The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume II Part 24

Before I finish, I must describe to you the manner in which I overtook Monsieur le Duc de Mirepoix t'other day, who lives at Lord Dunkeron's house at Turnham-green. It was seven o'clock in the evening of one of the hottest and most dusty days of this summer. He was walking slowly in the beau milieu of Brentford town, without any company, but with a brown lap-dog with long ears, two pointers, two pages, three footmen, and a vis-a-vis following him. By the best accounts I can get, he must have been to survey the ground of the battle of Brentford, which I hear he has much studied, and harangues upon.

Adieu! I enclose a World' to you, which, by a story I shall tell you, I find is called mine. I met Mrs. Clive two nights ago, and told her I had been in the meadows, but would walk no more there, for there was all the world. "Well," says she, "and don't you like the World!(404) I hear it was very clever last Thursday." All I know is, that you will meet with some of your acquaintance there. Good night, with my compliments to Miss Montagu.

(401) The Rev. Sir William Bunbury, father of Sir Charles, and of Henry, the celebrated caricaturist.-E.

(402) Lord Ashburnham succeeded Lord Pomfret as ranger of St.

James's and Hyde Parks.

(403) Member for Higham Ferrers.

(404) No. 28, ent.i.tled " Old women most proper objects for love." Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter to her daughter, says, "Send me no translations, no periodical papers; though I confess some of The World' entertained me very much, particularly Lord Chesterfield and Horry Walpole; but whenever I met Dodsley, I wished him out of the World with all my heart.

The t.i.tle was a very lucky one, being, as you see, productive of puns world without end; which is all the species of wit some people can either practise or understand."-E.

174 Letter 82 To Sir Horace Mann.

Strawberry Hill, July 21, 1753.

Though I have long had a letter of yours unanswered, yet I verily think it would have remained so a little longer, if the pretty altar-tomb which you have sent me had not roused my Grat.i.tude. It arrived here--I mean the tomb, not my grat.i.tude--yesterday, and this morning churchyarded itself in the corner of my wood, where I hope it will remain till some future virtuoso shall dig it up, and publish 'it in " A Collection of Roman Antiquities in Britain. It is the very thing I wanted: how could you, my dear Sir, take such exact measure of my idea? By the way, you have never told me the price; don't neglect it, that I nay pay your brother.

I told you how ill disposed I was to write to you, and you must know without my telling you that the only reason of that could be my not knowing a t.i.ttle worth mentioning; nay, not a t.i.ttle, worth or not. All England is gone over all England electioneering: the spirit is as great now they are all on one side, as when parties ran the highest. You judge how little I trouble myself about all this; especially when the question is not who shall be in the ministry, only who shall be in the House.

I am almost inclined not to say a word to your last letter, because if I begin to answer it, it must be by scolding you for making SO serious an affair of leaving off snuff; one would think you was to quit a vice, not a trick. Consider, child, you are in Italy, not in England: here you would be very fashionable by having so many nerves, and you might have doctors and waters for every One Of them, from Dr. Mead to Dr.

Thompson, and from Bath to the iron pear-tree water. I should sooner have expected to hear that good Dr. Cocchi(405) was in the Inquisition than in prescribing to a snuff-twitter-nerve-fever! You say people tell you that leaving off snuff all at once may be attended with bad consequences--I can't conceive what bad consequences, but to the snuff-shop, who, I conclude by your lamentations, must have sold you tolerable quant.i.ties; and I know what effects any diversion of money has upon the tobacco-trade in Tuscany. I forget how much it was that the duty sank at Florence in a fortnight after the erection of the first lottery, by the poor people abridging themselves of snuff to buy tickets; but I think I have said enough, considering I don't intend to scold.

Thank you for your civilities to Mr. Stephens; not at all for those to Mr. Perry,(406) who has availed himself of the partiality which he found you had for me, and pa.s.sed Upon you for my friend. I never spoke one word to him in my life, but when he went out of his own dressing-room at Penshurst that Mr.

Chute and I might see it, and then I said, "Sir, I hope we don't disturb you;" he grunted something, and walked away--la belle amiti'e!--yet, my dear child, I thank you, who receive bad money when it is called My coin. I Wish YOU had liked my Lady Rochford's beauty more: I intended it should return well preserved: I grow old enough to be piqued for the charms of my contemporaries.

Lord Pomfret(407) is dead, not a thousand pound in debt. The Countess has two thousand a-year rent-charge for jointure, five hundred as lady of the bedchamber to the late Queen, and fourteen thousand pounds in money, in her own power, just recovered by a lawsuit-what a fund for follies! The new Earl has about two thousand four hundred pounds a-year in present but deep debts and post-obits. He has not put on mourning, but robes; that is, in the middle of this very hot summer, he has produced himself in a suit of crimson velvet, that he may be sure of not being mistaken for being in weepers. There are rents worth ten thousand pounds left to little Lady Sophia Carteret,(408) and the whole personal estate between the two unmarried daughters;(409) so the seat(410) must be stripped.

There are a few fine small pictures, and one(411) very curious One of Henry VII. and his Queen, with Cardinal Morton, and, I think, the Abbot of Westminster. Strawberry casts a Gothic eye upon this, but I fear it will pa.s.s our revenues. The statues,(412) which were part of the Arundel collection, are famous, but few good. The Cicero is fine and celebrated: the Marius I think still finer. The rest are Scipios, Cincinnatus's and the Lord knows who, which have lost more of their little value than of their false pretensions by living out of doors; and there is a green-house full of colossal fragments. Adieu! Have you received the description and portrait of my castle?

(405) he was a very free thinker, and suspected by the Inquisition.

(406) He married one of the coheiresses of the Sidneys, Earls of Leicester.

(407) Thomas Fermor, first Earl of Pomfret, so created in 1721.

He had ben master of the horse to Queen Caroline, and ranger of St. James's Park-D.

(408) Daughter of John, Earl of Granville, by his second wife, eldest daughter of Thomas Fermor, Earl of Pomfret. (Afterwards married to William Petty, Earl of Shelburne and Marquis of Lansdowne.-D.)

(409) Lady Louisa and Lady Anne; the latter was afterwards married to Mr. Dawson.

(410) Easton Neston, in Northamptonshire.

(411) It is the marriage of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York.

The two other figures are probably St. Thomas and the Bishop of linola, the Pope's nuncio, who p.r.o.nounced the nuptial benediction. This curious picture was purchased by Lady Pomfret for two hundred pounds. The Earl of Oxford offered her five hundred pounds for it: Mr. Walpole bought it at Lord Pomfret's sale for eighty-four guineas, and it is now at Strawberry Hill.

(412) Lady Pomfret bought the statues, after her lord's death, and presented them to the University of Oxford.

176 Letter 83 To John Chute, Esq.

Stowe, Aug. 4, 1753

My dear Sir, You would deserve to be scolded, if you had not lost almost as much pleasure as you have disappointed me of.(413) Whether George Montagu will be so content With your commuting punishments, I don't know: I should think not; he "cried and roared all night"(414) when I delivered your excuse. He is extremely well-housed, after having roamed like a Tartar about the country with his whole personal estate at his heels. .

There is an extensive view, which is called pretty: but Northamptonshire is no county to please me. What entertained me was, that he who in London -,vas grown an absolute recluse, is over head and ears in neighbours, and as popular as if he intended to stand for the county, instead of having given up the town. The very first morning after my arrival, as we were getting into the chaise to go to Wroxton, they notified a Sir Harry Danvers, a young squire, booted and spurred, and buckskin-breeche'd. "Will you drink any chocolate?" "No; a little wine and water, if you please."--I suspected nothing but that he had rode till he was dry. "Nicol'o, some wine and water." He desired the water might be warm--I began to stare; Montagu understood the dialect, and ordered a negus. I had great difficulty to keep my countenance, and still more when I saw the baronet finish a very large jug indeed. To be sure, he wondered as much at me e who did not finish a jug; and I could not help reflecting, that living always in the world makes one as unfit for living out of it, as always living out of it does for living in it. Knightley, the knight of the shire, has been entertaining all the parishes round with a turtle-feast, which, so far from succeeding, has almost made him suspected for a Jeu,, as the country parsons have not yet learned to wade into green fat.

The roads are very bad to Greatworth; and such numbers of gates, that if one loved punning one should call it the Gate-house. - The proprietor had a wonderful invention: the chimneys, which are of stone, have niches and benches in them, where the man used to sit and smoke. I had twenty disasters, according to custom; lost my way, and had my French boy almost killed by a fall with his horse: but I have been much pleased.

When I was at Park-place I went to see Sir H.

Englefield's,(415) which Mr. Churchill and Lady Mary prefer, but I think very undeservedly, to Mr. Southcote's. It is not above a quarter as extensive, and wants the river. There is a pretty view of Reading seen under a rude arch, and the water is well disposed. The buildings are very insignificant, and the house far from good. The town of Henley has been extremely disturbed with an engagement between the ghosts of Miss Blandy and her father, which continued so violent, that some bold persons, to prevent farther blood-shed, broke in, and found it was two jacka.s.ses which had got into the kitchen.

I felt strangely tempted to stay at Oxford and survey it at my leisure; but as I was alone, I had not courage. I pa.s.sed by Sir James Dashwood'S,(416) a vast new house, situated so high that it seems to stand for the county as well as himself. I did look over Lord Jersey's(417) which was built for a hunting-box, and is still little better. But now I am going to tell you how delightful a day I pa.s.sed at Wroxton. Lord Guildford has made George Montagu so absolutely viceroy over it, that we saw it more agreeable than you can conceive; roamed over the whole house, found every door open, saw not a creature, had an extreme good dinner, wine, fruit, coffee and tea in the library, were served by fairies, tumbled over the books, said one or two talismanic words, and the cascade played, and went home loaded with pine-apples and flowers.--You will take me for Monsieur de CoulangeS,(418) I describe eatables so feelingly; but the manner in which we were served made the whole delicious. The house was built by a Lord Downe in the reign of James the First; and though there is a fine hall and a vast dining-room below, and as large a drawing-room above, it is neither good nor agreeable; one end of the front was never finished, and might have a good apartment. The library is added by this Lord, and is a pleasant chamber.

Except loads of portraits, there is no tolerable furniture. A whole-length of the first Earl of Downe is in the Bath-robes, and has a coif under the hat and feather. There is a charming picture of Prince Henry about twelve years old, drawing his sword to kill a stag, with a Lord Harrington; a good portrait of Sir Owen Hopton,(419) 1390; your pious grandmother, my Lady Dacre, which I think like you; some good Cornelius Johnsons; a Lord North, by Riley, good; and an extreme fine portrait by him of the Lord Keeper: I have never seen but few of the hand, but most of them have been equal to Lely and the best of Sir G.o.dfrey. There is too a curious portrait of Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity College, Oxford, said to be by Holbein.

The chapel is new, but in a pretty Gothic taste, with a very long window of painted gla.s.s, very tolerable. The frieze is pendent, just in the manner I propose for the eating-room at Strawberry Hill. Except one scene, which is indeed n.o.ble, I cannot much commend the without-doors. This scene consists of a beautiful lake entirely shut in with wood: the head falls into a fine cascade, and that into a serpentine river, over which is a little Gothic seat like a round temple, lifted up by a s.h.a.ggy mount. On an eminence in the park is an obelisk erected to the honour and at the expense of "optimus" and 1, munificentissimus" the late Prince of Wales, "in loci amoenitatem et memoriam advent'us ejus." There are several paltry Chinese buildings and bridges, which have the merit or demerit of being the progenitors of a very numerous race all over the kingdom: at least they were of the very first. In the church is a beautiful tomb of an Earl and Countess of Downe, and the tower is in a good plain Gothic style, ind was once, they tell you, still more beautiful; but Mr. Miller, who designed it, unluckily once in his life happened to think rather of beauty than of the water-tables, and so it fell down the first winter.

On Wednesday morning we went to see a sweet little chapel at Steane, built in 1620 by Sir Thomas Crewe, Speaker in the time of the first James and Charles. Here are remains of the mansion-house, but quite in ruins: the chapel is kept up by my Lord Arran, the last of the race. There are seven or eight monuments. On one is this epitaph, which I thought pretty enough:

"Conjux, casta parens felix, matrona pudica; Sara viro, mundo Martha, Maria Deo."

On another is the most affected inscription I ever saw, written by two brothers on their sister: they say, "This agreeable mortal translated her into immortality such a day:" but I could not help laughing at one quaint expression, to which time has given a droll sense: "She was a constant lover of the best."

I have been here these two days, extremely amused and charmed indeed. Wherever you stand you see an Albano landscape. Half as many buildings I believe would be too many, but such a profusion gives inexpressible richness. You may imagine I have some private reflections entertaining enough, not very communicable to the company: the Temple of Friendship, in which, among twenty memorandums of quarrels, is the bust of Mr.

Pitt: Mr. James Grenville is now in the house, whom his uncle disinherited for his attachment to that very Pylades, Mr. Pitt.

He broke with Mr. Pope, who is deified in the Elysian fields, before the inscription for his head was finished. That of Sir John Barnard, which was bespoke by the name of a bust of my Lord Mayor, was by a mistake of the sculptor done for Alderman Perry. The statue of the King, and that "honori, laudi, virtuti divae Carolinae," make one smile, when one sees the ceiling where Britannia rejects and hides the reign of King * *

* * But I have no patience at building and planting a satire!

Such is the temple of modern virtue in ruins! The Grecian temple is glorious: this I openly worship: in the heretical corner of my heart I adore the Gothic building, which by some unusual inspiration Gibbs had made pure and beautiful and venerable. The style has a propensity to the Venetian or mosque Gothic, and the great column near it makes the whole put one in mind of the Place of St. Mark. The windows are throughout consecrated with painted gla.s.s; most of it from the priory at Warwick, a present from that foolish Greathead, who quarrelled with me (because his father was a gardener) for asking him if Lord Brook had planted much--Apropos to painted gla.s.s. I forgot to tell you of a sweet house which Mr. Montagu carried me to see, belonging to a Mr. Holman, a Catholic, and called Warkworth. The situation is pretty, the front charming, composed of two round and two square towers. The court within is incomplete on one side; but above stairs is a vast gallery with four bow-windows and twelve other large ones, all filled with the arms of the old peers of England, with all their quarterings entire. You don't deserve, after deserting me, that I should tempt you to such a sight; but this alone is worth while to carry you to Greatworth.

Adieu, my dear Sir! I return to Strawberry to-morrow, and forgive you enough not to deprive myself of the satisfaction of seeing you there whenever you have nothing else to do.

(413) In not accompanying Mr. Walpole on a visit to Mr. George Montagu at Greatworth.

(414) A phrase of Mr. Montagu's.

(415) Whiteknights.

(416) At High Wycombe.

(417) Middleton.

(418) The cousin and friend of Madame de S'evign'e, and frequently mentioned in her letters.-E.

(419) Lieutenant of the Tower. His daughter was the wife of the first Earl of Downe.-E.

179 Letter 84 To George Montagu, Esq.

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 16, 1753.