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‌Family Matters

LONG before the abolition of slavery the Hollands’ estates in Jamaica had ceased to pay their way. Already in 1822 the properties had failed to produce an income, and Lady Holland talked of cutting down on entertaining – ‌‘open doors bring open mouths’¹ – and of closing Holland House entirely when they went away. (As well as their usual foreign trips they took a rented house in London when Parliament was sitting.) But it does not seem to have cramped her style too much, and, though they took place less frequently, her big dinners were larger than ever. In a letter to her son Henry Fox, she writes of the dining room being ‘pressed and jammed, in consequence of an unaccounted ‌number rushing in to dinner’.² On another occasion an unexpected guest arrived when the company was seated at an already overcrowded table. ‘Luttrell, make room,’ she cried in her most imperious voice. ‘It must certainly be made,’ he replied, ‌‘for it does not exist.’³

One person who seldom appeared at the evening gatherings at Holland House was the Hollands’ daughter Mary. With her brothers away, she had led a lonely and secluded life, looked after by a governess and seemingly rather neglected by her parents. Caroline Fox, who always took the part of her nephews and nieces, complained that Mary was never allowed to appear when there was company at the house. In 1823, however, when she was 17, it was time for her to ‘come out’ in society, to be presented at court and go to balls. Since her mother was still not accepted at court, Lady Lansdowne (married to Holland’s first cousin) took her under her kindly wing, and chaperoned her to her first ball, which took place at Devonshire House that April. Caroline Fox, Miss Vernon (Aunt Ebey) and Mrs Brown, the housekeeper, together ‘manufactured’ her dress, and though she was terrified beforehand, she found herself thoroughly enjoying her evening. Lady Lansdowne stayed up till five but could not feel tired, she said: looking at Mary’s happy countenance was reward enough.

Mary had been due to be presented at court on the preceding day, but the ceremony was put off as the king was laid low with gout, and the event did not take place till June the following year, when she was again accompanied by Lady Lansdowne. Caroline Fox recounted the scene to Henry Fox:

The toilet of the Royal person, I fancy, is so laborious and fatiguing, and so laced up is he, that it is impossible for him to stoop low enough to come in contact with the cheek of the young beauties below a certain stature; in consequence of which, such are suddenly lifted up by the attendants behind them to the level with the Kingly cheek. Mary was one of these, and I daresay she will describe to you her dismay, surprise and confusion, when she felt a hand under each arm raising her up ‌and letting her down again.⁴

Once Mary was launched her mother was eager to find her a husband, even enlisting Henry Fox’s help: ‘As Mary is out, I think it will be better policy to keep her in the eye of the batchelors… and I wish for your assistance to introduce some ‌good épouseurs to her notice.’⁵

Mary, a sweet, good-natured girl, pretty but shy, was embarrassed by her mother’s too obvious ambitions. Like many racy ladies turned respectable, Lady Holland was excessively strict where her own offspring were concerned. Charles Fox, now a captain in the 15th Regiment of the Line, was stationed in Malta, and Henry, after leaving Oxford, spent most of his time abroad, so Mary bore the brunt of her controlling instincts. The poor girl, wrote Lady Granville, ‘is so tied by the leg, so watched by the eye, so regulated, so tamed, so told to say this, not to do that… that she has lost all effect in society but that of being gênéd herself and a gêne to others… I never saw so ‌many natural advantages thrown away.’⁶

It seems strange that Lady Holland, who had suffered so much at the loss of her daughter Georgiana, should not have been more considerate of Mary’s feelings. But her character had hardened from years of defying the world, and her husband’s unfailing devotion had shielded her from criticism at home. Later, her children would accuse her of keeping their father from them; kindly though he was, he was content to follow his wife’s lead in family matters. With all of her children now grown up there was plenty to concern her.

Godfrey Webster, her eldest son, was a lost cause. Now MP for his father’s constituency in Sussex, and married with a family of four sons, he still refused to see his mother. With Henry Webster, she was on good terms and he was encouraged to treat Holland House as his home. But he was always jealous of his half-brother Charles. A professional soldier himself, he felt that Charles had benefited from his parents’ wire-pulling in a way that he had not, and at one point wrote furiously to his mother, accusing her (wrongly) of blocking his chances of promotion. He later apologized but the violence of his invective brought back memories of the irrational rages to which his father Sir Godfrey had been prone. ‘Pray advise him when he feels angry not to put pen to paper,’ wrote Holland to Charles, ‘for he brandishes his pen as a drunken dragoon does his sword and scarcely ‌knows the things he says.’⁷ Harriet Webster, the daughter Lady Holland had tried to hide away, had been brought up by her guardians the Chaplins, and denied any access to her mother; when she got married in 1816 to Fleetwood Pellew, son of Lord Exmouth, she did not ask Lady Holland to her wedding or attempt to meet her afterwards. Henry Webster and Charles Fox both got married in 1824: Henry to Grace Boddington, the daughter of a rich cotton merchant, Charles Boddington MP, ‘the Cotton King’, as Lady Holland called him; and Charles, after various amorous adventures, to Mary Fitzclarence, the natural daughter of the Duke of Clarence by his mistress, the celebrated actress Mrs Jordan – no beauty in Lady Holland’s opinion but ‘handsome is as handsome does’.

Henry Fox, Holland’s heir since Charles was illegitimate, was Lady Holland’s favourite son, perhaps because he most resembled his father in his cheerfulness and sweet nature. The lameness which had afflicted him since childhood made a military career impossible, and after an undistinguished two years at Oxford he had settled happily in Italy, refusing all attempts to involve him in Whig politics. In Genoa he fell in with Byron, who was delighted to be reminded of his pleasant hours at Holland House. ‘I have seen… Henry Fox, Lord Holland’s son, whom I had not looked upon since I left, a pretty mild boy,’ Byron wrote to Tom Moore in April 1823. ‘I have always liked that boy – perhaps from some resemblance in the less fortunate part of our destinies – I mean to avoid mistakes, his lameness. But there is this difference, that he appears a halting angel, who has tripped against a star; whilst ‌I am Le Diable Boiteux.’⁸

Moore, who was dining at Holland House soon after, showed the letter to Lady Holland. ‘Lord Byron has written to Mr Moore an account of you, very pretty and complimentary,’ she told Henry; ‘you shall see it, as I could not resist taking a copy, tho’ the alliance with such a man is not desirable ‌& creditable beyond distant admiration.’⁹

It was a far cry from the days when Byron had been the star of London drawing rooms. Fond though she was of him, Lady Holland’s caution reflected her feeling that the storm-tossed poet was not an ideal associate for her son. Three months later, Byron left for Greece to fight in the Greek War of Independence. In November that year, when a delegation of Greek deputies was travelling to London to raise a government loan, he gave them a letter of introduction to Holland, who he knew was a warm supporter of their cause.

I think it probable that their acquaintance may be interesting to you – and am very sure that Yours will be useful to them and their Country – They will inform you of all that is worth knowing here – and (what is little worth knowing unless you should enquire after a former acquaintance) of the ‘whereabouts’ and ‘whatabouts’ of yrs ‌ever and truly, Noel Byron.¹⁰

It was, as it turned out, Byron’s last communication with Holland House. On 19 April 1824, he died at Missolonghi. The news ran through London like wildfire, the press and public who had once reviled him now uniting to hail him as a martyr in the cause of Greek freedom. Among the Holland House papers are some elegiac lines in Holland’s hand, never published but reflective of his feelings at the time:

Short tho’ thy course oh Byron and the date

Of our strange friendship shorter – yet a throng

Of thoughts press on me if I read thy song

Hear but thy name or ponder on thy fate

Marvellous youth! In fame thou wilt be great

In genius wert so – and the random tongue

Of praise and ‌censure does thy memory wrong.¹¹

Byron’s sister, Augusta Leigh, was his heiress. She knew how much her brother had valued the friendship of the Hollands and she sent them both mementoes from his belongings. ‘I am almost ashamed of the shabby appearance of what I have selected for you from the very few articles I have yet received from my brother,’ she wrote to Lady Holland,

and it is really only as being valued by him that I can ask you to accept it. There are more things coming to England and I hope amongst them I may find something more worthy of your acceptance. All you so kindly say of him is most gratifying to me – more so than I am able to express.

And to Holland, to whom she had sent a ring: ‘It will be a great consolation to me to know that my dear Brother’s character and feelings were so well understood by one whose friendship and ‌regard he so highly valued.’¹²

The news of Byron’s death had scarcely reached London before a new controversy arose. In 1819 Tom Moore had fled to Europe to avoid imprisonment for debt, and had visited Byron in Venice. Byron, who sympathized with Moore’s plight, had presented him with the manuscript of his memoirs, which were not be published till after his death, but which could be shown to anyone Moore thought fit and used, if he wished, as security for a loan. Moore had taken liberal advantage of this permission on his return to England, and had shown the manuscript to a number of friends, among them the Hollands. This was tactless, since the memoirs included a disobliging reference to Lady Holland’s past – unrecorded, since the memoirs were later destroyed. Lady Holland took it in good part. ‘Such things give me no uneasiness…’ she told Moore. ‘As long as the few friends that I am really sure of speak kindly of me (and I would not believe the contrary if I saw it in black and white) all that the rest of the world can say is a matter ‌of complete indifference to me.’¹³ But she thought that Byron’s veiled reference to his half-sister as his ‘love of loves’ might cause trouble, while the fact that Moore had raised a loan of £2,000 on the memoirs from Byron’s publisher John Murray struck Holland as unwise. He wished that he could have raised the money in some other way, he told Moore; it was like ‘depositing a sort of quiver of poisoned arrows… for a ‌future warfare upon private character’,¹⁴ and he advised Moore to retrieve the book from Murray if he could.

Moore took these words to heart – the Hollands were two of his most powerful patrons – and he was in the throes of buying back the memoirs from Murray by taking out a loan from his own publishers, Longman’s, when the news of Byron’s death reached London. From then on events moved inexorably towards the destruction of the memoirs. Byron’s wife and sister, fearful of scandal, abetted by Byron’s executor Hobhouse, jealous of Moore’s friendship with Byron, were insistent that they should be destroyed. Despite Moore’s agonized protests, the memoirs were burnt in the fireplace of Murray’s drawing room, and the luckless Moore, too proud and touchy to accept payment from the Byron family, was left with a debt of £2,000 to Murray.

Holland had always been sympathetic to Moore, and though concerned about the publication of the memoirs, would never have agreed to such an act of vandalism. ‘Sam Rogers & I suspect the Hollands do not like the share they suppose me ‌to have in the business,’¹⁵ wrote Hobhouse uneasily. Later, when Moore, in an attempt to retrieve his money, embarked on a biography of Byron, the Hollands were generous with their help, allowing him to use his letters to them, and filling in the background of his brief political career. (Hobhouse, by contrast, refused to let Moore see any of Byron’s letters to him.)

A piquant footnote to the story of Byron and the Hollands comes from the journal of Henry Fox, who eight months after Byron’s death embarked on a short-lived affair with Byron’s last love Teresa Guiccioli. ‘I was not prepared for the extreme facility of the conquest,’ he confessed, ‘which (such is the perverseness of one’s nature) scarcely gave me pleasure…’ Within a few weeks he had grown thoroughly disgusted: ‘With T.G. I had various quarrels and hysterics; she is jealous and exigeante and troublesome. Poor Ld. Byron! I do not wonder ‌at his going to Greece.’¹⁶