MARRIAGE OF LORD SANDWICH
The next letter of interest is on October 20, to her mother—
“I return you many thanks for your directions for the apron, which I will carefully follow; as to the silver thread I do not approve the use of it, as all great artists work for immortality, and my sister will find a little time will tarnish her work if there is a mixture of silver in it.... I honour Lord Sandwich[172] for his wise and generous contempt of money in a point in which there are other things superior to it; he bears an excellent character, there is much prudence in knowing how to separate one’s particular happiness from that which is reckoned so in the world’s opinion: if Lord Sandwich takes greater pleasure in the conversation of a fine woman than in viewing a collection of medals and pictures, he is right to prefer Miss Dolly Fane with £5000 to Miss Spinckes with £50,000.... He has a good estate sufficient for the becoming state of a nobleman.... Miss Fane is a happy woman to have a lover so great, so generous, and so good. Love has a good right over the marriages of men, but not of women; for men raise their wives to their ranks, women stoop to their husbands, if they choose below themselves. I think all our neighbours are in a marrying humour. I wish some of them had married two and twenty years ago, we should have had now a gallant young neighbourhood.”
[172] John, 4th Earl Sandwich, whose nickname later was “Jemmy Twitcher,” just engaged to Dorothy, daughter of Charles, 1st Viscount Fane.
Dr. Mead had prescribed for Elizabeth for her eyes and for a swelled lip, which annoyed her much. What should we think of a blister applied to the back to reduce a swelled lip in these days? Yet it was ordered! Writing to Sarah, she says—
“I am better than I was, but my mouth not being yet perfectly reduced, I have got a fresh blister upon my back, well may it bend with such a weight of calamities.... I have sent for my bathing Cloaths, and on Sunday night shall take a souze. I think it a pleasant remedy. I am to sit a quarter of an hour in the bath, and then go to bed and lye warm; it is to be repeated three times a week.”
DUCAL BATHS!
The next letter to her mother throws a curious light on the personal cleanliness of the day, and the want of baths in a ducal house—
“November 6, 1741.
“Madam,