The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume II Part 25

Don't you suspect, that I have not only forgot the pleasure I had at Greatworth and Wroxton,(420) but the commissions you gave me too? It looks a little ungrateful not to have vented a word of thanks; but I stayed to write till I could send you the things, and when I had them, I stayed to send them by Mr.

Chute, who tells you by to-night's post when he will bring them. The b.u.t.ter-plate is not exactly what You ordered, but I flatter myself you will like it as well. There are a few seeds; more shall follow at the end of the autumn. Besides Tom Harvey's letter, I have sent you maps of Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, having felt the want of them when I was with you. I found the road to Stowe above twelve miles, very bad, and it took me up two hours and a half: but the formidable idea I conceived of the breakfast and way of life there by no means answered. You was a prophet; it was very agreeable. I am ashamed to tell you that I laughed half an hour yesterday at the sudden death of your new friend Sir Harry Danvers,(421) "after a morning's airing," the news call it; I suspect it was after a negus. I found my garden brown and bare, but these rains have recovered the green. You may get your pond ready as soon as you please; the gold fish swarm: Mr. Bentley carried a dozen to town t'other day in a decanter. You would be entertained with our fishing; instead of nets, and rods and lines, and worms, we use nothing but a pail and a basin and a tea-strainer, which I persuade my neighbours is the Chinese method. Adieu! My best compliments to Miss Montagu.

P. S. Since writing my letter, I have received your twin dispatches. I am extremely sensible of the honour my Lord Guildford does me, and beg you to transmit my grat.i.tude to him: if he is ever at Wroxton when I visit Greatworth, I shall certainly wait upon him, and think myself happy in seeing that charming place again. As soon as I go to town, I shall send for Moreland, and barbour your wardrobe with great pleasure. I find I must beg your pardon for laughing in the former part of my letter about your baronet's death; but his "wine and water a little warm" had left such a ridiculous effect upon me, that even his death could not efface it. Good night! Mr. Miller told me at Stowe, that the chimney-piece (I think from Steane) was he believed at Banbury, but he did not know exactly. If it lies in your way to inquire, on so vague a direction, will you?

Mr. Chute may bring me a sketch of it.

(420) The seat of Lord Guilford.

(421) Of Culworth, in Oxfordshire. He died at the age of twenty-two.-E.

180 Letter 85 To Richard Bentley, Esq.

Arlington Street, September, 1753.

My dear Sir, I am going to send you another volume of my travels; I don't know whether I shall not, at last, write a new Camden's Britannia; but lest you should be afraid of my itinerary, I will at least promise you that it shall not be quite so dry as most surveys, which contain nothing but lists of impropriations and glebes, and carucates, and transcripts out of Domesday, and tell one nothing that is entertaining, describe no houses nor parks, mention no curious pictures, but are fully satisfied if they inform you that they believe that some nameless old tomb belonged to a knight-templar, or one of the crusado, because he lies cross-legged. Another promise I will make you is, that my love of abbeys shall not make me hate the Reformation till that makes me grow a Jacobite, like the rest of my antiquarian predecessors; of whom, Dart in particular wrote Billingsgate against Cromwell and the regicides: and Sir Robert Atkins concludes his summary of the Stuarts with saying, "that it is no reason, because they have been so, that this family should always continue unfortunate."

I have made my visit at Hagley,(422) as I intended. On my way I dined at Park-place, and lay at Oxford. As I was quite alone, I did not care to see any thing; but as soon as it was dark I ventured out, and the moon rose as I was wandering among the colleges, and gave me a charming venerable Gothic scene, which was not lessened by the monkish appearance of the old fellows stealing to their pleasures. Birmingham is large, and swarms with people and trade, but did not answer my expectation from any beauty in it: yet, new as it is, I perceived how far I was got back from the London hegira; for every alehouse is here written mug-house, a name one has not heard of since the riots in the late King's time.

As I got into Worcestershire, I opened upon a landscape of country which I prefer even to Kent, which I had reckoned the most beautiful county in England: but this, with all the richness of Kent, is bounded with mountains. Sir George Lyttelton's house is immeasurably bad and old; one room at the top of the house, which was reckoned a conceit in those days, projects a vast way into the air. There are two or three curious pictures, and some of them extremely agreeable to me for their relation to Grammont: there is le s'erieux Lyttelton,(423) but too old for the date of that book; Mademoiselle Stuart,(424) Lord Brounker, and Lady Southesk;(425) besides, a portrait of Lord Clifford the treasurer(426) with his staff, but drawn in armour (though no soldier) out of flattery to Charles the Second, as he said the most glorious part of his life was attending the King at the battle of Worcester. He might have said, that it was as glorious as any part of his Majesty's life. You might draw, but I can't describe, the enchanting scenes of the park: it is a hill of three miles, but broke into all manner of beauty; such lawns, such wood, rills, cascades, and a thickness of verdure quite to the summit of the hill, and commanding such a vale of towns, and meadows, and woods extending quite to the Black Mountain in Wales, that I quite forgot my favourite Thames! Indeed, I prefer nothing to Hagley but Mount Edgecombe.

There is extreme taste in the park - the seats are not the best, but there is not one absurdity. There is a ruined castle, built by Miller, that would get him his freedom even of Strawberry: it has the true rust of the barons' wars. Then there is a scene of a small lake, with cascades falling down such a Parna.s.sus 1 with a circular temple on the distant eminence; and there is such a fairy dale, with more cascades gushing out of rocks! and there- is a hermitage, so exactly like those in Sadeler's prints, on the brow of a shady mountain, stealing peeps into the glorious world below; and there is such a pretty well under a wood, like the Samaritan woman's in a picture of Nicol'o Poussin! and there is such a wood without the park, enjoying such a prospect! and there is such a mountain on t'other side of the park commanding all prospects, that I wore out my eyes with gazing, my feet with climbing, and my tongue and my vocabulary with commending! The best notion I can give you of the satisfaction I showed, was, that Sir George proposed to carry me to dine with my Lord Foley; and when I showed reluctance, he said, "Why, I thought you did not mind any strangers, if you were to see any thing!"

Think of my not minding strangers! I mind them so much, that I missed seeing Hartlebury Castle, and the Bishop of Worcester's chapel of painted gla.s.s there, because it was his public day when I pa.s.sed by his park.-Miller has built a Gothic house in the village at Hagley for a relation of Sir George: but there he is not more than Miller; in his castle he is almost Bentley.

There is a genteel tomb in the church to Sir George's first wife,(427) with a Cupid and a pretty urn in the Roman style.

You will be diverted with my distresses at Worcester. I set out boldly to walk down the high-street to the cathedral: I found it much more peopled than I intended, and, when I was quite embarked, discovered myself up to the ears in a contested election. A new candidate had arrived the night before, and turned all their heads. Nothing comforted me, but that the opposition is to Mr. Trevis; and I purchased my pa.s.sage very willingly with crying "No Trevis! No Jews!" However, the inn where I lay was Jerusalem itself, the very head-quarters where Trevis the Pharisee was expected; and I had scarce got into my room, before the victorious mob of his enemy, who had routed his advanced guard, broke open the gates of our inn, and almost murdered the ostler-and then carried him off to prison for being murdered. The cathedral is pretty, and has several tombs, and cl.u.s.ters of light pillars of Derbyshire marble, lately cleaned. Gothicism and the restoration of that architecture, and not of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d breed, spreads extremely in this part of the world. Prince Arthur's tomb, from whence we took the paper for the hall and staircase, to my great surprise. is on a less scale than the paper, and is not of bra.s.s but stone, and that wretchedly whitewashed. The niches are very small, and the long slips in the middle are divided every now and then with the trefoil. There is a fine tomb for Bishop Hough, in the Westminster Abbey style; but the obelisk at the back is not loaded with a globe and a human figure, like Mr. Kent's design for Sir Isatc Newton; an absurdity which nothing but himself could surpa.s.s, when he placed three busts at the foot of an altar-and, not content with that, placed them at the very angles--where they have as little to do as they have with Shakspeare.

>From Worcester I went to see Malvern Abbey. It is situated half way up an immense mountain of that name: the mountain is very long, in shape like the prints of a whale's back: towards the larger end lies the town. Nothing remains but a beautiful gateway and a church, which is very large: every window has been glutted with painted gla.s.s, of which much remains, but it did not answer; blue and red there is in abundance, and good faces; but the portraits are so high, I could not distinguish them. Besides, the woman who showed me the church would pester me with Christ and King David, when I was hunting for John of Gaunt and King Edward. The greatest curiosity, at least what I had never seen before, was, the whole floor and far up the sides of the church has been, if I may call it so, wainscoted with red and yellow tiles, extremely polished, and diversified with coats of arms, and inscriptions, and mosaic. I have since found the same at Gloucester, and have even been so fortunate as to purchase from the s.e.xton about a dozen, which think what an acquisition for Strawberry! They are made of the natural earth of the country, which is a rich red clay, that produces every thing. All the lanes are full of all kind of trees, and enriched with large old apple-trees, that hang over from one hedge to another. Worcester city is large and pretty.

Gloucester city is still better situated, but worse built, and not near so large. About a mile from Worcester you break upon a sweet view of the Severn. A little farther on the banks is Mr. Lechmere's house; but he has given strict charge to a troop of willows never to let him see the river: to his right hand extends the fairest meadow covered with cattle that ever you saw - at the end of it is the town of Upton, with a church half ruined and a bridge of six arches, which I believe with little trouble he might see from his garden.

The vale increases in riches to Gloucester. I stayed two days at George Selwyn's house called Matson, which lies on Robin Hood's Hill: it is lofty enough for an Alp, yet is a mountain of turf to the very top, has wood scattered all over it, springs that long to be cascades in twenty places of it: and from the summit it beats even Sir George Lyttelton's views, by having the city of Gloucester at its foot, and the Severn widening to the horizon. His house is small, but neat. King Charles lay here at the siege; and the Duke of York, with typical fury, hacked and hewed the window-shutters of his chamber, as a memorandum of his being there. Here is a good picture, of Dudley Earl of Leicester in his latter age, which he gave to Sir Francis Walsingham, at whose house in Kent it remained till removed hither; and what makes it very curious, is, his age marked on it, fifty-four in 1572. I had never been able to discover before in what year he was born. And here is the very flower-pot and counterfeit a.s.sociation, for which Bishop Sprat was taken up, and the Duke of Marlborough sent to the tower. The reservoirs on the hill supply the city. The late Mr. Selwyn governed the borough by them-and I believe by some wine too. The Bishop's house is pretty, and restored to the Gothic by the late Bishop. Price has painted a large chapel-window for him, which is scarce inferior for colours, and is a much better picture than any of the old gla.s.s. The eating-room is handsome. As I am a Protestant Goth, I was glad to worship Bishop Hooper's room, from whence he was led to the stake: but I could almost have been a Hun, and set fire to the front of the house, which is a small pert portico, like the conveniences at the end of a London garden. The outside of the cathedral is beautifully light; the pillars in the nave outrageously plump and heavy. There is a tomb of one Abraham Blackleach, a great curiosity; for, though the figures of him and his wife are c.u.mbent, they are very graceful, designed by Vandyck, and well executed. Kent designed the screen; but knew no more there than he did any where else how to enter into the true Gothic taste. Sir Christopher Wren, who built the tower of the great gateway at Christ Church, has catched the graces of it as happily as you could do: there is particularly a niche between two compartments of' a window, that is a masterpiece.

But here is a modernity, which beats all antiquities for curiosity: just by the high altar is a small pew hung with green damask, with curtains of the same; a small corner cupboard, painted, carved, and gilt, for books, in one corner, and two troughs of a bird-cage, with seeds and water. If any mayoress on earth was small enough to enclose herself in this tabernacle, or abstemious enough to feed on rape and canary, I should have sworn that it was the shrine of the queen of the aldermen. It belongs to a Mrs. Cotton, who, having lost a favourite daughter, is convinced her soul is transmigrated into a robin-redbreast; for which reason she pa.s.ses her life in making an aviary of the cathedral of Gloucester. The chapter indulge this whim, as she contributes abundantly to glaze, whitewash, and ornament the church.

King Edward the Second's tomb is very light and in good repair.

The old wooden figure of Robert, the Conqueror's unfortunate eldest son, is extremely genteel, and, though it may not be so ancient as his death, is in a taste very superior to any thing of much later ages. Our Lady's Chapel has a bold kind of portal, and several ceilings of chapels, and tribunes in a beautiful taste: but of all delight, is what they call the abbot's cloister. It is the very thing that you would build, when you had extracted all the quintessence of trefoils, arches, and lightness. In the church is a star-window of eight points, that is prettier than our rose-windows.

A little way from the town are the ruins of Lantony Priory: there remains a pretty old gateway, which G. Selwyn has begged, to erect on the top of his mountain, and it will have a charming effect.

At Burford I saw the house of Mr. Lenthal the descendant of the Speaker. The front is good and a chapel connected by two or three arches, which let the garden appear through, has a pretty effect; but the inside of the mansion is bad and ill-furnished.

Except a famous picture of Sir Thomas More's family, the portraits are rubbish, though celebrated. I am told that the Speaker, who really had a fine collection, made his peace by presenting them to Cornbury, where they were well known, till the Duke of Marlborough bought that seat.

I can't go and describe so known a place as Oxford, which I saw pretty well on my return. The whole air of the town charms me; and what remains of the true Gothic un-Gibbs'd, and the profusion of painted gla.s.s, were entertainment enough to me.

In the picture-gallery are quant.i.ties of portraits; but in general they are not only not so much as copies, but proxies-so totally unlike they arc to the persons they pretend to represent. All I will tell you more of Oxford is, that Fashion has so far prevailed over her collegiate sister, Custom, that they have altered the hour of dinner from twelve to one. Does not it put one in mind of reformations in religion? One don't abolish Mahommedism; one only brings it back to where the impostor himself left it. I think it is at the South-Sea-house, where they have been forced to alter the hour of payment, instead of from ten to twelve, to from twelve to two; so much do even moneyed citizens sail with the current of idleness!

Was not I talking of religious sects? Methodism is quite decayed in Oxford, its cradle. In its stead, there prevails a delightful fantastic system, called the sect of the Hutchinsonians,(429) of whom one seldom hears any thing in town. After much inquiry, all I can discover is, that their religion consists in driving Hebrew to its fountain-head, till they find some word or other in every text of the Old Testament, which may seem figurative of something in the New, or at least of something, that may happen G.o.d knows when, in consequence of the New. As their doctrine is novel, and requires much study, or at least much invention, one should think that they could not have settled half the canon of what they are to believe-and yet they go on zealously, trying to make and succeeding in making converts.(429) I could not help smiling at the thoughts of etymological salvation; and I am sure you will smile when I tell you, that according to their gravest doctors, "Soap Is an excellent type of Jesus Christ, and the York-buildings waterworks of the Trinity."--I don't know whether this is not as entertaining as the pa.s.sion of the Moravians for the "little side-hole!" Adieu, my dear sir!

(422) The seat of Sir George, afterwards Lord Lyttelton.-E.

(423) Sir Charles Lyttelton, distinguished in the M'emoires de Grammont as "le s'erieux Lyttelton." He died in 1716, at the age of eighty-six.-E.

(424) The beautiful Frances Stuart, who married Esme, Duke of Richmond; which greatly displeased Charles the Second, who was in love with her.

(425) Anne, daughter of William, second Duke of Hamilton, and wife of Robert, third Earl of Southesk.-E.

(426) Sir Thomas Clifford, created Lord Clifford of Chudleigh.

He was one of "The Cabal."-E.

(427) Lucy, daughter of Hugh Fortescue, Esq. of Filleigh; upon whose death, in 1746-7, Lord Lyttelton wrote his Celebrated monody.-E.

(428) John Hutchinson, the founder of this sect, was born in 1674, and died in 1737, leaving a number of works on the Hebrew language, which were collected in 1748, in twelve volumes octavo. He imagined all knowledge to be contained in the Hebrew Scriptures, and, rejecting the points, he gave a fanciful meaning to every one of the Hebrew letters. He possessed great mechanical skill, and invented a chronometer for the discovery of the longitude, which was much approved by Sir Isaac Newton.-E.

(429) Among his followers were the amiable Dr. Horne, Bishop of Norwich, who published an "Abstract" of his writings, and Parkhurst, the author of the Hebrew Lexicon.-E.

186 Letter 86 To Sir Horace Mann.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 6, 1753.

I fear the letter of July 21st, which you tell me you have received, was the last I wrote. I will make no more excuses for my silence; I think they take up half my letters. The time of year must be full excuse; and this autumn is so dead a time, that people even don't die.

You have puzzled me extremely by a paragraph in yours about one Wilton, a sculptor, who, you say, is mentioned with encomiums one of the Worlds:(430) I recollected no such thing. The first parcel your brother sends you shall convey the other numbers of that paper, and I will mark all the names I know of the authors: there are several, and of our first writers;(431) but in general you will not find that the paper answers the idea you have entertained of it.

I grieve for my Florentine friends, and for the doubling of their yoke: the Count has shown great art. I am totally ignorant, not to say indifferent, about the Modenese treaty;(432) indeed, I have none of that spirit which was formerly so much objected to some of my family, the love of negotiations during a settled peace. Treaties within treaties are very dull businesses: contracts of marriage between baby-princes and miss-princesses give me no curiosity. If I had not seen it in the papers, I should never have known that Master Tommy the Archduke was playing at marrying Miss Modena.

I am as sick of the hide-and-seek at which all Europe has been playing about a King of the Romans! Forgive me, my dear child, you who are a minister, for holding your important affairs so cheap. I amuse myself with Gothic and painted gla.s.s, and am as grave about my own trifles as I could be at Ratisbon. I shall tell you one or two events within my own very small sphere, and you must call them a letter. I believe I mentioned having made a kind of armoury: my upper servant, who is full as dull as his predecessor, whom you knew, Tom Barney, has had his head so filled with arms, that the other day, when a man brought home an old chimney-back, which I had bought for having belonged to Harry VII, he came running in, and said, "Sir, Sir! here is a man has brought some more armour!"

Last week, when I was in town, I went to pay a bill to the glazier who fixed up the painted gla.s.s: I said, "Mr. Palmer, you charge me seven shillings a-day for your man's work: I know you give him but two shillings; and I am told that it is impossible for him to earn seven shillings a-day."--"Why no, Sir," replied be, "it is not that; but one must pay house-rent, and one must eat, and one must wear." I looked at him, and he had on a blue silk waistcoat with an extremely broad gold lace.

I could not help smiling. I turned round, and saw his own portrait, and his wife's, and his son's. "And I see," said I, "one must sit for one's picture; I am very sorry that I am to contribute for all you must do!" Adieu! I gave you warning that I had nothing to say.

(430) Mr. Mann mistook; I think it was in a paper called "The Adventurer."

(431) Lord Chesterfield, Lord Bath, Mr. W. Whithed, Sir Charles Williams, Mr. Soame Jennings, Mr. Cambridge, Mr. Coventry, etc.

(432) It was between the Empress-Queen and the Duke of Modena, for settling the duchy of Milan on one of the little Archdukes, on his marrying the Duke's granddaughter, and in the mean time the Duke was made administrator of Milan.

187 Letter 87 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, Dec 6, 1753.

In a very long, and consequently a very agreeable letter, which I received from you yesterday, you set me an example which I despair of following, keeping up a correspondence with spirit when the world furnishes no events. I should not say no events, for France is big with matter, but to talk of the parliamentary wars of another country would be only transcribing gazettes: and as to Prince Heracilus,(433) the other phenomenon of the age, it is difficult to say much about a person of whom one knows nothing at all. The only scene, that promises to Interest one, lies in Ireland, from whence we are told that the Speaker's party has carried a question against the Lord Lieutenant's; but no particulars are yet arrived. Foundations have formerly been laid in Ireland of troubles that have spread hither: I have read somewhere this old saw,

"He that would England win, Must with Ireland-first begin."

The only novelty I know, and which is quite private history, is, that there is a man(434) in the world, who has so much obligingness and attention in his friendships, that in the middle of public business, and teased to death with all kind of commissions, and overrun with cubs and cubaccioni's of every kind, he can for twelve years together remember any single picture, or bust, or morsel of virtu, that a friend of his ever liked; and what is forty times more extraordinary than this circ.u.mstantial kindness, he remembers it just at the time when others, who might be afflicted with as good a memory, would take pains to forget it, that is, when it is to be obtained:-exactly then this person goes and purchases the thing in question, whips it on board a ship, and sends it to his friend, in the manner in the world to make it most agreeable, except that he makes it impossible to thank him, because you must allow that one ought to be possessed of the same manner of obliging, before one is worthy of thanking such a person. I don't know whether you will think this person so extraordinary as I do; but I have one favour to beg; if you should ever hear his name, which, for certain reasons, I can't tell you, let me entreat you never to disclose it, for the world in general is so much the reverse of him, that they would do nothing but commend to him every thing they saw, in order to employ his memory and generosity. For this reason you will allow that the prettiest action that ever was committed, ought not to be published to all the world.

You, who love your friends, will not be sorry to hear a little circ.u.mstance that concerns, in a tolerable manner, at least two of them. The last of my mother's surviving brothers(435) is dead, and dead without a will, and dead rich. Mr. Conway and I shall share about six thousand pounds apiece in common with his brother and sister and my brother. I only tell you this for a momentary pleasure, for you are not a sort of person to remember any thing relative to your friends beyond the present instant!

After writing me two sheets of paper, not to mention the episode of Bianca Capello, I know not how to have the confidence to put an end to my letter already; and yet I must, and you will admit the excuse: I have but just time to send my brother an account of his succession: you who think largely enough to forgive any man's deferring such notice to you, would be the last man to defer giving it to any body else; and therefore, to spare you any more of the compliments and thanks, which surely I owe you, you shall let me go make my brother happy. Adieu!