F Eleanora Louis to Towne, 25 Jan 1794

Drumsheugh, 25 Jan. 1794

Dear Sir

I am much obliged to you for your letter & kind congratulations on my Sister’s marriage an event which cannot fail of affording me the sincerest satisfaction as she has so great a prospect of happines in her union with so worthy & excellent a man as Mr Woollcombe for whom I have the most perfect regard & respect, & I feel it an additional pleasure in the general approbation of all our friends on this occasion. - I mean’t to have thank’d you for your letter before, but I have been prevented by a variety of engagements which have occur’d since Lady Grace & Mr Douglas have been with us, & I am not always Mistress of my own time. I think however you will do me the justice to believe that I am never insensible to the Attentions of my friends which are always most flattering. I was highly entertained by the account you was so obliging as to give me of the several Excursions you made thro’ Kent & Devon in the course of the last Summer. My partiality for the latter County increases I believe in proportion as I am absent from it. I see nothing but what seems to sink in comparison with it, tho’ our last Summer Excursion presented many scenes to my view perfectly new to me & beautiful in their kind & I daresay would have been wholly gratifying to people of taste & judgement. I do not pretend to much in either in spite of what your politeness would attribute to me, & could I have supposed that my imperfect descriptions would have fallen into the hands of so Great a Connoisseur I am sure I should have felt great diffidence endeavouring to describe my tour. I feel all my obligations to your polite indulgence, & am confirm’d in my opinion that nobody can put people in better humour with themselves than Mr Towne. We are not[sic] preparing for an Excursion infinitely more interesting to my feelings & I have reason to hope that a very short time will bring me at least 400 miles nearer to my friends, & that before I return to Scotland I shall have the happiness of seeing my friends in Devonshire. I may thank the present times for this gratification for nothing else would I believe have drawn Lord Moray from home, to which he becomes more attached every year. ‘Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good" - We have had our Share of Alarms here, & a few seditious Gentlemen have been tried & condemned to pass the next 14 years in Botany Bay, where I hope they will have all the amusements they can expect from the desire they have manifested to go there. - Their Adherents threaten’d loudly to pull down the Prison, & to avenge their worthy Leaders - but their attempts have been fruitless, & many of them have been doom’d to a temporary confinement. The Town is perfectly quiet & I understand the number of the Seditious are so few, & they are so despicable that there is nothing to fear. I beg to be kindly remember’d to all friends and to assure you that I am dear Sir

Your much obliged friend & faithful Servant
F. Louis

To
Mr Towne
Exeter.