“. . . And now for Castlereagh—what an extraordinary event! I take for granted his self-destruction has been one of the common cases of pressure upon the brain which produces irritability, ending in derangement. Taylor will have it, and Ferguson also believes in this nonsense, that Bonaparte’s charge against him as told by O’Meara, of his having bagged part of Nap’s money has had something to do with it. Do you remember my telling you of a conversation Castlereagh forced upon Tavistock in the Park in the spring—about his anxiety to quit office and politicks and Parliament?* He did the same thing to Ferguson one of the last nights at Almack’s, stating his great fatigue and exhaustion and anxiety to be done with the concern altogether—just as poor Whitbread did to me both by letter and conversation two years before his death. It is a curious thing to recollect that one night at Paris in 1815 when I was at a ball at the Beau’s, Castlereagh came up to me and asked if I had not been greatly surprised at Whitbread’s death, and the manner of it, and then we had a good deal of conversation on the subject.
“Death settles a fellow’s reputation in no time, and now that Castlereagh is dead, I defy any human being to discover a single feature of his character that can stand a moment’s criticism. By experience, good manners and great courage, he managed a corrupt House of Commons pretty well, with some address. This is the whole of his intellectual merit. He had a limited understanding and no knowledge, and his
* See p. 38. |
| 1822.] | CASTLEREAGH’S DEATH. | 43 |
“Now, what will come next? Will the perfidious Canning forego his Indian prospects—stay with his wife and daughter to succeed Castlereagh. I think not. I think the former enmity between him and Eldon has been too publickly exposed and encreased, by their late sparring match upon the Marriage Act, to let them come together. Then I think the Beau will claim and have the Foreign Office, and Peel will claim to lead in the House of Commons. Mais-nous verrons! I suppose the King will approve the step Lord Castlereagh has taken, as he was Lady Conyngham’s abhorrence, and Lady Castlereagh would not speak to Lady Conyngham.
“What a striking thing this death of Castlereagh is under all the circumstances! This time last year he was revelling with his Sovereign in the country he had betrayed and sold, over the corpse of the Queen whom he had so inhumanly exposed and murdered. Ah, Prinney, Prinney! your time will come, my boy; and then your fame and reputation will have fair play too. . . . Taylor had a letter from Denison yesterday with a good deal of London jaw in it, and some of it is curious enough considering the quarter it comes from.* Bloomfield is to go to Stockholm as our minister! and then Denison says, had he not been discharged, the Privy Purse was in such a state, Parliament must have been applied to. Bloomfield’s defence is, the Privy Purse was exhausted by paying for diamonds for Lady Conyngham; and all these honors and emoluments showered on him by the Crown are given him to make him hold his tongue. . . .”
