396 Letter 240 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, Sept. 20(830)
My dear Sir, I have been roving about Hampshire with Mr. Chute, and did not receive your very kind note till yesterday, or I should certainly not have deferred a moment to thank you for it, and to express my great concern for Miss Montagu's bad health. You do me justice when you reckon on my feeling most sincerely for you: but let me ask why you will not bring her to town? She might not only have more variety of assistance, but it would be some relief to you: it must be dreadful, with your tenderness and feeling, to have nobody to share and divert your uneasiness.
I did not, till on the road the day before yesterday, hear the catastrophe of poor Sir John Bland, and the execrable villany, or, what our ancestors would have called, the humours of Taaffe. I am extremely sorry for Bland! He was very good-natured, and generous and well-bred; but never was such infatuation - I can call it by no term but flirting away his fortune and his life; he seemed to have no passion for play while he did it, nor sensibility when it ruined him but I fear he had both! What judgments the good people in the city (I mean the good in their own style, moneyed) will construe upon White's, when two of the most remarkable members have despatched themselves in nine months!
I shall be most sincerely glad to receive another letter to tell me that Miss Montagu mends: you have both my most hearty wishes. Yours ever.
(830) This letter is misplaced: the date of the year is 1755.-E.
397 Letter 241 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 29, 1757.
For how many years have I been telling you that your country was mad, that your country was undone! It does not grow wiser; it does not grow more prosperous! You can scarce have recovered your astonishment at the suspension of arms(831) concluded near Stade. How do you behave on these lamentable occasions? Oh! believe me, it is comfortable to have an island to hide one's head in! You will be more surprised when you hear that it is totally disavowed here. The clamour is going to be extreme—no wonder, when Kensington is the headquarters of murmur. The commander-in-chief is recalled— the late Elector(832) is outrageous. On such an occasion you may imagine that every old store of malice and hatred is ransacked: but you would not think that the general is now accused of cowardice! As improbable as that is, I do not know whether it may not grow your duty as a minister to believe it-and if it does, you must be sure not to believe, that with all this tempest the suspension was dictated from hence. Be that as it may, the general is to be the sacrifice. The difficulty will be extreme with regard to the Hessians, for they are in English pay. The King of Prussia will be another victim: he says we have undone him, without mending our own situation. He expected to beat the Prince de Soubize by surprise, but he, like the Austrians, declined a battle, and now will be reinforced by Richelieu's army, who is doomed to be a hero by our absurdities. Austrians, French, Russians, Swedes, can the King of Prussia not sink under all these! This suspension has made our secret expedition forgot by all but us who feel for particulars. It is the fashion now to believe it is not against the coast of France; I wish I could believe so!
As if all these disgraces were foreign objects not worth attending to, we have a civil war at home; literally so in many counties. The wise Lords, to defeat it, have made the Militia-bill so preposterous that it has raised a rebellion. George Townshend, the promoter of it for popularity, sees it not only most unpopular in his own county, but his father, my Lord Townshend, who is not the least mad of your countrymen, attended by a parson, a barber, and his own servants, and in his own long hair, which he has let grow, raised a mob against the execution of the bill, and has written a paper against it, which he has pasted up on the doors of four churches near him. It is a good name that a Dr. Stevens has given to our present situation, (for one cannot call it a Government,) a Mobocracy. I come to your letters which are much more agreeable subjects. I think I must not wish you joy of the termination of the Lorrain reign, you have lately taken to them, but I congratulate the Tuscans. Thank you extremely for the trouble you have given yourself in translating my inscription, and for the Pope's letter: I am charmed with his beautiful humility, and his delightful way of expressing it. For his ignorance about my father, I impute it to some failure of his memory. I should like to tell him that were my father still minister, I trust we should not make the figure we do—at least he and England fell together! If it is ignorance, Mr. Chute says it is a confirmation of the Pope's deserving the inscription, as he troubles his head so little about disturbing the peace of others. But our enemies need not disturb us-we do their business ourselves. I have one, and that not a little comfort, in my politics ; this suspension will at least prevent further hostilities between us and the Empress-Queen, and that secures my dear you.
When I have done thinking of politics, and that is always in an instant, unless such as you and Mr. Conway are involved in them, I am far from passing my time disagreeably. My mind is of no gloomy turn, and I have a thousand ways of amusing myself. Indeed of late I have been terribly frightened lest I must give them all up; my fears have gone to extravagance; do not wonder; my life is not quite irrational, and I trembled to think that I was growing fit only to consort with dowagers. What an exchange, books and drawings, and every thing of that sort, for cards! In short, for ten weeks I have had such pains in my eyes with the least application, that I thought I should lose them, at least that they would be useless. I was told that with reading and writing at night I had strained and relaxed the nerves. However, I am convinced that though this is partly the case, the immediate uneasiness came from a cold, which I caught in the hot weather by giving myself Florentine airs, by lying with my windows open, and by lying on the ground without my waistcoat. After trying forty 'you should do this's,'(833) Mr. Chute has cured me -with a very simple medicine: I will tell it you, that you may talk to Dr. Cocchi and about my eyes too. It is to bathe and rub the outsides all round, especially on the temples, with half a teaspoonful of white spirit of lavender (not lavender-water) and half of Hungary-water. I do this night and morning, and sometimes in the day: in ten days it has taken off all the uneasiness; I can now read in a chaise, which I had totally lost, and for five or six hours by candle-light, without spectacles or candle-screen. In short, the difference is incredible. Observe that they watered but little, and were less inflamed; only a few veins appeared red, whereas my eyes were remarkably clear. I do not know whether this would do with any humour, but that I never had. It is certain that a young man who for above twelve years had studied the law by being read to, from vast relaxation of the nerves, totally recovered the use of his eyes. I should think I tired you with this detail, if I was not sure that you cannot be tired with learning any thing for the good of others. As the medicine is so hot, it must not be let into the eyes, nor I should think be continued too long.
I approve much of your letter to Mr. Fox; I will give it to him at his return, but at present he is on a tour. How scrupulous you are in giving yourself the trouble to send me a copy—was that needful? or are you not always full of attentions that speak kindness? Your brother will take care to procure the vases when they come, and is inquiring for the liqueurs.