Letter 387 To Miss Berry.
Strawberry Hill, August 17, 1791. (page 514)
No letter from Florence this post, though I am wishing for one every day! The illness of a friend is bad, but is augmented by distance. Your letters say you are quite recovered; but the farther you are from me, the oftener I want to hear that recovery repeated: and any delay in hearing revives my apprehensions of a return of your fever. I am embarrassed, too, about your plan. It grows near to the time you Proposed beginning your journey. I do not write with any view to hastening that, which I trust will entirely depend on the state of your health and strength; but I am impatient to know your intentions: in short, I feel that, from this time to your arrival, my letters will grow very tiresome. I have heard to-day, that Lord and Lady Sheffield, who went to visit Mr. Gibbon at Lausanne, met with great trouble and impertinence at almost every post in France. in Switzerland there is a furious spirit of democracy, or demonocracy. They made great rejoicings on the recapture of the King of France. Oh! why did you leave England in such a turbulent era! When will you sit down on the quiet banks of the Thames?
Wednesday night.
Since I began my letter, I have received yours of the 2d, two days later than Usual; and a most comfortable one it is. My belief and my faith are now of the same religion. I do believe you quite recovered. You, in the mean time, are talking of my rheumatism-quite an old story. Not that it is gone, though the pain is. The lameness in my shoulder remains, and I am writing on my lap: but the complaint is put upon the establishment; like old servants, that are of no use, fill up the place of those that could do something, and yet still remain in the house.
I know nothing new, public or private. that is worth telling. The stocks are transported with the pacification with Russia, and do not care for what it has cost to bully the Empress to no purpose; and say, we can afford it. Nor can Paine and Priestley persuade them that France is much happier than we are, by having ruined itself. The poor French here are in hourly expectation of as rapid a counterrevolution as what happened two years ago. Have you seen the King of Sweden's letter to his minister, enjoining him to look dismal, and to take care not to be knocked on the head for so doing? It deserves to be framed with M. de Bouill`e's bravado.(817) You say you will write me longer letters when you know I am well. Your recovery has quite the contrary effect on me: I could scarce restrain my pen while I had apprehensions about you; now you are well, the goosequill has not a word to say. One would think it had belonged to a physician. I shall fill my vacuum with some lines that General Conway has sent me, written by I know not whom, on Mrs. Harte, Sir William Hamilton's pantomime mistress, or wife, who acts all the antique statues in an Indian shawl. I have not seen her yet, so am no judge; but people are mad about her wonderful expression, which I do not conceive; so few antique statues having any expression at all, nor being designed to have it. The Apollo has the symptoms of dignified anger:(818) the Laocoon and his sons, and Niobe and her family,(819) are all expression;' and a few more: but what do the Venuses, Floras, Hercules, and a thousand others tell, but the magic art of the sculptor, and their own graces and proportions?
I have been making up some pills of patience, to be taken occasionally, when you have begun your journey, and I do not receive your letters regularly; which may happen when you are .on the road. I recommend you to St. James of Compost-antimony, to whom St. Luke was an ignorant quack. Adieu!
(817) "The Marquis de Bouill`e, in order to draw upon himself the indignation of the Assembly, addressed to it a letter, which might be called mad, but for the generous motive which dictated it. He avowed himself the sole author of the King's journey, though, on the contrary, he had opposed it. He declared, in the name of the Sovereign, that Paris should be responsible for the safety of the Royal Family, and that the slightest injury offered to them should be signally avenged. The Assembly winked at this generous bravado, and threw the whole blame on Bouill`e; who had nothing to fear, for he was already abroad." Thiers, vol. i. p. 197.-E.
(818) "In his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity." Byron.-E.
(819) "Go see
Laocoon's torture dignifying pain—
A father's love and mortal's agony
With an immortal's patience blending:—Vain
The struggle: vain against the coiling strain
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,
The old man's clench, the long envenom'd chain
Rivets the living links,—the enormous asp
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp." Ibid.-E.
Letter 388 To The Miss Berrys.
Berkeley Square, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 1791. (page 516)