The Creevey Papers
Thomas Creevey to Elizabeth Ord, 9 September 1832
“Buxton, Sept. 9th.
“. . . I have been so lucky
in picking up a playfellow in Lady
Wellesley. She sent me a message that she wished to renew her
acquaintance with me; since which I have walked for an hour with her daily, and
in my life I never found a more agreeable companion. She always asked me to
come again the next day, and I franked all her letters for her. Miss Cator told me a very pleasant saying of
King Billy about Lady
Wellesley. When she was in waiting at Windsor, some one, in
talking of Mrs. Trollope’s book,
said:—‘Do you come from that part of America where they
“guess” and where they “calculate”?—
* The facts were not exactly as reported to
Mr. Creevey. The Duke was returning from the Mint when the
mob assembled. Attempts were made in Fenchurch Street to drag him from
his horse, and in Holborn there was some stone-throwing. Four
policemen—two on each side of his horse’s
head—escorted him to the end of Chancery Lane, down which the
Duke turned and rode to Sir Charles
Wetherell’s chambers in Lincoln’s Inn. The
gate of New Street Square being closed behind him, the mob was kept at
bay, while the Duke rode quietly out into Lincoln’s Inn Fields
and so home to Apsley House. |
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| 1832-33.] | THE END OF THE OLD ORDER. | 249 |
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King Billy said:—‘Lady Wellesley comes from
where they fascinate!’”*
Thomas Creevey (1768-1838)
Whig politician aligned with Charles James Fox and Henry Brougham; he was MP for Thetford
(1802-06, 1807-18) Appleby (1820-26) and Downton (1831-32). He was convicted of libel in
1813.
Lady Elizabeth Jerningham, baroness Stafford [née Caton] (d. 1862)
The daughter of Richard Caton of Maryland; in 1836 she married George William Stafford
Jerningham, eighth Baron Stafford. Her sister married Richard Wellesley; she was the
sister-in-law of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte.
Frances Trollope [née Milton] (1779-1863)
Novelist, travel-writer and mother of Anthony Trollope; she married Thomas Anthony
Trollope in 1809. She published
Domestic Manners of the Americans, 2
vols (1832).
Marianne Wellesley [née Caton] (d. 1853)
The daughter of Richard Caton of Maryland; she married, first, Robert Patterson, and
second, in 1825, Richard Wellesley, first Marquess Wellesley. She was the sister-in-law of
Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte and Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen Dowager Adelaide.
Maria Edgeworth: “Her face beautiful, her manner rather too diplomatically
studied.”
Sir Charles Wetherell (1770-1846)
Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, he was Tory MP (1812-32) violently opposed to
reform and Catholic emancipation; he was attorney-general (1826, 1828).
