LA THE CREEVEY PAPERS AST words linger longest. Critics who reserve their fault-finding to the end often convey a worse impression than they intended. When a book is so entertaining as the Creevey Papers" it is probably best to say the worst of it at once, especially if that worst is comparatively unimportant. 66 In his self-effacement and his happy mixture of boldness with discretion, Sir Herbert Maxwell has done his work admirably. He has supplied connecting links which are terse yet adequate; he has wisely confined his notes within the narrowest possible compass. But there are a few inaccuracies which may with advantage be corrected in future editions. Dealing first with the text, there are three points in which corrections may be suggested. Surely Creevey did not write the "indignant mercenary Canning" (vol. i., p. 9), for the point of the two epithets demands that the first should be "indigent.” Creevey twice refers to the poems of "Sir Thomas Hanbury Williams" (vol. ii., pp. 38, 39), and the mistake recurs in the index. The book referred to is, of course, the three-volume edition of the works of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, published in 1822. Lastly, Sir Herbert Maxwell attributes the letter printed on page 294 of volume i. to Lord Kinnaird. He adds a query. But there can be no doubt that the letter is by Lord Lauderdale, who, as Joseph Jekyll tells us ("Letters," p. 75), brought with him to England the manuscript of Byron's "Don Juan." Passing to the notes, it must be said that, brief as they are, they abound in repetitions. Five times, for example, in the course of fifty pages the Duke of Wellington's nickname of "The Beau" is explained. It is also noted four times over that Mr. Coke of Holkham was created Earl of Leicester. The statement (vol. i., p. 254, note) that Lady Caroline Lamb was separated from her husband in 1813, destroys one of the prettiest stories connected with the career of that fascinating lady. The separation did not take place till 1825. Lieutenant Clifford (vol. i., p. 266, note), whom Sir Herbert cannot identify, is undoubtedly Admiral Sir Augustus Clifford, Bart. (17881877), whom the Duke of Devonshire appointed Usher of the Black Rod in 1832. In "The Two Duchesses" will be found letters from the second Duchess of Devonshire, formerly Lady Elizabeth Foster, expressing her anxiety for the safety of the boy, who was then serving as a midshipman in Nelson's fleet. A note (vol. i., p. 267) appended to a passage in Lady Holland's letter of September 1817, which attributes a pamphlet on the Princess of Wales to a "skillful" pen on the borders of the Lake of Geneva, is probably wrong. Sir Herbert explains this as meaning Byron. But the poet's brief stay at Geneva had ended twelve months before, and it may be suggested, with greater probability, that the allusion is to John Cam Hobhouse. The nickname of "Madagascar," applied to Lady Holland, is not Creevey's (vol. ii., p. 15, note); it is given her by Lady Caroline Lamb in "Glenarvon." Sir Herbert's identification of Sharpe (vol. ii., p. 275, note) with Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe is certainly wrong. Creevey speaks of him in the same letter as "the Hatter," and the reference undoubtedly is to Richard Sharp, generally known as "Conversation Sharp," who was a wealthy hat-manufacturer. He was a man of such a swarthy complexion that some wag suggested his darkness might be felt. Other less important inaccuracies might be noted; but they amount to little more than slips of the pen. It is pleasanter to turn to the book itself, in which every class of readers may be sure of finding a store of amusement. Thomas Creevey was born in 1768. He died in 1838. For thirty years, from 1802 onwards, he was a member of Parliament, zealously assailing Tory jobs, of which, if perpetrated by his friends, he would have been the sturdy champion. For scarcely more than twice as many months he held office, or enjoyed a sinecure. After his death his existence was soon forgotten. To the present generation he was so completely unknown that his name finds no place in the "Dictionary of National Biography." Politically, Creevey lived in times when Nought's permanent about the human race Except the Whigs not getting into place. He joined the wrong side, and was too honest, or too deeply committed, to change it. The world has gained. Had Creevey become an official drudge he might not have written these entertaining papers. Nor is there any indication that his exclusion from office deprived the country of a valuable servant. From the first to the last page of these two volumes he rarely utters a dispassionate or statesmanlike criticism of public men or public affairs. As a chronicler of political and social life in the days of George IV., as Prince of Wales, as Regent, and as King, Creevey is the Rowlandson of pen "What with your and ink. election songs and your rompings, what with your carousings with the men and your bamboozlings with the women, you are a most complete hand indeed." So, in 1795, wrote a friend of his youth to the bachelor Creevey, then reading law at Gray's Inn. To the end he lived the same life, with an amazing flow of spirits, an unfailing zest, and an unabated vigour of constitution, which enabled him, at sixty, to keep a gathering of roystering young Irishmen in a roar till cockcrow in the morning at an inn in Dublin. The politics were those of Pitt and Fox, of Canning and Brougham, of the Napoleonic wars and the subsequent crisis of Currency, Corn, Catholics, and Constitution. The carousings were those of Sheridan. The |