40. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Arlington Street, Jan. 28, 1772. (page 65)
It is long indeed, dear Sir, since we corresponded. I should not have been silent if I had had any thing worth telling you in your way: but I grow such an antiquity myself, that I think I am less fond of what remains of our predecessors.
I thank you for Bannerman's proposal; I mean, for taking the trouble to send it, for I am not at all disposed to subscribe. I thank you more for the note on King Edward; I mean, too, for your friendship in thinking of me. Of Dean Milles I cannot trouble myself to think any more. His piece is at Strawberry: perhaps I may look at it for the sake of your note. The bad weather keeps me in town, and a good deal at home; which I find very comfortable, literally practising what so many persons pretend they intend, being quiet and enjoying my fireside in my elderly days.
Mr. Mason has shown me the relics of poor Mr. Gray. I am sadly disappointed at finding them so very inconsiderable. He always persisted, when I inquired about his writings, that he had nothing by him. I own I doubted. I am grieved he was so very near exact--I speak of my own satisfaction; as to his genius, what he published during his life will establish his fame as long as our language lasts, and there is a man of genius left. There is a silly fellow, I do not know who, that has published a volume of Letters on the English Nation, With characters of our modern authors. He has talked such nonsense On Mr. Gray, that I have no patience with the compliments he has paid me. He must have an excellent taste; and gives me a woful opinion of my own trifles, when he likes them, and cannot see the beauties of a poet that ought to be ranked in the first line. I am more humbled by any applause in the present age, than by hosts of such critics as Dean Milles. Is not Garrick reckoned a tolerable author, though he has proved how little sense is necessary to form a great actor'? His Cymon, his prologues and epilogues, and forty such pieces of trash, are below mediocrity, and yet delight the mob in the boxes as well as in the footman's gallery. I do not mention the things written in his praise; because he writes most Of them himself! But you know any one popular merit can confer all merit. Two women talking Of Wilkes, one said he squinted--t'other replied, "Squints!--well, if he does, it is not more than a man should squint." For my part, I can see how extremely well Garrick acts, without thinking him six feet high. It is said Shakspeare was a bad actor; why do not his divine plays make our wise judges conclude that he was a good one? They have not a proof of the contrary, as they have in Garrick's works--but what is it to you or me what he is? We may see him act with pleasure, and nothing obliges us to read his writings.(69)
(69) The best defence of Garrick against the charges which Walpole so repeatedly brings against him will be found in the estimation in which he was held by the most distinguished of his contemporaries. His friend Dr. Johnson thought well of' his talent in prologue writing: "Dryden," he said, "has written prologues superior to any that David has written; but David has written more good prologues than Dryden has done. It is wonderful that he has been able to write such variety of them. A true conception of character and natural expression of it, were his distinguished excellences; but I thought him less to be envied on the stage than at the head of a table. He was the first man in the world for sprightly conversation."-E.
41. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Arlington Street, June 9, 1772. (page 66)
Dear sir, The preceding paper(70) was given me by a gentleman, who has a better opinion of my bookhood than I deserve. I could give him no satisfaction, but told him, I would get inquiry made at Cambridge for the pieces he wants. If you can give any assistance in this chase, I am sure you will: as it will be trouble enough, I will not make my letter longer.
(70) This letter enclosed some queries from a gentleman abroad, respecting books, etc. relating to the order of Malta.
42. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, June 17, 1772. (page 66)
Dear sir, You are a mine that answers beyond those of Peru. I have given the treasure you sent me to the gentleman from whom I had the queries. He is vastly obliged to you, and I am sure so am I, for the trouble you have given yourself"and, therefore I am going to give you more. King Edward's Letters are printed.(71) Shall I keep them for you or send them, and how? I intend you four copies--shall you want more? Lord Ossory takes a hundred, and I have as many; but none will be sold.
I am out of materials for my press. I am thinking of printing some numbers of miscellaneous MSS. from my own and Mr. Gray's collection. If you have any among your stores that are historic, new and curious, and like to have them printed, I shall be glad of them. Among Gray's are letters of Sir Thomas Wyat the elder.(72) I am sure you must have a thousand hints about him. If you will send them to me I will do you justice; as you will see I have in King Edward's Letters. Do you know any thing of his son,(73) the insurgent, in Queen Mary's reign?
I do not know whether it was not to Payne the bookseller, but I am sure I gave somebody a very few notes to the British Topography. They were indeed of very little consequence.
I have got to-day, and am reading with entertainment, two vols. in octavo, the Lives of Leland, Hearne, and Antony Wood.,(74) I do not know the author, but he is of Oxford. I think you should add that of your friend Brown Willis.(75) There is a queer piece on Freemasonry in one of the volumes, said to be written, on very slender authority, by Henry VI. with notes by Mr. Locke: a very odd conjunction! It says that Arts were brought from the East by Peter Gower. As I am sure you will not find an account of this singular person in all your collections, be it known to you, that Peter Gower was commonly called Pythagoras. I remember our newspapers insisting that Thomas Kouli Khan was an Irishman, and that his true name was Thomas Callaghan.
On reading over my letter, I find I am no sceptic, having affirmed no less than four times, that I am sure. Though this is extremely awkward, I am sure I will not write my letter over again; so pray excuse or burn my tautology.
P. S. I had like to have forgotten the most obliging, and to me the most interesting part of your letter-your kind offer of coming hither. I accept it most gladly; but, for reasons I will tell you, wish it may be deferred a little. I am going to Park-place (General Conway's), then to Ampthill (Lord Ossory's), and then to Goodwood (Duke of Richmond's); and the beginning of August to Wentworth Castle (Marquis of Rockingham's); so that I shall not be at all settled here till the end of the latter month. But I have a stronger reason. By that time will be finished a delightful chapel I am building in my garden, to contain the shrine of Capoccio, and the Window with Henry III. and his Queen. My new bedchamber will be finished too, which is now all in litter: and, besides, September is a quiet month; visits to make or receive are over, and the troublesome go to shoot partridges. If that time suits you, pray assure me I shall see you on the first of September.
(71) "Copies of seven original Letters from King Edward VI. to Barnaby Fitzpatrick." Strawberry Hill, 1772.-E.
(72) He was the contemporary and friend of Surrey, and was accused by Henry VIII. of being the paramour of Anne Boleyn; but the King's suspicion dying away, he was appointed, in 1537, Henry's ambassador to the Emperor. His poems have recently been published in the Aldine edition of the Poets; and in the Biographical Preface to them are included some of his admirable letters.-E.
(73) Sir Thomas Wyatt "the younger," son of the preceding, who is presumed to have received that designation from having been knighted in the lifetime of his father. Having joined in the effort to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, he was condemned and executed for high treason, on the 11th of April 1554.-E.
(74) The editor was W. Huddersford, fellow of Trinity College.-E.
(74) Browne Willis, the antiquary, and author of "A Survey of the Cathedrals of England;" "Notitia Parliamentaria," etc. He was born at Blandford in 1682, and died in February 1760. Dr. Ducarel printed privately, immediately after his death, a small quarto pamphlet, entitled " Some Account Of Browne Willis, Esq. LL. D." One of Willis's peculiarities was his fondness for visiting cathedrals on the saints, days to which they were dedicated.-E.
43. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Monday, June 22, 1772. (page 68)
It is lucky that I have had no dealings with Mr. Fordyce;(75) for, if he had ruined me, as he has half the world, I could not have run away. I tired myself with walking on Friday: the gout came on Saturday in my foot; yesterday I kept my bed till four o'clock, and my room all day-but, with wrapping myself all over with bootikins, have scarce had any pain-my foot swelled immediately, and today I am descended into the blueth and greenth:(76) and though you expect to find that I am paving the way to an excuse, I think I shall be able to be with you on Saturday. All I intend to excuse myself from, is walking. I should certainly never have the gout, if I had lost the use of my feet. Cherubims that have no legs, and do nothing but stick their chins in a cloud and sing, are never out of order. Exercise is the worst thing in the world, and as bad an invention as gunpowder.
Apropos to Mr. Fordyce, here is a passage ridiculously applicable to him, that I met with yesterday in the letters of Guy Patin: "Il n'y a pas long-temps qu'un auditeur des comptes nomm`e Mons. Nivelle fit banqueroute; et tout fra`ichement, c'est-`a-dire depuis trois jours, un tr`esorier des parties casuelles, nomm`e SanSon, en a fait autant; et pour vous montrer qu'il est vrai que res humanae faciunt circulum, comme il a `et`e autrefois dit par Plato et par Aristote, celui-l`a s'en retourne d'o`u il vient. Il est fils d'un paysan; il a `et`e laquais de son premier m`etier, et aujourd'hui il n'est plus rien, si non qu'il lui reste une assez belle femme."--I do not think I can find in Patin or Plato, nay, nor in Aristotle, though he wrote about every thing, a parallel case to Charles Fox:(77) there are advertised to be sold more annuities of his and his society, to the amount of five hundred thousand pounds a-year! I wonder what he will do next, when he has sold the estates of all his friends!
I have been reading the most delightful book in the world, the Lives of Leland, Tom earne, and Antony Wood. The last's diary makes a thick volume in octavo. One entry is, "This day Old Joan began to make my bed." In the story of Leland is an examination of a freemason, written by the hand of King Henry VI., with notes by Mr. Locke. Freemasonry, Henry VI., and Locke, make a strange heterogeneous olio; but that is not all. The respondent, who defends the mystery of masonry, says it was brought into Europe by the Venetians--he means the Phoenicians. And who do you think propagated it? Why, one Peter Gore--And who do you think that was?--One Pythagoras, Pythagore. I do not know whether it is not still More extraordinary, that this and the rest of the nonsense in that account made Mr. Locke determine to be a freemason: so would I too, if I could expect to hear of more Peter Gores.
Pray tell Lady Lyttelton that I say she will certainly kill herself if she lets Lady Ailesbury drag her twice a-day to feed the pheasants, and you make her climb cliffs and clamber over mountains. She has a tractability that alarms me for her; and if she does not pluck up a spirit, and determine never to be put out of her own way, I do not know what may be the Consequence. I will come and set her an example of immovability. Take notice, I do not say one civil syllable to Lady Ailesbury. She has not passed a whole day here these two years. She is always very gracious, says she will come when you will fix a time, as if you governed, and then puts it off whenever it is proposed, nor will spare one Single day from Park-place-as if other people were not as partial to their own Park-places, Adieu! Yours ever.
Tuesday noon.
I wrote my letter last night; this morning I received yours, and shall wait till Sunday, as you bid me, which will be more convenient for my gout, though not for other engagements, but I shall obey the superior, as nullum tempus occurrit regi et podagrae.
(75) The greatest consternation prevailed at this time in the metropolis, in consequence of the banking-house of Neale, James, Fordyce, and Down having stopped payment. Fordyce was bred a hosier in Aberdeen. For a memoir of him, see Gent. Mag. vol. x1ii. p. 310.-E.
(76) Cant words of Walpole for blue and green. He means, that he came out of his room to the blue sky and green fields.
(77) Gibbon, in a letter to Mr. Holroyd, of the 8th of February, in reference to the recent debate in the House of Commons, on the clerical petition for relief from subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, says--"I congratulate you on the late victory of our dear Mamma, the Church of England. She had, last Thursday, seventy-one rebellious sons, Who pretended to set aside her will, on a account of insanity; but two hundred and seventeen worthy champions, headed by Lord North, Burke, Charles Fox, etc., though they allowed the thirty-nine clauses of her testament were absurd and unreasonable, supported the validity of it with infinite honour. By the bye, Charles Fox prepared himself for that holy work by passing twenty-one hours in the pious exercise of hazard; his devotions cost him only about five hundred pounds an hour, in all, eleven thousand pounds."-E.
44. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, July 7, 1772. (page 70)
Dear Sir, I sent you last week by the Cambridge Fly, that puts up in Gray's-inn-lane, six copies of King Edward's Letters, but fear I forgot to direct their being left at Mr. Bentham's, by which neglect perhaps you have not yet got them; so that I have been very blamable, while I thought I was very expeditious; and it was not till reading your letter again just now that I discovered my carelessness.
I have not heard of Dr. Glynn, etc., but the housekeeper has orders to receive them. I thank you a thousand times for the Maltese notes, which I have given to the gentleman, and for the Wyattiana: I am going to work on the latter.
I have not yet seen Mr. 's print, but am glad it is so like. I expected Mr. Mason would have sent me one early; but I suppose he keeps it for me, as I shall call on him in my way to Lord Strafford's.
Mr. West,(78) one of our brother antiquaries, is dead. He had a very curious collection of old pictures, English coins, English prints, and manuscripts. But he was so rich, that I take for granted nothing will be sold. I could wish for his family pictures of Henry V. and Henry VIII.
Foote, in his new comedy of The Nabob, has lashed Master Doctor Miles and our Society very deservedly for the nonsensical discussion they had this winter about Whittington and his Cat. Few of them are fit for any thing better than such researches. Poor Mr. Granger has been very ill, but is almost recovered. I intend to invite him to meet you in September. It is a party I shall be very impatient for: you know how sincerely I am, dear Sir, your obliged and Obedient humble servant.
(78) James West, Esq. He was for some time one of the secretaries of the treasury, vice president of the Society of Antiquaries, and president of the Royal Society. His curious collection of manuscripts were purchased by the Earl of Shelburne, and are now deposited in the British Museum.-E.
45. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, July 28, 1772. (page 70)
Dear Sir, I am anew obliged to you, as I am perpetually, for the notice you give me of another intended publication against me in the Archaeologia, or Old Woman's Logic. By Your account, the author will add much credit to their Society! For my part, I shall take no notice of any of his handycrafts. However, as there seems to be a willingness to carp at me, and as gnats may on a sudden provoke one to give a slap, I choose to be at liberty to say what I think Of the learned Society; and therefore I have taken leave of them, having so good an occasion presented as their council on Whittington and his Cat, and the ridicule that Foote has thrown on them. They are welcome to say any thing on my writings, but that they are the works of a fellow of so foolish a Society.
I am at work on the Life of Sir Thomas Wyat, but it does not please me; nor will it be entertaining, though you have contributed so many materials towards it. You must take one trouble more it is to inquire and search for a book that I want to see. It is the Pilgrim; was written by William Thomas, who was executed in Queen Mary's time; but the book was printed under, and dedicated to, Edward VI. I have only an imperfect memorandum of it, and cannot possibly recall to mind from whence I made it. All I think I remember is, that the book was in the King's library. I have sent to the Museum to inquire after it; but I cannot find it mentioned in Ames's History of English Printers. Be so good as to ask all your antiquarian friends if they know such a work.
Amidst all your kindness, you have added one very disagreeable paragraph:--I mean, you doubt about coming here in September. Fear of a sore throat would be a reason for your never coming. It is one of the distempers in the world the least to be foreseen, and September, a dry month, one of the least likely months to bring it. I do not like your recurring to so very ill-founded an excuse, and positively will not accept it, unless you wish I should not be so much as I an, dear Sir, Your most faithful humble servant, H. W.
46. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, Aug. 25, 1772. (page 71)
Dear sir, I thank YOU for your notices, dear Sir, and will deliver you from the trouble of any further pursuit of the Peleryne of Thomas. I have discovered him among the Cottonian MSS. in the Museum, and am to see him.
If Dr. Browne is returned to Cambridge, may I beg you to give him a thousand thanks for the present he left at my house, a goarstone and a seal, that belonged to Mr. Gray. I shall lay them up in my cabinet at Strawberry among my most valuables. Dr. Browne, however, was not quite kind to me; for he left no direction where to find him in town, so that I could not wait upon him, nor invite him to Strawberry Hill, as I much wished to do, Do not these words, "invite him to Strawberry," make Your ears tingle? September is at hand, and You must have no sore throat. The new chapel in the garden is almost finished, and you must come to the dedication.
I have seen Lincoln and York, and to say the truth, prefer the former in some respects. In truth, I was scandalized in the latter. William of Hatfield's tomb and figure is thrown aside into a hole: and yet the chapter possess an estate that his mother gave them. I have charged Mr. Mason(79) with my anathema, unless they do justice. I saw Roche Abbey, too; which is hid in such a venerable chasm, that you might lie concealed there even from a 'squire parson of the parish. Lord Scarborough, to whom it belongs, and who lives at next door, neglects it as much as if he was afraid of ghosts. I believe Montesino's cave lay in just such a solemn thicket, which is now so overgrown, that, when one finds the spot, one can scarce find the ruins.
I forgot to tell you, that in the screen of York Minster there are most curious statues of the Kings of England, from the Conqueror to Henry VI.; very singular, evidently by two different hands, the one better than the other, and most of them I am persuaded, very authentic. Richard II., Henry III., and Henry V., I am sure are; and Henry Iv., though unlike the common portrait at Hampton-court, in Herefordshire, the most singular and villanous countenance I ever saw. I intend to try to get them well engraved. That old fool, James I., is crowded in, in the place of Henry VII., that was taken away to make room for this piece of flattery; for the chapter did not slight live princes. Yours ever.
(79) Mason was a residentiary of York cathedral; as well as prebendary of Duffield, and rector of Aston.-E.
47. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, August 28, 1772. (page 72)
Dear Sir, Your repentance is much more agreeable than your sin, and will cancel it whenever you please. Still I have a fellow-feeling for the indolence of age, and have myself been writing an excuse this instant for not accepting an invitation above threescore miles off. One's limbs, when they grow old, will not go any where, when they do not like it. If yours should find themselves in a more pliant humour, you are always sure of being welcome here, let the fit of motion come when it will.
Pray what is become of that figure you mention of Henry VII., which the destroyers, not the builders have rejected? and which the antiquaries, who know a man by his crown better than by his face, have rejected likewise? The latter put me in mind of characters in comedies, in which a woman disguised in man's habit, and whose features her very lover does not know, is immediately acknowledged by pulling off her hat, and letting down her hair, which her lover had never seen before. I should be glad to ask Dr. Milles, if he thinks the crown of England was always made, like a quart pot, by Winchester measure? If Mr. Tyson has made a print from that little statue, I trust he will give me one; and if he, or Mr. Essex, or both, will accompany you hither, I shall be glad to see them.
At Buckden, in the Bishop's palace, I saw a print of Mrs. Newcome: I Suppose the late mistress of St. John's. Can you tell me where I can procure one? Mind, I insist that you do not serve me as you have often done, and send me your own, if you have one. I seriously will not accept it, nor ever trust you again. On the staircase, in the same palace, there is a picture of two young men, in the manner of Vandyck, not at all ill done; do you know who they are, or does any body? There is a worse picture, in a large room, of some lads, which, too, the housemaid did not know. Adieu! dear Sir, yours ever.
Letter 48To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, Nov. 7, 1772. (page 73)
Dear Sir, I did receive the print of Mrs. Newcome, for which I am extremely obliged to you, with a thousand other favours, and should certainly have thanked you for it long ago, but I was then, an(I am now, confined to my bed with the gout in every limb, and in almost every joint. I have not been out of my bedchamber these five weeks to-day and last night the pain returned violently into one of my feet; so that I am now writing to you in a most uneasy posture, which will oblige me to be very short.
Your letter, which I suppose was left at my house in Arlington street by Mr. Essex, was brought to me this morning. I am exceedingly sorry for his disappointment, and for his coming without writing first; in which case I might have prevented his journey. I do not know, even, whither to send to him, to tell him how impossible it is for me just now, in my present painful and hopeless situation, to be of any use to him. I am so weak and faint, I do not see even my nearest relations, and God knows how long it will be before I am able to bear company, much less application. I have some thoughts, as soon as I am able, of removing to Bath; so that I cannot guess when it will be in my power to consider duly Mr. Essex's plan with him. I shall undoubtedly, if ever capable of it, be ready to give him my advice, such as it is; or to look over his papers, and even to correct them, if his modesty thinks me more able to polish them than he is himself. At the same time, I must own, I think he will run too great a risk by the expense. The engravers in London are now arrived at such a pitch of exorbitant imposition, that, for my own part, I have laid aside all thoughts of having a single plate more done.
Dear Sir, pray tell Mr. Essex how concerned I am for his mischance, and for the total impossibility I am under of seeing him now. I can write no More, but I shall be glad to hear from you on his return to Cambridge: and when I am recovered, you may be assured how glad I shall be to talk his plan over with him. I am his and Your obliged humble servant.
49. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. (page 74)
I have had a relapse, and not been able to use my hand, or I should have lamented with you on the plunder of your prints by that Algerine hog.(80) I pity you, dear Sir, and feel for your awkwardness, that was struck dumb at his rapaciousness. The beast has no sort of taste neither-and in a twelvemonth will sell them again. I regret particularly one print, which I dare to say he seized, that I gave you, Gertrude More; I thought I had another, and had not; and, as you liked it, I never told you so. This Muley Moloch used to buy books, and now sells them. He has hurt his fortune, and ruined himself, to have a Collection, without any choice of what it should be composed. It is the most underbred swine I ever saw; but I did not know it was so ravenous. I wish you may get paid any how; you see by my writing how difficult it is to me, and therefore will excuse my being short.
(80) This letter may want some explanation. A gentleman, a collector of prints, and a neighbour of Mr. Walpole's, had just before requested to see Mr. Cole's collection, and on Mr. Cole's offering to accommodate him with such heads as he had not, he selected and took away no less than one hundred and eighty-seven of the most rare and valuable.
50. To The Countess Of Ailesbury. Arlington Street, Dec. 20, 1772. (page 74)
Indeed, Madam, I want you and Mr. Conway in town. Christmas has dispersed all my company, and left nothing but a loo-party or two. If all the fine days were not gone out of town, too, I should take the air in a morning; but I am not yet nimble enough, like old Mrs. Nugent, to jump out of a postchaise into an assembly.
You have a woful taste, my lady, not to like Lord Gower's bonmot. I am almost too indignant to tell you of a most amusing book in six volumes, called "Histoire Philosophique et Politique du commerce des Deux Indes."(81) It tells one every thing in the world;--how to make conquests, invasions, blunders, settlements, bankruptcies, fortunes, etc.; tells you the natural and historical history of all nations; talks commerce, navigation, tea, coffee, china, mines, salt, spices; of the Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, Danes, Spaniards, Arabs, caravans, Persians, Indians, of Louis XIV. and the King of Prussia; of La Bourdonnais, Dupleix, and Admiral Saunders; of rice, and women that dance naked; of camels, ginghams, and muslin; of millions of millions of livres, pounds, rupees, and cowries; of iron cables, and Circassian women; of Law and the Mississippi; and against all governments and religions. This and every thing else is in the two first volumes. I cannot conceive what is left for the four others. And all is so mixed, that you learn forty new trades and fifty new histories in a single chapter. There is spirit, wit, and clearness and, if there were but less avoirdupois weight in it, it would be the richest book in the world in materials--but figures to me are so many ciphers, and only put me in mind of children that say, an hundred hundred hundred millions. However, it has made me learned enough to talk about Mr. Sykes and the Secret Committee,(82) which is all that any body talks of at present, and yet Mademoiselle Heinel(83) is arrived. This is all I know, and a great deal too, considering I know nothing, and yet, were there either truth or lies, I should know them; for one hears every thing in a sick room. Good night both!
(81) By the Abb`e Raynal. sensible of the faults of his work, the Abb`e visited England and Holland to obtain correct mercantile information, and, on his return, published an improved edition at Geneva, in ten volumes, octavo. Hannah More relates, that, when in England, the Abb`e was introduced to Dr. Johnson, and advancing to shake his band, the Doctor drew back and put it behind him, and afterwards replied to the expostulation of a friend--"Sir, I will not shake hands with an infidel." The Parliament of Paris ordered the work to be burnt, and the author to be arrested; but he retired to Spain, and, in 1788, the National Assembly cancelled the decree passed against him. He died at Passy in 1794, at the age of eighty-five.-E.
(82) Upon indian affairs.
(83) See ante, p. 59, letter 34.
51. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Arlington Street, Jan. 8, 1773. (page 75)
In return to your very kind inquiries, dear Sir, I can let you know, that I am quite free from pain, and walk a little about my room, even without a stick: nay, have been four times to take the air in the park. Indeed, after fourteen weeks this is not saying much; but it is a worse reflection, that when one is subject to the gout, and far from young, one's worst account will probably be better than that after the next fit. I neither flatter myself on one hand, nor am impatient on the other--for will either do one any good? one must bear one's lot whatever it be.
I rejoice Mr. * * * * has justice,(84) though he had no bowels. How Gertrude More escape' him I do not guess. It will be wrong to rob you of her, after she has come to you through so many hazards--nor would I hear of it either, if you have a mind to keep her, or have not given up all thoughts of a collection since you have been visited by a Visigoth.
I am much more impatient to see Mr. Gray's print, than Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's answer to my Historic Doubts.(85) He may have made himself very angry; but I doubt whether he will make me at all so. I love antiquities; but I scarce ever knew an antiquary who knew how to write upon them. Their understandings seem as much in ruins as the things they describe. For the Antiquarian Society, I shall leave them in peace with Whittington and his Cat. As my contempt for them has not, however, made me disgusted with what they do not understand, antiquities, I have published two numbers of Miscellanies, and they are very welcome to mumble them with their toothless gums. I want to send you these--not their gums, but my pieces, and a Grammont,(86) of which I have printed only a hundred copies, and which will be extremely scarce, as twenty-five copies are gone to France. Tell me how I shall convey them safely.
Another thing you must tell me, if you can, is, if you know any thing ancient of the Freemasons Governor Pownall,(87) a Whittingtonian, has a mind they should have been a corporation erected by the popes. As you see what a good creature I am, and return good for evil, I am engaged to pick up what I can for him, to support this system, in which I believe no more than in the pope: and the work is to appear in a volume of the Society's pieces. I am very willing to oblige him, and turn my cheek, that they may smite that, also. Lord help them! I am sorry that they are such numsculls, that they almost make me think myself something! but there are great authors enough to bring me to my senses again. Posterity, I fear, will class me with the writers of this age, or forget me with them, not rank me with any names that deserve remembrance. If I cannot survive the Milles's, the What-d'ye-call-him's, and the compilers of catalogues of topography, it would comfort me very little to confute them. I should be as little proud of success as if I had carried a contest for churchwarden.
Not being able to return to Strawberry Hill, where all my books and papers are, and my printer lying fallow, I want some short bills to print. Have you any thing you wish printed? I can either print a few to amuse ourselves, or, if very curious, and not too dry, could make a third number of Miscellaneous Antiquities.
I am not in any eagerness to see Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's pamphlet against me; therefore pray give yourself no trouble to get it for me. The specimens I have seen of his writing take off all edge from curiosity. A print of Mr. Gray will be a real present. Would it not be dreadful to be commended by an age that had not taste enough to admire his Odes? Is not it too great a compliment to me to be abused too? I am ashamed! Indeed our antiquaries ought to like me. I am but too much on a par with them. Does not Mr. Henshaw come to London? Is he a professor, or only a lover of engraving? If the former, and he were to settle in town, I would willingly lend him heads to copy. Adieu!
(84) The gentleman who had carried off so many of Mr. Cole's prints. He now fully remunerated Mr. Cole in a valuable present of books.
(85) Mr. Master's pamphlet, printed at the expense of the Antiquarian Society in the second volume of the Archaeologia.
(86) "M`emoires du Comte de Grammont, nouvelle edition, augment`ee de Notes et Eclaircissemens n`ecessaires, par M. Horace Walpole." Strawberry Hill, 1772, 4to. To the M`emoires was prefixed the following dedication to Madame du Deffand:-- "L'Editeur VOUS Consacre cette edition, comme un monument de son amiti`e, de son admiration, et de son respect, a vous dont les gr`aces, l'esprit, et le gout retracent an si`ecle present le si`ecle de Louis XIV., et les agr`emens de l'auteur de ces Memoires."
(87) Thomas Pownall, Esq. the antiquary, and a constant contributor to the Archaeologia. Having been governor of South Carolina and other American colonies, he was always distinguished from his brother John, who was likewise an antiquary, by the title of Governor.-E.
52. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Arlington Street, Feb. 18, 1773. (page 77)
The most agreeable ingredient of your last, dear Sir, is the paragraph that tells me you shall be in town in April, when I depend on the pleasure of seeing you; but, to be certain, wish you would give me a few days' law, an let me know, too, where you lodge. Pray bring your books, though the continuation of the Miscellaneous Antiquities is uncertain. I thought the affectation of loving veteran anecdotes was so vigorous, that I ventured to print five hundred copies., One, hundred and thirty only are sold. I cannot afford to make the town perpetual presents; though I find people exceedingly eager to obtain them when I do; and if they will not buy them, it is a sign of such indifference, that I shall neither bestow my time, nor my cost, to no purpose. All I desire is, to pay the expenses, which I can afford much less than my idle moments. Not but the operations of-my press have often turned against myself in many shapes. I have told people many things they did not know, and from fashion they have bought a thousand things out of my hands, which they do not understand, and only love en passant. At Mr. West's sale, I got literally nothing: his prints sold for the frantic sum of 1495 pounds 10 shillings. Your and my good friend Mr. Gulston threw away above 200 pounds there.
I am not sorry Mr. Lort has recourse to the fountainhead: Mr. Pownall's system of Freemasonry is so absurd and groundless, that I am glad to be rid of intervention. I have seen the former once: he told Me he was willing to sell his prints, as the value of them is so increased--for that very reason I did not want to purchase them.
Paul Sanby promised me ten days ago to show Mr. Henshaw's engraving which I received from Dr. Ewen) to Bartolozzi, and ask his terms, thinking he would delight in So Very promising a scholar; but I have heard nothing since, and therefore fear there is no success. Let me, however, see the young man when he comes, and I will try if there is any other way of serving him.
What shall I say to you, dear Sir, about Dr. Prescot? or what I say to him? It hurts me not to be very civil, especially as any respect to my father's memory touches me much more than any attention to myself, which I cannot hold to be a quarter so well founded. Yet, how dare I write to a poor man, who may do, as I have lately seen done by a Scotchwoman that wrote a play,(88) and printed Lord Chesterfield's and Lord Lyttelton's letters to her, as Testimonia fluctorum: I will therefore beg you to make my compliments and thanks to the master, and to make them as grateful as you please, provided I am dispensed with giving any certificate under my hand. You may plead my illness, which, though the fifth month ended yesterday, is far from being at an end, My relapses have been endless - I cannot yet walk a step: and a great cold has added an ague in my cheek, for which I am just going to begin the bark. The prospect for the rest of my days is gloomy. The case of my poor nephew still more deplorable - he arrived in town last night, and bore his Journey tolerably-but his head is in much more danger of not recovering than his health; though they give us hopes of both. But the evils of life are not good subjects for letters--why afflict one's friends? Why make commonplace reflections? Adieu! Yours ever.
(88) "Sir Harry Gaylove; or, Comedy in Embryo;" by Mrs. Jane Marshall. It was printed in Scotland by subscription, but not acted. in the preface, she complains bitterly of the managers of the three London theatres, for refusing her the advantages of representing her performance.-E.
53. To The Rev. William Mason.(89) March 2, 1773. (page 78)
What shall I say? How shall I thank you for the kind manner in which you submit your papers to my correction? But if you are friendly, I must be just. I am so far from being dissatisfied, that I Must beg to shorten your pen, and in that respect only would I wish, with regard to myself, to alter your text. I am conscious that in the beginning of the differences between Gray and me, the fault was mine. I was young, too fond of my own diversions; nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation, as a prime minister's Son, not to have been inattentive to the feelings of one, I blush to say, that I knew was obliged to me; of one, whom presumption and folly made me deem not very superior in parts, though I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him. I treated him insolently. He loved me, and I did not think he did. I reproached him with the difference between us, when he acted from the conviction of knowing that he was my superior. I often disregarded his wish of seeing places, which I would not quit my own amusements to visit, though I offered to send him thither without me. Forgive me, if I say that his temper was not conciliating, at the same time that I confess to you, that he acted a most friendly part had I had the sense to take advantage of it. He freely told me my faults. I declared I did not desire to hear them, nor would correct them. You will not wonder,, that with the dignity of his spirit, and the obstinate carelessness of mine the breach must have widened till we became incompatible.
After this confession, I fear you will think I fall short in the words I wish to have substituted for some of yours. If you think them inadequate to the state of the case, as I own they are, preserve this letter and let some future Sir John Dalrymple produce it to load my memory; but I own I do not desire that any ambiguity should aid his invention to forge an account) for me. If you would have no objection, I would propose your narrative should run thus, [Here follows a note, which is inserted verbatim in Mason's Life of Gray.(90)] and contain no more, till a more proper time shall come for publishing the truth, as I have stated it to you. While I am living, it is not pleasant to see my private disagreements discussed in magazines and newspapers.
(89) This and the following letter are from Mr. mitford's valuable edition of Gray's Works. See vol. iv. pp. 216, 218.- E.
(90) "In justice to the memory of so respectable a friend, Mr. Walpole enjoins me to charge himself with the chief blame in their quarrel - confessing that more attention and complaisance, more deference to a warm friendship, superior judgment and prudence, might have prevented a rupture that gave such uneasiness to them both and a lasting concern to the survivor; though, in the year 1744, a reconciliation was effected between them, by a lady who wished well to both parties."-E.
54. To The Rev. William Mason. Strawberry Hill, March 27, 1773. (page 79)
I have received your letter, dear Sir, your manuscript, and Gray's letters to me. Twenty things crowd upon my pen, and jostle, and press to be laid. As I came here to-day for a little air, and to read you undisturbed, they shall all have a place in due time. But having so safe a conveyance for my thoughts, I must begin with the uppermost of them, the Heroic Epistle. I have read it so very often, that I have got it by heart; and now I am master of all its beauties, I confess I like it infinitely better than I did, though I liked it infinitely before. There is more wit, ten times more delicacy of irony, as much poetry, and greater facility than and as in the Dunciad. But what Signifies what I think? All the world thinks the same. No soul has, I have heard, guessed within an hundred miles. I catched at Anstey's name, and have, contributed to spread that notion. It has since been called Temple Luttrell's, and, to my infinite honour, mine; Lord ----- - swears he should think so, if I did not praise it so excessively. But now, my dear Sir, that you have tapped this mine of talent, and it runs so richly and easily, for Heaven's sake, and for England's sake, do not let it rest! You have a vein of irony, and satire, etc.
I am extremely pleased with the easy unaffected simplicity of your manuscript (Memoirs of Gray), and have found scarcely any thing I could wish added, much less retrenched, unless the paragraph on Lord Bute,(91) which I don't think quite clearly expressed; and yet perhaps too clearly, while you wish to remain unknown as the author of the Heroic Epistle,(92) since it might lead to suspicion. For as Gray asked for the place, and accepted it afterwards from the Duke of Grafton, it might be thought that he, or his friend for him, was angry with the author of the disappointment. I can add nothing to your account of Gray's going abroad with me. It was my own thought and offer, and cheerfully accepted. Thank you for inserting my alteration. As I am the survivor, any Softening would be unjust to the dead. I am sorry I had a fault towards him. It does not wound me to own it; and it must be believed when I allow it, that not he, but I myself, was in the wrong.
(91) This paragraph was suppressed-E.
(92) In March, 1798, Mr. Matthias suggested, in the Pursuits of Literature, that Walpole's papers would possibly lead to the discovery of the author of the far-famed Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers. By Thomas Warton, the poet-laureate, it was supposed to have been "written by Walpole, and buckrum'd by Mason;" and Mr. Croker, in a note to his edition of Boswell's Johnson, says of it, "there can be no doubt that it was the joint production of Mason and Walpole; Mason supplying the poetry and Walpole the points;" while the Quarterly Review, vol. xv. p. 385, observes, that "when it is remembered that no one then alive, with the same peculiar taste and the same political principles, could have written such poetry, we must either ascribe the Heroic Epistle to Mr. Mason, or suppose, very needlessly and improbably, that one person supplied the matter and another shaped it into verse; but, the personal insolence displayed in this poem to his Sovereign, which was probably the true reason for concealing the writer's -the principles of genuine taste which abound in it--the bitter and sarcastic strain of indignation against a monstrous mode of bad taste then beginning to prevail in landscape gardening, and, above all, a vigorous flow of spirited and harmonious verse, all concur to mark it as the work of our independent and uncourtly bard," The above letter settles the long-disputed point, and fixes the sole authorship of this exquisite poem on Mason.-E.
55. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Arlington Street, April 7, 1773. (page 80)
I have now seen the second volume of the Archaeologia, or Old Woman's Logic, with Mr. Masters's Answer to me. If he had not taken such pains to declare it was written against my Doubts, I should have thought it a defence of them; for the few facts he quotes make for my arguments, and confute himself; particularly in the case of Lady Eleanor Butler; -whom, by the way, he makes marry her own nephew, and not descend from her own family, because she was descended from her grandfather.
This Mr. Masters is an excellent Sancho Panza to such a Don Quixote as Dean Milles! but enough of such goosecaps! Pray thank Mr. Ashby for his admirable correction of Sir Thomas Wyat's bon-mot. It is right beyond all doubt, and I will quote it if ever the piece is reprinted.
Mr. Tyson surprises me by usurping your Dissertation. It seems all is fish that comes to the net of the Society- Mercy on us! What a cart-load of brick and rubbish, and Roman ruins, they have piled together! I have found nothing-, tolerable in the volume but the Dissertation of Mr Masters; which is followed by an answer, that, like Masters, contradicts him, without disproving any thing.
Mr. West's books are selling outrageously. His family will make a fortune by what he collected from stalls and Moorfields. But I must not blame the virtuosi, having surpassed them. In short I have bought his two pictures of Henry V. and Henry VIII. and their families; the first of which is engraved in my Anecdotes, or, as the catalogue says, engraved by Mr. H. Walpole, and the second described there. The first cost me 38 pounds and the last 84, though I knew Mr. West bought it for six guineas. But, in fact, these two, with my Marriages of Henry VI. and VII., compose such a suite of the House of Lancaster, and enrich my Gothic house so completely, that I would not deny myself. The Henry VII. cost me as much, and is less curious: the price of antiquities is so exceedingly risen, too, at present, that I expected to have paid more. I have bought much cheaper at the same sale, a picture of Henry VIII. and Charles V. in one piece, both much younger than I ever saw any portrait of either. I hope your pilgrimage to St. Gulaston's this month will take place, and that you will come and see them. Adieu!
56. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Arlington Street, April 27, 1773. (page 81) '
I had not time this morning to answer your letter by Mr. Essex, but I gave him the card you desired. You know, I hope, how happy I am to obey any orders of yours.
In the paper I showed you in answer to Masters, you saw I was apprised of Rastel's Chronicle: but pray do not mention my knowing of it; because I draw so much from it, that I lie in wait, hoping that Milles, or Masters, or some of their fools, will produce it against me; and then I shall have another word to say to them, which they do not expect, since they think Rastel makes for them.
Mr. Gough(93) wants to be introduced to me! Indeed! I would see him, as he has been midwife to Masters; but he is so dull, that he would only be troublesome--and besides you know I shun authors, and would never have been One myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company. They are always in earnest, and think their profession serious, and dwell upon trifles, and reverence learning. I laugh at all those things, and write only to laugh at them, and divert myself. None of us are authors of any consequence; and it is the most ridiculous in all vanities to be vain of being mediocre. A page in a great author humbles me to the dust; and the conversation of those that are not superior to myself, reminds me of what will be thought of myself. I blush to flatter them, or to be flattered by them, and should dread letters being published some time or other, in which they should relate our interviews, and we should appear like those puny conceited Witlings in Shenstone's and Hughes' Correspondence,(94) who give themselves airs from being in possession of the soil of Parnassus for the time being; as peers are proud, because they enjoy the estates of great men who went before them. Mr. Gough is very welcome to see Strawberry Hill; or I would help him to any scraps in my possession, that would assist his publications; though he is one of those industrious who are only reburying the dead-but I cannot be acquainted with him. It is contrary to my system, and my humour; and, besides, I know nothing of barrows, and Danish entrenchments, and Saxon barbarisms, and Phoenician characters--in short, I know nothing of those ages that knew nothing--then how should I be of use to modern literati? All the Scotch metaphysicians have sent me their works. I did not read one of them, because I do not understand what is not understood by those that write about it; and I did not get acquainted with one of the writers. I should like to be intimate with Mr. Anstey,(95) even though he wrote Lord Buckhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle.(96) I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts, and the former had sense, 'till he charged it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope, and lived with Gray. Adieu! Yours ever.
P. S. Mr. Essex has shown me a charming drawing, from a charming round window at Lincoln. It has revived all my eagerness to have him continue his plan.
(93) Richard Gough, Esq., author of the British Topography, and the Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain; and editor of Camden's Britannia. This learned antiquary was born in 1735, and died in the year 1809-E.
(94) A second edition had just appeared of "Letters by several eminent Persons deceased; including the Correspondence of John Hughes, Esq, and several of His Friends."-E.
(95) The author of the New Bath Guide. See vol. iii., letter 307 to George Montagu, Esq., June 20 1766.-E.
(96) See ante, letter 54, P. 80.-E.
57. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Arlington Street, May 4, 1773. (page 82)
I should not have hurried to answer your letter, dear Sir, the moment I receive it, but to send you another ticket(97) for your sister, in case she should not have recovered the other; and I think you said she was to stay but a fortnight in town. I would have sent it to her, had I known whither: and I have made it for five persons, in case she should have a mind to carry so many.
I am sorry for the young engraver; but I can by no means meddle with his going abroad, without the father's consent. it would be very wrong, and would hurt the young man essentially, if the father has any thing to leave. , In any case, I certainly would not be accessory to sending away the son against the father's will. The father is an impertinent fool--but that you and I cannot help.
Pray be not uneasy about Gertrude More: I shall get the original or, at least, a copy. Tell me how I shall Send you martagons by the safest conveyance, or any thing else you want. I am always in your debt; and the apostle-spoon will make the debtor side in my book of gratitude run over.
Your public orator has done me too much honour by far-- especially as he named me with my father,(98) to whom I am so infinitely inferior, both in parts and virtues. Though I have been abused undeservedly, I feel I have more title to censure than praise, and -will subscribe to the former sooner than to the latter. Would not it be prudent to look upon the encomium as a funeral oration, and consider Myself as dead? I have always dreaded outliving myself, and writing after what small talents I have should be decayed. Except the last volume of the Anecdotes of Painting, which has been finished and printed so long, and which, appear when they may, will still come too late for many reasons. I am disposed never to publish any more of my own self; but I do not say so positively, lest my breaking my intention should be but another folly. The gout has, however, made me so indolent and inactive, that if my head does not inform me how old I grow, at least my mind and my feet will--and can one have too many monitors of one's weakness!
I am sorry you think yourself so much inconvenienced by stirring from home. ' This is an incommodity by which your friends will suffer more than yourself, and nobody more, sensibly than yours, etc.
(97) Of admission to Strawberry.
(98) On presenting a relation of Mr. Walpole's to the Vice-chancellor for his honorary degree.
58. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Arlington Street, May 29, 1773. (page 83)
Dear Sir, I have been so much taken up of late with poor Lord Orford's affairs, I have not had, and scarce have now, time to write you a line, and thank you for all your kindnesses, information, and apostle -spoon. I have not Newcomb's Repertorium, and shall be obliged to you for the transcript; not as doubting, but to confirm what Heaven, King Edward I., and the Bishop of the Tartars have deposed in favour of Malibrunus, the Jew painter's abilities. I should sooner have suspected that Mr. Masters would have produced such witnesses to condemn Richard III. The note relating to Lady Boteler does not relate to her marriage.
I send you two martagon roots, and some jonquils; and have added some prints, two enamelled Pictures, and three medals. One of Oliver, by Simon; a fine one of Pope Clement X., and a scarce one of Archbishop Sancroft and the Seven Bishops. I hope the two latter will atone for the first. As I shall never be out of your debt, pray draw on me for any more other roots, or any thing that will be agreeable to you, and excuse me at present.
59. To Dr. Berkenhout.(99) July 6, 1773, (page 84)
Sir, I am so much engaged in private business at present, that I have not had time to thank you for the favour of your letter: nor can I now answer it to your satisfaction. My life has been too insignificant to afford materials interesting to the public. In general, the lives of mere authors are dry and unentertaining; nor, though I -have been one occasionally, are my writings of a class or merit to entitle me to any distinction. I can as little furnish you, Sir, with a list of them or their dates, which would give me more trouble to make out than is worth while. If I have any merit with the public, it is for printing and preserving some valuable works of others; and if ever you write the lives of printers, I may be enrolled in the number. My own works, I suppose, are dead and buried; but, as I am not impatient to be interred with them, I hope you will leave that office to the parson of the parish, and I shall be, as long as I live, yours, etc.
(99) Dr. John Berkenhout had been a captain both in the English and Prussian service, and in 1765 took his degree of MD. at Leyden. his application to Walpole was for the purpose of procuring materials for a life of him In his forthcoming work, "Biographia Literaria, or a Biographical History of Literature; containing the Lives of English, Irish, and Scottish Authors, from the dawn of Letters in these Kingdoms to the present Time." The first volume, which treats of those writers who lived from the beginning of the fifth to the end of the sixth century, and which is the only one ever published, appeared in 1777. He died in 1791-E.
60. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, Aug. 30, 1773. (page 84)
I returned last night from Houghton,(100) where multiplicity of business detained me four days longer than I intended, and where I found a scene infinitely more mortifying than I expected; though I certainly did not go with a prospect of finding a land flowing with milk and honey. Except the pictures, which are in the finest preservation, and the woods, which are become forests, all the rest is ruin, desolation, confusion, disorder, debts, mortgages, sales, pillage, villany, waste, folly, and madness. I do not believe that five thousand pounds would put the house and buildings into good repair. The nettles and brambles in the park are up to your shoulders; horses have been turned into the garden, and banditti lodged in every cottage. The perpetuity of livings that come up to the park-pales have been sold--and every farm let for half its value. In short, you know how much family pride I have, and consequently may judge how much I have been mortified! Nor do I tell you half, or near the worst circumstances. I have just stopped the torrent-and that is all. I am very uncertain whether I must not fling up the trust; and some of the difficulties in my way seem unsurmountable, and too dangerous not to alarm even my zeal; since I must not ruin myself, and hurt those for whom I must feel, too, only to restore a family that will end with myself, and to retrieve an estate' from which I am not likely ever to receive the least advantage.
if you will settle with the Churchills your journey to Chalfont, and will let me know the day, I will endeavour to meet you there; I hope it Will not be till next week. I am overwhelmed with business--but, indeed, I know not when I shall be otherwise! I wish you joy of this endless summer.
(100) Whither he had gone during the mental alienation of his nephew, George Earl of Orford, to endeavour to settle and arrange his affairs.
61. To The Earl Of Strafford. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 24, 1773. (page 85)
The multiplicity of business which I found chalked out to me by my journey to Houghton, has engaged me so much, my dear lord, and the unpleasant scene opened to me there struck me so deeply, that I have neither had time nor cheerfulness enough to flatter myself I could amuse my friends by my letters. Except the pictures, I found every thing worse than I expected, and the prospect almost too bad to give me courage to pursue what I am doing. I am totally ignorant of most of the branches of business that are fallen to my lot, and not young enough to learn any new business well. All I can hope is to clear the worst part of the way; for, in undertaking to retrieve an estate, the beginning is certainly the most difficult of the work--it is fathoming a chaos. But I will not unfold a confusion to your lordship which your good sense will always keep You from experiencing --very unfashionably; for the first geniuses of the age hold, that the best method of governing the world is to throw it into disorder. The experiment is not yet complete, as the rearrangement is still to come.
I am very seriously glad of the birth of your nephew,(101) my lord; I am going this evening with my gratulations'; but have been so much absent and so hurried, that I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing
Lady Anne,(102) though I have called twice. To Gunnersbury I have no summons this summer: I receive such honours, or the want of them, with proper respect. Lady Mary Coke, I fear, is in chace of a Dulcineus that she will never meet. When the ardour of peregrination is a little abated, will not she probably give in to a more comfortable pursuit; and, like a print I have seen of -the blessed martyr Charles the First, abandon the hunt of a corruptible for that of an incorruptible crown? There is another beatific print just published in that style: it is of Lady Huntingdon. With much pompous humility, she looks like an old basket-woman trampling on her coronet at the mouth of a cavern.-Poor Whitfield! if he was forced to do the honours of the spelunca!--Saint Fanny Shirley is nearer consecration. I was told two days ago that she had written a letter to Lady Selina that was not intelligible. Her grace of Kingston's glory approaches to consummation in a more worldly style. The Duke(103) is dying, and has given her the whole estate, seventeen thousand a-year. I am told she has already notified the contents of the will, and made offers of the sale of Thoresby. Pious matrons have various ways of expressing decency.
Your lordship's new bow-window thrives. I do not want it to remind me of its master and mistress, to whom I am ever the most devoted humble servant.
(101) A son of John Earl of Buckingham, who died young.
(102) Lady Anne Conolly.
(103) The Duke of Kingston died on the 22d of September, when all his honours became extinct.-E.
62. To The Earl Of Strafford. Arlington Street, Nov. 15, 1773. (page 86)
I am very sorry, my dear lord, that you are coming towards us so slowly and unwillingly. I cannot quite wonder at the latter. The world is an old acquaintance that does not improve upon one's hands: however, one must not give way to the disgusts it creates. My maxim, and practice, too, is to laugh, because I do not like to cry. I could shed a pailfull of tears over all I have seen and learnt Since my poor nephew's misfortune-the more one has to do with men the worse one finds them But can one mend them? No. Shall we shut ourselves up from them? No. We should grow humourists-and of all animals an Englishman is least made to live alone. For my part, I am conscious of so many faults, that I think I grow better the more bad I see in my neighbours; and there are so many I would not resemble, that it makes me watchful over myself You, my lord, who have forty more good qualities than I have, should not seclude yourself. I do not wonder you despise knaves and fools: but remember, they want better examples; they will never grow ashamed by conversing with one another.
I came to settle here on Friday, being drowned out of Twickenham. I find the town desolate, and no news in it, but that the ministry give up the Irish -tax-some say, because it will not pass in Ireland; others, because the city of London would have petitioned against it; and some, because there were factions in the council-- which is not the most incredible of all. I am glad, for the sake of some of my friends who would have suffered by it, that it is over.(104) In other respects, I have too much private business of my own to think about the public, which is big enough to take care of itself.
I have heard some of Lady Mary Coke's mortifications. I have regard and esteem for her good qualities, which are many; but I doubt her genius will never suffer her to be quite happy. As she will not take the psalmist's advice of not putting trust, I am sure she would not follow mine; for, with all her piety, King David is the only royal person she will not listen to, and therefore I forbear my sweet counsel. When she and Lord Huntingdon meet, will not they put you in mind of Count-Gage and Lady Mary Herbert, who met in the mines of Asturias, after they had failed of the crown of Poland?(105) Adieu, my dear lord! Come you and my lady among us. You have some friends that are not odious, and who will be rejoiced to see you both- -witness, for one, yours most faithfully.
(104) A tax upon absentees. Mr. Hardy, in his Memoirs of Lord Charlemont, says, that the influence of the Whig leaders predominated so far as to oblige the ministers to relinquish the measure.-E.
(105) "The crown of Poland, venal twice an age, To just three millions stint;ed modest Gage."
Pope in a note to the above couplet, states that Mr. Gage and Lady Mary Herbert, " each of them, in the Mississippi scheme, despised to realize above three hundred thousand pounds: the gentleman with a view to the purchase of the crown of Poland, the lady on a vision of the like royal nature: they have since retired into Spain, where they are still in search of gold, in the mines of the Asturias."-E.
63. To Lady Mary Coke.(106) ((page 87)
Your ladyship's illustrious exploits are the constant theme of my meditations. Your expeditions are so rapid, and to such distant regions, that I cannot help thinking you are possessed of the giant's boots that stepped seven leagues at a stride, as we are assured by that accurate historian Mother Goose. You are, I know, Madam', an excellent walker, yet methinks seven leagues at once are a prodigious straddle for a fair lady. But whatever is your manner of travelling, few heroines ancient or modern can be compared to you for length of journeys. Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, and M. M. or N. N. Queen of Sheba, went each of them the Lord knows how far to meet Alexander the Great and Solomon the Wise; the one to beg the favour of having a daughter (I suppose) and heiress by him; and the other, says scandal, to grant a like favour to the Hebrew monarch. Your ladyship, who has more real Amazonian principles, never makes visits but to empresses, queens, and princesses; and your country is enriched with the maxims of wisdom and virtue which you collect in your travels. For such great ends did Herodotus, Pythagoras, and other sages, make voyages to Egypt, and every distant kingdom; and it is amazing how much their own countries were benefited by what those philosophers learned in their peregrinations. Were it not that your ladyship is actuated by such public spirit, I could Put YOU in mind, Madam, of an old story that might save you a great deal of fatigue and danger-and now I think of it, as I have nothing better to fill my letter with, I will relate it to you.
Pyrrhus, the martial and magnanimous King of Epirus (as my Lord Lyttelton would call him), being, as I have heard or seen Goodman Plutarch say, intent on his preparations for invading Italy, Cineas, one of the grooms of his bedchamber, took the liberty of asking his majesty what benefit he expected to reap if he should be successful in conquering the Romans?--Jesus! said the King, peevishly; why the question answers itself. When we have overcome the Romans, no province, no town, whether Greek or barbarian, will be able to resist us: we shall at once be masters of all Italy. Cineas after a short pause replied, And having subdued Italy, what shall we do next?--Do next? answered Pyrrhus; why, seize Sicily. Very likely, quoth Cineas: but will that put an end to the war?-The gods forbid! cried his Majesty: when Sicily is reduced, Libya and Carthage will be within our reach. And then, without giving Cineas time to put in a word, the heroic Prince ran over Africa, Greece, Asia, Persia, and every other country he had ever heard of upon the face of God's earth; not one of which he intended should escape his victorious sword. At last, when he was at the end of his geography, and a little out of breath, Cineas watched his opportunity, and said quietly, Well, Sire, and when we have conquered all the world, what are we to do then?--Why, then, said his Majesty, extremely satisfied with his own prowess, we will live at our ease; we: Will spend whole days in banqueting and carousing, and will think of nothing but our pleasures.
Now, Madam, for the application. Had I had the honour a few years ago of being your confidential abigail, when you meditated a visit to Princess Esterhazi, I would have ventured to ask your ladyship of what advantage her acquaintance would be to you? Probably you would have told me, that she would introduce you to several electresses and margravines, whose courts you would visit. That having conquered all their hearts, as I am persuaded you would, your next jaunt would be to Hesse; from whence it would be but a trip to Aix, where Madame de Rochouart lives. Soaring from thence you Would repair to the Imperial court at Vienna, where resides the most august, most virtuous, and most plump of empresses and queens- -no, I mistake--I should only have said, of empresses; for her Majesty of Denmark, God bless her! is reported to be full as virtuous, and three stone heavier. Shall not you call at Copenhagen, Madam? If you do, you are next door to the Czarina, who is the quintessence of friendship, as the Princess Daskioff says, whom, next to the late Czar, her Muscovite Majesty loves above all the world. Asia, I suppose, would not enter into your ladyship's system Of conquest; for, though it contains a sight of queens and sultanas, the poor ladies are locked up in abominable places, into which I am sure your ladyship's amity would never carry you--I think they call them seraglios. Africa has nothing but empresses stark-naked; and of complexions directly the reverse of your alabaster They do not reign in their own right; and what is worse, the emperors of those barbarous regions wear no more robes than the sovereigns of their hearts. And what are princes and princesses without velvet and ermine? As I am not a jot a better geographer than King Pyrrhus, I can at present recollect but one lady more who reigns alone, and that is her Majesty of Otaheite, lately discovered by Mr. Bankes and Dr. Solander; and for whom, your ladyship's compassionate breast must feel the tenderest emotions,' she having been cruelly deprived of her faithful minister and lover Tobiu, since dead at Batavia.
Well,'Madam, after you should have given me the plan of your intended expeditions, and not left a queen regent on the face of the globe unvisited,-- I would ask what we were to do next?- -Why then, dear Abigail, you would have said, we will retire to Notting-hill, we will plant shrubs all the morning, read Anderson's Royal Genealogies all the evening; and once or twice a week I will go to Gunnersbury and drink a bottle with Princess Amelia. Alas, dear lady! and cannot you do all that without skuttling from one end of the world to the other?--This was the, upshot of all Cineas's inquisitiveness: and this is the pith of this tedious letter from, Madam, your ladyship's most faithful Aulic Counsellor and humble admirer.
(106) See the two preceding letters. It will be recollected that Lady Mary Coke was sister-in-law to The Earl of Strafford, and widow of Viscount Coke, heir apparent of Thomas Earl of Leicester, who died without issue by her, in his father's lifetime. Lady Mary died at a great age in 1811-E.
64. To The Hon. Mrs. GREY.(107) Dec. 9, 1773. (page 89)
DEAR MADAM, As I hear Lady Blandford has a return of the gout-, as I foretold last night from the red spot being not gone, I beg you will be so good as to tell her, that if she does not encourage the swelling by keeping her foot wrapped up as hot as possible in flannel, she will torment herself and bring more pain. I will answer that if she will let it swell, and suffer the swelling to go off of itself, she will have no more pain; and she must remember, that the gout will bear contradiction no more than she herself(108) Pray read this to her, and what I say farther--that though I know she will not bear pain for herself, I am sure she will for her friends. Her misfortune has produced the greatest satisfaction that a good mind can receive, the experience that that goodness has given her a great many sincere friends, who have shown as much concern as ever was known, and the most disinterested; as we know her generosity has left her nothing to give. We wish to preserve her for her own sake and ours, and the poor beseech her to bear a little pain for them.
I am going out of town till Monday, or would bring my prescription myself. She wants no virtue but patience; and patience takes it very ill to be left out of such good company. I am, dear Madam, Your obedient servant, Dr. WALPOLE.
(107) NOW first printed.
(108) It has already been stated, that Lady Blandford was somewhat impatient in her temper.-E.
65. To Sir David Dalrymple.(109) Arlington Street, Dec. 14, 1773. (page 90)
Sir, I have received from Mr. Dodsley, and read with pleasure, your Remarks on the History of Scotland," though I am not competently versed in some of the subjects. Indeed, such a load of difficult and vexatious business is fallen upon me by the unhappy situation of my nephew, Lord Orford, of whose affairs I have been forced to undertake the management, though greatly unfit for it, that I am obliged to bid adieu to all literary amusement and pursuits; and must dedicate the rest of a life almost worn out, and of late wasted and broken by a long illness, to the duties I owe to my family. I hope you, Sir, will have no such disagreeable avocation, and am your obliged servant.
(109) Now first collected.
66. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Arlington Street, May 4, 1774. (page 90)
Dear Sir, We have dropped one another, as if we were not antiquaries, but people of this world-or do you disclaim me, because I have quitted the Society? I could give You but too sad reasons for my silence. The gout kept entire possession of me for six months; and, before it released me, Lord Orford's illness and affairs engrossed me totally. I have been twice in Norfolk since you heard from me. I am now at liberty again. What is your account of yourself? To. ask you to come above ground, even so far as to see me, I know is in vain or I certainly would ask it. You impose Carthusian shackles on Yourself, Will not quit your cell, nor will speak above once a week. I am glad to hear of you, and to see your hand, though you make that as much like print as you can. If you were to be tempted abroad, it would be a pilgrimage: and I can lure you even with that. My chapel is finished, and the shrine will actually be placed in less than a fortnight. My father is said to have said, that every man had his price. You are a Beatus, indeed, if you resist a shrine. Why should not you add to your claustral virtues that of a peregrination to Strawberry? You will find me quite alone in July. Consider, Strawberry is almost the last monastery left, at least in England. Poor Mr. Bateman's is despoiled. Lord Bateman has stripped and plundered it: has sequestered the best things, has advertised the site, and is dirtily selling by auction what he neither would keep, nor can sell for a sum that is worth while. I was hurt to see half the ornaments of the chapel, and the reliquaries, and in short a thousand trifles, exposed to sneers. I am buying a few to keep for the founder's sake. Surely it is very indecent for a favourite relation, who is rich, to show so little remembrance and affection. I suppose Strawberry will have the same fate! It has already happened to two of my friends. Lord Bristol got his mother's house from his brother, by persuading her he was in love with it. He let it in a month after she was dead band all her favourite pictures and ornaments, which she had ordered not to be removed, are mouldering in a garret! You are in the right to care so little for a world where there is no measure but avoirdupois. Adieu! Yours sincerely.
67. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, May 28, 1774. (page 91)
Nothing will be more agreeable to me', dear Sir, than a visit from you in July. I will try to persuade Mr. Granger to meet you; and if you had any such thing as summer in the fens, I would desire you to bring a bag with you. We are almost freezing here in the midst of beautiful verdure, with a profusion of blossoms and flowers; but I keep good fires, and seem to feel warm weather while I look through the window; for the way to ensure summer in England, is to have it framed and glazed in a comfortable room.
I shall be still more glad to hear you are settled in Your living. Burnham is almost in my neighbourhood; and its being in that of Eton and Windsor, will more than console you, I hope, for leaving Ely and Cambridge. Pray let me know the moment you are certain. It would now be a disappointment to me as well as you. You shall be inaugurated in my chapel, which is much more venerable than your parish church, and has the genuine air of antiquity. I bought very little of poor Mr. Bateman's. His nephew disposed of little that was worth houseroom, and Yet pulled the whole to pieces.
Mr. Pennant has Published a new Tour to Scotland and the Hebrides: and, though he has endeavoured to paint their dismal isles and rocks in glowing colours, they will not be satisfied; for he seems no bigot about Ossian, at least in some passages; and is free in others, which their intolerating spirit will resent. I cannot say the book is very entertaining to me, and it is more a book of rates than of antiquities. The most amusing part was communicated to him by Mr. Banks, who found whole islands that bear nothing but columns, as other places do grass and barley. There is a beautiful cave called Fingal's; which proves that nature loves Gothic architecture.
Mr. Pennant has given a new edition of his former Tour, with more cuts. Among others, is the vulgar head, called the Countess of Desmond. I told him I had discovered, and proved past contradiction, that it is Rembrandt's mother. He owned it, and said, he would correct it by a note-but he has not. This is a brave way of being an antiquary! as if there could be any merit in giving for genuine what one knows to be spurious. He is, indeed, a superficial man, and knows little of history or antiquity: but he has a violent rage for being an author. He set out with Ornithology, and a little Natural History, and picks Up his knowledge as he rides. I have a still lower idea of Mr. Gough; for Mr. Pennant, at least, is very civil: the other is a hog. Mr. Fenn,(110) another smatterer in antiquity, but. a very good sort of man, told me, Mr. Gough desired to be introduced to me--but as he has been such a bear to you,(111) he shall not come. The Society of Antiquaries put me in mind of what the old Lord Pembroke said to Anstis the herald: "Thou silly fellow! thou dost not know thy own silly business." If they went behind taste by poking into barbarous ages, when there was no taste, one could forgive them--but they catch at the first ugly thing they see, and take it for old, because it is new to them, and then usher it pompously into the world, as if they had made a discovery; though they have not yet cleared up a single point that is of the least importance, or that tends to Settle any obscure passage in history.
I will not condole with you on having had the gout, since you find it has removed other complaints. Besides as it begins late, you are never likely to have it severely. I shall be in terrors in two or three months, having had the four last fits periodically and biennially Indeed, the two last were so long and severe, that my remaining and shattered strength could ill support such.
I must repeat how glad I shall be to have you at Burnham. When people grow old, as you and I do, they should get together. Others do not care for us: but we seem wiser to one another by finding fault with them. Not that I am apt to dislike young folks, whom I think every thing becomes: but it is a kind of self-defence to live in a body. I dare to say that monks never find out that they grow old fools. Their age gives them authority, and nobody contradicts them. In the world, one cannot help perceiving one is out of fashion. Women play at cards with women of their own standing, and censure others between the deals, and thence conclude themselves Gamaliels. I who see many young men with better parts than myself, submit with a good grace, or retreat hither to my castle, where I am satisfied with what I have done, and am always in good humour. But I like to have one or two old friends with me. I do not much invite the juvenile, who think my castle and me of equal antiquity: for no wonder, if they supposed George I. lived in the time of the crusades.
Adieu! my good Sir, and pray let Burnham Wood and Dunsinane be good neighbours. Yours ever.
(110) Sir John Fenn, who edited the "Original Letters, written during the Reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., Richard III., and Henry ViI., by various Persons of rank and consequence, digested in a Chronological order - with Notes historical and explanatory;" which were published in four volumes, quarto, between the years 1787-1789. The letters are principally by members of the Paston family and others, who were of great consequence in Norfolk at the time Sir John who was a native of Norwich, died in 1794. A fifth volume was published in 1823.- E.
(111) Alluding to his not having answered a letter from Mr. Cole for nearly a twelvemonth.
68. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, June 21, 1774. (page 93)
Your illness, dear Sir, is the worst excuse you could make me; and the worse, as you may be well in a night, if you will, by taking six grains of James's Powder. He cannot cure death; but he can most complaints that are not mortal or chronical. He could cure you so soon of colds, that he would cure you of another distemper, to which I doubt you are a little subject, the fear of them. I hope you were certain, that illness is a legal plea for missing induction, or you will have nursed a cough and hoarseness with too much tenderness, as they certainly could bear a journey. Never see my face again, if you are not rector of Burnham. How can you be so bigoted to Milton? I should have thought the very name would have prejudiced you against the place, as the name is all that could approach towards reconciling me to the fens. I shall be very glad to see you here, whenever you have resolution enough to quit your cell. But since Burnham and the neighbourhood of Windsor and Eton have no charms for you, can I expect that Strawberry Hill should have any? Methinks, that when one grows old, one's contemporary friends should be our best amusement: for younger people are soon tired of us, and our old stories: but I have found the contrary in some of mine. For your part, you care for conversing with none but the dead: for I reckon the unborn, for whom you are writing, as much dead, as those from whom you collect. .
You certainly ask no favour, dear Sir, when you want prints of Me. They are at any body's service that thinks them worth having. The owner sets very little value on them, since he sets very little, indeed, on himself: as a man, a very faulty one; and as an author, a very middling one; which whoever thinks a comfortable rank, is not at all my opinion. Pray convince me that you think I mean sincerely, by not answering me with a compliment. it is very weak to be pleased with flattery; the stupidest of 'all delusions to beg it. From You I should take it ill. We have known one another almost fifty years--to very little purpose, indeed, if any ceremony is necessary, or downright sincerity not established between us. tell me that you are recovered, and that I shall see you some time or other. I have finished the catalogue of my collection; but you shall never have it without fetching, nor, though a less punishment, the prints you desire. I propose in time to have plates of my house added to 'the Catalogue, yet I Cannot afford them, unless by degrees. Engravers are grown so much dearer, without My growing richer, that I must have patience! a quality I seldom have, but when I must. Adieu! Yours ever.
P. S. I have lately been at Ampthill, and saw Queen Catherine's cross. It is not near large enough for the situation, and would be fitter for a garden than a park: but it is executed in the truest and best taste. Lord Ossory is quite satisfied, as well as I, and designs Mr. Essex a present of some guineas. If ever I am richer, I shall consult the same honest man about building my offices, for Which I have a plan: but if I have no more money, ever, I Will not run in debt, and distress myself: and therefore remit my designs to chance and a little economy.
69. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1774. (page 94)
I have nothing to say--which is the best reason in the world for writing; for one must have a great regard for any body, one writes to, when one begins a letter neither on ceremony nor business. You are seeing armies,(112) who are always in fine order--and great spirits when they are in cold blood: I am sorry you thought it worth while to realize what I should have thought you could have seen in your mind's eye. However, I hope you will be amused and pleased With viewing heroes, both in their autumn and their bud. Vienna will be a new sight; so will the Austrian eagle and its two heads, I should like seeing, too, if any fairy would present me with a chest that would fly up into the air by touching a peg, and transport me whither I pleased in an instant: but roads, and inns, and dirt, are terrible drawbacks on My curiosity. I grow so old and so indolent, that I scarce stir from hence; and the dread of the gout makes me almost as much a prisoner, as a fit of it. News I know none, if there is any. The papers tell me that the city was to present a petition to The King against the Quebec-bill yesterday; and I suppose they will tell me to-morrow whether it was presented. The King's speech tells me, there has nothing happened between the Russians and the Turks.(113) Lady Barrymore told me t'other day, that nothing was to happen between her and Lord Egremont. I am as well satisfied with these negatives, as I should have been with the contrary. I am much more interested about the rain, for it destroys all my roses and orange-flowers, of which I have exuberance; and my hay is cut, and cannot be made. However, it is delightful to have no other distresses. When I compare my present tranquillity and indifference with all I suffered last year,(114) I am thankful for my happiness and enjoy it--unless the bell rings early in the morning--then I tremble, and think it an express from Norfolk.
It is unfortunate that when one has nothing to talk of but one's self, one should have nothing to' say of one's self. It is shameful, too, to send such a scrap by the post. I think I shall reserve it till Tuesday. If -I have then nothing to add, as is probable, you must content yourself with my good intentions, as you, I hope, will with this speculative campaign. Pray, for the future, remain at home and build bridges: I wish you were here to expedite ours to Richmond, which they tell me Will not be passable these two years. I have done looking so forward. Adieu!
(112) Mr. Conway was now on a tour of military curiosity through Flanders, Germany, Prussia, and part of Hungary.
(113) Peace between Russia and Turkey Was proclaimed at St. Petersburgh on the 14th of August, 1774.-E.
(114) During the illness of his nephew, Lord Orford.
70. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Matson, near Gloucester, Aug. 15, 1774. (page 95)
Dear Sir, As I am your disciple in antiquities (for you studied them when I was but a scoffer), I think it my duty to give you some account of my journeying, in the good cause. You will not dislike my date. I am in the Very mansion where King Charles the First and his two eldest sons lay during the siege; and there are marks of the last's hacking with his hanger on a window, as he told Mr. Selwin's grandfather afterwards. The present master has done due honour to the royal residence, and erected a good marble bust of the Martyr, in a little gallery. In a window is a shield in painted glass, with that King's and his Queen's arms, which I gave him. So you see I am not a rebel, when alma mater antiquity stands godmother.
I went again to the cathedral, and, on seeing the monument of Edward II a new historic doubt started which I pray you to solve. His Majesty has a longish beard - and such were certainly worn at that time. Who is the first historian that tells the story of his being shaven with cold water from a ditch and weeping to supply warm, as he was carried to Berkeley Castle? Is not this apocryphal? The house whence Bishop Hooper(115) was carried to the stake, is still standing, tale quale. I made a visit to his actual successor, Warburton, 'who is very infirm, speaks with much hesitation, and, they say, begins to lose his memory. They have destroyed the beautiful cross; the two battered heads of Henry III. and Edward III. are in the Postmaster's garden.
Yesterday I made a jaunt four miles hence that pleased me exceedingly, to Prinknash, the individual villa of the abbots of Gloucester. I wished you there with their mitre on. It stands on a glorious, but impracticable hill, in the midst of a little forest of beech, and commanding Elysium. The house is small, but has good rooms, and though modernized here and there, not extravagantly. On the ceiling of the hall is Edward IVth's Jovial device, a fau-con serrure. The chapel is low and small, but antique, and with painted glass, with many angels in their coronation robes, i. e. wings and crowns. Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour lay here: in the dining-room are their arms in glass, and of Catherine of Arragon, and of Brays and Bridges. Under the window, a barbarous bas-relief head of Harry, young: as it is still on a sign of an alehouse, on the descent of the hill. Think of my amazement, when they showed me the chapel plate, and I found on it, on four pieces, my own arms, quartering my mother-in-law, Skerret's, and in a shield of pretence, those of Fortescue certainly by mistake, for those of my sister-in-law, as the barony of Clinton was in abeyance between her and Fortescue Lord Clinton. The whole is modern and blundered: for Skerret should be impaled, not quartered, and instead of our crest, are two spears tied together in a ducal coronet, and no coronet for my brother, in whose time this plate must have been made, and at whose sale it was probably bought; as he finished the repairs of the church at Houghton, for which, I suppose, this decoration was intended. But the silversmith was no herald, you see.
As I descended the hill, I found in a wretched cottage a child, in an ancient oaken cradle, exactly in the form of that lately published from the cradle of Edward II. I purchased it for five shillings; but don't know whether I shall have fortitude enough to transport it to Strawberry Hill. People would conclude me in my second childhood.
To-day I have been at Berkeley and Thornbury Castles. The first disappointed me much, though very entire. It is much smaller than I expected, but very entire, except a small part burnt two years ago, while the present Earl was in the house. The fire began in the housekeeper's room, who never appeared more; but as she was strict over the servants, and not a bone of her was found, it was supposed that she was murdered, and the body conveyed away. The situation is not elevated nor beautiful, and little improvements made of late, but some silly ones `a la Chinoise, by the present Dowager. In good sooth, I can give you but a very imperfect account; for, instead of the lord's being gone to dine with the mayor of Gloucester, as I expected, I found him in the midst of all his captains of the militia. I am so sillily shy of strangers and youngsters, that I hurried through the chambers; and looked for nothing but the way out of every room. I just observed that there were many bad portraits of the family, but none ancient; as if the Berkeleys had been commissaries, and raised themselves in the last war. There is a plentiful addition of those of my Lord Berkeley of Stratton, but no knights templars, or barons as old as Edward I.; yet are there three beds on which there may have been as frisky doings three centuries ago, as there probably have been within these ten ears. The room shown for the murder of Edward II., and the shrieks of an agonizing king, I verily believe to be genuine. It is a dismal chamber, almost at top of the house, quite detached, and to be approached only by a kind of foot-bridge, and from that 'descends' a large flight of steps that terminate on strong gates; exactly the situation for a corps de garde. In that room they show you a cast of a face in plaister, and tell you it was taken from Edward's. I was not quite so easy of faith about that; for it is evidently the face of Charles I.
The steeple of the church, lately rebuilt handsomely, stands some paces from the body; in the latter are three tombs of the old Berkeleys;, with cumbent figures. The wife of the Lord Berkeley,(116) who was supposed to be privy to the murder, has a curious headgear; it is like a long horseshoe, quilted in quatrefoils; and, like Lord Foppington's wig, allows no more than the breadth of a half-crown to be discovered of the face. Stay, I think I mistake; the husband was a conspirator against Richard II. not Edward. But in those days, loyalty was not so rife as at present.
>From Berkeley Castle I went to Thornbury, of which the ruins are half-ruined. It would have been glorious, if finished.(117) I wish the lords of Berkeley had retained the spirit of deposing till Henry the VIIIth's time! The situation is fine, though that was not the fashion; for all the windows of the great apartment look into the inner court. The prospect was left to the servants. Here I had two adventures. I could find nobody to show me about. I saw a paltry house that I took for the sexton's, at the corner of the close, and bade my servant ring, and ask who could show me the Castle. A voice in a passion flew, from a casement, and issued from a divine. "What! was it his business to show the Castle? - Go look for somebody else! What did the fellow ring for as if the house was on fire?" The poor Swiss came back in a fright, and said, the doctor had sworn at him. Well--we scrambled over a stone stile, saw a room or two glazed near the gate, and rung at it. A damsel came forth and satisfied our curiosity. When we had done seeing, I said, "Child, we don't know our Way, and want to be directed into the London road; I see the Duke's steward yonder at the window, pray desire him to come to me, that I may consult him." She went--he stood staring at us at the window, and sent his footman. I do not think courtesy is a resident at Thornbury. As I returned through the close, the divine came running, out of breath, and without his beaver or band, and calls out, "Sir, I am come to justify myself: your servant says I swore at him: I am no swearer--Lord bless me! (dropping his voice) it is Mr. Walpole!" "Yes, Sir, and I think you was Lord Beauchamp's tutor at Oxford, but I have forgot your name." "Holwell, Sir." "Oh! yes." and then I comforted him, and laid the ill-breeding on my footman's being a foreigner; but could not help saying, I really had taken his house for the sexton's. "Yes, Sir, it is not very good without, won't you please to walk in!" I did, and found the inside ten times worse, and He was making an Index to Homer, a lean wife, suckling a child. He is going to publish the chief beauties, and I believe had just been reading some of the delicate civilities that pass between Agamemnon and Achilles, and that what my servant took for oaths, were only Greek compliments.(118) Adieu! Yours ever.
You see I have not a line more of paper.
(115) John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, who, having refused to recant his opinions, was burned alive before the cathedral of Gloucester in the year 1554.-E.
(116) Thomas, third Lord Berkeley, was entrusted with the custody of Edward II.; but, owing to the humanity with which he treated the captive monarch, he was forced to resign his prisoner and his castle to Lord Maltravers and Sir Thomas Gournay. After the murder of Edward, Lord Berkeley was arraigned as a participator in the crime, but honourably acquitted. The Lady Berkeley alluded to by Walpole was his first wife, Margaret, daughter of Roger de Mortimer, Earl of March, and widow of Robert Vere, Earl of Oxford.-E.
(117) Thornbury Castle was designed, but never finished by the Duke of Buckingham, in Henry VIII's time.-E.
(118) The Rev. William Holwell, vicar of Thornbury, prebendary of Exeter, and some time chaplain to the King. He was distinguished by superior talents as a scholar, and a critical knowledge of the Greek language. His "Extracts from Mr. Pope's Translation, corresponding with the Beauties of Homer, selected from the Iliad," were published in 1776.-E.
71. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, August 18, 1774. (page 98)
It is very hard, that because you do not get my letters, you will not let me receive yours, who do receive them. I have not had a line from you these five weeks. Of your honours and glories fame has told me;(119) and for aught I know, you may be a veldt-marshal by this time, and despise such a poor cottager as me. Take notice I shall disclaim you in my turn, if you are sent on a command against Dantzich, or to usurp a new district in Poland.(120)
I have seen no armies, kings, or. empresses, and cannot send you such august gazettes; nor are they what I want to hear of. I like to hear you are well and diverted; nay, have pimped towards the latter, by desiring Lady Ailesbury to send you Monsieur do Guisnes's invitation to a military f`ete at Metz.(121) For my part, I wish you was returned to your plough. Your Sabine farm is in high beauty. I have lain there twice within this week, going to and from a visit to George Selwyn, near Gloucester; a tour as much to my taste as yours to you. For fortified towns I have seen ruined castles. Unluckily, in that of Berkeley I found a hole regiment of militia in garrison, and as many young officers as if the Countess was in possession, and ready to surrender at indiscretion. I endeavoured to comfort myself, by figuring that they were guarding Edward II. I have seen many other ancient sights without asking leave of the King of Prussia: it would not please me so much to write to him, as it once did to write for him.(122)
They have found at least seventy thousand pounds of Lord Thomond's.(123) George Howard has decked himself with a red riband, money, and honours! Charming things! and yet One may be happy without them.
The young Mr. Coke is returned from his travels n love with the Pretender's queen,(124) who has permitted him to have her picture. What can I tell you more? Nothing. Indeed, if I only write to postmasters, my letter is long enough. Every body's head but mine is full of elections. I had the satisfaction at Gloucester, where George Selwyn is canvassing, of reflecting on my own wisdom. "Suave mari maggno turbantibus aequora ventis," etc. I am certainly the greatest philosopher in the world, without ever having thought of being so: always employed, and never busy;' eager about trifles, and indifferent to every thing serious. Well, if it is not philosophy, it is at least content. I am as pleased here with my own nutshell, as any monarch you have seen these two months astride his eagle--not but I was dissatisfied when I missed you at Park-place, and was peevish at your being in an Aulic chamber. Adieu! Yours ever.
P- S. They tell us from Vienna, that the peace is made between Tisiphone and the Turk: is it true?
(119) Alluding to the distinguished notice taken of General Conway by the King of Prussia.
(120) The first dismemberment of Poland had taken place in the preceding year, by which a third of her territory was ceded to Russia, Austria, and Prussia.-E.
(121) To see the review of the French regiment of Carabineers, then commanded by Monsieur de Guisnes.
(122) Alluding to the Letter to Rousseau in the name of the King of Prussia.
(123) Percy Wyndham Obrien. He was the second son of Sir Charles Wyndham, chancellor of the exchequer to Queen Anne; and took the name of Obrien, pursuant to the Earl of Thomond in Ireland.
(124) The Countess of Albany.-E.
72. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 7, 1774. (page 99)
I did not think you had been so like the rest of the world, as, when you pretended to be visiting armies, to go in search of gold and silver mines!(125) The favours of courts and the smiles of emperors and kings, I see, have corrupted even you, and perverted you to a nabob. Have you brought away an ingot in the calf of your leg? What abomination have you committed? All the gazettes in Europe have sent you on different negotiations: instead of returning With a treaty in your pocket, you will only come back with bills of exchange. I don't envy your subterraneous travels, nor the hospitality of the Hungarians. Where did you find a spoonful of Latin about you? I have not attempted to speak Latin these thirty years, without perceiving I was talking Italian thickened with terminations in us and orum. I should have as little expected to find an Ovid in those regions; but I suppose the gentry of Presburg read him for a fashionable author, as our squires and their wives do the last collections of ballads that have been sung at Vauxhall and Marybone. I wish you may have brought away some sketches of Duke Albert's architecture. You know I deal in the works of royal authors, though I have never admired any of their own buildings, not excepting King Solomon's temple. Stanley(126) and Edmondson in Hungary! What carried them thither? The chase of mines too? The first, perhaps, waddled thither obliquely, as a parrot would have done whose direction was to Naples.
Well, I am glad you have been entertained, and seen such a variety of sights. You don't mind fatigues and hardships, and hospitality, the two extremes that to me poison travelling. I shall never see any thing more, unless I meet with a ring that renders one invisible. It was but the other day that, being with George Selwyn at Gloucester, I Went to view Berkeley Castle, knowing the Earl was to dine with the mayor of Gloucester. Alas! when I arrived, he had put off the party to enjoy his militia a day longer, and the house was full of officers. They might be in the Hungarian dress, for aught I knew; for I was so dismayed, that I would"fain have persuaded the housekeeper that she could not show me the apartments; and when she opened the hall, and I saw it full of captains, I hid myself in a dark passage, and nothing could persuade me to enter, till they had the civility to quit the place. When I was forced at last to go over the castle, I ran through it without seeing any thing, as if I had been afraid of being detained prisoner.
I have no news to send you: if I had any, I would not conclude, as all correspondents do, that Lady Ailesbury left nothing Untold. Lady Powis is gone to hold mobs at Ludlow, where there is actual war, and where a knight, I forget his name, one of their friends, has been almost cut in two with a scythe. When you have seen all the armies in Europe, you will be just in time for many election-battles--perhaps, for a war in America, whither more troops are going. Many of those already sent have deserted; and to be sure the- prospect there is not smiling. Apropos, Lord Mahon,(127) whom Lord Stanhope, his father, will not suffer to wear powder because wheat is so dear, was presented t'other day in coal-black hair and a white feather: they said, "he had been tarred and feathered."
In France you will find a new scene.(128) The Chancellor is sent, a little before his time, to the devil. The old Parliament is expected back. I am sorry to say I shall not meet you there. It will be too late in the year for me to venture, especially as I now live in dread of my biennial gout, and should die of it in an h`otel garni, and forced to receive all comers--I, who you know lock myself up when I am ill as if I had the plague.
I wish I could fill my sheet, in return for your five pages. The only thing-you will care for knowing is, that I never saw Mrs. Damer better in her life, nor look so well. You may trust me, who am so apt to be frightened about her.
(125) Mr. Conway had gone to see the gold and silver mines of cremnitz, in the neighbourhood of Grau, in Hungary.
(126) Mr. Hans Stanley.
(127) Charles Viscount Mahon, born on the 3d of August 1753. In the following December, he married Lady Hester Pitt, eldest daughter of the Earl of Chatham. He succeeded his father, as third Earl Stanhope, in March 1786, and died in 1816.-E.
(128) In Consequence of the death of Louis XV. on the 10th of May.-E.
73. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 27, 1774. (page 101)
I should be very ungrateful indeed if I thought of complaining of you, who are goodness itself to me: and when I did not receive letters from 'you, I concluded it happened from your eccentric positions. I am amazed, that hurried as YOU have been, and your eyes and thoughts- crowded with objects, you have been able to find time to write me so many and such long letters, over and above all those to Lady, Ailesbury, your daughter, brother, and other friends. Even Lord Strafford brags of your frequent remembrance. That your superabundance of royal beams would dazzle you, I never suspected. Even I enjoy for you the distinctions you have received--though I should hate such things for myself, as they are particularly troublesome to me,'and I am particularly awkward under them, and as I abhor the King of Prussia, and if I passed through Berlin, should have no joy like avoiding him--like one of our countrymen, who changed horses at Paris, and asked what the name of that town was? All the other civilities you have received I am perfectly happy in. The Germans are certainly a civil, well-meaning people, and, I believe, one of the least corrupted nations in Europe. I do not think them very agreeable; but who do I think are so? A great many French women, some English men, and a few English women; exceedingly few French men. Italian women are the grossest, vulqarest of the sex. If an Italian man has a grain of sense, he is a buffoon. So much for Europe!
I have already told you, and so must Lady Ailesbury, that my courage fails me, and I dare not meet you at Paris, As the period arrived when the gout used to come, it is never a moment out of my head. Such a suffering, such a helpless condition as I was in for five months and a half, two years ago, makes me tremble from head to foot. I should die at once if seized in a French inn; or, what, if possible, would be worse, at Paris, where I must admit every body.--I, who you know can hardly bear to see even you when I am ill, and who shut up myself here, and would not let Lord and Lady Hertford come near me--I, who have my room washed though in bed, how could I bear French dirt! In short, I, who am so capricious, and whom you are pleased to call a philosopher, I suppose because I have given up every thing but my own will--how could I keep my temper, who have no way of keeping my temper but by keeping it out of every body's way! No, I must give up the satisfaction of being with you at Paris. I have just learnt to give up my pleasures, but I cannot give up my pains, which such selfish people as I who have suffered much, grow to compose into a system that they are partial to, because it is their own. I must make myself amends when you return: you will be more stationary, I hope, for the future; and if I live I shall have intervals of health. In lieu of me, you will have a charming succedaneum, Lady Harriet Stanhope.(129) Her father, who is more a hero than i, is packing up his old decrepit bones, and goes too. I wish she may not have him to nurse, instead of diverting herself.
The present state of your country is, that it is drowned and dead drunk; all water without, and wine within. Opposition for the next elections every where, even in Scotland; not from party, but as laying Out money to advantage. In the head-quarters, indeed, party is not out of the question: the day after to-morrow will be a great bustle in the city for a Lord Mayor,(130) and all the winter in Westminster, where Lord Mahon and Humphrey Cotes oppose the court. Lady Powis is saving her money at Ludlow and Powis Castles by keeping open house day and night against Sir Watkin Williams, and fears she shall be kept there till the general election. It has rained this whole month, and we have got another inundation. The Thames is as broad as your Danube, and all my meadows are under water. Lady Browne and I, coming last Sunday night from Lady Blandford's, were in a piteous plight. The ferryboat was turned round by the current, and carried to Isleworth. Then we ran against the piers of our new bridge, and the horses were frightened. Luckily, my cicisbeo -was a Catholic, and screamed to so many Saints, that some of them at the nearest alehouse came and saved us, or I should have had no more gout, or what I dreaded I should; for I concluded we should be carried ashore somewhere, and be forced to wade through the mud up to my middle. So you see one may wrap oneself up in flannel and be in danger, without visiting all the armies on the face of the globe, and putting the immortality of one's chaise to the proof.
I am ashamed Of sending you three sides of smaller paper in answer to seven large--but what can I do? I see nothing, know nothing, do nothing. My castle is finished, I have nothing new to read, I am tired of writing, I have no new or old bit for my printer. I have only black hoods around me; or, if I go to town, the family-party in Grosvenor Street. One trait will give you a sample of how I passed my time, and made me laugh, as it put me in mind of you; at least it was a fit of absence, much more likely to have happened to you than to me. I was playing eighteenpenny tredrille with the Duchess of Newcastle(131) and Lady Browne, and certainly not much interested in the game. I cannot recollect nor conceive what I was thinking of, but I pushed the cards very gravely to the Duchess, and said, "Doctor, you are to deal." You may guess at their astonishment, and how much it made us all laugh. I wish it may make you smile a moment, or that I had any thing better to send you. Adieu, most affectionately. Yours ever.
(129) a Daughter of the Earl of Harrington. Her ladyship was married, in 1776, to Thomas second Lord Foley.-E.
(130) When Mr. Wilkes was elected.
(131) Catherine, eldest daughter and heiress of the Right Hon. Henry Pelham, married to Henry ninth Earl of Lincoln; who, in consequence of his marriage with her, inherited in 1768, the dukedom of Newcastle-under-Line on the demise of the Countess's uncle, Thomas Pelham Holles, Who had been created Duke of Newcastle.under-Line, with special remainder to the Earl of Lincoln , in 1756 _E.
74. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 28, 1774. (page 103)
Lady Ailesbury brings you this,(132) which is not a letter, but a paper of direction, and the counterpart of what I have written to Madame du Deffand. I beg of you seriously to take a great deal of notice of this dear old friend of mine. She will, perhaps, expect more attention from you, as my friend, and as it is her own nature a little, than will be quite convenient to you: but you have an infinite deal of patience and good-nature, and will excuse it. I was afraid of her importuning Madame Ailesbury, who has a vast deal to see and do, and, therefore, I prepared Madame du Deffand, and told her Lady Ailesbury loves amusements, and that, having never been at Paris before, she must not confine her: so you must pay for both--and it will answer: and- I do not, I own, ask this Only for Madame du Deffand's sake, but for my own, and a little for yours. Since the late King's death she has not dared to write to me freely, and I want to know the present state of 'France exactly, both to satisfy my Own curiosity, and for her sake, as- I wish to learn whether her, pension, etc. is in any danger from the present ministry, some of whom are not her friends. She can tell you a great deal if she will--by that I don't mean that she is reserved, or partial to, her Own country against ours--quite the contrary; she loves me better than all France together--but she hates politics; and therefore, to make her talk on it, you must tell her it is to satisfy me, and that I want to know whether she is well at court, whether she has any fears from the government, particularly Maurepas and Nivernois: and that I am eager to have Monsieur do Choiseul and ma grandmaman, the Duchess, restored to power. If you take it on this foot easily, she will talk to you with the utmost frankness and with amazing cleverness. I have told her you are strangely absent, and that, if she does not repeat it over and over, you will forget every syllable; so I have prepared her to joke and be quite familiar with you at once.(133) She knows more of personal characters, and paints them better, than any body: but let this be between ourselves, for I would not have a living soul suspect, that I get any intelligence from her, which would hurt her; and, therefore, I beg you not to let any human being know of this letter, nor of your conversation with her, neither English nor French.
Madame du Deffand hates les philosophes; so you must give them up to her. She and Madame Geoffrin are no friends: so, if you go thither, don't tell her of it. Indeed, you would be sick of that house, whither all pretended beaux esprits and faux savants go, and where they are very impertinent and dogmatic.
Let me give you one other caution, which I shall give to Lady Ailesbury too. Take care of your papers at Paris, and have a very strong lock to your porte-feuille. In the h`otels garnis they have double keys to every lock, and examine every drawer and paper of the English they can get at. They will pilfer, too, whatever they can. I was robbed of half my clothes there the first time, and they wanted to hang poor Louis to save the people of the house who had stolen the things.
Here is another thing I must say. Madame du Deffand has kept a great many of my letters, and, as she is very old, I am in pain about them. I have written to her to beg she will deliver them up to you to bring back to me, and I trust she Will.(134) If she does, be so good to take great care of them. If she does not mention them, tell her before you come away, that I begged you to bring them; and if she hesitates, convince her how it would hurt me to have letters written in very bad French, and mentioning several people, both French and English, fall into bad hands, and, perhaps, be printed.
Let me desire you to read this letter more than once, that you may not forget my requests, which are very important to me; and I must give you one other caution, without which all would be useless.
There is at Paris a Mademoiselle de l,Espinasse,(135) a pretended bel esprit, who was formerly an humble companion of Madame du Deffand; and betrayed her and used her very ill. I beg of you not to let any body carry you thither. It Would disoblige my friend of all things in the world, and she would never tell you a syllable; and I own it would hurt me, who have such infinite obligations to her, that I should be very unhappy if a particular friend of mine showed her this disregard. She has done every thing upon earth to please and serve me, and I owe it to her to be earnest about this attention. Pray do not mention it; it might look simple in me, and yet I owe it to her, as I know it would hurt her, and, at her age, with her misfortunes, and with infinite obligations on my side, can I do too much to show My gratitude, or prevent her any new mortification? I dwell upon it, because she has some enemies so spiteful that they try to carry all English to Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse.
I wish the Duchess of Choiseul may come to Paris while you are there; but I fear she will not; you would like her of all things. She has more sense and more virtues than almost any human being. If you choose to see any of the savans, let me recommend Monsieur Buffon. He has not only much more sense than any of them, but is an excellent old man, humane, gentle, well-bred, and with none of the arrogant pertness of all the rest. if he is at Paris, you will see a good deal of the Comte d e Broglie at Madame du Deffand's. He is not a genius of the first water, but lively and sometimes agreeable. The court, I fear, will be at Fontainbleau, which will prevent your seeing many, unless you go thither. Adieu! at Paris! I leave the rest of my paper for England, if I happen to have any thing particular to tell you.
(132) Mr. Conway ended is military tour at Paris; whither Lady Ailesbury and Mrs. Damer went to meet him, and where they spent the winter together.
(133) In her letter to Walpole, of the 28th of October, Madame du Deffand draws the following portrait of General Conway:-- "Selon l'id`ee que vous m'en aviez donn`ee, je le croyais grave, s`ev`ere, froid, imposant; c'est l'homme le plus aimable, le plus facile, le plus doux, le plus obligeant, et le plus simple que je connaisse. Il n'a pas ces premiers mouvemens de sensibilit`e qu'on trouve en vous, mais aussi n'a-t-il pas votre humeur."-E.
(134) To this request Madame du Deffand replied--"Je ne me flatte point de vous revoir l'ann`ee prochaine, et le renvoi que vous voulez que je vous fasse de vos lettres est ce qui m'en fait denier. Ne serait-il pas plus naturel, si vous deviez venir, que je vous les rendisse `a vous-m`eme? car vous ne pensez pas que je ne puisse vivre encore un an. Vous me faites croire, Par votre m`efiance, que vous avez en vue d'effacer toute trace de votre intelligence avec Moi."-E.
(135) Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse, the friend of D'Alembert, born at Lyons in 1732, was the natural child of Mademoiselle d'Albon, whose legitimate daughter was married to the Marquis de Vichy. After the death of her mother, she resided with Monsieur and Madame de Vichy; but in consequence of some disagreements, left them, and in May 1754, went to reside with Madame du Deffand, with whom she remained until 1764. The letters of Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse were published some few years since.-E.
75. To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Strawberry Hill, Oct. 11, 1774. (page 105)
Dear Sir, I answer yours immediately; as one pays a shilling to clench a bargain, when one suspects the seller. I accept your visit in the last week of this month, and will prosecute you if you do not execute. I have nothing to say about elections, but that I congratulate myself ,every time I feel I have nothing to do with them. By my nephew's strange conduct about his boroughs, and by many other reasons, I doubt whether he is so well as he seemed to Dr. Barnardiston. It is a subject I do not love to talk on; but I know I tremble every time the bell rings at my gate at an unusual hour.
Have you seen Mr. Granger's Supplement? Methinks it grows too diffuse. I have hinted to him that fewer panegyrics from funeral orations would not hurt it. Adieu!
76. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Sunday, Oct. 16, 1774. (page 106)
I received this morning your letter of the 6th from Strasburg; and before you get this you will have had three from me by Lady Ailesbury. One of them should have reached you much sooner; but Lady Ailesbury kept it, not being sure where you was. It was in answer to one in which you told me an anecdote, which in this last you ask if I had received.
Your letters are always so welcome to me, that you certainly have no occasion for excusing what you say or do not say. Your details amuse me, and so would what you suppress; for, though I have no military genius or curiosity, whatever relates to yourself must interest me. The honours you have received, though I have so little taste for such things myself, gave me great satisfaction; and I do not know whether there is not more pleasure in not being a prophet in one's own country, when one is almost received like Mahomet in every other. To be an idol at home, is no assured touchstone of merit. Stocks and stones have been adored in fifty regions, but do not bear transplanting. The Apollo Belvidere and the Hercules Farnese may lose their temples, but never lose their estimation, by travelling.
Elections, you may be sure, are the only topic here at present--I mean in England--not on this quiet hill, where I think of them as little as of the spot where the battle of Blenheim was fought. They say there will not be much alteration, but the phoenix will rise from its ashes with most of its old plumes, or as bright. Wilkes at first seemed to carry all before him, besides having obtained the mayoralty of London at last. Lady Hertford told me last Sunday, that he would carry twelve members. I have not been in town since, nor know any thing but what I collect from the papers; so. if my letter is opened, M. de Vergennes will not amass any very authentic intelligence from my despatches.
What I have taken notice of, is as follows: For the city Wilkes will have but three members: he will lose Crosby, and Townsend will carry Oliver. In Westminster, Wilkes will not have one; his Humphrey Cotes is by far the lowest on the poll; Lord Percy and Lord T. Clinton are triumphant there. Her grace of Northumberland sits at a window in Covent-garden, harangues the mob, and is "Hail, fellow, well met!" At Dover, Wilkes has carried one, and probably will come in for Middlesex himself with Glynn. There have been great endeavours to oppose him, but to no purpose. Of this I am glad, for I do not love a mob so near as Brentford especially, as my road lies through it. Where he has any other interest I am too ignorant in these matters to tell you. Lord John Cavendish is opposed at York, and at the beginning of the poll had the fewest numbers. Charles Fox, like the ghost in Hamlet, has shifted to many quarters; but in most the cock crew, and he walked off.(136) In Southwark there has been outrageous rioting; but I neither know the candidates, their connexions, nor success. This, perhaps, will appear a great deal of news at Paris: here, I dare to say, my butcher knows more.
I can tell you still less of America. There are two or three more ships with forces going thither, and Sir William Draper as second in command.
Of private news, except that Dyson has had a stroke of palsy and will die, there is certainly none; for I saw that shrill Morning Post, Lady Greenwich, two hours ago, and she did not Know a paragraph.
I forgot to mention to you M. de Maurepas. He was by far the ablest and most agreeable man I knew at Paris: and if you stay, I think I could take the liberty of giving you a letter to him; though, as he is now so great a man, and I remain so little an one, I don't know whether it would be quite so proper--though he was exceedingly good to me, and pressed me often to make him a visit in the country. But Lord Stormont can certainly carry you to him--a better passport.
There was one of my letters on which I wish to hear from you. There are always English coming from Paris, who would bring such a parcel: at least, you might send me one volume at a time, and the rest afterwards: but I should not care to have them ventured by the common conveyance. Madame du Deffand is negotiating for an enamel picture for me; but, if she obtains it, I had rather wait for it till you come. The books I mean, are those I told you Lady Ailesbury and Mrs. Damer would give you a particular account of, for they know my mind exactly. Don't reproach me with not meeting you at Paris. Recollect what I suffered this time two years; and, if you can have any notion of fear, imagine my dread of torture for five months and a half! When all the quiet of Strawberry did but just carry me through it, could I support it in the noise of a French hotel! and, what would be still worse, exposed to receive all visits? for the French, you know, are never mor in public than in the act of death. I am like animals, and love to hide myself when I am dying. Thank God, I am now two days beyond the crisis when I expected my dreadful periodic visitant, and begin to grow very sanguine about the virtue of the bootikins. I shall even have courage to go to-morrow to Chalfont for two days, as it is but a journey of two hours. I would not be a day's journey from hence for all Lord Clive's diamonds. This will satisfy you. I doubt Madame du Deffand is not so easily convinced--therefore, pray do not drop a hint before her of blaming me for not meeting you rather assure her you are persuaded it would have been too great a risk for me at this season. I wish to have her quite clear of my attachment to her; but that I do not always find so easy. You, I am sure, will find her all zeal and entpressement for you and yours. Adieu! Yours ever.
(136) Mr. Fox was returned for Malmesbury.-E.
77. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Oct. 29, 1774. (page 108)
I have received your letter of the 23d, and it certainly overpays me, when you thank instead of scolding me, as I feared. A passionate man has very little merit in being in a passion, and is sure of saying many things he repents, as I do. I only hope you think that I could not be so much in the wrong for every body; nor should have been, perhaps, even for you, if I had not been certain I was the only person, at that moment, that could serve you essentially: and at such a crisis, I am sure I should take exactly the same part again, except in saying some things I did, of which I am ashamed!(137) I will say no more now on that topic, nor on any thing relating to it, because I have written my mind very fully, and you will know it soon. I can only tell you now, that I approve extremely your way of thinking, and hope you will not change it before you hear from me, and know some material circumstances. You and Lady Ailesbury and I agree exactly, and she and I certainly consider only you. I do not answer her last, because I could not help telling you how very kindly I take your letter. All I beg is, that you would have no delicacy about my serving you any way. You know it is a pleasure to me: any body else may have views that would embarrass you; and, therefore, till you are on the spot, and can judge for yourself (which I always insist on, because you are cooler than I, and because, though I have no interests to serve, I have passions, which equally mislead one,) it will be wiser to decline all kind of proposals and offers. You will avoid the plague of contested elections and solicitations: and I see no reasons, at present, that can tempt you to be in a hurry.(138)
You must not expect to be Madame du Deffand's first favourite. Lady Ailesbury has made such a progress there, that you will not easily supplant her. I have received volumes in her praise.(139) You have a better chance with Madame de Cambis, who is very agreeable; and I hope you are not such an English husband as not to conform to the manners of Paris while you are there.
I forgot to mention one or two of my favourite objects to Lady Ailesbury, nay, I am not sure she will taste one of them, the church of the C`elestines. it is crowded with beautiful old tombs; one of Francis II. whose beatitude is presumed from his being husband of the martyr Mary Stuart. - Another is of the first wife of John Duke of Bedford, the Regent Of France. I think you was once there with me formerly. The other is Richelieu's tomb, at the Sorbonne--but that every body is carried to see. The H`otel de Carnavalet,(140) near the Place Royale, is worth looking at, even for the fa`cade, as you drive by. But of all earthly things the most worth seeing is the house at Versailles, where the King's pictures, not hung up, are kept. There is a treasure past belief, though in sad order. and piled one against another. Monsieur de Guerchy once carried me thither; and you may certainly get leave. At the Luxembourg are some hung up, and one particularly is worth going to see alone: it is the Deluge by Nicolo Poussin, as winter. The three other seasons are good for nothing: but the Deluge is the first picture in the world of its kind. You will be shocked to see the glorious pictures at the Palais Royal transplanted to new canvasses, and new painted and varnished, as if they were to be scenes at the Opera-at least, they had treated half-a-dozen of the best so, three years ago, and were going on. The Prince of Monaco has a few fine, but still worse used; one of them shines more than a looking glass. I fear the exposition of pictures is over for this year; it is generally very diverting.(141) I, who went into every church of Paris, can assure you there are few worth it, but the Invalids-except the scenery at St. Roch, about one or two o'clock at noon, when the sun shines; the Carmelites, for the Guido and the portrait of Madame de la Vali`ere as a Magdalen; the Val de Grace, for a moment; the treasure at Notre Dame; the Sainte Chapelle, where in the ante-chapel are two very large enamelled portraits; the tomb of Cond`e at the Great Jesuits in the Rue St. Antoine, if not shut up; and the little church of St. Louis in the Louvre, where is a fine tomb of Cardinal Fleury, but large enough to stand on Salisbury-plain. One thing some of u must remember, as you return; nay, it is better to go soon to St. Denis, and Madame du Deffand must get you a particular order to be shown (which is never shown without) the effigies of the Kings.(142) They are in presses over the treasure which is shown, and where is the glorious antique cameo-cup; but the countenance of Charles IX. is so horrid and remarkable, you would think he had died on the morrow of the St. Barthelemi, and waked full of the recollection. If you love enamels and exquisite medals, get to see the collection of a Monsieur d'Henery, who lives in the corner of the street where Sir John Lambert lives--I forget its name. There is an old man behind the Rue de Colombier, who has a great but bad collection of old French portraits; I delighted in them, but perhaps you would not. I, you may be sure, hunted out every thing of that sort. The convent and collection of St. Germain, I mean that over against the H`otel du Parc Royal, is well worth seeing--but I forget names strangely--Oh! delightful!--Lord Cholmondeley sends me word he goes to Paris on Monday: I shall send this and my other letter by him. It was him I meant; I knew he was going and had prepared it.
Pray take care to lock up your papers in a strong box that nobody can open. They imagine you are at Paris on some commission, and there is no trusting French hotels or servants. America is in a desperate situation, The accounts from the Congress are not expected before the 10th, and expected very warm. I have not time to tell you some manoeuvres against them that will make your blood curdle. Write to me when you can by private hands, as I will to you. There are always English passing backwards and forwards.
(140) Where Madame de S`evign`e resided.
(141) He means from their extreme bad taste.
(142) The abbey of St. Denis was shorn of its glories during the Revolution. On the 16th of October 1793, the coffin of Louis XV. was taken out of the vaults; and, after a stormy debate, it was decided to throw the remains of all the kings, even those of Henry IV. and Louis XIV. which were yet to a great degree preserved entire, into a pit, to melt down their leaden coffins on the spot, and to take away and cast into bullets whatever lead remained in the church; not even excepting the roof.-E.
78. To The Countess Of Ailesbury. Strawberry Hill, Nov. 7, 1774. (page 110)
I have written such tomes to Mr. Conway, Madam, and have so nothing new to write, that I might as well, methinks, begin and like the lady to her husband: "Je vous `ecris parce que je n'ai rien `a faire: je finis parce que je n'ai rien `a vous dire." Yes, I have two complaints to make, one of your ladyship, the other of myself. You tell me nothing of Lady Harriet; have you no tongue, or the French no eyes? or are her eyes employed in nothing but seeing? What a vulgar employment for a fine woman's eyes, after she has risen from her toilet! I declare I will ask no more questions--what is it to me, whether she is admired or not? I should know how charming she is, though all Europe were blind. I hope I am not to be told by any barbarous nation upon earth what beauty and grace are.
For myself, I am guilty of the gout in my elbow; the left- -witness my handwriting. Whether I caught cold by the deluge in the night, or whether the bootikins, like the water of Styx, can only preserve the parts they surround, I doubt they have saved me but three weeks, for so long my reckoning has been out. However, as I feel nothing in my feet, I flatter myself that this Pindaric transition will not be a regular ode, but a fragment, the more valuable for being imperfect.
Now for my gazette.--Marriages--Nothing done. Intrigues--More in the political than civil way. Births--Under par since Lady Berkeley left off breeding. Gaming--Low water. Deaths--Lord Morton, Lord Wentworth, Duchess Douglas. Election stock--More buyers than sellers. Promotions--Mr. Wilkes as high as he can go.--Apropos, he was told the Lord Chancellor intended to signify to him, that the King did not approve the City's choice: he replied, "Then I shall signify to his lordship, that I am at least as fit to be Lord Mayor as he to be Lord Chancellor." This being more gospel than every thing Mr. Wilkes says, the formal approbation was given.
Mr. Burke has succeeded in Bristol, and Sir James Peachey will miscarry in Sussex. But what care you, Madam, about our Parliament? You will see the rentr`ee of the old one, with songs and epigrams into the bargain. We do not shift our Parliaments with so much gaiety. Money in one hand, and abuse in t'other--those are all the arts we know. Wit and a gamut I don't believe ever signified a Parliament,(143) whatever the glossaries may say; for they never produce pleasantry and harmony. Perhaps you may not taste this Saxon pun, but I know it will make the Antiquarian Society die with laughing.
Expectation hangs on America. The result of the general assembly is expected in four or five days. If one may believe the papers, which one should not believe, the other side of the waterists are not doux comme des moutons, and yet we do intend to eat them. I was in town on Monday; the Duchess of Beaufort graced our loo, and made it as rantipole as a Quaker's meeting. Louis Quinze ,(144) I believe, is arrived by this time, but I fear without quinze louis.
Your herb-snuff and the four glasses are lying in my warehouse, but I can hear of no ship going to Paris. You are now at FOntainbleau, but not thinking of Francis 1. the Queen of Sweden, and Monaldelschi. It is terrible that one cannot go to courts that are gone! You have supped with the Chevalier de Boufflers: did he act every thing in the world, and sing every thing in the world, and laugh at every thing in the world? Has Madame de Cambis sung to you "Sans d`epit, sans l`egert`e?"(145) Has Lord Cholmondeley delivered my pacquet? I hear I have hopes of Madame d'Olonne.(146) Gout or no gout, I shall be little in town till after Christmas. My elbow makes me bless myself that I am not at Paris. Old age is no such uncomfortable thing, if one gives oneself up to it with a good grace, and don't drag it about
"To midnight dances and the public show."
If one stays quietly in one's own house in the country, and cares for nothing but oneself, scolds one's servants, condemns every thing that is new, and recollects how charming a thousand things were formerly that were very disagreeable, one gets over the winters very well, and the summers get over themselves.
(143) Witenagemoot.
(144) This was a cant name given to Lady Powis, who was very fond of loo, and had lost much money at the game.
(145) The first words of a favourite French air.
(146) The Portrait in enamel of Madame d'Olonne by Petitot, which Walpole afterwards purchased.-E.
79. To The Earl Of Strafford. Strawberry Hill, Nov. 11, 1774. (page 112)
I am sorry there is still time, my dear lord, to write to you again; and that though there is, I have so little to amuse you with. One is not much nearer news for being within ten miles of London than if in Yorkshire; and besides, whatever reaches us, Lady Greenwich catches at the rebound before me, and Sends you before I can. Our own circle furnishes very little. Dowagers are good for propagating news when planted, but have done with sending forth suckers. Lady Blandford's coffee-house is removed to town, and the Duchess of Newcastle's is little frequented, but by your sister Anne, Lady Browne, and me. This morning, indeed, I was at a very fine concert at old Franks's at Isleworth, and heard Leoni,(147) who pleased me more than any thing I have heard these hundred years. There is a full melancholy melody in his voice, though a falsetto, that nothing but a natural voice ever compasses. Then he sung songs of Handel in the genuine simple style, and did not put one in pain like rope-dancers. Of the Opera I hear a dismal account; for I did not go to it to sit in our box like an old King dowager by myself. Garrick is treating the town, as it deserves and likes to be treated, with scenes, fireworks, and his own writing. A good new play I never expect to see more, nor have seen since The Provoked Husband, which came out when I was at school.
Bradshaw is dead, they say by his own hand: I don't know wherefore. I was told it was a great political event. If it is, our politics run as low as our plays. From town I heard that Lord Bristol was taken speechless with a stroke of the palsy. If he dies, Madam Chudleigh(148) must be tried by her peers, as she is certainly either duchess or countess. Mr. Conway and his company are so pleased with Paris, that they talk of staying till Christmas. I am glad; for they will certainly be better diverted there than here. Your lordship's most faithful servant.
(147) Leoni, a celebrated singer of the day, considered one of the best in England. He was a Jew, and engaged at the synagogues, from which he is said to have been dismissed for singing in the Messiah of Handel.-E.
(148) The Duchess of Kingston; against whom an indictment for bigamy was found on the 8th of December, she having married the Duke of Kingston, having been previously married to the Hon. Augustus John Hervey, then living, and who, by the death of his brother, in March, 1775, became Earl of Bristol.-E.
80. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Nov. 12, 1774. (page 112)
I have received a delightful letter from you of four sheets, and another since. I shall not reply to the campaigning part (though much obliged to you for it), because I have twenty other subjects -more pressing to talk of The first is to thank you for your excessive goodness to my dear old friend-she has some indiscretions, and you must not have any to her; but she has the best heart in the world, and I am happy,, at her great age, that she has spirits enough not to he always upon her guard. A bad heart, especially after long experience,, is but too apt to overflow inwardly with prudence. At least, as I am but too like her, and have corrected too few of my faults, I would fain persuade myself that some of them flow from a good principle--but I have not time to talk of myself, though you are much too Partial to me, and give me an opportunity; yet I shall not take it.
Now for English news, and then your letter again. There has been a great mortality here; though Death has rather been pri`e than a volunteer. Bradshaw, as I told Lady Ailesbury last post, shot himself. He is dead, totally undone. Whether that alone was the cause, or whether he had not done something worse, I doubt. I cannot conceive that, with his resources, he should have been hopeless--and, to suspect him of delicacy, impossible!
A ship is arrived from America, and I doubt with very bad news; for none but trifling letters have yet been given out- -but I am here, see nobody that knows any thing,,and only hear by accident from people that drop in. The sloop that is to bring the result of the general assembly is not yet come. There are indeed rumours, that both the non-importation, and even non-exportation have been decreed, and that the flame is universal. I hope this is exaggerated! yet I am told the stocks will fall very much in a day or two.
I have nothing to tell Lady Ailesbury, but that I hear a deplorable account of the Opera. There is a new puppet-show at Drury Lane, as fine as scenes can make it, called "The Maid of the Oaks,"(149) and as dull as the author could not help making it.
Except M. d'Herouville, I know all the people you name. C. I doubt, by things I have heard formerly, may have been a concessionnaire. The Duke, your protecteur(150) is mediocre enough; You would have been more pleased with his wife. The Chevalier's(151) bon-mot is excellent, and so is he. He has as much buffonnerie as the Italians, With more wit and novelty. His impromptu verses often admirable. Get Madame du Deffand to show you his embassy to the Princess Christine, and his verses on his eldest uncle, beginning Si Monsieur de Veau. His second uncle has parts, but they are not so natural. Madame de Caraman is a very good kind of woman, but has not a quarter of her sister's parts.(152) Madame de Mirepoix is the agreeable woman of the world when she pleases-but there, must not be a card in the room. Lord * * * * has acted like himself; that is, unlike any body else. You know, I believe, that I think him a very good spetcr; but I have little opinion of his judgment and knowledge of the world, and a great Opinion of his affectation and insincerity. The Abb`e Raynal, though he wrote that fine work on the Commerce des Deux Indes, is the most tiresome creature in the world. The first time I met him was at the dull Baron d'Olbach's: we were twelve at table: I dreaded opening My Mouth in French, before so many people and so many servants: he began questioning me, cross the table, about our colonies, which I understand as little as I do Coptic. I made him signs I was deaf. After dinner, he found I was not, and never forgave me. Mademoiselle do Raucoux I never saw till you told me Madame du Deffand said she was d`emoniaque sans chaleur! What painting! I see her now. Le Kain sometimes pleased me, oftener not. Mol`e is charming in genteel, or in pathetic comedy, and would be fine in tragedy, if he was stronger. Preville is always perfection. I like his wife in affected parts, though not animated enough. There was a delightful woman who did the Lady Wishforts, I don't know if there still, I think her name Mademoiselle Drouin; and a fat woman, rather elderly, who sometimes acted the soubrette. But you have missed the Dumenil, and Caillaut! What irreparable losses! Madame du Deffand, perhaps--I don't know--could obtain your hearing the Clairon, yet the Dumenil was infinitely preferable.
I could now almost find in my heart to laugh at you for liking Boutin's garden.(153) Do you know, that I drew a plan of it, as the completest absurdity I ever saw. What! a river that wriggles at right angles through a stone gutter, with two tansy puddings that were dug out of it, and three or four beds in a row, by a corner of the wall, with samples of grass, corn, and of en friche, like a tailor's paper of patterns! And you like this! I will tell Park-place--Oh! I had forgot your audience in dumb show--Well, as Madame de S`evign`e said, "Le Roi de Prusse, c'est le plus grand Roi du monde still."(154) My love to the old Parliament; I don't love new ones.
I went several times to Madame do Monconseil's, who is just what you say. Mesdames de Tingri et de la Vauguion I never saw: Madame de Noailles once or twice, and enough. You say something of Madame de Mallet, which I could not read; for, by the way, your brother and I agree that you are grown not to write legibly: is that lady in being? I knew her formerly. Madame de Blot(155) I know, and Monsieur de Paulmy I know; but for Heaven's sake who is Colonel Conway?(156) Mademoiselle Sanadon is la sana donna, and not Mademoiselle Celadon,(157) as you call her. Pray assure my good Monsieur Schouwalov(158)of my great regard: he is one of the best of beings.
I have said all I could, at least all I should. I reserve the rest of my paper for a postscript; for this is but Saturday, and my letter cannot depart till Tuesday: but I could not for one minute defer answering your charming volumes, which interest me so much. I grieve for Lady Harriet's swelled face, and wish for both their sakes .She could transfer it to her father. I assure her I meant nothing by desiring you to see the verses to the Princess Christine,(159) wherein there is very profane mention of a pair of swelled cheeks. I hear nothing of Madame d'Olonne. Oh! make Madame du Deffand show you the sweet portrait of Madame de Prie, the Duke of Bourbon's mistress. Have you seen Madame de Monaco, and the remains of Madame de Brionne? If -you wish to see Mrs. A * * *, ask for the Princesse de Ligne. If you have seen Monsieur de Maurepas, you have seen the late Lord Hardwicke.(160) By your not naming him, I suppose the Duc de Nivernois, is not at Paris. Say a great deal for me to M. de Guisnes.. You will not see my passion, the Duchess de Chatillon. if You see Madame de Nivernois, you will think the Duke of Newcastle is come to life again. Alas! where is my Postscript? Adieu! Yours ever.
(149) Written by General Burgoyne. Walpole's opinion of the General's abilities as a writer totally changed upon the appearance of "The Heiress", which he always called the greatest comedy in the English language.-E.
(150) The Duc de la Vali`ere: whom Mr. Conway had said, that, when presented to him, "his reception was what might be called good but rather de protection."
(151) The Chevalier de Boufflers; well known for his "Letters from Switzerland," addressed to his mother; his "Reine de Golconde," a tale; and a number of very pretty vers de soci`et`e.-E.
(152) Madame de Cambis.-E.
(153) See another ludicrous description of this garden in a letter to Mr. Chute; ante, P. 55, letter 31.-E.
(154) This alludes to Mr. Conway's presentation to the King of France, Louis XVI. at Fontainbleau, of which, in his letter to Mr. Walpole he gives the following account:-- "on St. Hubert's day in the morning I had the honour of being presented to the King: 'twas a good day, and an excellent deed. You may be sure I was well received! the French are so polite! and their court so Polished! The Emperor, indeed, talked to me every day; so did the King of Prussia, regularly and much; but that was not to be compared to the extraordinary reception of his most Christian Majesty, who, when I was presented, did not stop nor look to see what sort of an animal was offered to his notice, but carried his head, as it seemed, somewhat higher, and passed his way."
(155) Wife Of M. Chavigny de Blot, attached to the service of the Duke of Orleans: she Was sister to the Comte d'Hennery, who died at St. Domingo, where he was commander-in-chief.
(156) An officer in the French service.
(157) Mademoiselle Sanadon, a lady who lived with Madame du Deffand. She was niece to the P`ere Sanadon, well known by his translation of Horace, accompanied with valuable notes, and by his elegant Poems and orations in the Latin language.-E.
(158) The Russian minister at Paris. See vol. iii., Letter to the Earl of Hertford, March 26, 1765, letter 245. Madame du Deffand thus describes the Count in a letter to Walpole:--"Je trouve notre bon ami un peu ennuyeux; il n'a nulle inflexion dans la parole, nul mouvement dans l'`ame; ce qu'il dit est une lecture sans p`en`etration."-E.
(159) BY the Chevalier do Boufflers.
(160) He means, from their personal resemblance.
81. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, Nov. 27, 1774. (page 115)
I have received your delightful Plump packet with a letter of six pages, one from Madame du Deffand, the Eloges,(161) and the Lit de Justice. Now, observe my gratitude: I appoint you my resident at Paris, but you are not to resemble all our ministers abroad, and expect to live at home, which would destroy my Lord Castlecomer's(162) view in your staying at Paris. However, to prove to you that I have some gratitude that is not totally selfish, I will tell you what little news I know, before I answer your letter; for English news, to be sure, is the most agreeable circumstance in a letter from England.
On my coming to town yesterday, there was nothing but more deaths--don't you think we have the plague? The Bishop of Worcester,(163) Lord Breadalbane, Lord Strathmore. The first fell from his horse, or with his horse, at Bath, and the bishopric was incontinently given to Bishop North.
America is still more refractory, and I doubt will outvote the ministry. They have picked General Gage's pocket of three pieces of cannon,(164) and intercepted some troops that were going to him. Sir William Draper is writing plans of pacification in our newspapers; and Lord Chatham flatters himself that he shall be sent for when the patient is given over; which I don't think at all unlikely to happen. My poor nephew is very political too: so we shall not want mad doctors. Apropos, I hear Wilkes says he will propose Macreth for Speaker.
The Ecclesiastical Court are come to a resolution that the Duchess of Kingston is Mrs. Hervey; and the sentence will be public in a -fortnight. It is not so certain that she will lose the estate. Augustus(165) is not in a much more pleasant predicament than she is. I saw Lord Bristol last night: he looks perfectly well, but his speech is much affected, and his right hand.
Lady Lyttelton, who, you know, never hears any thing that has happened, wrote to me two days ago, to ask if it would not be necessary for you to come over for the meeting of the Parliament. I answered, very gravely, that to be sure you ought: but though Sir James Morgan threatened you loudly with a petition, yet, as it could not be heard till after Christmas, I was afraid you could not be persuaded to come sooner. I hope she will inquire who Sir James Morgan is, and that people will persuade her she has made a confusion about Sir James Peachy. Now for your letter.
I have been in the Chambre de Parlement, I think they call it the Grande Chambre; and was shown the corner in which the monarchs sit, and do not wonder you did not guess where it was they sat. It is just like the dark corner, under the window, where I always sat in the House of Commons. What has happened, has passed exactly according to my ideas. When one King breaks one parliament, and another, what can the result be but despotism? or of what else is it a proof? If a Tory King displaces his father's Whig lord chamberlain, neither lord chamberlain has the more or the less power ,over the theatres and court mournings and birthday balls. All that can arrive is, that the people will be still more attached to the old parliament, from this seeming restitution of a right--but the people must have some power before their attachment can signify a straw. The old parliament, too, may some time or other give itself more airs on this confession of right; but that too cannot be but in a minority, when the power of the crown is lessened by reasons that have nothing to do with the parliament. I will answer for it, they will be too grateful to give umbrage to their restorer. Indeed, I did not think the people would be so quick-sighted at once, as to see the distinction of old and new was without difference. Methinks France and England are like the land and the sea; one gets a little sense when the other loses it.
I am quite satisfied with all you tell me about my friend. My intention is certainly to see her again, if I am able; but I am too old to lay plans, especially when it depends on the despot gout to register or cancel them. It is even melancholy to see her, when it will probably be but once more; and still more melancholy, when we ought to say to one another, in a different sense from the common, au revoir! However, as mine is a pretty cheerful kind of philosophy, I think the best way is to think of dying, but to talk and act as if one was not to die; or else one tires other people, and dies before one's time. I have truly all the affection and attachment for her that she deserves from me, or I should not be so very thankful as I am for your kindness to her. The Choiseuls will certainly return at Christmas, and will make her life much more agreeable. The Duchess has as much attention to her as I could have; but that will not keep me from making her a visit.
I have only seen, not known, the younger Madame de Boufflers. For her musical talents, I am little worthy of them-yet I am just going to Lady Bingham's to hear the Bastardella, whom, though the first singer in Italy, Mrs. Yates could not or would not agree with,(166) and she is to have twelve hundred pounds for singing twelve times at the Pantheon, where, if she had a voice as loud as Lord Clare's, she could not be heard. The two bon-mots You sent me are excellent; but, alas! I had heard them both before; consequently your own, which is very good too, pleased me much more. M. de Stainville I think you will not like: he has sense, but has a dry military harshness, that at least did not suit me--and then I hate his barbarity to his Wife.(167)
You was very lucky indeed to get one of the sixty tickets.(168) Upon the whole, your travels have been very fortunate, and the few mortifications amply compensated. If a Duke(169) has been spiteful when your back was turned, a hero-king has been all courtesy. If another King has been silent, an emperor has been singularly gracious- -Frowns or silence may happen to anybody: the smiles have been addressed to you particularly. So was the ducal frown indeed-but would you have earned a smile at the price set on it? One cannot do right and be always applauded-- but in such cases are not frowns tantamount?
As my letter will not set forth till the day after to-morrow, I reserve the rest for my additional news, and this time will reserve it.
St. Parliament's day, 29th, after breakfast.
The speech is said to be firm, and to talk of the rebellion(170) of our province of Massachusetts. No sloop is yet arrived to tell us how to call the rest. Mr. Van(171) is to move for the expulsion of Wilkes; which will distress, and may produce an odd scene. Lord Holland is certainly dead; the papers say, Robinson too, but that I don't know--so many deaths of late make report kill to right and left.
(161) Two rival Eloges of Fontenelle, by ChamPfort and La Harpe.-E.
(162) A cant phrase of Mr. Walpole's; which took its rise from the following story:--The tutor of a young Lord Castlecomer, who lived at Twickenham with his mother, having broken his leg, and somebody pitying the poor man to Lady Castlecomer, she replied, "Yes indeed, it is very inconvenient to my Lord Castlecomer."-E.
(163) Dr. James Johnson.-E.
(164) The seizure of Fort William and Mary, near Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, by the provincial militia, in which they found many barrels of gunpowder, several pieces of cannon, etc.-E.
(165) Augustus Hervey, to whom she was first married.
(166) Mrs. Yates was at this time joint manager of the Opera with Mrs. Brook. In November 1773, she spoke a Poetical exordium, by which it appeared that she intended mixing plays with operas, and entertaining the public with singing and declamation alternately; but permission could not be obtained from the Lord Chamberlain to put this plan into execution.-E.
(167) Upon a suspicion OF gallantry with Clairval, an actor, she was confined for life in the convent Of les filles de Sainte Marie, at Nancy.-E.
(168) To see the Lit de Justice held by Louis XVI. when he recalled the Parliament of Paris, at the instigation of the Chancellor Maupeou, and suppressed the new one of their creation.
(169) The Duke de Choiseul.
(170) The King's Speech announced, "that a most daring spirit of resistance and disobedience to the law still unhappily prevailed in the province of Massachusett's Bay;" and expressed the King's "firm and steadfast resolution to withstand every attempt to weaken or impair the supreme authority Of this legislature over all the dominions of his crown: the maintenance of which he considered as essential to the dignity, the safety, and welfare of the British empire."-E.
(171) Charles Van, Esq. member for Brecon town. No motion for the expulsion of Wilkes took place.-E.
82. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, Dec. 15, 1774. (page 118)
As I wrote to Lady Ailesbury but on Tuesday, I should not have followed it so soon with this, if I had nothing to tell you but of myself. My gouts are never dangerous, and the shades of them not important. However, to despatch this article at once, I will tell you, that the, pain I felt yesterday in my elbow made me think all former pain did not deserve the name. Happily the torture did not last above two hours; and, which is more surprising, it is all the real pain I have felt; for though my hand has been as sore as if flayed, and that both feet are lame, the bootikins demonstrably prevent or extract the sting of it, and I see no reason not to expect to get out in a fortnight more. Surely, if I am laid up but one month in two years, instead of five or six, I have reason to think the bootikins sent from heaven.
The long expected sloop is arrived at last, and is indeed a man of war! The General Congress have voted a non-importation, a non-exportation, a non-consumption; that, in case of hostilities committed by the troops at Boston, the several provinces will march to the assistance of their countrymen; that the cargoes of ships now at sea shall be sold on their arrival, and the money arising thence given to the poor at Boston.; that a letter, in the nature of a petition of rights, shall be sent to the King; another to the House of Commons; a third to the people of England; a demand of repeal of all the acts of Parliament affecting North America passed during this reign, as also of the Quebec-bill: and these resolutions not to be altered till such repeal is obtained.
Well, I believe you do not regret being neither in parliament nor in administration! As you are an idle man, and have nothing else to do, you may sit down and tell one a remedy for all this. Perhaps you will give yourself airs, and say you was a prophet, and that prophets are not honoured in their own country. Yet, if you have any inspiration about you, I assure you it will be of great service-we are at our wit's end-which was no great journey. Oh! you conclude Lord Chatham's crutch will be supposed a wand, and be sent for. They might as well send for my crutch; and they should not have it; the stile is a little too high to help them over. His Lordship is a little fitter for raising a storm than laying one, and of late seems to have lost both virtues. The Americans at least have acted like men,(172) gone to the"bottom at once, and set the whole upon the whole. Our conduct has been that of pert children: we have thrown a pebble at a mastiff, and are surprised that it was not frightened. Now we must kill the guardian of the house which will be plundered the moment little master has nothing but the old nurse to defend it. But I have done with reflections; you will be fuller of them than I.
(172) "I have not words to express my satisfaction," says Lord Chatham in a letter of the 24th, "that the Congress has conducted this most arduous and delicate business with such manly Wisdom and calm resolution, as do the highest honour to their deliberations. Very few are the things contained in their resolves, that I could wish had been otherwise." Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 368.-$.
83. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, Dec. 26, 1774. (page 119)
I begin my letter to-day, to prevent the fatigue of dictating two to-morrow. In the first and best place, I am very near recovered; that is, though still a mummy, I have no pain left, nor scarce any sensation of gout except in my right hand, which is still in complexion and shape a lobster's claw. Now, unless any body can prove to me that three weeks are longer than five months and a half, they will hardly convince me that the bootikins are not a cure for fits of the gout and a Very short cure, though they cannot prevent it: nor perhaps is it to be wished they should; for, if the gout prevents every thing else, would not one have something that does? I have but one single doubt left about the bootikins, which is, whether they do not weaken my breast: but as I am sensible that my own spirits do half the mischief, and that, if I could have held my tongue, and kept from talking and dictating letters, I should not have been half so bad as I have been, there remains but half due to bootikins on the balance: and surely the ravages of the last long fit, and two years more in age, ought to make another deduction. Indeed, my forcing myself to dictate my last letter to you almost killed me; and since the gout is not dangerous to me, if I am kept perfectly quiet, my good old friend must have patience, and not insist upon letters from me but when it is quite easy to me to send them. So much for me and my gout. I will now endeavour to answer such parts of your last letters as I can in this manner, and considering how difficult it is to read your writing in a dark room.
I have not yet been able to look into the French harangues you sent me. Voltaire's verses to Robert Covelle are not only very bad, but very contemptible.
I am delighted with all the honours you receive, and with all the amusements they procure you, which is the best part of honours. For the glorious part, I am always like the man in Pope's Donne,
"Then happy he who shows the tombs, said I."
That is, they are least troublesome there. The serenissime(173) you met at Montmorency is one of the least to my taste; we quarrelled about Rousseau, and I never went near him after my first journey. Madame du Deffand will tell you the story, if she has not forgotten it.
It is supposed here, that the new proceedings of the French Parliament will produce great effects: I don't suppose any such thing. What America will produce I know still less; but certainly something very serious. The merchants have summoned a meeting for the second of next month, and the petition from the Congress to the King is arrived. The heads have been shown to Lord Dartmouth; but I hear one of the agents is again presenting it; yet it is thought it will be delivered, and then be ordered to be laid before Parliament. The whole affair has already been talked of there on the army and navy-days; and Burke, they say, has shone with amazing Wit and ridicule on the late inactivity of Gage, and his losing his cannon and straw; on his being entrenched in a town with an army of observation; with that army being, as Sir William Meredith had said, an asylum for magistrates, and to secure the port. Burke said, he had heard of an asylum for debtors and whores, never for magistrates; and of ships never of armies securing a port. This is all there has been in Parliament, but elections. Charles Fox's place did not come into question. Mr. * * *, who is one of the new elect, has opened, but with no success. There is a seaman, Luttrell,(174) that promises much better.
I am glad you like the Duchess de Lauzun:(175) she is one of my favourites. The H`otel du Chatelet promised to be very fine, but was not finished when I was last at Paris. I was much pleased with the person that slept against St. Lambert's poem: I wish I had thought of the nostrum, when Mr. Seward, a thousand years ago, at Lyons, would read an epic poem to me just as I had received a dozen letters from England. St. Lambert is a great Jackanapes, and a very tiny genius: I suppose the poem was The Seasons, which is four fans spun out into a Georgic. If I had not been too ill, I should have thought of bidding you hear midnight mass on Christmas-eve in Madame du Deffand's tribune, as I used to do. To be sure, you know that her apartment was part of Madame du Montespan's, whose arms are on the back of the grate in Madame du Deffand's own bedchamber. Apropos, ask her to show you Madame de Prie's pinture, M. le Duc's mistress--I am very fond of it--and make her tell you her history.(176)
I have but two or three words more. Remember my parcel of letters from Madame du Deffand,(177) and pray remember this injunction not to ruin yourselves in bringing presents. A very slight fairing of a guinea or two obliges as much, is much more fashionable, and not a moment sooner forgotten than a magnificent one; and then you may very cheaply oblige the more persons; but as the sick fox, in Gay's Fables, says (for one always excepts oneself),
"A chicken too might do me good."
i allow you to go as far as three or even five guineas for a snuff-box for me; and then, as ***** told the King, when he asked for the reversion of the lighthouse for two lives, and the King reproached him, with having always advised him against granting reversions; he replied, "Oh! Sir, but if your Majesty will give me this, I will take care you shall never give away another." Adieu, with my own left hand.
(173) The Prince de Conti.
(174) The Hon. James Luttrell, fourth son of Lord Irnham, a lieutenant in the navy.-E.
(175) She became Duchesse de Biron upon the death of her husband's uncle, the Marechal Duke de Biron. See vol. iii., Letter to John Montagu, Feb. 4, 1766, letter 294. Her person is thus described by Rousseau:--"Am`elie de Boufflers a une figure, une douceur, une timidit`e devierge: rien de plus aimable et de plus int`eressant que sa figure; rien de plus tendre et de plus chaste que les sentiments qu'elle inspire."-E.
(176) Madame de Prie was the mistress of the Regent Duke of Orleans. A full account of her family, character, etc. will be found in Duclos's Memoirs.-E.
(177) At Walpole's earnest solicitation, Madame du Deffand returned by General Conway all the letters she had received from him. In so doing, she thus wrote to him:--"Vous aurez longtemps de quoi allumer votre feu, surtout si vous joignez `a ce que j'avais de vous avez de moi, et rien ne serait plus juste: mais je m'en rapporte `a votre prudence; je ne suivrai pas l'exemple de m`efiance que vous me donnez."-E.
84. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, Dec. 31, 1774. (page 121)
No child was ever so delighted to go into breeches, as I was this morning to get on a pair of cloth shoes as big as Jack Harris's: this joy may be the spirits of dotage-but what signifies whence one is happy? Observe, too, that this is written with my own right hand, with the bootikin actually upon it, which has no distinction of fingers: so I no longer see any miracle in Buckinger, who was famous for writing without hands or feet; as it was indifferent which one uses, provided one has a pair of either. Take notice, I write so much better without fingers than with, that I advise you to try a bootikin. To be sure, the operation is a little slower; but to a prisoner, the duration of his amusement is of far more consequence than the vivacity of it.
Last night I received your very kind, I might say your letter tout court, of Christmas-day. By this time I trust you are quite out of pain about me. My fit has been as regular as possible; only, as if the bootikins were post-horses, it made the grand tour of all my limbs in three weeks. If it will always use the same expedition, I m content it should take the journey once in two years. You must not mind my breast: it was always the weakest part of a very weak system ; yet did not suffer now by the gout, but in consequence of it; and would not have been near so bad, if I could have kept from talking and dictating letters. The moment I am out of pain, I am in high spirits ; and though I never take any medicines, there is one thing absolutely necessary to be put into my mouth--a gag. At present, the town is so empty that my tongue is a sinecure.
I am well acquainted with the Biblioth`eque du Roi, and the medals, and the prints. I spent an entire day in looking over the English portraits, and kept the librarian without his dinner till dark night, till I was satisfied. Though the Choiseuls(178) will not acquaint with you, I hope their Abb`e Barthelemil(179) is not put under the same quarantine. Besides great learning, he has infinite wit and polissonnerie and is one of the best kind of men in the world. As to the grandpapa,(180) il ne nous aime pas nous autres, and has never forgiven Lord Chatham. Though exceedingly agreeable himself, I don't think his taste exquisite. Perhaps I was piqued; but he seemed to like Wood better than any of US. Indeed, I am a little afraid that my dear friend's impetuous zeal may have been a little too prompt in pressing you upon them d'abord:-- but don't say a word of this--it is her great goodness.--I thank you a million of times for all yours to her:-she is perfectly grateful for it. The Chevalier'S(181) verses are pretty enough. I own I like Saurin's(182) much better than you seem to do. Perhaps I am prejudiced by the curse on the Chancellor at the end.
Not a word of news here. In a sick room one hears all there is, but I have not even a lie; but as this will not set out these three days, it is to be hoped some charitable Christian will tell a body one. Lately indeed we heard that the King of Spain had abdicated; but I believe it was some stockjobber that had deposed him.
Lord George Cavendish, for my solace in my retirement, has given me a book, the History of his own Furness-abbey, written by a Scotch ex-Jesuit.(183) I cannot say that this unnatural conjunction of a Cavendish and a Jesuit has produced a lively colt; but I found one passage worth any money. It is an extract of a constable's journal kept during the civil war; and ends thus: "And there was never heard of such troublesome and distracted times as these five years have been, but especially for constables." It is so natural, that inconvenient to my Lord Castlecomer is scarce a better proverb.
Pray tell Lady Ailesbury that though she has been so very good to me, I address my letters to you rather than to her, because my pen is not always-upon its guard, but is apt to say whatever comes into its nib; and then, if she peeps over your shoulder, I am cens`e not to know it. Lady Harriet's wishes have done me great good: nothing but a father's gout could be obdurate enough to resist them. My Mrs. Damer says nothing to me; but I give her intentions credit, and lay her silence on you.
January 1. 1775. a happy new year!
I walk! I walk! walk alone!--I have been five times quite round my rooms to-day, and my month is not up! The day after to-morrow I shall go down into the dining-room; the next week to take the air: and then if Mrs. * * * * is very pressing, why, I don't know what may happen. Well! but you want news, there are none to be had. They think there is a ship lost with Gage's despatches. Lady Temple gives all her diamonds to Miss Nugent.(184) Lord Pigot lost 400 pounds the other night at Princess Amelia's. Miss Davis(185) has carried her cause against Mrs. Yates and is to sing again at the Opera. This is all my coffee-house furnished this morning.
(178) Mr. Conway and the ladies of his party had met with the most flattering and distinguished reception at Paris from every body but the Duc and Duchesse de Choiseul, who rather seemed to decline their acquaintance.
(179) The author of the Voyage du Jenne Anacharsis.
(180) A name given to the Duc de Choiseul by Madame du Deffand.
(181) Verses written by the Chevalier de Boufflers, to be presented by Madame du Deffand to the Duke and Duchess of Choiseul.
(182) They were addressed to M. do Malesherbes, then premier president de la Cour des Aides; afterwards, still more distinguished by his having been the intrepid advocate Selected by the unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth on his trial. He soon after perished by the same guillotine, from which he could not preserve his ill-fated master-E.
(183) "The Antiquities of Furness; or an account of the Royal Abbey of St. mary, in the vale Of Nightshade, near Dalton, in Furness." London, 1774 4to. This volume, which was dedicated to Lord George Cavendish, Was written by Thomas West, the antiquary, who was likewise the author of "A Guide to the Lakes in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire."-E.
(184) Mary, only daughter and heiress of Robert Earl Nugent, of the kingdom of Ireland. She was married, on the 16th of May, 1775, to George Grenville, second Earl Temple, who then assumed, by royal permission, the surnames of Nugent and Temple before that of Grenville, and the privilege of signing Nugent before all titles whatsoever. In 1784, he was created Marquis of Buckingham.-E.
(185) Cecilia Davis known in Italy by the name of L'Inglesina, first appeared at the Opera in 1773. She was considered on the Continent as second only to Gabrieli, and in England is said to have been surpassed only by Mrs. Billington. She was a pupil of the celebrated Hasse and, after having taught several crowned heads, died at an advanced age, and in very distressed circumstances, in 1836.-E.
Letter 85To The Rev. Mr. Cole. Arlington Street, Jan. 9, 1775. (page 124)
I every day intended to thank you for the copy of Nell Gwyn's letter, till it was too late; the gout came, and Made me moult my goosequill. The letter is very curious, and I am as well content as with the original. It is lucky you do not care for news more recent Than the Reformation. I should have none to tell you; nay, nor earlier neither. Mr. Strutt's(186) second volume I suppose you have seen. He showed me two or three much better drawings from pictures in the possession of Mr. Ives. One of them made me very happy; it is a genuine portrait of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and is the individual same face as that I guessed to be his in my Marriage of Henry VI. They are infinitely more like each other, than any two modern portraits of one person by different painters. I have been laughed at for thinking the skull of Duke Humphrey at St. Albans proved my guess; and yet it certainly does, and is the more like, as the two portraits represent him very bald, with only a ringlet of hair, as monks have. Mr. Strutt is going to engrave his drawings. Yours faithfully.
(186) His " Complete Views of the Manners, Customs, Arms, Habits, etc. of the Inhabitants of England from the arrival of the Saxons till the reign of Henry the VIII.; with a short Account of the Britons during the Government of the Romans."-E.
86. To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, Jan, 15, 1775. (page 124)
You have made me very happy by saying your journey to Naples is laid aside. Perhaps it made too great an impression on me; but you must reflect, that all my life I have satisfied myself with your being perfect, instead of trying to be so myself. I don't ask you to return, though I wish it: in truth there is nothing to invite you. I don't want you to come and breathe fire and sword against the Bostonians, like that second Duke of Alva, the inflexible Lord George Germain; or to anathematize the court and its works, like the incorruptible Burke, who scorns lucre, except when he can buy a hundred thousand acres from naked Caribs for a song. I don't want you to do any thing like a party-man. I trust you think of every party as I do, with contempt, from Lord Chatham's mustard-bowl down to Lord Rockingham's hartshorn. All, perhaps, will be tried in their turns, and yet, if they had genius, might not be Mighty enough to save us. From some ruin or other I think nobody can, and what signifies an option of mischiefs? An account is come of the Bostonians having voted an army of sixteen thousand men, who are to be called minute-men, as they are to be ready at a minute's warning. Two directors or commissioners, I don't know what they are called, are appointed. There has been too a kind of mutiny in the fifth regiment. A soldier was found drunk on his post. Gage, in his time of danger, thought vigour necessary, and sent the fellow to a court-martial. They ordered two hundred lashes. The general ordered them to improve their sentence. Next day it was published in the Boston Gazette. He called them before him, and required them on oath to abjure the communication, three officers refused. Poor Gage is to be scape-goat, not for this, but for what was a reason against employing him, incapacity. I Wonder at the precedent! Howe is talked of for his successor. Well, I have done with you!--Now I shall go gossip with Lady Ailesbury
You must know, Madam, that near Bath is erected a new Parnassus, composed of three laurels,- a myrtle-tree, a weeping-willow, and a view of the Avon, which has been new-christened Helicon. Ten years ago there lived a Madam Riggs, an old rough humourist who passed for a wit; her daughter, who passed for nothing, married to a Captain Miller, full of good-natured officiousness. These good folks were friends of Miss Rich,(187) who carried me to dine with them at Batheaston, now Pindus. They caught a little of what was then called taste, built and planted, and begot children, till the whole caravan- were forced to. go abroad to retrieve. Alas! Mrs. Miller is returned-' a beauty, a genius, a Sappho, a Muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle Scuderi, and as sophisticated as Mrs. Vesey. The captain's fingers are loaded with cameos, his tongue runs over with virt`u, and that both may contribute to the improvement of their own country, they have introduced bouts-rim`es as a new discovery. They hold a Parnassus-fair every Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux of quality at Bath contend for the prizes. A Roman vase dressed with pink ribands and myrtles receives the poetry which is drawn out every festival; six judges of these Olympic games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her fair hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle, with--I don't know what. You may think this is fiction, or exaggeration. Be dumb, unbelievers! The collection is printed, published. (188) Yes, on my faith, there are bouts-rim`es on a buttered muffin, made by her grace the Duchess of Northumberland;(189) receipts to make them by Corydon the venerable, alias George Pitt; others very pretty, by Lord Palmerston;(190) some by Lord Carlisle; many by Mrs. Miller herself, that have no fault but wanting metre; and immortality promised to her without end or measure. In short, since folly, which never ripens to madness but in this hot climate, ran distracted, there was never any thing so entertaining or so dull--for you cannot read so long as I have been telling.(191)
January 17.
Before I could finish this, I received your despatches by Sir Thomas Clarges, and a most entertaining letter in three tomes. It is being very dull, not to be able to furnish a quarter so much from your own country-but what can I do? You are embarked in a new world, and I am living on the scraps of an old one, of which I am tired. The best I can do is to reply to your letter, and not attempt to amuse you when I have nothing to say. I think the Parliament meets today, or in a day or two-but I hope you are coming. Your brother says so, and Madame du Deffand says so; and sure it is time to leave Paris, when you know ninety of the inhabitants.(192) There seems much affectation in those that will not know you;(193) and affectation is always a littleness--it has been even rude: but to be sure the rudeness one feels least, was that which is addressed to one before there has been any acquaintance.
Ninon came,(194) because, on Madame du Deffand's mentioning it, I concluded it a new work, and am disappointed. I can say this by heart. The picture of Madame de Prie, which you don't seem to value, and so Madame du Deffand says, I believe I shall dispute with you; I think it charming, but when offered to me years ago, I would not take it--it was now given to you a little a mon intention.
I am sorry that, amongst all the verses you have sent me, you should have forgotten what you commend the most, Les trois exclamations. I hope you will bring them with you. Voltaire's are intolerably stupid, and not above the level of officers in garrison. Some of M. de Pezay's are very pretty, though there is too much of them; and in truth I had seen them before. Those on Madame de la Vali`ere pretty too, but one is a little tired of Venus and the Graces. I am most pleased with your own--and if you have a mind to like them still better, make Madame du Deffand show you mine, which are neither French, nor measure, nor metre. She is unwilling to tell me so-, which diverts me. Yours are really genteel and new.
I envy you the Russian Anecdotes(195) more than M. de Chamfort's Fables, of which I know nothing; and as you say no more, I conclude I lose not much. The stories of Sir Charles(196) are so far not new to me, that I heard them of him from abroad after he was mad: but I believe no mortal of his acquaintance ever heard them before; nor did they at all correspond with his former life, with his treatment of his wife, or his history with Mrs. Woffington, qui n'`etait pas dupe. I say nothing on the other stories you tell me of billets dropped,(197) et pour cause.
I think I have touched all your paragraphs, and have nothing new to send you in return. In truth, I go nowhere but into private rooms,; for I am not enough recovered to relaunch into the world, when I have so good an excuse for avoiding it. The bootikins have done wonders; but even two or three such victories will cost too dear. I submit very patiently to my lot. I am old and broken, and it never was my system to impose upon myself when one can deceive nobody else. I have spirits enough for my use, that is, amongst my friends and contemporaries: I like Young people and their happiness for every thing but to live with; but I cannot learn their language, nor tell them old stories, of which I must explain every step as I go. Politics' the proper resource of age, I detest--I am Contented, but see few that are so--and I never will be led by any man's self-interest. A great scene is opening, of which I cannot expect to see the end! I am pretty sure not a happy end--so that, in short, I am determined to think the rest of my life but a postscript: and as this has been too long an One, I will wish You good night, repeating what you know already, that the return of you three is the most agreeable prospect I expect to see realized. Adieu!
(187) Daughter of Sir Robert Rich, and sister to the second wife of George Lord Lyttelton.
(188) They were published under the title of "Poetical Amusements at a Villa near Bath." An edition appeared in 1781, in four volumes.-E.
(189) "The pen which I now take and brandish Has long lain useless in my standish. Know, every maid, from her on patten, To her who shines in glossy satin, That could they now prepare an oglio >From best receipt of book in folio, Ever so fine, for all their puffing, I should prefer a butter'd muffin; A muffin Jove himself might feast on, If eat with Miller at Batheaston."-E.
(190) The following are the concluding lines of a poem on Beauty, by Lord Palmerston:--
"In vain the stealing hand of Time May pluck the blossoms of their prime; Envy may talk of bloom decay'd, How lilies droop and roses fade; But Constancy's unalter'd truth, Regardful of the vows of youth, Affection that recalls the past, And bids the pleasing influence last, Shall still preserve the lover's flame In every scene of life the same; And still with fond endearments blend The wife, the mistress, and the friend!"-E.
(191) "Lady Miller's collection of verses by fashionable people, which were put into her vase at Batheaston, in competition for honourary prizes being mentioned, Dr. Johnson held them very cheap: 'Bouts-rim`es,' said be, 'is a mere conceit, and an old conceit; I wonder how people were persuaded to write in that manner for this lady.' I named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase. Johnson--'He was a blockhead for his pains!' Boswell. 'The Duchess of Northumberland wrote.' Johnson: 'Sir, the Duchess of Northumberland may do what she pleases; nobody will say any thing to a lady of her high rank: but I should be apt to throw * * * *'s verses in his face.'" Boswell. vol. v. p. 227.-E.
(192) Madame du Deffand, writing of General Conway to Walpole, had said--"Savez-vous combien il connait d`ej`a de personnes dans Paris? Quatre.vingt dix. Il n'est nullement sauvage."-E.
(193) The Duc du Choiseul.
(194) The Life of Ninon de l'Enclos.
(195) The account of the revolution in Russia which placed Catherine II. on the throne, by M. de la Rulhi`ere, afterwards Published. Mr. Conway had heard it read in manuscript in a private society.
(196) Sir Charles Hanbury Williams.
(197) This alludes to circumstances Mr. Conway mentions as having taken place at a ball at Versailles.
87. To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(198) January 22, 1775. (page 128)
After the magnificent overture for peace from Lord Chatham, that I announced to Madame du Deffand, you will be most impatient for my letter. Ohin`e! you will be sadly disappointed. Instead of drawing a circle with his wand round the House of Lords, and ordering them to pacify America, on the terms he prescribed before they ventured to quit the circumference of his commands, he brought a ridiculous, uncommunicated, unconsulted motion for addressing the King immediately to withdraw the troops from Boston, as an earnest of lenient measures. The Opposition stared and shrugged; the courtiers stared and laughed. His own two or three adherents left him, except Lord Camden and Lord Shelburne, and except Lord Temple, who is not his adherent and was not there. Himself was not much animated, but very hostile; particularly on Lord Mansfield, who had taken care not to be there. He talked of three millions of Whigs in America, and told the ministers they were checkmated and had not a move left to make. Lord Camden was as strong. Lord Suffolk was thought to do better than ever, and Lord Lyttelton's declamation was commended as usual. At last, Lord Rockingham, very punily, and the Duke of Richmond joined and supported the motion; but at eight at night it was rejected by 68 to 18, though the Duke of Cumberland voted for it.(199)
This interlude would be only entertaining, if the scene was not so totally gloomy. The cabinet have determined on civil war, and regiments are going from Ireland and our West Indian islands. On Thursday the plan of the war is to be laid before both Houses. To-morrow the merchants carry their petition; which, I suppose, will be coolly received, since, if I hear true, the system is to cut off all traffic with America at present--as, you know, we can revive it when we please. There! there is food for meditation! Your reflections, as you understand the subject better than I do, will go further than mine could. Will the French you converse with be civil and keep their countenances?
George Damer(200) t'other day proclaimed your departure for the 25th; but the Duchess of Richmond received a whole cargo of letters from ye all on Friday night, which talk of a fortnight or three weeks longer. Pray remember it is not decent to be dancing at Paris, when there is a civil war in your own country. You would be like the Country squire, who passed by with his hounds as the battle of Edgehill began.
January 24.
I am very sorry to tell you the Duke of Gloucester is dying. About three weeks ago the physicians said it was absolutely necessary for him to go abroad immediately. He dallied, but was actually preparing. He now cannot go, and probably will not live many days, as he has had two shivering fits, and the physicians give the Duchess no hopes.(201) Her affliction and courage are not to be described; they take their turns as she is in the room with him or not. His are still greater. His heart is broken, and yet his firmness and coolness amazing. I pity her beyond measure; and it is not a time to blame her having accepted an honour which so few women could have resisted, and scarce one ever has resisted.
The London and Bristol merchants carried their petitions yesterday to the House of Commons. The Opposition contended for their being heard by the committee of the whole House, who are to consider the American papers; but the Court sent them to a committee(202) after a debate till nine at night, with nothing very remarkable, on divisions of 197 to 81, and 192 to 65. Lord Stanley(203) spoke for the first time; his voice and manner pleased, but his matter was not so successful. Dowdeswell(204 is dead, and Tom Hervey.(205) The latter sent for his Wife and acknowledged her. Don't forget to inform me when my letters must stop. Adieu! Yours ever.
(198) Now first printed.
(199) In the Chatham correspondence will be found another, and a very different, account of this debate, in a letter to Lady Chatham, from their son William:--"Nothing," he says, "prevented my father's speech from being the most forcible that can be imagined, and the administration fully felt it. The matter and manner were striking; far beyond what I can express. It was every thing that was superior; and though it had not the desired effect on an obdurate House of Lords, it must have an infinite effect without doors, the bar being crowded with Americans, etc. Lord Suffolk, I cannot say answered him, but spoke after him. He was a contemptible orator indeed, with paltry matter and a whining delivery. Lord Shelburne spoke well, and supported the motion warmly. Lord Camden was supreme, with only One exception, and as zealous as possible. Lord Rockingham spoke shortly, but sensibly; and the Duke of Richmond well, and with much candour as to the Declaratory act. Upon the whole, it was a noble debate. The ministry were violent beyond expectation, almost to madness. instead of recalling the troops now there, they talked of sending more. My father has had no pain, but is lame in one ankle near the instep from standing so long. No wonder he is lame: his first speech lasted above an hour, and the second half an hour; surely, the two finest speeches that ever were made before, unless by himself!" Dr. Franklin too, who heard the debate, says, in reference to Lord Chatham's speech-"I am filled with admiration of that truly great man. I have seen, in the course of my life, sometimes eloquence without wisdom and often wisdom without eloquence: in the present instance, I see both united, and both, as I think, in the highest degree possible." Vol. iv. pp. 375, 385.-E.
(200) Afterwards second Earl of Dorchester-E.
(201) His Royal Highness survived this illness more than thirty years.-E.
(202) This committee was wittily called by Mr. Burke, and afterwards generally known as "the committee of oblivion."-E.
(203) Afterwards Earl of Derby-E.
(204) The Right Hon. William Dowdeswell, of Pull Court, member for the county of Worcester. He died at Nice, whither he had gone for the recovery of his health.-E.
(205) The Hon. Thomas Hervey, second son of John first Earl of Bristol.-E.