SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

POLITICAL CORRESPONDENCE,

Memoirs of Viscountess Sundon, Mistress of the Robes to Queen Caroline, ConSON Of George Ii.; including Letter, from the most celebrated Parsons of her Time. Now first published from the Originals. By Mrs. Thomson, Author of " The Life of the

Hutches! of Marlborough," "Memoir, of the Court of Henry VIII.," Soc In two

volumes Chairs.

GEOGRAPHY,

A Sketch of Assam ; with some Account of the HMI Tribes. By an Officer in the Honourable East India Company's Bengal Native Infantry, In-Civil Employ. "nal Illustrations from Sketches by the Author anti& and Skier..

Jack Ariel; or Life on Board an Indianian. By the Author of the "Post Captain," "Travels In America," and a " Life of Chatterton." in three volumes... —Newer.

MRS. THOMSON'S MEMOIRS OF VISCOUNTESS SUNDON.

Mee. CLarron, afterwards Viscountess Sundon' was supposed to stand in the same relation towards Queen Caroline, wife of George the Second, that the celebrated Abigail Hill did to Queen Anne,—with this very important distinction, however, that strong minds choose confidants for the qualities they possess and the uses they will answer, and treat them as valued tools ; whereas weak people make them their favourites, to be. come their masters. Mrs. Clayton doubtless had great opportunities of recommending those she preferred, by putting their merits in the best light, on the most favourable occasions ; and when the beam is on the balance, a confidential person will always be able to turn the scale. Some patronage she must have had, as a fair right or perquisite of her position; and her very favour for a series of years implies influence. Every cour- tier or aspirant for promotion would do his best to flatter such a person ; and the majority might really write in good faith as believing Mrs. Clay- ton's powers were such as report assigned to her. The letters published by Mrs. Thomson would seem to indicate that Queen Caroline's favourite was to a great extent a channel for her royal mistress ; who attained through her means fuller and freer communications than could have been addressed to herself: and, however politely disguised, it is clear that this was known by the more important writers,—such as Dr. Alured Clarke, who writes on theology and literature, with a dash of political gossip ; or Bishop Clayton a connexion of the favourite by her marriage, who ad- dresses her on Irish politics, or rather on Irish corruption. The non- perception of this fact in its full extent has rather affected Mrs. Thom- son's estimates, and sometimes her personal judgmenta,—that, for in- stance, on the above-named Bishop. The right reverend intriguer was indeed subservient enough; but his servility, though addressed to Mrs. Clayton, was not intended for her but for the Queen, and through her means perhaps for Walpole. He did not submit his sermon for the 306 of January to Mrs. Clayton, and subsequently heighten the misdoings of the Stuarts in compliance with a hint, for her opinion alone : the Bishop was looking to a loftier critic. Such views as the following on the Irish rulers were not written merely to a I3erlehamber-woman or Mistress of the Robes, but with some tolerable certainty that they would have a greater reader.

"THE BISHOP OF RILLALA TO NEES. CLAYTON.

"Dublin, 9th November 1731.

"Madam—I hope you have received the letter which I wrote you soon after my coming to town. .However, I cannot forbear laying hold of this opportunity of sending this letter to you by a private hand, which, as it contains some things that do not please me, and I believe will not please you, I should not have ven- tured to have sent by the post. I believe it will not be unacceptable to you to let you know the true state of affairs in this kingdom; and therefore I have sat down with a full intent of giving you as particular an account as I am able. " The Duke, [of Dorset, Lord-Lieutenant,] ever since he came over, has lived in a very splendid and magnificent manner: be behaves himself very civilly, but with something of more height than is agreeable. He has three mornings in the week that he sees company at his levee. He stays but a short time out, speaks but to a few, and that but very little. You may easily perceive that entertaining of a mixed company is not his talent. When he entertains at dinner or supper, he does it with great magnificence' his retinue in great order, and all his attend- ants perfectly civil and camplaisant. I have dined twice with him on public days, along with the rest of the nobility. rhe Dutehm has a drawingroom twice a week, in the evenings, at one of which there is always a ball: this also is very orderly and handsome. On his Majesty's birth-day, everything was very grand; and the day following there was noble entertainment given the town, in imitation of a ridotto, where the rooms were ornamented, at his Grace's expense, in a very splpidid way, and nothing was wanting that could add to the grandeur of the entertainment. "All this is very well, but it does no business. Men who are to do one a ser- vice must be gained by something particular. No one thinks it an obligation to be lumped with a crowd. There are many Members in Parliament, which have been a good while in town, that his Grace or his Secretary hardly know the faced. To remedy this, I desired Mr. Carey [the Secretary] to come sometimes and dine with me; and told him, that if he would let me know when he would come, that I would always take care to have some of the Members of the House to meet him there, and I would take care to have engaged such as are against the Court, that if we could not have gained them over, we would, at least, have taken off their edge. But I have never had the pleasure of seeing him at my house since I wrote to you last, but once in a morning, when be paid a formal visit. I do not know what station Mr. Carey has acted in in England, but to me he does not seem to understand business. He is too busy inpublie, and too little so in private. In the House of Commons, where he should sit still, he is perpetually minim About speaking to the Members, even in the midst of a debate. However, the state of the nation, with regard to its debts and the vote for borrowing an additional loan of 100,000L, was all carried on with great ease and quietness; and indeed I thought the business of the session was over."

The Bishop, however, was mistaken; for the Court were defeated on some question, and by a single vote. In the following exhibition of per- sonal meanness, he lays the fault at the door of the Secretary, whom he had previously described as "putting on high airs"; and who was, says Dr. Clayton, "imprudent enough one day, wken he was talking to me,.to call it his Administration."

"I carried my Lord Percival's son to wait upon Mr. Carey, and presented him to him. He went afterwards to wait upon him by himself, but did not find him within; and when Mr. Percival told me that Mr. Carey had never returned his visit, I told him it must be the fault of the servant, who had never informed his master; and desired him, when be next met Mr. Carey in the Parliament House, to let him know he had been to see him: which he accordingly did; but from that time to this he has never heard anything from Mr. Carey. "My Lord Percival has an estate in this kingdom, now let for 5,6001. a year; his son is in the House of Commons; and there are two other Members of Parlia- ment, one of which is his receiver, and the other his receiver's son, that are very much influenced by him. I am not well enough acquainted with Mr. Carey to pretend to instruct him in pieces of good breeding; but I hinted it to a friend of his, who, I believe, has since told him; for within this day or two he has come up to Mr. Percival and asked him some questions about his father: but it is now too late. Ibis natural for everybody to desire to be thought of some consequence; and if they cannot gain some regard by fair means' if they have any spirit they will strive to gain it by opposition. This has been the effect of Mr. Carey's neg- ligence; which! did not think had made so great an impression, till I found Mr. Percival, in the last debate of consequence, voting with the Country people, as they call themselves. The Court lost it but by a single vote; whereas, had there been but the least proper precaution taken, they might have carried it by twenty."

Of a woman so important as a channel of communication, and from her position so influential, little is known and that little is not very eventful. Her family would seem to have 'been reputable,—perhaps, in the phrase of her day, " genteel"; for the letters of her nieces are well written and well bred : but it was seemingly obscure, and straitened in means. Her maiden name was Dyves ; and she married Mr. Clayton, a clerk in the Treasury; but how, when, or under what circumstances, does not appear. Mr. Clayton was a regular methodical man of business, and one of the managers of the Duke of Marlborough's estates. This connexion was the foundation of the fortunes of the pair; for Mrs. Clay- ton had so conciliated the favour of Sarah Dutchess of Marlborough as to be styled her "dear friend"' and on the arrival of George the First in used England, the Dutchess us her interest to get Mrs. Clayton appointed a Bedchamber-woman to Caroline Princess of Wales. This position she held for many years ; she was subsequently appointed Mistress of the Robes to the Queen ; and in 1735 her husband was created Viscount Sundon. On the death of Queen Caroline, in 1737, the importance of the Visammtess passed away; and, as far as the public was concerned, she sunk into as great an obscurity as that from which she originally emerged. She died in 1742.

A. life so little known furnishes scanty materials for biography ; but Mrs. Clayton left behind her seven thick volumes of manuscript papers. From this depository the letters in these volumes have been selected by Mrs. Thomson, and published with passages descriptive of the writers. The work is therefore not a memoir of Lady Sundon for there is scarcely anything to tell about her, but a selection from the letters addressed to her with notices of the writers, from a few brief remarks to lengthened " characters " and biographical sketches. In common hands this would be liable to wear too much of a book-making appearance ; but Mrs. Thomson's readings both of love and labour have run so much among the courtiers and literati of the last century, that most of what she does in this way is fresh, spontaneous, and interesting. As far as structure and arrangement are in question, her sketches are open to criticism. She gives a character of Sheffield Duke of Buckingham because his widow wrote a letter to Mrs. Clayton. The son of the celebrated Harley ad- dressed the favourite; but as there is little to say of him, Mrs. Thomson gives a notice of the father. Dr. Alured Clarke sent Mrs. Clayton an account of Budgell's Memoirs of the Boyles; and both Budgell and the Boyles are exhibited at some length. The once notorious Stephen Duck, a sort of Blomfield in his day, whose patronage by the Queen excited the ire of Savage, probably falls under this category, for the letters are about him, not from him. The whole of these rather forced introductions, how- ever, are very good of their kind. They furnish the reader with agreeable anecdotical information about well-known names by one who is mistress of her subject and of a full and easy style. Taken in conjunction with the other portraits, they are a gallery of remarkable characters ; which even those who have met fuller pictures before, have no objection to see again by another hand, from another point of view. Any of these larger pictures will furnish an example of the agreeable anecdotes which Mrs. Thomson has brought together.

FREDERICK PRINCE OF WALES, AND HIS SISTER.

The dissolute, pleasure loving Prince was not devoid of many qualities which Weald have rendeted him, in after times, the darling of the nation. He was liberal ahd gooduatured, and a complaisant husband, whose infidelities shocked the peo- ple of his own times far less than sternness or jealousy towards his with would have done. He was fond of his children, even to doting, and he confided in his Bailer's subjects. In those days, it was gratifying to the people to see the heir- apparent walking through the streets unguarded, and followed only by a couple of servants. He had that accessibility of manner which gives such an unspeak- able charm to royalty; and he showed a nicety of principle in one respect which was beyond his age—he always refused to give his vote in Parliament, or to in- fluence in any way the votes of his household. His popularity, as it is well known, soon rose to a height, and in a court where the narrowest German politics prevailed, infallibly produced a coolness between him and his parents: nor did the young Prince act so wisely as to mollify the petty and burning jealousy which his father displayed. It became his delight to tinfoil and irritate those parents, and it seemed his aim gradually to alienate them from him. That end was accomplished; and a disunion, never healed, was tire lamentable result. * In the Princess Anne, her eldest daughter, the Qneen found little con

itive man, of' little mental energy, and deformed in person, and hideous in face.

ge the Second could not, as Horace Walpole relates, in the honesty of hi. heart and the coarseness of his expression, help telling his daughter how frightful a bridegroom she was to expect, and signifying that she might refuse him if she liked. The ambitious girl replied, that she would marry him if he were a baboon." Well, then,' replied the King, there is baboon enough for you.' The Princess was married in March 1734; probably to the great relief of her parents, who, though proud of her understanding and her aceomplishments, could not re- main on terms with the arrogant young lady. In 17M, she became a widow; when she made an attempt to come over to England, in the hope of governing her• father. He however, sent her back to Holland, and never forgave Itee. She was not permitted even to pass two nights in London."

THE PROUD DUTCHER:35a

When the Dutehess [of Bucaingham] found herself dying, she sent for Angels the herald, and settled all the pomp of her funereal ceremony. She was afraid of dying before the preparations were ready: " Why," she asked, " won't they send the canopy for me to see? Let them send it, even though the tassels are not finished." And then she exacted, as Horace Walpole affirms, a vow from her ladies, that if she should become insensible, they would not sit down in her room until she was dead. Funeral honours appear, indeed, to have been her fancy; for when her only son died, she sent messengers to her friends, telling them that if they wished to see him lie in state, she would admit them by the back-stairs. Such was the delicacy of her maternal sorrow. But there was one match in pride and insolence for Katharine Dutchess of Buckingham; this was Sarah Dutchess of Marlborough. Upon the death of the young Duke of Buckingham, his mother endeavoured to borrow the triumphal car that had carried the remains of Marlborough to the grave: " No," replied the widowed Dutchess of Marlborough; "the car that has carried the Duke of Marl- borough's body shall never be profaned by any other." " I have sent to the un- dertaker," was the Dutchess of Buckingham's rejoinder, "and he has engaged to make a better for 201" On her deathbed, the latter expressed a wish to be buried by her father, James the Second, at 'aria. " She need not," was the re- mark of Mr. Selwyn, " be carried out of England to be buried by her father." [" Who," says Mrs. Thomson in a foot-note, " was supposed by the ill-natured to be Colonel Graham."] As far as pleasant reading is concerned, the letters are less attractive than Mrs. Thomson's commentary ; and some of them might well have been spared altogether as insignificant—mere particular communications, that do not exhibit the age, or that contain within themselves neither in- cident nor character. Many possess value of some kind. We have al- ready given an example of Bishop Clayton's ; and nearly all of that pre- late's are useful for their views of Irish affairs, or indications of himself. Dr. Alured Clarke's are interesting from his account of Duck, his literary criticisms, and his matter even upon commoner topics. Several of the ladies furnish Court gossip, and indicate matters of fashion or manners: thus, we read of the Prince of Wales, and "all" the company except the writer, going in the evening to Bartholomew Fair. The suspieione and rivalry of small courtiers, and the timid apprehension of the charge of Jacobitism, are also curious. At Bath, the Princess Amelia spoke to a Jacobite lady; and, for fear of the fact being reported, it was deemed ne- cessary to give an explanation in a letter to Mrs. Clayton.

"FROM THE COUNTESS OF POMFRET TO MRS. CLAYTON.

" Rath, may ITth 5725. "Dearest Madam—Having troubled you with a long letter last post, you will, I believe wonder upon what pretence I renew my importunity so soon; but I knew your good-nature too well not to be sensible you like to employ it, especially for a person that merits it. To my story then. I must tell you, when first the Prin- cess came to Bath, there was a great number of Roman Catholics here, and some very considerable ones, amongst them the late Lord Widdrington and his lady; you know he was pardoned by the late King, and favoured afterwards by the Parliament. Since both these things he has behaved himself with becoming re- spect; and for her part, she is a woman well born and well bred, and a Protes- tant. Some time ago, the Princess saw use speak to her at the Pump, where she was inquiring how her Royal Highness did; and then the Princess was so Ob- liging as to say a word or two to her; which had such an effect upon all of that sort in this city, that is hardly to be imagined, and they all speak of the Princess Amelia as of something that has charmed them ever since. Yesterday, in the walks, the same Lady Widdrington came near the Princess; who took much no- tice of her, and she walked some time with us. Mrs. Titchbourne was by, and much discomposed at it: from which I feared her ingenuity might make a crime of a rebel's wife, that did not come to the King and Queen, being so regarded, and that, upon her additions and alterations, the Princess might be blamed for that humanity and goodness that is the delight of all reasonable people. "You see, dear Madam, Mrs. Titchbourne has found the way to give me ter- ror; and when I think she can attack the Princess Amelia, I can no longer be content only to despise her. I know no antidote against malice like yourself: and, believe me, in serving this Princess you will please yourself. After we came home, 1 told her my fears and she agreed in them: upon which I said, 'I knew one that had sense and good-nature enough to prevent them.' She smiled and said, Your good friend Mrs. Clayton. You must write to her.' You see, dear Madam, she knows you enough to guess your name by your eserrader; though I often tell her, and she believes, to know you more and love you more is the same thing. I shall not wonder when this arrives to you; but I should be much sur- prised if she could ever esteem anybody that makes their approach through flat- tery, and only for interest. In short, if a more advanced age and a sharp expe- rience do not quite metamorphose her, her service would be paradise to an honest heart.

"I am sure I have spoke mine so much to you, that if I was not quite sure of yours it would be madness; but to trust you and to be trusted by you, has been, and will ever be, the chief satisfaction of my life, who am entirely "Dearest Mrs. Clayton's most faithful and most affectionate humble servant:, IL POMPRZT.

One of the letter-writers is the Lord Hervey whom Pope commemo- rated under various names—Sporus, Lord Fanny, "Narcissus, praised with all a parson's power," alluding to Middleton's rather fulsome dedica- tion. The verse-writing peer is perhaps the smartest correspondent of the whole, but too artificially laboured. The picture of the Court is almost too pointed to be true; the writer is thinking more about his pe- riods than his facts.

"LORD HERVEY TO MRS. CLAYTON.

"Hampton court, JUIY 31. 1733. "Madam—I am going this afternoon with the Duke of Richmond to Goodwood for three or four days; but cannot leave this place without returning you my thanks for the favour of your letter: a debt, perhaps, you would be inure ready to forgive than receive, but as it is of that sort that, one pays more for ones own sake than one's creditors, I plead no merit from the discharge of it, but the plea- sure of taking any occasion to assure you how much 1 am your humble servant. "I will not trouble you with any account of our occupations at Hampton Court No mill-horse ever went in a more constant track or a more unchanging circle; so that, by the assistance of an almanack for the dey of the week and a wok& for the hour of the day, you may hiform yourself fully, without any other intelli- gence but your memory, of every transaction within the verge of the Court. Walking, obliges, levees, and audiences, fill the morning; sleight, the King playa at commerce and backgammon, and the Queen at quadrille, where poor Lady

Charlotte runs her usual nightly gauntlet—the Queen pulling her hood, Mr. Schutz sputtering in her face, and the Princess Royal rapping her kutickles, all at a time. It was in vain she fled from persecution for her religion: she suffers for her pride what she escaped for her faith, undergoes in a dmwingroom what the dreaded from the Inquisition, and will die a martyr to a court though not to a church.

"The Duke of Grafton takes his nightly opiate of lottery, and sleeps as usual between the Princesses Amelia and Carolina; Lord Grantham strolls from one room to another, (as Dryden says,) like some discontented ghost that oft appears, and is forbid to speak, and stirs himself about as people stir a fire, not with any design, but in hopes to make it burn brisker; which his Lordship constantly does, to no purpose, and yet tries as constantly as if if had ever once succeeded. At last the King comes up, the pool finishes, and everybody has their dismission: their Majesties retire to Lady Charlotte and my Lord Lifford; the Princesses, to Bilderbec and Lony ; my Lord Grantham, to Lady Frances and Mr. Clark; some to supper, and some to bed; and thus (to speak in the Scripture phrase) the evening and the morning make the day. "Adieu, dear Madam; and believe me, without the formality of a conclusion, "Most sincerely yours,