Note 148 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
The spirit shown by the Duke of Bedford during his last illness is very remarkable; notwithstanding the languor and depression attendant on the complaint under which he laboured, he neglected no part of his business, either public or private. He spoke several times in the Lords during the session of 1770; he attended with his usual regularity the meetings of the various institutions of which he was a member; he superintended the management of his extensive estates, and yet all the while never allowing himself to lose the amusements which he enjoyed whilst in health. Some of the notices in his Journal are in this respect very characteristic.
“31st March.—At the Trinity House for the election of Lord Weymouth to succeed the late Lord Winchelsea. Dined at the King’s Arms. Went to the opera—La Constanza di Rossinello—a bad one. Supped at Mr. Rigby’s in lieu of the Club, the Waldegraves being out of town.
“4th April.—I went to Streatham, and in Charrington’s farm, Tooting, I marked three hundred and forty-four trees, chiefly elm,—many of them large ones. I came home to dinner; Lord and Lady Carlisle then dined with us. In the evening I went to Lady Holderness’s.”—(Appendix to Cavendish’s Debates, vol. i. p. 624.)
In the collection of papers at Woburn are some of his letters written within a month of his death. One is an application to Lord Barrington on behalf of a French officer whom he considered it a point of honour to provide for. Neither the style nor tone is that of a dying man; he says, “It seems next to impossible to conceive that any fresh subterfuge can be found to avoid giving Captain Gualy the reasonable request I have made in his favour, especially considering the offer I have made to compensate to any officer, out of my own pocket, that might be aggrieved by it, such loss as he shall sustain by such promotion, more especially considering that this gentleman is kinsman and namesake of Madame de Choiseul, and a man of credit and character. Should it be so, I wish to have it explicitly of your Lordship, that I may inform that lady that I have entirely lost all credit at my own Court, and that the King’s Ministers pay no regard to my solicitations, though ever so just and reasonable, notwithstanding the services I may venture to assert that I did my country in negotiating and signing the last peace, &c.” Whatever might have been the Duke’s errors of judgment, he was a high-minded warm-hearted man, of great energy of character and capacity for business.—E.