' and especially of the Fifth in the suite. I have been very well entertained lately with the two first volumes of The Foundling, written by Mr. Fielding, but not to be published till the twenty-second of January, if the same spirit runs through the whole work, I think it will be much preferable to Joseph Andrews.' She was right. At another time she asked her friend, 'Have you seen a little French book called Conseils à une Amie, said to be written by Madame de Pompadour : the name of the author will not incline you to expect any very exalted sentiments of religion or morality; but it contains good rules for making a proper figure in high life.' At the same time she speaks of the Letters and some Memoirs of M. Racine père she had been reading: ‘they give me a greater esteem for him as a man than as the author of Esther and Athaliah' (Esthère and Athalie). She further speaks of a reply made by the minister of B.'s' to Dr. Middleton's Free Enquiry about Miracles. 'I cannot imagine how he can reply to it without owning himself a Deist or explaining some of his innuendos in a different way to what they appear at first sight.' In the summer of 1753 the duchess was extremely ill, and for some weeks believed to be in great danger. However, in November, she was well enough to write to her friend, Lady Luxborough, by the Blessing of God, upon Dr. Shaw's prescriptions, I am at present, though lean and ill favoured, much better.' She died on the 7th of July 1754, and was buried beside her husband in Westminster Abbey. One last glimpse at the old duke's children, and his beloved Aza, whom in the end she does not marry, but gives herself instead to a Frenchman, Deterville, who had cherished in flowery language what seemed a hopeless passion. The letters are tinged with the sentimentality of the time, and are of much the same calibre as the Paul et Virginie of Bernardin de St. Pierre. The name was afterwards changed to Tom Jones of famous memory. 1 children's children, before we leave the story of his line, the Seymours of Trowbridge. His widow, the second duchess, still lived, and Sir Thomas Bootle was making love to her. His two daughters, by this second marriage, were spending the good fortune he had left to them as recklessly as possible. In September 1750 Walpole wrote:'Lord Granby's 1 match, which is at last to be finished tomorrow, has been a mighty topic of conversation lately. The bride (Lady Frances) is one of the great heiresses of old proud Somerset. Lord Winchelsea, who is her uncle, and has married the other sister (Lady Charlotte) very loosely to his own relation, Lord Guernsey,2 has tied up Lord Granby so rigorously that the Duke of Rutland has endeavoured to break the match. She has £4000 a year; he is to have the same in present, but not to touch hers. He is in debt, £10,000. She was to give him ten, which now Lord Winchelsea refuses. Upon the strength of her fortune Lord Granby proposed to treat her with presents of £12,000, but desired her to buy them. She, who never saw nor knew the value of ten shillings while her father lived, and has had no time to learn it, bespoke away so roundly that for one article of plate she ordered six sauceboats: besides this, she and her sister have squandered £7000 apiece 3 in all 1 John Manners, Marquess of Granby (1721-1770), son and heir of the Duke of Rutland. It is in his honour that no less than eighteen public-houses, in London alone, have the sign of The Marquis of Granby.' He owed this signboard popularity, partly to his personal bravery as a general, partly to the baldness of his head. One naturally remembers that it was my Hostess of The Marquis of Granby,' at Dorking, who married Mr. Weller, senior, in Pickwick. 2 Heneage Finch, the eldest son of the second Earl of Aylesford. 3 Some of the undesirable methods by which the money was squandered are suggested by Horace Walpole's description of an incident, three months before the marriage. 'Here' (at Vauxhall), he says, 'we picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from "Jenny's Whim," a tavern at the end of the wooden bridge, at Chelsea, where ... he had dined with Lady Fanny (Lady Frances Seymour), and left her and eight other women, and four other men, playing at " Brag."' kinds of baubles and frippery, so her £4000 a year set apart for two years to pay her debts.' 'Don't you like this English management?' Walpole asked Sir Horace Mann, 'two of the greatest fortunes meeting, and setting out with poverty and want! Sir Thomas Bootle, the Prince's Chancellor, who is one of the guardians, wanted to have her tradesmen's bills taxed; but in the meantime he has wanted to marry her duchess-mother: his loveletter has been copied and dispersed everywhere.' However, the dowager-duchess refused to be won, and died a widow at Sutton Court, Chiswick, on the 21st of January 1773. Lady Frances had died of fever and sore throat thirteen years before her mother. Thus, in January 1760, Horace Walpole writes concerning the epidemic in London, All the houses in town are laid up with sore throats. There has been cruel havoc among the ladies; my Lady Granby is dead.' Lady Charlotte survived her mother, dying in 1805, and leaving a numerous family. Of the children of the Proud Duke by his first wife, his only son, Algernon, had, as we have seen, left an only daughter, Elizabeth, who became Duchess of Northumberland. She died in 1775, predeceasing her husband, and leaving a family of children, the eldest of whom became second Duke of Northumberland, of the Smithson creation, and ancestor of the present line. He was the subject of the clever parody of the Ballad of Chevy Chase, which appeared in the Anti-Jacobin in 1798. His Smithson ancestry is supposed to have prevailed over his nobler blood, and he avoided full payment of Pitt's Income Tax by claiming the deduction of ten per cent. which was allowed to persons with above a certain number of children. 'No drop of princely Percy's blood I at St. Martin's Vestry Board That I have children eight and claim Charles and Percy, the sons of the old duke's eldest daughter, Katherine, became respectively Earls of Egremont and Thomond, the latter succeeding to the estates of his uncle, the Earl of Thomond, who had married the old duke's second daughter, and died childless in 1741. Lady Anne, the third daughter, predeceased her father, dying childless in 1722. At the risk of becoming tedious, one is tempted to look back once more at that 'absurd vain man,' the old Duke of Somerset. Absurd, vain, pompous, frail of intellect, and devoid of commonsense-such is his general reputation. And we may leave him with the words of Burnet re-echoing in our ears: 'He always acted more by humour than by reason . . . and was so humoursome, proud and capricious, that he was rather a ministry spoiler than a ministry maker.' CHAPTER VIII THE SEYMOURS OF BERRY POMEROY AND THE ... 'Now been ther two maneres of Pryde: that oon of hem is withinne the herte of man, and that other is withoute. . . . But natheless that oon of thise speces of pryde is signe of that other right as the gaye leefsel1atte taverne is signe of the wyn that is in the celer.'— CHAUCER, The Persones Tale. RETURNING for a brief moment to the middle of the sixteenth century, one remembers the story of the Protector and his first wife, Katherine Filliol, whom he repudiated for real or supposed unfaithfulness, preparatory to marrying Anne Stanhope, the lady of 'haughty stomach.' Katherine Filliol had two sons, John and Edward, the former of whom was supposed to have been born when the Protector was in France. His legitimacy was thus, rightly or wrongly, suspected, but, by the persuasion of Anne Stanhope, both sons were excluded in 1540 from their mother's, as well as their father's, inheritance and all their claims to their father's dignities were postponed to his children by his second wife. Yet in the irony of things it was his two elder sons who remained faithful to their father in the years of his misfortunes. In 1550 and 1551 both John and Edward Seymour were sent to the Tower with their father, and John Seymour paid the price with his life, dying in the Tower in the December of 1552. Until quite recently the name JOHN SEYMOUR was inscribed on the wall of the Beauchamp or Cobham Tower, where he spent the last months of his life, being nursed by 1 The bush at the tavern door which, the proverb says, good wine does not need. N |