George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life | Page 8

Carlisle and
Crawford, the "petit Craufurt" of Mme. du Deffand; and chief of all
was Charles Fox, who to Selwyn was incomprehensible. Selwyn had
been his father's friend, and had known him from childhood. He loved
him and liked his companionship; yet his unrestrained folly at the
gambling-table and on the racecourse, his loose ideas on money matters,
and his political opinions, at times annoyed, irritated, and puzzled him

almost beyond endurance. With the older and the younger group
Selwyn was on the same terms of intimate friendship: now pleasing by
his wit, and now helping by his kindness and common sense.
Castle Howard was the place, outside London, which most attracted
him. It is even to-day a long way from the metropolis, and one feels
something like surprise that such a lover of the town as Selwyn could,
even to the end of his life, undertake the tiresome journey to Yorkshire.
But in the stately galleries of Vanbrugh's design he renewed his
associations with France. There he was not bored by country society; in
the home circle he had all the company he needed. He could look out
over the rolling uplands and see the distant wolds, contented to observe
and enjoy them from afar amidst the books and pictures which his host
had collected. If he wanted exercise the spacious gardens were at hand,
and the artificial adornment of temples and statuary pleased a taste
highly cultivated after the fashion of the times.
In a drawing-room Selwyn was as welcome as in a club, and he could
only be said to be out of place in his own country house, more
especially at the time of an election for Gloucester. The modern love of
landscape, of country life as an aesthetic pleasure, was unknown to him.
Civilisation, refinement, seemed to him to be confined to London and
Paris, to Bath or Tunbridge Wells. "Now sto per partire, and I ought in
point of discretion to set out to-morrow, but I dare say 'twill be Friday
evening before I'll have the courage to throw myself off the cart. But
then go I must; for on Monday our Assizes begin, and how long I shall
stay the Lord knows, but I hope in God not more than ten days at
farthest, for I find my aversion to that part of the world greater and
more insufferable every day of my life, and indeed have no wish to be
absent from home but to go to Castle Howard, which I hope that I shall
not delay many days after my return from Gloucestershire" (August,
1774). A week later he had arrived at his home. "The weather is very
fine, and Matson in as great beauty as a place can be in, but the beauties
of it make very little impression upon me; in short, there is nothing in
the eccentric situation in which I am now that can afford me the least
pleasure, and everything I love to see in the world is at a distance from
me" (August 9, 1774).

To-day such a man as Selwyn Would have had a choice collection of
water colours; he would be ashamed if he could not appreciate the tone
and tenderness of an English landscape. But though a friend of
Reynolds and of Romney, though he commissioned and appreciated
Gainsborough, and valued the masterpieces of the past, in a word, was
essentially a man of culture, yet this phase of modern refinement was
utterly unknown to him.
As a politician Selwyn, as has already been said, was a sinecurist; he
never took a political interest in affairs of state, and he looked at events
which have become historical from an unpolitical point of view. But
though he writes of parliamentary incidents as a spectator, there is
always in his letters a personal characterisation which gives them
vividness and life. For his long parliamentary career brought Selwyn
continually into contact with many varied personalities of several
political generations. When he entered the House of Commons Henry
Pelham was Prime Minister, and the elder Pitt had not yet formed that
coalition with the Duke of Newcastle which enabled him to command a
majority in the House of Commons and to be the greatest War Minister
of the century. When Selwyn died, still a Member of Parliament, the
younger Pitt was Prime Minister and the French Revolution had upset
that old regime which Selwyn had known so well. In his time Pelham,
Newcastle, Bute, Grenville, Chatham, Grafton, North, Rockingham,
Shelburne, and Portland were successively heads of administrations: of
some of these, and of many who served under them, Selwyn was a
friend. Of the political and personal life of every one of them he had
been an interested spectator. There was no man of the age who had