Part 1 (1/2)

George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life.

by E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue.

PREFACE

IN the histories and memoirs of the eighteenth century the name of George Selwyn often occurs. The letters which he received have afforded frequent and valuable material to the student of the reign of George the Third. A large number of these were published by the late Mr. Jesse in the four volumes ent.i.tled ”George Selwyn and his Contemporaries.” Except, however, that Selwyn was regarded as the first humourist of his time, little was known about him, for scarcely any letters which he wrote had until recently been found.

But in the Fifteenth Report of the Historical Ma.n.u.script Commission there were printed, amongst a ma.s.s of other material, more than two hundred letters from his untiring pen which had been preserved at Castle Howard. No one who has had an opportunity of examining the originals can fail to recognise the skill and labour with which the Castle Howard correspondence of Selwyn--wanting in most instances the date of the year--was arranged by Mr. Kirk on behalf of the Commission.

A correspondence, however, which ill.u.s.trates vividly phases of an interesting and important period of English history, appeared to be deserving of presentation to the public in a separate volume, and with the explanations necessary to make the allusions in it fully understood.

A selection has therefore, in the following pages, been made from the Castle Howard letters. The aim of the editors has been to choose those which appeared most interesting and representative, and to place them in definite groups, supplementing them with such a narrative, remarks, and notes as would, without enveloping the correspondence in a quant.i.ty of extraneous material, enable the whole to present the life of Selwyn, and at the same time add another to the pictures of the age in which he lived.

The dates of the letters are those ascribed to them by Mr. Kirk.

The frequently incorrect spelling of proper names has not been altered.

The editors desire cordially to thank Lord Carlisle, not only for the permission to publish this correspondence, but for the kind a.s.sistance which he has given in other ways to the undertaking.

E. S. R. H. C.

November, 1899.

CHAPTER 1. GEORGE SELWYN--HIS LIFE, HIS FRIENDS, AND HIS AGE

During the latter half of the eighteenth century no man had more friends in the select society which comprised those who were of the first importance in English politics, fas.h.i.+on, or sport, than George Selwyn. In one particular he was regarded as supreme and unapproachable; he was the humourist of his time. His ban mots were collected and repeated with extraordinary zest. They were enjoyed by Members of Parliament at Westminster, and by fas.h.i.+onable ladies in the drawing-rooms of St. James's. They were told as things not to be forgotten in the letters of hara.s.sed politicians. ”You must have heard all the particulars of the Duke of Northumberland's entertainment,” wrote Mr. Whateley in 1768 to George Grenville, the most hardworking of ministers; ”perhaps you have not heard George Selwyn's bon mot.”* But as usually happens when a man becomes known for his humour jokes were fathered on Selwyn, just as half a century later any number of witticisms were attributed to Sydney Smith which he had never uttered. It was truly remarked of Selwyn at the time of his death: ”Many good things he did say, there was no doubt, and many he was capable of saying, but the number of good, bad, and indifferent things attributed to him as bon mots for the last thirty years of his life were sufficient to stock a foundling hospital for wit.”*

* Grenville Correspondence, vol. 11. p. 372.

* Gentleman's Magazine, 1791, p. 94.

It is therefore not surprising that Selwyn has been handed down to posterity as a wit. It is a dismal reputation. Jokes collected in contemporary memoirs fall flat after a century's keeping; the essential of their success is spontaneity, appropriateness, the appreciation even of their teller, often also a knowledge among those who hear them of the peculiarities of the persons whom they mock. When we read one of them now, we are almost inclined to wonder how such a reputation for humour could be gained. Wit is of the present; preserved for posterity it is as uninteresting as a faded flower, nor can it recall to us memories sunny or sad. But Selwyn was a man who while filling a conspicuous place in the fas.h.i.+onable life of the age was also so intimate with statesmen and politicians, and so thoroughly lives in his correspondence, that in following his life we find ourselves one of that singular society which in the last half of the eighteenth century ruled the British Empire from St. James's Street.

Selwyn's life, though pa.s.sed in a momentous age, was uneventful, but the course of it must be traced.

George Augustus Selwyn, second son of Colonel John Selwyn, of Matson, in Gloucesters.h.i.+re, and of Mary, daughter of General Farrington, of Kent, was born on the 11th of August, 1719. His father, aide-de-camp to Marlborough and a friend of Sir Robert Walpole, was a man of character and ability, well known in the courts of the first and second Georges. Selwyn, however, probably inherited his wit and his enjoyment of society from his mother, who was Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte. Horace Walpole writes of her as ”Mrs. Selwyn, mother of the famous George, and herself of much vivacity, and pretty.”

Selwyn's elder brother died in 1751, and grief at his loss seems to have hastened the death of his father, which occurred in the same year.

His sister Albinia married Thomas Townshend, second son of Charles Viscount Townshend. By this marriage the families of Selwyn and Walpole were connected.

The home of the family was at Matson, a village two and a half miles south-east of Gloucester, on the spurs of the Cotswold hills, looking over the Severn valley--once called Mattesdone. There is a good deal of obscurity as to the owners.h.i.+p of the manor in mediaeval times, but it appears to have been in the possession of what may popularly speaking be called the family of Mattesdone. The landowner described himself by the place; ”Ego Philippus de Mattesdone” are the words of an ancient doc.u.ment preserved among the records of the Monastery of St. Peter at Gloucester.*

* ”Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestria,”

edited by W. Hart, vol. i. p. 100.

To come to more recent times, the manor house was built in 1594 by Sir Ambrose Willoughby. From him the estate was purchased in 1597 by Jasper Selwyn, Counsellor at Law, of Stonehouse, who was the fourth in descent from John Selwyn, one of a Suss.e.x family.

In 1751 the direct entail was broken by Colonel Selwyn, and the property was re-entailed on the descendants of his daughter, Mrs.

Townshend, though it was left by will to George Selwyn for his life.