‘I Tremble Lest My Powers of Thought are not What They Ought to be’: Reputation and the Masculine Anxieties of an Eighteenth-Century Statesman

Abstract

This chapter explores how masculine norms were enacted through biographical assessments of political actors. It focuses on changing perceptions of the masculine ‘character’ of the Georgian politician, William Windham of Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk (1750–1810). Obituaries described him as ‘the politest man in England’, yet the publication of diaries in 1866 revealed that such apparently effortless attainments were underpinned by constant self-doubt, hypochondria, and restlessness. These revelations downgraded Windham’s historical reputation. The chapter explores three elements of this revision of Windham’s ‘public’ masculinity: Windham’s own perception of the relationship between his public persona and his private doubts; posthumous assessments of Windham’s ‘public’ character in relation to contemporary norms of masculinity; and how he was displaced from the pantheon of ‘worthy’ public role models in mid/late-Victorian England.