canoe races, but it struck me as fair good going. The memory of it lingers after six-and-forty years, for it was almost my last spin before leaving for South Africa, where I have dwelt ever since, and where life of a more serious nature and absorbing duties, not to say growing years and diminished strength, have made such pleasurable exploits things of the long past.

On two of my visits to the Old Country, however, I have at Oxford enjoyed a spin in a Canadian canoe, and on each occasion, having had a companion with me, we adopted the double-ended paddle, one of us sitting right forward and the other in the stern of the canoe. In this fashion, the flash of the up blades simultaneously on opposite sides of the boat is not only a pretty sight and ease to the operator decidedly greater, but the pace, if required, is much better. Such in my humble experience is the par excellence of propulsion and enjoyment in the art of manipulating the Canadian But for the single individual, whose delight is in a small craft propelled by hand-for pleasure, ease, and observation-the Rob Roy of the early seventies still holds the premier place, and in moments of blissful contentment he will be lacking in both historic interest and gratitude if he fails to whisper 'Good old Mac.'

canoe.

C. E. MAYO.

THE COURT LADY.

BY STANLEY J. WEYMAN.

II.

'ABOUT a week after,' the Queen continued, 'when upon maturer deliberation she had done everything about the basin that I would have her, I told her we should be good friends again; but could not help adding in a little more serious voice that I owned of all my servants I had least expected, as I had least deserved it, such treatment from her, when she knew that I had held her up at a time when it was in my power, if I had pleased, at any hour of the day, to let her drop through my fingers-thus !

To what occasion the Queen refers in the last sentence is unknown, but it is to be noted that she made this confidence to Lord Hervey not only after Mrs. Howard had left her service, but after the latter's second marriage had, for reasons that will be explained, greatly embittered the Queen's feelings towards her. This explains the acidity of her Majesty's tone. Lord Trevor, at this time Lord Privy Seal, was Mrs. Howard's cousin: he had been Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and therefore, both as a business man and as her friend, he was a person to whom she would naturally turn for advice.

Upon the question of etiquette, it is probable that the ceremony of kneeling while the Queen washed her hands was new to the Bedchamber woman-in other words that she had not had to do this for the Princess. The fact that she so passionately, and as it seems, so unreasonably resented it, goes far to prove that her private troubles and the disappointment of her friends' hopes had in these early months of the reign chafed a spirit which was usually so placid. A little later we find her inquiring of Lady Masham, who in Queen Anne's reign had filled the office, what were the precise duties of a Bedchamber woman, and we have Lady Masham's letter, explaining that when the Queen washed her hands the page of the back-stairs set down the basin and ewer on the side-table, and the Bedchamber woman then placed it before the Queen and knelt on the other side of the table over against the Queen, the Lady of the Bedchamber only looking on. The Bedchamber woman

then poured the water upon the Queen's hands. The Queen seems therefore to have been in the right.

As to the £1200 a year which Mr. Howard demanded-not, be it observed, of the King but of the Queen-it is certain that though the Queen refused to pay it, it was paid. A pension of that amount was granted to him, and with the public the King had the credit of paying it. But to some retiring pension Mr. Howard, who had been Groom of the Chamber to the late King for thirteen years, must have had a claim; nor can we omit to notice that £1200 was the precise difference between the £2000 a year which the Queen asserted was paid to Mrs. Howard by the Prince, and the £3200 which was paid to her by the King. We may surmise that this sum, whencesoever it came, was paid through his wife, as one of the terms of a formal agreement for separation which was made about this time.

Of the agitation of Mrs. Howard's spirits at this crisis we have a further glimpse in a letter written to her by Pope.

Your letter [he says] gives me great disquiet. I wish to God any method were soon taken to put you out of this uneasy tormenting situation. You, that I know feel even too delicately upon trifling occasions, must (I am sensible) do it to a deep degree upon one so near and tender to you. And yet as to the last thing that troubles you (the odd usage of Mr. Howard to his son) I will fain hope some good may be derived from it. It may turn him to a reflection that possibly his mother may be yet worse used than himself and make him think of some means to comfort himself in comforting her.

This is one of the few references to her son, later the tenth Earl of Suffolk, that appears in the 'Suffolk Correspondence.' Whether he took his father's part or not he seems to have counted for strangely little in her life. He made no great figure in the world, and dying at an early age predeceased his mother by many years.

To her father's family Mrs. Howard's attachment was close, and one of the few boons she did gain was a peerage for her brother, Sir John Hobart. He was created Lord Hobart, his being the first peerage given in the new reign. It is alleged that she strained her influence to obtain an earldom for her friend, Lord Bathurst, that this in the general wreck of her friends' hopes was considered a final test of her influence, and that she failed. But there is no trustworthy evidence of the fact, while there is proof that Lord

Bathurst was well aware that it was to the Queen that they must look who wanted anything.

Her decline in favour, as it had begun with the opening of the reign, so it progressed with it. The King grew ever cooler towards her, moved no doubt partly by her loyalty to her old friends, which to him was disaffection, partly by the influence of Walpole, who watched, suspected, and thwarted her, and whose weight with his Master grew greater with each year. She was entering her forties, her good looks were on the wane: and she must have sorely felt the change, which the behaviour of the Court daily brought home to her. She must have begun to foresee that her position might become untenable, and probably she already appreciated the wisdom of retreat. We find her complaining much of her deafness and of the headaches that disabled her; and as early as 1728 she appears to have offered her resignation. In 1729 we find Lady Hervey (her old friend Molly Lepell) writing :

I very much applaud your discretion in retiring whenever you behold the clouds gather: but I own I suspect you of bragging when you tell me of avoiding the sunshine; to my certain knowledge that is a precaution that has long been unnecessary; no, indeed, my dear Madam, the sun has not directed one beam on you a great while. You may freeze in the dog-days for all the warmth you will find from our Sol.

But the Queen still valued her, probably with an eye to keeping other and more dangerous competitors at a distance, and still supported her. Then, in 1731, came a welcome relief. Mr. Howard succeeded to the Suffolk title, his wife became a peeress, and she could no longer serve as a Bedchamber woman. The difficulty was met in a manner which has not received sufficient attention. Lady Suffolk declined the place of Lady of the Bedchamber-an office filled by peeresses from the rank of duchess downwardsand was straightway and at a bound promoted to the position of Mistress of the Robes, the highest which a woman could hold in the Queen's family. Since the opening of the century the office had been held by the Duchess of Marlborough, the Duchess of Somerset, the Duchess of St. Albans, the Duchess of Dorset-by no one, in a word, below the premier rank. That the Woman of the Bedchamber should be raised in a moment to this high post seems remarkable enough that one in Lady Suffolk's peculiar position should be so promoted arouses astonishment. Nor did the circumstance pass without notice at the time, for some years later, when

the Queen objected to the inclusion of Lady Archibald Hamilton, her son's mistress, in his bride's household, the Prince, with an impertinence all his own, appointed the lady Mistress of the Robes to the Princess.

Mr. Croker says of this promotion that at the time that it was gazetted Lady Suffolk had quite lost the favour of the King, and that the appointment bore eloquent witness to the power and policy of the Queen. And it was doubtless soothing to Lady Suffolk's pride. It gave her a position independent of the King's humours and it entailed on her many advantages, freeing her from the humiliation of the menial offices to which she objected, as well as from the irksomeness of daily attendance at Court. Her time became her own, her days were free, she could retire more often to Marble Hill, and there enjoy the society of her friends.

The number of those friends, it is true, was growing less. Death and disappointment had thinned their ranks. Swift had left England, never to return. Gay died a few months later, Arbuthnot's health was failing, Peterborough had retired to his house at Bevis Mount. But for the moment things wore a brighter aspect. 'Everything as yet,' Lady Suffolk writes in a letter to Gay, 'promises more happiness for the latter part of my life than I have yet had a prospect of.'

And her circle was still large, nor was it by any means confined to the opposite sex. Lady Hervey, of whom her father-in-law Lord Bristol constantly speaks in a tone of affectionate awe, as of a woman almost perfect, remained her friend through life, and the same may be said of Mrs. Campbell. Lady Bristol, Lady Pembroke, Lady Dalkeith, Mrs. Herbert of Highclere, Lady Betty Germaine, whose wealth gave her a great position in Society, Miss Pitt, sister to the famous Chatham, the Duchess of Queensberry, Lady Lansdowne, these were among her correspondents, writing to her with an affection, an admiration, a respect which bear eloquent testimony to her charm.

And seeing that all these were women of untarnished name, their friendship gives the lie to the insinuation, never seriously made, that the King had rivals in Lady Suffolk's affections. Only two names have been mentioned in this connection: that of Lord Bathurst, by the scandal-loving Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu, and that of Lord Peterborough. Of the former Mr. Croker says, and justly, that the whole tone of Bathurst's correspondence with Lady Suffolk is inconsistent with such an attachment; which, for the