1812

After a delay of near twelve months we quitted London on Tuesday the 31st of March, 1812, in order to proceed on Mr Liston's embassy to Constantinople. Long as we had had to prepare yet, that spirit of procrastination which so often prevails rendered the last few weeks of our stay in the metropolis as hurried and bustling as had been the first fortnight after our arrival, a year before, when we expected our departure to take place every day.

It was late in the evening when we set out for Portsmouth in a coach and four, our servants following in a post-chaise, and we wanted only the parrot, the monkey and the cold meat, to render it the cortege of Sir Francis Wronghead's family.

My parting from my friends in London, though less afflicting than that of the preceding year in Scotland, yet left that damp upon my spirits naturally resulting from the prospect of a long voyage, a distant clime and that uncertain period which, if lengthened, embitters your return by the various and melancholy changes which time has produced amongst your friends and connections.

The tediousness of our voyage, it is true, was considerably done away in prospect from the secretary of state's permission that Mr Liston should touch Cádiz, Gibraltar, Sicily, and Malta on his way to the archipelago, in order to carry with him, to that distant country, that latest and most important information.

At Portsmouth we found Captain Warren of the Argo, a frigate of forty-four guns, destined to convey us to the Levant.

We were immediately joined by our whole suite, which consisted of Mr Bartholomew Frere, Secretary of Embassy; Mr Terrick Hamilton, Turkish Secretary; Mr Turner from the Foreign Office; and Robert Elliott, the son of an old friend of mine, named after Mr Liston, together with Sir Robert Wilson, an officer of reputation attached to the Embassy, and intended to be sent on to the armies on the Danube, should Mr Liston find it expedient to take measures to bring about a peace betwixt the Turks and Russians.