Contrary to the expectations of all mankind here, everything still continues in ‘statu quo’.  General Conway has been desired by the King to keep the seals till he has found a successor for him, and the Lord President the same.  Lord Chatham is relapsed, and worse than ever:  he sees nobody, and nobody sees him:  it is said that a bungling physician has checked his gout, and thrown it upon his nerves; which is the worst distemper that a minister or a lover can have, as it debilitates the mind of the former and the body of the latter.  Here is at present an interregnum.  We must soon see what order will be produced from this chaos.

The Electorate, I believe, will find the want of Comte Flemming; for he certainly had abilities, and was as sturdy and inexorable as a Minister at the head of the finances ought always to be.  When you see Comtesse Flemming, which I suppose cannot be for some time, pray make her Lady Chesterfield’s and my compliments of condolence.

You say that Dresden is very sickly; I am sure London is at least as sickly now, for there reigns an epidemical distemper, called by the genteel name of ‘l’influenza’.  It is a little fever, of which scarcely anybody dies; and it generally goes off with a little looseness.  I have escaped it, I believe, by being here.  God keep you from all distempers, and bless you!

LETTER CCCII

London, October 30, 1767.

My Dear friend:  I have now left Blackheath, till the next summer, if I live till then; and am just able to write, which is all I can say, for I am extremely weak, and have in a great measure lost the use of my legs; I hope they will recover both flesh and strength, for at present they have neither.  I go to the Bath next week, in hopes of half repairs at most; for those waters, I am sure, will not prove Medea’s kettle, nor ’les eaux de Jouvence’ to me; however, I shall do as good courtiers do, and get what I can, if I cannot get what I will.  I send you no politics, for here are neither politics nor ministers; Lord Chatham is quiet at Pynsent, in Somersetshire, and his former subalterns do nothing, so that nothing is done.  Whatever places or preferments are disposed of, come evidently from Lord-------, who affects to be invisible; and who, like a woodcock, thinks that if his head is but hid, he is not seen at all.

General Pulteney is at last dead, last week, worth above thirteen hundred thousand pounds.  He has left all his landed estate, which is eight and twenty thousand pounds a-year, including the Bradford estate, which his brother had from that ancient family, to a cousin-german.  He has left two hundred thousand pounds, in the funds, to Lord Darlington, who was his next nearest relation; and at least twenty thousand pounds in various legacies.  If riches alone could make people happy, the last two proprietors of this immense wealth ought to have been so, but they never were.