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PREFACE
Letters, grave or gay,
have always a freshness about them, a reality of expression, which we
too often look for in vain in historical narrative. We may feel that we
have no right to listen, and human nature unfortunately finds in this an
extra interest. Curiosity may be an impudent jade, prying where she has
no business to gaze, or staring where she ought only to take a discreet
glance, but she is listened to and even courted. It is innate in us to
like to know the world as it was in the days of our ancestors and
ancestresses, not only through the pompous phrases of orators or
historians, but through the everyday tittle-tattle as well as through
the political letters of years long gone by. The mental picture is not
complete without these details. And if no living person’s character or
feelings be hurt, there can be no harm in gratifying a curiosity that is
certainly more pleasing than would be any attempt to know too much of
our modern next-door neighbour’s private affairs.
Interest grows with growing similarity in surroundings, and we love to
compare the immediate Past with the conventionalities, and faults and
virtues, of those whose portraits we have on our walls, and of whose
actions History tells us, and who were responsible for our own existence
in a society they largely prepared for us. Often they may have borne the
same names we bear. We have a lawful desire to see them as they moved
throughout that century when the quiet of social life was broken to
listen to the thunder of the wars of which Marlborough and Eugene were
the heroes beloved in Britain, and then of the campaigns of the Great
Frederick, of our own Stuart insurrection, and of the events ending in
the Independence of our American Colonies.
It was the century of mighty commanders, culminating in Bonaparte, as
all the world then called “ the Corsican Ogre.” It is fortunate so many
letters survive to enable us to live again with those who then told each
other their thoughts during those days, and we can thus estimate their
dangers, and the spirit with which they encountered them.
To turn to lighter contrasts, it is curious to see that some of the
expressions we suppose to be modern date back so far. “Jolly,” for
instance, is of old use. But we do not now say “vastly” so often as they
did in the eighteenth century, and “awfully” is almost unknown except
with its real meaning. “Mighty” is another adjective which was wrongly
used by our great grand parents: The forms of distant and formal
civility were employed between the nearest relatives, and it might have
been possible for a Duchess of those days in addressing her husband to
make the mistake said lately to have been made by a hospitable City
merchant who was entertaining a Scottish Duke at the merchant’s newly
acquired Northern estate, when the Duke, to his surprise, was twice
asked to partake of “moorfowl” with the words “Grace, your Grouse". Much
port and claret was drunk, but little if any liqueurs, so that any
ecclesiastic grown sleepy during a dinner that began at 4 p.m. would not
be under the temptation, when nearly asleep and hearing the servant ask
him if he would have Chartreuse or Benedictine, of dreaming that the
word “Benedictine” was a call to say grace, and to jump up, as a modern
clergyman did, in the middle of dinner and call out "Benedictus
Benedicat,” to the astonishment of the company, who had long begun, and
meant to be equally long before finishing, dinner. Domestic comforts
were in some respects wanting, and a Highland laird invited to a new
house in which they had been provided, replied to the hostess, when
asked if his rooms were comfortable, by saying, "Yes, Madam, but the
washstand is rather low.” People did most of their ablutions outside the
house in summer, and troubled themselves little about any in winter. In
woods outside the house were cottages with dressing-rooms where men
could warm themselves after a plunge into cold water in a submerged
tank.
The following letters were all written in the eighteenth century, or by
persons born before its end.
Argyll.
March 1910.
Intimate Society Letters
of the Eighteenth Century
Edited by The Duke of Argyll, K.T. in two volumes (1910)
Volume 1 |
Volume 2 |
