I have had a letter from M. Guizot, desiring I would make M. de St. Aulaire's acquaintance, and be civil to him, and St. Aulaire told Reeve that he had been desired by Guizot to cultivate him and me as the two most valuable acquaintances he could make.[16] I have been presented to him, and we had a long palaver the other night, in which he was extremely civil and cordial; but I am so out of the habit of speaking French, that I find myself floundering terribly when I get into great talk, which is very stupid and mortifying. I have written to Guizot, and told him I should be very happy to do anything I could for St. Aulaire, and especially to render any assistance in my power to him, but that I must candidly tell him I do not know half so much of what was going on now as I had done when the late Government were in office.
They tell me that Aberdeen is doing very well, working very hard, taking up every question, writing well on them all, and displaying much greater firmness than he did before.
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S CHATTELS.
The Duke of Wellington is remarkably well. I saw him yesterday for the first time since the Council at Windsor, and he said he never was better. But he is altered in character strangely. He has now a morbid aversion to seeing people, which nearly amounts to madness. Nobody can get access to him, not even his nearest relations. When anybody applies for an interview, he flies into a passion, and the answers which he dictates to letters asking for audiences, or asking for anything, are so brutally uncivil and harsh that my brother Algy constantly modifies or alters them. The Duke fancies he is so engaged that he cannot spare time to see anybody. This peculiarity is the more remarkable, because formerly his weakness was a love of being consulted by everybody, and mixed up with everything. Nobody was ever in a difficulty without applying to him; innumerable were the quarrels, tracasseries, scandals, intrigues, and scrapes which he had to arrange and compose. He has for a long time past kept up a correspondence with Raikes, encouraging him to write at great length, and punctually answering his letters. Raikes came over here to see what he could get, and the Duke interested himself in his favour, and spoke to Aberdeen; but although they have so long been correspondents, Raikes has never been able to obtain an audience at Apsley House, for though he solicited that favour as soon as he came, the Duke has never once admitted him. I was yesterday with Messrs. Sidebottom, in Lincoln's Inn, for the purpose of settling the disputes between Lord de Mauley and Lord Kinnaird, when they told me what had passed about the Duke's personal property, when a bill was brought in, upon Douro's marriage, to settle a jointure on Lady Douro. They urged him to take that opportunity to entail on the title all the curious and valuable things which had been given him by emperors and kings, and to have a clause inserted in the Bill for that purpose. He consented, but when he saw it, he said he did not like it; he thought the enumeration flashy, and he would have it expunged. At last they hit on an expedient, and they introduced a clause to the effect that anything which he should appoint by deed within two years should be entailed on the title for ever, and they prevailed on him to sign the deed on the very last day of the two years. The value of the property is said to amount to half a million, and a great number of things were brought to light which he did not know that he possessed. If his two sons die without issue, which is very probable, the disposal of all these valuables reverts to him.[17]
November 27th.—On Thursday I dined with Milman,[18] to meet Macaulay, Sydney Smith, and Babbage. Pretty equal partition of talk between Sydney and Macaulay. The latter has been employing his busy mind in gathering all the ballads he can pick up, buying strings of them in the streets, and he gave us an amusing account of the character of this species of literature, repeating lines and stanzas without end. The ballad writers, who may be supposed to represent the opinions and feelings of the masses for whose delectation they compose, do not, according to Macaulay, exhibit very high moral sentiments, as they evince a great partiality for criminals, and are the strenuous opposers of humanity to animals. We dined at the Prebendal House, once Ashburnham House, very handsome, and with one of the most elegant staircases I ever saw anywhere, the work of Inigo Jones. Yesterday I dined with Bingham Baring, Henry Taylor, John Mill (son of the historian and a very clever man), and Emerson Tennent, agreeable enough. The day's newspapers announced the sudden death of Chantrey, the most eminent of contemporary sculptors, but not, I suspect, for I am no judge, of a high order of genius. His busts were very happy, but I am not aware of any great work of imaginative art which he has produced, and his two children in Lichfield Cathedral have always been quoted as the greatest proof of his power.[19]
THE DUKE'S DELUSION.
November 30th.—Graham has made Sir Edmund Head Poor Law Commissioner, an appointment very creditable to him. The Government are certainly going on well, and Tufnell, as strong a Whig as any, told me last night he thought their appointments excellent, and that they were doing very well. This appointment of Head is what Normanby was urged, but was afraid, to make. He shrank from it, however, for very poor reasons, not honourable to himself or to others concerned. First of all, John Russell's trying to thrust Rich upon him, a man not for one moment to be compared with Head, and then because Chadwick was against him. Accordingly he left it to the Tories, fully expecting they would appoint Colonel A'Court; but Graham has thrown over all party considerations, and having, after strict enquiry, satisfied himself that Head is the ablest and the fittest man, he has given him the situation.
A correspondence has just appeared in the papers between the Duke of Wellington and the Paisley deputation, which is exceedingly painful to read, calculated to be very injurious to the Government, whom their enemies are always accusing of indifference to the public distress, and which, in my opinion, exhibits a state of mind in the Duke closely bordering on insanity. This deputation is come up to represent the distress prevailing at Paisley, and they ask for an interview to lay the case before the Duke. He refuses to see them, and writes a letter much in the style of his printed circulars, alleging that he has no time, and that he holds no office, and has no influence. They remonstrate temperately and respectfully, still press for the interview, and then he makes no reply whatever. All this is lamentable; it is a complete delusion he is under; he has nothing to do, and he has boundless influence. When we reflect upon his habits at the time he was Prime Minister, still more when he was in Spain, with such weight on his Atlantean shoulders, when he would find time for everything and for everybody's affairs, and when we compare the language of his despatches, and the conduct they exhibit, with his present querulous tone and pertinacious seclusion, we are painfully struck with the great change that has come over his noble spirit, and it becomes impossible not to regret that in his seventy-third year, and after three epileptic fits, he was not permitted to hold himself free from the trammels, cares, and duties of Executive Government. He might and would have been a great amicus curiæ, aiding with his moral influence the Government, adjusting differences and disputes, ready to be appealed to, to advise and assist in any case of necessity, but not wearing himself out by real or imaginary business, and neither committing the Government by his strange fancies, nor injuring his own popularity by his mortifying and almost savage behaviour to the various people who approach him.
ARMORIAL BEARINGS OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.
December 3rd.—I dined again with Bingham Baring yesterday and met Lord FitzGerald, with whom I had a long talk, the first time I have seen him since he came into office. We discussed the Duke of Wellington's Paisley correspondence, and he fully confirmed my impression of the vexation it would cause the Government. It is clear enough that they would be very glad to be without him; and after talking of the unhappy and increasing infirmity of his temper, he expressed his apprehension of the probable consequences in the House of Lords,[20] and that the Government may be seriously compromised by some imprudent or intemperate expressions of the Duke; that, last year, nothing but the extreme forbearance of Brougham, and his good-nature, had prevented some disagreeable results of this kind; and it was now the more serious, when the Duke was to be the organ of the Government, and from his habits and his deafness it would be impossible for anybody to check or restrain him, Lyndhurst placed afar off on the woolsack, and the Duke sitting with his head buried in his chest, and neither consulting with, nor attending to, anyone. In 1835, he said, it had been the Duke's wish to do what he is now doing—to lead the House of Lords without a place; but Peel had then thought this was open to constitutional objections. Why he did not raise the same objections now, I don't know, unless it was that he found the Duke bent on forming part of the Government, and that he would have insisted on the Foreign Office again, if he was not permitted to lead without one. This, however, is mere conjecture. FitzGerald owned that it would have been better if he had retired, and kept aloof from Government. It has been his great misfortune never to have people about him who ventured to oppose his opinions, and he has always liked the society of those who applauded to the skies everything he said and did. As long as his faculties were unimpaired, it is difficult not to believe that if he had had candid and intelligent friends he would have listened to and considered their opinions, for his obstinacy is not the result of pride or vanity, from both of which he is singularly free, but arises from the habit, become inveterate, of trusting entirely to himself and to his own judgement. FitzGerald told me that he had never been more struck by anything than by the despatches and State-papers of Lord Auckland, and that he had no sort of idea he was so able a man; that he was, with the sole exception of John Russell, by far the ablest man of his party. His views most statesmanlike, and his government of India particularly just. I never heard a warmer panegyric than he passed upon Auckland.[21]