LETTER XLI.41.
To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.
Nov. 10.
The savages assure us, my dear, on the information of the beavers, that we shall have a very mild winter: it seems, these creatures have laid in a less winter stock than usual. I take it very ill, Lucy, that the beavers have better intelligence than we have.
We are got into a pretty composed easy way; Sir George writes very agreable, sensible, sentimental, gossiping letters, once a fortnight, which Emily answers in due course, with all the regularity of a counting-house correspondence; he talks of coming down after Christmas: we expect him without impatience; and in the mean time amuse ourselves as well as we can, and soften the pain of absence by the attention of a man that I fancy we like quite as well.
With submission to the beavers, the weather is very cold, and we have had a great deal of snow already; but they tell me ’tis nothing to what we shall have: they are taking precautions which make me shudder beforehand, pasting up the windows, and not leaving an avenue where cold can enter.
I like the winter carriages immensely; the open carriole is a kind of one-horse chaise, the covered one a chariot, set on a sledge to run on the ice; we have not yet had snow enough to use them, but I like their appearance prodigiously; the covered carrioles seem the prettiest things in nature to make love in, as there are curtains to draw before the windows: we shall have three in effect, my father’s, Rivers’s, and Fitzgerald’s; the two latter are to be elegance itself, and entirely for the service of the ladies: your brother and Fitzgerald are trying who shall be ruined first for the honor of their country. I will bet three to one upon Ireland. They are every day contriving parties of pleasure, and making the most gallant little presents imaginable to the ladies.
Adieu! my dear.
Yours,
A. Fermor.