Herbert, George Augustus Herbert, Lord
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- Herbert, George Augustus Herbert, Lord
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(1759 - 1827) of Wilton, Wilts, e. s. of 10th E. of Pembroke; sty. Ld. Herbert - 1794 when suc. fa. as 11th E.; educ. Harrow; army officer, capt. 75 Ft. 1778, maj. 22 Drag. 1781, lt.-gen. 1802; MP 1780 - 5, 1788 - 94; m. 1 1787 Elizabeth Beauclerk (d. 1793), 2 1808 Catherine Vorontsov, dau. of Russian amb. in London; KG 1805; amb. Vienna 1807.
1779 - 80 [dep. England Nov. 1775] Venice (18 - 24 Jun. 1779), Padua (25 Jun.), Milan (7 - after 24 Jul.), Rome, Naples (by 24 Aug. - 16 Sep.) with visit to Paestum; Rome (21 Sep. - 2 Nov.), Florence (6 - 23 Nov.), Pisa (24 - 28 Nov.), Lucca, Genoa (3 - 9 Dec.), Turin (11 Dec. 1779 - 17 Mar. 1780) [England Jun. 1780]
Lord Herbert travelled with the Rev. William Coxe as his tutor and Captain John Floyd as his companion for 'exercise, geography and French'. His father had issued him with rigorous but original instructions (see Pembroke). Coxe recognised Lady Pembroke's aversion for her son 'while he is so young' to go to Italy where 'they scout every idea of decency, & morality, & will give him much too little trouble', and did not himself 'see the necessity of it'.1 They had spent four years in Vienna, Strasbourg, eastern Europe and Russia, before finally entering Italy in 1779 and their tour is described in some detail in Lord Herbert's travel diary and accounts.2
Lord Herbert may have bought two capricci by Guardi in Venice,3 where Coxe left him. He then stopped only a day at Rome ('I run from Ruin to Ruin', he told Coxe) on his way to Naples, where Floyd (now a Major) was recalled to his regiment,4 to be replaced by Major Seigneux, a family friend from Lausanne. In Naples Lord Herbert spent time with Sir William Hamilton ('almost all the most Chosen people of Naples resort to Hamilton's every evening'), Lord Tylney and Lord Maynard, and James Clark was his cicerone. His conscientious (and extremely informative) Italian diary mentions a new hospital for the poor: 'the building is so considerable that it most likely will never see its end, a common fault at Naples to form immense plans, to begin them and never finish' (he also noted that one Raphaeli, a cicerone, steals things). He climbed Vesuvius and visited Paestum with Clark, reflecting how 'it is extraordinary that the remains of such vast edifices ... should not have been discovered until 1755'. He visited Monte Cassino on his uncomfortable journey back to Rome where he stayed at Margherita's.
He was immediately in touch with Jenkins, the Abb? Grant and Hippisley who acted as his cicerone, 'and was so excellent ... that I flatter myself of having seen Rome more completely and to greater advantage, than most of my young countrymen'. At the French Academy he observed 'such horrible taste with such elegant Models before their Eyes', and he took care to meet English artists: Hewetson, Jacob More, Delane, Durno (whose copy of Raphael's Transfiguration was likely to be the last, 'as the Monks of Montorio swear they will give no more permissions for fear some hurt may come') and Thomas Jones (whom he found 'so so'). He sat in regimentals to Batoni; the portrait delivered to Jenkins in November 1779 and sent to England in December 17805 (Clark/Bowron 413; Sotheby's, NewYork, 14 Jan. 1994). He also commissioned an engraved gemstone from Nathaniel Marchant for his mother,6 and received a bust of his friend the King of Prussia from Tresham.
In Florence he attended Mann's Saturday assemblies ('the only Day of the Week, free from Theatre', but he later noted they were discontinued from 13 November), and was struck by Lady Cowper's beauty; he visited the Tribuna in the Uffizi but confessed that 'I am not arrived at that pitch of observation necessary to select good parts of a part'; 'the Gallery in general & particularly the Venus of Medicis had not answered my expectations'.
At the Turin Academy his father had urged him to be 'very attentive to riding, Fencing, & Dancing sans relach?, & I also beg that you would take Tennis in ... Musick & Drawing, you will find there in perfection, & in the Fortification of the Town, have a very noble opportunity of going on hand in hand with Practice & Theory'.7 Lord Herbert duly took tuition in mathematics, Italian and drawing and through Lord Mountstuart attended a Court reception on 19 December: 'eight most tiresome presentations, up stairs, down stairs, this way and that without end ... not one handsome Woman'. On the morning of Sunday 9 February 1780 'nothing was to be heard but cursed noisy Bells calling people to come and listen to different Scoundrels talking unpardonable nonsense out of several Pulpits'. After three months at Turin, he returned home through France.
1. Pembroke Papers, 1:69, 71. 2. See Pembroke Papers, 1:209, 225 - 430, 499 - 559. 3. See F. Haskell, JWCI [1960]:267n48. 4. SP 93/31 (Hamilton, 24 Aug. 1779). 5. Pembroke Papers, 2:70. 6. Marchant 1987, 44, no.22. 7. Pembroke Papers, 1:184.