Last night I had a good deal of company to hear Monticelli and Amorevoli, particularly the three beauty-Fitzroys, Lady Euston, Lady Conway, and Lady Caroline.(398) Sir R. liked the singers extremely:  he had not heard them before, I forgot to tell you all our beauties there was Miss Hervey,(399) my lord’s daughter, a fine, black girl, but as masculine as her father should be;(400) and jenny Conway, handsomer Still,(401) though changed with illness, than even the Fitzroys.  I made the music for my Lord Hervey, who is too ill to go to operas:  yet, with a coffin-face, is as full of his little dirty politics as ever.  He will not be well enough to go to the House till the majority is certain somewhere, but lives shut up with my Lord Chesterfield and Mr. Pultney-a triumvirate, who hate one another more than any body they could proscribe, had they the power.  I dropped in at my Lord Hervey’s, the other night, knowing my lady had company:  it was soon after our defeats.  My lord, who has always professed particularly to me, turned his back on me, and retired for an hour into a whisper with young Hammond,(402) at the end of the room.  Not being at all amazed at one whose heart I knew so well, I stayed on, to see more of this behaviour; indeed, to rise myself to it.  At last he came up to me, and begged this music. which I gave him, and would often again, to see how many times I shall be ill and well with him within this month.  Yesterday came news that his brother, Captain William Hervey, has taken a Caracca ship, worth full two hundred thousand pounds.  He was afterwards separated from it by a storm, for two or three days, and was afraid of losing it, having but five-and-twenty men to thirty-six Spaniards; but he has brought it home safe.  I forgot to tell you, that upon losing the first question, Lord Hervey kept away for a week; on our carrying the next great one, he wrote to Sir Robert, how much he desired to see him, “not upon any business, but Lord Hervey longs to see Sir Robert Walpole.”

Lady Sundon(402) is dead, and Lady M- disappointed:  she, who is full as politic as my Lord Hervey, had made herself an absolute servant to Lady Sundon, but I don’t hear that she has left her even her old clothes.  Lord Sundon is in great grief:  I am surprised, for she has had fits of madness ever since her ambition met such a check by the death of the Queen.(404) She had great power with her, though the Queen pretended to despise her; but had unluckily told her, or fallen into her power by some secret.(405) I was saying to Lady Pomfret, to be sure she is dead very rich!” She replied, with some warmth, She never took money.”  When I came home, I mentioned this to Sir R.  “No,” said he, “but she took jewels; Lord Pomfret’s place of master of the horse to the Queen was bought of her for a pair of diamond earrings, of fourteen hundred pounds value.”  One day that she wore them at a visit at old Marlboro’s, as soon as she was gone, the Duchess said to Lady Mary Wortley,(406)