"I was about to record my own proceedings and such other scraps as occurred to me, when my mind was diverted from all other topics by the intelligence of the death of [my first cousin] Lord George Bentinck [on 21 Sept. 1848]. This event was so strange and sudden, that it could not fail to make a very great sensation in the world, and so it did. It would be false and hypocritical were I to pretend that it affected me personally with any feeling of affliction, but I can say with truth that I was much shocked, and that I was sincerely sorry for it. I was sorry for the heavy blow thus inflicted on his father and his family, and it was impossible not to regard with compassion and something of regret the sudden termination of a career which promised to be one of no small prosperity and success. He was in truth a very remarkable man, of very singular character and disposition, and his history is one very much out of the common way. I am in one respect better, and in another worse, fitted to describe him than any other person, for nobody knew him so intimately and so well as I once did, nobody is so well acquainted with his most private thoughts and feelings as well as with his most secret practices; but on the other hand. I should never be deemed an impartial biographer of a man from whom I had been so long and completely estranged, and between whom and myself there existed such strong feelings of alienation and dislike. Nevertheless, I will try to describe him as I think he really was. nothing extenuating, and nothing setting down in malice. The world will and must form a very incorrect estimate of his character; more of what was good than of what was bad in it was known to the public; he had the credit of virtues which he did not possess or which were so mixed with vices that if all had been known he would have been most severely reproached in reference to the matters in which he had been the most loudly and generally bepraised; but his was one of those composite characters, in which opposite qualities, motives and feelings were so strangely intermingled that nothing but a nice analysis, a very close and impartial inspection of it, can do him justice. His memory has been kindly and generously dealt with; he was on the whole high in favour with the world; he had been recently rising in public estimation; and his sudden and untimely end has stifled all feelings but those of sympathy and regret and silenced all voices but those of eulogy and lamentation. He has long been held up as the type and model of all that is most honourable and high-minded; 'iracundus, inexorabilis, acer,' indeed, but the lofty and incorruptible scorner of everything mean and dishonourable, and the stern exposer and scourger of every species of delinquency and fraud, public or private. Oh for the inconsistency of human nature, the strange compound and medley of human motives and impulses, when the same man who crusaded against the tricks and villanies of others did not scuple to do things quite as bad as the worst of the misdeeds which he so vigorously and unrelentingly attacked! But it is only possible to make his character intelligible by a reference to certain passages of his life, especially to his transactions and connexions with myself.
He was brought up at home under a private tutor, was not studious in early life, and very soon entered the army. I do not remember whether he whether he went to a public school. He soon distinguished himself the army by his great spirit and courage, and by that arrogance which was his peculiar characteristic, and which never deserted him in any situation or circumstance in which he was placed. I well remember his getting into a quarrel which would have led to a duel if his father had not got me to go to the Duke of York, by whose interposition the hostile collision was prevented. [He had a great many quarrels, and at last he fought a duel, in which Admiral Rous was his second, who knows all the details of it]. I have, however, forgotten both the name of his antagonist and the merits of the case. He my soon quitted the army. and when Mr. Canning became Prime Minister he made George his private secretary. It has been said that Canning predicted great things of him if he would apply himself seriously to politics, but I do not know whether this is true. It is certain that after Canning's death, although by no means indifferent to public affairs, he took no active or prominent part in them, and the first development of his great natural energy took place in a very different field. He fell desperately in love, and he addicted himself with extraordinary vivacity to the turf. At this time and for a great many years we were most intimate friends, and I was the depository of his most secret thoughts and feelings. This passion, the only one he ever felt for any woman, betrayed him into great imprudence of manner and behaviour, so much so, that I ventured to put him on his guard. I cannot now say when this occurred, it is so long ago, but I well recollect that as I was leaving --- after the races, I took him aside, told him it was not possible to be blind to his sentiments, that he was exposing himself and her likewise ; that I did not mean to thrust myself into his confidence in so delicate a matter, but besought him to remember that all eyes were on him, all tongues ready to talk, and that it behoved him to be more guarded and reserved for her sake as well as his own. He made no reply, and I departed. I think I repeated the same thing to him in a letter; but whether I did or no, I received from him a very long one in which he confessed his sentiments without disguise, went at great length into his own case, declared his inability to sacrifice feelings which made the whole interest of his existence, but affirmed with the utmost solemnity that he had no reason to believe his feelings were reciprocated by her, and that not only did he not aspire to success, but that if it were in his power to obtain it (which he knew it was not), he would not purchase his own gratification at the expense of her honour and happiness; in short, his letter amounted to this -

'Let me but visit her, I'll ask no more;
Guiltless I'll gaze, and innocent adore.'

I allude to this to show the terms of intimacy on which he and I were, and likewise to do justice to the purity and unselfishness of his devotion, for I am certain that all he said to me was true. He was, however, not of a very warm temperament, and this may perhaps materially diminish the virtue and the value of his high-flown and self-immolating statements; but let them pass for what they are worth.
The first time I ever knew him much occupied with politics was during the great Reform battles in 1831 and 1832, when he was member for Lynn. He took much the same views that I did, and was very anxious to modify the Reform Bill and render it a less Radical measure. The people of Lynn wanted a member and commissioned him to find one, and he exerted himself greatly for that purpose. By his desire, I applied to Kindersley, then a man of some eminence at the Chancery bar, but he declined. I remember that he and his father did not coincide in their opinions. The Duke was frightened out of his wits, dreaded the loss of his vast property, and thought that the only safe policy was unconditional surrender to the roar of Reform. Hating the measure in his heart, he was against any endeavour to arrest its progress; and he was not at all pleased with George for the part that he took. The latter, however, to do him justice, was never afraid of anybody or anything; and he sturdily but deferentially adhered to his own opinion in opposition to the Duke's. Meanwhile, he constantly attended Newmarket, and it was not long before he began to have horses of his own, running them, however, in my name. The first good racehorse he possessed was 'Preserve,' which I bought for him in 1833, and she, alas! was the cause of our first quarrel, that which was made up in appearance, but in reality never. Of course in this quarrel (which took place in August 1835) we both thought ourselves in the right. Till then not an unkind word had ever passed between us, nor had a single cloud darkened our habitual intercourse; but on this occasion I opposed and thwarted him, and his resentment broke out against me with a vehemence and ferocity that perfectly astounded me, and displayed to perfection the domineering insolence of his character. I knew he was out of humour, but had no idea that he meant to quarrel with me, and thought his serenity would speedily return. I wrote to him as usual, and to my astonishment received one of his most elaborate epistles, couched in terms so savage and so virulently abusive, imputing to me conduct the most selfish and dishonourable, that 1 knew not on reading it whether I stood on my head or my heels. I was conscious that his charges and insinuations were utterly groundless, but what was I to do?I could not tamely endure such gross and unwarrantable insults, and I would not challenge my uncle's son. In this dilemma I consulted a friend, and placed the letter in his hands; he went to him, and (not I believe without great difficulty) he persuaded him to ask to withdraw it. It was agreed that the letter should be destroyed, and that there should be no ostensible quarrel between us; but it was evident that our turf connexion could no longer subsist, and accordingly it was instantly dissolved, and other arrangements were made for his stud.
Then commenced his astounding career of success on the turf; he soon enlarged the sphere of his speculations, increased his establishment, and ultimately transferred it all to John Day at Danebury, where he trained under all sorts of different names, it being a great object with him to keep his father in ignorance of his proceedings. [Some years before he had lost £11,000 at Doncaster, which he could not pay. The Duke was greatly annoyed, but paid the money for him, exacting a promise that he would not bet any more on the turf. Of course, he never dreamt of his keeping racehorses]. He and I met upon civil but cool terms, according to the agreement; but in about two years we began to jumble into intimacy again, and at length an incident happened which in great measure placed our relations on their former footing. My horse 'Mango' was in the St. Leger, and I wanted to try him. John Day told me he was sure Lord George would gladly try him for me. I proposed it to him, and he instantly assented. We went down together and tried the horse. Mango won his trial, won the St. Leger, and George won £14,000 on the race. All this contributed to efface the recollection of past differences, and we became mutually cordial again.
[It was not long after this that a very important incident in his turf life occurred. The Duke, his father (the most innocent of men), had his curiosity awakened by seeing a great number of horses running in the names of men whom he never saw or heard of. These were all his son's aliases. He asked a great many questions about these invisible personages, to the amusement of all the Newmarket world. At last it was evident he must find out the truth, and I urged George to tell it him at once. With reluctance and no small apprehension he assented, and mustering up courage he told the Duke that all those horses were his. The intimation was very ill received: the Duke was indignant. He accuised him of having violated his word; and he was so angry that he instantly quitted Newmarket and returned to Welbeck. For a long time he would not see George at all; at last the Duchess contrived to pacify him; he resumed his usual habits with his son, and in the end he took an interest in the horses, tacitly acquiesced in the whole thing, and used to take pleasure in seeing them and hearing about them.]
With me the reconciliation was sincere. I had forgiven his behaviour to me, and desired no better than to live in amity with him for the rest of my life; whether it was equally sincere on his part he alone knew, but I very much doubt it. We continued, however, to live very well together up to the time when he bought out the famous 'Crucifix,' when, without any fresh quarrel, our intimacy became somewhat less close, in consequence of my perceiving a manifest intention on his part to keep all the advantage of her merits to himself, without allowing me to participate in them. Still we went on, till the occurrence of the notorious 'Gurney affair,' on which he and I took opposite sides, and in which he played a very conspicuous and violent part. While this was going on we were brought into personal collision at Newmarket in a matter relating to the revision of the rules of the Jockey Club, when his arrogance and personal animosity to me broke out with extraordinary asperity. There was still no regular and avowed quarrel till the spring following, when at a meeting of the Jockey Club I made a speech in opposition to him which he chose to construe into an intentional insult, and the next time he met me he cut me dead. I made several attempts, as did our mutual friends, to do away with this impression and to effect a reconciliation, but he refused to listen to any explanation or overture, and announced his resolution not to make it up with me at all. From that time our estrangement was complete and irreparable. He was now become the leviathan of the turf; his success had been brilliant, his stud was enormous, and his authority and reputation were prodigiously great.
In 1844 he became still more famous by his exertions in detecting the 'Running Rein' fraud, and in conducting the 'Orlando' trial. There can be no doubt that the success of that affair was in great measure attributable to his indefatigable activity, ingenuity and perseverance. The attorney in the cause was amazed at the ability and dexterity he displayed, and said there was no sum he would not give to secure the professional assistance of such a coadjutor. He gained the greatest credit in all quarters by his conduct throughout this affair, which was afterwards increased by his manner of receiving a valuable testimonial, subscribed for the purpose of honouring and rewarding his exertions; he refused to accept anything for himself, but desired the money might be applied towards the establishment of a fund to reward decayed and distressed servants of the turf, which was eventually denominated 'The Bentinck Fund.'
[Here follow, in Mr. Greville's manuscript, several details of racing transactions in which Lord George Bentinck took a part, which Mr. Greville strongly disapproved; but they have now lost their interest, and are omitted.]
He was exceedingly self-willed and arrogant, and never could endure contradiction; and whatever he undertook he entered into with an ardour and determination which amounted to a passion. As he plunged into gaining on the turf, he desired to win money, not so much for the money, as because it was the test and trophy of success; he counted the thousands he won after a great race as a general would count his prisoners and his cannon after a great victory; and his tricks and strategems he regarded as the tactics and manoeuvres by which the success was achieved. Not probably that the money itself was altogether a matter of indifference to him: he had the blood of General Scott in his veins, who won half a million at hazard, and the grandson most likely chassait un peu de sa race. But to do him justice, if he was 'alieni appetans,' he was 'sui profusus.' Nobody was more liberal to all his people, nor more generous and obliging in money matters to his friends, and I am inclined to think that while he was taking to himself the mission of purifying the turf, and punishing or expelling wrongdoers of all sorts, his own mind became purified, and (though I do not know it) I should not wonder if he looked back with shame and contrition to all the schemes and plots, and machinations to which, in the ardour of his racing pursuit, he had been a party. What makes me think that it was less the base desire of pecuniary gain that the passionate eagerness of immense success which urged him on, is the alacrity with which he cast away his whole stud, at a moment when it promised him the most brilliant results and most considerable profits, as soon as another passion and another pursuit had taken possession of his mind; one in which there was not only no pecuniary benefit in view, but the occupation of which obliged him to neglect his turf concerns so entirely that he lost a great deal on money in consequence.
This brings me to his very extraordinary political career. I well remember, in the winter of 1845, when Peel's intentions began to be known or suspected, what indignation he expressed and what violent language he used about him. As soon as Parliament met he began to take an active part among the Protectionist malcontents, and he devoted much time to getting up a pro Corn Law case. He had never studied political economy, and knew very little on the subject, but he was imbued with the notions common to his party that the repeal of the Corn Laws would be the ruin of the landed interest; he therefore hated the Anti Corn Law League, and - considering that the first and most paramount of duties was to keep up the value of the estates of the order to which he belonged, and that Peel had been made Minister and held office mainly for this purpose - he considered Peel's abandonment of Protection, and adoption, or rather, extension, of Free Trade, as not only an act of treachery, but of treason to the party which claimed his allegiance, and he accordingly flung himself into opposition to him with all his characteristic vehemence and rancour. Still neither he himself nor any one else anticipated the part he was about to play, and the figure he was destined to make. One of the men he was in the habit of talking to was Martin, Q.C. [afterwards a Baron of the Court of Exchequer], and he told him that he had a great mind to speak on the Corn Law debate, but that he did not think he could; he had had no experience, and could not trust himself. Martin told me this.. I said I thought he copuld; that I had been much struck with a speech he had made at the Jockey Club, when he had spoken for two hours, and in a way which satisfied me he had speaking in him. Martin went and told him this, which struck him very much, and it decided him (so Martin told me) to make the attempt.
[He told Martin that he had carefully and elaborately got up the case, but he could not make the speech, and he begged him to find a man who would use his materials and speak for him. The man found, he undertook to provide him with a seat in Parliament. The first man they applied to was Humphry. George saw and conversed with hi, and immediately said he would not do. They then went to Serjeant Byles. He was delighted with the Serjeant, and would gladly have taken him, but, after at first consenting, the Serjeant drew back and declined the task. After this, Martin asked Frederick Robinson if he knew of a man, when he replied, 'It is all nonsense, looking out for a man; he must make the speech himself. Do you think the House of Commons would listen to a hired orator, brought down for the purpose? They will listen to him and to nobody else.' This Martin repeated to him, telling him it was very true; and then he added what I said about his speech at the Jockey Club. He said, 'Did he really say so? I thought it very bad, and I was disgusted at doing it so ill, and making such bad use of the good materials I had.' The next day he wrote word to Martin that he had made up his mind to make the attempt himself. This was ten days or a fortnight before the night on which he spoke.]
His début in the House of Commons was a remarkable exhibition, and made a great impression at the time: not that it was a very good, still less an agreeable speech; quite the reverse. He chose the worst moment he possibly could have done to rise; the House was exhausted by several nights of debate and had no mind to hear more. He rose very late on the last night, and he spoke for above three hours; his speech was ill-delivered, marked with all those peculiar faults which he never got rid of; it was very tiresome; it contained much that was in very bad taste; but in spite of all defects it was listened to, and it was considered a very extraordinary performance, giving indications of great ability and powers which nobody had any idea that he possessed.
The rest of his career is well known. He brought into politics the same ardour, activity, industry and cleverness which he had displayed on the turf, and some of the same cunning and contrivances too. He never was and never would have been anything like a statesman; he was utterly devoid of large and comprehensive views, and he was no pursuer and worshipper of truth. He brought the mind, the arts, and the habits of an attorney to the discussion of political questions; having once espoused a cause, and embraced a party, from whatever motive, he worked with all the force of his intellect and a superhuman power of application in what he conceived to be the interest of that party and that cause. No scruples, moral or personal, stood for a moment in his way; he went into evidence, historical or statistical, not to inform himself and to accept with a candid and unbiased mind the conclusions to which reason and testimony, facts and figures, might conduct him, but to pick out whatever might fortify his forgone conclusions, casting aside everything inimical to the cause he was advocating, and seizing all that could be turned to account by any amount of misrepresentation and suppression he might find it convenient to emply. It was thus he acted in the West India Committee; his labour and application was something miraculous; he conducted the inquiry very ably, but anything but impartially; having had no political education, and therefore being unimbued with sound principles on fiscal and commercial questions, he flung himself headlong into the Protectionist cause, he got up their case just as he did that of 'Orlando' or 'Running Rein,' and ran amuck against everything and everybody on the opposite side.
Against Peel he soon broke out with indescribably fury and rancour. Such was the attack he made upon him about his conduct to Canning, which has since been ascribed to his attachment to the latter, and a long cherished but suppressed resentment of Peel's behaviour to him. Nothing could be more ridiculously untrue; he did not care one straw for Canning, alive or dead, and he did not himself believe one word of the accusations he brought against Peel; but he thought he had found materials for a damaging attack on the man he detested, and he availed himself of it with all the virulence of the most vindictive hatred. It was a total failure, and he only afforded Peel an opportunity of vindicating himself once for all from an imputation which had been very generally circulated and believed, but which he proved to be altogether false. The House of Commons gave Peel a complete triumph, and George Bentinck was generally condemned; nevertheless, with more courage and bull-dog perseverance than good taste and judgement, he returned to the charge, and insteade of withdrawing his accusations, renewed and insisted on them in his reply. This was just like him; but though his conduct was very ill advised, I well remember thinking his reply (made too against the sense and feeling of the House) was very clever.
I have always thought that his conduct in selling his stud all at one swoop, and at once giving up the turf, to which he had just before seemed so devoted, was never sufficiently appreciated and praised. It was a great sacrifice both of pleasure and profit, and it was made to what he had persuaded himself was a great public duty. It is true that he had taken up his new vocation with an ardour and a zeal which absorbed his old one, but still it was a very fine act, and excessively creditable to him. He never did anything by halves, and having accepted the responsible post of leader of his party, he resolved to devote himself to their service, and he did so without stint or reserve; and when he had ceased to be nominally their leader, a transaction in which his behaviour was honourable and manly, he still voluntarily and gratuitously imposed upon himself an amount of labour and anxiety upon particular questions, which beyond all doubt contributed to the accident which terminated his life. Notwithstanding his arrogance and his violence, his constant quarrels and the intolerable language he indulged in, he was popular in the House of Commons, and was liked more or less wherever he went. He was extremely good-looking and particularly distinguished and high-bred; then he was gay, agreeable, obliging, and good-natured, charming with those he liked, and by whom he was not thwarted and opposed. His undaunted courage and the confident and haughty audacity with which he attacked or stood up against all opponents, being afraid of no man, inspired a general sentiment of admiration and respect, and his lofty assumption of superior integrity and his resolute determination to expose and punish every breach of public honour and morality were quietly acquiesced in, and treated with great deference by the multitude who knew no better, and were imposed on by his specious pretensions. The sensation caused by his death, the encomiums pronounced on his character, and the honours paid to his memory, have been unexampled in a man whose career has been so short, and who did not do greater things than he had it in his power to accomplish. He had become, however, the advocate of powerful interests, and of vast numbers of people whose united voices make a great noise in the world, and there is something in the appalling suddenness of the catastrophe which excites general sympathy and pity, and makes people more inclined to think of his virtues, his powers, and his promise, than of his defects. Of the latter perhaps the greatest was his constant disposition to ascribe the worst motives to all those to whom he found himself opposed;

'Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.'

and when he invariably fancied that he saw intentional fraud and the utmost baseness in the conduct of his antagonists, it is impossible not to ascribe such false and erroneous views of human nature to the moral consciousness which was the result of his own former courses, constantly suspecting others of the same sort of practices with which he was once so familiar. I have not the least doubt that, for his own reputation and celebrity, he died at the most opportune period; his fame had probably reached its zenith, and credit was given him for greater abilities than he possessed, and for a futurity of fame, influence, and power, which it is not probable he would ever have realised. As it is, the world will never know anything of those serious blemishes which could not fail to dim the lustre of his character; he will long be remembered and regretted as a very remarkable man, and will occupy a conspicuous place in the history of his own time."

Henry Reeve (ed): A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852, by the late Charles C.F.Greville (3 vols, London, 1885), III, pp. 222-234.

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