CHAPTER IX. ST. ANN'S HILL. AMONG the many disappointments of Fox's life, there was none which touched him more poignantly than the difference which sprung up between himself and the older Whigs on the subject of the French Revolution. Wonderful as were his spirits, he was too warmhearted not to feel deeply his separation from old friends such as Elliot and Thomas Grenville, too sensitive not to understand the grave rebuke conveyed by the withdrawal of the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam. A Whig party, which no longer numbered in its ranks the Cavendishes and the Bentincks and the Wentworths, seemed indeed, in the eyes of a politician of the eighteenth century, to be but a maimed and mutilated trunk. On the 9th of March, 1794, Fox writes sorrowfully to his nephew on the subject: "You will easily imagine how much I felt the separation from persons with whom I had so long been in the habit of agreeing; it seemed some way as if I had the world to begin anew, and if I could have done it with honour what I should best have liked would have been to retire from politics altogether; but this could not be done, and there remains nothing but to get together the remains of our party, and begin, like Sisyphus, to roll the stone up again, which long before it reaches the summit may probably roll down again." In the August of the same year he breaks out with still greater pathos : "I have nothing to say for my old friends, nor, indeed, as politicians have they any right to any tenderness from me; but I cannot forget how long I have lived in friendship with them, nor can I avoid feeling the most severe mortification when I recollect the certainty I used to entertain that they never would disgrace themselves as I think they have done. I cannot forget that ever since I was a child, Fitzwilliam has been in all situations my warmest and most affectionate friend, and the person in the world of whom decidedly I have the best opinion, and so in most respects I have still, but as a politician I cannot reconcile his conduct with what I, who have known him for more than five-and-thirty years, have always thought to be his character. There is a sentiment of Lord Rochester that I have always much admired, and which I feel the truth of very forcibly upon this occasion; it is this: To be ill-used by those on whom we have bestowed favours is so much in the course of things, and ingratitude is so common, that a wise man can feel neither much surprise nor pain when he experiences it, but to be ill-used by those to whom we owe obligations which we never can forget, and towards whom we must continue to feel affection and gratitude, is indeed a most painful sensation. I think they have all behaved very ill to me, and for most of them, who certainly owe much more to me than I do to them, I feel nothing but contempt, and do not trouble myself about them ; but Fitzwilliam is an exception indeed, and to my feelings for him everything Lord Rochester says applies very strongly indeed. I hope you will come home soon, it will make amends to me for everything, and make me feel alive again about politics, which I am now quite sick of and only attend to because I think it is a duty to do so, and feel that it would be unbecoming my character to quit them at this moment." It is clear from the letters which contain his most private thoughts, that Fox was utterly dispirited by the schism of 1793, and only persevered in the up-hill fight because he believed it was his duty to his country to do So. But the struggle, though manfully maintained, grew year by year more distasteful. His heart was ever at St. Ann's Hill when his bodily presence was at Westminster. "Here we are in this cursed place," he begins one letter from the manager's box in Westminster Hall, "very different from St. Ann's Hill or from Tivoli, where perhaps you now are." Throughout the years 1793-94, his mind evidently recurred again and again to the discarded plan of 1784, and he positively longed to find an argument which would justify to his conscience a withdrawal from regular attendance in Parliament. In 1795 he discusses the question in a letter to Lord Holland, but most reluctantly decides that to quit public business would be too open to the misconstruction that— 66 Having lost all hope of place, we left the country to take care of itself. I am so sure that secession is the measure a shabby fellow would take in our circumstances, that I think it can scarcely be right for us. But as for wishes, no man ever wished anything more." As the years passed on, and the policy of the Ministry seemed to become more and more obstructive and tyrannical, and their position more and more assured, the cry for a secession from Parliament began to make itself heard among most of the Opposition leaders. Grey, impulsive and irritable, was anxious for it. Erskine and the Duke of Bedford were willing to try it, and Fox on personal grounds longed for it, but could not disabuse his mind of the idea that it was ill-advised. "He acquiesced in it," says Lord Holland, "more from indolence than from judgment." Eventually, a meeting was held in 1797, at which all the chiefs of the Opposition were present, and it was agreed by all, except Sheridan and Tierney, to leave Parliament if Grey's motion for Reform was thrown out. Fox was anxious that too much importance should not be attributed to the step. In the House he only spoke of devoting a larger portion of his time to his literary pursuits, and in a letter to Lord Holland he wrote: “Pray if you have an opportunity of talking about the Secession say what is the truth, that there was not agreement of opinion enough upon the subject to make it possible to take what one may call a measure N upon the subject, but that most of us thought that after the proposition for Reform we might fairly enough stay away, considering the preceding events of the Session and the behaviour of Parliament upon them.” Fox had warned his friends that if he once left Parlia-/ ment it would be very difficult to get him back again, and so it proved. From May 26th, 1797, the day of Grey's motion, to March 3rd, 1806, the day on which he received office in the Ministry of all the talents, he only addressed the House nineteen times, while before the secession he had usually spoken more than that number of times in one year. There were, indeed, many reasons why he should prefer the quiet seclusion and lettered ease of St. Ann's to the turmoil of St. Stephen's. He was now getting well into middle age, had outgrown the passions and the excitement of youth, and was beginning to long for the full enjoyment of domestic peace congenial to his time of life. His marriage with Mrs. Armistead in 1795 had hallowed a love in which for many years he had found his chief delight. His letters are full of the most natural and tender allusion to her, which could only spring from the realisation through her of unalloyed domestic happiness. "If there ever was a place which might be called the seat of true happiness," he writes in 1794, "St Ann's is that place ;" and again in 1795: "I am perfectly happy in the country, I have quite resources enough to employ my mind, and the great resource of all, literature, I am fonder of every day; and then the Lady of the Hill is one continual source of happiness to me. I believe few men, indeed, ever were so happy in that respect as I." And in another letter: "I declare I think my affection for her increases every day. She is a comfort to me in every misfortune, and makes me to enjoy doubly every circumstance of life. There is to me a charm and a delight in her society, which time does not in the least wear off, and for real goodness of heart if she ever had her equal, she certainly never had a superior." Besides his delight in his domestic life, his private affairs made Fox anxious if possible to avoid the expense of a house in London. Owing to the recklessness of his youth, and his natural indolence about money matters, he had always been in embarrassed circumstances, and usually owed a good deal of money to his friends. In 1787 he was as much as £5000 in debt to Coutts the banker; but in 1793, by the exertions of his political friends, a sum was raised sufficient to clear him from debt, and to purchase an annuity for him. Naturally, therefore, he was anxious not to get into embarrassments again, and exercised for the rest of his life the strictest economy in order to live within his means. Attracted by the pleasures of home, and urged by the dictates of economy, Fox found another inducement to leave public life in the virulence of the attacks made upon him by the Tory press. No man, however even-spirited, can be wholly unaffected by continuous abuse, and Fox must have been all the more sensitive to the attacks made upon him because, unscrupulous as they were in their misrepresentation, many of them had some colour of excuse in his own folly. After the outbreak of the war, Fox was one of the best abused men in England. He was looked upon by a large section of the community as unpatriotic and untrustworthy, little better than a traitor. Gillray's caricatures he figures as the leading member of the party who were conspiring with the French to overthrow the constitution of England, and establish in its place a republic on the French model. With the unerring instinct on such matters which is the life blood of the caricaturist, Fox is always the central figure, the head and front of the offending. Sheridan is the faithful henchman when anything more than usually extravagant is to be done, but he always plays a ln |