(1229) Daughter of John, Earl Gower.

487 Letter 209
To George Montagu,
Arlington Street, July 3, 1746.

My dear George, I wish extremely to accept your invitation, but I can’t bring myself to it.  If I have the pleasure of meeting Lord North(1230) oftener-at your house next winter, I do not know but another summer I may have courage enough to make him a visit; but I have no notion of going to any body’s house, and have the servants look on the arms of the chaise to find out one’s name, and learn one’s face from the Saracen’s head.  You did not tell me how long you stayed at Wroxton, and so I direct this thither.  I have wrote one to Windsor since you left it.

The Dew earls have kissed hands, and kept their own titles.  The world reckon Earl Clinton obliged for his new honour to Lord GranVille, though they made the Duke of Newcastle go in to ask for it.

Yesterday Mr. Hussey’s friends declared his marriage with her grace of Manchester,(1231) and said he was gone down to Englefield Green to take possession.

I can tell you another wedding more certain, and fifty times more extraordinary; it is Lord Cooke with Lady Mary Campbell, the Dowager of Argyle’s youngest daughter.  It is all agreed, and was negotiated by the Countess of Gower and Leicester.  I don’t know why they skipped over Lady Betty, who, if there were any question of beauty, is, I think, as well as her sister.  They drew the girl in to give her consent, when they first proposed it to her; but now la Belle n’aime pas trop le Sieur L`eandre.  She cries her eyes to scarlet.  He has made her four visits, and is so in love, that he writes to her every other day.  ’Tis a strange match.  After offering him to all the great lumps of gold in all the alleys of the city, they fish out a woman of quality at last with a mere twelve thousand pound.  She objects his loving none of her sex but the four queens in a pack of cards, but he promises to abandon White’s and both clubs for her sake.

A-propos to White’s and cards, Dick Edgecumbe is shut up with the itch.  The ungenerous world ascribes it to Mrs. Day; but he denies it; owning, however, that he is very well contented to have it, as nobody will venture on her.  Don’t you like being pleased to have the itch, as a new way to ’keep one’s mistress to one’s self!

You will be in town to be sure for the eight-and-twentieth.  London will be as full as at a coronation.  The whole form is settled for the trials, and they are actually building scaffolds in Westminster-hall.

I have not seen poor Miss Townshend yet; she is in town, and better, but most unhappy.

(1230) Francis, Lord North and Grey; in 1752 created Earl of Guilford.  His lordship died in 1790, at the age of eighty-six.-E.

(1231) Isabella, eldest daughter of John, Duke of Montagu, married in 1723 to William, second Duke of Manchester, who died in 1739.  She married afterwards to Edward Hussey, Esq. who was created Baron Beaulieu in 1762, and Earl Beaulieu in 1784.