* * * * *
And then our Revenue, Lord knows how they viewed it,
While each petty Statesman talked lofty and big,
And the Beer tax was weak as if Windham had brewed it,
And the Pig Iron Duty a shame to a pig;
In vain is their boasting,
Too surely there's wanting
What judgment, experience and steadiness give;
Come, Boys,
Drink about merrily,
Health to sage Melville, and long may he live!
Our King too,—our Princess—I dare not say more, Sir,
May Providence watch them with mercy and might;
While there's one Scottish arm that can wag a day more, Sir,
They shall ne'er want a friend to stand up for their right.
Be d—d he that dare not,
For my part I'll spare not
To beauty afflicted a tribute to give!
Fill it up steadily,
Drink it off readily,
Here's to the Princess and long may she live!
And since we must not set Auld Reekie [41] in glory,
And make her brown visage as light as her heart,
Till each man illumine his own upper storey
Nor Law trash nor Lawyer shall force us to part.
In Grenville and Spencer
And some few good men, Sir,
High talents and honour slight difference forgive,
But the Brewer we'll hoax;
Tally ho! to the Fox;
And drink Melville for ever as long as we live!"
CHAPTER II
1805-1810
LETTERS OF AN EXILE
To a man far distant from the memorable scene of Lord Melville's trial, the news of the verdict, sent by Mrs Stanhope, must have caused peculiar satisfaction.
Among her numerous correspondents at this date, probably few had been more frequently in her thoughts during the past two years than her kinsman, Cuthbert Collingwood. From her earliest days, indeed, he had occupied a certain prominence in her horizon. Her mother, Winifred Collingwood, had belonged to another branch of the Northumberland family which owned a common ancestor with that of the afterwards famous Admiral, [1] and this tie had been strengthened rather than diminished throughout the passing of generations by the propinquity of the two branches.
In the commencement of his naval career, Cuthbert Collingwood, on board the Lennox, had attracted the hearty approbation of Mrs Stanhope's other relation, Admiral Roddam, [2] the grand old veteran who had been in the service about thirty-seven years before his young neighbour from Northumberland had become his midshipman. In 1787 he won as warm an appreciation from her husband when he stayed at Cannon Hall and first made the acquaintance of Walter Stanhope, who then formed for him a lifelong friendship. During the all-too-brief period when Collingwood was on shore, there occur entries in Stanhope's Journal recording many a quiet rubber of whist played with the man whose harsh fate was to render such moments of happy social intercourse a precious recollection through long, lonely years. Returned to his post, Captain Collingwood's thoughts clung to that family circle he had left-to the man who basked in the happiness of a home life from which he, personally, was debarred. Year by year Collingwood kept his kinsman Stanhope in touch with all his movements. Year by year, Stanhope and his wife responded, supplying the absent seaman with news of the chief events which were happening in the political world at home. And the letters from Collingwood, with their stern grip of a strenuous life, with their deep underlying tragedy of a profound loneliness, afford a curious contrast to the shallow utterances of other correspondents. Over the intervening miles of ocean, from that isolated soul on guard, they reached the family in Grosvenor Square, bearing, so it seemed, something of the freshness and the force of the wind-rocked brine which they had traversed. Into that restless routine of London life, they carried the echo of a distant clash of arms, the mutterings of a brooding storm. They told how the sea-dogs upon the alert were playing a desperate game of tactics with their country's foe, the outcome of which none could foretell and the chances of which few dared to contemplate. And in the minds of those to whom they were addressed they awoke an answering apprehension, which entered into the heart of their home-life, for one of that circle, little William Stanhope, was shortly to join his great kinsman at sea and to play his small part in the fierce ocean drama which was going forward.