CHAPTER 1. GEORGE SELWYN--HIS LIFE, HIS FRIENDS, AND HIS AGE

During the latter half of the eighteenth century no man had more
friends in the select society which comprised those who were of the
first importance in English politics, fashion, or sport, than George
Selwyn. In one particular he was regarded as supreme and
unapproachable; he was the humourist of his time. His ban mots were
collected and repeated with extraordinary zest. They were enjoyed by
Members of Parliament at Westminster, and by fashionable ladies in
the drawing-rooms of St. James's. They were told as things not to be
forgotten in the letters of harassed politicians. "You must have
heard all the particulars of the Duke of Northumberland's
entertainment," wrote Mr. Whateley in 1768 to George Grenville, the
most hardworking of ministers; "perhaps you have not heard George
Selwyn's bon mot."* But as usually happens when a man becomes known
for his humour jokes were fathered on Selwyn, just as half a century
later any number of witticisms were attributed to Sydney Smith which
he had never uttered. It was truly remarked of Selwyn at the time of
his death: "Many good things he did say, there was no doubt, and
many he was capable of saying, but the number of good, bad, and
indifferent things attributed to him as bon mots for the last thirty
years of his life were sufficient to stock a foundling hospital for
wit."*

* Grenville Correspondence, vol. 11. p. 372.

* Gentleman's Magazine, 1791, p. 94.

It is therefore not surprising that Selwyn has been handed down to