Chapter 335

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 4, 1789. (PAGE 437)

You ask whether I will call you wise or stupid for leaving, York races in the middle-neither; had you chosen to stay, you would have done rightly. The more young persons see, where there is nothing blamable, the better; as increasing the stock of ideas early will be a resource for age. To resign pleasure to please tender relations is amiable, and superior to wisdom; for wisdom, however laudable, is but a selfish virtue. But I do decide peremptorily, that it was very prudent to decline the invitation to Wentworth House,(671) which was obligingly given; but, as I am very proud for you, I should have disliked your being included in a mobbish kind of colhue. You two are not to go where any other two misses would have been equally pri`ees, and where people would have been thinking of the princes more than of the Berrys. Besides, princes are so rife now, that, besides my sweet nephew(672) in the Park, we have another at Richmond: the Duke of Clarence has taken Mr. Henry Hobart's house, pointblank over against Mr. Cambridge's, which will make the good woman of that mansion cross herself piteously, and stretch the throat of the blatant beast at Sudbrook(673) and of all the other pious matrons `a la ronde; for his Royal Highness, to divert lonesomeness, has brought with him - -, who, being still more averse to solitude, declares that any tempter would make even Paradise more agreeable than a constant t`ete-`a-t`ete.

I agree with you in not thinking Beatrice one of Miss Farren's capital parts. Mrs. Pritchard played it with more spirit, and was superior to Garrick's Benedict; so is Kemble, too, as he Is to Quin in Maskwell. Kemble and Lysons the clergyman(674) passed all Wednesday here with me. The former is melting the three parts of Henry the Sixth into one piece: I doubt it will be difficult to make a tolerable play out of them.

I have talked scandal from Richmond, like its gossips; and now, by your queries after Lady Luxborough, you are drawing me into more, which I do not love: but she is dead and forgotten, except on the shelves of an old library, or on those of my old memory; which you will be routing into. The lady you wot of, then, was the first wife of Lord Catherlogh, before he was an earl; and who was son of Knight, the South Sea cashier, and whose second wife lives here at Twickenham. Lady Luxborough, a high-coloured lusty black woman, was parted from her husband, upon a gallantry she had with Dalton, the reviver of Comus and a divine. She retired into the country; corresponded, as you see by her letters, with the small poets of that time; but, having no Theseus amongst them, consoled herself, as it is said, like Ariadne, with Bacchus.(675) This might be a fable, like that of her Cretan Highness--no matter; the fry of little anecdotes are so numerous now, that throwing one more into the shoal is of no consequence, if it entertains you for a Moment; nor need you believe what I don't warrant.

Gramercy for your intention of seeing Wentworth Castle. it is my favourite of all great seats;-such a variety of ground, of wood, and water; and almost all executed and disposed with so much taste by the present Earl. Mr. Gilpin sillily could See nothing but faults there. The new front is, in my opinion, one of the lightest and most beautiful buildings on earth - and, pray like the little Gothic edifice, and its position in the menagerie! I recommended it, and had it drawn by Mr. Bentley, from Chichester Cross. Don't bring me a pair of scissors from Sheffield - I am determined nothing shall cut our loves, though I should live out the rest of Methusalem's term, as you kindly wish, and as I can believe, though you are my wives; for I am persuaded my Agnes wishes so too. Don't you?

At night.

I am just come from Cambridge's, where I have not been in an evening, time out of mind. Major Dixon, alias "the Charming man,"(676) is there; but I heard nothing of the Emperor's rickets:(677) a great deal, and many horrid stories, of the violences in France; for his brother, the Chevalier Jerningham, is Just arrived from Paris. You have heard of the destruction of thirty-two chateaus in Burgundy, at the instigation of a demon, who has since been broken on the racks. There is now assembled near Paris a body of sixteen thousand deserters, daily increasing; who, they fear, will encamp and dictate to the capital, in spite of their militia of twenty thousand bourgeois. It will soon, I suppose, ripen to several armies, and a civil war; a fine acheminement to liberty!

My poor niece is still alive, though weaker every day, and pronounced irrecoverable: yet it is possible she may live some weeks; which, however, is neither to be expected nor wished, for she eats little and sleeps less. Still she is calm, and behaves with the patience of a martyr.

You may perceive, by the former part of my letter, that I have been dipping into Spenser again, though he is no passion of mine - there I lighted upon two lines that, at first sight, reminded me of Mademoiselle d'Eon,

"Now, when Marfisa had put off her beaver, To be a woman every one perceive her!"

but I do not think that is so perceptible in the Chevali`ere. She looked more feminine, as I remember her, in regimentals, than she does now. She is at best a heri-dragoon, or an Herculean hostess. I wonder she does not make a campaign in her own country, and offer her sword to the almost dethroned monarch, as a second Joan of Arc.(678) Adieu! for three weeks I shall say, Sancte Michael, ora pro nobis! You seem to have relinquished your plan of sea-coasting. I shall be sorry for that; it would do you good.

(671) The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York were going to receive a great entertainment at Wentworth House.-M.B.

(672) The Duke of Gloucester.

(673) Lady Greenwich.

(674) The " little Daniel" of the Pursuits of Literature, brother of Samuel Lysons, the learned antiquary, and author of "The Environs, twelve miles round London," in four volumes quarto--

"Nay once, for Purer air o'er rural ground, With little Daniel went his twelve miles round."-E.

(675) Lady Luxborough died in 1756. Her letters to Shenstone were published in 1775. In the first leaf of the original manuscript there is an autograph of the poet, describing them as being "written with abundant ease politeness, and vivacity; in which she was scarce equalled by any woman of her time." Some of her verses are printed in Dodsley's Miscellany, and Walpole has introduced her ladyship into his Noble Authors.-E.

(676) Edward Jerningham, Esq. Of Cossey, in Norfolk, uncle to the present Lord Stafford. He was distinguished in his day by the name of Jerningham the poet; but it was an unpoetical day. The stars of Byron, of Baillie, and of Scott, had not risen On the horizon. The well merited distinction of Jerningham was the friendship, affection, and intimacy which his amiable character had impressed on the author, and on all of his society mentioned in these letters.-M.B.

(677) This alludes to something said in a character which Jerningham had assumed, for the amusement of a society some time before at Marshal Conway's.-M.B.

(678) Miss More gives the following account of this extraordinary character:--"On Friday I gratified the curiosity of many years, by meeting at dinner Madame la Chevali`ere D'Eon - she is extremely entertaining, has universal information, wit, vivacity, and gaiety. Something too much of the latter (I have heard) when she has taken a bottle or two of Burgundy; but this being a very sober party, she was kept entirely within the limits of decorum. General Johnson was of the party, and it was ridiculous to hear her military conversation. Sometimes it Was, 'Quand j'`etais colonel d'un tel regiment;' then again, 'Non, c'Rait quand j'`etais secr`etaire d'ambassade du Duc de Nivernois,' or, 'Quand je n`egociais la paix de Paris.' She is, to be sure, a phenomenon in history; and, as such, a great curiosity. But one D'Eon is enough, and one slice of her quite sufficient." Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 156.-E.