kindness now. That beast of a Frog, what must we do with him? He is Welsh, I suppose, by his name, and I have no great opinion of the descendants of Cadwallader. I wish he would pay me my rent and go back to his mountains. from My friend, may all happiness attend you and yours, which is my heart the sincere New Year's wish of Your affectionate, WILLIAM COWPER MY DEAR FRIEND, 23 Weston Underwood, January 27th, 1788 In hope that my finances are able to bear it, and necessity enforcing the measure, I shall take the liberty to draw on you tomorrow for Forty pounds, the draft payable at sight to John Higgins, Esq., or order. Lady Hesketh in her last letter mentioned your having lately had a fit of the gout. I will not congratulate you on an acquisition not very desirable perhaps in any case to him who makes it, but your friends, and among them myself in particular, I will congratulate, because it seems to promise us that we shall keep you long. Wishing you a short and slight visit from this rough intruder as often as he shall return, and at the same time all possible benefit from his attendance, I remain, with my best respect to Mrs. Hill, Yours, my dear friend, affectionately, WILLIAM COWPER P.S.-Many thanks for a barrel of fine oysters. MY DEAR FRIend, 24 Weston, October 25th, 1788 I am much obliged to you for taking the necessary measures to extort payment from the insolvent Welshman. Frog I will not call him, because that is the name by which I call my valuable friends and neighbours the Throckmortons, for brevity's sake, as you will suppose. Nothing can be more picturesque than your description of Wargrave, nor consequently more beautiful than the subject of it. And I would that I were at liberty for an excursion which I know I should find so perfectly agreeable, and to which I have every inducement. But Homer, Homer, Homer, is my eternal answer to all invitations to a distance, and must be so long as I have that It will, I hope, not Bath, to Normandy, great stone to roll before me wherever I go. prove like that of Sisyphus. To Blithfield, to have I been bidden, and by friends whom I much love, but am forced to make the same reply to all. The witness of my writing this agreeable billet to Mr. Morgan is my friend Mr. Rose of Rathbone Place, a young gentleman now engaged in the study of the law under the auspices of a Special Pleader whose name I think is Praed. He is at present with me, and because I know he will please you, I will, with your permission, recommend it to him to pay his respects to you next winter in Great Queen Street. My love and Lady Hesketh's love attend Mrs. Hill and your sisters, of whose health I rejoice to hear, and heartily wish them a continuance of the present delightful weather, that they may have the most perfect enjoyment of the beauties of Wargrave. Yours, my dear friend, most truly, WILLIAM COWPER MY DEAR FRIEND, 25 Weston Underwood, November 15th, 1788 That you may have the satisfaction to know that your kind present suffered no unnecessary delay in its journey hither, I give you the earliest information possible of its safe arrival, together with many thanks for it. The turkey has been already an object of our joint admiration though in his feathers, and will I doubt not excite still more when we shall see him in querpo. He does great credit to Mrs. Hill's management, insomuch that I know not if she have not brought upon herself some trouble of which perhaps she will hear news ere long, but, knowing that Lady Hesketh intends shortly to write to her, I forbear to mention it. It will serve in the mean time to employ conjecture. I beg you will present her with my best respects, and with two-thirds of my thankful acknowledgments on the occasion, taking the remainder to yourself. We were fortunate in receiving your letter so early. Mr. Throckmorton's servant, happening to go to Newport for his master's letters, brought mine too; yours, otherwise, would not have reached me till the next day, for we have not a daily post. We are kept, as they say, in hot water concerning the poor King, but the last accounts having been the most favourable encourage a hope that the important question of his life or death will soon be decided to our wish. Should he die, the best thing the Ministry, or rather the Parliament, can do, will be to advertise for a successor, for it does not presently occur where we shall find a worthy one. I have been somewhat alarmed lately for Mr. Chester, who I hear has a carbuncle on his back; a very painful, and which is worse, a dangerous distemper, especially to a man like him, not qualified by great strength of constitution to contend with it. He spent the summer at Harrogate, as the King at Cheltenham. If such be the consequences of water-drinking, let us abstain from all such perilous beverage and drink wine. Lady Hesketh adds her best compliments to mine both to yourself and Mrs. Hill. Believe me, my dear friend, 26 WILLIAM COWPER MY DEAR FRIEND, [December 16th, 1788] I write you yet once again to give you notice of a draft payable to John Higgins, Esq., or order for Thirty pounds, and dated yesterday. My Bank, I should hope, is by this time somewhat replenished, and in condition to answer the demand. I have many acknowledgments to make you for your kind reception of Mr. Rose. I consider him as my proxy at your house, and all your favours to him as conferred on myself. At Christmas I hope to have his company for a week. He is a great walker, in which respect he suits me well, for while the cold weather lasts I am a great walker too. There seems to be a reasonable hope, judging by the opinion of the faculty, that the King's malady may prove an affair of no long continuance. He will be somewhat astonished, when he shall be capable of learning it, to find at what a rate some persons have driven during his derangement; and the longer his disorder lasts the more danger there will be of a relapse in consequence of such discovery, for they seem to lose no opportunity of saying and doing everything that would go near to turn the head of any king, even of one whose head had never received a twirl before. No man wishes him well more warmly than myself, but I much fear that, be the event of his indisposition what it may, he has seen his happiest days, sensible as he must be if he live to be sensible of anything How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have an heir like his. Lady Hesketh had last night a cold, and was a little feverish; I have not heard of her this morning, but hope soon to learn from herself that she is better. If she knew that I am writing, she would say, remember me to them both, which thus doing, and adding my own best respects to Mrs. Hill, together with compliments from the two turkeys, who are both in perfect health, My cellar being nearly exhausted, I shall soon find it expedient to import a hogshead of wine from Lynn, in which way of proceeding I supply myself much more advantageously than by hampers from London. Other articles of expense also threaten me at this season, and make it necessary for me to beg that you will be so kind as to send me a draft on your Banker for as much of my yearly revenue as you expect yet to receive. Lady Hesketh has communicated to me what you told her on the subject of Mr. Archdeacon Haslop. He is a strange man, and one would think, with all the fuss he has made about it, wants less his money than an opportunity to be troublesome. I thank you, however, for the care you have taken of me in this particular by quieting my apprehensions on his account. So long as I have you at my back I fear him not, or if I fear him at all, it is only as a visitor; even you cannot prevent his coming hither if he chooses it, and he has so managed for me that I feel it would be safest and best both for him and for me that we should settle our accounts at a distance. With my best respects to Mrs. Hill, I remain, my dear friend, WILLIAM COWPER MY DEAR FRIEND, 28 Weston Underwood, December 14th, 1789 It is a shame that I should never write to you but for the needful. The truth is, I write very few letters indeed that are not extorted from me by necessity. When I shall have fought all my Trojan battles, and have given Ulysses quiet possession of his own goods and chattels again, then I shall become a more reasonable correspondent. UNI I hope you have paid yourself out of stock the amount of my last draft, my income not being adequate to such demands and to the supply of my necessities also. Those necessities oblige me to beg a further supply at present, which I shall be happy to receive per first opportunity. Our Grand Signor has produced-or rather his Sultanas-two families, the last so late in the season that we despaired of them. But they are now thriving Turks. Among the youngest are two perfectly white; if Mrs. Hill (to whom I beg my best compliments) has any wish for such, Mrs. Unwin will send them in the spring. They are now unequal to the journey. I am, my dear friend, WILLIAM COWPER Many thanks for a barrel of oysters received some time since. 29 August 7th, 1790 MY DEAR FRIEND, I feel considerably lighter in my spirit, as in fact in my purse, since it is in my power to satisfy the demands of Mr. Archdeacon, and devoutly wish that I may never have to deal with another like him. I shall this moment send him the joyful news that my money is at his service. I feel myself in such perfect good humour that I cannot just now quarrel with anybody, especially with your supposition that I might possibly be drawn to Wargrave by a desire of seeing your guests, though yourself have no such attractions for me. Were it possible that I could visit you at all, for your own sake should I come and for no other sake that can be mentioned. But you must understand that I have not slept from home these nineteen years, and that I despair of being ever able to do it more. This is the effect of a cause with which I will not darken a letter that I have begun in good spirits. But if you are inclined to suspicions and surmises of duplicity, what do you think must mine be, who learn from yourself that you have been in the north and have returned to the south, that is to say, that you have twice passed my door without giving me so much as a call? Had I journeyed within little more than two miles of Wargrave and had served you so, it would have cost me much ingenuity to have exculpated myself from a charge A few illegible words in this letter have been omitted. |