42 To LADY OSSORY 15 SEPTEMBER 1770
To LADY OSSORY, Saturday 8 September 1770
Missing; referred to, post 15 Sept. 1770.
To LADY OSSORY, Saturday 15 September 1770
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 15, 1770. IT was lucky for your Ladyship and Lord Ossory that I prevented your doing me the honour of a visit last Monday. The very night I wrote (this day sennight) I was put into my bed, and have not been out of it since but three times to have it made. I will not tell your Ladyship what I have suffered, because lovers and good Christians are alone allowed to brag of their pains, and to be very vain of being very miserable. I am content at present with having recovered my write-ability enough to thank your Ladyship and Lord Ossory for your kind intentions, which for my own sake I have not virtue enough to decline, nor for your sakes the confidence to accept. Lord Ossory has seen me in the gout1 and knows I am not very peevish; consequently you might bear to make me a visit, but as I cannot flatter myself that I shall be able to quit my bedchamber before Tuesday, since at this instant I am writing in bed, I dare not ask you, Madam, to risk passing any time in a sick-chamber. As nothing would give me more pleasure sincerely than to see your Ladyship and Lord Ossory here for a few days, when I could enjoy it, why should not you a short time hence bring Mr Fitzpatrick,2 Harry Conway^ Charles Fox,* or who you please, and make a little October party hither?^ It would be the most agreeable honour in the
1. At Paris in 1765. 80, Downton 1780-4; of Norris Castle, Isle 2. Hon. Richard Fitzpatrick (1748- of Wight (Eton Coll. Reg.). 1813), Lord Ossory's brother and Charles 4. Hon. Charles James Fox (1749-1806), James Fox's friend and adviser; M.P.; statesman; 2d son of Henry, 1st Bn Hol army officer (General, 1803); author of oc land. His elder brother, Stephen, was mar casional verse (Old Westminsters). ried to Lord Ossory's sister, Lady Mary. 3. Hon. (from 1793, Lord) Henry 5. Vernon Smith's note, i. 9: 'The fol Seymour-Conway (1746-1830), 2d son of lowing is Lord Ossory's own opinion of HW's cousin, Lord Hertford; clerk of the the social talents of some of the best talk Crown and Hanaper, Ireland, 1768-88; ers of his day:—"Horace Walpole was an M.P. Coventry 1766-74, Midhurst 1774- agreeable lively man, very affected, al-