(698) Lady Hervey, it is supposed, had sent Mr. Walpole some potted pilchards.

Letter 233 To The Earl Of Hertford.  Strawberry Hill, Nov. 25, 1764. (page 356)

Could you be so kind, my dear lord, as to recollect Dr. Blanchard, after so long an interval.  It will make me still more cautious of giving recommendations to you, instead of drawing upon the credit you give me.  I saw Mr. Stanley last night at the Opera, who made his court extremely to me by what he said of you.  It was our first opera, and I went to town to hear Manzoli,(699) who did not quite answer my expectation, though a very fine singer, but his voice has been younger, and wants the touching tones of Elisi.(700) However, the audience was not so nice, but applauded him immoderately, and encored three of his songs.  The first woman was advertised for a perfect beauty, with no voice; but her beauty and voice are by no means so unequally balanced:  she has a pretty little small pipe, and only a pretty little small person, and share of beauty, and does not act ill.  There is Tenducci, a moderate tenor, and all the rest intolerable.  If you don’t make haste and send us Doberval, I don’t know what we shall do.  The dances were not only hissed, as truly they deserved to be, but the gallery, `a la Drury-lane, cried out, , Off! off!” The boxes were empty, for so is the town, to a degree.  The person,(701) who ordered me to write to you for Dobeval, was reduced to languish in the Duchess of Hamilton’s box.  My Duchess(702) does not appear yet—­I fear.

Shall I tell you any thing about D’Eon? it is sending coals to Paris:  you must know his story better than me; so in two words Vergy, his antagonist, is become his convert:(703) has wrote for him and sworn for him,—­nay, has made an affidavit before Judge Wilmot, that Monsieur de Guerchy had hired him to stab or poison D’Eon.  Did you ever see a man who had less of an assassin than your pendant, as Nivernois calls it!  In short, the story is as clumsy, as abominable.  The King’s Bench cited D’Eon to receive his sentence:  he absconds:  that court issued a warrant to search for him and a house in Scotland-yard, where he lodged, was broken open, but in vain.  If there is any thing more, you know it yourself.  This law transaction is buried in another.  The Master of the Rolls, Sir Thomas Clarke, is dead, and Norton succeeds.  Who do you think succeeds him? his predecessor.(704) The house of York is returned to the house of Lancaster:  they could not keep their white roses pure.  I have not a little suspicion that disappointment has contributed to this faux-pas.  Sir Thomas made a new will the day before he died, and gave his vast fortune, not to Mr. Yorke, as was expected, but to Lord Macclesfield, to whom, it is come out, he was natural brother.  Norton, besides the Rolls, which are for lite, and near 3,000 pounds a-year, has a pension of 1,200 pounds.  Mrs. Anne Pitt, too, has got a third pension:  so you see we are not quite such beggars as you imagined!