“I went to the ball last Friday, it was the first time I had been to the publick rooms, and it had like to have been fatal to me, for the coachman not being acquainted with the place, the night dark, and having no flambeaux, had like to have overturned just coming out from Joy’s Rooms, down a place where the coach would have been entirely topsy-turvy; the footmen were thrown off from behind, but several people being by, the coach was held up, and I got safe out, and no hurt done to the persons or machine. My fright was such I did not get my rest till six o’clock in the morning. I had many civil messages in the morning, and Lord and Lady Feversham came up the hill to inquire after me; my nerves are still a little the worse. If the coach had fallen it would have gone down some feet, but the standers-by behaved with great humanity, bearing a very heavy load on their shoulders. I believe our new coachman is too lazy to serve us. The danger I was in when John and the postillion were drunk and had like to have overturned us on a gallop against a post when we came from Windsor, and my second peril on Friday, makes me tremble whenever I get into the machine.”

A GENTLEMAN COACHMAN

To this Mr. Montagu replies—

“My Dearest,

“I am more concerned than j can express at the peril you were in. I tremble and shudder when j consider how fatal the consequences might have been if you had been actually overturned.... I have inquired after the cause of this unhappy affair, and though Ned says he cannot say the coachman was drunk, still he had been at the Ale House, and when he came home said there was no danger, and that the boys made almost as much noise as his Mistress. I find he is a lazy, proud, and what they call a gentleman coachman, and such as j would very soon get rid of.”

Ned was the head groom, and Mrs. Montagu proposed substituting him for the coachman, as he was honest and sober. To this her husband replies, “I wish he had more experience, but j should with all that think j run no great hazard in trusting him, besides he might practise to go out with the six horses of times when you did not want him.” To turn a lumbering coach and six must have been a most intricate affair. Ned was promoted to be coachman, but only to practise with the coach and six; “a coachman to a Mr. Lambard, and afterwards to Captain Pannel’s heir,” was employed when the coach went out, being then under a job-master, one Mr. Jarret, and a chaise and pair conveyed Mrs. Montagu to the Wells.

“The gentleman here ordered the place of my danger to be mended and acquainted me he had done so, and hoped I should not be frighted away from the balls.

“Sir Roger Twisden inquired much after you and my Father. He stays but a few days here. Lord Bath was ill again yesterday, he told me he was mortified that he had never been able to wait on me, but he was so weak he could not venture to trouble any one with a visit. I think he is in a bad way, but has a great deal of witt whenever he is tolerably well. His Lordship, I know, has been prejudiced in my favour by some of his friends, who are also friends of mine and Mr. Domville in particular, which I believe has given him a desire to be acquainted with me, but I believe he will hardly be able to make a visit this season, and in London he never visits any one who does not inhabit a ground floor. He has still a fine countenance, and those piercing eyes that denote a mind extraordinarily lively and penetrating.”

CHARACTER OF LORD BATH

William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, was born in April, 1684, hence he was at this period turned seventy-six. He had lost his wife, née Anna Maria Gumley, in 1758. Mrs. Montagu must have known him in a superficial society way, as a description of a great rout given by Lady Bath some years previously is in this book. But now was to commence that tender intimacy and affectionate friendship between them that lasted to his death, and which prompted him, even in the act of dying, to stagger from his bed and write a few lines of adieu to her as his last effort—sacred lines which I possess and treasure! For his political character I must refer the reader to history, and the “Dictionary of National Biography.” As regards his private character I cannot do better than quote Elizabeth Carter’s account of him in “Memoirs of her Life.” It was probable that through Mrs. Carter, who was a great friend of his, he began to appreciate the manifold charms of Elizabeth Montagu. This is what Mrs. Carter says—