Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/102

 was a woman quite admirable; so full of resources, so cheerful, she kept up the spirits of all the emigrants: and then she was so well dressed! She did not mind going in a hackney-coach to dine with the Duke of Portland.

"Lord H********** scraped up a reputation which he never deserved," continued Lady Hester, as her reflections led her from one person to another. "Insincere, greedy of place, and always pretending to be careless about it, he and my lady lived in a hugger-mugger sort of a way, half poverty half splendour, having soldiers for house servants, and my lady dining at two with the children (saying my lord dined out), and being waited on by a sergeant’s daughter. How often have I seen a scraggy bit of mutton sent up for luncheon, with some potatoes in their skins, before royalty! The princes would say to me, 'Very bad, Lady Hester, very bad; but there! he has a large family—he is right to be saving.' And then Lady H**********, with her little eyes, and a sort of waddle in her gait (for she once had a paralytic stroke), with a wig all curls, and, at the top of it, a great bunch of peacock’s feathers—then her dress, all bugles, and badly put on—horrid, doctor, horrid! and why should they have lived in such a large house, half furnished, with the girls sleeping altogether in large attics, with a broken looking-glass,