To MR. FOLEY AT PARIS

An adventure on the road

Toulouse, 14 Aug. 1762.

MY DEAR FOLEY,

After many turnings (alias digressions), to say nothing of downright overthrows, stops, and delays, we have arrived in three weeks at Toulouse, and are now settled in our houses with servants, &c., about us, and look as composed as if we had been here seven years.  In our journey we suffered so much from the heats, it gives me pain to remember it; I never saw a cloud from Paris to Nismes half as broad as a twenty-four sols piece.  Good God! we were toasted, roasted, grilled, stewed and carbonaded on one side or other all the way; and being all done enough (assez cuits) in the day, we were eat up at night by bugs, and other unswept-out vermin, the legal inhabitants (if length of possession gives right) of every inn we lay at.  Can you conceive a worse accident than that in such a journey, in the hottest day and hour of it, four miles from either tree or shrub which could cast a shade of the size of one of Eve’s fig leaves, that we should break a hind wheel into ten thousand pieces, and be obliged in consequence to sit five hours on a gravelly road, without one drop of water, or possibility of getting any?  To mend the matter, my two postillions were two dough-hearted fools, and fell a-crying.  Nothing was to be done!  By heaven, quoth I, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, something shall be done, for I’ll thrash you both within an inch of your lives, and then make you take each of you a horse, and ride like two devils to the next post for a cart to carry my baggage, and a wheel to carry ourselves.  Our luggage weighed ten quintals.  It was the fair of Baucaire, all the world was going, or returning; we were asked by every soul who passed by us, if we were going to the fair of Baucaire.  No wonder, quoth I, we have goods enough! vous avez raison, mes amis....

THOMAS GRAY

1716-1771

To RICHARD WEST

Scenery at Tivoli

Tivoli, 20 May, 1740.

This day being in the palace of his Highness the Duke of Modena, he laid his most serene commands upon me to write to Mr. West, and said he thought it for his glory, that I should draw up an inventory of all his most serene possessions for the said West’s perusal.  Imprimis, a house, being in circumference a quarter of a mile, two feet and an inch; the said house containing the following particulars, to wit, a great room.  Item, another great room; item, a bigger room; item, another room; item, a vast room; item, a sixth of the same; a seventh ditto; an eighth as before; a ninth as above said; a tenth (see No. 1); item, ten more such, besides twenty besides, which, not to be too particular, we shall pass over.  The said rooms contain nine chairs, two tables, five stools and a