The Greville Diary
The Greville Diary. Edited by Philip Whitwell Wilson. (Heinemann. 36s.) MR. PHILIP WILSON'S new edition of the Greville Diary should send the whole reading world to keep company with that supremely entertaining clerk to the Privy Council whose recollections delighted the Victorians. They are enviable people to whom the Diary is not already familiar, for they have many pleasant hours before them. Yet those who know the book best will be the first to buy it in its new form. The original edition was bowdlerized. Many people were then alive who would have been pained had Henry Reeve published the recollections as they were placed in his hands. As it was, they aroused a storm of indignation as well as a chorus of welcome :—" The horror of Queen Victoria surpassed the resources of language." What she would have said had she seen the Diary now surpasses surmise. Some ten thousand words have been put back into it while a few duller portions have been dexterously eliminated. As it stands, illuminated by Mr. Philip Wilson's concise and witty notes, it may be regarded as a perfect book of entertainment—two thick volumes in length.
The reader is made fully to realize the charm of Queen Victoria at the time of her Coronation, but he sees her more as a woman of the world than she is generally shown, a woman " not wholly without experience" as she wrote of herself. He tells the story of her distrust of her mother, as it was told to him by Lord Granville. The Duchess of Kent and her Secretary, Sir John Conroy (who according to the Duke of Wellington was probably her lover), concocted a plan by which the then Princess was to be forced to sign a letter implor- ing the House of Commons to arrange for a two years' regency —having regard to her youth and ignorance. The Duchess conceived the notion that she would be Regent. Stockmar got wind of the plot, told it to Melbourne and the whole thing was quashed. " The spirit of the daughter and the timidity of the mother prevented this plot from taking effect. Victoria, though no more than a girl of eighteen, displayed an immediate initiative, as decisive as the axe of the Tudors." Briefly, she offered Conroy £3,000 a year, and he accepted. He never darkened the Palace doors again.
Greville, while he admired, never really liked the Queen. The Diary frequently alludes to her obstinacy and prejudice, mentions recurrent fears for the soundness of her mind, and remarks adversely on her severity to her elder children, " She, does not much like the child " (the Prince of Wales), who he hears early resents the severity with which he is treated.
One of the most startling of the "new bits " refers to Lord George Bentinck. Greville was his cousin and had known him all his life and was disposed to believe him, what all the world believed him, the typical English gentleman of fiction, bluff, good-hearted, an ardent sportsman and a man of spotless honour. Written evidence which could not be doubted revealed him as " a common crook of the race "—a hypocrite of a new brand. When Disraeli was writing his life he came to Greville for information and Greville told him the truth. Disraeli did not show what he thought of the story, and, of course, disregarded it in the book—one wonders what his thoughts were. . . The Queen complained of Greville that he spoke . as he should not of the Sovereigns he had served, Certainly he is not over-respectful about them.
In a moment of vexation he writes that his experience haa led him to regard Kings asan " inferior race," but George IV.; William IV., and Louis Philippe could not be expected to exalt royalty in any man's mind. Though in all conscience he was no puritan, Greville had a very keen eye for the dull side of debauchery. He was amused to stay at Brighton with George just to see what it was like, but the society of a man " who had not the talent to make his pleasures subserve his happiness " bored him. He got great amusement from watching the people in the London streets who called : " Where's the Queen, Georgie ? " after " the first gentleman in Europe."
William's Court was duller still. Not many rooms appear to have been in use at Windsor Castle and very little enter- taining went on ; " with the King and Queen's immediate suite " and " toute la bittardise " the Castle appeared quite full. The account he gives us of country house life in his youth is in strong contrast to these sordid regal pictures. At Belvoir, at the celebration of the coming of age of the Duke of Rutland, he enjoys himself hugely. The Duke and Duchess plan ceaselessly for the good of their dependents. The tenants' balls, the junketings arranged for the poor, and the army of retainers recall the hospitality of the Middle Ages. A hundred and forty servants sit down to a dinner presided over by the head coachman, a man of great abdominal dignity." In the mornings the guests are waked by a band marching up and down under their windows.
The scene changes entirely when he goes to Holland House.• Here we see Talleyrand, already an old man and under the influence of his good niece. " His age was venerable," we read, " his society delightful," and his " moderate and healing counsels very becoming to his age and station." He is " vastly influential from his sagacity."
Greville enjoys meeting the great intellectuals, but he is critical. Sydney Smith seemed to be often " opposed by his own comical obligations," and " there never was any question of conversation when he was of the party." The first time he sees Macaulay he is a little shocked by his " common " appear- ance, and his final conclusion is that of Henry Taylor, that " his memory has swamped his mind." " A book in breeches," said Sydney Smith. If he left a company it " seemed quiet " without him, but not, comments Greville, "the worse for that."
As we read, we are constantly struck by the changes in the condition of the people and the sameness of the problems presented to their rulers. Greville speaks sadly of the misery of the poor, and fears it is worse than in other countries. Obviously things have greatly improved. At the same time the current fears of revolution, as an outcome of the growing powers of trade unions, and fears that the Church of England will fall owing to High Church and Evangelical differences of opinion, " Socinians " and " No Popery men " all crying out at each other, recall the terrors of to-day.
Life in the great world is, we imagine, less pleasant than it was, less intimate, less keenly interesting, but the great world was smaller than it is now and far more selfish, while below what was then called the ruling class, it is infinitely better worth having.
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