The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume III Part 80

I have finished my tragedy,(1021) but as you would not bear the subject, I will say no more of it, but that Mr. Chute, who is not easily pleased, likes it, and Gray, who is still more difficult, approves it.(1022) I am not yet intoxicated enough with it to think it would do for the stage, though I wish to see it acted; but, as Mrs. Pritchard(1023) leaves the stage next month, I know n.o.body could play the Countess; nor am I disposed to expose myself to the impertinent eyes of that jackanapes Garrick, who lets nothing appear but his own wretched stuff, or that of creatures still duller, who suffer him to alter their pieces as he pleases. I have written an epilogue in character for the Clive, which she would speak admirably; but I am not so sure that she would like to speak it. Mr. Conway, Lady Aylesbury, Lady Lyttelton, and Miss Rich, are to come hither the day after to-morrow, and Mr. Conway and I are to read my play to them; for I have not strength enough to go through the whole alone.(1024)

My press is revived, and is printing a French play written by the old President Henault.(1025) It was d.a.m.ned many years ago at Paris, and yet I think it is better than some that have succeeded, and much better than any of our modern tragedies. I print it to please the old man, as he was exceedingly kind to me at Paris; but I doubt whether he will live till it is finished.(1026) He is to have a hundred copies, and there are to be but a hundred more, Of Which You shall have one.

Adieu! though I am very angry with you, I deserve all your friendship, by that I have for you, witness my anger and disappointment. Yours ever.

P. S. Send me your new direction, and tell me when I must begin to use it.

(1021) The Mysterious Mother. See vol. i. p. 57.-E.

(1022) Of this tragedy Lord Byron was also an approver: "It is the fashion," he says, "to underrate Horace Walpole; firstly, because he was a n.o.bleman; and secondly, because he was a gentleman; but, to say nothing of the composition of his incomparable Letters, and of the Castle of Otranto, he is the ultimus Romanorum, the author of the Mysterious Mother; a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love.play."-E.

(1023) This celebrated actress, who excelled alike in tragedy and comedy, took leave of the stage in May, in the part of Lady Macbeth, and died at Bath in the following August.-E.

(1024) Walpole, in a letter to Madame du Deffand, of the 11th of March, speaking of the "Honn'ete Criminel," a copy of which she had sent him, gives her the following account of his own tragedy:--"L'Honn'ete Criminel me paroit a.s.sez m'ediocre. Ma propre trag'edie a de bien plus grands d'efauts, mais au moins elle ne ressemble pas au toout compa.s.s'e tet r'egl'e du si'ecle.

Il ne vous plairoit pas a.s.sur'ement; il n'y a pas de beaux Sentiments: il n'y a que des pa.s.sions sans envelope, des crimes, des repentis, et des horreurs. Je crois qu'il y a beaucoup plus de mauvais que de bon, et je sais s'urement que depuis le premier acte jusqu'a la derni'ere sc'ene l'int'er'et languit au lieu d'augmenter: peut-il avoir on plus grand d'efaut?"-E.

(1025) Corn'elie, a ma.n.u.script tragedy, written by the Pr'esident Henault in early life.

(1026) He died in Novembor 1770, at the age of eighty-six.-E.

Letter 341 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, April 16, 1768. (page 517)

Well, dear Sir, does your new habitation improve as the spring advances? There has been dry weather and east wind enough to parch the fens. We find that the severe beginning of this last winter has made terrible havoc among the evergreens, though of old standing. Half my cypresses have been bewitched, and turned into brooms; and the laurustinus is every where perished. I am Goth enough to choose now and then to believe in prognostics; and I hope this destruction imports, that, though foreigners should take root here, they cannot last in this climate. I would fain persuade myself, that we are to be our own empire to eternity.

The Duke of Manchester has lent me an invaluable curiosity; I mean invaluable to us antiquaries: but perhaps I have already mentioned it to you; I forgot whether I have or no. It is the original roll of the Earls of Warwick, as long as my gallery, and drawn by John Rous(1027) himself. Ay, and what is more, there are portraits of Richard III., his Queen, and son; the two former corresponding almost exactly with my print; and a panegyric on the virtues of Richard, and a satire, upwards and downwards, on the illegal marriage of Edward IV., and on the extortions of Henry VII. I have had these and seven other portraits copied, and shall, some time or other, give plates of them. But I wait for an excuse; I mean till Mr. Hume shall publish a few remarks he has made on my book: they are very far from substantial; yet still better than any other trash that has been written against it, nothing of which deserves an answer.

I have long had thoughts of drawing up something for London like St. Foix's Rues de Paris,(1028) and have made some collections.

I wish You Would be so good, in the course of your reading, to mark down any pa.s.sage to that end: as where any great houses of n.o.bility were situated; or in what street any memorable event happened. I fear the subject will not furnish much till later times, as our princes kept their courts up and down the country in such a vagrant manner.

I expect Mr. Gray and Mr. Mason to pa.s.s the day with me here to-morrow. When I am more settled here I shall put you in mind of your promise to bestow more than one day on me.

I hope the Methodist, your neighbour, does not, like his patriarch Whitfield, encourage the people to forge, murder, etc.

in order to have the benefit of being converted at the gallows.

That arch-rogue preached lately a funeral sermon on one Gibson, hanged for forgery, and told his audience, that he could a.s.sure them Gibson was now in heaven, and that another fellow, executed at the same time, had the happiness of touching Gibson's coat as he was turned off. As little as you and I agree about a hundred years ago, I don't desire a reign of fanatics. Oxford has begun with these rascals, and I hope Cambridge will wake. I don't mean that I would have them persecuted, which is what they wish; but I would have the clergy fight them and ridicule them. Adieu! dear Sir. Yours ever.

(1027) John Rous, the historian of Warwickshire, "who," according to Walpole in his Anecdotes of Painting, "drew his own portrait, and other semblances, but in too rude a style to be called painting."-E.

(1028) Essais Historiques sur Paris, par Germain-Fran'cois-Poulain de Saint Foix; of which an English translation was published in 1767.-E.

Letter 342 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, June 6, 1768. (page 519)

You have told me what makes me both sorry and glad.(1029) Long have I expected the appearance of Ely, and thought it at the eve of coming forth. Now you tell me it is not half written; but then I am rejoiced you are to write it. Pray do; the author is very much in the right to make you author for him. I cannot say you have addressed yourself quite so judiciously as he has. I never heard of Cardinal Lewis de Luxembourg in my days, nor have a sc.r.a.p of the history of Normandy, but Ducarel's tour to the Conqueror's kitchen. But the best way will be to come and rummage my library yourself: not to set me to writing the lives of prelates: I shall strip them stark, and you will have them to reconsecrate. Cardinal Morton is at your service: pray say for him, and of me, what you please. I have very slender opinion of his integrity; but as I am not spiteful, It would be hard to exact from you a less favourable account of him than I conclude your piety will bestow on all his predecessors and successors.

Seriously, you know how little I take contradiction to heart, and beg you will have no scruples about defending Morton. When I bestow but a momentary smile on the abuse of any answerers, I am not likely to stint a friend in a fair and obliging remark.

The man that you mention, who calls himself "Impartialis," is, I suppose some hackney historian, I shall never inquire, whom, angry at being censured in the jump, and not named. I foretold he would drop his criticisms before he entered on Perkin Warbeck, which I knew he could not answer; and so it happened. Good night to him!

Unfortunately, I am no culinary antiquary - the Bishop of Carlisle, who is, I have oft heard talk of a sotelle, as an ancient dish. He is rambling between London, flagley, and Carlisle, that I do not know where to consult him: but, if the book is not printed before winter, I am sure he could translate your bill of fare into modern phrase. As I trust I shall see you some time this summer, you might bring your papers with you, and we will try what we can make of them. Tell me, do, when it will be most convenient for you to come, from now to the end of October. At the same time, I will beg to see the letters of the university to King Richard; and shall be still more obliged to you for the print of Jane Sh.o.r.e.(1030) I have a very bad mezzotinto of her, either from the picture at Cambridge or Eton.

I wish I could return these favours by contributing to the decoration of your new old house: but, as you know, I erected an old house, not demolished one. I had no windows, or frames for windows, but what I bespoke on purpose for the places where they are. My painted gla.s.s was so exhausted, before I got through my design, that I was forced to have the windows in the Battery painted on purpose by Pecket. What sc.r.a.ps I have remaining are so bad I cannot make you pay for the carriage of them, as I think there is not one whole piece; but you shall see them when you come hither, and I will search if I can find any thing for your purpose. I am sure I owe it you. Adieu! Yours ever.

(1029) This is in reply to one of Mr. Cole's letters, wherein he had informed Mr. Walpole, that he had undertaken to write the history of some of' the Bishops of Ely for the History of Ely Cathedral, and requested some particulars relating to Cardinal Lewis de Luxembourg; and to be informed the meaning of the French word sotalle or sotelle. Mr. Cole also proposed to controvert an opinion of Mr. Walpole's respecting Cardinal Morton.

(1030) This appears, from the copy of Cole's previous letter, to have been an engraving done by Mr. Tyson of Bennett's College, from the picture in the Provost's lodge.

Letter 343 To George Montagu, Esq.

Strawberry Hill, June 15, 1768. (page 520)

No, I cannot be so false as to say I am glad you are pleased with your situation. You are so apt to take root, that it requires ten years to dig you out again when you once begin to settle. As you go pitching your tent up and down, I wish you were still more a Tartar, and shifted your quarters perpetually. Yes, I will come and see you, but tell me first, when do your Duke and d.u.c.h.ess travel to the north? I know that he is a very amiable lad, and I do not know that she is not as amiable a laddess, but I had rather see their house comfortably when they are not there.

I perceive the deluge fell upon you before it reached us. It began here but on Monday last, and then rained near eight-and-forty hours without intermission. My poor hay has not a dry thread to its back. I have had a fire these three days.

In short, every summer one lives in a state of mutiny and murmur, and I have found the reason: it is because we will affect to have a summer, and we have no t.i.tle to any such thing. Our poets learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and cooling breezes, and we get sore throats and agues with attempting to realize these visions. Master Damon writes a song, and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and the deuce a bit have we of any such thing as a cool evening. Zephyr is a northeast wind, that makes Damon b.u.t.ton up to the chin, and pinches Chloe's nose till it is red and blue; and then they cry, this is a bad summer! as if we ever had any other. The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other. We ruin ourselves with inviting over foreign trees and make our houses clamber up hills to look at prospects. How our ancestors would laugh at us, who knew there was no being comfortable, unless you had a high hill before your nose, and a thick warm wood at your back! Taste is too freezing a commodity for us, and, depend upon it, will go out of fashion again.

There is indeed a natural warmth in this country, which, as you say, I am very glad not to enjoy any longer; I mean the hothouse in St. Stephen's chapel. My own sagacity makes me very vain, though there was very little merit in it. I had seen so much of all parties, that I had little esteem left for any; it is most indifferent to me who is in or -who is out, or which is set in the pillory, Mr. Wilkes or my Lord Mansfield. I see the country going to ruin, and no man with brains enough to save it. That is mortifying ; but what signifies who has the undoing it? I seldom suffer myself to think on this subject: my patriotism could do no good, and my philosophy can make me be at peace.

I am sorry you are likely to lose your poor cousin Lady Hinchinbrook;(1031) I heard a very bad account of her when I was last in town. Your letter to Madame Roland shall be taken care of; but as you are so scrupulous of making me pay postage, I must remember not to overcharge you, as I can frank my idle letters no longer; therefore, good night!

P. S. I was in town last week, and found Mr. Chute still confined. He had a return in his shoulder, but I think it more rheumatism than gout.

(1031) Elizabeth, wife of John Viscount Hinchinbroke, afterwards fifth Earl of Sandwich, was the only surviving daughter of George, second and last Earl of Halifax. Her ladyship died on the 1st of July 1768, leaving a son, George Viscount Hinchinbroke, who died sine prole, in 1790.-E.

Letter 344 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(1032) Strawberry Hill, June 16, 1768. (page 521)

I am glad you have writ to me, for I wanted to write to you, and did not know what to say. I have been but two nights in town, and then heard of nothing but Wilkes, of whom I am tired to death, and of T. Townshend, the truth of whose story I did not know; and indeed the tone of the age has made me so uncharitable, that I concluded his ill-humour was put on, in order to be mollified with the reversion of his father's place, which I know he has long wanted; and the destination of the Pay-office has been so long notified, that I had no notion of his not liking the arrangement. For the new Paymaster,(1033) I could not think him worth writing a letter on purpose. By your letter and the enclosed I find Townshend has been very ill-treated, and I like his spirit in not bearing such neglect and contempt, though wrapped up in 2700 pounds a-year.

What can one say of the Duke of Grafton, but that his whole conduct is childish, insolent, inconstant, and absurd--nay, ruinous? Because we are not in confusion enough, he makes every thing as bad as possible, neglecting on one hand, and taking no precaution on the other. I neither see how it is possible for him to remain minister, nor whom to put in his place. No government, no police, London and Middles.e.x distracted, the colonies in rebellion, Ireland ready to be so, and France arrogant, and on the point of being hostile! Lord Bute accused of all and dying of a panic; George Grenville wanting to make rage desperate; Lord Rockingham the Duke of Portland, and the Cavendishes thinking we have no enemies but Lord Bute and Dyson, and that four mutes and an epigram can set every thing to rights, the Duke of Grafton like an apprentice, thinking the world should be postponed to a wh.o.r.e and a horserace; and the Bedfords not caring what disgraces we undergo, while each of them has 3000 pounds a-year and three thousand bottles of claret and champagne!

Not but that I believe these last good folks are still not satisfied with the satisfaction of their wishes. They have the favour of the Duke of Grafton, but neither his confidence nor his company; so that they can neither sell the places in his gift nor his secrets. Indeed, they,' have not the same reasons to be displeased with him as you have; for they were his enemies and you his friend--and therefore he embraced them and dropped you, and I believe would be puzzled to give a tolerable reason for either.

As this is the light in which I see our present situation, you will not wonder that I am happy to have nothing to do with it.

Not that, were it more flourishing, I would ever meddle again. I have no good opinion of any of our factions, nor think highly of either their heads or their hearts. I can amuse myself much more to my satisfaction; and, had I not lived to see my country at the period of its greatest glory, I should bear our present state much better. I cannot mend it, and therefore will think as little of it as I can. The Duke of Northumberland asked me to dine at Sion to-morrow; but, as his vanity of governing Middles.e.x makes him absurdly meditate to contest the county, I concluded he wanted my interest here, and therefore excused myself; for I will have nothing to do with it.

I shall like much to come to Park-place, if your present company stays, or if the Fitzroys or the Richmonds are there; but I desire to be excused from the Cavendishes, who have in a manner left me off, because I am so unlucky as not to think Lord Rockingham as great a man as my Lord Chatham, and Lord John more able than either. If you will let me know when they leave you, you shall see me: but they would not be glad of my company, nor I of theirs.

My hay and I are drowned; I comfort myself with a fire, but I cannot treat the other with any sun, at least not with one that has more warm than the sun in a harlequin-farce.

I went this morning to see the d.u.c.h.ess of Grafton, who has got an excellent house and fine prospect, but melancholy enough, and so I thought was she herself: I did not ask wherefore.

I go to town to-morrow to see the Devil upon Two Sticks,(1034) as I did last week, but could not get in. I have now secured a place in my niece Cholmondeley's box, and am to have the additional entertainment of Mrs. Macauley in the same company; who goes to see herself represented, and I suppose figures herself very like Socrates.

I shall send this letter by the coach, as it is rather free spoken, and Sandwich may be prying.