The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift/Volume 13/From Elizabeth Germain to Jonathan Swift - 19
FROM LADY BETTY GERMAIN.
PART the first, you order me to give up my secretaryship; and part the second, called postscript, you employ me about Dr. Sheridan's exchange, when the letters for it must have been at Dublin long before yours came away. I was just thinking, that you was a little upon the dear joy[1]; but to be sure, you were in the right, for what signified my secretaryship when I had no business?
The countess of Suffolk did not give up the first employment at court, for she had no other than mistress of the robes, being 400l. a year, which the duchess of Dorset had quitted to her, there being no lady of the bedchamber's place vacant, and it not being quite proper for a countess to continue bedchamber woman. As to her part about Gay, that I cleared to you long ago: for, to my certain knowledge, no woman was ever a better friend than she by many ways proved herself to him. As to what you hint about yourself, as I am wholly ignorant what it is you mean, I can say nothing upon it. And as to the question, Whether you should congratulate or condole? I believe, you may do either, or both, and not be in the wrong: for I truly think she was heartily sorry, to be obliged, by ill usage, to quit a master and mistress that she had served so justly, and loved so well. However, she has now much more ease and liberty, and accordingly her health better.
Mrs. Floyd has a cough every winter, and generally so bad, that she often frightens me for the consequences. My saucy niece[2] presents her service to parson Swift. The duchess of Dorset is gone to Bath with lady Lambert, for her health; she has not been long enough there yet to find the good effects of the waters: but as they always did agree with her, I have great hopes they will now quite cure her colick.
In all likelihood, you are weary by this time of reading, and I am of writing such a long letter; so adieu, my dear dean.
- ↑ An Irish expression.
- ↑ Mary, eldest daughter, and one of the coheirs of Thomas Chambers of Hanworth, in Middlesex, esq., by lady Mary Berkeley, sister to earl Berkeley and to lady Betty Germain. She married, April 1736, lord Vere Beauclere, afterward lord Vere.