Pilisttliantotts.
The Lady Flora Hastings lingers in a sad state of sickness, and her recovery is very doubtful. The Marquis and Marchioness of Hastings, who are staying at the Burlington Hotel, visit Lady Flora daily, at the Dutchess of Kent's apartments in Buckingham Palace. Lady Sophia Hastings arrived on Sunday from Scotland ; and nothing but the ex- treme infirmity of the Dowager Marchioness, which prevents her from leaving Lottdoun Castle, keeps her Ladyship from the sick chamber of her daughter.
We perceive that attacks are still made on the Premier, Sir James Clark, and the Ladies Portmau and Tavistock, for the part they have taken in the scandalous reports against Lady Flora. It is demanded that the original circulator or inventor of the calumny should be given up. Surely these writers cannot be ignorant of the Court version of the affair, and consequently that the satisfaction they seek cannot be given. What else than knowledge of this fact could have tempted Lord Melbourne—a man supposed to possess high breeding, if not high principles—to address the venerable mother, the Dowager Marchioness of Hastings, in words of rudeness which no gentleman would have written willingly ? What else could induce Ladies Portman and Tavis- took, persons of high character, to submit to the degradation of being I suspected as cruel slanderers of a virtuous lady—to the meanness of taking so much a quarter as pay for silence? The writers alluded to, who waste their fire upon the Court Physician, must know that to the unhappy feud between the Queen and her Mother, and perhaps to the ministering of a foreign favourite, is attributed the circulation of the slander, for which a voyage in the same steam-boat from Scotland with Sir Wm Conroy afforded the groundwork and pretence.
Previous page
