( 193 ) |
The successive stages in the conversion of the Tory Government
to Roman Catholic Emancipation have been abundantly discussed without bringing home to the
apprehension of most people that, in truth, there were no such stages. The circumstances
have been obscured by the recall of the pro-Catholic Lord Lieutenant, Anglesey, and the appointment of the anti-Catholic
Lieutenant, Northumberland, but that had really no
bearing upon the question. Anglesey had acted in what his old chief,
the Duke of Wellington, considered an insubordinate
manner, and was treated as relentlessly as Norman
Ramsay had been dealt with after Vittoria. There was no question of
ministerial policy involved; the puzzle arises out of the Prime Minister acting with a
total want of that ambiguity which usually envelopes ministerial acts. The victory of
Daniel O’Connell and the Catholic
Association over Vesey FitzGerald, appointed President
of the Board of Trade, in the election for County Clare, had convinced
Wellington that relief could no longer be withheld from the
Catholics. The position held by the Government ever since the question had driven Pitt out of office in 1801 must be abandoned; but he was
too old a campaigner to allow the enemy
194 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. VIII. |
“. . . Every one was up with the news of the day —that Wellington had decided to let the Catholics into Parliament. . . . I have always, you know, been convinced that the Beau must and would do something upon this subject, and what it is to be we now must very shortly know. . . .”
“Our only visitor last night was Sefton, who arrived about 12, bringing with him
the correspondence between the Duke of
Wellington and Lord
Anglesey, which the latter had lent to Sefton
to be returned the next morning at 11. He read it to Mrs. Taylor and me, and it was ½ past one
before he had done. The Beau, according to custom, writes
atrociously, and his charges against Lord Anglesey are of
the rummest kind, such as being too much addicted to popular courses, going to Lord Cloncurry’s, being too civil to Catholic
leaders, not turning Mr. O’Gorman
Mahon out of the commission of the peace, &c., &c. There
are letters full of such stuff, and Lord
1829.] | CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. | 195 |
“At Brooks’s last night the deceased poet Rogers came up to beg I would meet Brougham at dinner at his house on Wednesday.”
“. . . It does Wellington infinite honor; the only drawback to his fame on this occasion is his silence to Anglesey as to his intentions; but he has been jealous of his brother soldier playing the popular in Ireland, and so has sacrificed the man, while adopting his opinions.”
“Here is little Twitch, alias Scroop, alias Premier Duke, Hereditary Earl Marshal, who is sitting by my side and who reckons himself sure of franking a letter for you before the session closes. The removal of Catholic disabilities would permit the Duke of Norfolk to take his seat in the Lords.”
“. . . ‘Ra-ally,’ as Mrs. Taylor would say, Peel makes a great figure.* His physick for the [Catholic] Association is as mild as milk, and for a year only. It is such a new and important feature in this Tory Revolution to have no blackguarding or calling names of any one. There begins to be an alarm about the Lords, but I have no doubt without foundation. It is clear to me from the Duke of Rutland’s speech that he will ultimately support the Beau, and I have my doubts whether the Bishop of London† won’t do so likewise. . . . Lord Sefton has broke the bank at Crockford’s two nights following. He tells me he carried off £7000.”
* As Home Secretary, Peel was responsible for the government of Ireland, which was then administered from the Home Office. |
196 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. VIII. |
“. . . Our party at the deceased poet’s [Rogers] last night was his brother and living poet and wit—Luttrell, Sefton, Lord Durham, Burdett, Lord Robert [Spencer], Brougham and the Duke of Norfolk, and we had a merry day enough. . . .”
“. . . There is nothing going forward except this reported visit of the Duke of . . . Are you aware that Captain Garth is the son of this Duke by Princess ——.* General Garth, at the suit of the old King, consented to pass for the father of this son. The latter, in every way worthy of his villainous father, has shown all the letters upon this occasion, including one of the King’s. The poor woman has always said that this business would be her death. Garth asks £30,000 for the letters, and, to enhance their value, shews the worst part of them.”
“. . . The Whigs are as sore as be damned at Wellington distinguishing himself and at Lord Grey’s just panegyrick upon Peel the other night. A neat figure they [the Whigs] would have cut in such a storm; but, to do them justice, they would never have attempted it. . . .”
“Now I wonder if Ogg† is to be depended on. Our Whigs, who hate the Beau and Peel and Grey with all their hearts, and are mad to the last degree that the two former have taken the Catholick cause out of their own feeble and perfidious hands, and who are always croaking about the projected Bill as being sure to contain some conditions and provisions that will be quite inadmissible to the dear Liberals—the said Whigs are to-day more chopfallen than ever upon the visits that have been taking place the last two
* One should hesitate to withdraw the veil from this ugly affair, were it not that it has been freely discussed and made public property in the recently published letters of Madame de Lieven. |
1829.] | THE GARTH SCANDAL. | 197 |
“So, having just met old Ogg in the street in spectacles, he having lost an eye since I last saw him, and after hearing an account of the different calamities affecting his life, property and character, we got to this Windsor gossip. So says Ogg in his accustomed manner—‘Damme! I know exactly what it is all about, and if you promise never to mention my name, I’ll tell you.’ I need not observe that the condition he imposed upon me I should have gratuitously adopted, as the disclosure would, with most, destroy my story. However, he swore he knew the facts of his own knowledge, and they are these.
“Knight, a barrister of the Court of Chancery, has been advertising the Chancellor lately that on this day he should move for an injunction against Sir Herbert Taylor about Garth’s letters, which have been placed in his hands under some agreement with Garth, and which the latter or his creditors wish to make more favorable for themselves; £3000 a year for life and £10,000 in hand were the considerations, but it is sought to make it £16,000 in hand. Ogg adds that it is the fear of all this being made publick that has caused all these mutinies between the Beau and Prinney and Chancellor and D. of Cumberland. Ogg says, too, that he knows all the contents of these letters, and stated quite enough of them to account for all this Windsor hurry-scurry. . . .
“Well, I had a really charming dinner at old Sally’s* yesterday. Lady Sefton and her 2 eldest
198 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. VIII. |
“. . . I saw a good deal of young Lady Emily Cowper,* who is the leading favorite of the town so far. She is very inferior to her fame for looks, but is very natural, lively, and appears a good-natured young person.”
“Well, the Whig croaking must end now. The Beau is immortalised by his views and measures as detailed by Peel last night. I certainly, for one, think it an unjust thing to alter the election franchise from 40s. to £10; but considering the perfection of every other part and the difficulty there must have been in bringing Prinney up to this mark, I should, were I in Parliament, swallow the franchise thing without hesitation; and so I am happy to find a meeting of our Whigs at Burdett’s to-day have agreed to do. . . . Only think of the old notion of the Veto being just abandoned. . . .”
“Well, our ‘very small and early party’ last night [at Lady Sefton’s] was quite as agreeable as ever; but I must be permitted to observe that, considering the rigid virtue of Lady Sefton and the profound darkness in which her daughters of from 30 to 40 are brought up as to even the existence of vice,
* Married in 1830 to the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, at that time Lord Ashley. |
1829.] | A PARTY At LADY SEFTON’S. | 199 |
“Rather stiffish to-day, my dear; it can’t, of course, be age! but going four and twenty miles on a hard road at a kind of hand gallop is rather shaking, you know, to those not used to it. . . . The men we have had here are principally Pytchley, which, in dandyism, are very second-rate to the Quorn or Melton men. . . .
* The Duke of Rutland’s “Cadland” won the Derby in 1828, beating the King’s horse “The Colonel.” |
200 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. VIII. |
“. . . Does your paper ever give you any light upon the old affair of Garth? Did it contain his affidavit? You see it is now established in proof in a suit in Chancery that Sir Herbert Taylor had agreed to give Garth £3000 a year for his life, and to pay his debts; and that, upon this being done, certain letters were to be given up to Taylor. In the meantime they were deposited in Snow’s bank in the joint holding of the said bankers and Mr. Westmacott, the editor of the Age newspaper. . . . There is quite enough in this—Taylor being the purchaser and the price so monstrous, to make it quite certain the letters must contain great scandal affecting very great parties. . . . General Garth is still alive, and it was when he was extremely ill and thought himself quite sure of dying, that he wrote to young Garth, telling him who he was, explaining the part he—the General—had been induced to act out of respect and deference to the royal family. . . . General Garth recovered unexpectedly, and applied to young Garth for the document; but, I thank you! they had been seen and read and deemed much too valuable to be given back again.”
“. . . The King was delighted with the duel* and said he should have done the same—that gentlemen must not stand upon their privileges. . . .”
“. . . The King was very angry at the large majority [for the Catholic Relief bill] and did not
* Between the Duke of Wellington and Lord Winchelsea. |
1829.] | INTRIGUES IN THE OPPOSITION. | 201 |
“. . . I went to the Park, but the review was over, so we only learnt that the Beau had had a fall from his horse, but was not hurt; and in coming home here a little later who shd. I meet riding in a little back street near Coventry Street but the said Duke. So he stopt and shook hands. . . . I said:—‘Well, upon my soul, you are the first of mankind to have accomplished this Irish job as you have done, and I congratulate you upon it most sincerely. . . . You must ave had tough work to get thro’.’—‘Oh terrible, I assure you,’ said he, and so we parted.”
“. . . It is a well known fact that Lord Durham is doing all he possibly can to make
Lord Grey act a part that shall force
him into the Government, meaning in that event to go snacks himself in the
acquisition of power and profit; which, considering that he got his peerage by
deserting Grey and by helping Canning to defeat Wellington, is consistent and modest enough! So after dinner
[at Lord William Powlett’s] the levee
being mentioned, Grey said in the most natural manner he
would never go to another; upon which Lambton
[Lord Durham] remonstrated with him most severely and
pathetically, and George Lamb thought
Grey was wrong; but Grey held out
firm as a rock—said that it was quite against his own opinion going the
last time, but that he had been quite persecuted into it—that this last
personal insult from the King in never
noticing him was only one of a series of the same kind, and that for the future
he should please himself by avoiding a repetition of them. You may easily fancy
the amiability of Lambton’s face at his avowal. . .
. You see these impertinent and base
202 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. VIII. |
“. . . As you see only the Morning Post, I am afraid you are quite in the dark as to what is going on in France. . . . All are furious against the new Ministry, and with great reason. To think of making Bourmont the War Minister! He is the man who deserted from Bonaparte and came over to us the night before the battle of Waterloo.* General Gérard recommended him to Nap as a General of Division on that occasion, and said that he would pledge his life for his honor.† The deserter is now to be Minister for War, and will have to face Gérard as a member of the Chamber of Deputies! . . . Even the old Ultras think the experiment puts the throne of Charles Dix in danger.”
“. . . I am half way thro’ the 3rd volume of Bourrienne. Although my interest about Nap is greatly lessened by his wholesale use and destruction of mankind—not for the sake or defence of France, but for some ‘lark’ of his own, to be like Cæsar or Alexander, and for his damned nonsensical posterity that he is always after—then again he comes over me again by his talents, and by a kind of simplicity, and even drollery, behind the curtain whilst he is so successfully bamboozling all the world without. Don’t suppose I am partial to him because when Bourrienne
* It was on the morning of the 15th June, three days before Waterloo, that Bourmont deserted; and he went to Blücher, not to Wellington. † The expression Gérard used was that he would pledge his head: so when Gérard reported Bourmont’s treachery, the Emperor tapped Gérard playfully on the cheek, saying:—“Cette têtê, donc, e’est à moi, n’est ce pas?” adding more gravely, “mais j’en ai trop besoin.” |
1829.] | FIRST TRIP ON THE RAILWAY. | 203 |
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the promotion of which Creevey had so stoutly opposed in committee of the House of Commons, was nearly finished, and about to be opened for traffic.
“. . . You have no doubt in your paper reports of Huskisson’s return to office. Allow me to mention a passage which Lord Derby read to me out of a letter to himself from Lady Jane Houston, who lives very near Huskisson. . . . ‘Houston saw Huskisson yesterday, who talked to him of his return to office as of a thing quite certain, and of Edward Stanley doing so too. Indeed he spoke of the latter as quite the Hope of the Nation!’ As the Hope of the Nation was present when this was read, it would not have been decent to laugh; but the little Earl gave me a look that was quite enough.”
“. . . I left little Derby devouring Bourrienne with the greatest delight, and he is particularly pleased with the exposure of the ignorance of ‘that damned fellow Sir Walter Scott.’ The Stanley and Hornby party were rather shocked at the great bard and novelist being called such names, but the peer said he was a ‘damned impertinent fellow’ for presuming to write the life of Bonaparte.”
“. . . To-day we have had a lark of a very high order. Lady
Wilton sent over yesterday from Knowsley to say that the Loco
Motive machine was to be
204 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. VIII. |
“. . . I am sure you would not wish me to miss
Lady Foley. It is very nearly the
direct road to London. Then to see a noble novel-writer, who has never been
known in the midst of all their ruin to degrade herself by putting on either a
pair of gloves or a ribbon a second time, and who has always 4 ponies ready
saddled and bridled for any enterprise or excursion that may come into her
head! To say
1829.] | A SPENDTHRIFT PEER. | 205 |
≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |