244.
To his Stepmother.
March the 30th, 1775.
Dear Madam,
A SILENT MEMBER.
*I hardly know how to take up the pen. I talked in my last pen of two or three posts, and I am almost ashamed to calculate how many have elapsed. I will endeavour for the future to be less scandalous. Only believe that my heart is innocent of the lazyness of my hand. I do not mean to have recourse to the stale and absurd excuse of business, though I have really had a very considerable hurry of new Parliamentary business: one day, for instance, of seventeen hours, from ten in the morning till between three and four the next morning. It is, upon the whole, an agreeable improvement in my life, and forms just the mixture of business, of study, and of society, which I always imagined I should, and now find I do, like. Whether the House of Commons may ever prove of benefit to myself or Country is another question. As yet I have been mute. In the course of our American affairs, I have sometimes had a wish to speak, but though I felt tolerably prepared as to the matter, I dreaded exposing myself in the manner, and remained in my seat safe, but inglorious. Upon the whole (though I still believe I shall try), I doubt whether Nature, not that in some instances I am ungrateful, has given me the talents of an Orator, and I feel that I come into Parliament much too late to exert them.*
The H.'s have passed a fortnight with me and went away yesterday. I regret them much. We often thought and talked of you, and the more so, as we stumbled on your friend Mrs. Ashby. She is an agreable Woman, though we cannot think her either handsome, or proper for your daughter-in-law. *Do you hear of Port Eliot coming to Bath? and, above all, do you hear of Charles Street[290] coming to Bentinck Street, in its way to Essex, &c. Adieu.
Dear Madam,
I am most truly yours,
E. Gibbon.*