Letters Of Horace Walpole Volume Ii Part 22

So, you was not quite satisfied, though you ought to have been transported, with King's College Chapel, because it has no aisles, like every common cathedral. I suppose you would object to a bird of paradise, because it has no legs, but shoots to heaven in a trail, and does not rest on earth. Criticism and comparison spoil many tastes. You should admire all bold and unique essays that resemble nothing else; the "Botanic Garden,"[2] the "Arabian Nights," and King's Chapel are above all rules: and how preferable is what no one can imitate, to all that is imitated even from the best models! Your partiality to the pageantry of popery I do approve, and I doubt whether the world would not be a loser (in its visionary enjoyments) by the extinction of that religion, as it was by the decay of chivalry and the proscription of the heathen deities. Reason has no invention; and as plain sense will never be the legislator of human affairs, it is fortunate when taste happens to be regent.

[Footnote 1: The story of Eurydice's death and the descent of Orpheus, her husband, to h.e.l.l for her recovery, with which Virgil closes the fourth Georgic, is among the most exquisite pa.s.sages in all Latin poetry. Pope made it the subject of his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day; but if Pluto and Proserpine really relented at the doggerel that the English poet puts into the mouth of the half-divine minstrel, they cannot deserve the t.i.tle of _illacrymabiles_ which Horace gives them. Some of the pedantic scientists (to borrow a new word) have discovered in this tale of true love an allegory about the alternations of Day and Night, Sun and Moon, and what not, for which they deserve the anathema of every scholar and lover of true poetry.]

[Footnote 2: "The Botanic Garden," a poem by Dr. Darwin; chiefly remembered for Mr. Gladstone's favourite "Upas-tree," a plant which has not, and never had, any existence except in the fancy of some traveller, who hoaxed the too-scientific poet with the story, which, years afterwards, hoaxed the orator also.]

_DISMISSAL OF NECKER--BARON DE BRETEUIL--THE DUC D'ORLeANS--MIRABEAU._

TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.

STRAWBERRY HILL, _Wednesday night, July_ 15, 1789.

I write a few lines only to confirm the truth of much of what you will read in the papers from Paris. Worse may already be come, or is expected every hour.

Mr. Mackenzie and Lady Betty called on me before dinner, after the post was gone out; and he showed me a letter from Dutens, who said two couriers arrived yesterday from the Duke of Dorset and the d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re, the latter of whom was leaving Paris directly. Necker had been dismissed, and was thought to be set out for Geneva.[1] Breteuil, who was at his country-house, had been sent for to succeed him. Paris was in an uproar; and, after the couriers had left it, firing of cannon was heard for four hours together. That must have been from the Bastile, as probably the _tiers etat_ were not so provided. It is shocking to imagine what may have happened in such a thronged city! One of the couriers was stopped twice or thrice, as supposed to pa.s.s from the King; but redeemed himself by pretending to be despatched by the _tiers etat_.

Madame de Calonne[2] told Dutens, that the newly encamped troops desert by hundreds.

[Footnote 1: The Baron de Breteuil had been the Controller of the Household, and was appointed Necker's successor; but his Ministry did not last above a fortnight, as the King found himself compelled to restore Necker.]

[Footnote 2: Mme. de Calonne's husband had been Prime Minister for some years, having succeeded Necker in 1780.]

Here seems the egg to be hatched, and imagination runs away with the idea. I may fancy I shall hear of the King and Queen leaving Versailles, like Charles the First, and then skips imagination six-and-forty years lower, and figures their fugitive Majesties taking refuge in this country. I have besides another idea. If the Bastile conquers, still is it impossible, considering the general spirit in the country, and the numerous fortified places in France, but some may be seized by the _dissidents_, and whole provinces be torn from the Crown? On the other hand, if the King prevails, what heavy despotism will the _etats_, by their want of temper and moderation, have drawn on their country! They might have obtained many capital points, and removed great oppression.

No French monarch will ever summon _etats_ again, if this moment has been thrown away.

Though I have stocked myself with such a set of visions for the event either way, I do not pretend to foresee what will happen. Penetration argues from reasonable probabilities; but chance and folly are apt to contradict calculation, and hitherto they seem to have full scope for action. One hears of no genius on either side, nor do symptoms of any appear. There will perhaps: such times and tempests bring forth, at least bring out, great men. I do not take the Duke of Orleans[1] or Mirabeau[2] to be built _du bois dont on les fait_; no, nor Monsieur Necker. He may be a great traitor, if he made the confusion designedly: but it is a woful evasion, if the promised financier slips into a black politician! I adore liberty, but I would bestow it as honestly as I could; and a civil war, besides being a game of chance, is paying a very dear price for it.

[Footnote 1: The Duke of Orleans, the infamous egalite, fomented the Revolution in the hope that it might lead to the deposition of the King, and to his own election to the throne, as in England, a century before, the Prince of Orange had succeeded James II. He voted for the death of his cousin and king, and was, in just retribution, sent to the guillotine by Robespierre at the end of the same year.]

[Footnote 2: Mirabeau was the most celebrated of all the earlier leaders of the Revolution. At the time of this letter he had connected himself closely with the Duc d'Orleans, in whose pay, in fact, he was, as his profligacy and extravagance had long before dissipated all the property which had fallen to his share as a younger son. Afterwards, on discovering the cowardice and baseness of the Duke, he broke with him, and exerted himself in the cause of the King, whom, indeed, he had originally desired to support, if his advances had not been, with incredible folly, rejected by Necker. But he had no time to repair the mischief he had done, even if it had been in his power, which it probably would not have been, since he died, after a short illness, in April, 1791.]

For us, we are in most danger of a deluge; though I wonder we so frequently complain of long rains. The saying about St. Swithin is a proof of how often they recur; for proverbial sentences are the children of experience, not of prophecy. Good night! In a few days I shall send you a beautiful little poem from the Strawberry press.

_BRUCE'S "TRAVELS"--VIOLENCE OF THE FRENCH JACOBINS--NECKER._

TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.

STRAWBERRY HILL, _Wednesday night, July_ 1, 1790.

It is certainly not from having anything to tell you, that I reply so soon, but as the most agreeable thing I can do in my confinement. The gout came into my heel the night before last, perhaps from the deluge and damp. I increased it yesterday by limping about the house with a party I had to breakfast. To-day I am lying on the settee, unable to walk alone, or even to put on a slipper. However, as I am much easier this evening, I trust it will go off.

I do not love disputes, and shall not argue with you about Bruce; but, if you like him, you shall not choose an author for me. It is the most absurd, obscure, and tiresome book I know. I shall admire if you have a clear conception about most of the persons and matters in his work; but, in fact, I do not believe you have. Pray, can you distinguish between his _c.o.c.k_ and _hen_ Heghes, and between all Yasouses and Ozoros? and do you firmly believe that an old man and his son were sent for and put to death, because the King had run into a thorn-bush, and was forced to leave his clothes behind him! Is it your faith, that one of their Abyssinian Majesties pleaded not being able to contribute towards sending for a new Abuna, because he had spent all his money at Venice in looking-gla.s.ses? And do you really think that Peter Paez was a Jack-of-all-trades, and built palaces and convents without a.s.sistance, and furnished them with his own hands? You, who are a little apt to contest most a.s.sertions, must have strangely let out your credulity! I could put forty questions to you as wonderful; and, for my part, could as soon credit ----.

I am tired of railing at French barbarity and folly. They are more puerile now serious, than when in the long paroxysm of gay levity.

Legislators, a senate, to neglect laws, in order to annihilate coats of arms and liveries! to pull down a King, and set up an Emperor! They are hastening to establish the tribunal of the praetorian guards; for the sovereignty, it seems, is not to be hereditary. One view of their Fete of the 14th,[1] I suppose, is to draw money to Paris; and the consequence will be, that the deputies will return to the provinces drunk with independence and self-importance, and will commit fifty times more excesses, ma.s.sacres, and devastations, than last year. George Selwyn says, that _Monsieur_, the King's brother, is the only man of rank from whom they cannot take a t.i.tle.

[Footnote 1: The grand federation in the Champ de Mars, on the anniversary of the taking of the Bastile.]

How franticly have the French acted, and how rationally the Americans!

But Franklin and Was.h.i.+ngton were great men. None have appeared yet in France; and Necker has only returned to make a wretched figure! He is become as insignificant as his King; his name is never mentioned, but now and then as disapproving something that is done. Why then does he stay? Does he wait to strike some great stroke, when everything is demolished? His glory, which consisted in being Minister though a Protestant, is vanished by the destruction of Popery; the honour of which, I suppose, he will scarce a.s.sume to himself. I have vented my budget, and now good night! I feel almost as if I could walk up to bed.

_THE PRINCE OF WALES--GROWTH OF LONDON AND OTHER TOWNS._

TO THE MISS BERRYS.

BERKELEY SQUARE, _June_ 8, 1791.

Your No. 34, that was interrupted, and of which the last date was of May 24th, I received on the 6th, and if I could find fault, it would be in the length; for I do not approve of your writing so much in hot weather, for, be it known to you ladies, that from the first of the month, June is not more June at Florence. My hay is crumbling away; and I have ordered it to be cut, as a sure way of bringing rain. I have a selfish reason, too, for remonstrating against long letters. I feel the season advancing, when mine will be piteous short; for what can I tell you from Twickenham in the next three or four months? Scandal from Richmond and Hampton Court, or robberies at my own door? The latter, indeed, are blown already. I went to Strawberry on Sat.u.r.day, to avoid the Birthday [4th June] crowd and squibs and crackers. At six I drove to Lord Strafford's, where his goods are to be sold by auction; his sister, Lady Anne [Conolly], intending to pull down the house and rebuild it. I returned a quarter before seven; and in the interim between my Gothic gate and Ashe's Nursery, a gentleman and gentlewoman, in a one-horse chair and in the broad face of the sun, had been robbed by a single highwayman, _sans_ mask. Ashe's mother and sister stood and saw it; but having no notion of a robbery at such an hour in the high-road, and before their men had left work, concluded it was an acquaintance of the robber's. I suppose Lady Cecilia Johnstone will not descend from her bedchamber to the drawing-room without life-guard men.

The Duke of Bedford eclipsed the whole birthday by his clothes, equipage, and servants: six of the latter walked on the side of the coach to keep off the crowd--or to tempt it; for their liveries were worth an argosie. The Prince [of Wales] was gorgeous too: the latter is to give Madame d'Albany[1] a dinner. She has been introduced to Mrs.

Fitzherbert.[2] You know I used to call Mrs. Cosway's concerts Charon's boat: now, methinks, London is so. I am glad Mrs. C. [osway] is with you; she is pleasing--but surely it is odd to drop a child and her husband and country all in a breath!

[Footnote 1: Mme. d'Albany was the widow of Prince Charles Edward, who had died in 1788 in Italy. She was presented at Court, and was graciously received by the Queen. She was generally believed to be married to the great Italian tragic poet, Alfieri. Since her husband's death she had been living in Paris, but had now fled to England for safety.]

[Footnote 2: Mrs. Fitzherbert, the Roman Catholic lady whom the Prince of Wales had married.]

I am glad you are dis_franchised_ of the exiles. We have several, I am told, here; but I strictly confine myself to those I knew formerly at Paris, and who all are quartered on Richmond-green. I went to them on Sunday evening, but found them gone to Lord Fitzwilliam's, the next house to Madame de Boufflers', to hear his organ; whither I followed them, and returned with them. The Comtesse Emilie played on her harp; then we all united at loto. I went home at twelve, unrobbed; and Lord Fitzwilliam, who asked much after you both, was to set out the next morning for Dublin, though intending to stay there but four days, and be back in three weeks.

I am sorry you did not hear all Monsieur de Lally Tollendal's[1]

Tragedy, of which I have had a good account. I like his tribute to his father's memory. Of French politics you must be tired; and so am I.

Nothing appears to me to promise their chaos duration; consequently I expect more chaos, the sediment of which is commonly despotism. Poland ought to make the French blush; but that, they are not apt to do on any occasion....

[Footnote 1: M. de Lally Tollendal was the son of that unfortunate Count Lally, so iniquitously condemned for his conduct in the government of India, as is mentioned in a former note.]

The Duke of St. Albans has cut down all the brave old trees at Hanworth, and consequently reduced his park to what it issued from--Hounslow-heath: nay, he has hired a meadow next to mine, for the benefit of embarkation; and there lie all the good old corpses of oaks, ashes, and chestnuts, directly before _your_ windows, and blocking up one of my views of the river! but so impetuous is the rage for building, that his Grace's timber will, I trust, not annoy us long. There will soon be one street from London to Brentford; ay, and from London to every village ten miles round! Lord Camden has just let ground at Kentish Town for building fourteen hundred houses--nor do I wonder; London is, I am certain, much fuller than ever I saw it. I have twice this spring been going to stop my coach in Piccadilly, to inquire what was the matter, thinking there was a mob--not at all; it was only pa.s.sengers. Nor is there any complaint of depopulation from the country: Bath shoots out into new crescents, circuses, and squares every year: Birmingham, Manchester, Hull, and Liverpool would serve any King in Europe for a capital, and would make the Empress of Russia's mouth water. Of the war with Catherine Slay-Czar I hear not a breath, and thence conjecture it is dozing into peace.

Mr. Dundas[1] has kissed hands for Secretary of State; and Bishop Barrington, of Salisbury, is transferred to Durham, which he affected not to desire, having large estates by his wife in the south--but from the triple mitre downwards, it is almost always true, what I said some years ago, that "_nolo episcopari_ is Latin for _I lie_." Tell it not in Gath that I say so; for I am to dine to-morrow at the Bishop of London's at Fulham, with Hannah _Bonner_, my _imprimee_.[2] This morning I went with Lysons the Reverend to see Dulwich College, founded in 1619 by Alleyn, a player, which I had never seen in my many days. We were received by a smart divine, _tres bien poudre_, and with black satin breeches--but they are giving new wings and red satin breeches to the good old hostel too, and destroying a gallery with a very rich ceiling; and nothing will remain of ancient but the front, and an hundred mouldy portraits, among apostles, sibyls, and Kings of England. On Sunday I shall settle at Strawberry; and then woe betide you on post-days! I cannot make news without straw. The Johnstones are going to Bath, for the healths of both; so Richmond will be my only staple. Adieu, all three!

[Footnote 1: Mr. Dundas, President of the Board of Control, subsequently raised to the peerage as Lord Melville. In Pitt's second administration he became First Lord of the Admiralty, but in 1805 was impeached by the House of Commons on a charge of malversation while Treasurer of the Navy in Pitt's first Ministry. Of that he was acquitted; but it was proved that some of the subordinate officers of the department had misapplied large sums of the public money, which they could not have done if he had not been grossly negligent of his duties as head of the department, and he was consequently removed from the Privy Council.]

[Footnote 2: Miss Hannah More is meant; but I do not know what peculiar cruelty of temper or practice ent.i.tled her to the name of Mary's persecuting and pitiless Bishop.]

_SIR W. AND LADY HAMILTON--A BOAT-RACE--THE MARGRAVINE OF ANs.p.a.cH._

TO THE MISS BERRYS.

BERKELEY SQUARE, _Tuesday, Aug._ 23, 1791.

I am come to town to meet Mr. Conway and Lady Aylesbury; and, as I have no letter from you yet to answer, I will tell you how agreeably I have pa.s.sed the last three days; though they might have been improved had you shared them, as I wished, and as I _sometimes_ do wish. On Sat.u.r.day evening I was at the Duke of Queensberry's (at Richmond, _s'entend_) with a small company: and there were Sir William Hamilton and Mrs.

Harte[1]; who, on the 3rd of next month, previous to their departure, is to be made Madame l'Envoyee a Naples, the Neapolitan Queen having promised to receive her in that quality. Here she cannot be presented, where only such over-virtuous wives as the d.u.c.h.ess of Kingston and Mrs.

Hastings[2]--who could go with a husband in each hand--are admitted. Why the Margravine of Ans.p.a.ch, with the same pretensions, was not, I do not understand; perhaps she did not attempt it. But I forget to retract, and make _amende honorable_ to Mrs. Harte. I had only heard of her att.i.tudes; and those, in dumb show, I have not yet seen. Oh! but she sings admirably; has a very fine, strong voice; is an excellent buffa, and an astonis.h.i.+ng tragedian. She sung Nina in the highest perfection; and there her att.i.tudes were a whole theatre of grace and various expressions.

[Footnote 1: Mrs. Harte, the celebrated Lady Hamilton, with whom Nelson was so intimately acquainted, though old Lord St. Vincent always maintained that it had never been more than a purely Platonic attachment. Her previous life, however, had been notoriously such as rendered her inadmissible at our Court, though that of Naples was less particular.]

[Footnote 2: Mrs. Hastings, the wife of the great Governor-General, had previously been married to Baron Imhoff, a German miniature painter; but she had obtained a divorce from him, and, as the Baron returned to Germany with an amount of riches that he could hardly have earned by skill in his profession, the scandalous tongues of some of Hastings's enemies imputed to him that he had, in fact, bought her of her husband.]

The next evening I was again at Queensberry House, where the Comtesse Emilie de Boufflers played on her harp, and the Princesse di Castelcigala, the Neapolitan minister's wife, danced one of her country dances, with castanets, very prettily, with her husband. Madame du Barry was there too, and I had a good deal of frank conversation with her about Monsieur de Choiseul; having been at Paris at the end of his reign and the beginning of hers, and of which I knew so much by my intimacy with the d.u.c.h.esse de Choiseul.