Note 101 — Chapter X

Lady Luxborough was the only daughter of the Viscount St. John, and half-sister to Lord Bolingbroke. His brother John, who succeeded as second Viscount St. John, had married a daughter of Lady Anne Furness, the aunt of Lady Huntingdon, and left three sons and three daughters, one of whom married Lord Bagot. Her Ladyship was very intimate with the unfortunate Lord Ferrers, who had married her bosom friend, one of the sisters of Sir William Meredith. The ill conduct of her only daughter, who was divorced from her husband and afterwards married the Hon. W. Child, raised a storm, not only in her own family, but in the world, and drew forth letters of condolence from the Duchess of Somerset and Lady Huntingdon. The latter she thanked very politely for her sympathy, but styles the letter of the Duchess a “kind of sermon,” and spares her correspondent, Mr. Shenstone, the labour of perusing so “serious an epistle.” Lady Luxborough died in 1756. “Unhappy woman! (says Lady Huntingdon) how insensible has she been to the many alarming calls of Providence which she has received from time to time. Such repeated deaths in her family, the awful end of her brother, Lord Bolingbroke, made no impression on her; and she left this world, as she had always lived, intoxicated with the vanity of her numerous accomplishments and literary acquirements.” Yet her letters to Shenstone, published after his death, 1763, although pleasing and flattering to the poet, made a weak impression on the public.