The Diaries Of Charles Greville

Product Description

Charles Greville (1794-1865) made his first occasional diary entries in 1814, but the diary only became a regular habit in the mid-1820s, continuing with occasional breaks, about which he is self-reproachful, through the reigns of George IV, William IV & Victoria. Finally, in 1860, after shaking his head over the worrying triumphs of Garibaldi, he closed it, once & for all. The grandson of a duke, Greville looked with a level & scornful eye upon royalty. George was 'the most worthless dog that ever lived'; William 'the silliest old gentleman in his own dominions, but what can be expected of a man with a head like a pineapple?' The diaries roused Queen Victoria
- 'an odd woman'
- from the lethargy of her widowhood. She spoke of Greville's 'indiscretion, indelicacy, ingratitude toward friends, betrayal of confidence & shameful disloyalty'. Greville's circle included Talleyr&, Wellington, Macaulay, Sydney Smith, Princess Lieven, Lord Grey, Melbourne, Guizot & Disraeli, as well as 'jockeys, bookmakers & blackguards'. As Clerk of the Privy Council, Greville works for a compromise on the Reform Bill. He witnesses Covent Garden theatre burning down. His closest friend, Lord De Ros, is caught cardsharping. Visiting Balmoral, he finds Albert & Victoria living 'not merely like small gentlefolks, but like very small gentlefolks'. When cholera comes, he writes laconically of ' Mrs Smith, young & beautiful, taken ill while dressing for Church & dead by nightfall.' Not a chatterbox, Charles Greville brilliantly assembles everyone else's chatter. This is the intelligent voice of another age, an uneasy aristocrat catching history on the turn & looking dubiously at the future.