Good and correct as she was, Lady
Hervey viewed with a fashionable composure the various intimacies formed
during the course of their married life by his lordship.
The fact is, that the aim of both was not so much to insure their
domestic felicity as to gratify their ambition. Probably they were
disappointed in both these aims--certainly in one of them; talented,
indefatigable, popular, lively, and courteous, Lord Hervey, in the House
of Commons, advocated in vain, in brilliant orations, the measures of
Walpole. Twelve years, fourteen years elapsed, and he was left in the
somewhat subordinate position of vice-chamberlain, in spite of that high
order of talents which he possessed, and which would have been displayed
to advantage in a graver scene. The fact has been explained: the queen
could not do without him; she confided in him; her daughter loved him;
and his influence in that court was too powerful for Walpole to dispense
with an aid so valuable to his own plans. Some episodes in a life thus
frittered away, until, too late, promotion came, alleviated his
existence, and gave his wife only a passing uneasiness, if even indeed
they imparted a pang.
One of these was his dangerous passion for Miss Vane; another, his
platonic attachment to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
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