Charles Dickens was visiting Holland House when he was writing his Gordon riots novel ‘Barnaby Rudge’. In the Earl of Ilchester’s ‘Holland House Chronicles’, he is described as ‘unobtrusive yet not shy, intelligent in countenance, and altogether prepossessing.’
He made a good impression on Caroline Fox, apart from ‘the intolerable dandyism of his dress’, but Henry Edward Fox was not a fan.
The soon to be 4th Lord Holland wrote to his mother: ‘I am very glad you did not send me ‘Nicholas Nickleby’, as I dare say I should not be more successful in reading that, than in getting through the more celebrated and admired of that author’s works. I agree completely with what Lady Carlisle said about them. ‘I know there are such unfortunate beings as pickpockets and street walkers. I am very sorry for it and very much shocked at their mode of life, but I own I do not much wish to hear what they say to one another.’ I think it painful and revolting; and all that is humorous seems to me so forced and the style so bombast and mock heroic, that I cannot get on with it. I know that the works are just now in such favour and popularity, that few there are who venture to express an unfavourable opinion of them, and for the moment I am in a very small minority; but I suspect, when the novelty and the fashion of admiring them has worn off, they will sink to their proper level.’
In 1840 Henry Vassall-Fox, the third Lord Holland died in office, having played a part in the passing of the reform bills, the radical-taming poor law and the abolition of slavery.
His best epitaph was autobiographical: ‘Nephew of Fox and friend of Grey, sufficient for my fame, if those who knew me best say I tarnished neither name.’ However, he made some contradictory planter apologist and pro-emancipation statements.
Lord Holland wrote regarding a report of Jamaican Vassall tenants disputing their rent: ‘Nothing can be more false or foolish than their notion that they have any legal possession of their grounds without rent and that they had them before Lady Holland was born – Lady Holland and I are always pleased to hear that they are happy and contented and always disposed to contribute to that happiness as much as we can – but the only way to satisfy both us and them is to be just in our dealings – and that is that. We should pay them wages for the labour on the estate and that they should pay us rent for the land they cultivate for their provisions or for their own profit – This they will find is the queen’s law and I hope the government will expound and enforce it – It is, however, my opinion that the most prudent course is to give as good wages as one can afford especially to those willing as well as able to work.’
After commending the Governor of Jamaica for clamping down on the Baptists’ insurrectionary sermons, more or less his last property owning Whig words on the subject were: ‘I will never be a party to any direct or indirect method of cheating the black people of their due weight in the legislature as long as a representative system is allowed to subsist in Jamaica. It is quite proper that the land held and tilled by negroes should be adequately represented as well as land belonging to planters or colonists, as long as the laws which both parties should equally obey are made by an assembly pretending to represent the whole community.’
Although Lord Holland was sticking to basic Whig thinking, he had drifted away from the Foxite legacy by acting as a pragmatist attempting to moderate the idealists, rather than the other way round as it was with his uncle. And his last words on democracy fell some way short of universal suffrage: ‘To have quieted so widespread a discontent as the clamour against the poor laws and the political associations of the lower orders instigated by fanaticks… without any effusion of blood and without any inroad even by temporary legislation on our general maxim of free government is an achievement of which we may be justly proud.’
The Whigs’ Poor Law amendment act of 1834 introduced harsher regulation of workhouses, which resulted in the rise of the revolutionary Chartist movement for democratic change.
The Whig historian Thomas Macaulay wrote that in his time Holland House ‘can boast of a greater number of inmates distinguished in political and literary history than any other private dwelling in England.’
According to the bleak house obituary by Greville, ‘never was popularity so great and so general, and his death will produce a social revolution utterly extinguishing not only the most brilliant but the only great house of reception and constant society in England… This event may be said with perfect truth ‘to eclipse the gaiety of nations’… It is impossible to overrate the privation, the blank, which it will make to the old friends and associates, political and personal, to whom Holland House has always been open like a home.’
The Edinburgh Review editor Francis Jeffrey bemoaned ‘the conversion of that place, which, for 50 years has been the resort of all that was distinguished, and the school of all that was amiable and honourable, into a house of mourning and desolation… great men who have guided the politics of Europe – who have moved great assemblies by reason and eloquence – who have put life into bronze or canvass, or who have left for posterity things so written as it shall not willingly let them die – were there mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest in the society of the most splendid of capitals. They will remember the singular character which belonged to that circle, in which every talent and accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They will remember how the last debate was discussed in one corner, and the last comedy of Scribe in another; while Wilkie gazed with modest admiration on Reynolds’ Barreti; while MacKintosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation; while Talleyrand related his conversation with Barras at the Luxembourg or his ride with Lannes over the field of Austerlitz.’
With Lord Holland’s death, in Edward Walford’s ‘Old and New London’, ‘the glories of Holland House may be said to have passed away… and an air of solitude seems indeed to have gathered around the old mansion.’ Although in his day London had already come out to meet Holland House, which had always been the Fox plan rather than vice versa. In the south it was literally the Hollands’ own building development. Lord Holland’s statue was placed to the north of the house in the part of the grounds known as ‘the Wildernesse’.
The Baron Holland title expired with the 4th holder, his son, Henry Edward Fox in 1859. The last Lord Holland was a dilettante diplomat who ended up in Naples, a protégé of Byron, critic of Dickens and patron of the local Pre-Raphaelite painter GF Watts. After the demise of the last Lady Holland (who had de Vere ancestry), the house and estate passed to the Earls of Ilchester Fox Strangways branch of the family.