César de Saussure was born in 1705 into a family of exiled French Huguenots in Switzerland. In 1725 he journeyed to England and other parts of Europe. During his years of traveling he wrote many letters to his family. His great-great-grandson's wife translated them and published them in English in 1902 as
A foreign view of England in the reigns of George I. & George II.:The letters of Monsieur César de Saussure to his family. These letters were of such interest that they became popular in his lifetime, although they remained unpublished. In her introduction she claims that his letters were loaned to more than 200 people, including Voltaire, and that because of the interest in them he had them bound in a single volume.
Below is an excerpt from Letter XIV. It concerns a prank he played on a young Englishwoman whom, like he, was an interested onlooker at a
brit in London. He convinced her that the
sandak was going to be circumcised, and she believed him until the baby was brought out:
