The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume IV Part 69

Berkeley Square, Feb. 26, 1791. (page 479)

I have no letter from you to answer, nor any thing new that is the least interesting to tell you. The Duke of Argyll has sent a gentleman with a cart-load of affidavits, which the latter read to mother and daughter, in order to prevent the publication of their libel; but it only enraged the former, -who vows she will print all she knows, that is, any thing she has heard by their entire intimacy in the family, or, no doubt, what she can invent or misrepresent. What a Medusa! There has been a fragment of a rehearsal in the Haymarket, but still the Pantheon remains master of the field of battle: the vanquished are preparing manifestoes, but they seldom recover the day.

Madame du Barry(745) is come over to recover her jewels, of which she has been robbed--not by the National a.s.sembly, but by four Jews who have been seized here and committed to Newgate. Though the late Lord Barrymore acknowledged her husband to be of his n.o.ble blood, will she own the present Earl for a relation, when she finds him turned strolling player!(746) If she regains her diamonds, perhaps Mrs. Hastings may carry her to court.(747)

If you want bigger events, you may send to the Russian army, who will cut you fifteen thousand throats in a paragraph; or, en attendant, you may piddle with the havoc made at Chantilly, which has been half demolished by the rights of men, as the poor old Mesdames have been stopped by the rights of the poissardes; for, as it is true that extremes meet, the moment despotism was hurled from the throne, it devolved to the mob, whose majesties, not being able to write their names, do not issue lettres de cachet, but execute their wills with their own hands; for hanging, which degrades an executioner, ne deroge pas in sovereigns--witness the Czar Peter the Great, Muley Ishmael, and many religious and gracious African monarchs.

After eleven weeks of close confinement, I went out yesterday to take the air; but was soon driven back by rain and sleet, which soon ripened to a tempest of wind and snow, and continued all night - it does not freeze, but blows so hard, that I shall sally out no more tilt the weather has recovered its temper-I do not mean that I expect Pisan skies.

28th.

It was on Sat.u.r.day that I began this; it is now Monday, and I have no letter from you, though we have had dozens of east winds.

I am sorry to find that it costs above six weeks to say a word at Pisa and have an answer in London. This makes correspondence very uncomfortable; you will be talking to me of Miss Gunning, when, perhaps, she may be sent to Botany Bay, and be as much forgotten here as the Monster.(748) Still she has been a great resource this winter; for, though London is apt to produce Wilkeses, and George Gordons, and Mrs. Rudds, and Horne Tookes, and other phenomena, wet and dry, the, present season has been very unprolific; and we are forced to import French news, as we used to do fashions and Operas comiques. The Mesdames are actually set out: I shall be glad to hear they are safe at Turin, for are there no poissardes but at Paris?(749) Natio poissarda est.

Mr. Gibbon writes that he has seen Necker, and found him still devoured by ambition.(750) and I should think by mortification at the foolish figure he has made. Gibbon admires Burke to the skies, and even the religious parts, he says.(751)

Monday evening.

The east winds are making me amends -, one of them has brought me twins. I am sorry to find that even Pisa's sky is not quite sovereign, but that you have both been out of order, though, thank G.o.d! quite recovered both, If a Florentine March is at all like an English one, I hope you will not remove thither till April. Some of its months, I am sure, were sharper than those of our common wear are. Pray be quite easy about me: I am entirely recovered, though, if change were bad, we have scarce had one day without every variety of bad weather, with a momentary leaf-gold of sun. I have been out three times, and to-day have made five and-twenty visits, and was let in at six; and, though a little fatigued, am still able, you see, to finish my letter. You seem to think I palliated my illness - I certainly did not tell you that I thought it doubtful how it would end; yet I told you all & circ.u.mstances, and surely did not speak sanguinely.

I wish, in No. 20, you had not again named October or November.

I have quite given up those months, and am vexed I ever pressed for them, as they would break into Your reasonable plans, for which I abandon any foolish ones of my own. But I am a poor philosopher, or rather am like all philosophers, have no presence of mind, and must study my part before I can act it. I have now settled myself not to expect you this year-do not unsettle me: I dread a disappointment, as I do a relapse of the gout; and therefore cut this article short, that I may not indulge vain hopes, My affection for you both is unalterable; can I give so strong a proof as by supplicating you, as I do earnestly, to act as is most prudent for your healths and interest? A long journey in November would be the very worst part you could take. and I beseech you not to think of it: for me, you see I take a great deal of killing, nor is it so easy to die as is imagined.

Thank you, my dearest Miss Agnes, for your postscript. I love to see your handwriting; and yet do not press for it, as you are shy: though I address myself equally to both, and consult the healths of both In what I have recommended above. Here is a postscript for yours: Madame du Barry was to go and swear to her jewels before the Lord Mayor. Boydell, who is a little better bred than Monsieur Bailly,(752) made excuses for being obliged to administer the oath chez lui, but begged she would name her hour; and, when she did, he fetched her himself in the state-coach, and had a mayor-royal banquet ready for her.(753) She has got most of her jewels again. I want the King to send her four Jews to the National a.s.sembly, and tell them it is the change or la monnoie of Lord George Gordon, the Israelite.

Colonel Lenox is much better: the d.u.c.h.ess of Leinster had a letter from Goodwood to-day which says he rides out. I am glad you do. I said nothing on "the Charming-man's" poem. I fear I said too much to him myself. He said, others liked it: and showed me a note from Mr. Burke, that was hyperbole itself. I wish him so well, that I am sorry he should be so flattered, when, in truth, he has no genius.(754) There is no novelty, no plan, and no suite in his poetry: though many of the lines are pretty. Dr. Darwin alone can exceed his predecessors.

Let me repeat to both, that distance of place and time can make no alteration in my friendship. It grew from esteem for your characters, and understandings, and tempers; and became affection from your good-natured attentions 'to me, where there is so vast a disproportion in our ages. Indeed, that complaisance spoiled me; but I have weaned myself of my own self-love, and you shall hear no more of its dictates.

(745) The last mistress of Louis; the Fifteenth. The Count du Barry who had disgraced his name by marrying her, claimed to be of the same family with the Earls of Barrymore in Ireland.-E.

(746) See ante, p. 452, letter 354.

(747) Mrs. Hastings was supposed, by the party violence of the day, to have received immense bribes in diamonds.

(748) A vagabond so called, from his going about attempting to stab at women with a knife. His first aim had probably been at their Pockets, which having in several instances missed and wounded his intended victims, fear and a love of the marvellous dubbed him with the name of the Monster. The wretch, whose name was Renwick Williams, was tried for the offence at the Old Bailey, in July 1790, and found guilty of a misdemeanour.-E.

(749) After numerous interruptions, the King's aunts were permitted by the National a.s.sembly to proceed to Italy.-E.

(750) "I have pa.s.sed," says Gibbon, in a letter to Lord Sheffield, "four days at the castle of Copet with Necker; and could have wished to have shown him as a warning to any aspiring youth possessed with the demon of ambition. With all the means of private happiness in his power, he is the most miserable of human beings; the past, the present, and the future, are equally odious to him. When I suggested some domestic amus.e.m.e.nt of books, building, etc. he answered, with a deep tone Of despair, 'Dans l''etat o'u je suis, je ne puis sentir que le coup de vent qui m'a abbatu.' How different from the conscious cheerfulness with which our friend Lord North supported his fall! Madame Necker maintains more external composure, mais le diable n'y perd rien. It is true that Necker wished to be carried into the closet, like old Pitt, on the shoulders of the people, and that he has been ruined by the democracy which he had raised. I believe him to be an able financier and know him to be an honest man."-E.

(751) The following are Gibbon's expressions:--"Burke's book is a most admirable medicine against the French disease; which has made too much progress even in this happy country. I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his Chivalry, and I can forgive even his superst.i.tion."-E.

(752) M. Bailly, the learned astronomer. He was president of the first National a.s.sembly, and in July 1789, appointed mayor of Paris; in which situation he gave great offence to the people, in July 1791, by ordering martial law to be proclaimed against a mob which had a.s.sembled in the Champ de Mars to frame an address, recommending the deposition of Louis. For this step, which was approved of by the a.s.sembly, he was arrested, tried, condemned, and put to death on the 11th of November 1793. The details of this event are horrible. "The weather," says M. Thiers, "was cold and rainy, Conducted on foot, he manifested the utmost composure amidst the insults of a barbarous populace, whom he had fed while he +was mayor. On reaching the foot of the scaffold, one of the wretches cried out, that the field of' the federation ought not to be polluted by his blood. The people instantly rushed upon the guillotine, bore it off, and erected it again upon a dunghill on the bank of the Seine, and opposite to the spot where Bailly had pa.s.sed his life and composed his invaluable works. This operation lasted some hours: meanwhile, he was compelled to walk several times round the Champ de Mars, bareheaded, and with his hands pinioned behind him. Some pelted him with mud, others kicked and struck him with sticks. He fell exhausted. They lifted him up again. 'Thou tremblest!' said a soldier to him. 'My friend,' replied the old man, 'it is cold.'

At length he was delivered over to the executioner; and another ill.u.s.trious scholar, and one of the most virtuous of men, was then taken from it." Vol. iii. p. 207-E.

(753) See post, p. 484.-E.

(754) Mr. Gifford was of Walpole's opinion, and has, in consequence, accorded to " The Charming-man" a prominent situation in the Baviad:--

"See snivilling Jerningham at fifty weep O'er love-lorn oxen and deserted sheep."

To the poem here alluded to, and which was ent.i.tled "Peace, Ignominy, and Destruction," the satirist thus alludes:-"I thought I understood something of faces; but I must read my Lavater over again I find. That a gentleman, with the physionomie 2d'un mouton qui r'eve,' should suddenly start up a new Tyrtaeus, and pour a dreadful note, through a cracked war-trump, amazes me: well, fronti nulla fides shall henceforth be my motto' In a note to the Pursuits of Literature, Mr. Mathias directs the attention of Jerningham to the following beautiful lines in Dryden's Epistle to Mr. Julien, Secretary of the Muses:--

"All his care Is to be thought a Poet fine and fair; Small beer and gruel are his meat and drink, The diet he prescribes himself to think; Rhyme next his heart he takes at morning peep, Some love-epistles at the hour of sleep; And when his pa.s.sion has been bubbling long, The sc.u.m at last boils Up into a song." --E.

Letter 372 To The Miss Berrys.

Berkeley Square, March 5, 1791. (page 483)

One may live in a vast capital, and know no more of three parts of it than of Carthage. When I was at Florence, I have surprised some Florentines by telling them, that London was built, like their city, (where you often cross the bridges several times in a day,) on each side of the river: and yet that I had never been but on one side; for then I had never been in Southwark. When I was very young, and in the height of the opposition to my father, my mother wanted a large parcel of bugles; for what use I forget.

As they were then out of fashion, she could get none. At last, she was told of a quant.i.ty in a little shop in an obscure alley in the City. We drove thither; found a great stock; she bought it, and bade the proprietor send it home. He said, "Whither?"

"To Sir Robert Walpole's." He asked coolly, "Who is Sir Robert Walpole?"

This is very like Cambridge, who tells you three stories to make you understand a fourth. In short, t'other morning a gentleman made me a visit, and asked if I had heard of the great misfortune that had happened? The Albion Mills are burnt down. I asked where they were; supposing they were powder-mills in the country, that had blown up. I had literally never seen or heard of the s.p.a.cious lofty building at the end of Blackfriars Bridge. At first it was supposed maliciously burnt, and it is certain the mob stood and enjoyed the conflagration, as of a monopoly; but it had been on fire, and it was thought extinguished. The building had cost a hundred thousand Pounds; and the loss in corn and flour is calculated at a hundred and forty thousand. I do not answer for the truth of the sums; but it is certain that the Palace-yard and part of St. James's Park were covered with half-burnt grain.(755)

This accident, and my introduction, have helped me to a good part Of my letter; for you must have observed, that even in this overgrown town the winter has not been productive of events.

Good night! I have two days to wait for a letter that I may answer. Stay -, I should tell you, that I have been at Sir Joseph Banks's literary saturnalia,(756) where was a Parisian watchmaker, who produced the smallest autoMaton that I suppose was ever created. It was a rich snuffbox, not too large for a woman. On opening the lid, an enamelled bird started up, sat on the rim, turned round, fluttered its wings, and piped in a delightful tone the notes of different birds; particularly the jug-jug of the nightingale. It is the prettiest plaything you ever saw; the price tempting--only five hundred pounds. That economist, the Prince of Wales, could not resist it, and has bought one of those d.i.c.kybirds. If the maker finds such customers, he will not end like one of his profession here, who made the serpent in Orpheus and Eurydice;(757) and who fell so deeply in love with his own works, that he did nothing afterwards but make serpents, of all sorts and sizes, till he was ruined and broke. I have not a t.i.ttle to add-but that the Lord Mayor did not fetch Madame du Barry in the City-royal coach; but kept her to dinner. She is gone; but returns in April.

(755) The fire took place on the morning of the 2d of March.

There was no reason for any particular suspicion, except the general dislike in the lower cla.s.ses of the people, arising from a notion, that the undertaking enhanced the price of corn and decreased the value of labour.-E.

(756) Sir Joseph Banks, while President of the Royal Society, had a weekly evening reception of all persons distinguished in science or the arts.

(757) A celebrated opera.

Letter 373 To Miss Berry.

Strawberry Hill, Sat.u.r.day, March 19, 1791. (page 484)

I did not begin my letter on customary Friday , because I had nothing new to tell or to say. The town lies fallow--not an incident worth repeating as far as I know. Parliament manufactures only bills, not politics. I never understood any thing useful; and, now that my time and connexions are shrunk to so narrow a compa.s.s, what business have I with business? As I have mended considerably for the last four days, and as we have had a fortnight of soft warm weather, and a southwest wind to-day, I have ventured hither for change Of air, and to give orders about some repairs at Cliveden; which, by the way, Mr.

Henry Bunbury, two days ago, proposed to take off my hands for his life. I really do not think I accepted his offer. I shall return to town on Monday, and hope to find a letter to answer--or what will this do?

Berkeley Square, Monday evening.

I am returned and find the only letter I dreaded, and the only one, I trust, that I shall ever not be impatient to receive from you. Though ten thousand times kinder than I deserve, it wounds my heart: as I find I have hurt two of the persons I love the best upon earth', and whom I am most constantly studying to please and serve. That I soon repented of my murmurs, you have seen by my subsequent letters. The truth, as you may have perceived, though no excuse, was, that I had thought myself dying, and should never see you more; that I was extremely weak and low, when Mrs. Damer's letter arrived, and mentioned her supposing that I should not see you till spring twelvemonth.

That terrible sentence recalled Mr. Batt's being the first to a.s.sure me of your going abroad, when I had concluded you had laid aside the design. I did sincerely allow that in both instances you had acted from tenderness in concealing your intentions; but, as I knew I could better bear the information from yourselves than from others, I thought it unfriendly to let me learn from others what interested me so deeply: yet I do not in the least excuse my conduct; no, I condemn it in every light, and shall never forgive myself if you do not promise me to be guided entirely by your own convenience and inclinations about your return. I am perfectly well again, and just as likely to live one year as half an one. Indulge your pleasure in being abroad while you are there. I am now reasonable enough to enjoy your happiness as my own; and, since you are most kind when I least deserve it, how can I express my grat.i.tude for giving up the scruple that was so distressing to me! Convince me you are in earnest by giving me notice that you will write to Charingcross while the Neapolitans are at Florence.(758) I will look on that as a clearer proof of your forgiving my criminal letter, than your return before you like it. It is most sure that nothing is more solid or less personal than my friendship for you two; and even my complaining letter, though unjust and unreasonable, proved that the nearer I thought myself to quitting the world, the more my heart was set on my two friends; nay, they had occupied the busiest moments of my illness as well as the most fretful ones. Forgive then, my dearest friends, what could proceed from nothing but too impatient affection. You say most truly you did not deserve my complaints: your patience and temper under them make me but more in the wrong; and to have hurt you, who have known but too much grief, is such a contradiction to the whole turn of my mind ever since I knew you, that I believe my weakness from illness was beyond even what I suspected. It is sure that, when I am in my perfect senses, the whole bent of my thoughts is to promote your and your sister's felicity; and you know nothing can give me satisfaction like your allowing me to be of use to you. I speak honestly, notwithstanding my unjust letter; I had rather serve you than see you. Here let me finish this subject: I do not think I shall be faulty to you again.

The Mother Gunning has published her letter to the Duke of Argyll, and it disappoints every body. It is neither romantic, nor entertaining, nor abusive, but on the General and Mr. and Mrs. Bowen, and the General's groom. On the Bowens it is so immeasurably scurrilous, that I think they must prosecute her.

She accuses them and her husband of a conspiracy to betray and ruin his own daughter, without, even attempting to a.s.sign a motive to them. Of the House of Argyll she says not a word. In short, it is a most dull incoherent rhapsody, that gives no account at all of the story that gave origin to her book, and at which no mortal could guess from it; and the 246 pages contain nothing but invectives on her four supposed enemies, and endless tiresome encomiums on the virtues of her glorious darling, and the unspottable innocence of that harmless lambkin. I would not even send it to you if I had an opportunity-you would not have patience to go through it; and there, I suppose, the absurd legend will end. I am heartily tired of it. Adieu!

P. S. That ever I should give you two an uneasy moment! Oh!

forgive me: yet I do not deserve pardon in my own eyes: and less in my own heart.

(758) His correspondents, to settle his mind as to the certainty of their return at the time they had promised, had a.s.sured him, that no financial difficulties should stand in the way; which is what he means by sending to Charing-cross (to Drummond his banker), No such difficulties occurred. The correspondence, therefore, with Charing-cross never took place-M.B.