A PARSON AND HIS WIFE
To the duchess Mrs. Montagu wrote in raptures of the beauties of Sandleford, but in the middle of her description states, “Here was I interrupted by a Parson, his wife and daughter, and I shall not be reconciled to ‘Prunello and grogram’ again a great while, they robbed me of those hours I could have dedicated to your grace.” Prunello was the woollen stuff then used for clerical gowns, grogram a coarse kind of taffety, a mixture of silk and mohair, applicable to feminine attire.
Mrs. Botham writes on July 8, that as Mrs. Montagu was unable, when her baby was born, to be applied to, she had given him his father’s name, John. Lydia Botham had two, if not three, daughters, but this was her first son.
THE COUNTESS OF GRANVILLE
From Sandleford Mrs. Montagu returned to London, intending to be inoculated, but in a letter of July 12 she informs the duchess that Dr. Mead considered she had better defer the operation till the heat of the summer was over—in September. In the same letter she states that Mrs. Medows and herself had called on the old Countess of Granville,[278] who appears to have been a most garrulous old lady, and Mrs. Montagu says—
“She fell with all her violence on my complexion, and behold, she certainly by her description takes my forehead to be tortoishell, my cheeks to be gold, my eyes to be onyx, and my teeth amber: all these are precious things, but Mr. Montagu not having so rich a fancy as King Midas, I know not whether he would like such a wife. Your Grace may believe I was extremely mortified. The good woman says Mrs. Medows looks better and younger for being married; but for me I am pale and green, and describes me as worse than the apothecary that lives about the rendezvous of death in Caius Marius. She is of opinion that lying in has spoiled my face; true it is I have furnished a noble pair of chops to the little boy, and if mine are a little the lanker for it, I scarce grudge it....”
[278] Grace, Viscountess Carteret, and Countess Granville in her own right.
Further on she says, “Thank you for your kind inquiry after the young ‘Fidget,’ who loves laughing and dancing, and is worthy of the Mother he sprang from. As for Mrs. Donnellan, she is well. Mrs. Delany is better than well.”
Mrs. Pendarves had been married on June 9 this same year to the Rev. Dr. Patrick Delany,[279] afterwards Dean of Down, and an intimate friend of Swift’s.
[279] Dr. Delany, born 1686, died 1768; made Dean 1744.