LORD JOHN TOWNSHEND.
Three great families from East Anglia rose to distinction in the political world at the beginning of the eighteenth century. These were the Walpoles, the Townshends, and the Herveys, and the common link that bound them together was the sturdy figure of sir Robert Walpole. They grew with his growth, when through his shrewd common-sense and his vigorous speech he obtained the supremacy in English affairs. There was eccentricity, to use no harsher term, in all three. The life led by Walpole's successor in the peerage of Orford was disfigured by many blots and his wife's character was not different from his. Their follies may be read throughout the volumes of Horace Walpole's correspondence. The traits of the Herveys gave rise to the witticism that mankind was composed of wise men, mad men, fools and Herveys. Three of them during that century have left in the world's memory the recollection of their peculiarities. One of them was the "Sporus" of Pope's satire, the second was Augustus, the dashing sailor, the first husband of Miss Chudleigh, and the last was Frederick, the clever and whimsical bishop of Derry.
The third family was that of Townshend. The second viscount was Walpole's colleague and brother-in-law. For many years he exercised the leading influence in English politics but Walpole gradually ousted him from his position in the ministry and they quarrelled, drawing swords in a lady's rooms in a royal palace. His heart was in agriculture and his name is chiefly remembered now from his introduction on a large scale into our national system of farming of that familiar root, the turnip. The third viscount married Etheldreda, called among her friends Audrey, Harrison, the heiress of Ball's Park, near Hertford. Her indiscretions in act and speech, are written large among the scandalous chronicles of the smart set of that age. One of her sons was George, the brave soldier of Quebec but the tactless viceroy of Ireland, incompetent everywhere except at the dinner table. Another was Charles, whose audacious and witty speeches in parliament were the admiration of all the members whose minds could not realise the disastrous effects which his blazing errors in speech were certain to produce. He was chancellor of the exchequer, a position which under a happy constitution has been held by many a brilliant and wayward member of parliament, without even an elementary knowledge of finance, and this was Charles Townshend's case. A third member of the family was secretary of state in Mr. Pitt's cabinet and presided over the administration of our colonies when in their infancy. He became lord Sydney and gave his name to the chief city in New South Wales. John Townshend, at first the hon. John Townshend, then lord John Townshend was of this race. Elizabeth, lady Holland knew him well, his merits and his defects. She summed up his characteristics in the phrase, "like the rest of his family he is mad; never enough to be confined, but often very flighty."
The honourable John Townshend was the second son of George, the first marquess Townshend, second in command to Wolfe at the conquest of Canada. His mother was lady Charlotte Compton, only surviving child of James, earl of Northampton. He was born in Audley Square, London, on 19 Jany. 1757, and the King stood as his godfather. Like many a Townshend before him he was sent to Eton and St. John's College, Cambridge. He was admitted on 24 February 1773, at the age of 16, Ferris and Pearce, the latter afterwards dean of Ely and Master of the Temple, being his tutors and became M.A. in 1775 and LL.D. in 1811. In order to qualify himself for public life he went to the bar and was admitted at Lincoln's Inn on 1 6 July 1774.
Townshend was in early life remarkable above his fellows for his energy and for his supreme grace of manners. A special feature that characterised him was his "pathetic bow." While still very young he became a constant associate in the daily routine and in the political sympathies of Charles James Fox. He adopted the principles of the Whigs with enthusiasm and stuck to them throughout his life. His great desire was to represent the university of Cambridge, and the opportunity came to him in, when the marquess of Granby succeeded his grandfather in the dukedom of Rutland and caused a vacancy in the representation. The new duke gave him the support of his influence, in spite of the scandalous story repeated by Cole, the malicious old parson of Milton, of Townshend's conduct a few months previously to the marchioness of Granby. The fight was remarkable in the history of the university's representation in parliament. Three candidates stood — James Mansfield, of King's College, then solicitor general and afterwards chief justice of the common pleas, Townshend, who stood in the "independent interest," and lord Hyde, both of whom were of St. John's College, so that the interest of that powerful body was divided. Every nerve was strained in the contest, the marquess of Townshend even sent up an elector to vote for lord Hyde and against his own son, but Cole allows that had it not been for this unfortunate split in his college, the superior address and management of John Townshend, which far exceeded those of his two competitors, would have ensured him the victory. As it was the difference in voting was but small, the numbers being Mansfield 157 votes, Townshend 145 and Hyde 138. Had the election been delayed for two or three weeks he would have won, even with this division among the members of his college. The younger members of the university were warm in his favour and the accession, as Cole acknowledges, of "a young flight of Masters of Arts" would have carried his election.
Nothing daunted by this defeat, Townshend stood again at the general election in 1780. There were now five candidates for the honour of representing their university in parliament. The three old competitors were joined by Richard Croftes, also a member of St. John's college who had represented the university from 1771 to the dissolution in 1780, and William Pitt, who hailed from Pembroke Hall. Mansfield was at the head of the poll with 277 votes, Townshend came next with 247 and lord Hyde was a good third with 206 votes. The numbers of Croftes sank to 1 50 votes and Mr. Pitt had only 142. What was most of all remarkable in these contests was the extreme youth of the candidates, all of them with the exception of Croftes and Mansfield being under 30.
At 1784, the year of the next general election, the fortunes of the Whigs had ebbed out. There were now four wooers for the honour of Granta's hand. Three of them were ancient rivals, Mansfield, Townshend and Pitt, and the fourth lover was lord Euston, of Trinity college. A complete change had come over the minds of the electors. Pitt headed the poll with 351 votes and lord Euston came next with 299. Townshend was a good third with 278 votes, and the supporters of Mansfield, who had been first at the poll in 1780, dwindled to 181. The return of lord Euston was due to the preponderance of votes cast for him in his own college. At Trinity he polled 107 votes against 51 that were given to Townshend. At St. John's Townshend secured 91 and 48 were given to Euston. It was à propos of this election that Paley was fabled to have preached before the university in the presence of Pitt on the text "There is a lad here, who hath five barley loaves and two small fishes, but what are they among so many."
The comment of Wraxall over this electoral contest summed up the situation with complete justice. "Few men held a higher place in Fox's friendship than Townshend, a place to which he was well entitled by the elegance of his mind, his various accomplishments and steady adherence throughout life. Though not endowed with eminent parliamentary talents, he possessed an understanding highly cultivated, set off by the most pleasing manners. If party could ever feel regret, it would have been excited by his exclusion from a seat so honourable in itself as that of the University of Cambridge, to which he had attained by unwearied personal exertions."
Townshend's friendship with Fox and his influence over the Whig leader had by this time become known to the world at large. When Fox paid a long visit to Dublin in the closing months of 1777, Townshend accompanied him. Tickell, the brother-in-law of Sheridan, published anonymously in 1779 — it passed through at least three editions before the next year had run its course — a clever satire entitled "epistle from the honourable Charles Fox partridge shooting, to the honourable John Townshend cruising." Fox is represented as tired of pastime in the country and he hopes that Townshend is in like case. He indulges in satire over the peculiarities of his opponents in politics and adjures his friend to return to life at Westminster. The young Whig yachtsman is designated the "pride of fop alley though a little tanned" and there is spread before him an alluring picture of the pleasures of life at Brooks's, a worthy man "who blushes to be paid." Hare, the Hare of many friends, complained a year or two later that he seldom saw Fox "except at supper at Brooks's, with lord John Townshend." Lord John Russell, in quoting this passage calls him a "young man of very lively parts, who by his talents and devotion seems to have gained at this time an influence with Mr. Fox, the results of which were of great importance." (life and times of Fox, I., 337.) Fox put his friend prominently forward in July 1788. There was a bye-election for the city of Westminster. Admiral Hood had been made a lord of the admiralty and sought re-election from the electors. Westminster was one of the half-dozen populous borough constituencies in England where the franchise was of such a nature that the mass of the inhabitants could express their opinions at the polling booths . All through the reigns of the four Georges it was the centre of political attraction. The feelings of the constituency had been roused to indignation by the ill-advised attempt which Pitt had made to prevent through a scrutiny his illustrious rival from sitting for the borough. Fox determined upon a struggle for the complete representation of the borough and Townshend was nominated as the Whig opponent of the Tory Hood. Both sides put forward their whole strength but victory after a violent contest was on the side of the Whigs. They polled 6392 votes against 5569 which had been given to Hood and so two Whigs sat in parliament for Westminster. The success was celebrated by every proof of party exultation. Rioting occurred, as at the previous election in 1784, and the windows in the houses of the leading Tories were doomed to destruction. Gillray, for once on the side of the Whigs, expressed the current opinion on the lavish expenditure of the Tories in a caricature called "election troops bringing their accounts to the Pay table Westminster," in which Pitt is depicted behind the Treasury gate, blandly professing his own ignorance of any promises of money and referring the clamorous crowd of applicants to old George Rose.
Lord John retired from the representation of Westminster at the general election of 1790 and never again stood for a popular constituency, but he sat for the borough of Knaresborough from 30 March 1793 to 1818, when he withdrew from public life. The right of election in this Yorkshire borough was vested in the owners of between 80 and 90 burgage houses, and the duke of Devonshire owned all but four. The constituency consequently returned his nominees and it was his wish that one of them should be lord John Townshend. He never became a conspicuous figure in parliamentary life, and never filled any important position in office. From 30 March to 13 July 1782 and from 8 April to 30 Dec. 1783 he was a lord of the admiralty and when the ministry of "all the talents" was formed in Feb. 1806 he was created a privy councillor and was joint paymaster of the army from that month until the 4 April 1807. He contented himself for the most part with voting silently, but consistently, for his friend Fox and the political principles which he advocated.
Two special gifts were his. One was the art of mimicry. He could not only reproduce the manner of any person but he could improvise a subject and talk upon it as his victim would. Such was the testimony of the celebrated lady Holland. In her opinion he was "one of the wittiest men there is; his verses are excellent." That was his other talent; he possessed an unrivalled facility for writing verses. That imperious lady's husband wrote to Samuel Rogers about 1818, "I am as full of my own verses as our friend Jack Townshend could be." The opportunity for a display of his skill in versifying came to him in 1784. Most of the wits of the day were ranged on the side of the Whigs, and they soon found subjects for their jests among the supporters of Pitt. A country squire who represented Devonshire in parliament made himself the object of satire by his ludicrous speeches in the house against Fox and on behalf of Mr. Pitt. This was John Rolle, a young man with large estates in and around the two watering-places of Exmouth and Sidmouth, who lived to be the old lord Rolle who stumbled at the steps of the throne in 1838 when paying homage to the young queen Victoria. His name gave the title to their chief satire which first appeared as "criticisms on the Rolliad, a poem, being a more faithful portraiture of the present immaculate young minister and his friends, than any extant." Edition after edition poured from the press and into the stream of satire, as it sped its course, flowed many tributary poems. By 1795 it had become "The Rolliad in two parts; probationary odes for the laureatship and poetical miscellanies." The jokes and allusions had their days of life but have now passed into the grave. No one reads these satires and if many did only a few would appreciate the points. Speculation was long excited over the authorship of these effusions and gradually, through the testimony of contemporary politicians, most of the pieces found their parents. Lord John Townshend was certainly the begetter of not a few of them. He wrote the "probationary ode for Major Scott" the dullard that Warren Hastings chose for his champion in Parliament, and the playful parody of Horace's "donec gratus eram tibi," as well as numerous odes to his political opponents, lords Barrington, Dartmouth, George Germaine and sir Elijah Impey. Perhaps the most popular of his productions was Jekyll, a political eclogue. The original draft, which bore the name of "Lansdowne" and was designed as a satire on that peer, was wholly by Townshend and the piece was then more "terse and classical," more in fact what it was intended to be, a parody of one of Virgil's eclogues. But Richard Tickell, now hand in hand with the leading wits among the Whigs, took the poem up and expanded it into the form in which it appeared. It contains some good lines. Jekyll himself was credited with possessing a "book of sarcasms ready made" and a collection of "stale seventies and pilfer'd spleen." Speaking of the Temple, it is recorded that "the well-known fountain babbles day by day." Was ever, I may ask, any other fountain in the world, so plain and unpretentious as this, honoured by such an army of pilgrims? Yet the inhospitable benchers — inhospitable in this respect only — have not even given their visitors a seat on which to rest. The history of this fountain has never been fully told. It was set up in 1680—81 in the treasurership of William Whitelocke (calendar of Middle temple records, ed. C. H. Hopwood, 1903, p. 179) and cost with pavement and rails around it over £750. It was probably one of the improvements resulting from the great fire in the Temple, which broke out on Sunday night 26 Jany. 1678—9. It is mentioned by George Farquhar in his "Love and a bottle" 1698 (Act IV., Scene II.), by Charles Lamb in his essay on "the old benchers of the Inner Temple" — he "made it to rise and fall how many times! to the astoundment of the young urchins, his contemporaries" — and forms the subject of a poem by L. E. L. But its fame has been spread far and wide through its introduction by Dickens into the novel of "Martin Chuzzlewit."
Beau Brummell was a bit of an author himself, but he displayed more energy in collecting the poetical effusions of others. All the fashionables of that day professed a love of literature and dabbled in poetry, chiefly satirical, and circulated without their names. Moving as he did in the highest circles of life, he knew the arcana of authorship which were concealed from others. He kept a pocket book into which he entered all the odes and satires which attracted his notice and the names of those to whom they were assigned. Many of them are introduced into the fifteenth chapter of Jesse's life of the "beau" and among them are several by Townshend. One set by him was put forward as composed by Robert Adair, and was addressed to lady Hunloke, a coquette and a card player, who was reputed to be in love with Adair. The lady's reply to these verses which is given in the same chapter of the biography, was the composition of the duchess of Devonshire. In the following chapter are more verses by Townshend and these were composed as written by a clergyman to the countess of Blessington. If Adair had a share in the composition of the Rolliad (but the evidence is not clear on that point), he far outlived all his colleagues in its production. If he were guiltless of the accusation, the last survivor of these wits was lord John Townshend.
Townshend loved society and lived much in it. With Fox and Sheridan, Hare and Fitzpatrick, he often repaired to Whitbread's country house at Southill, in Bedfordshire. The party used to delight in teasing the leader whom they idolized. Fox, the sweetest-tempered of mankind, bore it all with equanimity but if it became necessary, he put out his paw and crushed them. After his retirement from active life in politics Townshend divided his time between his two houses, that of Ball's Park near Hertford, and his seaside retreat at Brighton. In Hertfordshire he cultivated the friendship of the professors at the East India College. Malthus, the Malthusian, was "my particular and most amiable" friend. When at the seaside, Moore would call upon him and have much talk about Sheridan. Much to lord John's surprise, the Prince Regent asked him in January 1819 to dinner at the Pavilion. Hitherto Florizel had "cut me as one of the old Whig set" but now he put forward all his powers of pleasing, "addressed his whole conversation to me and talked of nothing but Fox and old scenes." Nobody could be more agreeable than George the fourth when he liked. Townshend loved to discourse on Fox and the men around him. In Clayden's work on "Rogers and his contemporaries" (I., 220—3) is a long letter from him, mostly on Sheridan. There are many letters to and from him in Dr. Parr's works (I., 355—6, vii., 161—72, 630—6).
Townshend married on 10 April 1787 Georgiana Ann, eldest daughter of William Poyntz, of Midgham, in Berkshire, and niece to the dowager lady Spencer. She was divorced on Townshend's account from her first husband, William Fawkener, clerk of the privy council and a son of the gay old sir Everard Fawkener, whose varied life comprised a residence of some years in Constantinople, the patronage of Voltaire when in England, and the tenure of such official positions as secretary to the duke of Cumberland and postmaster-general. Townshend and she met at lord Melbourne's at Brocket Hall in the summer of 1785. A duel between him and her first husband took place in Hyde Park in May of next year. "Fawkener fired at and missed the defendant who fired in the air." Townshend and his wife lived happily together for many years. He died at Brighton on the 25 Feb. 1833, she survived until 4 May 1851, when she was in her 89th year. Her funeral at Hertford testified to the universal respect in which she was held. She had lived down any accusation which could be brought against her.
Three of their children died in early life, among them was his eldest son, Charles Fox Townshend, who was named after his father's friend. He took the degree of M.A. at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1816 and died in the following year. Their daughter, Isabella Georgiana Townshend was ill for "three long years" and died on 17 Sept. 1811. Her father wrote some pathetic lines to her memory. They are preserved in BrummeH's notebook, are inscribed on a tablet on the south wall of All Saints church, Hertford, over the pew of the manor of Ball's, and were printed on a fly-sheet which was bound by Archdeacon Wrangham in a volume of poetical and classical effusions now belonging to the British Museum.
Both father and mother were buried in that church at Hertford. The tablet to lord John Townshend contains the words: "For a period little short of thirty years he was the friend and companion of that illustrious patron and statesman, Mr. Fox. A distinction which was the pride of his life and the only one he was anxious might be recorded after his death." Marvellous indeed must have been the fascination of the politician who during long years of exile from office could retain the friendship and the allegiance of nearly every member of the brilliant band which had gathered around him under the brighter auspices of his youth.