John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey

Hervey was the eldest son of John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol, by his second wife, Elizabeth. He was known as Lord Hervey from 1723, upon the death of his elder half-brother, Carr, the only son of his father's first wife, Isabella, but Lord Hervey never became Earl of Bristol, as he predeceased his father. ==Life==

Hervey was educated at Westminster School and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he took his M.A. degree in 1715. His father then sent him to Paris in 1716, and thence to Hanover to pay court to George I. In spite of repeated requests he received no further preferment until after 1740, when he became Lord Privy Seal. After the fall of Sir Robert Walpole, he was dismissed (July 1742) from his office. A political pamphlet, Miscellaneous Thoughts on the present Posture of Foreign and Domestic Affairs, shows that he still retained his mental vigour, but he was liable to epilepsy, and his weak appearance and rigid diet were a constant source of ridicule for his enemies. He predeceased his father, but three of his sons became successively Earls of Bristol. ==Memoirs and literary quarrels==

Hervey wrote detailed and brutally frank memoirs of the court of George II of Great Britain from 1727 to 1737. He gave a most unflattering account of the King, and of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and their family squabbles. For the Queen Caroline of Ansbach and her daughter, Princess Caroline of Great Britain, he had genuine respect and attachment. The Princess's affection for him was commonly said to be the reason for the close retirement in which she lived after his death. The manuscript of Hervey's memoirs was preserved by the family, but his son, Augustus John, 3rd Earl of Bristol, left strict injunctions that they should not be published until after the death of George III. In 1848 they were published under the editorship of J. W. Croker, but the manuscript had been subjected to a certain amount of mutilation before it came into his hands. Croker also softened in some cases the plainspokenness of the original. Hervey's account of court life and intrigues resembles in many points the memoirs of Horace Walpole, and the two books corroborate one another in many statements that might otherwise have been received with suspicion. suggest that Pope's friend and fellow-satirist Henry Fielding intended the character of Beau Didapper in Joseph Andrews to be read as Hervey. Beau Didapper is described as obedient to the commands of a "Great Man" (presumably Walpole) "which he implicitly submitted to, at the Expence of his Conscience, his Honour, and of his Country." Didapper is also compared to Hylas, and is mistaken for a woman in the dark on account of his soft skin. The malicious caricature of Sporus does Hervey great injustice, and he is not much better treated by Horace Walpole, who in reporting his death in a letter (14 August 1743) to Horace Mann, said he had outlived his last inch of character. Nevertheless, his writings prove him to have been a man of real ability, condemned by Walpole's tactics and distrust of able men to spend his life in court intrigue, the weapons of which, it must be owned, he used with the utmost adroitness. His wife Lady Hervey (1700–1768), of whom an account is to be found in Lady Louisa Stuart's Anecdotes, was a warm partisan of the Stuarts. She retained her wit and charm throughout her life, and has the distinction of being the recipient of English verses by Voltaire. ==Marriages, affairs, and sexuality==

Hervey married Mary Lepell (1700–1768) on 21 April 1720. They had eight children: • George William Hervey, 2nd Earl of Bristol (1721–1775), unmarried • Lepell Hervey (15 April 1723 – 11 May 1780), married in 1743 Constantine John Phipps, 1st Baron Mulgrave, leaving issue • Augustus John Hervey, 3rd Earl of Bristol (1724–1779), died without legitimate issue • Mary Hervey (1725–1815), married 1747 George FitzGerald, of Turlough, County Mayo, and was the mother of the notoriously eccentric duellist George Robert FitzGerald, hanged for conspiracy to murder in 1786 • Frederick Augustus Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol (1730–1803), married 1752 Elizabeth Davers, had issue • General William Hervey (13 May 1732 – 1815), unmarried • Amelia Caroline Nassau Hervey (1734–1814), unmarried • Caroline Hervey (1736–1819), unmarried Hervey was bisexual. He had an affair with Anne Vane, and possibly with Lady Townshend, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Princess Caroline. He lived with Stephen Fox often during the decade after he followed him to Italy in 1728. He wrote passionate love letters to Francesco Algarotti, whom he first met in 1736. He may have had a sexual affair with Prince Frederick before their friendship dissolved. He was in fact denounced as a sexually ambiguous figure in his time most notably by William Pulteney, then leader of the Opposition and as cited above, by Alexander Pope in his "Sporus" portrait: "Let Sporus tremble/What that thing of silk...His wit all seesaw between that and this/Now high, now low, now master up, now miss/And he himself one vile antithesis...". He was also attracted to Henry Fox before his affair with Stephen Fox. ==Ancestry==

See Hervey's Memoirs of the Court of George II, edited by John Wilson Croker (1848); and an article by G. F. Russell Barker in the Dictionary of National Biography. Besides the Memoirs he wrote numerous political pamphlets, and some occasional verses. ==Modern portrayals==

Hervey appears as a character in the 1999 British television series Aristocrats, where he is portrayed by Anthony Finigan. He is shown acting as a patron to the younger Henry Fox. Hervey appears as a character in the historical novel Peter: The Untold True Story (2013) by Christopher Mechling, a tale of 18th-century feral child Peter the Wild Boy, whom the author believes to have been the inspiration for Peter Pan. == References ==