XXXI
As I talked, Lord Fairfax, who had seen greater armies, heard me in silence, and indeed, when I ceased, remained for a time without making any comment. Then he reined up his horse, and, handing me two letters, said: “I have kept these for your private reading, George; I have them through the kindness of one of Admiral Keppel’s officers.” I read them as we rode on, well in the rear, to avoid the annoyance caused by the marching of the Forty-eighth Foot, which beat up a great dust. He said: “Read them again at your leisure.” I did as was desired, and, as they happened to be left in my buckskin-coat pocket and forgot, they were the only papers I chanced to save in the battle. They are now before me, and I read them anew with interest. Not for many years have I seen them.
My dear Lord: I take this occasion to write you. London is very gay, and the clubs andtheir wits amazing merry over the appointment of Edward Braddock to command the force sent out to protect you from the Indians. Ch. S——y was here for dinner yesterday. He said General B. was a stranger both to fear and common sense, and that his best fitness to fight Indians was that he was providentially bald. Lord C. S. says he saw Anne Bellamy, the actress, whom the General visited when on the point of leaving London. She said Mr. Braddock was melancholy, and declared he was sent with a handful of men to conquer nations and to cut his way through an unknown wilderness.He said: “We are sent like sacrifices to the altar.” That ancient ram! say I. He told her she would never see him again.I wish you luck of your new General. He is touchy, punctilious, of a stiff mind, and has had forty years in the Guards. I do not think he was eager to leave Anne Bellamy and the clubs, for the man is a favourite; but he has little money, and it will be at least agreeable to spend the king’s guineas.If you were a woman I should tell you the new fashions. The beaux now carry their watches in their muffs, and the women are taking, more and more, to what Charles S——y calls undress uniform, so that soon Madame Eve will be the fashionable maker of gowns!—but I must not nourish your provincial blushes. Lord R. tells me that your General is a sad brute, for whenhis sister—a pretty thing she was—spent all her money at cards and hanged herself, the man said: “Poor Fanny, I always thought she would play till she would be forced to tuck herself up.” Horace Walpole says, when she meant to die, she wrote with a diamond on the window-pane this out of Garth’s “Dispensary”:“To die is landing on some silent shore,Where billows never break nor tempests roar.”But why should the woman die when she had a diamond left to gamble with?However, the Duke of Cumberland is his patron, and that is enough. F——x lost the other night at White’s, they say, £1000 and—
My dear Lord: I take this occasion to write you. London is very gay, and the clubs andtheir wits amazing merry over the appointment of Edward Braddock to command the force sent out to protect you from the Indians. Ch. S——y was here for dinner yesterday. He said General B. was a stranger both to fear and common sense, and that his best fitness to fight Indians was that he was providentially bald. Lord C. S. says he saw Anne Bellamy, the actress, whom the General visited when on the point of leaving London. She said Mr. Braddock was melancholy, and declared he was sent with a handful of men to conquer nations and to cut his way through an unknown wilderness.
He said: “We are sent like sacrifices to the altar.” That ancient ram! say I. He told her she would never see him again.
I wish you luck of your new General. He is touchy, punctilious, of a stiff mind, and has had forty years in the Guards. I do not think he was eager to leave Anne Bellamy and the clubs, for the man is a favourite; but he has little money, and it will be at least agreeable to spend the king’s guineas.
If you were a woman I should tell you the new fashions. The beaux now carry their watches in their muffs, and the women are taking, more and more, to what Charles S——y calls undress uniform, so that soon Madame Eve will be the fashionable maker of gowns!—but I must not nourish your provincial blushes. Lord R. tells me that your General is a sad brute, for whenhis sister—a pretty thing she was—spent all her money at cards and hanged herself, the man said: “Poor Fanny, I always thought she would play till she would be forced to tuck herself up.” Horace Walpole says, when she meant to die, she wrote with a diamond on the window-pane this out of Garth’s “Dispensary”:
“To die is landing on some silent shore,Where billows never break nor tempests roar.”
“To die is landing on some silent shore,Where billows never break nor tempests roar.”
“To die is landing on some silent shore,
Where billows never break nor tempests roar.”
But why should the woman die when she had a diamond left to gamble with?
However, the Duke of Cumberland is his patron, and that is enough. F——x lost the other night at White’s, they say, £1000 and—
I looked up and said: “The rest does not seem to be of interest or to say more of the general.”
“No, but always look at the postscript of a lady’s letter. There is more about your general.”
It was true, for I read:
P. S. I meant not to tell you of Braddock’s affair with Colonel Gumley, who was his friend, but I may as well, even if you think it incredible. A letter is a fine way to talk, because you can never see the blush you may cause, and may fib without being vexed by contradiction until so long after that you have forgotten all aboutit. But what a pother I am making about my harmless gossip!When Braddock quarrelled over cards with his friend, and swords were drawn, Gumley (you know, Lord Pulteney married his sister) cried out: “Braddock, you are a penniless dog. If you kill me you have no money, and you will have to run away.” So with that he tossed him his purse. Braddock was in such a rage that Gumley easily disarmed him, but he would not ask his life.
P. S. I meant not to tell you of Braddock’s affair with Colonel Gumley, who was his friend, but I may as well, even if you think it incredible. A letter is a fine way to talk, because you can never see the blush you may cause, and may fib without being vexed by contradiction until so long after that you have forgotten all aboutit. But what a pother I am making about my harmless gossip!
When Braddock quarrelled over cards with his friend, and swords were drawn, Gumley (you know, Lord Pulteney married his sister) cried out: “Braddock, you are a penniless dog. If you kill me you have no money, and you will have to run away.” So with that he tossed him his purse. Braddock was in such a rage that Gumley easily disarmed him, but he would not ask his life.
As we rode on I said it seemed to me to show that our general was foolishly obstinate, and that I liked the other man better, but neither very much.
His lordship said: “Yes, yes; it is a wild and a silly life. The woman is heartless, but what she says may serve to put you on your guard. These people think London the only part of the world worth a thought. The other letter is of more moment. It is from Colonel Conway. I have inked over these names; they do not matter. He is of another clay.”
London.My dear Lord: My nephew, Mr. Henry Wilton, carries this letter to you, and any kind attention you may feel disposed to pay him will oblige me.I think the choice of Braddock unfortunate. He is a brave, or rather a reckless, man, overconfident, arrogant, and sure to despise his enemy, and goes out, as I am assured, with a bad opinion of the Colonials. Horace Walpole, who knows, as we all do, the mad life Braddock has led in London, says: “He is a very Iroquois in disposition, and so, I suppose, fit to fight his kind.” Horace is making himself merry over the appointment, and the Colonial helping he is to have. But it is the fashion here to laugh at Colonials, and not for the world would Horace be out of the fashion. I wish the General may have good fortune, but I fear the matching of drill and pipe-clay against the wiles of the woods; as sensible would it be to set a fencing-master with a rapier to fight a tiger in a jungle. When I consider how vast is this increasing number of English in a country where must be great prospects and a fine sense of independency, I wonder how little they are regarded here. But it is our way to despise other nations, and even our own blood if it has had enterprise to cross the seas. Come back and help us to learn better.Always your Lordship’sOb’dthumleservt.Henry Conway.
London.
My dear Lord: My nephew, Mr. Henry Wilton, carries this letter to you, and any kind attention you may feel disposed to pay him will oblige me.
I think the choice of Braddock unfortunate. He is a brave, or rather a reckless, man, overconfident, arrogant, and sure to despise his enemy, and goes out, as I am assured, with a bad opinion of the Colonials. Horace Walpole, who knows, as we all do, the mad life Braddock has led in London, says: “He is a very Iroquois in disposition, and so, I suppose, fit to fight his kind.” Horace is making himself merry over the appointment, and the Colonial helping he is to have. But it is the fashion here to laugh at Colonials, and not for the world would Horace be out of the fashion. I wish the General may have good fortune, but I fear the matching of drill and pipe-clay against the wiles of the woods; as sensible would it be to set a fencing-master with a rapier to fight a tiger in a jungle. When I consider how vast is this increasing number of English in a country where must be great prospects and a fine sense of independency, I wonder how little they are regarded here. But it is our way to despise other nations, and even our own blood if it has had enterprise to cross the seas. Come back and help us to learn better.
Always your Lordship’s
Ob’dthumleservt.
Henry Conway.
His lordship looked at me as I put away the letters. I said: “That seems to me goodsense; but about the general, I cannot credit it.”
“You will judge for yourself,” he said, “if this be the man to send into the wilderness. Keep the letters, but do not lose them; you may return them later.” Which I should have done, only that the rout on the Monongahela put it out of my mind.