[6] [The active support given to Espartero by the British Government under the Quadruple Treaty, and the operations of Lord John Hay on the northern coast of Spain, which stopped the supplies of the Carlists, contributed to bring the contest for the Crown of Spain to an end, and on the 15th August Don Carlos surrendered himself to the French Government at Bayonne.]
September 23rd, 1839
Lady Holland asked me the other night what I thought of their prospects, and I told her I thought them very bad. She said, ‘The fact is, we have nothing to rely upon but the Queen and Paddy.’ This has since struck me as being an epigrammatic but very correct description of their position.
Last night there came to Holland House after dinner Brunnow and Nesselrode’s son, the first (not unlike Brougham, and would be very like if his nose moved about), a very able man, and said to be ‘la pensée intime de l’Empereur,’ sent over to see what can be done about the Eastern Question, which I take to be a very difficult matter.[7] I had much talk with Dedel (who told me this) about Palmerston. I said it was well known he was very able with his pen, but I did not know how he was in Conference. He replied: ‘Palmerston comes to any Conference so fully and completely LORD BROUGHAM’S PRETENDED DEATH. master of the subject of it in all the minutest details, that this capacity is a peculiar talent with him; it is so great, that he is apt sometimes to lose himself in the details.’
[7] [Baron Brunnow was sent to England at this time by the Emperor Nicholas to make the first overtures for the intervention of the Great Powers in the quarrel between the Sultan and the Pasha of Egypt. This overture was rejected by the Cabinet in 1839, but accepted on the Baron’s return to England in the following year, and it led to the celebrated treaty of the 15th July, 1840, and the quarrel with France, the true object of Nicholas having been the severance of the Western Powers. M. de Brunnow remained in England as Minister or Ambassador for nearly thirty-five years.]
London, November 8th, 1839
Six weeks nearly of an absolute blank. Left town October 1, Newmarket, then Cromer for ten days, Newmarket, London, Riddlesworth, Newmarket again, Euston, and back on Monday last. Nothing very remarkable has happened in this interval. Lord Clarendon[8] accepted the Privy Seal, not very willingly, but feeling that he could not, with decency, refuse it. They consider his accession to the Government a matter of great importance, and the Tories own it to be so, such a reputation has he acquired by the brilliant manner in which he conducted the mission in Spain, and by his popular and engaging qualities.
[8] [George William Frederic Villiers, fourth Earl of Clarendon, succeeded his uncle in the title in December, 1838. He had filled for some years with distinguished ability the office of British Minister at Madrid. He now returned to England; married Lady Katharine Barham, eldest daughter of the Earl of Verulam and widow of John Forster-Barham, Esq., in June 1839, and entered the Cabinet for the first time as Lord Privy Seal.]
Nothing has excited so much interest as the hoax of Brougham’s pretended death,[9] which was generally believed for twenty-four hours, and the report elicited a host of criticisms and panegyrics on his life and character, for the most part flattering, except that in the ‘Times,’ which was very able but very severe, and not less severe than true. As soon as it was discovered that he was not dead, the liveliest indignation was testified at the joke that had been played off, and the utmost anxiety to discover its origin. General suspicion immediately fixed itself on Brougham himself, who, finding the bad impression produced, hastened to remove it by a vehement but indirect denial of having had any share in, or knowledge of, the hoax. But so little reliance is placed upon his word, that everybody laughs at his denials, and hardly anybody has a shadow of a doubt that he was himself at the bottom of it. He has taken the trouble to write to all sorts of people, old friends and new, to exonerate himself from the charge; but never was trouble more thrown away. D’Orsay says that he carefully compared the (supposed) letter of Shafto with one of Brougham’s to him, and that they were evidently written by the same hand. The paper, with all its marks, was the same, together with various other minute resemblances, leaving no doubt of the fact.
[9] [A letter from Brougham purporting to be from Mr. Shafto was received by Mr. Alfred Montgomery, which contained the particulars of Lord Brougham’s death by a carriage accident. Mr. Montgomery brought the letter to Lady Blessington’s at Gore House, where I happened to be, and I confess we were all taken in by the hoax. Montgomery went off in a post-chaise to break the news to Lord Wellesley at Fernhill; and meeting Lord Alfred Paget in Windsor Park, he sent the news to the Castle. The trick was kept up for twenty-four hours, but the next day I received a note from Brougham himself, full of his usual spirits and vitality.—H.R.]