INTIMATE HISTORY

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 96, 21 January 1928, Page 22

INTIMATE HISTORY

THE GREVILLE MEMOIRS

‘ Charles Cavendish Fulke Orevillc was clerk of the Privy Council during the reigns of George, IV., William IV., and the first part - of the reign of Queen. Victoria, and a member by birth of the' oligarchy ' oi great families whose control of the Government of England began to pass with the Reform Bill of 1837, but whose hereditary ability is such that the names Of Cecil and Cavendish are still names of power. He was a grandson o? a Duke of Portland, Prime Minister, under George HL, a younger son of liis bouse, bom to genteel poverty, prevented by an inveterate..habit.of .“punting” on the turf from striking out on an independent career, and therefore angry and disappointed' with himself, and acid in his judgments of his world. But lie was clear sighted, he could write, and he was in a position to know everyone and hear everything. His diary, which coveted the years 1830-60, has passed through three stages of censorship, and now, except, we'are told, for one or two unimportant expletives, is given with the censored matter included as “The Greville Diary,” edited bv Philip Whitwell Wilson. Most of this matter hitherto suppressed consists of scathing criticisms of contemporaries rather than private scandal. Greville loved a good quarrel, but did not bother to record many “chroniques scandaleuses.’ Greville's diary reveals history as wrought by the intimate dealings of the great with one another. We see. George IV. at a Privy Council whispering racing gossip with the secretary, who was the ruling power of Hie jockey club, and after Catholic emancipation, ostentatiously ‘’ignoring” O’Connell at a levee with-the- resounding aside, “Damn the fellow, what does lie come here for?” “Dignified!” Greville. comments. His opinion of the Royal family in 1829 was one of unutterable contempt. However, he did his best. “Good God, what a set they are!” he said in 1829, proceed-

nig to particiularise. He was trainer to the Duke of York, “the only one of the princes who has the feelings of an English gentleman.” When' William IV. lay dying the Duke of Cumberland, his brother, who succeeded to the throne of Hanoveer, was advised by Wellington to “go at once and take care that you don’t get pelted.” Without realising the condition in which the young Queen found the. Royal dignity, it is not possible to understand Victoria and her Consort. It is easier to forgive the unwisdom of King Edward’s education, when we have the Prince Consort’s word that its aim was to make him in every way as different as possible from his great uncles. In the turmoil of the Reform Bill ■ Greville had fears for the monarchy itself, for the throne was occupied by the silliest king who ever.sat upon it. When William IV. dissolved the first reform Parliament “George Villiers said that in his life he never saw such a scene, and as he looked at the King upon the throne with the crown loose upon his head, and the tall, grim figure of Lord Grey beside him with the sword of State in his hand, it was as if Ihe King had got the executioner by his side, and the whole nictnre looked strikingly typical of his and our future destinies.

’lhe childhood of Victoria was tragic. The quarrels of her mother, the Duchess of Kent, with the King was undignified, squalid, and public The Duchess refused to have anything to do with his illegitimate children, and as she herself was not untouched by scandal the King was furious. Greville’s account of the bedchamber incident at the beginning of Victoria’s reign, when the Queen refused to dismiss her ladies on a change of Ministry reveals in this “mere baby of a queen” a, queer mixture of imperious dignity and childlike obstinacy. “He began it and not I,” were her first words to the fatherly Melbourne, who came to soothe her. In 1837 Greville travelled on a railway. “Nothing can be more comfortable,” he writes, “than the vessel in which I was put, a sort) of chariot'with two places, and there is nothing- disagreeable about. it but the occasional whiffs of stinking air which it is impossible to exclude altogether. The first sensation is a slight degree of nervousness fend a feeling of being run away with, but a sense of security soon supervenes, and the velocity is delightful. Town after town, one park and chateau after another are left behind with the rapid variety of a moving panorama, and the continual bustle and animation of the changes and stoppages make the journey very en- ’ tertaining.

Greville was sensitive to the growing power of the press. He was keenly aware of the revolutionary importance of the reporters’ gallerv installed in the House of Commons in 1835, “which is finite inconsistent with their standing orders ” “It is a sort of public and avowed homage to opinion, anrl-a.recog-nition of the right of the peqple.to .know through the medium of rhe press all that passes within those walls,” he , writes. Tn the middle of the century, Dekttie, the editor of “The Times.” became a; great.power, >Hg whs. much in demand-spciallv, and was willing to dine with anvone, but the Whiffs were furious when he did not allow his pclicv to be deviated,bv his’dinners. ..Greville (eared the "popular” press) “The best part of the press. ‘The Times.’ for instance,” he writes, “seldom finds its way to the cottages and reading-rooms of the lower classes, who are fed bv the chean radicalism of the ‘Dailv Despatch’ and other journals, unknown almost .to the higher classes of society, which are darkly working to undermine he productions of our social and political system.” . \ "