There is every prospect of a miserable defeat of the Conservatives in the City, which will be doubly disastrous, first as to the election, which is an important one, and secondly because it will go far to neutralise the effect of the famous address they got up. This is owing to mismanagement. The Committee has been bad and negligent; then they did a very foolish thing in ousting Pattison from Harwich to make room for Bonham; if they had left Pattison alone (which Harris had, I believe, pledged himself should be done), Lyall would have come in for the City, and perhaps Ward too; but when the electioneering affairs are left to William Peel, Ross, and Granville Somerset, no wonder there is not much dexterity and finesse displayed. I have published a pamphlet to help them; but as I never put my name to my pamphlets, of course nobody reads them.
January 5th, 1835
Sebastiani is coming here as Ambassador—that is, unless he changes his mind and pleads ill-health. The French Government notified to us his appointment ST. AULAIRE AND PRINCESS METTERNICH. without asking our consent, and when the Duke stated it to the Cabinet, objections were made; he accordingly wrote the same day to Bacourt, stating that the Cabinet thought the appointment objectionable, and that there would be difficulties in transacting business with him. The French Government expressed surprise, and rather insist upon their appointment, and as ours does not think it worth while to have a dispute about it, he is to come; but we think they have behaved very ill, for the Duke never proposed the Paris Embassy to Lord Cowley till he had communicated with France, and ascertained that the nomination would be agreeable to the King. It was expected that St. Aulaire or Latour-Maubourg would have come here. It is of Madame de St. Aulaire that Talleyrand said, ‘Elle cherche l’esprit que son mari trouve.’ (This anecdote I suspect not to be true, or not true of Madame de St. Aulaire, who is a very intelligent, agreeable woman, more lively and with more finesse d’esprit than her husband.)
St. Aulaire is Ambassador at Vienna, and, however clever, he either wants presence of mind or is touchy, as the following anecdote shows. Madame de Metternich is a fine handsome woman, ill brought up, impertinent, insouciante, and assez bourrue—au reste, quick and amusing. She went to a ball at St. Aulaire’s with a fine coronet of diamonds on, and when he came to receive her he said, ‘Mon dieu, madame, quelle belle couronne vous avez sur la tête!’ ‘Au moins,’ said she, ‘ce n’est par une couronne que j’ai volée.’ Instead of turning it into a joke, he made a serious affair of it, and went the next day to Metternich with a formal complaint; but Metternich said, ‘Mais mon cher, que voulez-vous? Vous voyez que j’ai épousé une femme sans éducation; je ne puis pas l’empêcher de dire de pareilles sottises, mais vous sentez bien que ce serait fort inconvénant pour moi de m’en mêler. Allons! il n’y faut plus penser,’ and so turned it off, and turned him out, by insisting on making a joke of the affair, as St. Aulaire had better have done at first.
January 7th, 1835
Just as might have been expected, the Conservative candidates in the City are defeated by an enormous majority. Pattison, the Governor of the Bank, the Liberal candidate who came in second on the poll, having been proposed by Jones Loyd,[2] the richest banker in the City, and perhaps the richest man in Europe.[3] Such outward demonstrations as these unquestionably afford a very plausible answer to the opposite cry, and the victory on the Radical side is great and important. Ward told me they should at least run them hard, so that the disappointment must be grievous; still it is asserted that the greatest part of the wealth of the City will be found in the columns of the address—but then the votes are in the other scale. The elections, as far as they have gone, are rather against the Government, but not showing any material difference in numbers—sufficient, however, to prove that, in point of fact, Peel’s declarations have produced little or no effect, and that the various considerations that have been urged on the country and the appeals to its reason have been all alike thrown away.
[2] [Mr. Jones Loyd, afterwards created Lord Overstone.]
[3] [The four City members were: Matthew Wood, James Pattison, William Crawford, and George Grote.]
I saw a letter which Barnes wrote to Henry de Ros yesterday, in which he speaks with horror and alarm of the prevailing spirit. He says the people are deaf with passion, and in the abrupt dissolution of the late Government and the bad composition of this they will see a conspiracy against their liberties, and mad and preposterous as the idea is, there is no eradicating it from their brains. I am afraid this is too true, and though no alarmist generally, and rather sluggish of fear, I do begin to tremble; and while I cast my eyes about in all directions to see what resource is in store for us, I can find none that is anything like satisfactory; the violence of party-spirit seems to blind everybody concerned in politics to all contingent possibilities, and every feeling of decency and propriety is forgotten.
Last night I was at Lady Holland’s; there were Lord and Lady Holland, Mulgrave, Seaford, Allen and Burdett. I asked them if they had read Whittle Harvey’s speech at VIOLENCE OF PARTY SPIRIT. Southwark, which was a tissue of the grossest and most outrageous abuse and ridicule of the King and Queen. They said ‘No,’ so I read to them some of the most offensive passages. Not the slightest disgust did they express. Holland merely said to one allegation, ‘That is not true,’ and Mulgrave laughed, and said, ‘Whittle is an eccentric politician.’