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

Footnote_72_72

John Child Tylney, second Lord Tylney, F.R.S., M.P. for Malmesbury.

Footnote_73_73

John Byng, youngest son of the Hon. George Byng, and grandson of the first Viscount Torrington.

Footnote_74_74

La Société du Printemps was the name of the society of young ladies at Lausanne, mentioned in the Memoirs.

Footnote_75_75

Madame Besson.

Footnote_76_76

Captain J. Eliot, R.N., was connected through his sister-in-law, Mrs. Eliot of Port Eliot, (née Catherine Elliston), with Gibbon. He died unmarried, an admiral and governor of Newfoundland.

Footnote_77_77

William Ponsonby (1744-1806), eldest son of Speaker Ponsonby, and first Lord Ponsonby.

Footnote_78_78

Thomas Lyttelton (1744-1779), son of the first Lord Lyttelton, afterwards known as "the wicked Lord Lyttelton," had engaged himself, while at Oxford, to a daughter of General Warburton. He was sent abroad, while the settlements were being arranged. The engagement was broken off in consequence of his bad reputation.

Footnote_79_79

Sir Horace Mann (1701-1786) was appointed Assistant Envoy at the Court of Florence in 1737. Three years later he became Envoy, and held the post till his death in 1786. From Florence he kept a close watch on the movements of Charles Stuart, and carried on his voluminous correspondence with Horace Walpole.

Footnote_80_80

George Nassau, Lord Fordwich (1738-1789), who succeeded his father in 1764 as third Earl Cowper, married in 1775 Miss Hannah Gore, and died at Florence in 1789.

Footnote_81_81

The Princess Augusta, eldest child of Frederick, Prince of Wales, born August 11, 1737, married the Duke of Brunswick.

Footnote_82_82

Near Stansted in Sussex, purchased in 1746 from the Earl of Tankerville by Sir Matthew Featherstonhaugh, M.P. for Portsmouth.

Footnote_83_83

The Manor and Mansion-house of Lenborough, in the county of Bucks, passed, by purchase from the families of Ingoldsby and Dormer, into the hands of Mr. John Rogers, of Buckingham, who, about the year 1730, sold them to the grandfather of Edward Gibbon. The "Mansion" was converted into a farmhouse for the tenant of the farm.

Footnote_84_84

The grandfather of Edward Gibbon died in 1736, leaving one son and two daughters. Catherine, the eldest of these two daughters, married Mr. Elliston, of South Weald, Essex, and her only child married, in 1756, Mr. (created in 1784 Lord) Eliot, of Port Eliot in Cornwall. Their three sons were Gibbon's nearest male relatives.

Footnote_85_85

Henry Ellis (1721-1806) wrote an account of an expedition in which he served to discover the North-West passage. His Voyage to Hudson's Bay, by the Dobbs Galley and California in the years 1746 and 1747, for Discovering a North-West Passage, was published in 1748. He was afterwards appointed successively Governor of Georgia and Nova Scotia.

Footnote_86_86

Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Hamilton (1730-1803) was appointed Envoy at the Court of Naples in 1764. In September, 1791, he married, as his second wife, Amy Lyon, who as Emma Hamilton became famous.

Footnote_87_87

John Murray, Resident at Venice, was appointed in November, 1765, ambassador at Constantinople. He died at Venice in August, 1775.

Footnote_88_88

Sir T. Worsley.

Footnote_89_89

Gibbon's Essai sur l'étude de la Littérature was published in 1761. The essay, translated into English, was published in 1764.

Footnote_90_90

Madame Necker, writing to Madame de Brentès, November 7, 1765, thus describes this visit of Gibbon to her married home: "Je ne sais, madame, si je vous ai dit, que j'ai vu Gibbon; J'ai été sensible à ce plaisir au-delà de toute expression, non qu'il me reste aucun sentiment pour un homme qui je vois n'en mérite guère; mais ma vanité féminine n'a jamais eu un triomphe plus complet et plus honnête. Il a resté deux semaines à Paris; Je l'ai eu tous les jours chez moi; it étoit devenu doux, souple, humble, décent jusqu'à la pudeur; témoin perpétuel de la tendresse de mon mari, de son esprit et de son enjouement, admirateur zélé de l'opulence, it me fit remarquer pour la première fois celle qui m'entoure, ou du moins jusqu'alors elle n'avoit fait sur moi qu'une sensation désagréable" (Lettres diverses recueillies en Suisse, par le Comte Fédor Galovkin, pp. 265, 266: Geneva, 1821).

Footnote_91_91

Theophilus Bolton, who was making the tour with Mr. Holroyd and Major Ridley, died of consumption at Genoa.

Footnote_92_92

Son of Sir Matthew Ridley, Bart., Major in the Welsh Fusiliers. He had served in Germany during the Seven Years' War, and was at this time Mr. Holroyd's travelling companion.

Footnote_93_93

M. Deyverdun had known Gibbon at Lausanne, and from 1766-69 was a frequent guest at Beriton. With his assistance Gibbon published the Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne pour l'an 1767 (Londres: Chez T. Becket and P. A. de Hondt dans le Strand, 1767), which were discontinued in 1768, when Deyverdun, on his friend's recommendation, left England as tutor to the son of Sir T. Worsley, afterwards the Right Hon. Sir Richard Worsley. In 1783 Gibbon took up his abode with Deyverdun at the latter's house at Lausanne. Deyverdun died in July, 1789, leaving his house and land by will to Gibbon for his life.

Footnote_94_94

Lady Diana Spencer married in 1757 Frederick St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, the "Bully" who figures in George Selwyn's correspondence, from whom she was divorced, March 10, 1768. Two days later she married Topham Beauclerk, grandson of the first Duke of St. Albans, the friend of Dr. Johnson, and the collector of a magnificent library. During his long illness she nursed him, as Johnson, no friendly witness, admits, "with very great assiduity." He died in 1780. Lady Diana, whose skill as an artist is frequently alluded to by Walpole, died in 1808.

Footnote_95_95

Hugh, Lord Warkworth, eldest son of Sir Hugh Smithson, Bart., of Stanwick, who was created Duke of Northumberland in 1766, married July 2, 1764, Lady Anne Stuart, third daughter of the Earl of Bute. They were divorced in 1779. As Earl Percy he served in the American War at the battle of Lexington and elsewhere.

Footnote_96_96

See note to Letter 126.

Footnote_97_97

Sir James Lowther, Bart., first Earl of Lonsdale, married (1761) Lady Mary Stewart, eldest daughter of the Earl of Bute, and sister of Lady Warkworth.

Footnote_98_98

Dr. William Heberden (1710-1801), one of the most famous physicians of the century, and a distinguished scholar. He was called by Dr. Johnson "Ultimus Romanorum" (a title which might be as justly applied to Sir H. Halford), as being "the last of our learned physicians." He is hailed by Cowper as "virtuous and faithful," perhaps because, as Dr. G. B. Hill suggests, he bought and destroyed an unpublished manuscript by Dr. Middleton on The Inefficacy of Prayer.

Footnote_99_99

Up Park, near Stansted in Sussex, the seat of Sir Matthew Featherstonhaugh, F.R.S., formerly M.P. for Morpeth, at this time M.P. for Portsmouth; Port Eliot, St. Germans, Cornwall, that of Gibbon's cousin, Mr. Edward Eliot, M.P. for Liskeard, afterwards for Cornwall, created in 1784 Baron Eliot of St. Germans; and Hartley Manduit that of Sir Simeon Stuart, M.P. for the county of Southampton.

Footnote_100_100

Under Lord Bute, the Ministerial Club, as it was at first called, used to meet at the Cocoa Tree Tavern, in St. James's Street. In 1745 it had been the great resort of the Jacobites. Gibbon describes a supper at the club in his Journal for November, 1762. [Memoirs of My Life and Writings – Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 154 (second edition, 1814).] By the "School of Vice" it is more than probable Gibbon meant White's Club, formed in 1736, at this time the great Tory gaming club. It contained within its walls an Old and a Young Club, the Old being recruited from among the members of the Young. Hence, perhaps, arose its name of the "School of Vice."

Footnote_101_101

The Stamp Act, charging stamp duties on all legal documents executed in the Colonies, received the royal assent March 22, 1765, and came into operation November 1, 1765. When Parliament reassembled on January 14, 1766, Pitt attacked the policy of the Act. General Conway, one of the Secretaries of State, who replied to him, said that the sentiments which he had expressed were substantially those of the ministers, and that, for his own part, he would gladly resign his office if Pitt would take it. Grenville, who followed, defended the Act, and it was in reply to him, on the same evening, that Pitt delivered one of the most eloquent and famous of his speeches. Ireland took a keen interest in the question, and the debate happens to be fully reported by two Irish gentlemen, Sir Robert Dean and Lord Charlemont; otherwise, like many others of the time, it might have passed without record. In the same session, February 24 to March 17, two resolutions were carried in both Houses, one declaring the right of Great Britain to tax the Colonies, the other repealing the Stamp Act. Two Acts of Parliament expressed these resolutions in legislative form.

Footnote_102_102

The name was so spelt in the newspapers. John Baker Holroyd married in 1767 Miss Abigail Way, only daughter of Lewis Way, of Richmond, Surrey.

Footnote_103_103

The motto of the regiment of light dragoons, called Royal Foresters, in which Mr. Holroyd had been captain, and which was disbanded in 1763.

Footnote_104_104

A nickname for Mr. Guise.

Footnote_105_105

At Southampton Gibbon attended every spring the monthly exercise of the militia, of which, by the resignation of his father and the death of Sir T. Worsley (1768), he eventually became lieutenant-colonel commandant.

Footnote_106_106

Parliament was dissolved March 11, 1768, and the elections took place in March. Gibbon seems to have assisted the Worsleys in the Isle of Wight against the Castle interest and that of the Holmes family. In 1586, when the Crown sought to create a parliamentary party in the House of Commons, six members were returned to Parliament by the three boroughs of Newport, Newtown, and Yarmouth, because in the Isle of Wight, through its military captain and governor, the influence of the Crown was paramount. Gradually the leading families of the island acquired control over the three boroughs, and at this period they were disputed by the Worsley, Barrington, and Holmes families, the latter being descended from Sir Robert Holmes, who took New York from the Dutch, and "first bewitched our eyes with Guinea gold." At the election of 1768 the following members were elected for the respective boroughs: – Newport: Hans Sloane, Esq., and John Eames, Esq., one of the Masters in Chancery. Newtown: Sir J. Barrington, Bart., and Harcourt Powell, Esq. (re-elected). Yarmouth: Jervoise Clarke, Esq., and William Strode, Esq.

Footnote_107_107

A convivial club, meeting once a week, established by Gibbon and other travellers.

Footnote_108_108

Gibbon was a member of Boodle's Club, known as the Savoir vivre.

Footnote_109_109

Ranelagh Gardens, now part of Chelsea Hospital Gardens, stood on the site of a villa belonging to Lord Ranelagh, the Jones of Grammont's Memoirs. The Rotunda, an amphitheatre, with an orchestra in the centre, surrounded by "balconies full of little alehouses," was opened to the public May 24, 1742. The last entertainment given there was the installation ball of the Knights of the Bath in 1802. The gardens were closed in 1803. A staple, fixed in one of the trees of the avenue, preserved, till a few years ago, the traditions of the glories of Ranelagh when the gardens were lighted by a thousand lamps.

Footnote_110_110

The Earl of Abingdon married, on June 7, 1768, the daughter of Admiral Sir Peter Warren.

Footnote_111_111

Serjeant Glynn, well known as the advocate of Wilkes, was afterwards elected as second member for Middlesex at a by-election. He married a daughter of Sir J. Oglander, of Nunwell, in the Isle of Wight, and had been an unsuccessful candidate for one of the Isle of Wight constituencies at the general election of 1768.

Footnote_112_112

John Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton.

Footnote_113_113

Sir Peter Leycester and Sir Frank Standish were found, November 29, 1768, not duly elected.

Footnote_114_114

The return for Yarmouth, I.W., was amended by order of the House of Commons, dated January 19th, 1769, by erasing the names of Jervoise Clarke and William Strode, and substituting those of George Lane Parker and Thomas Lee Dummer.

Footnote_115_115

On February 14, 1769, Sir George Osborne was found not duly elected, and Thomas Howe was declared duly elected. The return of Sir George Rodney was held to be valid. A note by Sir Denis le Marchant, appended to Lord Orford's Memoirs, states that the expenses of the contest and petition cost Lord Spencer £70,000.

Footnote_116_116

John Wilkes was expelled from the House of Commons in January, 1764, and outlawed in the following August. He returned to England in February, 1768, and was at the bottom of the poll for the City (March 23). He headed the poll for Middlesex, March 28, 1768. His outlawry was reversed as technically illegal by the Court of King's Bench in the same year; but his two convictions for republishing No. 45 of the North Briton, and the Essay on Woman, were affirmed, and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. He was expelled the House February 3, 1769; re-elected February 16 and expelled February 27; re-elected March 16 and expelled March 17. At the election on April 13 he polled 1147 votes to the 296 of Colonel Luttrell; but the House resolved (April 15) that the election of Wilkes was void, and Luttrell duly elected. He was discharged from his imprisonment in 1770.

Footnote_117_117

Lord Baltimore was charged with decoying to his house a young milliner named Sarah Woodcock, and with rape. On February 12, 1768, he was committed for trial at the spring assizes at Kingston, and acquitted in the following March.

Footnote_118_118

"Il y a," writes Madame du Deffand to Walpole, speaking of La Princesse de Babylon (April 3, 1768), "quelques traits plaisants, mais c'est un mauvais ouvrage, et, contre son ordinaire, fort ennuyeux."

Footnote_119_119

During Gibbon's stay at Lausanne in 1763, the duke, brother of the reigning duke, occupied a villa called La Chablière, a short distance from the town.

Footnote_120_120

Sir Simeon Stuart, Bart., M.P. for the county of Southampton, died in November, 1779.

Footnote_121_121

The bulk of the letters for the years 1768 and 1769 relate to the pecuniary affairs of the Gibbon family. Mr. Gibbon was the owner of estates at Maple Durham, in the parish of Beriton near Petersfield, at Lenborough in Buckinghamshire, and a house, garden, and lands at Putney. He had also inherited shares in the New River Company, and other investments. But he had for years lived beyond his income, and it was only to the wreck of this fortune that the historian succeeded in 1770.

Footnote_122_122

On January 2, 1769, Wilkes was chosen alderman of the ward of Faringdon-Without against Bromwich, a paper-maker on Ludgate Hill.

Footnote_123_123

The Baron de Wentzel was the most famous oculist of the day, and the discoverer of operations for cataract. He died in London in 1790.

Footnote_124_124

In 1769 John Baker Holroyd purchased from Lord de la Warr the estate of Sheffield Place in Sussex.

Footnote_125_125

Richard Cambridge (1717-1802) married in 1741 Miss Trenchard, and in 1751 settled at Twickenham in a villa which became the resort of many of the most distinguished men of the day. In 1751 he published the Scribleriad, a poem in six books, and from 1753 to 1756 wrote essays for the World. He was an intimate friend and old schoolfellow of Dr. Cooke, the father of Mrs. Way, sister-in-law to Mrs. Holroyd. Gibbon, accepting one of Mr. Cambridge's invitations to Twickenham, speaks of the Thames as an "amiable creature." On his way he was upset into the water, and obliged to return home. The ducking was, said Cambridge to Miss Burney, "God's revenge against conceit" (Madame d'Arblay, Diary and Letters, ii. 278).

Footnote_126_126

On October 2, 1769, the Annual Register notes that "part of the Russian fleet cast anchor at the mouth of the Humber. The whole fleet, consisting of twenty ships of the line, is to rendezvous at Spithead, where one or two straggling ships are already arrived. This fleet was separated in a storm, but has received no considerable damage."

Footnote_127_127

The letters signed "Junius" began to appear in the Public Advertiser on January 21, 1769: the last was published on January 21, 1772. The letter to which Gibbon alludes is that dated December 19, 1769, addressed to the king. "The prætorian bands, enervated and debauched as they were, had still strength enough to awe the Roman populace; but when the distant legions took the alarm, they marched to Rome and gave away the empire." The point of the allusion is the case of Major-General Gansel (September 21, 1769), who, after being arrested for debt, was rescued by a sergeant and file of musqueteers, acting under command of an officer of the Guards.

Footnote_128_128

Gibbon and Sir Richard Worsley were endeavouring to obtain for M. Deyverdun a tutorship. He eventually went abroad with the young Stanhope, afterwards Lord Chesterfield.

Footnote_129_129

Probably Mr. Jolliffe, M.P. for Petersfield, and a country neighbour of Gibbon. He married, in November, 1769, the only daughter and heiress of Sir R. Hylton, Bart., of Hylton Castle, Durham.

Footnote_130_130

On the 9th of January, 1770, the Earl of Chatham returned to public life, from which he had retired in October, 1768. His reappearance, and his attacks upon the Government, determined the Duke of Grafton, who had succeeded him as Prime Minister, to resign office. On January 28, Lord North, who was already Chancellor of the Exchequer, accepted the post of First Lord of the Treasury, which he held for eleven years.

Footnote_131_131

On March 14 the Lord Mayor (Beckford) presented to the King at St. James's "an Address, Remonstrance, and Petition of the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and livery of the city of London," praying for the dissolution of Parliament as not representing the people, and for the removal of "evil ministers." On March 15 a motion was carried by 271 to 108 for a copy of the Remonstrance to be laid on the table of the House. On March 19 it was resolved by 284 to 127 that the Remonstrance tended to disturb the peace of the kingdom. Beckford died June 21, 1770.

Footnote_132_132

The Spring Gardens at Vauxhall (properly Fulke's Hall, the manor of Fulke de Breauté) were formed in the reign of Charles II. From 1732 onwards, under the management of Jonathan Tyers, the music, vocal and instrumental, and the masquerades, or Ridottos al fresco, attracted the fashionable world of London. The gardens were closed in 1859. The name of their enterprising manager is preserved in Tyers Street.

Footnote_133_133

Arabella Mallet, a daughter of David Mallet's second wife, married Captain Williams, of the royal engineers. The second Mrs. Mallet was Lucy, daughter of Lewis Elstob, steward to the Earl of Carlisle.

Footnote_134_134

Anthony Addington (1713-1790), father of the Prime Minister, was originally a physician at Reading. In London he became Chatham's doctor, and was in 1788, after his retirement from practice, consulted on the condition of George III., whose early recovery he alone predicted.

Footnote_135_135

Madame Celesia's play of Almida, acted at Drury Lane.

Footnote_136_136

The Ridotto al fresco was introduced at Vauxhall in 1732. The word is said to be derived from the Latin reductus, and to mean "music reduced to a full score." It came to mean an entertainment of music and dancing, and was used as a synonym for masquerades. Bramston, in The Man of Taste, speaks of the way in which the use of a foreign word sanctioned things which in plain English would have seemed objectionable —

"In Lent, if masquerades displease the town,Call 'em ridottos, and they still go down."

The word survived in the Redoutensaal of Vienna and the Redoutentänze of famous composers. Other authorities derive the use of the word from the sense in which it is employed by Dante, i. e. a "shelter," or "place of refuge." Hence it came to mean a "place of convivial meeting." In Udino's Italian-French-German Dictionary (Frankfurt, 1674) the German equivalent is given as Spielhaus. The transition from this to "ball-room" is not difficult. Byron in Beppo correctly defines the popular meanings of the word —

"They went to the Ridotto – 'tis a hallWhere people dance and sup, and dance again;Its proper name, perhaps, were a masked ball,But that's of no importance to my strain."

Footnote_137_137

Ralph Verney, Viscount Fermanagh, and second Earl Verney in the Peerage of Ireland, formerly M.P. for Carmarthen, was at this time M.P. for Buckinghamshire. At his death, in 1791, the title became extinct.

Footnote_138_138

On March 14, 1771, the House of Commons ordered that the printer of the London Evening Post be taken into the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. He was arrested by the messenger of the House under the Speaker's warrant; but was discharged from custody, and the messenger committed, by the city magistrates. For this breach of privilege Alderman Richard Oliver, M.P. for the City, was committed to the Tower by order of the House of Commons, March 25, 1771. Thu Lord Mayor, Brass Crosby, was committed on March 27.

Footnote_139_139

The Soho masquerades were given at Carlisle House by Mrs. Theresa Cornelys, whom Walpole calls "the Heidegger of the age." It was here that, the year before, the Duke of Gloucester appeared as Edward IV. with Lady Waldegrave as Elizabeth Woodville.

Footnote_140_140

Sir John Dalrymple published in 1771 the two first volumes of his Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland. His style was parodied by Dr. Johnson, who said, "Nothing can be poorer than his mode of writing; it is the mere bouncing of a schoolboy!"

Footnote_141_141