Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth

“ Antholin’s, and was elected evening preacher at the Foundling hospital, which the state of his health obliged him to resign. The bishop of London presented him with a small prebend in the cathedral of St. Paul’s, which he relinquished on receiving the rectory of Stapleford, Herts. In 1804, he was presented by Lord Sidmouth (then Mr. Addington) with the valuable living of West Ham, in Essex, when he resigned every other clerical charge except that of Cripplegate, to which parish he was attached by warm feelings of gratitude. ”

“ Pellew printed many sermons and tracts, the most important of which was a ‘Letter to Sir Robert Peel on the means of rendering Cathedral Churches most conducive to the Efficiency of the Established Church.’ Many of his sermons were included in two volumes printed in 1848, and entitled ‘Sermons on many of the leading Doctrines and Duties taught by the Church of England.’ In 1847 he published ‘The Life and Correspondence of Addington, first Viscount Sidmouth,’ his father-in-law. ”

“ Addington, then Speaker of the House of Commons, and the son of a Doctor Addington, who had been the King’s physician (to which circumstance the son owed a nickname he could never shake off) , as his successor; and Mr. Addington was only remarkable for not being remarkable either for his qualities or for his defects, being just that staid, sober sort of man who, respectable in the chair of the House of Commons, would be almost ridiculous in leading its debates. ”

“ In the effort to strengthen his Ministry Perceval persuaded Lord Sidmouth to enter the Cabinet, but only on condition that the orders should be left an open question. Sidmouth plainly said that he would rather give up the orders than face an American war. [221] He also asked that the license system should be renounced. Perceval replied that this would be a greater sacrifice than if the licenses had never been granted. [222] Lord Sidmouth was not a great man,—Canning despised his abilities, and the Prince of Wales called him a blockhead ”

“ The foundation of the Sidmouth Peerage is traceable to one of those fortunate turns which have much to do with worldly success. It is related that while Lord Chatham was residing at Hayes, in Kent, his first coachman being taken ill, the postillion was sent for the family doctor; but not finding him, the messenger returned, bringing with him Mr. Addington, then a practitioner in the place, who, by permission of Lord Chatham, saw the coachman, and reported his ailment. His lordship was so pleased with Mr. Addington, that he employed him as apothecary for the servants, and then for himself ”

“ The mass of his supporters, who admired and obeyed him, were not drawn to him personally. Men of the highest rank found him stiff and unbending; and the king, though he esteemed him, looked on him as a master, and felt far more comfortable with Addington. ”

“ On the shore hereabouts, all sorts of marine curiosities can be picked up, such as petrified wood, madrepores, jaspers, agates, and a variety of shells.
Near Sidmouth is a very interesting house, which is thrown open occasionally to public view by the proprietor. In the garden are glass houses, in which oranges, vines, pines, and the most beautiful orchids grow, with pineries, and ferneries, and formerly there were aviaries, and a menagerie of curious animals, and in the cottage are preserved a number of rare things. ”

“ In brief, men were always divided in their own minds in regard to Ralph Addington. They knew that, constantly, he broke every canon of that mysterious flexible, half-developed code which governs their relations with women. ”

“ The Somersetshire squire and the chancery barrister in Westminster Hall—the extremes of national obtuseness and professional keenness—agreed in despising America. The pompous Lord Sidmouth, the tedious Lord Sheffield, the vivacious Canning, the religious Perceval, and the merry-andrew Cobbett—whose genius was peculiar in thinking itself popular—joined hands in spreading libels against a people three thousand miles away, who according to their own theory were too contemptible to be dangerous. ”

“ Audley street.† 2. Charles street near Mount street.†
Adam’s yard, Hockley in the Hole. †
Addington, a village in Surrey, three miles from Croydon, situated at the descent of a high spacious common to which it gives name. Its church, though said to be above 300 years old, is still very firm. But what is most remarkable, is, that the Lord of the Manor held it in the reign of Henry III. by the service of making his Majesty a mess of pottage in an earthen pot in the King’s kitchen at his coronation; and so late as the coronation of King Charles II. Thomas Leigh, Esq ”

“ When you stand upon any of the hills which stand round Sidmouth, the whole valley seems to be thickly wooded down to the very verge of the sea, and these pretty villas to be springing from the ground almost as thickly and quite as naturally as the trees themselves. ”

“ The last of the coast towns in this region is one of the best centres in south-east Devon for a detailed exploration of the countryside. That is, the best if a coast town must be chosen. To the writer's mind a better plan is to make a break from this established usage and get quarters in one of the quiet old places about eight or ten miles inland, such as Ottery or Axminster. But Sidmouth is an exceedingly pleasant spot, in which one need never feel dull or bored, and in which the vulgarities one associates with the "popular" watering place are entirely absent. ”

“ Addison observes, is certainly true, 'He more had pleased us, had he pleased us less.' He had a soul too full, an imagination too fertile to be restrained, and because he has more wit than any other poet, an ordinary reader is somehow disposed to think he had less. ”

“ Lord G—— told me he would write to you to offer his name likewise, if it strikes you that the object I allude to is worth pursuing, and if our names are likely to be of any use to you for the purposes above mentioned. Town is thin; few people, and less news; but an increasing report among Sidmouth's friends that he is in too bad health to continue, and that he must resign.
The Radicals, as you see, are all trying to make out a mob case for Sir R. Wilson, but the army, I am told, is well pleased at his dismissal. ”

“ Coming into Sidmouth, you see at once that you are arrived in a Superior Place, and, before you are perceived, make haste to brush the dust off your boots, put your headgear straight, and, in general making yourself look as respectable as may be possible to a rambler in the byways, step forth with a jaunty air ”

“ It has a bold and open shore, and many of its newest houses are built near the beach, which is protected from the encroachments of the sea by a natural rampart of shingly pebbles, that rises in four or five successive stages from near low-water mark, and terminates in a broad and commodious promenade about one-third of a mile in length. Sidmouth has two suburbs, respectively called the Western Town and the Marsh. It has a weekly market on Saturday, and two annual fairs—the one on Easter Tuesday, the other on the Wednesday after September 1. ”

“ Some took twice the number, some even crossed over from session to session. The first committee on which Addington was engaged had this unfortunate duration, and he was re-appointed to it in the second session of the parliament of 1785.
At this period, whether from a sense of disappointment, or from the silent dulness of this drudgery, his health appears to have been in a feeble state. In a letter to his father, he apologises for listlessness and stupidity by illness, and says, "that he does not come up to the definition of man as a risible animal." ”

“ Bullion without birth, money without manners are in process of revolutionising some aspects of Sidmouth, and it is quite in accord with the general trend of things that the newest, the largest, the reddest, and the most insistent of the hotels should have shoved a great hulking shoulder up against the pretty, rambling, white-faced cottage in Woolacombe Glen, where some earliest infant months of Queen Victoria were passed, and that it should have exploited the association by calling itself the “Victoria.” ”

“ When George I. succeeded to the throne, Addison's fortunes began to improve. A Council having been appointed to manage matters till the King arrived, Addison was chosen their secretary; and afterwards he went over again to Ireland in his old capacity, Sunderland being now Lord-Lieutenant. Here, much as he differed from Swift in politics, he resumed his intimacy with him,—an intimacy, considering the dispositions of the two men, singular, as though a lamb and a flayed bear were to form an alliance. In 1715 our poet returned to England, and obtained a seat at the Board of Trade. ”

“ Addington is the person intended for my successor. He wants only a little more age, and being a little more known, to make his nomination unexceptionable; but I certainly cannot but confess that he does want both these. It is, however, the best appointment that we can make to a situation to which so few people are willing to look, and for which so much fewer are at all qualified. ”

“ Sir Philip Sidney’s apologetic words are well known:— ‘Certainly I must confesse my own barbarousnes, I never heard the olde song of Percy and Duglas, that I found not my heart mooved more then with a Trumpet.’ Addison was bolder. ‘It is impossible that anything should be universally tasted and approved by a Multitude, tho’ they are only the Rabble of a Nation, which hath not in it some peculiar Aptness to please and gratify the Mind of Man.’ With these and other encouragements the popular poetry of England was not lost to sight ”

“ The political sections from which he was enabled to draw were his own immediate followers, and such of the late minister's as did not feel themselves pledged to follow Addington in his retirement. The result was not wholly satisfactory. Lord Eldon, the Duke of Portland, Lord Westmoreland, Lord Castlereagh, and Lord Hawkesbury, continued to hold office, Lord Hawkesbury surrendering the important post of Foreign Secretary to Lord Harrowby, and receiving in exchange the Home Office. ”

“ Sidmouth continued to grow in favour for years afterwards, and only began to experience neglect when the opening of the railways to the West discovered other beautiful spots in Devonshire. Next to the Royal association already recounted, Sidmouth most prides itself on the fact that in 1831 the Grand Duchess Helene of Russia for three months resided at Fortfield Terrace. ”

“ But for one circumstance Addington’s ministry would have lasted long. So strong was the reaction against the Revolution that the bulk of the nation was almost as suspicious of genius as the king himself. Not only was there no outcry for legislative reforms, but the very idea of reform was unpopular. The country gentlemen were predominant in parliament, and the country gentlemen as a body looked upon Addington with respect and affection. Such a minister was therefore admirably suited to preside over affairs at home in the existing state of opinion. ”

“ Addington, though agreeing wholly with the Ministry and differing with the Whigs, he even then refused to profit by a position so favorable to his interests, and submitted, like certain religionists, from a point of honor, to suffer for a faith in which he did not believe—it seems impossible not to concede that even to the obligations of Party he was as faithful as could be expected from a spirit that so far outgrew its limits, and, in paying the tax of fidelity while he asserted the freedom of dissent, showed that he could sacrifice every thing to it, except his opinion. ”

“ At this time Addison arrived. He had been advised not to show the smallest civility to the Dean [Pg 467] of St. Patrick's. He had answered, with admirable spirit, that it might be necessary for men whose fidelity to their party was suspected to hold no intercourse with political opponents; but that one who had been a steady Whig in the worst times might venture, when the good cause was triumphant, to shake hands with an old friend who was one of the vanquished Tories. His kindness was soothing to the proud and cruelly wounded spirit of Swift ”

“ The bathing is good, the climate warm. Formerly of some importance, the harbour can no longer be entered by large vessels, and goods are transhipped into flat-bottomed lighters for conveyance ashore. Fishing is extensively carried on and cattle fairs are held. In the 13th century Sidmouth was a borough governed by a port-reeve. ”

“ The business men looked at him with the slow smile of the sane for the fanatic and answered from the fatuous optimism of the man who expects the world to last at least his time. Some of them said something about "this great country", as if it were chartered by the Almighty to stand the assaults of other races, and when he reminded them that Addington was not trying to amalgamate its aliens with its own ideals, and was giving them over instead to Weedon Moore, they laughed at him. ”

“ Addison is the sunshine, which melts the ice and dries the mud and makes the earth thrill with light and hope. Like Swift, he despised shams, but unlike him, he never lost faith in humanity; and in all his satires there is a gentle kindliness which makes one think better of his fellow-men, even while he laughs at their little vanities. ”