husband for preferring the society of the lower classes to hers, or that she spoke of him in a sharp caustic way, whenever she did allude to him at all. Once, talking of cures for what used to be called distempers", i.e. such illnesses as could not be classed under any special name and were probably due to "nerves", my Lady was wont to reckon that such a doctor had cured so many, and such a medicine so many, but of all the sufferers the greatest number have found relief from the death of their husbands. On the occasion of the trial of the Jacobite Lords who were "out" in the '45, each peer having to say "Guilty ", or "Not guilty", as the case might be," on my honour" -my Lady Townshend hearing her husband vote, said, “I always knew my Lord was guilty, but I never thought he would own it on his honour". Again, when the Countess of Pembroke married en secondes noces, a Captain Barnard of the Horse Guards, and by so doing had somewhat lost favour at Court, Rigby, in a letter to the Duke of Bedford, says: My Lady Townshend, whom I saw at Lady Bath's assembly, last night, says more good things upon this event than my paper would hold, if my memory were good enough to remember them. She told me that she had already engaged her Captain against her lord's death, lest they should be all picked up. As a fact, she hated all the Townshends, and held little, if any, communication with them. Against her husband's half-brother, Augustus Townshend, son of Richard Rigby, 1722-1788, M.P. for Castle Rising, secretary to the Duke of Bedford, and a prominent member of the party. He was Paymaster to the Forces and held other lucrative posts. He left at his death a large fortune, supposed to be chiefly obtained from public money. Mrs. Paget Toynbee, the capable editor of Walpole's Letters, states that he was a notoriously unscrupulous and corrupt politician. the famous Dorothy Walpole (who is supposed to "walk" the corridors at Raynham from time to time as "The Little Brown Lady of Raynham ")—who had remonstrated with her on her close intimacy with Mr. Winnington of the Board of Trade, she cherished an especial grudge, and could not express any decent regret at his untimely death. Yet he had been very fond of her, though only a half-brother of her husband's, and in a letter to Edward Harrison, spoke of her as his "dear sister". He died at Batavia in Java, while in command of the East Indiaman Augusta. Roger Townshend, my Lady's third son, was with him at the time. The faults of the beautiful Lady Townshend have been laid bare unmercifully for the criticism of the generations that came after her, and chiefly by members of her own sex; but it must be remembered that whatever her faults may have been, one should always accept with more than the traditional pinch of salt what one woman says of another, especially if the object of the criticism happens to be a very beautiful woman, and one undeniably popular with the other sex. Lady Townshend was quite justified in leaving her husband to his vicious life with his inferiors and going on her way alone. She was not dependent on him in any way. As her father's heiress she had always had her own money, and was indeed a very rich woman. When her mother died in 1758, she inherited a further sum of £1000 a year, and never had any occasion to stint herself or her children in anything. There is no doubt that the curiously low tastes and eccentric doings of Lord Townshend led to her voluntary separation from him, embittered her outlook on life, and perhaps caused her to plunge more deeply into the whirl and wildness of a fast life than would otherwise have been the case. For many years she had no home ties or family cares. There were, indeed, not wanting spiteful persons ready to assert that she never missed them. The fact remains, however, that, whether inclined to home life or not, until her daughter was presented and her sons old enough to make some sort of a family circle, there was no restraining influence to hold her back, nothing to distract her from that continual round of excitement and intrigue which was the daily life of a woman of fashion in her day. CHAPTER II WHERE PERSONS OF QUALITY LIVED IN THE LONDON OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: WITH SOME PARTICU- Migration of the great families to the West End of London: want of occupation of ladies of fashion: Lady Townshend a very "Fine Lady" of the day: devotion of her friends: jealousy of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: scandal-mongers of the day the early morning of a lady of quality: amusements in the evenings: the Opera-house: the masquerades: the gambling fever: notorious gamblers: heavy dinners of the time. AT THE BEGINNING of the eighteenth century the aristocratic residential quarter of London was not confined within the same radius as it continued to be, later on, for so many years. The West End, as we know it, was still in process of formation, and to all intents and purposes finished at Devonshire House (then just built), while north of Piccadilly and west of the modern Bond Street was still practically open country. Noblemen and persons of note had long lived in the City itself, and the Strand was almost a continuous row of splendid palaces. Lincoln's Inn Fields, Bloomsbury, Soho Square-all now in a decadent state— were occupied by the great families of the day. Now "The Fields" is, and has been for some time, a gathering of lawyers' houses, for it will not be forgotten that the mysterious Mr. Tulkinghorn lived in one of the houses richly decorated with painted ceilings, on one of which was the heathen goddess, who with outstretched finger pointed to the murdered figure of the old lawyer while Hortense slunk away in the dress of Lady Dedlock. Bloomsbury" Piazza ", Covent Garden "Piazza", as the old squares were called, were other aristocratic quarters: perhaps the best known of all, and the most imposing was St. James's Piazza, laid out in 1677, where lived Moll Davis, the dancer and actress, mistress of Charles II.; the Herveys, intimate friends of my Lady Townshend; La Belle Stewart who sat for the model of Britannia on the pennies; the widow of the Duke of Monmouth; and many others; and, in the house now occupied by the London Library, Edward Harrison, ex-Indian governor and father of my Lady Townshend herself. Moving back towards Charing Cross we come upon the remains of the Royal Palace of Whitehall and the houses which had sprung up around it. Behind the Palace, and to one side of it, was the Privy Garden, the site of which is now occupied by the houses of Whitehall Gardens and some of the buildings of the Board of Trade. It was originally a private garden in fact as well as in name, containing about three and a half acres and lying between Whitehall Palace and the river Thames. Pepys walked there in 1662. In the Privy Garden saw the finest smocks and linen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine, laced with rich lace at the bottom, that ever I saw and did me good to look at them. ... Sir Christopher was ordered by Queen Anne in 1705 to erect a wall to render the spot still more private, |