a certain amount of variety and excitement to life. Bolingbroke was in London, plotting hard, and there were bets as to whether he would succeed in undermining steady-going, steadfast Robert Walpole, the greatest financier England had ever known, and the only man of capacity wide enough to foresee the peril of the South Sea Company, when to all the rest of the world that rotten fabric seemed the enchanted palace and treasury of Plutus himself, containing gold enough to enrich every one of the money-god's votaries, down to the meanest.
That stubborn good sense of his on the occasion of the South Sea fever had established Robert Walpole's reputation as a safe minister, and the sober common sense of the nation was with him. He had shown himself an advocate for peace, and Bolingbroke, who in the days of Marlborough's triumphs in the Low Countries had cavilled at the continuance of the war, was now scornful of the Treasurer's pacific policy, and led the chorus of the disaffected to the tune of England's decay. Lavendale dined with Lord Bolingbroke more than once that autumn at his house in Pall Mall, the splendid mansion in Golden Square having passed into other hands during his lordship's exile. Lavendale was a Whig by birth and education, but his Whiggism was not strong enough to prevent his friendship with the most brilliant man of the age, or to exclude him from the most intellectual circle in England. He went down to Dawley, Bolingbroke's fancy farm near Uxbridge, where his lordship appeared to advantage in his favourite character of country squire, and where the ploughs and harrows painted in fresco on the walls of the hall indicated his bucolic bent. Here Lavendale made the acquaintance of the statesman's French wife, and here he met Pope and Swift, and Arouet de Voltaire, who had now established himself in the neighbourhood of London, a distinguished literary exile, and who was l'ami de la maison at Dawley.
In his wild youth, when good Queen Anne was sovereign of England, and the Mohawk Club in full swing, Lavendale had admired Henry St. John as the type and model of all that is finest in manhood. He had been then, in the insolence of power and floodtide of success, scheming for the restoration of the Stuarts, while affecting to favour the Hanoverian succession. He had ousted his old friend and patron the Duke of Marlborough, had allowed the conqueror of Ramillies and Blenheim, the man who had made our English arms as glorious as they had been in the days of the Henries and the Edwards, to be humiliated by that nation which his signal genius had elevated above all other nations. That great man, to whom England and England's Queen owed so much, had knelt at his sovereign's feet and besought her pardon and favour for his beautiful termagant, whose follies might have been forgiven for the sake of the husband who so blindly adored her. An ignominious end assuredly to royal friendship, and royal favour, and heroic genius unfortunately mated. Saddest page in the life of England's Captain-General, that scene in the palace, the kneeling conqueror, and the stubborn Queen's unrelenting wrath.
St. John, who once wrote himself down my Lord Marlborough's most devoted and grateful servant, had helped to bring about that humiliation and that fall from power. And then came Atropos with the fatal shears, and just when the traitor's hopes were highest, and he was to play, in a strictly diplomatic and unwarlike character, the great part of General Monk, and bring about a new Restoration, with more ringing of joy-bells and flinging of flowers, as on the glorious twenty-ninth of May, the Queen died, and the plotter's web was rent in pieces. "What a world it is, and how does Fortune banter us!" he cried, in bitterness of spirit. Then came loss of office, six months of rustic retirement, watching for any change of the wind setting Saint-Germain-wards, then the bill of attainder, and the sudden flight of one who dared not face his accusers. Oxford, whose timidity mid irresolution had been ridiculed by his high-spirited colleague, had faced the danger, and escaped it; while Bolingbroke, the high-minded and daring, had fled to France disguised as a French messenger. And now he was in England again, debonair, audacious, favoured by his Majesty's morganatic wife, her Grace of Kendal, flattering everybody, charming everybody by his graces of person, his witchery of manner, his matchless talents, his reckless liberality.
Lavendale could but admire the sinner now, as he had admired him ten years ago, only with a less unquestioning idolatry.
"I know he is an unprincipled scamp," he told Durnford, when his friend remonstrated with him upon those long nights of brilliant talk and deep drinking which he spent with the patriot. "I know he has been a reprobate in his conduct to women, flying at all game, from the young lady of fashion to the chance Egeria of the Mall; and he could drink us bottle-men all under the table and keep his head clear to the last; yes, go straight from the carouse to his office-table and pen diplomatic correspondence, no worse for his four bottles than if he had been drinking rose-water instead of champagne. But he drinks less now, and he can hardly run after women as he used to do, since his adoring wife watches him closer than ever Juno watched Jove."
"And in all probability with the same result."
"Nay, Herrick, he is too deeply immersed in statecraft to sacrifice to Venus. He and Pulteney have sworn an alliance. They call themselves Patriots, and are to start a newspaper before the year is out, with the help of that scamp Amhurst, whom you must remember at Oxford, where he was turned out of his college for profligacy and insubordination. I have half a mind to write for them."
"You, Lavendale! Are you going to rat—turn Jacobite?"