AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY DE RETZ * OLTAIRE (or was it Lord Chesterfield?) once V declared that human beings should be divided

into three classes, ‘Men, Women and Herveys’; while Dr. Johnson was wont to say, ‘Call a dog Hervey, and I shall love him.’ These two celebrated utterances aptly hit off the characteristics of a brilliant family in- timately associated with English history and litera- ture. For the Herveys were almost all of them eccen- tric to a degree, and yet at the same time possessed of a superlative charm.

John, Lord Hervey of Ickworth, the friend of Queen Caroline of Anspach, and the writer of those invalu- able memoirs on which every historian of the reign of George I1 to-day so greatly relies, had for his third son a remarkable being who figures largely in not only the England but the Europe of the eighteenth cen- tury. Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, the ‘mitred Proteus’ of Horace Walpole, the ‘wicked prelate’ of George 111, the ‘episcopal patriot ’ of Northern Ireland, the ‘modern Maecenas‘ of artists and sculptors, and the ‘man plenteous in good works’ of John Wesley, if he left no mark on his age as author or statesman or courtier, was a cos- mopolitan personage whom we meet with in every memoir, diary, newspaper, and letter of his time, and whose memory as a wealthy epicurean, open-handed globe-trotter is still kept alive by the inevitable ‘ Hotel Bristol’ found in every continental town. The foreigner’s fixed and traditional idea of the rich, mad, restless English ‘ milord ’ can be largely traced in its origin to him.

The Em2 Bishop : The Life of Frederick Hervey, Bishop of Derry, Earl of Bristol. By W. C Childe-Pernberton. (Lon- dm, 1 9 ~ 5 . Hutst and B1,ackett. zvols. @/- net.)

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H e has had to wait more than one hundred and twenty years for his Biography, but it has come at last -immense in bulk, minute in detail, monumental in character. Some may consider it of inordinate length, but to the student of the period there is not in it a superfluous word, and it will, on the contrary, seem all too short. As one result of the flood of light it throws on European society during the thirty or forty years preceding the Revolution, some of our history and a good deal of our biographical literature will need re- casting. It makes and mars more than one reputation, and must largely modify the popular estimate hitherto held of Frederick Hervey himself.

This lately-issued Biography is mainly composed of the Bishop’s own vivid, racy, rambling letters, of which immense stores have been preserved, not only in the British Museum and various public collections at home and abroad, but also in the strong-rooms of the stately homes of England inhabited by his numerous descen- dants and kinsfolk. And it is most happily illustrated and illumined by admirable pictures of himself and his children from the brush of Angelica Kauffmann, Gainsborough, Zoffany, VigCe le Brun, and Romney, as well as by prints and engravings of the vast stone and marble palaces that the Bishop set up on his Eng- lish and Irish estates, and bequeathed more as a bur- den than a glory to his successors.

As a younger son, Frederick Hervey’s prospects were anything but brilliant. He did rather well both at Westminster School and at Cambridge, was called to the Bar, and married in his twenty-third year. It was a love-match, and generally disapproved of, while there was very little for him in the way of income. Two years later, Hervey renounced the Law for the Church. Curiously enough, his ordination took place in the buildin so well known to us as the Catholic church

193 of St. B theldreda’s, Holborn, but then used as the

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private chapel of the London palace of the Bishops of Ely. H e never seems in those early days to have done much, if any, clerical duty; he held no curacy, possessed no living, but dwelt in modest fashion in the country, acting as a magistrate, and mainly de- riving his support from a sinecure post he held in the Privy Seal Office and from his emoluments as a chap- lain to the King. In 1765-6 he was abroad-the first of many long tours on the continent, visiting France, the Low Countries, Italy, and Corsica. H e came home to find his life of obscurity ended for ever. His brother George, Earl of Bristol, had been nominated Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by the elder Pitt, and had instantly claimed the vacant bishopric of Cloyne for Frederick. Duly consecrated and enthroned, the lat- ter took possession of his see, exchanging it a few months later for the far richer and more important one of Derry. H e was sworn of the Irish Privy Council, and received honorary degrees from the English and Irish Universities. Twelve years afterwards, owing to the successive deaths of his two elder brothers, he be- came himself Earl of Bristol, with town house, country house, and property in four English counties. I t is said that the combined income of his bishopric and his family estates henceforth yielded him an income of f;27,ooo a year.

His career as an Irish Protestant Bishop was a singular one. Absent from his diocese for years at a time, he all the same kept the threads of its govern- ment ever in his own hands, while its interests were always very close to his heart. When in residence, his activity was amazing. His appearances in church were decorous, he could preach excellent moral dis- courses in the cold, unimpassioned manner of the period, his charity was princely and unbounded, he was zealous to present good, pious men to the many benefices in his gift, and those he promoted were gene-

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rally natives of the country. But material interests were his special care. He would reclaim waste lands, modernise agriculture, improve property, employ labour, build parsonages, start pension funds, erect bridges, develop coal mines, construct vast new roads. In politics he played a prominent and a daring part, decades ahead of his generation. An out- and- out Nationalist, a thorough friend to the poor down- trodden Irish Catholics, an avowed emancipationist, he was largely instrumental in obaining the first Catholic Relief Act. For years he was the idol of his people, who overlooked his glaring faults and his long absences, and almost forgot he was an Englishman. In his many houses and palaces he lived, of course, as a great nobleman, surroundcd with friends, occupied with grandiose building schemes, amid splendid trea- sures of art collected from every country in Europe.

But it is as a Traveller that he is best remembered. Travel was the passion of his existence. For years he rambled over the continent; France and Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, Italy and the Grisons, even the almost unexplored Dalmatia, all knew him well. In the capitals and great cities, in spas and watering- places, his was a familiar figure. For months at a time he would linger in Florence, Naples, Rome, mingle in the most exclusive society, and make friends with all the celebrated characters of the time. His in- terest in science (especially geology) was great, archi- tecture was his dearest hobby, and as a patron he sup- ported half the artists and art-students of Italy. His immense revenues were drained and exhausted by his mania for building and his incessant purchases of pictures and statues. The Bishop had other irons in the fire, too. H e was an ardcnt political plotter with a finger in every pie, an arch-meddler if ever there was one. Secret audiencxs with the Pope (Clement XIV), confabulations with the Cardinals, conversations with

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the King of Prussia, voluminous correspondence with British and foreign statesmen, constant intrigues at the court of Naples-these things were the breath of life to him, while his wealth, his family connections, his many accomplishments, and his charm of manner gave him the entrke everywhere.

When Catholic matters were concerned he was n dangerous man. Underneath that veneer of careless free-thought and tolerant liberalism he affected when abroad, there lay a deep dislike of Catholicism. Friendly as he might be with individual Catholics, he really detested their Faith ; he would ridicule and blaspheme it with his boon companions; no language was too coarse to be applied to its ministers-eventhe great Cardinal Consalvi was a ‘drivelling idiot,’ and the English Benedictines at Lambspring mere ‘grovel- ling, grunting epicurean hogs.’ On one occasion the Bishop is said to have insulted a religious procession at Siena in so outrageous a fashion that he with diffi- culy escaped with his life from the fury of the horrified and indignant populace.

Frederick Hervey’s relations with his family are somewhat puzzling. The romance of his early mar- riage did not last long; his wife (an excellent woman) soon ceased to interest him-she was only his ‘ Majes- tic Ruin ’-and for the last seventeen years of her life he never went near her. With his sons he was ever in and out of friendship; the elder (who died in his father’s lifetime) became British Minister to the Tus- can Court; the younger, afterwards the first Marquess of Bristol, was for awhile Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. But there can be no doubt of his great affec- tion for his daughters, one of whom was destined to be a Duchess and the other two Countesses-the hus- band of one of these latter (Lord Liverpool) being a well-known Prime Minister. The Bishop wrote to them incessantly, and with passionate interest and de-

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votion. Whether they quite returned his love is rather doubtful.

His friendships were as numerous as they were varied; Lady Hamilton and Goethe, Arthur Young and Alfieri, Voltaire and Cardinal de Bernis, General Paoli and Jeremy Bentham-these names are but a selection from a very long list. And, whatever may be thought of his moral character, there can be no doubt of his good deeds and works of benevolence. His charities were on a grand scale; not until he died was it fully realised how many in every country and of all classes and creeds lived on his bounty. I t is said that eight hundred artists attended in grief and gratitude his obsequies in Rome.

By some of his contemporaries Frederick Hervey was styled the ‘De Retz of the Eighteenth Century.’ Yet, though there were indeed points of resemblance, the Bishop of Derry when compared with the French Cardinal appears almost as an angel of light. His was a double personality, and if he were sometimes Mr. Hyde, he was oftener-far oftener-Dr. Jekyll.

ROBERT BRACEY, O.P.