80: "I know nothing to
the prejudice of the young lady; but I should not have selected for so
gentle and very amiable a man a sister of the empress of fashion, nor
a daughter of the Goddess of Wisdom." The goddess of wisdom was her
formidable and trenchant mother, Lady Spencer.

But I don't intend to follow the vain stages of her sentimental
pilgrimage in pursuit of Lord Granville Gower's heart, vain because
apparently the young man had not such an organ at her disposal. It was
not, perhaps, for nothing that they exchanged reflections upon _Les
Liaisons Dangereuses_. A new Choderlos de Laclos would get a new
sentimental novel out of the Granville Gower correspondence; or it
may be taken as it stands for a recovered Richardson, quite as long
as _Sir Charles Grandison_ and much more amusing--for the poor lady is
often witty. The affair dragged on, with much scandal, much whispering
about it and about, until 1809, when the hero of it married Lady
Harriet Cavendish, his mistress's niece. J.W. Ward, one of her lovers,
according to her, sharply sums it up in a letter to Mrs. Dugald
Stewart: "Lord Granville Leveson is going to marry Lady Harriet
Cavendish. Lady Bessborough resigns, I presume, in favour of her
niece. I have not heard what are supposed to be the secret articles of
the treaty, but it must be a curious document." It was in 1812, as I
have said, that she wrote out the pathetic confession of what we must
suppose to have been the truth.

But I intended to write about Sheridan. This correspondence reveals
him as the evil genius of Lady Bessborough's life; and perhaps, if all
the truth were known, she may have been the evil genius of his, or one
of them, anyhow. She had adventures with him behind her in 1794, when
she began adventures anew; for they became intimate at Devonshire
House, where, as the crony of Charles Fox, he was always at hand. The
Duchess herself was one of his familiars. His initials for her, in
letter-writing, were T.L., which a biographer pleasantly interprets as
"True Love." The sisters, Countess and Duchess, shared in all good and
evil things, and they seem to have shared Sheridan. His chosen initial
for Lady Bessborough's address was "F," her second name being Frances.
Mr. Sichel prints a letter from him to her, and guesses it to be
of 1788. Extracts will suffice for the judicious: "I must bid 'oo
good-night, for by the light passing to and fro near your room I
hope you are going to bed and to