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‌A Surrogate Son

HENRY Fox’s refusal to follow family tradition by entering Whig politics was a grave disappointment to his parents. For Holland it was a betrayal of all that the Foxes had stood for. ‘I must say,’ he wrote to Henry in 1820, ‘it ill becomes one of our name who have derived so much of our consideration and our existence in the world from such connexions to speak of them as not worth having… We Foxes owe as much to party ‌as party owes to us.’¹

By 1824 it seemed that the case was hopeless. ‘I do not think he will do anything in public,’ wrote Lord John Russell to Lady Holland. ‘He has not any feeling for it ‌and still less Whig feelings.’² Stubbornly Holland persisted, and at the end of 1825, without telling Henry, he accepted the offer of a vacant seat for him at Horsham, made by the Duke of Norfolk. Henry arrived in Paris the following March to find that he was an MP despite himself. But the arrangement made him so unhappy that after nine months of toing and froing, he wrote to the Duke of Norfolk resigning his seat, without ever having taken the necessary oath.

A career in diplomacy was the second-best choice as far as Henry’s parents were concerned, but Henry was in no hurry to take up an official post, and spent the next couple of years abroad, falling in and out of love, even briefly getting engaged, but showing no signs of settling down. It was not a satisfactory state of affairs and the fact that both the Hollands’ sons seemed to prefer living abroad to taking their place in English society was perhaps a reflection on their relationship with their parents.

Fortunately an ideal replacement was at hand. Ever since he had travelled with the Hollands in Spain and Portugal in 1808 and 1809, Lord John Russell had been almost a member of the family, beloved by parents and children alike. The third son of the Duke of Bedford, he had been born into the Whig tradition, and his politics were coloured from the first by a feeling for the underdog. He was barely 14 when he wrote in his diary, ‘What a pity that a man who steals a penny loaf should be hung, whilst he who steals thousands of the ‌public money should be acquitted.’³ Having entered the House of Commons in 1813, a few weeks before he came of age, he made his first major speech when he opposed the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in 1817. But his chief aim in politics was the achievement of parliamentary reform, and from 1820 onwards he devoted his energies to pressing for it in the House of Commons, where he was regarded as the leader of the reforming wing among the Whigs. His father had been a member of the Society of the Friends of the People nearly 30 years earlier, and he was acting, he felt, in a spirit which would have won the approval of his hero, Charles James Fox.

For the Hollands he was like a surrogate son, and his freedom of speech with Lady Holland, over 20 years his senior, must have been the wonder of more timid guests at Holland House. Here he is, for instance, reproving her for spreading despondency among the Whigs, and setting out his terms for peace:

1. Lady Holland shall be allowed to prefer vacillating, shabby and adverse politicians if agreeable, to dull, thick and thin voters. Granted.

2. Lady H. shall be permitted to take no part in discussions of Currency, Taxation and Law of Nations. Answer. Granted.

3. Lady H. shall be entitled to prefer persons who sell their talents for a sum of money to all other politicians whatsoever. Answer. Refused.

4. Lady H. shall be at liberty to impute the worst motives of malignity and selfishness to all persons who support Ld. Holland’s politics. Answer. Refused.

5. Lady H. shall be at liberty to stop political conversation when it becomes tiresome.

Answer. This question shall be referred to Commissioners – John Allen on one side and Lady Cowper [William Lamb’s sister Emily] on the other.

‘So ‌much for nonsense,’ he concludes.⁴

The mid 1820s were difficult years for the politics of Holland House and of the Whigs in general. To some extent this was because the liberal Tories were pursuing many of the same aims, and rather than maintaining a united front the party split as different members supported one policy or another in the House of Commons. There was no question of the Whigs allying themselves to the liberal Tories; Grey and Canning detested one another, while the king, whose hatred of the Whigs had become almost obsessional, declared he would rather have the Devil than the Whigs in the administration. But opposition lost much of its sting in this atmosphere, and though Liverpool kept an uneasy balance between the two sides, there was more division between the ‘Ultra’-Tories, opposed to Catholic Emancipation, and those like Canning who supported it, than there was between the liberal Tories and the Whigs. On this, above all other issues, the king remained a force to be reckoned with. And despite the growing agitation for the measure in Ireland, he continued to block all Cabinet discussion of the subject. It was as if he hoped that by doing nothing the whole problem would go away.

For the Foxite Whigs opposition to the Crown was nothing new. But public opinion was now flowing with them, and even though the king could drive his ministers to distraction, he was not as powerful as his father and, except where Catholic Emancipation was concerned, could be overawed by talk of popular protest. Canning’s aim, in Holland’s view, was to conciliate both the Whigs and public opinion and though the Whigs parted company with him on the question of parliamentary reform – to which, remembering the horrors of the French Revolution, Canning was strongly opposed – they broadly supported him on foreign policy.

With the Irish question in abeyance, the Whigs’ main interest at this time was in the affairs of Spain, a subject specially dear to Holland’s heart. The return of the exiled king Ferdinand VII at the end of the Peninsular War had put paid to the liberal constitution established there in 1812, and a period of extreme reaction had followed. In 1820, a military uprising leading to revolution forced Ferdinand to restore the constitution of 1812. But the quarrels between different factions, and the growing disorder in the country, gave the king the excuse to call for foreign intervention, and in April 1823 the French army, backed by the Holy Alliance, marched into Spain. Grey had assumed a warlike stance at the news that invasion was threatened: the Holy Alliance, he wrote to Holland in January, should be warned that Britain was the ally of Spain, and that any outside interference would be resisted. However, he did not come to London to press his case, and though Holland and Brougham agreed with taking a strong line the rest of the party was divided. ‘As a result,’ wrote Lord John Russell, ‘we do nothing but abuse one another – the violent laugh at the moderate and the moderate ‌look grave at the violent.’⁵

Canning cut through these doubts and indecisions by pursuing a policy of strict neutrality. He refused to admit that Britain had a moral obligation to support the Holy Alliance; he also refused to help the Spanish liberals when the king was restored to power by the French army in October 1823. But French ambitions could only be allowed to go so far, and in 1825 Canning took the initiative in recognizing the independence of the rebellious Spanish colonies in South America. ‘I resolved,’ he declared in the most famous of his speeches, ‘that if France had Spain, it should not be Spain “with the Indies”. I called the New World into existence to redress ‌the balance of the Old.’⁶

The Whigs could not realistically criticize the government’s policy over France’s invasion of Spain, for as Holland pointed out to Grey, ‘this must practically imply a censure on ministers for not making war or an exhortation now to make it, and public opinion would certainly not support, perhaps the case could hardly ‌bear, either of these measures.’⁷ But at least they could claim a share of the credit for recognizing the independence of the Spanish colonies, a measure first suggested by Lansdowne in the House of Lords nine months earlier, and Canning’s speech on the subject in the House of Commons was greeted with cheers from the opposition side.

For the Hollands the immediate result of Ferdinand’s reinstatement was an influx of Spanish refugees to Holland House. Lady Holland was in two minds about receiving them. She still had lingering hopes of being received at court, and she knew that the king would always support a fellow monarch. ‘Would you believe it,’ wrote Creevey to his step-daughter,

Lady H. wd. not let Holland dine with Lord Lansdowne last week – a dinner made purposely for Mina [a liberal Spanish general and hero of the Peninsular War], merely because she thought it might not please the King if he heard about it. Nor will she let Mina or any Spaniard approach Holland House for the same reason. Was ‌there ever such a ——?⁸

But Holland, easy-going on most matters, was not going to let his wife direct him where his political beliefs were concerned, and she was quickly made to change her tune. Mina and the radical politician Don Agustin Argüelles were guests of honour at a banquet at Holland House in March 1824, and, together with other leading Spanish liberals, were frequent visitors thereafter. Two years later, the Duke of Wellington, now reconciled with Holland after the misunderstanding over Ney, agreed to dine at Holland House to meet another distinguished Spanish liberal, General Álava, who had served under him in Spain.

As well as welcoming exiled Spanish liberals, Holland did his best, with influence and money, to mitigate penalties for those trapped in Spain, where Ferdinand had instituted a savage programme of reprisals, and to see that their families were provided for. This was despite the financial problems which the Hollands were still experiencing. Their West Indian properties were running at a loss, they had been forced to borrow from Caroline Fox and Lady Affleck in order to buy their son Charles’s commission as a major, and were contemplating letting Ampthill. From 1823 they had begun letting or selling off outlying areas of the Holland House estate for building; the first houses to go up were on the west side of the park, on what is now Addison Road.

Whether in the interests of economy or because there was little to be done in politics, the Hollands set out for an extended stay in Paris in September 1825. They travelled by steamboat for the first time, with Mary, Allen, Lady Affleck and a retinue of 21 people. Lady Granville, whose husband had been appointed ambassador in Paris the previous year, kept a sharp eye on their doings. ‘The Hollands have a good apartment and an excellent cook,’ she wrote to her sister, Lady Carlisle.

She [Lady Holland] is very well and to me all smiles, but to her alentours rather more in the termagant line than common. To the awestruck world who frequent her house (the most strict, undivorced and ultra-duchesses now go there), she appears encompassed by solemnity and a state of fan and elbow chair and shaded light which make them suppose themselves in the presence ‌of Maria Theresa at least.⁹

One unexpected bonus of the Hollands’ visit, according to Lady Granville, was Mary’s success in Parisian society. ‘Dearest, what an odd thing life is and how it ups and downs, and ebbs and flows, rises and sinks, for human beings in general and Mary Fox in particular,’ she told her sister.

You know in England she has short legs, looks a little gummy, is taken out as a good work, and Lansdowne and you find her rather a heavy shuttlecock… Here she is a Venus – she is ‘la plus belle, la plus magnifique, la plus piquante, l’esprit brille dans ses yeux, son âme se voit dans sa charmante figure’… In short she is a sort ‌of sky rocket in Paris.¹⁰

For the first time Lady Holland began to regard Mary as a social asset, no longer to be banished behind the scenes when there were important dinners. But there were no signs of an acceptable suitor coming forward. ‘Mary has the ill luck of always captivating royalties, which is rather troublesome leading to nothing but talk,’ her mother complained to Henry. And, a little later, ‘Mary has been a great expense. I wish she had an admirer… You must try not to set her against people, as she is getting on, no longer ‌the youngest among the belles.’¹¹ It is pleasing to relate that Mary found an ideal husband, Lord Lilford, with no help from her mother, five years later.

Both the Hollands had bouts of ill health during their stay in Paris. Lady Holland suffered from arthritis and was sometimes so lame that she had to use a wheelchair; Holland had frequent attacks of gout. But they managed to enjoy a busy social life, Holland seeing much of the Duke of Orléans (later Louis Philippe I), with whom he had long political discussions. Her husband was received ‘quite dans l’intérieur en famille with the Duke of Orléans’, ‌Lady Holland told Allen proudly.¹²

Belonging to the junior branch of the Bourbons (his father Philippe Égalité had signed the death warrant of Louis XVI, and had himself been executed a year later), Orléans had returned to Paris and the goodwill of his elder cousins in 1815, after a picaresque career in exile including four years in the United States. He had learnt to tread delicately in politics, but his sympathies were far more with the constitutional monarchy enjoyed in Britain than with the ultra-royalist views of Charles X, who had inherited the throne, but none of his moderation, from his elder brother Louis XVIII the previous year. Obstinately insisting on his divine right to rule, Charles had had himself crowned with medieval ceremony, passed laws condemning sacrilege and increased the privileges of the Church and aristocracy. In 1825, with a royalist majority in the Chamber of Deputies, his throne still seemed secure. But a revolution was preparing in the shadows, though neither Holland nor Orléans himself were yet aware of it.

Well received in French society, particularly by those of liberal views, the Hollands were also visited by their English friends. Rogers and Luttrell, the old ‘affidés’ (‘accomplices’), as Lady Granville called them, joined them in Paris, as did Sydney Smith on his first visit to France. Thanks to introductions from the Hollands he enjoyed a busy social life, attending a ball at the British embassy, mixing with a ‘profusion of French duchesses’ and frequently dining with the Hollands at their apartment in the Rue de la Grange-Batelière. On one of these occasions, he told his wife,

there was at the table Barras, the ex-Director, in whose countenance I immediately discovered all the signs of cruelty which distinguished his conduct. I found out at the end of dinner, that it was not Barras, but M. de Barante, an historian and man of letters, who, I believe, never killed ‌anything greater than a flea.¹³

The Hollands spent nine months in Paris, returning to Holland House in June 1826. Little had changed during their absence. The Tory government was still divided, the liberals, led by Canning, far closer to the Whigs than to their hardline colleagues. ‘We are certainly to all intents and purposes a ‌branch of His Majesty’s Government,’¹⁴ Tierney had reported to Holland three months earlier. ‘Its proceedings for some time past have proved that, though the gentlemen opposite are in office, we are in power. The measures are ours, but all the emoluments are theirs.’

The old party system was falling apart though the likelihood of a new one, with Tory and Whig liberals lined up against the Tory diehards, was remote. As long as Liverpool held the two sides of the party together, there was no chance of a formal accommodation with the Whigs, nor was Grey in favour of such an arrangement. But in February 1827, Liverpool suffered a massive stroke, which left him, in the words of the Times, ‘if not actually, at least politically dead’, and with his departure from the scene, a whole new set of possibilities opened up.