I am sorry your journey is deferred. No news from Fleet Street. What shall I do? Compliments to Datch. As he is now in Durance, great minds forgive their enemies, and I hope he may be released by this time.——Coming, sir. Adieu.
You see the P[rincess] of W[ales] is gone. Hans Stanley says, it is believed the Empress Queen[162] has taken the same journey.*
126.
To J. B. Holroyd, Esq.
London, Feb. 13, 1772.
Dear H.,
GOSSIP OF THE TOWN.
The principal object of my writing to-night is to acquaint you, that the old Anabaptist has escaped Damnation by sending in his papers, &c., on the 10th Instant, the destined day of judgement. *They arrived safe in town last night, and will be in your hands in their intact virgin State in a day or two. Consider them at leisure, if that word is known in the Rural life. Unite, divide, but above all raise. Bring them to London with you: I wait your orders; nor shall I, for fear of tumbling, take a single step till your arrival, which, on many accounts, I hope will not be long deferred.* No news from Fleet Street! What is their surveyor about?
*Clouds still hover over the Horizon of Denmark. The public circumstances of the Revolution are related, and, I understand, very exactly, in the foreign Papers. The secret springs of it still remain unknown. The town, indeed, seems at present quite tired of the subject. The Princess's death,[163] her Character, and what she left, engross the Conversation. She died without a will; and as her savings were generally disposed of in Charity, the small remains of her personal fortune will make a trifling object when divided among her Children. Her favourite, the P[rincess] of B[runswick][164] very properly insisted on the K.'s immediately sealing up all the papers, to secure her from the Idle reports which would be so readily swallowed by the great English Monster. The business of L. and Lady Grosvenor[165] is finally compromised, by the arbitration of the Chancellor[166] and Lord Cambden. He gives her £1200 a year separate maintenance, and £1500 to set out with; but, as her Ladyship is now a new face, her Husband, who has already bestowed on the public seventy young Beauties, has conceived a violent but hopeless passion for his chaste Moiety.* Her brother Vernon told me, that he has now in his hands a counter-affidavit of Countess Denhoff, in which she declares that she received a sum of money to swear the former, the contents of which are totally false. Such infamous conduct may blast her, but can never acquit the other; any more than another allegation of her friends, which must be only whispered to Mrs. H[orton], viz. that though the D[uke] of C[umberland] possessed the inclination, he wanted the power to injure any husband. Poor Mrs. H.! Yet why do I say poor?—*Lord Chesterfield is dying.[167] County Oppositions subside.* Adieu. Je me recommande. Entirely yours.