STRAWBERRY HILL, _Aug._ 13, 1764.
I am afraid it is some thousands of days since I wrote to you; but woe
is me! how could I help it? Summer will be summer, and peace peace. It
is not the fashion to be married, or die in the former, nor to kill or
be killed in the latter; and pray recollect if those are not the sources
of correspondence. You may perhaps put in a caveat against my plea of
peace, and quote Turks Island[1] upon me; why, to be sure the
parenthesis is a little hostile, but we are like a good wife, and can
wink at what we don't like to see; besides, the French, like a sensible
husband, that has made a slip, have promised us a new topknot, so we
have kissed and are very good friends.
[Footnote 1: Turk's Island, called also Tortuga, is a small island near
St. Domingo, of which a French squadron had dispossessed some British
settlers; but the French Government disavowed the act, and compensated
the settlers.]
The Duke of York returned very abruptly. The town talks of remittances
stopped; but as I know nothing of the matter, and you are not only a
minister but have the honour of his good graces, I do not pretend to
tell you what to be sure you know better than I do.
Old Sir John Barnard is dead, which he had been to the world for some
time; and Mr. Legge. The latter, who was heartily in the minority, said
cheerfully just before he died, "that he was going to the majority."
Let us talk a little of the north. Count Poniatowski, with whom I was
acquainted when he was here, is King of Poland, and calls himself
Stanislaus the Second. This is the sole instance, I believe, upon
record, of a second of a name being on the throne while the first was
living without having contributed to dethrone him.[1] Old Stanislaus
lives to see a line of successors, like Macbeth in the cave of the
witches. So much for Poland; don't let us go farther north; we shall
find there Alecto herself. I have almost wept for poor Ivan! I shall
soon begin to believe that Richard III. murdered as many folks as the
Lancastrian historians say he did. I expect that this Fury will poison
her son next, lest Semiramis should have the bloody honour of having
been more unnatural. As Voltaire has unpoisoned so many persons of
former ages, methinks he ought to do as much for the present time, and
assure posterity that there never was such a lamb as Catherine II., and
that, so far from assassinating her own husband and Czar Ivan,[2] she
wept over every chicken that she had for dinner. How crimes, like
fashions, flit from clime to clime! Murder reigns under the Pole, while
you, who are in the very town where Catherine de' Medici was born, and
within a stone's throw of Rome, where Borgia and his holy father sent
cardinals to the other world by hecatombs, are surprised to hear that
there is such an instrument as a stiletto. The papal is now a mere gouty
chair, and the good old souls don't even waddle out of it to get a
bastard.
[Footnote 1: The first was Stanislaus Leczinski, father of the Queen of
France. He had been driven from Poland by Peter the Great after the
overthrow of Charles XII. of Sweden (_v. infra_, Letter 90).]
[Footnote 2: Ivan, the Czar who had been deposed by the former Czarina,
Elizabeth, had recently been murdered, while trying to escape from the
confinement in which he had been so long detained.]
Well, good night! I have no more monarchs to chat over; all the rest are
the most Catholic or most Christian, or most something or other that is
divine; and you know one can never talk long about folks that are only
excellent. One can say no more about Stanislaus _the first_ than that he
is the best of beings. I mean, unless they do not deserve it, and then
their flatterers can hold forth upon their virtues by the hour.
_MADAME DE BOUFFLERS' WRITINGS--KING JAMES'S JOURNAL._