the usual offices.  When my company became troublesome, a sure and continually repeated means of exonerating themselves from it was for the footman to repair to the adjoining subterraneous apartments, invest his shoulders with some strong covering, and concealing his countenance, stalk in with a hollow, menacing, and inarticulate tone.  Lest that should not be sufficient, the servants had, stuck by the fireplace, the portraiture of a hobgoblin, to which they had given the name of Palethorp.  For some years I was in the condition of poor Dr. Priestley, on whose bodily frame another name, too awful to be mentioned, used to produce a sensation more than mental.

LETTER FROM BOWOOD TO GEORGE WILSON (1781)

SUNDAY, 12 o’clock.

Where shall I begin?—­Let me see—­The first place, by common right, to the ladies.  The ideas I brought with me respecting the female part of this family are turned quite topsy-turvy, and unfortunately they are not yet cleared up.  I had expected to find in Lady Shelburne a Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick, sister of an Earl of Ossory, whom I remember at school; instead of her, I find a lady who has for her sister a Miss Caroline V-----:  is not this the maid of honor, the sister to Lady G-----? the lady who was fond of Lord C------, and of whom he was fond? and whom he quitted for an heiress and a pair of horns?  Be they who they may, the one is loveliest of matrons, the other of virgins:  they have both of them more than I could wish of reserve, but it is a reserve of modesty rather than of pride.

The quadrupeds, whom you know I love next, consist of a child of a year old, a tiger, a spaniel formerly attached to Lady Shelburne—­at present to my Lord—­besides four plebeian cats who are taken no notice of, horses, etc., and a wild boar who is sent off on a matrimonial expedition to the farm.  The four first I have commenced a friendship with, especially the first of all, to whom I am body-coachman extraordinary en titre d’office:  Henry, (for that is his name) [the present Lord Lansdowne] for such an animal, has the most thinking countenance I ever saw; being very clean, I can keep him without disgust and even with pleasure, especially after having been rewarded, as I have just now, for my attention to him, by a pair of the sweetest smiles imaginable from his mamma and aunt.  As Providence hath ordered it, they both play on the harpsichord and at chess.  I am flattered with the hopes of engaging with them, before long, either in war or harmony:  not to-day—­because, whether you know it or not, it is Sunday; I know it, having been paying my devotions—­our church, the hall—­our minister, a sleek young parson, the curate of the parish—­our saints, a naked Mercury, an Apollo in the same dress, and a Venus de’ Medicis—­our congregation, the two ladies, Captain Blankett, and your humble servant, upon the carpet by the minister—­below, the domestics, superioris et inferioris ordinis.  Among the former I was concerned to see poor Mathews, the librarian, who, I could not help thinking, had as good a title to be upon the carpet as myself.