“Well, the curtain is about to drop upon my four weeks’ visit to an ex-Prime Minister. As yesterday was a blank day for London letters, Sefton at different times expressed his delight at the prospect of this morning and the news it would bring—very like an indication of ennui, you’ll say. . . . Lord Grey only smiled and said:—‘I don’t expect any news, and I don’t want any.’ At the accustomed hour of ten this morning, there stood a pile of letters on his plate, making, I should think, his legal number—fifteen.* So, having been some time employed in opening them and circulating their enclosures, either by flinging them or sending them on plates to their proper owners, he said at last:—‘It’s funny enough, of all these letters, there is not one for myself!’ A very good picture, this, for politicians to study, and a very pretty portrait of a retired one. The same tranquillity and cheerfulness, amounting almost to playfulness, instead of subsiding have rather encreased during my stay, and have never been interrupted by a single moment of thoughtfulness or gloom. He could not have felt more pleasure from carrying the Reform Bill, than he does apparently when he picks up half-a-crown from me at cribbage. A curious stranger would discover no out-of-the-way
* I.e. the number which, as a peer, he was entitled to receive free of postage in one day. |
| 302 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. XII. |
“I never mentioned to you a specimen of Lady Grey’s moral creed as given me by herself. It was just after Lady T—— had left us; so, being alone, she said to me:—‘I like Lady T——: she is always good-humoured, and she amuses me; and as she never says anything to offend me or those belonging to me, I don’t feel I have anything to do with Mr. Thompson or any other of the lovers which she has had. The same with Madame de Dino and the Duchess of B——; they are always very good-humoured and are very agreeable company; and as they never say anything to offend me, I have nothing to do with all the different lovers they are said to have had. I take no credit to myself for being different from them: mine is a very lucky case. Had I, in the accident of marriages, been married to a man for whom I found I had no respect, I might have done like them, for what I know. I consider mine as a case of luck.’
“Droll, wasn’t it?”
