Letter 411 To The Miss Berrys.
Friday, December 13, 1793. (page 553)
You will not wonder at my dulness about the time of your setting out, and of the giles you are to make on the road: you are used to my fits of incomprehension; and, as is natural at my age, I believe they increase. What augmented them was my eagerness to be sure of every opportunity of sending you the earliest intelligence of every event that may happen at this critical period. That impatience has sometimes made me too precipitate in my information. I believed Lord Howe's success too rapidly: you have seen by all the newspapers, that both the ministers and the public were equally credulous, from the collateral channels that imported such assertions! Well! if you have been disappointed of capturing five or six French men-of-war, you must at present stay your appetite by some handsome slices of St. Domingo, and by plentiful goblets of French blood shed by the Duke of Brunswick; which we firmly believe, though the official intelligence was not arrived last night. His Highness, who has been so serene for above a year, seems to have waked to some purpose and, which is not less propitious, his victory indicates that his principal, the King of Prussia, has added no more French jewels to his regalia. I shall like to hear the National Convention accuse him of being bribed by a contrary Pitt's diamond.(883) Here is another comfortable symptom: it looks as if Robespierre would give up Barr`ere. How fortunate that Beelzebubs and Molochs peach one another, like human highwaymen! I will tell you a reflection I have made, and which shows how the worst monsters counteract their own councils. Many formerly, who meant to undermine religion, began by sapping the belief of a devil. Next, by denying God, they have restored Satan to his throne, or will; though the present system is a republic of fiends. The Pandemonium below recalls its agents, as if they were only tribunes of the people elected by temporary factions. Barnave, called the Butcher in the first Convention, is ,gone, like Orleans and Brissot. If we do not presume to interpret judgments, I wonder the monsters themselves do not: enough has happened already to warn them of their own fate!
The Conways are in town for two or three days: they came for Mr. Jerningham's play. Harris had at last allowed him the fourth night; and he had a good night. I have a card from Lady Amherst for Monday; and shall certainly go, as my lord behaved so nobly about our cousin.(884) I have another from the Margravine of Anspach, to sup at Hammersmith; whither I shall certainly not go, but plead the whole list of chronical distempers. Do you think if the whole circle of Princes of Westphalia were to ask me for next Thursday evening,(885) that I would accept the invitation?
Saturday, Dec. 14, 1793.
I am glad this is to be the last of my gazettes. I am tired of notifying and recalling the articles of news: not that I am going to dislaurel the Duke of Brunswick; but not a sprig is yet come in confirmation. Military critics even conjecture, by the journals from Manheim and Frankfort, that the German victories have not been much more than repulses of the French, and have been bought dearly. I have inclined to believe the best from Wurmser; but I confess my best hopes are from the factions of Paris. If the gangrene does not gain the core, how calculate the duration? It has already baffled all computation, all conjecture. One wonders now that France, in its totality, was not more fatal to Europe than even it was. Is not it astonishing, that after five years of such havoc, such emigrations, expulsions, massacres, annihilation of commerce, evanition Of specie, and real or impending famine, they can still furnish and support armies against us and the Austrians in Flanders, against the Duke of Brunswick and Wurmser, against us at Toulon, against the King of Sardinia, against Spain, against the Royalists in La Vend`ee, and along the coast against our expedition under Lord Moira; and though we have got fifteen of their men-of-war at Toulon, they have sixteen, or more, at Brest, and are still impertinent with a fry of privateers? Consider, too, that all this spirit is kept up by the most extravagant lies, delusions, rhodomontade; by the extirpation of the usual root of enthusiasm, religion; and by the terror of murder, that ought to revolt all mankind. If such a system of destruction does not destroy itself, there is an end of that ignis fatuus, human reason; and French policy must govern, or exterminate mankind.
I this moment received Your Thursday's note, with that for your housekeeper, who is in town, and with those sweet words, "You need not leave a card; we shall be at home." I do not believe I shall send you an excuse. Marshal Conway has stopped in to tell me, he has Just met with his nephew, Lord Yarmouth,(886) who has received a letter from a foreign minister at Manheim, who asserts all the Duke of Brunswick's victories, and the destruction or dispersion of the French army in that quarter. The Earl maintains, that the King of Prussia's politics are totally changed to the right, and that eighteen thousand more of his troops have joined the allies. I should like to know, and to have the Convention know, that the murder of the Queen of France has operated this revulsion.
I hope I send you no more falsehoods-at least, you must allow, that it is not on bad authority. If Lord Howe has disappointed you, you will accept the prowess of the virago his sister, Mrs. Howe.(887) As soon as it was known that her brother had failed, a Jacobin mob broke her windows, mistaking them for his. She lifted up the sash, and harangued them; told them, that was not the house of her brother, Who lives in the other part of Grafton-street, and that she herself is a widow, and that that house is hers. She stilled the waves, and they dispersed quietly.
There! There end my volumes, to my great satisfaction! If we are to have any bonfires or illuminations, you will be here to light them Yourselves. Adieu to Yorkshire!
(883) He means bribed by the then prime minister.
(884) Lord Amherst, the then commander-in-chief, had appointed a cousin of Miss Berry's to an ensigncy, on his recommendation.