CHAPTER XXI

MEMOIRS OF LADY HERVEY AND HORACE WALPOLE—­BELZONI—­MILMAN—­SOUTHEY —­MRS. RUNDELL, ETC.

About the beginning of 1819 the question of publishing the letters and reminiscences of Lady Hervey, grandmother of the Earl of Mulgrave, was brought under the notice of Mr. Murray.  Lady Hervey was the daughter of Brigadier-General Lepel, and the wife of Lord Hervey of Ickworth, author of the “Memoirs of the Court of George II. and Queen Caroline.”  Her letters formed a sort of anecdotal history of the politics and literature of her times.  A mysterious attachment is said to have existed between her and Lord Chesterfield, who, in his letters to his son, desired him never to mention her name when he could avoid it, while she, on the other hand, adopted all Lord Chesterfield’s opinions, as afterwards appeared in the aforesaid letters.  Mr. Walter Hamilton, author of the “Gazetteer of India,” an old and intimate friend of Mr. Murray, who first brought the subject under Mr. Murray’s notice, said, “Lady Hervey writes more like a man than a woman, something like Lady M.W.  Montagu, and in giving her opinion she never minces matters.”  Mr. Hamilton recommended that Archdeacon Coxe, author of the “Lives of Sir Robert and Horace Walpole,” should be the editor.  Mr. Murray, however, consulted his fidus Achates, Mr. Croker; and, putting the letters in his hands, asked him to peruse them, and, if he approved, to edit them.  The following was Mr. Croker’s answer: 

Mr. Croker to John Murray.

November 22, 1820.

DEAR MURRAY,

I shall do more than you ask.  I shall give you a biographical sketch—­sketch, do you hear?—­of Lady Hervey, and notes on her letters, in which I shall endeavour to enliven a little the sameness of my author.  Don’t think that I say sameness in derogation of dear Mary Lepel’s powers of entertainment.  I have been in love with her a long time; which, as she was dead twenty years before I was born, I may without indiscretion avow; but all these letters being written in a journal style and to one person, there is a want of that variety which Lady Hervey’s mind was capable of giving.  I have applied to her family for a little assistance; hitherto without success; and I think, as a lover of Lady Hervey’s, I might reasonably resent the little enthusiasm I find that her descendants felt about her.  In order to enable me to do this little job for you, I wish you would procure for me a file, if such a thing exists, of any newspaper from about 1740 to 1758, at which latter date the Annual Register begins, as I remember.  So many little circumstances are mentioned in letters, and forgotten in history, that without some such guide, I shall make but blind work of it.  If it be necessary, I will go to the Museum and grab them, as my betters have done before me.  My dear little Nony [Footnote:  Mr. Croker’s adopted daughter, afterwards married to Sir George Barrow.] was worse last night, and not better all to-day; but this evening they make me happy by saying that she is decidedly improved.