Chapter 361

Paris, August 30, 1769. (page 552)

I have been so hurried with paying and receiving visits, that I have not had a moment's worth of time to write. My passage was very tedious, and lasted near nine hours for want of wind. But I need not talk of my journey; for Mr. Maurice, whom I met on the road, will have told you that I was safe on terra firma.

Judge of my surprise at hearing four days ago, that my Lord Dacre(1086) and my lady were arrived here. They are lodged within a few doors of me. He is come to consult a Doctor Pomme,(1087) who has prescribed wine, and Lord Dacre already complains of the violence of his appetite. If you and I had pommed him to eternity, he would not have believed us. A man across the sea tells him the plainest thing in the world; that man happens to be called a doctor; and happening for novelty to talk common sense, is believed, as if he had talked nonsense! and what is more extraordinary, Lord Dacre thinks himself better, though he is so.

My dear old woman(1088) is in better health than when I left her, and her spirits so increased, that I tell her she will go mad with age. When they ask her how old she is, she answers, "J'ai soixante et mille ans." She and I went to the Boulevard last night after supper, and drove about there till two in the morning. We are going to sup in the country this evening, and are to go tomorrow night at eleven to the puppet-show. A prot`eg`e of hers has written a piece for that theatre. I have not yet seen Madame du Barri, nor can get to see her picture at the exposition at the Louvre, the crowds are so enormous that go thither for that purpose. As royal curiosities are the least part of my virt`u, I wait with patience. Whenever I have an opportunity I visit gardens, chiefly with a view to Rosette's having a walk. She goes nowhere else, because there is a distemper among the dogs.

There is going to be represented a translation of Hamlet: who when his hair is cut, and he is curled and powdered, I suppose will be exactly Monsieur le Prime Oreste. T'other night I was at M`erope. The Dumenil was as divine as Mrs. Porter; they said her familiar tones were those of a poisonni`ere. In the last act, when one expected the catastrophe, Narbas, more interested than any body to see the event, remained coolly on the stage to hear the story. The Queen's maid of honour entered without her handkerchief, and with her hair most artfully undressed, and reeling as if she was maudlin, sobbed Out a long narrative, that did not prove true; while Narbas, with all the good breeding in the world, was more attentive to her fright than to what had happened. So much for propriety. Now for probability. Voltaire has published a tragedy, called "Les Gu`e,bres." Two Roman colonels open the piece: they are brothers, and relate to one another, how they lately in company destroyed, by the Emperor's mandate, a city of the Guebres, in which were their own wives and children: and they recollect that they want prodigiously to know whether both their families did perish in the flames. The son of the one and the daughter of the other are taken up for heretics, and, thinking themselves brother and sister, insist upon being married, and upon being executed for their religion. The son stabs his father, who is half a Gu`ebre, too. The high-priest rants and roars. The Emperor arrives, blames the pontiff for being a persecutor, and forgives the son for assassinating his father (who does not die) because--I don't know why, but that he may marry his cousin. The grave-diggers in Hamlet have no chance, when such a piece as the Guebres is written agreeably to all rules and unities. Adieu, my dear Sir! I hope to find you quite well at my return. Yours ever.

(1086) Thomas Barret Lennard, seventeenth Baron Dacre. His lordship married Ann Maria, daughter of Sir John Pratt, lord chief-justice of the court of King's Bench.-E.

(1087) At that time the fashionable physician of Paris. He was originally from Arles, and attained his celebrity by curing the ladies of fashion in the French metropolis of the vapours.-E.

(1088) Madame du Deffand.

\Letter 369 To George Montagu, Esq.

Paris, Sept. 7, 1769. (page 553)

Your two letters flew here together in a breath. I shall answer the article of business first. I could certainly buy many things for you here, that you would like, the reliques of the last age's magnificence; but, since my Lady Holderness invaded the custom-house with a hundred and fourteen gowns, in the reign of that two-penny monarch George Grenville, the ports are so guarded, that not a soul but a smuggler can smuggle any thing into England; and I suppose you would not care to pay seventy-five per cent, on second-hand commodities. All I transported three years ago, was conveyed under the canon of the Duke of Richmond. I have no interest in our present representative; nor if I had, is he returning. Plate, of all earthly vanities, is the most impassable: it is not Counerband in its metallic capacity, but totally so in its personal; and the officers of the custom-house not being philosophers enough to separate the substance from the superficies, brutally hammer both to pieces, and return you only the intrinsic: a compensation which you, who are a member of Parliament, would not, I trow, be satisfied with. Thus I doubt you must retrench your generosity to yourself, unless you can contract into an Elzevir size, and be content with any thing one can bring in one's pocket.

My dear old friend was charmed with your mention of her, and made me vow to return you a thousand compliments. She cannot conceive why you will not step hither. Feeling in herself no difference between the spirits of twenty-three and seventy-three, she thinks there is no impediment to doing whatever one will but the want of eyesight. If she had that, I am persuaded no consideration would prevent her making me a visit at Strawberry Hill. She makes songs, sings them, remembers all that ever were made; and, having lived from the most agreeable to the most reasoning age, has all that was amiable in the last, all that is sensible in this, without the vanity of the former, or the pedant impertinence of the latter. I have heard her dispute with all sorts of people, on all sorts of subjects, and never knew her in the wrong. She humbles the learned, sets right their disciples, and finds conversation for every body. Affectionate as Madame de S`evign`e, she has none of her prejudices, but a more universal taste; and, with the most delicate frame, her spirits hurry her through a life of fatigue that would kill me, if I was to continue here. If we return by one in the morning from supping in the country, she proposes driving to the Boulevard or to the Foire St. Ovide, because it is too early to go to bed. I had great difficulty last night to persuade her, though she was not well, not to sit up till' between two or three for the comet; for which purpose she had appointed an astronomer to bring his telescopes to the President Henault's, as she thought it would amuse me. In short, her goodness to me is so excessive, that I feel unashamed at producing my withered person in a round of diversions, which I have quitted at home. I tell a story; I do feel ashamed, and sigh to be in my quiet castle and cottage; but it costs me many a Pang, when I reflect that I shall probably never have resolution enough to take another journey to see this best and sincerest of friends, who loves me as much as my mother did! but it is idle to look forward--what is next year?-a bubble that may burst for her or me, before even the flying year can hurry to the end of its almanack! To form plans and projects in such a precarious life as this, resembles the enchanted castles"of fairy legends, in which every gate Was guarded by giants, dragons, etc. Death or diseases bar every portal through which we mean to pass; and, though we may escape them and reach the last chamber, what a wild adventurer is he that centres his hopes at the end of such an avenue! I am contented with the beggars of the threshold, and never propose going on, but as the gates open of themselves.

The weather here is quite sultry, and I am sorry to say one can send to the corner of the street and buy better peaches than all our expense in kitchen gardens produces. Lord and Lady Dacre are a few doors from me, having started from Tunbridge more suddenly than I did from Strawberry Hill, but on a more unpleasant motive. My lord was persuaded to come and try a new physician. His faith is greater than mine! but, poor man! can one wonder that he is willing to believe? My lady has stood her shock, and I do not doubt will get over it.

Adieu, my t'other dear old friend! I am sorry to say I see you almost as seldom as I do Madame du Deffand. However, it is comfortable to reflect that we have not changed to each other for some five-and-thirty years, and neither you nor I haggle about naming so ancient a term. I made a visit yesterday to the Abbess of Panthemont, General Oglethorpe's niece,(1089) and no chicken. I inquired after her mother, Madame de Meziers, and I thought I might to a spiritual votary to immortality venture to say, that her mother must be very old; she interrupted me tartly, and said, no, her mother had been married extremely young. Do but think of its seeming important to a saint to sink a wrinkle of her own through an iron grate! Oh, we are ridiculous animals; and if animals have any fun in them, how we must divert them.

(1089) Sister of the Princess de Ligne.