Among the fellow-passengers of Hastings on the ship which conveyed him to India in 1769, were a German portrait-painter, named Imhoff, and his wife, who were going out to Madras in the hope of bettering their circumstances. During the voyage a strong attachment sprang up between Hastings and the lady, who nursed him through an illness. The husband, it seems, had as little affection for his wife as she had for him, and was easily prevailed upon to enter into an amicable arrangement, by virtue of which Madame Imhoff instituted proceedings for divorce against him in the German courts. Pending the result, the Imhoffs continued to live together ostensibly as man and wife to avoid scandal. The proceedings—were long protracted, but a decree of divorce was finally procured in 1772, when Hastings married the lady and paid to the complaisant husband a sum, it is said, exceeding, 10,000 pounds.
The favourable reception accorded by the queen to Mrs. Hastings, when, in 1784, she returned to England as wife of the Governor-general of Bengal, passed not without public comment. Her husband, however, was in high esteem at Court from his great services, and she had an additional recommendation to the queen's favour in the friendship of Mrs. Schwellenberg, the keeper of the robes, whom she had known before her voyage to India.—ED.]
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[ Fanny's sister Charlotte, who had mairied Clement Francis, Feb. 11, 1786. They were now settled at Aylesham, in Norfolk, where Mr. Francis was practising as a surgeon.—ED.]
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[ Dr. Burney's daughter by his second wife—ED.]
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[ Sir Thomas Clarges, whose wife was a dear friend of Susan Burney. Sir Thomas died in December, 1782. In the “Early Diary” he is mentioned once or twice, as a visitor at Dr. Burney's. Fanny writes of him in May, 1775, as “a young baronet, who was formerly so desperately enamoured of Miss Linley, now Mrs. Sheridan, that his friends made a point of his going abroad to recover himself: he is now just returned from italy, and I hope cured. He still retains all the schoolboy English mauvaise honte; scarce speaks but to make an answer, and is as shy as if his last residence had been at Eton instead of Paris.”—ED.]
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[ 'Tis amazing what nonsense sensible people can write, when their heads are turned by considerations of rank and flummery!—ED.]