[243] Edward Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk.
FRENCH ECONOMY
“We were on Monday at Kiveton, which is by much the finest house I ever saw, and the best furnished. The Park and views from it are very beautiful.”
From Allerthorpe the Montagus visited Mr. Buckley[244] at Bishop’s Dale, near which place Mr. Robinson in former days had lived in the shooting season. Elizabeth had not been there for fifteen years. She describes to the Duchess of Portland the country—
[244] Mr. Buckley had been a second father to the three little Robinson boys, who spent their holidays with him.
“I had been three days upon an expedition to a wild part of the country called the Dales, where Nature’s works are not delicate, pretty and mignonne, but grand, sublime and magnificent. Vast mountains, rocks and cascades, and rapid rivers make the country beautiful and surprising. We went to a farm abounding in wonders, a high hill with some hanging wood before it, behind it a large and rapid river with the prospect of a huge cascade, an old Castle and a Church. Some houses in view take from it the honour of absolute solitude: a range of rocks appears like the ruins of an old town on the other side of the river. In a cottage built in this charming place, lives an old woman, who has attained to an hundred and four years, and for this long lease of life, has not exchanged the best comfort. She enjoys good health, tolerable strength, has her hearing perfect, and her sight very well: is cheerful and has not lost her reason, but answers with sense and spirit, her hair is of a fine black: she was knitting when we went to her, and has promised to knit me a pair of stockings in a month.
“My Father had a house in this part of the world for the summer sports of shooting and fishing, so that the old woman and I had been well acquainted 15 years ago, and she told me laughing she imagined I did not expect to see her alive at this time....
“Tell Père Courayer[245] my head is as much troubled with chimeras and giddiness as ever. I fear he is too fond of variety in life to be a friend to Matrimony. The merriest man I have seen in Yorkshire is a Frenchman, who came here for religion, and has had the needful of life added unto him; he has a little estate, and lives with the mountain nymphs, Liberty and Health, in the Dales; he amuses himself with singing to his grandchildren, mending his clothes, and making soup: his grandson eats soup with him, and his next darling, le petit chat, helps him off with the Bouillie. He can not only make a fine dish of the cabbage, but of the snails and caterpillars, and what we call the unprofitable vermin that live upon it! There was not a creature in Noah’s Ark that would not be received into his larder, for a Frenchman is seldom so proud of stomach as to term anything unclean....
“Mr. Montagu desires his compliments to your grace, and my Lord Duke; we talk of you and drink your health as often as you can expect from sober people. Had I married a Tory fox-hunter he might have toasted you in a longer draught; but for temperate Whigs we do you reason.
“I am, my dear Lady Duchess’s