(795) Dr. Wilcox, Bishop of Rochester, and Dr. Sherlock, Bishop of Salisbury: the latter afterwards accepted the See of London.
317 Letter 103 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, April 14, 1743.
This has been a noble week; I have received three letters at once from you. I am ashamed when I reflect on the poverty of my own! but what can one do? I don't sell you my news, and therefore should not be excusable to invent. I wish we don't grow to have more news! Our politics, which have not always been the most in earnest, now begin to take a very serious turn. Our army is wading over the Rhine, up to their middles in snow. I hope they will be thawed before their return: but they have gone through excessive hardships. The King sends six thousand more of his Hanoverians at his own expense: this will be popular-and the six thousand Hessians march too. All this will compose an army considerable enough to be a great loss if they miscarry. The King certainly goes abroad in less than a fortnight. He takes the Duke with him to Hanover who from thence goes directly to the army. The Court will not be great: the King takes only Lord Carteret, the Duke of Richmond, master of the horse, and Lord Holderness and Lord Harcourt,(796) for the bedchamber. The Duchesses of Richmond and Marlborough,(797) and plump Carteret,(798) go to the Hague.
His Royal Highness is not Regent: there are to be fourteen. The Earl of Bath and Mr. Pelham, neither of them in regency-posts, are to be of the number.
I have read your letters about Mystery to Sir Robert. He denies absolutely having ever had transactions with King Theodore, and is amazed Lord Carteret can; which he can't help thinking but he must, by the intelligence about Lady W. Now I can conceive all that affected friendship for Richcourt! She must have meant to return to England by Richcourt's interest with Touissant(799) and then where was her friendship? You are quite in the right not to have engaged with King Theodore: your character is not-Furibondo. Sir R. entirely disapproves all Mysterious dealings; he thinks Furibondo most bad and most improper, and always did. You mistook me about Lady W.'s Lord-I meant Quarendon, who is now Earl of Litchfield, by his father's death, which I mentioned. I think her lucky in Sturges's death, and him lucky in dying. He had outlived resentment; I think had almost lived to be pitied.
I forgot to thank you about the model, which I should have been sorry to have missed. I long for all the things, and my Lord more. so. Am I not to have a bill of lading, or how!
I never say any thing of the Pomfrets, because in the great city of London the Countess's follies do not make the same figure as they did in little Florence. Besides, there are such numbers here who have such equal pretensions to be absurd, that one is scarce aware of particular ridicules.
I really don't know whether Vanneschi be dead; he married some low English woman, who is kept by Amorevoli; so the Abbate turned the opera every way to his profit. As to Bonducci,(200) I don't think I could serve him; for I have no interest with the Lords Middlesex and Holderness, the two sole managers. Nor if I had, would I employ it, 'to bring over more ruin to the operas. Gentlemen directors, with favourite abb`es and favourite mistresses, have almost overturned the thing in England. You will plead my want of interest to Mr. Smith(801) too: besides, we had Bufos here once, and from not understanding the language, people thought it a dull kind of dumb-show. We are next Tuesday to have the Miserere of Rome. It must be curious! the finest piece of vocal music in the world, to be performed by three good voices, and forty bad ones, from Oxford, Canterbury, and the farces! There is a new subscription formed for an opera next year, to be carried on by the Dilettanti, a club, for which the nominal qualification is having been in Italy, and the real one, being drunk: the two chiefs are Lord Middlesex and Sir Francis Dashwood, who were seldom sober the whole time they were in Italy.
The parliament rises next week: every body is going out of town. My Lord goes the first week in May; but I shall reprieve myself till towards August. Dull as London is in summer, there is always more company in it than in any one place in the country. I hate the country: I am past the shepherdly age of groves and streams, and am not arrived at that of hating every thing but what I do myself, as building and planting. Adieu!
(796) Simon, second Viscount Harcourt, created an earl in 1749; in 1768 appointed ambassador at Paris, and in 1769 Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He was accidentally drowned in a well in his park at Nuncham, in 1777; occasioned, it is believed, by overreaching himself, in order to save the life of a favourite dog.-E.