“As for the princesses, there was some excuse for their conduct: I do not mean as regards myself—for they were always polite to me—but as to what people found fault with them for. The old queen treated them with such severity, shutting them up in a sort of a prison—at least the Princess Sophia—that I rather pitied than blamed them.
“But look at the princes: what a family was there! never getting more than four hours’ sleep, and always so healthy and well-looking. But men generally are not now-a-days as they were in my time. I do not mean a Jack M. and those of his description, handsome, but of no conversation: they are, however, pleasant to look at. But where will you see men like Lord Rivers, like the Duke of Dorset? Where will you find such pure honour as was in the Duke of Richmond and Lord Winchelsea? The men of the present generation are good for nothing—they have no spunk in them.
“And as for women, show me such women of fashion as Lady Salisbury, the Duchess of Rutland, Lady Stafford, and” (three or four more were named, but they have slipped my memory). “However, doctor, I never knew more than four fashionable women, who could do the honours of their house, assign to everybody what was due to his rank, enter a room and speak to everybody, and preserve their dignity and self-possession at all times: it is a very difficult thing to acquire. One was the old Duchess of Rutland, the others the Marchioness of Stafford, Lady Liverpool, and the Countess of Mansfield:[11]—all the rest of the bon ton were bosh” (in Turkish, good for nothing). “The Countess of Liverpool was a Hervey; and men used to say, the world was divided into men, women, and Herveys—for that they were unlike every other human being. I have seen Lady Liverpool come into a room full of people; and she would bow to this one, speak to that one, and, when you thought she must tread on the toes of a third, turn round like a teetotum, and utter a few words so amiable, that everybody was charmed with her. As for the Duchess of D*********, it was all a ‘fu, fu, fuh,’ and ‘What shall I do?—Oh, dear me! I am quite in a fright!’—and so much affectation, that it could not be called high breeding; although she knew very well how to lay her traps for some young man whom she wanted to inveigle into her parties, and all that. Then there were some, with highly polished manners, who would pass along like oil over water, smooth and swimming about: but good breeding is very charming, doctor, isn’t it?
“The last time I saw Lady Liverpool was at Lord Mulgrave’s. The dinner was waiting: Mr. Pitt and I had got there; but Lord Liverpool, being long in dressing, was still behind. Everybody was looking at the door or the window. At last his carriage was seen, and dinner was ordered. If you had been present when Lady Liverpool entered the room, and had marked the grace with which, whilst we were standing, she slipped in and out among the guests, like an eel, when she turned her back, turning her head round, speaking to this person and to that, and all with such seasonable courtesies and compliments, it was really wonderful. But Lady Liverpool was a Hervey, and the Herveys, as I told you before, were a third part of the creation.
“Oh, Lord! when I think of some people, who fancy that abruptness is the best way of approaching you—how horrid it is! I recollect one man, a sensible man too, who came into the room with—‘Lady Hester, I understand you are a very good judge of a leg; you shall look at mine: see, there are muscles! they say it is an Irish chairman’s; but isn’t it the true antique?’ Another would enter, and begin—‘What a horrid bonnet Lady So-and-so wears; I have just seen her, and I never shall get over it.’ A third would cry, on seeing you—‘Do you know Lord Such-a-one is given over? He has tumbled down from a terrible height, and is so hurt!’—‘Good God! what’s the matter?’—‘Why, don’t you know? He has tumbled from his government:’ and then they fancy that wit.
“Such conversations as we hear in people’s houses are, in my mind, no conversations at all. A man who says, ‘Oh! it’s Sunday; you have been to church, I suppose?’—or, ‘You have not been to church, I see;’ or another, who says, ‘You are in mourning, are you not? what, is the poor Lord So-and-so dead at last?’—and is replied to by, ‘No, I am not in mourning; what makes you think so? is it that you don’t like black?’—all this is perfect nonsense, in my mind. I recollect being once at a party with the Duchess of Rutland, and a man of some note in the world stopped me just as we entered the room. ‘Lady Hester,’ said he, ‘I am anxious to assure you of my entire devotion to Mr. Pitt:’ so far he got on well. ‘I had always—hem—if you—hem—I do assure you, Lady Hester, I have the sincerest regard—hem—G—d d—n me, Lady Hester, there is not a man for whom—hem—I esteem him beyond measure, and, G—d d—n me—hem—if I were asked—hem—I do assure you, Lady Hester—hem and here the poor man, who could not put two ideas together, coming to a stand-still, the Duchess of Rutland, to relieve his embarrassment, helped him out by saying, ‘Lady Hester is perfectly convinced of your sincere attachment to Mr. Pitt’s interests.’ He had a beautiful amber cane, doctor, worth a hundred guineas, that he had sent for from Russia.”
November 16.—Lady Hester Stanhope’s features had a very pallid and almost a ghastly look. The fits of oppression on her lungs grew more frequent, when, from a lying posture, she would start suddenly up in bed and gasp for breath. As she had not been beyond the precincts of her house for some years, I suggested the increased necessity of her getting a little fresh air, by going into her garden at least every day. She said, ‘I will do as you desire, and if you will ride my ass a few times to break her in, and make her gentle, I will try and ride about in the garden: but, as for going outside my own gates, it is impossible; the people would beset me so—you have no idea. They conceal themselves behind hedges, in holes in the rocks, and, whichever way I turn, out comes some one with a complaint or a petition, begging, kissing my feet, and God knows what: I can’t do it. I can ride about my garden, and see to my plants and flowers: but you must break her in well for me; for, if she were to start at a bird or a serpent, I am so weak I should tumble off.’
November 18.—I had taken some physic without consulting her, upon which she launched out into a tirade against English doctors. Impoverishment of the blood is a very favourite theme among people who are well off, and who shut their eyes to the robust health of many a labourer, whose whole sustenance amounts not to the offals of their table. So she began—“What folly you have been guilty of in impoverishing your blood! Look at a stupid Englishman, who takes a dose of salts, rides a trotting horse to get an appetite, eats his dinner, takes a cordial draught to make him agreeable, goes to his party, and then goes to bed:—for worlds, I would not be such a man’s wife! where is he to get a constitution? But the fault is not all their own—part is you doctors: you give the same remedies for everybody. If I look at the mouthpiece of my pipe” (Lady Hester was smoking at the time) “I know it is amber; and, when I know it is amber, I know how to clean it: but, if I did not know that, I might attempt to clean it in some way that would spoil it: so it is with you doctors. Not half of you can distinguish between people’s nijems [stars], and what you do often does more harm than good. The constitution you take in hand you do not well examine; and then how can you apply proper remedies for it?”
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Lady Hester, soon after she went to live with Mr. Pitt, was anxious that her three half-brothers should be removed from their father’s roof, to be under her own guidance: fearing that the line of politics which Earl Stanhope then followed might be injurious to their future welfare and prospects. To this end, Mr. Rice, a trusty person, of whom mention is incidentally made elsewhere, brought them furtively to town in a post-chaise, and they afterwards remained under Mr. Pitt’s protection until his death.