The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume IV Part 67

Your No. 15 came two days ago, and gives me the pleasure of knowing that you both are the better for riding, which I hope you will continue. I am glad, too, that you are pleased with your d.u.c.h.ess of Fleury and your Latin professor: but I own, except your climate and the six hundred camels, you seem to me to have met with no treasure which you might not have found here without going twenty miles: and even the camels, according to Soame Jenyns' spelling, were to be had from Carrick and other places.

I doubt you apply Tully de Amicitia too favourably: at least, I fear there is no paragraph that countenances 73 and 27.

Monday, the 24th.

I think I shall give you pleasure by telling you that I am very sure now of recovering from the present fit. It has almost always happened to me, in my considerable fits of the gout, to have one critical night that celebrates its departure: at the end of two different fits I each time slept eleven hours. Morpheus is not quite so young nor so generous now ; but, with the interruption of a few minutes, he presented me with eight hours last night: and thence I shall date my recovery. I shall now begin to let in a little company; and, as the Parliament will meet in a week, my letters will probably not be so dull as they have been; nor shall I have occasion, nor be obliged, to talk so much of myself, of which I am sure others must be tired, when I am so much tired myself.

Tuesday, the 25th.

Old Mrs. French(724) is dead at last, and I am on the point of losing, or have lost, my oldest acquaintance and friend, George Selwyn, who was yesterday at the extremity. These misfortunes, though they can be so but for a short time, are very sensible to the old; but him I really loved, not only for his infinite wit, but for a thousand good qualities. Lady Cecilia Johnstone was here yesterday. I said much for you, and she as much to you.

The Gunnings are still playing the fool, and perhaps somebody with them; but I cannot tell you the particulars now. Adieu!

(723) His surgeon.

(724) An Irish lady, who, during the latter part of her life, had a country house at Hampton Court.

Letter 365 To The Miss Berrys.

Sat.u.r.day, Jan. 29, 1791. (page 468)

Voici de ma propre 'ecriture! the best proof that I am recovering, though not rapidly, which is not the march of my time of life. For n these last six days I have mended more than I expected. My left hand, the first seized, is the most dilatory, and of which I have least hopes. The rheumatism, that I thought so clear and predominant, is so entirely gone, that I now rather think it was hussar-gout attacking in flying squadrons the outposts. No matter which, very ill I was ; and you might see what I thought of myself: nor can I stand many such victories.

My countenance was so totally altered, that I could not trace it myself. Its outlines have returned to their posts, though with deep gaps. This is a true picture, and too long an one of self; and too hideous for a bracelet. Apropos, your sweet Miss Foldson, I believe, is painting portraits of all our Princesses, to be sent to all the Princes upon earth ; for, though I have sent her several written duns, she has not deigned even to answer one in writing. I don't know whether Mrs. Buller is not appointed Royal Academician too; for, though I desired the "Charming-man," who was to dine with her that day, to tell her, above a week ago, that I should be glad to see her, she has not taken the least notice of it. Mr. Batt, ditto; who was at Cambridge's when I was at the worst, and knew so, has not once inquired after me, in town or country. So you see you have carried off your friends from me as well as yourselves: and it is not them I regret; or rather, in fact, I outlive all my friends!

Poor Selwyn is gone, to my sorrow; and no wonder Ucalegon feels it!(725) He has left about thirty thousand pounds to Mademoiselle f.a.gniani;(726) twenty of which, if she has no children, to go to those of Lord Carlisle ; the Duke of Queensberry residuary legatee. Old French has died as foolishly as she lived, and left six thousand pounds to you don't know whom ; but to be raised out of her judicious collection of trumpery pictures, etc.

Pray, delight in the following story: Caroline Vernon, fille d'honneur, lost t'other night two hundred pounds at faro, and babe Martindale mark it up. He said he had rather have a draft on her banker. "oh! willingly;" and she gave him one. Next morning he hurried to Drummond's, lest all her money should be drawn out. said the clerk, "would you receive the contents immediately?" "a.s.suredly." "why, Sir, have you read the note?"

Martindale took it; it was, "Pay to the bearer two hundred blows, well applied." The nymph tells the story herself; and yet I think the clerk had the more humour of the two.

The Gunninghiad(727) draws to a conclusion. The General, a few weeks ago, to prove the equality of his daughter to any match, literally put into the newspapers, that he himself is the thirty-second descendant in a line from Charlemagne;--oui, vraiment! Yet he had better have, like Prior's Madam,

"To cut things short, gone up to Adam,"

However, this Carlovingian hero does not allow that the letters are forgeries, and rather suspects the novelist, his lady(728) for the auth.o.r.ess; and if she is, probably Miss Charlemagne is not quite innocent of the plot: though she still maintains that her mother-in-law elect did give her much encouragement; which, considering her grace's conduct about her children, is not the most incredible part of this strange story. I have written this at twice, and will now rest.

Sunday evening.

I wish that complaining of people for abandoning me were an infallible receipt for bringing them back! but I doubt it will not do in acute cases. To-day, a few hours after %writing the latter part of this, appeared Mr. Batt. He asked many pardons, and I easily forgave him; for the mortification was not begun.

He asked much after you both. I had a crowd of visits besides; but they all come past two o'clock, and sweep one another away before any can take root. My evenings are solitary enough, for I ask n.o.body to come; nor, indeed, does any body's evening begin till I am going to bed. I have Outlived daylight, as well as my contemporaries. What have I not survived? The Jesuits and the monarchy of France! and both without a struggle! Semiramis seems to intend to add Constantinople to the ma.s.s of revolutions ; but is not her permanence almost as wonderful as the contrary explosions! I wish--I wish we may not be actually flippancying ourselves into an embroil with that Ursa-major of the North Pole.

What a vixen little island are we, if we fight wit the Aurora Borealis and Tippo Saib at the end of Asia at the same time!

You, damsels, will be like the end of the conundrum, "You've seen the man who saw the wondrous sights."

Monday evening.

I cannot finish this with my own hand, for the gout has returned a little into my right arm and wrist, and I am not quite so well as I was yesterday; but I had said my say, and had little to add.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Gordon, t'other night, coming out of an a.s.sembly, said to Dundas, "Mr. Dundas, you are used to speak in public; will you call my servant?"

Here I receive your long letter of the 7th, 9th, and 10th, which it is impossible for me to answer now; there is one part to which I wish to reply, but must defer till next post, by which time I hope to have recovered my own pen. You ask about the house of Argyll. You know I have no connexion with them, nor any curiosity about them. Their relations and mine have been in town but four days, so I know little from them: Mrs. Grenville, to-day, told me the Duke proposes to continue the same life he used to lead, with a cribbage-table and his family. Every body admires the youngest daughter's(729) person and understanding.

Adieu! I will begin to write again myself as soon as I can.

(725) This celebrated wit and amiable man died on the 25th of January, in his seventy-second year. He was member for Luggershall, surveyor-general of the crown lands, surveyor of the meltings and clerk of the irons in the Mint; "and," add the newspapers of the day, "receiver-general of wit and stray jokes."

The following tribute to his memory appeared at the time:--

"If this gay Fav'rite lost, they yet can live, A tear to Selwyn let the Graces give!

With rapid kindness teach Oblivion's pall O'er the sunk foibles of the man to fall And fondly dictate to a faithful Muse The prime distinction of the Friend they lose:-- 'Twas Social Wit; which, never kindling strife, Blazed in the small, sweet courtesies of life; Those little sapphires round the diamond shone, Lending soft radiance to the richer stone."-E.

(726) Married in 1798, to the Earl of Yarmouth; who, in 1822, succeeded his father as third Marquis of Hertford.-E.

(727) Meaning the strange, imagined history Of a marriage supposed to have been likely to take place between Miss Gunning and the Marquis of Blandford.

(728) Mrs. Gunning was a Miss Minifie, of Fairwater, Somersetshire, and, before her marriage, had published several popular novels.-E.

(729) Lady Charlotte-Susan-Maria; married, first to Colonel John Campbell of Islay and, secondly to the Rev. Mr. Bury.-E.

Letter 366 To Miss Berry.

Berkeley Square, Friday, Feb. 4, 1791. (page 470)

Last post I sent you as cheerful a letter, as I could, to convince you that I was recovering. This will be less gay; not because I have had a little return in both arms, but because I have much more pain in my mind than in my limbs. I see and thank you all for the kindness of your intention; but, as it has the contrary effect from what you expect, I am forced, for my own peace, to beseech you not to continue a manoeuvre that only tantalizes and wounds me. In your last you put together many friendly words to give me hopes of your return; but can I be' so blind as not to see that they are vague words? Did you mean to return in autumn, Would you not say so? would the most artful arrangement of words be so kind as those few simple ones? In fact, I have for some time seen how little you mean it; and, for your sakes, I cease to desire it. The pleasure you expressed at seeing Florence again, forgive me for saying, is the joy of sight merely; for can a little Italian town, and wretched Italian company, and travelling English lads and governors, be comparable to the choice of the best company of so vast a capital as London, unless you have taken an aversion to England? And your renewed transports at a less and still more insipid town, Pisa! These plainly told me your thoughts, which vague words cannot efface.

You then dropped that you could let your London house till next Christmas, and then talked of a visit to Switzerland, and since all this, Mrs. Damer has warned me not to expect YOU till next Spring. I shall not; nor do I expect that next spring. I have little expected this next! My dearest Madam, I allow all my folly and Unreasonableness, and give them up and abandon them totally.

I have most impertinently and absurdly tried, for my own sake merely, to exact from two young ladies, above forty years younger than myself, a promise of sacrificing their rooted inclinations to my whims and satisfaction. But my eyes are opened, my reason is returned, I condemn myself; and I now make you but one request, which is, that, though I am convinced it would be with the most friendly and good-natured meaning possible, I do implore you not to try to help me to delude myself any more. You never know half the shock it gave me when I learned from Mr. Batt, what you had concealed from me, your fixed resolution of going abroad last October; and though I did in vain deprecate it,--your coming to Twickenham in September, which I know, and from my inmost soul believe, was from mere compa.s.sion and kindness to me,-yet it did aggravate my parting with you.

I would not repeat all this, but to prevail with you, While I do live, and while you do condescend to have any friendship for me, never to let me deceive myself. I have no right to inquire into your plans, views or designs; and never will question you more about them. I shall deserve to be deluded if I do; but what you do please to say to me, I beg may be frank. I am, in every light, too weak to stand disappointment ow: I cannot be disappointed. You have a firmness that nothing shakes; and, therefore, it would be unjust to betray your good-nature into any degree of insincerity. You do nothing that is not reasonable and right; and I am conscious that you bore a thousand times more from my self-love and vanity, than any other two persons but yourselves would have supported with patience so long. Be a.s.sured that what I say I think, feel, and mean; derange none of your plans for me. I now wish you take no one step but What is conformable to your views, interest and satisfaction. It would hurt me to interfere with them -. I reproach myself with having so ungenerously tried to lay you under any difficulties, and I approve your resolution in adhering steadily to your point. Two posts ago I hinted that I was weaning myself from the anxiety of an attachment to two persons that must have been so uneasy to them, and has ended so sorrowfully to myself but that anxiety I restrict solely to the desire of your return: my friendship, had I years to live, could not alter or be shaken; and there is no kind of proof or instance of it that I will not give you both while I have breath.

I have vented what I had at my heart, and feel relieved. Do not take ill a word I have said. Be a.s.sured I can love you as much as ever I did, and do; and though I am no longer so Unjust as to prefer my own satisfaction to yours. Here I drop the subject; before Tuesday, perhaps, I shall be able to talk on some other.

Monday, 7th.

Though the Parliament is met, and the town they say, full, I have not heard a t.i.ttle of news of any sort; and yet my prison is a coffeehouse in a morning, though I have been far from well this whole week. Yesterday and Sat.u.r.day the gout was so painful in my right shoulder, that I could not stoop or turn round. To-day it is in my left elbow, and, I doubt, coming into my right foot: in short, it seems to be going its circle over again. I am not very sorry; sufferings reconcile one to parting with one's self.

One of our numerous tempests threw down Mrs. Damer's chimney last week, and it fell through her workshop; but fortunately touched none of her own works, and only broke two or three insignificant casts. I suppose you know she returns through Spain. This minute I have heard that Lord Lothian's daughter, Lady Mary St.

John, and daughter-in-law of Lady Di Beauclerc, died yesterday, having been delivered of a fine boy but the day before. As you are curious to know the chief topic of conversation, it is the rival Opera-houses, neither of which are opened yet; both saying the other is fallen down. Taylor has published a pamphlet that does not prove that the Marquis(730) is the most upright Chamberlain that ever dropped from the skies, nor that the skies are quite true blue. Adieu! if no postscript tomorrow. None.

(730) of Salisbury.

Letter 367 To Miss Berry.

Berkeley Square, Feb. 12, 1791. (page 472)

I have received your two letters of January 17th and 24th with an account of your objects and plans; and the latter are very much what I expected, as before you receive this you will have seen by my last, No. 18. Indeed, you most kindly offer to break SO far into your plan, as to return at the beginning of next winter; but as that would, as you say, not only be a sacrifice, but risk your healths, can any thing upon earth be more impossible than for me to accept or consent to such a sacrifice? Were I even in love with one of you, could I agree to it? and, being only a most zealous friend, do you think I will hear of it? Should I be a friend at all, if I wished you, for my sake, to travel in winter over mountains, or risk the storms at sea, that I have not forgotten when you went away? Can I desire you to derange a reasonable plan of economy, that would put you quite at your ease at your return? Have I any pretensions for expecting, still less for asking, such or any sacrifices? Have I interested myself in your affairs only to embarra.s.s them?

I do, in the most. Positive and solemn manner, refuse to accept the smallest Sacrifice of any part of your plan, but the single point that would be so hard on me. I will not say a word more on your return, and beg your pardon for having been so selfish as to desire it: my only request now is, that we may say no more about it. I am grieved that the great distance we are at must make me still receive letters about it for some weeks. I shall not forget how very unreasonable I have been myself; nor shall I try to forget it, lest I should be silly again: but I earnestly desire to be totally silent on a subject that I have totally abandoned, and which it is not at all improbable I may never have occasion to renew.

I knew the Comte de Coigny(731) in the year 1766: he was then lively and jovial. I did not think he would turn out a writer, or even reader; but he was agreeable. I say nothing on France- you must know as much as I do, and probably sooner. I will only tell you, that my opinion is not altered in a t.i.ttle. What will happen I do not pretend to guess; but am thoroughly persuaded that the present system, if it can be called so, cannot take root. The flirts towards anarchy here have no effect at all.

Horne Tooke before Christmas presented a saucy libel to the House of Commons, as a pet.i.tion on his election. The House contemptuously voted it only frivolous and vexatious, and disappointed him of a ray of martyrdom; but his fees, etc. will cost him three or four hundred pounds, which never go into a mob's calculation of the ingredients of martyrdom.(732)

Monday morning, 14th.