Bishop George Augustus Selwyn

“ Himself without ambition, he watched men, not possessed of his tact and ability, rise to positions which he had never the least desire to fill. In an age of great political bitterness and the strongest personal antagonism he continued the tranquil tenor of his way, amused and amusing, hardly ever put out except by the illness or the misfortune of a friend. "George Selwyn died this day se'night," wrote his friend Storer to Lord Auckland; "a more good-natured man or a more pleasant one never, I believe, existed. ”

“ By the end of August, Selwyn had escaped from Gloucester and was again among his friends and in his favourite haunts in London.
[1774,] Aug. 25, Thursday night, Almack's.—Here are the Duke of Roxb [urgh] , Vernon, James, and Sir W. Draper at Whist; Boothby, Richard, and R. Fletcher at Quinze. I dined to-day at the Duke of Argyle's (117) at a quarter before four. He and the Duchess went to Richmond at six. The maccaroni dinner was at Mannin's. My eyes are still very painful to me at night, and I do not know what I shall do for them. I hear of no news ”

“ Gilly Williams was a kind and good-natured man, yet we find him writing to Selwyn:
"Harrington's porter was condemned yesterday. Cadogan and I have already bespoken places at the Braziers, and I hope Parson Digby will come time enough to be of the party. I presume we shall have your honour's company, if your stomach is not too squeamish for a single serving."
Another friend, Henry St. John, begins a letter to Selwyn by telling how he and his brother went to see an execution. "We had a full view of Mr. Waistcott as he went to the gallows with a white cockade in his hat." ”

“ Have you been at Lady Holland's? Are you in my house? Do not stay too long at Frognal; change the scene; it will do you good. Gratify every caprice of that sort, and write to me everything that comes into your head. You cannot unload your heart to any one who will receive its weight more cheerfully than I shall do."
But next year we hear of Selwyn at Milan negotiating with Mie Mie's relatives for her return. His proposals to make settlements on her met with alternate rebuffs and promises that kept him in a state of intermingled fear and hope. ”

“ I stayed two days at George Selwyn's house, called Matson, which lies on Robin Hood's Hill; it is lofty enough for an Alp, yet it is a mountain of turf to the very top, has wood scattered all over it, springs that long to be cascades in twenty places of it, and from the summit of it beats even Sir George Lyttleton's views, by having the city of Gloucester at its foot, and the Severn widening to the horizon. His house is small, but neat. ”

“ Richard is in high cash, and that is all I know of that infernal house. Adieu; my respects to Lady Carlisle, and my most hearty love to the children. My best compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Eden, and to Crowle, and pray rub Mr. Dean Emily's ears till he writes to me.
It is not desirable that those who present a correspondence for perusal should play too much the part of a showman. Letters speak for themselves. Yet that which Selwyn wrote on April 14th may well be pointed to as giving, in a few lines, a reflection in miniature of the events grave and gay which were then interesting London society. ”

“ The children of Carlisle had grown out of childhood. Lord Morpeth was going to Oxford, (229) Lady Caroline was married. His adopted daughter, the Mie Mie of so many of the preceding letters, had become a woman, and the care and affection with which Selwyn had watched over her growth and upbringing was now transferred to her well-being and pleasure in the first society of the country. It is a charming picture—the old man without a wife or children of his own finding in the friendship of young and old all that his kindly and affectionate nature required. ”

“ Elle ne rit, que quand elle ne songe pas a ses malheurs. At other times she is, as Polinitz says of K (ing) James's Queen, when he saw her after the Revolution, une Arethuse. M. le M (arquis) de la Fayette comes to the Tuilleries, and although he be really no more or less than the jailer, he is received with graciousness.
But now, four les Evangiles du jour. I had a letter from Warner this morning before I left Richmond, dated last Thursday night. Your brother's courier did not, however, leave Paris till the morning of Friday. ”

“ In a drawing-room Selwyn was as welcome as in a club, and he could only be said to be out of place in his own country house, more especially at the time of an election for Gloucester. The modern love of landscape, of country life as an aesthetic pleasure, was unknown to him. Civilisation, refinement, seemed to him to be confined to London and Paris, to Bath or Tunbridge Wells. "Now sto per partire, and I ought in point of discretion to set out to-morrow, but I dare say 'twill be Friday evening before I'll have the courage to throw myself off the cart. ”

“ GEORGE SELWYN—HIS LIFE, HIS FRIENDS, AND HIS AGE During the latter half of the eighteenth century no man had more friends in the select society which comprised those who were of the first importance in English politics, fashion, or sport, than George Selwyn. In one particular he was regarded as supreme and unapproachable; he was the humourist of his time. His ban mots were collected and repeated with extraordinary zest. They were enjoyed by Members of Parliament at Westminster, and by fashionable ladies in the drawing-rooms of St. James's. ”

“ In New Zealand he found plenty of people to appreciate these qualities in a bishop.
Though Selwyn was the master and perhaps the greater man, yet a peculiar fame has attached to his disciple John Coleridge Patteson, owing to the sweetness of his disposition, the singleness of his aim, and the consummation of his work by a martyr's death. Born in London in 1827, he was more truly a son of Devon, to which he was attached by many links. His mother's brother, Justice Coleridge, and many other relatives, lived close round the old town of Ottery St. Mary ”

“ The King will never have a servant that will please the public more. I dine with him often a petit convert at March's. I am not desirous that my friends should become ministers; but if they are ministers, it is fair to wish they may become one's friends. He is yours very cordially, I'm persuaded. He always asks very kindly after you, and seems uneasy that the Order has not yet reached you. He said the other day at dinner, aun ton tres patetique, "I shall be much disappointed if in four or five years Lord Carlisle does not give a very good account of himself." ”

“ Selwyn criticised disparagingly his Othello.
(53) John, second Earl of Upper Ossory (1745-1818) . He was the brother of Richard Fitzpatrick and of Mary Fitzpatrick, wife of the second Lord Holland. He was educated at Eton and Oxford. "The man I have liked the best in Paris is an Englishman, Lord Ossory, who is the most sensible young man I ever saw" ("Walpole's Letters," vol. iv. p. 426) . ”

“ They don't know when they have got a good spectacle, and think that finding fault is the only way to pass for judges." Such are the words of his Honour, the prophet Brudenell. John St. John says that the Baccelli is thrown away in the part of Nannette; au lieu d'etre danseuse, elle n'est que la Columbine. This he takes from the Baccelli, and the Duke of Dorset. John acts a strange underpart at the theatre. Mademoiselle Baccelli's runner is not so honourable an employment as being Lord North's.
Selwyn lost within this week a large sum of money. ”

“ It may have seemed to many a dull routine to be followed year after year by a man who might have filled high place and moved in brilliant society at home; but from his letters it is clear that he was satisfied with his life and that no thought of regret assailed him.
The year 1868 brought a severe loss when Bishop Selwyn was called home to take charge of the Diocese of Lichfield. It was he who had drawn Patteson to the South Seas: his presence had been an abiding strength to the younger man, however rare their meetings ”

“ No credit seemed to be given yesterday at dinner, either to his intelligence or credit with the new people, and he had a very dissatisfied look. Two of the Bedchamber are to be left, Lord Ailesford and the Duke of Queensberry, but the Duke's other place will be annihilated.
The Duke of R (ichmond) affects to say that he will take nothing, and when this is repeated there is a laugh, thinking how suddenly his Grace is changed, for lately he took anything, and what no man living would have taken but himself ”

“ He was a Groom of the Bedchamber, a Member of Parliament, and a colonel in the army. He was a man of wit, universally popular.
[1768,] Jan. 15, Friday morning.—We are at this moment in some alarm about you, which I hope to find has been given without any foundation; however, en tous cas, I hope this will find you at Nice, and not at Turin, where Lady Carlisle has been told there is a contagious disorder. You are near enough that place to have better intelligence than we.
I dine (d) with the Duke of Grafton the day before yesterday at Lord Barrington's, who assured me the death of Mr. ”

“ Ekins and I dined yesterday at Lord Gower's, when I received your letter of the 6th, and Lady G. one from Lady Carlisle. Lord G. and I had a good deal of discourse on the present state of things, but my curiosity led to know chiefly how any alterations would affect you in your present situation. He seemed to think not at all. What may become of Storer, of me, or of John St. J (ohn) is another thing. These people, by long opposition, hunger, and engagements, are become very ravenous ”

“ No better selection could have been made than that by which England sent this muscular Christian to organize and administer a Church of mingled savages and pioneers. Bishop Selwyn was both physically and mentally a ruler of men. ”

“ The characters of the two men, however, and various points in their correspondence, seem to fix this relation upon the Duke of Queensberry. Selwyn's interest was that of a man who though without children had a strong and unusual affection for the young. He looked forward to the pleasure her development and education would be to him, and to the solace of her companionship in old age. ”

“ From a letter written by the Marchesa Fagniani to Selwyn in 1772 it is evident that Mie Mie, then about a year old, had been with him for some months, and in 1774 Lord Carlisle congratulates him upon the certainty of the child's remaining with him. The first mention of her in these letters occurs under date of July 23, 1774, where we have a picture of Selwyn, drawn by himself. He is sitting on his steps, the pretty, foreign-looking child in his arms, pleased at the attention she attracts. ”

“ When we read one of them now, we are almost inclined to wonder how such a reputation for humour could be gained. Wit is of the present; preserved for posterity it is as uninteresting as a faded flower, nor can it recall to us memories sunny or sad. But Selwyn was a man who while filling a conspicuous place in the fashionable life of the age was also so intimate with statesmen and politicians, and so thoroughly lives in his correspondence, that in following his life we find ourselves one of that singular society which in the last half of the eighteenth century ruled the British Empire from St. ”

“ Educated at Eton and Oxford, he became member of parliament for the family borough of Ludgershall in 1747, and from 1754, three years after he inherited Matson, to 1780 he represented Gloucester. In parliament he took no part in debate, but he managed to obtain two or three lucrative sinecures; in society he was very popular and won a great reputation as a wit. ”

“ For his long parliamentary career brought Selwyn continually into contact with many varied personalities of several political generations. When he entered the House of Commons Henry Pelham was Prime Minister, and the elder Pitt had not yet formed that coalition with the Duke of Newcastle which enabled him to command a majority in the House of Commons and to be the greatest War Minister of the century. When Selwyn died, still a Member of Parliament, the younger Pitt was Prime Minister and the French Revolution had upset that old regime which Selwyn had known so well. ”

“ If her own wishes were completed in this respect she must have died yesterday, being on the same day in October that the late King died. It is a pity that she should not have been gratified. But she still hopes it will be in this month, that she may lose no reputation in point of prevoyance, which would be a pity.
It is not an unnatural thing, with our German family, to make a rendezvous as to death, and it has in more instances than one been kept. K (ing) G (eorge) 1st took a final leave of the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, the night before he went to Hanover for the last time ”

“ You know me very well also in thinking that my heart fails me as the time of my going to Gloucester approaches. I made a very stout resistance a fortnight ago, notwithstanding Harris's importunate summons, and now he plainly confesses in a letter which I received from him to-day, that my coming down upon that pretended meeting would have been nugatory, as he calls it. The Devil take them; I have wished him and his Corporation in Newgate a thousand times. But there will be no trifling after the end of this next week. The Assizes begin on Monday sevennight. ”

“ Even in those early days Selwyn, who went by the sobriquet of "Bosky," had many friends—not only among college boys, but in London society. "You must judge by what you feel yourself," wrote Walpole to General Conway, the soldier and statesman, on the occasion of a severe illness from which Selwyn suffered in 1741, "of what I feel for Selwyn's recovery, with the addition of what I have suffered from post to post. ”