In compliance with your request, I answer the very day I have
received it. I own you had vexed me; not so much in refusing me
the money I asked you, as by revealing the thing to my father. But
what is done cannot be undone, and as my father has forgiven me,
I think I may do as much for you. I consent, then, to the renewal
of our correspondence with all my heart. I shall begin by the tail
of your letter. My whole debt was not with Gee; a great part was
with a person of this town, who has heard reason easily enough.
He has consented to receive a note by which I own the debt, and
promise to pay him when I can. Gee has not been so easy. After
having obliged him to take back the watch and the mare, the debt
was still at fifty guineas. I bought him for twenty another watch,
paying (as I do still) two guineas a month to the watchmaker, and
which Mons. Pavilliard and I contrive to retrench out of my other
expenses. Gee left us about four months ago. Have you a mind to
know his destiny? Yes. Hear it, then. His parents had ordered him
forty guineas for his journey, but as they had allowed him to stay
a fortnight at Paris, he was to take twenty more in that place.
Gee quits Lausanne in this manner. Suppose him at Lyons. He goes
immediately to the correspondent of his banker, for whom he had a
letter of recommendation. "Sir," says he, in accosting him, "I have
a letter for you from your correspondent, Mons. Grand of Lausanne.
You will find in it that he desires you to pay me twenty-five guineas
at sight." The banker puts on his spectacles, reads the letter,
but finds nothing in it about money. Upon which he tells Gee that
certainly there is some mistake, and he cannot give him a farthing
before it is cleared up. Gee replies that he must be at Paris a
certain day, and that without money he cannot go. In a word, for I
hate long stories, the banker gives him the money, but writes to
his correspondent at Paris to stop Gee's twenty guineas. He, having
some wind of the affair, runs post, day and night, arrives at Paris
four hours before the letter, and draws the money. Gee's adventures
at Paris would take up a volume, as he played a great deal. Once he
had a hundred and fifty thousand livres, French money, in his pocket
(£6700), but a week after he was 1500 guineas in debt, thanks to the
famous Mr. Taff[5] and some others of much the same stamp. The end
was _that his mother, though extremely poor, paid all his debts_, and
sent him into England, where he is now, having lost his commission,
having hardly any other resource than his Majesty's highway. So much
for Gee.
[5] It is probable that this was the Mr. Taaffe who, with Mr.
Wortley Montagu and Lord Southwell, invited a Jew named Abraham
Payba to dine with them at Montagu's lodgings in Paris, in
September, 1751. Having made him drunk, they won from him in
less than an hour eight hundred louis d'or. Their debtor paid
them with drafts which he knew would be dishonoured. Finding
themselves outwitted, Taaffe and Montagu broke into Payba's
house, and possessed themselves of a considerable sum of
money and a quantity of jewellery. For this offence they were
imprisoned for three months in the Grand Châtelet (Nichols'
_Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century_, vol. iv. pp.
629-634).
[Sidenote: HIS FATHER'S SECOND MARRIAGE]
A tear to poor Nell; she really deserves it. Am glad Nemmy is well
married. Would write to my aunt Hester,[6] but know not what to say
to her. You tell me Snell and Milton are gone; where? Compliments to
Bett Gilbert and to the Darrels[7] since you are at Richmond. I hurry
over; but, _à propos_, who directed your letter, for it is not your
hand? I hurry over all these things to come to my father's marriage.
[6] Miss Hester Gibbon died unmarried in 1790, at the age of
eighty-six, at King's Cliffe in Northamptonshire. William Law,
the author of the _Serious Call_, originally her brother's tutor
at Putney, afterwards her almoner, spiritual adviser and guide,
died at her house in 1761. In the tomb which she caused to be
built for him, she was also herself buried. Hester Gibbon is
stated to have been the Miranda of the _Serious Call_; but her
age at the date when the book was published (1728) makes this
doubtful.
[7] The second daughter of Mr. James Porten married Mr. Darrel of
Richmond, and left two sons, Edward and Robert.
About a fortnight ago I received a vastly kind letter from my father
of the 18th of August (inquire the day of his marriage). He forgave
me in it all my past faults, promised never to speak of them again
to me, provided only I kept the promises I had made him about my
future behaviour; allows me to make a little tour about Switzerland,
which I had asked him, and tells me that, after having completed my
studies and my exercises, he would make me make that of France and
Italy. But not a syllable about his marriage.[8] Three days after I
heard of it by the canal of a certain Mr. Hugonin, whose father is
our neighbour in Hampshire, but without any particularities either
of name or anything else. Guess my surprise; you know he had always
protested that he never would marry again--at least, had he done it
in the time he was angry with me, I should have been less struck; but
now what can he mean by it? What frightens me most is what I remember
you told me; if my father married again, by my grandfather's will the
estate went to the children of the second bed, and that I had only
200 a year, provided the second wife had more fortune than my mother,
who had only £1500. You may easily guess the anxiety that has put me
in. I have wrote to a friend in England, who I think I can trust to
get me a copy of that will out of Doctors' Commons; but though sure
of his discretion, I do not know whether he will care to serve me.
_Could you not do it YOURSELF?_ and inquire whether my father has not
taken care of me by his marriage contract.
[8] Gibbon's father married his second wife, Miss Dorothea
Patton, in 1755.
You say that Mrs. Gibbon (Miss Patton) has set my father against the
Mallets.[9] I do not know if 'tis so very good a sign. Since she was
intimate with him when I was under Ward's[10] hands, I should think
you must have heard something of her. Do make some inquiries about
her and send them me. I wonder what will become of my poor cousin.
She will be sold at last. Since they are in France, and that the war
is going to break out, what if they should come to Lausanne?
[9] David Mallet, or Malloch, poet, playwright, and miscellaneous
writer (1705-65), is best known for his ballad of _William and
Margaret_, his unsubstantiated claim to the authorship of _Rule
Britannia_, and his edition of Bolingbroke's works. Bolingbroke,
said Dr. Johnson, had "spent his life in charging a gun against
Christianity," and "left half-a-crown to a hungry Scotchman to
draw the trigger." Mallet was "a great declaimer in all the
London coffee-houses against Christianity," and the obtrusion of
his sceptical views made his household unpleasing to David Hume.
To his house Gibbon was taken after his reception into the Church
of Rome.
[10] A well-known doctor of the day.
[Sidenote: YOUNG TRAVELLERS.]
*Now for myself. As my father has given me leave to make a journey
round Switzerland, we set out to-morrow. Buy a map of Switzerland,
'twill cost you but a shilling, and follow me. I go by Iverdun,
Neufchâtel, Bienne or Biel, Soleure or Solothurn, Bâle or Basil,
Bade, Zurich, Lucerne, and Bern. The voyage will be of about four
weeks; so that _I hope to find a letter from you waiting for me_.
As my father had given me leave to learn what I had a mind, I have
learned to ride, and learn actually to dance and draw. Besides that,
I often give ten or twelve hours a day to my studies. I find a great
many agreeable people here; see them sometimes, and can say upon the
whole, without vanity, that, tho' I am the Englishman here who spends
the least money, I am he who is the most generally liked. I told you
that my father had promised to send me into France and Italy. I have
thanked him for it. But if he would follow my plan, he won't do it
yet a while. I never liked young travellers; they go too raw to make
any great remarks, and they lose a time which is (in my opinion) the
most precious part of a man's life. My scheme would be, to spend
this winter at Lausanne--for tho' 'tis a very good place to acquire
the air of good company and the French tongue, we have no good
professors--to spend (I say) the winter at Lausanne; go into England
to see my friends a couple of months, and after that, finish my
studies, either at Cambridge (for after what's past one cannot think
of Oxford), or at a university in Holland. If you liked the scheme,
_could you propose it to my father by Metcalf, or somebody else who
has a certain credit over him_? I forgot to ask you whether, in case
my father writes to tell me his marriage, would you advise me to
compliment my mother-in-law? I think so. My health is so very regular
that I have nothing to say about it.
I have been the whole day writing you this letter; the preparations
for our voyage gave me a thousand interruptions. Besides that, I was
obliged to write in English. This last reason will seem a parradox,
but I assure you the French is much more familiar to me.* _À propos_,
do you know anything of my Lord Newnham?[11] I heard he was in
Germany.
I am, dear Kitty,
Your affectionate nephew
(_Not your grave, obedient, humble servant_),
E. GIBBON.
[11] George Simon (1736-1809), Viscount Nuneham, afterwards
second Earl of Harcourt, eldest son of the first earl. He was
remarkable for his affectation of French manners and fashions.
5.
_To his Father._