After meeting Fox at his parents’ home in August 1832, when he was a 30-year-old bachelor just embarked on a belated diplomatic career, Macaulay wrote:
He scarcely ever speaks in the society of Holland House. Rogers ... once said to me of him, ‘Observe that man. He never talks to men. He never talks to girls. But, when he can get into a circle of old tabbies, he is just in his element. He will sit clacking with an old woman for hours together. That always settles my opinion of a young fellow.’ This description is quite correct. Yet Fox’s address is extremely polished, his person agreeable, and his mind, I believe, not uncultivated. He was, on this occasion, very courteous to me. But I despise his shallowness and instability.
Fifteen months later, when Fox was freshly married to Lady Augusta Coventry, ‘a pretty little damsel, as red as a cherry and as plump as a partridge’, Macaulay was more indulgent towards him:
He is ... no favourite of mine. But I cannot deny that his powers of conversation are considerable, and his manners very sweet and courteous. Towards women - both his own wife and other men’s wives - his manner is at once so respectful and caressing that I do not wonder at the havoc which he has made among the ladies. But he is lame and cannot walk without a stick, - a great drawback on his handsome face and figure.
Macaulay Letters, ii. 182, 337, 339.
Fox’s formidable, capricious and possessive mother, who was singularly devoid of normal maternal feelings, told him when he was 28 that his ‘infirmity’ - a slight deformity of the hip and spine which made him permanently lame - ‘regulated all our plans and motions for years’.
‘A clever and suprafine boy’, as Smith put it, he was considered too delicate for public school and was educated at home, first by the Rev. Philip Shuttleworth, fellow and later warden of New College, Oxford, and between 1815 and 1817 by the ex-Catholic theologian Joseph Blanco White, who was advised by Holland that Henry ‘above all requires constant attention and conversation to excite his diligence and to occupy and divert his mind’.
The king shook hands and spoke to him and he must be a good Whig indeed if such favour engrafted on an Oxford education does not infuse an alloy of Toryism ... He reads a little more than he did, but he has quite given up Greek and will not try for his degree, which with his parts and quickness a very little application would enable him to obtain.
Yet Fox wrote in his journal only three months later:
Every day I live I am more and more persuaded not to meddle in politics; they separate the best friends, they destroy all social intercourse. And why? Is it for power? Is it for popularity? How unenviable they are separately! How seldom you see them combined; and most politicians have neither.
Add. 51782, Holland to C.R. Fox, 2 May 1820; Fox Jnl. 35.
After spending the summer of 1821 with his parents in Paris he fretted under ‘the dull monotony of life at Holland House’ in September; and in the Christmas vacation he suffered ‘endurance vile’ in the cold there, longing to return to the urban comforts of ‘old smoky’.
Fox was a ladies’ man, drawn particularly to older, usually married, women for general gratification, but he also fell in love at the drop of a hat with pretty girls of his own age, and he was curiously eager to marry, perhaps to assert and secure his independence. In the summer of 1822, when he was in Edinburgh during the king’s Scottish jaunt, he brought to a head a family row over his wish to marry Canning’s daughter Harriet. His horrified parents would not hear of it, objecting ostensibly on the grounds of Fox’s youth and their own meagre financial resources, and he reluctantly submitted to the veto.
I have no doubt of his abilities, but ... I have doubts whether he will do anything, partly because his father has done something, and partly from the straggling unsettled manner in which you bring up your sons. It is a sad thing that clever as he is, he is not able to take a common degree at Oxford ... As to his coming into Parliament I see no need for hurry. He is sure to be brought in by a friend in a short time. At 21 a young man either makes bad speeches or considers the House as a bore. Henry would probably go down after dinner, vote and then go to Almack’s to praise Canning’s fine speech. It is well he should feel anxious to come in before he does ... After all, however, he is one of the cleverest young men I ever saw and may do well if he is not spoilt by dowagers.
Add. 51679, Russell to Lady Holland, 22 Dec. [1822].
In February 1823 Fox, having been advised by his mother to be ‘careful of your health, take opening physics and wrap yourself up well’, went with Stuart Wortley on a four month tour to Paris, Genoa (where he called on Byron), Pisa, Florence and Geneva. He acquired a taste for tobacco and for life in ‘southern climes’, noting that ‘few are the charms that England offers me’ and that he was ‘greatly wanting in that satisfied, tranquil, imperturbable conviction that England is far superior to the rest of the world’.
I am sorry to see his heart so bent upon my entering into politics, for which I have neither talents nor disposition ... If ... I felt any eagerness or strong opinion upon any subject I would not allow my vanity or fear of failure to overcome my opinions; but to be exposed to the reproach and contempt of half England for not supporting the fame of my name and family on a stage I am unwilling to appear on, and to which I have rather a repugnance, is still more hopeless. But with a wise and affectionate father I feel I should be wretched and unworthy of his tenderness if I were not to yield to whatever may be his wishes and try to fulfil his intentions, or at least allow him an opportunity of discovering his mistake by my own failure and disgrace ... I only possess a little quickness, which enables me to disguise my ignorance and to make the most of the little I do know. I have no steadiness, perseverance or application; I seize results and have not patience for details. This succeeds well enough in conversation; but in Parliament more depth and solidity is required, which I could only acquire by application and industry - efforts I am not capable of making except for something that deeply interests me, which Mr. Hume’s economy, Lord John Russell’s reform, or Mr. Wortley’s game laws, do not in the least. I can conceive questions arising in which I willingly and earnestly should engage - the liberty of some continental country, the justice or injustice of some future war; but in these piping times of peace I cannot work myself up to the proper state of factious, peevish discontent, which I ought to cherish to become a worthy member of the opposition benches.
Add. 51749, Holland to Fox, 27 Aug. 1824; Fox Jnl. 195-6.
If his parents were unaware of the depth of his aversion to a political career, they were soon enlightened, for in early October 1824 Russell reported to them the opinion of John Fazakerley*, with whom and his wife Fox had recently stayed at Lausanne:
‘Henry Fox ... is most amiable and agreeable, quite unlikely, I think, to make any exertion in public life: he seems to lament that his family should expect such an effort from him, and if these are his feelings it is perhaps a pity that they should expose themselves to disappointment more acute than if the experiment had not been made’.
A few months later the veteran Whig Tierney confided to Lord Grey that he had ‘no hope’ of Fox’s success in Parliament, for he ‘has neither the energy nor the ambition which is necessary to call forth the talents he possesses’.
Fox was ill with a deranged stomach at Venice, but reached Rome in November and moved on to Naples in January 1825.
The day alas! approaches when bon que malgre I am to become a steady voter and a red hot patriot foaming and spluttering about things I care not three straws for one way or another. But sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Add. 61937, ff. 1, 3, 5.
Indeed, at this very moment the 2nd Baron Yarborough was offering Holland, through a third party, to return Fox free of charge and unfettered by any ‘unpleasant conditions’ for Newtown, Isle of Wight, at the next general election.
His letters show some progress in knowledge and other improvement ... He is to come into Parliament ... I hope he shows in conversation or at least feels in his heart more pleasure at the prospect than he expresses in his letters. As to his politics I have no reason to believe he differs from me, and if he did ... I should not blame or interfere with him, but I do not like in a young one an indifference on such matters ... I am sometimes vexed at the prospect of a boy of so excellent an understanding, delightful manners and warm affections as Harry falling into a sort of indolent, pococurante philosophy which may make his life unprofitable to others and tedious and unsatisfactory to himself.
Fox Jnl. 205-11; Add. 51784.
Back at Naples in the summer he became stormily involved with Byron’s former mistress Teresa Guiccioli and cultivated Lady Deerhurst, wife of the disreputable future 8th earl of Coventry, but remained emotionally though confusedly attached to Theresa Villiers, to the consternation of his parents, who when they found out precipitated a distressing correspondence.
My mind has long been made up - perhaps some time may intervene before I can carry my intention into execution - but my intention is to pass my life on this side of the Alps. I foresee that I shall not be able to settle as I wish in England ... I have no local attachments, no John Bull feelings, I hate the climate, dislike the manners and feel a most shameful indifference to the politics of the country.
Add. 61937, ff. 24, 26.
She tried to convince him that England had its merits and that he might be ‘amused’ by Parliament.
I hope ... [it] was merely a joke for ... I must openly decline any such honour. I have not health, inclination or opinions that would induce me to undergo the fatigue, odium and decision that is necessary for a county Member. If I come into Parliament (and you well know that I had much much rather not come in at all) I come in merely to please you and to satisfy or rather to disappoint your ambition by a display of total unfitness for an occupation for which I have no sort of inclination ... If there really was any notion or if you see it likely that such a notion should spring up for the convenience of the Russells, the Whitbreads, the Pyms or for the laudable diversion of annoying the adverse party I should take it particularly kind of you to baffle such intentions.
Holland assured him that it was not a ‘serious design’, but rebuked him for his dismissal of party obligations:
As to your sneer of convenience to Russells, Whitbreads, etc. and at what you are pleased to call our indulgent and candid friends, I must say that it little becomes anyone of our name who have derived so much consideration and even existence in the world from such connections to speak of them either as not worth having, or as not liberally bestowed upon us when we deserve it. We Foxes owe at least as much to party as party men owe to us.
Fox was conciliatory, but defended himself:
I do not see why I am to be called conceited because I cannot choose the same pursuits and inclinations. As to coming into Parliament ... I will do it as you wish it ... I did not mean to say I had any particular objection or pleasure in seeing the faults of our party more than of another.
Add. 51749, Fox to Holland, 15 Jan. [23 Feb.], reply, 28 Jan. 1826.
He set off for Paris in late February with ‘painful and disagreeable feelings’, which were intensified when, within minutes of his arrival on 6 Mar. 1826 he learnt that he was about to be returned on a vacancy for Horsham by the 12th duke of Norfolk; this, as he told Mrs. Fazakerley, ‘cut sadly into some projects which I had and still fondly cherish’.
On 3 Oct. Holland wrote to Norfolk explaining that Fox would be unable to take his seat at the meeting of the new Parliament in November and placing it at his disposal. He informed Fox of this at the same time, but the following day was surprised to receive a letter from him in which he offered to return home and try to make a fist of Parliament if his parents would allow him to marry Theresa Villiers. Holland, keen to have him back, initially gave ground to the extent of promising that they would ‘lay no restrictions with respect to your society or your time nor impose any conditions except that the discussion [of marriage] may not be renewed unless invited by me’. Norfolk assured Holland, who had informed him of Fox’s possible return, that there was no need to do anything about the seat ‘this side [of] Christmas’.
To be sure, your parliamentary career will be an odd one - in two Parliaments and never within the walls of the House. What a price among collectors your franks will fetch! My uncle’s or Pitt’s will be nothing to it.
Add. 51750, Holland to Fox, 20, 26 Jan., 2, 5 Feb.; 51833, Robinson to Holland, 5 Feb. 1827.
A few weeks later Fox, as he had doubtless been planning for some time, sought permission to marry Natalie Potocka, a young Polish aristocrat, who was supposed to have £60,000. His ‘puzzled and confounded’ parents reluctantly consented, but the affair soon petered out.
I look back upon life with much repentance. Not for the ambitious objects I have slighted, for had I attained them I should not have been happier, and had I failed in the attempt, which is more likely, I should have been mortified and miserable. But I have cruelly and wantonly played with the feelings of others, I have never believed anyone attached to me, and I have on that account ... determined not to be myself attached. My conduct towards Miss V., Mlle P., and Lady N. leaves me much to regret - especially the last two instances.
Ibid. 354-78; Ilchester, Holland House, 134.
Holland had ‘nothing to ask for him’ from the new premier, but dropped a hint about his diplomatic leanings.
I cannot guess at his future intentions ... Perhaps he has no fixed plan, but from what I see of him my notion is that except I were named to some mission in a warmer climate he would give the matter up ... the truth is that he does not like the business. He entered eagerly into it when he came here, but flagged very soon after the first excitement was over ... when he returns from any of his tours he never shows the least anxiety to know what has passed in his absence or even to put himself en courant. All this makes me afraid that diplomacy will never be a serious pursuit with him.
Holland House Diaries, 18, 20, 49; Lady Holland to Son, 111; Ilchester, Holland House, 148; Countess Granville Letters, ii. 122. Add. 51604, Granville to Holland, 6 Feb.; 51610, Adair to same, 22 May 1832.
A posting to Turin in September 1832 was more congenial to him. The following spring he married at Florence Lady Augusta Coventry (Lady Deerhurst’s daughter), ‘the very nicest little doll or plaything’ Creevey had ever seen; he surmised that she was ‘up to anything, as all Coventrys are’.