3. No boats on Sunday, never: so I was forced to walk, and so hot by the
time I got to Ford’s lodging that I was quite spent; I think the weather
is mad. I could not go to church. I dined with the Secretary as usual,
and old Colonel Graham {229b} that lived at Bagshot Heath, and they said
it was Colonel Graham’s house. Pshaw, I remember it very well, when I
used to go for a walk to London from Moor Park. What, I warrant you do
not remember the Golden Farmer {229c} neither, figgarkick soley? {229d}
4. When must we answer this letter, this N. 15 of our little MD? Heat
and laziness, and Sir Andrew Fountaine, made me dine to-day again at Mrs.
Van’s; and, in short, this weather is unsupportable: how is it with you?
Lady Betty Butler and Lady Ashburnham sat with me two or three hours this
evening in my closet at Mrs. Van’s. They are very good girls; and if
Lady Betty went to Ireland, you should let her be acquainted with you.
How does Dingley do this hot weather? Stella, I think, never complains
of it; she loves hot weather. There has not been a drop of rain since
Friday se’ennight. Yes, you do love hot weather, naughty Stella, you do
so; and Presto can’t abide it. Be a good girl then, and I will love you;
and love one another, and don’t be quarrelling girls.
5. I dined in the City to-day, and went from hence early to town, and
visited the Duke of Ormond and Mr. Secretary. They say my Lord Treasurer
has a dead warrant in his pocket; they mean a list of those who are to be
turned out of employment; and we every day now expect those changes. I
passed by the Treasury to-day, and saw vast crowds waiting to give Lord
Treasurer petitions as he passes by. He is now at the top of power and
favour: he keeps no levees yet. I am cruel thirsty this hot weather.—I
am just this minute going to swim. I take Patrick down with me, to hold
my nightgown, shirt, and slippers, and borrow a napkin of my landlady for
a cap. So farewell till I come up; but there is no danger, don’t be
frighted.—I have been swimming this half-hour and more; and when I was
coming out I dived, to make my head and all through wet, like a cold
bath; but, as I dived, the napkin fell off and is lost, and I have that
to pay for. O, faith, the great stones were so sharp, I could hardly set
my feet on them as I came out. It was pure and warm. I got to bed, and
will now go sleep.
6. Morning. This letter shall go to-morrow; so I will answer yours when
I come home to-night. I feel no hurt from last night’s swimming. I lie
with nothing but the sheet over me, and my feet quite bare. I must rise
and go to town before the tide is against me. Morrow, sirrahs; dear
sirrahs, morrow.—At night. I never felt so hot a day as this since I was
born. I dined with Lady Betty Germaine, and there was the young Earl of
Berkeley {230a} and his fine lady. I never saw her before, nor think her
near so handsome as she passes for.—After dinner, Mr. Bertue {230b} would
not let me put ice in my wine, but said my Lord Dorchester {230c} got the
bloody flux with it, and that it was the worst thing in the world. Thus
are we plagued, thus are we plagued; yet I have done it five or six times
this summer, and was but the drier and the hotter for it. Nothing makes
me so excessively peevish as hot weather. Lady Berkeley after dinner
clapped my hat on another lady’s head, and she in roguery put it upon the
rails. I minded them not; but in two minutes they called me to the
window, and Lady Carteret {231a} showed me my hat out of her window five
doors off, where I was forced to walk to it, and pay her and old Lady
Weymouth {231b} a visit, with some more beldames. Then I went and drank
coffee, and made one or two puns, with Lord Pembroke, {231c} and designed
to go to Lord Treasurer; but it was too late, and beside I was half
broiled, and broiled without butter; for I never sweat after dinner, if I
drink any wine. Then I sat an hour with Lady Betty Butler at tea, and
everything made me hotter and drier. Then I walked home, and was here by
ten, so miserably hot, that I was in as perfect a passion as ever I was
in my life at the greatest affront or provocation. Then I sat an hour,
till I was quite dry and cool enough to go swim; which I did, but with so
much vexation that I think I have given it over: for I was every moment
disturbed by boats, rot them; and that puppy Patrick, standing ashore,
would let them come within a yard or two, and then call sneakingly to
them. The only comfort I proposed here in hot weather is gone; for there
is no jesting with those boats after it is dark: I had none last night.
I dived to dip my head, and held my cap on with both my hands, for fear
of losing it. Pox take the boats! Amen. ’Tis near twelve, and so I’ll
answer your letter (it strikes twelve now) to-morrow morning.
7. Morning. Well, now let us answer MD’s letter, N. 15, 15, 15, 15.
Now have I told you the number? 15, 15; there, impudence, to call names
in the beginning of your letter, before you say, How do you do, Mr.
Presto? There is your breeding! Where is your manners, sirrah, to a
gentleman? Get you gone, you couple of jades.—No, I never sit up late
now; but this abominable hot weather will force me to eat or drink
something that will do me hurt. I do venture to eat a few
strawberries.—Why then, do you know in Ireland that Mr. St. John talked
so in Parliament? {232a} Your Whigs are plaguily bit; for he is entirely
for their being all out.—And are you as vicious in snuff as ever? I
believe, as you say, it does neither hurt nor good; but I have left it
off, and when anybody offers me their box, I take about a tenth part of
what I used to do, and then just smell to it, and privately fling the
rest away. I keep to my tobacco still, {232b} as you say; but even much
less of that than formerly, only mornings and evenings, and very seldom
in the day.—As for Joe, {232c} I have recommended his case heartily to my
Lord Lieutenant; and, by his direction, given a memorial of it to Mr.
Southwell, to whom I have recommended it likewise. I can do no more, if
he were my brother. His business will be to apply himself to Southwell.
And you must desire Raymond, if Price of Galway comes to town, to desire
him to wait on Mr. Southwell, as recommended by me for one of the Duke’s
chaplains, which was all I could do for him; and he must be presented to
the Duke, and make his court, and ply about, and find out some vacancy,
and solicit early for it. The bustle about your Mayor I had before, as I
told you, from the Archbishop of Dublin. Was Raymond not come till May
18? So he says fine things of me? Certainly he lies. I am sure I used
him indifferently enough; and we never once dined together, or walked, or
were in any third place; only he came sometimes to my lodgings, and even
there was oftener denied than admitted.—What an odd bill is that you sent
of Raymond’s! A bill upon one Murry in Chester, which depends entirely
not only upon Raymond’s honesty, but his discretion; and in money matters
he is the last man I would depend on. Why should Sir Alexander Cairnes
{232d} in London pay me a bill, drawn by God knows who, upon Murry in
Chester? I was at Cairnes’s, and they can do no such thing. I went
among some friends, who are merchants, and I find the bill must be sent
to Murry, accepted by him, and then returned back, and then Cairnes may
accept or refuse it as he pleases. Accordingly I gave Sir Thomas
Frankland the bill, who has sent it to Chester, and ordered the
postmaster there to get it accepted, and then send it back, and in a day
or two I shall have an answer; and therefore this letter must stay a day
or two longer than I intended, and see what answer I get. Raymond should
have written to Murry at the same time, to desire Sir Alexander Cairnes
to have answered such a bill, if it come. But Cairnes’s clerks (himself
was not at home) said they had received no notice of it, and could do
nothing; and advised me to send to Murry.—I have been six weeks to-day at
Chelsea, and you know it but just now. And so Dean — thinks I write the
_Medley_. Pox of his judgment! It is equal to his honesty. Then you
han’t seen the _Miscellany_ yet? {233a} Why, ’tis a four-shilling book:
has nobody carried it over?—No, I believe Manley {233b} will not lose his
place; for his friend {233c} in England is so far from being out that he
has taken a new patent since the Post Office Act; and his brother Jack
Manley {233d} here takes his part firmly; and I have often spoken to
Southwell in his behalf, and he seems very well inclined to him. But the
Irish folks here in general are horribly violent against him. Besides,
he must consider he could not send Stella wine if he were put out. And
so he is very kind, and sends you a dozen bottles of wine _at a time_,
and you win eight shillings _at a time_; and how much do you lose? No,
no, never one syllable about that, I warrant you.—Why, this same Stella
is so unmerciful a writer, she has hardly left any room for Dingley. If
you have such summer there as here, sure the Wexford waters are good by
this time. I forgot what weather we had May 6th; go look in my journal.
We had terrible rain the 24th and 25th, and never a drop since. Yes,
yes, I remember Berested’s bridge; the coach sosses up and down as one
goes that way, just as at Hockley-in-the-Hole. {234a} I never impute any
illness or health I have to good or ill weather, but to want of exercise,
or ill air, or something I have eaten, or hard study, or sitting up; and
so I fence against those as well as I can: but who a deuce can help the
weather? Will Seymour, {234b} the General, was excessively hot with the
sun shining full upon him; so he turns to the sun, and says, “Harkee,
friend, you had better go and ripen cucumbers than plague me at this
rate,” etc. Another time, fretting at the heat, a gentleman by said it
was such weather as pleased God: Seymour said, “Perhaps it may; but I am
sure it pleases nobody else.” Why, Madam Dingley, the First-Fruits are
done. Southwell told me they went to inquire about them, and Lord
Treasurer said they were done, and had been done long ago. And I’ll tell
you a secret you must not mention, that the Duke of Ormond is ordered to
take notice of them in his speech in your Parliament: and I desire you
will take care to say on occasion that my Lord Treasurer Harley did it
many months ago, before the Duke was Lord Lieutenant. And yet I cannot
possibly come over yet: so get you gone to Wexford, and make Stella well.
Yes, yes, I take care not to walk late; I never did but once, and there
are five hundred people on the way as I walk. Tisdall is a puppy, and I
will excuse him the half-hour he would talk with me. As for the
_Examiner_, I have heard a whisper that after that of this day, {234c}
which tells us what this Parliament has done, you will hardly find them
so good. I prophesy they will be trash for the future; and methinks in
this day’s _Examiner_ the author talks doubtfully, as if he would write
no more. {235a} Observe whether the change be discovered in Dublin, only
for your own curiosity, that’s all. Make a mouth there. Mrs. Vedeau’s
business I have answered, and I hope the bill is not lost. Morrow. ’Tis
stewing hot, but I must rise and go to town between fire and water.
Morrow, sirrahs both, morrow.—At night. I dined to-day with Colonel
Crowe, Governor of Jamaica, and your friend Sterne. I presented Sterne
to my Lord Treasurer’s brother, {235b} and gave him his case, and engaged
him in his favour. At dinner there fell the swingingest long shower, and
the most grateful to me, that ever I saw: it thundered fifty times at
least, and the air is so cool that a body is able to live; and I walked
home to-night with comfort, and without dirt. I went this evening to
Lord Treasurer, and sat with him two hours, and we were in very good
humour, and he abused me, and called me Dr. Thomas Swift fifty times: I
have told you he does that when he has mind to make me mad. {235c} Sir
Thomas Frankland gave me to-day a letter from Murry, accepting my bill;
so all is well: only, by a letter from Parvisol, I find there are some
perplexities.—Joe has likewise written to me, to thank me for what I have
done for him; and desires I would write to the Bishop of Clogher, that
Tom Ashe {235d} may not hinder his father {235e} from being portreve. I
have written and sent to Joe several times, that I will not trouble
myself at all about Trim. I wish them their liberty, but they do not
deserve it: so tell Joe, and send to him. I am mighty happy with this
rain: I was at the end of my patience, but now I live again. This cannot
go till Saturday; and perhaps I may go out of town with Lord Shelburne
and Lady Kerry to-morrow for two or three days. Lady Kerry has written
to desire it; but to-morrow I shall know farther.—O this dear rain, I
cannot forbear praising it: I never felt myself to be revived so in my
life. It lasted from three till five, hard as a horn, and mixed with
hail.
8. Morning. I am going to town, and will just finish this there, if I
go into the country with Lady Kerry and Lord Shelburne: so morrow, till
an hour or two hence.—In town. I met Cairnes, who, I suppose, will pay
me the money; though he says I must send him the bill first, and I will
get it done in absence. Farewell, etc. etc.