Timeless Record LYTTON STRACHEY said of Charles Greville that, having
once tasted the delicious fruit of the tree of political knowledge, he found he could eat nothing else. This might have been said of Mis: Arbuthnot, who deesibes Greville as " the most unprincipled repro- bate in the Kingdot ." She thought, and so did Wellington. that he had been the writer of an anonymous postcard she received suggesting that she was in love with the Duke. Mrs. Arbuthnot died of cholera itr1834, aged forty. During her life she was well known for her discretion, so that the extreme outspokenness of her Journal is une*pected and delightful. She was, as the present Duke says, the perfect mirror of her times and of the-society M which she lived • she-was obserVant, but lacking in originality or imagination. The mirror she bolds up is less distorting than Greville's, less fogged and. spotted than Creevey's. It would be hard to speak too highly of the fascination of her Journal. Mrs. Arbuthnot was twenty-six/ears younger than her husband, but the centre ideally happy- averyui very All liked. They nfloved at the centre Of the Tory would. The Rt. Hon. Charles.Arbuthnot, M.P., had been Anibassador at Constantinople, and when the Journal opens he was Joint Secretary at the Treasury and reaponsible for the Treasury's patronage. The chief interest, historically, is the light -thrown on the characters of such men as Castlereagh (Londonderry), whom Mrs. Arbuthnot worshipped, Canning, whom she disliked, Liverpool, Huskisson,,Peel, and, above all, Wellington. It is strange that although this Journal's ekistence in the muniment room at Apsley House was always known to its owners, no biographer of Wellington, nor, apparently, anyone else, has ever used it. Guedalla (1931) fails to mention it, while Cruttwell (1936) suggests that there was something "revolting " about .the -Duke's relations with the Arbuthnots, - whom he describes as agreeable parasites. No description could Se less appropriate. It, would be impossible, after reading this Journal, to suppose that Mrs. Arbuthnot was ever the Duke's mistress. It was a platonic friend- ship which warmed their lives, and after her death her husband made his home with the Duke at Apsley House. There " the two ageing men lived together united, without a twinge of jealousy, in their memories of the same woman." Mr. Aldington in his recent life of the Duke (1943) badly misrepresents Wellington's relations with the Royal Family ; those relations are convincingly and amusingly portrayed by Mrs. Arbuthnot.
Although it is intensely political, this Journal is packed with scenes and anecdotes. There is George IV, at his Coronation, " continually nodding and winking at Ly Conyngham, and sighing and making eyes at her." There is a companion picture of a Ball at Carlton House where the King stationed a page outside a room to which he had retired with Lady Conyngham. Laughing, the page stopped not only the Duke, Princess Esterhazy, and Madame de Lieven from going inside, but also. Lady Conyngham's son. Mrs. Arbuthnot was rather shocked, and a score of passages in the Journal show that the famous Victorian piimness was well on the way earlier than is generally believed.
Elsewhere we are shown Castlereagh's unhappy doctor trying, unsuccessfully, to convince Wellington that the crime of which his patient had accused himself, when he was out of his mind before committing suicide, was not a delusion. We are shown Wellington complaining bitterly that his duchess was mad. He said that " she made his house so dull that nobody would go to it." When asked why he had married her, he replied: "Could you believe that anybody could be such a d—d fool. I was not the least in love with her." And then he told Mrs. Arbuthnot the whole story.
Mrs. Arbuthnot was not blind to the Duke's faults, as when he was childishly enraged with the architect, Wyatt, over the bills for Apsley House. Her own blind spots are often as revealing as her moments of vision. During the Reform Bill agitation she writes df the scheme for giving political representation to Manchester and Birmingham. • Nothing can exceed the folly of giving members to these Popu- lous towns. It causes riots, and loss of lives and property, and is not needed, for the great merchants get returned for the rotten boroughs, and can attend to the interests of their town much better
than if they were obliged to pander to the passions of an interested mob."
These two attractive volumes are magnificently entertaining. They have the timeless quality of Pepys or He6ey. Mrs. Arbuthnot was limited, but her character, unlike Greville's, was a unity. She was wise in the best sense, loyal, ,truthful, and supremely charming. Her Journal is admirably edited, and the production deserves a
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