The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume II Part 47

(700) Thomas Belasyse, fourth Viscount and first Earl of Fauconberg. He died in 1774.-D.

330 Letter 188 To George Montagu, Esq.

June 18.

The two drawings of the Vine and Strawberry, which you desired, are done. and packed up in a box; tell me how I must send them.

The confusion about the ministry is not yet settled; at least it was not at noon to-day; but, for fear that confusion should ever finish, all the three factions are likely to come into place together. Poor Mr. Chute has had another bad fit; he took the air yesterday for the first time. I came to town but last night, and returned to my chateau this evening knowing nothing but that we are on the crisis of battles and ministries. Adieu!

P. S. I just hear that your cousin Halifax has resigned, on Pitt's not letting him be secretary of state for the West Indies.

330 Letter 189 To Sir Horace Mann.

Strawberry Hill, July 11, 1756.

I receive with great satisfaction all your thanks for my anxiety about your brother: I love you both so much, that nothing can flatter me more, than to find I please the one by having behaved as I ought to the other--oh, yes! I could be much more rejoiced, if this brother ceased to want my attentions. Bristol began to be of service to him. but he has caught cold there, and been out of order again: he a.s.sures me it is over. I will give you a kind of happiness: since he was there, he tells me, that if he does not find all the benefit he expects, he thinks of going abroad. I press this most eagerly, and shall drive it on, for I own if he stays another winter in England, I shall fear his disorder will fix irremovably. I will give you a commission, which, for his sake, I am sure, you will be attentive to execute in the perfectest manner. Mr. Fox wants four vases of the Volterra alabaster, of four feet high each. I choose to make over any merit in it to you, and though I hate putting you to expense, at which you always catch so greedily, when it is to oblige, yet you shall present these.

Choose the most beautiful patterns, look to the execution, and send them with rapidity, with such a letter as your turn for doing civil things immediately dictates.

There is no describing the rage against Byng; for one day we believed him a real Mediterranean Byng.(701) He has not escaped a sentence of abuse, by having involved so many officers in his disgrace and his councils of war: one talks coolly of their being broke, and that is all. If we may believe report, the siege is cooled' into a blockade, and we may still save Minorca, and, what I think still more of dear old Blakeney.(702) What else we shall save or lose I know not.

The French, we hear, are embarked at Dunkirk--rashly, if to come hither; if to Jersey or Guernsey, uncertain of success if to Ireland, ora pro vobis! The Guards are going to encamp. I am sorry to say, that with so much serious war about our ears, we can't help playing with crackers. Well, if the French do come, we shall at least have something for all the money we have laid out on Hanoverians and Hessians! The latter, on their arrival. asked bonnement where the French camp was. They could not conceive being sent for if it was no nearer than Calais.

The difficulties in settling the Prince's family are far from surmounted; the council met on Wednesday night to put the last hand to it, but left it as unsettled as ever.

Pray do dare to tell me what French and Austrians say of their treaty: we are angry--but when did subsidies purchase grat.i.tude! I don't think we have always found that they even purchased temporary a.s.sistance. France declared, Sweden and Denmark allied to France, Holland and Austria neuter, Spain not quite to be depended on, Prussia--how sincerely reconciled!

Would not one think we were menaced with a league of Cambray?

When this kind of situation was new to me, I did not like it-I have lived long enough, and have seen enough, to consider all political events as mere history, and shall go and see the camps with as unthinking curiosity as if I were a simpleton or a new general. Adieu!

(701) His father, Lord Torrington, had made a great figure there against the Spaniards.

(702) It was at that time believed that General Blakeney had acted with great spirit; but it appeared afterwards that he had been confined to his bed, and had not been able to do any thing.

331 Letter 190 To George Montagu, Esq.

Strawberry Hill, July 12, 1756.

When I have told you that Mr. Muntz has finished the drapery of your picture, and the copy of it, and asked you whither and how they must be sent, I think I have done all the business of my letter; except telling you, that if you think of conveying them through Moreland, he is gone a soldiering. All the world is going the same road, except Mr. Muntz, who had rather be knocked on the head for fame, than paint for it. He goes to morrow to Kingston, to see the great drum pa.s.s by to Cobham, as women go to take a last look of their captains. The Duke of Marlborough, and his grandfather's triumphal car are to close the procession. What would his grandame, if she were alive, say to this pageant? If the war lasts, I think well enough of him to believe he will earn a sprig; but I have no pa.s.sion for trying on a crown of laurel, before I had acquired it. The French are said to be embarked at Dunkirk--lest I should seem to know more than any minister, I will not pretend to guess whither they are bound. I have been but one night in town, and my head sung ballads about Admiral Byng all night, as one is apt to dream of the masquerade minuet: the streets swarm so with lampoons, that I begin to fancy myself a minister's son again.

I am going to-morrow to Park-place; and the first week in August into Yorkshire. If I hear that you are at Greatworth, that is, if you will disclose your motions to me for the first fortnight of that month, I will try if I cannot make it in my road either going or coming. I know nothing of roads, but Lord Strafford is to send me a route, and I should be glad to ask you do for one night--but don't expect me, don't be disappointed about me, and of all things don't let so uncertain a scheme derange the least thing in the world that you have to do. There are going to be as many camps and little armies, as when England was a heptarchy. Adieu!

332 Letter 191 To Sir Horace Mann.

Strawberry Hill, July 24, 1756.

Because you desire it, I begin a letter to-day, but I don't fancy I shall be able to fill to the bottom of this side. It is in answer to your long one of the 3d. In answer?--no; you must have Patience till next session before your queries can be resolved, and then I believe you will not be very communicative of the solutions. In short, all your questions of, Why was not Byng sent sooner? Why not with more ships? Why was Minorca not supported earlier? All these are questions which all the world is asking as well as you, and to which all the world does not make such civil answers as you must, and to which I shall make none, as I really know none.(703) The clamour is extreme, and I believe how to reply in Parliament will be the chief business that will employ our ministry for the rest of the summer--perhaps some such home and personal considerations were occupying their thoughts in the winter, when they ought to have been thinking of the Mediterranean.

We are still in the dark; we have nothing but the French account of the surrender of St. Philip's: we are humbled, disgraced, angry. We know as little of Byng, but hear that he sailed with the reinforcement before his successor reached Gibraltar. if shame, despair, or any human considerations can give courage, he will surely contrive to achieve some great action, or to be knocked on the head--a cannon-ball must be a pleasant quietus. compared to being torn to pieces by an English mob or a House of Commons. I know no other alternative, but withdrawing to the Queen of Hungary, who would fare little better if she were obliged to come hither-- we are extremely disposed to ma.s.sacre somebody or other, to show we have any courage left. You will be pleased with a cool, sensible speech of Lord Granville to Coloredo, the Austrian minister, who went to make a visit of excuses. My Lord Granville interrupted him, and said, "Sir, this is not necessary; I understand that the treaty is only of neutrality; but what grieves me is, that our people will not understand it so; and the prejudice will be so great, that when it shall become necessary Again, as it will do, for us to support your mistress, n.o.body will then dare to be a Lord Granville."

I think all our present hopes lie in Admiral Boscawen's intercepting the great Martinico fleet of a hundred and fifty sail, convoyed by five men-of-war Boscawen has twenty. I see our old friend Prince Beauvau behaved well at Mahon. Our old diversion, the Countess,(704) has exhibited herself lately to the public exactly in a style you would guess. Having purchased and given her lord's collection of statues to the University of Oxford, she has been there at the public act to receive adoration. A box was built for her near the Vice-Chancellor, where she sat three days together for four hours at a time to hear verses and speeches, to hear herself called Minerva; nay, the public orator had prepared an encomium on her beauty, but being struck with her appearance, had enough presence of mind to whisk his compliments to the beauties of her mind. Do but figure her; her dress had all the tawdry poverty and frippery with which you remember her, and I dare swear her tympany, scarce covered with ticking, produced itself through the slit of her scowered damask robe.

It is amazing that she did not mash a few words of Latin, as she used to fricasee French and Italian! or that she did not torture some learned simile, like her comparing the tour of Sicily, the surrounding the triangle, to squaring the circle; or as when she said it was as difficult to get into an Italian coach, as for Caesar to take Attica, which she meant for Utica. Adieu! I trust by his and other accounts that your brother mends.

P. S. The letters I mentioned to you, pretended to be Bower's, are published, together with a most virulent pamphlet, but containing affidavits, and such strong a.s.sertions of facts as have staggered a great many people. His escape and account of himself' in Italy is strongly questioned. I own I am very impatient for the answer he has promised. I admire his book so much, and see such malice in his accusers, that I am strongly disposed to wish and think him a good man. Do, for my private satisfaction, inquire and pick up all the anecdotes you can relating to him, and what is said and thought of him in Italy. One accusation I am sure is false, his being a plagiary; there is no author from whom he could steal that ever wrote a quarter so well.

(703) "However the case may be with regard to Byng," writes Mr. George Grenville to Mr. Pitt, on the first intelligence of the disaster, "what can be the excuse for sending a force, which at the utmost is scarcely equal to the enemy, upon so important and decisive an expedition? Though, in the venality of this hour, it may be sufficient to throw the whole blame upon Byng, yet I will venture to say, the other is a question that, in the judgment of every impartial man, now and hereafter, will require a better answer, I am afraid, than can be given. I believe be was not reckoned backward in point of personal courage, which makes this affair the more extraordinary, and induces me to wait for his own account of it, before I form an opinion of it." Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. p. 163.-E.

(704) Of Pomfret.

334 Letter 192 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, August 28, 1756.

As you were so kind as to interest yourself about the issue of my journey, I can tell you that I did get to Strawberry on Wednesday night, but it was half an hour past ten first- -besides floods the whole day, I had twenty accidents with my chaise, and once saw one of the postilions with the wheel upon his body; he came off with making his nose bleed. My castle, like a little ark, is surrounded with many waters, (and yesterday morning I saw the Blues wade half way up their horses through Teddington-lane.

There is nothing new but what the pamphlet shops produce; however it is pleasant to have a new print or ballad every day--I never had an aversion to living in a Fronde. The enclosed cards are the freshest treason; the portraits by George Townshend are droll--the other is a dull obscure thing as can be. The "Worlds" are by Lord Chesterfield on Decorum, and by a friend of yours and mine, who sent it before he went to Jersey; but this is a secret: they neglected it till now, so preferable to hundreds they have published--I suppose Mr.

Moore finds, what every body else has found long, that he is aground. I saw Lovel to-day; he is very far advanced and executes to perfection; you will be quite satisfied; I am not discontent with my own design, now I see how well it succeeds.

It will certainly be finished by Michaelmas, at which time I told him he might depend on his money, and he seemed fully satisfied. My compliments to your brother, and adieu!

334 Letter 193 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, August 29, 1756.

A journey of amus.e.m.e.nt into Yorkshire would excuse my not having writ to you above this month, my dear Sir, but I have a better reason,--nothing has happened worth telling YOU. Since the conquest of Minorca, France seems to have taken the wisest way for herself, and a sure one too of ruining us, by sitting still, and yet keeping us upon our guard, at an outrageous expense. Gazettes of all countries announce, as you say, almost a league of Cambray against us; but the best heads think, that after all Europe has profited of our profusion, they will have the sense only to look on, while France and we contend which shall hereafter be the Universal Merchant of Venal Princes. If we reckon at all upon the internal commotions in France, they have still a better prospect from ours: we ripen to faction fast. The dearness of corn has even occasioned insurrections: some of these the Chief Justice Willcs has quashed stoutly. The rains have been excessive just now, and must occasion more inconveniences. But the warmth on the loss of Minorca has opened every sluice of opposition that has been so long dammed up. Even Jacobitism perks up those fragments of a.s.ses' ears which were not quite cut to the quick. The city of London and some counties have addressed the King and their members on our miscarriages. Sir John Barnard, who endeavoured to stem the torrent of the former, is grown almost as unpopular as Byng. That poor simpleton, confined at Greenwich, is ridiculously easy and secure, and has even summoned on his behalf a Captain Young, his warmest accuser. Fowke, who of two contradictory orders chose to obey the least spirited, is broke. Pamphlets and satirical prints teem; the courts are divided; the ministers quarrel-indeed, if they agreed, one should not have much more to expect from them! the fair situation!

I do not wonder that you are impertinenced by Richcourt;(705) there is nothing so catching as the insolence of a great proud woman(706) by a little upstart minister: the reflection of the sun from bra.s.s makes the latter the more troublesome of the two.

Your dear brother returns from Bristol this week; as I fear not much recovered, I shall have good reason to press his going abroad, though I fear in vain. I will tell you faithfully, after I have seen him a few days, what I think of him.

I never doubt your zeal in executing any commission I give you. The bill shall be paid directly; it will encourage me to employ you; but you are generally so dilatory in that part of the commission, that I have a thousand times declined asking your a.s.sistance. Adieu! my dear Sir.

(705) Count Richcourt, a Lorrainer, prime minister at Florence for the Great Duke.

(706) The Empress Queen, wife of the Great Duke.

335 Letter 194 To Richard Bentley, Esq.

Wentworth Castle, August.

I always dedicate my travels to you. My present expedition has been very amusing, sights are thick sown in the counties of York and Nottingham; the former is more historic, and the great lords live at a prouder distance: in Nottinghamshire there is a very heptarchy of little kingdoms elbowing one another, and the barons of them want nothing but small armies to make inroads into one another's parks, murder deer, and ma.s.sacre park-keepers. But to come to particulars: the great road as far as Stamford is superb; in any other country it would furnish medals, and immortalize any drowsy monarch in whose reign it was executed. It is continued much farther, but is more rumbling. I did not stop at Hatfield(707) and Burleigh(708) to seek the palaces of my great-uncle-ministers, having seen them before.

Budgen palace(709) surprises one prettily in a little village; and the remains of Newark castle, seated pleasantly, began to open a vein of historic memory. I had only transient and distant views of Lord Tyrconnells at Belton, and of Belvoir.

The borders of Huntingdonshire have churches instead of milestones, but the richness and extent of Yorkshire quite charmed me. Oh! what quarries for working in Gothic! This place is one of the very few that I really like; the situation, woods, views, and the improvements are perfect in their kinds; n.o.body has a truer taste than Lord Strafford.

The house is a pompous front screening an old house; it was built by the last lord on a design of the Prussian architect Bott, who is mentioned in the King's M'emoires de Brandenburg, and is not ugly: the one pair of stairs is entirely engrossed by a gallery of 180 feet, on the plan of that in the Colonna palace at Rome: it has nothing but four modern statues and some bad portraits, but, on my proposal, is going to have books at each end. The hall is pretty, but low; the drawing-room handsome: there wants a good eating-room and staircase: but I have formed a design for both, and I believe they will be executed--that my plans should be obeyed when yours are not! I shall bring you a groundplot for a Gothic building, which I have proposed that you should draw for a little wood, but in the manner of an ancient market-cross.

Without doors all is pleasing: there is a beautiful (artificial) river, with a fine semicircular wood overlooking it, and the temple of Tivoli placed happily on a rising towards the end. There are obelisks, columns, and other buildings, and above all, a handsome castle in the true style, on a rude mountain, with a court -,and towers: in the castle-yard, a statue of the late lord who built it. Without the park is a lake on each side, buried in n.o.ble woods. Now contrast all this, and you may have some idea of Lord Rockingham's. Imagine now a most extensive and most beautiful modern front erected before the great Lord Strafford's old house, and this front almost blocked up with hills, and every thing unfinished around it, nay within it. The great apartment, which is magnificent, is untouched -. the chimney-pieces lie in boxes unopened. The park is traversed by a common road between two high hedges--not from necessity.

Oh! no; this lord loves nothing but horses, and the enclosures for them take place of every thing. The bowling-green behind the house contains no less than four obelisks, and looks like a Brobdignag nine-pin-alley: on a hill near, you would think you saw the York-buildings water-works invited into the country. There are temples in corn-fields; and in the little wood, a window-frame mounted on a bunch of laurel, and intended for an hermitage. In the inhabited part of the house, the chimney-pieces are like tombs; and on that in the library is the figure of this lord's grandfather, in a night- gown of plaster and gold. Amidst all this litter and bad taste, I adored the fine Vandvek of Lord Strafford and his secretary, and could not help reverencing his bed-chamber.