George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life. George Augustus Selwyn
of George Augustus Selwyn at the age of fifty-one: from a pastelle by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, drawn in 1770. Hamilton, who was an Irish artist of considerable reputation, was at this time working in London. After a long visit to Italy he returned to Dublin in 1792 and was elected a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. This drawing is in the possession of the Earl of Carlisle at Castle Howard, Yorkshire.
Group of George Augustus Selwyn and Frederick, fifth Earl of Carlisle: from a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. The dog by the side of Selwyn is his favourite, Raton. Selwyn is dressed in a pale brown coat and breeches, a red vest trimmed with gold lace, and light grey stockings; the Earl of Carlisle in a reddish brown coat and pale yellow vest. He wears the green ribbon and star of the Order of the Thistle. This picture was probably painted about the year 1770, and is in the possession of the Earl of Carlisle at Castle Howard, Yorkshire. …
TABLE OF DATES 1719. Birth. 1739. Matriculated at Hart Hall, Oxford. 1740. Clerk of the Irons and Surveyor of Meltings at the Mint. 1742–3. In Paris; having gone down from Oxford for a time. 1745. Finally left Oxford. 1747. M.P. for Ludgershall. 1751. Death of father and elder brother. 1754. M.P. for Gloucester. 1755. Paymaster of the Works. 1767. Correspondence with fifth Earl of Carlisle commences. 1779. Registrar of the Court of Chancery of Barbadoes. 1780. Loses seat for Gloucester. M.P. for Ludgershall. 1782. Loses office of Paymaster of the Works. 1784. Surveyor-General of Land Revenues of the Crown. 1791. Death.
Health is the first good lent to men;
A gentle disposition then
Next to be rich by no bye ways,
Lastly with friends t'enjoy our days.
HERRICK
CHAPTER 1. 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. They were told as things not to be forgotten in the letters of harassed politicians. "You must have heard all the particulars of the Duke of Northumberland's entertainment," wrote Mr. Whateley in 1768 to George Grenville, the most hardworking of ministers; "perhaps you have not heard George Selwyn's bon mot."* But as usually happens when a man becomes known for his humour jokes were fathered on Selwyn, just as half a century later any number of witticisms were attributed to Sydney Smith which he had never uttered. It was truly remarked of Selwyn at the time of his death: "Many good things he did say, there was no doubt, and many he was capable of saying, but the number of good, bad, and indifferent things attributed to him as bon mots for the last thirty years of his life were sufficient to stock a foundling hospital for wit."*
* Grenville Correspondence, vol. 11. p. 372.
* Gentleman's Magazine, 1791, p. 94.
It is therefore not surprising that Selwyn has been handed down to posterity as a wit. It is a dismal reputation. Jokes collected in contemporary memoirs fall flat after a century's keeping; the essential of their success is spontaneity, appropriateness, the appreciation even of their teller, often also a knowledge among those who hear them of the peculiarities of the persons whom they mock. 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. James's Street.
Selwyn's life, though passed in a momentous age, was uneventful, but the course of it must be traced.
George Augustus Selwyn, second son of Colonel John Selwyn, of Matson, in Gloucestershire, and of Mary, daughter of General Farrington, of Kent, was born on the 11th of August, 1719. His father, aide-de-camp to Marlborough and a friend of Sir Robert Walpole, was a man of character and ability, well known in the courts of the first and second Georges. Selwyn, however, probably inherited his wit and his enjoyment of society from his mother, who was Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte. Horace Walpole writes of her as "Mrs. Selwyn, mother of the famous George, and herself of much vivacity, and pretty."
Selwyn's elder brother died in 1751, and grief at his loss seems to have hastened the death of his father, which occurred in the same year.
His sister Albinia married Thomas Townshend, second son of Charles
Viscount Townshend. By this marriage the families of Selwyn and
Walpole were connected.
The home of the family was at Matson, a village two and a half miles south-east of Gloucester, on the spurs of the Cotswold hills, looking over the Severn valley—once called Mattesdone. There is a good deal of obscurity as to the ownership of the manor in mediaeval times, but it appears to have been in the possession of what may popularly speaking be called the family of Mattesdone. The landowner described himself by the place; "Ego Philippus de Mattesdone" are the words of an ancient document preserved among the records of the Monastery of St. Peter at Gloucester.*
* "Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestria," edited by W. Hart, vol. i. p. 100.
To come to more recent times, the manor house was built in 1594 by
Sir Ambrose Willoughby. From him the estate was purchased in 1597 by
Jasper Selwyn, Counsellor at Law, of Stonehouse, who was the fourth
in descent from John Selwyn, one of a Sussex family.
In 1751 the direct entail was broken by Colonel Selwyn, and the property was re-entailed on the descendants of his daughter, Mrs. Townshend, though it was left by will to George Selwyn for his life. On his death it devolved on Thomas, Lord Sydney, and has since remained in the possession of the Townshend family.** Walpole has given a description of the place in the days when he used to visit it.
** Bigland, "History of Gloucestershire," vol. ii. p. 200.
"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. King Charles lay here at the siege, and the Duke of York, with typical fury, hacked and hewed the window-shutters of his chamber, as a memorandum of his being there. Here is a good picture of Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in his later age, … and here is the very flower pot and counterfeit association for which Bishop Sprat is taken up, and the Duke of Marlborough sent to the Tower. The reservoirs on the hill supply the city. The late Mr. Selwyn governed the borough by them, and I believe by some wine too. …
"A little way from the town are the ruins of Lantony Priory; there remains a pretty old gateway, which G. Selwyn has begged to erect on the top of his mountain, and it will have a charming effect."*
* "The Letters of Horace Walpole," vol. ii. p. 354.
Selwyn's schooldays were passed at Eton with Gray and Walpole. In 1739 he became an undergraduate of Hertford College, Oxford, or Hart Hall as it was called. It was to Hertford also that later Charles Fox went, "a college which has in our own day been munificently