“Dear Fidget’s
“Very humble servant and admirer,
“M. Cavendish Portland.”
[18] The duchess always spelt Bullstrode with the double l, from the story of the place, and I choose to do the same.
[19] On Dr. Middleton’s second wife.
DRAWING LESSONS
In Elizabeth’s next letter, November 3, 1734, she regrets that her father, having recovered his spirits, had given up going to Bath as projected, and says—
“One common objection to the country, one sees no faces but those of one’s own family, but my Pappa thinks he has found a remedy for that by teaching me to draw; but then he husbands these faces in so cruel a manner that he brings me sometimes a nose, sometimes an eye at a time: but on the King’s birthday, as it was a festival, he brought me out a whole face with its mouth wide open. Your Grace desired me to send you some verses; I have not heard so much as a Rhyme lately, and I believe the Muses have all got agues in this country, but I have enclosed you the following Summons which we sent an old bachelor, who is very much our humble servant, and would die but not dance for us; but being once in great necessity for partners, we thought him better than an elbow chair, and compelled him to come to this Summons, which pleased me extremely, as I believe it was the first time he ever found the power of the fair sex.... I am so far from Cambridge, and have no friend charitable enough to send me any scandal, I have heard nothing of either of the doctors, but as to my dear grandmother,[20] I have before heard she was as famous as a free speaker as he is for a free-thinker.[21]
[20] This is Elizabeth’s fun, as her own grandmother was dead, and the doctor was her step-grandfather.
[21] Dr. Middleton held free-thinking views on the Old Testament.