Russell, Lord John

To Lady Olivia Sparrow, [March 1820]

A kind, agreeable, long and interesting letter from dear should be answered directly but that I am in deep arrears to your Ladyship. Nothing can be more obliging than her little details, than which nothing makes letters so pleasant. Public events are just now of so complicated & overwhelming a nature that even to touch upon /them/ would fill my paper and occupy your time to little purpose. I truly pity ^* How surely does God at one time or other visit our errors and bring our sins to remembrance! How he will get extricated the wisest seem not to know. I have just got a letter from a friend whose habits lay open much information to him. He tells me that a Gentleman of his acquaintance on whom the firmest reliance may be placed is lately come from the Continent. Passing through a small town in Italy he stopped at an Inn and desired to see a good bed. On being shown one, he said it was not large enough for him and his Wife –"Not large enough," said the Mistress of the Inn, "why and the Baron her Chamberlain Slept in it last week, and so they have done twenty times before and they never complained that it was too small." You don’t mean that they slept together said the gentleman? Yes replied the woman I do, as they have always done." One or two such testimonies woud be proof positive. But then in what a distracted state would it place this poor country.^* – I fear we are emulating France in all its parricidal horrors! What a Providential escape of the Ministers I grieve to think what a flood of drunkenness, idleness and perjury this premature Parliamentary election will introduce, – A propos. I am desired to request your vote and interest for Lord John Russel who is canvassing your county. I know nothing of him, but that I fear he is what I call, on the wrong side. They speak well of his talents^*