The Press. — London, England, 1857-08-08 00:00:00

776 fittraturt. e t I '. t . A Portion of the Journal kept by Thomas Raikes, Esq. Vols. 111. and IV. London : Longmans. THESE concluding volumes of Mr. Raikes's diary are much better than their predecessors. Their matter is more valuable and solid, and, being nearer to our own times (1831 to 1847), their anecdotes have not been anticipated. We get in them some near glimpses of the Duke of Wellington. and authentic details of his daily life at Walmer, and elsewhere. Some peeps at Court life are also given us, and Mr. Charles Greville's letters are repeatedly drawn upon for illustrative gossip. There are many portions of this diary which well deserve the historian's notice, and the two volumes are readable, various, and entertaining. Wo feel ourselves scarcely called upon to estimate their critical value. Mr. Raikes was not a man of depth or originality ; he was a sensible, conventional sort of person, and was much of a proser. He lived in the best society, and he was in the great world, if not of it. Much of his tattle was ponderous ; none of his reflections are profound : his style is essentially commonplace. The fact of an Eng lish gentleman of his connections and position choosing to keep a diary, with a view to publica tion, gives his ana a Boswellian kind of in terest. For ourselves we do not think it fair in any man to keep a diary of what he hears and sees, in order that his executors may pub lish it before he is cold in the tomb. Would any of our readers like that a literary reporter should be admitted to their tables, and, after enjoying their hospitality, would they be pleased at being told that before he went to bed he jotted down what he heard and saw? We think that the practice is not an honour able ono. It was introduced on a great scale by the Americana, and we all cried out against its impertinence and vulgarity. The literary profession, we believe, hold a strong opinion on the gross impropriety of Thomas Moore putting down in black and white the conversa tions that he heard. We do not think that the memory of Mr. Raikes should in this respect be allowed to pass free from censure. Dirties of the kind before us ought not to be published for many years, if at all ; and their writers would do better if their matter had been used in a narrative form, and given to the world during their lives. " I trust," says Mr. Raikes, " that if this " journal should ever meet the public eye, it " may be allowed to have more claim to veracity " than Wraxall's Memoirs " We concede that claim ; but Mr. Raikes had not even as much literary talent as Wraxall. He cannot pro. duce pictures, or mass details together effec tively. His style is curt, and his omissions, on points where we might expect full informa tion, are numerous. His circle was limited, though a high one, and his coil espondents were not facile at the pen. He has not the least pretensions to Walpolian laurels. He was a gossip about our own times, and we must take him as he was. We shall proceed to select a few charac teristic passages from these volumes, which are certainly most readable We shall com mence with the Court. Under date of Feb ruary, 1838, Mr. Raikes records (he was then living at Paris),—" All accounts from England " corroborate each other as to the extraordi " nary firmness and decision of character " shown by the youne. Queen, and testify to the singular command she must have exer " eised until she came of age " (vol. iii. p. 241) Af.er describing how firmly her Majesty adhered to the Whigs, the diarist then pro ceeds to narrate how Sir R. Peel began to have influence over her am glad to learn from the beat authority that Sir R. Peel begins to feel that he is gradually gaining influence with the Queen; and her manner is certainly become far more gracious towards him than could have been expected from the untoward circumstances under which he has been presented to her notice. lie describes her as endowed with considerable abilities, and not only in a wonderful manner become conversant with Stare affairs, but also as taking an all-absorbing interest in them. When a mes senger's box is brought down to Wind :or, her countenance, which is naturally serious, brightens up immediately She reads all the despatches, makes her ex:n=las, and t, THE PRESS, AUGUST 8,1857. really so much engrossed by this one idea, that she never enters into the light gossiping conversation to which young women are generally addicted. Peel, who at the first felt na.urally rather embarrassed with his young mistress, is now become more at his ease with her; and he has so much talent and tact that he soon finds a clue to her good opinion. He gained much ground with her by the adroit manner in which he offered to Prince Albert the presidency of a new Society of Arts. He took care first in a deferential manner to consult her Majesty's wishes on the subject, stating that the choice would be popular in the country; and she immediately embraced the idea with great eagerness. She ordered the young Princess to be brought down to him, and treated him with great affability. On a later occasion, when he and Lady Peel were invited to stay a few days at Windsor, her Majesty, in the course of conversation, asked him what was the reason of his great hostility to the system of her late Government. He immediately took advantage of this to enter into a detail of the revolutionary tendency of all their measures, and the bad spirit which they had so wantonly excited in the country,--a spirit which was rapidly threatening the ruin of the monarchy, as well as that of the country. He said that crowned heads should not only think of what was agreeable to their own feelings, but also what was con ducive to the welfare of their posterity. It was in itself a contradiction that sovereigns should be democrats, or encourage those principles in their dominions. That in another month her Majesty might probably give birth to a son, to whom it must be the object of her anxiety to leave her crown as a sure and peaceful inheritance ; and how could that be accomplished by following the system of concession and revolution, into which she had been gradually led under the false hope of obtaining a short lived and uncertain popularity, at the expense of under mining the great props of the Constitution in Church and State ? As Peel has great eloquence and fluency, it may be supposed that these arguments could not fail to have a certain weight. The " all-absorbing interest" in affairs of State might be partly attributable, in addition to her Majesty's high conscientiousness, to the novelty of her position. The speech of Peel put into his mouth by Mr. Raikes is not like what Sir Robert would have said. He would have alluded to the finances, to the deficits caused by the Whigs, and in his adroit way he would have suggested what horrors had been caused in the French Revolution by the state of the French finances. His unrivalled knowledge of money matters, and his com plete acquaintance with public business, Ivey() amongst the means by which Sir R. Peel obtained his influence with the Queen. But the Queen exercised a vast influence in return over Sir R. Peel. Here are some Court anecdotes, resting on the authority of the Duke of Wellington ; the date is September, 1843: This morning at breakfast the Duke said to me, " Did you hear what happened at the wedding ?" meaning that of the Princess ♦ugusta of Cambridge. Replying in the negative, he continued, " When we proceeded to the sig- natures, the King of Hanover was very anxious to sign before Prince Albert, and when the Queen approached the table, he placed himself by her side, watching his oppor- tunity. Sh• knew very well what he was about, and just as the Archbishop was giving her the pen, she suddenly dodged round the table, placed herself next to the Prince, then quickly took the pen from the Archbishop, signed, and gave it to Prince Albert, who also signed next, before it couli be prevented. " The Queen was also very anxious to give the prece dence at Court to King Leopold before the King of Hanover, and she consulted Too about it, and how it should be arranged. I told her Majesty that 1 supposed it should be settled as we did at the Congress of Vienna. ' How was that,' said she, 'by first arrival?' No Ma'am,' sail I,' alphabetically, and then, you know, B. comes before H.' Thie pleased her very much, and it was done." The best parts of the diary are those relating to the Duke of Wellington. In an article in the current number of the New Quarterly Review, entitled " Reaction against Peel," there are some originttl anecdotes, which appear to be confirmed by passages in this diary. The life of the Duke at Waltner Castle is thus de scribed (date 1842) : As every memorial will be interesting hereafter of the habits and characteristics of one whose name will fill the pages of history, I shall add a few details of the Duke's daily life at Walmer. He always ri,.es at six o'clock, and walks on the platform, then returns to his room to dress, which, as I have said, takes a very long time. He is re markably neat in big appearance, always wearing a white waistcoat and trousers, under which is a good guard of fleecy hosiery against the cold ; and a blue riding-coat in the morning. At ten o'clock he appears at breakfast ; he seems to eat heartily, and makes mesies of rusks and bread in his tea, never meat or eggs. He converses the whole time, then retires, saying, " Well, we shall dine at seven." He remains in his room, writing letters and despatches, and making notes, some rather droll and concise, on the difr•rent letters to be answered by his secretary in his name ; and Greville's hand is become so like to his, that ew people can distinguish the difference. Greville showed me one from Fitzroy Somerset, with details about Ireland. His note on the margin was, " If i au► to manage the affairs of Ireland, I had better gu there myself." About two o'clock, he generally gets on his horse, and gallops over the downs, or, perhaps, to Dover, where he is very active in attending to his business as Warden of the Cinque Ports. He seems to be worshipped all over the country, for he is very charitable and always ready to do good to his neighbours. In a shop at Dover is to be seen, framed and glazed, a short note, which he once wrote to the owner, ordering fifty yards of flannel; it is kept as a precious relic. On his return lie walks again on the platform, till he enters to dress for dinner, at which he also eats with appetite, mixing meat, rice, and vegetables into a mess, which fills his plate; he drinks very little wine, and during the evening two decanters of iced water are placed by his side, which are generally empty when he goes to bed. When we were only men, he dressed in boots, but when there are ladies (and when only my daughter) always wears shoes, silk stockings, with his star and the garter. He is exceedingly polite to all, and particularly attentive to women ; he is la rieille tour personnifiee. Although still active, yet age has made some havoc with his frames; his hair is quite white, but not scanty ; ho is very deaf with the left ear, and when left to himself, or engaged in thought, he stoops very much, and his head seems to droop on his breast; but the instant any subject is started that interests him, his eye brightens, his head is raised, he puts his hand to his right ear to catch the sound, and enters into the argument with all the spirit, and judgment, and penetration, which form so striking a part of his character. The Duke had naturally an excitable nervous system (like all the \Vellesleys), but " he was " a man of too martial a temperament easily to " give way to emotion " in public. But only gross ignorance ever supposed that he was hard, inflexible, or impassive. Mr. Raikes truly says : Arbuthnot is his fidas Achates, his second self, from whom he seems to have no secret hid. I observe that at breakfast he shows him almost all his letters, and his character is so mild and so placid, that it blends admirably with that of the Duke, who, with all his fine qualities, when worried and vexed by his multifarious business, is subject at times to momentary fits of anger and excite• ment. These bursts never last long, and when the bile is once vomited out, he is cool and dispassionate again. Algy says, that this bile is sometimes visited upon Arbuthnot himself, from whom it glides off innocuous, and who often makes a very convenient paratonnerre for others. All the ana about the Duke of Wellington in these volumes are of much interest. The editor has suppressed nearly everything about the late Marquis of Hertford, though Mr. Raikes wrote much about him. Louis Philippe is the celebrity about whom Mr. Raikes has written most, and his picture of that dethroned monarch is highly unfavourable; and M. Guizot, also, is made to figure in unflattering colours in these volumes. There are several most characteristic anec• dotes scattered through these pages. The following is capital; it is under dato of 1836 : Lord Fitzgerald made us laugh at dinner to-day with a story about C , whose pertinacity of opinion is well known : he was laying down the law after dinner to the Duke of Wellington, and according to custom asserting the superiority of his own information on all subjects, having even flatly contradicted the Duke, who had men tioned some incident that took place at the battle of Waterloo• At last the conversatio❑ turned upon the use of percussion caps for the muskets of the army, when C again maintained a directly opposite opinion to that which was urged by the Duke, who at last good humouredly said to him, " My dear C , I can yield to your superior information on most points, and you may perhaps know a great deal more of what passed at Wa:erloo than myself, but, as a sportsman, I will maintain my point about the percussion caps." .0 's view of politics has now for some years been of the moat gloomy cast, and so far does his wish for infallibility supersede his patriotism, that he absolutely seems to rejoice at any par tial fulfilment of his prophecies, though it may thwart his own views and that of his party. Fitzgerald once said to Lord Wellesley at the castle, " I have had a very melan choly letter from C this morning." "Ay!" said Lord Wellesley, "written, I suppose, in a strain of the most sanguine despondency." Elsewhere, under date of 1838, we read : There is only one voice about -'s conduct in bringing out his article in the Quarterly Review about Soult and the battle of Tculouse at this moment, in de fiance of the Duke's wishes, and his impertinent rejection of the flake's earnest request to him by letter not to do it; and this after getting from the Duke an account of the battle, which they say he has likewise altered. Much of the marked reception given to the Marshal in London may be traced to a wish of palliating this inhos pitable tirade. The publication of that article was a flagrant literary scandal, and damaged even the con nection to which the writer belonged. Sir William Napier wrote a trenchant letter on the subject at the time. The following story of Grisi at Walmer Castle 'is amusing The Duke gave an enter tainment to the late Duke and Duchess of Cambridge :