Heber’s father, who was ordained in 1753, was a fellow of Brasenose until 1766, when he succeeded his elder brother to Hodnet and became a rural clergyman. Marton, the family’s original property, did not come into his possession until the death of his brother’s widow in 1803. His first wife died soon after Richard Heber’s birth and he married again in 1782: the first child of this union was Reginald Heber (1783-1826), later bishop of Calcutta. Richard Heber’s bibliomania, which became the mainspring of his life, manifested itself during his schooldays, when his father, frequently irked by his ‘debts contracted with booksellers’, tried to curb it:
I cannot say I rejoice in the importation of the cargo of books you mention from abroad, we had before enough and too many, ten times more than were ever read or even looked into. Of multiplying books ... there is neither end nor use. The cacoethes of collecting books draws men into ruinous extravagancies. It is an itch which grows by indulgence and should be nipped in the bud.
Heber Letters, 25, 33, 52.
At Oxford Heber refined his literary tastes, continued to collect books and earned some reputation as a scholar and littérateur. He was a frequent attender at debates in Parliament in the 1790s. He toured Scotland in 1799 and the West of England in 1800, when he formed a lasting friendship with Walter Scott, whose literary circle he joined: he was later a member of the Roxburghe Club and a contributor to the Quarterly Review. He visited France in 1802 and returned before war broke out to busy himself with the volunteers. His father’s death in 1804 brought him a handsome inheritance which gave him full rein to indulge his bibliomania.
Heber first appeared as a candidate for Oxford University in the premature canvass of 1805. He went to the poll in 1806 but came a poor third. He was involved in another abortive canvass in 1814, when he was handicapped by doubts as to his firmness on the Catholic question. Suspicions were aroused by his silence on the issue and memories of his support for Lord Grenville in the contest for the chancellorship in 1809. He satisfied his former tutor, who catechized him on the subject, that he was a ‘true and steady church and kingman’.
His own notions, for I take him to be a Tory, will naturally lead him to support the government of the day; but he will be content to consider the honour the University has done him as the end, and not as a mere stepping-stone to selfish objects of a lower order; he will not sell piecemeal a mark of confidence so honourably and freely conferred upon him.
Bucks. RO, Fremantle mss D/FR, Sir T. to W.H. Fremantle, 2 Sept. 1821; Ward, Llandaff Letters, 289.
Despite his reputation for wit and wisdom, Heber signally failed to distinguish himself in the Commons, where his performance was ‘by no means answerable to the expectations of many of his constituents’.
Heber was an habitué of Holland House, and Lady Holland had this to say of him in 1822: ‘His memory is quite remarkable, and his ready application of verses and stories smart and brisk. He is a valuable inmate to help on conversation’.
He is good-natured and has acquired a good deal with all his book-collecting and reading, but is rather in the Oxford style of humbug, which is so very odious. I rather like him. He is very much given to drinking and eating, which his friends!!! say has deadened his understanding.
Fox Jnl. 154.
Heber was a founder member of the Athenaeum Club and, early in 1825, Lady Holland noted:
This activity has done him harm at Oxford, as they complain of his drawing off members from the University Club - indeed I fear Heber is not popular at Oxford, as he keeps no house nor has spoken in Parliament.
Ilchester, 56.
This was true. In May 1825 the provost of Oriel encouraged Heber to allay the growing dissatisfaction with his anonymity in the House by the ‘trifling sacrifice’ of giving ‘some public evidence of attention to the political feelings of the University’; but he merely cast silent votes against the Catholic relief bill, 1 Mar., 10 May. He also voted for the bill to suppress the Catholic Association, 25 Feb., and against regulation of the Irish franchise, 26 Apr. On 28 July 1825 he left for the continent, and the following month he informed his half-sister Mrs. Cholmondeley that he had decided to resign his seat:
Towards this I have been turning onward for some time and the impending dissolution seemed the proper moment to decide. Not taking an active part in its proceedings, I found the House somewhat of a fag and a bore and the time it took up unprofitably spent. All things considered, I do not think I shall repent my resolution.
Heber Letters, 328-31.
The true reason for Heber’s precipitate retreat from English public life was less innocent. At some time in 1825, probably in July, he made sexual advances at the Athenaeum to two young men, including the son of his agent, one Fisher, who threatened to bring charges against him. The affair was brought to Peel’s notice by Robert Wilmot Horton*, a close friend of Heber’s half-brother, who had ‘the strongest suspicions’ that Reginald Heber had gone to India in 1823 ‘in consequence of his having obtained some sort of knowledge’ of Richard’s moral laxity. Heber’s friend, Henry Hobhouse, Peel’s under-secretary, was enlisted in their attempt to prevent the episode from bringing ‘irretrievable ruin’ on Heber and in the process ‘leaving an almost ineffaceable stain upon his own caste in society’. Heber had at first protested his innocence and determination ‘to abide the result’; but eventually he ‘admitted enough’ for Hobhouse to advise him to leave the country and take steps to vacate his seat at the dissolution (which was expected in the autumn). He reluctantly complied and by 4 Aug. 1825 was at Calais, whence he wrote to Hobhouse, promising to deal with the matter of his seat, but asking whether he might return for a short while to settle some private business. Hobhouse’s reply gave him nothing for his comfort:
I think the object of those with whom I have recently communicated respecting you is to prevent your retaining the place you have filled in English society; and that if that object can be attained without recourse to legal proceedings, there is no disposition to take those steps, to which they would otherwise recur. Under these circumstances you must judge for yourself of the prudence of visiting England, taking into the account that since your departure the facts have (I believe) been imparted to Mr. F[isher] ... If you resolve on running the risk, there are cogent reasons, why I should neither be party nor privy to the fact of your being here.
He promised not to return ‘at present’, but still prevaricated about his seat. Hobhouse believed he would do nothing about it unless forced to, but was disinclined to exert himself further in the affair. Peel persuaded Hobhouse to reconsider and, agreeing that ‘a man who has so disgraced himself’ ought to leave Parliament ‘both for the sake of himself and the public’, he pressed Heber to act. Heber, who was now in Antwerp, ‘submitted to the self-abasement suggested to him’ and sent letters of resignation, to be forwarded to the Oxford authorities when a dissolution was announced, which ascribed his retreat to ‘tedium and a wish to be able to devote his time more exclusively to literary pursuits’. Hobhouse was evidently able to use them to avert a renewed threat, presumably from Fisher, to expose the truth.
The dissolution was postponed, and Heber’s resignation was formally submitted in January 1826, when it became ‘the topic and wonder’ of the moment. Peel, replying to his former tutor’s inquiries, blandly replied that ‘Heber was so listless last session, and appeared to have such a horror of anything which might by possibility call him up in the House of Commons, that I am hardly surprised at his resignation’.
God, God, whom shall we trust? Here is earning, wit, gaiety of temper, high station in society and complete reception everywhere all at once debased and lost by such a degrading bestiality.
Soon afterwards Scott got wind of the intervention of Hobhouse, who had ‘detected a warrant for ... [Heber’s] trial passing through the [home] office’: ‘the fairest outsides so often cover the foulest vices’.
Abercromby told me yesterday an anecdote about Heber which ... I think proves him to be mad. During the Fonthill sale he was invited to reside at Mr. Bennet’s ... and one night after a supper, where he had drunk immoderately, he ... found his way to Miss Bennet’s room, and actually assaulted this very pretty young woman so that on her running for protection to her mother’s apartment, it was judged fitting to turn him out of doors the next morning.
Add.75938, Lady to Lord Spencer, 8 Nov. 1826.
There was speculation that Heber would ‘take orders and slip himself into his own living’, but he did not return to England until 1831 and even then, according to an obituary notice, ‘not into the society which he had left; for rumours had been in circulation degrading to his moral character’.