He says the cascade at Boughton, though smaller than the one at Versailles, is more beautiful. The old gourmet is never tired of praising the good living and extolling the comestibles that the Duke had sent him, and he says: “J’ai été à Boughton voir milord, la bonne compagnie, l’érudition, les perdreaux, les truffes;” in fact all that had charms for him in the absence of the Duchesse de Mazarin herself, to whom he writes. The two men met frequently at the house of the beautiful Hortense, one of whose most fervent admirers was the Duke of Montagu. To her he was most generous, for in one of her letters she says that if Montagu discovered you liked or admired a thing, you need take no more thought about it: “‘Quelque dépense qu’il faille faire, quelque soin, quelque peine qu’il faut employer pour l’avoir, la chose ne vous manquera pas.’ Ce sont les propres paroles de la feue Duchesse de Mazarin.” But it seems that there was some interruption in their intimacy, for in one of Algernon Sidney’s letters there is this passage: “Montagu goes no more to the Duchesse de Mazarin; whether his love or his politics proved too pressing, I know not, but the town says he is forbid the house.”
His Grace departed this life on the 9th of March, 1708, at Montagu House in Bloomsbury, afterwards the British Museum.
Anne, Viscountess Hinchingbrook:
By MRS. BEALE.
Three-quarter Length.
(Seated. Light Auburn Hair, Dove-coloured Dress. Pearl Ornaments. Holding a Flower in the Left Hand.)
Lady Anne Boyle was the fourth daughter of Richard, second Earl of Cork and first Earl of Burlington, by Lady Elizabeth Clifford, only daughter and heiress of the fifth Earl of Cumberland. In 1667 she married Viscount Hinchingbrook, eldest son of the first Earl of Sandwich, by whom she had two sons and one daughter. Pepys seemed well contented with the marriage for his patron’s son, though he is dissatisfied at not having a favour sent him, and Lady Sandwich was so much pleased with her new daughter-in-law as apparently to be consoled for her first born having lost the chance of marrying the great heiress, Mistress Mallet.
The first time Pepys saw her at Lord Crewe’s he saluted her and invited her to his house; he thought her mighty pleasant and good humoured, but neither did he count her a beauty or ugly, but a comely lady; and when she accepted his hospitality next day he found her “a sweet natured and well disposed lady, a lover of books and pictures, and of good understanding;” and he goes on to visit her and her lord afterwards at Burlington House next to Clarendon House, which he was glad to see for the first time.
Lady Hinchingbrook and her sister Henrietta, Countess of Rochester, were undoubtedly shining lights of modesty, and domestic virtue in this profligate age.