The Greville Memoirs, Part 2 (of 3), Volume 2 (of 3): A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852Greville, Charles
History
The Greville Memoirs, Part 2 (of 3), Volume 2 (of 3): A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852
Greville, Charles
Great Britain -- History -- Victoria, 1837-1901
Death has been busy here of late, sweeping away men of very different
estimation, and leaving behind them very unequal regrets. A few days
ago died Archdeacon Singleton, a man who will be more remembered as
the correspondent of Sydney Smith in his inimitable letters on Church
Reform than for any acts of his own; but he was nevertheless a very
excellent and valuable man. He was the intimate friend and counsellor
of the Duke of Northumberland; and if that dullest of all bores was
enabled to get through the Irish Lieutenancy with credit, it was
because Singleton's sense informed him, and directed every act of his
official career.
On Sunday Lord Munster[38] shot himself. He had been in low spirits
for some time, and was tainted with the hereditary malady. He was a
man not without talent, but wrongheaded, and having had the folly to
quarrel with his father, and estrange himself from Court during the
greater part of his reign, he fell into comparative obscurity and real
poverty, and there can be no doubt that the disappointment of the
expectations he once formed, together with the domestic unhappiness of
a dawdling, ill-conditioned, vexatious wife, preyed upon his mind, and
led to this act. The horror of the deed excited a momentary interest,
but he will be soon forgotten.
Last night died very suddenly Colonel Armstrong, a man who will leave
many social regrets behind him. He was formerly A.D.C. to the Duke of
York, and equally a favourite of his and of the Duchess. He had very
little general knowledge, and had never received much education, but
he was very quick and intelligent, with a strong turn for humour and
drollery, and perfectly good-humoured, inoffensive, and well-bred.
Nobody ever heard him say a spiteful or ill-natured thing, and he was
always lively and agreeable without ever being obtrusive in society.
He was an excellent specimen of a man of the world, who lived upon its
passing events without mixing himself up in its malignities and its
quarrels, and who was universally respected and esteemed. The regrets
of the world are of a very light and transitory nature, but Armstrong
leaves a void in the society which he frequented, and this is all
the sensation which anybody without public importance can expect to
produce.
[Footnote 38: [George Fitzclarence, the eldest of the illegitimate
sons of King William IV., was raised to the Peerage soon after
his father's accession to the throne, with the title of Earl of
Munster. He was born January 22, 1794, and married a daughter of
the Earl of Egremont in 1819. He died by his own hand March 20,
1842.]]
[Sidenote: DEATH OF COLONEL ARMSTRONG.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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