The men stayed last night or rather this morning till four or five tho’ I entreated T⸺. to think of to-night’s fatigue for me and let them go, but ’twas all in vain, for the moment my back was turn’d off they march’d into the other room with their Bottles and Glasses and order’d Stephen to bring the fire after them—so at least they had the grace to think of not disturbing me, for you are to know since the cold wether we dine and sup in the Drawing Room. However unfortunately my ears were quick enough to reach to Stephen’s Pantry where I heard every cruel Pop of that odious five shilling claret which entirely hindered my closing my eyes, so here I am at half past one just after breakfast and thinking of my evening’s dissipation. Don’t you think that I should cut a figure in the great world?[38] As a member of the glittering Whig fraternity that moved about Fox, Sheridan, and the Prince of Wales, Tickell became a large contributor to the great collective (and perennial) satire known as _The Rolliad_, a shilling edition of which, George Saintsbury once remarked, if properly annotated, would keep one amused from London to York. He also produced a number of more or less serious pamphlets attacking Pitt’s government; and during the regency crisis of 1788-89 he worked feverishly with the other Foxites in the expectation of a Whig triumph. But the King recovered, the Whigs’ hopes were dashed, and Tickell never obtained his expected seat in Parliament.[39] Mary Tickell died in July 1787. Two years later Tickell eloped with the daughter of a captain in the East India Company’s service, Miss Sarah Ley, a reigning beauty who was for a time the rival of Emma Hamilton as Romney’s model.[40] She was very young, very extravagant, and without any fortune. In a year or two her husband, who was chronically improvident and was now deprived of Mary Tickell’s common sense, found himself overwhelmed with debts. In May 1793 he appealed to Warren Hastings for a loan of 500_l._ and obtained it.[41] Hastings was a friend of the Ley family, but that an intimate of the Fox-Sheridan circle and a contributor to _The Rolliad_ should have turned to him for help is an indication of Tickell’s desperate straits. The loan was evidently not sufficient for his needs. On the 4th of November his lifeless body was found below the parapet outside his Hampton Court apartment. Two days later Joseph Farington recorded in his _Diary_: “Distressed circumstances and an apprehension of being arrested, it is said, is the cause of this momentary phrenzy.”[42] _6_