Lord Durham had overestimated the improvement in his
health and, as soon as the year 1837 began, he knew that he
could not stay in Russia for much longer. On 26 January, he
wrote:

'My mission is nearly over. I have done all the good that in
present circumstances can be affected and my health has
been so seriously injured by this atrocious climate that my
physician will not allow me any longer to delay seeking a
change.'

In fact his doctors had told him plainly that they would not
be responsible for his life unless he would leave Russia as soon
as he could. When the late spring made it easier for him to get
about, he began to wind up his affairs and prepared to leave
in June. Palmerston wrote sympathetically, approving of his
return, and told him that the King, in recognition of his work,
had been pleased to bestow on him the Grand Cross of the
Order of the Bath. On 10 June, the Emperor of Russia honoured
him with the cross of the Order of St. Andrew. William IV was
very near to his death and, in his last hours, seems to have
realized how harshly he had judged Lord Durham and to want to
make amends to him. Lord Erroll wrote to tell him 'how kindly
His Majesty spoke of you a very short time before his death.

That Grand Cross was the last order that William was to
bestow. When, after a pathetic request to his doctors to 'patch
him up for a few days longer' so that he might see another
Waterloo anniversary, he died, Lord Durham was already on
his way home. Next month he received his Cross from the
hands of the new Queen, at her first investiture.

In those early days Lord Durham had every reason to expect
that the Queen would look kindly on him. He had been one of
the few who had persistently shown kindness to her when she
was an obscure Princess; one of the still fewer who had treated
her mother with courtesy and kindness, when the King insulted
her on every possible public occasion and grudged her the
meanest necessities of life in the Palace of Kensington which
he had given her. The Princess Victoria had grown up with
pleasant memories of Lord Durham's visits to Kensington and

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