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

(870) Lady Anne Lennox, sister of the Duke of Richmond, and wife of William Anne van Keppel, Earl of Albemarle: she had been lady of the bedchamber to the Queen; and this year conducted Princess Louisa to Altona, to be married to the Prince Royal of Denmark.

(871) Henry Vernon, Esq. a nephew of Admiral Vernon, married to Lady Henrietta Wentworth, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Strafford, of the second creation.-D.

(872) Signor Pucci was resident from Tuscany at the Court of England.

(873) Chevalier Ossorio was several years minister in England from the King of Sardinia, to whom he afterwards became first minister.

351 Letter 124 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, Nov. 30, 1743.

I have had two letters from you since I wrote myself This I begin against to-morrow, for I should have little time to write. The parliament opens, and we are threatened with a tight Opposition, though it must be vain, if the numbers turns out as they are calculated; three hundred for the Court, two hundred and five opponents; that is, in town; for, you know, the whole amounts to five hundred and fifty-eight. The division of the ministry has been more violent than between parties; though now, they tell you, it is all adjusted. The Secretary,(874) since his return, has carried all with a high hand, and treated the rest as ciphers; but he has been so beaten in the cabinet council, that in appearance he submits, though the favour is most evidently with him. All the old ministers have flown hither as zealously as in former days; and of the three lev'ees (875) in this street, the greatest is in this house, as my Lord Carteret told them the other day; "I know you all go to Lord Orford - he has more company than any of us-- do you think I can't go to him too?" He is never sober; his rants are amazing; so are his parts and spirits.

He has now made up with the Pelhams, though after naming to two vacancies in the Admiralty without their knowledge; Sir Charles Hardy and Mr. Philipson. The other alterations are at last fixed. Winnington is to be paymaster; Sandys, cofferer, on resigning the exchequer to Mr. Pelham; Sir John Rushout, treasurer of the navy; and Harry Fox, lord of the treasury.

Mr. Compton,(876) and Gybbons remain at that board. Wat.

Plumber, a known man, said, the other day, "Zounds! Mr.

Pultney took those old dishclouts to wipe out the 'treasury, and now they are going to lace them and lay them up!" It is a most just idea: to be sure, Sandys and Rushout, and their fellows, are dishclouts, if dishclouts there are in the world: and now to lace them!

The Duke of Marlborough has resigned every thing, to reinstate himself in the old d.u.c.h.ess's will. She said the other day, "It is very natural: he listed as soldiers do when they are drunk, and repented when he was sober." So much for news: now for your letters.

All joy to Mr. Whithed on the increase of his family! and joy to you; for now he is established in so comfortable a way, I trust you will not lose him soon-and la Dame s'appelle?

If my Lady Walpole has a mind once in her life to speak truth, or to foretell,-the latter of which has as seldom any thing to do with truth as her ladyship has,-why she may now about the Tesi's dog, for I shall certainly forget what it would be in vain to remember. My dear Sir, how should one convey a dog to Florence! There are no travelling Princes of Saxe Gotha or Modena here at present, who would carry a little dog in a nutsh.e.l.l. The poor Maltese cats, to the tune of how many!

never arrived here; and how should one little dog ever find its way to Florence! But tell me, and, if it is possible, I will send it. Was it to be a greyhound, or of King Charles's breed? It was to have been the latter; but I think you told me that she rather had a mind to the other sort, which, by the way, I don't think I could get for her.

Thursday, eight o'clock at night.

I am just come from the House, and dined. Mr. c.o.ke(877) moved the address, seconded by Mr. Yorke, the lord chancellor's son.(878) The Opposition divided 149 against 278; which gives a better prospect of carrying on the winter easily. In the lords' house there was no division. Mr. Pitt called Lord Carteret the execrable author of our measures, and sole minister.(879) Mr. Winnington replied, that he did not know of any sole minister; but if my Lord Carteret was so, the gentlemen of the other side had contributed more to make him so than he had.

I am much pleased with the prospect you show me of the Correggio. My lord is so satisfied with the Dominichin, that he will go as far as a thousand pounds for the Correggio. Do you really think we shall get it, and for that price?

You talk of the new couple, and of giving the sposa a mantilla: What new couple! you don't say. I suppose, some Suares, by the raffle. Adieu!

(874) Lord Carteret.

(875) Lord Carteret's, Mr. Pelham's, and Lord Orford's.

(876) The Hon. George Compton, second son of George, fourth Earl of Northampton. He succeeded his elder brother James, the fifth earl, in the family t.i.tles and estates in 1754, and died in 1758.-D.

(877) The only son of Lord Lovel.-D.

(878) Philip Yorke, eldest son of Lord Hardwicke; and afterwards the second earl of that t.i.tle.-D.

(879) In Mr. Yorke's MS. parliamentary journal, the words are"an execrable, a sole minister, who had renounced the British nation, and seemed to have drunk of the potion described in poetic fictions."-E.

352 Letter 125 To Sir Horace Mann.

Dec. 15, 1743.

I write in a great fright, lest this letter should come too late. My lord has been told by a Dr. Bragge, a virtuoso, that, some ye(irs ago, the monks asked ten thousand pounds for our Correggio,(880) and that there were two copies then made of it: that afterwards, he is persuaded, the King of Portugal bought the original; he does not know at what price. Now, I think it very possible that this doctor, hearing the picture was to be come at, may have invented this Portuguese history; but as there is a possibility, too, that it may be true, you must take all imaginable precautions to be sure it is the very original-a copy would do neither you nor me great honour.

We have entered upon the Hanoverian campaign. Last Wednesday, Waller moved in our House an address to the King, to continue them no longer in our pay than to Christmas-day, the term for which they were granted. The debate lasted till half an hour after eight at night. Two young officers (881) told some very trifling stories against the Hanoverians, which did not at all add any weight to the arguments of the Opposition; but we divided 231 to 181. On Friday,' Lord Sandwich and Lord Halifax, in good speeches, brought the same motion into the Lords. I was there, and heard Lord Chesterfield make the finest oration I ever did hear.(882) My father did not speak, nor Lord Bath. They threw out the motion by 71 to 36. These motions will determine the bringing on the demand for the Hanoverians for another year in form; which was a doubtful point, the old part of the ministry being against it, though very contrary to my lord's advice.

Lord Gower, finding no more Tories were to be admitted, resigned on Thursday; and Lord Cobham in the afternoon. The privy-seal was the next day given to Lord Cholmondeley. Lord Gower's resignation is one of the few points in which I am content the prophecy in the old Jacobite ballad should be fulfilled-"The King shall have his own again."

The changes are begun, but will not be completed till the recess, as the preferments will occasion more re-elections than they can spare just now in the House of Commons. Sandys has resigned the exchequer to Mr. Pelham; Sir John Rushout is to be treasurer of the navy; Winnington, paymaster; Harry Fox, lord of the treasury: Lord Edgc.u.mbe, I believe, lord of the treasury,(883) and Sandys, cofferer and a peer. I am so scandalized at this, that I will fill up my letter (having told you all the news) with the first fruits of my indignation.

VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS ON ITS RECEIVING A NEW PEER,

THou senseless Hall, whose injudicious s.p.a.ce, Like Death, confounds a various mismatched race, Where kings and clowns, th' ambitious and the mean, Compose th' inactive soporific scene,

Unfold thy doors!-and a promotion see That must amaze even prost.i.tuted thee!

Shall not thy sons, incurious though they are, Raise their dull lids, and meditate a stare?

Thy sons, who sleep in monumental state, To show the spot where their great fathers sate.

Ambition first, and specious warlike worth, Call'd our old peers and brave patricians forth; And subject provinces produced to fame Their lords with scarce a less than regal name.

Then blinded monarchs, flattery's fondled race, Their favourite minions stamp'd with t.i.tled grace, And bade the tools of power succeed to Virtue's place, Hence Spensers, Gavestons, by crimes grown great, Vaulted into degraded Honour's seat: Hence dainty Villiers sits in high debate, Where manly Beauchamps, Talbots, Cecils sate Hence Wentworth,(884) perjured patriot, burst each tie, Profaned each oath, and gave his life the lie: Renounced whate'er he sacred held and dear, Renounced his country's cause, and sank into a Peer.

Some have bought ermine, venal Honour's veil, When set by bankrupt Majesty to sale Or drew n.o.bility's coa.r.s.e ductile thread >From some distinguished harlot's t.i.tled bed.

Not thus enn.o.bled Samuel!-no worth from his mud the sluggish reptile forth; No parts to flatter, and no grace to please, With scarce an insect's impotence to tease, He struts a Peer-though proved too dull to stay, Whence (885) even poor Gybbons is not brush'd away.

Adieu! I am just going to Leicester House, where the Princess sees company to-day and to-morrow, from seven to nine, on her lying-in. I mention this per amor del Signor Marchese Cosimo Riccardi.(886)

(880) One of the most celebrated pictures of Correggio, with the Madonna and Child, saints, and angels, in a convent at Parma.

(881) Captain Ross and Lord Charles Hay.-E.

(882) "Lord Chesterfield's performance," says Mr. Yorke, "was much cried up; but few of his admirers could distinguish the faults of his eloquence from its beauties." MS. Part.

Journal.-E.

( 883 This did not happen.

(884) Earl of Strafford; but it alludes to Lord Bath.

(885) The Treasury.

(886) A gossiping old Florentine n.o.bleman, whose whole employment was to inform himself of the state of marriages, pregnancies, lyings-in, and such like histories.

354 Letter 126 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, Dec. 26, 1743.

I shall complain of inflammations in my eyes till you think it is an excuse for not writing; but your brother [email protected] Witness that I have been shut up in a dark room for this week. I got frequent colds, which fall upon my eyes; and then I have bottles of sovereign eye- waters from all my acquaintance; but as they are Only accidental colds, I never use any thing but sage, which braces my eye-fibres again in a few days. I have had two letters since my last to you; One Complaining of my silence, and the other acknowledging one from me after a week's intermission: indeed, I never have been so long without writing to you - I do sometimes miss two weeks on any great dearth of news, which is all I have to fill a letter; for living as I do among people, whom, from your long absence, you cannot know, should talk Hebrew to mention them to you. Those, that from eminent birth, folly, or parts, are to be found in the chronicles of the times, I tell you of, whenever necessity or the King puts them into new lights. The latter, for I cannot think the former had any hand in it, has made Sandys, as I told you, a lord and cofferer! Lord Middles.e.x is one of the new treasury, not amba.s.sador as you heard. So the Opera-house and White's have contributed a commissioner and a secretary to the treasury,(887) as their quota to the government. It is a period to make a figure in history.

There is a recess of both Houses for a fortnight; and we are to meet again, with all the quotations and flowers that the young orators can collect-,ind forcibly apply to the Hanoverians; with all the malice which the disappointed Old have h.o.a.rded against Carteret, and with all the impudence his defenders can sell him - and when all that is vented-what then?-why then, things will just be where they were.

General Wade (888) is made field-marshal, and is to have command of the army, as it is supposed, on the King's not going abroad; but that is not declared . The French preparations go on with much more vigour than ours; they not having a House of Commons to combat all the winter; a campaign that necessarily engages all the attention of ministers, who have no great variety of apartments in their understandings.