Your letter of the 19th seems to postpone your arrival rather
than advance it; yet Lady Ailesbury tells me that to her you
talk of being here in ten days. I wish devoutly to see you,
though I am not departing myself; but I am impatient to have
your disagreeable function(264) at an end, and to know that YOU
enjoy Yourself after such fatigues, dangers, and ill-requited
services. For any public satisfaction you will receive in
being at home, you must not expect much. Your mind was not
formed to float on the surface of a mercenary world. My prayer
(and my belief) is, that you may always prefer what you always
have preferred, your integrity to success. You will then
laugh, as I do, at the attacks and malice of faction or
ministers. I taste of both; but, as my health is recovered,
and My Mind does not reproach me, they will perhaps only give
me an opportunity, which I should never have sought, of proving
that I have some virtue--and it will not be proved in the way
they probably expect. I have better evidence than by hanging
out the tattered ensigns of patriotism. But this and a
thousand other things I shall reserve for our meeting. Your
brother has pressed me much to go with him, if he goes, to
Paris.(265) I take it very kindly, but have excused myself,
though I have promised either to accompany him for a short time
at first, or to go to him if he should have any particular
occasion for me: but my resolution against ever appearing in
any public light is unalterable. When I wish to live less and
less in the world here, I cannot think of mounting a new stage
at Paris. At this moment I am alone here, while every body is
balloting in the House of Commons. Sir John Philips proposed a
commission of accounts, which has been converted into a select
committee of twenty-one, eligible by ballot. As the ministry
is not predominant in the affections of mankind, some of them
may find a jury elected that will not be quite so complaisant
as the House is in general when their votes are given openly.
As many may be glad of this opportunity, I shun it; for I
should scorn to do any thing in secret, though I have some
enemies that are not quite so generous.
You say you have seen the North Briton, in which I make a
capital figure. Wilkes, the author, I hear, says, that if he
had thought I should have taken it so well, he would have been
damned before he would have written it-but I am not sore where
I am not sore.
The theatre of Covent-garden has suffered more by riots than
even Drury-lane.(266) A footman of Lord Dacre has been hanged
for murdering the butler. George Selwyn had great hand in
bringing him to confess it. That Selwyn should be a capital
performer in a scene of that kind is not extraordinary: I tell
it you for the strange coolness which the young fellow, who was
but nineteen, expressed: as he was writing his confession, "I
murd--" he stopped, and asked, "how do you spell murdered?"
Mr. Fox is much better than at the beginning of the winter; and
both his health and power seem to promise a longer duration
than people expected. Indeed, I think the latter is so
established, that poor Lord Bute would find it more difficult
to remove him, than he did his predecessors, and may even feel
the effects of the weight he has made over to him; for it is
already obvious that Lord Bute's lev`ee is not the present path
to fortune. Permanence is not the complexion of these times--a
distressful circumstance to the votaries of a court, but
amusing to us spectators. Adieu!
(264) The re-embarkation of the British troops from Flanders
after the peace.
(265) An ambassador.
(266. In January, there was a riot at Drury-lane, in
consequence of the managers refusing admittance at the end of
the third act of a play for half-price; when the glass lustres
were broken and thrown upon the stage, the benches torn up, and
the performance put a stop to. The same scene was threatened
on the following evening, but was prevented by Garrick's
consenting to give admittance at half-price after the third
act, except during the first winter of a new pantomime. At
Covent-garden, the redress demanded having been acceded to, no
disturbance took place on that occasion; but a more serious
riot happened on the 24th of February, in consequence of a
demand for full prices at the opera of Artaxerxes. The
mischief done was estimated at not less than two thousand
pounds.-E.
Letter 148 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, March 29, 1763. (page 205)
Though you are a runaway, a fugitive, a thing without friendship
or feeling, though you grow tired of your acquaintance in half
the time you intended, I will not quite give you up: I will write
to you once a quarter, just to keep up a connexion that grace may
catch at, if it ever proposes to visit you. This is my plan, for
I have little or nothing to tell you. The ministers only cut one
another's throats instead of ours. They growl over their prey
like two curs over a bone, which neither can determine to quit;
and the whelps in opposition are not strong enough to beat either
way, though like the species, they will probably hunt the one
that shall be worsted. The saddest dog of all, Wilkes, shows
most spirit. The last North Briton is a masterpiece of mischief.
He has written a dedication too to an old play, the Fall of
Mortimer, that is wormwood; and he had the impudence t'other day
to ask Dyson if he was going to the treasury; "Because," said he,
"a friend of mine has dedicated a play to Lord Bute, and 'It is
usual to give dedicators something; I wish you would put his
lordship in mind of it." Lord and Lady Pembroke are reconciled,
and live again together.(267) Mr. Hunter would have taken his
daughter too, but upon condition she should give back her
settlement to Lord Pembroke and her child: she replied nobly,
that she did not trouble herself about fortune, and would
willingly depend on her father; but for her child, she had
nothing left to do but to take care of that, and would not part
with it; so she keeps both, and I suppose will soon have her
lover again too, for T'other sister(268) has been sitting to
Reynolds, who by her husband's direction has made a speaking
picture. Lord Bolingbroke said to him, "You must give the eyes
something of Nelly O'Brien, or it will not do." As he has given
Nelly something of his wife's, it was but fair to give her
something of Nelly's, and my lady will not throw away the
present!
I am going to Strawberry for a few days, pour faire mes piques.
The gallery advances rapidly. The ceiling is Harry the Seventh's
chapel in proprid persona; the canopies are all placed; I think
three months will quite complete it. - I have bought at Lord
Granville's sale the original picture of Charles Brandon and his
queen; and have to-day received from France a copy of Madame
Maintenon, which with my La Vali`ere, and copies of Madame
Grammont, and of the charming portrait of the Mazarine at the
Duke of St. Alban's, is to accompany Bianca Capello and Ninon
L'Enclos in the round tower. I hope now there will never be
another auction, for I have not an inch of space, or a farthing
left. As I have some remains of paper, I will fill it up with a
song that I made t'other day in the postchaise, after a
particular conversation that I had with Miss Pelham the night
before at the Duke of Richmond's.