The Creevey Papers
Lady Holland to Eleanor Creevey, [May?] 1816
“Holland House, Tuesday.
“I take the opportunity of Lady Lansdowne’s departure to send you a small parcel of
rubbish for your friend Gina, and, what is not rubbish, some verses by Mr. Rogers to add to his poems. . . . The town has been much
occupied by a very strange affair which led to a duel between Ld. Buckingham and Sir Thos. Hardy. It is a mysterious business, but I sincerely
hope quite over for ever. It was the charge of Ld. B.
being the author of some very scandalous, offensive anonymous letters to, and
about, Ly. Hardy. You would naturally
suppose that the character of a gentleman, which Ld. B.
has never forfeited would have been a sufficient guard to have repelled such a
charge; but the Lady was angry. There are various conjectures about the writer
of these letters; but, except just the angry parties, the world generally do
justice to Lord B., from the impossibility of a man of
character and in his station of life being capable of such an abominable
proceeding. It is not the mode of revenge which a man takes, however he may
have been jilted, or believed himself as so. But all these stories you will
have heard from the Tierneys, who meant
to spend some days at Bruxelles. . . . We are going to make a northern
excursion . . . we shall make Lord Grey a
visit of a week at Howick, and if Lord
Lauderdale should not be philandering in
these parts, stop at Dunbar. . . .”
Charles Grey, second earl Grey (1764-1845)
Whig statesman and lover of the Duchess of Devonshire; the second son of the first earl
(d. 1807), he was prime minister (1831-34).
Lady Anne Louisa Emily Hardy [née Berkeley] (1782 c.-1877)
The daughter of Admiral Sir George Cranfield Berkeley and wife of Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas
Hardy, baronet, whom she married in 1807. In 1840 she married Charles Rose Ellis, Lord
Seaford
Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, baronet (1769-1839)
Admiral Nelson's flag-captain, created baronet in 1806; he was commander on the South
American Station, 1819-24, and first sea lord, 1830.
James Maitland, eighth earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839)
Scottish peer allied with Charles James Fox; he was author of
An
Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth, and into the Means and causes of
its Increase (1804) and other works on political economy.
Samuel Rogers (1763-1855)
English poet, banker, and aesthete, author of the ever-popular
Pleasures of Memory (1792),
Columbus (1810),
Jaqueline (1814), and
Italy (1822-28).
George Tierney (1761-1830)
Whig MP and opposition leader whose political pragmatism made him suspect in the eyes of
his party; he fought a bloodless duel with Pitt in 1798. He is the “Friend of Humanity” in
Canning and Frere's “The Needy Knife-Grinder.”
