The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume II Part 22

(371) "The debate was long and heavy; the Duke of Bedford's performance moderate enough: he divided the House, but it was not told, for there went below the bar with him the Earl of Harcourt, Lord Townshend, the Bishop of Worcester, and Lord Talbot only. Upon the whole, it was the worst judged, the worst executed, and the worst supported point, that I ever saw of so much expectations" Dodington, p. 202.-E.

(372) This insignificant, and indeed ridiculous accusation, against Murray and Stone, is magnified by Walpole, both here and in his Memoire,,,, into an important transaction, in consequence of the hatred he bore to the persons accused,-D.

["The accusation was justly ridiculed by the wits of the day, as a counterpart to the mountain in labour; and the Pelhams had the satisfaction of seeing it terminate in the full exculpation of their friends, the Solicitor-general and Mr. Stone." c.o.xe's Pelham, vol. ii, p. 263.]

(373) On receiving a proof of the tail-piece, which Mr. Bentley had designed for the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, and which represents a village funeral, Gray wrote to Walpole: "I am surprised at the print, which far surpa.s.ses my idea of London graving: the drawing itself was so finished, that I suppose it did not require all the art I imagined to copy it tolerably.

My aunts seeing me open your letter, took it to be a burying- ticket, and asked whether any body had left me a ring; and so they still conceive it to be, even with all their spectacles on. Heaven forbid they should suspect it to belong to any verses of mine! They would burn me for a poet." Works, vol.

iii. p. 105.-E.

161 Letter 74 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, April 16, 1753.

Dear Sir, I know I never give you more pleasure than in recommending such an acquaintance as Mr. Stephens, a young gentleman now in Italy, of whom I have heard from the best hands the greatest and most amiable character. He is brother-in-law of Mr.

West,(374) Mr. Pelham's secretary, and (to you I may add,) as I know it will be an additional motive to increase your attentions to his relation, a particular friend of mine. I beg you will do for my sake, what you always do from your own goodness of heart, make Florence as agreeable to him as possible: I have the strongest reasons to believe that you will want no incitement the moment you begin to know Mr. Stephens.

(374) James West, member for St. Albans, secretary to Mr.

Pelham as chancellor of the exchequer, secretary to the treasury, treasurer to the Royal Society, and member of the Antiquarian Society, married the sister of this Mr. Stephens.

161 Letter 75 To Sir Horace Mann.

Strawberry Hill, April 27, 1753.

I have brought two of your letters. .h.i.ther to answer: in town there are so many idle people besides oneself, that one has not a minute's time; here I have whole evenings, after the labours of the day are ceased. Labours they are, I a.s.sure you; I have carpenters to direct, plasterers to hurry, papermen to scold, and glaziers to help: this last is my greatest pleasure: I have ama.s.sed such quant.i.ties of painted gla.s.s, that every window in my castle will be illuminated with it: the adjusting and disposing it is vast amus.e.m.e.nt. I thank you a thousand times for thinking of procuring me some Gothic remains from Rome; but I believe there is no such thing there: I scarce remember any morsel in the true taste of it in Italy. indeed, my dear Sir, kind as you are about it, I perceive you have no idea what Gothic is; you have lived too long amidst true taste, to understand venerable barbarism. You say, "You suppose my garden is to be Gothic too." That can't be; Gothic is merely architecture; and as one has a satisfaction in imprinting the gloom of abbeys and cathedrals on one's house, so one's garden, on the contrary, is to be nothing but riot, and the gaiety of nature. I am greatly impatient for my altar, and so far from mistrusting its goodness, I only fear it will be too good to expose to the weather, as I intend it must be, in a recess in the garden. I was going to tell you that my house is so monastic, that I have a little hall decked with long saints in lean arched windows, and with taper columns, which we call the Paraclete, in memory of Eloisa's cloister.(375)

I am glad you have got rid of your duel, bloodguiltless: Captain Lee had ill luck in lighting upon a Lorrain officer; he might have boxed the ears of the whole Florentine n.o.bility, (con rispetto si dice,) and not have occasioned you half the trouble you have had in accommodating this quarrel.

You need not distrust Mr. Conway and me for showing any attentions to Prince San Severino,(376) that may convince him of' our regard for you; I only hope he will not arrive till towards winter, for Mr. Conway is gone to his regiment in Ireland, and my chateau is so far from finished, that I am by no means in a condition to harbour a princely amba.s.sador. By next spring I hope to have rusty armour, and arms with quarterings enough to persuade him that I am qualified to be Grand Master of Malta. If you could send me Viviani,(377 with his invisible architects out of the Arabian tales, I might get my house ready at a day's warning; especially as it will not be quite so lofty as the triumphal arch at Florence.

What you say you have heard of strange conspiracies, fomented by our nephew(378) is not entirely groundless. A Dr.

Cameron(379) has been seized in Scotland, who certainly came over with commission to feel the ground. He is brought to London; but n.o.body troubles their head about him, or any thing else, but Newmarket, where the Duke is at present making a campaign, with half the n.o.bility and half the money of England attending him: they really say, that not less than a hundred thousand pounds have been carried thither for the hazard of this single week. The palace has been furnished for him from the great wardrobe, though the chief person(380) concerned flatters himself that his son is at the expense of his own amus.e.m.e.nt there.

I must now tell you how I have been treated by an old friend of yours--don't be frightened, and conclude that this will make against your friend San Severino: he is only a private prince; the rogue in Question is a monarch. Your brother has sent you some weekly papers that are much in fashion, called "The World;" three or four of them are by a friend of yours; one particularly I wrote to promote a subscription for King Theodore, who is in prison for debt. His Majesty's character is so bad, that it only raised fifty pounds; and though that was so much above his desert, it was so much below his expectation, that he sent a solicitor to threaten the printer with a prosecution for having taken so much liberty with his name--take notice too, that he had accepted the money! Dodsley, you may believe, laughed at the lawyer; but that does not lessen the dirty knavery. It would indeed have made an excellent suit! a printer prosecuted suppose for having solicited and obtained charity for a man in prison, and that man not mentioned by his right name, but by a mock t.i.tle, and the man himself not a native of the country!--but I have done with countenancing kings!

Lord Bath has contributed a paper to the World, but seems to have entirely lost all his wit and genius: it is a plain heavy description of Newmarket, with scarce an effort towards humour.(381) I had conceived the greatest expectations from a production of his, especially in the way of the Spectator; but I M now a.s.sured by Franklyn, the old printer of the Craftsman, (who by a comical revolution of things, is a tenant of mine at Twickenham,) that Lord Bath never wrote a Craftsman himself, only gave hints for them--yet great part of his reputation was built on those papers. Next week my Lord chesterfield appears in the World(382)--I expect much less from him than I did from Lord Bath, but it is very certain that his name will make it applauded. Adieu!

P.S. Since I came to town, I hear that my Lord Granville has cut another colt's tooth-in short, they say he is going to be married again; it is to Lady Juliana Collier,(383) a very pretty girl, daughter of Lord Portmore: there are not above two or three and forty years difference in their ages, and not above three bottles difference in @ their drinking in a day, so it is a very suitable match! She will not make so good a Queen as our friend Sophia, but will like better, I suppose, to make a widow. If this should not turn out true,(384) I can't help it.

(375) "Where awful arches make a noonday night, And the dim windows shade a solemn light."-Pope.-E.

(376) Amba.s.sador from the King of Naples.

(377) Viviani, a Florentine n.o.bleman, showing the triumphal arch there to Prince San Severino, a.s.sured him, and insisted upon it, that it was begun and finished in twenty-four hours!

(378) The King of Prussia.

(379) This is a strange story, and it is difficult to believe that the King of Prussia was concerned in it. In his Memoires, Walpole gives the following account of the taking of Dr.

Cameron:--"About this time was taken in Scotland, Dr. Archibald Cameron, a man excepted by the act of indemnity. Intelligence had been received some time before of his intended journey to Britain, with a commission from Prussia to offer arms to the disaffected Highlanders, at the same time that ships were hiring in the north to transport men. The fairness of Dr.

Cameron's character, compared with the severity he met from a government most laudably mild to its enemies, confirmed this report. That Prussia, who opened its inhospitable arms to every British rebel, should have tampered in such a business, was by no means improbable. That King hated his uncle: but could a Protestant potentate dip in designs for restoring a popish government? Of what religion is policy? To what sect is royal revenge bigoted? The Queen-dowager, though sister of our King, was avowedly a Jacobite, by principle so-and it was natural: what Prince, but the single one who profits by the principle, can ever think it allowable to overturn sacred hereditary right? It is the curse of sovereigns that their crimes should be unpunishable."-D.

(380) The King.

(381) No. 17, giving an account of the races and manners at Newmarket.-E.

(382) It forms the 18th number, and is ent.i.tled " A Country Gentleman's Tour to Paris with his family."-E.

(383) Lady Juliana Collier, youngest daughter of Charles, second Earl of Portmore, by Juliana hale, d.u.c.h.ess-dowager of Leeds. She married, in 1759, James Dawkins, Esq. of Standlinch, in Wiltshire.-D.

(384) It did not happen.

164 Letter 76 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, May 5, 1753.

Though my letter bears a country date, I am only a pa.s.senger here, just come to overlook my workmen, and repose myself upon some shavings, after the fatigues of the season. You know b.a.l.l.s and masquerades always abound as the weather be(,Ins to be too hot for them, and this has been quite a spring-tide of diversion. Not that I am so abandoned as to have partaken of all; I neither made the Newmarket campaign under the Duke, nor danced at any ball, nor looked well at any masquerade: I begin to submit to my years, and amuse myself-only just as much as I like. Indeed, when parties and politics are at an end, an Englishman may be allowed not to b always grave and out of humour. His Royal Highness has won as many hearts at Newmarket as he lost in Scotland; he played deep and handsomely; received every body at his table with the greatest good humour, and permitted the familiarities of the place with ease and sense.

There have been b.a.l.l.s at the d.u.c.h.ess of Norfolk's, at Holland-house, and Lord Granville's, and a subscription masquerade: the dresses were not very fine, not much invention, nor any very absurd. I find I am telling you extreme trifles; but you desired me to write; and there literally happens nothing of greater moment. If I can fill out a sheet even in this way, I will; for at Sligo(385) perhaps I may appear a journalist of consequence.

There is a Madame de Mezi'eres arrived from Paris, who has said a thousand impertinent things to my Lady Albemarle, on my lord's not letting her come to Paris.(386) I should not repeat this to you, only to introduce George Selwyn's account of this woman who, he says, is mother to the Princess of Montauban, grandmother to Madame de Brionne, sister to General Oglethorpe, and was laundress to the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth.

Sir Charles Williams, never very happy at panegyric, has made a distich on the Queen of Hungary, which I send you for the curiosity, not the merit of it:

"O regina orbis prima et pulcherrima, ridens Es Venus, incedens Juno, Minerva loquens."

It is infinitely admired at Vienna, but Baron Munchausen has received a translation of it into German in six verses, which are still more applauded.

There is another volume published of Lord Bolinbroke's: it contains his famous Letter to Sir William Windham, with an admirable description of the Pretender and hi Court, and a very poor justification of his own treachery to that party; a flimsy unfinished State of the Nation, written at the end of his life, and the commonplace tautology of an old politician, who lives out of the world and writes from newspapers; and a superficial letter to Mr. Pope, as an introduction to his Essays, which are printed, but not yet published.

What shall I say to you more? You see how I am forced to tack paragraphs together, without any connexion or consequence!

Shall I tell you one more idle story, and will you just recollect that you once concerned yourself enough about the heroine of it, to excuse my repeating such a piece of t.i.ttle-tattle? This heroine is Lady Harrington, the hero is-- not entirely of royal blood; at least I have never heard that Lodomie, the toothdrawer, was in any manner descended from the house of Bourbon. Don't be alarmed: this plebeian operator is not in the catalogue of your successors. How the lady was the aggressor is not known; 'tis only conjectured that French politeness and French interestedness could never have gone such lengths without mighty provocation. The first instance of the toothdrawer's un-gentle behaviour was on hearing it said that Lady Harrington was to have her four girls drawn by Liotard; which was wondered at, as his price is so great--"Oh!" said Lodomie, "chacune paie pour la sienne." Soon after this insult, there was some dispute about payments and toothpowder, and divers messages pa.s.sed. At last the lady wrote a card, to say she did not understand such impertinent answers being given to her chairman by an arracheur de dents. The angry little gentleman, with as much intrepidity as if he had drawn out all her teeth, tore the card in five slits, and returned it with this astonishing sentence, "I return you your impertinent card, and desire you will pay me what you owe me." All I know more is, that the toothdrawer still lives; and so do many lords and gentlemen, formerly thought the slaves of the offended fair one's will and pa.s.sions, and among others, to his great shame, your sincere friend.

(385) Mr. Conway was then with his regiment quartered at Sligo in Ireland.

(386) Lord Albemarle was then amba.s.sador at Paris.

165 Letter 77 To George Montagu, Esq.

Strawberry Hill, May 22, 1753.

You may very possibly be set out for Greatworth, but what house Greatworth is, or whose, or how you came to have it, is all a profound secret to us: your transitions arc so Pindaric, that, without notes, we do not understand them, especially as neither Mr. Bentley nor I have seen any of the letters, which I suppose you have written to your family in the intervals of your journeyings from Sir Jonathan Cope's(387) to Roel, and from Roel to Greatworth. Mr. Bentley was just ready to send you down a packet of Gothic, and brick and mortar, and arched windows, and taper columns to be erected at Roel--no such matter, you have met with some brave chambers belonging to Sir Jonathan somebody in Northamptonshire, and are unloading your camels and caravan,.;, and pitching your tents among your own tribe. I cannot be quite sorry, for I shall certainly visit you at Greatworth, and it might have been some years before the curtain had drawn up at Roel. We emerge very fast out of shavings, and hammerings, and pastings; the painted gla.s.s is full-blown in every window, and the gorgeous saints, that were brought out for one day on the festival of Saint George Montagu, are fixed for ever in the tabernacles they are to inhabit.- The castle is not the only beauty: and to-day we had a glimpse of the sun as he pa.s.sed by, though I am convinced the summer is over; for these two last years we have been forced to compound for five hot days in the pound.

News there is none to tell you. We had two days in the House of Commons, that had something of the air of Parliament; there has been a Marriage-bill, invented by my Lord Bath, and cooked up by the Chancellor, which was warmly opposed by the Duke of Bedford in the Lords, and with us by Fox and Nugent: the latter made an admirable speech last week against it, and Charles Townshend,(388) another very good one yesterday, when we sat till near ten o'clock, but were beat, we minority, by 165 to 84.

I know nothing else but elopements: I have lost my man Henry, who is run away for debt; and my Lord Bath his only son. who is run away from thirty thousand pounds a-year, which in all probability would have come to him in six months. There had been some great fracas about his marriage; the stories are various on the Why; some say his father told Miss Nichols that his son was a very worthless young man; others, that the Earl could not bring himself to make tolerable settlements; and a third party say, that the Countess has blown up a quarrel in order to have his son in her power, and at her mercy. Whatever the cause was, this ingenious young man, who You know has made my Lady Townshend his everlasting enemy, by repeating her histories of Miss Chudleigh to that Miss, of all counsellors in the world, picked out my Lady Townshend to consult on his domestic grievances: she, with all the good-nature and charity imaginable, immediately advised him to be disinherited. He took her advice, left two dutiful letters for his parents, to notify 'his disobedience, and went off last Friday night to France. The Earl is so angry, that he could almost bring himself to give Mr. Newport, and twenty other people, their estates again. Good night--here is the Goth, Mr. Bentley, wants to say a word to you.