Her brother John, the recipient of most of the following letters, was, on the contrary, a youth of exceptional amiability, and unalterably popular with all whom he encountered. Intellectual from his earliest childhood, in later life he was a profound classical scholar. A seven months' child, however, the constitutional delicacy which was a constant handicap to him throughout his existence had been further accentuated by an unlucky accident. When at Westminster, a fall resulting from a push given to him by Ralph Nevill, Lord Abergavenny's son, had broken his collar-bone, and with the Spartan treatment to which children were then subjected, this injury received no attention. But what he lacked in physical strength was supplied by dauntless grit and mental energy, so that, although in the future debarred by his health from taking any active part in political life, he early attained, as we shall see, to no mean fame as a traveller and an explorer, while he was regarded as one of the savants of his generation.
During 1805, when he was yet a freshman at Christ Church, his younger brothers and sisters were likewise variously employed with their education, the boys at the celebrated schools of Sunbury and Westminster, the girls in the seclusion of a large school-room in the rambling house in Grosvenor Square. And that the learning for which they all strove was of a comprehensive nature, moreover, that those of their party who had already entered the gay world never disdained to share such labours, is shown in a letter written many years afterwards to John by his brother Charles, in which the writer complains sarcastically—
You have no idea how happy, year by year, as of yore, the little ones seem—(for they will always be called so, though now Frances is as big as me and amazingly handsome). Yet still they have not one moment of time to themselves. They cram and stuff with accomplishments incessantly, and they prison me in my room & won't allow me to pry into the haunts of the Muses. Marianne and Anne have been learning to paint for these last two years, and make (I think) but slow progress. Marianne never will have done (I wish I could be so industrious). She is now beginning to learn the harp. They are both learning to sing from some great star, which is only money and time thrown away; & Isabella, Frances and Maria learn to dance of one of the most celebrated Opera dancers. Isabella learns a new instrument something like a guitar, called a harp-lute. Marianne and Anne, having learnt French, German, Latin and Italian, are now at a loss to find something left to know, and talk of learning Russian. They will be dyed blue-stocking up to their very chins.
Allowing for the exaggeration of a schoolboy, the letter throws an interesting light on the standard of education aimed at by those who, despite the imputation to the contrary, had no pretension to belong to the recognised blue-stocking coteries of their day. And the father of that busy, happy circle, in the seriousness of his own life and aims, presented the same contrast to many of his contemporaries which was reflected in his family.
Fourteen years senior to his wife, and at this date in his fifty-seventh year, Walter Stanhope had been M.P. respectively for his different constituencies since 1775. A keen politician, he was punctilious in his attendance at the House.
Nevertheless, as shown in a former volume, although a man of ability and of intense earnestness of purpose, his devotion to his political labours never wholly counteracted a certain lethargy of temperament which, throughout his life, limited achievement. Thus, although in his youth undoubtedly gifted with a lively fancy, or with what his generation termed sensibility, this very trait seems at variance with the sum of his later career. True, that under stress of emotion he could rise to heights of impassioned oratory which provoked by its very evidence of latent power; but the tenor of his existence was scarcely in accordance with these brief flashes of genius, and the fulfilment of his prime belied its promise. The record of his life remains one which commands respect rather than admiration. Level-headed, sober in judgment and conduct, even while possessed of a wit which was rare and a discernment at times profound, his days flowed on in an undeviating adherence to duty which makes little appeal to the imagination. As a churchman, as a parent, as a landowner, as a politician he fulfilled each avocation with credit. As a man of the world he could toy with but remain unmastered by the foibles of his age. While a Fox and a Pitt rose to heights and sank to depths which Stanhope never touched; while a Wilberforce was imbued with religious fervour as with a permeating flame, Stanhope, to his contemporaries, presented something of an anomaly. As in his early years he had been a Macaroni who eschewed the exaggerations of his sect, so throughout life he could gamble without being a gamester, could drink without being a toper, be a politician without party acumen, and a man of profoundly religious feelings devoid of fanaticism. But since he who himself is swayed by the intensity of his convictions is he who in turn sways his fellows, possibly the very restraint which saved Stanhope from folly debarred him from fame. [13]
Meantime his generation was one of colossal exaggeration, both in talent and in idiocy, in virtue and in vice. Men sinned like giants and as giants atoned. Common sense, mediocrity—save upon the throne—were rare. Even the fools in their folly were great. The spectacle was recurrent of men who would smilingly stake a fortune as a wager, who could for hours drench their drink-sodden brains in wine, then rise like gods refreshed, and with an iron will throw off the stupor which bound them, to wield a flood of eloquence that swayed senates and ruled the fate of nations. Even the fops in their foppishness were of a magnitude in harmony with their period. They could promote dandyism to a fine art and win immortality by perfecting the rôle. Their affectation became an adjunct of their greatness, their eccentricity an assumption of supremacy; their very insolence was a right divine before which the common herd bowed with a limitless tolerance.
In the world of London, as that celebrated gossip, Gronow, points out, from generation to generation, certain men of fashion have come to the fore amongst the less conspicuous mass of their fellows, and have been defined by the general term of "men about town." The earlier representatives of that race, the Macaronis of a former date, ere 1805 had been replaced by a clique of dandies whose pretensions to recognition were based on a less worthy footing. For while those previous votaries of fashion, although derided and caricatured according to the humour of their day, were, none the less, valuable patrons of art and literature, the exquisites of a later date could seldom lay claim to such distinction. To dine, to dress, to exhibit sufficient peculiarity in their habits and rudeness in their manners whereby to enhance that fictitious value in the eyes of those who did not dare to emulate such foibles, was the end and aim of their existence. Yet it is doubtful whether posterity remembers them less faithfully. Side by side with the great names of their century there has come down to us the record of these apparently impudent pretenders to fame, and it is questionable whether a Nash, a Brummell, or a D'Orsay are less familiar to the present generation than those whose claim to the recognition of posterity was not so ephemeral.
Thus, while the circle of acquaintance with which the lives of Stanhope and his family at this date mingled serves to throw into sharper relief his own divergence of character from that of many of his contemporaries— those men who to great abilities, and sometimes to great achievement, joined the pettiness of a fop and the follies of a mountebank—still more did the typical man-about-town, with his whims and his foibles, his shallow aims and his lost opportunities, compare strangely with the larger souls of his generation. For the moment was one which called forth the greatness or the littleness of those who met it, and which heightened that contrast of contemporary lives.
With the coming of the nineteenth century the political outlook for England had waxed grave. The air was full of wars and rumours of wars. Napoleon, the mighty scourge of the civilised world, was minded to accomplish the downfall of the one Power which still defied his strength. "The channel is but a ditch," he boasted, "and anyone can cross it who has but the courage to try." Boats were in readiness at Boulogne and at most of the French ports, fitted up for the attempt, while the Conqueror of Europe dallied only for the psychological moment to put his project into execution. With bated breath Europe awaited the possible demolition of the sole barrier which yet lay between the Tyrant and universal monarchy, while upon the other side of the "ditch" the little Island expected his arrival in a condition of prolonged tension and stubborn courage. At any moment her blue waters and green fields might be dyed with blood. At any moment a swarm of foreign invaders might trample her pride in the dust, and crush her as other nations had been effectually crushed. But she meant to sell her liberty dear. Out of a population averaging 9,000,000 souls there were 120,000 regular troops, 347,000 volunteers, and 78,000 militia; and still Napoleon paused.