“I have a great appetite. I think I shall be able to eat for a wager, with my brother-in-law.[517] I am glad Miss Maria Naylor had an opportunity of shining in her proper sphere, the county of Huntingdon. Why should the Gunnings[518] of universal empire drive her from her little native land? Do they want to add the epithet of great to their names? Indeed I do not know why Gunning the great should not sound as well as Alexander the Great. I am afraid the eldest Miss Naylor is much dejected at the infidelity of our cousin Wortley, who is greatly enamoured of little Miss Ashe. All collectors of natural curiosities love something of every species. Mr. Wortley has had a passion for all sorts and sizes of women. Miss Ashe is a sort of middle species between a woman and a fairy, and by her rarity worthy to be added even to so large a collection of amours.” [517] George Lewis Scott. [518] The celebrated Irish beauties, afterwards one Countess of Coventry, the other Duchess of Hamilton and Argyll. [Page heading: MISS ASHE] Miss Ashe, or the “Pollard Ashe,” as Walpole called her, eloped with Edward Wortley Montagu in the autumn of 1751. He was soon after this put in prison with a Mr. Taafe in France for robbing or cheating a Jew. As he was married before, though separated from his wife, he could not marry Miss Ashe. She afterwards married a Mr. Falconer, R.N. It was in this year Horace Walpole had written to Sir Horace Mann-- “Our greatest miracle is Lady Mary Wortley’s son whose adventures have made so much noise, his parts are not proportionate, but his expense is incredible. His father scarce allows him anything, yet he plays, dresses, diamonds himself, even to distinct shoe buckles for a frock, and has more snuff-boxes than would suffice a Chinese idol with an hundred noses. But the most curious part of his dress, which he has brought from Paris, is an iron wig; you literally would not know it from hair. I believe it is on this account that the Royal Society have just chosen him of their body.” Mrs. Montagu wrote the description of “our cousin’s adventures,” and after several comments on Wortley’s conduct, she says, “Poor Miss Ashe weeps like the forsaken Ariadne on a foreign shore.” The company at Tunbridge Wells had been increased by the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, the Duchess of Norfolk, and, Mrs. Montagu writes, “we expect those goddesses called the Gunnings and Sir Thomas Robinson.... My Father is very gay, but complains he never saw the place so dull. I never said so to those about me, lest they should say to me as Swift to the fat man who complained of a crowd, ‘Friend, you make the very crowd you blame!’ Mr. West reads to us in the evening, and the wit of the last age supplies us when we do not meet with any in this.” [Page heading: DEATH OF MRS. PERCIVAL] [Page heading: DR. SHAW]