“Tho’ J have not been overturned you’ll imagine by the scrawl you receive yt both my thumb and forefinger have been dislocated; J own j can’t agree with you in yt for j flatter myself j have the use of them, but if you please j’ll agree with you that they never were in joint, for which reason j am not so sensible of ye loss of jointed fingers, as you might be had yours been broke by the overturn of your coach, which accident j hope may never happen to you. The Dss. is as well as can be expected tho’ a little weak, and is extremely obliged to you for your letter, and also begged j would hint yt tho’ she can’t wright letters she can read them, j need not explain my meaning to you. She desires her kind service to Fidgett; and should be glad if you would make her compliments acceptable to your Mama, etc.
“j am with the uttmost respect, Madam,
“Your most obedient, humble servant,
“Portland.”
The duke’s writing is very characteristic, but certainly rather disjointed looking, and his I’s always written as long j’s.
Elizabeth had just had another coach adventure. The coachman who drove her father and mother and her brother Matthew home after dining at a neighbour’s, was drunk, which they did not perceive till he lashed the four horses into a furious gallop. In vain Mr. Robinson called to him, and swore at him; Matthew and Mrs. Robinson intreated; he persisted in lashing the horses till he fell off the box, and two wheels ran over him, but as Elizabeth states, “being preserved in beer, took very little harm; both footmen were drunk, so took very little care about us.”
In a letter to the duchess (August 15) we find Elizabeth and her sister Sarah banished from home to Canterbury on account of a woman and three children who lived in a farmhouse near the gate of Mount Morris having the smallpox. That fell disease ever inspired Elizabeth with great dread. Later in life at three different times she was inoculated,[57] each time unsuccessfully, for this disease, then a universal scourge. I should like the foolish fathers and mothers of the present day who petition for non-vaccination to read the accounts given in letters I possess of the unbridled ravages then made by smallpox, and to consider that a usually temporary inconvenience to the child’s health is a very trifling infliction compared with a loathsome disease, which many people fled from nursing, and which even if it did not kill the sufferers, probably disfigured them for life. The sisters first stayed with Mrs. Scott,[58] and then with Mrs. Tennison, “wife to a prebend in this church; there is very little company here, except Deans, Prebends and Minor Canons, etc., etc.; nothing but messages and visits from Prebends, Deacons, and the Church militant upon earth.” Later on, speaking of her brother Matthew’s refusal to leave home on account of the smallpox, she says, “I have seven brothers, and would not part with one for a kingdom; and if I had but one, I should be distracted about him; sure nobody has so many or so good brothers.”
[57] Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced inoculation into England in 1721.
[58] Of Scott’s Hall.
INFLUENZA —
THE SMALLPOX