flesh, for I grow fat.”[195] [195] Boulton to Watt, 25th and 30th September, 1780. Boulton MSS. To increase his influence among the adventurers, and secure the advantages of a local habitation among them, Boulton deemed it necessary to take a mansion capable of accommodating his family, and which should serve the same purpose for his partner when sojourning in the neighbourhood. Boulton’s first idea was to have a portable wooden house built and fitted up in the manner of a ship’s cabin, which might readily be taken to pieces and moved from place to place as business required. This plan was, however, eventually abandoned in favour of a residence of a more fixed kind. After much searching, a house was found which promised to answer the intended purpose,--an old-fashioned, roomy mansion, with a good-sized garden full of fruit trees, prettily situated at Cosgarne, in the Gwennap valley. Though the United Mines district was close at hand, and fourteen of Boulton and Watt’s engines were at work in the immediate neighbourhood, not an engine chimney was to be seen from the house, which overlooked Tresamble Common, then an unenclosed moor. Here the partners by turns spend much of their time for several successive years, travelling about from thence on horseback from mine to mine to superintend the erection and working of their engines. [Illustration: COSGARNE HOUSE.] By this time the old Newcomen engines had been almost completely superseded, only one of that construction remaining at work in the whole county of Cornwall. The prospects of the engine business were, indeed, so promising, that Boulton even contemplated retiring altogether from his other branches of business at Soho, and settling himself permanently in Cornwall.[196] [196] His partner Fothergill would not, however, consent to let Boulton go, and the Soho business was continued until the death of Fothergill (bankrupt) in 1782, after which it was continued for some time longer under the firm of Boulton and Scale. Notwithstanding the great demand for engines, the firm continued for some time in serious straits for money, and Boulton was under the necessity of resorting to all manner of expedients to raise it, sometimes with Watt’s concurrence, but oftener without. Watt’s inexperience in money matters, conjoined with his extreme timidity and nervousness, made him apprehend ruin and bankruptcy from every fresh proposition made to him on the subject of raising money. He was kept so utterly wretched by his fears as to be on occasions quite unmanned, and he would brood for days together on the accumulation of misery and anxiety which his great invention had brought upon him. His wife was kept almost as miserable as himself, and as Matthew Boulton was the only person, in her opinion, who could help him out of his troubles, she privately appealed to him in the most pathetic terms:--