CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY 



than ever, for a Member of Parliament is a great 

 man, though there appear no reasons why the 

 suffrages of Pontefract should place him in different 

 social relations towards us than those in which we 

 mutually stood before." 



But the history of Greville's references to Gully 

 is a curious one. The earlier editions of the 

 famous memoirs contain several very offensive 

 reflections upon Gully and his chequered career. 

 In the edition of 1894 they wholly disappear. 

 The following explanation is offered. It is of 

 unimpeachable authority. " I knew Harry Hill, 

 the Commissioner, very well. He banked with 

 me at Charing Cross. One day I was going down 

 towards Whitehall when I met him and a tall 

 young man whom he introduced to me as young 

 Gully. He said, ' We have just been to see Mr. 

 Reeve ^ at the Council Office and have asked him 

 to leave out things he had said in his earlier editions. 

 He said he would do so, and he was very civil 

 about it, and it is just as well he was, for young 



' Mr. Henry Reeve in 1837 was appointed by Lord Lansdowne 

 Clerk of Appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 

 and was promoted to the Registrarship in 1843. In 1855 he 

 became Editor of the Edinburgh Review. Ten years later Greville 

 placed in his hands the important deposit of his memoirs. These 

 were most conscientiously edited by Reeve, whose cosmopolitan 

 training and broad political sympatliies eminently qualified him 

 for the task. The publication of the memoirs provoked the wrath 

 and fury of Queen Victoria. She was " horrified and indignant " 

 at Greville's " indiscretion." Her anger was. equally directed 

 against Reeve, and her deep displeasure with the poor Editor was 

 conveyed to him by Sir Arthur Helps. Reeve adroitly defended 

 himself, but to no purpose ; and when he left the public service 

 the customary knighthood was denied him. Disraeli on Greville 

 in a letter to Lady Bradford is most entertaining [Lije of Disraeli, 

 vol. v. pp. 348-51)- 



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