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G. W. E. Russell, in Collections and Recollections, famously tells us that the little daughter of a great Whig statesman asked her mother "Mama, are Tories born wicked, or do they grow wicked afterwards?", and was given the reply "They are born wicked, and grow worse". Do we know which little daughter of which great Whig? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 22:25, 20 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Finding the query with various replies by the mother beginning with an 1840 novel:
Bulwer, Lytton (1840). The Budget Of The Bubble Family. Vol. 1. p. 318. "* This enlightened query was really put a short time ago, by a young lady, of Whig extraction, to her mother!"
"The Chinese Classics". The Spectator. October 2, 1875. "...a certain little Miss Eden asked her Whig parent some fifty years ago,..."
I suppose "a certain little Miss Eden" refers to the influential Eden family; she could for example theoretically have been a daughter of George Eden (1784–1849), but then the name may have been made up by the writer purely to embellish and lend verisimilitude to the anecdote. --Lambiam11:46, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No more likely than it being the other way around - that Lady Lytton Bulwer heard the story and thought "Ooh! That'll make a nice little anecdote to work into my potboiler" - indeed she says as much in a footnote. Stanhope has it as one of Lady Minto's own daughters. One can easily imagine a young Fanny asking the question. DuncanHill (talk) 12:40, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Therefore, her eight daughters, the misses Eleanor (b 1777), Catharine (b 1778), Elizabeth (b 1780), Caroline(b 1781), Mary Louisa (b 1788), Mary Dulcibella (b 1793), Emily (b 1797) and Frances (b 1801) Eden, were all nieces of the first Lady Minto (Anna Maria Elliot 17??-1829).
That every boy and every gal / That's born into the world alive / Is either a little Liberal / Or else a little Conservative! Fal, lal, la! (Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri, Act II). Alansplodge (talk) 17:47, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]