E-Book, Englisch, 428 Seiten
Ziegler Melbourne
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-30288-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
A Biography of William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne
E-Book, Englisch, 428 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-571-30288-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Philip Ziegler (born 1929) is one of Britain's most distinguished biographers and historians. His works include biographies of Diana Cooper, Lord Melbourne (both to be reissued in Faber Finds), Mountbatten, Harold Wilson and Osbert Sitwell. He is currently working on the authorized biography of Edward Heath.
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ETON, like other leading schools, was, in academic terms, a factory for the production of classicists. Other subjects might figure in the curriculum but they were of little significance: the making of Latin verses, as William regretfully noted, was ‘almost the exclusive road to reputation at Eton’.
To be fair to the school, however, academic performance was by no means the only, or even the main purpose of its education. Eton was a forcing ground for the boys who would be entering parliament over the next ten years and governing Britain for the following thirty. It was taken for granted that the way of the Etonian would lie in public places and that he must be equipped for all the exigencies of such a role. Much emphasis was put on declamation and the boys were encouraged to debate and to orate formally at each other. But it was not so much what was taught that was important as the fact that the air itself seemed suffused with politics. The boys’ fathers ruled Britain and the boys not only assumed that they would take on the mantle but also that they were already associated in the work. In William’s first year the regency crisis was in issue. The school was split into two warring camps and each side urged its cause by methods perhaps more brutal but certainly little less sophisticated than those used by their fathers in the Houses of Lords and Commons.
In later life William was fond of quoting Talleyrand’s aphorism: ‘La meilleure ducation, c’est l’éducation Publique Anglaise; et c’est détestable.’ At first, at least, he found plenty to detest. Life was a series of disagreeable shocks for a gentle, slightly bookish child used to a home where he was treated as a civilized and almost adult being. On his arrival he was taken directly into chapel. A boy dropped his marble and William saw a master scowl at him ‘in menace of future punishment’. He thought no more about it, but as soon as the school reassembled the luckless child was called out of class and flogged. If this was the sort of punishment meted out for trifles, what could be reserved for more serious offences? Nor were the boys any less violent to one another. The proper way of settling any difference was by one’s fists. William became involved in some quarrel with a bigger boy ‘who had much longer arms and pounded amazingly. I stood and reflected a little, and thought to myself, and then gave it up. I thought that one of the most prudent acts, but I was reckoned very dastardly for it.’1 Undiscomfited, he made it a rule always to give up after the first round if he found that he was going to lose. Such behaviour could hardly have been more rational but a little boy who stood around and thought rather than knocked down his enemies was hardly likely to be a hero among his contemporaries.
It was not so much the violence as the neglect which disconcerted William. At midday on the first schoolday he found himself despatched to a field on the banks of the Thames where he was told to amuse himself for the next two hours. In alarm and perplexity he wandered around, wishing that someone would tell him what to do. ‘I thought it then very odd, for I had been accustomed to have two or three nursery maids after me, not allowing me to wet my heels …’2 He solaced himself by gorging at the tuckshop. His father had given him an extravagant amount of pocket money, more than ten guineas a term, and though he later discovered the delights of the dog-fighters, the rabbit-catchers and the boatmen, at the start every penny was spent at the pastry cooks. He stuffed himself with tarts, made himself sick, and, by the time he went home for the Christmas holidays, had spots all over his face.
At least the work did not pose any serious problems. In spite of his criticism of Mr Marsham, William found that he was well ahead of his contemporaries. His house-master was Dr William Langford, one of the most ferocious of Eton’s floggers at a time when corporal punishment was considered to be the panacea for almost every ill. He was a chaplain to George III and the harshness of his regime was mitigated by his frequent absences when he trailed off behind the court to Weymouth. He equally moved up to Windsor when the court was in residence but here there was no relief since he was close enough to Eton to know what was going on and his victims merely added the tedium of a walk to the Castle to the pain of their beating. He could have been worse. ‘A schoolmaster of more than thirty years standing who either preserves a tolerable degree of temper or is not worn down into complete carelessness and apathy is a man of considerable merit,’ wrote William. ‘Such a man was Dr Langford.’ But he was also vain, unimaginative and rather silly. He was so anxious that his boys should do him credit that he would sometimes write their verses for them and then bask in vicarious glory when the headmaster was told of their accomplishment. Even though William’s Greek was lamentable and he was never one of the outstanding Latinists, he was one of Dr Langford’s favourites. Indeed, he escaped with only three floggings in as many years. ‘I don’t think he flogged me enough,’ William told Victoria, ‘it would have been better if he had flogged me more.’3
A spotty and studious boy who refuses to fight and is a favourite of the teachers would seem destined to unpopularity, if not persecution. William escaped it. He was tolerably good at games, which may have helped; his lavish pocket money perhaps bought him a few friends and, more important than either of these, he was cheerful, friendly and relaxed. It was possible to ignore William Lamb but very hard to quarrel with him. He had too a kind of insouciance, an indifference to the woes which usually trouble schoolboys, which won the admiration of his contemporaries. He was not unconventional; he did not clash with the authorities; yet he went his own way and somehow contrived to give the impression that, when he conformed, he did so because he wanted to and not through lack of independence. For the first year or two of his Eton life he was tolerated, then he became popular, finally he found himself the height of fashion.
His last two years at Eton were happy ones. His Greek got no better but his masters comforted themselves with the fact that he was reasonably proficient in other subjects. For William himself the theatre became increasingly important. With a group of fellow enthusiasts he set up a stage in a room thirty feet long and ten wide and acted every kind of play. He was assistant stage manager and played Faulkland in a particularly ambitious performance of The Rivals. Mrs Malaprop was acted by Montgomery minor and Lamb minor, William’s brother Frederick, was cast as Sir Lucius.4 Some of the parents protested that their sons were spending too long on such diversions. The headmaster blandly agreed that the whole thing was unfortunate and should be stopped; then urged the boys in future to hold their rehearsals secretly. All did not run smoothly. ‘Our society,’ recorded William, ‘was disturbed by envy, jealousy and all the various passions, which produce intrigue and dissension in other theatres …’ The group broke up in disarray, to set up rival theatres and to write angry prologues and epilogues denouncing the amateurish bungling of the opposition.
On reflection William was more inclined to support the parents than the headmaster. For one thing he thought it possible that the boys who took the female roles might assume a ‘character of effeminacy’ which they would find hard to shake off in after life. Montgomery minor no doubt survived his stint as Mrs Malaprop, but what about the innocent ephebe who starred as Lydia Languish? More seriously, he thought that boys might become enraptured with all things theatrical and never escape the thrall. This was not as foolish as it might sound; it was a stage-struck age. Of William’s contemporaries at Eton one became a professional actor, several more wrote for the stage, while William himself thought nothing of devoting two months at a time to elaborate amateur theatricals in some country house. But nonetheless he felt that acting was a healthier pursuit than the likely alternatives: ‘drinking, racing, badger-baiting and the low company into which such amusements lead.’
His time on the stage was bought at the price of his concern for matters political. Unlike the preceding generation, of which Canning had been the golden boy, William’s immediate contemporaries took relatively little interest in what went on at Westminster. His division included Beau Brummel; a future Archbishop in Charles Sumner; Charles Stuart, who was to become Lord Stuart de Rothesay and a distinguished diplomatist; the next Duke of Atholl but one: but no one else who was to play any great part in government.5 Politics were part of their life but rarely a subject for passion.
By the time he was seventeen, William had had enough of school. Afterwards he regretted he had not stayed on for another year but at the time he was hungry for the world outside. He looked back benignly on his time at Eton – ‘seven years of as much enjoyment and satisfaction and as little vexation and discontent, as can fall to the lot of the years of childhood’. But he never felt that the public schools did a proper job of education; arithmetic and geometry were neglected to...
