“Friday, the 27th.
“I am not only a prophet, but have more command of my passions than such impetuous gentry as prophets are apt to have. We found the fiddles as I foretold; and yet I kept my resolution and did not dance, though the Sirens invited me, and though it would have shocked the dignity of old Tiffany Ellis, who would have thought it an indecorum. The two younger Norths and Sir Ralph Payne supplied my place. I played at cribbage with the matrons, and we came away at midnight. So if I now and then do cut a colt’s tooth, I have it drawn immediately. I do not know a paragraph of news—the nearer the minister, the farther from politics.
“P.S. My next jubilee dancing shall be with Lady Gertrude.”
Not long after the date of these letters, Mann sends news of further improvements at Florence. Walpole answers:
“The decree[88] you sent me against high heads diverted me. It is as necessary here, but would not have such expeditious effect. The Queen has never admitted feathers at Court; but, though the nation has grown excellent courtiers, Fashion remained in opposition, and not a plume less was worn anywhere else. Some centuries ago, the Clergy preached against monstrous head-dresses; but Religion had no more power than our Queen. It is better to leave the Mode to its own vagaries; if she is not contradicted, she seldom remains long in the same mood. She is very despotic; but, though her reign is endless, her laws are repealed as fast as made.”
The frequency of highway robberies only a century ago sounds surprising to the present generation. Horace recounts to Lady Ossory an adventure of this kind which befell him and his friend and neighbour, Lady Browne, in the autumn of this jovial 1781:
“The night I had the honour of writing to your Ladyship last, I was robbed—and, as if I were a sovereign or a nation, have had a discussion ever since whether it was not a neighbour who robbed me—and should it come to the ears of the newspapers, it might produce as ingenious a controversy amongst our anonymous wits as any of the noble topics I have been mentioning. Voici le fait. Lady Browne and I were, as usual, going to the Duchess of Montrose at seven o’clock. The evening was very dark. In the close lane under her park-pale, and within twenty yards of the gate, a black figure on horseback pushed by between the chaise and the hedge on my side. I suspected it was a highwayman, and so I found did Lady Browne, for she was speaking and stopped. To divert her fears, I was just going to say, Is not that the apothecary going to the Duchess? when I heard a voice cry ‘Stop!’ and the figure came back to the chaise. I had the presence of mind, before I let down the glass, to take out my watch and stuff it within my waistcoat under my arm. He said, ‘Your purses and watches!’ I replied, ‘I have no watch.’ ‘Then your purse!’ I gave it to him; it had nine guineas. It was so dark that I could not see his hand, but felt him take it. He then asked for Lady Browne’s purse, and said, ‘Don’t be frightened; I will not hurt you.’ I said, ‘No; you won’t frighten the lady?’ He replied, ‘No; I give you my word I will do you no hurt.’ Lady Browne gave him her purse, and was going to add her watch, but he said, ‘I am much obliged to you! I wish you good-night!’ pulled off his hat, and rode away. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘Lady Browne, you will not be afraid of being robbed another time, for you see there is nothing in it.’ ‘Oh! but I am,’ said she, ‘and now I am in terrors lest he should return, for I have given him a purse with only bad money that I carry on purpose.’ ‘He certainly will not open it directly,’ said I, ‘and at worst he can only wait for us at our return; but I will send my servant back for a horse and a blunderbuss,’ which I did. The next distress was not to terrify the Duchess, who is so paralytic and nervous. I therefore made Lady Browne go into the parlour, and desired one of the Duchess’s servants to get her a glass of water, while I went into the drawing-room to break it to the Duchess. ‘Well,’ said I, laughing to her and the rest of the company, ‘you won’t get much from us to-night.’ ‘Why,’ said one of them, ‘have you been robbed?’ ‘Yes, a little,’ said I. The Duchess trembled; but it went off. Her groom of the chambers said not a word, but slipped out, and Lady Margaret and Miss Howe having servants there on horseback, he gave them pistols and despatched them different ways. This was exceedingly clever, for he knew the Duchess would not have suffered it, as lately he had detected a man who had robbed her garden, and she would not allow him to take up the fellow. These servants spread the story, and when my footman arrived on foot, he was stopped in the street by the ostler of the ‘George,’ who told him the highwayman’s horse was then in the stable; but this part I must reserve for the second volume, for I have made this no story so long and so tedious that your Ladyship will not be able to read it in a breath; and the second part is so much longer and so much less, contains so many examinations of witnesses, so many contradictions in the depositions, which I have taken myself, and, I must confess, with such abilities and shrewdness that I have found out nothing at all, that I think to defer the prosecution of my narrative till all the other inquisitions on the anvil are liquidated, lest your Ladyship’s head, strong as it is, should be confounded, and you should imagine that Rodney or Ferguson was the person who robbed us in Twickenham Lane. I would not have detailed the story at all, if you were not in a forest, where it will serve to put you to sleep as well as a newspaper full of lies; and I am sure there is as much dignity in it as in the combined fleet, and ours, popping in and out alternately, like a man and woman in a weather-house.”
A few months later he writes to his Countess:
“Strawberry Hill, Aug. 31, 1782.
“It is very strange indeed, Madam, that you should make me excuses for writing, or think that I have anything better, or even more urgent, to do than to read your letters. It is very true that the Duchess de la Vallière, in a hand which I could not decypher, has recommended Count Soltikoff and his wife to me: but, oh! my shame, I have not yet seen them. I did mean to go to town to-day on purpose, but I have had the gout in my right eyelid, and it was swelled yesterday as big as a walnut; being now shrunk to less than a pistachio, I propose in two or three days to make my appearance. Luckily the Countess was born in England, the daughter of the former Czernichew, and she is in such terrors of highwaymen, that I shall be quit for a breakfast; so it is an ill highwayman that blows nobody good. In truth, it would be impossible, in this region, to amass a set of company for dinner to meet them. The Hertfords, Lady Holdernesse, and Lady Mary Coke did dine here on Thursday, but were armed as if going to Gibraltar; and Lady Cecilia Johnston would not venture even from Petersham—for in the town of Richmond they rob even before dusk—to such perfection are all the arts brought! Who would have thought that the war with America would make it impossible to stir from one village to another? yet so it literally is. The Colonies took off all our commodities down to highwaymen. Now being forced to mew, and then turn them out, like pheasants, the roads are stocked with them, and they are so tame that they even come into houses.