Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/87

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Lady Hester Stanhope.
73

sent to Windsor. There was one by this Tomino put into the Exhibition.

"A fine picture in Mr. Pitt's possession represented Diogenes with a lantern searching by day for an honest man. A person cut out a part of the blank canvas, and put in Mr. Pitt's portrait.

"When Mr. Pitt was going to Bath, previous to his last illness, I told him I insisted on his taking my eider-down quilt with him. 'You will go about,' said I, 'much more comfortably; and, instead of being too hot one day under a thick counterpane, and the next day shivering under a thin one, you will have an equable warmth, always leaving one blanket with this quilt. Charles and James were present, and could not help ridiculing the idea of a man's carrying about with him such a bundling, effeminate thing. 'Why,' interrupted I, 'it is much more convenient than you all imagine: big as it looks, you may put it into a pocket-handkerchief.'—'I can't believe that,' cried Charles and James. 'Do you doubt my word?' said I, in a passion: 'nobody shall doubt it with impunity:' and my face assumed that picture of anger, which you can't deny, doctor, is in me pretty formidable; so I desired the quilt to be brought. Why, my dear Lady Hester,' said Mr. Pitt, 'I am sure the boys do not mean to say you tell falsehoods: