The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume III Part 55

Letter 234 To The Earl Of Hertford.

Arlington Street, Dec. 3, 1764. (page 358)

I love to contradict myself as fast as I can when I have told you a lie, lest you should take me for a chambermaid, or Charles Townshend. But how can I help it? Is this a consistent age?

How should I know people's minds, if they don't know them themselves? In short, Charles Yorke is not attorney-general, nor Norton master of the rolls. A qualm came across the first, and my Lord lorn across the second, who would not have Norton in his court. I cannot imagine why; it is so gentle, amiable, honest a being! But I think the Chancellor says, Norton does not understand equity, so he remains prosecutor-general. Yorke would have taken the rolls, if they would have made it much more considerable; but as they would not, he has recollected that it will be clever for one Yorke to have the air of being disinterested, so he only disgraces himself,(711) and takes a patent of precedence over the Solicitor-General:--but do not depend upon this--he was to have kissed hands on Friday, but has put it off till Wednesday next--between this and that, his Virtue may have another fit. The court ridicule him even more than the opposition. What diverts me most, is, that the pious and dutiful house of Yorke, who cried and roared over their father's memory, now throw all the blame on him, and say, he forced them into opposition--amorent nummi expellas furc'a, licet usque recurret.(712) Sewell(713) is master of the rolls.

Well! I may grow a little more explicit to you; besides, this letter goes to you by a private hand. I gave you little hints, to prepare you for the separation of the house of Grafton. It is so, and I am heartily sorry for it. Your brother is chosen by the Duke, and General Ellison by the d.u.c.h.ess, to adjust the terms, which are not yet settled. The Duke takes all on himself, and a.s.signs no reason but disagreement of tempers. He leaves Lady Georgina' with her mother, who, he says, is the properest person to educate her, and Lord Charles, till he is old enough to be taken from the women. This behaviour is n.o.ble and generous-- still I wish they could have agreed!

This is not the only parting that makes a noise. His grace of Kingston(714) has taken a pretty milliner from Cranborn-alley, and carried her to Th.o.r.esby. Miss Chudleigh, at the Princess's birthday on Friday, beat her side till she could not help having a real pain in it, that people might inquire what was the matter; on which she notified a pleurisy, and that she is going to the baths of Carlsbad, in Bohemia. I hope she will not meet with the Bulgares that demolished the Castle of Thundertentronck.(715 y) My Lady Harrington's robbery is at last come to light, and was committed by the porter,(716) who is in Newgate.

Lady Northumberland (who, by the way, has added an eighth footman since I wrote to you last) told Me this Morning that the Queen is very impatient to receive an answer from Lady Hertford, about Prince George's letters coming through your hands, as she desired they might.

A correspondence between Legge and Lord Bute about the Hampshire election is published to-day, by the express desire of the former, When he was dying.(717) He showed the letters to me in the spring, and I then did not-think them so strong or important as he did. I am very clear it does no honour to his memory to have them printed now. It implies want of resolution to publish them in his lifetime, and that he died with more resentment than I think one should care to own. I would Send them to you, but I know Dr. Hunter takes care of such things. I hope he will send you, too, the finest piece that I think has been written for liberty since Lord Somers. It is called an Inquiry into the late Doctrine on Libels, and is said to be written by one Dunning,(718) a lawyer lately started up, who makes a great noise. He is a sharp thorn in the sides of Lord Mansfield and Norton, and, in truth, this book is no plaster to their pain. It is bitter, has much unaffected wit, and is the Only tract that ever made me understand law.(719) If Dr. Hunter does not send you these things, I suppose he will convey them himself, as I hear there will be a fourteenth occasion for him. Charles Fitzroy says, Lord Halifax told Mrs. Crosby that you are to go to Ireland. I said he l(nows you are not the most communicative person in the world, and that you had not mentioned it--nor do I now, by way of asking impertinent questions; but I thought you would like to know what was said.

I return to Strawberry Hill to-morrow, but must return on Thursday, as there is to be something at the Duke of York's that evening, for which I have received a card. He and his brother are most exceedingly civil and good-humoured--but I a.s.sure you every place is like one of Shakspeare's plays:--Flourish, enter the Duke of York, Gloucester, and attendants. Lady Irwin(720) died yesterday.

Past eleven.

I have just come from a little impromptu ball at Mrs. Ann Pitt's.

I told you she had a new pension, but did I tell you it was five hundred pounds a year? It was entertaining to see the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford and Lady Bute with their respective forces, drawn up on different sides of the room; the latter's were most numerous. My Lord Gower seemed very willing to promote a parley between the two armies. It would have made you shrug up your shoulders at dirty humanity, to see the two Miss Pelhams sit neglected, without being asked to dance. You may imagine this could not escape me, who have pa.s.sed through the several grradations in which Lady Jane Stuart and Miss Pelham are and have been; but I fear poor Miss Pelham feels hers a little more than ever I did.(721) The Duke of York's is to be a dinner and a ball for Princess Amelia.

Lady Mary Bowlby(722) gave me a commission, a genealogical one, from my Lady Hertford, which I will execute to the best of my power. I am glad my part is not to prove eighteen generations Of n.o.bility for the Bruces. I fear they have made some mes-alliances since the days of King Robert-at least, the present Scotch n.o.bility are not less apt to go into Lombard-street than the English.

My Lady Suffolk was at the ball; I asked the Prince of Ma.s.serano whom he thought the oldest woman in the room, as I concluded he would not guess she was. He did not know my reason for asking, and would not tell me. At last, he said very cleverly, his own wife.

Mr. Sarjent has sent me this evening from Les Consid'erations sur les Moeurs," and "Le Testament Politique,"(723) for which I give you, my dear lord, a thousand thanks. Good night!

P.S. Manzoli(724) has come a little too late, or I think he would have as many diamond watches and snuff-boxes as Farinelli.

(711) We can venture to state, that there never was any idea of Mr. Yorke's accepting the rolls; and it is believed that they never were offered to him; certainly, be himself never thought of taking that office. The patent of precedence which he did accept, was an arrangement, which, though convenient for the conduct of the business in court, could give no addition of either rank or profit to a person in Mr. Yorke's circ.u.mstances.

The facts were as follow: when Mr. Yorke, in 1756, was made solicitor-general, he was not a King's counsel; he succeeded to be attorney-general, but on his resignation in October 1763, he lost the precedence which his offices had given him, and he returned to the outer bar and a stuff gown. It was a novel and anomalous sight to see a man who had led the Chancery bar so long, and filled the greatest office of the law, retire to comparatively, so humble a rank in the court in which he might be every day expected to preside; and accordingly, on his first appearance after his resignation, the Chancellor, with the concurrence (indeed, it has been said on the suggestion) of the bar, called to Mr. Yorke, out of his turn, next after the King's counsel: this irregular pre-audience had lasted above a year, when it was thought more proper and more convenient for the business of the court to give Mr. Yorke that formal patent of precedence, the value and circ.u.mstances of which Mr Walpole so much misunderstands. We have heard from old lawyers, that Mr.

Yorke's business at this period was more extensive and less lucrative than any other man ever possessed in Chancery, and we find no less than four other barristers had at this time patents of precedence.-C.

(712) The reader is requested to look back to p. 272, letter 188, where he will find Mr. Walpole himself stating--long before Lord Hardwickc's death, and even before his illness--that "the old Chancellor was violent against the court, and that Mr. Charles Yorke had resigned, contrary to his own; and Lord Royston's inclination." The fact was in no way true; for it is well known that there never was the slightest difference of opinion between the old Lord Hardwicke and his son Charles upon their political conduct.-C.

(713) Sir Thomas Sewell, Knight.-E.

(714) Evelyn, last Duke of Kingston: he soon after married Miss Chudleigh, who was supposed to have been already married to Mr.

Augustus Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol.-C.

(715) An allusion to a loose incident in Voltaire's Candide.

(716) See ant'e, p. 260, letter 184.

(717) Mr. Legge had, in 1759, while chancellor of the exchequer to George II. been requested by Lord Bute, in the name of the Prince of Wales, to pledge himself to support a Mr. Stuart at the next election for Hampshire: this Mr. Legge, for very sufficient reasons, refused to do; and for this refusal (as he thought, and wished to persuade the public) he was turned out of office at the accession of the young King.-C.

(718) Mr. Dunning soon rose into great practice and eminence; in 1767 he was made solicitor-general, which office he held till 1770. He then made a considerable figure in the opposition, till the accession to the ministry, in 1782, of his friend Lord Shelburne, when he was created Lord Ashburton; he died next year.-C.

(719) Mr. Dunning's pamphlet was int.i.tuled "Inquiry into the Doctrine lately propagated concerning Juries, Libels, etc. upon the principles of the Law and the Const.i.tution." Gray, in a letter to Walpole of the 30th, thus characterizes it:--"Your canonical book I have been reading with great satisfaction. He speaketh as one having authority. If Englishmen have any feeling, methinks they must feel now; and if the ministry have any feeling (Whom n.o.body will suspect of insensibility) they must cut off the author's ears; for if is in all the forms a most wicked libel. Is the old man and the lawyer put on, or is it real? or has some real lawyer furnished a good part of the materials, and another person employed them? This I guess."

Works, vol. iv. p. 40.-E.

(720) Anne Howard, daughter of the third Earl of Carlisle, and widow of the third Viscount Irwin. She was lady of the bedchamber to the Princess Dowager. Mr. Park has introduced her into his edition of the n.o.ble Authors.-C.

(721) Mr. Walpole means that he was courted during his father's power, and neglected after his fall, as the daughters of a succeeding prime minister, Mr. Henry Pelham, now were; but as Lady Jane Stuart was but two-and-twenty years old, and Miss Pelham was thirty-six, we may account for the preference given to her ladyship at a ball, without any reference to the meanness and political time-serving of mankind. Both the Misses Pelham died unmarried.-C.

(722) Sister of the Duke of Montagu.

(723) A French forgery called "Le Testament Politique du Chevalier Robert Walpole," of which Mr. Walpole drew up an exposure, which is to be found in the second volume of his works.-C.

(724) The enthusiasm, however, ran pretty high, as we learn from the following pa.s.sage, in one of the periodical papers of the day:--"Signor Manzoli, the Italian singer at the Haymarket, got no less, after paying all charges of every kind, by his benefit last week (March, 1765), than 1000 guineas. This added to a sum of 1,500 which he has already saved, and the remaining profits of the season, is surely an undoubted proof of British generosity.

One particular lady complimented the singer with a 200 pound bill for a ticket on that occasion."-C.''

Letter 235 To George Montagu, Esq.

Arlington Street, Dec. 16, 1764. (page 362)

As I have not read in the paper that you died lately at Greatworth, in Northamptonshire, nor have met with any Montagu or Trevor in mourning, I conclude you are living: I send this, however, to inquire, and if you should happen to be departed, hope your executor will be so kind as to burn it. Though you do not seem to have the same curiosity about my existence, you may gather from my handwriting that I am still in being; which being perhaps full as much as you want to know of me, I will trouble you with no farther particulars about myself--nay, nor about any body else; your curiosity seeming to be pretty much the same about all the world. News there are certainly none; n.o.body is even dead, as the Bishop of Carlisle told me to-day, which I repeat to you in general, though I apprehend in his own mind he meant no possessor of a better bishopric.

If you like to know the state of the town, here it is. In the first place, it is very empty; in the next, there are more diversions than the week will hold. A charming Italian opera, with no dances and no company, at least on Tuesdays; to supply which defect, the subscribers are to have a ball and supper--a plan that in my humble opinion will fill the Tuesdays and empty the Sat.u.r.days. At both playhouses are woful English operas; which, however, fill better than the Italian, patriotism being entirely confined to our ears: how long the sages of the law may leave us those I cannot say. Mrs Cornelis, apprehending the future a.s.sembly at Almack's, has enlarged her vast room, and hung it with blue satin, and another with yellow satin; but Almack's room, which is to be ninety feet long, proposes to swallow up both hers, as easy as Moses's rod gobbled down those Of the magicians. Well, but there are more joys; a dinner and a.s.sembly every Tuesday at the Austrian minister's; ditto on Thursdays at the Spaniard's; ditto on Wednesdays and Sundays at the French amba.s.sador's; besides Madame de Welderen's on Wednesdays, Lady Harrington's Sundays, and occasional private mobs at my lady Northumberland's. Then for the mornings, there are lev'ees and drawing-rooms without end. Not to mention the maccaroni-club, which has quite absorbed Arthur's; for you know old fools will hobble after young ones. Of all these pleasures, I prescribe myself a very small pittance,--my dark corner in my own box at the Opera, and now and then an amba.s.sador, to keep my French going till my journey to Paris. Politics are gone to sleep, like a paroli at pharaoh, though there is the finest tract lately published that ever was written, called an Inquiry into the Doctrine of Libels. It would warm your old Algernon blood; but for what any body cares, might as well have been written about the wars of York and Lancaster. The thing most in fashion is my edition of Lord Herbert's Life; people are mad after it, I believe because only two hundred were printed; and, by the numbers that admire it, I am convinced that if I had kept his lordship's counsel, very few would have found out the absurdity of it. The caution with which I hinted at its extravagance, has pa.s.sed with several for approbation, and drawn on theirs. This is nothing new to me; it is when one laughs out at their idols that one angers people. I do not wonder now that Sir Philip Sydney was the darling hero, when Lord Herbert, who followed him so close and trod in his steps, is at this time of day within an ace of rivalling him. I wish I had let him; it was contradicting one of my own maxims, which I hold to be very just; that it is idle to endeavour to cure the world of any folly, unless We Could cure it of being foolish.

Tell me whether I am likely to see you before I go to Paris, which will be early in February. I hate you for being so indifferent about me. I live in the world, and yet love nothing, care a straw for nothing, but two or three old friends, that I have loved these thirty years. You have buried yourself with half a dozen parsons and isquires, and Yet never cast a thought upon those you have always lived with. You come to town for two Months, grow tired in six weeks, hurry away, and then one hears no more of you till next winter. I don't want you to like the world, I like it no more than you; but I stay awhile in it, because while one sees it one laughs at it, but when one gives it up one grows angry with it; and I hold it to be much wiser to laugh than to be out of humour. You cannot imagine how much ill blood this perseverance has cured me of; I used to say to myself, "Lord! this person is so bad, that person is so bad, I hate them." I have now found out that they are all pretty much alike, and I hate n.o.body. Having never found you out, but for integrity and sincerity, I am much disposed to persist in a friendship with you; but if I am to be at all the pains of keeping it up, I shall imitate my neighbours (I don't mean those at next door, but in the Scripture sense of my neighbour, any body,) and say "That is a very good man, but I don't care a farthing for him." Till I have taken my final resolution on that head, I am yours most cordially.

Letter 236 To George Montagu, Esq.

Christmas-eve, 1764. (page 364)

You are grown so good, and I delight so much in your letters when you please to write them, that though it is past midnight, and I am to go out of town tomorrow morning, I must thank you.

I shall put your letter to Rheims into the foreign post with a proper penny, and it will go much safer and quicker than if I sent it to Lord Hertford, for his letters lie very often till enough are a.s.sembled to compose a jolly caravan. I love your good brother John, as I always do, for keeping your birthday; I, who hate ceremonious customs, approve of what I know comes so much from the heart as all he and you do and say. The General surely need not ask leave to enclose letters to me.

There is neither news, nor any body to make it, but the clergy, who are all gaping after or about the Irish mitre,(725) which your old antagonist has quitted. Keene has refused it; Newton hesitates, and they think will not accept it; Ewer pants for it, and many of the bench I believe do every thing but pray for it.

Goody Carlisle hopes for Worcester if it should be vacated, but I believe would not dislike to be her Grace.

This comes with your m.u.f.f, my Anecdotes of Painting, the fine pamphlet on libels, and the Castle of Otranto, which came out to-day. All this will make some food for your fireside. Since you will not come and see me before I go, I hope not to be gone before you come, though I am not quite in charity with you about it. Oh! I had forgot; don't lend your Lord Herbert, it will grow as dirty as the street; and as there are so few, and They have been so lent about, and so dirtied, the few clean copies will be very valuable. What signifies whether they read it or not?

there will be a new bishop, or a new separation, or a new something or other, that will do just as well, before you can convey your copy to them; and seriously, if you lose it, I have not another to give you; and I would fain have you keep my editions together, as you had the complete set. As I want to make you an economist of my books, I will inform you that this second' set of Anecdotes sells for three guineas. Adieu!

P. S. I send you a decent smallish m.u.f.f, that you may put in your pocket, and it costs but fourteen shillings.

(7250 Dr. John Stone, Archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland, died on the 19th of December 1764.-E.

Letter 237 To The Earl Of Hertford.

Arlington Street, Jan. 10, 1765. (page 364)

I should prove a miserable prophet or almanac maker, for my predictions are seldom verified. I thought the present session likely to be a very supine one, but unless the evening varies extremely from the morning, it will be a tempestuous day--and yet it was a very southerly and calm wind that began the hurricane.

The King's Speech was so tame, that, as George Montagu said of the earthquake, you might have stroked it.(726) Beckford (whom I certainly did not mean by the gentle gale) touched on Draper'S(727) Letter about the Manilla money. George Grenville took up the defence of the Spaniards, though he said he only stated their arguments. This roused your brother, who told Grenville he had adopted the reasoning of Spain; and showed the fallacy of their pretensions. He exhorted every body to support the King's government, "which I," said he, "ill-used as I have been, wish and mean to support-not that of ministers, when I see the laws and independence of Parliament struck at in the most profligate manner." You may guess how deeply this wounded.