Transcribers’ Note

Words in italics are marked with _underscores_.

Words in small capitals are shown in UPPER CASE.

Please also see the note at the end of this volume.

  ELIZABETH MONTAGU

  THE QUEEN OF THE BLUE-STOCKINGS

  HER CORRESPONDENCE FROM 1720 TO 1761

[Illustration: _C. F. Zincke. Pinx._ _Emery Walker Ph. Sc._

_Mrs. Montagu_

_née Elizabeth Robinson_

_from a miniature in the possession of Miss Montagu_]

  ELIZABETH MONTAGU

  THE QUEEN OF THE BLUE-STOCKINGS

  HER CORRESPONDENCE FROM 1720 TO 1761

  BY HER GREAT-GREAT-NIECE

  EMILY J. CLIMENSON

  AUTHORESS OF “HISTORY OF SHIPLAKE,”
    “HISTORICAL GUIDE TO HENLEY-ON-THAMES,”
    “PASSAGES FROM THE DIARIES OF MRS. P. LYBBE POWYS,” ETC., ETC.

  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

  IN TWO VOLUMES--VOL. I

  [Illustration: Publisher’s colophon, a coat of arms]

  LONDON
  JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
  1906

  PRINTED BY
  WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED
  LONDON AND BECCLES

  AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
  TO
  MY COUSINS
  MAGDALEN WELLESLEY
  AND
  ELIZABETH MONTAGU
  BY
  THE AUTHORESS

PREFACE.

From my early youth I heartily desired to know more of the life of my
great-great-aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu. Every scrap of information I
could pick up respecting her I accumulated; therefore when my cousins,
Mrs. Wellesley and her sister, Miss Montagu, in October, 1899, gave me
the whole of her manuscripts contained in 68 cases, holding from 100 to
150 letters in each, my joy was unbounded!

In 1810 my grandfather, the 4th Baron Rokeby (her nephew and adopted
son), published two volumes of her letters; these were followed by
two more volumes in 1813. To enable him to perform this pleasing
task he asked all her principal friends to return her letters to
him, beginning with the Dowager Marchioness of Bath,[1] daughter of
the Duchess of Portland, who gave him back the earliest letters to
her mother, many carefully inserted in a curious grey paper book by
the duchess, who placed the date of reception on each, and evidently
valued them exceedingly. The Rev. Montagu Pennington returned her
letters to his aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, the learned translator of
Epictetus; Mrs. Freind those to her husband; and many other people
did the same. From General Pulteney, at Lord Bath’s death, she had
asked for and received her correspondence with Lord Bath, which she
carefully preserved. At the death of Lord Lyttelton, the executors,
at her request, returned her her letters; those to Gilbert West and
other correspondents were returned in the same manner. Meanwhile she
kept all letters of her special friends, as well as notabilities,
so that one may deem the collection quite unique, though doubtless
many letters have disappeared, notably those of Sir Joshua Reynolds,
many of whose letters were destroyed by an ignorant caretaker of Mrs.
Montagu’s house, Denton Hall, near Newcastle-on-Tyne. There are none of
Horace Walpole’s, from whom she must have received some; and those from
several other celebrities she knew well are missing.

    [1] _Née_ Elizabeth Cavendish, born 1735, died 1825, ætat 91.

Owing to the enormous quantity of letters undated, the sorting has
been terribly difficult, and I spent one entire winter in making up
bundles and labelling each year. My grandfather made a variety of
mistakes as to the dates of the letters. I hope I have atoned for some
of his deficiencies, though a few mistakes are probably inevitable. He
nearly blinded himself by working at night, and my grandmother[2] had
constantly to copy the letters in a large round hand to enable him to
make them out. After my grandmother’s death he discontinued arranging
them, though they might have been continued till 1800, the year of Mrs.
Montagu’s death.

    [2] _Née_ Elizabeth Charlton.

In the present volumes only her early life is presented, interwoven
with portions of her most intimate friends’ letters to herself. Were
the whole of this vast correspondence printed, a large bookcase could
be filled with the volumes. In order to consult the varied tastes of
the general reader, I have endeavoured to pick out the most interesting
portions of her letters, such as relate to customs, fashions in dress,
price of food, habits, but I have often groaned in spirit at having
to leave out much that was noble in sentiment, or long comments upon
contemporary books and events. If life should be spared me, I hope
to be able to continue my narrative, for, like the ring produced by
a stone thrown on the water, her circle of friends and acquaintances
increased yearly, and not only comprised her English friends and every
person of distinction in Great Britain, but also the most distinguished
foreigners of all nations, notably the French. It has been asserted
that Gilbert West was the first person to influence Mrs. Montagu on
religious points. That his amiable Christianity may have strengthened
her religious opinions I do not deny, but I hope it will be seen from
this book that from her earliest days, when at the height of her _joie
de vivre_, the religious sentiment was existent--a religion that
prompted her ever to the kindest actions to all classes, that had
nothing bitter or narrow in it, no dogmatism. Adored by men of all
opinions, and liking their society, she was the purest of the pure,
as is amply proved by the letters of Lord Lyttelton, Dr. Monsey, and
others, but she was no prude with all this. Her worthy husband adored
her, and no wife could have been more devoted and obedient than she
was. His was a noble character, and doubtless influenced her much for
good. As a wife, a friend, a _camarade_ in all things, grave or gay,
she was unequalled; as a housewife she was notable, beloved by her
servants, by the poor of her parish, and by her miners and their wives
and children. She planned feasts and dances and instituted schools for
them, and fed and clothed the destitute.

With Mr. Raikes[3] she was one of the first people to institute
Sunday-schools. She was as interested in Betty’s rheumatism as she
was in the conversation of a duke or a duchess; a discussion with
bishops and Gilbert West on religion, or with Emerson on mathematics,
or Elizabeth Carter on Epictetus, all came alike to her gifted nature.
She danced with the gay, she wept with the mourner; her sympathies
never lay idle, even to the very end of life; and in a century which
has been deemed by many to be coarse, uneducated, and irreligious,
her sweet wholesome nature shone like a star, and attracted all minor
lights. Where in the twentieth century should we find a coterie of
men and women of the highest rank and influence in the world, either
from intellect or position, so content and devoted to each other, so
free from the petty jealousies and sarcasms of the present fashionable
society, so anxious for each other’s welfare, socially and morally; so
free from cant or prudery, so devoted to each other’s interest?

    [3] Robert Raikes, born 1735, died 1811. The first Sunday-school
    instituted by him in 1781.

A great and terrible break in this book was caused by the death of my
beloved husband in May, 1904, after a long, lingering illness. I doubt
if I should have taken courage to resume my pen if it had not been for
my friend Mr. A. M. Broadley, whose interest in my literary work and
affectionate solicitude for myself has been a kindly spur to goad me
on to action, so as to complete the present volumes. To him I tender
my thanks for past and present encouragement, as well as many other
kindnesses.

  EMILY J. CLIMENSON.

CONTENTS TO VOL. I.

                                                                  PAGE

 PREFACE                                                           vii

 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS                                              xv

 CHAPTER I.

 The Robinson, Sterne, and Morris families--Birth and
     childhood of Elizabeth Montagu--Correspondence with
     Duchess of Portland (_passim_)--Dr. Middleton’s second
     wife--“Fidget”--A summons --Tunbridge Wells--Mrs.
     Pendarves--Lady Thanet --Miss Anstey--Bevis Mount--The
     Wallingfords--A suit of “cloathes”--Anne Donnellan           1–25

 CHAPTER II.

 Correspondence with Duchess of Portland (_passim_)--Sir Robert
     Austin--The goat story--The Freinds--Country beaux--Thomas
     Robinson, barrister--Lady Wallingford--Duke of Portland’s
     letter--A coach adventure--Influenza--Smallpox--Cottage
     life--Bath--Lord Noel Somerset--Dowager Duchess
     of Norfolk--Frost Fair on the Thames--The plunge
     bath--“Long” Sir Thomas Robinson--Lord Wallingford’s
     death --The menagerie at Bullstrode--Lady Mary Wortley
     Montagu--Princess Mary of Hesse--Monkey Island--Lydia
     Botham--Mrs. Pendarves--Lord Oxford--Admiral
     Vernon--Anne Donnellan--Charlemagne--Dr. Young’s _Night
     Thoughts_--Duchess of Kent--Mr. Achard                      26–62

 CHAPTER III.

 Hairdressing--Correspondence with Duchess of Portland
     (_passim_) --Sarah Robinson attacked by smallpox--Hayton
     Farm--A country squire--Handel--Dr. Middleton--Laurence
     Sterne--Duke of Portland’s letter--A brother’s
     tribute--Carthagena--The Westminster election --A South
     Sea lawsuit--Lord Oxford’s death--Panacea of bleeding--A
     one-horse chaise--A Windsor hatter--Lord Sandwich’s
     marriage--Ducal baths--Domestic service--Cibber’s Life--Peg
     Woffington--Dowager Duchess of Marlborough--Revolution in
     Russia--New Year’s Day--Lord George Bentinck--Northfleet
     Fair--Sir R. Walpole--Duchess of Norfolk’s masquerade--Sir
     Hans Sloane--A House of Lords debate --The Opera--Garrick  63–107

 CHAPTER IV.

 Love triumphs--Sir George Lyttelton--Edward Montagu--Anne
     Donnellan’s advice--Elizabeth’s engagement and
     marriage--Correspondence with Duchess of Portland--“Delia”
     Dashwood--Odd honeymoon etiquette--Mr. Robinson’s
     letter--Dr. Middleton’s letter--Cally Scott--Mrs.
     Freind--Père Courayer--Works of Manor --The Dales--Whig
     principles--Correspondence with Edward Montagu--Hanoverian
     troops--Handel’s Oratorios--Young’s _Night Thoughts_--A
     country beau and roué--A bolus--The Lord Chancellor --Dr.
     Sandys--A cook                                            108–140

 CHAPTER V.

 Journey to London--The floods--A faithful steward--The
     Rogers’ pedigree--A curious letter--Mr. Montagu’s visit
     to Newcastle --Birth of “Punch”--Inoculation--Baby
     clothes--Sandleford Priory --A parson and his
     wife--Countess of Granville--Correspondence with
     Duchess of Portland--Courayer--Woman’s education--Lord
     Orford’s letter to General Churchill--Preparation for
     inoculation--Elizabeth’s letter to her husband--Army
     discipline--Physicians’ fees--Pope’s grotto--A
     highwayman--Dangers of a post-chaise--“Punch’s” chariot--A
     Bath ball--“Mathematical inseration”--Midgham--A
     footpad--The Ministry--Pope’s _Dunciad_--Mrs.
     Pococke--Sugar tax--The Pretender--Sir Septimus
     Robinson--“Hide” Park--Gowns and fans--The wearing
     of “Punch”--A wet-nurse--Aprons--Orange trees--Lord
     Anson--Clothes and table-linen--Stowe--Thoresby--Death
     of “Punch”--Loss of an only child--Submission to God’s
     will--Duchess of Marlborough’s death--A Raree Show--Cattle
     disease--Mrs. Robinson’s illness                          141–197

 CHAPTER VI.

 Correspondence with the Duchess of Portland--Donnington
     Castle--Tunbridge Wells--Dr. Young and Colley
     Cibber--Buxton--Tonbridge Castle--The 1745 rising in
     Scotland--George Lewis Scott--National terrors--Wade’s
     army--County meeting at York--The Northern gentry--General
     Cope’s defeat at Preston Pans--Sussex privateers--Tunbridge
     ware--Walnut medicine--D. Stanley’s letter to Duke of
     Montagu--Cattle murrain--Fears of invasion--The Law
     regiment--Romney Marsh--A footman--A brave gamekeeper     198–226

 CHAPTER VII.

 Correspondence with Duchess of Portland--Death of Mrs.
     Robinson--Lydia Botham--The Hill Street house--“Such
     a Johnny”--Courayer--Mr. Carter’s death--Denton
     estate--Elixir of vitriol and tar-water--Dr. Shaw--Young
     Edward Wortley Montagu--General election--Huntingdon
     Election--Dr. Pococke--Mrs. Theophilus Cibber--Courayer’s
     figure--A high and dry residence--Lady Fane’s grottoes--In
     search of an axletree--Winchester Cathedral--Mount
     Bevis--The New Forest--Wilton House--Savernake--Courayer’s
     letter--Matthew Robinson, M.P. for Canterbury--Lyttelton’s
     _Monody_--Thomas Robinson’s death--Coffee House,
     Bath--Cambridge--Richardson’s _Clarissa_--Peace of
     Aix-la-Chapelle--Spa--The Hague--James Montagu’s
     death--Price of tea                                       227–263

 CHAPTER VIII.

 Ranelagh masquerade--Tunbridge Wells--Duke of Montagu’s
     death--Coombe Bank--The feather screen--Hinchinbrook--The
     Miss Gunnings--Chinese room in Hill Street--A parson’s
     children--Dowager Duchess of Chandos--Lord Pembroke’s
     death--The earthquake--Death of Dr. Middleton--Anniversary
     of Elizabeth’s wedding day--Mrs. Boscawen--Gilbert
     West--Barry and Garrick--Embroidered flounces--“The
     cousinhood”--West family--Berenger--Hildersham--Miss Maria
     Naylor--The “Pollard Ashe”--Mrs. Percival’s death--Dr.
     Shaw’s death--The Dauphin--Dr. Middleton’s works--Anne
     Donnellan--Nathaniel Hooke                                264–296

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

VOL. I.

 MRS. MONTAGU (_née_ ELIZABETH ROBINSON)                _Frontispiece_
     _From a      miniature by C. F. ZINCKE, in the
     possession of The Hon. Elizabeth Montagu,
     Farnham Royal. (Photogravure.)_

                                                          TO FACE PAGE

 MOUNT MORRIS, NEAR HYTHE, KENT                                      8
     _From an old print, 1809._

 MISS MORRIS, GRANDMOTHER OF MRS. MONTAGU                           16
     _From a picture (artist unknown), in the possession
     of the Hon. Elizabeth Montagu. (Photogravure.)_

 MR. AND MRS. MATTHEW ROBINSON (MRS. MONTAGU’S FATHER AND
       MOTHER)                                                      32
     _From a picture by W. HAMILTON, in the possession of
     The Hon. Elizabeth Montagu, Farnham Royal. (Photogravure.)_

 W. FREIND, D.D., DEAN OF CANTERBURY                                64
     _From the picture by T. WORLIDGE._

 WILLIAM, SECOND DUKE OF PORTLAND                                   76
     _From the picture by THOMAS HUDSON, in the possession
     of the Duke of Portland. (Photogravure.)_

 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU                                          80
     _From a miniature (artist unknown), in the possession
     of Mrs. Climenson. (Photogravure.)_

 SIR THOMAS ROBINSON (1ST BARON ROKEBY)                            100
     _From a picture (artist unknown), in the possession of
     The Hon. Elizabeth Montagu, Farnham Royal. (Photogravure.)_

 MORRIS ROBINSON                                                   144
     _From the picture by the REV. M. W. PETERS, R.A.,
     in the possession of The Hon. Elizabeth Montagu,
     Farnham Royal. (Photogravure.)_

 SANDLEFORD PRIORY, NEAR NEWBURY, BERKSHIRE                        152
     _From a photograph._

 DENTON HALL, NORTHUMBERLAND                                       160

 MARGARET CAVENDISH HARLEY, DUCHESS OF PORTLAND                    192
     _From the picture by THOMAS HUDSON, in the possession
     of the Duke of Portland. (Photogravure.)_

 LADY LECHMERE (_née_ HOWARD), AFTERWARDS LADY (THOMAS)
       ROBINSON                                                    208
     _From a picture (artist unknown), in the possession of
     The Hon. Elizabeth Montagu, Farnham Royal. (Photogravure.)_

 GILBERT WEST                                                      296
     _From an engraving by E. SMITH, after W. Walker._

 ROBINSON PEDIGREE                          _In pocket at end of Vol._

ELIZABETH MONTAGU

THE QUEEN OF THE BLUE-STOCKINGS

CHAPTER I.

GIRLHOOD UP TO 1738, AND BEGINNING OF THE CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE
DUCHESS OF PORTLAND.

[Page heading: THE ROBINSON FAMILY]

Before entering on the life of Elizabeth Robinson, afterwards Mrs.
Edward Montagu, the famous _bas bleu_, the focus, as she may be called,
of all the cleverest and most intellectual society of the last half
of the eighteenth century, a few words must be said of the family she
sprang from. The Robinsons are said to have been originally Robertsons,
the name being corrupted into Robinson. They are in many Peerages[4]
said to descend from the Robertsons of Struan, or Strowan, in
Perthshire, who descended from Duncan de Atholia, Earl of Athole, hence
descendants of Duncan, King of Scotland. My grandfather, the 4th Baron
Rokeby, in an unfinished pedigree, believed this, but there have been
Robinsons bearing the same[5] coat-of-arms in Yorkshire as early as the
time of copyhold record in Edward III.’s reign. However, they may have
been related. Our narrative starts from William, said to be younger
son of the 7th Baron Robertson of Strowan, who, being deprived of his
portion of inheritance as younger son by the Earl of Athole, fled into
England, and settled at Kendal in Westmorland, in the time of Henry
VIII. He had three children, Ralph, Henry, and Ursula. Ralph married
Agnes Philip, by whom he had William, who succeeded to his father’s
estates at Kendal and Brignal, and who on June 7, 1610, bought the
estate of Rokeby in Yorkshire from Sir Thomas Rokeby, whose family had
been possessed of it before the Conquest. Rokeby continued to belong to
the Robinson family for 160 years, when “Long Sir Thomas Robinson” sold
it in 1769 to John B. Saurey Morritt, the friend of Sir Walter Scott.
The Robinsons finally assumed two lines (_vide_ Pedigree), William,
the eldest, remaining master of Rokeby, and his posthumous brother,
Leonard, becoming the direct ancestor of our heroine. Leonard Robinson
was a merchant in London; he became Chamberlain of the City of London,
and was knighted on October 26, 1692. He married, first, Lucy Layton,
of West Layton, etc., by whom he had no issue. For his second wife
he married Deborah, daughter of Sir James Collet, Knight and Sheriff
of London, by whom he had six daughters, all of whom married and had
issue, and one son, Thomas, who married a widow, Elizabeth Light. She
was daughter of William Clarke, Esq., of Merivale Abbey, Warwickshire,
and heiress of her brother, William Clarke. By her first husband,
Anthony Light, she had one daughter, Lydia. By her second marriage with
Thomas Robinson she had three sons. Matthew, the eldest, alone concerns
us as father of Mrs. Montagu. The following table will show the
connection between the Robinson and Sterne families: the Rev. Laurence
Sterne marrying their cousin, Elizabeth Lumley:--

[Page heading: PEDIGREE OF THE ROBINSONS AND STERNES]

          1st.                                           2nd.
     Anthony Light = Elizabeth Clarke, daughter of = Thomas Robinson,
      1 daughter.  |  William Clarke, of Merivale  |   son of Sir
                   |     Abbey, Warwickshire;      | Leonard Robinson.
                   |    heiress to her brother,    |
                   |        William Clarke.        |
                   |                               |
      1st          |         2nd.                  |
  Thomas Kirke = Lydia = The Rev. Robert         Matthew = Elizabeth
  of Cockridge,        | Lumley, of Lumley      Robinson.   Drake,
    co. Yorks.         | Castle, Rector of                daughter of
  Great Virtuoso.      |  Bedale, Yorks,                  Councillor
    d. 1709.           |   1721–1731.                       Robert
     +----------------------+                              Drake, of
     |                      |                             the Drakes
  Lydia =  Rev. Henry     Elizabeth = Rev. Laurence         of Ash,
          Botham, Vicar             |   Sterne.             Devon.
          of Albury and   +---------+------+
            Ealing.       |                |
          5 children.    Lydia,          Lydia = A. de Medalle.
                        died an                |
                        infant.               Son.

    [4] _Vide_ Debrett and Lodge’s Peerages; Collin’s Baronetage, 1741,
    vol. iv.; Burke, “The New Peerage,” by W. Owen, 1785; and Longmate’s
    Peerage.

    [5] Coat vert, a chevron between three bucks trippant. Mrs. Laurence
    Sterne and her sister, Mrs. Botham, as will be seen in the letters,
    call Matthew Robinson and his wife “Uncle” and “Aunt,” they being
    really their step-uncle and aunt. Thomas Robinson died at the early
    age of thirty-three, in the year 1700.

[Year: 1694]

[Page heading: THE MORRIS FAMILY]

We now enter on the history of Matthew Robinson, the eldest surviving
son of Thomas, and his wife Elizabeth. He was born in 1694, therefore
was only six years old when his father died. At an early age he was
entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, and became a fellow-commoner.
He was a person of great intellectual parts, a conversationalist and
wit, the life of the coffee-houses, which then served, as clubs do
nowadays, as a rendezvous for men of fashion. His talent for painting
was remarkable. His great nephew states, “He acquired so great a
proficiency as to excel most of the professional artists of his day
in landscape.” At the early age of eighteen, in 1712, he married
Elizabeth Drake, daughter of Councillor Robert Drake, of Cambridge,
descended from the Drakes of Ashe in Devonshire. Elizabeth’s mother’s
name was Sarah Morris. The Morris family had been seated in Kent at
East Horton since the reign of Elizabeth. Thomas Morris, father of
Sarah, built the mansion of Mount Morris, sometimes called Monk’s
Horton, near Hythe. He had one son, Thomas, who was drowned under
London Bridge on his return from Holland in 1697, ætat 23. His sister
Sarah had two children by Councillor Drake, Morris and Elizabeth. Their
maternal grandfather lived to 1717, when he devised his estates to his
grandson, Morris Drake, with the proviso of his assuming the extra
name of Morris, and failing of his issue with remainder to Elizabeth,
his sister, then Mrs. Matthew Robinson. Her mother, Mrs. Drake, having
become a widow, had remarried the celebrated Dr. Conyers Middleton, but
had no children by him. The following table will elucidate this:--

                      Thomas Morris, Esq.,
           of Mount Morris, _alias_ Monk’s Horton,[6] Kent,
                      which he built; d. 1717.
     +-----------------------+--+
     |                       |
    Thomas, drowned         Sarah,    =   1st. Councillor Robert Drake,
      under London        d. Feb. 19, |     2nd. (1710) Dr. Conyers
   Bridge, 1697, ætat 23,   1730–1.   |   Middleton, of Trinity College,
  returning from Holland.             |            Cambridge.
         +----------------------+-----+
         |                      |
  Morris Drake (Morris)     Elizabeth, m. 1713,  =  Matthew Robinson, of
   took name of Morris       d. 1745, sister and     Edgeley and of West
   on becoming heir to       heir of her brother,    Layton Hall, Yorks.
  his grandfather; died         Morris Drake         Born at York, 1694;
   _s.p._ His property         Morris. Inherited     died October, 1778.
  entailed on his sister,     Coveney, Cambs.,
     Eliz. Robinson.          and Mount Morris,
                                    Kent.

    [6] Monk’s Horton, or Up Horton, alienated by Heyman Rooke in the
    time of Queen Anne to Thomas Morris, who entailed it to his
    daughter’s male issue.

[Year: 1712]

[Page heading: ELIZABETH ROBINSON]

To return to the Robinsons, they settled at their property of West
Layton Hall, derived from Lucy Layton, first wife of Sir Leonard
Robinson, and Edgeley in Wensleydale for the summer, and spent the
winter in York; most country families at that period repairing to
London or their nearest county town for convenience and society during
the winter. To this young couple were born twelve children, of whom
seven sons and two daughters lived to grow up--

1. Matthew, born April 6, 1713; afterwards 2nd Baron Rokeby. Educated
at Trinity Hall, Cambridge; became a Fellow. Died November 30, 1800,
ætat 87.

2. Thomas, born 1714, died in 1746–7. Barrister-at-law.

3. Morris, born 1715, died 1777; of the Six Clerks’ Office.

4. _Elizabeth, born at York, October 2, 1720, died August 25, 1800._

5. Robert, Captain, E.I.C.S. Died in China, 1756.

6. Sarah, born September 21, 1723, died 1795.

7. William, born 1726, died 1803.

8. John, of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

9. Charles, born 1733, died 1807.

[Page heading: DR. CONYERS MIDDLETON]

Elizabeth, the subject of this book, was about seven years old when,
by the death of her uncle, Morris Drake Morris, her mother inherited,
as his heir, the important property of East Horton, and Mount Morris
in Kent. The family then left Yorkshire for residence at Mount Morris.
But before and after their inheritance of the Kentish property
much time was spent with the Conyers Middletons both at Coveney,
Cambridgeshire, a property Mrs. Conyers Middleton had inherited from
her first husband, Councillor Drake; the advowson of the living being
hers, she bestowed it on her second husband, Dr. Conyers Middleton,[7]
whom she had married in 1710; also at Cambridge, where was their usual
residence, and where several of the little Robinsons were born in their
grandmother’s house, as we learn from a letter of Dr. Middleton’s.
Elizabeth Robinson was naturally much with her grandmother, with whom
and Conyers Middleton she was a great favourite. Her nephew and adopted
son, in his volumes of her letters[8] that he published in 1810,
states--

 “Her uncommon sensibility and acuteness of understanding, as well
 as extraordinary beauty as a child, rendered her an object of
 great notice in the University, and Dr. Middleton was in the habit
 of requiring from her an account of the learned conversations at
 which, in his society, she was frequently present; not admitting of
 the excuse of her tender age as a disqualification, but insisting
 that although at the present time she could but imperfectly
 understand their meaning, she would in future derive great benefit
 from the habit of attention inculcated by this practice.”

    [7] Conyers Middleton, D.D., born 1683, died 1750. Fellow of Trinity
    College, Cambridge, etc., etc. Wrote the “Life of Cicero,” etc.,
    etc.

    [8] “The Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu,” by her nephew, Matthew
    Montagu, afterwards 4th Baron Rokeby.

Her father was proud of her vivacious wit, and encouraged her gifts of
repartee which she possessed in as large a measure as himself.

 “In her youth her beauty was most admired in the peculiar animation
 and expression of her blue eyes, with high arched eyebrows, and
 in the contrast of her brilliant complexion with her dark brown
 hair. She was of the middle stature, and stooped a little, which
 gave an air of modesty to her countenance, in which the features
 were otherwise so strongly marked as to express an elevation of
 sentiment befitting the most exalted condition.”

[Year: 1727–28]

Her elder brothers, members of Cambridge University, were all extremely
literary, and became, early, distinguished scholars. We are told--

 “Their emulation produced a corresponding zeal in their sisters,
 and a diligence of application unusual in females of that time.
 Their domestic circle was accustomed to struggle for the mastery
 in wit, or in superiority in argument, and their mother, whose
 frame of mind partook rather of the gentle sedateness of good sense
 than of the eccentricities of genius, was denominated by them ‘the
 Speaker,’ from the frequent mediation by which she moderated their
 eagerness for victory.”

[Page heading: MOUNT MORRIS]

[Page heading: LADY MARGARET CAVENDISH HARLEY]

In Harris’s “History of Kent,” published in 1719, on p. 156, is a
picture of Mount Morris, the home of the Robinsons, a large square
house with a cupola surmounted by a ball and a weathercock, surrounded
by a number of walled gardens laid out in the formal Dutch manner, an
inner Topiary garden, leading to a steep flight of steps to the front
door. Whilst staying in Cambridgeshire, Elizabeth had several times
visited at Wimpole with her father and mother. Wimpole was the seat
of Edward,[9] second Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, who had married
Henrietta Cavendish, only daughter and heiress of John Holles, 1st Duke
of Newcastle-on-Tyne. She was a great heiress, and brought her husband
£500,000; she is said to have been a good but a very dull woman, very
proud, and a rigid worshipper of etiquette. In the “National Biography”
she is said to have “disliked most of the wits who surrounded her
husband, and hated _Pope_!”[10] The Earl spent enormous sums in
collecting books, manuscripts, pictures, medals, and articles of virtu,
spending £400,000 of his wife’s fortune. To him we are indebted for
the Harleian manuscripts, bought from his widow in 1753 for £10,000
by the nation, now in the British Museum. With the Lady Margaret
Cavendish Harley,[11] only child of the Earl and Countess of Oxford,
Elizabeth became on the most intimate terms, and her first extant
letter is addressed to her when she was only eleven years old, and the
Lady Margaret eighteen. So greatly did Lady Margaret value Elizabeth’s
letters, that for a series of years she preserved them between the
leaves of an old grey book which I possess. The first letter is
endorsed, “Received, February 24, 1731–2, at Wimpole.” It commences--

  “MADAM,

 “Your ladyship’s commands always give me a great deal of pleasure,
 but more especially when you ordered me to do myself this honour,
 without which I durst not have taken that liberty, for it would
 have been as great impertinence in me to have attempted it as it is
 condescension in your ladyship to order it.”

This alludes evidently to Lady Margaret having desired her to write to
her. It ends--

 “My duty to my Lord and Lady Oxford, and service to Lord
 Dupplin,[12] and my best respects to Miss Walton,[13] hope in a
 little while it may be duty. I am in great hopes that when your
 ladyship sees any impertinent people in London it will put you in
 mind of, Madam,

 “Your ladyship’s most obliged, humble servant,

  “ELIZ. ROBINSON.”

    [9] Lord Oxford sold Wimpole in 1740 to Lord Hardwick to pay off his
    debts.

    [10] Pope was his bosom friend, Swift and Prior also; the latter
    died at Wimpole.

    [11] Prior celebrated the Lady Margaret in the lines commencing “My
    noble, lovely, little Peggy.”

    [12] Afterwards 8th Earl of Kinnoul.

    [13] Lady Margaret’s governess, about to be married.

[Illustration: MOUNT MORRIS.]

[Year: 1731–32]

The formal terms in this letter were then considered essential, even
when addressing those of lower birth, all the more so to a person of
Lady Margaret’s rank. Viscount Dupplin, whose name frequently occurs in
the letters, was a cousin of Lady Margaret’s on her father’s side, his
mother being a daughter of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford. The two
young friends now kept up a lively correspondence, but as many of the
letters have been published by my grandfather in 1810, I shall for this
early period of her life give only a _résumé_ of them, picking out such
facts as point to the manners of the time, or that strike one as of
interest. From Mount Morris in August, 1732, she writes--

 “Since I came here I have been to Canterbury Races, at which there
 was not much diversion, as only one horse ran for the King’s
 Plate.... We had an assembly for three nights; the rooms are so
 small and low that they were exceedingly hot.”

From this date one perceives that young ladies were allowed to appear
in public early, as Elizabeth was then not quite twelve years old!

[Year: 1733]

[Page heading: TUNBRIDGE WELLS]

In October, 1733, she paid, in company of her parents, her first visit
to Tunbridge Wells, ever afterwards such a favourite resort of hers.
She says--

 “It is so pleasant a place I don’t wonder the physicians prescribe
 it as a cure for the spleen; a great part of the company,
 especially of the gentlemen, are vapoured. When the wind is not in
 the east they are very good company, but they are as afraid of an
 easterly wind as if it would bring caterpillars upon our land as
 it did on the land of Egypt.... I am very sorry I could not get
 you any verses at Tunbridge, of which, at the latter part of the
 season, when the garrets grow cheap, that the poets come down,
 there is commonly great plenty.”

Further on she says, “I thank your ladyship for the verses, and I wish
I had any to send you in return for them, but my poet is turned lawyer,
and has forsook the Muses for ‘Coke upon Littleton.’” This alludes to
her brother Tom, who was then studying law. The collecting of verses on
every sort of circumstance seems to have been as fashionable then as
photograph, autograph, or stamp-collecting, etc., are now.

[Page heading: “MRS.” PLACE]

In the next letter of November, 1733, she alludes to Dr. Conyers
Middleton, who, as stated before, had married Mrs. Drake, Elizabeth’s
grandmother, and who was now a widower--

 “I suppose you have heard Dr. Middleton has brought his Cousin
 Place[14] to keep his house. He very gravely sent us word that
 his cousin had come to spend the winter with him, and it was not
 impossible they might agree for a longer time; so I fancy he has
 brought her with him to see if she likes to play at quadrille, and
 sup on sack posset with the grave doctors, whose company to one of
 her gay temper must be delightful. I suspected his designs when he
 made so many complaints in London, that it was so very difficult to
 find a maid who understood making jellies and sack posset, which he
 and a certain doctor used to have for their suppers. He lost one
 lady because she was deaf to him; but I believe that fortune, to
 make amends to him, has blinded this. For though I don’t doubt he
 always takes care to show her the side of his face which Mr. Doll
 says is younger by ten years than the other, yet that is rather too
 old to be a match for twenty-five, which I believe is the age of
 Mrs.[15] Place.”

    [14] Mary, daughter of the Rev. Conyers Place, of Dorchester. She
    died April 26, 1745.

    [15] It was the custom at this time to give spinster ladies the
    complimentary title of “Mrs.”

The next letter she says--

 “I have not heard from Dr. Middleton a great while. I suppose his
 thoughts are taken up with business and his pretty cousin in the
 West. I don’t know whether she has made a complete conquest of his
 heart.”

In May, 1733--

 “Dr. Middleton now owns his marriage. I wish he finds the felicity
 of it answers his resigning a £100 a year. I am glad, for the sake
 of any other family, he has not got another rich widow; if he had,
 it would have been her turn to resign.”

This alludes to the fact that on the learned doctor’s remarriage he had
to resign his fellowship.

[Page heading: MR. ROBINSON]

Mr. Robinson, Elizabeth’s father, was not fond of the country, where
his wife’s fine estate and his nine children condemned him to reside
the greater part of the year; and when we consider how young a man he
was, then only thirty-one, and his great love of witty society, one
cannot be surprised at his having attacks of the “hyp” or “vapours,” as
the terms for ennui were then. Elizabeth writes to Lady Margaret from
Mount Morris--

 “Though I am tired of the country, to my great satisfaction I
 am not so much so as my Pappa; he is a little vapoured, and
 last night, after two hours’ silence, he broke out with a great
 exclamation against the country, and concluded in saying that
 living in the country was sleeping with one’s eyes open. If he
 sleeps all day, I am sure he dreams much of London. What makes
 this place more dull is, my brothers are none of them here; two of
 them went away about a fortnight ago, and ever since my Pappa has
 ordered me to put a double quantity of saffron[16] in his tea.”

    [16] Saffron, said to be good for heaviness of spirits.

[Year: 1734]

February 11, 1734, she writes--

 “Dr. Middleton sends us word my Pappa’s acquaintance wonder he has
 not the spleen, but they would cease their surprise if they knew he
 was so much troubled with it that his physicians cannot prescribe
 him any cordial strong enough to keep up his spirits. We think
 London would do it effectually, and I believe he will have recourse
 to it.”

[Page heading: THE DUCHESS OF PORTLAND]

On July 11, 1734, Lady Margaret Cavendish Harley married William,
2nd Duke of Portland.[17] There are no letters of Elizabeth’s in my
possession on the occasion of her friend’s marriage; they recommence
October 20 in the same year. Henceforward all the duchess’s letters
were franked by the duke, and many of Elizabeth’s, often unfortunately
undated. At this period ladies prevailed on such of their friends
as were either Peers or members of Parliament, to sign sheets of
letter-paper with their names at the back, often of folio size, which
they used free of cost as they wanted them, wrapping their letters in
these outer sheets and sealing them. As a single letter from London to
Edinburgh cost 1_s._ 1½_d._, if double 2_s._ 3_d._, and if treble 3_s._
4½_d._, the smallest inclosure being treated as an additional sheet,
to send letters unfranked was a costly luxury. The practice of forging
people’s names led to such intolerable abuse of franking that an Act
was passed in 1764 making it compulsory for the whole address to be
written by the person franking the letter.

    [17] William, 2nd Duke of Portland, born 1708, died 1762. Hearne, in
    his Diary, says, “Is reported the handsomest man in England.”

In October, the same year, Elizabeth replies to a letter from the
duchess chiding her for not writing--

 “_Oct. 3, 1734._--I am surprised that my answer to your Grace’s
 letter has never reached your hands. I sent it immediately to
 Canterbury by the servant of a gentleman who dined here, and
 I suppose he forgot to put it in the post. I am reconciled to
 the carelessness of the fellow, since it has procured to me so
 particular a mark of your concern. If my letter were sensible,
 what would be the mortification, that instead of having the honour
 to kiss your Grace’s hands, it must lie confined in the footman’s
 pocket with greasy gloves, rotten apples, a pack of dirty cards,
 and the only companion of its sort, a tender epistle from his
 sweetheart, ‘tru tell deth.’ Perhaps by its situation subject to be
 kicked by his master every morning, till at last, by ill-usage and
 rude company, worn too thin for any other use, it may make its exit
 in lighting a tobacco-pipe. I believe the fellow who lost my letter
 knew very well how ready I should be to supply it with another.

  “I am, Madam,
  “Your Grace’s most obedient servant,
  “ELIZABETH ROBINSON.”

[Page heading: “FIDGET”]

The duchess’s favourite name for Elizabeth was “Fidget,” a name adopted
by all the Bullstrode[18] circle. This was due to her vivacity of mind
and body. She was never really a strong person, but her nervous energy
enabled her frail body to perform feats that a more lethargic person
could not have accomplished. “Why should a table that stands still
require so many legs when I can fidget on two?” she would exclaim. The
duchess returns an answer on October 25, portions of which I copy--

  “DEAR FIDGET,

 “I assure you I am very angry at the fellow’s not taking care of
 your letter, for they always give me infinite pleasure, and I
 esteem it as a great loss. I am very sensible of the friendship
 you have for me, and hope you never shall find any reason to the
 contrary. You have painted extremely well the fate of your letter
 was not according to its deserts.... Pray do you hear anything of
 Dr. Middleton and his fine wife?[19] I had a letter not long ago
 wherein it was said she made the doctor very sensible she had a
 tongue, and a very sharp one too, with the addition of a clear and
 distinct voice. If you have any poetry, send it to me; you know it
 will be acceptable to her who is

  “Dear Fidget’s
  “Very humble servant and admirer,
  “M. CAVENDISH PORTLAND.”

    [18] The duchess always spelt Bullstrode with the double _l_, from
    the story of the place, and I choose to do the same.

    [19] On Dr. Middleton’s second wife.

[Page heading: DRAWING LESSONS]

In Elizabeth’s next letter, November 3, 1734, she regrets that her
father, having recovered his spirits, had given up going to Bath as
projected, and says--

 “One common objection to the country, one sees no faces but those
 of one’s own family, but my Pappa thinks he has found a remedy for
 that by teaching me to draw; but then he husbands these faces in
 so cruel a manner that he brings me sometimes a nose, sometimes an
 eye at a time: but on the King’s birthday, as it was a festival, he
 brought me out a whole face with its mouth wide open. Your Grace
 desired me to send you some verses; I have not heard so much as a
 Rhyme lately, and I believe the Muses have all got agues in this
 country, but I have enclosed you the following Summons which we
 sent an old bachelor, who is very much our humble servant, and
 would die but not dance for us; but being once in great necessity
 for partners, we thought him better than an elbow chair, and
 compelled him to come to this Summons, which pleased me extremely,
 as I believe it was the first time he ever found the power of
 the fair sex.... I am so far from Cambridge, and have no friend
 charitable enough to send me any scandal, I have heard nothing of
 either of the doctors, but as to my dear grandmother,[20] I have
 before heard she was as famous as a _free speaker_ as he is for a
 _free-thinker_.[21]

    [20] This is Elizabeth’s fun, as her own grandmother was dead, and
    the doctor was her step-grandfather.

    [21] Dr. Middleton held free-thinking views on the Old Testament.

[Page heading: A SUMMONS]

 “‘SUMMONS.

 “‘_Kent, to J. B., Esqre._[22]

 “‘WHEREAS complaint has been made to us Commissioners of Her
 Majesties’ Balls, Hopps, Assemblies, &c., for the county aforesaid,
 that several able and expert men, brought up and instructed in
 the art or mistery of Dancing, have and daily do refuse, though
 often thereunto requested, to be retained and exercised in the
 aforesaid Art or Mistery, to the occasion of great scarcity of good
 dancers in these parts, and contrary to the Laws of Gallantry and
 good manners, in that case made and provided: AND WHEREAS we are
 likewise credibly informed that you J. B., Esqre., though educated
 in the said Art by that celebrated Master, Lally, Senior, are one
 of the most notorious offenders in this point, these are therefore
 in the name of the Fair Sex, to require you, the said J. B.,
 Esqre., personally to be and appear before us, at our meeting this
 day at the sign of the “Golden Ball,” in the parish of Horton, in
 the county aforesaid, between the hours of twelve and one in the
 forenoon to answer to such matter as shall be objected against you,
 concerning the aforesaid refusal and contempt of our jurisdiction
 and authority, and to bring with you your dancing shoes, laced
 waistcoat and white gloves. And hereby fail not under peril of our
 frowns, and being henceforth deemed and accounted an Old Bachelor.
 Given under our hands and seals this eighth day of October, 1734,
 to which we all set our hands.’”

    [22] James Brockman, of Beachborough. The summons is still kept at
    Beachborough.

[Page heading: THE “GOLDEN BALL”]

The “Golden Ball” was the ball of the weathercock on the lantern cupola
of the house at Mount Morris. In the next letter, November 20, she
says--

 “Out of my filial piety I would persuade my Pappa to set out for
 London. I have been preaching to him all this day, that when Saul
 had the spleen, David’s musick did him a great deal of good, and
 that I am satisfied Farinelli[23] would do him as much service. He
 goes frequently shooting or coursing, and fancies that will prevent
 its return, and to answer me with the Scripture, says, Nimrod the
 mighty hunter never had the Hyp. Dr. Middleton designed to bring
 his Dearee to London, but if she is so gay it may be as prudent
 to keep her at Cambridge ... if it should enter her head that the
 doctor is no greater than another, what a mortification it would
 be to my good Grand-pappa; if he knows himself and her, I think he
 would agree with Arnolfe in _L’Ecole des Femmes_[24]--

    “‘Que c’est assez pour elle, a vous en bien parler,
    De savoir prier Dieu, l’aimer, coudre, et filer.’”

    [23] Carlo Brocchi, whose professional name was Farinelli, vocalist
    and pupil of Porpora.

    [24] A play of Molière’s.

  _Emery Walker Ph. Sc._

_Miss Sarah Morris_]

Mr. Robinson, who drew and painted in a style worthy of a professional
artist, was anxious Elizabeth should become a proficient in the same
art, but she writes to the duchess--

 “If you design to make any proficiency in that art, I would
 advise you not to draw _old men’s_ heads. It was the rueful head
 countenance of Socrates or Seneca that first put me out of conceit
 of it; had my Pappa given me the blooming faces of Adonis or
 Narcissus, I might have been a more apt scholar; and when I told
 him I found those great beards difficult to draw, he gave me St.
 John’s head in a charger, so to avoid the speculation of dismal
 faces, which by my art I dismalized ten times more than they were
 before, I threw away my pencil.”

[Year: 1735]

[Page heading: TUNBRIDGE WELLS]

In October, 1735, the duchess’s first child was born, Elizabeth,
eventually wife of the 1st Marquis of Bath. Elizabeth writes to
congratulate her, and states she heard Dr. Mead (then the great ladies’
doctor) pronounced it the finest child he ever saw. Elizabeth had
just returned from her first visit to Tunbridge Wells for her health,
suffering much from headaches and weak eyes. At this period the
_Dowager_ Duchess of Portland died. The letters up to this date were
addressed to “To Her Grace, The junior Duchess of Portland.”

[Page heading: LORD STANHOPE]

Elizabeth writes a description of her five weeks at Tunbridge Wells.
After comments on an unhappy marriage recently made, she says--

 “You know some of our Grub Street wits compared marriage to a
 country dance, which scheme I extremely approved, but when I read
 it, I thought it should have been set to the tune of ‘Love for
 ever;’ but they say it never did go to that tune, nor ever would.
 I danced twice a week all the time I was at Tunbridge, and once
 extraordinary, for Lord Euston[25] came down to see Lord Augustus
 Fitzroy,[26] and made a ball. Lord Euston danced with the Duchess
 of Norfolk,[27] but her Grace went home early, and then Lord Euston
 danced with Lady Delves. We all left off about one o’clock. The day
 after I left the Wells, I went to the Races (Canterbury), which
 began on Monday, and ended on Thursday.... Monday there was an
 Assembly, Tuesday a Play, Wednesday an Assembly again, and Thursday
 another play, and as soon as that was over, we had a ball where we
 had ten couple. I did not go to bed after our private ball till
 six o’clock, and rose again before nine.

 “The person who was taken most notice of at Tunbridge as particular
 is a young gentleman your Grace may be perhaps acquainted with, I
 mean Lord Stanhope.[28] He is always making mathematical scratches
 in his pocket-book, so that one half the people took him for a
 conjurer, and the other half for a fool.”

    [25] George, Earl of Euston, son of the 2nd Duke of Grafton.

    [26] A brother of Lord Euston.

    [27] Wife of Edward, 9th Duke of Norfolk.

    [28] Philip, 2nd Earl Stanhope, born 1714.

In a letter of October 2 is the first mention of Mrs. Pendarves,[29]
afterwards Mrs. Delany. It runs--

 “Your pleasures are always my satisfactions; I assure you I partake
 at Mount Morris all the happiness you tell me you receive at
 Bullstrode. I am sure Mrs. Pendarves cannot give you any pleasure
 in her conversation that she is not repayed in enjoying yours. I
 am glad you have got so agreeable a companion with you; it is a
 happiness you have not always enjoyed, though deserved.”

    [29] _Née_ Mary Granville, widow of Mr. W. Pendarves, born 1700,
    died 1788. Daughter of John Granville.

[Page heading: LADY THANET]

Mention is made of the duchess’s desire to obtain beautiful shells,
and Elizabeth desired her sailor brother Robert, who had just returned
from Italy, and was going in his ship to the East Indies, to bring home
what he can in shells and feathers of all sorts--parrots, peacocks,
etc.--for work the duchess was doing. This feather work became a
rage of both the duchess and Elizabeth, and was the precursor of
the celebrated feather hangings, immortalized by Cowper’s verses in
Elizabeth’s later years. A humorous description of Lady Thanet,[30]
then the great lady of West Kent, an amusing character, and great-aunt
of the Duchess of Portland, is given in the same letter--

 “Lord Thanet[31] said when he came to Kent this summer that Lord
 Cowper[32] had brought his Countess[33] to affront all _East Kent_,
 and he had brought his Countess to affront all _West Kent_. She was
 a little discomposed one day at dinner and threw a pheasant and a
 couple of partridges off the table in shoving them up to my Lord to
 cut up.”

    [30] Mary, 4th daughter and coheiress of 2nd Marquis of Halifax.

    [31] 7th Earl of Thanet.

    [32] William, 2nd Earl Cowper.

    [33] Henrietta, daughter of Earl Grantham.

[Year: 1737]

Early in 1737, the second daughter of the duchess’s was
born--Henrietta, afterwards Countess of Stamford and Warrington.
Elizabeth writes to congratulate her on the event. She and her family
were very ill of fever that summer, thirteen persons down with it in
the house. The smallpox raged at Canterbury, and Mrs. Robinson would
not allow her daughters to attend the races. In a letter of September
mention is made of Dr. Conyers Middleton’s disappointment at not
obtaining the Mastership of the Charter House, which he most desired.
Another peep at Lady Thanet--

 “Lady Thanet came into this part of the country ten days ago;
 her French woman rode astride through the wilds of Kent, and the
 country people having heard her Ladyship was something odd, took
 Mademoiselle for Lady Thanet.”

The first letter extant between Elizabeth and Miss Anstey, sister of
Christopher Anstey, the author of the “New Bath Guide,”[34] may be
placed here, though undated, except “Mount Morris, near Hythe, July
15.” This extract shows her vivacious nature--

    [34] The “New Bath Guide” was not written till 1766. The Ansteys
    lived at Brinckley near Cambridge.

 “Yesterday I was overturned coming from a neighbour’s. We got no
 hurt at all, but were forced to borrow a coach to bring us the
 rest of the way, our own being quite disabled by the fall.... I
 always think one visits in the country at the hazard of one’s
 bones, but fear is never so powerful with me, as to make me stay
 at home, and the next thing to being retired, is to be morose:
 contemplation is not made for a woman on the right side of thirty,
 it suits prodigiously well with the gout or the rheumatism: rest
 and an elbow chair are the comfort of age, but the pleasures of
 youth are of a more lively sort. I have in winter gone eight miles
 to dance to the music of a blind fiddler, and returned at two in
 the morning, mightily pleased that I had been so well entertained.
 I am so fond of dancing that I cannot help fancying I was at some
 time bit by a tarantula,[35] and never got well cured of it. I
 shall this year lose my annual dancings at Canterbury Races, for my
 Papa has made a resolution (I assure you without my advice) not to
 go to them.”

    [35] It was believed that a tarantula’s bite was only to be cured by
    dancing.

[Page heading: MERSHAM HATCH]

[Page heading: THE PLAY]

In the next letter to the duchess, October 15, 1737--

 “Lady Thanet made a ball at Hothfield a few days ago to which she
 did our family the honour to invite them, and as we were obeying
 her commands and got into the coach with our ball airs and our
 dancing shoes, at five miles of our journey we met with a brook so
 swelled by the rain it looked like a river, and the water, we were
 told, was up to the coach seat, and as I had never heard of any
 balls in the Elysian Fields, and don’t so much as know whether the
 ghosts of departed beaux wear pumps, I thought it better to reserve
 ourselves for the Riddotto[36] than hazard drowning for this ball,
 and so we turned back and went to Sir Wyndham Knatchbull’s,[37]
 who were hindered by the same water; for my part I could think of
 nothing but the ball, when any one asked me how I did I cry’d
 tit for tat, and when they bid me sit down, I answered ‘Jack of
 the green.’ A few days after the ball, Lady Thanet bespoke a play
 at a town eight miles from us, and summoned us to it; two of my
 brothers, and my sister,[38] and your humble servant went, and
 after the play the gentlemen invited all the women to a supper
 at a tavern, where we staid till two o’clock in the morning, and
 then all set out for their respective homes. Here I suppose you
 will think my diversion ended, but I must tell your Grace it
 did not; for before I had gone two miles, I had the pleasure of
 being overturned, at which I squalled for joy; and to complete my
 felicity I was obliged to stand half an hour in the most refreshing
 rain, and the coolest north breeze I ever felt; for the coach’s
 braces breaking were the occasion of our overturn, and there was no
 moving till they were mended. You may suppose we did not lose so
 favourable an opportunity of catching cold; we all came croaking
 down to breakfast the next morning, and said we had caught no cold,
 as one always says when one has been scheming, but I think I have
 scarce recovered my treble notes yet. We had seven coaches at the
 play; there was Lord Winchilsea,[39] Lady Charlotte Finch,[40]
 Lady Betty Fielding,[40] Capt. Fielding,[41] his lady, and the
 Miss Palmers.[42] Mr. Fielding and Miss Molly Palmer caught such
 colds they sent for a physician the next day; Lady Knatchbull and
 Miss Knatchbull have kept their beds ever since: poor Lady Thanet
 was overturned as she went home, and caught a terrible hoarseness,
 which was the better for the poor coachman, who by that means
 escaped a sharp and shrill reproof; and indeed it is enough for
 any poor man to lye under the terror of her frowns, with a look
 she can wound, with a frown she can kill; I think I never saw so
 formidable a countenance. I think Lord Thanet’s education of his
 son[43] is something particular; he encourages him in swearing and
 singing nasty ballads with the servants: he is a very fine boy,
 but prodigiously rude; he came down to breakfast the other day
 when there was company, and his maid came with him, who, instead
 of carrying a Dutch toy, or a little whirligig for his Lordship to
 play with, was lugging a billet for his plaything. There was a fine
 supper at the ball, 33 dishes all very neat. My elder brother got
 out of the coach and put on a pair of boots, and rode on to the
 ball when we turned back.”

    [36] An entertainment of music first and afterwards dancing.

    [37] 5th Baronet. His place called Mersham Hatch.

    [38] Sarah Robinson, three years younger than Elizabeth.

    [39] Daniel, 7th Earl Winchilsea.

    [40] Sisters of Lord Winchilsea.

    [41] Father of Henry Fielding, the novelist.

    [42] Daughters of Sir Thomas Palmer of Wingham, Kent. Miss Molly
    afterwards 2nd Lady Winchilsea.

    [43] Sackville Tufton, 8th Earl of Thanet, born 1733.

[Page heading: LADY WALLINGFORD]

November 21, the duchess writes to condole with Elizabeth on the loss
of the ball, and mentions having been staying with the Duke at Lady
Peterborough’s[44]--

 “Bevis Mount[45] is the most delightful place I ever saw, the house
 bad and tumbling down, but there is a summer-house in the garden,
 such a one! From thence there is a prospect of the sea, the Isle
 of Wight, New Forest, the town of Southampton, the garden laid out
 with an elegant taste, and in short everything that is agreeable,
 but particularly the Mistress.... Lord and Lady Wallingford are
 with us now; they are extremely agreeable. I fancy you must have
 seen her in public places. She is extremely pretty, and in the
 French dress.”

    [44] _Née_ Anastasia Robinson, wife of the 3rd Lord Peterborough.

    [45] Bevis Mount, in Southampton.

Lady Wallingford was the daughter of John Law, the famous financier, by
his wife Katherine Knollys, third daughter of Charles Knollys, titular
3rd Earl of Banbury. Mary Katherine Law married in 1732 her first
cousin, called Viscount Wallingford.

[Page heading: THE SUIT OF CLOATHES]

At this period, though undated, may be placed Elizabeth’s request to
her father for a handsome suit of clothes. In a letter to her mother
she thanks her “for your goodness in giving me leave to stay, and
making it convenient to answer the Duchess’s and my wishes to stay
during her confinement. When we came to town the Duchess reckoned the
end of April.” From Bullstrode, therefore, she accompanied the duchess
and her family to Whitehall, where in a portion of the old palace was
the Portlands’ town residence. Elizabeth was now in her eighteenth
year. In a letter to her father, too lengthy to insert entirely, worded
in the respectful way children addressed their parents then, with “Sir”
and “Madam,” and concluding with “your most dutiful daughter,” she
says--

 “You know this year I am to be introduced by the Duchess to the
 best company in the town, and when she lies in, am both to receive
 in form with her all her visits as Lady Bell[46] used to do on
 that occasion, all the people of quality of both sexes that are in
 London, and I must be in full dress, and shall go about with her
 all the winter, therefore a suit of cloathes will be necessary for
 me, the value of which I submit entirely to you. I shall never so
 much want a handsome suit as upon this occasion of first appearing
 with my Lady Duchess; but as the first consideration is to please
 you, I would by no means urge this beyond your pleasure, by duty
 or inclination, I shall always be content with what you order, and
 hope you will not be displeased with my requests.”

    [46] Lady Isabella Bentinck, sister of the duke.

To this appeal her father sent her £20, and she returns thanks thus:--

  “Whitehall, Thursday.

  “SIR,

 “Wit is seldom accompanied with money, but your letter came to
 me with so much of both, that I can neither send you thanks, nor
 an answer worthy of your present epistle. You are very good
 to gratify my bosom friend, vanity, which, though it does not
 abandon me in a plain gown, takes greater delight in seeing me
 in a handsome one, and it has promised me that I shall appear to
 advantage in my new suit of cloathes, both to myself and other
 people.... The Duchess, with her advice, will help me to make the
 best use of your generosity. I have been to the Mercer’s, but have
 not yet pitched upon a silk.... Mr. Pope has wrote an epitaph upon
 himself, which is not by far the best monument of his wit; it is
 a trifling thing, and seems wrote for amusement. I would send it
 you if I could, but I have not got a copy of it; as soon as I have
 I will convey it to Mount Morris, where I imagine you may want
 amusements, and our roads are not smooth enough for Pegasus.”

[Page heading: ROBERT ROBINSON]

This epitaph is probably the one commencing “Under this marble, or
under this sill, or under this turf, or e’en what they will.” At the
end of the letter she says of her sailor brother--

 “Now Robert is secure of his commission, his life is something
 hazardous, but he holds danger in contempt, the golden fruit of
 gain is always guarded by some dragon which courage or vigilance
 must conquer.”

He had just been made captain of the _Bedford_, a ship in the merchant
service. Evidently Mrs. Robinson wrote a letter of advice as to the
important choice of “cloathes.” The answer runs--

  “MADAM,

 “I have obeyed your commands as to my cloathes, and have bought a
 very handsome Du Cape within the twenty pounds; a little accident
 which had happened to the silk in the Lomb made it a great deal
 cheaper, and, I believe, will not be at all the worse when made up;
 the colour in some places is a little damaged, but that will cut
 for the tail, and the rest is perfectly good. It will last longer
 clean than a flowered silk, and I have already had two since I
 have been in Mantuas:[47] I saw some of 25_s._ a yard that I did
 not think so pretty. Pray, Madam, let my thanks be repeated to my
 Pappa, to whose goodness I owe this suit of cloathes.... Pray send
 me by Tom the figured Dimity that was left of my upper coat, for it
 is too narrow and too short for my present hoop, which is of the
 first magnitude.”

    [47] The expression then used for the period when young ladies were
    what we call “out.”

[Page heading: ANNE DONNELLAN]

At the end of this letter Anne Donnellan is mentioned for the first
time. She was a friend of Dean Swift’s, together with her sister,
Mrs. Clayton, and her brother, the Rev. Christopher Donnellan. Anne
Donnellan’s pet name in the Duchess of Portland’s circle was “Don,”
as Mrs. Pendarves (afterwards Mrs. Delany) was “Pen,” Miss Dashwood
“Dash,”[48] and Lady Wallingford “Wall.”

    [48] The “Delia” of the poet Hammond.

CHAPTER II.

LIFE IN BATH, LONDON, AND AT BULLSTRODE, 1738–1740 BEGINNING OF
CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. DONNELLAN.

[Year: 1738]

On April 16, 1738, the Duchess of Portland’s son, William Henry,
afterwards 3rd Duke, was born, after which Elizabeth returned home
with her father. On June 30 the duchess wrote to apologize for a long
silence--

 “I should have answered dear Fidget’s letter before I left
 London, but you are sensible what a hurry one lives in there,
 and particularly after being confined some months from public
 diversions, how much one is engaged in them, Operas, Park,
 Assemblies, Vaux Hall--which I believe you never had the occasion
 of seeing. You must get your Papa to stay next year: it is really
 insufferable going out of town at the most pleasant time of the
 year. I am positive the easterly winds have much greater effect
 upon the spirits in the country, than it is possible they should
 have in London. I dare say the chief part of the year your Papa is
 in town he don’t know which way the wind is, except when he goes
 into a Coffee House and meets with some poor disbanded Officer who
 is quarrelling with the times and consequently with the weather,
 because he is not a General in time of peace; or a valetudinarian,
 that if a fly settled on his nose, would curse the Easterly wind,
 and fancy it had sent it there; these are the only people that ever
 thought of East wind in London.”

At the end of the letter the duchess says, “My amusements are all of
the Rural kind--Working, Spinning, Knotting, Drawing, Reading, Writing,
Walking, and picking Herbs to put into an Herbal.”

[Page heading: SIR ROBERT AUSTIN]

This little peep of her life is most characteristic, though fond
of the pleasures of high society diversions, and the varieties of
London, she took an interest in all sorts of country and domestic
pursuits, and excelled in them. She turned in wood and ivory; she
was familiar with every kind of needlework; she made shell frames,
adorned grottoes, designed feather work, collected endless objects in
the animal and vegetable kingdom; was a hearty lover of animals and
birds of all kinds. Her letters are lively and affectionate, but not
clever and witty as her friend Elizabeth Robinson’s. She complains of
her stupidity in letter-writing. Elizabeth had the witty head, and the
duchess the cunning hand, but both possessed that valuable possession,
warm hearts. To the duchess’s last letter Elizabeth replies--

 “I arrived at Mount Morris rather more fond of society than
 solitude. I thought it no very agreeable change of scene from
 Handel[49] and Cafferelli.[50]... Sir Francis Dashwood’s sister is
 going to be married to Sir Robert Austin, a baronet of our county;
 if the size of his estate bore any proportion to the bulk of his
 carcase, he would be one of the greatest matches in England ... a
 lady may make her lover languish till he is the size she most likes
 ... as it is the fashion for men to die for love, the only thing
 a woman can do is to bring a man into a consumption; what triumph
 then must attend the lady who reduces Sir Robert Austin ... to
 asses’ milk. Omphale made Hercules spin, but greater glory awaits
 the lady who makes Sir Robert Austin lean.... I told my Pappa how
 much he laid under your Grace’s displeasure for hurrying out of
 town: but what is a fine lady’s anger, or the loss of London, to
 five and forty? They are more afraid of an easterly wind than a
 frown when at that age.”

    [49] George Frederick Handel, born 1685, died 1759.

    [50] Gaetano Majoriano Caffarelli, celebrated Italian singer, pupil
    of Porpora, died 1783.

[Page heading: VARIOUS RECIPES]

[Page heading: THE GOAT]

On December 17 Elizabeth writes to the duchess in answer to a string of
queries the latter had sent her--

 “I must take the liberty to advise what is to be done, and to avoid
 confusion will take them in the order of the letter. Item, for the
 wet-nurse[51] after the chickenpox, that she may become new milch
 again, a handful of Camomile flowers, a handful of Pennyroyal,
 boiled in white wine, and sweetened with treacle, to be taken at
 going to rest. For my Lord Titchfield who grows prodigiously,
 Daisy roots and milk. For the small foot and taper ancle of my
 Lady Duchess, bruised and strained by a fall, a large shoe and oil
 Opodeldock. For the horse whose Christian name I have forgotten,
 Friar’s Balsam, and for the death of a dormouse take four of the
 fairest Moral and Theological Virtues, with patience and fortitude,
 quantum sufficit, and they will prevent immoderate grieving.... I
 heard a very ridiculous story a few days ago: Mr. Page, brother to
 Sir Gregory, going to visit Mr. Edward Walpole,[52] a tame goat
 which was in the street followed him unperceived when he got out
 of the coach into the house. Mr. Walpole’s servant, thinking the
 goat came out of Mr. Page’s coach, carried it into the room to Mr.
 Walpole, who thought it a little odd Mr. Page should bring such a
 visitor, as Mr. Page no less admired at his choice of so savoury a
 companion; but civility, a great disguiser of sentiments, prevented
 their declaring their opinions, and the goat, no respecter of
 persons or furniture, began to rub himself against the frame of a
 chair which was carved and gilt, and the chair, which was fit for
 a Christian, but unable to bear the shock of a beast, fell almost
 to pieces. Mr. Walpole thought Mr. Page very indulgent to his dear
 crony the goat, and wondering he took no notice of the damage,
 said he fancied tame goats did a great deal of harm, to which the
 other said he believed so too: after much free and easy behaviour
 of the goat, to the great detriment of the furniture, they came to
 an explanation, and Mr. Goat was turned downstairs with very little
 ceremony or good manners.... Dr. Middleton has got two nieces whom
 he is to keep entirely, for his brother left them quite destitute.
 They are very fine children, and my Grannam is very fond of them.
 The doctor is soon to bring forth his ‘Cicero,’ everybody says the
 production will do him credit. Lady Thanet has set an assembly on
 foot about eight miles from hence, where we all meet at the full
 moon and dance till 12 o’clock, and then take an agreeable journey
 home. Our assembly in full glory has ten coaches at it; and Lady
 Thanet, to make up a number, is pleased in her humility to call
 in all the parsons, apprentices, tradesmen, apothecaries, and
 farmers, milliners, mantua-makers, haberdashers of small wares,
 and chambermaids. It is the oddest mixture you can imagine--here
 sails a reverent parson, there skips an airy apprentice, here
 jumps a farmer, and then every one has an eye to their trade; the
 milliner pulls you by the hand till she tears your glove; the
 mantua-maker treads upon your petticoat till she unrips the seams;
 the shoemaker makes you foot it till you wear out your shoes; the
 mercer dirties your gown; the apothecary opens the window behind
 you to make you sick. Most of our neighbours will be in town by
 the next moon, so we shall have no more balls this winter. In
 town the ladies talk of their stars, but here, ‘If weak women go
 astray, the moon is more in fault than they.’ Will o’ Whisp never
 led the bewildered traveller over hedge or ditch as a moon does us
 country folk; a squeaking fiddle is an occasion, and a moonlight
 night an opportunity, to go ten miles in bad roads at any time.
 I must tell your Grace that my Papa forgets twenty years and nine
 children, and dances as nimbly as any of the Quorum, but is now
 and then mortified by hearing the ladies cry, ‘Old Mr. Robinson
 hay sides, and turn your daughter:’ other ladies who have a mind
 to appear young say, ‘Well, there is my poor Grandpapa; he could
 no more dance so.’ Then comes an old bachelor of fifty and shakes
 him by the hand, and cries, ‘Why you dance like us young fellows:’
 another more injudicious than the rest, says by way of compliment,
 ‘Who would think you had six fine children taller than yourself? I
 protest if I did not know you I should take you to be young.’ Then
 says the most antiquated Virgin in the company, ‘Mr. Robinson wears
 mighty well; my mother says he looks as well as ever she remembers
 him; he used often to come to the house when I was a girl.’ You may
 suppose he has not the ‘hyp’ at these balls; but indeed it is a
 distemper so well bred as never to come but when people are at home
 and at leisure.”

    [51] Wet-nurse of the Marquis of Titchfield.

    [52] Son of Sir Robert and brother of Horace Walpole.

[Year: 1739]

[Page heading: WILLIAM AND GRACE FREIND]

In April, 1739, Elizabeth’s cousin, Grace Robinson, sister of “Long”
Sir Thomas Robinson,[53] married the Rev. William Freind,[54] son of
the Rev. Dr. Robert Freind, Head Master of Westminster School. Soon
after the marriage, Elizabeth, who appears to have known Mr. Freind
intimately before he married her cousin, writes from “Leicester
Street, near Leicester Fields,” to Mr. and Mrs. Freind, “How rare meet
now, such pairs in love and honour joyn’d,” and addresses them as
“my inestimable cousins.” She states that her family return to Kent
shortly, whilst she is going to the Duchess of Portland in White Hall.
Elizabeth writes to the duchess on July 1, 1739, having just returned
home from her visit--

 “I have thought of nothing but the company I was in on Tuesday
 since I left town, though a worshipful Justice with a new leathern
 belt, scarlet waistcoat and plush breeches, has been endeavouring
 this whole afternoon to put you out of my head. I have been forced
 to hear the most elegant encomiums upon the country, and the most
 barbarous censures upon the town. First his Worship talked of
 Larks and Nightingales, then enlarged upon the sweetness of bean
 blossom, roses and honeysuckles, said the town stunk of cabbages
 and limekilns, so that I found as to pleasures he was lead by the
 nose.”

    [53] Sir Thomas Robinson, eldest son of William Robinson, of Rokeby;
    made a baronet in 1730. Called “Long” Sir Thomas to distinguish him
    from Sir Thomas Robinson, afterwards 1st Baron Grantham.

    [54] Succeeded his father as Rector of Whitney, Oxon, and afterwards
    Dean of Canterbury.

[Page heading: COUNTRY BEAUX]

Further on she says, the Canterbury Races were to be on July 18, and
begs her Grace, if she knows any dancing shoes which lye idle, to bid
them trip to Canterbury, as there will be many forsaken damsels--

 “Our collection of men is very antique, they stand in my list thus:
 a man of sense, a little rusty, a beau a good deal the worse for
 wearing, a coxcomb extremely shattered, a pretty gentleman, very
 insipid, a baronet very solemn, a squire very fat, a fop much
 affected, a barrister learned in ‘Coke upon Lyttelton’ but knows
 nothing of ‘long ways for many as will,’ an heir-apparent, very
 awkward; which of these will cast a favourable eye upon me I don’t
 know.”

[Page heading: THOMAS ROBINSON]

[Page heading: A BONE-SETTER]

She was destined not to go after all, for she writes--

  “Mount Morris, July 18, 1739.

  “MADAM,

 “The great art of life is to turn our misfortunes to our advantage,
 and to make even disappointments instrumental to our pleasures. To
 follow which rule I have taken the day which I should have gone
 to the Races to write to your Grace. About ten days ago my Papa
 took an hypochondriacal resolution not to go to the Races, for the
 Vapours and Love are two things that seek solitude, but for me, who
 have neither in my constitution, a crowd is not disagreeable, and
 I always find myself prompted by a natural benevolence and love
 of Society to go where two or three are gathered together.... The
 theory of dancing is extreamly odd, tho’ the practice is agreeable;
 who could by force of reasoning find out the satisfaction of
 casting off right hand and left, and the Hayes; we often laugh at
 a kitten turning round in pursuit of its tail, when the creature
 is really turning single. I shall have an account of the Races
 from my brother Robinson, who is there; as for the Barrister,[55]
 he came down to the Sessions, and when he had sold all his Law,
 packed up his saleable eloquence and carried it back to Lincoln’s
 Inn, there to be left till called for. Would you think a person so
 near akin to me as a brother could run away from a ball? I hear
 some Canterbury girls who could aspire no higher than a younger
 brother, are very angry, and say they shall never put their cause
 into his hands, as he seems so little willing to defend it....
 Next year we must certainly go to the Races for the good of the
 county, and dance out of the spirit of Patriotism. The Election
 year always brings company to Canterbury upon this occasion, and
 as for me I will dance to either a Whig or a Tory tune, as it may
 be, for in any wise I will dance. I am not like the dancing Monkies
 who will only cut their capers for King George, I will dance for
 any man or Monarch in Christendom, nay were it even a Mahometan
 or idolatrous King; I should not make much scruple about it. I
 had the misfortune to be overturned the other day coming from Sir
 Wyndham Knatchbull’s,[56] the occasion of it was one of our wheels
 coming off. I assure you I but just avoided the indecency of being
 topsy turvey, my head was so much lower than its usual situation,
 as put my ideas much out of place, and I think my head has been
 in a perfect litter ever since.... I shall begin to think from
 my frequent overturns a bone-setter a necessary part of equipage
 for country visiting. I am sure those who visit much, love their
 neighbours better than themselves; perhaps you will be as apt to
 suspect me as anybody of that extream of charity, but I am so
 tender of myself there are few I would hazard even a gristle or
 a sinew, but civility is a debt that must be paid. I hope in all
 accidents I shall preserve a finger and thumb, to write myself

  “Your Grace’s most obedient and obliged
  “Humble servant,
  “E. ROBINSON.

 “My humble service to the Duke.”

    [55] Her brother Thomas.

    [56] At Mersham Hatch.

  _Hamilton, Pinx._      _Emery Walker Ph. Sc._

_Mr. & Mrs. Matthew Robinson_]

[Page heading: DUKE OF PORTLAND]

The duchess was now expecting her confinement, and Lady Wallingford,
who was staying with her, corresponded with Elizabeth in French. Owing
to the residence of her father in France as Superintendent of Finances,
she was more French than English. Her letters are well written and
expressed, though the spelling is peculiar. At a later date she writes
to Elizabeth in broken English, and she scolds her for making her
correspond in English instead of French. Horace Walpole, in a letter
to the Earl of Buchan, states that Lady Wallingford was the image of
her father, and that her mother, Lady Katherine Law, lived during her
husband’s power in France in great state. On July 26, 1739, another
daughter, Lady Margaret, was born to the duchess. Dr. Sandys was, as
usual, the accoucheur, but it makes one horrified in these days to
think Dr. Sandys _bled_ the duchess for a feverish cold on the Monday
and Thursday after her child was born. Truly under this San Grado
treatment it was then the “survival of the fittest”! The duke now wrote
a bulletin of his wife to Elizabeth--

  “Whitehall, August 9, 1739.

  “MADAM,

 “Tho’ J have not been overturned you’ll imagine by the scrawl you
 receive yt both my thumb and forefinger have been dislocated; J own
 j can’t agree with you in yt for j flatter myself j have the use of
 them, but if you please j’ll agree with you that they never were in
 joint, for which reason j am not so sensible of ye loss of jointed
 fingers, as you might be had yours been broke by the overturn of
 your coach, which accident j hope may never happen to you. The Dss.
 is as well as can be expected tho’ a little weak, and is extremely
 obliged to you for your letter, and also begged j would hint yt
 tho’ she can’t wright letters she can read them, j need not explain
 my meaning to you. She desires her kind service to Fidgett; and
 should be glad if you would make her compliments acceptable to your
 Mama, etc.

  “j am with the uttmost respect, Madam,
  “Your most obedient, humble servant,
  “PORTLAND.”

The duke’s writing is very characteristic, but certainly rather
disjointed looking, and his I’s always written as long j’s.

Elizabeth had just had another coach adventure. The coachman who drove
her father and mother and her brother Matthew home after dining at a
neighbour’s, was drunk, which they did not perceive till he lashed the
four horses into a furious gallop. In vain Mr. Robinson called to him,
and swore at him; Matthew and Mrs. Robinson intreated; he persisted
in lashing the horses till he fell off the box, and two wheels ran
over him, but as Elizabeth states, “being preserved in beer, took very
little harm; both footmen were drunk, so took very little care about
us.”

In a letter to the duchess (August 15) we find Elizabeth and her sister
Sarah banished from home to Canterbury on account of a woman and three
children who lived in a farmhouse near the gate of Mount Morris having
the smallpox. That fell disease ever inspired Elizabeth with great
dread. Later in life at three different times she was inoculated,[57]
each time unsuccessfully, for this disease, then a universal scourge.
I should like the foolish fathers and mothers of the present day who
petition for non-vaccination to read the accounts given in letters
I possess of the unbridled ravages then made by smallpox, and to
consider that a usually temporary inconvenience to the child’s health
is a very trifling infliction compared with a loathsome disease, which
many people fled from nursing, and which even if it did not kill the
sufferers, probably disfigured them for life. The sisters first stayed
with Mrs. Scott,[58] and then with Mrs. Tennison, “wife to a prebend
in this church; there is very little company here, except Deans,
Prebends and Minor Canons, etc., etc.; nothing but messages and visits
from Prebends, Deacons, and the Church militant upon earth.” Later on,
speaking of her brother Matthew’s refusal to leave home on account of
the smallpox, she says, “I have seven brothers, and would not part with
one for a kingdom; and if I had but one, I should be distracted about
him; sure nobody has so many or so good brothers.”

    [57] Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced inoculation into England
    in 1721.

    [58] Of Scott’s Hall.

[Page heading: INFLUENZA]

[Page heading: THE SMALLPOX]

Meanwhile the duchess had a return of fever, and was for some days
in great danger. On August 28 Lady Wallingford writes to say she was
out of danger. Influenza was rife then, and Lady Wallingford states
that she had not a single lackey fit to attend her from her house to
Whitehall, but had walked there by herself, though still suffering from
its effects. It was not then called influenza, but from the description
must have been that disease. Eight out of the nine in the farm at
Mount Morris caught the smallpox, and the duke, writing to Elizabeth on
September 15, a bulletin about his wife, adds--

 “Both she and j[59] join in entreating you not to venture yourself,
 and that pretty face of yours, to come within the walls of your
 paternal mansion, and were j in your situation, nothing but
 absolute commands should make me venture myself.”

    [59] The “j” for “I,” characteristic of the duke’s writing.

After her visit to Canterbury, Elizabeth spent a month at Mersham Hatch
with the Knatchbulls. She now became seriously indisposed; her health
was always frail, and she appears to have suffered much from headaches
at this period. In a letter to the duchess she complains--

 “I have swallowed the weight of an Apothecary in medicine, and what
 I am the better for it, except more patient, and less credulous,
 I know not. I have learnt to bear my infirmities and not to trust
 to the skill of Physicians for curing them. I endeavour to drink
 deeply of Philosophy, and to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy
 when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended, and
 patient where there be no redress. The mighty can do no more, and
 the wise seldom do as much.”

On October 10 she announces that she and her mother, who had been
extremely unwell too, had been advised to drink the Bath waters, and
were to be accompanied there by her father. She hopes to see the
duchess on her way to Bath, but bids her tell her porter to admit her,
as she has grown so thin--

 “he will think it is my ghost and shut the door. I shall stay but
 a few days in town and then proceed with my Father and Mother,
 to the waters of life and recovery. My Pappa’s chimney ‘hyp’ will
 never venture to attack him in a public place; it is the sweet
 companion of solitude and the off-spring of meditation, the disease
 of an idle imagination, not the child of hurry and diversion. I
 am afraid that with the gaiety of the place, and the spirits the
 waters give, I shall be perfect Sal-Volatile, and open my mouth
 and evaporate.... I was a month at Hatch, where the good humour of
 the family makes everything agreeable; we had great variety in the
 house--children in cradles, and old women in elbow chairs. I think
 the family may be looked upon as the three tenses, the present,
 past and future.”

[Page heading: COTTAGE LIFE]

On a fresh scare being caused by the illness of her maid, which the
old women of the parish pronounced to be smallpox, Mrs. Robinson sent
Elizabeth and Sarah to the cottage of the carpenter hard by without
delay, though so late that Elizabeth writes--

 “I arrived at my new lodging but the moment before it was time to
 go to bed, where I slept pretty well, notwithstanding the goodman
 and his wife snored, the little child cryed, the maid screamed, one
 little boy had whooping cough, another roared with chilblains. The
 furniture of our chamber is extraordinary, the ornamental parts as
 follows:--on the mantelpiece four stone tea-cups, four wineglasses,
 two broken, two leaden cherubims, a piece of looking-glass, with
 a ‘beggerly account of empty bottles,’ as Shakespeare calls it, a
 print of King Charles the Martyr, the woeful ballad of the children
 in the wood, a pious copy of verses entitled ‘the believer’s
 gold chain, or good councell for all men,’ with a resplendent
 brass warming pan, in which my sister is dressing her head to the
 disadvantage of her complexion, and not much to the rectitude of
 her head-dress.”

The alarm proved to be false as to the nature of the maid’s illness,
and they returned the next day to the paternal mansion.

[Page heading: EDMUND CURLL]

On November 12 Elizabeth writes from Bath to her sister a long and
indignant letter upon some poems brought out in the name of Prior. She
says--

 “I got at last this morning the poems just published under
 Prior’s[60] name, brought them home under my arm, locked my
 door, sat me down by my fireside, and opened the book with great
 expectation, but to my disappointment found it to be the most
 wretched trumpery that you can conceive, the production of the
 meanest of Curl’s[61] band of scribblers.”

    [60] Matthew Prior, born 1664, died 1721.

    [61] Edmund Curll, born 1675, died 1747; publisher, etc., ridiculed
    by Pope in the “Dunciad.”

She continues to inveigh against this forgery in eloquent terms, and
towards the end of the letter remarks “that mankind can’t support above
two dead languages at a time, so as to have any tolerable knowledge or
use of them, therefore in all probability Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden,
Prior, and Pope are but short-lived, in comparison of those Methuselahs
the Classicks.”

[Page heading: BATH]

[Page heading: GRACE FREIND]

The first letter to the duchess from Bath is dated--

  “December 15, Friday, Bath.

  “MADAM,

 “After four days’ journey in very bad roads, I arrived here a
 good deal tired: if Scarron[62] had not been very facetious, my
 countenance had not received the impression of a smile since I
 left Whitehall till my arrival at Bath. I read most of the way,
 but was sometimes taken off ‘Le petit Ragotin’s’ disasters to fear
 those that might happen to la petite Fidget.[63]... morning after
 I arrived, I went to the Ladies’ Coffee House, where I heard of
 nothing but the rheumatism in the shoulder, the sciatica in the
 hip, and the gout in the toe. After these complaints I began to
 fancy myself in the Hospitals or Infirmaries; I never saw such
 an assembly of disorders. I dare say Gay[64] wrote his fable of
 the ‘Court of Death’ from this place. After drinking the waters
 I go to breakfast, and about 12 I drink another glass of water,
 and then dress for dinner; visits employ the afternoon, and we
 saunter away the evening in great stupidity. I think no place can
 be less agreeable. ‘How d’ye do?’ is all one hears in the morning,
 and ‘What’s trumps?’ in the afternoon. Lady Berkshire[65] did us
 the honour of a visit on Wednesday, and inquired much about your
 health. Lord Berkshire[66] is literally speaking laid by the leg,
 which the gout has usurped, for it has ever been a distemper of
 very great quality, and runs in the blood of the Howards. Mr.
 Howard and Mr. Tom Howard,[67] Lord Berkshire’s youngest son, are
 here, as are Mrs. Greville and her daughter; Lady Hereford,[68]
 Lady F. Shirley,[69] Lady Anne Furnese,[70] Lady Anne Finch,[71]
 Lady Widdrington, Miss Windsors, Miss Gage, and I should first
 have said the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk,[72] and Mrs. Howard,
 wife of Brigadier-General Howard; as for the men, except Lord
 Noel Somerset, they are altogether abominable; however, such as
 they are, I must dress for the ball, and I will add a supplement
 to-morrow.

 “P.S.--Madam, you know the _Spectator_ says a woman never speaks
 her mind but in the postscript! Last night produced nothing but
 some bad dancing, except Mr. Southwell,[73] who was overwhelmed
 with congratulatory compliments; in one day he was chose Member,
 made Father to a little daughter, and got a £500 prize in the
 lottery; he seemed in good spirits, and bowed popularly low to all
 his acquaintance.... I believe there is a great circulation of
 company, for the bells are always ringing for somebody to come, or
 tolling for somebody gone. There are many people I have known and
 seen before, but very few whom I care to see again. One person whom
 I like extremely, loves her husband so much better than me, that
 I cannot persuade her to come out. I believe your Grace has often
 heard me speak of Mrs. Freind,[74] who is not at all like Sir Tommy
 her brother. What makes me like her still better is her contempt
 of Matadors.[75] I do not think she ever dreamt of Spadille in
 her life, tho’ most people here prefer its company to their best
 friends.”

    [62] Paul Scarron, born 1610, died 1660; French satirist. Husband of
    Mademoiselle D’Aubigné, afterwards Madame de Maintenon; wrote “Le
    Roman Comique,” etc.

    [63] Her pet-name.

    [64] John Gay, born 1685, died 1732; poet, etc.

    [65] Catherine, daughter of J. Grahame, of Levens, Westmorland.

    [66] 4th Earl of Berkshire.

    [67] Afterwards 6th Earl of Berkshire, and 14th Earl of Suffolk.

    [68] Wife of 6th Viscount.

    [69] Daughter of 1st Earl Ferrers.

    [70] Daughter of 1st Earl Ferrers, by second marriage.

    [71] Daughter of 1st Earl Aylesford.

    [72] Widow of 15th Duke, _née_ Sherburne.

    [73] Son of Sir Thomas Southwell.

    [74] Her cousin, _née_ Grace Robinson.

    [75] Terms used in ombre and quadrille.

[Year: 1740]

In her next letter of January 4, 1740, she says--

 “I should be glad to send you some news, but all the news of the
 place would be like the bills of Mortality, palsy four, gout six,
 fever one, and so on. We hear of nothing but ‘Mr. such-a-one is
 not abroad to-day.’ ‘Oh no,’ says another poor gentleman, ‘he dyed
 to-day.’ Then another cries, ‘My party was made for Quadrille[76]
 to-night, but one of the gentlemen has had a second stroke of the
 palsy and cannot come; there is no depending on people, nobody
 minds engagements.’

 “I beg the favour of your Grace to tell Mrs. Pendarves that I often
 enquire after her from her friend Mrs. Donnellan. I hear there is
 hope of Mrs. Pendarves coming here in March, but I know you will be
 against the journey, so I dare not say how glad I should be to see
 her. I assure we have none like her here.”

    [76] Quadrille, a card-game for four people, played with 40 cards,
    8’s, 9’s, and 10’s discarded.

[Page heading: LORD NOEL SOMERSET]

[Page heading: DOWAGER DUCHESS OF NORFOLK]

Miss Anne Donnellan, who according to the then prevailing custom in
regard to unmarried women beyond extreme youth was called Mrs., was
the daughter of Nehemiah Donnellan, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer
of Ireland, and Martha, _née_ Miss Usher. Her father was dead, and
her mother had, in 1712, remarried the Hon. Philip Percival, brother
to the 1st Lord Egmont. The Donnellans were great friends of Dean
Swift, and Anne and her brother, the Rev. Christopher Donnellan,
were correspondents of his, as can be seen in the printed letters in
“Swift’s Life.” The next letter to the duchess says--

 “Lord Berkshire was wheeled into the rooms on Thursday night, where
 he saluted me with much snuff and civility, in consequence of which
 I sneezed and curtseyed abundantly; as a further demonstration of
 his loving-kindness, he made me play at commerce with him. You
 may easily guess at the charms of a place where the height of my
 happiness is a pair royal at commerce, and a peer of fourscore.
 Last night I took to the more youthful diversion of dancing, and am
 nothing but a fan (which my partner tore), the worse for it; our
 beaux here may make a rent in a woman’s fan, but they never will
 make holes in her heart, for my part Lord Noel Somerset[77] has
 made me a convert from toupets and pumps, to tye wigs and a gouty
 shoe. Ever since my Lord Duke reprimanded me for admiring Lord
 Crawford’s[78] nimble legs, I have resolved to prefer the merit of
 the head to the agility of the heels; and I have made so great a
 progress in my resolution as to like the good sense which limps,
 better than the lively folly which dances. But to my misfortune
 he likes the Queen of Spades so much more than me, that he never
 looks off his cards, though, were I the Queen of Diamonds, he would
 stand a fair chance for me. Lord Aylesford comes to the rooms every
 night like ‘Beau Clincher’ in a blanket: he wears a nasty red rugg
 great coat. The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk bathes, and being very
 tall she had like to have drowned a few women in the Cross Bath,
 for she ordered it to be filled till it reached to her chin, and
 so all those who were below her stature, as well as rank, were
 forced to come out or drown; and finding, according to the Proverb,
 in vain to strive against the stream, they left the bath rather
 than swallow so large a draught of water. I am sorry for the cruel
 separation of your Grace and Miss Dashwood, I believe no one parts
 with their friends with greater reluctance than you do.”

    [77] Afterwards 4th Duke of Beaufort.

    [78] John, 17th Earl of Crawford, and 7th Earl of Lindsay.

On January 25 Elizabeth says, “An unfortunate joint in my hip has been
so troublesome, I could not have believed the rheumatism would attack
so dancing a leg;” and then commenting on Lord Noel Somerset’s recent
engagement to Miss Berkeley[79]--

    [79] Elizabeth Berkeley, daughter of John Symes Berkeley, of Stoke
    Gifford.

 “I think Lord Noel’s wife must be happy, and Miss Berkeley is
 a very deserving woman, and good-natured. Everybody is content
 except those who would have liked the gentleman for themselves....
 A man of merit, and a younger brother is a purchase only for a
 large fortune; as for those who have more merit than wealth,
 they must turn the penny by disposing of their useless virtues
 for riches, the exchange may sometimes be difficult, Virtues not
 being sterling, nor merit the coin of the nation.... Gold is the
 chief ingredient in the composition of worldly happiness. Living
 in a cottage on love is certainly the worst diet and the worst
 habitation one can find out. As for modern marriages they are great
 infringers of the baptismal vow; for ’tis commonly the pomps and
 vanities of this wicked world on one side and the simple lust of
 the flesh on the other side. For my part when I marry I do not
 intend to enlist entirely under the banner of Cupid or Plutus, but
 take prudent consideration and decent inclination for my advisers;
 I like a coach and six extremely, but a strong apprehension of
 repentance would not suffer me to accept it from many who possess
 it....

 “I beg your Grace to make my compliments to Mrs. Pendarves, and
 return my sincere thanks for saying so much in my favour as could
 introduce me to so an agreeable an acquaintance as Mrs. Donnellan.
 I assure you what she says gives pleasure, and what she sings
 delight.”[80]

    [80] Her exquisite singing is mentioned in Mrs. Delany’s Memoirs.

[Page heading: FROST FAIR]

In January, 1740, the weather was so severe, a frost fair was held on
the Thames for weeks together; booths, tents, and shows of all kinds
were the order of the day. In a letter to the duchess this is alluded
to thus:--

 “What will the world come to now the Duchesses drink gin, and
 frequent Fairs? I am afraid your gentlemen did not pledge you, or
 they might have resisted the frost and the fatigue by the strength
 of that comfortable liquor. I want much to know if your Grace got
 a ride in the Flying Coach, which is part of the diversion of a
 Fair.... I am much obliged to your Grace for forming schemes for
 me. If any castles come to my share they must be airy ones, for
 I have no material to build them on Terra Firma. I am not a good
 chimerical architect, and besides I would rather dwell this summer
 in a small room in a certain mansion near Gerrard’s Cross,[81]
 than in the most spacious building I could get. I shall not be
 troublesome to you in town, for our stay here will be so long that
 our family will hardly go down till May. The time will come that we
 shall meet at Philippi.”

    [81] Meaning Bullstrode, which is close to Gerrard’s Cross.

[Page heading: MRS. DONNELLAN]

A letter from Mrs. Donnellan, with whom Elizabeth had struck up a
lively friendship, and entered into a correspondence, is dated from
London, April, 1740, portions of which I copy--

 “Since my last I passed a most agreeable day with your friend and
 mine; the Duke and Duchess of Portland proposed a jaunt into the
 city to see city shows, and were so obliging as to ask me with
 Mrs. Pendarves to be of the party. We were four men, four women:
 our fourth woman was Lady Wallingford, whom I never saw before;
 but she seems good-natured and civil; our four men, the Duke, Lord
 Dupplin, Mr. Achard,[82] and Dr. Shaw,[83] all new to me. We set
 out at ten in two hackney coaches, and stopped at everything that
 had a name between us and the Tower, going and coming, and dined at
 a city Tavern. I am extremely glad your time is fixed for coming
 to us, and that we shall have you a month. You will find the rage
 for whist[84] a little abated, I hope, if the weather and Vaux
 Hall is in its lustre. You are right in quarrelling with the men
 for letting cards take their places in the ladies’ hearts, for I
 dare say they would rather hear the gentlemen say fine things,
 than win a Slam, and it is a want of gallantry in the men that
 runs the women into cards; for something we must have to stir our
 passions, or life seems dull. Your account of Bath folks diverted
 me much.... My present delight is the fine lady who admires and
 hates to excess; she doats on the dear little boy that dances,
 she detests Handel’s Oratorios; indeed she don’t say she admires
 Mademoiselle de Chateauneuf’s kicking the tambourine, till she
 shows herself naked to the waist. She owns it is indecent, but she
 goes constantly to see her. I don’t know whether you have heard of
 the kicking entertainment? I have not seen it, but I have heard it
 very lively described; she kicks twice for the King, and once for
 the audience, to the great edification of the spectators. I suppose
 you have heard of the false dice at the last masquerade. I fancy
 it must have been a pretty sight, a dozen Dominoes, at five in the
 morning examined before Justice de Val: I think they should have
 been all Devils with Horns and Hoofs. I saw the Duke and Duchess
 of Portland yesterday morning at Zincke’s,[85] where she and
 Mrs. Pendarves are sitting for their pictures.... Adieu; make my
 compliments to all your family, and believe me, dear Madam,

  “Your affectionate friend, and humble servant,
  “ANNE DONNELLAN.”

    [82] Mr. Achard had been tutor to the duke, and was afterwards his
    secretary.

    [83] Dr. Shaw, born 1692, died 1751; Regius Professor of Greek,
    Oxford. Great traveller, botanist, etc.

    [84] Elizabeth hated games of cards.

    [85] Christian Frederick Zincke, born 1684, died 1767; eminent
    miniature painter.

[Page heading: THE PLUNGE BATH]

Elizabeth suffering much still from headaches, Dr. Sandys was
consulted, and he recommended the plunge bath. This was at Marylebone,
at the then popular gardens. This was considered a hazardous exploit,
and she first wrote to ask her parents’ consent. Writing to Sarah, she
says--

 “If you was to see me souse into the cold bath, you would think I
 had not sense or feeling.... The Duchess went with me the first
 time, and was frightened out of her wits, but I behaved much to my
 honour. Mrs. Verney went to learn to go in of me. Mrs. Pendarves
 went with me to-day, and was as pale as a ghost with the fear of
 my being drowned, which you know is impossible. I go in every
 day and have found benefit already; but there are two things I
 dislike, viz. the pain of going overhead, and the expense of the
 bath. The Duke and Duchess are very good in lending me the coach
 every morning to Marrybone, which is two miles from here, but the
 bath was better than any at Charing Cross: the Duchess says if
 there is any bath, as she thinks there is in their neighbourhood at
 Bullstrode, she will send me to it, a tub not being near so good.”

The whole parish of Marylebone belonged to the Duchess of Portland.
There were nine springs of water there: _vide_ “Old and New London,”
vol. iv.

[Page heading: FAIRINGS]

April, 1740, occurs a letter to her sister Sarah, written whilst
staying with the duchess in London. Elizabeth says--

 “Lord Oxford went to Bath in the post chaise for a week, he brought
 us all fairings. Mine were a fan, and a snuff box of Egyptian
 pebbles set in Pinchbeck.[86] The Duchess a fan, and an enamel tag
 for her lace.”

    [86] Christopher Pinchbeck invented this sham gold. He died in 1732.

The next letter to her mother says--

 “I was at Mr. Zincke’s yesterday in the morning, where I am to
 sit for my picture. On Thursday we went out of town to Sir John
 Stanley’s[87] at North End. There we met Mrs. Pendarves. I was
 much pleased with my visit. Sir John at 80 years old has as much
 politeness, good nature and cheerfulness as I ever met; his
 behaviour has neither the formality of age, nor the pertness of
 youth.”

    [87] Sir John Stanley married Anne Granville, aunt to Mrs.
    Pendarves, who had been Maid-of-Honour to Queen Mary II.

[Page heading: “LONG” SIR THOMAS ROBINSON]

In March Lord Oxford gave a ball at Marylebone--

 “The Ball was very agreeable. I will give you the list of company
 as they danced;--the Duchess and Lord Foley,[88] the Duke and
 Mrs. Pendarves, Lord Dupplin and ‘Dash,’[89] Lord George[90] and
 ‘Fidget,’ Lord Howard and Miss Cesar, Mr. Granville[91] and Miss
 Tatton, Mr. Howard and another Miss Cesar. The partners were chosen
 by their fans, but a little supercherie in the case of one of our
 dancers appointed failed, so our worthy cousin Sir Tommy[92] was
 sent for, and he came, but when he had drawn Miss Cesar’s fan
 he would not dance with her, but Mr. Hay,[93] who as the more
 canonical diversion, chose cards, danced with the poor forsaken
 damsel. The Knight bore the roast with great fortitude, and to make
 amends promised his neglected Fair a ball at his house. I believe
 in his economy he saves a dinner when invited to supper, for he
 eat a forequarter of lamb, a chicken, with a plentiful portion of
 ham, potted beef and jellies innumerable, and made a prodigious
 breakfast of bread and butter and coffee, a little after two in
 the morning.... I sat for my picture[94] this morning to Zincke; I
 believe it will be very like. I am in Anne Boleyn’s dress. I desire
 you to send me up my worked facing and robing, my point, some
 lute-string, and the cambrick for my ruffles. I had the pleasure
 of hearing to-day that our dear Robert had succeeded in getting a
 ship. I am sorry he will go out with the first fleet. I tremble,
 too, for fear he should have any engagement with the Spaniards.
 Mrs. D’Ewes desires to recommend herself to you being of the party
 of loving sisters.”

    [88] Thomas, 2nd Baron Foley.

    [89] Miss Dashwood, “Delia.”

    [90] Lord George Bentinck, the duke’s brother.

    [91] Brother of Mrs. Pendarves.

    [92] “Long” Sir Thomas Robinson, of Rokeby.

    [93] The Rev. Robert Hay, son of the 7th Earl of Kinnoul; afterwards
    Archbishop of York.

    [94] See portrait in this book.

Mrs. D’Ewes, _née_ Anne Granville, was the beloved sister of Mrs.
Pendarves, recently married to Mr. John D’Ewes.... In the next letter
to her mother she describes what she calls a “new head,” given to her
by the duchess. “Last Tuesday I put on my New head; it is extremely
handsome, very broad, and the lace has more thin work in it than has
been made till this year.” To this head was added ruffles and a tucker
by the same donor. Quin was acting then in London. She writes to Sarah--

 “I have been to the play _As you Like it_. Quin outdid his usual
 outdoings. I never heard anything spoke with such command of
 voice and action as the ‘seven stages of man,’ from the rough bass
 of the good Justice, ‘whose round belly with good capon lined,’
 till he sunk to the childish treble; it was really prodigious, the
 alteration of the voice, he spoke the slippered pantaloon just like
 my Uncle Clark.[95] I saw the facetious Monsieur and Mademoiselle
 Fausan dance, but Quin had so possessed himself of my thoughts
 that I was not over-delighted with them, tho’ I think they dance
 very well for a character dance. Wednesday I went into the cold
 bath, and from thence the Duke and Duchess, Mr. Achard, Lord George
 Bentinck, Lady Throckmorton, Mrs. Collingwood, and Sir Robert
 Throckmorton[96] went to Mary-le-Bone gardens to breakfast; after
 that they all went with me to Zincke’s to sit for my picture, and
 we spent the evening at Vaux Hall. On Thursday we went, two coaches
 and six, to Kew, Richmond, and Petersham, Lord Harrington’s,[97]
 where I could turn Pastorella with great pleasure, such prospects,
 from the most charming place I ever saw, I was ready to call out,
 ‘O care Selve beate.’ I would tell you more of my meditations, but
 the bell for supper interrupts me.”

    [95] Her great-uncle on her mother’s side.

    [96] 4th Baronet and his second wife.

    [97] 1st Earl of Harrington.

[Page heading: LORD WALLINGFORD’S DEATH]

Lady Wallingford was attacked by smallpox at this time, but had it very
favourably. In a letter to Mrs. Robinson, Elizabeth says--

 “She never had three hundred all over her, and was at the heighth,
 I believe, in seven days. Her Lord dyed very suddenly of a quinsy
 before she had been downstairs, so she had not even the melancholy
 consolation of a last farewell; she laid up two pairs of stairs,
 and he below, so they told her he was removed, and died at
 Kensington. He has left everything to her.... Lord Wallingford
 certainly caught his death with attending her, a sad aggravation
 of the affliction; he died with the greatest courage imaginable.
 Sandys, who with several Physicians and Surgeons was called in,
 begged him to settle his affairs, upon which he made his will (that
 he had by him, being very deficient in points of Law), and took
 leave of his friends. There was no hopes from the first, for this
 convulsive Quinsy is always mortal.”

In another she says he died of “cramp in the throat,” which sounds more
likely. It has been stated that Lord Wallingford died in France, but
his death occurred at Whitehall.

The duke and family, including Elizabeth, left Whitehall in June for
Bullstrode.[98] In a letter of June 24 to Mr. Freind and his wife, she
says--

 “The rural beauties of the place would persuade me I was in the
 plains of Arcadia, but the magnificence of the building under whose
 gilded roof I dwell, has a pomp far beyond pastoral. We go to
 chapel twice a week, and have sermons on Sunday, for his Grace of
 Portland values the title of Christian above that of Duke, and the
 chaplain may preach against every vice in fashion without fear of
 offending either his Patron or Patroness.”

    [98] Bullstrode was originally in the Shobbington family before the
    Conquest. Judge Jefferies bought it, and built the house here
    mentioned in 1686. His son-in-law sold it to the Earl of Portland.
    In 1807 it was sold to the Duke of Somerset.

[Page heading: THE MENAGERIE]

In another letter--

 “We breakfast at 9, dine at 2, drink tea at 8, and sup at 10. In
 the morning we work or read. In the afternoon the same, walk from
 6 till tea-time, and then write till supper. I think since we
 came down our despatches in numbers, tho’ not in importance, have
 equalled those at the Secretary’s Office.... The Duchess and I have
 been walking in the woods to-night, and feeding the pheasants in
 the menagerie. The late Duke had Macaws, Parrots, and all sorts of
 foreign birds flying in one of the woods; he built a house and kept
 people to wait upon them; there are now some birds in the house,
 and one Macaw, but most were destroyed in the Duke’s minority.”

[Page heading: FRANKS]

[Page heading: LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU]

On July 22 occurs this interesting letter to her mother--

  “MADAM,

 “Much visiting has of late hindered my writing to you. My Lady
 Duchess does not care to spare me to write except when she is so
 employed too, and the time set apart for that is in the evening,
 and when we make visits at any distance, it is late before we
 return, and letters go from here between 10 and 11. When we first
 came down, we supped at 9, but we found so early an hour encroached
 too much upon our hours of writing, so now we sup at 10, at which
 time the Duke comes into the Duchess’s dressing-room,[99] where
 we write together, and franks our packets. On Saturday, we were
 at Windsor to visit the Miss Granvilles, daughters of the famous
 Lord Lansdowne;[100] they unhappily inherit neither the wit of
 their Father, nor the beauty of their Mother.[101]... The Duchess
 is very civil to them, and Miss Granville was her acquaintance in
 infancy, and it is very right in her to take notice of them now.
 Lord Weymouth[102] supports them, but how long he will be willing
 or able to do so, no one knows. On Sunday, I was at Mrs. Hare’s,
 widow to the late Bishop Hare,[103] and was much entertained there
 by Sir John Shadwell and his family, who are just come from abroad.
 Lady Shadwell[104] saw Lady Mary Wortley at Venice, where she now
 resides, and asked her what made her leave England; she told them
 the reason was, people were grown so stupid she could not endure
 their company, all England was infected with dullness; by-the-bye,
 what she means by insupportable dullness is her husband,[105] for
 it seems she never intends to come back while he lives. A husband
 may be but a dull creature to one of Lady Mary’s sprightly genius,
 but methinks even her vivacity might accommodate itself to living
 in the Kingdom with him; she is a woman of great family merit, she
 has banished her children,[106] abandoned her husband. I suppose
 as she cannot reach Constantinople, she will limit her ambition to
 an intrigue with the Pope or the Doge of Venice.... The Duke of
 Leeds’[107] wedding was very grand. The Duke of Newcastle’s[108]
 entertainment upon the occasion was 15 dishes in a course, four
 courses. The Duchess of Newcastle, sister to Lady Mary Godolphin,
 and Mr. Hay are gone down with the Duke and Duchess of Leeds. The
 Duchess had a diamond necklace from her Mother worth £10,000,
 she was very fine in cloaths and jewels. The old Duchess of
 Marlborough[109] is now mightily fond of her. Her Grace is at law
 with the Duke of Marlbro’; she talked two hours like the widow
 Blackacre in Westminster Hall, amongst things of value she was to
 surrender to the Duke[110] there was the late Duke’s fine sword,
 and George, ‘Oh,’ says she, ‘as for the George, he will sell it,
 but for the sword he won’t know what to do with that, so I believe
 he will lay it by, or may be if he can he will pawn it, he can make
 no other use of it, I am sure.’... Pray have you heard from the
 dear little boys?[111] I have always forgot their direction. I
 think it is Scorton, near Richmond?

  “I am, Madam,
  “Your most dutiful daughter,
  “E. ROBINSON.”

    [99] In the eighteenth century dressing-rooms represented the modern
    boudoir.

    [100] George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, born 1667, died 1735; great
    statesman and writer. Uncle to Mrs. Delany.

    [101] Lady Mary Villiers, daughter of the Earl of Jersey, widow of
    J. Thynne.

    [102] Their half-brother.

    [103] Francis Hare, D.D., born 1665, died 1740; Bishop of St. Asaph
    and Chichester.

    [104] Daughter of Evelyn, Duke of Kingston, born 1690, died 1762.

    [105] Edward Wortley Montagu, grandson of 1st Earl Sandwich. His
    mother, Anne Wortley, a great heiress; he took her name.

    [106] Her two children, the eccentric Edward Wortley Montagu,
    junior, and Mary, Countess of Bute.

    [107] Thomas, 4th Duke of Leeds.

    [108] 1st Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Thomas Pelham Holles. The
    _bride_, Lady Harriett Godolphin, grand-daughter of the Duke of
    Marlborough.

    [109] The celebrated duchess.

    [110] Charles Spencer, 2nd Duke of Marlborough.

    [111] Her three little brothers.

[Page heading: THE REV. WILLIAM FREIND]

Mr. Freind, having written a letter to Elizabeth expressing a fear that
her head might be turned by the great company, and the splendid place
she was residing in, she replies--

 “I am neither condemning greatness, nor envying it, but gratefully
 and cheerfully enjoying what I am. I thank Providence for the
 blessings it has given me, without either despising or wishing
 for the gifts it has bestowed on others. I enjoy the present time
 without regretting the past, or wishing for that to come, but still
 as conducive to happiness, prefer to-day to yesterday or to-morrow.
 I keep content for the present, and hope for the future, and love
 this life without fearing another.”

This letter was sent to Witney, Oxon, the seat of the blanket
manufacture. The Rev. William Freind had become Rector there, since the
resignation of his father, the Rev. Dr. Robert Freind, in the previous
year. His mother was a Miss Jane de l’Angle, daughter of the Rev.
Samuel de l’Angle, once pastor of the reformed church at Charenton,
near Paris, who, on the persecution of Louis XIV., fled to England and
was made a Prebendary of Westminster. The Rev. William Freind built
the good stone rectory still existent at Witney. A medallion portrait
of him is over a door in the Hall. Mrs. Donnellan had been recommended
to drink the waters at Spa in the Ardennes, and, accompanied by her
friends, Mr. and Mrs. Cottington, set out, poor Mr. Cottington dying
soon after their arrival. Mrs. Donnellan wrote to Elizabeth on July 11
a long letter, out of which I copy the account of the water cure as
then practised--

 “We are all out by six in the morning in our chaises, and go three
 miles to the Geronsterre waters. We come home by nine, and take
 a cup of chocolate, dine between 12 and 1, go to the Assembly at
 4, where there are all countries, and all languages, half a dozen
 card tables, and no crowd; from the Assembly we take a walk in the
 Capucins garden; all are in before 8 to supper, and to bed at 10.”

[Page heading: PRINCESS MARY OF HESSE]

Princess Mary[112] of England had been married in May to the Prince of
Hesse.[113] The prince did not come to England, so her brother, the
Duke of Cumberland, acted proxy. The following account is of gifts
given to the princess’s suite who accompanied her to Hesse:--

 “The Duchess of Dorset[114] has had fine presents upon going over
 with the Princess of Hesse. The Prince presented her with a gold
 teapot, tea-kettle, and lamp, and Lady Caroline Sackville[115] with
 a set of Dresden china and a diamond solitaire. The Duchess had
 likewise a set of Dresden teacups, and a service of Dresden China,
 and the King gave her a gold snuffbox with a thousand pounds Bank
 bill in it.”

    [112] Princess Mary, daughter of George II.

    [113] Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse Cassel.

    [114] Wife of 1st Duke of Dorset, _née_ Elizabeth Colyear.

    [115] Daughter of the Duchess of Dorset, afterwards Countess of
    Dorchester.

In a letter to Sarah Robinson of August 11, mention is made of--

 “a mask at Cliefden, on Princess Augusta’s[116] birthday; ‘The
 Story of Alfred,’ wrote by Thomson[117] and Mallet,[118] Mr.
 Grenville commends it and says it will be published. I own I
 cannot give much credit to it, for I rather imagine he commends
 it as a patriot than a judge. I never knew anything of Thomson’s
 that seemed to be wrote, or could be read, without great labour of
 the brain.... Lord and Lady Oxford are to come here next Monday,
 (Bullstrode), and stay a month. Lord Dupplin has made a copy of
 verses upon my going into the bath, which we would impute to
 Sandys[119] to his great amazement. He says he does not know who
 wrote them, but thinks he is very sure he did not.”

    [116] Daughter of George II., born 1737.

    [117] James Thomson, born 1700, died 1748; poet, wrote “The
    Seasons,” etc.

    [118] David Mallet, Scottish poet, patronized by Pope; died 1765.

    [119] A well-known lady’s doctor.

[Page heading: MONKEY ISLAND]

August 25, Elizabeth writes to her father--

 “The Duke and Duchess were so obliging as to carry me to see
 Windsor Castle last week. It is so delightful a place and so fine
 a palace, I am surprised his Majesty does not spend his summer
 there, I should think it as well as going to Hanover. The same day
 we were at Windsor, we went to see a little island[120] circled by
 the Thames, which the Duke of Marlborough[121] purchased and has
 beautified at the expense of £8000. There is too great an embarras
 of buildings upon it, the finest of which I think something
 resembling the Temple of Janus. He has a better title to build one
 to war than to fame, for he has got a commission, but renown I
 believe is what he will never gain. He sent out a few days ago for
 four-score workmen to improve a place he never proposes to live at,
 after the old Duchess dies. His Grandfather now saved a people, now
 saved a groat, but such a warrior and economist as this gentleman
 he will never save either.

 “Lady Andover[122] told me in a letter I received from her last
 post, that Mrs. Botham was grown very grave, and a great workwoman
 and an excellent housewife; if that is the case, Mr. Botham
 preaches to those of his household as well as those of his parish.”

    [120] Monkey Island.

    [121] Charles, 3rd Duke.

    [122] Second daughter of Heneage, Earl of Aylesford, wife of
    William, Lord Andover.

[Page heading: LYDIA BOTHAM]

[Page heading: COUNTESS OF OXFORD]

This is the first allusion to Lydia Botham, cousin of Elizabeth
Robinson; she, and her more illustrious sister Elizabeth, or Eliza
Lumley, afterwards wife of the Rev. Laurence Sterne, of “Shandean”
memory, were the children of the Rev. Robert Lumley, of the Lumley
Castle family, Rector of Bedale, Yorks, from 1721 to 1732; and of
Lydia, daughter of Anthony Light,[123] and widow in 1709 of her first
husband, Thomas Kirke, of Cockridge, near Leeds (a famous Virtuoso),
she married afterwards the Rev. Robert Lumley;[124] for the table
elucidating this pedigree the reader must turn to the end of the
introductory portion of this work. The Lumleys are said to have been
brought up in style, but little means had remained to them. Both
parents were dead; Lydia had recently married the Rev. John Botham,
Rector of Yoxall, Staffordshire. Elizabeth Lumley, her sister, was
residing alone in “Little Alice Lane,” under the shadow of York
Cathedral. In a folio-sheet letter to her sister Sarah, Elizabeth
explains that owing to the Countess of Oxford being at Bullstrode, she
had more time to herself, as the countess and she had spent alternate
mornings with the duchess. The countess was kind to Elizabeth, but she
was a rare admirer of etiquette. When she was with the duchess, she
actually wished to see all her letters, which was naturally annoying
to a married woman; she also expected them to be couched in the most
formal manner, as addressed _to a ducal person_! Hence, when Elizabeth
was away from the duchess, and Lady Oxford was with her, the letters
were often written under cover to the duchess’s two lady dressers,
so as to indulge in fewer formalities; also, as can be read in Mrs.
Delany’s Memoirs in letters from the duchess, nicknames were often set
up between the circle of friends, known only to themselves in case
of their being opened. This passage in the letter will point to the
formality of the circle when including Lady Oxford--

 “While our present Guests are here we are so overcharged with
 ceremony, we cannot move about, and as I am not (thanks to the
 humility of my station), of the Countess’ cabinet council, I have
 the morning to myself. To employ them to my edification, I have
 laid in a great store of Italian, which I cannot read with the
 Duchess as she has forgotten it so much. I have laid aside the
 Arcadia[125] till Mrs. Pendarves comes, who is fond of it, and the
 Duchess and I have agreed that she shall read it to us.... I beg
 you will send me the receipt for York Curds, and also for Pancakes,
 called ‘A quire of paper.’”

    [123] Of Durham; his grandmother, wife of Gilbert Kirke, was one of
    the coheiresses of Francis Layton of Rawdon.

    [124] As stated in former pages, her mother, Mrs. Light, remarried
    for second husband, Thomas Robinson, father by her of
    Matthew Robinson.

    [125] “The Arcadia,” written by Sir Philip Sidney.

On August 21, in a letter to Mrs. Donnellan at Spa, occurs the passage--

 “Our friend Penny is under great anxiety for the change her sister
 is going to make. I do not wonder at her fears; I believe both
 experience, and observation, have taught her the state she is
 going into is in the general, less happy than that she has left.
 ‘Pip’ has a good prospect, for they say the gentleman[126] has
 good sense, good nature, and great sobriety; these are very good
 things, and indeed what a stock of virtues and qualifications ought
 to be laid in to last out the journey of life, where so much too
 lies through the rugged ways of adversity, all will hardly serve to
 lengthen love and patience to the end.”

    [126] John D’Ewes, of Wellesbourne, Co. Warwick.

The lady to be married was Anne Granville, whose nickname was “Pip”;
she was about to be married to Mr. John D’Ewes. “Pen” was Mrs.
Pendarves’ nickname, afterwards Mrs. Delany, and those who have read
her memoirs will remember how unhappy was her _first_ experience of
married life. Much mention is made in this letter of an apron Elizabeth
is working for the duchess; she begs for patterns of flowers from her
father’s pencil, and Mr. Hateley, an artist friend. Embroidered aprons
were then the rage, but only for demi-toilette; the beautiful Duchess
of Queensberry,[127] going to Court in an apron about this time, was
forbidden to attend. The aprons were of all colours as well as white,
and the duchess, fearing a light ground would soon soil, bade Elizabeth
work hers on a black ground. Sarah Robinson at the same time was
working her sister one.

    [127] Catherine Hyde, Duchess of Queensberry. Prior’s “Kitty,
    beautiful and young;” wife of 3rd Duke.

[Page heading: EARL OF OXFORD]

The following passage is indicative of the times:--

 “Lord Oxford drinks hard at the chaplain sometimes, but whether a
 churchman’s conscience lyes deep, or a bumper to Church and King
 agrees with an orthodox stomach, I don’t know, but he seems less
 confounded with a bottle of claret than he is with his text, and
 shows the bottom of it too, which he cannot do with the other.”

Mr. Freind having written a letter in which he rallies Elizabeth about
not choosing one of her many admirers, she replies--

 “I have lately studied my own foibles, and I have found out I
 should make a very silly wife, and an extremely foolish Mother,
 and so have as far resolved as is consistent with deference to
 reason and advice, never to trouble any man, or spoil any children.
 I already love too many people in this world to enjoy a perfect
 tranquility, and I don’t care to have any more strings to pull my
 heart; it is very tender, and a small matter hurts it. I have been
 lately a little out of spirits about my incomparable Duchess; she
 has been a good deal out of order, but by bleeding and care, she is
 much better, I wish I could say well.”

[Page heading: ADMIRAL VERNON]

Mention of Admiral Vernon[128] is made in a letter of September 12 to
Mr. Freind after the victory of Portobello, which had been taken by him
in 1739; he had bombarded Carthagena--

 “I hope the glorious Vernon will do some great exploit by himself.
 All the ladies in Suffolk give place to Mrs. Vernon, even those of
 the highest rank. I wish the Admiral may be made a peer when he
 returns, Baron Something and Viscount Portobello will sound very
 well.”

    [128] Admiral Vernon, born 1684, died 1757.

[Page heading: CHARLEMAGNE]

Mrs. Donnellan returned from Spa early in September, in company of
Mrs. Anne Pitt, a sister of Mr. William Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham.
Portions of her letter I copy--

 “We had a very pleasant journey together, and find ’tis possible
 to travel comfortably without that lordly person--_Man!_ I have
 mentioned being at Aix-la-Chapelle, which is a bad day’s journey
 from Spa. I went with Mrs. Hoare, and we chose to go at the time
 Charlemagne makes his procession round the town, which is an annual
 ceremony, and the most solemn and ridiculous I have seen. He built
 the town, and made it an imperial city, and this procession is in
 memory of him. He is represented by a pasteboard figure, 12 feet
 high (for they will have him a giant), he has on his head a very
 fine curled and powdered full-bottomed periwig, an Imperial crown
 on that; downwards, he has a yellow damask night-gown, which hides
 those who carry him. He walks round the city attended by all the
 Orders in their different habits (which is a pretty sight),--the
 magistracy, and the Host carried under a canopy. They stopped
 before the Town House where we were, and said Mass at an altar
 raised on purpose, then they adored the Host, and Charlemagne
 stooped and goggled his eyes, which are pulled by wires, and so the
 ceremony ended. We landed at Deal on Sunday night, in a storm of
 thunder, lightning and wind, wet to the skin. I have bought some
 Spa necklaces. I have a blue one for you, and a green one for the
 Duchess.

 “My folks are quite taken up with fitting their[129] house in Bond
 Street, which they design getting into at Michaelmas. I have a
 cheerful dressing room in it, which I dedicate to a few friends,
 none other shall come into it, and it luckily only holds a few
 seats; I will reserve one for you.”

    [129] Her mother, then the Hon. Mrs. Philip Perceval, and her second
    husband.

[Page heading: THE REV. DR. YOUNG]

On September 23, in a letter of Elizabeth to her sister, we first
hear of Dr. Young, the author of “Night Thoughts.” At this time this
celebrated poem was not written, but various other poems, satires, and
tragedies had made him famous. Edward Young, LL.D., was born in 1684,
educated at Winchester, New College, and Corpus Christi, Oxford; in
1730 was Rector of Welwyn, Herts; in 1731 he married Lady Betty Lee,
widow of Colonel Lee, and daughter of the Earl of Lichfield. The Duke
of Wharton was his literary patron.

 “Dr. Young is coming soon. We wish for his coming, for I hear he
 is agreeable, and, indeed, his private character is excellent. He
 sends his compliments to me when he writes to the Duchess, and says
 he is perfectly acquainted with me, and all that is the vision of
 a Poet, for I never saw him in my life, but he is so kind as to
 commend me and all my works in all places.”

In the next letter (October 8) she says--

  “MY DEAR SALLY,

 “The sons of Apollo haunt this place much; the tuneful
 Green[130] is gone, but the poetical Dr. Young is with us. I
 am much entertained with him, he is a very sensible man, has a
 lively imagination, and strikes out very pretty things in his
 conversation, tho’ he has satyrized the worst of our sex, he
 honours the best of them extremely, and seems delighted with those
 who act and think reasonably. I think he has written a Satire
 against that composition of oddity, affectation, and folly which is
 called ‘a pretty sort of a woman,’--if anyone has a mind to put on
 that character they need only pervert their sense, distort their
 faces, disjoint their limbs, mince their phrases, and lisp their