[517] George Lewis Scott.
[518] The celebrated Irish beauties, afterwards one Countess of Coventry, the other Duchess of Hamilton and Argyll.
MISS ASHE
Miss Ashe, or the “Pollard Ashe,” as Walpole called her, eloped with Edward Wortley Montagu in the autumn of 1751. He was soon after this put in prison with a Mr. Taafe in France for robbing or cheating a Jew. As he was married before, though separated from his wife, he could not marry Miss Ashe. She afterwards married a Mr. Falconer, R.N.
It was in this year Horace Walpole had written to Sir Horace Mann—
“Our greatest miracle is Lady Mary Wortley’s son whose adventures have made so much noise, his parts are not proportionate, but his expense is incredible. His father scarce allows him anything, yet he plays, dresses, diamonds himself, even to distinct shoe buckles for a frock, and has more snuff-boxes than would suffice a Chinese idol with an hundred noses. But the most curious part of his dress, which he has brought from Paris, is an iron wig; you literally would not know it from hair. I believe it is on this account that the Royal Society have just chosen him of their body.”
Mrs. Montagu wrote the description of “our cousin’s adventures,” and after several comments on Wortley’s conduct, she says, “Poor Miss Ashe weeps like the forsaken Ariadne on a foreign shore.”
The company at Tunbridge Wells had been increased by the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, the Duchess of Norfolk, and, Mrs. Montagu writes, “we expect those goddesses called the Gunnings and Sir Thomas Robinson.... My Father is very gay, but complains he never saw the place so dull. I never said so to those about me, lest they should say to me as Swift to the fat man who complained of a crowd, ‘Friend, you make the very crowd you blame!’ Mr. West reads to us in the evening, and the wit of the last age supplies us when we do not meet with any in this.”
DEATH OF MRS. PERCIVAL —
DR. SHAW
At this period Mrs. Percival (Anne Donnellan’s mother) died; she had long been in bad health. Dr. Shaw, the celebrated traveller, died also, and Mrs. Montagu comments thus on August 29 on the two events to her husband, who was then at Newcastle—