“The message I sent you by C. Grey three weeks ago must have prepared you for this dreadful calamity which has befallen us, though nothing could reconcile you to it. Indeed one feels it more, if possible, as a private than a publick loss. . . . It seems as if the Opposition lay under a curse at this time—not merely politically, but physically. Romilly last winter was bled out of a violent inflammation of the lungs, and I think him damaged by it, next winter will show whether permanently or not, but at 58 such things are not safe, and he continues to work as hard as ever.* Ossulstone has been most dangerously ill. . . . The anxiety and labour Grey has lately had make one fear a severe attack of his spasms—indeed he had one a few nights ago, having been on Monday at Sir W. Ponsonby’s funeral, and having to set off for Whitbread’s at 4 the next morning. The attack was in the night, and he went notwithstanding.
“I hardly can venture to mention myself after these cases, but I have been very ill for 4 or 5 months, hardly able to go through common business, and now forced to give up the circuit. . . . I can only give you a notion how much I am altered by saying that I have not made such an exertion in writing for three months as this letter is, and that I already ache all over with it. . . . To continue my catalogue, Lord Thanet has been alarmingly ill, tho’ now somewhat better; and such dismal accounts of the Hollands are daily arriving that one of my chief reasons for writing to you now is to ask you how the poor boy is. . . . In this state of affairs and of my own health, when there seems nothing to be done, and when, if there were, I am not the man now to do it, you will marvel at my coming into Parlt., which I have been overpersuaded to do, and which will have happened almost as soon as you receive this.† The usual and unchangeable friendship
* He committed suicide in 1818. † Brougham remained out of Parliament after his defeat at Liverpool in 1812, until returned for Winchelsea, a borough of Lord Darlington’s, in 1816. |
| 244 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch XI. |
