The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume II Part 19

(327) She was a Miss Strafford. The perusal of Cr'ebillon's works inspired her with such a pa.s.sion for the author, that she ran away from her friends, went to Paris, married him, and nursed and attended him with exemplary tenderness and affection to his dying day. In reference to this marriage, Lord Byron, in his Observations on Bowles's Strictures upon Pope, makes the following remark:--"For my own part, I am of the opinion of Pausanias, that success in love depends upon fortune. Grimm has an observation of the same kind, on the different destinies of the younger Cr'ebillon and Rousseau. The former writes a licentious novel, and a young English girl of some fortune runs away, and crosses the sea to marry him; while Rousseau, the most tender and pa.s.sionate of lovers, is obliged to espouse his chambermaid."-E.

(328) Lord Cholmondoley borrowed great sums of money of various people, under the pretence of a quant.i.ty of Genoa damask being arrived for him, and that his banker was out of town, and he must pay for it immediately. Four persons comparing notes, produced four letters from him in a coffeehouse, in the very same words.

137 Letter 64 To Richard Bentley, Esq.(329) Battel, Wednesday, August 5, 1752.

here we are, my dear Sir, in the middle of our pilgrimage; and lest we should never return from this holy land of abbeys and Gothic castles, I begin a letter to you. that I hope some charitable monk, when he has buried our bones, will deliver to you. We have had piteous distresses, but then we have seen glorious sights! You shall hear of each in their order.

Monday, Wind S. E.--at least that was our direction--While they were changing our horses at Bromley, we went to see the Bishop of Rochester's palace; not for the sake of any thing there was to be seen, but because there was a chimney, in which had stood a flower-pot, in which was put the counterfeit plot against Bishop Sprat. 'Tis a paltry parsonage, with nothing of antiquity but two panes of gla.s.s, purloined from Islip's chapel in Westminster Abbey, with that abbot's rebus, an eye and a slip of a tree. In the garden there is a clear little pond, teeming with gold fish. The Bishop is more prolific than I am.

>From Sevenoaks we went to Knowle. The park is sweet, with much old beech, and an immense sycamore before the great gate, that makes me more in love than ever with sycamores. The house is not near so extensive as I expected:(330) the outward court has a beautiful decent simplicity that charms one. The apartments are many, but not large. The furniture throughout, ancient magnificence; loads of portraits, not good nor curious; ebony cabinets, embossed silver in vases, dishes, etc.

embroidered beds, stiff chairs, and sweet bags lying on velvet tables, richly worked in silk and gold. There are two galleries, one very small; an old hall, and a s.p.a.cious great drawing-room. There is never a good staircase. The first little room you enter has sundry portraits of the times; but they seem to have been bespoke by the yard, and drawn all by the same painter; One should be happy if they were authentic; for among them there is Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Gardiner of Winchester, the Earl of Surry, the poet, when a boy, and a Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, but I don't know which.

The only fine picture is of Lord Goring and Endymion Porter by Vand.y.k.e. There is a good head of the Queen of Bohemia, a whole-length of Duc d'Espernon, and another good head of the Clifford, Countess of Dorset, who wrote that admirable haughty letter to Secretary Williamson, when he recommended a person to her for member for Appleby: "I have been bullied by an usurper, I have been neglected by a court, but I won't be dictated to by a subject: your man shan't stand. Ann Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery." In the chapel is a piece of ancient tapestry: Saint Luke in his first profession is holding an urinal. Below stairs is a chamber of poets and players, which is proper enough in that house; for the first Earl wrote a play,(331) and the last Earl was a poet,(332) and I think married a player(333) Major Mohun and Betterton are curious among the latter, Cartwright and Flatman among the former. The arcade is newly enclosed, painted in fresco, and with modern gla.s.s of all the family matches. In the gallery is a whole-length of the unfortunate Earl of Surry, with his device, a broken column, and the motto Sat superest. My father had one of them, but larger, and with more emblems, which the Duke of Norfolk bought at my brother's sale. There is one good head of henry VIII., and divers of Cranfield, Earl of Middles.e.x, the citizen who came to be lord treasurer, and was very near coming to be hanged.(334) His Countess, a bouncing kind of lady-mayoress, looks pure awkward amongst so much good company. A visto cut through the wood has a delightful effect from the front: but there are some trumpery fragments of gardens that spoil the view from the state apartments.

We lay that night at Tunbridge town, and were surprised with the ruins of the old castle. The gateway is perfect, and the enclosure formed into a vineyard by a Mr. Hooker, to whom it belongs, and the walls spread with fruit, and the mount on which the keep stood, planted in the same way. The prospect is charming, and a breach in the wall opens below to a pretty Gothic bridge of three arches over the Medway. We honoured the man for his taste-not but that we wished the committee at Strawberry Hill were to sit upon it, and stick cypresses among the hollows.--But, alas! he sometimes makes eighteen sour hogsheads, and is going to disrobe 'the ivy-mantled tower,'

because it harbours birds!

Now begins our chapter of woes. The inn was full of farmers and tobacco; and the next morning, when we were bound for Penshurst, the only man in the town who had two horses would not let us have them, because the roads, as he said, were so bad. We were forced to send to the wells for others, which did not arrive till half the day was spent-we all the while up to the head and ears in a market of sheep and oxen. A mile from the town we climbed up a hill to see Summer Hill,(335) the residence of Grammont's Princess of Babylon.(336) There is now scarce a road to it: the Paladins of those times were too valorous to fear breaking their necks; and I much apprehend that la Monsery and the fair Mademoiselle Hamilton,(337) must have mounted their palfreys and rode behind their gentlemen-ushers upon pillions to the Wells. The house is little better than a farm, but has been an excellent one, and is entire, though out of repair. I have drawn the front of it to show you, which you are to draw over again to show me. It stands high, commands a vast landscape beautifully wooded, and has quant.i.ties of large old trees to shelter itself, some of which might be well spared to open views.

>From Summer Hill we went to Lamberhurst to dine; near which, that is, at the distance of three miles, up and down impracticable hills, in a most retired vale, such as Pope describes in the last Dunciad,

"Where slumber abbots, purple as their vines,"

We found the ruins of Bayham Abbey, which the Barrets and Hardings bid us visit. There are small but pretty remains, and a neat little Gothic house built near them by their nephew Pratt. They have found a tomb of an abbot, with a crosier, at length on the stone.

Here our woes increase. The roads row bad beyond all badness, the night dark beyond all darkness, our guide frightened beyond all frightfulness. However, without being at all killed, we got UP, or down,--I forget which, it was so dark,--a famous precipice called Silver Hill, and about ten at night arrived at a wretched village called Rotherbridge. We had still six miles. .h.i.ther, but determined to stop, as it would be a pity to break our necks before we had seen all we intended. But alas! there was only one bed to be had: all the rest were inhabited by smugglers, whom the people of the house called mountebanks; and with one of whom the lady of the den told Mr. Chute he might lie. We did not at all take to this society, but, armed with links and ]anthems, set out again upon this impracticable journey. At two o'clock in the morning we got hither to a still worse inn, and that crammed with excise officers, one of whom had just shot a smuggler. However, as we were neutral powers, we have pa.s.sed safely through both armies. .h.i.therto, and can give you a little farther history of our wandering through these mountains, where the young gentlemen are forced to drive their curricles with a pair of oxen. the only morsel of good road we have found, was what even the natives had a.s.sured us was totally impracticable: these were eight miles to Hurst Monceaux.(338) It is seated at the end of a large vale, five miles in a direct line to the sea, with wings of blue hills covered with wood, one of which falls down to the in a sweep of a hundred acres. The building, for the convenience of water to the moat, sees nothing at all; indeed it is entirely imagined on a plan of defence, with drawbridges actually in being, round towers, watch-towers mounted on them, and battlements pierced for the pa.s.sage of arrows from long bows. It was built in the time of Henry VI., and is as perfect as the first day. It does not seem to have been ever quite finished, or at least that age was not arrived at the luxury of white-wash; for almost all the walls, except in the princ.i.p.al chambers, are in their native brickhood. It is a square building, each side about two hundred feet in length; a porch and cloister, very like Eton College; and the -whole is much in the same taste, the kitchen extremely so, with three vast funnels to the chimneys going up on the inside. There are two or three little courts for offices, but no magnificence of apartments. It is scarcely furnished with a few necessary beds and chairs: one side has been sashed, and a drawing-room and dining-room and two or three rooms wainscoted by the Earl of Suss.e.x, who married a natural daughter of Charles II. Their arms with delightful carvings by Gibbons-, particularly two pheasants, hang Over the chimneys. Over the great drawing-room chimney is the first coat armour of the first Leonard, Lord Dacre, with all his alliances. Mr. Chute was transported, and called cousin with ten thousand quarterings.(339) The chapel is small, and mean: the Virgin and seven long lean saints, ill done, remain in the windows. There have been four more, but seem to have been removed for light; and we actually found St. Catherine, and another gentlewoman with a church in her hand, exiled into the b.u.t.tery. There remain two odd cavities, with very small wooden screens on each side the altar, which seem to have been confessionals. The outside is a mixture of gray brick and stone, that has a very venerable appearance. The drawbridges are romantic to a degree; and there is a dungeon, that gives one a delightful idea of living in the days of soccage and under such goodly tenures. They showed us a dismal chamber which they called Drummer's-hall, and suppose that Mr. Addison's comedy is descended from it. In the windows of the gallery over the cloisters, which leads all round to the apartments, is the device of the Fienneses, a wolf holding a baton with a scroll, Le roy le veut--an unlucky motto, as I shall tell you presently, to the last peer of that line. The estate is two thousand a year, and so compact as to have but seventeen houses upon it. We walked up a brave old avenue to the church, with ships sailing on our left hand the whole way. Before the altar lies a lank bra.s.s knight, hight William Fienis, chevalier, who obiit c.c.c.c.v. that is in 1405. By the altar is a beautiful tomb, all in our trefoil taste, varied into a thousand little canopies and patterns, and two knights reposing on their backs.

These were Thomas, Lord Dacre, and his only son Gregory, who died sans issue. An old grayheaded beadsman of the family talked to us of a blot in the scutcheon; and we had observed that the field of the arms was green instead of blue, and the lions ramping to the right, contrary to order. This and the man's imperfect narrative let us into the circ.u.mstances of the personage before us; for there is no inscription. He went in a Chevy-chase style to hunt in a Mr. Pelham's(340) park at Lawton: the keepers opposed, a fray ensued, a man was killed.

The haurhty baron took the death upon himself, as most secure of pardon; but however, though there was no chancellor of the exchequer in the question, he was condemned to be hanged: Le roy le Vouloist.

Now you arc fully master of Hurst Monceaux, I shall carry you on to Battel--By the way, we bring you a thousand sketches, that you may show us what we have seen. Battel Abbey stands at the end of the town, exactly as Warwick Castle does of Warwick; but the house of Webster have taken due care that it should not resemble it in any thing else. A vast building, which they call the old refectory, but which I believe was the original church, is now barn, coach-house, etc. The situation is n.o.ble, above the level of abbeys: what does remain of gateways and towers is beautiful, particularly the flat side of a cloister, which is now the front of the mansion-house. Miss of the family has clothed a fragment of a portico with c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls! The grounds, and what has been a park, lie in a vile condition. In the church is the tomb of Sir Anthony Browne, master of the horse for life to Harry VIII.: from whose descendants the estate was purchased. The head of John Hanimond, the last abbot, is still perfect in one of the windows. Mr. Chute says, "What charming things we should have done if Battel Abbey had been to be sold at Mrs. Chenevix's, as Strawberry was!" Good night!

Tunbridge, Friday.

We are returned hither, where we have established our head-quarters. On our way, we had an opportunity of surveying that formidable mountain, Silver Hill, which we had floundered down in the dark: it commands a whole horizon of the richest blue prospect you ever saw. I take it to be the ]Individual spot to which the Duke of Newcastle carries the smugglers, and, showing them Suss.e.x and Kent, says, "All this will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me." Indeed one of them, who exceeded the tempter's warrant, hangs in chains on the very spot where they finished the life of that wretched customhouse officer whom they were two days in murdering.

This morning we have been to Penshurst-but, oh! how fallen!(341) The park seems to have never answered its character: at present it is forlorn; and instead of Sacharissa's(342) cipher carved on the beeches, I should sooner have expected to have found the milkwoman's score. Over the gate is an inscription, purporting the manor to have been a boon from Edward VI. to Sir William Sydney. The apartments are the grandest I have seen in any of these old palaces, but furnished in tawdry modern taste. There are loads of portraits; but most of them seem christened by chance, like children at a foundling hospital. There is a portrait of Languet,(343) the friend of Sir Philip Sydney; and divers of himself and all his great kindred; particularly his sister-in-law, with a vast lute, and Sacharissa, charmingly handsome, But there are really four very great curiosities, I believe as old portraits as any extant in England: they are, Fitzallen, Archbishop of Canterbury, Humphry Stafford, the first Duke of Buckingham; T. Wentworth, and John Foxle; all four with the dates of their commissions as constables of Queenborough Castle, from whence I suppose they were brought.

The last is actually receiving his invest.i.ture from Edward the Third, and Wentworth is in the dress of Richard the Third's time. They are really not very ill done.(344) There are six more, only heads; and we have found since we came home that Penshurst belonged for a time to that Duke of Buckingham.

There are some good tombs in the church, and a very Vandal one.

called Sir Stephen of Penchester. When we had seen Penshurst, we borrowed saddles, and, bestriding the horses of our postchaise, set out for Hever,(345) to visit a tomb of Sir Thomas Bullen, Earl of Wiltshire, partly with a view to talk of it in Anna Bullen's walk at Strawberry Hill. But the measure of our woes was not full, we could not find our way.. and were forced to return; and again lost ourselves in coming from Penshurst, having been directed to what they call a better road than the execrable one we had gone.

Since dinner we have been to Lord Westmorland's which is so perfect in a Palladian taste, that I must own it has recovered me a little from Gothic. It is better situated than I had expected from the bad reputation it bears, and some prospect, though it is in a moat, and mightily besprinkled with small ponds. The design, you know, is taken from the Villa del Capra by Vicenza, but on a larger scale: yet, though it has cost an hundred thousand pounds, it is still only a fine villa: the finishing of in and outside has been exceedingly Expensive. A wood that runs up a hill behind the house is broke like an Albano landscape, with an octagon temple and a triumphal arch; But then there are some dismal clipt hedges, and a pyramid, which by a most unnatural copulation is at once a grotto and a greenhouse. Does it not put you in mind of the proposal for your drawing a garden-seat, Chinese on one side and Gothic on the other? The chimneys, which are collected to a centre, spoil the dome of the house, and the hall is a dark well. The gallery is eighty-two feet long, hung with green velvet and pictures, among which is a fine Rembrandt and a pretty La Hire.

The ceilings are painted, and there is a fine bed of silk and gold tapestry. The attic is good, and the wings extremely pretty, with porticoes formed on the style of the house. The Earl has built a new church, with a steeple which seems designed for the lat.i.tude, of Cheapside, and is so tall that the poor church curtsies under it, like Mary Rich(346) in a vast high-crown hat: it has a round portico, like St. Clement's, with vast Doric pillars supporting a thin shelf. The inside is the most abominable piece of tawdriness that ever was seen, stuffed with pillars painted in imitation of verd antique, as all the sides are like Sienna marble: but the greatest absurdity is a Doric frieze, between the triglyphs of which is the Jehovah, the I. H. S. and the Dove. There is a little chapel with Nevil tombs, particularly of the first Fane, Earl of Westmorland, and of the founder of the old church, and the heart of a knight who was killed in the wars. On the Fane tomb is a pedigree of bra.s.s in relief, and a genealogy of virtues to answer it. There is an entire window of painted-gla.s.s arms, chiefly modern, in the chapel, and another over the high altar. The hospitality of the house was truly Gothic; for they made our postilion drunk, and he overturned us close to a water and the bank did but just save us from being in the middle of it. Pray, whenever you travel in Kentish roads, take care of keeping your driver sober.

Rochester, Sunday.

We have finished our progress sadly! Yesterday after twenty mishaps we got to Sissinghurst to dinner. There is a park in ruins, and a house in ten times greater ruins, built by Sir John Balier, chancellor of the exchequer to Queen Mary. You go through an arch of the stables to the house, the court of which is perfect and very beautiful. The Duke of Bedford has a house at Cheneys, in Buckinghamshire, which seems to have been very like it, but is more ruined. This has a good apartment, and a fine gallery, a hundred and twenty feet by eighteen, which takes up one side: the wainscot is pretty and entire: the ceiling vaulted, and painted in a light genteel grotesque. The whole is built for show: for the back of the house is nothing but lath and plaster. From thence we Went to Bocton-Malherbe, where are remains of a house of the Wottons, and their tombs in the church; but the roads were so exceedingly bad that it was dark before we got thither, and still darker before we got to Maidstone: from thence we pa.s.sed this morning to Leeds Castle.(347) Never was such disappointment! There are small remains: the moat is the only handsome object, and is quite a lake, supplied by a cascade which tumbles through a bit of a romantic grove. The Fairfaxes have fitted up a pert, bad apartment in the fore-part of the castle, and have left the only tolerable rooms for offices. They had a gleam of Gothic in their eyes, but it soon pa.s.sed off into some modern windows, and some that never were ancient. The only thing that at all recompensed the fatigues we have undergone was the picture of the d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham,(348) la Ragotte, who is mentioned in Grammont--I say us, for I trust that Mr. Chute is as true a bigot to Grammont as I am. Adieu? I hope you will be as weary with reading our history as we have been in travelling it.

Yours ever.

(329) Only son of Dr. Richard Bentley, the celebrated Divine and cla.s.sical scholar. He was educated at Trinity College, under his father. c.u.mberland, who was his nephew, describes him as a man of various and considerable accomplishments; possessing a fine genius, great wit, and a brilliant imagination; "but there was," he adds, "a certain eccentricity and want of prudence in his character, that involved him in distresses, and reduced him to situations uncongenial with his feelings, and unpropitious to the cultivation and encouragement of his talents."-E.

(330) Evelyn ' in his Diary for July 25, 1673, says, "In my way I visited my Lord of Dorset's house at Knowle, near Sevenoaks, a greate old-fashion'd house."-E.

331) Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, while a student in the Temple, wrote his tragedy of Gordobuc, which was played before Queen Elizabeth, at Whitehall, in 1561. He was created Earl of Dorset by James the First, in 1604.-E.

(332) Charles Sackville, sixth Earl of Dorset. On the day previous to the naval engagement with the Dutch, in 1665, he is said to have composed his celebrated song, "to all you Ladies now on Land."-E.

(333) On the contrary, he married the Lady Frances, daughter of the Earl of Middles.e.x, who survived him.-E.

(334) Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middles.e.x, married two wives: the first was the daughter of a London citizen; the second, the daughter of James Brett, Esq. and half-sister of Mary Beaumont, created Countess of Buckingham. To this last alliance, Lord Middles.e.x owed his extraordinary advancement.-E.

(335) "May 29, 1652. We went to see the house of my Lord Clanrickard, at Summer Hill, near Tunbridge; now given to that villain Bradshaw, who condemned the King. 'Tis situated on an eminent hill, with a park, but has nothing else extraordinary."

Evelyn, vol. ii. p. 58.-E.

(336) lady Margaret Macarthy, daughter and heiress of the Marquis of Clanricarde, wife of Charles, Lord Muskerry.-E.

(337) Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Sir George Hamilton, fourth son of the first Earl of Abercorn, and niece of to the first Duke of Ormond, celebrated in the "M'emoires de Grammont"

(written by her brother, Count Anthony Hamilton,) for her beauty and accomplishments. She married Philip, Count de Grammont, by whom she had two daughters; the eldest married Henry Howard, created Earl of Stafford, and the youngest took the veil.-E.

(338) the ancient inheritance of Lord Dacre of the South.-E.

(339) Chaloner Chute, Esq, of the Vine, married Catherine, daughter of Richard, Lord Dacre.-E.

(340) At the date of this letter Mr. Pelham was prime minister.

(341) Evelyn, who visited Penshurst exactly a century before Walpole, gives the Following brief notice of the place:-"July 9, 1652. We went to see Penshurst, the Earl of Leicester's, famous once for its gardens and excellent fruit, and for the n.o.ble conversation which Was wont to meet there, celebrated by that ill.u.s.trious person Sir Philip Sidney, who there composed divers of his pieces. It stands in a park, is finely watered, and was now full of company, on the marriage of my old fellow-collegiate, Mr. Robert Smith, who marries Lady Dorothy Sidney, widow of the Earl of Sunderland."-E.

(342) Lady Dorothy Sidney, daughter of Philip, Earl of Leicester; of whom Waller was the unsuccessful suitor, and to whom he addressed those elegant effusions of poetical gallantry, in which she is celebrated under the name of Sacharissa. Walpole here alludes to the lines written at Penshurst-

"Go, boy, and carve this pa.s.sion on the bark Of yonder tree, which stands the sacred mark Of n.o.ble Sydney's birth; when such benign, Such more than mortal-making stars did shine, That there they cannot but for ever prove The monument and pledge of humble love; His humble love, whose hope shall ne'er rise higher, Than for a pardon that he dares admire."-E.

(343) Hubert Tanguet, who quitted the service of the Elector of Saxony on account of his religion, and attached himself to the Prince of Orange. He died in 1581.-E.

(344) In Harris's History of Kent, he gives from Philpot a list of the constables of Queenborough Castle, p. 376; the last but one of whom, Sir Edward Hobby, is said to have collected all their portraits, of which number most probably were these ten.

(345) Hever Castle was built in the reign of Edward III., by William de Hevre, and subsequently became the property of the Boleyn family. In this castle Henry VIII. pa.s.sed the time of his courtship to the unfortunate Anne Boleyn; whose father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, was Created Earl of wiltshire and Ormond, 1529 and 1538.-E.

(346)Daughter of Sir Robert Rich, and elder sister of Elizabeth Rich, Lady Lyttelton.

(347) A very ancient and magnificent structure, built throughout of stone, at different periods, formerly belonging to the family of Crovequer. In the fifteenth of Edward II.

Sir Thomas de Colepeper, who was castellan of the castle, was hanged on the drawbridge for having refused admittance to Isabel, the Queen-consort, in her progress in performing a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas 'a Becket at Canterbury.

The manor and castle were forfeited to the crown by his attainder, but restored to his son, sir Thomas Colepeper. By his Diary of May 8, 1666, it appears to have been hired by Evelyn for a prison. "Here," he says, "I flowed the dry moat, made a new drawbridge, brought spring-water into the court of the castle to an old fountain, and took order for the repairs."-E.

(348) Mary, d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham, only daughter of Thomas, Lord Fairfax.-E.