Chapter 216

Strawberry Hill, June 3, 1781. (PAGE 279)

You know I have more philosophy about you than courage, yet for once I have been very brave. There was an article in the papers last week that said, a letter from Jersey mentioned apprehensions of being attacked by four thousand French. Do you know that I treated the paragraph with scorn? No, no; I am not afraid for your island, when you are at home in it, and have had time to fortify it, and have sufficient force. No, no; it will not be surprised when you are there, and when our fleet is returned, and Digby before Brest. However, with all my valour, I could not help going to your brother to ask a few questions; but he had heard of no such letter. The French would be foolish indeed if they ran their heads a third time against your rocks, when watched by the most vigilant of all governors. Your nephew George(430) is arrived with the fleet: my door opened t'other morning; I looked towards the common horizon of heads, but was a foot and a half below any face. The handsomest giant in the world made but one step across my room, and seizing my hand, gave it such a robust gripe that I squalled; for he crushed my poor chalk-stones to powder. When I had recovered from the pain of his friendly salute, I said, "It must be George Conway! and yet, is it possible? Why, it is not fifteen months ago since you was but six feet high!" In a word, he is within an inch of Robert and Edward, with larger limbs; almost as handsome as Hugh, with all the bloom of youth; and, in short, another of those comely sons of Anak, the breed of which your brother and Lady Hertford have piously restored for the comfort of the daughters of Sion. He is delighted with having tapped his warfare with the siege of Gibraltar, and burns to stride to America. The town, he says, is totally destroyed, and between two and three hundred persons were killed.--Well, it is a pity Lady Hertford has done breeding: we shall want such a race to repeople even the ruins we do not lose! The rising generation does give one some hopes. I confine myself to some of this year's birds. The young William Pitt(431) has again displayed paternal oratory. The other day, on the commission of accounts, he answered Lord North, and tore him limb from limb. If Charles Fox could feel, one should Think such a rival, with an unspotted character, would rouse him. What, if a Pitt and Fox should again be rivals! A still newer orator has appeared in the India business, a Mr. Bankes,(432) and against Lord North too; and with a merit that the very last crop of orators left out of their rubric--modesty. As young Pitt is modest too, one would hope some genuine English may revive!(433)

Tuesday, June 5.

This is the season of opening my cake-house. I have chosen a bad spot, if I meant to retire; and calculated ill, when I made it a puppet-show. Last week we had two or three mastiff-days; for they were fiercer than our common dog-days. It is cooled again; but rain is as great a rarity as in Egypt; and father Thames is so far from being a Nile, that he is dying for thirst himself. But it would be prudent to reserve paragraphs of weather till people are gone out of town; for then I can have little to send you else from hence.

Berkeley Square, June 6.

As soon as I came to town to-day Le Texier called on me, and told me he has miscarried of Pygmalion. The expense would have mounted to 150 pounds and he could get but sixty subscribers at a guinea apiece. I am glad his experience and success have taught him thrift. I did not expect it. Sheridan had a heavier miscarriage last night. The two Vestris had imagined a f`ete; and, concluding that whatever they designed would captivate the town and its purses, were at the expense of 1200 pounds and, distributing tickets at two guineas apiece, disposed of not two hundred. It ended in a bad opera, that began three hours later than usual, and at quadruple the price. There were bushels of dead flowers, lamps, country dances--and a cold supper. Yet they are not abused as poor Le Texier was last year.

June 8.

I conclude my letter, and I hope our present correspondence, very agreeably; for your brother told me last night, that you have written to Lord Hillsborough for leave to return. If all our governors could leave their dominions in as good plight, it were lucky. Your brother owned, what the Gazette with all its circumstances cannot conceal, that Lord Cornwallis's triumphs have but increased our losses, without leaving any hopes. I am told that his army, which when he parted from Clinton amounted to seventeen thousand men, does not now contain above as many hundred, except the detachments. The Gazette, to my sorrow and your greater sorrow, speaks of Colonel O'Hara having received two dangerous wounds. Princess Amelia was at Marlborough-house last night, and played at faro till twelve o'clock. There ends the winter campaign! I go to Strawberry-hill to-morrow; and I hope, a l'Irlandaise, that the next letter I write to you will be not to write to you any more.

(430) Lord George Seymour Conway, seventh son of Francis, first Earl and Marquis of Hertford; born 1763.-E.

(431) The young William Pitt," afterwards, as Walpole anticipated, the proud rival of Charles Fox, and for so long a period the prime-minister of England, delivered his maiden speech in the House of Commons, on the 26th of February, in favour of Mr. Burke's bill for an economical reform in the civil list. "Never," says his preceptor, Bishop Tomline, "were higher expectations formed of any person upon his first coming into Parliament, and never were expectations more completely answered. They were, indeed, much more than answered; such were the fluency and accuracy of language, such the perspicuity of arrangement, and such the closeness of reasoning, and manly and dignified elocution,--generally, even in a much less degree, the fruits of long habit and experience,--that it could scarcely be believed to be the first speech of a young man not yet two-and-twenty. On the following day, knowing my anxiety upon every subject which related to him, Mr. Pitt, with his accustomed kindness, wrote to me at Cambridge, to inform me that 'he had heard his own voice in the House of Commons,' and modestly expressed his satisfaction at the manner in which his first attempt at parliamentary speaking had been received."-E.

(432) Henry Bankes, Esq. of Kingston Hall. He represented Corfe-Castle from 1780 to 1826, and the county of Dorset from that time until 1831. In 1818, he published "The Civil and Constitutional History of Rome, from the Foundation to the Age of Augustus," in two volumes, 8vo; and died in 1834.-E.

(433) Mr. Wilberforce, in a letter to a friend, of the 9th of June, says--"The papers will have informed you how Mr. William Pitt, second son of the late Lord Chatham has distinguished himself: he comes out as his father did, a ready-made orator, and I doubt not but that I shall one day or other, see him the first man in the country." Life, vol. 1. p. 22.-E.