HIS EARLY LIFE AND CONNECTIONS
LONDON
ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS
187 PICCADILLY, W
1910
Second Impression.
To
BEVILL FORTESCUE
OF DROPMORE AND BOCONNOC,
THIS BOOK, WHICH OWES EVERYTHING TO HIM,
IS
GRATEFULLY DEDICATED.
My first words of preface must be of excuse for some apparent lack ofgratitude in my dedication. For besides my debt to Mr. Fortescue, I owemy warmest acknowledgments to Mary, Lady Ilchester, and her son, for thepermission to examine some of the papers of Henry Fox; a character ofgreat interest, whose life is yet to be written. But I hope that thiswill soon be presented by Lord Ilchester, whose capacity for such workis already proved. I render my sincere thanks both to him and to hismother; but my dedication, written long before I had access to theHolland House papers, must remain unchanged; for without Mr. Fortescue'sfamily collection of papers at Dropmore this book could never have beenbegun.
The life of Chatham is extremely difficult to write, and, strictlyspeaking, never can be written at all. It is difficult because of theartificial atmosphere in which he thought it well to envelop himself,and because the rare glimpses which are obtainable of the real manreveal a nature so complex, so violent, and so repressed. What is thisstrange career?
Born of a turbulent stock, he is crippled by gout at Eton and Oxford,then launched into a cavalry regiment, and then into Parliament. Foreight years he is groom-in-waiting to a prince. Then he holdssubordinate office for nine years more. Then he suddenly flashes out,not as a royal attendant or a minor placeman, but as the people'sdarling and the champion of the country. In obscureviii positions he hasbecome the first man in Britain, which he now rules absolutely for fouryears in a continual blaze of triumph. Then he is sacrificed to anintrigue, but remains the supreme statesman of his country for fiveyears more. Then he becomes Prime Minister amid general acclamation; butin an instant he shatters his own power, and retires, distempered if notmad, into a cell. At last he divests himself of office, and recovers hisreason; he lives for nine years more, a lonely, sublime figure, butawful to the last, an incalculable force. He dies, practically, inpublic, as he would have wished; and the nation, hoping against hope,pins its faith in him to the hour of death.
And for most of the time his associations are ignoble, if nothumiliating. He had to herd with political jobbers; he has to serveintriguing kinsfolk; he had to cringe to unworthy Kings and themistresses of Kings; he is flouted and insulted by a puppet whig likeRockingham. Despite all this he bequeaths the most illustrious name inour political history; and it is the arduous task of his biographer toshow how these circumstances led to this result.
Happily this task does not fall to the present writer, who has only todescribe the struggle and the ascent; the consummation and glory of thecareer lie beyond these limits.
Further, it may be said that n