I flatter myself that my long silence must have given you great
satisfaction. You recollect that while I was under the tyranny of the
Gout, I showed myself tolerably exact in sending you intelligence
of my situation and improvement. From my silence therefore, you
must have concluded that I am, now, as indeed I am, restored to
public health, and once more engaged in the busy as well as idle
dissipations of this great town. I jumped at once from a sick
chair into the warmest debates, which I ever remember in my short
parliamentary life. They have constantly been fed by our miserable
news from America, and the Session after the holydays will be taken
up by Committees on the state of the Nation, Enquiries into the
conduct of Ministers and Generals, &c., which will at least serve
to increase the public ferment. What will be the resolutions of our
Governors I know not, but I shall scarcely give my consent to exhaust
still further the finest country in the World in the prosecution of a
war from whence no reasonable man entertains any hopes of success. It
is better to be humbled than ruined.
Half my acquaintance, Lady Dy, Lady Payne, the Solicitor
General,[380] &c., are running down to Bath for the holydays. Had
I no other inducement I should certainly escape from the crowd, and
employ that short interval of quiet in resuming my long neglected
History. Those literary occupations however I would gladly sacrifice
to the pleasure of seeing you, but I apprehend I shall be engaged to
prefer the Sussex to the Bath journey by some reasons which I will
fairly submit to your judgement.
1. Holroyd, as you must have learned from his sister, is in a very
indifferent state of health. His eyes are affected, his spirits are
low, he has been disappointed of other company and he entreats me in
a very moving way not to abandon him on this occasion.
2. I wish to pass some time with him on my own account, and
to consult him with regard to Buriton, which is, I fear, very
indifferently treated by my tenant Winton.
3. I expect, without knowing the day, a French lady of quality,
Madame de Genlis,[381] to whom I have very great obligations.
Whenever she informs me of her arrival in London, I must instantly
fly (on the wings of mere friendship) to receive and attend her:
now it would be somewhat vexatious to travel an hundred and ten
miles, and to be called away the next day. Determine for me, my dear
friend, you have every tye upon me of promise, of gratitude and of
inclination. If you are not perfectly satisfied with my positive
engagement to pass the Easter recess with you, depend upon it I will
break through every difficulty that detains me at present. I have
a thousand things to hear and say, and I know that you will enjoy,
what I could not perhaps say to others without incurring the censure
of vanity. If the Goulds are at Bath, I beg to be remembered to
them. I see your friend Mr. Melmoth[382] has published a translation
of another piece of Tully: on a subject which you understand at
least as well as either of them. It will be worth your reading, for
the treatise is valuable and he is an elegant as well as faithful
translator.
I am, Dear Madam,
Ever yours,
E. G.
[380] Wedderburn.
[381] Stephanie Félicité Ducrest de St. Aubin (1746-1830)
married, in 1761, the Comte de Genlis. Through her aunt, who was
secretly married to the Duc d'Orléans, she became "gouvernante"
to the duke's children by his first wife, a daughter of the
Duc de Penthièvre,--Madame Adelaide, Louis Philippe, and three
others. She was a voluminous and versatile writer. Her _Adèle
et Théodore_ was published in 1782. "J'eus une liaison assez
intime," she says in her _Mémoires_ (ii. 351), "avec M. Gibbon,
auteur de la chute de l'empire romain, ouvrage anglais que nos
philosophes ont beaucoup loué, parce qu'il renferme de très
mauvais principes, mais qui est, a tous égards, un mauvais
ouvrage, très diffus, sans vues nouvelles, et fort ennuyeux."
[382] William Melmoth (1710-1799), "Pliny" Melmoth, as Miss
Burney says he was nicknamed, was an author, commissioner of
bankrupts, and a good classical scholar. In 1753 he published
Cicero's _Ad Familiares_; in 1773, the _De Senectute_; and in
1777, the work referred to in the letter, _De Amicitia_.
332.
_To his Stepmother._
Sheffield Place, December the 26th, 1777.