L30/9a/4

Volume 4 - Transcripts/extracts of correspondence of Jemima Yorke, (Marchioness Grey) sent to Miss Catherine Talbot.

1744-1747

From: 1744 To: 1747

PAGE 2. Wrest. "You have been all this while reading 4 books of Lucan - why, we have read it through since Monday". Detailed criticism - Caesar's soldiers after battle of Pharsalia, Pompey's death, Cornelia's grief; but rant in several places, characters partially drawn. Translation good in general, "that is very expressive, which is all I can judge of", but some peculiarities in style. 1744 PAGE 4. [I n answer to suggestion that she is getting old and dull] "Dull (Madam) I certainly am, but old I will not allow... Could you get a telescope to reach so far, in my room you would see everything gay and riant, the brightest sunshine without it, and all the variety that prints, birds, china and flowers can give to the inside. If you followed me into the garden, you would almost take me for a shepherdess. All the haymaking time I was to be found with my dog and my book among woods and purling steams contemplating the cheerful labours and near enough to converse with the honest labourers, and followed in my walks by a little bounding fawn." Will not allow that Catherine Talbot is old either - must be from want of that staid composed philosophic disposition which Time will bring along with it. 1744 PAGE 7. Reading Don Quixote - Jarvis' translation vastly more spirited and diverting that any previous; more entertainment with it than any book I ever read; impatient to get to it after supper. Dante: does he sometimes make you a little sick? devils, fire and flames almost as much as I can bear. "I fear I shall stick in one of the circles del 'Inferno for this year and not arrive [at Heaven]". History: reading Machiavel and Guichardin. 1744 PAGE 10. Hopes not to go to town for a month or so. Reading about Byzantine emperors. Continuing with Dante, "conducting Dante down to the bottom of hell. I have it something upon my conscience to bring him up again, but I shall not pursue the rest of his journey this year". 13 October 1744. PAGE 13. "Last week was very fatal, it not only killed the old Duchess but Lady Granville. " October 1744. PAGE 14. Wrest. Her long and amusing letters. Mr Charles left Saturday, now soberly and quietly alone; our residence fixed in the library; from tea (that is, from the time it's dark) till supper, sitting on each side of the great table, with a competent quantity of candles, books and papers on it, and looking most profoundly wise. Latterly after supper study Moliere, very amusing. Has not read Davila, but accepts her remarks. Has been reading very early French history (Childerica etc.) Is Catherine Talbot not inconsistent to be a Royalist in England and a Guisard in France? Finds Philip de Commines very entertaining. 26 October (?) PAGE 19. London. Not glad to leave country, but much disposed always to make as much as I can of the present whatever it is. Came through snow and wind and indifferent roads. Politics. 24 November 1744. PAGE 21. London. Has not been to public place; Drury Lane playhouse has riots every night; the oratorios have as strong a party against them as the plays. Books come safe. New edition of Shakespeare, no patience with Sir Thomas' emendations; cuts abominable. Mr Whitehead's poem. 1 December 1744. PAGE 26. "Yes, we did value those former happy days as we ought; we were wise enough to enjoy them with gratitude. Though I am never disposed to quarrel with my situation, I shall always remember them with regret. 5 January 1744/5. PAGE 27.- Rallies her on rising at 6 a.m. at Cuddesdon. News of friends. Never read Cassandra. January 1744/5. PAGE 30. Out of humour with fog, particularly on Mrs Secker's account, shall be more so if it keeps you longer in country as Bishop hinted. Bishop has lent new translation of Horace (Humourous account of its arriving while she was making tea for gentlemen visitors; escape - happy if I did not leave behind me character of precieuse, femme savante, etc. 18 January 1745. PAGE 33. Impossible to describe how happy the fortnight spent together made me. After seeing her off, walked up into my closet and slumbered over a few chapters of Locke till breakfast; after breakfast and prayers went out, though unpleasant day, because I had determined it, and turned my steps to walk you liked best; "dinner bad - no friend that dinner shared"; slept in library over history of Holland and a dab of work; tea. Poor Monsieur had nobody to carry his tea to him, but was forced to move his great desk himself to the table; and what was still worse, had been beat before tea at billiards, and had nobody to revenge himself upon after tea at chess. Short walk in vile unpleasant evening, returned to quiet occupation, settling each side of library table, "when your packet entered and enlivened them". Then supper; then Homer, [apparently coach had taken her to Cuddesdon and returned]. PAGE 38. Wrest. Finished Odyssey. 20 June 1745. PAGE 41. Health directions (semi-serious). Captain Yorke has a company and has become Colonel. Locke goes on; not out of 3rd book, which confuses me most of all. 1745 PAGE 44. Wrest. Alarming news. 11 July 1745. PAGE 46. Wrest. Colonel Yorke's miraculous escape from fall from horse. Army near Brussels. Arcadia. Questions about garden: obelisk is 80 ft high. 18 July 1745. PAGE 49. Wrest. Fawn is dead (as 9a, p.57). Wants an elegy. Idleness; not qualified to shine at card-tables. The work you left me about (whatever it was ) is you may be sure still to be finished. Locke at last rumbled through, but a little in the style of a cat over a harpsichord. The young Pretender. 25 July 1745. PAGE 53. I am glad you are so well pleased with Philip de Comines: I was very much so when I read it, but it must lose extremely in a Translation: His natural & agreeable Naïveté is so much more Naïve in Old French, you can’t imagine how delightful it is & how much like telling a Story. As to myself I never could say so little for It & Its Employments as this year. I have done absolutely nothing instead of being alone & reading soberly, we have been a parcel of Idle People all together all this Summer. Or rather to be more just to my Company, while some have been usefully &Others Ingeniously employed in Reading, Composing & Drawing, I have had nothing better for myself than sitting by & admiring their works. So that excepting two or three Books of Spencer which Miss Yorke & I have got through in our morning Walks, our studies would make but a very poor Figure. The name of the oftenest repeated in them would be Viaggi de Petro de la Valle which Mr Wray was very deep in, & would suffer nothing else to be looked at or talked of all day. It has too much Credit in the Chronicle of Travels to be called a Rum, but it is often Odd enough in the manner of writing & full of as many little trifling Particulars as the best Rum could afford & as Entertaining. I mean really Entertaining, for comparing anything to a Rum is with us the highest compliment. I have just now begun Bentivoglio’s History of Flanders & have resolve to read that & Davila before I leave this Place. August 1745. PAGE 55. Wrest. A packet from Cuddesdon. The '45. 12 September 1745. PAGE 59. Wrest. The '45. 25 September 1745. PAGE 65. London. The '45. 1 October 1745. PAGE 68 - The '45. 5 October 1745. PAGE 71 Catherine Talbot has evidently written that she has had very indifferent spirits all this year "that one is apt in solitude to fall into very serious, not to say melancholy musings". "I have often quarrelled with you (you know) for this disposition, and must continue to do so, and repeat over and over again it is the effect of spirits not of reason. You may carry on as pretty an allegory as you please about the journey of human life, but I cannot allow all the force you give it. The cypress and monuments are indeed excellent waymarks, and very properly kept in view, but I can no more think myself obliged to overlook all the gayer landscapes around me than I should think it necessary if I were travelling over Hounslow Heath to fix my eyes constantly upon the gibbet and the man hanging in chains there". "In short we are not only designed to go through the world, but to live in it. We are made sensible to every accident we may meet with, and as we can't avoid being strongly affected by the sorrows too frequent in it, we ought as easily to receive the impressions of joy it is formed to give us. We ourselves, everything that happens in the world, and every object in it, have that mixture of joy and misery blended in them, and we certainly do not answer the gracious and wise ends of Providence when we let either wholly get the better of us." Thinks we are not properly grateful for our lot, if we have felt no real misfortune but suffer a gloom cloud to spread over our minds... "we have preached as usual, and perhaps neither convinced the other". 19 October 1745. PAGE 74. Birth of prince. Has been to play with Lady Carpenter, (The Nonjuror). 29 October 1745. PAGE 76. The '45. 5th November bonfires. 9 November 1745. PAGE 81. The '45. 23 November 1745. PAGE 83. The '45. 30 November 1745. PAGE 89. The '45. 4 December 1745. PAGE 91. The '45. 6 December 1745. PAGE 96. The '45. 9 December 1745. PAGE 100. The '45. 11 December 1745. PAGE 106. The '45. 14 December 1745. PAGE 112. The '45. 21 December 1745. PAGE 117. The '45. 23 December 1745. PAGE 120. The '45. Playhouses scarce thought of, no opera. 28 December 1745. PAGE 123. Concert at Hickford's. Surrender of Carlisle. Lady Mary has lost child. 4 January 1745/6. PAGE 126. Wrest. Country at this season, never saw it in higher beauty. Every part of the creation, every animal great and small, as regular and finished a design and equally an end in view; every plant or weed. 29 May 1746. PAGE 128. "Bamming." June 1746. PAGE 129. The trials. Expedition to Rochester with Miss Yorke, Mr Wray, Mr Lawry . (as 3, p.110). PAGE 139. Trials. 1 August 1746. PAGE 149. Wrest. Verdicts. 14 August 1746. PAGE 151. Glad she will be at Oxford. "Seem much set upon persuading both yourself and me of the near approach of age". Doesn't like subject - whether because some truth in it, or whether convinced that "as we have felt no misfortunes (thank God!) to change our tempers, we may be as happy as 10 years ago if we please. Executions. 21 August 1746. PAGE 155. Melancholy. Book of persecutions in France. 4 September 1746. PAGE 157.Wrest. Thanksgiving, bonfires answered to every view round house, prodigious pretty effect. 16 October 1746. PAGE 159. London. [Seems to be answering humourous letter about goose]. I would fain have returned you the compliment, and have been looking round my room for some form to offer you; but all are motionless, pictures, chairs, tables, even flower-pots won't be blooming enough till spring; unless you please to be transformed into my harpsichord, and then indeed I shall spend many hours with you. The Abbé's letters dull. Mr Wray and Mr Birch. Pictures. 22 November 1746. PAGE 164. London. General news. 29 November 1746. PAGE 166. General news. 6 December 1746. PAGE 169. Refers to time "when one room was our constant place of meeting". Odes of Mr Warton. No foreign news. 12 December 1746. PAGE 173. General news. 19 December 1746. PAGE 174. General news. December 1746. PAGE 175. London. Town employments - seem necessary - shopping or lying in bed, going to court, to "Drum", to play to see Garrick or Cibber, or fixed down to card-table at Assembly; yet when we look back upon the many hours thus employed we cannot but think them hurry and impertinence. But Catherine Talbot far away from town's empty pursuits. Deep in Pliny's epistles. 10 January 1747. PAGE 178. Pliny; his country life given to study and exercise; "I don't find how Mrs Pliny (for all his charming account of her and his letters to her) could have any share in it or even see him except at supper, or one hour's walk she might be admitted to, perhaps. I fancy she did not racket or gad about so much as we fine ladies do. New opera. Lady Carpenter, daughter and Miss Yorke. 17 January 1746. PAGE 181. Has been to review in Green Park. 31 January 1747.

Published microfilm available in the searchroom as Mic 298.

Published as a microfilm by academic publishers Adam Matthew. A digital edition is being planned by the same publisher.

item

Talbot, Catherine,
Granville,
Charles,
Secker,
Yorke,
de Comines,
Wray,
Carpenter,
Gregory, Mary,
Lawry,
Birch,
Warton,
Garrick,
Cibber,
Pliny,
Stuart, Charles Edward

CORRESPONDENCE, Wrest Park, books, DEATH, POLITICS, plays, colonel, WARS & TREATIES, Carlisle, legal process