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| Table of Contents | |
| Section | Page |
| Start of eBook | 1 |
| REMINISCENCES OF THE COURTS OF GEORGE THE FIRST AND SECOND. | 1 |
| CHAPTER 8.—101 | 1 |
| ADVERTISEMENT. | 23 |
| 37 | |
| CHAPTER 1. | 55 |
| CHAPTER II | 62 |
| CHAPTER III. | 69 |
| CHAPTER IV. | 74 |
| CHAPTER V. | 77 |
| CHAPTER VI. | 80 |
| CHAPTER VII. | 82 |
| CHAPTER VIII. | 93 |
| CHAPTER IX. | 95 |
| (See Reminiscences, p. 97.) | 101 |
| Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) | 570 |
| (Three Pages) | 572 |
CHAPTer 1.—67 Motives to the Undertaking-Precedents-George the First’s Reign-a Proem to the History of the Reigning House of Brunswick-The Reminiscent introduced to that Monarch-His Person and Dress-The Duchess of Kendal-her Jealousy of Sir Robert Walpole’s Credit with the King-the Intrigues to displace him, and make Bolingbroke Minister
Chapter 2.—73 Marriage of George the First, while Electoral Prince, to the Princess Sophia Dorothea-Assassination of Count Konigsmark-Separation from the Princess-Left-handed espousal-Piety of the Duchess of Kendal-Confinement and Death of Sophia Dorothea in the Castle of Alden-French Prophetess-The King’s Superstition-Mademoiselle Schulemberg-Royal Inconsistency-Countess of platen-Anne Brett-Sudden Death of George the First
Chapter 3.—79 Quarrel between George the First and his Son-Earl of Sunderland-Lord Stanhope-South Sea Scheme-Death of Craggs-Royal Reconcilement-Peerage Bill Defeated-Project for seizing the Prince of Wales and conveying him to America-Duke of Newcastle-Royal Christening-Open rupture-Prince and Princess of Wales ordered to leave the Palace
CHAPtER 4.—83 Bill Of Pains and Penalties against Bishop Atterbury-Projected Assassination of Sir Robert Walpole-Revival of the Order of the Bath-Instance of George the First’s good-humoured Presence of Mind
Chapter 5.—86
Accession of George the Second-Sir Spencer Compton-Expected
Change in Administration-Continuation of Lord Townshend
-and
Sir Robert Walpole by the Intervention of Queen Caroline-Mrs.
Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk-Her character
by
Swift-and by Lord Chesterfield
Chapter 6.—89
Destruction of George the First’s Will.
Chapter 7.91 History of Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk-Miss Bellenden-Marriage with Colonel John Carnl)bell, afterwards Fourth Duke of Argyle-Anecdotes of Queen Caroline-Her last Illness and Death-Anecdotes of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-Last Years of George the Second-Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady Sundon-Lady Diana Spencer-Frederick, Prince of Wales-Sudden Removal of the Prince and Princess from Hampton Court to St. James’s-Birth of a Princess-Rupture with the King-Anecdotes of Lady Yarmouth
George the Second’s Daughters-Anne, Princess of Orange-Princess Amelia-Princess Caroline-Lord Hervey-Duke of Cumberland
Chapter 9.—103
Anecdotes of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-and of
Catherine,
Duchess of Buckingham
Extracts from the letters of Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, to the earl of Stair, illustrative of “The reminiscences.” (Now first PUBlished) 111
Lettersof Horace walpole.
(Those Letters now first collected are marked N.)
1735
1. To Richard West, Esq. November 9.-Picture of a University life. Cambridge sophs. Juvenile quadruple alliance—121
1736.
2. To George Montagu, Esq. May 2.-Marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales, with the Princess Augusta of Saxe Gotha—122
3. To the same, May 6.-Pleasures of youth, and youthful recollections—123
4. To the same, May 20.-Jaunt to Oxford. Wrest House. Easton Neston. Althorp—124
5. To the same, May 30.-Petronius Arbiter. Coventry’s Dialogue between Philemon and Hydaspes on False Religion. Artemisia— 126
6. To Richard West, Esq. Aug. 17.-Gray, and other schoolfellows. Eton recollections. Course of study at the University—127
1737.
7. To George Montagu, Esq. March 20.-French and English manners contrasted—128
8. To the same.-Feelings on revisiting Eton—129
1739.
9. To Richard West, Esq. April 21. Paris society. Amusements. Funeral of the Duke de Tresmes. St. Denis. Church of the Celestins. French love of show. Signs. Notions of honour—130
10. To the same.-, Description of Versailles. Conventof the Chartreux. History of St. Bruno, painted by Le Soeur. Relics— 132
11. To the same, June 18.-Rheims. Brooke’s “Gustavus Vasa”— 134
12. To the same, July 20.-Rheims. Compiegne. Self-introduction—134
13. To the same, Sept. 28.-Mountains of Savoy. Grande Chartreuse. Aix. English visitors. Epigram—136
14. To the same, Nov. 11.-Passage of Mount Cenis. Cruel accident. Chamberri. Inscription. Pas de Suza. Turin. Italian comedy. “L’Anima Damnata.” Conversazione—138
15. To the same.-Bologna. Letter-writing. Curl. Whitfield’s Journal. Jingling epitaph. Academical exercises at the Franciscans’ church. Dominicans’ Church. Old verses in a new light—140
1740.
16. To the same, January 24.-Florence. Grand Duke’s gallery. Effect of travel. English and Italian character contrasted. Story of the prince and the nut—142
17. To the same, February 27.-Florence. The Carnival. Character of the Florentines. Their prejudice about nobility. Mr. Martin. Affair of honour—143
18. To the Hon. Henry Seymour Conway, March 6.-Complaints of his not writing. Attachment to Florence—145
19. To richard West, Esq. March 22.-Description of Siena. Romish superstitions. Climate of italy. Italian customs. Radicofani. Dome of Siena. Inscription. Entrance to Rome—146
20. To the same, April 16.-Rome. Ruins of the temple of Minerva Medica. Ignorance and poverty of the present Romans. The Coliseum. Relics—148
21. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, April 23.-Society at Rome. The Moscovita. Roman Conversations. The Conclave. Lord Deskford— 150
22. To Richard West, Esq., May 7.-The Conclave. Antiquities of Rome. State of the public a century hence—152
23. To the same, June 14.-Naples. Description of Herculaneum. Passage in Statius picturing out this latent city—153
24. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, July 5.-Reasons for leaving Rome. Malaria. Radicofani described. Relics from Jerusalem. Society at Florence. Mr. Mann. Lady pomfret. Princess Craon. Hosier’s ghost. The Conclave. Lord Chancellor Hardwicke—155
25. To Richard West, Esq.-Medals and inscriptions. Taking of Porto Bello. The Conclave. Lady Mary Montagu. Life at Florence—159
26. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Sept. 25.-Character of the Florentines. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu described. Sortes Virgiliane—161
27. To Richard West, Esq. Oct. 2.-Effect of travel- A wedding at Florence. Addison’s Italy. Dr. Cocchi. Bondelmonti. A song. Bronzes and medals. Tartini. Lady Walpole. Platonic love—163
28. To the same, Nov.-Disastrous flood at Florence—166
1741.
29. To the Rev. Joseph Spence, Feb. 21.-Hopes to renew in England an acquaintance begun in Italy. Owns him his master in the antique—[N.) 168
30. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, March 25.-Rejoices at George Selwyn’s recovery And at the result of Mr. Sandvs’ motion for the removal of Sir Robert Walpole. Middleton’s Life of Cicero--169
31. To Richard West, Esq., May 10.-His opinion of the first act of West’s tragedy of Pausanias. Description of Rome during fair-time—170
32. To Sir Horace Mann, Sept.-Calais on his return to England. Amorevoli. The Viscontina. Passage to Dover. Comfort and snugness of English in country towns. The distinction of “meddling people” nowhere but in England. Story of Mr. Pope and the Prince of Wales—172
33. To the same, Oct.-Corsica. Bianca Colonna. Baron Stosch, and his Maltese cats—174
34. To the Hon. H. S. Conway.-On his return to England. Changes produced by travel—175
35. To Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 8.-Illness of Sir Robert Walpole. The Opera. Sir Benjamin Keene. Dominichino’s Madonna and Child. Lady Dorothy Boyle. State of parties—176
36. To the same, Oct. 13—178
37. To the same, Oct. 19.-Unfavourable state of his father’s health—178
38. To the same, Oct. 22.-Duel between Winnington and Augustus Townshend. Long Sir Thomas Robinson. Mrs. Woffington. “Les Cours de l’Europe”—179
39. To the same, Nov. 2.-Sir Thomas Robinson’s ball. The Euston embroil. The Neutrality. “The Balancing Captain,” a new song—182
40. To the same, Nov. 5.-Opera House management—186
41. To the same, Nov. 12.-Admiral Vernon. The Opera. The Viscontina—187
42. To the same, Nov. 23.-Spanish design on Lombardy. Sir Edward Walpole’s courtship. Lady Pomfret. “Going to Court.” Lord Lincoln. Paul Whitehead. “Manners”—189
43. To the same, Nov. 26.-His mother’s tomb. Intaglio of the Gladiator—191
44. To the same, Dec. 3.-Admiral Haddock. Meeting of Parliament. State of parties. Colley Cibber—192
45. To the same, Dec. 10.-Debate on the King’s speech. Westminster petition. Triumph of Opposition. “Bright Bootle”— 194
46. To the same, Dec. 16.-Chairman of election committees. Ministry in a minority—197
47. To the same, Dec. 17.-Warm debates in Westminster election committee. Odd suicide—199
48. To the same, Dec. 24.-Anecdote of Sandys. Ministerial victory. Debates on the Westminster election. Story of the Duchess of Buckingham. Mr. Nugent. Lord Gage. Revolution in Russia—201
49. To the same, Dec. 29.-The Dominichino. Passage of the Giogo. Bubb Doddington. Follies of the Opposition—206
1742.
50. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 7.-Reasons why he is not in fashion. His father’s want of partiality for him. Character of General Churchill. Vote-trafficking during the holidays. Music party. The three beauty-Fitzroys. Lord Hervey. Hammond, the poet. Death of Lady Sundon. Anecdotes—207
51. To the same, Jan. 22.-House of Commons. Merchants’ petition. Leonidas Glover. Place Bill. Projected changes. King’s message to the Prince. Pulteney’s motion for a secret committee on Sir Robert Walpole’s conduct. New opera—212
52. To the same Feb. 4.-Sir Robert’s morning levees. His resignation. Created Earl of Orford—218
53. To the same; Feb. 9.@Political changes. Opposition meeting at the Fountain. Cry against Sir Robert. Instructions to members. Lord Wilmington first lord of the Treasury.New ministry. Crebillon’s “Sofa”—220
54. To the same, Feb. 18.-Rumoured impeachments. Popular feeling. “The Unhappy Favourite.” “broad Bottom” ministry. the Prince of Wales at the King’s levee. sir Robert takes his seat in the HOuse of Lords. Grand masquerade—224
55. To the same, Feb. 25.-House of Commons. Shippen. Murray. Story of Sir R. Godschall. Impeachments. Changes. “England in 1741,” by Sir C. H. Williams—227
56. To the same, march 3.-Merchants’ petition. leonidas Glover. New Story of the Lord mayor. speech of Doddington. Heydon election. “The broad Bottom.” Duchess of Marlborough’s Memoirs. Lord Oxford’s sale. New opera. Sir robert at richmond—229
57. to the same, March 10.-The coalition. Motion for a committee of inquiry into the last twenty years thrown out. Duke of Argyle resigns. Old Sarah’s Memoirs—234
58. To the same, march 22.-Queen of Hungary’s successes. Lord Oxford’s sale—237
59. to the same, March 24.-Secret Committee to inquire into the conduct of the Earl of Orford appointed. Horace WAlpole’s speech on the occasion—238
60. To the same, april 1.-Secret Committee balloted for. court and Opposition lists. Bill for repealing the Septennial Act rejected—241
61. To the same, april 8.-lady Walpole’s extravagant schemes. Subsidy for the Queen of Hungary. Lord Orford’s crowded levees. Rage of the mob against him. Place Bill rejected by the Lords—243
62. To the same, April 15.-Progress of the Secret Committee. Committal of Paxton—246
63. To the same, april 22.- Secret Committee. Examination of Sir John Rawdon. Opening of Ranelagh Gardens—247
64. To the same, April 29.-Preparations for war in Flanders. Examinations before the Secret Committee. Scuffle at the Opera—249
65. To richard West, Esq., may 4.-Anxiety for the recovery of his health and spirits. The age most unpoetical. Wit monopolized by politics. Royal reconciliation. Asheton’s sermons. (Death of Mr. West)—251
66. To sir Horace mann, May 6.-Florentine nobility. Embarkations for Germany. Doings of the Secret committee. the opera—252
67. to the same, May 13.-first report of the Secret Committee. Bill to indemnify evidence against Lord orford brought in—254
68. To the same, May 20.-Indemnity Bill carried in the Commons. Party dinner at the Fountain. Place Bill. Mr. Nugent’s attack on the bishops—254
69. To the same, May 28.-Ranelagh. Vauxhall. Mrs. Clive. “Miss Lucy in town.” Garrick at Goodman’s Fields: “a very good mimic; but nothing wonderful in his acting.” Mrs. Bracegirdle. meeting at the Fountain. The Indemnity Bill flung out by the Lords. Epigram on Pulteney. Committee to examine the public accounts. Epigram on the Indemnity Bill. Kent and symmetry. “The Irish Beggar”—256
70. To the same, June 3.-Epigram on Lord Islay’s garden upon Hounslow Heath—260
71. To the same, June 10.-Lady Walpole and her son. Royal reviews. Death of hammong. Process against the duchess of Beaufort—261
72. To the same, June 14.-Peace between Austria and Prussia. Ministerial movements. Perplexities of the Secret Committee. Conduct of Mr. Scrope. Lady Vane’s adventures—263
73. To the same, June 25.-successes of the Queen of Hungary. Mr. Pulteney created Earl of Bath—265
74. To the same, June 30.-Second Report of the Secret Committee.’ The Pretender. Intercepted letters. Lord Barrymore—267
75. to the same.-Lines on the death of Richard West, Esq. “A Receipt to make a lord”—269
76. To the same, July 7.-New Place Bill. General Guise. Monticelli—271
77. To the same July 14.-Ned and Will Finch. Lord Sidney Beauclerc. Pulteney takes up his patent as Earl of Bath. Ranelagh masquerade. Fire in Downing Street—273
78. To the same.-Prorogation. End of the Secret Committee. Paxton released from Newgate. Ceretesi. Shocking scene of murder. Items from his grandfather’s account-book. Lord Orford at court—275
79. To the same, July 29.-About to set out for Houghton. Evening at Ranelagh with his father. Lord Orford’s increasing popularity. “The Wife of Bath.” Cibber’s pamphlet against Pope. Doddington’s “Comparison of the Old and New Ministry”— 278
80. To the same,-New ballads. Lord Orford at Houghton—279
81. To the same, Aug. 20—280
82. To the same, Aug. 28.-Marshal Belleisles, Cardinal Tencin. “Lessons for the Day.” “An honourable man”—281
83. To the same, Sept, 11.-Visit to Woolterton. A Catalogue of New French Books”—284
84. To the same, Sept. 25.-Admiral Matthews. The King’sJourney to Flanders. Siege of Prague. History of the Princess Eleonora of Guastalla. Moli`ere’s Tartuffe—285
85. To the same, Oct. 8.-Siege of Prague raised. Great preparations for the King’s journey to Flanders. Odes on Pulteney. Story of the Pigwiggins. Fracas at Kensington Palace—287
86. To the same, Oct. 18.-Admiral Matthews. “Yarmouth Roads.” A ballad, by Lord Hervey—289
87. To the same, Oct. 23.—293
88. To the same, Nov. 1.-The King’s levee and drawing-room described. State of parties. A piece of absence. Duc d’Arembery—294
89. To the same, Nov. 15.-Projects of Opposition Lord Orford’s reception at the levee. Revolution in the French court. The Opera. Lord Tyrawley. Doddington’s marriage—296
90. To the same, Dec. 2.—House of Commons. Motion for a new secret committee thrown out. Union of the Whigs—298
91. To the same, Dec. 9.-Debate on disbanding the army in Flanders. “Hanover"-the word for the winter—299
92. To the same, Dec. 23.-Difficulty of writing upon nothing— 301
1743.
93. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 6.-Admiral Vernon. Reply of the Duchess of Queensberry—302
94. To the same, Jan. 13.-House of Commons. Case of the Hanover ’Forces.” Difficulty of raising the supplies. Lord Orford’s popularity—304
95. To the same, Jan. 27.-Accession of the Dutch to the King’s measures—306
96. To the same, Feb. 2. Debate in the Lords on disbanding the Hanoverian troops—308
97. to the same, Feb. 18.—309
98. To the same, Feb. 24.’ Austrian victory over the Spaniards in Italy. King theodore’s Declaration. handle and the Opera— 309
99. To the same, March 3.-Death of the Electress. Story of Lord Hervey. The Oratorios—310
100. To the same, March 14.-Duel between his uncle Horace and Mr. Chetwynd. Death of the Duchess of Buckingham—311
101. To the same, March 25.-Epidemic. Death of Dr. Blackburne, Archbishop of York—314
102. To the same, April 4.-Funeral of the Duchess of Buckingham—315
103. To the same, April 14.-Army in Flanders. King Theodore. The Opera ruined by gentlemen directors. Dillettanti Club. London versus the country—317
104. To the same, April 25.-Departure of the King and Duke of Cumberland from the army in Flanders. The Regency. Princess Louisa and the Prince of Denmark. Lord Stafford and Miss Cantillon. Irish fracas. Silvia and Philander—318
105. To the same, May 4.-King Theodore. Admiral Vernon’s frantic speech. Ceretesi. Low state of the Opera. Freemasonry--320
106. to the same, May 12.-Death of the Duchess of Kendal. Story of Old Sarah. Maids of honour—322
107. To the same, May 19.-Mutiny of a Highland regiment—323
108. To the same, June 4.-Marriages, deaths and promotions. Sale of Corsica—324
109. To the same, June 16.-expected battle in Flanders. Alarms for Mr. Conway. Houghton gallery. Life of Theodore—326
110. To the same, June 20.-Visit to Euston. Kent. Anecdote of Lord Easton. Lady Dorothy Boyle—328
111. To the same, June 28.-Batttle of Dettingen. Conduct of the King. Anecdotes—329
112. To the same, July 4.-Further anecdotes of the battle. Public rejoicings. Lines on the victory. Halifax’s poem of the battle of the Boyne—331
113. to the same, July 11.-another battle expected—333
114. to the same, July 19.-Conduct of General Ilton. “The Confectioner”—334
115. To the same, July 31.-the temporizing conduct of the Regency. Bon-mot of Winnington—335
116. To the same, Aug. 14.-Arrival of the Dominichini. Description. Pun of Madame de S`evign`e—336
117. To John Chute, Esq., Aug. 20.-Life at Houghton. Stupifying qualities of beef, ale, and wine. The Dominichini— [N.) 338
118. To Sir Horace Mann, Aug. 29.-Undoubted originality of the Dominichini. Mr. Pelham first lord of the treasury—340
119. To the same, Sept. 7.-The marrying Princesses. French players at Cliefden. Our faith in’politics. Story of the Duke of Buckingham. Extraordinary miracle—341
120. To the same, Sept 17.-The King and Lord Stair—343
121. To the same, Oct. 3.-Journey to town. Newmarket described. No solitude in the country. Delights of a London life. Admiral Matthews and the Pope. Story of Sir James of the Peak. Mrs. White’s brown bob. Old Sarazin at two the morning. Lord Perceval’s “Faction Detected.” Death of the duke of Argyle—344
122. To the same, oct. 12.-Conduct of Sir Horace’s father. The army in Flanders in winter quarters. Distracted state of parties. Patapaniana. Imitation of an epigram of martial—347
123. To the Same, Nov. 17.-the King’s arrival and reception. His cool behaviour to the Prince of Wales. Lord Holderness’s Dutch bride. The Prince of Denmark. the Opera—349
124. To the same, Nov. 30.-Meeting of Parliament. Strength of Opposition. Conduct of Lord Carteret. Treasury dishclouts. Debate on the Address—351
125. To the same, Dec. 15.-Debates on the Hanoverian troops. Resignation of Lord Gower. Ministerial changes. Sandys made a peer. Verses addressed to the House of Lords, on its receiving a new peer—352
126. To the same, Dec. 26.—354
1744.
127. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 24.-The Brest fleet at sea. Motion for continuing the Hanover troops carried by the exertions of Lord Orford—356
128. To the same, Feb. 9.-Appearance of the Brest squadron off the Land’s End. Pretender’s son at Paris—358
129. To the same, Feb. 16.-French squadron off Torbay. King’s message concerning the young Pretender and designed invasion. Activity and zeal of Lord Orford—359
130. To the same, Feb. 23.-Welsh election carried against Sir Watkyn Williams. Prospect of invasion. Preparations—361
131. To the same, March 1.-The French expected every moment. Escape of the Brest squadron from Sir John Norris. Dutch troops sent for. Spirit of the nation. Addresses. Lord Barrymore and Colonel Cecil taken up. Suspension of the Habeas Corpus. The young Pretender—361
132. To the same, March 5.-Great storm. French transports destroyed, and troops disembarked—363
133. To the same, March 15.-Fears of invasion dispelled. Mediterranean engagement. Admiral Lestock—364
134. To the same, March 22.-French declaration of war. Affair in the Mediterranean. Sir John Norris. Hymeneals. Lord Carteret and Lady Sophia Fermor. Doddington and Mrs. Behan— 365
135. To the same, April 2.—366
136. To the same, April 15.-Nuptials of the great Quixote and the fair Sophia. Invasion from Dunkirk laid aside—367
137. To the same, May 8.-Debate on the Pretender’s Correspondence Bill—369
138. To the same, May 29.-Movements of the army in Flanders. Illness of his father. Death of Pope. Mr. Henry Fox’s private marriage with Lady Charlotte Lenox. Bishop Berkeley and tar-water—370
139. To the same, June 11.-Successes of the French army in Flanders. State of the combined army. And of our sea-force— 372
140. To the same, June 18.-Return of Admiral Anson. Ball at Ranelagh. Purchase of Dr. Middleton’s collection. Lord Orford’s pension—373
141. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 29.-Eton recollections. Lines out of a new poem. Opinion of the present great men. Ranelagh described—[N.] 375
142. To Sir Horace Mann, June 29.-Cluster of good news. Our army joined by the dutch. Success of the King of Sardinia over the Spaniards. The Rhine passed by Prince Charles. Lines on the death of Pope. Epitaph on him by Rolli— 377
143. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, July 20.-Happiness at receiving a letter of confidence. Advice on the subject of an early attachment. Arguments for breaking off the acquaintance. Offer of the immediate use of his fortune—379
144. To Sir Horace Mann, July 22.-Letter-writing one of the first duties. Difficulty of keeping up a correspondence after long absence. History writing. Carte and the City aldermen. Inscription on Lady Euston’s picture. lady Carteret. Epigram on her—381
145. To the same, Aug. 6.-Marquis de la Ch`etardie dismissed by the Empress of Russia. The Grifona. Lord Surrey’s sonnets— 383
146. To the same, Aug. 16.-Preparations for a Journey to Houghton. Rule for conquering the passions. Country life. king of Prussia’s address to the people of England. A dialogue on the battle of Dettingen—385
147. To the same, Sept. 1.-Victory at Velletri. Illness of the King of France. Epigram on Bishop Berkeley’s tar-water—387
148. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 6.—388
149. To Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 6.-Self-scolding. Neapolitan expedition—390
150. To the same, Oct. 19.-Defeat of the King of Sardinia. loss of the ship Victory, with Sir John Balchen. Death of Sarah of Marlborough, the Countess Granville, and Lord Beauchamp. Marriage of Lord Lincoln. French King’s dismissal of Madame de Chateauroux. Discretion of a Scotch soldier—391
151. To the same, November 9.-Lord middleton’s wedding. The Pomfrets. Lady Granville’s At Home. Old Marlborough’s will. Glover’s Leonidas—393
152. To the same, Nov. 26.-History of Lord Granville’s resignation. Voila le monde! Decline of his father’s health. Outcry against pantomimes. Drury Lane uproar. Bear-garden bruisers. Walpole turned popular orator—394
153. To the same, Dec. 24.-Conduct of the King. Prostitution of patriots. List of ministerial changes. Mr. Pitt declines office. Opposition selling themselves for profit. The Pretender’s son owned in France—397
1745.
154. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan, 4.-Complains of dearth of news. His ink at low water mark. Lord Sandwich’s first-rate tie-wig. Lady Granville’s assemblies. Marshal a prisoner at Hanover— 399
155. To the same, Jan. 14.-M. de Magnan’s history. Prince Lobkowitz. Doings of the Granville faction. Anecdote of Lord Baltimore. Illness of Lord Orford. Mrs. Stephens’s remedy. Sir Thomas Hanmer’s Shakspeare. Absurd alteration therein—400
156. To the same, Feb. 1.-Variety of politics. Lord Granville characterized. Progress of the coalition—402
157. To the same, Feb. 28.-Alarming illness of Lord Orford. Success of the coalition. situation of the Pelhams. Masquerade at the Venetian ambassadress’s. Lady townshend’s ball. Marshal Belleisle at Nottingham. matrimonials on the tapis—404
158. To the same, march 29.-Death of Lord Orford. Inquiry into the miscarriage of the fleet in the action off Toulon. Matthews and Lestock. Instability of the ministry. Thomson’s Tancred and Sigismunda. Glover’s Leonidas. The Seasons. Alenside’s Odes. Quarrel between the Duchesses of Queensberry and Richmond. Rage for conundrums—406
159. To the same, April 15.-Reflections on his father’s death. Compliments paid to his memory. Mediterranean miscarriages— 410
160. To the same, April 29.-Disadvantages of a distant correspondence. Death of Mr. Francis Chute, and of poor Patapan. Prospect of a battle in Flandders. Marshal Saxe—411
161. To the same, May 11.-Battle of Fontenoy. Bravery of the Duke. Song, written after the news of the battle, by the Prince of Wales—412
162. To George Montagu, Esq., May 18.-Condolence on the death of Mr. Montigu’s brother at Fontenoy—415
163. To Sir Horace Mann, May 24.-Popularity of the Duke of Cumberland. Lady Walpole. Story of Lord Bath’s parsimony—415
164. To George Montagu, Esq. may 25.-Family at Englefield Green. Sir Edward Walpole. Dr. Styan Thirlby—416
165. To the Hon. H. S. conway, May 27.-Despairs of seeing his friend a perfect hero. the Why!—417
166. To sir Horace Mann-Recommendatory, of Mr. Hobart, afterwards Lord Buckinghamshire—418
167. to the same, June 24.-Expected arrival from Italy of the sister-Countess. Surrender of the citadel of tournai. Defeat of Charles Lorrain. Revolution of the Prince of Wales’s court. Miss Neville. Lady Abergavenny—419
168. to George Montagu, Esq. June 25.-Mistley, the seat of Mr. Rigby, described. Fashionable at Homes. Lady Brown’s Sunday parties. Lady Archibald hamilton. Miss Granville. Jemmy Lumley’s assembly—421
169. To the Hon. H.S. Conway, July 1.-Tournai and Fontenoy. Gaming act—422
170. To Sir Horace Mann, July 5.-Seizure of Ghent and Bruges by the French—424
171. To the same, July 12.—–425
172. to George Montagu, Esq. July 13.-Success of the French in Flanders. Lord Baltimore. Mrs. Comyns—427
173. To sir Horace Mann, July 15.—428
174. To the same, July 26.-Projected invasion. Disgraces in Flanders—430
175. To George Montagu, Esq. AUg. 1.-Portrait of M. de Grignon. Livys patavinity. marshal Belleisle in London. Duke of Newcastle described. Duches of Bolton’s geographical resolution—431
176. To sir Horace Mann, Aug. 7.-Rumours of an invasion. Proclamation for apprehending the Pretender’s son—432
177. To the Rev. Thomas Birch, Aug. 15.-Respecting a projected History of George the Second—434
178. To Sir Horace Mann, Sept. 6.-Landing and progress of the young Pretender. His manifestoes—435
179. To the same, Sept. 13.-Progress of the rebellion. The Duke of Newcastle’s speech to the Regency—436
179a. To George Montagu, Esq., Sept. 17.— (Transcriber’s note: this letter appears in the text but was omitted from the printed table of contents—438
180. To the same, Sept. 20.-Edinburgh taken by the rebelsOur strength at sea. Plan of raising regiments. Lady Orford’s reception in England.—439
181. To the same, Sept. 27.-Successes of Prince Charles in Scotland—441
182. To the same, Oct. 4.-Operations against the rebels. Spirited conduct of the Archbishop of York—443
183. To the same, Oct. 11.-Death of Lady Granville—445
184. To the same, Oct. 21.-Excesses of the rebels at Edinburgh. Proceedings in Parliament—446
185. To the same, Nov. 4.-State of the rebellion. Debates respecting the new raised regiments. Ministerial changes—447
186. To the same, Nov. 15.-Disturbance about the new regiments. Advance of the rebels into England. Their desperate situation. Lord Clancarty—449
187. To the same, Nov. 22.-The rebels advance to Penrith. The Mayor of Carlisle’s heroic letter, and surrender of the town. Proceedings in Parliament—451
188. To the same, Nov. 29.-,rhe sham Pretender. Lord Derwentwater taken. The rebels at Preston. Marshal Wade—453
189. To the same, Dec. 9.-Conduct of the rebels at Derby. Black Friday. Preparations for a French invasion Rising spirit of the people—455
190. To the same Dec. 20.-Flight of the rebels from Derby. Capture of the Martinico fleet. Debate on employing the Hessian troops.Marriage of the Duchess of Bridgewater and Dick Lyttelton. A good Irish letter—457
1746.
191. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 3.-Recapture of Carlisle. General Hawley. Preparations at Dunkirk. Ministerial movements—460
192. To the same, Jan. 17.-The rebels fortifying themselves in Scotland. Hawley’s executions. Anecdotes of him. The French invasion laid aside—461
193. To the same, Jan. 28.-Battle of Falkirk—463
194. To the same, Feb. 7.-Plight of the rebels. The new regiments. Confusion at court—464
195. To the same, Feb. 14.-Insurrection in the closet. The Pelhams throw up the seals. Reconciliation and return to office. History—466
196. To the same, March 6.-Reunion of the dispersed clans. Lord Lovat—469
197. To the same, March 21.-The rebels take Fort Augustus. The Prince of Wales’s new opposition—470
198. To the same, March 28.-The rebels out of spirits. Lady Walpole. Peggy Banks. The opera. Shocking murder—471
199. To the same, April 15.-The rebellion at its last gasp. Supplies from France taken. Hanoverian troops. Trial of Hawley. Marriage of Lord Kildare. An odd discovery. Strange event—473
200. To the same, April 25.-Battle of Culloden. Escape of the young Pretender. Fireworks and illuminations. Death of Mr. Winnington—476
201. To the same, May 16.-End of the rebellion. Old Tullybardine. Lords Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Ogilvie prisoners. Antwerp taken—478
202. To George Montagu, Esq. May 22.-Visit to Langley. The Sidney Papers. Sir Philip’s defence of the Earl of Leicester— 479
203. To the same, June 6.-Character of the Prince of Hesse. Fame of the Violette—480
204. To Sir Horace Mann, June 6.-Marriage of the Princess Mary to the Prince of Hesse—482
205. To George Montagu, Esq. June 12.-Anecdotes of the Prince of Hesse. Lady Caroline Fitzroy. Dick Edgecumbe—483
206. To the same, June 17.-Prospect of Peace. Death of Augustus Townshend—484
207. To Sir Horace Mann, June 20.-Battle of Placentia. Old Tullybardine and Lord Cromartie in the Tower. Death of Jack Spenser—485
208. To George Montagu, Esq. June 24.-Ministerial changes. Arrival of rebel prisoners. Jack Spenser’s will. Lady Townshend’s bon-mots. Anecdotes of Lords Bath and Sandys, and the Duke of Cumberland—486
209. To the same, July 3.-Promotions and marriages—487
210. To Sir Horace Mann, July 7.-Lord Lovat, and Murray, the Pretender’s secretary,taken.—488
211. To the same, Aug, 1.-Trials of the rebel Lords. Description of Lords Kilmarnock, Cromartie, and Balmerino. Intercessions in their behalf. Confessions of Murray—489
212. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 2.-Trials of the rebel Lords. Anecdotes—494
213. To the same, Aug. 5.-Discoveries of Murray. Lady Cromartie’s petition. Anecdotes of the rebel lords. The Duke of Cumberland’s ball—495
214. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 11.-Lord Cromartie’s pardon. Lady Caroline Fitzroy’s marriage—497
215. To Sir Horace mann, Aug. 12.-Opera squabbles. The Violette. Lord Sandwich’s embassy. Marriage of Lady Charlotte Fermor, and of the Princess Louisa to the King of Denmark. Wanderings of the young Pretender. Conduct of the rebel Lords. Story of Lord Balmerino—497
216. To George Montagu, Esq. Aug. 16.-Anecdotes of the rebel Lords under sentence—500
217. To Sir Horace Mann, Aug. 21.-Account of the execution of Lords Balmerino and Kilmarnock—501
218. To the same, Sept. 15.-Lady Orford and Mr. Shirley—504
219. To the same, Oct. 2.-Arrival of Mr. Chute from Italy. Mr. Whithed described—506
220. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 3.-Enclosing Gray’s Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College—507
221. To Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 14.-Defeat of the allies in Flanders. Capitulation of Genoa. Acquittal of Cope. General Oglethorpe’s sentence—508
222. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 24.-Campaign in Scotland— 509
223. To George Montagu, Esq. Nov. 3.-His Epilogue to Tamerlane—510
224. To Sir Horace Mann, Nov. 4.-Ministerial changes. Lord Chesterfield accepts the seals. Expedition to Quiberon. Admiral Matthews’s court-martial—511
225. To the same, Nov. 12—513
226. To the same,, Dec. 5.-Marriages. Reformations in the army. Arrest of Orator henley. theatricals—514
227. To Sir Horace Mann, Dec. 25.-Trial of Lord Lovat. Mr.Davis’s copy of the Dominichino—515
1747.
228. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 27.-The Prince’s new Opposition--517
229. To the same, Feb. 23.-The Opera. Debates on places and pensions. Lord Kildare’s marriage. Panciatici. Anecdotes of Lord Holderness and Lord Hervey—519
230. to the same, March 20.-Lord Lovat’s trial. Anecdotes—521
231. To the same, April 10.-Account of Lord Lovat’s execution. The Independents. Tottering state of the ministry. Civil war in the house of Finch—522
232. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, April 16.-Mutability of fame and popularity. Lord Lovat’s burial. Story of George Selwyn. Debate on the Heritable Jurisdictions Bill—525
233. To Sir Horace Mann, May 5.-The new Stadtholder. Scotch Clanships Bill. Bill for allowing counsel to prisoners on impeachments for treason. Resignations. Holland House—526
234. To the same, May 19.-Anson’s victory. Death of Captain Grenville. Mr. Dayrolies—527
235. To the same, June 5.-Sudden dissolution of Parliament. Rumoured ministerial changes. Purchase (of Strawberry Hill— 528
236. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 8.-Description of Strawberry Hill. Dissolution of Parliament. Measures for carrying elections—530
237. To Sir Horace Mann, June 26.-Election tumults. Sir Jacob Botiverie’s peerage. The Duchess of Queensberry at court. Instance of English bizarrerie—531
238. To George Montagu, Esq. July 2.-Ill success of the army in the Netherlands. Battle of Laffeldt. Gallant conduct of Mr. Conway. Naval captures—533
239. To Sir Horace Mann, July 3.-Battle of Laffeldt. Capture of the Domingo fleet. Progress of the elections—534
240. To the same, July 28.-Piedmontese victory over the French. Death of the Chevalier Belleisle—535
241. To the same, Sept. 1.-Bergen-op-Zoom. Sir James Grey. Pantiatici—536
242. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 1.-Cardinal Polignac’s Anti-Lucretius. George Selwyn. Anecdotes—537
243. To Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 2.-Capture of Bergen-op-Zoom. Character of Mr. Chute. Chit-chat. Anecdote of Lord Bath—537
244. To the same, Nov. 10.-Admiral Hawke’s victory. Meeting of the new Parliament. The musical clock—539
245. To the same, Nov. 24.-Meditates a journey to Florence. Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle. Ministerial interference in the Seaford election. Mr. Potter. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Eclogues—539
1748.
246. To Sir Horace Mann, Jan. 12.-General dispositions for war. Diplomatic Changes. Lord and Lady Coke. Matrimonial fracas—541
247. To the same, Jan. 26.-Mr. Legge’s embassy to the King of Prussia. Mr. Villiers. Ministers triumphant in Parliament. Admiral Vernon’s letters—542
248. To the same, Feb. 16.-Resignation of Lord Chesterfield. Ministerial changes. Hitch in Mr. Legge’s embassy. Discontents in the army. Public amusements. Comedy of the Foundling—544
249. To Sir Horace Mann, March 11.-Prevalence of miliary fever. Death of the Marquis of Powis. Private theatricals. Attempt to damn the Foundling. Animosities in the House of Commons. Buckingham assizes. The Duchess of Queensberry’s masquerade—545
250. To the same, April 29.-Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. Masquerade at the Hay market—547
251. To George Montagu, Esq. May 18.-Lord Anson’s voyage with Lady Elizabeth Yorke. His voyage. Anecdotes. Marshal Wade’s house—549
252. To the same, May 26.-Ranelagh. Anecdotes. Sir Thomas Bootle. Story of Prince Edward—550
253. To the same, June 7.-The Duke of Newcastle’s journey to Holland. Strawberry Hill,” the old name of his house—551
254. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, June 27.-His rural occupations. Lord Coke. Friendly advice from White’s. F`ete at Vauxhall— (N.). 553
255. To SirHorace Mann, July 14.@The Duke of Newcastle’s travels. Anecdote—554
256. To the same.-Bad state of Lord Orford’s health. Reflections. Has finished his Aedes Walpolianae. Improvements at Strawberry Hill—555
257. To George Montagu, Esq. July 25.-Account of a visit to Nugent. Family of the Aubrey de Versa, Earls of Oxford. Henningham Castle Gosfield—556
258. To the same, Aug. 11.-Anecdotes of the House of Vere. Kitty Clive. Garrick and Lee. Visit to Esher. Claremont House. Mrs. Pritchard—558
259. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Aug. 29.-His progress in planting. Anticipations of future discoveries—561
260. To George Montagu, Esq. Sept. 3.-Bonmot of the duke of Cumberland. “The new light.” Whitfield and the Methodists. Smell of thieves. Story of Handsome Tracy. Gray, the worst company in the world—563
261. To Sir Horace Mann, Sept. 12-Death of Bishop Gibson—565
262. To George Montagu, Esq. Sept. 25.-Disinterested friendship. passage in Chillingworth. The Duchess of Ireland’s Hennins, or piked horns—566
263. To the Hon. H. S. Conway, Oct. 4.-Meeting of Parliament. Preparations for proclaiming the peace. Lady Cadogan—567
264. To George Montagu, Esq. Oct. 20—568
265. To Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 24.-Adventure of Milord Richard Onslow. Character of lord Walpole. Unpopularity, of the peace. Death of old Tom Walker—569
266. To the same, Dec. 2.-The King’s return. Prospects of a stormy session. League Of the tories with the Prince’s party. Bon-mots of Mr. Chute. The Opera. Pertici. Lord Marchmont and Hume Campbell. Treason at Oxford—570
267. To the same, Dec. 11.-Imprisonment of the young Pretender at Vincennes. Death of the proud Duke of Somerset; his will. Bon-mot of John Stanhope. hogarth at Calais—571
268. To the same, Dec. 26.-Improvements at Strawberry Hill. Diplomatic movements. Old Somerset’s will. Trial of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford.Story of sir William Burdett—574
Preface.
The letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, as hitherto published, have consisted of,-
1. The letters contained in the quarto edition of his works, published in the year 1798.
2. His letters to George Montagu, Esq. from 1738 to 1770, which formed one quarto volume, published in 1818.
3. His letters to the Rev. William Cole and others, from 1745 to 1782, published in the same form and year.
4. His letters to the Earl of Hertford, during his lordship’s embassy to Paris, and also to the Rev. Henry Zouch, which appeared in quarto, in 1825.
And 5. His letters to Sir Horace Mann, British Envoy at the Court of Tuscany, from 1741 to 1760, first published in 1833, in three volumes octavo, from the originals in the possession of the Earl of Waldegrave; edited by Lord Dover, with an original memoir of the author.
To the above are now added several hundred letters, which have hitherto existed Only in manuscript, or made their appearance singly and incidentally in other works. In this new collection, besides the letters to Miss Berry, are some to the Hon. H. S. Conway, and John Chute, Esq. omitted In former editions; and many to Lady Suffolk, his brother-in-law, Charles Churchill, Esq., Captain Jephson, Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, the Earl of Buchan, the Earl of Charlemont, Mr. Gibbon, Mr. Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, George Hardinge, Esq., Mr. Pinkerton, and other distinguished characters. The letters to the Rev. William Cole have been carefully examined with the originals, and many explanatory notes added, from the manuscript collections of that indefatigable antiquary, deposited in the British museum.
Besides being the only complete edition ever published of the incomparable letters of this “prince of epistolary writers,” as he has been designated by an eminent critic, the present work possesses the further advantage of exhibiting the letters themselves in chronological order. Thus the whole series forms a lively and most interesting commentary on the events of the age, as well as a record of the most important transactions, invaluable to the historian and politician, from 1735 to 1797-a period of more than sixty years.
To Lord Dover’s description of these letters (1) little need be added. Of Horace Walpole it is not too much to say, that he knew more of the Courts of George I., George ii., and George iii., during the early years of the last monarch, than any other individual; and, though he lived to an extreme age, the perpetual youthfulness of his disposition rendered him as lively a chronicler when advanced in life, as when his brilliant career commenced. It is to this unceasing spring, this unfading juvenility of spirit, that the world is indebted for the gay colours with which Walpole invests every thing he touches. If the irresistible court beauties-the Gunnings, the Lepels, and others-have been compelled, after their hundred conquests, to yield to the ungallant liberties of Time, and to Death, the rude destroyer, it is a delight to us to know that their charms are destined to bloom for ever in the sparkling graces
As a suitable introduction, prefixed to the whole collection of letters, are the author’s admirable “Reminiscences of the Courts of George the First and Second,” which were first narrated to, and, in 1788, written for the amusement of Miss Mary and Miss Agnes Berry. To the former of these ladies the public is indebted for a curious commentary on the Reminiscences, contained in extracts from the letters of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, to the Earl of Stair, now first published from the original manuscripts. Of the Reminiscences themselves it has been truly observed, that, both in manner and matter, they are the very perfection of anecdote writing, and make us better acquainted with the manners of George the First and Second and their Courts, than we should be after perusing a hundred heavy historians.
Of the most valuable of all Walpole’s correspondence-his letters to Sir Horace Mann-the history will appear in the following Preface to that work, from the pen of the lamented editor, the late Lord Dover:-
“In the Preface to the ’Memoires of the last Ten Years of the Reign of George ii. by Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford,’ published in the year 1822, is the following statement:-
“’Among the papers found at Strawberry Hill, after the death of Lord Orford, was the following memorandum, wrapped in an envelope, on which was written, Not to be opened till after my will.”
“’In my library at Strawberry Hill are two wainscot chests or boxes, the larger marked with an A, the lesser with a B:- I desire, that as soon as I am dead, my executor and executrix will cord up strongly, and sell the larger box, marked A, and deliver it to the Honourable Hugh Conway Seymour, to be kept by him unopened and unsealed till the eldest son of Lady Waldegrave, or whichever of her sons, being Earl of Waldegrave, shall attain the age of twenty-five years; when the said chest, with whatever it contains, shall be delivered to him for his own. And I beg that the Honourable Hugh Conway Seymour, when be shall receive the said chest, will give a promise in writing, signed by him, to Lady Waldegrave, that he or his representatives will deliver the said chest, unopened and unsealed, by my executor and executrix, to the first son of Lady Waldegrave who shall attain the age of’ twenty-five years. The key of the said chest is in one of the cupboards of the green closet, within the blue breakfast room, at Strawberry Hill; and that key, I desire, may be delivered to Laura, Lady Waldegrave, to be kept by her till her son shall receive the chest.’ “‘March 21st, 1790.’”
(Signed) Hon. Horace walpole, earl of orford.’ Aug. 19, 1796.’
“In obedience to these directions, the box described in the preceding memorandum was corded an(] sealed with the seals of the Honourable Mrs. Damer and the late Lord Frederick Campbell, the executrix and executor of Lord Orford, and by them delivered to the late Lord Hugh Seymour, by whose representatives it was given up, unopened and unsealed, to the present Earl of Waldegrave, when he attained the age of twenty-five. On examining the box, it was found to contain a number of manuscript volumes and other papers, among which were the Memoires now published.’ "
“The correspondence of Horace Walpole with Sir Horace Mann, now first published, was also contained in the same box. It appears that Walpole, after the death of Sir Horace, became again the possessor of his own letters. He had them copied very carefully in three volumes, and annotated them with short notes, explanatory of the persons mentioned in them, with an evident view to their eventual publication. “It is from these volumes that the present publication is taken. The notes of the author have also been printed verbatim. As, however, in the period of time which has elapsed since Walpole’s death, many of the personages mentioned in the letters, whom he appears to have thought sufficiently conspicuous not to need remark, have become almost forgotten, the Editor has deemed it necessary to add, as shortly as possible, some account of them; and he has taken care, whenever he has done so, to distinguish his notes from those of the original author, by the letter D. placed at the end of them.
“This correspondence is perhaps the most interesting one of Walpole’s that has as yet appeared; as, in addition to his usual merit as a letter-writer, and the advantage of great ease, which his extreme intimacy with Sir Horace Mann gives to his style, the letters to him are the most uninterrupted series which has thus far been offered to the public. They are also the only letters of Walpole which give an account of that very curious period when his father, Sir Robert Walpole, left office. In his letters hitherto published, there is a great gap at this epoch; probably in consequence of his other correspondents being at the time either in or near London. A Single letter to Mr. Conway, dated ’london, 1741,’-one to Mr. West, dated ’May 4th, 1742,’-(none in 1743,) and one to Mr. Conway, dated ‘Houghton: Oct. 6th, 1744,’ are all that appear till ‘may 18th, 1745,’ when his letters to George Montagu recommence, after an interval of eight years. Whereas, in the correspondence now published, there are no less than one hundred and seventeen letters during that interval.
The letters of Walpole to Sir Horace Mann have also another advantage over those of the same author previously published, namely, that Sir Horace’s constant absence from home, and the distance of his residence from the British Islands, made every occurrence that happened acceptable to him as news. It) consequence, his correspondent relates to him every thing that takes place, both in the court and in society,-whether the anecdotes are of a public or private nature,-hence the collection of’ letters to him becomes a most exact chronicle of the events of the day, and elucidates very amusingly both the manners of the time, and the characters of the persons then alive. In the sketches, however, of character, which Walpole has thus left us, we must always remember that, though a very quick and accurate observer, he was a man of many prejudices; and that, above all, his hostility was unvarying and unbounded with regard to any of his contemporaries, who had been adverse to the person or administration of Sir Robert Walpole. This, though an amiable feeling, occasionally carries him too far in his invectives, and renders him unjust in his judgments.
“The answers of Sir Horace Mann are also preserved at Strawberry Hill: they are very voluminous, but particularly devoid of interest, as they are written in a dry heavy style, and consist almost entirely of trifling details of forgotten Florentine society, mixed with small portions of Italian political news of the day, which are even still less amusing than the former topic. They have, however, been found useful to refer to occasionally, in order to explain allusions in the letters of Walpole.
“Sir Horace Mann was a contemporary and early friend of Horace Walpole. (2) He was the second son of Robert Mann, of Linton, in the county of Kent, Esq. He was appointed in 1740 minister plenipotentiary from England to the court of Florence-a post he continued to occupy for the long period of forty-six years, till his death, at an advanced age, November 6, 1786. In 1755 he was created a baronet, with remainder to the issue of his brother Galfridus Mann, and, in the reign of George the Third, a knight of the Bath. It will be observed that Walpole calls his correspondent Mr. Mann, whereas the title-pages of’ these volumes, and all the notes which have been added by the editor designate him as Sir Horace Mann. This latter appellation is undoubtedly, in the greater part of the correspondence, an anachronism, as Sir Horace Mann was not made a baronet till the year 1755; but, as he is best known to the world under that designation, it was considered better to allow him the title, by courtesy, throughout the work.
“As the following letters turn much upon the politics of the day, and as the ignoble and unstable Governments which followed that of Sir Robert Walpole are now somewhat forgotten, it may not be unacceptable to the reader to be furnished with a slight sketch of the political changes which took place from the year 1742 to the death of George the Second.
“At the general election of 1741, immense efforts were made by the Opposition to the Walpole administration to strengthen their phalanx-great sums were spent by their leaders in elections, and an union was at length effected between the Opposition or ‘Patriots,’ headed by Pulteney, and the Tories or Jacobites, who had hitherto, though opposed to Walpole, never acted cordially with the former.
“Sir Robert, upon the meeting of Parliament, exerted himself with almost more than his usual vigour and talent, to resist this formidable band of opponents; but the chances were against him. The timidity of his friends, and, if we may believe Horace Walpole, the treachery of some of his colleagues, and finally the majority in the House of Commons against him, compelled him at length to resign; which he did in the beginning of February, 1742. Upon this step being taken, and perhaps even before it, the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke, the two most influential members of Sir Robert Walpole’s cabinet, entered into communication with Mr. Pulteney and Lord Carteret, the leaders of the regular Opposition, with a view of forming a government, to the exclusion of the Tories and Jacobites, and even of part of Mr. Pulteney’s own party. The negotiation was successful; but it was so at the expense of the popularity, reputation, and influence of Pulteney, who never recovered the disgrace of thus deserting his former associates.
“In consequence of these intrigues, the King agreed to send for Lord Wilmington, and to place him at the head of the ministry. It is remarkable that this man, who was a mere cipher, should have been again had recourse to, after his failure in making a government at the very commencement of the reign of George the Second, when his manifest incapacity, and the influence of Queen Caroline, had occasioned the remaining of his opponent Sir Robert Walpole in power. With Lord Wilmington came in Lord Harrington, as president of the council; Lord Gower, as privy seal; Lord Winchilsea, as first lord of the admiralty; Lord Carteret as secretary of state; the other secretary being the Duke of Newcastle, who had been so under Walpole; Lord Hardwicke continued chancellor; and Samuel Sandys was made chancellor of the exchequer. Several of the creatures of Pulteney obtained minor offices: but he himself, hampered by his abandonment of many of his former friends, took no place; but Only obtained a promise of an earldom, whenever he might wish for it.
“These arrangements produced, as was natural, a great schism in the different parties, which broke out at a meeting at the Fountain Tavern, on the 12th of February, where the Duke of Argyll declared himself in opposition to the new government, upon the ground of the unjust exclusion of the Tories. The Duke of Argyll subsequently relented, and kissed hands for the master-generalship of the ordnance, upon the understanding, that Sir John Hinde Cotton, a notorious Jacobite, was to have a place. This the King refused; upon which the Duke finally subsided into Opposition. Lord Stair had the ordnance, and Lord Cobham was made a field-marshal and commander of the forces in England. This latter event happened at the end of the session of 1742, when Lord Gower and Lord Bathurst, and one or two other Jacobites, were promoted. It was at this period (July, 1742), that the King, by the advice of Sir Robert Walpole, who saw that such a step would complete the degradation Of Pulteney, insisted upon his taking out the patent for his earldom and quitting the House of Commons; which he did with the greatest unwillingness.
“On the death of Lord Wilmington, in July 1743, Mr. Pelham was made first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer (from which office Sandys was dismissed), by the advice of Sir Robert Walpole, and instead of Lord Bath, who now found that his adversary had really turned the key upon him, (3) and that the door of the cabinet was never to be unlocked to him. The ministry was at this time, besides its natural feebleness, rent by internal dissensions; for Lord Carteret, who, as secretary of state, had accompanied the King abroad in 1743, had acquired great influence over his royal master,-and trusting to this, and to the superiority of his talents over his colleagues, his insolence to them became unbounded. The timid and time-serving Pelhams were quite ready to
“Finally, in November 1744, the greater part of the cabinet having previously made their arrangements with the Opposition) joined in a remonstrance to the King against Lord Carteret, and offered, if he was not dismissed, their own resignations. After some resistance, the King, again by the advice of Lord Orford, yielded. Lord Carteret and his adherents, and those of Lord Bath, were dismissed, and a mixed government of Whigs and Tories was formed. Mr. Pelham continued first minister; the Duke of Dorset was made president of the council; Lord Gower again took the privy-seal, which had been held for a few months by Lord Cholmondeley; the Duke of Bedford became first lord of’ the admiralty; Lord Harrincton secretary of state; Lord Chesterfield, Lord Sandwich, George Grenville, Doddington, and Lyttelton, and Sir John Hinde Cotton, Sir John Philipps, and some other Tories, had places. But though the King had dismissed Lord Carteret (now become Earl of Granville) from his councils, he had not from his confidence. He treated his new ministers with coldness and incivility, and consulted Lord Granville secretly upon all important points.
“At length, in the midst of the Rebellion, in August 1746, the ministry went to the King, and gave him the option of taking Pitt into office, which he had previously refused, or receiving their resignations. After again endeavouring in vain to form an administration through the means of Lord Granville and Lord Bath, the King was obliged to consent to the demands of his ministers-and here may be said to commence the leaden rule of the Pelhams, which continued to influence the councils of this country, more or less, for so many years. Pitt took the inferior, but lucrative office of paymaster; and from this time no material change took place till the death of Mr. Pelham, in March 1754, unless we except the admission of Lord Granville to the cabinet in 1751, as president of the council; an office which he contrived, with an interested prudence very unlike his former conduct, to retain during all succeeding ministries-and the getting rid of the Duke of Bedford and Lord Sandwich, of whom the Pelhams had become jealous.
The death of Pelham called into evidence the latent divisions and hatreds of public Men, who had been hitherto acting in concert. Fox and Pitt were obviously the two persons, upon one of whom the power of Pelham must eventually fall. But the intriguing Duke of Newcastle hated, and was jealous of both. He, therefore, placed Sir Thomas Robinson in the House of Commons, as secretary of state and leader, and made Henry Bilson Legge chancellor of the exchequer, while he himself took the treasury-leaving Fox (4) and Pitt in the subordinate situations they had hitherto held. The incapacity of Sir Thomas Robinson became, however, soon so apparent, that a change was inevitable. This was hastened by a temporary coalition between Fox and Pitt, which was occasioned, naturally enough, by the ill-treatment they had both received from the Duke of Newcastle.
“At length the latter reluctantly consented to admit Fox into the cabinet, in 1755. Upon this, Pitt again broke with Fox, and went with his friends into opposition, with the exception of Sir George Lyttelton, who became chancellor of the exchequer. The new government, however, lasted but one session of parliament-its own dissensions, the talents of its opponents, and the dissatisfaction of the King, who had been thwarted in his German subsidiary treaties, aiding in its downfall.
“The Duke of Devonshire, who had been very active in the previous political negotiations, was now commissioned, in 1756, by the King to form a government. The Duke of Newcastle and Fox were turned out, and Pitt became lord of the ascendant. But the King’s aversion to his new ministers was even greater than it had been to his old; and in February 1757, he commissioned Lord Waldegrave to endeavour to form a government, with the assistance of Newcastle and Fox. In this undertaking he failed, very mainly through the irresolutions and jealousies of Newcastle. Thus circumstanced, the King, however unwillingly, was obliged to deliver himself up into the hands of Pitt, Who (in June, 1757) succeeded in forming that administration, which was destined to be one of the most glorious ones England has ever seen. He placed himself at the head of it, holding the situation of secretary of state and leader of the House of Commons, leaving the Duke of Newcastle at the head of the treasury, and placing Legge again in the exchequer. This administration lasted till the reign of the succeeding sovereign.”
To his edition of the Letters to Sir Horace Mann, Lord Dover appended illustrative notes, which are retained in the present. Of the manner in which his lordship executed the office of editor and annotator, the Edinburgh Review thus speaks, in a brilliant article on those Letters, which appeared in the number of that work for January 1834:-"The editing of these volumes was the last of the useful and modest services rendered to literature by a nobleman of amiable manners, of untarnished public and private character, and of
It remains only to add, that the original notes of Horace Walpole are throughout retained, undistinguished by any signature; whereas, those of the various editors are indicated by a characteristic initial, which is explained in the progress of the work.
January, 1840.
(1) Sketch of the Life, etc.
(2) The coincidence of remarkable names in the two families of Mann and Walpole, would lead one to imagine that there was also some connection of relationship between them-and yet none is to be traced in the pedigree of either family. Sir Robert Walpole had two brothers named Horace and Galfridus-and Sir Horace Mann’s next brother was named Galfridus Mann. If such a relationship did exist, it probably came through the Burwells, the family of Sir Robert Walpole’s mother.
(3) “Sir Robert Walpole’s expression, when he found that Pulteney had consented to be made Earl of Bath.”
(4) “Fox was secretary at war.”
To the first edition of Lord Orford’s works,
which was published the year after he died, no memoir
of his life was prefixed: his death
was too recent, his life and character
was too well known, his works
too popular, to require
it. His political Memoirs, and
the collections of his Letters which have been subsequently
published, were edited by persons, who, though well
qualified for their task in every other respect, have
failed in their account of his private life, and their
appreciation of his individual character, from the
want of a personal acquaintance with their author.
The life contained in Sir Walter Scott’s Biographical Sketches of the English Novelists labours under the same disadvantages. He had never seen Lord Orford, nor even lived with such of his intimates and contemporaries in society as survived him.
Lord Dover, who has so admirably edited the first part of his correspondence with Sir Horace Mann, knew Lord Orford only by having been carried sometimes, when a boy, by his father Lord Clifden to Strawberry Hill. His editorial labours with these letters were the last occupation of his accomplished mind, and were pursued while his body was fast sinking under the complication of disease, which so soon after deprived Society Of One Of its most distinguished members,
It is by the Review of the Letters to Sir Horace Mann, that the severest condemnation has been passed and the most unjust impressions given, not only of the genius and talents, but of the heart and character, of Lord Orford. The mistaken opinions of the eloquent and accomplished author (5) of that review are to be traced chiefly to the same causes which defeated the intentions of the two first biographers. In his case, these causes were increased, not only by no acquaintance with his subject, but by still farther removal from the fashions, the social habits, the little minute details, of the age to which Horace Walpole belongs,-an age so essentially different from the business, the movement, the important struggles, of that which claims the critic as one of its most distinguished ornaments. A conviction that these reasons led to his having drawn up, from the supposed evidence of Walpole’s works alone, a character of their author so entirely and offensively unlike the original, has forced the pen into the feeble and failing hand of the writer of these pages,-has imposed the pious duty of attempting to rescue, by incontrovertible facts, acquired in long intimacy, the memory of an old and beloved friend, from the giant grasp of an author and a critic from whose judgment, when deliberately formed, few can hope to appeal with success. The candour, the good-nature of this critic,-the inexhaustible stores of his literary acquirements, which place him in the first rank of those most distinguished for historical knowledge and critical acumen,-will allow him, I feel sure, to forgive this appeal from his hasty and general opinion, to the judgment of his better informed mind, on the peculiarities of’ a character often remarkably dissimilar from that of his works.
Lord Dover has justly and forcibly remarked, “that what did the most honour both to the head and the’ heart of Horace Walpole, was the friendship which he bore to Marshal Conway; a man who, according to all the accounts of him that have come down to us, was so truly worthy of inspiring such a decree of affection.” (6) He then quotes the character given of him by the editor of Lord Orford’s works in 1798. This character of Marshal Conway was a portrait drawn from the life, and, as it proceeded from the same pen which now traces these lines, has some right to be inserted here. “It is only those who have had the opportunity of penetrating into the most secret motives of his public conduct, and into the inmost recesses of his private life, who can do real justice to the unsullied purity of his character;-who saw and knew him in the evening of his days, retired from the honourable activity of a soldier and of a statesman, to the calm enjoyments of private -life; happy in the resources of his own mind, and in the cultivation of useful science, in the bosom of domestic peace-unenriched by pensions or places-undistinguished by titles or ribbons-unsophisticated by public life, and unwearied by retirement.”
To this man, Lord Orford’s attachment, from
their boyish days at Eton school to the death of Marshal
Conway in 1795, is already a circumstance of sufficiently
rare occurrence among men of the world. Could
such a man, of whom the foregoing lines are an unvarnished
sketch-of whose character, simplicity was one of the
distinguished ornaments-could such a man have endured
the intimacy of such an individual as the reviewer
describes Lord Orford to have been? Could an
intercourse of uninterrupted friendship and undiminished
confidence have existed between them during a period
of nearly sixty
years,
undisturbed by the business and bustle of
middle life, so apt to cool, and often to terminate,
youthful friendships? Could such an intercourse
ever have existed, with the supposed selfish indifference,
and artificial coldness and conceit of Lord Orford’s
character?
The last correspondence included in the present publication will, it is presumed, furnish no less convincing proof, that the warmth of his feelings, and his capacity for sincere affection, continued unenfeebled by age. It is with this view, and this alone, that the correspondence alluded to is now, for the first time, given to the public. It can add nothing to the already established epistolary fame of Lord Orford, and the public can be as little interested in his sentiments for the two individuals addressed. But, in forming a just estimate of his character, the reader will hardly fail to observe that those sentiments were entertained at a time of life when, for the most part, the heart is too little capable of expansion to open to new attachments. The whole tone of these letters must prove the unimpaired warmth of his feelings, and form a striking contrast to the cold harshness
Is this, then, the man who is supposed to be “the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious, the most capricious of mortals? -his mind a bundle of inconsistent whims and affectations-his features covered with mask within mask, which, when the outer disguise of obvious affectation was removed, you were still as far as ever from seeing the real man."-"Affectation is the essence of the man. It pervades all his thoughts and all his expressions. If it were taken away, nothing would be left.” (8)
He affected nothing; he played no part; he was what he appeared to be. Aware that he was ill qualified for politics, for public life, for parliamentary business, or indeed for business of any sort, the whole tenor of his life was consistent with this opinion of himself. Had he attempted to effect what belongs only to characters of another stamp -had he endeavoured to take a lead in the House of Commons-had he sought for place, dignity, or office-had he aimed at intrigue, or attempted to be a tool for others-then, indeed, he might have deserved the appellation of artificial, eccentric, and capricious.
>From the retreat of his father, which happened the year after he entered parliament, the only real interest he took in politics was when their events happened immediately to concern the objects of his private friendships. He occupied himself with what really amused him. If he had affected any thing, it would certainly not have been a taste for the trifling occupations with which he is reproached. Of no person can it be less truly said, that “affectation was the essence of the man.” What man, or even what woman, ever affected to be the frivolous being he is described? When his critic says, that he had “the soul of a gentleman-usher,” he was little aware that he only repeated what Lord Orford often said of himself-that from his knowledge of old ceremonials and etiquettes, he was sure that in a former state of existence, he must have been a gentleman-usher,-about the time of Elizabeth.
In politics, he was what he professed to be, a Whig, in the sense which that denomination bore in his younger days,-never a Republican.
In his old and enfeebled age, the horrors of the first French revolution made him a Tory; while he always lamented, as one of the worst effects of its excesses, that they must necessarily retard to a distant period the progress and establishment of civil liberty. But why are we to believe his contempt for crowned heads should have prevented his writing a memoir of “Royal and Noble Authors?” Their literary labours, when all brought together by himself, would not, it is believed, tend much to raise, or much to alter his opinion of them.
In his letters from Paris, written in the years 1765, 1766, 1767 and 1771, it will be seen, that so far from being infinitely more occupied with “the fashions and gossip of Versailles and Marli than with a great moral revolution which was taking place in his sight,” he was truly aware of the state of the public mind, and foresaw all that was coming on.
Of Rousseau he has proved that he knew more, and that he judged him more accurately, than Mr. Hume, and many others who were then duped by his mad pride and disturbed understanding.
Voltaire had convicted himself of the basest of vain lies in the intercourse he sought with Mr. Walpole. The details of this transaction, and the letters which passed at the time, are already printed in the quarto edition of his works. In the short notes of his life left by himself, and from which all the dates in this notice are taken, it is thus mentioned:
“Although Voltaire, with whom I had never had the least acquaintance, had voluntarily written to me first, and asked for my book, he wrote a letter to the Duchesse de Choiseul, in which, without saying a syllable of his having written to me first, he told her I had officiously sent him my works, and declared war with him in defence ‘de ce bouffon de Shakspeare,’ whom in his reply to me he pretended so much to admire. The Duchesse sent me Voltaire’s letter; which gave me such a contempt for his disingenuity, that I dropped all correspondence with him.”
When he spoke with contempt of d’Alembert, it was not of his abilities; of which he never pretended to judge. Professor Saunderson had long before, when he was a lad at Cambridge, assured him, that it would be robbing him to pretend teaching him mathematics, of which his mind was perfectly incapable, so that any comparison of the intellectual powers of the two men” would indeed be as “exquisitely ridiculous” as the critic declares it. But lord Orford, speaking of d’Alembert, complains of the overweening importance which he, and all the men of letters of those days in France, attributed to their squabbles and disputes. The idleness to which an absolute government necessarily condemns nine-tenths of its subjects, sufficiently accounts for the exaggerated importance given to and assumed by the French writers, even before they had become, in the language of the Reviewer, “the interpreters between England and mankind:” he asserts, “that all the great discoveries in physics, in metaphysics, in political science, are ours but no foreign nation, except France, has received them from us by direct communication: isolated in our situation, isolated by our manners, we found truth, but did not impart it.” (9) It may surely be asked, whether France will subscribe to this assertion of superiority, in the whole range of science! If she does, her character has undergone an even greater change, than any she has yet experienced in the course of all her revolutions.
lord Orford is believed by his critic to have “sneered” at every body. sneering was not his way of showing dislike. He had very strong prejudices, sometimes adopted on very insufficient grounds, and he therefore often made great mistakes in the appreciation of character; but when influenced by such impressions, he always expressed his opinions directly, and often too violently.
The affections of his heart were bestowed on few; for in early life they had never been cultivated, but they were singularly warm, pure, and constant; characterized not by the ardour of passion, but by the constant preoccupation of real affection. He had lost his mother, to whom he was fondly attached, early in life; and with his father, a man of coarse feelings and boisterous manners, he had few sentiments in common. Always feeble in constitution, he was unequal to the sports of the field, and to the drinking which then accompanied them, so that during his father’s retreat at Houghton, however much he respected his abilities and was devoted to his fame, he had little sympathy in his tastes, or pleasure in his society. To the friends of his own selection his devotion was not confined to professions or words: on all occasions of difficulty, of whatever nature, his active affection came forward in defence of their character, or assistance in their affairs.
When his friend Conway, as second in command under Sir John Mordaunt, in the expedition to St. Maloes, partook in some degree of the public censure called forth by the failure of these repeated ill-judged attempts on the coasts of France, Walpole’s pen was immediately employed in rebutting the accusations of the popular pamphlet of the day on this subject, And establishing his friend’s exemption from any responsibility in the failure. When, on a more important occasion, Mr. Conway was not only dismissed from being Equerry to the King, George iii., but from the command of his regiment, for his constitutional conduct and votes in the House of Commons, in the memorable affair of the legality of General Warrants for the seizure of persons and papers, Walpole immediately stepped forward, not with cold commendations of his friend’s upright and spirited conduct, but with all the confidence Of long-tried affection, and all the security of noble minds incapable of misunderstanding each other, he insisted on being allowed to share in future his fortune with his friend, and thus more than repair the pecuniary loss he had incurred. Mr. Conway, in a letter to his brother, Lord Hertford, of this period, says “Horace Walpole has on this occasion shown that warmth of friendship that you know him capable of so, strongly, that I want words to express my sense of it;” (10) thus proving the justice he did to Walpole’s sentiments and intentions.
In the case of General Conway’s near relationship and intimacy from childhood, the cause in which his fortunes were suffering might have warmed a colder heart, and opened a closer hand, than Mr. Walpole’s: but Madame du Deffand was a recent acquaintance, who had no claim on him, but the pleasure he received from her society, and his desire that her blind and helpless old age might not be deprived of any of the comforts and alleviations of which it was capable. When by the financial arrangements of the French government, under the unscrupulous administration of the Abb`e Terray, the creditors of the state were considerably reduced in income, Mr. Walpole, in the most earnest manner, begged to prevent the unpleasantness of his old friend’s exposing her necessities, and imploring aid from the minister of the day, by allowing him to make up the deficit in her revenue, as a loan, Or in any manner that would be most satisfactory to her. The loss, after all, did not fall on that stock from which she derived her income, and the assistance was not accepted; but Madame du Deffand’s confidence in, and opinion of, the offer, we see in her letters.
During his after life, although no ostentatious contributor to public charities and schemes of improvement, the friends in whose opinion he knew he could confide, had always more difficulty to repress than to excite his liberality.
That he should have wished his friend Conway to be employed as commander on military expeditions, which, as a soldier fond of his profession, he naturally coveted, although Mr. Walpole might disapprove of the policy of the minister in sending out such expeditions, surely implies neither disguise, nor contradiction in his opinions.
The dread which the reviewer supposes him to have had, lest he should lose caste as a gentleman, by ranking as a wit and an author, he was much too fine a gentleman to have believed in the possibility of feeling. He knew he had never studied since he left college; he knew that he was not at all a learned man: but the reputation he had acquired by his wit and by his writings, not only among fine gentlemen, but with society in general, made him nothing loath to cultivate every opportunity of increasing it. The account he gave of the idleness of his life to Sir Horace Mann, when he disclaims the title of “the learned gentleman,” was literally true; and it is not easy to imagine any reason why a man at the age of forty-three, who admits that he is idle, and who renounces being either a learned man or a politician, should be “ashamed” of playing loo in good company till two or three o’clock in the morning, if he neither ruins himself nor others. (11) He wrote his letters as rapidly as his disabled fingers would allow him to form the characters of a remarkably legible hand. No rough draughts or sketches of familiar letters were found amongst his papers at Strawberry Hill: but he was in the habit of putting down on the backs of letters or on slips of paper, a note of facts, of news, of witticisms, or of any thing he wished not to forget, for the amusement of his correspondents.
After reading “The Mysterious Mother,” who will accede to the opinion, that his works are “destitute of every charm that is derived from elevation, or from tenderness of sentiment?” (12)
But, with opinions as to the genius, the taste, or the talents of Lord Orford, this little notice has nothing to do. It aims solely at rescuing his individual character from misconceptions. Of the means necessary for this purpose, its writer, by the “painful preeminence” of age, remains the sole depositary, and being so, has submitted to the task of repelling such misconceptions. It is done with the reluctance which must always be experienced in differing from, or calling in question, the opinions of a person, for whom is felt all the admiration and respect due to super-eminent abilities, and all the grateful pride and affectionate regard inspired by personal friendship.
M. B. October 1840.
(5) T. Babbington Macaulay.
(6) Sketch of the Life of Horace Walpole, by Lord Dover. See vol. i.
(7) See Preface to Madame du Deffand’s Letters, p. xi.; and vol. ii. of this collection.
(8) See Edinburgh Review, vol. lviii. p. 233.
(9) Edinburgh Review, vol, lviii. p. 233.
(10) See vol. iii.
(11) See Edinburgh Review, vol. lviii. p. 232.
(12) Ibid., p. 237.
Second Advertisement
The last volume will be found to contain upwards of one hundred letters, introduced into no former edition of the Correspondence of Horace Walpole. The greater part of them were written between the years 1789 and 1797, and were addressed to the Miss Berrys, during their residence in Italy. They embrace most of the leading events of the first five years of the French Revolution; and wherever the facts detailed in the letters have appeared to require elucidation or confirmation, the Editor has generally had recourse to M. Thiers’s useful “History” of that great event; which has recently appeared in an English dress, accompanied with notes and illustrations, drawn from the most authentic sources.
While the last volume was at press, the Editor was favoured with a letter from the Right Honourable Sir Charles Grey, relative to the share which he considers Mr. Walpole to have had in the composition and publication of the Letters of Junius.
Albany Street, Regent’s Park,
October 28, 1840.
To the editor
of the letters of Horace walpole,
earl of orford.
Sir,
1. Before your last volume is published, I am desirous of stating to you some of the considerations which, more than seventeen years ago, led me to the belief I still entertain, that Walpole had a principal share in the composition and publication of the Letters of Junius: though I think it likely that Mason, or some other friend corrected the style, and gave precision and force to the most striking passages.
2. It was in 1823, whilst I was residing in India, that Lord Holland’s edition of Walpole’s Memoires of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second suggested to me this notion; and it was shortly afterwards communicated to several of my friends. The edition of Junius which I had with me, was that of Mr. Woodfall the younger, in three volumes; and I am not at present by any means satisfied that all the letters which the editor assigns to Junius were written by him: but in this hasty notice I must proceed upon the supposition that they were.
3. It will be remembered that the Memoires were composed by Walpole in secrecy, and that he left them in a sealed box, which, by his will, was forbidden to be opened till many years after his death. The letters from which the corresponding passages are given below are all published as Letters of Junius by Mr. Woodfall, and are of dates later than the time when Walpole wrote his Memoires; but half a century earlier than the time when they were printed.
Note by the transcriber: there follows a table, in which letters of Junius are presented for comparisons side by side with writings of Walpole. I have changed the format to present them in sequence. Return to text.
Junius: I own, my lord, that yours is not an uncommon character. Women, and men like women, are timid, vindictive, and irresolute. Woodfall’s Junius, vol. ii, p. 168.
Walpole: As it is observed that timorous natures like those of women are generally cruel, Lord mansfield might easily slide into rigour, etc.-Walpole’s Memoires, vol. ii. p. 175.
Junius: Without openly supporting the person, you (Lord Mansfield) have done essential service to the cause; and consoled yourself for the loss of a favourite family by reviving and establishing the maxims of their government.-vol. ii, p. 182.
Walpole: The occasions of the times had called him (Lord Mansfield) off from principles that favoured an arbitrary king-he still leaned towards an arbitrary government.-vol. ii. p. 266.
Junius: You (Lord Mansfield) would fain be thought to take no share in government, while in reality you are the mainspring of the machine.-vol. ii. p. 179.
Walpole: Pitt liked the dignity of despotism; Lord Mansfield the reality.-Vol. ii. p. 274.
Junius: You secretly engross the power, while you decline the title of minister.-vol. ii. p.179.
Walpole: He was timid himself, and always waving what he was always courting.-Vol. ii. p. 336.
Junius: In council he generally affects to take a moderate part.-vol. ii. p. 354. At present there is something oracular in the delivery of my opinion. I speak from a recess which no human curiosity can penetrate.-vol. i. p. 314.
Walpole: The conduct was artful, new and grand: secluded from all eyes, his (Lord Chatham’s) orders were received as oracles.-vol. ii. p. 347.
Junius: Our enemies treat us as the cunning trader does the unskilful Indian. they magnify their generosity when they give us baubles of no proportionate value for ivory and gold.-vol. ii. p. 359.
Walpole: They made a legal purchase to all eternity of empires and posterity, from a parcel of naked savages, for a handful of glass beads and baubles.-Vol. i. p. 343.
Junius: If you deny him the cup, there will be no keeping him within the pale of the ministry.-vol. ii. p. 249.
Walpole: Where I believe the clergy do not deny the laity the cup.-Letter to Montague. He took care to regulate his patron’s warmth within the pale of his own advantage.-Memoires, vol. ii. p. 197. Come over to the pale of loyalty.-vol. i. p. 282.
Junius: Honour and justice must not be renounced although a thousand modes of right and wrong were to occupy the degrees of morality between Zeno and Epicurus. The fundamental principles of Christianity may still be preserved.-vol. ii. p. 346.
Walpole: The modes of Christianity were exhausted.-Vol. ii. p. 282 To mark how much the modes of thinking change, and that fundamentals themselves can make no impression.-vol. ii. p. 265.
Junius: He (the duke of Bedfor) would not have betrayed such ignorance or such contempt of the constitution as openly to avow in a court of judicature the purchase and sale of a borough. Note.- In an answer in chancery in a suit against him to recover a large sum paid him by a person whom he had undertaken to return to parliament for one of his Grace’s boroughs. He was compelled to repay the money.-vol. i. p. 576.
Walpole: Corruption prevailed in the House of Commons. Instances had been brought to our courts of judicature how much it prevailed in our elections. Note.-The Duke of Bedford had received 1500 pounds for electing Jefrery French at one of his boroughs in the west; but he dying immediately, his heir sued the Duke for the money, who paid it, rather than let the cause be heard.
Junius: The Princess Dowager made it her first care to inspire her son with horror against heresy, and with a respect for the church. His mother took more pains to form his beliefs than either his morals or his understanding.-vol. iii. p. 408.
Walpole: >From the death of the Prince the object of the Princess Dowager had been the government of her son; and her attention had answered. She had taught him great devotion, and she had taken care that he should be taught nothing else.-Vol. i. p. 396.
Junius: That prince had strong natural parts, and used frequently to blush for his own ignorance and want of education, which had been wilfully neglected by his mother and her minion.
Walpole: Martin spoke for the clause, and said, “The King could not have a separate interest from his people, the Princess might; witness Queen Isabella and her minion Mortimer."-Vol. i. p. 118.
Transcriber’s note: the following paragraph is surrounded by asterisks. it appears to be a comment by the letter writer, sir charles Grey, rather than either Junius or Walpole.
Our great Edward, too, at an early period, had sense enough to understand the nature of the connexion between his abandoned mother and the detested Mortimer.
Junius: when it was proposed to settle the present King’s household as Prince of Wales, it is well known that the Earl of Bute was forced into it in direct contradiction to the late King’s inclination. vol. ii. .-
Walpole: Fox had an audience. The monarch was sour, but endeavoured to keep his temper, yet made no concessions; no request to the retiring minister to stay. At last he let slip the true cause of his indignation: “You,” said he, “have made me make that puppy Bute groom of the stole."-Vol. ii. p. 92.
Though too long to be cited in these hurried notes, there are several other passages in which the coincidence of sentiment and expression and of the order in which the thoughts and arguments are ranged, is very remarkable: and the difficulty of accounting otherwise for such coincidences between the Letters of Junius and the unpublished and secret Memoires of Walpole, first made me suspect that the two names might belong to one and the same person-Horace Walpole the younger.
4. Being led by this conjecture to examine the other works of Walpole, I found, in them also, many echoes, as it were, of the voice of Junius, which it is singular should not have been more observed. No One, I think, can collate the concluding portion of Walpole’s letter to Lord Bute, of February 15, 1762, and the latter part of the eulogium of Junius on Lord Chatham, without being struck by the similarity of manner and tone; and by the identity of that feeling, which, in both cases, prompts the writer, whilst he is elaborating compliments, to defend himself jealously against all suspicion of flattery or interested motives.
Transcriber’s note: there follows a comparison of material from Junius and Walpole, set out in parallel columns. I have changed these to a sequential arrangement.
Junius: I did not intend to make a public declaration of the respect I bear Lord Chatham. I well knew what unworthy conclusions would be drawn from it. But I am called upon to deliver my opinion, and surely it is not in the little censure of Mr. Home to deter me from doing signal justice to a man who, I confess, has grown upon my esteem. As for the common, sordid views of avarice, or any purpose of vulgar ambition, I question whether the applause of Junius would be of service to Lord Chatham. My vote will hardly recommend him to an increase of his pension, or to a seat in the Cabinet. But if his ambition be upon a level with his understanding; if he judges of what is truly honourable for himself with the same superior genius which animates and directs him to eloquence in debate, to wisdom in decision, even the pen of Junius shall contribute to reward him. Recorded honour shall gather round his monument, and thicken over him. It is a solid fabric, and will support the laurels that adorn it. I am not conversant in the language of panegyric. These praises are extorted from me; but they will wear well, for they have been dearly earned.-Vol. ii. p. 310.
Walpole. I did not purpose to tempt again the patience of mankind. But the case is very different with regard to my trouble. My whole fortune is from the bounty of the Crown and from the public: it would ill become me to spare any pains for the King’s glory, or for the honour and satisfaction of my country; and give me leave to add, my lord, it would be an ungrateful return for the distinction with which your lordship has condescended to honour me if I withheld such trifling aid as mine, when it might in the least tend to adorn your lordship’s administration. From me, my lord, permit me to say these are not words of course, or of compliment, this is not the language of flattery: your lordship knows I have no views; perhaps knows that, insignificant as it is, my praise is never detached from my esteem: and when you have raised, as I trust you will, real monuments of glory, the most contemptible characters in the inscription dedicated by your country, may not be the testimony of, my lord, your lordship’s most obedient humble servant.-Letters, vol. iii.
I have neither time nor space for going much farther into this part of the subject; but there is one circumstance which, in its application to the supposition that Francis was Junius, is too remarkable to be passed over. Sir Philip Francis supplied Mr. Almon with reports of two speeches of Lord Chatham, in one of which there is this passage, “The Americans had Purchased their liberty at a dear rate, since they had quitted their native country and gone in search of freedom to a desert.” Junius, about three weeks before, had said, “They left their native land in search of freedom, and found it in a desert;” and it has been inferred from this, that the words in the speech were not Lord Chatham’s, but the reporter’s, and that Sir Philip Francis was Junius. But it happens that Walpole, in his Royal and Noble Authors, some years earlier than either the letter of Junius or the speech of Lord Chatham, had said of Lord Brooke, that he was on the point “Of seeking liberty in the forests of America.”
5. If we turn from a recollection of the words to a consideration of the peculiarities of the style of Junius, I think it will be agreed that the most remarkable of all is that species of irony which consists in equivocal compliment. Walpole also excelled in this; and prided himself upon doing so. Are we not justified in saying, that of all who, in the eighteenth century, cast their thoughts on public occurrences into the form of letters, Junius and Walpole are the most distinguished! that the works of no other prose writer of their time exhibit a zest for political satire equal to that which is displayed in the Letters of Junius, and in the Memoires and Political Letters of Walpole and that the sarcasm of equivocal praise was the favourite weapon in the armoury of each, though it certainly appears to have been tempered, and sharpened, and polished with additional care for the hand of
6. It has sometimes been said, that the Letters of Junius must have been written by a lawyer, and they were at one time attributed even to Mr. Dunning. The mistakes which I am about to notice, trifling as they may be, make it impossible that any lawyer should have been the author; and it appears to me that not only is there a considerable resemblance in those mistakes which I adduce of Walpole’s, but that the affectation in both of employing legal terms with which they were not familiar, and of which they did not distinctly apprehend the meaning, is very remarkable. Junius thought De Lolme’s Essay deep,” (13) and talks of property which “savours of the reality:” (14) he misapplies that trite expression of the courts, bona fide: (15) misunderstands mortmain, (16) and supposes that an inquisitio post mortem was an inquiry how the deceased came by his death. (17) Walpole talks of “the purparty of a wife’s lands;” of “tenures against which, of all others, quo warrantos are sure to take place;” (18) of the days of soccage,” which he supposes to be obsolete; and of a fera naturae.
Transcriber’s note: Again there are a few passages from Junius and Walpole compared in parallel columns, which I present below in sequence.
Junius: You say the facts on which you reason are universally admitted: a gratis dictum which I flatly deny.-vol. ii. p. 143.
Walpole: This circumstance is alleged against them as an incident contrived to gain belief, as if they had been in danger of their lives. The argument is gratis dictum.-Works, vol. ii. p. 568.
Junius: They are the trustees, not the owners of the estate. the fee simple is in us.- vol.-vol. i. p. 345.
Walpole: Do you think we shall purchase the fee simple of him for so many years?-Letters, vol. ii.
7. Walpole’s time of life, his station in society, means of information, and habits of writing much, and anonymously, and in concealment, all tally with the supposition of his being Junius. So do his places of residence, when that part of the subject is carefully examined.
8. It is an odd circumstance that Walpole, who makes remarks on every thing, makes no remark on Junius. If he ever expressed an opinion of him in his letters to any of his numerous correspondents, those letters have been suppressed. There are fewer letters of his in the years during which Junius was writing, than in any others.
9. Walpole’s quarrel with the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, and The party whom he calls “the Bedford court,” and Junius “the Bloomsbury gang,” would account for the rancour of the letters of the latter to the Duke.
10. Walpole’s dislike and opinion of the Duke of Grafton, which is nowhere more remarkably expressed than in a letter published for the first time in your third volume, coupled with his friendship for the first Duchess of Grafton, fall in with the attacks of Junius on the Duke.
11. The Memoires of Walpole show an enmity to Lord Mansfield almost equal to that of Junius.
12. Turning from these to a person in a different station, we find, on the part of Walpole, (and, by-the-by, of Mason too,) a sort of spite against Dr. Johnson; and in the works of Walpole, selected by himself for publication after his death,’ there is a high-wrought criticism and condemnation of the style of Johnson, which I cannot help believing to have been conceived in revenge of the well-known handling of Junius in Johnson’s pamphlet on the Falkland Islands. “Let not injudicious admiration mistake the venom of the shift for the vigour of the bow,” is said by Johnson of Junius: and Walpole says of Johnson, that “he destroys more enemies by the weight of his shield, than with the point of his spear.”
13. There is a host of small facts which might be adduced in support of what I have advanced. Any one who has leisure to examine the voluminous works of Walpole, and who can lend his mind to the inquiry, will find them crowd upon him. Let me mention one well known occurrence.
Junius says, in the postscript of a private note to Mr. Woodfall, Beware of David Garrick. He was sent to pump you, and went directly to Richmond to tell the King I should write no more.” He then directed Woodfall to send the following note to Garrick, but not in the handwriting of Junius:-"I am very exactly informed of your impertinent inquiries, and of the information you so busily sent to Richmond, and with what triumph and exultation it was received. I knew every particular of it the next day. Now, mark me, vagabond! Keep to your pantomimes, or be assured you shall hear of it. Meddle no more, thou busy informer! It is in my power to make you curse the hour in which you dared to interfere with Junius.” (19)
Mr. Woodfall remarks on this, that Garrick had received a letter from Woodfall, (the editor of the newspaper in which the letters of Junius first appeared,) before the above-note of Junius was sent to the printer, in which Garrick was told, in confidence, that there were some doubts whether Junius would continue to write much longer. Garrick flew with the intelligence to Mr. Remus, one of the pages to the King, who immediately conveyed it to his Majesty, at that time residing at Richmond; and from the peculiar sources of information that were open to this extraordinary writer, Junius was apprised of the whole transaction on the ensuing
But I have extended this letter too far. My purpose was merely to invite your attention to a subject of some literary interest, which you have peculiar opportunities of examining; and to enable you, if you should think fit, to draw to it the attention of the public also. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, Chas. EDW. Grey. 20. Albemarle Street, October 24, 1840.
(13) Woodfall’s Junius, vol. i. p. 385.
(14) Ibid. p. 312.
(15) Ibid. p. 311.
(16) Ibid., vol. ii. p. 131.
(17) Ibid.,vol. i. p. 454.
(18) Walpole’s Works, vol. iv. p. 361.
(19) Junius, Vol. i. P. 228.
SKETCH OF THE LIFE of HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD: BY LORD DOVER. (20)
Any one who attempts to become a biographer of Horace Walpole must labour under the disadvantage of following a greater master in the art; namely, Sir Walter Scott, whose lively and agreeable account of this Author, contained in his “Lives of the Novelists,” is well known and deservedly admired. As, however, the greater part of Walter Scott’s pages is devoted to a very able criticism of the only work of fiction produced by Walpole, “The Castle of Otranto,” it has been thought, that a more general sketch of his life and writings might not prove unacceptable to the reader.
Horace Walpole was the third and youngest son (21) of that eminent minister, Sir Robert Walpole-the glory of the Whigs, the preserver of the throne of these realms to the present Royal Family, and under whose fostering rule and guidance the country flourished in peace for more than twenty years. The elder brothers of Horace were, Robert, Lord Walpole, so created in 1723, who succeeded his father in the Earldom of Orford in 1745, and died in 1751; and Sir Edward Walpole, Knight of the Bath, whose three natural daughters were, Mrs. Keppel, wife to the Honourable Frederick Keppel, Bishop of Exeter; the Countess of Waldegrave, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester; and the Countess of Dysart. Sir Edward Walpole died in 1784. His sisters were, Catherine, who died of consumption at the age of nineteen; and Mary, married to George, Viscount Malpas, afterwards third Earl of Cholmondeley: she died in 1732. The mother of Horace, and of his brothers and sisters here mentioned, was Catherine Shorter, daughter of John Shorter, Esq. of Bybrook,
Horace Walpole was born October 5th, 1717 (23) and educated a Eton School, and at King’s College, Cambridge. Upon leaving the latter place, he set out on his travels on the Continent, in company with Gray the poet, with whom he had formed a friendship at school. They commenced their journey in March 1739, and continued abroad above two years. Almost the whole of this time was spent in Italy, and nearly a year of it was devoted to Florence; where Walpole was detained by the society of his friends, Mr. Mann, Mr. Chute, and Mr. Whithed. It was in these classic scenes, that his love of art, and taste for elegant and antiquarian literature, became more developed; and that it took such complete possession of him as to occupy the whole of his later life, diversified only by the occasional amusement of politics, or the distractions of society. Unfortunately, the friendship of Walpole and his travelling companion could not survive two years of constant intercourse: they quarrelled and parted at Reggio, in July 1741, and afterwards pursued their way homewards by different routes. (24)
Walpole arrived in England in September 1741, at which time his correspondence with Sir Horace Mann commences. He had been chosen member for Callington, in the parliament which was elected in June of that year, and arrived in the House of Commons just in time to witness the angry discussions which preceded and accompanied the downfall of his father’s administration. He plunged at once into the excitement of political partisanship with all the ardour of youth, and all the zeal which his filial affection for his father inspired. His feelings at this period are best explained by a reference to his letters in the following collection. Public business and attendance upon the House of Commons, apart from the interest attached to peculiar questions, he seems never to have liked. He consequently took very little part either in debates or committees. In March 1742, on a motion being made for an inquiry into the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole for the preceding ten years, he delivered his maiden speech; (25) on which he was complimented by no less a judge of oratory than Pitt. This speech he has preserved in his letter to Sir Horace Mann, of March 24th, 1742. He moved the Address in 1751; and in 1756 made a speech on the question
Upon this occasion he writes thus to George Montagu,-” As my senatorial dignity is gone, I shall not put you to the expense of a cover; and I hope the advertisement will not be taxed, as I seal it to the paper. In short, I retain so much iniquity from the last infamous parliament, that, you see, I would still cheat the public. The comfort I feel in sitting peaceably here, instead of being at Lynn, in the high fever of a contested election, which, at best, Would end in my being carried about that large town, like a figure of a pope at a bonfires is very great. I do not think, when that function is over, that I shall repent my resolution. What could I see but sons and grandsons playing over the same knaveries that I have seen their fathers and grandfather’s act? Could I hear oratory beyond my Lord Chatham’s? Will there ever be parts equal to Charles Towns@ends? Will George Grenville cease to be the most tiresome of beings?” (27)
>From this time Walpole devoted himself more than ever to his literary and antiquarian pursuits; though the interest he still, in society at least, took in politics, is obvious, from the frequent reference to the subject in his letters.
In the course of his life, his political opinions appear to have undergone a great change. In his youth, and indeed till his old age, he was not only a strenuous Whig, but, at times, almost a Republican. How strong his opinions were in this sense may be gathered, both from the frequent confessions of his political faith, which occur in his letters, and from his reverence for the death-warrant of Charles the First, of which he hung up the engraving in his bed-room, and wrote upon it with his own hand the words “Major Charta.” The horrors of the French Revolution drove him, in the latter period of his life, into other views of politics; and he seems to have become, in theory at least, a Tory, though he probably would have indignantly repudiated the appellation, had it been applied to him.
Even during the earlier part of his career, his politics had varied a good deal (as, indeed, in a long life, whose do not?); but, in his case, the cause of variation was a most amiable one. His devoted attachment to Marshal Conway, which led him, when that distinguished man was turned out of his command of a regiment, and of his place at court, in 1764, (28) to offer, with much earnestness, to divide his fortune with him caused him also to look with a favourable eye upon the government of the day, whenever Mr. Conway was employed, and
Upon one political point Horace Walpole appears to have entertained from the first the most just views, and even at a time when such were not sanctioned by the general opinion of the nation. From its very commencement, he objected to that disastrous contest the American war, which, commenced in ignorant and presumptuous folly, was prolonged to gratify the wicked obstinacy of individuals, and ended, as Walpole had foretold it would, in the discomfiture of its authors, and the national disgrace and degradation, after a profuse and useless waste of blood and treasure. Nor must his sentiments upon the Slave Trade be forgotten-sentiments which he held, too, in an age when, far different from the present one, the Assiento Treaty, and other horrors of the same kind, were deemed, not only justifiable, but praiseworthy. “We have been sitting,” he writes, on the 25th of February 1750, “this fortnight on the African Company. We, the British Senate, that temple of Liberty, and bulwark of Protestant Christianity, have, this fortnight, been considering methods to make more effectual that horrid traffic of selling negroes. It has appeared to us, that six-and-forty thousand of these wretches are sold every year to our plantations alone! It chills one’s blood-I would not have to say I voted for it, for the continent of America! The destruction of the miserable inhabitants by the Spaniards was but a momentary misfortune that flowed from the discovery of the New World, compared to this lasting havoc which it brought upon Africa. We reproach Spain, and yet do not even pretend the nonsense of butchering the poor creatures for the good of their souls.” (31)
One of the most favourite pursuits of Walpole was the building and decoration of his Gothic villa of Strawberry Hill. It is situated at the end of the village of Twickenham, towards Teddington, on a slope, which gives it a fine view of the reach of the Thames and the opposite wooded hill of Richmond Park. He bought it in 1747, of Mrs. Chenevix, the proprietress of a celebrated toy-shop. He thus describes it in a letter of that year to Mr. Conway. “You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix’s shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges:-
’A small Euphrates through the piece is roll’d, And little finches wave their wings of gold.’
Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises; barges, as solemn as barons of the exchequer, move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospects; but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. (32) Dowagers, as plenty as flounders, inhabit all around; and Pope’s ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight.” (33)
He commenced almost immediately adding to the house, and Gothicizing it, assisted by the taste and designs of his friend Mr. Bentley; till, in the end, the cottage of Mrs. Chenevix had increased into the castellated residence we now behold. He also filled it with collections of various sorts-books, prints, pictures, portraits, enamels, and miniatures, antiquities, and curiosities of all kinds. Among these miscellaneous hoards are to be found some fine works of art, and many things most valuable in an historical and antiquarian point of view. For these various expenses he drew upon his annual income, which arose from three patent places conferred on him by his father, of which the designations were, Usher of the Exchequer, Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk of the Estreats. As early as the year 1744, these sinecures produced to him, according to his own account, nearly two thousand a-year; and somewhat later, the one place of Usher of Exchequer rose in value to double this sum. This income, with prudent management, sufficed for the gratification of his expensive tastes of building and collecting, to which his long life was devoted.
With regard to the merits of Strawberry Hill, as a building, it is perhaps unfair, in the present age, when the principles of Gothic architecture have been so much studied, and so often put in practice, to criticise it too severely. Walpole himself, who, in the earlier part of his life, seems to have had an unbounded admiration for the works of his own hands, appears in later times to have been aware of the faults in style of which he had been guilty; for, in a letter to Mr. Barrett, in 1788, he says, “If Mr. Matthews was really entertained” (with seeing Strawberry Hill), “I am glad. But Mr. Wyatt has made him too correct a Goth not to have seen all the imperfections and bad execution of my attempts; for neither Mr. Bentley nor my workmen had studied the science, and I was always too desultory and impatient to consider that I should please myself more by allowing time, than by hurrying my plans into execution before they were ripe. My house, therefore, is but a sketch for beginners; yours (34) is finished by a great master; and if Mr. Matthews liked mine, it was en virtuose, who loves the dawnings of an art, or the glimmerings of its restoration.” (35)
In fact, the building of Strawberry Hill was “the glimmering of the restoration” of gothic architecture, which had previously, for above a century, been so much neglected that its very principles seemed lost. If we compare the Gothic of Strawberry Hill with that of buildings about the same period, or a little anterior to it, we shall see how vastly superior it is to them, both in its taste and its decorations. If we look at some of the restorations of our churches of the beginning of the eighteenth century , we shall find them a most barbarous mixture of Gothic forms and Grecian and Roman ornaments. Such are the western towers of Westminster Abbey, designed by Wren; the attempts at Gothic, by the same architect, in one or two of his City churches; Gibbs’s quadrangle of All Souls’ College, Oxford; and the buildings in the same style of Kent, Batty, Langley, etc. To these Strawberry is greatly superior: and it must be observed, that Walpole himself, in his progressive building, went on improving and purifying his taste. Thus the gallery and round-tower at Strawberry Hill, which were among his latest works, are incomparably the best part of the house; and in their interior decorations there is very little to be objected to, and much to be admired.
It were to be wished, indeed, that Walpole’s haste to finish, to which he alludes in the letter just quoted, and perhaps also, in some degree, economy, had not made him build his castle, which, with all its faults, is a curious relic of a clever and ingenious man, with so little solidity, that it is almost already in a state of decay. Lath and plaster, and wood, appear to have been his favourite materials for construction; which made his friend Williams (36) say of him, towards the end of his life, “that he had outlived three sets of his own battlements.” It is somewhat curious, as a proof of the inconsistency of the human mind, that, having built his castle with so little view to durability, Walpole entailed the perishable possession with a degree of strictness, which would have been more fitting for a baronial estate. And that, too, after having written a fable entitled “The Entail,” in consequence, of some one having asked him whether he did not intend to entail Strawberry Hill, and in ridicule of such a proceeding.
Whether Horace Walpole conferred a benefit upon the public by setting the fashion of applying the Gothic style of architecture to domestic purposes, may be doubtful; so greatly has the example he gave been abused in practice since. But, at all events, he thus led the professors of architecture to study with accuracy the principles of the art, which has occasioned the restoration and preservation in such an admirable manner of so many of our finest cathedrals. colleges, and ancient Gothic and conventual buildings. This, it must be at least allowed, was the fortunate result of the rage for Gothic, which succeeded the building of Strawberry Hill. For a good many
The next pursuit of Walpole, to -which it now becomes desirable to advert, are his literary labours, and the various publications with which, at different periods of his life, he favoured the world. His first effort appears to have been a copy of verses, written at Cambridge. His poetry is generally not of a very high order; lively, and with happy turns and expressions, but injured frequently by a sort of quaintness, and a somewhat inharmonious rhythm. Its merits, however, exactly fitted it for the purpose which it was for the most part intended for; namely, as what are called vers de soci`et`e.” (37) Among the best of his verses may be mentioned those “On the neglected Column in the Place of St. Mark, at Florence,” which contains some fine lines; his “Twickenham Register;” and “The Three Vernons.”
In 1752 he published his “Edes Walpolianae,” or description of the family seat’ of Houghton Hall, in Norfolk, where his father had built a palace, and had made a fine collection of pictures, which were sold by his grandson George, third Earl of Orford, to the Empress Catherine of Russia. This work, which is, in fact, a mere catalogue of pictures, first showed the peculiar talent of Horace Walpole for enlivening, by anecdote and lightness of style, a dry subject.
In 1757 Walpole established a private printing-press at Strawberry Hill, and the first work he printed at it was the Odes of Gray, with Bentley’s prints and vignettes. Among the handsomest and most valuable volumes which subsequently issued from this press, in addition to Walpole’s own Anecdotes of Painting, and his description of Strawberry Hill, must be mentioned the quarto lucan, with the notes of Grotius and Bentley; the Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury by himself, flentzner’s Travels, and Lord Whitworth’s account of Russia. Of all these he printed a very limited number. It does not, however, appear, as stated in the Biographical Dictionary, (39) he reserved all the copies as presents; on the contrary, it would seem that in most instances he sold a certain portion of the copies to the booksellers, probably with a view of defraying the expenses of his printing establishment. As, however, the supply in the book-market of the Strawberry Hill editions was very small, they generally sold for high prices, and a great interest was created respecting them.
In 1764 Walpole published one of the most remarkable of his works, “The Castle of Otranto;” and in 1768 his still more remarkable production, “The Mysterious Mother.” (40) In speaking of the latter effort of his genius, (for it undoubtedly deserves that appellation,) an admirable judge of literary excellence has made the following remarks; “It is the fashion to underrate Horace Walpole firstly, because he was a nobleman, 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: he is the father of the first romance, and of the last tragedy in our language, and surely worthy of a higher place than any living author, be he who he may.” (41)
In speaking Of “The Castle of Otranto,” it may be remarked as a singular coincidence in the life of Walpole, that as he had been the first person to lead the modern public to seek for their architecture in the Gothic style and age, so he also opened the great magazine of the tales of Gothic times to their literature. “The Castle of Otranto” is remarkable,” observes an eminent critic, “not only for the wild interest of its story, but as the first modern attempt to found a tale of amusing fiction upon the basis of the ancient romances of chivalry.” (42) “This romance,” he continues, “has been justly considered not only as the original and model of a peculiar species of composition, attempted and successfully executed by a man of great genius, but as one of the standard works of our literature.’ (43)
The account which Walpole himself gives of the circumstances which led to the composition of “The Castle of Otranto,” of his fancy of the portrait of Lord Deputy Falkland, in the gallery at Strawberry Hill, walking Out of its frame; and of his dream of a gigantic hand in armour on the banister of a great staircase, are well known. Perhaps it may be objected to him, that he makes too frequent use of supernatural machinery in his romance; but, at the time it was written, this portion of his work was peculiarly acceptable to the public. We have since, from the labours of the immense tribe of his followers and imitators of different degrees of merit, “supped so full of horrors,” that we are become more fastidious upon these points; and even, perhaps, unfairly so, as at the present moment the style of supernatural romances in general is rather fallen again Into neglect and disfavour. “If,” concludes Walter Scott, in his criticism on this work, (and the sentiments expressed by him are so fair and just, that it is impossible to forbear quoting them,) “Horace Walpole, who led the way in this new species of literary composition, has been surpassed by some of his followers in diffuse brilliancy of composition, and perhaps in the art of detaining the mind of the reader in a state of feverish and anxious suspense through a protracted and complicated narrative, more will yet remain with him than the single merit of originality and invention. The applause due to chastity of style—to a happy combination of supernatural agency with human interest-to a tone of feudal manners and language, sustained by characters strongly marked and well discriminated,-and to unity of action, producing scenes alternately of interest and grandeur,-the applause, in fine, which cannot be denied to him who can excite the passions of fear and pity must be awarded to the author of the Castle of Otranto.” (44)
“The Mysterious Mother,” is a production of higher talent and more powerful genius than any other which we owe to the pen of Horace Walpole; though, from the nature of its subject, and the sternness of its character, it is never likely to compete in popularity with many of his other writings. The story is too horrible almost for tragedy. It is, as Walpole himself observes,"more truly horrid even than that of Oedipus.” He took it from a history which had been told him, and which he thus relates: “I had heard, when very Young, that a gentlewoman, under uncommon agonies of mind, had waited on Archbishop Tillotson, and besought his counsel. Many years before, a damsel that served her, had acquainted her that she was importuned by the gentlewoman’s son to grant him a private meeting. The mother ordered the maiden to make the assignation, when, she said, she would discover herself, and reprimand him for his criminal passion: but, being hurried away by a much more criminal passion herself, she kept the assignation without discovering herself. The fruit of this horrid artifice was a daughter, whom the gentlewoman caused to be educated very privately in the country: but proving very lovely, and being accidentally met by her father-brother, who had never had the slightest suspicion of the truth, he had fallen in love with and actually married her. The wretched, guilty mother, learning what had happened, and distracted with the consequence of her crime, had now resorted to the archbishop, to know in what manner she should act. The prelate charged her never to let her son or daughter know what had passed, as they were innocent of any criminal intention. For herself he bade her almost despair.” (45) Afterwards, Walpole found out that a similar story existed in the Tales of the Queen of Navarre, and also in Bishop Hall’s works. In this tragedy the dreadful interest is well sustained throughout, the march of the blank verse is grand and imposing, and some of the scenes are worked up with a vigour and a pathos, which render it one of the most powerful dramatic efforts of which our language can boast.
The next publication of Walpole, was his “Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third,” one of the most ingenious historical and antiquarian dissertations which has ever issued from the press. He has collected his facts with so much industry, and draws his arguments and inferences from them with so much ability, that if he has not convinced the public of the entire innocence of Richard, he has, at all events, diminished the number of his crimes, and has thrown a doubt over his whole history, as well as over the credibility of his accusers, which is generally favourable to his reputation. This work occasioned a great sensation in the literary world, and produced several replies, from F. Guydickens, Esq., Dean Milles, and the Rev. Mr. Masters, and others. These works, however, are now gathered to “the dull of ancient days;” while the book they were intended to expose and annihilate remains an instructive and amusing volume; and, to say the least of it, a most creditable monument of its author’s ingenuity.
The remainder of the works of Walpole, published or printed in his lifetime, consist of minor, or, as he calls them, Fugitive pieces.” Of these the most remarkable are his papers in “The World,” and other periodicals; " A Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese Philosopher, in London,” on the politics of the day; the “Essay on Modern Gardening;” the pamphlet called “A Counter Address,” on the dismissal of Marshal Conway from his command of a regiment; the fanciful, but lively “Hieroglyphic Tales;” and “The Reminiscences,” or Recollections of Court and Political Anecdotes; which last he wrote for the amusement of the Miss Berrys. All of these are marked with those peculiarities, and those graces of style, which belonged to him; and may still be read, however various their subjects, with interest and instruction. The Reminiscences are peculiarly curious; and may, perhaps, be stated to be, both in manner and matter, the very perfection of anecdote writing. We may, indeed, say, with respect to Walpole, what can be advanced of but few such voluminous authors, that it is impossible to open any part of his works without deriving entertainment from them; so much do the charms and liveliness of his manner of writing influence all the subjects he treats of.
Since the death of Walpole, a portion of his political Memoires, comprising the History of the last ten years of the Reign of George the Second, has been published, and has made a very remarkable addition to the historical information of that period. At the same time it must be allowed, that this work has not entirely fulfilled the expectation which the public had formed of it. Though full of curious and interesting details; it can hardly be said to form a very interesting whole; while in no other of the publications of the author do his prejudices and aversions appear in so strong and unreasonable a light. His satire also, and we might even call it by the stronger name of abuse, is too general, and thereby loses its effect. Many of the characters are probably not too severely drawn; but some evidently are, and this circumstance shakes our faith in the rest. We must, however, remember that the age he describes was one of peculiar corruption; and when the virtue and character of public men were, perhaps, at a lower ebb than at any other period since the days of Charles the Second. The admirably graphic style of Walpole, in describing particular scenes and moments, shines forth in many parts of the Memoires: and this, joined to his having been an actor in many of the circumstances he relates and a near spectator of all, must ever render his book one of extreme value to the politician and the historian.
But, the posthumous works of Walpole, upon which his lasting fame with posterity will probably rest, are his “incomparable letters.” (46) Of these, a considerable portion was published in the quarto edition of his works in 1798: since which period two quarto volumes, containing his letters to George Montagu, Esq. and the Rev. William Cole; and another, containing those to Lord Hertford and the Rev. Henry Zouch, have been given to the world; and the present publication of his correspondence with Sir Horace Mann completes the series, which extends from the year 1735 to the commencement of 1797, within six weeks of his death-a period of no less than fifty-seven years.
A friend of Mr. Walpole’s has observed, that “his epistolary talents have shown our language to be capable of all the grace and all the charms of the French of Madame de S`evign`e;” (47) and the remark is a true one, for he is undoubtedly the author who first proved the aptitude of our language for that light and gay epistolary style, which was before supposed peculiarly to belong to our Gallic neighbours. There may be letters of a higher order in our literature than those of Walpole. Gray’s letters, and perhaps Cowper’s, may be taken as instances of this; but where shall we find such an union of taste, humour, and almost dramatic power of description and narrative, as in the correspondence of Walpole? Where such happy touches upon the manners and characters of the time? Where can we find such graphic scenes, as the funeral of George the Second; as the party to Vauxhall with Lady Harrington; as the ball at Miss Chudleigh’s, in the letters already published; or as some of the House of Commons’ debates and many of the anecdotes of society in those now offered to the world? Walpole’s style in letter-writing is occasionally quaint, and sometimes a little laboured; but for the most part he has contrived to throw into it a great appearance of ease, as if he wrote rapidly and without premeditation. This, however, was by no means the case, as he took great pains with his letters, and even collected, and wrote down beforehand, anecdotes, with a view to their subsequent insertion. Some of these stores have been discovered among the papers at Strawberry Hill. The account of the letters of Walpole leads naturally to some mention of his friends, to whom they were addressed. These were, Gray the poet, Marshal Conway, his elder brother, Lord Hertford, George Montagu, Esq., the Rev. William Cole, Lord Strafford, Richard Bentley, Esq., John Chute, Esq., Sir Horace Mann, Lady Hervey, and in after-life, Mrs. Hannah More, Mrs. Damer, and the two Miss Berrys. His correspondence with the three latter ladies has never been published; but his regard for them, and intimacy with them, are known to have been very great. Towards Mrs. Damer, the only child of the friend of his heart, Marshal Conway, he had an hereditary feeling of affection; and to her he bequeathed Strawberry Hill. To the Miss Berrys he left, in conjunction with their father, the greater part of his papers, and the charge of collecting and publishing his works, a task which they performed with great care and judgment. To these friends must be added the name of Richard West, Esq., a young man of great promise, (only son of Richard West, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, by the daughter of Bishop Burnet,) who died in 1742, at the premature age of twenty-six.
Gray had been a school friend of Walpole, as has been before mentioned, they travelled together, and quarrelled during the Journey. Walter Scott suggests as a reason for their differences, “that the youthful vivacity, and perhaps aristocratic assumption, of Walpole, did not agree with the somewhat formal opinions and habits of the professed man of letters.” (48) This conjecture may very possibly be the correct one; but we have no clue to guide us with certainty to the causes of their rupture. In after-life they were reconciled, though the intimacy of early friendship never appears to have been restored between them. (49) Scott says of Walpole, that , his temper was precarious;” and we may, perhaps, affirm the same of Gray. At all events, they were persons of such different characters, that their not agreeing could not be surprising. What could be more opposite than “the self-sequestered, melancholy Gray,” and the eager, volatile Walpole, of whom Lady Townshend said, when some one talked of his good spirits, “Oh, Mr. Walpole is spirits of hartshorn.” When Mason was writing the life of Gray, Walpole bade him throw the whole blame of the quarrel upon him. This might be mere magnanimity, as Gray was then dead; what makes one most inclined to think it was the truth, is the fact, that Gray was not the only intimate friend of Walpole with whom he quarrelled. He did so with Bentley, for which the eccentric conduct of that man of talent might perhaps account. But what shall we say to his quarrel with the good-humoured, laughing George Montagu, with whom for the last years of the life of the latter, he held no intercourse? It is true, that in a letter to Mr. Cole, Walpole lays the blame upon Montagu, and says, “he was become such an humourist;” but it must be remembered that we do not know Montagu’s version of the story; and that undoubtedly three quarrels with three intimate friends rather support the charge, brought by Scott against Walpole, of his having “a precarious temper.”
The friendship, however, which does honour both to the head and heart of Horace Walpole, was that which he bore to Marshal Conway; a man who, accordant to all the accounts of him that have come down to us, was so truly worthy of inspiring such a degree of affection. Burke’s panegyric (50)upon his public character and conduct is well-known; while the Editor of Lord Orford’s Works thus most justly eulogizes his private life. “It is only those who have had the opportunity of penetrating into the most secret motives of his public conduct and the inmost recesses of his private life, that can do real justice to the unsullied purity of his character-who saw and knew him in the evening of his days, retired from the honourable activity of a soldier and a statesman, to the calm enjoyments of private life, happy in the resources of his own mind, and in the cultivation of useful science, in the bosom of domestic peace-unenriched by pensions or places, undistinguished by titles or ribands, unsophisticated
The rest of’ Walpole’s friends and correspondents it is hardly necessary to dwell upon; they are many of them already well known to the public from various causes. it may, however, be permitted to observe, that, they were, for the most part, persons distinguished either by their taste in the fine arts, their love of antiquities, their literary attainments, or their conversational talents. To the friends already mentioned, but with whom Walpole did not habitually correspond, must be added, Mason the poet, George Selwyn, Richard second Lord Edgecumbe, George James Williams, Esq. Lady Suffolk, and Mrs. Clive the actress.
With the Marquise du Deffand, the old, blind, but clever leader of French society, he became acquainted at Paris late in her life. Her devotion for him appears to have been very great, and is sometimes expressed in her letters with a warmth and tenderness, which Walpole, who was most sensitive of ridicule, thought so absurd in a person of her years and infirmities, that he frequently reproves her very harshly for it; so much so, as to give him the appearance of a want of kindly feeling towards her, which his general conduct to her, and the regrets he expressed on her death, do not warrant us in accusing him of. (51)
In concluding the literary part of the character of Walpole, it is natural to allude to the transactions which took place between him and the unfortunate Chatterton; a text upon which so much calumny and misrepresentation have been embroidered. The periodicals of the day, and the tribe of those “who daily scribble for their daily bread,” and for whom Walpole had, perhaps unwisely, frequently expressed his contempt, attacked him bitterly for his inhumanity to genius, and even accused him as the author of the subsequent misfortunes and untimely death of that misguided son of genius; nay, even the author of “The Pursuits of Literature,” who wrote many years after the transaction had taken place, and who ought to have known better, gave in to the prevailing topic of abuse. (52) It therefore becomes necessary to state shortly what really took place upon this occasion, a task which is rendered easier by the clear view of the transaction taken both by Walter Scott in his “Lives of the Novelists,” and by Chalmers in his “Biographical Dictionary,” which is also fully borne out by the narrative drawn up by Walpole himself, and accompanied by the correspondence.
it appears then, that in March 1769, Walpole-received a letter from Chatterton, enclosing a few specimens of the pretended poems of Rowley, and announcing his discovery of a series of ancient painters at Bristol. To this communication Walpole, naturally enough, returned a very civil answer. Shortly afterwards, doubts arose in his mind as to the authenticity of the poems; these were confirmed by the opinions of some friends, to whom he showed them; and he then wrote an expression of these doubts to Chatterton. This appears to have excited the anger of Chatterton, who, after one or two short notes, wrote Walpole a very impertinent one, in which he redemanded his manuscripts. This last letter Walpole had intended to have answered with some sharpness; but did not do so. He only returned the specimens on the 4th of August 1769; and this concluded the intercourse between them, and as Walpole observes, “I never saw him then, before, or since.” Subsequently to this transaction, Chatterton acquired other patrons more credulous than Walpole, and proceeded with his forgeries. In April 1770 he came to London, and committed suicide in August of that year; a fate which befell him, it is to be feared, more in consequence of his own dissolute and profligate habits, than from any want of patronage. However this may be, Walpole clearly had nothing to say to it.
In addition to the accusation of crushing, instead of fostering his genius, Walpole has also been charged with cruelty in not assisting him with money. Upon this, he very truly says himself, “Chatterton was neither indigent nor distressed, at the time of his correspondence with me. He was maintained by his mother and lived with a lawyer. His only pleas to my assistance were, disgust to his profession, inclination to poetry, and communication of some suspicious MSS. His distress was the consequence of quitting his master, and coming to London, and of his other extravagances. He had depended on the impulse of the talents he felt for making impression, and lifting him to wealth, honours, and faine. I have already said, that I should have been blamable to his mother and society, if I had seduced an apprentice from his master to marry him to the nine Muses;’ and I should have encouraged a propensity to forgery, which is not the talent most wanting culture in the present age.” (53) Such and so unimportant was the transaction with Chatterton, which brought so much obloquy on Walpole, and seems really to have given him at different times great annoyance.
There remains but little more to relate in the life of Walpole. His old age glided on peacefully, and, with the exception of his severe sufferings from the gout, apparently contentedly, in the pursuit of his favourite studies and employments. In the year 1791, he succeeded his unhappy nephew, George, third Earl of Orford, who had at different periods of his life been insane, in the family estate and the earldom. The accession of this latter dignity seems rather to have annoyed him than otherwise. He never took his seat in the House of Lords, and his unwillingness to adopt his title was shown in his endeavours to avoid making use of it in his signature. He not unfrequently signed himself, “The Uncle of the late Earl of Orford.” (54)
He retained his faculties to the last, but his limbs became helpless from his frequent attacks of gout: as he himself expresses it,
“Fortune, who scatters her gifts out of season, Though unkind to my limbs, has yet left me my reason.” (55)
As a friend of his, who only knew him in the last years of his life, speaks of “his conversation as singularly brilliant as it was original,” (56) we may conclude his liveliness never deserted him; that his talent for letter-writing did not, we have a proof in a letter written only six weeks before his death, in which, with all his accustomed grace of manner he entreats a lady of his acquaintance not to show “the idle notes of her ancient servant."-Lord Orford died in the eightieth year `of his life, at his house in Berkeley Square, on the 2d of March 1797, and was buried with his family in the church at Houghton and with him concluded the male line of the descendants of Sir Robert Walpole.
(20) Originally prefixed to his lordship’s edition of Walpole’s Letters to Sir Horace Mann, first published in 1833.
(21) In a ms. note by Walpole, in his own copy of collins’s Peerage, it is stated, that Sir Robert Walpole had, by his first wife, “another son, William, who died young, and a daughter, Catherine, who died of a consumption at Bath, aged nineteen."-E.
(22) The occasion of the death of sir John Shorter was a curious one. It is thus related in the Ellis Correspondence:-"Sir John Shorter, the present Lord Mayor. is very ill with a fall off his horse, under Newgate, as he was going to proclaim Bartholomew Fair. The city custom is, it seems, to drink always under Newgate when the Lord Mayor passes that way; and at this time the Lord Mayor’s horse, being somewhat skittish,-started at the sight of the large glittering tankard which was reached to his lordship.” Letter of Aug. 30th, 1688.
“On Tuesday last died the Lord Mayor, Sir John Shorter: the occasion of his distemper was his fall under Newgate, which bruised him a little, and put him into a fever.” Letter of September 6th, 1688.
(23 )birthdate) In Chalmers’s Biographical Dictionary it is stated, that Horace Walpole was born in 1718; and Sir Walter Scott says he was born in 1716-17, which, according to the New Style, would mean that he was born in one of the three first months of the year 1717. Both these statements are, however, erroneous, as he himself fixes the day of his birth, in a letter to Mr. Conway, dated October 5th, 1764, where he says “What signifies what happens when one is seven-and-forty, as I am to-day? They tell me ’tis my birthday,” And again, in a letter to the same correspondent, dated October 5th, 1777, he says, “I am three-score to-day.”
(24) The exact cause of this quarrel,” says Mr. Mitford, in his Life of Gray, " has been passed over by the delicacy of his biographer, because Horace Walpole was alive when the Memoirs of Gray were written. The former, however, charged himself with the chief blame, and lamented that he had not paid more attention and deference to Gray’s superior judgment and prudence.” See Works of Gray, vol. i. p. 9, Pickering’s edition 1836. In the “Walpolianae” is the following passage:-"The quarrel between Gray and me arose from his being too serious a companion. I had just broke loose from the restraints of the University with as much money as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself. Gray was for antiquities, etc. while I was for perpetual balls and plays: the fault was mine."-E.
(25) Sir Walter Scott says that Walpole, on one occasion, " vindicated the memory of his father with great dignity and eloquence” in the House of Commons; but, as I cannot find any trace of a speech of this kind made by him after Sir Robert Walpole’s death, I am inclined to think Sir Walter must have made a mistake as to the time of delivery of the speech mentioned in the text. [Secker, at that time Bishop of Oxford, says that Walpole “spoke well against the motion.” See post, letter to Sir Horace Mann, dated March 24, 1742.
(26) Sir Walter Scott is in error when he says that Walpole retired from the House of Commons in 1758, “at the active age of forty-one.” This event occurred, as is here stated, in March, 1768, and when Walpole was consequently in his fifty-first year.
(27) Letter, dated Arlington Street, March 12th, 1768. It is but fair to mention, in opposition to the opinion respecting George Grenville, here delivered by Walpole, that of no less an authority than Burke, who says, “Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country,”
(28) He had also offered to share his fortune with Mr. Conway in the year 1744 (see letter of July 20th of that year), in order to enable Mr. Conway to marry a lady he was then in love with. He ends his very pressing entreaties by saying, “For these reasons, don’t deny me what I have set my Heart on-the making your fortune easy to you.” Nor were these the only instances of generosity to a friend, which we find in the life of Walpole. In the year 1770, when the Abb`e Terrai was administering the finances of France, (or, to use the more expressive language of Voltaire, “Quand Terrai nous mangeait,”) his economical reductions occasioned the loss of a portion of her pension, amounting to three thousand livres, to Madame du Deffand. Upon this occasion Walpole wrote thus to his old blind friend, who had presented a memorial of her case to M. de St. Florentin, a course of proceeding which Walpole did not approve of:-"Ayez assez d’amiti`e pour moi pour accepter les trois mille livres de ma part. Je voudrais que la somme ne me f`ut pas aussi indiferente qu’elle
(29) See letter, dated Monday, five o’clock, Feb. 1761.
(30) See letter, dated April 19th, 1764.
(31) See letter to Sir Horace Mann, Feb. 25, 1750.
(32) Catherine Hyde, the eccentric friend of Pope and Gay. She was, at this time, living in a small house in Ham Walks. Walpole, having found her out airing in her Carriage, one day that he had called on her, there addressed the following lines to her:—
’To many a Kitty, Love his car
Would for a day engage;
But Prior’s Kitty, ever fair,
Retains it for an age.”
(33) Letter of June 8th, 1747.
(34) Lee, in Kent.
(35) Letter of June 5th, 1788.
(36) George James Williams, Esq.
(37) In his vers de soci`et`e we perpetually discover a laborious effort to introduce the lightness of the French badinage into a masculine and somewhat rough language."-Quart. Rev. vol. xix. p. 122.
(38) Lives of the Novelists, Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 304, ed. 1834.
(39) Chalmer’s Biographical Dictionary, article Walpole.
(40) “The Mysterious Mother” was printed in that year: but was never published till after the death of Walpole.
(41) Lord Byron, Preface to Mtrino Faliero.”
(42) Lives of the Novelists, Sir Walter Scott; Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 313.
(43) Shortly after the appearance of this romance, the following high encomium was passed upon it by Bishop Warburton:-"We have been lately entertained with what I will venture to call a masterpiece in the fable, and a new species likewise. The piece I mean is laid in Gothic chivalry, where a beautiful imagination, supported by strength of judgment, has enabled the author to go beyond his subject, and effect the full purpose of the ancient tragedy; that is, to purge the passions by pity and terror, in colouring as great and harmonious as in any of the best dramatic writers."-E.
(44) Lives of the Novelists; Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 323.
(45) Postscript to “The Mysterious Mother.”
(46) Lord Byron.
(47) Social Life in England and France,” by Miss Berry.
(48) Lives of the Novelists; Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 301.
(49) “In 1744, the difference between Walpole and Gray was adjusted by the interference of a lady, who wished well to both parties. The lapse of three years had probably been sufficient, in some degree, to soften down, though not entirely obliterate, the remembrance of supposed injustices on both sides; natural kindness of temper had resumed their place, and we find their correspondence again proceeding on friendly and familiar terms.” Mitford’s Gray, vol. i. p. xxiii; see also vol. ii. p. 174.-E.
(50) Speech on American Taxation, April 19, 1774.
(51) “Vanity, when it unfortunately gets possession of a wise man’s head, is as keenly sensible of ridicule, as it is impassible to its shafts when more appropriately lodged with a fool. Of the sensitiveness arising out of this foible Walpole seems to have had a great deal, and it certainly dictated those hard-hearted reproofs that repelled the warm effusions of friendship with which poor Madame du Deffand (now old and blind) addressed him, and of which he complained with the utmost indignation, merely because, if her letters were opened by a clerk at the post-office, such expressions of kindness might expose him to the ridicule of which he had such undue terror.” Quart. Rev. Vol. xix. p. 119.-E.
(52) See “Pursuits of Literature,” second Dialogue:-
“The Boy, whom once patricians pens adorn’d, First meanly flatter’d, then as meanly scorn’d.”
Which lines are Stated in a note to allude to Walpole. See also, first Dialogue, where Chatturton is called, “That varlet bright.” The note to which passage is “’I am the veriest varlet that ever chew’d,’ says Falstaff, in Henry iv. Part 1. Act. 2. Mr. Horace Walpole, now Lord Orford, did not, however, seem to think it necessary that this varlet Chatterton should chew at all. See the Starvation Act, dated at Strawberry Hill.”
(53) Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of Chatterton. Works, vol. iv.
(54) The Duke of Bedford has a letter of Walpole’s with this signature.
(55) “Epitapilium vivi auctoris."-l 792.
(56) “Social Life in England and France.”
Reminiscences of the courts of
George the first and second:
Written in 1788,
for the amusement of miss
mary and miss Agnes Berry.
Il ne faut point d’esprit pour s’occuper
des vieux
`ev`enements.-Voltaire.
Motives to the Undertaking-Precedents-George the First’s Reign a Proem to the History of the Reigning House of Brunswick-The Reminiscent introduced to that Monarch-His Person and Dress-The Duchess of Kendal-her Jealousy of Sir Robert Walpole’s Credit with the King-and Intrigues to displace him, and make Bolingbroke Minister. ’
You were both so entertained with the old stories I told you one evening lately, of what I recollected to have seen and heard from my childhood of the courts of King George the First, and of his son the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Second, and of the latter’s princess, since Queen Caroline; and you expressed such wishes that I would commit those passages (for they are scarce worthy of the title even of anecdotes) to writing, that, having no greater pleasure than to please you both, nor any more important or laudable occupation, I will begin to satisfy the repetition of your curiosity. But observe, I promise no more than to begin; for I not only cannot answer that I shall have patience to continue, but my memory is still so fresh, or rather so retentive of trifles which first made impression on it, that it is very possible my life (turned of seventy-one) may be exhausted before my stock of remembrances; especially as I am sensible of the garrulity of old age, and of its eagerness of relating whatever it recollects, whether of moment or not. Thus, while I fancy I am complying with you, I may only be indulging myself, and consequently may wander into many digressions for which you will not care a straw, and which may intercept the completion of my design. Patience, therefore young ladies; and if you coin an old gentleman into narratives, you must expect a good deal of alloy. I engage for no method, no regularity, no polish. My narrative will probably resemble siege-pieces, which are struck of any promiscuous metals; and, though they bear the impress of some sovereign’s name, only serve to quiet the garrison for the moment, and afterwards are merely hoarded by collectors and virtuosos, who think their series not complete, unless they have even the coins of base metal of every reign. As I date from my nonage, I must have laid up no state secrets. Most of the facts I am going to tell you though new to you and to most of the present age, were known perhaps at the time to my nurse and my tutors. Thus, my stories will have nothing to do with history.
Luckily, there have appeared within these three months two publications, that will serve as precedents for whatever I am going to say: I mean Les Fragments of the Correspondence of the Duchess of Orleans, (57) and those of the M`emoires of the Duc de St. Simon. (58) Nothing more d`ecousu than both: they tell you what they please; or rather, what their editors have pleased to let them tell. In one respect I shall be less satisfactory. They knew and were well acquainted, or thought they were, with their personages. I did not at ten years old, penetrate characters; and as George 1. died at the period where my reminiscence begins, and was rather a good sort of man than a shining king; and as the Duchess of Kendal was no genius, I heard very little of either when he and her power were no more. In fact, the reign of George 1. was little more than the proem to the history of England Under the House of Brunswick.
Commen`cons.
As my first hero was going off the stage before I ought to have come upon it, it will be necessary to tell you why the said two personages happened to meet just two nights before they were to part for ever; a rencounter that barely enables me to give you a general idea of the former’s person and of his mistress’s-or, as has been supposed, his wife’s.
As I was the youngest by eleven years of Sir Robert Walpole’s children by his first wife, and was extremely weak and delicate, as you see me still, though with no constitutional complaint till I had the gout after forty, and as my two sisters were consumptive and died of consumptions, the supposed necessary care of me (and I have overheard persons saying, “That child cannot possibly live”) so engrossed the attention of my mother, that compassion and tenderness soon became extreme fondness; and as the infinite good-nature of my father never thwarted any of his children, he suffered me to be too much indulged, and permitted her to gratify the first vehement inclination that I ever expressed, and which, as I have never since felt any enthusiasm for royal persons, I must suppose that the female attendants in the family must have put into my head, to long to see the king. This childish caprice was so strong, that my mother solicited the Duchess of Kendal to obtain for me the honour of kissing his Majesty’s hand before he set out for Hanover. A favour so unusual to be asked for a boy of ten years old, was still too slight to be refused to the wife of the first minister for her darling child; yet not being proper to be made a precedent, it was settled to be in private, and at night.
Accordingly, the night but one before the king began his last journey, my mother carried me at ten at night to the apartment of the Countess of Walsingham, (59) on the ground floor, towards the garden at St. James’s, which opened into that of her aunt, the Duchess of Kendal’s: apartments occupied by George ii. after his queen’s death, and by his successive mistresses, the Countesses of Suffolk and Yarmouth.
Notice being given that the king was come down to supper, Lady Walsingham took me alone into the duchess’s ante-room, where we found alone the king and her. I knelt down, and kissed his hand. He said a few words to me, and my conductress led me back to my mother (60)
The person of the king is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him but yesterday. It was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his pictures and coins; Dot tall; of an aspect rather good than august; with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches of snuff coloured cloth, with stockings Of the same colour, and a blue riband over all. So entirely was he my object that I do not believe I once looked at the duchess; but as I could not avoid seeing her on entering the room, I remember that just beyond his Majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill-favoured old lady but I did not retain the least idea of her features, nor know what the colour of her dress was.
My childish loyalty, and the condescension in gratifying it, were, I suppose, causes that contributed, very soon afterwards, to make me shed a flood of tears for that sovereign’s death, when, with the other scholars at Eton college, I walked in procession to the proclamation of the successor; and which (though I think they partly felt because I imagined it became the son of a prime-minister to be more concerned than other boys) were no doubt imputed by many of the spectators who were politicians, to fears of my father’s most probable fall, but of which I had not the smallest conception, nor should have met with any more concern than I did when it really arrived, in the year 1742; by which time I had lost all taste for courts and princes and power, as was natural to one who never felt an ambitious thought for himself.
It must not be inferred from her obtaining this grace for me, that the Duchess of Kendal was a friend to my father; on the contrary, at that moment she had been labouring to displace him, and introduce Lord Bolingbroke (61) into the administration; on which I shall say more hereafter.
It was an instance of Sir Robert’s singular fortune, or evidence of his talents, that he not only preserved his power under two successive monarchs, but in spite of the efforts of both their mistresses (62) to remove him. It was perhaps still more remarkable, and an instance unparalleled, that Sir Robert governed George the First in Latin, the King not speaking English, (63) and his minister no German, nor even French. (64) It was much talked of, that Sir Robert, detecting one of the Hanoverian ministers in some trick or falsehood before the King’S face, had the firmness to say to the German, “Mentiris, impudentissime!” The good-humoured monarch only laughed, as he often did when Sir Robert complained to him of his Hanoverians selling places, nor would be persuaded that it was not the practice of the English court; and which an incident must have planted in his mind with no favourable impression of English disinterestedness. “This is a strange country!” said his Majesty; “the first morning after my arrival at St. James’s, I looked out of the window, and saw a park with walks, a canal, etc. which they told me were mine. The next day,
By what I can at present recollect, the Duchess seems to have been jealous of Sir Robert’s credit with the King, which he had acquired, not by paying court, but by his superior abilities in the House of Commons, and by his knowledge in finance, of which Lord Sunderland and Craggs had betrayed their ignorance in countennancing the South Sea scheme; and who, though more agreeable to the King, had been forced to give way to Walpole, as the only man capable of repairing that mischief. The Duchess, too, might be alarmed at his attachment to the Princess of Wales; from whom, in case of the King’s death, her grace could expect no favour. Of her jealousy I do know the following instance; Queen Anne had bestowed the rangership of Richmond New Park on her relations the Hydes for three lives, one of which was expired. King George, fond of shooting, bought out the term of the last Earl of Clarendon, and of his son Lord Cornbury, and frequently shot there; having appointed my eldest brother, Lord Walpole, ranger nominally, but my father in reality, wished to hunt there once or twice a week. The park had run to great decay under the Hydes, nor was there any mansion (65) better than the common lodges of the keepers. The King ordered a stone lodge designed by Henry, Earl of Pembroke, to be erected for himself, but merely as a banqueting-house, (66) with a large eating-room, kitchen, and necessary offices, where he might dine after his sport. Sir Robert began another of brick for himself, and the under-ranger, which by degrees, he much enlarged; usually retiring thither from business, or rather, as he said himself, to do more business than he could in town, on Saturdays and Sundays. On that edifice, on the thatched-house, and other improvements, he laid out fourteen thousand pounds of his own money. In the meantime, he hired a small house for himself on the hill without the park; and in that small tenement the King did him the honour of dining with him more than once after shooting. His Majesty, fond of private joviality, (67) was pleased with punch after dinner, and indulged in it freely. The Duchess, alarmed at the advantage the minister might make of the openness of the King’s heart in those convivial,
Nor was that discovery the first intimation that Walpole had received of the measure of Bolingbroke’s gratitude. The minister, against the earnest representations of his family and Most intimate friends, had consented to the recall of that incendiary from banishment, (68) excepting only his readmission into the House of Lords, that every field of annoyance might not be open to his mischievous turbulence. Bolingbroke, it seems, deemed an embargo laid on his tongue would warrant his hand to launch every envenomed shaft against his benefactor, who by restricting had paid him the compliment of avowing that his eloquence was not totally inoffensive. Craftsmen, pamphlet, libels, combinations, were showered on or employed for years against the prime-minister, without shaking his power or ruffling his temper; and Bolingbroke had the mortification of finding his rival had abilities to maintain his influence against the mistresses of two kings, with whom his antagonist had plotted in vain to overturn him. (69)
(57) Charlotte Elizabeth, daughter of the Elector of Bavaria. In 1671 she became the second wife (his first being poisoned) of the brother of Louis xiv. by whom she was the mother of the regent, Duke of Orleans. She died in 1722. A collection of her letters, addressed to Prince Ulric of Brunswick, and to the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, was published at Paris in 1788.-E.
(58) These celebrated M`emoires of the Court of Louis xiv. were first published, in a mutilated state, in 1788. A complete edition, in thirteen volumes, appeared in 1791.-E.
(59) Melusina Schulemberg, niece of the Duchess of Kendal, created Countess of Walsingham and -,afterwards married to the famous Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield.
(60) The following is the account of this introduction given in “Walpoliana:"-"I do remember something of George the First. My father took me to St. James’s while I was a very little boy; after waiting some time in an anteroom, a gentleman came in all dressed in brown, even his stockings, and with a riband and star. He took me up in his arms, kissed me, and chatted some time,"-E.
(61) The well-known Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, secretary of state to Queen Anne; on whose death he fled, and was attainted. ["We have the authority of Sir Robert Walpole himself,” says Coxe, “that the restoration of Lord Bolingbroke was the work of the Duchess of Kendal. He gained the duchess by a present of eleven thousand pounds, and obtained a promise to use her influence over the King, for the purpose of forwarding his complete restoration.”]
(62) The Duchess of Kendal and Lady Suffolk.
(63) Sir Robert was frequently heard to say, that during the reign of the first George, he governed the kingdom by means of bad Latin: it is a matter of wonder that, under such disadvantages. the King should take pleasure in transacting business with him: a circumstance which was principally owing to the method and perspicuity of his calculations, and to the extreme facility with which he arranged and explained the most abstruse and difficult combinations of finance.” Coxe.-E.
(64) Prince William, afterwards Duke of Cumberland, then a child, being carried to big grandfather on his birthday, the King asked him at what hour he rose. The Prince replied, “when the chimney-sweepers went about.” “Vat is de chimney-sweeper?” said the King. “Have you been so long in England,” said the boy, “and do not know what a chimney-sweeper is? Why, they are like that man there;” pointing to Lord Finch, afterwards Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham, of a family uncommonly swarthy and dark-"the black funereal Finches"-Sir Charles Williams’s Ode to a Number of Great Men, 1742.
(65) The Earl of Rochester, who succeeded to the title of Clarendon on the extinction of the elder branch, had a villa close without the park; but it had been burnt down, and only one wing was left. W. Stanhope, Earl of Harrington, purchased the ruins, and built the house, since bought by Lord Camelford.
(66) It was afterwards enlarged by Princess Amelia; to whom her rather, George ii. had granted the reversion of the rangership after Lord Walpole. Her Royal Highness sold it to George iii. for a pension on Ireland of twelve hundred pounds a-year, and his Majesty appointed Lord Bute ranger for life.
(67) The King Hated the parade of royalty. When he went to the opera, it was in no state; nor did he sit in the stage-box, nor forwards, but behind the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Walsingham, in the second box, now allotted to the maids of honour.
(68) Bolingbroke at his return could not avoid waiting on Sir Robert to thank him, and was Invited to dine with him at Chelsea; but whether tortured at witnessing Walpole’s serene frankness and felicity, or suffocated with indignation and confusion at being forced to be obliged to one whom be hated and envied, the first morsel he put into his mouth was near choking him, and he was reduced to rise from table and leave the room for some minutes. I never heard of their meeting more.
(69) George ii. parted with Lady Suffolk, on Princess Amelia informing Queen Caroline from Bath, that the mistress had interviews there with Lord Bolingbroke. Lady Suffolk, above twenty years after, protested to me that she had not once seen his lordship there; and I should believe she did not, for she was a woman of truth: but her great intimacy and connexion with Pope and Swift, the intimate friends of Bolingbroke, even before the death of George I. and her being the channel through whom that faction had flattered themselves they should gain the ear of the new King, can leave no doubt of Lady Suffolk’s support of that party. Her dearest friend to her death was William, afterwards Lord Chetwynd, the known and most trusted confidant of Lord Bolingbroke. Of those political intrigues I shall say more in these Reminiscences.
Marriage of George the First, while Electoral Prince, to the Princess Sophia Dorothea-Assassination of Count Konigsmark-Separation from the Princess-Left-handed Espousal-Piety of the Duchess of Kendal-Confinement and Death of Sophia Dorothea in the Castle of Alden-French Prophetess-The King’s Superstition-Mademoiselle Schulemberg—Royal Inconstancy-Countess of Platen-Anne Brett—Sudden Death of George the First.
George the First, while Electoral Prince, had married his cousin, the Princess Dorothea (70) only child of the Duke of Zell; a match of convenience to reunite the dominions of the family. Though she was very handsome, the Prince, who was extremely amorous, had several mistresses; which provocation, and his absence in the army of the confederates, probably disposed the Princess to indulge some degree of coquetry. At that moment arrived at Hanover the famous and beautiful Count Konigsmark, (71) the charms of whose person ought not to have obliterated the memory of his vile assassination of Mr. Thynne.(72)His vanity, the beauty of the Electoral Princess, and the neglect under which he found her, encouraged his presumption to make his addresses to her, not covertly; and she, though believed not to have transgressed her duty, did receive them too indiscreetly. The old Elector flamed at the insolence of so stigmatized a pretender, and ordered him to quit his dominions the next day. The Princess, surrounded by women too closely connected with her husband, and consequently enemies of the lady they injured, was persuaded by them to suffer
Of the circumstances that ensued on Konigsmark’s disappearance I am ignorant; nor am I acquainted with the laws of Germany relative to divorce or separation: nor do I know or suppose that despotism and pride allow the law to insist on much formality when a sovereign has reason or mind to get rid of his wife. Perhaps too much difficulty of untying the Gordian not of matrimony thrown in the way of an absolute prince would be no kindness to the ladies, but might prompt him to use a sharper weapon, like that butchering husband, our Henry viii. Sovereigns, who narrow or let out the law of God according to their prejudices and passions, mould their own laws no doubt to the standard of their convenience. Genealogic purity of blood is the predominant folly of Germany; and the code of Malta seems to have more force in the empire than the ten commandments. Thence was introduced that most absurd evasion of the indissolubility of marriage, espousals with the left hand-as if the Almighty had restrained his ordinance to one half of a man’s person, and allowed a greater latitude
Separated the Princess Dorothea certainly was, and never admitted even to the nominal honours of her rank, being thenceforward always styled Duchess of Halle. Whether divorced (75) is problematic, at least to me; nor can I pronounce, as, though it was generally believed, I am not certain that George espoused the Duchess of Kendal with his left hand. As the Princess Dorothea died only some months before him, that ridiculous ceremony was scarcely deferred till then; and the extreme outward devotion of the Duchess, who every Sunday went seven times to Lutheran chapels, seemed to announce a realized wife. As the genuine wife was always detained in her husband’s power, he seems not to have wholly dissolved their union; for, on the approach of the French army towards Hanover, during Queen Anne’s reign, the Duchess of Halle was sent home to her father and mother, who doted on their only child, and did retain her for a whole year, and did implore, though in vain that she might continue to reside with them. As her son too, George ii., had thoughts of bringing her over and declaring her Queen Dowager, one can hardly believe that a ceremonial divorce had passed, the existence of which process would have glared in the face of her royalty. But though German casuistry might allow her husband to take another wife with his left hand, because his legal wife had suffered her right hand to be kissed in bed by a gallant, even Westphalian or Aulic counsellors could not have pronounced that such a momentary adieu constituted adultery; and therefore of a formal divorce I must doubt-and there I must leave that case of conscience undecided, till future search into the Hanoverian chancery shall clear up a point of little real importance.
I have said that the disgraced Princess died but a short time before the King. (76) It is known that in Queen Anne’s time there was much noise about French prophets. A female of that vocation (for we know from Scripture that the gift of prophecy is not limited to one gender) warned George I. to take care of his wife, as he would not survive her a year. That oracle was probably dictated to the French Deborah by the Duke and Duchess of Zell, ‘who might be apprehensive lest the’ Duchess of Kendal should be tempted to remove entirely the obstacle to her conscientious union with their son-in-law. Most Germans are superstitious, even such as have few other
I do not know whether it was about the same period, that in a tender mood he promised the Duchess of Kendal, that if she survived him, and it were possible for the departed to return to this world, he would make her a visit. The Duchess, on his death, so much expected the accomplishment of that engagement, that a large raven, or some black fowl, flying into one of the windows of her villa at Isteworth, she was persuaded it was the soul of her departed monarch so accoutred, and received and treated it with all the respect and tenderness of duty, till the royal bird or she took their last flight.
George ii., no more addicted than his father to too much religious credulity, had yet implicit faith in the German notion of vampires, and has more than once been angry with my father for speaking irreverently of those imaginary bloodsuckers.
the Duchess of Kendal, of whom I have said so much, was when Mademoiselle Schulemberg, maid of honour to the Electress Sophia, mother of King George I. and destined by King William and the Act of Settlement to succeed Queen Anne. George fell in love with Mademoiselle Schulemberg, though by no means an inviting object-so little, that one evening when she was in waiting behind the Electress’s chair at a ball, the Princess Sophia, who had made herself mistress of the language of her future subjects, said in English to Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk, then at her court, “Look at that mawkin, and think of her being my son’s passion!” Mrs. Howard, who told me the story, protested that she was terrified, forgetting that Mademoiselle Schulemberg did not understand English.
The younger Mademoiselle Schulemberg, who came over with her and was created Countess Walsingham, passed for her niece; but was so like to the King that it is not very credible that the Duchess, who had affected to pass for cruel, had waited for the left-handed marriage.
The Duchess under whatever denomination, had attained and preserved to the last her ascendant over the king: but notwithstanding that influence, he was not more constant to her than he had been to his avowed wife; for another acknowledged mistress, whom he also brought over, was Madame Kilmansegge, Countess of Platen, who was created Countess of Darlington, and by whom he was indisputably father of Charlotte, married to Lord Viscount Howe, and mother of the present earl. (77) Lady Howe was never publicly acknowledged as the Kings daughter; but Princess Amelia, (78) treated her daughter, Mrs. Howe, (79) upon that foot, and one evening, when I was present, gave her a ring, with a small portrait of George I, with a crown of diamonds.
Lady Darlington, whom I saw at my mother’s in my infancy, and whom I remember by being terrified at her enormous figure, was as corpulent and ample as the Duchess was long and emaciated. Two fierce black eyes, large and rolling beneath two lofty arched eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays 80) no wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress, and that the mob of London were highly diverted at the importation of so uncommon a seraglio! They were food from all the venom of the Jacobites; and, indeed nothing could be grosser than the ribaldry that was vomited out in lampoons, libels, and every channel of abuse, against the sovereign and the new court, and chaunted even in their hearing about the public streets. (81)
On the other hand, it was not till the last year or two of his reign that their foreign sovereign paid the nation the compliment of taking openly an English mistress. That personage was Anne Brett, eldest daughter by her second husband, (82) of the repudiated wife of the Earl Of Macclesfield, the unnatural mother of Savage the poet. Miss Brett was very handsome, but dark enough by her eyes, complexion, and hair, for a Spanish beauty. Abishag was lodged in the palace under the eyes of Bathsheba, who seemed to maintain her power, as other favourite sultanas have done, by suffering partners in the sovereign’s affections. When his Majesty should return to England, a countess’s coronet was to have rewarded the young lady’s compliance, and marked her secondary rank. She might, however, have proved a troublesome rival, as she seemed so confident of the power of her charms, that whatever predominant ascendant the Duchess might retain, her own authority in the palace she thought was to yield to no one else. George I., when his son the Prince of Wales and the Princess had quitted St. James’s on their quarrel with him, had kept back their three eldest daughters, who lived with him to his death, even after there had outwardly been a reconciliation between the King and Prince. Miss Brett, when the King set out, ordered a door to be broken out of her apartment into the royal garden. Anne, the eldest of the Princesses, offended at that freedom, and not choosing such a companion in her walks, ordered the door to be walled up again. Miss Brett as imperiously reversed that command. The King died suddenly, and the empire of the new mistress and her promised coronet vanished. She afterwards married Sir William Leman, and was forgotten before her reign had transpired beyond the confines of Westminster! (70) Her names were Sophia Dorothea ; but I call her by the latter, to distinguish her from the Princess Sophia, her mother-in-law, on whom the crown of Great Britain was settled. (71) Konigsmark behaved with great intrepidity, and was wounded at a bull-feast in Spain. See Letters
Reresby states, that Lady Ogle, immediately after the marriage, “repenting herself of the match, fled from him into Holland, before they were bedded.” This circumstance added to the fact, that Mr. Thynne had formerly seduced Miss Trevor, one of the maids of honour to Catherine of Portugal, wife of Charles ii., gave birth to the following lines:
“Here lies Tom Thynne, of Longleat Hall,
Who never would have miscarried,
Had he married the woman he lay withal,
Or lain with the woman he married.”
On the 30th of May, in the same year, Lady Ogle was
married to
Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset.-E.
(73) Lady Suffolk thought he rather would have her regent of Hanover; and she also told me, that George I. had offered to live again with his wife, but she refused, unless her pardon were asked publicly. She said, what most affected her was the disgrace that would be brought on her children; and if she were only pardoned, that would not remove it. Lady Suffolk thought she was then divorced, though the divorce was never published; and that the old Elector consented to his son’s marrying the Duchess of Kendal with the left hand-but it seems strange, that George I. should offer to live again with his wife, and yet be divorced front her. Perhaps George ii. to vindicate his mother, supposed that offer and her spirited refusal.
(74) George ii. was scrupulously exact in separating and keeping in each country whatever belonged to England or Hanover. Lady Suffolk told me, that on his accession he could not find a knife, fork, and spoon of gold which had belonged to Queen Ann(@, and which he remembered to have seen here at his first -arrival. He found them at Hanover on his first journey thither after he came to the crown, and brought them back to England. He could not recollect much of greater value; for, on Queen Anne’s death, and in the interval before the arrival of the new family, such a clearance had been made of her Majesty’s jewels, or the new King so instantly distributed what he found amongst his German favourites, that, as Lady S. told me, Queen Caroline never obtained of the late Queen’s.jewels but one pearl necklace.
(75) George I., says Coxe, who never loved his wife, gave implicit credit to the account of her infidelity, as related by his father; consented to her imprisonment, and obtained from the ecclesiastical consistory a divorce, which was passed on the 28th of December 1694.” Memoirs of Walpole.-E.
(76) “the unfortunate Sophia was confined in the castle of Alden, situated on the small river Aller, in the duchy of Zell. She terminated her miserable existence, after a long captivity of thirty-two years, on the 13th of November 1726, only seven months before the death of George the First; and she was announced in the Gazette, under the title of the Electress Dowager of Hanover. During her whole confinement she behaved with no less mildness than dignity; and, on receiving the sacrament once every week, never omitted making the most solemn asseverations, that she was not guilty of the crime laid to her charge.” Coxe, vol. i. p. 268.-E.
(77) Admiral Lord Howe, and also of sir William, afterwards Viscount Howe.-E.
(78) Second daughter of George the Second; born in 1711, died October the 31st, 1786.
(79) Caroline, the eldest of Lady Howe’s children, had married a gentleman of her own name, John Howe, Esq, of Honslop, in the county of Bucks.
(80) According to Coxe, she was, when young, a woman of great beauty, but became extremely corpulent as she advanced in years. “Her power over the King,” he adds, “was not equal to that of the Duchess of Kendal, but her character for rapacity was not inferior.” On the death of her husband, in 1721, she was created Countess of Leinster in the kingdom of Ireland, Baroness of Brentford, and Countess of Darlington.-E.
(81) One of the German ladies, being abused by the mob, was said to have put her head out of the coach, and cried in bad English, “Good people, why you abuse us? We come for all your goods.” “Yes, damn ye,” answered a fellow in the crowd, “and for all our chattels too.” I mention this because on the death of Princess Amelia the newspapers revived the story and told it of her, though I had heard it threescore years before of one of her grandfather’s mistresses.
(82) Colonel Brett, the companion of Wycherley, Steele, Davenant, etc. and of whom the following particulars are recorded by Spence, on the authority of Dr. Young:-"The Colonel was a remarkably handsome man. The Countess looking out of her window on a great disturbance in the street, saw him assaulted by some bailiffs, who were going to arrest him. She paid his debt, released him from their pursuit, and soon after married him. When she died, she left him more than he expected; with which he bought an estate in the country, built a very handsome house upon it, and furnished it in the highest taste; went down to see the finishing of it, returned to London in hot weather and in too much hurry; got a fever by it, and died. Nobody had a better taste of what would please the town, and his opinion was much regarded by the actors and dramatic poets.” Anecdotes, p. 355.-E.
Quarrel between George the First and his Son-Earl
of
Sunderland-Lord Stanhope-South Sea Scheme-Death of
Craggs-Royal
Reconcilement-Peerage Bill defeated-Project for seizing
the
Prince of Wales and conveying him to America-Duke
of
Newcastle-Royal Christening-Open Rupture-Prince and
Princess of
Wales ordered to leave the Palace.
One of the most remarkable occurrences in the reign of George I. was the open quarrel between him and his son the Prince of Wales. Whence the dissension originated; whether the prince’s attachment to his mother embittered his mind against his father, or whether hatred of’ his father occasioned his devotion to her, I do not pretend to know. I do suspect front circumstances, that the hereditary enmity in the House of Brunswick between the parents and their eldest sons dated earlier than the divisions between the first two Georges. The Princess Sophia was a woman of parts and great vivacity: in the earlier part of her life she had professed much zeal for the deposed House of Stuart, as appeared by a letter of hers in print, addressed to the Chevalier de St. George. It is natural enough for all princes,-who have no prospect of being benefited by the deposition of a crowned head, to choose to think royalty an indelible character. The Queen of Prussia, daughter of George I. lived and died an avowed Jacobite. The Princess Sophia, youngest child of the Queen of Bohemia, was consequently the most remote from any pretensions to the British crown; (83) but no sooner had King William procured a settlement of it after Queen Anne on her Electoral Highness, than nobody became a stancher Whig than the Princess Sophia, nor could be more impatient to mount the throne of the expelled Stuarts. It is certain, that during the reign of Anne, the Elector George was inclined to the Tories, though-after his mother’s death and his own accession he gave himself to the opposite party. But if be and his mother espoused different factions, Sophia found a ready partisan in her grandson,
Earl Stanhope was a man of strong and violent passions, and had dedicated himself to the army; and was so far from thinking of any other line, that when Walpole, who first suggested the idea of appointing him secretary of state, proposed it to him, he flew into a furious rage, and was on the point of a downright quarrel, looking on himself’ as totally unqualified for the post, and suspecting it for a plan of mocking him. He died in one of those tempestuous sallies, being pushed in the House of Lords on the explosion of the South Sea scheme. That iniquitous affair, which Walpole had early exposed, and to remedy the mischiefs of which he alone was deemed adequate, had replaced him at the head of affairs, and obliged Sunderland
But the hatred of some of the junta at court had gone farther, horribly farther. On the death of George 1. Queen Caroline found in his cabinet a proposal of the Earl of Berkeley, (92) then, I think, first lord of the admiralty, to seize the Prince of Wales, and convey him to America, whence he should never be heard of more. This detestable project copied probably from the Earl of Falmouth’s offer to Charles ii. with regard to his Queen, was in the handwriting of Charles Stanhope, elder brother of the Earl of Harrington: (93) and so deep was the impression deservedly made on the mind of George ii. by that abominable paper, that all the favour of Lord Harrington, when secretary of state, could never obtain the smallest boon to his brother, though but the subordinate transcriber. (94) George I. was too humane to listen to such an atrocious deed. It was not very kind to the conspirators to leave such an instrument behind him; and if virtue and conscience will not check bold bad men from paying court by detestable offers, the King’s carelessness or indifference in such an instance ought to warn them of the little gratitude that such machinations can inspire or expect.
Among those who had preferred the service of the King to that of the heir apparent, was the Duke of Newcastle;, (95) Who, having married his sister to Lord Townshend, both his royal highness and the viscount had expected would have adhered to that connexion-and neither forgave his desertion.-I am aware of the desultory manner in which I have told my story, having mentioned the reconciliation of the King and Prince before I have given any account of their public rupture. The chain of my thoughts led me into the preceding details, and, if I do not flatter myself, will have let you into the motives of my dramatis personae better than if I had ’more exactly observed chronology.- and as I am not writing a regular tragedy, and profess but to relate facts as I recollect them; or (if you will allow me to imitate French writers of tragedy) may I not plead that I have unfolded my piece as they do, by introducing two courtiers to acquaint one another, and by bricole the audience, with what had passed in the penetralia before the tragedy commences?
The exordium thus duly prepared, you must suppose, ladies, that the second act opens with a royal christening The Princess of Wales had been delivered of a second son. The Prince had intended his uncle, the Duke of York, Bishop of Osnaburg, should with his Majesty be godfathers. Nothing could equal the indignation of his Royal Highness when the King named the Duke of Newcastle for second sponsor, and would hear of no other. The christening took place as usual in the Princess’s bedchamber. Lady Suffolk, then in waiting as woman of the bedchamber, and of most accurate memory painted the scene to me exactly. On one side of the bed stood the godfathers and godmother; on the other the Prince and the Princess’s ladies. No sooner had the Bishop closed the ceremony, than the Prince, crossing the feet of the bed in a rage, stepped up to the Duke of Newcastle, and, holding up his hand and fore-finger in a menacing attitude, said, “You are a rascal, but I shall find you,” meaning, in broken English, “I shall find a time to be revenged."-"What was my astonishment,” continued Lady Suffolk, “when going to the Princess’s apartment the next morning, the yeOMen in the guard-chamber pointed their halberds at my breast, and told me I must not pass! I urged that it was my duty to attend the Princess. They said, ’No matter; I must not pass that way.’”
In one word, the King had been so provoked at the Prince’s outrage in his presence, that it had been determined to inflict a still greater insult on his Royal Highness. His threat to the Duke was pretended to be understood as a challenge; and to prevent a duel he had actually been put under arrest-as if a Prince of Wales could stoop to fight with a subject. The arrest was soon taken off; but at night the Prince and Princess were ordered to leave the palace, (96) and retired to the house of her chamberlain, the Earl of Grantham, in Albemarle Street.
(83) It is remarkable, that either the weak propensity of the Stuarts to popery, or the visible connexion between regal and ecclesiastic power, had such operation on many of the branches of that family, who were at a distance from the crown of England, to wear which it is necessary to be a Protestant, that two or three of the daughters of the king and Queen of Bohemia, though their parents had lost every thing in the struggle between the two religions, turned Roman Catholics; and so did one or more of the sons of the Princess Sophia, brothers of the Protestant candidate, George I.
(84) Afterwards George ii.
(85) I believe it was a fact, that the poor weak Queen, being disposed even to cede the crown to her brother, consulted Bishop Wilkins, called the Prophet, to know what would be the consequence of such a step. He replied, “Madam, you would be in the Tower in a month, and dead in three.” This Sentence, dictated by common sense, her Majesty took for inspiration, and dropped all thoughts of resigning the crown.
86) James Craggs, Jun, buried in Westminster Abbey, with an epitaph by Pope. [Craggs died on the 16th of February, 1721. His monument was executed by Guelphi, whom Lord Burlington invited into the kingdom. Walpole considered it graceful and simple, but that the artist was an indifferent sculptor. Dr. Johnson objects to Pope’s inscription, that it is partly in Latin and partly in English. “If either language,” he says, “be preferable to the other, let that only be used; for no reason can be given why part of the information should be given in one tongue, and part in another, on a tomb more than in any other place or any other occasion: such an epitaph resembles the conversation of a foreigner, who tells part of his meaning by words, and conveys part by signs.”]
(87) I think it was the sixpenny tax on offices.
(88) Sarah Cadogan, afterwards Duchess of Richmond.
(89) Queen Anne’s creation of twelve peers at once, to obtain a majority in the House of Lords, offered an ostensible plea for the restrictions.
(90) Sir Robert published a pamphlet against the bill, entitled, “The Thoughts of a Member of the Lower House, in relation to a project for restraining and limiting the powers of the Crown in the future creation of Peers.” On the other side, Addison’s pen was employed in defending the measure, in a paper called “The Old Whig,” against Steele, who attacked it in a pamphlet entitled “The Plebeian."-E.
(91) The effect of Sir Robert’s speech on the House,” says Coxe, “exceeded the sanguine expectations: it fixed those who had before been wavering and irresolute, brought over many who had been tempted by the speciousness of the measure to favour introduction, and procured its rejection, by a triumphant majority of 269 against 177.” Memoirs, Vol. i.-E.
(92) James, third Earl of Berkeley. knight of the garter, etc. In March 1718, he was appointed first lord of the admiralty, in which post he continued all the reign of George the First. He died at the castle of Aubigny in France in 1736.]
(93) William Stanhope, first Earl of Harrington of that family.
(94) Coxe states, that such was the indignation which the perusal of this paper excited, that, when Sir Robert espoused Charles Stanhope’s interest, the King rejected the application with some expressions of resentment, and declared that no consideration should induce him to assign to him any place of trust or honour.- E.
(95) Thomas Holles Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, lord chamberlain, then secretary of state, and lastly, first lord of the treasury under George ii.; the same King to whom he had been so obnoxious in the preceding reign. He was obliged by George iii. to resign his post.
(96) “Notice was also formally given that no persons who paid their respects to the Prince and Princess of Wales would be received at court; and they were deprived of their guard, and of all other marks of distinction.” Coxe, vol. i. p. 132.-E.
Bill of Pains and Penalties against Bishop Atterbury-Projected
Assassination of Sir Robert Walpole-Revival of the
Order of the
Bath-Instance of George the First’s good-humoured
Presence of
Mind.
As this trifling work is a miscellany of detached recollections, I will, ere I quit the article of George I., mention two subjects of very unequal import, which belong peculiarly to his reign. The first was the deprivation of Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester. Nothing more offensive to men of priestly principles could easily have happened: yet, as in a country of which the constitution was founded on rational and liberal grounds, and where thinking men had so recently exerted themselves to explode the prejudices attached to the persons of Kings and churchmen, it was impossible to defend the Bishop’s treason but by denying it; or to condemn his condemnation, but by supposing illegalities in the process: both were vehemently urged by his faction, as his innocence was pleaded by himself. That punishment and expulsion from his country may stagger the virtue even of a good man, and exasperate him against his country, is perhaps natural, and humanity ought to Pity it. But whatever were the prepossessions of his friends in his favour, charity must now believe that Atterbury was always an ambitious, turbulent priest, attached to the House of Stuart, and consequently no friend to the civil and religious liberties of his country; or it must be acknowledged, that the disappointment of his ambition by the Queen’s death, and the proscription of his ministerial associates, had driven on attempts to restore the expelled family in hopes of realizing his aspiring views. His letters published by Nichols breathe the impetuous spirit of his youth. His exclamation on the Queen’s death, when he offered to proclaim the Pretender at Charing Cross in pontificalibus, and swore, on not being supported, that there was the best cause in
It was not to load the character of the bishop, nor to affect candour by applauding his talents, that I introduced mention of him, much less to impute to him -,my consciousnesses of the intended crime that I am going to relate. The person against whom the blow was supposed to be meditated never, in the most distant manner, suspected the bishop of being privy to the plot-No: animosity of parties, and malevolence to the champions of the House of Brunswick, no doubt suggested to some blind zealots the perpetration of a crime which would necessarily have injured the bishop’s cause, and could by no means have prevented his disgrace.
Mr. Johnstone, an ancient gentleman, who had been secretary of state for Scotland, his country, in the reign of King William, was a zealous friend of my father, Sir Robert, and who, in that period of assassination plots, had imbibed such a tincture of suspicion that he was continually notifying similar machinations to my father, and warning him. to be on his guard against them. Sir Robert, intrepid and unsuspicious, (97) used to rally his good monitor; and, when serious, told him that his life was too constantly exposed to his enemies to make it of any use to be watchful on any particular occasion; nor, though Johnstone often hurried to him with intelligence of such designs, did he ever see reason, but once, to believe in the soundness of the information. That once arrived thus: a day or two before the bill of pains and penalties was to pass the House of Commons against the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Johnstone advertised Sir Robert to be circumspect, for three or four persons meditated to assassinate him as he should leave the house at night. Sir Robert laughed, and forgot the notice. The morning after the debate, Johnstone came to Sir Robert with a kind of good-natured insult, telling him, that though he had scoffed his advice, he had for once followed it, and by so doing preserved his life. Sir Robert understood not what he meant, and protested he had not given more credit than usual. to his warning. “Yes,” said Johnstone, “but you did; for you did not come from the House last night in your own chariot.” Walpole affirmed that he did; but his friend persisting in his asseveration, Sir Robert called one of the footmen, who replied, “I did call up your honour’s
The second subject that I promised to mention, and it shall be very briefly, was the revival of the Order of the Bath. It was the measure of Sir Robert Walpole, and was an artful bank of thirty-six ribands to supply a fund of favours in lieu of places. He meant, too, to stave off the demand for garters, and intended that the red should be a step to the blue, and accordingly took one of the former himself. He offered the new order to old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, for her grandson the duke, and for the Duke of Bedford, who had married one of her grand-daughters. (98) She haughtily replied, they should take nothing but the garter. “Madam,” said Sir Robert coolly, “they who take the bath will the sooner have the garter.” The next year he took the latter himself with the Duke of Richmond, both having been previously installed knights of the revived institution.
Before I quit King George I. I will relate a story, very expressive of his good-humoured presence of mind.
On one of his journeys to Hanover his coach broke. At a distance in view was the chateau of a considerable German nobleman. The king sent to borrow assistance. The possessor came, conveyed the king to his house, and begged the honour of his Majesty’s accepting a dinner while his carriage was repairing; and, while the dinner was preparing, begged leave to amuse his Majesty with a collection of pictures which he had formed in several tours to Italy. But what did the king see in one of the rooms but an unknown portrait of a person in the robes and with the regalia of the sovereigns of Great Britain! George asked whom it represented. The nobleman replied, with much diffident but decent respect, that in various journeys to Rome he had been acquainted with the Chevalier de St. George. who had done him the honour of sending him that picture. “Upon my word,” said the king instantly, “it is very like to the family.” It was impossible to remove the embarrassment of the proprietor with more good breeding.
(97) At the time of the Preston rebellion, a Jacobite, who sometimes furnished Sir Robert with intelligence, sitting alone with him one night, suddenly putting his hand into his bosom and rising, said, “Why do not I kill you now?” Walpole starting up, replied, “Because I am a younger man and a stronger.” They sat down again, and discussed the person’s information But Sir Robert afterwards had reasons for thinking that the spy had no intention of assassination,
(98) Wriothesly, Duke of Bedford, had married Lady Anne Egerton, only daughter of Scroop, Duke of Bridgewater, by Lady Elizabeth Churchill, daughter of John, Duke of Marlborough. See vol. I. 8.
Accession of George the Second-Sir Spencer Compton-Expected Change in Administration-Continuation of Lord Townshend-and Sir Robert Walpole by the Intervention of Queen Caroline-Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk-Her character by Swift-and by Lord Chesterfield.
The unexpected death of George I. on his road to Hanover was instantly notified by Lord Townshend, secretary of state, who attended his Majesty, to his brother Sir Robert Walpole, who as expeditiously was the first to carry the news to the successor and hail him King. The next step was, to ask who his Majesty would please should draw his speech to the Council. “Sir Spencer Compton,” replied the new monarch. The answer was decisive, and implied Sir Robert’s dismission. Sir Spencer Compton was Speaker of the House of Commons, and treasurer, I think, at that time, to his Royal Highness, who by that first command, implied his intention of making Sir Spencer his prime-minister. He was a worthy man, of exceedingly grave formality, but of no parts, as his conduct immediately proved. The poor gentleman was so little qualified to accommodate himself to the grandeur of the moment, and to conceive how a new sovereign should address himself to his ministers, and he had also been so far from meditating to supplant the premier,(99) that, in his distress, it was to Sir Robert himself that he had recourse, and whom he besought to make the draught of the Kin(,’s speech for him. The new Queen, a better judge than her husband of the capacities of the two candidates, and who had silently watched for a moment proper for overturning the new designations, did not lose a moment
The Queen, impatient to destroy all hopes of change, took the earliest opportunity of declaring her own sentiments. The instance I shall cite will be a true picture of courtiers. Their Majesties had removed from Richmond to their temporary palace in Leicester-fields(100)on the very evening of their receiving notice of their accession to the Crown, and the next day all the nobility and gentry in town crowded to kiss their hands; my mother amongst the rest, who, Sir Spencer Compton’s designation, and not its evaporation, being known, could not make her way between the scornful backs and elbows of her late devotees, nor could approach nearer to the Queen than the third or fourth row; but no sooner was she descried by her Majesty than the Queen said aloud, “There, I am sure, I see a friend!” The torrent divided and shrunk to either side; “and as I came away,” said my mother, “I might have walked over their heads if I had pleased.”
The preoccupation of the Queen in favour of Walpole must be explained. He had early discovered that, in whatever gallantries George Prince of Wales indulged or affected, even the person of his Princess was dearer to him than any charms in his mistresses; and though Mrs. Howard (afterwards Lady Suffolk) was openly his declared favourite, as avowedly as the Duchess of Kendal was his father’s, Sir Robert’s sagacity discerned that the power would be lodged with the wife, not with the mistress; and he not only devoted himself to the Princess; but totally abstained from even visiting Mrs. Howard; while the injudicious multitude concluded. that the common consequences of an inconstant husband’s passion ’for his concubine would follow, and accordingly warmer, if not public vows were made to the supposed favourite, than to the Prince’s consort. They, especially, who in the late reign had been out of favour at court, had, to pave their future path to favour, and to secure the fall of Sir Robert Walpole, sedulously, and no doubt zealously, dedicated themselves to the mistress: Bolingbroke secretly, his friend Swift openly, and as ambitiously, cultivated Mrs. Howard; and the neighbourhood of Pope’s
To Mrs. Howard, Swift’s ingratitude was base. She, indubitably, had not only exerted all her interest to second his and his faction’s interests, but loved Queen Caroline and the minister as little as they did; yet, when Swift died, he left behind him a Character of Mrs. Howard by no means flattering, which was published in his posthumous works.
On its appearance, Mrs. Howard (become Lady Suffolk) said to me, in her calm, dispassionate manner, “All I can say is, that it is very different from one that he drew of me, and sent to me, many years ago, and which I have, written by his own hand."(102
Lord Chesterfield, rather more ingenuous-as his character of her, but under a feigned name, was printed in his life, though in a paper of which he was not known to be the author-was not more consistent. Eudosia, described in the weekly journal called Common Sense, for September 10, 1737, was meant for Lady Suffolk: yet was it no fault of hers that he was proscribed at court; nor did she perhaps ever know, as he never did till the year before his death, when I acquainted him with it by his friend Sir John Irwin, why he had been put into the Queen’s Index expurgatorius.(102) The queen had an obscure window at St. James’s that looked into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at night, which looked upon Mrs. Howard’s apartment. Lord Chesterfield, one Twelfth-night at court, had won so large a sum of money, that he thought it imprudent to carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with the mistress. Thence the queen inferred great intimacy, and thenceforwards Lord Chesterfield could obtain no favour from court- and finding himself desperate, went into opposition. My father himself long afterwards told me the story, and had become the principal object of the peer’s satiric wit, though he had not been the mover of his disgrace. The weight of that anger fell more disgracefully on the king, as I shall mention in the next chapter.
I will here interrupt the detail of what I have heard of the commencement of that reign, and farther anecdotes of the queen and the mistress, till I have related the second very memorable transaction of that era; and which would come in awkwardly, if postponed till I have despatched many subsequent particulars.
(99) Sir Spencer Compton, afterwards Earl of Wilmington, was so far from resenting Sir Robert’s superior talents, that he remained steadfastly -,attached to him; and when the famous motion for removing Sir Robert was made in both Houses, Lord Wilmington, though confined to his bed, and with his head blistered, rose and went to the House of Lords, to vote against a measure that avowed its own injustice, by being grounded only on popular clamour.
(100) It was the town residence of the Sidneys, Earls of Leicester, of whom it was hired, as it was afterwards by Frederick, Prince of Wales, on a similar quarrel with his father. He added to it Savile House, belonging to Sir George Savile, for his children.
(101) Mr. Croker, in his biographical notice of Lady Suffolk, prefixed to the edition of her Letters, thus satisfactorily confutes this anecdote: “On this it is to be observed, that George the Second was proclaimed on the 14th of June 1727, that Swift returned to Ireland in the September of the same year, and that the first creation of peers in that reign did not take place till the 28th of May 1728. Is it credible, that Mrs. Howard should have made such a request of the new King, and suffered so decided a refusal ten or eleven months before any peers were made? But, again, upon this first creation of peers Mrs. Howard’s brother is the second name. Is it probable that, with so great an object for her own family in view, she risked a solicitation for Lord Bathurst? But that which seems most convincing, is Swift’s own correspondence. In a letter to Mrs. of the 9th of July 1727, in which, rallying her on the solicitation to which the new King would be exposed, he says, — ’for my part, you may be secure, that I will never venture to recommend even a mouse to Mrs. Cole’s cat, or a shoe-cleaner to your meanest domestic.’” Vol. i. p. xxv-E.
(102) “This,” says her biographer, “is a complete mistake, to give it no harsher name. The Character which Swift left behind, and which was published in his posthumous works, is the very same which Lady Suffolk had in her possession. If it be not flattering, it is to Swift’s honour that he ’did not condescend to flatter her in the days of her highest favour; and the accusation of having written another less favourable, is wholly false.” Ibid. vol. i. p. xxxviii.-E.
(103) “It certainly would have been extraordinary,” observes Mr. Croker, “that Lord Chesterfield, in 1137, when he was on terms of the most familiar friendship with Lady Suffolk, should have published a deprecatory character of her, and in revenge too, for being disgraced at court-Lady Suffolk being at the same time in disgrace also. But, unluckily for Walpole’s conjecture, the character of Eudosia (a female savant, as the name imports,) has not the slightest resemblance to Lady Suffolk, and contains no allusion to courts or courtiers.” Ibid. vol. ii. p. xxxiii-E.
Destruction of George the First’s will.
At the first council held by the new sovereign, Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, produced the will of the late King, and delivered it to the successor, expecting it would be opened and read in council. On the contrary, his Majesty put it into his pocket, and stalked out of the room without uttering a word on the subject. The poor prelate was thunderstruck, and had not the presence of mind or the courage to demand the testament’s being opened, or at least to have it registered. No man present chose to be more hardy than the person to whom the deposit had been trusted-perhaps none of them immediately conceived the possible violation of so solemn an act so notoriously existent; still, as the King never mentioned the will more, whispers only by degrees informed the public that the will was burnt; at least that its injunctions were never fulfilled.
What the contents were was never ascertained. Report said, that forty thousand pounds had been bequeathed to the Duchess of Kendal; and more vague rumours spoke of a large legacy to the Queen of Prussia, daughter of the late King. Of that bequest demands were afterwards said to have been frequently and roughly made by her son the great King of Prussia, between whom and his uncle subsisted much inveteracy.
The legacy to the ]Duchess was some time after on the brink of coming to open and legal discussion. Lord Chesterfield marrying her niece and heiress, the Countess of Walsingham, and resenting his own proscription at court, was believed to have instituted, or at least to have threatened, a suit for recovery of the legacy to the Duchess, to which he was then become entitled; and it was as confidently believed that he was quieted by the payment of twenty thousand pounds.
But if the Archbishop had too timidly betrayed the trust reposed in him from weakness and want of spirit, there were two other men who had no such plea of imbecility, and who, being independent, and above being awed, basely sacrificed their honour and their integrity for positive sordid gain. George the First had deposited duplicates of his will with two sovereign German princes: I will not specify them, because at this distance of time I do not, perfectly recollect their titles; but I was actually, some years ago, shown a copy of a letter from one of our ambassadors abroad to-a secretary of state at that period, in which the ambassador said, one of the princes in question would accept the proffered subsidy, and had delivered, or would deliver, the duplicate of the King’s will. The other trustee, was no doubt, as little conscientious and as corrupt. It is pity the late King of Prussia did not learn their infamous treachery.
Discoursing once with Lady Suffolk on that suppressed testament, she made the only plausible shadow of an excuse that could be made for George the Second. She told me that George the First had burnt two wills made in favour of his son. They were, probably, the wills of the Duke and Duchess of Zell; or one of them might be that of his mother, the Princess Sophia. The crime of the first George could only palliate, not justify, the criminality of the second; for the second did -not punish the maturity, but the innocent. But bad precedents are always dangerous, and too likely to be copied. (104)
(104) On the subject of the royal will, Walpole, in his Memoires, vol. ii. p. 458, relates the following anecdote:-"The morning after the death of George the Second, Lord Waldegrave showed the Duke of Cumberland an extraordinary piece: it was endorsed, ‘very private paper,’ and was a letter from the Duke of Newcastle to the first Earl of Waldegrave; in which his Grace informed the Earl, then our ambassador in France, that he had received by the messenger the copy of the will and codicil of George the First; that he had delivered it to his Majesty, who put it into the fire without opening it: ‘So,’ adds the Duke, ’we do not know whether it confirms the other or not;’ and he proceeds to say, ’Despatch a messenger to the Duke Of Wolfenbuttle with the treaty, in which he is granted all he desired; and we expect, by return of the messenger, the original will from him.’ George the First had left two wills; one in the hands of Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, the other with the Duke of Wolfenbuttle. He had been in the right to take these precautions: he himself had burned his wife’s testament, and her and her father’s, the duke of Zell; both of whom had made George the Second their heir—a paliative of the latter’s obliquity, if justice would allow of any violation.” From the following passage in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, the Doctor appears to have given credence to the story of the will:—“tom Davies instanced Charles the Second; Johnson taking fire at an attack upon that prince, exclaimed, “charles the Second was licentious in his practice, but he always had a reverence for what was good; Charles the Second was not such a man as George the Second; he did not destroy his father’s will’ he did not betray those over whom he ruled’ he did not let the French fleet pass ours.’ He roared with prodigious violence against George the Second. When he ceased, Moody interjected, in an Irish tone, and a comic look, ‘Ah! poor George the Second!’” See vol. v. p. 284, ed. 1835.-E.
History of Mrs. Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk-Miss Bellenden-Her Marriage with Colonel John Campbell, afterwards fourth Duke of Argyle-Anecdotes of Queen Caroline-her last Illness and Death-Anecdote of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-Last Years of George the Second-Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady Sundon-Lady Diana Spencer-Frederick, Prince of Wales-Sudden Removal of the Prince and Princess from Hampton Court to St. James’s -Birth of a Princess-Rupture with the King-Anecdotes of Lady Yarmouth.
I will now resume the story of Lady Suffolk whose history, though she had none of that influence on the transactions of the cabinet that was expected, will still probably be more entertaining to two young ladies than a magisterial detail of political events, the traces of which at least may be found in journals and brief chronicles of the times. The interior of courts, and the lesser features of history, are
Henrietta Hobart was daughter of Sir Henry, and sister of Sir John Hobart, Knight of the Bath on the revival of the order, and afterwards by her interest made a baron; and since created Earl of Buckinghamshire.
She was first married to Mr. Howard, the younger brother of more than one Earl of Suffolk; to which title he at last succeeded himself, and left a son by her, who was the last earl of that branch. She had but the slender fortune of an ancient baronet’s daughter; and Mr. Howard’s circumstances were the reverse of opulent. It was the close of Queen Anne’s reign: the young couple saw no step more prudent than to resort to Hanover, and endeavour to ingratiate themselves with the future sovereigns of England. Still so narrow was their fortune, that Mr. Howard finding it expedient to give a dinner to the Hanoverian ministers, Mrs. Howard is said to have sacrificed her beautiful head of hair to pay for the expense. It must be recollected, that at that period were in fashion those enormous full-bottomed wigs, which often cost twenty and thirty guineas. Mrs. Howard was extremely acceptable to the intelligent Princess Sophia; but did not at that time make farther impression on the Electoral Prince, than, on his father’s succession to the crown, to be appointed one of the bedchamber-women to the new Princess of Wales.
The elder Whig politicians became ministers to the King. The most promising of the young lords and gentleman of that party, and the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new court of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The apartment of the bedchamber-woman in waiting became the fashionable evening rendez-vous of the most distinguished wits and beauties. Lord Chesterfield, then Lord Stanhope, Lord Scarborough, Carr Lord Hervey, elder brother of the more known John Lord Hervey, and reckoned to
>From the steady decorum of Mrs. Howard, I should conclude that she would have preferred the advantages of her situation to the ostentatious `eclat of it: but many obstacles stood in the way of total concealment; nor do I suppose that love had any share in the sacrifice she made of her virtue. She had felt poverty, and was far from disliking power. Mr. Howard was probably as little agreeable to her as he proved worthless. The King, though very amorous, was certainly more attracted by a silly idea he had entertained of gallantry being becoming, than by a love of variety; and he added the more egregious folly of fancying that
Such intemperate proceedings by no means invited the new mistress to leave the asylum of St. James’s. She was safe while under the royal roof: even after the rupture between the King and Prince (for the affair commenced in the reign of the first George), and though the Prince, on quitting St. James’s, resided in a private house, it was too serious an enterprise to attempt to take his wife by force out of the palace of the Prince of Wales. The case was altered, when, on the arrival of summer, their Royal Highnesses were to remove to Richmond. Being only woman of the bedchamber, etiquette did not allow Mrs. Howard the entr`ee of the coach with the Princess. She apprehended that Mr. Howard might seize her on the road. To baffle such an attempt, her friends, John, Duke of Argyle, and his brother, the Earl of Islay, called for her in the coach of one of them by eight o’clock in the morning of the day, at noon of which the Prince and Princess were to remove, and lodged her safely in their house at Richmond. During the summer a negotiation was commenced with the obstreperous husband, and he sold his own noisy honour and the possession of his wife for a pension of twelve hundred a-year. (108)
These now little-known anecdotes of Mr. Howard’s behaviour I received between twenty and thirty years afterwards, from the mouth of Lady Suffolk herself. She had left the court about the year 1735, and passed her summers at her villa of Marble Hill, at Twickenham, living very retired both there and in London. I purchased Strawberry Hill in 1747; and being much acquainted with the houses of Dorset, Vere, and others of Lady Suffolk’s intimates, was become known to her; though she and my father had been at the head of two such hostile factions at court. Becoming neighbours, and both, after her second husband’s death, living single and alone, our acquaintance turned to intimacy. She was extremely deaf, (109) and consequently had more satisfaction in narrating than in listening; her memory both of remote and of the most recent facts was correct beyond belief. I, like you, was indulgent to, and fond of old anecdotes. Each of us knew different Parts of many court stories, and each was eager to learn what either could relate more; and thus, by comparing notes, we sometimes could make out discoveries of a third circumstance, (110) before unknown to both. Those evenings, and I had many of them in autumnal nights, were extremely agreeable; and if this chain of minutiae proves so to you, you owe perhaps to those conversations the fidelity of my memory, which those repetitions recalled and stamped so lastingly.
In this narrative will it be unwelcome to you, if I subjoin a faithful portrait of the heroine of this part? lady Suffolk was of a just height, well made, extremely fair, with the finest light brown hair; was remarkably genteel, and always well dressed with taste and simplicity. Those were her personal charms, for her face was regular and agreeable rather than beautiful and those charms she retained with little diminution to her death at the age of seventy-nine. (111) Her mental qualifications were by no means shining; her eyes and countenance showed her character, which was grave and mild. Her strict love of truth and her accurate memory were always in unison, and made her too circumstantial on trifles. She was discreet without being reserved; and having no bad qualities, and being constant to her connexions, she preserved uncommon respect to the end of her life; and from the propriety and decency of her behaviour was always treated as if her virtue had never been questioned; her friends even affecting to suppose, that her connexion with the King had been confined to pure friendship. Unfortunately, his Majesty’s passions were too indelicate to have been confined to Platonic love for a woman who was deaf, (112)-sentiments he had expressed in a letter to the Queen, who, however jealous of Lady Suffolk, had latterly dreaded the King’s contracting a new attachment to a younger rival, and had prevented Lady Suffolk from leaving the court as early as she had wished to do. “I don’t know,” said his Majesty, “why you will not let me part with an old deaf woman, of whom I am weary.”
Her credit had always been extremely limited by the Queen’s superior influence, and by the devotion of the minister to her Majesty. Except a barony, a red riband, and a good place for her brother, Lady Suffolk could succeed but in very subordinate recommendations. Her own acquisitions were so moderate, that, besides Marble Hill, which cost the King ten or twelve thousand pounds, her complaisance had not been too dearly purchased. She left the court with an income so little to be envied, that, though an economist and not expensive, by the lapse of some annuities on lives not so prolonged as her own she found herself straitened; and, besides Marble Hill, did not at most leave twenty thousand pounds to her family. On quitting court, she married Mr. George Berkeley, and outlived him. (113)
No established mistress of a sovereign ever enjoyed less of the brilliancy of the situation than Lady Suffolk. Watched and thwarted by the Queen, disclaimed by the minister, she owed to the dignity of her own behaviour, and to the contradiction of their enemies, the chief respect that was paid to her, and which but ill compensated for the slavery of her attendance, and the mortifications she endured. She was elegant; her lover the reverse, and most unentertaining, and void of confidence in her. His motions too were measured by etiquette and the clock. He visited her every evening at nine; but with such dull punctuality, that he frequently walked about his chamber for ten minutes with his watch in his hand, if the stated minute was not arrived.
But from the Queen she tasted yet more positive vexations. Till she became Countess of Suffolk, she constantly dressed the Queen’s bead, who delighted in subjecting her to such servile offices, though always apologizing to her good Howard. Often her Majesty had more complete triumph. It happened more than once, that the King, coming into the room while the Queen was dressing, has snatched off the handkerchief, and, turning rudely to Mrs. Howard, has cried, “Because you have an ugly neck yourself, you hide the Queen’s.”
It is certain that the King always preferred the Queen’s person to that of any other woman; nor ever described his idea of beauty, but he drew the picture of his wife.
Queen Caroline is said to have been very handsome at her marriage, soon after which she had the small-pox; but was little marked by it, and retained a most pleasing countenance. It was full of majesty or mildness as she pleased, and her penetrating eyes expressed whatever she had a mind they should. Her voice too was captivating, and her hands beautifully small, plump, and graceful. Her understanding was uncommonly strong; and so was her resolution. From their earliest connexion she had determined to govern the King, and deserved to do so; for her submission to his will was unbounded, her sense much superior, and his honour and interest always took place of her own: so that her love of power that was predominant, was dearly bought, and rarely ill employed. She was ambitious too of fame; but, shackled by her devotion to the King, she seldom could pursue that object. She wished to be a patroness of learned men but George had no respect for them or their works; and her Majesty’s own taste was not very exquisite, nor did he allow her time to cultivate any studies. Her Generosity would have displayed itself, for she valued money but as the instrument of her good purposes: but he stinted her alike in almost all her passions; and though she wished for nothing more than to be liberal, she bore the imputation of his avarice, as she did of others of his faults. Often, when she had made prudent and proper promises of preferment, and could not persuade the King to comply, she suffered the breach of word to fall on her, rather than reflect on him. Though his affection and confidence in her were implicit, he lived in dread of being supposed to be governed by her; and that silly parade was extended even to the most private moments of business with my father. Whenever he entered, the Queen rose, courtesied, and retired or offered to retire. Sometimes the King condescended to bid her stay-on both occasions she and Sir Robert. had previously settled the business to be discussed. Sometimes the King would quash the proposal in question, and yield after retalking it over with her-but then he boasted to Sir Robert that he himself had better considered it.
One of the Queen’s delights was the improvement of the garden at Richmond; and the King believed she paid for all with her own money-nor would he ever look at her intended plans, saying he did not care how she flung away her own revenue. He little suspected the aids Sir Robert furnished to her from the treasury. When she died, she was indebted twenty thousand pounds to the King.
Her learning I have said was superficial; her knowledge of languages as little accurate. The King, with a bluff Westphalian accent, spoke English correctly. The Queen’s chief study was divinity, and she had rather weakened her faith than enlightened it. She was at least not orthodox; and her confidante, Lady Sundon, an absurd and pompous simpleton, swayed her countenance towards the less-believing clergy. The Queen, however, was so sincere at her death, that when Archbishop Potter was to administer the sacrament to her, she declined taking it, very few persons being in the room. When the prelate retired, the courtiers in the ante-room crowded round him, crying, “My lord, has the queen received?” His grace artfully eluded the question, only saying most devoutly , “Her Majesty was in a heavenly disposition"-and the truth escaped the public.
She suffered more unjustly by declining to see her son, the Prince of Wales, to whom she sent her blessing and forgiveness; but conceiving the extreme distress it would lay on the King, should he thus be forced to forgive so impenitent a son, or to banish him again if once recalled, she heroically preferred a meritorious husband to a worthless child.
The Queen’s greatest error was too high an opinion of her own address and art; she imagined that all who did not dare to contradict her were imposed upon; and she had the additional weakness of thinking that she could play off @any persons without being discovered. That mistaken humour, and at other times her hazarding very offensive truths, made her many enemies; and her duplicity in fomenting jealousies between the ministers, that each might be more dependent on herself, was no sound wisdom. It was the Queen who blew into a flame the ill-blood between Sir Robert Walpole and his brother-in-law, Lord Townshend. Yet though she disliked some of the cabinet, she never let her own prejudices disturb the King’s affairs, provided the obnoxious paid no court to the mistress. Lord Islay was the only man, who, by managing Scotland for Sir Robert Walpole, was maintained by him in spite of his attachment to Lady Suffolk.
The Queen’s great secret was her own rupture, which, till her last illness, nobody knew but the King, her German nurse, Mrs. Mailborne, and one other person. To prevent all suspicion, her Majesty would frequently stand some minutes in her shift talking to her ladies (114) and though labouring with so dangerous a complaint, she made it so invariable a rule never to refuse a desire of the King, that every morning at Richmond she walked several miles with him; and more than once, when she had the gout in her foot, she dipped her whole leg in cold water to be ready to attend him. The pain, her bulk, and the exercise, threw her into such fits of perspiration as vented the gout; but those exertions hastened the crisis of her distemper. It was great shrewdness in Sir Robert Walpole, who, before her distemper broke
Yet the Queen was constant in her protection of Sir Robert, and the day before she died gave a strong mark of her conviction that he was the firmest supporter the King had. As they two alone were standing by the Queen’s bed, she pathetically recommended, not the minister to the sovereign, but the master to the servant. Sir Robert was alarmed, and feared the recommendation would leave a fatal impression; but a short time after, the King reading with Sir Robert some intercepted letters from Germany, which said that now the Queen was ’gone, Sir Robert would have no protection: “On the contrary,” said the King, “you know she recommended me to you.” This marked the notice he had taken of the expression; and it was the only notice he ever took of it: nay, his Majesty’s grief was so excessive and so sincere, that his kindness to his minister seemed to increase for the Queen’s sake.
The Queen’s dread of a rival was a feminine weakness; the behaviour of her elder son was a real thorn. He early displayed his aversion to his mother, who perhaps assumed too much at first; yet it is certain that her good sense, and the interest of her family, would have prevented, if possible, the mutual dislike of the father and son, and their reciprocal contempt. As the Opposition gave into all adulation towards the Prince, his ill-poised head and vanity swallowed all their incense. He even early after his arrival had listened to a high act of disobedience. Money he soon wanted: old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, (116) e ever proud and ever malignant, was persuaded to offer her favourite Granddaughter, Lady Diana Spencer, afterwards Duchess of Bedford, to the Prince of’ Wales, with a fortune of a hundred thousand pounds. He accepted the proposal, and the day was fixed for their being secretly married at the Duchess’s lodge in the Great park at Windsor. Sir Robert Walpole got intelligence of the project, prevented it, and the secret was buried in silence.
Youth, folly, and indiscretion, the beauty of the young lady, and a large sum of ready money, might have offered something like a plea for so rash a marriage, had it taken place; but what could excuse, what indeed could provoke, the senseless and barbarous insult offered to the King and Queen, by Frederick’s taking his wife out of the palace of Hampton Court in the middle of the night, when she was in actual labour, and carrying her, at the imminent risk of the lives of her and the child, to the unaired palace and bed at St. James’s? Had he no way of affronting his parents but by venturing to kill his wife and the heir of the crown? A baby that wounds itself to vex its nurse is no more void of reflection. The scene which commenced by unfeeling idiotism closed with paltry hypocrisy. The Queen on the first notice of her son’s exploits, set out for St. James’s to visit the Princess by seven in the morning. The gracious Prince, so far from attempting an apology, spoke not a word to his mother; but on her retreat gave her his hand, led her into the street to her coach-still dumb!-but a crowd being assembled at the gate, he kneeled down in the dirt, and humbly kissed her Majesty’s hand. Her indignation must have shrunk into contempt.
After the death of the Queen, Lady Yarmouth (117) came over, who had been the King’s mistress at Hanover during his latter journeys-and with the Queen’s privity, for he always made her the of his amours; which made Mrs. Selwyn once tell him, he should be the last man with whom she would have an intrigue, for she knew he would tell the Queen. In his letters to the latter from Hanover, he said, “You must love the Walmoden, for she loves me.” She was created a countess, and had much weight with him; but never employed her credit but to assist his ministers, or to convert some honours and favours to her own advantage. She had two sons, who both bore her husband’s name; but the younger, though never acknowledged, was supposed the King’s, and consequently did not miss additional homage from the courtiers. That incense being one of the recommendations to the countenance of Lady Yarmouth, drew Lord Chesterfield into a ridiculous distress. On his being made secretary of state, be found a fair young lad in the antechamber at St. James’s, -who seeming much at home, the earl, concluding it was the mistress’s son, was profuse of attentions to the boy, and more prodigal still of his prodigious regard for his mamma. The shrewd boy received all his lordship’s vows with indulgence, and without betraying himself: at last he said, “I suppose your lordship takes me for Master Louis; but I am only Sir William Russel, one of the pages.”
The King’s last years passed as regularly as clockwork. At nine at night he had cards in the apartment of his daughters, the Princesses Amelia and Caroline, with Lady Yarmouth, two or three of the late Queen’s ladies, and as many of the most favoured officers of his own household. Every Saturday in summer he carried that uniform party, but without his daughters, to dine at Richmond: they went in coaches and six in the middle of the day , with the heavy horse-guards kicking up the dust before them-dined, walked an hour in the garden, returned in the same dusty parade; and his Majesty fancied himself the most gallant and lively prince in Europe.
His last year was glorious and triumphant beyond example; and his death was most felicitous to himself, being without a Pang, without tasting a reverse, and when his sight and hearing were so nearly extinguished that any prolongation could but have swelled to calamities. (118)
(105) She is thus described in a ballad, made upon the quarrel between George the First and the Prince of Wales, at the christening recorded at p. 83 when the Prince and all his household were ordered to quit St. James’s:-
“But Bellenden we needs must praise,
Who, as down the stairs she jumps,
Sings over the hills and far away,
Despising doleful dumps."-E.
(106) Colonel John Campbell succeeded to the dukedom in 1761: Mrs. Campbell died in 1736. She was the mother of the fifth Duke of Argyle and three other sons, and of Lady Caroline, who married, first, the Earl of Aylesbury, and, secondly, Walpole’s bosom friend, Marshal Conway.-E.
(107) “The letter which Walpole alludes to,” says Mr. Croker, “is in existence. It is not a letter from Mr. Howard to his lady, but from the Archbishop to the Princess; and although his grace urges a compliance with Mr. Howard’s demand of the restoration of his wife, he treats it not as a matter between them, but as an attack on the Princess herself, whom the Archbishop considers as the direct protectress of Mrs. Howard, and the immediate cause of her resistance. So that in this letter at least there is no ground for imputing to Mrs. Howard any rivalry with the Princess, or to the Princess any malicious jealousy of Mrs. Howard.” Vol. i. p. xiv.-E.
(108) Mr. Croker asserts, that “neither in Mrs. Howard’s correspondence with the King, nor in the notes of her conversation with the Queen, nor in any of her most confidential papers, has he found a single trace of the feeling which Walpole so confidently imputes.” Upon this assertion, Sir Walter Scott, in a review of the Suffolk Correspondence, pleasantly remarks,-"We regret that the editor’s researches have not enabled him to state, whether it is true that the restive husband sold his own noisy honour and the possession of his lady for a pension of twelve hundred a-year. For our own parts, without believing all Walpole’s details, we substantially agree in his opinion, that the King’s friendship was by no means Platonic or refined; but that the Queen and Mrs. Howard, by mutual forbearance, good sense, and decency, contrived to diminish the scandal: after all, the question has no great interest for the present generation, since scandal is only valued when fresh, and the public have generally enough of that poignant fare, without ripping up the frailties of their grandmothers.” Sir Walter sums up his notice of the inaccuracies occurring in these Reminiscences, with the following just and considerate reflection: “When it is recollected that the noble owner of Strawberry Hill was speaking of very remote events, which he reported on hearsay, and that hearsay of old standing, such errors are scarcely to be wondered at, particularly when they are found to correspond with the partialities and prejudices of the narrator. These, strengthening as we grow older, gradually pervert or at least alter, the accuracy of our recollections, until they assimilate them to our feelings, while,
“As beams of warm imagination play,
The memory’s faint traces melt away.
See Prose Works, vol. xix. p. 201.-E.
(109) Pope alludes to this personal defect in his lines “On a certain Lady at court:”
“I know a thing that’s most uncommon;
(Envy be silent, and attend!)
I know a reasonable woman,
handsome and witty, yet a friend.
Not warp’d by passion, awed by rumour;
Not grave through pride, or gay through folly—
An equal mixture of good humour
And sensible, soft melancholy.
‘Has she no faults then,’ (Envy says,)
‘Sir?’
’Yes, she has one, I must aver;
When all the world conspires to praise her—
The woman’s deaf, and does not hear.’"-E.
(110) The same thing has happened to me by books. A passage lately read has recalled some other formerly perused; and both together have opened to me, or cleared up some third fact, which neither separately would have expounded.
(111) Lady Suffolk died in July, 1767.-E.
(112) Lady Suffolk was early affected with deafness. Cheselden, the surgeon, then in favour at court, persuaded her that he had hopes of being able to cure deafness by some operation on the drum of the ear, and offered to try the experiment on a condemned convict then in Newgate, who was deaf. If the man could be pardoned, he would try it; and, if he succeeded, would practise the same cure on her ladyship. She obtained the man’s pardon, who was cousin to Cheselden, who had feigned that pretended discovery to save his relation-and no more was heard of the experiment. The man saved his ear too-but Cheselden was disgraced at court.
(113) Lady Suffolk formally retired from court in 1734, and in the following year married the Honourable George Berkeley, youngest son of the second Earl of Berkeley. He was Master of St. Catherine’s, in the Tower, and had served in two parliaments as member for Dover. He died in 1746.-E.
(114) While the Queen dressed, prayers used to be read in the outward room, where hung a naked Venus. Mrs. Selwyn, bedchamber-woman in waiting, was one day ordered to bid the chaplain, Dr. Maddox, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, begin the service. He said archly, “And a very proper altar-piece is here, Madam!” Queen Anne had the same custom; and once ordering the door to be shut while she shifted, the chaplain stopped. The Queen sent to ask why he did not proceed. He replied, “he would not whistle the word of God through the keyhole.”
(115) Mrs. Clayton, wife of Robert Clayton, Esq. of the Treasury, bedchamber-woman to the Queen. This lady, who had the art to procure her husband to be created Lord Sundon, possessed over her royal mistress an influence of which even Sir Robert Walpole was jealous.-E.
(116) That woman, who had risen to greatness and independent wealth by the weakness of another Queen, forgot, like Duc d’Epernon, her own unmerited exultation, and affected to brave successive courts, though sprung from the dregs of one. When the Prince of Orange came over to marry the Princess Royal, Anne, a boarded gallery with a penthouse roof was erected for the procession from the windows of the great drawing-room at St. James’s cross the garden to the Lutheran chapel in the friary. The Prince being indisposed, and going to Bath, the marriage was deferred for some weeks, and the boarded gallery remained, darkening the windows of Marlborough House. The Duchess cried, “I wonder when my neighbour George will take away his orange-chest!”—which it did resemble. She did not want that sort of wit,* which ill-temper, long knowledge of the world, and insolence can sharpen-and envying the favour which she no longer possessed, Sir R. Walpole was often the object of her satire. Yet her great friend, Lord Godolphin, the treasurer, had enjoined her to preserve very different sentiments. The Duchess and my father and mother were standing by the Earl’s bed at St. Albans as he was dying. Taking Sir Robert by the hand, Lord Godolphin turned to the Duchess, and said, “Madam, should ’you ever desert this young man, and there should be a possibility of returning from the grave, I shall certainly appear to you.” Her grace did not believe in spirits.
* Baron Gleicken, minister from Denmark to France, being at Paris soon after the King his master had been there, and a French lady being so ill-bred as to begin censuring the King to him, saying, “Ah! Monsieur, c’est une t`ete!"-"Couronn`ee,” replied he instantly, stopping her by so gentle a hint.
(117) Amelia Sophia, wife of the Baron de Walmoden, Created Countess of Yarmouth in 1739.
(118) For an interesting account of the death of George the Second, on the 24th of October, 1760, and also of his funeral in Westminster Abbey, see Walpole’s letters to Mr. Montagu on the 25th of that month, and of the 13th of November.-E.
George the Second’s Daughters-Anne, Princess of Orange-Princess Amelia-Princess Caroline-Lord Hervey-Duke of Cumberland.
I am tempted to drain my memory of all its rubbish, and will set down a few more of my recollections, but with less method than I have used in the foregoing pages.
I have said little or nothing of the King’s two unmarried daughters. Though they lived in the palace with him, he never admitted them to any share in his politics; and if any of the ministers paid them the compliment of seeming attachment, it was more for the air than for the reality. The Princess Royal, Anne, married in Holland, was of a most imperious and ambitious nature; and on her mother’s death, hoping to succeed to her credit, came to Holland on pretence of ill health; but the King, aware of her plan, Was so offended that he sent her to Bath as soon as she arrived, and as peremptorily back to Holland-I think, without suffering her to pass two nights in London.
Princess Amelia, as well disposed to meddle, was confined to receiving court from the Duke of Newcastle, who affected to be in love with her; and from the Duke of Grafton, in whose connexion with her there was more reality.
Princess Caroline, one of the most excellent of women, was devoted to the Queen, who, as well as the King, had such confidence in her veracity, that on any disagreement among their children, they said, “Stay, send for Caroline, and then we shall know the truth.”
The memorable Lord Hervey had dedicated himself to the Queen, and certainly towards her death had gained great ascendance with her. She had made him privy-seal; and as he took care to keep as well with Sir Robert Walpole, no man stood in a more prosperous light.
But Lord Hervey, who handled all the weapons of a court, (119) had also made a deep impression on the heart of the virtuous Princess Caroline; and as there was a mortal antipathy between the Duke of Grafton and Lord Hervey, the court was often on the point of being disturbed by the enmity of the favourites of the two Princesses. The death of the Queen deeply affected her daughter Caroline; and the change of the ministry four years after, dislodged Lord Hervey whom for the Queen’s sake the King would have saved, and who very ungratefully satirized the King in a ballad, as if he had sacrificed him voluntarily. Disappointment, rage, and a distempered constitution carried Lord Hervey off, and overwhelmed his Princess — she never appeared in public after the Queen’s death; and, being dreadfully afflicted with the rheumatism, never stirred out of her apartment, and rejoiced at her own dissolution some years before her father.
Her sister Amelia leagued herself with the Bedford faction during the latter part of her father’s life. When he died, she established herself respectably; but enjoying no favour with her nephew, and hating the Princess-dowager, she made a plea of her deafness, and soon totally abstained from St. James’s.
The Duke of Cumberland, never, or very rarely, interfered in politics. Power he would have liked, but never seemed to court it. His passion would have been to command the army, and he would, I doubt, have been too ready to aggrandize the crown by it: but successive disgusts weaned his mind from all pursuits, and the grandeur of his sense, (120) and philosophy made him indifferent to a world that had disappointed all his views. The unpopularity which the Scotch and Jacobites spread against him for his merit in suppressing the rebellion, his brother’s jealousy, and the contempt he himself felt for the Prince, his own ill success in his battles abroad, and his father’s treacherous sacrifice of him on the convention of Closterseven, the dereliction of his two political friends, Lord Holland and Lord Sandwich, and the rebuffing spite of the Princess-dowager; all those mortifications centring on a constitution evidently tending to dissolution, made him totally neglect himself, and ready to shake off being, as an encumbrance not worth the attention of a superior understanding.
>From the time the Duke first appeared on the stage of the public, all his father’s ministers had been blind to his Royal Highness’s capacity, or were afraid of it. Lord Granville, too giddy himself to sound a young Prince, had treated him arrogantly when the King and the Earl had projected a match for him with the Princess of Denmark. The Duke, accustomed by the Queen and his governor, Mr. Poyntz, to venerate the wisdom of Sir Robert Walpole, then on his death-bed, sent Mr. Poyntz, the day but one before Sir Robert expired, to consult him how to avoid the match. Sir Robert advised his Royal Highness to stipulate for an ample settlement. The Duke took the sage counsel, and heard no more of his intended bride.
The low ambition of Lord Hardwicke, the childish passion for power of the Duke of Newcastle, and the peevish jealousy of Mr. Pelham, combined on the death of the Prince of Wales, to exclude the Duke of Cumberland from the regency (in case of minority,) and to make them flatter themselves that they should gain the favour of the Princess-dowager by cheating her with the semblance of power. The Duke resented the slight, but scorned to make any claim. The Princess never forgave the insidious homage; and, in concurrence with Lord Bute, totally estranged the affection of the young King from his uncle, nor allowed him a shadow of influence.
(119) He had broken with Frederick, Prince of Wales, on having shared the favours of his mistress, Miss Vane, one of the Queen’s maids of honour. When she fell in labour at St. James’s, and was delivered of a son, which she ascribed to the Prince, Lord Hervey and Lord Harrington each told Sir Robert Walpole that he believed himself father of the child.
(120) the Duke, in his very childhood, gave a mark of his sense and firmness. He had displeased the Queen, an(f she sent him up to his chamber. When he appeared again, he was sullen. “William,” said the Queen, “what have you been doing?”— “Reading.”—“Reading what?”—“The Bible.”—“And what did you read there?”—“About Jesus and Mary.=—“And what about them?”—“Why, that Jesus said to Mary, Woman! what hast thou to do with me?”
Anecdotes of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough-and of Catherine Duchess of Buckingham.
I have done with royal personages: shall I add a codicil on some remarkable characters that I remember? As I am writing for young ladies, I have chiefly dwelt on heroines of your own sex; they, too, shall compose my last chapter: enter the Duchesses of Marlborough and Buckingham.
Those two women were considerable personages in their day. The first, her own beauty, the superior talents of her husband in war, and the caprice of a feeble princess, raised to the highest pitch of power; and the prodigious wealth bequeathed to her by her lord, and accumulated in concert with her, gave her weight in a free country. The other, proud of royal, though illegitimate birth, was, from the vanity of that birth, so zealously attached to her expelled brother, the Pretender, that she never ceased labouring to effect his restoration; and, as the opposition to the House of Brunswick was composed partly of principled Jacobites-of Tories, who either knew not what their own principles were, or dissembled them to themselves, and of Whigs, who, from hatred of the minister, both acted in concert with the Jacobites and rejoiced in their assistance-two women of such wealth, rank, and enmity to the court, were sure of great attention from all the discontented.
The beauty of the Duchess of Marlborough had always been of the scornful and imperious kind, and her features and air announced nothing that her temper did not confirm; both together, her beauty and temper, enslaved her heroic lord. One of her principal charms was a prodigious abundance of fine fair hair. One day at her toilet, in anger to him, she cut off those commanding tresses, and flung them in his face. Nor did her insolence stop there, nor stop till it had totally estranged and worn out the patience of the poor Queen, her mistress. The Duchess was often seen to give her Majesty her fan and gloves, and turn away her own head, as if the Queen had offensive smells.
Incapable of due respect to superiors, it was no wonder she treated her children and inferiors with supercilious contempt. Her eldest daughter (121) and she were long at variance, and never reconciled. When the young Duchess exposed herself by placing a monument and silly epitaph, of her own composition and bad spelling, to Congreve, in Westminster Abbey, her mother, quoting the words, said, “I know not what pleasure she might have in his company, but I am sure it was no honour."(122) With her youngest daughter, the Duchess of Montagu, old Sarah agreed as ill. “I wonder,” said the Duke of Marlborough to them, “that you cannot agree, you are so alike!” Of her granddaughter, the Duchess of Manchester, daughter of the Duchess of Montagu, she affected to be fond. One day she said to her, “Duchess of Manchester, you are a good creature, and I love you mightily-but you have a mother!"-"And she has a mother!” answered the Duchess of Manchester, who was all spirit, justice, and honour, and could not suppress sudden truth.
One of old Marlborough’s capital mortifications sprang from a granddaughter. The most beautiful of her four charming daughters, Lady Sunderland,(123) left two sons,(124) the second Duke of Marlborough, and John Spencer, who became her heir, and Anne Lady Bateman, and Lady Diana Spencer, whom I have mentioned, and who became Duchess of Bedford. The Duke and his brother, to humour their grandmother, were in opposition, though the eldest she never loved. He had good sense, infinite generosity, and not more economy than was to be expected from a young man of warm passions and such vast expectations. He was modest and diffident too, but could not digest total dependence on a capricious and avaricious grandmother. His sister, Lady Bateman, had the intriguing spirit of her father and grandfather, Earls of Sunderland. She was connected with Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, and both had great influence over the Duke of Marlborough. What an object would it be to Fox to convert to the court so great a subject as the Duke! Nor was it much less important to his sister to give him a wife, who, with no reasons for expectation of such shining fortune, should owe the obligation to her. Lady Bateman struck the first stroke, and persuaded her brother to marry a handsome young lady, who, unluckily, was daughter of Lord Trevor, who had been a bitter enemy to his grandfather, the victorious Duke. The grandam’s rage exceeded all bounds. Having a portrait of Lady Bateman, she blackened the face, and wrote on it, “Now her outside is as black as her inside.” The duke she turned out of the little lodge in Windsor Park; and then pretending that the new Duchess and her female cousins (eight Trevors) had stripped the house and gardens, she had a puppet-show made with waxen figures, representing the Trevors tearing up the shrubs, and the Duchess carrying off the chicken-coop under her arm.
Her fury did but increase when Mr. Fox prevailed on the Duke to go over to the court. With her coarse intemperate humour, she said, “that was the Fox that had stolen her goose.” Repeated injuries at last drove the Duke to go to law with her. Fearing that even no lawyer would come up to the Billingsgate with which she was animated herself, she appeared in the court of justice, and with some wit and infinite abuse, treated the laughing public with the spectacle of a woman who had held the reigns of empire, metamorphosed into the widow Black-acre. Her grandson, in his suit, demanded a sword set with diamonds, given to his grandsire by the Emperor. “I retained it,” said the beldam, " lest he should pick out the diamonds and pawn them.”
I will repeat but one more instance of her insolent asperity, which produced an admirable reply of the famous Lady Mary -Wortley Montague. Lady Sundon had received a pair of diamond ear-rings as a bribe for procuring a considerable post in Queen Caroline’s family for a certain peer; and, decked with those jewels, paid a visit to the old Duchess; who, as soon as she was gone, said, “What an impudent creature, to come hither with her bribe in her ear!” “Madam,” replied Lady Mary Wortley, who was present, “how should people know where wine’ is sold, unless a bush is hung out?”
The Duchess of Buckingham was as much elated by owing her birth to James ii.(125) as the Marlborough was by the favour of his daughter. Lady Dorchester,(126) the mother of the former, endeavoured to curb that pride, and, one should have thought, took an effectual method, though one few mothers would have practised. “You need not be so vain,” said the old profligate, “for you are not the King’s daughter, but Colonel Graham’s.” Graham was a fashionable man of those days and noted for dry humour. His legitimate daughter, the Countess of Berkshire, was extremely like to the Duchess of Buckingham: “Well! well!” said Graham, “Kings are all powerful, and one must not complain; but certainly the same man begot those two women.” To discredit the wit of both parents, the Duchess never ceased labouring to restore the House of Stuart, and to mark her filial devotion to it. Frequent were her journeys to the Continent for that purpose. She always stopped at Paris, visited the church where lay the unburied body of James, and wept over it. A poor Benedictine of the convent, observing her filial piety, took notice to her grace that the velvet pall that covered the coffin was become threadbare-and so it remained.
Finding all her efforts fruitless, and perhaps aware that her plots were not undiscovered by Sir Robert Walpole, who was remarkable for his intelligence, she made an artful double, and resolved to try what might be done through him himself. I forget how she contracted an acquaintance with him: I do remember that more than once he received letters from the Pretender himself, which probably were transmitted through her. Sir Robert always carried them to George ii. who endorsed and returned them. That negotiation not succeeding. the Duchess made a more home push. Learning his extreme fondness for his daughter, (afterwards Lady Mary Churchill,) she sent for Sir Robert, and asked him if he recollected what had not been thought too great a reward to Lord Clarendon for restoring the royal family? He affected not to understand her. “Was not he allowed,” urged the zealous Duchess, “to match his daughter to the Duke of York?” Sir Robert smiled, and left her.
Sir Robert being forced from court, the Duchess thought the moment (127) favourable, and took a new journey to Rome; but conscious of the danger she might run of discovery, she made over her estate to the famous Mr. Pulteney (afterwards Earl of Bath), and left the deed in his custody. What was her astonishment, when on her return she redemanded the instrument!-It was mislaid-he could not find it-he never could find it! The Duchess grew clamorous. At last his friend Lord Mansfield told him plainly,- he could never show his face unless he satisfied the Duchess. Lord Bath did then sign a release to her of her estate. The transaction was recorded in print by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in a pamphlet that had great vogue, called a Congratulatory Letter, with many other anecdotes
But though Madam of Buckingham could not effect a coronation to her will, she indulged her pompous mind with such puppet-shows as were appropriate to her rank. She had made a funeral for her husband as splendid as that of the great Marlborough: she renewed that pageant for her only son, a weak lad, who died under age; and for herself; and prepared and decorated -waxen dolls of him and of herself to be exhibited in glass-cases in Westminster Abbey. It was for the procession at her son’s burial that she wrote to old Sarah of Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had transported the corpse of the Duke. “It carried my Lord Marlborough,” replied the other, and shall never be used for any body else.” “I have consulted the undertaker,” replied the Buckingham, and he tells me I may have a finer for twenty pounds.”
One of the last acts of Buckingham’s life was marrying a grandson she had to a daughter of Lord Hervey. That intriguing man, sore, as I have said, at his disgrace, cast his eyes every where to revenge or exalt himself. Professions or recantations of any principles cost him nothing: at least the consecrated day which was appointed for his first interview with the Duchess made it presumed, that to obtain her wealth, with her grandson for his daughter, he must have sworn fealty to the House of Stuart. It was on the martyrdom of her grandfather: she received him in the great drawing-room of Buckingham House, seated in a chair of state, in deep mourning, attended by her women in like weeds, in memory of the royal martyr.
It will be a proper close to the history of those curious ladies to mention the anecdote of Pope relative to them. Having drawn his famous character of Atossa, he communicated it to each Duchess, pretending it was levelled at the other. The Buckingham believed him: the Marlborough had more sense, and knew herself, and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress it;-and yet he left the copy behind him!(128)
Bishop Burnet, from absence of mind, had drawn as strong a picture of herself to the Duchess of Marlborough, as Pope did under covert of another lady. Dining with the Duchess after the Duke’s disgrace, Burnet was comparing him to Belisarius: “But how,” said she, “could so great a general be so abandoned?” “Oh! Madam,” said the Bishop, “do not you know what a brimstone of a wife he had’!”
Perhaps you know this anecdote, and perhaps several others that I have been relating. No matter; they will go under the article of my dotage-and very properly-I began with tales of my nursery, and prove that I have been writing in my second childhood.
H. W. January 13th, 1789.
(121) The Lady Henrietta, married to Lord Godolphin, who, by act of Parliament, succeeded as Duchess of Marlborough. She died in 1738, childless; and the issue of her next sister, Lady Sunderland, succeeded to the duchy of Marlborough.-E.
(122) “For reasons,” says Dr. Johnson, “either not known, or not mentioned, Congreve bequeathed a legacy of about ten thousand pounds to the Duchess; the accumulation of attentive parsimony, which, though to her superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress."-E.
(123) Lady Sunderland was a great politician; and having, like her mother, a most beautiful head of hair, used, while combing it at her toilet, to receive men whose votes or interests she wished to influence.
(124) She had an elder son, who died young, while only Earl of Sunderland. He had parts, and all the ambition of his parents and of his family (which his younger brother had not); but George ii. had conceived such an aversion to his father, that he would not employ him. The young Earl at last asked Sir Robert Walpole for an ensigncy in the Guards. The minister, astonished at so humble a request from a man of such consequence, expressed his surprise. “I ask it,” said the young lord, “to ascertain whether it is determined that I shall never have any thing.” He died soon after at Paris.
(125) By Catherine Sedley, created by her royal lover Countess of Dorchester for life.-E.
(126) Lady Dorchester is well known for her wit, and for saying that she wondered for what James chose his mistresses: “We are none of us handsome,” said she; “and if we have wit, he has not enough to find it out.” But I do not know whether it is as public, that her style was gross and shameless. Meeting the Duchess of Portsmouth and Lady Orkney, the favourite of King William, at the drawing-room of George the First, “God!” said she, “who would have thought that we three whores should have met here?” Having, after the King’s abdication, married Sir David Collyer, by whom she had two sons, she said to them, " If any body should call you sons of a whore, you must bear it; for you are so: but if they call you bastards, fight till you die; for you are an honest man’s sons.” Susan, Lady Bellasis, another of King James’s mistresses, had wit too, and no beauty. Mrs. Godfrey had neither. Grammont has recorded why she was chosen.
(127) I am not quite certain that, writing by memory at the distance of fifty years, I place that journey exactly at the right period, nor whether it did not take place before Sir Robert’s fall. Nothing material depends on the precise period.
(128) The story is thus told by Dr. Warton:-” These lines were shown to her grace, as if they were intended for the portrait of the Duchess of Buckingham; but she soon stopped the person who was reading them to her, as the Duchess of Portland informed me, and called out aloud, “I cannot be so imposed upon; I see plainly enough for whom they are designed;” and abused Pope most plentifully on the subject: though she was afterwards reconciled to him, and courted him, and gave him a thousand pounds to suppress this portrait, which he a accepted, it is said, by the persuasion of Mrs. M. Blount; and, after the Duchess’s death, it was printed in a folio sheet, 1746, and afterwards inserted in his Moral Essays. This is the greatest blemish on our poet’s moral character."-E.
The following extracts from Letters of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, were copied by me from the original letters addressed to the Earl of Stair, left by him to Sir David Dalrymple, his near relative, and lent to me by Sir David’s brother, Mr. Alexander Dalrymple, long employed as Geographer in the service of the East India company. They formed part of a large volume of ms. letters, chiefly from the same person.
The Duchess of Marlborough’s virulence, her prejudices, her style of writing, are already well known, and every line of these extracts will only serve to confirm the same opinion of all three. But it will, probably, be thought curious thus to be able to compare the notes of the opposite political parties, and their different account of the same trifling facts, magnified by the prejudices of both into affairs of importance.
January, 1840
Extracts from the
letters of Sarah, duchess of
Marlborough,
to the earl
of Stair,
illustrative of “The
reminiscences.”
(Now first published.)
London, Feb. 24th, 1738. . . . . As to Norfolk House, (129) I have heard there is a great deal of company, and that the Princess of Wales, tho’ so very young, behaves so as to please every body; and I think her conversation is much more proper and decent for a drawing-room than the wise queen Caroline’s was, who never was half an hour without saying something shocking to some body or other, even when she intended to oblige, and generally very improper discourse for a public room.
[See p. 98. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii]
London, December 24th, 1737. My Lord, I received the favour of yours of the 17th December yesterday. I have nothing material to say to you since my last. His Majesty saw the Queen’s women servants first, which was a very mournful sight, for they all cried extremely; and his Majesty was so affected that he began to speak, but went out of the room to recover himself. And yesterday he saw the foreign ministers and his horses, which I remember Dean Swift gives a great character of; and was very sorry to leave them for the conversation of his countrymen in England.; and I think he was much in the right.
[See P. 98. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii)
Marlborough House, Nov. 15, 1737. It is not many days since I wrote to your lordship by post, but one can’t be sure those letters are sent. However, I have a mind to give you an account of what, perhaps, you may not have so particularly from any other hand. This day, se’nnight the Queen was taken extremely ill; the physicians were sent for, and from the account that was given, they treated her as if she had the gout in her stomach: but, upon a thorough investigation of the matter, a surgeon desired that she would put her hand where the pain was that she complained of, which she did; and the surgeon, following her hand with his, found it was a very large rupture, which had been long Concealed. Upon this, immediately they cut it, and some little part of the gut, which was discoloured. Few of the knowing people have had any hopes for many days; for they still apprehend a mortification, and she can’t escape it unless the physicians can make something pass thro’ her, which they have not yet been able to do in so many days. The King and the Royal Family have taken leave of her more than once; and his Majesty has given her leave to make her will, which she has done; but I fancy it will be in such a manner that few, if any, will know what her money amounts to. Sir Robert Walpole was in Norfolk, and came to -London but last night. I can’t but think he must be extremely uneasy at this misfortune; for I have a notion that many of his troops will slacken very much, if not quite leave him, when they see he has lost his sure support. But there is so much folly, and mean corruption, etc.
London, December 1st, 1737. . . . . As to what has passed in the Queen’s illness, and since her death, one can’t depend on much one hears; and they are things that it is no great matter whether they are true or false. But one thing was odd: whether out of folly, or any thing else, I can’t say, but the Duke of Newcastle did not send Sir Robert Walpole news of her illness, nor of her danger, as soon as he might have done; and after he came to town, which was but a few days before she died, and when she could no more live than she can now come out of her coffin, the physicians, and all that attended her, were ordered to say she was better, and that they had some hopes. What the use of that was I cannot conceive. And the occasion of her death is still pretended to be a secret: yet it is known that she had a rupture, and had it for many years; that she had imposthumes that broke, and that some of the guts were mortified. This is another mystery which I don’t comprehend; for what does it signify what one dies of, except the pain it gives more than common dissolutions? etc.
[See p. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter Vii)
I am Of the opinion, from woful experience, that, from flattery and want of understanding, most princes are alike; and, therefore, it is to no purpose to argue against their passions, but to defend ourselves, at all events, against them.
[See P. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter vii]
Wimbledon, 17th Aug. 1737. There has been a very extraordinary quarrel at court, which, I believe, nobody will give you so exact an account of as myself. The 31st of last month the Princess fell in labour. The King and Queen both knew that she was to lie in -,it St. James’s, where every thing was prepared. It was her first child, and so little a way to London, that she thought it less hazard to go immediately away from Hampton Court to London, where she had all the assistance that could be, and every thing prepared, than to stay at Hampton Court, where she had nothing, and might be forced to make use of a country midwife. There was not a minute’s time to be lost in debating this matter, nor in ceremonials; the Princess begging earnestly of the Prince to carry her to St. James’s, in such a hurry that gentlemen went behind the coach like footmen. They got to St. James’s safe, and she was brought to bed in one hour after. Her Majesty followed them as soon as she could, but did not come till it was all over. However, she expressed a great deal of anger to the Prince for having carried her away, tho’ she and the child were very well. I should have thought it had been most natural for a grandmother to have said she had been mightily frightened, but was glad it was so well over. The Prince said all the respectful and dutiful things imaginable to her and the King, desiring her Majesty to support the reasons which made him go away as he did without acquainting his Majesty with it: and, I believe, all human creatures will allow that this was natural, for a man not to debate a thing of this kind, nor to lose a minute’s time in ceremony, which was very useless, considering that it is a great while since the King has spoke to him, or taken the least notice of him. The Prince told her Majesty he intended to go that morning to pay his duty to the King, but she advised him not. This was Monday morning, and she said Wednesday was time enough; and, indeed, in that I think her Majesty was in the right. the Prince submitted to her counsel, and only writ a most submissive and respectful letter to his Majesty, giving his reasons for what he had done. And this conversation ended, that he hoped his Majesty would do him the honour to be godfather to his daughter, and that he would be pleased to name who the godmothers should be; and that he left all the directions of the christening to his Majesty’s pleasure. The queen answered that it would be thought the asking the King to be godfather was too great a liberty, and advised him not to do it. When the Prince led the Queen to her coach, which she would not have
[See p. 100. Reminiscences, Chapter vii]
June 20th, 1738. My Lord, I write to you this post, to give you an account of what I believe nobody else will so particularly, that Madame Walmond (130) was presented in the drawing-room to his Majesty on Thursday. As she arrived some days before, there can be no doubt that it was not the first meeting, tho’ the manner of her reception had the appearance of it; for his Majesty went up to her and kissed her on both sides, which is an honour, I believe, never any lady had from a king in public. And when his Majesty went away, Lord Harrington presented the great men in the ministry and the foreign ministers in the drawing-room; the former of which performed their part with the utmost respect and submission. This is, likewise, quite new; for, though all kings have had mistresses, they were attended at their own lodgings, and not in so public a manner. I conclude they performed that ceremony too; but they could not lose the first opportunity of paying their respects, though ever so improperly.
These great men were, the Duke of Newcastle, Sir Robert Walpole, my Lord Wilmington, my Lord Harrington, and Mr. Pelham. My Lord Hervey had not the honour to be on the foot of a minister. . . .
I have nothing more to say, but that this Madame Walmond is at present in a mighty mean dirty lodging in St. James’s Street. Her husband came with her, but he is going away; and that house that was Mr. Seymour’s, in Hyde Park, which opens into the King’s garden, is fitting up for her; -and the Duchess of Kendal’s lodgings are making ready for her at St. James’s. There is nothing more known at present as to the settlement, but that directions are given for one upon the establishment of Ireland. perhaps that mayn’t exceed the Duchess of Kendal’s, which was three thousand pounds a-year. But ’tis easy for the first minister to increase that as she pleases.
[See p. 101.]
London, December 3rd, 1737. I saw one yesterday that dined with my Lord Fanny, (131) who, as soon as he had dined, was sent for to come up to his Majesty, and there is all the appearance that can be of great favour to his lordship. I mentioned him in my last, and I will now give you an account of some things concerning his character, that I believe you don’t know. What I am going to say I am sure is as true as if I had been a transactor in it myself. And I will begin the relation with Mr. Lepelle, my Lord Fanny’s wife’s father, having made her a cornet in his regiment as soon as she was born, which is no more wrong to the design of an army than if she had been a son: and she was paid many years after she was a maid of honour. She was extreme forward and pert; and my Lord Sunderland got her a pension of the late King, it being too ridiculous to continue her any longer an officer in the army. And into the bargain, she was to be a spy; but what she could tell to deserve a pension, I cannot comprehend. However, King George the First used to talk to her very much; and this encouraged my Lord Fanny and her to undertake a very extraordinary project: and she went to the drawing-room every night, and publicly attacked his Majesty in a most vehement manner, insomuch that it was the diversion of all the town; which alarmed the Duchess of Kendal, and the ministry that governed her, to that degree, lest the King should be put in the opposers’ hands, that they determined to buy my Lady H- off; and they gave her 4000 pounds to desist, which she did, and my Lord Fanny bought a good house with it, and furnished it very well.
[See p. 106. Reminiscences, Chapter ix]
London, March 19th, 1738. My Lord, I have received the favour of yours of the 11th by the post, but not that which you mention by another hand. And since you can like such sort of accounts as I am able to give you, I will continue to do it. I think it is very plain now that Sir Robert don’t think it worth his while to make any proposals where it was once suspected he would. And his wedding was
March 27th, 1738. ’I think I did not tell you that the Duke of Dorset waited on my Lady Walpole to congratulate her marriage, with the same ceremony as if it had been one of the Royal Family, with his white staff, which has not been used these many years, but when they attend the Crown. But such a wretch as he is I hardly know; and his wife, whose passion is only money, assists him in his odious affair with Lady Betty Jermyn, who has a great deal to dispose of; who, notwithstanding the great pride of the Berkeley family, married an innkeeper’s son. But indeed there was some reason for that; for she was ugly, without a portion, and in her youth had an unlucky accident with one of her father’s servants; and by that match she got money to entertain herself all manner of ways. I tell you these things, which did not happen in your time of knowledge, which is a melancholy picture of what the world is come to; for this strange woman has had a great influence over many.
Feb. 24th. 1738. Monday next is fixed for presenting Mrs. Skerrit at court: and there has been great solicitation from the court ladies who should do it, in which the Duchess of Newcastle has succeeded, and all the apartment is made ready for Sir Robert’s lady, at his house at the Cockpit. (132) I never saw her in my life, but at auctions; but I remember I liked her as to behaviour very well, and I believe she has a great deal of sense: and I am not one of the number that wonder so much at this match; for the King of France married Madame de Maintenon, and many men have done the same thing. But as to the public, I do believe never was any man so great a villain as Sir Robert.
Wednesday, Feb. 16th, 1741. .....Some changes are made as to employments; but very few are brought in but such as will be easily governed, and brought to act so as to keep their places. I have inquired often about your lordship, who I have not yet heard named in this alteration. And I have been told that Lords Chesterfield and Gower are to have nothing in the government, which I think a very ill sign of what is intended; because that can be for no reason but because you are all such men as are incapable of ever being prevailed on by any arts to act any thing contrary to honour and the true interests of our country.
(129) Where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided.
(130 Welmoden.
(131 John, Lord Hervey, so called by Pope.
(132) Where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided.
Correspondence
of Horace walpole
Earl
of Orford
121 Letter 1 To Richard West, Esq. (133) King’s College, Nov 9, 1735,
Dear West, You expect a long letter from me, and have said in verse all that I intended to have said in far inferior prose. I intended filling three or four sides with exclamations against a University life; but you have showed me how strongly they may be expressed in three or four lines. I can’t build without straw; nor have I the ingenuity of the spider, to spin fine lines out of dirt: a master of a college would make but a miserable figure as a hero of a poem, and Cambridge sophs are too low to introduce into a letter that aims not at punning:
Haud equidem invideo vati, quem pulpita pascunt.
But why mayn’t we hold a classical correspondence? I can never forget the many agreeable hours we have passed in reading Horace and Virgil; and I think they are topics will never grow stale. Let us extend the Roman empire, and cultivate two barbarous towns o’er -run with rusticity and Mathematics. The creatures are so used to a circle, that they Plod on in the same eternal round, with their whole view confined to a punctum, cujus nulla est pars: “Their time a moment, and a point their space.”
Orabunt causas melius, coelique meatus
Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent
Tu coluisse novem Musas, Romane, memento;
Hae tibi crunt artes. . . .
We have not the least poetry stirring here; for I can’t call verses on the 5th of November and 30th of January by that name, more than four lines on a chapter in the New Testament is an epigram. Tydeus (134) rose and set at Eton: he is only known here to be a scholar of King’s. Orosmades and Almanzor are just the same; that is, I am almost the only person they are acquainted with, and consequently the only person acquainted with their excellencies. Plato improves every day; so does my friendship with him. These three divide my whole time, though I believe you will guess there is no quadruple alliance; (135) that was a happiness which I only enjoyed when you was at Eton. A short account of the Eton people at Oxford would much oblige, my dear West, your faithful friend, H. Walpole.
(133) Richard West was the only son of the Right Honourable Richard West, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, by Elizabeth, daughter of the celebrated Dr. Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury. When this correspondence commences, Mr. West was nineteen years old, and Mr. Walpole one year younger. [West died on the 1st of January, 1742, at the premature age of twenty-six. He had a great genius for poetry. His correspondence with Gray, and several of his poems, are included in the collection of letters published by Mr. Mason. West’s father published an able discourse of treasons and bills of attainder, and a tract on the manner of creating peers. He also wrote several essays in “The Freethinker;” and was the reputed author of a tragedy called “Hecuba;” which was performed at Drury Lane theatre in 1726.]
(134) Tydeus, Orosmades, Almanzor, and Plato, were names which had been given by them to some of their Eton schoolfellows.
(135) Thus as boys they had called the intimacy formed at Eton between Walpole, Gray, West, and Ashton.
1736
122 Letter 2 To George Montagu, Esq. (136) King’s College, May 2, 1736.
Dear Sir, Unless I were to be married myself, I should despair ever being able to describe a wedding so well as you have done: had I known your talent before, I would have desired an epithalamium. I believe the princess (137) will have more beauties bestowed on her by the occasional poets, than even a painter would afford her. They will cook up a new Pandora, and in the bottom of the box enclose Hope, that all they have said is true. A great many, out of excess of good breeding, having heard it was rude to talk Latin before women, propose complimenting her in English; which she will be much the better for. I doubt most of them instead of fearing their compositions should not be understood, should fear they should: they write they don’t know what, to be read by they don’t know who. You have made me a very unreasonable request, which I will answer with another as extraordinary: you desire I would burn your letters; I desire you would keep mine. I know but of one way of making what I send you useful, which is, by sending you a blank sheet: sure you would not grudge three-pence for a half-penny sheet, when you give as much for one not worth a farthing. You drew this last paragraph on you by your exordium, as you call it, and conclusion. I hope, for the future, our correspondence will run a little more glibly, with dear George, and dear Harry; not as formally as if we were playing a game at chess in Spain and Portugal; and Don Horatio was to have the honour Of specifying to Don Georgio, by an epistle, whether he would move. In one point I would have our correspondence like a game at chess; it should last all our lives-but I hear you cry check; adieu! Dear George, yours ever.
(136) George Montagu was the son of Brigadier-General Edward Montagu, and nephew to the Earl of Halifax. He was member of parliament for Northampton, usher of the black rod in Ireland during the lieutenancy of the Earl of Halifax, ranger of Salsey Forest, and private secretary to Lord North when chancellor of the exchequer. [And of him “it is now only remembered,” says the “Quarterly Review,” vol. xix. p. 131, “that he was a gentleman-like body of the vieille cour, and that he was usually attended by his brother John, (the Little John of Walpole’s correspondence,) who was a midshipman at the age of sixty, and found his chief occupation in carrying about his brother’s snuff-box.”]
(137) Augusta, Princess of Saxe-Gotha, married, in April, 1736, to Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales.
123 Letter 3 To George Montagu, Esq. King’s College, May 6, 1736.
Dear George, I agree with you entirely in the pleasure you take in talking over old stories, but can’t say but I meet every day with new circumstances, which will be still more pleasure to me to recollect. I think at our age ’tis excess of joy, to think, while we are running over past happinesses, that it is still in our power to enjoy as great. Narrations of the greatest actions of other people are tedious in comparison of the serious trifles that every man can call to mind of himself while he was learning those histories. Youthful passages of life are the chippings of Pitt’s diamond, set into little heart-rings with mottos; the stone itself more worth, the filings more gentle and agreeable. Alexander, at the head of the world, never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age have enjoyed at the head of a school. Little intrigues, little schemes, and policies engage their thoughts; and, at the same time that they are laying the foundation for their middle age of life, the mimic republic they live in furnishes materials of conversation for their latter age; and old men cannot be said to be children a second time with greater truth from any one cause, than their living over again their childhood in imagination. To reflect on the season when first they felt the titillation of love, the budding passions, and the first dear object of their wishes! how unexperienced they gave credit to all the tales of romantic loves! Dear George, were not the playing fields at Eton food for all manner of flights? No old maid’s gown, though it had been tormented into all the fashions from King James to King George, ever underwent so many transformations as those poor plains have in my idea. At first I was contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of the cascade under the bridge. How happy should I have been to have had a kingdom only for the pleasure of being driven from it, and living disguised in an humble vale! As I got further into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia to the garden of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view than the Capitoli immobile saxum. I wish a committee of the House of Commons may ever seem to be the senate; or a bill appear half so agreeable as a billet-doux. You see how deep you have carried me into old stories; I write of them with pleasure, but shall talk of them with more to you. I can’t say I am sorry I was never quite a schoolboy: an expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things very near as pretty. The beginning of my Roman history was spent in the asylum, or conversing in Egeria’s hallowed grove; not in thumping and pommelling king Amulius’s herdsmen. I was sometimes troubled with a rough creature or two from the plough; one, that one should have thought, had worked with his head, as well as his hands, they were both so callous. One of the most agreeable circumstances I can recollect is the Triumvirate, composed of yourself, Charles,(138) and Your sincere friend.
(138) Colonel Charles Montagu, afterwards Lieutenant-General, and Knight of the Bath, and brother of George Montagu. He married Elizabeth Villiers, Viscountess Grandison, daughter of the Earl of Grandison.
124 Letter 4 To George Montagu, Esq. King’s College, May 20, 1736.
Dear George: You will excuse my not having written to you, when you hear I have been a jaunt to Oxford. As you have seen it, I shall only say I think it one of the most agreeable places I ever set my eyes on. In our way thither we stopped at the Duke of Kent’s, (139) at Wrest. (140) On the great staircase is a picture of the duchess; (141) I said it was very like; oh, dear sir! said Mrs. Housekeeper, it’s too handsome for my lady duchess; her grace’s chin is much longer than that.
In the garden are monuments in memory of Lord Harold (142) Lady Glenorchy, (143) the late duchess,(144) and the present duke. At Lord Clarendon’s (145) at Cornbury,(146) is a prodigious quantity of Vandykes; but I had not time to take down any of their dresses. By the way, you gave me no account of the last masquerade. Coming back, we saw Easton Neston,(147) a seat of Lord Pomfret, where in an old greenhouse is a wonderful fine statue of Tully, haranguing a numerous assembly of decayed emperors, vestal virgins with new noses, Colossuses, Venuses, headless carcases, and carcaseless heads, pieces of tombs, and hieroglyphics.(148) I saw Althorp(149) the same day, where are a vast many pictures-some mighty good; a gallery with the Windsor beauties, and Lady Bridgewater(150) who is full as handsome as any of them; a bouncing head of, I believe, Cleopatra, called there the Duchess of Mazarine. The park is enchanting. I forgot to tell you I was at Blenheim, where I saw nothing but a cross housekeeper, and an impertinent porter, except a few pictures, a quarry of stone that looked at a distance like a great house, and about this quarry, quantities of inscriptions in honour of the Duke of Marlborough, and I think of her grace too.
Adieu! dear George, Yours ever.
The verses are not published.
(139) Henry de Grey, Duke, Marquis, and Earl of Kent, son of Anthony Earl of Kent, and Mary, daughter of Lord Lucas. [The duke, who had been so created in 1710, having lost all his sons during his lifetime, obtained a new patent in 1740, creating him Marquis Grey, with remainder to his grand-daughter Jemima Campbell, daughter of his eldest daughter, Lady amabel Grey, by her husband John, third Earl of Breadalbane. On the death of the duke, in June 1740, the marquisate of Grey and barony of Lucas, together with the Wrest House and all the vast estates of the duke, devolved upon his grand-daughter, Lady Jemima Campbell, then Lady Jemima Royston, she having married Philip Viscount Royston, eldest son of the Earl of Hardwicke, by whom she had two daughters, Amabel married in July 1772, to Lord Polwarth, only son of the Earl of Marchmont,
(140) Wrest House in Bedfordshire. [It is remarkable that, from the death of the Duke of Kent, Wrest House has never remained a second generation in the same family, but has descended successively through females to the families of Yorke Earl of Hardwicke, Hume Earl of Marchmont, and is now vested in that of Robinson Lord Grantham, the great-great-grandson of the duke.)
(141) Lady Sophia Bentinck, second wife of the Duke of Kent, and daughter to William Earl of Portland.
(142) Anthony Earl of Harold, eldest son of the Duke of Kent. [Married to Lady Mary Grafton, daughter of the Earl of Thanet. He died without issue, in 1723, in consequence of an ear of barley sticking in his throat. His widow, who survived many years, afterwards married John first Earl Gower.]
(143) Amabella, eldest daughter of the Duke of Kent, married to John Campbell, Lord Viscount Glenorchy, son of Lord Breadalbane.
(144) Jemima, eldest daughter of Lord Crewe, and first wife of the Duke of Kent.
(145) Henry Earl of Clarendon and Rochester, son of Laurence Earl of Rochester.
(146) In the county of Oxford.
(147) Easton Neston, the ancient family seat of the Fermor family, had been rebuilt by Sir William Fermor who was elevated to the peerage by the title of Baron Lempster of Lempster, or Leominster, county of Hereford; and whose only son Thomas, second baron, was advanced to the earldom of Pomfret in 1721.-E.
(148) Part of the invaluable collection of the great Earl of Arundel. They had been formerly purchased by John Lord Jefferies, Baron of Wem; and in 1755 were presented by his daughter, the Countess-dowager of Pomfret, to the University of Oxford.-E.
(149) The seat of Charles, fifth Earl of Sunderland; who, upon the demise of his aunt Henrietta, eldest daughter of John Duke of Marlborough, succeeded to the honours of his illustrious grandfather. Althorp is now the seat of Earl Spencer. An account of the mansion, its pictures, etc. was published by Dr. Dibdin, in 1822, under the title of “Edes Althorpianae,” as a supplement to his “Bibliotheca Spenceriana."-E.
(150) Elizabeth, third daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough, and wife of Scroop, Earl and afterwards first Duke of Bridgewater. She died, however, previous to her husband’s advancement to the dukedom.-E.
126 Letter 5 To George Montagu, Esq. King’s College, May 30, 1736.
Dear George, You show me in the prettiest manner how much you like Petronius Arbiter; I have heard you commend him, but I am more pleased with your tacit approbation of writing like him, prose interspersed with verse: I shall send you soon in return some poetry interspersed with prose; I mean the Cambridge congratulation with the notes, as you desired. I have transcribed the greatest part of what was tolerable at the coffee-houses; but by most of what you will find, you will hardly think I have left any thing worse behind. There is lately come out a new piece, called A Dialogue between Philemon and Hydaspes on false religion, by one Mr. Coventry,(151) A.M., and fellow, formerly fellow-commoner, of Magdalen. He is a young man, but ’tis really a pretty thing. If you cannot get it in town, I will send it with the verses. He accounts for superstition in a new manner, and I think a Just One; attributing it to disappointments in love. He don’t resolve it all into that bottom; ascribes it almost wholly as the source of female enthusiasm; and I dare say there’s ne’er a girl from the age of fourteen to four-and-twenty, but will subscribe to his principles, and own, if the dear man were dead that she loves, she would settle all her affection on heaven, whither he was gone.
Who would not be an Artemisia, and raise the stately mausoleum to her lord; then weep and watch incessant over it like the Ephesian matron!
I have heard of one lady, who had not quite so great a veneration for her husband’s tomb, but preferred lying alone in one, to lying on his left hand; perhaps she had an aversion to the German custom of left-handed wives. I met yesterday with a pretty little dialogue on the subject of constancy tis between a traveller and a dove
Le passant.
Que fais tu dans ce bois, plaintive Tourturelle?
La ToURTURELLE.
Je g`emis, j’ai perdu ma compagne fidelle.
Le passant.
Ne crains tu pas que l’oiseleur
Ne te fasse mourir comme elle?
La Tourturelle.
Si ce n’est lui, ce sera ma douleur.
’Twould have been a little more apposite, if she had grieved for her lover. I have ventured to turn it into that view, lengthened it, and spoiled it, as you shall see.
P.-Plaintive turtle, cease your moan;
Hence away;
In this dreary wood alone
Why d’ye stay?
T.-These tears, alas! you see flow
For my mate!
P.-Dread you not from net or bow
His sad fate?
T.-If, ah! if they neither kill,
Sorrow will.
You will excuse this gentle nothing, I mean mine, when I tell you, I translated it out of pure good-nature for the use of a disconsolate wood-pigeon in our grove, that was made a widow by the barbarity of a gun. She coos and calls me so movingly, ’twould touch your heart to hear her. I protest to you it grieves me to pity her. She is so allicholy as any thing. I’ll warrant you now she’s as sorry as one of us would be. Well, good man, he’s gone, and he died like a lamb. She’s an unfortunate woman, but she must have patience; tis what we must all come to, and so as I was saying, Dear George, good bye t’ye, Yours sincerely.
P. S. I don’t know yet when I shall leave Cambridge.
(151) Mr. Henry Coventry was the son of Henry Coventry, Esq. who had a good estate in Cambridgeshire. He was born in 1710, and died in 1752. He wrote four additional Dialogues. The five were republished shortly after his death, by his cousin, the Rev. Francis Coventry. The following is transcribed from the MSS. of the Rev. W. Cole:-
“When Henry Coventry first came to the University, he was of a religious turn of mind, as was Mr. Horace Walpole; even so much so as to go with Ashton, his then great friend, to pray with the prisoners in the Castle. Afterwards, both Mr. Coventry and Mr. Walpole took to the infidel side of the question."-E.
127 Letter 6 To Richard West, Esq. King’s College, Aug. 17, 1736.
Dear West, Gray is at Burnham,(152) and, what is surprising, has not been at Eton. Could you live so near it without seeing it? That dear scene of our quadruple-alliance would furnish me with the most agreeable recollections. ’Tis the head of our genealogical table, that is since sprouted out into the two branches of Oxford and Cambridge. You seem to be the eldest son, by having got a whole inheritance to yourself; while the manor of Granta is to be divided between your three younger brothers, Thomas of Lancashire, [153] Thomas of London [154] and Horace. We don’t wish you dead to enjoy your seat, but your seat dead to enjoy you. I hope you are a mere elder brother, and live upon what your father left you, and in the way you ’were brought up in, poetry: but we are supposed to betake ourselves to some trade, as logic, philosophy, or mathematics. If I should prove a mere younger brother, and not turn to any Profession, would you receive me, and supply me out of your stock, where you have such plenty? I have been so used to the delicate food of Parnassus, that I can never condescend to apply to the grosser studies of Alma Mater. Sober cloth of syllogism colour suits me ill; or, what’s worse, I hate clothes that one must prove to be of no colour at all. If the Muses coelique vias et sidera monstrent, and qua vi maria alta lumescant. why accipiant: but ’tis thrashing, to study philosophy in the abstruse authors. I am not against cultivating these studies, as they are certainly useful; but then they quite neglect all polite literature, all knowledge of this world. Indeed, such people have not much occasion for this latter; for they shut themselves up from it, and study till they know less than any one. Great mathematicians have been of great use; but the generality of them are quite unconversible: they frequent the stars, sub pedibusque vident nubes, but they can’t see through them. I tell you what I see; that by living amongst them, I write of nothing else: my letters are all parallelograms, two sides equal to two sides; and every paragraph an axiom, that tells you nothing but what every mortal almost knows. By the way, your letters come under this description; for they contain nothing but what almost every mortal knows too, that knows you-that is, they are extremely agreeable, which they know you are capable of making them:-no one is better acquainted with it than Your sincere friend.
(152) in Buckinghamshire, where his uncle resided.
(153) Thomas Ashton. He was afterwards fellow of Eton College, rector of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate-street, and preacher to the Society of Lincoln’s-inn. It was to him that Mr. Walpole addressed the poetical epistle from Florence, first published in Dodsley’s collection of poems.
(154) Thomas Gray, the poet.
1737
128 Letter 7 To George Montagu Esq. King’s College, March 20, 1737.
Dear George, The first paragraph in my letter must be in answer to the last in yours; though I should be glad to make you the return you ask, by waiting on you myself. ’Tis not in my power, from more circumstances than One, which are needless to tell you, to accompany you and Lord Conway(155) to Italy: you add to the pleasure it would give me, by asking it so kindly. You I am infinitely obliged to, as I was capable, my dear George, of making you forget for a minute that you don’t propose stirring from the dear place you are now in. Poppies indeed are the chief flowers in love nosegays, but they seldom bend towards the lady; at least not till the other flowers have been gathered. Prince Volscius’s boots were made of love-leather, and honour-leather; instead of honour, some people’s are made of friendship; but since you have been so good to me as to draw on this, I can almost believe you are equipped for travelling farther than Rheims. ’Tis no little inducement to make me wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there; that you may be polite and not be thought awkward for it. You know the pretty men of the age in England use the women with no more deference than they do their coach-horses, and have not half the regard for them that they have for themselves. The little freedoms you tell me you use take off from formality, by avoiding which ridiculous extreme we are dwindled into the other barbarous one, rusticity. If you had been at Paris, I should have inquired about the new Spanish ambassadress, who, by the accounts we have thence, at her first audience of the queen, sat down with her at a distance that suited respect and conversation. Adieu, dear George, Yours most heartily.
(156) Francis Seymour Conway, son of Francis Seymour, Lord Conway, and Charlotte, daughter of John Shorter, Esq. [Sister to Lady Walpole, the mother of Horace, and with her co-heiress of John Shorter, Esq. lord-mayor of London in 1688, who died during his mayoralty, from a fall off his horse, under Newgate, as he was going to proclaim Bartholomew Fair. Lady Walpole died in the August of the year in which the present letter was written, and Sir Robert soon afterwards married @Miss Skerrit. Walpole’s well-known fondness for his mother is alluded to by Gray, in a letter to West, dated 22d August, 1737:-” But while I write to you, I hear the bad news of lady Walpole’s death, on Saturday night last. Forgive me if the thought of what my poor Horace must feel on that account obliges me to have done.”]
129 Letter 8 To George Montagu, Esq. Christopher Inn, Eton.
The Christopher. Lord! how great I used to think anybody just landed at the Christopher! But here are no boys for me to send for-here I am, like Noah, just returned into his old world again, with all sorts of queer feels about me. By the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound-I recollect so much, and remember so little-and want to play about-and am so afraid of my playfellows-and am ready to shirk Ashton and can’t help making fun of myself-and envy a dame over the way, that has just locked in her boarders, and is going to sit down in a little hot parlour to a very bad supper, so comfortably! and I could be so jolly a dog if I did not fat, which, by the way, is the first time the word was ever applicable to me. In short, I should be out of all bounds if I was to tell you half I feel, how young again I am one minute, and how old the next. But do come and feel with me, when you will-to-morrow-adieu! If I don’t compose myself a little more before Sunday morning, when Ashton is to preach, I shall certainly be in a bill for laughing at church; but how to belt it, to see him in the pulpit, when the last time I saw him here, was standing up funking at a conduit to be catechised. Good night; yours.
1739
130 Letter 9
To
Richard West, Esq.
Paris, April 21, N. S. 1739. (157)
Dear West, You figure us in a set of pleasures, which, believe me, we do not find; cards and eating are so universal, that they absorb all variation of pleasures. The operas, indeed, are much frequented three times a week; but to me they would be a greater penance than eating maigre: their music resembles a gooseberry tart as much as it does harmony. We have not yet been at the Italian playhouse; scarce any one goes there. Their best amusement, and which in some parts, beats ours, is the comedy three or four of the actors excel any we have: but then to this nobody goes, if it is not one of the fashionable nights; and then they go, be the play good or bad-except on Moli`ere’s nights, whose pieces they are quite weary of. Gray and I have been at the Avare to-night; I cannot at all commend their performance of it. Last night I was in the Place de Louis le Grand (a regular octagon, uniform, and the houses handsome, though not so large as Golden Square), to see what they reckoned one of the finest burials that ever was in France. It was the Duke de Tresmes, governor of Paris and marshal of France. It began on foot from his palace to his parish-church, and from thence in coaches to the opposite end of Paris, to b interred in the church of the Celestins, where is his family-vault. About a week ago we happened to see the grave digging, as we went to see the church, which is old and small., but fuller of fine ancient monuments than any, except St. Denis, which we saw on the road, and excels Westminster; for the windows are all ’ painted in mosaic,
The weather is still so bad, that we have not made any excursions to see Versailles and the environs, not even walked in the Tuileries; but we have seen almost every thing else that is worth seeing in Paris, though that is very considerable. They beat us vastly in buildings, both in number and magnificence. The tombs of Richelieu and Mazarin at the Sorbonne and the College de Quatre Nations are wonderfully fine, especially the former. We have seen very little of the people themselves, who are not inclined to be propitious to strangers, especially if they do
To-morrow we go to the Cid. They have no farces but petites pieces like our “Devil to Pay.”
(157) Mr. Walpole left Cambridge towards the end of the year 1738, and in March, 1739, began his travels by going to Paris, accompanied by Mr. Gray.
(158) Francis, second Lord Conway, in 1750, created Viscount Beauchamp and Earl of Hertford, and in 1793, Earl of Yarmouth and Marquis of Hertford. He was the elder brother of General Conway, and grandfather of the present Marquis.
(159) Hugh Fortescue, in whose favour the abeyance into which the barony of Clinton had fallen on the death of Edward, thirteenth Baron Clinton, was terminated by writ of summons, in 1721. He was created, in 1746, Lord Fortescue and Earl of Clinton; and died unmarried, in 1751.-E.
(160) Son of Henry, second Earl and first Duke of Portland; he died in 1759.-E.
(161) Mr. Brand of the Hoo, in Hertfordshire, who afterwards married Lady Caroline Pierrepoint, daughter of the Duke of Kingston by his second wife, and half-sister of Lady Mary Wortley.-E.
132 Letter 10 To Richard West, Esq. >From Paris, 1739.
Dear West, I should think myself to blame not to try to divert you, when you tell me I can. From the air of your letter you seem to want amusement, that is, you want spirits. I would recommend to you certain little employments that I know of, and that belong to you, but that I imagine bodily exercise is more suitable to your complaint. If you would promise me to read them in the Temple garden, I would send you a little packet of plays and pamphlets that we have made up, and intend to dispatch to ‘Dick’s’ the first opportunity.-Stand by, clear the way, make room for the pompous appearance of Versailles le Grand!—But no: it fell so short of my idea of it, mine, that I have resigned to Gray the office of writing its panegyric.(162) He likes it. They say I am to like it better next Sunday; when the sun is to shine., the king is to be fine, the water-works are to play, and the new knights of the Holy Ghost are to be installed! Ever since Wednesday, the day we were there, we have done nothing but dispute about it. They say, we did not see it to advantage, that we ran through the apartments, saw the garden
We saw last week a place of another kind, and which has more the air of what it would be, than anything I have yet met with: it was the convent of the Chartreux. All the conveniences, or rather (if there was such a word) all the adaptments are assembled here, that melancholy, meditation, selfish devotion, and despair would require. But yet ’tis pleasing. Soften the terms, and mellow the uncouth horror that reigns here, but a little, and ’tis a charming solitude. It stands on a large space of ground, is old and irregular. The chapel is gloomy: behind it, through some dark passages, you pass into a large obscure hall, which looks like a combination-chamber for some hellish council. The large cloister surrounds their buryingground. The cloisters are very narrow and very long, and let into the cells, which are built like little huts detached from each other. We were carried into one, where lived a middle-aged man not long initiated into the order. He was extremely civil, and called himself Dom Victor. We have promised to visit him often. Their habit is all white: but besides this he was infinitely clean in his person; and his apartment and garden, which he keeps and cultivates without any assistance, was neat to a degree. He has four little rooms, furnished in the prettiest manner, and hung with good prints. One of them is a library, and another a gallery. He has several canary-birds disposed in a pretty manner in breeding-cages. in his garden was a bed of good tulips in bloom, flowers and fruit-trees, and all neatly kept. They are permitted at certain hours to talk to strangers, but never to one another, or to go out of their convent. But what we chiefly went to see was the small cloister, with the history of St. Bruno their founder, painted by Le Sceur. It consists of twenty-two pictures, the figures a good deal less than life. But sure they are amazing! I don’t know what Raphael may be in Rome, but these pictures excel all I have seen in Paris and England. The figure of the dead man who spoke at his burial, contains all the strongest and horridest
Yours ever.
(162) For Gray’s description of Versailles, which he styles " a huge heap of littleness,” see his letter to West of the 22nd of May, 1739. (Works, by Mitford, vol. ii. P. 46).edited by the Rev. John Mitford.-E.
134 Letter 11 To Richard West, Esq. Rheims, (163) June 18, 1739, N. S.
Dear West, How I am to fill up this letter is not easy to divine. I have consented that Gray shall give an account of our situation and proceedings; (164) and have left myself at the mercy of my own’ invention—a most terrible resource, and which I shall avoid applying to if I can possibly help it. I had prepared the ingredients for a description of a ball, and was just ready to serve it up to you, but he has plucked it from me. However, I was resolved to give you an account of a particular song and dance in it, and was determined to write the words and Sing the tune just as I folded up my letter: but as it would, ten to one, be opened before it gets to you, I am forced to lay aside this thought, though an admirable one. Well, but now I have put it into your head, I suppose you won’t rest without it. For that individual one, believe me ’tis nothing without the tune and the dance; but to stay your stomach, I -will send you one of their vaudevilles or Ballads, (165) which they sing at the comedy after their petites pi`eces.
You must not wonder if all my letters resemble dictionaries, with French on one side and English on t’other; I deal in nothing else at present, and talk a couple of words of each language alternately, from morning till night. This has put my mouth a little out of tune at present but I am trying to recover the use of it by reading the newspapers aloud at breakfast, and by shewing the title-pages of all my English books. Besides this, I have paraphrased half of the first act of your new GustavUS (166) which was sent us to Paris: a most dainty performance, and just what you say of it. Good night, I am sure you must be tired: if you are not, I am. yours ever.
(163) Mr. Walpole, with his cousin Henry Seymour Conway and Mr. Gray, resided three months at Rheims, principally to acquire the French language.
(164) Gray’s letter to West has not been preserved; but one addressed to his mother, on the 21 st of June, containing an account of Rheims and the society, is printed in his Works, vol. ii. p. 50.-E.
(165) This ballad does not appear.
(166) The tragedy of “Gustavus Vasa,” by Henry Brooke, author of “The Fool of Quality.” It was rehearsed at Drury Lane; but, as it was supposed to satirize Sir Robert Walpole, it was prohibited to be acted. This, however, did Brooke no injury, as he was encouraged to publish the play by subscription.-E.
134 Letter 12 To Richard West, Esq. Rheims, July 20, 1739.
Gray says, Indeed you ought to write to West.-Lord, child, so I would, if I knew what to write about. If I were in London and he at Rheims, I would send him volumes about peace and war, Spaniards, camps, and conventions; but d’ye think he cares sixpence to know who is gone to Compiegne, and when they come back, or who won and lost four livres at quadrille last night at Mr. Cockbert’s?—No, but you may tell him what you have heard of Compiegne; that they have balls twice a week after the play, and that the Count d’Eu gave the king a most flaring entertainment in the camp, where the Polygone was represented in flowering shrubs. Dear West, these are the things I must tell you; I don’t know how to make ’em look significant, unless you will be a Rhemois for a little moment.(167) I wonder you can stay out of the city so long, when we are going to have all manner of diversions. The comedians return hither from Compiegne in eight days, for example; and in a very little of time one attends the regiment of the king, three battalions and an hundred of officers; all men of a certain fashion, very amiable, and who know their world. Our women grow more gay, more lively, from day to day, in expecting them; Mademoiselle la Reine is brewing a wash of a finer dye, and brushing up her eyes for their arrival. La Barone already counts upon fifteen of them: and Madame Lelu, finding her linen robe conceals too many beauties, has bespoke one of gauze.
I won’t plague you any longer with people you don’t know, I mean French ones; for you must absolutely hear of an Englishman that lately appeared at Rheims. About two days ago, about four o’clock in the afternoon, and about an hour after dinner,-from all which you may conclude we dine at two o’clock,-as we were picking our teeth round a littered table and in a crumby room, Gray in an undress, Mr. Conway in a morning gray coat, and I in a trim white night-gown and slippers, very much out of order, with a very little cold, a message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr. Walpole from Mr. More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on him. We scuttled upstairs in great confusion, but with no other damage than the flinging down two or three glasses and the dropping a slipper by the way. Having ordered the room to be cleaned out, and sent a very civil response to Mr. More, we began to consider who Mr. More should be. Is it Mr. More of Paris! No. Oh, ’tis Mr. More, my Lady Teynham’s husband? No, it can’t be he. A Mr. More, then, that lives in the Halifax family?
P. S. I thank you ten thousand times for your last letter: when I have as much wit and as much poetry in me, I’ll send you as good an one. Good night, child!
(167) The three following paragraphs are a literal translation of French expressions to the same imports.
136 Letter 13 To Richard West, Esq. >From a Hamlet among the Mountains of Savoy, Sept. 28, 1739, N. S.
Precipices, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings, Salvator Rosa-the pomp of our park and the meekness of our palace! Here we are, the lonely lords of glorious, desolate prospects. I have kept a sort of resolution which I made, of not writing to you as long as I staid in France: I am now a quarter of an hour out of it, and write to you. Mind, ’tis three months since we heard from you. I begin this letter -among the clouds; where I shall finish, my neighbour Heaven probably knows: ’tis an odd wish in a mortal letter, to hope not to finish it on this side the atmosphere. You will have a billet tumble to you from the stars hen you least think of it; and that I should write it too! Lord, how potent that sounds! But I am to undergo many transmigrations before I come to “yours ever.” Yesterday I was a shepherd of Dauphin`e; to-day an Alpine savage; to-morrow a Carthusian monk; and Friday a Swiss Calvinist. I have one quality which I find remains with me in all worlds and in all aethers; I brought it with me from your world, and am admired for it in this-’tis my esteem for you: this is a common thought among you, and you will laugh at it, but it is new here: as new to remember one’s friends in the world one has left, as for you to remember those you have lost.
Aix in Savoy, Sept. 30th.
We are this minute come in here, and here’s an awkward abb`e this minute come in to us. I asked him if he would sit down. Oui, oui, oui. He has ordered us a radish soup for supper, and has brought a chess-board to play with Mr. Conway. I have left ’em in the act, and am set down to write to you. Did you ever see any thing like the prospect we saw yesterday? I never did. We rode three leagues to see the Grande Chartreuse; (168) expected bad roads and the finest convent in the kingdom. We were disappointed pro and con. The building is large and plain, and has nothing remarkable but its primitive simplicity; they entertained us in the neatest manner, with eggs, pickled salmon, dried fish, conserves, cheese, butter, grapes, and figs, and pressed us mightily to lie there. We tumbled into the hands of a lay-brother, who, unluckily having the charge of the meal and bran, showed us little besides. They desired us to set down our names in the list of strangers, where, among others, we found two mottos of our countrymen, for whose stupidity and brutality we blushed. The first was of Sir j * * * D * * *, who had wrote down the first stanza of justum et tenacem, altering the last line to Mente quatit Carthusiana. The second was of one D * *, Coelum ipsum petimus stultitia; et hic ventri indico bellum. The Goth!-But the road, West, the road! winding round a prodigious mountain, and surrounded with others, all shagged with hanging woods, obscured with pines, or lost in clouds! Below, a torrent breaking through cliffs, and tumbling through fragments of rocks! Sheets of @cascades forcing their silver speed down channelled precipices, and hasting into the roughened river at the bottom! Now and then an old foot-bridge, with a broken rail, a leaning cross, a cottage, or the ruin of an hermitage! This sounds too bombast and too romantic to one that has not seen it, too cold for one that has. If I could send you my letter post between two lovely tempests that echoed each other’s wrath you might have some idea of this noble roaring scene, as you were reading it. Almost on the summit, upon a fine verdure, but without any prospect, stands the Chartreuse. We staid there two hours, rode back through this charming picture, wished for a painter, wished to be poets! Need I tell you we wished for you? Good night!
Geneva, Oct. 2.
By beginning a new date, I should begin a new letter; but I have seen nothing yet, and the Post is going Out: ’tis a strange tumbled dab, and dirty too, I am sending you; but what can I do? There is no possibility of writing such a long history over again. I find there are many English in the town; Lord Brook, (169) Lord Mansel, (170) Lord Hervey’s eldest son,(171) and a son of-of Mars and Venus, or of Antony and Cleopatra, or, in short, of-. This is the boy, in the bow of whose hat Mr. Hedges pinned a pretty epigram. I don’t know if you ever heard it; I’ll suppose you never did, because it will fill up my letter:
“Give but Cupid’s dart to me,
Another Cupid I shall be:
No more distinguish’d from the other,
Than Venus would be from my mother.”
Scandal says, Hedges thought the two last very like; and it says too, that she was not his enemy for thinking so.
Adieu! Gray and I return to Lyons in three days. Harry stays here. Perhaps at our return we may find a letter from you: it ought to be very full of excuses, for you have been a lazy creature: I hope you have, for I would not owe your silence to any other reason. Yours ever.
(168) It was on revisiting it, when returning to England after his unfortunate quarrel with Walpole, that Gray inscribed his beautiful “Alcaic Ode” in the album of the fathers of this monastery. Gray’s account of this grand scene, where “not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry,” will be found in his letter to West, dated Turin, Nov. 16, N. S. 1739. Works, vol. ii. p. 69.-E.
(169) Francis Lord Brooke, advanced to the dignity of Earl Brooke in 1746.-E.
(170) Thomas Lord Mansell, who died in 1743, without issue. He was succeeded in the title by his uncles Christopher and Bussy; and, On the death of the latter in 1744, it became extinct.-E.
(171) George William Hervey, who succeeded his grandfather as Earl of Bristol in 1751, and died Unmarried in 1775.-E.
138 Letter 14 To Richard West, Esq. Turin, Nov. 11, 1739, N. S.
So, as the song says, we are in fair Italy! I wonder we are; for on the very highest precipice of Mount Cenis, the devil of discord, in the similitude of sour wine, had got amongst our Alpine savages, and set them a-fighting with Gray and me in the chairs: they rushed him by me on a crag, where there was scarce room for a cloven foot. The least slip had tumbled us into such a fog, and such an eternity, as we should never have found our way out of again. We were eight days in coming hither from Lyons; the four last in crossing the Alps. Such uncouth rocks, and such uncomely inhabitants! My dear West, I hope I shall never see them again! At the foot of Mount Cenis we were obliged to quit our chaise, which was taken all to pieces and loaded on mules; and we were carried in low arm-chairs on poles, swathed in beaver bonnets, beaver gloves, beaver stockings, muffs, and bear-skins. When we came to the top, behold the snows fallen! and such quantities, and conducted by such heavy clouds that hung glouting, that I thought we could never have waded through them. The descent is two leagues, but steep and rough as O * * * * father’s face, over which, you know, the devil walked with hobnails in his shoes. But the dexterity and nimbleness of the mountaineers are inconceivable: they run with you down steeps and frozen precipices, where no man, as men are now, could possibly walk. We had twelve men and nine mules to carry us, our servants, and baggage, and were above five hours in this agreeable
Just coming out of Camber, which is a little nasty old hole, I copied an inscription set up at the end of a great road, which was practised through an immense solid rock by bursting it asunder with gunpowder. The Latin is pretty enough, and so I send it you:
“Carolus Emanuel ii. Sab. dux, Pedem. princeps, Cypri rex,public`a felicitate part`a, singulorum commodis intentus, breviorem securioremque viam regiam, natur`a occlusam, Romanis intentatam, mteris desperatam, dejectis scopulorum repagulus, aquata montiuminiquitate, quae cervicibus imminebant precipitia pedibus substernens, aeternis populorum commerciis patefecit. A.D. 1670.”
We passed the Pas de Suze, where is a strong fortress on a rock, between two very neighbouring mountains; and then, through a fine avenue of three leagues, we at last discovered Tturin:—
“E l’un k l’altro mostra, ed in tanto oblia La noia, e’l mal ‘delta passata via."’
’Tis really by far one of the prettiest cities I have seen; not one of your large straggling ones that can afford to have twenty dirty suburbs, but, clean and compact, very new and very regular. The king’s palace is not of the proudest without, but of the richest within; painted, gilt, looking-glassed, very costly, but very tawdry; in short, a very popular palace. We were last night at the Italian comedy-the devil of a house and the devil of actors! Besides this, there is a sort of an heroic tragedy, called “La rapprentatione dell’ Anima Damnata."(173) A woman, a sinner, comes in and makes a solemn prayer to the Trinity: enter Jesus Christ and the Virgin: he scolds, and exit: she tells the woman her son is very angry, but she don’t know, she will see what she can do. After the play we were introduced to the assembly, which they call the conversazione: there were many people playing at ombre, pharaoh, and a game called taroc, with cards so high, (174) to the number of seventy-eight. There are three or four English here Lord Lincoln,(175) with Spence,(176)
(172) This incident is described also by Gray in one of his letters to his mother. “If the dog,” he adds, “had not been there, and the creature had thought fit to lay hold of one of the horses, chaise and we, and all, must inevitably have tumbled above fifty fathoms perpendicularly down the precipice."-E.
(173) This representation is also mentioned by Spence, in a letter to his mother:-"In spite of the excellence,” he says, “of the actors, the greatest part of the entertainment to me was the countenances of the people in the pit and boxes. When the devils were like to carry off the Damned Soul, every body was in the utmost consternation and when St. John spoke so obligingly to her, they were ready to cry out for joy. When the Virgin appeared on the stage, every body looked respectful; and, on several words spoke by the actors, they pulled off, their hats, and crossed themselves. What can you think of a people, where their very farces are religious, and where they are so religiously received? It was from such a play as this (called Adam and Eve) that Milton when he was in Italy, is said to have taken the first hint for his divine poem of “Paradise Lost.” What small beginnings are there sometimes to the greatest things!-E.
(174) In the manuscript the writing of this word is extraordinary tall.
(175) Henry ninth Earl of Lincoln, who having, in 1744, married Catherine, eldest daughter and heiress of the Right Honourable Henry Pelham, inherited, in 1768, the dukedom of Newcastle-under-Line at the demise of the countess’s uncle, Thomas Pelham Holles, who, in 1756, had been created Duke of Newcastle-under-Line, with special remainder to the Earl of Lincoln.-E.
(176) The Rev. Joseph Spence, the author of one of the best collections of ana the English language possesses-the well-known “Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men,” of which the best edition is that edited by Singer.-E.
140 Letter 15 To Richard West, Esq. >From Bologna, 1739.
I don’t know why I told Ashton I would send you an account of what I saw: don’t believe it, I don’t intend it. Only think what a vile employment ’tis, making catalogues! And then one should have that odious Curl (177) get at one’s letters, and publish them like Whitfield’s Journal, or for a supplement to the Traveller’s Pocket Companion. Dear West, I protest against having seen any thing but what all the world has seen; nay, I have not seen half that, not-some of the most
My dear West, in return for your epigrams of Prior, I will transcribe some old verses too, but which I fancy I can show you in a sort of a new light. They are no newer than Virgil, and what is more odd, are in the second Georgic. ’Tis, that I have observed that he not only excels when he is like himself, but even when he is very like inferior poets: you will say that they rather excel by being like him: but mind, they are all near one another:
“Si non ingenter oribus domus alta superbis Mane sa@atame totis vomit Eedibus uridam:”
And the four next lines; are they not just like Martial? In the following he is as much Claudian”
“Illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum
Flexit, et infidos agitans discordia fratres;
Aut conjurato descendens Dacus ab Istro.”
Then who are these like?
“nec ferrea jura, insanumque forum,
aut populi tabularia vidit.
Sollicitant alii remis freta ceca, ruuntque
In ferrum, penetrant aulas et limina regum.
Hic petit excidiis urbem miseresque Penates,
Ut gemma, bibat, et Sarrano indormiat ostro.”
Don’t they seem to be Juvenal’s?-There are some more, which to me resemble, Horace; but perhaps I think so from his having some on a parallel subject. Tell me if I am mistaken; these are they:
“Interea dulces pendent eircum oscula nati:
Casta pudicitiam servat domus-”
inclusively to the end of these:
“Hanc olim veteres vitam colti`ere Sabini
Hanc Remus et frater: sic fortis Etruria crevit,
Scilicet et retum facta est pulcherrima Roma.”
If the imagination is whimsical; well at least, ’tis like me to have imagined it. Adieu, child! We leave Bologna to-morrow. You know ’tis the third city in Italy for pictures: knowing that, you know all. We shall be three days crossing the Apennine to Florence: would it were over!
My dear West, I am yours from St. Peter’s to St. Paul’s!
(177) Edmund Curll, the well-known bookseller. The letters between Pope and many of his friends falling into Curll’s hands, they were by him printed and sold. As the volume contained some letters from noblemen, Pope incited a prosecution against him in the House of Lords for breach of privilege; but, when the orders of the House were examined, none of them appeared to have been infringed: Curll went away triumphant, and Pope was left to seek some other remedy.-E.
(178) The Epitaph on the outside of the wall of the church of St. Proculo-
Si procul `a Proculo Proculi campana fuisset, Jam procul `a Proculo Proculus ipse foret. A.D. 1392.
142 Letter 16 To Richard West, Esq. Florence, Jan. 24, 1740, N. S.
Dear West, I don’t know what volumes I may send you from Rome; from Florence I have little inclination to send you any. I see several things that please me calmly, but `a force d’en avoir vu I have left off screaming Lord! this! and Lord! that! To speak sincerely, Calais surprised me more than any thing I have seen since. I recollect the joy I used to propose if I could but once see the great duke’s gallery; I walk into it now with as little emotion as I should into St. Paul’s. The statues are a congregation of good sort of people, that I have a great deal of unruffled regard for. The farther I travel the less I wonder at any thing: a few days reconcile one to a new spot, or an unseen
P. S. Upon reading my letter, I perceive still plainer the sameness that reigns here; for I find I have said the same thing ten times over. I don’t care, I have made out a letter, and that was all my affair.
143 Letter 17 To Richard West, Esq. Florence, February 27, 1740, N. S.
Well, West, I have found a little unmasqued moment to Write to you; but for this week past I have been so muffled up in my domino, that I have not had the command of my elbows. But what have you been doing all the mornings? Could you not write then?-No, then I was masqued too; I have done nothing but slip out of my domino into bed, and out of bed into my domino. The end of the Carnival is frantic, bacchanalian; all the morn one makes parties in masque to the shops and coffee-houses, and all the evening to the operas and balls. Then I have danced, good gods! how have I danced! The Italians are fond to a degree of our country dances: Cold and raw-they only know by the tune; Blowzybella is almost Italian, and Buttered peas is Pizelli ag buro. There are but three days more; but the two last are to have balls all the morning at the fine unfinished palace of the Strozzi; and the Tuesday night a masquerade after supper: they sup first, to eat gras, and not encroach upon Ash-Wednesday. What makes masquerading more agreeable here than in England, is the great deference that is showed to the disguised. Here they do not catch at those little dirty opportunities of saying any ill-natured thing they know of you, do not abuse you because they may, or talk gross bawdy to a woman of quality. I found the other day, by a play of Etheridge’s, that we have had a sort of Carnival even since the Reformation; Ytis in “She would if She could,” they talk of going a-mumming in Shrove-tide.(179)-After talking so much of diversions, I fear you will attribute to them the fondness I own I contract for Florence; but it has so many other charms, that I shall not want excuses for my taste. The freedom of the Carnival has given me opportunities to make several acquaintances.; and if I have no found them refined, learned, polished, like some other cities, yet they are civil, good-natured, and fond of the English-. Their little partiality for themselves, opposed to the violent vanity of the French, makes them very amiable in my eyes. I can give you a comical instance of their great prejudice about nobility; it happened yesterday. While we were at dinner at Mr. Mann’S. (180) word was brought by his secretary, that a cavalier demanded audience of him upon an affair of honour. Gray and I flew behind the curtain of the door. An elderly gentleman, whose attire was not certainly correspondent to the greatness of his birth, entered, and informed the British minister, that one Martin. an English painter, had left a challenge for him at his house, for having said Martin was no gentleman. He would by no means have spoke of the duel before the transaction of it, but that his honour, his blood, his etc. would never permit him to fight with one who was no cavalier; which was what he came to inquire of his excellency. We laughed loud laughs, but unheard: his fright or his nobility had closed his ears. But mark the sequel: the instant he was gone, my very English curiosity hurried me out of the gate
I have this instant received your letter. Lord! I am glad I thought of those parallel passages, since it made you translate them. ’Tis excessively near the original; and yet, I don’t know, ’tis very easy too.-It snows here a little to-night, but it never lies but on the mountains. Adieu! Yours ever.
P.S. What is the history of the theatres this winter?
(179) Sir Charles Etheridge. “She would if She could,” was brought out at the Duke of York’s theatre in February, 1668: Pepys, who was present, calls it “a silly, dull thing; the design and end being mighty insipid."-E.
(180) Sir Horace Mann, created a baronet in 1755. He was appointed minister plenipotentiary from England to the court of Florence in 1740, and continued so until his death, on the 6th November 1786.-E.
145 Letter 18 To The Hon. Henry Seymour Conway, (181) Florence, March 6, 1740, N. S.
Harry, my dear, one would tell you what a monster you are, if one were not sure your conscience tells you so every time you think of me. At Genoa, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and thirty-nine, I received the last letter from you; by your not writing to me since, I imagine you propose to make this a leap year. I should have sent many a scold after you in this long interval, had I known where to have scolded; but you told me you should leave Geneva immediately. I have despatched sundry inquiries into England after you, all fruitless. At last drops in a chance letter to Lady Sophy Farmor, (182) from a girl at Paris, that tells her for news, Mr. Henry Conway is here. Is he, indeed? and why was I to know it only by this scrambling way? Well, I hate you for this neglect, but I find I love you well enough to tell you so. But, dear now, don’t let one fall into a train of excuses and reproaches; if the god of indolence is a mightier deity with you than the god of caring for one, tell me, and I won’t dun you; but will drop your correspondence as silently as if I owed you money.
If my private consistency was of no weight with you, yet, is a man nothing who is within three days’ journey of a conclave? Nay, for what you knew, I might have been in Rome. Harry, art thou so indifferent, as to have a cousin at the election of a pope (183) without courting him for news? I’ll tell you, were I any where else, and even Dick Hammond were at Rome, I think verily I should have wrote to him. Popes, cardinals, adorations, coronations, St. Peter’s! oh, what costly sounds! and don’t you write to one yet? I shall set out in about a fortnight, and pray then think me of consequence.
I have crept on upon time from day to day here; fond of Florence to a degree: ’tis infinitely the most agreeable of all the places I have seen since London: that you know one loves, right or wrong, as one does one’s nurse. Our little Arno is not bloated and swelling like the Thames, but ’tis vastly pretty, and, I don’t know how, being Italian, has something visionary and poetical in its stream. Then one’s unwilling to leave the gallery, and-but-in short, one’s unwilling to get into a postchaise. I am surfeited with mountains and inns, as if I had eat them. I have many to pass before I see England again, and no Tory to entertain me on the road? Well, this thought makes me dull, and that makes me finish. Adieu! Yours ever.
P. S. Direct to me, (for to be sure you will not be so outrageous as to leave me quite off), recornmand4 i Mons. Mann, Ministre de sa Majest`e Britannique @ Florence.
(181) Second Son of Francis first Lord Conway. by Charlotte Shorter, his third wife. He was afterwards secretary in Ireland during the vice-royalty of William fourth Duke of Devonshire; groom of the bedchamber to George ii. and George iii.; secretary of state in 1765; lieutenant-general of the ordnance in 1770; commander in chief in 1782; and a field-marshal in 1793. This correspondence commences when Mr. Walpole was twenty-three years old, and Mr. Conway two years younger. They had gone abroad together, with Mr. Gray, in the year 1739, had spent three months together at Rheims, and afterwards separated at Geneva.
(182) Daughter of the first Earl of Pomfret, and married,, in 1744, to John second Lord Carteret and first Earl of Granville.-E.
(183) As successor of Clement XII., who died in the eighty-eighth year of his age, and the tenth of his pontificate, on the 6th Feb. 1740. The cardinals being uncertain whom to choose, Prosper Lamberteri, the learned and tolerant Archbishop of Ancona, said, with his accustomed good-humour, “If you want a saint, choose Gotti; if a politician, Aldrosandi: but if a good man, take me.” His advice was followed, and he ascended the papal throne as Benedict xiv.-E.
146 Letter 19 To Richard West, Esq. Siena, March 22, 1740, N. S.
Dear West, Probably now you will hear something of the Conclave: we have left Florence, and are got hither on the way to a pope. In three hours’ time we have seen all the good contents of this city: ’tis old, and very snug, with very few inhabitants. You must not believe Mr. Addison about the wonderful Gothic nicety of the dome: the materials are richer, but the workmanship and taste not near so good as in several I have seen. We saw a college of the Jesuits, where there are taught to draw above fifty boys: they are disposed in long chambers in the manner of Eton, but cleaner. N. B. We were not bolstered; (184) so we wished you with us. Our Cicerone, who has less classic knowledge, and more superstition than a colleger, upon showing 147 us the she-wolf, the arms of Siena, told us that Romolus and Remus were nursed by a wolf, per la volonta di Dio, si pu`o dire; and that one might see by the arms, that the same founders built Rome and Siena. Another dab of Romish superstition, not unworthy of Presbyterian divinity, we met with in a book of drawings: ’twas the Virgin standing on a tripod composed of Adam, Eve, and the Devil, to express her immaculate conception.
You can’t imagine how pretty the country is between this and Florence; millions of little hills planted with trees, and tipped with villas or convents. We left unseen the great Duke’s villas and several palaces in Florence, till our return from Rome: the weather has been so cold, how could one go to them? In Italy they seem to have found out how hot their climate is, but not how cold; for there are scarce any chimneys, and most of the apartments painted in fresco so that one has the additional horror of freezing with imaginary marble. The men hang little earthen pans of coals upon their wrists, and the women have portable stoves under their petticoats to warm their nakedness, and carry silver shovels in their pockets, with which their Cicisbeos stir them-Hush! by them, I mean their stoves. I have nothing more to tell you; I’ll carry my letter to Rome and finish it there.
R`e di Coffano, March 23, where lived one of the three kings. The King of Coffano carried presents of myrrh, gold, and frankincense, I don’t know where the devil he found them; for in all his dominions we have not seen the value of a shrub. We have the honour of lodging under his roof to-night. lord! such a place, such an extent of ugliness! A lone inn upon a black mountain, by the side of an old fortress! no curtains or windows, only shutters! no testers to the beds! no earthly thing to eat but some eggs and a few little fishes! This lovely spot is now known by the name of Radi-cofani. Coming down a steep hill with two miserable hackneys, one fell under the chaise; and while we were disengaging him, a chaise came by with a person in a red cloak, a white handkerchief on its head, and a black hat: we thought it a fat old woman; but it spoke in a shrill little pipe, and proved itself to be Senesini. (185) I forgot to tell you an inscription I copied from the portal of the dome of Siena:
Annus centenus Roma seraper est jubilenus: Crimina laxantur si penitet ista dortantur; Sic ordinavit Bonifacius et roboravit.
Rome, March 26
We are this instant arrived, tired and hungry! O! the charming city-I believe it is-for I have not seen a syllable yet, only the Pons Milvius and an obelisk. The Cassian and Flaminian ways were terrible disappointments; not one Rome tomb left; their very ruins ruined. The English are numberless. My dear West, I know at Rome you will not have a grain of pity for one; but indeed ’tis dreadful, dealing with schoolboys just broke loose, or old fools that are come abroad at forty to see the world, like Sir Wilful Witwould.
I don’t know whether you will receive this, or any other I write; but though I shall write often, you and Ashton must not wonder if none come to you; for though I am harmless in my nature, my name has some mystery in it.(186) Good night! I have no more time or paper. Ashton, child, I’ll write to you next post. Write us no treasons, be sure!
(184) An Eton phrase.
(185) Francesco Bernardi, better known by the name of Senesino, a celebrated singer, who, having been engaged for the opera company formed by Handel in 17@20, remained here as principal singer until 1726, when the state of his health compelled him to return to Italy. In 1730 he revisited England, where he remained until about 1734. He was the contemporary, if not the rival of Farinelli; and Mr. Hogarth, in his “Memoirs of the Musical Drama,” (i. 431,) tells us, that when Senesino and Farinelli were in England together, they had not for some time the opportunity of hearing each other, in consequence of their engagements at different theatres. At last, however, they were both engaged to sing on the same stage. Senesino had the part of a furious tyrant, and Farinelli the part of an unfortunate hero in chains; but, in the course of the first act, the captive so softened the heart of the tyrant, that Senesino, forgetting his stage character, ran to Farinelli, and embraced him in his own.-E.
(186) He means the name of Walpole at Rome, where the Pretender and many of his adherents then resided.
148 letter 20 To Richard West, Esq. Rome, April 16th, 1740, N. S.
I’ll tell you, West, because one is amongst new things, you think one can always write new things. When I first came abroad, every thing struck me, and I wrote its history: but now I am grown so used to be surprised, that I don’t perceive any flutter in myself when I meet with any novelties; curiosity and astonishment wear off, and the next thing is, to fancy that other people nnow as much of places as One’s Self; or, at least, one does not remember that they do not. It appears to me as odd to write to you of St. Peter’s, as it would do to you to write of Westminster Abbey. Besides, as one looks at churches, etc. with a book of travels in one’s hand, and sees every thing
I am very glad that I see Rome while it yet exists: before a great number of years are elapsed, I question whether it will be worth seeing. Between the ignorance and poverty of the present Romans, every thing is neglected and falling to decay; the villas are entirely out of repair, and the palaces so ill kept, that half the pictures are spoiled by damp. At the villa Ludovisi is a large oracular head of red marble, colossal, and with vast foramina for the eyes and mouth: the man that showed the palace said it was un ritratto della famiglia? The Cardinal Corsini has so thoroughly pushed on the misery of Rome by impoverishing it, that there is no money but paper to be seen. He is reckoned to have amassed three millions of crowns. You may judge of’ the affluence the nobility live in, when I assure you, that what the chief princes allow for their own eating is a testoon a day; eighteen pence: there are some extend their expense to five pauls, or half a crown: Cardinal Albani is called extravagant for laying out ten pauls for his dinner and supper. You may imagine they never have any entertainments: so far from it, they never have any company. The princesses and duchesses particularly lead the dismallest of lives. Being the posterity of popes, though of worse families than the ancient nobility, they expect greater respect than my ladies the countesses and marquises will pay them; consequently they consort not, but mope in a vast palace with two mniserable tapers, and two or three monsignori, whom they are forced to court and humour, that they may not be entirely deserted. Sundays they do issue forth in a most unwieldy coach to the Corso.
In short ’child, after sunset one passes one’s time here very ill; and if I did not wish for you in the mornings, it would be no compliment to tell you that I do in the evening. Lord! how many English I could change for you, and yet buy you wondrous cheap! And, then French and Germans I could fling into the bargain by dozens. Nations swarm here. You will have a great fat French cardinal garnished with thirty abb`es roll into the area of St. Peter’s, gape, turn short, and talk of the chapel of Versailles. I heard one of them say t’other day, he had been at the Capitale. One asked of course how he liked it-.Oh! il y a assez de belles choses.
Tell Ashton I have received his letter, and will write next post but I am in a violent hurry and have no more time; so Gray finishes this delicately.
Not so delicate; nor indeed would his conscience suffer him to write to you, till he received de vos nouvelles, if he had not the tail of another person’s letter to use by way of evasion. I sha’n’t describe, as being in the only place in the world that deserves it which may seem an odd reason-but they say as how it’s fulsome, and every body does it (and I suppose every body says the same thing); else I should tell’you a vast deal about the Coliseum, and the Conclave, and the Capitol, and these matters. A-propos du Colis`ee, if you don’t know what it is, the Prince Borghese will be very capable of giving you some account of it, who told an Englishman that asked what it was built for: “They say ’twas for Christians to fight with tigers in.” We are just come from adoring a great piece of the true cross, St. Longinus’s spear, and St. Veronica’s handkerchief; all of which have been this evening exposed to view in St. Peter’s. In the same place, and on the same occasion last night, Walpole saw a poor creature naked to the waist discipline himself with a scourge filled with iron prickles, till he made hii-nself a raw doublet, that he took for red satin torn, and showing the skin through. I should tell you, that he fainted away three times at the sight, and I twice and a half at the repetition of it. All this is performed by the light of a vast fiery cross, composed of hundreds of little crystal latmps, which appears through the great altar under the grand tribuna, as if hanging by itself in the air. All the confraternities of the city resort thither in solemn procession, habited in linen frocks, girt with a cord, and their heads covered with a cowl all over, that has only two holes before to see through. Some of these are all black, others parti-coloured and white: and with these masqueraders that vast church is filled, who are seen thumping their breasts, and kissing the pavement with extreme devotion. But methinks I am describing:-’tis an ill habit; but this, like every thing else will wear off We have sent you our compliments by a friend of yours, and correspondent in a corner, who seems a very agreeable man; one Mr. Williams; I am sorry he staid so little a while in Rome. I forget Porto-Bello (187) all this while; pray let us know where it is, and whether you or Ashton had any hand in the taking of’it. Duty to the admiral. Adieu! Ever yours,
T. Gray.
(187) Porto-Bello, taken from the Spaniards by Admiral Vernon, with six ships only, On the 21st Nov. 1740. By the articles of the capitulation, the town was not to be plundered, nor the inhabitants molested in the smallest degree; and the governor and inhabitants expressed themselves in the highest terms, when speaking of the humanity and generosity with which they had been treated by the admiral and the officers of the squadron under his command.-E.
150 Letter 21 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Rome, April, 23, 1740, N. S.
As I have wrote you two such long letters lately, my dear Hal, I did not hurry myself to answer your last; but choose to write to poor SelWyn (188) Upon his illness. I pity you excessively upon finding him in such a situation- what a shock it must have been to you! He deserves so much love from all that know him, and you owe him so much friendship, that I can scarce conceive a greater shock. I am very glad you did not write to me till he was out of danger; for this great distance would have added to my pain, as I must have waited so long for another letter. I charge you, don’t let him relapse into balls: he does not love them, and, if you please, your example may keep him out of them. You are extremely pretty people to be dancing and trading with French poulterers and pastry cooks, when a hard frost is starving half the nation, and the Spanish war ought to be employing the other half. We are much more public spirited here; we live upon the public news, and triumph abundantly upon the taking Porto-Bello. If you are not entirely debauched with your balls, you must be pleased with an answer of Lord Harrington’s (189) to the governor of Rome. He asked him what they had determined about the vessel that the Spaniards took under the canon of Civita Vecchia, whether they had restored it to the English? The governor said, they had done justice. My lord replied, “If you had not, we should have’ done it ourselves.” Pray reverence our spirit, Lieutenant Hal.
Sir, MoscovitEO (190) is not a pretty woman, and she does sing ill; that’s all.
My dear Harry, I must now tell you a little about myself, and answer your questions. How I like the inanimate part of Rome you will soon perceive at my arrival in England; I am far gone in medals, lamps, idols, prints, etc.” and all the small commodities to the purchase of which I can attain; I would buy the Coliseum if I could: Judge. My mornings are spent in the most agreeable manner; my evenings ill enough. Roman conversations are dreadful things! such untoward mawkins as the princesses! and the princes are worse. Then the whole city is littered with French and German abb`es, who make up a dismal contrast with the inhabitants. The conclave is far from enlivening us; its secrets don’t transpire. I could give you names of this cardinal and that, that are talked of, but each is contradicted the next hour. I was there t’other day to visit one of them, and one of the most agreeable, Alexander Albani. I had the opportunity of two cardinals making their entry: upon that occasion the gate is unlocked, and their eminences come to talk to their acquaintance over the threshold. I have received great civilities from him I named to you, and I wish he were out, that I might receive greater: a friend of his does the honours of Rome for him; but you know that it is unpleasant to visit by proxy. Cardinal Delei, the object of the Corsini faction, is dying; the hot weather will probably despatch half a dozen more. Not that it is hot yet; I am now writing to you by my fireside.
Harry, you saw Lord Deskfoord (191) at Geneva; don’t you like him? He is a mighty sensible man. There are few young people have so good understandings. He is mighty grave, and so are you; but you can both be pleasant when you have a mind. Indeed, one can make you pleasant, but his solemn Scotchery is a little formidable: before you 1 can play the fool from morning to night, courageously. Good night. I have other letters to write, and must finish this. Yours ever.
(188) John Selwyn, elder brother of George Augustus Selwyn. He died about 1750.
(189)William Marquis of Hartington. He succeeded his father as fourth Duke of Devonshire in 1755.-E.
(190) Notwithstanding she laboured under such disadvantages-and want of beauty and want of talent are serious ones to a cantatrice,-it will be seen from Walpole’s letter to Mann, 5th Nov. 1741, that the Moscovita, on her arrival here, received six hundred guineas for the season, instead of four hundred, the salary previously given to the , second woman;” and became, moreover, the mistress of Lord Middlesex, the director of the opera.-E.
(191) Son of the Earl of Findlater and Seafield, who succeeded his father in 1764, and died in 1770.-E.
152 Letter 22 To Richard West, Esq. Rome, May 7, 1740, N. S.
Dear West, ’Twould be quite rude and unpardonable in one not to wish you joy upon the great conquests that you are all committing all over the world. We heard the news last night from Naples, that Admiral Haddock (192) had met the Spanish convoy going to Majorca, and taken it all, all; three thousand men, three colonels, and a Spanish grandee. We conclude it is true, for the Neapolitan Majesty mentioned it at dinner. We are going thither in about a week, to wish him joy of it too. ’Tis with some apprehensions we go too, of having a pope chosen in the interim: that would be cruel, you know. But, thank our stars, there is no great probability of it. ’ Feuds and contentions run high among the eminences. A notable one happened this week. Cardinal Zinzendorff and two more had given their votes for the general of the Capucins: he is of the Barberini family, not a cardinal, but a worthy man. Not effecting any thing, Zinzendorff voted for Coscia, and declared it publicly. Cardinal Petra reproved him; but the German replied, he thought Coscia as fit to be pope as any of them. It seems, his pique to the whole body is, their having denied a daily admission of a pig into the conclave for his eminence’s use who, being much troubled with the gout, was ordered by his mother to bathe his leg in pig’s blood every morning.
Who should have a vote t other day but the Cardinalino of Toledo! Were he older, the Queen of Spain might possibly procure more than one for him, though scarcely enough.
Well, but we won’t talk Politics: shall we talk antiquities? Gray and I discovered a considerable curiosity lately. In an unfrequented quarter of the Colonna garden lie two immense fragments of marble, formerly part of a frieze to some building; ’tis not known of what. They are of Parian marble: which may give one some idea of the magnificence of the rest of the building for these pieces were at the very top. Upon inquiry, we were told they had been measured by an architect, who declared they were larger than any member of St. Peter’s. The length of one of the pieces is above sixteen feet. They were formerly sold to a stonecutter for five thousand crowns, but Clement xi. would not permit them to be sawed, annulled the bargain, and laid a penalty of twelve thousand crowns upon the family if they parted with them. I think it was a right judged thing. Is it not amazing, that so vast a structure should not be known of, or that it should be so entirely destroyed? But indeed at Rome this is a common surprise; for, by the remains one sees of the Roman grandeur in their structures, ’tis evident that there must have been more pains taken to destroy those piles than to raise them. They are more demolished than any time or chance could have effected. I am persuaded that in an hundred years Rome will not be worth seeing; ’tis less so now than one would believe. All the public pictures are decayed or decaying; the few ruins cannot last long; and the statues and private collections must be sold, from the great poverty of the families. There are now selling no less than three of the principal collections, the Barberini, the Sacchetti, and Ottoboni: the latter belonged to the cardinal who died in the conclave. I must give you an instance of his generosity, or rather ostentation. When Lord Carlisle was here last year, who is a great virtuoso, he asked leave to see the cardinal’s collection of cameos and intaglios. Ottoboni gave leave, and ordered the person who showed them to observe which my lord admired most. My lord admired many: they were all sent him the next morning. He sent the cardinal back a fine gold repeater; who returned him an acate snuff box, and more cameoes of ten times the value. Voila qui est fini! Had my lord produced more golden repeaters, it would have been begging more cameos. Adieu, my dear West! You see I write often and much, as you desired it. Do answer one now and then, with any little job that is done in England. Good night. Yours ever.
(192) This report, which proved unfounded, was grounded on the fact, that on the 18th of April his Majesty’s ships Lenox, Kent, and Orford, commanded by Captains Mayne, Durell, and Lord Augustus Fitzroy, part of Admiral Balchen’s squadron being on a cruise about forty leagues to the westward of Cape Finisterre, fell in with the Princessa, esteemed the finest ship of war in the Spanish navy, and captured her, after an engagement of five hours.-E.
(193) Henry fourth Earl of Carlisle, grandfather of the present Earl. In 1742, he married Isabella, the daughter of William fourth Lord Byron, and died in 1758.-E.
(194) Cardinal Ottoboni, Dean of the Sacred College, who died in 1740: he had been made a cardinal in 1689.-E.
153 Letter 23 To Richard West, Esq. Naples, June 14, 1740, N. S.
Dear West, One hates writing descriptions that are to be found in every book of travels; but we have seen something to-day that I am sure you never read of, and perhaps never heard of. Have you ever heard of a subterraneous town? a whole Roman town, with all its edifices, remaining under ground? Don’t fancy the inhabitants buried it there to save it from the Goths: they were buried with it themselves; which is a caution we are not told that they ever took. You remember in Titus’s time there were several cities destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, attended with an earthquake. Well, this was one of them, not very considerable, and then called Herculaneum. (195) Above it has since been built Portici, about three miles from Naples, where the King has a villa. This under-ground city is perhaps one of the noblest curiosities that ever has been discovered. It was found out by chance, about a year and half ago. They began digging, they found statues; they dug, further, they found more. Since that they have made a very considerable progress, and find continually. You may walk the compass of a mile; but by the misfortune of the modern town being overhead, they are obliged to proceed with great caution, lest they destroy both one and t’other. By this occasion the path is very narrow, just wide enough and high enough for one man to walk upright. They have hollowed, as they found it easiest to work, and have carried their streets not exactly where were the ancient ones, but sometimes before houses, sometimes through them. You would imagine that all the fabrics were crushed together; on the contrary., except some columns, they have found all the edifices standing upright in their proper ’ situation. There is one inside of a temple quite perfect, with the middle arch, two columns, and two pilasters. It is built of brick plastered over, and painted with architecture almost all the insides of the houses are in the same manner; and, what is very particular the general ground of all the painting is red. Besides this temple, they make out very plainly an amphitheatre: the stairs, of white marble and the seats are very perfect; the inside was painted in the same colour with the private houses, and great part cased with white marble. They have found among other things some fine statues, some human bones, some rice, medals, and a few paintings extremely fine. These latter are preferred to all the ancient paintings that have ever been discovered. We have not seen them yet, as they are kept in the King’s apartment, whither all these curiosities are transplanted; and ’tis difficult to see them-but we shall. I forgot to tell you, that in several places the beams of the houses remain, but burnt to charcoal; so little damaged that they retain visibly the grain of the wood, but upon touching crumble to ashes. What is remarkable, there are no other marks or appearance of fire, but what are visible on these beams.
There might certainly be collected great light from this reservoir of antiquities, if a man of learning had the inspection of it; if he directed the working, and would make a journal of the discoveries. But I believe there is no judicious choice made of directors. There is nothing of the kind known in the world; I mean a Roman city entire of that age, and that has not been corrupted with modern repairs. (196) Besides scrutinising this very carefully, I should be inclined to search for the remains of the other towns that were partners with this in the general ruin. ’Tis certainly an advantage to the learned world, that this has been laid up so long. Most of the discoveries in Rome were made in a barbarous age, where they only ransacked the ruins in quest of treasure, and had no regard to the form and being of the building; or to any circumstances that might give light to its use and history. I shall finish this long account with a passage which Gray has observed in Statius, and which correctly pictures out this latent city:-
Haec ego Chalcidicis ad te, Marcelle, sonabam
Littoribus, fractas ubi Vestius egerit iras,
Emula Trinacriis volvens incendia flammis.
Mira fides! credetne viram ventura propago,
Cum segetes iterum, cum jam haec deserta virebunt,
Infra urbes populosque premi?
SyLv. lib. iv. epist. 4.
Adieu, my dear West! and believe me yours ever.
(195) Some excavations were made at Herculaneum in 1709 by the Prince d’Elbeuf; but, thirty years elapsed after the prince had been forbidden to dig further, before any more notice was taken of them. In December 1738 the King of the two Sicilies was at Portici, and gave orders for the prosecution of these subterranean labours. There had been an excavation in the time of the Romans; and another so lately as 1689. In a letter from Gray to his mother, he describes their visits to Herculaneum; but, not mentioning it by name, Mason supposed it had not then been discovered to be that city. It is evident, from this observation of Walpole, that Mason’s opinion was unfounded.-E.
(196) Pompei a was not then discovered.
155 Letter 24 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. R`e di Cofano, vulg. Radicofani, July 5, 1740, N. S.
You will wonder, my dear Hal, to find me on the road from Rome: why, intend I did to stay for a new popedom, but the old eminences are cross and obstinate, and will not choose one the Holy Ghost does not know when. There is a horrid thing called the mallaria, that comes to Rome, every summer, and kills one, and I did not care for being killed so far from Christian burial. We have been jolted to death; my servants let us come without springs to the chaise, and we are wore threadbare: to add to our disasters, I have sprained my ancle, and have brought it along, laid upon a little box of baubles that I have bought for presents in England. Perhaps I may pick you out some little trifle there, but don’t depend
Florence, July 9.
My dear Harry, We are come hither, and I have received another letter from you with Hosier’s Ghost. Your last put me in pain for you, when you talked of going to Ireland; but now I find your brother and sister go with you, I am not much concerned. Should I be? You have but to say, for my feelings are extremely at your service to dispose as you please. Let us see: you are to come back to stand for some place; that will be about April. ’Tis a sort of thing I should do, too; and then we should see one another, and that would be charming; but it is a sort of thing I have no mind to do; and then we shall not see one another, unless you would come hither-but that you cannot do: nay, I would not have you, for then I shall be gone. So! there are many @ that just signify nothing at all. Return I must sooner than I shall like. I am happy here to a degree. I’ll tell you my situation. I am lodged with Mr. Mann, (198) the best of creatures. I have a terreno all to myself, with an open gallery on the Arno, where I am now writing to you. Over against me is the famous Gallery; and, on either hand, two fair bridges. Is not
You see how glad I am to have reasons for not returning; I wish I had no better.
As to Hosier’s Ghost, (203) I think it very easy, and consequently pretty; but, from the ease, should never have guessed it Glover’s. I delight in your, “the patriots cry it up, and the courtiers cry it down, and the hawkers cry it up and down,” and your laconic history of the King and Sir Robert, on going to Hanover, and turning out the Duke of Argyle. The epigram, too, you sent me on the same occasion is charming.
Unless I sent you back news that you and others send me, I can send you none. I have left the conclave, which is the only stirring thing in this part of the world, except the child that the Queen of Naples is to be delivered of in August. There is no likelihood the conclave will end, unless the messages take effect which ’tis said the Imperial and French ministers have sent to their respective courts for leave to quit the Corsini for the Albani faction: otherwise there will never be a pope. Corsini has lost the only one he could have ventured to make pope, and him he designed; ’twas Cenci, a relation of the Corsini’s mistress. The last morning Corsini made him rise, stuffed a dish of chocolate down his throat, and would carry him to the scrutiny. The poor old creature went, came back, and died. I am sorry to have lost the sight of the pope’s coronation, but I might have stayed for seeing it till I had been old enough to be pope myself.
Harry, what luck the chancellor has! first, indeed, to be in himself so great a man; but then in accidents: he is made chief justice and peer, when Talbot is made chancellor and peer: (204) Talbot dies in a twelvemonth, and leaves him the seals at an age when others are scarce made solicitors: (205)-then marries his son into one of the first families of Britain, (206) obtains a patent for a marquisate and eight thousand pounds a year after the Duke of Kent’s
There, Harry,-I have done. Don’t suspect me: I have said no ill of you behind your back. Make my best compliments to Miss Conway. (208)
I thoght I had done, and lo, I had forgot to tell you, that who d’ye think is here?-Even Mr. More! our Rheims Mr. More! the fortification, hornwork, ravelin, bastion Mr. More! which is very pleasant sure. At the end of the eighth side, I think I need make no excuse for leaving off; but I am going to write to Selwyn, and to the lady of the mountain; from whom I have had a very kind letter. She has at last received the Chantilly brass. Good night: write to me from one end of the world to t’other. Yours ever.
(197) A large old house, two miles from the seat of Sir Arthur Acheson, near Market-hill, and the scene of Swift’s humorous poem, “The Grand Question debated, whether Hamilton’s Bawn should be turned into a barrack or a malt-house."-E.
(198) Afterwards Sir Horace Mann. He was at this time resident at Florence from George ii.
(199) Henrietta Louisa, wife of Thomas Earl of Pomfret. [She was the daughter of John Lord Jefferies, Baron of Wem. Lady Pomfret, who was the friend and correspondent of Frances Duchess of Somerset, retired from the court upon the death of Queen Caroline in 1737.]
(200) Afterwards married to John Lord Carteret, who became Earl of Granville on the death of his mother in the year 1744.
(201) Lady Charlotte Fermor married, in August 1746, William Finch, brother of Daniel seventh Earl of Winchelsea, by whom she had issue a son, George, who, on the death of his uncle, in 1769, succeeded to the earldom. Her ladyship was governess to the children of George iii., and highly esteemcd by him and his royal consort.-E.
(202) The Princess Craon was the favourite mistress of Leopold the last Duke of Lorrain, who married her to M. de Beauveau, and prevailed on the Emperor to make him a prince of the empire. They at this time resided at Florence, where Prince Craon was at the head of the council of regency.
(203) This was a party ballad (written by Glover, though by some at the time ascribed to Lord Bath,) on the taking of Porto-Bello by Admiral Vernon. “The case of Hosier,” says Bishop Percy, in his admirable Reliques, vol. ii. p. 382, where the song is preserved, “The case of Hosier, which is here so pathetically represented, was briefly this. In April 1726, that commander was sent with a strong fleet into the Spanish West Indies to block up the galleons in the port of that country, or, should they presume to come out, to seize and carry them to England: he accordingly arrived at Bastimentos, near Porto-Bello; but, being employed rather to overawe than attack the Spaniards, with whom it was probably not our interest to go to war, he continued long inactive on this station. He afterwards removed to Carthagena, and remained crusing in those seas, till the greater part of his men perished deplorably by the diseases of that unhealthy Climate. This brave man, seeing his best officers and men thus daily swept away, his ships exposed to inevitable destruction, and himself made the sport of the enemy, is said to have died of a broken heart.-E.
(204) Philip Yorke Lord Hardwicke was the son of an attorney at Dover, and was introduced by the Duke of Newcastle to Sir Robert Walpole. He was attorney-general, and when Talbot, the solicitor-general, was preferred to him in the contest for the chancellorship, Sir Robert made him chief justice for life, with an increased salary. He was an object of aversion to Horace Walpole, who, in his Memoirs, tells us, “in the House of Lords, he was laughed at, in the cabinet despised.” Upon which it is very properly observed by the noble editor of those memoirs, Lord Hollan,-"Yet, in the course of the work, Walpole laments Lord Hardwicke’s influence in the cabinet, where he would have us believe that he was despised, and acknowledges that he exercised a dominion nearly absolute over that house of Parliament which, he would persuade his readers, laughed at him. The truth is, that, wherever this great magistrate is mentioned, Lord Orford’s resentments blind his judgment and disfigure his narrative."-E.
(205) charles Talbot baron Talbot was, on the 29th Nov. 1733, made lord high chancellor and created a baron; and, dying in Feb. 1737, was succeeded by Lord Hardwicke. There is a story current, that Sir Robert Walpole, finding it difficult to prevail on Yorke to quit a place for life, for the higher but more precarious dignity of chancellor, worked upon his jealousy, and said that if he persisted in refusing the seals, he must offer them to Fazakerly. “Fazakerly!” exclaimed Yorke, “impossible! he is certainly a Tory, perhaps a Jacobite.” “It’s all very true,” replied Sir Robert, taking out his watch; " but if by one o’clock you do not accept my offer, Fazakerly by two becomes lord keeper of the great seal, and one of the staunchest Whigs in all England!” Yorke took the seals and the peerage.-E.
(206) That of Grey, Duke of Kent, see avove.-E.
(207) Miss Jane Conway, half-sister to Henry Seymour Conway. She died unmarried in 1749.
(208) Afterwirds married to John Harris, Esq. of Hayne in Devonshire.
159 Letter 25 To Richard West, Esq. Florence, July 31, 1740, N. S.
Dear West, I have advised with the most notable antiquarians of this city on the meaning of Thur gut Luetis. I can get no satisfactory interpretation. In my own opinion ’tis Welsh. I don’t love offering conjectures on a language in which I have hitherto made little proficiency, but I will trust you with my explication. You know the famous Aglaughlan, mother of Cadwalladhor, was renowned for her conjugal virtues, and grief on the death of her royal spouse. I conclude this medal was struck in her regency, by her express order, to the memory of her lord, and that the inscription Thur gut Luetis means no more than her dear Llewis or Llewellin.
In return for your coins I send you two or three of different kinds. The first is a money of one of the kings of Naples; the device, a horse; the motto, Equitas regni. This curious pun is on a coin in the Great Duke’s collection, and by great chance I have met with a second. Another is, a satirical medal struck on Lewis xiv.; ’tis a bomb, covered with flower-de-luces, bursting; the motto, Se ipsissimo. The last, and almost the only one I ever saw with a text well applied, is a German medal with a Rebellious town besieged and blocked up; the inscription, This kind is not expelled but by fasting. Now I mention medals, have they yet struck the intended one on the taking of Porto-Bello? Admiral Vernon will shine in our medallic history. We have just received the news of the bombarding Carthagena, and the taking Chagre. (209) We are in great expectation of some important victory obtained by the squadron under Sir John Norris. we are told the Duke is to be of the expedition; is it true? (210) All the letters, too, talk of France suddenly declaring war; I hope they will defer it for a season, or one shall be obliged to return through Germany.
The conclave still subsists, and the divisions still increase; it was very near separating last week, but by breaking into two popes; they were on the dawn of a schism. Aldovrandi had thirty-three voices for three days, but could not procure the requisite two more; the Camerlingo having engaged his faction to sign a protestation against him and each party were inclined to elect. I don’t know whether one should wish for a schism or not; it might probably rekindle the zeal for the church in the powers of Europe which has been so far decaying. On Wednesday we expect a third she-meteor. Those learned luminaries the Ladies Pomfret and Walpole are to be joined by the Lady Mary Wortley Montague. You have not been witness to the rhapsody of mystic nonsense which these two fair ones debate incessantly, and consequently cannot figure what must be the issue of this triple alliance: we have some idea of it. Only figure the coalition of prudery, debauchery, sentiment, history, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and metaphysics; all, except the second, understood by halves, by quarters, or not at all. You shall have the journals of this notable academy. Adieu, my dear West! Yours ever,
Hor. Walpole.
Though far unworthy to enter into so learned and political a correspondence, I am employed pour barbouiller une page de 7 pounces et demie en hauteur, et `a en largeur; and to inform you that we are at Florence, a city of Italy, and the capital of Tuscany: the latitude I cannot justly tell, but it is governed by a prince called Great Duke; an excellent place to employ all one’s animal sensations in, but utterly contrary to one’s rational powers. I have struck a medal upon myself: the device is thus 0, and the motto Nihilissimo, which I take in the most concise manner to contain a full account of my person, sentiments, occupations, and late glorious successes. If you choose to be annihilated too, you cannot do better than undertake this journey. Here you shall get up at twelve o’clock, breakfast till three, dine till five, sleep till six, drink cooling liquors till eight, go to the bridge till ten, sup till two, and so sleep till twelve again.
Lahore fessi venimus ad larem nostrum,
Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto;
Hoc est, quod unum est, pro laborious tantis.
O quid solutis est beatius curis?
We shall never come home again; a universal war is just upon the point of breaking out; all outlets will be shut up. I shall be secure in my nothingness, while you, that will be so absurd as to exist, will envy me. You don’t tell me what proficiency you make in the noble science of defence. Don’t you start still at the sound of a gun? Have you learned to say ha! ha! and is your neck clothed with thunder? Are your whiskers of a tolerable length? And have you got drunk yet with brandy and gunpowders? Adieu, noble captain! T. Gray.
(209) On the 24th March, 1740, the Spaniards hung out a white flag, and the place was surrendered by capitulation to Admiral Vernon.-E.
(210) The Duke of Cumberland had resolved to accompany Sir John Norris as a volunteer, and sailed with him from St. Helens on the 10th June; but on the 17th a gale arising drove them into Torbay, Where Sir John continued until the 29th, when he again put to sea; but the wind once more becoming contrary, and blowing very hard, he was constrained to return to Spithead, and on the following day his royal highness returned to London.-E.
161 Letter 26 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Florence, September 25, 1740, N. S.
My dear Hal, I begin to answer your letter the moment I have read it, because you bid me; but I grow so unfit for a correspondence with any body in England, that I have almost left it off. ’Tis so long since I was there, and I am so utterly a stranger to every thing that passes there, that I must talk vastly in the dark to those I write: and having in a manner settled myself here, where there can be no news, I am void of all matter for filling up a letter. As, by the absence of the Great Duke, Florence is become in a manner a country town, you
Did I tell you Lady Mary Wortley is here? She laughs at my Lady Walpole, scolds my Lady Pomfret, and is laughed at by the whole town. (211) Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze any one that never heard her name. She wears a foul mob, that does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled; an old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvass petticoat. Her face swelled violently on one side with the remains of a-, partly covered with a plaster, and partlv with white paint, which for cheapness she has bought so coarse, that you would not use it to wash a chimney.-In three words I will give you her picture (212) as we drew it in the Sortes Virgilianae-Insanam vatem aepicies.
I give you my honour, we did not choose it; but Mr. Gray, Mr. Cooke, (213) Sir Francis Dashwood, (214) and I, and several others, drew it fairly amongst a thousand for different people, most of which did not hit as you may imagine: those that did I will tell you.
For our most religious and gracious-
-Dii, talem terris avertite pestem.
For one that would be our most religious and gracious.
Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro
Languescit moriens, lassove papavera collo
Demis`ere caput, pluvia cum fort`e gravantur.
For his son.
Regis Romani: primus qui legibus urbem Fundabit,
Curibus
parvis et paupere terra, Missus in imperium magnum.
For Sir Robert.
Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt Moliri,
et late
fines custode tueri.
I will show you the rest when I see you.
(211) In a letter from Florence, written by Lady Mary to Mr. Wortley, on the 11th of August, she says, “Lord and Lady Pomfret take pains to make the place agreeable to me, and I have been visited by the greatest part of the people of quality.” See the edition of her works, edited by Lord Wharncliffe, vol. ii. p. 325.-E.
(212) The following favourable picture” of Lady Mary is by Spence, who met her at Rome, in the ensuing January:-” She is one of the most shining characters in the world, but shines like a comet; she is all irregularity, and always wandering; the most wise, most imprudent; loveliest, most disagreeable; best-natured, cruellest woman in the world; ’all things by turns, and nothing long.’"-E.
(213) George Cooke, Esq. afterwards member for Tregony, and chief prothonotary in the Court of Common Pleas. On Mr. Pitt’s return to office in 1766 he was appointed joint paymaster-general, and died in 1768. See Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 338.-E.
(214) Sir Francis Dashwood, who, on the death of John Earl of Westmoreland, succeeded to the barony of Le Despencer, as being the only son of Mary, eldest sister of the said Earl, and which was confirmed to him 19th April’1763.-E.
163 Letter 27 To Sir Richard West, Esq. Florence, Oct. 2, 1740, N. S.
Dear West, T’other night as we (you know who we are) were walking on the charming bridge, just before going to a wedding assembly, we said, Lord, I wish, just as we are got into the room, they would call us out, and say, West is arrived! We would make him dress instantly, and carry him back to the entertainment. How he would stare and wonder at a thousand things, that no longer strike us as odd!” Would not you? One agreed that you should come directly by sea from Dover, and be set down at Leghorn, without setting foot in any other foreign town, and so land at Us, in all your first full amaze; for you are to know, that astonishment rubs off violently; we did not cry out Lord! half so much at Rome as at Calais, which to this hour I look upon as one of the most surprising cities in the universe. My dear child, what if you were to take this little sea-jaunt? One would recommend Sir John Norris’s convoy to you, but one should be laughed at now for supposing that he is ever to sail beyond Torbay.(215) The Italians take Torbay for an English town in the hands of the Spaniards, after the fashion of Gibraltar, and imagine ’tis a wonderful strong place, by our fleet’s having retired from before it so often, and so often returned. We went to this wedding that I told you of; ’twas a charming feast: a large palace finely illuminated;
Now I’ll answer your questions.
I have made no discoveries in ancient or modern arts. Mr. Addison travelled through the poets, and not through Italy; for all his ideas are borrowed from the descriptions, and not from the reality. He saw places as they were, not as they are. I am very well acquainted with Dr. Cocchi; (217) he is a good sort of man, rather than a great man; he is a plain honest creature, with quiet knowledge, but I dare say all the English have told you, he has a very particular understanding: I really don’t believe they meant to impose on you, for they thought so. As to Bondelmonti, he is much less; he is a low mimic; the brightest cast of his parts attains to the composition of a sonnet: he talks irreligion with- English boys, sentiment with my sister, (218) and bad French with any one that will hear him. I will transcribe you a little song that he made t’other day; ’tis pretty enough; Gray turned it into Latin, and I into English; you will honour him highly by putting it into French, and Asheton into Greek. Here ’tis. Spesso Amor sotto la forma D’amista ride, e s’asconde; Poi si mischia, e si confonde Con lo sdegno e col rancor.
In pietade ei si trasforma,
Pas trastullo e par dispetto;
ma nel suo diverso aspetto,
Sempre egli `a l’istesso Amor.
Risit amicitiae interd`um velatus amictu,
Et ben`e composit`a veste fefellit Amor:
Mox irae assumpsit cultus faciemque minantem,
Inque odium versus, versus et in lacrymas:
Ludentem fuge, nec lacrymanti aut furenti;
Idem est dissimili semper in ore Deus.
Love often in the comely mien
Of friendship fancies to be seen;
Soon again he shifts his dress,
And wears disdain and rancour’s face.
To gentle pity then he changes-
Thro’ wantonness, thro’ piques he ranges;
But in whatever shape he moves,
He’s still himself, and still is Love.
See how we trifle! but one can’t pass one’s youth too amusingly for one must grow old, and that in England; two most serious circumstances, either of which makes people gray in the twinkling of a bedstaff; for know you there is not a country upon earth where there are so many old fools and so few young ones.
Now I proceed in my answers.
I made but small collections, and have only bought some bronzes and medals, a few busts, and two or three pictures: one of my busts is to be mentioned; ’tis the famous vespasian in touchstone, reckoned the best in Rome, except the Caracalia of the Farnese- I gave but twenty-two POUDds for it at Cardinal Ottoboni’s sale. One of my medals is as great a curiosity; ’tis of Alexander Severus, with the amphitheatre in brass; this reverse is extant on medals of his, but mine is a medagliuncino, or small medallion, and The Only one with this reverse known in the world: ’twas found by a peasant while I was in Rome, and sold by him for sixpence to an antiquarian, to whom I paid for it seven guineas and a half: but to virtuosi ’tis worth any sum.
As to Tartini’s (219) musical compositions, ask Gray; I know but little in music.
But for the Academy, I am not of it, but frequently in company with it: ’tis all disjointed. Madame * * *, who, though a learned lady, has not lost her modesty and character, is extremely scandalized with the other two dames, especially Moll Worthless, who knows no bounds. She is at rivalry with Lady W. for a certain Mr. * * *, whom perhaps you knew at Oxford. If you did not, I’ll tell you: he is a grave young man by temper, and a rich one by constitution; a shallow creature by nature, but a wit by the grace of our women here, whom he deals with as of old with the Oxford toasts. He fell into sentiments with my Lady W. and was happy to catch her at Platonic love; but as she seldom stops there, the poor man will be frightened out of his senses when she shall break the matter to him; for he never dreamt that her purposes were so naught. Lady Mary is so far gone, that to get him from the mouth of her antagonist she literally took him out to dance country dances last night at a formal ball, where there was no measure kept in laughing at her old, foul, tawdry, painted, plastered personage. She played at pharaoh two or three times at Princess Craon’s, where she cheats horse and foot. She is really entertaining: I have been reading her works, which she lends out in manuscript, but they are too womanish: I like few of her performances. I forgot to tell you a good answer of Lady Pomfret to mr. W. *** who asked her if she did not approve Platonic love. “Lord, sir,” says she, , “I am sure any one that knows me never heard that I had any love but one, and there sit two proofs of it,” pointing to her two daughters.
So I have given you a sketch of our employments, and answered your questions, and will with pleasure as many more as you have about you. Adieu! Was ever such a lon@ letter? But ’tis nothing to what I shall have to say to you. I shaft scold you for never telling us any news, public or private, no deaths, riiarriages, or mishaps; no account of new books: Oh, you are abominable! I could find it in my heart to hate You if I did not love you so well; but we will quarrel now, that we may be the better friends when we meet: there is no danger of that, is there? Good night, whether friend or foe! I am most sincerely Yours.
(215) Though brave, skilful, and enterprising Sir John failed to acquire renown, in consequence of mere accidents. On the breaking out of the Spanish war, he was ordered to cruise in the Bay of Biscay; but, owing to tempestuous weather, was compelled to put into port for the winter. The following lines were addressed to him upon this occasion:
“Homeward, oh! bend thy course; the seas are rough; To the Land’s End who sails has sailed enough.” E.
(216) Walpole calls the Hercules’ Pillars an alehouse. Whatever it might have been at the period he wrote, it is very certain that, after the peace of 1762, it was a respectable tavern, where the Marquis of Granby, and other persons of rank, particularly military men, had frequent dinner parties, which were then fashionable. It was also an inn of great repute among the west-country gentlemen, coming to London for a few weeks, who thought themselves fortunate if they could secure accommodations for their families at the Hercules’ Pillars. The spot where it once stood, is now occupied by the noble mansion of the Duke of Wellington.-E.
(217) Dr. Antonio Cocchi, a learned physician, resident at Florence, who published a collection of Greek writers upon medicine. He figures conspicuously in Spence’s Anecdotes.-E.
(218) Margaret Rolle, wife of Robert Walpole, eldest son of Sir Robert Walpole, created Lord Walpole during the lifetime of his father.
(219) Giuseppe Tartini of Padua, whom Viotti pronounced the last great improver of the practice of the violin. Several of Tartini’s compositions are particularized in that amusing little volume, “The Violin and its Professors,” by Mr. Dubourg, who has recorded in quaint verse the well-known story of the “Devil’s Sonata,” a piece of diablerie, the result of which is that to this day, Tartini’s tale hath made all fiddlers say, A hard sonata is the devil to play!-E.
166 Letter 28 To Richard West, Esq. >From Florence, Nov. 1740.
Child, I am going to let you see your shocking proceedings with us. On my conscience, I believe ’tis three months since you wrote to either Gray or me. If you had been ill, Ashton would have said so; and if you had been dead the gazettes would have said it. If you had been angry,-but that’s impossible; how can one quarrel with folks three thousand miles off? We are neither divines nor commentators, and consequently have not hated you on paper. ’Tis to show that my charity for you cannot be interrupted at this distance that I write to you, though I have nothing to say, for ’tis a bad time for small news; and when emperors and czarinas are dying all up and down Europe, one can’t pretend to tell you of any thing that happens within our sphere. Not but that we have our accidents too. if you have had a great wind in England, we have had a great water at Florence. We have been trying to set out every day, and pop upon you (220) * * * * * It is fortunate that we stayed, for I don’t know what had become of us! Yesterday, with violent rains, there came flouncing down from the mountains such a flood that it floated the whole city. The jewellers on the Old Bridge removed their commodities, -and in two hours after the bridge was cracked. The torrent broke down the quays and drowned several coach-horses, which are kept here in stables under ground. We were moated into our house all day, which is near the Arno, and had the miserable spectacles of the ruins that were washed along with the hurricane. There was a cart with two oxen not quite dead, and four men in it drowned: but what was ridiculous, there came tiding along a fat haycock, with a hen and her eggs, and a cat. The torrent is considerably abated; but we expect terrible news from the country, especially from Pisa, which stands so much lower, and nearer the sea. There is a stone here, which, when the water overflows, Pisa is entirely flooded. The water rose two ells yesterday above that stone. Judge!
For this last month we have passed our time but dully; all diversions silenced on the emperor’s death, (221) and everybody out of town. I have seen nothing but cards and dull pairs of cicisbeos. I have literally seen so much love and pharaoh since being here, that I believe I shall never love either again so long as I live. Then I am got in a horrid lazy way of a morning. I don’t believe I should know seven o’clock in the morning again if I was to see it. But I am returning to England, and shall grow very solemn and wise! Are you wise’( Dear West, have pity on one who have done nothing of gravity for these two years, and do laugh sometimes. We do nothing else, and have contracted such formidable ideas of the good people of England that we are already nourishing great black eyebrows and great black beards, and teasing our countenances into wrinkles. Then for the common talk of the times, we are quite at a loss, and for the dress. You would oblige us exceedingly
As our departure depends entirely upon the weather, we cannot tell you to a day when we shall say Dear West, how glad I am to see you! and all the many questions and answers that we shall give and take. Would the day were come! Do but figure to yourself the journey we are to pass through first! But you can’t conceive Alps, Apennines, Italian inns, and postchaises. I tremble at the thoughts. They were just sufferable while new and unknown, and as we met them by the way in coming to Florence, Rome, and Naples; but they are passed, and the mountains remain! Well, write to one in the interim; direct to me addressed to Monsieur Selwyn, chez Monsieur.Ilexandre, Rue St. Apolline, a Paris. If Mr. Alexandre is not there, the street is, and I believe that will be sufficient. Adieu, my dear child! Yours ever.
(220) A line of the manuscript is here torn away.
(221) Charles the Sixth, Emperor of Germany, upon whose death, on the 9th of October, his eldest daughter, Maria-Theresa, in virtue of the Pragmatic Sanction, instantly succeeded to the whole Austrian inheritance.-E.
168 Letter 29 To The Rev. Joseph Spence. (222) Florence, Feb. 21, 1741, N. S.
Sir, Not having time last post, I begged Mr. Mann to thank you for the obliging paragraph for me in your letter to him. But as I desire a nearer correspondence with you than by third hands, I assure you in my own proper person that I shall have great pleasure, on our meeting in England, to renew an acquaintance that ’I began with so much pleasure in Italy. (223) I Will not reckon you among my modern friends, but in the first article of virtu: you have given me so many new lights into a science that but a warmth and freedom that will flow from my friendship, and which will not be contained within the circle of a severe awe. As I shall always be attentive to give you any satisfaction that lies in my power, I take the first opportunity of sending you two little poems, both by a hand that I know you esteem the most; if you have not seen them, you will thank me for lilies of Mr. Pope: if you have, why I did not know it.
I don’t know whether Lord Lincoln has received any orders to return home: I had a letter from one of my brothers last post to tell me from Sir Robert that he would have me leave Italy as soon as possible, lest I should be shut up unawares by the arrival of the Spanish troops; and that I might pass some time in France if I had amind. I own I don’t conceive how it is possible these troops should arrive without its being known some time before. And as to the Great Duke’s dominions, one can always be out of them in ten hours or less. If Lord Lincoln has not received the same orders.. I shall believe what I now think, that I am wanted for some other reason. I beg my kind love to Lord Lincoln, and that Mr. Spence will believe me, his sincere humble servant Hor. Walpole.
(222) The well-known friend of Pope and author of the Polymetis, who was then travelling on the Continent with Henry, Earl of Lincoln, afterwards Duke of Newcastle. See ante p. 140, (Letter 14, and footnote 175).-E.
(223) This acquaintance proved of infinite service to Walpole, shortly after the date of this letter, when he was laid up with a quinsy at Reggio. Spence thus describes the circumstance: “About three or four in the morning I was surprised with a message, saying that Mr. Walpole was very much worse, and desired to see me; I went, and found him scarce able to speak. I soon learned from his servants that he had been all the while without a physician, and had doctored himself; so I immediately sent for the best aid the place would afford, and despatched a messenger to the minister at Florence, desiring him to send my friend Dr. Cocchi. In about twenty-four hours I had the satisfaction to find Mr. Walpole better: we left him in a fair way of recovery, and we hope to see him next week at Venice. I had obtained leave of Lord Lincoln to stay behind some days if he had been worse. You see what luck one has sometimes in going out of one’s way. If Lord Lincoln had not wandered to Reggio, Mr. Walpole (who is one of the best-natured and most sensible young gentlemen England affords) would have, in all probability, fallen a sacrifice to his disorder."-E.
169 Letter 30 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Florence, March 25th, 1741, N. S.
Dear Hal, You must judge by what you feel yourself of what I feel for Selwyn’s recovery, with the addition of what I have suffered from post to post. But as I find the whole town have had the same sentiments about him, (though I am sure few so strong as myself,) I will not repeat what you have heard so much. I shall write to him to-night, though he knows without my telling him how very much I love him. To you, my dear Harry, I am infinitely obliged for the three successive letters you wrote me about him, which gave me double pleasure, as they showed your attention for me at a time that you know I must be so unhappy; and your friendship for him. Your account of Sir Robert’s victory (224) was so extremely
I was to have set out last Tuesday, but on Sunday came the news of the Queen of Hungary being brought to bed of a son; (226) on which occasion here will be great triumphs, operas and masquerades, which detain me for a short time.
I won’t make you any excuse for sending you the follOWing lines; you have prejudice enough for me to read with patience any Of My idlenesses. (227)
My dear Harry, you enrage me with talking of another journey to Ireland; it will shock me if I don’t find you at my return: pray take care and be in England.
I wait with some patience to see Dr. Middleton’s Tully, as I read the greatest part of it in manuscript; though indeed ’tis rather a reason for my being impatient to read the rest. If Tully can receive any additional honour, Dr. Middleton is most capable of conferring it. (228)
I receivc with great pleasure any remembrances of my lord and your sisters; I long to see all of you. Patapan is so handsome that he has been named the silver fleece; and there is a new order of knighthood to be erected to his honour, in opposition to the golden. Precedents are searching, and plans drawing up for that purpose. I hear that the natives pretend to be companions, upon the authority of their dogskin waistcoats; but a council that has been held on purpose has declared their pretensions impertinent. Patapan has lately taken wife unto him, as ugly as he is genteel, but of a very great family, being the direct heiress of Canis Scaliger, Lord of Verona: which principality we design to seize `a la Prussienne; that is, as soon as ever we shall have persuaded the republic of Venice that we are the best friends they have in the world. Adieu, dear child! Yours ever.
P. S. I left my subscriptions for Middleton’s Tully with Mr. Selwyn; I won’t trouble him, but I wish you would take care and get the books, if Mr. S. has kept the list.
(224) On the event of Mr. Sandys’ motion in the House of commons to remove Sir Robert Walpole from the King’s presence and councils for ever. [The motion was negatived by 290 against 106: an unusual majority, which proceeded from the schism between the Tories and the Whigs, and the secession of Shippen and his friends. The same motion was made by Lord-Carteret in the House of Lords, and negatived by 108 against 59.-E.)
(225) The print alluded to exhibits an interesting view of Whitehall, the Treasury, and adjoining buildings, as they stood at the time. The Earl of Chesterfield, as postilion of a coach which is going full speed towards the Treasury, drives over all in his way. The Duke of Argyle is coachman, flourishing a sword instead of a whip; while Doddington is represented as a spaniel, sitting between his legs. Lord Carteret, perceiving the coach about to be overturned, is calling to the coachman,"Let me get out!” Lord Cobbam, as the footman, is holding fast on by the straps; while Lord Lyttleton is ambling by the side on a rosinante as thin as himself. Smallbrook, Bishop of Lichfield, is bowing obsequiously as they pass; while Sandys, letting fall the place-bill, exclaims, ,I thought what would come of putting him on the box.” In the foreground is Pulteney, leading several figures by strings from their noses, and wheeling a barrow filled with the Craftsman’s Letters, Champion, State of the Nation, and Common Sense, exclaiming, “Zounds, they are over!” This caricature, and another, entitled " The Political Libertines, or Motion upon Motion,” had been provoked by one put forth by Sir Robert Walpole’s opponents, entitled “The Grounds for the Motion;” and were followed up by another from the supporters of Sandys’ motion, entitled “The Motive or Reason for his Triumph,” which the caricaturist attributes entirely to bribery.-E.
(226) Afterwards Joseph the Second, emperor of Germany.-E.
(227) Here follows the Inscription for the neglected column in the place of St. Mark, at Florence, afterwards printed in the Fugitive Pieces.
(228) Dr. Middleton’s “History of the Life of Cicero” was published in the early part of this year, by subscription, and dedicated to Pope’s enemy, Lord Hervey. This laboured encomium on his lordship obtained for the doctor a niche in the Dunciad:-
Narcissus, praised with all a Parson’s power,
Look’d a white lily sunk beneath a shower."-E.
170 Letter 31
To Richard West, Esq.
Reggio, May 1 1741, N. S.
Dear West, I have received the end of your first act, (229) and now will tell you sincerely what I think of it. If I was not so pleased with the beginning as I usually am with your compositions, believe me the part of Pausanias has charmed me. There is all imaginable art joined with all requisite simplicity: and a simplicity, I think, much preferable to that in the scenes of Cleodora and Argilius. Forgive me, if I say they do not talk laconic but low English in her, who is Persian too, there would admit more heroic. But for the whole part of Pausanias, ’tis great and well worried up, and the art that is seen seems to proceed from his head, not from the author’s. As I am very desirous you should continue, so I own I wish you would improve or change the beginning: those who know you not so well as I do, would not wait with so much patience for the entrance of Pausanias. You see I am frank; and if I tell you I do not approve of the first part, you may believe me as sincere when I tell you I admire the latter extremely.
My letter has an odd date. You would not expect I should be writing in such a dirty place as Reggio: but the fair is charming; and here come all the nobility of Lombardy, and all the broken dialects of Genoa, Milan, Venice, Bologna, etc. You never heard such a ridiculous confusion of tongues. All the morning one goes to the fair undressed, as to the walks of Tunbridge: ’tis Just in that manner, with lotteries, raffles, etc. After dinner all the company return in their coaches, and make a kind of corso, with the ducal family, who go to shops, where you talk to ’em, from thence to the opera, in mask if you will, and afterwards to the ridotto. This five nights in the week, Fridays there are masquerades, and Tuesdays balls at the Rivalta, a villa of the Duke’s. In short, one diverts oneself. I pass most part of the opera in the Duchess’s box, who is extremely civil to me and extremely agreeable. A daughter of the Regent’s, (230) that could please him, must be so. She is not young, though still handsome, but fat; but has given up her gallantries cheerfully, and in time, and lives easily with a dull husband, two dull sisters of his, and a dull court. These two princesses are wofully ugly, old maids and rich. They might have been married often; but the old Duke was whimsical and proud, and never would consent to any match for them, but left them much money, and pensions of three thousand pounds a year apiece. There was a design to have given the eldest to this King of Spain, and the Duke was to have had the Parmesan princess; so that now he would have had Parma and Placentia, Joined to Modena, Reggio, Mirandola, and Massa. But there being a Prince of Asturias, the old Duke Rinaldo broke off the match, and said his daughter’s children should not be younger brothers: and so they mope old virgins.
I am goin@ from hence to Venice, in a fright lest there be a war with France, and then I must drag myself through Germany. We have had an imperfect account of a sea-fight in America . but we are so out of the way, that one can’t be sure of it. Which way soever I return, I shall be soon in England, and there you ’will find me again.
As much as ever yours.
(229) of a tragedy called Pausanias, The first act, and probably all that was ever written by Mr. West. [In the preceding month West had forwarded to Gray the sketch of this tragedy, which he appears to have criticised with much freedom; but Mr. Mason did not find among Gray’s papers either the sketch itself, or the free critique upon it.]
(230) Philip Duke of Orleans.
172 Letter 32
To Sir Horace Mann. (231)
Calais, and Friday, and here I have been these two
days, 1741.
Is the wind laid? Shall I Dever get aboard? I came here on Wednesday night, but found a tempest that has never ceased since. At Boulogne I left Lord Shrewsbury and his mother, and brothers and sisters, waiting too: Bulstrode (232) passes his winter at the court of Boulogne, and then is to travel with two young Shrewsburys. I was overtaken by Amorevoli and Monticelli, (233) who are here with me and the Viscontina, and Barberina, and Abbate Vanneschi (234)-what a coxcomb! I would have talked to him about the opera, but he preferred politics. I have wearied Amorevoli with questions about you. If he was not just come from you, and could talk to me about you, I should hate him; for, to flatter me, he told me that I talked Italian better than you. He did not know how little I think it a compliment to have any thing preferred to you-besides, you know the consistence of my Italian! They are all frightened out of their senses about going on the sea, and are not a little afraid of the English. They went on board the William and Mary yacht yesterday, which waits here for Lady Cardigan from Spa. The captain clapped the door, and swore in broad English that the Viscontina should not stir till she gave him a song, he did not care whether it was a catch or a moving ballad; but she would not submit. I wonder he did! When she came home and told me, I begged her not to judge of all the English from this specimen; but, by the way, she will find many sea-captains that grow on dry land.
Sittinburn, Sept. 13, O. S.
Saturday morning, or yesterday, we did set out, and after a good passage of four hours and a half, landed at Dover. I begin to count my comforts, for I find their contraries thicken on my apprehension. I have, at least, done for a while with postchaises. My trunks were a little opened at Calais, and they would have stopped my medals, but with much ado and much three louis’s they let them pass. At Dover I found the benefit of the motions (235) having miscarried last year, for they respected Sir Robert’s son even in the person of his trunks. I came over in a yacht with East India captains’ widows, a Catholic girl, coming from a convent to be married, with an Irish priest to guard her, who says he studied medicines for two years, and after that he studied learning for two years more. I have not brought over a word of French or Italian for common use; I have so taken pains to avoid affectation in this point, that I have failed Only now and then in a chi`a l`a! to the servants, who I can scarce persuade myself yet are English. The COUntry-town (and you will believe me, who, you know, am not prejudiced) delights me; the populousness, the ease, the gaiety, and well-dressed every body amaze me. Canterbury, which on my setting out I thought deplorable, is a paradise, (236) to Modena, Reggio, Parma, etc. I had before discovered that there was nowhere but in England the distinction of middling people; I perceive now, that there is peculiar to us middling houses: how snug they are! I write to-night because I have time; to-morrow I get to London just as the post goes. Sir Robert is at Houghton. Good night till another post. You are quite well I trust, but tell me so always. My loves to the Chutes (237) and all the etc.’s.
Oh! a story of Mr. Pope and the prince:-"Mr. Pope, you don’t love princes.” “Sir, I beg your pardon.” “Well, you don’t love kings, then!""Sir, I own I love the lion best before his claws are grown.” Was it possible to make a better answer to such simple questions? Adieu! my dearest child! Yours, ten thousand times over.
P. S. Patapan does not seem to regret his own country.
(231) This is the first of the series of letters addressed by Walpole to Sir Horace Man, British envoy at the court of Tuscany. The following prefatory note, entitled “Advertisement by the Author,” explains the views which led Walpole to preserve them for publication:-
“The following Collection of Letters, written very carelessly by a young man, had been preserved by the person to whom they were addressed. The author, some years after the date of the first, borrowed them, on account of some anecdotes interspersed. On the perusal, among many trifling relations and stories, which were only of consequence or amusing to the two persons concerned in the correspondence, he found some facts, characters, and news, which, though below the dignity of history, might prove entertaining to many other people: and knoing how much pleasure, not only himself, but many other persons have found in a series of private and familiar letters, he thought it worth his while to preserve these, as they contain something of the customs, fashions, politics, diversions, and private history of several years; which, if worthy of any existence, can be properly transmitted to posterity only in this manner.
“The reader will find a few pieces of intelligence which did not prove true; but which are retained here as the author heard and related them, lest correction should spoil the simple air of the narrative.* When the letters were written, they were never intended for public inspection; and now they are far from being thought correct, or more authentic than the general turn of epistolary correspondence admits. The author would sooner have burnt them than have taken the trouble to correct such errant trifles, which are here presented to the reader, with scarce any variation or omissions, but what private friendships and private history, or the great haste with which the letters were written, made indispensably necessary, as will plainly appear, not only by the unavoidable chasms, where the originals were worn out or torn away, but by many idle relations and injudicious remarks and prejudices of a young man; for which @the only excuse the author can pretend to make, is, that as some future reader may possibly be as young as he was when he first wrote, he hopes they may be amused with what graver people (if into such hands they should fall) will very justly despise. Who ever has patience to peruse the series, will find, perhaps, that as the author grew older, some of his faults became less striking.” * They are marked in the notes.
(232) Tutor to the young Earl of Shrewsbury. [.Charles Talbot, fifteenth Earl of Shrewsbury, born December 1719. He married, in 1753, Elizabeth, daughter of the Hon. John Dormer, afterwards Lord Dormer, and died in 1787, without issue.]
(233) Italian singers. [Angelo Maria Monticelli, a celebrated singer of the same class as Veluti, was born at Milan in 1715, and first attained the celebrity which he enjoyed by singing with Mingotti at the Royal Opera at Naples in 1746. After visiting most of the cities of the Continent, he was induced by the favour with which he was received at Dresden to make that city his residence, until his death in 1764. Is the name of Amorevoli, borne by one of the first singers of that day, an assumed one, or an instance of name fatality? Certain it is,that Amorevole is a technical term in music somewhat analogous in its signification with Amabile and Amoroso.]
(234) An Italian abb`e, who directed and wrote the operas under the protection of Lord Middlesex.
(235) The motion in both houses of Parliament, 1740, for removing Sir Robert Walpole from the King’s councils. [See ante, p. 169 (Letter 30).)
(236) ("On! On! through meadows, managed like
a garden,
A paradise of hops and high production;
For, after years of travel by a bard in
Countries of greater heat, but lesser suction,
A green field is a sight which makes him pardon
The absence of that more sublime construction,
Which mixes up vines, olives, precipices,
Glaciers, volcanos, oranges, and ices."-Byron, 1823.)
(237) John Chute and Francis Whithed, Esqrs. two great friendls of Mr. W.’s, whom he had left at Florence, where he had been himself thirteen months, in the house of Mr. Mann, his relation and particular friend.
174 Letter 33 To Sir Horace Mann. [The beginning of this letter is lost.)
****I had written and sealed my letter, but have since received another from you, dated Sept. 24. I read Sir Robert your account of Corsica; he seems to like hearing any account sent this way-indeed, they seem to have more superficial relations in general than I could have believed! You will oblige me, too, with any farther account of Bianca Colonna: (238) it is romantic, her history!
I am infinitely obliged to Mr. Chute for his kindness to me, and still more for his friendship to you. You cannot think how happy I am to hear that you are to keep him longer. You do not mention his having received my letter from Paris: I directed it to him, recommended to you. I would not have him think me capable of neglecting to answer his letter, which obliged me so much. I will deliver Amorevoli his letter the first time I see him.
Lord Islay (239) dined here; I mentioned Stosch’s (240) Maltese cats. Lord Islay begged I would write to Florence to have the largest male and female that can be got. If you will speak to Stosch, you will oblige me: they may come by sea. You cannot imagine my amazement at your not being invited to Riccardi’s ball; do tell me, when you know, what can be the meaning of it; it could not be inadvertence-nay, that were as bad! Adieu my dear child, once more!
(238A kind friend of Joan of Are, who headed the Corsican rebels against the Genoese.
(239) Archibald Campbell, Earl of Islay, and, on his brother’s death in 1743, Duke of Argyle.
(240) Baron Stosch, a Prussian virtuoso, and spy for the court of England on the Pretender. He had been driven from Rome, though it was suspected that he was a spy on both sides: he was a man of a most infamous character in every respect. according to the Biographic Universelle, the Baron “ne put s’acquitter de fonctions aussi d`elicates sans se voir expos`e `a des naines violentes, qui le forc`erent `a se retirer `a Florence;” where he died in 1757. He was one of the most skilful and industrious antiquaries of his time. A catalogue of his gems was drawn up by Winkelmann.]
175 Letter 34 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. London, 1741.
My Dearest Harry, Before I thank you for myself, I must thank you for that excessive good nature you showed in writing to poor Gray. I am less impatient to see you, as I find you are not the least altered, but have the same tender friendly temper you always had. I wanted much to see if you were still the same-but you are.
Don’t think of coming before your brother, he is too good to be left for any one living: besides, if it is possible, I will see you in the country. Don’t reproach me, and think nothing could draw me into the country: impatience to see a few friends has drawn me out of Italy; and Italy, Harry, is pleasanter than London. As I do not love living en famille so much as you (but then indeed my family is not like yours), I am hurried about getting myself a house; for I have so long lived single, that I do not much take to being confined with my own family.
You won’t find me much altered, I believe; at least, outwardly. ’I am not grown a bit shorter, or a bit fatter, but am just the same long lean creature as usual. Then I talk no French., but to my footman; nor Italian, but to myself. What inward alterations may have happened to me, you will discover best; for you know ’tis said, one never knows that one’s self. I will answer, that that part of it that belongs to you, has not suffered the least change-I took care of that. For virt`u, I have a little to entertain you: it is my sole pleasure.-I am neither young enough nor old enough to be in love.
My dear Harry, will you take care and make my compliments to that charming Lady Conway, (241) who I hear is so charming, and to Miss Jenny [Conway], who I know is so? As for Miss Anne, (242) and her love as far as it is decent: tell her, decency is out of the question between us, that I love her without any restriction. I settled it yesterday with Miss Conway, that you three are brothers and sister to me, and that if you had been so, I could not love you better. I have so many cousins, and uncles and aunts, and bloods that grow in Norfolk, that if I had portioned out my affections to them, as they say I should, what a modicum would have fallen to each!-So, to avoid fractions, I love my family in you three, their representatives. (243)
Adieu, my dear Harry! Direct to me at Downing Street. Good-bye! Yours ever.
(241) Isabella Fitzroy, daughter of Charles Duke of Grafton. She had been married in May, to(Walpole’s maternal cousin), Francis Seymour Conway, afterwards Earl of Hertford.(
242) Miss Anne conway, youngest sister of Henry Seymour Conway.
(243) They were first cousins by the mother’s side; Francis first Lord conway having married Charlotte, eldest daughter of John Shorter of Bybrook in Kent, sister to Catherine Shorter Lady Walpole.
176 Letter 35 To Sir Horace Mann. Downing Street, Oct. 8, 1741, O. S.
I have been very near sealing this letter with black wax; Sir Robert came from Richmond on Sunday night extremely ill, and on Monday was in great danger. It was an ague and looseness; but they have stopped the latter, and converted the other into a fever, which they are curing with the bark. He came out of his chamber to-day for the first time, and is quite out of danger. One of the newspapers says, Sir R. W. is so bad that there are no Hopes of him.
The Pomfrets (244) are arrived; I went this morning to visit my lord, but did not find him. Lady Sophia is ill, and my earl (245) still at Paris, not coming. There is no news, nor a soul in town. One talks of nothing but distempers, like Sir Robert’s. My Lady Townsende (246) was reckoning up the other day the several things that have cured them; such a doctor so many, such a medicine, so many; but of all, the greatest number have found relief from the sudden deaths of their husbands.
The opera begins the day after the King’s birthday: the singers are not permitted to sing till on the stage, so no one has heard them, nor have I seen Amorovoli to give him the letter. The opera is to be on the French system of dancers, scenes, and dresses. The directors have already laid out great sums. They talk of a mob to silence the operas, as they did the French players; but it will be more difficult, for here half the young noblemen in town are engaged, and they will not be so easily persuaded to humour the taste of the mobility: in short, they have already retained several eminent lawyers from the Bear Garden (247) to plead their defence. I have had a long visit this morning from Don Benjamin: (248) he is one of the best kind of agreeable men I ever saw-quite fat and easy, with universal knowledge: he is in the greatest esteem at my court.
I am going to trouble you with some commissions. Miss Rich, (249) who is the finest singer except your sister (250) in the world, has begged me to get her some music, particularly “the office of the Virgin of the Seven Sorrows,” by Pergolesi, (251) the “Serva Padrona, il Pastor se torna Aprile,” and “Symplicetta Pastorella.” If you can send these easily, you will much oblige me. Do, too, let me know by your brother, what you have already laid out for me, that I may pay him.
Lord Euston is to be married to Lady Dorothy Boyle (254) tomorrow, after so many delays. I have received your long letter, and Mr. Chute’s too, which I will answer next post. I wish I had the least politics to tell you; but all is silent. The opposition sav not a syllable, because they don’t know what the Court will think of public ’affairs; and they will not take their part till they are sure of contradicting. The Court will not be very ready to declare themselves, as their present situation is every way disagreeable. All they say, is to throw the blame entirely on the obstinacy of the Austrian Court, who -,vould never stir or soften for themselves, while they thought any one obliged to defend them. All I know of news is, that Poland is leaning towards the acquisition side, like her neighbours, and proposes to get a lock of the Golden Fleece too. Is this any part of Gregory’s (255) negotiation? I delight in his Scapatta—“Scappata, no; egli solamente ha preso la posta.” My service to Seriston; he is charming.
How excessively obliging to go to Madame Grifoni’s (256) festino! but believe me, I shall be angry, if for my sake, you do things that are out of your character: don’t you know that I am infinitely fonder of that than of her?
I read your story of the Sposa Panciatici at table, to the great entertainment of the company, and Prince Craon’s epitaph, which Lord Cholmley (257) says he has heard before, and does not think it is the prince’s own; no more do I, it is too good; but make my compliments of thanks to him; he shall have his buckles the first opportunity I find of sending them. Say a thousand things for me to dear Mr. Chute, till I can say them next post for myself: till then, adieu. Yours ever.
(244) Thomas Earl of Pomfret, and Henrietta Louisa, his consort, and his two eldest daughters, Sophia and Charlotte, had been in Italy at the same time with Mr. Walpole. The Earl had been master of the horse to Queen Caroline, and the countess lady of the bedchamber.
(245) Henry Earl of Lincoln was at that time in love with Lady Sophia Fermor.
(246) Ethelreda Harrison, wife of Charles Lord Viscount Townsend, but parted from him.
(247) Boxers.
(248) Sir Benjamin Keene, ambassador at Madrid.
(249) Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Sir Robert Rich, since married to Sir George Lyttelton. [Eldest son of sir Thomas Lyttelton of hagley; in 1744 appointed one of the lords of the treasury, and in 1755, chancellor of the exchequer. In 1757,when he retired from public life, he was raised to the peerage, by the title of Lord Lyttelton. He died in 1773. His prose works were printed collectively in 1774; and his poems have given him a place among the British poets.]
(250) Mary, daughter of R. Mann, Esq. since married to Mr. Foote.
(251) Better known to all lovers of the works of this great composer as his " Stabat mater."-E.
(252) It will be seen by Walpole’s letter to Mr. Chute, of the 20th August 1743, now first published, that he eventually succeeded in purchasing this picture.-E.
(253) A corrupted pronunciation of the Bolognese.
(254) This unfortunate marriage is alluded to several times in the course of the subsequent letters. George Earl of Euston was the eldest son of Charles the second Duke of Grafton. He married, in 1741, Lady Dorothy Boyle, eldest daughter and co-heir of Richard, third and last heir of B(irlington. She died in 1742, from the effects, as it is supposed, of his brutal treatment of her. The details of his cruelty towards her are almost too revolting to be believed. In Sir Charles Hanbury Williams’s poems are some pretty lines on her death, beginning, “Behold one moment Dorothea’s fate."-D.
(255) Gregorio ALdollo, an Asiatic, from being a prisoner at Leghorn, raised himself to be employed to the Great Duke by the King of Poland.
(256) Elisabetta Capponi, wife of signor Grifoni, a great beauty.
(257) George third Earl of Cholmondeley, had married Mary Walpole, only legitimate daughter of Sir Robert Walpole-D.
178 Letter 36
To Sir Horace Mann.
London, Oct. 13, 1741.
[The greatest part of this letter is wanting.]
**** The Town will come to town, and then one shall know something. Sir Robert is quite recovered.
Lady Pomfret I saw last night: Lady Sophia has been ill with a cold; her head is to be dressed French, and her body English, for which I am sorry; her figure is so fine in a robe: she is full as sorry as I am. Their trunks are not arrived yet, so they have not made their appearance. My lady told me a little out of humour that Uguecioni wrote her word, that you said her things could not be sent away yet: I understood from you, that very wisely, you would have nothing to do about them, so made no answer.
The parliament meets the fifteenth of November. **** Amorevoli has been with me two hours this evening; he is in panics about the first night, which is the next after the birthday.
I have taken a master, not to forget my Italian-don’t it look like returning to Florence’!-some time or other. Good night. Yours ever and ever, my dear child.
178 Letter 37
To Sir Horace Mann.
London, Oct. 19, 1741, O. S.
[Great part wanting.]
I write to you up to the head and ears in dirt, straw, and unpacking. I have been opening all my cases from the Custom-house the whole morning; and-are not you glad?-every individual safe and undamaged. I am fitting up an apartment in Downing Street ***(258) was called in the morning, and was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, for I have frequently known him snore ere they had drawn his curtains, now never sleeps above an hour without waking; and he, who at dinner always forgot he was minister, and was more gay and thoughtless than all his company, now sits without speaking, and with his eyes fixed for an hour together. Judge if this is the Sir Robert you knew.
The politics of the age are entirely suspended; nothing is mentioned; but this bottling them up, will make them fly out with the greater violence the moment the parliament meets; till *** a word to you about this affair.
I am sorry to hear the Venetian journey of the Suares family; it does not look as if the Teresina was to marry PandOlfini; do you know, I have set my heart upon that match.
You are very good to the Pucci, to give her that advice, though I don’t suppose she will follow it. The Bolognese scheme *** In return for Amorevoli’s letter, he has given me two. I fancy it will be troublesome to you; so put his wife into some other method of correspondence with him.
Do you love puns? A pretty man of the age came into the playhouse the other night, booted and spurred: says he, “I am come to see Orpheus"-"And Euridice- You rid I see,” replied another gentleman.
(258) The omissions in these letters marked with stars occur in the original ms.-D.
179 Letter 38 To Sir Horace Mann. London, Oct. 22, 1741, O. S.
Your brother has been with me this morning, and we have talked over your whole affair. He thinks it will be impossible to find any servant of the capacities you require, that will live with you under twenty, if not thirty pounds a-year, especially as he is not to have your clothes: then the expense of the journey to Florence, and of back again, in case you should not like him, will be considerable. He is for your taking one from Leghorn; but I, who know a little more of Leghorn than he does, should be apprehensive of any person from thence being in the interest of Goldsworthy, (259) or too attached to the merchants: in short, I mean, he would be liable to prove a spy upon you. We have agreed that I shall endeavour to find out a proper man, if such a one will go to you for twenty pounds a-year, and then you shall ficar from me. I am very sensible that Palombo (260) is not fit for you, and shall be extremely diligent
Well, I did believe I should never find time to write to you again; I was interrupted in my letter last post, and could not finish it; to-day I came home from the King’s levee, where I Kissed his hand, without going to the drawing-room, on purpose to finish my letter, and the moment I sat down they let somebody in. That somebody is gone, and I go on-At Mrs. Boothby’s Lady Townshend was coquetting with Lord Baltimore: (263) he told her, if she meant any thing with him he was not for her purpose; if only to make any one jealous, he would throw away an hour with her with all his heart.
The whole town is to be to-morrow night at Sir Thomas Robinson’s (264) ball, which he gives to a little girl of the Duke of Richmond’s. There are already two hundred invited, from miss in bib and apron, to my lord chancellor (265) in bib and mace. You shall hear about it next post.
I wrote you word that Lord Euston is married: in a week more I believe that I shall write you word that he is divorced. He is brutal enough; and has forbid Lady Burlington (266) his house, and that in very ungentle terms. The whole family is in confusion: the Duke of Grafton half dead. and Lord Burlington half mad. The latter has challenged Lord Euston, who accepted the challenge, but they were prevented. There are different stories: some say that the duel would have been no breach of consanguinity; others, that there’s a contract of marriage come out in another place, which has had more consanguinity than ceremony in it: in short, one cannot go into a room but you hear something of it. Do you not pity the poor girl? of the softest temper, vast beauty, birth, and fortune, to be so sacrificed!
The letters from the West Indies are not the most agreeable. You have heard of the fine river and little town which Vernon took, and named, the former dugusta, the latter Cumberland. Since that, they have found out that it is impracticable to take St. Jago by sea — on which Admiral Vernon and Ogle insisted that Wentworth, with the land forces, should march to it by land, which he, by advice of all the land-officers, has refused; for their march would have been of eighty miles, through a mountainous, unknown country, full of defiles, where not two men could march abreast; and they have but four thousand five hundred men, and twenty-four horses. Quires of paper from both sides are come over to the council, who are to determine from hence what is to be done. They have taken a Spanish man-of-war and a register ship, going to Spain, immensely valuable.
The parliament does not meet till the first of December, which relieves me into a little happiness, and gives me a little time to settle myself. I have unpacked all my things, and have not had the least thing suffer. I am now only in a fright about my birthday clothes, which I bespoke at Paris: Friday is the day, and this is Monday, without any news of them!
I have been two or three times at the play, very unwillingly; for nothing was ever so bad as the actors, except the company. There is much in vogue a Mrs. Woffington, (267) a bad actress; but she has life.
Lord Hartington (268) dines here: it is said (and from his father’s partiality to another person’s father, I don’t think it impossible) that he is to marry a certain miss:(269) Lord Fitzwilliam is supposed another candidate.
Here is a new thing which has been much about town, and liked; your brother Gale (270) gave me the copy of it:
“Les cours de l’Europe
L’Allemagne craint tout;
L’Autriche risque tout;
La Bavi`ere esp`ere touut;
La Prusse entreprend tout;
La Mayence vend tout;
Le Portugal regarde tout;
L’Angleterre veut faire tout;
L’Espagne embrouille tout;
La Savoye se d`efie de tout;
Le Mercure se m`ele de tout;
La France sch`ete tout;
Les Jesuites se trouvent par tout;
Rome b`enit tout’
Si dieu ne pourvoye `a tout,
Le diable emportera tout.”
Good night, my dear child: you never say a word of your own health; are not you quite recovered? a thousand services to Mr. Chute and Mr. Whithed, and to all my friends: do they begin to forget me? I don’t them. Yours, ever.
(259) Consul at Leghorn, who was endeavouring to supplant Mr. Mann.
(260)An Italian, secretary to Mr. Mann.
(261"Winnington,” says Walpole, (Memoirs, i. P. 151), “had been bred a Tory, but had left them in the height of Sir Robert Walpole’s power -. when that minister sunk. he had injudiciously, and, to please my Lady Townshend, who had then the greatest influence over him, declined visiting him, in a manner to offend the steady old Whigs; and his jolly way of laughing.at his own want of principles had revolted all the graver sort, who thought deficiency of honesty too sacred and profitable a commodity to be profaned and turned into ridicule. He had infinitely more wit than any man I ever knew, and it was as ready and quick as it was constant and Unmeditated. His style was a little brutal, his courage not at all so; his good-humour inexhaustible; it was impossible to hate or to trust him.” Winnington was first Ynade lord of the admiralty, then of the treasury, then cofferer, and lastly paymaster of the forces: to which office, on his death in 1746, Mr. Pitt succeeded.-E.
(262) The Hon. Augustus Townshend was second son of the minister, Lord Townshend, by his second wife, the sister of Sir Robert Walpole. He was consequently half-brother to Charles, the third viscount, husband to Ethelreda, Lady Townshend.-D.
(263) Charles Calvert, sixth Lord Baltimore in Ireland. He was at this time member of parliament for the borough of St. Germains, and a lord of the admiralty.-D.
(264) Sir Thomas Robinson, of Rokeby Park, in Yorkshire, commonly called “Long Sir Thomas,” on account of his stature, and in order to distinguish him from the diplomatist, Sir Thomas Robinson, afterwards created Lord Grantham. [He has elsewhere been styled the new Robinson Crusoe by Walpole, who says, when speaking of him, " He was a tall, uncouth man; and his stature was often rendered still more remarkable by his hunting-dress, a postilion’s cap, a tight green jacket, and buckskin breeches. He was liable to sudden whims, and once set off on a sudden in his hunting suit to visit his sister, who was married and settled at Paris. He arrived while there was a large company at dinner. The servant announced M. Robinson, and he came in to the great amazement of the hosts. Among others, -a French abb`e thrice lifted his fork to his mouth and thrice laid it down, with an eager stare of surprise. Unable to restrain his curiosity any longer, he burst out with I Excuse me, sir, are you the famous Robinson Crusoe so remarkable in history?’”]
(265) Philip Yorke, Lord Hardwicke.-D.
(266) Lady Dorothy Savile, eldest daughter and co-heiress of William second Marquis of Halifax, the mother of the unhappy Lady Euston.-D.
(267) Margaret Woffington, the celebrated beauty.-D.
(268) William, Marquis of Hartington, afterwards fourth Duke of Devonshire. He married Lady Charlotte Boyle, second daughter of Richard, third Earl of Burlington.-D.
(269) Miss Mary Walpole, daughter of Sir Robert Walpole by his second wife, Maria Skerrett, but born before their marriage. When her father was made an earl, she had the rank of an earl’s daughter given to her.-D.
(270) Galfridus Mann.
182 Letter 39
To Sir Horace Mann.
London, Nov. 2, 1741.
You shall not hear a word but of balls and public places: this one week has seen Sir T. Robinson’s ball, my lord mayor’s, the birthday, and the opera. There were an hundred and ninety-seven persons at Sir Thomas’s, and yet was it so well conducted that nobody felt a crowd. He had taken off all his doors, and so separated the old and the young, that neither were inconvenienced with the other. The ball began at eight; each man danced one minuet with his partner, and then began country dances. There were four-and-twenty couple, divided into twelve a@d twelve: each set danced two dances, and then retired into another room, while the other set took their two; and so alternately. Except Lady Ancram, (271) no married woman danced; so you see, in England, we do not foot it till five-and-fifty. The beauties were the Duke of Richmond’s two daughters (272) and their mother, still handsomer than they: the duke (273) sat by his wife all night, kissing her hand:
* * Friday was the birthday; it was vastly full, the ball immoderately so, for there came all the second edition of my lord mayor’s, but not much finery: Lord Fitzwilliam (282) and myself were far the most superb. I did not get mine till nine that morning.
The opera will not tell as well as the other two shows, for they were obliged to omit the part of Amorevoli, who has a fever. The audience was excessive, without the least disturbance, and almost as little applause; I cannot conceive why, for Monticelli ***** be able to sing to-morrow.
At court I met the Shadwells; (283) Mademoiselle Misse Molli, etc. I love them, for they asked vastly after you, and kindly. Do you know, I have had a mind to visit Pucci, the Florentine minister, but he is so black, and looks so like a murderer in a play, that I have never brought it about yet? I know none of the foreign ministers, but Ossorio, (284) a little; he is still vastly in fashion, though extremely altered. Scandal, who, I believe, is not mistaken, lays a Miss Macartney to his charge; she is a companion to the Duchess of Richmond, as Madame Goldsworthy was; but Ossorio will rather be Wachtendonck (285) than Goldsworthy: what a lamentable story is that of the hundred sequins per month! I have mentioned Mr. Jackson, as you desired, to Sir R., who says, he has a very good opinion of him. In case of any change at Leghorn, you will let me know. He will not lose his patron, Lord Hervey, (286) so soon as I imagined; he begins to recover.
I believe the Euston embroil is adjusted; I was with Lady Caroline Fitzroy on Friday evening; there were her brother and the bride, and quite bridal together, quite honeymoonish.
I forgot to tell you that the prince was not at the opera; I believe it has been settled that he should go thither on Tuesdays, and Majesty on Saturdays, that they may not meet. The Neutrality (287) begins to break out, and threatens to be an excise or convention. The newspapers are full of it, and the press teems. It has already produced three pieces: “The Groans of Germany,” which I will send you by the first opportunity: “Bedlam, a poem on His Maj’esty’s happy escape from his German dominions, and all the wisdom of his conduct there.” The title of this is all that is remarkable in it. The third piece is a ballad, which, not for the goodness, but for the excessive abuse of it, I shall transcribe:
The late gallant
exploits of A famous balancing
captain.
A new song. To the
tune of the king and the
Miller.
Mene tekel. The handwriting on the wall.
1. I’ll tell you a story as strange as ’tis new, Which all, who’re concerned, will allow to be true, Of a Balancing Captain, well-known herabouts, Returned home, God save him as a mere King of Clouts.
2. This Captain he takes, in a gold-ballast’d
ship,
Each summer to Terra damnosa a trip,
For which he begs, borrows, scrapes all he can get,
And runs his poor Owners most vilely in debt.
3. The last time he set out for this blessed
place,
He met them, and told them a most piteous case,
Of a Sister of his, who, though bred up at court,
Was ready to perish for want of support.
4. This Hungry Sister, he then did pretend,
Would be to his Owners a notable friend,
If they would at that critical junction supply her-
They did-but alas! all the fat’s in the
fire!
5. This our Captain no sooner had finger’d
the cole,
But he hies him abroad with his good Madam Vole-
Where, like a true tinker, he managed this metal,
And while he stopp’d one hole, made ten in the
kettle.
6. His Sister, whom he to his Owners had,,;worn,
To see duly settled before his return,
He gulls with bad messages sent to and fro,
Whilst he underhand claps up a peace with her foe.
7. on He then turns this Sister adrift, and declares Her most mortal foes were her Father’s right heirs-“G-d z-ds!” cries the world, “such a step was ne’er taken!” “O, ho!” says Nol Bluff, “I have saved my own bacon.”
8. Let France damn the Germans, and undam the
Dutch,
And Spain on Old England pish ever so much,
Let Russia bang Sweden, or Sweden bang that,
I care not, by Robert! one kick of my hat.
9. So I by myself can noun substantive stand,
Impose on my Owners, and save my own land;
You call me masculine, feminine, neuter, or block,
Be what will the gender, sirs, hic, haec, or hoc.
10. Or should my choused Owners begin to look
sour,
I’ll trust to Mate Bob to exert his old power,
Regit animos dictis, or nummis, with ease,
So, spite of your growling, I’ll act as I please.”
11. Yet worse in this treacherous contract, ’tis
said,
Such terms are agreed to, such promises made,
That his Owners must soon feeble beggars become-
“Hold!” cries the crown office, “’twere
scandal-so, mum!”
12. This secret, however, must out on the day When he meets his poor Owners to ask for more pay; And I fear when they come to adjust the account, zero for balance will prove their amount.
One or two of the stanzas are tolerable; some, especially the ninth, most nonsensically bad. However, this is a specimen of what we shall have amply commented upon in parliament.
I have already found out a person, who, I believe, will please you, in Palombo’s place: I am to see your brother about it to-morrow, and next post you shall hear more particularly. I am quite in concern for the poor prinCess,(289) and her conjugal and amorous distresses: I really pity them; were they in England, we should have all the old prudes dealing out judgments on her, and mumbling toothless ditties to the tune of Pride will have a fall. I am bringing some fans and trifles for her, si mignons! Good night. Yours ever.
(271) Lady Caroline D’Arcy, daughter of Robert third Earl of Holdernesse, and wife of William Henry fourth Marquis of Lothian, at this time, during his father’s lifetime, called Earl of Ancram.-D
(272) Lady Caroline and Lady Emily Lenox. [The former was married, in 1744, to Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland; the latter in 1746-7, to James, twentieth Earl of Kildare, in 1766 created Duke of Leinster.]
(273) Charles, second Duke of Richmond, and Lady Sarah Cadogan, his duchess, eldest daughter of William Earl Cadogan.-D.
(274) Eldest daughter of Charles Duke of Grafton.-[In 1746 married to Lord Petersham, afterwards Earl of Harrington.]
(275) Sister to John Duke of’Rutland; married in 1742, to the Duke of Montrose.
(276) Only daughter of Charles second Earl of Tankerville. She married, first, Gilbert Fane Fleming, Esq. and secondly, Mr. Wake, of Bath.-D.
(277) Lady Sophia Fermor.-D.
(278) Robert D’Arcy, fourth and last Earl of Holdernesse.-E.
(279) Lord Lincoln was at this time an admirer of Lady Sophia Fermor,-D.
(280) Harriet, natural daughter of General Churchill; afterwards married to Sir Everard Fawkener.
(281) The son and daughters of Alderman Parsons, a Jacobite brewer, who lived much in France, and had, somehow or other, been taken notice of by the king.
(282) William third Earl Fitzwilliam, in Ireland; created an English peer in 1742; and in 1746 an English earl.-D.
(283) Sir John Shadwell, a physician, his wife and daughters, the youngest of whom was pretty, and by the foreigners generally called Mademoiselle Misse Molli, had been in Italy, when Mr. W. was there.
(284) The Chevalier Ossorio, minister from the King of Sardinia.
(285) General Wachtendonck, commander of the great dukes troops at Leghorn, was cicisbeo to the conslil’s wife there.
(286) John Lord Hervey, lord privy seal, and eldest son of John first Earl Of Bristol. He was a man of considerable celebrity in his day; but is now principally known from his unfortunate rivalry with Pope, for the good graces of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He died August 5, 1743, at the age of forty-seven.-D.
(287) The Neutrality for the electorate of Hanover.(
(288) This song is a satire upon George ii., ,the balancing Captain,” and upon that in his vacillating and doubtful conduct, which his fears for the electorate of Hanover made him pursue, whenever Germany was the seat of war. His Sister, whom he is accused of deserting, was Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary.-E.
(289) The Prince de Craon, and the princess his wife, who had been favourite mistress to Leopold, the last Duke of Lorrain, resided at this time at Florence, where the prince was head of the council of regency; but they were extremely ill-treited and mortified by the Count de Richcourt, a low Lorrainer, who, being a creature of the great duke’s favourite minister, had the chief ascendant and power there.
186 Letter 40 To Sir Horace Mann. Downing Street, Nov. 5, 1741, O. S.
I just mentioned to you in my letter on Monday, that I had found such a person as you wanted; I have since seen your brother, who is so satisfied with him, that he was for sending him directly away to you, without staying six weeks for an answer from you, but I chose to have your consent. He is the son of a tradesman in this city, so not yet a fine gentleman. He is between fifteen and sixteen, but very tall of his age: he was disappointed in not going to a merchant at Genoa, as was intended; but was so far provided for it as to have learned Italian three months: he speaks French very well, writes a good hand, and casts accounts; so, you see there will not be much trouble in forming him to your purpose. He will go to you for twenty pounds a-year and his lodging. If you like this, Nvrite me word by the first post, and he shall set out directly.
We hear to-day that the Toulon squadron is airived at Barcelona; I don’t like it of’ all things, for it has a look towards Tuscany. If it is suffered to go thither quietly, it will be no small addition to the present discontents.
Here is another letter, which I am entreated to send you, from poor Amorevoli; he has a continued fever, though not a high one. Yesterday, Monticelli was taken ill, so there will be no opera on Saturday; nor was on Tuesday. MOnticelli is infinitely admired; next to Farinelli. The Viscontina is admired more than liked. The music displeases every body, and the dances. I am quite uneasy about the opera, for Mr. Conway is one of’ the directors, and I fear they will lose considerably, which he cannot afford. There are eight; Lord
(290) Charles Sackville, Earl of Middlesex, and subsequently second Duke of Dorset, eldest son of Lionel, first Duke of Dorset. He was made a lord of the treasury in 1743, and master of the horse to Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1747-D.
(291) John Frederick, Esq. afterwards Sir John Frederick, Bart. by the death of his cousin, Sir Thomas. He was a commissioner of customs, and member of parliament for West Looe.-D.
(292) Francis Seymour Conway, first Earl and Marquis of Hertford, ambassador at Paris, lord chamberlain of the household, etc.-D.
(293) Henry Seymour Conway, afterwards secretary of state, and a field marshal in the army.-D.
(294) Joseph Damer, Esq. created in 1753 Baron Milton, in Ireland, and by George iii. an English peer, by the same title, and eventually Earl of Dorchester.-D.
(295) Francis Greville, eighth Lord Brooke; created in 1746 Earl Brooke, and in 1759 Earl of Warwick.-D.
(296) Mr. Brand of the Hoo, in Hertfordshire, one of the original members of the society of Dilettanti.—D.
(297) If this anticipation of Walpole’s was ever realized, “the pretty sum” was eventually lost on the spot where it had been gained. Vanneschi, having in 1753 undertaken the management of the opera-house on his own account, continued it until 1756, when his differences with Mingotti, which excited almost as much of the public attention as the rivalries of Handel and Bononcini or of Faustina and Cuzzoni, completely prejudiced the public against him, and eventually ended in making him a bankrupt, a prisoner in the Fleet, and at last a fugitive.-E.
(298) She was kept by Lord Middlesex.
187 Letter 41
To Sir Horace Mann.
Downing Street, Nov. 12, 1741.
Nothing is equal to my uneasiness about you. I hear or think of nothing but Spanish embarkations for Tuscany: before you receive this, perhaps, they will be at Leghorn. Then, your brother tells me you have received none of my letters. He knows I have never failed writing once a week, if not twice. We have had no letters from You this post. I shall not have the least respite from anxiety, till I hear about you, and what you design to do. it is immpossible but the great duke must lose Tuscany; and I suppose it is as certain, (I speak on probabilities, for, upon honour, I know nothing of the matter,) that as soon as there is a peace, we shall acknowledge Don Philip, and then you may return to Florence again. In the mean while I will ask Sir R. if it is possible to get your appointments continued, while you stay in readiness at Bologna, Rome, Lucca, or where you choose. I talk at random; but as I think so much of you, I am trying to find out something that may be of service to you. I write in infinite hurry, and am called away, so scarce know what I say. Lord Conway and his family are this instant come to town, and have sent for me.
It is Admiral Vernon’s birthday, (299) and the city-shops are full of favours, the streets of marrowbones and cleavers, and the night will be full of mobbing, bonfires, and lights.
The opera does not succeed; Amorevoli has not sung yet; here is a letter to his wife; mind, while he is ill, he sends to the Chiaretta! The dances are infamous and ordinary. Lord Chesterfield was told that the Viscontina said she was but four-and-twenty: he answered, “I suppose she means four-and-twenty stone!”
There is a mad parson goes about; he called to a sentinel the other day in the Park; “Did you ever see the Leviathan?” “No.” “Well, he is as like Sir. R. W. as ever two devils were like one another.”
Never was such unwholesome weather! I have a great cold, and have not been well this fortnight: even immortal majesty has had a looseness.
The Duke of Ancaster (300) and Lord James Cavendish (301) are dead.
This is all the news I know: I would I had time to write more; but I know you will excuse me now. If I wrote more, it would be still about the Italian expedition, I am so disturbed about it. Yours, ever.
(299) Admiral Vernon was now in the height of his popularity, in consequence of his successful attack upon Porto-Bello, in November, 1739, and the great gallantry he had shown upon that occasion. His determined and violen’t opposition, as a member of parliament, to the measures of the government, assisted in rendering him the idol of the mob, which he continued for many years.-D. [The admiral was actually elected for Rochester, Ipswich, and Penryn: he’was also set up for the City of London, where
(300) Peregrine Bertie, second Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven, great chamberlain of England, and chief justice in Eyre, north of Trent. The report of his death was premature. His grace survived till the 1st of January.-E.
(301) The second son of William, second Duke of Devonshire. He was colonel of a regiment of foot-guards, and member for Malton.-E.
189 Letter 42 To Sir Horace Mann. Downing Street, Nov. 23, 1741.
Your letter has comforted me much, if it can be called comfort to have one’s uncertainty fluctuate to the better side. You make me hope that the Spaniards design on Lombardy ; my passion for Tuscany, and anxiety for you, make me eager to believe it; but alas! while I am in the belief of this, they may be in the act of conquest in Florence, and poor you retiring politically! How delightful is Mr. Chute for cleaving unto you like Ruth! “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge!” As to the merchants of Leghorn and their concerns, Sir R. thinks you are mistaken, and that if the Spaniards come thither, they will by no means be safe. I own I write to you under a great dilemma; I flatter myself, all is well with you; but if not, how disagreeable to have one’s letters fall into strange hands. I write, however.
A brother Of Mine, (302) Edward by name, has lately had a call to matrimony: the virgins name was Howe. (303) He had agreed to take her with no fortune, she him with his four children. The father of him, to get rid of his importunities, at last acquiesced. The very moment he had obtained this consent, he repented; and, instead of flying on the wings of love to notify it, he went to his fair One, owned his father had mollified, but hoped she would be so good as to excuse him. You cannot imagine what an entertaining fourth act of the opera we had the other night. Lord Vane, (304) in the middle of the pit, making love to my lady. The Duke of Newcastle (305) has lately given him three-score thousand pounds, to consent to cut off the entail of the Newcastle estate. The fool immediately wrote to his wife, to beg she would return to him from Lord Berkeley; that he had got so much money, and now they might live comfortably: but she will not live comfortably: she is at Lord Berkeley’s house, whither go divers after her. Lady Townshend told me an admirable history; it is of our friend Lady Pomfret. Somebody that belonged to the Prince of Wales said, they were going to Court; it was objected that they ought to
I believe I told you that Vernon’s birthday passed quietly, but it was not designed to be pacific; for at twelve at night, eight gentlemen, dressed like sailors, and masked, went round Covent Garden with a drum, beating up for a volunteer mob, but it did not take; and they retired to a great supper that was prepared for them at the Bedford Head, and ordered by Whitehead (307) the author of Manners. It has been written into the country that Sir R. has had two fits of an apoplexy, and cannot live till Christmas; but I think he is recovered to be as well as ever. To-morrow se’nnight is the Day! (308) It is critical. You shall hear faithfully.
The opera takes: Monticelli (309) pleases almost equal to Farinelli: Amorevoli is much liked; but the poor, fine Viscontina scarce at all. (310)I carry the two former to-night to my Lady Townshend’s.
Lord Coventry (311) has had his son thrown out by the party: he went to Carlton House; the prince asked him about the election. “Sir,” said he, “the Tories have betrayed me, as they will you, the first time you have occasion for them.” The merchants have petitioned the King for more guardships. My lord president, (312) referred them to the Admiralty; but they bluntly refused to go, and said they would have redress from the King himself.
I am called down to dinner, and cannot write more now. I will thank dear Mr. Chute and the Grifona next post. I hope she and you liked your things. Good night, my dearest child! Your brother and I sit upon your affairs every morning. Yours ever.
(302) Second son of Sir Robert Walpole. He was clerk of the pells, and afterwards knight of the Bath. [Sir Edward died unmarried, in 1784, leaving three natural daughters; Laura, married to the Hon. and Rev. Frederick Keppel, afterwards Bishop of Exeter; maria, married, first to the Earl of Waldegrave, and, secondly to the Duke of Gloucester; and Charlotte, married to the Earl of Dysart.]
(303) Eldest sister of the Lord Viscount Howe. She was soon after this married to a relation of her own name. [John Howe, Esq. of Hanslop, Bucks.]
(304) William, second Viscount Vane, in Ireland. His “lady” was the too-celebrated Lady Vane, first married to Lord William Hamilton, and secondly to Lord Vane; who has given her own extraordinary and disreputable adventures to the world, in Smollett’s novel of “Peregrine Pickle,” under the title of “Memoirs of a Lady of Quality.” She is also immortalized in different ways, by Johnson, in his ,Vanity of Human Wishes,” and by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in one of his Odes.-D. [She was the daughter of Mr. Hawes, a South Sea director, and died in 1788. Lord Vane died in 1789. Boswell distinctly states, that the lady mnentioned in Johnson’s couplet “was not the celebrated Lady Vane, whose Memoirs were given to the public by Dr. Smollett, but Ann Vane, who was mistress to Frederick Prince of Wales, and died in 1736, not long before Johnson settled in London.” See Boswell’s Johnson, vol. i. p. 226, ed. 1835.]
(305) Uncle of Lord Vane, whose father, Lord Barnard, had married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Gilbert Holles, Earl of Clare, and sister and coheir of John Duke of Newcastle.
(306) Henry Clinton, ninth Earl of Lincoln, succeeded as Duke of Newcastle in 1768, on the death of his uncle, the minister.
(307) Paul Whitehead, a satirical poet of bad character, was the son of a tailor, who lived in Castle-yard, Holborn. He wrote several abusive poems, now forgotten, entitled “The State Dances,” “Manners,” “The Gymnasiad,” etc. In “Manners,” having attacked some members of the House of Lords, that assembly summoned Dodsley, the publisher, before them, (Whitehead having absconded,) and subsequently imprisoned him. In politics, Whitehead was a follower of Bubb Dodington; in private life be was the friend and companion of the profligate Sir Francis Dashwood, Wilkes, Churchill, etc. and, like them, was a member of the Hell-fire Club, which held its orgies at Mednam Abbey, in Bucks. The estimation in which he was held even by his friends may be judged of by the lines in which Churchill has damned him to everlasting fame:
“May I (can worse disgrace on mankind fall?) Be born a Whitehead and baptized a Paul.”
Paul Whitehead died in 1774.-D. [The proceedings in the House of Lords against the author of “Manners” which took place in February, 1739, was, in the opinion of Dr. Johnson, “intended rather to intimidate Pope, than to punish Whitehead.”]
(308) The day the parliament was to meet.
(309) His voice was clear, sweet, and free from defects of every kind. He was a chaste performer, and never hazarded any difficulty which he was not certain of executing with the utmost precision. He was, moreover, an excellent actor, so that nothing but the recent remembrance of the gigantic talents of Farinelli, and the grand and majestic style of Senesino, could have lefl an English audience any thing to wish.-E.
(310) Amorevoli was an admirable tenor. “I have heard,” says Dr. Burney, “better voices of his pitch, but never, on the stage, more taste and expression. The Visconti had a shrill flexible voice, and pleased more in rapid songs than those that required high colouring and pathos."-E.
(311) William, fifth Earl of Coventry. He died in 1751.-D.
(312) Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, a man of moderate abilities, but who had filled many great offices. He died in 1743, when his titles extinguished.-D.
191 Letter 43 To Sir Horace Mann. Nov. 26, 1741.
I don’t write you a very long letter, because you will see the inclosed to Mr. Chute. I forgot to thank you last post for the songs, and your design on the Maltese cats.
It is terrible to be in this uncertainty about you! We have not the least news about the Spaniards, more than what you told us, of a few vessels being seen off Leghorn. I send about the post, and ask Sir R. a thousand times a-day.
I beg to know if you have never heard any thing from Parker about my statue: (313) it was to have been finished last june. What is the meaning he does not mention it? If it is done, I beg it may not stir from Rome till there is no more danger of Spaniards.
If you get out of your hurry, I will trouble you with a new commission: I find I cannot live without Stosch’s (314) intaglio of the Gladiator, with the vase, upon a granite. You know I offered him fifty pounds: I think, rather than not have it, I would give a hundred. What will he do if the Spaniards should come to Florence? Should he be driven to straits, perhaps he would part with his Meleager too. You see I am as eager about baubles as if I were going to Louis at the Palazzo Vecchio! You can’t think what a closet I have fitted up; such a mixture of French gaiety and Roman virtu! you would be in love with it: I have not rested till it was finished: I long to have you see it. Now I am angry that I did not buy the Hermaphrodite; the man would have sold it for twenty-five sequins: do buy it for me; it was a friend of Bianchi. Can you forgive me’! I write all this upon the hope and presumption that the Spaniards go to Lombardy. Good night. Yours, ever.
(313) A copy of the Livia Mattei, which Mr. W. designed for a tomb of his mother: it was erected in Henry vii.’s Chapel, in Westminster Abbey, in 1754.
(314) He gave it afterwards to Lord Duncannon, for procuring him the arrears of his pension.
192 Letter 44 To Sir Horace Mann. Downing Street, Dec. 3, 1741, O. S.
Here I have two letters from you to answer. You cannot conceive my joy on the prospect of the Spaniards going to Lombardy: all advices seem to confirm it. There is no telling you what I have felt, and shall feel, till I am certain you are secure. You ask me about Admiral Haddock; you must not wonder that I have told you nothing of him: they know nothing of him here. He had discretionary powers to act as he should judge proper from his notices. He has been keeping in the Spanish fleet at Cales. (315) Sir R. says, if he had let that go out, to prevent the embarkation, the Tories would have complained, and said he had
So much for politics! for I suppose you know that Prague is taken by storm, in a night’s time. I forgot to tell you that Commodore Lestock, with twelve ships, has been waiting for a wind this fortnight, to join Haddock. (321)
I write to you in defiance of a violent headache, which I got last night at another of Sir T. Robinson’s balls. There were six hundred invited, and I believe above two hundred there. Lord Lincoln, out of prudence, danced with Lady Caroline Fitzroy, and Mr. Conway, with Lady Sophia; the two couple were just mismatched, as every body soon perceived, by the attentions of each man to the woman he did not dance with, and the emulation of either lady: it was an admirable scene. The ball broke up at three; but Lincoln, Lord Holderness, Lord Robert Sutton, (322) Young Churchill (323) and a dozen more grew ‘oily,’ stayed till seven in the morning, and drank thirty-two bottles.
I will take great care to send the knee-buckles and pocket-book; I have got them, and Madame Pucci’s silks, and only wait to hear that Tuscany is quiet, and then I will convey them by the first ship. I would write to them to-night, but have not time now; old Cibber, (324) plays to-night, and all the world will be there.
Here is another letter from Amorevoli, who is out of his wits at not hearing from his wife. Adieu! my dearest child. How happy shall I be when I know you are in peace; Yours, ever.
(315) Cadiz.
(316) The Right Hon. Henry Pelham, so long in conjunction with his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, one of the principal rulers of this country. He was a man of some ability, and a tolerable speaker. The vacillations, the absurdity, the foolish jealousy of the duke, greatly injured the stability and respectability of Mr. Pelham’s administration. Mr. Pelham was born in 1696, and died in 1754.-D.
(317) William Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, whose character and history are too well known to require to be here enlarged upon.-D.
(318) General Charles Churchill, groom of the bedchamber to the King.
(319) Lady Betty Berkeley, married to the notorious adventurer and gambler, Sir John Germain, who had previously married the divorced Duchess of Norfolk, (Lady Mary Mordaunt,) by whose bequest he became possessed of the estate of Drayton, in Northamptonshire, which he left on his own death to Lady Betty, his second @wife. Lady Betty left it to Lord George Sackville, third son of Lionel first Duke of Dorset. Sir John Germain was so ignorant, that he is said to have left a legacy to Fair Matthew Decker, as the author of St. Matthew’s Gospel.-D.
(320) sic, in the manuscript.-D.
(321) But for this circumstance, and the junction of the French squadron, Haddock would certainly have destroyed the Spanish fleet, and thereby escaped the imputation which was circulated with much industry, that his hands had been tied up by a neutrality entered into for Hanover; than which nothing could be more false. These reports, though ostensibly directed against Haddock, were, in reality, aimed at Sir Robert Walpole, a general election being at hand, and his opponents wishing to render him as unpopular with the people as possible.-E.
(322) Second son of John, third Duke of Rutland. He took the name of Sutton, on inheriting the estate of his maternal grandfather, Robert Sutton, Lord Lexington.-D.
(323) Natural son of General Charles Churchill, afterwards married to Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Walpole.-D.
(324) Colley Cibber, the celebrated dramatic author and actor. He had left the stage in 1731; but still occasionally acted, in spite of his age, for he was now seventy.-D. [For those occasional performances he is said to have had fifty guineas per night. So late as 1745, he appeared in the character of Pandulph, the pope’s legate, in his own tragedy, called “Papal Tyranny.” He died in 1757.]
194 letter 45 To Sir Horace Mann. Somerset House, (for I write to you wherever I find myself,) Dec. 10, 1741.
I have got no letter from you yet, the post should have brought it yesterday. The Gazette says, that the cardinal (325) has declared that they will suffer no expedition against Tuscany. I wish he had told me so! if they preserve this guarantee, personally, I can forgive their breaking the rest. But I long for your letter; every letter now from each of us is material. You will be almost as impatient to hear of the parliament, as I of Florence. The lords on Friday went upon the King’s speech; Lord Chesterfield made a very fine speech against the address, all levelled at the House of Hanover. Lord Cholmley, they say, answered him well. Lord Halifax (326) spoke Very ill, and was answered by little Lord Raymond, (327) who always will answer him. Your friend Lord Sandwich (328) affronted his grace of Grafton, (329) extremely, who was ill, and sat out of his place, by calling him to order; it was indecent in such a boy to a man of his age and rank: the blood of Fitzroy will not easily pardon it. The court had a majority of forty-one, with some converts.
On Tuesday we had the Speech; there were great differences among the party; the Jacobites, with Shippen (330) and Lord Noel Somerset at their head, were for a division, Pultney and the Patriots against one; (332) the ill success in the House of lords had frightened them; we had no division, but a very warm battle between Sir. R. and Poltney. The latter made a fine speech, very personal, on the state of affairs. Sir R. with as much health, as much spirits, as much force and command as ever, answered him for an hour; said, He hadbeen taxed with all our misfortunes; but did he raise the war in Germany? or advise the war with Spain? did he kill the late Emperor or King of Prussia?’ did he counsel this King? or was he first minister to the King of Poland? did he kindle the war betwixt Muscovy and Sweden?” For our troubles at home, he said, “all the grievances of this nation were owing to the Patriots.” They laughed much at this; but does he want proofs of it? he said, They talked much of an equilibrium in this parliament, (333) and of what they designed against him; if it was so, the sooner he knew it the better; and there-fore if any man would move for a day to examine the state of the nation, he would second it.” Mr. Pultney did move for it; Sir R. did second it, and it is fixed for the twenty-first of January. Sir R. repeated some words of Lord Chesterfield’s in the House of Lords, that this was a time for truth, for plain truth for English truth, and hinted at the reception (334) his lordship had met in France. After these speeches of such consequence, and from such men, Mr. Lyttelton (335) got up to justify, or rather to flatter Lord Chesterfield, though every body then had forgot that he had been mentioned. Danvers (336) who is a rough, rude beast, but now and then mouths out some humour, said, “that Mr. P. and Sir R. were like two old bawds, debauching young members.”
That day was a day of triumph, but yesterday (Wednesday) the streamers of victory did not fly so gallantly. It was the day of receiving petitions; Mr. Pultney presented an immense piece of parchment, which he said he could but just lift; it was the Westminster petition, and is to be heard next Tuesday, when we shall all have our brains knocked out by the mob; so if you don’t hear from me next post, you will conclude my head was a little out of order. After this we went upon a cornish petition, presented by Sir William Yonge, (337) which drew on a debate and a division, when lo! we were but 222 to 215-how do you like a majority of seven? The Opposition triumphs highly, and with reason; one or two such victories, as Pyrrhus, the member for Macedon, said, will be the ruin of us. I look upon it now, that the question is, Downing Street or the Tower; will you come and see a body, if one should happen to lodge at the latter? There are a thousand pretty things to amuse you; the lions, the Armoury, the crown, and the axe that beheaded Anna Bullon. I design to make interest for the room where the two princes were smothered; in long winter evenings, when one wants company, (for I don’t suppose that many people will frequent me then,) one may sit and scribble verses against Crouch-back’d Richard, and dirges on the sweet babes. If I die there, and have my body thrown into a wood, I am too old to be buried by robin redbreasts, am not I?
Bootle, (338) the prince’s chancellor, made a most long and stupid speech; afterwards, Sir R. called to him, “Brother Bootle, take care you don’t get my old name.” “What’s that?” “Blunderer.”
You can’t conceive how I was pleased with the vast and deserved applause that Mr. Chute’s (339) brother, the lawyer, got: I never heard a clearer or a finer speech. When I went home, “Dear Sir,” said I to Sir R. “I hope Mr. Chute will carry his election for Heydon; he would be a great loss to you.” He replied. “We will not lose him.” I, who meddle with nothing, especially elections, and go to no committees, interest myself extremely for Mr. Chute.
Old Marlborough (340) is dying-but who can tell! last year she had lain a great while ill, without speaking; her physicians said, “She must be blistered, or she will die.” She called out, “I won’t be blistered, and I won’t die.” If she takes the same resolution now, I don’t believe she will. (341)
Adieu! my dear child: I have but room to say, yours, ever.
(325) Cardinal Fleury, first minister of France.
(326) George Montague Dunk, second Earl of Halifax, of the last creation. Under the reign of George iii., he became secretary of state, and was so unfortunate in that capacity as to be the opponent of Wilkes, on the subject of General Warrants, by which he is now principally remembered.-D.
(327) Robert, second Lord Raymond, only son of the chief justice of that name and title.-D.
(328) John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, passed through a long life of office, and left behind him n indifferent character, both in public and private He was, however, a man of some ability.-D.
(329) Charles Fitzroy, second Duke of Grafton, and grandson of Charles ii., was a person of considerable weight and influence at the court of George ii., where he long held the post of chamberlain of the household.
(330) “Honest Will Shippen,” as he was called, or ,Downright Shippen,” as Pope terms him, was a zealous Jacobite member of parliament, possessed of considerable talents, and a vehement opposer of Sir Robert Walpole’s government. He, however, did justice to that able minister, for he was accustomed to say, “Robin and I are honest men; but as for those fellows in long perriwigs” (meaning the Tories of the day,) " they only want to get into office themselves.” He was the author of a satirical poem, entitled, “Faction Displayed,” which possesses considerable merit.-D. [Shippen was born in 1672, and died in 1743. Sir Robert Walpole repeatedly declared, that he would not say who was corrupted, but he would say who was not corruptible-that man was Shippen. His speeches generally contained some pointed period, which he uttered with great animation. He usually spoke in a low tone of voice, with too great rapidity, and held his glove before his mouth.]
(331) Lord Charles Noel Somerset, second son of Henry, second Duke of Beaufort. He succeeded to the family honours in 1746, when his elder brother, Henry, the third duke, died without children.-D. [After the death of Sir William Wyndham, which happened in 1740, Lord Noel Somerset was considered as the rising head of the Tory interest. “He was,” says Tindal, “a man of sense, spirit, and activity, unblameable in his morals, but questionable in his political capacity.” He died in 1756.)
(332) Mr. Pulteney declared against dividing; observing, with a witticism, that “dividing was not the way to multiply.”
(333) In speaking of the balance of power, Mr. Pulteney had said, ,He did not know how it was abroad, not being in secrets, but congratulated the House, that he had not, for these many years, known it so near an equilibrium as it now was there."-E.
(334) Lord Chesterfield had been sent by the party, in the preceding September, to France, to request the Duke of Ormond (at Avignon,) to obtain the Pretender’s order to the Jacobites, to vote against Sir R. W. upon any question whatever; many of them having either voted for him, or retired, on the famous motion the last year for removing him from the, King’s councils. [Lord Chesterfield’s biographer, Dr. Maty states that the object of his lordship’s visit to France was the restoration of his health, which required the assistance of a warmer climate. The reception he met with during his short stay at Paris, is thus noticed in a letter from Mr. Pitt, of the 10th of September:-” I hope you liked the
(335) George Lyttelton, afterwards created Lord lyttelton.-D.
(336) Joseph Danvers, Esq. of Swithland, in the county of Leicester, at this time member for Totness. In 1746 he was created a baronet. He married Frances, the daughter of thomas babington, Esq. of Rothley Temple, Leicestershire.-E.
(337) the Right Hon. Sir William Yonge, Bart., secretary at war, to which office he had succeeded in May, 1735. Walpole, who tells us (Memoires, i. p. 20,) that " he was vain, extravagant, and trifling; simple out of the House, and too ready at assertions in it,” adds, “that his vivacity and parts, whatever the cause was, made him shine, and he was always content with the lustre that accompanied fame, without thinking of what was reflected from rewarded fame-a convenient ambition to ministers, who had few such disinterested combatants. Sir Robert Walpole always said of him ’that nothing but Yonge’s character could keep down his parts, and nothing but his parts support his character.’” That these parts were very great is shown by the fact, that Sir Robert Walpole often, when he did not care to enter early into the debate himself, gave Yonge his notes, as the latter came late into the House, from which be could speak admirably and fluently, though he had missed the preceding discussion. Sir William, who had a proneness to poetry, wrote the epilogue to Johnson’s tragedy of “Irene.” ’When I published the plan for my Dictionary,” says the Doctor, “Lord’Chesterfield told me that the word great should be pronounced so as to rhyme to state; and Sir William Yonge sent me word, that it should be pronounced so as to rhyme to seat, and that none but an Irishman would pronounce it great. Now, here were two men of the highest rank, the one the best speaker in the House of Lords, the other the best speaker in the House of Commons, differing entirely.” See Boswell’s Johnson,vol.iii.p.191.
(338) Sir Thomas Bootle, chancellor to the Prince of Wales; a dull, heavy man, and who is, therefore, ironically called, by Sir C. H. Williams, “Bright Bootle,"-D.
(339) Francis Chute, an eminent lawyer, second brother of Anthony Chute, of the Vine, in Hampshire, had, in concert with Luke Robinson, another lawyer, disputed Mr. Pultney’s borough of Heydon with him at the general elections and been returned but on a petition, and the removal of Sir R. W. they were voted out of their seats, and Mr. Chute died soon after.-E.
(340) Sarah, Dowager Duchess of Marlborough.
(341) Nor did she, Her grace survived the date of this letter nearly three years. She died on the 18th of October 1744, being then eighty-four years of age.-E.
197 Letter 46 To Sir Horace Mann. Wednesday night, eleven o’clock, Dec. 16, 1741.
Remember this day.
Nous voil`a de la Minorit`e! entens-tu cela! h`e! My dear child, since you will have these ugly words explained, they just mean that we ar— metamorphosed into the minority. This was the night of choosing a chairman of the committee of elections. Gyles Earle, (342) (as in the two last parliaments) was named by the Court; Dr. Lee, (343) a civilian, by the Opposition, a man of a fair character. (344) Earle was formerly a dependent on the Duke of Argyle,(345) is of remarkable covetousness and wit, which he has dealt out largely against the Scotch and the Patriots. It was a day of much expectation, and both sides had raked together all probabilities: I except near twenty who are in town, but stay to vote on a second question, when the majority may be decided to either party. have you not read of such in story? Men, who would not care to find themselves on the weaker side, contrary to their intent. In short, the determined sick were dragged out of their beds; zeal came in a great coat. There were two vast dinners at two taverns, for either-party; at six we met in the House. Sir William Yonge, seconded by my uncle Horace, (346) moved for Mr. Earle: Sir Paul Methuen (347) and Sir Watkyn Williams (348) proposed Dr. Lee-and carried him, by a majority of four: 242 against 238-the greatest number, I believe, that ever lost a question. You have no idea of their huzza! unless you can conceive how people must triumph after defeats of twenty years together. We had one vote shut out, by coming a moment too late; one that quitted us, for having been ill used by the Duke of Newcastle but yesterday-for which in all probability, he will use him well to-morrow-I mean, for quitting us. Sir Thomas Lowther,(349) Lord Hartington’s (350) uncle, was fetched down by him and voted against us. Young Ross,(351) son to a commissioner of the customs, and saved from the dishonour of not liking to go to the West Indies when it was his turn, by Sir R.s giving him a lieutenancy, voted against us; and Tom Hervey,(352) who is always with us, but is quite mad; and being asked why he left us, replied, “Jesus knows my thoughts; one day I blaspheme, and pray the next.” so, you see what accidents were against us, or we had carried our point. They cry, Sir R. miscalculated: how should he calculate, when there are men like Ross, and fifty others he could name! It was not very pleasant to be stared in the face to see how one bore it-you can guess at my bearing it, who interest myself so little about any thing. I have had a taste of what I am to meet from all sorts of people. The moment we had lost the question, I went from the
To-morrow and Friday we go upon the Westminster election-you will not wonder, shall you, if you hear the next post that we have lost that too? Good night. Yours, ever.
(342) Giles Earle, Esq. one of the lords of the treasury and who had been chairman of the committees of the House of Commons from 1727 to the date of this letter. He had been successively groom of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales in 1718, clerk comptroller of the King"s household in 1720, commissioner of the Irish revenue in 1728, and a lord of the treasury in 1738. Mr. Earle was a man of broad coarse wit, and a lively image of his style and sentiments has been preserved by Sir C. H. Williams, in his “Dialogue between Giles Earle and Bubb Dodington."-E.
(343) George Lee, brother to the lord-chief justice; he was appointed one of the lords of the admiralty on the following change, which post he resigned on the disgrace of his patron, Lord Granville. He was designed by the Prince of Wales for his first minister, and, immediately on the prince’s death, was appointed treasurer to the princess dowager, and soon after made dean of the arches, a knight, and privy counsellor. He died in 1758.
(344) In a letter to Dodington, written from Spa, on the 8th of September, Lord Chesterfield says:-"I am for acting at the very beginning of the session. The court generally proposes some servile and shameless tool of theirs to be chairman of the committee of privileges. Why should not we, therefore, pick up some Whig of a fair character, and with personal connexions, to set up in opposition? I think we should be pretty strong upon this point."-E.
(345) John, the great Duke of Argyle and Greenwich.-D.
(346) Horace Walpole, younger brother of Sir Robert, created. in his old age, Lord Walpole of Wolterton. He was commonly called “Old Horace,” to distinguish him from his nephew, the writer of these letters.-D.
(347) The son of John Methuen, Esq. the diplomatist, and author of the celebrated Methuen treaty with Portugal. Sir Paul was a knight of the Bath, and died in 1757.-D.
(348) Sir Watkyn Williams Wynn, Bart. the third baronet of the family, was long one of the leaders in the House of Commons.-D. (349) Sir Thomas Lowther, Bart. of Holker, in Lancashire. He had married Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of the second Duke of Devonshire.-D.
(350) Afterwards the fourth Duke of Devonshire.
(351) Charles Ross, killed in flannders, at the battle of Fontenoy, 1745.
(352) Thomas Hervey, second son of John, first Earl of Bristol, ’and Surveyor of the royal gardens. He was at this time writing his famous letter to Sir Thomas Hanmer. [With whose wife he had eloped. In the letter alluded to, he expresses his conviction that his conduct was natural and delicate, and that, finally, in heaven, Lady Hanmer, in the distribution of wives, would be considered to be his. Dr. Johnson (to whom he had left a legacy of fifty pounds, but -,afterwards gave it him in his life-time) characterises him as “very vicious.” " Alas!” observes Mr. Croker, “it is but too probable that he was disordered in mind, and that what was called vice was. in truth, disease, and required a madhouse rather than a prison.” He died in 1775. See Boswell’s Johnson, Vol. iii. P. 18, ed. 1835.)
(353) His mother, Catherine Lady Walpole, who died August 20, 1737.
199 Letter 47 To Sir Horace Mann. Thursday, six o’clock. [Dec. 17, 1741.
You will hardly divine where I am writing to you-in the Speaker’s chamber. The House is examining witnesses on the Westminster election, which will not be determined to-day; I am not in haste it should, for I believe we shall lose it. A great fat fellow, a constable, on their side, has just deposed, that Lord Sundon,(355) and the high constable, took him by the collar at the election, and threw him down stairs. Do you know the figure of Lord Sundon? If you do, only think of that little old creature throwing any man down stairs!
As I was coming down this morning, your brother brought me a long letter from you, in answer to mine of the 12th of November. You try to make me mistrust the designs of Spain against Tuscany, but I will hope yet: hopes are all I have for any thing I know!
As to the young man, I will see his mother the first moment I can; and by next post, hope to give you a definite answer, whether he will submit to be a servant or not; in every other respect, I am sure he will please you.
Your friend, Mr. Fane,(356) would not come for us last night, nor will vote till after the Westminster election: be is brought into parliament by the Duke of Bedford,(357) and is unwilling to disoblige him in this. We flattered ourselves with better success; for last Friday, after sitting till two in the morning we carried a Cornish election in four divisions-the first by a majority of six, then of twelve, then of fourteen, and lastly by thirty-six. You can’t imagine the zeal of the young men on both sides: Lord Fitzwilliam, Lord Hartington, and my friend Coke (358) on ours, are warm as possible; Lord Quarendon (359) and Sir Francis Dashwood (360) are as violent on theirs: the former speaks often and well. But I am talking to you of nothing but parliament; why, really, all one’s ideas are stuffed with it, and you yourself will not dislike to hear things so material. The Opposition who invent every method of killing Sir R., intend to make us sit on Saturdays; but how mean and dirty is it, how scandalous! when they can’t ruin him by the least plausible means, to murder him by denying him air and exercise.(361) There was a strange affair happened on Saturday; it was strange, yet very English. One Nourse, an old gamester, said, in the coffee-house, that Mr. Shuttleworth, a member, only pretended to be ill. This was told to Lord Windsor,(362) his friend, who quarrelled with Nourse, and the latter challenged him. My lord replied, he would not fight him, he was too old. The other replied, he was not too old to fight with pistols. Lord Windsor still refused: Nourse, in a rage, went home and cut his own throat. This was one of the odd ways in which men are made.
I have scarce seen Lady Pomfret lately, but I am sure Lord Lincoln is not going to marry her daughter. I am not surprised at her sister being shy of receiving civilities from you-that was English too!
Say a great deal for me to the Chutes. How I envy your snug suppers! I never have such suppers! Trust me, if we fall, all the grandeur, all the envied grandeur of our house, will not cost me a sigh: it has given me no pleasure while we have it, and will give me no pain when I part with it. My liberty, my ease, and choice of my own friends and company, will sufficiently counterbalance the crowds of Downing-street. I am so sick of it all, that if we are victorious or not, I propose leaving England in the spring,. Adieu! Yours, ever and ever.
(355) William clayton, Lord Sundon, in Ireland, so created in 1735. His wife was a favourite of Queen Caroline, to whom she was mistress of the robes.
(356) Charles Fane, Only son of Lord Viscount Fane, whom he succeeded, had been minister at Florence.
(357) John Russell, fourth Duke of Bedford.-D.
(358) Edward, Lord Viscount Coke, only son of the Earl of Leicester. He died in 1753.
(359) George Henry Lee, Lord Viscount Quarendon, eldest son of the Earl of Lichfield, whom he succeeded in that title.
(360) Sir Francis Dashwood, Bart., afterwards Lord Le Despencer. Under the administration of Lord Bute he was, for a short time, chancellor of the exchequer.-D.
(361) Sir Robert always went every Saturday to Newpark, Richmond, to hunt. (From his early youth, Sir Robert was fond of the diversions of the field. He was accustomed to hunt in Richmond Park with a pack of beagles. On receiving a packet of letters, he usually opened that from his gamekeeper first.] (362) Herbert Windsor Hickman, second Viscount Windsor in Ireland, and Baron Montjoy of the Isle of Wight. [His lordship died in 1758, when all his honours, in default of male issue, became extinct.]
201 Letter 48 To Sir Horace Mann. Christmas eve, 1741.
My dearest child, if I had not heard regularly from you, what a shock it would have given me! The other night at the opera, Mr. Worseley, with his peevish face, half smiling through ill-nature, told me (only mind!) by way of news, “that he heard Mr. Mann was dead at Florence!"’ How kind! To entertain one with the chitchat of the town, a man comes and tells one that one’s dearest friend is dead! I am sure he would have lost his speech if he had had any thing pleasurable to tell. If ever there is a metempsychosis, his soul will pass into a vulture and prey upon carcases after a battle, and then go and bode at the windows of their relations. But I will say no more of him; I will punish him sufficiently, if sufficiently there be, by telling him you are perfectly well: you are, are you not? Send me certificate signed by Dr. Cocchi,(363) and I will choke him with it: another’s health must be venomous to him.
Sir Francis Dashwood too,-as you know all ill-natured people hear all ill news,-told me he heard you was ill: I vowed you was grown as strong as the Farnese Hercules. Then he desires you will send him four of the Volterra urns, of the chimney-piece size; send them with any of my things; do, or he will think I neglected it because he is our enemy; and I would not be peevish, not to be like them. He is one of the most inveterate; they list under Sandys,(364) a parcel of them with no more brains than their general; but being malicious they pass for ingenious, as in these countries fogs are reckoned warm weather. Did you ever hear what Earle said of Sandys? “that he never laughed but once, and that was when his best friend broke his thigh.”
Last Thursday I wrote you word of our losing the chairman of the committee. This winter is to be all ups and downs. The next day (Friday) we had a most complete victory. Mr. Pultney moved for all papers and letters, etc. between the King and the Queen of Hungary and their ministers. Sir R. agreed to give them all the papers relative to those transactions, only desiring to except the letters written by the two sovereigns themselves. They divided, and we carried it, 237 against 227. They moved to have those relations to France, Prussia,
The Duchess of Buckingham, (375) who is more mad with pride than any merchant’s wife in Bedlam, came the other night to the opera en princesse, literally in robes, red velvet and ermine. I must tell you a story of her: last week she sent for Cori,(376) to pay him for her opera-ticket; he was not at home, but went in an hour afterwards. She said, “Did he treat her like a tradeswoman? She would teach him to respect women of her birth; said he was in league with Mr. Sheffield (377) to abuse her, and bade him come the next morning at nine.” He came, and she made him wait till eight at night, only sending him an omlet and a bottle of wine, “as it was Friday, and he a Catholic, she supposed he did not eat meat.” At last she received him in all the form of a princess giving audience to an ambassador. “Now,” she said, “she had punished him.”
In this age we have some who pretend to impartiality: you will scarce guess how Lord Brook (378) shows his: he gives one vote on one side, one on the other, and the third time does not vote at all, and so on, regularly.
My sister is ,up to the elbows in joy and flowers that she has received from you this morning and begs I will thank you for her.
You know, or have heard of, Mrs. Nugent, Newsham’s mother; she went the other morning to Lord Chesterfield to beg “he would encourage Mr. Nugent (379) to speak in the house; for that really he was so bashful, she was afraid his abilities would be lost on the world.” I don’t know who has encouraged him; but so it is, that this modest Irish converted Catholic does talk a prodigious deal of nonsense in behalf of English liberty.
Lord Gage (380) is another; no man would trust him in a wager, unless he stakes, and yet he is trusted by a whole borough with their privileges and liberties! He told Mr. Winnington the other day, that he would bring his son into parliament, that he would not influence him, but leave him entirely to himself. “D-n it,” said Winnington, “so you have all his lifetime.”
Your brother says you accuse him of not writing to you, and that his reasons are, he has not time, and next, that I tell you all that can be said. So I do, I think: tell me when I begin to tire you, or if I am too circumstantial; but I don’t believe you will think so, for I remember how we used to want such a correspondent when I was with you.
I have spoke about the young man who is well content to live with you as a servant out of livery. I am to settle the affair finally with his father on Monday, and then he shall set out as soon as possible. I will send the things for Prince Craon etc. by him. I will write to Madame Grifoni the moment I hear she is returned from the country.
The Princess Hesse (381) is brought to bed of a son. We are going into mourning for the Queen of Sweden;(382) she had always been apprehensive of the small-pox, which has been very fatal in her family.
You have heard, I suppose, of the new revolution (383) in Muscovy. The letters from Holland to-day say, that they have put to death the young Czar and his mother, and his father too: which, if true,(384) is going very far, for he was of a sovereign house in another country, no subject of Russia, and after the death of his wife and son, could have no pretence or interest to raise more commotions there.
We have got a new opera, not so good as the former; and we have got the famous Bettina to dance, but she is a most indifferent performer. The house is excessively full every Saturday, never on Tuesday: here, you know, we make every thing a fashion.
I am happy that my fears for Tuscany vanish every letter. There! there is a letter of twelve sides! I am forced to page it, it is so long, and I have not time to read it over and look for the mistakes. Yours, ever.
(363) Antonio Cocchi, a learned physician and author, at Florence; a particular friend of Mr. Mann. [The following favourable character of Dr. Cocchi is contained in a letter from the Earl of Cork to Mr. Duncombe, dated Florence, November 29, 1754. “Mr Mann’s fortunate in the friendship, skill, and care of his physician, Dr. Cocchi. He is a man of most extensive learning; understands, reads, and speaks all the European languages; studious, polite, modest, humane, and instructive. He is always to be admired and beloved by all who know him. Could I live with these two gentlemen only, and converse with few or none others, I should scarce desire to return to England for many years.”]
(364) Samuel Sandys, a republican, raised on the fall of Sir R.’W. to be chancellor of the exchequer, then degraded to a peer and cofferer, and soon afterwards laid aside. [In 1743, he was raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Sandys, Baron of Omberley in the county of Worcester, and died in 1770. Dr. Nash, in his history of that county, states him to have been “a very useful, diligent senator-a warm, steady friend-a good neighbor, and a most hospitable country gentleman and provincial magistrate.”]
(365) William Murray, brother of Lord- Stormont, and of Lord Dunbar, the Pretender’s first minister. He is known by his eloquence and the friendship of Mr. Pope. He was soon afterwards promoted to be solicitor-general. (Afterwards the celebrated chief-justice of the King’s Bench, and Earl of Man’s’field.-D.)
(366) Sir Richard Lloyd, advanced in 1754 to be solicitor-general, in the room of Mr. Murray, appointed attorney-general. [And in 1759, appointed one of the Barons of the exchequer.]
(367) Arthur St. Leger, Lord Doneraile, died in 1750, being lord of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales.
(368) Lord Sundon and Sir Charles Wager had been the Court candidates for Westminster at the late election against Admiral Vernon and Charles Edwin, Esq.-D.
(369) A great London merchant, and one of the members for the City. His reputation for integrity and ability gave him much weight in the House of Commons.-D. (Lord Chatham, when mr. Pitt, frequently calls him the Great Commoner. In 1749, he became father of the City; when, much against his will, the merchants erected a statue of him in the Royal Exchange. He died in 1764.]
(370) Paul Whitehead, an infamous but not despicable poet. [See ante, p. 190, Letter 42.]
(371) Thomas Lord Viscount Gage had been a Roman Catholic, and was master of the household to the Prince. [Lord Gage, in 1721, was elected for the borough of Tewksbury; which he represented till within a few months of his death, in 1754. He was a zealous politician, and distinguished himself, in 1732, by detecting the fraudulent sale of the Derwentwater estates.]
(372) John Perceval, second Earl of Egmont, in Ireland, created, in 176@, Lord Lovel and Rolland in the peerage of Great Britain. He became, in 1747, a lord of the bedchamber to Frederick Prince of Wales, and in the early part of the reign of George iii. held successively the offices of postmaster-general and first lord of the admiralty. He was a man of some ability and a frequent and fluent speaker, and was the author of a celebrated party pamphlet of’ the day, entitled “Faction Detected.” His excessive love of ancestry led him, in Conjunction with his father, and assisted by Anderson, the genealogist, to print two thick octavo volumes respecting his family, entitled “History of the House of Ivery;” a most remarkable monument of human vanity.-D. [Boswell was not of this opinion. “Some have affected to laugh,” he says, “at the History of the House of Ivery: it would be well if many others would transmit their pedigrees to posterity, with the same accuracy and generous zeal with which the noble lord who compiled that work has honoured and perpetuated his ancestry. Family histories, like the imagines majorum of the ancients, excite to virtue.” See “Life of Johnson,” vol viii. p. 188.]
(373) Swallowfield, in Berkshire, the seat of John Dodd, Esq.
(374) A scheme for obtaining a larger allowance for the Prince of Wales.
(375) Catherine, Duchess Dowager of Buckingham, natural daughter of King James ii. (Supposed to be really the daughter of Colonel Graham, a man of Gallantry of the time, and a lover of her mother, Lady Dorchester.-D.) [This remarkable woman was extravagantly proud of her descent from James the Second, and affected to be the head of the Jacobite party in England. She maintained a kind of royal state, and affected great devotion to the memory of her father and grandfather. On the death of her son, the second Duke of Buckingham of the Sheffield family (whose funeral was celebrated in a most extraordinary manner), she applied to the old Duchess of Marlborough, who was as high spirited as herself, for the loan of the richly-ornamented hearse which had conveyed the great duke to his grave. “Tell her,” said Sarah, “it carried the Duke of Marlborough, and shall never carry any one else.” “My upholsterer,” rejoined Catherine of Buckingham in a fury, “tells me I can have a finer for twenty pounds."-” This last stroke,” says the editor of the Suffolk Correspondence, " was aimed at the parsimony of their Graces of Marlborough, which was supposed to have been visible even in the funeral; but the sarcasm was as unjust as the original request of borrowing the hearse was mean and unfeeling."-E.]
(376) Angelo Maria Cori, prompter to the Opera.
(377) Mr. Sheffield, natural son of the late Duke of Buckingham, with whom she was at law.
(378) Francis, Baron, and afterwards created Earl Brooke.
(379) Robert Nugent, a poet, a patriot, an author, a lord of the treasury, (and finally an Irish peer by the titles of Lord Clare and Earl Nugent. He seems to have passed his long life in seeking lucrative places and courting rich widows, in both of which pursuits be was eminently successful.-D.) [He married the sister and heiress of Secretary Craggs, and his only daughter married the first Marquis of Buckingham. A volume of his ,Odes and Epistles” were published anonymously in 1733. He died in 1788.)
(380) Lord Gage was one of those persons to whom the privileges of parliament were of extreme consequence, as their own liberties were inseparable from them.
(381) Mary, fourth daughter of King George ii.
(382) Ulrica, Queen of Sweden, sister of Charles XII.
(383) This relates to the revolution by which the young Czar John was deposed, and the Princess Elizabeth raised to the throne.
(384) This was not true. The Princess Anne of Mecklenburgh died in prison at Riga, a few years afterwards. Her son, the young Czar, and her husband, Prince Antony of Brunswick Wolfenbuttle, were confined for many years.
206 Letter 49 To Sir Horace Mann. London, Dec. 29, 1741.
I write to you two days before the post goes out, because to-morrow I am to go out of town; but I would answer your letter by way of Holland, to tell you how much you have obliged both Sir Robert and me about the Dominichini;(385) and to beg you to thank Mr. Chute and Mr. Whithed-but I cannot leave it to you.
“My dear Mr. Chute, was ever any thing so kind! I crossed the Giogo (386) with Mr. Coke,(387) but it was in August, and I thought it then the greatest compliment that ever was paid to mortal; and I went with him too! but you to go only for a picture, and in the month of December: What can I say to you? You do more to oblige your friend, than I can find terms to thank you for. If I was to tell-it here, it would be believed as little as the rape of poor Tory (388) by a wolf. I can only say that I know the Giogo, its snows and its inns, and consequently know the extent of the obligation that I have to you and Mr. Whithed.”
Now I return to you, my dear child: I am really so much obliged to you and to them, that I know not what to say. I read Pennee’s letter to Sir. R., who was much pleased with his discretion; he will be quite a favourite of mine. And now we are longing for the picture; you know, of old, my impatience.
Your young secretary-servant is looking out for a ship, and will set out in the first that goes: I envy him.
The Court has been trying but can get nobody to stand for Westminster. You know Mr. Doddington has lost himself extremely by his new turn, after so often changing sides: he is grown very fat and lethargic; my brother Ned says, “he is grown of less consequence, but more weight."(389)
One hears of nothing but follies said by the Opposition, who grow mad on having the least prospect. Lady Carteret,(390) who, you know, did not want any new fuel to her absurdity, says, “they talk every day of making her lord first minister, but he is not so easily persuaded as they think for.” Good night. Yours, ever.
(385) A celebrated picture of a Madonna and Child by Dominichino, in the palace Zembeccari, at Bologna, now in the collection of the Earl of Orford, at Houghton, in Norfolk. (Since sent to Russia with the rest of the collection.-D.)
(386) The Giogo is the highest part of the Apennine between Florence and Bologna.
(387) Son of Lord Lovel, since Earl of Leicester. [In 1744, Lord Lovel was created Viscount Coke of Holkham and Earl of Leicester. His only son Edward died before him, in 1753, without issue; having married Lady Mary, one of the co-heirs of John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich.]
(388) A black spaniel of Mr. Walpole’s was seized by a wolf on the Alps, as it was running at the head of the chaise-horses, at noonday. [See ante, p. 139 letter 14.]
(389) George Bubb Dodington had lately resigned his post of one of the lords of the treasury, and gone again into opposition. [In Walpole’s copy of the celebrated Diary of this versatile politician, he had written a “Brief account of George Bubb Doddington, Lord Melcombe,” which the noble editor of the “Memoires” has inserted. It describes him, “as his Diary shows, vain, fickle, ambitious, and corrupt,’ and very lethargic; but gives him credit for great wit and readiness.” Cumberland, in his Memoirs, thus paints him:-"Dodington, lolling in his chair, in perfect apathy and self-command, dozing, and even snoring, at intervals, in his lethargic way, broke out every now and then into gleams and flashes of wit and humour.” In 1761, he was created Lord Melcombe, and died in the following year.]
(390) Frances, daughter of Sir Robert Worseley, and first wife of John Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl of Granville.
207 Letter 50 To Sir Horace Mann. London, Jan. 7, 1741-2, O. S.
I must answer for your brother a paragraph that he showed me in one of your letters: “Mr. W.’s letters are full of wit; don’t they adore him in England?” Not at all-and I don’t wonder at them: for if I have any wit in my letters, which I do not at all take for granted, it is ten to one that I have none out of my letters. A thousand people can write, that cannot talk; and besides, you know, (or I conclude so, from the little one hears stirring,) that numbers of the English have wit, who don’t care to produce it. Then, as to adoring; you now See Only my letters, and you may be sure I take care not to write you word of any of my bad qualities, which other people must see in the gross; and that may be a great hindrance to their adoration. Oh! there are a thousand other reasons I could give you, why I am not the least in fashion. I came over in an ill season: it is a million to one that nobody thinks a declining old minister’s son has wit. At any time, men in opposition have always most; but now, it would be absurd for a courtier to have even common sense. There is not a Mr. Stuart, or a Mr. Stewart, whose names begin but with the first letters of Stanhope,(391) that
If you have a mind to know who is adored and has wit, there is old Churchill has as much God-d-n-ye wit as ever-except that he has lost two teeth. There are half a dozen Scotchmen who vote against the Court, and are cried up by the Opposition for wit, to keep them steady. They are forced to cry up their parts, for it would be too barefaced to commend their honesty. Then Mr. Nugent has had a great deal of wit till within this week; but he is so busy and so witty, that even his own party grow tired of him. His plump wife, who talks of nothing else, says he entertained her all the way on the road with repeating his speeches.
I did not go into the country, last week, as I intended, the weather was so bad; but I shall go on Sunday for three or four days, and perhaps shall not be able to write to you that week. You are in an agitation, I suppose, about politics: both sides are trafficking deeply for votes during the holidays. It is allowed, I think, that we shall have a majority of twenty-six: Sir R. says more; but now, upon a pinch, he brags like any bridegroom.
The Westminster election passed without any disturbance, in favour of Lord Perceive-all (394) and Mr. Perceive-nothing, as my uncle calls them. Lord Chesterfield was vaunting to Lord Lovel, that they should have carried it, if they had set up two broomsticks. “So I see,” replied Lovel. But it seems we have not done with it yet: if we get the majority, this will be declared a void election too, for my Lord Chancellor (395) has found out, that the person who made the return, had no right to make it: it was the High Bailiff’s clerk, the High Bailiff himself being in custody of the sergeant-at-arms. it makes a great noise, and they talk of making subscriptions for a Petition.
Lord Stafford (396) is come over. He told me some good stories of the Primate.(397)
Last night I had a good deal of company to hear Monticelli and Amorevoli, particularly the three beauty-Fitzroys, Lady Euston, Lady Conway, and Lady Caroline.(398) Sir R. liked the singers extremely: he had not heard them before, I forgot to tell you all our beauties there was Miss Hervey,(399) my lord’s daughter, a fine, black girl, but as masculine as her father should be;(400) and jenny Conway, handsomer Still,(401) though changed with illness, than even the Fitzroys. I made the music for my Lord Hervey, who is too ill to go to operas: yet, with a coffin-face, is as full of his little dirty politics as ever. He will not be well enough to go to the House till the majority is certain somewhere, but lives shut up with my Lord Chesterfield and Mr. Pultney-a triumvirate, who hate one another more than any body they could proscribe, had they the power. I dropped in at my Lord Hervey’s, the other night, knowing my lady had company: it was soon after our defeats. My lord, who has always professed particularly to me, turned his back on me, and retired for an hour into a whisper with young Hammond,(402) at the end of the room. Not being at all amazed at one whose heart I knew so well, I stayed on, to see more of this behaviour; indeed, to rise myself to it. At last he came up to me, and begged this music. which I gave him, and would often again, to see how many times I shall be ill and well with him within this month. Yesterday came news that his brother, Captain William Hervey, has taken a Caracca ship, worth full two hundred thousand pounds. He was afterwards separated from it by a storm, for two or three days, and was afraid of losing it, having but five-and-twenty men to thirty-six Spaniards; but he has brought it home safe. I forgot to tell you, that upon losing the first question, Lord Hervey kept away for a week; on our carrying the next great one, he wrote to Sir Robert, how much he desired to see him, “not upon any business, but Lord Hervey longs to see Sir Robert Walpole.”
Lady Sundon(402) is dead, and Lady M- disappointed: she, who is full as politic as my Lord Hervey, had made herself an absolute servant to Lady Sundon, but I don’t hear that she has left her even her old clothes. Lord Sundon is in great grief: I am surprised, for she has had fits of madness ever since her ambition met such a check by the death of the Queen.(404) She had great power with her, though the Queen pretended to despise her; but had unluckily told her, or fallen into her power by some secret.(405) I was saying to Lady Pomfret, to be sure she is dead very rich!” She replied, with some warmth, She never took money.” When I came home, I mentioned this to Sir R. “No,” said he, “but she took jewels; Lord Pomfret’s place of master of the horse to the Queen was bought of her for a pair of diamond earrings, of fourteen hundred pounds value.” One day that she wore them at a visit at old Marlboro’s, as soon as she was gone, the Duchess said to Lady Mary Wortley,(406)
Friday morning. I was forced to leave off last night, as I found it would be impossible to send away this letter finished in any time. It will be enormously long, but I have prepared you for it. When I consider the beginning of my letter, it looks as if I were entirely of your opinion about the agreeableness of them. I believe you will never commend them again, when you see how they increase upon your hands. I have seen letters of two or three sheets, written from merchants at Bengal and Canton to their wives: but then they contain the history of a twelvemonth: I grow voluminous from week to week. I can plead in excuse nothing but the true reason; you desired it; and I remember how I used to wish for such letters, when I was in Italy. My Lady Pomfret carries this humanity still farther, and because people were civil to her in Italy, she makes it a rule to visit all strangers in general. She has been to visit a Spanish Count (407) and his wife, though she cannot open her lips in their language. They fled from Spain, he and his brother having offended the Queen, (408) by their attachments to the Prince of Asturias; his brother ventured back to bring off this woman, who was engaged to him. Lord Harrington (409) has procured them a pension of six hundred a-year. They live chiefly with Lord Carteret and his daughter,(410) who speak Spanish. But to proceed from where I left off last night, like the Princess Dinarzade in the Arabian Nights, for you will want to know what happened one day. Sir Robert was at dinner with Lady Sundon, who hated the Bishop of London, as much as she loved the Church. “Well,” said she to Sir R., “how does your pope do!"-"Madam,” replied he, “he is my pope, and shall be my Pope; every body has some pope or other; don’t you know that you are one! They call you Pope Joan.” She flew into a passion, and desired he would not fix any names on her; that they were not so easily got rid of.
We had a little ball the other night at Mrs. Boothby’s, and by dancing, did not perceive an earthquake, which frightened all the undancing part of the town.
We had a civility from his Royal Highness,(411) who sent for Monticelli the night he was engaged here, but, on hearing it, said he would send for him some other night. If I did not live so near St. James’s, I would find out some politics in this-should not one?
Sir William Stanhope (412) has had a hint from the same Highness, that his company is not quite agreeable: whenever he met any body at Carlton House whom he did not know, he said, “Your humble servant, Mr. or Mrs. Hamilton.”
I have this morning sent aboard the St. Quintin a box for you, with your secretary-not in it.
Old Weston of Exeter is dead. Dr. Clarke, the Dean, Dr. Willes, the decipherer, and Dr. Gilbert of Llandaff, are candidates to succeed him.(413) Sir R. is for Willes, who, he says, knows so many secrets, that he might insist upon being archbishop.
My dear Mr. Chute! how concerned I am that he took all that trouble to no purpose. I will not write to him this post, for as you show him my letters, this here will sufficiently employ any one’s patience-but I have done. I long to hear that the Dominichini is safe. Good night. Yours, ever.
(391) The name of Lord Chesterfield.
(392) On the subject of Sir Robert’s alleged want of partiality for his son, the following passage occurs in the anecdotes prefixed to Lord Wharncliffe’s edition of the works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:-"Those ironical lines, where Pope says that Sir Robert Had never made a friend in private life, And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife,’ are well understood, as conveying a sly allusion to his good-humoured unconcern about some things which more strait-laced husbands do not take so coolly. In a word, Horace Walpole was generally supposed to be the son of Carr Lord Hervey, and Sir Robert not to be ignorant of it. One striking circumstance was visible to the naked eye; no beings in human shape could resemble each other less than the two passing for father and son; and while their reverse of personal likeness provoked a malicious whisper, Sir Robert’s marked neglect of Horace in his infancy tended to confirm it. Sir Robert took scarcely any notice of him till his proficiency in Eton school, when a lad of some standing, drew his attention, and proved that, whether he had or had not a right to the name he went by, he was likely to do it Honour.” Vol. i. 1). 33.-E.
(393) General Charles Churchill. (Whose character has been so inimitably sketched, at about the same period when this letter was written, by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in his poem of’, Isabella, or the Morning:"-
“The General, one of those brave old commanders,
Who served through all our glorious wars in Flanders.
Frank and good-natur’d, of an honest heart,
Loving to act the steady friendly part;
None led through youth a gayer life than he,
Cheerful in converse, smart in repartee;
But with old age, its Vices Come along,
And in narration he’s extremely long;
Exact in circumstance, and nice in dates,
He each minute particular relates.
If you name one of marlbro’s ten campaigns,
He
gives you its whole history for your pains,
And Blenheim’s field becomes by his reciting,
As long in telling as it was in fighting.
His old desire to please is still express’d,
His hat’s well cock’d, his periwig’s
well dress’d.
He rolls his stockings still, white gloves he wears,
And in the boxes with the beaux appears.
His eyes through wrinkled corners cast their rays,
Still he looks cheerful, still soft things he says,
And still remembering that he once was young,
He strains his crippled knees, and struts along."-D.)
(394) Vide an account of the erection of Lord Perceval and one Edwin, in that Lord’s History of the House of Ivery.
(395) Philip Yorke, Lord, and afterwards Earl of Hardwicke, for twenty years Lord Chancellor of England.-D.
(396) William mathias Howard, Earl of Stafford.
(397) The Primate of Lorrain, eldest son of Prince Craon, was famous for his wit and vices of all kinds.
(398) Lady Dorothy Boyle, eldest daughter of Lord Burlington; Isabella, wife of Francis Lord Conway, and Caroline, afterwards married to Lord Petersham, were the daughter-in-law and daughters of Charles Fitzroy, Duke of grafton, lord chamberlain.
(399) Lepel, eldest daughter of John Lord Hervey, afterwards married to Mr. Phipps. (Constantine Phipps, in 1767 created Lord Mulgrave.]
(400) The effeminacy of Lord Hervey formed a continual subject for the satire of his opponents. Pope’s bitter lines on him- are well remembered. The old Duchess of Marlborough, too, in her “Opinions,” describes him as having “certainly parts and wit; but he is the most wretched profligate man that ever was born, besides ridiculous; a painted face, and not a tooth in his head.” on which the editor of that curious little book, Lord Hailes, remarks, “Lord Hervey, having felt some attacks of the epilepsy, entered upon and persisted in a very strict regimen, and thus stopped the progress and prevented the effects of that dreadful disease. His daily food was a small quantity of asses’ milk and a flour biscuit. Once a week he indulged himself with eating an apple; he used emetics daily. Mr. Pope and he were once friends; but they quarrelled, and persecuted each other with virulent satire. Pope, knowing the abstemious regimen which Lord Hervey observed, was so ungenerous as to call him “mere cheese-curd of asses’ milk!” Lord Hervey used paint to soften his ghastly appearance. Mr. Pope must have known this also; and therefore it was unpardonable in him to introduce it into his “celebrated portrait.” It ought to be remembered, that Lord Hervey is very differently described by Dr. Middleton; who, in his dedication to him of “The History of the Life of Tully,” praises him for his strong good sense, patriotism, temperance, and information.-E.
(401) Jane, only daughter of Francis, the first Lord Conway, by his second wife, Mrs. Bodens. (She died unmarried, May 5, 1749.-D.)
(402) Author of some Love Elegies, and a favourite of Lord Chesterfield. He died this year. [Hammond was equerry to the Prince of Wales, and member for Truro. He died in June, 1742, at Stowe, the seat of Lord Cobham, in his thirty.second year. Miss Dashwood long survived him, and died unmarried in 1779. " The character,” says Johnson, “which her lover gave her was, indeed, not likely to attract courtship.”]
(402) Wife of William Clayton, Lord Sundon, woman of the bedchamber and mistress of the robes to Queen Caroline. [She had been the friend and correspondent of Sarah Duchess of’ Marlborough; who, on the accession of George I , through Baron Bothmar’s influence, procured for her friend the place of lady of the bedchamber to the Princess with whom she grew as great a favourite as her colleague, Mrs. Howard, with the Prince; and eventually, on the Princess becoming Queen, exercised an influence over her, of which even sir Robert Walpole was jealous.]
(404) Queen Caroline, died November 1737.-D.
(405) This is now known to have been a rupture, with which the Queen was afflicted, and which she had the weakness to wish, and the courage to be able, to conceal.-E.
(406) The celebrated Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, oldest daughter of Evelyn, first Duke of Kingston, and wife of Wortley Montagu, Esq.-D.
(407) Marquis de Sabernego: he returned to Spain after the death of Philip V.
(408) The Princess of Parma, second wife of Philip V. King of Spain, and consequently stepmother to the Prince of Asturias, son of that King, by his first wife, a princess of Savoy.-D.
(409) William Stanhope, created Lord Harrington in 1729, and Earl of the same in 1741. He held various high offices, and was, at the time this was written, secretary of state.-D.
(410) Frances, youngest daughter of Lord Carteret, afterwards married to the Marquis of Tweedale. (in 1748. The marquis was an extraordinary lord of session, and the last person who held a similar appointment.]
(411) Frederick Prince of Wales.-D.
(412) Brother to Lord Chesterfield. This bon mot was occasioned by the numbers of Hamiltons which Lady Archibald Hamilton, the Prince’s mistress, had placed at that court.
(413) Nicholas Clagget, Bishop of St. David’s, succeeded, on Weston’s death, to the see of Exeter.-Dr. Clagget was, however, succeeded in the see of St. David’s by Dr. Edward Willes, Dean of Lincoln and decipherer to the King; and, in the following year, translated to the bishopric of Bath and Wells. The art of deciphering, for which Dr. Willes was so celebrated, has been the subject of many learned and curious works by Trithemius, Baptista Porta, the Duke Augustus of Brunswick, and other more recent writers. The Gentleman’s Magazine for 1742, contains a very ingenious system of deciphering: but the old modes of secret writing having been, for the most part, superseded by the modern system of cryptography, in which, according to a simple rule which may be communicated verbally, and easily retained in the memory, the signs for the letters can be changed continually; it is the chiffre quarr`e or chiffre ind`echiffrable, used, if not universally, yet by most courts. None of the old systems of deciphering are any longer available.]
212 Letter 51 To Sir Horace Mann. Friday, Jan. 22, 1742.
Don’t wonder that I missed writing to you yesterday, my constant day: you will pity me when you hear that I was shut up in the House of Commons till one in the morning. I came away more dead than alive, and was forced to leave Sir R. at supper with my brothers: he was all alive and in spirits.(414) He says he is younger than me, and indeed I think so, in spite of his forty years more. My head aches to-night, but we rose early; and if I don’t write to-night when shall I find a moment to spare? Now you want to know what we did last night; stay, I will
On Wednesday, Sir Robert Godschall, the Lord Mayor, presented the Merchant’s petition, signed by three hundred of them, and drawn up by Leonidas Glover.(416) This is to be heard next Wednesday. This gold-chain came into parliament, cried up for his parts, but proves so dull, one would think he chewed opium. Earle says, “I have heard an oyster speak as well twenty times.”
Well, now I come to yesterday: we met, not expecting much business. Five of our members were gone to the York election, and the three Lord Beauclercs (417) to their mother’s funeral at Windsor; for that old beauty St. Albans (418) is dead at last. On this they depended for getting the majority, and towards three o’clock, when we thought of breaking up, poured in their most violent questions: one was a motion for leave to bring in the Place Bill to limit the number of placemen in the House. This was not opposed, because, out of decency, it is generally suffered to pass the Commons, and is thrown out by the Lords; only Colonel Cholmondeley (419) desired to know if they designed to limit the number of those that have promises of places, as well as of those that have places now. I must tell you that we are a very conclave; they buy votes with reversions of places on the change of the ministry. Lord Gage was giving an account in Tom’s coffeehouse of the intended alterations: that Mr. Pultney is to be chancellor of the exchequer, and Chesterfield and Carteret secretaries of state. Somebody asked who was to be paymaster? Numps Edwin,(420) who stood by, replied, “We have not thought so low as that yet.” Lord Gage harangues every day at Tom’s, and has read there a very false account of the King’S message to the Prince.(421) The Court, to show their contempt of Gage, have given their copy to be read by Swinny.(422) This is the authentic copy, which they have made the bishop write from the message which he carried, and as he and Lord Cholmondeley agree it was given.
On this Thursday, of which I was telling you, at three o’clock, Mr. Pultney rose up, and moved for a secret committee of twenty-one. This inquisition, this council of ten, was to sit and examine whatever persons and papers they should please, and to meet when and where they pleased. He protested much on its not being intended against any person, but merely to give the King advice, and on this foot they fought it till ten at night, when Lord Perceval blundered out what they had been cloaking with so @much art, and declared that he should vote for it as a committee of accusation. Sir Robert immediately rose, and protested that he should not have spoken, but for what he had heard last; but that now, he must take it to himself. He portrayed the malice of the Opposition, who, for twenty years, had not been able to touch him, and were now reduced to this infamous shift. He defied them to accuse him, and only desired that if they should, might be in an open and fair manner: desired no favour, but to be acquainted with his accusation. He spoke of Mr. Doddington, who had called his administration infamous, as of a person of great self-mortification, who, for sixteen years, had condescended to bear part of the odium. For Mr. Pultney, who had just spoken a second time, Sir R. said, he had begun the debate with great calmness, but give him his due, he had made amends for it in the end. In short, never was innocence so triumphant.
There were several glorious speeches on both sides: Mr. Pultney’s two, W. Pitt’s (423) and George Grenville’s,(424) Sir Robert’s, Sir W. Yonge’s, Harry Fox’s, (425) Mr. Chute’s, and the Attorney-General’s.(426) My friend Coke, for the first time, spoke vastly well, and mentioned how great Sir Robert’s character is abroad. ’ Sir Francis Dashwood replied, that he had found quite the reverse from Mr. Coke, and that foreigners always spoke with contempt of the Chevalier de Walpole. That was going too far, and he was called to order, but got off well enough, by saying, that he knew it was contrary to rule to name any member, but that he only mentioned it as spoken by an impertinent Frenchman.
But of all speeches, none ever was so full of wit as Mr. Pultney’s last. He said, “I have heard this committee represented as a most dreadful spectre; it has been likened to all terrible things; it has been likened to the King; to the inquisition; it will be a committee of safety; it is a committee of danger; I don’t know what it is to be! One gentleman, I think, called it a cloud! (this was the Attorney) a cloud! I remember Hamlet takes Lord Polonius by the hand and shows him a cloud, and then asks him if he does not think it is like a whale.” Well, in short, at eleven at night we divided, and threw out this famous committee by 253 to 250, the greatest number that ever was in the house, and the greatest number that ever lost a question.
It was a most shocking sight to see
the sick and dead brought in
on both sides! Men on crutches,
and Sir
William Gordon (427) from his
bed, with a blister on his head, and flannel hanging
out from under
his wig. I could scarce pity him
for his
ingratitude. The day before the Westminster
petition, Sir Charles Wager (428) gave his son a ship,
and the next day the father came down and voted against
him. The son has since been east away; but they
concealed it from the father, that he might not absent
himself. However, as we have our good-natured
men too on our side, one of his own countrymen went
and told him of it in the House. The old man,
who looked like Lazarus at his resuscitation, bore
it with great resolution, and said, he knew why he
was told of it, but when he thought his country in
danger, he would not go away. As he is so near
death, that it is indifferent to him whether he died
two thousand years ago or to-morrow, it is unlucky
for him not to have lived when such insensibility
would have been a Roman virtue. (429)
There are no arts, no menaces, which the Opposition do not practise. They have threatened one gentleman to have a reversion cut off from his son, unless he will vote with them. To Totness there came a letter to the mayor from the Prince, and signed by two of his lords, to recommend a candidate in opposition to the solicitor-general. The mayor sent the letter to Sir Robert. They have turned the Scotch to the best account. There is a young Oswald (430) who had engaged to Sir R. but has voted against us. Sir R. sent a friend to reproach him: the moment the gentleman who had engaged for him came into the room, Oswald said, “You had liked to have led me into a fine error! did you not tell me that Sir R. would have the majority?”
When the debate was over, Mr. Pultney owned that he had never heard so fine a debate on our side; and said to Sir Robert, “Well, nobody can do what you can!” “Yes,” replied Sir R., “Yonge did better.” Mr. P. answered, “It was fine, but not of that weight with what you said.” They all allow it- and now their plan is to persuade Sir Robert to retire with honour. All that evening there was a report about the town, that he and my uncle were to be sent to the Tower, and people hired windows in the city to see them pass by-but for this time I believe we shall not exhibit so historical a parade.
The night of the committee, my brother Walpole (431) had got two or three invalids at his house, designing to carry them into the House by his door, as they were too ill to go round by Westminster hall: the patriots, who have rather more contrivances than their predecessors of Grecian and Roman memory, had taken the precaution of stopping the keyhole with sand. How Livy’s eloquence would have been hampered, if there had been back-doors and keyholes to the Temple of Concord!
A few days ago there were lists of the officers at
Port Mahon laid before the House of Lords -. unfortunately,
it appeared that two-thirds of the regiment had been
absent. The Duke of Argyll said, “Such
a list was a libel on the government;” and of
all men, the Duke of Newcastle was the man who rose
up and agreed with him: remember what I have
told you once before of his union with Carteret.
We have
carried
the York election by a majority of 956.
The other night the Bishop of Canterbury(432) was with Sir’Robert, and on going away, said, “Sir, I have been lately reading Thaunus; he mentions a minister, who having long been persecuted by his enemies, at length vanquished them: the reason he gives, quia se non
Sir Thomas Robinson is at last named to the government of Barbadoes; he has long prevented its being asked for, by declaring that he had the promise of it. Luckily for him, Lord Lincoln liked his house, and procured him this government on condition of hiring it.
I have mentioned Lord Perceval’s speeches; he has a set who have a rostrum at his house, and harangue there. A gentleman who came thither one evening was refused, but insisting that he was engaged to come, “Oh, Sir,” said the porter, “what, are you one of those who play at members of Parliament?”
I must tell you something, though Mr.
Chute will see my letter. Sir Robert brought
home yesterday to dinner, a fat comely gentleman,
who came up to me, and said he believed I knew his
brother abroad. I asked his name; he replied,
He is with Mr. Whithed.” I thought he
said, It is Whithed.” After I had talked
to him of Mr. Whithed, I said, There is a very
sensible man with Mr. Whithed,
one Mr. Chute.” “Sir,”
said he, “my name is
Chute.” “My dear
Mr. Chute, now I know both your
brothers. You
will forgive my mistake.”
With what little conscience I begin
a third sheet! but it shall be but half a one.
I have received your vast packet of music by the
messenger, for which I thank you a thousand times;
and the political
sonnet, which is far from bad.
Who
translated it? I like the translation.
I am obliged to you about the gladiator, etc.: the temptation of having them at all is great, but too enormous. If I could have the gladiator for about an hundred pounds, I would give it.
I enclose one of the bills of lading of the things that I sent you by your secretary: he sets out tomorrow. By Oswald’s (433) folly, to whom I entrusted the putting them on board, they are consigned to Goldsworthy, (434) but pray take care that he does not open them. The captain mortifies me by proposing to stay three weeks at Genoa. I have sent away to-night a small additional box of steel wares, which I received but to-day from Woodstock. As they are better than the first, you will choose out some of them for Prince Craon, and give away the rest as you please.
We have a new opera by Pescetti, but a very bad one; however, all the town runs after it, for it ends with a charming dance.(435) They have flung open the stage to a great length, and made a perfect view of Venice, with the Rialto, and numbers of gondolas that row about full of masks, who land and dance. You would like it.
Well, I have done. Excuse me if I don’t take the trouble to read it all over again, for it is immense, as you will find. Good night!
(414) Sir Robert Wilmot also, in a letter to the Duke of Devonshire, written on the 12th, Sir Robert was today observed to be more naturally gay and full of spirits than he has been for some time past."-E.
(415) HUme Campbell was twin brother of Hugh, third
Earl of Marchmont. They were
sons of Alexander, the second earl,
who had quarrelled with Sir Robert Walpole at the
time of the excise scheme
in 1733. Sir Robert, in consequence, prevented
him from being reelected
one of the sixteen representative Scotch peers in
1734; in requital for which,
the
old earl’s two sons became the
bitterest opponents of the Minister. They were
both
men
of considerable talents; extremely similar in
their characters and dispositions, and so much so
in their outward appearance that it was very difficult
to know them apart.-D. The estimation in which
Lord Marchmont was held by his contemporaries, maybe
judged of by the fact,
that Lord Cobham gave his bust a place in the Temple
of Worthies, at Stowe,
and the mention of him in Pope’s inscription
in his grotto at Twickenham;-
“Where British siglis from dying Wyndham stole, And the bright flame was shot through Marchmont’s soul.”
We are told by Coxe, that Sir Robert Walpole “used frequently to rally his sons, who were praising the speeches of Pultney, Pitt, Lyttelton, and others, by saying, “You may cry up their speeches if you please, but when I have answered Sir John Barnard and Lord Polwarth, I think I have concluded the debate.”]
(416) Glover, a merchant, author of “Leonidas,” a poem, “Boadicea,” a tragedy, etc. [Glover’s talent for public speaking, and information concerning trade and Commerce, naturally pointed him out to the merchants of London to conduct their application to parliament on the neglect of their trade.]
(417) Lord Vere, Lord Henry, and Lord Sidney Beauclerc, sons of the Duchess Dowager of St. Albans, who is painted among the beauties at Hampton Court.
(418) Lady Diana Vere, daughter, and at length sole heir, of Aubrey de Vere, twentieth and last Earl of Oxford. She married, in 1694, Charles, first Duke of St. Albans, natural son of Charles ii. by Nell Gwin. She died Jan. 15, 1742.
(419) Colonel James Cholmondeley, only brother of the Earl. Afterwards distinguished himself at the battles of Fontenoy and Falkirk, and died in 1775.-E.
(420) Charles Edwin, Admiral Vernon’s unsuccessful colleague at Westminster.-E.
(421) During the holidays, Sir R. W. had prevailed on the King to send to the Prince of Wales, to offer to pay his debts and double his allowance. This negotiation was intrusted to Lord Cholmondeley on the King’s, and to Secker, Bishop of Oxford, on the Prince’s side, but came to nothing, [The Prince, in his answer, stated, that “he could not come to court while Sir Robert Walpole presided in His Majesty’s councils; that he looked on him as the sole author of our grievances at home, and of our ill success in the West Indies; and that the disadvantageous figure we at present made in all the courts of Europe was to be attributed alone to him.”]
(422) Owen MacSwinny, a buffoon; formerly director of the playhouse. [He had been a manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and was the author of several dramatic pieces. He resided in Italy for several years, and, on his return, was appointed keeper of the King’s Mews. He died in 1754, leaving his fortune to the celebrated Mrs. Woffington.](
423) Afterwards the great Lord Chatham.-D.
(424) First minister in the early part of the reign of George iii.-D.
(425) Afterwards the first Lord Holland.-D.
(426) Sir Dudley Ryder.-D.
(427) Sir Robert Wilmot, in a letter to the Duke of Devonshire, says:-,,Sir William Gordon was brought in like a corpse. Some thought it had been an old woman in disguise, having a white cloth round his head: others,, who found him out, expected him to expire every moment. Other incurables were introduced on their side. Mr. Hopton, for Hereford, w, is carried in with crutches. Sir Robert Walpole exceeded himself; Mr. Pelham, with the greatest decency, cut Pultney into a thousand pieces. Sir Robert actually dissected him, and laid his heart open to the view of the House."-E.
(428) Admiral Sir Charles Wager. He had been knighted by Queen Anne, for his Gallantry in taking and destroying some rich Spanish galleons. He was at this time first lord of the Admiralty. He died in 1743.-D.
(429) Sir William died in the May following.
(430) James Oswald, afterwards one of the commissioners of trade and plantations.
(431) Robert, Lord Walpole, afterwards Earl of Orford. He was auditor of the Exchequer, and his house joined to the House of commons, to which he had a door: but it was soon afterwards locked up, by an order of the House.
(432) John Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury, translated, in 1737, from the see of Oxford. He died in 1747.-D.
)433) George Oswald, steward to Sir R. W.
(434) Mr. Goldsworthy, consul at Leghorn, had married Sir Charles Wager’s niece, and was endeavouring to supplant Mr. Mann at Florence.
(435) Vestris, the celebrated dancer, would have been delighted with it; for it is related of him, that when Gluck had finished his noble opera, “Iphigenia,” Vestris was sadly disappointed on finding that it did not end with a “chaconne,” and worried the composer to induce him to introduce one. At length Gluck, losing all patience, exclaimed, “Chaconne! chaconne! Had, then, the Greeks, whose manners we are to represent, chaconnes?” “Certainly not,” replied Vestris, “certainly not; but so much the worse for the Greeks."-D.
218 Letter 52 To Sir Horace Mann. London, Feb. 1741-2.
I am miserable that I have not more time to write to you, especially as you will want to know so much of what I have to tell you; but for a week or fortnight I shall be so hurried, that I shall scarce know what I say. I sit here writing to you, and receiving all the town, who flock to this house; Sir Robert has already had three levees this morning, and the rooms still overflowing-they overflow up to me. You will think this the prelude to some victory! On the contrary, when you receive this, there will be no longer a Sir Robert Walpole: you must know him for the future by the title of Earl of Orford. That other envied name expires next week with his ministry! Preparatory to this change. I should tell you, that last week we heard in the House of Commons the Chippenham election, when Jack Frederick and his brother-in-law, Mr. Hume, on our side, petitioned against Sir Edmund Thomas and Mr. Baynton Holt. Both sides made it the decisive question-but our people were not all equally true: and upon the previous question we had but 235 against 236, so lost it by one. From that time my brothers, my uncle, I, and some of his particular friends, persuaded Sir R. to resign. He was undetermined till Sunday night. Tuesday we were to finish the election, when we lost it by 16; upon which Sir Robert declared to some particular persons in the House his resolution to retire,(436) and had that morning sent the Prince of Wales notice of’ it. It is understood from the heads of the party, that nothing more is to be pursued against him. Yesterday (Wednesday) the King adjourned both Houses for a fortnight, for time to settle things. Next week Sir Robert resigns and goes into the House of Lords. The only change yet fixed, is, that Lord Wilmington (437) is to be at the head of the Treasury-but numberless other alterations and confusions must follow. The Prince will be reconciled, and the Whig-patriots will come in. There were a few bonfires last night, but they are very unfashionable, for never was fallen minister so followed. When he kissed the King’s hand to take his first leave, the King fell on his neck, wept and kissed him, and begged to see him frequently. He will continue in town, and assist the ministry in the Lords. Mr. Pelham has declared that he will accept nothing, that was Sir Robert’s; and this moment the Duke of Richmond has been here from court to tell Sir R. that he had resigned the mastership of the horse, having received it from him, unasked, and that he would not keep it beyond his ministry. This is the greater honour, as it was so unexpected, and as he had no personal friendship with the duke.
For myself, I am quite happy to be free from all the fatigue, envy, and uncertainty of our late situation. I go every where; indeed, to have the stare over, and to use myself to neglect, but I meet nothing but civilities. Here have been Lord Hartington, Coke, and poor Fitzwilliam,(438) and others crying: here has been Lord Deskford (439) and numbers to wish me joy; in short, it is a most extraordinary and various scene.(440)
There are three people whom I pity much; the King, Lord Wilmington, and my own sister; the first, for the affront, to be forced to part with his minister, and to be forced to forgive his son; the second, as he is too old, and (even when he was young,) unfit for the burthen: and the poor girl,(441) who must be created an earl’s daughter, as her birth would deprive her of the rank. She must kiss hands, and bear the flirts of impertinent real quality
I am invited to dinner to-day by Lord Strafford (442) Argyll’s son-in-law. You see we shall grow the fashion.
My dear child, these are the most material points: I am sensible how much you must want particulars; but you must be sensible, too, that just yet, I have not time.
Don’t be uneasy; your brother Ned has been here to wish me joy: your brother Gal. has been here and cried; your tender nature will at first make you like the latter; but afterwards you will rejoice with the elder and me. Adieu! Yours, ever, and the same.
(436) “Sir Robert,” says Coxe, “seemed to have anticipated this event, and met it with his usual fortitude and cheerfulness. While the tellers were performing their office, he beckoned Sir Edward Baynton, the member whose return was supported by the Opposition, to sit near him., spoke to him with great complacency, animadverted on the ingratitude of several individuals who were voting against him, on whom he had conferred great favour, and declared he would never again sit in that House."-E.
(437) Sir Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, knight of the garter, and at this time lord president of the council.
(438) william, Baron, and afterwards Earl Fitzwilliam; a young lord, much attached to Sir R. W.
(439) James Ogilvy, Lord Deskford succeeded his father, in 1764, as sixth Earl of Findlater, and third Earl of Seafield. He held some inconsiderable offices in Scotland, and died in 1770.-D.
(440) the peculiar antipathy to Lord Hardwicke manifested by Horace Walpole on all occasions is founded, no doubt, upon the opinion which he had taken up, that the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole at this moment had been rendered necessary by the treachery and intrigues of that nobleman and the Duke of Newcastle. In his “Memoires” he repeatedly charges him with such treachery; and the Edinburgh reviewer of that work (xxxvi. 1). 29) favours this view, observing, “It appears that, unless there was a secret understanding of Newcastle and Hardwicke with Pulteney
(441) Maria, natural daughter of Sir R. W. by Maria Skerret, his mistress, whom he afterwards married. She had a patent to take place as an earl’s daughter.
(442) William Wentworth, second Earl of Strafford, of the second creation. He married Anne Campbell, second daughter of John, Duke of Argyle.-D.
220 Letter 53 To Sir Horace Mann. Feb. 9, 1741-2.
You will have had my letter that told you of the great change. The scene is not quite so pleasant as it was, nor the tranquility arrived that we expected. All is in confusion; no overtures from the Prince, who, it must seem, proposes to be King. His party have persuaded him not to make up, but on much greater conditions than he first demanded: in short, notwithstanding his professions to the Bishop,(443)-he
I hate sending you false news, as that was, of the Duke of Richmond’s resignation. It arose from his being two hours below with Sir R., and from some very warm discourse of his in the House of Lords, against the present violences; but went no further. Zeal magnified this, as she came up stairs to me, and I wrote to you before I had seen Sir Robert.
At a time when we ought to be most united, we are in the greatest confusion; such is the virtue of the patriots, though they have obtained what they professed alone to seek. They will not stir one step in foreign affairs, though Sir R. has offered to unite with them, with all his friends, for the common cause. It will now be seen whether he or they are most patriot. You see I call him Sir Robert still! after one has known him by that name for these threescore years, it is difficult to accustom one’s mouth to another title.
In the midst of all this, we are diverting ourselves as cordially as if Righteousness and Peace had just been kissing one another. Balls, operas, and masquerades! The Duchess of Norfolk (447) makes a grand masquing next week; and to-morrow there is one at the Opera-house.
Here is a Saxe-Gothic prince, brother to her Royal Highness:(448) he sent her word from Dover that he was driven in there, in his way to Italy. The man of the inn, Whom he consulted about lodgings in town, recommended him to one of very ill-fame in Suffolk-street. He has got a neutrality for himself, and goes to both courts.
Churchill (449) asked Pultney the other day, “Well, Mr. Pultney, will you break me too?"-"No, Charles,” replied he, “you break fast enough of yourself!” Don’t you think it hurt him more than the other breaking would? Good night! Yours, ever.
Thursday, Feb. 11, 1741-2.
P. S. I had finished my letter, and unwillingly resolved to send you all that bad news, rather than leave you ignorant of our doings; but I have the pleasure of mending your prospect a little. Yesterday the Common Council met, and resolved upon instructions to their members, which, except one not very descriptive paragraph, contains nothing personal -,against our new earl; and ends with resolutions “to stand by our present constitution.” Mind what followed! One of them proposed to insert “the King and Royal Family” before the words, “our present constitution;” but, on a division, it was rejected by three to one.
But to-day, for good news! Sir Robert has resigned; Lord Wilmington is first lord of the treasury, and Sandys has accepted the seals as chancellor of the exchequer, with Gibbon (450) and Sir John Rushout,(451) joined to him as other lords of the treasury. Waller was to have been the other, but has formally refused. So, Lord Sundon, Earle, Treby,(452) and Clutterbuck (453) are the first discarded, unless the latter saves himself by Waller’s refusal. Lord Harrington, who is created an earl, is made president of the council, and Lord Carteret has consented to be secretary of state in his room-but mind; not one of them has promised to be against the prosecution of Sir Robert, though I don’t believe now that it will go on. You see Pultney is not come in, except in his friend Sir John Rushout, but is to hold the balance between liberty and prerogative; at least, in this, he acts with honour. They say Sir John Hind Cotton and the Jacobites will be left out,,unless they bring in Dr. Lee and Sir John Barnard to the admiralty, as they propose; for I do not think it is decided what are their principles. Sir Charles Wager has resigned this morning:(454) he says, “We shall not die, but be all changed!” though he says, a parson lately reading this text in an old Bible, where the c was rubbed out, read it, not die, but be all hanged!
To-morrow our earl goes to Richmond Park, en retir`e; comes on Thursday to take his seat in the Lords, and returns thither again. Sandys is very angry at his taking the title of Orford, which belonged to his wife’s (455) great uncle. You know a step of that nature cost the great Lord Strafford (456) his head, at the prosecution of a less bloody-minded man than Sandys.
I remain in town, and have not taken at all to withdrawing, which I hear has given offence,(457) as well as my gay face in public; but as I had so little joy in the grandeur, I am determined to take as little part in the disgrace. I am looking about for a new house.
I have received two vast packets from you to-day, I believe from the bottom of the sea, for they have been so washed that I could scarce read them. I could read the terrible history of the earthquakes at Leghorn: how infinitely good you was to poor Mrs. Goldsworthy! How could you think I should not approve such vast humanity? but you are all humanity and forgiveness. I am only concerned that they will be present when you receive all these disagreeable accounts of your friends. Their support” is removed as well as yours. I only fear the interest of the Richmonds (458) with the Duke of Newcastle; but I will try to put you well with Lord Lincoln. We must write circumspectly, for our letters now are no longer safe.
I shall see Amorevoli to-night to give him the letter. Ah! Monticelli and the Visconti are to sing to-night at a great assembly at Lady Conway’s. I have not time to write more: so, good night, my dearest child! be in good spirits. Yours, most faithfully.
P. S. We have at last got Cr`ebillon’s “Sofa:” Lord Chesterfield received three hundred, and gave them to be sold at White’s. It is admirable! except the beginning of the first volume, and the last story, it is equal to any thing he has written. How he has painted the most refined nature in Mazulhim! the most retired nature in Mocles! the man of fashion, that sets himself above natural sensations, and the man of sense and devotion, that would skirmish himself from their influence, are equally justly reduced to the standard of their own weakness.(459)
(443) Secker, Bishop of Oxford.
(444) Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham, so created in 1717, with remainder to the issue male of his sister, Hester Grenville. He had served in Flanders under the Duke of Marlborough, and was upon the overthrow of Sir Robert Walpole’s administration promoted to the military rank of field marshal. He is now best remembered as the friend of pope and the creator of the gardens at Stowe.-D.
(445) Sir John Hinde Cotton, Bart. of Landwade, in Cambridgeshire; long a member of parliament, and one of the leaders of the Jacobite party. He died in 1752, and Horace Walpole, in his Memoires, in noticing this event, says, “Died Sir John Cotton, the last Jacobite of any sensible activity."-D.
Lord Carteret and Mr. Pulteney had really betrayed their party, and so injudiciously, that they lost their old friends and gained no new ones.
(446) Sir Robert, at the persuasion of his brother, Mr. Selwyn, and others, desisted from this grant. Three years afterwards, when the clamour was at an end, and his affairs extremely involved, he sued for it; which Mr. Pelham, his friend and `el`eve, was brought with the worst grace in the world to ask, and his old obliged master the King prevailed upon, with as ill grace, to grant. ["February 6. Sir R. Walpole was presented at Court as Earl of Orford. He was persuaded to refuse a grant of four thousand pounds a-year during the King’s life and his own, but could not be dissuaded from accepting a letter of honour from the King, to grant his natural daughter Maria, precedence as an earl’s daughter; who was also presented this day. The same thing had been done for Scrope, Earl of Sunderland, who left no lawful issue, and from one of whom Lord Howe is descended."-Secker ms.]
(447) Mary, daughter of Edward Blount, Esq. and wife of Edward, ninth Duke of Norfolk.-D.
(448) The Princess of Wales.-D.
(449)General Charles Churchill.-D.
(450) Philip Gibbons, Esq.-D.
(451) Sir John Rushout, the fourth baronet of the family, had particularly distinguished himself as an opponent of Sir R. Walpole’s excise scheme. He was made treasurer of the navy in 1743, and died in 1775, at the advanced age of ninety-one. His son was created Lord Northwick, in 1797.-D.
(452) George Treby, Esq.-D.
(453) Thomas Clutterbuck, Esq. He left the Treasury in February 1742, and was made treasurer of the navy.-D.
(454) “February ii. Lord Orford and Sir Charles Wager resigned. Mr. Sandys kissed hands as chancellor of the exchequer: Lord Wilmington declared first commissioner of the Treasury: offers made to the Duke of Argyle, but refused: none to Lord Chesterfield."-Secker ms.-E.
(455) Lady Sandys was daughter of Lady Tipping, niece of Russel, Earl of Orford.
(456) Sir Thomas Wentworth, the great Earl of Strafford, took the title of Raby from a castle of that name, which belonged to Sir Henry Vane, who, from that time, became his mortal foe.
(457) Sir Charles Wager. [In the following December Sir Charles was appointed treasurer of the navy, which office he held till his death, in May 1743.)
(458) Mrs. Goldsworthy had been a companion of the Duchess of Richmond.
(459) Posterity has not confirmed the eulogium here given to the indecent trash of the younger Cr`ebillon: but in the age of George ii. coarseness passed for humour, and obscenity was wit."-D
224 Letter 54 To Sir Horace Mann. Feb. 18, 1741-2.
I write to you more tired, and with more headache, than any one but you could conceive! I came home at five this morning from the Duchess of Norfolk’s masquerade, and was forced to rise before eleven, for my father, who came from Richmond to take his seat in the Lords, for the Houses met to-day. He is gone back to his retirement. Things wear a better aspect: at the great meeting (460) on Friday, at the Fountain, Lord Carteret and Lord Winchilsea (461) refused to go, only saying, that they never dined at a tavern. Pultney and the new chancellor of the exchequer went, and were abused by his Grace of Argyll. The former said he was content with what was already done, and would not be active in any further proceedings, though he would not desert the party. Sandys said the King had done him the honour to offer him that place; why should he not accept it? if he had not, another would: if nobody would, the King would be obliged to employ his old minister again, which he imagined the gentlemen present would not wish to see; and protested against screening, with the same conclusion as Pultney. The Duke of Bedford was very warm against Sir William Yonge; Lord Talbot (462) was so in general.(463)
During the recess, they have employed Fazakerley to draw up four impeachments; against Sir Robert, my uncle, Mr. Keene, and Colonel Bladen, who was only commissioner for the tariff at Antwerp. One of the articles against Sir R. is, his having at this conjuncture trusted Lord Waldegrave as ambassador, who is so near a relation (464) of the Pretender-. but these impeachments are likely to grow obsolete manuscripts. The minds of the people grow more candid: at first, they made one of the actors at Drury Lane repeat some applicable lines at the end of Harry the Fourth; but last Monday, when his Royal Highness-, had purposely bespoken “The Unhappy Favourite” (465) for Mrs. Porter’s benefit, they never once applied the most glaring passages; as where they read the indictment against Robert Earl of Essex, etc. The Tories declare against further prosecution-if Tories there are, for now one hears of nothing but the Broad Bottom: it is the reigning cant word, and means, the taking all parties and people, indifferently into the ministry. The Whigs are the dupes of this; And those in the Opposition affirm that Tories no longer exist. Notwithstanding this, they will not come into the new ministry, unless what were always reckoned Tories are admitted. The Treasury has gone a-begging: I mean one of the lordships, which is at last filled up with Major Compton, a relation of Lord Wilmington; but now we shall see a new scene. On Tuesday night Mr. Pultney went to the Prince, and, without the knowledge of Argyll, etc., prevailed on him to write to the King: he was so long determining, that it was eleven at night before the King received his letter. Yesterday morning the prince, attended by two of his lords, two grooms of the Bedchamber,
Yesterday there was a meeting of all the Scotch of our side, who, to a man, determined to defend Sir Robert
Lyttelton (469) is going to marry Miss Fortescue, Lord Clinton’s sister.
When our earl went to the House of lords to-day, he apprehended some incivilities from his Grace of Argyll, but he was not there. Bedford, Halifax, Berkshire,(470) and some more, were close by him, but would not bow to him. Lord Chesterfield wished him joy. This is all I know for certain; for I will not send you the thousand lies of every new day.
I must tell you how fine the masquerade of last night was. There were five hundred persons, in the greatest variety of handsome and rich dresses I ever saw, and all the jewels of London-and London has some! There were dozens of ugly Queens of Scots, of which I will only name to you the eldest Miss Shadwell! The Princess of Wales was one, covered with diamonds, but did not take off her mask: none of the Royalties did, but every body else. Lady Conway (471) was a charming Mary Stuart: Lord and Lady Euston, man and woman huzzars. But the two finest and most charming masks were their Graces of Richmond,(472) like Harry the Eighth and Jane Seymour: excessively rich, and both so handsome @ Here is a nephew of the King of Denmark, who was in armour, and his governor, a most admirable Quixote. there were quantities of Vandykes, and all kinds of old pictures walked out of the frames. It was an assemblage of all ages and nations, and would look like the day of judgment, if tradition did not persuade us that we are all to meet naked, and if something else did not tell us that we shall not meet with quite so much indifference, nor thinking quite so much of the becoming. My dress was an Aurungzebe: but of all extravagant figures commend me to our friend the Countess!(473) She and my lord trudged in like pilgrims with vast staffs in their hands; and she was so heated, that you would have thought her pilgrimage had been, like Pantagruel’s voyage, to the Oracle of the Bottle! Lady Sophia was in a Spanish dress-so was Lord Lincoln; not, to be sure, by design, but so it happened. When the King came in, the Faussans (474) were there, and danced an entr`ee. At the masquerade the King sat by Mrs. Selwyn, and with tears told her, that “the Whigs should find he loved them, as he had the poor man that was gone!” He had sworn that he would not speak to the Prince at their meeting, but was prevailed on.
I received your letter by Holland, and the paper about the Spaniards. By this time you will conceive that I can speak of nothing to any purpose, for Sir R. does not meddle in the least with business.
As to the Sibyl, I have not mentioned it to him; I still am for the other. Except that, he will not care, I believe, to buy more pictures, having now so many more than he has room for at Houghton; and he will have but a small house in town when we leave this. But you must thank the dear Chutes for their new offers; the obligations are too great, but I am most sensible to their goodness, and, were I not so excessively tired now, would write to them. I cannot add a word more, but to think of the Princess:(475) “Comment! vous avez donc des enfans!” You see how nature sometimes breaks out in spite of religion and prudery, grandeur and pride, delicacy and `epuisements! Good night! Yours ever.
(460) See an account of this meeting in Lord Egmonfs “Faction Detected.” [To this meeting at the Fountain tavern Sir Charles Hanbury Williams alludes in his Ode against the Earl of Bath, called the Statesman-
“Then enlarge on his cunning and wit:
Say, how he harangued at the Fountain;
Say, how the old patriots were bit,
And a mouse was produced by a mountain.”]
(461) Daniel Finch, seventh Earl of Winchilsea and third Earl of Nottingham. He was made first lord of the admiralty upon the breaking up of Sir R. Walpole’s government.-D.
(462) William, second Lord Talbot, eldest son of the lord chancellor of that name and title.-D.
(463) The following is from the Secker ms.-"Feb. 12. Meeting at the Fountain tavern of above two hundred commoners and thirty-five Lords. Duke of Argyle spoke warmly for prosecuting Lord Orford, with hints of reflection on those who had accepted. Mr. Pulteney replied warmly. Lord Talbot drank to cleansing the Augean stable of the dung and grooms. Mr. Sandys and Mr. Gibbon there. Lord Carteret and Lord Winchilsea not. Lord Chancellor, in the evening, in private discourse to me, strong against taking in any Tories: owning no more than that some of them, perhaps, were not for the Pretender, or, at least, did not know they were for him; though, when I gave him the account first of my discourse with the Prince, he said, the main body of them were of the same principles with the Tories."-E.
(464) His mother was natural daughter of King James ii. (James, first Earl Waldegrave, appointed ambassador to the court of France in 1730: died in 1741.-D.)
(465) banks’s tragedy of “The Unhappy Favourite; or, the Earl of Essex,” was first acted in 1682. The prologue and epilogue were written by Dryden. Speaking of this play, in the Tatler, Sir Richard Steele says, “there is in it not one good line, and yet it is a play which was never seen without drawing tears from some part of the audience; a remarkable instance, that the soul is not to be moved by words, but things; for the incidents in the drama are laid together so happily that the spectator makes the play for himself, by the force with which the circumstance has upon his imagination."-E.
(466) Thomas Lumley, third Earl of Scarborough.-D.
(467) “February 17. Prince of Wales went to St. James’s. The agreement made at eleven the night before, and principally by Mr. Pultney; as Lord Wilmington told me. The King received him in the drawing-room: the Prince kissed his hand: he asked him how the Princess did: showed no other mark of regard. All the courtiers went the same day to Carlton House. The Bishop of Gloucester (Dr. Benson) and I went thither. The Prince and princess civil to us both.” Secker ms.-E.
(468) Charles Spencer, second duke of Marlborough succeeded to that title on the death of his aunt Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, in 1733.-D.
(469) Sir George Lyttelton, afterwards created Lord Lyttelton. Miss Fortescue was his first wife, and mother of Thomas, called the wicked Lord Lyttelton. She died in childbed and Lord Lyttelton honoured her Memory with the well-known Monody which was so unfeelingly parodied by Smollett.-D. [ Under the title of an “Ode on the Death of My Grandmother.”)
(470 Henry Bowes Howard, fourth Earl of Berkshire. He succeeded, in 1745, as eleventh Earl of Suffolk, on the death, without issue, of henry, tenth earl. He died in 1757.-D.
(471) Lady Isabella Fitzroy, Youngest daughter of the Duke of grafton, and wife of Francis Seymour, Lord Conway of Hertford.
(472) Charles Lennox, master of the horse, and Sarah Cadogan, his duchess. He died in the year following.
(473) The Countess of Pomfret.
(474) Two celebrated comic dancers.
(475) Princess Craon, so often mentioned in these letters.-D.
227 Letter 55
To Sir Horace Mann.
London, Feb. 25, 1742.
I am impatient to hear that you have received my first account of the change; as to be sure you are now for every post. This last week has not produced many new events. The Prince of Wales has got the measles,(476) so there has been but little incense offered up to him: his brother of Saxe-Gotha has got them too. When the Princess went to St. James’s, she fell at the King’s feet and struggled to kiss his hand, and burst into tears. At the Norfolk masquerade she was vastly bejewelled; Frankz had lent her forty thousand pounds worth, and refused to be paid for the hire, only desiring that she would tell whose they were. All this is nothing, but to introduce one of Madame de Pomfret’s ingenuities, who. being dressed like a pilgrim, told the Princess, that she had taken her for the Lady of Loreto.
But you will wish for politics now, more than for histories of masquerades, though this last has taken up people’s thoughts full as much. The House met last Thursday and voted the army without a division: Shippen (477 alone, unchanged, Opposed it. They have since been busied on elections, turning out our friends and voting in their own.. almost without opposition. The chief affair
Next week they commence their prosecutions, which they will introduce by voting a committee to inquire into all the offices: Sir William Yonge is to be added to the impeachments, but the chief whom they wish to punish is my uncle.(480) He is the more to be pitied, because nobody will pity him. They are not fond of a formal message which the States General have sent to Sir Robert, “to compliment him on his new honour, and to condole with him on being out of the ministry, which will be so detrimental to Europe!
The third augmentation in Holland is confirmed, and that the Prince of Hesse is chosen generallissimo, which makes it believed that his Grace of Argyll will not go over, but that we shall certainly have a war with France in the spring. Argyll has got the Ordnance restored to him, and they wanted to give him his regiment; to which Lord Hertford (481) was desired to resign it, with the offer of his old troop again. He said he had received the regiment from the King; if his Majesty pleased to take it back, he might, but he did not know why he should resign it. Since that, he wrote a letter to the King, and sent it by his son, Lord Beauchamp, resigning his regiment, his government, and his wife’s pension, as lady of the bedchamber to the late Queen.
No more changes are made yet. They have offered the Admiralty to Sir Charles Wager again, but he refused it: he said, he heard that he was an old woman, and that he did not know what good old women could do any where.
A comet has appeared here for two nights, which, you know, is lucky enough at this time and a pretty ingredient for making prophecies.
These are all the news. I receive your letters regularly, and hope you receive mine so: I never miss one week. Adieu! my dearest child! I am perfectly well; tell me always that you are. Are the good Chutes still at Florence? My best love to them, and services to all.
Here are some new Lines much in vogue:(482)
1741.
Unhappy England, still in forty-one (483)
By Scotland art thou doom’d to be undone!
But Scotland now, to strike alone afraid,
Calls in her worthy sister Cornwall’s (484)
aid;
And these two common Strumpets, hand in hand,
Walk forth, and preach up virtue through the land;
Start at corruption, at a bribe turn pale,
Shudder at pensions, and at placemen rail.
Peace, peace! ye wretched hypocrites; or rather
With Job, say to Corruption, " Thou’rt our Father.”
But how will Walpole justify his fate?
He trusted Islay (485) till it was too late.
Where were those parts! where was that piercing mind!
That judgment, and that knowledge of mankind!
To trust a Traitor that he knew so well!
(Strange truth! I)ctray’d, but not deceived,
he fell!)
He knew his heart was, like his aspect, vile;
Knew him the tool, and Brother of Argyll!
Yet to his hands his power and hopes gave up;
And though he saw ’twas poison, drank the cup!
Trusted to one he never could think true,
And perish’d by a villain that he knew.
(476) “February 21. Prince taken ill of the measles. The King sent no message to him in his illnesses Secker ms.-E.
(477) William Shippen, a celebrated Jacobite. Sir R. Walpole said that he was the Only man whose price he did not know. [See ante, p. 194, Letter 45.]
(478) William Murray, Mr. Pope’s friend, afterwards Solicitor, and then Attorney-general.
(479) Sir Richard Lloyd, who succeeded Mr. Murray, in 1754, as Solicitor-general.
(480) Horace Walpole, brother of Sir Robert.
(481) Algernon Seymour, Earl of Hertford, eldest son of Charles, called the proud Duke of Somerset, whom he succeeded in that Title, and was the last Duke of Somerset of that branch; his son, who is here mentioned, having died before him.-D.
(482) These Lines were written by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams. [And are published in the edition of his works, in three volumes, 12 no.1.
(483) Alluding to the Grand Rebellion against Charles the First.
(484) The Parliament which overthrew Sir R. W. was carriedagainst him by his losing the majority of the Scotch and Cornish boroughs; the latter managed by Lord Falmouth
(485) Archibald Campbell, Earl of Islay,
brother of John, Duke of Argyll, in conjunction with
whom (though then openly at variance) he was supposed
to have betrayed Sir R.
W. and to have let the
Opposition
succeed in the Scotch elections, which were trusted
to
his management. It
must be
observed, that Sir R. W. would never allow that he
believed
himself betrayed by Lord Islay.
229 Letter 56 To Sir Horace Mann. London, March 3d, 1742.
I am Obliged to write to you to-day, for I am sure I shall not have a moment to-morrow; they are to make their motion for a secret committee to examine into the late administration. We are to oppose it strongly, but to no purpose; for since the change, they have beat us on no division under a majority of forty. This last week has produced no new novelties; his Royal Highness has been shut up with the measles, of which he was near dying, by eating China oranges.
We are to send sixteen thousand men into Flanders in the spring, under his Grace of Argyll; they talk of the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Albemarle to command under him. Lord Cadogan (486) is just dead, so there is another regiment vacant: they design Lord Delawar’s for Westmoreland;(487) so now Sir Francis Dashwood (488) will grow as fond of the King again as he used to be-or as he has hated him since.
We have at last finished the Merchants’ petition, under the conduct of the Lord Mayor and Mr. Leonidas;(489) the greatest coxcomb and the greatest oaf that ever met in blank verse or prose. I told you the former’s question about the copy of a letter taken after the original was lost. They have got a new story of him; that hearing of a gentleman who had had the small-pox twice and died of it, he asked, if he died the first time or the second-if this is made for him, it is at least quite in his style. After summing up the evidence (in doing which, Mr. Glover literally drank several times to the Lord Mayor in a glass of water that stood by him,) Sir John Barnard moved to vote, that there had been great neglect in the protection of the trade, to the great advantage of’ the enemy, and the dishonour of the nation. He said he did not mean to charge the Admiralty particularly, for then particular persons must have had particular days assigned to be heard in their own defence, which would take up too much time, as we are now going to make inquiries of a much higher nature. Mr. Pelham was for leaving out the last words. Mr. Doddington rose, and in a set speech declared that the motion was levelled at a particular person, who had so usurped all authority, that all inferior offices were obliged to submit to his will, and so either bend and bow, or be broken: but that he hoped the steps we were now going to take, would make the office of first minister so dangerous a post, that nobody would care to accept it for the future. Do but think of this fellow, who has so lost all character, and made himself so odious to both King, and Prince, by his alternate flatteries, changes, oppositions, and changes of flatteries and oppositions, that he can never expect what he has so much courted by all methods,-think of his talking of making it dangerous for any one else to accept the first ministership! Should such a period ever arrive, he would accept it with joy-the only chance he can ever have for it! But sure, never was impudence more put to shame! The whole debate turned upon him. Lord Doneraile (490) (who, by the way, has produced blossoms of Doddington like fruit, and consequently is the fitter scourge for him) stood up and said, he did not know what that gentleman meant; that he himself was as willing to bring all offenders to justice as any man; but that he did not intend to confine punishment to those who had been employed only at the end of the last ministry, but proposed to extend it to all who had been engaged in it, and wished that that gentleman would speak with more lenity of an administration, in which he himself had been concerned for so many years. Winnington said, he did not know what Mr. Doddington had meant, by either bending or being broken; that he knew some who had been broken, though they had bowed an bended. Waller defended Doddington, and said, if he was gilty, at least Mr. Winnington was so too; on which Fox rose up, and, laying his
Thursday evening.
I had written all the former part of my letter, only reserving room to tell you, that they had carried the secret committee-but it is put off till next Tuesday. To-day we had nothing but the giving up the Heydon election, when Mr. Ppultney had an opportunity (as Mr. Chute and Mr. Robinson would not take the trouble to defend a cause which they could not carry) to declaim upon corruption: had it come to a trial, there were eighteen witnesses ready to swear positive bribery against Mr. Pultney. I would write to Mr. Chute, and thank him for his letter which you sent me, but I am so out of humour at his brother’s losing his seat, that I cannot speak civilly even to him to-day.
It is said, that my Lord’s Grace of Argyll has carried his great point of the Broad Bottom-as I suppose you will hear by rejoicings from Rome. The new Admiralty is named; at the head is to be Lord Winchilsea, with Lord Granard,(491) Mr. Cockburn, his Grace’s friend, Dr. Lee, the chairman, Lord Vere Beauclerc;(492) one of the old set, by the interest of the Duke of Dorset, and the connexion of Lady Betty Germain, whose niece Lord Vere married; and two Tories, Sir John Hind Cotton and Will. Chetwynd,(493) an agent of Bolingbroke’s-all this is not declared yet, but is believed.
This great Duke has named his four aid-de-camps-Lord Charles Hay; George Stanhope, brother of Earl Stanhope; Dick Lyttelton, who Was page; and a Campbell. Lord Cadogan is not dead, but has been given over.
We are rejoicing over the great success of the Queen of Hungary’s arms, and the number of blows and thwarts which the French have received. It is a prosperous season for our new popular generals to grow glorious!
But, to have done with politics. Old Marlborough has at last published her Memoirs; they are digested by one Hooke, (494) who wrote a Roman history; but from her materials which are so womanish, that I am sure the man might sooner have made a gown and petticoat with them. There are some choice letters from Queen Anne, little inferior in the fulsome to those from King James to the Duke of Buckingham.
Lord Oxford’s (495) famous sale begins next Monday, where there is as much rubbish of another kind as in her grace’s history. Feather bonnets presented by the Americans to Queen Elizabeth; elks’-horns -cups; true copies converted into candle of original pictures that never existed; presents to himself from the Royal Society, etc. particularly forty volumes of prints of illustrious English personages; which collection is collected from frontispieces to godly books, bibles and head-pieces and tail-pieces to Waller’s works; views of King Charles’s sufferings; tops of ballads; particularly earthly crowns for heavenly ones, and streams of glory. There are few good pictures. for the miniatures are not to be sold, nor the manuscripts , the books not till next year. There are a few fine bronzes, and a very fine collection of English coins.
We have got another opera,(496) which is liked. There was to have been a vast elephant, but the just directors, designing to give the audience the full weight of one for their money, made it so heavy that at the prova it broke through the stage. It was to have carried twenty soldiers, with Monticelli on a throne in the middle. There is a new subscription begun for next year, thirty subscribers at two hundred pounds each. Would you believe that I am one? You need not believe it quite, for I am but half an one; Mr. Conway and I take a share between us. We keep Monticelli and Amorevoli, and to please Lord Middlesex, that odious Muscovita; but shall discard Mr. Vaneschi. We are to have the Barberina and the two Faussans; so, at least, the singers and dancers will be equal to any thing in Europe.
Our earl is still at Richmond: I have not been there yet; I shall go once or twice; for however little inclination I have to it, I would not be thought to grow cool just now. You know I am above such dirtiness, and you are sensible that my coolness is of much longer standing. Your sister is with mine at the Park; they came to town last Tuesday for the opera, and returned next day. After supper, I prevailed on your sister (497) to sing, and though I had heard her before, I thought I never heard any thing beyond it; there is a sweetness in her voice equal to Cuzzoni’s, with a better manner. ’
I was last week at the masquerade, dressed like an old woman, and passed for a good mask. I took the English liberty of teasing whomever I pleased, particularly old Churchill. I told him I was quite ashamed. of being there till I met him, but was quite comforted with finding one person in the room older than myself. The Duke,(498) who had been told who I was, came up and said, “Je connois cette poitrine.” I took him for some Templar, and replied, “Vous! vous ne connoissez que des poitrines qui sont bien plus us`ees.” It was unluckily pat. The next night, at the drawing-room, he asked me, very good-humouredly, if I knew who was the old woman that had teased every body at the masquerade.
(486) Charles, Lord Cadogan, of Oakley, to which title he succeeded on the death of his elder brother, William, Earl Cadogan, who was one of the most distinguished “of Marlborough’s captains.” Charles, Lord Cadogan, did not die at the period when this letter was written. On the contrary, he lived, till the year 1776.-D.
(487) John, seventh Earl of Westmoreland. He built the Palladian Villa of Mereworth, in Kent, which is a nearly exact copy of the celebrated Villa Capra, near Vicenza. He died in 1762. Sir Francis Dashwood succeeded, on his decease, to the barony in fee of Le Despencer.-D.
(488) Sir Francis Dashwood, nephew to the Earl of Westmoreland, had gone violently into Opposition, on that lord’s losing his regiment.
(489) Mr. Glover. (Walpole always depreciates Glover; but his conduct, upon the occasion referred to in the text, displayed considerable ability.-D.) [His speech upon this occasion was afterwards published in a pamphlet, entitled, ,A short Account of the late Application to Parliament, made by the Merchants of London, upon the Neglect of their Trade; with the Substance thereof, as summed up by Mr. Glover.,,]
(490) Arthur Mohun St. Leger, third Viscount Doneraile,
in Ireland, of the first creation.
He
was at this time member for Winchilsea, was
appointed a lord of the bedchamber to Frederick Prince
of Wales in 1747, and died at Lisbon in 1749.-D.
(491) George Forbes, third Earl of Granard in Ireland; an admiral, and a member of the House of Commons.-D.
(492) Third son of the first Duke of St. Albans, created in 1750 Lord Vere of Hanworth in Middlesex. He was the direct ancestor of the present line of the St. Albans family. His wife was Mary, daughter and heiress of Thomas Chambers, Esq. of Hanworth, by Lady Mary Berkeley, the sister of lady Betty Germain.-D.
(493) William Richard Chetwynd ’second brother of the first viscount of that name; member of parliament successively for Stafford and Plymouth. He had been envoy at Genoa, and a lord of the Admiralty; and he finally succeeded his two elder brothers as third Viscount Chetwynd, in 1767.-D. [He was familiarly called “Black Will,” and sometimes “Oroonoka Chetwynd,” from his dark complexion. He died in 1770.]
(494) Nathaniel Hooke, a laborious compiler, but a very bad writer. It is said, that the Duchess of Marlborough gave him 5000 pounds for the services he rendered her, in the composition and publication of her apology. She, however, afterwards quarrelled with him, because she said he tried to convert her to Popery. Hooke was himself of that religion, and was also a Quietist, and an enthusiastic follower of Fenelon. It was Hooke who brought a Catholic priest to attend the deathbed of Pope; a proceeding which excited such bitter inclination in the infidel Bolingbroke. Hooke died July 19, 1763. [When Hooke asked Pope, “whether he should not send for a priest, the dying poet replied, “I do not suppose that is essential, but it will look right."-Spence, p. 322.)
(495) Edward second Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, only son of the minister, he was a great and liberal patron of literature and learned men, and completed the valuable collection of manuscripts commenced by his father, which is now in the British Museum. He married the great Cavendish heiress, Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, daughter of Holles, Duke of Newcastle, and died June 16, 1741.-D.
(496) By Buranello, and called “Scipione in Cartagine."-E. (497) Mary Mann, afterwards married to Mr. Foote.
(498) Of Cumberland. [William Augustus, third son of George ii.)
234 Letter 57 To Sir Horace Mann. March 10, 1742.
I will not work you up into a fright only to have the pleasure of putting you out of it, but will tell you at once that we have gained the greatest victory! I don’t mean in the person of Admiral Vernon, nor of Admiral Haddock; no. nor in that of his Grace of Argyll. By we, I don’t mean we; England, but we, literally we; not you and I, but we, the House of Orford. The certainty that the Opposition (or rather the Coalition, for that is the new name they have taken) had of carrying every point they wished, made them, in the pride of their hearts, declare that they would move for the Secret Committee yesterday (Tuesday), and next Friday would name the list, by which day they should have Mr. Sandys from his reelection. It was, however, expected to be put off, as Mr. Pultney could not attend the House, his only daughter was dying-they say she is dead.(499) But an affair of consequence to them, and indeed to the nation in general, roused all their rage, and drove them to determine on the last violences. I told you in my last, that the new Admiralty was named, with a mixture of Tories; that is, it was named by my Lord of Argyll; but the King flatly put his negative on Sir John Cotton. They said he was no Tory now, (and, in truth, he yesterday in the House professed himself a Whig,) and that there were no Tories left in the nation. The King replied, “that might be; but he was determined to stand by those who had set him and his family upon the throne.” This refusal enraged them so much, that they declared they would force
I don’t know what violent step they will take next; it must be by surprise, for when they could not carry this, it will be impossible for them to carry any thing more personal. We trust that the danger is now past, though they had a great meeting to-day at Doddington ’S,(504) and threaten still. He was to have made the motion, but was deterred by the treatment he met last week. Sir John Norris was not present; he has resigned all his employments, in a pique for not being named of the new Admiralty. His old Grace of Somerset (505) is reconciled to his son, Lord Hertford, on his late affair of having the regiment taken from him: he sent for him, and told him he had behaved like his son.
My dearest child, I have this moment received a most unexpected and most melancholy letter from you, with an account of your fever and new operation. I did not in the least dream of your having any more trouble from that disorder! are you never to be delivered from it? Your letter has shocked me extremely; and then I am terrified at the Spaniards passing so near Florence. If they should, as I fear they will, stay there, how inconvenient and terrible it would be for you, now you are ill! You tell me, and my good Mr. Chute tells me, that you are out of all danger, and much better; but to what can I trust, when you have these continual relapses? The vast time that passes between your writing and my receiving your letters, makes me flatter myself, that by now you are out of all pain: but I am miserable, with finding that you may be still subject to new torture! not all your courage, which is amazing can give me any about you. But how can you write to me? I will not suffer it-and now, good Mr. Chute will write for you. I am so angry at your writing immediately after that dreadful operation, though I see your goodness in it, that I will not say a word more to you. All the rest is to Mr. Chute.
What shall I say to you, my dearest Sir, for all your tenderness to poor Mr. Mann and me? as you have so much friendship for him, you may conceive how much I am obliged to you. How much do I regret not having had more opportunities of showing you my esteem and love, before this new attention, to Mr. Mann. You do flatter me, and tell me he is recovering—nay I trust you? and don’t you say it, only to comfort me?-Say a great deal for me to Mr. Whithed; he is excessively good to me; I don’t know how to thank him. I am happy that you are so well yourself, and so constant to your fasting. To reward your virtues, I will tell you the news I know; not much, but very extraordinary. What would be the most extraordinary event that you think could happen? Would not-next to his becoming a real patriot-the Duke of Argyll’s resigning be the most unexpected? would any thing be more surprising than his immediately resigning power at having felt the want of them? Be that as it will, he literally, actually, resigned all his new commissions yesterday, because the King refused to employ the Tories.(506) What part he will act next is yet to come. Mrs. Boothby said, upon the occasion, “that in one month’s time he had contrived to please the whole nation-the Tories, by going to court; the Whigs, by leaving it.”
They talk much of impeaching my father, since they could not committee him; but as they could not, I think they will scarce be able to carry a more violent step. However, to show how little Tory resentments are feared, the King has named a new Admiralty; Lord Winchilsea, Admiral Cavendish, Mr. Cockburn, Dr. Lee, Lord Baltimore, young Trevor,(507) (which is much disliked, for he is of no consequence for estate, and less for parts, but is a relation of the Pelhams,) and Lord Archibald Hamilton,(508)-to please his Royal Highness. Some of his people (not the Lytteltons and Pitts) stayed away the other night upon the Secret Committee, and they think he will at last rather take his father’s part, than Argyll’s.
Poor Mr. PUltney has lost his girl: she was an only daughter, and sensible and handsome. He has only a son left, and, they say, is afflicted to the greatest degree.
I will say nothing about old Sarah’s Memoirs; for, with some spirit they are nothing but remnants of old women’s frippery. Good night! I recommend my poor Mr. Mann to you, and am yours, most faithfully.
P. S. My dearest child, how unhappy I shall be, till I hear you are quite recovered
(499) The young lady died on the preceding evening. She was in her fourteenth year.-E.
(500) William Hamilton, Lord Viscount Limerick. (According to the peerages, Lord Limerick’s Christian name was James, and not William.-D.)
(501) For removing Sir Robert Walpole.
(502) Sir John St. Aubyn, of Clowance in Cornwall, third baronet of that family.-D. [He died in 1744.
(503) March 9. Motion in the House of Commons for a secret committee to inquire into our affairs for twenty or twenty-one years. The Speaker said Ayes had it: one that was for it divided the House. The Noes carried it by 244 against 242. Mr. Sandys at Worcester, Mr. Pulteny at home-his daughter dying. The Prince at New. Several of his servants, and several Scotch members, not at the House; nor Lord Winchelsea’s brothers. Gibbon, Rushout, Barnard voted for the committee, but did not speak. It is said that the Prince had before this written to Lord Carteret, to desire that Lord Archibald Hamilton and Lord Baltimore might be lords of the Admiralty, and that this had been promised."-Secker, ms.-E.
(504) “Never was there,” writes Mr. Orlebar to the Rev. Mr. Elough, “a greater disappointment. Those who proved the minority, were so sure of being the majority, that the great Mr. Dodington harangued in the lobby those who went out at the division to desire them not to go away, because there were several other motions to be made in consequence of that: and likewise to bespeak their attendance at the Fountain, in order to settle the committee. Upon which Sir George Oxenden, after they found it was lost, whispered -@t friend thus: I Suppose we were to desire Mr. D. to print the speeches he has just now made in the lobby.”
(505) Charles, commonly called “the proud Duke of Somerset.” An absurd, vain, pompous man, who appears to have been also most harsh and unfeeling to those who depended on him.-D.
(506) March 10. Duke of argyle resigned his places to the King. He gave for a reason, that a proposal had been made to him for going ambassador to Holland, which he understood to be sending him out of the way.” Secker ms.-E.
(507) The Hun. John Trevor, second son of Thomas, first Lord Trevor. He succeeded his elder brother Thomas, as third Lord Trevor, in 1744.-D.
(508) Lord Archibald Hamilton was the seventh and youngest son of Anne, Duchess of Hamilton, in her own right, and of William, Earl of Selkirk, her husband, created by Charles ii. Duke of Hamilton, for life b. Lord Archibald married Lady Jane Hamilton, daughter of James, Earl of Abercorn, and by her had three sons; of whom the youngest was Sir William Hamilton, so long the British envoy at the court of Naples.-D.
237 Letter 58
To Sir Horace Mann.
Monday, March 22, 1742.
[Great part of this letter is lost.]
*** I have at last received a letter from you in answer to the first I wrote you upon the change in the ministry. I hope you have received mine regularly since, that you may know all the consequent steps. I like the Pasquinades you sent me, and think the Emperor’s(509) letter as mean as you do. I hope his state will grow more abject every day. It is amazing, the progress and success of the Queen of Hungary’s arms! It is said to-day, that she has defeated
I shall say every thing that is proper for you to the earl, and shall take care about expressing you to him, as I know you have your gratitude far more at heart, than what I am thinking of for you, I mean your stay at Florence. I have spoken very warmly to Lord Lincoln about you, who, I am sure, will serve you to his power. Indeed, as all changes are at a stop, I am convinced there will be no thought of removing you. However, till I see the situation of next winter, I cannot be easy on your account.
I have made a few purchases at Lord Oxford’s sale; a small Vandyke, in imitation of Teniers; an old picture of the Duchess of Suffolk, mother of Lady Jane Grey, and her young husband; a sweet bronze vase by Flamingo, and two or three other trifles. The things sold dear; the antiquities and pictures for about five thousand pounds, which yet, no doubt, cost him much more, for he gave the most extravagant prices. His coins and medals are now selling, and go still dearer. Good night! How I wish for every letter to hear how you mend!
(509) Charles vii. the Emperor of the Bavarian family.-D.
(510) John Dalrymple, second Earl of Stair, a man much distinguished both as a general and a diplomatist. [He served with credit at Dettingen; but, after that battle, resigned his military rank, indignant at the King’s unjust partiality to the Hanoverians. However, on the rebellion of 1745, he was made commander-in-chief, and materially assisted the Duke of Cumberland in the campaign which ended at Culloden. He died in 1747.]
(511) An expression of Mr. Chute.
238 Letter 59
To sir Horace Mann.
March 24, 1742.
I promised you in my last letter to send you the event of yesterday.(512) It was not such as you would wish, for on the division, at nine o’clock at night, we lost it by 242 against 245. We had three people shut out, so that a majority of three (513) is so small that it is scarce doubted, but that, on Friday, when we ballot for the twenty-one to form the committee, we shall carry a list composed of our people, so that then it will be better that we lost it yesterday, as they never can trouble my Lord Orford more, when the Secret Committee consists of his own friends.
After the division. Mr. Pultney(514) moved for an address to the King; to declare their resolution of standing by him, especially in assisting the Queen of Hungary-but I believe, after the loss of the question, he will not be in very good humour with this address.
I am now going to tell you what you, will not have expected-that a particular friend of yours opposed the motion, and it was the first time he ever spoke. To keep you not in suspense, though you must have guessed, it was 220.(515) As the speech was very favourably heard, and has done him service, I prevailed with him to give me a copy-here it is:-
Mr. Speaker,(516)-I have always thought, Sir, that incapacity and inexperience must prejudice the cause they undertake to defend; and it has been diffidence of myself, not distrust of the cause, that has hitherto made me so silent upon a point on which I ought to have appeared so zealous.
“While the attempts for this inquiry were made in general terms, I should have thought it presumption in me to stand up and defend measures in which so many abler men have been engaged, and which, consequently, they could so much better support; but when the attack grows more personal, it grows my duty to oppose it more particularly, lest I be suspected of an ingratitude which my heart disdains. But I think, Sir, I cannot be suspected of that, unless my not having abilities to defend my father can be construed into a desire not to defend him.
“My experience, Sir, is very small; I have never been conversant in business and politics, and have sat a very short time in this house -with so slight a fund, I must much mistrust my power to serve him-especially as in the short time I have sat here, I have seen that not his own knowledge, innocence, and eloquence, have been able to protect him against a powerful and determined party. I have seen, since his retirement,
“I shall say no more, Sir, but leave the material part of this defence to the impartiality, candour, and credit of men who are no ways dependent on him. He has already found that defence, Sir, and I hope he always will! It is to their authority I trust-and to me, it is the strongest proof of innocence, that for twenty years together, no crime could be solemnly alleged against him; and since his dismission, he has seen a majority rise up to defend his character in that very House of Commons in which a majority had overturned his power. As, therefore, Sir, I must think him innocent, I stand up to protect him from injustice-had he been accused, I should not have given the House this trouble: but I think, Sir, that the precedent of what was done upon this question a few days ago, is a sufficient reason, if I had no other, for me to give my negative now.”
William Pitt, some time after, in the debate, said, how very commendable it was in him to have made the above speech, which must have made an impression upon the House; but if It was becoming in him to remember that he was the child of the accused, that the House ought to remember too that they are the children of their country. It was a great compliment from him, and very artful too.
I forgot to tell you in my last, that one of our men-of-war, commanded by Lord Bamffe,(518) a Scotchman, has taken another register ship, of immense value.
You will laugh at a comical thing that happened the other day to Lord Lincoln. He sent the Duke of Richmond word that he would dine with him in the country, and if he would give him leave, would bring lord Bury with him. It happens that Lord Bury is nothing less than the Duke of Richmond’s nephew.(519) The Duke, very properly, sent him word back, that Lord Bury might bring him, if he pleased.
I have been plagued all this morning with that oaf of unlicked antiquity, Prideaux,(520) and his deaf boy. He talked through all Italy, and every thing in all Italy. Upon mentioning Stosch, I asked if he had seen his collection. He replied, very few of his things, for he did not like his company; that he never heard so much heathenish talk in his days. I inquired what it was, and found that Stosch had one day said before him, “that the soul was only a little glue.” I laughed so much that he walked off; I suppose, thinking, that I believed so too. By the way, tell Stosch that a gold Alectus sold at Lord Oxford’s sale for above threescore pounds. Good night, my dear child! I am just going to the ridotto; one hates those places, comes away out of humour, and yet one goes again! How are you! I long for your next letter to answer me.
(512) The debate in the House of Commons on Lord Limerick’s motion for a Secret Committee to inquire into the conduct of the Earl of Orford during the last ten years of his administration.-E.
(513) The motion was carried by a majority of seven, the numbers being 252 against 245.-E.
(514) This was much mentioned in the pamphlets written against the war, which was said to have been determined “by a gentleman’s fumbling in his pocket for a piece of paper at ten o’clock at night,” and the House’s agreeing to the motion without any consideration.
(515) The author of these letters.
(516) There is a fictitious speech printed for this in several Magazines of that time, but which does not contain one sentence of the true one.
(517) The following note of this debate is from the Bishop of Oxford’s diary.-,, March 23. Motion by Lord Limerick, and seconded by Sir J. St. Aubin, on the 9th instant, for a Secret Committee of twenty-one, to examine into the Earl of Orford’s conduct for the last ten years of his being chancellor of the exchequer and lord of the treasury. Mr. Pultney said, ministers should always remember the account they must make; that he was against rancour in the inquiry, desired not to be named for the committee, particularly because of a rash word he had used, that he would pursue Sir Robert Walpole to his destruction; that now the minister was destroyed, he had no ill-will to the man; that from his own knowledge and experience of many of the Tories, he believed them to be as sincerely for the King and this family as himself; that he was sensible of the disagreeable situation he was in, and would get out of it as soon as he could. Mr. Sandys spoke for the motion, and said, he desired his own conduct might always be strictly inquired into. Lord Orford’s son, and Mr. Ellis spoke well against the motion. It was carried by 252 against 245. Three or four were shut out, who would have been against it. Mr. William -Finch against it. The Prince’s servants for it. Then Mr. Pultney moved for an address of duty to the King &e. which he begged might pass without opposition; and accordingly it did so. But Mr. W. W. wynne and several others, went out of the House; which was by some understood to be disapprobation, by others accident or weariness,” Secker ms.-E.
(518) alexander Ogilvy, sixth Lord Banff, commanded the Hastings man-of war in 1742 and 1743, and captured, during that time, a valuable outward-bound Spanish register-ship, a Spanish privateer of twenty guns, a French polacca with a rich cargo, and other vessels. He died at Lisbon in November 1746, at the early age of twenty-eight.-D.
(519) George Lord Bury, afterwards third Earl of Albemarle. His mother was Lady Anne Lennox, sister of the Duke of Richmond.-D. His lordship served as aide-de-camp) to the Duke of Cumberland at the battle of Fontenoy and at Culloden, and commanded in chief at the reduction of the Havannah. He died in 1772.)
(520 Grandson of Dean Prideaux; he was just returned out of Italy, with his son.
241 Letter 60 To Sir Horace Mann. Downing Street, April 1, 1742.
I received your letter of March 18th, and would be as particular in the other dates which you have sent me in the end of your letter, but our affairs having been in such confusion, I have removed all my papers In general from hence, and cannot now examine them. I have, I think, received all yours: but lately I received them two days at least after their arrival, and evidently opened; so we must be cautious now what we write. Remember this, for of your last the seal had been quite taken off and set on again.
Last Friday we balloted for the Secret Committee. Except the vacancies, there were but thirty-one members absent: five hundred and eighteen gave in lists. At six that evening they named a committee of which Lord Hartington was chairman, (as having moved for it,) to examine the lists. This lasted from that time, all that night, till four in the afternoon of the next day; twenty-two hours without remission. There were sixteen people, of which were Lord Hartington and Coke, who sat up the whole time, and one of theirs, Velters Cornwall,(521) fainted with the fatigue and heat, for people of all sorts were admitted into the room, to see the lists drawn; it was in the Speaker’s chambers. On the conclusion, they found the majority was for a mixed list, but of which the Opposition had the greater number. Here are the two lists, which were given out by each side, but of which people altered several in their private lists.
The court list.
William Bowles.
Lord Cornbury.(522)
William Finch.(523)
Lord Fitzwilliam.
Sir Charles Gilmour.
Charles Gore.
H. Arthur Herbert.(524)
Sir Henry Liddel.(525)
John Plumptree (526)
Sir John Ramsden.
Strange, Solicitor-General.
Cholmley Turnor.
John Talbot.(527)
General Wade.(528)
James West.(529)
The opposition list.
Sir John Barnard.
Alexander Hume Campbell.(530)
Sir John Cotton.
George Bubb Doddington.(531)
Nicholas Fazakerley.
Henry Furnese.
Earl of Granird.
Mr. Hooper.(532)
Lord Limerick.(533)
George Lyttelton.(534)
John Philips-(535)
William Pitt.(536)
Mr. Prouse.
Edmund Waller.(537)
Sir Watkyn Williams Wynn.
Besides the following six which were in both lists-
These Six, On casting up the numbers, had those marked against their names, and were consequently chosen. Those with this mark (*) were reckoned of the Opposition.
George Compton 515 William Noell 512 (538) Lord Quarendon 512 (539) Sir John Rushout 516 (540) Samuel Sandys 516 (541) Sir John St. Aubin 518
On casting up the numbers, the lists proved thus:-
Sir John Barnard 268 Nicholas Fazakerley 262 (542) Henry Furnese 282 Earl of Granard 258 Mr. Hooper 265 William Pitt 259 Mr. Prouse 259 Edmund Waller 259 William Bowles 259 Lord Cornbury 262 Solicitor-General 259 Cholmley Turnor 259
This made eighteen: Mr. Finch, Sir Harry Liddel, and Mr. Talbot, had 258 each, and Hume Campbell 257, besides one in which his name was mis-written, but allowed; out of these four, two were to be chosen: it was agreed that the Speaker was to choose them; he, with a resolution not supposed to be in him, as he has been the most notorious affecter of popularity, named Sir Harry Liddel and Mr. ’albot; so that, on the whole, we have just five that we can call our own.(543) These will not be sufficient to stop their proceedings, but by being privy, may stop any iniquitous proceedings. They have chosen Lord Limerick chairman. Lord Orford returns tomorrow from Houghton to Chelsea, from whence my uncle went in great fright to fetch him.
I was yesterday presented to the Prince and Princess; but had not the honour of a word from either: he did vouchsafe to talk to Lord Walpole the day before.
Yesterday the Lord Mayor brought in their favourite bill for repealing the Septennial Act, but we rejected it by 284 to 204.(544)
You shall have particular accounts of the Secret Committee and their proceedings: but It will be at least a month before they can make any progress. You did not say any thing about yourself in your last; never omit it, my dear child.
(521) Velters Cornwall, Esq., of Meccas Court, in Herefordshire, and member for that county.-D.
(522) Son of the Earl of Clarendon.
(523) Afterwards vice-chamberlain.
(524) Afterwards Earl of Powis.
(525) Afterwards Lord Ravensworth.
(526) He had a place in the Ordnance.
(527) Son of the late lord chancellor, and afterwards a judge.
(528) Afterwards field.marshal.
(529) Afterwards secretary of the treasury.
(530) Afterwards solicitor to the Prince.
(531) Had been a lord of the treasury.
(532) Had a place on a change of the ministry. (He was a Hampshire gentleman, and member for Christchurch.-D.)
(533) Afterwards King’s remembrancer.
(534) Afterwards cofferer.
(535) Afterwards a lord of trade and baronet.
(536) Afterwards paymaster.
(537) Afterwards cofferer.
(538) Afterwards a judge.
(539) Afterwards Earl of Lichfield.
(540) Afterwards treasurer of the navy.
(541) Afterwards chancellor of the exchequer, then cofferer, and then a baron.
(542) Nicholas Fazakerley, Esq. Walpole calls him “a tiresome Jacobite lawyer.” He, however, appears to have been a speaker of some weight in the House of Commons, and distinguished himself by his opposition to Lord Hardwicke’s mischievous marriage bill in the year 1753.-D. (He died in 1767.)
(543) “March 26, 27. The House of commons balloted for their committee, being called over, and each opening his list at the table, and putting it into a vessel which stood there. This was ended by five. Then a committee began to examine the lists, and sat from that time till four the next afternoon: for, though two lists were given out, many delivered in consisted partly of one, and partly of the other; and many were put in different order. Sir Thomas Drury, a friend of Lord Orford’s, put down four of the opposite side in his list. Lord Orford’s friends hoped it would bring moderate persons over to them, if they put some on their list who were not partial to him."-” March 29. The decision between Sir H. Lyddel, Mr. J. Talbot. and Mr. W. Finch, was left to the Speaker, who chose the two former.” Secker MS.-E.
(544) This is not correct. It appears, by the Journals, that the motion passed in the negative by 204 against 184. The debate is thus noticed by the Bishop of Oxford:-"March 31. Sir Robert Cotschall, Lord Mayor, moved for the repeal of the Septennial Bill. Mr. Pultney said, he thought annual parliaments would be best, but preferred septennial to triennial and voted against the motion. In all, 204 against it, and 184 for it.” Secker MS.-E.
243 Letter 61 To Sir Horace Mann. London, April 8, 1742.
You have no notion how astonished I was, at reading your account of Sir Francis Dashwood!-that it should be possible for private and personal pique so to sour any man’s temper and honour, and so utterly to change their principles! I own I am for your mentioning him in your next despatch: they may at least intercept his letters, and prevent his dirty intelligence. As to Lady Walpole,(545) her schemes are so wild and so ill-founded, that I don’t think it worth while to take notice of them. I possibly may mention this new one of changing her name, to her husband, and of her coming-over design, but I am sure he will only laugh at it.
The ill-situation of the King, which you say is so much talked of at the Petraia,(546) Is not true; indeed he and the Prince are not at all more reconciled for being reconciled; but I think his resolution has borne him out. All the public questions are easily carried, even with the concurrence of the Tories. Mr. Pultney proposed to grant a large sum for assisting the Queen of Hungary, and got Sir John Barnard to move it. They have given the King five hundred thousand pounds for that purpose.(547) The land-tax of four shillings in the pound is continued. Lord Stair is gone to Holland, and orders are given to the regiments and guards to have their camp equipages ready. As to the Spanish war and Vernon, there is no more talk of them; one would think they had both been taken by a privateer.
We talk of adjourning, soon for a month or six weeks, to give the Secret Committee time to proceed, which yet they have not done. Their object is returned from Houghton in great health and greater spirits. They are extremely angry with him for laughing at their power. The concourse to him is as great as ever; so is the rage against him. All this week the mob has been carrying about his effigies in procession, and to the Tower. The chiefs of the Opposition have been so mean as to give these mobs money for bonfires, particularly the Earls of Lichfield, Westmoreland, Denbigh, (548) and Stanhope:(549) the servants of these last got one of these figures, chalked out a place for the heart and shot at it. You will laugh at me, who, the other day, meeting one of these mobs, drove up to it to see what was the matter: the first thing I beheld was a maulkin, in a chair, with three footmen, and a label on the breast, inscribed “Lady mary.” (550)
The Speaker, who has been much abused for naming two of our friends to the Secret Committee, to show his disinterestedness, has resigned his place of treasurer of the navy. Mr. Clutterbuck,(551) one of the late treasury is to have it; so there seems a stop put to any new persons from the Opposition.
His Royal Highness is gone to Kew his drawing-rooms Will not be so crowded at his return, as he has disobliged so many considerable people, particularly the Dukes of Montagu (552) and Richmond, Lord Albemarle,(553) etc. The Richmond went twice, and yet was not spoken to; nor the others; nay, he has vented his princely resentment even upon the women, for to Lady Hervey, not a word.
This is all the news except that little Brook (554) is on the point of matrimony with Miss Hamilton, Lady Archibald’s daughter. She is excessively pretty and sensible, but as diminutive as he.
I forgot to tell you that the Place Bill has met with the same fate from the Lords as the Pension Bill (555) and the Triennial Act; so that, after all their clamour and changing of measures, they have not been able to get one of their popular bills passed, though the newspapers, for these three months, have swarmed with instructions for these purposes, from the constituents of all parts of Great Britain to their representatives.
We go into mourning on Sunday for the old Empress Amelia.(556) Lord Chedworth, (557) one of three new Peers, is dead. We hear the King of Sardinia is at Piacenza, to open the campaign. I shall be in continual fears lest they disturb you at Florence. All love to the Chutes, and my compliments to all my old acquaintance. I don’t think I have forgot one of Them. Pataman is entirely yours, and entirely handsome. Good night!
(545) Margaret Rolle, a great Devonshire heiress, the wife of Robert, Lord Walpole, afterwards second Earl of Orford, the eldest son of the minister. She was separated from her husband, and had quarrelled violently with his whole family. She resided principally at Florence, where she died in 1781; having married secondly, after the death of Lord Orford, the Hon. Sewallis Shirley. She was a woman of bad character, as well as Half mad: which last quality she to communicated to her unfortunate son George, third Earl of Orford. She succeeded, in her own right, to the baronies of Clinton and Say, upon the death, in 1751, of Hugh, Earl and Baron Clinton.-D. (This lady was married to Lord Walpole in 1724. In a letter to the Countess of mar, written in that year, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu says:- “I have so good an opinion of your taste, to believe harlequin in person will not make you laugh so much as the Earl of Stair’s furious passion for Lady Walpole, aged fourteen and some months. Mrs. Murray undertook to bring the business to bear, and provided the opportunity, a great ingredient You’ll Say but the young lady proved skittish. She did not only turn his heroic flame into present ridicule, but exposed all his generous sentiments, to divert her Husband and father-in-law.” Works, vol. ii. p. 188.]
(546) A villa belonging to the Great Duke, where Prince Craon resided in summer.
(547) “April 2. In the Commons, 500,000 pounds voted for the Queen of Hungary; I believe nem. con. Sir John Barnard moved it; which, Mr. Sandys told me, was that day making himself the chancellor of the exchequer. He told me, also, the King was unwilling to grant the Prince 50,000 pounds a-year; and I am told from other hands, that he saith he never promised it. The Bishop of Sarum (Sherlock) says, Sir Robert Walpole told him, the King would give 30,000 pounds, but no more. Mr. Sandys appeared determined against admitting Tories, and said it was wonderful their union had held so long, and could not be expected to hold longer; that he could not imagine why every body spoke against Lord Carteret, but that he had better abilities than any body; that as soon as foreign affairs could be settled, they would endeavour to reduce the expenses of the crown and interest of the debts.” Secker MS.
(548) William Fielding, fifth Earl of Denbigh, died 1755.-D.
(549) Philip, second Earl Stanhope, eldest son of the general and statesman, who founded this branch of the Stanhope family. Earl Philip was a man of retired habits, and much devoted to scientific pursuits. He died in 1786.-D.
(550) Lady Mary Walpole, daughter of Sir R. W.
(551) This Mr. Clutterbuck had been raised by Lord Carteret, when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whom he betrayed to Sir R. Walpole; the latter employed him, but never would trust him. He then ingratiated himself with Mr. Pelham, under a pretence of candour and integrity, and was continually infusing scruples into him on political questions, to distress Sir R. On the latter’s quitting the ministry, he appointed a board of treasury at his own house, in order to sign some grants; Mr. Clutterbuck made a pretence to slip away, and never returned. He was a friend, too, of the Speaker’s: when Sir R. W. was told that Mr. Onslow had resigned his place, and that Mr. Clutterbuck was to succeed him, said, “I remember that the Duke of Roxburgh, who was a great pretender to conscience, persuaded the Duke of Montrose to resign the seals of’ Secretary of state, on some scruple, and begged them himself the next day.” Mr. Clutterbuck died very soon after this transaction. [Mr. Clutterbuck was appointed treasurer of the navy in May, and died in November following.]
(552) John, second and last Duke of Montagu, of the first creation. He was a man of Some talent, and great eccentricity. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, his mother-in-law, Used to say of him, “My son-in-law Montagu is fifty, and he is still as mere a boy as if he was only fifteen.".-D. On his death, in 1749),the title became extinct.)
(553) William-Anne Keppel, second Earl of Albemarle. An amiable prodigal who filled various great offices, through the favour of Lady Yarmouth, who died insolvent.-D. [He married. in 1723, Lady Anne Lennox, daughter of Charles, first Duke of Richmond, and, whilst ambassador to the French court, died suddenly at Paris, in 1755.]
(554) Francis Greville, Lord Brooke, created an earl in 1746. [And, in 1759, raised to the dignity of Earl of Warwick. He died in 1773.]
(555) “March 26. The Pension Bill read a second time in the Lords. Duke of Devonshire said a few words against it. Lord Sandwich pleaded for it, that some persons now in the ministry had patronized it, and for their sakes it should be committed; Lord Romney, that some objections against it had been obviated by alterations. These three speeches lasted scarce half a quarter of an hour. The question being put for committing, not-content, 76; content, 46. I was one of five bishops for it; Lord Carteret and Lord Berkeley against it.” Secker 318.-E.
(556) Widow of the Emperor Joseph. She was of the house of Wolfenbuttle.
(557) John Bowe, Esq. of Stowell, created a baron in May 1741.
246 Letter 62 To Sir Horace Mann. April 15, 1742.
The great pleasure I receive from your letters is a little abated by my continually finding that they have been opened. It is a mortification as it must restrain the freedom of our correspondence, and at a time when more than ever I must want to talk to you. Your brother showed me a letter, which I approve extremely, yet do not think this a proper time for it; for there IS not only no present prospect of any further alterations, but, if there were, none that will give that person any interest. He really has lost himself so much, that it will be long before he can recover credit enough to do any body any service. His childish and troublesome behaviour, particularly lately (,but I Will not mention instances, because I would not have it known whom I mean), has set him in the lowest light imaginable. I have desired your brother to keep your letter, and when we see a necessary or convenient opportunity, which I hope will not arrive, it shall be delivered. However, if you are still of that opinion, say so, and your brother shall carry it. At present, my dear child, I am much more at repose about you, as I trust no more will happen to endanger your situation. I shall not only give you the first notice, but employ all the means in my power to prevent your removal.
The Secret Committee, it seems, are almost aground, and, it is thought, will soon finish. They are now reduced, as I hear, to inquire into the last month, not having met with any foundation for proceeding in the rest of the time. However, they have this week given a strong instance of’ their arbitrariness and private resentments. They sent for Paxton,(558) the solicitor of the treasury, and examined him about five hundred pounds which he had given seven years ago at Lord Limerick’s election. The man, as it directly tended to accuse himself, refused to answer. They complained to the House, and after a long debate he was committed to the sergeant-at-arms -, and to-day, I hear, for still refusing, will be sent to Newgate.(559) We adjourn to-day for ten days, but the committee has leave to continue sitting. . But, my dear child, you may be quite at ease, for they themselves seem to despair of being able to effect any thing.
The Duke (560) is of age to-day, and I hear by the guns, is just gone with the King, to take his seat in the Lords.
I have this morning received the jar of cedrati safe, for which I give you a million of thanks. I am impatient to hear of the arrival of your secretary and the things at Florence; it is time for you to have received them.
Here! Amorevoli has sent me another letter. Would you believe that our wise directors for next year will not keep the Visconti, and have sent for the Fumagalli? She will not be heard to the first row of the pit.
I am growing miserable, for it is growing fine weather-that is, every body is going out of town. I have but just begun to like London, and to be settled in an agreeable set of’ people, and now they are going to wander all over the kingdom. Because they have some chance of having a month of good weather they will bury themselves three more in bad.
The Duchess of Cleveland (561) died last night of what they call a miliary fever, which is much about: she had not been ill two days. So the poor creature, her duke, is again to be let; she paid dear for the hopes of being duchess dowager. Lady Catherine Pelham,(562) has miscarried of twins; but they are so miserable with the loss of their former two boys, that they seem glad now of not having any more to tremble for.
There is a man who has by degrees bred himself up to walk upon stilts so high, that he now stalks about and peeps into one pair of stairs windows. If this practice should spread, dining-rooms will be as innocent as chapels. Good night! I never forget my best loves to the Chutes.
P. S. I this moment hear that Edgecombe (563) and Lord Fitzwilliam are created English peers: I am sure the first is, and I believe the second.
(558) Commemorated in a line of Pope-"’Tis all a libel, Paxton, Sir, will say."-D.
(559) On a division of 180 against 128, Paxton was this day committed to Newgate where he remained till the end of the session, July 15. He died in April 1744.-E.
(560) The Duke of Cumberland, third Son of George the Second.-E.
(561) Lady Henrietta Finch, sister of the Earl of Winchilsea, wife of William, Duke of Cleveland. [On whose death, in 1774, the title became extinct.]
(562) Catherine, sister of John Manners, Duke of Rutland, and wife of Henry Pelham. They lost their two sons by an epidemic sore-throat, after which she would never go to Esher, or any house where she had seen them.
(563) Richard Edgecombe, a great friend of Sir R. Walpole, was Created a baron to prevent his being examined by the Secret Committee concerning the management of the Cornish boroughs. (He was created Lord Edgecumbe on the 20th of April, and in December appointed chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. He died in 1758.]
247 Letter 63 To Sir Horace Mann. London, April 22, 1742.
You perceive, by the size of my paper, how little I have to say. The whole town is out of town for Easter, and nothing left but dust, old women, and the Secret Committee. They go on warmly, and have turned their whole thoughts to the secret-service money, after which they are inquiring by all methods. Sir John Rawdon (564) (you remember that genius in Italy) voluntarily swore before them that, at the late election at Wallingforrd, he spent two thousand pounds, and that one Morley promised him fifteen hundred more, if he would lay it out. “Whence was Morley to have it?"-"I don’t know; I believe from the first minister.” This makes an evidence. It is thought that they will ask leave to examine members, which was the reason of Edgecumbe’s going into the peerage, as they supposed he had been the principal agent for the Cornish boroughs. Sir John Cotton said, upon the occasion, “Between Newgate (565 and the House of Lords the committee will not get information.”
The troops for Flanders go on board Saturday se’nnight, the first embarkation of five thousand men: the whole number is to be sixteen thousand. It is not yet known what success Earl Stair has had at the Hague. We are in great joy upon the news of the King of Prussia’s running away from the Austrians: (566) though his cowardice is well established, it is yet believed that the flight in question was determined by his head, not his heart; in short, that it was treachery to his allies.
I forgot to tell you, that of the Secret Committee Sir John Rushout and Cholmley TurnOr never go to it, nor, which is more extraordinary, Sir John Barnard. He says he thought their views were more general, but finding them so particular against one man, he Will not engage with them.
I have been breakfasting this morning at Ranelagh-garden: (567) they have built an immense amphitheatre, with balconies full of little ale-houses; it is in rivalry to Vauxhall, and costs above twelve thousand pounds. The building is not finished, but, they get great sums by people going to see it and breakfasting in the house: there were yesterday no less than three hundred and eighty persons, at eighteen pence a-piece. You see how poor we are, when, with a tax of four shillings in the pound, we are laying out such sums for cakes and ale.
We have a new opera, with your favourite song, se cerca, se dice: (568) Monticelli sings it beyond what you can conceive. Your last was of April 8th. I like the medal of the Caesars and Nihils (569) extremely; but don’t at all like the cracking of your house, (570) except that it drives away your Pettegola. (571) What I like much worse is your recovering your strength so slowly; but I trust to the warm weather.
Miss Granville, daughter of the late Lord Lansdown, (572) is named maid of honour, in the room of Miss Hamilton, who I told you is to be Lady Brook-they are both so small! what little eggs they will lay!
How does my Princess?(573) does not she deign to visit you too? Is Sade (574) there still? Is Madame Suares quite gone into devotion yet? Tell me any thing-I love any thing that you write to me. Good night!
(564) He was afterwards made an Irish lord. (Lord Rawdon in 1750, and Earl of Moira in 1761. His first two wives were the daughters of the Earl of Egmont and Viscount Hillsborough. His third wife, by whom he was the father of the late Lord Hastings, was the daughter, and eventually the heiress, of Theophilus, ninth Earl of Huntingdon.-D.)
(565) Alluding to Paxton, who was sent thither for refusing to give evidence.
(566) this must allude to the King of Prussia’s abandonment of his design to penetrate through Austria to Vienna, which he gave of) in consequence of the lukewarmness of his Saxon and the absence of his French allies. It is curious now, when the mist of contemporary prejudices has passed away, to hear Frederick the Great accused of cowardice.-D.
(567) the once celebrated place of amusement was so called from its site being that of a villa of’ Viscount Ranelagh, near Chelsea. The last entertainment given in it was the installation ball of the Knights of the Bath, in 1802. It has since been razed to the ground.-E.
(568) In the Olimpiade.
(569) A satirical medal: on one side was the head of Francis, Duke of Lorrain (afterwards emperor) with this motto, aut Caesar aut nihil: on the reverse, that of the Emperor Charles Vii. Elector of Bavaria, who had been driven out of his dominions, et Caesar et nihil.
(570) Sir H. Mann had mentioned, in one of his letters,
the appearance of several cracks in the walls of his
house at Florence. Mrs. Goldsworthy, the wife
of the English consul,
had
taken refuge in it when driven from Leghorn by
an earthquake.-D.
(571) Mrs. (’Goldsworthy.
(572) George Granville, Lord Lansdown,
Pope’s “Granville the polite,” one
of Queen
Anne’s twelve peers, and
one of the minor
poets of that time. He died in 1734, without
male issue, and his honours
extinguished.-D.
(573) Princess Craon.
(574) The Chevalier de Sade.
249 Letter 64
To Sir Horace Mann.
London, April 29, 1742.
By yours of April 17, N. S. and some of your last letters, I find my Lady Walpole is more mad than ever-why, there never was so wild a scheme as this, of setting up an interest through Lord Chesterfield! one who has no power; and, if he had, would think of, or serve her, one of the last persons upon earth. What connexion has he with what interest could he have in obliging her? and, but from views, what has he ever done, or will he ever do? But is Richcourt (575) so shallow, and so ambitious, as to put any trust in there projects? My dear child, believe me, if I was to mention them here, they would sound so chimerical, so womanish, that I should be laughed at for repeating them. For yourself, be quite at rest, and laugh, as I do, at feeble, visionary malice, and assure yourself, whoever mentions such politics to you, that my Lady Walpole must have very frippery intelligence from hence, if she can raise no better views and on no better foundations. For the poem you mention, I never read it: upon inquiry, I find there was such a thing though now quite obsolete: undoubtedly not Pope’s, and only proves what I said before, how low, how paltry, how uninformed her ladyship’s correspondents must be.
We are now all military! all preparations for Flanders! no parties but reviews; no officers, but “hope” they are to go abroad-at least, it is the fashion to say so. I am studying lists of regiments and Dames of colonels-not that “I hope I am to go abroad,” but to talk of those who do. Three thousand men embarked yesterday and the day before, and the thirteen thousand others sail as soon as the transports can return. Messieurs d’Allemagne (576) roll their red eyes, stroke up their great beards, and look fierce-you know one loves a review and a tattoo.
We had a debate yesterday in the House on a proposal for replacing four thousand men of some that are to be sent abroad, that, in short, we might have fifteen thousand men to guard the kingdom. This was strongly opposed by the Tories, but we carried it in the committee, 214 against 123, and to-day, in the House, 280 against 169. Sir John Barnard, Pultney, the new ministry, all the Prince’s people, except the Cobham cousins,(577) the Lord Mayor, several of the Opposition, voted with us; so you must interpret Tories in the strongest sense of the word.
The Secret Committee has desired leave to-day to examine three members, Burrel, Bristow, and Hanbury Williams: (578) the two first are directors of the bank; and it is upon an agreement made with them, and at which Williams was present, about remitting some money to Jamaica, and in which they pretend Sir Robert made a bad bargain, to oblige them as members of Parliament. they all three stood up, and voluntarily offered to be examined; so no vote passed upon it.
These are all the political news: there is little of any other sort; so little gallantry is stirring, that I do not hear of so much as one maid of honour who has declared herself with child by any officer, to engage him not to go abroad. I told you once or twice that Miss Hamilton is going to be married to Lord Brook: somebody wished Lord Archibald joy. He replied, “Providence has been very good to my family.”
We had a great scuffle the other night at the Opera, which interrupted it. Lord Lincoln was abused in the most shocking manner by a drunken officer, upon which he kicked him, and was drawing his sword, but was prevented. were they were put under arrest, and the next morning, the man begged his pardon before the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Albemarle, and other officers, in the most submissive terms. I saw the quarrel from the other side of the house, and rushing to get to Lord Lincoln, could not for the crowd. I climbed into the front boxes, and stepping over the shoulders of three ladies, before I knew where I was, found I had lighted in Lord Rockingham’s (579) lap. It was ridiculous! Good night!
(575) Count Richcourt was a Lorrainer, and chief minister of Florence; there was a great connexion between him and Lady Walpole.
(576)The royal family.
(577) Pitts, Grenvilles, Lytteltons, all related by marriage, or female descent, to Lord Cobham.-D.
(578) Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, a devoted follower of Sir Robert Walpole. His various satirical poems against the enemies and successors of that minister are well known, and must ever be admired for their ease, their spirit, and the wit and humour of their sarcasm. It was said at the time that Sir Charles’s poetry had done more in three months to lower and discredit those it was written against, than the Craftsman and other abusive papers had been able to effect against Sir Robert in a long series of years.-D.
(579) Lewis Watson, second Earl of Rockingham. He married Catharine, second daughter and coheir of George Sondes, Earl of Feversham, and died in 1745.-D.
251 Letter 65 To Richard West, Esq. London, May 4, 1742.
Dear West, Your letter made me quite melancholy, till I came to the postscript of fine weather. Your so suddenly finding the benefit of it makes me trust you will entirely recover your health and spirits with the warm season: nobody wishes it more than I: nobody has more reason, as few have known you so long. Don’t be afraid of your letters being dull. I don’t deserve to be called your friend, if I were impatient at hearing your complaints. I do not desire you to suppress them till the causes cease; nor should I expect you to write cheerfully while you are Ill. I never desire to write any man’s life as a stoic, and consequently should not desire him to furnish me with opportunities of assuring posterity what pains he took not to show any pain.
If you did amuse yourself with writing any thing in poetry, you know how pleased I should be to see it; but for encouraging you to it, d’ye see, ’tis an age most unpoetical! ’Tis even a test of wit to dislike poetry; and though Pope has half a dozen old friends that he has preserved from the taste of last century, yet, I assure you, the generality of readers are more diverted with any paltry prose answer to old Marlborough’s secret history of Queen Mary’s robes. I do not think an author would be universally commended for any production in verse, unless it were an ode to the Secret Committee, with rhymes of liberty and property, nation and administration.
Wit itself is monopolized by politics; no laugh would be ridiculous if it were not on one side or t’other. Thus, Sandys thinks he has spoken an epigram, when he crincles up his nose and lays a smart accent on ways and means.
We may, indeed. hope a little better now to the declining arts. The reconciliation between the royalties is finished, and fifty thousand pounds a-year more added to the heir apparent’s revenue. He will have money now to tune up Glover, and Thomson, and Dodsley again: Et spes et ratio studiorum in Caesare tantUM.
Asheton is much yours. He has preached twice at Somerset Chapel with the greatest applause. I do not mind his pleasing the generality, for you know they ran as much after Whitfield as they could after Tillotson; and I do not doubt but St. Jude converted as many Honourable women as St. Paul. But I am sure you would approve his compositions, and admire them still more when you heard him deliver them. He will write to you himself next post, but is not mad enough with his fame to write you a sermon. Adieu, dear child! Write me the progress of your recovery,(580) and believe it will give me a sincere pleasure; for I am, yours ever.
(580) Mr. West died in less than a month from the date of this letter, in the twenty-sixth year of his age. (see ant`e, p. 121, Letter 1.) In his last letter to Grey, written a few days before his death, he says, “I will take my leave of you for the present, with a vale et vive paulisper cum vivis:” so little was he aware of the short time that he himself would be numbered among the living. But this is almost constantly the case with those who die of that most flattering of all diseases, a consumption. “Shall humanity,” says Mason, “be thankful or sorry that it is so? Thankful, surely! for as this malady generally attacks the young and the innocent, it seems the merciful intention of Heaven, that to these death should come unperceived, and, as it were, by stealth; divested of one of its sharpest stings, the lingering expectation of their dissolution."-E.
252 Letter 66 To Sir Horace Mann. Downing Street, May 6, 1742.
I have received a long letter from you of the 22d of April. It amazes me! that our friends of Florence should not prove our friends.(581) Is it possible? I have always talked of their cordiality, because I was convinced they could have no shadow of interest in their professions:—of that, indeed, I am convinced still-but how could they fancy they had? There is the wonder! If they wanted common honesty, they seem to have wanted common sense more. What hope of connexion could there ever be between the British ministry and the Florentine nobility! The latter have no views for being, or knowledge for being envoys, etc. They are too poor and proud to think of trading with us; too abject to hope for the restoration of their liberty from us-and, indeed, however we may affection our own, we have showed no regard for their liberty-they have had no reason ever to expect that from us! In short, to me it is mystery! But how could you not tell me some particulars? Have I so little interested myself with Florence, that you should think I can be satisfied without knowing the least particulars? I must know names. Who are these wretches that I am to scratch out of my list? I shall give them a black blot the moment I know who have behaved ill to you. Is Casa Ferroni of the number? I suspect it:-that was of your first attachments. Are the prince and princess dirty?-the Suares?-tell me, tell me! Indeed, my dear Mr. Chute, I am not of your opinion, that he should shut himself up and despise them; let him go abroad and despise them. Must he mope because the Florentines are like the rest of the world? But that is not true, for the world in England have not declared themselves so suddenly. It has not been the fashion to desert the earl and his friends: he has had more concourse, more professions, and has still, than in the height of his power. So your neighbours have been too hasty: they are new style, at least, eleven days before us. Tell them, tell Richcourt, tell his Cleopatra,(582) that all their hopes are vanished, all their faith in Secret Committees-the reconciliation is made, and whatever reports their secretships may produce, there will be at least above a hundred votes added to our party. Their triumph has been but in hope, and their hope has failed in two months.
As to your embroil with Richcourt, I condemn you excessively: not that you was originally in fault, but by seeming to own yourself so. He is an impertinent fellow, and will be so if you’ll let him. My dear child, act with the spirit of your friends here; show we have lost no credit by losing power, and that a little Italian minister must not dare to insult you. Publish the accounts I send you; which I give you my honour are authentic. If they are not, let Cytheris, your Antony’s travelling concubine, contradict them.
You tell me the St. Quintin is arrived at Genoa: I see by the prints of to-day that it is got to leghorn: I am extremely glad, for I feared for it, for the poor boy, and for the things. Tell me how you like your secretary. I shall be quite happy, if I have placed one with you that you like.
I laughed much at the family of cats I am to receive. I believe they will be extremely welcome to Lord Islay now: for he appears little, lives more darkly and more like a wizard than ever. These huge cats will figure prodigiously in his cell: he is of’ the mysterious, dingy nature of Stosch.
As words is what I have not rhetoric to find out to thank you, for sending me this paragraph of Madame Goldsworthy, I can only tell you that I have laughed for an hour at it. This was one of my Lady Pomfret’s correspondents.
There seems to be a little stop in our embarkations: since the first, they have discovered that the horse must not go till all the hay is provided. Three thousand men will make a fine figure towards supporting the balance of power! Our whole number was to be but sixteen; and if all these cannot be assembled before the end of July, what will be said of it?
The Secret Committee go on very pitifully: they are now inquiring about some customhouse officers that were turned out at Weymouth for voting wrong at elections. Don’t you think these articles will prove to the world what they have been saying of Sir Robert for these twenty years? The House still sits in observance to them; which is pleasant to me, for it keeps people in town. We have operas too; but they are almost over, and if it were not for a daily east wind, they would give way to Vauxhall and Chelsea. The new directors have agreed with the Fumagalli for next year, but she is to be second woman: they keep the Visconti. Did I never mention the Bettina, the first dancer. It seems she was kept by a Neapolitan prince, who is extremely jealous of her thither. About a fortnight ago, she fell ill, upon which her Neapolitan footman made off immediately. She dances again, but is very weak, and thinks herself poisoned.
Adieu! my dear child; tell me you are well, easy, and in spirits: kiss the Chutes for me, and believe me, etc
(581) This alludes to an account given by Sir Horace Mann, in one of his letters, of the change he had observed in the manner of many of the Florentines towards himself since Sir Robert Walpole’s retirement from office, upon the supposition entertained by them that he was intimately connected with the fallen minister@D.
(582) Lady Walpole.
254 Letter 67
To Sir Horace Mann.
London, May 13, 1742.
As I am obliged to put my letter into the secretary’s office by nine o’clock, and it now don’t want a quarter of it, I can say but three words, and must defer till next post answering Your long letter by the courier. I am this moment come from the House, where we have had the first part of the Report from the Secret Committee. It is pretty long; but, unfortunately for them, there is not once to be found in it the name of the Earl of Orford: there is a good deal about Mr. Paxton and the borough of Wendover; and it appears that in eleven years Mr. Paxton has received ninety-four thousand pounds unaccounted for: now, if Lady Richcourt can make any thing of all this, you have freely my leave to communicate it to her. Pursuant to this report, and Mr. Paxton’s contumacy, they moved for leave to bring in a bill to indemnify all persons who should accuse themselves of any crime, provided they do but accuse Lord Orford, and they have carried it by 251 to 228! but it is so absurd a bill, that there is not the least likelihood of its passing the Lords. By this bill, whoever are guilty of murder, treason, forgery, etc. have nothing to do but to add perjury, and swear Lord Orford knew of it, and they may plead their pardon. Tell Lady Richcourt this. Lord Orford knew of her gallantries: she may plead her pardon. Good night! I have not a moment to lose.
254 Letter 68
To Sir Horace Mann.
May 20, 1742.
I sent you a sketch last post of the division on the Indemnity Bill. As they carried the question for its being brought in, they brought it in on Saturday; but were prevailed on to defer the second reading till Tuesday. Then we had a long debate till eight at night, when they carried it, 228 against 217, only eleven majority: before, they had had twenty-three. They immediately went into the committee on it,-and reported it that night. Yesterday it came to the last reading; but the House, having sat so late the night before, was not so full, and they carried it, 216 to 184. But to-day it comes into the Lords,-where they do not in the least expect to succeed; yet, to show their spirit, they have appointed a great dinner at the Fountain to-morrow to consider on methods for supporting the honour of the Commons, as they call it, against the Lords, So now all prospect of quiet seems to vanish! The noise this bill makes is incredible; it is so unprecedented, so violent a step! Every thing is inflamed by Pultney, who governs both parties only, I think, to exasperate both more. Three of our own people of the committee, the Solicitor,(582) Talbot, and Bowles, vote against us in the Indemnity Bill, the two latter have even spoke against us. Sir Robert said, at the beginning, when he was congratulated on having some of his own friends in the committee, “The moment they are appointed, they will grow so jealous of the honour of their committee, that they will prefer that to every other consideration."(583)
Our foreign news are as bad as our domestic: there seem little hopes of the Dutch coming into our measures; there are even letters, that mention strongly their resolution of not stirring-so we have Quixoted away sixteen thousand men! On Saturday we had accounts of the Austrians having cut off two thousand Prussians, in a retreat; but on Sunday came news of the great victory,(584) which the latter have gained, killing six, and taking two thousand Austrians prisoners, and that Prince Charles is retired to Vienna wounded. This will but too much confirm the Dutch in their apprehensions of Prussia. As to the long letter you wrote me, in answer to a very particular one of mine, I cannot explain myself, till I find a safer conveyance than the post, by which, I perceive all our letters are opened. I can only tell you, that in most things you guessed right; and that as to myself (585) all is quiet. I am in great concern, for you seem not satisfied with the boy we sent you. Your brother entirely agreed with me that he was what you seem to describe; and as to his being on the foot of a servant, I give you my honour I repeated it over and over to his mother. I suppose her folly was afraid of shocking him. As to Italian, she assured me he had been learning it some time. If he does not answer your purpose, let me know if you can dispose of him any other way, and I will try to accommodate you better. Your brother has this moment been here, but there was no letter for me; at least, none that they will deliver yet.
I know not in the least how to advise Mr. Jackson.(586) I do not think Mr. Pelham the proper person to apply to; for the Duke of Newcastle is as jealous of him as of any body.(587) Don’t say this to him. For Lord Hervey, though Mr. Jackson has interest there, I would not advise him to try it, for both hate him. The application to the Duke of Newcastle by the Most direct means, I should think the best, or by any one that can be serviceable to the government.
You will laugh at an odd accident that happened the other day to my uncle:(588) they put him into the papers for Earl of Sheffield. There have been little disputes between the two Houses about coming into each other’s House; when a lord comes into the Commons, they call out, withdraw: that day, the moment my uncle came in, they all roared out, Withdraw! withdraw!
The great Mr. Nugent has been unfortunate, too, in parliament; besides being very ill heard, from being a very indifferent speaker, the other day on the Place Bill, (which, by the way, we have new modelled and softened, and to which the Lords have submitted to agree to humour Pultney,) he rose, and said, “He would not vote, as he was not determined in his opinion; but he would offer his sentiments; which were, particularly, that the bishops had been the cause of this bill being thrown out before.” Winnington called him to order, desiring he would be tender of the Church of England. You know he was a papist. In answer to the beginning of his speech, Velters Cornwall, who is of the same side, said, “He wondered that when that gentleman could not convince himself by his eloquence, he should expect to convince the majority.”
Did I tell you that Lord Rochford,(589) has at last married Miss Young?(590) I say, at last, for they don’t pretend to have been married this twelvemonth; but they were publicly married last week. Adieu!
(582) John Strange, Esq. made Solicitor-general in 1736, and Master of the Rolls in 1750, he died in 1754.-E.
(583) Voltaire has since made the same kind of observation in his “Life of Louis XlV.” Art of Calvinism;-"Les hommes se piquent toujours de remplir un devoir qui les distingue.”
(584) The battle of Chotusitz, or Czaslau, gained by the King of Prussia over the very superior forces of the Austrians. This victory occasioned the peace between the contending powers, and the cession of Silesia to the Prussian monarchy.- D.
(585) This relates to some differences between Mr. Walpole and his father, to which the former had alluded in one of his letters. They never suited one another either in habits, tastes, or opinions; in addition to which, Sir Robert appears to have been rather a harsh father to his youngest son. If such was the case, the latter nobly revenged himself, by his earnest solicitude through life for the Honour of his parent’s memory.-D. [See ant`e, p. 207, Letter 50.)
(586) He had been consul at Genoa.
(587) Sir Robert Walpole used to say of the Duke of Newcastle, “He has a foolish head and a perfidious heart. His name is perfidy."-E.
(588) Horace Walpole the elder@D.
(589) William Henry Zulestein Nassau, fourth Earl of Rochford. He filled many diplomatic situations, and was also at different times, groom of the stole and secretary of state. He died in 1781.-D.
(590) Daughter of Edward Young, Esq. She had been maid of honour to the Princess of Wales.
256 Letter 69 To Sir Horace Mann Downing Street, May 26, 1742.
To-day calls itself May the 26th, as you perceive by the date; but I am writing to you by the fireside, instead of going to Vauxhall. if we have one warm day in seven, “we bless our stars, and think it luxury.” And yet we have as much waterworks and fresco diversions, as if we lay ten degrees nearer warmth. Two nights ago Ranelagh-gardens were opened at Chelsea; the Prince, Princess, Duke, much nobility, and much mob besides, were there. There is a vast amphitheatre, finely gilt, painted, and illuminated, into which every body that loves eating, drinking, staring, or crowding, is admitted for twelvepence. The building and disposition of the gardens cost sixteen thousand pounds. Twice a-week there are to be ridottos, at guinea tickets, for which you are to have a supper and music. I was there last night, but did not find the joy of it. Vauxhall is a little better; for the garden is pleasanter, and one goes by water. Our operas are almost over; there were but three-and-forty people last night in the pit and boxes. There is a little simple farce at Drury Lane, called “Miss Lucy in Town,"(591)
I did, indeed, design the letter of this post for Mr. Chute; but I have received two such charming long ones from you of the 15th and 20th of May (N. S.), that I must answer them, and beg him to excuse me till another post; so must the Prince,(594) Princess, the Grifona, and Countess Galli. For the Princess’s letter, I am not sure I shall answer it so soon, for hitherto I have not been able to read above every third word; however, you may thank her as much as if I understood it all. I am very happy that mes bagatelles (for I still insist they were so) pleased. You, my dear child, are very good to be pleased with the snuff-box.. I am much obliged to the superior lumi`eres of old Sarasin (595) about the Indian ink: if’ she meant the black, I am sorry to say I had it into the bargain with the rest of the Japan: for the coloured, it is only a curiosity, because it has seldom been brought over. I remember Sir Hans Sloane was the first who ever had any of it, and would on no account give my mother the least morsel of it. since that, She afterwards got a good deal of it from China; and more has come over; but it is even less valuable than the other, for we never could tell how to use it; however, let it make its figure.
I am sure you blame me all this time, for chatting about so many trifles, and telling you no politics. I own to you, I am so wearied, so worn with them, that I scarce know how to turn my hand to them; but you shall know all I know. I told you of the meeting at the Fountain tavern: Pultney had promised to be there, but was-not; nor Carteret. As the Lords had put off the debate on the Indemnity Bill, nothing material passed; but the meeting was very Jacobite. Yesterday the bill came on, and Lord Carteret took the lead against it, and about seven in the evening it was flung out by almost two to one, 92 to 47, and 17 proxies to 10. To-day we had a motion by the new Lord Hillsborough,(596) (for the father is Just dead,) and seconded by Lord Barrington,(597) to examine the Lords’ votes, to see what has become of the bill: this is the form. The chancellor of the exchequer, and all the new ministry, were with us against it; but they carried it, 164 to 159. It is to be reported to-morrow, and
“Thy horse does things by halves, like thee:
Thou, with irresolution,
Hurt’st friend and foe, thyself and me,
The King and Constitution.”
The list I meant: you must know, some time ago, before the change, they had moved for a committee to examine, and state the public accounts: It was passed. Finding how little success they had with their Secret Committee, they have set this on foot, and we were to ballot for seven commissioners, who are to have a thousand a-year; We balloted yesterday: on our lists were Sir Richard Corbet,(598) Charles Hamilton (599) Lady Archibald’s brother,) Sir William Middleton,(600) Mr. West, Mr. Fonnereau, Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Ellis.(601) On theirs Mr. Bance, George Grenville, Mr. Hooper, Sir Charles Mordaunt,(602) Mr, Phillips, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Stuart. On casting up the numbers, the four first on ours, and the three first on their list, appeared to have the majority,: so no great harm will come from this, should it pass the Lords; which it is not likely to do. I have now told you, I think, all the political news, except that the troops continue going to Flanders, though we hear no good news yet from Holland. If we can prevent any dispute between the two Houses, it is believed and much hoped by the Court, that the Secret Committee will desire to be dissolved: if it does, there is an end of all this tempest!
I must tell you an ingenuity of Lord Raymond,(603) an epitaph on the Indemnifying Bill-I believe you would guess the author:-
“Interr’d beneath this marble stone doth
lie
The Bill of Indemnity;
To show the good for which it was designed,
It died itself to save mankind.”
My Lady Townshend made me laugh the other night about your old acquaintance, Miss Edwin; who, by the way, is grown almost a Methodist. My lady says she was forced to have an issue made on one side of her head, for her eyes, and that Kent(604) advised her to have another on the other side for symmetry. There has lately been published one of the most impudent things that ever was printed; it is called “The Irish Recister,” and is a list of all the unmarried women of any fashion in England, ranked in order, duchesses-dowager, ladies, widows, misses, etc. with their names at length, for the benefit of Irish fortune-hunters, or as it is said, for the incorporating and manufacturing of British commodities. Miss Edwards(605) is the only one printed with a dash, because they have placed her among the widows. I will send you this, “Miss Lucy in Town,” and the magazines, by the first opportunity, as I should the other things, but your brother tells me you have had then) by another hand. I received the cedarati, for which I have already thanked you: but I have been so much thanked by several people to whom I gave some, that I can very well afford to thank you again.
As to Stosch expecting any present from me, he was so extremely well paid for all I had of’ him, that I do not think myself at all in his debt: however, you was very good to offer to pay him.
As to my Lady Walpole, I shall say nothing now, as I have not seen either of the two persons since I received your letter to whom I design to mention her; only that I am extremely sorry to find you still disturbed at any of the little nonsense of’ that cibal. I hoped that the accounts which I have sent you, and which, except in my last letter, must have been very satisfactory, would have served you as an antidote to their legends; and I think the great victory in the House of Lords, and which, I assure you, is here reckoned prodigious, Will raise your spirits against them. I am happy you have taken that step about Sir Francis Dashwood; the credit it must have given you with the King will more than counterbalance any little hurt you might apprehend from the cabal.
I am in no hurry for any of my things; as we shall be moving from hence as soon as Sir Robert has taken another house, I shall not want them till I am more settled.
Adieu! I hope to tell you soon that we are all at peace, and then I trust you will be so. A thousand loves to the Chutes. How I long to see you all!
P. S. I unseal my letter to tell you what a vast and, probably, final victory we have gained to-day. They moved, that the lords flinging out the Bill of Indemnity was an obstruction of justice, and might prove fatal to the liberties of’ this country. We have sat till this moment, seven o’clock, and have rejected this motion by 245 to 193. The call of the House, which they have kept off from fortnight to fortnight, to keep people in town, was appointed for to-day. The moment the division was over, Sir John Cotton rose and said, “As I think the inquiry is at an end, you may do what you will with the call.” We have put it off for two months. There’s a noble postscript!
(591) This farce, the production of Fielding, was acted several nights with success; but it being hinted, that one of the characters was written in ridicule of a man of quality, the Lord Chamberlain sent an order to forbid its being performed any more.-E.
(592) catherine Clive, an excellent actress in low comedy. Churchill says of her, in the Rosciad,
In spite of outward blemishes she shone,
For humour famed, and humour all her own.
Easy, as if at home, the stage she trod,
Nor sought the critic’s praise, nor fear’d
his rod
Original in spirit and in ease,
She pleased by hiding all attempts to please.
No comic actress ever yet could raise
On humour’s base, more merit or more praise.”
In after life she lived at Twickenham, in the house
now called
Little Strawberry Hill, and
became an intimate friend of Horace Walpole@D.
(593) Garrick made his first appearance, October 19, 1741, in the character of Richard the Third. Walpole does not appear to have been singular in the opinion here given. Gray in a letter to Chute, says, “Did I tell you about Mr. Garrick, that the town are horn-mad after: there are a dozen dukes of a night at Goodman-fields sometimes; and vet I am stiff in the opposition."-E.
(594) prince Craon.
(595) Madame Sarasin, a Lorrain lady, companion to Princess Craon.
(596) Wills Hill, the second Lord Hillsborough, afterwards created an Irish earl and made cofferer of the household. (In the reign of George III. he was created Earl of Hillsborough, in England, and finally Marquis of Downshire, in Ireland; and held the office of secretary of state for the colonies.-D.)
(597) William Wildman, Viscount Barrington, made a lord of the admiralty on the coalition, and master of the great wardrobe, in 1754. He afterwards held the offices of chancellor of the exchequer, secretary at war, and treasurer of the navy, and died February 1st, 1793.-D.)
(598) Sir Richard Corbett, of Leighton, in Montgomeryshire, the fourth baronet of that family. He was member for Shrewsbury, and died in 1774.-D.
(599) The Hon. Charles Hamilton, sixth son of James, sixth Earl of Abercorn. Member for Truro, comptroller of the green cloth to the Prince of Wales, and subsequently receiver-general of the Island of Minorca. He died in 1787.-D.
(600) Sir William Middleton, Bart. of Belsay Castle, Northumberland, the third baronet of the family. He was member for Northumberland, and died in 1767.-D.’’
(601) Welbore Ellis, member of parliament for above half a century; during which period he held the different offices of a lord of the admiralty, secretary at war, treasurer of the navy, vice-treasurer of Ireland, and secretary of state. He was created Lord Mendip in 1794, with remainder to his nephew, Viscount Clifden, and died February 2, 1802, at the age of eighty-eight.-D.
(602) Sir Charles Mordaunt, of Massingham, in Norfolk, the sixth baronet of the family. He was member for the county of Warwick, and died in 1778.-D.
(603) Robert, the second Lord Raymond, son of the lord chief justice. [On whose death, in 1753, without issue, the title expired.]
(604) William Kent, of whom Walpole himself drew the following just character:-"He was a painter, an architect, and the father of modern gardening. In the first character he was below mediocrity; in the second, he was a restorer of the science; in the last, an original, and the inventor of an art that realizes painting and improves nature. Mahomet imagined an elysium, Kent created many."-The misfortune of Kent was, that his fame and popularity in his own age were so great, that he was employed to give designs for all things, even for those which he could know nothing about-such as ladies’ birthday dresses, which he decorated with the five orders of architecture. These absurdities drew upon him the satire of Hogarth.-D. [Walpole further states of Kent, that Pope undoubtedly contributed to form his taste.]
(605) Miss Edwards, an unmarried lady of great fortune, who openly kept Lord Anne Hamilton.
260 Letter 70 To Sir Horace Mann. London, June 3, 1742.
I have sent Mr. Chute all the news; I shall only say to you that I have read your last letter about Lady W. to Sir R. He was not at all surprised at her thoughts of England, but told me that last week my Lord Carteret had sent him a letter which she had written to him, to demand his protection. This you may tell publicly; it will show her ladyship’s credit.
Here is an epigram, which I believe will divert you: it is on Lord Islay’s garden upon Hounslow Heath.
“Old Islay, to show his fine delicate taste,(606)
In improving his gardens purloined from the waste,
Bade his gard’ner one day to open his views,
By cutting a couple of grand avenues:
No particular prospect his lordship intended,
But left it to chance how his walks should be ended.
With transport and joy he beheld his first view end
In a favourite prospects church that was ruin’d-
But alas! what a sight did the next cut exhibit!
At the end of the walk hung a rogue on a gibbet!
He beheld it and wept, for it caused him to muse on
Full many a Campbell that died with his shoes on.
All amazed and aghast at the ominous scene,
He order’d it quick to be closed up again
With a clump of Scotch firs that served for a Screen.”
Sir Robert asked me yesterday about the Dominichini, but I did not know what to answer: I said I would write to you about it. Have you bought it? or did you quite put it off? I had forgot to mention it again to you. If you have not, I am still of opinion that you should buy it for him. Adieu!
(606) These lines were written by Bramston, author of “The Art of Politics,” and “The Man of Taste.” [The Reverend James Bramston, vicar of Starling, Sussex. Pope took the line in the Dunciad, “Shine in the dignity of F. R. S.” from his Man of Taste;-"A satire,” says Warton, “in which the author has been guilty of the absurdity of making his hero laugh at himself and his own follies.” He died in 1744.]
261 Letter 71 To Sir Horace Mann. June 10, the Pretender’s birthday, which, by the way, I believe he did not expect to keep at Rome this year, 1742.
Since I wrote you my last letter, I have received two from you of the 27th May and 3d of June, N. S. I hope you will get my two packets; that is, one of them was addressed to Mr. Chute, and in them was all my fagot of compliments.
Is not poor SCUlly (607) vastly disappointed that we are not arrived? But really, will that mad woman never have done! does she still find credit for her extravagant histories. I carried her son with me to Vauxhall last night: he is a most charming boy,(608) but grows excessively like her in the face. I don’t at all foresee how I shall make out this letter: every body is gone out of town during the Whitsuntide, and many will not return, at least not these six weeks; for so long they say it will be before the Secret Committee make their Report, with which they intend to finish. We are, however, entertained with pageants every day-reviews to gladden the heart of David,(609) (609) and triumphs to Absalom! He,(610) and his wife went in great parade yesterday through the city and the dust to dine at Greenwich; they took water at the Tower, and trumpeting away to Grace Tosier’s,
“Like Cimon, triumph’d over land and wave”
I don’t know whether it was my Lord of Bristol (611) or some of the SaddlerS,((612) Company who had told him that this was the way “to steal the hearts of the people.” He is in a quarrel with Lord Falmouth.(613) There is just dead one Hammond,(614) a disciple of Lord Chesterfield, and equerry to his royal highness: he had parts, and was Just come into parliament, strong of the Cobham faction, or nepotism, as Sir Robert calls it. The White Prince desired Lord Falmouth to choose Dr. Lee, who, you know, has disobliged the party by accepting a lordship of the admiralty. Lord Falmouth has absolutely refused, and insists upon choosing one of his own brothers: his highness talks loudly of opposing him. The borough is a Cornish one.
There is arrived a courier from Lord Stair, with news of Prince Lobkowitz having cut off five thousand French. We are hurrying away the rest of our troops to Flanders, and say that we are in great spirits, and intend to be in greater when we have defeated the French too.
For my own particular, I cannot say I am well; I am afraid I have a little fever upon my spirits, or at least have nerves, which, you know, every body has in England. I begin the cold-bath to-morrow, and talk of going to Tunbridge, if the parliament rises soon.
Sir R. who begins to talk seriously of Houghton, has desired me to go -with him thither;’ but that is not all settled. Now I mention Houghton, you was in the right to miss a gallery there; but there is one actually fitting up, where the green-house was, and to be furnished with the spoils of Downing-street.
I am quite sorry you have [)ad so much trouble with those odious cats of Malta: dear child, fling them into the Arno, if there is water enough at this season to drown them; or, I’ll tell you, give them to Stosch, to pay the postage he talked of. I have no ambition to make my court with them to the old wizard.
I think I have not said any thing lately to you from Patapan; he is handsomer than ever, and crows fat: his eyes are charming; they have that agreeable lustre which the vulgar moderns call sore eyes, but the judicious ancients golden eyes, ocellos Patapanicos.
The process is begun against her Grace of Beaufort,(615) and articles exhibited in Doctors’ Commons. Lady Townshend has had them copied, and lent them to me. There is every thing proved to your heart’s content, to the birth of the child, and much delectable reading.
Adieu! my dear child; you see I have eked out a letter: I hate missing a post, and yet at this dead time I have almost been tempted to invent a murder or a robbery. But you are good, and will be persuaded that I have used my eyes and ears for your service; when, if it were not for you, I should let them lie by in a drawer from week’s end to week’s end. Good night!
(607) An Irish tailor at Florence, who let out ready-furnished apartments to travelling English. Lady W. had reported that Lord Orford was flying from England and would come thither. (608) George Walpole, afterwards the third Earl of Orford. He succeeded to the earldom in 1751, and was appointed lord-lieutenant and custos rotulorum of the county of Norfolk Mr, Pitt, in a letter, written in 1759, says, “Nothing could make a better appearance than the two Norfolk battalions: Lord Orford, with the port of Mars himself, and really the genteelest figure under arms I ever saw, was the theme of every tongue.” Chatham Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 4.-E.
(609) George the Second.
(610) Frederic, Prince of Wales.
(611) Dr. Secker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford. (And eventually Archbishop of Canterbury. According to Walpole, he was bred a man-midwife.-D.) [Secker had committed in Walpole’s eyes, the unpardonable offence of having “procured a marriage between the heiress of the Duke of Kent and the chancellor’s (Hardwicke’s) son;” he, therefore, readily propagated the charges of his being “a Presbyterian, a man-midwife, and president of a very freethinking club,” (Memoires, i. p. 56,) when the fact is, the parents of Secker were Dissenters, and he for a time pursued the study, though not the practice of medicine and surgery. The third charge is a mere falsehood. See also Quarterly Review, xxv’i. p. 187.]
(612) The Prince was a member of the Saddlers’ company.
(613) Hugh Boscawen, second Viscount Falmouth, a great dealer in boroughs. It is of him that Lord Dodington tells the story, that he went to the minister to ask a favour, which the minister seemed unwilling to grant; upon which Lord Falmouth said, “Remember, Sir, we are seven."-D.
(614) Author of Love Elegies. [See ant`e, p. 210.)
(615) Frances, daughter and heir of the last Lord Scudamore, wife of Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort; from whom she was divorced for adultery with Lord Talbot. She was afterwards married to Colonel Fitzroy, natural son of the Duke of Grafton. [The duke Having clearly proved the incontinence of his wife, obtained a divorce in March 1743-4.)
263 Letter 72 To Sir Horace Mann. Downing Street, June 14, 1742.
We were surprised last Tuesday with the great good news of the peace between the Queen and the King of Prussia. it was so unexpected and so welcome, that I believe he might get an act of parliament to forbid any one thinking that he ever made a slip in integrity. Then, the reported accounts of the successes of Prince Charles and Lobkowitz over the French have put us into the greatest spirits. Prince charles is extremely commended for courage and conduct, and makes up a little for other flaws in the family.
it is at last settled that Lords gower,(616) Cobham, and Bathurst (617) are to come in. The first is to be privy-seal, and was to have kissed hands last Friday, but Lord Hervey had carried the seal with him to Ickworth; but he must bring it back. Lord Cobham is to be field-marshal, and to command all the forces in England. Bathurst was to have the Gentleman-pensioners, but Lord Essex,(618) who is now the Captain, and was to have had the Beef-eaters, will not change. Bathurst is to have the Beef-eaters; the Duke of Bolton (619) who has them, is to have the Isle of Wight, and Lord lymington,(620) who has that, is to have—nothing!
The Secret Committee are in great perplexities about Scrope:(621) he would not take the oath, but threatened the Middlesex justices who tendered it to him “Gentlemen,” said he, “have you any complaint against Me? if you have not, don’t you fear that I will prosecute you for enforcing oaths?” However, one of them began to read the oath—“I, John Scrope,”—“I John Scrope:"said he; “I did not say any such thing; but come, however, let’s hear the oath;”—“do promise that I will faithfully and truly answer all such questions as shall be asked me by the Committee of Secrecy, and—” they were going on, but Scrope cried out, “Hold, hold! there is more than I can digest already.” He then went before the committee, and desired time to consider. Pitt asked him abruptly, if he wanted a quarter of an hour: he replied, “he did not want to inform either his head or his heart, for both were satisfied what to do; but that he would ask the King’s leave.” He wants to fight Pitt. He is a most testy little old gentleman, and about eight years ago would have fought Alderman Perry. It was in the House, at the time of the excise: he said we should carry it: Perry said he hoped to see him hanged first. “You see me hanged, you dog, you!” said Scrope, and pulled him by the nose. The committee have tried all ways to soften him, and have offered to let him swear to only what part he pleased, or only with regard to money given to members of parliament. Pultney himself has tried to work on him; but the old gentleman is inflexible, and answered, “that he was fourscore years old, and did not care whether he spent the few months he had to live (622) in the Tower or not; that the last thing he would do should be to betray the King and next to him the Earl of Orford.” It remains in suspense. The troops continue going to Flanders, but slowly enough. Lady Vane has taken a trip thither after a cousin (623) of Lord Berkeley, who is as simple about her as her own husband is, and has written to Mr. Knight at Paris to furnish her with what money she wants. He says she is vastly to blame; for he was trying to get her a divorce from Lord Vane, and then would have married her himself. Her adventures(624 arc worthy to be bound up with those of my good sister-in-law, as the German Princess, and Moll Flanders.
Whom should I meet in the Park last night but Ceretesi! He told me he was at a Bagne. I will find out his bagnio; for though I was not much acquainted with him, yet the obligations I had to Florence make me eager to show any Florentine all the civilities in my power; though I do not love them near so well, since what you have told me of their late behaviour; notwithstanding your letter of June 20th, which I have just received. I perceive that simple-hearted, good, unmeaning Ituccilai is of the number of the false, though you do not directly say so.
I was excessively diverted with your pompous account of the siege of Lucca by a single Englishman. I do believe that you and the Chutes might put a certain city into as great a panic. Adieu!
(616) John Leveson Gower, second Lord Gower; in 1746 created an earl. He died in 1754.-E.
(617) Allan, first Lord Bathurst, one of the twelve Tory peers created by Queen Anne, in 1711. He was the friend of Pope, Congreve, Swift, Prior, and other men of letters. He lived to see his eldest son chancellor of England, and died at the advanced age of ninety, in 1775; having been created an earl in 1772.-D.
(618) William Capel, third Earl of Essex; ambassador at the court of Turin. he died in January 1743. The Beef-eaters are otherwise called the Yeomen of the Guard.-D.
(619) Charles Powlett, third Duke of Bolton. His second wife was Miss Lavinia Fenton, otherwise Mrs. Beswick, the actress; who became celebrated in the character of Polly Peacham in the Beggar’s Opera. By her the duke had three sons, born before marriage. With his first wife, the daughter and sole heiress of John Vaughan, Earl of Carberry in Ireland, he never cohabited. He died in 1754.-D.
(620) John Wallop, first Viscount Lymington; in the following April created Earl of Portsmouth. He died in 1762.-E.
(621) John Scrope, secretary of the treasury. He had been in Monmouth’s rebellion, when very young, and carried intelligence to Holland in woman’s clothes.
(622) He did not die till 1753. Tindal states that, upon giving this answer he was no further pressed.-E.
(623) Henry Berkeley; killed the next year at the battle of Dettingen.
(624) Lady Vane’s Memoirs, dictated by herself, were actually published afterward,,; in a book, called “The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle;” and she makes mention of Lady Orford. [See ant`e, p. 189, Letter 42. Sir Walter Scott says, that “she not only furnished Smollett with the materials for recording her own infamy, but rewarded him handsomely for the insertion of her story.”]
265 Letter 73 To sir Horace Mann. Midsummer Day, 1742.
One begins every letter with an Io Paean! indeed our hymns are not so tumultuous as they were some time ago, to the tune of Admiral Vernon. They say there came an express last night, of the taking of Prague and the destruction of some thousand French. It is really amazing the fortune of the Queen! We expect every day the news of the king of Poland having made his peace; for it is affirmed that the Prussians left him but sixteen days to think of it. There is nothing could stop the King of Prussia, if he should march to Dresden: how long his being at peace with that king will stop him I look upon as very uncertain.
They say we expect the Report from the Secret Committee next Tuesday, and then finish. I preface all my news with “they say;” for I am not at all in the secret, and I had rather that “they say” should tell you a lie than myself. They have sunk the affair of Scrope: the Chancellor (625) and Sir John Rushout spoke in the committee against persecuting him, for he is secretary to the treasury. I don’t think there is so easy a language as the ministerial in the world-one learns it in a week! There are few members in town, and most of them no friends to the committee; so that there is not the least apprehension of any violence following the Report. I dare say there is not; for my uncle, who is my political weather-glass, and whose quicksilver rises and falls with the least variation of parliamentary weather, is in great spirits, and has spoken three times in the House within this week; he had not opened his lips before since the change. Mr. Pultney has his warrant in his pocket for Earl of Bath, and kisses hands as soon as the parliament rises. The promotions I mentioned to you are not yet come to pass; but a fortnight will settle things wonderfully.
The Italian, (626) who I told you is here, has let me into a piece of secret history, which you never mentioned: perhaps it is not true; but he says the mighty mystery of the Count’s (627) elopement from Florence, was occasioned by a letter from Wachtendonck,(628) which was so impertinent as to talk of satisfaction for some affront. The great Count very wisely never answered it-his life, to be sure, is of too great consequence to be trusted at the end of a rash German’s sword! however, the General wrote again, and hinted at coming himself for an answer. So it happened that when he arrived, the Count was gone to the baths of Lucca-those waters were reckoned better for his health, than steel in the abstract-How oddly it happened! He Just returned to Florence as the General was dead! Now was not this heroic lover worth running after? I wonder, as the Count must have known my lady’s courage and genius for adventures, that he never thought of putting her in men’s clothes, and sending her to answer the challenge. How pretty it would have been to have fought for one’s lover! and how great the obligation, when he durst not fight for himself!
I heard the other day, that the Primate of Lorrain was dead of the smallpox. Will you make my compliments of condolence? though I dare say they are little afflicted: he -was a ’most worthless creature, and all his wit and parts, I believe little comforted them for his brutality and other vices.
The fine Mr. Pit (629) is arrived: I dine with him to-day at Lord Lincoln’s, with the Pomfrets. So now the old partie quarr`ee is complete again. The earl is not quite cured,(630) and a partner in sentiments may help to open the wound again. My Lady Townshend dines with us too. She flung the broadest Wortley-eye (631) on Mr. Pitt, the other night, in the park!
Adieu! my dear child; are you quite well? I trust the summer will perfectly re-establish you.
(625) Mr. Sandys, chancellor of the exchequer.
(626) Ceretesi.
(627) Count Richcourt.
(628) General Wachtendonck, commander of the Queen of Hungary’s troops at Leghorn.
(629) George Pitt, of Strathfieldsea: he had been in love with Lady Charlotte Fermor, second daughter of Lord Pomfret, who was afterwards married to William Finch, vice-chamberlain. (Mr. Pitt was created Lord Rivers in 1776. In 1761 he was British envoy at Turin in 1770, ambassador extraordinary to Spain. He died in 1803.-D.)
(630) Of his love for lady Sophia Fermor.-D.
(631) Mr. Pitt was very handsome, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had liked him extremely, when he was in Italy.
267 Letter 74 To Sir Horace Mann. Downing Street, June 30, 1742.
It is about six o’clock, and I am come from the House, where, at last, we have had another Report from the Secret Committee. They have been disputing this week among themselves, whether this should be final or not. The new ministry, thanked them! were for finishing; but their arguments were not so persuasive as dutiful, and we are to have yet another. This lasted two hours and a half in reading, though confined to the affair of Burrel and Bristow, the Weymouth election, and secret-service money. They moved to print it; but though they had fetched most of their members from Ale and the country, they were not strong enough to divide. Velters Cornwall, whom I have mentioned to you, I believe, for odd humour, said, “ie believed the somethingness of this report would make amends for the nothingness of the last, and that he was for printing it, if it was only from believing that the King would not see it, unless it is printed.” Perhaps it may be printed at the conclusion; at least it will without authority-and so you will see it.
I received yours of June 24, N. S. with one from Mr. Chute, this morning, and I will now go answer it and Your last. You seem still to be uneasy about my letters, and their being retarded. I have not observed, lately, the same signs of yours being opened; and for my own, I think it may very often depend upon the packet-boat and winds.
You ask me if Pultney has lately received any new disgusts.-How can one answer for a temper so hasty, so unsettled!-not that I know, unless that he finds, what he has been twenty years undoing, is not yet undone.
I must interrupt the thread of my answer, to tell you that I hear news came last night that the States of Holland have voted forty@seven thousand men for the Assistance of the Queen,(632) and that it was not doubted but the States—General would imitate this resolution. This seems to be the consequence of the King of Prussia’s proceedings-but how can they trust him so easily?
I am amazed that your leghorn ministry are so wavering; they are very old style, above eleven days out of fashion, if they any longer fear the French: my only apprehension is, lest these successes should make Richcourt more impertinent.
You have no notion how I laughed at the man that “takes nothing but Madeira."(633) I told it to my Lady Pomfret, concluding it would divert her too; and forgetting that she repines when she should laugh, and reasons when she should be diverted. She asked gravely what language that was That Madeira being subject to an European prince, to be sure they talk some European dialect!” The grave personage! It was a piece with her saying, “that Swift would have written better, if he had never written ludicrously.”
I met a friend of yours the other day at an auction, and though I knew him not the least, yet being your friend, and so like you (for, do you know, he is excessively,) I had a great need to speak to him-and did. He says, “he has left off writing to you, for he never could get an answer.” I said, you had never received ’but one from him in all the time I was with you, and that I was witness to your having Answered it. He was with his mother, Lady Abercorn,(634) a most frightful gentlewoman: Mr. Winnington says, he one day overheard her and the Duchess of Devonshire (635) talking of “hideous ugly women!” By the way, I find I have never told you that it was Lord Paisley;(636) but that you will have perceived.
Amorevoli is gone to Dresden for the summer; our directors are in great fear that he will serve them like Farinelli, and not return for the winter.
I am writing to you in one of the charming rooms towards the park: it is a delightful evening, and I am willing to enjoy this sweet corner while I may, for we are soon to quit it. Mrs. Sandys came yesterday to give us warning; Lord Wilmington has lent it to them. Sir Robert might have had it for his own at first, but would only take it as first lord of the treasury.(637) He goes into a small house of his own in Arlington Street, opposite to where we formerly lived. Whither I shall travel is yet uncertain: he is for my living with him; but then I shall be cooped-and besides, I never found that people loved one another the less for living asunder.
The drowsy Lord Mayor (638) is dead-so the newspapers say. I think he is not dead, but sleepeth. Lord Gower is laid up with the gout: this, they say, is the reason of his not having the privy seal yet. The town has talked of nothing lately but a plot: I will tell you the circumstances. last week the Scotch hero (639) sent his brother (640) two papers, which he said had been left at his house by an Unknown hand; that he believed it was by Colonel Cecil, agent for the Pretender—though how could that be, for he had had no conversation with Colonel Cecil for these two years! He desired Lord Islay to lay them before the ministry. One of the papers seemed a letter, though with no address or subscription, written in true genuine Stuart characters. It was to thank Mr. Burnus (D. of A.) for his services, and that he hoped he would answer the assurances given of him. The other was to command the Jacobites,
I am sorry the boy is so uneasy at being on the foot of a servant. I will send for his mother, and ask her why she did not tell him the conditions to which we had agreed; at the same time, I will tell her that she may send any letters for him to me. Adieu! my dear child: I am going to write to Mr. Chute, that is, to-morrow. I never was more diverted than with his letter.
(632) The Queen of Hungary, Maria Theresa.-D.
(633) The only daughter and heiress of the Marquis Accianoli at Florence, was married to one of the same name, who was born at Madeira. ’ (634) Anne Plummer, Countess of Abercorn, wife of James, the seventh earl. She died in 1756.-E.
(635) Catherine, daughter of John Hoskins, Esq. She was married to the third Duke of Devonshire in 171@, and died in 1777.-E.
(636) James Hamilton succeeded as eighth Earl of Abercorn, on the death of his father in 1743. He was created Viscount Hamilton in England in 1786, and died unmarried in 1789.-D.
(637) This is the house, in Downing Street, which is still the residence of the first lord of the treasury. George the First gave it to Baron Bothmar, the Hanoverian minister-, for life. On his death, George the Second offered to give it to Sir Robert Walpole; who, however, refused it, and begged of the King that it might be attached to the office of first lord of the treasury.-D.
(638) Sir Robert Godschall.
(639) The Duke of Argyll.
(640) Earl of Islay.
(641) Besides intercepted letters, Sir R. Walpole had more than once received letters from the Pretender, making him the greatest offers, which Sir R. always carried to the King, and got him to endorse, when he returned them to Sir R.
(642) James Barry, fourth Earl of Barrymore, succeeded his half-brother Lawrence in the family titles in 1699, and died in 1747, at the age of eighty. James, Lord Barrymore, was an adherent of the Pretender, whereas Lawrence had been so great a supporter of the revolution, that he was attainted, and his estates sequestered by James the Second’s Irish parliament, in 1689.-D.
(643) The Duke of Argyll, in the latter part of his life, was often melancholy and disordered in his understanding. After this transaction, and it is supposed he had gone still farther, he could with difficulty be brought even to write his name. The marriage of his eldest daughter with the Earl of Dalkeith was deferred for some time, because the duke could not be prevailed upon to sign the writings.
269 Letter 75 To Sir Horace Mann.
On the Death of Richard West, Esq.(644)
While surfeited with life, each hoary knave
Grows, here, immortal, and eludes the grave,
Thy virtues immaturely met their fate,
Cramp’d in the limit of too short a date!
Thy mind, not exercised so oft in vain,
In health was gentle, and composed in pain:
successive trials still refined thy soul,
And plastic Patience perfected the whole.
A friendly aspect, not suborn’d by art;
An eye, which look’d the meaning of thy heart;
A tongue, With simple truth and freedom fraught,
The faithful index of thy honest thought.
Thy pen disdain’d to seek the servile ways
Of partial censure, and more partial praise;
Through every tongue it flowed in nervous ease,
With sense to Polish , and With wit to please.
No lurking venom from thy pencil fell;
Thine was the kindest satire, living well:
The vain, the loose, the base, might blush to see
In what thou wert, what they themselves should be,
Let me not charge on Providence a crime,
Who snatch’d thee, blooming, to a better clime,
To raise those virtues to a higher sphere:
Virtues! which only could have starved thee here;
A Receipt
To Make A Lord.
Occasioned by a late report of a promotion.(645)
Take a man, who by nature’s a true son of earth,’
By rapine enriched, though a beggar by birth;
In genius the lowest, ill-bred and obscene;
In morals most Wicked, most nasty in mien;
By none ever trusted, yet ever employed;
In blunders quite fertile, in merit quite void;
A scold in the Senate, abroad a buffoon,
The scorn and the jest of all courts but his own:
A slave to that wealth that ne’er made him a
friend,
And proud of that cunning that ne’er gain’d
an end;
A dupe in each treaty, a Swiss in each vote;
In manners and form, a complete Hottentot.
Such an one could you find, of all men you’d
commend him; But be
sure let the curse of each Briton attend him.
thus fully prepared, add the grace of the throne,
The folly of monarchs, and screen of a crown—
Take a prince for his purpose, without ears or eyes,
And a long parchment roll stuff’d brimful of
lies:
These mingled together, a fiat shall pass,
and the thing be a Peer, that before was an ass.
The former copy I think you will like: it was written by one Mr. Ashton (646) on Mr. West, two friends of mine, whom you have heard me often mention. The other copy was printed in the Common Sense, I don’t know by whom composed: the end of it is very bad, and there are great falsities in it, but some strokes are terribly like!
I have not a moment to thank the Grifona, nor to answer yours of June 17, N. S. which I have this instant read. Yours, in great haste.
(644) See ante, pp. 121, (Letter 1), 251, (Letter 65).
(645) The report, mentioned in a preceding letter, that Horace Walpole, brother to Sir Robert, was created a peer.
(646)Thomas Ashton, afterwards fellow of Eton College. [See ant`e, p. 128, Letter 6, footnote 153.)
271 Letter 76 To Sir Horace Mann. London, July 7, 1742.
Well! you may bid the Secret Committee good night. The House adjourns to-day till Tuesday, and on Thursday is to be prorogued. Yesterday we had a bill of Pultney’s, about returning officers and regulating elections: the House was thin, and he carried it by 93 to 92. Mr. Pelham was not there, and Winnington did not vote, for the gentleman is testy still; when he saw how near he had been to losing it, he said loud enough to be heard, “I will make the gentlemen of that side feel me!” and, rising up, he said, “He was astonished, that a bill so calculated for the freedom of elections was so near being thrown out; that there was a report on the table, which showed how necessary such a bill was, and that though we had not time this year to consider what was proper to be done in consequence of it, he hoped we should next,"-with much to the same purpose; but all the effect this notable speech had, was to frighten my uncle, and make him give two or three shrugs extraordinary to his breeches. They now say,(647) that Pultney will not take out the patent for his earldom, but remain in the House of Commons in terrorem; however, all his friends are to have places immediately, or, as the fashion of expressing it is, they are to go to Court in the Bath coach!"(648)
Your relation Guise (649) is arrived from Carthagena, madder than ever. As he was marching up to one of the forts, all his men deserted him; his lieutenant advised him to retire; he replied, “He never had turned his back yet, and would not now,” and stood all the fire. When the pelicans were flying over his head, he cried out, “What would Chloe (650) give for some of these to make a pelican pie!” When he is brave enough to perform such actions as are really almost incredible, what pity it is that he should for ever persist In saving things that are totally so!
Lord Annandale (651) is at last mad in all the forms: he has long been an out-pensioner of Bedlam College. Lord and Lady Talbot,(652) are parted; he gives her three thousand pounds a-year. Is it not amazing, that in England people will not find out that they can live separate without parting? The Duke of Beaufort says, “He pities Lord Talbot to have met with two such tempers as their two wives!”
Sir Robert Rich (653) is going to Flanders, to try to make up an affair for his son; who, having quarrelled with a Captain Vane, as the commanding officer was trying to make it up at the head of the regiment, Rich came behind Vane, “And to show you,” said he, “that I will not make it up, take that,” and gave him a box on the ear. They were immediately put in arrest; but the learned in the laws of honour say, they must fight, for no German officer will serve with Vane, till he has had satisfaction.
Mr. Harris,(654) who married Lady Walpole’s mother, is to be one of the peace-offerings on the new altar. Bootle is to be chief-justice; but the Lord Chancellor would not consent to it, unless Lord Glenorchy,(655) whose daughter is married to Mr. Yorke, had a place in lieu of the Admiralty, which he has lost-he is to have Harris’s. Lord Edgecumbe’s, in Ireland, they say, is destined to Harry Vane,(656) Pultney’s toad-eater.
Monticelli lives in a manner at our house. I tell my sister that she is in love with him, and that I am glad it was not Amorevoli. Monticelli dines frequently with Sir Robert, which diverts me extremely; you know how low his ideas are of music and the virtuosi; he calls them all fiddlers.
I have not time now to write more, for I am going to a masquerade at the Ranelagh amphitheatre: the King is fond of it, and has pressed people to go; but I don’t find that it will be full. Good night! All love to the Pope for his good thing.
(647) Sir R. W. to defeat Pultney’s ambition persuaded the ++King to insist on his going into the House of Lords: the day he carried his patent thither, he flung it upon the floor in a passion, and could scarce be prevailed on to have it passed. ["I remember,” says Horace Walpole, (Reminiscences), “my father’s action and words when he returned from court, and told me what he had done — ’I have turned the key of the closet on him!’ making that motion with his hand.”]
(648) His title was to be Earl of Bath.
(649) General Guise, a, very brave officer, but apt to romance; and a great connoisseur in pictures. (He bequested his collection of pictures, which is a very indifferent one, to christ church College, Oxford.-D.)
(650) the duke of Newcastle’s French cook.
(651) George Johnstone, third Marquis of Annandale, in Scotland. He was not declared a lunatic till the year 1748. Upon his death, in 1792, his titles became either extinct or dormant.-D.
(652) Mary, daughter of Adam de Cardonel, secretary to John the great Duke of Marlborough, married to William, second Lord Talbot, eldest son of Lord Chancellor Talbot.-D.
(653) Sir Robert Rich, Bart., of Rose Hall, Suffolk. At his death, in 1768, he was colonel of the fourth regiment of dragoons, governor of Chelsea Hospital, and field-marshal of the forces.-E.
(654) This article did not prove true. Mr. Harris was not removed, nor Bootle made chief-justice.
(655) John Campbell, Lord Glenorchy, and, on his father’s death, in 1752, third Earl of Breadalbane. His first wife was Lady Amiable Grey, eldest daughter and coheir of the Duke of Kent. By her he had an only daughter, Jemima, who, upon the death of her grandfather, became Baroness Lucas of Crudwell, and Marchioness de Grey. She married Philip Yorke, eldest son of the Chancellor Hardwicke, and eventually himself the second duke of that title.-D.
(656) Henry Vane, eldest son of Gilbert, second Lord Barnard, and one of the tribe who came into office upon the breaking up of Sir Robert Walpole’s administration. He was created Earl of Darlington in 1753, and died in 1758.-D.
273 Letter 77 To Sir Horace Mann. Downing Street, July 14, 1742.
Sir Robert Brown(657) is displaced from being paymaster of something, I forget what, for Sir Charles Gilmour, a friend of Lord Tweedale.(658) Nee Finch (659) is made groom of the bedchamber, which was vacant; and Will Finch (660) vice chamberlain, which was not vacant; but they have emptied it of Lord Sidney Beauclerc.(661) Boone is made commissary-general, in Hurley’s room, and JefFries(662) in Will Stuart’s. All these have been kissing hands to-day, headed by the Earl of Bath. He went into the King the other day “,it this’long list, but was told shortly, that unless he would take up his patent and quit the House of Commons, nothing should be done-he has consented. I made some of them very angry; for when they told me who had kissed hands, I asked, if the Pretender had kissed hands too, for being King? I forgot to tell you, that Murray is to be solicitor-general, in Sir John Strange’s place, who is made chief justice, or some such thing.(663)
I don’t know who it was that said it, but it was a very good answer to one who asked why Lord Gower had not kissed hands sooner—“the Dispensation was not come from Rome."(664)
I am writing to you up to the ears in packing: Lord Wilmington has lent this house to Sandys, and he has given us instant warning; we are moving as fast as possible to Siberia,-Sir Robert has a house there, within a few mile,, of the Duke of Courland; in short, child, we are all going to Norfolk, till we can get a house ready in town: all the furniture is taken down, and lying about in confusion. I look like St. John in the Isle of Patmos, writing revelations, and prophesying “Woe! woe! woe! the kingdom of desolation is at hand!” -indeed, I have prettier animals about me, than he ever dreamed of: here is the dear Patapan, and a little Vandyke cat, with black whiskers -ind boots; you would swear it was of a very ancient family, in the West of England, famous for their loyalty.
I told you I was going to the masquerade at Ranelagh gardens, last week: it was miserable; there were but an hundred men, six women, and two shepherdesses. The King liked it,—and that he might not be known, they had dressed him a box with red damask! Lady Pomfret and her three daughters were there, all dressed alike, that they might not be known. My Lady said to Lady Bel Finch,(665) who was dressed like a nun, and for coolness had cut off the nose of her mask, “Madam, you are the first nun that ever I saw without a nose!”
As I came home last night, they told me there was a fire in Downing Street; when I came to Whitehall, I could not get to the end of the street in my chariot, for the crowd; when I got out, the first thing I heard was a man enjoying himself: “Well! if it lasts two hours longer, Sir Robert Walpole’s house will be burnt to the ground!” it was a very comfortable hearing! but I found the fire was on the opposite side of the way, and at a good distance. I stood in the crowd an hour to hear their discourse: one man was relating at how many fires he had happened to be present, and did not think himself at all unlucky in passing by, just at this. What diverted me most, was a servant-maid, who was working, and carrying pails of water, with the strength of half-a-dozen troopers, and swearing the mob out of her way-the soft creature’s name was Phillis! When I arrived at our door, I found the house full of goods, beds, women, and children, and three Scotch members of parliament, who lodge in the row, and who had sent in a saddle, a flitch of bacon, and a bottle of ink. There was no wind, and the house was saved, with the loss of only its garret, and the furniture.
I forgot to mention the Dominichin last post, as I suppose I had before, for I always was for buying it; it is one of the most engaging pictures I ever saw. I have no qualms about its originality; and even if Sir Robert should not like it when it comes, which is impossible, I think I would live upon a flitch of bacon and a bottle of ink, rather than not spare the money to buy it myself: so my dear Sir, buy it.
Your brother has this moment brought me a letter: I find by it, that you are very old style with relation to the Prussian peace. Why, we have sent Robinson (666) and Lord Hyndford (667) a green ribbon, for it, above a fortnight ago. Muley, (as Lord Lovel calls him,) Duke of Bedford, (668) is, they say, to have a blue one, for making his own peace: you know we always mind home-peaces more than foreign ones.
I am quite sorry for all the trouble you have had about the Maltese cats; but you know they were for Lord Islay, not for myself. Adieu! I have no more time.
(657) Sir Robert Brown had been a merchant at Venice, and British resident there, for which he was created a baronet in 1732. He held the place at this time of” “paymaster of his Majesty’s works, concerning the repairs, new buildings, and well-keeping of any of his Majesty’s houses of access, and others, in time of progress."-D
(658) John Hay, fourth Marquis of Tweedale. In 1748, he married Frances, daughter of John Earl Granville, and died in 1762.-E.
(659) The Hon. Edward Finch, fifth son of Daniel, sixth Earl of Winchilsea and second Earl of Nottingham, and the direct ancestor of the present Lord Winchilsea. He assumed the name of Hatton, in 1764, in consequence of inheriting the fortune of William Viscount Hatton, his mother’s brother. He was employed in diplomacy, and was made master of the robes in 1757. He died in 1771.-D.
(660) The Hon. William Finch, second son of Daniel, sixth Earl of Winchilsea, had been envoy in Sweden and in Holland. He continued to hold the office of vice-chamberlain of the household till his death in 1766. These two brothers, and their elder brother Daniel, seventh Earl of Winchilsea, are the persons whom Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, calls, on account of the blackness of their complexions, “the dark, funereal Finches.” [His widow, Charlotte, daughter of the Earl of Pomfret, was appointed governess to the young princes and princesses.]
(661) Lord Sidney Beauclerk, fifth son of the first Duke of St. Albans; a man of bad character. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams calls him “Worthless Sidney.” He was notorious for hunting after the fortunes of the old and childless. Being very handsome, he had almost persuaded Lady Betty Germain, in her old age, to marry him; but she was dissuaded from it by the Duke of Dorset and her relations. He failed also in obtaining the fortune of Sir’ Thomas Reeve, Chief Justice of the (common Pleas, whom he used to attend on the circuit, with a view of ingratiating himself with him. At length he induced Mr. Topham, of Windsor, to leave his estate to him. He died in 1744, leaving one son, Topham Beauclerk, Esq.-D. [This son, so celebrated for his conversational, talents, and described by Dr. Jonson as uniting the eloquent manners of a gentleman with the mental acccomplishments of a scholar, married, in 1768, Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough, and died in 1780.]
(662) John JefFries, secretary of the treasury.-D.
(663) Sir John Strange was made master of the rolls, but not till some years afterwards; he died in 1754.
(664) From the Pretender. Lord Gower had been, until he was made privy-seal, one of the leading Jacobites; and was even supposed to lean to that party, after he had accepted the appointment.
(665) Lady Isabella Finch, third daughter of the sixth Earl of Winchilsea, first lady of the bedchamber to the Princess Amelia. It was for her that Kent built the pretty and singular house on the western side of Berkeley Square, with a fine room in it, of which the ceiling is painted in arabesque compartments, by Zucchi;-now the residence of C. B. Wall, Esq.-D. [In this house her ladyship died unmarried, in 1771.)
(666) Sir Thomas Robinson, minister at Vienna; be was made secretary of state in 1754. (And a peer, by the title of Lord Grantham, in 1761.-D.)
(667) John Carmichael, third Earl of Hyndford. He had been sent as envoy to the King of Prussia, during the first war of Silesia. He was afterwards sent ambassador to St. Petersburgh and Vienna, and died in 1767.-D.
(668) The Duke of Bedford had not the Garter till some years after this.
275 Letter 78 To Sir Horace Mann.
You scolded me so much about my little paper, that I dare not venture upon it even now, when I have very little to say to you. The long session is over, and the Secret Committee already forgotten. Nobody remembers it but poor Paxton, who has lost his place(669) by it. saw him the day after he came out of Newgate: he came to Chelsea:(670) Lord Fitzwilliam was there, and in the height of zeal, took him about the neck and kissed him. Lord Orford had been at Court that morning, and with his usual spirits, said to the new ministers, “So! the parliament is up, and Paxton, Bell, and I have got our liberty!” The King spoke in the kindest manner to him at his levee, but did not call him into the closet, as the new ministry feared he would, and as perhaps, the old ministry expected he would. The day before, when the King went to put an end to the session, Lord Quarendon asked Winnington “whether Bell would be let out time enough to hire a mob to huzza him as he went to the House of Lords.”
The few people that are left in town have been much diverted with an adventure that has befallen the new ministers. Last Sunday the Duke of Newcastle gave them a dinner at Claremont, where their servants got so drunk, that when they came to the inn over against the gate of Newpark,(671) the coachman, who was the only remaining fragment of their suite, tumbled off the box, and there they were planted. There were Lord Bath, Lord Carteret, Lord Limerick, and Harry Furnese (672) in the coach: they asked the innkeeper if he could contrive no way to convey them to town. , No,” he said, “not unless it was to get Lord Orford’s coachman to drive them.” They demurred; but Lord Carteret said “Oh, I dare say, Lord Orford will willingly let us have him.” So they sent and he drove them home.(673)
Ceretesi had a mind to see this wonderful Lord Orford, of whom he had heard so much; I carried him to dine at Chelsea. You know the earl don’t speak a word of any language but English and Latin,(674) and Ceretesi not a word of either; yet he assured me that he was very happy to have made cosi bella conascenza! He whips out his pocket-book every moment, and writes descriptions in issimo of every thing he sees: the grotto alone took up three pages. What volumes he will publish at his return, in usum Serenissimi Pannom!(675)
There has lately been the most shocking scene of murder imaginable; a parcel of drunken constables took it into their heads to put the laws in execution against disorderly persons, and so took up every woman they met, till they had collected five and six or twenty, all of whom they thrust into St. Martin’s roundhouse, where they kept them all night, with doors and windows closed. The poor creatures, who could not stir or breathe, screamed as long as they had any breath left, begging at least for water: one poor wretch said she was worth eighteen-pence, and would gladly give it for a draught of water, but in vain!
I have just now received yours of the 15th of July, with a married letter from both Prince and Princess:(679) but sure nothing ever equalled the setting out of it! She says, “The generosity of your friendship for me, Sir, leaves me nothing to desire of all that is precious in England, China, and the Indies!” Do you know, after such a testimony under the hand of a princess, that I am determined, after the laudable example of the house of Medici, to take the title of Horace the Magnificent! I am only afraid it should be a dangerous example for my posterity, who may ruin themselves in emulating the magnificence of their ancestor. It happens comically, for the other day, in removing from Downing-street, Sir Robert found an old account-book of his father, wherein he set down all his, expenses. In three months and ten days that he was in London one winter as member of parliament, he spent-what do you think?-sixty-four pounds seven shillings and five-pence! There are many articles for Nottingham ale, eighteen-pences for dinners, five shillings to Bob (now Earl of Orford), and one memorandum of six shillings given in exchange to Mr. Wilkins for his wig-and yet this old man, my grandfather, had two thousand pounds a-year, Norfolk sterling! He little thought that what maintained him for a whole session, would scarce serve one of his younger grandsons to buy japan and fans for princesses at Florence!
Lord Orford has been at court again to-day: Lord Carteret came up to thank him for his coachman; the Duke of Newcastle standing by. My father said, “My lord, whenever the duke is near overturning you, you have nothing to do but to send to me, and I will save you.” The duke said to Lord Carteret, “Do you know, my lord, that the Venison you eat that day came out of Newpark?” Lord Orford laughed, and said, “So, you see I am made to kill the fatted calf for the return of the prodigals!” The King passed by all the new ministry to speak to him, and afterwards only spoke to my Lord Carteret.
Should I answer the letters from the court of Petraria again? there will be no end of our magnificent correspondence!-but would it not be too haughty to let a princess write last?
Oh, the cats! I can never keep them, and yet It is barbarous to send them all to Lord Islay: he will shut them up and starve them, and then bury them under the stairs with his wife. Adieu!
(669) Solicitor to the treasury. See ante, p. 246.
(670) Sir R. Walpole’s house at Chelsea.-D.
(671) Lord Walpole was ranger of Newpark. (Now called Richmond Park.-D.)
(672) One of the band of incapables who obtained power and place on the fall of Walpole. Horace Walpole, in his Memoires, calls him “that old rag of Lord Bath’s quota to an administration, the mute Harry Furnese."-D.
(673) This occurrence was celebrated in a ballad which is inserted in C. Hanbury Williams’s works, and begins thus.
“As Caleb and Carteret, two birds of a feather, Went down to a feast at Newcastle’s together.”
Lord Bath is called “Caleb,” in consequence of the name of Caleb DAnvers having been used in The Craftsman, of which he was the principal author.-D.
(674) It was very remarkable that Lord Orford could get and keep such an ascendant with King George 1. when they had no way of conversing but very imperfectly in Latin.
(675) The coffee-house at Florence where the nobility meet.
(676) The keeper of the round-house was tried but acquitted of wilful murder. [The keeper, whose name was William Bird, was tried at the Old Bailey in October, and received sentence of death; which was afterwards transmuted to transportation.]
(677) The Honourable John Spencer, second son of Charles, third Earl of Sunderland, by Anne his wife, second daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough. He was the favourite grandson of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough who left him a vast fortune, having disinherited, to the utmost of her power, his eldest brother, Charles, Duke of Marlborough. The condition upon which she made this bequest was that neither he nor his heirs should take any place or pension from any government, except the rangership of Windsor Park. He was the ancestor of the present Earl Spencer, and died in 1746.- D.
(678) Lord George Graham, youngest son of the Duke of Montrose, and a captain in the navy. He died in 1747.-D.
(679) Prince and Princess Craon.
278 Letter 79
To Sir Horace Mann.
Chelsea, July 29, 1742.
I am quite out of humour; the whole town is melted away; you never saw such a desert. You know what Florence is in the vintage-season, at least I remember what it was: London is just as empty, nothing but half-a-dozen private gentlewomen left, who live upon the scandal that they laid up in the winter. I am going too! this day se’nnight we set out for Houghton, for three months; but I scarce
I carried Sir Robert the other night to Ranelagh for the first time: my uncle’s prudence, or fear, would never let him go before. It was pretty full, and all its fulness flocked round us: we walked with a train at our heels, like two chairmen going to fight; but they were extremely civil, and did not crowd him, or say the least impertinence—I think he grows popular already! The other day he got it asked, whether he should be received if he went to Carleton House?-no, truly!-but yesterday morning Lord Baltimore’ came (680) to soften it a little; that his royal highness -did not refuse to see him, but that now the Court was out of town, and he had no drawing-room, he did not see any body.
They have given Mrs. Pultney an admirable name, and one that is likely to stick by her-instead of Lady Bath, they call her the wife of Bath.(681) Don’t you figure her squabbling at the gate with St. Peter for a halfpenny.
Cibber has published a little pamphlet against Pope, which has a great deal of spirit, and, from some circumstances, will notably vex him.(682) I will send it to you by the first opportunity, with a new pamphlet, said to be Doddington’s, called “A Comparison of the Old and New Ministry:” it is much liked. I have not forgot your magazines, but will send them and these pamphlets together. Adieu! I am at the end of my tell.
P. S. Lord Edgecumbe is just made lord-lieutenant of Cornwall, at which the Lord of Bath looks sour. He said, yesterday, that the King would give orders for several other considerable alterations; but gave no orders, except for this, which was not asked by that earl.
(680) Lord of the bedchamber to the Prince.
(681) In allusion to the old ballad.
(682) This pamphlet, which was entitled “A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope; inquiring into the motives that might induce him, in his satirical works to be so frequently fond of Mr. Cibber’s name,” so “notably vexed” the great poet, that, in a new edition of the Dunciad, he dethroned Theobald from his eminence as King of the dunces, and enthroned Cibber in his stead.-E.
279 Letter 80
To Sir Horace Mann.
(From Houghton.)
Here are three new ballads,(683) and you must take them as a plump part of a long letter. Consider, I am in the barren land of Norfolk, where news grows as slow as any thing green; and besides, I am in the house of a fallen minister! The first song I fancy is Lord Edgcumbe’s; at least he had reason to write it. The second I do not think so good as the real Story that occasioned it. The last is reckoned vastly the best, and is much admired: I cannot say I see all those beauties in it, nor am charmed with the poetry, which is cried up. I don’t find that any body knows whose it is.(684) Pultney is very anoyed, especially as he pretends, about his wife, and says, “it is too much to abuse ladies!” You see, their twenty years’ satires come back home! He is gone to the Bath in great dudgeon: the day before he went, he went in to the King to ask him to turn out Mr. Hill of the customs, for having opposed him at Heydon. “Sir,” said the King, “was it not when you was opposing me? I won’t turn him out: I will part with no more of my friends.” Lord Wilmington was waiting to receive orders accordingly, but the King gave him none.
We came hither last Saturday; as we passed through Grosvenor-square, we met Sir Roger Newdigate, (685) with a vast body of Tories, proceeding to his election at Brentford: we might have expected some insult, but only one single fellow hissed. and was not followed. Lord Edgcumbe, Mr. Ellis, and Mr. Hervey, in their way to Coke’s,(686) and Lord Chief Justice Wills (on the circuit) are the Only company here yet. My Lord invited nobody, but left it to their charity. The other night, as soon as he had gone through showing Mr. Wills the house, Well,” said he, “here I am to enjoy ’t, and my Lord of Bath may—.” I forgot to tell you, in confirmation of what you see in the song of the wife of Bath having shares of places, Sir Robert told me, that when formerly she got a place for her own father, she took the salary and left him only the perquisites!
It is much thought that the King will go abroad, if he can avoid leaving the Prince in his place—. Imagine all this!
I received to-day yours of July 21), and two from Mr. Chute and Madame Pucci,(687) which I will answer very soon: where is she now? I delight in Mr. Villiers’s, (688) modesty-in one place you had written it villette’s; I fancy on purpose, for it would do for him.
Good night, my dear child! I have written myself threadbare. I know you will hate my campaign, but what can one do!
(683) As these ballads are to be found in the edition of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams’s works, published in 1822, it has been deemed better to omit them here. They are called, “Labour in Vain,” “The Old Coachman,” and “The Country Girl."-D.
(684) it was written by Hanbury Williams.
(685) Sir Roger Newdigate, the fifth baronet of the family. He was elected member for Middlesex, upon the vacancy occasioned by Pultney’s being created Earl of Bath. He belonged to the Tory or Jacobite party.-D. [Sir Roger afterwards represented the University of Oxford in five parliaments, and died in 1806, in his eighty-seventh year. Among other benefactions to his Alma Mater, he gave the noble candelabra in the Radcliffe library, and founded an annual prize for English verses on ancient painting, sculpture, and architecture.]
(686) Holkham. Coke was the son of Lord Lovel, afterward Viscount Coke, when his father was created Earl of Leicester.-D.
(687) She was the daughter of the Conte di Valvasone, of Friuli, sister of Madame Suares, and of the bedchamber to the Duchess of Modena.
(688) Thomas Villiers a younger son of william, second Earl of Jersey, at this time British minister at the court of Dresden, and eventually created Lord Hyde, and Earl of clarendon. Sir H. Mann had alluded in one of his letters to a speech attributed to Mr. Villiers, in which he took great credit to himself for having induced the King of Poland to become a party to the peace of Breslau, recently concluded between the Queen of Hungary and the King, of Prussia; a course of proceeding, which, in fact, his Polish Majesty had no alternative but to adopt. Villettes was an inferior diplomatic agent from England to some of the Italian courts, and was at this moment resident at the court of Turin.-D.
280 Letter 81 To Sir Horace Mann. Houghton, Aug. 20, 1742
By the tediousness of the post, and distance of place, I am still receiving letters from you about the Secret Committee, which seems strange, for it is as much forgotten now, as if it had happened in the last reign. Thus much I must answer you about it, that it is possible to resume the inquiry upon the Report next session; but you may judge whether they will, after all the late promotions.
We are willing to believe that there are no news in town, for we hear none at all: Lord Lovel sent us word to-day, that he heard, by a messenger from the post office, that Montemar (689) is put under arrest. I don’t tell you this for news, for you must know it long ago: but I expect the confirmation of it from you next post. Since we came hither I have heard no more of the king’s journey to Flanders: our troops are as peaceable there as On Hounslow Heath, except some bickerings and blows about beef with butchers, and about sacraments with friars. You know the English can eat no meat, nor be civil to any God but their own.
As much as I am obliged to you for the description of your Cocchiata,(690) I don’t like to hear of it. It is very unpleasant, instead of being at it, to be prisoner, in a melancholy, barren province, which would put one in mind of the deluge, only that we have no water. Do remember exactly how your last was; for I intend that you shall give me just such another Cocchiata next summer, if it pleases the kings and queens of this world to let us be at peace For “it rests that without fig-leaves,” as my Lord Bacon says in one of his letters , “I do ingenuously confess and acknowledge,” (691) that I like nothing so well as Italy.
I agree with you extremely about Tuscany for Prince Charles,(692) but I can only agree with you on paper; for as to knowing anything of it, I am sure Sir Robert himself knows nothing of it: the Duke of Newcastle and my Lord Carteret keep him in as great ignorance as possible, especially the latter; and even in other times, you know how little he ever thought on those things. Believe me, he will every day know less.
Your last, which I have been answering, was the. 5th of August; I this minute receive another of the 12th. How I am charmed with your spirit and usage of Richcourt! Mais ce n’est pas d’aujourdhui que je commence `a les m`epriser! I am so glad that you have quitted your calm, to treat them as they deserve. You don’t tell me if his opposition in the council hindered your intercession from taking place for the valet de chambre. I hope not! I could not bear his thwarting you!
I am now going to write to your brother, to get you the overtures; and to desire he will send them with some pamphlets and the magazines which I left in commission for you, at my leaving London. I am going to send him, too, des pleins pouvoirs, for nominating a person to represent me at his new babe’s christening.
I am sorry Mrs. Goldsworthy is coming to England, though I think it can be of no effect. Sir Charles (692) has no sort of interest with the new powers, and I don’t think the Richmonds have enough to remove foreign ministers. However, I will consult with Sir Robert about it, and see if he thinks there is any danger for you, which I do not in the least; and whatever can be done by me, I think you know, will.
P. S. I inclose an answer to Madame Pucci’s letter. Where is she in all this Modenese desolation
(689) Montemar was the General of the King of Spain, who commanded the troops of that sovereign against the Imperialists in Italy.-D.
(690) A sort of serenade. Sir H. Mann had mentioned, that he was about to give an entertainment of this kind in his garden to the society of Florence.-D.
(691) Prince Charles of Lorraine, younger brother of Francis, who was now Grand Duke of Tuscany. He was a general of some abilities; but it was his misfortune to be so often opposed to the superior talents of the King of Prussia.-D.
(692) Sir Charles Wager.
281 Letter 82
To Sir Horace Mann.
Houghton, August 28, 1742.
I did receive your letter of the 12th, as I think I mentioned in my last; and to-day another of the 19th. Had I been you, instead of saying that I would have taken my lady’s(693) woman for my spy, I should have said, that I would hire Richcourt himself: I dare to say that one might buy the count’s own secrets of himself.
I am sorry to hear that the Impressarii have sent for the Chiaretta; I am not one of the managers; I should have remonstrated against her, for she will not do on the same stage with the Barbarina. I don’t know who will be glad of her coming, but Mr. Blighe and Amorevoli.
’Tis amazing, but we hear not a syllable of Prague taken,(694) it must be! Indeed, Carthagena, too, was certain of being taken! but it seems, Maillebois is to stop at Bavaria. I hope Belleisle (695) will be made prisoner? I am indifferent about the fate of the great Broglio-but Belleisle is able, and is our most determined enemy: we need not have more, for to-day it is confirmed that Cardinal Tencin (696) and M. d’Argenson are declared of the prime ministry. The first moment they can, Tencin will be for transporting the Pretenders into England. Your advice about Naples was quite judicious: the appearance of a bomb will have great weight in the councils of the little king.
We don’t talk now of any of the Royals passing into Flanders; though the Champion (697) this morning had an admirable quotation, on the supposition that the King would go himself: it was this line from the Rehearsal:-
“Give us our fiddle; we ourselves will play.”
The lesson for the Day (698) that I sent you, I gave to Mr. Coke, who came in as I was writing it, and by his dispersing it, it has got into print, with an additional one, which I cannot say I am proud should go under my name. Since that, nothing but lessons are the fashion: first and second lessons, morning and evening lessons, epistles, etc. One of the Tory papers published so abusive an one last week on the new ministry, that three gentlemen called on the printer, to know how he dared to publish it. Don’t you like these men who for twenty years together led the way, and published every thing that was scandalous, that they should wonder at any body’s daring to publish against them! Oh! it will come home to them! Indeed, every body’s fame now is published at length: last week the Champion mentioned the Earl of Orford and his natural daughter, Lady Mary, at length (for which he had a great mind to prosecute the printer). To-day, the London Evening Post says, Mr. Pane, nephew of Mr. Scrope, is made first clerk of the treasury, as a reward for his uncle’s taciturnity before the Secret Committee. He is in the room of old Tilson, who was so tormented by that Committee that it turned his brain, and he is dead.
I am excessively shocked at Mr. Fane’s (699) behaviour to you; but Mr. Fane is an honourable man! he lets poor you pay him his salary for eighteen months, without thinking of returning it! But if he had lost that sum to Jansen,(700) or to any of the honourable men at White’s, he would think his honour engaged to pay it. There is nothing, sure, so whimsical as modern honour! You may debauch a woman upon a promise of marriage, and not marry her; you may ruin your tailor’s or your baker’s family by not paying them; you may make Mr. Mann maintain you for eighteen months, as a public minister, out of his own pocket, and still be a man of honour! But, not to pay a common sharper, or not to murder a man that has trod upon your toe, is such a blot in your scutcheon, that you could never recover your honour, though you had in your veins “all the blood of all the Howards!”
My love to Mr. Chute: tell him, as he looks on the east front of Houghton, to tap under the two windows in the left-hand wing, up stairs, close to the colonnade-there are Patapan and I, at this instant, writing to you; there we are almost every morning, or in the library; the evenings, we walk till dark; then Lady Mary, Miss Leneve, and I play at comet; the Earl, Mrs. Leneve, and whosoever is here, discourse; car telle est notre vie! Adieu!
(693) Lady Walpole. Richcourt, the Florentine minister, was her lover, and both, as has been seen in the former part of these letters, were enemies of Sir . H. Mann.-D.
(694) This means retaken by the Imperialists from the French, who had obtained possession of it on the 25th of November, 1741. The Austrian troops drove the French out of Prague, in December, 1742.-D.
(695) This wish was gratified, though not in this year. Marshal Belleisle was taken prisoner in 1745, by the Hanoverian dragoons, was confined for some months in Windsor Castle, and exchanged after the battle of Fontenoy.-D.
(696) A profligate ecclesiastic, who was deeply engaged in the corrupt political intrigues of the day. In these he was assisted by his sister Madame Tencin, an unprincipled woman of much ability, who had been the mistress of the still more infamous Cardinal Dubois. Voltaire boasts in his Memoirs, of having killed the Cardinal Tencin from vexation, at a sort of political hoax, which he played off upon him.-D. [The cardinal was afterwards, made Archbishop of Lyons. In 1752, he entirely quitted the court, and retired to his diocese, where he died in 1758, ,greatly esteemed,” says the Biog. Univ. for his extensive charities.” His sister died in 1749. She was mother of the celebrated D’Alembert by Destouches Canon, and authoress of “Le Comte de Comminges,” “Les Malheurs de l’Amour,” and other romances.]
(697) ’The Champion was an opposition Journal, written by Fielding. [Assisted by Ralph, the historian.)
(698) Entitled " The Lessons for the Day, 1742.” Published in Sir Charles Hanbury Williams’s works, but written by Walpole.-D.
(699) Charles Fane, afterwards Lord Fane, had been minister at Florence before Mr. Mann.
(700) A notorious gambler. He is mentioned by Pope, in the character of the young man of fashion, in the fourth canto of the Dunciad,
“As much estate, and principle, and wit, As Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber, shall think fit."-D.
284 Letter 83 To Sir Horace Mann. Houghton, Sept. 11, 1742.
I could not write to you last week, for I was at Woolterton,(701) and in a course of visits, that took up my every moment. I received one from you there, of August 26th, but have had none at all this week.
You know I am not prejudiced in favour of the country, nor like a place because it bears turnips well, or because you may gallop over it without meeting a tree: but I really was charmed with Woolterton; it is all wood and water! My uncle and aunt may, without any expense, do what they have all their lives avoided, wash themselves and make fires.(702) Their house is more than a good one; if they had not saved eighteen pence in every room, it would have been a fine one. I saw several of my acquaintance,(703) Volterra vases, Grisoni landscapes, the four little bronzes, the raffle-picture, etc.
We have printed about the expedition to Naples: the affair at Elba, too, is in the papers, but we affect not to believe it. We are in great apprehensions of not taking Prague—the only thing that has been taken on our side lately, I think, is my Lord Stair’s journey hither and back again-we don’t know for what-he is such an Orlando! The papers are full of the most defending King’S Journey to Flanders;our private letters say not a word of it-I say our, for at present I think the earl’s intelligences and mine are pretty equal as to authority.
Here is a little thing which I think has humour in it.
A CATALOGUE OF NEW FRENCH BOOKS.
1. Jean-sans-terre, on l’Empereur en pet-en-l’air; imprim`e `a Frankfort.
2. La France
mourante d’une suppression
d’hommes et d’argent: dedi`e au public.
3. L’art de faire les Neutralit`es, invent`een Allemagne, et `ecrit en cette langue, par Un des Electeurs, et nouvellement traduit en Napolitain; par le Chef d’Escadre Martin.
4. Voyage d’Allemaune, par Monsieur de Maupertuis; avec un t`elescope, invent`e pendant son voyage; `a l’usage des H`eros, pour regarder leur victoires de loin.
5. M`ethode court et facile pour faire entrer les troupes Fran`coies en Allemagne:-mais comment faire, pour les en faire sortir?
6. Trait`e tr`es salutaire et tr`es utile sur la reconnoissance envers les bienfaicteurs, par le Roy de Pologne. Folio, imprim`e `a Dresde.
7. Obligation sacr`ee des Trait`es, Promesses, et Renonciations, par le Grand Turc; avec des Remarques retractoires, par un Jesuite.
8. Probleme; combien il faut d’argent FranSois pour payer le sang Su`edois circul`e par le Comte de Gyllembourg
9. Nouvelle m`ethode de friser les cheveux `a la Francoise; par le Colonel Mentz et sa Confrairie.
10. Recueil de Dissertations sur la meilleure mani`ere de faire la partition des successions, par le Cardinal de Fleury; avec des notes, historiques et politiques, par la Reine d’Espagne.
11. Nouveau Voyage de Madrid `a Antibes, par l’Infant Dom Philippe.
12. Lart de chercher les ennemis sans lea trouver; par le Marechal de Maillebois.
13. La fid`elit`e couronn`ee, par le G`en`eral Munich et le Comte d’Osterman.
14. Le bal de Lintz et les amusements de DOnawert;
pi`ece pastorale et galante,
en
un acte, par le Grand Duc.
15. l’Art de maitriser les Femmes, par sa Majest`e Catliolique.
16. Avantures Boh`emiennes, tragi-comiques, tr`es curieuses, tr`es int`erressantes, et charg`ees d’incidents. Tom. i. ii. iii. N.B. Le dernier tome, qui fera le denouement, est sous presse.
Adieu! my dear child; if it was not for this secret of transcribing, what should one do in the country to make out a letter?
285 Letter 84 To Sir Horace Mann. Houghton, Sept. 25th, 1742.
At last, my dear child, I have got two letters from you! I have been in strange pain, between fear of your being ill, and apprehensions of your letters being stopped; but I have received that by Crew, and another since. But you have been ill! I am angry with Mr. Chute for not writing to let me know it. I fancied you worse than you say, or at least than you own. But I don’t wonder you have fevers! such a busy politician as Villettes,(704) and such a blustering negotiator as il Furibondo (705) are enough to put all your little economy of health
Poor Prince Craon! where did De Sade get fifty sequins. When I was at Florence, you know all his clothes were in pawn to his landlord; but he redeemed them by pawning his Modenese bill of credit to his landlady! I delight in the style of the neutrality maker(708)-his neutralities and his English arc perfectly of a piece.
You have diverted me excessively with the history of the Princess Eleonora’s(709) posthumous issue-but how could the woman have spirit enough to have five children by her footman, and yet not have enough to own them. Really, a woman so much in the great world should have known better! Why, no yeoman’s dowager could have acted more prudishly! It always amazes me, when I reflect on the women, who are the first to propagate scandal of one another. If they would but agree not to censure what they all agree to do, there would be no more loss of characters among them than amongst men. A woman cannot have an affair, but instantly all her sex travel about to publish it, and leave her off: now, if a man cheats another of his estate at play, forges a will, or marries a ward to his own son, nobody thinks of leaving him off for such trifles.
The English parson at Stosch’s, the archbishop on the chapter of music, the Fanciulla’s persisting in her mistake, and old Count Galli’s distress, are all admirable stories.(710) But what is the meaning of Montemar’s writing to the Antinora?—I thought he had left the Galia for my illustrissima,(711) her sister. lord! I am horridly tired of that romantic love and correspondence! Must I answer her last letter? there were but six lines—what can I say? I perceive, by what you mention of the cause of his disorder, that Rucellai does not turn out that simple, honest man you thought him-come, own it
I just recollect a story, which perhaps will serve your archbishop on his Don Pilogio(712)-the Tartuffe was meant for the then archbishop of Paris, who, after the first night, forbad its being acted. Moliere came forth, and told the audience, “Messieurs, on devoit vous donner le Tartuffe, mais MOnSeigneur l’Archev`eque ne veut pas qu’on le joue.”
My lord is very impatient for his Dominichin; so you will send it by the first safe conveyance. He is making a gallery, for the ceiling of which I have given the design of that in the little library of St. Mark at Venice: Mr. Chute will remember how charming it was; and for the frieze, I have prevailed to have that of the temple at Tivoli. Naylor(713) came here the other day with two coaches full of relations: as his mother-in-law, who was one of the company is widow of Dr. Hare, Sir Robert’s old tutor at Cambridge, he made them stay to dine: when they were gone, he said, “Ha, child! what is that Mr. Naylor, Horace ? he is the absurdest man I ever saw!” I subscribed to his opinion; won’t you? I must tell you a story of him. When his father married this second wife, Naylor said,"Father, they say you are to be married to-day, are you?” “Well,” replied the bishop, “and what is that to you?” “Nay, nothing; only if you had told me, I would have powdered my hair.”
(704) Mr. Villettes was minister at Turin.
(705) Admiral Matthews; his ships having committed some outrages on the coast of Italy, the Italians called him it Furibondo.
(706) Of George the Second.-D.
(707) Afterwards a marshal of France. He was a man of some ability, and the friend and patron of St. Lambert, and of other men of letters of the time of Lewis XV.-D. [He was made a marshal in 1783 by the unfortunate Louis XVI. and in 1789 a minister of state. He died in 1793, a few weeks after the murder of his royal master.]
(708) Admiral Matthews.
(709) Eleonora of Guastalla, widow of the last cardinal of Medici, died at Venice. (The father of the children was a French running footman.-D.) [Cosmo the Third was sixty-seven years old at the period of the marriage: “une fois le marriage conclu,” says the Biog. Univ. “El`eonore refusa de la consommer, rebut`ee par la figure, par l’age et surtout par les d`esordres de son `epouse.” Cosmo died at the age of eighty-one. A translation of his Travels through England, in 1669, was published in 1820.
(710) These are stories in a letter of Sir H. Mann’s, which are neither very decent nor very amusing.-D.
(711) Madame Grifoni.
(712) The Archbishop of Florence had forbid the acting of a burlettae called Don Pilogio, a sort of imitation of Tartuffe. When the Impresario of the Theatre remonstrated upon the expense he had been put to in preparing the music for it, the archbishop told him he might use it for some other opera.-D.
(713) He was the son of Dr. Here, Bishop of Chichester, and changed his name for an estate.
287
Letter 85
To
Sir Horace Mann.
Houghton, Oct. 8th, 1742.
I have not heard from you this fortnight; if I don’t receive a letter to-morrow, I shall be quite out of humour. It is true, of late I have written to you but every other post; but then I have been in the country, in Norfolk, in Siberia! You were still at Florence, in the midst of Kings of Sardinia, Montemars, and Neapolitan neutralities; your letters are my only diversion. As to German news, it is all so simple that I am peevish: the raising of the siege of Prague,((714) and Prince Charles and Marechal Maillebois playing at hunt the squirrel, have disgusted me from inquiring about the war. The earl laughs in his great chair, and sings a bit of an old ballad,
“They both did fight, they both did beat, they
both did run
away,
They both strive again to meet, the quite contrary
way.”
Apropos! I see in the papers that a Marquis de Beauvau escaped out of Prague with the Prince de Deuxpons and the Duc de Brissac; was it our Prince Beauvau?
At last the mighty monarch does not go to Flanders, after making the greatest preparations that ever were made but by Harry the Eighth, and the authors of the grand Cyrus and the illustrious Hassa: you may judge by the quantity of napkins, which were to the amount of nine hundred dozen-indeed, I don’t recollect that ancient heroes were ever so provident of necessaries, or thought how they were to wash their hands and face after a victory. Six hundred horses, under the care of the Duke of Richmond, were even shipped; and the clothes and furniture of his court magnificent enough for a bull-fight at the conquest of Granada. Felton Hervey’s(715) war-horse, besides having richer caparisons than any of the expedition, had a gold net to keep off the flies-in winter! Judge of the clamours this expense to no purpose will produce! My Lord Carteret is set out from the Hague, but was not landed when the last letters came from London: there are no great expectations from this trip; no more than followed from my Lord Stair’s.
I send you two more odes on Pultney,(716) I believe by the same hand as the former, though none are equal to the Nova Progenies, which has been more liked than almost ever any thing was. It is not at all known whose they are; I believe Hanbury Williams’s. The note to the first was printed with it: the advice to him to be privy seal has its foundation; for when the consultation was held who were to have places, and my Lord Gower was named to succeed Lord Hervey, Pultney said with some warmth, “I designed to be privy seal myself!”
We expect some company next week from Newmarket: here is at present only Mr. Keene and Pigwiggin,(717)-you never saw so agreeable a creature!-oh yes! you have seen his parents! I must tell you a new story of them Sir Robert had given them a little horse for Pigwiggin, and somebody had given them another: both which, to save the charge of keeping, they sent to grass in Newpark. After three years that they had not used them, my Lord Walpole let his own son ride them, while he was at the park, in the holidays. Do you know, that the woman Horace sent to Sir Robert, and made him give her five guineas for the two horses, because George had ridden them? I give you my word this is fact.
There has been a great fracas at Kensington: one of the Mesdames(718) pulled the chair from under Countess Deloraine(719) at cards, who, being provoked that her monarch was diverted with her disgrace, with the malice of a hobby-horse, gave him just such another fall. But alas! the Monarch, like Louis XIV. is mortal in the part that touched the ground, and was so hurt and so angry, that the countess is disgraced, and her German rival (720) remains in the sole and quiet possession of her royal master’s favour.
October 9th.
Well! I have waited till this morning, but have no letter from you; what can be the meaning of it? Sure, if you was ill, Mr. Chute would write to me! Your brother protests he never lets your letters lie at the office.
Sa Majest`e Patapanique(721) has had a dreadful misfortune!-not lost his first minister, nor his purse—nor had part of his camp equipage burned in the river, nor waited for his secretary of state, who is perhaps blown to Flanders—nay, nor had his chair pulled from under him-worse! worse! quarrelling with a great pointer last night about their countesses, he received a terrible shake by the back and a bruise on the left eye—poor dear Pat! you never saw such universal consternation! it was at supper. Sir Robert, who makes as much rout with him as I do, says, he never saw ten people show so much real concern! Adieu! Yours, ever and ever-but write to me.
(714) The Marshal de Maillebois and the Count de Saxe had been sent with reinforcements from France, to deliver the Marshal de Broglio and the Marshal de Belleisle, who, with their army, were shut up in Prague, and surrounded by the superior forces of the Queen of Hungary, commanded by Prince Charles of Lorraine. They succeeded in facilitating the escape of the Marshal de Broglio, and of a portion of the French troops; but the Marshal de Belleisle continued to be blockaded in Prague with twenty-two thousand men, till December 1742, when he made his escape to Egra.-D.
(715) Felton Hervey, tenth son of John, first Earl of Bristol; in 1737, appointed groom of the bedchamber to the Duke of Cumberland. He died in 1775.-E.
(716) These are “The Capuchin,” and the ode beginning, “’Great Earl of Bath, your reign is o’er;” As they have been frequently published, they are omitted. The “Nova Progenies” is the well-known ode beginning, “See, a new progeny descends."-D.
(717) Eldest son of old Horace Walpole. [Afterwards the second Lord Walpole of Wolterton, and in 1806, at the age of eighty-three created Earl of Orford. He died in 1809.-E.]
(718) The Princesses, daughters of George II.-D.
(719) Elizabeth Fenwick, widow of Henry Scott, third Earl of Deloraine. She was a favourite of George II. and lived much in his intimate society. From the ironical epithets applied to her in Lord Hervey’s ballad in the subsequent letter, it would appear, that her general conduct was not considered to be very exemplary. She died in 1794.-D.
(720) Lady Yarmouth.
289 Letter 86
To
Sir Horace Mann.
Houghton, Oct. 18, 1742.
I have received two letters from you since last post; I suppose the wind stopped the packet-boat.
Well! was not I in the right to persist in buying the Dominichin? don’t you laugh at those wise connoisseurs, who pronounced it a copy? If it is one, where is the original? or who was that so great master that could equal Dominichin? Your brother has received the money for it, and Lord Orford is in great impatience for it; yet he begs, if you can find any opportunity, that it may be sent in a man-of-war. I must desire that the statue may be sent to Leghorn, to be shipped with it, and that you will get Campagni and Libri to transact the payment as they did for the picture, and I will pay your brother.
Villettes’ important despatches to you are as ridiculous as good Mr. Matthews’s devotion. — I fancy Mr. Matthews’s own god (722) would make as foolish a figure about a monkey’s neck, as a Roman Catholic one. You know, Sir Francis Dashwood used to say that Lord Shrewsbury’s providence was an old angry man in a blue cloak: another person-that I knew, believed providence was like a mouse, because he is invisible. I dare to say Matthews believes, that providence lives upon beef and pudding, loves prize-fighting and bull-baiting, and drinks fog to the health of Old England.
I go to London in a week, and then will send you cart-loads of news: I know none now, but that we hear to-day of the arrival of Duc d’Aremberg-I suppose to return my Lord Carteret’s visit. The latter was near being lost; he told the King that being in a storm, he had thought it safest to put into Yarmouth roads, at which he laughed, hoh! hoh! hoh!
For want of news, I live upon ballads to you; here is one that has made a vast noise, and by Lord Hervey’s taking great pains to disperse it, has been thought his own-if it is,(723) he has taken true care to disguise the niceness of his style.
1. O England, attend. while thy fate I deplore, Rehearsing the schemes and the conduct of power. And since only of those who have power I sing, I am sure none can think that I hint at the King.
2. From the time his son made him old Robin depose, All the power of a King he was well-known to lose; But of all but the name and the badges bereft, Like old women, his paraphernalia are left.
3. To tell how he shook in St. James’s for fear, When first these new Ministers bullied him there, Makes my blood boil with rage, to think what a thing They have made of a man We ’obey as a King.
4. Whom they pleas’d they put in, whom they pleas’d they put out, And just like a top they all lash’d him about, Whilst he like a top with a murmuring noise, Seem’d to grumble, but turn’d to these rude lashing boys.
5. At last Carteret arriving, spoke thus to his grief, If you’ll make me your Doctor, I’ll bring you relief; You see to your closet familiar I come, And seem like my wife in the circle-at home.”
6. Quoth the King, “My good Lord, perhaps you’ve been told, That I used to abuse you a little of old; ’But now bring whom you will, and eke turn away, But let me and my money, and Walmoden(724) stay.”
7.” For you and Walmoden, I freely consent, But as for your money, I must have it spent; I have promised your son (nay, no frowns,) shall have some, Nor think ’tis for nothing we patriots are come.
8. “But, however, little King, since I find you so good, Thus stooping below your high courage and blood, Put yourself in my hands, and I’ll do what I can, To make you look yet like a King and a man.
9. “At your Admiralty and your Treasury-board, To save one single man y; u shan’t say a word, For, by God! all your rubbish front both you shall shoot, Walpole’s ciphers and Gasherry’S(725) vassals to boot.
10. “And to guard Prince’s ears, as all Statesmen take care, So, long as yours are-not one man shall come near; For of all your Court-crew we’ll leave only those Who we know never dare to say boh! to a goose.
11. “So your friend booby Grafton I’ll e’en let you keep, Awake he can’t hurt, and is still half asleep; Nor ever was dangerous, but to womankind, And his body’s as impotent now as his mind.
12. “There’s another Court-booby, at once hot and dull, Your pious pimp, Schutz, a mean, Hanover tool; For your card-play at night he too shall remain, With virtuous and sober, and wise Deloraine.(726)
13. “And for all your Court-nobles who can’t write or read, As of such titled ciphers all courts stand in need, Who, like parliament-Swiss, vote and fight for their pay, They’re as good as a new set to cry yea and nay.
14. “Though Newcastle’s as false, as he’s silly, I know, By betraying old Robin to me long ago, As well as all those who employed him before, Yet I leave him in place, but I leave him no power.
15. “For granting his heart is as black as his hat, With no more truth in this, than there’s sense beneath that; Yet as he’s a coward, he’ll shake when I frown; You call’d him a rascal, I’ll use him like one,
16. “And since his estate at elections he’ll spend, And beggar himself, without making a friend; So whilst the extravagant fool has a sous, As his brains I can’t fear, so his fortune I’ll use,
17. “And as miser Hardwicke, with all courts will draw, He too may remain, but shall stick to his law; For of foreign affairs, when he talks like a fool, I’ll laugh in his face,, and will cry ‘Go to school!’
18. “The Countess of Wilmington, excellent nurse, I’ll trust with the Treasury, not with its purse, For nothing by her I’ve resolved shall be done, She shall sit at that board, as you sit on the throne.
19. “Perhaps now, you expect that I should begin To tell you the men I design to bring in; But we’re not yet determined on all their demands -And you’ll know soon enough, when they come to kiss hands.
20. “All that weathercock Pultney shall ask, we must grant, For to make him a great noble nothing, I want; And to cheat such a man, demands all my arts, For though he’s a fool, he’s a fool with great parts,
21. “And as popular Clodius, the Pultney of Rome, >From a noble, for power did plebeian become, So this Clodius to be a Patrician shall choose, Till what one got by changing, the other shall lose.
22. “Thus flatter’d and courted, and gaz’d at by all, Like Phaeton, rais’d for a day, he shall fall, Put the world in a flame, and show he did strive To get reins in his hand, though ’tis plain he can’t drive.
23. “For your foreign affairs, howe’er they turn out, At least I’ll take care you shall make a great rout: Then cock your great hat, strut, bounce, and look bluff, For though kick’d and cuffd here, you shall there kick and cuff.
24. “That Walpole did nothing they all used to say, So I’ll do enough, but I’ll make the dogs pay; Great fleets I’ll provide, and great armies engage, Whate’er debts we make, or whate’er wars we wage.”
25. With cordials like these the Monarch’s new guest Revived his sunk spirits and gladden’d his heart; Till in raptures he cried, " y dear Lord, you shall do Whatever you will, give me troops to review.
26. “But oh! my dear England, since this is thy state, Who is there that loves thee but weeps at thy fate? Since in changing thy masters, thou art just like old Rome, Whilst Faction, Oppression, and Slavery’s thy doom.
27. “For though you have made that rogue Walpole retire, You’re out of the frying-pan into the fire! But since to the Protestant line I’m a friend, I tremble to think where these changes may end!”
This has not been printed. You see the burthen of all the songs Is the rogue Walpole, which he has observed himself, but I believe is content, as long as they pay off his arrears to those that began the tune. Adieu!
(722) Admiral Matthews’s crew having disturbed some Roman Catholic ceremonies in a little island on the coast of Italy, hung a crucifix about a monkey’s neck.
(723) It was certainly written by Lord Hervey.
(724) Lady Yarmouth.
(725) Sir Charles Wager’s nephew, and Secretary to the Admiralty.
(726) Countess Dowager of Deloraine, governess to the young Princesses.
293 Letter 87 To Sir Horace Mann. Houghton, Oct. 23, 1742.
At last I see an end of my pilgrimage; the day after tomorrow I am affirming it to you as earnestly as if’ you had been doubting of it like myself: but both my brothers are here, and Sir Robert will let me go. He must follow himself soon: the Parliament meets the 16th of November, that the King may go abroad the first of March: but if all threats prove true prophecies, he will scarce enter upon heroism so soon, for we are promised a winter just like the last-new Secret Committees to be tried for, and impeachments actually put into execution. It is horrid to have a prospect of a session like the last.
In the meantime, my Lord of Bath and Lord Hervey, who seem deserted by every body else, are grown the greatest friends in the world at Bath; and to make a complete triumvirate, my Lord Gower is always of their party: how they must love one another, the late, the present, and the would-be Privy Seal!
Lord Hyndford has had great honours in Prussia: that King bespoke for him a service of plate to the value of three thousand pounds. He asked leave for his Majesty’s arms to be put upon it: the King replied, “they should, with the arms of Silesia added to his paternal coat for ever.” I will tell you Sir ]Robert’s remark on this: “He is rewarded thus for having obtained Silesia for the King of Prussia, which he was sent to preserve to the Queen of Hungary!” Her affairs begin to take a little better turn again; Broglio is prevented from joining Maillebois, who, they affirm, can never bring his army off, as the King of Poland is guarding all the avenues of Saxony, to prevent his passing through that country.
I wrote to you in my last to desire that the Dominichin and my statue might come by a man-of-war. Now. Sir Robert, who is impatient for his picture, would have it sent in a Dutch ship, as he says he can easily get it from Holland. If you think this conveyance quite safe, I beg my statue may bear it company.
Tell me if you are tired of ballads on my Lord Bath; if you are not, here is another admirable one,(727) I believe by the same hand as the others; but by the conclusion certainly ought not to be Williams’s. I only send you the good ones, for the newspapers are every day full of bad ones on this famous earl.
My compliments to the Princess; I dreamed last night that she was come to Houghton, and not at all `epuis`ee with her journey. Adieu!
P.S. I must add a postscript, to mention a thing I have often designed to ask you to do for me. Since I came to England I have been buying drawings, (the time is well chosen, when I had neglected it in Italy!) I saw at Florence two books that I should now be very glad to have, if you could get them tolerably reasonable; one was at an English painter’s; I think his name was Huckford, over against your house in via Bardi; they were of Holbein: the other was of Guercino, and brought to me to see by the Abb`e Bonducci; my dear child, you will oblige me much if you can get them.
(727) Sir Charles Hanbury Williams’s ode, beginning “What Statesman, what Hero, what King-.” It is to be found in all editions of his poems.-D.
294 Letter 88
To
Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Nov. 1, 1742.
I have not felt so pleasantly these three months as I do at present, though I have a great cold with coming into an unaired house, and have been forced to carry that cold to the King’s levee and the drawing-room. There were so many new faces that I scarce knew where I was; I should have taken ’it for Carlton House, or my Lady Mayoress’s visiting-day, only the people did not seem enough at home, but rather as admitted to see the King dine in public. ’Tis quite ridiculous to see the numbers of old ladies, who, from having been wives of patriots, have not been dressed these twenty years; out they come, in all the accoutrements that were in use in Queen Anne’s days. Then the joy and awkward jollity of them is inexpressible! They titter, and, wherever you meet them, are always going to court, and looking at their watches an hour before the time. I met several on the birthday, (for I did not arrive time enough to make clothes,) and they were dressed in all the colours of the rainbow: they seem to have said to themselves twenty years ago, ,Well, if ever I do go to court again, I will have a pink and silver, or a blue and silver,” and they keep their resolutions.- But here’s a letter from you, sent to me back from Houghton; I must stop to read it.-Well, I have read it, and am diverted with Madame Grifoni’s being with child; I hope she was too. I don’t wonder that she hates the country; I dare to say her child does not owe its existence to the Villeggiatura. When you wrote, it seems you had not heard what a speedy determination was put to Don Philip’s reign in Savoy. I suppose he will retain the title: you know great princes are fond of titles, which proves they are not so great as they once were.
I find a very different face of things from what we had conceived in the country. There are, indeed, thoughts of renewing attacks on Lord Orford, and Of stepping the supplies; but the new ministry laugh at these threats, having secured a vast majority in the House: the Opposition themselves own that the Court will have upwards of a hundred majority: I don’t, indeed, conceive how; but they are confident of carrying every thing. They talk of Lord Gower’s not keeping the privy seal; that he will either resign it, or have it taken away: Lord Bath, who is entering into all the court measures, is most likely to succeed him. The late Lord Privy Seal(728) has had a most ridiculous accident at Bath: he used to play in a little inner room; but one night some ladies had got it, and he was reduced to the public room; but being extremely absent and deep in politics, he walked through the little room to a convenience behind the curtain, from whence (still absent) he produced himself in a situation extremely diverting to the women: imagine his delicacy, and the passion he was in at their laughing!
I laughed at myself prodigiously the other day for a piece of absence; I was writing on the King’s birthday, and being disturbed with the mob in the street, I rang for the porter, and, with an air of grandeur, as if I was still at Downing Street, cried, “Pray send away those marrowbones and cleavers!” The poor fellow with the most mortified air in the world, replied, “Sir, they are not at our door, but over the way at my Lord Carteret’s.” “Oh,” said I, “then let them alone; may be he does not dislike the noise!” I pity the poor porter, who sees all his old customers going over the way too.
Our operas begin to-morrow with a pasticcio, full of most of my favourite songs: the Fumagalli has disappointed us; she had received an hundred ducats, and then wrote word that she had spent them, and was afraid of coming through the Spanish quarters; but if they would send her an hundred more, she would come next year. Villettes has what been written to in the strongest manner to have her forced hither (for she is at Turin.) I tell you this by way of key, in case you should receive a mysterious letter in cipher from him about this important business.
I have not seen Due d’Aremberg; but I hear that all the entertainments for him are suppers, for he -will dine at his own hour, eleven in the morning. He proposed it to the Duchess of Richmond when she invited him; but she said she did not know where to find company to dine with him at that hour.
I must advise YOU to be cautious how you refuse humouring our captains (729) in any of their foolish schemes; for they are popular, and I should be very sorry to have them out of humour with you when they come home, lest it should give any handle to your enemies. Think of it, my dear child! The officers in Flanders, that are members of parliament, have had intimations, that if they asked leave to come on their private affairs, and drop in, not all together, they will be very well received; this is decorum. Little Brook’s little wife is a little with child. Adieu!
(728) Lord Hervey.
(729) The captains of ships in the English fleet at Leghorn.
296 Letter 89 To Sir Horace Mann. London, Nov. 15, 1742.
I have not written to you lately, expecting letters from you; last I have received two. I still send mine through France, as I am afraid they would get to you with still more difficulty through Holland.
Our army is just now ordered to march to Mayence, at the repeated instances of the Queen of Hungary; Lord Stair goes with them, but almost all the officers that arc in parliament arc come over, for the troops are only to be in garrison till March, when, it is said, the King will take the field with them. This step makes a great noise, for the old remains of the Opposition are determined to persist, and have termed this a H(inoverian measure. They begin to-morrow, with opposing the address on the King’s speech: Pitt is to be the leading mail; there are none but he and Lyttelton of the Prince’s court, who do not join with the ministry: the Prince has told them, that he will follow the advice they long ago gave him, “turning out all his people who do not vote as he would have them.”
Lord Orford is come to town, and was at the King’s levee to-day; the joy the latter showed to see him was very visible: all the new ministry came and spoke to him; and he had a long, laughing conversation with my Lord Chesterfield, who is still in Opposition.
You have heard, I suppose, of the revolution in the French Court; Madame de Mailly is disgraced, and her handsome sister De la Tournelle(730) succeeds: the latter insisted on three conditions; first, that the Mailly should quit the palace before she entered it; next, that she should be declared mistress, to which post, they pretend, there is a large salary annexed, (but that is not probable,) and lastly, that she may always have her own parties at supper: the last article would very well explain what she proposes to do with her salary.
There are admirable instructions come up from Worcester to Sandys and Winnington; they tell the latter how little hopes they always had of him. “But for you, Mr. Sandys, who have always, etc., you to snatch at the first place you could get,” etc. In short, they charge him, who is in the Treasury and Exchequer not to vote for any supplies.(731)
I write to you in a vast hurry, for I am going to the meeting at the Cockpit, to hear the King’s speech read to the members: Mr. Pelham presides there. They talk of a majority of fourscore: we shall see to-morrow.
The Pomfrets stay in the country most part of the winter-. Lord Lincoln and Mr. (George) Pitt have declared off in form.(732) So much for the schemes of my lady! The Duke of Grafton used to say that they put him in mind of a troop of Italian comedians; Lord Lincoln was Valere, Lady Sophia, Columbine, and my lady the old mother behind the scenes.
Our operas go on au plus miserable: all our hopes lie in a new dancer, Sodi, who has performed but once, but seems to please as much as the Fausan. Did I tell you how well they had chosen the plot of the first opera? There was a prince who rebels against his father, who had before rebelled against his.(733) The Duke of Montagu says, there is to be an opera of dancing, with singing between the acts.
My Lord Tyrawley(734) is come from Portugal, and has brought three wives and fourteen children; one of the former is a Portuguese, with long black hair plaited down to the bottom of her back. He was asked the other night at supper, what he thought of England; whether he found much alteration from fifteen years ago? “No,” he said, “not at all: why, there is my Lord Bath, I don’t see the least alteration in him; he is just what he was: and then I found Lord Grantham (735) walking on tiptoe, as if he was still afraid of waking the Queen.”
Hanbury Williams is very ill at Bath, and his wife in the same way in private lodgings in the city. Mr. Doddington has at last owned his match with his old mistress.(736) I suppose he wants a new one.
I commend your prudence about Leghorn; but, my dear child, what pain I am in about you! Is it possible to be easy while the Spaniards are at your gates! write me word every minute as your apprehensions vanish or increase. I ask every moment what people think; but how can they tell here? You say nothing of Mr. Chute, sure he is with You Still! When I am in such uneasiness about you, I want you every post to mention your friends being with you: I am sure you have none so good or sensible as he is. I am vastly obliged to you for the thought of the book of shells, and shall like -it much; and thank you too about my Scagliola table; but I am distressed about your expenses. Is there any way one could get your allowance increased? You know how low my interest is now; but you know too what a push I would make to be of any service to you-tell me,, and adieu!
(730) Afterwards created Duchess of Chateauroux. (Mary Anne (le Mailly, widow of the Marquis de la Tournelle. She succeeded her sister Madame de Mailly, as mistress of Louis XV., as the latter had succeeded the other sister, Madame de Vintimille, in the same situation. Madame de Chateauroux was sent away from the court during the illness of Louis at Metz; but on his recovery he recalled her. Shortly after which she died, December 10, 1744, and on her deathbed accused M. de Maurepas, the minister, of having poisoned her. The intrigue, by means of which she supplanted her sister, was conducted principally by the Marshal de Richelieu.-D.
(731) “We earnestly entreat, insist, and require, that you will postpone the supplies until you have renewed the secret committee of inquiry."-E.
(732) An admirer of Lady Sophia Fermor.-D.
(733) This was a pasticcio, called “Mandane,” another name for Metastasio’s drama of “Artaserse."-E.
(734) Lord Tyrawley was many years ambassador at Lisbon. Pope has mentioned his and another ambassador’s seraglios in one of his imitations of Horace, “Kinnoul’s lewd cargo, or Tyrawley’s crew.” [James O’Hara, second and last Lord Tyrawley of that family, He died in 1773, at the age of eighty-five.]
(735) Henry Nassau d’Auverquerque, second Earl of Grantham. He had been chamberlain to Queen Caroline. He died in 1754, when his titles became extinct.-E.
(736) Mrs. Beghan.
298 Letter 90
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Dec. 2, 1742.,
You will wonder that it is above a fortnight Since I wrote to you; but I have had an inflammation in one of my eyes, and durst not meddle with a pen. I have had two letters from you of Nov. 6th and 13th, but I am in the utmost impatience for another, to hear you are quite recovered of your Trinculos and FuribOndos. You tell me you was in a fever; I cannot be easy till I hear from you again. I hope this will come much too late for a medicine, but it will always serve for sal volatile to give you spirits. Yesterday was appointed for considering
De reste, the town is wondrous dull; operas unfrequented, plays not in fashion, amours as old as marriages-in short, nothing but whist! I have not yet learned to play, but I find that I wait in vain for its being left off.
I agree with you about not sending home the Dominichin in an English vessel; but what I mentioned to you of its coming in a Dutch vessel, if you find an opportunity, I think will be very safe, if you approve it; but manage that as you like. I shall hope for my statue at the same time; but till the conveyance is absolutely safe, I know you will not venture them. Now I mention my statue, I must beg you will send me a full bill of all my debts to you, which I am sure by this time must be infinite; I beg to know the particulars, that I may pay your brother. Adieu, my dear Sir; take care of yourself, and submit to popery and slavery rather than get colds with sea-heroes.(740)
(737) Samuel Sandys, chancellor of the Exchequer, in the room of Sir R. Walpole.
(738) Lord Cobham’s nephews and cousins.-D.
(739) This alludes to the supposed Jacobite principles of Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield.-D.
(740) Sir H. Mann had complained, in one of his letters, of the labours he had gone through in doing the honours of Florence to some of Admiral Matthews’s (il Furibondo) officers. The English fleet was now at Leghorn, upon the plea of defending the Tuscan territories, in case of their being attacked by the Spaniards.-D.
299 Letter 91 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Dec. 9, 1742.
I shall have quite a partiality for the post of Holland; it brought me two letters last week, and two more yesterday, of November 20th and 27th; but I find you have your perpetual headaches-how can you say that you shall tire me with talking Of them? you may make me suffer by your pains, but I will hear and insist upon your always telling me of your health. Do you think I only correspond with you to know the posture of the Spaniards or the `epuisements of the Princess! I am anxious, too, to know how poor Mr. Whithed does, and Mr. Chute’s gout. I shall look upon our sea captains with as much horror as the King of Naples can, if they bring gouts, fits, and headaches. You will have had a letter from me by this time, to give up sending the Dominichin by a man-of-war, and to propose its coming in a Dutch ship. I believe that will be safe.
We have had another great day in the House on the army in Flanders, which the Opposition were for disbanding; but we carried ’it by a hundred and twenty.(741) Murray spoke for the first time, with the greatest applause; Pitt answered him with all his force and art of language, but on an ill-founded argument. In all appearances, they will be great rivals. Shippen was in great rage at Murray’s apostacy;(742) if any thing can really change his principles, possibly this competition may. To-morrow we shall have a tougher battle on the sixteen thousand Hanoverians. Hanover is the word given out for this winter: there is a most bold pamphlet come out, said to be Lord Marchmont’s,(743) which affirms that in every treaty made since the accession of this family, England has been sacrificed to the interest of Hanover, and consequently insinuates the incompatibility of the two. Lord Chesterfield says, “that if we have a mind effectually to prevent the Pretender from ever obtaining this crown, we should make him Elector of Hanover, for the people of England will never fetch another king from thence.” Adieu! my dear child. I am sensible that I write you short letters, but I write you all I know. I don’t know how it is, but the wonderful seems worn out. In this our day, we have no rabbit women-no elopements-no epic poems,(744) finer than Milton’s-no contest about harlequins and Polly Peachems. Jansen (745) has won no more estates, and the Duchess of Queensberry is grown as tame as her neighbours. Whist has spread an universal opium over the whole nation; it makes courtiers and patriots sit down to the same pack of cards. The only thing extraordinary, and which yet did not seem to surprise any body, was the Barberina’s(746) being attacked by four men masqued, the other night, as she came out of the opera house, who would have forced her away, but she screamed, and the guard came. Nobody knows who set them on, and I believe nobody inquired.
The Austrians in Flanders have separated from our troops a little out of humour, because it was impracticable for them to march without any preparatory provisions for their reception. They will probably march in two months, if no peace prevents it. Adieu!
(741) Upon a motion, made by Sir William Yonge, that 534,763 pounds be granted for defraying the charge of 16,259 men, to be employed in Flanders. The numbers on the division were 280 against 160.-E.
(742) From Toryism.-D.
(743) Hugh Hume, third Earl of Marchmont.
(744) This alludes to the extravagant encomiums bestowed on Glover’s Leonidas by the young patriots.
(745) H. Jansen, a celebrated gamester, who cheated the late Duke of Bedford of an immense sum: Pope hints at that affair in this line, “Or when a duke to Jansen punts at White’s.”
(746) A famous dancer.
301 Letter 92
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Dec. 23, 1742.
I have had no letter from you this fortnight, and I have heard nothing this month: judge now how fit I am to write. I hope it is not another mark of growing old; but, I do assure you, my writing begins to leave me. Don’t be frightened! I don’t mean this as an introduction towards having done with you-I will write to you to the very stump of my pen, and as Pope says,
“Squeeze out the last dull droppings of my sense.”
But I declare, it is hard to sit spinning out one’s brains by the fireside, without having heard the least thing to set one’s hand a-going. I am so put to it for something to say, that I would make a memorandum of the most improbable lie that could be invented by a viscountess-dowager; as the old Duchess of Rutland (747) does when she is told of some strange casualty, “Lucy, child, step into the next room and set that down."-"Lord, Madam!” says Lady Lucy,(748) “it can’t be true!"-"Oh, no matter, child; it will do for news into the country next post.” But do you conceive that the kingdom of the Dull is come upon earth-not with the forerunners and prognostics of other to-come kingdoms? No, no; the sun and the moon go on just as they used to do, without giving us any hints: we see no knights come prancing upon pale horses, or red horses; no stars, called wormwood, fall into the Thames, and turn a third part into wormwood; no locusts, like horses, with their hair as the hair of women-in short, no thousand things, each of which destroys a third part of mankind: the only token of this new kingdom is a woman riding on a beast, which is the mother of abominations, and the name in the forehead is whist: and the four-and-twenty elders, and the woman, and the whole town, do nothing but play with this beast. Scandal itself is dead, or confined to a pack of cards; for the only malicious whisper I have heard this fortnight, is of an intrigue between the Queen of hearts and the Knave of clubs. Y our friend Lady Sandwich (749) has got a son; if one may believe the belly she wore, it is a brave one. Lord Holderness(750) has lately given a magnificent repast to fifteen persons; there were three courses of ten, fifteen, and fifteen, and a sumptuous dessert: a great saloon illuminated, odours, and violins-and,
I have been in a round of dinners with Lord Stafford, and Bussy the French minister, who tells one stories of Capuchins, confessions, Henri Quatre, Louis XIV., Gascons, and the string which all Frenchmen go through, without any connexion or relation to the discourse. These very stories, which I have already heard four times, are only interrupted by English puns, which old Churchill translates out of jest-books into the mouth of my Lord Chesterfield, and into most execrable French.
Adieu! I have scribbled, and blotted, and made nothing out, and, in short, have nothing to say, so good night!
(747) Lady Lucinda Sherard, widow of John Manners, second Duke of Rutland. She died in 1751.-E.
(748) Lady Lucy Manners, married, in 1742, to William, second Duke of Montrose. She died in 1788.-E.
(749) Judith, sister of Lord Viscount Fane, wife of John Montagu, fifth Earl of Sandwich.-E.
(750) Robert d’Arcy, fourth Earl of Holderness; subsequently made secretary of State. Upon his death his earldom extinguished, and what remained of his estate, as well as the Barony of Conyers, descended to his only daughter, who was married to Francis Osborne, fifth Duke of Leeds, in 1773.-D. [From whom she was divorced in 1779. She afterwards married Captain John Byron, son of Admiral Byron, and father of the great poet.]
302 Letter 93 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Jan. 6, 1743.
You will wonder that you have not heard from me, but I have been too ill to write. I have been confined these ten days with a most violent cough, and they suspected an inflammation on my lungs; but I am come off with the loss of my eyes and my voice, both of which I am recovering, and would write to you to-day. I have received your long letter of December 11th, and return you a thousand thanks for giving up so much of your time; I wish I could make as long a letter for you, but we arc in a neutrality of news. The Elector Palatine (751) is dead; but I have not heard what alterations that will make. Lord Wilmington’s death, which is reckoned hard upon, is likely to make more conversation here. He is going to Bath, but that is only to pass away the time until be dies.
The great Vernon is landed, but we have not been alarmed with any bonfires or illuminations; he has outlived all his popularity. There is nothing new but the separation of a Mr. and Mrs. French, whom it is impossible you should know. She has been fashionable these two winters; her husband has commenced a suit in Doctors’ Commons against her cat, and will, they say, recover considerable damages: but the lawyers are of opinion, that the kittens must inherit Mr. French’s estate, as they were born in lawful wedlock.
The parliament meets again on Monday, but I don’t hear of any fatigue that we are likely to have; in a little time, I suppose, we shall hear what campaigning we are to make.
I must tell you of an admirable reply of your acquaintance the Duchess of Queensberry:(752) old Lady Granville, Lord Carteret’s mother, whom they call the Queen-Mother, from taking upon her to do the honours of her son’s power, was pressing the duchess to ask her for some place for herself or friends, and assured her that she would procure it, be it what it would. Could she have picked out a fitter person to be gracious to? The duchess made her a most grave curtsey, and said, “Indeed, there was one thing she had set her heart on."-"Dear child, how you oblige me by asking, any thing! What is it? tell me.” “Only that you would speak to my Lord Carteret to get me made lady of the bedchamber to the Queen of Hungary.”
I come now to your letter, and am not at all pleased to find that the Princess absolutely intends to murder you with her cold rooms. I wish you could come on those cold nights and sit by my fireside; I have the prettiest warm little apartment, with all my baubles, and Patapans, and cats! Patapan and I go to-morrow to New Park, to my lord, for the air, and come back with him on Monday.
What an infamous story that affair of Nomis is! and how different the ideas of honour among officers in your world and ours! Your history of cicisbeosm is more entertaining: I figure the distress of a parcel of lovers who have so many things to dread-the government in this world! purgatory in the next! inquisitions, villeggiaturas, convents, etc.
Lord Essex is extremely bad, and has not strength enough to go through the remedies that are necessary to his recovery. He now fancies that he does not exist, will not be persuaded to walk or talk, because, as he sometimes says, “How should he do any thing? he is not.” You say, “How came I not to see Duc d’Aremberg?” I did once at the opera; but he went away soon after: and here it is not the way to visit foreigners, unless you are of the Court, or are particularly in a way of having them at your house: consequently Sir R. never saw him either-we are not of the Court! Next, as to Arlington Street: Sir R. is in a middling kind of house, which has long been his, and was let; he has taken a small one next to it for me, and they are laid together.
I come now to speak to you of the affair of the Duke of Newcastle; but absolutely, on considering it much myself, and on talking of it with your brother, we both are against your attempting any such thing. In the first place, I never heard a suspicion of the duke’s taking presents, and should think he would rather be affronted: in the next place, my dear child, though you are fond of that coffee-pot, it would be thought nothing among such wardrobes as he has, of the finest wrought plate: why, he has- a set of gold plates that would make a figure on any sideboard in the Arabian Tales;(753) and as to Benvenuto cellini, if the duke could take it for his, people in England understand all work too well to be deceived. Lastly, as there has been no talk of alterations in the foreign ministers, and as all changes seem at an end, why should you be apprehensive? As to Stone,(754) if any thing was done, to be sure it should be to him though I really can’t advise even that. These are my sentiments sincerely: by no means think of the duke. Adieu!
(751) Charles Philip of Neubourg, , Elector Palatine. He died December 31, 1742. He was succeeded by Charles Theodore, Prince of Sulzbach, descended from a younger branch of the house of Neubourg, and who, in his old age, became Elector of Bavaria.-D.
(752) Catherine Hyde, daughter of the Earl of Clarendon, and wife of Charles Douglas, Duke of Queensberry; a famous beauty, celebrated by Prior in that pretty poem which begins, “Kitty, beautiful and young,” and often mentioned in Swift and Pope’s letters, She was forbid the Court for promoting subscriptions to the second part of the Beggar’s Opera, when it had been prohibited from being acted. She and the duke erected the monument to Gay in Westminster Abbey. [And to which Pope supplied the epitaph, “the first eight lines of which,” says Dr. Johnson, “have no grammar; the adjectives without substantives, and the epithets without a subject.” The duchess died in 1777, and her husband in the year following.]
(753) Walpole, in his Memoires, says that the duke’s houses, gardens, table, and equipages swallowed immense treasures, and that the sums he owed were only exceeded by those he wasted. He employed several physicians, without having had apparently much need of them. His gold plate appears to have been almost as dear to him as his health; for he usually kept it in pawn, except when he wished to display it on great occasions.
(754) Andrew Stone, at this time private secretary to the Duke of Newcastle. he subsequently filled the offices of under-secretary of state, sub-governor to Prince George, keeper of the state-paper office, and, on the marriage of George the third, treasurer to the Queen. he died in 1773.-E.
304 Letter 94 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Jan. 13, 1743,
Your brother brought me two letters together this morning, and at the same time showed me yours to your father. How should I be ashamed, were I he, to receive such a letter! so dutiful, so humble, and yet so expressive of the straits to which he has let you be reduced! My dear child, it looks too much like the son of a minister, when I am no longer so; but I can’t help repeating to you offers of any kind of service that you think I can do for you any way.
I am quite happy at your thinking Tuscany so secure from Spain, unless the wise head of Richcourt works against the season; but how can I ever be easy while a provincial Frenchman, Something half French, half German, instigated by a mad Englishwoman is to govern an Italian dominion?
I laughed much at the magnificent presents made by one of the first families in Florence to their young accouch`ee. Do but think if a Duke or Duchess of Somerset were to give a Lady Hertford fifty pounds and twenty yards of velvet for bringing an heir to the blood of Seymour!
It grieves me that my letters drop in so slowly to you: I have never missed writing, but when I have been absolutely too much out of order, or once or twice when I had no earthly thing to tell you. This winter is so quiet, that one must inquire much to know any thing. The parliament is met again, but we do not hear of any intended opposition to any thing. the tories have dropped the affair of the Hanoverians in the House of Lords, in compliment to Lord Gower. there is a second pamphlet on that subject which makes a great noise.(755) The ministry are much distressed on the ways and means for raising the money for this year: there is to be a lottery, but that will not supply a quarter of what they want. They have talked of a new duty on tea, to be paid by every housekeeper for all the persons in their families; but it will scarce be proposed. Tea is so universal, that it would make a greater clamour than a duty on wine. Nothing is determined; the new folks do not shine at expedients. Sir Robert’s health is now drunk at all the clubs in the city; there they are for having him made a duke, and placed again at the head of the Treasury; but I believe nothing could prevail on him to return thither. He says he will keep the 12th of February,.-the day he resigned, with his family as long as he lives. They talk of Sandys being raised to the peerage, by way of getting rid of him; he is so dull they can scarce draw him on.(756)
The English troops in Flanders march to-day, whither we don’t know, but “probably to Liege: from whence they imagine the Hanoverians are going into Juliers and Bergue.(757) The ministry have been greatly alarmed with the King of Sardinia’s retreat, and suspected that it was a total one from the Queen’s interest; but it seems he sent for Villettes and the Hungarian minister, and had their previous approbations of his deserting Chamberry, etc.
Vernon is not yet got to town, we are impatient for what will follow the arrival of this mad hero. Wentworth will certainly challenge him, but Vernon does not profess personal valour: he was once knocked down by a merchant, who then offered him satisfaction-but he was satisfied.
Lord Essex’ is dead:(758) Lord Lincoln will have the bedchamber; Lord Berkeley of Stratton(759) (a disciple of Carteret’s) the Pensioners; and Lord Carteret himself probably the riband.
As to my Lady Walpole’s dormant title,(760) it was in her family; but being in the King’s power to give to which sister in equal claim he pleased, it was bestowed on Lord Clinton, who descended from the younger sister of Lady W.’s grandmother, or great grand-something. My Lady Clifford,(761) Coke’s mother, got her barony so, in preference to Lady Salisbury and Lady Sondes, her elder sisters, who had already titles for their children. It is called a title in abeyance.
Sir Robert has just bid me tell you to send the Dominichin by the first safe conveyance to Matthews, who has had orders from Lord Winchilsea (762) to send it by the first man-of-war to England; or if you meet with a ship going to Port Mahon, then you must send it thither to Anstruther, and write to him that Lord Orford desires that he will take care of it, and send it by the first ship that comes directly home. He is so impatient for it, that he will have it thus; but I own I should not like to have my things tumbled out of one ship into another, and beg mine may stay till they can come at once. Adieu!
(755) Entitled “The Case of the Hanover Forces in the Pay of Great Britain examined.” It was written by Lord Chesterfield, and excited much attention.-E.
(756) In December he was created a peer, by the title of Lord Sandys, Baron of Ombersley, and made cofferer of the household.-E.
(757) The British troops began their march from Flanders at the end of February, under the command of the Earl of Stair; but were so tardy in their movements, that it was the middle of May before they crossed the Rhine and fixed their station at Hochst, between Mayence and Frankfort.-E.
(758) William Capel, third Earl of Essex. [A lord of the bedchamber, knight of the garter, and captain of the yeomen of the guard.)
(759) John, fifth and last Lord Berkeley of Stratton. He died in 1773.-D.
(760) The barony of Clinton in fee descended to the daughters of Theophilus, Earl of Huntingdon, who died without male issue. One of those ladies died without children, by which means the title lay between the families of Rolle and Fortescue. King George I. gave it to Hugh Fortescue, afterwards Created an earl; on whose death it descended to his only sister, a maiden lady, after whom, without issue, it devolved on Lady Orford.
(761) Lady Margaret Tufton, third daughter of Thomas, sixth Earl of Thanet. the barony of De Clifford had descended to Lord Thanet, from his mother, Lady Margaret Sackville, daughter of Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery. Upon Lord Thanet’s death, the barony of De Clifford fell into abeyance between his five daughters. These were Lady Catherine, married to Edward Watson, Viscount Sondus; Lady Anne, married to James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury; Lady Margaret, before mentioned; Lady Mary, married first to Anthony Grey, Earl of Harold, and secondly to John Earl Gower; and Lady Isabella, married to Lord Nassau Powlett.-D.
(762) First lord of the admiralty.-]).
306 Letter 95
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Jan. 27, 1743.
I could not write you last Thursday, I was so much out of order with a cold; your brother came and found me in bed. TO-night, that I can write, I have nothing to tell you; except that yesterday the welcome news (to the ministry) came of the accession of the Dutch to the King’s measures. They are in great triumph; but till it Is clear what part his Prussian Uprightness is acting, other people take the liberty to be still in suspense. So they are about all our domestic matters too. It is a general stare! the alteration that must soon happen in the Treasury will put some end to the uncertainties of this winter. Mr. Pelham is universally named to the head of it; but Messrs. Prince,(263) Carteret, Pultney, and Companies must be a little considered. how they will like it: the latter the least.
You will wonder, perhaps be peevish, when I protest I have not another paragraph by me in the world. I want even common conversation; for I cannot persist, like the royal family, in asking people the same questions, “Do you love walking?” “Do you love music’!” “Was you at the opera?” “When do you go into the country!” I have nothing else to say: nothing happens; scarce the common episodes of a newspaper, of a man falling off a ladder and breaking his leg; or of a countryman cheated out of his leather pouch, with fifty shillings in it. We are in such a state of sameness, that I shall begin to wonder at the change of seasons, and talk of the spring as a strange accident. Lord Tyrawley, who has been fifteen years in Portugal, is of my opinion; he says he finds nothing but a fog, whist, and the House of Commons.
In this lamentable state, when I know not what to write even to you, what can I do about my serene Princess Grifoni? Alas! I owe her two letters, and where to find a beau sentiment, I cannot tell! I believe I may have some by me in an old chest of draws, with some exploded red-heel shoes and full-bottom wigs; but they would come out so yellow and moth-eaten! Do bow to her, in every superlative degree in the language, that my eyes have been so bad, that as I wrote you word, over and over, I have not been able to write a line. That will move her, when she hears what melancholy descriptions I write, of my not being able to write-nay, indeed it will not be so ridiculous as you think; for it is ten times worse for the eyes to write in a language one don’t much practise! I remember a tutor at Cambridge, who had been examining some lads in Latin, but in a little while excused himself, and said he must speak English, for his mouth was very sore.
I had a letter from you yesterday of January 7th, N. S. which has wonderfully excited my compassion for the necessities of the princely family,(764) and the shifts the old Lady’ is put to for quadrille.(765)
I triumph much on my penetration about the honest Rucellai(766)-we little people, who have no honesty, virtue, nor shame, do so exult when a good neighbour, who was a pattern, turns out as bad as oneself! We are like the good woman in the Gospel, who chuckled so much on finding her lost bit; we have more joy on a saint’s fall, than in ninety-nine devils, who were always de nous autres! I am a little pleased too, that Marquis BagneSi’(767) whom you know I always liked much, has behaved so well; and am more pleased to hear what a Beffana(768) the Electress(769) is-Pho! here am I sending you back your own paragraphs, cut and turned! it is so silly to think that you won’t know them again! I will not spin myself any longer; it is better to make a short letter. I am going to the masquerade, and will fancy myself in via della Pergola.(770) Adieu! “Do you know me?"-"That man there with you, in the black domino, is Mr. Chute.,, Good night!
(763) Frederick, Prince of Wales.-D.
(764) Prince and Princess Craon.
(765) Madame Sarasin.
(766) Sir H. Mann says, in his letter of January 7, 1743, 11 I must be so just as to tell you, @my friend, the Senator Rucellai, is, as you always thought, a sad fellow. He has quite abandoned me for fear of offending."-D.
(767) “Apropos of duels, two of our young nobles, Marquis BagneSi and Strozzi, have fought about a debt of’ fifteen shillings; the latter, the creditor and the occasion of the fight, behaved ill."-Letter from Sir H. Mann, dated Jan. 7, 1743.-D.
(768) A Beffana was a puppet, which was carried about the town on the evening of the Epiphany. The word is derived from Epifania. It also means an ugly woman. The Electress happened to go out for the first time after an illness on the Epiphany, and said in joke to Prince Craon, that the “Beffane all went abroad on that day."-D.
(769) The Electress Palatine Dowager, the last of the House of Medici.
(770) A street at Florence, in which the Opera house stands.
308 Letter 96 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Feb. 2, 1743.
Last night at the Duchess of Richmond’s I saw Madame Goldsworthy: what a pert, little, unbred thing it is! The duchess presented us to one another; but I cannot say that either of us stepped a foot beyond the first civilities. The good duchess was for harbouring her and all her brood: how it happened to her I don’t conceive, but the thing had decency enough to refuse it. She is going to live with her father at Plymouth-tant mieux!
The day before yesterday the lords had a great day: Earl Stanhope(771) moved for an address to his Britannic Majesty, in consideration of the heavy wars, taxes, etc. far exceeding all that ever were known, to exonerate his people of foreign troops, Hanoverians,) which are so expensive, and can In no light answer the ends for which they were hired. Lord Sandwich seconded: extremely well, I hear, for I was not there. Lord Carteret answered, but was under great concern. Lord Bath spoke too, and would fain have persuaded that this measure was not Solely Of one minister, but that himself and all the council were equally concerned in it. The late Privy Seal(772) Spoke for an hour and a half, with the greatest applause, against the Hanoverians: and my Lord Chancellor extremely well for them. The division was, 90 for the Court, 35 against it The present Privy Seal(773) voted with the Opposition: so there will soon be another. Lord Halifax, the Prince’s new Lord, was with the minority too; the other, Lord Darnley,(774) with the Court. After the division, Lord Scarborough, his Royal Highness’s Treasurer, moved an address of approbation of the measure, which was carried by 78 to the former 35. Lord Orford was ill, and could not be there, but sent his proxy: he has got a great cold and slow fever, but does not keep his room. If Lord Gower loses the Privy Seal, (as it is taken for granted he does not design to keep it,) and Lord Bath refuses it, Lord Cholmondeley stands the fairest for it.
I will conclude abruptly, for you will be tired of my telling you that I have nothing to tell you-but so it is literally-oh! yes, you will want to know what the Duke of Argyle did-he was not there; he is every thing but superannuated. Adieu!
(771) Philip, second Earl Stanhope, born in 1714. He succeeded his father when he was only seven years old, and died in 1786. His character is thus sketched by his great-grandson, Viscount Mahon, in his History of England, vol. iii. p. 242.-"He had great talents, but fitter for speculation than for practical objects of action. He made himself one of the best-Lalande used to say the best-mathematicians in England of his day, and was likewise deeply skilled in other branches of science and philosophy. The Greek language was as familiar to him as the English; he was said to know every line of Homer by heart. In public life, on the contrary, he was shy, ungainly, and embarrassed. From his first onset in Parliament, he took part with vehemence against the administration of Sir Robert Walpole.” Bishop Secker says, that Lord Stanhope “spoke a precomposed speech, which he held in his hand, with great tremblings and agitations, and hesitated frequently in the midst of great vehemence."-E.
(772) Lord Hervey.
(773) Lord Gower.
(774) Edward Bligh, second Earl of Darnley, in Ireland, and Lord of the Bedchamber to Frederic Prince of Wales.-D.
309 Letter 97
To Sir Horace Mann.
Feb. 13, 1743.
Ceretesi tells me that Madame Galli is dead: I have had two letters from you this week; but the last mentions only the death of old Strozzi. I am quite sorry for Madame Galli, because I proposed seeing her again, on my return to Florence, which I have firmly in my intention: I hope it will be a little before Ceretesi’s, for he seems to be planted here. I don’t conceive who -waters him! Here are two noble Venetians that have carried him about lately to Oxford and Blenheim: I am literally waiting for him now, to introduce him to Lady Brown’s sunday night; it is the great mart for all travelling and travelled calves-pho! here he is.
Monday morning.-Here is your brother: he tells me you never hear from me; how can that be? I receive yours, and you generally mention having got one of mine, though long after the time you should. I never miss above one post, and that but very seldom. I am longer receiving yours, though you have never missed; but then-I frequently receive two at once. I am delighted with Goldsworthy’s mystery about King Theodore! If you will promise me not to tell him, I will tell you@a secret, which is, that if that person is not King Theodore, I assure you it is not Sir Robert Walpole.
I have nothing to tell you but that Lord Effingham Howard(775) is dead, and Lord Litchfield(776) at the point of death; he was struck with a palsy last Thursday. Adieu!
(775) Francis, first Earl of Effingham, and seventh Lord Howard of Effingham. He died February 12, 1743.-D.
(776) George Henry Lee, second Earl of Lichfield. He died February 15, 1743.-D.
309 Letter 98 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Feb. 24, 1743.
I write to you in the greatest hurry in the world, but write I will. Besides, I must wish you joy; you are warriors; nay, conquerors;(777) two things quite novel in this war, for hitherto it has been armies without fighting, and deaths without killing. We talk of this battle as of a comet; “Have you heard of the battle?” it Is so strange a thing, that numbers imagine you may go (ind see it at Charing Cross. Indeed, our officers, who are going to Flanders, don’t quite like it; they are afraid it should grow the fashion to fight, and that a pair of colours should be no longer a sinecure. I am quite unhappy about poor Mr. Chute: besides, it is cruel to find that abstinence is not a drug. If mortification ever ceases to be a medicine, or virtue to be a passport to carnivals in the other world, who will be a self-tormentor any longer-not, my child, that I am one; but, tell me, is he quite recovered?
I thank you for King Theodore’s declaration,(778) and wish Him success with all my soul. I hate the Genoese; they make a commonwealth the most devilish of all tyrannies!
We have every now and then motions for disbanding Hessians and Hanoverians, alias mercenaries; but they come to nothing. To-day the party have declared that they have done for this session; so you will hear little more but of fine equipages for Flanders: our troops are actually marched, and the officers begin to follow them-1 hopes they know whither! You know in the last war in Spain, Lord Peterborough rode galloping about to inquire for his army.
But to come to more real contests; Handel has set up an oratorio against the opera @ind succeeds. He has hired all the goddesses from farces and the singers of Roast Beef(779) from between the acts at both theatres, with a man with one note in his voice, and a girl without ever an one; and so they sing, and make brave hallelujahs; and the good company encore the recitative, if it happens to have any cadence like what they call a tune. I was much diverted the other night at the opera; two gentlewoman sat before my sister, and not knowing her, discoursed at their ease. Says one, “Lord! how fine Mr. W. is!” “Yes,” replied the other, with a tone of saying sentences, “some men love to be particularly so, your petit-maitres-but they are not always the brightest of their sex.’@-Do thank me for this period! I am sure you will enjoy it as much as we did.
I shall be very glad of my things, and approve entirely of your precautions; Sir R. will be quite happy, for there is no telling YOU how impatient he is for his Dominichin. Adieu!
(777) This alludes to an engagement, which took place on the 8th of February, near Bologna, between the Spaniards under M. de Gages, and the Austrians under General Traun, in which the latter were successful.-D.
(778) With regard to Corsica, of which he had declared himself King. By this declaration, which was dated January 30, Theodore recalled, under pain of confiscation of their estates, all the Corsicans in foreign service, except that of the Queen of Hungary, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany.-E.
(779) It was customary at this time for the galleries to call for a ballad called “The Roast Beef of Old England,” between the acts, or before or after the play.
310 Letter 99 To Sir Horace Mann. March 3d, 1743.
So, she is dead at last, the old Electress!(780)-well, I have nothing more to say about her and the Medici; they had outlived all their acquaintance: indeed, her death makes the battle very considerable -makes us call a victory what before we did not look upon as very decided laurels.
Lord Hervey has entertained the town with another piece of wisdom: on Sunday it was declared that he had married his eldest daughter the night before to a Mr. Phipps,(781) grandson of the Duchess of Buckingham. They sent for the boy but the day before from Oxford, and bedded them at a day’s notice. But after all this mystery, it does not turn out that there is any thing great in this match, but the greatness of the secret. Poor Hervey,(782) the brother, is in fear and trembling, for he apprehends being ravished to bed to some fortune or other with as little ceremony. The Oratorios thrive abundantly-for my part, they give me an idea of heaven, where every body is to sing whether they have voices or not.
The Board (the Jacobite Club) have chosen his Majesty’s Lord Privy Seal(783) for their President, in the room of Lord Litchfield. Don’t you like the harmony of parties? We expect the parliament will rise this month: I shall be sorry, for if I am not hurried out of town, at least every body else will-and who can look forward from April to November? Adieu! though I write in defiance of having nothing to say, yet you see I can’t go a great way in this obstinacy; but you will bear a short letter rather than none.
(780) Anna Maria of Medicis, daughter of Cosmo III. widow of John William, Elector Palatine. After her husband’s death she returned to Florence, where she died, Feb @ 7 1743, aged seventy-five, being the last of that family.
(781) Constantine Phipps, in 1767, created Lord Mulgrave in Ireland. He married, on the 26th of February, Lepel, eldest daughter of Lord Hervey, and died in 1775. Her ladyship was found dead in her bed, 9th March, 1780, at her son’s house in the Admiralty.-E.
(782) George William Hervey, afterwards second Earl of Bristol. He died unmarried, in 1775.-E.
(783) Lord Gower.
311 Letter 100
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, March 14, 1743.
I don’t at all know how to advise you about mourning; I always think that the custom of a country, and what other foreign ministers do, should be your rule. But I had a private scruple rose with me: that was, whether you should show so much respect to the late woman (784) as other ministers do, since she left that legacy to Quella a Roma.(785) I mentioned this to my lord, but he thinks that the tender manner of her wording it, takes off that exception; however, he thinks it better that you should write for advice to your commanding officer. That will be very late, and you will probably have determined before. You see what a casuist I am in ceremony; I leave the question more perplexed than I found it.
Pray, Sir, congratulate me upon the new acquisition of glory to my family! We have long been eminent statesmen; now that we are out of employment we have betaken ourselves to war-and we have made great proficiency in a short season. We don’t run, like my Lord Stair, into Berg and Juliers, to seek battles where we are sure of not finding them-we make shorter marches; a step across the Court of Requests brings us to engagement. But not to detain you any longer with flourishes, which will probably be inserted in my uncle Horace’s patent when he is made a field-marshal; you must know that he has fought a duel, and has scratched a scratch three inches long on the side of his enemy-lo Paon! The circumstances of this memorable engagement were, in short, that on some witness being to be examined the other day in the House upon remittances to the army, my uncle said, He hoped they would indemnify him, if he told any thing that affected himself.” Soon after he was standing behind the Speaker’s chair, and Will. Chetwynd,(786) an intimate of Bolingbroke, came up to him, What, Mr. Walpole, are you for rubbing up old sores?” He replied, “I think I said very little, considering that you and your friends would last year have hanged up me and my brother at the lobby-door without a trial.” Chetwynd answered, I would still have you both have your deserts.” The other said, If you and I had, probably I should be here and you would be somewhere else.” This drew more words, and Chetwynd took him by the arm and led him out.
I have no news to tell you, but that we hear King Theodore has sent over proposals of his person and crown to Lady Lucy Stanhope,(788) with whom he fell in love the last time he was in England.
Princess Buckingham(789) is dead or dying: she has sent for Mr. Anstis, and settled the ceremonial of her burial. On Saturday she was so ill that she feared dying before all the pomp was come home: she said, “Why won’t they send the canopy for me to see? let them send it, though all the tassels are not finished.” But yesterday was the greatest stroke of all! She made her ladies vow to her, that if she should lie senseless, they would not sit down in the room before she was dead. She has a great mind to be buried by her father at Paris. Mrs. Selwyn says, “She need not be carried out of England, and yet be buried by her father.” You know that Lady Dorchester always told her, that old Graham(790) was her father.
I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken about the statue; do draw upon me for it immediately, and for all my other debts to you: I am sure they must be numerous; pray don’t fail.
A thousand loves to the Chutes: a thousand compliments to the Princess; and a thousand-what? to the Grifona. Alas! what can one do? I have forgot all my Italian. Adieu!
(784) The Electress Palatine Dowager.
(785) She left a legacy to the Pretender, describing him only by these words, To Him at Rome.
(786) William Chetwynd, brother of the Lord Viscount Chetwynd. On the coalition he was made Master of the Mint.
(787) Coxe, in his Memoirs of Lord Walpole, gives the following account of this duel: “A motion being made in the House of Commons, which Mr. Walpole supported, he said to Mr. Chetwynd, ‘I hope we shall carry this question.’ Mr. Chetwynd replied, ‘I hope to see you hanged first!’ ’You see me hanged first!’ rejoined Mr. Walpole and instantly seized him by the nose. They went out and fought. The account being conveyed to Lord Orford, he sent his son to make inquiries; who, on coming into the House of Commons, found his uncle speaking with the same composure as if nothing had happened to ruffle his tamper or endanger his life. Mr. Chetwynd was wounded.” vol. ii. p. 68.-E.
(788) Sister of Philip, second Earl Stanhope.
(789) Catherine, Duchess of Buckingham, natural daughter of King James II. by the Countess of Dorchester. She was so proud of her birth, that she would never go to Versailles, because they would not give her the rank of Princess of the Blood. At Rome, whither she went two or three times to see her brother, and to carry on negotiations with him for his interest, she had a box at the Opera distinguished like those of crowned heads. She not only regulated the ceremony of her own burial, and dressed up the waxen figure of herself for Westminster Abbey, but had shown the same insensible pride on the death of her only son, dressing his figure, and sending messages to her friends, that if they had a mind to see him lie in state, she would carry them in conveniently by a back-door. She sent to the old Duchess of Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had carried the Duke’s body. Old Sarah, as mad and proud as herself, sent her word, “that it had carried my Lord Marlborough, and should never be profaned by any other corpse.” The Buckingham retorted that, “she had spoken to the undertaker, and he had engaged to make a finer for twenty pounds.” [See ant`e, p. 204.]
(790) Colonel Graham. When the Duchess was young, and as insolent as afterwards, her mother used to say, “You need not be so proud, for you are not the King’s but old Graham’s daughter.” It is certain, that his legitimate daughter, the Countess of Berkshire and Suffolk, was extremely like the Duchess, and that he often said with a sneer, “Well, well, kings are great men, they make free with whom they please! All I can say is, that I am sure the same man begot those two women.” The Duchess often went to weep over her father’s body at Paris: one of the monks seeing her tenderness, thought it a proper opportunity to make her observe how ragged the pall is that lies over the body, (which is kept unburied, to be some time or other interred in England,)-but she would not buy a new!
314 Letter 101 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, March 25, 1743.
Well! my dear Sir, the Genii, or whoever are to look after the seasons, seem to me to change turns, and to wait instead of one another, like lords of the bedchamber. We have had loads of sunshine all the winter; and within these ten days nothing but snows, north-east winds, and blue plagues. The last ships have brought over all your epidemic distempers: not a family in London has escaped under five or six ill: many people have been forced to hire new labourers. Guernier, the apothecary, took two new apothecaries, and yet could not drug all his patients. It is a cold and fever. I had one of the worst, and was blooded on Saturday and Sunday, but it is quite gone: my father was blooded last night: his is but slight. The physicians say that there has been nothing like it since the year Thirty-three, and then not so bad: in short, our army abroad would shudder to see what streams of blood have been let out! Nobody has died of it, but old Mr. Eyres, of Chelsea, through obstinacy of not bleeding; and his ancient Grace of York:(791) Wilcox of Rochester(792) succeeds him, who is fit for nothing in the world, but to die of this cold too.
They now talk of the King’s not going abroad: I like to talk on that side; because though it may not be true, one may at least be able to give some sort of reason why he should not. We go into mourning for your Electress on Sunday; I suppose they will tack the Elector of Mentz to her, for he is just dead. I delight in Richcourt’s calculation- I don’t doubt but it is the method he often uses in accounting with the Great Duke.
I have had two letters from you of the 5th and 12th, with a note of things coming by sea; but my dear child, you are either run Roman Catholicly devout, or take me to be so; for nothing but a religious fit of zeal could make you think of sending me so many presents. Why, there are Madonnas enough in one case to furnish a more than common cathedral-I absolutely will drive to Demetrius, the silversmith’s, and bespeak myself a pompous shrine! But indeed, seriously, how can I, who have a conscience, and am no saint, take all these things? You must either let me pay for them, or I will demand my unfortunate coffee-pot again, which has put you upon ruining yourself By the way, do let me have it again, for I cannot trust it any longer in your hands at this rate; and since I have found out its virtue, I will present it to somebody, whom I shall have no scruple of letting send me bales and cargoes, and ship-loads of Madonnas, perfumes, prints, frankincense, etc. You have not even drawn upon me for my statue, my hermaphrodite, my gallery, and twenty other things, for which I am lawfully your debtor.
I must tell you one thing, that I will not say a word to my lord of this Argosie, as Shakspeare calls his costly ships, till it is arrived, for he will tremble for his Dominichin, and think it will not come safe in all this company-by the way, will a captain of a man-of-war care to take all? We were talking over Italy last night- my lord protests, that if he thought he had strength, he would see Florence, Bologna, and Rome, by way of Marseilles, to Leghorn. You may imagine how I gave in to such a jaunt. I don’t set my heart upon it, because I think he cannot do it; but if he does, I promise you, you shall be his Cicerone. I delight in the gallantry of the Princess’s brother.(793) I will tell you what, if the Italians don’t take care, they will grow as brave and as wrongheaded as their neighbours. Oh! how shall I do about writing to her? Well, if I can, I will be bold, and write to her to-night.
I have no idea what the two minerals are that you mention, but I will inquire, and if there are such, you shall have them; and gold and silver, if they grow in this land; for I am sure I am deep enough in your debt. Adieu! .
P. S. It won’t do! I have tried to write, but you would bless yourself to see what stuff I have been forging for half an hour, and have not waded through three lines of paper. i have totally forgot my Italian, and if she will but have prudence enough to support the loss of a correspondence, which was long since worn threadbare, we will come to as decent a silence as may be.
(791) Doctor lancelot Blackburne. Walpole, in his Memoires, vol. i. p. 74, calls him “the jolly old archbishop, who had the manners of a man of quality, though he had been a buccaneer, and was a clergyman.” Noble, in his continuation of Granger, treats these aspersions as the effect of malice. “How is it possible!” he asks, ,that a buccaneer should be so great a scholar as Blackburne certainly was? he who had so perfect a knowledge of the classics, as to be able to read them with the same ease as he could Shakspeare, must have taken great pains to have acquired the learned languages, and have had both leisure and good masters.” He is allowed to have been a remarkably pleasant man; and it was said of him, that “he gained more hearts than souls."-E.
(792) He was not succeeded by Dr. Wilcox, but by Dr. Herring, who was elevated, in 1747, to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and died in 1757.-E.
(793) a Signor Capponi, brother of Madame Grifoni.
315 Letter 102
To Sir Horace Mann.
Monday, April 4, 1743.
I had my pen in my hand all last Thursday morning to write to you, but my pen had nothing to say. I would make it do something to-day though what will come of it, I don’t conceive.
They say, the King does not go abroad: we know nothing about our army. I suppose it is gone to blockade Egra, and to not take Prague, as it has been the fashion for every body to send their army to do these three years. The officers in parliament are not gone yet. We have nothing to do, but I believe the ministry have something for us to do, for we are continually adjourned, but not prorogued. They talk of marrying Princess Caroline and Louisa to the future Kings of Sweden and Denmark; but if the latter(794) is King of both, I don’t apprehend that he is to marry both the Princesses in his double capacity.
Herring, Of Bangor, the youngest bishop, is named to the see of York. it looks as if the bench thought the church going out of fashion; for two or three(795) of them have refused this mitre.
Next Thursday we are to be entertained with a pompous parade for the burial of old Princess Buckingham. They have invited ten peeresses to walk: all somehow or other dashed with blood-royal, and rather than not have King James’s daughter attended by princesses, they have fished out two or three countesses descended from his competitor Monmouth.
There, I am at the end of my tell! If I write on, it must be to ask questions. I Would ask why Mr. Chute has left me off but when he sees what a frippery correspondent I am, he will scarce be in haste to renew with me again. I really don’t know why I am so dry; mine used to be the pen of a ready writer, but whist seems to have stretched its leaden wand over me too, who have nothing to do with it. I am trying to set up the noble game of bilboquet against it, and composing a grammar in opposition to Mr. Hoyle’s. You will some day or other see an advertisement in the papers, to tell you where it may be bought, and that ladies may be waited upon by the author at their houses, to receive any further directions. I am ’really ashamed to send this scantling of paper by the post, over so many seas and mountains: it seems as impertinent as the commission which Prior gave to the winds,
“Lybs must fly south, and Eurus east,
For jewels for her neck and breast.”
Indeed, one would take you for my Chloe, when one looks on this modicum of gilt paper, which resembles a billet-doux more than a letter to a minister. You must take it as the widow’s mite, and since the death of my spouse, poor Mr. News, I cannot afford such large doles as formerly. Adieu! my dear child, I am yours ever, from a quire of the largest foolscap to a vessel of the smallest gilt.
(794) There was a party at this time in Sweden, who tried to choose the Prince Royal of Denmark for successor to King Frederick of sweden.
(795) Dr. Wilcox, Bishop of Rochester, and Dr. Sherlock, Bishop of Salisbury: the latter afterwards accepted the See of London.
317 Letter 103 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, April 14, 1743.
This has been a noble week; I have received three letters at once from you. I am ashamed when I reflect on the poverty of my own! but what can one do? I don’t sell you my news, and therefore should not be excusable to invent. I wish we don’t grow to have more news! Our politics, which have not always been the most in earnest, now begin to take a very serious turn. Our army is wading over the Rhine, up to their middles in snow. I hope they will be thawed before their return: but they have gone through excessive hardships. The King sends six thousand more of his Hanoverians at his own expense: this will be popular-and the six thousand Hessians march too. All this will compose an army considerable enough to be a great loss if they miscarry. The King certainly goes abroad in less than a fortnight. He takes the Duke with him to Hanover who from thence goes directly to the army. The Court will not be great: the King takes only Lord Carteret, the Duke of Richmond, master of the horse, and Lord Holderness and Lord Harcourt,(796) for the bedchamber. The Duchesses of Richmond and Marlborough,(797) and plump Carteret,(798) go to the Hague.
His Royal Highness is not Regent: there are to be fourteen. The Earl of Bath and Mr. Pelham, neither of them in regency-posts, are to be of the number.
I have read your letters about Mystery to Sir Robert. He denies absolutely having ever had transactions with King Theodore, and is amazed Lord Carteret can; which he can’t help thinking but he must, by the intelligence about Lady W. Now I can conceive all that affected friendship for Richcourt! She must have meant to return to England by Richcourt’s interest with Touissant(799) and then where was her friendship? You are quite in the right not to have engaged with King Theodore: your character is not-Furibondo. Sir R. entirely disapproves all Mysterious dealings; he thinks Furibondo most bad and most improper, and always did. You mistook me about Lady W.’s Lord-I meant Quarendon, who is now Earl of Litchfield, by his father’s death, which I mentioned. I think her lucky in Sturges’s death, and him lucky in dying. He had outlived resentment; I think had almost lived to be pitied.
I forgot to thank you about the model, which I should have been sorry to have missed. I long for all the things, and my Lord more. so. Am I not to have a bill of lading, or how!
I never say any thing of the Pomfrets, because in the great city of London the Countess’s follies do not make the same figure as they did in little Florence. Besides, there are such numbers here who have such equal pretensions to be absurd, that one is scarce aware of particular ridicules.
I really don’t know whether Vanneschi be dead; he married some low English woman, who is kept by Amorevoli; so the Abbate turned the opera every way to his profit. As to Bonducci,(200) I don’t think I could serve him; for I have no interest with the Lords Middlesex and Holderness, the two sole managers. Nor if I had, would I employ it, ’to bring over more ruin to the operas. Gentlemen directors, with favourite abb`es and favourite mistresses, have almost overturned the thing in England. You will plead my want of interest to Mr. Smith(801) too: besides, we had Bufos here once, and from not understanding the language, people thought it a dull kind of dumb-show. We are next Tuesday to have the Miserere of Rome. It must be curious! the finest piece of vocal music in the world, to be performed by three good voices, and forty bad ones, from Oxford, Canterbury, and the farces! There is a new subscription formed for an opera next year, to be carried on by the Dilettanti, a club, for which the nominal qualification is having been in Italy, and the real one, being drunk: the two chiefs are Lord Middlesex and Sir Francis Dashwood, who were seldom sober the whole time they were in Italy.
The parliament rises next week: every body is going out of town. My Lord goes the first week in May; but I shall reprieve myself till towards August. Dull as London is in summer, there is always more company in it than in any one place in the country. I hate the country: I am past the shepherdly age of groves and streams, and am not arrived at that of hating every thing but what I do myself, as building and planting. Adieu!
(796) Simon, second Viscount Harcourt, created an earl in 1749; in 1768 appointed ambassador at Paris, and in 1769 Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He was accidentally drowned in a well in his park at Nuncham, in 1777; occasioned, it is believed, by overreaching himself, in order to save the life of a favourite dog.-E.
(797) Elizabeth Trevor, daughter of Thomas Lord Trevor, wife of Charles Spencer, Duke of Marlborough. She died in 1761.-E.
(798) Frances, only daughter of Sir Robert Worseley, first wife of Lord Carteret.
(799) First minister of the Great Duke.
(800) Bonducci was a Florentine abb`e, who translated some of Pope’s works into Italian.
(801) The English Consul at Venice.
318 Letter 104
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, April 25, 1743.
Nay, but it is serious! the King is gone, and the Duke with him. The’ latter actually to the army. They must sow laurels, if they design to reap any; for there are no conquests forward enough for them to come just in time and finish. The French have relieved Egra and cut to pieces two of the best Austrian regiments, the cuirassiers. This is ugly! We are sure, you know, of beating the French afterwards in France and Flanders; but I don’t hear that the heralds have produced any precedents for our conquering them on the other side the Rhine.(802) We at home may be excused from trembling at the arrival of every post; I am sure I shall. If I were a woman, should support my fears with more dignity; for if one did lose a husband or a lover, there are those becoming comforts, weeds and cypresses, jointures and weeping cupids; but I have only a friend or two to lose, and there are no ornamental substitutes settled, to be one’s proxy for that sort of grief. One has not the satisfaction of fixing a day for receiving visits of consolation from a thousand people whom one don’t love, because one has lost the only person one did love. This is a new situation, and I don’t like it.
You will see the Regency in the newspapers. I think the Prince might have been of it when my Lord Gower is. I don’t think the latter more Jacobite than his Royal Highness.
The Prince is to come to town every Sunday fortnight to hold drawing-rooms; the Princesses stay all the summer at St. James’s-would I did! but I go in three weeks to Norfolk; the only place that could make me wish to live at St. James’s. My Lord has pressed me so much, that I could not with decency refuse: he is going to furnish and hang his picture-gallery, and wants me. I can’t help wishing that I had never known a Guido from a Teniers: but who could ever suspect any connexion between painting and the wilds of Norfolk.
Princess Louisa’s contract with the Prince of Denmark was signed the morning before the King Went; but I don’t hear when she goes. Poor Caroline misses her man of Lubeck,(803) by his missing the crown of Sweden.
I must tell you an odd thing that happened yesterday at Leicester House. The Prince’s children were in the circle: Lady Augusta(804) heard somebody call Sir Robert Rich by his name. She concluded there was but one Sir Robert in the world, and taking him for Lord Orford, the child went staring up to him, and said, “Pray, where is your blue string! and pray what has become of your fat belly?” Did one ever hear of a more royal education, than to have rung this mob cant in the child’s ears till it had made this impression on her!
Lord Stafford is come over to marry Miss Cantillon, a vast fortune, of his own religion. She is daughter of the Cantillon who was robbed and murdered, and had his house burned by his cook(805) a few years ago. She is as ugly as he; but when she comes to Paris, and wears a good deal of rouge, and a separate apartment, who knows but she may be a beauty! There is no telling what a woman is, while she is as she is. There is a great fracas in Ireland in a noble family or two, heightened by a pretty strong circumstance of Iricism. A Lord Belfield(806) married a very handsome daughter of a Lord Molesworth.(807) A certain Arthur Rochfort, who happened to be acquainted in the family, by being Lord Belfield’s own brother, looked on this woman, and saw that she was fair. These ingenious people, that their history might not be discovered, corresponded under feigned names-And what names do you think they chose?-Silvia and Philander! Only the very same that Lord Grey(808) and his sister-in-law took upon a parallel occasion, and which arc printed in their letters!
Patapan sits to Wootton to-morrow for his picture. He is to have a triumphal arch at a distance, to signify his Roman birth, and his having barked at thousands of Frenchmen in the very heart of Paris. If you can think of a good Italian motto applicable to any part of his history send it to me. If not, he shall have this antique one-for I reckon him a senator of Rome, while Rome survived,-"O, et Presidium et dulce decus meum!” He is writing an ode on the future campaign of this summer; it is dated from his villa, where he never was, and being truly in the classic style, “While you, great Sir,” etc. Adieu!
(802) Walpole seems to have forgotten the battle of Blenheim.-D;
(803) Adolphus Frederick of Holstein, Bishop of Lubeck, was elected successor, and did succeed to the crown of Sweden. He married the Princess Louisa Ulrica of Prussia.
(804) Afterwards Duchess of Brunswick.-D.
(805) Cantillon was a Paris wine-merchant and banker, who had been engaged with Law in the Mississippi scheme. He afterwards brought his riches to England and settled in this country. In May 1734, some of his servants, headed by the cook, conspired to murder him, knowing that he kept large sums of money in his house. They killed him, and then set fire to the house; but the fire was extinguished, and the body, with the wounds upon it, found. The cook fled beyond sea; but in December, three of his associates were tried at the Old Bailey for the murder, and acquitted.-E.
(806) Robert Rochfort, created Lord Belfield in Ireland in 1737, Viscount Belfield in 1751, and Earl of Belvedere in 1756. His second wife, whom be married in 1736, was the Hon. Mary Molesworth. D.
(807) Richard, third Viscount Molesworth, in Ireland. He had been aide-de-camp to the great Duke of Marlborough, and in that capacity distinguished himself greatly at the battle of Ramilies. He became afterwards master-general of the ordnance in Ireland, and commander of the forces in that kingdom, and a field-marshal. He died in 1758.-D.
(808) Fordo, the infamous Lord Grey of werke, and his sister-in-law, Lady Henrietta Berkeley, whose “Love Letters,” under these romantic names, were published in three small volumes. They are supposed to have been compiled by Mrs. Behn.-D. [Lord Grey commanded the horse at Sedgmoor, and is accused of flying at the first charge, and preserving his life by giving evidence against his associates. He married Lady Mary, daughter of George, first Earl of Berkeley, and died in 1701.)
320 Letter 105 To Sir Horace Mann. May 4, 1743.
The King was detained four or five days at Sheerness
but yesterday we heard that he was got to Helvoetsluys.
They talk’ of an interview between him and
his nephew of Prussia-I never knew any advantage result
from such conferences. We expect to hear of
the French attacking our army, though there are accounts
of their retiring, which would necessarily produce
a peace-I hope so! I don’t like to be at
the eve, even of an Agincourt; that, you know, every
Englishman is bound in faith to expect: besides,
they say my Lord Stair has in his pocket, from the
records of the Tower, the original patent, empowering
us always to conquer. I am told that Marshal
Noailles is as mad as Marshal Stair. Heavens!
twice fifty thousand men trusted to two mad captains,
without one Dr. Monroe(809) over
them!
I am sorry I could give you so little
information about King Theodore; but my lord knew
nothing of him, and as little of any connexion between
Lord Carteret and him. I am sorry you have him
on your
hands. He quite mistakes
his
province: an adventurer should come hither;(810)
this is the soil for mobs and patriots
it is the country of the world to make one’s
fortune — with parts never so scanty, one’s
dulness is not discovered, nor one’s dishonesty,
till one obtains the post one wanted-and then, if
they do not come to light-why, one slinks into one’s
green velvet bag,(811) and lies so snug! I don’t
approve of your hinting at the falsehoods(812)
of Stosch’s intelligence; nobody
regards it but the King
, it pleases
him-e basta.
I was not in the House at Vernon’s frantic speech;(813) but I know he made it, and have heard him pronounce several such: but he has worn out even laughter, and did not make impression enough on me to remember till the next post that he had spoken.
I gave your brother the translated paper; he will take care of it. Ceretesi is gone to Flanders with Lord Holderness. Poor creature! he was reduced, before he went, to borrow five guineas of Sir Francis Dashwood. How will he ever scramble back to Florence?
We are likely at last to have no opera
next year: Handel has had a palsy, and can’t
compose; and the Duke of Dorset has set himself strenuously
to oppose it, as Lord Middlesex is the impresario,
and must ruin the house of Sackville by a course of
these follies. Besides what he will lose this
year, he has not paid his share to the losses of the
last; and yet is singly undertaking another for next
season, with
the almost certainty of
losing
between four or five thousand pounds, to which the
deficiencies of the opera generally amount now.
The
Duke of Dorset has desired
the King
not to subscribe; but Lord Middlesex is so obstinate,
that this will probably only make him lose a
thousand pounds more.
The Freemasons are in so low repute now in England, that one has scarce heard the proceedings at Vienna against them mentioned. I believe nothing but a persecution could bring them into vogue again here. You know, as great as our follies are, we even grow tired of them, and are always changing.
(809) Physician of Bedlam-
“Those walls where Folly holds her throne,
And laughs to think Monroe would take her down."-E.
(810) He afterwards came to England, where he suffered much from poverty and destitution, and was finally arrested by his creditors and confined in the King,’s Bench prison. He was released from thence under the Insolvent Act, having registered the kingdom of Corsica for the use of his creditors. Shortly after this event he died, December 11, 1756, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Anne’s, Soho, where Horace Walpole erected a marble slab to his memory. He was an adventurer, whose name was Theodore Anthony, Baron Newhoff, and was born at Metz, in 1686. Walpole, who had seen him, describes him as “a comely, middle-sized man, very reserved, and affecting much dignity,"-D.
(811) The secretaries of state and lord treasurer carry their papers in a green velvet bag.
(812) Stosch used to pretend to send over an exact
journal of the life of the Pretender and his sons,
though he had been sent out of Rome at the Pretender’s
request, and must have
had
very bad, or no intelligence, of
what passed in that family.
(813) The admiral had recently said, in the House of Commons, that “there was not, on this side Hell, a nation so burthened with taxes as England."-E.
322 Letter 106 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, May 12, 1743.
It is a fortnight since I got any of your letters, but I will expect two at once. I don’t tell you by way of news, because you will have had expresses, but I must talk of the great Austrian victory!(814) We have not heard the exact particulars yet, nor whether it was Kevenhuller or lobkowitz who beat the Bavarians; but their general, Minucci, is prisoner. At first, they said Seckendorffe was too; I am glad he is not: poor man, he has suffered enough by the house of Austria! But my joy is beyond the common, for I flatter myself this victory will save us one: we talk of nothing, but its producing a peace, and then one’s friends will return.
The Duchess of Kendal(815) is dead-eighty-five years old: she was a year older than her late King. Her riches were immense; but I believe my Lord Chesterfield will get nothing by her death-but his wife: (816) she lived in the house with the duchess, where he had played away all his credit.
Hough,(817) the good old Bishop of Worcester, is dead too. I have been looking at the “Fathers in God” that have been flocking over the way this Morning to Mr. Pelham, who is just come to his new house. This is absolutely the ministerial street Carteret has a house here too; and Lord Bath seems to have lost his chance by quitting this street. Old Marlborough has made a good story of the latter; she says, that when he found he could not get the privy seal, he begged that at least they would offer it to him, and upon his honour he would not accept it, but would plead his vow of never taking a place; in which she says they humoured him. The truth is, Lord Carteret did hint an offer to him, upon which he went with a nolo episcopari to the King-he bounced, and said, “Why I never offered it to you:” upon which he recommended my Lord Carlisle, with equal Success.
Just before the King went, he asked my Lord Carteret, " Well, when am I to get rid of those fellows in the Treasury?” They are on so low a foot, that somebody said Sandys had hired a stand of hackney-coaches, to look like a levee.
Lord Conway has begged me to send you a commission, which you will oblige me much by executing. It is to send him three Pistoia barrels for guns: two of them, of two feet and a half in the barrel in length; the smallest of the inclosed buttons to be the size of the bore, hole, or calibre, of the two guns. The third barrel to be three feet and an inch in length; the largest of these buttons to be the bore of it; these feet are English measure. You will be so good to let me know the price of them.
There has happened a comical circumstance at Leicester House: one of the Prince’s coachmen, who used to drive the Maids of Honour, was so sick of them, that he has left his son three hundred pounds, upon condition that he never carries a Maid of Honour!
Our journey to Houghton is fixed to Saturday se’nnight; ’tis unpleasant, but I flatter myself that I shall get away in the beginning of August. Direct your letters as you have done all this winter; your brother will take care to send them to me. Adieu!
(814) There was no great victory this year till the battle of Dettingen, which took place in June; but the Austrians obtained many advantages during the spring over the Bavarians and the French, and obliged the latter to recross the Rhine.-D.
(815) Erangard Melusina Schulembergh, the mistress of George I. George I. created her Duchess of Munster and Marchioness of Dungannon in Ireland in 1719; Ind Duchess of Kendal, Countess of Feversham, and Baroness of Glastonbury. in England, in 1723. All these honours were for life only. He also persuaded the Emperor to create her Princess of eberstein in the Roman empire in 1723.-D.
(816) Melusina Schulembergh, Countess of Walsingham, niece of the Duchess of Kendal, and her heiress.
(817) Hough Was a man of piety, ability, and integrity, and had distinguished himself early in his life by his resistance to the arbitrary proceedings of James II. against Magdalen College, Oxford, of which he was the president. Pope, with much justice, speaks of “Hough’s unsullied mitre."-D. [He was nominated Bishop of Oxford in 1690; and translated to Worcester in 1717.]
323 Letter 107 To Sir Horace Mann. May 19, 1743.
I am just come tired from a family dinner at the Master of the Rolls;(818) but I have received two letters from you since my last, and will write to you, though my head aches with maiden sisters’ healths, forms, and Devonshire and Norfolk. With yours I received one from Mr. Chute, for which I thank him a thousand times, and will answer as soon as I get to Houghton. Monday is fixed peremptorily, though we have had no rain this month; but we travel by the day of the week, not by the day of the sky.
We are in more confusion than we care to own. There lately came up a highland regiment from Scotland, to be sent abroad. One heard of nothing but their good discipline and quiet disposition. When the day came for their going to the water side, an hundred and nine of them mutinied, and marched away in a body. They did not care to go where it would not be equivocal for what King they fought. Three companies of dragoons are sent after them. If you happen to hear of any rising don’t be surprised-I shall not, I assure you. Sir Robert Monroe, their lieutenant-colonel, before their leaving Scotland, asked some of the ministry, " “But suppose there should be any rebellion in Scotland, what should we do for these eight hundred men?” It was answered, “Why, there would be eight hundred fewer rebels there.”
“Utor permisso, caudeque pilos ut equinae
Paulatim cello; demo unum, demo etiam unum,
Dum-”
My dear child, I am surprised to hear you enter so seriously into earnest ideas of my lord’s passing into Italy! Could you think (however he, you, or I might wish it) that there could be any probability of it? Can you think his age could endure it, or him so indifferent, so totally disministered, as to leave all thoughts of what he has been, and ramble like a boy, after pictures and statues? Don’t expect it.
We had heard of the Duke of Modena’s command before I had your letter. I am glad, for the sake of the duchess, as she is to return to France. I never saw any body wish anything more! and indeed, how can one figure any particle of pleasure happening to the daughter of the Regent,(819) and a favourite daughter too, full of wit and joy, buried in a dirty, dull Italian duchy, with an ugly, formal object for a husband, and two uncouth sister-princesses for eternal companions? I am so near the eve of going into Norfolk, that I imagine myself something in her situation,
Adieu! My next will be dated from some of the doleful castles in the principality of your forlorn friend, the duchy of Reepham.
(818) William Fortescue, master of the rolls, a relation of Margaret Lady Walpole. ffortescue was made master of the rolls in 1741, and continued so until his death in 1749. He was the friend and correspondent of Pope, and assisted the poet in drawing up the humorous report, “Stradling versus Stiles.” He was a man of great humour, talents, and integrity.]
(819) Mademoiselle de Valois, who had made herself notorious during the regency of her father, by her intrigue with the Duke of Richelieu. She consented to marry the Duke of Modena, in order to obtain the liberty of her lover, who was confined in the Bastille, for conspiring against the Regent. The Duke of Richelieu, in return, followed her afterwards secretly to Modena.-D.
(820) The Hammonds and Hostes are two Norfolk families, nearly allied to the Walpoles.
324 letter 108 To Sir Horace Mann. Houghton, Jan. 4, 1743.
I wrote, this week to Mr. Chute, addressed to you; I could not afford two letters in one post from the country, and in the dead of summer. I have received one from you of May 21st, since I came I must tell you a smart dialogue between your father and me the morning we left London: he came to wish my lord a good journey: I found him in the parlour. “Sir,” said he, “I may ask you how my son does; I think you hear from him frequently: I never do.” I replied, “Sir, I write him kind answers; pray do you do so?” He coloured, and said with a half mutter, “Perhaps I have lived too long for him!” I answered shortly, “Perhaps you have.” My dear child, I beg your pardon, but I could not help this. When one loves any body, one can’t help being warm for them at a fair opportunity. Bland and Mr. Legge were present-your father could have stabbed me. I told your brother Gal, who was glad.
We are as private here as if we were in devotion-. there is nobody with us now but Lord Edgecumbe and his son. The Duke of Grafton and Mr. Pelham come next week, and I hope Lord Lincoln with them. Poor Lady Sophia is at the gasp of her hopes; all is concluded for his match with Miss Pelham. It is not to be till the winter. He is to have all Mr. Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle can give or settle; unless Lady Catherine should produce a son, or the duchess should die, and the duke marry again.
Earl Poulett(821) is dead, and makes vacant another riband. I imagine Lord Carteret will have one; Lord Bath will ask it. I think they should give Prince Charles(822) one of the two, for all the trouble he saves us. The papers talk of nothing but a suspension of arms: it seems toward, for at least we hear of no battle, though there are so many armies looking at one another.
Old Sir Charles Wager(823) is dead at last, and has left the fairest character. I can’t help having a little private comfort, to think that Goldsworthy-but there is no danger.
Madox of St. Asaph has wriggled himself into the see of Worcester. He makes haste; I remember him only domestic chaplain to the late Bishop of Chichester.(824) Durham is not dead, as I believe I told you from a false report.
You tell me of dining with Madame de Modene,(824) but you don’t tell me of being charmed with her. I like her excessively-I don’t mean her person, for she is as plump as the late Queen; but, sure her face is fine; her eyes vastly fine! and then she is as agreeable as one should expect the Regent’s daughter to be. The Princess and she must have been an admirable contrast; one has all the good breeding of a French court, and the other all the ease of it. I have almost a mind to go to Paris to see her. She was so excessively civil to me. You don’t tell me if the Pucci goes into France with her.
I like the Genoese selling Corsica! I think we should follow their example and sell France; we have about as good a title, and very near as much possession. At how much may they value Corsica? at the rate of islands it can’t go for much. Charles the Second sold Great Britain and Ireland to Louis XIV. for 300,000 pounds. a-year, and that was reckoned extravagantly dear. Lord Bolingbroke took a single hundred thousand for them, when they were in much better repair.
We hear to-day that the King goes to the army on the 15th N. S. that is, to-day; but I don’t tell it you for certain. There has been much said against his commanding it, as it is only an army of succour, and not acting as principal in the cause. In my opinion, his commanding will depend upon the more or less probability of its acting at all. Adieu!
(821) John, first Earl of Poulett, knight of the garter. He died, aged upwards of eighty, on the 28th May 1743.-D.
(822) Prince Charles of Lorraine, the queen of Hungary’s general against the French.-D.
(823) This distinguished admiral died on the 24th of May, in his seventy-seventh year; at which time he was member for West looe. A splendid monument was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey.-E.
(824) Dr. Waddington.
(825) It was not the Duchess of Modena, but the Duke’s second sister, who went to Florence.
326 letter 109 To Sir Horace Mann. Houghton, June 10, 1743.
You must not expect me to write you a very composed, careless letter; my spirits are all in agitation! I am at the eve of a post that may bring me the most dreadful news! we expect to-morrow the news of a decisive battle. Oh! if you have any friend there, think what apprehensions I (826) must have of such a post! By yesterday’s letters, our army was within eight miles of the French, who have had repeated orders to attack them. Lord Stair and Marshal Noailles
“-To sit heavy on their souls to-morrow!”
Alas! perhaps that glorious to-morrow was a dismal yesterday at least, perhaps it was to me! The genius of England might be a mere mercenary man of the world, and employed all his attention to turn aside cannonballs from my Lord Stair, to give new edge to his new Marlborough’s sword: was plotting glory for my Lord Carteret, or was thinking of furnishing his own apartment in Westminster Hall with a new set of trophies-who would then take care of Mr. Conway? You, who are a minister, will see all this in still another light, will fear our defeat, and will foresee the train of consequences.-Why, they may be wondrous ugly; but till I know what I have to think about my own friends, I cannot be wise in my generation.
I shall now only answer your letter; for till I have read to-morrow’s post, I have no thoughts but of a battle.
I am angry at your thinking that I can dislike to receive two or three of your letters at once. Do you take me for a child, and imagine, that though I may like one plum-tart, two may make me sick? I now get them regularly; so I do but receive them, I am easy.
You are mistaken about the gallery; so far from unfurnishing any part of the house, there are several pictures undisposed of, besides numbers at Lord Walpole’s, at the Exchequer, at Chelsea, and at New Park. Lord Walpole has taken a dozen to Stanno, a small house, about four miles from hence, where he lives with my lady Walpole’s vicegerent.(827) You may imagine that her deputies are no fitter than she is to come where there is In a modest, unmarried girl.(828)
I will write to London for the life of Theodore, though you may depend upon its being a Grub Street piece, without one true fact. Don’t let it prevent your undertaking his Memoirs. Yet I should say Mrs. Heywood,(829) or Mrs. Behn(830) were fitter to write his history.
How slight you talk of Prince Charles’s victory at Brunau! We thought it of vast consequence; so it was. He took three posts afterwards, and has since beaten the Prince of Conti, and killed two thousand men. Prince Charles civilly returned him his baggage. The French in Bavaria are quite dispirited-poor wretches! how one hates to wish so ill as one does to fourscore thousand men!
There is yet no news of the Pembroke. The Dominichin has a post of honour reserved in the gallery. My Lord says, as to that Dalton’s Raphael, he can say nothing without some particular description of the picture and the size, and some hint at the price, which you have promised to get. I leave the residue of my paper for tomorrow: I tremble, lest I should be forced to finish it abruptly! I forgot to tell you that I left a particular commission with my brother Ned, who is at Chelsea, to get some tea-seed from the physic-garden; and he promised me to go to Lord Islay, to know what cobolt and zingho(831) are, and where they are to be got.
Saturday morning.
The post is come: no battle! Just as they were marching against the French, they received orders from Hanover not to engage, for the Queen’s generals thought they were inferior, and were positive against fighting. Lord Stair, with only the English, proceeded, and drew out in order; but though the French were then so vastly superior, they did not attack him. The King is now at the army, and, they say, will endeavour to make the Austrians fight. It wilt make great confusion here if they do not. The French are evacuating Bavaria as fast as possible, and seem to intend to join all their force together. I shall still dread all the events of this campaign. Adieu!
(826) Mr. Conway the most intimate friend of Horace Walpole, was now serving in Lord Stair’s army.
(827) Miss Norsa; she was a Jewess, and had been a singer.
(828) Lady Maria Walpole.
(829) Eliza Heywood, a voluminous writer of indifferent novels; of which the best known is one called “Betsy Thoughtless.” She was also authoress of a work entitled “The Female Spectator.” — Mrs. Heywood was born in 1693, and died in 1756.-D.
(830) Mrs. Afra Behn, a woman whose character and writings were equally incorrect. Of her plays, which were seventeen in number, Pope says,
“The stage how loosely does Astrea tread, Who fairly puts all characters to bed.”
Her novels and other productions were also marked with similar characteristics. She died in 1689-D.
(831) Cobalt and Zinc, two metallic substances; the former composed of silver, copper, and arsenic, the latter of tin and iron.-D.
328 letter 110 To Sir Horace Mann. Houghton, June 20, 1743.
I have painted the Raphael to my lord almost as fine as Raphael himself could; but he will not think of it-. he will not give a thousand guineas for what he never saw. I wish I could persuade him. For the other hands, he has already fine ones of every one of them. There are yet no news of the Pembroke: we row impatient.
I have made a short tour to Euston this week with the Duke of Grafton, who came over from thence with Lord Lincoln and Mr. Pelham. Lord Lovel and Mr. Coke carried me and brought me back. It is one of the most admired seats in England-in my opinion, because Kent has a most absolute disposition of it. Kent is now so fashionable, that, like Addison’s Liberty, he
“Can make bleak rocks and barren mountains smile.”
I believe the duke wishes he could make them green
too. The house is large and bad; it was built
by Lord Arlington, and stands, as all old houses do
for convenience of water and shelter, in a hole; so
it neither sees, nor is seen: he has no money
to build another. The park is fine, the old woods
excessively so: they are much grander than Mr.
Kent’s passion clumps-that is, sticking a dozen
trees here and there, till a lawn looks like the ten
of spades. Clumps have their beauty; but in
a great extent of country, how trifling to scatter
arbours, where you should spread forests! He is
so unhappy in his heir apparent,(832) that he checks
his hand in almost every thing he undertakes.
Last week he heard a new complaint of his barbarity.
A tenant of Lord Euston, in Northamptonshire, brought
him his rent: the Lord said it wanted three and
sixpence: the tenant begged he would examine
the account, that it would prove exact-however, to
content him, he would willingly pay him the three
and sixpence. Lord E. flew into
a
rage, and vowed he would write
to the Duke to have him turned out of a little place
he has in the post-office of thirty pounds a-year.
The poor man, who has six children, and knew nothing
of my lord’s
being
upon no terms of power with
his father, went home and shot himself!
I know no syllable of news
’. but that my Lady Carteret is dead at Hanover,
and Lord Wilmington dying. So there will be
to let a first
minister’s ladyship
and a first
lordship of the Treasury. We have nothing from
the army, though the King has now been there some
time. As new a thing as it is, we don’t
talk much about it.
Adieu! the family are gone a fishing: I thought I stayed at home to write to you, but I have so little to say that I don’t believe you will think so.
(832) George, Earl of Euston, who died
in the lifetime of his father. He seems to have
been a man of the most odious character. He
has been already mentioned in the course
of these letters, upon
the
occasion of his marriage with the ill-fated lady Dorothy
Boyle, who died from his ill-treatment of her.
Upon a picture of lady Dorothy at the Duke of Devonshire’s
at Chiswick, is the following touching inscription,
written by her mother, which commemorates her virtues
and her fate:-
“lady Dorothy Boyle, Born May the 14th, 1724. She was the comfort and joy of her parents, the delight of all who knew her angelick of temper, and the admiration of all who saw her beauty. She was marry’d October the 10th, 1741, and delivered (by death) from misery, May the 2nd, 1742. This picture was drawn seven weeks after her death (from memory) by her most affectionate mother, Dorothy Burlington."-D.
329 letter 111 To Sir Horace Mann. Friday noon, July 29, 1743.
I don’t know what I write-I am all a flurry of thoughts-a battle-a victory! I dare not yet be glad-I know no particulars of my friends. This instant my lord has had a messenger from the Duke of Newcastle, who has sent him a copy of Lord Carteret’s letter from the field of battle. The King was in all the heat of the fire, and safe—the Duke is wounded in the calf of the leg, but slightly; Duc d’Aremberg in the breast; General Clayton and Colonel Piers are the only officers of note said to be killed-here is all my trust! The French passed the Mayne that morning with twenty-five thousand men, and are driven back. We have lost two thousand, and they four-several of their general officers, and of the Maison du Roi, are taken prisoners: the battle lasted from ten in the morning till four. The Hanoverians behaved admirably. The Imperialists(833) were the aggressors; in short, ’In all public views, it is all that could be wished-the King in the action, and his son wounded-the Hanoverians behaving well-the French beaten: what obloquy will not all this wipe out! Triumph, and write it to Rome! I don’t know what our numbers were; I believe about thirty thousand, for there were twelve thousand Hessians and Hanoverians who had not joined them. O! in my hurry, I had forgot the place-you must talk of the battle of Dettingen!
After dinner. My child, I am calling together all my thoughts, and rejoice in this victory as much as I dare; for in the raptures of’ conquest, how dare I think that my Lord Carteret, or the rest of those who have written, thought just of whom I thought? The post comes in tomorrow morning, but it is not sure that we shall learn any particular certainties so soon as that. Well! how happy it is that the King has had such an opportunity of distinguishing himself’!(834) what a figure he will make! They talked of its being below his dignity to command an auxiliary army: my lord says it will not be thought below his dignity to have sought dangers These were the flower of the French troops: I flatter myself they will tempt no more battles. such, and we might march from one end of France to the other. So we are in a French war, at least well begun! My lord has been drinking the healths of Lord Stair and Lord Carteret: he says, “since it was well done, he does not care by whom it was done.” He thinks differently from the rest of the world: he thought from the first, that France never missed such an opportunity as when they undertook the German war, instead of joining with Spain against us. If I hear any more tomorrow before the post goes out, I will let you know. Tell me if this is the first you hear of the victory: I would fain be the first to give you so much pleasure.
Saturday morning.
Well, my dear child, all is safe! I have not so much as an acquaintance hurt. The more we hear the greater it turns out. Lord Cholmondeley writes my lord from London that we gained the victory with only fifteen regiments, not eleven thousand men, and SO not half in number to the French. I fancy their soldiery behaved ill, by the Gallantry of their officers; for Ranby, the King’S private surgeon, writes that he alone has 150 officers of distinction desperately wounded under his care. Marquis Fenelon’s son is among the prisoners, and says Marshal Noailles is dangerously wounded; so is Duc d’Aremberg. Honeywood’s regiment sustained the attack, and are almost all killed: his natural son has five wounds, and cannot live. The horse were pursuing when the letters came away, so there is no certain account of the slaughter. Lord Albemarle had his horse shot under him. In short, the victory is complete. There is no describing what one hears of the spirits and bravery of our men. One of them dressed himself up in the belts of three officers, and swore he would wear them as long as he lived. Another ran up to Lord Carteret, who was in a coach near the action the whole time, and said, “Here, my lord, do hold this watch for me; I have just killed a French officer and taken it, and I will go take another.”
Adieu! my dear Sir: May the rest of the war be as glorious as the beginning!
(833) The Bavarians.
(834) Frederick the Great, in his “Histoire de mon Temps,” gives the Following account of George the Second at the battle of Dettingen. “The King was on horseback, and rode forward to reconnoitre the enemy: his horse, frightened at the cannonading, ran away with his Majesty, and nearly carried him into the midst of the French lines: fortunately, one of his attendants succeeded in stopping him. George then abandoned his horse, and fought on foot, at the head of his Hanoverian battalions. With his sword drawn, and his body placed in the attitude of a fencing-master, who is about to make a lunge in carte, he continued to expose himself, without Circling, to the enemy’s fire."-D.
To Mr. Chute.
My dear Sir, I wish you joy, and you wish me joy, and Mr. Whithed, and Mr. Mann, and Mrs. Bosville, etc. Don’t get drunk and get the gout. I expect to be drunk with hogsheads of the Mayne-water, and with odes to his Majesty and the Duke, and Te Deums. Patapan begs you will get him a dispensation from Rome to go and hear the thanksgiving at St. Paul’s. We are all mad-drums, trumpets, bumpers, bonfires! The mob are wild, and cry, “Long live King George and the Duke of Cumberland, and Lord Stair and Lord Carteret, and General Clayton that’s dead!” My Lord Lovel says, “Thanks to the gods that John(835) has done his duty!”
Adieu! my dear Dukes of Marlborough! I am ever
your
JOHN DUKE OF MARLBOROUGh.
(835) John Bull.-D.
331 Letter 112
To Sir Horace Mann.
Houghton, July 4, 1743.
I hear no particular news here, and I don’t pretend to send you the common news; for as I must have it first from London, you will have it from thence sooner in the papers than in my letters. There have been great rejoicings for the victory; which I am convinced is very considerable by the pains the Jacobites take to persuade it is not. My Lord Carteret’s Hanoverian articles have much offended; his express has been burlesqued a thousand ways. By all the letters that arrive, the loss of the French turns out more considerable than by the first accounts: they have dressed up the battle into a victory for themselves-I hope they will always have such! By their not having declared war with us, one should think they intended a peace. It is allowed that our fine horse did us no honour — the victory was gained by the foot. Two of their princes of the blood, the Prince de Dombes, and the Count d’Eu(836) his brother, were wounded, and several of their first nobility. Our prisoners turn out but seventy-two officers, besides the private men; and by the printed catalogue, I don’t think of great family. Marshal Noailles’s mortal wound is quite vanished, and Duc d’Aremberg’s shrunk to a very slight one. The King’s glory remains in its first bloom.
Lord Wilmington is dead. I believe the civil battle for his post will be tough. Now we shall see what service Lord Carteret’s Hanoverians will do him. You don’t think the crisis unlucky for him, do you? If you wanted a treasury, should you choose to have been in Arlington Street,(837) or driving by the battle of Dettingen? You may imagine our Court wishes for Mr. Pelham. I don’t know any one who wishes for Lord Bath but himself-I believe that is a pretty substantial wish.
I have got the Life of King Theodore, but I don’t know how to convey it—I will inquire for some way.
We are quite alone. You never saw any thing so unlike as being here five months out of place, to the congresses of a fortnight in place. but you know the “Justum et tenacem propositi virum” can amuse himself without the “Civium ardor!” As I have not so much dignity of character to fill up my time, I could like a little more company. With all this leisure, you may imagine that I might as well be writing an ode or so upon the victory; but as I cannot build upon the Laureate’s place till I know whether Lord Carteret or Mr. Pelham will carry the Treasury, I have vounded my compliments to a slender collection of quotations against I should have any occasion for them. Here are some fine lines from Lord Halifax’s (838) poem on the battle of the Boyne-
“The King leads on, the King does all inflame, The King!-and carries millions in the name.”
Then follows a simile about a deluge, which you may imagine, but the next lines are very good —
“So on the foe the firm battalions prest,
And he, like the tenth wave, drove on the rest.
Fierce, gallant, young, he shot through every place,
Urging their flight, and hurrying on the chase,
He hung upon their rear, or lighten’d in their
face.”
The next are a magnificent compliment, and, as far as verse goes, to be sure very applicable.
“Stop, stop! brave Prince, allay that inner
flame;
Enough is given to England and to fame.
Remember, Sir, you in the centre stand;
Europe’s divided interests you command,
All their designs uniting in your hand.
Down from your throne descends the golden chain
Which does the fabric of our world sustain,
That once dissolved by any fatal stroke,
The scheme of all our happiness is broke.”
Adieu! my dear Sir: pray for peace!
(836) The two sons of the Duke du Maine, a natural son, but legitimated, of Lewis the Fourteenth, by Madame de Montespan.-E.
(837) Where Mr. Pelham lived.
(838) Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, the “Bufo” of Pope
“Proud as Apollo, on his forked hill
Sate full-blown Bufo, I)uff’d by every quill;
Fed with soft dedication all day long,
Horace and he went hand in hand in song."-E.
333 Letter 113
To Sir Horace Mann.
Houghton, July 11, 1743.
The Pembroke is arrived! Your brother slipped a slice of paper into a letter which he sent me from you the other day, with those pleasant words, “The Pembroke is arrived.” I am going to receive it. I shall be in town the end of this week, only stay there about ten days, and wait on the Dominichin hither. Now I tremble! If it should not stand the trial among the number of capital pictures here! But it must; It will.
O, sweet lady!(839) What shall I do about her letter? I must answer it-and where to find a penful of Italian in the world, I know not. Well, she must take what she can get: gold and silver I have not, but what I have I give unto her. Do you say a vast deal of my concern for her illness, and that I could not find decompounds and superlatives enough to express myself. You never tell me a syllable from my sovereign lady the princess: has she forgot me? What is become of Prince Beauvau?(840) is he warring against us? Shall I write to Mr. Conway to be very civil to him for my sake, if he is taken prisoner? We expect another battle every day. Broglio has joined Noailles, and Prince Charles is on the Neckar. Noailles says, “Qu’il a fait une folie, mais qu’il est pr`et `a la r`eparer.” There is great blame thrown on Baron Ilton, the Hanoverian General for having hindered the Guards from en(,aging. If they had, and the horse, who behaved wretchedly, had done their duty, it is agreed that there would be no second engagement. The poor Duke is in a much worse way than was at first apprehended: his wound proves a bad one; he is gross, and has had a shivering fit, which is often the forerunner of a mortification. There has been much thought of making knights-banneret, but I believe the scheme is laid aside; for, in the first place, they are never made but on the field of battle, and now it was not thought on till some days after; and besides, the King intended to make some who were not actually in the battle.
Adieu! Possibly I may hear something in town worth telling you.
(839) Madame Grifoni.
(840) Son of Prince Craon.
334 letter 114
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, July 19.
Here am I come a-Dominichining! and the first thing, I hear is, that the Pembroke must perform quarantine fourteen days for coming from the Mediterranean, and a week airing. It is forty days, if they bring the plague from Sicily. I will bear this misfortune as heroically as I can; and considering I have London to bear it in, may possibly support it well enough.
The private letters from the army all talk of the King’s going to Hanover, 2nd of August, N. S. If he should not, one shall be no longer in pain for him; for the French have repassed the Rhine, and think only of preparing against Prince Charles, who is marching sixty-two thousand men, full of conquest and revenge, to regain his own country. I most cordially wish him success, and that his bravery may recover what his abject brother gave up so tamely, and which he takes as little personal pains to regain. It is not at all determined whether we are to carry the war into France. It is ridiculous enough! we have the name of war with Spain, without the thing and war with France, without the name!
The maiden heroes of the Guards are in great wrath with General Ilton, who kept them out of harm’s way. They call him “the Confectioner,” because he says he preserved them.
The week before I left Houghton my father had a most dreadful accident: it had near been fatal; but he escaped miraculously. He dined abroad, and went up to sleep. As he was coming down again, not quite awakened, he was surprised at seeing the company through a glass-door which he had not observed: his foot slipped, and he, who is now entirely unwieldy and helpless, fell at once down the stairs against the door, which, had it not been there, he had dashed himself to pieces, in a stone hall. He cut his forehead two inches long to the pericranium, and another gash upon his temple; but, most luckily, did himself’ no other hurt, and was quite well again before I came away.
I find Lord Stafford (841) married to Miss Cantillon; they are to live half the year in London, half in Paris. Lord Lincoln is soon to marry his cousin Miss Pelham: it will be great joy to the whole house of Newcastle.
There is no determination yet come about the Treasury. Most people wish for Mr. Pelham; few for Lord Carteret; none for Lord Bath. My Lady TOWnshend said an admirable thing the other day to this last: he was complaining much of a pain in his side-"Oh!” said she, “that can’t be; you have no side.”
I have a new cabinet for my enamels and miniatures Just come home, which I am sure you would like: it is of rosewood; the doors inlaid with carvings in ivory.’ I wish you could see ’It! Are you to be forever ministerial sans rel`ache? Are you never to have leave to come and “settle your private affairs,” as the newspapers call it?
A thousand loves to the Chutes. Does my sovereign lady yet remember me, or has she lost with her eyes all thought of m! Adieu!
P.S. Princess Louisa goes soon to her young Denmark: and Princess Emily, it is now said, will have the man of Lubeck. If he had missed the crown of Sweden, he was to have taken Princess Caroline, because, in his private capacity, he was not a competent match for the now-first daughter of England. He is extremely handsome; it is fifteen years since Princess Emily was so.
(841) William-Matthias, third Earl of Stafford. He died in 1751 without issue.-E.
335 letter 115 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, July 31, 1743.
If I went by my last week’s reason for not writing to you, I should miss this post too, for I have no more to tell you than I had then; but at that rate, there would be great vacuums in our correspondence. I am still here, waiting for the Dominichin and the rest of the things. I have incredibly trouble about them, for they arrived just as the quarantine was established. Then they found out that the Pembroke had left the fleet so long before the infection in Sicily began, and had not touched at any port there, that the admiralty absolved it. Then the things were brought up; then they were sent back to be aired; and still I am not to have them in a week. I tremble for the pictures; for they are to be aired at the rough discretion of a master of a hoy, for nobody I could send would be suffered to go aboard. The city is outrageous; for you know, to merchants there is no plague so dreadful as a stoppage of their trade. The regency are so temporizing and timid, especially in this inter-ministerium, that I am in great apprehensions of our having the plague an island, so many ports, no power absolute or active enough to establish the necessary precautions, and all are necessary! And now it is on the continent too! While confined to Sicily there were hopes: but I scarce conceive that it will stop in two or three villages in Calabria. My dear child, Heaven preserve you from it! I am in the utmost pain on its being so near you. What will you do! whither will you go, if it reaches Tuscany? Never think of staying in Florence: shall I get you permission to retire out of that State, in case of danger? but sure you would not hesitate on such a crisis!
We have no news from the army: the minister there communicates nothing to those here. No answer comes about the Treasury. All is suspense: and clouds of breaches ready to burst. now strange is this jumble! France with an unsettled ministry; England with an unsettled one; a victory just gained over them, yet no war ensuing, or declared from either side; our minister still at Paris, as if to settle an amicable intelligence of the losses on both sides! I think there was Only wanting for Mr. Thompson to notify to them in form our victory over them, and for Bussy(843) to have civil letters of congratulation-’tis so well-bred an age!
I must tell you a bon-mot of Winnington. I was at dinner with him and Lord Lincoln and Lord Stafford last week, and it happened to be a maigre day of which Stafford was talking, though, you may believe, without any scruples; “Why,” said Winnington, “what a religion is yours! they let you eat nothing, and vet make you swallow every thing!”
My dear child, you will think when I am going to give you a new commission, that I ought to remember those you give me. Indeed I have not forgot one, though I know not how to execute them. The Life of King Theodore is too big to send but by a messenger; by the first that goes you shall have it. For cobolt and zingho, your brother and I have made all inquiries, but almost in vain, except that one person has told him that there Is some such thing in Lancashire; I have written thither to inquire. For the tea-trees, it is my brother-’s fault, whom I desired, as he is at Chelsea, to get some from the Physic-garden: he forgot it; but now I am in town myself, if possible, you shall have some seed. After this, I still know not how to give you a commission, for you over-execute; but on conditions uninfringeable, I will give you one. I have begun to collect drawings: now, if you will at any time buy me any that you meet with at reasonable rates, for I will not give great prices, I shall be much obliged to you. I would not have above one, to be sure, of any of the Florentine school, nor above one of any master after the immediate scholars of Carlo Maratti. For the Bolognese school, I care not how many; though I fear they will be too dear. But Mr. Chute understands them. One condition is, that if he collects drawings as well as prints, there is an end of the commission; for you shall not buy me any, when he perhaps would like to purchase them. The other condition is, that you regularly set down the prices you pay; otherwise, if you send me any without the price, I instantly return them unopened to your brother: this, upon my honour, I will most strictly perform.
Adieu! write me minutely the history of the plague. If it makes any progress towards you, I shall be a most unhappy man. I am far from easy on our own account here.
(843) Mr. Thompson and the Abb`e de Bussy were the English and French residents.
336 letter 117 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Aug. 14, 1743.
I should write to Mr. Chute to-day, but I won’t till next post: I will tell you why presently. Last week I did not write at all; because I was every day waiting for the Dominichin, etc. which I at last got last night-But oh! that etc.! It makes me write to you, but I must leave it etc. for I can’t undertake to develop it. I can find no words to thank you from my own fund; but Must apply an expression of the Princess Craon’s to myself, Which the number of charming things you have sent me absolutely melts down from the bombast, of which it consisted when she sent it me. “Monsieur,
The Dominichin is safe; so is every thing. I cannot think it of the same hand with the Sasso Ferrati you sent me. This last is not so manier`e as the Dominichin; for the more I look at it, the more I am convinced it is of him. It goes down with me to-morrow to Houghton. The Andrea del Sarto is particularly fine! the Sasso Ferriti particularly graceful-oh! I should have kept that word for the Magdalen’s head, which is beautiful beyond measure. Indeed, my dear Sir, I am glad, after my confusion is a little abated, that your part of the things is so delightful; for I am very little satisfied with my own purchases. Donato Creti’s(844) copy is a wretched, raw daub; the beautiful Virgin of the original he has made horrible. Then for the statue, the face is not so broad as my nail, and has not the turn of the antique. Indeed, La Vall`ee has done the drapery well, but I can’t pardon him the head. My table I like; though he has stuck in among the ornaments two vile china jars, that look like the modern japanning by ladies. The Hermaphrodite, on my seeing it again, is too sharp and hard-in short, your present has put me out of humour with every thing of my own. You shall hear next week how my lord is satisfied with his Dominichin. I have received the letter and drawings by Crewe. By the way, my drawings of the gallery are as bad as any thing of my own ordering. They gave Crewe the letter for you at the-office, I believe, for I knew nothing of his going, or I had sent you the Life of King Theodore.
I was interrupted in my letter this morning by the Duke of Devonshire, who called to see the Dominichin. Nobody knows pictures better: he was charmed with it, and did not doubt its Dominichinality.
I find another letter from you to-night of August 6th, and thank you a thousand times for your goodness about Mr. Conway: but I believe I told you, that as he is in the Guards, he was not engaged. We hear nothing but that we are going to cross the Rhine. All we know is from private letters: the Ministry hear nothing. When the Hussars went to Kevenhuller for orders, he said, “Messieurs, l’Alsace est `a vous; je n’ai point d’autres ordres `a vous donner.” They have accordingly taken up their residence in a fine chateau belonging to the Cardinal de Rohan, as Bishop of Strasbourg. We expect nothing but war; and that war expects nothing but conquest.
Your account of our officers was very false; for, instead of the soldiers going on without commanders, some of them were ready to go without their soldiers. I am sorry you have such plague with your Neptune(845) and the Sardinian-we know not of them scarce.
I really forget any thing of an Italian greyhound for the Tesi. I promised her, I remember, a black spaniel-but how to send it! I did promise one of the former to Marquis Mari at Genoa, which I absolutely have not been able to get yet, though I have often tried; but since the last Lord Halifax died, there is no meeting with any of the breed. If I can, I will get her one. I am sorry you are engaged in the opera. I have found it a most dear undertaking. I was not in the management: Lord Middlesex was chief. We were thirty subscribers, at two hundred pounds each, which was to last four years, and no other demands ever to be made. Instead of that, we have been made to pay fifty-six pounds over and above the subscription in one winter. I told the secretary in a passion, that it was the last money I would ever pay for the follies of directors.
I tremble at hearing that the plague is not over, as we thought, but still spreading. You will see in the papers That Lord Hervey is dead-luckily, I think. for himself; for he had outlived the last inch of character. Adieu!
(844) A copy of a celebrated picture by Guido at Bologna, of the Patron Saints of that city. VOL. 1. 29.-D.
(845) Admiral Matthews.
338 letter 117
To John Chute, Esq.(846)
Houghton, August 20, 1743.
Indeed, my dear Sir, you certainly did not use to be stupid, and till you give me more substantial proof that you are so, I shall not believe it. As for your temperate diet and milk bringing about such a metamorphosis, I hold it impossible. I have such lamentable proofs every day before my eyes of the stupefying qualities of beef, ale, and wine, that I have contracted a most religious veneration for your spiritual nouriture. Only imagine that I here every day see men, who are mountains of roast beef, and only seem just roughly hewn out into the outlines of human form, like the giant-rock at Pratolino! I shudder when I see them brandish their knives in act to carve, and look on them as savages that devour
Oh! my dear Sir, don’t you find that nine parts in ten of the world are of no use but to make you wish yourself with that tenth part? I am so far from growing used to mankind by living amongst them, that my natural ferocity and wildness does but every day grow worse. They tire me, they fatigue me; I don’t know what to do with them; I don’t know what to say to them; I fling open the windows and fancy I want air; and when I get by myself, I undress myself, and seem to have had people in my pockets, in my plaits, -and on my shoulders! I indeed find this fatigue worse in the country than in town, because one can avoid it there, and has more resources; but it is there too. I fear ’tis growing old; but I literally seem to have murdered a man whose name was Ennui, for his ghost is ever before me. They say there is no English word for ennui;(847) I think you may translate it most literally by what is called “entertaining people,” and “doing the honours:” that is, you sit an hour with somebody you don’t know, and don’t care for, talk about the wind and the weather, and ask a thousand foolish questions, which all begin with, “I think you live a good deal in the country,” or, “I think you don’t love this thing or that.” Oh! ’tis dreadful!
I’ll tell you what is delightful-the Dominichin!(848) My dear Sir, if ever there was a Dominichin, if ever there was an original picture, this is one. I am quite happy; for my father is as much transported with it as I am. It is hung in the gallery, where are all his most capital pictures, and he himself thinks it beats all but the two Guido’S. That of the Doctors and The Octagon-I don’t know if you ever saw them? What a chain of thought this leads me into! but why should I not indulge it? I will flatter myself with your, some time or other, passing a few days with me. Why must I never expect to see any thing but Beefs in a gallery which would not yield even to the Colonna! If I do not most unlimitedly wish to see you and Mr. Whithed in it this very moment, it is only because I would not take you from our dear Mann. Adieu! you charming people all. Is not Madam Bosville a Beef? Yours, most sincerely.
(846) this very lively letter is the first of a series, hitherto unpublished, addressed by Mr. Walpole to John Chute, Esq. of the Vine, in the county of Hants. Mr. Chute was the grandson of Chaloner Chute, Esq. Speaker of the House of Commons to Richard Cromwell’s parliament. On the death of his brother Anthony, in 1754, he succeeded to the family estates, and died in 1776.-E.
(847) According to Lord Byron—
“Ennui is a growth of English root,
Though nameless in our language: we retort
The fact for words, and let the French translate
That awful yawn, which sleep cannot abate.”
(848) Thus described by Walpole in his Description Of the Pictures at Houghton Hall:- “The Virgin and Child, a most beautiful, bright, and capital picture, by Dominichino: bought out of the Zambeccari palace at Bologna by Horace Walpole, junior."-E.
340 Letter 118
To Sir Horace Mann.
Houghton, Aug. 29, 1743.
You frighten me about the Spaniards entering Tuscany: it is so probable, that I have no hopes against it but in their weakness. If all the accounts of their weakness and desertion are true, it must be easy to repel them. If their march to Florence is to keep pace with Prince Charles’s entering Lorrain, it is not yet near: hitherto, he has not found the passage of the Rhine practicable. The French have assembled greater armies to oppose it than was expected. We are marching to assist him: the King goes on with the army. I am extremely sorry for the Chevalier de Beauvau’s(849) accident; as sorry, perhaps, as the prince or princess; for you know he was no favourite. The release of the French prisoners prevents the civilities which I would have taken care to have had shown him. You may tell the princess, that though it will be so much honour to us to have any of her family it) our power, vet I shall always be extremely concerned to have such an opportunity of showing my attention to them. there’s a period in her own style-"Comment! Monsieur des attentions: qu’il est poli! qu’il s`cait tOUrner une civilit`e!”
“Ha!(850) la brave Angloise! e viva!” What would I have given to have overheard you breaking it to the gallant! But of all, commend me to the good man Nykin! Why, Mamie (851) himself could not have cuddled up an affair for his sovereign lady better.
I have a commission from my lord to send you ten thousand thanks for his bronze-. He admires it beyond measure. It came down last Friday, on his birthday,(852) and was placed at the upper end of the gallery, which was illuminated on the occasion: indeed, it is incredible what a magnificent appearance it made. There were sixty-four candles, which showed all the pictures to great advantage. The Dominichin did itself and us honour. There is not the least question of its being original: one might as well doubt the originality of King Patapan! His patapanic majesty is not one of the least curiosities
You will have seen in the papers that Mr. Pelham is at last first lord of the Treasury. Lord Bath had sent over Sir John Rushout’s valet de chambre to Hanau to ask it. It is a great question now what side he will take; or rather, if any side will take him. It is not yet known what the good folks in the Treasury will do-I believe, what they can. Nothing farther will be determined till the King’s return.
(849) Third son of Prince Craon, and knight of Malta.
(850) This relates to an intrigue which was observed in a church between an English gentleman and a lady who was at Florence with her husband. Mr. Mann was desired to speak to the lover to choose more proper places.
(851) Prince Craon’s name for the princess. She was mistress of Leopold, the last Duke of Lorrain, who married her to M. de Beauvau, and prevailed on the Emperor to make him a prince of the empire. Leopold had twenty children by her, who all resembled him; and he got his death by a cold which he contracted in standing to sea a new house, which he had built for her, furnished. The duchess was extremely jealous, and once retired to Paris, to complain to her brother the Regent; but he was not a man to quarrel with his brother-in-law for things of that nature, and sent his sister back. Madame de Craon gave into devotion after the Duke’s death.
(852) August 26.
341 letter 119
To Sir Horace Mann.
Houghton, Sept. 7, 1743.
My letters are now at their ne plus ultra of nothingness so you may hope they will grow better again. I shall certainly go to town soon, for my patience is worn out. Yesterday, the weather grew cold: I put on a new waistcoat for its being winter’s birthday-the season I am forced to love; for summer has no charms for me when I pass it in the country.
We are expecting another battle, and a congress at the same time. Ministers seem to be flocking to Aix la Chapelle: and, what will much surprise you, unless you have lived long enough not to be surprised, is, that Lord Bolingbroke has hobbled the same way too-you will suppose, as a minister for France; I tell you, no. My uncle, who is here, was yesterday stumping along the gallery with a very political march: my lord asked him whither he was going. Oh, said he, to Aix la Chapelle.
You ask me about the marrying princesses. I know not a tittle. Princess Louisa(853) seems to be going, her clothes are bought; but marrying our daughters makes no conversation. For either of the other two, all thoughts seem to be dropped of it. The senate of Sweden design themselves to choose a wife for their man of Lubeck. The city, and our supreme governors, the mob, are very angry that there @is a troop of French players at Clifden.(854) One of them was lately impertinent to a countryman, who thrashed him. His Royal Highness sent angrily to know the cause. The fellow replied, “he thought to have pleased his Highness in beating one of them, who had tried to kill his father and had wounded his brother.” This was not easy to answer.
I delight in Prince Craon’s exact intelligence! For his satisfaction, I can tell him that numbers, even here, would believe any story full as absurd as that of the King and my Lord Stair; or that very one, if any body will ever write it over. Our faith in politics will match any Neapolitan’s in religion. A political missionary will make more converts in a county progress than a Jesuit in the whole empire of China, and will produce more preposterous miracles. Sir Watkin Williams, at the last Welsh races, convinced the whole principality (by reading a letter that affirmed it), that the King was not within two miles of the battle of Dettingen. We are not good at hitting off anti-miracles, the only way of defending one’s own religion. I have read -,in admirable story of the Duke of Buckingham, who, when James II. sent a priest to him to persuade him to turn Papist, and was plied by him with miracles, told the doctor, that if miracles were proofs of a religion, the Protestant cause was as well supplied as theirs. We have lately had a very extraordinary one near my estate in the country. A very holy man, as you might be, doctor, was travelling on foot, and was benighted. He came to the cottage of a poor dowager, who had nothing in the house for herself and daughter but a couple of eggs and a slice of bacon. However, as she was a pious widow, she made the good man welcome. In the morning, in taking leave, the saint made her over to God for payment, and prayed that whatever she should do as soon as he was gone she might continue to do all day. This was a very unlimited request, and, unless the saint was a prophet too, might not have been very pleasant retribution. The good woman, who minded her affairs, and was not to be put out of her way, went about her business. She had a piece of coarse cloth to make a couple of shifts for herself and child. She no sooner began to measure it but the yard fell a-measuring, and there was no stopping it. It was sunset before the good woman had time to take breath. She was almost stifled, for she was up to her ears in ten thousand yards of cloth. She could have afforded to have sold Lady Mary Wortley a clean shift’ of the usual coarseness she wears, for a groat halfpenny.
I wish you would tell the Princess this story. Madame Riccardi, or the little Countess d’Elbenino, will doat on it. I don’t think it will be out of Pandolfini’s way, if you tell it to the little Albizzi. You see that I have not forgot the tone of my Florentine acquaintance. I know I should have translated it to them: you remember what admirable work I used to make of such stories in broken Italian. I have heard old Churchill tell Bussy English puns out of jest-books: particularly a reply about eating hare, which he translated, “j’ai mon ventre plein de poil.” Adieu!
(853) Youngest daughter of George the Second. She was married in the following October, and died in 1751, at the age of twenty-seven.-E.
(854) The residence of the Prince of Wales. This noble building was burnt to the ground in 1795, and nothing of its furniture preserved but the tapestry that represents the Duke of Marlborough’s victories.-E.
343 letter 120 To sir Horace Mann. Houghton, Sept. 17, 1743.
As much as we laughed at Prince Craon’s history of the King and Lord Stair, you see it was not absolutely without foundation. I don’t just believe that he threatened his master with the parliament. They say he gives for reason of his Quitting, their not having accepted one plan of operation that he has offered. There is a long memorial that he presented to the King, with which I don’t doubt but his lordship will oblige the public.(856) He has ordered all his equipages to be sold by public auction in the camp. This is all I can tell you of this event, and this is more than has been written to the ministry here. They talk of great uneasinesses among the English officers, all of which I don’t believe. The army is put into commission. Prince Charles has not passed the Rhine, nor we any thing but our time. The papers of to-day tell us of a definitive treaty signed by us and the Queen of Hungary with the King of Sardinia, which I will flatter myself will tend to your defence. I am not in much less trepidation about Tuscany than Richcourt is, though I scarce think my fears reasonable; but while you are concerned, I fear every thing.
My lord does not admire the account of the lanfranc; thanks you, and will let it alone. I am going to town in ten days, not a little tired of the country, and in the utmost impatience for the winter; which I am sure from all political prospects, must be entertaining to one who only intends to see them at the length of the telescope. I was lately diverted with an article in the Abecodario Pittorico, in the article of William Dobson: it says, “Nacque nel quartiere d’Holbrons in Inghilterra."(857) Did the author take Holborn for a city, or Inghilterra for the capital of the island of London? Adieu!
(856) In this memorial Lord Stair complained that his advice had been slighted, hinted at Hanoverian partialities, and asked permission to retire, as he expressed it, to his plough. His resignation was accepted, with marks of the King’s displeasure at the language in which it was tendered.-E.
(857) Charles the First used to call Dobson the English Tintoret. He is said to have been the first painter who introduced the practice of obliging persons who sat to him to pay half the price in advance.-E.
344 letter 121 To Sir Horace Mann. Newmarket, Oct. 3, 1743.
I am writing to you in an inn on the road to London. What a paradise should I have thought this when I was in the Italian inns in a wide barn with four ample windows, which had nothing more like glass than shutters and iron bars ’ no tester to the bed, and the saddles and portmanteaus heaped on me to keep off the cold. What a paradise did I think the inn at Dover when I came back! and what magnificence Were twopenny prints, saltcellars, and boxes to hold the knives: but the summum bonum was small-beer and the newspaper.
“I bless’d my stars, and called it luxury!”
Who was the Neapolitan ambassadress (858) that could not live at Paris, because there was no maccaroni? Now am I relapsed into all the dissatisfied repinement of a true English grumbling voluptuary. I could find in my heart to write a Craftsman against the Government, because I am not quite so much at my ease as on my own sofa. I could persuade myself that it is my Lord Carteret’s fault that I am only sitting in a common arm-chair, when I would be lolling in a p`ech`e-mortel. How dismal, how solitary, how scrub does this town look and yet it has actually a street of houses better than Parma or Modena. Nay, the houses of the people of fashion, who come hither for the races, are palaces to what houses in London itself were fifteen years ago. People do begin to live again now, and I suppose in a term we shall revert to York Houses, Clarendon Houses, etc. But from that grandeur all the nobility had contracted themselves to live in coops of a dining-room, a dark back-room, with one eye in a corner, and a closet. Think what London would be, if the chief houses were in it, as in the cities in other countries, and not dispersed like great rarity-plums in a vast pudding of country. Well, it is a tolerable place as it is! Were I a physician, I would prescribe nothing but recipe, CCCLXV drachm. Linden. Would you know why I like London so much? Why if the world must consist of so many fools as it does, I choose to take them in the gross, and not made into separate pills, as they are prepared in the country. Besides, there is no being alone but in a metropolis: the worst place in the world to find solitude is in the country: questions grow there, and that unpleasant Christian commodity, neighbours. Oh! they are all good Samaritans, and do so pour balms and nostrums upon one, if one has but the toothache, or a journey to take, that they break one’s head. A journey to take-ay! they talk over the miles to you, and tell you, you will be late and My Lord Lovel says, John always goes two hours in the dark in the morning, to avoid being One hour in the dark in the evening. I was pressed to set out to-day before seven: I did before nine; and here am I arrived at a quarter past five, for the rest of the night.
I am more convinced every day, that there is not only no knowledge of the world out of a great city, but no decency, no practicable society-I had almost said, not a virtue. I will only instance in modesty, which all old Englishmen are persuaded cannot exist within the atmosphere of Middlesex. Lady Mary has a remarkable taste and knowledge of music, and can sing; I don’t say, like your sister, but I am sure she would be ready to die if obliged to sing before three people, or before One with whom she is not intimate. The other day there came to see her a Norfolk heiress: the young gentlewoman had not been three hours in the house, and that for the first time of her life, before she notified her talent for singing, and invited herself up-stairs, to Lady Mary’s harpsichord; where, with a voice like thunder, and with as little harmony, she sang to nine or ten people for an hour. “Was ever nymph like Rossvmonde?"-no, d’honneur. We told her, she had a very strong voice. “Lord, Sir! my master says it is nothing to what it was.” My dear child, she brags abominably; if it had been a thousandth degree louder, you must have heard it at Florence.
I did not write to you last post, being overwhelmed with this sort of people — I will be more punctual in London. Patapan is in my lap: I had him wormed lately, which he took famously: I made it up with him by tying a collar of rainbow-riband about his neck, for a token that he is never to be wormed any more.
I had your long letter of two sheets of Sept. 17th, and wonder at your perseverance in telling me so much as you always do, when I, dull creature, find so little for you. I can only tell you that the more you write, the happier you make me; and I assure you, the more details the better: I so often lay schemes for returning to you, that I am persuaded I shall, and would keep up my stock of Florentine ideas.
I honour Matthew’s punctilious observance of his Holiness’s dignity. How incomprehensible Englishmen are! I should have sworn that he would have piqued himself on calling the Pope the w- of Babylon, and have begun his remonstrance, with “you old d-d-.” What extremes of absurdities! to flounder from Pope Joan to his Holiness! I like your reflection, “that every body can bully the Pope.” There was a humourist called Sir James of the Peak, who had been beat by a felony, who afterwards underwent the same operation from a third hand. “Zound,” said Sir James, “that I did not know this fellow would take a beating!” Nay, my dear child, I don’t know that Matthews would!
You know I always thought the Tesi comique, pendant que `ca devroit, `etre tragique. I am happy that my sovereign lady expressed my opinion so well-by the way, is De Sade still with you? Is he still in pawn by the proxy of his clothes? has the Princess as constant retirements to her bedchamber with the colique and Amenori? Oh! I was struck the other day with a resemblance of mine hostess at Brandon
i agree with you, that it would be too troublesome to send me the things now the quarantine exists, except the gun-barrels for Lord Conway, the length of which I know nothing about, being, as you conceive, no sportsman. I must send you, with the Life of Theodore, a vast pamphlet (859) in defence of’ the new administration, which makes the greatest noise. It is written, as supposed, by Dr. Pearse,(860) of St. Martin’s, whom Lord Bath lately made a dean; the matter furnished by him. There is a good deal of useful ]Knowledge of the famous change to be found in it, and much more impudence. Some parts are extremely fine; in particular, the answer to the Hanoverian pamphlets, where he has collected the flower of all that was said in defence of that measure.(861) Had you those pamphlets? I will make up a parcel: tell me what other books you would have: I will send you nothing else, for if I give you the least bauble, it puts you to infinite expense, which I can’t forgive, and indeed will never bear again: you would ruin yourself, and there is nothing I wish so much as the contrary.
Here is a good Ode, written on the supposition of that new book being Lord Bath’s; I believe by the same hand as those charming ones which I sent you last year: the author is not yet known.(862)
The Duke of Argyle is dead-a death of how little moment, and of how much it would have been a year or two ago.(863) It is provoking, if one must die, that one can’t even die a propos!
How does your friend Dr. Cocchi? You never mention him: do only knaves and fools deserve to be spoken of? Adieu!
(858) The Princess of Campoflorido.
(859) Called " Faction Detected.”
(860) Mr. Pearse, afterwards Bishop of Bangor. He was not the author, but Lord Perceval, afterwards Earl of Egmont.
(861) Sir John Hawkins says, that Osborne the bookseller, held out to Dr. Johnson a strong temptation to answer this pamphlet; which he refused, being convinced that the charge contained in it was unanswerable.-E.
(862) The Ode by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, beginning, “Your sheets I’ve perused."-D.
(863) “Leaving no male issue, Argyle was succeeded in his titles and estates by his brother, and of late his bitter enemy, the Earl of Islay. With all his faults and follies, Argyle was still brave, eloquent, and accomplished, a skilful officer, and a princely nobleman."-lord Mahon, vol. iii. p. 271.
347 letter 122 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Oct. 12, 1743.
They had sent your letter of Sept. 24th to Houghton the very night I came to town. I did not receive it back till yesterday, and soon after another, with Mr. Chute’s inclosed, for which I will thank him presently. But, my dear child, I can, like you, think Of nothing but your bitter father’s letter.—! and that I should have contributed to it! how I detest myself!(864) My dearest Sir, you know all I ever said to him:(865) indeed, I never do see him, and I assure you that I would worship him as the Indians do the Devil, for fear-he should hurt you: tempt you I find he will not. He is so avaricious, that I believe, if you asked for a fish, he would think it even extravagance to give you a stone: in these bad times, stones may come to be dear, and if he loses his place and his lawsuit, who knows but he may be reduced to turn paviour? Oh! the brute! and how shocking, that, for your sake, one can’t literally wish to see him want bread! But how can you feel the least tenderness, when the wretch talks of his bad health, and of not denying himself comforts! It is weakness in you: whose health is worse, yours or his? or when did he ever deny himself a comfort to please any mortal? My dear child, what is it possible to do for you? is there any thing in my power? What would I not do for you? and, indeed, what ought I not, if I have done you any disservice? I don’t think there is any danger of your father’s losing his place,(866) for whoever succeeds Mr. Pelham is likely to be a friend to this house, and would not turn out one so connected with it.
I should be very glad to show my lord an account of those statues you mention: they are much wanted in his hall, where, except the Laocoon, he has nothing but busts. For Gaburri’s drawings, I am extremely pleased with what you propose to me. I should be well content with two of each master. I can’t well fix any price; but would not the rate of a sequin apiece be sufficient? to be sure he never gave any thing like that: when one buys the quantity you mention to me, I can’t but think that full enough, one ’with another. At least, if I bought so many as two hundred, I would not venture to go beyond that.
I am not at all easy from what you tell me of the Spaniards. I have now no hopes but in the winter, and what it may produce. I fear ours will be most ugly-the disgusts about Hanover swarm and increase every day. The King and Duke have left the army, which is marching to winter-quarters in Flanders, He will not be here by his birthday, but it will be kept when he comes. The parliament meets the 22d of November. All is distraction! no union in the Court: no certainty about the House of Commons: Lord Carteret making no friends, the King making enemies: Mr. Pelham in vain courting Pitt, etc. Pultney unresolved. How will it end? No joy but in the Jacobites. I know nothing more, so turn to Mr. Chute.
My dear Sir, how I am obliged to you for your poem! Patapan is so vain with it, that he will read nothing else; I only offered him a Martial to compare it with the original, and the little coxcomb threw it into the fire, and told me, “He had never heard of a lapdog’s reading Latin; that it was very well for house-dos and pointers that live in the country, and have several hours upon their hands: for my part,” said he,
“I am so nice, who ever saw
A Latin book on my sofa?
You’ll find as soon a primer there
Or recipes for pastry ware.
Why do ye think I ever read
But Crebillon or Calpren`ede?
This very thing of Mr. Chute’s
Scarce with my taste and fancy suits,
oh! had it but in French been writ,
’Twere the genteelest, sweetest bit!
One hates a vulgar English poet:
I vow t’ ye, I should blush to show it
To women de ma connoissance,
Did not that agr`eable stance.
Cher double entendre! furnish means
Of making sweet Patapanins!"(867)
My dear Sir, your translation shall stand foremost in the Patapaniana: I hope in time to have poems upon him, and sayings of his own, enough to make a notable book. En attendant, I have sent you some pamphlets to amuse your solitude; for, do you see, tramontane as I am, and as much as I love Florence, and hate the country, while we make such a figure in the world, or at least such a noise in it, one must consider you other Florentines as country gentlemen. Tell our dear Miny that when he unfolds the enchanted carpet, which his brother the wise Galfridus sends him, he will find all the kingdoms of the earth portrayed in it. In short, as much history as was described on the ever-memorable and wonderful piece of silk which the puissant White Cat(868) inclosed in a nutshell, and presented to her paramour Prince. In short, in this carpet, which (filberts being out of season) I was reduced to pack up in a walnut, he will find the following immense library of political lore: Magazines for October, November, December; with an Appendix for the year 1741; all the Magazines for 1742, bound in one volume; and nine Magazines for 17’43. The Life of King Theodore, a certain fairy monarch; with the Adventures of this Prince and the fair Republic of Genoa. The miscellaneous thoughts of the fairy Hervey. ’The Question Stated. Case of the Hanover Troops; and the Vindication of the Case. Faction Detected. Congratulatory Letter to Lord Bath. The Mysterious Congress; and @our Old England Journals. Tell Mr. Mann, or Mr. Mann tell himself, that I would send him nothing but this enchanted carpet, which he can’t pretend to return. I will accept nothing under enchantment. Adieu all ! Continue to love the two Patapans.
(864) Sir Horace Mann in a letter to Walpole, dated Sept. 24th, 1743, gives an account of his father’s refusal to give him any money; and then quotes the following passage from his father’s letter-"He tells me he has been baited by you and your uncle on my account, which was very disagreeable, and believes he may charge it to me."-D.
(865) See ant`e, p.325. (letter 108)
(866) Mr. Robert Mann, father of Sir Horace Mann, had a place in Chelsea College, under the Paymaster of the Forces.
(867) Mr. Chute had sent Mr. Walpole the following imitation of an epigram of Martial:
“Issa est passere nequior Catulli,
Issa est pUrior osculo columbae.”
Martial, Lib. i, Ep. 110.
“Pata is frolicksome and smart,
As Geoffry once was-(Oh my heart!)
He’s purer than a turtle’s kiss,
And gentler than a little miss;
A jewel for a lady’s ear,
And Mr. Walpole’s pretty dear.
He laughs and cries with mirth or spleen;
He does not speak, but thinks, ’tis plain.
One knows his little Guai’s as well
As if he’d little words to tell.
Coil’d in a heap, a plumy wreathe,
He sleeps, you hardly hear him breathe.
Then he’s so nice, who ever saw
A drop that sullied his sofa?
His bended leg!-what’s this but sense?-
Points out his little exigence.
He looks and points, and whisks about,
And says, pray, dear Sir, let me out.
Where shall we find a little wife,
To be the comfort of his life,
To frisk and skip, and furnish means
Of making sweet Patapanins?
England, alas! can boast no she,
Fit only for his cicisbee.
Must greedy Fate then have him all?-
No; Wootton to our aid we’ll call-
The immortality’s the same,
Built on a shadow, or a name.
He shall have one by Wootton’s means,
The other Wootton for his pains.”
(868) See the story of the White Cat in the fairy tales.
349 Letter 123
To Sir Horace Mann.
London, Nov. 17, 1743.
I would not write on Monday till I could tell you the King was come. He arrived at St. James’s between five and six on Tuesday. We were in great fears of his coming through the city, after the treason that has been publishing for these two months; but it is incredible how well his reception was beyond what it had ever been before: in short, you would have thought it had not been a week after the victory at Dettingen. They almost carried him into -the palace on their shoulders; and at night the whole town was illuminated and bonfired. He looks much better than he has for these five years, and is in great spirits. The Duke limps a little. The King’s reception of the Prince, who was come to St. James’s to wait for him, and who met him on the stairs with his two sisters and the privy councillors, was not so gracious-pas un mot-though the Princess was brought to bed the day before, and Prince George is ill of the small-pox. It is very Unpopular! You will possibly, by next week, hear great things: hitherto, all is silence, expectation, struggle, and ignorance. The birthday is kept on Tuesday, when the parliament was to have met; but that can’t be yet.
Lord Holderness has brought home a Dutch bride:(869) I have not seen her. The Duke of Richmond had a letter yesterday from Lady Albemarle,(870) at Altona. She says the Prince of Denmark is not so tall as his bride, but. far from a bad figure: he is thin, and not ugly, except having too wide a mouth. When she returns, as I know her particularly, I will tell you more; for the present, I think I have very handsomely despatched the chapter of royalties. My lord comes to town the day after to-morrow.
The opera is begun, but is not so well as last year. The Rosa Maricini, who is second woman, and whom I suppose you have heard, is now old. In the room of Amorevoli, they have got a dreadful bass, who, the Duke of Montagu says he believes, was organist at Aschaffenburgh.
DO you remember a tall Mr. Vernon,(871) who travelled with Mr. Cotton? He is going to be married to a sister of Lord Strafford.
I have exhausted my news, and you shall excuse my being short to-day. For the future, I shall overflow with preferments, alterations, and parliaments.
Your brother brought me yesterday two of yours together, of Oct. 22 and 27, and I find you still overwhelmed with Richcourt’s folly and the Admiral’s explanatory ignorance. It is unpleasant to have old Pucci (872) added to your embarrassments.
Chevalier Ossorio (873) was with me the other morning, and we were talking over the Hanoverians, as every body does. I complimented him very sincerely on his master’s great bravery and success: he answered very modestly and sensibly, that he was glad amidst all the clamours, that there had been no cavil to be found with the subsidy paid to his King. Prince Lobkowitz makes a great figure, and has all my wishes and blessings for having put Tuscany out of the question.
There is no end of my giving you trouble with packing me up cases: I shall pay the money to your brother. Adieu! Embrace the Chutes, who are heavenly good to you, and must have been of great use in all your illness and disputes.
(869) Her name was Mademoiselle Doublette, and she is called in the Peerages “the niece of M. Van Haaren, of the Province of Holland."-D.
(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
The Duke of Marlborough has resigned every thing, to reinstate himself in the old duchess’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 nutshell. 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. Coke(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 titles 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 title.-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 Edgcumbe, 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 space,
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 prostituted 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 titled
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 Nobility’s coarse ductile thread
>From some distinguished harlot’s titled bed.
Not thus ennobled 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 nobleman, 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 is@My 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 Middlesex is one of the new treasury,
not ambassador 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 hoarded 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.
I have paid your brother the bill I received from you, and give you a thousand thanks for all the trouble you have had; most particularly from the plague of hams,(889) from which you have saved me. Heavens! how blank"I should have looked at unpacking a great case of bacon and wine! My dear child, be my friend, and preserve me from heroic presents. I cannot possibly at this distance begin a new courtship of regalia; for I suppose all those hams were to be converted into watches and toys. Now it would suit Sir Paul Methuen very well, who is a knight-errant at seventy-three, to carry on an amour between a Mrs. Chenevix’s(890) shop and a noble collar in Florence; but alas! I am neither old enough nor young enough to be gallant, and should ill become the writing of heroic epistles to a fair mistress in Italy-no, no: “ne sono uscito con onore, mi pare, e non voglio riprendere quel impegno pi`u” You see how rustic I am grown again!
I knew your new brother-in-law(891) at school, but have not seen him since. But your sister was in love, and must consequently be happy to have him. Yet I own, I cannot much felicitate any body that marries for love. It is bad enough to marry; but to marry where one loves, ten times worse. it is so charming at first, that the decay of inclination renders it infinitely more disagreeable afterwards. Your sister has a thousand merits; but they don’t count: but then she has good sense enough to make her happy, if her merit cannot make him so.
Adieu! I rejoice for your sake that Madame Royale’ is recovered, as I saw in the papers.
(887) John JefFries.
(888)General George Wade, afterwards commander of
the forces in Scotland. He died in 1748.
A fine monument, by Roubillac, was erected to his
memory in Westminster
Abbey.-E.
(889) Madame Grifoni was going to send Mr. W. a Present of hams and Florence wine.
(890) The proprietress of a celebrated toy-shop.-D.
(891) Mr. Foote.
(892) The Duchess of Lorrain, mother of the Great
Duke: her death would have occasioned a long
mourning at Florence.
[Elizabeth of Orleans, only daughter of Philip, Duke
of
Orleans
(Monsieur), by his second wife, the Princess Palatine.]
-D.
To Sir Horace Mann.
Dear Sir, I have been much desired by a very particular friend, to recommend to you Sir William Maynard,(893) who is going to Florence. You will oblige me extremely by any civilities you show him while he stays there; in particular, by introducing him to the Prince and Princess de Craon, Madame Suares, and the rest of my acquaintance there, who, I dare say, will continue their goodness to me, by receiving him with the same politeness that they received me. I am, etc.
(893) Sir William Maynard, the fourth baronet of the family, and a younger branch of the Lords Maynard. His son, Sir Charles Maynard, became Viscount Maynard in 1775, upon the death of his cousin Charles, the first viscount, who had been so created, with special remainder to him.-D.
356 Letter 127
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Jan. 24, 1744.
Don’t think me guilty of forgetting you a moment, though I have missed two or three posts. If you knew the incessant hurry and fatigue in which I live, and how few ’moments I have to myself, you would not suspect Me. You know, I am naturally indolent, and without application to any kind of business; yet it is- impossible, in this country, to live in the world, and be in parliament, and not find oneself every day more hooked into politics and company, especially inhabiting a house that is again become the centre of affairs. My lord becomes the last resource, to which they are all forced to apply. One part of the ministry, you may be sure, do; and for the other, they affect to give themselves the honour of it too.
Last Thursday I would certainly have written to give you a full answer to your letter of grief (894) but I was shut up in the House till past ten at night; and the night before till twelve. But I must speak to you in private first. I don’t in the least doubt but my Lady Walpole and Richcourt would willingly be as mischievous as they are malicious, If they could: but, my dear child, it is impossible. Don’t fear from Carteret’s silence to you; he never writes: if that were a symptom of disgrace, the Duke of’ Newcastle would have been out long ere this: and when the regency were not thought worthy of his notice, you could not expect it. As to your being attached to Lord Orford, that is your safety. Carteret told him the other day, “My Lord, I appeal to the Duke of Newcastle, if I did not tell the King, that it was you who had carried the Hanover troops.” That, too, disproves the accusation of Sir Robert’s being no friend to the Queen of Hungary. That is now too stale and old. However, I will speak to my lord and Mr. Pelham-would I had no more cause to tremble for you, than from little cabals! But, my dear child, when we hear every day of the ’Toulon fleet sailing, can I be easy for you? or can I not foresee where that must break, unless Matthews and the wonderful fortune of England can interpose effectually? We are not without our own fears; the Brest fleet of twenty-two sail is out at sea; they talk, for Barbadoes. I believe we wish it may be thither destined? Judge what I think; I cannot, nor may write: but I am in the utmost anxiety for your situation.
The whole world, nay the Prince himself allows, that if Lord Orford had not come to town, the Hanover troops had been lost.(895) They were in effect given up by all but Carteret. We carried our own army in Flanders by a majority of 112.(896) Last Wednesday was the great day of expectation: we sat in the committee on the Hanover troops till twelve at night: the numbers were 271 to 226. The next day on the report we sat again till past ten, the opposition having moved to adjourn till Monday, on which we divided, 265 to 177. Then the Tories all went away in a body, and the troops were voted.
We have still tough work to do: there are the estimates on The extraordinaries of the campaign, and the treaty of Worms (897) to come;—I know who (898) thinks this last more difficult to fight than the Hanover troops. It is likely to turn out as laborious a session as ever was. All the comfort is, all the abuse don’t lie at your door nor mine; Lord Carteret has the full perquisites of the ministry. The other day, after Pitt had called him “the Hanover troop-minister, a flagitious taskmaster,” and said, “that the sixteen thousand Hanoverians were all the party he had, and were his placemen;” in short, after he had exhausted invectives, he added, “But I have done: if he were present, I would say ten times more."(899) Murray shines as bright as ever he did at the bar; which he seems to decline, to push his fortune in the House of Commons under Mr. Pelham.
This is the present state of our politics, which is our present state; for nothing else is thought of. We. fear the King will again go abroad.
Lord Hartington has desired me to write to you for some melon-seeds, which you will be so good to get the best, and send to me for him.
I can’t conclude without mentioning again the Toulon squadron: we vapour and say, by this time Matthews has beaten them, while I see them in the port of Leghorn!
My dear Mr. Chute, I trust to your friendship to comfort our poor Miny: for my part, I am all apprehension! My dearest child, if it turns out so, trust to my friendship for working every engine to restore you to as good a situation as you will lose, If my fears prove prophetic! The first peace would reinstate you in your favourite Florence, whoever were sovereign of it. I wish you may be able to smile at the vanity of my fears, as I did at yours about Richcourt. Adieu! adieu!
(894) Sir Horace Mann had written in great uneasiness, in consequence of his having heard that Count Richcourt, the Great Duke’s minister; was using all his influence with the English government, in conjunction with Lady Walpole, to have Sir Horace removed from his situation at Florence.-D.
(895) “Lord Orford’s personal credit with his friends was the main reason that the question was so well disposed of: he never laboured any point during his own administration with more zeal, and at a dinner at Hanbury Williams’s had a meeting with such of the old court party as were thought most averse to concurring in this measure; where he took great pains to convince them of the necessity there was for repeating it.” Mr. P. Yorke’s MS. Journal.-E.
(896) It appears from Mr. Philip Yorke’s Parliamentary Journal, that the letter-writer took a part in the debate-"Young Mr. Walpole’s speech,” he says, “met with deserved applause from every body: it was judicious and elegant: he applied the verse which Lucan puts in Curia’s mouth to Caesar, to the King:-
“Livor edax tibi cuncta negat, Gallasque subactos, Vix impune feres."-E.
(897) Between the King of England, the Queen of Hungary, and the King of Sardinia, to whom were afterwards added Holland and Saxony. It is sometimes called “the triple alliance."-D.
(898) Lord Orford.
(899) “Pitt as usual,” says Mr. Yorke, in his MS. Parliamentary Journal, ,fell foul of Lord Carteret, called him a Hanover troop-minister; that they were his party, his placemen; that he had conquered the cabinet by their means, and after being very lavish of his abuse, wished he was in the House, that he might give him more of it.” Tu the uncommon accuracy of Mr. Walpole’s reports of the proceedings in Parliament, the above-quoted Journal bears strong evidence.-E.
358 Letter 128 To Sir Horace Mann. Feb. 9, 1744.
I have scarce time to write, or to know what I write. I live in the House of Commons. We sat on Tuesday till ten at night, on a Welsh election; and shall probably stay as long to-day on the same.
I have received all your letters by the couriers and the post: I am persuaded the Duke of Newcastle is much pleased with your despatch; but I dare not enquire, for fear he should dislike your having written the same to me.
I believe we should have heard more of the Brest squadron,
if their appearance off the Land’s End on Friday
was se’nnight, steering towards Ireland, had
occasioned greater consternation. It is incredible
how little impression it made: the stocks hardly
fell: though it was then generally believed that
the Pretender’s son was on board. We expected
some invasion; but as they were probably disappointed
on finding no rising in their favour, it is now believed
that they are gone to the Mediterranean. They
narrowly missed taking the Jamaica fleet, which was
gone out convoyed by two men-of-war. The French
pursued them, outsailed them, and missed them by their
own inexpertness. Sir John Norris is at Portsmouth,
ready to sail with nineteen
men-of-war,
and is to be
joined by two more from Plymouth. We
hope
to hear that Matthews has
beat the Toulon squadron before they can be joined
by the Brest. This is the state of our situation.
“le have stopped the embarkation of the six
thousand men for Flanders; and I hope the King’s
journey thither, The Opposition fight every
measure
of supply, but very
unsuccessfully. When this Welsh election is
over, they will probably go out of town, and leave
the rest of the session at ease.
I think you have nothing to apprehend from the new mine that is preparing against you. My lord is convinced it is an idle attempt and it will always be in his power to prevent any such thing from taking effect. I am very unhappy for Mr. Chute’s gout, or for any thing that disturbs the peace of people I love so much, and that I have such vast reason to love. You know my fears for you: pray Heaven they end well!
It is universally believed that the Pretender’s son, who is at Paris, will make the campaign in one of their armies. I suppose this will soon produce a declaration of war; and then France, perhaps, will not find her account in having brought him as near to England as ever he is like to be. Adieu! My Lord is hurrying me down to the House. I must go!
359 Letter 129 To Sir Horace Mann. House of Commons, Feb. 16, 1744.
We are come nearer to a crisis than indeed I expected! After the various reports about the Brest squadron, it has proved that they are sixteen ships of the line off Torbay; in all probability to draw our fleet from Dunkirk, where they have two men-of-war and sixteen large Indiamen to transport eight thousand foot and two thousand horse, which are there in the town. There has been some difficulty to persuade people of the imminence of our danger — but yesterday the King sent a message to both Houses to acquaint us that he has certain information of the young Pretender being in France, and of the designed invasion from thence, in concert with the disaffected here.(900) Immediately the Duke of Marlborough, who most handsomely and seasonably was come to town on purpose, moved for an Address to assure the King of standing by him with lives and fortunes. Lord Hartington, seconded by Sir Charles Windham,(901) the convert son of Sir William, moved the same in our House. To our amazement, and little sure to their own honour, Waller and Doddington, supported in the most indecent manner by Pitt, moved to add, that we would immediately inquire into the state of the navy, the causes of our danger by negligence, and the sailing of the Brest fleet. They insisted on this amendment, and debated it till seven at night, not one (professed) Jacobite speaking. The division was 287 against 123. In the Lords, Chesterfield moved the same amendment, seconded by old dull Westmoreland; but they did not divide.
All the troops have been sent for in the greatest haste to London but we shall not have above eight thousand men together at most. An express is gone to Holland, and General Wentworth followed it last night, to demand six thousand men, who will probably be here by the end of next week. Lord Stair (902) has offered the King his service, and is to-day named commander-in-chief. This is very generous, and will be of great use. He is extremely beloved in the -army, and most firm to this family.
I cannot say our situation is the most agreeable; we know not whether Norris is gone after the Brest fleet or not. We have three ships in the Downs, but they cannot prevent a landing, which will probably be in Essex or Suffolk. Don’t be surprised if you hear that this crown is fought for on land. As yet there is no rising; but we must expect it on the first descent.
Don’t be uneasy for me, when the whole is at stake. I don’t feel as if my friends would have any reason to be concerned for me: my warmth will carry me as far as any man; and I think I can bear as I should the worst that can happen; though the delays of the French, I don’t know from what cause, have not made that likely to happen.
The King keeps his bed with the rheumatism. He is not less obliged to Lord Orford for the defence of his crown, now he is out of place, than when he was in the administration. His zeal, his courage, his attention, are indefatigable and inconceivable. He regards his own life no more than when it was most his duty to expose it, and fears for every thing but that.
I flatter myself that next post I shall write you a more comfortable letter. I would not have written this, if it were a time to admit deceit. Hope the best, and fear as little as you would do if you were here in the danger. My best love to the Chutes; tell them -I never knew how little I was a Jacobite till it was almost my interest to be one. Adieu!
(900) “February 13. Talking upon this subject with Horace Walpole, he told me confidentially, that Admiral Matthews intercepted, last summer, a felucca in her passage from Toulon to Genoa, on board of which were found several papers of great consequence relating to a French invasion in concert with the Jacobites; one of them particularly was in the style of an invitation from several of the nobility and gentry of England to the Pretender. These papers, he thought had not been sufficiently looked into and were not laid before the cabinet council until the night before the message was sent to both Houses.” Mr. P. York(,@’s Parliamentary Journal.-E.
(901) Afterwards Earl of Egmont.
(902) The Duke of Marlborough and Lord Stair had quitted the army in disgust, after last campaign, on the King’s showing such unmeasurible preference to the Hanoverians.
361 Letter 130 To Sir Horace Mann. Thursday, Feb. 23, 1744.
I write to you, in the greatest hurry, at eight o’clock at night, whilst they are all at dinner round me. I am this moment come from the House, where we have carried a great Welsh election against Sir Watkyn Williams by 26. I fear you have not had my last, for the packet-boat has been stopped on the French stopping our messenger at Calais. There is no doubt of the invasion: the young Pretender is at Calais, and the Count de Saxe is to command the embarkation. Hitherto the spirit of the nation is with us. Sir John Norris was to sail yesterday to Dunkirk, to try to burn their transports; we are in the utmost expectation of the news. The Brest squadron was yesterday on the coast of Sussex. We have got two thousand men from Ireland, and have sent for two more. The Dutch are coming: Lord Stair is general. Nobody is yet taken up-God knows why not! We have repeated news of Matthews having beaten and sunk eight of the Toulon ships; but the French have so stopped all communication that we don’t yet know it certainly; I hope you do. Three hundred arms have been seized in a French merchant’s house at Plymouth. Attempts have been made to raise the clans in Scotland, but unsuccessfully.
My dear child, I write short, but it is much: and I could not say more in ten thousand words. All is at stake we have great hopes, but they are but hopes! I have no more time: I wait with patience for the event, though to me it must and shall be decisive.
361 Letter 131 To Sir Horace Mann. March 1st, 1744.
I wish I could put you out of the pain my last letters must have given you. I don’t know whether your situation, to be at such a distance on so great a crisis, is not more disagreeable than ours, who are expecting every moment to hear the French are landed. We had great ill-luck last week: Sir John Norris, with four-and-twenty sail, came within a league of the Brest squadron, which had but fourteen. The coasts were covered with people to see the engagement; but at seven in the evening the wind changed, and they escaped. There have been terrible winds these four or five days . our fleet has not suffered materially, but theirs less. Ours lies in the Downs; five of theirs at Torbay-the rest at La Hague. We hope to hear that these storms, which blew directly on Dunkirk, have done great damage to their transports. By the fortune of the winds, which have detained them in port, we have had time to make preparations; if they had been ready three weeks ago. when the Brest squadron sailed, it had all been decided. We expect the Dutch in four or five days. Ten battalions, which make seven thousand men, are sent for from our army in Flanders, and four thousand from Ireland, two of which are arrived. If they still attempt the invasion, it must be a bloody war!
The spirit of the nation has appeared extraordinarily in our favour. I wish I could say as much for that of’ the ministry. Addresses are come from all parts, but you know how little they are to be depended on-King James had them. The merchants of London are most zealous: the French name will do more harm to their cause than the Pretender’s service. One remarkable circumstance happened to Colonel Cholmondeley’s regiment on their march to London: the public-houses on all the road would not let them pay any thing, but treated them, and said, “You are going to defend us against the French.” There are no signs of any rising. Lord Barrymore,(903) the Pretender’s general, and Colonel Cecil, his secretary of state, are at last taken up; the latter, who having removed his papers, had sent for them back, thinking the danger over, is committed to the Tower, on discoveries from them; but, alas! these discoveries go on but lamely.(904) One may perceive who is not minister, rather than who is. The Opposition tried to put off the suspension of the Habeas Corpus -feebly. Vernon (905) and the Grennvilles are the warmest: Pitt and Lyttelton went away without voting.(906) My father has exerted himself most amazingly — the other day, on the King’s laying some information before the House, when the ministry had determined to make no address on it, he rose up in the greatest agitation, and made a long and fine speech On the present situation.(907) The Prince was so pleased with it, that he has given him leave to go to his court, which he never would before. He went yesterday, and was most graciously received.
Lord Stair is at last appointed general. General Oglethorpe (908) is to have a commission for raising a regiment of Hussars, to defend the coasts. The Swiss servants in London have offered to form themselves into a regiment; six hundred are already clothed and armed, but no colonel or officers appointed. We flatter ourselves, that the divisions in the French ministry will repair what the divisions in our own undo.
The answer from the court of France to Mr. Thomson on the subject of the boy (909) is most arrogant: “that when we have given them satisfaction for the many complaints which they have made on our infraction of treaties, then they will think of giving us des `eclaircissements.”
We have no authentic news yet from Matthews: the most credited is a letter from Marseilles to a Jew, which says it was the most bloody battle ever fought; that it lasted three days; that the two first we had the worst, and the third, by a lucky gale, totally defeated them. Sir Charles Wager always said, “that if a sea-fight lasted three days, he was sure the English suffered the most for the two first, for no other nation would stand beating for two days together.”
Adieu! my dear child. I have told you every circumstance I know: I hope you receive my letters; I hope their accounts will grow more favourable. I never found my spirits so high, for they never were so provoked. hope the best, and believe that, as long as I am, I shall always be yours sincerely.
P. S. My dear Chutes, I hope you will still return to your own England.
(903) James Barry, fourth Earl of Barrymore. He died in 1747. See ant`e, p. 269. Letter 74.
(904) “Some treasonable papers of consequence were found in Cecil’s pockets, which gave occasion to the apprehending of Lord Barrymore. They were both concerned in the affair of transmitting the Pretender’s letter to the late Duke of Argyle; which it was now lamented had not then undergone a stricter examination. I observed the Tories much struck with the news of this being secured.” Mr. P. Yorke’s Parl. Journal.-E.
(905) Admiral Vernon.
(906) “Lord Barrington’s motion for deferring the suspension was thrown out by 181 against 83. Pitt and Lyttelton walked down the House whilst Lord Barrington was speaking, and went away; so did Mr. Crowne, though a Tory; but most of that party voted with the Ayes. Lord Chesterfield told the chancellor there was no opposition to this bill intended amongst the Lords; not even a disposition to it in any body; and greatly approved the limiting it to so short a time.” Mr. P. Yorke’s Parl. journal.-E.
(907) “Lord Orford, though he had never spoken in the House of Lords, having remarked to his brother Horatio that he had left his tongue in the House of Commons, yet on this occasion his eloquent voice was once more raised, beseeching their lordships to forget their cavils and divisions, and unite in affection round the throne. It was solely owing to him, that the torrent of public opposition was braved and overcome.” Lord Mahon, Hist. vol. iii. p. 273.-E.
(908) General James Oglethorpe, born in 1698. His activity in settling the colony of Georgia obtained for him the friendship and panegyric of Pope-
“One, driven by strong benevolence of soul, Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole.”
He was one of the earliest patrons of Johnson’s “London,” on its first appearance, and the Doctor, throughout life, acknowledged the kind and effectual support given to that poem. The General sat in five parliaments, and died in 1785, at the age of eighty-seven. For a striking pen-and-ink whole.length sketch, taken a few months before that event, while the General was attending the sale of Dr. Johnson’s library at Christie’s auction-room, see “Johnsoniana,” 8vo. edit. p. 378.-E.
(909) Charles Edward, the young Pretender. His person, at this time, is thus described by Lord Mahon: “The Prince was tall and well-formed; his limbs athletic and active. He excelled in all manly exercises, and was inured to every kind of toil, especially long marches on foot, having applied himself to field-sports in Italy, and become an expert walker. His face was strikingly handsome, of a perfect oval, and a fair complexion; his eyes light blue; his features high and noble. Contrary to the custom of the time, which prescribed perukes, his own fair hair usually in long ringlets on his neck. This goodly person was enhanced by his graceful manners; frequently condescending to the most familiar kindness, yet always shielded by a regal dignity: he had a peculiar talent to please and to persuade, and never failed to adapt his conversation to the taste or to the station of those whom he addressed.” Hist. vol. iii. p. 280.-E.
363 Letter 132 To Sir Horace Mann. March 5th, 1744, eight o’clock at night.
I have but time to write you a minute-line, but it will be a comfortable one. There is just come advice, that the great storm on the 25th of last month, the very day the embarkation was to have sailed from Dunkirk, destroyed twelve of their transports, and obliged the whole number of troops, which were fifteen thousand, to debark. You may look upon the invasion is at an end, at least for the present; though, as every thing is coming to a crisis, one shall not be surprised to hear of the attempt renewed. We know nothing yet certain from Matthews; his victory grows a great doubt.
As this must go away this instant, I cannot write more-but what could be more? Adieu! I wish you all joy.
364 Letter 133 To Sir Horace Mann. March 15th, 1744
I have nothing new to tell you: that great storm certainly saved us from the invasion-then.(910) Whether it has put an end to the design is uncertain. They say the embargo at Dunkirk and Calais is taken off, but not a vessel of ours is come in from thence. They have, indeed, opened again the communication with Ypres and Nieuport, etc. but we don’t yet hear whether they have renewed their embarkation. However, we take it for granted it is all over-from which, I suppose it will not be over. We expect the Dutch troops every hour. That reinforcement, and four thousand men from Ireland, will be all the advantage we shall have made of gaining time.
At last we have got some light into our Mediterranean affair, for there is no calling it a victory. Villettes has sent a courier, by which it seems we sunk one great Spanish ship; the rest escaped, and the French fled shamefully; that was, I suppose, designedly, and artfully. We can’t account for Lestock’s not coming up with his seventeen ships, and we have no mind to like it, which will not amaze you. We flatter ourselves that, as this was only the first day, we shall get some more creditable history of some succeeding day.
The French are going to besiege Mons: I wish all the war may take that turn; I don’t desire to see England the theatre of it. We talk no more of its becoming so, nor of the plot, than of the gunpowder-treason. Party is very silent; I believe, because the Jacobites have better hopes than from parliamentary divisions,-those in the ministry run very high, and, I think, near some crisis.
I have enclosed a proposal from my bookseller to the undertaker of the Museum Florentinum, or the concerners of it, as the paper called them; but it was expressed in such wonderfully-battered English, that it was impossible for Dodsley or me to be sure of the meaning of it. He is a fashionable author, and though that is no sign of perspicuity, I hope, more intelligible. Adieu!
(910) “The pious motto,” says Mr. P. Yorke, “upon the medal struck by Queen Elizabeth after the defeat of the Armada, may, with as much propriety, be applied to this event-"Flavit ventO, et dissipati sunt;’ for, as Bishop Burnet somewhere observes, ’our preservation at this juncture was one of those providential events, for which we have much to answer."’ MS. Parl. Journal.-E.
365 Letter 134 To Sir Horace Mann. London, March 22, 1744.
I am .sorry this letter must date the era of a new correspondence, the topic of which must be blood! Yesterday, came advice from Mr. Thompson,(911) that Monsieur Amelot had sent for him and given him notice to be gone, for a declaration of war with England was to be published in two days. Politically, I don’t think it so bad; for the very name of war, though in effect, on foot before,, must make our governors take more precautions; and the French declaring it will range the people more on our side than on the Jacobite: besides, the latter will have their communication with France cut off. But, my dear child, what lives, what misfortunes, must and may follow all this! As a man, I feel my humanity more touched than my spirit-I feel myself more an universal man than an Englishman! We have already lost seven millions of money and thirty thousand men in the Spanish war-and all the fruit of all this blood and treasure is the glory of having Admiral Vernon’s head on alehouse signs! for my part, I would not purchase another Duke of Marlborough at the expense of one life. How I should be shocked, were I a hero, when I looked on my own laurelled head on a medal, the reverse of which would be widows and orphans. How many such will our patriots have made!
The embarkation at Dunkirk does not seem to go on, though, to be sure, not laid aside. We received yesterday the particulars of the Mediterranean engagement from Matthews. We conclude the French squadron retired designedly, to come up to Brest, where we every day expect to hear of them. If Matthews does not follow them, adieu our triumphs in the Channel-and then! Sir John Norris has desired leave to come back, as little satisfied with the world as the world is with him. He is certainly very unfortunate;(912) but I can’t say I think he has tried to correct his fortune. If England is ever more to be England, this sure is the crisis to exert all her vigour. We have all the disadvantage of Queen Elizabeth’s prospect, without one of her ministers. Four thousand Dutch are landed, and we hope to get eight or twelve ships from them. Can we now say, Quatuor maria vindico?"(913)
I will not talk any more politically, but turn to hymeneals, with as much indifference as if I were a first minister. Who do you think is going to marry Lady Sophia Fermor?(914)-only Lord Carteret!-this very week!-a drawing-room conquest. Do but imagine how many passions will be gratified in that family! her own ambition, vanity, and resentment-love she never had any; the politics, management, and pedantry of the mother, who will think to govern her son-in-law out of Froissart.(915) Figure the instructions she will give her daughter! Lincoln is quite indifferent, and laughs. My Lord Chesterfield says, “It is only another of Carteret’s vigorous measures.” I am really glad of it; for her beauty and cleverness did deserve a better fate, than she was on the point of having determined for her for ever,. How graceful, how charming, and how haughtily condescending she will be! how, if Lincoln should ever hint past history, she will
“Stare upon the strange man’s face,
As one she ne’er had known!"(916)
I wonder I forgot to tell you that Doddington had owned a match of seventeen years’ standing with Mrs. Behan, to whom the one you mention is sister.
I have this moment received yours of March 10th, and thank you much for the silver medal, which has already taken its place in my museum.
I feel almost out of pain for your situation, as by the motion of the fleets this way, I should think the expedition to Italy abandoned. We and you have had great escapes, but we have still occasion for all Providence!
I am very sorry for the young Sposa Panciatici, and wish all the other parents joy of the increase of their families. Mr. Whithed is en bon train; but the recruits he is raising will scarce thrive fast enough to be of service this war. My best loves to him and Mr. Chute. I except you three out of my want of public spirit. The other day, when the Jacobites and patriots were carrying every thing to ruin, and had made me warmer than I love to be, one of them said to me, “Why don’t you love your country?” I replied, “I should love my country exceedingly,’If it were not for my countrymen.” Adieu!
(911) Chaplain to the late Lord Waldegrave; after whose death he acted as minister at Paris, till the war, when he returned, and was made a dean in Ireland.
(912) He was called by the seamen “Foul-weather Jack.”
(913) Motto of a medal of Charles the Second.
(914) Eldest daughter of Thomas, Earl of Pomfret.
(915) lady Pomfret had translated Froissart.
(916) Verses in Congreve’s Doris.
366 Letter 135
To Sir Horace Mann.
April 2, 1744.
I am afraid our correspondence will be extremely disjointed, and the length of time before you get my letters will make you very impatient, when all the world will be full of events; but I flatter myself that you will hear every thing sooner than by my letters; I mean, that whatever happens will be on the Continent; for the danger from Dunkirk seems blown over. We declared war on Saturday: that is all I know, for every body has been out of town for the Easter holidays. To-morrow the Houses meet again: the King goes, and is to make a speech. The Dutch seem extremely in earnest, and I think we seem to put all our strength in their preparations.
The town is persuaded that Lord Clinton (916) is gone to Paris to make peace — he is certainly gone thither, nobody knows why. He has gone thither every year -all his life, when he was in the Opposition; but, to be sure, this is a very strange time to take that journey. Lord Stafford, who came hither just before the intended invasion, (no doubt for the defence of the Protestant religion, especially as his father-in-law, Bulkeley,(917), was colonel of one of the embarked regiments,) is gone to carry his sister to be married to a Count de Rohan,(918) and then returns, having a sign manual for leaving his wife there.
We shall not be surprised to hear that the Electorate(919) has got a new master; shall you? Our dear nephew of Prussia will probably take it, to keep it safe for us.
I had written thus far on Monday, and then my lord came from New Park: and I had no time the rest of the day to finish it. We have made very loyal addresses to the King on his speech, which I suppose they send you. There is not the least news, but that my Lord Carteret’s wedding has been deferred on Lady Sophia’s falling dangerously ill of a scarlet fever; but they say it is to be next Saturday. She is to have sixteen hundred pounds a-year jointure, four hundred pounds pin-money, and two thousand of jewels. Carteret says, he does not intend to marry the mother and the whole family. What do you think my lady intends? Adieu! my dear Sir! Pray for peace.
(916) Hugh Fortescue, afterwards Earl of Clinton and Knight of the Bath. Not long after he received that order he went into Opposition, and left off his riband and star for one day, but thought better of it, and put them on the next. He was created Lord Fortescue and Earl of Clinton in 1746, and died in 1751.)
(917) Mr. Bulkeley, an Irish Roman Catholic, married the widow Cantillon, mother of the Countess of Stafford. He rose high in the French army, and had the cordon bleu: his sister was second wife of the first Duke of Berwick.
(918)Afterwards Duke of Rohan Chabot.-D.
(919) Of Hanover.-D.
367 Letter 136
To Sir Horace Mann.
London, April 15, 1744.
I could tell you a great deal of news, but it would not be what you would expect. It is not of battles, sieges, and declarations of war; nor of invasions, insurrections, and addresses. It is the god of love, not he of war, who reigns in the newspapers. The town has made up a list of six and thirty weddings, which I shall not catalogue to you; for you would know, them no more than you do Antilochum, fortemque Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum.
But the chief entertainment has been the nuptials of our great Quixote and the fair Sophia. On the point of matrimony she fell ill of a scarlet fever, and was given over, while he had the gout, but heroically sent her word, that if she was well, he would be so. They corresponded every day, and he used to plague the cabinet council with reading her letters to them. Last night they were married; and as all he does must have a particular air in it, they supped at Lord Pomfret’s: at twelve, Lady Granville, his mother, and all his family went to bed, but the porter: then my lord went home, and waited for her in the lodge: she came alone in a hackney-chair, met him in the hall, and was led up the back stairs to bed. What is ridiculously lucky is, that Lord Lincoln goes into waiting, to-day, and will be to present her! On Tuesday she stands godmother with the King to Lady Dysart’s(920) child, her new grand-daughter. I am impatient to see the whole m`enage; it will be admirable. There is a wild young Venetian ambassadress(921) come, who is reckoned very pretty. I don’t think so; she is foolish and childish to a degree. She said, “Lord! the old secretary is going to be married!” hey told her he was but fifty-four. “But fifty-four! why,” said she, “my husband is but two-and-forty, and I think him the oldest man in the world.” Did I tell you that Lord Holderness(922) goes to Venice with the compliments of accommodation, and leaves Sir James Grey resident there?
The invasion from Dunkirk seems laid aside. We talk little of our fleets — Sir John Norris has resigned -. Lestock is coming home, and sent before him great complaints of Matthews; so that affair must be cleared up. the King talks much of going abroad, which will not be very prudent. The campaign is not opened yet, but I suppose will disclose at once with great `eclat in several quarters.
I this instant receive your letter of March 31st, with the simple Demetrius, for which, however, I thank you. I hope by this time you have received all my letters, and are at peace about the invasion; which we think so much over, that the Opposition are now breaking out about the Dutch troops, and call it the worst measure ever taken. Those terms so generally dealt to every measure successively, will at least soften the Hanoverian history.
Adieu! I have nothing more to tell you: I flatter myself you content yourself with news; I cannot write sentences nor sentiments. My best love to the Chutes, and now and then let my friends the Prince and Princess and Florentines know that I shall never forget their goodness to me. What is become of Prince Beauvau?
(920) Lady Grace Carteret, eldest daughter of Lord Carteret. She was married in 1729 to Lionel Tollemache, third Earl of Dysart; by whom she had fifteen children.-E.
(921) Wife of Signor Capello.
(922) Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness, ambassador at Venice and the Hague, and afterwards secretary of state.
369 Letter 137 To Sir Horace Mann. London, May 8, 1744.
I begin to breathe a little at ease; we have done with the Parliament for this year: it rises on Saturday. We have had but one material day lately, last Thursday. The Opposition had brought in a bill to make it treason to correspond with the young Pretenders:(923) the Lords added a clause, after a long debate, to make it a forfeiture of estates, as it is for dealing with the father. We sat till one in the morning, and then carried it by 255 to 106. It was the best debate I ever heard.(924) The King goes to Kensington to-morrow, and not abroad. We hear of great quarrels between Marshal Wade and Duc d’Aremberg. The French King is at Valenciennes with Monsieur de Noailles, who is now looked upon as first minister. He is the least dangerous for us of all. It is affirmed that Cardinal Tencin is disgraced, who was the very worst for us. If he is, we shall at least have no invasion this summer. Successors of ministers seldom take up the schemes of their predecessors; especially such as by failing caused their ruin, which, I believe, was Tencin’s case at Dunkirk.
For a week we heard of the affair at Villafranca in a worse light than was true: it certainly turns out ill for both sides. Though the French have had such a bloody loss, I cannot but think they will carry their point, and force their passage into Italy.
We have no domestic news, but Lord Lovel’s being created Earl of Leicester, on an old promise which my father had obtained for him. Earl Berkeley(925) is married to Miss Drax, a very pretty maid of honour to the Princess; and the Viscount Fitzwilliam(926) to Sir Matthew Decker’s eldest daughter , but these are people I am sure you don’t know.
There is to be a great ball tomorrow at the Duchess of Richmond’s for my Lady Carteret: the Prince is to be there. Carteret’s court to pay her the highest honours, which she receives with the highest state. I have seen her but once, and found her just what I expected, tr`es grande dame; full of herself, and yet not with an air of happiness. She looks ill and is grown lean, but is still the finest figure in the world. The mother is not so exalted as I expected- I fancy Carteret has kept his resolution, and does not marry her too.
My Lord does not talk of’ going out of town yet; I don’t propose to be at Houghton till August. Adieu!
(923) Charles Edward, and Henry his brother, afterwards the Cardinal of York.-D.
(924) The Honourable Philip Yorke, in his MS. Parliamentary Journal, says, “it was a warm and long d(.-bate, in which I think as much violence and dislike to the proposition was shown by the opposers, as in any which had arisen during the whole winter. I thought neither Mr. Pelham’s nor Pitt’s performances equal on this occasion to what they are on most others. Many of the Prince’s friends were absent; for what reason I cannot learn. This was the parting blow of the session; for the King came and dismissed us on the 12th, and the Parliament broke up with a good deal of ill-humour and discontent on the part of the Opposition, and little expectation in those who knew the interior of the court, and the unconnected state of the alliance abroad, that much would be done in the ensuing campaign to allay it, or infuse a better temper into the nation."-E.
(925) Augustus. fourth Earl Berkeley, Knight of the Thistle. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Drax, Esq, of Charborough, in Dorsetshire; and died in 1755.-D.
(926) Richard, sixth Viscount Fitzwilliam in Ireland, married Catherine, daughter and heiress of Sir Matthew Decker, Bart., and died in 1776.-E.
370 Letter 138 To Sir Horace Mann. London, May 29, 1744.
Since I wrote I have received two from you of May 6th and 19th. I am extremely sorry you get mine so late. I have desired your brother to complain to Mr. Preverau: I get yours pretty regularly.
I have this morning had a letter from Mr. Conway at the army; he says he hears just then that the French have declared war against the Dutch: they had in effect before by besieging Menin, which siege our army is in full march to raise. They have laid bridges over the Scheldt, and intend to force the French to a battle. The latter are almost double our number, but their desertion is prodigious, and their troops extremely bad. Fourteen thousand more Dutch are ordered, and their six thousand are going from hence with four more of ours; so we seem to have no more apprehensions of an invasion. All thoughts of it are over! no inquiry made into it! The present ministry fear the detection of conspiracies more than the thing itself: that is, they fear every thing that they are to do themselves.
My father has been extremely ill, from a cold he caught last week at New-park. Princess Emily came thither to fish, and he, who is grown quite indolent, and has not been out of a hot room this twelve- month, sat an hour and a half by the water side. He was in great danger one day, and more low-spirited than ever I knew him, though I think that grows upon him with his infirmities. My sister was at his bedside; I came into the room,-he burst into tears and could not speak to me — but he is quite well now; though I cannot say I think he will preserve his life long, as he has laid aside all exercise, which has been of such vast service to him. he talked the other day of shutting himself up in the farthest wing at Houghton; I said, “Dear, my Lord, you will be at a distance from all the family there!” He replied, “So much the better!”
Pope is given over with a dropsy, which is mounted into his head: in an evening he is not in his senses; the other day at Chiswick, he said,- to my Lady Burlington, “Look at our Saviour there! how ill they have crucified him!"(927)
There is a Prince of Ost-Frize(928) dead, which is likely to occasion most unlucky broils: Holland, Prussia, and Denmark have all pretensions to his succession; but Prussia is determined to make his good. If the Dutch don’t dispute it, he will be too near a neighbour; if they do, we lose his neutrality, which is now so material.
The town has been in a great bustle about a private match; but which, by the ingenuity of the ministry, has been made politics. Mr. Fox fell in love with Lady Caroline Lennox;(929) asked her, was refused, and stole her. His father(930) was a footman; her great grandfather a king: hinc illae, lachrymae! all the blood royal have been up in arms. The Duke of Marlborough, who was a friend of the Richmonds, gave her away. If his Majesty’s Princess Caroline had been stolen, there could not have been more noise made. The Pelhams, who arc much attached to the Richmonds, but who have tried to make Fox and all that set theirs, wisely entered into the quarrel, and now don’t know how to get out of it. They were for hindering Williams,(931) who is Fox’s great friend, and at whose house they were married, from having the red riband; but he has got it, with four others, the Viscount Fitzwilliam, Calthorpe, Whitmore, and Harbord. Dashwood, Lady Carteret’s quondam lover, has stolen a great fortune, a Miss Bateman; the marriage had been proposed, but the fathers could not agree on the terms.
I am much obliged to you for all your Sardinian and Neapolitan journals. I am impatient for the conquest of Naples, and have no notion of neglecting sure things, which may serve by way of d`edommagement.
I am very sorry I recommended such a troublesome booby to you. Indeed, dear Mr. Chute, I never saw him, but was pressed by Mr. Selwyn, whose brother’s friend he is, to give him that letter to you. I now hear that he is a warm Jacobite; I suppose you somehow disobliged him politically.
We are now mad about tar-water, on the publication of a book that I will send you, written by Dr. Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne.(932) The book contains every subject from tar-water to the Trinity; however, all the women read, and understand it no more than they would if it were intelligible. A man came into an apothecary’s shop the other day, “Do you sell tar-water?” “Tar-water!” replied the apothecary, “why, I sell nothing else!” Adieu!
(927) Pope died the day after this letter was written; “in the evening,” says Spence, “but they did not know the exact time; for his departure was so easy, that it was imperceptible even to the standers by.”
(928) The Prince of East Friesland.
(929) Eldest daughter of Charles Duke of Richmond, grandson of King Charles II.
(930) Sir Stephen Fox.
(931) Sir C. Hanbury Williams.
(932) Having cured himself of a nervous colic by the use of tar-water, the bishop this year published a book entitled “Philosophical Reflections and Enquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar-water.’,-E.
372 Letter 139
To Sir Horace Mann.
June 11, 1744.
Perhaps you expect to hear of great triumphs and victories; of General Wade grown into a Duke of Marlborough; or of the King being in Flanders, with the second part of the battle of Dettingen-why, ay: you are bound in conscience, as a good Englishman, to expect all this -but what if all these 10 paeans should be played to the Dunkirk tune? I must prepare you for some such thing; for unless the French are as much their own foes as we are our own, I don’t see what should hinder the festival to-day(933) being kept next year a day sooner. But I will draw no consequences; only sketch you out our present situation: and if Cardinal Tencin can miss making his use of it, we may burn our books and live hereafter upon good fortune.
The French King’s army is at least ninety thousand strong; has taken Menin already, and Ypres almost. Remains then only Ostend; which you will look in the map and see does not lie in the high road to the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands. Ostend may be laid under water, and the taking it an affair of time. But there lies all our train of artillery Which cost two hundred thousand pounds; and what becomes of our communication with our army? Why, they may go round by Williamstadt, and be in England just time enough to be some other body’s army! It turns out that the whole combined army, English, Dutch, Austrians, and Hanoverians, does not amount to above thirty-six thousand fighting men! and yet forty thousand more French, under the Duc d’Harcourt are coming into Flanders. When their army is already so superior to ours, for what can that reinforcement be intended, but to let them spare a triumph to Dunkirk? Now you will naturally ask me three questions: where is Prince Charles? where are the Dutch? what force have you to defend England? Prince Charles is hovering about the Rhine to take Lorrain, which they seem not to care whether he does or not, and leaves you to defend the -Netherlands. The Dutch seem indifferent, whether their barrier is in the hands of the Queen or the Emperor and while you are so mad, think it prudent not to be so themselves. For our own force, it is too melancholy to mention: six regiments go away to-morrow to Ostend, with the six thousand Dutch. Carteret and Botzlaer, the Dutch envoy extraordinary, would have hurried them away without orders; but General Smitsart, their commander, said, he was too old to be hanged. This reply was told to my father yesterday: “Ay,” said he, “so I thought I was, but I may live to be mistaken!” When these troops are gone, we shall not have in the whole island above six thousand
Here are arrived two Florentines, not recommended to me, but I have been very civil to them, Marquis Salviati and Conte Delci; the latter remembers to have seen me at Madame Grifoni’s. The Venetian ambassador met my father yesterday at my Lady Brown’s: you would have laughed to have seen how he stared and @eccellenza’d him. At last they fell into a broken Latin chat, and there was no getting the ambassador away from him.
If you have the least interest in any one Madonna in Florence, pay her well for all the service she can do us. If she can work miracles, now is her time. If she can’t, I believe we all shall be forced to adore her. Adieu! Tell Mr. Chute I fear we should not be quite so well received at the conversazzioni, at Madame de Craon’s, and the Casino,(936) when we are but refugee heretics. Well, we must hope! Yours I am, and we will bear our wayward fate together.
(933) The 10th of June was the Pretender’s birthday, and the 11th the accession of George II.
(934) He was of a Jacobite family.
(935) Lord Sunderland, who betrayed James II.
(936) The Florentine coffee-house.
373 Letter 140 To Sir Horace Mann. London, June 18, 1744. I have not any immediate bad news to tell you in consequence of my last. The siege of Ypres does not advance so expeditiously as was expected; a little time gained in sieges goes a great way in a campaign. The Brest squadron is making just as great a figure in our channel as Matthews does before Toulon and Marseilles. I should be glad to be told by some nice computers of national glory, how much the balance is on our side.
Anson(937) is returned with vast fortune, substantial and lucky. He has brought the Acapulca ship into Portsmouth, and its treasure is at least computed at five hundred thousand pounds. He escaped the Brest squadron by a mist. You will have all the particulars in a gazette.
I will not fail to make your compliments to the Pomfrets and Carterets. I see them seldom, but I am in favour; so I conclude, for my Lady Pomfret told me the other night, that I said better things than any body. I was with them all at a subscription-ball at Ranelagh last week, which my Lady Carteret thought proper to look upon as given to her, and thanked the gentlemen, who were not quite so well pleased at her condescending to take it to herself. My lord stayed with her there till four in the morning. They are all fondness -walk together, and stop every five steps to kiss. Madame de Craon is a cypher to her for grandeur. The ball was on an excessively hot night: yet she was dressed in a magnificent brocade, because it was new that morning for the inauguration-day. I did the honours of all her dress:-"How charming your ladyship’s cross is! I am sure the design was your own."-"No, indeed; my lord sent it me just as it is."-"How fine your ear-rings are!"-"Oh! but they are very heavy.” Then as much to the mother. Do you wonder I say better things than any body?
I send you by a ship going to Leghorn the only new books at all worth reading. The Abuse(938) of Parliaments is by Doddington and Waller, circumstantially scurrilous. The dedication of the Essay(939) to my father is fine; pray mind the quotation from Milton. There is Dr. Berkeley’s mad book on tar-water, which has made every body as mad as himself.
I have lately made a great antique purchase of all Dr. Middleton’s collection which he brought from Italy, and which he is now publishing. I will send you the book as soon as it comes out. I would not buy the things till the book was half printed, for fear of an `e Museo Walpoliano.-Those honours are mighty well for such known and learned men as Mr. Smith,(940) the merchant of Venice. My dear Mr. Chute, how we used to enjoy the title-page(941) of his understanding! Do you remember how angry he was when showing us a Guido, after pompous roomsfull of Sebastian Riccis, which he had a mind to establish for capital pictures, you told him he had now made amends for all the rubbish he had showed us before?
My father has asked, and with some difficulty got, his pension of four thousand pounds a-year, which the King gave him on his resignation and which he dropped, by the wise fears of my uncle and the Selwyns. He has no reason to be satisfied with the manner of obtaining it now, or with the manner of the man(942) whom he employed to ask it — yet it was not a point that required capacity-merely gratitude. Adieu!
(937) The celebrated circumnavigator, afterwards a peer, and first lord of the admiralty.-D.
(938) Detection of the Use and Abuse of Parliaments, by Ralph, under the direction of Doddington and Waller.
(939) Essay on Wit, Humour, and Ridicule, by Corbyn Morris.
(940) Mr. Smith, consul at Venice, had a fine library” of which he knew nothing at all but the title-pages.
(941) Expression of Mr. Chute.
(942) Mr. Pelham.
375 Letter 141
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(943)
Arlington Street, June 29, 1744.
My dearest Henry, I don’t know what made my last letter so long on the road: yours got hither as soon as it could. I don’t attribute it to any examination at the post-office. God forbid I should suspect any branch of the present administration of attempting to know any one kind of thing! I remember when I was at Eton, and Mr. Bland(944) had set me an extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique myself upon not getting it, because it was not immediately my school business. What! learn more than I was absolutely forced to learn! I felt the weight of learning that; for I was a blockhead, and pushed up above my parts.
Lest you maliciously think I mean any application of this last sentence any where in the world, I shall go and transcribe some lines out of a new poem, that pretends to great impartiality, but is evidently wrote by some secret friend of the ministry. It is called Pope’s, but has no good lines but the following. The plan supposes him complaining of being put to death by the blundering discord of his two physicians. Burton and Thompson; and from thence makes a transition to show that all the present misfortunes of the world flow from a parallel disagreement; for instance, in politics:
“Ask you what cause this conduct can create?
The doctors differ that direct the state.
Craterus, wild as Thompson, rules and raves,
A slave himself yet proud of making slaves;
Fondly believing that his mighty parts
Can guide all councils and command all hearts;
Give shape and colour to discordant things,
Hide fraud in ministers and fear in kings.
Presuming on his power, such schemes he draws
For bribing Iron(945) and giving Europe laws,
That camps, and fleets, and treaties fill the news,
And succours unobtain’d and unaccomplish’d
views.
“Like solemn Burton grave Plumbosus acts;
He thinks in method, argues all from facts;
Warm in his temper, yet affecting ice,
Protests his candour ere he gives advice;
Hints he dislikes the schemes he recommends,
And courts his foes-and hardly courts his friends;
Is fond of power, and yet concerned for fame-
>From different parties would dependents claim
Declares for war, but in an awkward way,
Loves peace at heart, which he’s afraid to say;
His head perplex’d, altho’ his hands are
pure-
An honest man,-but not a hero sure!”
I beg you will never tell me any news till it has past every impression of the Dutch gazette; for one is apt to mention what is wrote to one: that gets about, comes at last to, the ears of the ministry, puts them in a fright, and perhaps they send to beg to see your letter. Now, you know one should hate to have one’s private correspondence made grounds for a measure,-especially for an absurd one, which is just possible.
If I was writing to any body but you, who know me so well, I should be afraid this would be taken for pique and pride, and be construed into my thinking all ministers inferior to my father but, my dear Harry, you know it was never my foible to think over-abundantly well of him. Why I think as I do of the great geniuses, answer for me, Admiral Matthews, great British Neptune, bouncing in the Mediterranean, while the Brest squadron is riding in the English Channel, and an invasion from Dunkirk every moment threatening your coasts: against which you send for six thousand Dutch troops, while you have twenty thousand of your own in Flanders, which not being of any use, you send these very six thousand Dutch to them, with above half of the few of your own remaining in England; a third part of which half of which few you countermand, because you are again alarmed with the invasion, and yet let the six Dutch go, who came for no other end but to protect you. And that our naval discretion may go hand-in-hand with our military, we find we have no force at home; we send for fifteen ships from the Mediterranean to guard our coasts, and demand twenty from the Dutch. The first fifteen will be here, perhaps in three months. Of the twenty Dutch, they excuse all but six, of which six they send all but four; and your own small domestic fleet, five are going to the West Indies and twenty a hunting for some Spanish ships that are coming from the Indies. Don’t it put you in mind of a trick that is done by calculation: Think of a number: halve it-double it-and ten-subtract twenty-add half the first number-take away all you added: now, what remains?
That you may think I employ my time as idly as the great men I have been talking of, you must be informed that every night constantly I go to Ranelagh; which has totally beat Vauxhall. Nobody goes any where else-every body goes there. My Lord Chesterfield is so fond of it, that he says he has ordered all his letters to be directed thither. If you had never seen it, I would make you a most pompous description of it, and tell you how the floor is all of beaten princes-you can’t set your foot without treading on a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cumberland. The company is universal: there is from his Grace of Grafton down to Children out of the Foundling Hospital-from my Lady Townshend to the kitten—from my Lord Sandys to your humble cousin and sincere friend.
(943) Now first printed.
(944) Dr. Henry Bland, head-master, and from 1732 to his death, in 1746, provost of Eton College. In No. 628 of the Spectator is a Latin version by him of Cato’s soliloquy.-E.
(945) This is nonsense@H. W.
377 Letter 142
To Sir Horace Mann.
London, June 29, 1744.
Well, at last this is not to be the year of our captivity! There is a cluster of good packets come at once. The Dutch have marched twelve thousand men to join our army; the King of Sardinia (but this is only a report) has beaten the Spaniards back over the Varo, and I this moment hear from the Secretary’s office, that Prince Charles has undoubtedly passed the Rhine at the head of fourscore thousand men-where, and with what circumstances, I don’t know a word; ma basta cos`i. It is said, too, that the Marquis de la Ch`etardie(946) is sent away from Russia: but this one has no occasion to believe. False good news are always produced by true good, like the waterfall by the rainbow. But why do I take upon me to tell you all this?-you, who are the centre of ministers and business! the actuating genius in the conquest of Naples! You cannot imagine how formidable you appear to me. My poor little, quiet Miny, with his headache and `epuisements, and Cocchio, and coverlid of cygnet’s down, that had no dealings but with a little spy-abb`e at Rome, a civil whisper with Count Lorenzi,(947) or an explanation on some of Goldsworthy’s absurdities, or with Richcourt about some sbirri,(948) that had insolently passed through the street in which the King of Great Britain’s arms condescended to hang! Bless me! how he is changed, become a trafficking plenipotentiary with Prince lobkowitz, Cardinal Albani(949) and Admiral Matthews! Why, my dear child, I should not know you again; I should not dare to roll you up between a finger and thumb like wet brown paper. Well, heaven prosper your arms! But I hate you, for I now look upon you as ten times fatter than I am.
I don’t think it would be quite unadvisable for Bistino(950) to take a journey hither. My Lady Carteret would take violently to any thing that came so far as to adore her grandeur. I believe even my Lady Pomfret would be persuaded he had seen the star of their glory travelling westward to direct him. For my part, I expect soon to make a figure too in the political magazine, for all our Florence set is coming to grandeur; but you and my Lady Carteret have outstripped me. I remain with -the Duke of Courtland in Siberia-my father has actually gone thither for a long season. I met my Lady Carteret the other day at Knaptons,(951) and desired leave to stay while she sat for her picture. She is drawn crowned with corn, like the Goddess of Plenty, and a mild dove in her arms, like Mrs. Venus. We had much of my lord and my lord. The countess-mother was glad my lord was not there-he was never satisfied with the eyes; she was afraid he would have had them drawn bigger than the cheeks. I made your compliments abundantly, and cried down the charms of the picture as politically as if’ you yourself had been there in person.
To fill up this sheet, I shall transcribe some very good lines published to-day in one of the papers, by I don’t know whom, on Pope’s death.
“Here lies, who died, as most folks die, in
hope,
The mouldering, more ignoble part of Pope;
The hard, whose sprightly genius dared to wage
Poetic war with an immoral age;
Made every vice and private folly known
In friend and foe—a stranger to his own
Set Virtue in its loveliest form to view,
And still professed to be the sketch he drew.
As humour or as interest served, his verse
Could praise or flatter, libel or asperse:
Unharming innocence with guilt could load,
Or lift the rebel patriot to a god:
Give the censorious critic standing laws-
The first to violate them with applause;
The just translator and the solid wit,
Like whom the passions few so truly hit:
The scourge of dunces whom his malice made-
The impious plague of the defenceless dead:
To real knaves and real fools a sore-
Beloved by many but abhorr’d by more,
If here his merits are not full exprest,
His never-dying strains shall tell the rest.”
Sure the greater part was his true character; Here is another epitaph by Rolli;(952) which for the profound fall in some of the verses’, especially in the last, will divert you.
“Spento `e il Pope: de’ poeti Britanni
Uno de’ lumi che sorge in mille anni:
Pur si vuol che la macchia d’Ingrato
N’abbia reso il fulgor men sereno:
Stato fora e pi`u giusto e pi`u grato.
Men lodando e biasmando ancor meno.”
(946) French ambassador at the court of St. Petersburg, and for some time a favourite of the Empress Elizabeth. The report of his disgrace was correct. He died in 1758.-E.
(947) A Florentine, but employed as minister by France.
(948) The officers of justice, who are reckoned so infamous in Italy, that the foreign ministers have always pretended to hinder them from passing through the streets where they reside.
(949) Cardinal Alexander Albani, nephew of Clement XI. was minister of the Queen of Hungary at Rome.
(950) Giovanni Battista Uguecioni, a Florentine nobleman, and great friend of the Pomfrets.
(951) George Knapton, a portrait painter. Walpole says, he was well versed in the theory of painting, and had a thorough knowledge of the hands of the good masters. He died at Kensington, in 1778, at the age of eighty.-E.
(952) Paolo Antonio Rolli, composer of the operas, translated and published several things. [Thus hitched into the Dunciad-
“Rolli the feather to his ear conveys
Then his nice taste directs our operas.”
Warburton says, “He taught Italian to some fine gentlemen, who affected to direct the operas.”
379 Letter 143 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, July 20, 1744.
My dearest Harry, I feel that I have so much to say to you, that I foresee there will be but little method in my letter; but if, upon the whole, you see My meaning, and the depth of my friendship for you, I am content.
It was most agreeable to me to receive a letter of confidence from you, at the time I expected a very different one from you; though, by the date of your last, I perceive you had not then received some letters, which, though I did not see, I must call simple, as they could only tend to make you uneasy for some months. I should not have thought of communicating a quarrel to you at a distance, and I don’t conceive the sort of friendship of those that thought it necessary. When I heard it had been wrote to you, I thought it right to myself to give you my account of it, but, by your brother’s desire, suppressed my letter, and left it to be explained by him, who wrote to you so sensibly on it, that I shall say no more but that I think myself so ill-used that it will prevent my giving you thoroughly the advice you ask of me for how can I be sure that my resentment might not make me see in a stronger light the reasons for your breaking off an affair(953) which you know before I never approved?
You know my temper is so open to any body I love that I must be happy at seeing you lay aside a reserve with me, which is the only point that ever made me dissatisfied with you. That silence of yours has, perhaps, been one of the chief reasons that has always prevented my saying much to you on a topic which I saw was so near your heart. Indeed, its being so near was another reason; for how could I expect you would take my advice, even if you bore it? But, my dearest Harry, how can I advise you now? Is it not gone too far -for me to expect you should keep any resolution about it, especially in absence, which must be destroyed the moment you meet again? And if ever you should marry and be happy, won’t you reproach me with having tried to hinder it? I think you as just and honest as I think any man living; but any man living in that circumstance would think I had been prompted by private reasons. I see as strongly as you can all the arguments for your breaking off; but, indeed, the alteration of your fortune adds very little strength to what they had before. You never had fortune enough to make such a step at all prudent: she loved you enough to be content with that; I can’t believe this change will alter her sentiments, for I must do her the justice to say that it is plain she preferred you with nothing to all the world. I could talk upon this head, but I will only leave you to consider, without advising YOU On either side, these two things-whether you think it honester to break off with her after such engagements as yours (how strong I don’t know), after her refusing very good matches for you, and show her that she must think of making her fortune; or whether you will wait with her till some amendment in your fortune can put it in your power to marry her. ’
My dearest Harry, you must see why I don’t care to say more on this head. My wishing it could be right for you to break off with her (for, without it is right, I would not have you on any account take such a step) makes it impossible for me to advise it; and therefore, I am sure you will forgive my declining, an act of friendship which your having put in my power gives me the greatest satisfaction. But it does put something else in my power, which I am sure nothing can make me decline, and for which I have long wanted an opportunity. Nothing could prevent my being unhappy at the smallness of your fortune, but its throwing it into my way to offer you to share mine. As mine is so precarious, by depending on so bad a constitution, I can only offer you the immediate use of it. I do that most sincerely. My places still (though my Lord Walpole has cut off three hundred pounds a-year to save himself the trouble of signing his name ten times for once) bring me in near two thousand pounds a-year. I have no debts, no connexions; indeed, no -way to dispose of it particularly. By living with my father, I have little real use for a quarter of it. I have always flung it away all in the most idle manner; but, my dear Harry, idle -,is I am, and thoughtless, I have sense enough to have real pleasure in denying myself baubles, and in saving a very good income to make a man happy, for whom I have a just esteem and most sincere friendship. I know the difficulties any gentleman and man of spirit must struggle with, even in having such an offer made him, much more in accepting it. I hope you will allow there are some in making it. But hear me: if there is such a thing as friendship in the world, these are the opportunities of exerting it, and it can’t be exerted without it is accepted. I must talk of myself to prove to you that it will be right for ’you to accept it. I am sensible of having more follies and weaknesses, and fewer real good qualities than most men. I sometimes reflect on this, though I own too seldom. I always want to begin acting like a man, and a sensible one, which I think I might b, if I would. Can I begin better, than by taking care of my fortune for one I love? You have seen (I have seen you have) that I am fickle, and foolishly fond of twenty new people; but I don’t really love them-I have always loved you constantly: I am willing to convince you and the world, what I have always told you, that I loved you better than any body. If I ever felt much for any thing, which I know may be questioned, it was certainly my mother. I look on you as my nearest relation by her, and I think I can never do enough to show my gratitude and affection to her. For these reasons, don’t deny me what I have set my heart on-the making your fortune easy to you.
[The rest of this letter is wanting.]
(953) This was an early attachment of Mr. Conway’s. By his having complied with the wishes and advice of his friends on this subject, and got the better of his passion, he probably felt that he, in some measure, owed to Mr. Walpole the subsequent happiness of his life, in his marriage with another person. (the lady alluded to was Lady Caroline Fitzroy, afterwards Countess of Harrington, whose sister, Lady Isabella, had, three years before, married Mr. Conway’s elder brother, afterwards Earl and Marquis of Hertford.]
381 Letter 144 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, July 22, 1744.
I have not written to you, my dear child, a good while, I know but, indeed, it was from having nothing to tell you. You know I love you too well for it to be necessary to be punctually proving it to you; so, when I have nothing worth your knowing, I repose myself upon’ the persuasion that you must have of my friendship. But I will never let that grow into any negligence, I should say, idleness, which is always mighty ready to argue me out of every thing I ought to do; and letter-writing is one of the first duties that the very best people let perish out of their rubric. Indeed, I pride myself extremely in having been so good a correspondent; for, besides that every day grows to make one hate writing, more, it is difficult, you must own, to keep up a correspondence of this sort with any spirit, when long absence makes one entirely out of all the little circumstances of each other’s society, and which are the soul of letters. We are forced to deal only in great events, like historians; and, instead of being Horace Mann and Horace Walpole, seem to correspond as Guicciardin and Clarendon would:
Discedo Alceus puncto Illius; ille meo quis!
Quis nisi Callimachus?
Apropos to writing histories and Guicciardin; I wish to God, Boccalini was living! never was such an opportunity for Apollo’s playing off a set of looks, as there is now! The good city of London, who, from long dictating to the government, are now come to preside over taste and letters, have given one Carte,(954) a Jacobite parson, fifty pounds a-year, for seven years, to write the history of England; and four aldermen and six common councilmen are to .inspect his materials and the progress of the work. Surveyors and common sewers turned supervisors of literature! To be sure, they think a history of England is no more than Stowe’s Survey of the Parishes! Instead of having books published with the imprimatur of an university, they Will be printed, as churches are whitewashed, John Smith and Thomas Johnson, churchwardens.
But, brother historian, you will wonder I should have nothing to communicate, when all Europe is bursting with events, and every day “big with the fate of Cato and of Rome.” But so it is; I know nothing; Prince Charles’s great passage of the Rhine has hitherto produced nothing, more: indeed, the French armies are moving towards him from Flanders; and they tell us, ours is crossing the Scheldt to attack the Count de Saxe, now that we arc equal to him, from our reinforcement and his diminutions. In the mean time, as I am at least one of the principal heroes of my own politics, being secure of any invasion, I am going to leave all my lares, that is, all my antiquities, household gods and pagods, and take a journey into Siberia for six weeks, where my father’s grace of Courland has been for some time.
Lord Middlesex is going to be married to Miss Boyle,(955) Lady Shannon’s daughter; she has thirty thousand pounds, and may have as much more, if her mother, who is a plain widow, don’t happen to Nugentize.(956) The girl is low and ugly, but a vast scholar.
Young Churchill has got a daughter by the Frasi;(957) Mr. Winnington calls it the opera-comique ; the mother is an opera girl; the grandmother was Mrs. Oldfield.
I must tell you of a very extraordinary print, which my Lady Burlington gives away, of her daughter Euston, -with this inscription:
Lady Dorothy Boyle,
Once the pride, the joy, the -comfort of her parents,
The admiration of all that saw her,
The delight of all that knew her.
Born May 14, 1724, married alas! Oct. 10, 1741,
an
delivered from extremest misery May 2, 1742.
This print was taken from a picture drawn by memory seven weeks after her death, by her most afflicted mother; DOROTHY BURLINGTON.(958)
I am forced to begin a new sheet, lest you should think my letter came from my Lady Burlington, as it ends so patly with her name. But is it not a most melancholy way of venting oneself? She has drawn numbers of these pictures: I don’t approve her having them engraved; but sure the inscription(959) is pretty.
I was accosted the other night by ’a little, pert petit-maitre figure, that claimed me for acquaintance. Do you remember to have seen at Florence an Abb`e Durazzo, of Genoa? well, this was he: it is mighty dapper and French: however, I will be civil to it: I never lose opportunities of paving myself an agreeable passage back to Florence. My dear Chutes, stay for me: I think the first gale of peace will carry me to you. Are you as fond of Florence as ever? of me you are not, I am sure, for you never write me a line. You would be diverted with the grandeur of our old Florence beauty, Lady Carteret. She dresses more extravagantly, and grows more short-sighted every day: she can’t walk a step without leaning on one of her ancient daughters-in law. Lord Tweedale and Lord Bathurst are her constant gentlemen-ushers. She has not quite digested her resentment to Lincoln yet. He was walking with her at Ranelagh the other night, and a Spanish refugee marquis,(960) who is of the Carteret court, but who, not being quite perfect in the carte du pais, told my lady, that Lord Lincoln had promised him to make a very good husband to Miss Pelham. Lady Carteret, with an accent of energy, replied, “J’esp`ere qu’il tiendra sa promesse!” Here is a good epigram that has been made on her:
“Her beauty, like the Scripture feast,
To which the invited never came,
Deprived of its intended guest,
Was given to the old and lame.”
Adieu! here is company; I think I may be excused leaving off at the sixth side.
(954) Thomas Carte, a laborious writer of history.
His principal works are, his Life of the Duke of
Ormonde, in three volumes, folio, and his History
of England, in four. He
died
in 1754.-D. [The former, though
ill-written, was considered by Dr. Johnson as a work
of authority; and of the latter Dr. Warton remarks,
“You may read Hume for his eloquence, but Carte
is the historian for facts.”]
(955) Grace Boyle, daughter and sole heiress of Richard, Viscount Shannon. She became afterwards a favourite of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and died in 17 63.-D.
(956) See ant`e, p. 205. (Letter 48)
(957 Prima donna at the opera.
(958) This is an incorrect copy of the inscription on Lady Euston’s picture given in a note at 329 of this volume.-D. (Letter 110, p. 328/9)
(959) It is said to be Pope’s.
(960) The Marquis Tabernego.
383 Letter 145
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Aug. 6, 1744.
I don’t tell you any thing about Prince Charles, for you must hear all his history as soon as we do: at least much sooner than it can come to the very north, and be despatched back to Italy. There is nothing from Flanders: we advance and they retire-just as two months ago we retired and they advanced: but it is good to be leading up this part of the tune. Lord Stair is going into Scotland: the King is grown wonderfully fond of him, since he has taken the resolution of that journey. He said the other day, “I wish my Lord Stair was in Flanders! General Wade is a very able officer, but he is not alert.” I, in my private litany, am beseeching the Lord, that he may contract none of my Lord Stair’s alertness.
When I first wrote you word of la Ch`etardie’s disgrace, I did not believe it; but you see it is now public. What I like is, her Russian Majesty’s making her amour keep exact pace with her public indignation. She sent to demand her picture and other presents. “Other presents,” to be sure, were billet-doux, bracelets woven of her own bristles-for I look upon the hair of a Muscovite Majesty in the light of the chairs which Gulliver made out of the combings of the Empress of Brobdignag’s tresses: the stumps he made into very good large-tooth combs. You know the present is a very Amazon. she has grappled with all her own grenadiers. I should like to see their loves woven into a French opera: La Ch`etardie’s character is quite adapted to the civil discord of their stage: and then a northern heroine to reproach him in their outrageous quavers, would make a most delightful crash of sentiment, impertinence, gallantry, contempt, and screaming. The first opera that I saw at Paris, I could not believe was in earnest, but thought they had carried me to the op`era-comique. The three acts of the piece(961) were three several interludes, of the Loves of Antony and Cleopatra, of Alcibiades and the Queen of Sparta, and of Tibuilus with a niece of Macenas; besides something of Circe, who was screamed by a Mademoiselle Hermans, seven feet high. She was in black, with a nosegay of black (for on the French stage they pique themselves on propriety,) and without powder: whenever you are a widow, are in distress, or are a witch, you are to leave off powder.
I have no news for you, and am going to have less, for I a)n going into Norfolk. I have stayed till I have not one acquaintance left: the next billow washes me last off the plank. I have not cared to stir, for fear of news from Flanders; but I have convinced myself that there will be none. Our army is much superior to the Count de Saxe; besides, they have ten large towns to garrison, which will reduce their army to nothing; or they must leave us the towns to walk into coolly.
I have received yours of July 21. Did neither I nor your brother tell you, that we had received the Neapolitan snuff-box?(962) it is above a month ago: how could I be so forgetful? but I have never heard one word of the cases, nor of Lord Conway’s guns, nor Lord Hartington’s melon-seeds, all which you mention to have sent. Lestock has long been arrived, so to be sure the cases never came with him: I hope Matthews will discover them. Pray thank Dr. Cocchi very particularly for his book.
I am very sorry too for your father’s removal; it was not done in the most obliging manner by Mr. Winnington; there was something exactly like a breach of promise in it to my father, which was tried to be softened by a civil alternative, that was no alternative at all. He was forced to it by my Lady Townshend, who has an implacable aversion to all my father’s people; and not having less to Mr. Pelham’s, she has been as brusque with Winnington about them. He has no principles himself, and those no principles of his are governed absolutely by hers, which are no-issimes.
I don’t know any of your English. I should delight in your Vauxhall-ets: what a figure my Grifona must make in such a romantic scene! I have lately been reading the poems of the Earl of Surrey,(963) in Henry the Eighth’s time; he was in love with the fair Geraldine of Florence; I have a mind to write under the Grifona’s picture these two lines from one of his sonnets:
“From Tuscane came my lady’s worthy race, Fair Florence was some time her auncient seat.”
And then these:
“Her beauty of kinde, her vertue from above;
Happy is he that can obtaine her love!”
I don’t know what of kinde means, but to be sure it was something prodigiously expressive and gallant in those days, by its being unintelligible now. Adieu! Do the Chutes cicisb`e it?
(961) I think it was the ballet de la paix.
(962) It was for a present to Mr. Stone, the Duke of Newcastle’s secretary
(963) Henry Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk. Under a charge of high-treason, of which he was manifestly innocent, this noble soldier and accomplished poet was found guilty, and in 1547, in his thirty-first year, was beheaded on Tower Hill. History is silent as to the name of fair Geraldine.-E.
385 Letter 146 To Sir Horace Mann. London, Aug. 16, 1744.
I am writing to you two or three days beforehand, by way of settling my affairs-not that I am going to be married or to die; but something as bad as either if it were to last as long. You will guess that it can only be going to Houghton; but I make as much an affair of that, as other people would of going to Jamaica. Indeed I don’t lay in store of cake and bandboxes, and citron-water, and cards, and cold meat, as country-women do after the session. My packing-up and travelling concerns lie in very small compass; nothing but myself and Patapan, my
I think I have pretty well exhausted the chapter of myself. I will now go talk to YOU Of another fellow, who makes me look upon myself as a very perfect character; for as I have little merit naturally, and only pound a stray virtue now @ind then by chance, the other gentleman seems to have no vice, rather no villainy, but what he nurses in himself and metliodizes with as much pains as a stoic would patience. Indeed his pains are not thrown away. This painstaking person’s name is Frederic, King of Prussia. Pray remember for the future never to speak of him and H. W. without giving the latter the preference. Last week we were all alarm! He was before Prague with fifty thousand men, and not a man in Bohemia to ask him, “What dost thou?” This week we have raised a hundred thousand Hungarians, besides vast militias and loyal nobilities. The King of Poland is to attack him on his march, and the Russians to fall on Prussia.(964) In the mean time, his letter or address to the people of England(965) has been published here: it is a poor performance! His Voltaires and his litterati should correct his works before they are printed. A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not misbecome a monarch; but to pen manifestoes worse than the lowest commis that is kept jointly by two or three margraves, is insufferable!
We are very strong in Flanders, but still expect to do nothing this campaign. The French are so entrenched, that it is impossible to attack them. There is talk of besieging Maubeuge; I don’t know how certainly.
Lord Middlesex’s match is determined, and the writings signed. She proves an immense fortune; they pretend a hundred and thirty thousand pounds-what a fund for making operas!
My Lady Carteret is going to Tunbridge—there is a hurry for a son: his only one is gone mad: about a fortnight ago he was at the Duke of Bedford’s, and as much in his few senses as ever. At five o’clock in the morning he waked the duke and duchess all bloody, and with the lappet of his coat held up full of ears: he had been in the stable and cropped all the horses! He is shut up.(966) My lady is in the honeymoon of her grandeur: she lives in public places, whither she is escorted by the old beaux of her husband’s court; fair white-wigged old gallants, the Duke of Bolton,(967) Lord Tweedale, Lord Bathurst, and Charles Fielding;(968) and she all over knots, and small hoods, and ribands. Her brother told me the other night, “Indeed I think my thister doesth countenanth Ranelagh too mutch.” They call Lord Pomfret, King Stanislaus, the queen’s father.
I heard an admirable dialogue, which has been written at the army on the battle of Dettingen, but one can’t get a copy; I must tell you two or three strokes in it that I have heard. Pierot asks Harlequin, “Que donne-t’on aux g`en`eraux qui ne se sont pas trouv`es `a la bataille!” Harl. “On leur donne le cordon rouge.” Pier. “Et que donne-t’on au g`en`eral en Chef(969 qui a gagn`e la victoire!” Harl. “Son cong`e.” Pier. “Qui a soin des bless`es?” Harl. “L’ennemi.” Adieu!
(964) This alludes to the King of Prussia’s retreat from Prague, on the approach of the Austrian army commanded by Prince Charles Lorraine.-D.
(965) In speaking of this address of the King of Prussia, Lady Hervey, in a letter of the 17th, says, “I think it very well and very artfully drawn for his purpose, and very impertinently embarrassing to our King. He is certainly a very artful prince, and I cannot but think his projects and his ambition still more extensive, than people at present imagine them."-E.
(66) On the death of his father this son succeeded to the earldom in 1763. He died in 1776, when the title became extinct.-E.
(967) Charles Poulett, third Duke of Bolton.
(968) The Hon, Charles Fielding, third son of William, third Earl of Denbigh; a lieutenant-colonel in the guards, and Gentleman-usher to Queen Caroline. He died in 1765.-E.
(969) Lord Stair.-D.
387 Letter 147
To Sir Horace Mann.
Houghton, Sept. 1, 1744.
I wish you joy of your victory at Velletri!(970) I call it yours, for you are the great spring of all that war. I intend to publish your life, with an Appendix, that shall contain all the letters to you from princes, cardinals, and great men of the time. In speaking of Prince Lobkowitz’s attempt to seize the King of Naples at Velletri, I shall say: “for the share our hero had in this great action, vide the Appendix, Card.
I thank you for the particulars of the action, and the list of the prisoners: among them is one Don Theodore Diamato Amor, a cavalier of so romantic a name, that my sister and Miss Leneve quite interest themselves in his captivity; and make their addresses to you, who, they hear, have such power with Prince Lobkowitz, to obtain his liberty. If he has Spanish gallantry in any proportion to his name, he will immediately come to England, and vow himself their knight.
Those verses I sent you on Mr. Pope, I assure you, were not mine; I transcribed them from the newspapers; from whence I must send you a very good epigram on Bishop Berkeley’s tar-water:
“Who dare deride what pious Cloyne has done?
The Church shall rise and vindicate her son;
She tells us, all her Bishops shepherds are-
And shepherds heal their rotten sheep with tar.”
I am not at all surprised at my Lady Walpole’s ill-humour to you about the messenger. If the resentments of women did not draw them into little dirty spite, their hatred would be very dangerous; but they vent the leisure they have to do mischief in a thousand meannesses, which only serve to expose themselves.
Adieu! I know nothing here but public politics, of which I have already talked to you, and which you hear as soon as I do.
Thank dear Mr. Chute for his letter; I will answer it very soon; but in the country I am forced to let my pen lie fallow between letter and letter.
(970) The Austrians had formed a scheme to surprise the Neapolitan King and general at Velletri, and their first column penetrated into the place, but reinforcements coming up, they were repulsed with considerable slaughter.-E.
(971) On the 8th of August, Louis the Fifteenth was seized at Metz, on his march to Alsace, with a malignant putrid fever, which increased so rapidly, that, in a few days, his life was despaired of. In his illness, he dismissed his reigning mistress, Madame de Chateauroux.-E.
(972) The King of Prussia.
(973) The battle of Molwitz.
388 Letter 148
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Houghton, Oct. 6, 1744.
My dearest Harry, My lord bids me tell you how much he is obliged to you for your letter, and hopes you will accept my answer for his. I’ll tell you what, we shall both be obliged to you if you will inclose a magnifying-glass in your next letters; for your two last were in so diminutive a character, that we were forced to employ all Mrs. Leneve’s spectacles, besides an ancient family reading-glass, with which my grandfather used to begin the psalm, to discover what you said to us. Besides this, I have a piece of news for you: Sir Robert Walpole, when he was made Earl of Orford, left the ministry, and with it the palace in Downing-street; as numbers of people found out three years ago, who, not having your integrity, were quick in perceiving the change of his situation. Your letter was full as honest as you; for, though directed to Downing-street, it would not, as other letters would have done, address itself to the present possessor. Do but think if it had! The smallness of the hand would have immediately struck my Lord Sandys with the idea of a plot; for what he could not read’ at first sight, he would certainly have concluded must be cipher.
I march next week towards London, and have already begun to send my heavy artillery before me, consisting of half-a-dozen books and part of my linen: my light-horse, commanded by Patapan, follows this day se’nnight. A detachment of hussars surprised an old bitch fox yesterday morning, who had lost a leg in a former engagement; and then, having received advice of another litter being advanced as far as Darsingham, Lord Walpole commanded Captain Riley’s horse, with a strong party of foxhounds, to overtake them; but on the approach of our troops the enemy stole off, and are now encamped at Sechford common, whither we every hour expect orders to pursue them.
My dear Harry, this is all I have to tell you, and, to my great joy, which you must forgive me, is full as memorable as any part of the Flanders campaign. I do not desire to have you engaged in the least more glory than you have been. I should not love the remainder of you the least better for your having lost an arm or a leg, and have as full persuasion of your courage as if you had contributed to the slicing off twenty pair from French officers. Thank
Adieu! my dear Harry. I long to see you, You will easily believe the thought I have of being particularly well with you is a vast addition to my impatience, though you know it is nothing new to me to be overjoyed at your return. Yours ever.
390 Letter 149 To Sir Horace Mann. Houghton, Oct. 6, 1744.
Does decency insist upon one’s writing within certain periods, when one has nothing to say? because, if she does, she is the most formal, ceremonious personage I know. I shall not enter into a dispute with her, as my Lady Hervey did with the goddess of Indolence, or with the goddess of letter-writing, I forget which, in a long letter that she sent to the Duke of Bourbon; because I had rather write than have a dispute about it. Besides, I am not at all used to converse with hierglyphic ladies. But, I do assure you, it is merely to avoid scolding that I set about this letter: I don’t mean your scolding, for you are all goodness to me; but my own scolding of myself-a correction I stand in great awe of, and which I am sure never to escape as often as I am to blame. One can scold other people again, or smile and jog one’s foot, and affect not to mind it; but those airs won’t do with oneself; One always comes by the worst in a dispute with one’s own conviction.
Admiral Matthews sent me down hither your great packet: I am charmed with your prudence, and with the good sense of your orders for the Neapolitan expedition; I won’t say your good nature, which is excessive for I think your tenderness of the little Queen(974) a little outree, especially as their apprehensions might have added great weight to your menaces. I would threaten like a corsair, though I would conquer with all the good-breeding of a Scipio. I most devoutly wish you success; you are sure of having me most happy with any honour you acquire. You have quite soared above all fear of Goldsworthy, and, I think, must appear of consequence to any ministry. I am much obliged to you for the medal, and like the design: I shall preserve it as part of your works.
I can’t forgive what you say to me about the coffee-pot: one would really think that you looked upon me as an old woman that had left a legacy to be kept for her sake, and a curse to attend the parting with it. My dear child, is it treating me justly to enter into the detail of your reasons? was it even necessary to say, ,I have changed your coffee-pot for some other plate?”
I have nothing to tell you but that I go to town next week, and will then write you all I hear. Adieu!
(974) The Queen of Naples,-Maria of Saxony, wife of Charles the Third, King of Naples, and subsequently, on the death of his elder brother, King of Spain. This alludes to the Austrian campaign in the Neapolitan territories, the attack on the town of Velletri, etc.-E.
391 Letter 150 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Oct 19, 1744.
I have received two or three letters from you since I wrote to you last, and all contribute to give me fears for your situation at Florence. How absurdly all the Queen’s ban haughtinesses are dictated to her by her ministers, or by her own Austriacity! She lost all Silesia because she would not lose a small piece of it, and she is going to lose Tuscany for want of a neutrality, because she would not accept one for Naples, even after all prospect of conquering it was vanished. Every thing goes ill! the King of Sardinia beaten; and to-day we hear of Coni lost! You will see in the papers too, that the Victory, our finest ship, is lost, with Sir John Balchen and nine hundred men.(975) The expense alone of the ship is computed at above two hundred thousand pounds. We have nothing good but a flying report of a victory of Prince Charles over the Prussian, who, it ’Is said, has lost ten thousand men, and both his legs by a cannon-ball. I have no notion of his losing them, but by breaking them in over-hurry to run away. However, it comes from a Jew, who had the first news of the passage of the Rhine.(976) But, my dear child, how will this comfort me, if you are not to remain in peace at Florence! I tremble as I write!
Yesterday morning carried off those two old beldamss, Sarah of Marlborough and the (.countess Granville;(977) so now Uguccioni’s(978) epithalamium must be new-tricked out in titles, for my Lady Carteret is Countess! Poor Bistino! I wish my Lady Pomfret may leave off her translation of Froissart to English the eight hundred and forty heroics! When I know the particulars of old Marlborough’s will, you shall.
My Lord Walpole has promised me a letter for young Gardiner; who, by the way, has pushed his fortune en vrai b`atard, without being so, for it never was pretended that he was my brother’s — he protests he is not; but the youth has profited of his mother’s gallantries.
I have not seen Admiral Matthews yet, but I take him to be very mad. He walks in the Park with a cockade of three colours: the Duke desired a gentleman to ask him the meaning, and all the answer he would give was, “The Treaty of Worms! the treaty of Worms!” I design to see him, thank him for my packet, and inquire after the cases.
it is a most terrible loss for his parents, Lord
Beauchamp’s(979) death: if they were out
of the question, one could not be sorry for such a
mortification to the pride of old Somerset.
He has written the most shocking letter imaginable
to poor Lord Hertford, telling him that it is a judgment
upon him for all his undutifulness, and that he must
always look upon himself. as the cause of’ his
son’s death. Lord Hertford is as good a
man as lives, and has always been most unreasonably
ill-used by that old tyrant. The title of’
Somerset will revert to Sir Edward Seymour, whose line
has been most unjustly deprived of it from the first
creation.
The Protector when only Earl of Hertford,
married a great
heiress, and had a Lord Beauchamp, who was about twenty
when his mother died. His father then married
an Anne Stanhope, with whom he was In love, and not
only procured an act of parliament to deprive Lord
Beauchamp of’ his honours and to settle the
title of Somerset, which he was going to have, on
the children of’ this second match, but took
from him even his mother’s fortune. From
him descended Sir Edward Seymour, the Speaker, who,
on King William’s landing, when he said to him,
“Sir Edward, I think you are of the Duke of Somerset’s
family!” replied, “No, Sir: he is
of mine.”
Lord Lincoln was married last Tuesday, and Lord Middlesex will be very soon. Have you heard the gentle manner of the French King’s dismissing Madame de Chateauroux? In the very circle, the Bishop of Soissons(980) told her, that, as the scandal the King had given with her was public, his Majesty thought his repentance ought to be so too, and that he therefore forbade her the court; and then turning to the monarch, asked him if that was not his pleasure, who replied, Yes. They have taken away her pension too, and turned out even laundresses that she had recommended for the future Dauphiness. A-propos to the Chateauroux: there is a Hanoverian come over, who was so ingenuous as to tell Master Louis,(981) how like he is to M. Walmoden. You conceive that “nous autres souvereins nous n’aimons pas qu’on se m`eprenne aux gens:” we don’t love that our Fitzroys should be scandalized with any mortal resemblance.
I must tell you a good piece of discretion of a Scotch soldier, whom Mr. Selwyn met on Bexley Heath walking back to the army. He had met with a single glove at Higham, which had been left there last year in an inn by an officer now in Flanders: this the fellow was carrying in hopes of a little money; but, for fear he should lose the glove, wore it all the way.
Thank you for General Braitwitz’s deux potences.(982) I hope that one of them, at least will rid us of the Prussian. Adieu! my dear child: all my wishes are employed about Florence.
(975) The Victory, of a hundred and ten brass guns, was lost, between the 4th and 5th of October, near Alderney.-E.
(976) This report proved to be without foundation.
(977) Mother of John, Lord Carteret, who succeeded her in the title.
(978) A Florentine, who had employed an abbe of his acquaintance to write an epithalamium on Lord Carteret’s marriage, consisting of eight hundred and forty Latin lines. Sir H. Mann had given an account of the composition of this piece of literary flattery in one of his letters to Walpole.-D.
(979) Only son of Algernon, Earl of Hertford, afterwards the last Duke of Somerset of that branch. [lord Beauchamp was seized with the smallpox at Bologna, and, after an illness of four days, died on the 11th of September; on which day he had completed his nineteenth year.]
(980) Son of Fitzjames, Duke of Berwick. This Bishop of Soissons, on the King being given over at Metz, prevailed on him to part with his mistress, the Duchess de Chateauroux; but the King soon recalled her, and confined the bishop to his diocese.
(981) Son of King George II. by Madame Walmoden, created Countess of Yarmouth.
(982) General Braitwitz, commander of the Queen of Hungary’s troops in Tuscany, speaking of the two powers, his mistress and the King of Sardinia, instead of’ saying “ces deux pouvoirs,” said “ces deux potences.”
393 Letter 151 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Nov. 9, 1744.
I find I must not wait any longer for news, if I intend to keep up our correspondence. Nothing happens; nothing has since I wrote last, but Lord Middlesex’s wedding;(983) which was over above a week before it was known. I believe the bride told it then; for he and all his family are so silent, that they Would never have mentioned it: she might have popped out a child, before a single Sackville would have been at the expense of a syllable to justify her.
Our old acquaintance, the Pomfrets, are not so reserved about their great matrimony: the new Lady Granville was at home the other night for the first time of her being mistress of the house. I was invited, for I am in much favour with them all, but found myself extremely d`eplac`e: there was nothing but the Winchilseas and Baths, and the Gleanings of a party stuffed out into a faction, some foreign ministers, and the whole blood of Fermor. My Lady Pomfret asked me if I corresponded still with the Grifona: “No,” I said, “since I had been threatened with a regale of hams and Florence wine, I had dropped it.” My Lady Granville said, “You was afraid of being thought interested.”—“Yes,” said the queen-mother, with all the importance with which she used to blunder out pieces of heathen mythology, “I think it was very ministerial.” Don’t you think that the Minister word came in as awkwardly as I did into their room? The Minister is most gracious to me; he has returned my visit, which, you know, IS never practised by that rank: I put it all down to my father’s account, who is not likely to keep up the civility.
You will see the particulars of old Marlborough’s will in the Evening Posts of this week: it is as extravagant as one should have expected; but I delight in her begging that no part of the Duke of Marlborough’s life may be written in verse by Glover and Mallet, to whom she gives five hundred pounds apiece for writing it in prose.(984) There is a great deal of humour in the thought: to be sure the spirit of the dowager Leonidas(985) inspired her with it.
All public affairs in agitation at present go well for us; Prince Charles in Bohemia, the raising of the siege of Coni, and probably of that of Fribourg, are very good circumstances. I shall be very tranquil this winter, if Tuscany does not come into play, or another scene of invasion. In a fortnight meets the Parliament; nobody guesses what the turn of the Opposition will be. Adieu! My love to the Chutes. I hope you now and then make my other compliments: I never forget the Princess, nor (ware hams!) the Grifona.
(983) The Earl of Middlesex married Grace, daughter and sole heiress of Lord Shannon. On the death of his father in 1765, he succeeded, as second Duke of Dorset, and died without issue, in 1769.-E.
(984) Glover, though in embarrassed circumstances at the time, renounced the legacy; Mallet accepted it, but never fulfilled the terms.-E.
(985) Glover wrote a dull heroic poem on the action of Leonidas at Thermopylae. ["Though far indeed from being a vivid or arresting picture of antiquity, Leonidas,” says Mr. Campbell, “the local descriptions of Leonidas, its pure sentiments, and the classical images which it recalls, render it interesting, as the monument of an accomplished and amiable mind.”]
394 Letter 152 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Nov. 26, 1744.
I have not prepared for you a great event, because it was really, so unlikely to happen, that I was afraid of being the author of a mere political report; but, to keep you no longer in suspense, Lord Granville has resigned: that is the term “l’honn`ete fa`con de parler;” but, in few words, the truth of the history is, that the Duke of Newcastle (by the way, mind that the words I am going to use are not mine, but his Majesty’s,) “being grown as jealous of Lord Granville(986) as he had been of Lord Orford, and wanting to be first minister himself, which, a puppy! how should he be?” (autre phrase royale) and his brother being as susceptible of the noble passion of jealousy as he is, have long been conspiring to overturn the great lord. Resolution and capacity were all they wanted to bring it about; for the imperiousness and universal contempt which their rival had for them, and for the rest of the ministry, and for the rest of the nation, had made almost all men his engines; and, indeed, he took no pains to make friends: his maxim was, “Give any man the Crown on his side, and he can defy every thing.” Winnington asked him, if that were true, how he came to be minister? About a
Who are mortified, are the fair Sophia and Queen Stanislaus. However, the daughter carries it off heroically: the very night of her fall she went to the Oratorio. I talked to her much, and recollected all that had been said to me upon the like occasion three years ago: I succeeded, and am invited to her assembly next Tuesday. Tell Uguccioni that she still keeps conversazioni, or he will hang himself. She had no court, but an ugly sister and the fair old-fashioned Duke of Bolton. It put me in mind of a scene in Harry VIII., where Queen Catherine appears after her divorce, with Patience her waiting-maid, and Griffith her gentleman-usher.
My dear child, voil`a le monde! are you as great a philosopher about it as I am? You cannot imagine how I entertain myself, especially as all the ignorant flock hither, and conclude that my lord must be minister again. Yesterday, three bishops came to do him homage; and who should be one of them but Dr. Thomas.(988) the only man mitred by Lord Granville! As I was not at all mortified with our fall, I am only diverted with this imaginary restoration. They little think how incapable my lord is of business again. He has this whole summer been troubled with bloody water upon the least motion; and to-day Ranby assured me, that he has a stone in his bladder, which he himself believed before: so now he must never use the least exercise, never go into a chariot again; and if ever to Houghton, in a litter. Though this account will grieve you, I tell it you, that you may know what to expect; yet it is common for people to live many years in his situation.
if you are not as detached from every thing as I am, you will wonder at my tranquillity, to be able to write such variety in the midst of hurricanes. It costs me nothing; so I shall write on, and tell you an adventure of my own. The town has been trying all this winter to beat pantomimes off the stage, very boisterously; for it is the way here to make even an affair of taste and sense a matter of riot and arms. Fleetwood, the master of Drury-Lane, has omitted nothing to support them, as they supported his house. About ten days ago, he let into the pit great numbers of Bear-garden bruisers (that is the term), to knock down every body that hissed. The pit rallied their forces, and drove them out: I was sitting very quietly in the side-boxes, contemplating all this. On a sudden the curtain flew up, and discovered the whole stage filled with blackguards, armed with bludgeons and clubs, to menace the audience. This raised the greatest uproar; and among the rest, who flew ’into a passion, but your friend the philosopher. In short, one of the actors, advancing to the front of the stage to make an apology for the manager, he had scarce begun to say, “Mr. Fleetwood—” when your friend, with a most audible voice and dignity of anger, called out, “He is an impudent rascal!” The whole pit huzzaed, and repeated the words. Only think of my being a popular orator! But what was still better, while my shadow of a person was dilating to the consistence of a hero, One of the chief ringleaders of the riot, coming under the box where I sat, and pulling off his hat, said, “Mr. Walpole, what would you please to have us do next?” It is impossible to describe to you the confusion into which this apostrophe threw me. I sank down into the box, and have never since ventured to set my foot into the playhouse. The next night, the uproar was repeated with greater violence, and nothing was heard but voices calling out, “Where’s Mr. W.? where’s Mr. W.?” In short, the whole town has been entertained with my prowess, and Mr. Conway has given me the name of Wat Tyler; which, I believe, would have stuck by me, if this new episode of Lord Granville had not luckily interfered.
We every minute expect news of the Mediterranean engagement for, besides your account, Birtles has written the same from Genoa. We expect good news, too, from Prince Charles, who is driving the King of Prussia before him. In the mean time, his wife the Archduchess is dead, which may be a signal loss to him.
I forgot to tell you that, on Friday, Lord Charles Hay,(989) who has more of the parts of an Irishman than of a Scot, told my Lady Granville at the drawing-room, on her seeing so full a court, “that people were come out of curiosity.” The Speaker,(990) is the happiest of any man in these bustles: he says, “this Parliament has torn two favourite ministers from the throne.” His conclusion is, that the power of the Parliament will in the end be so great, that nobody can be minister but their own speaker.
Winnington says my Lord Chesterfield and Pitt will have places before old Marlborough’s legacy to them for being patriots is paid. My compliments to the family of Suares on the Vittorina’s marriage. Adieu!
(986) By the death of his mother, Lord Carteret had become Earl Granville.-E.
(987) George, Earl Cholmondeley.
(988) Bishop of Lincoln [successively translated to Salisbury and Winchester. He died in 1781.]
(989) Brother of Lord Tweedale.
(990) Arthur Onslow.
397 Letter 153
To sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Dec. ’24, 1744.
You will wonder what has become of me: nothing has. I know it is above three weeks since I wrote to you; but I will tell you the reason. I have kept a parliamentary silence, which I must ’explain to you. Ever since Lord Granville went out, all has been in suspense. The leaders of the Opposition immediately imposed silence upon their party; every thing passed without the least debate—in short, all were making their bargains. One has heard of the corruption of courtiers; but believe me, the impudent prostitution of patriots, going to market with their honesty, beats it to nothing. Do but think of two hundred men of the most consummate virtue, setting themselves to sale for three weeks! I have been reprimanded by the wise for saying that they all stood like servants at a country statute fair to be hired. All this while nothing was certain: one day the coalition was settled; the next, the treaty broke off-I hated to write to you what I might contradict next post. Besides, in my last letter I remember telling you that the Archduchess was dead; she did not die till a fortnight afterwards.
The result of the whole is this: the King, instigated by Lord Granville, has used all his ministry as ill as possible, and has with the greatest difficulty been brought to consent to the necessary changes. Mr. Pelham has had as much difficulty to regulate the disposition of places. Numbers of lists of the hungry have been given in by their centurions of those, several Tories have refused to accept the proffered posts some, from an impossibility of being rechosen for their Jacobite counties. But upon the whole, it appears that their leaders have had very little influence with them; for not above four or five are come into place. The rest will stick to Opposition. Here is a list of the changes, as made last Saturday:
Duke of Devonshire, Lord Steward, in the room of the
Duke of
Dorset.
Duke of Dorset, Lord President, in Lord Harrington’s
room.
Lord Chesterfield,+ Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in
the Duke of
Devonshire’s.
Duke of Bedford,+ Lord Sandwich,+ George Grenville,+
Lord Vere
Beauclerc,(991) and Admiral Anson, Lords of the Admiralty,
in
the room of Lord Winchilsea,* Dr. Lee,* Cockburn,*
Sir Charles
Hardy,* and Philipson.*
Mr. Arundel and George Lyttelton,f Lords of the Treasury,
All those with a cross are from the Opposition; those with a star, the turned-out, and are of the Granville and Bath squadron, except Lord Cholmondeley, (who, too, had connected with the former,) and Mr. Philipson. The King parted with great regret with Lord Cholmondeley, and complains loudly of the force put upon him. The Prince, who is full as warm as his father for Lord Granville, has already turned out Lyttelton, who was his secretary, and Lord Halifax; and has named Mr. Drax and Lord Inchiquin(994) in their places. You perceive the great Mr. William Pitt is not in the list, though he comes thoroughly into the measures. To preserve his character and authority in the Parliament, he was unwilling to accept any thing yet: the ministry very rightly insisted that he should; he asked for secretary at war, knowing it would be refused-and it was.(995)
By this short sketch, and it is impossible to be more explanatory, you will perceive that all is confusion: all parties broken to Pieces, and the whole Opposition by tens and by twenties selling themselves for profit-power they get none! It is not easy to say where power resides at present: it is plain that it resides not in the King; and yet he has enough to hinder any body else from having it. His new governors have no interest with him-scarce any converse with him.
The Pretender’s son is owned in France as Prince of Wales; the princes of the blood have been to visit him in form. The Duchess of Chateauroux is poisoned there; so their monarch is as ill-used as our most gracious King!(996) How go your Tuscan affairs? I am always trembling for you, though I am laughing at every thing else. My father is pretty well: he is taking a preparation of Mr. Stephens’s(997) medicine; but I think all his physicians begin to agree that he has no large stone.
Adieu! my dear child: I think the present comedy cannot be of long duration. the Parliament is adjourned for the holidays; I am impatient to see the first division.
(991) Lord Vere Beauclerc, third son of the first Duke of St. Albans, afterwards created Lord Vere, of Hanworth. He entered early into a maritime life, and distinguished himself in several commands, He died in 1781.-E.
(992) The King was much displeased that an adherent of the exiled family should be forced into the service of his own. in consequence of this appointment a caricature was circulated, representing the ministers thrusting Sir John, who was extremely corpulent, down the King’s throat.
(993) John, first Lord Hobart, so created in 1728, by the interest of his sister, Lady Suffolk, the mistress of George the Second. In 1746 he was created Earl of Buckinghamshire; and died in 1756.-D.
(994) William O’Brien, fourth Earl of Inchiquin, in Ireland. He died in 1777.-E.
(995) Pitt alone was placeless. He loftily declared, that he would accept no office except that of secretary at war, and the ministers were not yet able to dispense with Sir William Yonge in that department. This resolution of Pitt, joined to the King’s pertinacity against him, excluded him, for the present, from any share in power."-Lord Mahon, vol. iii. p. 315.
(996) The Duchess died on the 8th of December. The Biog. Univ. says, that the rumour of her having been poisoned was altogether without foundation.-E.
(997) It was Dr. Jurin’s preparation.
399 Letter 154
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Jan. 4, 1745.
When I receive your long letters I am ashamed: mine are notes in comparison. How do you contrive to roll out your patience into two sheets? You certainly don’t love me better than I do you; and yet if our loves were to b@ sold by the quire, you would have by far the more magnificent stock to dispose of. I can only say that age has already an effect on the vigour of my pen; none on yours: it is not, I assure you, for you alone, but my ink is at low water-mark for all my acquaintance. My present shame arises from a letter of eight sides, of December 8th, which I received from you last post; but before I say a word to that, I must tell you that I have at last received the cases; three with gesse figures, and one with Lord Conway’s gun- barrels: I thought there were to be four, besides the guns; but I quite forget, and did not even remember what they were to contain. Am not I in your debt again? Tell me, for you know how careless I am. Look over your list, and see whether I have received all. There were four barrels, the Ganymede, the Sleeping Cupid, the model of my statue, the Musaeum Florentinum, and some seeds for your brother. But alas! though I received them in gross, I did not at all in detail; the model was broken into ten thousand bits, and the Ganymede shorn in two: besides some of the fingers quite reduced to powder. Rysbrach has undertaken to mend him. The little Morpheus arrived quite whole, and is charmingly pretty; I like it better in plaster than in the original black marble.
It is not being an upright senator to promise one’s vote beforehand, especially in a money matter; but I believe so many excellent patriots have just done the same thing, that I shall venture readily to engage my promise to you, to get you any sum for the defence of Tuscany -why it is to defend you and my own country! my own palace in via di santo spirits,(998) my own Princess `epuis`ee, and all my family! I shall quite make interest for you: nay, I would speak to our new ally, and your old acquaintance, Lord Sandwich, to assist in it; but I could have no hope of getting at his ear, for he has put on such a first-rate tie-wig, on his admission to the admiralty board, that nothing without the lungs of a boatswain can ever think to penetrate the thickness of the curls. I think, however, it does honour to the dignity of ministers: when he was but a patriot, his wig was not of half its present gravity. There are no more changes made: all is quiet yet; but next Thursday the Parliament meets to decide the complexion of the session. My Lord Chesterfield goes next week to Holland, and then returns for Ireland.
The great present disturbance in politics is my Lady Granville’s assembly; which I do assure you distresses the Pelhams infinitely more than a mysterious meeting of the States would, and far more than the abrupt breaking up of the Diet at Grodno. She had begun to keep Tuesdays before her lord resigned, which now she continues with greater zeal. Her house is very fine, she very handsome, her lord very agreeable and extraordinary; and yet the Duke of Newcastle wonders that people will go thither. He mentioned to my father my going there, who laughed at him; Cato’s a proper person to trust with such a childish jealousy! Harry Fox says, “Let the Duke of Newcastle open his own house, and see if all that come thither are his friends.” The fashion now is to send cards to the women, and to declare that all men Are welcome without being asked. This is a piece of ease that shocks the prudes of the last age. You can’t imagine how my Lady Granville shines in doing favours; you know she is made for it. My lord has new furnished his mother’s apartment for her, and has given her a magnificent set of dressing plate: he is very fond of her, and she as fond of his being so.
You will have heard of Marshal Belleisle’s being made a prisoner at Hanover: the world will believe it was not by accident. He is sent for over hither: the first thought was to confine him to the Tower, but that is contrary to the politesse of modern war: they talk of sending him to Nottingham, where Tallard was. I am sure, if he is prisoner at large anywhere, we could not have a worse inmate! so ambitious and intriguing a man, who was author of this whole war, will be no bad general to be ready to head the Jacobites on any insurrection.(999)
I can say nothing more about young Gardiner, but that I don’t think my father at all inclined now to have any letter written for him. Adieu!
(998) The street in Florence where Mr. Mann lived. (999) Belleisle and his brother, who had been sent by the King
of France on a mission to the King of Prussia, were detained, while changing horses, at Elbengerode, and from thence conveyed to England; where, refusing to give their parole in the mode it was required, they were confined in Windsor Castle.
400 Letter 155 To sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Jan. 14, 1745.
I have given my uncle the letter from M. de Magnan; he had just received another from him at Venice, to desire his recommendation to you. His history is, first,-the Regent picked him up, (I don’t know from whence, but he is of the Greek church,) to teach the present Duke of Orleans the Russ tongue, when they had a scheme for marrying him into Muscovy. At Paris, Lord Waldegrave(1000) met with him, and sent him over hither, where they pensioned him and he was to be a spy, but made nothing out; till the King was weary of giving him money, and then they despatched him to Vienna, with a recommendation to Count d’Uhlefeldt, who, I suppose, has tacked him upon the Great Duke. My uncle says, he knows no ill of him; that you may be civil to him, but not enter into correspondence with him, you need not; he is of no use. Apropos to you; I have been in a fright about you; we were told that Prince Lobkowitz was landed at Harwich; I did not like the name; and as he has been troublesome to you, I did not know but he might fancy he had some complaints against you. I wondered you had never mentioned his being set out; but it is his son, a travelling boy of twenty; he is sent under the care of an apothecary and surgeon.
The Parliament is met: one hears of the Tory Opposition continuing, but nothing has appeared; all is quiet. Lord Chesterfield is set out for the Hague — I don’t know what ear the States will lend to his embassy, when they hear with what difficulty the King was brought to give him a parting audience; and which, by a watch, did not last five-and-forty seconds. The Granville faction are still the constant and only countenanced people at court. Lord Winchilsea, one of the disgraced, played at court On Twelfth-night, and won: the King asked him the next morning, how much he had for his own share?(1001) He replied, “Sir, about a quarter’s salary.” I liked the spirit, and was talking to him Of it the next night at Lord Granville’s: “Why, yes,” said he, “I think it showed familiarity at least: tell it your father—I don’t think he will dislike it.” My Lady Granville gives a ball this week, but in a manner a private one, to the two families of Carteret and Fermor and their intimacies: there is a fourth sister, Lady Jullana,(1002) who is very handsome, but I think not so well as Sophia: the latter thinks herself breeding.
I will tell you a very good thing: Lord Baltimore will not come into the admiralty, because in the new commission they give Lord Vere Beauclerc the precedence to him, and he has dispersed printed papers with precedents in his favour. A gentleman, I don’t know who, the other night at Tom’s coffee-house, said, “It put him in mind of Ponkethman’s petition in the Spectator, where he complains, that formerly he used to act second chair in Dioclesian, but now was reduced to dance fifth flowerpot.”
The Duke of Montagu has found out an old penny-history-book, called the Old Woman’s Will of Ratcliffe-Highway, which he has bound up with his mother-in-law’s, Old Marlborough,(1003) only-tearing away the title-page of the latter.
My father has been extremely ill this week with his disorder— I think the physicians are more and more persuaded that it is the stone in his bladder. He is taking a preparation of Mrs. Stevens’s medicine, a receipt of one Dr. Jurin, which we began to fear was too violent for him: I made his doctor angry with me, by arguing on this medicine, which I never could comprehend. it is of so great violence, that it Is to split a stone when it arrives at it, and yet it is to do no damage to all the tender intestines through which it must first pass.(1004) I told him, I thought it was like an admiral going on a secret expedition of war, with instructions, which are not to be opened till he arrives in such a latitude.
George Townshend,(1005) my lord’s eldest son, who is at the Hague on his travels, has had an offer to raise a regiment for their service, of which he is to be colonel, with power of naming all his own officers. It was proposed, that it should consist of Irish Roman Catholics, but the regency of Ireland have represented against that, because they think they will all desert to the French. He is now to try it of Scotch, which will scarce succeed, unless he will let all the officers be of the same nation. An affair of this kind first raised the late Duke of Argyll; and was the cause of the first quarrel with the Duke of Marlborough, who was against his coming into our army in the same rank.
Sir Thomas Hanmer has at last published his Shakspeare: he has made several alterations, but they will be the less talked of, as he has not marked in the text, margin, or notes, where or why he has made any change; but every body must be obliged to collate it with other editions. One most curiously absurd alteration I have been told. In Othello, it is said of Cassio, “a Florentine, one almost damned in a fair wife.” It happens that there is no other mention in the play of Cassio’s wife. Sir Thomas has altered it-how do you think?-no, I should be sorry if you could think how-"almost damned in a fair phiz!"-what a tragic word! and what sense!
Adieu! I see advertised a translation of Dr. Cocchi’s book on living on vegetables:(1006) Does he know any thing of it? My service to him and every body.
(1000) James, first Earl of Waldegrave, ambassador at Paris, K. G. He died in 1741.-D.
(1001) Those who play at court on Twelfth-night, make a bank with several people.
(1002) Lady Juliana Fermor, married in 1751 to Thomas Penn, Esq. (son of William Penn, the great legislator of the Quakers) one of the proprietors of Pennsylvania. He died in 1775, and Lady Juliana in 1781.-E.
(1003) The Duchess of Marlborough’s will was published in a thin octavo volume.-D.
(1004) Mrs. Stephens’s remedy for the stone made for some time, the greatest noise, and met both with medical approbation and national reward. In 1742, Dr. James Parsons published a pamphlet on the subject, which Dr. Mead describes as @’ a very useful book; in which both the mischiefs done by the medicine, and the artifices employed to bring it into vogue are set in a clear light.”—E.
(1005) Afterwards first Marquis Townshend, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Master General of the Ordnance. etc.
(1006) The Doctor’s treatise “Di Vitto Pythagorico,” appeared this year in England, under the title of “The Pythagorean Diet; or Vegetables only conducive to the Preservation of Health and the Cure of Diseases."-E.
402 letter 156 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Feb. 1, 1745.
I am glad my letters, obscure as they of course must be, give you any light into England; but don’t mind them too much; they may be partial; must be imperfect: don’t negotiate upon their authority, but have Capello’s(1007) example before your eyes! How I laugh when I see him important, and see my Lady Pomfret’s letters at the bottom of his instructions! how it would make a philosopher smile at the vanity of politics! How it diverts me, who can entertain myself at the expense of philosophy, politics, or any thing else! Mr. Conway says I laugh at all serious characters-so I do-and at myself too, who am far from being of the number. Who would not laugh at a world, where so ridiculous a creature as the Duke of Newcastle can overturn ministries! Don’t take me for a partisan of Lord Granville’s because I despise his rivals; I am not for adopting his measures; they were wild and dangerous -. in his single capacity, I think him a great genius(1008) and without having recourse to the Countess’s translatable periods, am pleased with his company. His frankness charms one when it is not necessary to depend upon it: and his contempt for fools is very flattering to any one who happens to know the present ministry. Their coalition goes on as One should expect; they have the name of having effected it; and the Opposition is no longer mentioned: yet there is not a half-witted prater in the House but can divide with every new minister on his side, except Lyttelton, whenever he pleases. They actually do every day bring in popular bills, and on the first tinkling of the brass, all the new bees swarm back to the Tory side of the House. The other day, on the Flanders army, Mr. Pitt came down to prevent this: he was very ill, but made a very strong and much admired speech for coalition,(1009) which for that day succeeded, and the army was voted with but one negative,. But now the Emperor (1010) is dead, and every thing must wear a new face. If it produces a peace, Mr. Pelham is a fortunate man! He will do extremely well at the beginning of peace, like the man in Madame de la Fayette’s Memoirs, Qui exer`coit extr`emement bien sa charge, quand il n’avoit rien `a faire.” However, do you keep well with them, and be sure don’t write me back any treason, in answer to all I write to you: you are to please them; I think of them -is they are.
The new Elector(1011) seems to set out well for us, though there are accounts of his having taken the style of Archduke, as claiming the Austrian succession: if he has, it will be like the children’s game of beat knaves out of doors, where you play the pack twenty times over; one gets pam, the other gets pam, but there is no conclusion to the game till one side has never a card left.
After my ill success with the baronet,(1012) to whom I gave a letter for you. I shall always be very cautious how I recommend barbarians to your protection. I have this morning been solicited for some credentials for a Mr. Oxenden.(1013) I could not help laughing: he is a son of Sir George, my Lady W.’s famous lover! Can he want recommendations to Florence? However, I must give him a letter; but beg you will not give yourself any particular trouble about him, for I do not know him enough to bow to. His person is good: that and his name, I suppose, will bespeak my lady’s attentions, and save you the fatigue of doing him many honours.
Thank Mr. Chute for his letter; I will answer it very soon. I delight in the article of the Mantua Gazette. Adieu!
(1007) The Venetian ambassador.
(1008) Swift, in speaking of Lord Granville, says, that “he carried away from college more Greek, Latin, and philosophy than properly became a person of his rank;” and Walpole, in his Memoires, describes him as “an extensive scholar, master of all classic criticism, and of all modern politics."-E.
(1009) “Mr. Pitt, who had been laid up with the gout, came down with the mien and apparatus of an invalid, on purpose to make a full declaration of his sentiments on our present circumstances. What he said was enforced with much grace both of action and elocution. He commended the ministry for pursuing moderate and healing measures, and such -,is tended to set the King at the head of all his people.” See Mr.- P. Yorke’s MS. Parliamentary Journal.-E.
(1010) Charles Vii. Elector of Bavaria.
(1011) Maximilian Joseph. He died in 1777.-E.
(1012) Sir William Maynard. (He married the daughter of Sir Cecil Bisshopp, and died in 1772.]
(1013) Afterwards Sir Henry Oxenden, the sixth baronet of the family, and eldest son of Sir George Oxenden, for many years a lord of the treasury during the reign of George the Second. He died in 1803.-E.
404 Letter 157 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Feb. 28, 1745.
You have heard from your brother the reason of my not having written to you so long. I have been out but twice since my father fell into this illness, which is now near a month; and all that time either continually in his room, or obliged to see multitudes of people; for it is most wonderful how every body of all kinds has affected to express their concern for him. He has been out of danger above this week; but I can’t say he mended at all perceptibly,
March 4th.
I had written thus far last week, without being able to find a moment to finish. In the midst of all my attendance on my lord and receiving visits, I am forced to go out and thank those that have come and sent; for his recovery is now at such a pause, that I fear it is in vain to expect much farther amendment. How dismal a prospect for him, with the possession of the greatest understanding in the world, not the least impaired to lie without any use of it! for to keep him from pains and restlessness, he takes so much opiate, that he is scarce awake four hours of the four-and-twenty; but I -will say no more on this.
Our coalition goes on thrivingly; but at the expense of the old Court, who are all discontented, and are likely soon to show their resentment. The brothers have seen the best days of their ministry. The Hanover troops dismissed to please the Opposition, and taken again with their consent, under the cloak of an additional subsidy to the Queen of Hungary, who is to pay them. This has set the patriots in so villainous a light, that they will be ill able to support a minister who has thrown such an odium on the Whigs, after they had so stoutly supported that measure last year, and which, after all the clamour, is now universally adopted, as you see. If my Lord Granville had any resentment, as he seems to have nothing but thirst, sure there is no vengeance he might not take! So far from contracting any prudence from his fall, he laughs it off every night over two or three bottles. The countess is with child. I believe she and the countess-mother have got it; for there is nothing ridiculous which they have not done and said about it. There was a private masquerade lately at the Venetian ambassadress’s for the Prince of Wales, who named the company, and expressly excepted my Lady Lincoln and others of the Pelham faction. My Lady Granville came late, dressed like Imoinda, and handsomer than one of the houris — the Prince asked her why she would not dance? , Indeed, Sir, I was afraid I could not have come at all, for I had a fainting fit after dinner.” The other night my Lady Townshend made a great ball on her son’s coming of age: I went for a little while, little thinking of dancing. I asked my Lord Granville, why my lady did not dance? “Oh, Lord! I wish you would ask her: she will with you.” I was caught, and did walk down one country dance with her; but the prudent Signora-madre would not let her expose the young Carteret any farther.
You say, you expect much information about Belleisle, but there has not (in the style of the newspapers) the least particular transpired. He was at first kept magnificently close at Windsor; but the expense proving above one hundred pounds per day, they have taken his parole, and sent him to Nottingham, `a la Tallarde. Pray, is De Sade with you still’? his brother has been taken too by the Austrians.
My Lord Coke is going to be married to a Miss Shawe,(1014) of forty thousand pounds. Lord Hartington(1015) is contracted to Lady Charlotte Boyle, the heiress of Burlington, and sister of the unhappy Lady Euston; but she is not yet old enough. Earl Stanhope,(1016) too, has at last lifted up his eyes from Euclid, and directed them to matrimony. He has chosen the eldest sister of your acquaintance Lord Haddington. I revive about you and Tuscany. I will tell you. what is thought to have reprieved you: it is much suspected that the King of Spain(1017) is dead. I hope those superstitious people will pinch the queen, as they do witches, to make her loosen the charm that has kept the Prince of Asturias from having children. At least this must turn out better than the death of the Emperor has.
The Duke,(1018) you hear, is named generalissimo, with Count Koningseg, Lord Dunmore,(1019) and Ligonier,(1020) under him. Poor boy! he is most Brunswickly happy with his drums and trumpets. Do but think that this sugar-plum was to tempt him to swallow that bolus the Princess of Denmark!(1021) What will they do if they have children? The late Queen never forgave the Duke of Richmond, for telling her that his children would take place before the Duke’s grandchildren.
I inclose you a pattern for a chair, which your brother desired me to send you. I thank you extremely for the views of Florence; you can’t imagine what wishes they have awakened. My best thanks to Dr. Cocci for his book: I have delivered all the copies as directed. Mr. Chute will excuse me yet; the first moment I have time I will write. I have: just received your letter of Feb. 16, and grieve for your disorder: you know, how much concern your ill health gives m. Adieu! my dear child: I write with twenty people in the room.
(1014) This marriage did not take place. Lord Coke afterwards married Lady Campbell; and Miss Shawe, William, fifth Lord Byron, the immediate predecessor of the great poet.-E.
(1015) In 1755 he succeeded his father as fourth Duke of Devonshire. He died at Spa, in 1764; having filled at different times, the offices of lord lieutenant of Ireland, first lord of the treasury, and lord chamberlain of the household. His marriage with Lady Charlotte Boyle took place in March 1748.-E.
(1016) Philip, second Earl Stanhope. See ant`e, p. 308. Letter 96. He married, in July following, Lady Grizel Hamilton, daughter of Charles Lord Binning.-E.
(1017) The imbecile and insane Philip V. He did not die till 1746. The Prince of Asturias was Ferdinand VI., who succeeded him, and died childless in 1759.-D.
(1018) Of Cumberland. He never married.-D.
(1019) John Murray, second Earl of Dunmore: colonel of the third regiment of Scotch foot-guards. He died in 1752-E.
(1020) Sir John Ligonier a general of merit. He was created Lord Ligonier in Ireland, in 1757, an English peer by the same title in 1763, and Earl Ligonier in 1766. He died at the great age of ninety-one, in 1770.-D.
(1021) The Princess was deformed and- ugly. “Having in vain remonstrated with the King against the marriage, the Duke sent his governor, mr. Poyntz, to consult Lord Orford how to avoid the match. After reflecting a few moments, Orford advised ’that the Duke should give his consent, on condition of his receiving an ample and immediate establishment; and believe me,’ added he, ‘that the match will be no longer pressed.’ The Duke followed the advice, and the result fulfilled the prediction “’ Lord Mahon, vol. iii. p. 321.-E.
406 Letter 158 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, March 29, 1745.
I begged your brother to tell you what it was impossible for me to tell you.(1023) You share nearly in our common loss! Don’t expect me to enter at all upon the subject. After the melancholy two months, that I have passed, and in my situation, you will not wonder I shun a conversation which could not be bounded by a letter-a letter that would grow into a panegyric, or a piece of moral; improper for me to write upon, and too distressful for us both!-a death is only to be felt, never to be talked over by those it touches!
I had yesterday your letter of three sheets — I began to flatter myself that the storm was blown over, but I tremble to think of the danger you are in! a danger, in which even the protection of the great friend you have lost could have been of no service to you. How ridiculous it seems for me to renew protestations of my friendship for you, at an instant when my father is just dead, and the Spaniards just bursting into Tuscany! How empty a charm would my name have, when all my interest and significance are buried in my father’s grave! All hopes of present peace, the only thing that could save you, seem vanished. We expect every day to hear of the French declaration of war against Holland. The new Elector of Bavaria is French, like his father; and the King of Spain is not dead. I don’t know how to talk to you. I have not even a belief that the Spaniards will spare Tuscany. My dear child what will become of you? whither will you retire till a peace restores you to your ministry? for upon that distant view alone I repose!
We are every day nearer confusion. The King is in as bad humour as a monarch can be; he wants to go abroad, and is detained by the Mediterranean affair; the inquiry into which was moved by a Major Selwyn, a dirty pensioner, half-turned patriot, by the Court being overstocked with votes.(1024) This inquiry takes up the whole time of the House of Commons, but I don’t see what conclusion it can have. My confinement has kept me from being there, except the first day; and all I know of what is yet come out is, as it was stated by a Scotch member the other day, “that there had been one (Matthews) with a bad head, another, (Lestock) with a worse heart, and four (the captains of the inactive ships) with no heart at all.” Among the numerous visits of form that I have received, one was from my Lord Sandys: as we two could only converse upon general topics, we fell upon this of the Mediterranean, and I made him allow, “that, to be sure, there is not so bad a court of justice in the world as the House of Commons; and how hard it is upon any man to have his cause tried there!”
Sir Everard Falkner(1025) is made secretary to the Duke, who is not yet gone: I have got Mr. Conway to be one of his aide-de-camps. Sir Everard has since been offered the joint-Postmastersh’ip, vacant by Sir John Iyles’S(1026) death; but he would not quit the Duke. It was then proposed to the King to give it to the brother: it happened to be a cloudy day, and he, only answered, ,I know who Sir Everard is, but I don’t know who Mr. Falkner is.”
The world expects some change when the Parliament rises. My Lord Granville’s physicians have ordered him to go to the Spa, as, you know, they often send ladies to the Bath who are very ill of a want of diversion. It will scarce be possible for the present ministry to endure this jaunt. Then they are losing many of their new allies: the new Duke of Beaufort,(1027) a most determined and unwavering Jacobite, has openly set himself at the head of that party, and forced them to vote against the Court, and to renounce my Lord Gower. My wise cousin, Sir John Phillipps, has resigned his place; and it is believed that Sir John Cotton will soon resign but the Bedford, Pitt, Lyttelton, and that squadron, stick close to their places. Pitt has lately resigned his bedchamber to the Prince, which, in friendship to Lyttelton, it was expected he would have done long ago. They have chosen for this resignation a very apposite passage out of Cato:
“He toss’d his arm aloft, and proudly told me He would not stay, and perish like Sempronius.”
This was Williams’s.
My Lord Coke’s match is broken off, upon some coquetry of the lady with Mr. Mackenzie,(1028) at the Ridotto. My Lord Leicester says, there shall not be a third lady in Norfolk of the species of the two fortunes(1029) that matched at Rainham and Houghton.” Pray, will the new Countess of Orford come to England?
The town flocks to a new play of Thomson’s, called Tancred and Sigismunda: it is very dull, I have read it.(1030) I cannot bear modern poetry; these refiners of the purity of the stage, and of the incorrectness of English verse, are most -,,,wofully insipid. I had rather have written the most absurd lines in Lee, than Leonidas or the Seasons; as I had rather be put into the round-house for a wrong-headed quarrel, than sup quietly at eight o’clock with my grandmother. There is another of these tame geniuses, a Mr. Akenside,(1031) who writes Odes: in one he has lately published, he says, “Light the tapers, urge the fire.” Had not you rather make gods jostle ’in the dark, than light the candles for fear they should break their heads? One Russel, a mimic, has a puppet-show to ridicule operas; I hear, very dull, not to mention its being twenty years too late: it consists of three acts, with foolish Italian songs burlesqued in Italian.
There is a very good quarrel on foot between two duchesses; she of Queensberry sent to invite Lady Emily Lennox(1032) to a ball: her Grace of Richmond, who is wonderfully cautious since Lady Caroline’s elopement, sent word, “she could not determine.” The other sent again the same night: the same answer. The Queensberry then sent word, that she had made up her company, and desired to be excused from having Lady Emily’s; but at the bottom of the card wrote, “Too great a trust.” You know how mad she is, and how capable of such a stroke. There is no declaration of war come out from the other duchess; but, I believe it will be made a national quarrel of the whole illegitimate royal family.
It is the present fashion to make conundrums: there are books of them printed, and produced at all assemblies: they are full silly enough to be made a fashion. I will tell you the most renowned—“Why is my uncle Horace like two people conversing?-Because he is both teller and auditor.” This was Winnington’s.
Well, I had almost forgot to tell you a most extraordinary impertinence of your Florentine Marquis Riccardi. About three weeks ago, I received a letter by Monsieur Wastier’s footman from the marquis. He tells me most cavalierly, that he has sent me seventy-seven antique gems to sell for him, by the way of Paris, not caring it should be known in Florence. He will have them sold altogether, and the lowest price two thousand pistoles. You know what no-acquaintance I had with him. I shall be as frank as he, and not receive them. If I did, they might be lost in sending back, and then I must pay his two thousand doppie di Spagna. The refusing to receive them is Positively all the notice I shall take of it.
I enclose what I think a fine piece on my father:(1033) it was written by Mr. Ashton, whom you have often heard me mention as a particular friend. You see how I try to make out a long letter, in return for your kind one, which yet gave me great pain by telling me of your fever. My dearest Sir, it is terrible to have illness added to your other distresses! .
I will take the first opportunity to send Dr. Cocchi his translated book; I have not yet seen it myself.
Adieu! my dearest child! I write with a house full of relations, and must conclude. Heaven preserve you and Tuscany.
(1023) The death of Lord Orford. — He expired,” says Coxe, “on the 18th of March, 1745, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. His remains were interred in the parish church at Houghton, without monument or inscription-
“So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name, Which once had honours, titles, wealth and fame!"-E.
(1024) “February 26.-We had an unexpected motion from a very contemptible fellow, Major Selwyn, for an inquiry into the cause of the miscarriage of the fleet in the action off Toulon. Mr. Pelham, perceiving that the inclination of the House was for an inquiry, acceded to the motion; but forewarned it of the temper, patience, and caution with which it should be pursued."-Mr. Yorke’s MS. Journal.-E.
(1025) He had been ambassador at Constantinople.
(1026) Sir John Eyles, Bart. an alderman of the city of London, and at one time member of parliament for the same. He died March 11, 1745.-D.
(1027) Charles Noel Somerset, fourth Duke of Beaufort, succeeded his elder brother Henry in the dukedom, February 14, 1745.-D.
(1028) The Hon. James Stuart Mackenzie, second son of James, second Earl of Bute, and brother of John, Earl of Bute, the minister. He married Lady Elizabeth Campbell, one of the daughters of John, the great Duke of Argyll, and died in 1800.-D.
(1029) Margaret Rolle, Countess of Orford, and Ethelreda Harrison, Viscountess Townshend.
(1030) This was the most successful of all Thomson’s plays; “but it may be doubted,” says Dr. Johnson, " whether he was, either by the bent of nature or habits of study, much qualified for tragedy: it does not appear that he had much sense of the pathetic; and his diffusive and Descriptive style produced declamation rather than dialogue."-E.
(1031) The author of “The Pleasures of the Imagination;” a poem of some merit, though now but little read.-D.
(1032) Second daughter of Charles, Duke of Richmond. (Afterwards married to James Fitzgerald, first Duke of Leinster in Ireland.-D.)
1033) It was printed in the public papers.
410 Letter 159
To sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, April 15, 1745.
By this time you have heard of my Lord’s death: I fear it will have been a very great shock to you. I hope your brother will write you all the particulars; for my part, you can’t expect I should enter into the details of it. His enemies pay him the compliment of saying, they do believe now that he did not plunder the public,, as he was accused (as they accused him) of doing, he having died in such circumstances.” If he had no proofs of his honesty but this, I don’t think this would be such indisputable authority:
The House of Commons have at last finished their great affair, their inquiry into the Mediterranean miscarriage. It was carried on with more decency and impartiality than ever was known in so tumultuous, popular, and partial a court. I can’t say it ended so; for the Tories, all but one single man, voted against Matthews, whom they have not forgiven for lately opposing one of their friends in Monmouthshire, and for carrying his election. The greater part of the Whigs were for Lestock. This last is a very great man: his cause, most unfriended, came before the House with all the odium that could be laid on a man standing in the light of having betrayed his country. His merit, I mean his parts, prevailed, and have set him in a very advantageous point of view. Harry Fox has gained the greatest honour by his assiduity and capacity in this affair. Matthews remains in the light of a hot, brave, imperious, dull, confused fellow. The question was to address the King to appoint a trial, by court-martial, of the two admirals and the four coward captains. Matthews’s friends were for leaving out his name, but, after a very long debate, were only 76 to 218. It is generally supposed, that the two admirals will be acquitted and the captains hanged. By what I can make out, (for you know I have been confined, and could not attend the examination,) Lestock preferred his own safety to the glory of his country; I don’t mean cowardly, for he is most unquestionably brave, but selfishly. Having to do with a man who, he knew, would take the slightest opportunity to ruin him, if he in the least transgressed his orders, and knowing that man too dull to give right orders, he chose to stick to the letter, when, by neglecting it, he might have done the greatest service.
We hear of great news from Bavaria, of that Elector being forced into a neutrality; but it IS not confirmed.
Mr. Legge is made lord of the admiralty, and Mr. Philipson surveyor of the roads in his room. This is all I know. I look with anxiety every day into the Gazettes about Tuscany, but hitherto I find all is quiet. My dear Sir, I tremble for you!
I have been much desired to get you to send five gesse figures; the Venus, the Faun, the Mercury, the Cupid and Psyche, and the little Bacchus; you know the original is modern: if this is not to be had, then the Ganymede. My dear child, I am sorry to give you this trouble; order any body to buy them, and to Send them from Leghorn by the first ship. let me have the bill, and bill of lading. Adieu!
411 Letter 160 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, April 29, 1745.
When you wrote your last of the 6th of this month, you was still in hopes about my father. I wish I had received your letters on his death, for it is most shocking to have all the thoughts opened again upon such a subject!-it is the great disadvantage of a distant correspondence. There was a report here a fortnight ago of the new countess coming over. She could not then have heard it. Can she be so mad? Why should she suppose all her shame buried in my lord’s grave? or does not she know, has she seen so little of the world, as not to be sensible that she will now return in a worse light than ever? A few malicious, who would have countenanced her to vex him, would now treat her like the rest of the world. It is a private family affair; a husband, a mother, and a son, all party against her, all wounded by her conduct, would be too much to get over! \\
My dear child, you have nothing but misfortunes of your friends to lament. You have new subject by the loss of poor Mr. Chute’s brother.(1034) It really is a great loss! he was a most rising man, and one of the best-natured and most honest that ever lived. If it would not sound ridiculously, though, I assure you, I am far from feeling it lightly, I would tell you of poor Patapan’s death — he died about ten days ago.
This peace with the Elector of Bavaria may Produce a general one. You have given great respite to my uneasiness, by telling me that Tuscany seems out of danger. We have for these last three days been in great expectation of a battle. The French have invested Tournay; our army came up with them last Wednesday, and is certainly little inferior, and determined to attack them; but it is believed they are retired: we don’t know who commands them; it is said, the Duc d’Harcourt. Our good friend, the Count de Saxe, is dying(1036)-by Venus, not by Mars. The King goes on Friday; this may make the young Duke(1036) more impatient to give battle, to have all the honour his own.
There is no kind of news; the Parliament rises on Thursday, and every body is going out of town. I shall only make short excursions in visits; you know I am not fond of the country, and have no call into it now! My brother will not be at Houghton this year; he shuts it Up to enter on new, and there very unknown economy: he has much occasion for it! Commend me to poor Mr. Chute! Adieu!
(1034) Francis Chute, a very eminent lawyer.
(1035) The Marshal de Saxe- did not die till 1750. He was, however, exceedingly ill at the time of the battle of Fontenoy. Voltaire, in his “Si`ecle de Louis XV.” mentions having met him at Paris just as he was setting out for the campaign. Observing how unwell he seemed to b, he asked him whether he thought he had strength enough to go through the fatigues which awaited him. To this the Marshal’s reply was “il ne s’agit pas de vivre, mais de partir."-D.
William, Duke of Cumberland.-D.
412 Letter 161
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, May 11, 1745.
I stayed till to-day, to be able to give you some account of the battle of Tournay:(1037) the outlines you will have heard already. We don’t allow it to be a victory on the French side: but that is, just as a woman is not called Mrs. till she is married, though she may have had half-a-dozen natural children. In short, we remained upon the field of battle three hours: I fear, too many of us remain there still! without palliating, it is certainly a heavy stroke. We never lost near so many officers. I pity the Duke, for it is almost the first battle of consequence that we ever lost. By the letters arrived to-day we find that Tournay still holds out. There are certainly killed Sir James Campbell, General Ponsonby, Colonel Carpenter, Colonel Douglas, young Ross, Colonel Montagu, Geo, Berkeley, and Kellet. Mr. Vanbrugh is since dead. Most of the your),r men of quality in the Guards @ are wounded. I have had the vast fortune to have nobody hurt, for whom I was in the least interested. Mr. Conway, in particular, has highly distinguished himself; he ind Lord Petersham,’ who is slightly wounded, are most commended; though none behaved ill but the Dutch horse. There has been but very little consternation here: the King minded it so little, that being set out for Hanover, and blown back into Harwich-roads since the news came, he could not be persuaded to return, but sailed yesterday with the fair wind. I believe you will have the Gazette sent Tonight; but lest it should not be printed time enough, here is a list of the numbers, as it came over this morning.
British foot 1237 killed.
Ditto horse 90 ditto.
Ditto foot 1968 wounded.
Ditto horse 232 ditto.
Ditto foot 457 missing.
Ditto horse 18 ditto.
Hanoverian foot 432 killed.
Ditto horse 78 ditto.
Ditto foot 950 wounded.
Ditto horse 192 ditto.
Ditto horse and foot 53 missing.
Dutch 625 killed and wounded.
Ditto 1019 missing.
So the whole hors de combat is above seven thousand three hundred. The French own the loss of three thousand; I don’t believe many more, for it was a most desperate and rash perseverance on our side. The Duke behaved very bravely and humanely;(1038) but this will not have advanced the peace.
However coolly the Duke may have behaved, and coldly his father, at least his brother, has outdone both. He not only went to the play the night the news came, but in two days made a ballad. It is in imitation of the Regent’s style, and has miscarried in nothing but the language, the thoughts, and the poetry. Did I not tell you in my last that he was going to act Paris in Congreve’s Masque? The song is addressed to the goddesses.
1. Venez, mes ch`eres D`eesses,
Venez calmer mon chagrin;
Aidez, mes belles Princesses,’
A le noyer dans le vin.
Poussons cette douce Ivresse
Jusqu’au milieu de la nuit,
Et n’`ecoutons que la tendresse
D’un charmant vis-a-vis.
2. Quand le chagrin me d`evore,
Vite `a table je me mets,
Loin des objets que j’abhorre,
Avec joie j’y trouve la paix.
Peu d’amis, restes D’un naufrage
Je rassemble autour de moi,
Et je me ris de l’`etalage.
Qu’a chez lui toujours on Roi.
3. Que m’importe, que l’Europe
Ait Un, ou plusieurs tyrans?
Prions seulement Calliope,
Qu’elle inspire nos vers, nos chants.
Laissons Mars et toute la gloire;
Livrons nous tous `a l’amour;
Que Bacchus nous donne `a boire;
A ces deux fasions la cour.
4. Passons ainsi notre vie,
Sans rover IL ce qui suit;
Avec ma ch`ere Sylvie,(1039)
Le tems trop Vite me fuit.
Mais si, par Un malheur extr`eme,
Je perdois cet objet charmant,
Oui, cette compagnie m`eme
Ne me tiendroit Un moment.
5. me livrant `a ma tristesse,
Toujours plein de mon chagrin,
Je n’aurois plus d’all`egresse
Pour mettre Bathurst(1040) en train:
Ainsi pour vous tenir en joie
Invoquez toujours les Dieux,
Q Qu’elle vive et qu’elle soit
Avec nous toujours heureuse!
Adieu! I am in a great hurry.
(1037) Since called the battle of Fontenoy. (The Marshal de Saxe commanded the French army, and both Louis XV. and his son the Dauphin were present in the action. The Duke of Cumberland commanded the British forces.-D.)
(1037) William, Lord Petersham, eldest son of the Earl of Harrington.
(1038) The Hon. Philip Yorke, in a letter to Horace Walpole, the elder, of the following day, says,"the Duke’s behaviour was, by all accounts, the most heroic and gallant imaginable: he was the whole day in the thickest of the fire. His Royal Highness drew out a pistol upon an officer whom he saw running away."-E.
(1038) Frederick, Prince of Wales. The following song was written immediately after the battle of Fontenoy, and was addressed to Lady Catherine Hanmer, Lady Fauconberg, and Lady Middlesex, who were to act the three goddesses, with the Prince of Wales, in Congreve’s Judgment of Paris, whom he was to represent, and Prince Lobkowitz, Mercury.-E.
(1039) The Princess.
(1040) Allen, Lord Bathurst.
415 Letter 162
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, May 18, 1745.
Dear George, I am very sorry to renew our correspondence upon so melancholy a circumstance, but when you have lost so near a friend as your brother,(1041) ’tis sure the duty of all your other friends to endeavour to alleviate your loss, and offer all the increase of affection that is possible to compensate it. This I do most heartily; I wish I could most effectually.
You will always find in me, dear Sir, the utmost inclination to be of service to you; and let me beg that you will remember your promise of writing to me. As I am so much in town and in the world, I flatter myself with having generally something to tell you that may make my letters agreeable in the country: you, any where, make yours charming.
Be so good to say any thing you think proper from me to your sisters, and believe me, dear George, yours most sincerely.
(1041) Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Montagu, killed at the battle of Fontenoy.
415 Letter 163 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, May 24, 1745.
I have no consequences of the battle of Tournay to tell you but the taking of the town: the governor has eight days allowed him to consider whether he will give up the citadel. The French certainly lost more men than we did. Our army is still at Lessines waiting for recruits from Holland and England; ours are sailed. The King is at Hanover. All the letters are full of the Duke’s humanity and bravery: he will be as popular with the lower class of men as he has been for three or four years with the low women: he will be the soldier’s Great Sir as well as theirs. I am really glad; it will be of great service to the family, if any one of them come to make a figure.
Lord Chesterfield is returned from Holland; you will see a most simple farewell speech of his in the papers.(1042)
I have received yours of the 4th of May, and am extremely obliged to you for your expressions of kindness: they did not at all surprise me, but every instance of your friendship gives me pleasure. I wish I could say the same to good prince Craon. Yet I must set about answering his letter: it is quite an affair; I have so great a disuse of writing French, that I believe it will be very barbarous.
My fears for Tuscany are again awakened: the wonderful march Which the Spanish Queen has made Monsieur de Gage take, may probably end in his turning short to the left; for his route to Genoa will be full as difficult as what he has already passed. I watch eagerly every article from Italy, at a time when nobody will read a paragraph but from the army in Flanders.
I am diverted with my Lady’s(1043) account of the great riches that are now coming to her. She has had so many foolish golden visions, that I should think even the Florentines would not be the dupes of any more. As for her mourning, she may save it, if she expects to have it notified. Don’t you remember my Lady Pomfret’s having a piece of economy of that sort, when she would not know that the Emperor was dead, because my Lord Chamberlain had not notified it to her.
I have a good story to tell you of Lord Bath, whose name you have not heard very lately; have you? He owed a tradesman eight hundred pounds, and would never pay him: the man determined to persecute him till he did; and one morning followed him to Lord Winchilsea’s, and sent up word that he wanted to speak with him. Lord Bath came down, and said, “Fellow, what do you want with me’!"-"My money,” said the man, as loud as ever he could bawl, before all the servants. He bade him come the next morning, and then would not see him. The next Sunday the man followed him to church, and got into the next pew: he leaned over, and said, , “My money; give me my money!” My lord went to the end of the pew; the man too: “Give me my money!” The sermon was on avarice, and the text, “Cursed are they that heap up riches.” The man groaned out, “O lord!” and pointed to my Lord Bath. In short, he persisted so much, and drew the eyes of all the congregation, that my Lord Bath went out and paid him directly. I assure you this is a fact. Adieu.
(1042) " Have you Lord Chesterfield’s speech on taking leave? It is quite calculated for the language it is wrote in, and makes but an indifferent figure in English. The thoughts are common, and yet he strains hard to give them an air of novelty; and the quaintness of the expression is quite a la Fran`caise.” The Hon. P. Yorke to Horatio Walpole.-E.
(1043) Lady Walpole, now become Countess of Orford.-D.
416 Letter 164 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, May 25, 1745.
Dear George, I don’t write to you now so much to answer your letter as to promote your diversion, which I am as much obliged to you for consulting me about, at least as much as about an affair of honour, or your marriage, or any other important transaction; any one of which you might possibly dislike more than diverting yourself. For my part, I shall give you my advice on this point with as much reflection as I should, if it were necessary for me, like a true friend, to counsel you to displease yourself.
You propose making a visit at Englefield Green, and ask me, if I think it right? Extremely so. I have heard it is a very pretty place. You love a jaunt—have a pretty chaise, I believe, and, I dare swear, very easy; in all probability, you have a fine evening too ; and, added to all this, the gentleman you would go to see is very agreeable and good humoured.(1044) He has some very Pretty children, and a sensible, learned man that lives with him, one Dr. Thirlby,(1045) whom, I believe you know. The master of the house plays extremely well on the bass-viol, and has generally other musical people with him. He knows a good deal of the private history of a late ministry; and, my dear George, you love memoires. Indeed, as to personal acquaintance with any of the court beauties, I can’t say you will find your account in him ; but, to make amends, he is perfectly master of all the quarrels that have been fashionably on foot about Handel, and can give you a very perfect account of all the modern rival painters. In short, you may pass a very agreeable day with him; and if he does but take to you, as I can’t doubt, who know you both, you will contract a great friendship with him, which he will preserve with the greatest warmth and partiality.
In short, I can think of no reason in the world against your going there but one: do you know his youngest brother? If you to be so unlucky, I can’t flatter you so far as to advise you to make him a visit; for there is nothing in the world the Baron of Englefield has such an aversion for as for his brother.
(1044) Mr. Walpole’s brother, Sir Edward. See Ant`e, p.189, letter 42.
(1045) Styan Thirlby, fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, published an edition of Justin Martyr, and, I think, wrote something against Middleton. He communicated several notes to Theobald for his Shakspeare, and in the latter part of his life, took to study the common law. He lived chiefly for his last years with Sir Edward Walpole, who had procured for him a small place in the Custom house, and to whom he left his papers: he had lost his intellects some time before his death. [He died a martyr to intemperance, in 1751, in his sixty-first year. Mr. Nichols says, that, while in Sir Edward’s houses, he kept a miscellaneous book of Memorables, containing whatever was said or done amiss by Sir Edward, or any part of his family.]
417 Letter 165 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, May 27, 1745.
My dear Harry, As gloriously as you have set out, yet I despair of seeing you a perfect hero! You have none of the charming violences that are so essential to that character. You write as coolly, after behaving well in battle, as you fought in it. Can your friends flatter themselves with seeing you, one day or other, be the death of thousands, when you wish for peace in three weeks after four first engagements and laugh at the ambition of those men who have given you this opportunity of distinguishing yourself? With the person of an Orondates, and the courage, you have all the compassion, the reason, and the ’reflection of one that never read a romance. Can one ever hope you will make a figure, when you only fight because it was right you should, and not because you hated the French or loved destroying mankind? This is so un-English, or so un-heroic, that I despair of you!
Thank Heaven, you have one spice of madness! Your admiration of your master(1047) leaves me a glimmering of hope, that you will not be always so unreasonably reasonable. Do you remember the humorous lieutenant, in one of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays, that is in love with the king? Indeed, your master is not behindhand with you; you seem to have agreed to puff one another.
If you are acting up to the strictest rules of war and chivalry in Flanders, we are not less scrupulous on this side the water in fulfilling all the duties of the same order. The day the young volunteer(1048 departed for the army (unluckily indeed, it was after the battle), his tender mother Sisygambis, and the beautiful Statira,(1049) a lady formerly known in your history by the name of Artemisia, from her cutting off her hair in your absence, were so afflicted and SO inseparable, that they made a party together to Mr. graham’S(1050) (you may read lapis if you please) to be blooded. It was settled that this was a more precious way of expressing Concern than shaving the head, which has been known to be attended with false locks the next day.
For the other princess you wot of, who is not entirely so tall as the former, nor so evidently descended from a line of monarchs—I don’t hear her talk of retiring. At present she is employed in buying up all the nose-gays in Covent Garden and laurel leaves at the pastry cooks, to where chaplets for the return of her hero. Who that is I don’t pretend to know or guess. All I know is, that in this age retirement is not one of the fashionable expressions of passion.
(1046) The battle of Fontenoy, where Mr. Conway greatly distinguished himself.
(1047) The Duke of Cumberland, to whom Mr. Conway was aide-de-camp.
(1048) George, afterwards Marquis Townshend.
(1049) Ethelreda Harrison, Viscountess Townshend, and her daughter, the Hon. Audrey Townshend, afterwards married to Robert Orme, Esq.
(1050) A celebrated apothecary in Pall-mall.
418 Letter 166 To Sir Horace Mann.
I have the pleasure of recommending you a new acquaintance, for which I am sure you will thank me. Mr. Hobart(1051) proposes passing a little time at Florence, which I am sure you will endeavour to make as agreeable to him as possible. I beg you will introduce him to all my friends, who, I don’t doubt, will show him the same civilities that I received. Dear Sir, this will be a particular obligation to me, who am, etc.
1051) Eldest son of John, Earl of Buckinghamshire, (The Hon. John Hobart, afterwards second Earl of Buckinghamshire, and lord Lieutenant of Ireland.-D.)
419 Letter 167 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, June 24, 1745.
I have been a fortnight in the country, and had ordered all my to be kept till I came to town, or I should have written to you sooner about my sister-countess. She is not arrived yet, but is certainly coming: she has despatched several letters to notify her intentions: a short one to her mother, saying, “Dear Madam, as you have often desired me to return to England, I am determined to set out, and hope you will give me reasons to subscribe myself your most affectionate daughter.” This “often desired me to return” has never been repeated since the first year of her going away. The poor signora-madre is in a terrible fright, and will not come to town till her daughter is gone again, which all advices agree will be soon. Another letter is to my Lady Townshend, telling her, “that, as she knows her ladyship’s way of thinking, she does not fear the continuance of her friendship.” Another, a long one, to my Lord Chesterfield; another to Lady Isabella Scot,(1052) an old friend of hers; and another to Lady Pomfret. This last says, that she hears from guccioni, my Lady O. will stay here a very little time, having taken a house at Florence for three years. She is to come to my Lady Denbigh.(1053) My brother is extremely obliged to you for all your notices about her, though he is very indifferent about her motions. If she happens to choose law (though on what foot no mortal can guess), he is prepared; having from the first hint of her journey, fee’d every one of the considerable lawyers. In short, this jaunt is as simple as all the rest of her actions have been hardy. Nobody wonders at her bringing no English servants with her-they know, and consequently might tell too much.
I feel excessively for you, my dear child, on the loss of Mr. Chute!—so sensible and so good-natured a man would be a loss to any body; but to you, who are so meek and helpless, it is irreparable! who will dry you when you are very wet brown-paper?(1054) Though I laugh, you know how much I pity you: you will want somebody to talk over English letters, and to conjecture with ),on; in short, I feel your distress in all its lights.
The citadel of Tournay is gone;(1055) our affairs go ill. Charles of Lorrain(1056) has lost a great battle grossly! He was constantly drunk, and had no kind of intelligence. Now he acts from his own head, his head turns out a very bad one. I don’t know, indeed, what they can say in defence of the great general to whom we have just given the garter, the Duke of Saxe Weissenfels; he is not of so serene a house but that he might have known something of the motions of the Prussians. Last night we heard that the Hungarian insurgents had cut to pieces two Prussian regiments. The King of Prussia and Prince Charles are so near, that we every day expect news of another battle. We don’t know yet what is to be the next step in Flanders. Lord Cobham has got Churchill’S(1057) regiment, and Lord Dunmore his government of Plymouth. At the Prince’s court there is a great revolution; he, or rather Lord Granville, or perhaps the Princess, (who, I firmly believe, by all her quiet sense, will turn out a Caroline,) have at last got rid of Lady Archibald,(1058) who was strongly attached to the coalition. They have civilly asked her, and Crossly forced her to ask civilly to go away, which she has done, with a pension of twelve hundred a-year. Lady Middlesex,(1059) is mistress of the robes: she lives with them perpetually, and sits up till five in the morning at their suppers. Don’t mistake!-not for her person, which is wondrous plain and little: the town says it is for her friend Miss Granville, one of the maids of honour; but at least yet, that is only scandal. She is a fair, red-haired girl, scarce pretty; daughter of the poet, Lord Lansdown.(1060) Lady Berkeley is lady of the bedchamber, and Miss Lawson maid of honour. Miss Neville, a charming beauty, and daughter of the pretty, unfortunate Lady Abergavenny,(1061) is named for the next vacancy.
I was scarcely settled in my joy for the Spaniards having taken the opposite route to Tuscany, when I heard of Mr. Chute’s leaving you. I long to have no reason to be uneasy about you. I am obliged to you for the gesse figures, and beg you will send me the bill in your first letter. Rysbrach has perfectly mended the Ganymede and the model, which to me seemed irrecoverably smashed.
I have just been giving a recommendatory letter for you to Mr. Hobart; he is a particular friend of mine, but is Norfolk, and in the world; so you will be civil to him. He is of the Damon-kind, and not one of whom you will make a Chute. madame Suares may make something of him. Adieu!
(1052) Daughter of Anne, Countess of Buccleuch, and Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, the wife of James, the unhappy Duke of Monmouth. Lady Isabella Scott was the daughter of the duchess by her second husband, Charles, third Lord Cornwallis. She died unmarried, Feb. 18, 1748.-D.
(1053) Isabella de Jonghe, a Dutch lady, and wife of William Fielding, fifth Earl of Denbigh. She died in 1769.-D.
(1054) Mr. Mann was so thin and weak that Mr. Walpole used to compare him to wet brown-paper.
(1055) The treachery of the principal engineer, who deserted to the enemy, and the timidity of other officers in the garrison, produced a surrender of the city in a fortnight, and Of the citadel in another week.-E.
(1056) He was brother of Francis, at this time Grand Duke of Tuscany. On the 3d of June, the King of Prussia had gained a signal victory over him at Friedberg.-E.
(1057) General Churchill, or, as he was commonly called, “Old Charles Churchill,” was just dead.-D.
(1058) Lady Archibald Hamilton, daughter of Lord Abercorn, and wife of Lord Archibald Hamilton.
(1059) Daughter of Lord Shannon, and wife of Charles, Earl of Middlesex, eldest son of Lionel, Duke of Dorset. Her favour grew to be thought more than platonic.
(1060) George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, one of Queen Ann,-’s twelve Tory Peers styled by Pope, who addressed his Windsor Forest to him, “the polite.” He died in 1735.-E.
(1061) Catherine Tatton, daughter of Lieutenant-General Tatton. She married, first, Edward Neville-,, thirteenth Lord Abergavenny, who died without issue in his nineteenth year, in 1724. She remarried with his cousin and successor, William, fourteenth Lord Abergavenny, by whom she had issue, one son, George, afterwards fifteenth Lord Abergavenny, and one daughter, Catherine, who is mentioned above. Lady Abergavenny herself died in childbed, Dec. 4, 1729, in less than one month after the detection of an intrigue between her and Richard Lyddel, Esq. against whom Lord Abergavenny brought an action for damages, and recovered five thousand pounds. In a poem written on her death by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, she is praised for her gentleness, and pitied for her " cruel wrongs.” Her husband is also called “that stern lord.” All further details respecting her are, however, now unknown.-D.
421 Letter 168 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, June 25, 1745.
Dear George, I have been near three weeks in Essex, at Mr. Rigby’s,(1062) and had left your direction behind me, and could not write to you. It is the charmingest place by nature, and the most trumpery by art, that ever I saw. The house stands on a high hill, on an arm of the sea, which winds itself before two sides of the house. On the right and left, at the very foot of this hill, lie two towns; the one of market quality, and the other with a wharf where ships come up. This last was to have a
The town is not quite empty yet. My Lady Fitzwatter, Lady Betty Germain,(1063) Lady Granville,(1064) and the dowager Strafford have their At-homes, and amass company. Lady Brown has done with her Sundays, for she is changing her house into Upper Brook Street. In the mean time, she goes to Knightbridge, and Sir Robert to the woman he keeps at Scarborough: Winnington goes on with the Frasi; so my lady Townshend is obliged only to lie of people. You have heard of the disgrace of the Archibald, and that in future scandal she must only be ranked with the Lady Elizabeth Lucy and Madam Lucy Walters, instead of being historically noble among the Clevelands, Portsmouths, and Yarmouths. It is said Miss Granville has the reversion of her coronet; others say, she won’t accept the patent.
Your friend Jemmy Lumley,(1065)—beg pardon, I mean your kin, is not he? I am sure he is not your friend;—well, he has had an assembly, and he would write all the cards himself, and every one of them was to desire he’s company and she’s company, with other pieces of curious orthography. Adieu, dear George! I wish you a merry farm, as the children say at Vauxhall. My compliments to your sisters.
(1062) Mistley Hall, near Manningtree.
(1063) Second daughter of the Earl of Berkeley, and married to Sir John Germain.
(1064) Daughter of rhomms, Earl of Pomfret. She was Lord Granville’s second wife.
(1065) Seventh son of the first Earl of Scarborough. He died in 1766, unmarried.-E.
422 Letter 169 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, July 1, 1745.
My dear harry, If it were not for that one slight inconvenience, that I should probably be dead now, I should have liked much better to have lived in the last war than in this; I mean as to the pleasantness of writing letters. Two or three battles won, two or three towns taken, in a summer, were pretty objects to keep up the liveliness of a correspondence. But now it hurts one’s dignity to be talking of English and French armies, at the first period
With all these reflections, as I love to make myself easy, especially politically, I comfort myself with what St. Evremond (a favourite philosopher of mine, for he thought what he liked, not liked what he thought) said in defence of Cardinal Mazarin, when he was reproached with neglecting the good of the kingdom that he might engross the riches of it: “Well, let him get all the riches, and then he will think of the good of the kingdom, for it will all be his own.” Let the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it. We may possibly contract the French spirit of being supremely content with the glory of our monarch, and then-why then it will be the first time we ever -were contented yet. We hear of nothing but your retiring,(1067 and of Dutch treachery: in short, ’tis an holy scene!
I know of no home news but the commencement of the gaming act,(1068) for which they are to put up a scutcheon at White’s—for the death of play; and the death of Winnington’s wife, which may be an unlucky event for my Lady Townshend. As he has no children, he will certainly marry again; and who will give him their daughter, unless he breaks off that affair, which I believe he will now very willingly make a marriage article? We want him to take Lady -Charlotte Fermor. She was always his beauty, and has so many charming qualities, that she would make any body happy. He will make a good husband; for he is excessively good-natured, and was much better to that strange wife than he cared to own.
You wondered at my journey to Houghton; now -wonder more, for I am going to Mount Edgecumbe. Now my summers are in my own hands, and I am not obliged to pass great part of them in Norfolk, I find it is not so very terrible to dispose of them up and down. In about three weeks I shall set out, and see Wilton and Doddington’s in my way. Dear Harry, do but get a victory, and I will let off every cannon at Plymouth: reserving two, till I hear particularly that you have killed two more Frenchmen with your own hand.(1069) Lady Mary(1070) sends you her compliments; she is going to pass a week with Miss Townshend(1071) at Muffits; I don’t think you will be forgot. Your sister Anne has got a new distemper, which she says feels like something jumping in her. You know my style on such an occasion, and may be sure I have not spared this distemper. Adieu! Yours ever.
(1066) The author of Leonidas.
(1067) Mr. Conway was still with the army in Flanders.
(1068) An act had recently passed to prevent excessive and deceitful gaming.-E.
(1069) Alluding to Mr. Conway’s having been engaged with two French grenadiers at once in the battle of Fontenoy.
(1070) Lady Mary Walpole, youngest daughter of Sir R. Walpole, afterwards married to Charles Churchill, Esq.
(1071) DAUGHTER of Charles Viscount Townshend, afterwards married to Edward Cornwallis, brother to Earl Cornwallis, and groom of the bedchamber to the King.
424 Letter 170 To sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, July 5, 1745.
All yesterday we were in the utmost consternation an express came the night before from Ostend with an account of the French army in Flanders having seized Ghent and Bruges, cut off a detachment of four thousand men, surrounded our army, who must be cut to pieces or surrender themselves prisoners, and that the Duke was gone to the Hague, but that the Dutch had signed a neutrality. You will allow that here was ample subject for confusion! To-day we are a little relieved, by finding that we have lost but five hundred men(1072) instead of four thousand, and that our army, which is inferior by half to theirs, is safe behind a river. With this came the news of the Great Duke’s victory over the Prince of Conti:(1073) he has killed fifteen thousand, and taken six thousand prisoners. Here is already a third great battle this summer! But Flanders is gone! The Dutch have given up all that could hinder the French from overrunning them, upon condition that the French should not overrun them. Indeed, I cannot be so exasperated at the Dutch as it is the fashion to be; they have not forgot the peace of Utrecht, though we have. Besides, how could they rely on any negotiation with a people whose politics alter so often as ours? Or why were we to fancy that my Lord Chesterfield’s parts would have more weight than my uncle had, whom, ridiculous as he was, they had never known to take a trip to Avignon to confer with the Duke of Ormond?(1074)
Our communication with the army is cut off through Flanders and we are in great pain for Ostend: the fortifications are all out of repair. Upon Marshal Wade’s reiterated remonstrances, we did cast thirty cannon and four mortars for it-and then the economic ministry would not send them. “What! fortify the Queen of Hungary’s towns? there will be no end of that.” As if Ostend was of no more consequence to us, than Mons or Namur! Two more battalions are ordered over immediately; and the old pensioners of Chelsea College are to mount guard at home! Flourishing in a peace of twenty years, we were told that we were trampled upon by Spain and France. Haughty nations, like those, who can trample upon an enemy country, do not use to leave it in such wealth and happiness as we enjoyed; but when the Duke of Marlborough’s old victorious veterans are dug out of their colleges and repose, to guard the King’s palace, and to keep up the show of an army which we have buried in America, or in a manner lost in Flanders, we shall soon know the real feel of being trampled upon! In this crisis, you will hear often from me; for I will leave you in no anxious uncertainty from which I can free you.
The Countess(1075) is at Hanover, and, we hear, extremely well received. It is conjectured, and it is not impossible, that the Count may have procured for her some dirty dab of a negotiation about some ’acre of territory more for Hanover, in order to facilitate her reception. She has been at Hesse Cassel, and fondled extremely Princess Mary’S(1076) children; just as you know she used to make a rout about the Pretender’s boys. My Lord Chesterfield laughs at her letter to him; and, what would anger her more than the neglect, ridicules the style and orthography. Nothing promises well for her here.
You told me you wished I would condole with Prince Craon on the death of his son:(1077) which son? and where was he killed? You don’t tell me, and I never heard. Now it would be too late. I should have been uneasy for Prince Beauvau, but that you say he is in Piedmont.
Adieu! my dear child: we have much to wish! A little good fortune will not re-establish us. I am in pain for your health from the great increase of your business.
(1072 The French had been successful in a skirmish against the English army, at a place called Melle. The consequence of this success was their obtaining the possession of Ghent.-D.
(1073) The army of the Prince of Conti, posted near the Maine, had been so weakened by the detachments sent from it to reinforce the army in Flanders, that it was obliged to retreat before the Austrians. This retrograde movement was effected with considerable loss, both of soldiers and baggage; but it does not appear that any decisive general engagement took place during the campaign between the French and Austrians.-D.
(1074) ant`e, p. 195; Letter 45 (note 334).
(1075) Lady Orford.
(1076) Princess Mary of England, daughter of George the Second; married in 1740 to the Prince of Hesse Cassel, who treated her with great inhumanity. She died in June, 1771.-E.
(1077) The young Prince de Craon was killed at the head of his regiment at the battle of Fontenoy.-D.
425 Letter 171 To sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, July 12, 1745.
I am charmed with the sentiments that Mr. Chute expresses for you; but then you have lost him! Here is an answer to his letter; I send it unsealed, to avoid repealing what I have thought on our affairs. Seal it and send it. Its being open, prevented my saying half so much about you as I should have done.
There is no more news — the Great Duke’s victory, of which we heard so much last week, is come to nothing! So far from having defeated the Prince of Conti, it is not at all impossible but the Prince may wear the imperial coat of diamonds, though I am persuaded the care of that will be the chief concern of the Great Duke, (next to his own person,) in a battle. Our army is retreated beyond Brussels; the French gather laurels, and towns, and prisoners, as one would a nosegay. In the mean time you are bullying the King of Naples, in the person of the English fleet; and I think may possibly be doing so for two months after that very fleet belongs to the King of France; as astrologers tell one that we should see stars shine for I don’t know how long after they were annihilated. But I like your spirit; keep it up! Millamant, in the Way of the World, tells Mirabel, that she will be solicited to the very last; nay, and afterwards. He replies, “What! after the last?”
I am in great pain about your arrears; it is a bad season for obtaining payment. In the best times, they make a custom of paying foreign ministers Ill; which may be very politic, when they send men of too great fortunes abroad in order to lessen them: but, my dear child, God knows that is not your case!
I have some extremely pretty dogs of King Charles’s breed, if I knew how to convey them to you: indeed they are not Patapans. I can’t tell how they would like travelling into Italy, when there is a prospect of the rest of their race returning from thence: besides, you must certify me that none of them shall ever be married below themselves; for since the affair of Lady Caroline Fox, one durst not hazard the Duke of Richmond’s resentment even about a dog and bitch of that breed.
Lord Lempster(1078) is taken prisoner in the affair of the detachment to Ghent. My lady,(1079) who has heard of Spartan mothers, (though you know she once asserted that nobody knew any thing of the Grecian Republics,) affects to bear it with a patriot insensibility. She told me the other day that the Abb`e Niccolini and the eldest Pandolfini are coming to England: is it true? I shall be very Clad to be civil to them, especially to the latter, who, you know, was one of my friends.
My Lady Orford is at Hanover, most Graciously received by “the Father of all his people!” In the papers of yesterday was this paragraph; “Lady O. who has spent several years in Italy, arrived here (Hanover) the 3d, on her return to England, and was Graciously received by his Majesty.” Lady Denbigh is gone into the country so I don’t know where she is to lodge-perhaps at St. James’s, out of’ regard to my father’s memory.
Trust me, you escaped well in Pigwiggin’s(1079) not accepting your invitation of living with you: you must have aired your house, as Lady Pomfret was forced to air Lady Mary Wortley’s bedchamber. He has a most unfortunate breath: so has the Princess his sister. When I was at their country-house, I used to sit in the library and turn over books of prints: out of good breeding they would not quit me; nay, would look over the prints with me. A whiff would come from the east, and I turned short to the west, whence the Princess would puff me back with another gale full as richly perfumed as her brother’s. Adieu!
(1078) George Fermor: who, on the death of his father in 1753, became second Earl of Pomfret. He died in 1785.-E.
(1079) Henrietta Louisa, Countess of Pomfret, mother of Lord Lempster.
(1080) A nickname given by Walpole to his cousin Horace, eldest son of “Old Horace Walpole,” afterwards first Earl of Orford of the second creation. He died in 1809, at the age of eighty-six.-E.
427 Letter 172 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, July 13, 1745.
Dear George, We are all Cabob’d and Cocofagoed, as my Lord Denbigh says. We, who formerly, you know, could any one of us beat three Frenchmen, are now so .degenerated, that three Frenchmen(1081) can evidently beat One Englishman. Our army is running away, all that is left to run; for half of it is picked up by three or four hundred at a time. In short, we must step out of the high pantoufles that were made by those cunning shoemakers at Poitiers and Ramilies, and go clumping about perhaps in wooden ones. My Lady Hervey, who you know dotes upon every thing French, is charmed with the hopes of these new shoes, and has already bespoke herself a pair of pigeon wood. How did the tapestry at Blenheim look? Did it glow with victory, or did all our glories look overcast?
I remember a very admired sentence in one of my Lord Chesterfield’s speeches, when he was haranguing for this war; with a most rhetorical transition, he turned to the tapestry in the House of Lords,(1082) and said, with a sigh, he feared there were no historical looms at work now! Indeed, we have reason to bless the good patriots, who have been for employing our manufactures so historically. The Countess of that wise Earl, with whose two expressive words I began this letter, says, she is very happy now that my lord had never a place upon the coalition, for then all this bad situation of our affairs would have been laid upon him.
Now I have been talking of remarkable periods in our annals, I must tell you what my Lord Baltimore thinks one:—He said to the Prince t’other day, “Sir, your Royal Highness’s marriage will be an area in English history.”
If it were not for the life that is put into the town now and then by very bad news from abroad, one should be quite stupefied. There is nobody left but two or three solitary regents; and they are always whisking backwards and forwards to their villas; and about a dozen antediluvian dowagers, whose carcasses have miraculously resisted the wet, and who every Saturday compose a very reverend catacomb at my old Lady Strafford’s. She does not take money at the door for showing them, but ’you pay twelvepence apiece under the denomination of card-money. Wit and beauty, indeed, remain in the persons of Lady Townshend and Lady Caroline Fitzroy; but such is the want of taste of this age, that the former is very often forced to wrap up her wit in plain English before it can be understood; and the latter is almost as often obliged to have recourse to the same artifices to make her charms be taken notice of.
Of beauty, I can tell you an admirable story. One Mrs. Comyns, an elderly gentlewoman, has lately taken a house in St. James’s Street: some young gentlemen went there t’other night;—“Well, Mrs. Comyns, I hope there won’t be the same disturbances here that were at your other house in Air Street.”—“Lord, Sir, I never had any disturbances there: mine was as quiet a house as any in the neighbourhood, and a great deal of company came to me: it was only the ladies of quality that envied Me.”—“Envied you! why, your house was pulled down about your ears.”—“Oh, dear Sir! don’t you know how that happened?”—“No; pray how?”—“Why, dear Sir, it was my Lady **** who gave ten guineas to the mob to demolish my house, because her ladyship fancied I got women for Colonel Conway.”
My dear George, don’t you delight in this story? If poor Harry(1083) comes back from Flanders, I intend to have infinite fun with his prudery about this anecdote, which is full as good as if it was true. I beg you will visit Mrs. Comyns when you come to town- she has infinite humour.
(1081) Alluding to the success of the French army in Flanders, under the command of Mareschal Saxe.
(1082) Representing the defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588, and surrounded by portraits of the principal officers who commanded the fleet. This noble suit of hangings was wrought in Holland, at the expense of the Earl of Nottingham, lord high admiral.-E.
(1083) The Honourable Henry Seymour Conway.
428 Letter 173
To Sir Horace Mann.
July 15, 1745.
You will be surprised at another from me so soon, when I wrote to you but four days ago. This is not with any news, but upon a private affair. You have never said any thing to Me about the extraordinary procedure of Marquis Riccardi, of which I wrote you word. Indeed, as his letter came just upon my father’s death, I had forgot it too; so much so, that I have lost the catalogue which he sent me. Well, the other day I received his cargo. Now, My dear child, I don’t write to him upon it, because, as he Sent the things without asking my leave, I am determined never to acknowledge the receipt of them because I will in no manner be liable to pay for them if they are lost: which I think highly probable; and as I have lost the catalogue, I cannot tell whether I have received all or not.
I beg you will just say what follows to him. That I am extremely amazed he should think of employing me to sell his goods for him, especially without asking my consent, that an English gentleman, just come from France, has brought me a box of things, of which he himself had no account; nor is there any letter or catalogue with them; that I suppose they may be the Marquis’s collection: I have lost the catalogue, and consequently cannot tell whether I have received all or not, nor whether they are his: that as they came in so blind a manner, and have been opened at several custom-houses, I will not be answerable especially having never given my consent to receive them, and having opened the box ignorantly, without knowing the contents: that when I did open it, I concluded it came from Florence, having often refused to buy most of the things, which had long lain upon the jeweller’s hands on the old bridge, and which are very improper for sale here, as all the English for some years have seen them, and not thought them worth purchasing — that I remember in the catalogue the price for the whole was fixed at two thousand pistoles; that they are full as much worth two-and-twenty thousand; and that I have been laughed at by people to whom I have showed them for naming so extravagant a price: that nobody living would think of buying all together: that for myself, I have entirely left off making any collection; and if I had not, would not buy things dear now which I have formerly refused at much lower prices. That, after all, though I cannot think myself at all well used by Marquis Riccardi, either in sending me the things, in the price he has fixed on them, or in the things themselves, which to my knowledge he has picked up from the shops on the old bridge, and were no family collection, yet, as I received so many civilities at Florence from the nobility, and in particular from his wife, Madame Riccardi, if he will let me do any thing that is practicable, I will sell what I can for him. That if he will send me A new and distinct catalogue, with the price of each piece, and a price considerably less than what he has set upon the whole, I will endeavour to
My dear Sir, translate this very distinctly for him, for he never shall receive any other notice from me; nor will I give them up to Wasner or Pucci,(1084) or any body else, though he should send me an order for it; for nobody saw me open them, nor shall any body be able to say I had them, by receiving them from me. In short, I think I cannot be too cautious in such a negotiation. If a man will send Me things to the value of two thousand pistoles, whether they are really worth it or not, he shall take his chance for losing them, and shall certainly never come upon me for them. He must absolutely take his choice, of selling them at a proper price and separately, or of having them directly sent back by sea; for whether he consents to either or not, I shall certainly proceed in my resolution about them the very instant I receive an answer from you; for the sooner I am clear of them the better. If he will let me sell them without setting a price, he may depend upon my taking the best method for his service; though really, my dear child, it will be for my own honour, not for his sake, who has treated me so impertinently. I am sorry to give you this trouble, but judge how much the fool gives me! Adieu!
(1084) Ministers of the Queen of Hungary and the Great Duke.
430 Letter 174 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, July 26, 1745.
It is a pain to me to write to you, when all I can tell you will but distress you. How much I wish myself with you! anywhere, where I should have my thoughts detached in some degree by distance and by length of time from England! With all the reasons that I have for not loving great part of it, it is impossible not to feel the shock of living at the period of all its greatness! to be one of the Ultimi Romanorum! I will not proceed upon the chapter of reflections, but mention some facts, which will supply your thoughts with all I should say.
The French make no secret of their intending to come hither; the letters from Holland speak of it as a notoriety. Their Mediterranean fleet is come to Rochfort, and they have another at Brest. Their immediate design is to attack our army, the very lessening which will be victory for them. Our six hundred men, which have lain cooped up in the river till they had contracted diseases, are at last gone to Ostend. Of all this our notable
You may judge of our situation by the conversation of Marshal Belleisle: he has said for some time, that he saw we were so little capable of making any defence that he would engage, with five thousand scullions of the French army, to conquer England—yet, just now, they choose to release him! he goes away in a week.(1085) When he was told of the taking Cape Breton, he said. “he could believe that, because the ministry had no hand in it.” We are making bonfires for Cape Breton, and thundering over Genoa, while our army in Flanders is running away, and dropping to pieces by detachments taken prisoners every day; while the King is at Hanover, the regency at their country-seats, not five thousand men in the island, and not above fourteen or fifteen ships at home! Allelujah!
I received yours yesterday, with the bill of lading for the gesse figures, but you don’t tell me their price; pray do in your ’next. I don’t know what to say to Mr. Chute’s eagle; I would fain have it; I can depend upon his taste-but would not it be folly to be buying curiosities now! how can I tell that I shall have any thing in the world to pay for it, by the time it is bought? You may present these reasons to Mr. Chute; and if he laughs at them, why then he will buy the eagle for me; if he thinks them of weight, not.
Adieu! I have not time or patience to say more.
(1085) The Marshal and his brother left England on the 13th of August.-E.
431 Letter 175 To George Montagu, Esq. [August 1, 1745.]
Dear George, I cannot help thinking you laugh at me when you say such very civil things of my letters, and yet, coming from you, I would fain not have it all flattery:
So much the more, as, from a little elf,
I’ve had a high opinion of myself,
Though sickly, slender, and not large of limb.
With this modest prepossession, you may be sure I like to have you commend me, whom, after I have done with myself, I admire of all men living. I only beg that you will commend me no more: it is very ruinous; and praise, like other debts, ceases to be due on being paid. One comfort indeed is, that it is as seldom paid as other debts.
I have been very fortunate lately: I have met with an extreme good print of M. de Grignan;(1086) I am persuaded, very like; and then it has his toufie `ebouriff`ee; I don’t, indeed, know what that was, but I am sure it Is in the-print. None of the critics could ever make out what Livy’s Patavinity is though they are confident it is in his writings. I have heard within these few days, what, for your sake, I wish I could have told you sooner-that there is in Belleisle’s suite the Abb`e Perrin, who published Madame S`evign`e’s letters, and who has the originals in his hands. How one should have liked to have known him! The Marshal was privately in london last Friday. He is entertained to-day at Hampton Court by the Duke of Grafton.(1087) Don’t you believe it was to settle the binding the scarlet thread in the window, when the French shall come in unto the land to possess it? I don’t at all wonder at any shrewd observations the Marshal has made on our situation. The bringing him here at all—the sending him away now—in short, the whole series of our conduct convinces me that, we shall soon see as silent a change as that in the Rehearsal, of King Usher and King Physician. It may well be so, when the disposition of the drama is in the hands of the Duke of Newcastle—those hands that are always groping and sprawling, and fluttering and hurrying on the rest of his precipitate person. But there is no describing him, but as M. Courcelle, a French prisoner, did t’other day: “Je ne scais pas,” dit il, “je ne scaurois m’exprimer, mais il a un certain tatillonage.” If one could conceive a dead body hung in chains, always wanting to be hung somewhere else, one should have a comparative idea of him.
For my own part, I comfort myself with the humane reflection of the Irishman in the ship that was on fire—I am but a passenger! if I were not so indolent, I think I should rather put in practice the late Duchess of Bolton’s(1088) geographical resolution of going to China, when Winston told her the world would be burnt in three years. Have you any philosophy? Tell me what you think. It is quite the fashion to talk of the French coming here. Nobody sees it in any other light but as a thing to be talked of, not to be precautioned against. Don’t you remember a report of the plague being in the city, and every body went to the house where it was to see it? You- see I laugh about it, for I would not for the world be so unenglished as to do otherwise. I am persuaded that when Count Saxe, with ten thousand men, is within a day’s march of London, people will be hiring windows at Charing-cross and Cheapside to see them pass by. ’Tis our characteristic to take dangers for sights, and evils for curiosities.
Adieu! dear George: I am laying in scraps of Cato against it may be necessary to take leave of one’s correspondents `a la Romaine, and, before the play itself is suppressed by a lettre de cachet to the booksellers.
P. S. Lord! ’tis the 1st of August, 1745, a holiday(1089) that is going to be turned out of the almanack!
(1086) Fran`cois-Adh`emar de Monteil, Comte de Grignan, Lieutenant-general of Provence. He married, in 1669, the daughter of Madame de S`evign`e-E.
(1087) As he was, on the preceding day, by the Duke of Newcastle, at Clermont.-E.
(1088) Natural daughter of James Scot, Duke of Monmouth, by Eleanor, daughter of Sir Robert Needham.-E.
(1089) The anniversary of the accession of the House of Brunswick to the throne of England.
432 Letter 176 To sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Aug. 7, 1745.
I have no news to tell you: Ostend is besieged, and must be gone in a few days. The Regency are all come to town to prevent an invasion—I should as soon think them able to make one—not but old Stair, who still exists upon the embers of an absurd fire that warmed him ninety years ago, thinks it still practicable to march to Paris, and the other day in council prevented a resolution of sending for our army home; but as we always do half of a thing, when even the whole would scarce signify, they seem determined to send for ten thousand—the other ten will remain in Flanders, to keep up the bad figure that we have been making there all this summer. Count Saxe has been three times tapped since the of Fontenoy: but if we get rid of his enmity, there is Belleisle gone, amply to supply and succeed to his hatred! Van Hoey, the ingenious Dutchman at Paris, wrote to the States to know if he should make new liveries against the rejoiCings for the French conquests in Flanders. I love the governor of SLuys; when the States sent him a reprimand, for not admitting our troops that retreated thither from the affair of Ghent, asking him if he did not know that he ought to admit their allies? he replied, “Yes; and would they have him admit the French too as their allies?”
There is a proclamation come out for apprehending the Pretender’s son;(1090) he was undoubtedly on board the frigate attendant on the Elizabeth, with which Captain Brett fought so bravely:(1090) the boy is now said to be at Brest.
I have put off my journey to the Hague, as the sea is full of ships, and many French ones about the siege of Ostend: I go tomorrow to Mount Edgecumbe. I don’t think it impossible but you may receive a letter from me on the road, with a paragraph like that in Cibber’s life, “Here I met the revolution.”
My lady Orford is set out for Hanover; her gracious sovereign does not seem inclined to leave it. Mrs. Chute(1092) has sent me this letter, which you will be so good as to send to Rome. We have taken infinite riches; vast wealth in the East Indies, vast from the West; in short, we grow so fat that we shall very soon be fit to kill.
Your brother has this moment brought me a letter from you, full of your good-natured concern for the Genoese. I have not time to write you any thing but short paragraphs, as I am in the act of writing all my letters and doing my business before my journey. I can say no more now about the affair of your secretary. Poor Mrs. Gibberne has been here this morning almost in fits about her son. She brought me a long letter to you, but I absolutely prevented her sending it, and told her I would let you know that it was my fault if you don’t hear from her, but that I would take the answer upon myself. My dear Sir, for her sake, for the silly boy’s, who is ruined if he follows his own whims, and for your own sake, who will have so much trouble to get and form another, I must try to prevent your parting. I am persuaded, that neither the fatigue of writing, nor the indignation of going to sea are the boy’s true motives. They are, the smallness of his allowance, and his aversion to waiting it table, For the first, the poor woman does not expect that you should put yourself to any inconvenience; she only begs that you will be so good as to pay him twenty pounds a-year more, which she herself will repay to your brother; and not let her son know that it comes from her, as he would then refuse to take it. For the other point, I must tell you, my dear child, fairly, that in goodness to the poor boy, I hope you will give it up. He is to make his fortune in your way of life, if he can be so lucky, It will be an insuperable obstacle to him that he is with you in the light of a menial servant. When you reflect that his fortune may depend upon it, I am sure you will free him from this servitude, Your brother and I, you know, from the very first, thought that you should not insist upon it. If he will stay with you on the terms I propose, I am sure, from the trouble it will save yourself, and the ruin from which it will save him, you will yield to this request; which I seriously make to you, and advise you to comply with. Adieu!
(1090) The proclamation was dated the 1st of August, and offered a reward of thirty thousand pounds for the young Prince’s apprehension. He left the island of Belleisle on the 13th of July, disguised in the habit of a Student of the Scots college at Paris, and allowing his beard to grow.-E.
(1091) Captain Brett was the same officer who, in Anson’s expedition, had stormed Paita. His ship was called the Lion. After a well-matched fight of five or six hours, the vessels parted, each nearly disabled.-E.
(1092) Widow of Francis Chute, Esq.
434 Letter 177
To The Rev. Thomas Birch.(1093)
Woolterton 15th [Aug.] 1745
When I was lately in town I was favoured with yours of the 21st past; but my stay there was so short, and my hurry so great, that I had not time to see you as I intended. As I am persuaded that nobody is more capable than yourself, in all respects, to set his late Majesty’s reign in a true light, I am sure there is nobody to whom I would more readily give my assistance, as far as I am able: but, as I have never wrote any thing in a historical way, have now and then suggested hints to others as they were writing, and never published but two pamphlets-one was to justify the taking and keeping in our pay the twelve thousand Hessians, of which I have forgot the title, and have it not in the country; the other was published about two years since, entitled, “The Interest of Great Britain steadily Pursued,” in answer to the pamphlets about the Hanover forces-I can’t tell in what manner, nor on what heads to answer your desire, which is conceived in such general terms: if you could point out some stated times, and some particular facts, and I had before me a sketch of your narration, I perhaps might be able, to suggest or explain some things that are come but imperfectly to your knowledge, and some anecdotes might occur to my memory relating to domestic and foreign affairs, that are curious, and were never yet made public, and perhaps not proper to, be published yet; particularly with regard to the alteration of the ministry in 1717, by the removal of my relation, and the measures that were pursued in consequence of that alteration; but in order to do this, or any thing else for your service, requires a personal conversation with you, in which I should be ready to let you know what might occur to me. I am most truly, etc.
(1093) This industrious historian and biographer was born in 1705, and was killed by a fall from his horse, in 1765. Dr. Johnson said of him, “Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand, than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.—E.
435 Letter 178 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Sept. 6, 1745.
It would have been inexcusable in me, in our present circumstances and after all I have promised you, not to have written to you for this last month, if I had been in London; but I have been at Mount Edgecumbe, and so constantly upon the road, that I neither received your letters, had time to write, or knew what to write. I came back last night, and found three packets from you, which I have no time to answer, and but just time to read. The confusion I have found, and the danger we are in, prevent my talking of any thing else. The young Pretender(1094) at the head of three thousand men, has got a march on General Cope, who is not eighteen hundred strong: and when the last accounts came away, was fifty miles nearer Edinburgh than Cope, and by this time is there. The clans will not rise for the Government: the Dukes of Argyll(1095) and Athol,(1096) are come
There are two manifestos published signed Charles Prince, Regent for his father, King of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland. By One, he promises to preserve every body in their just rights; and orders all persons who have public moneys in their hands to bring it to him; and by the other dissolves the union between England and Scotland. But all this is not the worst! Notice came yesterday, that there are ten thousand men, thirty transports, and ten men-of-war at Dunkirk. Against this force we have—I don’t know what— scarce fears! Three thousand Dutch -we hope are by this time landed In Scotland; three more are coming hither. We have sent for ten regiments from Flanders, which may be here in a week, and we have fifteen men-of-war in the Downs. I am grieved to tell you all this; but when it is so, how can I avoid telling you? Your brother is just come in, who says he has written to you-I have not time to expatiate.
My Lady O. is arrived; I hear she says, only to endeavour to get a certain allowance. Her mother has sent to offer her the use of her house. She is a poor weak woman. I can say nothing to Marquis Riccardi, nor think of him; only tell him, that I will when I have time. My sister(1102) has married herself, that is, declared she will, to young Churchill. It is a foolish match; but I have nothing to do with it. Adieu! my dear Sir; excuse my haste, but you must imagine that one is not much at leisure to write long letters—hope if you can!
(1094) The ’Pretender had landed, with a few followers, in the Highlands Of Scotland, on the 25th of July. His appearance at this time is thus described by Mr. Eneas Macdonald, one of his attendants: “There entered the tent a tall youth, of a most agreeable aspect, in a plain black coat, with a plain shirt not very clean, and a cambric stock, fixed with a plain silver buckle, a plain hat with a canvass string, having one end fixed to one of his coat buttons. he had black stockings and brass buckles in his shoes. At his first appearance I found my heart swell to my very throat, but we were immediately told, that this youth was an English clergyman, who had long been possessed with a desire to see and converse with Highlanders.” “It is remarkable,” observes Lord Mahon, " that among the foremost to join Charles, was the father of Marshal Macdonald, Duke de Tarento, long after raised to these honours by his merit in the French revolutionary wars, and not more distinguished for courage and capacity than for integrity and honour.” Hist. vol. iii. p. 344.-E.
(1095) Archibald, Earl of Islay, and upon the death of his elder brother John, Duke of Argyll,-D.
(1096) James Murray, second Duke of Athol; to which he succeeded upon the death of his father in 1724, in consequence of the attainder of his elder brother, William, Marquis of Tullibardine.-D.
(1097) This was not true of the Duke of Argyll; for he did not attempt to raise any men, but pleaded a Scotch act of parliament against arming without authority.
(1098) Cosmo George, third Duke of Gordon. He died in 1752.-D.
(1099) John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudon; a general in the army. He died in 1782.-D.
(1100) The eldest son of Mackenzie, Earl of Seaforth-D
(1101) William Maule, Earl of Panmure, in Ireland, so created in 1743, in consequence of the forfeiture of the Scotch honours in 1715, by his elder brother, James, Earl of Panmure.-D.
(1102) Lady Maria Walpole, daughter of Lord Orford, married Charles Churchill, Esq. son of the General.
436 Letter 179 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Sept. 13, 1745.
The rebellion goes on; but hitherto there is no rising in England, nor landing of troops from abroad; indeed not even of ours or the Dutch. The best account I can give you is, that if the Boy has apparently no enemies in Scotland, at least he has openly very few friends. Nobody of note has joined him, but a brother of the Duke of Athol,(1103) and another of Lord Dunmore.(1104) For cannon, they have nothing but one-pounders: their greatest resource is money; they have force Louis-d’ors. The last accounts left them at Perth, making shoes and stockings. It is certain that a sergeant of Cope’s with twelve men, put to flight two hundred, on killing only six or seven. Two hundred of the Monroe clan have joined our forces. Spirit seems to rise in London, though not in the proportion it ought; and then the person(1105) most concerned does every thing to check its progress: when the ministers propose any thing with regard to the rebellion, he cries, “Pho! don’t talk to me of that stuff.” Lord Granville has persuaded him that it is of no consequence. Mr. Pelham talks every day of resigning: he certainly will as soon as this is got over!—if it is got over. So, at least we shall see a restoration of queen Sophia.(1106) She has lain-in of a girl; though she had all the pretty boys in town brought to her for patterns.
The young Chevalier has set a reward on the King’s head: we are told that his brother is set out for Ireland. However, there is hitherto little countenance given to the undertaking by France or Spain. It seems an effort of despair, and weariness of the manner in which he has been kept in France. On the grenadier’s caps is written, “a grave or a throne.” He stayed some time at the Duke of Athol’s, whither old Marquis Tullybardine(1107) sent to bespeak dinner; and has since sent his brother word, that he likes the alterations
“Pray consider my Lords, how disastrous a thing, To have two Prince of Wales’s and never a King!”
The merchants are very zealous, and are opening a great subscription for raising troops. The other day, at the city meeting, to draw up the address, Alderman Heathcote proposed a petition for a redress of grievances, but not one man seconded him. In the midst of all this, no Parliament is called! The ministers say they have nothing ready to offer; but they have something to notify!
I must tell you a ridiculous accident: when the magistrates of were searching houses for arms, they came to Mr. Maule’s, brother of Lord Panmure, and a great friend of the Duke of Argyll. The maid would not let them go into one room, which was locked, and as she said, full of arms. They now thought they had found what they looked for, and had the door broke open—where they found an ample collection of coats of arms!
The deputy governor of Edinburgh Castle has threatened the magistrates to beat their town about their ears, if they admit the rebels. Perth is twenty-four miles from Edinburgh, so we must soon know whether they will go thither; or leave it, and come into England. We have great hopes that the Highlanders will not follow him so far. Very few of them could be persuaded the last time to go to Preston; and several refused to attend King Charles II. when he marched to Worcester. The Caledonian Mercury never calls them “the rebels,” but “the Highlanders.”
Adieu! my dear child —thank Mr. Chute for his letter, which I will answer soon. I don’t know how to define my feeling: I don’t despair, and yet I expect nothing but bad! Yours, etc.
p . S. Is not my Princess very happy with the hopes of the restoration of her old tenant?(1110)
(1103) William, Marquis of Tullibardine.-D.
(1104) John Murray, second Earl of Dunmore; he died in 1754. His brother, who joined the Pretender, was the Hon. Wm. Murray, of Taymount. He was subsequently pardoned for the part he took in the rebellion, and succeeded to the earldom on the death of Earl John.-D.
(1105) The King.
(1106) Lady Granville.
(1107) Elder brother of the Duke of Athol, but outlawed for the last rebellion. He was taken prisoner after the battle of Culloden, and died in the Tower.
(1108) Afterwards Sir William Breton. He held an office in the household of Frederick, Prince of Wales.-D.
(1109) Jane, daughter of John Frederick, Esq. and widow of James Lanoy, Esq.-D.
(1110) When the Old Pretender was in Lorrain, he lived at Prince Craon’s.
438 Letter 179a To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, Sept. 17, 1745.
Dear George, How could u ask me such a question, as whether I should be glad to see you? Have you a mind I should make you a formal speech, with honour, and pleasure, and satisfaction, etc.? I will not, for that would be telling you I should not be glad. However, do come soon, if you should be glad to see me; for we, I mean we old folks that came over with the Prince of Orange in eighty-eight, have had notice to remove by Christmas-day. The moment I have SMUgged up a closet or a dressing-room, I have always warning given me that my lease is out. Four years ago I was mightily at my ease in Downing-street, and then the good woman, Sandys, took my lodgings over my head, and was in such a hurry to junket her neighbours, that I had scarce time allowed me to wrap my old china in a little hay. Now comes the Pretender’s boy, and promises all my comfortable apartments in the Exchequer and Custom-house to some forlorn Irish peer, who chooses to remove his pride and poverty out of some large unfurnished gallery at St. Germain’s. Why really Mr. Montagu this is not pleasant; I shall wonderfully dislike being a loyal sufferer in a threadbare coat, and shivering in an ante-chamber at Hanover, or reduced to teach Latin and English to the young princes at Copenhagen. The Dowager Strafford has already written cards for my Lady Nithisdale, my Lady Tullibardine, the Duchess of Perth and berwick, and twenty more revived peeresses, to invite them to play at whist, Monday three months: for your part, you will divert yourself with their old taffeties, and tarnished slippers, and their awkwardness, the first day they go to court in shifts and clean linen. Will you ever write to me at my garret at Herenhausen? I will give you a faithful account of all the promising speeches that Prince George and Prince Edward make, -whenever they have a new sword, and intend to re-conquer England. At least write to me, while you may with acts of parliament on your side: but I hope you are coming. Adieu!
439 Letter 180 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Sept. 20, 1745.
One really don’t know what to write to you: the accounts from Scotland vary perpetually, and at best are never very certain. I was just going to tell you that the rebels are in England; but my Uncle is this moment come in, and says, that an express came last night with an account of their being in Edinburgh to the number of five thousand. This sounds great, to have walked through a kingdom, and taken possession of the capital! But this capital is an open town and the castle impregnable, and in our
My Lady O. makes little progress in popularity. Neither the protection of my Lady Pomfret’s prudery, nor of my Lady Townshend’s libertinism, do her any services The women stare at her, think her ugly, awkward, and disagreeable; and what is worse, the men think so too. For the height of mortification, the King has declared publicly to the ministry, that he has been told of the great civilities which be was said to show her at Hanover; that he protests he showed her only the common civilities due to any
(1111) Mr. Henry Fox, in letters to Sir C. H. Williams, of September 5th and 19th, writes, “England, Wade says, and I believe it, is for the first comer; and if you can tell whether the six thousand Dutch, and the ten battalions of English, or five thousand French or Spaniards will be here first, you know our fate.” “The French are not come, God be thanked! But had five thousand landed in any part of this island a week ago, I verily believe the entire conquest would not have cost them a battle."-B.
(1112) This plan of raising regiment,,; afterwards degenerated into a gross job. Sir C. H. Williams gives an account of it in his ballad, entitled “The Herbes.” To this Horace Walpole appended the following explanatory note..—“In the time of the rebellion, these lords had proposed to raise regiments of their own dependents, and were allowed; Had they paid them too, the service had been noble: being paid by Government, obscured a little the merit; being paid without raising them, would deserve too coarse a term. It is certain, that not six regiments ever were raised: not four of which were employed. The chief persons who were at the head of this scheme were the Dukes of Bedford and Montagu; the Duke of Bedford actually and served with his regiment.”—The other lords mentioned in the ballad are, the Duke of Bolton, Lord Granby, Lord Harcourt, Lord Halifax, Lord Falmouth, Lord Cholmondeley, and Lord Berkeley. They were in all fifteen-
“Fifteen nobles of great fame,
All brib’d by one false muster."-D.
(1113) Isaac Leheup, brother-in-law of Horace Walpole the elder. He was a man of great wit and greater brutality, and being minister at Hanover, was recalled for very indecent behaviour there.
441 Letter 181 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Sept. 27, 1745.
I can’t doubt but the joy of the Jacobites has reached Florence before this letter. Your two or three Irish priests, I forget their names, will have set out to take possession of abbey-lands here. I feel for what you will feel, and for the insulting things that will be said to you upon the battle(1114) we have lost in Scotland; but all this is nothing, to what it prefaces. The express came hither on Tuesday morning, but the Papists knew it on Sunday night. Cope lay in face of the rebels all Friday; he scarce two thousand strong, they vastly superior, though we don’t know their numbers. The military people say that he should have attacked them. However, we are sadly convinced that they are not such raw ragamuffins as they were represented. The rotation that has been established in that country, to give all the Highlanders the benefit of serving in the independent companies, has trained and disciplined them. Macdonald (I suppose, he from Naples,) -who is reckoned a very experienced able officer, is said to have commanded them, and to be dangerously wounded. One does not hear the Boy’s personal valour cried up; by which I conclude he was not in the action.(1115) Our dragoons most shamefully fled without striking a blow, and are with Cope, who escaped in a boat to Berwick. I pity poor him(1116) who with no shining abilities, and no experience, and no force, was sent to fight for a crown! He never saw a battle but that of Dettingen, where he got his red riband: Churchill, whose led-captain he was, and my Lord Harrington, had pushed him up to this misfortune. We have lost all our artillery, five hundred men taken and three killed, and several officers, as you will see in the papers. This defeat has frightened every body but those it rejoices, and those it should frighten most; but my Lord Granville still buoys up the King’s spirits, and persuades him it is nothing. He uses his ministers as ill as possible, and discourages every body that would risk their lives and fortunes with him. Marshal Wade is marching against the rebels; but the King will not let him take above eight thousand men; so that if they come into England, another battle, with no advantage on our side, may determine our fate. Indeed, they don’t seem so unwise as to risk their cause upon so precarious an event; but rather to design to establish themselves in Scotland, till they can be supported from France, and be set up with taking Edinburgh Castle, where there is to the value of a million, and which they would make a stronghold. It is scarcely victualled for a month, and must surely fall into their hands. Our coasts are greatly guarded, and London kept in awe by the arrival of the guards. I don’t believe what I have been told this morning, that more troops are sent for from Flanders, and aid asked of Denmark.
Prince Charles has called a Parliament in Scotland for the 7th of October; ours does not meet till the 17th, so that even in the show of liberty and laws, they are beforehand with us. With all this, we hear of no men of quality or fortune having joined him but Lord Elcho(1117) whom you have seen at Florence; and the Duke of Perth,(1118) a silly race-horsing boy, who is said to be killed in this battle. but I gather no confidence from hence: my father always said, “If you see them come again, they will begin by their lowest people; their chiefs will not appear till the end.” His prophecies verify every day!
The town is still empty; in this point only the English act contrary to their custom, for they don’t throng to see a Parliament, though it is likely to prove a curiosity!
I have so trained myself to expect this ruin, that I see it approach without an emotion. I shall suffer with fools, without having any malice to our enemies, who act sensibly from principle and from interest. Ruling parties seldom have caution or common sense. I don’t doubt but Whigs and Protestants will be alert enough in trying to recover what they lose so supinely.
I know nothing of my Lady O. In this situation I dare say she will exert enough of the spirit of her Austrian party, to be glad the present government is oppressed; her piques and the Queen of Hungary’s bigotry will draw satisfaction from what ought to be so contrary to each of their wishes. I don’t wonder my lady hates you so much, as I think she meant to express by her speech to Blair. Quem non credit Cleopatra nocentem, A quo casta fuit?”
She lives chiefly with my Lady Townshend: the latter told me last night, that she had seen a new fat player, who looked like every body’s husband. I replied, “I could easily believe that, from seeing so many women who looked like every body’s wives.” Adieu! my dear Sir: I hope your spirits, like mine, will grow calm, from being callous of ill news.
(1114) At Preston-Pans, near Edinburgh; where the Pretender completely defeated Sir John Cope, on the 21st of September.-D.
(1115) “Charles,” says Lord Mahon, ’put himself at the head of the second line, which was close behind the first, and addressed them in these words@ Follow me, gentlemen, and by the blessing of God, I will this day make you a free and happy people.” Hist. Vol. iii. P. 392.-E.
(1116) General Cope was tried afterwards for his behaviour in this action, and it appeared very clearly, that the ministry, his inferior officers, and his troops, were greatly to blame; and that he did all he could, so ill-directed, so ill-supplied, and so ill-obeyed.
(1117) Eldest son of the Earl of Wemyss.
(1118) James Drummond, who would have been the fifth Earl of Perth, had it not been for the attainder and outlawry under which his family laboured. His grandfather, the fourth earl, had been created a duke by James II. after his abdication. He was not killed at Preston-Pans.-D.
443 Letter 182 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Oct. 4, 1745.
I am still writing to you as “R`esident de sa Majest`e Britannique;” and without the apprehension of your suddenly receiving letters of recall, or orders to notify to the council of Florence the new accession. I dare say your fears made you think that the young Prince (for he is at least Prince of Scotland) had vaulted from Cope’s neck into St. James’s House; but he is still at Edinburgh; and his cousin Grafton, the lord chamberlain has not even given orders for fitting up this palace for his reception. The good people of England have at last rubbed their eyes and looked about them. A wonderful spirit is arisen in all counties, and among all sorts of people. The nobility are raising regiments, and every body else is-being raised. Dr. Herring,(1119) the Archbishop of York, has set an example that would rouse the most indifferent; in two days after the news arrived at York of Cope’s defeat, and when they every moment expected the victorious rebels at their gates, the bishop made a speech to the assembled county, that had as much true spirit, honesty, and bravery in it, as ever was penned by an historian for an ancient hero.
The rebels returned to Edinburgh, where they have no hopes of taking the Castle, for old Preston, the deputy-governor, and General Guest, have obliged them to supply the Castle constantly with fresh provisions, on pain of having the town fired with red-hot bullets. They did fling a bomb on Holyrood House, and obliged the Boy to shift his quarters. Wade is marching against them, and will have a great army: all the rest of our troops are ordered from Flanders, and are to meet him in Yorkshire, with some Hessians too. That county raises four thousand men, besides a body of foxhunters, whom Oglethorpe has converted into hussars. I am told that old Stair, who certainly does not want zeal, but may not want envy neither, has practised a little Scotch art to prevent wade from having an army, and consequently the glory of saving this country. This I don’t doubt he will do, if the rebels get no foreign aid; and I have great reason to hope they will not, for the French are privately making us overtures of peace. My dear child, dry your wet-brown-paperness, and be in spirits again!
It is not a very civil joy to send to Florence, but I can’t help telling you how glad I am of news that came two days ago, of the King of Prussia having beat Prince Charles,(1120) who attacked him just after we could have obtained for them a peace with that King. That odious house of Austria! It will not be decent for you to insult Richcourt but I would, were I at Florence.
Pray let Mr. Chute have ample accounts of our zeal to figure with at Rome. of the merchants of London undertaking to support the public credit; of universal associations; of regiments raised by the dukes of Devonshire, Bedford, Rutland, Montagu; Lords Herbert, Halifax, Cholmondeley, Falmouth, Malton, Derby,(1121) etc.; of Wade with an army of twenty thousand men; of another about London of near as many—and lastly, of Lord Gower having in person assured the King that he is no Jacobite, but ready to serve him with his life and fortune. Tell him of the whole coast so guarded, that nothing can pass unvisited; and in short, send him this advertisement out of to-day’s papers, as an instance of more spirit and wit than there is in all Scotland:
TO ALL JOLLY BUTCHERS.
MY BOLD hearts,
The Papists eat no meat on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays,
nor
during Lent.
Your friend,
JOHN STEEL.
Just as I wrote this, a person is come in, who tells me that the rebels have cut off the communication between Edinburgh and the Castle: the commanders renewed their threats: and the good magistrates have sent up hither to beg orders may be sent to forbid this execution. It is modest! it is Scotch!-and, I dare say, will be granted. Ask a government to spare your town which you yourself have given up to rebels: and the consequence of which will be the loss of your Castle!-but they knew to what Government they applied! You need not be in haste to have this notified at Rome. Tell it not in Gath! Adieu! my dear Sir. This account has put Me so out of humour, and has so altered the strain of my letter, that I must finish.
(1119) An excellent prelate, afterwards promoted to the see of Canterbury. Walpole, in his Memoires, mentioning his death, thus speaks of him: “On the 13th of March, 1757, died Dr. Herring, Archbishop of Canterbury a very amiable man, to whom no fault was objected; though perhaps the gentleness of his Principles, his great merit, was thought one. During the rebellion he had taken up arms to defend from oppression that religion, which he abhorred making an instrument of oppression."-D.
(1120) The battle of Soor in Bohemia, gained by the King of Prussia over the Austrians, on the 30th of September, 1745.-D.
(1121) For an account of this transaction see note 1112, letter 181, at p. 440. The noblemen here mentioned were, William Cavendish, Third Duke of Devonshire; John Russell, fourth Duke of Bedford; John, second and last Duke of Montagu; Henry Arthur Herbert, first Lord Herbert of cherbury of the third creation; George Montagu, third Earl of Halifax; George, third Earl of Cholmondeley; Hugh Boscawen, second Viscount Falmouth; Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Malton; and Edward Stanley, eleventh Earl of Derby.—D.
445 Letter 183 To sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Oct. 11, 1745.
This is likely to be a very short letter; for I have nothing to tell you, nor any thing to answer. I have not had one letter from you this month, which I attribute to the taking of the packet-boat by the French, with two mails in it. It was a very critical time for our negotiations; the ministry will say, it puts their transactions out of order.
Before I talk of any public news, I must tell you what you will be very sorry for-Lady Granville is dead. She had a fever for six weeks before her lying-in, and could never get it off. Last Saturday they called in another physician, Dr. Oliver; on Monday he pronounced her out of danger. About seven in the evening, as Lady Pomfret and Lady Charlotte were sitting by her, the first notice they had of her immediate danger, was her sighing and saying, “I feel death come very fast upon me!” She repeated the same words frequently-remained perfectly in her senses and calm, and died about eleven at night. Her mother and sister sat by her till she was cold. It is very shocking for any body so young, so handsome, so arrived at the height of happiness, so sensible of it, and on whom all the joy and grandeur of her family depended, to be so quickly snatched away! Poor Uguccioni! he will be very sorry and simple about it.
For the rebels, they have made no figure since Their victory. The Castle of Edinburgh has made a sally and taken twenty head of cattle, and about thirty head of Highlanders. We heard yesterday, that they are coming this way. The troops from Flanders are expected to land in Yorkshire to-morrow. A privateer of Bristol has taken a large Spanish ship, laden with arms and money for Scotland. A piece of a plot has been discovered in Dorsetshire, and one Mr. Weld(1122) taken up. The French have declared to the Dutch, that the House of Stuart is their ally, and that the Dutch troops must not act against them; but we expect they shall. The Parliament meets next Thursday, and by that time, probably, the armies will too. The rebels are not above eight thousand, and have little artillery; so you may wear what ministerial spirits you will.
The Venetian ambassador has been making his entries this week: he was at Leicester-fields to-day with the Prince, and very pretty compliments passed between them in Italian. Do excuse this letter; i really have not a word more to say; the next shall be all arma virumque cano!
(1122) Edward Weld, Esq. of Lulworth Castle. Hutchins, in his History of Dorsetshire, says, that, “although he ever behaved as a peaceful subject, he was ordered into custody, in 1745, on account of his name being mentioned in a treasonable anonymous letter dropped near Poole; but his immediate and honourable discharge is the most convincing proof of his innocence."-E.
446 Letter 184 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Oct. 21, 1745.
I had been almost as long without any of Your letters as you had without mine; but yesterday I received one, dated the 5th of this month, N. S.
The rebels have not left their camp near Edinburgh, and, I suppose, will not now, unless to retreat into the Highlands. General Wade was to march yesterday from Doncaster for Scotland. By their not advancing, I conclude that either the Boy and his council could not prevail On the Highlanders to leave their own country, or that they were not strong enough, and still wait for foreign assistance, which, in a new declaration, he intimates that he still expects.(1123) One only ship, I believe a Spanish one, has got to them with arms, and Lord John Drummond(1124) and some people of quality on board. We don’t hear that the younger Boy is of the number. Four ships sailed from Corunna; the one that got to Scotland, one taken by a privateer of bristol, and one lost on the Irish coast; the fourth is not heard of. At Edinburgh and thereabouts they commit the most horrid barbarities. We last night expected as bad here: information was given of an intended insurrection and massacre by the Papists; all the Guards were ordered out, and the Tower shut up at seven. I cannot be surprised at any thing, considering the supineness of the ministry—nobody has yet been taken up!
The Parliament met on Thursday. I don’t think, considering the crisis, that the House was very full. Indeed, many of the Scotch members cannot come if they would. The young Pretender had published a declaration, threatening to confiscate the estates of Scotch that should come to Parliament, and making it treason for the English. The only points that have been before the house, the address and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, met with obstructions from the Jacobites. By this we may expect what spirit they will show hereafter.(1125) With all this, I am far from thinking that they are so confident and sanguine as their friends at Rome. I blame the Chutes extremely for cockading themselves: why take a part when they are only travelling? I should certainly retire to Florence on this occasion.
You may imagine how little I like our situation; but I don’t despair. The little use they made, or could make of their victory; their not having marched into England; their miscarriage at the Castle of Edinburgh; the arrival of our forces, and the non-arrival of any French or Spanish, make me conceive great hopes of getting over this ugly business. But it is still an affair wherein the chance Of battles, or perhaps of one battle, may decide.
I write you but short letters, considering the circumstances of the time; but I hate to send you paragraphs only to contradict them again: I still less choose to forge events; and, indeed, am glad I have so few to tell you.
My lady O. has forced herself upon her mother, who receives her very coolly: she talks highly of her demands, and quietly of her methods — the fruitlessness of either will, I hope, soon send her back—I am sorry it must be to you!
You mention Holdisworth:(1126) he has had the confidence to come and visit me within these ten days; and (I suppose, from the overflowing of his joy) talked a great deal and with as little sense as when he was more tedious.
Since I wrote this, I hear the Countess has told her mother, that she thinks her husband the best of our family, and me the worst—nobody so bad, except you! I don’t wonder at my being so ill with her; but what have you done? or is it, that we are worse than any body, because we know more of her than any body does! Adieu!
(1123) “At three several councils did Charles propose to march into England and fight Marshal Wade; but as often was his proposal overruled. At length he declared in a very peremptory manner, ’I see, gentlemen, you are determined to stay in Scotland and defend your country; but I am not less resolved to try my fate in England, though I should go alone.’” Lord Mahon, vol. iii. P.241.-E.
(1124) Brother of the titular Duke of Perth.
(1125) “As to the Parliament,” writes Horatio Walpole to Mr. Milling, on the 29th of October, “although the address was unanimous the first day, yesterday, upon a motion ’to enquire into the causes of the progress of the rebellion’ the House was so fully convinced of the necessity of immediately putting an end to it, and that the fire should be quenched before we should enquire who kindled or promoted it, that it was carried, not to put the question at this time, by 194 against 112."-E.
(1126) A nonjuror who travelled with Mr. George Pitt.
447 Letter 185 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Nov. 4, 1745.
It is just a fortnight since I wrote to you last: in all that time the rebellion has made no progress, nor produced any incidents worth mentioning. They have entrenched themselves very strongly in the Duke of Buccleuch’s park, whose seat, about seven miles from Edinburgh, they have seized. We had an account last week of the Boy’s being retired to Dunkirk, but it was not true. Kelly,(1127) who is gone to solicit succour from France, was seized at Helvoet, but by a stupid burgher released. Lord Loudon is very brisk in the north of Scotland, and has intercepted and beat some of their parties. Marshal Wade was to march from Newcastle yesterday.
But the rebellion does not make half the noise here that one of its consequences does.
Fourteen lords (most of them I have named to you), at the beginning, offered to raise regiments; these regiments, so handsomely tendered at first, have been since put on the regular establishment; not much to the honour of the undertakers or of the firmness of the ministry, and the King is to pay them. One of the great grievances of this is, that these most disinterested colonels have named none but their own relations and dependents for the officers, who are to have rank; and consequently, both colonels and subalterns will interfere with the brave old part of the army, who have served all the war. This has made great clamour. The King was against their having rank, but would not refuse it; yet wished that the House of Commons would address him not to grant it. This notification of his royal mind
I am extremely pleased with the, purchase of the Eagle and Altar, and think them cheap: and I even begin to believe that I shall be able to pay for them. The gesse statues are all arrived safe. Your last letter was dated Oct. 19, N. S. and left you up to the chin in water(1132) just as we were drowned five years ago. Good night, if you are alive still! (1127) He had been confined in the Tower ever since the assassination plot, in the reign of King William; but at last made his escape.
(1128) This circumstance is thus alluded to in Sir C. H. Williams’s ballad of “The heroes.
“Three regiments one Duke contents,
With two more places you know:
Since his Bath Knights, his Grace delights
In Tri-a junct’ in U-no.”
The Duke of Montagu was master of the great wardrobe, a place worth eight thousand pounds a-year. He was also grand-master of the order of the Bath.-D.
(1129) In the May following, Mr. Pitt was appointed paymaster of the forces.-E.
(1130) Pattee Byng, second Viscount Torrington. He had been made vice-treasurer of Ireland upon the going out of the Walpole administration.-D.
(1131) @ James Fitzgerald, twentieth Earl of Kildare; created in 1761, Marquis of Kildare, and in 1766 Duke of Leinster--Irish honours.-D.
(1132) By an inundation of the Arno.
449 Letter 186
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Nov. 15, 1745.
I told you in my last what disturbance there had been about the new regiments; the affair of rank was again disputed on the report till ten at night, and carried by a majority of 23. The King had been persuaded to appear for it, though Lord Granville made it a party point against Mr. Pelham. Winnington did not speak. I was not there, for I could not vote for it, and yielded not to give any hindrance to a public measure (or at least what was called so) ’ just now. The Prince acted openly, and influenced his people against it; but it, only served to let Mr. Pelham see, what, like every thing else, he did not know, how strong he is. The King will scarce speak to him, and he cannot yet get Pitt into place.
The rebels are come into England: for two days we believed them near Lancaster, but the ministry now own that they don’t know if they have passed Carlisle. Some think they will besiege that town, which has an old wall, and the militia in it of Cumberland and Westmoreland; but as they can pass by it, I don’t see why they should take it; for they are not strong enough to leave garrisons. Several desert them as they advance south; and altogether, good men and bad, nobody believes them ten thousand. By their marching westward to avoid Wade, it is evident they are not strong enough to fight him. They may yet retire back into their mountains, but if once they get to Lancaster, their retreat is cut off; for Wade ’will not stir from Newcastle, till he has embarked them deep into England, and then he will be behind them. He has sent General Handasyde from Berwick with two regiments to take possession of Edinburgh. The rebels are certainly in a Very desperate situation: they dared not meet Wade; and if they had waited for him their troops would have deserted. Unless they meet with great risings in their favour in Lancashire, I don’t see what they can hope, except from a continuation of our neglect. That, indeed, has nobly exerted itself for them. They were suffered to march the whole length of Scotland, and take possession of the capital, without a man appearing against them. Then two thousand men
With the rebels in England, you may imagine we have no private news, nor think of foreign. From this account you may judge, that our case is far from desperate, though disagreeable, The Prince, while the Princess lies-in, has taken to give dinners, to which he asks two of the ladies of the bedchamber, two of the maids of honour, etc. by turns, and five or six others. He sits at the head of the table, drinks and harangues to all this medley till nine at night; and the other day, after the affair of the regiments, drank Mr. Fox’s health in a bumper, with three huzzas, for opposing Mr. Pelham—
“Si quel fata aspera rumpas,
Tu Marcellus eris!”
You put me in pain for my eagle, and in more for the Chutes; whose zeal is very heroic, but very ill-placed. I long to hear that all my Chutes and eagles are safe out of the Pope’s hands! Pray wish the Suares’s joy of all their espousals. Does the Princess pray abundantly for her friend the Pretender? Is she extremely abbatue with her devotion? and does she fast till she has got a violent appetite for supper? And then, does she eat so long that old Sarrasin is quite impatient to go to cards again? Good night! I intend you shall be resident from King George.
P. S. I forgot to tell you, that the other day I concluded the ministry knew the danger was all over; for the Duke of Newcastle ventured to have the Pretender’s declaration burnt at the Royal Exchange.
(1133) Donagh Maccarty, Earl of Clancarty, was an Irishman, and not a Scotchman.-D.
451 Letter 187 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Nov. 22, 1745.
For these two days we have been expecting news of a battle. Wade marched last Saturday from Newcastle, and must have got up with the rebels, if they stayed for him, though the roads are exceedingly bad and great quantities of snow have fallen. But last night there was some notice of a body of rebels being advanced to Penryth. We were put into great spirits by an heroic letter from the mayor of Carlisle, who had fired on the rebels and made them retire; he concluded with saying, “And so I think the town of Carlisle has done his Majesty more service than the great city of Edinburgh, or than all Scotland together.” But this hero, who was crown the whole fashion for four-and-twenty hours, had chosen to stop all other letters. The King spoke of him at his levee with great encomiums; Lord Stair said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Patterson has behaved very bravely.” The Duke of Bedford interrupted him; “My lord, his name is not Paterson; that is a Scotch name; his name is Patinson.” But, alack! the next day the rebels returned, having placed the women and children of the country in wagons in front of their army, and forcing the peasants to fix the scaling-ladders. The great Mr. Pattinson, or Patterson (for now his name may be which one pleases,) instantly surrendered the town and agreed to pay two thousand pounds to save it from pillage. Well! then we were assured that the citadel could hold out seven or eight days but did not so many hours. On mustering the militia, there were not found above four men in a company; and for two companies, which the ministry, on a report of Lord Albemarle, who said they were to be sent from Wade’s army, thought were there, and did not know were not there, there was nothing but two of invalids. Colonel Durand, the governor, fled, because he would not sign the capitulation, by which the garrison, it is said, has sworn never to bear arms against the house of Stuart. The Colonel sent two expresses, one to Wade, and another to Ligonier at Preston; but the latter was playing at whist with Lord Harrington at Petersham. Such is our diligence and attention! All my hopes are in Wade, who was so sensible of the ignorance of our governors that he refused to accept the command, till they consented that he should be subject to no kind of orders from hence. The rebels are reckoned up to thirteen thousand; Wade marches with about twelve; but if they come southward, the other army will probably be to fight them; the Duke is to command it, and sets out next week with another brigade of Guards, and Ligonier under him. There are great apprehensions for Chester from the Flintshire-men, who are ready to rise. A quartermaster, first sent to Carlisle, was seized and carried to Wade; he behaved most insolently; and being asked by the General, how many the rebels were, replied, “enough to beat any army you have in England.” A Mackintosh has been taken, who reduces their formidability, by being sent to raise two clans, and with orders, if they would not rise, at least to give out they had risen, for that three clans would leave the Pretender, unless joined by those two. Five hundred new rebels are arrived at Perth, where our prisoners are kept.
I had this morning a subscription pool@ brought me for our parish; Lord Granville had refused to subscribe. This is in the style of his friend Lord Bath, who has absented himself whenever any act of authority was to be executed against the rebels.
Five Scotch lords are going to raise regiments `a l’Angloise! resident in London, while the rebels were in Scotland; they are to receive military emoluments for their neutrality!
The Fox man-of-war of twenty guns is lost off Dunbar. One Beavor, the captain, had done us notable service: the Pretender sent to commend his zeal and activity, and to tell him, that if he would return to his allegiance, be should soon have a flag. Beavor replied, “he never treated with any but principals; that if the Pretender would come on board him, he would talk with him.” I must now tell you of our great Vernon: without once complaining to the ministry, he has written to Sir John Philipps, a distinguished Jacobite, to complain of want of provisions; yet they do not venture to recall him! Yesterday they had another baiting from Pitt, who is ravenous for the place of secretary at war: they would give it him; but as a preliminary, he insists on a declaration of our having nothing to do with the Continent. He mustered his forces, but did not notify his intention; only at two o’clock Lyttelton said at the Treasury, that there would be business at the House. The motion was to augment our naval force, which, Pitt said, was the only method of putting an end to the rebellion. Ships built a year hence to suppress an army of Highlanders, now marching through England! My uncle attacked him, and congratulated his country on the wisdom of the modern young men; and said he had a son of two-and-twenty, who, he did not doubt, would come over wiser than any of them. Pitt was provoked, and retorted on his negotiations and greyheaded experience. At those words, my uncle, as if he had been at Bartholomew fair, snatched off his wig, and showed his gray hairs, which made the august senate laugh, and put Pitt out, who, after laughing himself, diverted his venom upon Mr. Pelham. Upon the question, Pitt’s party amounted but to thirty-six: in short, he has nothing left but his words, and his haughtiness, and his Lytteltons, and his Grenvilles. Adieu!
453 Letter 188 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Nov. 29, 1745.
We have had your story here this week of the pretended pretender, but with the unlucky circumstance of its coming from the Roman Catholics. With all the faith you have in your little spy, I cannot believe it; though, to be sure, it has a Stuart-air, the not exposing the real boy to danger. The Duke of Newcastle mentioned your account this morning to my uncle; but they don’t give any credit to the courier’s relation. It grows so near being necessary for the young man to get off by any evasion, that I am persuaded all that party will try to have it believed. We are so far from thinking that
I forgot to tell you, that my uncle begged the Duke of Newcastle to stifle this report of the sham Pretender lest the King should hear it and recall the Duke, as too great to fight a counterfeit. It is certain that the army adore the Duke, and are gone in the greatest spirits; and on the parade, as they began their march, the Guards vowed that they would neither give nor take quarter. For bravery, his Royal Highness is certainly no Stuart, but literally loves to be in the act of fighting. His brother has so far the same taste, that the night of his new son’s christening, he had the citadel of Carlisle in sugar at supper, and the company besieged it with sugar-plums. It was well imagined, considering the time and the circumstances. One thing was very proper; old Marshal Stair was there, who is grown child enough to be fit to war only with such artillery. Another piece of ingenuity of that court was on the report of Pitt being named secretary at war. The Prince hates him, since the fall of Lord Granville:
The good Provost of Edinburgh has been with Marshal Wade at Newcastle, and it is said, is coming to London-he must trust hugely to the inactivity of the ministry! They have taken an agent there going with large contributions from the- Roman Catholics, who have pretended to be so quiet! The Duchess of Richmond, while her husband is at the army, was going to her grace of Norfolk:(1137) when he was very uneasy at her intention, she showed him letters from the Norfolk, “wherein she prays God that this wicked rebellion may be soon suppressed, lest it hurt the poor Roman Catholics.” But this wise jaunt has made such a noise that it is laid aside.
Your friend Lord Sandwich has got one of the Duke of Montagu’s regiments: he stayed quietly till all the noise was over. He is now lord of the admiralty, lieutenant-colonel to the Duke of Bedford, aide-de-camp to the Duke of Richmond, and colonel of a regiment!
A friend of mine, Mr. Talbot, who has a good estate in Cheshire, with the great tithes, which he takes in kind, and has generally fifteen hundred pounds stock, has expressly ordered his steward to burn it, if the rebels come that way: I don’t think this will make a bad figure in Mr. Chute’s brave gazette. As we go on prospering, I will take care to furnish him with paragraphs, till he kills Riviera(1138) and all the faction. When my lovely eagle comes, I will consecrate it to his Roman memory; don’t think I want spirits more than he, when I beg you to send me a case of drams: I remember your getting one for Mr. Trevor.
I guessed at having lost two letters from you in the packet-boat that was taken: I have received all you mention, but those of the 21st and 28th of September, one of which I suppose was about Gibberne: his mother has told me how happy you have made her and him, for which I much thank you and your usual good-nature. Adieu! I trust all my letters will grow better and better. You must have passed a lamentable
P. S. It is now generally believed from many circumstances, that the youngest Pretender is actually among the prisoners taken on board the Soleil: pray wish Mr. Chute joy for me.
(1134) Charles Radcliffe, brother of James, Earl of Derwentwater, who was executed for the share he took in the rebellion of 1715. Charles was executed in 1746, upon the sentence pronounced against him in 1716, which he had then evaded, by escaping from Newgate. His son was Bartholomew, third Earl of Newburgh, a Scotch title he inherited from his mother.-D.
(1135) Afterwards the well-known Duchess of Kingston.-D.
(1136) Charles Douglas, third Duke of Queensberry, and second Duke of Dover: died 1778.-D.
(1137) Mary Blount, Duchess of Norfolk, the wife of Duke Edward. She and her Husband were suspected of Jacobitism.-D.
(1138) Cardinal Riviera, promoted to the purple by the interest of the Pretender.
(1139) George Keppel, eldest son of the Earl of Albemarle, whom he succeeded in the title in 1754.
(1140) Edward, brother of Earl Cornwallis, groom of the bedchamber to the King, and afterwards governor of Nova Scotia.
(1141) George, eldest son of George, Earl of Cholmondeley, and of Mary, second daughter of Sir Robert Walpole.
455 Letter 189 To sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, December 9, 1745.
I am glad I did not write to you last post as I intended; I should have sent you an account that would have alarmed you, and the danger would have been over before the letter had crossed the sea. The Duke, from some strange want of intelligence, lay last week for four-and-twenty hours under arms at Stone, in Staffordshire, expecting the rebels every moment, while they were marching in all haste to Derby.(1142) The news of this threw the town into great consternation but his Royal Highness repaired his mistake, and got to Northampton, between the Highlanders and London. They got nine thousand pounds at Derby, and had the books brought to them, and obliged every body to give them what they had subscribed against them. Then they retreated a few miles, but returned again to Derby, got ten thousand pounds more, plundered the town, and burnt a house of the Countess of Exeter. They are gone again, and got back to Leake, in Staffordshire, but miserably harassed, and, it is said, have left
But the greatest demonstration of loyalty appeared on the prisoners being brought to town from the Soleil prize — the young man is certainly Mr. Radcliffe’s son; but the mob, persuaded of his being the youngest Pretender, could scarcely be restrained from tearing him to pieces all the way on the road, and at his arrival. He said he had heard of English mobs, but could not conceive they were so dreadful, and wished he had been shot at the battle of Dettingen, where he had been engaged. The father, whom they call Lord Derwentwater, said, on entering the Tower, that he had never expected to arrive there alive. For the young man, he must only be treated as a French captive; for the father, it is sufficient to produce him at the Old Bailey, and prove that he is the individual person condemned for the last rebellion, and so to Tyburn.
We begin to take up people, but it is with as much caution and timidity as women of quality begin to pawn their Jewels; we have not ventured upon any great stone yet!
The Provost of Edinburgh is in custody of a messenger; and the other day they seized an, odd man, who goes by the name of Count St. Germain. he has been here these two years, and will not tell who he is, or whence, but professes that he does not go by his right name. He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible. He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; a somebody that married a great fortune in Mexico, and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople; a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman, The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in vain. However, nothing has been made out against him -.’ he is released: and, what convinces me that he is not a gentleman, stays here, and talks of his being taken up for a spy.
I think these accounts, upon which you may depend, must raise your spirits, and figure in Mr. Chute’s royal journal.-But you don’t get my letters: I have sent you eleven since I came to town; how many of these have you received? Adieu!
(1142) The consternation was so great as to occasion that day being named Black Friday. (Fielding, in his True Patriot, says, that, “when the Highlanders, by a most incredible march, got between the Duke’s army and the metropolis, they struck a terror into it scarce to be credited.” An immediate rush was made upon the Bank of England, which, it is said, only escaped bankruptcy by paying in sixpences, to gain time. The shops in general were shut up; public business, for the most part, was suspended, and the restoration of the Stuarts was expected by all as no improbable or distant occurrence. See Lord Mahon, vol. iii. p. 444.)
(1143 “Charles arrived at Derby in high spirits, reflecting that he was now within a hundred and thirty miles of the capital. Accordingly, that evening, at supper, he studiously directed his conversation to his intended progress and expected triumph—whether it would be best for him to enter London on foot or on horseback, in Highland or in English dress. Far different were the thoughts of his followers, who, early next morning, laid before him their earnest and unanimous opinion for an immediate retreat to Scotland, Charles said, that, rather than go back, he would wish to be buried twenty feet under ground. On the following day he sullenly consented to retreat, but added, that, in future, he would call no more councils; since he was accountable to nobody for his actions, excepting to God and his father, and would therefore no longer either ask or accept their advice.” See Sir Walter Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather, vol. v. p. 226.-E.
(1144) Sir John Willes, knight, chief justice of the common pleas from 1737 to 1762.-D.
(1145) In the beginning of the year 1755, on rumours of a great armament at Brest, one Virette, a Swiss, who had been a kind of toad-eater to this St. Germain, was denounced to Lord Holderness for a spy; but Mr. Stanley going pretty surlily to his lordship, on his suspecting a friend of his, Virette was declared innocent, and the penitent secretary of state made him the honourable amends of a dinner in form. About the same time, a spy of ours was seized at Brest, but not happening to be acquainted with Mr. Stanley, was broken upon the wheel.
457 Letter 190 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington street, Dec. 20, 1745.
I have at last got your great letter by Mr. Gambier, and the views of the villas,(1146) for which I thank you much. I can’t say I think them too well done. nor the villas themselves pretty; but the prospects are charming. I have since received two more letters from you, of November 30th and December 7th. You seem to receive mine at last, though very slowly.
We have at last got a spring-tide of good luck. The rebels turned back from Derby, and have ever since been flying with the greatest precipitation.(1147) The Duke, with all his horse, and a thousand foot mounted, has pursued them with astonishing rapidity; and General Oglethorpe, with part of Wade’s horse, has crossed over upon them. There has been little prospect of coming up with their entire body, but it dismayed them; their stragglers were picked up, and the towns in their way preserved from plunder, by their not having time to do mischief. This morning an express is arrived from Lord Malton(1148) in Yorkshire, who has had an account of Oglethorpe’s cutting a part of them to pieces, and of the Duke’s overtaking their rear and entirely demolishing it. We believe all this; but, as it is not yet confirmed, don’t depend upon it too much. The fat East India ships are arrived safe from Ireland—I mean the prizes; and yesterday a letter arrived from Admiral Townshend in the West Indies, where he has fallen in with the Martinico fleet (each ship valued at eight thousand pounds), taken twenty, sunk ten, and driven ashore two men-of-war, their convoy, and battered them to pieces. All this will raise the pulse Of the stocks, which have been exceedingly low this week, and the Bank itself in danger. The private rich are making immense fortunes out of the public distress: the dread of the French invasion has occasioned this. They have a vast embarkation at Dunkirk; the Duc de Richelieu, Marquis Fimarcon, and other general officers, are named in form to command. Nay, it has been notified in form by the insolent Lord John Drummond,(1149) who has got to Scotland, and sent a drum to Marshal Wade, to announce himself commander for the French King in the war he designs to wage in England, and to propose a cartel for the exchange of prisoners. No answer has been made to this rebel; but the King has acquainted the Parliament with this audacious message. We have a vast fleet at sea; and the main body of the Duke’s army is coming down to the coast to prevent their landing, if they should slip our ships. Indeed, I can’t believe they will attempt coming hither, as they must hear of the destruction of the rebels in England; but they will probably, dribble away to Scotland, where the war may last considerably. Into England, I scarce believe the Highlanders will be drawn again:—to have come as far as Derby—to have found no rising in their favour, and to find themselves not strong enough to fight either army, will make lasting impressions!
Vernon, I hear, is recalled for his absurdities, and at his own request, and Martin named for his successor.(1150) We had yesterday a very remarkable day in the House: the King notified his having sent for six thousand Hessians into Scotland. Mr. Pelham, for an address of thanks. Lord Cornbury (indeed, an exceedingly honest man(1151)) was for thanking for the notice, not for the sending for the troops; and proposed to
Boetslaar is come again from Holland, but his errand not yet known. You will have heard of another victory,(1152) which the Prussian has gained over the Saxons; very bloody on both sides—but now he is master of Dresden.
We again think that we have got the second son,(1153) under the name of Macdonald. Nobody is permitted to see any of the prisoners.
In the midst of our political distresses, which, I assure you, have reduced the town to a state of Presbyterian dulness, we have been entertained with the marriage of the Duchess of Bridgewater(1154) and Dick Lyttelton — she, forty, plain, very rich, and with five children; he, six-and-twenty, handsome, poor, and proper to get her five more. I saw, the other day, a very good Irish letter. A gentleman in Dublin, full of the great qualities of my Lord Chesterfield, has written a panegyric on them, particularly on his affability and humility; with a comparison between him and the hauteur of all other lord-lieutenants. As an instance, he says, the earl was invited to a great dinner, whither he went, by mistake, at one, instead of three. The master was not at home, the lady not dressed, every thing in confusion. My lord was so humble as to dismiss his train and take a hackney-chair, and went and stayed with Mrs. Phipps till dinner-time—la belle humilit`e!
I am not at all surprised to hear of my cousin Don Sebastian’s stupidity. Why, child, he cannot articulate; how would you have had him educated? Cape Breton, Bastia, Martinico! if we are undone this year, at least we go out with `eclat. Good night.
1146) Villas of the Florentine nobility.
(1147) “Now few there were,” says Captain Daniel, in his MS. Memoirs, " who would go on foot if they could ride; and mighty taking, stealing, and pressing of horses there was amongst us! Diverting it was to see the Highlanders mounted, without either breeches, saddle, or any thing else but the bare back of the horses to ride on; and for their bridle, only a straw rope! in this manner do we march out of England.” See Lord Mahon’s Hist. vol. iii. p. 449.-E.
(1148) Sir Thomas Watson Wentworth, Knight of the Bath and Earl of Malton. [In April 1746, he was advanced to the dignity of Marquis of Rockingham. He died in 1750, was succeeded by his second son, Charles Watson Wentworth, second marquis; on whose death, in 1782, all the titles became extinct.]
(1149) Brother of the titular Duke of Perth. [And a general officer in the French army. “The amount of supplies brought by him reminds us,” says Sir Walter Scott, “of those administered to a man perishing of famine, by a comrade, who dropped into his mouth, from time to time, a small shelfish, affording nutriment enough to keep the sufferer from dying, but not sufficient to restore him to active exertion.”]
(1150) On the 2d of January, Admiral Vernon, having arrived in the Downs from a cruise, struck his flag; upon which, Admiral Martin took the command, in his room.-E.
(1151) Henry Hyde, only son of Henry, the last Earl of Clarendon. He was called up to the House of Peers, by the style of Lord Hyde, and died unmarried, before his father, at Paris, 1753. (When Lord Cornbury returned from his travels, Lord Essex, his brother-in-law, told him, with a great deal of pleasure, that he had got a handsome pension for him, All Lord Cornbury’s answer was, “How could you tell, my Lord, that I was to be sold? or, at least, how came you to know my price so exactly?”—“It was on this account,” says Spence, “that Pope complimented him with this passage-
“Would you be bless’t? despise low joys,
low gains;
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains;
Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains.”
On the death of the earl, a few months after his son, the viscounty of Cornbury and earldom of Clarendon became extinct.-E.]
(1152) The battle of Kesselsdorf, gained by Prince Leopold of Anhalt Dessau over the Saxon army, commanded by Count Rutowsky. This event took place on the 15th of December, and was followed by the taking of Dresden by the King of Prussia.-D.
(1153) Henry Stuart, afterwards Cardinal of York. This intelligence did not prove true.-D.
(1154) lady Rachel Russel, eldest sister of John, Duke of Bedford, and widow of Scrope Egerton, Duke of Bridgewator; married to her second husband, Colonel Richard Lyttelton, brother of Sir George Lyttelton, and afterwards Knight of the Bath.
460 Letter 191 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Jan, 3, 1746.
I deferred writing to you till I could tell you that the rebellion was at an end in England. The Duke has taken Carlisle, but was long enough before it to prove how basely or cowardly it was yielded to the rebel: you will see the particulars’ in the Gazette. His Royal Highness is expected in town every day; but I still think it probable that he will go to Scotland.(1155) That country is very clamorous for it. If the King does send him, it should not be with that sword of mercy with which the present family have governed those people. All the world agrees in the fitness of severity to highwaymen, for the sake of the innocent who suffer; then can rigour be ill-placed against banditti. who have so terrified, pillaged, and injured the poor people in Cumberland, Lancashire, Derbyshire, and the counties through which this rebellion has stalked? There is a military magistrate of some fierceness sent into Scotland with Wade’s army, who is coming to town; it is General Hawley.(1156) He will not sow the seeds of future disloyalty by too easily pardoning the present.
The French still go on with their preparations at Dunkirk and their sea-ports; but I think, few people believe now that they will be exerted against us: we have a numerous fleet in the Channel, and a large army on the shores opposite to France. The Dutch fear that all this storm is to burst on them. Since the Queen’s making peace with Prussia, the Dutch are applying to him for protection; and I am told, wake from their neutral lethargy.
We are in a good quiet state here in town; the Parliament is reposing itself for the holidays; the ministry is in private agitation; the Cobham part of the coalition is going to be disbanded; Pitt’s wild ambition cannot content itself with what he had asked, and had granted: and he has driven Lyttelton and the Grenvilles to adopt all his extravagances. But then, they are at ’variance again within themselves: Lyttelton’s wife(1157) hates Pitt, and does not approve his governing her husband and hurting their family; so that, at present, it seems, he does not care to be a martyr to Pitt’s caprices, which are in excellent training; for he is governed by her mad Grace of Queensberry. All this makes foul weather; but, to me, it is only a cloudy landscape.
The Prince has dismissed Hume Campbell(1158) who was his solicitor, for attacking Lord Tweedale(1159) on the Scotch affairs: the latter has resigned the seals of secretary of state for Scotland to-day. I conclude, when the holidays are over, and the rebellion travelled so far back, we shall have warm inquiries in Parliament. This is a short letter, I perceive; but I know nothing more; and the Carlisle part of it will make you wear, your beaver more erect than I believe you have of late. Adieu!
(1155) The Duke of Cumberland entered Carlisle on the 31 st of December; but his pursuit of the Highlanders in person was interrupted by despatches, which called him to London, to be ready to take command against the projected invasion from France.-E.
(1156) “Hawley,” says Lord Mahon, “was an officer of some experience, but destitute of capacity, and hated, not merely by his enemies, but by his own soldiers, for a most violent and vindictive temper. One of his first measures, on arriving at Edinburgh, to take the chief command, was to order two gibbets to be erected, ready for the rebels who might fall into his hands; and, with a similar view, he bid several executioners attend his army on his march.” Vol. ii. p. 357.
(1157) Lucy Fortescue, sister of Lord Clinton, first wife of Sir George, afterwards Lord Lyttelton. [She died in January 1747, at the age of twenty-nine.
(1158) twin-brother to the Earl of Marchmont; who, in his Diary .of the 2d of January, says, “My brother told me he had been, last night, with Mr. Drax, the Prince’s secretary, when he had notified to him that the Prince expected all his family to go together to support the measures of the administration, and that, as Mr. Hume did not act so, he was to write him a letter, discharging him, In the conversation, Mr. Drax said, that the Prince was to support the Pelhams, and that his dismission was to be ascribed to Lord Granville. My brother said, that he had nothing to say to the Prince, other than that he would support all the measures he thought conducive to the King’s interests, but no others."-E.
(1159) The Marquis of Tweedale was one of the discontented Whigs, during the administration of Sir Robert Walpole; on whose removal he came to court, and was made secretary of state, attaching himself to Lord Granville’s faction, whose youngest daughter, Frances, he afterwards married, He was reckoned a good civilian, but was a very dull man.
461 Letter 192 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Jan. 17,1746.,
It is a very good symptom, I can tell you, that I write to you seldom -. it is a fortnight since my last; and nothing material has happened in this interval. The rebels are intrenching and fortifying themselves in Scotland; and what a despicable affair is a rebellion upon the defensive! General Hawley is marched from Edinburgh, to put it quite out. I must give you some idea of this man, who will give a mortal blow to the pride of the Scotch nobility. He is called Lord chief Justice; frequent and sudden executions are his passion. Last winter he had intelligence of a spy to come from the French army: the first notice our army had of his arrival, was by seeing him dangle on a gallows in his mufti and boots. One of the surgeons of the army begged the body of a soldier who was hanged for desertion, to dissect: “Well,” said Hawley, “but then you shall give me the skeleton to hang up in the guard-room.” He is very brave and able; with no small bias to the brutal. Two years ago, when he arrived at Ghent, the magistrates, according to customs sent a gentleman, with the offer of a sum Of money to engage his favour. He told the gentleman, in great wrath, that the King his master paid him, and that he should go tell the magistrates so; at the same time dragging him to the head of the stairs, and kicking him down. He then went to the town-hall; on their refusing him entrance, he burst open the door with his foot, and seated himself abruptly: told them how he had been affronted, was persuaded they had no hand in it, and demanded to have the gentleman given up to him, who never dared to appear in the town while he stayed in it. Now I am telling you anecdotes of him, you shall hear two more. When the Prince of Hesse, our son-in-law, arrived at Brussels, and found Hawley did not wait on him, the Prince sent to know if he expected the first visit? He replied, “He always expected that inferior officers should wait on their commanders; and not only that, but he gave his Highness but half an hour to consider of it.” The Prince went to him. I believe I told you of Lord John Drummond sending a drum to Wade to propose a cartel. Wade returned a civil answer, which had the King’s and council’s approbation. When the drummer arrived with it at Edinburgh, Hawley opened it and threw it into the fire, would not let the drummer go back, but made him write to Lord J. “That rebels were not to be treated with.” If you don’t think that spirit like this will do-do you see, I would not give a farthing for your presumption.(1160)
The French invasion is laid aside; we are turning our hands to war again upon the continent. The House of Commons is something of which I can give YOU no description: Mr. Pitt, the meteor of it, Is neither yet in place, nor his friends out. Some Tories oppose: Mr. Pelham is distressed, and has vast majorities. When the scene clears a little, I will tell you more of it.
The two last letters I have had from you, are of December 21 and January 4. You was then still in uneasiness; by this time I hope you have no other distresses than are naturally incident to your miny-ness.
I never hear any thing of the Countess(1161) except just now, that she is grown tired of sublunary affairs, and willing to come to a composition with her lord: I believe that the price will be two thousand a-year. The other day, his and her lawyers were talking over the affair before her and several other people: her counsel, in the heat of the dispute, said to my lord’s lawyers, “Sir, Sir, we shall be able to prove that her ladyship was denied nuptial rights and conjugal enjoyments for seven years.” It was excellent! My lord must have had matrimonial talents indeed, to have reached to Italy; besides, you know, she made it a point after her son was born, not to sleep with her husband.
Thank you for the little medal. I am glad I have nothing more to tell you-you little expected that we should so soon recover our tranquility. Adieu!
(1160) Glover, in his Memoirs, speaks of Hawley with great contempt, and talks of “his beastly ignorance and negligence,” which occasioned the loss of the battle of Falkirk.-D.
(1161) Lady Orford.
463 Letter 193
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Jan. 28, 1746.
Do they send you the gazettes as they used to do? If you have them, you will find there an account of another battle lost in Scotland. Our arms cannot succeed there. Hawley, of whom I said so much to you in my last, has been as unsuccessful as Cope, and by almost every circumstance the same, except that Hawley had less want of skill and much more presumption. The very same dragoons ran away at Falkirk, that ran away at Preston Pans.(1162) Though we had seven thousand men, and the rebels but five, we had scarce three regiments that behaved well. General Huske and Brigadier Cholmondeley,(1163) my lord’s brother, shone extremely — the former beat the enemy’s. right wing; and the latter, by rallying two regiments, prevented the pursuit. Our loss is trifling: for many of the rebels fled as fast as the glorious dragoons- but we have lost some good officers, particularly Sir Robert Monroe; and seven pieces of cannon. A worse loss is apprehended, Stirling Castle, which could hold out but ten days; and that term expires to-morrow. The Duke is gone post to Edinburgh, where he hoped to arrive to-night; if possible, to relieve Stirling. Another battle will certainly be fought before you receive this;
Some Of our prisoners in Scotland (the former Prisoners) are returned. They had the Privilege of walking about the town, where they were confined, upon their parole: the militia of the country rose and set them at liberty. General Hawley is so strict as to think they should be sent back; but nobody here comprehends such refinement: they could not give their word that the town should not be taken. There are two or three others, who will lay the government under difficulties, when we have got over the rebellion. They were come to England on their parole; and when the executions begin, they must in honour be given up—the question indeed will be, to whom?
Adieu! my dear sir! I write you this short letter, rather than be taxed with negligence on such an event; though, YOU perceive, I know nothing but what you will se in the printed papers.
P.S. The Hessians would not act, because we would not settle a cartel with rebels!
(1162) “Hawley was never seen in the field during the battle; and every thing would have gone to wreck, in a worse manner than at Preston, if General Huske had not acted with judgment and courage, and appeared every where.” Culloden Papers, p. 267.-E.
(1163) The Hon. James Cholmondeley, second son of George, second Earl of Cholmondeley. He served with distinction both in Flanders and Scotland. In 1750, he became colonel of the Inniskillen regiment of dragoons; and died in 1775.-D.
464 Letter 194 To Sir Horace MANN. Arlington Street Feb. 7, 1746.
Till yesterday that I received your last of January 27, I was very uneasy at finding you still remained under the same anxiety about the rebellion, when it had so long ceased to be formidable with us: but you have got all my letters, and are out of your pain. Hawley’s defeat (or at least what was called so, for I am persuaded that the victory was ours as far as there was any fighting, which indeed lay in a very small compass, the great body of each army running away) will have thrown you back into your terrors; but here is a letter to calm you again. All Monday and Tuesday we were concluding that the
The French seem to be at the eve of taking Antwerp and Brussels, the latter of which is actually besieged. In this case I don’t see how we can send an army abroad this summer, for there will be no considerable towns in Flanders left in the possession of the Empress-Queen.
The new regiments, of which I told you so much, have again been in dispute: as their term was near expired, the ministry proposed to continue them for four months longer. This was last Friday, when, as we every hour expected the news of a conclusive battle, which, if favourable, would render them useless, Mr. Fox, the general against the new regiments, begged it might only be postponed till the following Wednesday, but 170 against 89 voted them that very day. On the very Wednesday came the news of the flight of the rebels; and two days before that, news from Chester of Lord Gower’s new regiment having mutinied, on hearing that they were to be continued beyond the term for which they had listed.
At court all is confusion-. the King, at Lord Bath’s instigation, has absolutely refused to make Pitt secretary at war.(1164) How this will end, I don’t know, but I don’t believe in bloodshed: neither side is famous for being incapable of yielding.
I wish you joy of having the Chutes again, though I am a little sorry that their bravery was not rewarded by staying at Rome till they could triumph in their turn: however, I don’t believe that at Florence you want opportunities of exulting. That Monro you mention was made travelling physician by my father’s interest, who had great regard for the old doctor.(1165) if he has any skill in quacking madmen, his art may perhaps be of service now in the Pretender’s court.
I beg my eagle may not come till it has the opportunity of a man-of-war: we have lost so many merchantmen lately, that I should never expect to receive it that way.
I can say nothing to your opinion of the young Pretender being a cheat; nor, as the rebellion is near at end, do I see what end it would answer to prove him original or spurious. However, as you seem to dwell upon it, I will mention it again to my uncle.
I hear that my sister-Countess is projecting her return, being quite sick of England, where nobody visits her. She says there is not one woman of sense in England. Her journey, however, will have turned to account, and, I believe, end in almost doubling her allowance. Adieu! my dear child; love the Chutes for me as well as for yourself.
(1164) Lord Marchmont, in his Diary of Feb. 9, says, “My brother told me, that on the ministry insisting on Mr. Pitt being secretary at war, and the King having said he should not be his secretary, Lord Bath had gone to the King and told him, though he had resolved never to take a place, yet now, finding his ministers would force a servant on him, rather than he should be so used, he would undertake to get him his money. The King said. the ministers had the Parliament; Lord Bath said, his Majesty had it, and not they: and that hereupon the King thanked him; and it was expected the ministers would all be out."-E.
(1165) In 1743, Dr. John Monro was appointed, through the influence of Sir Robert Walpole, to one of the Radcliffe travelling fellowships. In 1752, he succeeded his father as physician to Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals. In 1758, he published “Remarks on Dr. Battie’s Treatise on Madness,” in which he vindicated his father’s treatment of that disorder. He died in 1791.-E.
466 Letter 195 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Feb. 14, 1746.
By the relation I am going to make, you will think that I am describing Turkish, not English revolutions; and will cast your eye upwards to see if my letter is not dated from Constantinople. Indeed, violent as the changes have been, there has been no bloodshed; no Grand Vizier has had a cravat made of a bowstring, no Janizaries have taken upon them to alter the succession, no Grand Signior is deposed—only his Sublime Highness’s dignity has been a little impaired. Oh! I forgot; I ought not to frighten you; you will interpret all these fine allusions, and think on the rebellion—pho! we are such considerable proficients in politics, that we can form rebellions within rebellions, and turn a government topsy-turvy at London, while we are engaged in a civil war in Scotland. In short, I gave you a hint last week of an insurrection in the closet, and of Lord Bath having prevented Pitt from being secretary at war. The ministry gave up that point; but finding that a change had been made in a scheme of foreign politics, which they had laid before the King, and for which he had thanked them; and perceiving some symptoms of a resolution to dismiss them at the end of the session, they came to a sudden determination not to do Lord Granville’s business by carrying the supplies, and then to be turned out: so on Monday morning, to the astonishment of every body, the two secretaries of state threw up the seals; and the next day Mr. Pelham, with the rest of the Treasury, the Duke of Bedford with the Admiralty, Lord Gower, privy seal,
I should tell you too, that Lord Bath’s being of the enterprise contributed hugely to poison the success of it. In short, his lordship, whose politics were never characterized by steadiness, found that he had not courage enough to take the Treasury. You may guess how ill laid his schemes were, when be durst not indulge both his ambition and avarice! In short, on Wednesday morning (pray mind, this was the very Wednesday after the Monday on which the chance had happened,) he went to the King, and told him he had tried the House of Commons, and found it would not do!(1167) Bounce! went all the project into shivers, like the vessels in Ben Jonson’s Alchymist, when they are on the brink of the philosopher’s stone. The poor King, who, from being fatigued with the Duke of Newcastle, and sick of Pelham’s timidity and compromises, had given in to this mad hurly-burly of alterations, was confounded with having floundered to no purpose, and to find himself more than ever in the power of men he hated, shut himself up in his closet, and refused to admit any more of the persons who were pouring in upon him with white sticks, and golden keys, and commissions, etc. At last he sent for Winnington, and told him, he was the only honest man about him, and he should have the honour of a reconciliation, and sent him to Mr. Pelham to desire they would all return to their employments.(1168)
Lord Granville is as jolly as ever; laughs and drinks, and owns it was mad, and owns he -would do it again to-morrow. It would not be quite so safe, indeed, to try it soon again, for the triumphant party are not at all in the humour to be turned out every time his lordship has drunk a bottle too much; and that House of Commons that he could not make do for him, would do to send him to the Tower till he was sober. This was the very worst period he could have selected, when the fears of men had made them throw themselves absolutely into all measures of Government to secure the government itself; and that temporary strength of Pelham has my Lord Granville contrived to fix to him: and people will be glad to ascribe to the Merit and virtue of the ministry, what they would be ashamed to Own, but was really the effect of their own apprehensions. It was a good idea Of somebody, when no man would accept a place under the new system, that Granville and Bath were met going about the streets, calling odd man! as the hackney chairman do when they want a partner. This little faction of Lord Granville goes by the name of the Grandvillains.
There! who would think that I had written you an entire history in the compass of three sides of paper?(1169) ***Vertot would have composed a volume on this event. and entitled it, the Revolutions of England. You will wonder at not having it notified to you by Lord Granville himself, as is customary for new secretaries of state: when they mentioned to him writing to Italy, he said-"To Italy! no: before the courier can get thither, I shall be out again.” it absolutely makes one laugh: as serious as the consequences might be, it is impossible to hate a politician of such jovial good-humour. I am told that he ordered the packet-boat to be stopped at Harwich till Saturday, till he should have time to determine what he would write to Holland. This will make the Dutch receive the news of the double revolution at the same instant.
Duke and his name are pursuing the scattered rebels into their very mountains, determined to root out sedition entirely. It is believed, and we expect to hear, that the young Pretender is embarked and gone. Wish the Chutes joy of the happy conclusion of this affair!
Adieu! my dear child! After describing two revolutions, and announcing the termination of a rebellion, it would be below the dignity of my letter to talk of any thing of less moment. Next post I may possibly descend out of my historical buskin, and converse with you more familiarly—en attendant, gentle reader, I am, your sincere well-wisher,
Horace Walpole, Historiographer
to the high and mighty Lord John, Earl Granville.
(1166) Henry Herbert, ninth Earl of Pembroke, an intelligent lover of the arts, and an amateur architect of considerable merit. Walpole says of him, in his account of Sculptors and Architects, The soul of Inigo Jones, who had been patronised by his ancestors, seemed still to hover over its favourite Wilton, and to have assisted the Muses of Arts in the education of this noble person. No man had a purer taste in building than Earl Henry, of which he gave a few specimens: besides his works at Wilton, the new Lodge in Windsor Park; the Countess of Suffolk’s house, at Marble Hill, Twickenham; the Water-house, in Lord Orford’s park at Houghton, are incontestable proofs of Lord Pembroke’s taste: it was more than taste; it was passion for the utility and honour of his country that engaged his lordship to promote and assiduously overlook the construction of Westminster Bridge by the ingenious M. Lahelye, a man that deserves more notice than this slight encomium can bestow.” He died in January 1750-1.-E.
(1167) “Feb. 13. Lord Bolingbroke told me, that Bath had resigned, and all was now over. He approved of what had been done, though he owned that Walpole’S faction had done what he had wrote every King must expect who nurses up a faction by governing by a party; and that it was a most indecent thing, and must render the King contemptible. Lord Cobham told me, that the King had yesterday sent Winnington to stop the resignations; that he had offered Winnington the seat of exchequer, after Bath had resigned it; but Winnington said it would not do. At court I met Lord Granville, who is still secretary, but declared to be ready to resign when the King pleases.” Marchmont Diary.-E.
(1168) In a letter to the Duke of Newcastle, of the 18th, Lord Chesterfield says, " Your victory is complete: for God’s sake pursue it. Good policy still more than resentment, requires that Granville and Bath should be marked-out,’and all their people cut off. Every body now sees and knows that you have the power; let them see and know too, that you will use it. A general run ought to be made upon Bath by all your followers and writers."-E.
(1169) The projectors of this ,attempt to remove the ministers were overwhelmed with ridicule. Among other jeux d’esprit, was “A History of the Long Administration,” bound up like the works printed for children, and sold for a penny; and of which one would suspect Walpole to be the author. It concluded as follows: “And thus endeth the second and last part of this astonishing administration, which lasted forty-eight hours, three quarters, seven minutes, and eleven seconds; which may be truly called the most wise and most Honest of all administrations, the minister having, to the astonishment of all wise men, never transacted one rash thing, and, what is more marvellous, left as much money in the treasury as he found in it. This worthy history I have faithfully recorded in this mighty volume, that it may be read with the valuable works of our immortal countryman, Thomas Thumb, by our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, to the end of the world:’-E.
469 Letter 196 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, March 6, 1746.
I know I have missed two or three posts, but you have lost nothing: you perhaps expected that our mighty commotions did not subside at once, and that you should still hear of struggles and more shocks; but it all ended at once; with only some removals and promotions which you saw in the Gazette. I should have written, however, but I have been hurried with my sister’S(1170) wedding; but all the ceremony of that too is over now, and the dinners and the visits.
The rebellion has fetched breath; the dispersed clans have reunited and marched to Inverness, from whence Lord Loudon was forced to retreat, leaving a garrison in the castle, which has since yielded without firing a gun. Their numbers are now reckoned at seven thousand: old Lord lovat(1171) has carried them a thousand Frasers. The French continually drop them a ship or two: we took two, with the Duke of Berwick’s brother on board: it seems evident that they design to keep up our disturbances as long as possible, to prevent our sending any troops to Flanders. Upon the prospect of the rebellion being at an end, the Hessians were ordered back, but luckily were not gone; and now are quartered to prevent the rebels slipping the Duke, (who is marching to them,) and returning into England. This counter-order was given in the morning, and in the evening came out the Gazette, and said the Hessians are to go away. This doubling style in the ministry is grown so characteristic, that the French are actually playing a farce, in which harlequin enters, as an English courier, with two bundles of despatches fastened to his belly and his back: they ask him what the one is? “Eh! Ces sont mes ordres.” and what the other? “Mais elles sont mes contre-ordres.”
We have been a little disturbed in some other of our politics, by the news of the King of Sardinia having made his peace: I think it comes out now that he absolutely had concluded one with France, but that the haughty court of Spain rejected it: what the Austrian pride had driven him to, the Spanish pride drove him from. You will allow that our affairs are critically bad, when all our hopes centre in that honest monarch, the King of Prussia-but so it is: and I own I see nothing that can restore us to being a great nation but his interposition. Many schemes are framed, of making him Stadtholder of Holland, or Duke of Burgundy in Flanders, in lieu of the Silesias, or altogether, and that I think would follow-but I don’t know how far any of these have been carried into propositions.
I see by your letters that our fomentations of the Corsican rebellion have had no better success than the French tampering in ours-for ours, I don’t expect it will be quite at an end, till it is made one of the conditions of peace, that they shall give it no assistance.
The smallpox has been making great havoc in London; the new Lord Rockingham,(1172) whom I believe you knew when only Thomas Watson, is dead of it, and the title extinct. My Lady Conway(1173) has had it, but escaped.
My brother is on the point of finishing all his affairs with his countess; she is to have fifteen hundred per year; and her mother gives her two thousand pounds. I suppose this will send her back to you, added to her disappointments in politics, in which it appears she has been tampering. Don’t you remember a very foolish knight, one Sir Bourchier Wrey?(1174) Well, you do: the day Lord Bath was in the Treasury, that one day! she wrote to Sir Bourchier at Exeter, to tell him that now their friends were coming into power, and it was a brave opportunity for him to Come Up and make his own terms. He came, and is lodged in her house, and sends about cards to invite people to come and see him at the Countess of Orford’s. There is a little fracas I hear in their domestic; the Abb`e-Secretary has got one of the maids with child. I have seen the dame herself but once these two months, when she came into the Opera at the end of the first act, fierce as an incensed turkey-cock, you know her look, and towing after her Sir Francis Dashwood’s new Wife,(1175) a poor forlorn Presbyterian prude, whom he obliges to consort with her.
Adieu! for I think I have now told you all I know. I am very sorry that you are so near losing the good Chutes, but I cannot help having an eye to myself in their coming to England.
(1170) Lady Maria Walpole, married to Charles Churchill, Esq.
(1171) Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, a man of parts, but of infamous character. He had the folly, at the age of eighty, to enter into the rebellion, upon a promise from the Pretender, that he would make him Duke of Fraser. He was taken, tried, and beheaded.-D.
)1172) Thomas Watson, third Earl of Rockingham, succeeded his elder brother Lewis in the family honours in 1745, and died himself in 1746. The earldom extinguished upon his death’; but the Barony of Rockingham devolved upon his kinsman, Thomas Watson Wentworth, Earl of Malton, who was soon afterwards created Marquis of Rockingham. ant`e, p. 458, letter 191.
(1173) Lady Isabella Fitzroy, daughter of Charles, Duke of Grafton, and wife of Francis, Lord Conway, afterwards Earl of Hertford.
(1174) Sir Bourchier Wrey of Tavistock, in Devonshire, the fifth baronet of the family. He was member of parliament for Barnstaple, and died in 1784.-D.
(1175) Widow of Sir Richard Ellis.
470 Letter 197
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, March 21, 1746.
I have no new triumphs of the Duke to send you: he has been detained a great while at Aberdeen by the snows. The rebels have gathered numbers again, and have taken Fort Augustus, and are marching to Fort William. The Duke complains extremely of the loyal Scotch: says he can get no intelligence, and reckons himself more in an enemy’s country, than when he was warring with the French in Flanders. They profess the big professions wherever he comes, but, before he is out of sight of any town, beat up for volunteers for rebels. We see no prospect of his return, for he must stay in Scotland while the rebellion lasts; and the existence of that seems too intimately connected with the being of Scotland, to expect it should soon be annihilated.
We rejoice at the victories of the King of Sardinia, whom we thought lost to our cause. To-day we are to vote subsidies to the Electors of Cologne and Mentz. I don’t know whether they will be opposed by the Electoral Prince;(1176) but he has lately erected a new opposition, by the councils of Lord Bath, who has got him from Lord Granville: the latter and his faction act with the court.
I have told you to the utmost extent of my political knowledge; of private history there is nothing new. Don’t think, my dear child, that I hurry over my letters, or neglect writing to you; I assure you I never do, when I have the least grain to lap up in a letter: but consider how many chapters of correspondence are extinct: Pope and poetry are dead! Patriotism has kissed hands on accepting a place: the Ladies O. and T.’ have exhausted scandal both in their persons and conversations: divinity and controversy are grown good Christians, say their prayers and spare their neighbours; and I think even self-murder is out of fashion. Now judge whether a correspondent can furnish matter for the common intercourse of the post.
Pray what luxurious debauch has Mr. Chute been guilty of, that he is laid up with the gout? I mean, that he was, for I hope his fit has not lasted till now. If you are ever so angry, I must say, I flatter myself I shall see him before my eagle, which I beg may repose itself still at Leghorn, for the French privateers have taken such numbers of our merchantmen, that I cannot think of suffering it to come that way. If you should meet with a good opportunity of a man-of-war, let it come-or I will postpone my impatience. Adieu!
P. S. I had sealed my letter, but break it open, to tell you that an account is just arrived of two of our privateers having met eight-and- twenty transports going with supplies to the Brest fleet, and sunk ten, taken four, and driven the rest on shore.
)1176) The prince of Wales.
471 Letter 198
To sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, March 28, 1746.
I don’t at all recollect what was in those two letters of mine, which I find you have lost: for your sake, as you must be impatient for English news, I am sorry you grow subject to these miscarriages but in general, I believe there is little of consequence in my correspondence.
The Duke has not yet left Aberdeen, for want of his supplies; but by a party which he sent out, and in which Mr. Conway was, the rebels do not seem to have recovered their spirits, though they have recruited their numbers; for eight hundred of them fled on the first appearance of our detachment, and quitted an advantageous post. As much as you know, and as much as you have lately heard of Scotch finesse, you will yet be startled at the refinements that nation have made upon their own policy. Lord Fortrose,(1177) whose father was in the last rebellion, and who has himself been restored to his fortune, is in Parliament
The Parliament is adjourned for the Easter holidays. Princess Caroline is going to the Bath for a rheumatism. The countess, whose return you seem so much to dread, has entertained the town with an excellent vulgarism. She happened One night at the Opera to sit by Peggy Banks,(1178) a celebrated beauty, and asked her several questions about the singers and dancers, which the other naturally answered, as one woman of fashion answers another. The next morning Sir Bourchier Wrey sent Miss Banks an opera-ticket, and my lady sent her a card, to thank her for her civilities to her the night before, and that she intended to wait on her very soon. Do but think of Sir B. Wrey’s paying a woman of fashion for being civil to my Lady O.! Sure no apothecary’s wife in a market-town could know less of the world than these two people! The operas flourish more than in any latter years; the composer is Gluck, a German: he is to have a benefit, at which he is to play on a set of drinking-glasses, which he modulates with water—I think I have heard you speak of having seen some such thing.
You will see in the papers long accounts of a most shocking murder, that has been committed by a lad(1179) on his mistress, who was found dead in her bedchamber, with an hundred wounds; her brains beaten out, stabbed, her face, back, and breasts slashed in twenty places- one hears of nothing else wherever one goes. But adieu! it is time to finish a letter, when one is reduced for news to the casualties of the week.
(1177) William Mackenzie, fifth Earl of Seaforth, the father of Kenneth Lord Fortrose, had been engaged in the rebellion of 1715, and was attainted. He died in 1740. In consequence of his attainder, his son never assumed the title of Seaforth, but continued to be called Lord Fortrose, the second title of the family. He was member of parliament in 1741 for the burghs of Fortrose, etc., and in 1747 and 1754, for the county of Ross, He died in 1762. His only son, Kenneth, was created Viscount Fortrose, and Earl of Seaforth in Ireland.-D.
(1178_ Margaret, sister of John Hodgkinson Bank,.;, Esq.; married, in 1757, to the Hon. Henry Grenville, fifth son of the Countess Temple, who was appointed governor of Barbadoes in 1746, and ambassador to the Ottoman Porte in 1761.-D.
(1179) One Henderson, hanged for murdering Mrs. Dalrymple.
473 Letter 199 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, April 15, 1746.
Your triumphs in Italy are in high fashion: till very lately, Italy was scarce ever mentioned as part of the scene of war. The apprehensions of your great King making his peace began to alarm us and when we just believed it finished, we have received nothing but torrents of good news. The King of Sardinia(1180) has not only carried his own character and success to the highest pitch, but seems to have given a turn to the general face of the war, which has a much more favourable aspect than was to be expected three months ago, has made himself as considerable in the scale as the Prussian, but with real valour, and as great abilities, and without the infamy, of the other’s politics.
The rebellion seems once more at its last gasp; the Duke is marched, and the rebels fly before him, in the utmost want of money. The famous Hazard sloop is taken, with two hundred men and officers, and about eight thousand pounds in money, from France. In the midst of such good news from thence, Mr. Conway has got a regiment, for which, I am sure, you will take part in my joy. In Flanders we propose to make another great effort, with an army of above ninety thousand men; that is, forty Dutch, above thirty Austrians, eighteen Hanoverians, the Hessians, who are to return; and we propose twelve thousand Saxons, but no English; though, if the rebellion is at all suppressed in any time, I imagine some of our troops will go, and the Duke command the whole: in the mean time, the army will be under Prince Waldeck and Bathiani. You will wonder at my running so glibly over eighteen thousand Hanoverians, especially as they are all to be in our pay, but the nation’s digestion has been much facilitated by the pill given to Pitt, of vice-treasurer of Ireland.(1181) Last Friday was the debate on this subject, when we carried these troops by 255 against 122: Pitt, Lyttelton, three Grenvilles, and Lord BarringTton, all voting roundly for them, though the eldest Grenville, two years ago, had declared in the House, that he would seal it with his blood that he never would give his vote for a Hanoverian. Don’t you shudder at such perjury? and this in a republic, and where there is no religion that dispenses with oaths! Pitt was the only one of this ominous band that opened his — mouth,(1182) and it was to add impudence to profligacy; but no criminal at the Place de Greve was ever so racked as he was by Dr. Lee, a friend of Lord Granville, who gave him the question both ordinary and extraordinary.
General Hawley has been tried (not in person, you may believe) and condemned by a Scotch jury for murder, on hanging a spy. What do you say to this? or what will you say when I tell you, that Mr. Ratcliffe, who has been so long confined in the Tower, and supposed the Pretender’s youngest son, is not only suffered to return to France, but was entertained at a great dinner by the Duke of Richmond as a relation!(1183) The same Duke has refused his beautiful Lady Emily to Lord Kildare,(1184) the richest and the first peer of Ireland, on a ridiculous notion of the King’s evil being in the family—but sure that ought to be no objection: a very little grain more of pride and Stuartism might persuade all the royal bastards that they have a faculty of curing that distemper.
The other day, an odd accidental discovery was made; some of the Duke’s baggage, which he did not want, was sent back from Scotland, with a bill of the contents. Soon after, -.another large parcel, but not specified in the bill, was brought to the captain, directed like the rest. When they came to the Custom-house here, it was observed, and they sent to Mr. Poyntz,(1185) to know what they should do: be bade them open it, suspecting some trick; but when they did, they found a large crucifix, copes, rich vestments, beads, and heaps of such like trumpery, consigned from the titulary primate of Scotland, who is with the rebels: they imagine, with the privity of some of the vessels, to be conveyed to somebody here in town.
Now I am telling you odd events, I must relate one of the strangest I ever heard. Last week, an elderly woman gave information against her maid for coining, and the trial came on at the Old Bailey. The mistress deposed, that having been left a widow several years ago, with four children, and no possibility of maintaining them, she had taken to coining: that she used to buy old pewter-pots, out Of each of which she made as many shillings, etc. as she could put off for three pounds, and that by this practice she had bred up her children, bound them out apprentices, and set herself up in a little shop, by which she got a comfortable livelihood; that she had now given over coining, and indicted her maid as accomplice. The maid in her defence said, “That when her mistress hired her, she told her that she did something up in a garret into which she must never inquire: that all she knew of the matter was, that her mistress had often given her moulds to clean, which she did, as it was her duty: that, indeed, she had sometimes seen pieces of pewter-pots cut, and did suspect her mistress of coining; but that she never had had, or put off; one single piece of bad money.” The judge asked the mistress if this was true; she answered, “Yes; and that she believed her maid was as honest a creature as ever lived; but that, knowing herself in her power, she never could be at peace; that she knew,-by informing, she should secure herself; and not doubting but the maid’s real innocence would appear, she concluded the poor girl would come to no harm.” The judge flew into the greatest rage; told her he wished he could stretch the law to hang her, and feared he could not bring off the maid for having concealed the crime; but, however, the jury did bring her in not guilty. I think I never heard a more particular instance of parts and villainy.
I inclose a letter for Stosch, which was left here with a scrap of paper, with these words; “Mr. Natter is desired to send the letters for Baron de Stosch, in Florence, by Mr. H. W.” I don’t know who Mr. Natter(1186) is, nor who makes him this request, but I desire Mr. Stosch will immediately put an end to this method of correspondence; for I shall not risk my letters to you by containing his, nor will I be post to such a dirty fellow.
Your last was of March 22d, and you mention Madame Suares illness; I hope she is better, and Mr. Chute’s gout better. I love to hear of my Florentine acquaintance, though they all seem to have forgot me; especially the Princess, whom YOU never mention. Does she never ask after me? Tell me a little of the state of her state, her amours, devotions, and appetite. I must transcribe a paragraph out of an old book of letters,(1187) printed in 1660, which I met with-the other day: “My thoughts upon the reading your letter made me stop in Florence, and go no farther, than to consider the happiness of them who live in that town, where the people come so near to angels in knowledge, that they can counterfeit heaven well enough to give their friends a taste of it in this life.” I agree to the happiness of living in Florence, but I am sure knowledge was not one of its recommendations, which never was any where it a lower ebb—I had forgot; I beg Dr. Cocchi’s pardon, who is much an exception; how does he do? Adieu!
P. S. Lord Malton, who is the nearest heir-male to the extinct earldom of Rockingham, and has succeeded to a barony belonging to it, is to have his own earldom erected into a marquisate, with the title of Rockingham. Vernon, is struck off the list of admirals.
(1180) Charles Emmanuel the Third, an able sovereign, and the last of the House of Savoy who possessed any portion of that talent for which the race had previously been so celebrated.-.D.
(1181) On the death of Mr. Winnington, in the following month, Mr. Pitt was appointed paymaster of the forces, and chosen of the privy council.-E.
(1182) In a letter to the Duke of Cumberland, of the 17th, the Duke of Newcastle says, “Mr. Pitt spoke so well, that the premier told me he had the dignity of Sir William Wyndham, the wit of Mr. Pulteney, and the knowledge and judgment of Sir Robert Walpole: in short, he said all that was right for the King, kind and respectful to the old corps, and resolute and contemptuous of the Tory opposition."-E.
(1183) He was related to the Duke’s mother by the Countess of Newburgh, his mother.
(1184) Afterwards Duke of Leinster. he married Lady Emily in the following February.-E.
(1185) Stephen Poyntz, treasurer, and formerly governor to the Duke.
(1186) He was an engraver of seals.
(1187) A Collection of letters made by Sir Toby Matthews. [In this Volume will be found an interesting account of the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh.]
476 Letter 200 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, April 25, 1746.
You have bid me for some time send you good news-well! I think I will. How good would you have it? must it be a total victory over the rebels; with not only the Boy, that is here, killed, but the other, that is not here, too; their whole army put to the sword, besides -in infinite number of prisoners; all the Jacobite estates in England confiscated, and all those in Scotland—what would you have done with them?—or could you be content with something much under this? how much will you abate? will you compound for Lord John Drummond, taken by accident? or for three Presbyterian parsons, who have very poor livings, stoutly refusing to pay a large contribution to the rebels? Come, I will deal as well with you as I can, and for once, but not to make a practice of it, will let you have a victory! My friend, Lord Bury,(1188) arrived this morning from the Duke, though the news was got here before him; for, with all our victory, it was not thought safe to send him through the heart of Scotland; so he was shipped at Inverness, within an hour after the Duke entered the town, kept beating at sea five days, and then put on shore at North Berwick, from whence he came post in less than three days to London; but with a fever upon him, for which he had twice been blooded but the day before the battle; but he is young, and high in spirits, and I flatter myself will not suffer from this kindness of the Duke: the King has immediately ordered him a thousand pound, and I hear will make him his own aide-de-camp. My dear Mr. Chute, I beg your pardon; I had forgot you have the gout, and consequently not the same patience to wait for the battle, with which I, knowing the particulars, postpone it.
On the 16th, the Duke, by forced marches came up with the rebels, a little on this side Inverness—by the way, the battle is not christened yet; I only know that neither Preston-Pans(1189) nor Falkirk(1190) are to be godfathers. The rebels, who fled from him after their victory, and durst not attack him, when so much exposed to them at his passage(1191) of the Spey, now stood him, they seven thousand, he ten. They broke through Barril’s regiment, and killed Lord Robert Kerr,(1192) a handsome young gentleman, who was cut to pieces with above thirty wounds; but they were soon repulsed, and fled; the whole engagement not lasting above a quarter of an hour. The young Pretender escaped; Mr. Conway, says, he hears, wounded: he certainly was in the rear. -They have lost above a thousand men in the engagement and pursuit; and six hundred were already taken; among which latter are their French ambassador and Earl Kilmarnock.(1193) The Duke of Perth and Lord ogilvie(1194) are said to be slain; Lord Elcho(1195) was in a salivation, and not there. Except Lord Robert Kerr, we lost nobody of note: Sir Robert Rich’s eldest son has lost his hand, and about a hundred and thirty private men fell. The defeat is reckoned total, and the dispersion general: and all their artillery is taken. It is a brave young Duke! the town is all blazing round me, as I write, with fireworks and illuminations — I have some inclination to wrap up half-a-dozen skyrockets, to make you drink the Duke’s health. Mr. Doddington, on the first report, came out with a very pretty illumination; so pretty, that I believe he had it by him, ready for any occasion.
I now come to a more melancholy theme, though your joy will still be pure, except from what part you take in a private grief of mine. It is the death of Mr. Winnington,(1196) whom you only knew as One Of the first men in England, from his parts and from his employment. But I was familiarly acquainted with him, loved and admired him, for he had great good-nature, and a quickness of wit most peculiar to himself: and for his public talents he has left nobody equal to him, as before, nobody was superior to him but my father. The history of his death is a cruel tragedy, but what, to indulge me who am full of it, and want to vent the narration, you must hear. He was not quite fifty, extremely temperate and regular, and of a constitution remarkably strong, hale and healthy. A little above a fortnight ago he was seized with an inflammatory rheumatism, a common and known case, dangerous, but scarce ever remembered to be fatal. He had a strong aversion to all physicians, and lately had put himself into the hands of one Thomson, a quack, whose foundation of method could not be guessed, but by a general contradiction to all received practice. This man was the oracle of Mrs. Masham,(1197) sister, and what one ought to hope she did not think of, coheiress to Mr. Winnington-. his other sister is as mad in methodism as this in physic, and never saw him. This ignorant wretch, supported by the influence of the sister, soon made such progress in fatal absurdities, as purging, bleeding, and starving him, and checking all perspiration, that his friends Mr. Fox and Sir Charles Williams absolutely insisted on calling in a physician. Whom could they call, but Dr. Bloxholme, an intimate old friend of Mr. Winnington, and to whose house he always went once a year? This doctor, grown paralytic and indolent, gave in to every thing the quack advised: Mrs. Masham all the while ranting and raving At last, which at last came very speedily, they had reduced him to a total dissolution, by a diabetes and a thrush; his friends all the time distracted for him, but hindered from assisting him; so far, that the night before he died, Thomson gave him another purge, though he could not get it all down. Mr. Fox by force brought Dr. Hulse, but it was too late: and even then, when Thomson owned him lost, Mrs. Masham was against trying Hulse’s assistance. In short, madly, or wickedly, they have murdered(1199) a man to whom nature would have allotted a far longer period, and had given a decree of abilities that were carrying that period to so great a height of lustre, as perhaps would have excelled both ministers, who in this country have owed their greatness to the greatness of their merit.
Adieu! my dear Sir; excuse what I have written to indulge my own concern, in consideration of what I have written to give you JOY.
P. S. Thank you for Mr. Oxenden; but don’t put yourself to any great trouble, for I desired you before not to mind formal letters much, which I am obliged to give: I write to you separately, when I wish you to be particularly kind to my recommendations.
(1188) George Keppel, eldest son of William Anne, Earl of Albemarle, whom he succeeded in the title.
(1189/1190) @ Where the King’s troops had been beaten by the rebels. This was called the battle of Culloden.
(1191) the letter, relating that event, was one of those that were lost.
(1192) Second son of the Marquis of Lothian.
(1193) William Boyd, fourth Earl of Kilmarnock in Scotland. He was tried by the House of Lords for high treason, condemned and beheaded on Tower Hill, August 18, 1746. (He was the direct male ancestor of the present Earl of Errol. Johnson says of him,
“Pitied by gentle minds, Kilmarnock died."-D.)
(1194) James, Lord Ogilvie, eldest son of David, third Earl of Airlie. He had been attainted for the part he took in the rebellion of 1715.-D.
(1195) David Lord Elcho, eldest son of James, fourth Earl of Wemyss. He was attainted in 1746; but the family honours were restored, as were those of Lord Airlie, by act of parliament, in 1826.-D.
(1196) Thomas Winnington, paymaster of the forces.
(1197) Harriet, daughter of Salway Winnington, Esq. of Stanford Court, in the county of Worcester: married to the Hon. Samuel Masham, afterwards second Lord Masham. She died in 1761.-D.
(1198) At the conclusion of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams’s political Odes will be found an affectionate epitaph to the memory of his deceased friend.-E.
(1199) There were several Pamphlets published on this case, on both sides. @In May, Dr. Thomson published “The Case of Thomas Winnington.” Esq.;” to which Dr. J. Campbell published a reply, entitled “A Letter to a friend in Town, occasioned by the Case of the Right Hon. Thomas Winnington.”]
478 Letter 201 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, May 16, 1746.
I have had nothing new to tell you since the victory, relative to it, but that it has entirely put an end to the rebellion. The number slain is generally believed much greater than is given out. Old Tullybardine(1200) has surrendered himself; the Lords Kilmarnoch, Balmerino,(1201) and Ogilvie(1202) are prisoners, and coming up to their trials. The Pretender is not openly taken, but many people think he is in their power; however, I dare say he will be allowed to escape; and some French ships are hovering about the coast to receive him. The Duke is not yet returned, but we have amply prepared for his reception, by settling on him immediately and for ever twenty-five thousand pounds a-year, besides the fifteen which he is to have on the King’s death. It was imagined the Prince would have opposed this, on the reflection that fifteen thousand was thought enough for him, though heir of the Crown, and abounding in issue but he has wisely reflected forwards, and likes the precedent, as it will be easy to find victories in his sons to reward, when once they have a precedent to fight with.
You must live on domestic news, for our foreign is exceedingly unwholesome. Antwerp is gone;(1203) and Bathiani with the allied army retired under the cannon of Breda; the junction of the Hanoverians cut off, and that of the Saxons put off. We are now, I suppose, at the eve of a bad peace; though, as Cape Breton must be a condition, I don’t know who will dare to part with it. Little Eolus (the Duke of Bedford) says they shall not have it, that they shall have Woburn(1204) as soon-and I suppose they will! much such positive patriot politics have brought on all this ruin upon us! All Flanders is gone, and all our money, and half our men, and half our navy, because we would have no search. Well! but we ought to think on what we have got too!—we have got Admiral Vernon’s head on our signs, and we are going to have Mr. Pitt at the head of our affairs. Do you remember the physician in Moli`ere, who wishes the man dead that he may have the greater honour from recovering him? Mr. Pitt is paymaster; Sir W. Yonge vice-treasurer of Ireland: Mr. Fox, secretary-at-war; Mr. Arundel,(1205) treasurer of the chambers, in the room of Sir John Cotton, who is turned out; Mr. Campbell (one of my father’s admiralty) and Mr. Legge in the treasury, and Lord Duncannon(1206) succeeds Legge in the admiralty.
Your two last were of April 19th and 26th. I wrote one to Mr. Chute, inclosed to you, with farther particulars of the battle; and I hope you received @it. I am entirely against your sending my eagle while there is any danger. Adieu! my dear child! I wrote to-day, merely because I had not written very lately; but you see I had little to say.
(1200) Elder brother of the Duke of Athol; he was outlawed for the former rebellion.
(1201) Arthur Elphinstone, sixth Lord Balmerino in Scotland. He was beheaded at the same time and place with Lord Kilmarnock; and on the scaffold distinguished himself by his boldness, fortitude, and even cheerfulness.-D.’
(1202) This was a mistake; it was not Lord Ogilvie, but Lord Cromarty.
(1203) It was taken by the French.-D.
(1204) The seat of the Duke of Bedford.
(1205) The Hon. Richard Arundel, youngest son of John, second Lord Arundel of Trerice. He had been master of the mint under Sir Robert Walpole’s administration.-D.
(1206) William Ponsonby, Viscount Duncannon, afterwards second Earl of Besborough.-D.
479 Letter 202 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, May 22, 1746.
Dear George, After all your goodness to me, don’t be angry that I am glad I am got into brave old London again: though my cats don’t purr like Goldwin, yet one of them has as good a heart as old Reynolds, and the tranquillity of my own closet makes me some amends for the loss of the library and toute la belle compagnie celestine. I don’t know whether that expression will do for the azure ceilings; but I found it at my fingers’ ends, and so it slipped through my pen. We called at Langley,(1207) but did not like it, nor the Grecian temple at all; it is by no means gracious.
I forgot to take your orders about your poultry; the partlets have not laid since I went, for little chanticleer
Is true to love, and all for recreation,
And does not mind the work of propagation.
But I trust you will come Yourself in a few days, and then you may settle their route.
I am got deep into the Sidney papers, there are old wills full of bequeathed ovoche and goblets with fair enamel, that will delight you; and there is a little pamphlet of Sir Philip Sidney’s in defence of his uncle Leicester, that gives me a much better opinion of his parts than his dolorous Arcadia, though it almost recommended him to the crown of Poland; at least I have never been able to discover what other great merit he had. In this little tract he is very vehement in clearing up the honour of his lineage; I don’t think he could have been warmer about his family, if he had been of the blood of the Cues.(1208) I have diverted myself with reflecting how it would have entertained the town a few years ago, if my cousin Richard Hammond had wrote a treatise to clear up my father’s pedigree, when the Craftsman used to treat him so roundly ’With being Nobody’s son. Adieu! dear George!
Yours ever,
THE GRANDSON OF NOBODY.
(1207) A seat of the Duke of Marlborough.
(1208) Mr. Montagu used to call his own family the Cues.
480 Letter 203
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, June 5, 1746.
Dear George, You may perhaps fancy that you are very happy in the country, and that because you commend every thing you see, you like every thing: you may fancy that London is a desert, and that grass grows now where Troy stood; but it does not, except just before my Lord Bath’s door, whom nobody will visit. So far from being empty, and dull, and dusty, the town is full of people, full of water, for it has rained this week, and as gay as a new German Prince must make any place. Why, it rains princes: though some people are disappointed of the arrival of the Pretender, yet the Duke is just coming and the Prince of Hesse come. He is tall, lusty, and handsome; extremely like Lord Elcho in person, and to Mr. Hussey,(1209) in what entitles him more to his freedom in Ireland, than the resemblance of the former does to Scotland. By seeing him with the Prince of Wales, people think he looks stupid; but I dare say in his own country he is reckoned very lively, for though he don’t speak much, he opens his mouth very often. The King has given him a fine sword, and the Prince a ball. He dined with the former the first day, and since with the great officers. Monday he went to Ranelagh, and supped in the house; Tuesday at the Opera he sat with his court in the box on the stage next the Prince, and went into theirs to see the last dance; and after it was over to the Venetian ambassadress, who is the only woman he has yet noticed. To-night there is a masquerade at Ranelagh for him, a play at Covent Garden on Monday, and a Ridotto at the Haymarket; and then he is to go. His amours are generally very humble, and very frequent; for he does not much affect our daughter.(1210) A little apt to be boisterous when he has drank. I have not heard, but I hope he was not rampant last night with Lady Middlesex, or Charlotte Dives.(1211) Men go to see him in the morning, before he goes to see the lions.
The talk of peace is blown over; nine or ten battalions were ordered for Flanders the day before yesterday, but they are again countermanded; and the operations of this campaign again likely to be confined within the precincts of Covent Garden, where the army- surgeons give constant attendance. Major Johnson commands (I can’t call it) the corps de reserve in Grosvenor Street. I wish you had seen the goddess of those purlieus with him t’other night at Ranelagh; you would have sworn it had been the divine Cucumber in person.
The fame of the Violetta(1212) increases daily; the sister-Countesses of Burlington and Talbot exert all their stores of sullen partiality in competition for her- the former visits her, and is having her picture, and carries her to Chiswick, and she sups at Lady Carlisle’s, and lies—indeed I have not heard where, but I know not at Leicester House, where she is in great disgrace, for not going once or twice a week to take lessons of Denoyer, as he(1213) bid her: you know, that is politics in a court where dancing-masters are ministers.
Adieu! dear George: my compliments to all at the farm. Your cocks and hens would write to you, but they are dressing in haste for the masquerade — mind, I don’t say that Asheton is doing any thing like that; but he is putting on an odd sort of a black gown — but, as Di Bertie says on her message cards, “mum for that.” Yours ever.
(1209) Edward Hussey, afterwards Earl of Beaulieu. [He married Isabella, widow of William, second Duke of Manchester, the heroine of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams’s poem entitled “Isabella; or, the Morning;” and died in 1802.]
(1210) The Princess Mary, who was married to the Prince of Hesse Cassel, in 1740.-E.
(1211) Afterwards married to Samuel, second and last Lord Masham, who died in 1776.-E.
(1212) Afterwards Mrs. Garrick.
(1213) The Prince of Wales; with whom the dancing-master was a great favourite.
482 Letter 204 To sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, June 6, 1746.
It was a very unpleasant reason for my not hearing from you last post, that you was ill; but I have had a letter from you since of May 24th, that has made me easy again for your health: if you was not losing the good Chutes, I should have been quite satisfied; but that is a loss you will not easily repair, though I were to recommend you Hobarts(1214) every day. Sure you must have had flights of strange awkward animals, if you can be so taken with him! I shall begin to look about me, to see the merits of England: he was no curiosity here; and yet heaven knows there are many better, with whom I hope I shall never be acquainted. As I have cautioned you more than once against minding my recommendatory letters, (which one gives because one can’t refuse them,) unless I write to you separately, I have no scruple in giving them. You are extremely good to give so much credit to my bills at first sight; but don’t put down Hobart to my account; I used to call him the Clearcake; fat, fair, sweet, and seen through in a moment. By what you tell me, I should conclude the Countess was not returning; for Hobart is not a morsel that she can afford to lose.
I am much obliged to you for the care you take in sending my eagle by my commodore-cousin, but I hope it will not be till after his expedition. I know the extent of his genius; he would hoist it overboard on the prospect of an engagement, and think he could buy me another at Hyde Park Corner with the prize-money; like the Roman tar that told his crew, that if they broke the antique Corinthian statues, they should find new ones.
We have been making peace lately, but I think it is off again; there is come an unpleasant sort of a letter, transmitted from Van Hoey(1215) at Paris; it talks something of rebels not to be treated as rebels, and of a Prince Charles that is somebody’s cousin and friend-but as nobody knows any thing of this—why, I know nothing of it neither. There are battalions ordered for Flanders, and countermanded, and a few less ordered again — if I knew exactly what day this would reach you, I could tell you more certainly, because the determination for or against is only of every other day. The Duke is coming: I don’t find it certain, however, that the Pretender is got off.
We are in the height of festivities for the Serenity of Hesse, our son-in-law, who passes a few days here on his return to Germany. If you recollect Lord Elcho, you have a perfect idea of his person and parts. The great officers banquet him at dinner; in the evenings; there are plays, operas, ridottos, and masquerades.
You ask me to pity you for losing the Chutes — indeed I do; and I pity them for losing you. They will often miss Florence, and its tranquillity and happy air. Adieu! Comfort yourself with what you do not lose.
(1214) The Hon. John Hobart, afterwards second Earl of Buckinghamshire. Walpole had given him a letter of introduction to Sir Horace Mann.-E.
(1215) The Dutch minister at Paris.
483 Letter 205
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, June 12th, 1746.
My dear George, Don’t commend me -. you don’t know what hurt it will do me; you will make me a pains-taking man, and I had rather be dull Without any trouble. From partiality to me you won’t allow my letters to be letters. If you have a mind I should write you news, don’t make me think about it; I shall be so long turning my periods, that what I tell you will cease to be news.
The Prince of Hesse had a most ridiculous tumble t’other night at the Opera; they had not pegged up his box tight after the ridotto, and down he came on all four; George Selwyn says he carried it off with an unembarrassed countenance. He was to go this morning; I don’t know whether he did or not. The Duke is expected to-night by all the tallow candles and fagots in town.
Lady Carolina Fitzroy’s match is settled to the content of all parties; they are taking Lady Abergavenny’s house in Brook Street; the Fairy Cucumber houses all Lady Caroline’s out-pensioners; Mr. Montgomery(1216) is now on half pay with her. Her Major Johnstone is chosen at White’s, to the great terror of the society.- When he was introduced, Sir Charles Williams presented Dick Edgecumbe(1217) to him, and said, , I have three favours to beg of you for Mr. Edgecumbe: the first is that you would not lie with Mrs. Day; the second, that you would not poison his cards; the third, that you would not kill him;” the fool answered gravely, “Indeed I will not.”
The Good has borrowed old Bowman’s house in Kent, and is retiring thither for six weeks: I tell her she has lived so rakish a life, that she is obliged to go and take up. I hope you don’t know any more of it, and that Major Montagu is not to cross the country to her. There—I think you can’t commend me for this letter; it shall not even have the merit of being one. My compliments to all your contented family. Yours ever.
P.S. I had forgot to tell you, that Lord Lonsdale had summoned the peers to-day to address the King not to send the troops abroad in the present conjuncture. I hear he made a fine speech, and the Duke of Newcastle a very long one in answer, and then they rose without a division.(1218) Lord Baltimore is to bring the same motion into our House.(1219)
(1216) The Honourable Archibald Montgomerie. He succeeded his brother as eleventh Earl of Eglinton, in 1769, and died in 1796.-E.
(1217) Richard Edgecumbe, second Lord Edgecumbe.
(1218) ’There was a debate,” writes Mr. Pelham to Horatio Walpole on the 12th, “in the House of Lords this day, upon a motion of Lord Lonsdale, who would have addressed the King, to defer the sending abroad any troops till it was more clear that we are in no danger @ home; which he would by no means allow to be the case at present. The Duke of Newcastle spoke well for one that was determined to carry on the war. Granville was present, but said nothing. flattered the Duke of Newcastle when the debate was over, and gave a, strong negative to the motion."-E.
(1219) Lord Baltimore made his motion in the House of Commons, on the 18th; when it was negatived by the great majority of 103 against 12.-E.
484 Letter 206 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, June 17, 1746.
Dear George, I wrote to you on Friday night as soon as I could after receiving your letter, with a list of the regiments to go abroad; one of which I hear since, is your brothers. I am extremely sorry it is his fortune, as I know the distress it will occasion in your family.
For the politics which you inquire after, and which may have given motion to this step, I can give you no satisfactory . I have heard that it is in consequence of an impertinent letter sent over by Van Hoey in favour of the rebels, though at the same time I hear we are making steps towards a peace. There centre all my politics, all in peace. Whatever your cousin(1220) may think, I am neither busy about what does happen, nor making parties for what may. If he knew how happy I am, his intriguing nature would envy my tranquillity more than his suspicions can make him jealous of my practices. My books, my virt`u, and my other follies and amusements take up too much of my time to leave me much leisure to think of other people’s affairs; and of all affairs. those of the public are least my concern. You will be sorry to hear of Augustus Townshend’s(1221) death. I lament it extremely, not much for his sake, for I did not honour him, but for his poor sister Molly’s, whose little heart, that is all tenderness, and gratitude, and friendship, will be broke with the shock. I really dread it, considering how delicate her health is. My Lady Townshend has a son with him. I went to tell it her. Instead of thinking of her child’s distress, she kept me half an hour with a thousand histories of Lady Caroline Fitzroy and Major Johnstone, and the new Paymaster’s(1222) m`enage, and twenty other things, nothing to me, nor to her, if only she could drop the idea Of the pay of office.
The serene hessian is gone. Little Brooke is to be an earl. I went to bespeak him a Lilliputian coronet at Chenevix’s.(1223) Adieu! dear George.
(1220) George Dunk, Earl of Halifax.
(1221) Son of Viscount Townshend and Dorothy, sister of Sir Robert Walpole. he was a captain in the service of the East India Company, and died at Batavia, having at that time the command of the Augusta.-E.
(1222) Mr. Pitt.
(1223) A celebrated toy-shop.
485 Letter 207
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, June 20, 1746.
We are impatient for letters from Italy, to confirm the news of a victory over the French and Spaniards-(1224) The time is critical, and every triumph or defeat material, as they may raise or fall the terms of peace. The wonderful letters of Van Hoey and M. d’Argenson in favour of the rebels, but which, if the ministry have any spirit, must turn to their harm, you will see in all the papers. They have rather put off the negotiations, and caused the sending five thousand men this week to Flanders. The Duke is not yet returned from Scotland, nor is anything certainly known of the Pretender. I don’t find any period fixed for the trial of the Lords; yet the Parliament sits on, doing nothing, few days having enough to make a House. Old Marquis Tullibardine, with another set of rebels are come, amongst whom is Lord Macleod, son of Lord Cromarty,(1225) already in the Tower. Lady Cromarty went down incog. to Woolwich to see her son pass by, without the power of speaking to him: I never heard a more melancholy instance of affection! Lord Elcho(1226) has written from Paris to Lord Lincoln to solicit his pardon; but as he has distinguished himself beyond all the rebel commanders by brutality and insults and cruelty to our prisoners, I think he is likely to remain where he is.
Jack Spenser,(1227) old Marlborough’s grandson and heir, is just dead, at the age of six or seven and thirty, and in possession Of near 30,000 pounds a-year, merely because he would not be abridged of those invaluable blessings of an English subject, brandy, small-beer, and tobacco.
Your last letter was of May 31st. Since you have effectually lost the good Chutes, I may be permitted to lay out all my impatience for seeing them. There are no endeavours I shall not use to show how much I love them for all their friendship to you. You are very kind in telling me how much I am honoured by their Highnesses Of Modena; but how can I return it? would it be civil to send them a compliment through a letter of yours? Do what you think properest for me.
I have nothing to say to Marquis Riccardi about his trumpery gems, but what I have already said; that nobody here will buy them together; that if he will think better, and let them be sold by auction, he may do it most advantageously, for, with all our distress, we have not at all lost the rage of expense; but that for sending them to Lisbon, I will by no means do it, as his impertinent sending them to me without my leave, shall in no manner draw me into the risk of paying for them. That, in short, if he will send any body to me with full authority to receive them, and to give me the most ample discharge for them, I will deliver them, and shall be happy so to get rid of them. There they lie in a corner of my closet, and will probably come to light at last with excellent antique mould about them! Adieu.
(1224) The battle of Placentia, which took place on the 15th of May.-E.
(1225) George Mackenzie, third Earl of Cromartie, and his eldest son John, Lord Macleod. They had been deeply engaged in the rebellion, were taken prisoners at Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland, and from thence conveyed to the Tower. They were, upon trial, found guilty of high treason; but their lives were granted to them. Lord Macleod afterwards entered the Swedish service. Lady Cromartie was Isabel, daughter of Sir William Gordon, of Invergordon, Bart.-D.
(1226) Eldest son of the Earl of Wemyss.
(1227) Brother of Charles Spenser, Earl of Sunderland and Duke of Marlborough.
486 Letter 208 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, June 24, 1746.
Dear George, You have got a very bad person to tell you news; for I hear nothing before all the world has’ talked it over, and done with it. Till twelve o’clock last night I knew nothing of all the kissing hands that had graced yesterday morning; Arundel(1228) for treasurer of the chambers; Legge, and your friend Walsh Campbell, for the treasury; Lord Duncannon for the admiralty; and your cousin Halifax (who is succeeded by his predecessor in the buck hounds) for chief justice in eyre, in the room of Lord Jersey. They talk of new earls, Lord Chancellor, Lord Gower, Lord Brooke, and Lord Clinton; but I don’t know that this will be, because it is not past.
Tidings are every minute expected of a great sea-fight; Martin has got between the coast and the French fleet, which has sailed from Brest. The victory in Italy is extremely big; but as none of my friends are aide-de-camps there, I know nothing of the particulars, except that the French and-Spaniards have lost ten thousand men.
All the inns about town are crowded with rebel Prisoners, and people are making parties of pleasure, which you know is the English genius, to hear their trials. The Scotch, which you know is the Scotch genius, are loud in censuring the Duke for his severities in the highlands.
The great business of the town is Jack Spenser’s will, who has left Althorp and the Sunderland estate in reversion to Pitt; after more obligations and more pretended friendship for his brother, the Duke, than is conceivable. The Duke is in the utmost uneasiness about it, having left the drawing of the writings for the estate to his brother and his grandmother, and without having any idea that himself was cut out of the entail.
I have heard nothing of Augustus Townshend’s will: my lady, who you know hated him, came from the Opera t’other night, and on pulling off her gloves, and finding her hands all black, said immediately, “My hands are guilty, but my heart is free.” Another good thing she said, to the Duchess of Bedford,(1229) who told her the Duke was windbound at Yarmouth, “Lord! he will hate Norfolk as much as I do.”
I wish, my dear George, you could meet with any man that could copy the beauties in the castle: I did not care if it were even in Indian ink. Will you inquire? Eckardt has done your picture excellently well. What shall I do with the original? Leave it with him till you come?
Lord Bath and Lord Sandys have had their pockets picked at Cuper’s Gardens. I fancy it was no bad scene, the avarice and jealousy of their peeresses on their return. A terrible disgrace happened to Earl Cholmondeley t’other night at Ranelagh. You know all the history of his letters to borrow money to pay for damask for his fine room at Richmond. As he was going in, in the crowd, a woman offered him roses—“Right damask, my lord!” he concluded she had been put upon it. I was told, a-propos, a bon-mot on the scene in the Opera, where there is a view of his new room, and the farmer comes dancing out and shaking his purse. Somebody said there was a tradesman had unexpectedly got his money.
I think I deal in bon-mots to-day. I’ll tell you now another, but don’t print my letter in a new edition of Joe Miller’s jests. The Duke has given Brigadier Mordaunt the Pretender’s coach, on condition he rode up to London in it. “That I will, Sir,” said he, “and drive till it stops of its own accord at the Cocoa Tree.”
(1228) The Honourable Richard Arundel, second son to John, Lord Arundel, of Trerice. He married, 1732, Lady Frances Manners, daughter of John, second Duke of Rutland.-E.
(1229) Daughter of John, Earl Gower.
487 Letter 209
To George Montagu,
Arlington Street, July 3, 1746.
My dear George, I wish extremely to accept your invitation, but I can’t bring myself to it. If I have the pleasure of meeting Lord North(1230) oftener-at your house next winter, I do not know but another summer I may have courage enough to make him a visit; but I have no notion of going to any body’s house, and have the servants look on the arms of the chaise to find out one’s name, and learn one’s face from the Saracen’s head. You did not tell me how long you stayed at Wroxton, and so I direct this thither. I have wrote one to Windsor since you left it.
The Dew earls have kissed hands, and kept their own titles. The world reckon Earl Clinton obliged for his new honour to Lord GranVille, though they made the Duke of Newcastle go in to ask for it.
Yesterday Mr. Hussey’s friends declared his marriage with her grace of Manchester,(1231) and said he was gone down to Englefield Green to take possession.
I can tell you another wedding more certain, and fifty times more extraordinary; it is Lord Cooke with Lady Mary Campbell, the Dowager of Argyle’s youngest daughter. It is all agreed, and was negotiated by the Countess of Gower and Leicester. I don’t know why they skipped over Lady Betty, who, if there were any question of beauty, is, I think, as well as her sister. They drew the girl in to give her consent, when they first proposed it to her; but now la Belle n’aime pas trop le Sieur L`eandre. She cries her eyes to scarlet. He has made her four visits, and is so in love, that he writes to her every other day. ’Tis a strange match. After offering him to all the great lumps of gold in all the alleys of the city, they fish out a woman of quality at last with a mere twelve thousand pound. She objects his loving none of her sex but the four queens in a pack of cards, but he promises to abandon White’s and both clubs for her sake.
A-propos to White’s and cards, Dick Edgecumbe is shut up with the itch. The ungenerous world ascribes it to Mrs. Day; but he denies it; owning, however, that he is very well contented to have it, as nobody will venture on her. Don’t you like being pleased to have the itch, as a new way to ’keep one’s mistress to one’s self!
You will be in town to be sure for the eight-and-twentieth. London will be as full as at a coronation. The whole form is settled for the trials, and they are actually building scaffolds in Westminster-hall.
I have not seen poor Miss Townshend yet; she is in town, and better, but most unhappy.
(1230) Francis, Lord North and Grey; in 1752 created Earl of Guilford. His lordship died in 1790, at the age of eighty-six.-E.
(1231) Isabella, eldest daughter of John, Duke of Montagu, married in 1723 to William, second Duke of Manchester, who died in 1739. She married afterwards to Edward Hussey, Esq. who was created Baron Beaulieu in 1762, and Earl Beaulieu in 1784.
488 Letter 210 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, July 7, 1746.
I have been looking at the dates of my letters, and find that I have not written you since the 20th of last month. As long as it seems, I am not in fault; I now write merely lest you should think me forgetful of you, and not because I have any thing to say. Nothing great has happened; and for little politics, I live a good deal out of the way of’ them. I have no manner of connexion with any ministry, or opposition to ministry; and their merits and their faults are equally a secret to me. The Parliament sitting, so long has worn itself to a skeleton; and almost every body takes the opportunity of shortening, their stay in the country, which I believe in their hearts most are glad to do, by going down, and returning for the trials, which are to be on the 28th of this month. I am of the number; so don’t expect to hear from me again till that aera.
The Duke is still in Scotland, doing his family the only service that has been done for them there since their accession. He daily picks Up notable prisoners, and has lately taken Lord Lovat, and Murray the secretary. There are flying reports of the Boy being killed, but I think not certain enough for the father(1232) to faint away again-I blame myself for speaking lightly of the old man’s distress; but a swoon is so natural to his character, that one smiles at it at first, without considering when it proceeds from cowardice, and when from misery. I heard yesterday that we are to expect a battle in Flanders soon: I expect it with all the tranquillity that the love of one’s country admits, when one’s heart is entirely out of the question, as, thank God! mine is: not one of my friends will be in it. I -wish it may be as magnificent a victory for us, as your giornata di San Lazaro!
I am in great pain for my eagle, now the Brest fleet is thought to be upon the coast of Spain: bi-it what do you mean by him and his pedestal filling three cases? is he like the Irishman’s bird, in two places at once?
Adieu! my dear child; don’t believe my love for you in the least abridged, whenever my letters are scarce or short. I never loved you better, and never had less to say, both which I beg you will believe by my concluding, yours, etc.
P. S. Since I finished my letter, we hear that the French and Spaniards have escaped from Placentia, not without some connivance of your hero-king.(1233) Mons is taken.
(1232) James Stuart, called " The Old Pretender."-D.
(1233) The King of Sardinia.-D.
489 Letter 211
To sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Aug. 1, 1746.
I am this moment come from the conclusion of the greatest and most melancholy scene I ever yet saw! you will easily guess it was the trials of the rebel Lords. As it was the most interesting sight, it was the most solemn and fine: a coronation is a puppet-show, and all the splendour of it idle; but this sight at once feasted one’s eyes and engaged all one’s passions. It began last Monday; three parts of Westminster-hall were inclosed with galleries, and hung with scarlet; and the whole ceremony was conducted with the most awful solemnity and decency, except in the one point of leaving the prisoners at the bar, amidst the idle curiosity of some crowd, and even with the witnesses who had sworn against them, while the Lords adjourned to their own House to consult. No part of the royal family was there, which was a proper regard to the unhappy men, who were become their victims. One hundred and thirty-nine lords were present, and made a noble sight on their benches, frequent and full. The Chancellor(1234) was Lord High Steward; but though a most comely personage with a fine voice, his behaviour was mean, curiously searching for occasion to bow to the minister(1235) that is no peer, and consequently applying to the other ministers, in a manner for their orders; and not even ready at the ceremonial. To the prisoners he was peevish; and instead of keeping up to the humane dignity of the law of England, whose character it is to point out favour to the criminal, he crossed them, and almost scolded at any offer they made towards defence. I had armed myself with all the resolution I could, whit the thought of their crimes and of the danger past, and was assisted by the sight of the Marquis of Lothian(1236) in weepers for his son who fell at Culloden— but the first appearance of the prisoners shocked me! their behaviour melted me! Lord Kilmarnock and Lord Cromartie are both past forty, but look younger. Lord Kilmarnock is tall and slender, with an extreme fine person: his behaviour a most just mixture between dignity and submission; if in any thing to be reprehended, a little affected, and his hair too exactly dressed for a man in his situation; but when I say this, it is not to find fault with him but to show how little fault there was to be found. Lord Cromartie is an indifferent figure, appeared much dejected, and rather sullen: he dropped a few tears the first day, and swooned as soon as he got back to his cell. For Lord Balmerino, he is the most natural brave old fellow I ever saw: the highest intrepidity, even to indifference,. At the bar he behaved like a soldier and a man; in the intervals of form, with carelessness and humour. He pressed extremely to have his wife, his pretty Peggy,(1237) with him in the tower. Lady Cromartie only sees her husband through the grate, not choosing to be shut up with him, as she thinks she can serve him better by her intercession without: she is big with child and very handsome; so are their daughters. When
When the trial began, the two earls pleaded guilty; Balmerino not guilty, saying he could prove he was not at the taking of the castle of Carlisle, as was laid in the Indictment. Then the King’s counsel opened, and Serjeant Skinner pronounced the most absurd speech imaginable; and mentioned the Duke of Perth, “who,” said he, “I see by the papers is dead."(1238) Then some witnesses were examined, whom afterwards the old hero shook cordially by the hand. The Lords withdrew to their House, and returning demanded, of the judges, whether one point not being proved, though all the rest were, the indictment was false? to which they unanimously answered in the negative. Then the Lord High Steward asked the Peers severally, whether Lord Balmerino @was guilty! All said, “guilty upon honour,” and then adjourned, the prisoner having begged pardon for giving them so much trouble. While the lords were withdrawn, the Solicitor-General Murray (brother of the Pretender’s minister)1239) officiously and insolently went up to Lord Balmerino, and asked him, how he could give the Lords so much trouble, when his solicitor had informed him that his plea could be of no use to him? Balmerino asked the bystanders who this person was! and being told, he said. “Oh, Mr. Murray! I am extremely glad to see you; I have been with several of your relations; the good lady, your mother, was of great use to us at Perth.” Are not you charmed with this speech? how just it was! As he went away, he said, “They call me Jacobite; I am no more a Jacobite than any that tried me: but if the Great Mogul had set up his standard, I should have followed it, for I could not starve.” The worst of his case is, that after the battle of Dumblain, having a company in the Duke of Argyll’s regiment, he deserted with it to the rebels, and has since been pardoned. Lord Kilmarnock is a Presbyterian, with four earldoms(1240) in him, but so poor since Lord Wilmington’s stopping a pension that my father had given him, that he often wanted a dinner. Lord Cromartie was receiver of the rents of the King’s second son in Scotland, which, it was understood, he should not account for; and by that means had six hundred a-year from the Government: Lord Elibank,(1241) a very prating, impertinent Jacobite, was bound for him in nine thousand pounds, for which the Duke is determined to sue him.
When the Peers were going to vote, Lord Foley(1242) withdrew, as too well a wisher; Lord Moray,(1243) as nephew of Lord Balmerino—and Lord Stair—as, I believe, uncle to his great-grandfather. Lord Windsor,(1244) very affectedly, said, “I am sorry I must say, guilty upon my honour.” Lord Stamford(1245) would not answer to the name of Henry, having been christened Harry— what a great way of thinking on such an occasion! I was diverted too with old Norsa, the father of my brother’s concubine, an old Jew that kept a tavern; my brother, as auditor of the exchequer, has a gallery along one whole side of the court: I said, “I really feel for the prisoners!” old Issachar replied, “Feel for them! pray, if they had succeeded, what would have become of all us?” When my Lady Townshend heard her husband vote, she said, “I always knew my Lord was guilty, but I never thought he would own it upon his honour.” Lord Balmerino said, that one of his reasons for pleading not guilty, was, that so many ladies might not be disappointed of their show.
On Wednesday they were again brought to Westminster-hall, to receive sentence; and being asked what they had to say, Lord Kilmarnock, with a very fine voice, read a very fine speech, confessing the extent of his crime, but offering his principles as some alleviation, having his eldest son (his second unluckily was with him,) in the Duke’s army, fighting for the liberties of his country at Culloden, where his unhappy father was ? .n arms to destroy them. He insisted much on his tenderness to the English prisoners, which some deny, and say that he was the man who proposed their being put to death, when General Stapleton urged that he was come to fight, and not to butcher; and that if they acted any such barbarity, he would leave them with all his men. He very artfully mentioned Van Hoey’s letter, and said how much he should scorn to owe his life to such intercession. Lord Cromartie spoke much shorter, and so low, that he was not heard but by those who sat very near him; but they prefer his speech to the other. He mentioned his misfortune in having drawn in his eldest son, who is prisoner with him; and concluded with saying, “If no part of this bitter cup must pass from me, not mine, O God, but thy will be done!” If he had pleaded not guilty, there was ready to be produced against him a paper signed with his own hand, for putting to death the English prisoners.
Lord leicester went up to the Duke of Newcastle, and said, “I never heard so great an orator as Lord Kilmarnock; if I was grace, I would pardon him, and make him paymaster."(1246) That morning a paper had been sent to the lieutenant of the Tower for the prisoners; he gave it to Lord Cornwallis,(1247) the governor, who carried it to the House of Lords. It was a plea for the prisoners, objecting that the late act for regulating the trial of rebels did not take place till after their crime was committed. The Lords very tenderly and rightly sent this plea
Great intercession is made for the two Earls: Duke Hamilton,(1248) who has never been at court, designs to kiss the King’s hand, and ask Lord Kilmarnock’s life. The King is much inclined to some mercy; but the Duke, who has not so much of Caesar after a victory, as in gaining it, is for the utmost severity. It was lately proposed in the city to present him with the freedom of some company; one of the aldermen said aloud, “Then let it be of the Butchers!"(1249) The Scotch and his Royal Highness are not at all guarded in their expressions of each other. When he went to Edinburgh, in his pursuit of the rebels, they would not admit his guards, alleging that it was contrary to their privileges; but they rode in, sword in hand; and the Duke, very justly incensed, refused to see any of the magistrates. He came with the utmost expedition to town, in order for Flanders; but found that the court of Vienna had already sent Prince Charles thither, without the least notification, at which both King and Duke are greatly offended’. When the latter waited on his brother, the Prince carried him into a room that hangs over the Wall of St. James’s Park, and stood there with his arm about his neck, to charm the gazing mob
Murray, the Pretender’s secretary, has made ample confessions: the Earl of Traquair(1250 and Dr. Barry, a physician, are apprehended, and more warrants are out; so much for rebels! Your friend, Lord Sandwich, is instantly going ambassador to Holland, to pray the Dutch to build more ships. I have received yours of July 19th, but you see have no more room left, only to say, that I conceive a good idea of my eagle, though the sea] is a bad one. Adieu!
p S. I have not room to say any thing to the Tesi till next post; but, unless she will sing gratis, would advise her to drop this thought.
(1234) Philip Yorke, lord Hardwicke.
(1235 henry Pelham.
(1236) William ker, third marquis of Lothian. Lord Robert Ker, who was killed at Culloden, was his second son.—D.
(1237) Margaret, lady Balmerino, daughter of Captain chalmers.—D.
(1238) The duke of Perth, being a young man of delicate frame, expired on his passage to France.—E.
(1239) Lord Dunbar.
(1240) Kilmarnock, Erroll, Linlithgow, and Calendar.—D.
(1241) Patrick Murray, fifth Lord Elibank.—D.
(1242) Thomas, second Lord Foley, of the first creation.—D.
(1243) James Stewart, ninth Earl of Moray. His mother was jean Elphinstone, daughter of John, fourth Lord Balmerino.—D.
(1244) Robert Windsor, second viscount Windsor in Ireland. He sat in Parliament as Lord Mountjoy of the isle of Wight. He died in 1758, when His titles extinguished.—D.
(1245) Harry Grey, died in 1768.—D.
(1246) Alluding to Mr. Pitt, who had lately been preferred to that post, from the fear the ministry had of his abusive eloquence.
(1247) Charles, fifth Lord Cornwallis. He was created an earl in 1753, and died in 1762.-D.
(1248) James, sixth Duke of Hamilton: died in 1758.-D.
(1249) “The Duke,” says Sir Walter Scott, " was received with all the honours due to conquest; and all the incorporated bodies of the capital, from the guild brethren to the butchers, desired his acceptance of the freedom of their craft, or corporation.” Billy the Butcher was one of his by-names.-E.
(1250) Charles Stuart, fifth Earl of Traquair.-D.
494 Letter 212
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, Aug. 2, 1746.
Dear George, You have lost nothing by missing yesterday at the trials, but a little additional contempt for the High Steward; and even that is recoverable, as his long, paltry speech is to be printed; for which, and for thanks for it, Lord Lincoln moved the House of Lords. Somebody said to Sir Charles Windham, “Oh! you don’t think Lord Hardwicke’s speech good, because you have read Lord Cowper’s.”—“No,” replied he; “but I do think it tolerable, because I heard Serjeant Skinner’s."(1251) Poor brave old Balmerino retracted his plea, asked pardon, and desired the Lords to intercede for mercy. As he returned to the Tower, he stopped the coach at Charing-cross to buy honey-blobs as the Scotch call gooseberries. He says he is extremely afraid Lord Kilmarnock will not behave well. The Duke said publicly at his levee, that the latter proposed murdering the English prisoners. His Highness was to have given Peggy Banks a ball last night; but was persuaded to defer it, as it would have rather looked like an insult on the prisoners, the very day their sentence was passed. George Selwyn says that he had begged Sir William Saunderson to get him the High Steward’s wand, after it was broke, as a curiosity; but that he behaved so like an attorney the first day, and so like a pettifogger the second, that he would not take it to light his fire with; I don’t believe my Lady Hardwicke is so high-minded.
Your cousin Sandwich(1252) is certainly going on an embassy to Holland. I don’t know whether it is to qualify him, by new dignity, for the head of the admiralty, or whether (which is more agreeable to present policy) to satisfy him instead of it. I know when Lord Malton,(1253) who was a young earl, asked for the garter, to stop his pretensions, they made him a marquis. When Lord Brooke, who is likely to have ten sons, though he has none yet, asked to have his barony settled on his daughters, they refused him with an earldom; and they professed making Pitt paymaster, in order to silence the avidity of his faction.
Dear George, I am afraid I shall not be in your neighbourhood, as I promised myself. Sir Charles Williams has let his house. I wish you would one day whisk over and look at Harley House. The inclosed advertisement makes it sound pretty, though I am afraid too large for me. Do look at it impartially: don’t be struck at first sight with any brave old windows; but be so good as to inquire the rent, and if I can have it for a year, and with any furniture. I have not had time to copy out the verses, but you shall have them soon. Adieu, with my compliments to your sisters.
(1251) Matthew Skinner, afterwards a Welsh judge.-E.
(1252) John, the fourth Earl of Sandwich; son of Edward Richard, Viscount Hichinbrooke. He signed the treaty of peace at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.
(1253) Thomas Watson Wentworth, Earl of Malton, created Marquis of Rockingham, in 1746. [He died In 1782, when his title became extinct.)
495 Letter 213 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, Aug. 5, 1746.
Though I can’t this week accept your invitation, I can prove to you that I am most desirous of passing my time with you, and therefore en attendant Harley House, if you can find me out any clean, small house in Windsor, ready furnished, that is not -,absolutely in the middle of the town, but near you, I should be glad to take it for three or four months.(1254) I have been about Sir Robert Rich’s, but they will only sell it. I am as far from guessing why they send Sandwich in embassy, as you are; and, when I recollect of what various materials our late ambassadors have been composed, I can only say, “ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius.” Murray(1255) has certainly been discovering, and warrants are out; but I don’t yet know who are to be their prize. I begin to think that the ministry had really no intelligence till now. I before thought they had, but durst not use it. A-propos to not daring, I went t’other night to look at my poor favourite Chelsea,(1256) for the little Newcastle is gone to be dipped in the sea. In one of the rooms is a bed for her Duke, and a press-bed for his footman; for he never dares lie alone, and, till be was married, had always a servant to sit up with him. Lady Cromartie presented her petition to the King last Sunday. He was very civil to her, but would not at all give
I must tell you a bon-mot of George Selwyn’s at the trial. He saw Bethel’s(1259) sharp visage looking wistfully at the rebel lords; he said, What a shame it is to turn her face to the prisoners till they are condemned.” If you have a mind for a true foreign idea, one of the foreign ministers said at the trial to another, “Vraiment cela est auguste.” “Oui,” replied the other, “cela est vrai, mais cela n’est pas royale.” the I am assured that the old Countess of Errol made her son Lord Kilmarnock(1260) go into the rebellion on pain of disinheriting him. I don’t know whether I told you that the man at the tennis-court protests that he has known him dine at the man that sells pamphlets at Storey’s Gate; “and,” says he, “he would often have been glad if I would have taken him home to dinner.” He was certainly so poor, that in one of his wife’s intercepted letters she tells him she has plagued their steward for a fortnight for money, and can get but three shillings. Can any one help pitying such distress?(1261) I am vastly softened, too, about Balmerino’s relapse, for his pardon was only granted him to engage his brother’s vote in the election of Scotch peers.
My Lord Chancellor has got a thousand pounds in present for his high stewardship, and has @(it the reversion of clerk of the crown (twelve hundred a-year) for his second son. What a long time it will be before his posterity are drove into rebellion for want, like Lord Kilmarnock!
The Duke gave his ball last night to Peggy Banks at Vauxhall. It was to pique my Lady Rochford, in return for the Prince of Hesse. I saw the company get into their barges at Whitehall Stairs, as I was going myself, and just then passed by two city companies in their great barges, who had been a swan-hopping:. They laid by and played “God save our noble King,” and altogether it was a mighty pretty show. When they came to Vauxhall, there were assembled about five-and-twenty hundred people, besides crowds without. They huzzaed, and surrounded him so, that he was forced to retreat into the ball-room. He was very near being drowned t’other night going from Ranelagh to Vauxhall, and politeness of Lord Cathcart’s, who, stepping on the side of the boat to lend his arm, overset it, and both fell into the water up to their chins.
I have not yet got Sir Charles’s ode;(1262) when I have, you shall see it: here are my own lines. Good night!
(1260) The Earl of Kilmarnock was not the son of the Countess of Errol. His wife, the Lady Anne Livingstone, daughter of the Earl of Linlithgow, was her niece, and, eventually, her heiress.—E.
(1261) The Duke of Argyle, telling him how sorry he was to see him engaged in such a cause, ‘MY Lord,’ says be, ’for the two Kings and their rights, I care not a farthing which prevailed; but I was starving, and by God, if Mahomet had set up his standard in the highlands, I had been a good Mussulman for bread, and stuck close to the party, for I must eat.’” Gray, vol. 5.-E.
(1262) On the Duchess of Manchester, entitled Isabella, or the Morning.-E.
497 Letter 214 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, Aug. 11, 1746.
Dear George, I have seen Mr. Jordan, and have taken his house at forty guineas a-year, but I am to pay taxes. Shall I now accept your offer of being at the trouble of giving orders for the airing of it? I have desired the landlord will order the key to be delivered to you, and Asheton will assist you. Furniture, I find, I have in abundance, which I shall send down immediately; but shall not be able to be at Windsor at the quivering dame’s before to-morrow se’nnight, as the rebel Lords are not to be executed till Monday. I shall stay till that is over, though I don’t believe I shall see it. Lord Cromartie is reprieved for a pardon. If wives and children become an argument for saving rebels, there will cease to be a reason against their going into rebellion. Lady Caroline Fitzroy’s execution is certainly to-night. I dare say she will follow Lord Balmerino’s advice to Lord Kilmarnock, and not winch.
Lord Sandwich has made Mr. Keith his secretary. I don’t believe the founder of your race, the great Quu,(1263) of Habiculeo, would have chosen his secretary from California.
I would willingly return the civilities you laid upon me at Windsor. Do command me; in what can I serve you? Shall I get you an earldom? Don’t think it will be any trouble; there is nothing easier or cheaper. Lord Hobart and Lord Fitzwilliam are both to be Earls to-morrow: the former, of Buckingham; the latter, by his already title. I suppose Lord Malton will be a Duke; he has had no new peerage this fortnight. Adieu! my compliments to the virtuous ladies, Arabella and Hounsibeloa Quus.
P. S. Here is an order for the key.
(1263) The Earl of Halifax.-E.
497 Letter 215
To sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Aug. 12, 1746.
To begin with the Tesi; she is mad if she desires to come hither. I hate long histories, and so will only tell you in a few words, that Lord Middlesex(1264) took the opportunity of a rivalship between his own mistress, the Nardi, and the Violette,(1265) the finest and most admired dancer in the world, to involve the whole m`enage of the Opera in the quarrel, and has paid nobody; but, like a true Lord of the Treasury, has shut up his own exchequer. The principal man-dancer was arrested for debt; to the composer his Lordship gave a bad note, not payable in two years, besides amercing him entirely three hundred pounds, on pretence of his siding with the Violette. If the Tesi likes this account-venga! venga!
Did I tell you that your friend Lord Sandwich was sent’ ambassador to Holland? He is: and that Lady Charlotte Fermor(1266) was to be married to Mr. Finch,(1267) the Vice-chamberlain? She is. Mr. Finch is a comely black widower, without children, and heir to his brother Winchilsea, who has no sons. The Countess-mother has been in an embroil, (as we have often known her,) about carrying Miss Shelly, a bosom-friend, into the Peeresses’ place at the trials. Lord Granville, who is extremely fond of Lady Charlotte, has given her all her sister’s jewels, to the great discontent of his own daughters. She has five thousand pounds, and Mr. Finch Settles fifteen thousand pounds more upon her. Now we are upon the chapter of marriages, Lord Petersham(1268) was last night married to One Of our first beauties, Lady Caroline Fitzroy;(1269) and Lord Coke(1270) is to have the youngest of the late Duke of Argyl@s daughters,)1271) who is none of our beauties at all.
Princess Louisa has already reached the object of her wish ever since she could speak, and is Queen of Denmark, We have been a little lucky lately in the deaths of Kings, and promise ourselves great matters from the new monarch in Spain.(1272) Princess Mary is coming over from Hesse to drink the Bath waters; that is the pretence for leaving her brutal husband, and for visiting the Duke and Princess Caroline, who love her extremely. She is of the softest, mildest temper in the world.
We know nothing certainly of the young Pretender, but that he is concealed in Scotland, and devoured with distempers — I really wonder how an Italian constitution can have supported such rigours! He has said, that “he did not see what he had to be ashamed of; and that if he had lost one battle, he had gained two.” Old Lovat curses Cope and Hawley for the loss of those two, and says, if they had done their duty, he had never been in this scrape. Cope is actually going to be tried; but Hawley, who is fifty times more culpable, is saved by partiality: Cope miscarried by incapacity; Hawley, by insolence and carelessness.
Lord Cromartie is reprieved; the Prince asked his life, and his wife made great intercession. Duke Hamilton’s intercession for Lord Kilmarnock has rather hurried him to the block: he and Lord Balmerino are to die next Monday. Lord Kilmarnock, with the greatest nobleness of soul, desired to have Lord Cromartie preferred to himself for pardon, if there could be but one saved; and Lord Balmerino laments that himself and Lord Lovat were not taken at the same time; “For then,” says he, “we might have been sacrificed, and those other two brave men escaped.” Indeed Lord Cromartie does not much deserve the epithet; for he wept whenever his execution was mentioned. Balmerino is jolly with ’his pretty Peggy. There is a remarkable story of him at the battle of Dunblain, where the Duke of Argyll, his colonel, answered for him, on
Wish Mr. Hobart joy of ])is new lordship; his father took his seat to-day as Earl of Buckingham -. Lord Fitzwilliam is made English earl with him, by his old title. Lord TankerVille(1274) goes governor to Jamaica: a cruel method of recruiting a prodigal nobleman’s broken fortune, by sending him to pillage a province! Adieu!
P. S. I have taken a pretty house at Windsor and am going thither for the remainder of the summer.
(1264) Charles Sackville, eldest son of Lionel, Duke of Dorset, a Lord of the Treasury.
(1265) She was born at Vienna, in February, 1724-5, and married to Garrick, the celebrated actor, in June, 1749. She died in October, 1822, in the ninety-eighth year of her age.-E.
(1266) Second daughter of Thomas, Earl of Pomfret, and sister of Lady Granville.
(1267) William Finch, brother of the Earl of Winchilsea, had been ambassador in Holland.
(1268) Son of the Earl of Harrington, Secretary of State.
(1269) Eldest daughter of Charles, Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain.
(1270) Edward, only son of Thomas, Earl of Leicester.
(1271) Lady Mary Campbell. She survived her husband fifty-eight years; he having died in 1753, and she in 1811.-D.
(1272) Philip the Fifth, the mad and imbecile King of Spain, was just dead. He was succeeded by his son Ferdinand the Sixth, who died in 1759.—D.
(1273) A melancholy and romantic incident which took place amid the terrors of the executions is thus related by Sir Walter Scott:—“A young lady, of good family and handsome fortune, who had been contracted in marriage to James Dawson, one of the sufferers, had taken the desperate resolution of attending on the horrid ceremonial. She beheld her lover, after being suspended for a few minutes, but not till death (for such was the barbarous sentence), cut down, embowelled, and mangled by the knife of the executioner. All this she supported with apparent fortitude; but when she saw the last scene, finished, by throwing Dawson’s heart into the fire, she drew her head within the carriage, repeated his name, and expired on the spot.” This melancholy event was made, by Shenstone, the theme of a tragic ballad:—
“The dismal scene was o’er and past,
The lover’s mournful hearse retired;
The maid drew back her languid head,
And, sighing forth his name, expired
“though justice ever must prevail,
The tear my Kitty shed is due;
For seldom shall she hear a tale
So sad, so tender, yet so true.”
James Dawson was one of the nine men who suffered
at
Kennington, on the 30th Of July.-E.
(1274) Charles Bennet, second Earl of TankerVille. The appointment did not take place. He died in 1753. His wife, Camilla, daughter of Edward Colville, of White-house, in the bishopric of Durham, Esq. survived till 1775, aged one hundred and five.—E.
500 Letter 216
To George Montagu, Esq,
Arlington Street, Aug. 16, 1746.
Dear George, I shall be with you on Tuesday night, and since you are so good as to be my Rowland white, must beg my apartment at the quivering dame’s may be aired for me. My caravan sets out with all my household stuff on Monday; but I have heard nothing of your sister’s hamper, nor do I know how to send the bantams by it, but will leave them here till I am more settled under the shade of my own mulberry- tree.
I have been this morning at the Tower, and passed under the new heads at Temple Bar,(1275) where people make a trade of letting spying-glasses at a halfpenny a look. Old Lovat arrived last night. I saw Murray, Lord Derwentwater, Lord Traquair, Lord Cromartie and his son, and the Lord Provost, -,it their respective windows. The other two wretched Lords are in dismal towers, and they have stopped up one of old Balmerino’s windows because he talked to the populace; and now he has only one, which looks directly upon all the scaffolding. They brought in the death-warrant at his dinner. His wife fainted. He said, “Lieutenant, with your damned warrant you have spoiled my lady’s stomach.” He has written a sensible letter to the Duke to beg his intercession, and the Duke has given it to the King; but gave a much colder answer to Duke Hamilton, who went to beg it for Lord Kilmarnock: he told him the affair was in the King’s hands, and that he had nothing to do with it. Lord Kilmarnock, who has hitherto kept up his spirits, grows extremely terrified. It will be difficult to make you believe to what heights of affectation or extravagance my Lady Townshend carries her passion for my Lord Kilmarnock, whom she never saw but at the bar of his trial, and was smitten with his falling shoulders. She has been under his windows; sends messages to him; has got his dog and his snuff-box; has taken lodgings out of town for to-morrow and Monday night, and then goes to Greenwich; forswears conversing with the bloody English, and has taken a French master. She insisted on Lord Hervey’s promising her he would not sleep a whole night for my Lord Kilmarnock, “and in return,” says she, “never trust me more if I am not as yellow as a jonquil for him."(1276) She said gravely t’other day, “Since I saw my Lord Kilmarnock, I really think no more of Sir Harry Nisbett than if there was no such man in the world.” But of all her flights, yesterday
(1275) In the sixth volume of “London and its Environs described,” published in 1761, a work which furnishes a curious view of the state of the metropolis on the accession of George the Third, it is not only gravely stated of Temple Bar, that, “since the erection of this gate, it has been particularly distinguished by having the heads of such as have been executed for high treason placed upon it,” but the accompanying plate exhibits it as being at that time surmounted by three such disgusting proofs of the- then semi-barbarous state of our criminal code. The following anecdote, in reference to this exhibition, was related by Dr. Johnson in 1773:—“I remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey: while we surveyed the Poet’s Corner, I said to him,
‘Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.’
When we got to Temple Bar, he stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it, and slily whispered me,
‘Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur ISTIS."’ Life, vol. iii. p. 2@.-E
( 276) “This,” says the Quarterly Review, “is an odd illustration of the truth of the first line in the following couplet, which begins an epigram ascribed to Johnson:—
’Pitied by gentle minds, Kilmarnock died: The brave, Balmerino, are on thy side.’”—E.
(1277) Isabel, Duchess of Manchester, married to Edward Hussey, Esq.-E.
501 Letter 217 To sir Horace Mann. Windsor, Aug. 21, 1746.
You will perceive by my date that I am got into a new scene, and that I am retired hither like an old summer dowager; Only that I have no toad-eater to take the air with me in the back part of my lozenge-coach, and to be scolded. I have taken a small house here within the castle and propose spending the greatest part of every week here till the parliament meets; but my jaunts to town will prevent my news from being quite provincial and marvellous. Then, I promise you, I will go to no races nor assemblies, nor make comments upon couples that come in chaises to the White Hart.
I came from town (for take notice, I put this place upon myself for the country) the day after the execution of the rebel Lords: I was not at it, but had two persons come to me directly who were at the next house to the scaffold; and I saw another who was upon it, so that you may depend upon my accounts.
Just before they came out of the Tower, Lord Balmerino drank a bumper to King James’s health. As the clock struck ten they came forth on foot, Lord Kilmarnock all in black, his hair unpowdered in a bag: supported by Forster, the great Presbyterian, and by Mr. Home a young clergyman, his friend. Lord Balmerino followed], alone, in a blue coat turned up with red, his rebellious regimentals, a flannel waistcoat, and his shroud beneath; their hearses following They were conducted to a house near the scaffold; the room forwards had benches for spectators; in the second Lord Kilmarnock was put, and in the third backwards Lord Balmerino; all three chambers hung with black. Here they parted! Balmerino embraced the other, and said, “My lord, I wish I could suffer for both!” he had scarce left him, before he desired again to see him, and then asked him, “My Lord Kilmarnock, do you know any thing of the resolution taken in our army, the day before the battle of Culloden, to put the English prisoners to death?” He replied, “My lord, I was not present; but since I came hither, I have had all the reason in the world to believe that there was such order taken; and I hear the Duke has the pocket-book with the order.” Balmerino answered, “It was a lie raised to excuse their barbarity to us."-Take notice, that the Duke’s charging this on Lord Kilmarnock (certainly on misinformation) decided this unhappy man’s fate! The most now pretended is, that it would have come to Lord Kilmarnock’s turn to have given the word for the slaughter, as lieutenant-general, with the patent for which he was immediately drawn into the rebellion, after having been staggered by his wife, her mother, his own poverty, and the defeat of Cope. He remained an hour and a half in the house, and shed tears. At last he came to the scaffold, certainly much terrified, but with a resolution that prevented his behaving in the least meanly or unlike a gentleman.(1278) He took no notice of the crowd, only to desire that the baize might be lifted up from the rails, that the mob might see the spectacle. He stood and
The scaffold was immediately new-strewed with saw-dust, the block new-covered, the executioner new-dressed, and a new axe brought. Then came old Balmerino, treading with the air of a general. As soon as he mounted the scaffold, he read the inscription on his coffin, as he did again afterwards: he then surveyed the spectators, who were in amazing numbers, even upon masts of ships in the river; and pulling out his spectacles, read a treasonable speech,(1279) which he delivered to the Sheriff, and said, the young Pretender was so sweet a Prince that flesh and blood could not resist following him; and lying down to try the block, he said, “If I had a thousand lives, I would lay them all down here in the same cause.” he said, “if he had not taken the sacrament the day before, he would have knocked down Williamson, the lieutenant of the Tower, for his ill usage of him. He took the axe and felt it, and asked the headsman how many blows he had given Lord Kilmarnock; and gave him three guineas. Two clergymen, who attended him, coming up, he said, “No, gentlemen, I believe you have already done me all the service you can.” Then he went to the corner of the scaffold, and called very loud for the warder, to give him his periwig, which he took off, and put on a nightcap of Scotch plaid, and then pulled off his coat and waistcoat and lay down; but being told he was on the wrong side, vaulted round, and immediately gave the sign by tossing up his arm, as if he were giving the signal for battle. He received three blows, but the first certainly took away all sensation. He was not a quarter of an hour on the scaffold; Lord Kilmarnock above half a one. Balmerino certainly died with the intrepidity of a hero, but with the insensibility of one too.(1280) As he walked from his prison to execution, seeing every window and top of house filled with spectators, he cried out, “Look, look, how they are all piled up like rotten oranges!”
My Lady Townshend, who fell in love -with Lord Kilmarnock at his trial, will go nowhere to dinner, for fear of meeting with a rebel- pie; she says, every body is so bloody-minded, that they eat rebels! The Prince of Wales, whose intercession saved Lord Cromartie, says he did it in return for old Sir William Gordon, Lady Cromartie’s father, coming down out of his deathbed to vote against my father in the Chippenham election.(1281) If his Royal Highness had not countenanced inveteracy like that of Sir Gordon he would have no occasion to exert his gratitude now in favour of rebels. His brother has plucked a very useful feather out of the cap of the ministry, by forbidding any application for posts in the army to be made to any body but himself: a resolution I dare say, he will keep as strictly and minutely as he does the discipline and dress of the army. Adieu!
P. S. I have just received yours of Aug. 9th. You had not then heard of the second great battle of Placentia, which has already occasioned new instructions, or, in effect, a recall, being sent after Lord Sandwich.
(1278) “When,” says Sir Walter Scott, in Tales of a Grandfather, “he beheld the fatal scaffold, covered with black cloth; the executioner with his axe and his assistants; the saw-dust which was soon to be drenched with his blood; the coffin prepared to receive the limbs which were yet warm with life; above all, the immense display of human countenances which surrounded the scaffold like a sea, all eyes being bent on the sad object of the preparation, his natural feelings broke forth in a whisper to the friend on whose arm he leaned, ‘Home, this is terrible!’ No sign of indecent timidity, however, affected his behaviour."-E.
(1279) Ford, in his account, states that " so far was this speech from being filled with passionate invective, that it mentioned his Majesty as a Prince of the greatest magnanimity and mercy, at the same time that, through erroneous ’political principles, it denied him a right to the allegiance of his people."-E.
(1280) He once more turned to his friends and took his last farewell, and looking on the crowd, said, ’Perhaps some may think my behaviour too bold; but remember, Sir,’ said he to a gentleman who stood near him, ’that I now declare it is the effect of confidence in God, and a good conscience, and I should dissemble if I should show any signs of fear.’” Ford.-E.
(1281) See ant`e, P. 215. (in Letter 51, which begins p. 212.)
504 Letter 218 To Sir Horace Mann. Windsor, Sept. 15, 1746.
You have sent me Marquis Rinuncini with as much secrecy as if you had sent me a present. I was here; there came an exceedingly fair written and civil letter from you, dated last May: I comprehended by the formality of it, that it was written for the person who brought it, not for the person it was sent to. I have been to town on purpose to wait on him, and though you know he was not of my set, yet being of
Your two last were of Aug. 23d and 30th. In the latter you talk of the execution of the rebel lords, but don’t tell me whether you received my long history of their trials. Your Florentines guessed very rightly about my Lady O."s reasons for not returning amongst you: she has picked up a Mr. Shirley,(1287) no great genius—but with all her affectation of parts, you know she never was delicate about the capacity of her lovers. this swain has so little pretensions to any kind of genius, that two years ago being to act in the Duke of Bedford’s company,(1288) he kept back the play three weeks, because he could not get his part by heart, though it consisted but of seventeen lines and a half. With him she has retired to a villa near Newpark, and lets her house in town.
Your last letter only mentions the progress of the King of Sardinia towards Genoa; but there is an account actually arrived of his being master of it. It is very big new-,, and I hope will make us look a little haughty again: we are giving ourselves airs, and sending a secret expedition against France: we don’t indeed own that it is in favour of the Chevalier William Courtenay,(1289) who, you know, claims the crown of France, and whom King William threatened them to proclaim, when they proclaimed the Pretender; but I believe the Protestant Highlanders in the south of France are ready to join him the moment he lands. There is one Sir Watkin Williams, a great Baron in languedoc, and a Sir John Cotton, a Marquis of Dauphin`e,(1290) who have engaged to raise a great number of men, on the first debarkation that we make.
I think it begins to be believed that the Pretender’s son is got to France — pray, if he passes through Florence, make it as agreeable to him as you can, ,ind introduce him to all my acquaintance. I don’t indeed know him myself, but he is a particular friend of my cousin, Sir John Philipps,(1291) and of my sister-in-law Lady O., who will both take it extremely kindly—besides, do for your own sake you may make your peace with her this way; and if ever Lord Bath comes into power, she will secure your remaining at florence. Adieu!
(1282) Marquis Rinuncini, the elder, had been envoy in England, and prime minister to John Gaston, the last Great duke.
(1283) Grey, in a letter to Wharton of the 11th, says, “Mr. Walpole has taken a house in Windsor, and I see him usually once a week. He is at present gone to town, to perform the disagreeable task of presenting and introducing about a young Florentine, the Marquis Rinuncini, who comes recommended to him.” Works, vol. iii. @. 9.-E.
(1284) Sister of Madame Grifoni.
(1285) Signor Ottavio Manelli had been cicisbeo of Madame Grifoni.
(1286) Madame Grifoni.
(1287) Sewallis Shirley, uncle of Earl Ferrers. (He married Lady Orford, after her first husband’s death.-D)
(1288) The Duke of Bedford and his friends acted several plays at Woburn.
(1289) Sir William Courtenay, said to be the right heir of Louis le Gros. There is a notion that at the coronation of a new King of France, the Courtenays assert their pretensions, and that the King of France says to them, “Apres Nous, Vous.” [See Gibbon’s beautiful account of this family, in a digression to his History of the Decline and Fall, Vol. xi.]
(1290) Two Jacobite Knights of Wales and Cambridgeshire.
(1291) Sir J. Philipps, of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire; a noted Jacobite. He was first cousin of Catherine Shorter, first wife of Sir Robert Walpole.
506 Letter 219 To sir Horace Mann. Windsor, Oct. 2,1746.
By your own loss YOU may measure My joy at the receipt of the dear Chutes.(1292) I strolled to town one day last week, and there I found them! Poor creatures! there they were! wondering at every thing they saw, but with the difference from Englishmen that go abroad, O keeping their amazement to themselves. They will tell you of wild dukes in the playhouse, of streets dirtier than forests, and of women more uncouth than the streets. I found them extremely surprised at not finding any ready-furnished palace built round two courts. I do all I can to reconcile their country to them; though seriously they have no affectation, and have nothing particular in them, but that they have nothing particular: a fault, of which the climate and their neighbours will soon correct. You may imagine how we have talked you over, and how I have inquired after the state of your Wetbrownpaperhood. Mr. Chute adores you: do you know, that as well
I have had two or three letters from you since I wrote. The young Pretender is generally believed to have got off the 18th of last month: if he were not, with the zeal of the Chutes, I believe they would be impatient to send a limb to Cardinal Acquaviva and Monsignor Piccolomini. I quite gain a winter with them, having had no expectation of them till spring’. Adieu!
(1292) John Chute and Francis Whitehed had been several years in Italy, chiefly at Florence.
(1293) Gray, in a letter to Mr. Chute, written at this time, thus describes Mr. Whithead:
“He is a fine young personage in a coat all over spangles, just come over from the tour in Europe to take possession and be married. I desire my hearty congratulations to him, and say I wish him more spangles, and more estates, and more wives.” Works, vol. iii. p. 20.-E.
(1294) A fine singer.
(1295) Mr. Mann hired a large palace of the Manetti family at Florence in via di Santo Spirito: foreign ministers in Italy affix large shields with the arms of their sovereign over their door.
507 Letter 220 To the Hon. H. S. Conway. Windsor still, Oct. 3, 1746.
My dear Harry, You ask me if I have really grown a philosopher. Really I believe not: for I shall refer you to my practice rather than to my doctrine, and have really acquired what they only pretended to seek, content. So far, indeed I was a philosopher even when I lived in town, for then I was content too; and all the difference I can conceive between those two opposite doctors was, that Aristippus loved London, and Diogenes Windsor; and if your master
You will immediately conclude, out of good breeding, that it is mine, and that it is charming. I shall be much obliged to you for the first thought, but desire you will retain only the second; for it is Mr. Gray’s, and not your humble servant’s.
(1296) " The Duke of Cumberland is here at his lodge with three women, and three aide-de-camps; and the country swarms with people. He goes to races and they make a ring about him as at a bear-baiting.” Gray to Wharton, Sept. 11. Works, vol. iii. p. 10.-E.
(1297) Here follows, in the original Mr. Gray’s Ode on a, distant prospect of Eton College. [This, which was the first English production of Gray which appeared in print, was published by Dodsley in the following year. Dr. Warton says, that " little notice was taken of it, on its first publication."-E.
508 Letter 221 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Oct. 14, 1746.
You will have been alarmed with the news of another battle(1298) lost in Flanders, where we have no Kings of Sardinia. We make light of it; do not allow it to be a battle, but call it “the action near Liege.” then, we have whittled down our loss extremely, and will not allow a man more than three hundred and fifty English slain out of the four thousand. The whole of’ it, as It appears to me, is, that we gave up eight battalions to avoid fighting; as at Newmarket people pay their forfeit when they foresee they should lose the race; though, if the whole army had fought, and we had lost the day, one might have hoped to have come off for eight battalions. Then they tell you that the French had four-and-twenty-pounders, and that they must beat us by the superiority of their cannon; so that to me it is grown a paradox, to war with a nation who have a mathematical certainty of beating you; or else it is a still stranger paradox, why you cannot have as large cannon as the French. This loss was balanced by a pompous account of the triumphs of our invasion of Bretagne; which, in plain terms, I think, is reduced to burning two or three villages and reimbarking: at least, two or three of the transports are returned with this history, and know not what is become of Lestock and the rest of the invasion. The young Pretender is landed in France, with thirty Scotch, but in such a wretched condition that his Highland Highness had no breeches.(1299)
I have received yours of the 27th of last month, with the capitulation of Genoa, and the kind conduct of the Austrians to us their allies, so extremely like their behaviour whenever they are fortunate. Pray, by the way, has there been any talk of my cousin,(1300) the Commodore, in letting slip some Spanish ships’!-don’t mention it as from me, but there are whispers of court-martial on him. They are all the fashion now; if you miss a post to me, I will have you tried by a court-martial. Cope is come off most gloriously, his courage ascertained, and even his conduct, which every body had given up, justified. Folkes and Lascelles, two of his generals, are come off too; but not so happily in the opinion of the world. Oglethorpe’s sentence is not yet public, but it is believed not to be favourable. He was always a bully, and is now tried for cowardice. Some little dash of the same sort is likely to mingle withe the judgment on il furibondo Matthews; though his party rises again a little, and Lestock’s acquittal begins to pass for a party affair. In short, we are a wretched people, and have seen our best days.
I must have lost a letter, if you really told me of the sale of the Duke of Modena’s pictures,(1301) as you think you did; for when Mr. Chute told it me, it struck me as quite new. They are out of town, good souls; and I shall not see them this fortnight; for I am here only for two or three days, to inquire after the battle, in which not one of my friends were. Adieu!
(1298) The battle of Rocoux; lost by the allies on the 11th of October.-E.
(1299) About the 18th of September, Prince Charles received intelligence that two French frigates had arrived at Lochnannagh, to carry him and other fugitives of his party to France: accordingly, after numerous wanderings in various disguises he embarked, on the 20th of September, attended by Lochiel, Colonel Roy Stuart, and about a hundred others of the relics of his party; and safely landed at the little port of Roscoff, near Morlaix, in Brittany, on the 29th. " During these wanderings,” says Sir Walter Scott, in Tales of a Grandfather, “the secret of the Adventurer’s concealment was intrusted to hundreds, of every sex, age, and condition; but no individual was found, in a high or low situation, or robbers even , who procured their food at the risk of their lives, who thought for an instant of obtaining opulence at the expense of treachery to the proscribed and miserable fugitive. Such disinterested conduct will reflect honour on the Highlands of Scotland while their mountains shall continue to exist.” Prose Works, vol. xxvi. p. 374.-E.
(1300) George Townshend, eldest son of Charles, Lord Viscount Townshend, by Dorothy, his second wife, sister of Sir Robert Walpole. (He was subsequently tried by a court-martial for his conduct upon this occasion, and honourably acquitted.-D.)
(1301) To the King of Poland.
509 Letter 222
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Windsor, Oct. 24, 1746.
Well, Harry, Scotland is the last place on earth I should have thought of for turning any body poet: but I begin to forgive it half its treasons in favour of your verses, for I suppose you don’t think I am the dupe of the highland story that you tell me: the only use I shall make of it is to commend the lines to you, as if they really were a Scotchman’s. There is a melancholy harmony in them that is charming, and a delicacy in the thoughts that no Scotchman is capable of, though a Scotchwoman(1302 might inspire it. I beg, both for Cynthia’s sake and my own, that you would continue your De Tristibus till I have an opportunity of seeing your muse, and she of rewarding her: Reprens ta musette, berger amoureux! If Cynthia has ever travelled ten miles in fairy-land, she must be wondrous content with the person and qualifications of her knight, who in future story will be read of thus: Elmedorus was tall and perfectly well made, his face oval, and features regularly handsome, but not effeminate; his complexion sentimentally brown, with not much colour; his teeth fine, and forehead agreeably low, round which his black hair curled naturally and beautifully. His eyes were black too, but had nothing of fierce or insolent; on the contrary, a certain melancholy swimmingness, that described hopeless love rather than a natural amorous languish. His exploits in war, where he always fought by the side of the renowned Paladine William of England, have endeared his memory to all admirers of true chivalry, as the mournful elegies which he poured out among the desert rocks of Caledonia,(1303) in honour of the peerless lady and his heart’s idol, the incomparable Cynthia, will for ever preserve his name in the flowery annals of poesy.
What a pity it is I was not born in the golden age of Louis the Fourteenth, when it was not only the fashion to write folios, but to read them too! or rather , it is a pity the same fashion don’t subsist NOW, when one need not be at the trouble of invention, nor of turning the whole Roman history into romance for want of proper heroes. Your campaign in Scotland, rolled out and well be-epitheted, would make a pompous work, and make one’s fortune; at sixpence a number, one should have all the damsels within the liberties for subscribers: whereas now, if one has a mind to be read, one must write metaphysical poems in blank verse, which, though I own to be still easier, have not half the imagination of romances, and are dull without any agreeable absurdity. Only think of the gravity of this wise age, that have exploded “Cleopatra and Pharamond,” and approve “The Pleasures of the Imagination,” “The Art of Preserving Health,” and “Leonidas!” I beg the age’s pardon: it has done approving these poems, and has forgot them.
Adieu! dear Harry. Thank you seriously for the poem. I am going to town for the birthday, and shall return hither till the Parliament meets; I suppose there is no doubt of our meeting then. Yours ever.
P.S. Now you are at Stirling, if you should meet with Drummond’s history of the five King Jameses, pray look it over.(1304) I have read it, and like it much. It is wrote in imitation of Livy; the style is masculine, and the whole very sensible; only he ascribes the misfortunes of one reign to the then king’s loving architecture and
“In trim gardens taking pleasure.”
(1302) Caroline Campbell, Countess of Ailesbury.-E.
(1303) Mr. Conway was now in Scotland.
(1304) Drummond of Hawthorne’s History of Scotland, from 1423 to 1542, did not appear until after his death. This work, in which the doctrine of unlimited authority and passive obedience is advocated to an extravagant extent, is generally considered to have added little to his reputation. He died in December 1649, in his sixty-fourth year. Ben Jonson is said to have so much admired the genius of this “Scotian Petrarch,” as to travel on foot to Scotland, out of love and respect for him.-E.
510 Letter 523
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, Nov. 3, 1746.
Dear George, Do not imagine I have already broken through all my wholesome resolutions and country schemes, and that I am given up body and soul to London for the winter. I shall be with you by the end of the week; but just now I am under the maiden palpitation of an author. My epilogue will, I believe, be spoken to-morrow night;(1305) and I flatter myself I shall have no faults to answer for but what are in it, for I have kept secret whose it is. It is now gone to be licensed; but as the Lord Chamberlain is mentioned,(1306)’ though rather to his honour, it is possible it may be refused.
Don’t expect news, for I know no more than a newspaper. Asheton would have written it if there were any thing to tell you. Is it news that my Lord Rochford is an oaf? He has got a set of plate buttons for the birthday clothes, with the Duke’s head in every one. Sure my good lady carries her art too far to make him so great a dupe. How do all the comets? Has Miss Harriet found out any more ways at solitaire? Has Cloe left off evening prayer on account of the damp evenings? How is Miss Rice’s cold and coachman? Is Miss Granville better? Has Mrs. Masham made a brave hand of this bad season, and lived upon carcases like any vampire? Adieu! I am just going to see Mrs. Muscovy,(1307) and will be sure not to laugh if my old lady should talk of Mr. Draper’s white skin, and tickle his bosom like Queen Bess.
(1305) Rowe’s tragedy of Tamerlane was written in compliment to William the Third, whose character the author intended to display under that of Tamerlane, as he meant to be understood to draw that of Louis the Fourteenth in Bajazet. Tamerlane was always acted on the 4th and 5th of November, the anniversaries of King William’s birth and landing; and this year Mr. Walpole had written an epilogue for it, on the suppression of the rebellion.-E.
(1306) The Duke of Grafton.
(1307) Mrs. Boscawen, wife of the Hon. George Boscawen, fifth son of Viscount Falmouth.-E.
511 Letter 224 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Nov. 4, 1746.
Mr. Chute and I a,,reed not to tell you of any new changes till we could tell you more of them, that you might not be “put into a taking,” as you was last winter with the revolution of three days; but I think the present has ended with a single fit. Lord Harrington,(1308) quite on a sudden, resigned the seals; it is said, on some treatment not over-gracious; but he is no such novice to be shocked with that, though I believe it has been rough ever since his resigning last year, which he did more boisterously than he is accustomed to behave to Majesty. Others talk of some quarrel with his brother secretary, who, in complaisance, is all for drums and trumpets. Lord Chesterfield was immediately named his successor; but the Duke of Newcastle has taken the northern provinces, as of more business, and consequently better suited to his experience and abilities! I flatter myself that this can no way affect you. Ireland is to be offered to Lord Harrington, or the Presidentship; and the Duke of Dorset, now President, is to have the other’s refusal. The King has endured a great deal with your old complaint; and I felt for him, recollecting all you underwent.
You will have seen in the papers all the histories of our glorious expeditions(1309) and invasions of France, which have put Cressy and Agincourt out of all countenance. On the first view, indeed, one should think that our fleet had been to victual; for our chief prizes were cows and geese and turkeys. But I rather think that the whole was fitted out by the Royal Society, for they came back quite satisfied with having discovered a fine bay! Would one believe, that in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty-six, we should boast of discovering something on the coast of France, as if we had found out the Northeast passage, or penetrated into some remote part of America? The Guards are come back too, who never went: in one Single day they received four several different orders!
Matthews is broke at last. Nobody disputes the justice of the sentence; but the legality of it is not quite so authenticated. Besides some great errors in the forms, whenever the Admiralty perceived any of the court-martial inclined to favour him, they were constantly changed. Then, the expense has been enormous; two hundred thousand pounds! chiefly by employing young captains, instead of old half-pay officers; and by these means, double commissions. Then there has been a great fracas between the court-martial and Willes.(1310) He, as Chief Justice, sent a summons in the ordinary form of law, to Mayerne, to appear as an evidence in a trial where a captain had prosecuted Sir Chaloner Ogle for horrid tyranny: the ingenious court-martial sat down and drew up articles of impeachment, like any House of Commons, against the Chief Justice for stopping their proceedings! and the Admiralty, still more ingenious, had a mind to complain of him to the house! He was charmed to catch them at such absurdities—but I believe at last it is all compromised.
I have not heard from you for some time, but I don’t pretend to complain: you have real occupation; my idleness is for its own sake. The Abb`e Niccolini and Pandolfini are arrived; but I have not yet seen them. Rinuncini cannot bear England—and if the Chutes speak their mind, I believe they are not captivated yet with any thing they have found: I am more and more with them: Mr. Whithed is infinitely improved: and Mr. Chute has absolutely more Wit, knowledge, and good-nature, than, to their great surprise, ever met together in one man.(1311) he has a bigotry to you, that even astonishes me, who used to think that I was pretty well in for loving you; but he is very often ready to quarrel with me for not thinking you all pure gold. Adieu!
(1308) William Stanhope, Earl of Harrington, secretary of state.
(1309) The expedition to Quiberon; the troops under General St. Clair, the fleet under Admiral Lestock. The object was to surprise Port l’Orient, and destroy the stores and ships of the French East India Company, but the result attained was only the plunder and burning of a few helpless villages. The fleet and troops returned, however, with little loss. “The truth is,” says Tindal, “Lestock was too old and infirm for enterprise, and, as is alleged, was under the shameful direction of a woman he carried along with him; and neither the soldiers nor the sailors seem to have been under any kind of discipline."-E.
(1310) John Willes, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas(1311) Grey, in a letter to Mr. Chute of the 12th of October says, “Mr. Walpole is full, I assure you, of your panegyric. Never any man had half so much wit as Mr. Chute, (which is saying every thing with him, you know,) and Mr. Whitehead is the finest young man that was ever imported.” Works, vol. iii. p. 22.-E.
513 Letter 225 To Sir Horace Mann. Windsor, Nov. 12, 1746.
Here I AM come hither, per saldare; but though the country is excellently convenient, from the idleness of it, for beginning a letter, yet it is not at all commode for finishing one: the same ingredients that fill a basket by the carrier, will not fill half a sheet of paper; I could send you a cheese, or a hare; but I have not a morsel of news. Mr. Chute threatened me to tell you the distress I was in last week, when I starved Niccolini and Pandolfini on a fast-day, when I had thought to banquet them sumptuously. I had luckily given a guinea for two pine-apples, which I knew they had never seen in Italy, and upon which they revenged themselves for all the meat that they dared not touch. Rinuncini could not come. How you mistook me, my dear’ child! I meant simply that you had not mentioned his coming; very far from reproving you for giving him a letter. Don’t I give letters for you every day to cubs, ten times cubber than Rinuncini! and don’t you treat them as though all their names were Walpole? If you was to send me all the uncouth productions
As to Mr. Townshend, I now know all ’the particulars, and that Lord SandWich(1313) was at the bottom of it. What an excellent heart his lordship will have by the time he is threescore, if he sets out thus! The persecution(1314) is on account of the poor boy’s relation to my father; of whom the world may judge pretty clearly already, from the abilities and disinterestedness of such of his enemies as have succeeded; and from their virtue in taking any opportunity to persecute any Of his relations; in which even the public interest of their country can weigh nothing, when clashing with their malice. The King of Sar dinia has written the strongest letter imaginable to complain of the grievous prejudice the Admiralty has don@his affairs by this step.
Don’t scold me for not sending you those Lines to Eckardt:(1315) I never wrote any thing that I esteemcd less, or that was seen so incorrect ; nor can I at all account for their having been so much liked, especially as the thoughts were so old and so common. I was hurt at their getting into print. I enclose you an epilogue(1316) that I hae vwritten since, merely for a specimen of something more correct. You know, or have known, that Tamerlane is always acted on King William’s birthday, with an occasional prologue ; this was the epilogue to it, and succeeded to flatter me. Adieu!
(1312) Minister from the Great Duke.
(1313) John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty.
1314) See letter 221 of the 14th October.
((1315) The Beauties, an Epistle to Eckardt, the painter; reprinted in Dodsley’s Miscellanieg in Walpole’s Works, vol. i. p. 19.]
(1316) On the suppression of the rebellion. [See Works, vol. i. p. 25.]
514 Letter 226 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Dec. 5, 1746.
We are in such a newsless situation, that I have been some time without writing to you; but I now answer one I received from you yesterday. You will excuse me, if I am not quite so transported as Mr. Chute is, at the extremity of Aquaviva.(1317) I can’t afford to hate people so much at such a distance: my aversions find employment within their own atmosphere.
Rinuncini returns to you this week, not at all contented with England: Niccolini is extremely, and turns his little talent to great account; there is nobody of his own standard but thinks him a great genius. The Chutes and I deal extremely together; but they abuse me, and tell me I am grown so English! lack-a-day! so I am; as folks that have been in the Inquisition, and did not choose to broil, come out excellent Catholics.
I have been unfortunate in my own family; my nephew, Captain Cholmondeley,(1318) has married a player’s sister; and I fear Lord Malpas(1319) is on the brink of matrimony with another girl of no fortune. Here is a ruined family! their father totally undone, and all be has seized for debt!
The Duke is gone to Holland to settle the operations of the campaign, but returns before the opening of it. A great reformation has been made this week in the army; the horse are broke, and to be turned into dragoons, by which sixty thousand pounds a-year will be saved. Whatever we do in Flanders, I think you need not fear any commotions here, where Jacobitism seems to have gasped its last. Mr. Radcliffe, the last Derwentwater’s brother, is actually named to the gallows for Monday; but the imprudence of Lord Morton,(1320) who has drawn himself into the Bastile, makes it doubtful whether the execution will be so quick. The famous orator Henley is taken up for treasonable flippancies.(1321)
You know Lord Sandwich is minister at the Hague. Sir Charles Williams, who has resigned the paymastership of the marines, is talked of for going to Berlin, but it is not yet done. The Parliament has been most serene, but there is a storm in the air: the Prince waits for an opportunity of erecting his standard, and a disputed election between him and the Grenvilles is likely very soon to furnish the occasion. We are to have another contest about Lord Bath’s borough,(1322) which Mr. Chute’s brother formerly lost, and which his colleague, Lu@e Robinson, has carried by a majority of three, though his competitor is returned. Lord Bath wrote to a man for a list of all that would be against him: the man placed his own and his brother’s names at the head of the list.
We have operas, but no company at them; the Prince and Lord Middlesex Impresarii. Plays only are in fashion: at one house the best company that perhaps ever were together, quin, Garrick, Mrs. Pritchard, and Mrs. Cibber: at the other, Barry, a favourite young actor, and the Violette, whose dancing our friends don’t like; I scold them, but all the answer is, “Lord! you are so English!” If I do clap sometimes when they don’t, I can fairly say with Oedipus,
“My hands are guilty, but my heart is free.” ’
Adieu!
(1317) Cardinal Acquaviva, Protector of Spain, and a great promoter of the interests of the Pretender
(1318) Robert, second son of George, Earl of Cholmondeley, married Mary, sister of Mrs. Margaret Woffington, the actress. He afterwards quitted the army and took orders. [Besides two church livings, he enjoyed the office of auditor of the King’s revenues in America. He died in 1804.]
(1319) George, eldest son of Lord Cholmondeley, married, in January 1747, Miss Edwards. (She was the, daughter and heiress of Sir Francis Edwards, Bart. of Grete, in Shropshire.-D.)
(1320) James Douglas, ninth Earl of Morton.-D.
(1321) He was, a few days after, admitted to bail.-E.
(1322) Heydon.
515 Letter 227
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Christmas-day, 1746.
We are in great expectation of farther news from Genoa, which the last accounts left in the greatest confusion, and I think in the hands of the Genoese;,(1323) a circumstance that may chance to unravel all the fine schemes in Provence! Marshal Bathiani, at the Hague, treated this revolt as a trifle; but all the letters by last post make it a reconquest. The Dutch do all the Duke asks: we talk of an army of 140,000 men in Flanders next campaign. I don’t know how the Prince of Orange relishes his brother-in-law’s dignities and success.
Old Lovat has been brought to the bar of the House of Lords: he is far from having those abilities for which he has been so cried up. He saw Mr. Pelham at a distance and called to him, and asked him if it were worth while to make all this fuss to take off a gray head fourscore years old? In his defence he complained of his estate being seized and kept from him. Lord Granville took up this complaint very strongly, and insisted on having it inquired into. Lord Bath went farther, and, as some people think, intended the Duke; but I believe he only aimed at the Duke of Newcastle, who was so alarmed with this motion, that he kept the House above a quarter of an hour in suspense, till he could send for Stone,(1324) and consult what he should do. They made a rule to order the old creature the profits of his estate till his conviction. He is to put in his answer the 13th of January.
Lord Lincoln is cofferer at last, in the room of Waller,(1325) who is dismissed. Sir Charles Williams has kissed hands, and sets out for Dresden in a month: he has hopes of Turin, but I think Villettes is firm. Don’t mention this.
Did I ever talk to you of a Mr. Davis, a Norfolk gentleman, who has taken to painting? He has copied the Dominichin, the third picture he ever copied in his life: how well, you may judge; for Mr. Chute, who, I believe you think, understands pictures if any body does, happened to come in, just as Mr. Davis brought his copy hither. “Here,” said I, “Mr. Chute, here is your Dominichin come to town to be copied.” He literally did not know it; which made me very happy for Mr. Davis, who has given me this charming picture. Do but figure to yourself a man of fifty years old, who was scarce ever out of the county of Norfolk, but when his hounds led him; who never saw a tolerable picture till those at Houghton four years ago who plays and composes as well as he paints, and who has no more of the Norfolk dialect than a Florentine! He is the most decent, sensible man you ever saw.
Rinuncini is gone: Niccolini sups continually with the Prince of Wales, and learns the Constitution! Pandolfini is put to-bed, like children, to be out of the way. Adieu!
P. S. My Lady O. who has entirely settled her affairs with my brother, talks of going abroad again, not being able to live here on fifteen hundred pounds a-year—many an old ’lady, and uglier too, lives very comfortably upon less. After I had writ this, your brother brought me another letter with a confirmation of all we had heard about Genoa. You may be easy about the change of provinces,(1326) which has not been made as was designed. Echo Mons`u Chute
>From Mr. Chute.
Mr. Walpole gives me a side, and I catch hold of it to tell you that I parted this minute with your charming brother, who has been in the council with me about your grand affair:(1327) it is determined now to be presented to the King by way of memorial; and to-morrow we meet again to draw it up: Mr. Stone has graciously signified that this is a very proper opportunity — one should think he must know.
Oh! I must tell you: I was here last night, and saw my Lord Walpole,(1328) for the first time, but such a youth! I declare to you, I was quite astonished at his sense and cleverness; it is impossible to describe it; it was just what would have made you as happy to observe as it did me: he is not yet seventeen, and is to continue a year longer at Eton, upon his own desire. Alas! how few have I seen of my countrymen half so formed even at their return from their travels! I hope you will have him at Florence One day or other; he will pay you amply for the Pigwiggins, and------
Mr. Walpole is quite right in all he tells you of the miracle worked by St. Davis, which certainly merits the credit of deceiving far better judges of painting than I; who am no judge of any thing but you, whom I pretend to understand better than any body living and am, therefore, my dear sir, etc. etc. etc. J. C.
(1323) This circumstance is thus alluded to in a letter of Sir Horace Mann’s, dated Dec. 20th, 1746. “The affairs of Genoa are in such a horrid situation, that one is frightened out of one’s senses. The accounts of them are so confused, that one does not know what to make of them; but it is certain that the mob is quite master of the town and of every thing in it. They have sacked several houses, particularly that of the Doge, and five or six others, belonging to those who were the principal authors of the alliance which the Republic made with France and Spain."-D.
(1324) Andrew Stone, secretary to the Duke of Newcastle, and afterwards sub-governor to George, Prince of Wales.
(1325) Edmund Waller, of Beaconsfield.
(1326) Meaning a change in the secretaries of state. There were at this time two, one of whom was called the Secretary of State for the Northern Province, and the other the Secretary of State for the Southern Province.-D.
(1327) Of Mr. Mann’s arrears.
(1328) George, only son of Robert, second Earl of Orford, whom he succeeded in the title.
517 Letter 228 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Jan. 27, 1747.
The Prince has formally declared a new Opposition which is never to subside till he is King (s’entendent that he does not carry his point sooner.) He began it pretty handsomely the other day with 143 to 184, which has frightened the ministry like a bomb. This new party wants nothing but heads; though not having any, to be sure the struggle is the fairer. Lord Baltimore(1329) takes the lead; he is the best and honestest man in the world, with a good deal of jumbled knowledge; but not capable of conducting a party. However, the next day, the Prince, to reward him, and to punish Lord Archibald Himllton, who voted with the ministry, told Lord Baltimore that he would not give him the trouble of waiting any more as Lord of the Bedchamber. but would make him Cofferer. Lord B. thanked him, but desired that it might not be done in a way disagreeable to Lord Archibald, who was then Cofferer. The Prince sent for Lord Archibald, and told him he would either make him Comptroller, or give him a pension of twelve hundred pounds a-year; the latter of’ which the old soul accepted, and went away content; but returned in an hour with a letter from his wife,(1330) to say, that as his Royal Highness was angry with her husband, it was not proper for either of them to take their pensions. It is excellent! When she was dismissed herself, she accepted the twelve hundred pounds, and now will not let her husband, though he had accepted. It must mortify the Prince wondrously to have four-and-twenty hundred pounds a-year thrown back into an exchequer that never yet overflowed!
I am a little piqued at Marquis Riccardi’s refusing me such a, trifle as the four rings, after all the trouble I have had with his trumpery! I think I cannot help telling him, that Lord Carlisle and Lord Duncannon, Who heard of his collection from Niccolini, have seen it; and are willing, at a reasonable price, to take it between them: if you let me know the lowest, and in money that I understand, not his equivocal pistoles, I will allow so much to Florence civilities, as still to help him off with his goods, though he does not deserve it; as selling me four rings could not have affected the general purchase. I pity your Princess Strozzi(1331) but cannot possibly hunt after her chattels: Riccardi has cured me of Italian merchandise, by forcing it upon me.’
Your account of your former friend’s neglect of you does not at all surprise me: there is an inveteracy, a darkness, a design and cunning in his character that stamp him for a very unamiable young man: it is uncommon for a heart to be so tainted so early My cousin’s(1332) affair is entirely owing to him;(1333) nor can I account for the pursuit of such unprovoked revenge.
I never heard of the advertisement that you mention to have received from Sir James Grey,(1334) nor believe it was ever in the House of Commons; I must have heard of it. I hear as little of Lady O. who never appears; nor do I know if she sees Niccolini: he lives much with Lady Pomfret (who has married her third daughter),(1335) and a good deal with the Prince.
Adieu! I have answered your letter, and have nothing more to put into mine.
(1329) Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, had been a Lord of the Admiralty, on the change of the ministry in 1742. He died soon after the Prince, in 1751.
(1330) Jane, sister of the Earl of Abercorn, and wife of Lord Archibald Hamilton, great-uncle of Duke Hamilton: she had been mistress of the robes, etc. to the Princess of Wales, and the supposed mistress of the Prince. She died at Paris, in December 1752.
(1331) She had been robbed of some of the most valuable gems of the famous Strozzi collection.
(1332) The Hon. George Townshend. See what is said of him in a letter (221) of Oct. 14, 1746, and note 1300.-D.
(1333) It appeared afterwards that the person here mentioned, after having behaved very bravely, gave so perplexed an account of his own conduct, that the Admiralty thought it necessary to have it examined; but the inquiry proved much to his honour.
(1334) “Sir James Gray has sent me the copy of an advertisement, the publisher of which, he says, had been examined before the House of Commons, Lost or mislaid an ivory table-book, containing various queries vastly strong.” Letter of Sir H. Mann, of Jan. 10th, 1747. It probably related to the trial of the rebel Lords.-D.
(1335) Lady Henrietta Fermor, second wife of Mr. Conyers.
519 Letter 229 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Feb. 23, 1747.
Why, you do nothing but get fevers! I believe you try to dry your Wet-brown-paperness, till you scorch it. Or do you play off fevers against the Princess’s coliques? Remember, hers are only for the support of her dignity, and that is what I never allowed you to have: you must(1336) have twenty unlawful children, and then be twenty years in devotion, and have twenty unchristian appetites and passions all the while, before you may think of getting into a cradle with `epuisements and have a Monsieur Forzoni(1337) to burn the wings of boisterous gnats-pray be more robust-do you hear!
One would think you had been describing our Opera, not your own; we have just set out with one in what they call, the French manner, but about as like it, as my Lady Pomfret’s hash of plural persons and singular verbs or infinitive moods was to Italian. They sing to jigs, and dance to church music -. Phaeton is run away with by horses that go a foot’s-pace, like the Electress’s(1338) coach, with such long traces, that the postilion was in one street and the coachman in another;—then comes Jupiter with a farthing-candle to light a squib and a half, and that they call fire-works. Reginello, the first man, is so old and so tall, that he seems to have been growing ever since the invention of operas. The first woman has had her mouth let out to show a fine set of teeth, but it lets out too much bad voice at the same time.(1339) Lord Middlesex, for his great prudence in having provided such very tractable
Lord Kildare is married to the charming Lady Emily Lennox, who went the very next day to see her sister Lady Caroline Fox, to the great mortification of the haughty Duchess-mother. They have not given her a shilling, but the King endows her, by making Lord Kildare a Viscount Sterling:(1340) and they talk of giving him a Pinchbeck-dukedom too, to keep him always first peer of Ireland.(1341) Sir Everard Falkener is married to Miss Churchill, and my sister is brought to bed of a son.
Panciatici is arrived, extremely darkened in his person and enlivened in his manner. He was much in fashion at the Hague, but I don’t know if he will succeed so well here: for in such great cities as this, you know people affect not to think themselves honoured by foreigners; and though we don’t quite barbarize them as the French do, they are toujours des etrangers. Mr. Chute thinks we have to the full all the politeness that can make a nation brutes to the rest of the world. He had an excellent adventure the other day with Lord Holderness, whom he met at a party it Lady Betty Germains; but who could not possibly fatigue himself to recollect that they had ever met before in their lives. Towards the end of dinner Lady Betty mentioned remembering a grandmother of Mr. Chute who was a peeress: immediately the Earl grew as fond of him as if they had walked together at a coronation. He told me another good story last night of Lord Hervey,(1342) who was going with them from the Opera, and was so familiar as to beg they would not call him my Lord and your Lordship. The freedom proceeded; when on a sudden, he turned to Mr. Whithed, and with a distressed friendly voice, said, “Now have you no peerage that can come to you by any woman?”
Adieu! my dear Sir; I have no news to tell you. Here is another letter of Niccolini that has lain in my standish this fortnight.
(1336) All the succeeding paragraph alludes to Princess Craon.
(1337) Her gentleman usher.
(1338) The Electress Palatine Dowager, the last of the house of Medici; she lived at Florence.
(1339) The drama of Fetonte was written by Vaneschi. “The best apologies for the absurdities of an Italian opera, in a country where the language is little understood, are,” says Dr. Burney, “good music and exquisite singing: unluckily, neither the composition nor performance of Phaeton had the siren power of enchanting men so much, as to stimulate attention at the expense of reason.” Hist. of Music, Vol. iv. p. 456.-E.
(1340) Meaning an English viscount. He was created Viscount Leinster, of Taplow, in Bucks, Feb. 21st, 1747.-D.
(1341) In 1761 his lordship was advanced to the Marquisate of Kildare, and in 1766 created Duke of Leinster. By Lady Emily Lennox the Duke had seventeen children.-E.
(1342) George, eldest son of John, Lord Hervey, and afterwards Earl of Bristol, and minister at Turin and Madrid.
521 Letter 230 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, March 20, 1747.
I have been living at old Lovat’s trial, and was willing to have it over before I talked to you of it. It lasted seven days: the evidence was as strong as possible; and after all he had denounced, he made no defence. The Solicitor-General,(1343) who was one of the managers for the House of Commons, shone extremely; the Attorney-General ,(1344) who is a much greater lawyer, is cold and tedious. The old creature’s behaviour has been foolish, and at last, indecent. I see little of parts in him, nor attribute much to that cunning for which he is so famous: it might catch wild Highlanders; but the art of dissimulation and flattery is so refined and improved, that it is of little use where it is not very delicate. His character seems a mixture of tyranny and pride in his villainy. I must make you a little acquainted with him. In his own domain he governed despotically, either burning or plundering the lands and houses of his open enemies, or taking off his secret ones by the assistance of his cook, who was his poisoner in chief. He had two servants who married without his consent; he said, “You shall have enough of each other,” and stowed them in a dungeon, that had been a well for three weeks. When he came to the Tower, he told them, that if he were not so old and infirm, they would find it difficult to keep him there. They told him they had kept much younger: “Yes,” said he, “but they were inexperienced: they had not broke so many gaols as I have.” At his own house he used to say, that for thirty years of his life he never saw a gallows but it made his neck ache. His last act was to shift his treason upon his eldest son, whom he forced into the rebellion. He told Williamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, “We will hang my eldest son, and then my second shall marry your niece.” He has a sort of
Don’t thank Riccardi for me: I don’t feel obliged for his immoderate demand, but expect very soon to return him his goods; for I have no notion that the two Lords, who are to see them next week, will rise near his price. We have nothing like news: all the world has been entirely taken up with the trial. -Here is a letter from Mr. Whithed to Lord Hobart. Mr. Chute would have written to-Day, if I had not; but will next post. Adieu!
(1343) William Murray.
(1344) Sir Dudley Ryder; afterwards Lord Chief Justice.
(1345) He was secretary to the Duke, whom he had attended into Scotland during the rebellion.
(1346) Lord Byron has put nearly the same words into the mouth of Israel Bertuccio, in his tragedy of Marino Falicro.-E.
522 Letter 131 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, April 10, 1747.
I deferred writing to you as long as they deferred the execution of old Lovat, because I had a mind to send you some account of his death, as I had of his trial. He was beheaded yesterday, and died extremely well, without passion, affectation, buffoonery, or timidity: his behaviour was natural and intrepid. He professed himself a Jansenist; made no speech, but sat down a little while in a chair on the scaffold, and talked to the people round him. He said, “he was glad to suffer for his country, dulce est pro patria mori; that he did not know how, but he had always loved it, nescio qua natale solum, etc.; that he had never swerved from his principles; that this was the character of his family, who had been gentlemen for five hundred years.” He lay down quietly, gave the sign soon, and was despatched at a blow. I believe it will strike some terror into the Highlands, when they hear there is any power great enough to bring so potent a tyrant to the block. A scaffold fell down, and killed several persons; one, a man that had rid post from Salisbury the day before to see the ceremony; and a woman was taken up dead with a live child in her arms. The body(1347) is sent into Scotland: the day was cold, and before It set out, the coachman drove the hearse about the court, before my Lord Traquair’s dungeon, which could be no agreeable sight: it might to Lord Cromartie, who is above the chair.(1348) Mr. Chute was at the execution with the Italians, who were more entertained than shocked: Panciatici told me, “It was a triste spectacle, mais qu’il ne laissoit d’`etre beau.” Niccolini has treasured it up among his insights into the English constitution. We have some chance of a Peer’s trial that has nothing to do with the rebellion. A servant of a college has been killed at Oxford, and a verdict of wilful murder by persons unknown, brought in by the coroner’s inquest. These persons unknown are supposed to be Lord Abergavenny,(1349) Lord Charles Scot,(1350) and two more, who had played tricks with the poor fellow that night, while he was drunk, and the next morning he was found with his skull fractured, at the foot of the first Lord’s staircase. One pities the poor boys, who undoubtedly did not foresee the melancholy event of their sport.
I shall not be able till the next letter to tell you about Riccardi’s gems: Lord Duncannon has been in the country; but he and Lord Carlisle are to come to me next Sunday, and determine.
Mr. Chute gave you some account of the Independents:(1351) the committee have made a foolish affair of it, and cannot furnish a report. Had it extended to three years ago, Lord Sandwich and Grenville(1352) of the admiralty would have made an admirable figure as dictators of some of the most Jacobite healths that ever were invented. Lord Doneraile, who is made comptroller to the Prince, went to the committee, (whither all members have a right to go, though not to vote, as it is select, not secret,) and plagued Lyttelton to death, with pressing him to inquire into the healths of the year ’43. The ministry are now trembling at home, with fear of losing the Scotch bills for humbling the Highland chiefs: they have whittled them down almost to nothing, in complaisance to the Duke of Argyll: and at last he deserts them. Abroad they are in panics for Holland, where the French have at once besieged two towns, that must fall into their hands, though we have plumed ourselves so much on the Duke’s being at the head of a hundred and fifteen thousand men.
There has been an excellent civil war in the house of Finch: our friend, Lady Charlotte,(1353( presented a daughter of John Finch, (him who was stabbed by Sally Salisbury,(1354)) his offspring by Mrs. Younger,(1355) whom he since married. The King, Prince, and Princess received her: her aunt, Lady Bel,(1356) forbad Lady Charlotte to present her to Princess Emily, whether, however, she carried her in defiance. Lady Bel called it publishing a bastard at court, and would not present her—think on the poor girl! Lady Charlotte, with spirit, presented her herself. Mr. W. Finch stepped up to his other sister, the Marchioness of Rockingham,(1357) and whispered her with his composed civility, that he knew it was a plot of her and Lady Bel to make Lady Charlotte miscarry. The sable dame (who, it is said, is the blackest of the family, because she swept the chimney) replied, “This is not a place to be indecent, and therefore I shall only tell you that you are a rascal and a villain, and that if ever you dare to put your head into my house, I will kick you down stairs myself.” Politesse Anglaise! lord Winchilsea (who, with his brother Edward, is embroiled with both sides) came in, and informed every body of any circumstances that tended to make both parties in the wrong. I am impatient to hear how this operates between my Lady Pomfret and her friend, Lady Bel. Don’t you remember how the Countess used to lug a half-length picture of the latter behind her post-chaise all over Italy, and have a new frame made for it in every town where she stopped? and have you forgot their correspondence, that poor lady Charlotte was daily and hourly employed to transcribe into a great book, with the proper names in red ink? I have but just room to tell you that the King is perfectly well, and that the Pretender’s son was sent from Spain as soon as he arrived there. Thank you for the news of Mr. Townshend. Adieu!
(1347) It was countermanded, and buried in the Tower.
(1348) Lord Cromartie had been pardoned.-D.
(1349) George Neville, fifteenth Lord and first Earl of Abergavenny. Died 1785.-D.
(1350) Lord Charles Scott, second son of Francis, Duke of Buccleuch . He died at Oxford during the year 1747.-D.
(1351) An innkeeper in Piccadilly, who had been beaten by them, gave information against them for treasonable practices, and a committee of the House of Commons, headed by Sir W. Yonge and Lord Coke, was appointed to inquire into the matter. [The informant’s name was Williams, keeper of the White Horse in Piccadilly. Being observed, at the anniversary dinner of the independent electors of Westminster, to make memorandums with a pencil, he was severely cuffed, and kicked out of the company. The alleged treasonable practices consisted in certain Offensive toasts. On the King’s health being drunk, every man held a glass of water in his left hand, and waved a glass of wine over it with the right.]
(1352) George Grenville, afterwards prime minister.-D.
(1353) Lady Charlotte Fermor, second daughter of Thomas, Earl of Pomfret, and second wife of William Finch, vice-chamberlain to the King; formerly ambassador in Holland, and brother of Daniel, Earl of Winchilsea.
(1354) Sally Salisbury, alias Pridden, a woman of the town, stabbed the Hon. John Finch, in a bagnio, in the neighbourhood of Covent-garden; but he did not die of the wound.-D.
(1355) Elizabeth Younger. Her daughter, by the Hon. John Finch, married John Mason, Esq. of Greenwich.-D.
(1356) Lady Isabella Finch, lady of the bedchamber to the Princesses Emily and Caroline.
(1357) Lady mary Finch, fifth daughter of Daniel, sixth Earl of Winchilsea; married in 1716 to the Hon. Thomas Wentworth, afterwards created Marquis of Rockingham.-E.
525 Letter 232 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Arlington Street, April 16, 1747.
Dear Harry, We are all skyrockets and bonfires tonight for your last year’s victory;(1359) but if you have a mind to perpetuate yourselves in the calendar, you must take care to refresh your conquests. I was yesterday out of town, and the very signs as I passed through the villages made me make very quaint reflections on the mortality of fame and popularity. I observed how the Duke’s head had succeeded almost universally to Admiral Vernon’s, as his had left but few traces of the Duke of Ormond’s. I pondered these things in my heart, and said unto myself, Surely all glory is but as a sign!
You have heard that old lovat’s tragedy is over: it has been succeeded by a little farce, containing the humours of the Duke of Newcastle and his man Stone. The first event was a squabble between his grace and the Sheriff about holding up the head on the scaffold—a custom that has been disused, and which the Sheriff would not comply with, as he received no order in writing. Since that, the Duke has burst ten yards of breeches strings(1360) about the body, which was to be sent into Scotland; but it seems it is customary for vast numbers to rise to attend the most trivial burial. The Duke, who is always at least as much frightened at doing right as at doing wrong, was three days before he got courage enough to order the burying in the Tower. I must tell you an excessive good story of George Selwyn -. Some women were scolding him for going to see the execution, and asked him, how he could be such a barbarian to see the head cut off? “Nay,” says he, “if that was such a crime, I am sure I have made amends, for I went to see it sewed on again.” When he was at the undertaker’s, as soon as they had stitched him together, and were going to put the body into the coffin, George, in my Lord Chancellor’s voice, said “My Lord lovat, your lordship may rise.” My Lady Townshend has picked up a little stable-boy in the Tower, which the warders have put upon her for a natural son of Lord Kilmarnock’s, and taken him into her own house. You need not tell Mr. T. this from me.
We have had a great and fine day in the House on the second reading the bill for taking away the heritable Jurisdictions in Scotland. Lyttelton made the finest oration imaginable; the Solicitor General, the new Advocate,(1361) and Hume Campbell, particularly the last. spoke excessively well for it, and Oswald against it. The majority was 233 against 102. Pitt was not there; the Duchess of Queensberry had ordered him to have the gout.
I will give you a commission once more, to tell Lord Bury(1362) that he has quite dropped me: if I thought he would take me up again, I would write to him; a message would encourage me. Adieu!
(1359) The battle of Culloden.
(1360) Alluding to a trick of the Duke of Newcastle’s.
(1361) William Grant, Lord Advocate of Scotland.
(1362) George Keppel, eldest son of William, Earl of Albemarle, whom he succeeded in the title in 1755. He was now, together with Mr. Conway, aide-de-camp to the Duke of Cumberland.
526 Letter 233 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, May 5, 1747.
It is impossible for me to tell you more of the new Stadtholder(1363) than you must have heard from all quarters. Hitherto his existence has been of no service to his country. Hulst, which we had heard was relieved, has surrendered. The Duke was in it privately, just before it was taken, with only two aide-de-camps, and has found means to withdraw our three regiments. We begin to own now that the French are superior: I never believed they were not, or that we had taken the field before them; for the moment we had taken it, we heard of Marshal Saxe having detached fifteen thousand men to form sieges. There is a print published in Holland of the Devil weighing the Count de Saxe and Count lowendahl in a pair of scales, with this inscription:
Tous deux vaillants,
Tous deux galants,
Tous deux constants,
Tous deux galiards,
Tous deux paliards,
Tous deux b`atards,(1364)
Tous deux sans foi.
Tous deux sans loi.
Tous deux `a moi.
We are taken up with the Scotch bills for weakening clanships and taking away heritable Jurisdictions. I have left them sitting on it to-day, but was pleased with a period of Nugent. “These jurisdictions are grievous, but nobody complains of them; therefore, what? therefore, they are excessively grievous.” We had a good-natured bill moved to-day by Sir William Yonge, to allow council to prisoners on impeachments for treason, as they have on indictments. It hurt every body at old Lovat’s trial, all guilty as he was, to see an old wretch worried by the first lawyers in England, without any assistance but his own unpractised defence. It had not the least opposition; yet this was a point struggled for in King William’s reign, as a privilege and dignity inherent in the Commons, that the accused by them should have no assistance of council. how reasonable, that men, chosen by their fellow-subjects for the defence of their fellow-subjects, should have rights detrimental to the good of the people whom they are to protect! Thank God! we are a better-natured age, and have relinquished this savage privilege with a good grace!
Lord Cowper(1365) has resigned the bedchamber, on the Beef-eaters being given to Lord Falmouth. The latter, who is powerful in elections, insisted on having it: the other had nothing but a promise from the King, which the ministry had already twice forced him to break.
Mr. Fox gave a great ball last week at Holland House. which he has taken for a long term, and where he is making great improvements. It is a brave old house, and belonged to the gallant Earl of Holland, the lover of Charles the First’s Queen. His motto has puzzled every body; it is Ditior est qui se. I was allowed to hit off an interpretation, which yet one can hardly reconcile to his gallantry, nor can I decently repeat it to you. While I am writing, the Prince is going over the way to Lord Middlesex’s, where there is a ball in mask to-night for the royal children.
The two Lords have seen and refused Marquis Riccardi’s gems: I shall deliver them to Pucci; but am so simple (you will laugh at me) as to keep the four I liked: that is, I will submit to give him fifty pounds for them, if he will let me choose one ring more; for I will at least have it to call them at ten guineas apiece. If he consents, I will remit the money to you, or pay it to Pucei, as he likes. If not, I return them with the rest of the car,,o. I can choose no ring for which I would give five guineas.
I have received yours of April 25th, since I came home. You will scold me for being so careless about the Pretender’s son; but I am determined not to take up his idea again, till he is at least on this side Derby. Do excuse me; but when he could not get to London, with all the advantages which the ministry had smoothed for him, how can he ever meet more concurring circumstances? If my lady’S(1366) return has no better foundation than Niccolini’s authority, I assure you you may believe as little of it as you please. If he knows no more of her, than he does of every thing else that he pretends to know, as I am persuaded he does not, knowledge cannot possibly be thinner spread. He has been a progress to add more matter to the mass, that he already don’t understand. Adieu!
(1363) The Prince of Orange had just been raised to that dignity in a tumultuary manner.
(1364) The Count de Saxe was a natural son of Augustus the Second, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and of the Countess Konigsmark. The Count de LOWendahl was not a “b`atard” himself; but his father, Woldemar, Baron of Lowendahl, was the son of the Count of Gildoniew, who was the natural son of Frederick the Third, King of Denmark.-D.
(1365) William, second Earl Cowper, son of the Chancellor. He died in 1764.-D.
(1366) Lady Orford.-D.
527 Letter 234
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, May 19th, 1747,
As you will receive the Gazette at the same time with this letter, I shall leave you to that for the particulars of the great naval victory that Anson has gained over the French off Cape Finisterre.(1367) It is a very big event, and by far one of the most considerable that has happened during this war. By it he has defeated two expeditions at once; for the fleet he has demolished was to have split, part for the recovery of Cape Breton, part for the East Indies. He has always been most remarkably fortunate: Captain Granville, the youngest of the brothers, was as unlucky: he was killed by the cannon that was fired as a signal for their striking.(1368) He is extremely commended: I am not partial to the family; but it is but justice to mention, that when he took a great prize some time ago, after a thousand actions of generosity to his officers and crew, he cleared sixteen thousand pounds, of which he gave his sister ten. The King is in great spirits. The French fought exceedingly well.
I have no other event to tell you, but the promotion of a new brother of yours. I condole with you, for they have literally sent one Dayrolies(1369) resident to Holland, under Lord Sandwich,
—Minum partes tractare secundas.
This curious minister has always been a led-captain to the Dukes of Grafton and Richmond; used to be sent to auctions for them, and to walk in the Park with their daughters, and once went dry nurse to Holland with them. He has belonged, too, a good deal to my Lord Chesterfield, to whom, I believe, he owes this new honour; as he had before made him black-rod in Ireland, and gave the ingenious reason, that he had a black face. I believe he has made him a minister, as one year, at Tunbridge, he had a mind to make a wit of Jacky Barnard, and had the impertinent vanity to imagine that his authority was sufficient.
Your brother has gone over the way with Mr. Whithed, to choose some of Lord Cholmondeley’s pictures for his debt; they are all given up to the creditors, who yet scarce receive forty per cent. of their money.
It is wrong to send so short a letter as this so far, I know; but what can one do? After the first fine shower, I will send you a much longer. Adieu!
(1367) Upon this occasion Admiral Anson took six French men-of war and four of their East Indiamen, and sunk or destroyed the rest of their fleet.-D.
(1368) Thomas Grenville, youngest brother of Richard, Earl Temple. As soon as he was struck by the cannon-ball, he exclaimed, gallantly, “well! it is better to die thus, than to be tried by a court-martial!” [His uncle Lord Cobham, erected a column to his memory in the gardens at Stowe.]
(1369) ,,b Solomon Dayrolles, Esq. There are many letters addressed to him in Lord Chesterfield’s Miscellaneous Correspondence.-D.
528 Letter 235 To Sir Horace Mann Arlington Street, June 5, 1747.
Don’t be more frightened at hearing the Parliament is to be dissolved in a fortnight, than you are obliged to be as a good minister. Since this Parliament has not brought over the Pretender, I trust the death of it will not. You will want to know the reason of this sudden step: several are given, as the impossibility of making either peace or war, till they are secure of a new majority; but I believe the true motive is to disappoint the Prince, who was not ready with his elections. In general, people seem to like the measure, except the Speaker, who is very pompous about it, and speaks constitutional paragraphs. There are rumours of changes to attend its exit. People imagine Lord Chesterfield(1370) is to quit, but I know no other grounds for this belief, than that they conclude the Duke of Newcastle must be jealous of him by this time. Lord Sandwich is looked upon as his successor, Whenever it shall happen. He is now here, to look after his Huntingdonshire boroughs. We talk nothing but elections-however, it is better than talking them for a year together. Mine for Callington (for I would not come in for Lynn, which I have left to Prince Pigwiggin(1371)) is so easy, that I shall have no trouble, not even the dignity of being carried in triumph, like the lost sheep, on a porter’s shoulders but may retire to a little new farm that I have taken just out of Twickenham. The house is so small, that I can send it you in a letter to look at: the prospect is as delightful as possible, commanding the river, the town, and Richmond Park; and being situated on a hill descends to the Thames through two or three little meadows, where I have some Turkish sheep and two cows, all studied in their colours for becoming the view. This little rural bijou was Mrs. Chenevix’s, the toy-woman `a la mode, who in every dry season is to furnish me with the best rain-water from Paris, and now and then with some Dresden-china cows, who are to figure like wooden classics in a library: so I shall grow as much a shepherd as any swain in the Astrea.
Admiral Anson(1372) is made a baron, and Admiral Warren(1373) Knight of the Bath-so is Niccolini to be-when the King dies.(1374) His Majesty and his son were last night at the masquerade at Ranelagh, where there was so little company, that I was afraid they would be forced to walk about together.
I have been desired to write to you for two scagliola tables; will you get them? I will thank you, an pay you too.
You will hardly believe that I intend to send you this for a letter, but I do. Mr. Chute said he would write to you to-day, so mine goes as page to his. Adieu!
(1370) He was now secretary of state, which office he did not resign till Feb. 1748.-D.
(1371) Eldest son of Horatio, brother of Sir Robert Walpole.
(1372) George Anson, created Lord Anson of Soberton. He is well known for his voyages round the world, as well as for his naval successes. He was long first lord of the admiralty; but did not distinguish himself as a statesman. He died suddenly, while walking in his garden at Moor Park in Hertfordshire, June 6th, 1762.-D.
(1373) Sir Peter Warren was the second in command in the victory off Cape Finisterre.-D.
(1374) The Abb`e Niccolini was in much favour with the Prince of Wales.-D.
530 Letter 236 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Twickenham, June 8, 1747.
You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix’s shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with filigree hedges:
“A small Euphrates through the piece is roll’d, And little finches wave their wings in gold”
Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises; barges as solemn as barons of the exchequer move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospect; but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. Dowagers (-As plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope’s ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. I have about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah’s, when he set up in the ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I believe his was after they had been cooped up together forty days. The Chenevixes had tricked it out for themselves: up two pair of stairs is what they call Mr. Chenevix’s library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without any glasses. Lord John Sackville predeceased me here, and instituted certain games called cricketalia, which have been celebrated this very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring meadow.
You will think I have removed my philosophy from Windsor with my tea-things hither; for I am writing to you in all this tranquillity, while a Parliament is bursting about my ears. You know it is going to be dissolved: I am told, you are taken care of, though I don’t know where, nor whether any body that chooses you will quarrel with me because he does choose you, as that little bug the Marquis of Rockingham did; one of the calamities of my life which I have bore as abominably well as I do most about which I don’t care. They say the Prince has taken up two hundred thousand pounds, to carry elections which he won’t carry:—he had much better have saved it to buy the Parliament after it is chosen. A new set of peers are in embryo, to add more dignity to the silence of the House of Lords.
I make no remarks on your campaign,(1375) because, as you say, you do nothing at all; which, though very proper nutriment for a thinking head, does not do quite so well to write upon. If any one of you can but contrive to be shot upon your post, it is all we desire, shall look upon it as a great curiosity, and will take care to set up a monument to the person so slain; as we are doing by vote to Captain Cornwall, who was killed at the beginning Of the action in the Mediterranean four years ago.(1376) In the present dearth of glory, he is canonized; though, poor man! he had been tried twice the year before for cowardice.(1377)
I could tell you much election news, none else; though not being thoroughly attentive to so important a subject, as to be sure one ought to be, I might now and then mistake, and give you a candidate for Durham in place of one for Southampton, or name the returning-officer instead of the candidate. In general, I believe, it is much as usual-those sold in detail that afterwards will be sold in the representation—the ministers bribing Jacobites to choose friends of their own--the name of well-wishers to the present establishment, and patriots outbidding ministers that they may make the better market of their own patriotism:-in short, all England, under some flame or other, is just now to be bought and sold; though, whenever we become posterity and forefathers, we shall be in high repute for wisdom and virtue. My great-great-grandchildren will figure me with a white beard down to my girdle; and Mr. Pitt’s will believe him unspotted enough to have walked over nine hundred hot ploughshares, without hurting the sole of his foot. How merry my ghost will be, and shake its ears to hear itself quoted as a person of consummate prudence! Adieu, dear Harry! Yours ever.
(1375) Mr Conway was in Flanders with the Duke of Cumberland.
(1376) The House of Commons, on the 28th of May, had agreed to erect a monument in Westminster Abbey to the memory of Captain Cornwall, of the Marlborough; who was slain while bravely defending his ship. The monument, designed and executed bye Taylor, was completed in 1755. —E.
(1377) And honourably acquitted on both occasions.-E.
531 Letter 237 To sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, June 26, 1747.
You can have no idea of the emptiness of London, and of the tumult every where else. To-day many elections begin. The sums of money disbursed within this month would give any body a very faint idea of the poverty of this undone country! I think the expense and contest is greater now we are said to be all of a mind, than when parties ran highest. Indeed, I ascribe part of the solitude in town to privilege being at an end; though many of us can afford to bribe so high, it is not so easy to pay debts. Here am I, as Lord Cornbury(1378) says, sitting for a borough, while every body else stands for one. He diverted me extremely the other day with the application of a story to the King’s speech. It says, the reason for dissolving the Parliament is its being so near dissolution:(1379) Lord Cornbury said it put him in mind of a gaoler in Oxfordshire who was remarkably humane to his prisoners; one day he said to one of them, “My good friend, you know you are to be hanged on Friday se’nnight; I want extremely to go to London; would you be so kind as to be hanged next Friday?”
Pigwiggin is come over, more Pigwiggin than ever! He entertained me with the horrid ugly figures that he saw at the Prince of Orange’s court; think of his saying ugly figures! He is to be chosen for Lynn,-whither I would not go, because I must have gone; I go to Callington again, whither I don’t go. My brother chooses Lord luxborough(1380) for Castlerising. Would you know the connexion? This Lord keeps Mrs. Horton the player; we keep Miss Norsa the player: Rich the harlequin is an intimate of all; and to cement the harlequinity, somebody’s brother (excuse me if I am not perfect in such genealogy) is to marry the Jewess’s sister. This coup de th`eatre procured Knight his Irish coronet, and has now stuffed him into Castlerising, about which my brother has quarrelled with me, for not looking upon it, as, what he called, a family-borough. Excuse this ridiculous detail; it serves to introduce the account of the new peers, for Sir Jacob Bouverie, a considerable Jacobite, who is made Viscount Folkestone, bought his ermine at twelve thousand pound a-yard of the Duchess of Kendal(1381) d’aujourd’hui. Sir Harry Liddel is Baron Ravensworth, and Duncombe Baron Feversham; Archer and Rolle have only changed their Mr.ships for Lordships. Lord Middlesex has lost one of his Lordships, that of the Treasury; is succeeded by the second Grenville, and he by Ellis,(1382) at the admiralty. Lord Ashburnham had made a magnificent summer suit to wait, but Lord Cowper at last does not resign the bedchamber. I intend to laugh over this disgrazia with the Chuteheds, when they return triumphant from Hampshire, where Whitehed has no enemy. A-propos to enemies! I believe the battle in Flanders is compromised, for one never hears of it.
The Duchess of Queensberry(1383) has at last been at court, a point she has been intriguing these two years. Nobody gave in to it. At last she snatched at the opportunity of her son being obliged to the King for a regiment in the Dutch service, and would not let him go to thank, till they sent for her too. Niccolini, who is next to her in absurdity and importance, is gone electioneering with Doddington.
I expect Pucci every day to finish my trouble with Riccardi; I shall take any ring, though he has taken care I shall not take another tolerable one. If you will pay him, which I fancy will be the shortest way to prevent any fripponnerie, I will put the money into your brother’s hands.
My eagle(1384) is arrived-my eagle tout court, for I hear nothing of the pedestal: the bird itself was sent home in a store-ship; I was happy that they did not reserve the statue, and send its footstool. It is a glorious fowl! I admire it, and every body admires it as much as it deserves. There never was so much spirit and fire preserved, with so much labour and finishing. It stands fronting the Vespasian: there are no two such morsels in England!
Have you a mind for an example of English bizarrerie? there is a Fleming here, who carves exquisitely in ivory, one Verskovis; he has done much for me, and where I have recommended him; but he is starving, and returning to Rome, to carve for-the English, for whom, when he was there before, he could not work fast enough.(1385)
I know nothing, nor ever heard of the Mills’s and Davisons; and know less than nothing Of whether they are employed from hence. There is nobody in town of whom to inquire; if there were, they would ask me for what borough these men were to stand, and wonder that I could name people from any other motive. Adieu!
(1378) Henry Hyde, only son of the last Earl of Clarendon. He died before his father.
(1379) King’s words are, “As this Parliament would necessarily determine in a short time, I have judged it expedient speedily to call a new one."-E.
(1380) Robert Knight, eldest son of the famous cashier of the South Sea Company. (Created Lord Luxborough in Ireland 1746, and Earl of Catherlough in 1763. He died in 1772.-D.)
(1381) Lady Yarmouth, the mistress of George II.-D.
(1382) Right Honourable Welbore Ellis.-D.
(1383) She had quarrelled with the court, in consequence of the refusal to permit Gray’s sequel to the Beggar’s Opera, called “Polly,” to be acted.-D.
(1384) The eagle found in the gardens of Boccapadugli within the precincts of Caracalla’s baths, at Rome, in the year 1742; one of the finest pieces of Greek sculpture in the world. See Walpole’s Works, vol. ii. p. 463, and Gray’s Ode on the Progress of Poesy.-E.
(1385) Verskovis is also mentioned by Walpole in his Anecdotes of Painting. he had a son, who to the art of carving in ivory, added painting, but died young, in 1749, before his father. The latter did not survive above a year.-E.
533 Letter 238 To George Montagu, Esq. Arlington Street, July 2, 1747.
Dear George, Though we have no great reason to triumph, as we have certainly been defeated,(1386) yet the French have as certainly bought their victory dear: indeed, what would be very dear to us, is not so much to them. However, their least loss is twelve thousand men; as our least loss is five thousand. The truth of the whole is, that the Duke was determined to fight at all events, which the French, who determined not to fight but at great odds, took advantage of. His Royal Highness’s valour has shone extremely, but at the expense of his judgment. Harry Conway, whom nature always designed for a hero of romance, and who is d`eplac`e in ordinary life, did wonders; but was overpowered and flung down, when one French hussar held him by the hair, while another was going to stab him: at that instant, an English sergeant with a soldier came up, and killed the latter; but was instantly killed himself; the soldier attacked the other, and Mr. Conway escaped; but was afterwards taken prisoner; is since released on parole, and may come home to console his fair widow,,(1387) whose brother, Harry Campbell, is certainly killed, to the great concern of all widows who want consolation. The French have lost the Prince of Monaco, the Comte de Bavi`ere, natural brother to the last Emperor, and many officers of great rank. The French King saw the whole through a spying-glass, from Hampstead Hill, environed with twenty thousand men.’ Our Guards did shamefully, and many officers. The King had a line from Huske in Zealand on the Friday night, to tell him we were defeated; of his son not a word — judge of his anxiety till three o’clock on Saturday! Lord Sandwich had a letter in his pocket all the while, and kept it there, which said the Duke was well.
We flourish at sea, have taken great part of the Domingo fleet, and I suppose shall have more lords. The Countess touched twelve thousand for Sir Jacob Bouverie’s coronet.
I know nothing of my own election, but suppose it is over; as little of Rigby’s, and conclude it lost. For franks, I suppose they don’t begin till the whole is complete. My compliments to your brothers and sisters.
(1386) The Battle of Laffelt, in which the Duke of Cumberland was defeated.-E.
(1387) Caroline, widow of the Earl of Ailesbury, sister of Henry Campbell, here mentioned, and of John, Duke of Argyle.-E.
(1388) The King of France’ in allusion to the engagement, is said to have observed, that “the British not only paid all, but fought all.” In his letter to the Queen, he also characterized the Austrians as “benevolent” spectators of the battle. See M`emoires de Richelieu, t. vii. P. 111.-E.
534 Letter 239 To sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, July 3, 1747.
You would think it strange not to hear from me after a battle though the printed relation is so particular, that I could only repeat what that contains. The sum total is, that we would fight. which the French did not intend; we gave them, or did not take, the advantage of situation; they attacked: what part of our army was engaged did wonders, for the Dutch ran away, and we had contrived to post the Austrians in such a manner, that they could not assist us:(1388) we were overpowered by numbers, though the centre was first broke by the retreating Dutch; and though we retired, we killed twelve thousand of the enemy, and lost six ourselves. The Duke was very near taken, having through his short sight, mistaken a body of French for his own people. He behaved as bravely as usual; but his prowess is so well established, that it grows time for him to exert other qualities of a general.
We shine at sea; two-and-forty sail of the Domingo fleet have fallen into our hands, and we expect more. The ministry are as successful in their elections: both Westminster and Middlesex have elected court candidates, and the city of London is taking the same step, the first time of many years that the two latter have been Whig; but the non-subscribing at the time of the rebellion, has been most successfully played off upon the Jacobites; of which stamp great part of England was till-the Pretender came. This would seem a paradox in any other country, but contradictions are here the only rule of action. Adieu!
(1389) The Duke of Cumberland, in a letter to Lord Chesterfield of the 3d of July, says, “The great misfortune of our position was that our right wing was so strongly posted, that they could neither be attacked nor make a diversion; for I am assured that Marshal Bathiani would have done all in his power to sustain me, or attack the enemy."-E.
535 Letter 240 To sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, July 28, 1747.
This is merely one of my letters of course, for I have nothing to tell you. You will hear that Bergen-op-zoom still holds out, and is the first place that has not said yes, the moment the French asked it the question. The Prince of Waldeck has resigned, on some private disgust with the Duke. Mr. Chute received a letter from you yesterday, with the account of the deliverance of Genoa, which had reached us before, and had surprised nobody. But when you wrote, you did not know of the great victory obtained by eleven battalions of PiedmOntese over six-and-forty of the French, and of the lucky but brave death of their commander, the Chevalier de Belleisle. He is a great loss to the French, none to Count Saxe; an irreparable one to his own brother. whom, by the force of his parts, he had pushed so high, at the same time always declining to raise himself, lest he should eclipse the Marshal, who seems now to have missed the ministry by his Italian scheme, as he did before by his ill success in Germany. We talk of nothing but peace: I hope we shall not make as bad an one as we have made a war, though one is the natural consequence of the other.
We have at last discovered the pedestal for my glorious eagle, at the bottom of the store-ship; but I shall not have it out of the Custom-house till the end of this week. The lower part of the eagle’s beak(1390) has been broke off and lost. I wish you would have the head only of your Gesse cast, and send it me, to have the original restored from it.
The commission for the scagliola tables was given me without any dimensions; I suppose there is a common size. If the original friar(1391) can make them, I shall be glad: if not, I fancy the person would not care to wait so long as you mention, for what would be less handsome than mine.
I am almost ashamed to send you this summer letter; but nobody is in town; even election news are all over. Adieu!’
(1390) “Quench’d in dark clouds of slumber lie The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye,” Gray.-E.
(1391) Scagliola is a composition, which was made only at Florence by Father Hugford, an Irish friar.
536 Letter 241 To sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Sept. 1, 1747.
Your two last are of August 1st and 22d. I fear my last to you was of July 28th. I have no excuse, but having nothing to tell you, and having been in the country. Bergen-op-zoom still holds out; the French having lost great numbers before it, though at first, at least, it was not at all well-defended. Nothing else is talked of, and opinions differ so much about the event, that I don’t pretend to guess what it will be. It appears now that if the Dutch had made but decent defences of all the other towns, France would have made but slow progress in the conquest of Flanders, and Wanted many thousand men that now threaten Europe.
There are not ten people in London besides the Chuteheds and me; the White one is going into Hampshire; I hope to have the other a little with me at Twickenham, whither I go to-morrow for the rest of the season.
I don’t know what to say to you about Mr. Mill; I can learn nothing about him: my connexions with any thing ministerial are little as possible; and were they bigger, the very commission, that you apprehend, would be a reason to’ make them keep it secret from you, on whose account alone, they would know I inquired. I cannot bring myself to believe that he is employed from hence; and I am always so cautious of meddling about you, for fear of risking you in any light, that I am the unfittest person in the world to give you any satisfaction on this head: however, I shall continue to try.
I never heard any thing so unreasonable as the Pope’s request to that Cardinal Guadagni;(1392) but I suppose they will make him comply.
You will, I think, like Sir James Grey; he is very civil and good-humoured, and sensible. Lord (1393) is the two former; but, alas he is returned little wiser than he went.
Is there a bill of exchange sent to your brother? or may not I pay him without? it is fifty pounds and three zechins, is it not? Thank you.
Pandolfini is gone with Count Harrache; Panciatici goes next week: I believe he intended staying longer; but either the finances fail, or he does not know how to dispose of these two empty months alone; for Niccolini is gone with the Prince to Cliefden. I have a notion the latter would never leave England, if he could but bring himself to change his religion; or, which he would like as well, if he could persuade the Prince to change his. Good night!
(1392) This relates to a request made by the Pope to Cardinal Guadagni, to resign a piece of preferment which he was in possession of.-D.
(1393) So in the MS.-D.
537 Letter 242
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, Oct. 1, 1747.
Dear George, I wish I could have answered your invitation from the Tigress’s with my own person, but it was impossible. I wish your farmer would answer invitations with the persons of more hens and fewer cocks; for I am raising a breed, and not recruits. The time before he sent two to one, and he has done so again. I had a letter from Mr. Conway, who is piteously going into prison again, our great secretary has let the time Slip for executing the cartel, and the French have reclaimed their prisoners. The Duke is coming back. I fear his candles are gone to bed to Admiral Vernon’s! He has been ill; they say his head has been more affected than his body. Marshal Saxe sent him Cardinal Polignac’s Anti-Lucretius(1393) to send to Lord Chesterfield. If he won’t let him be a general, at least ’tis hard to reduce him to a courier.
When I saw you at Kyk in de Pot, I forgot to tell you that seven more volumes of the Journals are delivering: there’s employment for Moreland. I go back to Kyk in de Pot tomorrow. Did you dislike it so much that you could not bring yourself to persuade your brother to try it with you for a day or two! I shall be there till the birthday, if you will come.
George Selwyn says, people send to Lord Pembroke to know how the bridge rested. You know George never thinks but `a la t`ete tranch`ee: he came to town t’other day to have a tooth drawn, and told the man that he would drop his handkerchief for the signal. My compliments to your family.
(1393) In 1757, Anti-Lucretius was rendered into English by Dobson; for whose translation of Paradise Lost into Latin verse, Auditor Benson, who erected a monument to Milton in Westminster Abbey, gave him one thousand pounds. In 1767, a translation of the first book of the Cardinal’s poem was published by the father of the Right Honourable George Canning.-E.
537 Letter 243 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Oct. 2, 1747.
I am glad the Chuteheds are as idle as I am for then you will believe it is nothing but idleness. I don’t know that it is absolutely so; I rather flatter myself that it is want of materials that has made me silent, I fear, above these five weeks. Literally nothing has happened but the treachery at Bergen-Op-zoom,(1394) and of that all the world knows at least as much as I do. The Duke is coming home, and both armies are going into quarters, at least for the present: the French, I suppose, will be in motion again with the first frosts. Holland seems gone!-How long England will remain after it, Providence and the French must determine! This is too ample a subject to write but little upon, and too obvious to require much.
The Chuteheds have been extremely good, and visited and stayed with me at Twickenham-I am sorry I must, at your expense, be happy. If I were to say all I think of Mr. Chute’s immense honesty, his sense, his wit, his knowledge, and his humanity, you would think I was writing a dedication. I am happy in him: I don’t make up to him for you, for he loves nothing a quarter so well; but I try to make him regret you less-do you forgive me? Now I am commending your friends, I reproach myself with never having told you how much I love your brother Gal.(1395) you yourself have not more constant good-humour-indeed he has not such trials with illness as you have, you patient soul! but he is like you, and much to my fancy. Now I live a good deal at Twickenham, I see more of him, and like to see more of him: you know I don’t throw my liking about the street.
Your Opera must be fine, and that at Naples glorious: they say we are to have one, but I doubt it. Lady Middlesex is breeding-the child will be well-born; the Sackville is the worst blood it is supposed to swell with. Lord Holderness has lost his son. Lady Charlotte Finch, when she saw company on her lying-in, had two toilets spread in her bedchamber with her own and Mr. Finch’s dressing plate. This was certainly a stroke of vulgarity, that my Lady Pomfret copied from some festino in Italy.
Lord Bath and his Countess and his son(1396) have been making a tour: at Lord Leicester’s(1397) they forgot to give any thing to the servants that showed the house; upon recollection-and deliberation, they sent back a man and horse six miles with-half a crown! What loads of money they are saving for the French!
Adieu! my dear child-perhaps you don’t know that I , “cast many a Southern look"(1398) towards Florence-I think within this half-year I have thought more of making you a visit, than in any half-year since I left you. I don’t know whether the difficulties will ever be surmounted, but you cannot imagine how few they are: I scarce think they are in the plural number.
(1394) In the letter to Sir Thomas Robinson of the 7th of November, Sir Everard Fawkener says, “The capture of Bergen-op-zoom is a subject to make one mad, if any thing had been done; but the ordinary forms of duty, which never fail in times of the greatest security, were now, in this critical time, neglected in the most scandalous manner.” Hence it was surmised that the place was surrendered through treachery. See Coxe’s Pelham, vol. i. p. 361.-E.
(1395) Galfridus Mann, twin-brother of Horace Mann.
(1396) William, Viscount Pulteney, only son of Lord Bath. He died in his father’s lifetime.-D.
(1397) Holkham.
(1398) Shakspeare, Henry IV.-,, “Cast many a northern look to see his father bring up his powers.”
539 Letter 244 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Nov. 10, 1747.
I came to town but last week; but on looking over the dates of my letters, I find I am six weeks in arrear to you. This is a period that ought to make me blush, and beyond what I think I was ever guilty — but I have not a tittle to tell you; that is, nothing little enough has happened, nor big enough, except Admiral Hawke’s(1399) great victory and for that I must have transcribed the gazettes.
The Parliament met this morning, the House extremely full, and many new faces. We have done nothing, but choose a Speaker, and, in choosing him, flattered Mr. Onslow, who is rechosen. In about ten days one shall be able to judge of the complexion of the winter; but there is not likely to be much opposition. The Duke was Coming, but is gone back to Breda for a few days. When he does return, it will be only for three weeks. He is to watch the French and the negotiations for peace, which are to be opened-I believe not in earnest.
Whithed has made his entrance into Parliament; I don’t expect he will like it. The first session is very tiresome with elections, and without opposition there will be little spirit.
Lady Middlesex has popped out her child before its time; it is put into spirits, and my Lord very loyally, cries over it. Lady Gower carried a niece to Leicester-fields(1400) the other day, to present her; the girl trembled-she pushed her: “What are you so afraid of? Don’t you see that musical clock? Can you be afraid of a man that has a musical clock?”
Don’t call this a letter; I don’t call it one; it only comes to make my letter’s excuses. Adieu!
(1399) Admiral Edward Hawke, afterwards created Lord Hawke, for his eminent naval services. On the ]5th July 1747, he met a large fleet of French merchant-vessels going from the ports of France to the West Indies. and guarded by a strong force of ships of war. He completely routed them, and took six ships of war. -It was in his despatch to the Admiralty on this occasion, that he made use of the Following remarkable expression: “As the enemy’s ships were large, they took a great deal of drubbing."-D.
(1400) Where the Prince of Wales held his court. Lady Gower was Mary Tufton, daughter of Thomas, Earl of Thanet, and widow of Anthony Gray, Earl of Harold, who became, in 1736, third wife of John, second Lord Gower.-D.
539 Letter 245 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Nov. 24, 1747.
You say so many kind things to me in your letter of Nov. 7th, on my talking of a journey to Florence, that I am sorry I mentioned it to you. I did it to show you that my silence is far from proceeding from any forgetfulness of you; and as I really think continually of such a journey, I name it now and then; though I don’t find how to accomplish it. In short, my affairs are not so independent of every body, but that they require my attending to them to make them go smoothly; and unless I could get them into another situation, it is not possible for me to leave them. Some part of my fortune is in my Lord O.’s(1401) hands; and if I were out of the way of giving him trouble, he has not generosity enough to do any thing that would be convenient for me. I will say no more on this subject, because it is not a pleasant one; nor would I have said this, but to convince you that I did not mention returning to Florence out of gaiet`e de coeur. I never was happy but there; have a million of times repented returning to England, where I never was happy, nor expect to be.
For Mr. Chute’s silence, next to myself, I can answer for him: He always loves you, and I am persuaded wishes nothing more than himself at Florence. I did hint to him your kind thought about Venice, because, as I saw no daylight to it, it could not disappoint him; and because I knew how sensible he would be to this mark of your friendship. There is not a glimmering prospect of our sending a minister to Berlin; if we did, it would be a person of far greater consideration than Sir James Grey; and even if he went thither, there are no means of procuring his succession for Mr. Chute. My dear child, you know little of England, if you think such and so quiet merit as his likely to meet friends here. Great assurance, or great quality, are the only recommendations. My father was abused for employing low people with parts-that complaint is totally removed.
You reproach me with telling you nothing of Bergen-op-zoom; seriously, I know nothing but what was in the papers; and in general, on those great public events, I must transcribe the gazette, if you will have me talk to you. You will have seen by the King’s speech that a congress is appointed at Aix-la-Chapelle, but nobody expects any effect from it. Except Mr. Pelham, the ministry in general are for the war; and, what is comical, the Prince and the Opposition are so too. We have had but one division yet in the House, which was on the Duke of Newcastle’s interfering in the Seaford election. The numbers were, 247 for the court, against 96. But I think it very probable that, in a little time, a stronger opposition will be formed, for the Prince has got some new and very able speakers; particularly a young Mr. Potter,(1402) son of the last Archbishop, who promises very greatly; the world is already matching him against Mr. Pitt.
I sent Niccolini the letter; and here is another from him. I have not seen him this winter, nor heard of him: he is of very little consequence, when there is any thing else that is.
I have lately had Lady Mary Wortley’s Eclogues(1403) published; but they don’t please, though so excessively good. I say so confidently, for Mr. Chute agrees with me: he says, for the epistle to Arthur Gray,(1404) scarce any woman could have written it, and no man; for a man who had had experience enough to paint such sentiments so well, would not have had warmth enough left. Do you know any thing of Lady Mary? her adventurer son(1405) is come into Parliament, but has not opened. Adieu! my dear child: nous nous reverrons un jour!
(1401) Lord Orford, the eldest brother of Horace Walpole.-D.
(1402) Thomas, second son of Dr. Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury, was appointed secretary to the Princess of Wales, in which post he remained till the death of the Prince: he made two celebrated speeches on the Seaford election, and on the contest between Aylesbury and Buckingham for the summer assizes; but did not long support the character here given of him. [In 1757, he was made joint vice-treasurer of Ireland, and died in June 1759. Several letters, addressed by him to Mr. Pitt, will be found in the first volume of the Chatham Correspondence.)
(1403) Some of those Eclogues had been printed long before: they were now published, with other of her poems, by Dodsley, in quarto, and soon after, with others, reprinted in his Miscellany. [They will be found in Lord Wharncliffe’s edition of Lady Mary’s Works, vol. iii. p. 350.]
(1404) The epistle was from Arthur Grey, the footman, and addressed to Mrs. Murray, after his condemnation for attempting to commit violence. The man was tried for the offence in 1721, and transported. See Works, vol. i. p. 71, and vol. iii. p. 402, where the epistle is printed.-E.
(1405) Edward Wortley Montagu, after a variety of adventures in various characters, was taken up -,it Paris with Mr. Teaffe, another member of Parliament, and imprisoned in Fort L`eveque, for cheating and robbing a Jew. (Mr. Montagu was confined in the Grand Chatelet from the 31st of October till the 2nd of November. For his own account of the affair, see Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, vol. iv. p. 629.]
541 Letter 246 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Jan. 12, 1748.
I have just received a letter from you of the 19th of last month, in which you tell me you was just going to complain of me, when you received one from me: I fear I am again as much to blame, as far as not having written; but if I had, it would only be to repeat what you say would be sufficient, but what I flatter myself I need not repeat. The town has been quite empty; and the Parliament which met but yesterday, has been adjourned these three weeks. Except elections, and such tiresome squabbles, I don’t believe it will produce any thing: it is all harmony. From Holland we every day hear bad news, which, though we don’t believe-at the present, we agree it is always likely to be true by tomorrow. Yet, with no prospect of success,
I will tell you a secret: there is a transaction going on to send Sir Charles Williams to Turin; he has asked it. and it is pushed. In my private opinion, I don’t believe Villettes(1406) will be easily overpowered; though I wish it, from loving Sir Charles and from thinking meanly of the other; but talents are no passports. Sir Everard Falkener(1407) is going to Berlin. General Sinclair is presently to succeed Wentworth: he is Scotchissime, in all the latitude of the word, and not very able; he made a poor business of it at Port l’Orient.
Lord Coke(1408) has demolished himself very fast: I mean his character: you know he was married but last spring; he is always drunk, has lost immense sums at play, and seldom goes home to his wife till early in the morning. The world is vehement on her side; and not only her family, but his own, give him up. At present, matters are patching up by the mediation of my brother, but I think can never go on: she married him extremely against her will, and he is at least an out-pensioner of Bedlam: his mother’s family have many of them been mad.
I thank you, I have received the eagle’s head: the bill is broken off individually in the same spot with the original; but, as the piece is not lost, I believe it will serve.
I should never have expected you to turn Lorrain:(1409) is your Madame de Givrecourt a successor(1410) of my sister? I think you hint so. Where is the Princess, that you are so reduced? Adieu! my dear child. I don’t say a kind word to you, because you seem to think it necessary, for assuring you of the impossibility of my ever forgetting, or loving you less.
(1406) Minister at Turin, and afterwards in Switzerland.
(1407) He had been ambassador at Constantinople: he was not sent to Berlin, but was secretary to the Duke, and one of the general postmasters.
(1408) Edward, only son of Thomas, Earl of Leicester, married Mary, youngest daughter of John, Duke of Argyll, from whom he was parted. He died in 1752.
(1409) The Emperor kept a Lorrain regiment at Florence; but there was little intercourse between the two nations.
(1410) With Count Richcourt.
542 Letter 247
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Jan. 26, 1748.
I have again talked over with our Chute the affair of Venice; besides seeing no practicability in it, we think you will not believe that Sir James Grey will be so simple as to leave Venice, whither with difficulty he obtained to be sent, when you hear that Mr. Legge(1411) has actually kissed hands, and sets out on Friday for ’Berlin, as envoy extraordinary and plenipotentiary. We thought Sir Everard Falkener Sure; but this has come forth very unexpectedly. Legge is certainly a wiser choice’-, nobody has better parts; and if art and industry can obtain success, I know no one would use more: but I don’t think that the King of Prussia,’ with half parts and much cunning, is so likely to be the dupe of more parts and as much cunning-, as the people with whom Legge has so prosperously pushed his fortune. My father was fond of him to the greatest degree of partiality, till he endeavoured to have a nearer tie than flattery gave him, by trying to marry Lady Mary: after that my lord could never bear his name. Since that. he has wiggled himself in with the Pelhams, by being the warmest friend and servant of their new allies, and is the first favourite of the little Duke of Bedford. Mr. Villiers(1412) was desired to go to Berlin, but refused and proposed himself for the treasury, till they could find something else for him. They laughed at this; but he is as fit for one employment as the other. We have a stronger reason than any I have mentioned against going to Venice; which is, the excuse it might give to the Vine,(1413) to forget we were in being; an excuse which his hatred of our preferment would easily make him embrace, as more becoming a good Christian brother!
The ministry are triumphant in their Parliament: there have been great debates on the new taxes, but no division: the House is now sitting on the Wareham election, espousing George Pitt’s uncle,(1414 one of the most active Jacobites, but of the coalition and in place, against Drax,(1415) a great favourite of the Prince, but who has already lost one question on this election by a hundred.
Admiral Vernon has just published a series of letters to himself(1416) among which are several of Lord Bath, written in the height of his opposition: there is one in particular, to congratulate Vernon on taking Portobello, wherein this great Virtuous patriot advises him to do nothing more,(1417) assuring him that his inactivity would all be imputed to my father. One does not hear that Lord Bath has called him to any account for this publication, though as villainous to these correspondents as one of them was in writing such a letter; or as the Admiral himself was, who used to betray all his instructions to this enemy of the government. Nobody can tell why he has published these letters now, unless to get money. What ample revenge every year gives my father against his patriot enemies! Had he never deserved well himself’,posterity must still have the greatest opinion of him, when they see on what rascal foundations
As famous as you think your Mr. Mill, I can find nobody who ever heard his name. Projectors make little noise here; and even any one who only has made a noise, is forgotten as soon as out of sight. The knaves and fools of the day are too numerous to leave room to talk of yesterday. The pains that people, who have a mind to be named, are forced to take to be very particular, would convince you how difficult it is to make a lasting impression on such a town as this. Ministers, authors, wits, fools, patriots, prostitutes, scarce bear a second edition. Lord Bolingbroke, Sarah Malcolm,(1418) and old Marlborough. are never mentioned but by elderly folks to their grandchildren, who had never heard of them. What would last Pannoni’s(1419) a twelvemonth is forgotten here ]it twelve hours. Good night!
(1411) Henry fourth son of the Earl of Dartmouth, was made secretary of the treasury by Sir Robert Walpole; and was afterwards surveyor of the roads, a lord of the admiralty, a lord of the treasury, treasurer of the navy, and chancellor of the exchequer. He had been bred to the sea, and was for a little time minister at Berlin. The Duke of Newcastle, in a letter to Mr. Pitt, of the 18th of January, says, " I have thought of a person, to whom the King has this day readily agreed. It is Mr. Harry Legge. There, is capacity, integrity, quality, rank and address.” See Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. p. 27.-E.
(1412) Coxe, in his Memoirs of lord Walpole, says, that Mr. Legge, though a man of great talents for business, “was unfit for a foreign mission, and of a character ill suited to the temper of that powerful casuist, whose extraordinary dogmas were supported by 140,000 of the most effectual but convincing arguments in the world.” Vol. ii. II. 304.-E.
(1413) Thomas Villiers, brother of the Earl of Jersey, had been minister It Dresden, and was afterwards a lord of the admiralty.
(1414) Anthony Chute, of the Vine, in Hampshire, elder brother of J. Chute; died in 1754.
(1415) John Pitt, one of the lords of trade.
1416) Henry Drax, the Prince’s secretary. He died in 1755.
(1417) The publication was entitled " Letters to an Honest Sailor.” Walpole’s inference is not borne out by the letter itself. Pulteney’s words; are, “Pursue your stroke, but venture not losing the honour of it by too much intrepidity. Should you make no more progress than you have done, no one could blame you but those persons only who ought to have sent some land-forces with you, and did not. To their slackness it will be very justly imputed by all mankind, should you make no further progress till Lord Cathcart joins you."-E.
(1418) A washerwoman at the Temple, executed for three murders. (She was executed in March 1733, opposite Mitre Court, in Fleet Street. A portrait of her is given in the Gentleman’s Magazine for that year. So great was the public expectation for her confession, that the manuscript of it was sold for twenty pounds.-E.)
(1419) The coffee-house at Florence.
544 Letter 248
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, Feb. 16, 1748.
I am going to tell you nothing but what Mr. Chute has told you already,-that my Lord Chesterfield has resigned the seals, that the Duke of Newcastle has change] his province, and that the Duke of Bedford is the new secretary of state. I think you need be under no apprehension from this change; I should be frightened enough if you had the least reason, but I am quite at ease. Lord Chesterfield, who I believe had no quarrel but with his partner, is gone to Bath; and his youngest brother, John Stanhope,(1420) comes into the admiralty, where Sandwich is now first lord. There seems to be some hitch in Legge’s embassy; I believe we were overhasty. Proposals of peace were expected to be laid before Parliament, but that talk is vanished. The Duke of Newcastle, who is going greater lengths in every thing for which he overturned Lord Granville, is all military; and makes more courts than one by this disposition. The Duke goes to Holland this week, and I hear we are going to raise another million. There are prodigious discontents in the army: the town got a list of a hundred and fifty officers who desired at once to resign, but I believe this was exaggerated. We are great and very exact disciplinarians; our partialities are very strong, especially on the side of aversions, and none of these articles tally exactly with English tempers. Lord Robert Bertie(1421) received a reprimand the other day by an aide-de-camp for blowing his nose as he relieved the guard under a window;(1422) where very exact notice is constantly taken of very small circumstances.
We divert ourselves extremely this winter; plays, balls, masquerades, and pharaoh are all in fashion. The Duchess of Bedford has given a great ball, to which the King came with thirty masks. The Duchess of Queensberry is to give him a masquerade. Operas are the only consumptive entertainment. There was a new comedy last Saturday, which succeeds, called The Foundling. I like the old Conscious lovers better, and that not much. The story is the same, only that the Bevil of the new piece is in more hurry, and consequently more natural. It Is extremely well acted by Garrick and Barry, Mrs. Cibber and Mrs. Woffington. My sister was brought to bed last night of another boy. Sir C. Williams, I hear, grows more likely to go to Turin: you will have a more agreeable correspondent than your present voluminous brother.(1423) Adieu!
(1420) John Stanhope, third son of Philip, third Earl of Chesterfield, successively M. P. for Nottingham and Dorhy. He died in 1748.-D.
(1421) Lord Robert Bertie was third son of Robert, first Duke of Ancaster, by his second wife. He became a general in the army and colonel of the second regiment of Guards, and was also a lord of the bedchamber and a member of parliament. He died in 1732.-D.
(1422) The Duke’s.
(1423) Mr. Villettes.
545 Letter 249
To Sir Horace Mann.
Arlington Street, March 11, 1748.
I have had nothing lately to tell you but illnesses and distempers: there is what they call a miliary fever raging, which has taken off a great many people, It was scarce known till within these seven or eight years, but apparently increases every spring and autumn. They don’t know how to treat it, but think that they have discovered that bleeding is bad for it. The young Duke of Bridgewater(1424) is dead of it. The Marquis of Powis(1425) is dead too, I don’t know of what: but though a Roman Catholic, he has left his whole fortune to Lord herbert, the next male of his family, but a very distant relation. It is twelve thousand pounds a-year, with a very rich mine upon it; there is a debt, but the money and personal estate will pay it. After Lord Herbert(1426) and his brother, who are both unmarried, the estate is to go to the daughter of Lord Waldegrave’s sister, by her first husband, who was the Marquis’s brother.
In defiance of all these deaths, we are all diversions; Lady Keith(1427) and a company of Scotch nobility have formed a theatre, and have acted The Revenge several times; I can’t say excellently: the Prince and Princess were at it last night. The Duchess of Queensberry gives a masquerade tonight, in hopes of drawing the King to it; but he will not go. I do; but must own it is wondrous foolish to dress one’s self out in a becoming dress in cold blood. There has been a new comedy called The Foundling;(1428) far from good, but it took. Lord Hobart and some more young men made a party to damn it, merely for the love of damnation. The Templars espoused the play, and went around with syringes charged with stinking oil, and with sticking plaisters; but it did not come to action. Garrick was impertinent, and the pretty men gave over their plot the moment they grew to be in the right.
I must now notify to you the approaching espousals of the most illustrious Prince Pigwiggin with Lady Rachel Cavendish, third daughter of the Duke of Devonshire: the victim does not dislike it! my uncle makes great settlements; and the Duke is to get a peerage for Pigwiggin upon the foot that the father cannot be spared out of the House of Commons! Can you bear this old buffoon making himself of consequence, and imitating my father!
The Princess of Orange has got a son, and we have taken a convoy that was going to Bergen-op-zoom; two trifling occurrences that are most pompously exaggerated, when The whole of both is, that the Dutch, who before sold themselves to France, will now grow excellent patriots when they have a master entailed upon them; and we shall run ourselves more into danger, on having got all advantage which the French don’t feel.
Violent animosities are sprung up in the House of Commons upon a sort of private affair between the Chief Justice Willes and the Grenvilles, who have engaged the ministry in an extraordinary step, of fixing the assizes at Buckingham by act of parliament in their favour. We have had three long days upon it in our House, and it is not yet over; but though they will carry it both there and in the lords, it is by a far smaller majority than any they have had in this Parliament.(1429) The other day, Dr. Lee and Mr. Potter had made two very strong speeches @-against Mr. Pelham on this subject; he rose with the greatest emotion, fell into the most ridiculous passion, was near crying, and not knowing how to return it on the two fell upon the Chief Justice (who was not present), and accused him of ingratitude. The eldest Willes got up extremely moved, but with great propriety and cleverness told Mr. Pelham that his father had no obligation to any man now in the ministry; that he had been obliged to one of’ the greatest Ministers that ever was, who is now no more; that the person who accused his father of ingratitude was now leagued with the very men who had ruined that minister, to whom he (Mr. Pelham) owed his advancement, and without whom he would have been nothing!” This was dangers!-not a word of reply.
I had begun my letter before the masquerade, but had not time to finish it: there Were not above one hundred persons; the dresses pretty; the Duchess as mad as you remember her. She had stuck up orders about dancing, as you see in public bowling-greens; turned half the company out at twelve; kept those she liked to supper; and, in short, contrived to do an agreeable thing in the rudest manner imaginable; besides having dressed her husband in a Scotch plaid, which just now is One of the things in the world that is reckoned most offensive; but you know we are all mad, so good night!
(1424) John Egerton, second Duke of Bridgewater, eldest surviving son of Scroop, the first Duke, by his second wife, Lady Rachel Russell. He was succeeded by his younger brother Francis; upon whose death, in 1803, the dukedom of Bridgewater became extinct.-D.
(1425) William Herbert, second Marquis of Powis, upon whose death the title became extinct. His father, William, the First Marquis, was created Duke of Powis and Marquis of Montgomery, by James the Second, after his abdication, which titles were in consequence never allowed.-]).
(1426) Henry Arthur Herbert, Lord Herbert, afterwards created Earl of Powis, married the young lady on whom the estate was entailed: his brother died unmarried.
(1427) Caroline, eldest daughter of John, Duke of Argyll, married the eldest son of the Duke of Buccleuch, who dying before his father, she afterwards married Charles Townshend, second son of the Lord Viscount Townshend. (She was created Baroness Greenwich in 1767.-D.
(1428) By Edward Moore. It met with tolerable success during its run, but on the first night of its appearance the character of Faddle gave considerable disgust, and was much curtailed in the ensuing representation.-E.
(1429) The bill passed the Commons on the 15th of March, by 155 to 108. For the debate thereon, see Parliamentary History, vol. xiv. p. 206.-E.
547 Letter 250 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, April 29, 1748.
I know I have not writ to you the Lord knows when, but I waited for something to tell you, and I have now what there was not much reason to expect. The preliminaries to the peace are actually signed"(1430) by the English, Dutch, and French: the Queen,(1431) who would remain the only sufferer, though vastly less than she could expect, protests against this treaty, and the Sardinian minister has refused to sign too, till further orders. Spain is not mentioned, but France answers for them, and that they shall give us a new assiento. The armistice is for six weeks, with an exception to Maestricht; upon which the Duke sent Lord George Sackville to Marshal Saxe to tell him that, as they are so near being friends, he shall not endeavour to raise the siege and spill more blood, but hopes the marshal will give the garrison good terms, as they have behaved so bravely. The conditions settled are a general restitution on all sides, as Modena to its Duke, Flanders to the Queen, the Dutch towns to the Dutch, Cape Breton to France, and Final to the Genoese; but the Sardinian to have the cessions made to him by the Queen, who, you see, is to be made observe the treaty of Worms, though we do not. Parma and Placentia are to be given to Don Philip; Dunkirk to remain as it is, on the land-side; but to be Utrecht’d(1432) again to the sea. The Pretender to be renounced, with all his descendants, male and female, even in stronger terms than by the quadruple alliance; and the cessation of arms to take place in all other parts of the world, as in the year 1712. The contracting powers agree to think of means of making the other powers come into this treaty, in case they refuse.
This is the substance; and wonderful it is what can make the French give us such terms, or why they have lost so much blood and treasure to so little purpose! for they have destroyed very little of the fortifications in Flanders. Monsieur de St. Severin told Lord Sandwich, that he had full powers to sign now, but that the same courier that should carry our refusal, was to call at Namur and Bergen-op-zoom, where are mines under all the works, which were immediately to be blown up. There is no accounting for this, but from the King’S aversion to go to the army, and to Marshal Saxe’s fear of losing his power with the loss of a battle. He told Count Flemming, the Saxon minister, who asked him if the French were in earnest in their offer of peace, “Il est vrai, nous demandons la paix comme des l`aches, et ne pouvons pas l’obtenir.”
Stocks rise; the ministry are in spirits, and ;e s’en faut but we shall admire this peace as our own doing! I believe two reasons that greatly advanced it are, the King’s wanting to go to Hanover, and the Duke’s wanting to go into a salivation.
We had last night the most magnificent masquerade that ever was seen: it was by Subscription at the Haymarket: every body who subscribed five guineas had four tickets. There were about seven hundred people, all in chosen and very fine dresses. The supper was in two rooms, besides those for the King and Prince, who, with the foreign ministers, had tickets given them.
You don’t tell me whether the seal of which you sent me the impression, is to be sold: I think it fine, but not equal to the price which you say was paid for it. What is it? Homer or Pindar?
I am very miserable at the little prospect you have of success in your own affair: I think the person(1433) you employed has used you scandalously. I would have you write to my uncle; but my applying to him would be far from doing you service. Poor Mr. Chute has got so bad a cold that he could not go last night to the masquerade. Adieu! my dear child! there is nothing -well that I don’t wish you, but my wishes are very ineffectual!
(1430) The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.-D.
(1431) Of Hungary.-D.
(1432) That is, the works destroyed, as they were after the treaty of Utrecht.-D.
(1433) Mr. Stone, the Duke of Newcastle’s private secretary.-E.
549 Letter 251 To George Montagu, Esq. May 18, 1748.
Here I am with the poor Chutehed,(1434) who has put on a shoe but to-day for the first time. He sits at the receipt of custom, and one passes most part, of the day here; the other part I have the misfortune to pass en Pigwiggin. The ceremony of dining is not over yet: I cannot say that either the Prince or the Princess look the comelier for what has happened. The town says, my Lady Anson(1435) has no chance for looking different from what she did before she was married: and they have a story of a gentleman going to the Chancellor to assure him,
I went yesterday to see Marshal Wade’s house, which is selling by auction: it is worse contrived on the inside than is conceivable, all to humour the beauty of the front. My Lord Chesterfield said, that to be sure he could not live in it, but intended to take the house over against it to look at it. It is literally true, that all the direction he gave my Lord Burlington was to have a place for a cartoon of Rubens that he bought in Flanders; but my lord found it necessary to have so many correspondent doors, that there was no room at last for the picture; and the Marshal was forced to sell the picture to my father: it is now at Houghton.(1436)
As Windsor is so charming, and particularly as you have got so agreeable a new neighbour at Frogmore, to be sure you cannot wish to have the prohibition taken off on your coming to Strawberry Hill. However, as I am an admirable Christian, and as you seem to repent of your errors, I will give you leave to be so happy as to come to me when you like, though I would advise it to be after you have been at Roel,(1437) winch you would not be able to bear after my paradise. I have told you a vast deal of something or other, which you will scarce be able to read; for now Mr. Chute has the gout, he keeps himself very low and lives upon very thin ink. My compliments to all your people. Yours ever.
(1434) John Chute, Esq. of the Vine of Hampshire.
(1435) Lord Anson married, on the 25th of April, Lady Elizabeth Yorke, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke’s eldest daughter, an ingenious woman and a poetess. She died without issue in 1760.-E.
(1436) Walpole gives the following account of this picture, in his description of Houghton:- “Meleager and Atalanta, a cartoon, by Rubens, larger than life; brought out of Flanders by Wade: it being designed for tapestry, all the weapons are in the left hand of the figure. For the story, see Ovid’s Metamorphoses, lib. 3. When General Wade built his house in Burlington Garden, Lord Burlington gave the design for it."-E
(1437) A house of Mr. Montagu’s in Gloucestershire.
550 Letter 252
To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, May 26, 1748.
Good-by to YOU! I am going to my Roel too. I was there yesterday to dine, and it looked so delightful, think what you will, that I shall go there to-morrow to settle, and shall leave this odious town to the * * *, to the regency, and the dowagers; to my lady Townshend, who is not going to Windsor, to old Cobham, who is not going out of the world yet, and to the Duchess of Richmond, who does not -,go out with her twenty-fifth pregnancy: I shall leave too more disagreeable Ranelagh, which is so crowded, that going there t’other night in a string of coaches we had a stop of six-and-thirty Minutes. Princess Emily, finding no marriage articles for her settled at the congress, has at last determined to be old and out of danger; and has accordingly ventured to Ranelagh to the great improvement of the pleasures of the place. The Prince has given a silver cup to be rowed for, which carried every body up the Thames. and afterwards there was a great ball at Carlton house. There have two good events happened at that court: the town was alarmed t’other morning by the firing of guns, which proved to be only from a large merchantman come into the river. The city construed it into the King’s return, and the peace broke; but Chancellor Bootle and the Bishop of Oxford, who loves a tabour next to promoting the cause of it, concluded the Princess was brought to bed, and went to court upon it. Bootle, finding the Princess dressed,
My Pigwiggin dinners are all over, for which I truly say grace. I have had difficulties to keep my countenance at the wonderful clumsiness and uncouth nicknames that the Duke has for all his offspring: Mrs. Hopefull, Mrs. Tiddle, Puss, Cat, and Toe, sound so strange in the middle of a most formal banquet! The day the peace was signed, his grace could find nobody to communicate joy with him: he drove home, and bawled out of the chariot to Lady Rachael, “Cat! Cat!” She ran down, staring over the balustrade; he cried, “Cat! Cat! the peace is made, and you must be very glad, for I am very glad.”
I send you the only new pamphlet worth reading, and this is more the matter than the manner. My compliments to all your tribe. Adieu!
P. S. The divine Asheton has got an ague, which he says prevents his coming amongst us.
551 Letter 253 To sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, June 7, 1748.
Don’t reproach me in your own Mind for not writing, but reproach the world for doing nothing; for making peace as slowly as they made war. When any body commits an event, I am ready enough to tell it you; but I have always declared against inventing news; when I do, I will set up a newspaper.
The Duke of Newcastle is not gone; he has kissed hands, and talks of going this week: the time presses, and he has not above three days left to fall dangerously ill. There are a thousand wagers laid against his going: he has hired a transport, for the yacht s not big enough to convey all the tables and chairs and conveniences that he trails along with him, and which he seems to think don’t grow out of England. I don’t know how he proposes to lug them through Holland and Germany, though any objections that the map can make to his progress don’t count, for he is literally so ignorant, that when one goes to take leave of him, he asks your commands into the north, concluding that Hanover is north of Great Britain, because it is in the northern province, which he has just taken: you will scarce believe this, but upon my honour it is true.
The preliminaries wait the accession of Spain, before they can ripen into peace. Niccolini goes to Aix-la-Chapelle, and will be much disappointed if his advice is not asked there: he talks of being at Florence in October.
Sir William Stanhope has just given a great ball to Lady Petersham, to whom he takes extremely, since his daughter married herself to Mr. Ellis,(1438) and as the Petershams are relations, they propose to be his heirs. The Chuteheds agreed with me, that the house, which is most magnificently furnished, all the ornaments designed by Kent, and the whole festino, puts us more in mind of Florence, than any thing we had seen here. There were silver-pharaoh and whist for the ladies that did not dance, deep basset and quinze for the men; the supper very fine.
I am now returning to my villa, where I have been making some alterations: you shall hear from me from Strawberry Hill, which I have found out in my lease is the old name of my house; so pray, never call it Twickenham again. I like to be there better than I have liked being any where since I came to England. I sigh after Florence, and wind up all my prospects with the thought of returning there. I have days when I even set about contriving a scheme for going to you, and though I don’t love to put you upon expecting me, I cannot help telling you, that I wish more than ever to be with you again. I can truly say, that I never was happy but at Florence, and you must allow that it is very natural to wish to be happy once more. Adieu!
(1438) The Right Hon. Welbore Ellis, afterwards created Lord Mendip. His first wife was Elizabeth, only daughter of Sir William Stanhope, K. B. She died in 1761.-D.
553 Letter 254 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(1439) Strawberry Hill, June 27th, 1748.
Dear Harry, I have full as little matter for writing as you can find in a camp. I do not call myself farmer or country gentleman; for though I have all the ingredients to compose those characters, yet, like the ten pieces of card in the trick you found out, I don’t know how to put them together. But, in short, planting and fowls and cows and sheep are my whole business, and as little amusing to relate to anybody else as the events of a stillborn campaign. If I write to any body, I am forced to live upon what news I hoarded before I came out of town; and the first article of that, as I believe it is in every body’s gazette, must be about my Lord Coke. They say, that since he has been at Sunning Hill with Lady Mary,(1440 she has made him a declaration in form, that she hates him, that she always did, and that she always will. This seems to have been a very unnecessary notification. However, as you know his part is to be extremely in love, he is very miserable upon it; and relating his woes at White’s, probably at seven in the morning, he was advised to put an end to all this history and shoot himself-an advice they would not have given him if he were not insolvent. He has promised to consider of it.
The night before I left London, I called at the Duchess of Richmond’s, who has stayed at home with the apprehension of a miscarriage. The porter told me there was no drawing-room till Thursday. In short, he did tell me what amounted to as much, that her grace did not see company till Thursday, then she should see every body: no excuse, that she was gone out or not well. I did not stay till Thursday to kiss hands, but went away to Vauxhall: as I was coming out, I was overtaken by a great light, and retired under the trees of Marble Hall to see what it should be. There came a long procession of Prince Lobkowitz’s footmen in very rich new liveries, the two last bearing torches; and after them the Prince himself’, in a new sky-blue watered tabby Coat, with gold buttonholes and a magnificent gold waistcoat fringed, leading Madame ambassadrice de Venise in a green sack with a straw hat, attended by my Lady Tyrawley, Wall, the private Spanish agent, the two Miss Molyneux’s, and some other men. They went into one of the Prince of Wales’s barges, had another barge filled with violins and hautboys, and an open boat with drums and trumpets. This was one of the f`etes des adieux. The nymph weeps all the morning and says she is sure she shall be poisoned by her husband’s relations when she returns for her behaviour with this Prince.
I have no other news, but that Mr. Fitzpatrick has married his Sukey Young, and is very impatient to have the Duchess of Bedford come to town to visit her new relation.
Is not my Lady Ailesbury(1442) weary of her travels? Pray make her my compliments,-unless she has made you any such declaration as Lady Mary Coke’s. I am delighted with your description of the bedchamber of the House of Orange, as I did not see it; but the sight itself must have been very odious, as the hero and heroine are so extremely ugly. I shall give it my Lady Townshend as a new topic of matrimonial satire.
Mr. Churchill and Lady Mary have been with me two or three days, and are now gone to Sunning. I only tell you this, to hint that my house will hold a married pair; indeed, it is not quite large enough for people who lie, like the patriarchs, with their whole genealogy, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and oxes, and asses, in the same chamber with them. Adieu! do let this be the last letter, and come home.
(1440) Now first printed.
(1441) See ant`e, p. 498 (Letter 215).-E.
(1442) On the 19th of the preceding December, Mr. Conway had married Caroline, widow of Charles Bruce, Earl of Ailesbury, and only daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel John Campbell, afterwards fourth Duke of Argyle.-E.
554 Letter 255
To Sir Horace Mann.
Mistley, July 14, 1748.
I would by no means resent your silence while you was at Pisa, if it were not very convenient; but I cannot resist ’the opportunity of taking it ill, when it serves to excuse my being much more to blame; and therefore, pray mind, I am very angry, and have not written, because you had quite left me off-and if I say nothing from hence,(1443) do not imagine it is because I am at a gentleman’s house whom you don’t know, and threescore miles from London, and because I have been but three days in London for above this month: I could say a great deal if I pleased, but I am very angry, and will not. I know several pieces of politics from Ipswich that would let you into the whole secret of the peace; and a quarrel at Denham assembly, that is capable of involving all Europe in a new war-nay, I know that Admiral Vernon(1444) knows of what you say has happened in the West Indies, and of which nobody else in England knows a word-but please to remember that you have been at the baths, and don’t deserve that I should tell you a tittle-nor will I. In revenge, I will tell you some- thing that happened to me four months ago, and which I would not tell you now. if I had not forgot to tell it you when it happened-nay, I don’t tell it you now for yourself, only that you may tell it the Princess: I truly and seriously this winter won and was paid a milleleva at pharaoh; literally received a thousand and twenty-three sixpences for one: an event that never happened in the annals of pharaoh, but to Charles II.’s Queen Dowager, as the Princess herself informed me: ever since I have treated myself as Queen Dowager, and have some thoughts of being drawn so.
There are no good anecdotes yet arrived of the Duke of Newcastle’s travels, except that at a review which the Duke made for him, as he passed through the army, he hurried about with his glass up to his eye, crying, “Finest troops! finest troops! greatest General!” then broke through the ranks when he spied any Sussex man, kissed him in all his accoutrements,-my dear Tom such an one! chattered of Lewes races; then back to the Duke with “Finest troops! greatest General!"-and in short was a much better show than any review.
The Duke is expected over immediately; I don’t know if to stay, or why he comes-I mean, I do know, but am angry, and will not tell.
I have seen Sir James Grey, who speaks of you with great affection, and recommends himself extremely to me by it, when I am not angry with you; but I cannot possibly be reconciled till I have finished this letter, for I have nothing but this quarrel to talk of, and I think I have worn that out-so adieu! you odious, shocking, abominable monster!
(1443) Mistley near Manningtree, in Essex, the seat of Richard Rigby, Esq.
(1444) He lived near Ipswich.
555 Letter 256
To Sir Horace Mann.
Strawberry Hill, —–
I beg you will let me know whether the peace has arrived in Italy, or if you have heard any thing of it; for in this part of the world nobody can tell what has become of it. They say the Empress Queen has stopped it; that she will not take back the towns in Flanders, which she says she knows are very convenient for us, but of no kind of use to her, and that she chooses to keep what she has got in Italy. However, we are determined to have peace at any rate, and the conditions must jumble themselves together as they can. These are the politics of Twickenham, my metropolis; and, to tell you the truth, I believe pretty near as good as you can have any where.
As to my own history, the scene is at present a little gloomy: my Lord Orford is in an extreme bad state of health, not to say a dangerous state: my uncle(1445) ’ is going off in the same way my father did. I don’t pretend to any great feelings of affection for two men, because they are dying, for whom it is known I had little before, my brother especially having been as much my enemy as it was in his power to be; but I cannot with indifference see the family torn to pieces, and falling into such ruin as I foresee; for should my brother die soon, leaving so great a debt, so small an estate to pay it off, two great places(1446) sinking, and a wild boy of nineteen to succeed, there would be an end to the glory of Houghton, which had my father proportioned more to his fortune, would probably have a longer duration. This is an unpleasant topic to you who feel for us-however, I should not talk of it to one who would not feel. Your brother Gal. and I had a very grave conversation yesterday morning on this head; he thinks so like you, so reasonably and with so much good nature, that I seem to be only finishing a discourse that I have already had with you. As my fears about Houghton are great, I am a little pleased to have finished a slight memorial(1447) of It, a description of the pictures, of which I have just printed an hundred, to give to particular people: I will send you one, and shall beg Dr. Cocchi to accept another.
If I could let myself wish to see you in England, it would be to see you here: the little improvements I am making have really turned Strawberry Hill into a charming villa: Mr. Chute, I hope, will tell you how pleasant it is; I mean literally tell you, for we have a glimmering of’ a Venetian prospect; he is just going from hence to town by water, down our Brenta.
You never say a word to me from the Princess, nor any of my old friends: I keep up our intimacy in my own mind; for I will not part with the idea of seeing Florence again. Whenever I am displeased here, the thoughts of that journey are my resource; just as cross would-be devout people, when they have quarrelled with this world, begin packing up for the other. Adieu!
(1445) Lord Orford did not die till 1751, and old Horace Walpole not till 1757.-D.
(1446) Auditor of the exchequer and Master of the buck-hounds.
(1447) “Aedes Walpolianae, or a Description of the Pictures at Houghton Hall, in Norfolk,” first printed in 1747, and again in 1752.
556 Letter 257 To George Montagu, Esq. Mistley, July 25, 1748.
Dear George, I have wished you with me extremely: you would have liked what I have seen. I have been to make a visit of two or three days to Nugent, and was carried to see the last remains of the glory of the old Aubrey de Veres, Earls of Oxford. They were once masters of’ almost this entire county, but quite reduced even before the extinction of their house: the last Earl’s son died at a miserable cottage, that I was shown at a distance; and I think another of the sisters, besides Lady Mary Vere, was forced to live upon her beauty.
Henningham Castle, where Harry the Seventh(1448) was so sumptuously banqueted, and imposed that villainous fine for his entertainment, is now shrunk to one vast curious tower, that stands on a spacious mount raised on a high hill with a large fosse. It commands a fine prospect, and belongs to Mr. Ashurst, a rich citizen, who has built a trumpery new house close to it. In the parish church is a fine square monument of black marble of one of the Earls; and there are three more tombs of the family at Earl’s Colne, some miles from the castle. I could see but little of them, as it was very late, except that one of the Countesses has a headdress exactly like the description of Mount Parnassus, with two tops. I suppose you have heard much of Gosfield, Nugent’s seat. It is extremely in fashion, but did not answer to me, though there are fine things about it; but being situated in a country that is quite blocked up with hills upon hills, and even too much wood, it has not an inch of prospect. The park is to be sixteen hundred acres, and is bounded with a wood of five miles round; and the lake, which is very beautiful, is of seventy acres, directly in a line with the house, at the bottom of a fine lawn, and broke with very pretty groves, that fall down a Slope into it. The house is vast, built round a very old court that has never been fine; the old windows and gateway left, and the old gallery, which is a bad narrow room, and hung with all the late patriots, but so ill done, that they look like caricatures done to expose them, since they have so much disgraced the virtues they pretended to. The rest of the house is all modernized, but in patches, and in the bad taste that came between the charming venerable Gothic and pure architecture. There is a great deal of good furniture, but no one room very fine — no tolerable pictures. Her dressing-room is very pretty, and furnished with white damask, china, japan, loads of easy chairs, bad pictures, and some pretty enamels. But what charmed me more than all I had seen, is the library chimney, which has existed from the foundation of the house; over it is an alto-relievo in wood, far from being ill done, of the battle of Bosworth Field. It is all white, except the helmets and trappings, which are gilt, and the shields, which are properly blazoned with the arms of all the chiefs engaged. You would adore it.
We passed our time very agreeably; both Nugent and his wife are very good-humoured, and easy in their house to a degree. There was nobody else but the Marquis of Tweedale; his new Marchioness,(1451) who is infinitely good-humoured and good company, and sang a thousand French songs mighty prettily; a sister of Nugent’s, who does not figure; and a Mrs. Elliot,(1452) sister to Mrs. Nugent, who crossed over and figured in with Nugent: I mean she has turned Catholic, as he has Protestant. She has built herself a very pretty small house in the path-, and is only a daily visiter. Nugent was extremely communicative of his own labours; repeated us an ode of ten thousand stanzas to abuse Messieurs de la Gallerie, and reid me a whole tragedy, which has really a great many @ pretty things in it; not indeed equal to his glorious ode on religion and liberty, but with many of those absurdities which are so blended with his parts. We were overturned coming back, but, thank YOU, we were not it all hurt, and have been to-day to see a large house and a pretty park, belonging to a Mr. Williams; it is to be sold. You have seen in the papers that Dr. Bloxholme is dead. He cut his throat. He always was nervous and vapoured; and so good-natured, that he left off his practice from not being able to bear seeing so many melancholy objects. I remember him with as much wit as ever I knew; there was a pretty correspondence of Latin odes that passed between him and Hodges.
You will be diverted to hear that the Duchess of Newcastle was received at Calais by Locheil’s regiment under arms, who did duty himself while she stayed. The Duke of Grafton is going to Scarborough; don’t you love that endless back-stairs policy? and at his time of life! This fit of ill health is arrived on the Prince’s going to shoot for a fortnight at Thetford, and his grace is afraid of not being civil enough or too civil.
Since I wrote my letter I have been fishing in Rapin for any Particulars relating to the Veres, and have already found that Robert de Vere,(1453) the great Duke of Ireland, and favourite of Richard the Second, is buried at Earl’s COlnE, and probably under one of the tombs I saw there; I long to be certain that the lady with the strange coiffure is Lancerona, the joiner’s daughter, that he married after divorcing a princess of the blood for her. I have found, too, that King Stephen’s Queen died at Henningham, a castle belonging to Alberic de Vere:,(1454) in short, I am just now Vere mad, and extremely mortified to have Lancerona and lady Vere Beauclerk’s, Portuguese grandmother blended with this brave old blood. Adieu! I go to town the day after to-morrow, and immediately from thence to Strawberry Hill. Yours ever.
(1448) See Hume’s History of England, vol. iii. p. 399. ["The Earl of Oxford, his favourite general, having splendidly entertained him at his castle of Henningham, was desirous of making a parade of his magnificence at the departure of his royal guest; and ordered all his retainers, with their liveries and badges, to be drawn up in two lines, that their appearance might be the more gallant and splendid. ‘My lord,’ said the King, ’I have heard much of your hospitality; but the truth far exceeds the report: these handsome gentlemen and yeomen whom I see on both sides of me are no doubt your menial servants.’ The Earl smiled, and confessed that his fortune was too narrow for such magnificence. ‘They are most of them,’ subjoined he, ’my retainers, who are come to do service at this time, when they know I am honoured with your Majesty’s presence.’ The King started a little, and said, ’By my faith! my lord, I thank you for your good cheer, but I must not allow my laws to be broken in my sight: my attorney must speak with you.’ Oxford is said to have paid no less than fifteen thousand marks, as a compensation for his offence.”)
(1449) Daughter of the Earl of Granville.
(1450) Harriot, wife of Richard Elliot, Esq., father of the first Lord St. Germains, and a daughter of Mr. Secretary Craggs. For a copy of verses addressed by Mr. Pitt to this lady, see the Chatham Correspondence, Vol. iv. j. 373.-E.
(1451)) Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was the favourite of Richard the Second; who created him Marquis of Dublin and Duke of Ireland, and transferred to him by patent the entire sovereignty of that island for life.
(1452) Alberic de Vere was an Earl in the reign of Edward the Confessor.
(1453) Daughter of Thomas Chambers, Esq., and married to Lord Vere Beauclerc, third son of the first Duke of St. Albans by his wife Diana, daughter of Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
558 Letter 258 To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Aug. 11, 1748.
I am arrived at great knowledge in the annals of the house of Vere but though I have twisted and twined their genealogy and my own a thousand ways, I cannot discover, as I wished to do, that I am descended from them any how but from one of their Christian names the name of Horace having travelled from them into Norfolk by the marriage of a daughter of Horace Lord Vere of Tilbury with a Sir Roger Townshend, whose family baptised some of us with it. But I have made a really curious discovery! the lady with the strange dress at Earl’s Colne, which I mentioned to you, is certainly Lancerona, the Portuguese-for I have found in Rapin, from one of the old chronicles, that Anne of Bohemia, to whom she had been Maid of Honour, introduced the fashion of piked horns, or high heads, which is the very attire on this tomb, and ascertains it to belong to Robert de Vere, the great Earl of Oxford, made Duke of Ireland by Richard II., who, after the banishment of this Minister, and his
and the wer twoo kinges served with a banket and after mirthe, had communication in the banket time, and there sheweth the one the other their pleasure.
Would not one swear that old Hal showed all that is showed in the Tower? I am now in the act of expecting the house of Pritchard,(1456) Dame Clive,(1457) and Mrs. Metheglin to dinner. I promise you the Clive, and I will not show one another our pleasure during the banket time nor afterwards. In the evening, we go to a play at Kingston, where the places are two pence a head. Our great company at Richmond and Twickenham has been torn to pieces by civil dissensions, but they continue acting. Mr. Lee, the ape of Garrick, not liking his part, refused to play it, and had the confidence to go into the pit as spectator. The actress, whose benefit was in agitation, made her complaints to the audience, who obliged him to mount the stage; but since that he has retired from the company. I am sorry he was such a coxcomb, for he was the best. . . .
You say, why won’t I go to Lady Mary’s?(1458) I say, why won’t you go to the Talbots? Mary is busied about many things, is dancing the hays between three houses; but I will go with you for a day or two to the Talbots if you like it. and you shall come hither to fetch me. I have been to see Mr. Hamilton’s, near Cobham, where he has really made a fine place out of a most cursed hill. Esher(1459) I have seen again twice, and prefer it to all villas, even to Southcote’s—Kent is Kentissing there. I have been laughing too at Claremont house; the gardens are improved since I saw them: do you know that the pineapples are literally sent to Hanover by couriers! I am serious. Since the Duke of Newcastle went, and upon the news of the Duke of Somerset’s illness, he has transmitted his commands through the King, and by him through the Bedford to the University of Cambridge to forbid their electing any body, but the most ridiculous person they could elect, his grace of Newcastle. The Prince hearing this, has written to them, that having heard his Majesty’s commands, he should by no means oppose them. This is sensible: but how do the two secretaries answer such a violent act of authority? Nolkojumskoi(1460) has let down his dignity and his discipline, and invites continually all officers that are members of parliament. Doddington’s sentence of expulsion is sealed: Lyttelton is to have his place (the second time he has tripped up his heels); Lord Barrington is to go to the treasury, and Dick Edgecumbe into the admiralty.
Rigby is gone from hence to Sir William Stanhope’s to the Aylesbury races, where the Grenvilles and Peggy Banks design to appear and avow their triumph. Gray has been here a few days, and is transported with your story of Madame Bentley’s diving, and her white man, and in short with all your stories. Room for cuckolds—here comes my company—
Aug. 15?.
I had not time to finish my letter last night, for we did not return from the dismal play, which was in a barn at Kingston, till twelve o’clock at night. Our dinner passed off very well; the Clive was very good company; you know how much she admires Asheton’s preaching. She says, she is always vastly good for two or three days after his sermons;’ but by the time that Thursday comes, all their effect is worn out. I never saw more proper decent behaviour than Mrs. Pritchard’s, and I assure you even Mr. Treasurer Pritchard was far better than I expected. Yours ever, Chaucerides.
(1454) The grandmother of the Hon. Horace Walpole was daughter of sir Erasmus Philips, of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire.
(1455) Niece of Mrs. Leneve, and first wife of Admiral Hugh Pigot.-E.
(1456/1457) Two celebrated actresses.
(1458) lady Mary Churchill.
(1459) The favourite seat of the Right Honourable Henry Pelham, which he embellished under the direction of Kent. It is pleasingly mentioned by Pope, in his Epilogue to the Imitations of the Satires of Horace:-
“Pleas’d let me own, in Esher’s
peaceful grove,
Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham’s love,
The scene, the master, opening to my view,
I sit and dream I see my Craggs anew."-E
.
(1460) A cant name for the Duke of Cumberland.
561 Letter 259
To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, Aug. 29, 1748.
Dear Harry, Whatever you may think, a campaign at Twickenham furnishes as little matter for a letter as an abortive one in Flanders. I can’t say indeed that my generals wear black wigs, but they have long full- bottomed hoods which cover as little entertainment to the full.
There’s General my Lady Castlecomer, and General my Lady Dowager Ferrers! Why, do you think I can extract more out of them than you can out of Hawley or Honeywood?(1461) Your old women dress, go to the Duke’s levee, see that the soldiers cock their hats right, sleep after dinner, and soak with their led-captains till bed-time, and tell a thousand lies of what they never did in their youth. Change hats for head-clothes, the rounds for visits, and led-captains for toad-eaters, and the life is the very same. In short, these are the people I live in the midst of, though not with; and it is for want of more important histories that I have wrote to you seldom; not, I give you my word, from the least negligence. My present and sole occupation is planting, in which I have made great progress, and talk very learnedly with the nurserymen, except that now and then a lettuce run to seed overturns all my botany, as I have more than once taken it for a curious West-Indian flowering shrub. Then the deliberation with which trees grow, is extremely inconvenient to my natural impatience. I lament living in so barbarous an age, when we are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am persuaded that a hundred and fifty years hence it will be as common to remove oaks a hundred and fifty years old, as it is now to transplant tulip-roots. I have even begun a treatise or panegyric on the great discoveries made by posterity in all arts and sciences, wherein I shall particularly descant on the great and cheap convenience of making trout-rivers-One Of the improvements which Mrs. Kerwood wondered Mr. Hedges would not make at his country-house, but which was not then quite so common as it will be. I shall talk of a secret for roasting a wild-boar and a whole pack of hounds alive, without hurting them, so that the whole chase may be brought up to table; and for this secret, the Duke of Newcastle’s grandson, if he can ever get a son, is to give a hundred thousand pounds. Then the delightfulness of having whole groves of hummingbirds, tame tigers taught to fetch and carry, pocket spying-glasses to see all that is doing in China, with a thousand other toys, which we now look upon as impracticable, and which pert posterity would laugh in one’s face for staring at, while they are offering rewards for perfecting discoveries, of the principles of which we have not
If I happen to be less punctual in my correspondence than I intend to be, you must conclude I am writing my book, which being designed for a panegyric, will cost me a great deal of trouble. The dedication, with your leave, shall be addressed to your son that is coming, or, with my Lady Ailesbury’s leave, to your ninth son, who Will be unborn nearer to the time I ’am writing of; always provided that she does not bring three at once, like my Lady Berkeley.
Well! I have here set you the example of’ writing nonsense when one has nothing to say, and shall take it ill if you don’t keep up the correspondence on the same foot. Adieu!
(1461) General Honeywood, governor of Portsmouth.
(1462) Pineda was a Spanish Jesuit, and a professor of theology. He died in 1637, after writing voluminous commentaries upon several books of the Holy Scriptures, besides an universal history of the church.
(1463) Walpole, in his “Royal and Noble Authors,” designates the Marquis as a “fantastic protector and fanatic,” and describes the " Century of Inventions” as “an amazing piece of folly;” and Hume, who does not even know the title of the book, boldly pronounces it “a ridiculous compound of lies, chimeras, and impossibilities.” In 18@5, however, an edition of this curious and very amusing little work was published], with historical and explanatory notes, by Mr. C. F. Partington; who clearly proves, that the Marquis was the person, either in this or any Other country, who gave the first idea of the steam engine.-E.
563 Letter 260 To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, Sept, 3, 1748.
All my sins to Mrs. Talbot you are to expiate; I am here quite alone, and want nothing but your fetching to go to her. I have been in town for a day, just to see Lord Bury who is come over with the Duke; they return next Thursday. The Duke is fatter, and it is now not denied that he has entirely lost the sight of one eye. This did not surprise me so much as a bon mot of his. Gumley, who you know is grown Methodist, came to tell him, that as he was on duty, a tree in Hyde Park, near the powder magazine, had been set on fire; the Duke replied, he hoped it was not by the new light. This nonsensical new light is extremely in fashion, and I shall not be surprised if we see a revival of all the folly and cant of the last age. Whitfield preaches continually at my Lady Huntingdon’s,(1464) at Chelsea; my Lord Chesterfield, my Lord Bath, my Lady Townshend, my Lady Thanet, and others, have been to hear him.(1465) What will you lay that, next winter, he is not run after, instead of Garrick?
I am just come from the play at Richmond, where I found the Duchess of Argyle and Lady Betty Campbell, and their court. We had a new actress, a Miss Clough; an extremely fine tall figure, and very handsome: she spoke very justly, and with spirit. Garrick is to produce her next winter; and a Miss Charlotte Ramsey, a poetess and deplorable actress. Garrick, Barry, and some more of the players, were there to see these new comedians; it is to be their seminary.
Since I came home I have been disturbed with a strange, foolish woman, that lives at the great corner house yonder; she is an attorney’s wife, and much given to the bottle. By the time she- has finished that and daylight, she grows afraid of thieves, and makes the servants fire minute guns out of the garret windows. I remember persuading Mrs. Kerwood that there was a great smell of thieves, and this drunken dame seems literally to smell it. The divine Asheton, whom I suppose you will have seen when you receive this, will give you an account of the astonishment we were in last night at hearing guns; I began to think that the Duke had brought some of his defeats from Flanders.
I am going to tell you a long story, but you will please to remember that I don’t intend to tell it well; therefore, if you discover any beauties in the relation where I never intended them, don’t conclude, as you did in your last, that I know they are there. If I had not a great command of my pen, and could not force it to write whatever nonsense I had heard last, you would be enough to pervert all one’s letters, and put one upon keeping up one’s character; but as I write merely to satisfy you, I shall take no care but not to write well: I hate letters that are called good letters.
You must know then,-but did you not know a young fellow that was called Handsome Tracy? he was walking in the Park with some of his acquaintance, and overtook three girls; one was very pretty: they followed them; but the girls ran away, and the company grew tired of pursuing them, all but Tracy. (There are now three more guns gone off; she must be very drunk.) He followed to Whitehall gate, where he gave a porter a crown to dog them: the porter hunted them-he the porter. The girls ran all round Westminster, and back to the Haymarket, where the porter came up with them. He told the pretty one she must go with him, and kept her talking till Tracy arrived, quite out of breath, and exceedingly in love. He insisted on knowing where she lived, which she refused to tell him; and after much disputing , went to the house of one of her companions, and Tracy with them. He there made her discover her family, a butterwoman in Craven Street, and engaged her to meet him the next morning in the Park; but before night he wrote her four love-letters, and in the last offered two hundred pounds a-year to her, and a hundred a-year to Signora la Madre. Griselda made a confidence to a staymaker’s wife, who told her that the swain was certainly in love enough to marry her, if she could determine to be virtuous and refuse his offers. “Ay,” says she, “but if I should, and should lose him by it.” However, the measures of the cabinet council were decided for virtue: and when she met Tracy the next morning in the park, she was convoyed by her sister and brother-in-law, and stuck close to the letter of her reputation. She would do nothing she would go nowhere. At last, as an instance of prodigious compliance, she told him, that if he would accept such a dinner as a butterwoman’s daughter could give him, he should be welcome. Away they walked to Craven Street: the mother borrowed some silver to buy a leg of mutton, and they kept the eager lover drinking till twelve at night, when a chosen committee waited on the faithful pair to the minister of May-fair. The doctor was in bed, and swore he would not get up to marry the King, but that he had a brother over the way who perhaps would, and who did. The mother borrowed a pair of sheets, and they consummated at her house; and the next day they went to their own palace. In two or three days the scene grew gloomy; and the husband coming home one night, swore he could bear it no longer. “Bear! bear what?”—“Why, to be teased by all my acquaintance for marrying a butterwoman’s daughter. I am determined to go to France, and will leave you a handsome allowance.”—“Leave me! why you don’t fancy you shall leave me? I will go with you.”—“What, you love me then?”—“No matter whether I love you or not, but you shan’t go without me.” And they are gone! If you know any body that proposes marrying and travelling, I think they cannot do it in a more commodious method.
I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray; he is the worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn. living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences his writings are admirable; he himself is not agreeable.’(1466)
There are still two months to London; if you could discover your own mind for any three or four days of that space, I will either go with you to the Tigers or be glad to see you here; but I positively will ask you neither one nor t’other any more. I have raised seven-and-twenty bantams from the patriarchs you sent me. Adieu!
(1464) Daughter of Washington, Earl Ferrers.
(1465) Lord Bolingbroke, in a letter to the Earl of Marchmont of the 1st of November, says, “I hope you heard from me by myself, as well of me by Mr. Whitfield. This apostolical person preached some time ago at Lady Huntingdon’s, and I should have been curious to hear him. Nothing kept me from going, but an imagination that there was to be a select auditory. That saint, our friend Chesterfield, was there; and I hear from him an extreme good account of the sermon.” Marchmont Papers, vol. ii. p. 377.-E.
(1466) Dr. Beattie says, in a letter to Sir W. Forbes, “Gray’s letters very much resemble what his conversation was: he had none of the airs of either a scholar or a poet; and though on those and all other subjects he spoke to me with the utmost freedom, and without any reserve, he was in general company much more silent than one could have wished."-E.
565 Letter 261 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, Sept. 18, 1748.
I have two letters of yours to account for, and nothing to plead but my old insolvency. Oh! yes, I have to scold you, which you find is an inexhaustible fund with me. You sent me your d`em`el`e(1467) with the whole city of Florence, and charged me to keep it secret-and the first person I saw was my Lord Hobart, who was full of the account he had received from you. You might as well have told a woman an improper secret, and expected to have it kept! but you may be very easy, for unless it reaches my Lady Pomfret or my Lady Orford, I dare say it will never get back to Florence; and for those two ladies, I don’t think it likely that they should hear it, for the first is in a manner retired from the world, and the world is retired from the second. Now I have vented my anger, I am seriously sorry for you, to be exposed to the impertinence of those silly Florentine women: they deserve a worse term than silly, since they pretend to any characters. How could you act with so much temper? If they had treated me in this manner, I should have avowed ten times more than they pretended you had done; but you are an absolute minister!
I am much obliged to Prince Beauvau for remembering me, and should be extremely pleased to show him all manner of attentions here: you know I profess great attachment to that family for their civilities to me. But how gracious the Princess has been to you! I am quite jealous of her dining with you: I remember what a rout there was to get her for half of half a quarter of an hour to your assembly.
The Bishop of London is dead; having luckily for his family, as it proves, refused the archbishopric.*1468) We owe him the justice to say, that though he had broke with my father, he always expressed himself most handsomely about him, and without any resentment or ingratitude.
Your brothers are coming to dine with me; your brother Gal. is extremely a favourite with me: I took to him for his resemblance to you, but am grown to love him upon his own fund.
The peace is still in a cloud: according to custom, we have hurried on our complaisance before our new friends were at all ready with theirs. There was a great Regency(1469) kept in town, to take off the prohibition of commerce with Spain: when they were met, somebody asked if Spain was ready to take off theirs? “Oh, Lord! we never thought of that!” They sent for Wall,(1470) and asked him if his court would take the same step with us? He said, “he believed they might, but he had no orders about it.” However, we proceeded, and hitherto are bit.
Adieu! by the first opportunity I shelf send you the two books of Houghton, for yourself and Dr. Cocchi. My Lord Orford is much mended: my uncle has no prospect of ever removing from his couch.
(1467) A Madame Ubaldini having raised a scandalous story of two persons whom she saw together in Mr. Mann’s garden at one of his assemblies, and a scurrilous sonnet having been made upon the occasion, the Florentine ladies for some time pretended that it would hurt their characters to come any more to his assembly.
(1468) Dr. Edmund Gibson had been very intimate with Sir Robert Walpole, and was designed by him for archbishop after the death of Wake; but setting himself at the head of the clergy against the Quaker bill, he broke with Sir Robert and lost the archbishoprick which was given to Potter; but on his death, the succeeding ministry offered it to Dr. Gibson. [The Doctor declined it, on account of his advanced age and increasing infirmities. He died on the 6th of February, 1748.)
(1469) This means a meeting of the persons composing the Regency during the King’s absence in Hanover.-D.
(1470) General Wall, the Spanish ambassador.
566 Letter 262
To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 25, 1748.
I shall write you a very short letter, for I don’t know what business we have to be corresponding when we might be together. I really wish to see you, for you know I am convinced of what you say to me. It is few people I ask to come hither, and if possible, still fewer that I wish to see here. The disinterestedness of your friendship for me has always appeared, and is the only sort that for the future I will ever accept, and consequently I never expect any more friends. As to trying to make any by obligations, I have had such woful success, that, for fear of thinking still worse than I do of the world, I will never try more. But you are abominable to reproach me with not letting you go to Houghton: have not I offered a thousand times to carry you there? I mean, since it was my brother’s: I did not expect to prevail with you before; for you are so unaccountable, that you not only will never do a dirty thing, but you
Since I gave you the account of the Duchess of Ireland’s piked horns among the tombs of the Veres, I have found a long account in Bayle of the friar, who, as I remember to have read somewhere, preached so vehemently against that fashion: it was called Hennin, and the monk’s name was Thomas Conecte. He was afterwards burnt at Rome for censuring the lives of the clergy. As our histories say that Anne of Bohemia introduced the fashion here, it is probable that the French learnt it from us, and were either long before they caught it, Or long in retaining the mode; for the Duke of Ireland died in 1389, and Connect was burnt at Rome in 1434. There were, indeed, several years between his preaching down Hennins and his death, but probably not near five-and-forty years, and half that term was a long duration for so outrageous a fashion. But I have found a still more entertaining fashion in another place in Bayle which was, the women wearing looking-glasses upon their bellies’: I don’t conceive for what use. Adieu! don’t write any more, but come.
(1471) Eldest son of George, third Earl of Cholmondoley, and grandson of Sir Robert Walpole.
567 Letter 263 To The Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, Oct. 6, 1748.
Dear harry, I am sorry our wishes clash so much. Besides that I have no natural inclination for the Parliament, it will particularly disturb me now in the middle of all my planting; for which reason I have never inquired when it will meet, and cannot help you to guess—but I should think not hastily-for I believe the peace, at least the evacuations, are not in so prosperous a way as to be ready to make any figure in the King’s speech. But I speak from a distance; it may all be very toward: our ministers enjoy the consciousness of their wisdom, as the good do of their virtue, and take no pains to make it shine before men. In the mean time, we have several collateral emoluments from the pacification: all our milliners, tailors, tavern keepers, and young gentlemen are tiding to France for our improvement in luxury; and as I foresee we shall be told on their return that we have lived in a total state of blindness
I am going to dinner with Lady Sophia Thomas(1472) at Hampton Court, where I was to meet the Cardigans; but I this minute receive a message that the Duchess of Montagu(1473) is extremely ill, which I am much concerned for on Lady Cardigan’s(1474) account, whom I grow every day more in love with; you may imagine, not her person, which is far from improved lately; but, since I have been here, I have lived much with them, and, as George Montagu says, in all my practice I never met a better understanding, nor more really estimable qualities: such a dignity in her way of thinking; so little idea of any thing mean or ridiculous, and such proper contempt for both! Adieu! I must go dress for dinner, and you perceive that I wish I had, but have nothing to tell you.
(1472) Daughter of the first Earl of Albemarle, and wife of General Thomas.-E.
(1473) She was mother to Lady Cardigan, and daughter to the great Duke of Marlborough.
(1474) Lady Mary Montagu, third daughter of John, Duke of Montagu, and wife of George Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, afterwards created Duke of Montagu.
568 Letter 264 To George Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, Oct. 20, 1748.
You are very formal to send me a ceremonious letter of thanks; you see I am less punctilious, for having nothing to tell you, I did not answer your letter. I have been in the empty town for a day: Mrs. Muscovy and I cannot devise where you have planted Jasmine; I am all plantation, and sprout away like any chaste nymph in the Metamorphosis.
They say the old Monarch at Hanover has got a new mistress; I fear he ought to have got * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Now I talk of getting, Mr. Fox has got the ten thousand pound prize; and the Violette, as it is said, Coventry for a husband. It is certain that at the fine masquerade he was following her, as she was under the Countess’s arm, who, pulling off her glove, moved her wedding-ring up and down her finger, which it seems was to signify that no other terms would be accepted. It is the year for contraband marriages, though I do not find
569 Letter 265 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, October 24, 1748.
I have laughed heartily at your adventure of Milord Richard Onslow;(1475) it is an admirable adventure! I am not sure that Riccardi’s absurdity was not the best part of it. Here were the Rinuncinis, the Panciaticis, and Pandolfinis? were they as ignorant too? What a brave topic it would have been for Niccolini, if he had been returned, to display all his knowledge of England!
Your brothers are just returned from Houghton, where they found my brother extremely recovered: my uncle too, I hear, is better; but I think that an impossible recovery.(1476) Lord Walpole is setting out on his travels; I shall be impatient to have him in Florence; I flatter myself you will like him: I, who am not troubled with partiality to my family, admire him much. Your brother has got the two books of Houghton, and will send them by the first Opportunity: I am by no means satisfied with then; they are full of’ faults, and the two portraits wretchedly unlike.
The peace is signed between us, France, and Holland, but does not give the least joy; the stocks do not rise, and the merchants are unsatisfied; they say France will sacrifice us to Spain, which has not yet signed: in short, there has not been the least symptom of public rejoicing; but the government is to give a magnificent firework.
I believe there are no news, but I am here all alone, planting. The Parliament does not meet till the 29th of next month: I shall go to town but two or three days before that. The Bishop of Salisbury,(1477) who refused Canterbury, accepts London, upon a near prospect of some fat fines. Old Tom Walker(1478) is dead, and has left vast wealth and good places; but have not heard where either are to go. Adieu! I am very paragraphical, and you see have nothing to say.
(1475) One Daniel Bets, a Dutchman or Fleming, who called himself my Lord Richard Onslow, and pretended to be the Speaker’s son, having forged letters of credit Ind drawn money from several bankers, came to Florence, and was received as an Englishman of quality by Marquis Riccardi, who could not be convinced by Mr. Mann of the imposture till the adventurer ran away on foot to Rome in the night.
(1476) Yet he did in great measure recover by the use of soap and limewater.
(1477) Dr. Sherlock.
(1478) He was surveyor of the roads; had been a kind of toad-eater to Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Godolphin; was a great frequenter of Newmarket, and a notorious usurer. His reputed wealth is stated, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, at three hundred thousand pounds.]
570 Letter 266 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Dec. 2, 1748.
Our King is returned and our parliament met: we expected nothing but harmony and tranquillity, and love of the peace; but the very first day opened with a black cloud, that threatens a stormy session. To the great surprise of the ministry, the Tories appear in intimate league with the Prince’s party, and both agreed in warm and passionate expressions on the treaty: we shall not have the discussion till after Christmas. My uncle, who is extremely mended by soap, and the hopes of a peerage is come up, and the very first day broke out in a volley of treaties: though he is altered, you would be astonished at his spirits.
We talk much of the Chancellor’s(1479) resigning the seals, from weariness of the fatigue, and being made president of the council, with other consequent changes, which I will write you if they happen; but as this has already been a discourse of six months, I don’t give it you for certain.
Mr. Chute, to whom alone I communicated Niccolini’s banishment, though it is now talked of from the Duke of Bedford’s office, says “he is sorry the Abb`e is banished for the only thing which he ever saw to commend in him,-his abusing the Tuscan ministry.” I must tell you another admirable bon mot of Mr. Chute, now I am mentioning him. Passing by the door of Mrs. Edwards, who died of drams, be saw the motto which the undertakers had placed to her escutcheon, Mors janua vitae, he said “it ought to have been Mors aqua vita.”
The burlettas are begun; I think, not decisively liked or condemned yet: their success is certainly not rapid, though Pertici is excessively admired. Garrick says he is the best comedian he ever saw: but the women are execrable, not a pleasing note amongst them. Lord Middlesex has stood a trial with Monticelli for arrears of salary, in Westminster-hall, and even let his own handwriting be proved against him! You may imagine he was cast. Hume Campbell, lord Marchmont’s brother, a favourite advocate, and whom the ministry have pensioned out of the Opposition into silence, was his council, and protested, striking his breast, that he had never set his foot but once into an opera-house in his life. This affectation ’of British patriotism is excellently ridiculous in a man so known: I have often heard my father say, that of all the men he ever ](new, Lord Marchmont and Hume Campbell were the most abandoned in their professions to him on their coming into the world: he was hindered from accepting their services by the present Duke of Argyll, of whose faction they were not. They then flung themselves into the Opposition, where they both have made great figures, till the elder was shut out of Parliament by his father’s death, and the younger being very foolishly dismissed from being solicitor to the Prince, in favour of Mr. Bathurst, accepted a pension from the court, and seldom comes into the House, and
Two Oxford scholars are condemned to two years’ imprisonment for treason;(1481) and their vice-chancellor, for winking at it, is soon to be tried. What do you say to the young Pretender’s persisting to stay in France? It will not be easy to persuade me that it is without the approbation of that court. Adieu!
(1479) Lord Hardwicke.-D.
(1480) In the preceding March, Lord Marchmont had married a second wife.@, Miss Crampton. The circumstances attending this marriage are thus related by David Hume, in a letter to Mr. Oswald, dated January 29, 1748:-” Lord Marchmont has had the most extraordinary adventure in the world. About three weeks ago he was at the play, when he espied in one of the boxes a fair virgin, whose looks, airs, and manners had such a wonderful effect upon him, as was visible by every bystander. His raptures were so undisguised, his looks so expressive of passion, his inquiries so earnest, that every person took notice of it. He soon was told that her name was Crampton, a linendraper’s daughter, who had been bankrupt last year. He wrote next morning to her father, desiring to visit his daughter on honourable terms, and in a few days she will be the Countess of Marchmont. Could you ever suspect the ambitious, the severe, the bustling, the impetuous, the violent Marchmont of becoming so tender and gentle a swain-an Orondates!"-E.
(1481) In drinking the Pretender’s health, and using seditious expressions against the King. They were also sentenced “to walk round Westminster-hall with a label affixed to Their foreheads, denoting their crime and sentence, and to ask pardon of the several courts;” which they accordingly performed.-E.
571 Letter 267 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, Dec. 15, 1748.
I conclude your Italy talks of nothing but the young Pretender’s imprisonment at Vincennes. I don’t know whether he be a Stuart, but I am sure, by his extravagance he has proved himself’ of English extraction! What a mercy that we had not him here! with a temper so, impetuous and obstinate, as to provoke a French government when in their power, what would he have done with an English Government in his power?(1482) An account came yesterday that he, with his Sheridan and a Mr. Stafford (who was a creature of my Lord Bath,) are transmitted to Pont de Beauvoisin, under a solemn promise never to return into France (I suppose unless they send for him). It is said that a Mr. Dun, who married Alderman Parsons’s eldest daughter, is in the Bastile for having struck the officer when the young man was arrested.
Old Somerset(1483) is at last dead, and the Duke of Newcastle Chancellor of Bainbridge, to his heart’s content. Somerset tendered his pride even beyond his hate; for he has left the present Duke all the furniture of his palaces, and forbore to charge the estate, according to a power he had, with five-and-thirty thousand pounds. To his Duchess,(1484) who has endured such a long slavery with him, he has left nothing but one thousand pounds and a small farm, besides her jointure; giving the whole of his unsettled estate, which is about six thousand pounds a-year, equally between his two daughters, and leaving it absolutely in their own powers now, though neither are of age; and to Lady Frances, the eldest, he has additionally given the fine house built by Inigo Jones, in Lincoln’s-inn-fields, (which he had bought of the Duke of Ancaster for the Duchess,) hoping that his daughter will let her mother live with her. To Sir Thomas Bootle he has given half a borough, and a whole one,(1485) to his grandson Sir Charles Windham,(1486) with an estate that cost him fourteen thousand pounds. To Mr. Obrien,(1487) Sir Charles Windham’s brother, a single thousand; and to Miss Windham an hundred a-year, which he gave her annually at Christmas, and is just Such a legacy as you would give to a housekeeper to prevent her from going to service again. She is to be married immediately to the second Grenville;(1488) they have waited for a larger legacy. The famous settlement(1489) is found, which gives Sir Charles Windham about twelve thousand pounds a-year of the Percy estate after the present Duke’s death; the other five, with the barony of Percy, must go to Lady Betty Smithson.(1490) I don’t know whether you ever heard that, in Lord Grenville’s administration, he had prevailed with the King to grant the earldom of Northumberland to Sir Charles; Lord Hertford represented against it; at last the King said he would give it to whoever they would make it appear was to have the Percy estate; but old Somerset refused to let any body see his writings, and so the affair dropped, every body believing that there was no such settlement.
John Stanhope of the admiralty is dead, and Lord Chesterfield gets thirty thousand pounds for life: I hear Mr. Villiers is most likely to succeed to that board. You know all the Stanhopes are a family aux bon-mots: I must tell you one of this John. He was sitting by an old Mr. Curzon, a nasty wretch, and very covetous: his nose wanted blowing, and continued to want it: at last Mr. Stanhope, with the greatest good-breeding, said, “Indeed, Sir, if you don’t wipe your nose, you will lose that drop.”
I am extremely pleased with Monsieur de Mirepoix’s(1491) being named for this embassy; and I beg you will desire Princess Craon to recommend me to Madame, for I would be particularly acquainted with her as she is their daughter. Hogarth has run a great risk since the peace; he went to France, and was so imprudent as to be taking a sketch of the drawbridge at Calais. He was seized and carried to the governor, where he was forced to prove his vocation by producing several caricatures of the French; particularly a scene(1492) of the shore, with an immense piece of beef landing for the lion-d’argent, the English inn at Calais, and several hungry friars following it.(1493) They were much diverted with his drawings, and dismissed him.
Mr. Chute lives at the herald’s office in your service, and yesterday got particularly acquainted with your great-great-grandmother. I says, by her character, she would be extremely shocked at your wet-brown-paperness, and that she was particularly famous for breaking her own pads. Adieu!
(1482) At the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle the French court proposed to establish Prince Charles at Fribourg in Switzerland, with the title of Prince of Wales, a company of guards, and a sufficient pension; but he placed a romantic point of Honour in ’braving ‘the orders from Hanover,’ as he called them, and positively refused to depart from Paris. Threats, entreaties, arguments, were tried on him in vain. He withstood even a letter obtained from his father at Rome, and commanding his departure. He still nourished some secret expectation, that King Louis would not venture to use force against a kinsman; but he found himself deceived. As he went to the Opera on the evening of the 11th of December, his coach was stopped by a party of French guards, himself seized, bound hand and foot, and conveyed, with a single attendant, to the state-prison of Vincennes, where he was thrust into a dungeon seven feet wide and eight feet long. After this public insult, he was carried to Pont de Beauvoisin, on the frontier of Savoy, and there restored to his wandering and desolate freedom.” lord Mahon, vol .iii. p. 552.-E.
(1483) The proud Duke of Somerset.-D.
(1484) Charlotte Finch, sister of the Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham, second wife of Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset; by whom she had two daughters, Lady Frances, married to the Marquis of Granby, and lady Charlotte to Lord Guernsey, eldest son of the Earl of Aylesford.
(1485) Midhurst, in Sussex.-D.
(1486) Afterwards Earl of Egremont.-D.
(1487) Afterwards created Earl of Thomond in Ireland.-D.
(1488) George Grenville. issue of that marriage were the late Marquis of Buckingham, the Right Honourable Thomas Grenville, and Lord Grenville; besides several daughters.-D.
(1489) The Duke’s first wife was the heiress of the house of Northumberland — she made a settlement of her estate, in case her sons died without heirs male, on the children of her daughters. Her eldest daughter, Catherine, married Sir William Windham, whose son, Sir Charles, by the death of Lord Beauchamp, only son of Algernon, Earl of Hertford, and afterwards Duke of Somerset, succeeded to the greatest part of the Percy estate, preferably to Elizabeth, daughter of the same Algernon, who was married to Sir Hugh Smithson.
(1490) Elizabeth daughter of Algernon, last Duke of Somerset of the younger branch. She was married to Sir Hugh Smithson, Bart. who became successively Earl and Duke of NorthUmberland.-D.
(1491) The Marquis de Mirepoix, marshal of France, and ambassador to England. His wife was a woman of ability, and was long in great favour with Louis the Fifteenth and his successive mistresses.-D.
(1492) He engraved and published it on his return.
(1493) Hogarth’s well known print, entitled “The Roast Beef of Old England.” The original picture is in the possession of the Earl of Charlemont, in Dublin.-D.
574 Letter 268 To Sir Horace Mann. Strawberry Hill, Dec. 26, 1748.
Did you ever know a more absolute country-gentleman? Here am I come down to what you call keep my Christmas! indeed it is not in all the forms; I have stuck no laurel and holly in my windows, I eat no turkey and chine, I have no tenants to invite, I have not brought a single soul With me. The weather is excessively stormy, but has been so warm, and so entirely free from frost the whole winter, that not only several of’ my honeysuckles are come out, but I have literally a blossom upon a nectarine-tree, which I believe was never seen in this climate before on the 26th of December. I am extremely busy here planting; I have got four more acres, which makes my territory prodigious in a situation where land is so scarce, and villas as abundant as formerly at Tivoli and Baiae. I have now about fourteen acres, and am making a terrace the whole breadth of my garden on the brow of a natural hill, With meadows at the foot, and commanding the river, the village, Richmond-hill, and the park, and part of Kingston-but I hope never to show it you. What you hint at in your last, increase of character, I should be extremely against your stirring in now: the whole system of embassies is in confusion, and more candidates than employments. I would have yours pass, as it is, for settled. If you were to be talked especially for a higher character at Florence, one don’t know whom the -,additional dignity might tempt. Hereafter, perhaps, it might be practicable for you, but I would by no means advise your soliciting it at present. Sir Charles Williams is the great obstacle to all arrangement: Mr. Fox makes a point of his going to Turin; the ministry, Who do not love him, are not for his going any where. Mr. Villiers is talked of for Vienna, though just made a lord of the admiralty. There were so many competitors, that at last Mr. Pelham said he would carry in two names to the King, and he should choose (a great indulgence!) Sir Peter Warren and Villiers were carried in; the King chose the latter. I believe there is a little of Lord Granville in this, and in a Mr. Hooper, who was turned out with the last ministry, and is now made a commissioner of the customs: the pretence is, to vacate a seat in Parliament for Sir Thomas Robinson, who is made a lord of trade; a
Lord St. John(1495) is dead; he had a place in the custom-house of 1200 pounds a year, which his father had bought of the Duchess of Kendal for two lives, for 4000 pounds. Mr. Pelham has got it for Lord Lincoln and his child.
I told you in my last a great deal about old Somerset’s will: they have since found 150,000 which goes, too, between the two daughters. It had been feared that he would leave nothing to the youngest; two or three years ago, he waked after dinner and found himself upon the floor; she used to watch him, had left him, and he had fallen from his couch. He forbade every body to speak to her, but yet to treat her with respect as his daughter. She went about the house for a year, without any body daring openly to utter a syllable to her; and it was never known that he had forgiven her. His whole stupid life was a series of pride and tyranny.
There have been great contests in the Privy Council about the trial of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford: the Duke of’ Bedford and Lord Gower pressed it extremely. The latter asked the Attorney-General(1496) his opinion, who told him the evidence did not appear strong enough: Lord Gower said, “Mr. Attorney, you Seem to be very lukewarm for your party.” He replied, “My lord, I never was lukewarm for my party, nor ever was but Of one party.” There is a scheme for vesting in the King the nomination of’ the Chancellor of that University,(1497) who has much power—and much noise it would make! The Lord Chancellor is to be High Steward of Cambridge, in succession to the Duke of Newcastle.
The families of Devonshire and Chesterfield have received a great blow at Derby, where, on the death of John Stanhope, they set up another of the name. One Mr. Rivett, the Duke’s chief friend and manager. stood himself, and carried it by a majority of seventy-one. Lord Chesterfield had sent down credit for ten thousand pounds. The Cavendish’s. however, are very happy, for Lady Hartington(1498) has produced a son.(1499)
I asked a very intelligent person if there could be any foundation for the story of Niccolini’s banishment taking its rise from complaints of our court: he answered very sensibly, that even if our court had complained, -which was most unlikely, it was not at all probable that the court of Vienna would have paid any regard to it. There is another paragraph in your same letter in which I must set you right: you talk Of the sudden change of my opinion about Lord Walpole:(1500) I never had but one opinion about him, and that was always most favourable: nor can I imagine what occasioned your mistake, unless my calling him a wild boy, where I talked of the consequences of his father’s death. I meant nothing in the world by wild, but the thoughtlessness of a boy of nineteen, who comes to the possession of a peerage and an estate. My partiality, I am sure, could never let me say any thing else of him.
Mr. Chute’s sister is dead. When I came from town Mr. Whithed had heard nothing of her will — she had about four thousand pounds. The brother is so capricious a monster, that we almost hope she has not given the whole to our friend.
You will be diverted with a story I am going to tell You; it is very long, and so is my letter already; but you perceive I am in the country and have nothing to hurry me. There is about town a Sir William Burdett,*1501) a man of a very good family, but most infamous character. He formerly was at Paris with a Mrs. Penn, a Quaker’s wife, whom he there bequeathed to the public, and was afterwards a sharper at Brussels, and lately came to England to discover a plot for poisoning the Prince of Orange, in which I believe he was poisoner, poison, and informer all himself. In short, to give you his character at once, there is a wager entered in the bet-book at White’s (a MS. of which I may one day or other give you an account), that the first baronet that will be hanged is this Sir William Burdett. About two months ago he met at St. James’s, a Lord Castledurrow,(1502) a young Irishman, and no genius as you will find, and entered into conversation with him: the Lord, seeing a gentleman, fine, polite, and acquainted with every body, invited him to dinner for next day, and a Captain Rodney,(1503) a young seaman, who has made a fortune by very gallant behaviour during the war. At dinner it came out, that neither the Lord nor the Captain had ever been at any Pelham-levees. “Good God!” said Sir William, “that must not be so any longer; I beg I may carry you to both the Duke and Mr. Pelham: I flatter myself I am very well with both.” The appointment was made for the next Wednesday and Friday; in the mean time, he invited the two young men to dine with him the next day. When they came, he presented them to a lady, dressed foreign, as a princess of the house of’ Brandenburg: she had a toadeater, and there was another man, who gave himself for a count. After dinner Sir William looked at his watch, and said, “J-s! it is not
(1494) Lord Granville’s house in Arlington Street was the lowest in the street on the side of the Green-park-D.
(1495) John, second Viscount St. John, the only surviving son of Henry, first Viscount St. John, by his second wife, Angelica Magdalene, daughter of George Pillesary, treasurer-general of the marines in France, He was half-brother of the celebrated Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke, who was the only son of the said Henry, first Viscount St. John, by his first wife Mary, second daughter of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick. John, second Viscount St. John, was the direct ancestor of the present Viscount Bolingbroke and St. John.-D.
(1496) Sir Dudley Ryder.
(1497) In consequence of the University’s always electing Jacobites to that office.-D.
(1498) Lady Charlotte Boyle, second daughter of Richard, Earl of Burlington and Cork, and wife of William, Marquis of Hartington.
(1499) William Cavendish, afterwards fifth Duke of Devonshire, and Knight of the Garter. He died in 1811.-D.
(1500) George, third Earl of Orford.
(1501) Sir William Vigors Burdett, of Dunmore, in the county of Carlow.-E.
(1502) Henry Flower, Lord Castledurrow, and afterwards created Viscount Ashbrook.
(1503) George Brydges Rodney. He had distinguished himself in Lord Hawke’s victory, In 1761 he took the French island of Martinique. In 1779 he met and defeated the Spanish fleet commanded by Don Juan de Langara, and relieved the garrison of gibraltar, which was closely besieged; and in 1789, he obtained his celebrated victory over the French fleet commanded by Count de Grasse. For this latter service he was created a peer, by the title of Baron Rodney, of Rodney Stoke in the county of Somerset. He died May 24, 1792.
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