A Letter Book / Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859)

There are very few examples in biography where the publication of letters has had a happier effect on the general idea of the writer than in Macaulay's case. It is not here a question of historical trustworthiness, or even of literary-style, in both which respects he has come in for severe strictures and sometimes for rather half-hearted defence. Nor do the letters display any purely literary gifts in him (except perhaps a playfulness of humour or at least wit) which do not appear in the History and the Essays. But, as the exception may perhaps partly indicate, they extend and improve the notion of his personality in the most remarkable fashion. Even those who did not quarrel with his views sometimes, before Sir George Trevelyan's book, disliked and regretted what have been called his "pistolling ways"—the positive, hectoring "hold-your-tongue" sort of tone which dominated his productions. With the very rarest exceptions, themselves sometimes of a revealing and excusable frankness, this tone is, if not quite absent[122] from, much seldomer present in, his letters. He jokes without difficulty; talks without in the least monopolising the conversation; shows himself often willing to live and let live; and is on the whole as different a person as possible from the Macaulay who is sure that "every schoolboy" knows better than the author he is reviewing, and who finds Johnson guilty of superstition and Swift of apostasy. "Happy thrice and more also" are those whose letters thus vindicate them. I have purposely chosen the following example (written to his sister) from the most mundane class. "Appointment" was to the Indian Council, which explains the "Cotton" and "Muslin" and other things. "Ellis" (Thomas Flower), a friend of Macaulay's from Cambridge days and his literary executor in part. "Lushington" (Stephen), a civilian lawyer of great eminence as a judge in Admiralty and ecclesiastical matters, but a rather violent politician. "Town"—Leeds. "Miss Berry" is annotated elsewhere. "Sir Stratford Canning," later Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, George Canning's cousin, and one of the most famous diplomatists of the nineteenth century, especially during his long tenure of the Embassy at Constantinople. Vivian Grey—Disraeli's first novel. "Lady Holland," the most famous hostess on the Whig side in the first half of the nineteenth century, but, by all accounts, a person now and then quite intolerable. "Allen" (John), an Edinburgh Reviewer, was familiarly called her "tame atheist" (All the company were of the Holland House "set"). "Bobus"—Robert Percy Smith, Sydney's elder brother, a great wit and scholar. "Cosher," an Irish word, is not always used in this sense of "chat."

41. To his Sister

London: November 1833.

Dear Hannah,

Things stand as they stood; except that the report of my appointment is every day spreading more widely; and that I am beset by advertising dealers begging leave to make up a hundred cotton shirts for me, and fifty muslin gowns for you, and by clerks out of place begging to be my secretaries. I am not in very high spirits to-day, as I have just received a letter from poor Ellis, to whom I had not communicated my intentions till yesterday. He writes so affectionately and so plaintively that he quite cuts me to the heart. There are few indeed from whom I shall part with so much pain; and he, poor fellow, says that, next to his wife, I am the person for whom he feels the most thorough attachment, and in whom he places the most unlimited confidence.

On the 11th of this month there is to be a dinner given to Lushington by the electors of the Tower Hamlets. He has persecuted me with importunities to attend and make a speech for him; and my father has joined in the request. It is enough, in these times, Heaven knows, for a man who represents, as I do, a town of a hundred and twenty thousand people to keep his own constituents in good humour; and the Spitalfields weavers and Whitechapel butchers are nothing to me. But, ever since I succeeded in what everybody allows to have been the most hazardous attempt of the kind ever made,—I mean in persuading an audience of manufacturers, all Whigs or Radicals, that the immediate alteration of the corn-laws was impossible,—I have been considered as a capital physician for desperate cases in politics. However, to return from that delightful theme, my own praises, Lushington, who is not very popular with the rabble of the Tower Hamlets, thinks that an oration from me would give him a lift. I could not refuse him directly, backed as he was by my father. I only said that I would attend if I were in London on the 11th, but I added that, situated as I was, I thought it very probable that I should be out of town.

I shall go to-night to Miss Berry's soirÉe. I do not know whether I told you that she resented my article on Horace Walpole so much that Sir Stratford Canning advised me not to go near her. She was Walpole's greatest favourite. His Reminiscences are addressed to her in terms of the most gallant eulogy. When he was dying at past eighty, he asked her to marry him, merely that he might make her a Countess and leave her his fortune. You know that in Vivian Grey she is called Miss Otranto. I always expected that my article would put her into a passion, and I was not mistaken; but she has come round again, and sent me a most pressing and kind invitation the other day.

I have been racketing lately, having dined twice with Rogers, and once with Grant. Lady Holland is in a most extraordinary state. She came to Rogers's, with Allen, in so bad a humour that we were all forced to rally, and make common cause against her. There was not a person at table to whom she was not rude; and none of us were inclined to submit. Rogers sneered; Sydney made merciless sport of her; Tom Moore looked excessively impertinent; Bobus put her down with simple straightforward rudeness; and I treated her with what I meant to be the coldest civility. Allen flew into a rage with us all, and especially with Sydney, whose guffaws, as the Scotch say, were indeed tremendous. When she and all the rest were gone, Rogers made Tom Moore and me sit down with him for half an hour, and we coshered over the events of the evening. Rogers said that he thought Allen's firing up in defence of his patroness the best thing that he has seen in him. No sooner had Tom and I got into the street than he broke forth: "That such an old stager as Rogers should talk such nonsense, and give Allen credit for attachment to anything but his dinner! Allen was bursting with envy to see us so free, while he was conscious of his own slavery."

Her Ladyship has been the better for this discipline. She has overwhelmed me ever since with attentions and invitations. I have at last found out the cause of her ill-humour, or at least of that portion of it of which I was the object. She is in a rage at my article on Walpole, but at what part of it I cannot tell. I know that she is very intimate with the Waldegraves, to whom the manuscripts belong, and for whose benefit the letters were published. But my review was surely not calculated to injure the sale of the book. Lord Holland told me, in an aside, that he quite agreed with me, but that we had better not discuss the subject.

A note; and, by my life, from my Lady Holland: "Dear Mr. Macaulay, pray wrap yourself very warm, and come to us on Wednesday." No, my good Lady. I am engaged on Wednesday to dine at the Albion Tavern with the Directors of the East India Company; now my servants; next week, I hope, to be my masters.

Ever yours,

T. B. M.

FOOTNOTES:

[122] Indeed it exemplifies Defoe's favourite proverb about "What is bred in the bone," etc.—as for instance when, while admitting Chesterfield's high position in some ways, he calls the Letters "for the most part trash." It is scarcely too much to call such criticism itself "trashy."

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