Further on she says, “I thank your ladyship for the verses, and I wish I had any to send you in return for them, but my poet is turned lawyer, and has forsook the Muses for ‘Coke upon Littleton.’” This alludes to her brother Tom, who was then studying law. The collecting of verses on every sort of circumstance seems to have been as fashionable then as photograph, autograph, or stamp-collecting, etc., are now.
“MRS.” PLACE
In the next letter of November, 1733, she alludes to Dr. Conyers Middleton, who, as stated before, had married Mrs. Drake, Elizabeth’s grandmother, and who was now a widower—
“I suppose you have heard Dr. Middleton has brought his Cousin Place[14] to keep his house. He very gravely sent us word that his cousin had come to spend the winter with him, and it was not impossible they might agree for a longer time; so I fancy he has brought her with him to see if she likes to play at quadrille, and sup on sack posset with the grave doctors, whose company to one of her gay temper must be delightful. I suspected his designs when he made so many complaints in London, that it was so very difficult to find a maid who understood making jellies and sack posset, which he and a certain doctor used to have for their suppers. He lost one lady because she was deaf to him; but I believe that fortune, to make amends to him, has blinded this. For though I don’t doubt he always takes care to show her the side of his face which Mr. Doll says is younger by ten years than the other, yet that is rather too old to be a match for twenty-five, which I believe is the age of Mrs.[15] Place.”
[14] Mary, daughter of the Rev. Conyers Place, of Dorchester. She died April 26, 1745.
[15] It was the custom at this time to give spinster ladies the complimentary title of “Mrs.”
The next letter she says—
“I have not heard from Dr. Middleton a great while. I suppose his thoughts are taken up with business and his pretty cousin in the West. I don’t know whether she has made a complete conquest of his heart.”
In May, 1733—
“Dr. Middleton now owns his marriage. I wish he finds the felicity of it answers his resigning a £100 a year. I am glad, for the sake of any other family, he has not got another rich widow; if he had, it would have been her turn to resign.”