The Creevey Papers
Eleanor Creevey to Elizabeth Ord, 25 August 1806
“25th August.
“. . . Mr.
Creevey dined yesterday at Lord
Cowper’s. It was a grand dinner after the christening of
his son, to whom the Prince stood godfather.
The ceremony
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was going on in one drawing-room when
Mr. Creevey arrived. After it was over, the Prince, on
coming into the room where the rest of the company were assembled, said:
‘Ho, Creevey! you there,’ and
sprang across the room and shook hands with him. When he sat opposite to him at
dinner he hardly spoke to anyone else, beginning directly
with—‘Well, tell me now, Creevey, about
Mrs. Creevey and the girls, and
when they come to Brighton;’ and on hearing ‘probably in
October,’ he said—‘Oh delightful! we shall be so
comfortable,’ and then went over the old stories . . . till, as
Mr. C. says, the company did not know very well what
to make of it. They all adjourned to Melbourne House to supper. At 2
o’clock in the morning, that terrible Sheridan seduced Mr. Creevey into Brookes,
where they stayed till 4, when Sherry affectionately came
home with him, and upstairs to see me. They were both so very merry, and so
much pleased with each other’s jokes, that, though they could not repeat
them to me very distinctly, I was too much amused to scold them as they
deserved.”
Eleanor Creevey [née Branding] (d. 1818)
The daughter of Charles Branding (1733-1802); in 1779 she married William Ord (d. 1789)
and in 1802, the politician and diarist Thomas Creevey.
Thomas Creevey (1768-1838)
Whig politician aligned with Charles James Fox and Henry Brougham; he was MP for Thetford
(1802-06, 1807-18) Appleby (1820-26) and Downton (1831-32). He was convicted of libel in
1813.
Maria Anne Fitzherbert [née Smythe] (1756-1837)
The consort of the Prince of Wales whom she married in 1785 as her third husband; the
marriage was regarded as illegitimate since she was a Catholic.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
Anglo-Irish playwright, author of
The School for Scandal (1777),
Whig MP and ally of Charles James Fox (1780-1812).
