“September [no date].—I dined at the Duke of Wellington’s, and was much pleased to find the Duc de Richelieu there, whom I had never seen before. He was just arrived, on his way to the Congress at Aix-la-chapelle. The Duke of W. introduced me to him, and I never saw a Frenchman I took such a fancy to before. His excellent manners, his simplicity and his appearance, are most striking and agreeable. We had a small party and no ladies. From Sir George Murray being between the Duc de Richelieu and myself at dinner, and my deaf ear towards him into the bargain, I lost much of his conversation. The Duke of Wellington, however, after Richelieu was gone, told me in conversation what had passed between them, which was not amiss. The D. of R. asked the D. of W. if he had heard what had passed at the Hague the other day at the christening of the Prince of Orange’s second son, to which Wellington replied no. The D. of R. then told him that on that occasion, there being a dinner and fête, the Prince of Orange had made a flaming patriotic oration, in which he had expressed his devotion to his Belgic, as well as his Dutch, compatriots, and concluded by declaring he would sacrifice his life in repelling any power who dared to invade their country. Upon which the Duke of Wellington said to Richelieu:—‘Who the devil does he mean? I suppose you—the French.’—‘No,’ answered Richelieu, ‘it is said he meant you—the English.’ There had been some talk of an army of observation being formed of our troops, to be kept in the Netherlands, so maybe it was an allusion to this.
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“I said to the Duke what a pity it was that the Prince of Orange, after distinguishing himself as he had done at Waterloo, should make such a goose of himself: to which Wellington said with his comical simplicity:—‘So it is, but I can’t help it. I have done all I could for him.’
“Barnes has told me more than once during my stay at Cambray a fact about the Prince of Orange which, incredible as I at first thought it, must be true: viz.—that the Prince was mad enough to listen to some proposals made to him by certain French exiles as to making him think of France and dethroning old Louis Dix-huit. Kinnaird had often told me there was something of this kind going on, which I quite scouted; and then he told me afterwards, when he was interrogated by the police on the subject of Wellington’s affair, that many questions were put to him on the subject of this plot in favor of the Prince of Orange, and as to what Kinnaird knew about it; but Barnes told me that Fagel, the Minister from the Pays Bas at Paris, told him (Barnes) that all this was perfectly true; and not only so, but that in consequence of it the Prince of Orange had been obliged to answer certain prepared interrogations which were put to him by the allied Sovereigns on this subject. So it must be true, and Wellington of course knew it to be so during this conversation with me.
“We had after this a very long conversation, and quite alone. I apologised for a question I was about to ask him, and begged him if I was doing wrong to tell me so immediately. I said Mrs. Hamilton expected to be confined in eight or ten weeks, and he would do me a signal favor if he would tell me if the army was really to leave France, as in that case she would never run the risque of being confined at Cambray, and left after the army was gone. He answered without the slightest hesitation:—‘Oh, you must remove her certainly. I shall begin to move the army next month, and I hope by the 20th of November to have got everybody away* I shall keep a single battalion for myself, and shall be the last to leave this place . . . so
* The Duke’s farewell to the army of occupation was issued as ordre-du-jour on 30th October. |
| 1817-18.] | JOURNAL. | 287 |
“We then went to politics, and publick men and publick speaking. He said much in favor of Lord Grey’s and Lord Lansdowne’s speaking. Of the former he said that, as leader of the House of Commons he thought his manner and speaking quite perfect; and of Lord Lansdowne* he said that, had he remained in the House of Commons he must have been minister of the country long before this time. ‘But,’ said he, ‘they are lost by being in the House of Lords. Nobody cares a damn for the House of Lords; the House of Commons is everything in England, and the House of Lords nothing.’
“I then favored him with my notions of some on the other side. I said there was no fact I was more convinced of than that Castlereagh would have expired politically in the year 1809—that all the world by common consent had had enough of him, and were tired out—had it not been for the piece of perfidy by Canning to him at that time, and that this, and this alone, had raised him from the dead, and given him his present great position. I then followed up Canning on the score of his infinite meanness in taking his Lisbon job and filling his present inferior situation under Castlereagh, whose present situation he (Canning) held in 1809, and then, forsooth! was too great a man to act with Castlereagh as his inferior.
“All this Wellington listened to, it is true; but he would not touch it,† except by saying he heard Canning and Whitbread have a sparring bout in the House of Commons, and he thought Whitbread had much the best of it. The conversation ended by further remarks about publick speaking.—‘There’s the Duc de Richelieu, for instance,’ he said, ‘altho’ he speaks as Minister, and has everything prepared in writing, you never heard anything so bad in your life as his speaking.’
“It is a very curious thing to have seen so much
* Formerly Lord Henry Petty. † The old soldier was far too wary to give himself away, knowing, as he must have done, from having heard all about the Duke of Kent’s confession, how freely Creevey repeated confidential conversations. |
| 288 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch XII. |
