| Citation |
BEP(F.761.055
23 Nov 1761:22 (1369)
London, Sept. 7. . . Extract of a late letter from Paris,
Since the arrival of Mr. Stanley from England, all the lower
citizens of Paris have put on chearful countenances. You
must know, that the plague at Constantinople, earthquakes at
Lisbon, inundations in Holland, and the scarcity of perter
and roast-beef in England, if ever that should happen, are
all trifles in comparison of the long suffered calamities,
in Paris. My landlord, with a pitiful eye, shrugged his
shoulders, and pray'd ardently to God that peace and
foreigners may soon arrive; upon which I asked him what
foreigners he meant ? Your hotels are as much occupied as
ever; besides one can hardly cross a street without danger
of being run over by a carosse de remise.
" Ay! says my landlord, but you are mistaken, good sir,
there is nobody at Paris but high-German dukes, Princes,
counts of the empire, and numberless barons: We do not
honour them with the name of foreigners: They are such
adepts in our own oeconomical mysteries of cutting a
prodigious show, and leaving their creditors in the lurch,
that we look upon them as a shoal of all-devouring
grasshoppers. No, no; by foreigners we mean those
numberless my-lords and squires from England, who in time of
peace flock hither, and with a bountiful hand relieve the
honest industry of all our taverns, hotels, eating-houses,
operas, comedies, tripts or gaming-houses, tabagies or
smoaking-houses, and other honest employments. Why, sir,
Mr. Carpeton, my brother-in-law, will tell you upon his
conscience, he hath not furnished lodgings for ten
mistresses during the war; whereas in 1751, he furnished, in
one summer, one hundred and fifty genteel houses for the
finest creaters he ever saw, all kept by English nobility.
. . . [11 more lines]
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