"April 5. 1823.
"My dear Lord,
"How is your gout? or rather, how are you? I return the Count ----'s
Journal, which is a very extraordinary production[1], and of a most
melancholy truth in all that regards high life in England. I know, or
knew personally, most of the personages and societies which he
describes; and after reading his remarks, have the sensation fresh
upon me as if I had seen them yesterday. I would however plead in
behalf of some few exceptions, which I will mention by and by. The
most singular thing is, _how_ he should have penetrated _not_ the
_fact_, but the _mystery_ of the English ennui, at two-and-twenty. I
was about the same age when I made the same discovery, in almost
precisely the same circles,--(for there is scarcely a person
mentioned whom I did not see nightly or daily, and was acquainted
more or less intimately with most of them,)--but I never could have
described it so well. _Il faut étre Français_, to effect this.
[Footnote 1: In another letter to Lord B---- he says of this
gentleman, "he seems to have all the qualities requisite to have
figured in his brother-in-law's ancestor's Memoirs."]
"But he ought also to have been in the country during the hunting
season, with 'a select party of distinguished guests,' as the papers
term it. He ought to have seen the gentlemen after dinner (on the
hunting days), and the soiree ensuing thereupon,--and the women
looking as if they had hunted, or rather been hunted; and I could
have wished that he had been at a dinner in town, which I recollect
at Lord C----'s--small, but select, and composed of the most amusing
people. The dessert was hardly on the table, when, out of twelve, I
counted _five asleep_; of that five, there were _Tierney_, Lord ----,
and Lord ---- --I forget the other two, but they were either wits or
orators--perhaps poets.
"My residence in the East and in Italy has made me somewhat indulgent
of the siesta;--but then they set regularly about it in warm
countries, and perform it in solitude (or at most in a tête-à-tête
with a proper companion), and retire quietly to their rooms to get
out of the sun's way for an hour or two.
"Altogether, your friend's Journal is a very formidable production.
Alas! our dearly beloved countrymen have only discovered that they
are tired, and not that they are tiresome; and I suspect that the
communication of the latter unpleasant verity will not be better
received than truths usually are. I have read the whole with great
attention and instruction. I am too good a patriot to say
_pleasure_--at least I won't say so, whatever I may think. I showed
it (I hope no breach of confidence) to a young Italian lady of rank,
_très instruite_ also; and who passes, or passed, for being one of
the three most celebrated belles in the district of Italy, where her
family and connections resided in less troublesome times as to
politics, (which is not Genoa, by the way,) and she was delighted
with it, and says that she has derived a better notion of English
society from it than from all Madame de Staël's metaphysical
disputations on the same subject, in her work on the Revolution. I
beg that you will thank the young philosopher, and make my
compliments to Lady B. and her sister.
"Believe me your very obliged and faithful
"N. B.
"P.S. There is a rumour in letters of some disturbance or complot in
the French Pyrenean army--generals suspected or dismissed, and
ministers of war travelling to see what's the matter. 'Marry (as
David says), this hath an angry favour.'
"Tell Count ---- that some of the names are not quite intelligible,
especially of the clubs; he speaks of _Watts_--perhaps he is right,
but in my time _Watiers_ was the Dandy Club, of which (though no
dandy) I was a member, at the time too of its greatest glory, when
Brummell and Mildmay, Alvanley and Pierrepoint, gave the Dandy Balls;
and we (the club, that is,) got up the famous masquerade at
Burlington House and Garden, for Wellington. He does not speak of the
_Alfred_, which was the most _recherché_ and most tiresome of any, as
I know by being a member of that too."