Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

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I bought the first volume of Manchester, but could not read it;
it was much too learned for me, and seemed rather an account of
Babel than Manchester, I mean in point of antiquity.(207) To
be sure, it is very kind in an author to promise one the
history of a country town, and give one a circumstantial
account of the antediluvian world into the bargain. But I am
simple and ignorant, and desire no more than I pay for. And
then for my progenitors, Noah and the Saxons, I have no
curiosity about them. Bishop Lyttelton used to plague me to
death about barrows, and tumuli, and Roman camps, and all those
bumps in the ground that do not amount to a most imperfect
ichnography; but, in good truth, I am content with all arts
when perfected, nor inquire how ingeniously people contrive to
do without them--and I care still less for remains of art that
retain no vestiges of art. Mr. Bryant,)208) who is sublime in
unknown knowledge, diverted me more, yet I have not finished
his work, no more than he has. There is a great ingenuity in
discovering all his history [though it has never been written]
by etymologies. Nay, he convinced me that the Greeks had
totally mistaken all they went to learn in Egypt, etc. by
doing, as the French do still, judge wrong by the ear--but as I
have been trying now and then for above forty years to learn
something, I have not time to unlearn it all again, though I
allow this our best sort of knowledge. If I should die when I
am not clear in the History of the World below its first three
thousand years, I should be at a sad loss on meeting with Homer
and Hesiod, or any of those moderns in the Elysian fields,
before I knew what I ought to think of them. Pray do not
betray my ignorance: the reviewers and such literati have
called me a learned and ingenious gentleman. I am sorry they
ever heard my name, but don't let them know how irreverently I
speak of the erudite, whom I dare to say they admire. These
wasps, I suppose, will be very angry at the just contempt Mr.
Gray had for them, and will, as insects do, attempt to sting,
in hopes that their twelvepenny readers will suck a little
venom from the momentary tumour they raise--but good night-and
once more, thank you for the prints. Yours ever.

(207) "The History of Manchester," by John Whitaker, B. D.
London, 1771-3-5. 2 vols. 4to. "We talked," says Boswell, "of
antiquarian researches. Johnson. 'All that is really known Of
the ancient state of Britain is contained in a few Pages. We
can know no more than what the old writers have told us; Yet
what large books we have upon it; the whole of which, excepting
such parts as are taken from these old writers, is all a dream,
such as Whitaker's Manchester.'" Life of Johnson, vol. vii. p.
189.-E.

(208) Jacob Bryan, the learned author of "A New System; or, n
Analysis of Ancient Mythology," 4to. 1774-6, 3 vols.; and of
many other works. His character was thus finely drawn, in
1796, by Mr. Matthias, in "The Pursuits of Literature:"--"No
man of literature can pass by the name of Mr. Bryant without
gratitude and reverence. He is a gentleman of attainments
peculiar to himself, and of classical erudition without an
equal in Europe. His whole life has been spent in laborious
researches, and the most curious investigations. He has a
youthful fancy and a playful wit; with the mind, and
occasionally with the pen of a poet; and with an ease and
simplicity of style aiming only at perspicuity, and, as I
think, attaining it. He has lived to see his eightieth winter
(and May he yet long live!) with the esteem of the wise and
good; in honourable retirement from the cares of life; with a
gentleness of manners, and a readiness and willingness of
literary communication seldom found. He is admired and sought
after by the young who are entering on a course of study, and
revered, and often followed, by those who have completed it.
Nomen in exemplum sero servabirnus evo!" Mr. Bryant died in
1804, in his eighty-ninth year, in consequence Of a wound on
his Shin, occasioned by his foot slipping from a chair which he
had stepped on to reach a book in his library-E.

Letter 90 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Strawberry Hill, June 5, 1775. (page 134)

I am extremely concerned, dear Sir, to hear you have been so
long confined by the gout. The painting of your house may,
from the damp, have given you cold-I don't conceive that paint
can affect one otherwise, if it does not make one sick, as it
does me of all things. Dr. Heberden(209) (as every physician,
to make himself talked of, will Set up Some new hypothesis,)
pretends that a damp house, and even damp sheets, which have
ever been reckoned fatal, are wholesome: to prove his faith he
went into his own new house totally Unaired, and survived it.
At Malvern, they certainly put patients into sheets just dipped
in the spring-however, I am 'glad you have a better proof that
dampness is not mortal, and it is better to be too cautious
than too rash. I am perfectly well, and expect to be so for a
year and a half-I desire no more of the bootikins than to
curtail my fits.

Thank you for the note from North's Life, though, having
reprinted my Painters, I shall never have an opportunity of
using it. I am still more obliged to you for the offer of an
Index to my Catalogue but, as I myself know exactly where to
find every thing in it, and as I dare to say nobody else will
want it, I shall certainly not put YOU to that trouble.

Dr. Glynn will certainly be most welcome to see my house, and
shall, if I am not at home:-still I had rather know a few days
before, because else he may happen to come when I have company,
as I have often at this time of the year, and then it is
impossible to let it be seen, as I cannot ask my company, who
may have come to see it too, to go out, that somebody else may
see it, and I should be Very sorry to have the Doctor
disappointed. These difficulties, which have happened more
than once, have obliged me to give every ticket for a
particular day; therefore, if Dr. Glynn will be so good as to
advertise me of the day he intends to come here, with a
direction, I shall send him word what day he can see it.

I have just run through the two vast folios of Hutchins's
Dorsetshire.(210) He has taken infinite pains; indeed, all but
those that would make it entertaining.

Pray can you tell me any thing of some relations of my own, the
Burwells? My grandfather married Sir Jeffery Burwell's
daughter, of Rongham, in Suffolk. Sir Jeffery's mother, I
imagine, was daughter of a Jeffery Pitman, of Suffolk; at least
I know there was such a man in the latter, and that we quarter
the arms of Pitman. But I cannot find who Lady Burwell, Sir
Jeffery's wife, was. Edmondson has searched in vain in the
Heralds' office; and I have outlived all the ancient of my
family so long, that I know not of whom to Inquire, but you of
the neighbourhood. There is an old walk in the park at
Houghton, called "Sir Jeffery's Walk," where the old gentleman
used to teach my father (Sir Robert) his book. Those very old
trees encouraged my father to plant at Houghton. When people
used to try to persuade him nothing would grow there, he said,
why Will not other trees grow as well as those in Sir Jeffery's
Walk?--Other trees have grown to some purpose! Did I ever tell
you that ,my father was descended from Lord Burleigh? The
latter's granddaughter, by his son Exeter, married Sir Giles
Allington, whose daughter married Sir Robert Crane, father of
Sir Edward Walpole's .'Wife. I want but Lady Burwell's name to
Make my genealogic tree Shoot out stems every way. I have
recovered a barony in fee, which has no defect but in being
antecedent to any summons to Parliament, that of the Fitz
Osberts: and On MY Mother's side it has mounted the Lord knows
whither by the Philipps,s to Henry VIII. and has sucked in
Dryden for a great-uncle: and by Lady Philipps's mother, Darcy,
to Edward III. and there I stop for brevity's sake--especially
as Edward III. is a second Adam; who almost is not descended
from Edward 1 as posterity will be from Charles II. and all the
princes in Europe from James I. I am the first antiquary of my
race. People don't know how entertaining a study it is. Who
begot whom is a most amusing kind of hunting; one recovers a
grandfather instead of breaking one's own neck--and then one
grows so pious to the memory of a thousand persons one never
heard of before. One finds how Christian names came into a
family, with a world of other delectable erudition. You cannot
imagine how vexed I was that Bloomfield(211) died before he
arrived at Houghton--I had promised myself a whole crop of
notable ancestors-but I think I have pretty well unkennelled
them myself. Adieu! Yours ever.

P. S. I found a family of Whaplode in Lincolnshire who give our
arms, and have persuaded myself that Whaplode is a corruption
of Walpole, and came from a branch when we lived at Walpole in
Lincolnshire.

(209) Dr. William Heberden, the distinguished physician and
medical writer, who died on the 17th of March, 1801, at the
advanced age of ninety-one.-E.

(210) "The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset."
London, 1774, in two volumes, folio. A second edition,
corrected, augmented, and improved, by Richard Gough and John
Bowyer Nichols, in four Volumes, folio, appeared in
1796-1815.-E.

(211) The Rev. Francis Blomefield, the author of an " Essay
towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk,"
which was left unfinished by him, and continued by the Rev.
Charles Parkin. It was first printed in five folio volumes:
1739-1773. A second edition, in eleven volumes, octavo,
appeared in 1805-1810.-E.

Letter 91 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, July 9, 1775. (page 136)

The whole business of this letter would lie in half a line.
Shall you have room for me on Tuesday the 18th? I am putting
myself into motion that I may go farther. I told Madame du
Deffand how you had scolded me on her account, and she has
charged me to thank you, and tell you how much she wishes to see
you, too. I would give any thing to go-But the going!--However,
I really think I shall, but I grow terribly affected with a
maladie de famille, that of taking root at home.

I did but put my head into London on Thursday, and more bad news
from America.(211) I wonder when it will be bad enough to make
folks think it so, without going on! The stocks, indeed, begin
to grow a little nervous, and they are apt to affect other
pulses. I heard this evening here that the Spanish fleet is
sailed, and that we are not in the secret whither-but I don't
answer for Twickenham gazettes, and I have no better. I have a
great mind to tell you a Twickenham story; and yet it will be
good for nothing, as I cannot send you the accent in a letter.
Here it is, and you must try to set it to the right emphasis.
One of our maccaronis is dead, a Captain Mawhood, the teaman's
son. He had quitted the army, because his comrades called him
Captain Hyson, and applied himself to learn the classics and
freethinking; and was always disputing with the parson of the
parish about Dido and his own soul. He married Miss Paulin's
warehouse, who had six hundred a-year; but, being very much out
of conceit with his own canister, could not reconcile himself to
her riding-hood--so they parted beds in three nights. Of late he
has taken to writing comedies, which every body was welcome to
hear him read, as he could get nobody to act them. Mrs. Mawhood
has a friend, one Mrs. V * * *, a mighty plausible good sort of
body, who feels for every body, and a good deal for herself, is
of a certain age, wears well, has some pretensions that she
thinks very reasonable still, and a gouty husband. Well! she was
talking to Mr. Rafter about Captain Mawhood a little before he
died. "Pray, Sir, does the Captain ever communicate his writings
to Mrs. Mawhood?" "Oh, dear no, Madam; he has a sovereign
contempt for her understanding." "Poor woman!" "And pray, Sir,-
- give me leave to ask you: I think I have heard they very seldom
sleep together!" "Oh, never, Madam! Don't you know all that?"
"Poor woman!" I don't know whether you will laugh; but Mr.
Raftor,(213) who tells a story better than any body, made me
laugh for two hours. Good night!

(212) Of the commencement of hostilities with the Americans at
Lexington on the 19th of April.-E.

(213) Mr. Raftor brother to Mrs. Clive.-E.

Letter 92 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(214)
Strawberry Hill, August 9, 1775. (page 137)

Well, I am going tout de bon, and I heartily wish I was returned.
It is a horrid exchange, the cleanness and verdure and
tranquillity of 'Strawberry, for a beastly ship, worse inns, the
pav`e of the roads bordered with eternal rows of maimed trees,
and the racket of an h`otel garni! I never doat on the months of
August and September, enlivened by nothing but Lady Greenwich's
speaking-trumpet--but I do not want to be amused--at least never
at the expense of being put in motion. Madame du Deffand, I am
sure, may be satisfied with the sacrifice I make to her!(215)

You have heard, to be sure, of the war between your brother and
Foote; but probably do not know how far the latter has carried
his impudence. Being asked, why Lord Hertford had refused to
license his piece, he replied, "Why, he asked me to make his
youngest son a box-keeper, and because I would not, he stopped my
play."(216) The Duchess of Kingston offered to buy it off, but
Foote would not take her money, and swears he will act her in
Lady Brumpton; which to be sure is very applicable.

I am sorry to hear Lord Villiers is going to drag my lady through
all the vile inns in Germany. I think he might go alone.

George Onslow told me yesterday, that the American Congress had
sent terms of accommodation, and that your brother told him so;
but a strange fatality attends George's news, which is rarely
canonical; and I doubt this intelligence is far from being so..
I shall know more to-morrow, when I go to town to prepare for my
journey on Tuesday. Pray let me hear from you, enclosed to M.
Panchaud.

I accept with great joy Lady Ailesbury's offer Of coming hither
in October, which will increase my joy in being at home again. I
intend to set out on my return the 25th Of next month. Sir
Gregory Page has left Lord Howe eight thousand pounds at present,
and twelve more after his aunt Mrs. Page's death.

Thursday, 10th.

I cannot find any ground for believing that any proposals are
come from the Congress. On the contrary, every thing looks as
melancholy as possible. Adieu!

(214) Now first printed.

(215) In her letter of the 5th of August, Madame du Deffand, by
way of inducement to Walpole to take the journey, says--"Je vous
jure que je ne me soucierai de rien pour vous; c'est `a dire, de
vous faire faire une chose Plut`ot qu'une autre: vous serez
totalement libre de toutes vos pens`ees, paroles, et actions,
vous ne me verrez pas un souhait un d`esir qui Puisse contredire
vos pens`ees et Vos volont`es: je saurai que M. Walpole est `a
Paris, il saura que je demeure `a St. Joseph; il sera maitre d'y
arriver, d'y rester, de s'en aller, comme il lui plaira."-E.

(216) The piece was entitled "The Trip to Calais;" in which the
author having ridiculed, under the name of Kitty Crocodile, the
eccentric Duchess of Kingston she offered him a sum of money to
strike out the part. A correspondence took place between the
parties, which ended in the Duchess making an application to Lord
Hertford, at that time Lord Chamberlain, who interdicted the
performance. Foote, however, brought it out, with some
alterations, in the following year, under the title of "The
Capuchin."-E.

Letter 93 To The Countess Of Ailesbury.
>From t'other side of the water, August 17, 1775.(217) (page 138)

Interpreting your ladyship's orders in the most personal sense,
as respecting the dangers of the sea, I -write the instant I am
landed. I did not, in truth, set out till yesterday morning at
eight o'clock; but finding the roads, horses, postilions, tides,
winds, moons, and Captain Fectors in the pleasantest humour in
the world, I embarked almost as soon as I arrived at Dover, and
reached Calais before the sun was awake;-and here I am for the
sixth time in my life, with only the trifling distance of
seven-and-thirty years between my first voyage and the present.
Well! I can only say in excuse, that I am got into the land of
Struldburgs, where one is never too old to be young, and where la
b`equille du p`ere Barnabas blossoms like Aaron's rod, or the
Glastonbury thorn. Now, to be sure, I shall be a little
mortified, if your ladyship wanted a letter of news, and did not
at all trouble your head about my navigation. However, you will
not tell one so; and therefore I will persist in believing that
this good news will be received with transport at Park-place, and
that the bells of Henley will be set a ringing. The rest of my
adventures, must be deferred till they have happened, which is
not always the case of travels. I send you no Compliments from
Paris, because I have not got thither, nor delivered the bundle
which Mr. Conway sent me. I did, as Your ladyship commanded; buy
three pretty little medallions in frames of filigraine, for our
dear old friend. They will not ruin you, having cost not a
guinea and a half; but it was all I could find that was genteel
and portable; and as she does not measure by guineas, but
attentions, she will be as much pleased as if you had sent her a
dozen acres of Park-place. As they are in bas-relief, too, they
are feelable, and that is a material circumstance to her. I wish
the Diomede had even so much as a pair of Nankin!

Adieu, toute la ch`ere famille! I think of October with much
satisfaction; it will double the pleasure of my return.

(217) Mr. Walpole reached Paris on the 19th of August and left it
on the 19th of October.-E.

Letter 94 To The Countess Of Ailesbury.
Paris, August 20, 1775. (page 139)

I have been sea-sick to death: I have been poisoned by dirt and
vermin; I have been stifled by beat, choked by dust, and starved
for want of any thing I could touch: and yet, Madam, here, I am
perfectly well, not in the least fatigued; and, thanks to the
rivelled parchments, formerly faces, which I have seen by
hundreds, I find myself almost as young as When I came hither
first in the last century. In spite of my whims, and delicacy,
and laziness, none of my grievances have been mortal: I have
borne them as well as if I had set up for a philosopher, like the
sages of this town. Indeed, I have found my dear old woman So
well, and looking so much better than she did four years ago,
that I am transported with pleasure, and thank your ladyship and
Mr. Conway for driving me hither. Madame du Deffand came to me
the instant I arrived, and sat by me whilst I stripped and
dressed myself; for, as she said, since she cannot see there was
no harm in my being stark.(218) She was charmed with your
present; but was so Kind as to be so much more charmed with my
arrival, that she did not think of it a moment. I sat with her
till half an hour after two in the morning, and had a letter from
her before MY eyes were open again. In short, her soul is
immortal, and forces her body to bear it company.

This is the very eve of Madame Clotilde's(219) Wedding - but
Monsieur Turgot, to the great grief of Lady Mary Coke, will
suffer no cost, but one banquet, one ball, and a play at
Versailles. Count Viry gives a banquet, a bal masqu`e, and a
firework. I think I shall see little but the last, from which I
will send your ladyship a rocket in my next letter. Lady Mary, I
believe, has had a private audience of the ambassador's leg,(220)
but en tout bien, et honneur, and only to satisfy her ceremonious
curiosity about any part of royal nudity. I am just going to
her, as she is to Versailles; and I have not time to add a word
more to the vows of your ladyship's most faithful.

(218) Madame du Deffand had just completed her seventy-eighth
year.-E.

(219) Madame Clotilde, sister of Louis XV1. Turgot was the new
minister of finance, who, With his colleagues were endeavouring,
by every practicable means, to reduce the enormous expenditure of
the country.-E.

(220) Mr. Walpole alludes to the ceremony of the marriages of
princesses by proxy.-E.

Letter 95 To Mrs. Abington(221)
Paris, September [1775.] (page 140)

If I had known, Madam, of your being at Paris, before I heard it
from Colonel Blaquiere, I should certainly have prevented your
flattering invitation, and have offered you any services that
could depend on my acquaintance here. It is plain I am old, and
live with very old folks, when I did not hear of your arrival.
However, Madam, I have not that fault at least of a veteran, the
thinking nothing equal to what they admired in their youth. I do
impartial justice to your merit, and fairly allow it not only
equal to that of any actress I have seen, but believe the present
age will not be in the wrong, if they hereafter prefer it to
those they may live to see. Your allowing me to wait on you in
London, Madam, will make me some amends for the loss I have had
here; and I shall take an early opportunity of assuring you how
much I am, Madam, your most obliged humble servant.

(221) Now first printed. This elegant and fashionable actress
was born in 1735, quitted the stage in 1799, and died in 1815.-E.

Letter 96 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Paris, Sept 8, 1775. (page 140)

The delays of the post, and its departure before its arrival,
saved me some days of anxiety for Lady Ailesbury, and prevented
my telling you how concerned I am for her accident; though I
trust, by this time, she has not even pain left. I feel the
horror you must have felt during her suffering in the dark, and
on the sight of her arm;(222) and though nobody admires her
needlework more than I, still I am rejoiced that it will be the
greatest sufferer. However, I am very impatient for a farther
account. Madame du Deffand, who, you know, never loves her
friends by halves, and whose impatience never allows itself time
to inform itself, was out of her wits, because I could not
explain exactly how the accident happened, and where. She wanted
to write directly, though the post was just gone; and, as soon as
I could make her easy about the accident, she fell into a new
distress about her fans for Madame de Marchais, and concludes
they have been overturned, and broken too. In short, I never saw
any thing like her. She has made engagements for me till Monday
se'nnight; in which are included I don't know how many journeys
into the country; and as nobody ever leaves her without her
engaging them for another time, all these parties will be so many
polypuses, that will shoot out into new ones every way. Madame
de Jonsac,(223) a great friend of mine, arrived the day before
yesterday, and Madame du Deffand has pinned her down to meeting
me at her house four times before next Tuesday, all parentheses,
that are not to interfere with our other suppers; and from those
suppers I never get to bed before two or three o'clock. In
short, I need have the activity of a squirrel, and the strength
of a Hercules, to go through my labours--not to count how many
d`em`el`es I have had to raccommode, and how many m`emoires to
present against Tonton,(224) who grows the greater favourite the
more people he devours. As I am the only person who dare correct
him, I have already insisted on his being confined in the Bastile
every day to after five o'clock. T'other night he flew at Lady
Barrymore's face, and I thought would have torn her eye out; but
it ended in biting her finger. She was terrified: she fell into
tears. Madame du Deffand, who has too much parts not to see
every thing in its true light, perceiving that she had not beaten
Tonton half enough, immediately told us a story of a lady, whose
dog, having bitten a piece out of a gentleman's leg, the tender
dame in a great fright, cried out, "Won't it make my dog sick?"

Lady Barrymore(225) has taken a house. She will be glutted with
conquests: I never saw any body so much admired. I doubt her
poor little head will be quite overset.

Madame de Marchais(226) is charming: eloquence and attention
itself I cannot stir for peaches, nectarines, grapes, and bury
pears. You would think Pomona was in love with me. I am not so
transported with N * * * * cock and hen. They are a tabor and
pipe that I do not understand. He mouths and she squeaks and
neither articulates. M. d'Entragues I have not seen. Upon the
whole, I am much more pleased with Paris than ever I was; and,
perhaps, shall stay a little longer than I intended. The Harry
Grenville's(227) are arrived. I dined with them at Madame de
Viry's,(228) who has completed the conquest of France by her
behaviour on Madame Clotilde's wedding, and by the f`etes she
gave. Of other English I wot not, but grieve the Richmonds do
not come. I am charmed with Dr. Bally; nay, and with the King of
Prussia--as much as I can be with a northern monarch. For your
Kragen, I think we ought to procure a female one, and marry it to
Ireland, that we may breed some new islands against we have lost
America. I know nothing of said America. There is not a
Frenchman that does not think us distracted.