The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope, vol 1 | Page 6

only money and time thrown away; & Isabella,
Frances and Maria learn to dance of one of the most celebrated Opera
dancers. Isabella learns a new instrument something like a guitar, called
a harp-lute. Marianne and Anne, having learnt French, German, Latin
and Italian, are now at a loss to find something left to know, and talk of
learning Russian. They will be dyed blue-stocking up to their very
chins.
Allowing for the exaggeration of a schoolboy, the letter throws an
interesting light on the standard of education aimed at by those who,
despite the imputation to the contrary, had no pretension to belong to
the recognised blue-stocking coteries of their day. And the father of
that busy, happy circle, in the seriousness of his own life and aims,
presented the same contrast to many of his contemporaries which was
reflected in his family.
Fourteen years senior to his wife, and at this date in his fifty-seventh
year, Walter Stanhope had been M.P. respectively for his different
constituencies since 1775. A keen politician, he was punctilious in his
attendance at the House.
Nevertheless, as shown in a former volume, although a man of ability
and of intense earnestness of purpose, his devotion to his political
labours never wholly counteracted a certain lethargy of temperament

which, throughout his life, limited achievement. Thus, although in his
youth undoubtedly gifted with a lively fancy, or with what his
generation termed sensibility, this very trait seems at variance with the
sum of his later career. True, that under stress of emotion he could rise
to heights of impassioned oratory which provoked by its very evidence
of latent power; but the tenor of his existence was scarcely in
accordance with these brief flashes of genius, and the fulfilment of his
prime belied its promise. The record of his life remains one which
commands respect rather than admiration. Level-headed, sober in
judgment and conduct, even while possessed of a wit which was rare
and a discernment at times profound, his days flowed on in an
undeviating adherence to duty which makes little appeal to the
imagination. As a churchman, as a parent, as a landowner, as a
politician he fulfilled each avocation with credit. As a man of the world
he could toy with but remain unmastered by the foibles of his age.
While a Fox and a Pitt rose to heights and sank to depths which
Stanhope never touched; while a Wilberforce was imbued with
religious fervour as with a permeating flame, Stanhope, to his
contemporaries, presented something of an anomaly. As in his early
years he had been a Macaroni who eschewed the exaggerations of his
sect, so throughout life he could gamble without being a gamester,
could drink without being a toper, be a politician without party acumen,
and a man of profoundly religious feelings devoid of fanaticism. But
since he who himself is swayed by the intensity of his convictions is he
who in turn sways his fellows, possibly the very restraint which saved
Stanhope from folly debarred him from fame. [13]
Meantime his generation was one of colossal exaggeration, both in
talent and in idiocy, in virtue and in vice. Men sinned like giants and as
giants atoned. Common sense, mediocrity--save upon the throne--were
rare. Even the fools in their folly were great. The spectacle was
recurrent of men who would smilingly stake a fortune as a wager, who
could for hours drench their drink-sodden brains in wine, then rise like
gods refreshed, and with an iron will throw off the stupor which bound
them, to wield a flood of eloquence that swayed senates and ruled the
fate of nations. Even the fops in their foppishness were of a magnitude
in harmony with their period. They could promote dandyism to a fine

art and win immortality by perfecting the rôle. Their affectation became
an adjunct of their greatness, their eccentricity an assumption of
supremacy; their very insolence was a right divine before which the
common herd bowed with a limitless tolerance.
In the world of London, as that celebrated gossip, Gronow, points out,
from generation to generation, certain men of fashion have come to the
fore amongst the less conspicuous mass of their fellows, and have been
defined by the general term of "men about town." The earlier
representatives of that race, the Macaronis of a former date, ere 1805
had been replaced by a clique of dandies whose pretensions to
recognition were based on a less worthy footing. For while those
previous votaries of fashion, although derided and caricatured
according to the humour of their day, were, none the less, valuable
patrons of art and literature, the exquisites of a later date could seldom
lay claim to such distinction. To dine, to dress, to exhibit sufficient
peculiarity in their habits and rudeness