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~ History, Folkore and the Supernatural

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Tag Archives: Friars

Naughty Nuns and Frisky Friars: Sir Francis Dashwood’s Hell-Fire Club

12 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by Lenora in Bizarre, General, History

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Abbey, Caves, Cellar books, club, eigheenth century, England, Fanny Murray, Friars, George Selwyn, Georgian, hell fire, Lord Bute, Lord Sandwich, Medmenham, Monks, Paul Whitehead, Satanic Rituals, Sir Francis Dashwood, West Wycombe, Wharton

Hogarth_Dashwood_wikip

Sir Francis Dashwood worshiping Venus, with the Earl of Sandwich reflected in his halo.By Hogarth.

Philip, Duke of Wharton was the trailblazer of all things Hell-fire, with his notorious  Hell-Fire Club of the 1720’s.  But his was by no means the only Hell Fire club, nor the most famous spawned in the enthusiastically libertine eighteenth Century.  In the 1740’s a club was formed that became infamous as THE Hell-Fire club.  A secret cabal made up of the landed elite and political opposition – a shadow government in waiting; rumored to hold secret Satanic rituals in a secluded abbey and nearby caves, engaging in blasphemous orgies where members, dressed as friars and nuns, met in all manner of fornication and adulteries. Eventually they took power in the ministry of Lord Bute, but soon over-reached themselves, and were ultimately betrayed by one of their own.  Oh, and there was also a baboon involved along the way, as if all that wasn’t enough.

Sounds like the perfect template for a Hell-fire Club- except that this particular Hell-Fire Club, wasn’t quite as devilish as it’s reputation suggested…and it’s founder was no latter-day Wharton, brilliant, bitter and blasphemous – nor yet some Georgian Crowley figure – he comes across as rather more, well, jolly.  A traveler to foreign parts, a fan of dressing up, a bit of a practical joker,  with a mixed up view of religion.

The King of clubs: Sir Francis Dashwood (1708-1781)

Sirfrancisdashwood_wikip

Sir Francis dressed to impress, at the Divan Club.

The mark of a gentleman in the eighteenth century, was to be clubbable.  Societies and clubs sprang up like mushrooms in this very sociable century – if you had a particular interest, you could bet your life there was a group of like-minded fellows meeting in a tavern near you, on the second Tuesday of every month.   If you couldn’t find a club to suit you, you could start your own – no matter what your tastes ran too.

Sir Francis Dashwood, 15th Baron le Despencer, was no stranger to this eighteenth century trend.  In 1732/3 after traveling in Italy and meeting the formidable Lady Mary Wortley Montague, he founded the famous Dilettante Society.  Later, following a sojourn in the Ottoman Empire, where he again crossed paths with Lady Mary, he founded the Divan Club, which ran until about 1746.  Later still, he founded the little known Lincoln Club which ran from the 1750’s to the 1770’s.  These clubs focused on an aesthetic appreciation of the ancient and the exotic, ladies could be members.  Fine dining and fancy dress were the order of the day (although there are no records of whether Lincoln green was required dress for the Lincoln Club) and there was much imbibing of alcohol, one would imagine.

During his Grand Tour to Italy, Sir Francis got about a bit, he flirted with Jacobitism and meet with the Bonny Prince himself;  he is also said to have developed an antipathy towards the more excitable aspects of Catholicism at that time, due in part to an over-zealous tutor.

Madonna della Misericordia (detail), 1418-1422 by Pietro di Domenico da Montepulciano, Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon.

Penitents scourging themselves.  Detail of Madonna della Misericordia, 1418-1422 by Pietro di Domenico da Montepulciano, Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon.

A penchant for irreligious practical jokes may also have emerged during this trip. That doyenne of eighteenth century gossip, Horace Walpole, recounted one such (likely apocryphal) incident in which the young Sir Francis attended a solemn candlelit ceremony in the Sistine Chapel, in which penitents were offered token whips to scourge themselves of sin. Showing a thoroughly wicked sense of humor and a flair for the theatrical, Sir Francis disguised himself in a night watchman’s cloak, then leaped out on the unsuspecting faithful. Striding up and down the dimly lit aisle of the chapel cracking a horse whip he managed to scare the bejezus out of the penitents, who thought the very devil himself had put in an appearance…

The Order of the Knights of St Francis of Wycombe

Back in England,  having established himself as a man who was well-traveled, with a passing interest in the occult (his library contained a number of occult texts), irreligious by nature, fond of dressing up and keen on forming clubs, Sir Francis went on to form what would become one of the most notorious clubs in the eighteenth century.  It was founded in 1746, and began life as Order of the Knights of St Francis of Wycombe, also known as the Monks or Friars of Medmenham.  However posterity erroneously remembers it as The Hell-Fire Club.

West Wycombe, glimpsed through the trees.

West Wycombe Park, glimpsed through the trees. (Image: Lenora).

Like many private clubs at the time, it began life in a pub, the ominously named George and Vulture tavern at Cornhill in London.  The private meeting room is said to have boasted a ‘Rosicrucian lamp, a large crystal globe encircled by a gold serpent, tail in its mouth, crowned with silver wings’ [1].  The club proved popular, and Sir Francis soon sought to acquire more private accommodation for his illustrious members.  Taking the club out to Buckinghamshire and his newly leased property of West Wycombe.  The first meeting of the brotherhood was said to have taken place on Walpurgis night, 1752, much to the annoyance of Sir Francis’s prudish wife [2].  Eventually, due to spousal pressure (?)  the club began looking for more exclusive and more atmospheric premises.

Medmenham Abbey and the Gothic Revival

medmenham-abbey-buckinghamshire-d85xtw

Print of Medmenham Abbey

In the mid-eighteenth century all things Gothic were making a comeback, scholars and antiquaries were bringing ancient England into the public consciousness.  Initially, as an architectural style, it was mocked as being in rather vulgar taste, something popular with ‘new money’ and rather going against the Classical tide of the century.   It was not until Horace Walpole created his Mock Medieval Masterpiece at Strawberry Hill, that it became truly acceptable to the Bon Ton.  To Sir, aka, Saint, Francis and his merry band of fornicating friars, a picturesque Gothic pile was just what the Order ordered.

The Mausoleum, funded by George Bubb Doddington. Image Lenora.

The Octagonal Mausoleum, featured in many Hammer Horror films. Image Lenora.

Medmenham had been a Cistercian Abbey, originally founded in the twelfth century.  Like many such religious houses, it fell foul of that jolly old wife-killer, Henry VIII, and was sold to the Duffield family who remodeled and rebuilt it over the centuries.  Sir Francis leased the Abbey from the Duffield’s in 1755 and began renovating the property to suit his peculiar tastes. He repaired the ruined cloister, tower and chapter house, a refectory, dining room and common room and catered for the ‘private devotions’ of the monks by providing them with their own ‘cells’.  The ethos of the club was proudly inscribed above the main door ‘Fais ce que tu voudras’ – that ever popular Rabelaisian dictum ‘do as you will’ – thereby leaving no doubt as to the philosophy of its founder.

Harpocrates. Image via wikimedia.

Harpocrates. Image via wikimedia.

Secrecy and voyeurism were also part of the ethos – the refectory was presided over by Harpocrates, the Greek god of silence and Angerona, the Roman goddess of secrecy.  Apertures in the anteroom adjacent the dining room allowed secret observations.

The costumes of the monks were described by Horace Walpole, who visited the abbey in the 1760’s.  He described the chapter house as being decorated by prints of monks and nuns, pegs on the walls held their costumes: white hats, jackets and trousers, a red hat for the Prior.  Looking, he thought, rather like the costumes of boatmen.  Hardly the robes of Satanic devil-worshipers.

Fais ce que tu voudras: Do what thou wilt

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The Secrets of the Convent c1763.  Trustees of the British Museum.

But what did the monks actually get up to?  Was there any evidence of actual Satanic practices, or was it all just posh boys putting it about?  There is little evidence of any really Diabolical practices, most of this comes from later rumors.  Many of the documents relating to the club have been lost, the cellar book survives, and is a great source for identifying meetings, and prospective members, but has little on the actual ‘doings’ of the club.

Horace Walpole, following his visit to Medmenham Abbey, reported on the practices of the Monks:

“practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed; and the nymphs and the hogsheads that were laid in against the festivals of this new church, sufficiently informed the neighborhood of the complexion of those hermits.”

Sex and wine certainly seem to have been a major part of the rituals – even the landscape was sexualized.  The gardens included a Temple of Venus and Parlour of Venus as well as statues of Pan and Priapus – perfect for a club dedicated to divine procreation.  One dramatic feature, described by Burgo Partridge in his ‘History of Orgies’ was:

‘[Dashwood] had laid out one part of the gardens i the shape of a woman, with much suggestive grouping of pillars and bushes, an expensive smutty joke which could not be appreciated fully until the invention of the aeroplane.’

Dan Cruikshank, in his book on Georgian London, considers the possibility that Sir Francis may have been aware of antiquarian and later-day Druid, Rev William Stukeley and his theories about fertility rights and the Mother Goddess at Stonehenge.  Stukeley re vivified the Druid movement, and interest in a pre- Roman Britain, naming himself Chief Druid in 1722.

cimg3654

Cruikshank considers it is possible that Sir Francis, in the design of his gardens at West Wycombe and Medmenham, might in fact have been aiming less for a smutty joke, and more at a nod towards the Goddess.  Another alternative he considers, could be that the Order in fact represented a humanist tradition, questioning traditional morality and the confines of the established religion of the time… either way, he is impressed with the result, stating:

‘They [the gardens] remain an outstanding example of the libertine vision of antiquity, a perfect fusion of nature, the classical world, ancient British traditions and virtually ungoverned sexual encounter.’ [3]

The Rakes Progress by Hogarth.

The Rakes Progress by Hogarth.

Who were the Monks and Nuns of Medmenham?

Paul Whitehead, Secretary of the Club.

Paul Whitehead, Secretary of the Club.

Sir Francis was the founder, but did not always act as the Abbot, this role seems to have been rotated amongst members of the inner circle.  The loyal Paul Whitehead, known as The Aged Paul, was club steward, George Bubb Doddington was also a key member (and a bequest from him funded the completion of the octagonal Mausoleum).  Later members include the notorious John Wilkes, whose political spat with fellow monk, and founding member, the Earl of Sandwich, would expose the activities of the club to censure and cement its notoriety in the public imagination.

Chevalier d'Eon by Thomas Stewart, bought by the National Portrait Gallery. Click for full picture. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery, London

Chevalier d’Eon by Thomas Stewart. NPG.

There have been many suggestions of other possible members, some more likely than others and encompassing both the famous and infamous of eighteenth century ‘celebrities’.  From Benjamin Franklin, founding father of the USA and fan of the madness inducing glass harmonica, Chevalier D’Eon the sexually ambiguous cross-dressing French Spy, and George Selwyn the eighteenth centuries own necrophiliac ‘gentleman sadist’, to name but a few.

Lady Mary Wortley Montague, in Turkish Dress.

Lady Mary Wortley Montague, in Turkish Dress.

Ladies were also reported to be members, with the Lady Mary Wortley Montague being perhaps the most illustrious.  She was certainly a member of Sir Francis’s other clubs, however it has been suggested her membership may have been honorary due to her advanced age, and the fact that she spent much of her time abroad.  It was rumored that many noble ladies attended the club in disguise, in order to conduct affairs, and it would seem likely that many of the members would have brought their mistresses to partake of the delights of Medmenham.  It also seems likely that Sir Francis was shipping in the creme of societies courtesans to act as naughty nuns.  The beautiful Fanny Murray, famed courtesan and former mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, was almost certainly a member.

Fanny Murray by Thomas Johnson. Via Wikimedia.

Fanny Murray by Thomas Johnson. Via Wikimedia.

That Devil Wilkes – the beginning of the end

John Wilkes by Hogarth.

John Wilkes by Hogarth.

The Medmenham Set have sometimes been seen as a sinister political cabal, pulling strings and being implicated in all manner of conspiracies.  In fact, many of them did eventually take a role in government, in the ill-fated ministry of Lord Bute.   The Friars certainly attracted many of disaffected ‘opposition’ during the period of Robert Walpole’s ‘Robinocracy’.  The eventual undoing of the club occurred during a political cat-fight between the Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes (a hell-raiser and famously known as the ugliest man in Britain).

Now for the baboon story. Some say, Earl Sandwich had a bee in his bonnet about John Wilkes following an incident involving a baboon dressed as the devil.  John Wilkes is alleged to have hidden the baboon in a chest, releasing it mid ceremony in a pant-wetting moment for the Earl of Sandwich.  (Alas, this story seems to originate in a pornographic tale called ‘Chrysal: the adventure of a golden Guinea’ in 1766 and is unlikely to be true…although oddly enough the club may have actually owned a baboon).  In any event, the antipathy between the two spilled over into the a very public political antagonism which got dirty very quickly. Sandwich tried to get Wilkes expelled from parliament because of his connection with a pornographic poem, ‘Essay on Woman’, even going so far as to read out selected saucy passages to suitably horrified/titillated MPs. Wilkes struck back in 1763 by writing of the antics of the Friars and exposing them to the full glare of public opprobrium:

‘The favourite doctrine was not penitence, for in the centre of the orchard was a grotesque figure, and in his hand he had a reed stood with flaming tips of fire.  To use Milton’s expression, Pente Tente (penitence) or Peni Tenti (erection).’ [4]

Wilkes also hinted that Pagan practices, by way of some form of English Eleusinian Mysteries dedicated to the Bona Dea (good Goddess), were performed.

It was now open season for speculation, an updated version of Chrysal came out in 1766 elaborating and embroidering upon Wilkes’s revelations, and so the Hell-fire reputation began to form…and fiction became accepted as fact.

‘Every sacred right of religion was profaned, hymns and prayers were dedicated to the Devil ‘ the monks, it was alleged carried out  ‘gross lewdness and impiety’

The club limped on for a while, but political scandal and public censure took its toll.  Curious tourists visited the Abbey post-Wilkes.  But the memory of the Friars of Medmenham lived on, in fiction and the popular imagination.  What was probably posh boys having naughty boozy weekends with perhaps a little light paganism thrown in, became the stuff of Hell-fire legend and infamy.

It seems fitting to end on a poignant little tale, in 1781 the ghost of ‘Aged Paul’ (Whitehead), whose heart was interred at the famous octagonal Mausoleum, appeared at West Wycombe and was seen beckoning and signalling.  Dashwood’s own sister was a witness to this manifestation.  It is said that upon hearing of the apparition, Sir Francis knew it was his loyal old friend come for him, and he died soon after. One can only hope that they continue their carousing in spirit. [5]

The Mausoleum, where the heart of Paul Whitehead was interred. Image by Lenora.

The Mausoleum, where the heart of Paul Whitehead was interred. Image by Lenora.

Sources and notes

Arnold, Catharine, ‘City of Sin, London and its Vices’, 2010, Simon & Schuster. [1] [2]

Ashe, Geoffrey,  ‘Sex, Rakes and Libertines, The Hell-fire Clubs’, 2005, Sutton. [5]

Cruikshank, Dan, ‘The Secret History of Georgian London’, 2010, Windmill Books. [3]

Dashwood, Sir Francis, ‘The Dashwoods of West Wycombe’, 1987, Aurum Press.

Lord, Evelyn, ‘The Hell-Fire Clubs, Sex, Satanism and Secret Societies’, 2008, Yale University Press. [4]

Image sources

Garden: Citation: Jason M. Kelly, “A Nymphaeum and a Temple to Venus in an Eighteenth-Century English Garden,” Secrets of the Hellfire Club Blog (8 March 2012), …

 

 

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George Selwyn – The Gentleman Sadist

22 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by Lenora in Bizarre, eighteenth century, General, History, Macabre

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

blasphemy, Eccentrics, eighteenth century history, Engish History, Friars, George Selwyn, hangings, Hellfire club, Horace Walpole, Maria Fagiani, Mie Mie, Monks of Medmenham, necrophilia, tyburn

George Selwyn by Joshua Reynolds

George Selwyn by Joshua Reynolds

“It is actually possible to become amateurs in suffering. I have heard of men who have travelled into countries where horrible executions were to be daily witnessed, for the sake of that excitement which the sight of suffering never fails to give, from the spectacle of a tragedy, or an auto-da-fe, down to the writhings of the meanest reptile on whom you can inflict torture, and feel that torture is the result of your own power. It is a species of feeling of which we never can divest ourselves.” (1)

So wrote Charles Maturin in his 1820 novel Melmoth the Wanderer – and the inspiration for this insight into the darker side of human nature?  George Selwyn (1719 -1791), heir to a fortune, kicked out of Oxford for Blasphemy, MP to a rotten borough (or two), rake, wit and notorious necrophile.

Drunken japes or bloody blasphemy?

Chalice

George Selwyn, second son of a Gloucestershire gentleman farmer, was sent to Eton and Oxford as befitted his rank in society.  Here he met his lifelong friend the renowned wit and inveterate letter-writer Horace Walpole.  Although Horace Walpole would eventually become famous for his novel ‘The Castle of Otranto’ a novel that was the fore-runner of many a famous Gothic novel, at this early stage Selwyn seems to have had the edge on the darker-side of human nature.

In fact George’s Oxford career was cut rather short one drunken evening in July 1745.  Having somehow successfully blagged a local silversmith into to handing over a sacred chalice that was being repaired for a church, George set out to parody the Christian Holy Communion.  Gathering together his chums he filled the chalice with red wine and then “made signs as though he was blooding at one of his arms, did apply the neck of the bottle of wine into the said arm…”(2) Following this he uttered the blasphemous words “Drink this in remembrance of me.”(3)

In 1745 that was enough to have you drummed out of Oxford however drunk you claimed to be.  Even pandering to the anti-Catholic feelings of the day – by claiming to have been mocking transubstantiation – did not save Selwyn’s university career.  Not that he seemed to mind very much.

A Clubbable Man

White's Club London, sited here since 1778. Image by Paul Farmer 2009 [via wikimedia]

White’s Club London, sited here since 1778. Image by Paul Farmer 2009 [via Wikimedia]

In the eighteenth century it was important for a man to be ‘clubbable’.  To be able to socialise amongst his peers with poise, elegance and wit.  Despite, or perhaps because of, the somewhat sleepily affable persona that Selwyn exuded he was a hit.  He soon became a well-known figure at clubs such as Brookes’ and White’s (White’s was so notorious for gambling that Hogarth satirised it as a club where if a man collapsed outside, his body would be dragged into the club so bets could be laid on whether he was dead or not). Like most of his peers he was a keen gambler (and the aforementioned wager would no doubt have appealed to Selwyn’s macabre side) and he also had a ready wit.  His Bon Mots were the talk of the town, and many a time ‘Selwyn’s last‘ was recorded for posterity by Horace Walpole.  One of my favourites is the following slightly saucy retort:

Princess Amellia, by Jean Baptiste Van Loo

“Asked if Princess Amelia would have a guard, he replied with some indelicacy ‘now and then one, I suppose'”  (4)

Wraxall described his style as: “eyes turned up, his mouth set primly, a look almost of melancholy on his whole fact.” (5) One can just imagine this lugubrious delivery just adding to its comedic effect.

He didn’t just restrict his membership to the more usual gaming and drinking clubs.  Selwyn was, according to Geoffrey Ashe, one of the fully paid up members of Sir Francis Dashwood’s Monks of Medmenham – otherwise know as the Hellfire Club.  (Of which more in future posts).

Selwyn didn’t let his political career get in the way of pursuing his favourite pass-times – in fact in 40 years as an MP he is not credited with a single political speech and his main contribution seems to have been in amusing his fellow MPs by ‘Snoring in unison with Lord North’(6)

However witty his Bon Mots were, and however uneventful his political career was, George Selwyn has come down through posterity as a necrophile and the model (along with Algernon Swinburne) for Edmond De Goncourt’s ‘Gentleman Sadist’ in his novel La Faustin – why was this?

A connoisseur of the macabre

The idle prentice hanged at Tyburn. Hogarth.

The idle prentice hanged at Tyburn by Hogarth.

It was an age when it was not unusual for people to look forward to attending public hangings (even children were hanged).  So popular was this gruesome spectator sport that you could even buy premium ‘grandstand’ seats at Tyburn in  the so-called ‘Mother Proctor’s Pews’ – Roy Porter notes that for the hanging of the infamous Lord Ferrers (no relation to Katherine Ferrers of Wicked Lady fame) the pews raked in £500 in profit.  Yet despite this, George Selwyn’s well-known predilection for executions and death was considered somewhat extreme even in his own day – Walpole relates the following tale that illustrates Selwyn’s pre-eminence in the subject:

“[Selwyn] told him, as a most important communication, that Arthur Moore had had his coffin chained to that of his mistress. ‘Lord! how do you know?’ asked Horace. ‘Why, I saw them the other day in a vault at St. Giles’s.’ ‘Oh! Your servant, Mr. Selwyn,’ cried the man who showed the tombs at Westminster Abbey, ‘I expected to see you here the other day when the old Duke of Richmond’s body was taken up.'” 

The Wharton’s, in their book ‘The Wits and Beaux of Society’, point out that Selwyn was in some ways a man of contradictions – one minute the toast of polite society with his bon mots, the next rooting about in coffins and extorting confessions from criminals remarking of him that: “George Augustus Selwyn famous for his wit, and notorious for his love of horrors”

Lord Lovat

Lord Lovat, image Wikimedia

This mixture of wit and gloom came to the fore following the execution of Lord Lovat the captured Jacobite rebel.  Some ladies objected to his having witnessed the execution to which he replied:

“‘I made full amends, for I went to see it sewn on again.’ He had indeed done so, and given the company at the undertaker’s a touch of his favourite blasphemy, for when the man of coffins had done his work and laid the body in its box, Selwyn, imitating the voice of the Lord Chancellor at the trial, muttered, ‘My Lord Lovat, you may rise.'” (7)

Selwyn hated to miss an execution and often got friends to give him full reports of any that he was unable to attend – however he did have some scruples.  On being asked why he did not attend the hanging of a criminal named Charles Fox (the same name as his friend the Whig statesman Charles James Fox) he is reported to have said:

“I make it a point never to attend rehearsals.” (OUCH!)

The most famous and likely apocryphal story attached to George Selwyn is that he was mistaken for an executioner on a busman’s holiday when he was spotted at the execution of Damiens in 1757.  Damiens made a pretty feeble attempt on the life of King Louise XV of France and was sentenced to a gruesome death:  torture with red-hot pincers before being slowly ripped limb from limb by horses.  The whole process took hours (with the unfortunate Damiens being alive for a considerable part of it).  A sentimental lady is reported to have objected to the barbarity of the proceedings – because the horses were whipped. Who said only the British are animal lovers!

Selwyn was spotted pushing his way to the front of the crowd to get a ringside view of the torture when a gentleman spotted him.  He asked Selwyn if he was himself an executioner come to observe proceedings.  Selwyn made the unforgettable reply:

“No Monsieur, I have not that honour: I am but an amateur”

Damiens before the judges. 18C via WIkimeida

Damiens before the judges. 18C via Wikimedia

For all of his charm, wit and affable nature, there is something chilling in his love of watching the suffering of others and in his fondness for watching corpses exhumed.  It is likely that this particular story has simply attached itself to his legend (it is also told of others) and he was often the butt of fanciful tales spread about by his friends (and rivals) in wit.  Lord Chesterfield and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams have been cited by the Wharton’s as possible sources of this tale, and of the rumour that Selwyn sometimes dressed as a woman in order to attend executions incognito. Nevertheless it does not seem too far out of character for Selwyn that – given the chance – his connoisseurs palate would not have relished such a scene of horror as presented by Damien.

A slightly more amusing anecdote has Lord Holland, on his death-bed, advising a servant that:

“If Mr. Selwyn calls, let him in: if I am alive I shall be very glad to see him, and if I am dead he will be very glad to see me.”

Sometimes his friends were able to use his love of the death-bed and corpses to their own ends – one story associated with Selwyn’s time at Whites Club relates to the election of Sheridan as a member.  Selwyn did not want Sheridan, a mere theatrical, elected to a gentleman’s club.  The only way to stop him repeatedly black-balling Sheridan was for Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, in cahoots with Charles Fox, to trick him out of the club with the promise of a juicy death-bed to attend!

The twilight years

Mie Mie by George Romney

Mie Mie by George Romney

Although friends such as Walpole, the Duke of Queensberry and Lord Carlisle seemed to have esteemed Selwyn and thought him of good heart despite his foibles, one of his passions might seem a little off-putting to the modern reader.  Selwyn never married and claimed to have only slept with women seven times in his entire life, the last being when he was 29.  Instead he transferred his affections to children.

Two little girls were the focus of his attention:  Anne Coventry daughter of one of the beautiful Gunning sisters, and more lastingly Maria ‘Mie Mie’ Fagniani daughter of the high living Marchese Fagniani and the Duke of Queensberry.   Despite there being no question that he was not the father, he was so obsessed with Mie Mie (right from her infancy) that he succeeded in persuading the Marchese to leave her child with him when she returned to the continent.  By the late 1770’s she and Selwyn were embroiled in a bitter dispute over custody.  Eventually Selwyn seems to have won and spent the rest of his life fussing over Mie Mie, despite her eventual disdain for him.  In his will he left the girl £33,000 (which along with the £150,000 left to her by Queensberry made her a very eligible heiress).

George Selwyn was a feature in society long after it had come to view him as a bit of a relic.  His good friend the Duke of Queensberry provides this description of him at a society dinner:

“George Selwyn, (who lived for society and continued in it till he looked  really like the waxwork figure of a corpse)”

It seems a fitting epitaph for a man who loved death so much.  Selwyn finally succumbed of that most upper class of diseases: Gout, in 1791.

George Selwyn, (standing), and friends by Henry Graves

George Selwyn, (standing), and friends by Henry Graves

George Selwyn’s legacy

George Selwyn was a wit and a necrophile.  He didn’t participate in any major events, he was hardly a mover and a shaker.  Nevertheless he did leave a legacy.  A somewhat unenviable one, based on his love of the macabre and his membership of the notorious Hellfire Club.  It is in literature that he is still remembered:  from Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, to Charles Johnstone’s Chrysal, Or the Adventures of a Guinea; to Edmond de Goncort’s La Faustin where he is fused with that other reputed sadist Algernon Swinburne. Although it is worth noting that despite selwyn’s love of  torture and executions this seems to have been a voyeuristic pleasure, and though this does seem to qualify him as a sadist there is at least no evidence to suggest he was a sexual sadist.  (Small mercies perhaps…?)

Whatever the modern take on George Selwyn, it is apparent that his willing embrace of the darker side of human nature holds an enduring fascination – whether we like to admit to ourselves or not.

I will leave the final words to a contemporary of Selwyn, a poet who thought that Selwyn would be a suitable successor for the Devil should Old Nick ever need a day off….

“The murmurs hush’d – the Herald straight proclaimed
S-l-n the witty next in order name’d
But he was gone to hear the dismal yells
Of tortur’d ghost and suffering criminals.
Tho’ summoned thrice, he chose not to return,
Charmed to behold the crackling culprits burn
With George all know ambition must give place
When there’s an execution in place” (8)

Juan_de_Valdés_Leal_-_Finis_Gloriae_Mundi_-_WGA24215

Finis Gloria Mundi by Juan de Valdes Leal c1670 via Wikimedia

Notes

1.  Maturin, Charles, Melmoth the Wanderer, 1820
2. White, T.H., The Age of Scandal, 1950
3. Ibid
4. Ibid
5. Wharton, G and P, The Wits and Beaux of Society Vol2
6. ibid
7. ibid
8. Combe, William, The Diaboliad, 1777

Sources

Ashe, Geoffrey, The Hellfire Clubs, Sutton, 2005
http://www.bartleby.com/344/357.html
Gothic Labyrinth http://omni.sytes.net/selwyn.htm
Porter, Roy, Engish Society in the Eighteenth Century, Penguin, 1982
Wharton Grace and Philip, Ed Justin Huntley Mccarthy MP, The Wits and Beaux of Society Vol2, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10797 2004 ed
White, T.H, The Age of Scandal, Folio Society, 1993 ed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Augustus_Selwyn_%28politician%29

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