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-.