Mr. Pitt resigned the foreign secretaryship on October 5, 1761. He and his friends were for declaring war against Spain. Lord Bute and a majority opposed it, the king agreeing with them. Pitt’s fall was made tolerable by the pension of £3,000 a year for the lives of himself, son, and wife. The latter was created Baroness of Chatham; and in three months war was declared with Spain!
Mrs. Scott to her brother at Naples. November 28, 1761.—“... Lord Bath and Lord Lyttelton were both at Tunbridge, and Miss Carter was with my sister; so, you may imagine, the place was agreeable, and wit flowed more copiously than the spring. The room she has so long been fitting-up is not yet finished, but the design of it is so much improved that I really believe it will be the most beautiful thing ever seen, and proportionably expensive. Taste, you know, is not the cheapest thing to purchase. Use and convenience may be provided for at a moderate charge, but great geniuses are above being contented with such matters.
“I suppose you have heard much of the general lamentations for Mr. Pitt’s resignation. It is by many thought that his resuming his post is unavoidable, and, indeed, I suppose it must be so, if affairs take the turn which appearances give reason to expect. He is more popular than ever in the city. The procession of the royal family on the Lord Mayor’s Day was broke in a manner that puzzled people much, as they could not account for it; but it has since been said it was occasioned by a multitude of sailors, who forced their way through the crowd in search of Mr. Pitt’s chariot, from which they intended to have taken the horses, and to have drawn it themselves to the Mansion House. The post of honour is not often a place of safety, but I think it was seldom more dangerous than it would have proved in this case, had they effected their design; but they could not find him, so he got there with whole bones, and was received with greater acclamations than were bestowed on any other person. He endeavoured to get away privately, but the mob were so very kind that they very near overturned Lord Temple’s chariot, in which he was, by crowding about it, and hanging on the doors; and a very long time he was in getting home. I will not say it was tedious, for the sweetest music is deserved praise. He did not attend the House of Commons till some days after its first meeting; but when he did, spoke, by all accounts, beyond what he or any other man ever did, with perfect calmness and modesty, and, with few words, silenced every one who endeavoured to oppose him. G. Grenville attempted to answer him, but a general buz obliged him to sit down. However, the press is loaded with his abuse. These events are happy for hireling scribblers. They get a dinner, and can do him no essential harm. So it’s very well. It would be cruel to grudge them their morsel. I hope it will fatten many a starving author.
“But to mention those who do not write for bread, and those who contrive to get both bread and fame together, Lord Lyttelton’s second volume quarto of ‘Henry the Second,’ is in the press.... Mallett has published a poem called ‘Truth in Rhyme,’ dedicated to Lord Bute.... I am glad he can tell truth in either rhyme or prose.... I have heard a bon mot of Lady Townshend’s, of which no one will deny the truth. Somebody expressed their surprise that Lady Northumberland should be made lady of the bedchamber. ‘Surely,’ said she, ‘nothing could be more proper. The queen does not understand English, and can anything be more necessary than that she should learn the vulgar tongue?’”
It was at this period that Mrs. Scott became an authoress, in whole or in part, of a successful, but now utterly forgotten, novel, called “Millennium Hall.” This book, a single volume, went through four editions. In the first edition, 1762, the first word of the title is spelt throughout with one n, and in all the editions it is said to be by a gentleman on his travels. Common report assigned the authorship to Mrs. Scott, shared, as far as some small help went, by her friend and companion for years, Lady Barbara Montagu. A copy of the second edition (1764), which once belonged to Horace Walpole, is now in the British Museum. On the back of the title-page, Walpole corrects the above sharing of literary labour in the following words, written in his well-known hand: “This book was written by Lady Bab Montagu (the sister of George Montagu Dunk, Earl of Hallifax) and Mrs. Scott, daughter of Matthew Robinson, Esq., and wife of George Scott, Esq.” It was continued to be published as the work of a gentleman, in the two succeeding editions; but Mrs. Scott is still accredited with the greatest share in the labour. “Millennium Hall” is generally described as a novel. It is a series of stories of the romantic lives of four or five ladies who, having been bitterly disappointed in love, and handsomely solaced by riches, retire from the world and establish themselves in the hall which gives its name to the novel. It is a name which would lead one to suppose that there is a sort of millennium peace and happiness achieved there, such as will be found on earth generally only in the millennium period. The wealthy and love-lorn ladies of the hall, however, have only founded a female school and society in advance of contemporary ideas, but having nothing wonderful, though now and then something eccentric, if weighed by our present standards. The real interest of the volume lies in the romantic biographies, and these are narrated with ladylike grace, elegance, tenderness, and, occasionally, tedious prolixity.
The story represented, with some exaggeration, the lives led by Lady Bab and Mrs. Scott in their “conventual house” at Batheaston. Both boys and girls were well trained by those ladies at that place. Mrs. Montagu, in reference to Mrs. Scott’s good works, so loved her sister as to render her uncharitable to other people. “Methodist ladies,” she said, “did out of enthusiasm what Mrs. Scott did out of a calm sense of duty, and gratitude that the employment was a solace to one who had been cruelly tried by affliction.” No credit was given to poor Lady Bab, but her happy temperament could well afford to do without it. Strange as the stories were which illustrate “Millennium Hall,” they were not nearly so strange as one which, in March, 1762, Mrs. Scott related to her brother at Rome, in a letter from Bath: “Those who deal in the small wares of scandal will not want subjects. Miss Hunter, daughter to Orby Hunter, has lately furnished a copious topic.... She and Lord Pembroke, in spite of winds, waves, and war, left this kingdom for one where they imagined they may love with less molestation,—where they cannot see a wife weep nor hear a father rage. They set off in a storm better suited to travelling witches than flying lovers, but were so impeded by the weather, that a captain sent out a boat and took the lady prisoner; but after he had set her on shore, he found that, as she was of age, it was difficult to assume any lawful authority over her; and, after having spent a night in tears and lamentation, she was restored to Lord Pembroke.... His lordship resigned his commission and his place of lord of the bedchamber, and wrote a letter to Lady Pembroke, acknowledging her charms and virtues and his own baseness (an unnecessary thing, since the latter she must long have known, and was probably not absolutely ignorant of the former), but assuring her Miss Hunter was irresistible; that he never intended to return into England, and had taken care that £5,000 should be paid her yearly. As Lady Pembroke is so handsome and amiable, perhaps his conduct will be seen by the world in a true light, without any fashionable palliations. A report was spread, that they were taken by a privateer, but I can hear of none but of a very different capture—the clay cold corpses of Lord and Lady Kingstone, which were on their way to England for interment.”
The elopement of Miss Hunter (a maid of honour, too!) from Bath with the Earl of Pembroke formed one of the most delicious bits of scandal ever discussed in the Rooms, on the Parade, or in the Meadows. The excitement attendant thereon was shared by the whole country; for Kitty Hunter was a well-known, and not at all suspected, beauty of the day. Her father, Orby Hunter, was, at the time of the elopement, one of the lords of the admiralty. The vessel that brought back the fugitives was a privateer, commanded by a friend of Mr. Hunter’s. Kitty’s father declined to receive her, and she accompanied Lord Pembroke abroad. The earl was a married man. His wife was Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough. Her exemplary husband wrote to her from Italy a letter, in which he politely informed her, that though he had lived with her so many years, he regretted to say he had never been able to love her so well as she deserved, so thought it best to leave her. Subsequently, he had the assurance to invite Lady Pembroke to accompany them on the Continent. “And she,” says Walpole, “who is all gentleness and tenderness, was with difficulty withheld from acting as mad a part from goodness as he had acted from guilt and folly.” He had tried to make his wife hate him, but in vain. It is one of the illustrations of social feeling in the last century, that neither the rascal earl nor the light-o’-love maid of honour was thought much the worse of for their shameless conduct. A “Peerage,” of ten years subsequent to the elopement, edited by a clergyman, too! the Rev. Frederick Barlow, vicar of Burton, thus speaks of my lord, who was then living: “His lordship distinguished himself in the annals of gallantry with Miss H—— about ten years ago, and since that time,” it, goes on to speak plainly of the earl’s gallantry, “with several ladies of less note;” adding, “his lordship is universally esteemed as an accomplished nobleman and a brave officer.” Mrs. Scott happily goes on to treat of a plainer but much honester woman than Kitty Hunter: “The queen gives daily less satisfaction, and the people who at first found her out to be pleasing, seem now to be insensible to the discovery they then made. Her husband, however, seems fond of her.... Report says the Prince of Mecklenburg, a very pretty sort of man, with an agreeable person, is fallen desperately in love with Miss Bowes—a prudent passion; and the girl has no ambition if she does not choose to be a princess. I fancy, should she become such, he would be richer than the duke, his elder brother.... Lady Raymond is going to be married to Lord Robert Bertie,—an union wherein no acid will enter; for they are both famed for good temper. Mr. Whitehead’s play has been acted and published, and a poor performance it is. The dialogue flat and ungenteel, and the plot poor enough.”
Whitehead’s play was a comedy, “The School for Lovers,” in which Garrick played Sir John Dorilant. The main attraction was the ever youthful Mrs. Cibber, who, at nearly fifty years old, acted Cælia, a girl of seventeen; yet Victor says: “She was admitted by the nicest observers to become the character. This was entirely owing to that uncommon symmetry and exact proportion in her form, that happily remained with her to her death.” But there were more extraordinary comedies being enacted in real life than on the stage.
In a letter from Mrs. Scott to her brother, at Naples, dated April 10, 1762, there are profuse congratulations on the birth of his son, and a wonderful amount of speculation on mothers, nurses, and on babies generally, possible and impossible, expected and not expected, overtardy or too hasty, and all in as plain language as the subject could admit. The writer then refers to the report of the queen affording promise of an heir; “but as she is no great favourite with the nation, it does not seem to afford any great joy.” This leads to a subject that made a stir among last century ladies who were privileged to go to court. “A court dress (sic) is going to take place at St. James’s, the same as in France, which greatly distresses the old ladies, who are quite clamourous on the occasion, and at a loss how to cover so much neck as the stiffened-bodied gowns are made to show, and which they are sensible is not very appétissante after a certain age; as likewise how to supply the deficiency which churlish time has made in their once flowing tresses. Some younger ladies, to whom nature has been rather a stepdame than a kind mother, join in their lamentations, and London is in an uproar. The exultation of those who, conscious of their charms, rejoice in laying aside as much covering as possible, being as little silent at the distress of the others. They look on this allowed display as a sort of jail delivery to their long-imprisoned attractions; and as beauty is nature’s boast, insist that it should be showed at courts, and feasts and high solemnities, where most may wonder at the workmanship; and that fashion has been hitherto unjust in concealing part of the superiority nature has bestowed upon them. The consumption of pearl-powder will certainly be much increased; for where there is such a resource, even fourscore will exhibit a snowy breast, and the corpulent dowagers will unite the lilies of the spring with all the copious abundance of a later season.
“... Lord Pembroke, after he got to Holland, wrote to his lady, to desire her to come to them, assuring her Miss Hunter would be assiduous in her endeavours to oblige her, and that they should form a very happy society, if she would bring over her guitar, two servants who play on the French horn, and his dog Rover! This polite invitation she, Emma like, was exceeding ready to comply with, but the Duke of Marlborough had rather too much sense to permit it. His lordship has since written her word, he shall never be happy till he lives with her again. Absurd as all this is, it is certainly fact, and some add, that he has advised Miss Hunter to turn nun! To be sure he best knows how fit she is to take a vow of chastity! That he may by this time wish she would take any vow that might separate her from him, is, I think, very probable.”