Yesterday there was a bother with the Chancellor about Lord Westmeath’s case pending before the Privy Council.[2] He took it into his head (probably having been got at by Lady Westmeath or some of her friends) to have it decided forthwith, and sent to desire a Committee might be convened. Westmeath’s counsel was out of town; Follett, whom he relies on, is on the Northern Circuit, but his other counsel is to be had, being at Chislehurst. Accordingly the Chancellor desired that the case might stand over from Thursday, the day he first appointed it (giving only two days’ notice), to Monday, and that it should be notified to the parties that if they did not then appear the case should go on without them. Westmeath came to me in a frenzy of rage, and said the Chancellor was the greatest of villains, and so he would tell him in the House of Lords or in the Privy Council. I begged him to hold his tongue, and I would speak to the Chancellor. So I went to the House of Lords where he was sitting, and told Lemarchant what had passed, and that the case ought not to be thus hurried on. He thanked me very much, and said he would go to Brougham; but he soon returned, and said that the Chancellor would hear nothing, and would have the case brought on, and he therefore advised me not to give myself any further concern in it, and to leave him and Westmeath to settle it as they might. In the meantime Westmeath went down to the House of Lords, and after speaking to Wynford, whom the Chancellor had asked to attend (as he learnt from me), was going to get up in the House of Lords and attack him, and was only prevented by Wynford dragging him down by the tail of his coat. I had already spoken to Wynford, and I afterwards spoke to Lord Lansdowne, telling them that the case ought not to be hurried on in this peremptory way, and I persuaded Lord Lansdowne to set his face against it. However, in the meantime Wynford had urged the Chancellor to put it off, and not exasperate that madman, who would say or do something violent; and, whether from reason or fear, he prevailed on him. Wynford told me that Brougham is undoubtedly mad, and so I really believe he is. While I was in the House of Lords Horne came in from the Commons, and said they had succeeded in stifling there all discussion on the rejection of the Tithe Bill by the House of Lords. Grattan was going to introduce the subject, but was prevailed on to say nothing, and to some questions put by Major Beauclerck Althorp refused to reply.
[2] [The appellate jurisdiction in causes matrimonial was vested at this time in the King in Council. The case of Westmeath v. Westmeath, which was a suit for a separation and a question of alimony, came up on appeal from the Court of Arches.]
August 16th, 1834
At a Council for the prorogation; the first time I have seen all these new Ministers in a bunch—a queer set, all things considered, to be in possession of the Palace. Great change of decoration. Duncannon, Ellice, Hobhouse, Abercromby, Mulgrave, Auckland. The King, who is fond of meddling in the Council business instead of repeating like a parrot what is put in his mouth, made a bother and confusion about a fancy matter, and I was forced to go to Taylor and beg to explain it to him, which I did after the House of Lords. The King was quite knocked up and easily satisfied, for he neither desired nor could have understood any explanations. There were not much more than half a dozen Peers in the House, but many ladies. The Chancellor went down, and, in presence of the ladies, LORD BROUGHAM. attired in his golden robes (and especially before Mrs. P., to whom he makes love), gave a judgment in some case in which a picture of Nell Gwynne was concerned, and he was very proud of the delicacy of his judgment. There never was anything like his exhilaration of spirits and good-humour. I don’t know what has come to him, except it be that he has scrambled through the session and got Lord Grey out. He wound up in the House of Lords by the introduction of his Bill for a Judicial Committee there, which he prefaced by a speech exhibiting his own judicial acts, and undoubtedly making a capital case for himself as to diligence and despatch if it be all true (which I see no reason to doubt), and passing a great eulogium upon the House of Lords as an institution, and drawing comparisons between that House and the House of Commons (much to the disadvantage of the latter), expressing many things which are very true and just and of a highly conservative tendency. He is a strange being whom, with all his inconsistencies, one cannot but admire; so varied and prodigious are his powers. Much more are these lines applicable to him than to his predecessor on the Woolsack:—
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
In a speech the other night, by way of putting his audience on a wrong scent with regard to his correspondence with Lord Wellesley, he assured them that that correspondence was on any subject but politics, and in every language except English; and Lemarchant told somebody that his most difficult employment was to correct and copy out the Chancellor’s Greek epigrams to Lord Wellesley, his Greek characters being worse than his English; while Lord Wellesley sent him very neatly written and prettily composed epigrams in return. I should think Lemarchant’s occupation very amusing, and that no study could be more curious than that of the mind and actions of this strange specimen of humanity.
August 19th, 1834
At Stoke from Saturday, the 16th, till yesterday; had much talk with old Creevey about the Chancellor. Sefton, his great ally, so resented his conduct to Lord Grey that he was on the point of quarrelling with him, and Brougham miscalculated so far as to chuckle to Sefton himself over the improvement of his own position in the new order of things, telling him that he could more easily manage Melbourne than he could Lord Grey. They are a precious set with their squabbles and tracasseries. It appears that they very well knew what Brougham was from the beginning, especially Grey’s womankind, who warned their father against him, but they all flattered themselves they had taken the sting out of him by getting him into the House of Lords. Creevey says that Brougham is devoured with ambition, and what he wants is to be Prime Minister, but that it is quite impossible he should for ever escape detection and not be regularly blown up sooner or later. He now wants to appear on good terms with Lord Grey, and there is a dinner at Edinburgh in contemplation (at which Brougham is to preside) to be given to Lord Grey. His friends want him not to go, but he has a notion that the Scotch have behaved so well to him that he ought not to refuse the invitation. The Chancellor had intended to go junketting on the Rhine with Mrs. P., and this project was only marred by his discovering that he could not leave the country without putting the Great Seal in commission at a cost (to himself) of 1,400ℓ. This was a larger price than he was disposed to pay for his trip, so he went off to Brougham instead.
On Sunday I went all over the private apartments of Windsor Castle, and walked through what they call the slopes to the Queen’s cottage; all very splendid and luxurious. In the gallery there is a model of a wretched-looking dog-hole of a building, with a ruined tower beside it. I asked what this was, and the housekeeper said, ‘The Château of Meiningen;’ put there, I suppose, to enhance by comparison the pleasure of all the grandeur which surrounds the Queen, for it would hardly have been exhibited as a philosophical or moral memento of her humble origin and the low fortune from which she has been raised.
SPENCER PERCEVAL. As I rode into London yesterday morning I fell in with Spencer Perceval, and got off my horse to walk into town with him. He talks rationally enough till he gets on religious topics; he asked me what I thought of the state of affairs, and, after telling him my opinion of the condition and prospects of the Church, I asked him what he thought of them. He said he agreed with me as to the status, but his notion was ‘that it all proceeded from a departure from God,’ that ours was a backsliding Church, and that God had forsaken it, and that we had only to put our trust in Him, and rely entirely on Him, and He would work out the salvation of His own. We parted in the midst of the discussion, and before I had any time to get from him any explanation of the course he would recommend to those who govern in furtherance of his own theocratical principles.