Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/36

 my equestrian powers, that nothing could be like it. I was the toast there every day.

"Nobody ever saw much of me until Lord Romney's review. I was obliged to play a trick on my father to get there. I pretended, the day before, that I wanted to pay a visit to the Miss Crumps" (or some such name), "and then went from their house to Lord Romney's. Though all the gentry of Kent were there, my father never knew, or was supposed not to have known, that I had been there. The king took great notice of me. I dined with him—that is, what was called dining with him, but at an adjoining table. Lord and Lady Romney served the king and queen, and gentlemen waited on us: Upton changed my plate, and he did it very well. Doctor, dining with royalty, as Lord Melbourne does now, was not so common formerly; I never dined with the king but twice—once at Lord Romney's at an adjoining table, and once afterwards at his own table: oh! what wry faces there were among some of the courtiers! Mr. Pitt was very much pleased at the reception I met with the king took great notice of me, and, I believe, always after liked me personally. Whenever I was talking to the dukes, he was sure to come towards us. 'Where is she?' he would cry; 'where is she? I hear them laugh, and where they are laughing I must go too:' then, as he came nearer, he would