Chapter 302

Strawberry Hill, June 28, 1766. (page 482)

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.(963) 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(9 64) 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!

(963) Madame du Deffand had sent Mr. Walpole a snuff-box, on the lid of which was a portrait of Madame de S`evign`e, accompanied by a letter written in her name from the Elysian Fields, and addressed to Mr. Walpole; who did not at first suspect Madame du Deffand as the author, but thought both the present and the letter had come from the Duchess of Choiseul. ("One of the principal features, and it must be called, when carried to such excess, one of the principal weaknesses of Mr. Walpole's character, was a fear of ridicule--a fear which, , like most others, often leads to greater dangers than that which it seeks to avoid. At the commencement of his acquaintance with madame du Deffand, he was near fifty, and she above seventy years of age, and entirely blind. She had already long passed the first epoch in the life of a Frenchwoman, that of gallantry, and had as long been established as a bel esprit; and it is to be remembered that, in the ante-revolutionary world of paris, these epochs in life were as determined, and as strictly observed, as the changes of dress on a particular day of the different seasons; and that a woman endeavouring to attract lovers after she ceased to be galante, would have been not less ridiculous as her wearing velvet when the rest of the world were in demi-soisons. Madame du Deffand, therefore, old and blind, had no more idea of attracting Mr. Walpole to her as a lover than she had of the possibility of any one suspecting her of such an intention; and indeed her lively feelings, and the violent fancy she had taken for his conversation and character, in every expression of admiration and attachment which she really felt, and which she never supposed capable of misinterpretation. By himself they were not misinterpreted; but he seems to have had ever before his eyes a very unnecessary dread of that being so by others--a fear lest madame du Deffand's extreme partiality and high opinion should expose him to suspicions of entertaining the same opinion of himself, or of its leading her to some extravagant mark of attachment; and all this, he persuaded himself, was to be exposed in their letters to all the clerks of the post-office at paris and all the idlers at Versailles. This accounts for the ungracious language in which he often replied to the importunities of her anxious affection; a language so foreign to his heart, and so contrary to his own habits in friendship: this too accounts for his constantly repressing on her part all effusions of sentiment, all disquisitions on the human heart, and all communications of its vexations, weaknesses, and pains." Preface to "Letters of Madame du Deffand to Mr. Walpole."-E.

(964) Vous avez si bien fait," replied Madame du Deffand, "par vo le`cons, vos pr`eceptes, vos gronderies, et, le pis do tous, par vos ironies, que vous `etes presque parvenu `a me rendre fausse, ou, pour le moins, fort dissimul`ee."-E.