Private Letters of Edward Gibbon (1753-1794) Volume 1 (of 2)

62.

To his Father

Pall Mall, March the 22nd, 1769.

Dear Sir,

It is impossible for me to express how much your last letter surprized and grieved me; as well from the particular contents of it, as from the general strain of resentment & dis-satisfaction which runs thro' the whole. To be accused of neglect, of indifference, of unjust insinuations are reproaches, which I can only bear because I am conscious of not having deserved them. I wish to look forwards, & if at any time I look back, it is only where such a retrospect, however unpleasant, becomes necessary.

Our Deed of Trust has ever been considered by us all as the Great Basis of our future conduct, & Mr. Porten, by our mutual consent. We were to empower them to sell the Hampshire and Bucks Estates, & to reconvey to us the Remainder (after payment of Debts, &c.) on certain conditions, which have been more than once explained. Such was the clear sense of this Deed, which I thought had been long since understood by us all. Indeed to put that sense into a Legal form was not in our power. Southouse is doing that, and it was thought as necessary as it is usual, that the Attorney's work should be revised by a Lawyer of some note, Mr. Pechell, a Master in Chancery and particular friend of Mr. Porten. To these four persons only, the two Trustees, one Attorney and one Council, has the affair been exposed.

HIS FATHER'S SCHEME IMPRACTICABLE.

With regard to my possessing the Buckinghamshire Estate in fee, irrevocably charged with your annuity and Mrs. G.'s jointure; it was what, after the maturest consideration & the most disinterested advice, I cannot depart from. Should I ever be idiot enough to sell it whilst so heavily burdened, no such act could in the least affect your settled annuity or Mrs. G.'s jointure. I am however willing to give you my word of honor, that I will never sell or mortgage any part of it during your life; and that I will immediately make a Will, by which (supposing I should die without children before you) I leave the Estate to you in fee simple. If any legal restraints can be devised, (other than such as make me for ever a meer life Tenant) I will consent to them with pleasure: I will do more, I will try to discover them.

So far, Dear Sir, from neglecting our immediate occasion for money, the Trustees are impowered to borrow whatever sums may be wanted before the Estates can be disposed of. But I must add that till the Deed is executed nothing can be done, and that you are therefore the Cause of the Delays with which you reproach us. I am the more sensible of a speedy dispatch as the Chancery affair cannot be put off much longer.

I am, Dear Sir,Most truly yours,E. Gibbon.

63.

To his Father

London, March the 31st, 1769.

Dear Sir,

According to your request I communicated your last proposals to our common friends. I must acknowledge that we all discovered many strong and almost insuperable difficulties in it; many of which related even to your own comfort and happiness, which will ever be a very principal consideration. But I shall not at present trouble you with our objections; as we should not have time to execute this new scheme, however eligible it might be; at present every thing is nearly finished. The Hampshire Deed is almost engrossed, the B[uckinghamshire] is now before Council, and I can venture to assure you that in the course of next week, I shall be able to write in order to fix the positive day for your's and Mrs. G.'s coming up. Should we now adopt your Proposal, every thing must begin again de novo, and several weeks would elapse before we should be reinstated in our present situation.

With regard to your last questions, I can now positively say that neither household furniture nor stock are comprized in the Deed, tho' we expect and depend on your word of honor, that the latter, and such of the former as is not wanted, will be faithfully applied by yourself to the same common purposes.

I believe I mentioned some time ago, that the particulars of Debts will not be described in the Deed of Trust, but in a private Schedule referred to therein. You will be so good, Dear Sir, as to prepare and bring the materials of it with you. The List you gave me at Beriton must already have suffered some alterations, both as Debtor and Creditor. Besides Clarke's Debt is as yet unknown. – Indeed it will be necessary that previous to your coming up, you should send the Deeds of Copyhold (if any) and College Holding which we have not at present. We should likewise be glad to hear your sentiments still further with regard to Putney. The practice of Advertising is universal, and it is in vain to think of secrecy.

I am, Dear Sir,Most truly your's & Mrs. G.'s,E. G.

64.

To his Father

April 13th, 1769.

Dear Sir,

Mr. Southouse whom I saw yesterday tells me, that I may desire the favor of your company, with Mrs. G.'s, next Thursday evening. He thinks that Friday and Saturday mornings will suffice for our immediate business. As to the place, I should be glad to know whether you choose my lodgings or wish me to look out for any other place. – Should any thing (which I do not foresee) happen to defer your coming up, I shall take care to give you timely intelligence. – It is very difficult to say any thing positive as to money till we have finished writings, &c. However as to the C. affair, Mr. Scott will answer for it.

Mrs. G. distresses me every way. – I am truly concerned that it should be necessary for her to come up, at a time when I can easily conceive the state of her mind & spirits; but I am still more embarassed from her generous obstinacy. The sum of her Jointure is left in blank. Should she still object to the encrease of her Jointure, I must leave it as an engagement not of law, but of honor, of gratitude and of inclination.

You may depend on another letter by Sunday, till when

I am, Dear Sir,Yours most truly,E. G.

65.

To his Father

April 18th, 1769.

Dear Sir,

I waited till to-night before I took Lodgings, as I was not sure of your intentions. To-morrow morning I shall look out for one. I apprehend Suffolk Street or that neighbourhood will be at once private and convenient. – You will of course come in by Hyde Park Corner, and my servant shall attend at my lodgings at Mr. Taylor's, Grocer's, opposite to the Duke of Cumberland's, Pall Mall, to conduct you to your lodgings, where I shall immediately attend you. I should think that you had better not arrive till towards five o'clock, when Sir R. will be gone to dinner.

I am, Dear Sir,Most truly yours,E. G.

66.

To his Stepmother

Thursday night, Cocoa Tree.

Dear Madam,

HIS FATHER'S FAILING EYESIGHT.

I was a good deal alarmed with your letter of yesterday, and as much pleased with that of to-day, which dispelled my uneasiness: before you receive this I flatter myself that my father will be quite recovered. I have seen Wentzel,[123] who very obligingly took my guinea to tell me that he could tell me nothing about my father's case without seeing him. On that head he was very cool and very fair; a decay of the optic nerve, he said, was sometimes tho' seldom to be removed; as to the opinions of our surgeons he treated them with infinite contempt.

I am glad that our Meeting was attended, that things may end with a good grace. Sir Simeon has been so dangerously ill with the gout, that I have not yet settled my resignation. Henry will attend next Tuesday.

I am, Dear Madam,Most truly yours,E. G.

67.

To his Father

London, June the 1st, 1769.

Dear Sir,

I am sorry that I cannot give you more pleasing accounts of our progress in the Putney affairs, but we find people very cool, and tho' many applications are made, yet nobody as yet has spoke seriously and to the point. We attribute this general slowness in a great measure to the vague description of an Estate seven miles from London, &c., and heartily wish you would allow us to particularize place, name, &c. Boissier has been over to S.'s at Wimbleton. It plainly appears that he wishes to buy, but to buy cheap, and that, notwithstanding his polite professions, he will do all in his power to keep off all other purchasers. Considering all these rubs, we could very much wish that you would set about giving us the particulars of the Hampshire Estates, that the summer may not steal away upon us, without any things being done.

I am much concerned to hear from Mrs. Gibbon that your Operation has not produced any good effects, tho' we could hardly expect any alteration in so short a time. As soon as we see a little more clearly into what can or cannot be done as to Putney, I propose coming down, as I wish to see you and Mrs. Gibbon, and I am sure London has now no charms for me.

I am, Dear Sir,Most truly yours,E. G.

We wish to know upon what terms your Putney Tenants who have no leases (Bateman, I think, & Stewart) hold their land and what they pay.

P.S. – If you think I can be of more service at Beriton than in London, I will attend you as soon as our Militia meeting is over, for till then I think I cannot decently be in Hampshire.

68.

To his Stepmother

London, June 22nd, 1769.

Dear Madam,

Before I received your last letter I was displeased with myself for having been so long silent, and yet I should have been still more displeased if I had wrote, as I could say nothing that was agreable, nothing but what must lower my father's spirits as they every day do mine. Tho' we have had many enquiries about Putney, yet nothing like an offer has presented itself. We must therefore think of Beriton, and tho' I do not wish to complain, I must say that we are all surprized at my father's seeming indifference on that occasion. We feel for the situation both of his eyes & his spirits, but still we are surprized. – Things indeed draw so near a crisis that some resolution must be taken. Mr. Scott & Mr. Porten propose entering upon it next Week, and think my presence necessary. As soon as something is settled you may depend either on seeing me at Beriton, or at least on hearing every particular which can interest the common cause.

I am, Dear Madam,Most truly yours & my father's,E. G.

69.

To his Father

Pall Mall, August the 17th, 1769.

Dear Sir,

We have agreed with Mr. Wood for the £8500, the rents and profits till Michaelmas excepted. The writings are sent to his Lawyer's to-day, and as there is no difficulty in the title, we may look upon the affair as concluded. Our friends were clearly of opinion that the measure is prudent, and, every thing considered, I could not avoid being of the same opinion. But I shall say the less on that head as they propose writing themselves very soon. They wish me to remain here till Wood's Lawyer has signified his approbation. I hope to be with you Sunday, as I find myself in a far greater solitude in Town than at Beriton.

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Footnote_1_1

Judith Porten, the mother of Edward Gibbon, was the third and youngest daughter of Mr. James Porten, a merchant of London. She died in December, 1747, leaving the maternal care of her son to her sister, Miss Catherine Porten, the "Aunt Kitty" of the later correspondence, to whom this letter is addressed. After her father's commercial ruin, Miss Catherine Porten opened a boarding-house for Westminster School, in College Street. Under her care Gibbon spent the two years which he passed at Westminster. He entered the school in January, 1748, and was placed in the second form.

Footnote_2_2

This endorsement is in the handwriting of his stepmother, the second Mrs. Gibbon.

Footnote_3_3

"M. Pavilliard has described to me the astonishment with which he gazed on Mr. Gibbon standing before him; a thin little figure, with a large head, disputing and urging, with the greatest ability, all the best arguments that had ever been used in favour of popery." [Lord Sheffield.]

Footnote_4_4

Voltaire lived from 1755 to 1758 at les Délices near Geneva, and within Genevan territory.

Footnote_5_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).

Footnote_6_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.

Footnote_7_7

The second daughter of Mr. James Porten married Mr. Darrel of Richmond, and left two sons, Edward and Robert.

Footnote_8_8

Gibbon's father married his second wife, Miss Dorothea Patton, in 1755.

Footnote_9_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.

Footnote_10_10

A well-known doctor of the day.

Footnote_11_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.

Footnote_12_12

Word omitted in original.

Footnote_13_13

The Seven Years' War, 1756-63. – "A war," says Horace Walpole, "that reaches from Muscovy to Alsace and from Madras to California" (Horace Walpole to the Earl of Strafford, June 12, 1759).

Footnote_14_14

Dr. John Turton (1736-1806) was in 1782 appointed physician to both the King and Queen. He attended Goldsmith on his death-bed. His progress to fame and fortune was very rapid, and when he died he left his widow £9000 a year in land, and £60,000 in the funds. "The bulk of his great fortune he has bequeathed, after the death of his wife, to her Royal Highness the Princess Mary, their Majesty's fourth daughter" (Annual Register, April 15, 1806).

Footnote_15_15

Miss Porten had now removed from College Street to a large boarding-house which she had built in Dean's Yard, Westminster.

Footnote_16_16

The lottery began to be drawn November 14, 1758; the last ticket was drawn December 12, when "No. 72,570 in the present lottery was drawn a prize of £10,000."

Footnote_17_17

Matthew Maty, born near Utrecht in 1718, settled in England as a physician in 1741; in 1756 he was appointed an under-librarian at the British Museum, and in 1772 succeeded Gowin Knight as chief librarian. His Journal Britannique (1750-55), published in French at the Hague, contains a bi-monthly review of English literature. He died in 1776. If the son, whom Gibbon "tipped," resembled the father, this passage may confirm Dr. Johnson's description of Maty as a "little black dog." For Gibbon's relations with Maty, see note to Letter 15.

Footnote_18_18

Dorothea Mallet, Madame Celesia (1738-1790), a poet and dramatist, eldest daughter, by his first wife, of David Mallet. She married Pietro Paolo Celesia, a Genoese gentleman, who was ambassador to this country from 1755 to 1759, and was afterwards ambassador to Spain. Madame Celesia's drama of Almida, an adaptation of Voltaire's Tancrède, was brought out at Drury Lane in 1771, and published in the same year.

Footnote_19_19

Dodsley's tragedy of Cleone was then being played at Covent Garden.

Footnote_20_20

Sir William Milner, Bart. (1719-1774), for many years receiver-general of the Excise, married Elizabeth, youngest daughter of the Hon. and Rev. George Mordaunt, brother of the third Earl of Peterborough. She died a year after her husband.

Footnote_21_21

Sir John Brute, the surly, drunken husband of Lady Brute in Vanbrugh's play of The Provoked Wife.

Footnote_22_22

Mallet's tragedy Eurydice, written in 1731, was revived in 1759. The Smyrna Coffee-house in Pall Mall stood on the site now occupied by Messrs. Harrison, the booksellers. It was famous in the days of the Tatler and the Spectator.

Footnote_23_23

On his return from Lausanne Gibbon completed his Essai sur l'étude de la Littérature, his first published work. The manuscript was submitted to Dr. Maty in 1758, and by his advice partly rewritten and wholly revised. It was published in French, with a letter to the author from Dr. Maty, in 1761. The essay is printed in The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon (ed. 1814), vol. iv. pp. 1-93.

Footnote_24_24

Lady Hervey, the beautiful "Molly Lepel," daughter of Brigadier-General Nicholas Lepel, was the widow of John, Lord Hervey, the "Sporus" of Pope's Prologue to the Satires, and the Boswell of George II. and Queen Caroline. Married in October, 1720, she was the mother of four sons, three of whom in succession became Earl of Bristol. She died September 2, 1768.

Footnote_25_25

In June, 1759, Gibbon and his father joined the Hampshire regiment of militia as respectively captain and major. The South battalion, to which they belonged, was kept "under arms, in constant pay and duty," from the date of its enrolment till December 23, 1762, when it was disbanded as a permanent force. The battalion was at Winchester Camp from June 25 to October 23, 1761, and from the latter date to February 28, 1762, at "the populous and disorderly town of Devizes" (see next letter). His Autobiography shows that Gibbon found that "a camp," as Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale in October, 1778, "however familiarly we may speak of it, is one of the great scenes of human life," and that, partially at least, he agreed with Lord Chesterfield, that "courts and camps are the only places to learn the world in."

Footnote_26_26

The Black Musqueteers of Colonel Barré were raised in 1761-2 as the 106th Regiment of Foot (or Black Musqueteers.) See List of General and Field Officers for 1763, p. 175.

Footnote_27_27

William, Lord Fitzmaurice, M.P. for Chipping Wycombe, afterwards Prime Minister (1782), and first Marquess of Lansdowne, succeeded his father as second Earl of Shelburne in the spring of 1761. He acted as the go-between in the negotiations between Bute and Fox, which led to the cessation of the Seven Years' War and the Treaty of Paris.

Footnote_28_28

Robert Sharrock was a captain in the South Battalion of the Hampshire Militia.

Footnote_29_29

James Hall received his commission as ensign in February, 1762.

Footnote_30_30

John Butler Harrison, lieutenant in the South Battalion, was Gibbon's chief friend in the regiment. In his journal Gibbon speaks of the disagreeable society in which he was compelled to live. "No manners, no conversation, they were only a set of fellows, all whose behaviour was low, and most of whose characters were despicable. I must, however, except Sir Thomas and Harrison out of this society. Harrison is a young man of honour, spirit, and good nature. The virtues of his heart make amends for his having none of the head."

Footnote_31_31

Francis Egerton, third and last Duke of Bridgewater (1736-1803), with the assistance of Brindley, developed the canal system of the north of England.

Footnote_32_32

The Marquis of Tavistock, who married, in June, 1764, Lady E. Keppel, was killed in the hunting-field in 1767.

Footnote_33_33

John, second and last Earl of Ossory, married, in 1769, the Duchess of Grafton. Anne Liddell, daughter of Lord Ravensworth, married to the Duke of Grafton in January, 1756, was separated from her husband in 1765. Her daughter by Lord Ossory was born in 1768; her divorce from the duke, and her marriage with Lord Ossory, took place in March, 1769.

Footnote_34_34

The Treaty of Paris was signed February 10, 1763.

Footnote_35_35

Mr. Neville arrived in London with the Definitive Treaty, February 15, and at once had an audience of the king, which he describes in a letter printed in the Bedford Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 199.

Footnote_36_36

Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715-1771) published his materialistic book, De l'Esprit, in 1758. He married Mademoiselle de Ligneville, who survived him more than a quarter of a century.

Footnote_37_37

Madame Geoffrin (1699-1777), a woman of humble origin, the widow of a wealthy ice-merchant, opened her salon to philosophers and men of letters. Madame du Deffand called her la mère des philosophes, also la reine mère de Pologne for her intimacy with Stanislas Poniatowski. She affected to despise the influence of Madame Geoffrin. When some friend spoke to her of her rival's salon, she exclaimed, "Voilà bien du bruit pour une omelette au lard." Gibbon owed his introduction to Madame Geoffrin to Lady Hervey. Writing to Lady Hervey in October, 1765, Horace Walpole says of Madame Geoffrin, "she has one of the best understandings I ever met, and more knowledge of the world." Yet his account of her, on the whole, confirms Lord Carlisle's opinion that she was "the most impertinent old brimstone" (Lord Carlisle to George Selwyn, December 26, 1767). Gibbon speaks in his Autobiography of her "capricious tyranny." In a letter to Gray (January 25, 1766) Walpole paints an elaborate portrait of her and her rival, Madame du Deffand.

Footnote_38_38

The Right Hon. Hans Stanley, of Paultons in the New Forest, was a grandson of Sir Hans Sloane. He was a distinguished diplomatist, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Trustee of the British Museum, Cofferer of the Royal Household, and M.P. for Southampton. Walpole speaks of him as "deep in the secrets of the peace of Paris." He committed suicide at Althorpe on January 13, 1780. Gibbon knew him through Stanley's connection with Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Stanley was twice Captain and Governor of the Island, 1764-66 and 1770-80.

Footnote_39_39

John, fourth Duke of Bedford (1710-1771), to whom Gibbon had a letter of introduction from the Duke of Richmond, was in 1756 appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1761, and in 1762 ambassador to France, where he signed the preliminaries of peace with France and Spain. "The Duke of Bedford," writes Horace Walpole in September, 1762, "is gone in a fury to make peace, for he cannot be even pacific with temper."