You will oblige me much by sending me "Crazy Kate." A gentleman last winter promised me both her and the "Lace-maker," but he went to London, that place in which, as in the grave, "all things are forgotten," and I have never seen either of them.[428]
I begin to find some prospect of a conclusion, of the Iliad at least, now opening upon me, having reached the eighteenth book. Your letter found me yesterday in the very fact of dispersing the whole host of Troy, by the voice only of Achilles. There is nothing extravagant in the idea, for you have witnessed a similar effect attending even such a voice as mine, at midnight, from a garret window, on the dogs of a whole parish, whom I have put to flight in a moment.
W. C.
His high sense of the character and qualifications of Lady Hesketh is pleasingly expressed in the following letter, where Mrs. Montagu's coteries in Portman-square are also alluded to.
TO LADY HESKETH.
The Lodge, May 12, 1788.
It is probable, my dearest coz, that I shall not be able to write much, but as much as I can I will. The time between rising and breakfast is all that I can at present find, and this morning I lay longer than usual.
In the style of the lady's note to you I can easily perceive a smatch of her character.[429] Neither men nor women write with such neatness of expression, who have not given a good deal of attention to language, and qualified themselves by study. At the same time it gave me much more pleasure to observe, that my coz, though not standing on the pinnacle of renown quite so elevated as that which lifts Mrs. Montague to the clouds, falls in no degree short of her in this particular; so that, should she make you a member of her academy,[430] she will do it honour. Suspect me not of flattering you, for I abhor the thought; neither will you suspect it. Recollect, that it is an invariable rule with me never to pay compliments to those I love.
Two days, en suite, I have walked to Gayhurst,[431] a longer journey than I have walked on foot these seventeen years. The first day I went alone, designing merely to make the experiment, and choosing to be at liberty to return at whatsoever point of my pilgrimage I should find myself fatigued. For I was not without suspicion that years, and some other things no less injurious than years, viz. melancholy and distress of mind, might by this time have unfitted me for such achievements. But I found it otherwise. I reached the church, which stands, as you know, in the garden, in fifty-five minutes, and returned in ditto time to Weston. The next day I took the same walk with Mr. Powley, having a desire to show him the prettiest place in the country.[432] I not only performed these two excursions without injury to my health, but have by means of them gained indisputable proof that my ambulatory faculty is not yet impaired; a discovery which, considering that to my feet alone I am likely, as I have ever been, to be indebted always for my transportation from place to place, I find very delectable.