“Lord Chatham never travelled without a mistress. He was a man of no merit, but of great sâad (luck): he used to keep people waiting and waiting whilst he was talking and breakfasting with her. He would keep his aide-de-camps till two or three in the morning. How often would the servant come in, and say supper was ready, and he would answer, ‘Ah! well, in half an hour.’ Then the servant would say, ‘Supper is on the table;’ and then it would be, ‘Ah? well, in a quarter of an hour.’ An aide-de-camp would come in with a paper to sign, and perhaps Lord Chatham would say—‘Oh, dear! that’s too long: I can’t possibly look at it now: you must bring it to-morrow.’ The aide-de-camp would present it next day, and he would cry, ‘Good God! how can you think of bringing it now? don’t you know there’s a review to-day?’ Then, the day after, he was going to Woolwich. ‘Well, never mind,’ he would say; ‘have you got a short one?—well, bring that.’
“Doctor, I once changed the dress of a whole regiment—the Berkshire militia. Somebody asked me, before a great many officers, what I thought of them, and I said they looked like so many tinned harlequins. One day, soon after, I was riding through Walmer village, when who should pop out upon me but the colonel, dressed in entirely new regimentals, with different facings, and more like a regiment of the line. ‘Pray, pardon me, Lady Hester’—so I stopped, as he addressed me—‘pray, pardon me,’ said the colonel, ‘but I wish to know if you approve of our new uniform.’ Of course I made him turn about, till I inspected him round and round—pointed with my whip, as I sat on horseback, first here and then there—told him the waist was too short, and wanted half a button more—the collar was a little too high—and so on; and, in a short time, the whole regiment turned out with new clothes. The Duke of York was very generous, and not at all stingy in useful things.
“I recollect once at Ramsgate, five of the Blues, half drunk, not knowing who I was, walked after me, and pursued me to my door. They had the impertinence to follow me up-stairs, and one of them took hold of my gown. The maid came out, frightened out of her senses; but, just at the moment, with my arm I gave the foremost of them such a push, that I sent him rolling over the others down stairs, with their swords rattling against the balusters. Next day, he appeared with a black patch as big as a saucer over his face; and, when I went out, there were the glasses looking at me, and the footmen pointing me out—quite a sensation!”
During these conversations respecting Mr. Pitt’s times, Sir Nathaniel’s Memoirs were generally in my hand, and when there was a pause I resumed my reading. In giving Sir Walter Farquhar’s private conversation respecting Mr. Pitt’s death, the author says—“Mr. Pitt mounted the staircase with alacrity.” Here Lady Hester stopped me, with the exclamation of—“What a falsehood, doctor! Just hear how it was. You know, when the carriage came to the door, he was announced, and I went up to the top of the stairs to receive him. The first thing I heard was a voice so changed, that I said to myself, ‘It is all over with him.’ He was supported by the arms of two people, and had a stick, or two sticks, in his hands, and as he came up, panting for breath—ugh! ugh! I retreated little by little, not to put him to the pain of making a bow to me, or of speaking:—so much for his alacrity!
“After Mr. Pitt’s death, I could not cry for a whole month and more. I never shed a tear, until one day Lord Melville came to see me; and the sight of his eyebrows turned grey, and his changed face, made me burst into tears. I felt much better for it after it was over.
“Mr. Pitt’s bust was taken after his death by an Italian, named, I think, Tomino—an obscure artist, whom I had rummaged out. This man had offered me at one time a bust worth a hundred guineas, and prayed me to accept it, in order, as he said, to make his name known: I refused it, but recollected him afterwards. The bust turned out a very indifferent resemblance: so, with my own hand, I corrected the defects, and it eventually proved a strong likeness. The D. of C. happening to call when the artist was at work in my room, was so pleased, that he ordered one of a hundred guineas for himself, and another to be sent to Windsor. There was one by this Tomino put into the Exhibition.
“A fine picture in Mr. Pitt’s possession represented Diogenes with a lantern searching by day for an honest man. A person cut out a part of the blank canvas, and put in Mr. Pitt’s portrait.
“When Mr. Pitt was going to Bath, previous to his last illness, I told him I insisted on his taking my eider-down quilt with him. ‘You will go about,’ said I, ‘much more comfortably; and, instead of being too hot one day under a thick counterpane, and the next day shivering under a thin one, you will have an equable warmth, always leaving one blanket with this quilt. Charles and James were present, and could not help ridiculing the idea of a man’s carrying about with him such a bundling, effeminate thing. ‘Why,’ interrupted I, ‘it is much more convenient than you all imagine: big as it looks, you may put it into a pocket-handkerchief.’—‘I can’t believe that,’ cried Charles and James. ‘Do you doubt my word?’ said I, in a passion: ‘nobody shall doubt it with impunity:’ and my face assumed that picture of anger, which you can’t deny, doctor, is in me pretty formidable; so I desired the quilt to be brought. ‘Why, my dear Lady Hester,’ said Mr. Pitt, ‘I am sure the boys do not mean to say you tell falsehoods: they suppose you said it would go into a handkerchief merely as a façon de parler.’”
Lady Hester, when she told me this story, here interrupted herself—“And upon my word, doctor, if you had seen the footman bringing it over his shoulder, he himself almost covered up by it, you would have thought indeed it was only a façon de parler.”
She continued. “I turned myself to James. ‘Now, sir, take and tie it up directly in this pocket-handkerchief. There! does it, or does it not go into it!’