y chosen for being
disqualified for the service he is employed in in almost every respect.
He may be brave for aught I know, and he is honest in pecuniary
matters."[192] The astute Franklin, who also had good opportunity of
knowing him, says: "This general was, I think, a brave man, and might
probably have made a good figure in some European war. But he had too
much self-confidence; too high an opinion of the validity of regular
troops; too mean a one of both Americans and Indians."[193] Horace
Walpole, in his function of gathering and immortalizing the gossip of
his time, has left a sharply drawn sketch of Braddock in two letters to
Sir Horace Mann, written in the summer of this year: "I love to give you
an idea of our characters as they rise upon the stage of history.
Braddock is a very Iroquois in disposition. He had a sister who, having
gamed away all her little fortune at Bath, hanged herself with a truly
English deliberation, leaving only a note upon the table with those
lines: 'To die is landing on some silent shore,' etc. When Braddock was
told of it, he only said: 'Poor Fanny! I always thought she would play
till she would be forced to _tuck herself up_.'" Under the name of Miss
Sylvia S----, Goldsmith, in his life of Nash, tells the story of this
unhappy woman. She was a rash but warm-hearted creature, reduced to
penury and dependence, not so much by a passion for cards as by her
lavish generosity to a lover ruined by his own follies, and with whom
her relations are said to have been entirely innocent. Walpole
continues: "But a more ridiculous story of Braddock, and which is
recorded in heroics by Fielding in his _Covent Garden Tragedy,_ was an
amorous discussion he had formerly with a Mrs. Upton, who kept him. He
had gone the greatest lengths with her pin-money, and was still craving.
One day, that he was very pressing, she pulled out her purse and showed
him that she had but twelve or fourteen shillings left. He twitched it
from her: 'Let me see that.' Tied up at the other end he found five
guineas. He took them, tossed the empty purse in her face, saying: 'Did
you mean to cheat me?' and never went near her more. Now you are
acquainted with General Braddock."

[Footnote 192: _Shirley the younger to Morris, 23 May, 1755_.]

[Footnote 193: Franklin, _Autobiography_.]

"He once had a duel with Colonel Gumley, Lady Bath's brother, who had
been his great friend. As they were going to engage, Gumley, who had
go