149. To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, April 6, 1763. (page 206)
You will pity my distress when I tell you that Lord Waldegrave has got the smallpox, and a bad sort. This day se'nnight, in the evening, I met him at Arthur's: he complained to me of the headache, and a sickness in the stomach. I said, "My dear lord, why don't you go home, and take James's powder you will be well in the morning." He thanked me, said he was glad I had put him in mind of it, and he would take my advice. I sent in the morning; my niece said he had taken the powder, and that James thought he had no fever, but that she found him very low. As he had no fever, I had no apprehension. At eight o'clock on Friday night, I was told abruptly at Arthur's, that Lord Waldegrave had the small-pox. I was excessively shocked, not knowing if the powder was good or bad for it. I went instantly to the house; at the door I was met by a servant of Lady Ailesbury, sent to tell me that Mr. Conway was arrived. These two opposite strokes of terror and joy overcame me so much, that when I got to Mr. Conway's I could not speak to him, but burst into a flood of tears. The next morning, Lord Waldegrave hearing I was there, desired to speak to me alone. I should tell you, that the moment he knew it was the small-pox, he signed his will. This has been the unvaried tenor of his behaviour, doing just what is wise and necessary, and nothing more. He told me, he knew how great the chance was against his living through that distemper at his age. That, to be sure, he should like to have lived a few years longer; but if he did not, he should submit patiently. That all he desired was, that if he should fail, we would do our utmost to comfort his wife, who, he feared was breeding, and who, he added, was the best woman in the world. I told him he could not doubt our attention to her, but that at present all our attention was fixed on him. That the great difference between having the small-pox young, or more advanced in years, consisted in the fear of the latter; but that as I had so often heard him say, and now saw, that he had none of those fears, the danger of age was considerably lessened. Dr. Wilmot says, that if any thing saves him, it will be his tranquillity. To my comfort I am told, that James's powder has probably been a material ingredient towards his recovery. In the mean time, the universal anxiety about him is incredible. Dr. Barnard, the master of Eton, who is in town for the holidays, says, that, from his situation, he is naturally invited to houses of all ranks and parties, and that the concern is general in all. I cannot say so much of my lord, and not do a little justice to my niece too. Her tenderness, fondness, attention, and courage are surprising. She has no fears to become her, nor heroism for parade. I could not help saying to her, "There never was a nurse of your age had such attention." She replied, "There never was a nurse of my age had such an object." It is this astonishes one, to see so much beauty sincerely devoted to a man so unlovely in his person; but if Adonis was sick, she could not stir seldomer out of his bedchamber. The physicians seem to have little hopes, but, as their arguments are not near so strong as their alarms, I own I do not give it up, and yet I look on it in a very dangerous light.
I know nothing of news and of the world, for I go to Albemarle-Street early in the morning, and don't come home till late at night. Young Mr. Pitt has been dying of a fever in Bedfordshire. The Bishop of Carlisle,(269) whom I have appointed visiter of Strawberry, is gone down to him. You will be much disappointed if you expect to find the gallery near finished. They threaten me with three months before the gilding can be begun. twenty points are at a stand by my present confinement, and I have a melancholy prospect of being forced to carry my niece thither the next time I go. The Duc de Nivernois, in return for a set of the Strawberry editions, has sent me four seasons, which, I conclude, he thought good, but they shall pass their whole round in London, for they have not even the merit of being badly old enough for Strawberry. Mr. Bentley's epistle to Lord Melcomb has been published in a magazine. It has less wit by far than I expected from him, and to the full as bad English. The thoughts are old Strawberry phrases; so are not the panegyrics. Here are six lines written extempore by Lady Temple, on Lady Mary Coke, easy and genteel, and almost true:
She sometimes laughs, but never loud; She's handsome too, but somewhat proud: At court she bears away the belle; She dresses fine, and figures well: With decency she's gay and airy; Who can this be but Lady Mary?
There has been tough doings in Parliament about the tax on cider; and in the Western counties the discontent is so great, that if Mr. Wilkes will turn patriot-hero, or patriot-incendiary in earnest, and put himself at their head, he may obtain a rope of martyrdom before the summer is over. Adieu! I tell you my sorrows, because, if I escape them, I am sure nobody will rejoice more.
(269) Dr. Charles Lyttelton, consecrated Bishop of Carlisle in 1762, in the room of Dr. Osbaldiston, translated to the see of London.-E.
150. To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, Friday night, late. [April 8, 1763.. (page 208)
Amidst all my own grief, and all the distress which I have this moment left, I cannot forget you, who have so long been my steady and invariable friend. I cannot leave it to newspapers and correspondents to tell you my loss. Lord Waldegrave died to-day. Last night he had some glimmerings of hope. The most desponding of the faculty flattered us a little. He himself joked with the physicians, and expressed himself in this engaging manner: asking what day of the week it was; they told him Thursday: "Sure," said he, "it is Friday." "No, my lord, indeed it is Thursday." "Well," said he, "see what a rogue this distemper makes one; I want to steal nothing but a day." By the help of opiates, with which, for two or three days, they had numbed his sufferings, he rested well. This morning he had no worse symptoms. I told Lady Waldegrave, that as no material alteration was expected before Sunday, I would go to dine at Strawberry, and return in time to meet the physicians in the evening; in truth, I was worn out with anxiety and attendance, and wanted an hour or two of fresh air. I left her at twelve, and had ordered dinner at three that I might be back early. I had not risen from table when I received an express from Lady Betty Waldegrave, to tell me that a sudden change had happened, that they had given him James's powder, but that they feared it was too late, and that he probably would be dead before I could come to my niece, for whose sake she begged I would return immediately. It was indeed too late! too late for every thing--late as it was given, the powder vomited him even in the agonies--had I had power to direct, he should never have quitted James; but these are vain regrets! vain to recollect how particularly kind he, who was kind to every body, was to me! I found Lady Waldegrave at my brother's; she weeps without ceasing, and talks of his virtues and goodness to her in a manner that distracts one. My brother bears this mortification with more courage than I could have expected from his warm passions: but nothing struck me more than to see my rough savage Swiss, Louis, in tears, as he opened my chaise. I have a bitter scene to come: to-morrow morning I carry poor Lady Waldegrave to Strawberry. Her fall is great, from that adoration and attention that he paid her, from that splendour of fortune, so much of which dies with him, and from that consideration, which rebounded to her from the great deference which the world had for his character. Visions perhaps. Yet who could expect that they would have passed away even before that fleeting thing, her beauty!
If I had time or command enough of my thoughts, I could give you as long a detail of as unexpected a revolution in the political world. To-day has been as fatal to a whole nation, I mean to the Scotch, as to our family. Lord Bute resigned this morning. His intention was not even suspected till Wednesday, nor at all known a very few days before. In short, there is nothing, more or less, than a panic; a fortnight's opposition has demolished that scandalous but vast majority, which a fortnight had purchased; and in five months a plan of absolute power has been demolished by a panic. He pleads to the world bad health; to his friends, more truly, that the nation was set at him. He pretends to intend retiring absolutely, and giving no umbrage. In the mean time he is packing up a sort of ministerial legacy, which cannot hold even till next session, and I should think would scarce take place at all. George Grenville is to be at the head of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer; Charles Townshend to succeed him; and Lord Shelburne, Charles. Sir Francis Dashwood to have his barony of Despencer and the great wardrobe, in the room of Lord Gower, who takes the privy seal, if the Duke of Bedford takes the presidentship; but there are many ifs in this arrangement; the principal if is, if they dare stand a tempest which has so terrified the pilot. You ask what becomes of Mr. Fox? Not at all pleased with this sudden determination, which has blown up so many of his projects, and left him time to heat no more furnaces, he goes to France by the way of the House of Lords,(270) but keeps his place and his tools till something else happens. The confusion I suppose will be enormous, and the next act of the drama a quarrel among the opposition, who would be all-powerful if they could do what they cannot, hold together and not quarrel for the plunder. As I shall be at a distance for some days, I shall be able to send you no more particulars of this interlude, but you will like a pun my brother made when he was told of this explosion: "Then," said he, "they must turn the Jacks out of the drawing-room again, and again take them into the kitchen." Adieu! what a world to set one's heart on!
270) Mr. Fox was Created Baron Holland of Foxley.-E.
151. To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, April 14, 1763. (page 210)
I have received your two letters together, and foresaw that your friendly good heart would feel for us just as you do. The loss is irreparable,(271) and my poor niece is sensible it is. She has such a veneration for her lord's memory, that if her sister and I make her cheerful for a moment, she accuses herself of it the next day to the Bishop of Exeter,(272) as if he was her confessor, and that she had committed a crime. She cried for two days to such a degree, that if she had been a fountain it must have stopped. Till yesterday she scarce eat enough to keep her alive, and looks accordingly; but at her age she must be comforted: her esteem will last, but her spirits will return in spite of herself. Her lord has made her sole executrix, and added what little douceurs he could to her jointure, which is but a thousand pounds a-year, the estate being but three-and-twenty hundred. The little girls will have about eight thousand pounds apiece; for the teller's place was so great during the war, that notwithstanding his temper was a sluice of generosity, he had saved thirty thousand pounds since his marriage.
Her sisters have been here with us the whole time. Lady Huntingtower is all mildness and tenderness; and by dint of attention I have not displeased the other. Lord Huntingtower has been here once; the Bishop most of the time: he is very reasonable and good-natured, and has been of great assistance and comfort to me in this melancholy office, which is to last here till Monday or Tuesday. We have got the eldest little girl too, Lady Laura, who is just old enough to be amusing; and last night my nephew arrived here from Portugal. It was a terrible meeting at first; but as he is very soldierly and lively, he got into spirits, and diverted us much with his relations of the war and the country. He confirms all we have heard of the villany, poltroonery, and ignorance of the Portuguese, and of their aversion to the English; but I could perceive, even through his relation, that our flippancies and contempt of them must have given a good deal of play to their antipathy.
You are admirably kind, as you always are in inviting me to Greatworth, and proposing Bath; but besides its being impossible for me to take any journey just at present, I am really very well in health, and the tranquillity and air of Strawberry have done much good. The hurry of London, where I shall be glad to be just now, will dissipate the gloom that this unhappy loss has occasioned; though a deep loss I shall always think it. The time passes tolerably here; I have my painters and gilders and constant packets of news from town, besides a thousand letters of condolence to answer; for both my niece and I have received innumerable testimonies of the regard that was felt for Lord Waldegrave. I have heard of but one man who ought to have known his worth, that has shown no concern; but I suppose his childish mind is too much occupied with the loss of his last governor.(273) I have given up my own room to my niece, and have taken myself to the Holbein chamber, where I am retired from the rest of the family when I choose it, and nearer to overlook my workmen. The chapel is quite finished except the carpet. The sable mass of the altar gives it a very sober air; for, notwithstanding the solemnity of the painted windows, it had a gaudiness that was a little profane.
I can know no news here but by rebound; and yet, though they are to rebound again to you, they will be as fresh as any you can have at Greatworth. A kind of administration is botched up for the present, and even gave itself an air of that fierceness with which the winter set out. Lord Hardwicke -was told, that his sons must vote with the court, or be turned out; he replied, as he meant to have them in place, he chose they should be removed now. It looks ill for the court when he is sturdy. They wished, too, to have had Pitt, if they could have had him Without consequences; but they don't find any recruits repair to their standard. They brag that they should have had Lord Waldegrave; a most notorious falsehood, as he had refused every offer they could invent the day before he was taken ill. The Duke of' Cumberland orders his servants to say, that so far from joining them, he believes if Lord Waldecrave could have been foretold of his death, he would have preferred it to an union with Bute and Fox. The former's was a decisive panic; so sudden, that it is said Lord Egremont was sent to break his resolution of retiring to the King. The other, whose journey to France does not indicate much less apprehension, affects to walk in the streets at the most public hours to mark his not trembling. In the mean time the two chiefs have paid their bravoes magnificently: no less than fifty-two thousand pounds a-year are granted in reversion! Young Martin,(274) Who is older than I am, is named my successor; but I intend he shall wait some years: if they had a mind to serve me, they could not have selected a fitter tool to set my character in a fair light by the comparison. Lord Bute's son has the reversion of an auditor of the imprest; this is all he has done ostensibly for his family, but the great things bestowed on the most insignificant objects, make me suspect some private compacts. Yet I may wrong him, but I do not mean it. Lord Granby has refused Ireland, and the Northumberlands are to transport their magnificence thither.(275) I lament that you made so little of that voyage, but is this the season of unrewarded merit? One should blush to be preferred within the same year. Do but think that Calcraft is to be an Irish lord! Fox's millions, or Calcraft's tythes of millions, cannot purchase a grain of your virtue or character. Adieu!
(271) In September 1766, Lady Waldegrave became the wife of his Royal Highness William Henry Duke of Gloucester; by whom she was mother of Prince William and of the Princess Sophia of Gloucester.-E.
(272) Married to a sister of Lady Waldegrave.
(273) Lord Waldegrave had been governor of George the Third.-E.
(274) Samuel Martin, Esq. member for Camelford, one of the joint secretaries of the treasury, named to succeed Walpole as usher of receipts of the exchequer, comptroller of the great roll, and keeper of the foreign receipts.-E.
(275) The Earl of Northumberland was gazetted on the 20th of April lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and on the 14th of May the Marquis of Granby was appointed master of the ordnance.-E.
152. To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, April 22, 1763. (page 212)
I have two letters from you, and shall take care to execute the commission in the second. The first diverted me much. .
I brought my poor niece from Strawberry on Monday. As executrix, her presence was quite necessary, and she has never refused to do any thing reasonable that has been desired of her. But the house and the business have shocked her terribly; she still eats nothing, sleeps worse than she did, and looks dreadfully; I begin to think she will miscarry. She said to me t'other day, "they tell me that if my lord had lived, he might have done great service to his country at this juncture, by the respect all parties had for him. This is very fine; but as he did not live to do those services, it will never be mentioned in history!" I thought this solicitude for his honour charming. But he will be known by history; he has left a small volume of Memoirs, that are a chef-d'oeuvre.(276) He twice showed them to me, but I kept his secret faithfully; now it is for his glory to divulge it.
I and glad you are going to Dr. Lewis After an Irish voyage I do not wonder you want careening. I have often preached to you--nay, and lived to you too; but my sermons were flung away and my example.
This ridiculous administration is patched up for the present; the detail is delightful, but that I shall reserve for Strawberry-tide. Lord Bath has complained to Fanshaw of Lord Pulteney's(277) extravagance, and added, "if he had lived he would have spent my whole estate." This almost comes up to Sir Robert Brown, who, when his eldest daughter was given over, but still alive, on that uncertainty sent for an undertaker, and bargained for her funeral in hopes of having it cheaper, as it was possible she might recover. Lord Bath has purchased the Hatton vault in Westminster-abbey, squeezed his wife, son, and daughter into it, reserved room for himself, and has set the rest to sale. Come; all this is not far short of Sir Robert Brown.
To my great satisfaction, the new Lord Holland has not taken the least friendly, or even formal notice of me, on Lord Waldegrave's death. It dispenses me from the least farther connexion with him, and saves explanations, which always entertain the world more than satisfy.
Dr. Cumberland is an Irish bishop; I hope before the summer is over that some beam from your cousin's portion of the triumvirate may light on poor Bentley. If he wishes it till next winter, he will be forced to try still new sunshine. I have taken Mrs. Pritchard's house for Lady Waldegrave; I offered her to live with me at Strawberry, but with her usual good sense she declined it, as she thought the children would be troublesome.
Charles Townshend's episode in this revolution passes belief, though he does not tell it himself. If I had a son born, and an old fairy were to appear and offer to endow him with her choicest gifts, I should cry out, "Powerful Goody, give him any thing but parts!"(278) Adieu!
(276) "the Memoirs, from 1754 to 1758, by James Earl Waldegrave," which were published in 1821, in a small quarto volume.-E.
(277) Son Of the Earl of Bath. He was a lord of the bedchamber and member for Westminster. He died on the 16th of February.-E.
(278) Lord Barrington, in a letter to Mr. Mitchell of the 19th of April, says,--"Charles Townshend accepted the admiralty on Thursday, and went to kiss hands the next day; but he brought Peter Burrell with him to court, and insisted he likewise should be one of the board. Being told that Lords Howe and Digby were to fill up the vacant seats at the admiralty, he declined accepting the office destined for him, and the next day received a dismission from the King's service."-E.
Letter 153To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, May 1, 1763. (page 213)
I feel happy at hearing your happiness; but, my dear Harry, your vision is much indebted to your long absence, which Makes
bleak rocks and barren mountains smile.
I mean no offence to Park-place, but the bitterness of the weather makes me wonder how you can find the country tolerable now. This is a May-day for the latitude of Siberia! The milkmaids should be wrapped in @the motherly comforts of a swanskin petticoat. In short, such hard words have passed between me and the north wind to-day, that, according to the language of the times, I was very near abusing it for coming from Scotland, and to imputing it to Lord Bute. I don't know whether I should not have written a North Briton against it, if the printers were not all sent to Newgate, and Mr. Wilkes to the Tower--ay, to the Tower, tout de bon.(279) The new ministry are trying to make up for their ridiculous insignificance by a coup d'`eclat. As I came hither yesterday, I do not know whether the particulars I have heard are genuine--but in the Tower he certainly is, taken up by Lord Halifax's warrant for treason; vide the North Briton of Saturday was se'nnight. It is said he refused to obey the warrant, of which he asked and got a copy from the two messengers, telling them he did not mean to make his escape, but sending to demand his habeas corpus, which was refused. He then went to Lord Halifax, and thence to the Tower; declaring they should get nothing out of him but what they knew. All his papers have been seize(]. Lord Chief Justice Pratt, I am told, finds great fault with the wording of the warrant.
I don't know how to execute your commission for books of architecture, nor care to put you to expense, which I know will not answer. I have been consulting my neighbour young Mr. Thomas Pitt,(280) my present architect: we have all books of that sort here, but, cannot think of one which will help you to a cottage or a green-house. For the former you should send me your idea, your dimensions; for the latter, don't you rebuild your old one, though in another place? A pretty greenhouse I never saw; nor without immoderate expense can it well be an agreeable object. Mr. Pitt thinks a mere portico without a pediment, and windows retrievable in summer, would be the best plan you could have. If so, don't you remember something of that kind, which you liked at Sir Charles Cotterel's at Rousham? But a fine greenhouse must be on a more exalted plan. In Short.. YOU Must be more particular, before I can be at all so.
I called at Hammersmith yesterday about Lady Ailesbury's tubs; one of them is nearly finished, but they will not both be completed these ten days. Shall they be sent to you by water? Good night to her ladyship and you, and the infanta,(281) whose progress in waxen statuary I hope advances so fast, that by next winter she may rival Rackstrow's old man. Do you know that, though apprised of what I was going to see, it deceived me, and made such impression on my mind, that, thinking on it as I came home in my chariot. and seeing a woman steadfastly at work in a window in Pall-mall, it made me start to see her move. Adieu!
Arlington Street, Monday night.
The mighty commitment set out with a blunder; the warrant directed the printer, and all concerned (unnamed) to be taken up. Consequently Wilkes had his habeas corpus of course, and was committed again; moved for another in the common pleas, and is to appear there to-morrow morning. Lord Temple, by another strain of power refused admittance to him, said, "I thought this was the Tower, but find it the Bastille." They found among Wilkes's papers an unpublished North Briton. designed for It contains advice to the King not to go to St. Paul's for the thanksgiving, but to have a snug one in his own chapel; and to let Lord George Sackville carry the sword. There was a dialogue in it too between Fox and Calcraft: the former says to the latter, "I did not think you would have served me so, Jemmy Twitcher."
(279) For his strictures in the North Briton, No. 45, on the King's speech at the close of the session.-E.
(280) Afterwards created Lord Camelford.
(281) Anne Seymour Conway.
154. To Sir David Dalrymple.(282) Strawberry Hill, May 2, 1763. _page 215)
Sir, I forebore to answer your letter for a few days, till I knew whether it was in my power to give you satisfaction. Upon inquiry, and having conversed with some who could inform me, I find it would be very difficult to obtain so peremptory an order for dismissing fictitious invalids (as I think they may properly be called), as you seem to think the state of the case requires; by any interposition of mine, quite impossible. Very difficult I am told it would be to get them dismissed from our hospitals when once admitted, and subject to a clamour which, in the present unsettled state of government, nobody would care to risk. Indeed I believe it could not be done by any single authority. The power of admission, and consequently of dismission, does not depend on the minister, but on the board who direct the affairs of the hospital, at which board preside the paymaster,, secretary at war, governor, etc.; if I am not quite exact, I know it is so in general. I am advised to tell you, Sir, that if upon examination it should be thought right to take the step you counsel, still it could not be done without previous and deliberate discussion. As I should grudge no trouble, and am very desirous of executing any commission, Sir, you will honour me with, if you will draw up a memorial in form, stating the abuses which have come to your ]Knowledge, the advantages which would result to the community by more rigorous examination of candidates for admission, and the uses to which the overflowings of the military might be put, I will engage to put it into the hands of Mr. Grenville, the present head of the treasury, and to employ all the little credit he is so good to let me have with him, in backing your request. I can answer for one thing and no more, that as long as he sits at that board, which probably will not be long, he will give all due attention to any scheme of national utility.
It is seldom, Sir, that political revolutions bring any man upon the stage, with whom I have much connexion. The great actors are not the class whom I much cultivate; consequently I am neither elated with hopes on their advancement, nor mortified nor rejoiced at their fall. As the scene has shifted often of late, and is far from promising duration at present, one must, if one lives in the great world, have now and then an acquaintance concerned in the drama. Whenever I happen to have one, I hope I am ready and glad to make use of such (however unsubstantial) interest to do good or to oblige; Ind this being the case at present, and truly I cannot call Mr. Grenville much more than an acquaintance, I shall be happy, Sir, if I can Contribute to your views, which I have reason to believe are those of a benevolent man and good citizen; but I advertise you truly, that my interest depends more on Mr. Grenville's goodness and civility, than on any great connexion between Us, and still less on any Political connexion. I think he would like to do public good, I know I should like to contribute to it-but if it is to be done by this channel, I apprehend there is not much time to be lost--you See, what I think of the permanence of the present system! Your ideas, Sir, on the hard fate of our brave soldiers concur with mine; I lamented their sufferings, and have tried in vain to suggest some little plans for their relief. I only mention this, to prove to you that I am not indifferent to the subject, nor undertake your commission from mere complaisance. You Understand the matter better than I do, but you cannot engage in it with more zeal. Methodize, if you please, your plan, and communicate it to me, and it shall not be lost for want of solicitation. We swarm with highwaymen, who have been heroes. We owe our safety to them, consequently we owe a return Of preservation to them, if we can find out methods of employing them honestly. Extend your views, Sir, for them, and let me -be@solicitor to the cause.
(282) Now first collected.
Letter 155To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, May 6, very late, 1763. (page 216)
The complexion of the times is a little altered since the beginning of this last winter. Prerogation, that gave itself such airs in November, and would speak to nothing but a Tory, has had a rap this morning that will do it some good, unless it is weak enough to do itself more harm. The judges of the common pleas have unanimously dismissed Wilkes from his imprisonment,(283) as a breach of privilege; his offence not being a breach of peace, only tending to it. The people are in transports; and it will require all the vanity and confidence of those able ministers, Lord Sandwich and Mr. C * * * to keep up the spirits of the court.
I must change this tone, to tell you of the most dismal calamity that ever happened. Lady Molesworth's house, in Upper Brook- street was burned to the ground between four and five this morning. She herself, two of her daughters, her brother,(284) and six servants Perished. Two other of the young ladies jumped out of the two pair of stairs and garret windows: one broke her thigh, the other (the eldest of all) broke hers too, and has had it cut off. The fifth daughter is much burnt. The French governess leaped from the garret, and was dashed to pieces. Dr. Molesworth and his wife, who were there on a visit, escaped; the wife by jumping from the two pair of stairs, and saving herself by a rail; he by hanging by his hands, till a second ladder was brought, after a first had proved too short. Nobody knows how or where the fire began; the catastrophe is shocking beyond what one ever heard: and poor Lady Molesworth whose character and conduct were the most amiable in the world, is universally lamented. Your good hearts will feel this in the most lively manner.(285)
I go early to Strawberry to-morrow, giving up the new Opera, Madame de Boufflers, and Mr. Wilkes, and all the present topics. Wilkes, whose case has taken its place by the side of the seven bishops, calls himself the eighth--not quite improperly, when One remembers that Sir Jonathan Trelawney, who swore like a trooper, was one of those confessors.
There is a good letter in the Gazetteer on the other side, pretending to be written by Lord Temple, and advising Wilkes to cut his throat, like Lord E * * * as it would be of infinite service to their cause. There are published, too, three volumes of Lady Mary Wortley's letters, which I believe are genuine, and are not unentertaining. But have you read Tom Hervey's letter to the late King? That beats every thing for madness, horrid indecency, and folly, and yet has some charming and striking passages. I have advised Mrs. Harris to inform against Jack, as writing in the North Briton; he will then be shut up in the Tower, and may be shown for old Nero.(286) Adieu!
(283) Wilkes was discharged on the 6th of May, by Lord Chief Justice Pratt, who decided that he was entitled to plead his privilege as a member of parliament; the crime of which he was accused, namely, a libel, being in the eyes of the law only a high misdemeanour, whereas the only three cases which could affect the privilege of a member of parliament were treason, felony, and breach of the peace.-E.
(284) Captain Usher. Lady Molesworth was daughter of the Rev. W. Usher, archdeacon of Clonfret, and second wife of Richard third Viscount Molesworth, who was aide-de-camp to the Duke of Marlborough at the battle of Ramilies, and saved his grace's life in that engagement.-E.
(285) The King upon hearing of this calamity, immediately sent the young ladies a handsome present; ordered a house to be taken and furnished for them at his expense; and not only continued the pension settled on the mother, but ordered it to be increased two hundred pounds per annum.
(286) An old lion there, so called.
156. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, May 16, 1763. (page 217)
Dear sir, I promised you should hear from me if I did not go abroad, and I flatter myself that you will not be sorry to know that I am much better in health than I was at the beginning of the winter. My journey is quite laid aside, at least for this year; though as Lord Hertford goes ambassador to Paris, I propose to make him a visit there next spring. As I shall be a good deal here this summer, I hope you did not take a surfeit of Strawberry Hill, but will bestow a visit on it while its beauty lasts; the gallery advances fast now, and I think in a few weeks will make a figure worth your looking at.
157. To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, May 17, 1763. (page 218)
"On vient de nous donner une tr`es jolie f`ete au ch`ateau de Straberri: tout etoit tapiss`e de narcisses, de tulipes, et de lilacs; des cors de chasse, des clarionettes; des petits vers galants faits par des f`ees, et qui se trouvoient sous la presse; des fruits `a la glace, du th`e, du caff`e, des biscuits, et force hot-rolls."--This is not the beginning of a letter to you, but of one that I might suppose sets out to-night for Paris, or rather, which I do not suppose will set out thither: for though the narrative is circumstantially true, I don't believe the actors were pleased enough with the scene, to give so favourable an account of it.
The French do not come hither to see. A l'Anglaise happened to be the word in fashion; and half a dozen of the most fashionable people have been the dupes of it. I take for granted that their next mode will be `a l'Iroquaise, that they may be under no obligation of realizing their pretensions. Madame de Boufflers(287) I think will die a martyr to a taste, which she fancied she had, and finds she has not. Never having stirred ten miles from Paris, and having only rolled in an easy coach from one hotel to another on a gliding pavement, she is already worn out with being hurried from morning till night from one sight to another. She rises every morning SO fatigued with the toils of the preceding day, that she has not strength, if she had inclination, to observe the least, or the finest thing she sees! She came hither to-day to a great breakfast I made for her, with her eyes a foot deep in her head, her hands dangling, and scarce able to support her knitting-bag. She had been yesterday to see a ship launched, and went from Greenwich by water to Ranelagh. Madame Dusson, who is Dutch-built, and whose muscles are pleasure-proof, came with her; there were besides, Lady Mary Coke, Lord and Lady Holderness, the Duke and Duchess of Grafton, Lord Hertford, Lord Villiers, Offley, Messieurs de Fleury, D'Eon,(288) et Duclos. The latter is author of the Life of Louis Onze;(289) dresses like a dissenting minister, which I suppose is the livery of le bel esprit, and is much more impetuous than agreeable. We breakfasted in the great parlour, and I had filled the hall and large cloister by turns with French horns and clarionettes. As the French ladies had never seen a printing-house, I carried them into mine; they found something ready set, and desiring to see what it was, it proved as follows:--
The Press speaks:
For MADAME DE BOUFFLERS--
The graceful fair, who loves to know, Nor dreads the North's inclement snow: Who bids her polish'd accent wear The British diction's harsher air; Shall read her praise in every clime Where types can speak or poets rhyme
For MADAME: DUSSON.
Feign not an ignorance of what I speak You could not miss my meaning were it Greek: 'Tis the same language Belgium utter'd first, The same which from admiring Gallia burst. True sentiment a like expression pours; Each country says the same to eyes like yours.
You will comprehend that the first speaks English, and that the second does not; that the second is handsome, and the first not; and that the second was born in Holland. This little gentilesse pleased, and atoned for the popery of my house, which was not serious enough for Madame de Boufflers, who is Montmorency, et du sang du premier Chritien; and too serious for Madame Dusson, who is a Dutch Calvinist. The latter's husband was not here, nor Drumgold,(290) who have both got fevers, nor the Duc de Nivernois, who dined at Claremont. The gallery is not advanced enough to give them any idea at all, as they are not apt to go out of their way for one; but the cabinet, and the glory of yellow glass at top, which had a charming sun for a foil, did surmount their indifference, especially as they were animated by the Duchess of Grafton, who had never happened to be here before, and who perfectly entered into the air of enchantment and fairyism, which is the tone of the place, and was peculiarly so to-day--a-propos, when do you design to come hither? Let me know, that I may have no measures to interfere with receiving you and your grandsons.
Before Lord Bute ran away, he made Mr. Bentley a commissioner of the lottery; I don't know whether a single or double one: the latter, which I hope it is, is two hundred a-year.
Thursday, 19th.
I am ashamed of myself to have nothing but a journal of pleasures to send you; I never passed a more agreeable day than yesterday. Miss Pelham gave the French an entertainment at Esher; but they have been so feasted and amused, that none of them were well enough, or reposed enough. to come, but Nivernois and Madame Dusson. The rest of the company were, the Graftons, Lady Rockingham, Lord and Lady Pembroke, Lord and Lady Holderness, Lord Villiers, Count Worotizow the Russian minister, Lady Sondes, Mr. and Miss Mary Pelham, Lady Mary Coke, Mrs. Anne Pitt, and Mr. Shelley. The day was delightful, the scene transporting; the trees, lawns, concaves, all in the perfection in which the ghost of Kent would joy to see them. At twelve we made the tour of the farm in chaises, and calashes, horsemen, and footmen, setting out like a picture of Wouverman's. My lot fell in the lap of Mrs. Anne Pitt,(291) which I could have excused, as she was not at all in the style of the day, romantic, but political. We had a magnificent dinner, cloaked in the modesty of earthenware; French horns and hautboys On the lawn. We walked to the Belvidere on the summit of the hill, where a theatrical storm only served to heighten the beauty Of the landscape, a rainbow on a dark cloud falling precisely behind the tower of a neighbouring church, between another tower and the building at Claremont. Monsieur de Nivernois, who had been absorbed all day, and lagging behind, translating my verses, was delivered of bis version, and of some more lines which he wrote on Miss Pelham in the Belvedere, while we drank tea and coffee. From thence we passed into the wood, and the ladies formed a circle on chairs before the Mouth of the cave, which was overhung to a vast height with the woodbines, lilacs, and liburnums, and dignified by the tall shapely cypresses. On the descent of the hill were placed the French horns; the abigails, servants, and neighbours wandering below the river; in short, it was Parnassus, as Watteau would have painted it. Here we had a rural syllabub, and part of the company returned to town; but were replaced by Giardini and Onofrio, who, with Nivernois on he violin, an Lord Pembroke on the bass, accompanied Mrs. Pelham, Lady Rockingham, and the Duchess of Grafton, who sang. This little concert lasted till past ten; then there were minuets, and as we had seven couple left, it concluded with a Country dance. I blush again, for I danced, but was kept in countenance by Nivernois, who has one wrinkle more than I have. A quarter after twelve they sat down to supper, and I came home by a charming moonlight. I am going to dine in town, and to a great ball with fireworks at Miss Chudleigh's, but I return hither on Sunday, to bid adieu to this abominable Arcadian life; for really when one IS not young, one ought to do nothing but s'ennuyer; I will try, but I always go about it awkwardly. Adieu!
P. S. I enclose a copy of both the English and French verses.
A MADAME DE BOUFFLRLRS.
Boufflers, qu'embellissent les graces, Et qui plairot sans le vouloir, Elle `a qui l'amour du s`cavoir Fit braver le Nord et les glaces; Boufflers se plait en nos vergers, Et veut `a nos sons `etrangers Plier sa voix enchanteresse. R`ep`etons son nom Mille fois, Sur tons les coeurs Bourflers aura des droits, Par tout o`u la rime et la Presse `a l'amour pr`eteront leur voix.
A MADAME DUSSON.
Ne feignez point, Iris, de ne pas nous entendre Cc que vous inspirez, en Grec doit se comprendre. On vous l'a dit d'abord en Hollandois, Et dans on langage plus tendre Paris vous l'a repet`e mille fois. C'est de nos coeurs l'expression sinc`ere; En tout climat, Iris, & toute heure, en tous lieux, Par tout o`u brilleront vos yeux, Vous apprendrez combien ils s`cavent plaire.
(287) La Comtesse de Boufflers, a lady of some literary pretensions, and celebrated as the intimate friend of the Prince de Conti, to whom she is said to have been united by a marriage de la main gauche. During her stay in England she paid a visit to Dr. Johnson, of which Mr. Beauclerk gave the following account to Boswell:--"When Madame de Boufflers was first in England, she was desirous to see Johnson; I accordingly went with her to his chambers in the Temple, where she was entertained with his conversation for some time. When our visit was over, she and I left him, and were got into Inner-Temple-lane, when all at once I heard a voice like thunder. This was occasioned by Johnson, who, it seem,;, upon a little reflection, had taken it into his head that he ought to have done the honours of his literary residence to a foreign lady of quality, and, eager to show himself a man of gallantry, was hurrying down the staircase in violent agitation. He overtook us before we reached the Temple gate, and brushing in between me and Madame de Boufflers, seized her hand and conducted her to her coach. His dress was a rusty-brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes by way of slippers, a little shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his head, and the sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging loose. A considerable crowd of people gathered round, and were not a little struck by this singular appearance."-E.
(288) The Chevalier D'Eon, secretary to the Duke de Nivernois, the French ambassador, and, upon the Duke's return to France, appointed minister plenipotentiary. On the Comte de Guerchy being some time afterwards nominated ambassador, the Chevalier was ordered to resume his secretaryship; at which he was so much mortified that he libelled the Comte, for which he was indicted and found guilty in the court of king's bench, in July 1764. For a further account of this extraordinary personage, see post, letter 181 to Lord Hertford, of the 25th of November.-E.
(289) Duclos's History of Louis XI. appeared in 1743. He was also the author of several ingenious novels, and had a large share in the Dictionary of the Academy. After his death, which took place in 1772, his Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. appeared. Rousseau describes him as a man "droit et adroit;" and D'Alembert said of him, "De tons les hommes que je connais, c'est lui qui a le plus d'esprit dans un temps donn`e."-E.
(290) Secretary to the Duc de Nivernois.
(291) Sister of Lord Chatham, whom she strikingly resembled in features as well as in talent. She was remarkable, even to old age, for decision of character and sprightliness of conversation. She died in 1780.-E.
158. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, May 21, 1763. (page 221)
You have now seen the celebrated Madame de Boufflers. I dare say you could in that short time perceive that she is agreeable, but I dare say too that you will agree with me that vivacity is by no means the partage of the French--bating the `etourderie of the mousquetaires and of a high-dried petit-maitre or two, they appear to me more lifeless than Germans. I cannot comprehend how they came by the character of a lively people. Charles Townshend has more sal volatile in him than the whole nation. Their King is taciturnity itself, Mirepoix was a walking mummy, Nivernois his about as much life as a sick favourite child, and M. Dusson is a good-humoured country gentleman, who has been drunk the day before, and is upon his good behaviour. If I have the gout next year, and am thoroughly humbled by it again, I will go to Paris, that I may be upon a level with them: at present, I am trop fou to keep them company. Mind, I do not insist that, to have spirits, a nation should be as frantic as poor Fanny Pelham, as absurd as the Duchess of Queensbury, or as dashing as the Virgin Chudleigh. Oh, that you had been' at her ball t'other night! History could never describe it and keep its countenance. The Queen's real birthday, you know, is not kept: this maid of honour kept it--nay, while the court is in mourning, expected people to be out of mourning; the Queen's family really was so, Lady Northumberland having desired leave for them. A scaffold was erected in Hyde-park for fireworks. To show the illuminations without to more advantage, the company were received in an apartment totally dark, where they remained for two hours. If they gave rise to any more birthdays, who could help it? The fireworks were fine, and succeeded well. On each side of the court were two large scaffolds for the Virgin's tradespeople. When the fireworks ceased, a large scene was lighted in the court, representing their majesties; on each side of which were six obelisks, painted with emblems, and illuminated; mottoes beneath in Latin and English: 1. For the Prince of Wales, a ship, Mullorum spes. 2. For the Princess Dowager, a bird of paradise, and two little ones, meos ad sidera tollo. People smiled. 3. Duke of York, a temple, Virtuti et honori. 4. Princess Augusta, a bird of paradise, Non habet paren--unluckily this was translated, I have no peer. People laughed out, considering where this was exhibited. 5. The three younger princes, an orange tree, Promiiuit et dat. 6. the younger princesses, the flower crown-imperial. I forget the Latin: the translation was silly enough, Bashful in youth, graceful in age. The lady of the house made many apologies for the poorness of the performance, which she said was only oil-paper, painted by one of her servants; but it really was fine and pretty. The Duke of Kingston was in a frock coat come chez lui. Behind the house was a cenotaph for the Princess Elizabeth, a kind of illuminated cradle; the motto, All the honours the dead can receive. This burying-ground was a strange codicil to a festival, and, what was more strange, about one in the morning, this sarcophagus burst out into crackers and guns. The Margrave of Anspach began the ball with the Virgin. The supper was most sumptuous.
You ask, when I propose to be at Park-place. I ask, shall not you come to the Duke of Richmond's masquerade, which is the 6th of June? I cannot well be with you till towards the end of that month.
The enclosed is a letter which I wish you to read attentively, to give me your opinion upon it, and return it. It is from a sensible friend of mine in Scotland,(292) who has lately corresponded with me on the enclosed subjects, which I little understand; but I promised to communicate his ideas to George Grenville, if he would state them-are they practicable? I wish much that something could be done for those brave soldiers and sailors, who will all come to the gallows, unless some timely provision can be made for them. The former part of his letter relates to a Grievance he complains of, that men who have not served are admitted into garrisons, and then into our hospitals, which were designed for meritorious sufferers. Adieu!
(292) Sir David Dalrymple. See ant`e, p. 215, letter 154.-E.
159. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, Saturday evening. (May 28, 1763.] (page 223)
No, indeed, I cannot consent to your being a dirty Philander.(293) Pink and white, and white and pink and both as greasy as if you had gnawed a leg of a fowl on the stairs of the Haymarket with a bunter from the Cardigan's Head! For Heaven's sake don't produce a tight rose-coloured thigh, unless you intend to prevent my Lord Bute's return from Harrowgate. Write, the moment you receive this, to your tailor to get you a sober purple domino as I have done, and it will make you a couple of summer-waistcoats.
In the next place, have your ideas a little more correct about us of times past. We did not furnish ou cottages with chairs of ten guineas apiece. Ebony for a farmhouse!(294) So, two hundred years hence some man of taste will build a hamlet in the style of George the Third, and beg his cousin Tom Hearne to get him some chairs for it of mahogany gilt, and covered with blue damask. Adieu! I have not a minute's time more.
(293) At the masquerade given by the Duke of Richmond on the 6th of June at his house in Privy-garden.
(294) Mr. Conway was at this time fitting up a little building at Park-place, called the Cottage, for which he had consulted Mr. Walpole on the propriety of ebony chairs.
160. To George Montagu, Esq. Huntingdon, May 30, 1763. (page 223)
As you interest yourself about Kimbolton, I begin my journal of two days here. But I must set Out With owning, that I believe I am the first man that ever went sixty miles to an auction. As I came for ebony, I have been up to my chin in ebony; there is literally nothing but ebony in the house; all the other goods. if there were any, and I trust my Lady Convers did not sleep upon ebony mattresses, are taken away. There are two tables and eighteen chairs, all made by the Hallet of two hundred years ago. These I intend to have; for mind, the auction does not begin till Thursday. There are more plebeian chairs of the same materials, but I have left commission for only the true black blood. Thence I went to Kimbolton,(295) and asked to see the house. A kind footman, who in his zeal to open the chaise pinched half my finger off, said he would call the housekeeper: but a groom of the chambers insisted on my visiting their graces; and as I vowed I did not know them, he said they were in the great apartment, that all the rest was in disorder and altering, and would let me see nothing. This was the reward of my first lie. I returned to my inn or alehouse, and instantly received a message from the Duke to invite me to the castle. I was quite undressed, and dirty with my journey, and unacquainted with the Duchess--yet was forced to go--Thank the god of dust, his grace was dirtier than me. He was extremely civil, and detected me to the groom of the chambers--asked me if I had dined. I said yes--lie the second. He pressed me to take a bed there. I hate to be criticised at a formal supper by a circle of stranger-footmen, and protested I was to meet a gentleman at Huntingdon to-night. the Duchess and Lady Caroline(296) came in from walking; and to disguise my not having dined, for it was past six, I drank tea with them. The Duchess is much altered, and has a bad short cough. I pity Catherine of Arragon(297) for living at Kimbolton: I never saw an uglier spot. The fronts are not so bad as I expected, by not being so French as I expected; but have no pretensions to beauty, nor even to comely ancient ugliness. The great apartment is truly noble, and almost all the portraits good, of what I saw; for many are not hung up, and half of those that are, my lord Duke does not know. The Earl of Warwick is delightful; the Lady Mandeville, attiring herself in her wedding garb, delicious. The Prometheus is a glorious picture, the eagle as fine as my statue. Is not it by Vandyck? The Duke told me that Mr. Spence found out it was by Titian--but critics in poetry I see are none in painting. This was all I was shown, for I was not even carried into the chapel. The walls round the house are levelling, and I saw nothing without doors that tempted me to taste. So I made my bow, hurried to my inn, snapped up my dinner, lest I should again be detected, and came hither, where I am writing by a great fire, and give up my friend the east wind, which I have long been partial to for the Southeast's sake, and in contradiction to the west, for blowing perpetually and bending all one's plantations. To-morrow I see Hinchinbrook(298)--and London. Memento, I promised the Duke that you should come and write on all his portraits. Do, as you honour the blood of Montagu! Who is the man in the picture with Sir Charles Goring, where a page is tying the latter's scarf? And who are the ladies in the double half-lengths?
Arlington Street, May 31.
Well! I saw Hinchinbrook this morning. Considering it is in Huntingdonshire, the situation is not so ugly nor melancholy as I expected; but I do not conceive what provoked so many of your ancestors to pitch their tents in that triste country, unless the Capulets(299) loved fine prospects. The house of Hinchinbrook is most comfortable, and just what I like; old, spacious, irregular, yet not vast or forlorn. I believe much has been done since you saw it--it now only wants an apartment, for in no part of it are there above two chambers together. The furniture has much simplicity, not to say too much; some portraits tolerable, none I think fine. When this lord gave Blackwood the head of the Admiral' that I have now, he left himself not one so good. The head he kept is very bad: the whole-length is fine, except the face of it. There is another of the Duke of Cumberland by Reynolds, the colours of which are as much changed as the original is to the proprietor. The garden is wondrous small, the park almost smaller, and no appearance of territory. The whole has a quiet decency that seems adapted to the Admiral after his retirement, or to Cromwell before his exaltation. I returned time enough for the opera; observing all the way I came the proof of the duration of this east wind, for on the west side the blossoms were so covered with dust one could not distinguish them; on the eastern hand the hedges were white in all the pride of May. Good night!
Wednesday, June 1.
My letter is a perfect diary. There has been a sad alarm in the kingdom of white satin and muslin. The Duke of Richmond was seized last night with a sore throat and fever; and though he is much better to-day, the masquerade of to-morrow night is put off till Monday. Many a Queen of Scots, from sixty to sixteen, has been ready to die of the fright. Adieu once more! I think I can have nothing more to say before the post goes out to-morrow.
(295) The seat of the Duke of Manchester.-E.
(296) Sister of the Duke of Manchester.-E.
(297) Queen Catherine of Arragon, after her divorce from Henry the Eighth, resided some time in this castle, and died there in 1536.-E.
(298) The seat of the Earl of Sandwich.-E.
(299) As opposing in every thing the Montagus.
161. To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, June 16, 1763. (page 225)
I do not like your putting off your visit hither for so long. Indeed, by September the gallery will probably have all its fine clothes on, and by what have been tried, I think it will look very well. The fashion of the garments to be sure will be ancient, but I have given them an air that is very becoming. Princess Amelia was here last night While I was abroad; and if Margaret is not too much prejudiced by the guinea left, or by natural partiality to what servants call our house, I think was pleased, particularly with the chapel.
As Mountain-George will not come to Mahomet-me, Mahomet-I Must come to Greatworth. Mr. Chute and I think of visiting you about the seventeenth of July, if you shall be at home, and nothing happens to derange our scheme; possibly we may call at Horton; we certainly shall proceed to Drayton, Burleigh, Fotheringay, Peterborough, and Ely; and shall like much of your company, all, or part of the tour. The only present proviso I have to make is the health of my niece who is at present much out of order, we think not breeding, and who was taken so ill on Monday, that I was forced to carry her suddenly to town, where I yesterday left her better at her father's.
There has been a report that the new Lord Holland was dead at Paris, but I believe it is not true. I was very indifferent about it: eight months ago it had been lucky. I saw his jackall t'other night in the meadows, the secretary at war,(301) so emptily-important and distilling paragraphs of old news with such solemnity, that I did not know whether it was a man or the Utrecht gazette.
(300) Admiral Montagu, first Earl of Sandwich; by Sir Peter Lely. In early life he was distinguished as a military commander under the parliamentary banner, and subsequently joint high-admiral of England; in which capacity, having had sufficient influence to induce the whole fleet to acknowledge the restored monarchy, he received the peerage as his reward. Having attained the highest renown as a naval officer, he fell in the great sea-fight with the Dutch, off Southwold-bay, on the 28th of May, 1672. Evelyn, in his diary of the 31st, gives the following high character of the Earl:--"Deplorable was the loss of that incomparable person, and my particular friend. He was learned in sea affairs, in politics, in mathematics, and in music: he had been on divers embassies, was of a sweet and obliging temper, sober, chaste, very ingenious, a true nobleman and ornament to the court and his prince; nor has he left any behind him who approach his many virtues."-E.
(301) Welbore Ellis, Esq. afterwards Lord Mendip.-E.
162. To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, July 1, 1763. (page 226)
Mr. chute and I intend to be with you on the seventeenth or eighteenth; but as we are wandering swains, we do not drive one nail into one day of the almanack irremovably. Our first stage is to Bleckley, the parsonage of venerable Cole, the antiquarian of Cambridge. Bleckley lies by Fenny Stratford; now can you direct us how to make Horton(302) in our way from Stratford to Greatworth? If this meander engrosses more time than we propose, do not be disappointed, and think we shall not come, for we shall. The journey you must accept as a great sacrifice either to you or to my promise, for I quit the gallery almost in the critical minute of consummation. Gilders, carvers, upholsterers, and picture-cleaners are labouring at their several forges, and I do not love to trust a hammer or a brush without my own supervision. This will make my stay very short, but it is a greater compliment than a month would be at another season and yet I am not profuse of months. Well, but I begin to be ashamed of my magnificence; Strawberry is growing Sumptuous in its latter day; it will scarce be any longer like the fruit of its name, or the modesty of its ancient demeanour, both which seem to have been in spencer's prophetic eye when he sung of
"The blushing strawberries Which lurk, close-shrouded from high-looking eyes, Showing that sweetness low and hidden lies."
In truth, my collection was too great already to be lodged humbly; it has extended my walls, and pomp followed. It was a neat, small house; it now will be a comfortable one, and except for one fine apartment, does not deviate from its simplicity. Adieu! I know nothing about the world, and am only Strawberry's and yours, sincerely.
(302) The seat of the Earl of Halifax.
163. To Sir David Dalrymple.(303) Strawberry Hill, July 1, 1763. (page 227)
Perhaps, sir, you have wondered that I have been so long silent about a scheme,(304) that called for despatch. The truth is I have had no success. Your whole plan has been communicated to Mr. Grenville by one whose heart went with it, going always with what is humane. Mr. Grenville mentions two objections; one, insuperable as to expedition; the other, totally so. No crown or public lands could be so disposed of without an act of parliament. In that case the scheme should be digested during a war, to take place at the conclusion, and cannot be adjusted in time for receiving the disbanded. But what is worse, he hints, Sir, that your good heart has only considered the practicability with regard to Scotland, where there are no poor's rates. Here every parish would object to such settlers. This is the sum of his reply; I am not master enough of the subject or the nature of it, as to answer either difficulty. If you can, Sir, I am ready to continue the intermediate negotiator; but you must furnish me with answers to these obstacles, before I could hope to make any way even with any private person. In truth, I am little versed in the subject; which I own, not to excuse myself from pursuing it if it can be made feasible, but to prompt you, Sir, to instruct me. Except at this place, which cannot be called the country, I have scarce ever lived in the country, and am shamefully ignorant of the police and domestic laws of my own country. Zeal to do any good, I have; but I want to be tutored when the operation is at all complicated. Your knowledge, Sir, may supply my deficiencies; at least you are sure of a solicitor for your good intentions, in your, etc.
(303) Now first collected.
(304) See ant`e, p. 215, letter 154.-E.
164. To The Rev. Mr. Cole
Strawberry Hill, July 1, 1763. (page 228)
Dear sir, As you have given me leave, I propose to pass a day with you, on my way to Mr. Montagu's. If you have no engagement, I will be with you on the 16th of this month, and if it is not inconvenient, and you will tell me truly whether it is or not, I shall bring my friend Mr. Chute with me, who is destined to the same place. I will beg you too to let me know how far it is to Bleckley, and what road I must take: that is, how far from London, or how far from Twickenham, and the road from each, as I am uncertain yet from which I shall set out. If any part of this proposal does not suit You, I trust you will own it, and I will take some other opportunity of calling on you, being most truly, dear Sir, etc.
165. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, July 12, 1763. (page 228)
Dear sir, Upon consulting maps and the knowing, I find it will be my best way to call on Mr. Montagu first, before I come to you, or I must go the same road twice. This will make it a few days later than I intended before I wait on you, and will leave you time to complete your hay-harvest, as I gladly embrace your offer of bearing me company on the tour I meditate to Burleigh, Drayton, Peterborough, Ely, and twenty other places, of all which you shall take as much or as little as you please. It will, I think, be Wednesday or Thursday se'nnight, before I wait on you, that is the 20th or 21st, and I fear I shall come alone; for Mr. Chute is confined with the gout: but you shall hear again before I set out. Remember I am to see Sir Kenelm Digby's.
I thank you much for your informations. The Countess of Cumberland is an acquisition, and quite new to me. With the Countess of Kent I am acquainted since my last edition.
Addison certainly changed sides in the epitaph to indicabit to avoid the jingle with dies: though it is possible that the thought may have been borrowed elsewhere. Adieu, Sir!
To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Dear sir, Wednesday is the day I propose waiting on you; what time of it the Lord and the roads know; so don't wait for me any part of it. If I should be violently pressed to stay a day longer at Mr. Montagu's I hope it will be no disappointment to you: but I love to be uncertain, rather than make myself expected and fail.
166. To George Montagu, Esq. Stamford, Saturday night, July 23, 1763. (page 229)
"Thus far arms have with success been crowned," bating a few mishaps, which will attend long marches like ours. We have conquered as many towns as Louis Quatorze in the campaign of seventy-two; that is, seen them, for he did little more, and into the bargain he had much better roads, and a dryer summer. It has rained perpetually till to-day, and made us experience the rich soil of Northamptonshire, which is a clay-pudding stuck full of villages. After we parted with you on Thursday, we saw Castle Ashby(305) and Easton MaudUit.(306) The first is most magnificently triste, and has all the formality of the Comptons. I should admire 'It if I could see out of it, or any thing in it, but there is scarce any furniture, and the bad little frames of glass exclude all objects. Easton is miserable enough; there are many modern portraits, and one I was glad to see of the Duchess of Shrewsbury. We lay at Wellingborough--pray never lie there-- the beastliest inn upon earth is there! We were carried into a vast bedchamber, which I suppose is the club-room, for it stunk of tobacco like a justice of peace. I desired some boiling water for tea; they brought me a sugar dish of hot water in a pewter plate. Yesterday morning we went to Boughton,(307) where we were scarce landed, before the Cardigans, in a coach and six and three chaises, arrived with a cold dinner in their pockets, on their way to Deane; for as it is in dispute, they never reside at Boughton. This was most unlucky, that we should pitch on the only hour in the year in which they are there. I was so disconcerted, and so afraid, of falling foul of the Countess and her caprices, that I hurried from chamber to chamber, and scarce knew what I saw, but that the house is in the grand old French style, that gods and goddesses lived over my head in every room, and that there was nothing but pedigrees all around me, and under my feet, for there is literally a coat of arms at the end of every step of the stairs: did the Duke mean to pun, and intend this for the descent of the Montagus? Well! we hurried away and got to Drayton an hour before dinner. Oh! the dear old place! you would be transported with it. In the first place, it stands in as ugly a hole as Boughton: well! that is not its beauty. The front is a brave strong castle wall, embattled and loopholed for defence. Passing the great gate, you come to a sumptuous but narrow modern court, behind which rises the old mansion, all towers and turrets. The house is excellent; has a vast hall, ditto dining-room, king's chamber, trunk gallery at the top of the house, handsome chapel, and seven or eight distinct apartments, besides closets and conveniences without end. Then it is covered with portraits, crammed with old china, furnished richly, and not a rag in it under forty, fifty, or a thousand years old; but not a bed or chair that has lost a tooth, or got a gray hair, so well are they preserved. I rummaged it from head to foot, examined every spangled bed, and enamelled pair of bellows, for such there are; in short, I do not believe the old mansion was ever better pleased with an inhabitant, since the days of Walter de Drayton, except when it has received its divine old mistress.(308) If one could honour her more than one did before, it would be to see with what religion she keeps up the old dwelling and customs, as well as old servants, who you may imagine do not love her less than other people do. The garden is just as Sir John Germain brought it from Holland; pyramidal yews, treillages, and square cradle walks with windows clipped in them. Nobody was there but Mr. Beauclerc(309) and Lady Catharine,(310) and two parsons: the two first suffered us to ransack and do as we would, and the two last assisted us, informed us, and carried us to every tomb in the neighbourhood. I have got every circumstance by heart, and was pleased beyond my expectation, both with the place and the comfortable way of seeing it. We stayed here till after dinner to-day, and saw Fotheringhay in our way hither. The castle is totally ruined.(311) The mount, on which the keep stood, two door-cases, and a piece of the moat, are all the remains. Near it is a front and two projections of an ancient house, which, by the arms about it, I suppose was part of the palace of Richard and Cicely, Duke and Duchess of York. There are two pretty tombs for them and their uncle Duke of York in the church, erected by order of Queen Elizabeth. The church has been very fine, but is now intolerably shabby; yet many large saints remain in the windows, two entire, and all the heads well painted. You may imagine we were civil enough to the Queen of Scots, to feel a feel of pity for her, while we stood on the very spot where she was put to death; my companion,(312) I believe, who is a better royalist than I am, felt a little more. There, I have obeyed you. To-morrow we see Burleigh and Peterborough, and lie @t Ely; on Monday I hope to be in town, and on Tuesday I hope much more to be in the gallery at Strawberry Hill, and to find the gilders laying on the last leaf of gold. Good night!
(305) A seat of the Earl of Northampton.
(306) A seat of the Earl of Sussex.
(307) The seat of Lord Montagu.
(308) Lady Betty Germain.-E.
(309) Aubrey Beauclerk, Esq. member for Thetford. He succeeded to the dukedom of St. Albans, as fifth Duke, in 1787, and died in 1802.-E.
(310) Lady Catharine Ponsonby, daughter of the Earl of Desborough.
(311) James the First is said to have ordered it to be destroyed, in consequence of its having been the scene of the trial and execution of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, beheaded there in February 1587.-E.
(312) Mr. Cole.
167. To George Montagu, Esq. Hockerill, Monday night, July 25, Vol. 2d. (page 231)
You must know we were drowned on Saturday night. It rained, as it did at Greatworth on Wednesday, all night and all next morning, so we could not look even at the outside of Burleigh; but we saw the inside pleasantly; for Lord Exeter, whom I had prepared for our intentions, came to us, and made every door and every lock fly open, even of his magazines, yet unranged. He is going through the house by decrees, furnishing a room every year, and has already made several most sumptuous. One is a little tired of Carlo Maratti and Lucca Jordano, yet still these are treasures. The china and japan are of the finest; miniatures in plenty, and a shrine full of crystal vases, filigree, enamel, jewels, and the trinkets of taste, that have belonged to many a noble dame. In return for his civilities, I made my Lord Exeter a present of a glorious cabinet, whose drawers and sides are all painted by Rubens. This present you must know is his own, but he knew nothing of the hand or the value. Just so I have given Lady Betty Germain a very fine portrait, that I discovered ,at Drayton in the Woodhouse.
I was not much pleased with Peterborough; the front is adorable, but the inside has no more beauty than consists in vastness. By the way, I have a pen and ink that will not form a letter. We were now sent to Huntingdon in our way to Ely, as we found it impracticable, from the rains and floods, to cross the country thither. We landed in the heart of the assizes, and almost in the middle of the races, both which, to the astonishment of the virtuosi, we eagerly quitted this morning. We were hence sent south to Cambridge, still on our way north to Ely: but when we got to Cambridge we were forced to abandon all thoughts of Ely, there being nothing but lamentable stories of inundations and escapes. However, I made myself amends at the university, which I have not seen these four-and-twenty years, and which revived many youthful scenes, which, merely from their being youthful, are forty times pleasanter than any other ideas. You know I always long to live at Oxford: I felt that I could like to live even at Cambridge again. The colleges are much cleaned and improved since my days, and the trees and groves more venerable; but the town is tumbling about their ears. We surprised Gray with our appearance, dined and drank tea with him, and are come hither within sight of land. I always find it worth my while to make journeys, for the joy I have in getting home again. A second adieu!
168. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, Aug. 8, 1763. (page 232)
Dear sir, You judge rightly, I am very indifferent about Dr. Shorton, since he is not Dr. Shorter. It has done nothing but rain since my return; whoever wants hay, must fish for it; it is all drowned, or swimming about the country. I am glad our tour gave you so much pleasure; you was so very obliging, as you have always been to me, that I should have been grieved not to have had it give you satisfaction. I hope your servant is quite recovered.
The painters and gilders quit my gallery this week, but I have not got a chair or a table for it yet; however, I hope it will have all its clothes on by the time you have promised me a visit.
169. To Dr. Ducarel. Strawberry Hill, Aug. 8, 1763. (page 232)
Sir, I have been rambling about the country, or should not so long have deferred to answer the favour of your letter. I thank you for the notices in it, and have profited of them. I am much obliged to you too for the drawings you intended me; but I have since had a letter from Mr. Churchill, and he does not mention them.
170. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Aug. 9, 1763. (page 232)
My gallery claims your promise; the painters and gilders finish to-morrow, and next day it washes its hands. You talked of the 15th; shall I expect you then, and the Countess,(313) and the Contessina,(314) and the Baroness?(315)
Lord Digby is to be married immediately to the pretty Miss Fielding; and Mr. Boothby, they say, to Lady Mary Douglas. What more news I know I cannot send you; for I have had it from Lady Denbigh and Lady Blandford, who have so confounded names, genders, and circumstances, that I am not sure whether Prince Ferdinand is not going to be married to the hereditary Prince. Adieu!
P. S. If you want to know more of me, you may read a whole column of abuse upon me in the Public Ledger of Thursday last; where they inform me that the Scotch cannot be so sensible @as the English, because they have not such good writers. Alack! I am afraid the most sensible men in any country do not write.
I had writ this last night. This morning I receive your paper of evasions, perfide que vous `etes! You may let it alone, you will never see any thing like my gallery--and then to ask me to leave it the instant it is finished! I never heard such a request in my days!--Why, all the earth is begging to come to see it: as Edging says, I have had offers enough from blue and green ribands to make me a falbala-apron. Then I have just refused to let Mrs. Keppel and her Bishop be in the house with me, because I expected all you--it is mighty well, mighty fine!-No, sir, no, I shall not come; nor am I in a humour to do any thing else you desire: indeed, without your provoking me, I should not have come into the proposal of paying Giardini. We have been duped and cheated every winter for these twenty years by the undertakers of operas, and I never will pay a farthing more till the last moment, nor can be terrified at their puffs; I am astonished you are. So far from frightening me. the kindest thing they could do would be not to let one have a box to hear their old threadbare voices and frippery thefts; and as for Giardini himself, I would not go cross the room to hear him play to eternity. I should think he could frighten nobody but Lady Bingley by a refusal.
(313) Of Ailesbury.
(314) Miss Anne Seymour Conway.
(315) Elizabeth Rich, second wife of George Lord Lyttelton.
171. To The Earl Of Strafford. Strawberry Hill, Aug 10, 1763. Page 233)
My dear lord, I have waited in hopes that the world would do something worth telling you: it will not, and I cannot stay any longer without asking you how you do, and hoping you have not quite forgot me. It has rained such deluges, that I had some thoughts of turning my gallery into an ark, and began to pack up a pair of bantams, a pair of cats, in short, a pair of every living creature about my house: but it is grown fine at last, and the workmen quit my gallery to-day without hoisting a sail in it. I know nothing upon earth but what the ancient ladies in my neighbourhood knew threescore years ago; I write merely to pay you my pepper-corn of affection, and to inquire after my lady, who I hope is perfectly well. A longer letter would not have half the merit: a line in return will however repay all the merit I can possibly have to one to whom I am so much obliged.
172. To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Aug. 15, 1763. (page 233)
The most important piece of news I have to tell you is, that the gallery is finished; that is, the workmen have quitted it. For chairs and tables, not one is arrived yet. Well, how you will tramp up and down in it! Methinks I wish you would. We are in the perfection of beauty; verdure itself was never green till this summer, thanks to the deluges of rain. Our complexion used to be mahogany in August. Nightingales and roses indeed are out of blow, but the season is celestial. I don't know whether we have not even had an earthquake to-day. Lady Buckingham, Lady Waldegrave, the Bishop of' Exeter, and Mrs. Keppel, and the little Hotham dined here; between six and seven we were sitting in the great parlour; I sat in the window looking at the river: on a sudden I saw it violently agitated, and, as it were, lifted up and down by a thousand hands. I called out, they all ran to the window; it continued; we hurried into the garden, and all saw the Thames in the same violent commotion for I suppose a hundred yards. We fancied at first there must be some barge rope; not one was in sight. It lasted in this manner, and at the farther end, towards Teddington, even to dashing. It did not cease before I got to the middle of the terrace, between the fence and the hill. Yet this is nothing: to what is to come. The Bishop and I walked down to my meadow by the river. At this end were two fishermen in a boat, but their backs had been turned to the agitation, and they had seen nothing. At the farther end of the field was a gentleman fishing, and a woman by him; I had perceived him on the same spot at the time of the motion of the waters, which was rather beyond where it was terminated. I now thought myself sure of a witness, and concluded he could not have recovered his surprise. I ran up to him. "Sir," said I, "did you see that strange agitation of the waters?" "When, Sir? when, Sir?" "Now, this very instant, not two minutes ago." He replied, with the phlegm of a philosopher, or of a man that can love fishing, "Stay, Sir, let me recollect if I remember nothing of it." "Pray, Sir," said I, scarce able to help laughing, "you must remember whether you remember it or not, for it is scarce over." "I am trying to recollect," said he, with the same coolness. "Why, Sir," said I, "six of us saw it from my parlour window yonder." "Perhaps," answered he, "you might perceive it better where you were, but I suppose it was an earthquake." His nymph had seen nothing neither, and so we returned as wise as most who inquire into natural phenomena. We expect to hear to-morrow that there has been an earthquake somewhere; unless this appearance portended a state-quake. You see, my impetuosity does not abate much; no, nor my youthfullity, which bears me out even at a sabat. I dined last week at Lady Blandford's, with her, the old Denbigh, the old Litchfield, and Methuselah knows who. I had stuck some sweet peas in my hair, was playing at quadrille, and singing to my sorci`eres. The Duchess of Argyle and Mrs. Young came in; you may guess how they stared; at last the Duchess asked what was the meaning of those flowers? "Lord, Madam," said I, "don't you know it is the fashion? The Duke of Bedford is come over with his hair full." Poor Mrs. Young took this in sober sadness, and has reported that the Duke of Bedford wears flowers. You will not know me less by a precipitation of this morning. Pitt and I were busy adjusting the gallery. Mr. Elliott came in and discomposed us; I was horridly tired of him. As he was going, he said, "Well, this house is so charming, I don't wonder at your being able to live so much alone." I, who shudder at the thought of any body's living With me, replied very innocently, but a little too quick, "No, only pity me when I don't live alone." Pitt was shocked, and said, "To be sure he will never forgive you as long as he lives." Mrs. Leneve used often to advise me never to begin being civil to people I did not care for: For," says she, "you grow weary of them, and can't help showing it, and so make it ten times worse than if you had never attempted to please them."
I suppose you have read in the papers the massacre of my innocents. Every one of my Turkish sheep, that I have been nursing up these fourteen years, torn to pieces in one night by three strange dogs! They killed sixteen outright, and mangled the two others in such a manner that I was forced to have them knocked on the head. However, I bore this better than an interruption.
I have scrawled and blotted this letter so I don't know whether you can read it; but it is no matter, for I perceive it is all about myself: but what has one else in the dead of summer? In return, tell me as much as you please about yourself, which you know is always a most welcome subject to me. One may preserve one's spirits with one's juniors, but I defy any body to care but about their contemporaries. One wants to linger about one's predecessors, but who has the least curiosity about their successors? This is abominable ingratitude: one takes wondrous pains to consign one's own memory to them at the same time that one feels the most perfect indifference to whatever relates to them themselves. Well, they will behave just so in their turns. Adieu!
173. To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 3, 1763. (page 235)
I have but a minute's time for answering your letter; my house is full of people, and has been so from the instant I breakfasted, and more are coming; in short, I keep an inn; the sign, the Gothic Castle. Since my gallery was finished I have not been in it a quarter of an hour together; my whole time is passed in giving tickets for seeing it, and hiding myself while it is seen. Take my advice, never build a charming house for yourself between London and Hampton-court: every body will live in it but you. I fear you must give up all thoughts of the Vine for this year, at least for some time. The poor master is on the rack; I left him the day before yesterday in bed, where he had been ever since Monday, with the gout in both knees and one foot, and suffering martyrdom every night. I go to see him again on Monday. He has not had so bad a fit these four years, and he has probably the other foot still to come. You must come to me at least in the mean time, before he is well enough to receive you. After next Tuesday I am unengaged, except on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday following; that is, the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth, when the family from Park-place are to be with me. Settle your motions, and let me know them as soon as you can, and give me as much time as you can spare. I flatter myself the General(316) and Lady Grandison will keep the kind promise they made me, and that I shall see your brother John and Mr. Miller too.
My niece is not breeding. You shall have the auction books as soon as I can get them, though I question if there is any thing in your way; however, I shall see you long before the sale, and we will talk on it.
There has been a revolution and a re-revolution, but I must defer the history till I see you, for it is much too big for a letter written in such a hurry as this. Adieu!
(316) General Montagu, who, in the preceding February, had married the Countess-dowager of Grandison.-E.
174. To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 7, 1763. (page 236)
As I am sure the house of Conway will not stay with me beyond Monday next, I shall rejoice to see the house of Montagu this day se'nnight (Wednesday), and shall think myself highly honoured by a visit from Lady Beaulieu;(317) I know nobody that has better taste, and it would flatter me exceedingly if she should happen to like Strawberry. I knew you would be pleased with Mr. Thomas Pitt; he is very amiable and very sensible, and one of the very few that I reckon quite worthy of being at home at Strawberry.
I have again been in town to see Mr. Chute; he thinks the worst over, yet he gets no sleep, and is still confined to his bed 'but his spirits keep up surprisingly. As to your gout, so far from pitying you, 'tis the best thing that can happen to you. All that claret and port are very kind to you, when they prefer the shape of lameness to that of apoplexies, or dropsies, or fevers, or pleurisies.
Let me have a line certain what day I may expect your party, that I may pray to the sun to illuminate the cabinet. Adieu!
(317) Isabella, eldest daughter and co-heir of John Duke of Montagu, and relict of William Duke of Manchester; married, in 1763, to Edward Montagu, Lord Beaulieu.-E.
175. To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Oct. 3, 1763. (page 236)
I was just getting into my chaise to go to Park-place, when I received your commission for Mrs. Crosby's pictures; but I did not neglect it, though I might as well, for the old gentlewoman was a little whimsical, and though I sent my own gardener and farmer with my cart to fetch them on Friday, she would not deliver them, she said, till Monday; so this morning they were forced to go again. They are now all safely lodged in my cloister; when I say safely, you understand, that two of them have large holes in them, as witness this bill of lading signed by your aunt. There are eleven in all, besides Lord Halifax, seven half-lengths and four heads; the former are all desirable, and one of the latter; the three others woful. Mr. Wicks is now in the act of packing them, for we have changed our minds about sending them to London by water, as your wagoner told Louis last time I was at Greatworth, that if they were left at the Old Hat, near Acton, he would take them up and convey them to Greatworth; so my cart carries them thither, and they will set out towards you next Saturday.
I felt shocked, as you did, to think how suddenly the prospect of joy at Osterly was dashed after our seeing it. However the young lover(318) died handsomely. Fifty thousand pounds will dry tears, that at most could be but two months old. His brother, I heard, has behaved still more handsomely, and confirmed the legacy, and added from himself the diamonds that had been prepared for her. Here is a charming wife ready for any body that likes a sentimental situation, a pretty woman, and a large fortune.(319)
I have been often at Bulstrode from Chaffont, but I don't like it. It is Dutch and triste. The pictures you mention in the gallery would be curious if they knew one from another; but the names are lost, and they are only sure that they have so many pounds of ancestors in the lump. One or two of them indeed I know, as the Earl of Southampton, that was Lord Essex's friend.
The works of Park-place go on bravely; the cottage will be very pretty, and the bridge sublime, composed of loose rocks, that will appear to have been tumbled together there the very wreck of the deluge. One stone is of fourteen hundred weight. It will be worth a hundred of Palladio's brigades, that are only fit to be used in an opera.
I had a ridiculous adventure on my way hither. A Sir Thomas Reeves wrote to me last year, that he had a great quantity of heads of painters, drawn by himself from Dr. Mead's collection, of which many were English, and offered me the use of them. This was one of the numerous unknown correspondents which my books have drawn upon me. I put it off then, but being to pass near his door, for he lives but two miles from Maidenhead, I sent him word I would call on my way to Park-place. After being carried to three wrong houses, I was directed to a very ancient mansion, composed of timber, and looking as unlike modern habitations, as the picture of Penderel's house in Clarendon. The garden was overrun with weeds, and with difficulty we found a bell. Louis came riding back in great haste, and said, "Sir, the Gentleman is dead suddenly." You may imagine I was surprised; however, as an acquaintance I had never seen was an endurable misfortune, I was preparing to depart; but happening to ask some women, that were passing by the chaise, if they knew any circumstance of Sir Thomas's death, I discovered that this was not Sir Thomas's house, but belonged to a Mr. Mecke,(320) fellow of a college at Oxford, who was actually just dead, and that the antiquity itself had formerly been the residence of Nell Gwyn. Pray inquire after it the next time you are at Frocmore. I went on, and after a mistake or two more found Sir Thomas, a man about thirty in age, and twelve in understanding; his drawings very indifferent, even for the latter calculation. I did not know what to do or say, but commended them and his child, and his house; said I had all the heads, hoped I should see him at Twickenham, was afraid of being too late for dinner, and hurried out of his house before I had been there twenty minutes. It grieves one to receive civilities when one feels obliged, and yet finds it impossible to bear the people that bestow them.
I have given my assembly, to show my gallery, and it was glorious; but happening to pitch upon the feast of tabernacles, none of my Jews could come, though Mrs. Clive proposed to them to change their religion; so I am forced to exhibit once more. For the morning spectators, the crowd augments instead of diminishing. It is really true that Lady Hertford called here t'other morning, and I was reduced to bring her by the back gate into the kitchen; the house was so full of company that came to see the gallery, that I had no where else to carry her. Adieu!
P. S. I hope the least hint has never dropped from the Beaulieus of that terrible picture of Sir Charles Williams, that put me into such confusion the morning they breakfasted here. If they did observe the inscription, I am sure they must have seen too how it distressed me. Your collection of pictures is packed up, and makes two large cases and one smaller.
My next assembly will be entertaining; there will be five countesses, two bishops, fourteen Jews, five papists, a doctor of physic, and an actress; not to mention Scotch, Irish, East and West Indians.
I find that, to pack up your pictures, Louis has taken some paper out of a hamper of waste, into which I had cast some of the Conway papers, perhaps only as useless , however, if you find any such in the packing, be so good as to lay them by for me.
(318) Francis Child, Esq. the banker at Temple-bar, and member for Bishop's-Castle, who died on the @3d of September. He was to have been married in a few days to the only daughter of the Hon. Robert Trevor Hampden, one of the postmasters-general.-E.
(319) This young lady was married in the May following to Henri, twelfth Earl of Suffolk.-E.
(320) The Rev. Mr. Mecke, of Pembroke College. He died on the 26th of September.-E.
176. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, Oct. 8, 1763. Page 239)
Dear Sir, You are always obliging to me and always thinking Of me kindly; yet for once you have forgotten the way of obliging me most. You do not mention any thought of coming hither, which you had given me cause to hope about this time, I flatter myself nothing has intervened to deprive me of that visit. Lord Hertford goes to France the end of next week; I shall be in town to take leave of him; but after the 15th, that is, this day se'nnight, I shall be quite unengaged and the sooner I see you after the 15th, the better, for I should be sorry to drag you across the country in the badness of November roads.
I shall treasure up your notices against my second edition for the volume of Engravers is printed off, and has been some time; I only wait for some of the plates. The book you mention I have not seen, nor do you encourage me to buy it. Some time or other however I will get you to let me turn it over.
As I will trust that you will let me know soon when I shall have the pleasure of seeing you here, I will make this a very short letter indeed. I know nothing new or old worth telling you.
177. To The Earl Of Hertford.(321) Arlington Street, Oct. 18, 1763. (page 239)
My dear Lord, I am very impatient for a letter from Paris, to hear of your outset, and what my Lady Hertford thinks of the new world she is got into, and whether it is better or worse than she expected. Pray tell me all: I mean of that sort, for I have no curiosity about the family compact, nor the harbour of Dunkirk. It is your private history--your audiences, reception, comforts or distresses, your way of life, your company--that interests me; in short, I care about my cousins and friends, not, like Jack Harris,(322) about my lord ambassador. Consider you are in my power. You, by this time, are longing to hear from England, and depend upon me for the news of London. I shall not send you a tittle, if you are not very good, and do not (one of you, at least) write to me punctually.
This letter, I confess, will not give you much encouragement, for I can absolutely tell you nothing. I dined at Mr. Grenville's to-day, if there had been any thing to hear, I should have heard it; but all consisted in what you will see in the papers--some diminutive(323) battles in America, and the death of the King of Poland,(324) which you probably knew before we did. The town is a desert; it is like a vast plain, which, though abandoned at present, is in three weeks to have a great battle fought upon it. One of the colonels, I hear, is to be in town tomorrow, the Duke of Devonshire. I came myself but this morning, but as I shall not return to Strawberry till the day after to-morrow, I shall not seal my letter till then. In the mean time, it is but fair to give you some more particular particulars of what I expect to know. For instance, of Monsieur de Nivernois's cordiality; of Madame Dusson's affection for England; of my Lord Holland's joy at seeing you in France, especially without your Secretary;(325) of all my Lady Hertford's(326) cousins at St. Germains; and I should not dislike a little anecdote or two of the late embassy,(327) of which I do not doubt you will hear plenty. I must trouble you with many compliments to Madame de Boufflers, and with still more to the Duchesse de Mirepoix,(328) who is always so good as to remember me. Her brother, Prince de Beauvau,(329) I doubt has forgotten me. In the disagreeableness of taking leave, I omitted these messages. Good night for to-night--OH! I forgot--pray send me some caff`e au lait: the Duc de Picquigny(33) (who by the way is somebody's son, as I thought) takes it for snuff; and says it is the new fashion at Paris; I suppose they drink rappee after dinner.
Wednesday night.
I might as well have finished last night; for I know nothing more than I did then, but that Lady mary Coke arrived this evening. She has behaved very honourably, and not stolen the hereditary Prince.(331)
Mr. Bowman(332) called on me yesterday before I came, and left word that he would come again to-day, but did not. I wished to hear of you from him, and a little of my old acquaintance at Rheims. Did you find Lord Beauchamp(333) much grown? Are all your sons to be like those of the Amalekites? who were I forget how many cubits high.
Pray remind Mr. Hume(334) Of collecting the whole history of the expulsion of the Jesuits. It is a subject worthy of his inquiry and pen. Adieu! my dear lord.
(321) This is the first of the series of letters which Walpole addressed to his relation, the Earl of Hertford, during his lordship's embassy in Paris, in the years 1763, 1764, and 1765. The first edition of these letters appeared, in quarto, in 1825, edited by the Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, and contained the following introductory notice:--
"No apology, it is presumed, is necessary for the following publication. The Letters of Mr. Walpole have already attained the highest rank in that department of English literature, and seem to deserve their popularity, whether they are regarded as objects of mere amusement, or as a collection of anecdotes illustrative of the politics, literature, and manners of an important and interesting period.
"The following collection is composed of his letters to his cousin, the Earl of Hertford, while ambassador at Paris, from 1763 to 1765; which seem, at least as much as those which have preceded them, deserving of the public attention.
"It appears from some circumstances connected with the letters themselves, that Mr. Walpole wrote them in the intention and hope that they might be preserved; and although they are enlivened by his characteristic vivacity, and are not deficient in the lighter matters with which he was in the habit of amusing all his correspondents, they are, on the whole, written in a more careful style, and are employed on more important subjects than any others which have yet come to light.
"Of the former collections, anecdote and chit-chat formed the principal topics, and politics were introduced Only as they happened to be the news of the day. Of the series now offered to the public, politics are the groundwork, and the town-talk is only the accidental embroidery.
"Mr. Walpole's lately published Memoires have given proof of his ability in sketching parliamentary portraits and condensing parliamentary debates. In the following letters, powers of the same class will, it is thought, be recognised; and as the published parliamentary debates are extremely imperfect for the whole time to which this correspondence relates, Mr. Walpole's sketches are additionally valuable.
"These letters also give a near view of the proceedings of political parties during that interesting period; and although the representation of so warm a partisan must be read with due caution, a great deal of authentic information on this subject will be found, and even the very errors of the writer will sometimes tend to elucidate the state of parties during one of the busiest periods of our domestic dissensions.
"Mr. Walpole's party feelings were, indeed, so warm, and his judgment of individuals was so often affected by the political lights in which he viewed them, that the Editor has thought it due to many eminent political characters to add a few notes, to endeavour to explain the prejudices and to correct the misapprehensions under which Mr. Walpole wrote. In doing so, the Editor has, he hopes, shown (what he certainly felt) a perfect impartiality; and he flatters himself that he has only endeavoured to perform, (however imperfectly) what Mr. Walpole himself, after the heat of party had subsided, would have been inclined to do."-- To the notes here spoken of, the letter C. is affixed.
(322) John Harris, Esq. of Hayne, in Devonshire, who married Anne, Lord Hertford's eldest sister.-E.
(323) The actions at Detroit and Edge Hill, on the 31st of July and 5th and 6th of August, between the British and the Indians. In the former the British were defeated, and their leader, Captain Ditlyell, killed; in the latter engagements, under Colonel Bouguet, they defeated the Indians.-C.
(324) Stanislaus Augustus, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. He died at Dresden, on the 5th of October.-E.
(325) Mr. Fox, so long a political leader in the House of Commons, had been lately created Lord Holland, and was now in Paris. Mr. Walpole insinuates, in his letter to Mr. Montagu of the 14th of April, that Lord Holland's visit to France arose from apprehension of personal danger to himself, in consequence of his share in Lord Bute's administration--an absurd insinuation! What is meant by his joy at seeing Lord Hertford in France is not clear; but the allusion to the secretary probably refers to the absence of Sir Charles, then Mr. Bunbury, who was nominated secretary to the embassy, but who had not accompanied Lord Hertford to Paris: as Mr. Bunbury had married Lady Holland's niece, there may have been family reason for this allusion.-C.
(326) Lady Hertford was a granddaughter of Charles II., and therefore cousin to the pretender, who, however, was at this period in Italy; and the cousins alluded to were probably the family of Fitz-James.-C.
(327) John, fourth Duke of Bedford, was Lord Hertford's predecessor. Mr. Walpole had been on terms of personal and political intimacy at Bedford-house; but political and private differences had occurred to sharpen his resentment against the Duke, and even occasionally against the Duchess of Bedford.-C.
(328) The Mar`eschale de Mirepoix was a clever woman, who was at the head of one class of French society. She, however, quarrelled with her family, and lost the respect of the public by the meanness of countenancing Madame du Barri.-C.
(329) Son of the Prince de Craon: he was born in 1720; served with great distinction from the earliest age, and was created, in 1782, marshal of France. His conduct in discountenancing the favouritism of the last years of Louis XV. was very honourable, as was his devotion to Louis XVI. in the first years of the revolution. The marshal survived his unfortunate sovereign but three months.-C.
(330) Son of the Duke de Chaulnes.-E.
(331) The Hereditary Prince of Brunswick was at this time betrothed to the King's eldest sister; and Mr. Walpole, a constant friend and admirer of Lady Mary, affects to think that her beauty and vivacity might have seduced his Serene Highness from his royal bride. Lady Mary lived till 1810.-C.
(332) This gentleman was travelling tutor to Lord Hertford's eldest son, and had been lately residing with him at Rheims.-C.
(333) Francis, afterwards second Marquis of Hertford, who died in the year 1822.-E.
(334) David Hume, the historian. He was at first private secretary to Lord Hertford, and afterwards secretary of embassy.-E.
178. To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Nov. 12, 1763. (page 242)
I send you the catalogue as you desired; and as I told you, you will, I think, find nothing to your purpose: the present lord bought all the furniture at Navestock;(335) the few now to be sold are the very fine ones of the best masters, and likely to go at vast prices, for there are several people determined to have some one thing that belonged to Lord Waldegrave. I did not get the catalogue till the night before last, too late to send by the post, for I had dined with Sir Richard Lyttelton at Richmond, and was forced to return by Kew-bridge, for the Thames was swelled so violently that the ferry could not work. I am here quite alone in the midst of a deluge, without Mrs. Noah, but with half as many animals. The waters are as much out as they were last year, when her vice-majesty of Ireland,(336) that now is sailed to Newmarket with both legs out at the fore glass, was here. Apropos, the Irish court goes on ill; they lost a question by forty the very first day on the address. The Irish, not being so absurd or so complimental as Mr. Allen, they would not suffer the word "adequate" to pass.(337) The prime minister is so unpopular that they think he must be sent back. His patent and Rigby's are called in question. You see the age is not favourable to prime ministers: well! I am going amidst it all, very unwillingly; I had rather stay here, for I am sick of the storms, that once loved them so cordially: over and above, I am not well; this is the third winter my nightly fever has returned; it comes like the bellman before Christmas, to put me in mind of my mortality.
Sir Michael Foster(338) is dead, a Whig of the old rock: he is a greater loss to his country than the prim attorney-general,(339) who has resigned, or than the attorney's father, who is dying, will be.
My gallery is still in such request, that, though the middle of November, I give out a ticket to-day for seeing it. I see little of it myself, for I cannot sit alone in such state; I should think myself like the mad Duchess of Albemarle,(340) who fancied herself Empress of China. Adieu!
(335) In Essex, the seat of the Waldegraves.-E.
(336) The Countess of Northumberland.-E.
(337) To prevent the presentation of a more objectionable address from the corporation of Bath, in favour of the peace, Mr. Allen had secured the introduction of the word adequate, into the one agreed to; which gave such offence to Mr. Pitt that he refused to present it.-E.
(338) One of the judges in the court of King's Bench.-E.
(339) The Hon. Charles Yorke.
(340) Widow of Christopher Duke of Albemarle, and daughter of the Duke of Newcastle.
179. To The Earl Of Hertford. Arlington Street, Nov. 17, 1763. (page 243)
If the winter keeps up to the vivacity of its d`ebut, you will have no reason to complain of the sterility of my letters. I do not say this from the spirit of the House of Commons on the first day,(341) which was the most fatiguing and dull debate I ever heard, dull as I have heard many; and yet for the first quarter of an hour it looked as if we were met to choose a King of Poland,(342) and that all our names ended in zsky. Wilkes, the night before, had presented himself at the Cockpit: as he was listening to the Speech,(343) George Selwyn said to him, in the words of the Dunciad, "May Heaven preserve the ears you lend!"(344) We lost four hours debating whether or not it was necessary to open the session with reading a bill. The opposite sides, at the same time, pushing to get the start, between the King's message, which Mr. Grenville stood at the bar to present, which was to acquaint us with the arrest of Wilkes and all that affair, and the complaint which Wilkes himself stood up to make. At six we divided on the question of reading a bill.(345) Young Thomas Townshend(346) divided the House injudiciously, as the question was so idle; yet the whole argument of the day had been so complicated with this question, that in effect it became the material question for trying forces. This will be an interesting part to you, when you hear that your brother(347) and I were in the minority. You know him, and therefore know he did what he thought right; and for me, my dear lord, you must know that I would die in the House for its privileges, and the liberty of the press. But come, don't be alarmed: this will have no Consequences. I don't think your brother is going into opposition; and for me, if I may name myself to your affection after him, nothing but a question of such magnitude can carry me to the House at all. I am sick of parties and factions, and leave them to buy and sell one another. Bless me! I had forgot the numbers; they were 300, we 111. We then went upon the King's message; heard the North Briton read; and Lord North,(348) who took the prosecution upon him and did it very well, moved to vote a scandalous libel, etc. tending to foment treasonable insurrections. Mr. Pitt gave up the paper, but fought against the last words of the censure. I say Mr. Pitt, for indeed, like Almanzor, he fought almost singly, and spoke forty times: the first time in the day with much wit, afterwards with little energy. He had a tough enemy too; I don't mean in parts or argument, but one that makes an excellent bulldog, the solicitor-general Norton. Legge was, as usual, concise; and Charles Townshend, what is not usual, silent. We sat till within a few minutes of two, after dividing again; we, our exact former number, 111; they, 273; and then we adjourned to go on the point of privilege the next day; but now
"Listen, lordings, and hold you still; Of doughty deeds tell you I will."
Martin,(349) in the debate, mentioned the North Briton, in which he himself had been so heavily abused; and he said, "whoever stabs a reputation in the dark, without setting his name, is a cowardly, malignant, and scandalous scoundrel." This, looking at Wilkes, he repeated twice, with such rage and violence, that he owned his passion obliged him to sit down. Wilkes bore this with the same indifference as he did all that passed in the day. The -House, too, who from Martin's choosing to take a public opportunity of resentment, when he had so long declined any private notice, and after Wilkes's courage was become so problematic, seemed to think there was no danger of such champions going further; but the next day, when we came into the House, the first thing we heard was that Martin had shot Wilkes: so he had; but Wilkes has six lives still good. It seems Wilkes had writ, to avow the paper, to Martin, on which the latter challenged him. They went into Hyde-park about noon; Humphrey Coates, the wine-merchant, waiting in a postchaise to convey Wilkes away if triumphant. They fired at the distance of fourteen yards: both missed. then Martin fired and lodged a ball in the side of Wilkes; who was going to return it, but dropped his pistol. He desired Martin to take care of securing himself, and assured him he would never say a word against him, and he allows that Martin behaved well. The wound yesterday was thought little more than a flesh-wound, and he was in his old spirits. To-day the account is worse, and he has been delirious: so you will think when you hear what is to come. I think, from the agitation his mind must be in, from his spirits, and from drinking, as I Suppose he will, that he probably will end here. He puts me in mind of two lines of Hudibras,(350) which, by the arrangement of the words combined with Wilkes's story, are stronger than Butler intended them:--
"But he, that fights and runs away, May live to fight another day."
His adventures with Lord Talbot,(351) Forbes,(352) and Martin, make these lines history.
Now for part the second. On the first day, in your House, where the address was moved by Lord Hilsborough and Lord Suffolk, after some wrangling between Lord Temple, Lord Halifax, the Duke of Bedford, and Lord Gower; Lord Sandwich(353) laid before the House the most blasphemous and indecent poem that ever was composed, called "An Essay on Woman, With notes, by Dr. Warburton."', I will tell you none of the particulars: they were so exceedingly bad, that Lord Lyttelton begged the reading might be stopped. The House was amazed; nobody ventured even to ask a question: so it was easily voted every thing you please, and a breach of privilege into the bargain. Lord Sandwich then informed your Lordships, that Mr. Wilkes was the author. Fourteen copies alone were printed, one of which the ministry had bribed the printer to give up. Lord Temple then objected to the manner of obtaining it; and Bishop Warburton, as much shocked at infidelity as Lord Sandwich had been at obscenity, said, "the blackest fiends in hell would not keep company with Wilkes when he should arrive there." Lord Sandwich moved to vote Wilkes the author; but this Lord Mansfield stopped, advertising the House that it was necessary first to hear what Wilkes could say in his defence. To-day, therefore, Was appointed for that purpose; but it has been put off by Martin's lodging a caveat.(354) This bomb was certainly well conducted, and the secret, though known to many, well kept. The management is worthy of Lord Sandwich, and like him. It may sound odd for me, with my principles, to admire Lord Sandwich; but besides that he has in several instances been very obliging to me, there is a good humour and an industry about him that are very uncommon. I do not admire politicians; but when they are excellent in their way, one cannot help allowing them their due. Nobody but he could have struck a stroke like this.
Yesterday we sat till eight on the address, which yet passed without a negative - we had two very long speeches from Mr. Pitt and Mr. Grenville; many fine parts in each. Mr. Pitt has given the latter some strong words, yet not so many as were expected.(355) To-morrow we go on the great question 'of privilege; but I must send this away, as we have no chance of leaving the House before midnight, if before next morning.
This long letter contains the history of but two days; yet if two days furnish a history, it is not my fault. The ministry, I think, may do whatever they please. Three hundred, that will give up their own privileges, may be depended upon for giving up any thing else. I have not time or room to ask a question, or say a word more.
Nov. 18, Friday.
I have luckily got a holiday, and can continue my despatch, as you know dinner time is my chief hour of business. The Speaker, unlike Mr. Onslow, who was immortal in the chair, is taken very ill, and our House is adjourned to Monday. Wilkes is thought in great danger: instead of keeping him quiet, his friends have shown their zeal by him, and himself has been all spirits and riot, and sat in his bed the next morning to correct the press for to-morrow's North Briton. His bon-mots are all over the town, but too gross, I think, to repeat; the chief' are at the expense of poor Lord George.(356) Notwithstanding Lord Sandwich's masked battery, the tide runs violently for Wilkes, and I do not find people in general so inclined to excuse his lordship as I was. One hears nothing but stories of the latter's impiety, and of the concert he was In with Wilkes on that subject. Should this hero die, the Bishop of Gloucester may doom him whither he pleases, but Wilkes will pass for a saint and a martyr.
Besides what I have mentioned, there were two or three passages in the House of Lords that were diverting. Lord Temple dwelled much on the Spanish ministry being devoted to France. Lord Halifax replied, "Can we help that? We can no more oblige the King of Spain to change his ministers, than his lordship can force his Majesty to change the present administration." Lord Gower, too, attacking Lord Temple on want of respect to the King, the Earl replied, "he never had wanted respect for the King: he and his family had been attached to the house of Hanover full as long as his lordship's family had."(357)
You may imagine that little is talked of but Wilkes, and what relates to him. Indeed, I believe there is no other news, but that Sir George Warren marries Miss Bishop, the maid of honour. The Duchess Of Grafton is at Euston, and hopes to stay there till after Christmas. Operas do not begin till tomorrow se'nnight; but the Mingotti is to sing, and that contents me. I forgot to tell you, and you may Wonder at hearing nothing Of the Reverend Mr. Charles Pylades,(358) while Mr. John Orestes is making such a figure: but Dr. Pylades, the poet, has forsaken his consort and the Muses, and is gone off with a stonecutter's daughter.(359) If he should come and offer himself to you for chaplain to the embassy!
The Countess of Harrington was extremely alarmed last Sunday,, on seeing the Duc de Prequigny enter her assembly: she forbade Lady Caroline(360) speaking to such a debauched young man, and communicated her fright to everybody. The Duchess of Bedford observed to me that as Lady Berkeley(361) and some other matrons of the same stamp were there, she thought there was no danger of any violence being committed. For my part, the sisters are so different, that I conclude my Lady Hertford has not found any young man in France wild enough for her. Your counterpart, M. de Guerchy, takes extremely. I have not yet seen his wife.
I this minute receive your charming long letter of the 11th, and give you a thousand thanks for it. I wish next Tuesday was past, for Lady Hertford's sake. You may depend on my letting you know, if I hear the least rumour in your disfavour. I shall do so without your orders, for I could not bear to have you traduced and not advertise you to defend yourself. I have hitherto not heard a syllable; but the newspapers talk of your magnificence, and I approve extremely your intending to support their evidence; for though I do not think it necessary to scatter pearls and diamonds about the streets like their vice-majesties(362), of Ireland, one owes it to one's self and to the King's choice to prove it was well made.
The colour given at Paris to Bunbury's(363) stay in England has been given out here too. You need not, I think, trouble yourself about that; a majority of three hundred will soon show, that if he was detained, the reason at least no longer subsists.
Hamilton is certainly returning from Ireland. Lord Shannon's(364) son is going to marry the Speaker's daughter, and the Primate has begged to have the honour of Joining their hands.
This letter is wofullv blotted and ill-written, yet I must say it is print compared to your lordship's. At first I thought you had forgot that you was not writing to the secretary of state, and had put it into cipher. Adieu! I am neither, dead of my fever nor apoplexy, nay, nor of the House of Commons. I rather think the violent heat of the latter did me good. Lady Ailesbury was at court yesterday, and benignly received;(365) a circumstance you will not dislike.
P.S. If I have not told you all you want to know, interrogate me, and I will answer the next post.
(341) Parliament met on the 15th of November. The public mind was at this moment in a considerable ferment, and the King's speech invited Parliament "to discourage that licentious spirit which is repugnant to the true principles of liberty and of this happy constitution." It was expected that these words would, from their being understood as a direct attack on Mr. Wilkes, have opened a debate on his question, which was then uppermost in every mind; but the opposition were unwilling to put themselves under the disadvantage of opposing the address and of excepting against words, which, in their general meaning were unexceptionable; they, therefore, had recourse to the proceedings so well described in this letter.-C.
(342) He means, that parties were so violent that the members seemed inclined to come to blows.-C.
(343) The King's speech, which is now read at the house of the minister, to a selection of the friends of government, was formerly read at the Cockpit, and all who chose attended.-C.
(344) "Yet oh, my sons! a father's words attend; So may the Fates preserve the ears you lend."-E.
(345) "As soon as the members were sworn at the table, Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Grenville then a chancellor of the exchequer, arose in their places, the first to make a complaint of a breach of privilege in having been imprisoned, etc.; and Mr. Grenville, to communicate to the House a message from the King, which related to the privileges of the House: the Speaker at the same time acquainted the House, that the clerk had prepared a bill, and submitted it to them, whether, in point of form, the reading of the bill should not be the first proceeding towards opening the session. A very long debate ensued, which of these three matters ought to have the precedence,, -and at last it was carried in favour of the bill." Hatsell's Precedents, vol. ii. p. 77.-E.
(346) Afterwards Lord Sydney. The Townshends were supposed to be very unsteady, if not fickle, in their political conduct; a circumstance which gives point to Goldsmith's mention of this Mr. Townshend in his character of Burke:-
"----yet straining his throat To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote."-C.
(347) Henry Seymour Conway, only brother of Lord Hertford, at this time a groom of the bedchamber, lieutenant-general in the army, and colonel of the first regiment of dragoons. He was, as we will see, in consequence of his opposition to government on these questions, dismissed both from court and his regiment: but he became, on a change of ministers in 1765, secretary of state; and in 1772 was promoted to be a general; and in 1793 a field-marshal.-C.
(348) Lord North was at this time one of the junior lords of the treasury.-E.
(349) Samuel Martin, Esq. Member for Camelford. He had been secretary of the treasury during the Duke of Newcastle's and Lord Bute's administration.-E.
(350) These lines, and two others, usually appended to them--
"He that is in battle slain Can never rise to fight again,"
are not in Hudibras. Butler has the same thought in two lines--
"For those that fly may fight again, Which he can never do that's slain." Par. iii. Cant. 3, 1. 243.-C.
(351) At the coronation, Lord Talbot, as lord steward, appeared on horseback in Westminster-hall. His horse had been, at numerous rehearsals, so assiduously trained to perform what was thought the most difficult part of his duty, namely, the retiring backwards from the royal table, that, at the ceremony itself, no art of his rider could prevent the too docile animal from making his approaches to the royal presence tail foremost. This ridiculous incident, was the occasion of some sarcastic remarks in the North Briton, of the 21st August, which led to a correspondence between Lord Talbot and Mr. Wilkes, and ultimately to a duel in the garden of the Red Lion Inn, at Bagshot, Mr. Wilkes proposed that the parties should sup together that night, and fight next morning. Lord Talbot insisted on fighting immediately. This altercation, and some delay of Wilkes in writing papers, which (not expecting, he said, to take the field before morning) he had left unfinished, delayed the affair till dusk, and after the innocuous exchange of shots by moonlight, the parties shook hands, and supped together at the inn with a great deal of jollity.-C.
(352) A young Scotch officer of the name of Forbes, fastened a quarrel on Mr. Wilkes, in Paris, for having written against Scotland, and insisted on his fighting him. Wilkes declined until he should have settled an engagement of the same nature which he had with Lord Egremont. Just at this time Lord Egremont died, and Wilkes immediately offered to meet Captain Forbes at Menin, in Flanders. By some mistake Forbes did not appear, and the affair blew over. A long controversy was kept up on the subject by partisans in the newspapers; but on the whole it is impossible to deny that Forbes's conduct was nasty and foolish, and that Wilkes behaved himself like a man of temper and honour.-C.
(353) At this time secretary of state. " It is a great mercy," says Lord Chesterfield, in a letter to his son, of the 3d of December, "that Mr. Wilkes, the intrepid defender of our rights and liberties, is out of danger; and it is no less a mercy, that God hath raised up the Earl of Sandwich, to vindicate true religion and morality. These two blessings will justly make an epocha in the annals affairs country."-E.
(354) The Bishop of Gloucester, whose laborious commentaries on Pope's Essay on Man gave Wilkes the idea of fathering on him the notes on the Essay on Woman.-C.
(355) Dr. Birch, in a letter to Lord Royston, gives the following account of what passed in the House of Lords on this occasion:- -"The session commenced with a complaint made by Lord Sandwich against Mr. Wilkes for a breach of privilege in being the author of a poem full of obscenity and blasphemy, intitled 'An Essay on Woman,' with notes, under the name of the Bishop of Gloucester. His letters, which discovered the piece was his, had been seized at Kearsley's the bookseller, when the latter was taken up for publishing No. 45 of the North Briton. Lord Temple and Lord Sandys objected to the reading letters, till the secretary of state's warrant, by which Kearsley had been arrested, had been produced and shown to be a legal act; but this objection being overruled, the Lords voted the Essay a most scandalous, obscene, and impious libel, and adjourned the farther consideration of the subject, as far as concerned the author, till the Thursday following."-E.
Lord Barrington, in a letter to Sir Andrew Mitchell, gives the following account of Mr. Pitt's speech:--"He spoke with great ability, and the utmost degree of temper: he spoke civilly, and not unfairly, of the ministers; but of the King he said every thing which duty and affection could inspire. The effect of this was a vote for an address, nem. con. I think, if fifty thousand pounds had been given for that speech, it would have been well expended. It secures us a quiet session." See Chatham Correspondence, Vol. ii. p. 262.-E.
(356) Probably Lord George Sackville, so disagreeably celebrated for his conduct at Minden; afterwards a peer, by the title of Lord Sackville, and secretary of state. In the North Briton which was in preparation when Wilkes was taken up, he advised that Lord George should carry the sword before the King at an intended thanksgiving. Of all the persons suspected of being the author of Junius, Lord George Sackville seems the most probable.-C. ["It is peculiarly hostile to the opinion in favour of Lord George, that Junius should roundly have accused him of want of courage." Woodfall's Junius, Vol. i. P. 161.]
(357) Lord Gower had been reputed the head of the Jacobites. Sir C. H. Williams sneeringly calls him "Hanoverian Gower;" and when he accepted office from the house of Brunswick, all the Jacobites in England were mortified and enraged. Dr. Johnson, a steady Tory, was, when compiling his Dictionary, with difficulty persuaded not to add to his explanation of the word deserter--"Sometimes it is called a Go'er."-C. ["Talking," says Boswell, "upon this subject, Dr. Johnson mentioned to me a stronger instance of the predominance of his private feelings in the composition of this work than any now to be found in it: 'You know, Sir, Lord Gower forsook the old Jacobite interest: when I came to the word renegades after telling what it meant, one who deserts to the enemy, a revolter, I added, sometimes we Say a GOWER: thus it went to the press; but the printer had more wit than I, and struck it out.'" Croker's Boswell.]
(358) Churchill the satirist and Wilkes; of whom Mr. Southey, in his Life of Cowper, relates the following anecdote:--"Churchill became Wilkes's coadjutor in the North Briton; and the publishers, when examined before the privy council on the publication of No. 45, having declared that Wilkes gave orders for the printing, and Churchill received the profits from the sale, orders were given for arresting Churchill under the general warrant. He was saved from arrest by Wilkes's presence of mind, who was in custody of the messenger when Churchill entered the room. 'Good morning, Thompson,' said Wilkes to him: 'how does Mrs. Thompson do? Does she dine in the country?' Churchill took the hint as readily as it had been given. He replied, that Mrs. Thompson was waiting for him, and that he only came for a moment, to ask him how he did. Then almost directly he took his leave, hastened home, secured his papers, retired into the Country, and eluded all search."-E.
(359) Mr. Southey states, that "a fortnight had not elapsed before both parties were struck with sincere compunction, and through the intercession of a true friend, at their entreaty, the unhappy penitent was received by her father: it is said she would have proved worthy of this parental forgiveness, if an elder sister had not, by continual taunt,; and reproaches, rendered her life so miserable, that, in absolute despair, she threw herself upon Churchill for protection. Instead of making a just provision forher, which his means would have allowed, he received her as his mistress. If all his other writings were forgotten, the lines in which he expressed his compunction for his conduct would deserve always to be remembered--
"Tis not the babbling of a busy world, Where praise and censure are at random hurl'd, Which can the meanest of my thoughts control, one settled purpose of my soul; Free and at large might their wild curses roam, If all, if all, alas! were well at home. No; 'tis the tale which angry conscience tells, When she, with more than tragic horror, swells Each circumstance of guilt; when stern, but true, She brings bad action.,; full into review, And, like the dread handwriting on the wall, Bids late remorse awake at reason's call; Arm'd at all points, bids scorpion vengeance pass, And to the mind holds up reflection's glass-- The mind, which starting heaves the heartfelt groan, And hates that form she knows to be her own.'"-E.
(360) Her eldest daughter, afterwards Viscountess Fortrose . she died in 1767, at the age of twenty.-E.
(361) Elizabeth Drax, wife of Augustus, fourth Earl Berkeley; she had been lady of the bedchamber to the Princess-dowager.-E.
(362) Hugh Earl, and afterwards Duke of Northumberland, and his lady, Elizabeth Seymour, only surviving child of Algernon Duke of Somerset, and heiress, by her grandmother, of the Percies.-E.
(363) Sir Charles Bunbury, Bart. The reason evidently was, that he remained to vote in the House of Commons.-C.
(364) Lord Boyle, eldest son of the first Earl of Shannon, married, in the following month, Catharine, eldest daughter of the Right Hon. John Ponsonby, Speaker of the Irish House of commons, by Lady Ellen Cavendish, second daughter of the third Duke of Devonshire. Lord Shannon, Mr. Ponsonby, and the Primate, Dr. George Stone, Archbishop of Armagh, were the ruling triumvirate of Ireland. They were four times declared lords justices of that kingdom. Some differences had, however, occurred between these great leaders, which Mr. Walpole insinuates that this marriage was likely to heal.-C.
(365) the benignity of her reception at court is noticed because General Conway's late votes against the ministry might naturally have displeased the King, to whom he was groom of the bedchamber.-C.
180. To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, Nov. 20, 1763. (page 250)
You are in the wrong; believe me you are in the wrong to stay in the country; London never was so entertaining since it had a steeple or a madhouse. Cowards fight duels; secretaries of state turn Methodists on the Tuesday, and are expelled the playhouse for blasphemy on Friday. I am not turned Methodist, but patriot, and what is more extraordinary, am not going to have a place. What is more wonderful still, Lord Hardwicke has made two of his sons resign their employments. I know my letter sounds as enigmatic as Merlin's almanack; but my events have really happened. I had almost persuaded myself like you to quit the world; thank my stars I did not. Why, I have done nothing but laugh since last Sunday; though on Tuesday I was one of a hundred and eleven, who were outvoted by three hundred; no laughing matter generally to a true patriot, whether he thinks his country undone or himself. Nay, I am still: more absurd; even for my dear country's sake I cannot bring myself to connect with Lord Hardwicke, or the Duke of Newcastle, though they are in the minority-an unprecedented case, not to love every body one despises, when they are of the same side. On the contrary, I fear I resembled a fond woman, and dote on the dear betrayer. In short, and to write something that you can understand, you know I have long had a partiality for your cousin Sandwich, who has out-Sandwiched himself. He has impeached Wilkes for a blasphemous poem, and has been expelled for blasphemy himself by the Beefsteak Club at Covent-garden. Wilkes has been shot by Martin, and instead of being burnt at an auto da fe, as the Bishop of Gloucester intended, is reverenced as a saint by the mob, and if he dies, I suppose, the people will squint themselves into convulsions at his tomb, in honour of his memory. Now is not this better than feeding one's birds and one's bantams, poring one's eyes out over old histories, not half so extraordinary as the present, or ambling to Squire Bencow's on one's padnag, and playing at cribbage with one's brother John and one's parson? Prithee come to town, and let us put off taking the veil for another year: besides by this time twelvemonth we are sure the world will be a year older in wickedness, and we shall have more matter for meditation. One would not leave it methinks till it comes to the worst, and that time cannot be many months off. In the mean time, I have bespoken a dagger, in case the circumstances should grow so classic as to make it becoming to kill oneself; however, though disposed to quit the world, as I have no mind to leave it entirely, I shall put off my death to the last minute, and do nothing rashly, till I see Mr. Pitt and Lord Temple place themselves in their curule chairs in St. James's-market, and resign their throats to the victors. I am determined to see them dead first, lest they should play me a trick, and be hobbling to Buckingham-house, while I am shivering and waiting for them on the banks of Lethe. Adieu! Yours, Horatius.
181. To The Earl Of Hertford. Arlington Street, Nov. 25, 1763. (page 251)
You tell me, my dear lord, in a letter I have this moment received from you, that you have had a comfortable one from me; I fear it was not the last: you will not have been fond of your brother's voting against the court. Since that, he has been told by different channels that they think of taking away regiments from opposers. He heard it, as he would the wind whistle: while in the shape of a threat, he treats it with contempt; if put into execution his scorn would subside into indifference. You know he has but one object--doing what is right; the rest may betide as it will. One or two of the ministers,(366) who are honest men, would, I have reason to believe, be heartily concerned to have such measures adopted; but they are not directors. The little favour they possess, and the desperateness of their situation oblige them to swallow many things they disapprove, and which ruin their character with the nation; while others, who have no character to lose, and whose situation is no less desperate, care not what inconveniences they bring on their master, nor what confusion on their country, in which they can never prosper, except when it is convulsed. The nation, indeed, seems thoroughly sensible of this truth. They are unpopular beyond conception: even of those that vote with them there are numbers that express their aversion without reserve. Indeed, on Wednesday, the 23d, this went farther: we were to debate the great point of privilege: Wilbraham(367) objected, that Wilkes was involved in it, and ought to be present. On this, though, as you see, a question of slight moment, fifty-seven left them at once: they were but 243 to 166.(368) As we had sat, however, till eight at night, the debate was postponed to next day. Mr. Pitt, who had a fever and the gout, came on crutches, and wrapped in flannels: so he did yesterday, but was obliged to retire at ten at night, after making a speech of an hour and fifty minutes; the worst, I think, I ever heard him make in my life. For our parts, we sat till within ten minutes of two in the morning: yet we had but few speeches, all were so long. Hussey,(369) solicitor to the Princess of Wales, was against the court, and spoke with great spirit, and true Whig spirit. Charles Yorke(370) shone exceedingly. He had spoke and voted with us the night before; but now maintained his opinion against Pratt's.(371) It was a most able and learned performance, and the latter part, which was oratoric, uncommonly beautiful and eloquent. You find I don't let partiality to the Whig cause blind my judgment. That speech was certainly the masterpiece of the day. Norton would not have made a figure, even if Charles Yorke had not appeared; but giving way to his natural brutality, he got into an ugly scrape. Having so little delicacy or decency as to mention a cause in which he had prosecuted Sir John Rushout(372) (Who sat just under him) for perjury, the tough old knight (who had been honourably acquitted of the charge) gave the House an account of the affair; and then added, "I was assured the prosecution was set on foot by that Honest gentleman; I hope I don't Call him out of his name--and that it was in revenge for my having opposed him in an election." Norton denied the charge upon his honour, which did not seem to persuade every body. Immediately after this we had another episode. Rigby,(373) totally unprovoked either by any thing said or by the complexion of the day, which was grave and argumentative, fell Upon Lord Temple, and described his behaviour on the commitment of Wilkes. James Grenville,(374) who sat beside him, rose in all the acrimony of resentment: drew a very favourable picture of his brother, and then one of Rigby, conjuring up the bitterest words, epithet, and circumstances that he could amass together: told him how interested he was, and how ignorant: painted his Journey to Ireland to get a law-place, for which he was so unqualified; and concluded with affirming he had fled from thence to avoid the vengeance of the people. The passive Speaker suffered both painters to finish their words, and would have let them carry their colours and brushes into Hyde-park the next morning, if other people had not represented the necessity of demanding their paroles that it should go no farther. They were both unwilling to rise: Rigby did at last, and put an end to it with humour(375) and good-humour. The numbers were 258 to 133. The best speech of all those that were not spoken was Charles Townshend's.(376) He has for some time been informing the world that for the last three months he had constantly employed six clerks to search and transcribe records, journals, precedents, etc. The production of all this mountain of matter was a mouse, and that mouse stillborn: he has voted with us but never uttered a word.
We shall now repose for some time; at least I am sure I shall. It has been hard service; and nothing but a Whig point of this magnitude could easily have carried me to the House at all, of which I have so long been sick. Wilkes will live, but is not likely to be in a situation to come forth for some time. The blasphemous book has fallen ten times heavier on Sandwich's own head than on Wilkes's: it has brought forth such a catalogue of anecdotes as is incredible! Lord Hardwicke fluctuates between life and death. Lord Effingham is dead suddenly, and Lord Cantelupe(377) has got his troop.
These are all our news; I am glad yours go on so smoothly. I take care to do you justice at M. de Guerchy's for all the justice you do to France, and particularly to the house of Nivernois. D'Eon(378) is here still: I know nothing more of him but that the honour of having a hand in the peace overset his poor brain. This was evident on the fatal night(379) at Lord Halifax's: when they told him his behaviour was a breach of the peace, he was quite distracted, thinking it was the peace between his country and this.
Our operas begin to-morrow. The Duchess of Grafton is come for a fortnight only. My compliments to the ambassadress, and all your court.
(366) There is reason to think that at this moment Mr. Grenville and Lord Halifax were those to whom Mr. Walpole gave credit for honest intentions and a disposition to moderate and conciliate. This opinion, though probably correct, Walpole soon changed, as to Mr. Grenville.-C.
(367) Randle Wilbraham, LL.D. a barrister, deputy steward of the University of Oxford, and member for Newton, in Lancashire.-E.
(368) The question was, "That Privilege of Parliament does not extend to the case of writing and publishing seditious libels, nor ought to be allowed to obstruct the ordinary course of the laws in the speedy and effectual prosecution of so heinous and dangerous an offence."-C.
(369) Richard Hussey, member for St. Mawes. He was counsel to the navy, as well as solicitor to the Queen, not, as Mr. Walpole says, to the Princess. He was afterwards her majesty's attorney-general.-C.
(370) Charles Yorke, second son of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. He had been attorney-general, but resigned on the 31st of October. He agreed with the ministry on the question of privilege, but differed from them on general warrants. This last difference may have accelerated his resignation; but the event itself had been determined on, ever since the failure of a negotiation which took place towards the end of the preceding August, through Mr. Pitt and Lord Hardwicke, to form a new administration on a Whig basis.-C.
(371) Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, afterwards Lord Camden. He had discharged Wilkes out of confinement on the ground of privilege.-E.
(372) Sir John Rushout, of Northwick, the fourth baronet. He had sat in ten Parliaments; in the three first for Malmsbury, and in the rest for Evesham. He had been a violent politician in Sir Robert Walpole's administration. See vol. i. p. 222, letter 53.-E.
(373) The Right Hon. Richard Rigby, master of the rolls in Ireland, afterwards paymaster of the forces; a statesman of the second class, and a bon vivant of the first. Mr. Rigby was at one time a chief friend and favourite of Mr. Walpole's, but became involved in Mr. Walpole's dislike to the Duke of Bedford, to whom Mr. Rigby was sincerely and constantly attached, and over whom he was supposed to have great influence.-C.
(374) Fourth brother of Lord Temple and Mr. George Grenville; father of Lord Glastonbury.-E.
(375) Lady Suffolk, in a letter to the Earl of Buckingham, of the 29th of November, says, "Jemmy Grenville and Mr. Rigby were so violent against each other, one in his manner of treating Lord Temple, who was in the House, and the brother in his justification of his brother, that the House was obliged to interfere to prevent mischief. Lord Temple comes to me; but politics is the bane of friendship, and when personal resentments join, the man becomes another creature."-E.
(376) As Mr. Walpole seems to impute Mr. Charles Townshend's silence on the question of privilege to fickleness, or some worse cause, it is but just to state that he never quite approved that question. This will be seen from the following extract from some of his confidential letters to Dr. Brocklesby, written two months before Parliament met:--"You know I never approved of No. 45, or engaged in any of the consequential measures. As to the question of privilege, it is an intricate matter; The authorities are contradictory, and the distinctions to be reasonably made on the precedents are plausible and endless." Mr. Townshend gave a good deal of further consideration to the subject, and his silence in the debate only proves that his first impressions were confirmed. Mr. Burke's beautiful, but, perhaps, too favourable character of Charles Townshend will immortalize the writer and the subject.-C.
(377) John, afterwards second Earl of Delawarr, vice-chamberlain to the Queen.-E.
(378) This singular person had been secretary to the Duke de Nivernois's embassy, and in the interval between that ambassador's departure and the arrival of M. de Guerchy, the French mission to our court devolved upon him. This honour, as Mr. Walpole intimates, seems to have turned his head, and he was so absurdly exasperated at being superseded by M. de Guerchy, that he refused to deliver his letters of recall, set his court at defiance, and published a volume of libels on M. de Guerchy and the French ministers. As he persisted in withholding the letters of recall, the two courts were obliged to notify in the London Gazette that his mission was at an end; and the French government desired that he be given up to them. This, of course, could not be done: but he was proceeded against by criminal information, and finally convicted of the libels against M. de Guerchy. D'Eon asserted, that the French ministry had a design to carry him off privately; and it has been said that he was apprised of this scheme by Louis XV. who, it seems, had entertained some kind of secret and extra- official communication with this adventurer. He afterwards continued in obscurity until 1777, when the public was astonished by the trial of an action before Lord Mansfield, for money lost on a wager respecting his sex. On that trial it seemed proved beyond all doubt, that the person was a female. Proceedings in the Parliament of Paris had a similar result, and the soldier and the minister was condemned to wear woman's attire, which d'Eon did for many years. He emigrated at the revolution, and died in London in May, 1810. On examination, after death, the body proved to be that of a male. This circumstance, attested by the most respectable authorities, is so strongly it variance with all the former evidence, that the French biographers have been induced to doubt whether the original Chevalier D'Eon and the person who died in 1810 were the same, and they even endeavour to show that the real person, the Chevali`ere, as they term it, died in 1790; but we cannot admit this solution of the difficulty, for one, at least, of the surgeons who examined the body in 1810, had known D'Eon in his habiliments, and he had for ten years lived unquestioned under the name of D'Eon.-C.
(379) On the 26th of October, D'Eon, meeting M. de Guerchy and a M. de Vergy at Lord Halifax's, in Great George-street, burst out into such violence on some observation made by De Vergy, that it became necessary to call in the guard. His whole behaviour in this affair looks like insanity.-C.
182. To The Earl Of Hertford. Arlington Street, Dec. 2, 1763. (page 254)
I have been expecting a letter all day, as Friday is the day I have generally received a letter from you, but it is not yet arrived and I begin mine without it. M. de Guerchy has given us a prosperous account of my Lady Hertford's audience still I am impatient to hear it from yourselves. I want to know, too, what you say to your brother's being in the minority. I have already told you that unless they use him ill, I do not think him likely to take any warm part. With regard to dismission of officers, I hear no more of it: such a violent step would but spread the flames. which are already fierce enough. I will give you an instance: last' Saturday, Lord Cornwallis(380) and Lord Allen,(381) came drunk to the Opera: the former went up to Rigby in the pit, and told him in direct words that Lord Sandwich was a pickpocket. Then Lord Allen, with looks and gestures no less expressive, advanced close to him, and repeating this again in the passage, would have provoked a quarrel, if George West(382) had not carried him away by force. Lord (Cornwallis, the next morning in Hyde-park, made an apology to Rigby for his behaviour, but the rest of the world is not so complaisant. His pride, insolence, and over-bearingness, have made him so many enemies, that they are glad to tear him to pieces for his attack on Lord Temple, so unprovoked, and so poorly performed. It was well that with his spirit and warmth he had the sense not to resent the behaviour of those two drunken young fellows.
On Tuesday your Lordship's House sat till ten at night, on the resolutions we had communicated to you; and you agreed to them by 114 to 35: a puny minority indeed, considering of what great names it was composed! Even the Duke of Cumberland voted in it; but Mr. Yorke's speech in our House, and Lord Mansfield's in yours, for two hours, carried away many of the opposition, particularly Lord Lyttelton, and the greater part of the Duke of Newcastle's Bishops.(383) The Duke of Grafton is much commended. The Duke of Portland commenced, but was too much frightened. There was no warmth nor event; but Lord Shelburne, who they say spoke well, and against the court, and as his friends had voted in our House, has produced one, the great Mr. Calcraft(384) being turned out yesterday, from some muster-mastership; I don't know what. Lord Sandwich is canvassing to succeed Lord Hardwicke, as High Steward of Cambridge; another egg of animosity. We shall, however, I believe, be tolerably quiet till after Christmas, as Mr. Wilkes Will not be able to act before the holidays. I rejoice at it: I am heartily sick of all this folly, and shall be glad to get to Strawberry again, and hear nothing of it. The ministry have bought off Lord Clive(385) with a bribe that would frighten the King of France himself: they have given him back his 25,000 a year. Walsh(386) has behaved nobly: he said he could not in conscience vote with the administration, and would not Vote against Lord Clive, who chose him: he has therefore offered to resign his seat. Lady Augusta's(387) fortune was to be voted to-day and Lord Strange talked of opposing it; but I had not the curiosity to go down. This is all our politics, and indeed all our news; we have none of any other kind. So far you will not regret England. For my part, I wish myself with you. Being perfectly indifferent who is minister and Who is not, and weary of laughing(388) at both, I shall take hold of the first spring to make you my visit.
Our operas do not succeed. Girardini, now become minister and having no exchequer to buy an audience, is grown unpopular. The Mingotti, whom he has forced upon the town, is as much disliked as if he had insisted on her being first lord of the treasury. The first man, though with sweet notes, has so weak a voice that he might as well hold his tongue like Charles Townshend. The figurantes are very pretty, but can dance no more than Tommy Pelham.(389) The first man dancer is handsome, well made, and strong enough to make his fortune any where: but you know, fortunes made in private are seldom agreeable to the public.(390) In short, it will not do; there was not a soul in the pit the second night.
Lady Mary Coke has received her gown by the Prince de Masseran, and is exceedingly obliged to you, though much disappointed; this being a slight gown made up, and not the one she expected, which is a fine one bought for her by Lady Holland,(391) and which you must send somehow or other: if you cannot, you must despatch an ambassador on purpose. I dined with the Prince de Masseran, at Guerchy's, the day after his arrival; and if faces speak truth, he will not be our ruin. Oh! but there is a ten times more delightful man--the Austrian minister:(392) he is so stiff and upright, that you would think all his mistress's diadems were upon his head, and that he was afraid of their dropping off.
I know so little of Irish politics, that I am afraid of misinforming you: but I hear that Hamilton, who has come off with honour in a squabble with Lord Newton,(393) about the latter's wife, speaks and votes with the opposition against the Castle.(394) I don't know the meaning of it, nor, except it had been to tell you, should I have remembered it.
Well! your letter will not come, and I must send away mine. Remember, the holidays are coming, and that I shall be a good deal out of town. I have been charming hitherto, but I cannot make brick without straw. Encore, you are almost the only person I ever write a line to. I grow so old and so indolent that I hate the sight of a pen and ink.
(380) Charles, first Marquis of Cornwallis: born in 1738, succeeded his father, the first Earl, in 1762, and died in India in 1805.-E.
(381) Joshua, fifth Viscount Allen, of Ireland, born in 1738.-E.
(382) George, second son of the first Earl of Delawarr.-E.
(383) Bishops made during the Duke of Newcastle's administration, and who were therefore supposed likely to be of his opinion. The Duke of Newcastle after being nearly half a century in office, was now in opposition.-C.
(384) John Calcraft, Esq. was deputy commissary-general of musters: he was particularly attached to Mr. Fox; which is, perhaps, one reason why Mr. Walpole, who had now quarrelled with Mr. Fox, speaks so slightingly of Mr. Calcraft.-C.
(385) Robert Clive, who, for his extraordinary services and success in India, was, at the age of thirty-five, created an Irish peer. It was of him that Mr. Pitt said, that he was "a heaven-born general, who without any experience in military affairs, had surpassed all the officers of his time." The wealth which this great man accumulated in India was, during his whole subsequent life, a subject of popular jealousy and party attack.-C.
(386) John Walsh, Esq. member for Worcester.-E.
(387) Princess Augusta, eldest sister of George III.; married in January 1764 to the Duke of Brunswick, killed at Jena, in 1806. Her Royal Highness died in London in 1810.-E.
(388) Mr. Walpole affected indifference to politics, but the tone of his correspondence does not quite justify the expression of laughing at either party; he was warmly interested in the one, and bitterly hostile to the other, and for a considerable period took a deep and active interest in political party.-C.
(389) Thomas Pelham, member for Sussex, afterwards comptroller of the household, and first Earl of Chichester.-E.
(390) The reader will observe, in this description of the Opera, an amusing allusion to public affairs; the last sentence refers, no doubt, to Lord Bute.-C.
(391) Lady Georgina Caroline Lenox, eldest daughter of Charles, second Duke of Richmond. She had been, in 1762, created Baroness Holland in her own right.-C.
(392) Probably the Count de Seleirn, minister from the Empress-Queen, Maria Theresa.
(393) Brinsley Lord Newton, afterwards second Earl of Lanesborough, married Lady Jane Rochfort, eldest daughter of the first Earl of Belvidere. In the affair here alluded to Lord Newton exhibited at first an extreme jealousy, and subsequently what was thought an extreme facility in admitting Mr. hamilton's exculpatory assurances.-C.
(394) This is not quite true; but Mr. Hamilton was on very bad terms with the Lord Lieutenant, and certainly did not take that prominent part in the House of Commons of Ireland which his station as chief secretary seemed to require,.-C.
183. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Arlington Street, Dec. 6, 1763. (page 256)
Dear sir, According to custom I am excessively obliged to you: you are continually giving me proofs of your kindness. I have now three packets to thank you for, full of information, and have only lamented the trouble you have given yourself.
I am glad for the tomb's sake and my own, that Sir Giles Allington's monument is restored. The draught you have sent is very perfect. The account of your ancestor Tuer(395) shall not be forgotten in my next edition. The pedigree of Allington I had from Collins before his death, but I think not as perfect as yours. You have made one little slip in it: my mother was granddaughter, not daughter of Sir John Shorter, and was not heiress, having three brothers, who all died after her, and we only quarter the arms of Shorter, which I fancy occasioned the mistake, by their leaving no children. The verses by Sir Edward Walpole, and the translation by Bland, are published in my description of Houghton.
I am come late from the House of Lords, and am just going to the Opera; so you will excuse me saying more than that I have a print of Archbishop Hutton for you (it @is Dr. Ducarel's), and a little plate of Strawberry; but I do not send them by the post, as it would crease them: if you will tell me how to convey them otherwise, I will. I repeat many thanks to you.
(395) Herbert Tuer, the painter. After the death of Charles 1. he withdrew into Holland, and it is believed that he died at Utrecht.-E.
184. To The Earl Of Hertford. Friday, Dec. 9, 1763. (page 257)
Your brother has sent you such a full account of his transaction with Mr. Grenville(396) that it is not necessary for me to add a syllable, except, what your brother will not have said himself, that he has acted as usual with the strictest honour and firmness, and has turned this negotiation entirely to his own credit. He has learned the ill wishes of his enemies, and what is more, knows who they are: he has laughed at them, and found at last that their malice was much bigger than their power. Mr. Grenville, as you would wish, has proved how much he disliked the violence of his associates, as I trust he will, whenever he has an opportunity, and has at last contented himself with so little or nothing, that I am sure you will feel yourself obliged to him. For the measure itself, of turning out the officers in general who oppose, it has been much pressed, and what is still sillier, openly threatened by one set; but they dare not do it, and having notified it without effect, are ridiculed by the whole town, as well as by the persons threatened, particularly by Lord Albermarle, who has treated their menaces with the utmost contempt and spirit. This mighty storm, like another I shall tell you of, has vented itself on Lord Shelburne and Colonel Barr`e,(397) who were yesterday turned out; the first from aide-de-camp to the King, the latter from adjutant-general and governor of Stirling. Campbell,(398) to Whom it was promised before, has got the last; Ned Harvey,(399) the former. My present expectation is an oration from Barr`e(400 in honour of Mr. Pitt; for those are scenes that make the world so entertaining. After that, I shall demand a satire on Mr. Pitt, from Mr. Wilkes; and I do not believe I shall be balked, for Wilkes has already expressed his resentment on being given up by Pitt, who, says Wilkes, ought to be expelled for an impostor.(401) I do not know whether the Duke of Newcastle does not expect a palinodia from me(402) T'other morning at the Duke's lev`ee he embraced me, and hoped I would come and eat a bit of Sussex mutton With him. I had such difficulty to avoid laughing in his face that I got from him as fast as I could. Do you think me very likely to forget that I have been laughing at him these twenty years?
Well! but we have had a prodigious riot: are not you impatient to know the particulars? It was so prodigious a tumult, that I verily thought half the administration would have run away to Harrowgate. The north Briton was ordered to be burned by the hangman at Cheapside, on Saturday last. The mob rose; the greatest mob, says Mr. Sheriff Blunt, that he has known in forty years. They were armed with that most bloody instrument, the mud out of the kennels: they hissed in the most murderous manner: broke Mr. Sheriff Harley's coach-glass in the most frangent manner; scratched his forehead, so that he is forced to wear a little patch in the most becoming manner; and obliged the hangman to burn the paper with a link, though fagots were prepared to execute it in a more solemn manner. Numbers of gentlemen, from windows and balconies, encouraged the mob, who, in about an hour and a half, were so undutiful to the ministry, as to retire without doing any mischief, or giving Mr. Carteret Webb(403) the opportunity of a single information, except against an ignorant lad, who had been in town but ten days.
This terrible uproar has employed us four days. The sheriffs were called before your House on Monday, and made their narrative. My brother Cholmondeley,(404) in the most pathetic manner, and suitably to the occasion, recommended it to your lordships, to search for precedents of what he believed never happened since the world began. Lord Egmont,(405) who knows of a plot, which he keeps to himself, though It has been carrying on these twenty years, thought more vigorous measures ought to be taken on such a crisis, and moved to summon the mistress of the Union Coffee-house. The Duke of Bedford thought all this but piddling, and at once attacked Lord Mayor, common council, and charter of the city, whom, if he had been supported, I believe he would have ordered to be all burned by the hangman next Saturday. Unfortunately for such national justice, Lord Mansfield, who delights in every opportunity of exposing and mortifying the Duke of Bedford, and Sandwich, interposed for the magistracy of London, and after much squabbling, saved them from immediate execution. The Duke of Grafton, with infinite shrewdness and coolness, drew from the witnesses that the whole mob was of one mind; and the day ended in a vote of general censure on the rioters. This was communicated to us at a conference, and yesterday we acted the same farce; when Rigby trying to revive the imputation on the Lord Mayor, etc. (who, by the by, did sit most tranquilly at Guildhall during the whole tumult) the ministry disavowed and abandoned him to a man, vindicating the magistracy, and plainly discovering their own fear and awe of the city, who feel the insult, and will from hence feel their own strength. In short, to finish this foolish story, I never saw a transaction in which appeared so little parts, abilities, or conduct; nor do I think there can be any thing weaker than the administration except it is the opposition: but an opposition, bedrid and tonguetied, is a most ridiculous body. Mr. Pitt is laid up with the gout; Lord Hardwicke, though much relieved by a quack medicine, is still very ill; and Mr. Charles Townshend is as silent as my Lord Abercorn(406--that they too should ever be alike!
This is not all our political news; Wilkes is an inexhaustible fund: on Monday was heard, in the common Pleas, his suit against Mr. Wood,(407) when, after a trial of fourteen hours, the jury gave him damages of one thousand pounds; but this was not the heaviest part of the blow. The Solicitor-general(408) tried to prove Wilkes author of the North Briton, and failed in the proof. You may judge how much this miscarriage adds to the defeat. Wilkes is not yet out of danger: they think there is still a piece of coat or lining to come Out of the wound. The campaign is over for the present, and the troops going into country quarters. In the mean time, the house of Hamilton has supplied us with new matter of talk. My lord was robbed about three o'clock in the night between Saturday and Sunday, of money, bills, watches, and snuff-boxes, to the amount of three thousand pounds. Nothing is yet discovered, but that the guard in the stable yard saw a man in a great coat and white stockings come from thereabouts, at the time I have named. The servants have all been examined over and over to no purpose. Fielding(409) is all day in the house, and a guard of his at night. The bureau in my lord's dressing-room (the little red room where the pictures are) was forced open. I fear you can guess who was at first suspected.(410)
I have received yours, my dear lord, of Nov. 30th, and am pleased that my Lady Hertford is so well reconciled to her ministry. You forgot to give me an account of her audience, but I have heard of the Queen's good-natured attention to her.
The anecdotes about Lord Sandwich are numerous; but I do not repeat them to you, because I know nothing how true they are, and because he has, in several instances, been very obliging to me, and I have no reason to abuse him. Lord Hardwicke's illness, I think, is a rupture and consequences.
I hope to hear that your little boy is recovered. Adieu! I have filled my gazette, and exhausted my memory. I am glad such gazettes please you - I can have no other excuse for sending such tittle-tattle.
(396) This transaction was an endeavour on the part of Mr. Grenville to obtain from General Conway a declaration that "his disposition was not averse from a general support of the persons and measures of those now employed," and permission " to say so much when he might have occasion to speak to him." This declaration General Conway declined to give, although Mr. Grenville seemed to ask it only to enable him to save Conway from dismissal on account of his late vote. There is reason to believe that at this conference (at which the Duke of Richmond was present, as Conway's friend) some overtures of a more intimate connexion with the administration were made; but Conway declared his determination to adhere to the politics of his friends, the Dukes of Devonshire and Grafton. "At least," he said, "if he should hereafter happen to differ from them, he should so steer his conduct as not to be, in any way of office or emolument, the better for it."-C.
(397) Isaac Barr`e was a native of Ireland, and born in 1726: he entered the army early in life, and rose, gradually to the rank of colonel. He was in 1763 made adjutant-general and the governor of Stirling Castle, but was turned out on this occasion, and even resigned his half-pay. He continued to make a considerable figure in the House of Commons: in 1782 he became a privy-councillor and treasurer of the navy, which latter office he soon exchanged for paymaster of the forces; but on the change of government he retired on a pension of 3200 pounds, which his political friends had previously secured for him. From this time his sight failed him, and he was quite blind for many years previous to his death, which took place in 1802.-C.
(398) Captain James, afterwards Sir James Campbell, of Ardkinglass: a captain in the army, and member for the county of Stirling.-E.
(399) Major-General Edward Harvey, lieutenant-general in 1772.-E.
(400) Colonel Barr`e, previous to his dismissal, had distinguished himself by an attack on Mr. Pitt, which is not reported in the Parliamentary Debates.-C. [In the Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 171, will be found the following passage, in a letter from Mr. Symmers to Sir Andrew Mitchell, dated January 29, 1762:--"Would you know a little of the humour of Parliament, and particularly with regard to Mr. Pitt?' I must tell you that Colonel Barr`e, a soldier of fortune, a young man born in Dublin, of a mean condition, his father and mother from France, and established in a little grocer's shop by the patronage of the Bishop of Clogher; a child of whom the mother nursed; this young man (a man of address and parts), found out, pushed, and brought into Parliament by Lord Shelburne, had not sat two days in the House of Commons before he attacked Mr. Pitt. I shall give you a specimen of his philippics. Talking in the manner of Mr. Pitt's speaking, he said, 'There he would stand, turning up his eyes to heaven, that witnessed his perjuries, and laying his hand in a solemn manner upon the table, that sacrilegious hand, that hand that had been employed in tearing out the bowels of his mother country!' Would you think that Mr. Pitt would bear this and be silent; or would you think that the House would suffer a respectable member to be so treated? Yet so it Was."]
(401) In the House of Commons, a few days before, Mr. Pitt had condemned the whole series of North Britons, and called them illiberal, unmanly, and detestable: "he abhorred," he said, "all national reflections: the King's subjects were one people; whoever divided them was guilty of sedition: his Majesty's complaint was well-founded; it was just; it was necessary: the author did not deserve to be ranked among the human species; he was the blasphemer of his God and the libeller of the King."-E.
(402) This improbable event a few weeks brought about. We shall see that Mr. Walpole did sing his Palinodia, and went down to Claremont to eat a bit of mutton with the man in the world whom (as all his writings, but especially his lately published Memoires, show) he had most heartily hated and despised.-C.
(403) Philip Carteret Webb, Esq. solicitor to the treasury and member for Haslemere.-E.
(404) George third Earl of Cholmondeley; born in 1703: married Mr. Walpole's only legitimate sister, who died at Aix in 1731; and as all Sir Robert Walpole's sons died without issue, Lord Cholmondeley's family succeeded to Houghton, and the rest of the Walpole property, as heirs-at-law of Sir Robert.-C.
(405) John, second Earl of Egmont, at this time first lord of the admiralty. Lord Egmont had been in the House of Commons what Coxe calls "a fluent and plausible debater;" but he had some peculiarities of mind, to which Walpole here and elsewhere alludes.-C.
(406) James, eighth Earl of Abercorn, "a nobleman," says his panegyrist, "whose character was but little known, or rather but little understood; but who possessed singular vigour of mind, integrity of conduct, and patriotic views." Mr. Walpole elsewhere laughs at his lordship's dignified aversion to throwing away his words.-C.
(407) An action brought by Wilkes against Robert Wood, Esq. late under-secretary of State for seizing Wilkes's papers, etc. It was tried before Chief Justice Pratt, and under his direction the jury found for the plaintiff.-C.
(408) Sir Fletcher Norton was not made attorney-general till after this trial.-E.
(409) Mr. John Fielding, chief police magistrate.-E.
(410) The robbery was committed by one Bradley, a discharged footman, and one John Wisket. The former was admitted a witness for the crown, and the latter was hanged on his evidence, in Dec. 1764.-C.
185. To The Earl Of Hertford. Arlington Street, Dec. 16, 1763. (page 261)
On the very day I wrote to you last, my dear lord, an extraordinary event happened, which I did not then know. A motion was made in the common council, to thank the sheriffs for their behaviour at the riot, and to prosecute the man who was apprehended for it. This was opposed, and the previous question being put, the numbers were equal; but the casting vote of the Lord Mayor(411) was given against putting the first question--pretty strong proceeding; for though, in consequence and in resentment of the Duke of Bedford's speech, it seemed to justify his grace, who had accused the mayor and magistracy of not trying to suppress the tumult; if they will not prosecute the rioters, it is not very unfair to surmise that they did not dislike the riot. Indeed, the city is so inflamed, and the ministry so obnoxious, that I am very apprehensive of some violent commotion. The court have lost the Essex election(412) merely from Lord Sandwich interfering in it, and from the Duke of Bedford's speech; a great number of votes going from the city on that account to vote for Luther. Sir John Griffin,(413) who was disobliged by Sandwich's espousing Conyers, went to Chelmsford, at the head of five hundred voters.
One of the latest acts of the ministry will not please my Lady Hertford: they have turned out her brother, Colonel Fitzroy:(414 Fitzherbert,(415) too, is removed; and, they say, Sir Joseph Yorke recalled.(416) I must do Lord Halifax and Mr. Grenville the justice to say that these violences are not imputed to them. It is certain that the former was the warmest opposer of the measure for breaking the officers; and Mr. Grenville's friends take every opportunity of throwing the blame on the Duke of Bedford and Lord Sandwich. The Duchess of Bedford, who is too fond a Wife not to partake in all her husband's fortunes, has contributed her portion of indiscretion. At a great dinner, lately, at Lord Halifax's, all the servants present, mention being made of the Archbishop of Canterbury,(417) M. de Guerchy asked the Duchess, "Est-il de famille?" She replied, "Oh! mon Dieu, non, il a `et`e sage-femme." The mistake of sage-femme for accoucheur, and the strangeness of the proposition, confounded Guerchy so much, that it was necessary to explain it: but think of a minister's wife telling a foreigner, and a Catholic, that the primate of her own church had been bred a man-midwife!
The day after my last, another verdict was given in the common Pleas, of four hundred pounds to the printers; and another episode happened, relating to Wilkes; one Dunn, a mad Scotchman, was seized in Wilkes's house, whither he had gone intending to assassinate him. This was complained of in the House of Commons, but the man's phrensy was verified; it was even proved that he had notified his design in a coffee-house, some days before. The mob, however, who are determined that Lord Sandwich shall answer for every body's faults, as well as his own, believe that he employed Dunn. I wish the recess, which begins next Monday, may cool matters a little, for indeed it grows very serious.
Nothing is discovered of Lord Harrington's robbery, nor do I know any other news, but that George West(418) is to marry lady Mary Grey. The Hereditary Prince's wound is broken out again, and will defer his arrival. We have had a new comedy,(419) written by Mrs. Sheridan, and admirably acted; but there was no wit in it, and it was so vulgar that it ran but three nights.
Poor Lady Hervey desires you will tell Mr. Hume how incapable she is of answering his letter. She has been terribly afflicted for these six weeks with a complication of gout, rheumatism, and a nervous complaint. She cannot lie down in her bed, nor rest two minutes in her chair. I never saw such continued suffering.
You say in your last, of the 7th, that you have omitted to invite no Englishman of rank or name. This gives me an opportunity, my dear lord, of mentioning one Englishman, not of great rank, but who is very unhappy that you have taken no notice of him. You know how utterly averse I am to meddle, or give impertinent advice; but the letter I saw was expressed with so much respect and esteem for you, that you would love the person. It is Mr. Selwyn, the banker. He says, he expected no favour; but the great regard he has for the amiableness of your character, makes him miserable at being totally undistinguished by you. He has so good a character himself and is so much beloved by many persons here that you know, that I think you will not dislike my putting you in mind of him. The letter was not to me, nor to any friend of mine; therefore, I am sure, unaffected. I saw the whole letter, and he did not even hint at its being communicated to me.
I have not mentioned Lady Holdernesse's presentation, though I by no means approve it, nor a Dutch woman's lowering the peerage of England. Nothing of that sort could make me more angry, except a commoner's wife taking such a step; for you know I have all the pride of A citizen of Rome, while Rome survives: In that respect my name is thoroughly Horatius.
(411) William Bridgen, Esq.-E.
(412) John Luther, Esq. was returned for Essex, on the popular interest, after a severe and most expensive contest.-C.
(413) Sir john Griffin Griffin, K. B., major-general and colonel of the 33d regiment; member for Andover. He established, in 1784, a claim to the barony of Howard de Walden, and was created, in 1788, Baron Braybrook, with remainder to A. A. Neville, Esq. He died in 1797.-C.
(414) Colonel Charles Fitzroy, member for Bury, afterwards Lord Southampton. It seems strange that Mr. Walpole should be mistaken in such a point; but Colonel Fitzroy was not Lady Hertford's brother, but her brother's son.-C.
(415) William Fitzherbert, Esq. member for Derby: a lord of trade.-C.
(416) the rumour mentioned in the text was unfounded, Sir Joseph continued at the Hague till 1783.-C.
(417) Archbishop Secker. The Grounds for this strange story (which Walpole was fond of repeating) was, that the Archbishop had, in early youth, been intended for the medical profession, and had attended some hospitals.-C.
(418) Mr. West married, in February 1764, Lady Mary Grey, daughter of the Earl of Stamford: he died without issue, in 1776.-E.
(419) "The Dupe," by Mrs. Sheridan, mother of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The Biographia Dramatica says it was condemned, "on account of a few passages, which the audience thought two indelicate."-E.
186. To The Earl Of Hertford. Arlington Street, Dec. 29, 1763. (page 263)
You are sensible, my dear lord, that any amusement from my letters must depend upon times and seasons. We are a very absurd nation (though the French are so good at present as to think us a very wise one, only because they themselves, are now a very weak one); but then that absurdity depends upon the almanac. Posterity, who will know nothing of our intervals, wilt conclude that this age was a succession of events. I could tell them that we know as well when an event, as when Easter will happen. Do but recollect these last ten years. The beginning of October, one is certain that every body will be at Newmarket, and the Duke of Cumberland will lose', and Shafto(420) win, two or three thousand pounds. After that, while people are preparing to come to town for the winter, the ministry is suddenly changed, and all the world comes to learn how it happened, a fortnight sooner than they intended; and fully persuaded that the new arrangement cannot last a month. The Parliament opens; every body is bribed; and the new establishment is perceived to be composed of adamant. November passes, with two or three self-murders, and a new play. Christmas arrives; every body goes out of town; and a riot happens in one of the theatres. The Parliament meets again; taxes are warmly opposed; and some citizen makes a fortune by a subscription.(421) The opposition languishes; balls and assemblies begin; some master and miss begin to get together, are talked of, and give occasion to forty more matches being invented; an unexpected debate starts up at the end of the session, that makes more noise than any thing that was designed to make a noise, and subsides again in a new peerage or two. Ranelagh opens and Vauxhall; one produces scandal, and t'other a drunken quarrel. People separate, some to Tunbridge, and some to all the horseraces in England; and so the year comes again to October. I dare to prophesy, that if you keep this letter, YOU Will find that my future correspondence will be but an illustration of this text; at least, it is an excuse for my having very little to tell you at present, and was the reason of My not writing to you last week.
Before the Parliament adjourned, there was nothing but a trifling debate in an empty House, occasioned by a motion from the ministry, to order another physician and surgeon to attend Wilkes; it was carried by about seventy to thirty, and was only memorable by producing Mr. Charles Townshend, who having sat silent through the question of privilege, found himself interested in the defence of Dr. Brocklesby!(422) Charles ridiculed Lord North extremely, and had warm words with George Grenville. I do not look upon this as productive of consequential speaking for the opposition; on the contrary, I should expect him sooner in place, if the ministry could be fools enough to restore weight to him and could be ignorant that he can never hurt them so much as by being with them. Wilkes refused to see Heberden and Hawkins, whom the House commissioned to visit him; and to laugh at us more, sent for two Scotchmen, Duncan and Middleton. Well! but since that, he is gone off himself: however, as I (lid in D'Eon's case, I can now only ask news of him from you, and not tell you any; for You have got him. I do not believe you will invite him, and make so much of him, as the Duke of Bedford did. Both sides pretend joy at his being gone; and for once I can believe both. You will be diverted, as I was, at the cordial esteem the ministers have for one another; Lord Waldegrave(423) told my niece, this morning, that he had offered a shilling, to receive an hundred pounds when-@Sandwich shall lose his head! What a good opinion they have of one another! apropos to losing heads, is Lally beheaded?
The East India Company have come to an unanimous resolution of not paying Lord Clive the three hundred thousand pounds, which the ministry had promised him in lieu of his nabobical annuity. Just after the bargain was made, his old rustic of a father was at the King's lev`ee; the King asked where his son was; he replied, "Sire, he is coming to town, and their your Majesty will have another vote." If you like these franknesses, I can tell you another. The Chancellor(424) is chosen a governor of St. Bartholomew's Hospital; a smart gentleman, who was sent with the staff, carried it in the evening, when the Chancellor happened to be drunk. "Well, Mr. Bartlemy," said his lordship, snuffling, "what have you to say?" The man, who had prepared a formal harangue, was transported to have so fair opportunity given him of uttering it, and with much dapper gesticulation congratulated his lordship on his health, and the nation on enjoying such great abilities. The Chancellor stopped him short, crying, "By God, it is a lie! I have neither health nor abilities my bad health has destroyed my abilities." The late Chancellor(425) is much better.
The last time the King was at Drury-lane, the play given out for the next night was "All in the Wrong:" the Galleries clapped, and then cried out. "Let us be all in the right! Wilkes and Liberty!" When the King comes to a theatre, or goes out, or goes to the House, there is not a single applause; to the Queen there is a little: in short, Louis le bien-aim`e is not French at present for King George.
The town, you may be sure, is very empty; the greatest party is at Woburn, whither the Comte de Guerchy and the Duc de Pecquigny are going. I have been three days at Strawberry, and had George Selwyn, Williams, and Lord Ashburnham;(426) but the weather was intolerably bad. We have scarce had a moment's drought since you went, no more than for so many months before. The towns and the roads are beyond measure dirty, and every thing else under water. I was not well neither, nor am yet, with pains in my stomach: however, if I ever used one, I could afford to pay a physician. T'other day, coming from my Lady Townshend's, it came into my head to stop at one of the lottery offices, to inquire after a single ticket I had, expecting to find it a blank, but it was five hundred pounds--Thank you! I know you wish me joy. It will buy twenty pretty things when I come to Paris.
I read last night, your new French play, Le Comte de Warwick(427) which we hear has succeeded much. I must say, it does but confirm the cheap idea I have of you French: not to mention the preposterous perversion of history in so known a story, the Queen's ridiculous preference of old Warwick to a young King; the omission of the only thing she ever said or did in her whole life worth recording, which was thinking herself too low for his wife, and too high for his mistress;(428) the romantic honour bestowed on two such savages as Edward and Warwick: besides these, and forty such glaring absurdities, there is but one scene that has any merit, that between Edward and Warwick in the third act. Indeed, indeed, I don't honour the modern French: it is making your son but a slender compliment, with his knowledge, for them to say it is extraordinary. The best proof I think they give of their taste, is liking you all three. I rejoice that your little boy is recovered. Your brother has been at Park-place this week, and stays a week longer: his hill is too high to be drowned.
Thank you for your kindness to Mr. Selwyn: if he had too much impatience, I am sure it proceeded only from his great esteem for you.
I will endeavour to learn what you desire; and will answer, in another letter, that and some other passages in your last. Dr. Hunter is very good, and calls on me sometimes. You may guess whether we talk you over or not. Adieu!
P. S. There has not been a death, but Sir William Maynard's, who is come to life again: or a marriage, but Admiral Knollys's who has married his divorced wife again.
(420) Robert Shafto, Esq. of Whitworth, member of Durham, well known on the turf.-C.
(421) To a loan.-C.
(422) Dr. Richard Brocklesby, an eminent physician. He had been examined before the House of Commons, as to Mr. Wilkes's incapacity to attend in his place. His Whig politics, which probably induced Mr. Wilkes to sen@ for him, induced the majority of the House to distrust his report, and to order two other medical men to visit the patient. This proceeding implied a doubt of Dr. Brocklesby's veracity, which certainly called for,@ the interference of Mr. Charles Townshend, who was a private as well as a political friend of the doctor's. Dr. Brocklesby, besides being one of the first physicians of his time, was a man of literature and taste, and did not confine his society nor his beneficence to those who agreed with him in politics. He was the friend and physician of Dr. Johnson, and when, towards the close of this great man's life, it was supposed that his circumstances were not quite easy, Dr. Brocklesby generously pressed him to accept an annuity of one hundred pounds, and he attended him to his death with unremitted affection and care.-C.
(423) John, third Earl of Waldegrave, a general in the army: in 1770 master of the horse to the Queen.-E.
(424) Lord Henley; afterwards Earl of Northington.
(425) Lord Hardwicke.
(426) John, second Earl of Ashburnham; one of the lords of the bedchamber, and keeper of the parks.-E.
(427) By La Harpe. This play, written when the author was only twenty-three years old, raised him into great celebrity; and is, in the opinion of the French critics, his first work in merit as well as date.-C.
(428) This phrase has been also attributed to Mademoiselle de Montmorency, afterwards Princess de Cond`e, in reply to the solicitations of Henry IV.; and is told also of Mademoiselle de Rohan, afterwards Duchess of Deux Ponts.-C.