“When the Grenville administration wanted to introduce new regulations into the Customs, and diminish their profits, I wrote such a petition for them, that Lord Grenville read it over and over, and cried out—‘There is only one person could write this, and we must give up the point.’ He sent the Duke of Buckingham to me to find out if it was I, and the duke said, to smooth the matter—‘Lady Hester, you know, if you want any favour, you have only to ask for it.’—‘Indeed,’ said I, ‘I shall ask no favour of your broad-bottomed gentry; what I want I shall take by force.’—‘Now, Hester,’ cried the duke, ‘you are too bad; you are almost indelicate.’
“Oh, I made a man laugh so once when speaking of an officer, who, I said, would not do for an hussar, as he wanted a little more of the Grenville make about him.”
After a pause, as if reflecting, Lady Hester resumed—“Is there nothing in the book about the G********’s getting the Prince down to Stowe? They received him with extraordinary magnificence, and the most noble treatment possible: they fancied they were going to do wonders. But I said to them—‘Do you think all this makes the impression you wish in the Prince’s breast? You suppose, no doubt, that you gratify him highly with such a splendid reception: you are much mistaken. From this time forward he will be jealous of you, and will hate you as long as he thinks you can rival him.’ The event proved how justly I knew his character.
“There they were, shut up: and when they told me they had got their conditions in black and white, I told them how it would be. I said he would take them in; for what was a paper to a man like him? I wrote them such a letter, doctor, that they all thought it was Mr. Pitt’s—Mr. Pitt’s best style, too—until I swore he never knew a word about it. They fancied they had got all the loaves and fishes. One was to be Prime Minister, one First Lord of the Admiralty, and so on: but their ambition destroyed them. What have they been since Mr. Pitt’s death? Nothing at all. Who ever hears now of the Duke of B*********?”[4]
I turned over the pages, and next read Wraxall’s account of Mr. Sheridan, which Lady Hester said was very much to the purpose. “Mr. Pitt,” she added, “always thought well of him, and never disliked my talking with him. Oh! how Sheridan used to make me laugh, when he pretended to marry Mr. Pitt to different women!”
I came to the passage where Sir Nathaniel finds fault with Mr. Pitt’s having refused Sheridan’s generous offer of co-operating with him in suppressing the mutiny at the Nore. “Why,” interrupted Lady Hester, “what could Mr. Pitt do? He was afraid, doctor; he did not know how sincere such people might be in their offers: they might be only coming over to his side to get the secrets of the cabinet, and then turn king’s evidence. It required a great deal of caution to know how to deal with such clever men.”
Where Sir Nathaniel relates the history of the Burrell family, she spoke highly of all the daughters, but especially of Mrs. Bennett, and considered that the author was wrong in saying that all but Mrs. Bennett were not handsome.
Of the D. of H. she observed, that he never lived with the duchess. He was in love with Lady ——, and used to disguise himself as a one-legged soldier—as a beggar—assuming a hundred masquerades, sleeping in outhouses, &c. He would have married her, but he could not, for he had got one wife already. That was the woman F. M**** married. “Oh, doctor, there was a man!” (meaning the Duke of H——) “perfect from top to toe, with not a single flaw in his person.”
Lady Hester was so delighted with Sir Nathaniel’s Memoirs that she said, more than once, “How I wish I had known that man! I would have made him a duke. What an excellent judgment he has, and how well he knew everybody! But how was I to find out all those people, when the stupid and interested set that surrounded Mr. Pitt kept them all in the background.”
November 11.—This evening I remained with Lady Hester about three hours. She was better, but complained of great pain in the left hypochondrium, and could not lie easy on either side, or on her back. Yet, notwithstanding her ailments, talking was necessary for her; and from the incidental mention of Mr. Pitt’s name, she went on about him for some time.