“She is too high and too giddy for a servant, time and experience
may mend her, she likes the business she is going to.... I have
obliged Mrs. Albert to promise she shall never go without her
or Dettmere[485] or Mrs. Donnellan’s maid.... Charles went to
Cambridge on Tuesday.”
[485] Mrs. Montagu’s lady’s-maid.
Charles’s health had improved, but as he did not like the sea as a
profession, he entered Cambridge as an undergraduate.
“Tell Mr. Hoare when you see him, that if he pleases to send my
face[486] to Hill Street, it will meet with a kind reception;
it is a young face to be sure, but the retrospect to 18 is so
pleasant I shall not find fault with it. I am, as you observe,
Mistress of a post-chaize, which next to having wings, is the most
convenient thing in the world, and must serve till it is brought to
perfection. We liked so well our journey to Cambridge in the summer
in a post-chaize which we hired for the time, that we bespoke one
immediately.”
[486] Her portrait by Hoare.
The old post-chaises had only two wheels. Four-wheeled post-chaises
were new, and were thought the more dangerous, as being liable to
overturn.
[Page heading: LORD PEMBROKE’S DEATH]
A letter occurs now from the Duchess Dowager of Chandos, third wife,
and widow since 1744, of the 1st Duke of Chandos, surnamed the
“Princely Duke,” the builder of the palatial residence of Canons, in
Middlesex, on which he spent £200,000. Having spent his fortune in
building and speculating, Canons was sold for the _material_ at his
death. The duchess’s maiden name was Van Hatten, but she had been
married to a Sir Thomas Davall. After the duke’s death she came to
reside at Shaw House,[487] near Newbury, from whence she writes to Mrs.
Montagu, and after some inquiries as to health, etc., says--
“What different tempers the world consists of: I am told passion
sent the late Lord Pembroke[488] out of the world, but that Mr.
Middleton who opened him says that both heart and all the vitals
were displaced by the continual swathing he used to keep himself
from growing bulky. This was itself a discontented temper, and if
at any time I should be extremely strait laced and contradicted,
it is certain my crossness would have been very great, and I or
my lace must burst. The giving Ward’s pill to a cock and then
turning it into broth for old Lady Northampton[489] has something
curious in it too, but as it ended in death, I suppose will not
be practised further. How many tricks do we try to lengthen life,
and yet like poor Lord Pembroke waste it in tormenting our blood
because others will not be of our mind, or we are too fat, or
too lean to please ourselves: if there is not another life where
we may be more perfect, more happy, we are certainly the most
inconsistent, foolish creatures this world produces; how much
better the other planets have for inhabitants I know not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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