HER LETTERS TO LADY MAR.

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I

with so much coldness. But I find it is impossible to forbear telling you the metamorphoses of some of your acquaintance, which appear as wondrous to me as any in Ovid. Would any one believe that Lady H*****ss is a beauty, and in love? and that Mrs. Anastasia Robinson is at the same time a prude and a kept mistress? The first of these ladies is tenderly attached to the polite Mr. M***, and sunk in all the joys of happy love, notwithstanding she wants the use of her two hands by a rheumatism, and he has an arm that he cannot move. wish I could tell you the particulars of this amour; which seems to me as curious as that between two oysters, and as well worth the serious attention of the naturalists. The second heroine has engaged half the town in arms, from the nicety of her virtue, which was not able to bear the too near approach of Senesino in the opera; and her condescension in accepting of Lord Peterborough for her champion, who has signalized both his love and courage upon this occasion in as many instances as ever Don Quixote did for Dulcinea. Innumerable have been the disorders between the two sexes on so great an account, besides half the House of Peers being put under arrest. By the Providence of Heaven, and the wise care of his Majesty, no bloodshed ensued. However, things are now tolerably accommodated; and the fair lady rides through the town in the shining berlin of her hero, not to reckon the more solid advantages of 100l. a month, which 'tis said he allows her. I will send you a letter by the Count Caylus, whom, if you do not know already, you will thank me for introducing to you. He is a Frenchman, and no fop; which, besides the curiosity of it, is one of the prettiest things in the world."- Vol. iii. p.120122.

"I write to you at this time piping-hot from the birth-night; my brain warmed with all the agreeable ideas that fine clothes, fine gentlemen, brisk tunes, and lively dances can raise there. It is to be hoped that my letter will entertain you; at least you will certainly have the freshest account of all passages on that glorious day. First, you must know that I led up the ball, which you'll stare at; but what is more, I believe in my conscience I made one of the best figures there: For, to say truth, people are grown so extravagantly ugly, that we old beauties are forced to come out on show-days, to keep the court in countenance. I saw Mrs. Murray there, through whose hands this epistle will be conveyed; I do not know whether she will make the same compliment to you that I do. Mrs. West was with her, who is a great prude, having but two lovers at a time; I think those are Lord Haddington and Mr. Lindsay; the one for use, the other for show.

"The world improves in one virtue to a violent degree - I mean plain dealing. Hypocrisy being, as the Scripture declares, a damnable sin, I hope our publicans and sinners will be saved by the open profession of the contrary virtue. I was told by a very good author, who is deep in the secret, that at this very minute there is a bill cooking up at a hunting seat in Norfolk, to have not taken out of the commandments, and clapped into the creed, the ensuing session of Parliament. To speak plainly, I am very sorry for the forlorn state

422

LADY MARY

CHARMING LETTERS.

of matrimony; which is now as much ridiculed by our young ladies as it used to be by young fellows: In short, both sexes have found the inconveniencies of it; and the appellation of rake is as genteel in a woman as a man of quality : It is no scandal to say Miss the maid of honour, looks very well now she is out again; and poor Biddy Noel has never been quite well since her last confinement. You may imagine we married women look very silly: We have nothing to excuse ourselves, but that it was done a great while ago, and we were very young when we did it."- Vol. iii. pp. 142-145.

66

Sixpenny worth of common sense, divided among a whole nation, would make our lives roll away glibly enough: But then we make laws, and we follow customs. By the first we cut off our own pleasures, and by the second we are answerable for the faults and extravagances of others. All these things, and five hundred more, convince me that I have been one of the condemned ever since I was born; and in submission to the Divine Justice, I have no doubt but I deserved it, in some pre-existent state. I will still hope, however, that I am only in purgatory; and that after whining and pining a certain number of years, I shall be translated to some more happy sphere, where virtue will be natural, and custom reasonable; that is, in short, where common sense will reign. I grow very devout, as you see, and place all my hopes in the next life-being totally persuaded of the nothingness of this. Don't you remember how miserable we were in the little parlour, at Thoresby? we then thought marrying would put us at once into possession of all we wanted. Then came though, after all, I am still of opinion, that it is extremely silly to submit to ill-fortune. One should pluck up a spirit, and live upon cordials; when one can have no other nourishment. These are my present endeavours; and I run about, though I have five thousand pins and needles in my heart. I try to console myself with a small damsel, who is at present every thing I like but, alas! she is yet in a white frock. At fourteen she may run away with the butler."Vol. iii. pp. 178-180.

"I cannot deny but that I was very well diverted on the coronation-day. I saw the procession much at my ease, in a house which I filled with my own company; and then got into Westminster-hall without trouble, where it was very entertaining to observe the variety of airs that all meant the same thing. The business of every walker there was to conceal vanity and gain admiration. For these purposes some languished and others strutted; but a visible satisfaction was diffused over every countenance, as soon as the coronet was clapped on the head. But she that drew the greatest number of eyes was indisputably Lady Orkney. She exposed behind, a mixture of fat and wrinkles; and before, a considerable protuberance, which preceded her. Add to this, the inimitable roll of her eyes, and her grey hairs, which by good fortune stood directly upright, and 'tis impossible to imagine a more delightful spectacle. She had embellished all this with considerable magnificence, which made her look as big again as usual; and I should have thought her one of the largest things of God's making, if my Lady St. J***n had not displayed all her charms in

HER LONG RESIDENCE ABROAD.

423

honour of the day. The poor Duchess of M***se crept along with a dozen of black snakes playing round her face; and my Lady P***nd (who has fallen away since her dismission from Court) represented very finely an Egyptian mummy embroidered over with hieroglyphics. In general, I could not perceive but that the old were as well pleased as the young and I who dread growing wise more than any thing in the world, was overjoyed to find that one can never outlive one's vanity. I have never received the long letter you talk of, and am afraid that you have only fancied that you wrote it."- Vol. iii. pp. 181-183.

In spite of all this gaiety, Lady Mary does not appear to have been happy. Her discreet biographer is silent upon the subject of her connubial felicity; and we have no desire to revive forgotten scandals; but it is a fact, which cannot be omitted, that her Ladyship went abroad, without her husband, on account of bad health, in 1739, and did not return to England till she heard of his death in 1761. Whatever was the cause of their separation, however, there was no open rupture; and she seems to have corresponded with him very regularly for the first ten years of her absence. These letters, which occupy the latter part of the third volume, and the beginning of the fourth, are by no means so captivating as most of the preceding. They contain but little wit, and no confidential or striking reflections. They are filled up with accounts of her health and her journies; with short and general notices of any extraordinary customs she meets with, and little scraps of stale politics, picked up in the petty courts of Italy. They are cold, in short, without being formal; and are gloomy and constrained, when compared with those which were spontaneously written to show her wit, or her affection to her correspondents. She seems extremely anxious to impress her husband with an exalted idea of the honours and distinction with which she was everywhere received; and really seems more elated and surprised than we should have expected the daughter of an English Duke to be, with the attentions that were shewn her by the noblesse of Venice, in particular. From this correspondence we are not tempted to make any extract.

The last series of letters, which extends to the middle

424 LADY MARY LETTERS TO HER DAUGHTER.

of the fifth volume, and comes down to the year 1761, consists of those that were addressed by Lady Mary, during her residence abroad, to her daughter the Countess of Bute. These letters, though somewhat less brilliant than those to the Countess of Mar, have more heart and affection in them than any other of her Ladyship's productions; and abound in lively and judicious reflections. They indicate, at the same time, a very great share of vanity; and that kind of contempt and indifference for the world, into which the veterans of fashion are most apt to sink. With the exception of her daughter and her children, Lady Mary seems by this time to have, indeed, attained to the happy state of really caring nothing for any human being; and rather to have beguiled the days of her declining life with every sort of amusement, than to have soothed them with affection or friendship. After boasting of the intimacy in which she lived with all the considerable people in her neighbourhood, she adds, in one of her letters, "The people I see here make no more impression on my mind than the figures on the tapestry, while they are before my eyes. I know one is clothed in blue, and another in red: but out of sight they are so entirely out of memory, that I hardly remember whether they are tall or short."

The following reflections upon an Italian story, exactly like that of Pamela, are very much in character.

"In my opinion, all these adventures proceed from artifice on one side, and weakness on the other. An honest, tender heart, is often betrayed to ruin by the charms that make the fortune of a designing head; which, when joined with a beautiful face, can never fail of advancement except barred by a wise mother, who locks up her daughters from view till nobody cares to look on them. My poor friend the Duchess of Bolton was educated in solitude, with some choice of books, by a saint-like governess: Crammed with virtue and good qualities, she thought it impossible not to find gratitude, though she failed to give passion: and upon this plan threw away her estate, was despised by her husband, and laughed at by the public. Polly, bred in an alehouse, and produced on the stage, has obtained wealth and title, and even found the way to be esteemed !"— Vol. iv. p. 119, 120.

There is some acrimony, and some power of reviling, in the following extract:

HER JUDGMENTS OF LITERARY MEN.

425

"I have only had time to read Lord Orrery's work, which has extremely entertained, and not at all surprised me, having the honour of being acquainted with him, and knowing him for one of those danglers after wit, who, like those after beauty, spend their whole time in humbly admiring. Dean Swift, by his Lordship's own account, was so intoxicated with the love of flattery, that he sought it amongst the lowest of people, and the silliest of women; and was never so well pleased with any companions as those that worshipped him, while he insulted them. His character seems to me a parallel with that of Caligula; and had he had the same power, he would have made the same use of it. That Emperor erected a temple to himself, where he was his own high-priest, preferred his horse to the highest honours in the state, professed enmity to the human race, and at last lost his wife by a nasty jest on one of his inferiors, which I dare swear Swift would have made in his place. There can be no worse picture made of the Doctor's morals than he has given us himself in the letters printed by Pope. We see him vain, trifling, ungrateful to the memory of his patron, making a servile court where he had any interested views, and meanly abusive when they were disappointed; and, as he says (in his own phrase), flying in the face of mankind, in company with his adorer Pope. It is pleasant to consider, that had it not been for the good nature of these very mortals they contemn, these two superior beings were entitled, by their birth and hereditary fortune, to be only a couple of link-boys. I am of opinion, however, that their friendship would have continued, though they had remained in the same kingdom. It had a very strong foundation -the love of flattery on one side, and the love of money on the other. Pope courted with the utmost assiduity all the old men from whom he could hope a legacy, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Peterborough, Sir G. Kneller, Lord Bolingbroke, Mr. Wycherly, Mr. Congreve, Lord Harcourt, &c., and I do not doubt projected to sweep the Dean's whole inheritance, if he could have persuaded him to throw up his deanery, and come to die in his house; and his general preaching against money was meant to induce people to throw it away, that he might pick it up." — Vol. iv. 142. 147.

p.

Some of the following reflections will appear prophetic to some people; and we really did not expect to find them under the date of 1753.

"The confounding of all ranks, and making a jest of order, has long been growing in England; and I perceive, by the books you sent me, has made a very considerable progress. The heroes and heroines of the age, are cobblers and kitchen-wenches. Perhaps you will say I should not take my ideas of the manners of the times from such trifling authors; but it is more truly to be found among them, than from any historian as they write merely to get money, they always fall into the notions that are most acceptable to the present taste. It has long been the endeavour of our English writers, to represent people of quality as the vilest and silliest part of the nation, being (generally)