Clio is one of the most glorious of the Muses; but, as everyone knows,
she (like her sister Melpomene) suffers from a sad defect: she is apt to
be pompous. With her buskins, her robes, and her airs of importance she
is at times, indeed, almost intolerable. But fortunately the Fates have
provided a corrective. They have decreed that in her stately advances
she should be accompanied by certain apish, impish creatures, who run
round her tittering, pulling long noses, threatening to trip the good
lady up, and even sometimes whisking to one side the corner of her
drapery, and revealing her undergarments in a most indecorous manner.
They are the diarists and letter-writers, the gossips and journalists of
the past, the Pepyses and Horace Walpoles and Saint-Simons, whose
function it is to reveal to us the littleness underlying great events
and to remind us that history itself was once real life. Among them is
Mr. Creevey. The Fates decided that Mr. Creevey should accompany Clio,
with appropriate gestures, during that part of her progress which is
measured by the thirty years preceding the accession of Victoria; and
the little wretch did his job very well.
It might almost be said that Thomas Creevey was 'born about three of
the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round
belly.' At any rate, we know nothing of his youth, save that he was
educated at Cambridge, and he presents himself to us in the early years
of the nineteenth century as a middle-aged man, with a character and a
habit of mind already fixed and an established position in the world. In
1803 we find him what he was to be for the rest of his life--a member of
Parliament, a familiar figure in high society, an insatiable gossip
with a rattling tongue. That he should have reached and held the place
he did is a proof of his talents, for he was a very poor man; for the
greater part of his life his income was less than £200 a year. But those
were the days of patrons and jobs, pocket-boroughs and sinecures; they
were the days, too, of vigorous, bold living, torrential talk, and
splendid hospitality; and it was only natural that Mr. Creevey,
penniless and immensely entertaining, should have been put into
Parliament by a Duke, and welcomed in every great Whig House in the
country with open arms. It was only natural that, spending his whole
political life as an advanced Whig, bent upon the destruction of abuses,
he should have begun that life as a member for a pocket-borough and
ended it as the holder of a sinecure. For a time his poverty was
relieved by his marriage with a widow who had means of her own; but Mrs.
Creevey died, her money went to her daughters by her previous husband,
and Mr. Creevey reverted to a possessionless existence--without a house,
without servants, without property of any sort--wandering from country
mansion to country mansion, from dinner-party to dinner-party, until at
last in his old age, on the triumph of the Whigs, he was rewarded with a
pleasant little post which brought him in about £600 a year. Apart from
these small ups and downs of fortune, Mr. Creevey's life was
static--static spiritually, that is to say; for physically he was always
on the move. His adventures were those of an observer, not of an actor;
but he was an observer so very near the centre of things that he was by
no means dispassionate; the rush of great events would whirl him round
into the vortex, like a leaf in an eddy of wind; he would rave, he would
gesticulate, with the fury of a complete partisan; and then, when the
wind dropped, he would be found, like the leaf, very much where he was
before. Luckily, too, he was not merely an agitated observer, but an
observer who delighted in passing on his agitations, first with his
tongue, and then--for so the Fates had decided--with his pen. He wrote
easily, spicily, and persistently; he had a favourite stepdaughter,
with whom he corresponded for years; and so it happens that we have
preserved to us, side by side with the majestic march of Clio (who, of
course, paid not the slightest attention to him), Mr. Creevey's
exhilarating _pas de chat_.
Certainly he was not over-given to the praise of famous men. There are
no great names in his vocabulary--only nicknames: George III. is 'Old
Nobs,' the Regent 'Prinney,' Wellington 'the Beau,' Lord John Russell
'Pie and Thimble,' Brougham, with whom he was on friendly terms, is
sometimes 'Bruffam,' sometimes 'Beelzebub,' and sometimes 'Old
Wickedshifts'; and Lord Durham, who once remarked that one could 'jog
along on £40,000 a year,' is 'King Jog.' The latter was one of the great
Whig potentates, and it was characteristic of Creevey that his
scurrility should have been poured out with a special gusto over his
own leaders. The Tories were villains, of course--Canning was all
perfidy and 'infinite meanness,' Huskisson a mass of 'intellectual
confusion and mental dirt,' Castlereagh ... But all that was obvious and
hardly worth mentioning; what was really too exacerbating to be borne
was the folly and vileness of the Whigs. 'King Jog,' the 'Bogey,'
'Mother Cole,' and the rest of them--they were either knaves or
imbeciles. Lord Grey was an exception; but then Lord Grey, besides
passing the Reform Bill, presented Mr. Creevey with the Treasurership of
the Ordnance, and in fact was altogether a most worthy man.
Another exception was the Duke of Wellington, whom, somehow or other, it
was impossible not to admire. Creevey, throughout his life, had a trick
of being 'in at the death' on every important occasion; in the House, at
Brooks's, at the Pavilion, he invariably popped up at the critical
moment; and so one is not surprised to find him at Brussels during
Waterloo. More than that, he was the first English civilian to see the
Duke after the battle, and his report of the conversation is admirable;
one can almost hear the 'It has been a damned serious business. Blücher
and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing--the
nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,' and the 'By God! I don't
think it would have done if I had not been there.' On this occasion the
Beau spoke, as was fitting, 'with the greatest gravity all the time, and
without the least approach to anything like triumph or joy.' But at
other times he was jocular, especially when 'Prinney' was the subject.
'By God! you never saw such a figure in your life as he is. Then he
speaks and swears so like old Falstaff, that damn me if I was not
ashamed to walk into the room with him.'
When, a few years later, the trial of Queen Caroline came on, it was
inevitable that Creevey should be there. He had an excellent seat in the
front row, and his descriptions of 'Mrs. P.,' as he preferred to call
her Majesty, are characteristic:
Two folding doors within a few feet of me were suddenly thrown
open, and in entered her Majesty. To describe to you her appearance
and manner is far beyond my powers. I had been taught to believe
she was as much improved in looks as in dignity of manners; it is
therefore with much pain I am obliged to observe that the nearest
resemblance I can recollect to this much injured Princess is a toy
which you used to call Fanny Royds (a Dutch doll). There is another
toy of a rabbit or a cat, whose tail you squeeze under its body,
and then out it jumps in half a minute off the ground into the air.
The first of these toys you must suppose to represent the person of
the Queen; the latter the manner by which she popped all at once
into the House, made a _duck_ at the throne, another to the Peers,
and a concluding jump into the chair which was placed for her. Her
dress was black figured gauze, with a good deal of trimming, lace,
&c., her sleeves white, and perfectly episcopal; a handsome white
veil, so thick as to make it very difficult to me, who was as near
to her as anyone, to see her face; such a back for variety and
inequality of ground as you never beheld; with a few straggling
ringlets on her neck, which I flatter myself from their appearance
were not her Majesty's own property.
Mr. Creevey, it is obvious, was not the man to be abashed by the
presence of Royalty.
But such public episodes were necessarily rare, and the main stream of
his life flowed rapidly, gaily, and unobtrusively through the fat
pastures of high society. Everywhere and always he enjoyed himself
extremely, but his spirits and his happiness were at their highest
during his long summer sojourns at those splendid country houses whose
hospitality he chronicles with indefatigable _verve_. 'This house,' he
says at Raby, 'is itself _by far_ the most magnificent and unique in
several ways that I have ever seen.... As long as I have heard of
anything, I have heard of being driven into the hall of this house in
one's carriage, and being set down by the fire. You can have no idea of
the magnificent perfection with which this is accomplished.' At Knowsley
'the new dining-room is opened; it is 53 feet by 37, and such a height
that it destroys the effect of all the other apartments.... There are
two fireplaces; and the day we dined there, there were 36 wax candles
over the table, 14 on it, and ten great lamps on tall pedestals about
the room.' At Thorp Perrow 'all the living rooms are on the ground
floor, one a very handsome one about 50 feet long, with a great bow
furnished with rose-coloured satin, and the whole furniture of which
cost £4000.' At Goodwood the rooms were done up in 'brightest yellow
satin,' and at Holkham the walls were covered with Genoa velvet, and
there was gilding worth a fortune on 'the roofs of all the rooms and the
doors.' The fare was as sumptuous as the furniture. Life passed amid a
succession of juicy chops, gigantic sirloins, plump fowls, pheasants
stuffed with pâté de foie gras, gorgeous Madeiras, ancient Ports. Wine
had a double advantage: it made you drunk; it also made you sober: it
was its own cure. On one occasion, when Sheridan, after days of riotous
living, showed signs of exhaustion, Mr. and Mrs. Creevey pressed upon
him 'five or six glasses of light French wine' with excellent effect.
Then, at midnight, when the talk began to flag and the spirits grew a
little weary, what could be more rejuvenating than to ring the bell for
a broiled bone? And one never rang in vain--except, to be sure, at King
Jog's. There, while the host was guzzling, the guests starved. This was
too much for Mr. Creevey, who, finding he could get nothing for
breakfast, while King Jog was 'eating his own fish as comfortably as
could be,' fairly lost his temper.
My blood beginning to boil, I said: 'Lambton, I wish you could tell
me what quarter I am to apply to for some fish.' To which he
replied in the most impertinent manner: 'The servant, I suppose.' I
turned to Mills and said pretty loud: 'Now, if it was not for the
fuss and jaw of the thing, I would leave the room and the house
this instant'; and dwelt on the damned outrage. Mills said: 'He
hears every word you say': to which I said: 'I hope he does.' It
was a regular scene.
A few days later, however, Mr. Creevey was consoled by finding himself
in a very different establishment, where 'everything is of a
piece--excellent and plentiful dinners, a fat service of plate, a fat
butler, a table with a barrel of oysters and a hot pheasant, &c.,
wheeled into the drawing-room every night at half-past ten.'
It is difficult to remember that this was the England of the Six Acts,
of Peterloo, and of the Industrial Revolution. Mr. Creevey, indeed,
could hardly be expected to remember it, for he was utterly unconscious
of the existence--of the possibility--of any mode of living other than
his own. For him, dining-rooms 50 feet long, bottles of Madeira, broiled
bones, and the brightest yellow satin were as necessary and obvious a
part of the constitution of the universe as the light of the sun and
the law of gravity. Only once in his life was he seriously ruffled; only
once did a public question present itself to him as something alarming,
something portentous, something more than a personal affair. The
occasion is significant. On March 16, 1825, he writes:
I have come to the conclusion that our Ferguson is _insane._ He
quite foamed at the mouth with rage in our Railway Committee in
support of this infernal nuisance--the loco-motive Monster,
carrying _eighty tons_ of goods, and navigated by a tail of smoke
and sulphur, coming thro' every man's grounds between Manchester
and Liverpool.
His perturbation grew. He attended the committee assiduously, but in
spite of his efforts it seemed that the railway Bill would pass. The
loco-motive was more than a joke. He sat every day from 12 to 4; he led
the opposition with long speeches. 'This railway,' he exclaims on May
31, 'is the devil's own.' Next day, he is in triumph: he had killed the
Monster.
Well--this devil of a railway is strangled at last.... To-day we
had a clear majority in committee in our favour, and the promoters
of the Bill withdrew it, and took their leave of us.
With a sigh of relief he whisked off to Ascot, for the festivities of
which he was delighted to note that 'Prinney' had prepared 'by having 12
oz. of blood taken from him by cupping.'
Old age hardly troubled Mr. Creevey. He grew a trifle deaf, and he
discovered that it was possible to wear woollen stockings under his silk
ones; but his activity, his high spirits, his popularity, only seemed to
increase. At the end of a party ladies would crowd round him. 'Oh, Mr.
Creevey, how agreeable you have been!' 'Oh, thank you, Mr. Creevey! how
useful you have been!' 'Dear Mr. Creevey, I laughed out loud last night
in bed at one of your stories.' One would like to add (rather late in
the day, perhaps) one's own praises. One feels almost affectionate; a
certain sincerity, a certain immediacy in his response to stimuli, are
endearing qualities; one quite understands that it was natural, on the
pretext of changing house, to send him a dozen of wine. Above all, one
wants him to go on. Why should he stop? Why should he not continue
indefinitely telling us about 'Old Salisbury' and 'Old Madagascar'? But
it could not be.
Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, Madame;
Las! Le temps non, mais nous, nous en allons.
It was fitting that, after fulfilling his seventy years, he should catch
a glimpse of 'little Vic' as Queen of England, laughing, eating, and
showing her gums too much at the Pavilion. But that was enough: the
piece was over; the curtain had gone down; and on the new stage that was
preparing for very different characters, and with a very different style
of decoration, there would be no place for Mr. Creevey.
1919.