How many good excuses (and you know I was ever good at an excuse)
might I call up to vindicate my past shameful silence! I might tell
how I wrote a long letter on my first coming hither, and seem vastly
angry at my not receiving an answer; I might allege that business
(with business you know I was always pestered) had never given me
time to finger a pen--but I suppress those and twenty more equally
plausible, and as easily invented, since they might be attended with
a slight inconvenience of being known to be lies. Let me then speak
truth. An hereditary indolence (I have it from the mother's side) has
hitherto prevented my writing to you, and still prevents my writing
at least twenty-five letters more, due to my friends in Ireland. No
turnspit dog gets up into his wheel with more reluctance than I sit
down to write; yet no dog ever loved the roast meat he turns better
than I do him I now address. Yet what shall I say now I'm entered?
Shall I tire you with a description of this unfruitful country;
where I must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, or their
valleys scarce able to feed a rabbit? Man alone seems to be the only
creature who has arrived to the natural size in this poor soil. Every
part of the country presents the same dismal landscape. No grove, nor
brook, lend their music to cheer the stranger, or make the inhabitants
forget their poverty. Yet with all these disadvantages, enough to
call him down to humility, the Scotchman is one of the proudest things
alive. The poor have pride ever ready to relieve them. If mankind
should happen to despise them, they are masters of their own
admiration; and _that_ they can plentifully bestow upon themselves.
From their pride and poverty, as I take it, results one advantage this
country enjoys; namely, the gentlemen here are much better bred than
amongst us. No such characters here as our fox-hunters; and they have
expressed great surprise when I informed them that some men in Ireland
of one thousand pounds a-year spend their whole lives in running after
a hare, and drinking to be drunk; and truly, if such a being, equipped
in his hunting dress, came among a circle of Scotch gentry, they would
behold him with the same astonishment that a countryman would King
George on horseback.
The men here have generally high cheek-bones, and are lean and
swarthy, fond of action, dancing in particular. Though now I mention
dancing, let me say something of their balls, which are very frequent
here. When a stranger enters the dancing-hall, he sees one end of
the room taken up with the ladies, who sit dismally in a group by
themselves; on the other end stand their pensive partners that are to
be; but no more intercourse between the sexes than there is between
two countries at war. The ladies indeed may ogle, and the gentlemen
sigh; but an embargo is laid on any closer commerce. At length, to
interrupt hostilities, the lady directress, or intendant, or what you
will, pitches on a gentleman and lady to walk a minuet; which they
perform with a formality that approaches to despondence. After five
or six couple have thus walked the gauntlet, all stand up to country
dances; each gentleman furnished with a partner from the aforesaid
lady directress; so they dance much and say nothing, and thus
concludes our assembly. I told a Scotch gentleman that such profound
silence resembled the ancient procession of the Roman matrons in
honour of Ceres; and the Scotch gentleman told me (and, faith, I
believe he was right) that I was a very great pedant for my pains.
Now I am come to the ladies; and to show that I love Scotland, and
everything that belongs to so charming a country, I insist on it, and
will give him leave to break my head that denies it--that the Scotch
ladies are ten thousand times handsomer and finer than the Irish. To
be sure, now, I see your sisters Betty and Peggy vastly surprised at
my partiality, but tell them flatly, I don't value them, or their fine
skins, or eyes, or good sense, or--, a potato; for I say it, and will
maintain it, and as a convincing proof (I'm in a very great passion)
of what I assert, the Scotch ladies say it themselves. But to be less
serious; where will you find a language so pretty become a pretty
mouth as the broad Scotch? and the women here speak it in its highest
purity; for instance, teach one of their young ladies to pronounce
'Whoar wull I gong?' with a becoming wideness of mouth, and I'll lay
my life they will wound every hearer.
We have no such character here as a coquet, but alas! how many envious
prudes! Some days ago I walked into my Lord Kilcoubry's (don't be
surprised, my lord is but a glover), when the Duchess of Hamilton
(that fair who sacrificed her beauty to ambition, and her inward peace
to a title and gilt equipage) passed by in her chariot; her battered
husband, or more properly the guardian of her charms, sat by her side.
Straight envy began, in the shape of no less than three ladies who sat
with me, to find faults in her faultless form.--'For my part,' says
the first, 'I think what I always thought, that the Duchess has too
much red in her complexion.' 'Madam, I'm of your opinion,' says the
second; 'I think her face has a palish cast too much on the delicate
order.' 'And let me tell you,' adds the third lady, whose mouth was
puckered up to the size of an issue, 'that the Duchess has fine lips,
but she wants a mouth.'--At this every lady drew up her lips as if
going to pronounce the letter P.
But how ill, my Bob, does it become me to ridicule women with whom
I have scarce any correspondence! There are, 'tis certain, handsome
women here; and 'tis as certain there are handsome men to keep them
company. An ugly and a poor man is society for himself; and such
society the world lets me enjoy in great abundance. Fortune has given
you circumstances, and nature a person to look charming in the eyes of
the fair world. Nor do I envy my dear Bob such blessings, while I may
sit down and laugh at the world and at myself, the most ridiculous
object in it. But I begin to grow splenetic, and perhaps the fit may
continue till I receive an answer to this. I know you can't send news
from Ballymahon, but such as it is, send it all; everything you write
will be agreeable and entertaining to me.
Has George Conway put up a sign yet; or John Finecly left off drinking
drams; or Tom Allen got a new wig? But I leave to your own choice what
to write. While Oliver Goldsmith lives, know you have a friend.
PS.--Give my sincere respects (not compliments, do you mind) to your
agreeable family, and give my service to my mother, if you see her;
for, as you express it in Ireland, I have a sneaking kindness for her
still.
Direct to me,--Student in Physic, in Edinburgh.