kri eccentric grace
Nzabeth Longford
141e Mitred Earl An Eighteenth Century „centric Brian Fothergill (Faber and Faber t4.75) 11le eccentricity begins with the portrait on lile jacket. Frederick Hervey, fourth Earl of stol and forty-eighth Bishop of Derry "730-1803) is smiling. Such jollity is rare ough in any portrait, or even in early phorNrahs. But for a bishop to be painted with a shire-cat grin, while Vesuvius puffs away aiablY in the background like a kettle on a must be unique. As it happened, wecleric k was staying in Naples with his old estrninster schoolfriend, Sir William Hamil4111. and was smiling amorously at the beaui4tall Young creature who was painting him, theme da Vigee le Brun. Her other sitter was fabulous Emma. tiNderick belonged to the remarkable Whig n.„411 of whom it was said that God created women and Herveys. As a young man he as bursting with typical Hervey wit and rghtliness. Later he developed some of the welted malice for which the first Lord Hervey Etais feared. Someone once said that all great ti glishmen are lunatics with a strong prac,,..eal side. Frederick missed greatness. His hi
ties lacked that consistent concentration W,
sh„,ell transforms mere eccentricity into a 471inrie madness. Nor was his practical side of116e,h in evidence, except in the management lia„"ls own wealth. He is therefore fortunate to poLe found so skilful a biographer as Brian or:nergill. I was a member of the panel which fo,'sented Mr Fothergill with the PEN prize sti' his Sir William Hamilton. His new book I:Ws how right we were: for The Mitred Earl ehrrionstrates once more his lively Jur acterisation, sophisticated but humane bgernent and dry wit. poir knows the period backwards, from its bre ties to its health foods. Frederick drank his akfast coffee laced With egg-yoke and thus su,Unted of all its irritating particles," and t4ed off port and potatoes. But you can of t'O'clur pick of Hervey eccentricities, not all tlisem amiable. In Italy he once poured a ihe",.,of spaghetti over a procession carrying he 2acred Host under his window. Not that jus:lisliked Catholics — far from it — but he hell Could not stand the sound of tinkling tori'' His wild fancies over dress were nohor.?Us. A young Irish girl saw him riding on tven'e,back through Rome the year he died, tr'ottng a nightcap-cum-mitre, gold fringed pr.11,,and silk dressing-gown. the si,ueriok entered the Church only because cho,,urother who had been destined for it 41 e the Army instead. Vocations were not r4at eighteenth century weakness. Lovestii 9les were regarded by him as fatal ivaVities, for, having made one himself, he ed out on his wife after thirty years of h5 age with callous unconcern. Meanwhile liz,stsecond daughter had become Lady tate,7"eth Foster, the celebrated lover and lien"' Wife of the Duke of Devonshire, a true hav,,,e,Y. His youngest daughter, Louisa, must Lord' o.ad enough of Herveys, for she married l'Itirtil-1„,,verpool, the least Hervey-like of all our [ ministers. Towards his son and heir he dalip`1,Y,oically selfish, urging him to marry the ter of the King of Prussia by his missilbs' with a view to augmenting the already ing ttinVal Hervey fortune and possibly gain[aMily a dukedom. His son insisted on Thg a plain Miss Upton. (bete Bishop had acquired a second fortune • 1)1 was the richest see in Ireland) when he
succeeded to the title of Bristol. It was this double fortune which enabled him to buy up, in his own words, "Rafaels, Titians and what not," and to follow the precepts of "dear Canova" and "dear impeccable Palladio." His art collections were destined to adorn the three princely mansions he built — Downhill and Ballyscullion in Derry, and Ickworth in Suffolk. His taste was entirely pagan, though he made a gesture towards Christianity by placing spires on the steepleless Derry churches. For this Ruskin might have forgiven his classical sins.
The people of Derry apparently felt they had nothing to forgive. Their Bishop, though often a cold-hearted magnifico towards his friends, and also an absentee landlord, was warm and true in his championship of human rights. In Ireland he strongly supported Catholic Emancipation against Protestant ascendancy. At the same time he flamboyantly espoused the Dissenters' cause in their fight for rights against the Church of Ireland, besides advocating an independentIrish Parliament. For all these things he earned genuine gratitude — and a monument — from Derry Catholics and Protestants alike.
Yet there was a philosophical flaw in this episcopal gem. He owed his liberal views largely to the French philosophers like Rousseau and Voltaire, and minimally to Christianity. Indeed I can think of only one New Testament text which might have appealed to him and to the other great eighteenth. century builders, and that was the Forsyte family favourite, "In my Father's house are many mansions." From Christianity the Bisop could have learnt about self-sacrifice. But he was a deist, if not atheist. He always followed his personal inclination when duty to Ireland clashed with fun on the Continent. Thus he could denounce clerical absenteeism and then spend the last eleven years of his life abroad, not to mention previous prolonged jaunts. He could become Colonel of the Londonderry Volunteers, flaunting a cocked hat a-top his canonicals — and then shake off Irish politics for ever. He was a humanist in fancy dress; ultimately an unacceptable combination. A hundred years later there were to be plenty of socially dedicated humanists, but they were sombre fellows. And plenty of empurpled bishops, but the Church by then had been reformed and bishops were Christians.
His last eleven years were a curious medley. To George III, Hervey had long been that "wicked prelate"; Lady Holland wrote him off as "a clever, bad man." Age did not mitigate his addiction to amities amoureuses.He loathed the French Revolution even more than he had liked Voltaire, and was imprisoned by the French for espionage. Full of bravery or bravado, he continued to conduct his spying from his cell in Milan. Mr Fothergill calls his final chapter, 'The End of the Journey.' So it was, since the Earl-Bishop's life had been one of ceaseless travel. But in another sense, what end had he reached? Of course it's better to travel than to arrive. But when you cannot travel any longer it may be a good thing to have arrived somewhere.
Only one of the Earl-Bishop's great mansions has 'arrived,' so to speak, in the twentieth century, if one excludes each Hotel Bristol named after him. Ickworth still stands, under the aegis of the Natiohal Trust; though he did not live to see it built. The Irish mansions have both gone. A quantity of his masterpieces were confiscated by the French. Those that escaped were sent home after his death but were destroyed by salt water leaking into the ship's hold. He died abroad. In order to lull the superstitious sailors, his corpse was crated and labelled "Statue." From this arose the legend that the EarlBishop's body was lost at sea and a statue buried in his grave. I like that last twist as much as anything in this highly entertaining story. In some ways the Bishop had indeed come to be less of a man than a work of art, not always in flawless taste.
The Countess of Longford has recently written Wellington: Pillar of State.
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