[420] He was beheaded April 9, 1747.
The curious remedies of the period are shown in a letter of Mrs. Botham, of November 25, where she says she has been taking Elixir of Vitriol for her asthma, and is now going to try Tar Water, then supposed to be a universal medicine. She adds that the Glebelands, sixty acres in extent at Albury, had been let for £17 a year for thirty years, but as no one bid “Johnny” more, he was now farming it himself, as it provides our family with “grain, fowls, bacon, milk, butter and eggs.”
In the next letter from Bullstrode, to Mr. Robinson, his daughter says—
“Mrs. Delany tells me Mr. Granville thinks himself very happy in passing some of his hours with you. She says she has great ambition to please you as you are an artist and a connoisseur. She is now copying a portrait of Sacharissa from Vandyck, and I believe it will please you very well.... The Duchess is in better spirits than ever I knew her; time has added accomplishments to her young family, her gardens are much improved, her house is new furnished.”
DR. SHAW
The last letter of the year to the duchess mentions—
“I hear there is going to be published a new comedy by Dr. Hoadley[421] and a tragedy by Mr. Thomson. I have no great expectations of the comedy, for Dr. Hoadley is a sober physician, and must be a kind of comedian malgré lui. As to Mr. Thomson,[422] we know the pitch of his muse, and with what dignity his buskins tread the Stage.” She winds up with “best respects to the huge ‘Godfather of all Shell-fish,’ who, tho’ not so frisky I presume, as nimble as his Seabrother the Leviathan, or his Hornie palfrey the Seahorse, or his lapdog the Porpoise.”
[421] Benjamin Hoadley, born 1706, died 1757. Physician to George II.; wrote “The Suspicious Husband.”
[422] “Tancred and Sigismund.”
This alludes to Dr. Shaw, the traveller, a constant visitor at Bullstrode, and a connoisseur in shells,[423] which the duchess took great delight in collecting.