JOURNAL AND CORRESPONDENCE OF MISS BERRY. NOTES OF EARLY LIFE. MY FATHER was the maternal nephew of an old Scotch merchant of the name of Ferguson, who had been sent for up from Scotland by a near relation of his, long established in London, on a promise to provide for him; this he did so completely, that before the middle of my uncle's life he found himself in possession of something near 300,000l., a great fortune for those days, for the said uncle had come up to London in the year of the Union, 1709. He might now have left the City for ever; but so attached was he to the habits and habitations of the counting-house, that not even his marriage, and his having purchased a considerable estate in Fifeshire, could persuade him to remove to the West-end of the town, or to abandon Austin Friars, where he lived for more than half a century, and till his death. He had married a Miss Townshend, the sister of the wife of Mr. Oswald,† a neighbour of his in Scotland, who was * • Broad Street. The House of the Augustine Friars was founded by Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, in the year 1243. + Mr. Oswald married Elizabeth, daughter of Townshend, of Honington Hall, Warwickshire, 1747. Mr. Oswald was for many years in Parliament, and filled the offices of Commissioner of Navy, Lord of Trade and Plantations, Lord of the Treasury, and Treasurer of Ireland. He died in 1766. in Parliament, and employed in several public offices during the Administrations of 1753 and 1754. There being no children from Mr. Ferguson's marriage, his sister's sons became his natural heirs. Of these, my father being the eldest, was, like all elder brothers of those days, bred to the law, with or without any intention of following the profession. After my father had left college, and gone through the routine of this education, he obtained his uncle's leave to travel; but he had only spent seven months in the Netherlands before he was recalled by his uncle, who, I conclude, ensured obedience to his orders by stopping his supplies. The law he seems never to have thought of more, nor was it thought necessary he should. But in all other respects I can easily suppose his careless disposition, even to his own situation, his turn towards literature and literary society, little suited the hard narrow mind of the man on whom his fortunes depended. My father's marriage, in 1762, with a distant relation of his own, of the ancient name of Seton, the daughter of a widow then living in Yorkshire, with a family of four daughters, did not serve his interests with his uncle. My mother is said to have had every qualification, beside beauty, that could charm, captivate, or attach, and excuse a want of fortune. At first she succeeded in captivating the good graces of the old man, but not to induce him to augment the allowance he made to his nephew. On this allowance they retired to live in Yorkshire, in the same house with her mother at Kirkbridge, where she gave birth in two succeeding years to two daughters, myself and Agnes. But however well pleased the old uncle might have been with his niece, his expectations were disappointed at her not producing a male heir, and were finally crushed by her death in childbirth. I have been told that his uncle was very importunate with my father to marry again directly. If so, I am sure my father must |