Noble dames and notable men of the Georgian era

Preface

The reader will be in little danger of supposing me to imply that the Georgian era did not produce nobler dames and more notable men than any I have included in the present volume. Nevertheless, it may perhaps be advisable for me to point out that the subjects of the six character sketches here brought together have been selected because, in addition to the interest of their several life histories, they all exhibit some peculiarity, or quaintness, or eccentricity, of mind and behaviour, such as would have caused our forebears to dub them emphatically " characters."

So far as was possible, I have let Horace Walpole tell the story of Lady Mary Coke, supplementing him, where necessary, from other sources, and especially from Lady Louisa Stuart's brief but brilliant sketch of the family of John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, which was prefixed to the portion of Lady Mary's "Journal" privately printed for Lord Home in 1889. It was not permissible for me to quote (as I should have been very glad to do pretty extensively) from Lady Louisa's delightful little memoir ; but I am especially fortunate in being able to enrich and enliven my narrative by the inclusion of eighteen scarcely known letters of Horace Walpole. When Cunningham issued his great edition of Walpole's " Letters," and for a good many years afterwards, it was thought that only one letter of his to Lady Mary Coke had survived ; but some eighteen or twenty years ago a packet was found amongst the papers of the late Mr. Drummond-Moray which contained no less than twenty-six hitherto unknown letters from Walpole to the lady, of various dates ranging from 1759 to 1772. These letters were included in the third volume of Lady Mary's "Journal, " which was privately printed in 1892. I have to express my most cordial thanks to Colonel Home Drummond-Moray for

PREFACE

permitting me to use these letters, and also to Lord Home for allowing me to copy them from his privately printed book. Whether or not it be true that people's characters may be always as well known by the letters addressed to them as by those of their own composition, it is certainly the fact that these letters to Lady Mary Coke contain not a few indications of the character of the recipient, as well as of that of the writer ; and they are likewise amongst the pleasantest and wittiest epistles that even that prince of letter-writers ever penned.

The sketch of Lady Holland was written before the appearance of the selection from her " Journal " which was published under the editorship of Lord Ilchester in 1909. But I have not found it necessary to make any alteration, because, as Lord Ilchester says, the later career of Lady Holland does not come within the scope of his volumes, and it is that later career alone with which I have attempted to deal. If it should be objected that Lady Holland, who died as recently as 1845, does not properly come within the period indicated in my title, I would reply that she was born in the 10th of George the Third ; that she was, both literally and metaphorically, a child of the eighteenth century ; and, moreover, that the period which we refer "to somewhat vaguely as " the Georgian era, " or " the eighteenth century," did not, as Sir Walter Besant first pointed out, come to an end on December 31st, 1800, or even on the day of the death of George the Fourth, but lasted on, in all its essential characteristics, at least until about the time of the accession of Queen Victoria.

J.F.

vi

Contents

PAGE PREFACE ......... V

I. A GRANDE DAME — LADY MARY COKE, 1726 — l8ll . . 3

II. A JOURNALISTIC PARSON — SIR HENRY BATE-DUDLEY,