His ill-health, which
he carefully concealed, his fastidiousness, his ultra-delicacy of
habits, formed an agreeable contrast to the coarse robustness of 'Sir
Robert,' and constituted a relief after the society of the vulgar,
strong-minded minister, who was born for the hustings and the House of
Commons rather than for the courtly drawing-room.
John Lord Hervey, long vice-chamberlain to Queen Caroline, was, like Sir
Robert Walpole, descended from a commoner's family, one of those good
old squires who lived, as Sir Henry Wotton says, 'without lustre and
without obscurity.' The Duchess of Marlborough had procured the
elevation of the Herveys of Ickworth to the peerage. She happened to be
intimate with Sir Thomas Felton, the father of Mrs. Hervey, afterwards
Lady Bristol, whose husband, at first created Lord Hervey, and
afterwards Earl of Bristol, expressed his obligations by retaining as
his motto, when raised to the peerage, the words 'Je n'oublieray
jamais,' in allusion to the service done him by the Duke and Duchess of
Marlborough.
The Herveys had always been an eccentric race; and the classification of
'men, women, and Herveys,' by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, was not more
witty than true.
Pages:
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344