September 3rd, 1831
On Wednesday a Council was held. Very few of the Ministers stay for the Councils; small blame to them, as the Irish say, for we are kept about three times as long by this regular, punctual King as by the capricious, irregular Monarch who last ruled over us. This King is a queer fellow. Our Council was principally for a new Great Seal and to deface the old Seal. The Chancellor claims the old one as his perquisite. I had forgotten the hammer, so the King said, ‘My Lord, the best thing I can do is to give you the Seal, and tell you to take it and do what you please with it.’ The Chancellor said, ‘Sir, I believe there is some doubt whether Lord Lyndhurst ought not to have half of it, as he was Chancellor at the time of your Majesty’s accession.’ ‘Well,’ said the King, ‘then I will judge between you like Solomon; here (turning the Seal round and round), now do you cry heads or tails?’ We all laughed, and the Chancellor said, ‘Sir, I take the bottom part.’ The King opened the two compartments of the Seal and said, ‘Now, then, I employ you as ministers of taste. You will send for Bridge, my silversmith, and desire him to convert the two halves each into a salver, with my arms on one side and yours on the other, and Lord Lyndhurst’s the same, and you will take one and give him the other, and both keep them as presents from me.’ The Duchess of Kent ANECDOTES OF GEORGE IV. will not attend the coronation, and there is a report that the King is unwilling to make all the Peers that are required; this is the current talk of the day.
September 5th, 1831
At Gorhambury since Saturday; the Harrowbys, Bathursts, Frankland Lewes’s, Lady Jersey, Mahon, Lushington, Wortleys; rather agreeable and lively; all anti-Reformers, so no quarrelling about that, though Lord Harrowby is ready to squabble with anybody either way, but furiously against the Bill.
September 8th, 1831
Dined with the Duke of Wellington yesterday; thirty-one people, very handsome, and the Styrian Minstrels playing and singing all dinner time, a thing I never saw before. I sat next to Esterhazy and talked to him (a very little) about Belgian affairs. He said Talleyrand had given positive assurances that the French troops should be withdrawn whenever the Dutch retired, that the other Powers were aware of Périer’s difficulties, and were ready to concede much to keep him in power, but that if he had not sufficient influence to repress the violent war faction there was no use in endeavouring to support him. Our Government had behaved very well and had been very strong in their remonstrances.
After dinner I had much talk with the Duke, who told me a good deal about the late King and the Duchess of Kent; talked of his extravagance and love of spending, provided that it was not his own money that he spent; he told an old story he had heard of Mrs. Fitzherbert’s being obliged to borrow money for his post-horses to take him to Newmarket, that not a guinea was forthcoming to make stakes for some match, and when on George Leigh’s[7] entreaty he allowed some box to be searched that 3,000ℓ. was found in it. He always had money. When he died they found 10,000ℓ. in his boxes, and money scattered about everywhere, a great deal of gold. There were about 500 pocket-books, of different dates, and in every one money—guineas, one pound notes, one, two, or three in each. There never was anything like the quantity of trinkets and trash that they found. He had never given away or parted with anything. There was a prodigious quantity of hair—women’s hair—of all colours and lengths, some locks with the powder and pomatum still sticking to them, heaps of women’s gloves, gages d’amour which he had got at balls, and with the perspiration still marked on the fingers, notes and letters in abundance, but not much that was of any political consequence, and the whole was destroyed. Of his will he said that it was made in 1823 by Lord Eldon, very well drawn, that he desired his executors might take all he had to pay his debts and such legacies as he might bequeath in any codicils he should make. He made no codicils and left no debts, so the King got all as heir-at-law. Knighton had managed his affairs very well, and got him out of debt. A good deal of money was disbursed in charity, a good deal through the medium of two or three old women. The Duke, talking of his love of ordering and expense, said that when he was to ride at the last coronation the King said, ‘You must have a very fine saddle.’ ‘What sort of saddle does your Majesty wish me to have?’ ‘Send Cuffe to me.’ Accordingly Cuffe went to him, and the Duke had to pay some hundreds for his saddle. (While I am writing the King and Queen with their cortége are passing down to Westminster Abbey to the coronation, a grand procession, a fine day, an immense crowd, and great acclamations.)
[7] [Colonel George Leigh, who managed his race-horses; he was married to Lord Byron’s half-sister.]
We then talked of the Duchess of Kent, and I asked him why she set herself in such opposition to the Court. He said that Sir John Conroy was her adviser, that he was sure of it. What he then told me throws some light upon her ill-humour and displays her wrong-headedness. In the first place the late King disliked her; the Duke of Cumberland too was her enemy, and George IV., who was as great a despot as ever lived, was always talking of taking her child from her, which he inevitably would have done but for the Duke, who, wishing to prevent quarrels, did all in his power to deter the King, not by opposing him when he talked of it, which he often did, but by putting the thing off as well THE DUCHESS OF KENT. as he could. However, when the Duchess of Cumberland came over, and there was a question how the Royal Family would receive her, he thought he might reconcile the Cumberlands to the Duchess of Kent by engaging her to be civil to the Duchess of Cumberland, so he desired Leopold to advise his sister (who was in the country) from him very strongly to write to the Duchess of Cumberland and express her regret at being absent on her arrival, and so prevented from calling on her. The Duchess sent Leopold back to the Duke to ask why he gave her this advice? The Duke replied that he should not say why, that he knew more of what was going on than she possibly could, that he gave her this advice for her own benefit, and again repeated that she had better act on it. The Duchess said she was ready to give him credit for the goodness of his counsel, though he would not say what his reasons were, and she did as he suggested. This succeeded, and the Duke of Cumberland ceased to blow the coals. Matters went on quietly till the King died. As soon as he was dead the Duchess of Kent wrote to the Duke, and desired that she might be treated as a Dowager Princess of Wales, with a suitable income for herself and her daughter, who she also desired might be treated as Heiress Apparent, and that she should have the sole control over the allowance to be made for both. The Duke replied that her proposition was altogether inadmissible, and that he could not possibly think of proposing anything for her till the matters regarding the King’s Civil List were settled, but that she might rely upon it that no measure which affected her in any way should be considered without being imparted to her and the fullest information given her. At this it appears she took great offence, for she did not speak to him for a long time after.
When the Regency Bill was framed the Duke desired the King’s leave to wait upon the Duchess of Kent and show it to her, to which his Majesty assented, and accordingly he wrote to her to say he would call upon her the next day with the draft of the Bill. She was at Claremont, and sent word that she was out of town, but desired he would send it to her in the country. He said she ought to have sent Sir John Conroy to him, or have desired him to go to her at Claremont, which he would have done, but he wrote her word that he could not explain by letter so fully what he had to say as he could have done in a personal interview, but he would do so as well as he could. In the meantime, Lord Lyndhurst brought on the measure in the House of Lords, and she sent Conroy up to hear him. He returned to Claremont just after the Duchess had received the Duke’s letter. Since that he has dined with her.