(603) Pannoni's coffeehouse of the Florentine nobility, not famous for their courage of late.
271 Letter 146 To Richard Bentley, Esq. Arlington Street, August 28, 1755.
Our piratic laurels, with which the French have so much reproached us, have been exceedingly pruned! Braddock is defeated and killed, by a handful of Indians and by the baseness of his own troops, who sacrificed him and his gallant officers. Indeed, there is some suspicion that cowardice was not the motive, but resentment at having been draughted from Irish regiments. Were such a desertion universal, could one but commend@it'@ Could one blame men who should refuse to be knocked on the head for sixpence a day, and for the advantage and dignity of a few ambitious? But in this case one pities the brave young @officers, who cannot so easily disfranchise themselves from the prejudices of glory! Our disappointment is greater than our loss; six-and-twenty officers are killed, who, I suppose, have not left a vast many fatherless and widowless, as an old woman told me to-day with great tribulation. The ministry have a much more serious affair on their hands-Lord Lincoln and Lord Anson have had a dreadful quarrel! Coquus teterrima belli causa! When Lord Mountford shot himself, Lord Lincoln said, "Well, I am very sorry for poor Mountford! but it is the part of a wise man to make the best of every misfortune-I shall now have the best cook in England." This was uttered before Lord Anson. Joras,(604)— who is a man of extreme punctilio, as cooks and officers ought to be, would not be hired till he knew whether this Lord Mountford would retain him. When it was decided that he would not, Lord Lincoln proposed to hire Joras. Anson had already engaged him. Such a breach of friendship was soon followed by an expostulation (there was jealousy of the Duke of Newcastle's favour already under the coals): in short the nephew earl called the favourite earl such gross names, that it was well they were ministers! otherwise, as Mincing says, "I vow, I believe they must have fit." The public, that is half-a-dozen toad-eaters, have great hopes that the present unfavourable posture of affairs in America will tend to cement this breach, and that we shall all unite hand and heart against the common enemy.
I returned the night before last from my peregrination. It is very unlucky for me that no crown of martyrdom is entailed on zeal for antiquities; I should be a rubric martyr of the first class. After visiting the new salt-water baths at Harwich, (which, next to horse-racing, grows the most fashionable resource for people who want to get out of town, and who love the country and retirement!) I went to see Orford castle, and Lord Hertford's at Sudborn. The one is a ruin, and the other ought to be so. Returning in a one-horse chair over a wild vast heath, I went out of the road to see the remains of Buttley Abbey; which however I could not see; for, as the keys of Orford castle were at Sudborn, so the keys of Buttley were at Orford! By this time it was night; we lost our way, were in excessive rain for above two hours, and only found our way to be overturned into the mire the next morning going into Ipswich. Since that I went to see an old house built by Secretary Naunton.(605) His descendant, who is a strange retired creature, was unwilling to let us see it; but we did, and little in it worth seeing. The house never was fine, and is now out of repair; has a bed with ivory pillars and loose rings, presented to the secretary by some German prince or German artist; and a small gallery of indifferent portraits, among which there are scarce any worth notice but of the Earl of Northumberland, Anna Bullen's lover, and of Sir Antony Wingfield, who having his hand tucked into his girdle, the housekeeper told us, had had his fingers cut off by Harry VIII. But Harry VIII. was not a man pour s'arr`eter `a ces minuties la!
While we waited for leave to see the house, I strolled into the churchyard, and was struck with a little door open into the chancel, through the arch of which I discovered cross-legged knights and painted tombs! In short, there are no less than eight considerable monuments, very perfect, of Wingfields, Nauntons, and a Sir John Boynet and his wife, as old as Richard the Second's time. But what charmed me still more, were two figures of Secretary Naunton's father and mother in the window in painted glass, near two feet high, and by far the finest painting on glass I ever saw. His figure, in a puffed doublet, breeches and bonnet, and cloak of scarlet and yellow, is absolutely perfect: her shoulder is damaged. This church, which is scarce bigger than a large chapel, is very ruinous, though containing such treasures! Besides these, there are brasses on the pavement, with a succession of all the wonderful head-dresses which our plain virtuous grandmothers invented to tempt our rude and simple ancestors.- -I don't know what our nobles might be, but I am sure that Milliners three or four hundred years ago must have been more accomplished in the arts, as Prynne calls them, of crisping, curling, frizzling, and frouncing, than all the tirewomen of Babylon, modern Paris, or modern Pall-Mall. Dame Winifred Boynet, whom I mentioned above, is accoutered with the coiffure called piked horns, which, if there were any signs in Lothbury and Eastcheap, must have brushed them about strangely, as their ladyships rode behind their gentlemen ushers! Adieu!
(604) The name of the cook in question.
(605) Sir Robert Naunton, master of the court of wards. He wrote Anecdotes of Queen Elizabeth and her favourites.
273 Letter 147 To The Rev. Henry Etough.(606) Woolterton, Sept. 10, 1755.
Dear Etough, I cannot forbear any longer to acknowledge the many favours from you lately; your last was the 8th of this month. His Majesty's speedy arrival among his British subjects is very desirable and necessary, whatever may be the chief motive for his making haste. As to Spain, I have from the beginning told my friends, when they asked, both in town and country, that I was at all apprehensive that Spain would join with France against us; for this plain reason, because it could not possibly be the interest of the Spaniards to do it for should the views of the French take place in making a line of forts from the Mississippi to Canada, and of being masters of the whole of that extent of country, Peru and Mexico, and Florida, would be in more danger from them than the British settlements in America.
Mr. Fowle has made me a visit for a few days, and communicated to me your two pieces relating to my brother and Lord Bolingbroke, and I think you do great justice to them both in their very different and opposite characters; but you will give me leave to add with respect to Lord Orford, there are several mistakes and misinformations, of which I am persuaded I could convince you by conversation, but my observations are not proper for a letter. Of this more fully when I see you, but when that will be I can't yet tell. I am ever most affectionately yours, etc.