Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/80

 nutiæ of the night as if he had been no more than an idle looker-on.

"He was not fond of the applause of a mob. One day, in going down to Weymouth, he was recognized in some town, and, whilst the carriage stopped to change horses, a vast number of people gathered round us: they insisted on dragging the carriage, and would do so for some time, all he could say. Oh, doctor! what a fright I was in!

"Mr. Pitt bore with ceremony as a thing necessary. On some occasions, I was obliged to pinch his arm to make him not appear uncivil to people: 'There's a baronet,' I would say; or, 'that's Mr. So-and-so.'

"I never saw Mr. Pitt shed tears but twice. I never heard him speak of his sister Har-yet" (so Lady Hester pronounced it) "but once. One day his niece, Harriet Elliott, dined with us, and, after she was gone, Mr. Pitt said, 'Well, I am glad Harriet fell to my brother's lot, and you to mine, for I never should have agreed with her.'—'But,' observed I, 'she is a good girl, and handsome.'—'She ought to be so,' said Mr. Pitt, 'for her mother was so.'"

Lady Hester said, that those who asserted that Mr. Pitt wanted to put the Bourbons on the throne, and that they followed his principles, lied; and, if she had been in parliament, she would have told them so.