GEORGE SELWYN and HIS CONTEMPORARIES ; with Memoirs and NOTES (VOLUME 1)
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GEORGE SELWYN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES ; with memoirs and NOTES (VOLUME 1) BY JOHN HENEAGE JESSE GEORGE AUGUSTUS SELWYN. George Augustus Selwyn, descended from an ancient and distinguished family in Gloucestershire, was the second son of Col. John Selwyn, of Matson in that county, who in his youth had been aide-de-camp to the Duke of Marlborough, and subsequently figured as a person of considerable note in the social and political circles of the reigns of George the First and Second. The mother of George Selwyn was Mary, daughter of General Farrington, of the county of Kent, and woman of the bedchamber to Queen Caroline. Horace Walpole has recorded more than one lively anecdote of her vivacity and social humour ; and from her, therefore, we may presume that her son inherited those agreeable qualities, and that peculiar character of wit, which rendered him the delight of his contemporaries ; her death took place on the 6th of November, 1777, in her eighty-seventh year. In a small chapel, situated in the grounds at Matson, and containing the remains of several members of the Selwyn family, there is a monument to the memory of the father and mother of George Selwyn. Their epitaph describes them to have been "affectionate parents, kind to their dependents, charitable to the poor, and faithful and beloved servants to King George the Second and Queen Caroline." George Selwyn was born on the i ith of August, 1 719, and was educated at Eton, where, as far as can be presumed from a comparison of dates, he was the contemporary of Gray, the poet, and of Horace Walpole. On quitting Eton, he was entered at Hertford College, Oxford, whence, after a short residence, he proceeded to make the tour of Europe. About the year 1744, at the age of twenty-five, he again entered himself at Hertford College, but the following year was compelled to withdraw on account of being guilty of an irreverent jest, for which the university (viewing his conduct as an act of wanton blasphemy) thought fit to pronounce on him an edict of expulsion, notwithstanding the fact of his having previously withdrawn his name from their books. It is but justice, however, to Selwyn, to observe, that his conduct on this occasion was regarded by several of the dignitaries of the university rather as intended to ridicule the errors and mysteries of the religion of the Church of Rome, than as a deliberate insult to Christianity. The writer of the present memoir recently applied to the proper authorities at Oxford for permission to avail himself of the documents connected with Selwyn's dismissal. This request (from very proper motives, he believes) was refused. The reader, however, will find the particulars detailed at sufficient length in the course of the subsequent correspondence. 1 Previously to his becoming a second time a member of the university, George Selwyn appears to have been a member of the clubs of St. James's Street, and a friend of the wits. It may be mentioned also, that previously to his completing his twenty-first year, his father's influence obtained for him the appointments of clerk of the irons and surveyor of the meltings at the mint, to which offices he was nominated on the 1st of March, 1740. The duties attached to these responsible appointments were performed, as was then customary, by deputy ; and, on inquiry at the mint, it appears that the only occasions on which Selwyn personally discharged the duties of his offices were comprised in his attendance at the weekly dinners, which were formerly provided at the public expense for the officers connected with that department. In 1747 Selwyn obtained a seat in Parliament, and in June, 175 1, in consequence of the death of his elder brother, became heir to the family estates, to which he succeeded on the death of his father, in November following. The property which he then inherited comprised the family mansion of Matson, in the neighbourhood of Gloucester, and the estate adjoining ; a considerable landed property at Ludgershall ; and the power of returning a member to Parliament for that borough. His family connections enabled him, during a long course of years, to secure his own return for the city of Gloucester ; thus permitting him to nominate a member for Ludgershall at his will. The command of two votes in Parliament, and apparently the means which he possessed of influencing the return of a second representative for Gloucester, naturally rendered him a person of considerable political importance, — a circumstance which he afterward took good care to turn to his personal advantage. The character of Selwyn was in many respects a remarkable one. With brilliant wit, a quick perception of the ridiculous, and a thorough knowledge of the world and human nature, he united classical knowledge and a taste for the fine arts. To these qualities may be added others of a very contradictory nature. With a thorough enjoyment of the pleasures of society, an imperturbable good humour, a kind heart, and a passionate fondness for children, he united a morbid interest in the details of human suffering, and, more especially, a taste for witnessing criminal executions. Not only was he a constant frequenter of such scenes of horror, but all the details of crime, the private history of the criminal, his demeanour at his trial, in the dungeon, and on the scaffold, and the state of his feelings in the hour of death and degradation, were to Selwyn matters of the deepest and most extraordinary interest. Even the most frightful particulars relating to suicide and murder — the investigation of the disfigured corpse, the sight of an acquaintance lying in his shroud — seem to have afforded him a painful and unaccountable pleasure. When the first Lord Holland was on his deathbed, he was told that Selwyn, who had long lived on terms of the closest intimacy with him, had called to inquire after his health. " The next time Mr. Selwyn calls," he said, "show him up ; if I am alive I shall be delighted to see him, and if I am dead he will be glad to see me." And yet this was the same individual who delighted in the first words and in the sunny looks of childhood ; whose friendship seems to have partaken of all the softness of female affection; and whose heart was never hardened against the wretched and oppressed. To have been intimately acquainted with George Selwyn, and to have loved him, appear to have amounted to the same thing. The value, indeed, attached to the tenderness of his friendship, and the importance attached to his advice (by such men, moreover, as the Duke of Queensberry, Lord Holland, Lord Carlisle, and Gilly Williams, who were intimately acquainted with human nature, and had learnt to estimate human character in its proper light), will be found sufficiently exemplified throughout the present correspondence. But it was the interest which he took in children which constituted the most striking contradiction in his character. It will be seen, indeed, in the course of these volumes, that the offspring of Lord Coventry and Lord Carlisle (and, latterly, an engaging child for whom he conceived the deepest interest 1 ) were alternately objects of his more than parental anxiety and tenderness. It was, in fact, a singular anomaly, that the same person, who, a few hours before, had been gazing on some harrowing scene of mortality or human suffering, should presently afterward be found identifying himself with the sports and feelings of childhood, or contentedly passing his time in gossiping with an old nurse, and discussing with her the treatment and character of her infantine charge. It was scarcely less an anomaly that, after quitting the nursery or the playground, the same individual was to be found in the crowded rooms of White's or Brooks's convulsing a circle of admirers with the roars of laughter provoked by his wit, or, as was too often the case, indulging in the feverish excitement of the gaming-table. Respecting Selwyn's extraordinary taste for criminal executions, as well as for scenes of gloom and horror, some curious anecdotes have been related. Horace Walpole writes to Sir Horace Mann, 1st September, 1750 : " Old Peter Le Neve, the herald (who thought ridicule consisted in not being of an old family), made this epitaph, and it was a good one, for young Craggs, whose father had been a footman : ' Here lies the last, who died before the first of his family.' ' Pray mind how I string old stories to-day. This old Craggs, who was angry with Arthur More, who had worn a livery too, and who was getting into a coach with him, turned about and said, 'Why, Arthur, I am always going to get up behind, are not you ? ' 2 I told this story the other day to George Selwyn, whose passion is to see coffins, and corpses, and executions : he replied, that Arthur More had had his coffin chained to that of his mistress. ' Lord ! ' said I, ' how do you know ? ' « Why, I saw them the other day in a vault at St. Giles's.' He was walking this week in Westminster Abbey with Lord Abergavenny, and met the man who shows the tombs : ' Oh ! your servant, Mr. Selwyn ; I expected to have seen you here the other day, when the old Duke of Richmond's body was taken up.' Shall I tell you another story of George Selwyn before I tap the chapter of Richmond, which you see opens here very a propos ? With this strange and dismal turn, he has infinite fun and humour in him.