If you bring blacks from New York with you, let them be such as you can depend upon. Our table will always want four attendants of decent appearance. The hurry of the public arrangements prevents me from writing, as I intended, to my friends on the other side of the water, nor even to Janet upon the great wish of my heart, tell her so, but she will know what can be done in time, for she cannot leave England till April or May, at any time before August to be here in good season. I have written to Vermont upon the subject of Moore Town and hear nothing to displease me, as yet, if no mischief has been done to our interests in that country, there will be peace, I believe; but of this more when I have their Governor's answer to my letters. They already ask favours and must first do justice.
Our winter is commenced and yet I was never less sensible of the frost. The stoves of Canada, in the passages, temper the air through all the house. I sit ordinarly by a common hearth which gives me the thermometer at 71 or 72, nearly summer heat. The close cariole and fur cap and cloak is a luxury only used on journeys. The cariole alone suffices in town. The Rout of last Thursday demonstrates this: 50 ladies in bright head dresses and not a lappet or frill discomposed. All English in the manner, except the ceremony of kissing which my Lord D. (Dorchester) engrossed all to himself. His aide-de-camp handed them through a room where he and I were posted to receive them. They had given two cheek kisses and were led away to the back rooms of the château, to which we repaired when the rush was over. The gentlemen came in at another door. Tea, cards, etc., that till 10 o'clock and the ceremony ended. I stole away at 9 and left your son to attend the beauty of the evening, a Mrs. Williams, wife to a major Williams and a daughter to Sir John Gibbons of Windford, a lady of genteel manners as well as birth. He did not find his lodging till near midnight. We had a dance that day at the Lt. Governor's. You must know General Hope. He was often at General Robertson's under the name of Col. Harry Hope, nephew to Lord Hopetown in Scotland, to Lord Darlington (by his mother's second marriage) in England. His table is in very genteel fashion. It reminds me that Mrs. Mallet must not forget all those little ornaments of plate, glass, etc., that belong to a dining-room. No water plates, the rooms don't require them, the plates being sufficiently heated by the stoves. But water dishes are necessary for soup and fish fricassees all in the shape of the proper dishes for such articles. Don't forget, among others, the silver gravy cups with double cavities, the larger for hot water. They are small hand ones, not unlike a tea pot. Mrs. Mallet will find these at all the great shops and particularly at Jones, in Cockspur street, near Charing Cross, where I bought my Mary's watch chain. William that understands Latin and French letters better than his native tongue, importunes my ordering a set of classical books, which he is welcome to, if you can purchase at N. Y. a small bill for about £15 sterling and enclose it in my letter to Mr. Ryland. If that is inconvenient to you stop my letter, and I will find other means to gratify his inclination. There is a very good library [252] here, and many private ones at my friends. How wretched your general affairs? if our Yankey informers speak the truth, multitudes are disposed to turn their heads from that draught, which I thought they would not long relish. Lord D. with the generosity and charity he always indulged, bids them welcome, disposed as he says to favour even the independant Whigs of America, above any other nation under heaven, for tho' no longer brethren, they are at least our cousins, branches from the same stock.
I have infinite consolation, in having dissuaded the parties from the steps, that led to all the calamities they have felt and still dread and more cheerfully will grasp at the means to lessen these afflictions, as the surest path to the greatest glory. I am solicited from Cambridge for a gift for pious uses, and find that you have been applied to, and probably will again. My promise shall most certainly be fulfilled. It was to give a lot for a church. But as I told them it was to be a gift to Christianity and not to Sectarianism. Religion and party are two different things. Tell them so that my gift will be to all Protestants, that is to say to the majority of the town being protestants, be the denomination what it may, and that I may not be imposed upon, I shall put my seal to no deed, before they bring me Dr. Rodger's certificate upon the subject. My best respects to him with compliments to Mrs. T., Mr. Ainslie, Mr. and Mrs. Foxcraft and all your friends.
The snapping of my wood fires makes me think of yours. Don't forget them yourself. Your three hundred acres of shingles, chills the blood in my veins…. Adieu. The broad hand of Heaven protect you!
I am, my dearest,
Most faithfully yours,
W. S.
MEADOWBANK.
"THE COUNTRY SEAT OF LIEUT.-COL. ANDREW CHARLES STUART.
Happy, is he who in a country life
Shuns more perplexing toil and jarring strife,
Who lives upon the natal soil he loves
And sits beneath his old ancestral groves."
—Downing.