(77) Anthony, the sixth Viscount Montagu, descended from Anthony Brown, created Viscount Montagu in 1554, being descended from John Neville, Marquis of Montagu.

43 Letter 13 To Sir Horace Mann.  Strawberry Hill, Sept. 12, 1749,

I have your two letters to answer of August 15th and 26, and, as far as I see before me, have a great deal of paper, which I don’t know how to fill.  The town is notoriously empty; at Kensington they have scarce company enough to pay for lighting the candles.  The Duke has been for a week with the Duke of Bedford at Woburn; Princess Emily remains, saying civil things; for example, the second time she saw Madame de Mircpoix, she cried out, “Ah!  Madame, vous n’avez pas tant de rouge aujourd’hui:  la premi`ere fois que vous `etes `a not venue ici, vous aviez une quantit`e horrible.”  This the Mirepoix herself repeated to me; you may imagine her astonishment,—­I mean, as far as your duty will give you leave.  I like her extremely; she has a great deal of quiet sense.  They try much to be English and whip into frocks without measure, and fancy they are doing the fashion.  Then she has heard so much of that villanous custom of giving money to the servants of other people, that there is no convincing her that women of fashion never give; she distributes with both hands.  The Chevalier Lorenzi has dined with me here:  I gave him venison, and, as he was determined to like it, he protested it was “as good as beef.”  You will be delighted with what happened to him:  he was impatient to make his brother’s compliments to Mr. Chute, and hearing somebody at Kensington call Mr. Schutz, he easily mistook the sound, and went up to him, and asked him if he had not been at Florence!  Schutz with the utmost Hanoverian gravity, replied, “Oui, oui, J’ai `et`e `a Florence, oui, oui:—­mais o`u est-il, ce Florence?”

The Richcourts(78) are arrived, and have brought with them a strapping lad of your Count; sure, is it the boy my Lady O. used to bring up by hand? he is pretty picking for her now.  The woman is handsome, but clumsy to a degree, and as much too masculine as her lover Rice is too little so.  Sir Charles Williams too is arrived, and tells me how much he has heard in your praise in Germany.  Villettes is here, but I have had no dealings with him.  I think I talk nothing but foreign ministers to-day, as if I were just landed from the Diet of Ratisbon.  But I shall have done on this chapter, and I think on all others, for you say such extravagant things of my letters, which are nothing but Gossiping gazettes, that I cannot bear it.  Then you have undone yourself with me, for you compare them to Madame Sevign`e,’s; absolute treason!  Do you know, there is scarce a book in the world I love so much as her letters?