Lady Medows writes that her appetite has been mended by drinking “Calves Pluck water!”
HARLEYFORD
On August 3 Mrs. Montagu thanks Lady Barbara Montagu for “the great favour you have done me in behalf of Mr. Burke,” but what that favour was I know not. The letter proceeds thus—
“I conducted Mrs. Pitt to Maidenhead Bridge on Tuesday, and on Wednesday dined at Mrs. Clayton’s[248] at Harleyford.[249] I think it the most agreeable situation I have seen on the Thames, I mean as a place of residence, every object speaks peace and plenty, the silver Thames glides at the foot of their garden, lofty trees crown the summit, they have fine prospects, sweet lawns, fine cornfields and distant villages.... I could not get permission from Mr. Montagu to stay a day or two, but had barely leave for a dining visit; to my great mortification, my Landlord at the Bridge told me that to go by Marlow would carry me 8 or 9 miles out of the Road, so I gave up my scheme, but met Mr. Amyand, who was travelling through Maidenhead town: he jumped out of his post-chaise, got into the coach to tell me all the news of the town, and on my complaining of my disappointment in regard to Mrs. Clayton, he assured me if I would go two miles out of my road I should find myself on the bank of the river opposite Mrs. Clayton’s house, that then I might go on board a flat-bottom’d boat and invade her territories. I followed his directions, but as my coach could not pass the river, I proposed only to drink a dish of Chocolate, walk round her gardens, and proceed to Reading. She kindly desired to carry me thither early in the afternoon, said she would get Mrs. Southwell[250] of the party, that my coach should go on to Reading and I should find my horses refreshed and ready to set forward for Sandleford: no magical wand could have made a metamorphosis more to my advantage than converting the rose Parlour at the Inn in Reading into an elegant salon, and my Landlord and his wife into Mrs. Clayton and Mrs. Southwell; and an empty coach into one filled with good company. A most incomparable dinner appeared, and Mrs. Southwell; we went together to Reading, and by 11 I got back to my darksome pines.”
[248] Presumably the widow of Bishop Clayton, and sister of Mrs. Donnellan.
[249] Now the seat of Sir William Clayton.
[250] Of King’s Weston.
Soon after her return to Sandleford, Mr. Montagu fell ill of a bad throat, caught, she thought, at a place built by a Mr. Cottington near Newbury, on such a hill that, as she says to Lyttelton,
“it would have made a good situation for a college of Augurs, for here they might conveniently make observations on the flight of Birds; the ascent is so steep a goat can hardly climb to it; he built a Belvidere at the top of the house, where perhaps he hoped to sit as umpire in the battles between the cranes and the pigmies, for as to looking down from it, it is rather horrible.”
Fortunately, Dr. Monsey was at Sandleford, and promptly “blooded” and doctored Mr. Montagu. Mention is made of a “magnificent epistle of Emin to the noble daughters of Brittain,” too long to be inserted here.