The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume II Part 30

213 Letter 106 To Sir Horace Mann.

Strawberry Hill, July 5, 1754.

I believe you never receive a letter from me at this season of the year, without wishing for winter, that I might have something to tell you. Warm weather in England disperses all the world, except a few old folks, whose day of events is past, and who contribute nothing to the society of news. There is a court indeed as near as Kensington, but where the monarch is old, the courtiers are seldom young: they sun themselves in a window like flies in autumn, past even buzzing, and to be swept away in the first hurricane of a new reign. However, as little novelty as the season or the times produce, there is an adventuress in the world, who even in the dullest times will take care not to let conversation stagnate: this public-spirited dame is no other than a Countess-dowager, my sister-in-law, who has just notified to the town her intention of parting from her second husband-a step which, being in general not likely to occasion much surprise,-she had, however, taken care to render extraordinary, by a course of inseparable fondness and wonderful jealousy, for the three years since these her second nuptials. The testimonials which Mr. Shirley had received in print from that living academy of love-lore, my Lady Vane, added to this excessive tenderness of one, little less a novice, convinced every body that he was a perfect hero.

You will pity poor Hercules! Omphale, by a most unsentimental precaution, has so secured to her own disposal her whole estate and jointure, that he cannot command so much as a distaff; and as she is not inclined to pay much for nothing, her offers on the article of separation are exceedingly moderate. As yet he has not accepted them, but is gone to Scarborough, and she into the west, to settle her affairs, and from thence embarks for France and Italy. I am sorry she will plague you again at Florence; but I shall like to hear of what materials she composes her second volume, and what reasons she will allege in her new manifestoes: her mother, who sold her, is dead; the all-powerful minister, who bought her, is dead! whom will she charge with dragging her. to the bed of this second tyrant, from whom she has been forced to fly--On her son's account, I am really sorry for this second 'equip'ee: I can't even help pitying her! at her age n.o.body can take such steps, without being sensible of their ridicule, and what snakes must such pa.s.sions be, as can hurry one over such reflections? Her original story was certainly very unhappy; and the forcing so very young a creature against her inclinations, unjustifiable: but I much question whether any choice of her own could have tied down her inclinations to -any temper--at least, I am sure she had pitched upon a Hercules then, who of all men living was the least proper to encounter such labours, my Lord Chesterfield!

I have sent your letter to Mr. Chute, who is at his own Vine; he had written to you of his own accord, and I trust your friendship will be re-established as strongly as ever, especially as there was no essential fault on either side, and as you will now be prepared not to mind his aversion to writing. Thank Dr. Cocchi for the book(497) he is so good as to intend for me; I value any thing from him, though I scarce understand any thing less than Greek and physic; the little I knew of the first I have almost forgot, and the other, thank G.o.d! I never had any occasion to know. I shall duly deliver the other copies.

The French are encroaching extremely upon us in all the distant parts of the world, especially in Virginia, from whence their attempts occasion great uneasiness here. For my own part, I think we are very lucky, when they will be so good as to begin with us at the farther end. The revocation of the Parliament of Paris, which is done or doing, is thought very bad for us: I don't know but it may: in any other time I should have thought not, as it is a concession or yielding from the throne, and would naturally spirit up the Parliament to struggle on for power; but no other age is a precedent for this. As no oppression would, I believe, have driven them into rebellion, no concession will tempt them to be more a.s.suming. The King of France will govern his Parliament by temporizing; the Parliament of Ireland is governed by being treated like a French one. Adieu!

(497) An edition of some of the Greek physicians.

215 Letter 107 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Sat.u.r.day, July 6, 1754.

Your letter certainly stopped to drink somewhere by the way, I suppose with the hearty hostess at the Windmill; for, though written on Wednesday, it arrived here but this morning: it could not have travelled more deliberately in the Speaker's body-coach. I am concerned, because, your fishmonger not being arrived, I fear you have stayed for my answer. The fish(498) are apprised that they are to ride over to Park-place, and are ready booted and spurred; and the moment their pad arrives, they shall set forth. I would accompany them on a pillion if I were not waiting for Lady Mary,(499) who has desired to bring a poor sick girl here for a few days to try the air. You know how courteous a knight I am to distressed virgins of five years old, and that my castle-gates are always open to them. You will, I am sure, accept this excuse for some days: and as soon as ever my hospitality is completed, I will be ready to obey your summons, though you should send a water-pot for me. I am in no fear of not finding you in perfect verdure; for the sun, I believe, is gone a great way off to some races or other, where his horses are to run for the King's plate: we have not heard of him in this neighbourhood. Adieu!

(497) Gold fish.

(499) Lady Mary Churchill.

215 Letter 108 To Sir Richard Bentley, Esq.

Strawberry Hill, July 9, 1754.

I only write a letter for company to the enclosed one. Mr.

Chute is returned from the Vine, and gives you a thousand thanks for your letter; and if ever he writes, I don't doubt but it will be to you. Gray and he come hither to-morrow, and I am promised Montagu and the Colonel(500) in about a fortnight--How naturally my pen adds, but when does Mr. Bentley come! I am sure Mr. Wicks wants to ask me the same question every day--"Speak to it, Horatio!" Sir Charles Williams brought his eldest daughter hither last week: she is one of your real admirers, and, without its being proposed to her, went on the bowling-green, and drew a perspective view of the castle from the angle, in a manner to deserve the thanks of the Committee.(501) She is to be married to my Lord Ess.e.x in a Week,(502) and I begged she would make you overseer of the works at Cashiobury. Sir Charles told me, that on the Duke of Bedford's wanting a Chinese house at Woburn, he said, "Why don't your grace speak to mr. Walpole? He has the prettiest plan in the world for one." --"Oh," replied the Duke, "but then it would be too dear!" I hope this was a very great economy, or I am sure ours would be very great extravagance: only think of a plan for little Strawberry giving the alarm to thirty thousand pounds a year! My dear sir, it is time to retrench! Pray send me 'a slice of granite(503) no bigger than a Naples biscuit.

The monument to my mother is at last erected; it puts me in mind of the manner of interring the Kings of France: when the reigning one dies, the last before him is buried. Will you believe that I have not yet seen the tomb? None of my acquaintance were in town, and I literally had not courage to venture alone among the Westminster-boys at the Abbey: they are as formidable to me as the ship-carpenters at Portsmouth. I think I have showed you the inscription, and therefore I don't send it yet].

I was reading t'other day the Life of Colonel Codrington,(504) who founded the library at All Souls - he left a large estate for the propagation of the Gospel, and ordered that three hundred negroes should constantly be constantly employed upon it. Did one ever hear a more truly Christian charity, than keeping a perpetuity of three hundred slaves to look after the Gospel's estate? How could one intend a religious legacy, and miss the disposition of that estate for delivering three hundred negroes from the most shocking slavery imaginable?

Must devotion be twisted into the unfeeling interests of trade?

I must revenge myself for the horror this fact has given me, and tell you a story of Gideon.(505) He breeds his children Christians: he had a mind to know what proficience his son had made in his new religion; "So," says he, "I began, and asked him, who made him; He said 'G.o.d.' I then asked him, who redeemed him? He replied very readily, 'Christ.' Well, then I was at the end of my interrogatories, and did not know what other question to put to him. I said, Who--who--I did not know what to say; at last I said, Who gave you that hat? 'The Holy Ghost,' said the boy." Did you ever hear a better catechism?

The great cry against Nugent at Bristol was for having voted for the Jew-bill: one old woman said, "What, must we be represented by a Jew and an Irishman?" He replied with great quickness, "My good dame, if you will step aside with me into a corner, I will show you that I am not a Jew, and that I am an Irishman."

The Princess(506) has breakfasted at the long Sir Thomas Robinson's at Whitehall; my Lady Townshend will never forgive it. The second dowager of Somerset(507) is gone to know whether all her letters from the living to the dead have been received. Before I bid you good-night, I must tell you of an admirable curiosity: I was looking over one of our antiquarian volumes, and in the description of Leeds is an account of Mr.

Th.o.r.esby's famous museum there-what do you think is one of the rarities?--a knife taken from one of the Mohocks! Whether tradition is infallible or not, as you say, I think so authentic a relic will make their history indisputable.

Castles, Chinese houses, tombs, negroes, Jews, Irishmen, princesses, and Mohocks--what a farrago do I send you! I trust that a letter from England to Jersey has an imposing air, and that you don't presume to laugh at any thing that comes from your mother island. Adieu!

(500) Charles Montagu.

(501) Mr. Walpole, in these letters, calls the Strawberry committee, those of his friends who had a.s.sisted in the plans and Gothic ornaments of Strawberry Hill.

(502) The lady was married to the Earl of Ess.e.x on the 1st of August. She died in childbed, in July 1759.-E.

(503) Mr. Walpole had commissioned Mr. Bentley to send him a piece of the granite found in the island of Jersey, for a sideboard in his dining-room.

(504) Colonel Christopher Codrington. He was governor of the Leeward Islands, and died at Barbadoes in 1710. He bequeathed his books, and the sum of ten thousand pounds, for the purpose of erecting and furnishing the above-mentioned library. He wrote some Latin poems, published in the "Musae Anglicanae,"

and addressed a copy of English verse to Garth on his Dispensary.-E.

(505) Sampson Gideon, the noted rich Jew. [In 1759, his only son, being then in his eleventh year, was created an English baronet; and, in 1789, advanced to the dignity of Lord Eardley.]

(506) Of Wales.

(507) Frances, oldest daughter and coheir of the Hon. Henry Thynne. '

217 Letter 109 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(508) Strawberry Hill, August 6, 1754.

>From Sunday next, which is the eleventh, till the four or five-and-twentieth, I am quite unengaged, and will wait upon you any of the inclusive days, when your house is at leisure, and you will summon me; therefore you have nothing to do but to let me know your own time: or, if this period does not suit you, I believe I shall be able to come to you any part of the first fortnight in September; for, though I ought to go to Hagley, it is incredible how I want resolution to tap such a journey.

I wish you joy of escaping such an accident as breaking the Duke's(509) leg; I hope he and you will be known to posterity together by more dignified wounds than the kick of a horse. As I can never employ my time better than in being your biographer, I beg you will take care that I may have no such plebeian mishaps upon my hands or, if the Duke is to fall out of battle, he has such delicious lions and tigers, which I saw the day before yesterday at Windsor, that he will be exceedingly to blame, if he does not give some of them an exclusive patent for tearing him to pieces.

There is a beautiful tiger at my neighbour Mr. Crammond's here, of which I am so fond, that my Lady Townshend says it is the only thing I ever wanted to kiss. As you know how strongly her ladyship sympathizes with the Duke, she contrived to break the tendon of her foot, the very day that his leg was in such danger. Adieu!

P. S. You may certainly do what you please with the Fable;(510) it is neither worth giving nor refusing.

(508) Now first printed.

(509) The Duke of c.u.mberland.

(510) The Entail.

218 Letter 110 To George Montagu, Esq.

Strawberry Hill, Aug 29, 1754.

You may be sure that I shall always be glad to see you whenever you like to come hither, but I cannot help being sorry that you are determined not to like the place, nor to let the Colonel like it; a conclusion I may very justly make, when, I think, for these four years, you have contrived to visit it only when there is not a leaf upon the trees. Villas are generally designed for summer; you are the single person who think they look best in winter. You have still a more unlucky thought; which Is, to visit the Vine in October. When I saw it in the middle of summer, it was excessively damp; you will find it a little difficult to persuade me to accompany you thither On stilts, and I believe Mr. Chute Will not be quite happy that you prefer that season; but for this I cannot answer at present, for he is at Mr. Morris's in Cornwall. I shall expect you and the Colonel here at the time you appoint. I engage for no farther, unless it is a very fine season indeed. I beg my compliments to Miss Montagu, and am yours ever.

218 Letter 111 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, Oct. 6, 1754.

You have the kindest way in the world, my dear Sir, of reproving my long silence, by accusing yourself. I have looked at my dates, and though I was conscious Of not having written to you for a long time, I did not think it had been so long as three months. I ought to make some excuse, and the truth is all I can make; if you have heard by any way in the world that a single event worth mentioning has happened in England for these three months, I will own myself guilty of abominable neglect. If there has not, as you know my unalterable affection for you, you will excuse me, and accuse the times.

Can one repeat often, that every thing stagnates? At present we begin to think that the world may be roused again, and that an East Indian war and a West Indian war may beget such a thing as an European war. In short, the French have taken such cavalier liberties with some of our forts, that are of great consequence to cover Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia, that we are actually despatching two regiments thither. As the climate and other American circ.u.mstances are against these poor men, I pity them, and think them too many, if the French mean nothing farther; too few, if they do. Indeed, I am one of those that feel less resentment when we are attacked so far off: I think it an obligation to be eaten the last.

You have entertained me much with the progress of the history of the Delmontis, and obliged me. I wish I could say I was not shocked at the other part of your letter, where you mention the re-establishment of the Inquisition at Florence. Had Richcourt power enough to be so infamous! was he superst.i.tious, fearful, revengeful, or proud of being a tool of the court of Rome?

What is the fate of the poor Florentines, who are reduced to regret the Medicis, who had usurped their government! You may be glad, my dear child, that I am not at Florence; I should distress your ministerial prudence, your necessary prudence, by taking pleasure to speak openly of Richcourt as he deserves: you know my warmth upon power and church power!

The Boccaneri seems to be one of those ladies who refine so much upon debauchery as to make even matrimony enter into their scheme of profligacy. I have known more than one instance, since the days of the Signora Messalina, where the lady has not been content to cuckold her husband but with another husband.

All pa.s.sions carried to extremity embrace within their circle even their opposites. I don't know whether Charles the Fifth did not resign the empire Out Of ambition of more fame. I must contradict myself in all pa.s.sions; I don't believe Sir Robert Brown will ever be so covetous as to find a pleasure in squandering.