For the first three decades of the
nineteenth century John Whishaw (1764c.-1840) was a privileged observer of the
literary and political scene in London. A Cambridge-educated lawyer of independent
means, he held a government position as commissioner for auditing the public
accounts that brought him into contact with politicians and public officials. His
duties permitted a busy social life as a member of London’s most elite
institutions: the Royal Society, the Society of Antiquaries, the Geographical
Society, the King of Clubs, the University Club, the Athenaeum. Whishaw was the
intimate friend of Sir Samuel Romilly and was on close terms with members of the
Whig circles associated with Lord Landsdown and Lord Holland.
He was known to the public as a
member of the African Institution and author of the biography prefixed to Mungo
Park’s Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa (1815). But most
of his writing seems to have been anonymous and collaboratory; his nephew James
Whishaw (1808-1879) reported that “it is well known among his acquaintances
that he contributed much to the merit and value of various pamphlets which were at
different times published by his noble friends Lords Holland and King, and
others” (Gentleman’s Magazine, Feb. 1841, p. 207). Those
“others” likely included contributors to the Edinburgh Review:
Whishaw was on close terms with Henry Brougham as well as Samuel Romilly and Sydney
Smith and he reveals names of anonymous contributors in his correspondence.
Mungo Park’s Journal
was a John Murray production; subsequent to its publication Whishaw became a
regular at Murray’s shop and a conduit of information about Byron: his
correspondence contains transcriptions from Byron’s letters and journals, and
gossips about impending publications and sales of works by Byron and Scott. Murray
wrote in 1815, “If your visit be about four o’clock or later, you will
probably be rewarded by meeting with Scott or Byron and most likely with
both” (p. 98). There is no indication that the meeting took place (Whishaw,
who had an artificial leg, would have been fit company for the two lame poets). A
few months later Whishaw was reporting on the separation, inclining to Lady
Byron’s side. He relates that he had had “some conversation on the
subject [of Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon] yesterday with Rogers, who
talked very properly and rationally” (p. 151).
Like Byron’s,
Whishaw’s letters were meant to be circulated. They take the form of news
reports addressed to Thomas Smith (d. 1822) of Easton Grey in Wiltshire. Whishaw
was a thoroughgoing Whig who followed elections and speeches in Parliament very
closely. Like others in the Holland House circle he was obsessed with Napoleon, and
after the Emperor ceased to be a topic of conversation, the divorce proceedings
involving Queen Caroline. If Whishaw did not think much of the personal characters
of Byron, Napoleon, and Caroline, he still delivers the party line with gusto. He
takes an interest in Hobhouse whom he regards as a reckless if promising young
radical. For the years from 1813 to 1822 the letters average one per month,
appearing more or less frequently depending on political circumstances. After
Thomas Smith’s death they continue sporadically, addressed to his wife
Elizabeth (d. 1859).
In 1844 Elizabeth Smith bequeathed
the correspondence to Charles Romilly, Whishaw’s ward following the deaths of
Sir Samuel Romilly and his wife in 1818. The editor of The Pope of Holland
House, Lady Elizabeth Mary Seymour (1853?-1950), was the daughter of
Frederick Romilly, who was the brother of Charles. She was assisted by William
Prideaux Courtney, who supplies a concluding chapter on membership in the King of
Clubs taken from the Whishaw papers. Courtney was a formidable antiquary and one
suspects that he was responsible for the lion’s share of the
annotations—if not for the book itself, which, tending more to politics and
history than to personalities, is chiefly to be valued for its information.
Yet the letters have their own
kind of interest. Whishaw was nearing fifty in 1813, wise in the ways of the world
but subject, for all his Benthamite confidence, to the pathos of events as college
friends die and long-sought-for reforms produced disappointing results. He was
enthusiastic about exploration and could not but approve of the expedition of
Joseph Ritchie (met at Murray’s), and yet he remarks, “The parting was
melancholy, as I could hardly expect to see him again” (p. 197)—the
brilliant young man did indeed die in the Sahara. Where Richard Lovell Edgeworth
writes of “the possibility of traversing a hostile country in balloons”
(p. 109) Whishaw was more interested in the down-to-earth business of suppressing
the slave trade. One admires the old bachelor’s commitment to Romilly’s
stricken family so unexpectedly thrust upon him.
The Pope of Holland House is enlivened by the letters of Whishaw’s
correspondents: Mackintosh, Smith, and the redoubtable Lady Holland, who having
raced to the newly-opened Continent writes: “I have been much disappointed at
your silence. So long an interval has never elapsed before between your letters.
This reproach should have been made sooner, but my health has been wretched, nearly
thirty days of severe bilious cholic, attended with the most excruciating pain,
confined me chiefly to my fireside, couch, and sometimes bed. Unwarily we trusted
my precious person to the skill of a Roman physician, who administered very strong
acid extracted from tamarinds. I leave you to guess the torture they inflicted.
However, opium and a change of habitation produced a salutary effect, and I am now
beginning to crawl in my limited way to see the wonders of this great city”
(p. 75). Such passages “catch the manners living as they rise.”
David Hill Radcliffe
