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"... everybody was gaping in the air and treading on one another's toes."
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Horace Walpole to Conway, Thursday 12 February 1756
The Duchess of Norfolk has opened her new house: all the earth was there last Tuesday.
You would have thought there had been a comet, everybody was gaping in the air and treading on one another's toes. In short, you never saw such a scene of magnificence and taste. The tapestry, the embroidered bed, the illumination, the glasses, the lightness and novelty of the ornaments, and the ceilings, are delightful. She gives three Tuesdays, would you could be at one! Somebody asked my Lord Rockingham afterwards at White's, what was there? He said, 'Oh! there was all the company afraid of the Duchess, and the Duke afraid of all the company.'—It was not a bad picture.