355. To Sir David Dalrymple.(701) Strawberry Hill, Sept. 21, 1790. (page 454)
So many years, Sir, have elapsed since I saw Burleigh, that I cannot in general pretend to recollect the pictures Well. I do remember that there was a surfeit of pieces by Luca Jordano, and Carlo Dolce, no capital masters, and posterior to the excellent. The Earl of Exeter, who resided long at Rome in the time of those two painters, seemed to have employed them entirely during his sojourn there. I was not struck more than you, Sir, with the celebrated Death of Seneca, though one of the best works of Jordano. Perhaps Prior's verses lifted it to part of its fame, though even those verses are inferior to many of that charming poet's compositions. Upon the whole, Burleigh is a noble palace, contains many fine things, and the inside court struck me with admiration and reverence. The Shakspeare Gallery is truly most inadequate to its prototypes but how should it be worthy of them! If we could recall the brightest luminaries of painting, could they do justice to Shakspeare? Was Raphael himself as great a genius in his art as the author of Macbeth? and who could draw Falstaffe, but the writer of Falstaffe? I am entirely of your opinion, Sir, that two of Northcote's pictures, from King John and Richard the Third, are at the head of the collection. In Macklin's Gallery of Poets and Scripture, there are much better pictures than at Boydell's. Opie's Jephthah's Vow is a truly fine performance, and would be so in any assemblage of paintings; as Sir Joshua's Death of Beaufort is worthy of none: the Imp is burlesque, and the Cardinal seems terrified at him as before him, when the Imp is behind him. In Sir Thomas Hanmer's edition there is a print that gives the fact simply, pathetically, and with dignity, and just as you wish it told.
My sentiments on French politics concur as much with yours as they do on subjects above. The National Assembly set out too absurdly and extravagantly, not to throw their country into the last confusion; which is not the way of correcting a government, but more probably of producing a worse, bad as the old was, and thence they will have given a lasting wound to liberty: for what king will ever call `Etats again, if he can possibly help it! The new legislators were pedants, not politicians, when they announced the equality of all men. We are all born so, no doubt, abstractedly; and physically capable of being kept so, were it possible to establish a perfect government, and give the same education to all men. But are they so in the present constitution of society, under a bad government, where most have had no education at all, but have been debased, brutified, by a long train and mixture of superstition and oppression, and witnesses to the luxury and vices of their superiors, which they could only envy and not enjoy? It was turning tigers loose; and the degradation of the nobility pointed out the prey. Could it be expected that savages so hallooed on to outrage and void of any notions of reciprocal"duties and obligations, would fall into a regular system of' acting as citizens under the government of reason and justice? It was tearing all the bonds of society, which the experience of mankind had taught them were necessary to the mutual convenience of all; and no provision, no security, was made for those who were levelled, and who, though they enjoyed what they had by the old constitution, were treated, or were exposed to be treated, as criminals. They have been treated so: several have been butchered; and the National Assembly dare not avenge them, as they should lose the favour of the intoxicated populace. That conduct was senseless, or worse. With no less folly did they seek to expect that a vast body of men, more enlightened, at least, than the gross multitude, would sit down in patience under persecution and deprivation of all they valued; I mean the nobility and clergy, who might be stunned, but Were sure of reviving and of burning with vengeance. The insult was the greater, as the subsequent conduct of the National Assembly has proved more shamefully dishonest, in their paying themselves daily more than two-thirds of them ever saw perhaps in a month; and that flagitious self-bestowed stipend, as it is void of all patriotic integrity, will destroy their power too; for, if constitution-making is so lucrative a trade, others will wish to share in the plunder of their country too; and, even without a civil war, I am persuaded the present Assembly will neither be septennial, nor even triennial.
(701) Now first collected.
356. To The Miss Berrys. Sunday, Oct. 10, 1790, The day of your departure. (page 455)
Is it possible to write to my beloved friends, and refrain from speaking of my grief for losing you; though it is but the continuation of what I have felt ever since I was stunned by your intention Of going abroad this autumn? Still I will not tire YOU With it Often. In happy days I smiled, and called you my dear wives--now I can only think on you as darling children of whom I am bereaved! As such I have loved and do love You; and, charming as you both are, I have had no Occasion to remind myself that I am Past seventy-three. Your hearts, your understandings, your virtues, and the cruel injustice of your fate,(702) have interested me in every thing that concerns you; and so far from having occasion to blush for any unbecoming weakness, I am proud of my affection for you, and very proud of your condescending to pass so many hours with a very old man, when every body admires you, and the most insensible allow that your good sense and information (I speak of both) have formed you to Converse with the most intelligent of our sex as well as your own; and neither can tax you with airs of pretension or affectation. Your simplicity and natural ease set off all your other merits-all these graces are lost to me, alas! when I have no time to lose.
Sensible as I am to my loss, it will occupy but part of my thoughts, till I know you are safely landed, and arrived safely at Turin. Not till you are there, and I learn so, will my anxiety subside, and settle into steady, selfish sorrow. I looked at every weathercock as I came along the road to-day, and was happy to see every one point northeast. May they do so to-morrow!
I found here the frame for Wolsey, and to-morrow morning Kirgate will place him in it; and then I shall begin pulling the little parlour to pieces, that it may be hung anew to receive him. I have also obeyed Miss Agnes, though with regret; for, on trying it, I found her Arcadia(703) would fit the place of the picture she condemns, which shall therefore be hung in its room; though the latter should give Way to nothing else, nor shall be laid aside, but shall hang where I shall see it almost as often. I long to hear that its dear paintress is well; I thought her not at all so last night. You will tell me the truth, though she in her own case, and in that alone, allows herself mental reservation.
Forgive me for writing nothing to-night but about you two and myself. Of what can I have thought else? I have not spoken to a single person but my own servants since we parted last night.
I found a message here from Miss Howe(704) to invite me for this evening--do you think I have not preferred staying at home to write to you, as this Must go to London to-morrow morning by the coach to be ready for Tuesday's post! My future letters shall talk of other things, whenever I know any thing worth repeating; or perhaps any trifle, for I am determined to forbid myself lamentations that would weary you; and the frequency of my letters will prove there is no forgetfulness. If I live to see you again, you will then judge whether I am changed; but a friendship so rational and so pure as mine is, and so equal for both, is not likely to have any of the fickleness of youth, when it has none of its other ingredients. It was a sweet consolation to the short time that I may have left, to fall into such a society; no wonder then that I am unhappy at that consolation being abridged. I pique myself on no philosophy but what a long use and knowledge of the world had given me-the philosophy of indifference to most persons and events. I do pique myself on not being ridiculous at this very late period of my life; but when there is not a grain of passion in my affection for you two, and when you both have the good sense not to be displeased at my telling you so, (though I hope you would have despised me for the contrary,) I am not ashamed to say that your loss is heavy to me; and that I am only reconciled to it by hoping that a winter in Italy, and the journeys and sea air, will be very beneficial to two constitutions so delicate as yours. Adieu! my dearest friends it would be tautology to subscribe a name to a letter, every line of which would suit no other man in the world but the writer.
(702) This alludes to Miss Berry's father having been disinherited by an uncle, to whom he was heir at law, and a large property left to his younger brother.-M.B.
(703) A drawing by Miss Agnes Berry.
(704) Julia Howe, an unmarried sister of Admiral Earl Howe, who lived at Richmond.
357. To The Miss Berrys. Sunday, Oct. 31, 1790. (page 457)
Perhaps I am unreasonably impatient, and expect letters before they can come. I expected a letter from Lyons three days ago, though Mrs. Damer told me I should not have one till to-morrow. I have got one to-day; but alas! from Pougues only, eleven and a half posts short of Lyons! Oh! may Mrs. Damer prove in the right to-morrow! Well! I must be happy for the past; and that you had such delightful weather, and but one little accident to your carriage. We have had equal summer till Wednesday last, when it blew a hurricane. I said to it, "Blow, blow, thou winter wind, I don't mind you now!" but I have not forgotten Tuesday the 12th; and now I hope it will be as calm as it is to-day on Wednesday next, when Mrs. Damer is to sail.(705) I was in town on Thursday and Friday, and so were her parents, to take our leaves; as we did on Friday night, supping all at Richmond-house. She set out yesterday morning, and I returned hither. I am glad you had the amusement of seeing the National Assembly. Did Mr. Berry find it quite so august as he intended it should be? Burke's pamphlet is to appear to-morrow, and Calonne has published a thumping one of four hundred and forty pages.(706) I have but begun it, for there is such a quantity of calculations, and one is forced to bait so often to boil milliards of livres down to a rob of pounds sterling, that my head is only filled with figures instead of arguments, and I understand arithmetic less than logic.
Our war still hangs by a hair, they say; and that this approaching week must terminate its fluctuations. Brabant, I am told, is to be pacified by negotiations at the Hague. Though I talk like a newspaper, I do not assume their airs, nor give my intelligence of any sort for authentic, unless when the Gazette endorses the articles. Thus, Lord Louvain is made Earl of Beverley, and Lord Earl of Digby; but in no Gazette, though still in the Songs of Sion, do I find that Miss Gunning is a marchioness. It is not that I suppose you care who gains a step in the aristocracy; but I tell you these trifles to keep you au courant, and that at your return you may not make only a baronial curtsey, when it should be lower by two rows of ermine to some new-hatched countess. This is all the, news-market furnishes. Your description of the National Assembly and of the Champ de Mars were both admirable; but the altar of boards and canvass seems a type of their perishable constitution, as their air-balloons were before. French visions are generally full of vapour, and terminate accordingly. I have been at Mrs. Grenville's(707) this evening, who had a small party for the Duchess of Gloucester: there were many inquiries after my wives.
(705) Mrs. Damer was going to pass the winter at Lisbon, on account of her health.
(706) This was his "Lettre sur l'`Etat de la France, pr`esent et `a venir;" of which a translation appeared in the following year.-E.
(707) Margaret Banks, widow Of the Hon. Henry Grenville, who died in 1784. Their only daughter was married, in 1781, to Viscount Mahon, afterwards Earl Stanhope.
358. To The Miss Berrys Park-place, Nov. 8, 1790. (page 458)
No letter since Pougues! I think you can guess how uneasy I am! It is not the fault of the wind; which has blown from every quarter. To-day I cannot hear, for no post comes in on Mondays. What can have occasioned my receiving no letters from Lyons, when, on the 18th of last month, you were within twelve posts of it? I am now sorry I came hither, lest by change of place a letter may have shuttlecocked about, and not have known where to find me; and yet I left orders with Kirgate to send it after me, if one came to Strawberry on Saturday. I return thither to-morrow, but not till after the post is come in here. I am writing to you now, while the company are walked out, to divert my impatience; which, however, is but a bad recipe, and not exactly the way to put YOU Out Of my head.
The first and great piece of news is the pacification with Spain. The courier arrived on Thursday morning with a most acquiescent answer to our ultimatum: what that was I do not know, nor much care. Peace contents me, and for my part I shall not haggle about the terms. I have a good general digestion, and it is not a small matter that will lie at my stomach when I have no hand in dressing the ingredients.
The pacification of Brabant is likely to be volume the second. The Emperor, and their majesties of Great Britain and Prussia, and his Serene Highness the Republic of Holland have sent a card to his turbulent Lowness of Brabant, and* they allow him but three weeks to submit to his old sovereign: on promise of a general pardon -or the choice of threescore thousand men ready to march without a pardon.
The third volume, expected, but not yet in the press, is a counterrevolution in France. Of that I know nothing but rumour; yet it certainly is not the most incredible event that rumour ever foretold. In this country the stock of the National Assembly IS fallen down to bankruptcy. Their only renegade, aristocrat Earl Stanhope, has, with D. W. Russel, scratched his name out of the Revolution Club; but the fatal blow has been at last given by Mr. Burke. His pamphlet(708) came out this day se'nnight, and is far superior to what was expected, even by his warmest admirers. I have read it twice; and though of three hundred and fifty pages, I wish I could repeat every page by heart. It is sublime, profound, and gay. The wit and satire are equally brilliant; and the whole is wise, though in some points he goes too far: yet in general there is far less want of judgment than could be expected from him. If it could be translated,--which, from the wit and metaphors and allusions, is almost impossible,--I should think it would be a classic book in all countries, except in present France.(709) To their tribunes it speaks daggers though, unlike them, it uses none. Seven thousand copies have been taken off by the booksellers already, and a new edition is preparing. I hope you will see it soon. There ends my gazette.
There is nobody here at present but Mrs. Hervey, Mrs. E. Hervey, and Mrs. Cotton: but what did I find on Saturday? Why, the Prince of Furstemberg,(710) his son, and son's governor! I was ready to turn about and go back: but they really proved not at all unpleasant. The ambassador has not the least German stiffness or hauteur; is extremely civil, and so domestic a man, that he talked comfortably of his wife and eight children, and of his fondness for them. He understands English, though he does not speak it. The son, a good-humoured lad of fifteen, seems well-informed: the governor, a middle-aged officer, speaks English so perfectly, that even by his accent I should not have discovered him for a foreigner. They stayed all night, and went to Oxford next morning before I rose.
November 9th, at night.
This morning, before I left Park-place, I had the relief and joy of receiving your letter of October 24, from Lyons. It would have been still more welcome, if dated from Turin; but, as you have met with no impediments so far, I trust you got out of France as well as through it. I do hope, too, that Miss Agnes is better, as you say; but when one is very anxious about a person, credulity does not take long strides in proportion. I am not surprised at your finding voiturins, or any body, or any thing, dearer: where all credit and all control are swept away, every man will be a tyrant in proportion to his necessities and his strength. Societies were invented to temperate force: but it seems force was liberty, and much good may it do the French with being delivered from every thing but violence!--which I believe they will soon taste pro and con.! You may make me smile by desiring me to continue my affection. Have I so much time left for inconstancy? For threescore years and ten I have not been very fickle in my friendship: in all these years I never found such a pair as you and your sister. Should I meet with a superior pair,-but they must not be deficient in any one of the qualities which I find in you two,-why, Perhaps, I may change; but, with that double mortgage on my affections, I do not think you are in much danger of losing them. You shall have timely notice if a second couple drops out of the clouds and falls in my way.
(708) The far-famed "Reflections on the Revolution in France;" of which about thirty thousand copies were sold in a comparatively short space of time.-E.
(709) A French translation, by M. Dupont, shortly after made its appearance, and spread the reputation of the work over all Europe. The Emperor of Germany, Catherine of Russia, and the French Princes transmitted to Mr. Burke their warm approbation of it, and the unfortunate Stanislaus of Poland sent him his likeness on a gold medal.-E.
(710) The Landgrave of Furstemberg had been sent from the Emperor Leopold to notify his being elected King of the Romans, and his subsequent coronation as Emperor of Germany.-E.
359. To Miss Berry. November 11, 1790. (page 460)
I had a letter from Mrs. Damer at Falmouth. She suffered much by cold and fatigue, and probably sailed on Saturday evening last, and may be at Lisbon by this time, as you, I trust, are in Italy. Mr. Burke's pamphlet has quite turned Dr. Price's head. He got upon a table at their club, toasted to our Parliament becoming a National Assembly, and to admitting no more peers of their assembly, having lost the only one they had. They themselves are very like the French `Etats: two more members got on the table (their pulpit), and broke it down: so be it!
The Marquisate(711) is just where it was--to be and not to be. The Duchess of Argyll is said to be worse. Della Crusca(712) has published a poem, called "The Laurel of Liberty," which, like the Enrag`es, has confounded and overturned all ideas. There are gossamery tears and silky oceans--the first time, to be sure, that any body ever cried cobwebs, or that the sea was made of paduasoy.(713) There is, besides, a violent tirade against a considerable personage, who, it is supposed, the author was jealous of, as too much favoured a few years ago by a certain Countess. You may guess why I am not more explicit: for the same reason I beg YOU not to mention it at all; it would be exceedingly improper. As the Parliament will meet in a fortnight, and the town be plumper, my letters may grow more amusing; though, unless the weather grows worse, I shall not contribute my leanness to its embonpoint. Adieu!
(711) Meaning the reported marriage of Miss Gunning to the Marquis of Blandford.-B.
(712) Robert Merry, Esq. who, at this time, wrote in the newspapers under this signature, and thereby became the object of the caustic satire of the author of the Baviad and Maviad--
"Lo, Della Crusca in his closet pent, He toils to give the crude conception vent Abortive thoughts, that right and wrong confound, Truth sacrific'd to letters, sense to sound; False glare, incongruous images combine, And noise and nonsense chatter through the line."-E.
(713) Besides the above, Mr. Gifford instances, from the same poem, "moody monarchs, radiant rivers, cooling cataracts, lazy Loires, gay Garonnes, glossy glass, mingling murder, dauntless day, lettered lightnings, delicious dilatings, sinking sorrows, real reasoning, meliorating mercies, dewy vapours damp that sweep the silent swamps, etc. etc."-E.
360. To The Miss Berrys. Strawberry Hill, Thursday, Nov. 18, 1790. (page 461)
On Tuesday morning, after my letter was gone to the post, I received yours of the 2d (as I have all the rest) from Turin, and it gave me very little of the joy I had so much meditated to receive from a letter thence. And why did not it?-because I had got one on Saturday, which anticipated and augmented all the satisfaction I had allotted for Turin. You will find my Tuesday's letter, if ever you receive it, intoxicated with Chamberry; for which, and all your kind punctuality, I give you a million of thanks. But how cruel to find that you found none of my letters at Turin! There ought to have been two at least, of October the 16th and 19th. I have since directed one thither of the 25th; but alas! from ignorance, there was par Paris on none of them; and the Lord knows at how many little German courts they may have been baiting! I shall put par Paris on this; but beg you will tell me, as soon as you can, which route is the shortest and the safest; that is, by which you are most likely to receive them. You do me justice in concluding there has been no negligence of mine in the case; indeed, I have been ashamed of the multiplicity of my letters, when I had scarce any thing to tell you but my own anxiety to hear of your being quietly settled at Florence, out of the reach of all commotions. And how could I but dread your being molested by some accident, in the present state of France! and how could your healths mend in bad inns, and till you can repose somewhere? Repose you will have at Florence, but I shall fear the winter for you there: I suffered more by cold there, than by any place in my life; and never came home at night without a pain in my breast, which I never felt elsewhere, yet then I was very young and in perfect health. If either of you suffer there in any shape, I hope you will retire to Pisa.
My inquietude, that presented so many alarms to me before you set out, has, I find, and am grieved for it, not been quite in the Wrong. Some inconveniences I am persuaded you have sunk: yet the difficulty of landing at Dieppe, and the ransack of your poor harmless trunks at Bourgoin, and the wretched lodgings with which you were forced to take up at Turin, count deeply with me: and I had much rather have lost all credit as a prophet, since I could not prevent your journey. May it answer for your healths! I doubt it will not in any other respect, as you have already found by the voiturins. In point of pleasure, is it possible to divest myself so radically of all self-love as to wish you may find Italy as agreeable as you di formerly? In all other lights, I do most fervently hope there will he no drawbacks on your plan. Should you be disappointed in any way, you know what a warm heart is open to receive you back; and so will your own Cliveden(714) be too.
I am glad you met the Bishop of Arras,(715) and am much pleased that he remembers me. I saw him very frequently at my dear old friend's,.(716) and liked him the best of all Frenchmen I ever knew. He is extremely sensible, easy, lively, and void of prejudices. Should he fall in your way again, I beg you will tell him how sincere a regard I have for him. He lived in the strictest union with his brother, the Archbishop of Tours, whom I was much less acquainted with, nor know if he be living.
I have heard nothing since my Tuesday's letter. As I still hope its predecessors will reach you, I will not repeat the trifling scraps of news I have sent you in them. In fact, this is only a trial whether par Paris is a better passport than a direction without it; but I am grievously sorry to find difficulty of correspondence superadded to the vexation of losing you. Writing to you was grown my chief occupation. I wish. Europe and its broils were in the East Indies, if they embarrass us quiet folks, who have nothing to do with their squabbles. The Duchess of Gloucester, who called on me yesterday, charged me to give her compliments to you both. Miss Foldson(717) has not yet sent me your pictures: I was in town on Monday, and sent to reproach her with having twice broken her promise; her mother told my servant that Miss was at Windsor, drawing the Queen and Princesses. That is not the work of a Moment. I am glad all the Princes are not on the spot.
I think of continuing here till the weather grows very bad; which it has not been at all yet, though not equal to what I am rejoiced you have found. I have no Somerset or Audley-street to receive me: Mrs. Damer is gone too. The Conways remain at Park-place till after Christmas; It is entirely out of fashion for women to grow old and stay at home in an evening. They invite you, indeed, now and then, but do not expect to see you till near midnight; which is rather too late to begin the day, unless one was born but twenty years ago. I do not condemn any fashions, which the young ought to set, for the old certainly ought not; but an oak that has been going on in its old way for an hundred years, cannot shoot into a May-pole in three years, because it is the mode to plant Lombardy poplars.
What I should have suffered, if your letters, like mine, had wandered through Germany! I, you was sure, had written, and was in no danger. Dr. Price, who had whetted his ancient talons last year to no purpose, has had them all drawn by Burke, and the Revolution Club is as much exploded as the Cock-lane Ghost; but you, in order to pass a quiet winter in Italy, would pass through a fiery furnace. Fortunately, you have not been singed, and the letter from Chamberry has composed all my panics, but has by no means convinced me that I was not perfectly in the right to endeavour to keep you at home. One does not put one's hand in the fire to burn off a hangnail; and, though health is delightful, neither of you were out of order enough to make a rash experiment. I Would not be so absurd as to revert to old arguments, that happily proved no prophecies, if my great anxiety about you did not wish, in time, to persuade you to return through Switzerland and Flanders, if the latter is pacified and France is not; of which I see no likelihood.
Pray forgive me, if parts of my letters are sometimes tiresome; but can I appear only always cheerful when you two are absent, and have another long journey to make, ay, and the sea to cross again? My fears cannot go to sleep like a paroli at faro till there is a new deal, in which even then I should not be sure of winning. If I see you again, I will think I have gained another milleleva, as I literally once did; with this exception, that I was vehemently against risking a doit at the game of travelling. Adieu!
(714) Little Strawberry Hill, which he had then thus named.
(715) M. de Conzies. This amiable prelate declined, in 1801, the Parisian archiepiscopacy, proffered him by Buonaparte, and died in London, in December 1804, in the arms of Monsieur, afterwards Charles the Tenth.-E.
(716) Madame du Deffand.
)717 Afterwards Mrs. Mee.
361. To The Miss Berrys. Strawberry Hill, Friday night, Nov. 27, 1790. (page 463)
I am waiting for a letter from Florence, not with perfect patience, though I could barely have one, even if you did arrive, as you intended, on the 12th; but twenty temptations might have occurred to detain you in that land of eye and ear sight; my chief eagerness is to learn that you have received at least some of my letters. I wish too to know, though I cannot yet, whether you would have me direct Par Paris, or as I did before. In this state of uncertainty I did not prepare this to depart this morning; nor, though the Parliament met yesterday, have I a syllable of news for you, as there will be no debate till all the members have been sworn, which takes two or three days. Moreover, I am still here: the weather, though very rainy, is quite warm; and I have much more agreeable society at Richmond, with small companies and better hours, than in town, and shall have till after Christmas, unless great cold drives me thither. Lady Di, Selwyn, the Penns, the Onslows, Douglases, Mackinsys, Keenes, Lady Mount-Edgcumbe, all stay, and Some of them meet every evening. The Boufflers too are constantly invited, and the Comtesse Emilie sometimes carries her harp, on which they say she plays better than Orpheus; but as I never heard him on earth, nor chez Proserpine, I do not pretend to decide. Lord Fitzwilliam(718) has been here too; but was in the utmost danger of being lost on Saturday night, in a violent storm between Calais and Dover, as the captain confessed to him when they were landed. Do you think I did not ache at the recollection of a certain Tuesday when you were sailing to Dieppe?
(718) Richard, seventh and last Viscount Fitzwilliam, the munificent benefactor to the University of Cambridge. He died in 1816.-E.
362. To Miss Agnes Berry. Strawberry Hill, Sunday, Nov. 29, 1790. (page 464)
Though I write to both at once, and reckon your letters to come equally from both, yet I delight in seeing your hand with a pen as well as with a pencil, and you express yourself as well with the one as with the other. Your part in that which I have been so happy as to receive this moment, has singularly obliged me, by your having saved me the terror of knowing you had a torrent to cross after heavy rain. No cat is so afraid of water for herself, as I am grown to be for you. That panic, which will last for many months, adds to my fervent desire of your returning early in the autumn, that you may have neither fresh water nor the "silky" ocean to cross in winter. Precious as our insular situation is, I am ready to wish with the Frenchman, that you could somehow or other get to it by land,-- Oui, c'est une isle toujours, je le sais bien; mais, par exemple, en allant d'alentour, n'y auroit-il pas moyen d'y arriver par terre?"
Correggio never pleased me in proportion to his fame; his grace touches upon grimace; the mouth of the beautiful Angel at Parma curls up almost into a half-moon. Still I prefer Corregio to the lourd want of grace in Guereino, who is to me a German edition of Guido. I am sorry the bookseller would not let you have an Otranto. Edwards told me, above two months ago, that he every day expected the whole impression; and he has never mentioned it waiting for my corrections. I will make Kirgate write to him, for I have told you that I am still here. We have had much rain, but no flood; and yesterday and to-day have exhibited Florentine skies.
>From town I know nothing; but that on Friday, after the King's speech, Earl Stanhope made a most frantic speech on the National Assembly and against Calonne's book, which he wanted to have taken up for high treason.(719) He was every minute interrupted by loud bursts of laughter; which was all the answer he received or deserved. His suffragan Price has published a short, sneaking equivocal answer to Burke, in which he pretends his triumph over the King of France alluded to July, not to October, though his sermon was preached in November. Gredat--but not Judaeus Apella, as Mr. Burke so wittily says of the assignats.(720) Mr. Grenville, the secretary of state, is made a peer, they say to assist the Chancellor in the House of Lords: yet the papers pretend the Chancellor is out of humour, and will resign the first may be true, the latter probably not.(721)
Richmond, my metropolis, flourishes exceedingly. The Duke of Clarence arrived at his palace there last night, between eleven and twelve, as I came from Lady Douglas. His eldest brother and Mrs. Fitzherbert dine there to-day with the Duke Of Queensbury, as his grace, who called here this morning, told me, on the very spot where lived Charles the First, and where are the portraits of his principal courtiers from Cornbury. Queensbury has taken to that palace at last, and has frequently company and music there in an evening. I intend to go.
I suppose none of my Florentine acquaintance are still upon earth. The handsomest woman there, of my days, was a Madame Grifoni, my fair Geraldine: she would now be a Methusalemess, and much more like a frightful picture I have of her by a one-eyed German painter. I lived then with Sir Horace Mann, in Casa Mannetti in Via de' Santi Apostoli, by the Ponte di Trinit`a. Pray, worship the works of Masaccio, if any remain; though I think the best have been burnt in a church. Raphael himself borrowed from him. Fra Bartolomeo, too, is one of my standards for great ideas; and Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus a rival of the antique, though Mrs. Damer will not allow it. Over against the Perseus is a beautiful small front of a house, with only three windows, designed by Raphael; and another, I think, near the Porta San Gallo, and I believe called Casa Panciatici or Pandolfini.
(719) in the report of Lord Stanbope's speech, as it is given in the Parliamentary History, there is no expression of a wish that M. Calonne should be ,taken up for high treason." What the noble Earl said was, that the assertion that a civil war would meet with the support of all the crowned heads in Europe was a scandalous libel on the King of England, and might endanger the lives of many natives of Scotland and Ireland then residing in France.-E.
(720) "The Assembly made in their speeches a sort of swaggering declaration, something, I rather think, above legislative competence; that is, that there is no difference in value between metallic money and their assignats. This was a good, stout proof article of faith, pronounced under an anathema, by the venerable fathers of this philosophic synod. Gredat who will certainly not
Judaeus Apella."-E.
(721) In Mr. Wilberforce's Diary for this year there appears the following entry:-"Nov- 22. Dined with Mr. Pitt. He told me of Grenville's peerage and the true reasons--distrust of Lord Thurlow. Saw Thurlow's answer to the news. Gave Pitt a serious word or two." See Life, vol. i. p. 284.-E.
363. To The Miss Berrys. Strawberry Hill, Dec. 20, 1790; very late at night. (page 465)
The French packet that was said to be lost on Tuesday last, and which did hang out signals of distress, was saved, but did not bring any letters; but three Flemish mails that were due are arrived, and did bring letters, and, to my inexpressible joy, two from you of the 22d and 29th of the last month, telling Me that you have received as far as No. 4 and 5 of mine. Thank all the stars in Herschell's telescope, or beyond its reach, that our correspondence is out of the reach of France and all its ravages! Thank you a million of times for all your details about yourselves When even the apprehension of any danger disquiets me so much, judge whether I do not interest myself in every particular of your pleasures and amusements! Florence was my delight, as it is yours but, I don't know how, I wish you did not like it quite so much and, after the gallery. how will any silver-penny of a gallery look? Indeed, for your Boboli, which I thought horrible even fifty years ago, before shepherds had seen the star of taste in the west, and glad tidings were proclaimed to their flocks, I do think there is not an acre on the banks of the Thames that should vail the bonnet to it.
Of Mr. Burke's book, if I have not yet told you my opinion, I do now: that it is one of the finest compositions in print. There is reason, logic, wit, truth. eloquence, and enthusiasm in the brightest colours. That it has given a mortal stab to sedition, I believe and hope; because the fury of the Brabanters,-whom, however, as having been aggrieved, I pitied and distinguish totally from the savage Gauls, -and the unmitigated and execrable injustices of the latter, have made almost any state preferable to such anarchy and desolation, that increases every day. Admiring thus, as I do, I am very far from subscribing to the extent of almost all Mr. Burke's principles. The work, I have no doubt, will hereafter be applied to support very high doctrines; and to you I will say, that I think it an Apocrypha, that, in many a council of Bishops, will be added to the Old Testament. Still, such an Almanzor was wanting at this crisis; and his foes show how deeply they are wounded, by their abusive pamphlets. Their Amazonian allies, headed by Kate Macaulay(722) and the virago Barbauld, whom Mr. Burke calls our poissardes, spit their rage at eighteenpence a head, and will return to Fleet-ditch, more fortunate in being forgotten than their predecessors, immortalized in the Dunciad. I must now bid you good-night; and night it is, to the tune of morning. Adieu, all three!
(722) A pamphlet, entitled "Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke on the Revolution in France; in a Letter to Earl Stanhope," was attributed to Mrs. Macaulay.-E.
364. To Miss Berry. Berkeley Square, Saturday, Jan. 22, 1791. (page 466)
I have been most unwillingly forced to send you such bad accounts of myself by my two last letters; but, as I could not conceal all, it was best to tell you the whole truth. Though I do not know that there was any real danger, I could not be so blind to my own age and weakness as not to think that, with so much gout an fever, the conclusion might very probably be fatal: and therefore it was better you should be prepared for what might happen. The danger appears to be entirely over: there seems to be no more gout to come. I have no fever, have a very good appetite, and sleep well. Mr. Watson,(723) who is all tenderness and attention, is persuaded to-day that I shall recover the use of my left hand ; of which I despaired much more than of the right, as having been seized three weeks earlier. Emaciated and altered I am incredibly, as you would find were you ever to see me again. But this illness has dispelled all visions ; and, as I have little prospect of passing another happy autumn, I Must wean myself from whatever would embitter my remaining time by disappointments.
Your No. 15 came two days ago, and gives me the pleasure of knowing that you both are the better for riding, which I hope you will continue. I am glad, too, that you are pleased with your Duchess of Fleury and your Latin professor: but I own, except your climate and the six hundred camels, you seem to me to have met with no treasure which you might not have found here without going twenty miles: and even the camels, according to Soame Jenyns' spelling, were to be had from Carrick and other places.
I doubt you apply Tully de Amicitia too favourably: at least, I fear there is no paragraph that countenances 73 and 27.
Monday, the 24th.
I think I shall give you pleasure by telling you that I am very sure now of recovering from the present fit. It has almost always happened to me, in my considerable fits of the gout, to have one critical night that celebrates its departure: at the end of two different fits I each time slept eleven hours. Morpheus is not quite so young nor so generous now ; but, with the interruption of a few minutes, he presented me with eight hours last night: and thence I shall date my recovery. I shall now begin to let in a little company; and, as the Parliament will meet in a week, my letters will probably not be so dull as they have been; nor shall I have occasion, nor be obliged, to talk so much of myself, of which I am sure others must be tired, when I am so much tired myself.
Tuesday, the 25th.
Old Mrs. French(724) is dead at last, and I am on the point of losing, or have lost, my oldest acquaintance and friend, George Selwyn, who was yesterday at the extremity. These misfortunes, though they can be so but for a short time, are very sensible to the old; but him I really loved, not only for his infinite wit, but for a thousand good qualities. Lady Cecilia Johnstone was here yesterday. I said much for you, and she as much to you. The Gunnings are still playing the fool, and perhaps somebody with them; but I cannot tell you the particulars now. Adieu!
(723) His surgeon.
(724) An Irish lady, who, during the latter part of her life, had a country house at Hampton Court.
365. To The Miss Berrys. Saturday, Jan. 29, 1791. (page 468)
Voici de ma propre `ecriture! the best proof that I am recovering, though not rapidly, which is not the march of my time of life. For n these last six days I have mended more than I expected. My left hand, the first seized, is the most dilatory, and of which I have least hopes. The rheumatism, that I thought so clear and predominant, is so entirely gone, that I now rather think it was hussar-gout attacking in flying squadrons the outposts. No matter which, very ill I was ; and you might see what I thought of myself: nor can I stand many such victories. My countenance was so totally altered, that I could not trace it myself. Its outlines have returned to their posts, though with deep gaps. This is a true picture, and too long an one of self; and too hideous for a bracelet. Apropos, your sweet Miss Foldson, I believe, is painting portraits of all our Princesses, to be sent to all the Princes upon earth ; for, though I have sent her several written duns, she has not deigned even to answer one in writing. I don't know whether Mrs. Buller is not appointed Royal Academician too; for, though I desired the "Charming-man," who was to dine with her that day, to tell her, above a week ago, that I should be glad to see her, she has not taken the least notice of it. Mr. Batt, ditto; who was at Cambridge's when I was at the worst, and knew so, has not once inquired after me, in town or country. So you see you have carried off your friends from me as well as yourselves: and it is not them I regret; or rather, in fact, I outlive all my friends! Poor Selwyn is gone, to my sorrow; and no wonder Ucalegon feels it!(725) He has left about thirty thousand pounds to Mademoiselle Fagniani;(726) twenty of which, if she has no children, to go to those of Lord Carlisle ; the Duke of Queensberry residuary legatee. Old French has died as foolishly as she lived, and left six thousand pounds to you don't know whom ; but to be raised out of her judicious collection of trumpery pictures, etc.
Pray, delight in the following story: Caroline Vernon, fille d'honneur, lost t'other night two hundred pounds at faro, and babe Martindale mark it up. He said he had rather have a draft on her banker. "oh! willingly;" and she gave him one. Next morning he hurried to Drummond's, lest all her money should be drawn out. said the clerk, "would you receive the contents immediately?" "Assuredly." "why, Sir, have you read the note?" Martindale took it; it was, "Pay to the bearer two hundred blows, well applied." The nymph tells the story herself; and yet I think the clerk had the more humour of the two.
The Gunninghiad(727) draws to a conclusion. The General, a few weeks ago, to prove the equality of his daughter to any match, literally put into the newspapers, that he himself is the thirty-second descendant in a line from Charlemagne;--oui, vraiment! Yet he had better have, like Prior's Madam,
"To cut things short, gone up to Adam,"
However, this Carlovingian hero does not allow that the letters are forgeries, and rather suspects the novelist, his lady(728) for the authoress; and if she is, probably Miss Charlemagne is not quite innocent of the plot: though she still maintains that her mother-in-law elect did give her much encouragement; which, considering her grace's conduct about her children, is not the most incredible part of this strange story. I have written this at twice, and will now rest.
Sunday evening.
I wish that complaining of people for abandoning me were an infallible receipt for bringing them back! but I doubt it will not do in acute cases. To-day, a few hours after %writing the latter part of this, appeared Mr. Batt. He asked many pardons, and I easily forgave him; for the mortification was not begun. He asked much after you both. I had a crowd of visits besides; but they all come past two o'clock, and sweep one another away before any can take root. My evenings are solitary enough, for I ask nobody to come; nor, indeed, does any body's evening begin till I am going to bed. I have Outlived daylight, as well as my contemporaries. What have I not survived? The Jesuits and the monarchy of France! and both without a struggle! Semiramis seems to intend to add Constantinople to the mass of revolutions ; but is not her permanence almost as wonderful as the contrary explosions! I wish--I wish we may not be actually flippancying ourselves into an embroil with that Ursa-major of the North Pole. What a vixen little island are we, if we fight wit the Aurora Borealis and Tippo Saib at the end of Asia at the same time! You, damsels, will be like the end of the conundrum, "You've seen the man who saw the wondrous sights."
Monday evening.
I cannot finish this with my own hand, for the gout has returned a little into my right arm and wrist, and I am not quite so well as I was yesterday; but I had said my say, and had little to add. The Duchess of Gordon, t'other night, coming out of an assembly, said to Dundas, "Mr. Dundas, you are used to speak in public; will you call my servant?"
Here I receive your long letter of the 7th, 9th, and 10th, which it is impossible for me to answer now; there is one part to which I wish to reply, but must defer till next post, by which time I hope to have recovered my own pen. You ask about the house of Argyll. You know I have no connexion with them, nor any curiosity about them. Their relations and mine have been in town but four days, so I know little from them: Mrs. Grenville, to-day, told me the Duke proposes to continue the same life he used to lead, with a cribbage-table and his family. Every body admires the youngest daughter's(729) person and understanding. Adieu! I will begin to write again myself as soon as I can.
(725) This celebrated wit and amiable man died on the 25th of January, in his seventy-second year. He was member for Luggershall, surveyor-general of the crown lands, surveyor of the meltings and clerk of the irons in the Mint; "and," add the newspapers of the day, "receiver-general of wit and stray jokes." The following tribute to his memory appeared at the time:--
"If this gay Fav'rite lost, they yet can live, A tear to Selwyn let the Graces give! With rapid kindness teach Oblivion's pall O'er the sunk foibles of the man to fall And fondly dictate to a faithful Muse The prime distinction of the Friend they lose:-- 'Twas Social Wit; which, never kindling strife, Blazed in the small, sweet courtesies of life; Those little sapphires round the diamond shone, Lending soft radiance to the richer stone."-E.
(726) Married in 1798, to the Earl of Yarmouth; who, in 1822, succeeded his father as third Marquis of Hertford.-E.
(727) Meaning the strange, imagined history Of a marriage supposed to have been likely to take place between Miss Gunning and the Marquis of Blandford.
(728) Mrs. Gunning was a Miss Minifie, of Fairwater, Somersetshire, and, before her marriage, had published several popular novels.-E.
(729) Lady Charlotte-Susan-Maria; married, first to Colonel John Campbell of Islay and, secondly to the Rev. Mr. Bury.-E.
366. To Miss Berry. Berkeley Square, Friday, Feb. 4, 1791. (page 470)
Last post I sent you as cheerful a letter, as I could, to convince you that I was recovering. This will be less gay; not because I have had a little return in both arms, but because I have much more pain in my mind than in my limbs. I see and thank you all for the kindness of your intention; but, as it has the contrary effect from what you expect, I am forced, for my own peace, to beseech you not to continue a manoeuvre that only tantalizes and wounds me. In your last you put together many friendly words to give me hopes of your return; but can I be' so blind as not to see that they are vague words? Did you mean to return in autumn, Would you not say so? would the most artful arrangement of words be so kind as those few simple ones? In fact, I have for some time seen how little you mean it; and, for your sakes, I cease to desire it. The pleasure you expressed at seeing Florence again, forgive me for saying, is the joy of sight merely; for can a little Italian town, and wretched Italian company, and travelling English lads and governors, be comparable to the choice of the best company of so vast a capital as London, unless you have taken an aversion to England? And your renewed transports at a less and still more insipid town, Pisa! These plainly told me your thoughts, which vague words cannot efface. You then dropped that you could let your London house till next Christmas, and then talked of a visit to Switzerland, and since all this, Mrs. Damer has warned me not to expect YOU till next Spring. I shall not; nor do I expect that next spring. I have little expected this next! My dearest Madam, I allow all my folly and Unreasonableness, and give them up and abandon them totally. I have most impertinently and absurdly tried, for my own sake merely, to exact from two young ladies, above forty years younger than myself, a promise of sacrificing their rooted inclinations to my whims and satisfaction. But my eyes are opened, my reason is returned, I condemn myself; and I now make you but one request, which is, that, though I am convinced it would be with the most friendly and good-natured meaning possible, I do implore you not to try to help me to delude myself any more. You never know half the shock it gave me when I learned from Mr. Batt, what you had concealed from me, your fixed resolution of going abroad last October; and though I did in vain deprecate it,--your coming to Twickenham in September, which I know, and from my inmost soul believe, was from mere compassion and kindness to me,-yet it did aggravate my parting with you.
I would not repeat all this, but to prevail with you, While I do live, and while you do condescend to have any friendship for me, never to let me deceive myself. I have no right to inquire into your plans, views or designs; and never will question you more about them. I shall deserve to be deluded if I do; but what you do please to say to me, I beg may be frank. I am, in every light, too weak to stand disappointment ow: I cannot be disappointed. You have a firmness that nothing shakes; and, therefore, it would be unjust to betray your good-nature into any degree of insincerity. You do nothing that is not reasonable and right; and I am conscious that you bore a thousand times more from my self-love and vanity, than any other two persons but yourselves would have supported with patience so long. Be assured that what I say I think, feel, and mean; derange none of your plans for me. I now wish you take no one step but What is conformable to your views, interest and satisfaction. It would hurt me to interfere with them -. I reproach myself with having so ungenerously tried to lay you under any difficulties, and I approve your resolution in adhering steadily to your point. Two posts ago I hinted that I was weaning myself from the anxiety of an attachment to two persons that must have been so uneasy to them, and has ended so sorrowfully to myself but that anxiety I restrict solely to the desire of your return: my friendship, had I years to live, could not alter or be shaken; and there is no kind of proof or instance of it that I will not give you both while I have breath.
I have vented what I had at my heart, and feel relieved. Do not take ill a word I have said. Be assured I can love you as much as ever I did, and do; and though I am no longer so Unjust as to prefer my own satisfaction to yours. Here I drop the subject; before Tuesday, perhaps, I shall be able to talk on some other.
Monday, 7th.
Though the Parliament is met, and the town they say, full, I have not heard a tittle of news of any sort; and yet my prison is a coffeehouse in a morning, though I have been far from well this whole week. Yesterday and Saturday the gout was so painful in my right shoulder, that I could not stoop or turn round. To-day it is in my left elbow, and, I doubt, coming into my right foot: in short, it seems to be going its circle over again. I am not very sorry; sufferings reconcile one to parting with one's self.
One of our numerous tempests threw down Mrs. Damer's chimney last week, and it fell through her workshop; but fortunately touched none of her own works, and only broke two or three insignificant casts. I suppose you know she returns through Spain. This minute I have heard that Lord Lothian's daughter, Lady Mary St. John, and daughter-in-law of Lady Di Beauclerc, died yesterday, having been delivered of a fine boy but the day before. As you are curious to know the chief topic of conversation, it is the rival Opera-houses, neither of which are opened yet; both saying the other is fallen down. Taylor has published a pamphlet that does not prove that the Marquis(730) is the most upright Chamberlain that ever dropped from the skies, nor that the skies are quite true blue. Adieu! if no postscript tomorrow. None.
(730) of Salisbury.
367. To Miss Berry. Berkeley Square, Feb. 12, 1791. (page 472)
I have received your two letters of January 17th and 24th with an account of your objects and plans; and the latter are very much what I expected, as before you receive this you will have seen by my last, No. 18. Indeed, you most kindly offer to break SO far into your plan, as to return at the beginning of next winter; but as that would, as you say, not only be a sacrifice, but risk your healths, can any thing upon earth be more impossible than for me to accept or consent to such a sacrifice? Were I even in love with one of you, could I agree to it? and, being only a most zealous friend, do you think I will hear of it? Should I be a friend at all, if I wished you, for my sake, to travel in winter over mountains, or risk the storms at sea, that I have not forgotten when you went away? Can I desire you to derange a reasonable plan of economy, that would put you quite at your ease at your return? Have I any pretensions for expecting, still less for asking, such or any sacrifices? Have I interested myself in your affairs only to embarrass them?
I do, in the most. Positive and solemn manner, refuse to accept the smallest Sacrifice of any part of your plan, but the single point that would be so hard on me. I will not say a word more on your return, and beg your pardon for having been so selfish as to desire it: my only request now is, that we may say no more about it. I am grieved that the great distance we are at must make me still receive letters about it for some weeks. I shall not forget how very unreasonable I have been myself; nor shall I try to forget it, lest I should be silly again: but I earnestly desire to be totally silent on a subject that I have totally abandoned, and which it is not at all improbable I may never have occasion to renew.
I knew the Comte de Coigny(731) in the year 1766: he was then lively and jovial. I did not think he would turn out a writer, or even reader; but he was agreeable. I say nothing on France- you must know as much as I do, and probably sooner. I will only tell you, that my opinion is not altered in a tittle. What will happen I do not pretend to guess; but am thoroughly persuaded that the present system, if it can be called so, cannot take root. The flirts towards anarchy here have no effect at all. Horne Tooke before Christmas presented a saucy libel to the House of Commons, as a petition on his election. The House contemptuously voted it only frivolous and vexatious, and disappointed him of a ray of martyrdom; but his fees, etc. will cost him three or four hundred pounds, which never go into a mob's calculation of the ingredients of martyrdom.(732)
Monday morning, 14th.
I have a story to tell you, much too long to add to this; which I will send next post, unless I have leisure enough to-day, from people that call on me to finish it to-day, having begun it last night; and in that case I will direct it to Miss Agnes. Mr. Lysons the clergyman has just been here, and told me of a Welsh sportsman, a Jacobite, I suppose, who has very recently had his daughter christened Louisa Victoria Maria Sobieski Foxhunter Moll Boycot. The curate of the minister who baptized her confirmed the truth of it to Mr. Lysons. When Belgiojoso, the Austrian minister, was here, and thought he could write English, he sent a letter to Miss Kennedy, a woman of the town, that began, "My Kennedy Polly dear girl." Apropos--and not much--pray tell me whether the Cardinal of York calls himself King; and whether James the Eighth, Charles the Fourth, or what?
(731) a Great-uncle of the present Duc de Coigny.
(732) On the 5th of February, the committee appointed to try the merits of the petition, reported it to be frivolous and vexatious. Mr. Burke urged the necessity of taking some step against the author of it: but the subject was got rid of by a motion for the order of the day.-E.
368. To Miss Agnes Berry. Feb. 13, 1791. (page 474)
The following narrative, though only the termination of a legend of 'which you know the foregoing chapters, is too singular and too long to be added to my letter; and therefore, though you will receive two by the same post, you will not repine. In short, the Gunninghiad is completed--not by a marriage, like other novels of the Minifies.(733)
Voici how the d`enouement happened. Another supposed love-letter had come from the Marquis(734) within these few weeks; which was so improbable, that it raised more suspicions, and was more closely examined; and thence was discovered to have been both altered and interlined. On this the General sent all the letters down to the Marquis;(735) desiring to be certified of their authenticity, or the contrary. I should tell you, that all this has happened since the death of is sister; who kept up the high tone, and said, her brother was not a man to be trifled with. The Marquis immediately distinguished the two kinds; owned the few letters that disclaimed all inclination for Miss Charlemagne, disavowed the rest. Thence fell the General's wrath on his consort; of which I have told you.
However, the General and his ducal brother-in-law thought it expedient that Miss Charly's character should be cleared as far as possible; she still maintaining the prodigious encouragement she had received from the parents of her intended sposo. She was ordered to draw up a narrative, which should be laid before the Duke of Marlborough; and, if allowed by him, to be shown for her vindication. She obeyed; and her former assertions did not suffer by the new statement. But one singular circumstance was added: she confessed--ingenuous maid!--that, though she had not been able to resist so dazzling an offer, her heart was still her cousin's, the other Marquis.(736)
Well! this narrative, after being laid before a confidential junto at Argyll-house, was sent to Blenheim by the General, by his own groom. Judge of the astonishment of the junto, when Carloman, almost as soon as was possible, laid before them a short letter from the Prince of Mindleheim(737) declaring how delighted he and his Princess had been at their son's having made choice of so beautiful and amiable a virgin for his bride; how greatly they had encouraged the match; and how chagrined they were, that, from the lightness and inconstancy of his temper, the proposed alliance was quite at an end. This wonderful acquittal of the damsel the groom deposed he had received in half-an-hour after his arrival at Blenheim; and he gave the most natural and unembarrassed account of all the stages he had made, going and coming.
You may still suspect, and so did some of the council, that every tittle of this report and of the letter were not gospel: though I own, I thought the epistle not irreconcilable to other parts of the conduct of their graces about their children. Still, I defy you to guess a thousandth part of the marvellous explanation of the mystery.
The first circumstance that struck was, that the Duke, in his own son's name, had forgotten the d in the middle. That was possible in the hurry of doing justice. Next, the wax was black; and nobody could discover for whom such illustrious personages were in mourning. Well; that was no proof one way or other. Unluckily, somebody suggested that Lord Henry Spencer was in town, though to return the next day to Holland. A messenger was sent to him, though very late at night, to beg he would repair to Argyll-house. He did; the letter was shown to him; he laughed, and said it had not the least resemblance to his father's hand. This was negative detection enough; but now comes the most positive and wonderful unravelling!
The next day the General received a letter from a gentleman, confessing that his wife, a friend of Miss Charly, had lately received from her a copy of a most satisfactory testimonial from the Duke of Marlborough In her favour (though, note, the narrative was not then gone to Blenheim); and begging the gentlewoman's husband would transcribe it, and send it to her, as she wished to send it to a friend in the country. The husband had done so, but had had the precaution to write at top Copy; and before the signature had written, signed, M.--both which words Miss had erased, and then delivered the gentleman's identic transcript to the groom, to be brought back as from Blenheim: which the steady groom, on being examined anew, confessed; and that, being bribed, he had gone but one post, and invented the rest.
You will now pity the poor General, who has been a dupe from the beginning, and sheds floods of tears; nay, has actually turned his daughter out of doors, as she banished from Argyll-house too: and Lady Charlotte,(738) to her honour, speaks of her with the utmost Indignation. In fact, there never was a more extraordinary tissue of effrontery, folly, and imposture.
it is a strange but not a miraculous part of this strange story, that Gunnilda is actually harboured by, and lodges with, the old Duchess(739) in Pall-Mall, the grandmother of whom she has miscarried, and who was the first that was big with her. You may depend on the authenticity of this narrative, and may guess from whom I received all the circumstances, day by day; but pray, do not quote me for that reason, nor let it out of your hands, nor transcribe any part of it. The town knows the story confusedly, and a million of false readings there will be; but, though you know it exactly, do not send it back hither. You will, perhaps, be diverted by the various ways in which it will be related. Yours, etc. Eginhart, secretary to Charlemagne and the Princess Gunnilda, his daughter.
P. S. Bowen is the name of the gentleman who gave information of the letter sent to him to be copied, on hearing of the suspected forgeries. The whole Minifry are involved in the suspicions, as they defend the damsel, who still confesses nothing; and it is her mother, not she, who is supposed to have tampered with the groom; and is discarded, too, by her husband.
(733) The name of the family of Mrs. Gunning. See p. 469, letter 365.
(734) George Spencer Churchill, Marquis of Blandford; he succeeded his father as fourth Duke of Marlborough in 1817.-E.
(735) General Gunning was son of John Gunning, Esq. of Castle-Coole, in the county of Roscommon and brother of the beautiful Miss Gunning, married first, in 1752, to the Duke of Hamilton; and second, in 1759, to the Duke of Argyle.-E.
(736) George William Campbell, Marquis of Lorn. He succeeded his father as sixth Duke of Argyle in 1806-E.
(737) The Emperor Joseph, in 1705, bestowed on the great Duke of Marlborough the principality of Mindleheim, in Swabia.-E.
(738) Lady Charlotte Campbell. See p. 470, letter 365, note 729.-E.
(739) Gertrude, eldest daughter of John Earl Gower, Widow of John fourth Duke of Bedford.-E.
369. To The Earl Of Charlemont.(740) Berkeley Square, Feb. 17, 1791. (page 476)
It is difficult, my lord, with common language that has been so prostituted in compliments, to express the real sense of gratitude, which I do feel at my heart, for the obligation I have to your lordship for an act of friendship as unexpected as it was unsolicited; which last circumstance doubles the favour, as it evinces your lordship's generosity and nobleness of temper, without surprising me. How can I thank your lordship, as I ought, for interesting yourself, and of yourself, to save me a little mortification, which I deserve, and should deserve more, had I the vanity to imagine that my printing a few copies of my disgusting tragedy would occasion different and surreptitious editions of it?
Mr. Walker has acquainted me, my lord, that your lordship has most kindly interposed to prevent a bookseller of Dublin from printing an edition of "The Mysterious Mother" without my consent; and, with the conscious dignity of a great mind, your lordship has not even hinted to me the graciousness of that favour. How have I merited such condescending goodness, my lord? Had I a prospect of longer life, I never could pay the debt of gratitude; the weightier, as your lordship did not intend I should know that I owe it. My gratitude can never be effaced; and I am charmed that it is due, and due with so much honour to me, that nothing could bribe me to have less obligation to your lordship, of which I am so proud. But as to the play itself, I doubt it must take its fate. Mr. Walker tells me the booksellers have desired him to remonstrate to me, urging that they have already expended fifty pounds; and Mr. Walker adds, as no doubt would be the case, that should this edition be stifled, when now expected, some other printer would publish it. I certainly might indemnify the present operator, but I know too much of the craft, not to be sure, that I should be persecuted by similar exactions; and, alas! I have exposed myself but too much to the tyranny of the press, not to know that it taxes delinquents as well as multiplies their faults.
In truth, my lord, it is too late now to hinder copies of my play from being spread. It has appeared here, both whole and in fragments: and, to prevent a spurious one, I was forced to have some printed myself: therefore, if I consent to an Irish edition, it is from no vain desire of diffusing the performance. Indeed, my good lord, I have lived too long not to have divested myself both of vanity and affected modesty. I have not existed to past seventy-three without having discovered the futility and triflingness of my own talents: and, at the same time, it would be impertinent to pretend to think that there is no merit in the execution of a tragedy, on which I have been so much flattered; though I am sincere in condemning the egregious absurdity of selecting a subject so improper for the stage, and even offensive to private readers.
But I have said too much on a personal theme; and therefore, after repeating a million of thanks to your lordship for the honour of your interposition, I will beg your lordship, if you please, to signify to the bookseller that you withdraw your prohibition: but I shall not answer Mr. Walker's letter, till I have your lordship's approbation, for You are both my lord chamberlain 'and licenser; and though I have a tolerably independent spirit, I may safely trust myself under the absolute power of one, who has voluntarily protected me against the licentiousness of those who have invaded my property, and who distinguishes so accurately and justly between license and liberty.
(740) Now first collected. This letter was written in consequence of one Walpole had received, informing him that a Dublin bookseller was about to print his tragedy of The Mysterious Mother. At this time, and indeed until the Union took place, there was no act of parliament which regulated literary property in Ireland.-E.
370. To Miss Agnes Berry. Berkeley Square, Feb. 18, 1791. (page 477)
Here is a shocking, not a fatal, codicil to Gunnilda's story. But first I should tell you, that two days after the explosion, the ignora Madre took a postchaise and four, and drove to Blenheim; but, not finding the Duke and Duchess there, she inquired where the Marquis was, and pursued him to Sir Henry Dashwood's: finding him there, she began about her poor daughter; but he interrupted her, said there was an end put to all that, and desired to lead her to her chaise, which he insisted on doing, and did. I think this another symptom Of the Minifry being accomplices to the daughter's enterprises. Well! after the groom's confession, and after Mr. Bowen had been confronted with her, and produced to her face her note to his wife, which she resolutely disowned, she desired the Duke of Argyll to let her take an oath on the Bible of her perfect innocence of every Circumstance of the whole transaction; which you may be sure he did not permit. N'importe: the next day, taking two of the Duchess of Bedford's servants for witnesses, she went before a justice of peace, swore to her innocence and ignorance throughout, even of the note to Mrs. Bowen; and then said to the magistrate, "Sir, from my youth you may imagine I do not know the solemnity of an oath but, to convince you I do, I know my salvation depends on what I have now sworn." Solve all this, if you can! Is it madness? Does even romance extend its inventions so far? or its dispensations? It is but a burlesque part of this wonderful tale, that old crazy Bedford exhibits Miss every morning on the causeway in Hyde Park; and declares her proteg`ee some time ago refused the hand of your acquaintance, Mr. Trevelyan.(741) Except of the contending Opera-houses, one can hear of nothing but Miss Gunning,,; but it is now grown so disgusting a story, that I shall be glad to hear and repeat to you no more about it.
The Pantheon has opened, and is small, they say, but pretty and simple; all the rest ill-conducted, and from the singers to the sceneshifters imperfect; the dances long and bad, and the whole performance so dilatory and tedious, that it lasted from eight to half an hour past twelve. The rival theatre is said to be magnificent and lofty, but it is doubtful whether it will be suffered to come to light: in short, the contest will grow politics; Dieu et Mon Droit supporting the Pantheon, and Ich Dien countenancing the Haymarket. It is unlucky that the amplest receptacle is to hold the minority!
20th.
O'Hara(742) is come to town. You will love him better than ever. He persuaded the captain of the ship, whom you will love for being persuaded, to stop at Lisbon, that he might see Mrs. Damer. O'Hara has been shockingly treated! The House of Richmond is on the point of receiving a very great blow. Colonel Lenox, who had been dangerously ill but was better, has relapsed with all the worst symptoms;(743) and is too weak to be sent to the south, as the physicians recommended, Lady Charlotte is breeding, but that is very precarious; and should it be a son, how many years ere that can be a comfortable resource!
Is not it strange that London, in February and Parliament sitting, should furnish no more paragraphs? Yet, confined at home and in every body's way, and consequently my room being a coffee-house from two to four, I probably hear all events worth relating as soon as they are born, and send you them before they are a week old. Indeed, I think the Gunninhiana may last you a month at Pisa, where, I suppose, the grass grows in the streets as fast as news. When I go out again I am likely to know less: I go but to few, and those the privatest places I can find, which are not the common growth of London; nor, but to amuse you, should I inquire after news. What is a juvenile world to me; or its pleasures, interests, or squabbles? I scarce know the performers by sight.
21st.
It is very hard! The Gunnings will not let me or the town have done with them. La Madre has advertised a Letter to the Duke of Argyll: so he is forced to collect counter affidavits. The groom has 'deposed that she promised him twenty pounds a year for his life, and he has given up a letter that she wrote to him. The mother, when she went after the Marquis, would have persuaded him to get into her chaise; but he would not venture being carried to Gretna-green, and married by force. She then wanted him to sign a paper, that all was over between him and her daughter. He said, "Madam, nothing was ever begun;" and refused. I told you wrong: mother and daughter were not actually in the Duchess of Bedford's house, but in Lord John Russel's, which she lent to them: nor were her servants witnesses to the oath before Justice Hide, but Dr. Halifax and the apothecary. The Signora and her Infanta now, for privacy, are retired into St. James's-street, next door to Brooks's; whence it is supposed Miss will angle for unmarried Marquises-perhaps for Lord Titchfield.(744) It is lost time for people to write novels, who can compose such a romance as these good folks have invented. Adieu!
(741) Mr. Trevelyan married in the following August, Maria, daughter of Sir Thomas Spencer Wilson, Bart. On the death of his father, in 1828, he succeeded to the title, as fifth baronet.-E.
(742) Afterwards lieutenant- governor of Gibraltar. He died in 1802.
(743) Colonel Lenox recovered from his illness, and, in 1806, succeeded his uncle as fourth Duke of Richmond. His grace was governor of Canada at the period of his decease, at Montreal, in 1819; and was succeeded by the son here anticipated; who was born on the 3d of August 1791.-E.
(744) In 1795, the, Marquis of Titchfield married Miss Scott, eldest daughter and heir of General John Scott, of Balcomie, in the county of Fife, and in 1809, succeeded his father as fourth Duke of Portland.-E.
371. \To The Miss Berrys. Berkeley Square, Feb. 26, 1791. (page 479)
I have no letter from you to answer, nor any thing new that is the least interesting to tell you. The Duke of Argyll has sent a gentleman with a cart-load of affidavits, which the latter read to mother and daughter, in order to prevent the publication of their libel; but it only enraged the former, -who vows she will print all she knows, that is, any thing she has heard by their entire intimacy in the family, or, no doubt, what she can invent or misrepresent. What a Medusa! There has been a fragment of a rehearsal in the Haymarket, but still the Pantheon remains master of the field of battle: the vanquished are preparing manifestoes, but they seldom recover the day.
Madame du Barry(745) is come over to recover her jewels, of which she has been robbed--not by the National Assembly, but by four Jews who have been seized here and committed to Newgate. Though the late Lord Barrymore acknowledged her husband to be of his noble blood, will she own the present Earl for a relation, when she finds him turned strolling player!(746) If she regains her diamonds, perhaps Mrs. Hastings may carry her to court.(747)
If you want bigger events, you may send to the Russian army, who will cut you fifteen thousand throats in a paragraph; or, en attendant, you may piddle with the havoc made at Chantilly, which has been half demolished by the rights of men, as the poor old Mesdames have been stopped by the rights of the poissardes; for, as it is true that extremes meet, the moment despotism was hurled from the throne, it devolved to the mob, whose majesties, not being able to write their names, do not issue lettres de cachet, but execute their wills with their own hands; for hanging, which degrades an executioner, ne deroge pas in sovereigns--witness the Czar Peter the Great, Muley Ishmael, and many religious and gracious African monarchs.
After eleven weeks of close confinement, I went out yesterday to take the air; but was soon driven back by rain and sleet, which soon ripened to a tempest of wind and snow, and continued all night - it does not freeze, but blows so hard, that I shall sally out no more tilt the weather has recovered its temper-I do not mean that I expect Pisan skies.
28th.
It was on Saturday that I began this; it is now Monday, and I have no letter from you, though we have had dozens of east winds. I am sorry to find that it costs above six weeks to say a word at Pisa and have an answer in London. This makes correspondence very uncomfortable; you will be talking to me of Miss Gunning, when, perhaps, she may be sent to Botany Bay, and be as much forgotten here as the Monster.(748) Still she has been a great resource this winter; for, though London is apt to produce Wilkeses, and George Gordons, and Mrs. Rudds, and Horne Tookes, and other phenomena, wet and dry, the, present season has been very unprolific; and we are forced to import French news, as we used to do fashions and Operas comiques. The Mesdames are actually set out: I shall be glad to hear they are safe at Turin, for are there no poissardes but at Paris?(749) Natio poissarda est.
Mr. Gibbon writes that he has seen Necker, and found him still devoured by ambition.(750) and I should think by mortification at the foolish figure he has made. Gibbon admires Burke to the skies, and even the religious parts, he says.(751)
Monday evening.
The east winds are making me amends -, one of them has brought me twins. I am sorry to find that even Pisa's sky is not quite sovereign, but that you have both been out of order, though, thank God! quite recovered both, If a Florentine March is at all like an English one, I hope you will not remove thither till April. Some of its months, I am sure, were sharper than those of our common wear are. Pray be quite easy about me: I am entirely recovered, though, if change were bad, we have scarce had one day without every variety of bad weather, with a momentary leaf-gold of sun. I have been out three times, and to-day have made five and-twenty visits, and was let in at six; and, though a little fatigued, am still able, you see, to finish my letter. You seem to think I palliated my illness - I certainly did not tell you that I thought it doubtful how it would end; yet I told you all & circumstances, and surely did not speak sanguinely.
I wish, in No. 20, you had not again named October or November. I have quite given up those months, and am vexed I ever pressed for them, as they would break into Your reasonable plans, for which I abandon any foolish ones of my own. But I am a poor philosopher, or rather am like all philosophers, have no presence of mind, and must study my part before I can act it. I have now settled myself not to expect you this year-do not unsettle me: I dread a disappointment, as I do a relapse of the gout; and therefore cut this article short, that I may not indulge vain hopes, My affection for you both is unalterable; can I give so strong a proof as by supplicating you, as I do earnestly, to act as is most prudent for your healths and interest? A long journey in November would be the very worst part you could take. and I beseech you not to think of it: for me, you see I take a great deal of killing, nor is it so easy to die as is imagined.
Thank you, my dearest Miss Agnes, for your postscript. I love to see your handwriting; and yet do not press for it, as you are shy: though I address myself equally to both, and consult the healths of both In what I have recommended above. Here is a postscript for yours: Madame du Barry was to go and swear to her jewels before the Lord Mayor. Boydell, who is a little better bred than Monsieur Bailly,(752) made excuses for being obliged to administer the oath chez lui, but begged she would name her hour; and, when she did, he fetched her himself in the state-coach, and had a mayor-royal banquet ready for her.(753) She has got most of her jewels again. I want the King to send her four Jews to the National Assembly, and tell them it is the change or la monnoie of Lord George Gordon, the Israelite.
Colonel Lenox is much better: the Duchess of Leinster had a letter from Goodwood to-day which says he rides out. I am glad you do. I said nothing on "the Charming-man's" poem. I fear I said too much to him myself. He said, others liked it: and showed me a note from Mr. Burke, that was hyperbole itself. I wish him so well, that I am sorry he should be so flattered, when, in truth, he has no genius.(754) There is no novelty, no plan, and no suite in his poetry: though many of the lines are pretty. Dr. Darwin alone can exceed his predecessors.
Let me repeat to both, that distance of place and time can make no alteration in my friendship. It grew from esteem for your characters, and understandings, and tempers; and became affection from your good-natured attentions 'to me, where there is so vast a disproportion in our ages. Indeed, that complaisance spoiled me; but I have weaned myself of my own self-love, and you shall hear no more of its dictates.
(745) The last mistress of Louis; the Fifteenth. The Count du Barry who had disgraced his name by marrying her, claimed to be of the same family with the Earls of Barrymore in Ireland.-E.
(746) See ante, p. 452, letter 354.
(747) Mrs. Hastings was supposed, by the party violence of the day, to have received immense bribes in diamonds.
(748) A vagabond so called, from his going about attempting to stab at women with a knife. His first aim had probably been at their Pockets, which having in several instances missed and wounded his intended victims, fear and a love of the marvellous dubbed him with the name of the Monster. The wretch, whose name was Renwick Williams, was tried for the offence at the Old Bailey, in July 1790, and found guilty of a misdemeanour.-E.
(749) After numerous interruptions, the King's aunts were permitted by the National Assembly to proceed to Italy.-E.
(750) "I have passed," says Gibbon, in a letter to Lord Sheffield, "four days at the castle of Copet with Necker; and could have wished to have shown him as a warning to any aspiring youth possessed with the demon of ambition. With all the means of private happiness in his power, he is the most miserable of human beings; the past, the present, and the future, are equally odious to him. When I suggested some domestic amusement of books, building, etc. he answered, with a deep tone Of despair, 'Dans l'`etat o`u je suis, je ne puis sentir que le coup de vent qui m'a abbatu.' How different from the conscious cheerfulness with which our friend Lord North supported his fall! Madame Necker maintains more external composure, mais le diable n'y perd rien. It is true that Necker wished to be carried into the closet, like old Pitt, on the shoulders of the people, and that he has been ruined by the democracy which he had raised. I believe him to be an able financier and know him to be an honest man."-E.
(751) The following are Gibbon's expressions:--"Burke's book is a most admirable medicine against the French disease; which has made too much progress even in this happy country. I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his Chivalry, and I can forgive even his superstition."-E.
(752) M. Bailly, the learned astronomer. He was president of the first National Assembly, and in July 1789, appointed mayor of Paris; in which situation he gave great offence to the people, in July 1791, by ordering martial law to be proclaimed against a mob which had assembled in the Champ de Mars to frame an address, recommending the deposition of Louis. For this step, which was approved of by the Assembly, he was arrested, tried, condemned, and put to death on the 11th of November 1793. The details of this event are horrible. "The weather," says M. Thiers, "was cold and rainy, Conducted on foot, he manifested the utmost composure amidst the insults of a barbarous populace, whom he had fed while he +was mayor. On reaching the foot of the scaffold, one of the wretches cried out, that the field of' the federation ought not to be polluted by his blood. The people instantly rushed upon the guillotine, bore it off, and erected it again upon a dunghill on the bank of the Seine, and opposite to the spot where Bailly had passed his life and composed his invaluable works. This operation lasted some hours: meanwhile, he was compelled to walk several times round the Champ de Mars, bareheaded, and with his hands pinioned behind him. Some pelted him with mud, others kicked and struck him with sticks. He fell exhausted. They lifted him up again. 'Thou tremblest!' said a soldier to him. 'My friend,' replied the old man, 'it is cold.' At length he was delivered over to the executioner; and another illustrious scholar, and one of the most virtuous of men, was then taken from it." Vol. iii. p. 207-E.
(753) See post, p. 484.-E.
(754) Mr. Gifford was of Walpole's opinion, and has, in consequence, accorded to " The Charming-man" a prominent situation in the Baviad:--
"See snivilling Jerningham at fifty weep O'er love-lorn oxen and deserted sheep."
To the poem here alluded to, and which was entitled "Peace, Ignominy, and Destruction," the satirist thus alludes:-"I thought I understood something of faces; but I must read my Lavater over again I find. That a gentleman, with the physionomie \2d'un mouton qui r`eve,' should suddenly start up a new Tyrtaeus, and pour a dreadful note, through a cracked war-trump, amazes me: well, fronti nulla fides shall henceforth be my motto' In a note to the Pursuits of Literature, Mr. Mathias directs the attention of Jerningham to the following beautiful lines in Dryden's Epistle to Mr. Julien, Secretary of the Muses:--
"All his care Is to be thought a Poet fine and fair; Small beer and gruel are his meat and drink, The diet he prescribes himself to think; Rhyme next his heart he takes at morning peep, Some love-epistles at the hour of sleep; And when his passion has been bubbling long, The scum at last boils Up into a song." --E.
372. To The Miss Berrys. Berkeley Square, March 5, 1791. (page 483)
One may live in a vast capital, and know no more of three parts of it than of Carthage. When I was at Florence, I have surprised some Florentines by telling them, that London was built, like their city, (where you often cross the bridges several times in a day,) on each side of the river: and yet that I had never been but on one side; for then I had never been in Southwark. When I was very young, and in the height of the opposition to my father, my mother wanted a large parcel of bugles; for what use I forget. As they were then out of fashion, she could get none. At last, she was told of a quantity in a little shop in an obscure alley in the City. We drove thither; found a great stock; she bought it, and bade the proprietor send it home. He said, "Whither?" "To Sir Robert Walpole's." He asked coolly, "Who is Sir Robert Walpole?"
This is very like Cambridge, who tells you three stories to make you understand a fourth. In short, t'other morning a gentleman made me a visit, and asked if I had heard of the great misfortune that had happened? The Albion Mills are burnt down. I asked where they were; supposing they were powder-mills in the country, that had blown up. I had literally never seen or heard of the spacious lofty building at the end of Blackfriars Bridge. At first it was supposed maliciously burnt, and it is certain the mob stood and enjoyed the conflagration, as of a monopoly; but it had been on fire, and it was thought extinguished. The building had cost a hundred thousand Pounds; and the loss in corn and flour is calculated at a hundred and forty thousand. I do not answer for the truth of the sums; but it is certain that the Palace-yard and part of St. James's Park were covered with half-burnt grain.(755)
This accident, and my introduction, have helped me to a good part Of my letter; for you must have observed, that even in this overgrown town the winter has not been productive of events. Good night! I have two days to wait for a letter that I may answer. Stay -, I should tell you, that I have been at Sir Joseph Banks's literary saturnalia,(756) where was a Parisian watchmaker, who produced the smallest autoMaton that I suppose was ever created. It was a rich snuffbox, not too large for a woman. On opening the lid, an enamelled bird started up, sat on the rim, turned round, fluttered its wings, and piped in a delightful tone the notes of different birds; particularly the jug-jug of the nightingale. It is the prettiest plaything you ever saw; the price tempting--only five hundred pounds. That economist, the Prince of Wales, could not resist it, and has bought one of those dickybirds. If the maker finds such customers, he will not end like one of his profession here, who made the serpent in Orpheus and Eurydice;(757) and who fell so deeply in love with his own works, that he did nothing afterwards but make serpents, of all sorts and sizes, till he was ruined and broke. I have not a tittle to add-but that the Lord Mayor did not fetch Madame du Barry in the City-royal coach; but kept her to dinner. She is gone; but returns in April.
(755) The fire took place on the morning of the 2d of March. There was no reason for any particular suspicion, except the general dislike in the lower classes of the people, arising from a notion, that the undertaking enhanced the price of corn and decreased the value of labour.-E.
(756) Sir Joseph Banks, while President of the Royal Society, had a weekly evening reception of all persons distinguished in science or the arts.
(757) A celebrated opera.
373. To Miss Berry. Strawberry Hill, Saturday, March 19, 1791. (page 484)
I did not begin my letter on customary Friday , because I had nothing new to tell or to say. The town lies fallow--not an incident worth repeating as far as I know. Parliament manufactures only bills, not politics. I never understood any thing useful; and, now that my time and connexions are shrunk to so narrow a compass, what business have I with business? As I have mended considerably for the last four days, and as we have had a fortnight of soft warm weather, and a southwest wind to-day, I have ventured hither for change Of air, and to give orders about some repairs at Cliveden; which, by the way, Mr. Henry Bunbury, two days ago, proposed to take off my hands for his life. I really do not think I accepted his offer. I shall return to town on Monday, and hope to find a letter to answer--or what will this do?
Berkeley Square, Monday evening.
I am returned and find the only letter I dreaded, and the only one, I trust, that I shall ever not be impatient to receive from you. Though ten thousand times kinder than I deserve, it wounds my heart: as I find I have hurt two of the persons I love the best upon earth', and whom I am most constantly studying to please and serve. That I soon repented of my murmurs, you have seen by my subsequent letters. The truth, as you may have perceived, though no excuse, was, that I had thought myself dying, and should never see you more; that I was extremely weak and low, when Mrs. Damer's letter arrived, and mentioned her supposing that I should not see you till spring twelvemonth. That terrible sentence recalled Mr. Batt's being the first to assure me of your going abroad, when I had concluded you had laid aside the design. I did sincerely allow that in both instances you had acted from tenderness in concealing your intentions; but, as I knew I could better bear the information from yourselves than from others, I thought it unfriendly to let me learn from others what interested me so deeply: yet I do not in the least excuse my conduct; no, I condemn it in every light, and shall never forgive myself if you do not promise me to be guided entirely by your own convenience and inclinations about your return. I am perfectly well again, and just as likely to live one year as half an one. Indulge your pleasure in being abroad while you are there. I am now reasonable enough to enjoy your happiness as my own; and, since you are most kind when I least deserve it, how can I express my gratitude for giving up the scruple that was so distressing to me! Convince me you are in earnest by giving me notice that you will write to Charingcross while the Neapolitans are at Florence.(758) I will look on that as a clearer proof of your forgiving my criminal letter, than your return before you like it. It is most sure that nothing is more solid or less personal than my friendship for you two; and even my complaining letter, though unjust and unreasonable, proved that the nearer I thought myself to quitting the world, the more my heart was set on my two friends; nay, they had occupied the busiest moments of my illness as well as the most fretful ones. Forgive then, my dearest friends, what could proceed from nothing but too impatient affection. You say most truly you did not deserve my complaints: your patience and temper under them make me but more in the wrong; and to have hurt you, who have known but too much grief, is such a contradiction to the whole turn of my mind ever since I knew you, that I believe my weakness from illness was beyond even what I suspected. It is sure that, when I am in my perfect senses, the whole bent of my thoughts is to promote your and your sister's felicity; and you know nothing can give me satisfaction like your allowing me to be of use to you. I speak honestly, notwithstanding my unjust letter; I had rather serve you than see you. Here let me finish this subject: I do not think I shall be faulty to you again.
The Mother Gunning has published her letter to the Duke of Argyll, and it disappoints every body. It is neither romantic, nor entertaining, nor abusive, but on the General and Mr. and Mrs. Bowen, and the General's groom. On the Bowens it is so immeasurably scurrilous, that I think they must prosecute her. She accuses them and her husband of a conspiracy to betray and ruin his own daughter, without, even attempting to assign a motive to them. Of the House of Argyll she says not a word. In short, it is a most dull incoherent rhapsody, that gives no account at all of the story that gave origin to her book, and at which no mortal could guess from it; and the 246 pages contain nothing but invectives on her four supposed enemies, and endless tiresome encomiums on the virtues of her glorious darling, and the unspottable innocence of that harmless lambkin. I would not even send it to you if I had an opportunity-you would not have patience to go through it; and there, I suppose, the absurd legend will end. I am heartily tired of it. Adieu!
P. S. That ever I should give you two an uneasy moment! Oh! forgive me: yet I do not deserve pardon in my own eyes: and less in my own heart.
(758) His correspondents, to settle his mind as to the certainty of their return at the time they had promised, had assured him, that no financial difficulties should stand in the way; which is what he means by sending to Charing-cross (to Drummond his banker), No such difficulties occurred. The correspondence, therefore, with Charing-cross never took place-M.B.
374. To The Miss Berrys. Berkeley Square, Sunday, March 27, 1791. (page 486)
Though I begin my despatch to-day, I think I shall change my post-days, as I hinted from Tuesdays to Fridays; not only as more commodious for learning news for you, but as I do not receive your letters generally but on Mondays, I have less time to answer. I have an additional reason for delay this week. Mr. Pitt has notified that he is to deliver a message from the King to-morrow, to the House of Commons on the situation of Europe; and should there be a long debate, I may not gather the particulars till Tuesday morning, and if my levee lasts late, shall not have time to write to you. Oh! now are you all impatience to hear that message: I am sorry to say that I fear it will be a warlike one. The Autocratrix swears, d-n her eyes! she will hack her way to Constantinople through the blood of one hundred thousand more Turks, and that we are very impertinent for sending her a card with a sprig of olive. On the other hand, Prussia bounces and buffs and claims our promise of helping him to make peace by helping him to make war; and so, in the most charitable and pacific way in the world, we are, they say, to send twenty ships to the Baltic, and half as many to the Black Sea,-this little Britain, commonly called Great Britain, is to dictate to Petersburg and Bengal and cover Constantinople under those wings that reach from the North Pole to the farthest East! I am mighty sorry for it, and hope we shall not prove a jackdaw that pretends to dress himself in the plumes of imperial eagles!
If we bounce abroad, we are more forgiving at home: a gentleman who lives at the east end of St. James's Park has been sent for by a lady who has a large house at the west end,(759) and they have kissed and are friends; which he notified by toasting her health in a bumper at a club the other day. I know no circumstances, but am glad of it; I love peace, public or private: not so the chieftains of the contending theatres of harmony. Taylor, in wondrous respectful terms and full of affliction, has printed in the newspapers an advertisement, declaring that the Marquis's honour the Lord Chamberlain(760) did in one season, and that an unprofitable one, send orders (you know, that is tickets of admission without paying) into the Opera-house, to the loss of the managers of four hundred pounds- -servants, it is supposed, and Hertfordshire voters eke: and moreover, that it has been sworn in Chancery that his lordship, not as lord chamberlain, has stipulated with Gallini and O'Reilly that he, his heirs and assigns, should preserve the power of giving those detrimental orders in perpetuity. The immunity is a little new: former chamberlains, it seems even durante officio, have not exercised the privilege--if they had it.
One word more of the Gunnings. Captain Bowen informed the authoress, by the channel of the papers, that he shall prosecute her for the libel. She answered, by the same conveyance, that she is extremely glad of it. But there is a difficulty-unless the prosecution is criminal, it is thought that Madam being femme couverte, the charge must be brought against her husband; and, to be sure, it would be droll that the General should be attached for not hindering his wife from writing a libel, that is more virulent against him himself than any body! Another little circumstance has come out: till the other day he did not know that he had claimed descent from Charlemagne in the newspapers; which, therefore, is referred to the same manufacture as the other forgeries. The General said, "It is true I am well born; but I know no such family in Ireland as the Charlemagnes."
Lord Ossory has just been here, and told me that Gunnilda has written to Lord Blandford, in her own name and hand, begging his pardon (for promising herself marriage in his name), but imputing the first thought to his grandmother, whom she probably inspired to think of it. This letter the Duchess of Marlborough carried to the Duchess of Bedford, to open her eyes on her proteg`ee, but with not much success; for what signify eyes, when the rest of the head is gone? She only said, "You may be easy, for both mother and daughter, are gone to France"--no doubt, on finding her grace's money not so forthcoming as her countenance, and terrified by Captain Bowen's prosecution and there, I hope, will terminate that strange story; for in France there is not a marquis left to marry her. One has heard Of nothing else these seven months; and it requires some ingenuity to keep up the attention of such a capital as London for above half a year together. I supped on Thursday at Mrs. Buller's with the conways and Mount-Edgcumbes; and the next night at Lady Ailesbury's with the same company, and Lady Augusta Clavering.(761) You know, on the famous night at your house when Gunnilda pretended that her father had received Lord Blandford's appointment of the wedding-day, we suspected, when they were gone, that we had seen doubts in Lady Augusta's face, and I desired her uncle, Lord Frederick, to ask her if we had guessed right; but she protests she had then no suspicion.
I have determined to send this away on Tuesday, whether I know the details of the temple of Janus to-morrow in time or not, that you may give yourself airs of importance, if the Turin ministers pretend to tell you news of your own country that you do not know. You may say, your charg`e des affaires sent you word of the King's message; and you may be mysterious about the rest; for mystery in the diplomatic dictionary is construed as knowledge, though, like a Hebrew word, it means the reverse too.
Sunday night.
I have been at White Pussy's(762) this evening. She asked much after you. I did not think her lord looked as if he would drive Prince Potemkin out of Bulgaria; but we trust that a new Frederick of Prussia and a new William Pitt will. Could they lay Catherine in the Black Sea, as ghosts used to be laid in the Red, the world would be obliged to them.
(759) The Queen and the Prince of Wales.
(760) The Marquis of Salisbury.
\(761) Eldest daughter of John Duke of Argyle.
(762) Elizabeth Cary, wife of Lord Amherst, at this time commander-in-chief.
375. To Miss Berry. Strawberry Hill, Sunday night, April 3, 1791. (page 488)
Oh! what a shocking accident! Oh! how I detest your going abroad more than I have done yet in my crossest mood! You escaped the storm on the 10th of October, that gave me such an alarm; you passed unhurt through the cannibals of France and their republic of larrons and poissardes, who terrified me sufficiently; but I never expected that you would dash yourself to pieces at Pisa!(763) You say I love truth, and that you have told me the exact truth: but how can fear believe!
How I hate a party of pleasure! It never turns out well: fools fall out, and sensible People fall down! Still I thank you a million of' times for writing yourself. If Miss Agnes had written for you, I confess I should have been ten times more alarmed than I am; and yet I am alarmed enough.
Not to torment you more with my fears, when I hope you are almost recovered, I will answer the rest of your letter. General O'Hara I have unluckily not met yet. He is so dispersed, and I am so confined in my resorts and so seldom dine from home, that I have not seen him, even at General Conway's. When I do, can you imagine that we shall not talk of you two--yes; and your accident, I am. sure, will be the chief topic. As our fleets are to dethrone Catherine Petruchia, O'Hara will probably not be sent to Siberia. Apropos to Catherine and Petruchio. I supped with their representatives, Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, t'other night at Miss Farren's: the Hothams(764) were there too, and Mrs. Anderson,(765) who treated the players with acting as many characters as ever they did, particularly Gunnilda and Lady Clackmannan.(766) Mrs. Siddons is leaner, but looks well: she has played Jane Shore and Desdemona, and is to play in the Gamester; all the parts she will act this year. Kemble, they say, shone in Othello.
Mrs. Damer has been received at Elvas with all military honours, and a banquet, by order of Mello, formerly ambassador here. It was handsome in him, but must have distressed her, who is so void of ostentation and love of show. Miss Boyle,(767) who no more than Miss Pulteney,(768) has let herself be snapped up by lovers of her fortune, is going to Italy for a year with Lord and Lady Malden.(769)
Berkeley Square, Monday after dinner.
Mirabeau is dead;(770) ay, miraculously; for it was of a putrid fever (that began in his heart). Dr. Price is dying also.(771) That Mr. Berry, with so much good nature and good sense should be staggered, I do not wonder. Nobody is more devoted to liberty than I am. It is therefore that I abhor the National Assembly, whose outrageous violence has given, I fear, a lasting wound to the cause; for anarchy is despotism in the hands of thousands. A lion attacks but when hungry or provoked; but who can live in a desert full of hyennas?--nobody but Mr. Bruce; and we have only his word for it. Here is started up another corsair; one Paine, from America, who has published an answer to Mr. Burke.(7722) His doctrines go to the extremity of levelling and his style is so coarse, that you would think he meant to degrade the language as much as the government: here is one of his delicate paragraphs:--"We do not want a king, or lords of the bedchamber, or lords of the kitchen," etc. This rhetoric, I suppose, was calculated for our poissardes.
(763) Miss Berry had fallen down a bank in the neighbourhood of Pisa, and received a severe cut on the nose.
(764) Sir Charles Hotham Thompson, married to Lady Dorothy Hobart, sister of John second Earl of Buckinghamshire.
(765) A daughter of Lady Cecilia Johnstone's, married to a brother of Charles Anderson Pelham, Lord Garborough.
(766) A nickname, which had been given by the writer to a lady of the society.
(767)Afterwards married to Lord Henry Fitzgerald.
(768) Afterwards married to Sir James Murray.
(769) Lord Malden, afterwards Earl of Essex, was a first cousin of Miss Boyle. This journey did not take place.
(770) Mirabeau died on the 2d of April, at the age of forty-two, a victim to his own debaucheries. His friend, M. Dupont, says of him, that, "trusting to the strength of his constitution he gave himself up, without restraint, to every kind of pleasure." Madame de Stael states, that he suffered cruelly in the last days of his life, and when no longer able to speak, wrote to his physician for a dose OF opium, in the words of Hamlet, "to die--to sleep!" His obsequies were celebrated with great pomp, and his body placed in the Pantheon, by the side of that of Descartes. In two short years his ashes were removed, by order of the Convention, and scattered abroad by the populace; who, at the same time, burned his bust in the Place de Gr`eve.-E.
(771) Dr. Price died on the 19th of April.-E.
(772) This was the first part of the " Rights of Man," in answer to the celebrated "Reflections." At the commencement of the year Paine had published in Paris, under the borrowed name of Achille Duchatellet, a tract recommending the abolition of royalty.-E.
376. To Miss Berry. Berkeley Square, Friday night, April 15, 1791. (page 490)
My preface will be short; for I have nothing to tell, and a great deal that I am waiting patiently to hear; all which, however, may be couched in these two phrases,-,, I am quite recovered of my fall, and my nose will not be the worse for it"--for with all my pretences, I cannot help having that nose a little upon my spirits; though if it were flat, I should love it as much as ever, for the sake of the head and heart that belong to it. I have seen O'Hara, with his face as ruddy and black, and his teeth as white as ever; and as fond of you two, and as grieved for your fall, as any body--but I. He has got a better regiment.
Strawberry Hill, Sunday night, past eleven.
You chose your time ill for going abroad this year: England never saw such a spring since it was fifteen years old. The warmth, blossoms, and verdure are unparalleled. I am just come from Richmond, having first called on Lady Di. who is designing and painting pictures for prints to Dryden's Fables.(773) Oh! she has done two most beautiful; one of Emily walking in the garden, and Palamon seeing her from the tower: the other, a noble, free composition of Theseus parting the rivals, when fighting in the wood. They are not, as you will imagine, at all like the pictures in the Shakspeare Gallery: no; they are -worthy of Dryden.
I can tell you nothing at all certain with our war with Russia. If one believes the weather-glass of the stocks, it will be peace; they had fallen to 71, and are risen again, and soberly, to 79. Fawkener" clerk of the council, sets out to-day or to-morrow for Berlin; probably, I hope, with an excuse. In the present case, I had much rather our ministers were bullies than heroes: no mortal likes the war. The court-majority lost thirteen of its former number at the beginning of the week, which put the Opposition into spirits; but, put pursuing their motions on Friday, twelve of the thirteen were recovered.(774) Lord Onslow told me just now, at Madame de BOufflers's, that Lady Salisbury was brought to bed of a son and heir(775) last night, two hours after she came from the Opera; and that Madame du Barry dined yesterday with the Prince of Wales, at the Duke of Queensberry's, at Richmond. Thus you have all my news, such as it is ; and I flatter myself no English at Pisa or Florence can boast of better intelligence than you--but for you, should I care about Madame du Barry or my Lady Salisbury, or which of them lies in or lies out?
Berkeley Square, Monday, April 18.
Oh! what a dear letter have I found, and from both at once; and with such a delightful bulletin! I should not be pleased with the idleness of the pencil, were it not owing to the chapter of health, which I prefer to every thing. You order me to be particular about my own health: I have nothing to say about it, but that it is as good as before my last fit. Can I expect or desire more at my age? My ambition is to pass a summer, with you two established at Cliveden. I shall not reject more if they come; but one must not be presumptuous at seventy-three; and though my eyes, ears, teeth, motion, have still lasted to make life comfortable, I do not know that I should be enchanted if surviving any of them ; and, having no desire to become a philosopher, I had rather be naturally cheerful than affectedly so: for patience I take to be only a resolution of holding one's tongue, and not complaining of what one feels-for does one feel or think the less for not owning it?
Though London increases every day, and Mr. Herschell has just discovered a new square or circus somewhere by the New Road in .the Via Lactea, where the cows used to be fed, I believe you will think the town cannot hold all its inhabitants; so prodigiously the population is augmented. I have twice been going to stop my coach in Piccadilly, (and the same has happened to Lady Ailesbury,) thinking there was a mob; and it was only nymphs and swains sauntering or trudging. T'other morning, i. e. at two o'clock, I went to see Mrs. Garrick and Miss Hannah More at the Adelphi, and was stopped five times before I reached Northumberland-house; for the tides of coaches, chariots, curricles, phaetons, etc. are endless. Indeed, the town is so extended, that the breed of chairs is almost lost ; for Hercules and Atlas could not carry any body from one end of this enormous capital to the other. How magnified would be the error of the young woman at St. Helena, who, some said years ago, to a captain of an Indiaman, "I suppose London is very empty, when the India ships come out." Don't make Me excuses, then, for short letters; nor trouble yourself a moment to lengthen them. YOU Compare little towns to quiet times, which do not feed history ; and most justly. If the vagaries of' London can be comprised once a week in three or four pages of small quarto paper, and not always that, how should little Pisa furnish an equal export? When Pisa *was at war with the rival republic of Milan, Machiavel was put to it to describe a battle, the slaughter in which amounted to one man slain; and he was trampled to death, by being thrown down and battered in his husk of complete armour; as I remember reading above fifty years ago at Florence.
Eleven at night.
Oh! mercy! I am just come from Mrs. Buller's, having left a very pleasant set at Lady Herries'(776)--and for such a collection Eight or ten women and girls, not one of whom I knew by sight: a German Count., as stiff and upright as the inflexible Dowager of Beaufort: a fat Dean and his wife, he speaking Cornish, and of having dined to-day at Lambeth; four young officers, friends of the boy Buller,(777) who played with one of them at tric-trac, while the others made with the Misses a still more noisy commerce; and not a creature but Mrs. Cholmondeley, who went away immediately, and her son, who was speechless with the headache, that I was the least acquainted with: and, to add to my sufferings, the Count would talk to me of les beaux arts, of which he knows no more than an oyster. At last, came in Mrs. Blair, whom I knew as little; but she asked so kindly after you two, and was so anxious about your fall and return, that I grew quite fond of her, and beg you would love her for my sake, as I do for yours. Good night!
I have this moment received a card from the Duchess-Dowager of Ancaster, to summon me for to-morrow at three o'clock--I suppose to sign Lord Cholmondeley's marriage-articles with her daughter.(778) The wedding is to be this day sevennight. Save me, my old stars, from wedding-dinners! But I trust they are not of this age. I should sooner expect Hymen to jump out of a curricle, and walk into the Duchess's dressing-room in boots and a dirty shirt.
(773) A splendid edition of the Fables of Dryden, ornamented with engravings, from the elegant and fascinating pencil of Lady Diana Beauclerc, was published in folio in 1797.-E.
(774) On the 12th of April, a series of resolutions, moved by Mr. Grey, the object of which was to pronounce the armament against Russia inexpedient and unnecessary, were, after a warm debate, negatived by 252 against 17?- A similar motion, made on the fifteenth, by Mr. Baker was rejected by a majority of 254 to 162.-E.
(775) James-Brownlow-William Gascoyne Cecil. in 1823, he succeeded his father as second Marquis of Salisbury.-E.
(776) The wife of the banker in St. James's Street.
(777) Mrs. Buller's only child.
(778) Lady Charlotte Bertie.
377. To Miss Berry. Strawberry Hill, April 23, 1791. (page 492)
To-day, when the town is staring at the sudden resignation of the Duke of Leeds,(779) asking the reason, and gaping to know who will succeed him, I am come hither -with an indifference that might pass for philosophy; as the true cause is not known, which it seldom is. Don't tell Europe; but I really am come to look at the repairs of Cliveden, and how they go on; not without an eye to the lilacs and the apple-blossoms: for even self can find a corner to wriggle into, though friendship may fit out the vessel. Mr. Berry may, perhaps, wish I had more political curiosity; but as I must return to town on Monday for Lord Cholmondeley's wedding, I may hear before the departure of the post, if the seals are given: for the Duke's reasons, should they be assigned, shall one be certain? His intention was not even whispered till Wednesday evening. The news from India, so long expected, are not couleur de rose, but de sang: a detachment has been defeated by Tippoo Saib, and Lord Cornwallis is gone to take the command of the army himself. Will the East be more propitious to him than the West?
The abolition of the slave-trade has been rejected by the House of Commons,(780) though Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox united earnestly to carry it: but commerce chinked its purse, and that sound is generally prevalent with the majority; and humanity's tears, and eloquence, figures and arguments, had no more effect than on those patrons of liberty, the National Assembly of France; who, while they proclaim the rights of men, did not choose to admit the sable moiety of mankind to a participation of those benefits.
Captain Bowen has published a little pamphlet of affidavits, which prove that Gunnilda attempted to bribe her father's groom to perjure himself; but he begged to be excused. Nothing more appears against the mother, but that Miss pretended her mamma had an aversion to Lord Lorn, (an aversion to a Marquis!) and that she did not dare to acquaint so tender a parent with her lasting passion for him. Still I am persuaded that both the mother and the aunt were in the plot, whatever it was. I saw Lady Cecilia last night, and made all your speeches, and received their value in return for you.
Good Hannah More is killing herself by a new fit of benevolence, about a young girl with a great fortune, who has been taken from school at Bristol to Gretna Green, and cannot be discovered; nor the apothecary who stole her. Mrs. Garrick, who suspects, as I do, that Miss Europa is not very angry with Mr. Jupiter, had Very warm words, a few nights ago, at the Bishop of London's, with Lady Beaumont; but I diverted the quarrel by starting the stale story of the Gunning. You know Lady Beaumont's eagerness: she is ready to hang the apothecary with her own hands; and he certainly is criminal enough. Poor Hannah lives with attorneys and Sir Sampson Wright;(781) and I have seen her but once since she came to town. Her ungrateful proteg`ee, the milkwoman, has published her tragedy, and dedicated it to a patron as worthy as herself, the Earl-bishop of Derry.(782)
At night.
Well! our wedding is over very properly, though with little ceremony; for the men were in frocks and white waistcoats; most of the women in white, and no diamonds but on the Duke's wife; and nothing of ancient fashion but two bride-maids. The endowing purse I believe, has been left off, ever since broad-pieces were called in and melted down. We were but eighteen persons in all, chiefly near relations of each side; and of each side a friend or two: of the first sort, the Greatheds. Sir Peter Burrell gave away the bride. The poor Duchess-mother wept excessively: She is now left quite alone; her two daughters married, and her other children dead; she herself, I fear, in a very dangerous way. She goes directly to Spa, where the new-married are to meet her. We all separated in an hour and a half. The Elliot-girl(783) was there, and is pretty: she rolls in the numerous list of my nephews and nieces.
I am now told that our Indian skirmish was a victory, and that Tippoo Saib and all his cavalry and elephants, ran away; but sure I am, that the first impression made on me by those who spread the news, was not triumphant; nor can I enjoy success in that country, which we have so abominably usurped and plundered. You must wait for a new secretary of state till next post. The Duke of Leeds is said to have resigned from bad health. The Ducs de Richelieu(784) and De Pienne, and Madame de St. Priest, are arrived here. Mr. Fawkener does not go to Berlin till Wednesday * still the stocks do not believe in the war.
I have exhausted my gazette; and this being both Easter and Newmarket week, I may possibly have nothing to tell you by to-morrow se'nnight's post, and may wait till Friday se'nnight: of which I give you notice, lest you should think I have had a fall, and hurt my nose which I know gives one's friend a dreadful alarm. Good night!
P. S. I never saw such a blotted letter: I don't know how you will read it. I am so earnest when writing to YOU two, that I omit half the words, and write too small; but I will try to mend.
(779) Francis Godolphin Osborne, fifth Duke of Leeds. In 1776, he was appointed a lord of the bedchamber, and in 1783, secretary of state for foreign affairs. He was succeeded in the office by Lord Grenville.-E.
(780) The numbers on the division were, for the abolition 88, against it 163.-E.
(781) In a letter written on this day, Miss More says,--"My time has been literally passed with thief takers, officers of justice, and such pretty kind of people." The young lady, who was an heiress and only fourteen years of age, had been trepanned away from school. All the efforts to discover the victim proved fruitless; the poor girl having been betrayed into a marriage and carried to the Continent.-E.
(782) The Earl of Bristol; for an account of whom, see ante, p. 236, letter 182.-E.
(783) A natural daughter of Lord Cholmondeley.
(784) Armand-Emanuel du Plessis, Duc do Richelieu. He had just succeeded to the title, by the death of his father. In the preceding year, he had entered a volunteer into the service of Catherine the Second, and distinguished himself at the siege of Ismael, not more by his bravery than his humanity; as appears by the following anecdote recorded in the "Histoire de la Nouvelle Russie," tom. iii. p. 217:--"Je sauvai la vie `a une fille de dix ans, dont l'innocence et la candeur formaient un contraste bien frappant avec la rage de tout ce qui mlenvironnait. En arrivant sur le bastion o`u commen`ca le carnage, j'apperus un groupe de quatre femmes `egorg`ees, entre lesquelles cet enfant, d'une figure charmante, cherchait un asile contre la fureur de deux Kosaks qui `etaient sur le point de la massacrer: ce spectacle m'attira bient`ot, et je n'h`esitai pas, comme on peut le croire, prendre entre mes bras cette infortun`ee, que les barbares voulaient y poursuivre encore." Lord Byron has paraphrased the affecting incident in the eighth canto of Don Juan:--
"Upon a taken bastion, where there lay Thousands of slaughter'd men, a yet warm group Of murder'd women, who had found their way To this vain refuge, made the good heart droop And shudder;--while, as beautiful as May, A female child of ten years tried to stoop And hide her little palpitating breast Amidst the bodies lull'd in bloody rest. Two villainous Cossacques pursued the child With flashing eyes, and weapons. * * * Don Juan raised his little captive from The heap, a moment more had made her tomb."
In 1803, the Duke returned to Russia, and was nominated civil and military governor of Odessa; -and to his administration," says Bishop Heber, 44 and not to any natural advantages, the town owes its prosperity." On the restoration of Louis the Eighteenth, he was appointed first gentleman of the bedchamber; and in 1815, president of the council and minister for foreign affairs. He finally retired from office in 1820, and died in 1822.-E.
378. To Miss Berry. Berkeley Square, May 12, 1791. (page 495)
A letter from Florence (that of April 20th) does satisfy me about your nose-till I can see it with my own eyes; but I will own to you now, that my alarm at first went much farther. I dreaded lest so violent a fall upon rubbish might not have hurt your head; though all your letters since have proved how totally that escaped any danger. Yet your great kindness in writing to me yourself so immediately did not tranquillize me, and only proved your good-nature-but I will not detail my departed fears, nor need I prove my attachment to you two. If you were really my wives, I could not be more generally applied to for accounts of you; of which I am proud. I should be ashamed, if, at my age, it were a ridiculous attachment; but don't be sorry for having been circumstantial. My fears did not spring thence; nor did I suspect your not having told the whole-no; but I apprehended the accident might be worse than you knew yourself.
Poor Hugh Conway,(785) though his life has long been safe, still suffers at times from his dreadful blow, and has not yet been able to come to town: nor would Lord Chatham's humanity put his ship into commission; which made him so unhappy, that poor Horatia,(786) doating on him as she does, wrote to beg he might be employed; preferring her own misery in parting with him to what she saw him suffer. Amiable conduct! but, happily, her suit did not prevail.
I am not at all surprised at the private interviews between Leopold(787) and C. I am persuaded that the first must and will take more part than he has yet seemed to do, and so will others too; but as speculations are but guesses, I will say no more on the subject now; nor of your English and Irish travellers, none of whom I know. I have one general wish, that you may be amused while you stay, by the natives of any nation: and I thank you a thousand times for confirming Your intention of returning by the beginning of November; which I should not desire coolly, but from the earnest wish of putting you in possession of Cliveden while I live; which every body would approve, at least, not wonder at (Mr. Batt, to whom I have communicated my intention, does extremely); and the rest would follow of course, as I had done the same for Mrs. Clive. I smiled at your making excuses for your double letter. Do you think I would not give twelvepence to hear more of you and your proceedings, than a single sheet would contain?
The Prince is recovered; that is all the domestic news, except a most memorable debate last Friday, in the House of Commons. Mr. Fox had most imprudently thrown out a panegyric on the French revolution.(788) His most considerable friends were much hurt, and protested to him against such sentiments. Burke went much farther, and vowed to attack these opinions. Great pains were taken to prevent such altercation, and the Prince of Wales is said to have written a dissuasive letter to Burke: but he was immovable; and on Friday, on the Quebec Bill, he broke out and sounded a trumpet against the plot, which he denounced as carrying on here. Prodigious clamours and interruption arose from Mr. Fox's friends: but he, though still applauding the French, burst into tears and lamentations on the loss of Burke's friendship, and endeavoured to make atonement; but in vain, though Burke wept too. In short, it was the most affecting scene possible; and undoubtedly an unique one, for both the commanders were earnest and sincere.(789) Yesterday, a second act was expected; but mutual friends prevailed, that the contest should not be renewed: nay, on the same bill, Mr. Fox made a profession of his faith, and declared he would venture his life in support of the present constitution by King, Lords, and Commons. In short, I never knew a wiser dissertation, if the newspapers deliver it justly; and I think all the writers in England cannot give more profound sense to Mr. Fox than he possesses. I know no more particulars, having seen nobody this morning yet. What shall I tell you else? We have expected Mrs. Damer from last night; and perhaps she may arrive before this sets out to-morrow.
Friday morning, May 13th.
Last night we were at Lady Frederick Campbell's,--the usual cribbage party, Conways, Mount-Edgcumbes, Johnstones. At past ten Mrs. Damer was announced! Her parents ran down into the hall, and I scrambled down some of the stairs. She looks vastly well, was in great spirits, and not at all fatigued; though she came from Dover, had been twelve hours at sea from Calais, and had rested but four days at Paris from Madrid. We supped, and stayed till one o'clock; and I shall go to see her as soon as I am dressed. Madrid and the Escurial she owns have gained her a proselyte to painting, which her statuarism had totally engrossed in her, no wonder. Of Titian she had no idea, nor have I a just one, though great faith, as at Venice all his works are now coal-black: but Rubens, she says, amazed her, and that in Spain he has even grace. Her father, yesterday morning, from pain remaining still in his shoulder from his fall, had it examined by Dr. Hunter, and a little bone of the collar was found to be broken, and he must wear his arm for some time in a sling. Miss Boyle, I heard last night, had consented to marry Lord Henry Fitzgerald. I think they have both chosen well--but I have chosen better. Adieu! Care spose!
(785) Lord Hugh Seymour Conway, brother of the then Marquis of Hertford.
(786) Lady Horatia Waldegrave, his wife.
(787) The Emperor Leopold, then at Florence; whither he had returned from Vienna, to inaugurate his son in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.-E.
(788) In the course of his speech on the 15th of April, during the debate on the armament against Russia, Mr. Fox had said, that "he for one admired the new constitution of France, considered altogether, as the most stupendous and glorious edifice of liberty which had been erected on the foundation of human integrity in any time or country." As soon as he had sat down Mr. Burke rose, in much visible emotion; but was prevented from proceeding by the general cry of question. Mr. Fox regretted the injudicious zeal of those who would not suffer him to reply on the spot: "the contention," be said, "might have been fiercer and hotter, but the remembrance of it would not have settled so deep, nor rankled so long, in the heart."-E.
(789) With the debate of this day terminated a friendship which had lasted more than the fourth part of a century. Mr. Wilberforce, in his Diary of the 6th of May, states, that he had endeavoured to prevent the quarrel; and in a letter to a friend, on the following day, he speaks of "the shameful spectacle of last night; more disgraceful almost, and more affecting, than the rejection of my motion for the abolition of the slave trade-a long tried and close worldly connexion of five-and-twenty years trampled to pieces in the conflict of a single night!" The following anecdote, connected with this memorable evening, is related by Mr. Curwen, at that time member for Carlisle, in his Travels in Ireland:--"the powerful feelings were manifested on the adjournment of the House. While I was waiting for my carriage, Mr. Burke came to me and requested, as the night was wet, I would set him down. As soon as the carriage-door was shut, he complimented me on My being no friend to the revolutionary doctrines of the French; on which he spoke with great warmth for a few minutes, when he paused to afford me an opportunity of approving the view he had taken of those measures in the House. At the moment I could not help feeling disinclined to disguise my sentiments: Mr. Burke, catching hold of the check-string, furiously exclaimed, 'you are one of these people! set me down!' With some difficulty I restrained him;-we had then reached Charingcross: a silence ensued which was preserved till we reached his house in Gerard-street, when he hurried out of the carriage without speaking."-E.
379. To Miss Berry. Berkeley Square, Thursday, May 19, 1791. (page 497)
Your letter of the 29th, for which you are so good as to make excuses on not sending it to the post in time, did arrive but two days later than usual; and as it is now two months from the 16th of March, and I have so many certificates of the prosperous state of your pretty nose, I attributed the delay to the elements, and took no panic. But how kindly punctual you are, When you charge yourself' with an irregularity of two days! and when your letters are so charmingly long, and interest me so much in all you do! But make no more excuses. I reproach myself with occasioning so much waste of your time, that you might employ every hour; for it is impossible to see all that the Medicis had collected or encouraged in the loveliest little city, and in such beautiful environs-nor had I forgotten the Cascines, the only spot containing English verdure. Mrs. Damer is as well, if not better, than she has been a great while: her looks surprise every body; to which, as she is tanned, her Spanish complexion contributes. She and I called, the night before last, on your friend Mrs. Cholmeley; and they are to make me a visit to-morrow morning, by their own appointment. At Dover Mrs. Damer heard the Gunnings are there: here, they are forgotten.
You are learning perspective, to take views: I am glad. Can one have too many resources in one's self? Internal armour is more necessary to your sex, than weapons to ours. You have neither professions, nor politics, nor ways of getting money, like men; in any of which, whether successful or not, they are employed. Scandal and cards you will both always hate and despise, as much as you do now; and though I shall not flatter Mary so much as to suppose she will ever equal the extraordinary talent of Agnes in painting, yet, as Mary, like the scriptural Martha, is occupied in many things, she is quite in the right to add the pencil to her other amusements.
I knew the Duchesse de Brissac(790) a little, and but a little, in 1766. She was lively and seemed sensible, and had an excellent character. Poor M. de Thygnols!(791) to be deprived of that only remaining child too!--but, how many French one pities, and how many more one abhors! How dearly will even liberty be bought, (if it shall prove to be obtained, which I neither think it is or will be,) by every kind of injustice and violation of consciences! How little conscience can they have, who leave to others no option but between perjury and starving! The Prince de Chimay I do not know.
After answering the articles of yours, I shall add what I can of new. After several weeks spent in search of precedents, for trials ceasing or not on a dissolution of parliament, the Peers on Monday sat till three in the morning on the report; when the Chancellor and Lord Hawkesbury fought for the cessation, but were beaten by a large majority; which showed that Mr. Pitt(792) has more weight (at present) in that House too, than--the diamonds of Bengal. Lord Hawkesbury protested. The trial recommences on Monday next, and has already caused the public fourteen thousand pounds; the accused, I suppose, much more.
The Countess of Albany(793) is not only in England, in London, but at this very moment, I believe, in the palace of St. James's--not restored by as rapid a revolution as the French, but, as was observed last night at supper at Lady Mount-Edgcumbe's, by that topsy-turvyhood that characterizes the present age. Within these two months the Pope has been burnt at Paris; Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis Quinze, has dined with the Lord Mayor of London, and the Pretender's widow is presented to the Queen of Great Britain! She is to be introduced by her great-grandfather's niece, the young Countess of Ailesbury.(794) That curiosity should bring her hither, I do not quite wonder-still less that she abhorred her husband; but methinks it is not very well bred to his family, nor very sensible; but a new way of passing eldest.
Apropos: I hear there is a medal struck at Rome of her brother- in-law, as Henry the Ninth; which, as one of their Papal majesties was so abominably mean as to deny the royal title to his brother, though for Rome he had lost a crown, I did not know they allow his brother to assume. I should be much obliged to you if you could get one of those medals in copper; ay, and of his brother, if there was one with the royal title. I have the father's and mother's, and all the Popes', in copper; but my Pope, Benedict the Fourteenth, is the last, and therefore I should be glad of one of each of his successors, if you can procure and bring them with little trouble. I should not be sorry to have one of the Grand Duke and his father; but they should be in copper, not only for my suite, but they are sharper than in silver.
Thursday night.
Well! I have had an exact account of the interview of the two Queens, from one who stood close to them. The dowager was announced as Princess of Stolberg. She was well-dressed, and not at all embarrassed. The King talked to her a good deal; but about her passage' the sea, and general topics: the Queen in the same way, but less. Then she stood between the Dukes of Gloucester and Clarence, and had a good deal of conversation with the former; who, perhaps, may have met her in Italy. Not a word between her and the Princesses: nor did I hear of the Prince, but he was there, and probably spoke to her. The Queen looked at her earnestly. To add to the singularity of the day, it is the Queen's birthday. Another odd accident: at the Opera at the Pantheon, Madame d'Albany was carried into the King's box, and sat there. It is not of a piece with her going to court, that she seals with the royal arms. I have been told to-night, that you will not be able to get me a medal of the royal Cardinal, as very few were struck, and only for presents; so pray give yourself but little trouble about it.
Boswell has at last published his long-promised Life of Dr. Johnson, in two volumes in quarto. I will give you an account of it when I have gone through it. I have already perceived, that in writing the history of Hudibras, Ralpho has not forgot himself nor will others, I believe, forget him!
(790) The Duc do Brissac was at this time commandant-general of Louis the Sixteenth's constitutional guard. In the following year he was denounced; and in the early days of September put to death at Versailles, for his attachment to his unfortunate sovereign.-E.
(791) The Duc de Nivernois, who, at this time, was employed about the person of Louis the Sixteenth, was denounced by the infamous Chaumette, and Cast into prison in September 1793; where he remained till 1796. He died in 1798.-E.
(792) In Mr. Wilberforce's Diary of the 22d of December, there is the following entry:--"Hastings's impeachment question. Pitt's astonishing speech. This was almost the finest speech he ever delivered: it was one which you would say at once he never could have made if he had not been a mathematician. He put things by as he proceeded and then returned to the very point from which he had started, with the most astonishing clearness. He had all the lawyers against him, but carried a majority of the House, mainly by the force of this speech. It pleased Burke exceedingly. 'Sir,' he said, 'the right honourable gentleman and I have often been opposed to one another, but his speech tonight has neutralized my opposition; nay, Sir, he has dulcified me.' " Life, vol. i. p. 286.-E.
(793) Louisa Maximiliana de Stolberg Goedern, wife of the Pretender. After the death of Charles Edward in 1788, she travelled in Italy and France, and lived with her favourite, the celebrated Alfieri, to whom she is stated to have been privately married. She continued to reside at Paris, until the progress of the revolution compelled her to take refuge in England.-E.
(794) Lady Anne Rawdon, sister to the first Marquis of Hastings.
380. To Miss Berry. Berkeley Square, May 26, 1791. (page 500)
I am rich in letters from you: I received that by Lord Elgin's courier first, as you expected, and its elder the next day. You tell me mine entertain you; tant mieux. It is my wish, but my wonder; for I live so little in the world, that I do not know the present generation by sight: for, though I pass by them in the streets, the hats with valences, the folds above the chin of the ladies, and the dirty shirts and shaggy hair of the young men, who have levelled nobility almost as much as the mobility in France have, have confounded all individuality. Besides, if I did go to public places and assemblies, which my going to roost earlier prevents, the bats and owls do not begin to fly abroad till far in the night, when they begin to see and be seen. However, one of the empresses of fashion, the Duchess of Gordon, uses fifteen or sixteen hours of her four-and-twenty. I heard her journal of last Monday. She first went to Handel's music in the Abbey; she then clambered over the benches, and went to Hastings's trial in the Hall; after dinner to the play; then to Lady Lucan's assembly; after that to Ranelagh, and returned to Mrs. Hobart's faro table; gave a ball herself in the evening of that morning, into which she must have got a good way: and set out for Scotland the next day. Hercules could not have achieved a quarter of her labours in the same space of time, What will the Great Duke think of our Amazons, if he has letters opened, as the Emperor was wont! One of our Camillas,(795) but in a freer style, I hear, he saw (I fancy just before your arrival); and he must have wondered at the familiarity of the dame, and the nincompoophood of her Prince. Sir William Hamilton is arrived-- his Nymph of the Attitudes!(796) was too prudish to visit the rambling peeress.
The rest of my letter must be literary; for we have no news. Boswell's book is gossiping;(797) but, having numbers of proper names, would be more readable, at least by me, were it reduced from two volumes to one; but there are woful longueurs, both about his hero and himself; thefidus Achates; about whom one has not the smallest curiosity. But I wrong the original Achates: one is satisfied with his fidelity in keeping his master's secrets and weaknesses, which modern led-captains betray for their patron's glory, and to hurt their own enemies; which Boswell has done shamefully, particularly against Mrs. Piozzi, and Mrs. Montagu, and Bishop Percy. Dr. Blagden says justly, that it is a new kind of libel, by which you may abuse any body, by saying some dead body said so and so of somebody alive. Often, indeed, Johnson made the most brutal speeches to living persons; for though he was good-natured at bottom, he was very ill-natured at top. He loved to dispute, to show his superiority. If his opponents were weak, he told them they were fools; if they vanquished him, be was scurrilous--to nobody more than to Boswell himself, who was contemptible for flattering him so grossly, and for enduring the coarse things he was continually vomiting on Boswell's own country, Scotland. I expected, amongst the excommunicated, to find myself, but am very gently treated. I never would be in the least acquainted with Johnson; or, as Boswell calls it, I had not a just value for him; which the biographer imputes to my resentment for the Doctor's putting bad arguments (purposely, out of Jacobitism,) into the speeches which he wrote fifty years ago for my father, in the Gentleman's Magazine; which I did not read then, or ever knew Johnson wrote till Johnson died, nor have looked at since. Johnson's blind Toryism and known brutality kept me aloof; nor did I ever exchange a syllable with him: nay, I do not think I ever was in a room with him six times in my days. Boswell came to me, said Dr. Johnson was writing the Lives of the Poets, and wished I would give him anecdotes of Mr. Gray. I said, very coldly, I had given what I knew to Mr. Mason. Boswell hummed and hawed, and then dropped, "I suppose you know Dr. Johnson does not admire Mr. Gray." Putting as much contempt as I could Into my look and tone, I said, "Dr. Johnson don't--humph!"--and with that monosyllable ended our interview. After the Doctor's death, Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Boswell sent an ambling circular-letter to me, begging subscriptions for a monument for him--the two last, I think, impertinently; as they could not but know my opinion, and could not suppose I would contribute to a monument for one who had endeavoured, poor soul! to degrade my friend's superlative poetry. I would not deign to write an answer; but sent down word by my footman, as I would have done to parish officers with a brief, that I Would not subscribe. In the two new volumes Johnson says, and very probably did, or is made to say, that 'Gray's poetry is dull, and that he was a dull man!(798) The same oracle dislikes Prior, Swift, and Fielding. If an elephant could write a book, perhaps one that had read a great deal would say, that an Arabian horse is a very clumsy ungraceful animal. Pass to a better chapter!
Burke has published another pamphlet(799) against the French Revolution, in which he attacks it still more grievously. The beginning is very good; but it is not equal, nor quite so injudicious as parts of its predecessor; is far less brilliant, as well as much shorter: but, were it ever so long, his mind overflows with such a torrent of images, that he cannot be tedious. His invective against Rousseau is admirable, just, and new.(799) Voltaire he passes almost contemptuously. I wish he had dissected Mirabeau too; and I grieve that he has omitted the violation of the consciences of the clergy, nor stigmatized those universal plunderers, the National Assembly, who gorge themselves with eighteen livres a-day; which to many of them would, three years ago, have been astonishing opulence.
When you return, I shall lend you three volumes in quarto of another Work,(800) With which you will be delighted. They are state-letters in the reigns of Henry the Eighth, Mary, Elizabeth, and James; being the correspondence of the Talbot and Howard families, given by a Duke of Norfolk to the Herald's-office; where they have lain for a century neglected, buried under dust, and unknown, till discovered by a Mr. Lodge, a genealogist, who, to gratify his passion, procured to be made a poursuivant. Oh! how curious they are! Henry seizes an alderman who refused to contribute to a benevolence: sends him to the army on the borders; orders him to be exposed in the front line; and if that does not do, to be treated with the utmost rigour of military discipline. His daughter Bess is not less a Tudor. The mean, unworthy treatment of the queen of Scots is striking; and you will find Elizabeth's jealousy of her crown and her avarice were at war, and how the more ignoble passion predominated. But the most amusing passage is one in a private letter, as it paints the awe of children for their parents a little differently from modern habitudes. Mr. Talbot, second son of the Earl of Shrewsbury, was a member of the House of Commons, and was married. He writes to the Earl his father, and tells him, that a young woman of a very good character, has been recommended to him for chambermaid to his wife, and if his lordship does not disapprove of it, he will hire her. There are many letters of news, that are very entertaining too--but it is nine o'clock, and I must go to Lady Cecilia's.
Friday.
The Conways, Mrs. Damer, the Farrens, and Lord Mount-Edgcumbe supped at the Johnstones'. Lord Mount-Edgcumbe said excellently, that "Mademoiselle D'Eon is her own widow." I wish I had seen you both in your court-plis, at your presentation; but that is only one wish amongst a thousand.
(795) Lady Craven; who was at this time in Italy with the Margravine of Anspach. Lord Craven died at Lausanne in September, and the lady was married to the Margrave in October following.-E.
(796) Miss Martel married, in the following September, to Sir William Hamilton-the lady, the infatuated attachment to whom has been said to have been "the only cloud that obscured the bright fame Of the immortal Nelson." By the following passage in a letter, written by Romney the painter to Hagley the poet on the 19th of June, it will be seen that she had not been many days in England, before a warm passion for her was engendered in the breast of the artist:--"At present, and for the greatest part of the summer, I shall be engaged in painting pictures from the divine lady: I cannot give her any other epithet; for I think her superior to all womankind. She asked me if you would not write my life: I told her you had begun it-then, she said, she hoped you would have much to say of her in the life; as she prides herself in being my model."-E.
(797) On the first appearance of his most interesting and instructive Life of Dr. Johnson, a considerable outcry was raised against poor Boswell. On the subject of this outcry, Mr. Croker in the introduction to his valuable edition of the work, published in 1831, makes the following excellent observations:-- "Whatever doubts may have existed as to the prudence or the propriety of the original publication--however naturally private confidence was alarmed, or individual vanity offended--the voices of criticism and complaint were soon drowned in the general applause. And, no wonder; the work combines within itself the four most entertaining classes of writing--biography, memoirs, familiar letters, and that assemblage of literary anecdotes, which the French have taught us to distinguish by the termination Ana. It was a strange and fortuitous concurrence, that one so prone to talk, and who talked so well, should be brought into such close contact and confidence with one so zealous and so able to record. Dr. Johnson was a man of extraordinary powers; but Mr. Boswell had qualities, in their own way, almost as rare. He United lively manners with indefatigable diligence, and the volatile curiosity of a man about town with the drudging patience of a chronicler. With a very good opinion of himself, he was quick in discerning, and frank in applauding the excellencies of others. His contemporaries, indeed, not without some colour of reason, occasionally complained of him as vain, troublesome, and giddy; but his vanity was inoffensive--his curiosity was commonly directed towards laudable objects--when he meddled, be did so, generally, from good-natured motives--and his giddiness was only an exuberant gaiety, which never failed in the respect and reverence due to literature, morals, and religion' ' and posterity grate taste, temper, and talents with which he selected, enjoyed, and described that polished intellectual society which still lives in his work, and without his work had perished!" Mr. Croker's edition of the work is the eleventh; and since its appearance, a twelfth, in ten pocket volumes, with embellishments has been given to the world, by Mr. Murray, of which thousands are understood to have been called for. Whenever Walpole, in the course of his correspondence, has had occasion to introduce the name of Boswell, he has uniformly spoken so disparagingly of him, that it is but justice to his memory to append to the above extract, a passage or two, in which other writers have recorded their estimation of him. Mr. Burke told Sir James Mackintosh, that "he thought Johnson appeared greater in Boswell's volumes than even in his own." Sir Walter Scott, speaking of the Doctor, says, "he yet is, in our mind's eye, a personification as lively as that of Siddons in Lady Macbeth, or Kemble in Cardinal Wolsey; and all this arises from his having found in Boswell such a biographer as no man but himself ever had." In the opinion of the Edinburgh Reviewers, Boswell was "the very prince of retail wits and philosophers," and his Life of Johnson is pronounced to be "one of the best books in the world-- a great, a very great work;" while the quarterly Review considers it "the richest dictionary of wit and wisdom, any language can boast, and that to the influence of Boswell we owe, probably, three-fourths of what is most entertaining, as well as no inconsiderable portion of whatever is most instructive, in all the books of memoirs that have subsequently appeared."-E.
(797) Dr. Johnson's attack upon Gray was undoubtedly calculated to give great offence to Walpole: "Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull every where: he was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great: he was a mechanical poet."-E.
(798) This was the "Letter from Mr. Burke to a member of the National Assembly."-E.
(799) "We have had," says Mr. Burke, "the great professor and founder of the philosophy of vanity in England. As I had good opportunities of knowing his proceedings, almost from day to day, he left no doubt on my mind that he entertained no principle, either to influence his heart or to guide his understanding, but vanity; with this vice he was possessed to a degree little short of madness. Benevolence to the whole species, and want of feeling for every individual with whom the professors come in contact, form the character of the new philosophy. Setting up for an unsocial independence, this their hero of vanity refuses the just price of common labour, as well as the tribute which opulence owes to genius, and which when paid, honours the giver and the receiver: and then he pleads his beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts with tenderness for those only who touch him by the remotest relation; and then, without one natural pang, casts away as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his disgustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves, licks, and forms her young; but bears are not philosophers."-E.
(800) This was Lodge's "Illustrations of British History, Biography, and Manners, in the Reigns of Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, Mary, Elizabeth and James the First;" a work which has also been highly praised by Mr. Gifford, Sir Walter Scott, Sir Egerton Brydges, Mr. Park, and others.-E.
381. To The Miss Berrys. Berkeley Square, June 2, 1791. (page 504)
To the tune of the Cow with the crumpled Horn, etc. "This is the note that nobody wrote." " This is the groom that carried the note that nobody wrote.
"This is Ma'am Gunning, Who was so very cunning, to examine the groom that carried the note that nobody wrote.
"This is Ma'am Bowen, to whom it was owing, that Miss Minify Gunning was so very cunning, to examine the groom that carried the note that nobody wrote.
"These are the Marquisses shy of the horn, who caused the maiden all for-Lorn, to become on a sudden so tattered and torn, that Miss Minify Gunning was so very cunning, to examine the groom, etc.
"These are the two Dukes, whose sharp rebukes made the two Marquesses shy of the horn, and caused the maiden all for-Lorn, etc.
"This is the General somewhat too bold, whose head was so hot, though his heart was so cold; who proclaimed himself single before it was meet, and his wife and his daughter turned into the street, to please the Dukes, whose sharp rebukes," etc.
This is not at all new; I have heard it once or twice imperfectly, but could not get a copy till now; and I think it will divert you for a moment, though the heroines are as much forgotten as Boadicea; nor have I heard of them since their arrival at Dover.
Well! I have seen Madame d'Albany who has not a ray of royalty about her. She has good eyes and teeth; but I think can have had no more beauty than remains, except youth. She is civil and easy, but German and ordinary. Lady Ailesbury made a small assemblage for her on Monday, and my curiosity is satisfied. Mr. Conway and Lady A., Lord and Lady Frederic Campbell, and Mrs. E. Hervey and Mrs. Hervey, breakfasted with me that morning at Strawberry, at the desire of the latter, who had never been there; and whose commendations were so promiscuous, that I saw she did not at all understand the style of the place. The day was northeasterly and cold, and wanting rain; and I was not sorry to return into town. I hope in five months to like staying there much better. Mrs. Damer, who returned in such Spanish health, has already caught an English northeastern cold; with pain in all her limbs, and a little fever, and yesterday was not above two hours out of her bed. Her father came to me from her before dinner, and left her better; and I shall go to her presently; and, this not departing till to-morrow, I hope to give you a still more favourable account. These two days may boldly assume the name of June, without the courtesy of England. Such weather makes me wish myself at Strawberry, whither I shall betake myself on Saturday.
505 Letter 382 To The Miss Berrys. Berkeley Square, June 8, 1791.
Your No. 34, that was interrupted, and of which the last date was of May 24th, I received on the 6th, and if I could find fault, it would be in the length; for I do not approve of your writing so much in hot weather, for, be it known to you ladies, that from the first of the month, June is not more June at Florence, My hay is crumbling away; and I have ordered it to be cut, as a sure way of bringing rain. I have a selfish reason, too, for remonstrating against long letters. I feel the season advancing, when mine will be piteous short for what can I tell you from Twickenham in the next three or four months'! Scandal from Richmond and Hampton Court, or robberies at my own door? The latter, indeed, are blown already. I went to Strawberry on Saturday, to avoid the birthday crowd and squibs and crackers. At six I drove to Lord Strafford's, where his goods are to be sold by auction; his sister, Lady Anne,(801) intending to pull down the house and rebuild it. I returned a quarter before seven; and in the interim between my Gothic gate and Ashe's nursery, a gentleman and gentlewoman, in a one-horse chair and in the broad face of the sun, had been robbed by a single highwayman, sans mask. Ashe's mother and sister stood and saw it; but having no notion of a robbery at such an hour in the high-road and before their men had left work, concluded it was an acquaintance of the robber's. I suppose Lady Cecilia Johnstone will not descend from her bedchamber to the drawing-room without life-guard men. The Duke of Bedford(802) eclipsed the whole birthday by his clothes, equipage, and servants - six of the latter walked on' the side of the coach to keep off the crowd-or to tempt it; for their liveries were worth an argosie. The Prince *as gorgeous too - the latter is to give Madame d'Albany a dinner. She has been introduced to Mrs. Fitzherbert. You know I used to call Mrs. Cosway's(803) concerts Charon's boat; now, methinks, London is so. I am glad Mrs. C. is with you; she is pleasing-but surely it is odd to drop a child and her husband and country, all in a breath! I am glad you are disfranchised of the exiles. We have several, I am told, hire; but I strictly confine myself to those I knew formerly at Paris, and who all are quartered on Richmond Green. I went to them on Sunday evening, but found them gone to Lord Fitzwilliam's, the next house to Madame de Boufflers', to hear his organ; whither I followed them, and returned with them. The Comtesse Emilie played on her harp; then we all united at loto. I went home at twelve, unrobbed; and Lord Fitzwilliam, who asked much after you both, was to set out the next morning for Dublin, though intending to stay there but four days, and be back in three weeks.
I am sorry you did not hear all Monsieur do Lally Tollendal's(804) tragedy, of which I have had a good account. I like his tribute to his father's memory.(805) Of French politics you must be tired; and so am I. Nothing appears to me to promise their chaos duration; consequently, I expect more chaos, the sediment of which is commonly despotism. Poland ought to make the French blush-but that, they are not apt to do on any occasion. Let us return to Strawberry. The house of Sebright breakfasted there with me on Monday; the daughter had given me a drawing, and I owed her a civility. Thank you for reminding me of falls: in one sense I am more liable to them than when you left me, for I am sensibly much weaker since my last fit; but that weakness makes me move much slower, and depend more on assistance. In a word, there is no care I do not take of myself: my heart is set on installing you at Cliveden; and it will not be my fault if I do not preserve myself till then. If another summer is added, it will be happiness indeed--but I am not presumptuous, and count the days only till November. I am glad you, on your parts, repose till your journey commences, and go not into sultry crowded lodgings at the Ascension. I was at Venice in summer, and thought airing on stinking ditches pestilential, after enjoying the delicious nights on the Ponte di Trinit`a at Florence, in a linen night-gown and a straw hat, with improvisatori. and music, and the coffee-houses open with ices--at least, such were the customs fifty years ago,.
The Duke of St. Albans has cut down all the brave old trees at Hanworth, and consequently reduced his park to what it issued from Hounslow-heath: nay, he has hired a meadow next to mine, for the benefit of embarkation; and there lie all the good old corpses of oaks, ashes, and chestnuts, directly before your windows, and blocking up one of my views of the river! but so impetuous is the rage for building, that his grace's timber will, I trust, not annoy us long. There will soon be one street from London to Brentford; ay, and from London to every village ten miles round! Lord Camden has just let ground at Kentish Town for building fourteen hundred houses--nor do I wonder; London is, I am certain, much fuller than ever I saw it. I have twice this spring been going to stop my coach in Piccadilly, to inquire what was the matter, thinking there was a mob--not at all; it was only passengers. Nor is there any complaint of depopulation from the country: Bath shoots out into new crescents, circuses, and squares every year: Birmingham, Manchester, Hull, and Liverpool would serve ay King in Europe for a capital, and would make the Empress of Russia's mouth water. Of the war with Catherine Slay-Czar I hear not a breath, and thence conjecture it is dozing into peace.
Mr. Dundas has kissed hands for secretary of state; and Bishop Barrington, of Salisbury, is transferred to Durham, which he affected not to desire, having large estates by his wife in the south-but from the triple-mitre downwards, it is almost always true, what I said some years ago, that "nolo episcopari is Latin for I lie.-- Tell it not in Gath that I say so; for I am to dine to-morrow at the Bishop of London's, at Fulham, with Hannah Bonner, my imprime. This morning I went with Lysons the Reverend to see Dulwich college, founded in 1619 by Alleyn, a player, which I had never seen in my many days. e were received by a smart divine, tr`es bien poudr`e, and with black satin breeches--but they are giving new wings and red satin breeches to the good old hostel too, and destroying a gallery with a very rich ceiling; and nothing will remain of ancient but the front, and an hundred mouldy portraits, among apostles, sibyls, and Kings of England. On Sunday I shall settle at Strawberry; and then wo betide you on post-days! I cannot make news without straw. The Johnstones are going to Bath, for the healths of both; so Richmond will be my only staple. Adieu, all three!
(801) Lady Anne Wentworth, married to the Right Honourable Thomas Conolly.
(802) Francis, fifth Duke of Bedford. He died at Woburn, in March 1802, at the early age of thirty-one; upon which event, Mr. Fox, in moving for a new writ for Tavistock, in the room of his brother John, who succeeded to the dukedom, pronounced an eloquent eulogium on the deceased-the only speech he could ever be prevailed upon to revise for publication-E.
(803) Maria Cosway, the wife of the eminent painter, and herself distinguished for her proficience both in painting and music. She was a native of Italy but of English parentage; and being passionately fond of music, her soir`ees in Pall-Mall and afterwards in Stratford-place, were attended by all the fashion of the town. In consequence of ill-health, accompanied by her brother, who had gained, as a student in painting, the Academy's gold metal, she had left England for Italy; where she remained about three years.-E
(804) The celebrated Count Lally do Tollendal. In 1789, he was one of the most eloquent members of the Constituent Assembly; but disapproving of the principles that prevailed, he retired into Switzerland, Gibbon, in a letter of the 15th of December of that year, says of him, "Lally is an amiable man of the world, and a poet: he passes the winter here; you know how much I prefer a quiet select society to a crowd of names and titles: what happy countries are England and Switzerland, if they know and preserve their happiness!" Having returned to France in 1792, he was sent to the Abbaye; whence he escaped during the massacres which took place in the prisons in September, and effected his retreat to England, where he found an asylum in the house of Lord Sheffield. On the restoration of the Bourbons, he was created a peer of France, and died in 1830. The subject of the tragedy above alluded to was the fall of the Earl of Strafford.-E.
(805) The unfortunate Count do Lally, governor of Pondicherry; who, on the surrender of the place to the English in 1761, was made prisoner of war, and sent to England. In the Chatham Correspondence, there is a letter from him to Mr. Pitt, written in English; in which he says, "When I shall have seen and heard here of Mr. Pitt all I have already read of him, I shall always remember I am his prisoner, and liberty to me, though a Frenchman, is of an inestimable value; therefore, I earnestly beg your interest with his Majesty to grant me leave to repair to my native soil." The desired permission was granted; but no sooner had he reached Paris, than he was thrown into the Bastille, and after being confined several years, brought to trial for treachery and found guilty. When his sentence was pronounced, "the excess of his indignation," says Voltaire, " was equal to his astonishment: he inveighed against his judges, and, holding in his hand a pair of compasses, which he used for tracing maps in his prison, he struck it against his heart; but the blow was not sufficient to take away life; he was dragged into a dung-cart, with a gag in his mouth, lest, being conscious of his innocence, he should convince the Spectators of the injustice of his fate." Madame du Deffand, in giving to Walpole, on the 10th of January 1766, an account of this horrible scene, having stated, that the populace "battait des mains pendant l'ex`ecution," he returned her an answer, in a high degree honourable to his moral feeling:--"Ah! Madame, Madame, quelles horreurs me racontez-vous la! Qu'on ne dise jamais que les Anglais sent durs et f`eroces. Veritablement ce sent les Fran`cais qui le sent, Oui, oui, vous `etes des sauvages, des Iroquois, vous autres. On a bien massacr`e des gens chez nous, mais a-t-on jamais vu battre des Mains pendant qu'on mettait `a mort un pauvre malheureux, un officier general, qui avait langui pendant deux ans en prison? un homme enfin si sensible `a l'honneur, qu'il n'avait pas voulu se sauver! si touch`e de la disgrace qu'il chercha `a avaler les grilles de sa prison plut`ot que de se voir expos`e `a l'ignominie publique; et c'est exactement cette honn`ete pudeur qui fait qu'on le traine dans un tombereau, et qu'on lui met un baillon `a la bouche comme au dernier des sc`elerats. Mon Dieu! que je suis aise d'avoir quitt`e Paris avant cette horrible sc`ene! je me serais fait d`echirer, ou mettre `a la Bastille."-E.
383. To The Miss Berrys
Strawberry Hill, June 14, 1791.(page 508)
I pity you! what a dozen or fifteen uninteresting letters are you going to receive! for here I am, unlikely to have any thing to tell you worth sending. You had better come back incontinently-but pray do not prophesy any more; you have been the death of our summer, and we are in close mourning for it in coals and ashes. It froze hard last night: I went out for a moment to look at my haymakers, and was starved. The contents of an English June are, hay and ice, orange-flowers and rheumatisms! I am now cowering over the fire. Mrs. Hobart had announced a rural breakfast at Sans-Souci last Saturday; nothing being so pastoral as a fat grandmother in a row of houses on Ham Common. It rained early in the morning: she despatched postboys, for want of Cupids and zephyrs, to stop the nymphs and shepherds who tend their flocks in Pall-Mall and St. James's- street; but half of them missed the couriers and arrived. Mrs. Montagu was more splendid yesterday morning, and breakfasted seven hundred persons on opening her great room, and the room with the hangings of feathers. The King and Queen had been with her last week. I should like to have heard the orations she had prepared on the occasion. I was neither City-mouse nor country-mouse. I did dine at Fulham on Saturday with the Bishop of London: Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Garrick, and Hannah More were there; and Dr. Beattie, whom I had never seen. He is quiet, simple, and cheerful, and pleased me. There ends my tale, this instant, Tuesday! How shall I fill a couple of pages more by Friday morning! Oh! ye ladies on the Common, and ye uncommon ladies in London, have pity on a poor gazetteer, and supply me with eclogues or royal panegyrics Moreover--or rather more under--I have had no letter from you these ten days, though the east wind has been as constant as Lord Derby. I say not this in reproach, as you are so kindly punctual; but as it stints me from having a single paragraph to answer. I do not admire specific responses to every article; but they are great resources on a dearth.
Madame de Boufflers is ill of a fever, and the Duchess de Biron(806) goes next week to Switzerland:--mais qu'est que cela vous fait? I must eke out this with a few passages that I think will divert you, from the heaviest of all books, Mr. Malone's Shakspeare, in ten thick octavos, with notes, that are an extract of all the opium that is spread through the works of all the bad playwrights of that age. Mercy on the poor gentleman's patience! Amongst his other indefatigable researches he has discovered some lists of effects in the custody of the property-man to the Lord Admiral's company of players, in 1598. Of those effects he has given eight pages-you shall be off for a few items; viz. "My Lord Caffe's [Caiaphas's] gercheri [jerkin] and his hoose [hose]; one rocke, one tombe, one Hellemought [Hell-mouth], two stepelles and one chyme of belles, one chaine of Dragons, two coffines, one bulle's head, one vylter, one goste's crown, and one frame for the heading of black Jone; one payer of stayers for Fayeton, and bowght a robe for to goo invisabell." The pair of stairs for Phaeton reminds one of Hogarth's Strollers dressing in a barn, where Cupid on a ladder is reaching Apollo's stockings, that are hanging to dry on the clouds; as the steeples do of a story in L'Histoire du Th`eatre Fran`cois: Jodelet, who not only wrote plays, but invented the decorations, was to exhibit of both before Henry the Third. One scene was to represent a view of the sea, and Jodelet had bespoken two rochers; but not having time to rehearse, what did he behold enter on either side of the stage, instead of two rochers, but two clochers! Who knows but my Lord Admiral bought them?
Berkeley Square, Thursday, 16th.
I am come to town for one night, having promised to be at Mrs. Buller's this evening with Mrs. Damer, and I believe your friend, Mrs. Cholmeley, whom I have seen two or three times lately and like much. Three persons have called on me since I came, but have not contributed a tittle of news to my journal. If I hear nothing to-night, this must depart, empty as it is, to-morrow morning, as I shall for Strawberry; I hope without finding a new mortification, as I did last time. Two companies had been to see my house last week; and one of the parties, as vulgar people always see with the ends of their fingers, had broken off the end of my invaluable Eagle's bill, and to conceal their mischief, had pocketed the piece. It is true it had been restored at Rome, and my comfort is, that Mrs. Damer can repair the damage--but did the fools know that? It almost provokes one to shut up one's house, when obliging begets injury!
Friday noon.
This moment I receive your 35th, to which I have nothing to answer, but that I believe Fox and Burke are not very cordial; though I do not know whether there has been any formal reconciliation or not. The Parliament is prorogued; and we shall hear no more of them, I suppose, for some months; nor have I learnt any thing new, and am returning to Strawberry, and must finish.
(806) Am`elie de Boufflers, wife of Armand-Louis de Gontaut, Duc do Biron, better known in England by the title of Duc de Lauzan. By a letter from Madame Necker to Gibbon, the Duchesse appears to have been at Lausanne in October; but in the following September , tempted," says Gibbon, " by some faint, and I fear, fallacious hope Of clemency to the women", she was induced to revisit France, and perished by the guillotine, in one of Robespierre's bloody proscriptions. See vol. v. pp. 133, 400. The Duc was entrusted with the command of the army of the republic in La Vend`ee; but, being reproached with having suffered Niort to be besieged and with not having seconded westermann, he was denounced at the bar of the Convention, delivered over to the revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to death. He suffered on the 31st of December 1793, and is words upon the scaffold are said to have been, "I have been false to my God, my order, and my king: I die full of faith and repentance." See his "M`emoires, " in two volumes 8vo. published in 1802.-E.
Letter 384To Miss Berry. Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1791. (page 510)
Wo is me! I have not an atom of news to send you, but that the second edition of Mother Hubbard's Tale was again spoiled on Saturday last by the rain; yet she had an ample assemblage of company from London and the neighbourhood. The late Queen of France, Madame du Barry, was there; and the late Queen of England, Madame d'Albany, was not. The former, they say, is as much altered as her kingdom, and does not retain a trace of her former powers. I saw her on her throne in the chapel of Versailles;(807) and, though then pleasing in face and person, I thought her un peu pass`e. What shall I tell you more? that Lord Hawkesbury is added to the cabinet-council--que vous importe? and that Dr. Robertson has published a Disquisition into the Trade of the Anchellts with India;(808) a sensible work--but that will be no news to you till you return. It was a peddling trade in those days. They now and then picked up an elephant's tooth, or a nutmeg, or one pearl, that served Venus for a pair of pendants, when Antony had toasted Cleopatra in a bumper of its fellow; which shows that a couple was imported:-but. alack! the Romans were so ignorant, that waiters from the Tres Tabernoe, in St. Apollo's-street, did not carry home sacks of diamonds enough to pave the Capitol--I hate exaggerations, and therefore I do not say, to pave the Appian Way. One author, I think, does say, that the wife of Fabius Pictor, whom he sold to a proconsul, did present Livia(809) with an ivory bed, inlaid with Indian gold; but, as Dr. Robertson does not mention it, to be sure he does not believe the fact well authenticated.
It is an anxious moment with the poor French here: a strong notion is spread, that the Prince of Cond`e will soon make some attempt; and the National Assembly, by their pompous blustering seem to dread it. Perhaps the moment is yet too early, till anarchy is got to a greater head; but as to the duration of the present revolution, I no more expect it, than I do the millennium before Christmas. Had the revolutionists had the sense and moderation of our ancestors, or of the present Poles, they might have delivered and blessed their country: but violence, injustice, and savage cruelty, tutored by inexperienced pedantry, produce offspring exactly resembling their parents, or turn their enemies into similar demons. Barbarity will be copied by revenge.
Lord Fitzwilliam has flown to Dublin and back. He returned to Richmond on the fourteenth day from his departure, and the next morning set out for France: no courier can do more. In my last, the description of June for orange-flowers, pray read roses: the east winds have starved all the former; but the latter, having been settled here before the wars of York and Lancaster, are naturalized to the climate, and reek not whether June arrives in summer or winter. They blow by their own old-style almanacks. Madame d'Albany might have found plenty of white ones on her own tenth of June; but, on that very day, she chose to go to see the King in the House of Lords, with the crown on his head, proroguing the Parliament.(810) What an odd rencontre! Was it philosophy or insensibility? I believe it is certain that her husband was in Westminster-hall at the coronation.
The patriarchess of the Methodists, Lady Huntingdon, is dead. Now she and Whitfield are gone, the sect will probably decline: a second crop of apostles seldom acquire the influence of the founders. To-day's paper declares upon its say-so, that Mr. Fawkener is at hand, with Catherine Slay-Czar's(811) acquiescence to our terms; but I have not entire faith in a precursor on such an occasion, and from Holland too. It looks more like a courier to the stocks; and yet I am in little expectation of a war, as I believe we are boldly determined to remain at peace. And now my pen is quite dry-you are quite sure not from laziness, but from the season of the year, which is very anti-correspondent. Adieu!
(807) See letter to George Montagu, Esq., Sept. 17, 1769, vol.3, letter 371.
(808) This work, which was the last labour of the historian, was suggested by the perusal of Major Rennell's "Memoir of a Map of Hindostan." In sending a copy of it to Gibbon, he says "No man had formed a more decided resolution of retreating early from public view' and of spending the eve of life in the tranquillity of professional and domestic occupations; but, directly in the face of that purpose, I step forth with a new work, when just on the brink of threescore and ten. My book has met with a reception beyond what the spe lentus, pavidusque futuri, dared to expect. I find, however, like other parents, that I have a partial fondness for this child of my old age, and cannot set my heart quite at rest, until I know your opinion of it."-E.
(809) This alludes to the stories told at the time, of an ivory bed, inlaid with gold, having been presented to Queen Charlotte by Mrs. Hastings, the wife of the governor-general of India.
(810) " The Bishop of London' " writes Hannah More, " carried me to hear the King make his speech in the House of Lords. As it was quite new to me, I was very well entertained; but the thing that was most amusing was to see, among the ladies, the Princess of Stolberg, Countess of Albany, wife to the Pretender, sitting just at the foot of that throne, which she might once have expected to have mounted; and what diverted the party, when I put them in mind of it, was, that it happened to be the 10th of June, the Pretender's birthday. I have the honour to be very much like her; and this opinion was confirmed yesterday, when we met again."-Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 343.-E.
(811) Walpole rarely makes mention of Catherine without an allusion to the murder of the Czar Peter. in a letter written to Madame du Deffand, in 1769 he thus indignantly denounce Voltaire's applauses of the Empress:--"Voltaire me fait horreur Avec sa Caterine: le beau sujet de badinage que l'assassinat d'un mari, et l'usurpateur de son tr`one! Il n'est pas mal, dit-il, qu'on ait une faute r`eparer: eh! comment reparer un meurtre? Est-ce en retenant des po`etes `a ses gages? en payant des historiens mercenaires, et en soudoyant des philosophes ridicules `a mille lieues dc son pays? Ce sent ces `ames viles qui chantent un Auguste, et se taisent sur ses proscriptions."-E.
385. To Miss Berry. Strawberry Hill, Tuesday night, July 12, 1791. (page 512)
I had had no letter from you for ten days, I suppose from west winds; but did receive one this morning, which had been three weeks on the road: and a charming one it was. Mr. Batt,--who dined with me Yesterday, and stayed till after breakfast to-day,--being here, I read part of It to him; and he was as much delighted as I was with your happy quotation of incedit Regina. If I could spare so much room, I might fill this paper with all he said of you both, and with all the friendly kind things he begged me to say to both from him. Last night I read to him' certain Reminiscences; and this morning he slipped from me, and walked to Cliveden, and hopes to see it again much more agreeably. I hope so too, and that I shall be with him.
I wish there were not so many f`etes at Florence; they are worse for you both than an Italian sultriness: but, if you do go to them, I am glad you have More northern weather. News I have none, but that Calonne arrived in London on Sunday: you may be sure I do not know for what. In a word, I have no more opinion of his judgment than of his integrity. Now I must say a syllable about myself; but don't be alarmed! It is not the gout; it is worse: it is the rheumatism, which I have had in my shoulder ever since it attended the gout last December. It was almost gone till last Sunday, when, the Bishop of London preaching a charity sermon in our church, -whither I very. very seldom venture to hobble, I would go to hear him; both out of civility, and as I am very intimate with him. The church was crammed; and, though it rained, every window was open. However, at night I went to bed; but at two I waked with such exquisite pain in my, rheumatic right shoulder, that I think I scarce ever felt greater torture from the gout.
386. To The Miss Berrys. Strawberry Hill, July 26, 1791. (page 512)
Ten months are gone of the longest year that ever was born--a baker's year, for it has thirteen months to the dozen! As our letters are so long interchanging, it is not beginning too early to desire You will think of settling the stages to which I must direct to you in your route. Nay, I don't know whether it is not already too late: I am sure it will be, if I am to stay for an answer to this; but I hope you will have thought on it before you receive this. I am so much recovered as to have been abroad. I cannot say my arm is glib yet; but, if I waited for the total departure of' the rheumatism, I might stay at home till the national debt is paid. My fair writing is a proof of my lameness: I labour as if I were engraving; and drop no words, as I do in my ordinary hasty scribbling.
Lady Cecilia tells me that her nephew, Mr. West,(812) who was with you at Pisa, declares he is in love with you both; so I am not singular. You two may like to hear this, though no novelty to you; but it will not satisfy Mr. Berry, who will be impatient for news from Birmingham: but there are no more, nor any-whence else. There has not been another riot in any of the three kingdoms. The villain Paine came over for the Crown and Anchor;(813) but, finding that his pamphlet had not set a straw on fire, and that the 14th of July was as little in fashion as the ancient gunpowder-plot, he dined at another tavern with a few quaking conspirators; and probably is returning to Paris, where he is engaged in a controversy with the Abb`e Sieyes, about the plus or minus of rebellion. The rioters in Worcestershire, whom I mentioned in my last, were not a detachment from Birmingham, but volunteer incendiaries from the capital; who went, according to the rights of men, with the mere view of plunder, and threatened gentlemen to burn their houses, if not ransomed. Eleven of these disciples of Paine are in custody; and Mr. Merry, Mrs. Barbauld, and Miss Helen Williams will probably have subjects for elegies. Deborah and Jael, I believe, were invited to the Crown and Anchor, and had let their nails grow accordingly: but, somehow or other, no poissonni`eres were there, and the two prophetesses had no opportunity that day of exercising their talents or talons. Their French allies, cock and hen, have a fairer field open; and the Jacobins, I think, will soon drive the National Assembly to be better royalists than ever they were, in selfdefence.
You have indeed surprised me by your account of the strange credulity of poor King Louis's escape in safety! In these villages we heard of his flight late in the evening, and, the very next morning, of his being retaken.(814) Much as he, at least the Queen, has suffered, I am persuaded the adventure has hastened general confusion, and will increase the royal party; though perhaps their Majesties, for their personal safeties, had better have awaited the natural progress of anarchy. The enormous deficiencies of money, and the total insubordination of the army, both apparent and uncontradicted, from the reports made to the National Assembly, show what is Coming. Into what such a chaos will Subside, it would be silly to attempt to guess. Perhaps it is not wiser in the exiles to expect to live to see a resettlement in their favour. One thing I have for these two years thought probable to arrive--a division, at least, a dismemberment of France. Despotism could no longer govern so unwieldy a machine; a republic would be still less likely to hold it together. If foreign powers should interfere, they will take care to pay themselves with what is `a leur biensance; and that, in reality, would be serving France too. So much for my speculations! and they have never varied. We are so far from intending to new-model our government and dismiss the Royal Family, annihilate the peerage, cashier the hierarchy, and lay open the land to the first occupier, as Dr. Priestley, and Tom Paine, and the Revolution Club humbly proposed, that we are even encouraging the breed of princes. It is generally believed that the Duke of York is going to marry the Princess of Prussia, the King's daughter by his first wife, and his favourite child. I do not affirm it; but many others do.(815)
Thursday night, late.
Lady Di. has told me an extraordinary fact. Catherine Slay-Czar sent for Mr. Fawkener(816) and desired he will order for her a bust of Charles Fox; and she will place it between Demosthenes and Cicero (pedantry she learnt from her French authors, and which our schoolboys would be above using); for his eloquence has saved two great nations from a war--by his opposition to it, s'entend: so the peace is no doubt made. She could not have addressed her compliment worse than to Mr. Fawkener, sent by Mr. Pitt, and therefore so addressed; and who of all men does not love Mr. Fox, and Mr. Fox who has no vainglory, will not care a straw for the flattery, and will understand it too. Good night!
(812) The Honourable Septimus West, uncle of the present Earl of Delawarr. He died of consumption in October 1793.
(813) The great dinner at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution.-E.
(814) The flight of the Royal Family of France to, and return from, Varennes.
(815) The marriage of the Duke of York with Frederica Charlotte Ulrica Catherine, eldest daughter of the King of Prussia, was solemnized, first in Prussia, on the 29th of September, and again in England, on the 23d of November, 1791. For Walpole's account of her Royal Highness's visit to Strawberry Hill, see his letter to the Miss Berrys of the 25th of September, 1793.-E.
(816. Mr. Fawkener was the son of Sir Everard Fawkener, He was one of the principal clerks of the privy council, and had been sent on a secret mission to Russia.-E.
387. To Miss Berry. Strawberry Hill, August 17, 1791. (page 514)
No letter from Florence this post, though I am wishing for one every day! The illness of a friend is bad, but is augmented by distance. Your letters say you are quite recovered; but the farther you are from me, the oftener I want to hear that recovery repeated: and any delay in hearing revives my apprehensions of a return of your fever. I am embarrassed, too, about your plan. It grows near to the time you Proposed beginning your journey. I do not write with any view to hastening that, which I trust will entirely depend on the state of your health and strength; but I am impatient to know your intentions: in short, I feel that, from this time to your arrival, my letters will grow very tiresome. I have heard to-day, that Lord and Lady Sheffield, who went to visit Mr. Gibbon at Lausanne, met with great trouble and impertinence at almost every post in France. in Switzerland there is a furious spirit of democracy, or demonocracy. They made great rejoicings on the recapture of the King of France. Oh! why did you leave England in such a turbulent era! When will you sit down on the quiet banks of the Thames?
Wednesday night.
Since I began my letter, I have received yours of the 2d, two days later than Usual; and a most comfortable one it is. My belief and my faith are now of the same religion. I do believe you quite recovered. You, in the mean time, are talking of my rheumatism-quite an old story. Not that it is gone, though the pain is. The lameness in my shoulder remains, and I am writing on my lap: but the complaint is put upon the establishment; like old servants, that are of no use, fill up the place of those that could do something, and yet still remain in the house.
I know nothing new, public or private. that is worth telling. The stocks are transported with the pacification with Russia, and do not care for what it has cost to bully the Empress to no purpose; and say, we can afford it. Nor can Paine and Priestley persuade them that France is much happier than we are, by having ruined itself. The poor French here are in hourly expectation of as rapid a counterrevolution as what happened two years ago. Have you seen the King of Sweden's letter to his minister, enjoining him to look dismal, and to take care not to be knocked on the head for so doing? It deserves to be framed with M. de Bouill`e's bravado.(817) You say you will write me longer letters when you know I am well. Your recovery has quite the contrary effect on me: I could scarce restrain my pen while I had apprehensions about you; now you are well, the goosequill has not a word to say. One would think it had belonged to a physician. I shall fill my vacuum with some lines that General Conway has sent me, written by I know not whom, on Mrs. Harte, Sir William Hamilton's pantomime mistress, or wife, who acts all the antique statues in an Indian shawl. I have not seen her yet, so am no judge; but people are mad about her wonderful expression, which I do not conceive; so few antique statues having any expression at all, nor being designed to have it. The Apollo has the symptoms of dignified anger:(818) the Laocoon and his sons, and Niobe and her family,(819) are all expression;' and a few more: but what do the Venuses, Floras, Hercules, and a thousand others tell, but the magic art of the sculptor, and their own graces and proportions?
I have been making up some pills of patience, to be taken occasionally, when you have begun your journey, and I do not receive your letters regularly; which may happen when you are .on the road. I recommend you to St. James of Compost-antimony, to whom St. Luke was an ignorant quack. Adieu!
(817) "The Marquis de Bouill`e, in order to draw upon himself the indignation of the Assembly, addressed to it a letter, which might be called mad, but for the generous motive which dictated it. He avowed himself the sole author of the King's journey, though, on the contrary, he had opposed it. He declared, in the name of the Sovereign, that Paris should be responsible for the safety of the Royal Family, and that the slightest injury offered to them should be signally avenged. The Assembly winked at this generous bravado, and threw the whole blame on Bouill`e; who had nothing to fear, for he was already abroad." Thiers, vol. i. p. 197.-E.
(818) "In his eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the Deity." Byron.-E.
(819) "Go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain-- A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending:--Vain The struggle: vain against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench, the long envenom'd chain Rivets the living links,--the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp." Ibid.-E.