“I have taken a little house on tryal at Kensington Gravel Pits ... both Richardson’s house at Northend and Mrs. Granville’s at Chelsey I think too low for me.... I want you to read ‘Sir Charles Grandison,’ it is not formed on your plan of banishing delicacy. I am afraid it carrys it too far on t’other side, and is too fine spun, but there are fine things and fine characters in it, and I don’t know how it is, but his tediousness gives one an eagerness to go on; there is a love-sick madness that I think extremely fine and touching, but if you have not read it I must not forestall. I think I will own to you, the great fault of my friend’s writings, there is too much of everything. I really laughed at your nursery of ‘Clarissas,’ but I hope you did not think of me as the old nurse, there was nobody there while I stayed!” [Page heading: “SIR CHARLES GRANDISON”] Mr. Richardson had just completed his novel of Sir Charles Grandison. The Clarissas is an allusion to Miss Botham and Miss Carter, then with Mrs. Montagu. This same month Mrs. Montagu was again very unwell. West urged her to go to London, but Mr. Montagu, who loved the retirement at Sandleford, was unwilling to leave it, and she says-- “Tho’ I am told I may go to town, I know it would not be agreeable where I ought to please, and I can hardly think it right to be in such haste to quit the place where I live most in the manner I ought to do, where only I am useful. I relieve the distresses and animate the industry of a few, and have given all my hours to the two girls under my care, whose welfare, whose eternal welfare perhaps, depends on what they shall now learn.” Mr. Hooke and Mr. Botham were both at Sandleford. In Mr. Hooke’s conversation Mrs. Montagu found much enjoyment; as West put it, “He (Hooke) is a very worthy man, and has in him the greatest compass of entertainments of any one I know, from nonsense (as Lord Bath calls it), to sense, and beyond sense to Metaphysics.” [Page heading: “THE TRIUMPHS OF THE GOUT”] On December 20 Mrs. West writes to present her Christmas wishes, and Mr. West’s, to the Montagus, as “Tubby” (Mr. West), as was his uneuphonious family nickname, had the gout in both hands. Mrs. Montagu writes to him-- “The 27th of December, 1753.