Ten months are gone of the longest year that ever was born—a baker's year, for it has thirteen months to the dozen! As our letters are so long interchanging, it is not beginning too early to desire You will think of settling the stages to which I must direct to you in your route. Nay, I don't know whether it is not already too late: I am sure it will be, if I am to stay for an answer to this; but I hope you will have thought on it before you receive this. I am so much recovered as to have been abroad. I cannot say my arm is glib yet; but, if I waited for the total departure of' the rheumatism, I might stay at home till the national debt is paid. My fair writing is a proof of my lameness: I labour as if I were engraving; and drop no words, as I do in my ordinary hasty scribbling.
Lady Cecilia tells me that her nephew, Mr. West,(812) who was with you at Pisa, declares he is in love with you both; so I am not singular. You two may like to hear this, though no novelty to you; but it will not satisfy Mr. Berry, who will be impatient for news from Birmingham: but there are no more, nor any-whence else. There has not been another riot in any of the three kingdoms. The villain Paine came over for the Crown and Anchor;(813) but, finding that his pamphlet had not set a straw on fire, and that the 14th of July was as little in fashion as the ancient gunpowder-plot, he dined at another tavern with a few quaking conspirators; and probably is returning to Paris, where he is engaged in a controversy with the Abb`e Sieyes, about the plus or minus of rebellion. The rioters in Worcestershire, whom I mentioned in my last, were not a detachment from Birmingham, but volunteer incendiaries from the capital; who went, according to the rights of men, with the mere view of plunder, and threatened gentlemen to burn their houses, if not ransomed. Eleven of these disciples of Paine are in custody; and Mr. Merry, Mrs. Barbauld, and Miss Helen Williams will probably have subjects for elegies. Deborah and Jael, I believe, were invited to the Crown and Anchor, and had let their nails grow accordingly: but, somehow or other, no poissonni`eres were there, and the two prophetesses had no opportunity that day of exercising their talents or talons. Their French allies, cock and hen, have a fairer field open; and the Jacobins, I think, will soon drive the National Assembly to be better royalists than ever they were, in selfdefence.
You have indeed surprised me by your account of the strange credulity of poor King Louis's escape in safety! In these villages we heard of his flight late in the evening, and, the very next morning, of his being retaken.(814) Much as he, at least the Queen, has suffered, I am persuaded the adventure has hastened general confusion, and will increase the royal party; though perhaps their Majesties, for their personal safeties, had better have awaited the natural progress of anarchy. The enormous deficiencies of money, and the total insubordination of the army, both apparent and uncontradicted, from the reports made to the National Assembly, show what is Coming. Into what such a chaos will Subside, it would be silly to attempt to guess. Perhaps it is not wiser in the exiles to expect to live to see a resettlement in their favour. One thing I have for these two years thought probable to arrive—a division, at least, a dismemberment of France. Despotism could no longer govern so unwieldy a machine; a republic would be still less likely to hold it together. If foreign powers should interfere, they will take care to pay themselves with what is `a leur biensance; and that, in reality, would be serving France too. So much for my speculations! and they have never varied. We are so far from intending to new-model our government and dismiss the Royal Family, annihilate the peerage, cashier the hierarchy, and lay open the land to the first occupier, as Dr. Priestley, and Tom Paine, and the Revolution Club humbly proposed, that we are even encouraging the breed of princes. It is generally believed that the Duke of York is going to marry the Princess of Prussia, the King's daughter by his first wife, and his favourite child. I do not affirm it; but many others do.(815)
Thursday night, late.
Lady Di. has told me an extraordinary fact. Catherine Slay-Czar sent for Mr. Fawkener(816) and desired he will order for her a bust of Charles Fox; and she will place it between Demosthenes and Cicero (pedantry she learnt from her French authors, and which our schoolboys would be above using); for his eloquence has saved two great nations from a war—by his opposition to it, s'entend: so the peace is no doubt made. She could not have addressed her compliment worse than to Mr. Fawkener, sent by Mr. Pitt, and therefore so addressed; and who of all men does not love Mr. Fox, and Mr. Fox who has no vainglory, will not care a straw for the flattery, and will understand it too. Good night!
(812) The Honourable Septimus West, uncle of the present Earl of Delawarr. He died of consumption in October 1793.
(813) The great dinner at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution.-E.
(814) The flight of the Royal Family of France to, and return from, Varennes.
(815) The marriage of the Duke of York with Frederica Charlotte Ulrica Catherine, eldest daughter of the King of Prussia, was solemnized, first in Prussia, on the 29th of September, and again in England, on the 23d of November, 1791. For Walpole's account of her Royal Highness's visit to Strawberry Hill, see his letter to the Miss Berrys of the 25th of September, 1793.-E.
(816. Mr. Fawkener was the son of Sir Everard Fawkener, He was one of the principal clerks of the privy council, and had been sent on a secret mission to Russia.-E.