LETTER 34. LONDON, Nov. 3, 1711.
My thirty-third lies now before me just finished, and I am going to seal and send it, so let me know whether you would have me add anything: I gave you my journal of this day; and it is now nine at night, and I am going to be busy for an hour or two.
4. I left a friend's house to-day where I was invited, just when dinner was setting on, and pretended I was engaged, because I saw some fellows I did not know; and went to Sir Matthew Dudley's, where I had the same inconvenience, but he would not let me go; otherwise I would have gone home, and sent for a slice of mutton and a pot of ale, rather than dine with persons unknown, as bad, for aught I know, as your deans, parsons, and curates. Bad slabby weather to-day.--Now methinks I write at ease, when I have no letter of MD's to answer. But I mistook, and have got the large paper. The Queen is laid up with the gout at Hampton Court: she is now seldom without it any long time together; I fear it will wear her out in a very few years. I plainly find I have less twitchings about my toes since these Ministers are sick and out of town, and that I don't dine with them. I would compound for a light easy gout to be perfectly well in my head.--Pray walk when the frost comes, young ladies go a frost-biting. It comes into my head, that, from the very time you first went to Ireland, I have been always plying you to walk and read. The young fellows here have begun a kind of fashion to walk, and many of them have got swingeing strong shoes on purpose; it has got as far as several young lords; if it hold, it would be a very good thing. Lady Lucy[1] and I are fallen out; she rails at me, and I have left visiting her.
5. MD was very troublesome to me last night in my sleep; I was a dreamed, methought, that Stella was here. I asked her after Dingley, and she said she had left her in Ireland, because she designed her stay to be short, and such stuff.--Monsieur Pontchartain, the Secretary of State in France, and Monsieur Fontenelle, the Secretary of the Royal Academy there (who writ the Dialogues des Morts, etc.), have sent letters to Lord Pembroke that the Academy have, with the King's consent, chosen him one of their members in the room of one who is lately dead. But the cautious gentleman has given me the letters to show my Lord Dartmouth and Mr. St. John, our two Secretaries, and let them see there is no treason in them; which I will do on Wednesday, when they come from Hampton Court. The letters are very handsome, and it is a very great mark of honour and distinction to Lord Pembroke. I hear the two French Ministers are come over again about the peace; but I have seen nobody of consequence to know the truth. I dined to-day with a lady of my acquaintance, who was sick, in her bed-chamber, upon three herrings and a chicken: the dinner was my bespeaking. We begin now to have chestnuts and Seville oranges; have you the latter yet? 'Twas a terrible windy day, and we had processions in carts of the Pope and the Devil, and the butchers rang their cleavers. You know this is the Fifth of November, Popery and gunpowder.
6. Since I am used to this way of writing, I fancy I could hardly make out a long letter to MD without it. I think I ought to allow for every line taken up by telling you where I dined; but that will not be above seven lines in all, half a line to a dinner. Your Ingoldsby[2] is going over, and they say here he is to be made a lord.--Here was I staying in my room till two this afternoon for that puppy Sir Andrew Fountaine, who was to go with me into the City, and never came; and if I had not shot a dinner flying, with one Mr. Murray, I might have fasted, or gone to an alehouse.--You never said one word of Goody Stoyte in your letter; but I suppose these winter nights we shall hear more of her. Does the Provost[3] laugh as much as he used to do? We reckon him here a good-for-nothing fellow.--I design to write to your Dean one of these days, but I can never find time, nor what to say.--I will think of something: but if DD[4] were not in Ireland I believe seriously I should not think of the place twice a year. Nothing there ever makes the subject of talk in any company where I am.