DYOTT'S DIARY.*
br any one expects to find in William Dyott a rival to Pepys, or even to Creevey, be will surely be disappointed. In vain *Dyott's Diary, 1781.1845: a Selection from the Journal of William Dyott, sometime General, to the British Army and elide-de-Camp to his Majesty Xing George III. Edited by Reginald W. Jeffery, 311.A. 2 vols. London: A. Constable and Co. [31s. 63.]
you will look in these pages for the gift of intimacy which
has made Samuel Pepys known to many generations of men. In vain you will look for the reckless criticism of men and things which gives life to the admirable Creevey. Dyott's talent was of a simpler, quieter kind. He was, in brief, a plain-hearted soldier and squire, who served his King and his country with loyalty and wisdom, and who was industrious enough to keep a record of his travels and adventures for
a period of sixty-five years. And it is this continuity which gives his Diary its greatest value. His intelligence was not above the common. As a writer he has neither skill nor pretension ; he is content to put down in the hieroglyphic consecrated to journals whatever he saw and heard. But he was persistent, and his persistence gives us a chance of watching his growth front youth to age, and of seeing what changes of habit and policy took place in the England of his time.
William Dyott belonged whole-heartedly to his age. He
swam down the current with joyousness and good temper. When he was young it was the fashion to drink, and he never lost the chance of emptying a bottle. His sketch of Nova Scotia, visited by Prince William, afterwards William IV., is
not without its value as a picture of manners, and the naivete of his enthusiasm does infinite credit to his simplicity. He
was delighted to bask in the sun of princely approval, and he took a frank pleasure in an orgie which lasted many weeks.
"We had a good dinner," says he after his easy fashion, "and got outrageously drunk, Prince and subject " ; but he did not carry the habits of youth into manhood, and he presently settled down with evident satisfaction to the duties of a country gentleman. For the profession of arms he seems to have had a tempered zeal. Promotion did not come swiftly enough to him, and be did not readily forgive the tardiness with which the devotion of his son, a soldier and the son of a soldier, was rewarded. Moreover, though he lived through the Napoleonic
age, lie did not have the good fortune to see the best of the fighting. The weeks which he spent in the West Indies, the "sugar islands" of Sheridan's contempt, gave him no hope of glory. He arrived in Egypt in time to witness the surrender of Xenon. He makes no mention of Trafalgar, and refers to Waterloo but incidentally. The truth is that his tastes were rural and domestic. He was happiest in the cultivation of his land, and in watching the growth and progress of his children. A fonder father never lived, and the efforts which he made to
win from the Commander-in-Chief a proper recognition for his son Dick should clearly have met with a better result. •
Dyott, in fact, was eminently characteristic of England and his century. He was a stern and serious Tory. He was rigidly opposed to change in life as in politics. He bated the railways as bitterly as he detested Parliamentary reform. He stood for the Throne and the Constitution, and he demanded from his Sovereign dignity and stateliness. Much as he had admired William IV. when he was a mere Prince, he deeply deplored his ambition to be a popular Monarch. His ideal was "George III. of blessed memory," and he did not recognise the signs of Queen Victoria's strength and intelligence. "A very young Queen," he wrote at the time of William IV.'s death, "coming to the throne of this mighty Empire (just eighteen years of age), brought up by, and subject to the control of a weak, capricious mother, surrounded by the parents' chosen advisers from distinguished democratick• councillors, gives token of unpropitious times to come." Nor did he change his opinion when he had seen her Majesty. It is thus that he describes her in 1840 :— "I had an opportunity of seeing the Queen and her consort driving in a low phaeton in the Park twice ; their equipage and attendance were inferior to many of those to be seen in the Park. Dick and I had an opportunity of a full view of the Queen getting into the phaeton from a visit to the Duchess of Kent. I could not see much to admire as to countenance or Princely character. The proceedings of the Court contrasted with the days of George III. of gracious remembrance is not favourable to the modern monarch."
In other words, Dyott was seventy-nine years of age, and his mind reverted with pleasure to the brave days when the blind• King held Court at Weymouth, and when Dyott, his aide-de- camp, was asked to join the Royal table at cards. Though Dyott lived, when he would, in the great world, he has not much to say of it that is fresh or interesting. Even Wellington failed to excite his enthusiasm. "Dined at Teddesley," he writes in 1821, "to meet the great Captain of
the age, the Duke of Wellington. . . . . . The Duke was not very talkative, though a large party of his friends were present. I was never in his company before ; neither his appearance, nor manners, nor conversation strike you as a man posessing the great mind and capacity he had so wonderfully displayed." Yet there is often an unmistakable shrewdness in his observations. At the outset he was dazzled by the talk of Croker, whom he frequently met at Drayton. Presently, however, he seems to have looked at him with the disapproval which most of the world shared. " Croker was there," he writes in 1838, "as full of grimace and gab as usual." Johnson he had seen, as became one who had been brought up near Lichfield, and had lived in the house which had once been Mrs. Porter's. "On the 14th," he writes in August, 1838, "a statue was erected to represent the great Dr. Johnson in the market-place, Lichfield, the gift of Chancellor Lap's to the city; a very bad likeness, and in my opinion a worse piece of sculpture ; of the former I can speak from remembrance of the mighty man, of the latter my judgment is of little consequence." It is satisfactory to know that "the mighty man" was a prophet even in his own country. But he whom Dyott reverenced beyond all others was Sir Robert Peel. For him Dyott's admiration never flagged. They were friends and neighbours, and in the last years of his life the General was a constant visitor at Drayton. He first mentions him in 1825. "On the 12th September," he writes, "I dined at Sir Robert Peel's to meet Mr. Peel, the Secretary of State The Secretary was most gracious, as usual. It was a delightful sight to observe the old Baronet raised by his own individual exertion to the eminence he had attained in society, and to the high grati- fication of seeing his son one of the first and greatest men in the land sitting at the head of his father's table to greet his friends and entertain them with his parent's hospi- tality." Five years later he welcomed him to the country. "I called upon Sir Robert Peel," he says in 1830, "my first visit on his accession to Drayton Manor. Found the Right Honourable the Secretary of State uncommon civiL He mentioned how joyously he looked forward to the becoming settled as a country gentleman, and his hope that his neigh- bours would accept him as a friend amongst them." There was one neighbour, at any rate, who accepted Peel with friendly enthusiasm, and that was Dyott. The hero of the second half of his Diary is undoubtedly the statesman whom he calls "the Right Honourable." The journal comes to an end before the repeal of the Corn-laws ; and though we do not know what Dyott thought of the part which Peel played in the crisis, it is improbable that his friendship for "the Secretary of State," warm as it was, successfully stood the strain.
In conclusion, the value of the Diary depends, not upon the wisdom, but upon the plain sense of Dyott. We know what many men of talent and intellect thought and said in the first half of the nineteenth century. There are added to our knowledge the opinion and character of a simple country gentleman, who was most intimately at home at Freeford Hall, and who was happiest in the society of his family and neighbours. That the Diary was worth publishing there can be no question. It was also worth a more careful editing than it has received. We cannot congratulate Mr. Jeffery upon his part of the work. The notes are always meagre, and not always accurate.
Previous page
