The Age of Elegance (18 page)

buildings, though these, in a land where almost everything was left to individual initiative, were few: the Abbey among the little, shabby, ancient streets of Westminster, with its sooty walls and crumbling monuments; the Tower where the unaccountable English exhibited their King's jewels and a menagerie of wild animals collected during their commercial voyages; the British Museum beside the Bloomsbury fields where, thanks to the combination of British sea-power, a persistent artist and the discrimination of a great nobleman, the Parthenon marbles had recently been brought from the brigand-infested wastes of Athens. They visited, too, what to a shop-keeping people seemed of more importance than any of these, the corporate institutions formed by their merchants. They saw the Royal Exchange with its piazza where traders in the garb of every nation haggled with top-hatted John Bulls; the Bank of England where a private company of financiers successfully monopolised the most precious of all royal prerogatives, the issue of money, and were now engaged in raising the handsomest building in the country behind high walls; the great docks built during the war by the East and West India merchants to protect their growing imports from the quick-fingered Cockneys. They even visited a brewery—a prodigious place where the Englishman's favourite drink was stored in vessels as large as ships and in quantities which, translated into money, would have maintained a Continental army for months, and where they partook of the brewer's traditional hospitality of a steak done on a shovel and washed down with a pint of the firm's "best entire." And this, they were told, was only one of a dozen other London breweries as large or larger. It added to their amazement to learn that their host, that plebeian master of vats and dray-horses, was a leading member of the House of Commons and the proprietor of the Theatre Royal.

The visitors saw something, too, of the great charities—the offspring of private benevolence—with which the islanders had endowed their capital. They visited the Charterhouse, the Foundling Hospital in the northern fields, the palaces built for naval and

Campbell, II, 257; Chancellor,
passim;
De Quincey,
Works
passim; Life in London, passim; Real Life in London;
Farington, VII, 257, 267-8, 283; Feltham,
passim;
Festing, 193, 195; Havelock, 280-1; Haydon, I, 199, 251; Hazlitt,
Essays;
Hughson,
passim;
Keats, IV, 61, 92; Lamb,
Essays of Elia;
L.C.C.
Survey of London;
Leigh,
passim;
Malton,
passim;
Partington,
passim;
Pennant,
London, passim;
Pyne,
Costume of the British People;
Robinson, I, 358; Simond, I, 3, 18-22, 26, 50-2, 195; II, 29-30, 116-17, 142, 199-200, 260; Southey,
Esprielta, passim;
Stanley, 89; Summerson,
passim; English Spy;
Wood,
passim.

military pensioners at Greenwich and Chelsea, and dined in the halls of the Goldsmiths' and Merchant Taylors'—representatives of corporations which spent between them as much on relieving and educating the poor as a Continental sovereign on maintaining his Court. The British capital had twenty voluntarily supported hospitals, a hundred and twenty almshouses, fifty free dispensaries, forty-five endowed free schools and two hundred and fifty parochial schools, educating, clothing and feeding nearly twenty thousand children. Though the palace of St. James's was the smallest and least imposing in Europe, London could claim that her real palaces were hospitals. Wren's Greenwich and Chelsea; Gibbs' St. Bartholomew's with its Hogarth staircase; St. Thomas's with its four great quadrangles, treating and discharging 11,000 patients a year; the new "Bethlem" and St. Luke's for the insane, with their enormous classical facades, were buildings that a king might have been proud to inhabit. In no other country was there so much voluntary corporate goodness towards the hungry, diseased and weak. When on Holy Thursday six thousand London charity children marched in procession to St. Paul's, the Prussian General Yorck declared that nothing had ever moved him so deeply. Blake, the poet, has left a picture of that famous service:

"Grey-headed beadles walked before with wands

as white as snow

Till into the high dome of Paul's they like

Thames waters flow . . .

The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes

of lambs,

Thousands of little boys and girls raising

their innocent hands."

As a patron of liberal institutions, the Czar also took the opportunity to investigate English methods of government. He visited the man who, though an untitled and private member of Parliament, had succeeded, in the teeth of vested interest, in abolishing the Slave Trade, and sat under the famous mulberry tree in Wilberforce's country garden at Kensington Gore expounding to the frail little philanthropist his views on the welfare of Humanity. On another occasion he drove with his sister to
Westminster to hear a debate in
the House of Commons—the Horse Guards with their swords riding up and down the roadway to keep back the crowds, while gentlemen, with muslined, high-waisted ladies, raised curved top-hats, and screeching urchins clung to lamp-posts to catch a glimpse of their coach. Alighting in a green precinctual square between a Norman hall and a hackney-coach stand, they found themselves, after threading a maze of ancient passages, in the gallery of a modest chamber, about ninety feet long, panelled in the plainest style of Queen Anne and fitted with tiers of green leather benches. With its arched casement windows, it might have been the chapel of one of the severer Protestant sects. This impression was quickly dispelled by the irreverent behaviour of its occupants, who were lolling about the benches, with arms akimbo and hats over their eyes, some lying on their backs, some propped against the pillars snoozing, others talking and cracking jokes. At the end, on a candle-lit throne surmounted by the Royal Arms, sat the Speaker in a black gown and long wig; in front of him three clerks wrote at a green baize table on which lay a golden mace. It was very stuffy and, but for the light cast by a brass chandelier, extremely dark. Here the astonished Czar and his sister listened to the speeches of those who governed England, including one from their late host, Mr. Whitbread—that stout, vehement Whig who in private life, to the infinite amusement of his fellow legislators, sold beer and liked, despite his Eton education and aristocratic wife, to be thought of as Sam, the People's man. The subject of his oratory
¹
was the family affairs of the Prince Regent—scarcely a proper theme, his royal auditors reflected, for a brewer. Throughout the speeches members continued to cough, shuffle their boots, utter goose-like honks of "Hear, hear" and "Order, order
," snort into their napkins, wh
inny, bark, crow, groan, and even howl like hounds. The only respect they showed was for their Speaker and his baubles. Half the time of his clerks was spent in laying the Mace alternately on top of the table or under it in accordance with his movements. Members on entering or leaving the Chamber bobbed at his chair; seen from the strangers' gallery they looked like boys practising before a dancing master. Indeed, in its exaggerated respect for illogical rites and in its bantering, halting, schoolboy oratory the House was not unreminiscent of the noisier kind of school. It even

¹
The Duchess of Gordon spoke of his eloquence as "teaching his drayhorse to caper." Holland, I, 234. See Creevey, I, 164; Simond, II, 163; Wilberforce, IV, 339; Moore,
Byron,
184.

had a kind of egalitarian tuck-shop—a place called Bellamy's—with an open fire, a roasting jack and little tables along the walls lit by candles where the Czar and his sister, sitting among the members, supped on broiled rump-steaks, Stilton cheese and salad.
¹
It enabled them to realise more fully the extraordinary way in which England, for all its wealth and success, was governed.

Set against the foliage and blossom of the West End parks and squares, the glittering balls and dinners of that June revolved round the bestarred and epauletted presences of the Allied sovereigns. They danced—for the Czar was a great waltzer—at the houses of the higher aristocracy, breakfasted at the Star and Garter at Richmond, and went to the Opera. On their first Sunday they appeared at the afternoon parade in Hyde Park when everybody who was anybody drove and rode round the Ring to see and be seen. It was a wonderful spectacle of silks, laces and glossy horses made more beautiful by the plumes and cuirasses of the Emperor's bodyguard dancing among the trees. The throng was so great that when the Sovereigns passed through the private gates of Kensington Gardens, eight thousand cavaliers followed them in. When they galloped down the avenue from Kensington Palace to the Serpentine there was almost a disaster. Boots were dragged off in the crush, ladies screamed, and the Master of the Horse, Garter ribbon and all, was thrown on to the grass. Poor
Blücher
, always the centre of attraction, was so set upon that he had to stand with his back to a tree to keep his admirers at bay.
²

The aristocratic gaiety of that gala midsummer mingled with the pageantry of state—the horses of the guard of honour in the glory of scarlet and gold striking sparks from the cobbles, the Coldstream band with its giant negroes striking their cymbals with high, rhythmic blows, the Knights of the Garter marching in procession for an investiture. In an age when men of rank were expected to spend their wealth on display, pageantry was as much a public prerogative as the utilitarian social services of to-day. Bright uniforms and liveries, music, banners and gilding, the spectacle of fine horses, equipages and jewelled women we
re part of the Londoner's birth
right.

¹
For the description of the House of Commons and the Czar's visit to it see Ackermann,
Microcosm,
I, 185; Bamford, II, 27-8; Byron,
Vision of Judgement;
Colchester, II, 503-4; Feltham, 107-11; Havelock, 281;
Hansard,
XXV1II, 104-16; Hughson, II, 201-5; Lady Shelley, I; Malton,
Street Views in London and Westminster;
Simond, I, 52-60; II, 163-4.

²
Ashton, II, 279-80; Brovvnlow, 108-9; Colchester, II, 502; De Quincey, III, 68; Festing, 193-5; Lady Shell
ey, I, 59-6o; Stanley, 86-8. See
also Chancellor, Plate 79; Feltham, 99, 375; Gronow, I, 52
.

Ceremony and pageantry provided, too, in that unpoliced England, a sounding-board for public opinion. As they drove through the crowds, the great and powerful learnt from their reception how they stood in popular esteem. For months the Regent, surrounded by all the pomp of state and in the floodtide of a great national triumph, had been unable to raise an huzza. In contrast, the Czar could not appear without an hysterical ovation. There were never less than ten thousand people waiting outside the Pulteney to see him. During those first days in London he moved in an unbroken halo of glory. The whole population, silks, rags and broadcloth, seemed to be in the streets, rushing after him and asking which way he had gone. The very horses of his escort had their tails plucked for souvenirs.

All this was made more humiliating for the Regent by the acclamations for his wife. Her presence in the capital at such a time was a constant aggravation. He was forced to inform his guests through the Foreign Secretary that any notice taken of her would be regarded as an insult. There was a terrible occasion when he and they attended the opera in the Haymarket. The theatre was crammed to its f
lame-coloured dome, the boxes fil
led, row after row, with women in white satin gowns and diamonds and men in orders and gold lace. But though the whole house rose and sang the National Anthem and the cheering continued for several minutes, the Regent —an unhealthy contrast to the rosy-cheeked Monarchs beside him —was seen to be gazing apprehensively at an empty box. And just as the second act was about to begin, there was a stir, every head turned, and there, noisily entering, was the injured Princess, shapeless and spangled, her brightly rouged face set off by a leonine mane of yellow curls. In the awful silence that ensued she curtsied to the Emperor, who rose to his feet and bowed, thus compelling the Regent to do the same. At this everyone cheered frantically. The situation was only saved by the Regent, who, always at his best in a crisis, took the applause as meant for himself and bowed until it ceased.
¹
But the Princess had spoilt his evening and delighted the Opposition
frondeurs
who had incited her to go. Afterwards, as she

¹
"His toadies
...
to save him the imputation of this ridiculous vanity chose to say that he did the most beautiful and elegant thing in the world and bowed to his wife." Lady Charlotte Bury. Bury,
1,
210-11. See Anderson, 76; Ashton, I, 279; Broughton,
1,
141-2; Colchester, II, 501; Feltham, 260; Havelock, 284; Nicolson, 114; Simond, I, 89-91.

left the theatre, the mob surrounded her carriage, huzzaing, snatching her hands and offering to burn down Carlton House.

There was another embarrassment. Eighteen years earlier the Princess of Wales had borne her husband a daughter. As after him she was next in the succession the Regent had done his best to keep the little Princess Charlotte in obscurity. But "the young 'un," as the Whigs called her, was not easy to ignore. With a full and shapely bosom, protuberant Hanoverian eyes and a fine pair of legs, which, like her father, she delighted to show, she was, despite many excellent qualities, a rather flamboyant little puss. According to the old Queen, she was forward and dogmatical, buckish about horses and full of expressions very like swearing. While still in the schoolroom she had become involved, with her mother's connivance, in a foolish correspondence with a young cavalry officer, and this had given her father the opportunity of stopping her weekly visits to the Princess of Wales. The girl had rebelled, and her plight had become a public question. The Opposition asked questions in Parliament, Lord Byron, the darling of Whig society, outraged conventional loyalty by publishing a poem beginning, "Weep daughter of a royal line," and the Princess refused to appear at the Queen's Drawing-Room because her mother was not allowed to be present. The mob adopted her cause; insulting processions marched past Carlton House, and mother and daughter, meeting accidentally in the Park, delighted the disaffected by embracing from their carriage windows.
¹

The Regent, therefore, was grateful when an opportunity arose to marry her and ship her out of England. Having gone to war to prevent a mihtary domination of the Low Countries and having, after twenty years, achieved its object, the British Government was anxious to establish a strong, friendly and united Netherlands under the Stadtholder of Holland. Nothing could, therefore, seem more appropriate after the liberation of Holland and Belgium than a match between his heir, William of Orange, who had been serving on Wellington's staff, and the daughter of England. The Princess felt little enthusiasm for the young man, but, as anything seemed better than her present confinement, she had allowed her father's impetuous announcement of her engagement to pass. But the train of

¹
See Aspinall,
Princess Charlotte, passim
Ashton, I, 192, 195-6, 216;
Bessborough,
232; Bury, I, 10-11, 38-9, 85, 125-6, 129, 151, 154-5. 162-3, 202; II, 290-2, 435; Colchester, II. 376, 4I6;
Creevey Papers,
1,
146,176; Creston,
passim
; Farington, VII, 153, 200, 244,266; Greville (Suppl.), 103-4;
Marlay Letters,
I57i
244-6; Lady Shelley, I, 47-8, 55-6; Simond, II, 32; Stanhope, 92; Woodward, 64.