~.;tvml\ len?> E V E L Y N WA U G H N E WS L E I , E R Vo 1uni~ 7, Number 2 Autumn, 1973 THE WICKED MARQUESS: DJSRAELI TO THACKERAY TO WAUGH By Donald Greene (University of Southern California) One can speculate in various ways about why one of the five ranks of the British Peerage; that of marquess, holds more glamor for writers and readers of fiction than the other four. For one thing, until the late eighteenth century it was rare. Young Frank Castlewood in Henry Esmond proclaims, supposedly in 1703, "There are but two marquises in all England, William Herbert Marquis of Powis, and Francis James "larquis of Esmond"; since the latter title was an empty one conferred by the exiled James II, and in any case a fiction of Thackeray's, there appears to have been only one. For another, it seemed an exotic import, as the persistence of the French spelling, "marquis," indicates, and carried with it strong overtones of French romance in which the elegant villain often bears that tit 1e. Although de Sa de's hereditary title was actually "Comte," his contemporaries (and their descendants) felt it more appropriate to his character to promote him, without authority, to "Marquis." The incredibly cruel Saint-Evremonde in Dickens's Tale of Two Cities is a marquis. It is perhaps also significant that of the 38 extant marquessates listed in Whitaker's Almanack for 1971, 24 were created during the fifty-odd years between 1784 and 1838; only five come from the two-and-a-half centuries between 1551 and 1784, and only nine from the century between 1838 and 1936. We know of course that this sudden rash of marquesses in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was part of the oolicy of the younger Pitt and his successors of diluting the power of the Whig "Venetian oligarchy" by flooding the peerage with Pittite creations (as Sir Walter Elliot complains). Still, it is pleasant to note that the half-century so prolific of marquesses was also the heyday of "Romanticism." The (real) marquess who contributed most to English fiction was Francis Charles Seymour-Conway (1777-1842), third Marquess of Hertford, Earl of Yarmouth, Viscount Beauchamp, etc., etc., the v1ealthy, fashionable, powerful, raffish intimate of the Prince qegent, later George IV. Lord Hertford figures, first, in Disraeli's Coninqsby (1844) as the t4arquess of Monmouth, and later in Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1847-48) as the r1arquess of Steyne.Z I should like to arque that he had a third avatar, in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, as the Marquess of Marchmain . :1e real-life prototypes of the F1ytes, ,'\archmain's family, were, according to Sir 0.enry ("Chips") Channen (1897-1958), the Lygons, the family of the Earls Beauchamp. In his diary for April 25, 1945, Channen recorded, "! am reading an advance copy of Evelyn v!a"sh'~ new novel 'Grideshead Revisited.' rt is obvious that the mise-en-scene is Hadresfield, and the hero Hugh Lygon. In fact, all the Beauchamp family figure in it . •l Whether Madresfield Court, near Malvern, Worcestershire, the seat of Lord Beauchamo, Jears any resemblance to the baroque architectural beauty of Brideshead Castle, I do not know. I have found no reference to it in the many works on the architecture of English country houses I have consulted; and of course it is not open to the public. The one notice of it I have so far come across is in a standard textbook on gardening, in a long list of English houses whose gardens are worth inspecting. In Waugh's sole mention of ~adresfield in A Little learning, he notes that there is a fountain in the garden on which •as inscribed ''That day is wasted on which one has not laughed," a motto which seems to ~im appropriate for his Arcadian Oxford days. The seventh Earl Beauchamp's eldest son and ·1eir, '~illiam Lyqon, Viscount Elmley (1903- ; later the eighth earl) was at Magdalen wh1le \olaugh was at Hertford; Wauqh describes him as "a solid, tolerant, highly respectable ,nan" (All, p. 179). Lord Brideshead? The second son, the Honourable Hugh Patrick Lygon, •<as at""""l'!"embroke, one of "the aristocratic refugees from the examination system, who had not even taken Responsions'' (o. 167). He and Waugh shared ''digs'' together in Merton Street _'-- .. for a term (as Charles Ryder was frustrated from doing with Sebastian Flyte); it was the i1 term before Waugh's final examinations, and proved disastrous for them. All that the standard reference works record of Hugh Lygon is that he was born in 1904 and died, un­ married, in 1936. Waugh describes him (p. 181): ''Always just missing the happiness he !I '( sought, without ambition, unhappy in love, a man of the greatest sweetness." Sebastian '· Flyte? A Little Learning briefly mentions that Waugh once visited Madresfield in the i' company of a sister, Lady Mary Lygon ("Mamie"); we have no other clue to Channen's assertion that ''all the Beauchamp family'' figure in Brideshead. Clearly the Flytes owe something to the Lyqons. But it is the rare novelist who can resist fictionalizing the characters for whom real-life acquaintanceships may have provided the original inspiration. There is surely another, at least equally important, element in the composition of the Flytes, especially the older generation. Elmley and Hugh Lygon's parents, after all, seem to have been as unlike Lord and Lady 1~archmain as possible. The highly active and respectable public career of the seventh Earl Beauchamp (lB72-1938} is recorded in the Dictionary of national Biography and similar places. "He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford," says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "and afterwards entered public life as a Liberal." Among the offices he held in that capacity, from his early twenties until his death, were those of Mayor of Worcester, member of the London School Board, Governor of New South Wales, First Commissioner of Works and Lord President of the Council in Asquith's cabinet, leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords, and finally Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. To be sure, the date of his death, 1938, coincides with Lord t1archmain's; but who can imaqine Lord Marchmain as leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords, or a member of the London School Board! Beauchamp's Countess, a Grosvenor, granddaughter of the first Duke of Westminster, an equally public-­ spirited Liberal peer, assisted him faithfully in his good works. Both families seem to have adhered staunchly to the Established Church; the Grosvenors indeed had a tradition of Low Church Evangelicalism. Lady Beauchamp's aunt, Lady Margaret Grosvenor, was the wife of Prince Adolphus, Duke of Teck, Queen Mary's brother, and an earlier Lady Mary Lygon was Queen ~1ary's lady-in-waiting and intimate friend.4 Readers of Brideshead will recall that the Flytes' Catholicism debarred Lady Julia from contemplating anal l1ance, through marriage to one of the young princes, with the royal family. Where then did Waugh find the Marchmains? Where else do we encounter a wealthy, urbane, arrogant, fashionable, pleasure-loving, agnostic marquess, who has married the intensely devout daughter of an old English aristocratic ''recusant'' (Roman Catholic) family; has oroduced two sons by her, of whom the elder, his heir, is on hostile terms with him, and the younger has turned out to be a weak failure; after amusing himself in various ways, finally settles down in Italy with a mistress; and whose death, in anything but a tranquil state of mind, is an important event in the story? The reader of Vanity Fair recognizes the pattern instantly. Cons10er: 1. "Lord c1archmain, well, a llttle fleshy perhaps, but very handsome, a magnifico, a voluptuary, Byronic, bored, infectiously slothful, not at all the sort of man you would expect to see easily put down" (Brideshead Revisited [Boston, 1945], p. 54). "Of a Star and Garter night Lord Steyne used also to out on his grandest manner, and to look and speak like a great prince, as he was. Becky admired him smiling sumptuously, easy. lofty. and stately. ~h. bon Dieu, v1hat a oleasant companion he was, what a brilliant wit, wnat a rich fund of talk, what a grand manner!' (Vanity Fair, Chap. LXIV]. "'Lord Steyne is really too bad,' Lady Slingstone said; 'but everybody goes'and of course r shall see that my qirls come to no harm.' 'His Lordship is a man to whom I owe much, everything in life,' said the Right Reverend Doctor Trail ... 'His morals are bad, said little Lord Southdown _ .. 'but, hang it all, he's got the best Sillery in Europe!'' (VF, Chap. XLVI I). - '"Why do you think he [Marchmain] will never go into Society?' 'I always thought people had turned against him.' 'My dear boy, you are very young. People turn against a handsome, wealthy man Hke ~lex? Never in your life"' (GR, p. 102). -3- "Besides his town palace [Gaunt House], the Marquis [of Steyne] had castles and palaces in various quarters of the three kingdoms" (VF, Chap. XLVII). Lord Marchmain, not quite so wealthy, has somewhat fewer--only Marchmain House in London, Brideshead Castle in the west country, and a palazzo in Venice. 2. "The f1archioness of Steyne was of the renowned and ancient family of the Caer­ lyons ... who have preserved the old faith . They continued to fiqht for it and ruin themselves for it as long as there was a Stuart left to head or to instigate a rebellion" (VF, Chap. XLVII). "The family history [of the Marchioness of Marchmain] was typical of the Catholic squires of England: from Elizabeth's reign to Victoria's they lived sequestered lives among their tenantry and kinsmen, sending their sons to school abroad; often marrying there--inter-marrying, if not, with a score.