125 — To Francis Hodgson
Falmouth, June 25, 1809.
My Dear Hodgson, — Before this reaches you, Hobhouse, two officers' wives, three children, two waiting-maids, ditto subalterns for the troops, three Portuguese esquires and domestics, in all nineteen souls, will have sailed in the Lisbon packet, with the noble Captain Kidd, a gallant commander as ever smuggled an anker of right Nantz.
We are going to Lisbon first, because the Malta packet has sailed, d'ye see? — from Lisbon to Gibraltar, Malta, Constantinople, and "all that," as Orator Henley said, when he put the Church, and "all that," in danger .
This town of Falmouth, as you will partly conjecture, is no great ways from the sea. It is defended on the sea-side by tway castles, St. Maws and Pendennis, extremely well calculated for annoying every body except an enemy. St. Maws is garrisoned by an able-bodied person of fourscore, a widower. He has the whole command and sole management of six most unmanageable pieces of ordnance, admirably adapted for the destruction of Pendennis, a like tower of strength on the opposite side of the Channel. We have seen St. Maws, but Pendennis they will not let us behold, save at a distance, because Hobhouse and I are suspected of having already taken St. Maws by a coup de main.
The town contains many Quakers and salt fish — the oysters have a taste of copper, owing to the soil of a mining country — the women (blessed be the Corporation therefor!) are flogged at the cart's tail when they pick and steal, as happened to one of the fair sex yesterday noon. She was pertinacious in her behaviour, and damned the mayor.
This is all I know of Falmouth.
Nothing occurred of note in our way down, except that on Hartford Bridge we changed horses at an inn, where the great — —, Beckford , sojourned for the night. We tried in vain to see the martyr of prejudice, but could not.
What we thought singular, though you perhaps will not, was that Ld Courtney travelled the same night on the same road, only one stage behind him.
Hodgson, remember me to the Drury, and remember me to yourself when drunk. I am not worth a sober thought. Look to my satire at Cawthorn's, Cockspur Street, and look to the Miscellany of the Hobhouse. It has pleased Providence to interfere in behalf of a suffering public by giving him a sprained wrist, so that he cannot write, and there is a cessation of ink-shed.
I don't know when I can write again, because it depends on that experienced navigator, Captain Kidd, and the "stormy winds that (don't) blow" at this season. I leave England without regret — I shall return to it without pleasure.
I am like Adam, the first convict sentenced to transportation, but I have no Eve, and have eaten no apple but what was sour as a crab; — and thus ends my first chapter. Adieu .
Yours, etc.
