Chapter 6

Strawberry Hill, June 29, 1770. (page 30)

Since the sharp mountain will not come to the little hill, the little hill must go to the mountain. In short, what do you think of seeing me walk into your parlour a few hours after this epistle! I had not time to notify myself sooner. The case is, Princess Amelia has insisted on my going with her to, that is, meeting her at Stowe on Monday, for a week. She mentioned it to me some time ago, and I thought I had parried it; but having been with her at Park-place these two or three days, she has commanded it so positively that I could not refuse. Now, as it would be extremely inconvenient to my indolence to be dressed up in weepers and hatbands by six o'clock in the morning, and lest I should be taken for chief mourner going to Beckford's funeral,(10) I trust you will be charitable enough to give me a bed at Adderbury for one night, whence I can arrive at Stowe in a decent time, and caparisoned as I ought to be, when I have lost a brother-in-law(11) and am to meet a Princess. Don't take me for a Lauson, and think all this favour portends a second marriage between our family and the blood-royal; nor that my visit to Stowe implies my espousing Miss Wilkes. I think I shall die as I am, neither higher nor lower; and above all things, no more politics. Yet I shall have many a private smile to myself, as I wander among all those consecrated and desecrated buildings, and think what company I am in, and of all that is past; but I must shorten my letter, or you will not have finished it when I arrive. Adieu! Yours, a-coming! a-coming!

(10) William Beckford, Esq. Lord Mayor of London, who died on the 21st of June, during his second mayoralty, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. On the 5th of the following month, at a meeting of the Common Council, "a motion being made and question put, that the statue of the Right Hon. William Beckford, late Lord Mayor, deceased, be erected in the Guildhall of this city, with the inscription of his late address to his Majesty, the was resolved in the affirmative." The speech here alluded to is the one which the Alderman addressed to his Majesty on the 23d of May, with reference to the King's reply--"That he should have been wanting to the public, as well as to himself, if he had not expressed his dissatisfaction at the late address." At the end of the Alderman's speech, in his copy of the City Addresses, Mr. Isaac Reed has inserted the following note:--"It is a curious fact, but a true one, that Beckford did not utter one syllable of this speech. It was penned by Horne Tooke, and by his art put on the records of the city and on Beckford's statue; as he told me, Mr. Braithwaite, Mr. Sayers, etc. at the Athenian club. Isaac Reed." There can be little doubt that the worthy commentator and his friends were imposed upon. In the Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 460, a letter from Sheriff Townsend to the Earl expressly states, that with the exception of the words "and necessary" being left out before the word "revolution," the Lord Mayor's speech in the Public Advertiser of the preceding day is verbatim the one delivered to the King.--E.

(11) George third Earl of Cholmondeley. He married, in 1723, Mary the youngest daughter of @Sir Robert Walpole.-E.