THE HOLLAND HOUSE CIRCLE.*
A.411.811ION has sprung up recently of preparing large volumes on minor celebrities of the past, wherein letters of vanished interest and anecdotes of dubious point are enlivened with a quantity of more or less good illustrations. From this mass of book-making Mr. Lloyd Sanders's volume stands out as a work of genuine literary merit and wide knowledge. His subject is the circle of friends and acquaintances of the third Lord Holland, and we cannot understand why the present representative of that house should have written to the papers objecting to the issue of a work which is in no way a family history. The name " Holland House " is common property, for both in literary and political history it denotes less the building, or even the inmates, than a certain attitude of mind. Mr. Sanders's knowledge of the early decades of last century is exact and curious. His taste is catholic, his judgment sound, and he has a gift of happy epigram in his comments. These .chapters are easy reading, but the ordinary reader may fail to recognise the amount of erudition which has gone to the making of them. Our only criticism of the book is that the arrangement of the chapters seems to us to be without system, and that there are far too many misprints.
• l . Ilatland House C.rcts. By Lloyd Sanders. London.a Methuen Lad Co. (]2.. eel. net.]
Holland House has bad very much its own way in literature, having been wise enough to conciliate the authors and diarists.. It was essentially a circle of talkers. " They cannot help it," said Lord Melbourne, "and they are not themselves aware how much they talk." None of the real habitue's were men of the highest distinction, for Fox had died before its true floruit began, and Sheridan was of the ,same generation. The true Holland-House-ites were men like Allen and Rogers and " Conversation " Sharp, rather than Canning, Grey, and Byron. But the merit of the circle was that it linked the old Whigs with the new, and that it kept in touch with every department of intellectual interest. Most notables of the day, British and foreign, dined there at some time, and therefore the history of the circle, broadly considered, is the intellectual history of England during half-a-century. Small wonder that all who knew it desired to see some chronicle of its doings prepared,—that work for which Macaulay was destined by Greville, which Sir James Mackintosh projected, and which Princess Lichtenstein in part accomplished. It was the most successful salon that ever flourished in this island, and its success—apart from a charming house—was due to the strategical abilities of the hostess and the lovable character of the host. Lord Holland was not a great man, but he was one of the wisest and kindest of men. He had a genius for friendship, and in their liking for him men forgot their political variance. Perhaps his friendships did not go very deep, for be had kindliness rather than affection, and behind his geniality lay a detached and self-contained soul.
As Brougham once wrote, " he surveyed mankind with the eye of a naturalist rather than a brother." But this inner aloofness made him socially the more powerful, for what be lacked in depth he gained in width. He was a competent, if unoriginal, public servant, and was an admirable lieutenant to Grey and Melbourne. His principles were what we should to-day call Liberal,—more national than those of the elder Whigs, and less doctrinaire and radical than those of the younger. But amiability and culture are not enough to conduct a salon, and Holland 'House would have been impossible but for that for- midable drum-major, its mistress. A chequered youth caused the female society of her day to look askance at her, and she turned to the society of men. Probably all successful salons are managed by women who are debarred by misfortune or taste from a large female acquaintance. Intellectually Lady Holland does not seem to have been siecially distinguished. She had a knack of taking up Whig beliefs and making them farcical from exaggeration, as in her devotion to Napoleon.
But she had a ready wit,- a shrewd knowledge of human nature, and boundless audacity. She ruled her dinner-table,
so that her distinguished guests found themselves ordered about like children at a school feast. Without tenderness, she yet had a capacity for loyal friendships, and it was not mere snobbishness which made her invitations the most eagerly sought of the day. She was an assiduous lion-hunter, but celebrities were not coaxed but commanded to her presence. It is impossible not to admire the capacity of a woman who drove such an ill-assorted team so easily and so long.
The circle, as we have said, began under the inspiration of Fox and his friends, and the house was always a shrine for his memory. Fitzpatrick, Hare, Lauderdale, Adair, Stanhope, and Sheridan were some of Fox's intimates who assisted in creating the salon. The curious figure of Erakine, whom Mr.
Sanders calls "that rare bird, a thriftless Scot," appeared often, and there was always abundance of the Chancellor's fellow-countrymen. Dugald Stewart in Edinburgh was in those days the favourite mentor of young progressives, and the Scottish school of thought was well represented by men like Horner and Mackintosh and the first Lord Dudley. Grenville and Grey made a curious contrast, the one ambitious, impracticable, and unpopular, the other impulsive, open.
minded, and singularly detached from the ordinary ambitions of politics. Castlereagh has earned a reputation for a cold heart, but he was human compared with Grenville and Windham and one or two more of the Whig magnates. Occasionally a Radical, like Whitbread or Hobbouse, came to the house, but the' atmosphere was not favourable to those strenuous
"friends of the people." Tories were not infrequent, for we hear of Lord Eldon and Wilberforce dining, and Lord. Stowell was a-constant visitor. Of the-greatest of them all, (tanning, we hear little, though Catmingites like Melbourne and
Palmerston often dined, and Hookbam Frere, Canning's most brilliant colleague on the Anti-Jacobin, was one of the inner circle. The most remarkable proof of Lord Holland's catholicity is that a man who had been an intimate of the old Whigs should have continued a warm friend of, the new, for a common creed held with a difference is usually a potent disruptive force. The old Whigs were far abler men and more attractive figures than their successors, but an incurable frivolity marred their public usefulness, and their cosmopolitanism engendered a lightness of mind which shut their eyes to grave national issues. The new Whigs were more serious, more radical, and more patriotic. Moreover, while they talked less brilliantly, they achieved more. Horner, Romilly, and Mackintosh were alike in a certain serious passion for straightforward reform. Lord Holland said that the last of the three was the only Scotchman he ever knew who felt the delight of lounging, and indolence and an unwise dissipation of energy prevented him from leaving much behind him to justify the admiration of his friends. Horner impressed all who met him with his practical ability and sincerity. Sydney Smith said that " the Command- ments were written on his face," and it is much to the credit of society in the early century that it should have been so attracted to a man who was probably dull in conversation and had no single advantage of birth and fortune. Holland House had. always a taste for lawyers, and, besides those we have named, Lyndhurst, Brougham, and Denman were frequent visitors. Mr. Sanders has an excellent chapter on the last ttto,—Denraan the "blameless Etonian with a love for music," and Brougham, " the maddest man who has taken part in the public life of this country." Of Plunket he records an admirable saying. Lord Essex said one day that he had seen a brother of Sir John Leach so like the Master of the Rolls that it seemed as if the manner ran in the family. "I should as soon have thought," exclaimed Plunket, " of a wooden leg running in a family."
But it is not to the lawyers and statesmen, but to the wits and men of letters, that Holland House owes its reputation. Of these the most typical was Sydney Smith, who spoke and wrote primarily for the Holland House coterie. There were always points in his satire which were properly appreciated only by his intimates. Reputations for esprit are transient, but his has survived, and there are few more sane, manly, and loyal figures in literary history. The petty middle-class soul of Rogers, the genial gaiety of Luttrell, the sparkle of Moore, the pedantic learning of Dr. Parr, the absurdities of "Monk " Lewis, are all associated eternally with . Lady Holland's parties. Scott loved the place, and used often to dine there when in London, though he was for long on bad terms with the hosts. It is to Byron that we owe the description of the house: "Where Scotchmen dine, and duns are kept aloof." It was there that the unhappy Lady Caroline Lamb first met the poet, and began that passionate persecution which so greatly annoyed him. In later days Macaulay was the chief literary figure, but Dickens, Grote, Washington Irving, Hallam, and a score of others were occasional visitors. The house was also a centre for itinerant foreign celebrities, and at various times saw Metternich, Talleyraud, and Madame de Stael within its walls. Mr. Sanders has given us in a most readable form a history of the best society during a time when entertaining was still an art, and society was still largely a cousinhood.
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