wit's end which was no great journey. Oh! you conclude Lord Chatham's crutch will be supposed a wand, and be sent for. They might as well send for my crutch; and they should not have it; the stile is a little too high to help them over. His lordship is a little fitter for raising a storm than laying one, and of late seems to have lost both virtues. The Americans at least have acted like men,1 gone to the bottom at once, and set the whole upon the whole. Our conduct has been that of pert children: we have thrown a pebble at a mastiff, and are surprised it was not frightened. Now we must be worried by it, or must kill the guardian of the house, which will be plundered the moment little master has nothing but the old nurse to defend it. But I have done with reflections; you will be fuller of them than I. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. Arlington Street, Dec. 26, 1774. I BEGIN my letter to-day, to prevent the fatigue of dictating two to-morrow. In the first and best place, I am very near recovered; that is, though still a mummy, I have no pain left, nor scarce any sensation of gout except in my right hand, which is still in complexion and shape a lobster's claw. Now, unless anybody can prove to me that three weeks are longer than five months and a half, they will hardly convince me that the bootikins are not a cure for fits of the gout, and a very short cure, though they cannot prevent it: nor perhaps is it to be wished they should; for if the gout prevents everything else, would not one have something that does? I have but one single doubt left about the bootikins, which is, whether they do not weaken my breast: but as I am sensible that my own spirits do half the mischief, and that, if I could have held "I have not words to express my satisfaction," says Lord Chatham, in a letter of the 24th, "that the Congress has conducted this most arduous and delicate business with such manly wisdom and calm resolution, as do the highest honour to their deliberations. Very few are the things contained in their resolves, that I could wish had been otherwise." Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 368.-E. my tongue, and kept from talking and dictating letters, I should not have been half so bad as I have been, there remains but half due to bootikins on the balance: and surely the ravages of the last long fit, and two years more in age, ought to make another deduction. Indeed, my forcing myself to dictate my last letter to you almost killed me; and since the gout is not dangerous to me, if I am kept perfectly quiet, my good old friend must have patience, and not insist upon letters from me but when it is quite easy to me to send them. So much for me and my gout. I will not endeavour to answer such parts of your last letters as I can in this manner, and considering how difficult it is to read your writing in a dark room. I have not yet been able to look into the French harangues you sent me. Voltaire's verses to Robert Covelle are not only very bad, but very contemptible. I am delighted with all the honours you receive, and with all the amusements they procure you, which is the best part of honours. For the glorious part, I am always like the man in Pope's Donne, "Then happy he who shows the tombs, said I." That is, they are least troublesome there. The serenissime1 you met at Montmorency is one of the least to my taste; we quarrelled about Rousseau, and I never went near him after my first journey. Madame du Deffand will tell you the story, if she has not forgotten it. It is supposed here, that the new proceedings of the French Parliament will produce great effects: I don't suppose any such thing. What America will produce I know still less; but certainly something very serious. The merchants have summoned a meeting for the second of next month, and the petition from the Congress to the King is arrived. The heads have been shown to Lord Dartmouth; but I hear one of the agents is against presenting it; yet it is thought it will be delivered, and then be ordered to be laid before Parlia 1 The Prince de Conti. ment. The whole affair has already been talked of there on the army and navy-days; and Burke, they say, has shone with amazing wit and ridicule on the late inactivity of Gage, and his losing his cannon and straw; on his being entrenched in a town with an army of observation; with that army being, as Sir William Meredith had said, an asylum for magistrates, and to secure the port. Burke said, he had heard of an asylum for debtors and whores, never for magistrates; and of ships, never of armies, securing a port. This is all there has been in Parliament, but elections. Charles Fox's place did not come into question. Mr. * * *, who is one of the new elect, has opened, but with no success. There is a seaman, 1 Luttrell, that promises much better. I am glad you like the Duchess de Lauzun: she is one of my favourites. The Hôtel du Chatelet promised to be very fine, but was not finished when I was last at Paris. I was much pleased with the person that slept against St. Lambert's poem: I wish I had thought of the nostrum, when Mr. Seward, a thousand years ago, at Lyons, would read an epic poem to me just as I had received a dozen letters from England. St. Lambert is a great jackanapes, and a very tiny genius. I suppose the poem was The Seasons, which is four fans spun out into a Georgic. If I had not been too ill, I should have thought of bidding you hear midnight mass on Christmas-eve in Madame du Deffand's tribune, as I used to do. To be sure, you know that her apartment was part of Madame du Montespan's, whose arms are on the back of the grate in Madame du Deffand's own bedchamber. Apropos, ask her to show you Madame de Prie's picture, M. le Duc's mistress I am very fond of it—and make her tell you her history.3 The Hon. James Luttrell, fourth son of Lord Irnham, a lieutenant in the navy.-E. 2 She became Duchesse de Biron upon the death of her husband's uncle, the Maréchal Duc de Biron. See antè, p. 133. Her person is thus described by Rousseau :· -" Amélie de Boufflers a une figure, une douceur, une timidité de vierge: rien de plus aimable et de plus intéressant que sa figure; rien de plus tendre et de plus chaste que les sentimens qu'elle inspire."-E. Madame de Prie was the mistress of the Regent Duke of Orleans. I have but two or three words more. Remember my parcel of letters from Madame du Deffand,' and pray remember this injunction, not to ruin yourselves in bringing presents. A very slight fairing of a guinea or two obliges as much, is more fashionable, and not a moment sooner forgotten than a magnificent one; and then you may very cheaply oblige the more persons; but as the sick fox, in Gay's Fables, says (for one always excepts oneself), I allow you to go as far as three or even five guineas for a snuff-box for me: and then, as ** * told the King, when he asked for the reversion of the lighthouse for two lives, and the King reproached him with having always advised him against granting reversions; he replied, "Oh! Sir, but if your Majesty will give me this, I will take care you shall never give away another." Adieu, with my own left hand. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY. Arlington Street, Dec. 31, 1774. No child was ever so delighted to go into breeches, as I was this morning to get on a pair of cloth shoes as big as Jack Harris's: this joy may be the spirits of dotage — but what signifies whence one is happy? Observe, too, that this is written with my own right hand, with the bootikin actually upon it, which has no distinction of fingers: so I no longer see any miracle in Buckinger, who was famous for writing without hands or feet; as it was indifferent which one uses, provided one has a pair of either. Take notice, I write so A full account of her family, character, &c. will be found in Duclos's Memoirs.-E. At Walpole's earnest solicitation, Madame du Deffand returned by General Conway all the letters she had received from him. In so doing, she thus wrote to him:-" Vous aurez long-tems de quoi allumer votre feu, surtout si vous joignez à ce que j'avais de vous ce que vous avez de moi, et rien ne serait plus juste: mais je m'en rapporte à votre prudence; je ne suivrai pas l'exemple de méfiance que vous me donnez."-E. VOL. V. 2 D much better without fingers than with, that I advise you to try a bootikin. To be sure, the operation is a little slower; but to a prisoner, the duration of his amusement is of far more consequence than the vivacity of it. Last night I received your very kind, I might say your letter tout court, of Christmas-day. By this time I trust you are quite out of pain about me. My fit has been as regular as possible; only, as if the bootikins were post-horses, it made the grand tour of all my limbs in three weeks. If it will always use the same expedition, I am content it should take the journey once in two years. You must not mind my breast it was always the weakest part of a very weak system; yet did not suffer now by the gout, but in consequence of it; and would not have been near so bad, if I could have kept from talking and dictating letters. The moment I am out of pain, I am in high spirits; and though I never take any medicines, there is one thing absolutely necessary to be put into my mouth-a gag. At present, the town is so empty that my tongue is a sinecure. I am well acquainted with the Bibliothèque du Roi, and the medals, and the prints. I spent an entire day in looking over the English portraits, and kept the librarian without his dinner till dark night, till I was satisfied. Though the Choiseuls will not acquaint with you, I hope their Abbé Barthelemi is not put under the same quarantine. Besides great learning, he has infinite wit and polissonnerie, and is one of the best kind of men in the world. As to the grandpapa,3 il ne nous aime pas nous autres, and has never forgiven Lord Chatham. Though exceedingly agreeable himself, I don't think his taste exquisite. Perhaps I was piqued; but he seemed to like Wood better than any of us. Indeed, I am a little afraid that my dear friend's impetuous zeal may have been a little too prompt in pressing you upon them d'abord: 1 Mr. Conway and the ladies of his party had met with the most flattering and distinguished reception at Paris from everybody but the Duc and Duchesse de Choiseul, who rather seemed to decline their acquaint ance. 2 The author of the Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis. * A name given to the Duc de Choiseul by Madame du Deffand. |