I wrote to you in my last to desire that the Dominichin and my statue might come by a man-of-war. Now. Sir Robert, who is impatient for his picture, would have it sent in a Dutch ship, as he says he can easily get it from Holland. If you think this conveyance quite safe, I beg my statue may bear it company.
Tell me if you are tired of ballads on my Lord Bath; if you are not, here is another admirable one,(727) I believe by the same hand as the others; but by the conclusion certainly ought not to be Williams's. I only send you the good ones, for the newspapers are every day full of bad ones on this famous earl.
My compliments to the Princess; I dreamed last night that she was come to Houghton, and not at all `epuis`ee with her journey. Adieu!
P.S. I must add a postscript, to mention a thing I have often designed to ask you to do for me. Since I came to England I have been buying drawings, (the time is well chosen, when I had neglected it in Italy!) I saw at Florence two books that I should now be very glad to have, if you could get them tolerably reasonable; one was at an English painter's; I think his name was Huckford, over against your house in via Bardi; they were of Holbein: the other was of Guercino, and brought to me to see by the Abb`e Bonducci; my dear child, you will oblige me much if you can get them.
(727) Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's ode, beginning "What Statesman, what Hero, what King-." It is to be found in all editions of his poems.-D.
294 Letter 88 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Nov. 1, 1742.
I have not felt so pleasantly these three months as I do at present, though I have a great cold with coming into an unaired house, and have been forced to carry that cold to the King's levee and the drawing-room. There were so many new faces that I scarce knew where I was; I should have taken 'it for Carlton House, or my Lady Mayoress's visiting-day, only the people did not seem enough at home, but rather as admitted to see the King dine in public. 'Tis quite ridiculous to see the numbers of old ladies, who, from having been wives of patriots, have not been dressed these twenty years; out they come, in all the accoutrements that were in use in Queen Anne's days. Then the joy and awkward jollity of them is inexpressible! They titter, and, wherever you meet them, are always going to court, and looking at their watches an hour before the time. I met several on the birthday, (for I did not arrive time enough to make clothes,) and they were dressed in all the colours of the rainbow: they seem to have said to themselves twenty years ago, ,Well, if ever I do go to court again, I will have a pink and silver, or a blue and silver," and they keep their resolutions.- But here's a letter from you, sent to me back from Houghton; I must stop to read it.-Well, I have read it, and am diverted with Madame Grifoni's being with child; I hope she was too. I don't wonder that she hates the country; I dare to say her child does not owe its existence to the Villeggiatura. When you wrote, it seems you had not heard what a speedy determination was put to Don Philip's reign in Savoy. I suppose he will retain the title: you know great princes are fond of titles, which proves they are not so great as they once were.
I find a very different face of things from what we had conceived in the country. There are, indeed, thoughts of renewing attacks on Lord Orford, and Of stepping the supplies; but the new ministry laugh at these threats, having secured a vast majority in the House: the Opposition themselves own that the Court will have upwards of a hundred majority: I don't, indeed, conceive how; but they are confident of carrying every thing. They talk of Lord Gower's not keeping the privy seal; that he will either resign it, or have it taken away: Lord Bath, who is entering into all the court measures, is most likely to succeed him. The late Lord Privy Seal(728) has had a most ridiculous accident at Bath: he used to play in a little inner room; but one night some ladies had got it, and he was reduced to the public room; but being extremely absent and deep in politics, he walked through the little room to a convenience behind the curtain, from whence (still absent) he produced himself in a situation extremely diverting to the women: imagine his delicacy, and the passion he was in at their laughing!
I laughed at myself prodigiously the other day for a piece of absence; I was writing on the King's birthday, and being disturbed with the mob in the street, I rang for the porter, and, with an air of grandeur, as if I was still at Downing Street, cried, "Pray send away those marrowbones and cleavers!" The poor fellow with the most mortified air in the world, replied, "Sir, they are not at our door, but over the way at my Lord Carteret's." "Oh," said I, "then let them alone; may be he does not dislike the noise!" I pity the poor porter, who sees all his old customers going over the way too.
Our operas begin to-morrow with a pasticcio, full of most of my favourite songs: the Fumagalli has disappointed us; she had received an hundred ducats, and then wrote word that she had spent them, and was afraid of coming through the Spanish quarters; but if they would send her an hundred more, she would come next year. Villettes has what been written to in the strongest manner to have her forced hither (for she is at Turin.) I tell you this by way of key, in case you should receive a mysterious letter in cipher from him about this important business.