[168] Lady Oxford sold the Harleian collection of manuscripts in 1753 to the British Museum.
Elizabeth wrote to condole heartily with the duchess on her sad loss, but imploring her, for the sake of the duke and her dear little children, to endeavour to bear up under this sad blow, for father and daughter were tenderly attached to each other.
A ONE-HORSE CHAISE
The universal panacea of bleeding—for one can only judge by the manner in which doctors applied to it for every case—had been endured by Elizabeth for the sake of her eyes, and she says “my eyes are worse for the bleeding.” She had a narrow escape at this time: her brother Matthew driving her for her health along the seashore on a high bank raised to keep off the incursion of the sea, the horse bolted, but fortunately their servant outrider was able to stop it without its bolting down either side of the bank. It is characteristic of the times that she calls a one-horse chaise, “of all things the most ridiculous!”
Mrs. Donnellan had been ill, and was ordered to Tunbridge Wells, to drink the waters. There was hope of Dr. Young being there. “I believe you will find his thoughts little confined to the place; he will entertain you with conversation much above what one generally finds there, where they talk of little but water, bread, butter, and scandal.”
On July 5 the duchess writes to say they had carried their cause in the law suit. She also expresses her joy at hearing Matthew Robinson intended to be inoculated that autumn. Elizabeth said if her eyes and general health were better, she would be inoculated too. She had just been given, “by a wise son of Æsculapius, a diabolical bolus that half killed me. I fainted away about three hours after I swallowed the notable composition, and was above an hour in such agony that if I had not waited for your letter I had certainly gone to the Elysian fields.”
A letter of Mrs. Botham’s from Elford, of which place, as well as of Yoxall, Staffordshire, her husband was Vicar, mentions a legacy left to her and her sister, Mrs. Laurence Sterne—
“My husband is in the North; his journey thither happened very opportunely, for an ancient woman whose very name I am a stranger to, has lately dyed intestate, and my Sister and self are heirs at law of her real estate, which consists of some houses at Leeds, the yearly value of them about £60. It would be well for us if we could make out a title to her personal estate, which is upwards of £5000, but that I have no hopes of.”
A WINDSOR HATTER
The duke and duchess were now at Bullstrode, and anxious for Elizabeth to come to them. The duchess gives an amusing account of a hatter’s funeral—