Chatham, His Early Life And Connections

PREFACE. MY first words of preface must be of excuse M far some apparent lack of gratitude in my dedication. For besides my debt to Mr. Fortescue, I owe my warmest acknowledgments to Mary, Lady Ilchester, and her son, for the permission to examine some of the papers of Henry Fox a character of great interest, whose life is yet to be written. But I hope that this wiU soon be presented by Lord Ilchester, whose capacity for such work is already proved. I render my sincere thanks both to him and to his mother but my dedication, written long before 1 had access to the Holland House papers, must remain unchanged for without Mr. Fortescues family collection of papers at Dropmore this book could never have been begun. The life of Chatham is extremely difficult to write, and, strictly speaking, never can be written at all. It is difficult because of the artificial atmosphere in which he thought it well to envelop himself, and because the rare glimpses which are obtainabIe of the real man reveal a nature so complex, so violent, and so repressed. What is this strange 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. For eight years he is groom in-waiting to a prince. Then he holds subordinate ofice for nine years more. Then he suddenly flashes out, not as a royal attendant or a minor placeman, but as the peoples darling and the champion of the country. In obscure vii PREFACE positions he has become the first man in Britain, which he now rules absolutely for four years in a continua1 blaze of triumph. Then he is sacrificed to an intrigue, but remains the supreme statesman of his co lrltry for five yearsmore. Then he becomes Prime Minister amid general acclamation but in an instant he shatters his own power, and retires, distempered if not mad, into L cell. At last he divests himself of office, and recovers his reason he lives for nine years more, s lonely, sublime figure, but awful to the last, an incalculable force. He dies, practically, in public, 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 not klumiliating. He had to herd with political jobbers he has to serve intriguing kinsfolk he had to cringe to un worthy Kings and the mistresses of Kings he is flouted and insulted by a puppet whig like Rockingham. Despite all this he bequeaths the most illustrious name in our political. history and it is the arduous task of his biographer to show how these circumstar ces led to this result Happily this task does not fall to the present writer, who has only to describe the struggle and the ascent the consummation and glory of the career lie beyond these limits. Further, it may be said that not merely is the com plete life of Chatham difficult to write, but iinpossible. It is safe, indeed, to assert that it never has been written and never can be written. This seems a hard saying, for it appears to be a reflection on his numerous biographers from Thackeray to Von Ruville, though it is nothing of the sort. lhe fact is that the materials do not exist. For ... the first VlLI time the Dropmore papers throw some light on the earlier part of his life. But it is tolerably certain that nothing of this kind exists to illuminate his later years. Of his conversations, of his private lifenothing, or little more tilall nothing, rem iiins...