CHAPTER VI
1828-1829
[A few extracts are given here from Miss Eden’s Journal kept in the early part of 1828.]
January 7, 1828.
Stayed at Grosvenor Place on our way home to dinner, and saw Mary [Drummond] with the three children dressed to go to the Duke of Atholl’s for twelfth cake. Came home at 9, I suppose, to settle in town. How I hate it! But then I have had a very excellent absence of six months from it, and enjoyed my Irish tour, and my summer altogether as much as I expected. Found an invitation to Cobham, to Lady Darnley, and invitations to Madame de Lieven’s and Mademoiselle de Palmella’s[279] parties to meet Dom Miguel.[280] Such a horrid look about these invitations.
January 9, 1828.
Theresa Villiers came here, and Mary at five, and said that Lord Goderich had resigned the day before, and that the King had sent to the Duke of Wellington to desire him to make a new Government.
It was hardly possible to regret the last, it was so weak, and Lord Goderich so inefficient and ridiculous, chiefly owing to Sarah, but the triumph of one’s enemies is always an ugly business.
January 12, 1828.
Lord Lansdowne dined alone with us. I never saw him in such good spirits or more agreeable. So extremely communicative, and so delighted to have done with office. He says the whole thing is an intrigue between Mr. Herries and Sir William Knighton.[281] The instances he gave of Sir W. Knighton’s influence over the King are quite wonderful. Lord Lansdowne does not believe, as all the rest of the Whigs do, that Lord Goderich has betrayed them. He says that at present they are all Ministers still, and that the King had signified to them his wishes that they might still continue so—which, as he puts it all into the hand of the Duke of Wellington, means nothing; and that they are to wait till the Duke makes them some proposition they cannot accede to, and then to go out.