(268) Croome in Worcestershire Lord Coventry's family seat.
(269) George, fourth Earl of Waldegrave (1751-1789). He married his cousin, Lady Elizabeth Laura Waldegrave, daughter of James, second earl, in 1782.
(1789,) Nov. 6, Friday m(orning), Richmond.—Lord C. will receive a letter from me this morning which will be sufficient to assure you that George is well. He is so indeed, a tous egards. I stayed with him all Wednesday, and yesterday about noon I left him, so that in reality his course of erudition had but one day's interruption from me. Mr. Roberts is au comble de sa joie, et de sa gloire, having gained the prize for a better copy of verses upon the Deluge than that of any of his competitors. They are to be printed, so I shall see what I can at present have no idea of, and that is, how he will find matter from that event to furnish a hundred or two of blank verses. I should think that no one, but one like our friend John St. J(ohn), who uses Helicon as habitually as others do a cold bath, is equal to it. I only hope, for my part, that the argument will not be illustrated by any dkbordement of the Thames near this house; at present there is no appearance of it.
I stayed at Matson, I will not say as long as it was good, but before it became very bad, which I believe it did before we had left the place two hours. The storm was brewing in the vale, but upon the hills we bade it defiance. I am very glad to be at a place where I can be stationary for a considerable time; and it is what is very requisite for my present state of health, which requires attention and regularity of living. If these are observed, I am as(su)red that after a time I shall be well, and that my lease for ten or twenty years seems as yet a good one. As for the labour and sorrow which his Majesty K(ing) D(avid) speaks of, I know of no age that is quite exempt from them, and have no fear of their being more severe in my caducity than they were in the flower of my age, when I had not more things to please me than I have now, although they might vary in their kind. When I see you and Lord C. with your children about you, and all of you in perfect health and spirits, my sensations of pleasure are greater than in the most joyous hours of my youth. It is no solitude, this place. We have got Onslows and Jeffreyes's, Mr. Walpole, &c., &c., and if Mr. Cambridge would permit it, I could be sometimes, as I wish to be, alone.
On Monday Mie Mie and I shall go to town for one night. I am to meet Me de Bouflers(270) at Lady Lucan's. I think that if this next winter does not make a perfect Frenchman of me, I shall give it up. I hope, more, that it will afford Mie Mie also an opportunity of improving herself in a language which will be of more use to her, in all probability, than it can ever hereafter be to me. I am not disgusted with the language by the abhorrence which I have at present of the country. But these calamities, at times, happen in all climes, as well as in France. Man is a most savage animal when uncontrolled.
The last accounts brought from France fill me with more horror than any former ones. The King is to be moved only by the fear of some approaching danger to his person. The Queen is agitated by all the alarming and distressing thoughts imaginable. Her health is visibly altered; she cries continually, and is, as Polinitz says of K(ing) James's Queen, une Arethuse. Her danger has been imminent; and the K(ing) left his capital, and her in it, as he was advised to do, il eut ete fait d'elle; she would have been, probably, dragged to the Hotel de Ville, et auroit fini ses jours en Greve. She holds out her children, which are called les enfans de la Reine exclusivement, as beggars in the streets do theirs, to move compassion. Behold, how low they have reduced a Queen! But as yet she is not ripe for tragedy, so John St. John may employ his muse upon other subjects for a time. To speak the truth, all these representations of the miseries of the French nation do not seem to me (very decent) proper subjects for our evening spectacles, and it is not, in my apprehension, quite decent that Mr. Hughes, Mr. Astley, or Mr. St. John should be making a profit by Iron Masques, and Toupets stuck upon Poles.
The D(uke) of Orleans's embassy here is universally considered as one devised for his own personal safety, and he is equally respected here and abroad. The subject of his credentials and object of negotiation had no more in them than to say that his most Xtian Majesty desired to know how his brother the K(ing) of England did. The answer to which was, very well, with thanks for his obliging enquiries. The King speaks to the D(uke) of O(rleans) civilly, mais il en demeure la. His behaviour to the Duc de Luxembourg(271) and to other Frenchmen of quality was more distinguished. He talked yesterday to M. de Luxembourg for an hour and 17 minutes. You know how exact we courtiers are upon these points.
Charles Fox was at Court, but was scarcely spoke to. Il n'en fut pour cela plus rebute. He stayed in the apartments till five in the afternoon. Others of the Opposition were there. Lord North came to Court with his son-in-law, Mr. D.(272) I must wait for a future opportunity of paying my court. The Duke has finished his, I believe, for the present. I expected to have found him here or in London. He went again into Scotland last Friday, and will not be returned in a month, and this sans qu'il m'en ait averti. Il faut avouer que notre Duc, a regard de tous les petits devoirs de la vie, est fort a son aise. Me de Cambis is also come; il en fourmille, but all of them almost beggars; some few, I hear, have letters of credit. Poor Me de Boufflers, as Lady Lucan writes me word, is dans un etat pitoyable. But for the French, brisons la pour le present.
(270) Marie Charlotte Hippolyte de Saujon, Comtesse de Boufflers-Rouvel (1724-1800). One of those remarkable women who in Paris at the end of the eighteenth century united a love of intellect and literature with a pleasure in society. After being left a widow in 1764, she lived with the Prince de Conti. She was a friend of Hume and Rousseau, the rival of Mme. du Deffand. Her salon in the Temple was a meeting-place for a singular variety of persons, among whom she was known as Minerva the Wise. Her daughter-in-law, the Comtesse Emilie de Boufflers, was guillotined in 1794. She herself was imprisoned, but was released after the death of Robespierre.
(271) The Due de Luxembourg and his family escaped with difficulty to England, 300,000 livres being set on his head. He arrived in London July 19, 1789.