1 10 Presidentship of James West 177 



dinner " Soup and Veal " come below the " Cod and Stoved 

 Carp/' At last, on February 13th, " Pease Soup " heads the 

 list, but immediately thereafter the old prioritjf of the 

 double fish-course reasserts itself. 



Some foreign guests of note were entertained by the Club 

 in the course of this year. The Prince of Masserano, Spanish 

 Ambassador to Great Britain, dined on the loth May. He 

 had been resident in London for some years. Horace Wai- 

 pole says of him : " The three great ambassadors danced at 

 Court ; the Prince of Masserano, they say, well ; he is 

 extremely in fashion, and is a sensible, good-humoured man, 

 though his appearance is so deceitful. They have given 

 me the honour of a bon mot, which, I assure you, does not 

 belong to me : that I never saw a man so full of orders and 

 disorders." * The poor Ambassador's " disorders " in- 

 creased on him as time passed. Walpole wrote some years 

 later : " The Prince of Masserano is set out, so ill, that I 

 question if he will reach Calais." 2 



" M. de Bougainville " is chronicled as a guest on 24th 

 May. There were two distinguished brothers of the name. 

 Louis Antoine the navigator has been already referred to 

 (p. 57). As the guest on this occasion was invited by the 

 President, who was not scientific but antiquarian and a 

 collector of prints, coins and rare books, we may conjecture 

 that the M. de Bougainville now in question was Jean 

 Pierre, who would be a congenial messmate to James West, 

 for he was Secretary of the Academic des Inscriptions at 

 Paris, and a correspondent of Lord Chesterfield's. 



On 13 th September M. de La Condamine reappeared at 

 the Club as the guest of Dr. Morton. Sir John Pringle was 

 chairman and Henry Cavendish was there. No record 

 appears to have survived of any special oddities of the 

 eminent Frenchman on this visit. 



1771. The Annual General Meeting in 1771 took place on 

 July 25th, and was attended by sixteen members, James 



1 To Earl of Hertford, 8th June 1764. 



2 To Sir Horace Mann, igth September 1777. The Prince died on the 

 1 5th November following. 



