DEAR WEST, TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. a Rheims, June 18, 1739, N. S. How I am to fill up this letter is not easy to divine. I have consented that Gray shall give an account of our situation and proceedings; and have left myself at the mercy of my own invention—a most terrible resource, and which I shall avoid applying to if I can possibly help it. I had prepared the ingredients for a description of a ball, and was just ready to serve it up to you, but he has plucked it from me. However, I was resolved to give you an account of a particular song and dance in it, and was determined to write the words and sing the tune just as I folded up my letter: but as it would, ten to one, be opened before it gets to you, I am forced to lay aside this thought, though an admirable one. Well, but now I have put it into your head, I suppose you won't rest without it. For that individual one, believe me 'tis nothing without the tune and the dance; but to stay your stomach, I will send you one of their vaudevilles or ballads, which they sing at the comedy after their petites pièces. You must not wonder if all my letters resemble dictionaries, with French on one side and English on t'other; I deal in nothing else at present, and talk a couple of words of each language alternately from morning till night. This has put my mouth a little out of tune at present; but I am trying to recover the use of it by reading the newspapers aloud at breakfast, and by chewing the title-pages of all my English books. Besides this, I have paraphrased half of the first act of your new Gustavus, which was sent us to Paris: a most dainty performance, and just what you say of it. Good night, I am sure you must be tired: if you are not, I am. Yours ever. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. Rheims, July 20, 1789. GRAY says, Indeed you ought to write to West.-Lord, child, so I would, if I knew what to write about. If I were in London and he at Rheims, I would send him volumes about peace and war, Spaniards, a Mr. Walpole, with his cousin Henry Seymour Conway and Mr. Gray, resided three months at Rheims, principally to acquire the French language. b Gray's letter to West has not been preserved; but one addressed to his mother, on the 21st of June, containing an account of Rheims and the society, is printed in his Works, vol. ii. p. 50.-E. This ballad does not appear. The tragedy of "Gustavus Vasa," by Henry Brooke, author of "The Fool of Quality." It was rehearsed at Drury Lane; but, as it was supposed to satirize Sir Robert Walpole, it was prohibited to be acted. This, however, did Brooke no injury, as he was encouraged to publish the play by subscription.-E. camps, and conventions; but d'ye think he cares sixpence to know who is gone to Compiegne, and when they come back, or who won and lost four livres at quadrille last night at Mr. Cockbert's?No, but you may tell him what you have heard of Compiegne; that they have balls twice a week after the play, and that the Count d'Eu gave the king a most flaring entertainment in the camp, where the Polygone was represented in flowering shrubs. Dear West, these are the things I must tell you; I don't know how to make 'em look significant, unless you will be a Rhemois for a little moment. I wonder you can stay out of the city so long, when we are going to have all manner of diversions. The comedians return hither from Compiegne in eight days, for example; and in a very little of time one attends the regiment of the king, three battalions and an hundred of officers; all men of a certain fashion, very amiable, and who know their world. Our women grow more gay, more lively, from day to day, in expecting them; Mademoiselle la Reine is brewing a wash of a finer dye, and brushing up her eyes for their arrival. La Barone already counts upon fifteen of them: and Madame Lelu, finding her linen robe conceals too many beauties, has bespoke one of gauze. I won't plague you any longer with people you don't know, I mean French ones; for you must absolutely hear of an Englishman that lately appeared at Rheims. About two days ago, about four o'clock in the afternoon, and about an hour after dinner,-from all which you may conclude we dine at two o'clock,—as we were picking our teeth round a littered table and in a crumby room, Gray in an undress, Mr. Conway in a morning gray coat, and I in a trim white night-gown and slippers, very much out of order, with a very little cold, a message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr. Walpole from Mr. More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on him. We scuttled upstairs in great confusion, but with no other damage than the flinging down two or three glasses and the dropping a slipper by the way. Having ordered the room to be cleaned out, and sent a very civil response to Mr. More, we began to consider who Mr. More should be. Is it Mr. More of Paris? No. Oh, 'tis Mr. More, my Lady Teynham's husband? No, it can't be he. A Mr. More, then, that lives in the Halifax family? No. In. short, after thinking of ten thousand more Mr. Mores, we concluded it could never be a one of 'em. By this time Mr. More arrives; but such a Mr. More! a young gentleman out of the wilds of Ireland, who has never been in England, but has got all the ordinary language of that kingdom; has been two years at Paris, where he dined at an ordinary with the refugee Irish, and learnt fortifications, which he does not understand at all, and which yet is the only thing he knows. In short, he is a young swain of very uncouth phrase, inarticulate speech, and no ideas. This hopeful child is riding post into Lorrain, or any where else, he is not certain; for if there is a war he shall go home a The three following paragraphs are a literal translation of French expressions to the same import. again for we must give the Spaniards another drubbing, you know; and if the Dutch do but join us, we shall blow up all the ports in Europe; for our ships are our bastions, and our ravelines, and our hornworks; and there's a devilish wide ditch for 'em to pass, which they can't fill up with things-Here Mr. Conway helped him to fascines. By this time I imagine you have laughed at him as much, and were as tired of him as we were; but he's gone. This is the day that Gray and I intended for the first of a southern circuit; but as Mr. Selwyn and George Montagu design us a visit here, we have put off our journey for some weeks. When we get a little farther, I hope our memories will brighten: at present they are but dull, dull as Your humble servant ever. P. S. I thank you ten thousand times for your last letter: when I have as much wit and as much poetry in me, I'll send you as good an Good night, child! one. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. From a Hamlet among the Mountains of Savoy, PRECIPICES, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings, Salvator Rosa -the pomp of our park and the meekness of our palace! Here we are, the lonely lords of glorious desolate prospects. I have kept a sort of resolution which I made, of not writing to you as long as I stayed in France; I am now a quarter of an hour out of it, and write to you. Mind, 'tis three months since we heard from you. I begin this letter among the clouds; where I shall finish, my neighbour Heaven probably knows: 'tis an odd wish in a mortal letter, to hope not to finish it on this side the atmosphere. You will have a billet tumble to you from the stars when you least think of it; and that I should write it too! Lord, how potent that sounds! But I am to undergo many transmigrations before I come to "yours ever." Yesterday I was a shepherd of Dauphiné; to-day an Alpine savage; tomorrow a Carthusian monk; and Friday a Swiss Calvinist. I have one quality which I find remains with me in all the worlds and in all ethers; I brought it with me from your world, and am admired for it in this 'tis my esteem for you; this is a common thought among you, and you will laugh at it, but it is new here: as new to remember one's friends in the world one has left, as for you to remember those you have lost. Aix in Savoy, Sept. 30th. WE are this minute come in here, and here's an awkward abbé this minute come into us. I asked him if he would sit down. Oui, oui, oui. He has ordered us a radish soup for supper, and has brought a chess-board to play with Mr. Conway. I have left 'em in the act, and set down to write to you. Did you ever see any thing like the prospect we saw yesterday? I never did. We rode three leagues to see the Grande Chartreuse; expected bad roads and the finest convent in the kingdom. We were disappointed pro and con. The building is large and plain, and has nothing remarkable but its primitive simplicity; they entertained us in the neatest manner, with eggs, pickled salmon, dried fish, conserves, cheese, butter, grapes, and figs, and pressed us mightily to lie there. We tumbled into the hands of a lay-brother, who, unluckily having the charge of the meal and bran, showed us little besides. They desired us to set down our names in the list of strangers, where among others, we found two mottoes of our countrymen, for whose stupidity and brutality we blushed. The first was of Sir J *** D ***, who had wrote down the first stanza of Justum & tenacem, altering the last line to Mente quatit Carthusiana. The second was of one D * *, Cœlum ipsum petimus stultitiâ; & hic ventri indico bellum. The Goth!-But the road, West, the road! winding round a prodigious mountain, and surrounded with others, all shagged with hanging woods, obscured with pines, or lost in clouds! Below, a torrent breaking through cliffs, and tumbling through fragments of rocks! Sheets of cascades forcing their silver speed down channelled precipices, and hasting into the roughened river at the bottom! Now and then an old foot-bridge, with a broken rail, a leaning cross, a cottage, or the ruin of an hermitage! This sounds too bombast and too romantic to one that has not seen it, too cold for one that has. If I could send you my letter post between two lovely tempests that echoed each other's wrath, you might have some idea of this noble roaring scene, as you were reading it. Almost on the summit, upon a fine verdure, but without any prospect, stands the Chartreuse. We stayed there two hours, rode back through this charming picture, wished for a painter, wished to be poets! Need I tell you we wished for you? Good night! Geneva, Oct. 2. By beginning a new date, I should begin a new letter; but I have seen nothing yet, and the post is going out: 'tis a strange tumbled dab, and dirty too, I am sending you; but what can I do? There is no possibility of writing such a long history over again. I find there are many English in the town; Lord Brook, Lord Mansel, Lord Hervey's eldest son," and a son of-of Mars and Venus, or of Antony and Cleopatra, or, in short, of— This is the boy, in the It was on revisiting it, when returning to England after his unfortunate quarrel with Walpole, that Gray inscribed his beautiful" Alcaic Ode" in the album of the fathers of this monastery. Gray's account of this grand scene, where "not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry," will be found in his letter to West, dated Turin, Nov. 16, N. S. 1739. Works, vol. ii. p. 69.-E. b Francis Lord Brooke, advanced to the dignity of Earl Brooke in 1746.—E. c Thomas Lord Mansell, who died in 1743, without issue. He was succeeded in the title by his uncles Christopher and Bussy; and, on the death of the latter in 1744, it became extinct.-E. d George William Hervey, who succeeded his grandfather as Earl of Bristol in 1751, and died unmarried in 1775.-E. bow of whose hat Mr. Hedges pinned a pretty epigram. I don't know if you ever heard it; I'll suppose you never did, because it will fill up my letter: Give but Cupid's dart to me, No more distinguish'd from the other, Scandal says, Hedges thought the two last very like; and it says too, that she was not his enemy for thinking so. Adieu! Gray and I return to Lyons in three days. Harry' stays here. Perhaps at our return we may find a letter from you: it ought to be very full of excuses, for you have been a lazy creature: I hope you have, for I would not owe your silence to any other reason. Yours ever. TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ. Turin, Nov. 11, 1739, N. S. So, as the song says, we are in fair Italy! I wonder we are; for, on the very highest precipice of Mount Cenis, the devil of discord, in the similitude of sour wine, had got amongst our Alpine savages, and set them a-fighting with Gray and me in the chairs: they rushed him by me on a crag, where there was scarce room for a cloven foot. The least slip had tumbled us into such a fog, and such an eternity, as we should never have found our way out of again. We were eight days in coming hither from Lyons; the four last in crossing the Alps. Such uncouth rocks, and such uncomely inhabitants! My dear West, I hope I shall never see them again! At the foot of Mount Cenis we were obliged to quit our chaise, which was taken all to pieces and loaded on mules; and we were carried in low arm-chairs on poles, swathed in beaver bonnets, beaver gloves, beaver stockings, muffs, and bearskins. When we came to the top, behold the snows fallen! and such quantities, and conducted by such heavy clouds that hung glouting, that I thought we could never have waded through them. The descent is two leagues, but steep and rough as O * * * * father's face, over which, you know, the devil walked with hobnails in his shoes. But the dexterity and nimbleness of the mountaineers are inconceivable: they run with you down steeps and frozen precipices, where no man, as men are now, could possibly walk. We had twelve men and nine mules to carry us, our servants, and baggage, and were above five hours in this agreeable jaunt! The day before, I had a cruel accident, and so extraordinary an one, that it seems to touch upon the traveller. I had brought with me a little black spaniel of King Charles's breed; but the prettiest, fattest, dearest creature! • Mr. Conway. |