I intended to send you the brief chronicle of Lord George Sackville but your brother says he has writ to you this morning.  If you want to know minute particulars, which neither he nor I should care to detail in a letter, I will tell you them if you will call for a minute at Strawberry on Sunday or Monday, as you go to your camp.  I ask this boldly, though I have not been with you; but it was impossible; George Montagu and his brother returned to Strawberry with me from the Vine, and I am expecting Mr. Churchill and Lady Mary, who sent me word they would come to me as soon as I came back, and I think you will find them with me.

Lady Mary Coke is stripping off all the plumes that she has been wearing for Niagara, etc., and is composing herself into religious melancholy against to-morrow night, when she goes to Princess Elizabeth’s burial.  I passed this whole morning most deliciously at my Lady Townshend’s.  Poor Roger, for whom she is not concerned, has given her a hint that her hero George may be mortal too; she scarce spoke, unless to improve on some bitter thing that Charles said, who was admirable.  He made me all the speeches that Mr. Pitt will certainly make next winter, in every one of which Charles says, and I believe, he will talk of this great campaign, “memorable to all posterity with all its imperfections-a campaign which, though obstructed, cramped, maimed—­but I will say no more.”

The campaign in Ireland, I hear, will be very warm; the Primate is again to be the object; Ponsonby, commander against him.  Lord George’s situation will not help the Primate’s.  Adieu!

(1070) Now first printed.

512 Letter 335
To George Montagu, Esq. 
Strawberry Hill, Saturday, October 11, 1759.

I don’t desire any such conviction of your being ill as seeing you nor can you wonder that I wish to persuade myself that what I should be very sorry for, never happens.  Poor Fred. Montagu’s gout seems more serious:  I am concerned that he has so much of a judge in him already.

You are very good in thinking of me about the sofas; but you know the Holbein chamber is complete, and old matters arc not flung away upon you yourself Had not you rather have your sofa than Lord Northampton’s running footman?  Two hundred years hence one might be amused with reading of so fantastic a dress, but they are horrid in one’s own time.  Mr. Bentley and I go to-morrow to Chaffont for two or three days.  Mr. Chute is at the Vine already, but, I believe, will be in town this week.

I don’t know whether it proceeds from the menaced invasion or the last comet, but we are all dying of heat.  Every body has put out their fires, and, if it lasts, I suppose will next week make summer clothes.  The mornings are too hot for walking:  last night I heard of strawberries.  I impute it to the hot weather that my head has been turned enough to contend with the bards of the newspapers.  You have seen the French epigram on Madame Pompadour, and fifty vile translations of it.  Here is Mine—­