999. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Aug. 27, 1765. I CAME to town last night, intending to lay your case more correctly before our Secretary of State [Conway], but he did not arrive from the country himself till ten at night, and then found himself, by an absence of three days, so besieged with despatches, which he sat reading during the whole supper and afterwards, that I could not slip in a paragraph. However, this morning reading that Sir Charles Howard was dead, I immediately wrote a note to Mr. Conway to advertise him of another Riband vacant, and to put in a caveat (as he is going to dine at Claremont) against the Duke of Newcastle promising it to some head of a college at Cambridge; and tonight I shall fully unfold your pretensions; but as the post will be gone before Mr. Conway comes home, I write this to show you how good a solicitor you have. I am in the more hurry to decorate you, as I am going directly to Paris; yea, I set out on the 9th of next month: after that date, direct to me thither, addressed to Mr. Foley, my banker. Well! after twenty-three years of designs and irresolutions, I am actually leaving England! You will ask kindly whether almost every foreign thought in those years did not point beyond Paris? Oh yes,-but, alas! think how ill I have been; not to mention that I am older too, by twenty-three years. That space has made Alps and Apennines grow twenty times taller and more wrinkled and horrid! Oh! but you will say, you may come by sea-worse and worse-a sea voyage after the gout in one's head and stomach ! I will tell you what; there is a man who has just invented what he calls a marine belt; you buckle it on, and walk upon the sea as you would upon a grass-plot. I never was an excellent walker, and my feet at present are piteously tender,—but I think a wave cannot hurt one, perhaps I may step to you from Marseilles to Leghorn. I am convinced that the art of flying will be next reduced to practice; -oh! I shall certainly make you a visit on the first pair of wings that are to be sold. However, I had rather have made it before your new Austrian court arrives: I have a mortal aversion to any detachment from Vienna. There is nothing new here, except that the whole town is in an uncertainty whether my Lord is dead or alive, whether he has had a fit or a bullet; and yet he is but yonder in Grosvenor-square. The neighbourhood say my lady called murder out of the window, and that immediately after, a pistol went off; the family now say that nothing at all happened, but a fit,—and yet he does not appear. Thomas Graham, the apothecary, used on every occasion when you complained of any disorder, to reply with much solemnity, "Humph! it is very extraordinary, and yet it is very common." This curious phrase never happened to have common sense in it but on the subject of self-murder, which is very extraordinary and yet very common. Adieu! Perhaps I shall write to you again before Monday se'nnight certainly, if I can have a star to send in my letter. The next after that will be from Paris. 1000. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Saturday, Aug. 31, 1765, Strawberry Hill. I THOUGHT it would happen so; that I should not see you before I left England! Indeed, I may as well give you quite up, for every year reduces our intercourse. I am prepared, because it must happen, if I live, to see my friends drop off; but my mind was not turned to see them entirely separated from me while they live. This is very uncomfortable, but so are many things!-well! I will go and try to forget you all-all! God knows the all that I have left to forget is small enough; but the warm heart, that gave me affections, is not so easily laid aside. If I could divest myself of that, I should not, I think, find much for friendship remaining: you, against whom I have no complaint, but that you satisfy yourself with loving me without any desire of seeing me, are one of the very last that I wish to preserve; but I will say no more on a subject that my heart is too full of. I shall set out on Monday se'nnight, and force myself to believe that I am glad to go, and yet this will be my chief joy, for I promise myself little pleasure in arriving. Can you think me boy enough to be fond of a new world at my time of life? If I did not hate the world I know, I should not seek another. My greatest amusement will be in reviving old ideas. The memory of what made impressions on one's youth is ten times dearer than any new pleasure can be. I shall probably write to you often, for I am not disposed to communicate myself to anything that I have not known You The these thirty years. My mind is such a compound from the vast variety that I have seen, acted, pursued, that it would cost me too much pains to be intelligible to young persons, if I had a mind to open myself to them. They certainly do not desire I should. like my gossipping to you, though you seldom gossip with me. trifles that amuse my mind are the only points I value now. I have seen the vanity of everything serious, and the falsehood of everything that pretended to be serious. I go to see French plays and buy French china, not to know their ministers, to look into their government, or think of the interests of nations-in short, unlike most people that are growing old, I am convinced that nothing is charming but what appeared important in one's youth, which afterwards passes for follies. Oh! but those follies were sincere; if the pursuits of age are so, they are sincere alone to self-interest. Thus I think, and have no other care but not to think aloud. I would not have respectable youth think me an old fool. For the old knaves, they may suppose me one of their number if they please; I shall not be so-but neither the one nor the other shall know what I am. I have done with them all, shall amuse myself as well as I can, and think as little as I can; a pretty hard task for an active mind! Direct your letters to Arlington-street, whence Favre will take care to convey them to me. I leave him to manage all my affairs, and take no soul but Louis. I am glad I don't know your Mrs. Anne; her partiality would make me love her; and it is entirely incompatible with my present system to leave even a postern-door open to any feeling, which would steal in if I did not double-bolt every avenue. If you send me any parcel to Arlington-street before Monday se'nnight I will take care of it. Many English books I conclude are to be bought at Paris. I am sure Richardson's Works are, for they have stupified the whole French nation:' I will not answer for our best authors. You may send me your list, and, if I do not find them, I can send you word, and you may convey them to me by Favre's means, who will know of messengers, &c., coming to Paris. I have fixed no precise time for my absence. My wish is to like it enough to stay till February, which may happen, if I can support the first launching into new society. I know four or five very 1 See note to Letter of March 18, 1765.-CUNNINGHAM. agreeable and sensible people there, as the Guerchys, Madame de Mirepoix, Madame de Boufflers, and Lady Mary Chabot,―these intimately; besides the Duc de Nivernois, and several others that have been here. Then the Richmonds will follow me in a fortnight or three weeks, and their house will be a sort of home. I actually go into it at first, till I can suit myself with an apartment; but I shall take care to quit it before they come, for, though they are in a manner my children, I do not intend to adopt the rest of my countrymen; nor, when I quit the best company here, to live in the worst there; such are young travelling boys, and, what is still worse, old travelling boys, governors. Adieu! remember you have defrauded me of this summer; I will be amply repaid the next, so make your arrangements accordingly. MY DEAR LORD: 1001. TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD. Arlington Street, Sept. 3, 1765. I CANNOT quit a country where I leave anything that I honour so much as your lordship and Lady Strafford, without taking a sort of leave of you. I shall set out for Paris on Monday next the 9th, and shall be happy if I can execute any commission for you there. A journey to Paris sounds youthful and healthy. I have certainly mended much this last week, though with no pretensions to a recovery of youth. Half the view of my journey is to re-establish my health-the other half to wash my hands of politics, which I have long determined to do whenever a change should happen. I would not abandon my friends while they were martyrs; but, now they have gained their crown of glory, they are well able to shift for themselves; and it was no part of my compact to go to that heaven, St. James's, with them. Unless I dislike Paris very much, I shall stay some time; but I make no declarations, lest I should be soon tired of it, and come back again. At first, I must like it, for Lady Mary Coke will be there, as if by assignation. The Countesses of Carlisle and Berkeley, too, I hear, will set up their staves there for some time; but as my heart is faithful to Lady Mary, they would not charm me if they were forty times more disposed to it. The Emperor' is dead-but so are all the Maximilians and 1 Francis the First, Emperor of Germany, died at Inspruck, on Sunday the 18th of August.-WRIGHT. Leopolds his predecessors, and with no more influence on the present state of things. The Empress Dowager Queen will still be master-unless she marries an Irishman, as I wish with all my soul she may. The Duke and Duchess of Richmond will follow me in about a fortnight Lord and Lady George Lennox go with them; and Sir Charles Bunbury and Lady Sarah are to be at Paris, too, for some time so the English court there will be very juvenile and blooming. This set is rather younger than the dowagers with whom I pass so much of my summers and autumns; but this is to be my last sally into the world; and when I return, I intend to be as sober as my cat, and purr quietly in my own chimney corner. Adieu, my dear lord! May every happiness attend you both, and may I pass some agreeable days next summer with. you at Wentworth-castle! 1002. TO THE RIGHT HON. LADY HERVEY. Arlington Street, Sept. 3, 1765. THE trouble your ladyship has given yourself so immediately, makes me, as I always am, ashamed of putting you to any. There is no persuading you to oblige moderately. Do you know, Madam, that I shall tremble to deliver the letters you have been so good as to send me? If you have said half so much of me, as you are so partial as to think of me, I shall be undone. Limited as I know myself, and hampered in bad French, how shall I keep up to any character at all? Madame d'Aiguillon and Madame Geoffrin will never believe that I am the true messenger, but will conclude that I have picked Mr. Walpole's portmanteau's pocket. I wish only to present myself to them as one devoted to your ladyship; that character I am sure I can support in any language, and it is the one to which they would pay the most regard.-Well! I don't care, Madam-it is your reputation that is at stake more than mine: and, if they find me a simpleton that don't know how to express myself, it will all fall upon you at last. If your ladyship will risk that, I will, if you please, thank you for a letter to Madame d'Egmont, too: I long to know your friends, though at the hazard of their knowing yours. Would I were a jolly old man, to match, at least, in that respect, your jolly old woman!'-But, alas! I am nothing but a La Duchesse Douairière d'Aiguillon, née Chabot, mother of the Duc d'Aiguillon, |