CHAPTER VI ECCENTRICITIES, GALLANTRIES AND WIT " Smartness at repartee of my Lady: the two Sir Thomas Robinsons: her dislike of the Germans at St. James's: Augustus Townshend and Mr. Winnington: her curious passion for my Lord Kilmarnock and her feeble Jacobitism: her alternate fancies for Catholicism and Methodism : Selina, Countess of Huntingdon. IT HAS BEEN SAID more than once that my Lady Townshend was noted for her "eccentricities, Gallantries, and Wit". Eccentric she certainly was, like so many of the Townshends before and since. Her "Gallantries " were probably just the gallantries of the time indulged in more or less openly by every person of quality. Her widespread reputation for wit which has survived to our own day was well established in hers. She lived up to it by all means in her power, and it is recorded of her and Lady Aberdeen 1 that each, resolving to be recognised as having the most wit of any one in the room, chose different parties or different ends of the room. To the end of her long life she was welcome wherever she went for her bright conversation and cheery manner. When quite an old woman, fifteen years after the death of her son Roger, she was to be found at Mrs. Montagu's at a time when that lady was 1 Wife of third Earl of Aberdeen, née Catherine Hanson; died 1817. ill and only receiving intimate friends, “in her best way-very chatty", as was reported by Mrs. Boscawen 2 to Mrs. Delany the following day. "Very chatty" describes her well. She was indeed an inveterate newsmonger, though without the deliberate malice of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu or the childish spite of Horace Walpole. Lady Mary Coke used to declare that there was no news to be had when Lady Townshend had none, and that she never failed to be entertained by her. This Lady Mary Coke was intimately connected with the Townshends. She was a sister of the widowed Countess of Dalkeith, who married, en secondes noces, Charles Townshend, the second son of my lady, and she had the care of his children after his death. Her father was John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich; her mother, his second wife, née Jane Warburton. She herself married, in 1747, Edward, only son of Thomas Coke, afterwards Earl of Leicester. She was considered a great beauty, but was generally known as "The White Cat" on account of the dead whiteness of her skin, the absence of eyebrows, and her very fierce eyes. It was a most unfortunate marriage. Lady Mary seems to have been a kind-hearted creature and might have made him an excellent wife, but his conduct was insupportable, and they were separated almost at once. She was a woman of very conceited and self-satisfied ideas, generally under the impression that some illustrious personage was in love with her, such as one of the German princelings who was over in England on a visit, or even one of the sons of George II., on whose death, she went into deep * Widow of an Admiral Boscawen, who had seen much active service and defeated the French at Lagos Bay and Luisberg. mourning. She quarrelled with nearly everybody sooner or later: with the good-natured Princess Amelia the unmarried daughter of the King, and with the Empress Maria Theresa, who had treated her as an intimate friend. But she was a soured woman; the tragedy of her unhappy marriage had spoilt her life. The great kindness of heart and overflowing goodhumour of my Lady Townshend found her many friends and made her immensely popular with all sorts of people. The Princess of Brunswick, visiting the wife of Charles Townshend, said she didn't expect to find so many people and had hoped to find only Lady Townshend. Mrs. Harris, on another occasion, wrote that she was blessed with a most excellent neighbour in Lady Townshend, who carried her out every day in her coach. Some specimens of my Lady's smart repartee and caustic comments have come down to us in the letters and memoirs of her contemporaries. Especially did Walpole, ever on the lookout for something with which to fill his letters, love to retail all her best sayings to Mann, Montagu and Selwyn. Many of her witty remarks are of course lost, and the charm of manner which, in her case, must have greatly enhanced all she said or did, is absent from a mere recital, but it is still possible to realise to a certain extent how quick she was in lively sally and ready retort. Walpole, speaking of certain scandals in which the name of Lady Grosvenor had been coupled with that of a Duke, said there was none of that kind of proof which my Lady Townshend had once said existed in another case, when, being asked for proof, replied, "Lord, child, she was all over proof!" She was particularly fond of sharpening her wit on those of her own set. Of the two Sir Thomas Robinsons, one of whom was very tall and thin and the other very short and plump, and who had both offended her, she said, "I can't imagine why one should be preferred to the other: I see but little difference between them: the one is as broad as the other is long ". Sir Thomas Robinson, "the long "the long ", first baronet of Rokeby, Yorkshire, Commissioner of Excise, and Governor of Barbados from 1742 to 1747, was a great friend of my Lady. He was celebrated for the magnificent private balls he gave, at which all fashionable London was present. He spent large sums in building and furnishing, but recovered a good deal by becoming the proprietor and director of Ranelagh House, the modish rendezvous of persons of quality at Chelsea. He died at Ranelagh, blind, in 1777, at the age of seventy-six. At the coronation of George III. he was selected to impersonate a mock Duke of Normandy, to indicate that the King of England was also King of France-Dei gratia ! Sir Thomas Robinson, the short", was British Minister at Vienna, and was afterwards created Baron Grantham. He held several important posts under Government and died in 1770. Another of my Lady's intimate friends was old Lord Bath. He once complained to her of a pain in his side; but she told him that was impossible, as "he had no side". When her husband died, leaving her a very rich widow, this same old Lord Bath proposed to marry her, though he was then eighty years of age. Very little is heard of my Lady Townshend in connection with the Court of the Georges. On her marriage to Lord Lynn, afterwards third Viscount Townshend, in 1723, she must have been presented |