Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

camels and caravans, and pitching your tents among your own tribe. I cannot be quite sorry, for I shall certainly visit you at Greatworth, and it might have been some years before the curtain had drawn up at Roel. We emerge very fast out of shavings, and hammerings, and pastings; the painted glass is full-blown in every window, and the gorgeous saints, that were brought out for one day on the festival of Saint George Montagu, are fixed for ever in the tabernacles they are to inhabit. The castle is not the only beauty and to-day we had a glimpse of the sun as he passed by, though I am convinced the summer is over; for these two last years we have been forced to compound for five hot days in the pound.

News there is none to tell you. We had two days in the House of Commons, that had something of the air of Parliament; there has been a Marriage-bill, invented by my Lord Bath, and cooked up by the Chancellor, which was warmly opposed by the Duke of Bedford in the Lords, and with us by Fox and Nugent: the latter made an admirable speech last week against it, and Charles Townshend another very good one yesterday, when we sat till near ten o'clock, but were beat, we minority, by 165 to 84.

I know nothing else but elopements: I have lost my man Henry, who is run away for debt; and my Lord Bath his only son, who is run away from thirty thousand pounds a-year, which in all probability would have come to him in six months. There had been some great fracas about his marriage; the stories are various on the Why; some say his father told Miss Nichols that his son was a very worthless young man; others, that the Earl could not bring himself to make tolerable settlements; and a third party say, that the Countess has blown up a quarrel in order to have his son in her power, and at her mercy. Whatever the cause was, this ingenious young man, who you know has made my Lady Townshend his everlasting enemy, by repeating her histories of Miss Chudleigh to that Miss, of all counsellors in the world, picked out my Lady Townshend to consult on his domestic grievances: she, with all the good-nature and charity imaginable, immediately advised him to be disinherited. He took her advice, left two dutiful letters for his parents, to notify his disobedience, and went off last Friday night to France. The Earl is so angry, that he could almost bring himself to give Mr. Newport, and twenty other people, their estates again. Good night-here is the Goth, Mr. Bentley, wants to say a word to you.

"DEAR SIR,

66

"I WROTE you a supernumerary letter on Saturday, but as I find you have shifted your quarters since I heard from you, imagine it may not have reached you yet. If you want to know what made me so assiduous, it was to tell you Sir Danvers Osborn has kissed hands for New York, that's all. I am sincerely yours, "R. BENTLEY. "P.S. I wish you would write to him mentioning me, that's more."

a Second son of the Marquis of Townshend.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Strawberry Hill, May 24, 1753.

Ir is well you are married! How would my Lady Ailesbury have liked to be asked in a parish church for three Sundays running? I really believe she would have worn her weeds for ever, rather than have passed through so impudent a ceremony! What do you think? But you will want to know the interpretation of this preamble. Why, there is a new bill, which, under the notion of preventing clandestine marriages, has made such a general rummage and reform in the office of matrimony that every Strephon and Chloe, every dowager and her Hussey, will have as many impediments and formalities to undergo as a treaty of peace. Lord Bath invented this bill, but had drawn it so ill, that the Chancellor was forced to draw a new one, and then grew so fond of his own creature, that he has crammed it down the throats of both Houses-though they gave many a gulp before they could swallow it. The Duke of Bedford attacked it first with great spirit and mastery, but had little support, though the Duke of Newcastle did not vote. The lawyers were all ordered to nurse it through our House: but except the poor Attorney-general, who is nurse indeed to all intents and purposes, and did amply gossip over it, not one of them said a word. Nugent shone extremely in opposition to the bill, and, though every now and then on the precipice of absurdity, kept clear of it, with great humour and wit and argument, and was unanswered-yet we were beat. Last Monday it came into the committee: Charles Townshend acted a very good speech with great cleverness, and drew a picture of his own story and his father's tyranny, with at least as much parts as modesty. Mr. Fox mumbled the Chancellor and his lawyers, and pinned the plan of the bill upon a pamphlet he had found of Dr. Gally's, where the doctor, recommending the French scheme of matrimony, says, "It was found that fathers were too apt to forgive." "The Gospel, I thought," said Mr. Fox, "enjoined forgiveness; but pious Dr. Gally thinks fathers are too apt to forgive." Mr. Pelham, extremely in his opinion against the

The following is Tindal's account of the origin of this bill: "The fatal consequences of clandestine marriages had been long complained of in England, as rendering the succession to all property insecure and doubtful. Every day produced hearings of the most shocking kind in the court of Chancery, and appeals in the House of Lords, concerning the validity of such marriages; and sometimes the innocent offspring were cut off from succession, though their parents had been married bona fide, because of the irregularity of such marriage. On the other hand, both women and men of the most infamous characters had opportunities of ruining the sons and daughters of the greatest families in England, by conveniences of marrying in the Fleet, and other unlicensed places; and marrying was now become as much a trade as any mechanical profession."—E.

Sir Dudley Ryder.

e Dr. Henry Gally, one of the King's chaplains in ordinary. Besides the pamphlet here spoken of, which was entitled "Some Considerations upon Clandestine Marriages," he wrote a "Dissertation on Pronouncing the Greek Language," and several other works He died in 1769.-E.

bill, and in his inclination too, was forced to rivet it, and, without speaking one word for it, taught the House how to vote for it; and it was carried against the Chairman's leaving the chair by 165 to 84.

This is all the news I know, or at least was all when I came out of town; for I left the tinkering of the bill, and came hither last Tuesday to my workmen. I flatter myself I shall get into tolerable order to receive my Lady Ailesbury and you at your return from Sligo, from whence I have received your letter, and where I hope you have had my first. I say nothing of the exile of the Parliament of Paris for I know no more than you will see in the public papers; only, as we are going to choose a new Parliament, we could not do better than choose the exiles: we could scarce choose braver or honester men. I say as little of Mademoiselle Murphy, for I conclude you hear nothing but her health drank in whiskey. Don't all the naked Irish flatter themselves with preferment, and claim relation with her? Miss Chudleigh says, there is some sense in belonging to a king who turns off an old mistress when he has got a new one.

Arlington Street, May 29.

I AM come to town for a day or two, and find that the Marriagebill has not only lasted till now in the committee, but has produced, or at least disclosed, extreme heats. Mr. Fox and Mr. Pelham have had very high words on every clause, and the former has renewed his attacks on the Chancellor under the name of Dr. Gally. Yesterday on the nullity clause they sat till half an hour after three in the morning, having just then had a division on adjournment, which was rejected by the ministry by above 80 to 70. The Speaker, who had spoken well against the clause, was so misrepresented by the Attorneygeneral, that there was danger of a skimmington between the great wig and the coif, the former having given a flat lie to the latter. Mr. Fox, I am told, outdid himself for spirit, and severity on the Chancellor and the lawyers. I say I am told; for I was content with having been beat twice, and did not attend. The heats between the two ministers were far from cooling by the length of the debate. Adieu! You did little expect in these times, and at this season, to have heard such a parliamentary history! The bill is not near finished; Mr. Fox has declared he will dispute every inch of ground. I hope he won't be banished to Pontoise. I shall write to you no more; so pray return. I hear most favourable accounts of my Lady Ailesbury.

An Irishwoman who was, for a short time, mistress to Louis XV.

b "The opposition to the bill was such, that few clauses remained unaltered; and Mr. Fox, holding it up in the House, as Antony exposed the murdered body of Cæsar, made a kind of a parody of the speech in Shakspeare upon that occasion." Tindal.—E.

The Parliament of Paris having espoused the cause of religious liberty, and apprehended several priests who, by the authority of the Archbishop of Paris and other prelates, had refused the sacraments to those who would not subscribe to the bull Unigenitus, were banished by Louis XV. to Pontoise.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Strawberry Hill, June 11, 1753.

You will think me very fickle, and that I have but a slight regard to the castle I am building for my ancestors, when you hear that I have been these last eight days in London amid dust and stinks, instead of seringa, roses, battlements, and niches; but you perhaps recollect that I have another Gothic passion, which is for squabbles in the Wittenagemot. I can't say that the contests have run so high in either House as they have sometimes done in former days, but this age has found out a new method of parliamentary altercations. The Commons abuse the Barons, and the Barons return it; in short, Mr. Fox attacked the Chancellor violently on the Marriage-bill; and when it was sent back to the Lords, the Chancellor made the most outrageous invectives on Fox that ever was heard. But what offends still more,-I don't mean offends Fox more,-was the Chancellor describing the chief persons who had opposed his bill in the Commons, and giving reason why he excused them. As the speaker was in the number of the excused, the two maces are ready to come to blows. The town says Mr. Fox is to be dismissed, but I can scarce think it will go so far.

My Lord Cornwallis is made an earl; Lord Bristol's sisters have the rank of earl's daughters; Damer is Lord Milton in Ireland, and the new Lord Barnard is, I hear, to be Earl of Darlington.

Poor Lady Caroline Brand is dead of a rheumatic fever, and her husband as miserable a man as ever he was a cheerful one: I grieve much for her, and pity him; they were infinitely happy, and lived in the most perfect friendship I ever saw.

You may be assured that I will pay you a visit some time this summer, though not yet, as I cannot leave my workmen, especially as we have a painter who paints the paper on the staircase under Mr. Bentley's direction. The armoury bespeaks the ancient chivalry of the lords of the castle; and I have filled Mr. Bentley's Gothic lanthorn with painted glass, which casts the most venerable gloom on the stairs that ever was seen since the days of Abelard. The lanthorn itself, in which I have stuck a coat of the Veres, is supposed

* The name of the Saxon great council, the supposed origin of parliaments. b Among the Hardwicke papers there is a letter from Dr. Birch to the Hon. Philip Yorke, giving an account of the debate in the House of Lords. The following is an extract:-"My Lord Chancellor expressed his surprise, that the bill should have been styled out of doors an absurd, a cruel, a scandalous, and a wicked one. With regard to his own share in this torrent of abuse, as he was obliged to those who had so honourably defended him, 'so,' said he, I despise the invective, and I despise the retractation; I despise the scurrility, and I reject the adulation.' Mr. Fox was not present, but had soon an account of what had passed; for the same evening, being at Vauxhall with some ladies, he broke from them, and collecting a little circle of young members of parliament and others, told them with great eagerness, that he wished the session had continued a fortnight longer, for then he would have made ample returns to the Lord Chancellor. The Speaker talks of my Lord Chancellor's speech in the style of Mr. Fox, as deserving of the notice of the Commons, if they had not been prorogued."—E.

[blocks in formation]

to have come from Castle Henningham. Lord and Lady Vere were here t'other day, and called cousins with it, and would very readily have invited it to Hanworth; but her Portuguese blood has so blackened the true stream that I could not bring myself to offer so fair a gift to their chapel.

I shall only tell you a bon-mot of Keith's, the marriage-broker, and conclude. "G-d d-n the bishops !" said he, (I beg Miss Montagu's pardon,) "so they will hinder my marrying. Well, let 'em; but I'll be revenged! I'll buy two or three acres of ground, and, by G-d! I'll underbury them all!" Adieu!

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Strawberry Hill, June 12, 1753.

I COULD not rest any longer with the thought of your having no idea of a place of which you hear so much, and therefore desired Mr. Bentley to draw you as much idea of it as the post would be persuaded to carry from Twickenham to Florence. The enclosed enchanted little landscape, then, is Strawberry Hill; and I will try to explain so much of it to you as will help to let you know whereabouts we are when we are talking to you; for it is uncomfortable in so intimate a correspondence as ours not to be exactly master of every spot where one another is writing, or reading, or sauntering. This view of the castle" is what I have just finished, and is the only side that will be at all regular. Directly before it is an open grove, through which you see a field, which is bounded by a serpentine wood of all kind of trees, and flowering shrubs, and flowers. The lawn before the house is situated on the top of a small hill, from whence to the left you see the town and church of Twickenham encircling a turn of the river, that looks exactly like a seaport in miniature. The opposite shore is a most delicious meadow, bounded by Richmond Hill, which loses itself in the noble woods of the park to the end of the prospect on the right, where is another turn of the river, and the suburbs of Kingston as luckily placed as Twickenham is on the left; and a natural terrace on the brow of my hill, with meadows of my own down to the river, commands both extremities. Is not this a tolerable prospect? You must figure that all this is perpetually enlivened by a navigation of boats and barges, and by a road below my terrace, with coaches, post-chaises, wagons, and horsemen constantly in motion, and the fields speckled with cows, horses, and sheep. Now you shall walk into the house. The bow-window below leads into a little parlour hung with a stone-colour Gothic paper and Jackson's Venetian prints, which I could never endure while they pretended, infamous as they are, to be after Titian, &c., but when I gave them this air of barbarous basreliefs, they succeeded

It was a view of the south side towards the northeast.

« VorigeDoorgaan »