“Dear Colonel,
“My gout has left me, and if he never troubles me with his company again, he has my free leave to keep away. I meditate to take advantage of his absence, and pay a visit to my good brother at the castle before his dinner hour to-morrow, Deo volente. I shall bring my live-lumber Mother Richards in the coach with me, as her small wits just serve her to descant with due precision upon warm nightcaps and a well-aired bed: she will pester the poor folks in the castle with her clack, but I shall profit by her care; and you know there is not a more selfish fellow living than your humble servant. As my rascally passion for hoarding money has no longer any object, since you won’t help me off with any of my savings, I shall tack two more dog horses to my scurvy team, and come in state like Sir Francis Wronghead, with Giles Joulter riding postillion: the cattle will get a belly-full in De Lancaster’s stables, and that is what they don’t often meet with in their own. I have bought a flaming fine watch of a pedling Jew, which I dare say won’t go; but it will do for Amelia Jones, if she behaves well, and does not slight me for that puppy John, for whom I do not care a rush, as you well know, having lived in solitude till I am unfit for society, and as cold at heart as the top of a Welch mountain. I am very glad my brother Lancaster has so much abated of his learned dissertations, for I have no reading beyond that of a trumpery story book, and am in as profound a state of blessed ignorance, as any gentleman in Wales can boast of. Yet Robert surely is an incomparable man; his honour is so nice, his nature so divine, that I am almost ready to adore him till he talks Greek, and then it’s over with me; I know no more of the matter than a blind man does of colours.
“Your son Edward is the very beauty of holiness: he not only does faithful service to religion by the strong reasoning powers of his mind, but renders it lovely by the gracefulness of his manners. My spiritual pastor and teacher takes quite as much care of his own body, as he does of my soul: he is silent at his meals, but loud in talk and positive in argument, when he has satisfied his craving: He can’t keep his temper at backgammon, when the dice go against him; yet if I ever slip out a hard word, as we soldiers are too apt to do, he takes up their cause at once and sermonizes against swearing. I don’t think this is quite fair; for he swallows his oaths out of compliment to his cloth, and I from the habits of mine make it a point of honour to say nothing behind a gentleman’s back that I won’t say before his face. One day by chance he had not dined with me, and I sent to him to come and read the evening prayers to my crew of sinners as usual; for which, by the way, I pay him an annual stipend: He sent for answer it was not his custom to turn out after dinner; he has never had it in his power to make that excuse again, and of course has regularly lulled dame Richards and the old butler to sleep with his soporiferous homily as surely as the evening comes. I do not think there is in existence a worse enemy to edification than metheglin.
“Lord have mercy on me, what a household of idlers do I keep! I would make a total reform in my family, if I could flatter myself that I should live to reap the benefit of it; but that is not upon the chances, and I am such a lazy blockhead, so mere a caput mortuum, that I let them work their own will, and am content to lie at my length, like Sampson’s lion, for the bees to make honey in my carcase.
“You must be sure to lay me at the feet of the divine Cecilia; for, if you don’t do it for me, I can’t do it for myself: I am quite as inflexible as the wax-work in Fleet-street; attempt to bend me, and I break asunder. I am absolutely good for nothing, and I dare say the gout only left me because there was no credit to be got by killing me: That same podagra is a purse-proud sycophant, and if he stoop to kiss your toe, were you the pope himself, he will make you pay dear for the compliment.
“I suppose you wonder why I write to you so long a letter—so do I; but though it wearies you with nonsense, it winds up with a truth, when I profess myself your cordial friend
and faithful servant
John Morgan.”
When this letter had been read to De Lancaster, joy brightened in his hospitable countenance: his orders circulated through the Castle for all things and all people to be put in order to pay proper honours to his expected visitor. He commented with great good humour upon some passages in the letter, that seemed to strike his fancy—Though the good man, he said, is so shy of what he calls my learned disquisitions, I believe it is only a copy of his countenance, for in fact he is no mean scholar; but we will muzzle the learned languages, and trust to nothing but our mother tongue; so take notice, my good Colonel, you will incur heavy penalties if you give us any of your heathen Greek, whilst my brother Morgan is in the house.
And if I do when he is out of it, replied the Colonel, I’ll give you leave to hang me.