In another letter she says, “when I lost my dear, and by me ever-lamented son, every faculty to please (if ever I were possessed of any such) died with him. I have no longer any cheerful thoughts to communicate to my friends; but as the joy and pride of my heart withers in his grave, my mind is continually haunting those mansions of the dead, and is but too inattentive to what passes in a world where I have still duties and attachments which I ought to be, and I hope I may truly say, I am, thankful for. But I enjoy all these blessings with trembling and anxiety, for after my dear Beauchamp, what human things can appear permanent? Youth, beauty, virtue, health, were not sufficient to save him from the hand of death, and who then can think themselves secure? These are the melancholy considerations which generally entertain my waking hours; though sometimes I am able to view the bright side of my fate, and ask myself for whom I grieve? only for myself? how narrow an affection does this imply! Could he have lived long as my fondest wish desired, what could I have asked at the end of that term more than the assurance that he should be placed where I humbly hope, and confidently trust, he is, beyond the reach of sorrow, sin, or sickness?”
I have said that this Duchess, the Eusebia of Dr. Watts' Miscellanies, and once more known as the Cleora of her then famous friend Mrs. Rowe's Letters, might perhaps have been happier in a humbler station; but she could not have been more meek and more amiable, nor have possessed in a greater degree the christian virtue of humility. She was one of the daughters and coheiresses of the Honourable Henry Thynne, and was of the bed-chamber to the Princess of Wales, in which office she continued after that Princess became Queen Caroline. It was through her intercession that Savage's life was spared. When the Queen being prejudiced against that wretched man had refused to hear any application in his behalf, “she engaged in it,” says Johnson, “with all the tenderness that is excited by pity, and all the zeal that is kindled by generosity; an advocate,” he calls her, “of rank too great to be rejected unheard, and of virtue too eminent to be heard without being believed.” Her husband's father was commonly called the proud Duke of Somerset,—an odious designation, which could not have been obtained unless it had been richly deserved: but there are some evil examples which incidentally produce a good effect, and Lord Beauchamp whose affability and amiable disposition endeared him to all by whom he was known, was perhaps more carefully instructed in the principles of Christian humility, and more sensible of their importance and their truth, because there was in his own family so glaring an instance of the folly and hatefulness of this preposterous and ridiculous sin. “It is a most terrible thing for his parents,” says Horace Walpole, “Lord Beauchamp's death; if they were out of the question, one could not be sorry for such a mortification to the pride of old Somerset. He has written the most shocking letter imaginable to poor Lord Hartford, telling him that it is a judgment upon him for all his undutifulness, and that he must always look upon himself as the cause of his son's death. Lord Hartford is as good a man as lives, and has always been most unreasonably ill-treated by that old tyrant.” The Duke was brute enough to say that his mother had sent him abroad to kill him. It was not his mother's fault that he had not been secured, as far as human precautions avail against the formidable disease of which he died. Three years before that event she said in one of her letters, “Inoculation is at present more in fashion than ever; half my acquaintance are shut up to nurse their children, grandchildren, nephews or nieces. I could be content notwithstanding the fine weather to stay in town upon the same account, if I were happy enough to see my son desire it; but that is not the case, and at his age it must either be a voluntary act or left undone.”
The proud Duke lived to the great age of eighty-six, and his son died little more than twelvemonths after him, leaving an irreproachable name. The Duchess survived her son ten years, and her husband four. Upon the Duke's death the Seymour honours were divided between two distant branches of that great and ancient house; those of the Percys devolved to his only daughter and heiress the Lady Elizabeth, then wife of Sir Hugh Smithson, in whom the Dukedom of Northumberland was afterwards revived. The widow passed the remainder of her days at a seat near Colnbrook, which her husband had purchased from Lord Bathurst, and had named Percy Lodge: Richkings was its former appellation. Pope in one of his letters calls it “Lord Bathurst's extravagante bergerie,” in allusion to the title of an old mock-romance. “The environs,” says the Duchess, “perfectly answer to that title, and come nearer to my idea of a scene in Arcadia than any place I ever saw. The house is old but convenient, and when you are got within the little paddock it stands on, you would believe yourself an hundred miles from London, which I think a great addition to its beauty.” Moses Brown wrote a poem upon it, the Duke and Duchess having appointed him their laureate for the nonce; but though written by their command, it was not published till after the death of both, and was then inscribed to her daughter, at that time Countess of Northumberland. If Olney had not a far greater poet to boast of, it might perhaps have boasted of Moses Brown. Shenstone's Ode on Rural Elegance, which is one of his latest productions, related especially to this place. He inscribed it to the Duchess, and communicated it to her in manuscript through their mutual friend Lady Luxborough, sister to Bolingbroke, who possessed much of her brother's talents, but nothing of his cankered nature.
The Duchess was a great admirer of Shenstone's poetry, but though pleased with the poem, and gratified by the compliment, she told him that it had given her some pain, and requested that wherever her name or that of Percy Lodge occurred, he would oblige her by leaving a blank, without suspecting her of an affected or false modesty, for to that accusation she could honestly plead not guilty. The idea he had formed of her character, he had taken, she said, from a partial friend whose good nature had warped her judgment. The world in general since they could find no fault in his poem, would blame the choice of the person to whom it was inscribed, and draw mortifying comparisons between the ideal lady, and the real one. “But I,” said she, “have a more impartial judge to produce than either my friend or the world,—and that is my own heart, which though it may flatter me I am not quite so faulty as the world would represent, at the same time loudly admonishes me that I am still further from the valuable person Lady Luxborough has drawn you in to suppose me. I hope you will accept these reasons as the genuine and most sincere sentiments of my mind, which indeed they are, though accompanied with the most grateful sense of the honour you designed me.”
I have said something, and have yet more to say of a retired Tobacconist; and I will here describe the life of a retired Duchess, of the same time and country, drawn from her own letters. Some of Plutarch's parallels are less apposite, and none of them in like manner equally applicable to those of high station and those of low degree.
The duchess had acquired that taste for landscape gardening, the honour of introducing which belongs more to Shenstone than to any other individual, and has been properly awarded to him by D'Israeli, one of the most just and generous of critical authors. Thus she described the place of her retreat when it came into their possession: “It stands in a little paddock of about a mile and a half round; which is laid out in the manner of a French park, interspersed with woods and lawns. There is a canal in it about twelve hundred yards long, and proportionably broad, which has a stream continually running through it, and is deep enough to carry a pleasure-boat. It is well stocked with carp and tench; and at its upper end there is a green-house, containing a good collection of orange, myrtle, geranium, and oleander trees. This is a very agreeable room, either to drink tea, play at cards, or sit in with a book on a summer's evening. In one of the woods (through all which there are winding paths), there is a cave; which though little more than a rude heap of stones, is not without charms for me. A spring gushes out at the back of it; which, falling into a basin (whose brim it overflows), passes along a channel in the pavement where it loses itself. The entrance to this recess is overhung with periwinkle, and its top is shaded with beeches, large elms, and birch. There are several covered benches, and little arbours interwoven with lilacs, woodbines, seringas and laurels; and seats under shady trees, disposed all over the park. One great addition to the pleasure of living here, is the gravelly soil; which after a day of rain (if it holds up only for two or three hours), one may walk over without being wet through one's shoes: and there is one gravel walk that encompasses the whole. We propose to make an improvement, by adding to the present ground a little pasture farm which is just without the pale, because there is a very pretty brook of clear water which runs through the meadows to supply our canal, and whose course winds in such a manner that it is almost naturally a serpentine river. I am afraid I shall have tired you with the description of what appear to me beauties in our little possession; yet I cannot help adding one convenience that attends it:—this is, the cheap manner in which we keep it: since it only requires a flock of sheep, who graze the lawns fine; and whilst these are feeding, their shepherd cleans away any weeds that spring up in the gravel, and removes dry leaves or broken branches that would litter the walks.”
“On the spot where the green-house now stands, there was formerly a chapel, dedicated to St. Leonard; who was certainly esteemed as a tutelar saint of Windsor Forest and its purlieus, for the place we left was originally a hermitage founded in honour of him. We have no relics of the saint; but we have an old covered bench with many remains of the wit of my lord Bathurst's visitors, who inscribed verses upon it. Here is the writing of Addison, Pope, Prior, Congreve, Gay, and, what he esteemed no less, of several fine ladies. I cannot say that the verses answered my expectation from such authors; we have however all resolved to follow the fashion, and to add some of our own to the collection. That you may not be surprized at our courage for daring to write after such great names, I will transcribe one of the old ones, which I think as good as any of them:
Who set the trees shall he remember
That is in haste to fell the timber?
What then shall of thy woods remain,
Except the box that threw the main?
There has been only one added as yet by our company, which is tolerably numerous at present. I scarcely know whether it is worth reading or not:
By Bathurst planted, first these shades arose;
Prior and Pope have sung beneath these boughs:
Here Addison his moral theme pursued,
And social Gay has cheer'd the solitude.