The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford Volume IV Part 73

Mr. Dundas 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 imprime. 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. e were received by a smart divine, tr'es bien poudr'e, 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 wo 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!

(801) Lady Anne Wentworth, married to the Right Honourable Thomas Conolly.

(802) Francis, fifth Duke of Bedford. He died at Woburn, in March 1802, at the early age of thirty-one; upon which event, Mr. Fox, in moving for a new writ for Tavistock, in the room of his brother John, who succeeded to the dukedom, p.r.o.nounced an eloquent eulogium on the deceased-the only speech he could ever be prevailed upon to revise for publication-E.

(803) Maria Cosway, the wife of the eminent painter, and herself distinguished for her proficience both in painting and music. She was a native of Italy but of English parentage; and being pa.s.sionately fond of music, her soir'ees in Pall-Mall and afterwards in Stratford-place, were attended by all the fas.h.i.+on of the town. In consequence of ill-health, accompanied by her brother, who had gained, as a student in painting, the Academy's gold metal, she had left England for Italy; where she remained about three years.-E

(804) The celebrated Count Lally do Tollendal. In 1789, he was one of the most eloquent members of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly; but disapproving of the principles that prevailed, he retired into Switzerland, Gibbon, in a letter of the 15th of December of that year, says of him, "Lally is an amiable man of the world, and a poet: he pa.s.ses the winter here; you know how much I prefer a quiet select society to a crowd of names and t.i.tles: what happy countries are England and Switzerland, if they know and preserve their happiness!" Having returned to France in 1792, he was sent to the Abbaye; whence he escaped during the ma.s.sacres which took place in the prisons in September, and effected his retreat to England, where he found an asylum in the house of Lord Sheffield. On the restoration of the Bourbons, he was created a peer of France, and died in 1830.

The subject of the tragedy above alluded to was the fall of the Earl of Strafford.-E.

(805) The unfortunate Count do Lally, governor of Pondicherry; who, on the surrender of the place to the English in 1761, was made prisoner of war, and sent to England. In the Chatham Correspondence, there is a letter from him to Mr. Pitt, written in English; in which he says, "When I shall have seen and heard here of Mr. Pitt all I have already read of him, I shall always remember I am his prisoner, and liberty to me, though a Frenchman, is of an inestimable value; therefore, I earnestly beg your interest with his Majesty to grant me leave to repair to my native soil." The desired permission was granted; but no sooner had he reached Paris, than he was thrown into the Bastille, and after being confined several years, brought to trial for treachery and found guilty. When his sentence was p.r.o.nounced, "the excess of his indignation," says Voltaire, "

was equal to his astonishment: he inveighed against his judges, and, holding in his hand a pair of compa.s.ses, which he used for tracing maps in his prison, he struck it against his heart; but the blow was not sufficient to take away life; he was dragged into a dung-cart, with a gag in his mouth, lest, being conscious of his innocence, he should convince the Spectators of the injustice of his fate." Madame du Deffand, in giving to Walpole, on the 10th of January 1766, an account of this horrible scene, having stated, that the populace "battait des mains pendant l'ex'ecution," he returned her an answer, in a high degree honourable to his moral feeling:--"Ah! Madame, Madame, quelles horreurs me racontez-vous la! Qu'on ne dise jamais que les Anglais sent durs et f'eroces. Veritablement ce sent les Fran'cais qui le sent, Oui, oui, vous 'etes des sauvages, des Iroquois, vous autres. On a bien ma.s.sacr'e des gens chez nous, mais a-t-on jamais vu battre des Mains pendant qu'on mettait 'a mort un pauvre malheureux, un officier general, qui avait langui pendant deux ans en prison? un homme enfin si sensible 'a l'honneur, qu'il n'avait pas voulu se sauver! si touch'e de la disgrace qu'il chercha 'a avaler les grilles de sa prison plut'ot que de se voir expos'e 'a l'ignominie publique; et c'est exactement cette honn'ete pudeur qui fait qu'on le traine dans un tombereau, et qu'on lui met un baillon 'a la bouche comme au dernier des sc'elerats. Mon Dieu! que je suis aise d'avoir quitt'e Paris avant cette horrible sc'ene! je me serais fait d'echirer, ou mettre 'a la Bastille."-E.

Letter 383 To The Miss Berrys.

Strawberry Hill, June 14, 1791.(page 508)

I pity you! what a dozen or fifteen uninteresting letters are you going to receive! for here I am, unlikely to have any thing to tell you worth sending. You had better come back incontinently-but pray do not prophesy any more; you have been the death of our summer, and we are in close mourning for it in coals and ashes. It froze hard last night: I went out for a moment to look at my haymakers, and was starved. The contents of an English June are, hay and ice, orange-flowers and rheumatisms!

I am now cowering over the fire. Mrs. Hobart had announced a rural breakfast at Sans-Souci last Sat.u.r.day; nothing being so pastoral as a fat grandmother in a row of houses on Ham Common.

It rained early in the morning: she despatched postboys, for want of Cupids and zephyrs, to stop the nymphs and shepherds who tend their flocks in Pall-Mall and St. James's- street; but half of them missed the couriers and arrived. Mrs. Montagu was more splendid yesterday morning, and breakfasted seven hundred persons on opening her great room, and the room with the hangings of feathers. The King and Queen had been with her last week. I should like to have heard the orations she had prepared on the occasion. I was neither City-mouse nor country-mouse. I did dine at Fulham on Sat.u.r.day with the Bishop of London: Mrs.

Boscawen, Mrs. Garrick, and Hannah More were there; and Dr.

Beattie, whom I had never seen. He is quiet, simple, and cheerful, and pleased me. There ends my tale, this instant, Tuesday! How shall I fill a couple of pages more by Friday morning! Oh! ye ladies on the Common, and ye uncommon ladies in London, have pity on a poor gazetteer, and supply me with eclogues or royal panegyrics Moreover--or rather more under--I have had no letter from you these ten days, though the east wind has been as constant as Lord Derby. I say not this in reproach, as you are so kindly punctual; but as it stints me from having a single paragraph to answer. I do not admire specific responses to every article; but they are great resources on a dearth.

Madame de Boufflers is ill of a fever, and the d.u.c.h.ess de Biron(806) goes next week to Switzerland:--mais qu'est que cela vous fait? I must eke out this with a few pa.s.sages that I think will divert you, from the heaviest of all books, Mr. Malone's Shakspeare, in ten thick octavos, with notes, that are an extract of all the opium that is spread through the works of all the bad playwrights of that age. Mercy on the poor gentleman's patience!

Amongst his other indefatigable researches he has discovered some lists of effects in the custody of the property-man to the Lord Admiral's company of players, in 1598. Of those effects he has given eight pages-you shall be off for a few items; viz. "My Lord Caffe's [Caiaphas's] gercheri [jerkin] and his hoose [hose]; one rocke, one tombe, one h.e.l.lemought [h.e.l.l-mouth], two stepelles and one chyme of belles, one chaine of Dragons, two coffines, one bulle's head, one vylter, one goste's crown, and one frame for the heading of black Jone; one payer of stayers for Fayeton, and bowght a robe for to goo invisabell." The pair of stairs for Phaeton reminds one of Hogarth's Strollers dressing in a barn, where Cupid on a ladder is reaching Apollo's stockings, that are hanging to dry on the clouds; as the steeples do of a story in L'Histoire du Th'eatre Fran'cois: Jodelet, who not only wrote plays, but invented the decorations, was to exhibit of both before Henry the Third. One scene was to represent a view of the sea, and Jodelet had bespoken two rochers; but not having time to rehea.r.s.e, what did he behold enter on either side of the stage, instead of two rochers, but two clochers! Who knows but my Lord Admiral bought them?

Berkeley Square, Thursday, 16th.

I am come to town for one night, having promised to be at Mrs.

Buller's this evening with Mrs. Damer, and I believe your friend, Mrs. Cholmeley, whom I have seen two or three times lately and like much. Three persons have called on me since I came, but have not contributed a t.i.ttle of news to my journal. If I hear nothing to-night, this must depart, empty as it is, to-morrow morning, as I shall for Strawberry; I hope without finding a new mortification, as I did last time. Two companies had been to see my house last week; and one of the parties, as vulgar people always see with the ends of their fingers, had broken off the end of my invaluable Eagle's bill, and to conceal their mischief, had pocketed the piece. It is true it had been restored at Rome, and my comfort is, that Mrs. Damer can repair the damage--but did the fools know that? It almost provokes one to shut up one's house, when obliging begets injury!

Friday noon.

This moment I receive your 35th, to which I have nothing to answer, but that I believe Fox and Burke are not very cordial; though I do not know whether there has been any formal reconciliation or not. The Parliament is prorogued; and we shall hear no more of them, I suppose, for some months; nor have I learnt any thing new, and am returning to Strawberry, and must finish.

(806) Am'elie de Boufflers, wife of Armand-Louis de Gontaut, Duc do Biron, better known in England by the t.i.tle of Duc de Lauzan.

By a letter from Madame Necker to Gibbon, the d.u.c.h.esse appears to have been at Lausanne in October; but in the following September , tempted," says Gibbon, " by some faint, and I fear, fallacious hope Of clemency to the women", she was induced to revisit France, and perished by the guillotine, in one of Robespierre's b.l.o.o.d.y proscriptions. See vol. v. pp. 133, 400. The Duc was entrusted with the command of the army of the republic in La Vend'ee; but, being reproached with having suffered Niort to be besieged and with not having seconded westermann, he was denounced at the bar of the Convention, delivered over to the revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to death. He suffered on the 31st of December 1793, and is words upon the scaffold are said to have been, "I have been false to my G.o.d, my order, and my king: I die full of faith and repentance." See his "M'emoires, "

in two volumes 8vo. published in 1802.-E.

Letter 384To Miss Berry.

Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1791. (page 510)

Wo is me! I have not an atom of news to send you, but that the second edition of Mother Hubbard's Tale was again spoiled on Sat.u.r.day last by the rain; yet she had an ample a.s.semblage of company from London and the neighbourhood. The late Queen of France, Madame du Barry, was there; and the late Queen of England, Madame d'Albany, was not. The former, they say, is as much altered as her kingdom, and does not retain a trace of her former powers. I saw her on her throne in the chapel of Versailles;(807) and, though then pleasing in face and person, I thought her un peu pa.s.s'e. What shall I tell you more? that Lord Hawkesbury is added to the cabinet-council--que vous importe? and that Dr. Robertson has published a Disquisition into the Trade of the Anch.e.l.lts with India;(808) a sensible work--but that will be no news to you till you return. It was a peddling trade in those days. They now and then picked up an elephant's tooth, or a nutmeg, or one pearl, that served Venus for a pair of pendants, when Antony had toasted Cleopatra in a b.u.mper of its fellow; which shows that a couple was imported:-but. alack! the Romans were so ignorant, that waiters from the Tres Tabernoe, in St.

Apollo's-street, did not carry home sacks of diamonds enough to pave the Capitol--I hate exaggerations, and therefore I do not say, to pave the Appian Way. One author, I think, does say, that the wife of Fabius Pictor, whom he sold to a proconsul, did present Livia(809) with an ivory bed, inlaid with Indian gold; but, as Dr. Robertson does not mention it, to be sure he does not believe the fact well authenticated.

It is an anxious moment with the poor French here: a strong notion is spread, that the Prince of Cond'e will soon make some attempt; and the National a.s.sembly, by their pompous bl.u.s.tering seem to dread it. Perhaps the moment is yet too early, till anarchy is got to a greater head; but as to the duration of the present revolution, I no more expect it, than I do the millennium before Christmas. Had the revolutionists had the sense and moderation of our ancestors, or of the present Poles, they might have delivered and blessed their country: but violence, injustice, and savage cruelty, tutored by inexperienced pedantry, produce offspring exactly resembling their parents, or turn their enemies into similar demons. Barbarity will be copied by revenge.

Lord Fitzwilliam has flown to Dublin and back. He returned to Richmond on the fourteenth day from his departure, and the next morning set out for France: no courier can do more. In my last, the description of June for orange-flowers, pray read roses: the east winds have starved all the former; but the latter, having been settled here before the wars of York and Lancaster, are naturalized to the climate, and reek not whether June arrives in summer or winter. They blow by their own old-style almanacks.

Madame d'Albany might have found plenty of white ones on her own tenth of June; but, on that very day, she chose to go to see the King in the House of Lords, with the crown on his head, proroguing the Parliament.(810) What an odd rencontre! Was it philosophy or insensibility? I believe it is certain that her husband was in Westminster-hall at the coronation.

The patriarchess of the Methodists, Lady Huntingdon, is dead.

Now she and Whitfield are gone, the sect will probably decline: a second crop of apostles seldom acquire the influence of the founders. To-day's paper declares upon its say-so, that Mr.

Fawkener is at hand, with Catherine Slay-Czar's(811) acquiescence to our terms; but I have not entire faith in a precursor on such an occasion, and from Holland too. It looks more like a courier to the stocks; and yet I am in little expectation of a war, as I believe we are boldly determined to remain at peace. And now my pen is quite dry-you are quite sure not from laziness, but from the season of the year, which is very anti-correspondent. Adieu!

(807) See letter to George Montagu, Esq., Sept. 17, 1769, vol.3, letter 371.

(808) This work, which was the last labour of the historian, was suggested by the perusal of Major Rennell's "Memoir of a Map of Hindostan." In sending a copy of it to Gibbon, he says "No man had formed a more decided resolution of retreating early from public view' and of spending the eve of life in the tranquillity of professional and domestic occupations; but, directly in the face of that purpose, I step forth with a new work, when just on the brink of threescore and ten. My book has met with a reception beyond what the spe lentus, pavidusque futuri, dared to expect. I find, however, like other parents, that I have a partial fondness for this child of my old age, and cannot set my heart quite at rest, until I know your opinion of it."-E.

(809) This alludes to the stories told at the time, of an ivory bed, inlaid with gold, having been presented to Queen Charlotte by Mrs. Hastings, the wife of the governor-general of India.

(810) " The Bishop of London' " writes Hannah More, " carried me to hear the King make his speech in the House of Lords. As it was quite new to me, I was very well entertained; but the thing that was most amusing was to see, among the ladies, the Princess of s...o...b..rg, Countess of Albany, wife to the Pretender, sitting just at the foot of that throne, which she might once have expected to have mounted; and what diverted the party, when I put them in mind of it, was, that it happened to be the 10th of June, the Pretender's birthday. I have the honour to be very much like her; and this opinion was confirmed yesterday, when we met again."-Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 343.-E.

(811) Walpole rarely makes mention of Catherine without an allusion to the murder of the Czar Peter. in a letter written to Madame du Deffand, in 1769 he thus indignantly denounce Voltaire's applauses of the Empress:--"Voltaire me fait horreur Avec sa Caterine: le beau sujet de badinage que l'a.s.sa.s.sinat d'un mari, et l'usurpateur de son tr'one! Il n'est pas mal, dit-il, qu'on ait une faute r'eparer: eh! comment reparer un meurtre?

Est-ce en retenant des po'etes 'a ses gages? en payant des historiens mercenaires, et en soudoyant des philosophes ridicules 'a mille lieues dc son pays? Ce sent ces 'ames viles qui chantent un Auguste, et se taisent sur ses proscriptions."-E.

Letter 385 To Miss Berry.

Strawberry Hill, Tuesday night, July 12, 1791. (page 512)

I had had no letter from you for ten days, I suppose from west winds; but did receive one this morning, which had been three weeks on the road: and a charming one it was. Mr. Batt,--who dined with me Yesterday, and stayed till after breakfast to-day,--being here, I read part of It to him; and he was as much delighted as I was with your happy quotation of incedit Regina.

If I could spare so much room, I might fill this paper with all he said of you both, and with all the friendly kind things he begged me to say to both from him. Last night I read to him'

certain Reminiscences; and this morning he slipped from me, and walked to Cliveden, and hopes to see it again much more agreeably. I hope so too, and that I shall be with him.

I wish there were not so many f'etes at Florence; they are worse for you both than an Italian sultriness: but, if you do go to them, I am glad you have More northern weather. News I have none, but that Calonne arrived in London on Sunday: you may be sure I do not know for what. In a word, I have no more opinion of his judgment than of his integrity. Now I must say a syllable about myself; but don't be alarmed! It is not the gout; it is worse: it is the rheumatism, which I have had in my shoulder ever since it attended the gout last December. It was almost gone till last Sunday, when, the Bishop of London preaching a charity sermon in our church, -whither I very. very seldom venture to hobble, I would go to hear him; both out of civility, and as I am very intimate with him. The church was crammed; and, though it rained, every window was open. However, at night I went to bed; but at two I waked with such exquisite pain in my, rheumatic right shoulder, that I think I scarce ever felt greater torture from the gout.

Letter 386 To The Miss Berrys.

Strawberry Hill, July 26, 1791. (page 512)

Ten months are gone of the longest year that ever was born--a baker's year, for it has thirteen months to the dozen! As our letters are so long interchanging, it is not beginning too early to desire You will think of settling the stages to which I must direct to you in your route. Nay, I don't know whether it is not already too late: I am sure it will be, if I am to stay for an answer to this; but I hope you will have thought on it before you receive this. I am so much recovered as to have been abroad. I cannot say my arm is glib yet; but, if I waited for the total departure of' the rheumatism, I might stay at home till the national debt is paid. My fair writing is a proof of my lameness: I labour as if I were engraving; and drop no words, as I do in my ordinary hasty scribbling.

Lady Cecilia tells me that her nephew, Mr. West,(812) who was with you at Pisa, declares he is in love with you both; so I am not singular. You two may like to hear this, though no novelty to you; but it will not satisfy Mr. Berry, who will be impatient for news from Birmingham: but there are no more, nor any-whence else. There has not been another riot in any of the three kingdoms. The villain Paine came over for the Crown and Anchor;(813) but, finding that his pamphlet had not set a straw on fire, and that the 14th of July was as little in fas.h.i.+on as the ancient gunpowder-plot, he dined at another tavern with a few quaking conspirators; and probably is returning to Paris, where he is engaged in a controversy with the Abb'e Sieyes, about the plus or minus of rebellion. The rioters in Worcesters.h.i.+re, whom I mentioned in my last, were not a detachment from Birmingham, but volunteer incendiaries from the capital; who went, according to the rights of men, with the mere view of plunder, and threatened gentlemen to burn their houses, if not ransomed.

Eleven of these disciples of Paine are in custody; and Mr. Merry, Mrs. Barbauld, and Miss Helen Williams will probably have subjects for elegies. Deborah and Jael, I believe, were invited to the Crown and Anchor, and had let their nails grow accordingly: but, somehow or other, no poissonni'eres were there, and the two prophetesses had no opportunity that day of exercising their talents or talons. Their French allies, c.o.c.k and hen, have a fairer field open; and the Jacobins, I think, will soon drive the National a.s.sembly to be better royalists than ever they were, in selfdefence.

You have indeed surprised me by your account of the strange credulity of poor King Louis's escape in safety! In these villages we heard of his flight late in the evening, and, the very next morning, of his being retaken.(814) Much as he, at least the Queen, has suffered, I am persuaded the adventure has hastened general confusion, and will increase the royal party; though perhaps their Majesties, for their personal safeties, had better have awaited the natural progress of anarchy. The enormous deficiencies of money, and the total insubordination of the army, both apparent and uncontradicted, from the reports made to the National a.s.sembly, show what is Coming. Into what such a chaos will Subside, it would be silly to attempt to guess.

Perhaps it is not wiser in the exiles to expect to live to see a resettlement in their favour. One thing I have for these two years thought probable to arrive--a division, at least, a dismemberment of France. Despotism could no longer govern so unwieldy a machine; a republic would be still less likely to hold it together. If foreign powers should interfere, they will take care to pay themselves with what is 'a leur biensance; and that, in reality, would be serving France too. So much for my speculations! and they have never varied. We are so far from intending to new-model our government and dismiss the Royal Family, annihilate the peerage, cas.h.i.+er the hierarchy, and lay open the land to the first occupier, as Dr. Priestley, and Tom Paine, and the Revolution Club humbly proposed, that we are even encouraging the breed of princes. It is generally believed that the Duke of York is going to marry the Princess of Prussia, the King's daughter by his first wife, and his favourite child. I do not affirm it; but many others do.(815)