Volume I Part 24 (2/2)
Yours, etc.
P.S.--Remember me to Dr. P.
[Footnote 1: See page 137 [Letter 76], [Foot]note 2.]
[Footnote 2: The d.u.c.h.ess of Gordon (1748-1812), 'nee' Jean Maxwell of Monreith, daughter of Sir W. Maxwell, Bart., married in 1767 the Duke of Gordon. The most successful matchmaker of the age, she married three of her daughters to three dukes--Manchester, Richmond, and Bedford. A fourth daughter was Lady Mandalina Sinclair, afterwards, by a second marriage, Lady Mandalina Palmer. A fifth was married to Lord Cornwallis (see the extraordinary story told in the 'Recollections of Samuel Rogers', pp. 145-146). According to Wraxall ('Posthumous Memoirs', vol.
ii. p. 319), she schemed to secure Pitt for her daughter Lady Charlotte, and Eugene Beauharnais for Lady Georgiana, afterwards d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford. Cyrus Redding ('Memoirs of William Beckford', vol. ii. pp.
337-339) describes her attack upon the owner of Fonthill, where she stayed upwards of a week, magnificently entertained, without once seeing the wary master of the house.
She was also the social leader of the Tories, and her house in Pall Mall, rented from the Duke of Buckingham, was the meeting-place of the party. Malcontents accused her of using her power tyrannically:--
”Not Gordon's broad and brawny Grace, The last new Woman in the Place With more contempt could blast.”
'Pandolfo Attonito' (1800).
Lord Alexander Gordon died in 1808.]
[Footnote 3: William Hutton (1723-1815), a Birmingham bookseller, who took to literature and became a voluminous writer of poems, and of topographical works which still have their value. In his 'Trip to Redcar and Coatham' (Preface, p. vi.) he says,
”I took up my pen at the advanced age of fifty-six ... I drove the quill thirty years, during which time I wrote and published thirty books.”
'The Battle of Bosworth Field' was published in 1788. A new edition, with additions by John Nichols, appeared in 1813. Byron's poem was never published.]
79.--To Elizabeth Bridget Pigot.
London, August 11, 1807.
On Sunday next I set off for the Highlands. [1] A friend of mine accompanies me in my carriage to Edinburgh. There we shall leave it, and proceed in a _tandem_ (a species of open carriage) though the western pa.s.ses to Inverary, where we shall purchase _shelties_, to enable us to view places inaccessible to _vehicular conveyances_. On the coast we shall hire a vessel, and visit the most remarkable of the Hebrides; and, if we have time and favourable weather, mean to sail as far as Iceland, only 300 miles from the northern extremity of Caledonia, to peep at _Hecla_. This last intention you will keep a secret, as my nice _mamma_ would imagine I was on a Voyage of _Discovery_, and raised the accustomed _maternal warwhoop_.
Last week I swam in the Thames from Lambeth through the two bridges, Westminster and Blackfriars, a distance, including the different turns and tracks made on the way, of three miles! [2] You see I am in excellent training in case of a _squall_ at sea. I mean to collect all the Erse traditions, poems, etc., etc., and translate, or expand the subject to fill a volume, which may appear next spring under the denomination of _”The Highland ”Harp”_ or some t.i.tle equally _picturesque_. Of Bosworth Field, one book is finished, another just began. It will be a work of three or four years, and most probably never _conclude_. What would you say to some stanzas on Mount Hecla?
they would be written at least with _fire_. How is the immortal Bran?
and the Phoenix of canine quadrupeds, Boatswain? I have lately purchased a thorough-bred bull-dog, worthy to be the coadjutor of the aforesaid celestials--his name is _s.m.u.t!_
”Bear it, ye breezes, on your _balmy_ wings.”
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