Yesterday I met the Chancellor at dinner at the Master of the Rolls’, when he told me about the King and Denman.[12] The King would not have the Recorder’s report last week, because the Recorder was too ill to attend, and he was resolved not to see Denman. The Duke went to him, when he threw himself into a terrible tantrum, and was so violent and irritable that they were obliged to let him have his own way for fear he should be ill, which they thought he would otherwise certainly be. He is rather the more furious with Denman from having been forced to consent to his having the silk gown, and he said at that time that he should never set his foot in any house of his; so that business is at a standstill, and the unfortunate wretches under sentence of death are suffered to linger on, because he does not choose to do his duty and admit to his presence an officer to whom he has taken an aversion. As the Chancellor said to me, ‘the fact is, he is mad.’ The fact is that he is a spoiled, selfish, odious beast, and has no idea of doing anything but what is agreeable to himself, or of there being any duties attached to the office he holds. The expenses of the Civil List exceed the allowance in every branch, every quarter; but nobody can guess how the money is spent, for the King makes no show and never has anybody there. My belief is that —— and —— —— plunder him, or rather the country, between them, in certain stipulated proportions. Among other expenses his tailor’s bill is said to be 4,000ℓ. or 5,000ℓ. a year. He is now employed in devising a new dress for the Guards.
[12] [Thomas Denman, afterwards Lord Denman and Lord Chief Justice of England, was at this time Common Serjeant of the City of London. George IV. hated him for the part he had taken on the Queen’s trial, and did all he could to prevent his having a silk gown. Vide supra, p. 156, January 16th, 1829.]
November 21st, 1829
STRAWBERRY HILL Maclane, the American Minister, could not come, but Irving did. He is lively and unassuming, rather vulgar, very good-humoured. We went to Strawberry Hill to-day—Moore, Ellis, Lady Georgiana, and I. Ellis is an excellent cicerone; everything is in the state in which old Horace Walpole left it, and just as his catalogue and description describe it. He says in that work that he makes that catalogue to provide against the dispersion of his collections, and he tied up everything as strictly as possible. Moore sang in the evening and was very agreeable the whole day. He said that Byron thought that Crabbe and Coleridge had the most genius and feeling of any living poet. Nobody reads Crabbe now. How dangerous it is to be a story-teller, however agreeable the manner or amusing the budget, for Moore to-day told a story which he told here last week! However, they all laughed just the same, except me, and I moralised upon it thus. Clifden is a very odd man, shrewd and well informed, and somewhat sarcastic, but very gay and good-humoured, fond of society and the ‘Times’ newspaper, a great enemy to the Church, and chuckles over its alarms and its dangers, but I was amused with a comical contradiction. Somebody told a story about an erratum in an Irish paper, which said that such a one had abjured the errors of the Romish Church and embraced those of the Protestant, at which he was greatly diverted, and said, ‘That is just what I should have said myself;’ and to-day after dinner, all of a sudden, he said grace (he says grace on Sunday only).
Moore gave an account this morning of his being examined in Trinity College, Dublin, when a boy, during the rebellion. Many of the youths (himself, and he says he is pretty sure Croker, among the number) had taken the oath of the United Irishmen[13] (Emmett[14] and some others who were in the College had absconded). The Chancellor (Lord Clare) came to the College, erected his tribunal, and examined all the students upon oath. He asked first if they had belonged to any society of United Irish, and, if the answer was in the affirmative, he asked whom they had ever seen there and what had passed. Contumacy was punishable by expulsion and exclusion from every profession. At the end of the first day’s examination Moore went home to his parents, and told them he could not take an oath which might oblige him to criminate others (as he should be forced to answer any question they might choose to put), and though they were poor, and had conceived great hopes of him, they encouraged him in this resolution. The next day he was called forth, when he refused to be sworn, stating his reasons why. The Chancellor said he did not come there to dispute with him, but added that they should only ask him general questions, on which he took the oath, but reserved to himself the power of declining to answer particular questions. They only asked him such questions as he could conscientiously answer (they had got all the information they wanted, and were beginning to relax), but when they had done with him Lord Clare asked him why he had demurred to answer. He said he was afraid he might be called on to criminate others, and that he had never taken an oath before, and naturally felt some reluctance and dread on such an occasion.
[13] He did not take the oath till after this examination.
[14] He had lived in intimacy with Emmett.
Moore told a story of an Irishman who saw from the pit a friend of his acting Othello, and he called out, ‘Larry, Larry, Larry, there’s the least taste in life of your linen hanging out!’ One day in America near the falls of Niagara Moore saw this scene:—An Indian whose boat was moored to the shore was making love to the wife of another Indian; the husband came upon them unawares; he jumped into the boat, when the other cut the cord, and in an instant it was carried into the middle of the stream, and before he could seize his paddle was already within the rapids. He exerted all his force to extricate himself from the peril, but finding that his efforts were vain, and his canoe was drawn with increasing rapidity towards the Falls, he threw away his paddle, drank off at a draught the contents of a bottle of brandy, tossed the empty bottle into the air, then quietly folded his arms, extended himself in the boat, and LORD GLENGALL’S COMEDY awaited with perfect calmness his inevitable fate. In a few moments he was whirled down the Falls and disappeared for ever.
Washington Irving wants sprightliness and more refined manners. He was in Spain four years, at Madrid, Seville, and Grenada. While at the latter place he was lodged in the Alhambra, which is excellently preserved and very beautiful; he gives a deplorable description of the ignorance and backward state of the Spaniards. When he returned to France he was utterly uninformed of what had been passing in Europe while he was in Spain, and he says that he now constantly hears events alluded to of which he knows nothing.