George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life | Page 5

the eighteenth century it was a pocket borough, returning two Members to Parliament, and was the property of the Selwyn family. The representation was as much in their hands as the trees in the adjoining fields. In 1747 George Selwyn had found it convenient to enter the House of Commons. In Ludgershall there were no constituents to take him to task; to be able to go to Westminster when he wished added to the variety of life. It kept him in touch with the politicians and statesmen of St. James's Street, and it made him a marketable quantity--his price was another sinecure, the place of Paymaster of the Works. But this he did not receive until he had inherited the family property, which gave him a hold on the city of Gloucester. For this city he was a Member from 1754 to 1780, when, losing his seat at the general election, he gladly returned to his former constituency. The seat at Ludgershall was never in the nature of a true political representation, and even when Member for Gloucester Selwyn seems to have attended but little to the House of Commons. He was one of a legion of sinecures--a true specimen of the place-man of the age. Possessed of some political influence, he was able to find in politics a means of increasing his income. It would be absurd to censure him because he was a sinecurist; he was acting according to the customs of the time. The man who in the reign of George III. had the opportunity of obtaining posts which carried with them salaries and no duties would have been regarded as Quixotic if he had thrown such opportunities away. In this Selwyn is thoroughly representative of his time, and his frequent anxiety lest he should be deprived of his offices is indicative of an apprehension which was felt by many others.
Yet, sinecurist as he was, Selwyn often regarded his position as a hard necessity, especially when he was driven into the country to look after his constituents. He would then heartily wish himself out of Parliament: the sorrows of a sinecurist might well be the title of some of the letters written from Matson.
Selwyn's was a life devoid of stirring incidents, and from the date at which his correspondence with Lord Carlisle begins the course of his days is indicated in his letters. It is sufficient, therefore, to state that he died at his house in Cleveland Row, St. James's, on the 25th of January, 1791, still a Member of Parliament, in the place where his life had been passed and among his innumerable friends.
In one sense his life had been solitary, for he was never married; but an unusual love for the young which was a charming and remarkable characteristic, singularly opposed to many of his habits, had been centred on the child whom he called Mie Mie,* the daughter of an Italian lady, the Marchesa Fagniani, who was for some time in England with her husband. The origin of Selwyn's interest in the child is obscure, but the story of his affection is striking and unusual.
From a letter written by the Marchesa Fagniani to Selwyn in 1772 it is evident that Mie Mie, then about a year old, had been with him for some months, and in 1774 Lord Carlisle congratulates him upon the certainty of the child's remaining with him. The first mention of her in these letters occurs under date of July 23, 1774, where we have a picture of Selwyn, drawn by himself. He is sitting on his steps, the pretty, foreign-looking child in his arms, pleased at the attention she attracts. When she was four she was taken to pay visits with him; but it is difficult at this time to know if he or the Earl of March had charge of her.
* Maria Fagniani (1771-1856). She was married in 1792, the year after Selwyn's death, to the Earl of Yarmouth, afterwards third Marquis of Hertford. She led a life of pleasure (1802-7), travelling on the continent with the Marshal Androche. She had three children, and died at Rue Tailbout, Paris.
Such interest in a young child naturally occasioned remark in London society, and the question of her paternity has never been clearly settled; in the gossip of the time both the Duke of Queensberry and Selwyn were said to be her father. The characters of the two men, however, and various points in their correspondence, seem to fix this relation upon the Duke of Queensberry. Selwyn's interest was that of a man who though without children had a strong and unusual affection for the young. He looked forward to the pleasure her development and education would be to him, and to the solace of her companionship in old age. She enlisted