[348] Erected by Lord Cobham for busts of his political friends.
NEWBOLD VERDON
After leaving Newbold Verdon, the Montagus went over Thoresby, the seat of the Duke of Kingston.[349] In a letter to Mrs. Freind from Allerthorpe, where the Montagus had arrived on August 16, Thoresby is thus described—
“A fine place enough, but does not deserve what is said of it; the cascade is not pretty, it is regular and formal. The lake from which it is supplied is fine. The verdure of the park is not good, nor are there fine trees. Our last stage was to York, where we saw the Assembly Room[350] built by Lord Burlington, it is prodigiously grand and beautiful.”
[349] The 2nd Duke of Kingston, called by Sir Horace Walpole “a very weak man, of the greatest beauty, and finest person in England.”
[350] Designed by Richard, 3rd Earl of Burlington, celebrated as an amateur architect. He built Burlington House.
“PUNCH’S” DEATH
In a letter to the Duchess of Portland of August 19, Mrs. Montagu said her boy had borne the journey well, and was “quite well.” She intended to leave him in Mrs. Carter’s care whilst she accompanied Mr. Montagu to Newcastle, where the air was not healthy, and roads very bad. Alas! a few days after, poor little “Punch,” in cutting another tooth, was taken with convulsion fits and died. The exact date I am unaware of. Lodge, in his “Peerage of Irish Peers,” states he died on August 17, and was buried at Burneston.[351] The date of the day is wrong, as will be perceived by her letter to the duchess. My grandfather simply states he died of convulsion fits, occasioned by teething, no date; but as Mrs. Freind wrote to condole with Mrs. Montagu on September 3, it must have happened soon after her letter to the duchess. As no parents, from their letters, could have adored an infant more than the Montagus, it may be judged what a blow this was to them. Many sweet passages about this child have I suppressed from want of space. He seems to have been of a too precocious nature in mind and body. He was so large he wore shoes big enough for a child of four. He ran alone and talked, and mimicked people’s manners and ways, and was only one year and three months old! “Our little cherub,” “our sweet angel,” as his father constantly writes of him. The noble way in which both his parents supported their anguish will be seen by future extracts from letters. Dr. Freind’s fine letter of condolence to Mrs. Montagu is indorsed at the back, “Letter from Dr. Freind on the unhappy loss of my son,” and is much worn with constant reading. He had lost two children, and was then threatened with the loss of his father,[352] whom he adored. The poor Montagus, much as they desired children, never had any more. I sometimes think that this poignant and irrevocable loss turned Elizabeth Montagu’s thoughts more strongly to literature and knowledge of all kind. She sought to occupy her mind as a solace for grief, but she never forgot her loss, and every now and then the bitterness of it is shown in passages in her letters.
[351] His body was moved to Winchester Cathedral eventually, and is buried with his father and mother there, by her will in October, 1800.
[352] The Rev. Dr. Robert Freind, died August 9, 1751.