George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life. George Augustus Selwyn
as a training school of principles and ideas very different from those ordinarily associated with the name of its greatest son." Hertford was in the middle of the eighteenth century a college where the so-called students neither toiled at books nor at physical exercise. They passed a short and merry time at the University, fashioned as nearly as might be on the mode of life of a man about town. In 1740 he was appointed to the vague-sounding office of Clerk of the Irons and Surveyor of the Meltings in the Mint, a sinecure which, after the manner of the time, required no personal attention from the holder. 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. But as I find the whole town have had the same sentiments about him (though I am sure few so strong as myself), I will not repeat what you have heard so much. I shall write to him to-night, though he knows, without my telling him, how very much I love him. To you, my dear Harry, I am infinitely obliged for the three successive letters you wrote me about him, which gave me double pleasure, as they showed your attention for me at a time that you knew I must be so unhappy, and your friendship for him."* But then came an interval in Selwyn's academic career—if such it may be called—since he was certainly in Paris, much in want of money, at the end of 1742 and the beginning of 1743. It is probable that he had gone down from Oxford for some irregularity; he ultimately was obliged to leave the University for the same reason. For though he re-entered his college in 1744 he only remained there until the following year, when he was sent down for an irreverent jest after dinner, having taken more to drink than was good for him. His friends, especially Sir Charles Hanbury Williams and some in authority at Oxford also, thought that Selwyn was harshly treated. Whether that were so or not this was the end of his University career. It was not a promising beginning of a life, and for some years he was regarded as a good-natured spendthrift. The death of his elder brother and father however in 1751 produced a sense of responsibility, but even before this date he had been endeavouring to regain his father's goodwill. "I don't yet imagine," wrote his friend, Sir William Maynard, shortly before the death of Colonel J. Selwyn, "you are quite established in his good opinion, and if his life is but spared one twelvemonth you may have an opportunity of convincing him you are in earnest in your promises of a more frugal way of life." As too often happens the son had not time in his father's lifetime to regain his good opinion. Certainly Selwyn made no attempt to give up pleasure, though he was bent on it no doubt with a more frugal mind. He was a man of fashion and of pleasure, having his headquarters in London, paying visits now and again to great country houses as Trentham and Croome. To Bath he went as one goes now to the Riviera. In Paris too he delighted; when in the autumn of 1762 the Duke of Bedford was in France negotiating the treaty which is known in history as the Peace of Paris, it was Selwyn who accompanied the Duchess when she joined her husband. "She sets out the day after to-morrow," wrote Walpole on September 8th, "escorted to add gravity to the Embassy by George Selwyn." After the treaty was completed on February 10th of the following year, as a memento of his visit the Duke presented Selwyn with the pen with which this unpopular document was signed.* Indeed in those days he was constantly in Paris, much to the regret of his friends at home—"Do come and live among your friends who love and honour you," wrote Gilly Williams to him in the autumn of 1764, but in spite of their wishes he stayed on throughout the winter in the French capital, and when his friend Carlisle went in 1778 to America as a peace commissioner Selwyn tried to console himself for his absence by a stay in Paris. "George is now, I imagine, squaring his elbows and turning out his toes in Paris," wrote Hare to Carlisle in December of that year. Neither politics nor pleasure could prevent continual and long visits to France.
* Horace Walpole to H. S. Conway, Florence, March 25, 1741.
* Bedford Correspondence, vol. iii. P. 206.
The charming country estate and house which he had inherited from his father had little attraction for Selwyn, and to the end of his life, if he could not be in town, he preferred Castle Howard, or indeed any house where he would meet with congenial spirits. "This is the second day," he once wrote to Carlisle, "I am come home to dine alone, but so it is, and if it goes on so I am determined to keep a chaplain, for although I do not stand in need of much society, I do not relish being quite alone at this time of day."
All this time he was a Member of Parliament. There is a little village of small red cottages with thatched roofs lying among the Wiltshire downs between Savernake Forest and Andover. It is called Ludgershall, and has a quiet out-of-the-world look. In the eighteenth century it was a pocket borough, returning two Members to Parliament, and was the property of the Selwyn family. The representation was as much in their hands as the trees in the adjoining fields. In 1747 George Selwyn had found it convenient to enter the House of Commons. In Ludgershall there were no constituents to take him to task; to be able to go to Westminster when he wished added to the variety of life. It kept him in touch with the politicians and statesmen of St. James's Street, and it made him a marketable quantity—his price was another sinecure, the place of Paymaster of the Works. But this he did not receive until he had inherited the family property, which gave him a hold on the city of Gloucester. For this city he was a Member from 1754 to 1780, when, losing his seat at the general election, he gladly returned to his former constituency. The seat at Ludgershall was never in the nature of a true political representation, and even when Member for Gloucester Selwyn seems to have attended but little to the House of Commons. He was one of a legion of sinecures—a true specimen of the place-man of the age. Possessed of some political influence, he was able to find in politics a means of increasing his income. It would be absurd to censure him because he was a sinecurist; he was acting according to the customs of the time. The man who in the reign of George III. had the opportunity of obtaining posts which carried with them salaries and no duties would have been regarded as Quixotic if he had thrown such opportunities away. In this Selwyn is thoroughly representative of his time, and his frequent anxiety lest he should be deprived of his offices is indicative of an apprehension which was felt by many others.
Yet, sinecurist as he was, Selwyn often regarded his position as a hard necessity, especially when he was driven into the country to look after his constituents. He would then heartily wish himself out of Parliament: the sorrows of a sinecurist might well be the title of some of the letters written from Matson.
Selwyn's was a life devoid of stirring incidents, and from the date at which his correspondence with Lord Carlisle begins the course of his days is indicated in his letters. It is sufficient, therefore, to state that he died at his house in Cleveland Row, St. James's, on the 25th of January, 1791, still a Member of Parliament, in the place where his life had been passed and among his innumerable friends.
In one sense his life had been solitary, for he was never married; but an unusual love for the young which was a charming and remarkable characteristic, singularly opposed to many of his habits, had been centred on the child whom he called Mie Mie,* the daughter of an Italian lady, the Marchesa Fagniani, who was for some time in England with her husband. The origin of Selwyn's interest in the child is obscure, but the story of his affection is striking and unusual.
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 she was four she was taken to pay visits with him; but it is difficult at this time to know if he or the Earl of March had charge of her.
* Maria Fagniani (1771–1856). She was married in 1792, the year after Selwyn's death, to the Earl of Yarmouth, afterwards third Marquis of Hertford. She led a life of pleasure (1802–7), travelling on the continent with the Marshal Androche. She had three children, and died at Rue Tailbout, Paris.
Such interest in a young child naturally occasioned remark in London society, and the question of her paternity has never been clearly settled; in the gossip of the time both the Duke of Queensberry and Selwyn were said to be her father.