Chapter 42

Strawberry Hill, September 19, 1760. (page 88)

thank you for your notice, though I should certainly have contrived to see you without it. Your brother promised he would come and dine here one day with you and Lord Beauchamp. I go to Navestock on Monday, for two or three days; but that Will not exhaust your waiting.(105) I shall be in town on Sunday; but- as that is a court-day, I will not--so don't propose it--dine with you at Kensington; but I will be with my Lady Hertford about six, where your brother and you will find me if you please. I cannot come to Kensington in the evening, for I have but one pair of horses in the world, and they will have to carry me to town in the morning.

I wonder the King expects a battle; when Prince Ferdinand can do as well without fighting, why should he fight? Can't he make the hereditary Prince gallop into a mob of Frenchmen, and get a scratch on the nose; and Johnson straddle across a river and come back with six heads of hussars in his fob, and then can't he thank all the world, and assure them he shall never forget the victory they have not gained? These thanks are sent over: the Gazette swears that this no-success was chiefly owing to General Mostyn; and the Chronicle protests, that it was achieved by my Lord Granby's losing his hat, which he never wears; and then his lordship sends over for three hundred thousand pints of porter to drink his own health; and then Mr. Pitt determines to carry on the war for another year; and then the Duke of Newcastle hopes that we shall be beat, that he may lay the blame on Mr. Pitt, and that then he shall be minister for thirty years longer; and then we shall be the greatest nation in the universe. Amen! My dear Harry, you see how easy it is to be a hero. If you had but taken impudence and Oatlands in your way to Rochfort, it would not have signified whether you had taken Rochfort or not. Adieu! I don't know who Lady Ailesbury's Mr. Alexander is. If she curls like a vine with any Mr. Alexander but you, I hope my Lady Coventry will recover and be your Roxana.

(105) Mr. Conway, as groom of the bedchamber to the King, was then in waiting at Kensington.