How shall I tell you the greatest curiosity of the story?  The whole plan and execution of the second act was laid and adjusted by my Lady Suffolk herself and Will.  Chetwynd, Master of the Mint, Lord Bolingbroke’s Oroonoko-Chetwynd;[1] he fourscore, she past seventy-six; and, what is more, much worse than I was, for added to her deafness, she has been confined these three weeks with the gout in her eyes, and was actually then in misery, and had been without sleep.  What spirits, and cleverness, and imagination, at that age, and under those afflicting circumstances!  You reconnoitre her old court knowledge, how charmingly she has applied it!  Do you wonder I pass so many hours and evenings with her?  Alas!  I had like to have lost her this morning!  They had poulticed her feet to draw the gout downwards, and began to succeed yesterday, but to-day it flew up into her head, and she was almost in convulsions with the agony, and screamed dreadfully; proof enough how ill she was, for her patience and good breeding makes her for ever sink and conceal what she feels.  This evening the gout has been driven back to her foot, and I trust she is out of danger.  Her loss will be irreparable to me at Twickenham, where she is by far the most rational and agreeable company I have.

[Footnote 1:  Oroonoko-Chetwynd, M.P. for Plymouth.  He was called Oroonoko and sometimes “Black Will,” from his dark complexion.]

I don’t tell you that the Hereditary Prince [of Brunswick][1] is still expected and not arrived.  A royal wedding would be a flat episode after a real fairy tale, though the bridegroom is a hero.  I have not seen your brother General yet, but have called on him, When come you yourself?  Never mind the town and its filthy politics; we can go to the Gallery at Strawberry—­stay, I don’t know whether we can or not, my hill is almost drowned, I don’t know how your mountain is—­well, we can take a boat, and always be gay there; I wish we may be so at seventy-six and eighty!  I abominate politics more and more; we had glories, and would not keep them:  well! content, that there was an end of blood; then perks prerogative its ass’s ears up; we are always to be saving our liberties, and then staking them again!  ’Tis wearisome!  I hate the discussion, and yet one cannot always sit at a gaming-table and never make a bet.  I wish for nothing, I care not a straw for the inns or the outs; I determine never to think of them, yet the contagion catches one; can you tell anything that will prevent infection?  Well then, here I swear,—­no, I won’t swear, one always breaks one’s oath.  Oh, that I had been born to love a court like Sir William Breton!  I should have lived and died with the comfort of thinking that courts there will be to all eternity, and the liberty of my country would never once have ruffled my smile, or spoiled my bow.  I envy Sir William.  Good night!

[Footnote 1:  The Duke of Brunswick, who was mortally wounded in 1806 at the battle of Jena.  He had come, as is mentioned in the next letter, to marry the King’s sister.]