I am afraid I have made you wait a little. But let me tell you
without any reproach that I have imitated your example in proclaiming
the arrival of my letter about two months before it really begins its
march. I must acknowledge your letters deserve waiting for better
than mine. However I flatter myself you are as well pleased with
hearing from me as I can be in hearing from you, and that is saying a
great deal.
After having assured you how much I love and respect you, Dear Madam,
which I hope you are convinced of without my saying it, I should give
an account of my method of passing my time here, but the happiness
the most difficult to be described is perhaps the truest in reality.
If I was in a place where I could fill pages with accounts of balls,
reviews, Court assemblies, &c., the conclusion would perhaps be only
that I had spent a great deal of time and money with very little
genuine satisfaction. Here every day is an agreable mixture of books
and good company, & consequently every day resembles the day that
preceded it; I have passed six months at Lausanne, but tho' the sum
of my pleasures has been very pleasing I cannot pick out any single
event that I think worthy your attention. You would hardly be
entertained with minute characters of people you are not acquainted
with & will probably never see.
We have some English here; most of them raw boys just escaped from
Eaton. Mr. Guise--I do not reckon him in the number of them. He is
about my age, has seen a good deal of the world, & without being
a profound scholar is far from wanting either parts or knowledge.
As far as I can judge of him he seems to be a prudent worthy young
man. If I can go into Italy with him I should like it extremely.
Lord Palmerston[60] passed thro' some time ago. He seems to have a
very right notion of travelling and I fancy will make very great
improvements.
[Sidenote: GIBBON A MAJOR.]
As we have the English papers here, we are by no means strangers to
what passes at home, and many an insignificant piece of news which we
should not have minded in England, gives us great pleasure at this
distance. I was very glad to hear of my friend Wilkes's deserved
chastisement,[61] and if the law could not punish him, Mr. Martin
could. After all the noise of faction, the numbers in the first
division seem to have shewn that the court still preserves a very
great superiority.
Will you be so good, dear Madam, as to assure my father of my
constant love and duty, and to acquaint him that I have just drawn a
bill of a hundred pounds upon him. I beg my best compliments to the
brothers. I hope poor David has destroyed his old ennemy the gout.
As to Billy [Patton] (do not tell it to him) I hope he is no longer
at Beriton, and that he has got the better of a enemy still more
dangerous--_Laziness_.
I am, Dear Madam,
Ever yours most affectionately,
E. GIBBON.
[60] Henry Temple, second Viscount Palmerston (1739-1802), a man
of artistic tastes, and, in after-years, a frequent resident in
Italy. He was at this time M.P. for Hastings. He married, as his
second wife, January 3, 1783, Miss Mee, by whom he was the father
of the Prime Minister, born 1784.
[61] In Gibbon's Journal for September 23, 1762, written at
Southampton, occurs the following entry which explains the words
"my friend Wilkes:"-- "Colonel Wilkes of the Buckinghamshire
Militia dined with us, and renewed the acquaintance Sir Thomas
and myself had begun with him at Reading. I scarce ever met
with a better companion; he has inexhaustible spirits, infinite
wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge: but a thorough
profligate as well in principle as in practice; his character is
infamous, his life stained with every vice, and his conversation
full of blasphemy and bawdy. These morals he glories in, for
shame is a _weakness_ he has long since surmounted. He told
us himself that, in this time of public dissension, he was
resolved to make his fortune. Upon this noble principle he has
connected himself with Lord Temple and Mr. Pitt, commenced a
public adversary to Lord Bute whom he abuses weekly in the _North
Briton_, and other political papers in which he is concerned.
This proved a very debauched day; we drank a good deal both
after dinner and supper, and when at last Wilkes was retired,
Sir Thomas and some others (of whom I was not one) broke into
his room and made him drink a bottle of claret in bed." Wilkes
had been challenged by Mr. Samuel Martin, M.P. for Camelford,
formerly Secretary of the Treasury under both the Duke of
Newcastle and Lord Bute, for speaking of him in the _North
Briton_ as a low fellow and dirty tool of power. Wilkes was
dangerously wounded in the duel, which was fought in November,
1763. In the preceding April he had been arrested under a General
Warrant on suspicion of being the author of No. 45 of the _North
Briton_. He applied for a writ of Habeas Corpus, and the case
came before Lord Chief Justice Pratt in the Court of Common
Pleas. He was discharged from custody, the judges unanimously
holding that the arrest was a breach of his privilege as a member
of Parliament.
31.
_To his Father._
Lausanne, February the 1st, 1764.