and her wit through an amazed and amused
society. It was one of her eccentricities to change her name Audrey to
Ethelfreda. Another was to fancy herself and to proclaim herself to be
very much in love with the unhappy Lord Kilmarnock. She attended the
trial persistently, waited under his windows, quarrelled with Selwyn
for daring to jest about the execution--no very happy theme for
wit--and was all for adopting a little boy whom some of the officials
of the Tower had palmed off upon her as Kilmarnock's son. Walpole
liked her, delighted in her witty, stinging sayings. She was always
entertaining, always alarming, always ready to say or do anything that
came into her mind. She lived, a whimsical, spiteful, sprightly
oddity, to be eighty-seven years of age. [Sidenote: 1766--Peculiar
characteristics of Charles Townshend] Charles Townshend was her second
son, and Charles Townshend was in many ways as whimsical as his mother.
He had a ready wit, a dexterity in epigram, an astonishing facility of
speech, and a very great appreciation of his own power of turning
friends or foes into ridicule. It is told of him that once in his
youth, when a student at Leyden, he suffered from his readiness to jest
at the expense of another. At a merry supper party he plied one of the
guests, a seemingly unconscious, stolid Scotchman named Johnstone, with
sneers and sarcasms which the Scotchman seemed to disregard or take in
good part. On the next morning, however, Townshend's victim,
enlightened by some friend as to the way in which he had been made a
butt of, became belligerent and sent Townshend a challenge. Various
opinions have been expressed of Townshend's action in the matter. He
has been applauded for good sense. He has been reproached for
cowardice. Certainly Townshend did not, would not fight his
challenger. It required a great deal of good sense to decline a duel
in those days, and Townshend did decline the duel. He apologized to
his slow-witted but stubborn-purposed opponent with a profusion of
apology which some of his {111} friends thought to be excessive. In
these days we should consider Townshend's refusal to fight a duel
merely as an unimportant proof of his common-sense, but in the last
century, in the society in which Townshend moved, and on the Continent,
such a refusal suggested the possession of a degree of common-sense
that was far from ordinary--that was, indeed, extraordinary.
Townshend's tact, wit, and