“I made your compliments to the Archbishop and Mrs. Herring, who dined with us the very day I received your letter. He is very well and as amiable and polite as ever. Dick[68] has been very dilligent and very successful in partridge shooting, and t’other day sent the prime fruits of his labours, a landrail, as a present to his Grace of Canterbury.”
[67] Thomas Herring, born 1671, died 1757. Archbishop of Canterbury.
[68] Young West.
BRIGHTHELMSTONE
At the beginning of September, through the influence of West, the Bishop of London gave the living of Ealing to Mr. Botham. Botham was at Brighthelmstone with his two boys for sea-bathing, as they were not in health. The joy of Mrs. Montagu was great at this preferment, as the bishop permitted Mr. Botham to continue to hold Albury as well, placing a curate in the living he did not occupy.
“PRECIEUSES RIDICULES”
Writing again to West, Mrs. Montagu says—
“Dr. Mangey kept a curate at Ealing as he did not reside there, but undoubtedly Mr. Botham will discharge the duties of the living he resides at without assistance; the Bishop of London required Mr. Botham’s residence: as the girls and boys are growing up and must soon live with him, they will be better placed at Ealing in a good neighbourhood than at Albury. They will learn nothing there but eating and drinking plentifully of Lord Aylesford, and Mr. Godschall’s house is generally full of poetic Misses, who are addressing each other by the names of Parthenia, Araminta, etc., with now and then a little epistle to Strephon or Damon. I was uneasy whenever they were at home, for fear they should enter into the precieuse character of Mrs. Godschall.”
This style of conversation is taken off in Molière’s “Precieuses Ridicules.”
West’s mother, Lady Langham was now paying her son a visit. Mrs. Montagu writes—