Biography of Rachel Cavendish 1727-1805

Letters of Horace Walpole. 23rd June 1752. Arlington Street. To The Hon H S Conway (age 31).

By a letter that I received from my Lady Ailesbury (age 31) two days ago, I flatter myself I shall not have occasion to write to you any more; yet I shall certainly see you with less pleasure than ever, as our meeting is to be attended with a resignation of my little charge (age 3).³¹⁶ She is vastly well, and I think you will find her grown fat. I am husband enough to mind her beauty no longer, and perhaps you will say husband enough too, in pretending that my love is converted into friendship; but I shall tell you some stories at Park-place of her understanding that will please you, I trust, as much as they have done me.

My Lady Ailesbury says I must send her news, and the whole history of Mr. Seymour (age 22) and Lady Di. Egerton (age 21), and their quarrel, and all that is said on both sides. I can easily tell her all that is said on one side, Mr. Seymour's, who says, the only answer he has ever been able to get from the Duchess or Mr. Lyttelton was, that Di. has her caprices. The reasons she gives, and gave him, were, the badness of his temper and imperiousness of his letters; that he scolded her for the overfondness of her epistles, and was even so unsentimental as to talk of desiring to make her happy, instead of being made so by her. He is gone abroad, in despair, and with an additional circumstance, which would be very uncomfortable to any thing but a true lover; his father refuses to resettle the estate on him, the entail of which was cut off by mutual consent, to make way for the settlements on the marriage.

The Speaker told me t'other day, that he had received a letter from Lord Hyde, which confirms what Mr. Churchill writes me, the distress and poverty of France and the greatness of their divisions. Yet the King's expenses are incredible; Madame de Pompadour (age 30) is continually busied in finding out new journeys and diversions to keep him from falling into the hands of the clergy. The last party of pleasure she made for him, was a stag-hunting; the stag was a man in a skin and horns, worried by twelve men dressed like bloodhounds! I have read of Basilowitz, a Czar of Muscovy, who improved on such a hunt, and had a man in a bearskin worried by real dogs; a more kingly entertainment!

I shall make out a sad Journal of other news; yet I will be like any gazette, and scrape together all the births, deaths, and marriages in the parish. [her brother] Lady Hartington (age 32) and Lady Rachel Walpole (age 25) are brought to bed of sons; Lord Burlington (age 58) and Lord Gower (age 57) have had new attacks of palsies: Lord Falkland (age 45) is to marry the Southwark Lady Suffolk;³¹⁷ and Mr. Watson (age 23), Miss Grace Pelham (age 17). Lady Coventry (age 19) has miscarried of one or two children, and is going on with one or two more, and is gone to France to-day. Lady Townshend (age 44) and Lady Caroline Petersham (age 30) have had their anniversary quarrel, and the [her mother] Duchess of Devonshire (age 53) has had her secular assembly, which she keeps once in fifty years: she was more delightfully vulgar at it than you can imagine; complained of the wet night, and how the men would dirty the rooms with their shoes; called out at supper to the [her father] Duke (age 53), "Good God! my lord, don't cut the ham, nobody will eat any!" and relating her private menage to Mr. Obnir, she said, "When there's only my lord and I, besides a pudding we have always a dish of Yeast!" I am ashamed to send you such nonsense, or to tell you how the good women at Hampton Court are scandalized at Princess Emily's (age 41) coming to chapel last Sunday in riding-clothes with a dog under her arm; but I am bid to send news: what can we do -,it such a dead time of year? I must conclude, as my Lady Gower did very well t'other day in a letter into the country, "Since the two Misses³¹⁸ were hanged, and the two Misses³¹⁹ were married, there is nothing at all talked of." Adieu! My best compliments and my wife's to your two ladies.

Note 315. Now first published.

Note 316. Their daughter, Ann Seymour Conway.

Note 317. Sarah, Duchess-dowager of Suffolk, daughter of Thomas Unwen, Esq. of Southwark.-E.

Note 318. Miss Blandy and Miss Jefferies.

Note 319. The Gunnings. [Maria Gunning Countess Coventry and Elizabeth Gunning Duchess Hamilton and Argyll (age 18)]