Chapter XXXI

As I talked, Lord Fairfax, who had seen greater armies, heard me in silence, and indeed, when I ceased, remained for a time without making any comment. Then he reined up his horse, and, handing me two letters, said: “I have kept these for your private reading, George; I have them through the kindness of one of Admiral Keppel’s officers.” I read them as we rode on, well in the rear, to avoid the annoyance caused by the marching of the Forty-eighth Foot, which beat up a great dust. He said: “Read them again at your leisure.” I did as was desired, and, as they happened to be left in my buckskin-coat pocket and forgot, they were the only papers I chanced to save in the battle. They are now before me, and I read them anew with interest. Not for many years have I seen them.

MY DEAR LORD: I take this occasion to write you. London is
very gay, and the clubs and their wits amazing merry over the
appointment of Edward Braddock to command the force sent out to
protect you from the Indians. Ch. S――――y was here for dinner
yesterday. He said General B. was a stranger both to fear and
common sense, and that his best fitness to fight Indians was
that he was providentially bald. Lord C. S. says he saw Anne
Bellamy, the actress, whom the General visited when on the
point of leaving London. She said Mr. Braddock was melancholy,
and declared he was sent with a handful of men to conquer
nations and to cut his way through an unknown wilderness.

He said: “We are sent like sacrifices to the altar.” That
ancient ram! say I. He told her she would never see him again.

I wish you luck of your new General. He is touchy, punctilious,
of a stiff mind, and has had forty years in the Guards. I do
not think he was eager to leave Anne Bellamy and the clubs, for
the man is a favourite; but he has little money, and it will be
at least agreeable to spend the king’s guineas.

If you were a woman I should tell you the new fashions. The
beaux now carry their watches in their muffs, and the women are
taking, more and more, to what Charles S――――y calls undress
uniform, so that soon Madame Eve will be the fashionable maker
of gowns!――but I must not nourish your provincial blushes. Lord
R. tells me that your General is a sad brute, for when his
sister――a pretty thing she was――spent all her money at cards
and hanged herself, the man said: “Poor Fanny, I always thought
she would play till she would be forced to tuck herself up.”
Horace Walpole says, when she meant to die, she wrote with a
diamond on the window-pane this out of Garth’s “Dispensary”:

“To die is landing on some silent shore,
Where billows never break nor tempests roar.”

But why should the woman die when she had a diamond left to
gamble with?

However, the Duke of Cumberland is his patron, and that is
enough. F――――x lost the other night at White’s, they say, £1000
and――

I looked up and said: “The rest does not seem to be of interest or to say more of the general.”

“No, but always look at the postscript of a lady’s letter. There is more about your general.”

It was true, for I read:

P. S. I meant not to tell you of Braddock’s affair with Colonel
Gumley, who was his friend, but I may as well, even if you
think it incredible. A letter is a fine way to talk, because
you can never see the blush you may cause, and may fib without
being vexed by contradiction until so long after that you have
forgotten all about it. But what a pother I am making about my
harmless gossip!

When Braddock quarrelled over cards with his friend, and swords
were drawn, Gumley (you know, Lord Pulteney married his sister)
cried out: “Braddock, you are a penniless dog. If you kill me
you have no money, and you will have to run away.” So with
that he tossed him his purse. Braddock was in such a rage that
Gumley easily disarmed him, but he would not ask his life.

As we rode on I said it seemed to me to show that our general was foolishly obstinate, and that I liked the other man better, but neither very much.

His lordship said: “Yes, yes; it is a wild and a silly life. The woman is heartless, but what she says may serve to put you on your guard. These people think London the only part of the world worth a thought. The other letter is of more moment. It is from Colonel Conway. I have inked over these names; they do not matter. He is of another clay.”

_London._

MY DEAR LORD: My nephew, Mr. Henry Wilton, carries this letter
to you, and any kind attention you may feel disposed to pay him
will oblige me.

I think the choice of Braddock unfortunate. He is a brave,
or rather a reckless, man, overconfident, arrogant, and sure
to despise his enemy, and goes out, as I am assured, with a
bad opinion of the Colonials. Horace Walpole, who knows, as
we all do, the mad life Braddock has led in London, says: “He
is a very Iroquois in disposition, and so, I suppose, fit
to fight his kind.” Horace is making himself merry over the
appointment, and the Colonial helping he is to have. But it is
the fashion here to laugh at Colonials, and not for the world
would Horace be out of the fashion. I wish the General may have
good fortune, but I fear the matching of drill and pipe-clay
against the wiles of the woods; as sensible would it be to set
a fencing-master with a rapier to fight a tiger in a jungle.
When I consider how vast is this increasing number of English
in a country where must be great prospects and a fine sense of
independency, I wonder how little they are regarded here. But
it is our way to despise other nations, and even our own blood
if it has had enterprise to cross the seas. Come back and help
us to learn better.

Always your Lordship’s

Ob’d’t hum’le serv’t.

_Henry Conway._

His lordship looked at me as I put away the letters. I said: “That seems to me good sense; but about the general, I cannot credit it.”

“You will judge for yourself,” he said, “if this be the man to send into the wilderness. Keep the letters, but do not lose them; you may return them later.” Which I should have done, only that the rout on the Monongahela put it out of my mind.