| <The Saturday Review, March 29 1856>
| <Memoirs of Mrs. Fitzherbert>
| <pb n="441">
| Whitewashing may appear to most people to be a simple and 
| easy operation; but when it is some one's character which 
| requires to be submitted to the process, it should be entrusted 
| to a workman more skilled in his art than the gentleman who 
| has attempted the undertaking on behalf of Mrs. Fitzherbert. 
| Moreover, we very much question the necessity, and most 
| certainly the propriety, of the whole proceeding ~~ 
| considering it, as we do, highly reprehensible thus to rake up 
| old ashes which it is impossible to disturb without producing 
| consequences anything but salutary to the bystanders. More 
| judicious than her self-constituted defender, Mrs. 
| Fitzherbert's executors, Sir George Seymour and Mr. Forster, 
| objected to the production of the papers which Mr. Langdale 
| had set his heart upon laying before the public. They urged 
| that those papers only proved the marriage of Mrs. 
| Fitzherbert with the Prince ~~ a thing which for many years 
| past has never been disputed; whilst on the other hand, the 
| revival of the subject would serve no other purpose than to 
| pander to the bad feeling and morbid curiosity of the public, 
| only too ready to indulge in idle gossip, and gratify its 
| appetite for pernicious scandal ~~ an appetite which grows 
| by what it feeds upon. As for the remarks made by Lord 
| Holland's friend, which Mr. Langdale conceived to require a 
| refutation that nothing but the production of these papers 
| could render clear and conclusive,
| <pb n="442">
| they did not, as Mr. Keppel justly says, touch on the fact of 
| the ceremony of the marriage itself, but merely on the 
| motives and feelings of the Prince and Mrs. Fitzherbert, and 
| on her having said that she thought the ceremony nonsense, 
| and had given herself up to the Prince, exacting no 
| conditions, and trusting to his honour. We are fearful of 
| incurring Mr. Langdale's indignation, but we cannot help 
| confessing that we think it extremely probable Mrs. 
| Fitzherbert may have felt and said all she is reported to have 
| done by Lord Holland's friend, yet not in the sense in which 
| Mr. Langdale has taken it. She must well have known that 
| any marriage ceremony solemnized between herself and the 
| Prince was illegal ~~ that it could not be binding upon him, 
| however binding she may have felt it to be upon herself. This 
| being the case, the ceremony was in fact nonsense, so far as 
| he was concerned; and she did trust to his honour, for there 
| was virtually nothing else for her to trust to. How that 
| confidence was abused, we have not now to learn. The whole 
| of her conduct, up to the death of the King, shows that she 
| really considered herself his wife in the sight of God; and 
| that, however faithless he was to her, she felt herself bound to 
| continue faithful to him. Whether it would be the duty of any 
| wife to return to any husband after having received such 
| treatment at his hands as Mrs. Fitzherbert experienced from 
| the Prince, it does not enter into our province to inquire. Mrs. 
| Fitzherbert, like a dutiful daughter of the Church, applied to 
| the highest spiritual authorities to know how far public 
| scandal might not interfere with her own engagements. The 
| reply from Rome was favourable, as might naturally have 
| been expected; and accordingly she rejoined her husband at 
| her own house, on the day on which she gave a public 
| breakfast to which the Prince was invited. But these, and 
| indeed all the other circumstances connected with the 
| subjects, are amongst the things which we would willingly let 
| die. Nor should we have thought it right to revive aught of the 
| scandal which floated about the clubs and drawing-rooms of 
| past years by saying as much as we have done, were it not 
| that we desired to show that there are two ways of looking at 
| the statement put forward by Lord Holland's friend ~~ one of 
| which is quite consistent with Mrs. Fitzherbert's being all, as 
| a woman and a wife, which Mr. Langdale considers her to 
| have been.
| Before we dismiss the subject, we must say that it grieved as 
| well as surprised us to find that, when Mrs. Fitzherbert was 
| endeavouring to secure the guardianship of the infanct 
| daughter of Lady Horatio Seymour, Mr. Romilly, on the case 
| being brought before the Court of Chancery, argued not only 
| that there could be no danger to the religion of the child by 
| the influence of Mrs. Fitzherbert, but also that 
| <quotation> </quotation>  
| Surely, whatever advantages might 
| accrue to the young lady from being placed under Mrs. 
| Fitzherbert's care, there could be none connected with the 
| patronage and protection of the Prince of Wales. If it had 
| been a boy, the case would have been widely different; but 
| liberal-minded as Mrs. Fitzherbert's advocate undoubtedly 
| was, ready to make allowance for human infirmities, and 
| accustomed to take large views of everything, he would 
| probably have shrunk from placing his own sister or daughter 
| in a position where she would have enjoyed among many 
| certain advantages, the very dubious one of he patronage and 
| protection of the Prince of Wales.
| At page 75 of his book, Mr. Langdale informs us that he had 
| proceeded some way in his task when his writing case, 
| containing his MS., was stolen ~~ we suspect, by some kind 
| friend, in the hope that the loss would damp the writer's 
| ardour in a work so little likely to redound to his own credit, 
| or to benefit the memory of the lady for whose sake he had 
| embarked in it. But, advanced though the MS. was at the 
| period at which it was stolen, and great as was the trouble 
| which it had cost him to indite it, Mr. Langdale was not a 
| man to be daunted in this way. He commenced his labours 
| afresh, and after many an agonizing throe, his mountain 
| brought forth its mouse, which, to his lively imagination, no 
| doubt, appeared a creature of far larger growth and more 
| imposing aspect. But even mice, small though they be, are 
| troublesome beings, ranking among domestic vermin, and as 
| such destined to the destruction which we trust is the fate 
| reserved for this book ~~ a fate it well deserves, whether we 
| take into consideration the matter or the manner of it. 
| Altogether it is as pretty a specimen of book-making as we 
| would wish, or not wish, to see ~~ one of those works of 
| superarogation of which the Roman-catholic Church 
| professes to have so large a store. From first to last there is 
| scarcely a page worth reading, and there are many which we 
| regret exceedingly should ever have appeared in print, 
| especially Lord Stourton's narrative. From this weeping 
| censure we must, however, except the letters written by the 
| gentlemen who were opposed to Mr. Langdale's wishes 
| respecting the production of Mrs.Fitzhert's papers. Amongst 
| these are two communications from the Duke of Wellington, 
| so characteristic of that great man that we will quote them in 
| full, and thus spare our readers the temptation of looking for 
| them in the book: ~~
| <quotation> </quotation>