I know not whether our letters crossed one another; but this I do know, that I could not have endured so long a silence, had I not felt quite sure of your friendship. Write as soon as you can to tell me that you are well and have not forgotten us, and let me know whether you received the volume of English sermons which the archbishop sent through me. Remember me to your excellent wife and your children."1 Locke was in London again in November, when he wrote another letter to Limborch, confessing that he had lately been a bad correspondent, but assuring him that his neglect was due not to any lack of friendly feeling, but to the constant strain of work upon his weakly body. The work lasted through the winter, but, carefully looked after by Lady Mashanı and the other members of the Oates household, his body seems to have been none the worse for it. He was tempted in the spring to make London his home again, and, though he did not do that, the political changes that then occurred, by which the whigs were restored to the chief place in King William's councils, began, as we shall presently see, to provide fresh work for him in the service of the state. "Have you heard of our late whiggish promotion without admiration?" the Earl of Monmouth wrote to him at Easter from Parson's Green. "Whether to congratulate with your friends, or to see the silly looks of the enemy, I suppose you will give us one week in town. There is a little philosophical apartment quite finished in the garden that expects you, and if you will let me know when you will come, it will not be the least inconvenience to me to send my coach 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Locke to Limborch, 3 June, 1693. 2 Familiar Letters,' p. 347; Locke to Limborch, 10 Nov., 1693. . 60-61 twenty miles out of town to meet you, and make your journey more easy. "1 Whether Locke accepted that invitation is not recorded; but he spent some two months in London in the early summer of 1694, and in the last week of June he took part in a very memorable business that was brought to completion in consequence of the "whiggish promotion." William Paterson had for three years past been advocating his project for organising a corporation which should raise a sum of 1,200,000l. to be lent to the crown at eight per cent. interest, and which, in return for that sorely needed assistance, should have power to deal in bills of exchange, bullion, and forfeited notes, provided it carried on no other trade in its corporate capacity. This was the beginning of the Bank of England, established, amid much opposition, by an act of parliament which was endorsed by the king on the 25th of April, and endowed with a charter which was completed on the 27th of July, 1694. We are not told that Locke took much interest in the early history of this famous project; but this may almost be assumed from the very substantial interest that we know him to have taken in it when it was completed. The subscription list for the capital of the new bank was opened on the 20th of June. "Tuesday last," that is, on the 26th, he said in a letter written on the Saturday to Clarke, "I went to see our friend J. F."-apparently John Freke. 66 Upon discourse with him, he told me he had subscribed 300l., which made me subscribe 500l.; and so that matter stands. Last night the subscriptions amounted to 1,100,000l., and to-night I suppose they are all full. Mr. Freke talks of going out of town Monday, 1 Lord King, p. 237; Monmouth to Locke, 25 March, 1694. and I shall go Tuesday." It would almost seem that a main reason for Locke's paying this visit to London was his desire to take part in the establishment of the bank, of which he now became one of the original proprietors. A letter that he wrote a few weeks after he had gone back to Oates reminds us that, amid all his other occupations, he still took a lively interest in medical affairs, and continued to cultivate the acquaintance of medical men. Dr. Hans Sloane, his junior by twentyeight years, and not made a baronet till 1716, was now a rising physician in London, and secretary of the Royal Society. He had probably been known to Locke for some time, but we are first informed of their acquaintance by this letter, in which he made precise inquiries concerning a disease from which a woman whom Sloane attended had died, and in which he also asked some questions about imperfect plants and equivocal generation in the vegetable kingdom. "It is very kindly done of you," Locke said, "to send me some news from the commonwealth of letters into a place where I seldom meet with anything beyond the observation of a scabby sheep or a lame horse." That was hardly polite to Lady Masham, or her step-daughter Esther. 2 About Locke's intimate relations with Lady Masham we have too few details. But we just now obtain some welcome insight into his relations with the younger lady. Esther Masham, a bright and amiable girl, who lived to be a bright and amiable old maid, was nineteen years old in 1694. Full of life and fun, as well as of good sense and sober thought, as fond of serious study as of 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290; Locke to Clarke, 30 June, 1694. French romances, she had won a place in Locke's heart and learnt to nestle there during the years they passed together at Oates. She had come to be one of those adopted sisters, wives or daughters, by whose honest affection Locke's bachelorhood seems to have been cheered at almost every stage of his life. "In raillery he used to call me his Laudabridis, and I called him my John," she proudly wrote many years afterwards. Often Laudabridis was shortened into Dab or Dib, and in one letter at any rate Locke signed himself, instead of the usual Joannes, as Celadon the Solitary-“ alluding," Esther explained, "to the romance of Astraea' I used to read to him after supper."1 As they were so much together during the thirteen years of their intimacy, there was probably not much occasion for letters to pass between them, but we have four written by Locke during the second half of 1694, and these will now be quoted. The first was written from Oates in July under circumstances that Laudabridis herself thus explained: "Being at this time in Huntingdonshire with my Lady Bernard, formerly Mrs. Wilding, now. married to Sir John Bernard, I writ to Mr. Locke. 1 In 1722 Esther Masham sorted all her old letters, and before destroying them" to prevent them becoming pie-papers, serving to set up candles, or, at best being made thread-papers," as she said-began to copy all the more important ones, including ten written by Locke, into a large note-book, to which a "volume two" had afterwards to be added. These manuscript volumes, entitled by her "Letters from Relations and Friends to E. Masham," and containing copies of a hundred and thirty-eight letters, are now in the possession of Miss Palmer, of Holme Park, near Reading, to whom I am greatly indebted for permission to copy from them the letters that will be given in the next few pages and afterwards. In 1773 the second Lord Masham, Esther's nephew, sold Oates to Mr. Palmer, from whom Miss Palmer is descended, and thus some of its treasures have been preserved, too many having been, it would seem, irretrievably lost. Having heard a rich widow had been visiting at Oates, I pretended to be jealous of her; upon which he sent me the following letter": "The greatest good the widow is ever like to do me is the having procured me a letter from my Laudabridis, and giving me the opportunity to let you know you possess the conquest you have made by a power that will hold it against any widow coming with her hundred thousands. A heart that you think worth looking after cannot but be yours, and where gratitude joins with inclination to make good your title, you need not fear a little absence; only I wish you would shorten it as much as you could. For, though I shall not fail you, yet I shall suffer for want of you, and the more faithful I am, the less can I bear the want of your company. Your letter satisfies me as much as you can desire that you are not indifferent whether you lose me or no. Let your return satisfy me that 'tis tenderness to me more than glorying over your rival that makes you look after me. For, if she steal me not away, yet, if your absence kill me, 'twill be but an odd way of expressing your kindness to your Joannes, who having satisfied you that he is proof against money, the temptation of old men, you ought to remove his doubts that the pride and triumph which so usually acccompany youth and beauty in a young lady do not make a great part of that care wherewith you hedge me in from the widow. If you think me to blame for this suspicion, you should not have showed me the example. If jealousy be allowable in either, it will be more excusable in my age and experience than in your gaiety. But a little touch of it sometimes does well, and is sauce to affection, and I take yours kindly as you have managed it. I suspect my daughter1 more than you, but not your way. But she has so little ill in her that I cannot take amiss anything she does or designs. Remember me very kindly to her, if she be with you still, and give my most humble service to Sir Robert and my lady and all the rest of your good company. Everybody here is well, and want you-Bully and all. "I am, madam, your most humble and most faithful servant, "JOANNES." 3 1 66 My cousin Frances Compton, then married to Mr. William St. John. She used to call Mr. Locke father."-Esther Masham's note. 24 Bully was a dog of mine."-E. M.'s note. 3 Letters from Relations and Friends, vol. i., pp. 8-10; Locke to Esther Masham, 23 July, 1694. |