For Lady Jersey, see p. 112,
1. The following passage, from Byron's
Detached Thoughts
, gives an account of the party at Middleton:
"In 1812 at Middelton (Lord Jersey's), amongst a goodly company of Lords, Ladies, and wits, etc., there was poor old Vice Leach, the lawyer, attempting to play off the fine gentleman. His first exhibition, an attempt on horseback, I think, to escort the women—God knows where—in the month of November, ended in a fit of the Lumbago—as Lord Ogleby says, 'a grievous enemy to Gallantry and address'—and if he could have but heard Lady Jersey quizzing him (as I did) next day for the cause of his malady, I don't think that he would have turned a 'Squire of dames' in a hurry again. He seemed to me the greatest fool (in that line) I ever saw. This was the last I saw of old Vice Leach, except in town, where he was creeping into assemblies, and trying to look young—and gentlemanly.
Erskine too!—Erskine was there—good but intolerable. He jested, he talked, he did everything admirably, but then he would be applauded for the same thing twice over. He would read his own verses, his own paragraphs, and tell his own story again and again; and then 'the trial by Jury!!!'—I almost wished it abolished, for I sate next him at dinner, and, as I had read his published speeches, there was no occasion to repeat them to me. Chester (the fox-hunter), surnamed 'Cheek Chester,' and I sweated the Claret, being the only two who did so. Cheek, who loves his bottle, and had no notion of meeting with a 'bonvivant' in a scribbler, in making my eulogy to somebody one evening, summed it up in 'by G-d, he drinks like a Man!'"