[1] [The Duc de Laval had succeeded Prince Polignac as French Ambassador in London.]
December 10th, 1829
Last night Miss Kemble acted Belvidera for the first time, and with great success.
December 18th, 1829
At Roehampton last Saturday to Monday; Granvilles, Byng, Lord Ashley, and I. Dino was extricated from prison by Laval’s paying the money, which he did very handsomely; he thought it wrong to have him in prison and wrong to attach him fictitiously to his Embassy, so he paid the debt, and Dino is gone back to France.
Despatches were received from Gordon yesterday giving an account of a ball he had given to the Divan; the Turks came, and the Reis-Effendi waltzed with a Mrs. Moore. After supper they drank King George IV.’s health in bumpers of champagne. This story was told to Lord Sidmouth as a good joke; but he said with a face of dismay, ‘Good God, is it possible? To what extent will these innovations be carried?’
December 19th, 1829
There is a review in the ‘Foreign Quarterly’ (the last number) on Greece, which is a remarkably able critique of the conduct of our Government in the affairs of that State. The writer, whoever he may be, has been amply supplied with documents and information, probably from Paris. Nothing can be more just than his remarks on our miserable policy, or more severe. I showed it to Lord Granville, who told me that it was generally correct, though containing some errors; for instance, that it was not true that we had engaged to afford the Greeks pecuniary aid, which we never did promise, but that he had been himself the person to negotiate with M. de la Ferronays, then Minister for Foreign Affairs at Paris, for the more limited boundary, and to dissuade the French from sending their expedition to the Morea; that there had been a violent contest in the English Cabinet on that subject, Huskisson and Dudley being in favour of the French expedition, and the Duke and the rest against it, but that the moment Huskisson and his party resigned the Duke gave way and agreed to the measure. This affords another example of his extraordinary mode of proceeding, that of opposing the views and plans of others violently, and when he finds opposition fruitless, or likely to become so, turning short round and adopting them as his own, and taking all the credit he can get for doing so. He did so in the case of the recognition of the South American colonies, of the Test and Corporation Acts, the Catholic question, and in this instance. Then his conduct on the Corn Bill is only the converse of the same proposition—begins by being a party to it and then procures its rejection. Greece and Portugal, if well handled, would afford two great cases against the Duke’s foreign policy, and they serve as admirable commentaries on each other. The raising the siege of Previsa, and the respect paid to Miguel’s blockade, and compulsion exercised on the Terceira people are enough to prove everything.
Ashley told me a curious thing about Sir Thomas Lawrence the other day. His father kept the inn at Devizes,[2] and when Lord Shaftesbury’s father and mother were once at the inn with Lord Shaftesbury, then a boy, the innkeeper GALLATIN came into the room and said he had a son with a genius for drawing, and, if they would allow him, his little boy should draw their little boy’s picture; on which the little Lawrence was sent for, who produced his chalk and paper, and made a portrait of the young Lord.
[2] [Sir Thomas Lawrence’s father at one time kept the ‘Black Bear’ at Devizes. In 1775 Lord and Lady Kenyon had the young prodigy (as he was called) introduced to them there. Lawrence was then only six years old.]