TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.

PARIS, _Jan._ 12, 1766.

I have received your letter by General Vernon, and another, to which I have writ an answer, but was disappointed of a conveyance I expected.

You shall have it with additions, by the first messenger that goes; but I cannot send it by the post, as I have spoken very freely of some persons you name, in which we agree thoroughly. These few lines are only to tell you I am not idle in writing to you.

I almost repent having come hither; for I like the way of life and many of the people so well, that I doubt I shall feel more regret at leaving Paris than I expected. It would sound vain to tell you the honours and distinctions I receive, and how much I am in fashion; yet when they come from the handsomest women in France, and the most respectable in point of character, can one help being a little proud? If I was twenty years younger, I should wish they were not quite so respectable. Madame de Brionne, whom I have never seen, and who was to have met me at supper last night at the charming Madame d'Egmont's, sent me an invitation by the latter for Wednesday next. I was engaged, and hesitated. I was told, "Comment! savez-vous que c'est qu'elle ne feroit pas pour toute la France?" However, lest you should dread my returning a perfect old swain, I study my wrinkles, compare myself and my limbs to every plate of larks I see, and treat my understanding with at least as little mercy. Yet, do you know, my present fame is owing to a very trifling composition, but which has made incredible noise. I was one evening at Madame Geoffrin's joking on Rousseau's affectations and contradictions, and said some things that diverted them. When I came home, I put them into a letter, and showed it next day to Helvetius and the Duc de Nivernois; who were so pleased with it, that after telling me some faults in the language, which you may be sure there were, they encouraged me to let it be seen. As you know I willingly laugh at mountebanks, _political_ or literary, let their talents be ever so great, I was not averse. The copies have spread like wild-fire; _et me voici a la mode_! I expect the end of my reign at the end of the week with great composure. Here is the letter:--

LE ROI DE PRUSSE A MONSIEUR ROUSSEAU.[1]

MON CHER JEAN JACQUES,

Vous avez renonce a Geneve votre patrie; vous vous etes fait cha.s.ser de la Suisse, pays tant vante dans vos ecrits; la France vous a decrete.

Venez donz chez moi; j'admire vos talens; je m'amuse de vos reveries, qui (soit dit en pa.s.sant) vous occupent trop, et trop long tems. Il faut a la fin etre sage et heureux. Vous avez fait a.s.sez parler de vous par des singularites peu convenables a un veritable grand homme. Demontrez a vos ennemis que vous pouvez avoir quelquefois le sens commun: cela les fachera, sans vous faire tort. Mes etats vous offrent une retraite paisible; je vous veux du bien, et je vous en ferai, si vous le trouvez bon. Mais si vous vous obstiniez a rejetter mons secours, attendez-vous que je ne le dirai a personne. Si vous persistez a vous creuser l'esprit pour trouver de nouveaux malheurs, choisissez les tels que vous voudrez. Je suis roi, je puis vous en procurer au gre de vos souhaits: et ce qui surement ne vous arrivera pas vis a vis de vos ennemis, je cesserai de vous persecuter quand vous cesserez de mettre votre gloire a l'etre.

Votre bon ami,

FReDeRIC.

[Footnote 1: Rousseau was always ready to believe in plots to mortify and injure him; and he was so much annoyed by this composition of Walpole's, that, shortly after his arrival in England, he addressed the following letter to _The London Chronicle_:--

"WOOTTON [IN DERBYSHIRE], _March_ 3, 1766

"You have failed, Sir, in the respect which every private person owes to a crowned head, in attributing publicly to the King of Prussia a letter full of extravagance and malignity, of which, for those very reasons, you ought to have known he could not be the author. You have even dared to transcribe his signature, as if you had seen him write it with his own hand. I inform you, Sir, that the letter was fabricated at Paris, and what rends my heart is that the impostor has accomplices in England.

You owe to the King of Prussia, to truth, and to me to print the letter which I write to you, and which I sign, as an atonement for a fault with which you would doubtless reproach yourself severely, if you knew to what a dark transaction you have rendered yourself an accessory. I salute you, Sir, very sincerely,

"ROUSSEAU."]

The Princesse de Ligne, whose mother was an Englishwoman, made a good observation to me last night. She said, "Je suis roi, je puis vous procurer de malheurs," was plainly the stroke of an English pen. I said, then I had certainly not well imitated the character in which I wrote. You will say I am a bold man to attack both Voltaire and Rousseau. It is true; but I shoot at their heel, at their vulnerable part.

I beg your pardon for taking up your time with these trifles. The day after to-morrow we go in cavalcade with the d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond to her audience; I have got my cravat and shammy shoes. Adieu!

_A CONSTANT ROUND OF AMUs.e.m.e.nTS--A GALLERY OF FEMALE PORTRAITS--MADAME GEOFFRIN--MADAME DU DEFFAND--MADAME DE MIREPOIX--MADAME DE BOUFFLERS--MADAME DE ROCHFORT--THE MAReCHALE DE LUXEMBURG--THE d.u.c.h.eSSE DE CHOISEUL--AN OLD FRENCH DANDY--M. DE MAUREPAS--POPULARITY OF HIS LETTER TO ROUSSEAU._

TO MR. GRAY.

PARIS, _Jan._ 25, 1766.

I am much indebted to you for your kind letter and advice; and though it is late to thank you for it, it is at least a stronger proof that I do not forget it. However, I am a little obstinate, as you know, on the chapter of health, and have persisted through this Siberian winter in not adding a grain to my clothes, and going open-breasted without an under waistcoat. In short, though I like extremely to live, it must be in my own way, as long as I can: it is not youth I court, but liberty; and I think making oneself tender is issuing a _general warrant_ against one's own person. I suppose I shall submit to confinement when I cannot help it; but I am indifferent enough to life not to care if it ends soon after my prison begins.

I have not delayed so long to answer your letter, from not thinking of it, or from want of matter, but from want of time. I am constantly occupied, engaged, amused, till I cannot bring a hundredth part of what I have to say into the compa.s.s of a letter. You will lose nothing by this: you know my volubility, when I am full of new subjects; and I have at least many hours of conversation for you at my return. One does not learn a whole nation in four or five months; but, for the time, few, I believe, have seen, studied, or got so much acquainted with the French as I have.

By what I said of their religious or rather irreligious opinions, you must not conclude their people of quality atheists--at least, not the men. Happily for them, poor souls! they are not capable of going so far into thinking. They a.s.sent to a great deal, because it is the fashion, and because they don't know how to contradict. They are ashamed to defend the Roman Catholic religion, because it is quite exploded; but I am convinced they believe it in their hearts. They hate the Parliaments and the philosophers, and are rejoiced that they may still idolise royalty. At present, too, they are a little triumphant: the Court has shown a little spirit, and the Parliaments much less: but as the Duc de Choiseul, who is very fluttering, unsettled, and inclined to the philosophers, has made a compromise with the Parliament of Bretagne, the Parliaments might venture out again, if, as I fancy will be the case, they are not glad to drop a cause, of which they began to be a little weary of the inconveniences.

The generality of the men, and more than the generality are dull and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural levity and cheerfulness. However, as their high opinion of their own country remains, for which they can no longer a.s.sign any reason, they are contemptuous and reserved, instead of being ridiculously, consequently pardonably, impertinent. I have wondered, knowing my own countrymen, that we had attained such a superiority. I wonder no longer, and have a little more respect for English _heads_ than I had.

The women do not seem of the same country: if they are less gay than they were, they are more informed, enough to make them very conversable.

I know six or seven with very superior understandings; some of them with wit, or with softness, or very good sense.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THOMAS GRAY, THE POET.

_From a drawing in the National Portrait Gallery by James Basire, after a sketch by Gray's friend and biographer, the Rev. William Mason._]

Madame Geoffrin, of whom you have heard much, is an extraordinary woman, with more common sense than I almost ever met with. Great quickness in discovering characters, penetration in going to the bottom of them, and a pencil that never fails in a likeness--seldom a favourable one. She exacts and preserves, spite of her birth and their nonsensical prejudices about n.o.bility, great court and attention. This she acquires by a thousand little arts and offices of friendship: and by a freedom and severity, which seem to be her sole end of drawing a concourse to her; for she insists on scolding those she inveigles to her. She has little taste and less knowledge, but protects artisans and authors, and courts a few people to have the credit of serving her dependents. She was bred under the famous Madame Tencin,[1] who advised her never to refuse any man; for, said her mistress, though nine in ten should not care a farthing for you, the tenth may live to be an useful friend. She did not adopt or reject the whole plan, but fully retained the purport of the maxim. In short, she is an epitome of empire, subsisting by rewards and punishments. Her great enemy, Madame du Deffand,[2] was for a short time mistress of the Regent, is now very old and stoneblind, but retains all her vivacity, wit, memory, judgment, pa.s.sions, and agreeableness. She goes to Operas, Plays, suppers, and Versailles; gives suppers twice a week; has everything new read to her; makes new songs and epigrams, ay, admirably, and remembers every one that has been made these four-score years. She corresponds with Voltaire, dictates charming letters to him, contradicts him, is no bigot to him or anybody, and laughs both at the clergy and the philosophers. In a dispute, into which she easily falls, she is very warm, and yet scarce ever in the wrong: her judgment on every subject is as just as possible; on every point of conduct as wrong as possible: for she is all love and hatred, pa.s.sionate for her friends to enthusiasm, still anxious to be loved, I don't mean by lovers, and a vehement enemy, but openly. As she can have no amus.e.m.e.nt but conversation, the least solitude and _ennui_ are insupportable to her, and put her into the power of several worthless people, who eat her suppers when they can eat n.o.body's of higher rank; wink to one another and laugh at her; hate her because she has forty times more parts--and venture to hate her because she is not rich.[3]

She has an old friend whom I must mention, a Monsieur Pondeveyle, author of the "Fatpuni," and the "Complaisant," and of those pretty novels, the "Comte de Cominge," the "Siege of Calais," and "Les Malheurs de l'Amour." Would you not expect this old man to be very agreeable? He can be so, but seldom is: yet he has another very different and very amusing talent, the art of parody, and is unique in his kind. He composes tales to the tunes of long dances: for instance, he has adapted the Regent's "Daphnis and Chloe" to one, and made it ten times more indecent; but is so old, and sings it so well, that it is permitted in all companies. He has succeeded still better in _les caracteres de la danse_, to which he has adapted words that express all the characters of love. With all this he has not the least idea of cheerfulness in conversation; seldom speaks but on grave subjects, and not often on them; is a humourist, very supercilious, and wrapt up in admiration of his own country, as the only judge of his merit. His air and look are cold and forbidding; but ask him to sing, or praise his works, his eyes and smiles open and brighten up. In short, I can show him to you: the self-applauding poet in Hogarth's Rake's Progress, the second print, is so like his very features and very wig, that you would know him by it, if you came hither--for he certainly will not go to you.

[Footnote 1: _"The famous Mme. Tencin._" "Infamous" would be more appropriate. She had been the mistress of Dubois, and was the mother of D'Alembert.]

[Footnote 2: His description of her on first making her acquaintance was not altogether complimentary. In a letter of the preceding October he calls her "an old blind debauchee of wit." In fact, she had been one of the mistresses of the Regent, Duc d'Orleans, and at first his chief inducement to court her society was to hear anecdotes of the Regent. But gradually he became so enamoured of her society that he kept up an intimacy with her till her death in 1783. There must be allowed to be much delicate perception and delineation of character in this description of the French fine ladies of the time.]

[Footnote 3: To the above portrait of Madame du Deffand it may be useful to subjoin the able development of her character which appeared in the _Quarterly Review_ for May, 1811, in its critique on her Letters to Walpole:--"This lady seems to have united the lightness of the French character with the solidity of the English. She was easy and volatile, yet judicious and acute; sometimes profound and sometimes superficial.

She had a wit playful, abundant, and well-toned; an admirable conception of the ridiculous, and great skill in exposing it; a turn for satire, which she indulged, not always in the best-natured manner, yet with irresistible effect; powers of expression varied, appropriate, flowing from the source, and curious without research; a refined taste for letters, and a judgment both of men and books in a high degree enlightened and accurate."]

Madame de Mirepoix's understanding is excellent of the useful kind, and can be so when she pleases of the agreeable kind. She has read, but seldom shows it, and has perfect taste. Her manner is cold, but very civil; and she conceals even the blood of Lorraine, without ever forgetting it. n.o.body in France knows the world better, and n.o.body is personally so well with the King. She is false, artful, and insinuating beyond measure when it is her interest, but indolent and a coward. She never had any pa.s.sion but gaming, and always loses. For ever paying court, the sole produce of a life of art is to get money from the King to carry on a course of paying debts or contracting new ones, which she discharges as fast as she is able. She advertised devotion to get made _dame du palais_ to the Queen; and the very next day this Princess of Lorraine was seen riding backwards with Madame Pompadour in the latter's coach. When the King was stabbed, and heartily frightened, the mistress took a panic too, and consulted D'Argenson, whether she had not best make off in time. He hated her, and said, By all means. Madame de Mirepoix advised her to stay. The King recovered his spirits, D'Argenson was banished,[1] and La Marechale inherited part of the mistress's credit.--I must interrupt my history of ill.u.s.trious women with an anecdote of Monsieur de Maurepas, with whom I am much acquainted, and who has one of the few heads which approach to good ones, and who luckily for us was disgraced, and the marine dropped, because it was his favourite object and province. He employed Pondeveyle to make a song on the Pompadour: it was clever and bitter, and did not spare even Majesty.

This was Maurepas absurd enough to sing at supper at Versailles.

Banishment ensued; and lest he should ever be restored, the mistress persuaded the King that he had poisoned her predecessor Madame de Chateauroux. Maurepas is very agreeable, and exceedingly cheerful; yet I have seen a transient silent cloud when politics are talked of.

[Footnote 1: The Comte d'Argenson was Minister at War.]

Madame de Boufflers, who was in England, is a _savante_, mistress of the Prince of Conti, and very desirous of being his wife. She is two women, the upper and the lower. I need not tell you that the lower is gallant, and still has pretensions. The upper is very sensible, too, and has a measured eloquence that is just and pleasing--but all is spoiled by an unrelaxed attention to applause. You would think she was always sitting for her picture to her biographer.

Madame de Rochfort is different from all the rest. Her understanding is just and delicate; with a finesse of wit that is the result of reflection. Her manner is soft and feminine, and though a _savante_, without any declared pretensions. She is the _decent_ friend of Monsieur de Nivernois; for you must not believe a syllable of what you read in their novels. It requires the greatest curiosity, or the greatest habitude, to discover the smallest connexion between the s.e.xes here. No familiarity, but under the veil of friendship, is permitted, and Love's dictionary is as much prohibited, as at first sight one should think his ritual was. All you hear, and that p.r.o.nounced with _nonchalance_, is, that _Monsieur un tel_ has had _Madame une telle_.

The Duc de Nivernois has parts, and writes at the top of the mediocre, but, as Madame Geoffrin says, is _manque par tout; guerrier manque, amba.s.sadeur manque, homme d'affaires manque_, and _auteur manque_--no, he is not _homme de naissance manque_. He would think freely, but has some ambition of being governor to the Dauphin, and is more afraid of his wife and daughter, who are ecclesiastic f.a.gots. The former out-chatters the Duke of Newcastle; and the latter, Madame de Gisors, exhausts Mr. Pitt's eloquence in defence of the Archbishop of Paris.

Monsieur de Nivernois lives in a small circle of dependent admirers, and Madame de Rochfort is high-priestess for a small salary of credit.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Choiseul, the only young one of these heroines, is not very pretty, but has fine eyes, and is a little model in waxwork, which not being allowed to speak for some time as incapable, has a hesitation and modesty, the latter of which the Court has not cured, and the former of which is atoned for by the most interesting sound of voice, and forgotten in the most elegant turn and propriety of expression. Oh! it is the gentlest, amiable, civil little creature that ever came out of a fairy egg! so just in its phrases and thoughts, so attentive and good-natured! Everybody loves it but its husband, who prefers his own sister the d.u.c.h.esse de Granmont, an Amazonian, fierce, haughty dame, who loves and hates arbitrarily, and is detested. Madame de Choiseul, pa.s.sionately fond of her husband, was the martyr of this union, but at last submitted with a good grace; has gained a little credit with him, and is still believed to idolize him. But I doubt it--she takes too much pains to profess it.

I cannot finish my list without adding a much more common character--but more complete in its kind than any of the foregoing, the Marechale de Luxembourg. She has been very handsome, very abandoned, and very mischievous. Her beauty is gone, her lovers are gone, and she thinks the devil is coming. This dejection has softened her into being rather agreeable, for she has wit and good-breeding; but you would swear, by the restlessness of her person and the horrors she cannot conceal, that she had signed the compact, and expected to be called upon in a week for the performance.

I could add many pictures, but none so remarkable. In those I send you there is not a feature bestowed gratis or exaggerated. For the beauties, of which there are a few considerable, as Mesdames de Brionne, de Monaco, et d'Egmont, they have not yet lost their characters, nor got any.

You must not attribute my intimacy with Paris to curiosity alone. An accident unlocked the doors for me. That _pa.s.se-par-tout_ called the fashion has made them fly open--and what do you think was that fashion?--I myself. Yes, like Queen Eleanor in the ballad, I sunk at Charing Cross, and have risen in the Fauxbourg St. Germain. A _plaisanterie_ on Rousseau, whose arrival here in his way to you brought me acquainted with many anecdotes conformable to the idea I had conceived of him, got about, was liked much more than it deserved, spread like wild-fire, and made me the subject of conversation.

Rousseau's devotees were offended. Madame de Boufflers, with a tone of sentiment, and the accents of lamenting humanity, abused me heartily, and then complained to myself with the utmost softness. I acted contrition, but had liked to have spoiled all, by growing dreadfully tired of a second lecture from the Prince of Conti, who took up the ball, and made himself the hero of a history wherein he had nothing to do. I listened, did not understand half he said (nor he either), forgot the rest, said Yes when I should have said No, yawned when I should have smiled, and was very penitent when I should have rejoiced at my pardon.

Madame de Boufflers was more distressed, for he owned twenty times more than I had said: she frowned, and made him signs; but she had wound up his clack, and there was no stopping it. The moment she grew angry, the lord of the house grew charmed, and it has been my fault if I am not at the head of a numerous sect; but, when I left a triumphant party in England, I did not come here to be at the head of a fashion. However, I have been sent for about like an African prince, or a learned canary-bird, and was, in particular, carried by force to the Princess of Talmond,[1] the Queen's cousin, who lives in a charitable apartment in the Luxembourg, and was sitting on a small bed hung with saints and Sobieskis, in a corner of one of those vast chambers, by two blinking tapers. I stumbled over a cat and a footstool in my journey to her presence. She could not find a syllable to say to me, and the visit ended with her begging a lap-dog. Thank the Lord! though this is the first month, it is the last week of my reign; and I shall resign my crown with great satisfaction to a _bouillie_ of chestnuts, which is just invented, and whose annals will be ill.u.s.trated by so many indigestions, that Paris will not want anything else these three weeks.

I will enclose the fatal letter[2] after I have finished this enormous one; to which I will only add, that nothing has interrupted my Sevigne researches but the frost. The Abbe de Malesherbes has given me full power to ransack Livry. I did not tell you, that by great accident, when I thought on nothing less, I stumbled on an original picture of the Comte de Grammont. Adieu! You are generally in London in March; I shall be there by the end of it.[3]

[Footnote 1: The Princess of Talmond was born in Poland, and said to be allied to the Queen, Marie Leczinska, with whom she came to France, and there married a prince of the house of Bouillon.]

[Footnote 2: The letter from the King of Prussia to Rousseau.--WALPOLE.]

[Footnote 3: Gray, in reference to this letter, writes thus to Dr.

Wharton, on the 5th of March:--"Mr. Walpole writes me now and then a long and lively letter from Paris, to which place he went the last summer, with the gout upon him; sometimes in his limbs; often in his stomach and head. He has got somehow well (not by means of the climate, one would think) goes to all public places, sees all the best company, and is very much in fashion. He says he sunk, like Queen Eleanor, at Charing Cross, and has risen again at Paris. He returns again in April; but his health is certainly in a deplorable state."--_Works by Mitford_, vol. iv. p. 79.]

_SITUATION OF AFFAIRS IN ENGLAND--CARDINAL YORK--DEATH OF STANILAUS LECZINSKI, EX-KING OF POLAND._