My scolding does you so much good. that I will for the future lecture you for the most trifling peccadillo. You have written me a very entertaining letter, and wiped out several debts; not that I will forget one of them if you relapse.
As we have never had a rainbow to assure us that the world shall not be snowed to death, I thought last night was the general connixation. We had a tempest of wind and snow for two hours beyond any thing I remember: chairs were blown to pieces, the streets covered with tassels and glasses and tiles, and coaches and chariots were filled like reservoirs. Lady Raymond's house in Berkeley-square is totally unroofed; and Lord Robert Bertie, who is going to marry her, may descend into it like a Jupiter Pluvius. It is a week of wonders, and worthy the note of an almanack-maker. Miss Draycott, within two days of matrimony, has dismissed Mr. Beauclerc; but this is totally forgotten already in the amazement of a new elopement. In all your reading, true or false, have you ever heard of a young Earl, married to the most beautiful woman in the world, a lord of the bedchamber, a general officer, and with a great estate, quitting every thing, resigning wife and world, and embarking for life in a pacquetboat with a Miss? I fear your connexions will but too readily lead you to the name of the peer; it is Henry Earl of Pembroke,(218) the nymph Kitty Hunter. The town and Lady Pembroke were but too much witnesses to this intrigue, last Wednesday, at a great ball at Lord Middleton's. On Thursday they decamped. However, that the writer of their romance, or I, as he is a noble author, might not want materials, the Earl has left a bushel of letters behind him; to his mother, to Lord Bute, to Lord Ligonier, (the two last to resign his employments,) and to Mr. Stopford, whom he acquits of all privity to his design. In none he justifies himself, unless this is a justification, that having long tried in vain to make his wife hate and dislike him, he had no way left but this, and it is to be hoped will succeed; and then it may not be the worst event that could have happened to her. You may easily conceive the hubbub such an exploit must occasion. With ghosts, elopements, abortive motions, etc., we can amuse ourselves tolerably well, till the season arrives for taking the field and conquering the Spanish West Indies.
I have sent YOU my books by a messenger; Lord Barrington was so good as to charge himself with them. They barely saved their distance; a week later, and no soul could have read a line in them, unless I had changed the title-page, and called them the loves of the Earl of Pembroke and Miss Hunter.
I am sorry Lady Kingsland is so rich. However, if the Papists should be likely to rise, pray disarm her of the enamel, and commit it to safe custody in the round tower at Strawberry. Good night! mine is a life of letter-writing; I pray for a peace that I may sheath my Pen.
(218) Henry Herbert, tenth Earl of Pembroke, married, 13th March 1756, Lady Elizabeth Spencer, second daughter of Charles, third Duke of Marlborough, by whom he had a son, George, eleventh Earl, born 19th September 1759: and some years afterwards, when he ran away with her, which he actually did, after they had lived for some time separated, a daughter, born in 1773, who died in 1784, unmarried.
Letter 116 To Dr. Ducarel.(219)
Feb. 24, 1762. (PAGE 174)
Sir, I am glad my books have at all amused you, and am much obliged to you for your notes and communications. Your thought of an English Montfaucon accords perfectly with a design I have long had of attempting something of that kind, in which too I have been lately encouraged; and therefore I will beg you at your leisure, as they shall occur, to make me little notes of customs, fashions, and portraits, relating to our history and manners. Your work on vicarages, I am persuaded, will be very useful, as every thing you undertake is, and curious.—After the medals I lent Mr. Perry, I have a little reason to take it ill, that he has entirely neglected me; he has published a number, and sent it to several persons,-and never to me.(220) I wanted to see him too, because I know of two very curious medals, which I could borrow for him. He does not deserve it at my hands, but I will not defraud the public of any thing valuable; and therefore, if he will call on me any morning, but a Sunday or Monday, between eleven and twelve, I will speak to him of them.—With regard to one or two of your remarks, I have not said that real lions were originally leopards. I have said that lions in arms, that is, painted lions, were leopards; and it is fact, and no inaccuracy. Paint a leopard yellow, and it becomes a lion.—YOU say, colours rightly prepared do not grow black. The art would be much obliged for such a preparation. I have not said that oil-colours would not endure with a glass; on the contrary, I believe they would last the longer.
I am much amazed at Vertue's blunder about my marriage of Henry VII.; and afterwards, he said, "Sykes, knowing how to give names to pictures to make them sell," called this the marriage of Henry VII.; and afterwards, he said, Sykes had the figures in an old picture of a church. He must have known little Indeed, Sir, if he had not known how to name a picture that he had painted on purpose that he might call it so! That Vertue, on the strictest examination, could not be convinced that the man was Henry VII., not being like any of his pictures. Unluckily, he is extremely like the shilling, which is much more authentic than any picture of Henry VII. But here Sykes seems to have been extremely deficient in his tricks. Did he order the figure to be painted like Henry VII., and yet could not get it painted like him, which was the easiest part of the task? Yet how came he to get the Queen painted like, whose representations are much scarcer than those of her husband? and how came Sykes to have pomegranates painted on her robe, only to puzzle the cause! It is not worth adding, that I should much sooner believe the church was painted to the figures, than the figures to the church. They are hard and antique: the church in a better style, and at least more fresh. If Vertue had made no better criticisms than these, I would never have taken so much trouble with his MS. Adieu!
(219) Librarian at Lambeth Palace, and a well-known antiquary. He died in 1785.
(220) A series of English Medals, by Francis Perry, 4to. with thirteen plates.