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SOCIABILITY, POLITENESS, AND ARISTOCRATIC SELF-FORMATION IN THE LIFE AND CAREER OF THE SECOND EARL OF SHELBURNE*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2012

LAWRENCE E. KLEIN
LAWRENCE E. KLEIN*
Affiliation:
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
*
Emmanuel College, Cambridge CB 2 3APlek26@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

The second earl of Shelburne is well known for his association with reform initiatives in the second half of the eighteenth century. However, he also put conspicuous effort into strengthening his aristocratic credentials and status. One noteworthy feature of this was his politeness: he aimed at personal cultivation, a goal in itself and a foundation for leadership in society; he also had a reputation for politeness in everyday social situations. One context for Shelburne's conspicuous politeness was his personal need to overcome a number of impediments to asserting aristocratic status. However, another context was his effort to articulate a vocation for the modern aristocrat. For Shelburne, polite sociability was a way for the aristocrat to gather, organize, and deploy creative energies in society for the sake of improvement and reform. Though a particular example, Shelburne illustrates the energy that asserting aristocratic status could demand and the sort of modernity that could be claimed on behalf of aristocracy. Finally, Shelburne demonstrates the role of politeness in aristocratic formation: in particular, he shows how aristocratic engagement in contemporary society entailed a range of social relations which polite competence helped to manage.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 653 - 677
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Warwick Eighteenth-Century Studies Centre at the University of Warwick, the Comparative Social and Cultural History Seminar at the University of Cambridge, and the Connecticut Eighteenth-Century Scholars Seminar at Trinity College, Connecticut. I am grateful to Donna Andrew, Ian McCracken, Simon Macdonald, Peter Mandler, Clarissa Campbell Orr, Thomas Stammers, and Andrew Thompson for discussions of Shelburne and to Julian Hoppit and the Journal's referees for their suggestions.

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54 Norris, Shelburne and reform, p. xi. Brown (The Chathamites, p. xiv) assigns Shelburne, with the elder Pitt, ‘an important place in the British democratic tradition’. Earlier, Elie Halévy had labelled Shelburne ‘a democratic Tory’ and identified Shelburne's circle as an inspiration of Bentham's utilitarian justification for democracy: The growth of philosophic radicalism (London, 1928), p. 147.

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63 Bentham's letters during his 1781 stay illustrate the female presence at Bowood, including not just the countess and her sisters but enduring acquaintances of the earl's, such as Lady Pembroke and the duchess of Bedford: Bowring, John, ed., The works of Jeremy Bentham (11 vols., Edinburgh, 1843), x, pp. 89–114Google Scholar.

64 André Morellet to Shelburne, 13 Dec. 1774, in Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, ed., Lettres de l'abbé Morellet de l'Académie Française à Lord Shelburne, depuis marquis de Lansdowne, 1772–1803 (Paris, 1898), p. 55.

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70 John Cannon draws attention to Shelburne's propensity for ‘lurid and melodramatic language’ and ‘penchant for threatening severe punishment’ in the context of ‘frequently informed and impressive’ parliamentary speeches: Cannon, ‘Petty, William, second earl of Shelburne and first marquess of Lansdowne (1737–1805)’, ODNB.

71 The liabilities of politeness are discussed in Carter, Men and the emergence of polite society, pp. 124–44. However, Shelburne's successful if brief military career and other aspects of his demeanour spared his being charged with one deformation of politeness, namely, effeminacy.

72 Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, i, pp. 149–67, 387–8, ii, pp. 5–6; Norris, Shelburne and reform, pp. 83, 134; Wraxall, Historical memoirs of my own time, i, p. 374; earl of Ilchester, Henry Fox, First Lord Holland, his family and relations (2 vols., London, 1920), ii, pp. 238–61.

73 George Rose, The diaries and correspondence of the Right Hon. George Rose, ed. L. V. V. Harcourt (2 vols., London, 1860), i, pp. 25, 27.

74 Boswell, Life of Johnson, p. 1059. In a related way, Horace Walpole once wondered whether ‘Lord Lansdown would be content with being master of ceremonies at Bath?’: W. S. Lewis, ed., The Yale edition of Horace Walpole's correspondence (48 vols., New Haven, CT, 1937–83), xxxiii, p. 468.

75 Lady Rockingham to Shelburne, no date: Shelburne papers, box 28, fos. 95–6.

76 Bowring, ed., The works of Jeremy Bentham, x, pp. 90, 92, 115. For the origins of Bentham's relationship with Shelburne, Norris, Shelburne and reform, pp. 141–3.

77 Joseph Priestley, ‘Memoirs of Dr Priestley’, in John Towill Rutt, ed., The theological and miscellaneous works of Joseph Priestley (25 vols., London, 1817–32), i, pp. 205–6.

78 Canovan, Margaret, ‘Paternalistic liberalism: Joseph Priestley on rank and inequality’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 2 (1983), pp. 23–37Google Scholar, offers an account of Priestley's complex and not entirely ‘modern’ ideas about social distinction: she says, of this passage, that Priestley had ‘some unknown model aristocrat [rather than Shelburne] in mind’ (p. 25).

79 Norris, Shelburne and reform, p. 5.

80 ‘Lord Shelburne's account of Lord George Sackville’, Shelburne papers, box 103, fo. 14. Versions of Irishness, positive and negative, from the English or British standpoint in the eighteenth century are discussed in: Kumar, Krishnan, The making of English national identity (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 140–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pittock, Murray G. H., Inventing and resisting Britain: cultural identities in Britain and Ireland, 1685–1789 (Basingstoke, 1997), pp. 23–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 54–6; Pittock, Murray G. H., Celtic identity and the British image (Manchester, 1999), pp. 24–6Google Scholar, 29, 45–54.

81 Autobiographical memorandum (‘Autobiography to 1754 & Historical Narrative’), Shelburne papers, box 102, fo. 9, and the separately foliated untitled autobiographical memorandum, fos. 2–4.

82 Autobiographical memorandum (‘Autobiography to 1754 & historical narrative’), Shelburne papers, box 102, fos. 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and the separately foliated untitled autobiographical memorandum, Shelburne papers, box 102, fos. 4–5.

83 Autobiographical memorandum (‘Autobiography to 1754 & historical narrative’), Shelburne papers, box 102, fo. 11.

84 Untitled autobiographical memorandum, Shelburne papers, box 102, fo. 8; Pemberton, W. Baring, Carteret: the brilliant failure of the eighteenth century (London, 1936), pp. 3, 8, 275–8Google Scholar.

85 Cannon, ‘Petty, William, second earl of Shelburne and first marquess of Lansdowne (1737–1805)’, ODNB.

86 Untitled autobiographical memorandum, Shelburne papers, box 102, fo. 8.

87 An account of Richmond's behaviour appears in a memoir by Henry Fox in countess of Ilchester and Lord Stavordale, eds., The life and letters of Lady Sarah Lennox (2 vols., London, 1901), i, pp. 20ff. Richmond was again antagonized when Shelburne succeeded him as secretary of state in July 1766: Lewis, ed., Horace Walpole's correspondence, xxx, p. 229.

88 George Grenville to the earl of Bute, 25 Mar. 1763, in William James Smith, ed., The Grenville papers: being the correspondence of Richard Grenville Earl Temple, K. G., and the Right Hon: George Grenville, their friends and contemporaries (4 vols., London, 1852), ii, p. 35. Two decades later, in 1782, the recent nature of Shelburne's Irish title, and the even more recent nature of his English title, were still the object of comment in the correspondence of Horace Walpole and Horace Mann: Lewis, ed., Horace Walpole's correspondence, xxv, p. 273.

89 Shelburne to Henry Fox, 20 May 1762, quoted in Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, i, p. 112.

90 Cobbett, William, The parliamentary history of England from the earliest period to the year 1803 (36 vols., London, 1806–20)Google Scholar, xxii, cols. 1003–5, in a debate in the Lords on the advancement of Lord George Sackville Germain to the peerage, 7 Feb. 1782; also, xviii, col. 281 (7 Feb. 1775), xix, cols. 1036, 1045–6, 1049–50 (8 Apr. 1778), xxiii, col. 809 (5 May 1783), xxx, col. 191 (27 Mar. 1797).

91 ‘Lord Shelburne, memorandum on his private affairs’, Shelburne papers, box 103, fos. 1–3; Cobbett, Parliamentary history, xviii, col. 959 (15 Nov. 1775).

92 Autobiographical memorandum (‘Autobiography to 1758’), Shelburne papers, box 102, fo. 47.

93 Cobbett, Parliamentary history, xxv, col. 857, in a debate in the Lords on Irish commercial legislation, 8 July 1785.

94 Ibid., xix, col. 347 (28 May 1777).

95 Ibid., xix, col. 183 (16 Apr. 1777).

96 ‘Lord Shelburne, memorandum on his private affairs’, Shelburne papers, box 103, fo. 55.

97 Ibid., fo. 65.

98 Ibid., fos. 59, 80.

99 Ibid., fo. 65; italics added.

100 A model of conversational interchange as polishing, crystallized by the third earl of Shaftesbury, had been incorporated, by Shelburne's time, into accounts of human development. James Millar, almost exactly Shelburne's contemporary, assigned sociability and conversational interaction key roles in the enhancement of mutual responsibility, first in Observations concerning the distinction of ranks in society (London, 1771), pp. 63–6, 74–5, and, more fully, in A historical view of the English government (first published 1787, 4 vols., London, 1803), iv, pp. 185–6, 228–9, 246–7.

101 Wraxall, Historical memoirs of my own time, i, p. 373.

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103 Ibid., pp. 39, 59–67, 127, 135.

104 Ibid., p. 354.

105 Bowood was discussed in Britton, The beauties of Wiltshire (3 vols., London, 1801), ii, pp. 213–27.

106 For instance, Warner, Richard, Excursions from Bath (Bath, 1801), pp. 209–26Google Scholar.