“Do not figure to yourself that I sit like Aurora in her car drawn by the rosy-bosom’d hours, les jeux et les ris, but imagine Dobbin and Whitenose and their 4 companions all mire and dirt, dragging me through deep water, over huge stones, the winds blowing, the clouds low’ring and rain darkening the windows of the coach.”
A GREAT LADY’S AVARICE
In a letter to Mr. Montagu, from Stilton, is this amusing passage—
“Lord Panmure pass’d me on the road yesterday, and I hear all the Scotch are gone to town from Peers to Pedlars, and I suppose all with the same intention to sell something and to get money. I found that a Scotch countess had bought all the black cloth, crapes and bombazeen, black ribbons, and fans at Darlington before the poor shopkeepers knew of the King’s death. She bought a great many suits of broad cloth and crape, which must be with an intention to sell them at a higher price in town, but surely nothing could be more mean than to enter into such a traffick and take advantage of the Shopkeepers’ ignorance, and it seems to me not honest. This lady is wife to Lord C——t; I believe I mistook when I called her a countess. The town was soon inform’d of the reason she had bought such a quantity of mourning, and I wonder she was not mobbed. The ladies at Darlington and in the neighbourhood are very angry, for she left but two yards of crape in the whole town.”
Lady Frances Williams, writing on November 19 to Mrs. Montagu from Bath, where she was drinking the waters, says—
“I no sooner heard of the loss of our good old King than I thought with regret of our friend Mrs. Pitt. I believe it has prevented her coming to this place, where I proposed much pleasure in meeting her. I hear the G—t minister’s friends, the mob, have posted upon all the Palaces—
‘A Pittical administration,—no Sc—tch influence;’
and on the Royal Exchange—
‘No petticoat administration, no Lord G. S—k—lle[299]
at Court.’”
[299] Lord George Sackville.