WILLIAM AND CAROLINE LAMB
The Young Melbourne. By Lord David Cecil. (Constable. los.) IT is always a difficult question to decide whether the his- torical imagination is better employed in seeing those in the past as different as possible from ourselves, or as like as brothers. Probably the latter is the better way, since, after all, it is only in their clothes, material and mental, that generations differ. Fundamentally, man is always the same animal and the same angel, with greeds and ambitions, dreams and ideals, that do not vary much, though they may be expressed in different language, in tones of other sententious- ness. But perhaps for people not very far removed it is better to make them out as unlike us as may be, lest we should confuse with ours the sense in which they use words : and this may be especially valuable when we are discussing such pre- Victorian and immediately pre-Romantic Age figures as Lord David Cecil offers us in this volume. Besides, to do so lends aesthetic distance, a distance necessary for the effect Lord David wishes to achieve; for this, besides being a biography, or conversation-piece as he justly calls it, is a work of art. The Prologue is a brilliant sketch of high Whig society at the turn of the eighteenth century, in all its splendour, its certitude, its ease of living, its social perfection, its unassum- ing assumption that it was born to rule. There was a great charm about it, for though the people that made it up " were worldly, they were not sophisticated." They were splendidly vital and terrifically normal. To them Melbourne belonged. He was born in the nick of time, and his family, the Lambs, had just established their place, made secure by that admirable figure, the first Viscountess Melbourne. " A remarkable woman," her son was heard to murmur when very old; " a devoted mother and excellent wife—but not chaste, not chaste." As a man who had thoroughly enjoyed life, he could hardly blame her for the defect : he was himself most probably the son of Lord Egremont.
Certainly the supposition would account for the strange streak of idealism, of poetry even, foreign to the rest of his family, that ran through this otherwise true-to-type materially robust character. So at least Lord David would have us see it, looking on the period as he does with a post-Victorian eye, wishing that William Lamb had been just a little more romantic, a little less sceptical, with his opinions based on some metaphysic or other. For many, perhaps, Melbourne's great charm resides in the very fact that he could remain so sceptical and yet not lose his affection for human beings. " The worst of the present day," he once remarked, " is that men hate one another so damnably. For my part, I love them all ! " That is the worst of faiths : they make men hate one another so damnably. William Lamb, endowed with the vitality that can make a man be consistently generous, giving and forgiving, was happily able to steer clear of them.
Religious faith he could not have; he knew too much about politics to hanker after idealisms there (in this respect he was like his family, whose version of the eleventh commandment was "Don't bother! "); and as for romanticism, he had had bitter experience of what that led to. He had known Devon- shire House, where It was love that breathed warmth into the social arts in which its inhabitants were so accomplished : love suffused the atmosphere in which they moved, with a soft enticing shimmer of romantic senti- ment and voluptuous grace : and out of that atmosphere had come the enchanting Lady Caroline, who as a wife would have morally shattered anyone with too rigid a standard in any respect, or too dearly held an idealism. It was something better than romanticism that enabled him to endure endlessly, to give patiently, and behave loyally. It was a lovable acceptance of human beings as they are.
It is one of the structural props of Lord David's picture that Melbourne matured late; that at the beginning his education at home damped down the creative capacity that might otherwise have gushed forth sooner, for it had destroyed all absolute beliefs. At forty-seven, certainly, he had acquired experience in the disillusions of an unfortunate marriage and
of politics, things which obviously cannot come At the thresh- old of life. But was he fundamentally different? In later
life, as in earlier, he was " an onlooker "; and just as in maturity he had no desire to throw himself into a struggle there was no eiance of winning, so at Eton he had never pursued a fight after the first round if he felt he could not beat the other fellow. " I thought it one of the most prudent acts, but it was reckoned very dastardly." What did he care? He never minded what other people thought, just as he never cared a fig for moral categories. He was always independent, always went his own way. Indeed, Lord David does not quite maintain his point. In early life we read that " Even his scepticism was not consistent; though he doubted the value of virtue, he never doubted the value of being a gentleman." And when mature " He did not believe in human virtue, but he recognised goodness when he saw it ; and he loved it." The difference is negligible.
One closes the book wishing there were more Melbournes. You may agree with Lord David that " there was a flaw in his philosophy, a radical defect," which was a shrinking from the unpleasant. What would happen if there were a disaster (he had already weathered one), or he lost his capacity for enjoyment? That was the element of daring in his philosophy, the risk. All philosophies that we hold depend upon some element in ourselves which may break down, and even " when we come to the gates of death, all religions seem to us wonder- fully alike, and colourless." He had faith in his lack of faith, since it depended upon his intense liking for, his unflagging interest in, human beings and the pageant they provided. Without this flaw, which does, of course, lessen him a little, the philosophy could not exist at all. It was compensated for by his lack of arrogance.
Lord David has written a consistently fascinating book : not for one moment does the interest flag as we encounter Lady Melbourne, Lady Bessborough, the Duchess of Devon- shire, the adorable but impossible Lady Caroline, of almost equal importance to Melbourne in this book, Byron, admirably analysed and sketched in, and a dozen others. It is a book designed and carried out as a work of art. Here and there the art does not quite conceal the artifice, as when Melbourne comes back from Ireland to his wife's death-bed : And alone, behind closed doors, they spoke to one another for the last time. It was for this only she had waited. A day or two later [her sister-in-law, Mrs. George Lamb, watching by her still form, heard a little sigh. She looked more closely : j Caroline was dead.
A more severe hand might have pruned away the words here put within brackets: the effect is a little too easy, and strikes one as a lapse in a magnificently sustained performance. Here and there, perhaps, there is a slight uncertainty of touch; especially where romantic love is concerned—the Devonshire House kind—which in one place glamorous, in another con- stitutes " a life of tempest and disillusion." Lord David is not always sure whether he likes or dislikes a person or attitude, or if either, why. Nevertheless, it is a delicate and precise work, and may stand on the same shelf with Strachey's
Queen Victoria and Geoffrey Scott's Portrait of Zelide. We need not quarrel about order of precedence.
BONAMY DOBRiE.
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