July 25th, 1830
Yesterday at Court at eleven; a Council for the dissolution. This King and these Councils are very unlike the last—few people present, frequent, punctual, less ceremony observed. Though these Ministers have been in office all their lives, nobody knew how many days must elapse before Parliament was summoned; some said sixty, some seventy days, but not one knew, nor had they settled the matter previously; so Lord Rosslyn and I were obliged to go to Bridgewater House, which was near, and consult the journals. It has always been fifty-two days of late.
In the afternoon another embarrassment. We sent the proclamations to the Chancellor (one for England and one for Ireland), to have the Great Seal affixed to them; he THE KING DINES AT APSLEY HOUSE. would only affix the Seal to the English, and sent back the Irish unsealed. The Secretary of State would not send it to Ireland without the Great Seal, and all the Ministers were gone to the fish dinner at Greenwich, so that there was no getting at anybody. At last we got it done at Lincoln’s Inn and sent it off. The fact is, nobody knows his business, and the Chancellor least of all. The King continues very active; he went after the Council to Buckingham House, then to the Thames Tunnel, has immense dinners every day, and the same people two or three days running. He has dismissed the late King’s band, and employs the bands of the Guards every night, who are ready to die of it, for they get no pay and are prevented earning money elsewhere. The other night the King had a party, and at eleven o’clock he dismissed them thus: ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, I wish you a good night. I will not detain you any longer from your amusements, and shall go to my own, which is to go to bed; so come along, my Queen.’ The other day he was very angry because the guard did not know him in his plain clothes and turn out for him—the first appearance of jealousy of his greatness he has shown—and he ordered them to be more on the alert for the future.
July 26th, 1830
Still the King; his adventures (for they are nothing else) furnish matter of continual amusement and astonishment to his liege subjects. Yesterday morning, or the evening before, he announced to the Duke of Wellington that he should dine with him yesterday; accordingly the Duke was obliged, in the midst of preparations for his breakfast, to get a dinner ready for him. In the morning he took the King of Würtemberg to Windsor, and just at the hour when the Duke expected him to dinner he was driving through Hyde Park back from Windsor—three barouches-and-four, the horses dead knocked up, in the front the two Kings, Jersey, and somebody else, all covered with dust. The whole mob of carriages and horsemen assembled near Apsley House to see him pass and to wait till he returned. The Duke, on hearing he was there, rushed down without his hat and stood in his gate in the middle of servants, mob, &c., to see him pass. He drove to Grillon’s ‘to drop’ the King of Würtemberg, and at a quarter past eight he arrived at Apsley House. There were about forty-five men, no women, half the Ministers, most of the foreign Ministers, and a mixture rather indiscriminate. In the evening I was at Lady Salisbury’s, when arrived the Duke of Sussex, who gave a short account to Sefton of what had passed, and of the King’s speech to the company. ‘You and I,’ he said, ‘are old Whigs, my Lord, and I confess I was somewhat astonished to hear his Majesty’s speech.’ I went afterwards to Crockford’s, where I found Matuscewitz, who gave me a whole account of the dinner. The two Kings went out to dinner arm in arm, the Duke followed; the King sat between the King of Würtemberg and the Duke. After dinner his health was drunk, to which he returned thanks, sitting, but briefly, and promised to say more by-and-by when he should give a toast. In process of time he desired Douro to go and tell the band to play the merriest waltz they could for the toast he was about to give. He then gave ‘The Queen of Würtemberg,’ with many eulogiums on her and on the connubial felicity of her and the King; not a very agreeable theme for his host, for conjugal fidelity is not his forte. At length he desired Douro to go again to the band and order them to play ‘See the conquering hero comes,’ and then he rose. All the company rose with him, when he ordered everybody to sit down. Still standing, he said that he had been so short a time on the throne that he did not know whether etiquette required that he should speak sitting or standing, but, however this might be, he had been long used to speak on his legs, and should do so now; he then proposed the Duke’s health, but prefaced it with a long speech—instituted a comparison between him and the Duke of Marlborough; went back to the reign of Queen Anne, and talked of the great support the Duke of Marlborough had received from the Crown, and the little support the Duke of Wellington had had in the outset of his career, though after the battle of Vimeiro he had been backed by all the energies of the country; that, notwithstanding his difficulties, his THE KING’S SPEECH AT APSLEY HOUSE. career had been one continued course of victory over the armies of France; and then recollecting the presence of Laval, the French Ambassador, he said, ‘Remember, Duc de Laval, when I talk of victories over the French armies, they were not the armies of my ally and friend the King of France, but of him who had usurped his throne, and against whom you yourself were combating;’ then going back to the Duke’s career, and again referring to the comparison between him and Marlborough, and finishing by adverting to his political position, that he had on mounting the throne found the Duke Minister, and that he had retained him because he thought his Administration had been and would be highly beneficial to the country; that he gave to him his fullest and most cordial confidence, and that he announced to all whom he saw around him, to all the Ambassadors and Ministers of foreign Powers, and to all the noblemen and gentlemen present, that as long as he should sit upon the throne he should continue to give him the same confidence. The Duke returned thanks in a short speech, thanking the King for his confidence and support, and declaring that all his endeavours would be used to keep this country in relations of harmony with other nations. The whole company stood aghast at the King’s extraordinary speech and declaration. Matuscewitz told me he never was so astonished, that for the world he would not have missed it, and that he would never have believed in it if he had not heard it.
Falck[3] gave me a delightful account of the speech and of Laval. He thought, not understanding one word, that all the King was saying was complimentary to the King of France and the French nation, and he kept darting from his seat to make his acknowledgments, while Esterhazy held him down by the tail of his coat, and the King stopped him with his hand outstretched, all with great difficulty. He said it was very comical.
[3] [Baron Falck, Dutch Minister at the Court of St. James’s. M. de Laval was the French Ambassador. This dinner took place on the day after the publication of the ordinances of July. Three days later Charles X. had ceased to reign. M. de Laval instantly left London on the receipt of the intelligence, leaving M. de Vaudreuil as Chargé d’Affaires.]
July 27th, 1830
Review in the morning (yesterday), breakfast at Apsley House, chapter of the Garter, dinner at St. James’s, party in the evening, and ball at Apsley House. I don’t hear of anything remarkable, and it was so hot I could not go to anything, except the breakfast, which I just looked in to for a minute, and found everybody sweating and stuffing and the royalties just going away. The Duke of Gloucester keeps up his quarrel with the Duke; the Duke of Cumberland won’t go to Apsley House, but sent the Duchess and his boy. The Queen said at dinner the other day to the Duke of Cumberland, ‘I am very much pleased with you for sending the Duchess to Apsley House,’ and then turned to the Duke of Gloucester and said, ‘but I am not pleased with you for not letting the Duchess go there.’ The fool answered that the Duchess should never go there; he would not be reconciled, forgetting that it matters not twopence to the Duke of Wellington and a great deal to himself.
I have been employed in settling half a dozen disputes of different sorts, but generally without success, trifling matters, foolish or violent people, not worth remembering any of them. The Chancellor, who does not know his own business, has made an attack on my office about the proclamations, but I have vindicated it in a letter to Lord Bathurst.