Thrice happy is the man, be he Warrior or Statesman, who, in spite of lessened activity and increasing burdens and the loss of much that once made life enjoyable, still

 “Finds comfort in himself and in his cause,
  And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
  His breath in confidence of Heaven’s applause.”

V

“FREDDY LEVESON”

When a man has died in his eighty-ninth year, it seems irreverent to call him by his nickname.  And yet the irreverence is rather in seeming than in reality, for a nickname, a pet-name, an abbreviation, is often the truest token of popular esteem.  It was so with the subject of this section, whose perennial youthfulness of heart and mind would have made formal appellation seem stiff and out of place.

Edward Frederick Leveson-Gower was the third son of Granville Leveson-Gower, first Earl Granville, by his marriage with Henrietta Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of the third Duke of Devonshire.  The very names breathe Whiggery, and in their combination they suggest a considerable and an important portion of our social and political history.

I have always maintained that Whiggery, rightly understood, is not a political creed, but a social caste.  The Whig, like the poet, is born, not made.  It is as difficult to become a Whig as to become a Jew.  Macaulay was probably the only man who, being born outside the privileged enclosure, ever penetrated to its heart and assimilated its spirit.  It is true that the Whigs, as a body, have held certain opinions and pursued certain tactics, which were analysed in chapters xix. and xxi. of the unexpurgated Book of Snobs.  But those opinions and those tactics have been accidents of Whiggery.  Its substance has been relationship.  When Lord John Russell formed his first Administration, his opponents alleged that it was mainly composed of his cousins, and the lively oracles of Sir Bernard Burke confirmed the allegation.  A. J. Beresford-Hope, in one of his novels, made excellent fun of what he called the “Sacred Circle of the Great-Grandmotherhood.”  He showed—­what, indeed, the Whigs themselves knew uncommonly well—­that from John, Earl Gower, who died in 1754, descend all the Gowers, Levesons, Howards, Cavendishes, Grosvenors, Harcourts, and Russells, who walk on the face of the earth.  Truly a noble and a highly favoured progeny.  “They are our superiors,” said Thackeray; “and that’s the fact.  I am not a Whig myself (perhaps it is as unnecessary to say so as to say that I’m not King Pippin in a golden coach, or King Hudson, or Miss Burdett-Coutts)—­I’m not a Whig; but oh, how I should like to be one!”

It argues no political bias to maintain that, in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, Toryism offered to its neophytes no educational opportunities equal to those which a young Whig enjoyed at Chatsworth and Bowood and Woburn and Holland House.  Here the best traditions of the previous century were constantly reinforced by accessions of fresh intellect.  The circle was, indeed, an aristocratic Family Party, but it paid a genuine homage to ability and culture.  Genius held the key, and there was a carriere ouverte aux talents.