I am glad you are aware of Miss Pitt:  pray continue your awaredom:  I assure you, before she set out for Italy, she was qualified to go any Italian length of passion.  Her very first slip was with her eldest brother:  and it is not her fault that she has not made still blacker trips.  Never mention this, and forget it as soon as she is gone from Florence.  Adieu!

(449) Bianca Capello was the daughter of a noble Venetian.  She had been seduced and carried off from her father’s house by a young Florentine of low origin, named Peter Bonaventuri.  They came to Florence, where she became the mistress of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Francis of Medicis.  He was very anxious to have a child by her; upon which she pretended to be brought to bed of a son, who had in reality been bought of one of the lower orders.  He was called Don Anthony of Medicis.  In order to prevent the Grand Duke from discovering her fraud, Bianca caused several of the persons who had had a part in the deception to be assassinated.  At length the wife of Francis, the Archduchess Joan of Austria, died in childbed; and Bianca intrigued so successfully, that she persuaded her lover to marry her.  Her marriage with the Grand Duke took place on the 12th of October, 1579, and was so sumptuous that it cost one hundred thousand Florentine ducats.  Her tyranny and rapacity soon made her universally hated.  She is supposed, as well as her husband, to have died by poison, administered to them through the means of his brother, the Cardinal Ferdinand of Medicis, who succeeded him as Grand I)uke.-D.

(451) Mr. Mann’s mother was an heiress of that house.

194 Letter 91 To Richard Bentley, Esq.  Arlington Street, March 2, 1754.

After calling two or three times without finding him, I wrote yesterday to Lord Granville,’ and received a most gracious answer, but desiring to see me.  I went.  He repeated all your history with him, and mentioned your vivacity at parting; however, consented to give you the apartment, with great good humour, and said he would write to his bailiff; and added, laughing, that he had an old cross housekeeper, who had regularly quarrelled with all his grantees.  It is well that some of your desires, though unfortunately the most trifling, depend on me alone, as those at least are sure of being executed.  By Tuesday’s coach there will go to Southampton two orange trees, two Arabian jasmines, some tuberose roots, and plenty of cypress seeds, which last I send you in lieu of the olive trees, none of which are yet come over.

The weather grows fine, and I have resumed little flights to Strawberry.  I carried George Montagu thither, who was in raptures, and screamed, and hooped and hollaed, and danced, and crossed himself a thousand times over.  He returns to-morrow to Greatworth, and I fear will give himself up entirely to country squirehood.  But what will you say to greater honour which Strawberry has received?  Nolkejumskoi(453) has been to see it, and liked the windows and staircase.  I can’t conceive how he entered it.  I should have figured him like Gulliver cutting down some of the largest oaks in Windsor Forest to make joint-stools, in order to straddle over the battlements and peep in at the windows of Lilliput.  I can’t deny myself this reflection (even though he liked Strawberry,) as he has not employed you as an architect.