Lord Sheffield to Edward Gibbon.
Sheffield Place, 13th Dec., 1791.
My Lady is getting quite well. Bratts very fond of their Swiss Tour. I have passed a week very pleasantly in London. King apparently quite well. Lally a great favourite with Lord Loughborough. He assisted at a copious dinner at Batt's, and said he never enjoyed one more interesting. He saw Lord Guilford on his passage through London, who was well pleased with him, as also is Douglas. Tell Mr. Trevor good care will be taken of him. La Comtesse de Lally seems to preserve a strict incognito. Lady Loughborough visits her. I can only collect that she doth not appear to like to go out. It is said, she has not confined her practices to Lally. Introduced him to Burke, who says the said Lally persists in his errors, and justifies all his mischievous conduct in the beginning, and the said Burke is as ridiculous and as absurd as may be imagined.[191] I have been presented to Cazalés (who resides with Burke), but I had not an opportunity of seeing anything of him. England has supplied and has been paid for 36,000 stand of arms for the Emigrants. The Corps Diplomatique at London says that Spain has sent 5 millions of livres to the Princes, and Portugal 4 millions—Berlin 2 millions.
I have expectation of seeing Batt and Lally here at Christmas. Tell Levade I have only just learned where to find his son-in-law. I hope also to see him here. People begin to talk of 3½ per Cent. for money.
582.
Lord Sheffield to Edward Gibbon.
Sheffield Place, 25th Dec., 1791.
I am obliged to write to you, otherwise it would not be proper, because we are determined to starve you into a more decent deportment; not a fragment from you except the medley to Maria. She has been so zealous in your service, that she deserved more notice. The obligation to write is that a pipe of Madeira (which has travelled and is very good) is ordered to set out for Lausanne by the same consignment and way as the last, ergo you must give notice to your correspondent at Basle, &c.