The marriage of your cousin puts me in mind of the two owls, whom the Vizier in some Eastern tale told the Sultan were treating on a match between their children, on whom they were to settle I don't know how many ruined villages. Trouble not your head about it. Our ancestors were rogues, and so will our posterity be.
Madame Roland has sent to me, by Lady Jerningham,(942) to beg my works. She shall certainly have them when I return to England; but how comes she to forget that you and I are friends? or does she think that all Englishmen quarrel on party? If she does, methinks she is a good deal in the right, and it is one of the reasons why I have bid adieu to politics, that I may not be expected to love those I hate, and hate those I love. I supped last night with the Duchess de Choiseul, and saw a magnificent robe she is to wear to-day for a great wedding between a Biron(943) and a Boufflers. It is of blue satin, embroidered all over in mosaic, diamond-wise, with gold: in every diamond is a silver star edged with gold, and surrounded with spangles in the same way; it is trimmed with double sables, crossed with frogs and tassels of gold; her head, neck, breast, and arms, covered with diamonds. She will be quite the fairy queen, for it is the prettiest little reasonable amiable Titania you ever saw; but Oberon does not love it. He prefers a great mortal Hermione his sister. I long to hear that you are lodged in Arlington-street, and invested with your green livery; and I love Lord Beaulieu for his cudom. Adieu!
(942) Mary, eldest daughter, and eventually heiress, of Francis
Plowden, Esq. by Mary eldest daughter of the Hon. John Stafford
Howard, younger son of the unfortunate Lord Stafford, wife of sir
George Jerningham.-E.
(943) The Duc de Lauzun, who upon the death of his uncle, the Mar`echal de Biron, became Duc de Biron, married the heiress and only child of the Duc de Boufflers, who died at Genoa. The marriage proved an unhappy one, and the Duchess twice took refuge in England at the breaking out of the French revolution; but having, in 1793, unadvisedly returned to Paris, she perished on the scaffold in one of the bloody proscriptions of Robespierre. At the beginning of that revolution, the Duke espoused the popular cause, and even commanded an army under the orders of the legislative assembly; but in the storms that succeeded, being altogether unequal to stem the torrent of popular fury or direct its course, he fell by the guillotine early in 1794.-E.
Letter 295 To George Montagu, Esq.
Paris, Sunday, Feb. 23. (page 470)
I cannot know that you are in my house, and not say, you are welcome. Indeed you are, and I am heartily glad you are pleased there. I have neither matter nor time for more, as I have heard of an opportunity of sending this away immediately with some other letters. News do not happen here as in London; the Parliaments meet, draw up a remonstrance, ask a day for presenting it, have the day named a week after, and so forth. At their rate of going on, if Methusalem was first president, he would not see the end of a single question. As your histories are somewhat more precipitate, I wait for their coming to some settlement, and then will return; but, if the old ministers are to be replaced, Bastille for Bastille, I think I had rather stay where I am. I am not half so much afraid of any power, as the French are of Mr. Pitt. Adieu!
Letter 296 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Paris, Feb. 28, 1766. (page 470)
Dear sir, As you cannot, I believe, get a copy of the letter to Rousseau, and are impatient for it, I send it you: though the brevity of it will not answer your expectation. It is no answer to any of his works, and is only a laugh at his affectations. I hear he does not succeed in England, where his singularities are no curiosity. Yet he must stay there, or give up all his pretensions. To quit a country where he may live at ease, and unpersecuted, will be owning that tranquillity is not what he seeks. If he again seeks persecution, who will pity him? I should think even bigots would let him alone out of contempt.
I have executed your commission in a way that I hope will please you. As you tell me you have a blue cup and saucer, and a red one, and would have them completed to six, without being all alike, I have bought one other blue, one other red, and two sprigged, in the same manner, with colours; so you will have just three pair, which seems preferable to six odd ones; and which, indeed, at nineteen livres a-piece, I think I could not have found.
I shall keep very near the time I proposed returning; though I am a little tempted to wait for the appearance of' leaves. As I may never come hither again, I am disposed to see a little of their villas and gardens, though it will vex me to lose spring and lilac-tide at Strawberry. The weather has been so bad, and continues so cold, that I have not yet seen all I intended in Paris. To-day, I have been to the Plaine de Sablon, by the Bois de Boulogne, to see a horserace rid in person by the Count Lauragais and Lord Forbes.(944) All Paris was in motion by nine o'clock this morning, and the coaches and crowds were innumerable at so novel a sight. Would you believe it, that there was an Englishman to whom it was quite as new? That Englishman was I: though I live within two miles of Hounslow, have been fifty times in my life at Newmarket, and have passed through it at the time of the races, I never before saw a complete one. I once went from Cambridge on purpose; saw the beginning, was tired, and went away. If there was to be a review in Lapland, perhaps I might see a review, too; which yet I have never seen. Lauragais was distanced at the second circuit. What added to the singularity was, that at the same instant his brother was gone to church to be married. But, as Lauragais is at variance with his father and wife, he chose this expedient to show he was not at the wedding. Adieu!