Lady Lavinia Pitt, however,
mentions the disease as the smallpox, then so much dreaded.
He left no family--except his young ward, the mysterious daughter
of "Mr. George"--of the Tretelly Inn. To her Antrobus had given
his name, and she inherited half his estate. Shortly after her kind
guardian's death she married an Exeter gentleman of high family.
Her father, "Mr. George," died in the course of Mr. Antrobus's
stay at Tretelly.
To some beaux and belles of the reigns of George II. and George
III. this book, originating in the conversation of another George--
George the Unknown--could well seem an interesting matter. All
the more might it be so in view of its scarceness, from the first.
There are no more copies of it, despite the fact that fashionable
dilettanti in things occult have borne it in mind. Could anything be
more characteristic of Horace Walpole than to find him in a letter,
from serene Strawberry Hill, confessing--to no purpose--that he is
"desirous of getting hold of that damned queer old woman's
fortune-telling book, by Bob Antrobus." In the Diary of the
sprightly Louisa Josepha Adelaide, Countess of Bute (afterward so
unfortunate a wife and an even more unfortunate mother), she
describes a droll scene at a Scotch castle one evening, in which the
unexpected statements of "The Square of Sevens" as to the lives
and characters of the company "put to the blush several persons of
distinction" who rashly tempted its wisdom--especially including
the aged Earl of Lothian.
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