From the morning of their landing at Calais, Abigail had been convinced that every coachman, porter, and servant was somehow trying to cheat her, an anxiety not helped by the fact that she understood nothing they said. Now the number of servants she was expected to employ and the division of labor insisted upon by them left her bewildered and exasperated. "One [servant] will not touch what belongs to the business of the other, though he or she has time enough to perform the whole," she wrote, in an effort to explain the system, to her sister Mary. The coachman would do nothing but attend the carriage and horses. The cook would only cook, never wash a dish. Then there was the maitre d'hotel whose "business is to purchase articles into the family and oversee that nobody cheats but himself." Counting Esther Field and John Briesler, she eventually had eight in service, but that, she was told, was hardly what was expected...

She thought Paris far from appealing, for all the splendor of its public buildings. And if she had not seen all of it, she had "smelt it." Given its state of sanitation, the stench was more than she could bear...The people themselves were the "dirtiest creatures" she had ever laid eyes on, and the number of prostitutes was appalling...