W1/6563

Samuel Whitbread II, Geneva, to Elizabeth Grey. Marked no 18.

13 July 1787

From: 1787 To: 1787

My dearest Bessy. My disappointment in not receiving a letter from my Father nor from that Black fellow Punch was the reason of my not performing the promise of writing to you on Wednesday. not that I wanted sufficient materials to compose a letter to you, but that the disappointment threw me in to ill humour & I was afraid some particle of that disposition might discover itself in my letter & you know that I dislike to be unmasked. Once however you caught me without my mask. when I came from Lord Bulkeley's to Hertford Street; & if I recollect you were good eno' to say that I was not the worse for the disguise being in some degree taken off. But good humour is a disguise so essential to the happiness of Life; stript of that Ornament everyone appears so horrid & disgusting, that altho' after five minutes writing to you I should have found myself reinstated in every particle of that quality that I possess, I would not sit down till the fit was ended either by the receipt of the two letters in Question, or by the reflection of the extreme inefficacy of ill-humour to bring about what one wishes. A letter from my Father on the one hand & a little reflection on the other have put me into a state of mind that entitles me to write to you, & the beginning the letter has completely conquered Spleen. But is it not provoking that Punch should as yet have taken no notice of our invitation to him to join our Party? Truely if the next Courier does not bear a letter from him, I will give him up, & never again swear that he is punctual, considerate, or prudent. My Father's letter is dated from Bath, & written upon the receipt of my first from Bordeaux & just as he was setting off for a short excursion in Wales so that it is very concise but written in good spirits & good humour. He hurries himself so rapidly from place to place, & is so fond of novelty in situation, that he is always discontented at the Idea of my visiting any one place twice: of course our Tour in Switzerland does not so totally correspond with his Ideas as I could wish; but knowing it to be impossible to travel as he would direct & knowing this to be by far the most agreable & interesting part of our Tour, I do not pay that attention to his discontent on that head that I otherwise should do, & we shall proceed in our Swizz expedition just as we originally intended. The Air of Geneva (h)as had an effect upon my friend Tom Monson; he has given up his gravity & sedateness & become Railleur. I was rather fixe the other morning & he disturbed me out of my pleasant reverie by saying, 'Sam will you swear to repeat four lines word for word as I shall say them? I heedlessly swore, & what should he produce for me to repeat, but the very four lines word for word that I remember to have placed in my first letter to you? true eno' Master Tom said I, & I am glad to see that you read Goldsmith with profit, & are apt at the transmutation of names.- Indeed nothing is more true than that every moment of my Life my thoughts are occupied by you. wherever I go you are my constant companion, & the realization of so much Happiness being for some time longer impossible, I feel a very great relief in the pleasure that your imaginary presence affords me. I will not say that by this means I make the most agreable companion to those with whom I am actually living but the whole weight of my stupidity must fall upon you; & I fear that you who have none of your own will be less able to bear the burthen of that of another. However I will hope that you have your moments of reverie, & that you are not so much at home at all times. if this is not the case, you must be altered for I think I have often been in your company when you to my no small mortification have been called away & have been absent for some minutes; where you were gone, or in whose company, I cannot pretend to say. Now may I venture to hope that I am not entirely excluded from such Society. The Quantity of English in & about this Town is astonishing. we sat down to dinner Yesterday no less than twenty four, & not one Foreigner. I am going to commit an Iricism by saying that a considera(ble) number of these English, are Irish. but every Inhabitant of the British Isles, once having set foot on the Continent comes under the description of Seigneur Anglois. One of these Hibernians who spent his last counter in Italy, finding himself exceedingly homesick at Florence declared to God, that if he had but once cast his Eyes on the Map before he left Dublin he should never have ventured so far. We have met with one of our Friends in Askew, whose name you know from his being Northumbrian, he is travelling with Sr. F. Sykes's Son. Ld. Belgrave, & Ld. Paget &c make up the tribe. As so many English could not possibly be collected without bringing England in some shape or other to Geneva, Racing is here the Rage, & the Genevan Hacknies have to lament sorely that such a place as Newmarket was ever in existence. Yesterday was the first great day, & the whole Town turned out to see the Gentlemen in their Caps & Jackets. the day past without any accident, & the sight was exceeding pretty. You will suppose of course that where Horses in any shape were concerned that I was one of the first in the affray; but know that I had nothing at all to do with the Races & that I was as unconcerned a Spectator as any Watchmaker of the Town. Not but that I am quite Boy eno' & Fool eno' to like riding a race most exceedingly, & that I have been stript to my Orange Jacket very often; but I know how quickly intelligence travels from Geneva to London, that everything that is done here appears in ---- papers & it would make a very pretty paragraph for Mr. Topham that Young W- was ruining himself on the Continent by Horse-racing. the press being set for my home makes it probable that he will still choose me as one of the Jockies, altho' I was only a Spectator; then I have it in my power to deny the Fact entirely, when my Father questions me about it; whereas if I had rode whether for five shillings or five hundred pounds the crime would have been equally great.- Do not suppose because I say that I like riding a race that I am fond of horse-racing, which some people would draw as a natural inference from such an Assertion; on the contrary I detest it in the common acceptation of the Words. It is my Idea that a Man who enters on the Turf, without giving himself entirely up to it, must be inevitably ruined, & of course deserves no other title than of Fool for running with his Eyes open to destruction; a Man who does devote his whole time to the pursuit becomes I fear very soon tainted with the Knavery of those with whom he has to deal. Not to mention that he is so engrossed by it as to render himself incapable of any other amusement, & almost unfit for society. The kind of Race that I like is that which is made in the gayety of the moment, which draws after it no consequence, & which I had rather give money to ride than win money by riding. Altho' these Subjects must appear extremely tiresome to you I am sure your goodness will pardon my being so diffuse when you consider that I do it with the view of making you aquainted as much as possible with my way of thinking on all occasions, only desiring in return that whenever you find it erronious you will have the candour to say so. I will not take the excuse of your being no Judge, because I know you have good sense & discernment sufficient to form very accurate Judgments. By the evidence of the date of this letter, I begin to flatter myself that Time does not stand perfectly still & that Michaelmas will arrive. We are now I think in the tenth Week since I left England & You, & nearly half the time is elapsed that is to keep me absent from you. When I talked of selling my Horses, you said it had the appearance of Banishment. You will allow that it has somewhat the appearance of return from exile when you hear that in a few days I intend writing to my groom to take my Horses up from grass & to get them in condition against my return. Foxhunting immediately rises to your mind. but I hope you do not attach all the odium to the title of Foxhunter, that is given to it by some People. If you do I will contest that point with you more strongly than any other of equal unimportance; but I think you will be of my way of thinking when you hear all that I have to say upon the Subject, & the limited way in which I defend the diversion. If by Fox-hunter is meant a person whose whole time and thoughts are engrossed by the Stable & Kennel & who returns from the Field merely to keep company with his Horse & Hounds at home I assure you it is a title of which I should be very little ambitious; & I would much rather give up any Amusement than make it my profession. but I do maintain that a Man may love Hunting to an excess, & at the same time be as little engaged in it when out of the Field as one who does not like it at all. As an Amusement I think it rational, manly, & to me I am sure it is the most interesting of any, as a profession I think it detestable. Hunting now is as different from what it was twenty years ago as it is possible for anything to be; Hunting in the morning was then only a pretence for being drunk in the afternoon; but you know that in Gigglewick was sketched out the plan of Life that would suit by Fancy, where the Field amusements of the morning were relieved by the Society delle Donne in the Afternoon. Well are you of my way of thinking? I hope you are.- but if you are not, tell me so. I will argue it over again. I will venture to assure you that in this controversy I will defeat all your Arguments, therefore give them to me.- I know you think me a most determined Foxhunter by the reply you made once to my saying, that I should like to spend three fourths of the year in the Country & three months in London. Ay, said You, those three months would not be in the Hunting Season. Now I will tell you exactly that those three Months would be March April & May. but I am talking like a fool, who thinks that he has nothing to consult but his own pleasure. whereas I know very well, that I shall have occupations sufficient to derange these air built earths, & to make my time subservient to them. I do not repine at the idea of having a great deal to do for God knows a man who has nothing to do but amuse himself, must find that the most irksome task that can be imposed.Thus far have I got in my letter without stirring you from Geneva, or giving you any idea of our future operations. Punch by neither writing nor appearing, has deranged us much but we fancy that we give him ample law, if we stay till next Tuesday the 17th. if we neither hear from him, nor see him by that time we shall imagine that the letter from Bordeaux miscarried, which is not very probable, or what is more so, that he was gone on some party, & that it lies unopened in Berners Street. At all events we shall set off in for Chamounin on Tuesday, but to give him a better chance, & better than he deserves, we shall return hither, & so proceed into the Valais by way of Lausanne, Vivay, & Villeneuve. I think that three weeks will be employed in Switzerland at least. from Strasbourg, we shall drop down the Rhine to Manheim & from thence go to Mayence & Francfort. to the last place you will direct your answer to this, taking care to say Francfort sur le Mayn. from Francfort we shall go to Cologne, Dusseldorf, Aix la Chapelle & Spa. at least this is our present intention. from Spa we have no fixed route because the time (thank Heaven) will then be so nearly elapsed as to make the route home our only consideration.- You desire me to lengthen rather then curtail my letters, or else this volume would frighten me.- I have assizes run in my head, I wish they were over; you are to write to me from Newcastle every thing is to be mentioned. & now I am going to add a little more trouble to the commission I before gave you. but you must be secret. a little man by the name of Tyrwhitt a friend of our's of exceeding good temper, but rather laughable figure is spending the Summer at Harraton. He is desperately in love with Deaffy, the conquest was made in the twinkling of an Eye;- I was present in Harley Street, but unconscious of the execution that was done at the very first introduction; pray observe him, & tell me whether you think the fair one is propitious. he must talk to her in the remotest corner of the Assembely Room, or everyone will hear, what he has to say, before it makes any impression on her Ears. it will serve you for amusement & me too. I am interested however in both their fates, I think them both extremely well adapted to each other & you may sing to them. 'Sure such a pair &c.' The attachment was confided to my by the confidant of the Lover, I confide it to you, & there it must stop, if not already known by the whole World which it most probably is.- Have you yet received the Ear-rings & do you like them?. I must know precisely every thing that happens at Newcastle. If the length of this letter does not tire your patience, I will say that you (are) more accommodating than it is possible to conceive. but you see how much I take advantage of the flattery you bestow upon me by saying that the length of my letters is one of their recommendations to you. Should my purse be finished it would be an appendage to the letter to Francfort that would be most highly acceptable, & there is no danger of its not arriving safe.- I recollect that about this time you will receive the letter I wrote in so much anxiety from Bordeaux; if what I have since written has not obtained me my pardon, now seal it & let me beseech you to forgive & forgot a fault that proceeded from an overanxiety, not from distrust, or doubt. I am sure that it's receipt will occasion you uneasiness, & for that I am sorry; but that uneasiness will be tempered with some degree of pleasure when you reflect that the disappointment at not receiving a letter would not have been so great if the pleasure at the receipt were not at least equivalent. It will now I think be time to draw my letter to a conclusion, & to give you some respite. I will write again on my return from Charmouni to this place. You have begged me not to ride Post & of course I shall not; let me entreat of you not to lame yourself by over dancing; remember that Knee; if I were to hear that any accident had happened to it, I should be most extremely mortified, & somewhat angry. Make my best remembrances acceptable to all your Family. May every blessing attend you my dearest Bessy, & believe me when I say from my heart that I am & shall ever remain Most sincerely & affectionately Your's & Your's only S. Whitbread Adieu Adieu I shall be impatient, at the same time afraid to open the letter to Zurich; if you scold me, I must run headlong to the Lake;- that would be a bad plan too; at all events I will not be desperate till I have received two letters. I Shall then be able to decide upon the measure of Wrath my complaints may have excited. Adieu, once more. Adieu, if I do not take a resolution to conclude at once I shall scribble till day break. Adieu."

item

Whitbread, Samuel II,
Grey, Elizabeth,
Punch,
Bulkeley,
Whitbread, Samuel I,
Monson, Thomas,
Tyrwhitt,
Askew,
Sykes,
Belgrave,
Paget

Geneva, Switzerland, Chamonix, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, fox hunting, horse racing, travel