The Creevey Papers
Henry Grey Bennet to Thomas Creevey, July 1815
“Whitehall, July, 1815.
“. . . Nothing could be more droll than the
discomfiture of our politicians at Brooks’s. The night the news of the
battle of Waterloo arrived, Sir Rt.
Wilson and Grey demonstrated
satisfactorily to a crowded audience that Boney had 200,000 men across Sambre, and that he must then be
at Brussels. Wilson read a letter announcing that the
English were defiling out of the town by the Antwerp gate; when the shouts in
the street drew us to the window, and we saw the ![]()
| 1815-16.] | DEATH OF WHITBREAD. | 241 |
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chaise and the Eagles. To be sure, we are good
people, but sorry prophets! The only consolation I have is in peace, and that
we shall have, and have time, too, to look about us, and amend our system at
home, and damage royalty, and badger Prinny.
I will venture to say he will long again for war abroad, as we will give him
enough of it at home in the H. of Commons, so I beg you will be preparing for
battle in the ensuing campaign. Peace we are hourly expecting. The [illegible] want to stop the French frontier, [illegible] to pillage Paris, and the ladies of the
fashionable world to massacre its inhabitants. I assure you we are very bloody
in this town, and people talk of making great examples, as if the French had
not the right to have, independent of us, what government they liked best.
“You will be sorry to hear that
Sam [Whitbread]
looks and is very ill. He has lost all spirits, and cannot speak. I hear he
vexes himself to death about Drury Lane. I am told a bill is filed against him
by the [illegible] to the tune of £25,000. . . . I hope
it is Drury Lane and not bad health that destroys his spirits.”
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).
Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).
Samuel Whitbread (1764-1815)
The son of the brewer Samuel Whitbread (1720-96); he was a Whig MP for Bedford, involved
with the reorganization of Drury Lane after the fire of 1809; its financial difficulties
led him to suicide.
Sir Robert Thomas Wilson (1777-1849)
Soldier, author, radical Whig MP for Southwark (1818-31), and diplomat; he wrote
History of the British Expedition to Egypt (1802) and was governor
of Gibraltar (1842).
