e is obliged to give several pence for bread, or can have a great deal
of bread for a penny, since the Savoyard nobility here keep as good
tables, without money, as those in London, who spend in a week what
would be here a considerable yearly revenue. Wine, which is equal to the
best burgundy, is sold for a penny a quart, and I have a cook for very
small wages, that is capable of rivalling Chloe."

"My girl gives me great prospect of satisfaction, but my young rogue of
a son is the most ungovernable little rake that ever played truant,"
Lady Mary wrote to Lady Mar in July, 1727, when the boy was fourteen and
the girl nine years old.

It has already been mentioned that young Edward, who was placed at
Westminster School at the early age of five, ran away. In fact, he ran
away more than once. "My blessed offspring has already made a great
noise in the world," his mother told Lady Mar in July, 1726. "That young
rake, my son, took to his heels t'other day and transported his person
to Oxford; being in his own opinion thoroughly qualified for the
University. After a good deal of search we found and reduced him, much
against his will, to the humble condition of a schoolboy. It happens
very luckily that the sobriety and discretion is of my daughter's side;
I am sorry the ugliness is so too, for my son grows extremely handsome."
The lad was incorrigible. In the following year he disappeared for some
months, to be found selling fish at Blackwall.

"My cousin is going to Paris, and I will not let her go without a letter
for you, my dear sister, though I was never in a worse humour for
writing" (the anxious mother wrote to her sister). "I am vexed to the
blood by my young rogue of a son; who has contrived at his age to make
himself the talk of the whole nation. He is gone knight-erranting, God
knows where; and hitherto 'tis impossible to find him. You may judge of
my uneasiness by what your own would be if dear Lady Fanny was lost.
Nothing that ever happened to me has troubled me so much; I can hardly
speak or write of it with tolerable temper, and I own it has changed
mine to that degree I have a mind to cross the water, to try what effect
a new heaven and a new earth will have upon my spirit."

Later, Edward ran away again, joining the crew of a ship going to
Oporto, and was not discovered in that city until a considerable period
had elapsed since his flight.

He capped all his follies by marrying at the age of twenty a