Note 17a — JOURNAL TO STELLA

The Countess of Berkeley’s second daughter, who married, in 1706, Sir John Germaine, Bart. (1650–1718), a soldier of fortune. Lady Betty Germaine is said to have written a satire on Pope (Nichols’ Literary Anecdotes, ii. 11), and was a constant correspondent of Swift’s. She was always a Whig, and shortly before her death in 1769 she made a present of £100 to John Wilkes, then in prison in the Tower. Writing of Lady Betty Butler and Lady Betty Germaine, Swift says elsewhere, “I saw two Lady Bettys this afternoon; the beauty of one, the good breeding and nature of the other, and the wit of either, would have made a fine woman.” Germaine obtained the estate at Drayton through his first wife, Lady Mary Mordaunt—Lord Peterborough’s sister—who had been divorced by her first husband, the Duke of Norfolk. Lady Betty was thirty years younger than her husband, and after Sir John’s death she remained a widow for over fifty years.