A Wayward Favourite
Great ViWers. By Hester W. Chapman. (Seeker and Warburg. 18s.)
ONCE again a distinguished writer of fiction enters the frequently trodden paths of seventeenth-century historical biography. Perhaps, like other novelists who made their reputations between the wars, _Miss Chapman has found it hard to readjust her art to a world where the middle classes are changing character and even Bloomsbury and Chelsea are not what they wet- In any case, before giving us another novel, as we must hope she soon will, she has cast her mind back into a pre-Socialist and' pre-democratic age. It might be thought that the reign of King Charles II, where her hero, George Villiers, second Duke of_iluckingham, flourished, would appeal especially to the inter-war generation, for the mixture of scepticism about morals, Roman Catholic proselytism among the upper classes and political turmoil superficially resembles what has been called the Era of Violence which some of us have survived. But this is not so. For Miss Chapman assures us that "the men and women of the Court of Charles II are waiting to be discovered again," that "one of the surest ways of getting at them is through the realisation that they do not really resemble ourselves," and she
concludes that "our degeneration, our wickedness, our hypocrisy are not theirs." In a sense then this is a work not of nostalgia but of escape.
Buckingham was born advantageously. His father was the favourite both of James I and Charles I, and he himself, after his
father's assassinatioia, /gas " adopted " and brought up as the playmate of the future Chatles II. During the Interregnum, though a Royalist, he succeeded in marrying the daughter of General Sir Thomas Fairfax, and was thus able to regain his estates, most of which had been forfeited and assigned to his father-in-law. On the return of Charles II to Whitehall Buckingham became a power at Court, helped to overthrow the Earl of Clarendon, Charles II's first chief Minister, and then became one of the so-called Cabal. After the fall of the Cabal he often got into hot water with Parliament, but he never lost the affection of the King, who found him amusing. But his extravagance, his irresponsibility and his scandalous sexual adventures prevented his ever being more than a dilettante—" every- thing by starts and nothing long "—and he died, a spent volcano, almost forgotten and virtually ruined.
What has attracted Miss Chapman to this wayward figure ? In the first place she could see a chance to represent to posterity a charm and splendour which had enraptured such -varions men as the grave Cavalier Reresby, John Lilbume the Leveller and Bishop Burnet. The last named called him "a man of noble appearance and most lovely wit." The loveliness of his wit is of course hard to appreciate today, but his biographer makes this magnifico live (in sketching his character she has drawn upon his unpublished common-. place book) and she writes with sure taste about his play, The Rehearsal, a skit on Dryden. It is true that Pope's "Great Villiers ", emerges from this study without disclosing any principles in public or in private life, a -.hypocrite, a liar, a weakling and a failure. Therefore some critic's would maintain that such a man is not worth writing about, on the argument that biography - should be confined to the important and to the virtuous. But that is a narrow judgement. Buckingham after all may be termed one of the historical might-have-beens. If he had seized the leadership of the party that opposed the francophile Cathlocising policy of Charles II after Shaftesbury died, the course of English history might have been altered. But after Sidney and Russell had been executed, Bucking- ham had neither the strength nor the conviction to rally the broken Whigs.
Miss Chapman is not so strong in explaining the political aspects of the story as she is on the personal side. But she would not claim to have offered more than a character study, and she even advises scholars and historians not to open her book. Nevertheless, the general reader should be warned that her judgements are not altogether reliable when she leaves the purely biographical route. A generalisation in a footnote on page 274 makes one wonder whether she fully understands the politics of the period, and her reading has scarcely been wide enough to permit her opinions on such con- troversial topics as James de la Clothe and the murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey. She would also have been well advised to omit the footnotes and bibliography, which are useless in the form she
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