“It is my constant practice to spend two pence a day in the hire of a chair, or rather two chairs, one on each side of the water in the new and beautiful enclosure in St. James’s Park. So when the enclosed note came after me to-day, with the name ‘Grey’ in the corner and ‘Immediate’ on the top, Mrs. Durham, who knows all my ways, immediately despatched Durham to ransack the said enclosure, and he found me as nearly asleep as possible, on the side nearest to Downing Street. So there I went; and Lord Grey, in the prettiest manner, told me that Lord Auckland’s place in Greenwich was vacant, and asked me if it would be agreeable to me to have it. He said it was not nearly as good as my present place, and that I should have some work, as I had to take care of the Northumberland estates, &c.† He said he had been very desirous that I should have the house, as it was a very nice one, with a very nice garden, &c., but that Tierney had a right to it in his turn as Commissioner. . . . As to the income, it is quite sure to be enough for me, and the respectability of the office, and the way in which it is given me by Lord Grey’s own unsolicited good will, gives the most agreeable finishing touch to my political life. . . . Sefton is to find out from Auckland in the Lords to-night the real value of the office, and I shall know it at the opera.
“I never saw Lord Grey apparently more oppressed with care than he was this morning. He said he had meant for some time past to offer me this office; but that things were now looking so distracted, there was no answering for the continuance of the
* Creevey means that his quarter’s salary is safe. † The estates of Greenwich Hospital in Northumberland. |
| 282 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. XII. |
