DICK, Quintin (1777-1858), of Curzon Street, Mayfair, London and Sackville Street, Dublin

Immensely wealthy, but considered by the courtesan Harriette Wilson to be ‘mean and vilely shabby’, Dick, throughout a lengthy parliamentary career, was known more for his lavish political dinners in Mayfair than his activities inside the Commons, where he was a silent Member who rarely troubled the division lobbies.1H. Wilson, Harriette Wilson’s Memoirs: of herself and others (1929), 238; M. S. Millar, ‘Dick, Quintin (1777-1858)’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. His penchant for illuminating his residence during his celebrated dinners earned him the sobriquet ‘Jolly Dick, the lamplighter’, though, as Disraeli privately quipped, this was in stark contrast to his habitually dour demeanour.2Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 4 Dec. 1837: Benjamin Disraeli letters, 1835-37, ed. J. A. W. Gunn et al. (1982), ii. 323. His ‘carroty’ hair and dandified old-fashioned dress sense, meanwhile, made him a figure of fun among his contemporaries.3Harriette Wilson’s Memoirs, 238-9, 254-5, 257. Disraeli was a regular presence at his Mayfair dinners, and Dick was the inspiration for the hospitable millionaire Ormsby in his 1844 novel Coningsby. However, beyond his purse, Disraeli appeared to have little respect for him: he once noted that in the Commons Dick ‘looked like a stale lemon’.4Millar, ‘Dick, Quintin’, Oxf. DNB; Disraeli to Mary Anne Disraeli, 12 Mar. 1842: Benjamin Disraeli letters, 1842-47, ed. J. B. Conacher et al. (1989), iv. 33.

Dick’s entrance into politics at the age of only twenty-three was made possible by his family’s wealth and personal connections. He was the eldest son of Samuel Dick, a successful East India proprietor and manager of the Bank of Ireland. After a legal education in England and Ireland, he was returned in 1800 for Dunleer in the Irish parliament as a nominee of his kinsman John Foster, an arch anti-Unionist. Unsurprisingly, he opposed the Act of Union. After succeeding his father in 1802, he purchased a seat at Westminster, sitting for West Looe, Cornwall, and later represented Cashel, before resigning on a point of honour in 1809. In 1826 he sought to revive his political career by putting himself up for Maldon as a friend of Liverpool’s ministry, but despite spending heavily throughout an infamous fifteen-day poll, he was defeated. He subsequently came in for Orford as a nominee of the 3^rd marquess of Hertford, before finally capturing a seat at Maldon in 1830.5HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 916-18. An avowed opponent of the Whig ministry’s reform bill, he was described by Edward Littleton as a ‘rich stingy alarmist’.6Hatherton diary, 20, 24 Nov. 1831. He was also hostile to Catholic claims, a position he held for the rest of his parliamentary career.

Standing again for Maldon at the 1832 general election, Dick presented himself as an unwavering champion of agricultural protection and advocated a ‘speedy’ abolition of slavery. He also insisted that he was ‘friendly’ to reform, though he chastised Grey’s ministry for going ‘too far’ on the issue. He was comfortably returned in second place.7Essex Standard, 30 June, 8 Sept., 15 Dec. 1832. Largely absent from the Commons for the first two sessions of the post-Reform parliament, he failed to vote for a reduction in the malt tax – a crucial issue in the agricultural borough of Maldon – and despite championing the abolition of slavery on the hustings, he missed Fowell Buxton’s important motions on shortening slave apprenticeships, 24, 25 July 1833. He did, though, oppose the ministry’s plan to award slave owners £20 million in compensation, 11 June 1833. He divided against radical motions to introduce the ballot, 25 Apr. 1833, and shorter parliaments, 15 May 1834.8R. Gooch, The book of the reformed Parliament: being a synopsis of the votes of the reformed House of Commons (1834), 18. At the 1835 general election he explained that the immediate abolition of slavery would create further problems for the West Indies and lead to calls for greater financial compensation. Following a hard-fought contest in which he put the ‘relief of the British farmer’ centre stage, he was re-elected in first place.9Essex Standard, 2, 9 Jan. 1835; Parliamentary test book (1835), 48.

Dick attended the Commons more frequently in the second post-Reform Parliament, but he remained silent in debate and does not appear to have sat on any select committees. His main contribution to political life in the capital was his role as a socialite, hosting numerous dinners at Curzon Street for a small inner circle of Conservative MPs, who were generally united by an ardent Protestantism and close ties to the agricultural community.10Benjamin Disraeli letters, 1838-1841, ed. J. B. Conacher et al. (1987), iii. 263; Morning Post, 25 Feb. 1840. He was also a prominent figure in the Pall Mall club scene, particularly the Conservative and Carlton Clubs, though Disraeli, when trying to gain membership to the latter, complained that Dick was ‘supercilious’ in his attitude to admitting new members.11Disraeli to Lady Blessington, 3 Feb. 1836: Benjamin Disraeli letters, ii. 145.

Dick’s votes in the division lobbies reflected his initial loyalty to the Conservative party under Peel’s leadership. He was in the ministerial minority on the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, and the address, 26 Feb. 1835, but sided with the agricultural interest by backing Chandos’s motion for a repeal of the malt tax, 10 Mar. 1835. He was against Irish church reform, 2 Apr. 1835, and following the fall of Peel’s short-lived ministry, he consistently opposed Melbourne’s administration on Irish matters. At the 1837 general election he attacked the Whig ministry as ‘intolerable’, and highlighted his vote against the freeman clause of the municipal reform bill, 23 June 1835, and his support for John Walter’s defeated motion for an enquiry into the operation of the poor law with regard to outdoor relief, 1 Aug. 1836, as evidence of his staunch opposition to what he felt were the more unpalatable measures introduced by the government.12Essex Standard, 7, 28 July 1837. Re-elected at the top of the poll, he continued to divide with the Conservative opposition on all the major domestic and foreign issues of the day and was one of a hardcore minority of MPs who consistently voted against the 1841 Poor Law amendment bill, 8 Feb., 22 Mar., 26 Mar. 1841. He was absent for Peel’s motion of no confidence in the Whig ministry, 4 June 1841.

By the time of the 1841 general election, Dick was president of the Maldon True Blue Club, and had emerged as one of Essex’s leading voices against corn law repeal, the issue which dominated that year’s contest.13Essex Standard, 25 June 1841. Following a bitter campaign he was once again re-elected in first place.14Essex Standard, 9 July 1841. He voted for the first reading of the Peel ministry’s corn importation bill, 16 Feb. 1842, which proposed a sliding scale on corn duties, but was absent from the divisions on the second and third readings. He also failed to vote on Peel’s proposal to reintroduce the income tax, though he later stated that he supported the measure.15Morning Post, 21 Apr. 1843; Essex Standard, 30 July 1847. Following news that the government intended to introduce a measure to reduce duties on corn imported from Canada, however, Dick, unlike many Conservative MPs who sought to avert any serious damage to the ministry, became an outspoken critic of Peel’s management of the corn law question.16D. R. Fisher, ‘Peel and the Conservative party: the sugar crisis of 1844 reconsidered’, Hist. Jnl., xviii (1975), 283-4. Speaking at an agricultural dinner at Wallingford, Oxfordshire, he accused Peel of lacking ‘steadiness and adherence’ on the question of agricultural protection, and warned, somewhat dramatically, that his party leader’s ‘equivocal declaration’ on the matter would lead to ‘bankruptcy and fraud’.17Morning Post, 21 Apr. 1843. Dick subsequently voted against the Canadian corn bill, 22 May 1843, and opposed Peel on the sugar duties, 14 June 1844. He abstained from Peel’s subsequent motion to reject Miles’ amendment to the sugar duties bill, 17 June 1844. Unsurprisingly he voted against Peel’s repeal of the corn laws, 27 Mar. and 15 May 1846.

After voting for the Conservative ministry’s ecclesiastical courts bill, 28 Apr. 1843, Dick, who was once described by Disraeli as a ‘hot’ Protestant, also became an opponent of Peel on religious questions.18Disraeli to Dick, 30 Dec. 1847, Benjamin Disraeli letters, iv. 329. He divided against the Dissenters’ chapels bill, 6 June 1844, the renewal of the Maynooth grant, 19 July 1844, the permanent endowment of Maynooth college, 18 Apr. 1845, and the Roman Catholic relief bill, 9 July 1845. In 1845 he became a member of the National Club, founded that year to defend the Protestant Constitution. Thereafter he consistently voted against Catholic relief.

At the 1847 general election Dick was praised by his local party for being an enemy of ‘popery, Puseyism and priestcraft’. His role in successfully promoting a bill to authorise the Eastern Counties Railway’s purchase of the Maldon, Witham and Braintree Railway was also widely celebrated.19Essex Standard, 8 Jan. 1847; 23 July 1847. This victory for the borough’s commercial interests, however, failed to protect him from a resurgent local Whig party, and following a notably bitter contest, he was narrowly defeated in third place.20Essex Standard, 30 July, 6 Aug. 1847. Given the vast amount of money Dick had spent on preserving his seat in the Essex borough (nearly £30,000 since 1826), his defeat was an inglorious end to seventeen years as its representative.21E. Dilliway, ‘Maldon Elections a Hundred Years Ago’, Essex Rev., li. (1942), 189-93. His predicament was neatly captured by four lines from the election ballad ‘Quintin Dick’s farewell to Maldon’:

I am poor old Quintin Dick,

Bereft of home and riches,

I have pawned my hat and coat,

And sold my shirt and breeches.22http://digital.nls.uk/english-ballads/pageturner.cfm?id=74893987&mode=transcription.

Dick did not have to wait long, however, for a return to the Commons. In March 1848 his deep commitment to the protectionist cause (and his even deeper pockets) earned him the Conservative nomination to contest a vacancy at Aylesbury, a large agricultural borough whose farmers had vociferously opposed corn law repeal. His unwavering opposition to ‘the modern theories of free trade’ played well and he was comfortably returned with a majority of 269 votes.23Morning Post, 28, 29 Mar. 1848; Morning Chronicle, 29 Mar. 1848. Back in the Commons, his relationship with Disraeli was strained by two events that took place in short succession in the summer of 1848. Firstly, Dick refused to help Disraeli’s personal lawyer, Philip Rose, gain membership of the Conservative Club, prompting Disraeli to complain that ‘Dick has behaved very carelessly and selfishly’.24Disraeli to Philip Rose, 12 July 1848: Benjamin Disraeli letters, 1848-1851, ed. J. B. Conacher et al. (1993), v. 42. Secondly, Dick, in an extremely rare intervention in debate, backed the inclusion of Aylesbury in a schedule of boroughs to be investigated for corrupt practices, much to Disraeli’s annoyance, who openly questioned the need for such a move.25Hansard, 10 Aug. 1848, vol. 101, cc. 66-9. Despite these disagreements, Dick continued to follow Disraeli into the division lobbies on most major issues of the day, though his attendance began to drop sharply during the 1849 session, when he was present for only 28 out of 219 divisions.26Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849. By the end of the year it was rumoured that he was close to death and possible replacements for his Aylesbury seat were mooted by the party leadership.27Disraeli to Stanley, 17 Dec. 1849: Benjamin Disraeli letters, v. 267. Dick rallied, however, and affirmed his protectionist sympathies with votes for Grantley Berkeley’s proposal to reconsider the corn laws, 14 May 1850, and Disraeli’s motion for agricultural relief, 13 Feb. 1851.

With his health declining, Dick retired from his Aylesbury seat at the 1852 dissolution, only to then seek election at Maldon, much to the surprise of the leaders of the Essex borough’s Conservative party, who had already selected two candidates for the forthcoming contest and claimed that Dick was yet to pay his share of debts incurred at the last general election.28Essex Standard, 21 May 1852. Unperturbed, he announced that he would stand ‘on my own responsibility alone, irrespective of any other candidate’, much to the chagrin of the local Conservative press, who attacked him for ‘persisting in his ill-timed and ill-judged opposition’.29Essex Standard, 28 May, 18 June 1852. Dick had little chance of success, and even those sympathetic to their old member noted that he looked ‘haggard and care-worn, and in a very unfit state for engaging in the turmoil of an election contest’, but he nevertheless persevered.30Essex Standard, 18 June 1852. At a raucous nomination, he presented himself as the victim of nefarious local party management, melodramatically declaring that ‘nothing but the hide of the rhinoceros could have borne it as I have done’. He polled a respectable 330 votes, but finished bottom of the poll in fourth place.31Essex Standard, 16 July 1852. A petition against the return, 25 Nov. 1852, and a subsequent one alleging that Dick himself had engaged in corrupt practices, 9 Dec. 1852, exposed him to an election inquiry, although the election committee determined that, as he was not elected, no ‘recriminatory evidence’ would be heard against him.32CJ (1852-53), cviii. 110-12, 181-3; PP 1852-53 (290), xvi. 9. When a new writ was finally issued for the borough in August 1854, Dick once again came forward in protest against the decision of the local Conservative party to reject his candidacy, though he admitted that he was ‘too old and unwell to return to the Commons’.33Essex Standard, 18 Aug. 1854. Indeed, his time as one of the most influential figures in Essex Conservatism had long since passed and following a light-hearted nomination speech, he finished bottom of the poll with a paltry 34 votes.34Daily News, 17 Aug. 1854.

Dick died at his Mayfair residence in March 1858, having been seriously ill for some time.35Dublin Evening Mail, cited in Essex Standard, 2 Apr. 1858; Gent. Mag. (1858), i. 559. He left an estimated £2 to £3 million in land, stocks and cash. At probate his personal estate was valued at under £600,000 in Ireland, 12 June, and £200,000 in England, 21 July 1858. Having died unmarried and without issue, his estates passed to his sister Charlotte Anne and her male issue, who were required, by his will dated 30 Aug. 1844, to take the name Dick. They passed in 1864 to Charlotte Anne’s son William Wentworth Fitzwilliam Hume, afterwards Dick (1805-92), Conservative Member for County Wicklow, 1852-80.36IR26/2125/481.