DEAR GEORGE, TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, Aug. 2, 1746. You have lost nothing by missing yesterday at the trials, but a little additional contempt for the High Steward; and even that is recoverable, as his long, paltry speech is to be printed; for which, and for thanks for it, Lord Lincoln moved the House of Lords. Somebody said to Sir Charles Windham, "Oh! you don't think Lord Hardwicke's speech good, because you have read Lord Cowper's."—"No," replied he; "but I do think it tolerable, because I heard Serjeant Skinner's." Poor brave old Balmerino retracted his plea, asked pardon, and desired the Lords to intercede for mercy. As he returned to the Tower, he stopped the coach at Charing-cross to buy honey-blobs as the Scotch call gooseberries. He says he is extremely afraid Lord Kilmarnock will not behave well. The Duke said publicly at his levee, that the latter proposed murdering the English prisoners. His Highness was to have given Peggy Banks a ball last night; but was persuaded to defer it, as it would have rather looked like an insult on the prisoners, the very day their sentence was passed. George Selwyn says that he had begged Sir William Saunderson to get him the High Steward's wand, after it was broke, as a curiosity; but that he behaved so like an attorney the first day, and so like a pettifogger the second, that he would not take it to light his fire with; I don't believe my Lady Hardwicke is so high-minded. Your cousin Sandwich is certainly going on an embassy to Holland. I don't know whether it is to qualify him, by new dignity, for the head of the admiralty, or whether (which is more agreeable to present policy) to satisfy him instead of it. I know when Lord Malton, who was a young earl, asked for the garter, to stop his pretensions, they made him a marquis. When Lord Brooke, who is likely to have ten sons, though he has none yet, asked to have his barony settled on his daughters, they refused him with an earldom; and they professed making Pitt paymaster, in order to silence the avidity of his faction. Dear George, I am afraid I shall not be in your neighbourhood, as I promised myself. Sir Charles Williams has let his house. I wish you would one day whisk over and look at Harley House. The inclosed advertisement makes it sound pretty, though I am afraid too large for me. Do look at it impartially: don't be struck at first sight with any brave old windows; but be so good as to inquire the rent, and if I can have it for a year, and with any furniture. I have not had time to copy out the verses, but you shall have them soon. Adieu, with my compliments to your sisters. a Matthew Skinner, afterwards a Welsh judge.-E. b John, the fourth Earl of Sandwich; son of Edward Richard, Viscount Hichinbrooke. He signed the treaty of peace at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. c Thomas Watson Wentworth, Earl of Malton, created Marquis of Rockingham, in 1746. [He died in 1782, when his title became extinct.] DEAR GEORGE, TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, Aug. 5, 1746. THOUGH I can't this week accept your invitation, I can prove to you that I am most desirous of passing my time with you, and therefore en attendant Harley House, if you can find me out any clean, small house in Windsor, ready furnished, that is not absolutely in the middle of the town, but near you, I shoud be glad to take it for three or four months. I have been about Sir Robert Rich's, but they will only sell it. I am as far from guessing why they send Sandwich in embassy, as you are; and, when I recollect of what various materials our late ambassadors have been composed, I can only say, " ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius." Murray has certainly been discovering, and warrants are out; but I don't yet know who are to be their prize. I begin to think that the ministry had really no intelligence till now. I before thought they had, but durst not use it. A-propos to not daring; I went t'other night to look at my poor favourite Chelsea, for the little Newcastle is gone to be dipped in the sea. In one of the rooms is a bed for her Duke, and a press-bed for his footman; for he never dares lie alone, and, till he was married, had always a servant to sit up with him. Lady Cromartie presented her petition to the King last Sunday. He was very civil to her, but would not at all give her any hopes. She swooned away as soon as he was gone.d Lord Cornwallis told me that her lord weeps every time any thing of his fate is mentioned to him. Old Balmerino keeps up his spirits to the same pitch of gaiety. In the cell at Westminster he showed Lord Kilmarnock how he must lay his head; bid him not wince, lest the stroke should cut his skull or his shoulders, and advised him to bite his lips. As they were to return, he begged they might have another bottle together, as they should never meet any more till- and then pointed to his neck. At getting into the coach, he said to the gaoler, "Take care, or you will break my shins with this damned axe."e I must tell you a bon-mot of George Selwyn's at the trial. He saw Bethel's sharp visage looking wistfully at the rebel lords; he Gray, in a letter to Wharton of the 15th, says, "Mr. Walpole I have seen a good deal, and shall do a great deal more, I suppose; for he is looking for a house somewhere about Windsor during the summer. All is mighty free, and even friendly, more than one could expect." Works, vol. iii. p. 7.-E. b John Murray of Broughton, the Pretender's Secretary, who purchased his own safety by betraying his former friends.-E. Where his mother died, and had chiefly resided.-E. d"Lady Cromartie, who is said to have drawn her husband into these circumstances, was at Leicester House on Wednesday, with four of her children. The Princess saw her, and made no other answer than by bringing in her own children and placing them by her; which, if true, is one of the prettiest things I ever heard." Gray to Wharton, Works, vol. iii. p. 4.-E. e "The first day, while the Peers were adjourned to consider of his plea, Balmerino diverted himself with the axe that stood by him, played with its tassels, and tried the edge with his finger." Gray, vol. iii. p. 5.-E. Anne, daughter of Samuel, first Lord Sandys, and wife of Christopher Bethell, Esq. -E. said, "What a shame it is to turn her face to the prisoners till they are condemned." If you have a mind for a true foreign idea, one of the foreign ministers said at the trial to another, "Vraiment cela est auguste." "Oui," replied the other, "cela est vrai, mais cela n'est pas royale." I am assured that the old Countess of Errol made her son Lord Kilmarnock go into the rebellion on pain of disinheriting him. I don't know whether I told you that the man at the tennis-court protests that he has known him dine at the man that sells pamphlets at Storey's Gate; "and," says he, "he would often have been glad if I would have taken him home to dinner." He was certainly so poor, that in one of his wife's intercepted letters she tells him she has plagued their steward for a fortnight for money, and can get but three shillings. Can any one help pitying such distress? I am vastly softened, too, about Balmerino's relapse, for his pardon was only granted him to engage his brother's vote at the election of Scotch peers. My Lord Chancellor has got a thousand pounds in present for his high stewardship, and has got the reversion of clerk of the crown (twelve hundred a-year) for his second son. What a long time it will be before his posterity are drove into rebellion for want, like Lord Kilmarnock! The Duke gave his ball last night to Peggy Banks at Vauxhall. It was to pique my Lady Rochford, in return for the Prince of Hesse. I saw the company get into their barges at Whitehall Stairs, as I was going myself, and just then passed by two city companies in their great barges, who had been a swan-hopping. They laid by and played "God save our noble King," and altogether it was a mighty pretty show. When they came to Vauxhall, there were assembled about five-and-twenty hundred people, besides crowds without. They huzzaed, and surrounded him so, that he was forced to retreat into the ball-room. He was very near being drowned t'other night going from Ranelagh to Vauxhall, and politeness of Lord Cathcart's, who, stepping on the side of the boat to lend his arm, overset it, and both fell into the water up to their chins. I have not yet got Sir Charles's ode; when I have, you shall see it here are my own lines. Good night! a The Earl of Kilmarnock was not the son of the Countess of Errol. His wife, the Lady Anne Livingstone, daughter of the Earl of Linlithgow, was her niece, and, eventually, her heiress.-E. b "The Duke of Argyle, telling him how sorry he was to see him engaged in such a cause, My Lord,' says he, for the two Kings and their rights, I cared not a farthing which prevailed; but I was starving, and by God, if Mahomet had set up his standard in the Highlands, I had been a good Mussulman for bread, and stuck close to the party, for I must eat.'" Gray, vol. iii. p. 5.-E. On the Duchess of Manchester, entitled Isabella, or the Morning.-E. DEAR GEORGE, TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Arlington Street, Aug. 11, 1746. I HAVE Seen Mr. Jordan, and have taken his house at forty guineas a-year, but I am to pay taxes. Shall I now accept your offer of being at the trouble of giving orders for the airing of it? I have desired the landlord will order the key to be delivered to you, and Asheton will assist you. Furniture, I find, I have in abundance, which I shall send down immediately; but shall not be able to be at Windsor at the quivering dame's before to-morrow se'nnight, as the rebel Lords are not to be executed till Monday. I shall stay till that is over, though I don't believe I shall see it. Lord Cromartie is reprieved for a pardon. If wives and children become an argument for saving rebels, there will cease to be a reason against their going into rebellion. Lady Caroline Fitzroy's execution is certainly to-night. I dare say she will follow Lord Balmerino's advice to Lord Kilmarnock, and not winch. Lord Sandwich has made Mr. Keith his secretary. I don't believe the founder of your race, the great Quu," of Habiculeo, would have chosen his secretary from California. I would willingly return the civilities you laid upon me at Windsor. Do command me; in what can I serve you? Shall I get you an earldom? Don't think it will be any trouble; there is nothing easier or cheaper. Lord Hobart and Lord Fitzwilliam are both to be Earls to-morrow the former, of Buckingham; the latter, by his already title. I suppose Lord Malton will be a Duke; he has had no new peerage this fortnight. Adieu! my compliments to the virtuous ladies, Arabella and Hounsibella Quus. P. S. Here is an order for the key. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Aug. 12, 1746. To begin with the Tesi; she is mad if she desires to come hither. I hate long histories, and so will only tell you in a few words, that Lord Middlesex took the opportunity of a rivalship between his own mistress, the Nardi, and the Violette, the finest and most admired. dancer in the world, to involve the whole ménage of the Opera in the quarrel, and has paid nobody; but, like a true Lord of the Treasury, has shut up his own exchequer. The principal man-dancer was arrested for debt; to the composer his Lordship gave a bad note, not The Earl of Halifax.-E. b Charles Sackville, eldest son of Lionel, Duke of Dorset, a Lord of the Treasury. She was born at Vienna in February, 1724-5, and married to Garrick, the celebrated actor, in June, 1749. She died in October, 1822, in the ninety-eighth year of her age.-E. payable in two years, besides amercing him entirely three hundred pounds, on pretence of his siding with the Violette. If the Tesi likes this account-venga! venga! Did I tell you that your friend Lord Sandwich was sent ambassador to Holland? He is: and that Lady Charlotte Fermor was to be married to Mr. Finch," the Vice-chamberlain? She is. Mr. Finch is a comely black widower, without children, and heir to his brother Winchilsea, who has no sons. The Countess-mother has been in an embroil, (as we have often known her,) about carrying Miss Shelly, a bosom-friend, into the Peeresses' place at the trials. Lord Granville, who is extremely fond of Lady Charlotte, has given her all her sister's jewels, to the great discontent of his own daughters. She has five thousand pounds, and Mr. Finch settles fifteen thousand pounds more upon her. Now we are upon the chapter of marriages, Lord Petersham was last night married to one of our first beauties, Lady Caroline Fitzroy; and Lord Coke is to have the youngest of the late Duke of Argyll's daughters, who is none of our beauties at all. Princess Louisa has already reached the object of her wish ever since she could speak, and is Queen of Denmark. We have been a little lucky lately in the deaths of Kings, and promise ourselves great matters from the new monarch in Spain. Princess Mary is coming over from Hesse to drink the Bath waters; that is the pretence for leaving her brutal husband, and for visiting the Duke and Princess Caroline, who love her extremely. She is of the softest, mildest temper in the world. 66 We know nothing certainly of the young Pretender, but that he is concealed in Scotland, and devoured with distempers: I really wonder how an Italian constitution can have supported such rigours! He has said, that he did not see what he had to be ashamed of; and that if he had lost one battle, he had gained two." Old Lovat curses Cope and Hawley for the loss of those two, and says, if they had done their duty, he had never been in this scrape. Cope is actually going to be tried; but Hawley, who is fifty times more culpable, is saved by partiality: Cope miscarried by incapacity; Hawley, by insolence and carelessness. Lord Cromartie is reprieved; the Prince asked his life, and his wife made great intercession. Duke Hamilton's intercession for Lord Kilmarnock has rather hurried him to the block: he and Lord Balmerino are to die next Monday. Lord Kilmarnock, with the greatest nobleness of soul, desired to have Lord Cromartie preferred to himself for pardon, if there could be but one saved; and Lord Balmerino * Second daughter of Thomas, Earl of Pomfret, and sister of Lady Granville. b William Finch, brother of the Earl of Winchilsea, had been ambassador in Holland. Son of the Earl of Harrington, Secretary of State. d Eldest daughter of Charles, Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain. • Edward, only son of Thomas, Earl of Leicester. f Lady Mary Campbell. She survived her husband fifty-eight years; he having died in 1753, and she in 1811.-D. 8 Philip the Fifth, the mad and imbecile King of Spain, was just dead. He was succeeded by his son Ferdinand the Sixth, who died in 1759.-D. |