388 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[a-"" S. YI. 15Q., Nov. 13. 'a?. 



of the South Sea infatuation, by which this lady was one 

 of the iniaginary gainers, when that grand bubble broke 

 the other hundred and fifty pounds evaporated with it." 



Tliis statement, after the fashion of Savage's 

 facts, is vague ; but no doubt was intended to refer 

 to his mother. Why then should not the. fact 

 have been openly and directly stated ? No allu- 

 sion at all events is made to it in the commu- 

 nications to The rinin Dealer in 1724. In the 

 same publication, however, the Life of 1727, we 

 have another fact of the kind. After alluding to 

 the allegecl cancelling of the " Preface " to the 

 Miscellanies, the writer says that Savage " about 

 this time " had " a pension of 50?. a year settled 

 an him ; " and he adds, " I will not venture to 

 say whether this allowance came directly from 

 fter." This story, though plainly pointing to 

 Mrs. Brett, was left suiEciently vague for escape 

 if necessary ; but the writer does not appear to 

 have considered its inconsistency with the re- 

 newed personal attacks upon the supposed wicked 

 paother in his own Memoir; and it does not well 

 Record with the fact that immediately upon 

 Savage's release these attacks and his complaints 

 of neglect and penury became louder and more 

 frequent than ever, JJesides three editions of his 

 Life, with all its scandal and exposure, there ap- 

 peai'ed, in folio, within a few months, a poem 

 entitled : — 



"Nature in Perfection; or, the Mother Unveiled, 

 Being a congratulatory Poem to Mrs. Brett, upon His 

 M.ijest3''s most Gracious Pardon granted to Mr. Richard 

 Savage, Son of the late Earl Rivers, &c. London. Printed 

 for T. Green near Charing Cross, and sold bj' J. Roberts 

 at the Oxford Arms in VVai'wick Lane, 1728." 



In this, Savage [for no other could be the 

 writer] attacks Mrs. Brett in a strain of irony and 

 insult. No attack of Savage at this period was 

 ever without an appeal for pecuniary aid; and, 

 accordingly, we have such lines as : — 



" Accused, forlorn, the much -loved youth behold, 

 Deprived of freedom, destitute of gold." 



In this poem Savage also attacks the daughter 

 of Mrs. Brett. After ironical allusions to his 

 mother's tenderness, he continues : — 



" Your Anna dear, taught by your matchless mind. 

 Copies that glorious frailtv of hor kind. 

 The sister's love in time of danger shown, 

 Can only be transcended by j'our own." 



This was followed, in the very next month, by 

 his poem of " The Bastard, inscribed with all due 

 Beverencc to Mrs. Brett, once Countess of Mac- 

 clesfield," in which he loads her with stilt greater 

 insults. Johnson tolls us, on the authority of 

 Savage, that the publication of this poem (of 

 which there were four editions in as many months) 

 had the effect of driving her from Bath, " to 

 shelter herself among the crowds of London." 

 The attacks, however, did not cease. Immedi- 

 ately afterwards appeared the second edition of 



Savage's Miscellany, in which he published for 

 the first time the Preface which he had hinted at 

 in his Life, and to which I have already alluded. 

 In this tlie " amour," " adultery," and " divorce " 

 of " the late Countess of Macclesfield, now widow 

 of Colonel Henry Brett," are again dragged for- 

 ward, with the old complaint of being " friendless 

 on the world," and " without the means of sup- 

 porting myself." 



Notwithstanding this long and relentless per- 

 secution, and all the threats " to harass her with 

 lampoons," the coa.xings and insults which Savage 

 had alternately employed, his own account is that 

 his alleged mother would never see him, or ac- 

 knowledge his claims; and Johnson says that 

 " she avoided him with the most vigilant precau- 

 tion ; and ordered him to be e-xcluded from her 

 house by whomsoever he might be introduced, 

 and what reason soever he might give for enter- 

 ing ; " and that on his forcing his way in, on one 

 occasion, she " alarmed the family with the most 

 distressful outcries," called Savage " a villain," 

 and ordered them to drive him out of the house. 

 This, it must be confessed, is precisely what she 

 might be expected to do if she had known that 

 her child was really dead, and Savage an impostor. 



If this were indeed the case, it would not be 

 difficult to imagine a reason for her silence and 

 long and patient endurance of Savage's persecu- 

 tion. To enter into an altercation with a man 

 whom she must have regarded as the vilest scoun- 

 drel concerning the details of her adultery ; to 

 come forward to acknowledge her crime, which, 

 although it was proved, she had never admitted ; 

 and to meet again all the scandal and the shame 

 which she might reasonably have hoped would be 

 allowed to rest after thirty years of respectable 

 life, in which she had had a daughter now grown 

 up to womanhood, would naturally be repugnant 

 to her, and calculated to lead to no good result. 

 The death of her illegitimate child — if it were dead 

 — would necessarily be very difficult to prove. It 

 had no name but Richard Smith, although we 

 know that when removed by the nin-se to Hamp- 

 stead, it passed by the name of " Richard Lee ; " 

 and that when claimed by the Portlocks, and taken 

 away as their son, it must of course have passed 

 by their name. Supposing it to be tho "Richard 

 Portlock " mentioned in the register of St. Paul's, 

 Covent Garden, as buried in 1698, proof that it 

 was the child of the Countess of Macclesfield 

 would be almost impossible. If, as I think nioi-e 

 pi-obable, the child was taken away by Elizabeth 

 Ousley and her brother Newdigate Ousley, the 

 agents of Lord Rivers, when they fied to escape 

 giving evidence, in 1G97, and supposing it to have 

 died while \w their charge, it would be equally 

 incapable of proof ; and I may here mention inci- 

 dentally that in the register of burials of St. Ishw- 

 tin's, the parish in which the Ousleys resided, I 



