Family album
ROY STRONG
The Stanhopes of Chevening Aubrey Newman (Macmillan 70s) 1 visited Chevening shortly after the death of the last Earl. Marvellously situated close,, to London, it lies in a well of country that sud- denly jerks the eye back a century or more in its seeming remoteness. The overwhelming impression of the house is of gloom and decay, of cracked and peeling walls, faded wallpapets and acres of deadening brown paint. There is, however, a wonderful suspended spiral stair- case, two or three good tapestries and a ravishing group of family portraits by Ramsay; This, then, is the Chevening of the Stanhope Earls, whose lives Aubrey Newman has now set down in his family biography.
Like crochet, family history is something I thought had stopped, but Mr Newman goes the whole way, even to a Latin dedication in honour-of the last Earl. Number I, James, was a man of action who rose as a soldier of for- tune in Marlborough's wars and, through politic Whig alignment, to the secretaryship of state, a peerage and the Chevening estate in the reign of George I. Number 2, Philip, was a bookish man who led a life of exile in Geneva, a centre of radical liberal thought that had a disastrous influence on number 3, Charles. 'Citizen Stanhope' was a man of en- thusiasms. He backed the French Revolution wholeheartedly, had the coronets temporarily removed from the gates of the house and even allowed his daughter to marry into the 'virtue' and 'happiness' of the middle classes, although the couple seem subsequently to have dis- appeared under a family cloud. Number 3 also had engaging scientific interests: flame-proof buildings; calculating machines; electricity; printing and shipping. 'He was a bad husband, an unkind, perhaps an unjust father,' Lord Holland tartly remarked.
Lady Hester, his eldest daughter by his first marriage to a Pitt, would certainly have agreed with that. She ran away and later connived at the escape of her two stepbrothers from the peculiar rigours of Chevening. The in- domitable Hester, but for her sex, would have been number 4; she made up for this depriva- tion with determination by her well-known excesses, queening it in the Lebanon dressed cap-A-pie as a Turkish man, surrounded by native servants, obsessed by some curious re- ligious syncretism which • she expounded in the half-light to amazed visitors from Europe.
Number 4 was, instead, her stepbrother Philip, a more muted eccentric. In contrast to his father, he was a diehard Tory whose reac- tionary notions extended, like the Duke of Wellington's, to include the railway. Number 5, another Philip, was without doubt the most interesting Stanhope man since number I. Not so much in public life as for his personal role as a pioneer in the use of historical documen- tation in writing. We owe to him the Conver- sations with Wellington and the foundation of the National Portrait Gallery, for the second of which I am truly grateful. He was also active and instrumental in the publication of State Papers, as President of the Society of Anti- quaries and as a trustee of the British Museum. He had a sister, Wilhelmina, 'whose wondrous flow of drollery, information, social tattle, taste, eloquence' entranced Disraeli, and who reigned long as a brilliant London hostess. Her un- finished, unpublished memoirs are at Cheven- ing and sound full of fascination. What little Mr Newman tells us about her suggests that something of aunt Hester's sparkle must have come her way. For Earls number 6, Arthur, and number 7, James, it would be quicker, I am sure, to look up Who was Who.
This is a good, solid, academic work, but I would draw Mr Newman's attention to some words of advice given by his number 5 to another historian: 'I would ... take the liberty of warning you against what I take to be the besetting sin of such compilations . . . against being so enamoured with your own subject as to consider every document precious and no details too long.'
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