[Footnote 1: Marshal Botta was the Commander-in-chief in Tuscany.]
We have a mighty expedition on the point of sailing; the destination not disclosed. The German War loses ground daily; however, all is still in embryo. My subsequent letters are not likely to be so barren, and indecisive. I write more to prove there is nothing, than to tell you anything.
You were mistaken, I believe, about the Graftons; they do not remove from Turin, till George Pitt arrives to occupy their house there. I am really anxious about the fate of my letter to the Duchess [of Grafton]; I should be hurt if it had miscarried; she would have reason to think me very ungrateful.
I have given your letter to Mr. T[homas] Pitt; he has been very unfortunate since his arrival—has lost his favourite sister in child-bed. Lord Tavistock, I hear, has written accounts of you that give me much pleasure.
I am ashamed to tell you that we are again dipped into an egregious scene of folly. The reigning fashion is a ghost[1]—a ghost, that would not pass muster in the paltriest convent in the Apennine. It only knocks and scratches; does not pretend to appear or to speak. The clergy give it their benediction; and all the world, whether believers or infidels, go to hear it. I, in which number you may guess, go to-morrow; for it is as much the mode to visit the ghost as the Prince of Mecklenburgh, who is just arrived. I have not seen him yet, though I have left my name for him. But I will tell you who is come too—Lady Mary Wortley.[2] I went last night to visit her; I give you my honour, and you who know her, would credit me without it, the following is a faithful description. I found her in a little miserable bedchamber of a ready-furnished house, with two tallow candles, and a bureau covered with pots and pans. On her head, in full of all accounts, she had an old black-laced hood, wrapped entirely round, so as to conceal all hair or want of hair. No handkerchief, but up to her chin a kind of horseman's riding-coat, calling itself a pet-en-l'air, made of a dark green (green I think it had been) brocade, with coloured and silver flowers, and lined with furs; boddice laced, a foul dimity petticoat sprig'd, velvet muffeteens on her arms, grey stockings and slippers. Her face less changed in twenty years than I could have imagined; I told her so, and she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she needed have taken it for flattery, but she did, and literally gave me a box on the ear. She is very lively, all her senses perfect, her languages as imperfect as ever, her avarice greater. She entertained me at first with nothing but the dearness of provisions at Helvoet. With nothing but an Italian, a French, and a Prussian, all men servants, and something she calls an old secretary, but whose age till he appears will be doubtful; she receives all the world, who go to homage her as Queen Mother,[3] and crams them into this kennel. The Duchess of Hamilton, who came in just after me, was so astonished and diverted, that she could not speak to her for laughing. She says that she has left all her clothes at Venice. I really pity Lady Bute; what will the progress be of such a commencement!
[Footnote 1: It was known as the Cock-lane Ghost. A girl in that lane asserted that she was nightly visited by a ghost, who could reveal a murder, and who gave her tokens of his (or its) presence by knocks and scratches, which were audible to others in the room besides herself; and at last she went so far as to declare that the ghost had promised to attend a witness, who might be selected, into the vault under the Church of St. John's, Clerkenwell, where the body of the supposed victim was buried. Her story caused such excitement, that at last Dr. Johnson, Dr. Douglas (afterwards Bishop of Salisbury), and one or two other gentlemen, undertook an investigation of the affair, which proved beyond all doubt that it was a trick, though they could not discover how it was performed, nor could they make the girl confess; and Johnson wrote an account of their investigations and verdict, which was published in The Gentleman's Magazine and the newspapers of the day (Boswell's "Life of Johnson," ann. 1763).]
[Footnote 2: Lady Mary Wortley was a daughter of the Duke of Kingston and wife of Mr. Wortley, our ambassador at Constantinople. She was the most accomplished lady of the eighteenth century. Christian Europe is indebted to her for the introduction of the practice of inoculation for the smallpox, of which she heard during her residence in Turkey, and of the efficacy of which she was so convinced that she caused her own children to be inoculated; and, by publishing its success in their case, she led to its general adoption. It saved innumerable lives in the eighteenth century, and was, in fact, the parent of the vaccination which has superseded it, and which is merely inoculation with matter derived from another source, the cow. She was also an authoress of considerable repute for lyric odes and vers de société, &c., and, above all, for her letters, most of which are to her daughter, Lady Bute (as Mme. de Sévigné's are to her daughter, Mme. de Grignan), and which are in no respect inferior to those of the French lady in sprightly wit, while in the variety of their subjects they are far superior, as giving the account of Turkish scenery and manners, and also of those of other countries which her husband visited on various diplomatic missions, while Mme. de Sévigné's are for the greater part confined to the gossip of the coteries of Paris. Her works occupy five volumes; but what we have is but a small part of what we might have had. D'Israeli points out that "we have lost much valuable literature by the illiberal or malignant descendants of learned and ingenious persons. Many of Lady Mary Wortley Montague's letters have been destroyed, I am informed, by her daughters, who imagined that the family honours were lowered by the addition of those of literature. Some of her best letters, recently published, were found buried in an old trunk. It would have mortified her ladyship's daughter to have heard that her mother was the Sévigné of Britain" ("Curiosities of Literature," i. 54); and, as will be seen in a subsequent letter (No. 67), Walpole corroborates D'Israeli. Lady Mary was at one time a friend and correspondent of Pope, who afterwards, for some unknown reason, quarrelled with her, and made her the subject of some of the most disgraceful libels that ever proceeded from even his pen.]
[Footnote 3: She was mother of Lady Bute, wife of the Prime
Minister.—WALPOLE.]
The King of France has avowed a natural son,[1] and given him the estate which came from Marshal Belleisle, with the title of Comte de Gisors. The mother I think is called Matignon or Maquignon. Madame Pompadour was the Bathsheba that introduced this Abishag. Adieu, my dear sir!
[Footnote 1: This was a false report.—WALPOLE.]