BERKELEY SQUARE, _Tuesday, Aug._ 23, 1791.
I am come to town to meet Mr. Conway and Lady Aylesbury; and, as I have
no letter from you yet to answer, I will tell you how agreeably I have
passed the last three days; though they might have been improved had you
shared them, as I wished, and as I _sometimes_ do wish. On Saturday
evening I was at the Duke of Queensberry's (at Richmond, _s'entend_)
with a small company: and there were Sir William Hamilton and Mrs.
Harte[1]; who, on the 3rd of next month, previous to their departure, is
to be made Madame l'Envoyée à Naples, the Neapolitan Queen having
promised to receive her in that quality. Here she cannot be presented,
where only such over-virtuous wives as the Duchess of Kingston and Mrs.
Hastings[2]--who could go with a husband in each hand--are admitted. Why
the Margravine of Anspach, with the same pretensions, was not, I do not
understand; perhaps she did not attempt it. But I forget to retract, and
make _amende honorable_ to Mrs. Harte. I had only heard of her
attitudes; and those, in dumb show, I have not yet seen. Oh! but she
sings admirably; has a very fine, strong voice; is an excellent buffa,
and an astonishing tragedian. She sung Nina in the highest perfection;
and there her attitudes were a whole theatre of grace and various
expressions.
[Footnote 1: Mrs. Harte, the celebrated Lady Hamilton, with whom Nelson
was so intimately acquainted, though old Lord St. Vincent always
maintained that it had never been more than a purely Platonic
attachment. Her previous life, however, had been notoriously such as
rendered her inadmissible at our Court, though that of Naples was less
particular.]
[Footnote 2: Mrs. Hastings, the wife of the great Governor-General, had
previously been married to Baron Imhoff, a German miniature painter; but
she had obtained a divorce from him, and, as the Baron returned to
Germany with an amount of riches that he could hardly have earned by
skill in his profession, the scandalous tongues of some of Hastings's
enemies imputed to him that he had, in fact, bought her of her husband.]
The next evening I was again at Queensberry House, where the Comtesse
Emilie de Boufflers played on her harp, and the Princesse di
Castelcigala, the Neapolitan minister's wife, danced one of her country
dances, with castanets, very prettily, with her husband. Madame du Barry
was there too, and I had a good deal of frank conversation with her
about Monsieur de Choiseul; having been at Paris at the end of his reign
and the beginning of hers, and of which I knew so much by my intimacy
with the Duchesse de Choiseul.
On Monday was the boat-race [at Richmond]. I was in the great room at
the Castle, with the Duke of Clarence, Lady Di., Lord Robert Spencer,
and the House of Bouverie, to see the boats start from the bridge to
Thistleworth, and back to a tent erected on Lord Dysart's meadow, just
before Lady Di.'s windows; whither we went to see them arrive, and where
we had breakfast. For the second heat, I sat in my coach on the bridge;
and did not stay for the third. The day had been coined on purpose, with
my favourite south-east wind. The scene, both up the river and down, was
what only Richmond upon earth can exhibit. The crowds on those green
velvet meadows and on the shores, the yachts, barges, pleasure and small
boats, and the windows and gardens lined with spectators, were so
delightful, that when I came home from that vivid show, I thought
Strawberry looked as dull and solitary as a hermitage. At night there
was a ball at the Castle, and illuminations, with the Duke's cypher, &c.
in coloured lamps, as were the houses of his Royal Highness's tradesmen.
I went again in the evening to the French ladies on the Green, where
there was a bonfire; but, you may believe, not to the ball.
Well! but you, who have had a fever with _fêtes_, had rather hear the
history of the new _soi-disante_ Margravine. She has been in England
with her foolish Prince, and not only notified their marriage to the
Earl [of Berkeley] her brother, who did not receive it propitiously, but
his Highness informed his Lordship by a letter, that they have an usage
in his country of taking a wife with the left hand; that he had espoused
his Lordship's sister in that manner; and intends, as soon as she shall
be a widow, to marry her with his right hand also. The Earl replied,
that he knew she was married to an English peer [Lord Craven], a most
respectable man, and can know nothing of her marrying any other man; and
so they are gone to Lisbon. Adieu!
_ARREST OF THE DUCHESSE DE BIRON--THE QUEEN OF FRANCE--PYTHAGORAS._