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1819: Don Juan, Westminster, and Peterloo

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1819: Don Juan, Westminster, and Peterloo 545 1819: Don Juan , Westminster, and Peterloo The publication of Don Juan I and II, the 1819 Westminster election, the Peterloo Massacre, and a Trifling Mistake December 2nd 1818-December 13th 1819 Edited from B.L.Add.Mss. 56540 The publication of the first two cantos of Don Juan coincides with the appearance of a comet in the skies of Europe. Hobhouse thinks he sees the comet; but would be surprised if told that it was a portent, and that the poem, the start of which he is seeing through the press with such “indifference – almost aversion”, would be seen nearly two centuries later as his friend’s greatest masterpiece, and as his main claim to poetic stature. Admittedly Hobhouse has many other things to worry about in 1819: his disintegrating relationship with the Holland House Whigs; his stormy literary and monetary relationship with Ugo Foscolo; and his political career, which is making progress, but in a two-steps-forward-one-back fashion the outcome of which no-one can foresee. He finds himself becoming very popular, and is cheered in public places. Amidst all this hurly-burly a mere poem can not be expected to make much impact. He almost recognises the quality of what is passing though his hands: on January 5th 1819 he writes to Byron asserting that he and Scrope Davies have just declared “that you were as superior in the burlesque as in the heroic to all competitors and even perhaps had found your real forte in this singular style” (BB 256). Two contrasting passages about politics in China (May 23rd), and politics in the U.S.A. (April 24th), show the internationalist breadth of Hobhouse’s interest. This section ends just after the Peterloo Massacre, which Hobhouse hears about while holidaying on the south coast. By the year’s end, he is in jail – see Newgate . Within a year, he is MP for Westminster. Wednesday December 2nd 1818: Foscolo called this morning and we had a long unpleasant discourse on his affairs. I refused a plan of his which was to make me advance more money, but said I would apply to Longman for him to buy his Dante. 1 [Ex .: The Examiner , Pickering and Chatto / Maruzen, 1998.] 546 1819: Don Juan , Westminster, and Peterloo I think Sir Robert Wilson 2 called this morning – Henry was present. He wanted me to write a letter to him – or somebody – expressive of my wish to conciliate the Whigs 3 – I refused this, but asked why the Whigs were not contented with my former discretion and present silence. I reminded him how the Whigs had used him – he declared himself very friendly and all that, but in a humbug way – he has refused to take the chair in the parish of St George’s, 4 and sent a most shuffling letter to the managing committee. He hinted to me that young Sam Whitbread 5 was much talked of by the Whigs – now I knew this nomination was next to impossible, and the more I think of it the more I believe Wilson to have thrown this out to terrify me, and keep me in order with the Whigs. If it be so, he is a shabby fellow, 6 and I was quite right in declining all correspondence with him at the last election – the application to him did not now come from me, but from the managing committee. S.B.Davies, Henry, and I dined with Douglas Kinnaird. I went home early and read a little, but am quite out of joint. Letter from Byron announcing two new poems coming for me, Don Juan and Mazeppa .7 Thursday December 3rd 1818: That morning there is a quarrel in the Covent Garden Committee over whether or not a petition by Baker Beaumont should be printed. Bickersteth 8 promises to speak to Place and sort it out. Place had said, 1: Foscolo had written a treatise on Dante, which Murray had refused. 2: General Sir Robert Wilson (1777-1849) soldier and Whig politician admired by B. He and H. had met in Berlin on 26 June 1813. He was a member with him of the Rota, a political club including Kinnaird and Burdett. M.P. for Southwark: dismissed from the army when he prevented the troops from firing on the mob at the funeral of Queen Caroline, he was later reinstated, and became a Tory, and Governor of Gibraltar. H. had known his sister, Mrs Bailly Wallis, very well during the Hundred Days. 3: As a prominent radical Whig, H. was on uneasy terms with the main body of the Whig Party. Wilson’s visit seems aimed at intimidating and / or neutralising him. 4: One of the districts of the constituency of Westminster, where H. had since 17 November been standing as a radical Whig candidate; the by-election was caused by the suicide of Sir Samuel Romilly (see Don Juan I stanza 15). 5: Son of Sir Samuel Whitbread, the brewer, politician and theatre-owner. He was not in fact nominated. The Hobhouse family had considerable holdings in Whitbread’s. 6: Perhaps an echo of Julius Caesar III ii 79: “If it were so, it was a grievous fault ...” 7: B. had actually told H. about Don Juan in September and November: BLJ VI 67-8 and 76. 8: Henry Bickersteth (1783-1851) Whig barrister, championed H. against Place’s favouring of Kinnaird. He was subsequently Baron Langdale, and the husband of Lady Oxford’s daughter Jane Harley (see entries for 24 June 1812 and 23 July 1812). 547 1819: Don Juan , Westminster, and Peterloo “By God, Mr Hobhouse, if Beaumont’s stuff passes we are ruined!” Hobhouse is in a characteristic dilemma: I cannot stir one way without displeasing the management committee, who are my zealous friends, nor can I move the other without identifying myself with all their violent hatred to the Whigs, which I do not, in fact, feel, and cannot confess without compromising myself with Tavistock, 9 and those to whom I have said that I will not begin with using hard words. He writes letters to Tavistock, Methuen, Sophy, and to Murray … … desiring him not to advertise my essay first as if the Illustrations were nothing. He dines with Kinnaird, and “like a fool, made a confidant of him about Foscolo”. Kinnaird “snatched up Byron’s letter and wanted to read it.” With or without Kinnaird, he goes to see “a play, Brutus , rifaccimento of Howard Payne, the American whom I knew at Paris – poor stuff indeed – tired to death. Went away from the Oxfords,” in whose box he seems to have sat. That night “old Jockey Nicholls”, formerly “a pensioner of Dodsley the bookseller’s” who had been “bought by Pitt for £40,000” says “some funny things” but is cumulatively “very tiresome indeed”. Friday December 4th 1818: In the morning Foscolo calls and says he is going to have to sell all his goods. “This,” comments Hobhouse, with characteristic absence of empathy, “I thought just”. He then calls on his brother Henry, who is “ill of the gravel” and cannot therefore sail to India on the morrow as he had intended: Poor fellow I fear I have occasionally used him unkindly – but his temper and manners are so different from those of a person with whom one can well agree: but he has an excellent friendly heart. He leaves his wife with a Mrs Fendall – where she may learn something. As he had promised Foscolo, he next goes to Paternoster Row and calls on 9: Francis Russell, Marquis of Tavistock, later Duke of Bedford, had been at Trinity a member of H.’s Whig Club. 548 1819: Don Juan , Westminster, and Peterloo Rees of Rees, Orme and Longman, but “he would not engage for Foscolo at all and told me the world was ‘sick of Dante’”. Hobhouse next speaks to Hanson, “about sending a man out with Byron’s books”. Then he takes a walk with Bickersteth to Covent Garden, where all is still “at sixes and sevens” over Baker Beaumont. There’s a rumour about that Hobhouse “will not accept of a single Whig vote”. He denies it: “I never ask whether a man is a Whig or not, any more than I ask what coat he wears”. He dines with Henry at the Parliament Coffee House, and goes in the evening to the Red Lion Committee in Princes Street, where “their canvas has been very successful”. That night he reads Paterculus: He concludes his discourse in favour of his country after praising the monster Tiberius as if he were the last patriot in Rome. This attachment to country is a commonplace in the mouth of every rogue and slave in our day – bed. Saturday December 5th 1818: Sir Robert Wilson calls again that morning, with evidence that Hobhouse is associated with “annual parliaments and universal suffrage – I told him I had not spoken on this subject”. Not, we notice, that he doesn’t believe in the two ideas. He never says even to his diary what, in practical constitutional terms, he does believe in. Wilson has been abused by Brougham for signing a letter to Tierney: “Wilson positively expressed himself to me as anything but a Whig” – presumably Wilson, the future Tory, harbours radical sympathies at this juncture. George Ticknor calls: … he told me that Lafayette read my Letters from Paris in his presence and was much pleased, but did not quite understand what I meant by calling him a “trimmer”. I did not know that I did call him so – but Ticknor explained it by saying “a man who conciliated all parties”.
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