King George IV
Hannah More to Patty More, 4 August 1794 [copy, presented to EM Forster by his great aunt, Marianne Thornton
I suppose by this time you expect I should give you some account of my adventures I am not yet at the place of my destination I got to Hertford Street in time to drink tea with the & & the who very gallantly appeared soon after me. carriage came for me after breakfast & carried me to Battersea Rise to dinner where were both the Masters & & . carriage took me after dinner the next stage where to my great surprise was waiting to carry me to my journeys end Theres politeness for you! Dont you think that the Masters improve! At Bitchworth the Prince of Wales’s fine who fought the duel the other day, was stopping with his . He says the Prince breakfasted with him the day before & told him that all was over between him & . I asked him if he thought they were ever married – he thinks not but is not sure
To Lady Olivia Sparrow, [March 1820]
A kind, agreeable, long and interesting letter from dear should be answered directly but that I am in deep arrears to your Ladyship. Nothing can be more obliging than her little details, than which nothing makes letters so pleasant. Public events are just now of so complicated & overwhelming a nature that even to touch upon /them/ would fill my paper and occupy your time to little purpose. I truly pity the K–* How surely does God at one time or other visit our errors and bring our sins to remembrance! How he will get extricated the wisest seem not to know. I have just got a letter from a friend whose habits lay open much information to him. He tells me that a Gentleman of his acquaintance on whom the firmest reliance may be placed is lately come from the Continent. Passing through a small town in Italy he stopped at an Inn and desired to see a good bed. On being shown one, he said it was not large enough for him and his Wife –"Not large enough," said the Mistress of the Inn, "why and the Baron her Chamberlain Slept in it last week, and so they have done twenty times before and they never complained that it was too small." You don’t mean that they slept together said the gentleman? Yes replied the woman I do, as they have always done." One or two such testimonies woud be proof positive. But then in what a distracted state would it place this poor country.* – I fear we are emulating France in all its parricidal horrors! What a Providential escape of the Ministers I grieve to think what a flood of drunkenness, idleness and perjury this premature Parliamentary election will introduce, – A propos. I am desired to request your vote and interest for who is canvassing your county. I know nothing of him, but that I fear he is what I call, on the wrong side. They speak well of his talents*
Hannah More to Marianne Thornton, 1816
How I have enjoyed dear honours at Brighton; not for his sake, the honour was done to the Prince in his selection of such a guest*. This notorious and marked attention to such a man, will do good in a variety of ways. Oh! that it might good to the Royal host! It strongly proves the power of consistency of character, how it eventually bears down all opposition. I wish religious people in general were more aware of this. It is this very want of consistency in many high professions which causes them to do so little good, /their practice defeating what their talk has /done.//