Letters Of Horace Walpole Volume Ii Part 23

On Monday was the boat-race [at Richmond]. I was in the great room at the Castle, with the Duke of Clarence, Lady Di., Lord Robert Spencer, and the House of Bouverie, to see the boats start from the bridge to Thistleworth, and back to a tent erected on Lord Dysart's meadow, just before Lady Di.'s windows; whither we went to see them arrive, and where we had breakfast. For the second heat, I sat in my coach on the bridge; and did not stay for the third. The day had been coined on purpose, with my favourite south-east wind. The scene, both up the river and down, was what only Richmond upon earth can exhibit. The crowds on those green velvet meadows and on the sh.o.r.es, the yachts, barges, pleasure and small boats, and the windows and gardens lined with spectators, were so delightful, that when I came home from that vivid show, I thought Strawberry looked as dull and solitary as a hermitage. At night there was a ball at the Castle, and illuminations, with the Duke's cypher, &c.

in coloured lamps, as were the houses of his Royal Highness's tradesmen.

I went again in the evening to the French ladies on the Green, where there was a bonfire; but, you may believe, not to the ball.

Well! but you, who have had a fever with _fetes_, had rather hear the history of the new _soi-disante_ Margravine. She has been in England with her foolish Prince, and not only notified their marriage to the Earl [of Berkeley] her brother, who did not receive it propitiously, but his Highness informed his Lordship by a letter, that they have an usage in his country of taking a wife with the left hand; that he had espoused his Lordship's sister in that manner; and intends, as soon as she shall be a widow, to marry her with his right hand also. The Earl replied, that he knew she was married to an English peer [Lord Craven], a most respectable man, and can know nothing of her marrying any other man; and so they are gone to Lisbon. Adieu!

_ARREST OF THE d.u.c.h.eSSE DE BIRON--THE QUEEN OF FRANCE--PYTHAGORAS._

TO THE MISS BERRYS.

STRAWBERRY HILL, _Tuesday evening, eight o'clock, Oct._ 15, 1793.

Though I do not know when it will have its whole lading, I must begin my letter this very moment, to tell you what I have just heard. I called on the Princesse d'Hennin, who has been in town a week. I found her quite alone, and I thought she did not answer quite clearly about her two knights: the Prince de Poix has taken a lodging in town, and she talks of letting her house here, if she can. In short, I thought she had a little of an Ariadne-air--but this was not what I was in such a hurry to tell you. She showed me several pieces of letters, I think from the d.u.c.h.esse de Bouillon: one says, the poor d.u.c.h.esse de Biron is again arrested[1] and at the Jacobins, and with her "une jeune etourdie, qui ne fait que chanter toute la journee;" and who, think you, may that be?--only our pretty little wicked d.u.c.h.esse de Fleury! by her singing and not sobbing, I suppose she was weary of her _Tircis_, and is glad to be rid of him. This new blow, I fear, will overset Madame de Biron again. The rage at Paris seems to increase daily or hourly; they either despair, or are now avowed banditti. I tremble so much for the great and most suffering victim of all, the Queen,[2] that one cannot feel so much for many, as several perhaps deserve: but her tortures have been of far longer duration than any martyrs, and more various; and her courage and patience equal to her woes!

[Footnote 1: The d.u.c.h.ess, with scores of other n.o.ble ladies, was put to death in the course of these two horrible years, 1793-94.]

[Footnote 2: Marie Antoinette was put to death the very next day. And I cannot more fitly close the allusions to the Revolution so frequent in the letters of the past four years than by Burke's description of this pure and n.o.ble Queen in her youth: "It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness of Versailles; and surely never lighted on this...o...b.. which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her, just above the horizon, glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendour and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added t.i.tles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men and cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult"

("Reflections on the French Revolution ").]

My poor old friend, the d.u.c.h.esse de la Valiere, past ninety and stone-deaf, has a guard set upon her, but in her own house; her daughter, the d.u.c.h.esse de Chatillon, mother of the d.u.c.h.esse de la Tremouille, is arrested; and thus the last, with her attachment to the Queen, must be miserable indeed!--but one would think I feel for nothing but d.u.c.h.esses: the crisis has crowded them together into my letter, and into a prison;--and to be a prisoner among cannibals is pitiable indeed!

_Thursday morning, 17th, past ten._

I this moment receive the very comfortable twin-letter. I am so conjugal, and so much in earnest upon the article of recovery, that I cannot think of _a pretty thing_ to say to very pretty Mrs. Stanhope; nor do I know what would be a pretty thing in these days. I might come out with some old-fashioned compliment, that would have been very genteel

In good Queen Bess's golden day, when I was a dame of honour.

Let Mrs. Stanhope imagine that I have said all she deserves: I certainly think it, and will ratify it, when I have learnt the language of the nineteenth century; but I really am so ancient, that as Pythagoras imagined he had been Panthoides Euphorbus[1] in the Trojan war, I am not sure that I did not ride upon a pillion behind a Gentleman-Usher, when her Majesty Elizabeth went into procession to St. Paul's on the defeat of the Armada! Adieu! the postman puts an end to my idle speculations--but, Scarborough for ever! with three huzzas!

[Footnote 1: "_Euphorbus._" This is an allusion to the doctrine of metempsychosis taught by the ancient philosopher Pythagoras of Samos, according to which when a man died his soul remained in the shades below suffering any punishment which the man had deserved, till after a certain lapse of time all the taint of the former existence had been worn away, when the soul returned to earth to animate some other body.

The pa.s.sage referred to here by Walpole occurs in Ovid's "Metamorphoses," xvi. 160, where Pythagoras is expounding his theory, which is also explained to Aeneas by Anchises in the shades below (Aeneid, vi. 745). But the two poets differ in more points than one.

According to Anchises, one thousand years are required between the two existences; according to Pythagoras, not above four hundred or five hundred. According to Anchises, before the soul revives in another body it must have forgotten all that happened to it in the body of its former owner. As Dryden translates Virgil--

Whole droves of minds are by the driving G.o.d Compell'd to drink the deep Lethaean flood, In large forgetful draughts to steep the cares Of their past labours, and their irksome years; That unremembering of its former pain The soul may suffer mortal flesh again.

(Aeneid, vi. 1020).

Pythagoras, on the other hand, professes a distinct recollection of who he was and what he suffered in his former life. He remembers that in the time of the Trojan war (at the outside not five hundred years before his time) he was a Trojan--Euphorbus, the son of Panthous--and that in the war he was killed by Menelaus; and his memory is so accurate, that not long before he had recognised the very shield which he had borne in the conflict hanging up as a trophy in the temple of Juno at Argos.]

_EXPECTATIONS OF A VISIT TO STRAWBERRY BY THE QUEEN._

TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.

STRAWBERRY HILL, _July_ 2, 1795.

I will write a word to you, though scarce time to write one, to thank you for your great kindness about the soldier, who shall get a subst.i.tute if he can. As you are, or have been in town, your daughter will have told you in what a bustle I am, preparing--not to resist, but to receive an invasion of royalties to-morrow; and cannot even escape them like Admiral Cornwallis, though seeming to make a semblance; for I am to wear a sword, and have appointed two aides-de-camp, my nephews, George and Horace Churchill. If I _fall_, as ten to one but I do, to be sure it will be a superb tumble, at the feet of a Queen and eight daughters of Kings; for, besides the six Princesses, I am to have the d.u.c.h.ess of York and the Princess of Orange! Woe is me, at seventy-eight, and with scarce a hand and foot to my back! Adieu! Yours, &c.

A POOR OLD REMNANT.

_REPORT OF THE VISIT._

_July_ 7, 1795.

I am not dead of fatigue with my Royal visitors, as I expected to be, though I was on my poor lame feet three whole hours. Your daughter [Mrs.

Damer], who kindly a.s.sisted me in doing the honours, will tell you the particulars, and how prosperously I succeeded. The Queen was uncommonly condescending and gracious, and deigned to drink my health when I presented her with the last gla.s.s, and to thank me for all my attentions.[1] Indeed my memory _de la vieille cour_ was but once in default. As I had been a.s.sured that her Majesty would be attended by her Chamberlain, yet was not, I had no glove ready when I received her at the step of her coach: yet she honoured me with her hand to lead her up stairs; nor did I recollect my omission when I led her down again.

Still, though gloveless, I did not squeeze the royal hand, as Vice-chamberlain Smith[2] did to Queen Mary.

[Footnote 1: There cannot be a more fitting conclusion than this letter recording the greatest honour conferred on the writer and his Strawberry by the visit of the Queen of the realm and her condescending proposal of his health at his own table.]

[Footnote 2: "_Vice-Chamberlain Smith._" An allusion to a gossiping story of King William's time, that when Queen Mary came back to England she asked one of her ladies what a squeeze of the hand was supposed to intimate; and when the reply was, "Love," "Then," said Her Majesty, "my Vice-Chancellor must be in love with me; for he always squeezes my hand."]

You will have stared, as I did, at the Elector of Hanover deserting his ally the King of Great Britain, and making peace with the monsters. But Mr. Fawkener, whom I saw at my sister's [Churchill's] on Sunday, laughs at the article in the newspapers, and says it is not an unknown practice for stock-jobbers to hire an emissary at the rate of five hundred pounds, and dispatch to Franckfort, whence he brings forged attestations of some marvellous political event, and spreads it on 'Change, which produces such a fluctuation in the stocks as amply overpays the expense of his mission.

This was all I learnt in the single night I was in town. I have not read the new French const.i.tution, which seems longer than probably its reign will be. The five sovereigns will, I suppose, be the first guillotined.

Adieu! Yours ever.

UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON.