Diplomacy, Satire and the Victorians told him that he could draw on him for the money. But ‘above all things,’ he wrote, ‘keep up your correspondence with me which both instructs and entertains.’120 Shortly after this, Bulwer wrote again to Grenville-Murray: My dear Sir, I don’t know how to thank you enough for the food which you give to my stomach and mind – nor do I flatter myself that a cypher which I shall shortly be able to send you will be adequate repayment. I ask myself where I shall find anything better to send you from this place but who answers ‘where?’ And so I wait until a more agreeable reply will give me the satisfaction of paying my debt.121
Whether this letter was itself the trigger or not, the juncture was right for a move on Sir Henry, and it was Grenville-Murray’s resourceful wife, Clara – who had clearly taken over the role of his London agent – who took the initiative. In a letter to the ambassador, she began by reminding Bulwer that, when they had met at Constantinople, he had asked what he could do for her husband. Even then, she continued, she had cherished the notion of his appointment as his secretary of embassy in the Ottoman capital – but had at the time held her tongue, ‘from motives of delicacy.’ Now, however, she had heard that the post was likely to fall vacant owing to the promotion of the incumbent, Charles Alison, and hoped that the ambassador would support the promotion of her husband in his place.122 This was on the face of it a shrewd enough move because Grenville-Murray had long ago argued publicly that a secretary of embassy should be a hard-working deputy to an ambassador, and had particularly singled out the Constantinople embassy in this respect. But alas! In early April, Alison was duly moved on, but the Foreign Office, perhaps having got wind of the closeness between Bulwer and Grenville-Murray and concluding that anyone would be preferable to the latter, swiftly filled the vacancy with someone else. This was John Savile-Lumley, who – despite being vindictive, narrow-minded and uncompromising – at least had already been secretary of legation successively at Washington, Madrid and St. Petersburg.123 It is improbable that this appointment had the blessing of Bulwer himself, for within months the ambassador had spectacularly fallen out with his new secretary of embassy and succeeded in
120
NRO, Bulwer to G-M, 12 December 1859, BUL 1/270/1-30. NRO, Bulwer to G-M, 17 February 1860, BUL 1/270/1-30. 122 NRO, Clara G-M (22 Brook Street) to Bulwer, 9 March 1860, BUL 1/268/1-6. 123 Jones, The British Diplomatic Service, 1815-1914, p. 89. 121
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