Henry Fox was as full of vitality as his
father, and he carried the stock higher; but
though very knowing, he was not so wise,
and did not end so happily. With him began
the first parliamentary emulation between
a Fox and a Pitt, which so curiously
descended to their sons. Many persons now
living remember the second rivalry. The
first was so like it, that Walpole, in one of
his happy comprehensive dashes, describes the
House of Commons, for a certain period, as
consisting of "a dialogue between Pitt and
Fox." Fox had begun life as a partisan of
Sir Robert Walpole; and in the course of
his career held lucrative offices under Government
—that of Paymaster of the Forces, for
one—in which he enriched himself to a
degree which incurred a great deal of suspicion.
He was latterly denounced in a City
address, as the "defaulter of unaccounted
millions." Public accounts in those times
were strangely neglected; and the family
have said, that his were in no worse condition
than those of others: but they do not
deny that he was a jobber. However, he
jobbed and prospered; ran away with a
duke's daughter; contrived to reconcile
himself with the family (that of Richmond);
got his wife made a baroness; was made
a lord himself, Baron Holland of Foxley;
was a husband, notwithstanding his jobbing,
loving and beloved; was an indulgent father;
a gay and social friend; in short, had as
happy a life of it as health and spirits
could make; till, unfortunately, health and
spirits failed; and then there seems to
have been a remnant of his father's better
portion within him, which did not allow him
to be so well satisfied with himself in his
decline. Out-tricked and got rid of by the
flighty Lord Shelburne, and forsaken by the
selfish friends with whom he had jobbed, and
made merry, and laughed at principle, he
tried, in retirement, to divert his melancholy
with building a villa at Kingsgate,
between Margate and Broadstairs, in a style
equally expensive and fantastic, from which
he made visits across the channel to France
and Italy. He also endeavoured to get
some comfort out of a few other worthless
persons, such as George Selwyn and Lord
March, afterwards Duke of Queensberry
("Old Q.,") gentlemen who, not being in want
of places, had abided by him. But all would
not do. He returned home and died at
Holland House, twenty years younger than
his father; and he was followed in less than
a month by his wife. It is said that a day or
two before his death, George Selwyn, who had
a passion for seeing dead bodies, sent to ask
how he was, and whether a visit would be
welcome. "Oh, by all means," said Lord
Holland. "If I am alive, I shall be delighted
to see George—and I know, that if I am dead,
he will be delighted to see me."

A curious story is told of the elopement
of the Duke of Richmond's daughter, Lady
Caroline Lenox, who thus speedily followed
her husband to the grave. The Duke was a
grandson of King Charles the Second, and
both he and the Duchess had declined to
favour the suit of Mr. Fox, the son of the
equivocal Sir Stephen. They reckoned on her
marrying another man; and an evening was
appointed on which the gentleman was to be
formally introduced as her suitor. Lady Caroline,
whose affections the dashing statesman
had secretly engaged, was at her wit's end to
know how to baffle this interview. She had
evaded the choice of the family as long as
possible, but this appointment looked like a
crisis. The gentleman is to come in the
evening: the lady is to prepare for his
reception by a more than ordinary attention to
her toilet. This gives her the cue to what is
to be done. The more than ordinary attention
is paid; but it is in a way that renders
the interview impossible. She has cut off
her eyebrows. How can she be seen by
anybody in such a trim? The indignation
of the Duke and Duchess is great; but the
thing is manifestly impossible. She is accordingly
left to herself for the night; she has
perfected her plans in expectation of that
result; and the consequence is, that when
next her parents inquire for her, she has gone.
Nobody can find her. She is off for Mr. Fox.

At the corner of Holland House Lane—the
lane that is now shut up—is a public house, the
Holland Arms, the sign of which is the family
scutcheon. The supporters of the shield are
a couple of foxes, and in this emblazonment
of it—for the arms in the peerages have no
such device—one of the foxes holds a rose in
his mouth. The rose is the cognisance of
the Richmond family, and is possibly an
allusion to the stolen bud.

Lady Caroline appears to have been truly
attached to her husband. Her death so soon
after his own was not improbably occasioned
by it; and when he procured her the title of
Baroness, before he was ennobled himself,
she put up their joint coat of arms in the house,
where it is still to be seen, with the motto
Re e Marito (king and husband); as much as
to say, that she derived her honours equally
from both.

But the Fox family, during this lord's
prosperity, had been forced to suffer what
they considered a degradation, in turn.
One of the amusements in Holland House
was the performance of plays. It had formerly
been a court custom, as it now is again; but
Queen Elizabeth, like Queen Victoria, had
the plays performed by professional actors.
Among those actors, in the days of the Tudors
and Stuarts, were children; and hence children
in private life subsequently figured
sometimes as amateurs. We have mentioned
a picture in Holland House, by Hogarth,
representing the performance of a play of
Dryden by children, one of whom was a
grand-niece of Sir Isaac Newton. In the
January of the year seventeen hundred and