The Duke seems for this year to have deserted us.  Monsieur de Calonne engrosses all the time which he can spare from Newmarket.  Frederick St. John’s match is, as I am told, at an end.  But then the Duchess of R(utland’s) widowhood is just begun.  I have lost myself the opportunity of being his rival.  Her Grace was in this house last summer with me, and alone, but how could I foresee the event which has since happened? and a survivance at my age could not be thought an object.  I do not hear who are to compose the next Court at the Castle.  You see whom the papers name, and perhaps can say who are the most likely to go there. . . .

(235) Charlotte Margaret, daughter of Sir Robert Gunning, K.C.B., Minister at the Courts of Copenhagen, Berlin, and St. Petersburg.  Miss Gunning, who was Maid of Honour to the Queen, must not be confused with the two celebrated sisters of an earlier period, or with Miss Elizabeth Gunning, a well-known and much-talked-of beauty at this time,

The correspondence from 1788 to the end of Selwyn’s life is entirely with Lady Carlisle.  Carlisle himself appears to have been much in London during that period, and thus in companionship with his old friend.  But letter-writing had become at once a habit and a necessity.  It was—­and can always be where there is what he has called an epanchement de Coeur—­an unceasing pleasure and solace.  There is only required pen, paper, and ink, and the last bit of news, the thought of the moment can be written down and exchanged with the friend at a distance.  It matters not that the letter does not reach its destination for some time to come.  In the transcribing of the thought, there is the sharing of it with another, and imagination anticipates its reception.

(1788, November) 20, Thursday, Cleveland Court.(236)—­George, you know, set out on Tuesday, and to-morrow I hope that you will see him, and as well as when I took leave of him.  I will own fairly to you, that it was some degree ’of anxiety to me, that he had no servant to go with him so long a journey. . . .  When I left him in Grosvenor Place I came here to write to you a letter, . . . but condemned it to the flames.  This Lord C., with whom I have breakfasted, has reproved me for:  he was sorry that I did not send it; you should not be left out of the secret, you should know as much as your neighbours, &c.  You shall do so, if I can furnish you with any intelligence, and although you never tell me anything which I have not seen before, a fortnight past, in the Gazette, I shall not use the same reserve with you.  I intend to write constantly to you, or to my Lord, what comes to my knowledge, true or false, and when I may cite the authors of my news I will, and what I ought to keep secret I must, but I think that there will be no occasion for that; I desire to be trusted with no secrets myself.  Those who are, tell them soon enough for me. . . .