GRONOW, Rees Howell (1794-1865), of 42 Hans Place, Sloane Street, London

Listed by Charles Greville as one of the ‘notorious characters’ returned to the first reformed Parliament in 1832, Gronow had been ‘one of the chief dandies’ of London.1C. Greville, The Greville memoirs, ed. H. Reeve (1875), ii. 385; F. Boase, Modern English biography (1892), i. 1250. In his Regency pomp his appearance was that of ‘a Frenchified man, very tightly strapped down’ with ‘a coat of the nicest fit mounted with a boa-constrictor like collar’.2London Review, v (1862), 82. His face was ‘extremely well groomed, handsome, quizzical, strangely prim and utterly enigmatic’.3Captain Gronow: his reminiscences of Regency and Victorian life, 1810-60, ed. C. Hibbert (1991), pp. xi. His father, William Gronow, of Herbert Court, Swansea, was a magistrate and deputy lieutenant of Glamorgan.4Burke’s landed gentry (1858), i. 488. Gronow had entered the army in 1812 and seen action in Spain and at the battle of Waterloo in 1815, before retiring in 1821. He was jailed for his debts in 1823, but on his father’s death in 1830 Gronow had inherited sufficient money to take a house in Mayfair.5C. Hibbert, ‘Gronow, Rees Howell (1794-1865)’, www.oxforddnb.com; Hibbert, Captain Gronow, pp. xii-xv.

In 1831 Lord Yarborough invited Gronow to contest Grimsby, where the nobleman possessed influence, on the proviso that he would not bribe.6R.H. Gronow, Recollections and anecdotes (1863), 186-7. Gronow dutifully obeyed his patron and was narrowly beaten into third place by two Tories.7Ibid., 187-8; HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 648. He did not make the same mistake when he contested the venal borough of Stafford at the 1832 general election. As he cheerfully admitted in his memoirs:

I had plenty of money in those days, and was determined that no one should outbid me for the support of these worthy and independent gentlemen, so I set to work to bribe every man, woman, and child in the ancient borough of Stafford. I engaged numerous agents, opened all the public houses which were not already taken by my opponents, gave suppers every night to my supporters, kissed all their wives and children, drank their health in every sort of abominable mixture, and secured my return against great local interest.8Gronow, Recollections and anecdotes, 190.

Gronow, who was one of three Reformers contesting the borough, promised to support ‘Reform in church and state, the abolition of slavery and useless sinecures, retrenchment’ and reduction of taxation.9Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 Nov. 1832. He also declared his opposition to the ‘cruel and unmanly’ practice of flogging in the army and navy and support for cheap bread.10Staffordshire Advertiser, 15 Dec. 1832. After a campaign distinguished by ‘bare-faced bribery’ on all sides, Gronow was elected in second place.11Staffordshire Advertiser, 24 Nov. 1832. Given his past insolvency, Gronow was forced to publicly swear his property qualification at the nomination.12Staffordshire Advertiser, 15 Dec. 1832. He avoided being unseated on petition, but only because the Commons decided to institute proceedings to disenfranchise the borough. Although he cast votes against the disenfranchisement bills of 1833 and 1834, Gronow otherwise left the defence of the borough entirely to his colleague William Fawkener Chetwynd.

Gronow does not appear to have spoken in debate or served on any committees. He generally backed Grey’s ministry on most issues, such as the Irish coercion bill, and voted against radical motions to abolish naval and military sinecures and scrutinise the pension list.13Dod’s parliamentary companion (1833), 118. He later wrote that the Whig leader of the House and chancellor of the exchequer Lord Althorp was ‘a bad and tedious speaker; his financial statements, given out as they were with endless humming and hawing, and constant hesitation, made his hearers feel quite nervous and uncomfortable’.14Hibbert, Captain Gronow, 233. However, Gronow praised his ‘great and good sense’, and generally endorsed Althorp’s financial policy, voting against the motions of the Attwood brothers, 21 Mar. 1833, 24 Apr. 1833.15Ibid. Even so, Gronow opposed his chief’s attempt to rescind the votes in favour of reducing malt duty and repealing house and window tax, 30 Apr. 1833.

In 1834, despite his hustings protestations, Gronow opposed a low fixed duty on corn, but supported the admission of Dissenters to universities, 17 Apr. 1834. He was in the minority that backed Hume’s amendment to compensate Irish tithe holders with money from the surplus revenues of the Irish church rather than from the consolidated fund, 5 July 1834. This perhaps owed something to his acquaintance with Daniel O’Connell, who Gronow ‘very often sat next to’ in the chamber. Gronow later recalled that the Irish leader ‘was always gay and cheerful, and sometimes very amusing; like most Irishmen, he was at all times ready for a joke’.16Ibid. Although he stood his ground at Stafford at the 1835 general election, Gronow was out-spent and beaten into fourth place, and thereafter does not appear to have sought a return to Parliament, although he remained a member of the Reform Club.17Gronow, Recollections and anecdotes, 190; Hibbert, Captain Gronow, p. xvi.

Gronow later moved to Paris. His flair for anecdote and pithy character sketches was displayed in the four volumes of his entertaining and well-received Recollections (1861-6).18Hibbert, Captain Gronow, p. viii; R.H. Gronow, Reminiscences (1861); idem, Recollections and anecdotes (1863); idem, Celebrities of London and Paris (1865); idem, Last recollections (1866). These contained lucid eyewitness accounts of the battle of Waterloo, the 1848 revolution in Paris and Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état of 1851.19Hibbert, ‘Gronow’; Hibbert, Captain Gronow, p. vii. He also included second or third-hand anecdotes and began to repeat his earlier material in the later volumes.20Ibid., pp. xvi-xvii. He was notably reticent on his own life. One of the finest pistol shots in his day, Gronow said little about the several duels he fought.21Ibid. p. xi. The last volume was published posthumously after Gronow’s death in November 1865. Twice married, both times to Frenchwomen, Gronow was survived by Mathilde and Caroline Mary, his daughters by his first wife, and four young children by his second wife.22In Captain Gronow, p. xvi and his Oxford DNB entry Hibbert has named Gronow’s second wife as Mademoiselle St. Pol, ‘a lady belonging to an old noble family of Brittany’. However, the marriage certificate gives her name as Amelia de Rouquêt: London Metropolitan Archives, Saint James, Paddington, Register of marriages, P87/JS, Item 035. His popular memoirs were republished in 1889, essentially remaining a collection of anecdotes, constantly cutting between France and Britain and different periods. A more readable distillation of Gronow’s writing, edited by Christopher Hibbert, was published in 1991.23Captain Gronow: his reminiscences of Regency and Victorian life, 1810-60, ed. C. Hibbert (1991).