Memoir of Francis Hodgson
John Herman Merivale to Francis Hodgson, [13 May 1838]
My dear Hodgson,—I should indeed be doing the greatest injustice to
my feelings, both as they regard yourself and your fair bride, if I delayed a
moment to acknowledge the very welcome epistle which I received too late for
the post on Saturday, ![]()
| 242 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. | |
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dated from Hardwicke Hall. I had
before (though under strict injunctions of secrecy) heard that place named as
your destination during the first days of your happiness, and, from the many
descriptions I had heard or read of it, was picturing to myself the enjoyment
which you could not fail both to derive from a location
(O spirits of Harriet Martineau and
James Jefferson Whitlee!) so full of picturesque,
romantic, historical, and imaginative interest. . . . I only fear that in spite
of the influence of local emotions, Queen Bess will have altogether supplanted
Queen Mary,1 as the object of your
devotions; and I beg you to assure her first-named majesty that I am myself far
too good an Englishman not to give in my adhesion to her superior claim upon
our affections and homage, at least in the person of her present
representative.
The confession you have made of your love for ‘Whistlecraft’2 transports me beyond all bounds of moderation, so
completely justifying, as it does, my presentiment that you would ‘be all
the better for something’ to laugh at on your journey. I told your
friend, Poet Rogers, that same day, at
the
1 Hodgson, in his youth, had been engaged on a poem, of
which the heroine was Mary Queen of Scots, an occupation to which
Byron alludes in a letter of
invitation to Newstead. Vide
supra, vol. i. p. 107. 2 By
Hookham Frere. |
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| ’WHISTLECRAFT.’ ’LIFE OF WILBERFORCE.’ | 243 |
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breakfast, of the present I had made you, and of the indignation you expressed
at my supposing it possible that you might want, or even admit of, diversion on
such an occasion, at the same time that you gravely pocketed the affront I
offered. His dry, bachelor-like remark was, not only that I had done quite
right, but that he hoped you had taken care, each of you, to provide a
travelling library, as he did not see how you were otherwise to get through it.
There’s an epithalamium for you, worthy of ‘Jaqueline’ or the ‘Pleasures of Memory.’
When you have time to read any other books than ‘Whistlecraft,’ and
such others as the Duke’s judgment
may have selected for your entertainment at Hardwicke, I think you will be much
interested in the ‘Life
of Wilberforce.’ I have felt great delight in observing, as I
have gone on with it, in how many points, especially political and
politico-religious, I in fact coincided with him, even while I fancied myself
at the furthest distance from him. His was indeed a proud position when the
leading men of both parties were beseeching his interference to extricate the
country from the extreme embarrassment occasioned by the proceedings against
the Queen; and his biographers well ![]()
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remark upon it as ‘not a little curious’ that
the strongest of these supplications came from a man (Lord J. Russell) whose maxim it was that ‘to abandon
party is to forfeit all political importance.’ Very much such a position
as his was then, I hold to be my good friend Sir
Thomas Acland’s now; and I am
accordingly not a little curious to know the result of
his motion this evening for rescinding the Resolutions of the House of Commons
on “which the present Ministry came into office; not that I consider it
as a party question, in which light I feel confident that
Acland himself would not have entertained it, but that
I am convinced of its having been the falsest and most pernicious move ever
made by a party for the attainment of power, and the retractation of which is,
in my apprehension, indispensable towards the settlement of the great Irish
question on any reasonable basis. And now farewell for the present! I will
write to you again when you are at Middleton.1 My
wife joins me in every feeling that
is most warm and affectionate towards both yourself and your sposa, and
I am, my dear H., ever
yours,
J. H. M.
Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, tenth baronet (1787-1871)
Tory politician and philanthropist, educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford; he was
MP for Devon (1812-18, 1820-31) and North Devon (1837-57). He was a founder of Grillion's
Club and active in religious causes.
Queen Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1768-1821)
Married the Prince of Wales in 1795 and separated in 1796; her husband instituted
unsuccessful divorce proceedings in 1820 when she refused to surrender her rights as
queen.
John Hookham Frere (1769-1846)
English diplomat and poet; educated at Eton and Cambridge, he was envoy to Lisbon
(1800-02) and Madrid (1802-04, 1808-09); with Canning conducted the
The
Anti-Jacobin (1797-98); author of
Prospectus and Specimen of an
intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft (1817, 1818).
Francis Hodgson (1781-1852)
Provost of Eton College, translator of Juvenal (1807) and close friend of Byron. He wrote
for the
Monthly and
Critical Reviews, and was
author of (among other volumes of poetry)
Childe Harold's Monitor; or
Lines occasioned by the last Canto of Childe Harold (1818).
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)
English writer and reformer; she published
Illustrations of Political
Economy, 9 vols (1832-34) and
Society in America
(1837).
Queen Mary of Scotland (1542-1587)
The controversial queen of Scotland (1561-1567) who found a number of champions in the
romantic era; Sir Walter Scott treats her sympathetically in
The
Abbott (1820).
Louisa Heath Merivale [née Drury] (1787-1873)
The daughter of Joseph Drury, headmaster of Harrow; she married John Herman Merivale in
1805 and had a family of six sons and six daughters.
Samuel Rogers (1763-1855)
English poet, banker, and aesthete, author of the ever-popular
Pleasures of Memory (1792),
Columbus (1810),
Jaqueline (1814), and
Italy (1822-28).
John Russell, first earl Russell (1792-1878)
English statesman, son of John Russell sixth duke of Bedford (1766-1839); he was author
of
Essay on the English Constitution (1821) and
Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe (1824) and was Prime Minister (1865-66).
