Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/257

 9*8. m. APRIL i,'99.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

251

Kyrle and Commons Preservation Societies,

n alarm, to appeal to the London Corporation,

md the steward won the day, as he foretold.

Che Corporation is reported to spend 400/. a

-ear on the Beeches, the owner of Droprnore

.^ hook off an expense, gained a bonus instead,


 * nd continued to enjoy as before.

I introduced the name of Forteseue merely t o associate it. Whether the steward prefixed .Mr. or Capt. I will not be positive, but ob- viously to a reader of plain understanding the individual meant was no other than the heir then in possession of the Grenville estates ; and the contention of my assailants was captious. They question my having received information about the packet from the faith- ful steward. I can weigh the epithet. Yet MR. MOORE'S frank statement that he found at Dropmore such a packet as I described affords conclusive evidence of the fact, for I never saw Lady Grenville.

MR. PEASE concludes too hastily that his father was " guilty of a breach of confidence." Very probably Lady Grenville explained how the packet had created a sensation in 1827, and that Lord Grenville had provided for a revelation, as old Junius-hunters have read ; therefore no secret attached so far, except as to a date which I have forgotten. Neither have I "betrayed confidence," as he infers. The subject had remained dormant twenty years or more before I questioned the steward, who left the impression on my mind that the packet had been opened as directed. Perhaps he knew not that Mr. Forteseue had burnt it, as MR. MOORE informs us ; but whether two or more of the family consulted, standing or sitting, or whether the secret was kept by
 * locking up or burning the packet, is im-
 * material, though interesting to know.

No reflection has been cast onMr.Fortescue's honour. Simply in choosing between Scj'llaand Charybdis his judgment was disappointing. When I wrote, the last Duke of Buckingham and the steward being dead, it depended on me whether Lord Grenville's compact with the literary world should be carried out. So, at the appointed time, it devolved on Mr. Forteseue to decide (as surmised in my first letter) between that compact and the explicit jommand of Junius himself, seconded by the >pinion of Mr. Thomas Grenville that "for private or family reasons the secret must be cept,'' as suggested in my second letter.

Mr. Forteseue a boy in 1805, when Lord jrenville "emphatically declared, 'I know the real Junius, but the secret will not tran- spire in my lifetime ' " (' Diary of an M.P.') was thirty-six years old when the packet was carried to Dropmore, and the chances are that

he knew more than his cousin, Lady Dela- mere, who inferred from remarks of their relative, the first Duke of Buckingham, that Junius and Earl Temple were one. Surely he, the favourite of Lord and Lady Grenville and heir to their estates, must have known earlier than the steward all about the com- pact, the existence of which is proved by the fact that Lady Grenville preserved till her death, thirty years after that of her husband, a sealed packet containing the real name of Junius (as Mr. Forteseue himself supposed), and endorsed by Lord Grenville "To be destroyed on my death." Though the word "unopened" was absent, Lady Grenville understood it was to be opened. Besides, Lord Grenville would have destroyed the packet himself had strict secrecy been intended. It is strange if Mr. Forteseue had never seen it and the steward had. Probably Lady Gren- ville, thinking that the steward would survive Mr. Forteseue, took the precaution to instruct him, for, judging from his manner, her lady- ship had been very earnest, and he, finding, at the date fixed, that nothing would be dis- closed, consoled himself by entering in his copy of Junius, in the seventies, what he had known for twenty years about Sir Philip Francis. MR. MOORE states that it occurred to Mr. Forteseue, after the mischief was done, that the packet alluded to Junius, and he frequently spoke of it. How did it occur to him 1 Did memory aid him 1 How did it occur to me ? Did I dream it ? Or did the steward who informed me inform Mr. Forteseue also ? The visits of the last Duke of Buckingham to Boconnoc may afford an explanation. Accord- ing to Miss Wynne it seems there were docu- ments, other than the packet, that contained the secret. The Duke of Buckingham, finding one, wrote to Lord Grenville an offer to ex- change secrets, and received no answer.

Junius was anxious that the writing of his amanuensis should escape the keen observa- tion of David Garrick, and while the incident of the packet was recent, a poem in three cantos was published from a manuscript found, many years before, among the papers of the late Mr. Almon, the publisher, and was attributed to Junius by reason of "the biting satire, political principles, personal sarcasm," the handwriting being compared with the original of Junius in the possession of Mr. Woodfall. Mr. Almon of ten visited Earl Temple at Stowe, and possibly Lady Temple had en- trusted him with the manuscript not long before her death, 1770, after which Mr. Almon, for some reason, did not see his way clear to publish it. To me the similarity of the hand- writing is not very striking ; however, a neat