A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume IV Part 13

CHAPTER LXXIX.

THE CLOSE OF A REIGN AND THE OPENING OF AN ERA.

[Sidenote: 1748-1832--Mackintosh, Malthus, and Mill]

Many lives that now belong to history had faded into history during the reign of William the Fourth. William Wilberforce, the great champion of every n.o.ble and philanthropic movement known to his times, had pa.s.sed from the living world which he had done so much to improve. Wilberforce lived to see the triumph of that movement against slavery and the slave-trade which he, more than any other of his time, had inspired and promoted. He had been compelled by ill-health to give up his position in Parliament for several years before his death, but he had never withdrawn his watchful sympathy and such co-operation as it was in his power to give from any cause to which he had consecrated his life. His name will always be ill.u.s.trious in English history as that of one who loved his fellow-men and who gave expression to that love in every act and effort of his public and private career. Jeremy Bentham, one of the greatest of modern thinkers, the founder of more than one school of political and economic doctrine, a man whose influence on human thought is never likely to pa.s.s altogether away, died in June, 1832. Bentham's principle, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, has often been narrowly and unfairly judged, but it may be doubted whether a sounder theory of political and social government has ever come out of the mere wisdom of man. The phrase utilitarianism, which came into use as the summary of his teaching, has often been misunderstood and misapplied, and perhaps some excuse was found for the misinterpretation of his meaning in his decision that his dead body should be given up for the purpose of anatomy and not buried in earth to be of service {281} only to the worms. Many of us have seen the skeleton of Jeremy Bentham clothed in his habit as he lived in a room of that University College which he helped to make a success.

Sir James Mackintosh brought his n.o.ble career to a close during this reign. Mackintosh had been historian, philosopher, and politician, and, like Macaulay, he had rendered great services in India as well as in England. Like Macaulay also, he had been listened to with the deepest interest whenever he addressed the House of Commons, although his gifts and his temperament seemed suited rather for the study than for Parliamentary life. Another man whose death belongs to the reign of William the Fourth, whose teachings were at one time the occasion for incessant controversy--and indeed caused most controversy where they were least understood--was Thomas Robert Malthus. In many cla.s.ses of readers the name of Malthus came to be a.s.sociated for a while with the idea of some strange and cruel doctrine which taught that wars and pestilences and other calamities that have the effect of sweeping redundant populations off the world are really good things in themselves, to be encouraged by beneficent legislation. It is hardly necessary to say now that nothing could be more narrow and even more perverse than this interpretation of Malthus's philosophy. Another of the teaching minds which pa.s.sed from the contemplation of earthly subjects during the reign was that of James Mill, the historian of British India and the promulgator of great doctrines in political economy. James Mill, like Edmund Burke, had studied India thoroughly, and come to understand it as few men had done who had lived there for years and years, although, like Burke, he had never been within sight of the sh.o.r.es of Hindustan. Mill divined India as Talleyrand said that Alexander Hamilton, the American statesman and companion of George Was.h.i.+ngton, had divined Europe.

Charles Greville, writing in November, 1830, speaks of meeting at breakfast "young Mill, a political economist," and adds that "young Mill is the son of Mill who wrote the 'History of British India,' {282} and said to be cleverer than his father." The elder Mill would no doubt have gladly endorsed the saying, and it may be a.s.sumed that history has given its judgment in the same way, but history will certainly maintain the fame of the father as well as the fame of the son. A man of a very different order from any of these we have just mentioned, but who has made a reputation of his own in literature as well as in politics, closed his career within the same reign. We have already spoken in this volume of William Cobbett's command of simple, strong English, which made his prose style hardly inferior to that of Swift himself. Indeed, one of the most distinguished authors of the present day, a man who has made a name in political life as well as in literature, has been heard to contend with earnestness that, as a writer of pure, strong, idiomatic English, Cobbett might be accounted the rival of Swift. The great engineer, Telford, and the really gifted and genuine, although eccentric and opinionated, physician, Dr. Abernethy, were among the celebrities whose deaths rather than their works belong to the time when William the Fourth was King.

[Sidenote: 1754-1834--Coleridge and Hannah More]

Poetry, romance, and art suffered many heavy losses during the same time.

We have already chronicled the death of Walter Scott. One who had known him and had been kindly welcomed by him, James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, died three years after Scott in 1835. The death of George Crabbe was one of the memorable events of the reign. Crabbe might well be described in the words which a later singer set out for his own epitaph, as "the poet of the poor." Crabbe pictured the struggles, the sufferings, the occasional gleams of happiness which are common to the lives of the poor with a realism as vigorous and as vivid as the prose of Charles d.i.c.kens himself could show, and he had touches here and there of exquisitely tender poetic feeling which were not unworthy of Keats or Wordsworth. Nothing was n.o.bler in the life of Burke than his early appreciation and generous support of Crabbe. Hannah More died in 1833.

The fame of this remarkable woman has somewhat faded of late years, and even the {283} most successful of her writings find probably but few readers among the general public. She has, however, won for herself a distinct place in history, not less by her life itself than by her work in various fields of literature. In her early days she had been an a.s.sociate of Samuel Johnson, Burke, and Goldsmith, and Reynolds, and she had known Macaulay from his childhood. She was always a writer with a purpose, whether she wrote a religious tract or an ethical essay, a tragedy or a novel. She always strove to be a teacher, and the intellectual gifts with which she had been endowed were only valued by her in so far as they enabled her to serve the education and the moral progress of humanity. "The rapt One of the G.o.dlike forehead, the heaven-eyed creature," as Wordsworth described Samuel Taylor Coleridge, died in 1834. Coleridge belonged to an order of intellect far higher than that to which Crabbe or Hannah More had any claim. He was indeed a man of genius in all but the very highest meaning of the word. He was poet, philosopher, teacher, and critic, and in each department, had he worked in that alone, he must have won renown. Perhaps if he had not worked in so many fields he might have obtained even a more exalted position than that which history must a.s.suredly a.s.sign to him. His influence as a philosopher is probably fading now, although he unquestionably inspired whole schools of philosophic thought, and the world remembers him rather as the author of "The Ancient Mariner" than as the metaphysical student and teacher. As a critic, in the highest sense of the word, he will always have the praise that should belong to the first who aroused the attention of Englishmen to the great new school of thoughtful criticism which was growing up in Germany under the influence of Lessing and of Goethe. He would have deserved fame if only for his translations of some of Schiller's n.o.blest dramas. It has been justly said that Coleridge by his successful efforts to spread over England the influence of the higher German criticism did much to restore Shakespeare to that position as head of the world's modern literature from which English {284} criticism and English tastes had done so much to displace him since the days of Dryden.

[Sidenote: 1775-1836--Mrs. Siddons and Edmund Kean]

The death of Coleridge was soon followed by that of Charles Lamb, and, indeed, Coleridge's death may have had some effect in hastening that of his dear and devoted friend. In the same poem from which we have just quoted the lines that picture Coleridge, Wordsworth tells how "Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, has vanished from his lonely hearth." Lamb was the most exquisite of essayists and letter-writers, a man whose delicate humor, playful irony, and happy gift of picturesque phrase claim for him true poetic genius. The present generation has probably but a faint memory of Felicia Hemans, whose verse had at one time an immense popularity among all readers with whom sweetness of sentiment, musical ease, fluency of verse, and simple tenderness of feeling were enough to const.i.tute poetic art. She, too, died not long before the close of the reign. Many men who had won wide fame as pulpit orators and as religious teachers of various orders marked by their deaths as well as by their lives this chapter of history. Rowland Hill was one of these, the great popular preacher, who flung aside conventionalities, and was ready to preach anywhere if he had hope of gathering an audience around him whom he could move and teach, whether he spoke from the pulpit of a church or a chapel, or from a platform in the open air, or in the midst of a crowd with no platform at all. Another was Robert Hall, admittedly one of the most eloquent preachers of modern times. Yet another was Adam Clarke, the author of the celebrated "Commentary on the Holy Scriptures." Of course the fame of these men and women does not belong in the fuller sense to the reign of William the Fourth. Some of them had wellnigh done their work before the reign began, none of them can be said to have won any new celebrity during the reign. Their names are introduced here because their deaths were events of the moment and lend, in that way, additional importance to the reign's history.

The fame of Mrs. Siddons can hardly be said to belong in any sense to the days when William the Fourth sat on {285} the English throne, for she had retired from the stage many years before his accession, and only appeared in public on rare occasions and for some charitable object; but she died within the reign, and it must therefore find another distinction by its a.s.sociation with her name. Two years later died Edmund Kean, who also may be said to have closed his career as an actor before the reign had begun. Of the fame that is won on the boards of a theatre posterity can only judge by hearsay. The poet, the novelist, the historian, the philosopher, the painter, the sculptor, leave their works always living behind them, and the later generation has the same materials on which to form its judgment as were open to the world when the author or artist had just completed his work. Even the orator can bequeath to all ages the words he has spoken, although they are no longer to be accompanied by the emphasis of his gesture and accentuated by the music of his voice. Of the actor and the actress who have long pa.s.sed away we can know nothing but what their contemporaries have told us, and can form no judgment of our own. We can hardly be wrong, however, in regarding Mrs. Siddons as by far the greatest tragic actress who has ever appeared on the English stage, and Edmund Kean as the greatest actor of Shakespearian tragedy whom England has seen since the days of Garrick. In mentioning these two names, we must also be reminded of the name of Charles Mathews the elder, an actor of extraordinary versatility and genuine dramatic power, who is, however, best remembered as the originator of the style of theatrical entertainment which may be described as the "At Home" performance, in which he probably never had a rival. Many of us can still remember his yet more gifted son, the younger Charles Mathews, the incomparable light comedian of a later day.

We have told thus far, in this chapter, only of lights going out in literature, art, philosophy, theology, and science. Let us relieve the picture by recording that one rising star of the first magnitude in literature cast its earliest rays over these latest years of William the Fourth. Early in 1836 the "Sketches by Boz" were published in a {286} collected form, and a little later in the same year appeared the first number of "The Pickwick Papers." Then the world began to know that a man of thoroughly original genius had arisen, and before the reign was out the young author, Charles d.i.c.kens, was accorded by all those whose judgment was worth having that place among the foremost English novelists which he has ever since retained and is ever likely to retain. "The Pickwick Papers" opened a new era in the history of English novel-writing. By a curious coincidence, the proposal of a young art student to furnish ill.u.s.trations for d.i.c.kens's books being declined by the author, led the young art student to believe that he had mistaken his vocation in trying to ill.u.s.trate the works of other men, and he turned his attention to literature, and afterwards became the one great rival of d.i.c.kens, and will be known to all time as the author of "Vanity Fair" and "The Newcomes." None of the writings which made Thackeray's fame appeared during the time of William the Fourth, but his name may be a.s.sociated with the close of the reign by the incident which brought him into an acquaintances.h.i.+p with d.i.c.kens, and which led to his abandoning the pencil for the pen.

[Sidenote: 1772-1834--The impositions of Princess Olivia]

Towards the close of the reign died one of the most audacious and astonis.h.i.+ng impostors known to modern times. Even the Tichborne claimant of the reign that followed makes but a poor show for inventiveness and enterprise when compared with the woman who described herself as the Princess Olivia of c.u.mberland, and who claimed to be the daughter of King William's brother. This woman was the daughter of a house painter named Wilmot, and was educated under the care of her uncle, the Rector of a parish in Warwicks.h.i.+re. She received a good education, and even in her young days seemed to have a desire to exhibit herself as the heroine of strange adventures. At an early age she was married to John Serres, a man distinguished in his art, who obtained the position of painter to the King and the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William the Fourth, and it was probably this a.s.sociation with the surroundings of greater personages that inspired {287} her with some of her bold conceptions. Her husband and she did not get on very well together, and a separation took place; after which for a while Mrs. Serres appeared on the stage, and then took to the art of painting on her own account, and actually succeeded in getting herself appointed landscape painter to the Prince of Wales. Her next attempt was at novel-writing, and she also published a volume of poems and even ventured on the composition of an opera. Later still she made herself conspicuous by writing a volume to prove that her uncle, the Rev. James Wilmot, was the actual author of the letters of Junius. That was only a beginning, for she soon after proclaimed herself the legitimate daughter, by a secret marriage, of the Duke of c.u.mberland.

She made her claims known to the Prince Regent and all the other members of the royal family, and demanded a formal hearing in order that she might prove her right to rank as one of them. She was so far successful that her claim was actually taken up by a member of the House of Commons, who moved for the appointment of a Committee of the House to give it a full investigation. Sir Robert Peel promptly settled the question, so far as regarded the appointment of a committee, by announcing that he held in his hand a manifesto of the Princess Olivia, addressed to the high powers of the kingdom of Poland, in which she claimed to be the descendant of Stanislaus Augustus. Sir Robert Peel urged that as the two claims were practically irreconcilable and were both made by the same claimant, the House of Commons might consider itself relieved from the necessity of appointing a Committee of Inquiry, and the House accepted his advice. Still, it is almost needless to say that many persons were found quite willing to believe in the genuineness of the Princess Olivia's claim, and even in the genuineness of both her claims, and she had indeed, for a time, a party of faithful and credulous followers as strong as that which backed up the pretensions of the adventurer from Wapping who proclaimed himself to be Sir Roger Tichborne. The later years of the self-created Princess Olivia were spent in poverty, and she died within the rules of the {288} King's Bench. Even in much later days, however, her name was not wholly forgotten.

A few lines may be spared to describe the career of a man who died not long after the death of the Princess Olivia, and who belonged to that cla.s.s which used to be described as wonderful characters. This was a man named James Norris, who came of a family of good position having property near Devizes. Norris received a good education, and at one time promised to make a name for himself as a student of natural history. He is described as "handsome in person and elegant in manners," and we are told that "he possessed a highly cultivated mind which seemed to promise in early life eminence in society, and that he would rise to be an ornament to the age in which he lived." At a comparatively early age he had outlived all his family, and thus became the owner of large landed property. He suddenly became a prey to strange, overmastering habits of indolence, apathy, and shyness, which gradually estranged him from all society. He neglected his property, allowed his rents to remain for years and years in the hands of his steward, without troubling himself about them, and allowed his dividends to grow up in the hands of his bankers without concerning himself as to their amount, or even opening any letters which might be addressed to him on the subject. He gave up shaving and allowed his hair and board to grow as they would; he never changed his clothing or his linen until they became worn to rags; he lay in bed for the greater part of the day, took his princ.i.p.al meal about midnight, then had a lonely ramble, and returned to bed as the morning drew near. He was hardly ever seen by anybody but his servants, and declined any communication even with his nearest neighbors. When an occasion arose which actually compelled him to communicate with any one from the outer world, he would only consent to speak with a door, or at least a screen, between him and the other party to the conversation. All the time he does not seem to have been engaged in any manner of study or work, and he appears to have simply devoted himself to the full indulgence of his {289} pa.s.sion for solitude. His figure, or some sketch suggested by it, has been made use of more than once by writers of fiction, but the man himself was a living figure in the reign of William the Fourth, and died not long before its close.

Under the date of March 31, 1837, Charles Greville writes: "Among the many old people who have been cut off by this severe weather, one of the most remarkable is Mrs. Fitzherbert, who died at Brighton at above eighty years of age. She was not a clever woman, but of a very n.o.ble spirit, disinterested, generous, honest, and affectionate, greatly beloved by her friends and relations, popular in the world, and treated with uniform distinction and respect by the Royal Family." The death of this celebrated woman recalls to memory one of the saddest and most shameful chapters in the whole sad and shameful story of the utterly worthless Prince who became George the Fourth.

[Sidenote: 1756-1837--Illness of William the Fourth]

Meanwhile the reign of William the Fourth was hastening to its close.

The King had had several attacks of illness, and more than once, before the end was yet quite near, his physical condition went down so low that those around him believed it impossible for him to rise again. He rallied, however, more than once, and regained his good spirits and gave hope to those who had any real wish for his recovery that the reign had not yet quite come to an end. In some of his better moods he showed glimpses of that higher nature which was wont to a.s.sert itself fitfully now and then at many periods of his career. More than once he prayed fervently in these later days that his life might be spared until the Princess Victoria should come of age. Almost to the end the usual festivities were kept up at Windsor Castle, and the Queen, by his wish, visited the race-course at Ascot a few days before the end came; but it is recorded that she only remained an hour on the ground. The formal announcement that the King was seriously ill was not made until within a few days of the sovereign's death. Even when regular bulletins began to be issued, they were so sparing of their information, and {290} so carefully guarded against any suggestion of alarm, that the outer public had really very little to go upon, except the bare fact that the King was growing to be an old man, and that he was liable to fits of illness just as he had been for years before. It would appear that it was William's whim to dictate the bulletins himself, and that he was very anxious not to allow a word to go forth which might convey a knowledge of his actual condition. The poor old sovereign was apparently inspired by the full conviction that the prolongation of his life was of the utmost importance to the welfare of his people, and it may be fully believed that his unwillingness to admit the imminence of danger to his life came from an honest sort of public purpose. He gave his attention to the business of the State almost to the very last. All the time those who were immediately around the sinking sovereign knew quite well that the end was close at hand, and were already consulting earnestly and constantly as to the steps which ought to be taken to prepare for the new reign, even as to the matter of mere ceremonials which were to accompany the accession of a woman as sovereign. On June 16 Greville says: "Met Sir Robert Peel in the Park, and talked with him about the beginning of the new reign.

He said that it was very desirable that the young Queen should appear as much as possible emanc.i.p.ated from all restraint, and exhibit a capacity for the discharge of her high functions. That the most probable as well as the most expedient course she could adopt would be to rely entirely on the advice of Melbourne, and she might with great propriety say that she thought it inc.u.mbent on her to follow the example which had been set by her two uncles, her predecessors, George the Fourth and William the Fourth." Each of these had retained the ministers whom he found in office, although not quite of his own pattern. There were some fears, at the time, that Leopold, King of the Belgians, might hasten over to England, and might exercise, or at least be suspected of exercising, an undue influence over the young Princess Victoria. Headers at the present day will notice, perhaps with peculiar interest, the observation made by {291} Greville that "Lord Durham is on his way home, and his return is regarded with no little curiosity, because he may endeavor to play a great political part, and materially to influence the opinions, or at least the councils, of the Queen." Lord Durham, up to this time, was regarded by most people merely as a Radical of a very advanced order, burning with strong political ambitions, fitfully impelled with pa.s.sionate likings and dislikings, and capable of proving a serious trouble to the quiet of the new reign. We know now that Durham was soon drawn away almost altogether from home politics, disappointing thereby many of his Radical admirers, and that he found a new field of success, and established for himself an abiding-place in history as the statesman to whose courage, energy, and genius is owing the foundation of the self-governing, prosperous, peaceful, and loyal Dominion of Canada, which has again and again proved itself in recent times an important part of the empire's strength.

[Sidenote: 1837--The Princess Victoria]

Writing of the Princess Victoria, Greville goes on to say: "What renders speculation so easy, and events uncertain, is the absolute ignorance of everybody, without exception, of the character, disposition, and capacity of the Princess. She has been kept in such jealous seclusion by her mother (never having slept out of her bedroom, nor been alone with anybody but herself and the Baroness Lehzen), that not one of her acquaintance, none of the attendants at Kensington, not even the d.u.c.h.ess of Northumberland, her governess, have any idea what she is or what she promises to be." Greville tells us that "the Tories are in great consternation at the King's approaching death," because they fear that the new sovereign is not likely to make any advances to them, while "the Whigs, to do them justice, behave with great decency; whatever they may really feel, they express a very proper concern, and I have no doubt Melbourne really feels the concern he expresses." Then Greville dismisses, for the moment, the whole subject with the words: "The public in general don't seem to care much, and only wonder what will happen."

The chronicler no doubt expressed very correctly the {292} public feeling. Of course, there is nothing surprising in the fact that while the poor King lay dying those who had any official relations with the Court or with Parliament were occupying themselves, during the greater part of the time, with speculations as to the immediate changes which his death would bring about, and with discussions and disputations as to the proper arrangements and ceremonials to accompany and to follow his pa.s.sing away from this world. Something of the same kind must have happened in the case of any Windsor shopkeeper whose family and friends were in hourly expectation of his death, and it is only when such discussions and arrangements come to be recorded as a part of the history of a reign that we are likely to feel impressed by the difference between the prosaic, practical details of the business of this world and the sacred solemnity of the event that is supposed already to cast its shadow before.

[Sidenote: 1837--Death of William the Fourth]

There appears to have been some dispute between the authorities of Church and State as to the offering up of prayers in the churches for the recovery of the King. William was anxious that the prayers should be offered at once, and the Privy Council a.s.sembled to make the order; but the Bishop of London raised an objection, not to the offering of the prayers, but to the suggestion that the prayers were to be offered in obedience to an order coming from the Lords in Council. The Bishop maintained that the Lords had no power to make any such order. In the discussion which took place it appears that some eminent lawyers were of opinion that even the King himself had no power to order the use of any particular prayers, or, at all events, that even if he had any such power it was in virtue of his position as head of the Church and not as head of the State. This was indeed to raise what the late Baron Bramwell once humorously described as "a most delightful point of law." The difficulty appears to have been got over by a sort of compromise, the Archbishop of Canterbury undertaking to order, on his own authority, that prayers should be offered up in all churches for the King's recovery, and the order was no {293} doubt dutifully obeyed. To complete the satirical humor of the situation King William ought actually to have died while the dispute was still going on as to the precise authority by which prayers were to be offered up for his recovery, but some sort of effective arrangement was made during the monarch's few remaining hours of life, and the appeal on his behalf was duly made.

On June 19 the King was found to be falling deeper and deeper into weakness, which seemed to put all chance of his recovery out of reasonable consideration, and the Sacrament was administered to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury. One of the King's last utterances may be set down as in the best sense characteristic--it ill.u.s.trated, that is to say, the best side of his character. "Believe me," were the words of the dying King, "that I have always been a religious man." It may be admitted, in justice to William, that according to his generally dull and often confused and hazy lights he did always recognize the standard, higher than that of mere expediency, or political compromise, or personal convenience, set up to regulate the conduct even of princes.

The reign came to an end on June 30, 1837. Shortly after two o'clock that morning King William pa.s.sed away. He died calmly and without a struggle. The closing hours of his life had a resignation and a dignity about them which might well have fitted the end of one whose whole career, public and private, had been more dignified and more n.o.ble than that of the poor, eccentric, restless, illiterate personage who succeeded the last of the Georges on the throne of England. It must be owned that, whatever the personal defects and disadvantages of the sovereign, the reign of King William the Fourth had been more beneficent in politics than that of any of his predecessors since the days of Queen Anne. For the first time in the modern history of England the voice of the people had been authorized by legislation to have some influence over the direction of national affairs. The pa.s.sing of the great Reform measure, and the rush of other reforms which followed it, opened the way for a new system of {294} administration, the beneficial effects of which in the political and social life of the empire have been expanding ever since.

With the reign of William the Fourth the principle of personal rule, or rule by the mere decree and will of the sovereign, came to an end. If the reign is to be judged by the work it accomplished, it cannot but be set down in history as a great reign. Perhaps there were few men in England of whatever cla.s.s, high or low, who had less of the quality of personal greatness than William the Fourth. He had greatness thrust upon him by the mere fact that fate would have him King. He contributed nothing towards the accomplishment of the many important works which are the best monuments of his reign, except by the negative merit of having at least not done anything to prevent their being accomplished. Even this, however, is a claim to the respect of posterity which must be denied to some of his nearest predecessors. He ruled over a great country without acquiring during his course any quality of greatness for himself. He was like the gla.s.s of the window, which admits the light of the sun without any light-creating power of its own.