THE STANLEY FAMILY
Miss Anne Stanley, daughter of Mr. Stanley, of Paultons, Hants, and grand-daughter of Sir Hans Sloane, now joined Mrs. Montagu from “Clewar,” near Windsor.[271] Anne and Sarah Stanley lived with their mother, Sarah Stanley, and were the intimate friends of Lord Lyttelton, whom Anne mentions in a letter of July 29. “Lord Lyttelton returned to us yesterday, and has had a bad night with the pain in his back, which has made him resolve to give up Sunning Hill Waters.” Anne eventually married Welbore Ellis, afterwards Lord Mendip. Sarah married Christopher D’Oyley, M.P. Their one brother was the Right Hon. Hans Stanley,[272] Lord of the Admiralty from 1757 to 1763.
[271] Now known as Clewer.
[272] He died in 1780.
On August 2 Lord Lyttelton writes from Hill Street—
“Monsieur des Champs brought me his translation of your three Dialogues. They are as well done as the poverty of the French tongue will admit. But such eloquence as yours must lose by being transposed into any other language.... There is great mourning in the gay world for poor Lady Lincoln.[273] I have seen her so lively, so cheerfull, so happy, that it shocks me to think of her sudden dissolution, and it frights me when I think that I have very dear friends who may as suddenly die, and especially some whose spirits, like hers, exceed their strength. Monsey says he cannot tell what was the cause of her death.”
[273] Catherine Pelham, daughter of Henry Pelham, brother to the 1st Duke of Newcastle; she died July 27, 1760.
BALL AT TUNBRIDGE WELLS
In the next letter to her husband, who was going to Sandleford, Mrs. Montagu says—
“I went to the ball last Friday, it was the first time I had been to the publick rooms, and it had like to have been fatal to me, for the coachman not being acquainted with the place, the night dark, and having no flambeaux, had like to have overturned just coming out from Joy’s Rooms, down a place where the coach would have been entirely topsy-turvy; the footmen were thrown off from behind, but several people being by, the coach was held up, and I got safe out, and no hurt done to the persons or machine. My fright was such I did not get my rest till six o’clock in the morning. I had many civil messages in the morning, and Lord and Lady Feversham came up the hill to inquire after me; my nerves are still a little the worse. If the coach had fallen it would have gone down some feet, but the standers-by behaved with great humanity, bearing a very heavy load on their shoulders. I believe our new coachman is too lazy to serve us. The danger I was in when John and the postillion were drunk and had like to have overturned us on a gallop against a post when we came from Windsor, and my second peril on Friday, makes me tremble whenever I get into the machine.”