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

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 hall
Where 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