Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/22

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8
Memoirs of

horses from London; and thus, by a little innocent frolic, I made all parties happy again."[1]

Lady Hester continued. "Lucy's disposition was sweet, and her temper excellent: she was like a Madonna. Griselda was otherwise, and always for making her authority felt. But I, even when I was only a girl, obtained and exercised, I can't tell how, a sort of command over them. They never came to me, when I was in my room, without ending first to know whether 1 would see them.

"Mr. Pitt never liked Griselda; and, when he found she was jealous of me, he disliked her still more. She stood no better in the opinion of my father, who bore with Lucy—ah! just in this way—he would say to her, to get rid of her, 'Now papa is going to study, so you may go to your room then, when the door was shut, he would turn to me, 'Now, we must talk a little philosophy and then, with his two legs

  1. In accordance with his republican principles, Lord Stanhope caused his armorial bearings to be defaced from his plate, carriages, &c. Nothing was spared but the iron gate before the entrance to the house. Even the tapestry given to the great Lord Stanhope by the king of Spain, with which one of the rooms in Chevening was ornamented, he caused to be taken down and put into a corner, calling it all damned aristocratical. He likewise sold all the Spanish plate, which Lady Hester said weighed (if I recollect rightly) six hundred weight.