"Bath, July 28."
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Nichols suggests that this and the following number were by Addison, who had sent Steele another packet or two from Ireland since the appearance of No. 32. Perhaps Steele made one paper, headed "The History of Orlando the Fair," serve for two numbers (50, 51). The personal character of these papers may have caused Steele to omit them in the list of Addison's papers which he gave to Tickell. See Tatler, No. 32.
[4] Dr. Radcliffe; see Nos. 44, 46, 47.
[5] See No. 46.
[6] Robert Feilding, commonly known by the name of Beau Feilding, a handsome and very comely gentleman, was tried for felony at the Old Bailey, December 4, 1706. He had married, as the indictment sets forth, on November 25, 1705, Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, having a former wife then living. In the course of the evidence at this trial, it appears, that sixteen days before, viz. November 9, 1705, Mrs. Villars, a very bad woman, had artfully drawn him into a marriage with one Mary Wadsworth, spinster, in the mistaken belief of her being Mrs. Deleau, a widow, with a fortune of £60,000. His marriage with the duchess was therefore set aside, and her Grace was allowed the liberty of marrying again. He craved the benefit of his clergy, and when sentence was given, that he should be burnt in his hand, produced the Queen's warrant to suspend execution, and was admitted to bail. In his will, dated April 9, 1712, and proved on May 12 following, he is styled "Robert Feilding, of Feilding Hall, in the county of Warwick, Esq.," and appears to have had some estates at Lutterworth. He is mentioned by Swift among those who have made "mean figures" on some remarkable occasions. Feilding, having injured his fortune by his gallantry and extravagance in early life, repaired the breaches he had made in it, by his first marriage with the Countess of Purbeck, a widow lady of an ancient and noble family in Ireland, who had a large fortune of her own, to which she had added considerably by a former marriage; she was the only daughter and heiress of Barnham Swift, Lord Carlingford, who was of the same family with the Dean of St. Patrick's. Feilding is said to have lived happily for some years with this lady, who was a zealous Roman Catholic, and could have no great difficulty in inducing a man who had no religion to profess himself a proselyte to her religious persuasion. See No. 51 (Nichols).—On July 29, 1706, Lady Wentworth wrote to Lord Raby that the Duchess of Cleveland had got Feilding sent to Newgate "for threatning to kill her two sons for taking her part, when he beet her and broke open her closet door and took four hundred pd. out.... He beat her sadly and she cried out murder in the street out of the window, and he shot a blunderbuss at the people" ("Wentworth Papers," pp. 58-9). See, too, Luttrell's "Diary," June, July, and October, 1706, passim.
[7] The side-boxes were usually reserved for men, ladies sitting in the front boxes, and Pope describes men ogling and bowing from the side boxes. See, too, the Spectator, Nos. 311, 377. But Swift ("Polite Conversation," 1738) writes: "Pray, Mr. Neverout, what lady was that you were talking with in the side box?" A wench in a side-box was looked upon with suspicion. See Nos. 145, 217. In the Theatre (No. 3) Steele says: "Three of the fair sex for the front boxes, two gentlemen of wit and pleasure for the side boxes, and three substantial citizens for the pit!"
[8] Barbara, daughter and heiress to William Villiers, Viscount Grandison. She became the mistress of Charles II., who made her husband—Roger Palmer—Earl of Castlemain, and afterwards made her Duchess of Cleveland. On Lord Castlemain's death in 1705 she married Beau Feilding, from whom she was subsequently divorced. She died of dropsy on October 9, 1709.