Mrs. Montagu informed us 't is rumoured that my Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (who you know is her cousin's cousin) thinks to return to England after being absent half a lifetime. I have a prodigious curiosity to see such a rarity. As for her beauty, that must be vanished, but her biting wit may outlive it, and Heaven send her here safe, I pray, to give a lash to the follies of more than one I could name, had I the malice. Were she to write a book of her life, 't would be the best reading in the world, could one wash their eyes and mind after reading it.
1764.
Kitty, my dear, have you forgot that, when my Lord Waldegrave died, I writ, "Are there no dukes to pursue the lovely widow?" Give honour to the prophet! She refused the Duke of Portland, that all the fair were hunting with stratagems worthy of the Mohawks. She refused this, that, and t' other. And the town said: "Pray who is the milliner's daughter, to turn up her nose at the first matches in England? Has she designs on the King of Prussia,--for our own young monarch is wed to his Charlotte,--or is it the Sultan, or His Holiness the Pope that will content her ladyship?"
No answer. But, Kitty, 't is me to smell a rat at a considerable distance, and I kept my nostrils open! Our handsome young King has a handsome young brother,--His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester,--and this gentleman has cast the sheep's eye, the eye of passion, upon our lovely widow! What think you of this? That it cannot be? Then what of the King Cophetua and other historic examples? I would have you know that in the tender passion there's nothing that cannot be. It laughs at obstacles and rides triumphant on the crest of the impossible. I knew it long since, but 't is over the town like wildfire now.
Meeting my Lady Sarah Bunbury yesterday, says she:--
"Lady Fanny, sure you know the Duke of Gloucester is desperately in love with my Lady Waldegrave. Now don't mask your little cunning face with ignorance, but tell me what's known. What have you heard from Horry Walpole?"
"Nothing, your la'ship," says I, very demure.
"Well," says she, "'t is reported the King has forbid him to speak to his fair widow, and she is gone out of town. He has given her two pearl bracelets worth five hundred pound. That's not for nothing surely. But for what?"
"Indeed, 't is an ambiguous gift, Madam," says I, whimsically; "and may mean much or little. Give me leave to ask whether 't is Pursuit or Attainment as your la'ship reads it?"
But she tossed her head, the little gossip, and off she went.