You do not mention the cathedral at Winchester, which I have twice seen and admired; nor do you say any thing of Bevismount and Netley—charming Netley! At Lyndhurst you passed the palatial hovel of my royal nephew; who I have reason to wish had never been so, and did all I could to prevent his being.
The week before last I met the Marlboroughs at Lady Di's. The Duchess(696) desired to come and see Strawberry again, as it had rained the whole time she was here last. I proposed the next morning: no, she could not: she expected company to dinner; she believed their brother, Lord Robert(697) would dine with them: I thought that a little odd, as they had Just turned him out for Oxfordshire; and I thought a dinner no cause at the distance of four miles. In her grace's dawdling way, she could fix no time: and so on Friday, at half an hour after seven, as I was going to Lady North's, they arrived; and the sun being setting, and the moon not risen, You may judge how much they could see through all the painted glass by twilight.
(695) In a letter written in this month to Walpole, Miss More asks, "Where and how are the Berrys? I hope they are within reach of your great chair, if you are confined, and of your airings, if you go abroad. I hate their going to Yorkshire: as Hotspur Says, 'What do they do in the north, when they ought to be in the south?", Memoirs, vol.ii. p. 235.-E.
(696) Lady Caroline Russell; married, in 1762, to the Duke of Marlborough.
(697) Lord Robert Spencer, brother of the Duke of Marlborough.
Letter 353 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, August 9, at night, 1790. (page 452)
MR. NICHOLLS has offered to be postman to you; whereof, though I have nothing, or as little as nothing, to say, I thought as how, it would look kinder to send nothing in writing than by word of mouth.
Nothing the first. So the peace is made, and the stocks drank its health in a bumper; but when they waked the next morning, they found they had reckoned without their host, and that their majesties the King of big Britain and the King of little Spain have agreed to make peace some time or other, if they can agree upon it; and so the stocks drew in their horns: but, having great trust in some time or other, they only fell two pegs lower. I, who never believed there would be war, keep my prophetic stocks up to par, and my consolation still higher; for when Spanish pride truckles, and English pride has had the honour of bullying, I dare to say we shall be content with the ostensible triumph, as Spain will be with some secret article that will leave her much where she was before. Vide Falkland's Island.
Nothing the second. Miss Gunning's match with Lord Blandford. You asserted it so peremptorily, that, though I doubted it, I quoted you. Lo! it took its rise solely in poor old Bedford's dotage, that still harps on conjunctions copulative, but now disavows it, as they say, on a remonstrance from her daughter.
Nothing the third. Nothing will come of nothing, says King Lear, and your humble servant.