Madeira," he writes, "is now become essential to my health
and reputation;"[139] yet again, "If I do not receive a supply of
Madeira in the course of the summer, I shall be in great shame and
distress."[140] His good friend in England, Lord Sheffield, regarded his
prayer and sent him a hogshead of "best old Madeira" and a tierce,
containing six dozen bottles of "finest Malmsey," and at the same time
wrote: "You will remember that a hogshead is on his travels through the
torrid zone for you.... No wine is meliorated to a greater degree by
keeping than Madeira, and you latterly appeared so ravenous for it, that
I must conceive you wish to have a stock."[141] Gibbon's devotion to
Madeira bore its penalty. At the age of forty-eight he sent this account
to his stepmother: "I was in hopes that my old Enemy the Gout had given
over the attack, but the Villain, with his ally the winter, convinced
me of my error, and about the latter end of March I found myself a
prisoner in my library and my great chair. I attempted twice to rise, he
twice knocked me down again and kept possession of both my feet and
knees longer (I must confess) than he ever had done before."[142] Eager
to finish his history, he lamented that his "long gout" lost him "three
months in the spring." Thus as you go through his correspondence, you
find that orders for Madeira and attacks of gout alternate with
regularity. Gibbon apparently did not connect the two as cause and
effect, as in his autobiography he charged his malady to his service in
the Hampshire militia, when "the daily practice of hard and even
excessive drinking" had sown in his constitution "the seeds of the
gout."[143]

Gibbon has never been a favorite with women, owing largely to his
account of his early love affair. While at Lausanne, he had heard much
of "the wit and beauty and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod" and when
he first met her, he had reached the age of twenty. "I saw and loved,"
he wrote. "I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation,
pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners.... She listened to the voice
of truth and passion.... At Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity";
and indeed he appeared to be an ardent lover. "He was seen," said a
contemporary, "stopping country people near Lausanne and demanding at
the point of a naked dagger whether a more adorable creature existed
than Suzanne Curchod."[144] On his return to England, however, he soon
discovered that his