"I write to you to please myself. I hear you are melancholy, because you have a bad head and deaf ears. These are two misfortunes I have laboured under these many years, and yet never was peevish with either myself or the world. Have I more philosophy and resolution than you? Or am I so stupid that I do not feel the evil?
"Answer those queries in writing, if poison or other methods do not enable you soon to appear in person. Though I make use of your own word, poison, yet let me tell you—it is nonsense, and I desire you will take more care for the time to come. Now, you endeavour to impose on my understanding by taking no care of your own."
The value of a keen and active confidante in a court of perpetual intrigue was obvious, and Mrs Clayton was the double of the Queen. But a deeper and more painful reason is assigned for her confidence. The Queen had a malady, which is not described in her Memoirs, but which we suppose to have been a cancer, which she was most anxious to hide from all the world. Walpole discovered it, and the discovery exhibits his skill in human nature.
On the death of Lady Walpole, the Queen, who was about the same age, asked Sir Robert in many questions as to her illness; but he remarked, that she frequently reverted to one particular malady, which had not been Lady Walpole's disease. "When he came home," (his son writes) "he said to me,—now, Horace, I know by the possession of what secret Lady Sundon has preserved such an ascendant over the Queen."
Mrs Clayton possessed at least one merit (if merit it be) in a remarkable degree, that of providing for her relatives. She was of a poor family, and she contrived to get something for them all. Her three nieces had court places, one of them that of a maid of honour; one brother obtained a cornetcy in the Horse Guards; another a chief clerkship in the annuity office; and her nephew was sent out with Lord Albemarle to Spain. A more remarkable relative was Clayton, Bishop of Clogher, who evidently knew the value of her patronage, for a more importunate suitor, and a more persevering sycophant, never kissed hands. Finally, she obtained a peerage for her husband, a distinction in which, of course, she herself shared, but which probably she desired merely to throw some eclat round a singularly submissive husband.
Yet there was no slight infusion of pleasantry in the minds of some of the royal household. When they got rid of the stately pedantry of Caroline, and the smooth hypocrisy of her confidante,—when the gross and formal monarch was shut out, and the younger portion of the court were left to their own inventions, they seem to have enjoyed themselves like children at play. There was a vast deal of flirtation, of course, for this folly was as much the fashion of the time as rouge. But there was also a great deal of verse writing, correspondence of all degrees of wit, and now and then caricature with pencil and pen. Mary Lepell, in one of those jeux d' esprit, described the "Six Maids of Honour" as six volumes bound in calf.—The first, Miss Meadows, as mingled satire, and reflection; the second as a plain treatise on morality; the third as a rhapsody; the fourth (supposed to be the future Lady Pembroke) as a volume, neatly bound, of "The Whole Art of Dressing;" the next a miscellaneous work, with essays on "Gallantry;" the sixth, a folio collection of all the "Court Ballads." But there were some women of a superior stamp in the court circle. One of those was Lady Sophia Fermor, the daughter of Lady Pomfret, who seems to have been followed by all the men of fashion, and loved by some of them. But, like other professed beauties, she remained unmarried, until at last she accepted Lord Carteret, a man twice her age. Yet the match was a brilliant one in all other points, for Carteret was Secretary of State, and perhaps the most accomplished public man of his time.
"Do but imagine," observes that prince of gossips, Horace Walpole, "how many passions will be gratified in that family; her own ambition, vanity, and resentment—love, she never had any; the politics, management, and pedantry of her mother, who will think to govern her son-in-law out of Froissart. Figure the instructions which she will give her daughter. Lincoln, (one of her admirers) is quite indifferent, and laughs."
While the marriage was on the tapis, the beautiful Sophia was taken ill of the scarlet fever, and Lord Carteret of the gout. Nothing could be less amatory than such a crisis. But his lordship was all gallantry; he corresponded with her, read her letters to the Privy Council, and tired all the world with his passion. At length both recovered, and the lady had all the enjoyments which she could find in ambition. Carteret obtained an earldom, lost his place, but became only more popular, personally distinguished, and politically active. The Countess then became the female head of the Opposition, and gave brilliant parties, to the infinite annoyance of the Pelhams. For a while, she was the "observed of all observers." But her career came to a sudden and melancholy close. She had given promise of an heir, which would have been doubly a source of gratification to her husband; as his son by a former wife was a lunatic. But she was suddenly seized with a fever. One evening, as her mother and sister were sitting beside her, she sighed and said, "I feel death coming very fast upon me." This was their first intimation of her danger. She died on the same night!
Walpole is the especial chronicler of this time. Such a man must have been an intolerable nuisance in his day, but his piquant impertinence is amusing in ours. He was evidently a wasp, pretending to perform the part of a butterfly, and fluttering over all the court flowers, only to plant his sting. As he was a perpetual flirt, he dangled round the Pomfret family; and probably received some severe rebuke from their mother, for he describes her with all the venom of an expelled dilettante.
He speaks of her as all that was prim in pedantry, and all that was ridiculous in affectation; as, on being told of some man who talked of nothing but Madeira, gravely asking, "What language that was;" and as attending the public act at Oxford (on the occasion of her presenting some statues to the University) in a box built for her near the Vice-Chancellor, "where she sat for three days together, to receive adoration, and hear herself for four hours at a time called Minerva." In this assembly, adds the wit, in his peculiar style, "she appeared in all the tawdry poverty and frippery imaginable, and in a scoured damask robe," and wonders that "she did not wash out a few words of Latin," as she used to fricassee French and Italian; or, that "she did not torture some learned simile," as when she said, that "it was as difficult to get into an Italian coach, as it was for Cæsar to take Attica, by which she meant Utica."