The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume IV Part 40

At the same time with yours I received a letter from another cousin at Paris, who tells me Necker is on the verge, and in the postscript says, he has actually resigned. I heard so a few days ago; but this is a full confirmation. Do you remember a conversation at your house, at supper, in which a friend of yours spoke, very unfavourably of Necker, and seemed to wish his fall?

In my own opinion they are much in the wrong. It is true, Necker laboured with all his shoulders to restore their finances; yet I am persuaded that his attention to that great object made him clog all their military operations. They will pay dearer for money; but money they will have: nor is it so dear to them, for, when they have gotten it, they have only not to pay. A Monsieur Joly de Fleury is comptroller-general. I know nothing of him; but as they change so often, some able man will prove minister at last--and there they will have the advantage again.

Lord Cornwallis's courier, Mr. Broderick, is not yet arrived; so you are a little precipitate in thinking America so much nearer to be subdued, which you have often swallowed up as if you were a minister; and yet, methinks, that era has been so frequently put off, that I wonder you are not cured of being sanguine--or rather, of believing the magnificent lies that every trifling advantage gives birth to. If a quarter of the Americans had joined the Royalists, that have been said to join, all the colonies would not hold them. But, at least, they have been like the trick of kings and queens at cards; where one Of two goes back every turn to fetch another. However, this Is only for conversation for the moment. With such aversion to disputation, I have no zeal for making converts to my own opinions not even on points that touch me nearer.

Thursday, May 31.

If you see the papers, you will find that there was a warm debate yesterday on a fresh proposal from Hartley(428) for pacification with America; in which the ministers were roundly reproached with their boasts of the returning zeal of the colonies and which, though it ought by their own accounts to be so much nearer Complete, they could not maintain to be at all effectual; though even yesterday a report was revived of a second victory of Lord Cornwallis. This debate prevented another on the Marriage-bill, which Charles Fox wants to get repealed, and which he told me he was going to labour. I mention this from the circ.u.mstance of the moment when he told ne so. I had been to see if Lady Ailesbury was come to town; as I came up St. James's-street, I saw a cart and porters at Charles's door; coppers and old chests of drawers loading. In short, his success at faro has awakened his host of creditors; but unless his bank had swelled to the size of the bank of England, it could not have yielded a sop apiece for each.

Epsom, too, had been unpropitious; and One creditor has actually seized and carried off his goods, which did not seem worth removing. As I returned full of this scene, whom should I find sauntering by my own door but Charles? He came up and talked to me at the coach-window, on the Marriage-bill(429) With as much sang-froid as if he knew nothing of what had happened. I have no admiration for insensibility to one's own faults, especially when committed out of vanity. Perhaps the whole philosophy consisted in the commission. If you could have been as much to blame, the last thing you would bear well would be your own reflections.

The more marvellous Fox's parts are, the more one is provoked at his follies, which comfort so many rascals and blockheads, and make all that is admirable and amiable in him only matter of regret to those who like him as I do.

I did intend to settle at Strawberry on Sunday; but must return on Thursday, for a party made at Marlborough-house for Princess Amelia. I am continually tempted to retire entirely; and should, if I did not see how very unfit English tempers are for living quite out of the world. We grow abominably peevish and severe on others, if we are not constantly rubbed against and polished by them. I need not name friends and relations of yours and mine as instances. My prophecy on the short reign of faro is verified already. The bankers find that all the calculated advantages of the game do not balance pinchbeck parolis and debts of honourable women. The bankers, I think, might have had a previous and more generous reason, the very bad air of holding a bank:--but this country is as hardened against the pet.i.te morale, as against the greater.--What should I think of the world if I quitted it entirely?

(428) On the preceding day, Mr. Hartley had moved for leave to bring in a bill to invest the Crown with sufficient power to treat upon the means of restoring peace with the provinces of north America. It was Negatived by 106 against 72.-E.

(429) On the 7th of June Mr. Fox moved for leave to bring in a bill to amend the act of the 26th of George the Second, for preventing clandestine marriages. The bill pa.s.sed the Commons, but was rejected by the Lords.-E.

Letter 219 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, June 3, 1781. (PAGE 279)

You know I have more philosophy about you than courage, yet for once I have been very brave. There was an article in the papers last week that said, a letter from Jersey mentioned apprehensions of being attacked by four thousand French. Do you know that I treated the paragraph with scorn? No, no; I am not afraid for your island, when you are at home in it, and have had time to fortify it, and have sufficient force. No, no; it will not be surprised when you are there, and when our fleet is returned, and Digby before Brest. However, with all my valour, I could not help going to your brother to ask a few questions; but he had heard of no such letter. The French would be foolish indeed if they ran their heads a third time against your rocks, when watched by the most vigilant of all governors. Your nephew George(430) is arrived with the fleet: my door opened t'other morning; I looked towards the common horizon of heads, but was a foot and a half below any face. The handsomest giant in the world made but one step across my room, and seizing my hand, gave it such a robust gripe that I squalled; for he crushed my poor chalk-stones to powder. When I had recovered from the pain of his friendly salute, I said, "It must be George Conway! and yet, is it possible? Why, it is not fifteen months ago since you was but six feet high!" In a word, he is within an inch of Robert and Edward, with larger limbs; almost as handsome as Hugh, with all the bloom of youth; and, in short, another of those comely sons of Anak, the breed of which your brother and Lady Hertford have piously restored for the comfort of the daughters of Sion. He is delighted with having tapped his warfare with the siege of Gibraltar, and burns to stride to America. The town, he says, is totally destroyed, and between two and three hundred persons were killed.--Well, it is a pity Lady Hertford has done breeding: we shall want such a race to repeople even the ruins we do not lose!

The rising generation does give one some hopes. I confine myself to some of this year's birds. The young William Pitt(431) has again displayed paternal oratory. The other day, on the commission of accounts, he answered Lord North, and tore him limb from limb. If Charles Fox could feel, one should Think such a rival, with an unspotted character, would rouse him. What, if a Pitt and Fox should again be rivals! A still newer orator has appeared in the India business, a Mr. Bankes,(432) and against Lord North too; and with a merit that the very last crop of orators left out of their rubric--modesty. As young Pitt is modest too, one would hope some genuine English may revive!(433)

Tuesday, June 5.

This is the season of opening my cake-house. I have chosen a bad spot, if I meant to retire; and calculated ill, when I made it a puppet-show. Last week we had two or three mastiff-days; for they were fiercer than our common dog-days. It is cooled again; but rain is as great a rarity as in Egypt; and father Thames is so far from being a Nile, that he is dying for thirst himself.

But it would be prudent to reserve paragraphs of weather till people are gone out of town; for then I can have little to send you else from hence.

Berkeley Square, June 6.

As soon as I came to town to-day Le Texier called on me, and told me he has miscarried of Pygmalion. The expense would have mounted to 150 pounds and he could get but sixty subscribers at a guinea apiece. I am glad his experience and success have taught him thrift. I did not expect it. Sheridan had a heavier miscarriage last night. The two Vestris had imagined a f'ete; and, concluding that whatever they designed would captivate the town and its purses, were at the expense of 1200 pounds and, distributing tickets at two guineas apiece, disposed of not two hundred. It ended in a bad opera, that began three hours later than usual, and at quadruple the price. There were bushels of dead flowers, lamps, country dances--and a cold supper. Yet they are not abused as poor Le Texier was last year.

June 8.

I conclude my letter, and I hope our present correspondence, very agreeably; for your brother told me last night, that you have written to Lord Hillsborough for leave to return. If all our governors could leave their dominions in as good plight, it were lucky. Your brother owned, what the Gazette with all its circ.u.mstances cannot conceal, that Lord Cornwallis's triumphs have but increased our losses, without leaving any hopes. I am told that his army, which when he parted from Clinton amounted to seventeen thousand men, does not now contain above as many hundred, except the detachments. The Gazette, to my sorrow and your greater sorrow, speaks of Colonel O'Hara having received two dangerous wounds. Princess Amelia was at Marlborough-house last night, and played at faro till twelve o'clock. There ends the winter campaign! I go to Strawberry-hill to-morrow; and I hope, a l'Irlandaise, that the next letter I write to you will be not to write to you any more.

(430) Lord George Seymour Conway, seventh son of Francis, first Earl and Marquis of Hertford; born 1763.-E.

(431) The young William Pitt," afterwards, as Walpole antic.i.p.ated, the proud rival of Charles Fox, and for so long a period the prime-minister of England, delivered his maiden speech in the House of Commons, on the 26th of February, in favour of Mr. Burke's bill for an economical reform in the civil list.

"Never," says his preceptor, Bishop Tomline, "were higher expectations formed of any person upon his first coming into Parliament, and never were expectations more completely answered.

They were, indeed, much more than answered; such were the fluency and accuracy of language, such the perspicuity of arrangement, and such the closeness of reasoning, and manly and dignified elocution,--generally, even in a much less degree, the fruits of long habit and experience,--that it could scarcely be believed to be the first speech of a young man not yet two-and-twenty. On the following day, knowing my anxiety upon every subject which related to him, Mr. Pitt, with his accustomed kindness, wrote to me at Cambridge, to inform me that 'he had heard his own voice in the House of Commons,' and modestly expressed his satisfaction at the manner in which his first attempt at parliamentary speaking had been received."-E.

(432) Henry Bankes, Esq. of Kingston Hall. He represented Corfe-Castle from 1780 to 1826, and the county of Dorset from that time until 1831. In 1818, he published "The Civil and Const.i.tutional History of Rome, from the Foundation to the Age of Augustus," in two volumes, 8vo; and died in 1834.-E.

(433) Mr. Wilberforce, in a letter to a friend, of the 9th of June, says--"The papers will have informed you how Mr. William Pitt, second son of the late Lord Chatham has distinguished himself: he comes out as his father did, a ready-made orator, and I doubt not but that I shall one day or other, see him the first man in the country." Life, vol. 1. p. 22.-E.

Letter 220 To The Earl Of Strafford.

Strawberry Hill, June 13, 1781. (PAGE 281)

It was very kind, my dear lord, to recollect me so soon: I wish I Could return it by amusing you; but here I know nothing, and suppose it is owing to age that even in town I do not find the transactions of the world very entertaining. One must sit up all night to see or hear any thing; and if the town intends to do any thing, they never begin to do it till next day. Mr. Conway will certainly be here the end of this month, having thoroughly secured his island from surprise, and it is not liable to be taken any other way. I wish he was governor of this bigger one too, which does not seem quite so well guaranteed.

Your lords.h.i.+p will wonder at a visit I had yesterday: it was from Mr. Storer, who has pa.s.sed a day and night here. It was not from my being a fellow-scholar of Vestris, but from his being turned antiquary; the last pa.s.sion I should have thought a macaroni would have taken. I am as proud of such a disciple as of having converted d.i.c.ky Bateman from a Chinese to a Goth. Though he was the founder of the Sharawadgi taste in England, I preached so effectually that his every paG.o.da took the veil. The Methodists say, one must have been very wicked before one can be of the elect--yet is that extreme more distant from the ton, which avows knowing and liking nothing but the fas.h.i.+on of the instant, to studying what were the modes of five hundred years ago? I hope this conversion will not ruin Mr. Storer's fortune under the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. How his Irish majesty will be shocked when he asks how large Prince Boothby's shoe-buckles are grown, to be answered, he does not know, but that Charles Brandon's cod-piece at the last birthday had three yards of velvet in it!

and that the d.u.c.h.ess of Buckingham thrust out her chin two inches farther than ever in admiration of it! and that the Marchioness of Dorset had put out her jaw by endeavouring to imitate her!

We have at last had some rains, which I hope extended to Yorks.h.i.+re, and that your lords.h.i.+p has found Wentworth Castle in the bloom of verdure. I always, as in duty bound, wish prosperity to every body and every thing there, and am your lords.h.i.+p's ever devoted and grateful humble servant.

Letter 221To The Rev. Mr. Cole.

Strawberry Hill, June 16, 1781. (PAGE 282)

Your last account of yourself was so indifferent, that I am impatient for a better: pray send me a much better.

I know little in your way but that Sir Richard Worseley has just published a History of the Isle of Wight, with many views poorly done enough.(434) Mr. Bull(435) is honouring me, at least my Anecdotes of Painting, exceedingly. He has let every page into a pompous sheet, and is adding every print of portrait, building, etc. that I mention, and that he can get, and specimens of all our engravers. It will make eight magnificent folios, and be a most valuable body of our arts. Nichols the printer has published a new Life of Hogarth,(436) of near two hundred pages- -many more, in truth, than it required: chiefly it is the life of his works, containing all the variations, and notices of any persons whom he had in view. I cannot say there are discoveries of many prints which I have not mentioned, though I hear Mr.

Gulston(437) says he has fifteen such; but I suppose he only fancies so. Mr. Nichols says our printsellers are already adding Hogarth's name to several spurious. Mr. Stevens, I hear, has been allowed to ransack Mrs. Hogarth's house for obsolete and unfinished plates, which are to be completed and published.

Though she was not pleased with my account of her husband, and seems by these transactions to have encouraged the second, I a.s.sure you I have much more reason to be satisfied than she has, the editor or editors being much civiller to living me than to dead Hogarth--yet I should not have complained. Every body has the same right to speak their sentiments. Nay, in general, I have gentler treatment than I expected, and I think the world and I part good friends.

I am now setting about the completion of my AEdes Strawberrianae.

A painter is to come hither on Monday to make a drawing of the Tribune, and finish T. Sandby's fine view of the gallery, to which I could never get him to put the last hand. They will Then be engraved with a few of the chimney-pieces, which will complete the plates. I must add an appendix of curiosities, purchased or acquired since the Catalogue was printed. This will be awkward, but I cannot afford to throw away an hundred copies. I shall take care if I can that Mr. Gough does not get fresh intelligence from my engravers, or he will advertise my supplement, before the book appears. I do not think it was very civil to publish such private intelligence, to which he had no right without my leave; but every body seems to think he may do what is good in his own eyes. I saw the other day, in a collection of seats (exquisitely engraved), a very rude insult on the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re. The designer went to draw a view of Chiswick, without asking leave, and was not hindered, for he has given it; but he says he was treated illiberally, the house not being shown without tickets, which he not only censures, but calls a singularity, though a frequent practice in other places, and practised there to my knowledge for these thirty years: so every body is to come into your house if he pleases, draw it whether you please or not, and by the same rule, I suppose, put any thing into his pockets that he likes. I do know, by experience, what a grievance it is to have a house worth being seen, and though I submit in consequence to great inconveniences, they do not save me from many rudenesses. Mr. Southcote(438) was forced to shut up his garden, for the savages who came as connoisseurs scribbled a thousand brutalities, in the buildings, upon his religion. I myself, at Canons, saw a beautiful table of oriental alabaster that had been split in two by a buck in boots jumping up backwards to sit upon it.

I have placed the oaken head Of Henry the Third over the middle arch of the armoury. Pray tell me what the church of Barnwell, near Oundle, was, which his Majesty endowed, and whence his head came. Dear Sir, Yours most sincerely.

(434) Sir Richard Worsley is better known by his splendid work, the "Museum Worsleianum; or, a Collection of antique Ba.s.so-relievos, Bustos, Statues, and Gems; with views of places in the Levant, taken on the spot, in the years 1785-6-7;" in two volumes, folio. Sir Richard sat many years in Parliament for the borough of Newport, and was governor of the Isle of Wight, where he died in 1805.-E.

(435) Richard Bull, Esq. a famous collector of portraits.-E.

(436) " Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth; and a Catalogue of his Works, chronologically arranged; with occasional Remarks."-E.

(437) Joseph Gulston, Esq. also an eminent portrait collector.-E.

(438) Philip Southcote, Esq. of Wooburn Farm, Chertsey: one of the first places improved according to the principles of modern gardening.-E.

Letter 222 To The Earl Of Charlemont.(439) Strawberry Hill, July 1, 1781. (PAGE 284)

I should have been exceedingly flattered, my lord, by receiving a present from your lords.h.i.+p, which at once proves that I retain a place in your lords.h.i.+p's memory, and you think me worthy of reading what you like. I could not wait to give your lords.h.i.+p a thousand thanks for so kind a mark of your esteem till I had done through the volume, which I may venture to say I shall admire, as I find it contains some pieces which I had seen, and did admire, without knowing their author. That approbation was quite impartial. Perhaps my future judgment of the rest will be not a little prejudiced, and yet on good foundation; for if Mr.

Preston(440) has retained my suffrage in his favour by dedicating his poems to your lords.h.i.+p, it must at least be allowed that I am bia.s.sed by evidence of his taste. He would not possess the honour of your friends.h.i.+p unless he deserved it; and, as he knows you, he would not have ventured to prefix your name, my lord, to poems that did not deserve your patronage. I dare to say they will meet the approbation of better judges than I can pretend to be. I have the honour to be, with the greatest respect, esteem, and grat.i.tude.

(439) Now first collected.

(440) William Preston, Esq. a young Irish gentleman, of whom Lord Charlemont had become the friend and patron. He afterwards published "Thoughts on Lyric Poetry, with an Ode to the Moon;" an "essay on Ridicule, Wit, and Humour;" and a translation of the Argonautics of Appollonius Rhodius. He died in 1807.-E.

Letter 223 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.