“I hear my cousin Pitt is gone abroad with Lord Kinnoul.... I wish his tour may afford him as much pleasure as it will improvement. But nothing can ever hinder a mind like his, active and desirous of knowledge from improving itself everywhere, but particularly in foreign countries.... I only wish the eyes of the handsome Spanish Ladies may not make a greater impression on his heart than the beautiful Vales of Arragon and Castile.”
LISBON
Thomas Pitt had gone to Lisbon with the Embassy under Lord Strathmore,[260] which England sent after the attempted assassination of the King of Portugal. In a letter to Lord Lyttelton from Lisbon on March 27, 1760, Mr. Pitt describes Lisbon—
[260] John Lyon, 7th Earl of Strathmore.
“The Tagus is extremely noble, and the shore on the other side is covered with woods of pine and fir. The city is quite destroy’d, and though they talk of magnificent plans for the rebuilding it, there is little likelihood that it should rise out of its ruins for many years.”
He then alludes to the late attempted assassination of the king, but his account is too long to copy in extenso—
“The story of a conspiracy is universally disbelieved, the whole is attributed to the malignity of the Duke of Aveiro, and the resentment of the old Marquis and Machioness of Tavora for the dishonour[261] done to their family since the late dreadful execution, which is followed by the erection of the Bastile, into which people of the first rank are committed without any cause assigned, makes them afraid to be even seen with one another.... I hear my little friend Tom has not forgot me in my peregrinations, has apprehensions from the impressions I may receive from the Spanish ladies. Pray give my love to him, and assure him if they resemble those of Portugal I never was in less danger.”
[261] The king had opposed the marriage of the Duke of Tavora’s son to a sister of the Duc de Cadaval.
In his next letter of April 14, to Mrs. Montagu, he says—
“I am going in about a week or ten days into the true country of Knight Errantry. I shall set out for Spain and pass through Andalousia and Granada before I go to Madrid, but instead of Rosinante and the Barber’s basin I shall provide myself with side-creeping mules and a heavy crazy old coach that has outlived the earthquake. I propose being at Madrid about the time the King makes his public entry, which is to be extremely magnificent. I shall dispute the prize at every tilt and tournament, and expect to send you a lock of hair plucked as a trophy from the forehead of a wild bull that I have laid dead at my feet. We have a very good chance of escaping the Corsairs, and sea-sickness, as the French Ambassador[262] here has had the goodness to write to his Court for a passport to enable us to get to Italy through the South of France.”