g for the moment in
an impossibility of going to town to see you, Caroline, and the
bambino, and that is enough, for it would be a great pleasure to me,
as you must imagine. Then, I am, in a manner, here with one single
servant. Pierre has left this house to go to his own, where he is
very well looked after by his wife, and is (as) comfortably lodged
as it is possible to be; but he is, as Mr. Dundas tells me, in a
very perilous situation, and yet, by excessive care, may recover.

He has been my doctor lately instead of his own, and given me,
daily, powders which he said were the bark, and which I was to take.
No such thing; they were powders of a different sort, which, it is
fortunate, have done me no mischief. They were in the drawer, and so
brought to me as bark. Dundas thought I neglected myself, and
rejected the prescription. I maintained that I had missed taking the
bark but one day. He knew the contrary from his shop book, and
to-day only the mystery was cleared up.

My next grievance is, that je peris de froid; j'en mis penetre au
pied de la lettre, and the reason is plain, but why I did not
discover it myself is hardly to be conceived. I have no clothes; my
stockings are of a fine thin thread, half of them full of holes; I
have no flannel waistcoat, which everybody else wears; in short, I
have been shivering in the warmest room sans scavoir pourquoi. But
yesterday there was a committee at the Duke's upon my drapery, and
to-day a tailor is sent for. I am to be flannelled and cottoned, and
kept alive if possible; but if that cannot be done, I must be
embalmed, with my face, mummy like, only bare, to converse through
my cerements. Then, my other footman, the Bruiser, is that, and all
things bad besides; he is not an hour in the day at home, and is
gaming at alehouses till 12 at night; so the moment that I can get
any servant that is tolerable to supply his place I shall send him
out of the house, sans autre forme de proces; but, till he is gone,
my whole family lives in terror of him.

It is amazing to what a degree I am become helpless; nothing can
account for it but extreme dotage, or extreme infancy. I wish
Barthow had left Lady Caroline, and was here only to dress me in
warmer clothes, but she goes from here, I hear, to Lady Ailesford,
so that I must not think of lying in and being nursed for some time.
. . .

(1790,) Dec. 8, Wednesday, Richmond.--You have bean at C(astle)
H(oward) ever since Monday sev