Between ten and eleven Mr. Fox and Comyn and I set out for Baltimore House.  When you go to London, my dears, you will find a vast difference in the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury from what it was that May morning in 1770.  Great Russell Street was all a sweet fragrance of gardens, mingling with the smell of the fields from the open country to the north.  We drove past red Montagu House with its stone facings and dome, like a French hotel, and the cluster of buildings at its great gate.  It had been then for over a decade the British Museum.  The ground behind it was a great resort for Londoners of that day.  Many a sad affair was fought there, but on that morning we saw a merry party on their way to play prisoner’s base.

Then we came to the gardens in front of Bedford House, which are now Bloomsbury Square.  For my part I preferred this latter mansion to the French creation by its side, and admired its long and graceful lines.  Its windows commanded a sweep from Holborn on the south to Highgate on the north.  To the east of it, along Southampton Row, a few great houses had gone up or were building; and at the far end of that was Baltimore house, overlooking her Grace of Bedford’s gardens.  Beyond Lamb’s Conduit Fields stretched away to the countryside.

I own I had a lively curiosity to see that lordly ruler, the proprietor of our province, whose birthday we celebrated after his Majesty’s.  Had I not been in a great measure prepared, I should have had a revulsion indeed.

When he heard that Mr. Fox and my Lord Comyn were below stairs he gave orders to show them up to his bedroom, where he received us in a night-gown embroidered with oranges.  My Lord Baltimore, alas! was not much to see.  He did not make the figure a ruler should as he sat in his easy chair, and whined and cursed his Swiss.  He was scarce a year over forty, and he had all but run his race.  Dissipation and corrosion had set their seal upon him, had stamped his yellow face with crows’ feet and blotted it with pimples.  But then the glimpse of a fine gentleman just out of bed of a morning, before he is made for the day, is unfair.

“Morning, Charles!  Howdy, Jack!” said his Lordship, apathetically.  “Glad to know you, Mr. Carvel.  Heard of your family.  ’Slife!  Wish there were more like ’em in the province.”

This sentiment not sitting very well upon his Lordship, I bowed, and said nothing.

“By the bye,” he continued, pouring out his chocolate into the dish, “I sent a damned rake of a parson out there some years gone.  Handsome devil, too.  Never seen his match with the women, egad.  ’Od’s fish—­” he leered.  And then added with an oath and a nod and a vile remark:  “Married three times to my knowledge.  Carried off dozen or so more.  Some of ’em for me.  Many a good night I’ve had with him.  Drank between us one evening at Essex’s gallon and half Champagne and Burgundy apiece.  He got to know too much, y’ know,” he concluded, with a wicked wink.  “Had to buy him up pack him off.”