August 4th.

I have dined to-day at Claremont, where I little thought I should dine,(639) but whither our affairs have pretty naturally conducted me.  It turned out a very melancholy day.  Before I got into the house, I heard that letters were just arrived there, with accounts of the Duke of Devonshire having had two more fits.  When I came to see Lord John’s(640) and Lord Frederick’s letters, I found these two fits had been but one, and that very slight, much less than the former, and certainly nervous by all the symptoms, as Sir Edward Wilmot, who has been at Chatsworth, pronounces it.  The Duke perceived it coming, and directed what to have done, and it was over in four minutes.  The next event was much more real.  I had been half round the garden with the Duke in his one-horse chair; we were passing to the other side of the house, when George Onslow met us, arrived on purpose to advertise the Duke of the sudden death of the Duchess of Leeds,(641) who expired yesterday at dinner in a moment:  he called it apoplectic; but as the Bishop of Oxford,(642) who is at Claremont, concluded, it was the gout flown up into the head.  The Duke received the news as men do at seventy-one:  but the terrible part was to break it to the Duchess, who is ill.  George Onslow would have taken me away to dinner with him, but the Duke thought that would alarm the Duchess too abruptly, and she is not to know it yet:  with her very low spirits it is likely to make a deep impression.  It is a heavy stroke too for her father, poor old Lord Godolphin, who is eighty-six.  For the Duke, his spirits, under so many mortifications and calamities, are surprising:  the only effect they and his years seem to have made on him is to have abated his ridicules.(643) Our first meeting to be sure was awkward, yet I never saw a man conduct any thing with more sense than he did.  There were no notices of what is passed; nothing fulsome, no ceremony, civility enough, confidence enough, and the greatest ease.  You would only have thought that I had been long abroad, and was treated like an old friend’s son with whom he might make free.  In truth, I never saw more rational behaviour:  I expected a great deal of flattery, but we had nothing but business while we were alone, and common conversation while the Bishop and the Chaplain were present.  The Duke mentioned to me his having heard Lord Holland’s inclination to your embassy.  He spoke very obligingly of you, and said that, next to his own children, he believed there was nobody the late Lord Hardwicke loved so much as you.  I cannot say that the Duke spoke very affectionately of Sir Joseph Yorke. who has never written a single line to him since he was out.  I told him that did not surprise me, for Sir Joseph has treated your brother in the same manner, though the latter has written two letters to him since his dismission.

Arlington Street, Tuesday night, 10 o’clock.