Another exception was the Duke of Wellington, whom, somehow or other, it was impossible not to admire.  Creevey, throughout his life, had a trick of being ‘in at the death’ on every important occasion; in the House, at Brooks’s, at the Pavilion, he invariably popped up at the critical moment; and so one is not surprised to find him at Brussels during Waterloo.  More than that, he was the first English civilian to see the Duke after the battle, and his report of the conversation is admirable; one can almost hear the ’It has been a damned serious business.  Bluecher and I have lost 30,000 men.  It has been a damned nice thing—­the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,’ and the ’By God!  I don’t think it would have done if I had not been there.’  On this occasion the Beau spoke, as was fitting, ’with the greatest gravity all the time, and without the least approach to anything like triumph or joy.’  But at other times he was jocular, especially when ‘Prinney’ was the subject.  ’By God! you never saw such a figure in your life as he is.  Then he speaks and swears so like old Falstaff, that damn me if I was not ashamed to walk into the room with him.’

When, a few years later, the trial of Queen Caroline came on, it was inevitable that Creevey should be there.  He had an excellent seat in the front row, and his descriptions of ‘Mrs. P.,’ as he preferred to call her Majesty, are characteristic: 

Two folding doors within a few feet of me were suddenly thrown open, and in entered her Majesty.  To describe to you her appearance and manner is far beyond my powers.  I had been taught to believe she was as much improved in looks as in dignity of manners; it is therefore with much pain I am obliged to observe that the nearest resemblance I can recollect to this much injured Princess is a toy which you used to call Fanny Royds (a Dutch doll).  There is another toy of a rabbit or a cat, whose tail you squeeze under its body, and then out it jumps in half a minute off the ground into the air.  The first of these toys you must suppose to represent the person of the Queen; the latter the manner by which she popped all at once into the House, made a duck at the throne, another to the Peers, and a concluding jump into the chair which was placed for her.  Her dress was black figured gauze, with a good deal of trimming, lace, &c., her sleeves white, and perfectly episcopal; a handsome white veil, so thick as to make it very difficult to me, who was as near to her as anyone, to see her face; such a back for variety and inequality of ground as you never beheld; with a few straggling ringlets on her neck, which I flatter myself from their appearance were not her Majesty’s own property.

Mr. Creevey, it is obvious, was not the man to be abashed by the presence of Royalty.