“. . . Very agreeable party at Lady Lichfield’s last night—Duchess of Kent everything I could wish . . . and plenty of ‘comrogues,’ male and female. Well, tho’ our places are all filled, there is no end of tantrums. Durham is furious at not being in the Cabinet. He asked Lord Grey the cause of it, to which the latter only replied it was ‘quite impossible.’ Durham asked who it was that objected, but asked in vain; the fact being that Brougham told Lord Grey he would not sit in the same Cabinet with Durham, and that Grey must make his choice between them. Brougham has been to the greatest degree indignant with Grey at his appointment of Auckland to the Admiralty, the more so as the appointment was made at the suit of Lansdowne. So, according to custom, the said Vaux has saluted Grey and Lansdowne with a literary philippic apiece. However, Sefton says he is dulcified since last night. All the old and new set were at Anson’s last night, and Brougham said to me:—‘Auckland’s is a neat appointment, is it not?’ twisting about his nose in its happiest forms. To be sure, my opinion would be that the hand of death was on Lord Grey when he could place on his side in this Cabinet such a notorious and so useless a jobber as Auckland, at the dictation of such a perfect old woman as Lansdowne.”
