maybe the 80s
werent the 60s
but they werent the 70s
but the widest range of novelty
instruments sounds beats
and where melody
is picking up again
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
TO SIR HORACE MANN BERKELEY SQUARE Dec. 31, 1780
...My letters, I think, are rather eras than journals. Three days ago commenced another date--the establishment of a family for the Prince of Wales. I do not know all the names, and fewer of the faces that compose it; nor intend. I, who kissed the hand of George I., have no colt's tooth for the Court of George IV. Nothing is so ridiculous as an antique face in a juvenile drawing-room. I believe that they who have spirits enough to be absurd in their decrepitude, are happy, for they certainly are not sensible of their folly; but I, who have never forgotten what I thought in my youth of such superannuated idiots, dread nothing more than misplacing myself in my old age. In truth, I feel no such appetite; and, excepting the young of my own family, about whom I am interested, I have mighty small satisfaction in the company of posterity; for so the present generation seem to me. I would contribute anything to their pleasure, but what cannot contribute to it--my own presence.
Alas! how many of this age are swept away before me: six thousand have been mowed down at once by the late hurricane at Barbadoes alone! How Europe is paying the debts it owes to America! Were I a poet, I would paint hosts of Mexicans and Peruvians crowding the shores of Styx, and insulting the multitudes of the usurpers of their continent that have been sending themselves thither for these five or six years. The poor Africans, too, have no call to be merciful to European ghosts. Those miserable slaves have just now seen whole crews of men-of-war swallowed by the late hurricane. We do not yet know the extent of our loss. You would think it very slight, if you saw how little impression it makes on a luxurious capital.
An overgrown metropolis has less sensibility than marble; nor can it be conceived by those not conversant in one. I remember hearing what diverted me then; a young gentlewoman, a native of our rock, St. Helena, and who had never stirred beyond it, being struck with the emotion occasioned there by the arrival of one or two of our China ships, said to the captain, "There must be a great solitude in London as often as the China ships come away!" Her imagination could not have compassed the idea, if she had been told that six years of war, the absence of an army of fifty or sixty thousand men of all our squadrons, and a new debt of many, many millions, would not make an alteration in the receipts at the door of a single theatre in London. I do not boast of, or applaud, this profligate apathy. When pleasure is our business, our business is never pleasure; and, if four wars cannot awaken us, we shall die in a dream!
TO SIR HORACE MANN Nov. 29, 1781
Your nephew is arrived, as he has told you himself; the sight of him, for he called on me the next morning, was more than ordinarily welcome, though your letter of the 10th, which I received the night before, had dispelled many of my fears. I will now unfold them to you. A packet-boat from Ostend was lost last week, and your nephew was named for one of the passengers. As Mrs. Noel had expected him for a fortnight, I own my apprehensions were strengthened; but I will say no more on a dissipated panic. However, this incident and his half-wreck at Lerici will, I hope, prevent him from the future from staying with you so late in the year; and I see by your letter that you agree with me, of which I should be sure though you had not said so.
I mentioned on Tuesday the captivity of Lord Cornwallis and his army, the Columbus who was to bestow America on us again. A second army taken in a drag-net is an uncommon event, and happened but once to the Romans, who sought adventures everywhere. We have not lowered our tone on this new disgrace, though I think we shall talk no more of insisting on implicit submission, which would rather be a gasconade than firmness. In fact, there is one very unlucky circumstance already come out, which must drive every American, to a man, from ever calling himself our friend.
By the tenth article of the capitulation, Lord Cornwallis demanded that the loyal Americans in his army should not be punished. This was flatly refused, and he has left them to be hanged. I doubt no vote of Parliament will be able to blanch such a--such a--I don't know what the word is for it; he must get his uncle the Archbishop to christen it; there is no name for it in any Pagan vocabulary. I suppose it will have a patent for being called Necessity. Well! there ends another volume of the American war. It looks a little as if the history of it would be all we should have for it, except forty millions of debt, and three other wars that have grown out of it, and that do not seem so near to a conclusion.
They say that Monsieur de Maurepas, who is dying, being told that the Duc de Lauzun had brought the news of Lord Cornwallis's surrender, said, from Racine's "Mithridate" I think:-- Mes derniers regards out vu fuir les Romains. How Lord Chatham will frown when they meet! for, since I began my letter, the papers say that Maurepas is dead. The Duc de Nivernois, it is said, is likely to succeed him as Minister; which is probable, as they were brothers-in-law and friends, and the one would naturally recommend the other. Perhaps, not for long, as the Queen's influence gains ground.
The warmth in the House of Commons is prodigiously rekindled; but Lord Cornwallis's fate has cost the Administration no ground there. The names of most éclat in the Opposition are two names to which those walls have been much accustomed at the same period--CHARLES FOX and WILLIAM PITT, second son of Lord Chatham. Eloquence is the only one of our brilliant qualities that does not seem to have degenerated rapidly--but I shall leave debates to your nephew, now an ear-witness: I could only re-echo newspapers.
Is it not another odd coincidence of events, that while the father Laurens is prisoner to Lord Cornwallis as Constable of the Tower, the son Laurens signed the capitulation by which Lord Cornwallis became prisoner? It is said too, I don't know if truly, that this capitulation and that of Saratoga were signed on the same anniversary. These are certainly the speculations of an idle man, and the more trifling when one considers the moment. But alas! what would my most grave speculations avail? From the hour that fatal egg, the Stamp Act, was laid, I disliked it and all the vipers hatched from it. I now hear many curse it, who fed the vermin with poisonous weeds. Yet the guilty and the innocent rue it equally hitherto! I would not answer for what is to come! Seven years of miscarriages may sour the sweetest tempers, and the most sweetened.
Oh! where is the Dove with the olive-branch? Long ago I told you that you and I might not live to see an end of the American war. It is very near its end indeed now--its consequences are far from a conclusion. In some respects, they are commencing a new date, which will reach far beyond us. I desire not to pry into that book of futurity. Could I finish my course in peace--but one must take the chequered scenes of life as they come. What signifies whether the elements are serene or turbulent, when a private old man slips away? What has he and the world's concerns to do with one another? He may sigh for his country, and babble about it; but he might as well sit quiet and read or tell old stories; the past is as important to him as the future.
To The Right Hon. Lady Hervey Strawberry Hill June 28, 1766
It is consonant to your ladyship's long experienced goodness, to remove my error as soon as you could. In fact, the same post that brought Madame d'Aiguillon's letter to you, brought me a confession from Madame du Deffand of her guilt. I am not the less obliged to your ladyship for informing against the true criminal. It is well for me, however, that I hesitated, and did not, as Monsieur Guerchy pressed me to do, constitute myself prisoner. What a ridiculous vainglorious figure I should have made at Versailles, with a laboured letter and my present! I still shudder when I think of it, and have scolded Madame du Deffand black and blue.
However, I feel very comfortable; and though it will be imputed to my own vanity, that I showed the box as Madam de Choiseul's present, I resign the glory, and submit to the Shame with great satisfaction. I have no pain in receiving this present from Madame du Deffand; and must own have great pleasure that nobody but she could write that most charming of all letters. Did not Lord Chesterfield think it so, Madam? I doubt our friend Mr. Hume must allow that not only Madame de Boufflers, but Voltaire himself, could not have written so well. When I give up Madame de S`evign`e herself, I think his sacrifices will be trifling.
Pray, Madam, continue your waters; and, if possible, wash away that original sin, the gout. What would one give for a little rainbow to tell one one should never have it again! Well, but then one should have a burning fever--for I think the greatest comfort that good-natured divines give us IS, that we are not to be drowned any more, in order that we may be burned. It will not at least be this summer. here is nothing but haycocks swimming round me. If it should cease raining by Monday se'nnight, I think of' dining with your ladyship at Old Windsor; and if Mr. Bateman presses me mightily, I may take a bed there.
As I have a waste of paper before me, and nothing more to say, I have a mind to fill it with a translation of a tale that I found lately in the Dictionnaire d'Anecdotes, taken from a German author. The novelty of it struck me, and I put it into verse-- ill enough; but as the old Duchess of Rutland used to say of a lie, it will do for news into the country.
From Time's usurping power,
I see, Not Acheron itself is free.
His wasting hand my subjects feel,
Grow old, and wrinkle though in Hell.
Decrepit is Alecto grown,
Megaera worn to skin and bone;
And t'other beldam is so old,
She has not spirits left to scold.
Go, Hermes, bid my brother Jove
Send three new Furies from above."
To Mercury thus Pluto said:
The winged deity obey'd.
It was about the self same season
That Juno, with as little reason,
Rung for her abigail;
and, you know,
Iris is chambermaid to Juno.
"Iris, d'ye hear? Mind what I say;
I want three maids--inquire--No, stay!
Three virgins--Yes, unspotted all;
No characters equivocal.
Go find me three, whose manners pure
Can Envy's sharpest tooth endure."
The goddess curtsey'd, and retired;
From London to Pekin inquired;
Search'd huts and palaces in vain;
And tired, to Heaven came back again.
"Alone! are you return'd alone?
How wicked must the world be grown!
What has my profligate been doing?
On earth has he been spreading ruin?
Come, tell me all." Fair Iris sigh'd,
And thus disconsolate replied:
"'Tis true, O Queen! three maids I found--
The like are not on Christian ground--
So chaste, severe, immaculate,
The very name of man they hate:
These--but, alas! I came too late;
For Hermes had been there before--
In triumph off to Pluto bore
Three sisters, whom yourself would own
The true supports of Virtue's throne."
"To Pluto!--Mercy!" cried the Queen,
"What can my brother Pluto mean?
Poor man! he doats, or mad he sure is!
What can he want them for?"--"Three Furies."
You will say I am an infernal poet; but every body cannot write as they do aux Champs Elys`ees. Adieu, Madam!
To David Hume, Esq. Arlington Street July 26, 1766
Dear Sir, Your set of literary friends are what a set of literary men are apt to be, exceedingly absurd.
They hold a consistory to consult how to argue with a madman; and they think it very necessary for your character to give them the pleasure of seeing Rousseau exposed, not because he has provoked you, but them. If Rousseau prints, you must; but I certainly would not till he does.
I cannot be precise as to the time of my writing the King of Prussia's letter; but I do assure you with the utmost truth that it was several days before you left Paris, and before Rousseau's arrival there, of which I can give you a strong proof; for I not only suppressed the letter while you stayed there, out of delicacy to you, but it was the reason why, out of delicacy to myself, I did not go to see him, as you often proposed to me, thinking it wrong to go and make a cordial visit to a man, with a letter in my pocket to laugh at him.
You are at full liberty, dear Sir, to make use of what I say in your justification, either to Rousseau or any body else. I should be very sorry to have you blamed on my account; I have a hearty contempt of Rousseau, and am perfectly indifferent what the literati of Paris think of the matter. If there is any fault, which I am far from thinking, let it lie on me.
No parts can hinder my laughing at their possessor, if he is a mountebank. If he has a bad and most ungrateful heart, as Rousseau has shown in your case, into the bargain, he will have my scorn likewise, as he will of all good and sensible men. You may trust your sentence to such who are as respectable judges as any that have pored over ten thousand more volumes.
P. S. I will look out the letter and the dates as soon as I go to Strawberry Hill.
4th Earl of Orford
Friday, June 10, 2011
You will not wonder so much at our earthquakes as at the effects they have had. All the women in town have taken them up upon the foot of Judgments; and the clergy, who have had no windfalls of a long season, have driven horse and foot into this opinion.
There has been a shower of sermons and exhortations; Secker, the jesuitical Bishop of Oxford, began the mode. He heard the women were all going out of town to avoid the next shock; and so: for fear of losing his Easter offerings, he set himself to advise them to await God's good pleasure in fear and trembling. But what is more astonishing, Sherlock, who has much better sense, and much less of the Popish confessor has been running a race with him for the old ladies, and has written a pastoral letter, of which ten thousand were sold in two days; and fifty thousand have been subscribed for, since the two first editions.
I told you the women talked of going out of town: several families are literally gone, and many more going to-day and to-morrow; for what adds to the absurdity, is, that the second shock having happened exactly a month after the former, it prevails that there will be a third on Thursday next, another month, which is to swallow up London. I am almost ready to burn my letter now I have begun it, lest you should think I am laughing at you: but it is so true, that Arthur of White's told me last night, that he should put off the last ridotto, which was to be on Thursday, because he hears nobody would come to it. I have advised several who are going to keep their next earthquake in the country, to take the bark for it, as it is so periodic. Dick Leveson and Mr. Rigby, who had supped and strived late at Bedford House the other night, knocked at several doors, and in a watchman's voice cried, "Past four o'clock, and a dreadful earthquake!"
But I have done with this ridiculous panic: two pages were too much to talk of it. We have had nothing in Parliament but trade-bills, on one of which the Speaker humbled the arrogance of Sir John Barnard, who had reflected upon the proceedings of the House. It is to break up on Thursday Se'nnight, and the King goes this day fortnight.
I was entertained the other night at the house of much such a creature as Sir John Rawdon, and one whom you remember too, Naylor. he has a wife who keeps the most indecent house of all those that are called decent: every Sunday she has a contraband assembly: I had had a card for Monday a fortnight before. As the day was new, I expected a great assembly, but found scarce six persons. I asked where the company was--I was answered, "Oh! they are not come yet: they will be here presently; they all supped here last night, stayed till morning, and I suppose are not up yet."
Wednesday I had not time to finish my letter on Monday. I return to the earthquake, which I had mistaken; it is to be to-day. This frantic terror is so much, that within these three days seven hundred and thirty coaches have been counted passing Hyde Park corner, with whole parties removing into the country. Here is a good advertisement which I cut out of the papers to-day; "On Monday next will be published (price 6d.) A true and exact List of all the Nobility and Gentry who have left, or shall leave, this place through fear of another Earthquake."
Several women have made earthquake gowns; that is, warm gowns to sit out of doors all to-night. These are of the more courageous. One woman, still more heroic, is come to town on purpose: she says, all her friends are in London, and she will not survive them. But what will you think of Lady Catherine Pelham, Lady Frances Arundel, and Lord and Lady Galway, who go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back-I suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish. The prophet of all this (next to the Bishop of London) is a trooper of Lord Delawar's who was yesterday sent to Bedlam. His colonel sent to the man's wife, and asked her if her husband had ever been disordered before. She cried, "Oh dear! my lord, he is not mad now; if your lordship would but get any sensible man to examine him, you would find, he is quite in his right mind." I shall now tell you something more serious: Lord Dalkeith is dead of the small-pox in three days. It is so dreadfully fatal in his family, that besides several uncles and aunts, his eldest boy died of it last year; and his only brother, who was ill but two days, putrefied so fast that his limbs fell off as they lifted the body into the coffin.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
sitting with horace
volume 2
dogs and children
over a hedge and sunset
laughing playing and acting
it could not get better
but friends will arrive
transport me somewhere
and be patient with me
and this sickness
a wandering highlander
among ruins of heroics
temples of dance
changing like fire
if you deign cremation
you have to put with decay
of the most rottenous
the oven won't be hot
but transition to light
is about the best
you can hope
at this point
apart from being eaten
by germs no less
all those fine ideas
jewelled in words
ones and zeros
of electric light
Monday, June 6, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.
STRAWBERRY HILL July_ 28, 1765.
The less one is disposed, if one has any sense, to talk of oneself to people that inquire only out of compliment, and do not listen to the answer, the more satisfaction one feels in indulging a self-complacency, by sighing to those that really sympathise with our griefs. Do not think it is pain that makes me give this low-spirited air to my letter.
No, it is the prospect of what is to come, not the sensation of what is passing, that affects me. The loss of youth is melancholy enough; but to enter into old age through the gate of infirmity most disheartening. My health and spirits make me take but slight notice of the transition, and, under the persuasion of temperance being a talisman, I marched boldly on towards the descent of the hill, knowing I must fall at last, but not suspecting that I should stumble by the way. This confession explains the mortification I feel. A month's confinement to one who never kept his bed a day is a stinging lesson, and has humbled my insolence to almost indifference.
Judge, then, how little I interest myself about public events. I know nothing of them since I came hither, where I had not only the disappointment of not growing better, but a bad return in one of my feet, so that I am still wrapped up and upon a couch. It was the more unlucky as Lord Hertford is come to England for a very few days. He has offered to come to me; but as I then should see him only for some minutes, I propose being carried to town to-morrow. It will be so long before I can expect to be able to travel, that my French journey will certainly not take place so soon as I intended, and if Lord Hertford goes to Ireland, I shall be still more fluctuating; for though the Duke and Duchess of Richmond will replace them at Paris, and are as eager to have me with them, I have had so many more years heaped upon me within this month, that I have not the conscience to trouble young people, when I can no longer be as juvenile as they are.
Judge, then, how little I interest myself about public events. I know nothing of them since I came hither, where I had not only the disappointment of not growing better, but a bad return in one of my feet, so that I am still wrapped up and upon a couch. It was the more unlucky as Lord Hertford is come to England for a very few days. He has offered to come to me; but as I then should see him only for some minutes, I propose being carried to town to-morrow. It will be so long before I can expect to be able to travel, that my French journey will certainly not take place so soon as I intended, and if Lord Hertford goes to Ireland, I shall be still more fluctuating; for though the Duke and Duchess of Richmond will replace them at Paris, and are as eager to have me with them, I have had so many more years heaped upon me within this month, that I have not the conscience to trouble young people, when I can no longer be as juvenile as they are.
Indeed I shall think myself decrepit, till I again saunter into the garden in my slippers and without my hat in all weathers,--a point I am determined to regain if possible; for even this experience cannot make me resign my temperance and my hardiness. I am tired of the world, its politics, its pursuits, and its pleasures; but it will cost me some struggles before I submit to be tender and careful. Christ! Can I ever stoop to the regimen of old age?
I do not wish to dress up a withered person, nor drag it about to public places; but to sit in one's room, clothed warmly, expecting visits from folks I don't wish to see, and tended and nattered by relations impatient for one's death! Let the gout do its worse as expeditiously as it can; it would be more welcome in my stomach than in my limbs. I am not made to bear a course of nonsense and advice, but must play the fool in my own way to the last, alone with all my heart, if I cannot be with the very few I wished to see: but, to depend for comfort on others, who would be no comfort to me; this surely is not a state to be preferred to death: and nobody can have truly enjoyed the advantages of youth, health, and spirits, who is content to exist without the two last, which alone bear any resemblance to the first.
You see how difficult it is to conquer my proud spirit: low and weak as I am, I think my resolution and perseverance will get the better, and that I shall still be a gay shadow; at least, I will impose any severity upon myself, rather than humour the gout, and sink into that indulgence with which most people treat it.
Bodily liberty is as dear to me as mental, and I would as soon flatter any other tyrant as the gout, my Whiggism extending as much to my health as to my principles, and being as willing to part with life, when I cannot preserve it, as your uncle Algernon when his freedom was at stake. Adieu!
TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.
PARIS, Sept._ 22, 1765. ...It is true, amusements do not always amuse when we bid them. I find it so here; nothing strikes me; everything I do is indifferent to me. I like the people very well, and their way of life very well; but as neither were my object, I should not much care if they were any other people, or it was any other way of life. I am out of England, and my purpose is answered.
Nothing can be more obliging than the reception I meet with everywhere. It may not be more sincere (and why should it?) than our cold and bare civility; but it is better dressed, and looks natural; one asks no more. I have begun to sup in French houses, and as Lady Hertford has left Paris to-day, shall increase my intimacies.
There are swarms of English here, but most of them are going, to my great satisfaction. As the greatest part are very young, they can no more be entertaining to me than I to them, and it certainly was not my countrymen that I came to live with. Suppers please me extremely; I love to rise and breakfast late, and to trifle away the day as I like. There are sights enough to answer that end, and shops you know are an endless field for me.
The city appears much worse to me than I thought I remembered it. The French music as shocking as I knew it was. The French stage is fallen off, though in the only part I have seen Le Kain I admire him extremely. He is very ugly and ill made, and yet has an heroic dignity which Garrick wants, and great fire. The Dumenil I have not seen yet, but shall in a day or two. It is a mortification that I cannot compare her with the Clairon, who has left the stage. Grandval I saw through a whole play without suspecting it was he. Alas! four-and-twenty years make strange havoc with us mortals! You cannot imagine how this struck me!
The Italian comedy, now united with their opera comique, is their most perfect diversion; but alas! harlequin, my dear favourite harlequin, my passion, makes me more melancholy than cheerful.
Instead of laughing, I sit silently reflecting how everything loses charms when one's own youth does not lend it gilding! When we are divested of that eagerness and illusion with which our youth presents objects to us, we are but the caput mortuum of pleasure. Grave as these ideas are, they do not unfit me for French company.
The present tone is serious enough in conscience. Unluckily, the subjects of their conversation are duller to me than my own thoughts, which may be tinged with melancholy reflections, but I doubt from my constitution will never be insipid. The French affect philosophy, literature, and free-thinking: the first never did, and never will possess me; of the two others I have long been tired. Free-thinking is for one's self, surely not for society; besides one has settled one's way of thinking, or knows it cannot be settled, and for others I do not see why there is not as much bigotry in attempting conversions from any religion as to it.
I dined to-day with a dozen savans and though all the servants were waiting, the conversation was much more unrestrained, even on the Old Testament, than I would suffer at my own table in England, if a single footman was present. For literature, it is very amusing when one has nothing else to do. I think it rather pedantic in society; tiresome when displayed professedly; and, besides, in this country one is sure it is only the fashion of the day. Their taste in it is worst of all: could one believe that when they read our authors, Richardson and Mr. Hume should be their favourites? The latter is treated here with perfect veneration. His History, so falsified in many points, so partial in as many, so very unequal in its parts, is thought the standard of writing.
In their dress and equipages they are grown very simple.
We English are living upon their old gods and goddesses; I roll about in a chariot decorated with cupids and look like the grandfather of Adonis. Of their parliaments and clergy I hear a good deal, and attend very little: I cannot take up any history in the middle, and was too sick of politics at home to enter into them here. In short, I have done with the world, and live in it rather than in a desert, like you.
Few men can bear absolute retirement, and we English worst of all. We grow so humorsome, so obstinate and capricious, and so prejudiced, that it requires a fund of good-nature like yours not to grow morose. Company keeps our rind from growing too coarse and rough; and though at my return I design not to mix in public, I do not intend to be quite a recluse. My absence will put it in my power to take up or drop as much as I please. Adieu!
I shall inquire about your commission of books, but having been arrived but ten days, have not yet had time. Need I say?--no I need not--that nobody can be more affectionately yours than, &c.
TO JOHN CHUTE, ESQ
PARIS, Oct. 3, 1765 I don't know where you are, nor when I am likely to hear of you.
I write at random, and, as I talk, the first thing that comes into my pen. I am, as you certainly conclude, much more amused than pleased. At a certain time of life, sights and new objects may entertain one, but new people cannot find any place in one's affection.
New faces with some name or other belonging to them, catch my attention for a minute--I cannot say many preserve it. Five or six of the women that I have seen already are very sensible. The men are in general much inferior, and not even agreeable.
They sent us their best, I believe, at first, the Duc de Nivernois. Their authors, who by the way are everywhere, are worse than their own writings, which I don't mean as a compliment to either.
In general, the style of conversation is solemn, pedantic, and seldom animated, but by a dispute. I was expressing my aversion to disputes: Mr. Hume, who very gratefully admires the tone of Paris, having never known any other tone, said with great surprise, "Why, what do you like, if you hate both disputes and whisk?"
What strikes me the most upon the whole is, the total difference of manners between them and us, from the greatest object to the least. There is not the smallest similitude in the twenty-four hours. It is obvious in every trifle.
Servants carry their lady's train, and put her into her coach with their hat on. They walk about the streets in the rain with umbrellas to avoid putting on their hats; driving themselves in open chaises in the country without hats, in the rain too, and yet often wear them in a chariot in Paris when it does not rain. The very footmen are powdered from the break of day, and yet wait behind their master, as I saw the Duc of Praslin's do, with a red pocket-handkerchief about their necks.
Versailles, like everything else, is a mixture of parade and poverty, and in every instance exhibits something most dissonant from our manners. In the colonnades, upon the staircases, nay in the antechambers of the royal family, there are people selling all sorts of wares. While we were waiting in the Dauphin's sumptuous bedchamber, till his dressing-room door should be opened, two fellows were sweeping it, and dancing about in sabots to rub the floor.
You perceive that I have been presented. The Queen took great notice of me; none of the rest said a syllable. You are let into the King's bedchamber just as he has put on his shirt; he dresses and talks good-humouredly to a few, glares at strangers, goes to mass, to dinner, and a-hunting. The good old Queen, who is like Lady Primrose in the face, and Queen Caroline in the immensity of her cap, is at her dressing-table, attended by two or three old ladies, who are languishing to be in Abraham's bosom, as the only man's bosom to whom they can hope for admittance. Thence you go to the Dauphin, for all is done in an hour. He scarce stays a minute; indeed, poor creature, he is a ghost, and cannot possibly last three months. The Dauphiness is in her bedchamber, but dressed and standing; looks cross, is not civil, and has the true Westphalian grace and accents.
The four Mesdames, who are clumsy plump old wenches, with a bad likeness to their father, stand in a bedchamber in a row, with black cloaks and knotting-bags, looking good-humoured, not knowing what to say, and wriggling as if they wanted to make water. This ceremony too is very short; then you are carried to the Dauphin's three boys, who you may be sure only bow and stare. The Duke of Berry looks weak and weak-eyed: the Count de Provence is a fine boy; the Count d'Artois well enough. The whole concludes with seeing the Dauphin's little girl dine, who is as round and as fat as a pudding.
In the Queen's antechamber we foreigners and the foreign ministers were shown the famous beast of the Gevaudan, just arrived, and covered with a cloth, which two chasseurs lifted up.
It is an absolute wolf, but uncommonly large, and the expression of agony and fierceness remains strongly imprinted on its dead jaws. I dined at the Duc of Praslin's with four-and-twenty ambassadors and envoys, who never go but on Tuesdays to Court. He does the honours sadly, and I believe nothing else well, looking important and empty.
The Duc de Choiseul's face, which is quite the reverse of gravity, does not promise much more. His wife is gentle, pretty, and very agreeable. The Duchess of Praslin, jolly, red-faced, looking very vulgar, and being very attentive and civil. I saw the Duc de Richelieu in waiting, who is pale, except his nose, which is red, much wrinkled, and exactly a remnant of that age which produced General Churchill, Wilks the player, the Duke of Argyll, &c.
Adieu!
Letter To Richard West, Esq. Florence Nov. 1740.
Child, I am going to let you see your shocking proceedings with us. On my conscience, I believe 'tis three months since you wrote to either Gray or me. If you had been ill, Ashton would have said so; and if you had been dead the gazettes would have said it. If you had been angry,-but that's impossible; how can one quarrel with folks three thousand miles off? We are neither divines nor commentators, and consequently have not hated you on paper. 'Tis to show that my charity for you cannot be interrupted at this distance that I write to you, though I have nothing to say, for 'tis a bad time for small news; and when emperors and czarinas are dying all up and down Europe, one can't pretend to tell you of any thing that happens within our sphere.
Not but that we have our accidents too. if you have had a great wind in England, we have had a great water at Florence. We have been trying to set out every day, and pop upon you. It is fortunate that we stayed, for I don't know what had become of us!
Yesterday, with violent rains, there came flouncing down from the mountains such a flood that it floated the whole city. The jewellers on the Old Bridge removed their commodities, -and in two hours after the bridge was cracked.
The torrent broke down the quays and drowned several coach-horses, which are kept here in stables under ground. We were moated into our house all day, which is near the Arno, and had the miserable spectacles of the ruins that were washed along with the hurricane. There was a cart with two oxen not quite dead, and four men in it drowned: but what was ridiculous, there came tiding along a fat haycock, with a hen and her eggs, and a cat. The torrent is considerably abated; but we expect terrible news from the country, especially from Pisa, which stands so much lower, and nearer the sea.
There is a stone here, which, when the water overflows, Pisa is entirely flooded. The water rose two ells yesterday above that stone. Judge! For this last month we have passed our time but dully; all diversions silenced on the emperor's death, and everybody out of town. I have seen nothing but cards and dull pairs of cicisbeos. I have literally seen so much love and pharaoh since being here, that I believe I shall never love either again SO long as I live.
Then I am got in a horrid lazy way of a morning. I don't believe I should know seven o'clock in the morning again if I was to see it. But I am returning to England, and shall grow very solemn and wise! Are you wise'( Dear West, have pity on one who have done nothing of gravity for these two years, and do laugh sometimes.
We do nothing else, and have contracted such formidable ideas of the good people of England that we are already nourishing great black eyebrows and great black beards, and teasing our countenances into wrinkles. Then for the common talk of the times, we are quite at a loss, and for the dress. You would oblige us exceedingly by forwarding to us the votes of the houses, the king's speech, and the magazines; or if you had any such thing as a little book called the Foreigner's Guide through the city of London and the liberties of Westminster; or a letter to a Freeholder; or the Political Companion: then 'twoulg be an infinite obligation if you would neatly band-box up a baby dressed after the newest Temple fashion now in use at both play-houses.
Alack-a-day! We shall just arrive in the tempest of elections! As our departure depends entirely upon the weather, we cannot tell you to a day when we shall say
Dear West, how glad I am to see you! and all the many questions and answers that we shall give and take. Would the day were come! Do but figure to yourself the journey we are to pass through first! But you can't conceive Alps, Apennines, Italian inns, and postchaises. I tremble at the thoughts. They were just sufferable while new and unknown, and as we met them by the way in coming to Florence, Rome, and Naples; but they are passed, and the mountains remain! Well, write to one in the interim; direct to me addressed to Monsieur Selwyn, chez Monsieur.Ilexandre, Rue St. Apolline, a Paris.
If Mr. Alexandre is not there, the street is, and I believe that will be sufficient.
Adieu, my dear child! Yours ever.
To Richard West, Esq. Reggio May 1 1741
Dear West, I have received the end of your first act, and now will tell you sincerely what I think of it.
If I was not so pleased with the beginning as I usually am with your compositions, believe me the part of Pausanias has charmed me. There is all imaginable art joined with all requisite simplicity: and a simplicity, I think, much preferable to that in the scenes of Cleodora and Argilius. Forgive me, if I say they do not talk laconic but low English in her, who is Persian too, there would admit more heroic. But for the whole part of Pausanias, 'tis great and well worried up, and the art that is seen seems to proceed from his head, not from the author's.As I am very desirous you should continue, so I own I wish you would improve or change the beginning: those who know you not so well as I do, would not wait with so much patience for the entrance of Pausanias. You see I am frank; and if I tell you I do not approve of the first part, you may believe me as sincere when I tell you I admire the latter extremely.
My letter has an odd date. You would not expect I should be writing in such a dirty place as Reggio: but the fair is charming; and here come all the nobility of Lombardy, and all the broken dialects of Genoa, Milan, Venice, Bologna, etc. You never heard such a ridiculous confusion of tongues. All the morning one goes to the fair undressed, as to the walks of Tunbridge: 'tis Just in that manner, with lotteries, raffles, etc. After dinner all the company return in their coaches, and make a kind of corso, with the ducal family, who go to shops, where you talk to 'em, from thence to the opera, in mask if you will, and afterwards to the ridotto.
This five nights in the week, Fridays there are masquerades, and Tuesdays balls at the Rivalta, a villa of the Duke's.
In short, one diverts oneself. I pass most part of the opera in the Duchess's box, who is extremely civil to me and extremely agreeable. A daughter of the Regent's, that could please him, must be so. She is not young, though still handsome, but fat; but has given up her gallantries cheerfully, and in time, and lives easily with a dull husband, two dull sisters of his, and a dull court. These two princesses are wofully ugly, old maids and rich. They might have been married often; but the old Duke was whimsical and proud, and never would consent to any match for them, but left them much money, and pensions of three thousand pounds a year apiece.
There was a design to have given the eldest to this King of Spain, and the Duke was to have had the Parmesan princess; so that now he would have had Parma and Placentia, Joined to Modena, Reggio, Mirandola, and Massa. But there being a Prince of Asturias, the old Duke Rinaldo broke off the match, and said his daughter's children should not be younger brothers: and so they mope old virgins.
I am going from hence to Venice, in a fright lest there be a war with France, and then I must drag myself through Germany. We have had an imperfect account of a sea-fight in America . but we are so out of the way, that one can't be sure of it. Which way soever I return, I shall be soon in England, and there you 'will find me again.
As much as ever yours.
To Sir Horace Mann Calais
Friday and here I have been these two days 1741
Friday and here I have been these two days 1741
Is the wind laid? Shall I Dever get aboard? I came here on Wednesday night, but found a tempest that has never ceased since. At Boulogne I left Lord Shrewsbury and his mother, and brothers and sisters, waiting too: Bulstrode passes his winter at the court of Boulogne, and then is to travel with two young Shrewsburys.
I was overtaken by Amorevoli and Monticelli, who are here with me and the Viscontina, and Barberina, and Abbate Vanneschi -what a coxcomb! I would have talked to him about the opera, but he preferred politics.
I have wearied Amorevoli with questions about you. If he was not just come from you, and could talk to me about you, I should hate him; for, to flatter me, he told me that I talked Italian better than you. He did not know how little I think it a compliment to have any thing preferred to you-besides, you know the consistence of my Italian! They are all frightened out of their senses about going on the sea, and are not a little afraid of the English. They went on board the William and Mary yacht yesterday, which waits here for Lady Cardigan from Spa.
The captain clapped the door, and swore in broad English that the Viscontina should not stir till she gave him a song, he did not care whether it was a catch or a moving ballad; but she would not submit. I wonder he did! When she came home and told me, I begged her not to judge of all the English from this specimen; but, by the way, she will find many sea-captains that grow on dry land.
To sir Horace Mann Arlington Street June 7, 1748
Don't reproach me in your own Mind for not writing, but reproach the world for doing nothing; for making peace as slowly as they made war. When any body commits an event, I am ready enough to tell it you; but I have always declared against inventing news; when I do, I will set up a newspaper.
The Duke of Newcastle is not gone; he has kissed hands, and talks of going this week: the time presses, and he has not above three days left to fall dangerously ill. There are a thousand wagers laid against his going: he has hired a transport, for the yacht s not big enough to convey all the tables and chairs and conveniences that he trails along with him, and which he seems to think don't grow out of England.
I don't know how he proposes to lug them through Holland and Germany, though any objections that the map can make to his progress don't count, for he is literally so ignorant, that when one goes to take leave of him, he asks your commands into the north, concluding that Hanover is north of Great Britain, because it is in the northern province, which he has just taken: you will scarce believe this, but upon my honour it is true.
The preliminaries wait the accession of Spain, before they can ripen into peace. Niccolini goes to Aix-la-Chapelle, and will be much disappointed if his advice is not asked there: he talks of being at Florence in October. Sir William Stanhope has just given a great ball to Lady Petersham, to whom he takes extremely, since his daughter married herself to Mr. Ellis, and as the Petershams are relations, they propose to be his heirs.
The Chuteheds agreed with me, that the house, which is most magnificently furnished, all the ornaments designed by Kent, and the whole festino, puts us more in mind of Florence, than any thing we had seen here. There were silver-pharaoh and whist for the ladies that did not dance, deep basset and quinze for the men; the supper very fine.
I am now returning to my villa, where I have been making some alterations: you shall hear from me from Strawberry Hill, which I have found out in my lease is the old name of my house; so pray, never call it Twickenham again. I like to be there better than I have liked being any where since I came to England. I sigh after Florence, and wind up all my prospects with the thought of returning there.
I have days when I even set about contriving a scheme for going to you, and though I don't love to put you upon expecting me, I cannot help telling you, that I wish more than ever to be with you again. I can truly say, that I never was happy but at Florence, and you must allow that it is very natural to wish to be happy once more. Adieu!
horace
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