BOOKS.

IN WHIG SO(;Lh1Y.#

LADY AIBIIE has given us a very attractive book. We say this in spite of the fact that a good deal of it is sketchy, a good deal of it obvious, and some of it out of true perspective. We would, however, pardon very much worse faults than these in order to get one or two of the letters which the volume contains, and also the reproductions of the pictures of the two chief persons of the drama.

Indirectly and incidentally the book brings out the essential feature of Whig Society and, indeed, of Whiggism. That essential feature was that birth, in the sense underst3od by the Heralds or the Saint-Simons, mattered little or nothing. To those who in the eighteenth century kept the jealously guarded doors of the Whig Social Sanctum position was everything. No doubt there were three or four great families (almost all of them " ignobles " from the pedigree-maker's point of view), like the Hollands, or the Foxes, or the Pitts, who formed an inner ring, into which they preferred to marry and so strengthen their " connexion." But here again it was not pride of ancestry, but pride of place, which made them think so much of them- selves and produced the sense of haughty, almost contemptuous, exclusiveness. The first Lady Melbourne is a very. good example of what we mean. She herself was of a goodish but not par- ticularly distinguished county family, but her husband, though his position was assured, was, from the Continental point of view, of the humblest, nay, meanest kind. His father was a country attorney who had been the confidential adviser of Lord Salisbury and Lord Egremont, and had contrived to amass a very great fortune, which, unless we are mistaken, was greatly added to by a marriage with a rich heiress. Anyway, the political attorney received a baronetcy. The old Lady Salisbury, widow of the first Marquis, who, poor woman, was burnt alive in the fire at Hatfield, used to say of the Lamb family—the name by itself denotes the rustic plebeian—that their money was made from the plunder of the Salisburys, but very probably that only meant that the Mr. Lamb in question lent money wisely.

A good proof of what we are insisting on is to be found in the remark of Lord Melbourne, the smartest, most fashionable and most exclusive of Whigs, to Queen Victoria. He told the Queen that he did not know who his own great-grandfather was. Presumably the old attorney did not talk to people about his ancestry. Perhaps he was simply a humble person, or he may

• In Whig Society. By Maboll Countess of Andle. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Ms. net.)

have been like the grandfather so wittily adumbrated by Sydney Smith. It will be rememitered that when someone asked Sydney Smith who his grandfather was he replied : " Hush !

Hush ! He disappeared about the time of the Assizes and the family asked no questions ! " While on this topic we cannot resist calling attention than excellent story giNten by Lady Airlie.

When Sir Peniaton Lamb, the first Lord Melbourne, built his huge house in Piccadilly, where the Albany now stands, ho asked that most sardonic of wits, George Selwyn, what he should call it, and added that he did not want to call it after his own name. " Call it House Lamb, my dear Peniston," was the reply. The peerage solved the difficulty, and when Sir Peniston became a peer in 1770 he called his Piccadilly palace Melbourne House. Another proof of our contention is the way in which Lady Melbourne at once took one of the highest places in Whig Society. No human being ever thought of challenging her right, either on the ground that she was only the daughter of a Yorkshire squire or the wife of an attorney's son. She had position ; she had beauty ; she had brains ; and perhaps what was more important than all, her husband had several nomination boroughs. Though she was in a sense discreet, and hated and avoided scandal almbst like a prude, she was a good Whig, even in her amours—a " grande amoureuse " no doubt, but one who never overdid it and never forgot the Whig principle of moderation. Even while she temporarily engaged the affections of the Prince of Wales at the time when he might almost be described as the leader of the Whig Opposi- tion she did not cause a scandal. At the end of her life she became " Chief Privy Councillor " to Byron in his short but hectic " joy-ride " through London Society. A picture of her reproduced in the present volume looks exactly what we might expect—a mixture of voluptuousness and caution, and of intellect coupled with a modified sensuality. Not a nice mixture, but one not unlikely to produce the great Lord Melbourne.

We are not going to plunge through the unpleasant quagmire of her alleged intrigues. Nor shall we attempt to appraise th3 character of her daughter—" that little devil Emily," as she was well called—except to say that with her it was externally a case of " lovely mother's lovelier daughter." There is a dash of the demon in Lady Cowper's face which adds a defiant attraction lacked by her mother. The mother was too like the cool-headed Chloe in Pope's " Characters of Women." " That little devil Emily " would never, one feels sure, have conducted her love affairs on the sound business principles practised by her mother.

A pathetic, or apparently pathetic, chapter of the book is about that alluring madcap, Lady Caroline Lamb—the lady who plagued Byron so greatly and led poor Lord Melbourne such a life. But she was clever as well as erratic. Her apology for her own misconduct is one of the ablest pleas of "confession and avoidance " ever made by man or woman. It is contained in a letter to her mother-in-law, Lady Melbourne :—

" God knows I am humiliated enough, & did not expect I should ever act in this manner. Some heads may bear perfect happiness & perfect liberty, mine cannot, & those principles which I came to William with—that horror of vice, of deceit, of any thing that was the least improper, that Religion which I believed in then, without a doubt & with what William pleased to call superstitious enthusiasm—merited praise, & ought to have been cherished—they were safeguards to a character like mine & nobody can tell the almost childish innocence & inexperience I had preserved till then. All at once this was thrown off, & William himself, though still unconscious of what he has done, William himself taught me to regard without horror all the forms & restraints I had laid so much stress on. With his excellent heart, sight, head & superior mind he might, & will go on with safety without them—he is superior to those passions & vanities which mislead weaker characters, & which, however I may be ashamed to own it, are continually mis- leading me. Ho called me Prudish, said I was straitlaced— amused himself with instructing me in things I need never have heard or known & the disgust I at first felt to the world's wickedness I till then had never heard of in a very short time gave way to a general laxity of principles which, little by little, unperceived by you all, has been undermining the few virtues I ever possessed."

The present writer must confess to have been greatly moved when he read this, and to have felt for the moment nothing but " poor Lady Caroline!" and disgust for the lackadaisical cynic her husband. A little reflection, however, and w little closer study of the papers contained in the present volume, soon made him feel that very possibly the whole story, though so effective and so admirable a piece of self-advocacy, was quite untrue and insincere. Melbourne was, no doubt, weak enough where women were concerned ; but somehow or other even 'a person who is not a great admirer begins to doubt the picture of the injured innocent. One cannot readily believe that Melbourne would deliberately have behaved as he is described as behaving.

Yet, mark the almost diabolical cleverness of Lady Caroline. She anticipates the objection by talking about William being unconscious of what he has done.

We must not devote our whole notice to the wives of the Lambs. There are plenty of other good things in the book. In our opinion, and we believe it will be in the opinion of our readers, Lady Airlie has given us a real addition to English " vers de societe." This consists of the epilogue for a two-act comic opera entitled Whistle Me First, by George Lamb, the fourth son of Lady Melbourne. The opera was produced at Covent Garden on April 10th, 1807, but was only performed three times. Byron alludes to it in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, with a sneer at Lamb's " patrician name "—a curious example of the bitter feeling which Byron always showed as a young man towards that Whig Society of which he never managed to form a part, though for two seasons he passed through its rooms :-

" And every candid female here allows

How hard a Misses life, who seeks a spouse.

At Operas, plays, and routs we never fail,

Put up, alas ! to everlasting sale. First in Hyde Park, sent by Maternal care, At Noon we walk, and seem to take the air, Or Bond Street's gay resort, for game we try And call at many a shop and seem to buy,

While, like a Dealer, the good Matron shews

Our shapes, and paces, to the chapmen Beaux, Well skill'd th' unfitting suitor to dispatch, And to allure the Eligible Match.

At night again; on us all pleasures pall ;

Bid for by inch of candle at a ball—

And e'en when fashion's toilsome revels cease,

For us no pause, no liberty, no peace—

Then when the Matrons speak of suppers small, A few choice friends besides ourselves—that's all,' This language in plain truth they mean to hold

A girl by private contract to be sold.' " With one more quotation we have dune—the astonishing

account of a conversation in regard to Lord Byron between Lady Bessborough and the Prince Regent told by the lady in question to Lady Melbourne :-

" Now could you imagine, Dear Ly. M., that I had spoken to the P[rince] of Ld. Byr.—ho began about my going to Ireland & then told me the whole history of Caro . . . saying Ld. Mel : had been with him very much out of humour complaining that she drove him mad, & we were almost as bad, that Ld. Byr. had bowitch'd the whole family Mothers & daughter & all & that nothing would satisfy us but making a fool of him as well as of ourselves, & insisting on his asking Ld. Byn. to his house. The P. said all this so rapidly & so loudly (?), interrupting himself now & then to exclaim, ' I never heard of such a thing in my life—taking the Mothers for confidantes I What would you have thought of my going to talk to Ly. Spencer in former times '—that in spite of the subject & the circle I was near laughing. But do not scold Ld. Mel., for he was so very good naturd & so civil that I was quite delighted with him. I could not get away from Ld. Byr., when once he began talking to me—ho was part of the time very pleasant & talking of other things—but he did tell me some things so terrifying & so extraordinary 1 ! To be sure if he does mean to deceive he takes the strangest way of doing it I ever knew—unless a shocking notion tho P. has can be true—hut I do think it impossible it is too diabolick. ' God bless you.' "

For a picture of the vulgar and heartless corruption of the time that letter can hardly be surpassed. When people talk about the corruptions of the present age, it is clear that they have no notion of the depravity of the period between 1790 and 1820. It was an age in which the High Society could not even claim that its martial ardour was undimmed by luxury.

No doubt it was a very small section of the community that was, to use Cromwell's words, " damnably debauched," but that section did not fight either by land or sea. Instead, it began by toasting heroes after its own heart, such as Mirabeau and Danton, and later tossed off bumpers to Napoleon or made poems in his honour. It was not the smart people who won at Trifalgar or in the Peninsula, but the Nelsons, the Moores, and the Wellealeys---scions of an Irish family with no real claim to nobility, No doubt there were a certain number of younger sons of the best Whig connexions in the Army, but really great people who "went abroad " were apt to be looked upon as eccentric persons, who had taken to a vulgar way of life. As Miss Austen's novels show us, though that was not Miss Austen's own way of looking at life, the War was chiefly mentioned in order to draw attention to the bad form shown by Militia officers.