One evening, when he was to speak, a party of
fashionable Amazons, with two duchesses--her grace of Queensberry and
her grace of Ancaster--at their head, stormed the House of Lords and
disturbed the debate with noisy laughter and sneers. Poor Lord Hervey
was completely daunted, and spoke miserably. After Sir Robert Walpole's
fall Lord Hervey retired. The following letter from him to Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu fully describes his position and circumstances:--
'I must now,' he writes to her, 'since you take so friendly a part in
what concerns me, give you a short account of my natural and political
health; and when I say I am still alive, and still privy seal, it is all
I can say for the pleasure of one or the honour of the other; for since
Lord Orford's retiring, as I am too proud to offer my service and
friendship where I am not sure they will be accepted of, and too
inconsiderable to have those advances made to me (though I never forgot
or failed to return any obligation I ever received), so I remain as
illustrious a nothing in this office as ever filled it since it was
erected. There is one benefit, however, I enjoy from this loss of my
court interest, which is, that all those flies which were buzzing about
me in the summer sunshine and full ripeness of that interest, have all
deserted its autumnal decay, and from thinking my natural death not far
off, and my political demise already over, have all forgot the death-bed
of the one and the coffin of the other.
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