Is not it strange that London, in February and Parliament sitting, should furnish no more paragraphs?  Yet, confined at home and in every body’s way, and consequently my room being a coffee-house from two to four, I probably hear all events worth relating as soon as they are born, and send you them before they are a week old.  Indeed, I think the Gunninhiana may last you a month at Pisa, where, I suppose, the grass grows in the streets as fast as news.  When I go out again I am likely to know less:  I go but to few, and those the privatest places I can find, which are not the common growth of London; nor, but to amuse you, should I inquire after news.  What is a juvenile world to me; or its pleasures, interests, or squabbles?  I scarce know the performers by sight.

21st.

It is very hard!  The Gunnings will not let me or the town have done with them.  La Madre has advertised a Letter to the Duke of Argyll:  so he is forced to collect counter affidavits.  The groom has ’deposed that she promised him twenty pounds a year for his life, and he has given up a letter that she wrote to him.  The mother, when she went after the Marquis, would have persuaded him to get into her chaise; but he would not venture being carried to Gretna-green, and married by force.  She then wanted him to sign a paper, that all was over between him and her daughter.  He said, “Madam, nothing was ever begun;” and refused.  I told you wrong:  mother and daughter were not actually in the Duchess of Bedford’s house, but in Lord John Russel’s, which she lent to them:  nor were her servants witnesses to the oath before Justice Hide, but Dr. Halifax and the apothecary.  The Signora and her Infanta now, for privacy, are retired into St. James’s-street, next door to Brooks’s; whence it is supposed Miss will angle for unmarried Marquises-perhaps for Lord Titchfield.(744) It is lost time for people to write novels, who can compose such a romance as these good folks have invented.  Adieu!

(741) Mr. Trevelyan married in the following August, Maria, daughter of Sir Thomas Spencer Wilson, Bart.  On the death of his father, in 1828, he succeeded to the title, as fifth baronet.-E.

(742) Afterwards lieutenant- governor of Gibraltar.  He died in 1802.

(743) Colonel Lenox recovered from his illness, and, in 1806, succeeded his uncle as fourth Duke of Richmond.  His grace was governor of Canada at the period of his decease, at Montreal, in 1819; and was succeeded by the son here anticipated; who was born on the 3d of August 1791.-E.

(744) In 1795, the, Marquis of Titchfield married Miss Scott, eldest daughter and heir of General John Scott, of Balcomie, in the county of Fife, and in 1809, succeeded his father as fourth Duke of Portland.-E.

Letter 371. \To The Miss Berrys.  Berkeley Square, Feb. 26, 1791. (page 479)