Charles Third Earl Stanhope Notes taken at Hamilton Library University of Hawaii
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| A Quixote by Darwin Leon |
A QUIXOTIC MINORITY OF ONE
CHARLES THIRD EARL STANHOPE
BY
DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS
Charles Stanhope (1753-1816) Third Earl Stanhope, Lord Mahon, although seldom heard of today in the United States, is an outstanding English example of the practical tendency of the revolutionary temper sweeping the world pursuant to the Enlightenment and French Revolution.
Protestants repudiated priests, republicans overturned royalty, facts overthrew opinions, and authoritarian schemes were analyzed to death. Practical knowledge was all the rage. Positive science was on the rise, and ruling notions were broken down or analyzed into their constituent elements for the reconstitution of a free world.
Charles wanted to put the radical democratic theories of the Revolution into practice. His high hopes as Lord Mahon would be confronted by an overwhelming conservative reaction in the House of Lords, where he, said to be the “Don Quixote of the nation,” “gesticulated like a windmill” after he introduced a motion deprecating any British interference into France’s affairs, thus gaining for himself the sobriquet “Minority of One.” A coin bearing that inscription and his likeness would eventually be struck in his honor.
The more or less scientific “logic of ideas” of the French Ideologues duly impressed no less than Thomas Jefferson, who replaced theology with ideology at his beloved university; his great correspondent, John Adams, called the new science of analytical thinking “idiotology.”
Charles Stanhope was himself well acquainted and friendly with many leading intellectuals of his age. G. P. Gooch, in his introduction to Ghita Stanhope's The Life of Charles, Third Earl Stanhope, which he revised and completed, said Charles’ life had not been previously chronicled, and that, “The present biography written by his great-great-granddaughter, written a century after his death, reveals him as one of the outstanding personalities of his time, an inventive genius of the first order, and a fearless reformer who played a leading part in public life for forty years. The son-in-law of Chatham, the nephew by marriage of Grenville, the comrade and then the enemy of Pitt, the protégé of Wilkes, the formidable antagonist of Fox during the Coalition and of Burke during the French Revolution, the valued supporter of Wilberforce, the friend of Franklin and Condorcet, Grattan and Price, the ally of Shelburne and Lauderdale in their opposition to the Great War and of Lord Holland in his championship of religious liberty, the butt of Gillray and the bogy of Horace Walpole, the hero of the youthful Coleridge and Landor, the oracle of the little band of Parliamentary Reformers, the friend of Fulton and Rennis and himself an inventor of the first rank.”
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| Stanhope Hall County Durham |
Now ‘Stanhope’ is the name of an old aristocratic family descended from Norman settlers and probably originally hailing from a settlement called Stanhope, a name derived from stone + hop, meaning an “enclosed valley,” in what is now known as Durham County. The place-name Stanhope is first mentioned about 1170 in a charter relating to the family of Bishop Hugh de Pudsey. The famous Battle of Stanhope Park between the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, with Scotland warring for independence, took place there in 1327.
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| Battle of Stanhope Park |
The History of Durham by William Hutchinson, 1794, vol. iii. p. 295, states, “The first of the name Stanhope we find holding lands in Stanhope was Richard de Stanhope, the son of Walter de Stanhope, who died seised of a messuage of 22 acres of land in the fifth year of Bishop Bury, 1338-1339, charged with a mark yearly to Peter de Stanford. In the ninth year of Bishop Hatfield, 1354, one of this family, William, died seised of 24 acres of land and 15 acres he had acquired of Robert Featherstonhalgh, and left a daughter, Margaret de Stanhope, his heir, after which period we do not find any of the Stanhopes named in the records.”
The Earls Stanhope conveniently located their seat at Chevening in Chevening House, built in the 1620s in the Sevenoaks District of Kent County, bordering northwest Greater London. The Chevening House was bequeathed to the nation by the Seventh and last Earl Stanhope (d. 1967), and houses foreign secretaries.
The Lords Mahon are so titled after “Port Mahon” (Maó-Mahón), the name of the capital city of the Island of Minorca in the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain. Mahon is famous for its cheese, and is said to be the origin of mayonnaise. James Stanhope, First Earl Stanhope and the first British lord of Mahon, was commander-in-chief of British forces in Spain when, in 1708, British and Dutch forces captured Port Mahon, a strategic naval base with one of the largest natural harbors in the world. James, after a year in a Spanish prison, returned to Britain where he held several high offices.
Charles Stanhope, Viscount of Mahon by virtue of his birth, was the son of Philip Stanhope, Second Earl Stanhope (1714-1786). Philip was a fellow of the Royal Society, a patron of mathematics. His enthusiasm for mathematics was a major influence on Charles, who himself, in 1772, would be elected a member of the Royal Society.
Charles’ father sent him to Eton School when he was nine-years old, where he showed his liking for mathematics and mechanics. His aunt Rachel described him as busy, merry boy who had improved since he was sent off to school. His tutor at Eton said the boy did not relish books nor have a good memory although his understanding was excellent.
When the health of his tubercular brother, Philip Stanhope (1746-1763), Viscount Mahon, deteriorated, his parents took him to Switzerland for treatment, where he died. Philip's final letter was addressed to young Charles, advising him to "never tell an untruth, be honest and good in every respect, and never mind naughty boys laughing at you for being so."
The Stanhopes decided to remain in Switzerland. Charles, now eleven-years-old, was pulled out of Eton and brought over to Geneva, where the family would live for the next ten years.
The principal biography of the Stanhope family’s sojourn in Geneva was drawn by Aubrey Newman, from correspondence between Charles' mother and Lady Chatman, Stanhope's close neighbor back in Kent, the wife to William Pitt the Elder. Charles, by and by, was destined to marry her daughter, Hester Pitt.
Young Charles had once been a "little devil," but now that he was almost always in the company of adults, he was a grave, precocious and shy young fellow. His mother let it be known that her only living son was a genius at everything he did enjoy. He soon won a prize from the National Academy of Stockholm for the best paper written in French on the construction of the pendulum.
He had been placed under the tutelage of the mathematician George-Louis le Sage, now remembered for his mechanical (ether) theory of gravitation. He tried dancing, skating, and painting. He was a handy painter, but he disliked fashionable music. He loved to ride horses. He naturally took up cricket to stay in touch with being an Englishman. His keen interest in applied science led to his invention of a pyrometer, and he won a prize from the National Academy of Stockholm for the best paper written in French on the construction of the pendulum. At age eighteen he was elected to the post of Commander of the Company of Archers in Geneva. He was elected to the Council of Two Hundred, providing him with an excellent view of Geneva's virulent politics.
The Stanhopes returned to England via Paris, where Charles lingered for the summer, reportedly fitting nicely into Parisian society, where he was indoctrinated into the optimistic principles of the French Enlightenment. To wit: practical reason is the light guiding humankind to material abundance and substantial happiness; applied science combined with politics is the utilitarian means to liberty, equality and fraternity.
His family and friends called him Mahon, but Charles Stanhope, following the lead of French revolutionaries, referred to himself as ‘Citizen Stanhope,’ as if he were a common resident of England even though France with its republican ideology was perceived as an enemy by almost all his aristocratic compeers.
The French Enlightenment influenced Charles throughout his life. He corresponded with and was influenced by the French philosopher, social scientist and mathematician Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794), a member of Voltaire's Enlightenment clique, an aristocrat who played a leading role in the 1789 Revolution. Condorcet was opposed to the sentimental approach of Rousseau. He preferred, instead, mathematical language and the application of statistical methods for the analysis of sociological phenomena.
Etiene Bonnot Abbe de Condillac (1715-1780), the great French empiricist philosopher, had an even greater influence on him. Condillac, influenced by the philosophy of John Locke, believed mental phenomena are merely sensations transformed hence his philosophy was called Sensationalism. He believed logical analysis was the key to understanding everything and he thought algebra was the only language necessary to that end.
Condillac augmented Charles Stanhope’s affection for logic. Charles, during the course of inventing a logic machine, noted that he hated ordinary speech and admired logic. Indeed, he was a practical, independent man. William Pitt said of him: "Charles Stanhope as a carpenter, a blacksmith, or millwright, could in any country, at all times, preserve his independence and bring up his family in honest and industrious courses, without soliciting the bounty of his friends or the charity of strangers."
Shortly before Charles' return to England, his aunt Rachel wrote, "...people of judgment say all his inventions are good; it is astonishing the influence he has here in public matters, just makes all the civil men do as he pleases... In conversation he mumbles and speaks so that you can't understand him, makes an awkward bow and comes into a room like an idiot... He had however to make a public speech... It was a most distinct audible voice and with such proper emphasis that... he might have been heard across the street..."
He had met the infamous agitator John Wilkes in Geneva, and he had otherwise been under the influence of radicals. Upon his return to England, where he stood for a seat for the county of Kent, he was seen riding in Wilkes' coach and dancing with his daughter. His association with Wilkes was frowned on by Lady Mary Coke, a friend of the family.
Charles, Lord Mahon, Third Earl Stanhope in 1786, dressed rather oddly for an aristocrat, and much was made of his plebian refusal to powder his black hair. It was said he was too cheap to buy wheat powder after the price of wheat had increased.
His friends said he had a plain, unaffected, and amiable manner in private. But his public appearance and demeanor created quite a scene, especially amongst his detractors; their perspective was summed up by a poet in the satirical column, ‘Criticisms of the Rolliad’ published by the Morning Herald.
"The Don Quixote of the nation, Beats his own windmill in gesticulation; To strike, not to please, his utmost force he bends, And all his sense is at his fingers’ ends."
His logic was deemed close, subtle and scholastic, but impractical, absurd and unintelligible. Some lords considered his diction uncouth, his speeches the scurrilous buffoonery of a stump orator.
His wife Hester Pitt died in 1780, a lady whom he mourned in "wildest despair," and by whom he had three daughters, one of whom would be the famous Lady Hester Stanhope. His youngest daughter, Lady Lucy Rachael Stanhope, would elope with Thomas Taylor, the family apothecary; her father refused to be reconciled to her, but William Pitt made Taylor controller-general of the customs, and his son was one of Lord Chatham’s executors.
Six months after Hester Pitt died he married her cousin, Louisa Grenville, who was mother to his three sons, daughter and sole heiress of the Hon. Henry Grenville, governor of Barbados in 1746 and ambassador to the Porte in 1762.
Although the family home at Chevening was dubbed "Democracy Hall,” its constitution was described as downright undemocratic not to mention uncongenial. True to his democratic principles, he removed the Stanhope coat-of-arms from Chevening House.
His profound sympathy with the French Revolution moved him to rid himself of every emblem of rank and title including his fine horse and carriage, but he got a new set because his favorite daughter, little Hester, destined to become a famous socialite and traveler, complained that her stepmother had to walk in the mud; therefore it seems that Lord Mahon as well as his daughter had humanitarian sentiments. Yet she, at age fourteen, was sent to tend turkeys in the commons dressed in hideous clothes, and her brothers were apprenticed to smithy and forge. He evidently wanted his children to make something of themselves, a policy that his peers considered abusive, so it was said that he was a bad father. Nevertheless, his integrity i.e. his adherence to the principles he proclaimed, was beyond reproach.
Quote Wraxall, who knew him well, said, "Over his whole figure, and even his dress, an air of Puritanism reminded the beholder of the sectaries under Cromwell, rather than a young man if quality in an age of refinement and elegance. He possessed stentorian lungs and a powerful voice, always accompanied by violent gesticulations."
In one famous incident, while arguing against smuggling, Lord Mahon, accidently gave William Pitt such a "a smart stroke on the head" that the House was convulsed with laughter.
Quoth Wraxall: "His ardent, zealous, and impetuous Mind, tinged with deep Shades of Republicanism and Eccentricity, which extended even to his Dress and Manners, was equally matched by a Bold Originality of Character, very enlightened Views of the public Welfare or Amelioration, inflexible Impertinacity, and a stead uprightness of Intention."
When Charles Stanhope became of age in 1774 he contested the city of Westminster without success. He joined the Lower House in 1780, and served there until his accession to the peerage in March 1786. He represented the Buckinghamshire borough of High Wycombe, and supported William Pitt’s administration during the 1783 and 1784 sessions. He married William Pitt’s sister, Lady Hester Pitt, in December 1774. He severed his connection with Pitt and opposed his arbitrary administration after Pitt forsook his earlier, liberal principles.
He generously advocated beneficial causes, but apparently did not think too kindly of animals, for he was one of only two peers who opposed Erskine's Bill of 1809 to prevent cruelty to animals. Although he was often too volatile, rash and pugnacious to succeed on his own and had scant influence on his compeers, he was nevertheless instrumental in getting division lists (voting tallies) recorded for use by historians. He introduced a bill in 1789 to afford religious tolerance to all but Catholics, and, in 1791, another bill to prevent Quakers from being assessed tithes. Incidentally, he opposed compulsory church attendance on Sundays, and took care to offend the bishops whenever he had a chance to do so.
He focused on electoral reform in the 1780's, leading a crusade against bribery and the high expense of conducting county elections. He attracted attention to the reform bill by provoking Fox and Pitt into pitted arguments on the bill, and incited them as well to dueling with one another over the Budget. He did not succeed with electoral reform because reformist movements did not have much support prior to the French Revolution. However, by keeping the issue in front of the public, he gained widespread acceptance for the concept of voter registration as a means to solve confusion and malpractice in county constituencies, a concept which was eventually adopted.
Wraxall reports a famous exchange of words between Lords North and Mahon in 1784 in regards to the controversial East India Bill. Lord North, referring to Lord Mahon's opposition to the bill before an assembly, said, "(Lord Mahon) by his nervous impassioned Gesticulations and sonorous Oratory, is well calculated to carry away the Prize in such a Contest." However, Lord North claimed, the clamor in favor the Bill actually exceeded the dissent. Wraxall reports, 'Lord Mahon, two Days afterwards, during the Discussion of the 20th February, retaliated with great Severity, not unaccompanied with Ability, on his political Adversaries.'
"Does he," exclaimed Lord Mahon, "interpret Groan into Applause, and take Hisses for Approbation?... There was a Time when he was heard like an Oracle! Why? Because the Public credulously believed that he was fighting their Battles as a sincere and honest Tribune of the People. But, their Eyes are opened since he has attempted to raise himself above the free Constitution of his Country, by aspiring to the Place of a Dictator... How was their Zeal expressed? In pretty intelligible Words - 'No Grand Mogul! No India Tyrant! No Usurper! No Turncoat! No Cataline! - If such be the Popularity to which he aspires, and if such are the Marks of Approbation of which he boasts, long may he continue to receive them!"
Lord Mahon was a trenchant critic of William Pitt's inalienable sinking fund proposal, the brain child of social-security theorist Richard Price. Britain had run up an enormous national debt largely because of the deficits engendered by the colonial policies in American that culminated in the costly American Revolution. William Pitt, however, enjoyed a surplus. A scheme was devised to regularly deposit a certain portion of the surplus into an inalienable sinking fund which would, thanks to the amazing magic of compound interest, rapidly accumulate and eventually pay off the national debt. The "inalienability" of the fund stems from an old concept in Roman law; in short, it means something must only be used for the purpose declared - it is what American politicians including President Clinton, who proposed a similar plan, called a "lockbox."
Lord Mahon believed the fund as proposed was not inalienable enough, and wanted a drastic security agreement whereby the violation of the fund would be an act of national bankruptcy. Nonetheless, Pitt's inalienable sinking fund bill was passed and the fund worked well until surpluses disappeared and deficits ran up due to the long war with France. In such contingencies, payments into the sinking fund must be funded by borrowing. In effect, it is as if you borrowed money from yourself to make loan payments, where "you" are many people and organizations comprising everybody, and you all hope to manipulate financial instruments and play interest rates in such a way that you all will come out ahead.
Lord Mahon was subpoenaed to testify in the 1794 Treason Trials of Twelve radicals whose political ideals were his own. The defendants were charged with seditious libel and/or a new kind of treason, “modern” or “French” treason inasmuch as royalty would be abolished altogether instead of merely replacing one king with another.
Fearing revolution at home during the war with France, William Pitt's government wanted to bring the radical members of the public to heel. Pitt, in the House of Commons, attacked the “monstrous doctrine” of the Rights of Man, which he said were conceived to “overturn government, security, religion, order, and everything valuable in this country.” So certain war measures were taken by government including the suspension of habeas corpus, which Lord Mahon vehemently opposed, and the prosecution of nonconformists, particularly the radical speakers, writers, and editors who were clamoring for radical reform.
Lord Mahon happened to adore the politics of his father-in-law, the senior Pitt, First Earl of Chatham, and he initially had agreeable relations with Chatham's son, William Pitt, whose sister, Hester, he married. However, he fell out with his wife's family. As mentioned, his fondness for the principles of the French Revolution placed him at odds with William Pitt. He openly applauded the 1789 storming and capture of the Bastille.
Lord Mahon was chairman of the Revolution Society, an organization formed to commemorate the Glorious English Revolution of 1688, and whose business was to champion parliamentary reform. In fact, Mahon was chairman when Richard Price delivered his famous 1789 speech, A Discourse on the Love of our Country, to the Society, denouncing "supporters of slavish governments and slavish hierarchies"; that speech provoked the eloquent conservative response of Edmund Burke in his instantly popular Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). It is one thing for intellectual gentlemen to disagree, and quite another when the mob, with the help of printing, takes up the cry: in May 1792, the London Society for Constitutional Information decided to print Paine's Rights of Man for national distribution; in the second half of the year, Pitt's Administration proceeded with its moves to suppress dissemination of radical propaganda - Paine left for France, and was tried, convicted and sentences for sedition in his absence.
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| Stanhope press |
Citizen Stanhope by the while was supporting freedom of the press as well as inventing an efficient way of printing and otherwise alienating himself from his powerful brother-in-law. That did not sit well with the Tories. His London house was attacked by a Royalist mob In 1794.
As prelude to the 1794 Treason Trials, Thomas Paine, John Frost, and Daniel Isaac Eaton had been tried in 1792. Only Eaton, a publisher, was acquitted. Paine had fled to France. Frost, an attorney and member of the Society for Constitutional Reform, was sentenced to six months imprisonment for declaring that he was for equality and no king. And in 1793 several Scottish activists had been convicted of treason and transported to Botany Bay.
John Horne Tooke, a moderate reformer who was infamous for championing the Colonists, was among the defendants charged for high treason in 1794. Tooke's main offense was being a member of the wrong society. He was associated with the Society for Constitutional Information, whose members had once included such respected notables as Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Lord John Russell, the Duke of Richmond, and, naturally, Lord Mahon.
But now the government suspected the Society of being a seat for radical dissent. During his trial, Tooke subpoenaed Pitt, Sheridan, the Duke of Richmond, and Lord Mahon to testify, hoping to demonstrate that he, Tooke, was no more radical than them. The witnesses hedged but were supportive of Tooke's "moderate views."
Nine of the twelve defendants, represented by talented attorneys Thomas Erskine and Vicary Gibbs, were acquitted and the prosecution dropped the cases against the rest amidst a great deal of public rejoicing. Even King George III was gladdened by the acquittal, saying "Constructive treason won't do."
Wordsworth said of the trial: "The late occurrences in every point of view are interesting to humanity. They will abate the insolence and presumption of the aristocracy, but showing it that neither the violence nor the act of power can crush even an unfriended individual though engaged in the propagation of doctrines confessedly unpalatable to privilege; and they will force upon the most prejudiced this conclusion that there is some reason in the language of reformers."
A celebration commemorating the acquittals was held at the Crown and Anchor on February 4, 1795; Lord Mahon spoke at length, protesting the irregular and unprecedented proceedings against the Twelve, who were, said the Earl of Stanhope, so revolutionary as to address each other as "citizen."
“Would you believe, that one of their supposed Offences was stated to have been, that, when those Men happened to address each other, they were (even) so abominably wicked as to call one another ' Citizen? ..... It was seriously termed 'a kind of Indication of an EVIL Intent! ... You all know that the word Citizen means nothing but Inhabitant. It is an old English word, as old as our Language. It it is also a very proper word; and I confess, that I am very happy, it is growing into common use.”
He supports his argument with, “Citizens, that learned Commentator on the Laws of England, Judge Blackstone, in speaking against Barracks (and, by the bye, he was much in the right to speak against barracks) says, that ‘A Circulation should be kept up between the Army and the People, and the Citizens and the Soldiers should be more intimately connected together.’ Now it is perfectly obvious, that, by the word 'Citizens,' the learned Judge did not there mean, solely to allude to such Persons as are free of particular Cities, such as those who are vulgarly called Citizens of London or of Coventry, or of any other City; but he meant, by the word 'Citizens,' the Inhabitants at large. Therefore, let us continue to talk the Language as Judge Blackstone, and let us follow his example; whatever Ministers may say against us, and whatever Aristocrats may think properly to say of us, upon that account. As you are Britons, I certainly am your Fellow Citizen, and it is a title which I prize more than another other.”
Although the prosecution's "impudence did not go quite so far as to state that crime to amount to High Treason," said Mahon, "it was seriously termed 'a kind of indication of an Evil Intent', as if a doctor who, when asked by his patient if he had symptoms of disease, said, 'No, Sir, you have got no such Symptoms; but I tell you what you have got; you have certainly very dangerous Indications of the Symptoms of the Symptoms of the Symptom.' "
Lord Mahon had vigorously opposed the suspension of Habeas Corpus after it had passed the lower House in merely two days, denouncing it as "neither more nor less than a system of erecting a Bastille in this country, and for establishing lettres de cachet (royal orders of imprisonment).
Lord Mahon's 1795 extremist motion in the House Lords, passionately and incoherently denouncing English interference in French affairs, certainly did not endear him with Prime Minister Pitt or with any other lord for that matter. The sobriquet "Minority of One" was all he won by that motion. Severely disappointed by its hostile reception, he stayed away from the House of Lords for five years. Yet the sobriquet stuck, allegedly for good reason. Henry Stanhope would observe, "Lord Mahon, Minority of One ... had a certain waywardness of temper which made him, it may almost be said, dislike the winning side as such."
He came back strong after nursing his grievous political wounds, presumably because "he loved unequal battles." He even chided a friend who came to his support for depriving him of his "minority of one" position on an issue.
Lord Mahon was a prolific inventor who made formidable contributions to the mechanical arts. William Pitt ranked him as Ben Franklin's equal. Mahon, incidentally, ardently supported his friend Franklin before the Royal Society, arguing that Franklin’s theory, that pointed lightning-conductors were more efficacious than those with knobbed ends, was correct. He spent a great deal of his fortune advancing his inventions, and in accordance with the cause of public liberty, he took out no patents or monopolies: he simply posted a notice at the Patent Office.
He conducted experiments with lightning conductors, part of his plan to secure buildings from lightning by means of "the returning stroke," described in his 'Treatise on Electricity.' He supported his theory by reference to an incident in Scotland, where James Lander and two horses, were killed by the returning stroke of lightning that initially struck at quite a distance from place where they were killed.
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| Stanhope Square and Circular Demonstrators |
He called computers diabolical pythons, complaining that Boole and Babbage had unleashed the devil with useless symbolic logic. On the other hand, he praised applied logic as the basis of progress. He invented two pre-Babbage machines, hand-held syllogistic-logic machines, which he called Demonstrators or Logical Machines, designed to expose fallacies and calculate probabilities.
He invented a microscope lens to test skins of feverish patients; a new method for tuning musical instruments; a cement more durable than mortar; artificial tiles for roofs; a device to prevent forgeries. He conceived a fireproofing method based on the principle that fire needs air to burn. He persuaded friends to join him upstairs in a house before it was set on fire to test his method; the flames rose 87 feet without harming them.
He is best known for his grandest idea, that of converting large ships to steam. "Some of your Lordships now sitting here," he pronounced in the House of Lords, "will live to see steamships crossing the Atlantic."
The Lords received his proposition with contempt and derision, pronouncing him to be "a little madder than usual."
In 1793 he outfitted the Kent, an experimental boat, with a steam engine. He used the screw propeller, an idea others subsequently discarded in favor of the paddle-box used in early steamships. His experiment was a success. In a letter to the Lords of Admiralty dated December 22, 1795, he urged the advancement of his project "for the purpose of ascertaining the efficacy of the important plan, invented by me, of navigating ships of the largest size without any wind and even against the wind and waves..." Alas, the Admiralty was unimpressed, and refused to renew his bond.
"The method you have imagined of moving ships independent of wind and tide,” Earl Spencer replied to his application, “will not be found to answer the very great expectations your Lordship appears to have formed of it."
Fulton's initial interest in steamships dated from his correspondence with Lord Mahon. Fulton had become acquainted with master canal builders, Lord Mahon and the Duke of Bridgewater, during his visit to England. Mahon had invented a special canal-building technique employing a double-inclined plane. Fulton was so impressed by the canal projects that he gave up his career as a painter to become involved in the schemes.
Even without steamships, it was a small world as information spread with the printed word. Stanhope fought against the suppression of printing. He invented several innovations for the art of stereotype printing, literally saved it from oblivion, establishing a stereotype printing plant in London using his "Stanhope Stereotype Plaster of Paris Process."
Charles Stanhope retired to Chevening House, where he reportedly died of dropsy, probably congestive heart failure, at age 63 on Dec. 15, 1816. His lifelong enthusiasm for experimental science and obsession with inventing new devices may have accelerated his demise, as he paid little attention to his health, was an extraordinarily frugal man, and was unwilling to believe in his own death.
There must be some scandal in every family. According to Ghita Stanhope and G.P. Gooch’ biography of the great man (“earl”), Charles’ relatives suspected that one Mrs. Walburgh Lackner, his intimate and caretaker, was starving him to death to her own benefit sometime after his wife Louisa left him.
“It is impossible to say precisely when the Countess left Chevening,” wrote Gooch, “but it must have been several years before the Earl's death in 1816…. Stanhope had lost the love of wife and children, and his home was desolate.”
“He had never cared about luxuries, but under the regime of Mrs. Lackner he had barely enough to eat. While continuing to spend very large sums on his beloved experiments, he endeavored to economize in the kitchen.' Lord Stanhope has, it is believed,' wrote Lord Carrington to Viscount Mahon, who was then abroad, 'let his housekeeping for a certain sum to a lady, and as she is naturally anxious to make a purse, the servants are as ill-kept as his Lordship.'”
“James Stanhope hastened to Chevening, and at once dispatched a report to his elder brother (Philip Henry (1781—1855 Fourth Earl Stanhope) …. ‘I have just returned from Chevening…. Madame de Lackner is still there and has complete ascendancy, keeping from him the old servants of the family. By all accounts she and Varley have secured themselves against all reverses of fortune here.' … (Philip), who was then at Vienna, dispatched a sheaf of letters to England. He instructed the agent to see that nothing was removed; and added, ' I am resolved to support by all legal means my just claims and expectations to the personal property…. I have ordered legal proceedings to be at once begun which will secure from the grasp of legatees the personal property in money as well as in goods and clothes.' As the news increased in gravity the heir moved homeward; but there was indignation, not sorrow, in his heart. Writing on December 14 from Paris he speaks bitterly of ' the family which, till he became the head of it, was happy and united.'”
Samuel Varley, who assisted Charles with his inventions, lived in the house between the mansion and kitchen garden, where Charles had built two rooms, one with a furnace to melt glass for a telescope speculum, another to grind it.
“(Citizen Stanhope) lived on soup, on the most meagre diet, on barley water sweetened with sugar, and, as Sir Joseph Banks thinks, starved himself to death. When he came to Chevening about August 10 he looked and in fact was very ill. Wonderful to relate he appears to have died without having been conscious at any one moment, even at the last, that he was dying. About nine a servant brought him a draught, which he sipped but seemed unable to swallow. The servant observed, ‘Your Lordship seems worse.’ ‘No, no, was the answer, ‘you have no patience. I shall be better in two or three days.’ Mrs. Lackner soon afterwards kissed his hands, wept and wished him adieu. He died at eleven without a sigh or a groan.”
“Mrs. Lackner, a foreigner of whose origin and early history nothing is known, had attracted the attention of the Chevening circle by her brilliant pianoforte playing. That the first and by far the largest legacy in the will was to her shows that their relations were intimate.”
'He possessed a taste for music,’ records the writer of the notice in the Annual Biography and Obituary for 1817, 'was a frequent attendant at concerts, and knew most of the best performers, both in England and on the Continent.' He also invented a new science of tuning, which he explained at length in a highly technical pamphlet printed by his own press in 1806.”
Since Citizen Stanhope, always faithful to his revolutionary principles, wanted the success of his children to rest on their independent efforts without reliance on the Chatham clan's aristocratic entitlements, and his family preferred the Earl of Chatham's patronage to his paternal protection, he would leave his family out of his will, dated Nov. 22, 1805. After a few legacies, he left the remainder of his disposable property to ten executors, eight of which would survive to probate the will. The land with Chevening House and the title of Earl were of course devised by right of primogeniture to his eldest son.
“Whereas, some years ago,” reads the will, “my wife Louisa did, with my consent, engage Mrs. Walburgh Lackner to give up giving lessons in music, and to agree not to play at concerts for money; and whereas that was a great sacrifice on the part of the said Mrs. Lackner, I give her the sum of £5000 of lawful money of Great Britain, and also all my music-books, organs and other musical instruments whatever.”
“Though Stanhope,” writes Gooch, “had lost the love of wife and children and his home was desolate, he still held the unchallenged position in one gentle and loving heart which he had always possessed. His mother lived on sound in mind and body, and their relations were never disturbed by the political and domestic storms which broke over her son. In his will, the legacy immediately following that to Mrs. Lackner is ' £1000 to my most excellent and truly venerable mother.'”
The priority of Mrs. Lackner over Charles’ mother as legatees suggests an intimate relationship, the biographer surmises. A reading of the will ranks Samuel Varley his mother’s equal in terms of money, and even more when added to the sum of £1000 are tangible items legated; namely his tools, machines, machinery, and instruments, mathematical and astronomical, chemical and mechanical instruments.
On December the day of Stanhope's death, John Brampton, the agent, wrote to Freshfield, Lord Mahon's solicitor. “I understand all the personal property is in the hands of eight executors, one of whom, Mr. Stone, surgeon at Brasted, attended the late Earl. Colonel Stanhope, who was here yesterday, sent Mrs. Lackner away, Mr. Stone and myself examining what she took with her in the chaise; but she says she will come again to take her other things away, but I am sure she shall never see Chevening House again. All property in the house is sealed up, and now she, Mrs. Lackner, is gone, I am not afraid, for she was a very bad woman as ever lived.”
The new Earl Stanford wrote, “C. E. S. left much smaller assets than I expected, but he appears to have continued his experimental extravagance and to have bought this year or last a musical instrument for £1400, and a machine for some printing purpose for a similar sum; exclusive of which he built in the CHAP, house inhabited by Varley, between the mansion and the kitchen garden, a room for grinding a speculum for the telescope and another for a furnace for melting it. He is supposed also to have given away much money to schemers, though he gave away none in the neighborhood. He lived most penuriously, but the machinery of his establishment was useless and expensive. B. heard him praise Mrs. Lackner, whom he always called Wally (Walburga), for her good management, as it appears that the average expense of their eating and drinking for two or three years amounted to £75. This appears almost incredible, but is strictly true .”
Poor Mrs. Lackner, Charles’ close friend, defamed by his family, as family’s are wont to do with unrelated intimates, left England and settled at Prague, where she died in 1838.
“I desire,” wrote Stanhope in his will in 1805, “that my funeral may be conducted without the least ostentation, as if I were to die a very poor man.” Gentleman's Magazine reported that “The funeral took place on December 24. The ceremony was conducted with the utmost possible plainness, according to the directions in the Noble Lord's will. There were neither hearse nor mourning coaches, but the body was carried to the grave.”
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| Stanhope's exotic daughter Lady Hester |
“We, his descendants,” wrote the Duchess of Cleveland of her grandfather, “are justly and I may say exceedingly proud of his genius and achievements, and yet humbly thankful that we were not called upon to live under his roof; for, ardently as he advocated liberty and enfranchisement abroad, he was the sternest of autocrats at home. His rule was absolute, his word law, and he enforced the most implicit and unquestioning obedience. Lady Hester, who did not know what fear meant, was perhaps the only one of his children not afraid of him. The others all stood more or less in awe and dread of him, and, as they grew up, one and all escaped from their unhappy home. In the end even my much enduring grandmother found her position untenable.”
Charles, Third Earl Stanhope, Minority of One, was in fact one of the most striking personalities of his time. He has been rediscovered in our own time with the revival of interest in the English Jacobins. New biographies based on old biographies and archived documents have been published, and most of the information is readily available via the Internet, and much of the old information may be obtained free thanks to Google Books.
I myself spent many leisure hours in the stacks collecting notes on this curious man, seemingly peculiar because he happened to be great enough to attract a great deal of attention in his own time. Yet we can all relate to him and his relationships with his family, with his foes and friends howsoever related, for we take pride in our individuality, as if each one of us is one of a kind or unique, and not just an indistinct member of the existentialist’s Category of One, the very commoner that, ironically, he would have been, instead of a noble or “known” person.
Now I have reorganized my notes into the brief sketch above, wherein much is lacking including personal commentary. I shall come back to it from time to time to fill in a few blanks, and thus learn more about this particular earl or “great” man hence come to know myself even better. I recommend that others do the same with their favorite forbears for our own good.
REFERENCES
Stanhope, Ghita, and Gooch, G,P., The Life of Charles Third Earl Stanhope, London: Longmans, Green and Co 1914
Wraxall, Nathaniel Williams, Posthumous Memoir of His Own Times, London: RIchard Bentley, 1839
Stanhope, Philip Henry, Life of the Right Honorable William Pitt, London: John Murray, 1861
Jones, Ed & David, Peers, Politics and Power: The House of Lords 1603-1911, London: Hambledon, 1986
Turberville, A.S., The House of Lords in the Age of Reform, Westport: Greenwood, 1958 The Life and Letters of Lady Hester Stanhope, by her niece, the Duchess of Cleveland, London: John Murray, 1914
Yarborough, Minnie Clare, John Horne Tooke, New York: AMS Press, 1966
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It did indeed, look like a collection of notes rather than a coherent article at times, and I did detect some duplications and non-chronological references making it difficult to follow. Still, the inventions alone, while not elaborated on, were quite amazing. While Robert Fulton this much credit for steamships, it appears that Stanhope had the vision first.
Ron