Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

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I used to scold you about your bad writing, and perceive I have
written in such a hurry, and blotted my letter so much, that you
will not be able to read it: but consider how few moments I have
to myself. I am forced to stuff my ears with cotton to get any
sleep. However, my journey has done me good. I have thrown off
at least fifteen years. Here is a letter for my dear Mrs. Damer
from Madame de Cambis, who thinks she doats on you all. Adieu!

P. S. I shall bring you two `eloges of Marshal Catinat; not
because I admire them, but because I admire him, because I think
him very like you.

(222) Lady Ailesbury had been overturned in her carriage at
Park-place, and dislocated her wrist.

223) La Comtesse de Jonsac, sister of the President Henault.

(224) A favourite dog of Madame du Deffand's.

(225) Third daughter of William second Earl of Harrington, and
wife of Richard sixth Earl of Barrymore, who, dying in 1780, left
issue Richard and Henry, each of whom became, successively, Earl
of Barrymore; a title which expired upon the death of the latter,
in 1823.-E.

(226) Madame de Marchais, n`ee Laborde, married to a
valet-de-chambre of Louis XV1. From her intimacy with M.
d'Angivillier, Directeur des B`atiments, Jardins, etc. du Roi,
She had the opportunity of obtaining the finest fruits and
flowers.-E.

(227) Henry Grenville, brother to Earl Temple. He married Miss
Margaret Banks. He died in 1784.-E.

(228) Miss Harriet Speed. She had married M. le Comte do Viry
when he was minister at London from the Court of Turin. She is
one of the ladies to whom Gray's "Long Story" is addressed. For
an account of her, see Vol. iii. P. 160, letter 102.-E.

Letter 97 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Paris, Oct. 6, 1775. (page 142)

It will look like a month since I wrote to you; but I have been
coming, and am. Madame du Deffand has been so ill, that the day
she was seized I thought she would not live till night. Her
Herculean weakness, which could not resist strawberries and cream
after supper, has surmounted all the ups and downs which followed
her excess; but her impatience to go every where, and to do every
thing has been attended with a kind of relapse, and another kind
of giddiness: so that I am not quite easy about her, as they
allow her to take no nourishment to recruit, and she will die of
inanition, if she does not live upon it. She cannot lift her
head from the pillow without `etourdissemens; and yet her spirits
gallop faster than any body's, and so do her repartees. She has
a great supper to-night for the Due de Choiseul, and was in such
a passion yesterday with her cook about it, and that put Tonton
into such a rage, that nos dames de Saint Joseph thought the
devil or the philosophers were flying away with their convert! As
I have scarce quitted her, I can have had nothing to tell you.
If she gets well, as I trust, I shall set out on the 12th; but I
cannot leave her in any danger--though I shall run many myself,
if I stay longer. I have kept such bad hours with this malade
that I have had alarms of gout; and bad weather, worse inns, and
a voyage in winter, will ill suit me. The fans arrived at a
propitious moment, and she immediately had them opened on her
bed, and felt all the patterns, and had all the papers described.
She was all satisfaction and thanks, and swore me to do her full
justice to Lady Ailesbury, and Mrs. Damer. Lord Harrington and
Lady Harriet are arrived; but have announced and persisted in a
strict invisibility. I know nothing of my ch`ere patrie, but
what I learn from the London Chronicle; and that tells me, that
the trading towns are suing out lettres de noblesse, that is,
entreating the King to put an end to commerce, that they may all
be gentlemen. Here agriculture, economy, reformation,
philosophy, are the bon-ton even at court. The two nations seem
to have crossed over and figured in; but as people that copy take
the bad with the good, as well as the good with the bad, there
was two days ago a great horserace in the plain de Sablon,
between the Comte d'Artois,(229) the Duc de Chartres,(230)
Monsieur de Conflans, and the Duc de Lauzun.(231) The latter won
by the address of a little English postilion, who is in such
fashion, that I don't know whether the Academy will not give him
for the subject of an `eloge.

The Due de Choiseul, I said, is here; and, as he has a second
time put off his departure, cela fait beaucoup de bruit. I shall
not at all be surprised if he resumes the reins, as (forgive me a
pun) he has the Reine at ready. Messrs. de Turgot and
Malesherbes certainly totter--but I shall tell you no more till I
see you; for though this goes by a private hand, it is so
private, that I don't know it, being an English merchant's, who
lodges in this hotel, and whom I do not know by sight: so,
perhaps, I may bring you word of this letter myself. I flatter
myself Lady Ailesbury's arm has recovered its straightness and
its cunning. . .

Madame du Deffand says, I love you better than any thing in the
world. If true, I hope you have not less penetration: if you
have not, or it is not true, what would professions avail?-So I
leave that matter in suspense. Adieu!

October 7.

Madame du Deffand was quite well yesterday; and at near one this,
morning I left the Duc de Choiseul, the Duchess de Grammont, the
Prince and the Princess of Beauveau, Princess Of Poix,(232) the
Mar`echale de Luxembourg, Duchess de Lauzun, Ducs de Gontaut(233)
et de Chabot, and Caraccioli, round her chaise longue; and she
herself was not a dumb personage. I have not heard yet how she
has slept, and must send away my letter this moment, as I must
dress to go to dinner with Monsieur de Malesherbes at Madame de
Villegagnon's. I must repose a great while after all this living
in company; nay, intend to go very little into the world again,
as I do not admire the French way of burning one's candle to the
very snuff in public. Tell Mrs. Damer, that the fashion now is
to erect the toup`ee into a high detached tuft of hair, like a
cockatoo's crest; and this toup`ee they call la physionomie--I
don't guess why.

My laquais is come back from St. Joseph's, and says Marie(234) de
Vichy has had a very good night, and is quite well.--Philip!(235)
let my chaise be ready on Thursday.(236)

(229) Afterwards Charles the Tenth.-E.

(230) On the death of his father, in 1785, he became Duke of
Orleans. In 1792, he was chosen a member of the
National-Convention, when he adopted the Jacobinical title of
Louis-Philippe-Joseph Egalit`e; and, in November 1793, he
suffered by the guillotine. -E.

(231) The Duc de Lauzun, son of the Duc de Gontaut, the maternal
nephew of the Duchesse de Choiseul.-E.

(232) Wife of the Prince de Poix, eldest son of the Mar`echal de
Mouchy, and daughter of the Prince de Beauveau. The Prince de
Poix retired to this country on the breaking out of the French
revolution, accompanied by his son, Comte Charles de Noailles,
who married the daughter of La Borde, the great banker.-E.

(233) The Duc de Gontaut, brother to the Mar`echal Duc de Biron,
and father to the Duc de Lauzun. The Duchesse de Gontaut was a
sister of the Duchesse de Choiseul-E.

(234) The maiden name of Madame du Deffand was Marie de Vichy
Chamrond. She was born in 1697, of a noble family in the
province of Burgundy; and, as her fortune was small, she was
married by her parents, in 1718, to the Marquis du Deffand; the
union being settled with as little attention to her feelings as
was usual in French marriages of that age. A separation soon
took place; but Walpole says they always continued on good terms,
and that upon her husband's deathbed, at his express desire, she
saw him.-E.

(235) Mr. Walpole's valet-de-chambre.

(236) Walpole left Paris on the 12th; upon which day, Madame du
Deffand thus wrote to him--"Adieu! ce mot est bien triste!
Souvenez que vous laissez ici la personne dont vous `etes le plus
aim`e, et dont le bonheur et le malheur consistent dans ce que
vous pensez pour elle. Donnez-moi de vos nouvelles le plus t`ot
qu'il sera possible."-E.

Letter 98 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Strawberry Hill, Dec. 10, 1775. (page 144)

I was very sorry to have been here, dear Sir, the day you called
on me in town. It is so difficult to uncloister you, that I
regret not seeing you when you are out of your own ambry. I have
nothing new to tell you that is very old; but you can inform me
of something within your own district. Who is the author, E. B.
G. of a version of Mr. Gray's Latin Odes into English,(237) and
of an Elegy on my wolf-devoured dog, poor Tory? a name you will
marvel at in a dog of mine; but his godmother was the widow of
Alderman Parsons, who gave him at Paris to Lord Conway, and he to
me. The author is a poet; but he makes me blush, for he calls
Mr. Gray and me congenial pair. Alas! I have no genius; and if
any symptom of talent, so inferior to Gray's, that Milton and
Quarles might as well be coupled together. We rode over the Alps
in the same chaise, but Pegasus drew on his side, and a
cart-horse on mine. I am too jealous of his fame to let us be
coupled together. This author says he has lately printed at
Cambridge a Latin translation of the Bards; I should be much
obliged to you for it.

I do not ask you if Cambridge has produced any thing, for it
never does. Have you made any discoveries? Has Mr. Lort? Where
is he? Does Mr. Tyson engrave no more? My plates for Strawberry
advance leisurely. I am about nothing. I grow old and lazy, and
the present world cares for nothing but politics, and satisfies
itself with writing in newspapers. If they are not bound up and
preserved in libraries, posterity will imagine that the art of
printing was gone out of use. Lord Hardwicke(238) has indeed
reprinted his heavy volume of Sir Dudley Carleton's Despatches,
and says I was in the wrong to despise it. I never met with any
body that thought otherwise. What signifies raising the dead so
often, when they die the next minute? Adieu!

(237) Edward Burnaby Greene, formerly of Bennet College, but at
that time a brewer in Westminster, He likewise published
translations of Pindar, Persius, Apollonius Rhodius, Anacreon,
etc.-E.

(238) Philip Yorke, second Earl of Hardwicke, when Lord Royston,
published the "Letters to and from Sir Dudley Carleton, Knight,
during his Embassy in Holland, from January 1615-16 to December
1620," 4to. 1727; and, in 1775, a second edition, "with large
additions to the Historical Preface."-E.

Letter 99 To The Countess Of Ailesbury.
Arlington Street, Dec. 11, 1775. (page 145)

Did you hear that scream?--Don't be frightened, Madam; it was
only the Duchess of Kingston last Sunday was sevennight at
chapel: but it is better to be prepared; for she has sent word to
the House of Lords, that her nerves are so bad she intends to
scream for these two months, and therefore they must put off her
trial. They are to take her throes into consideration to-day;
and that there may be sufficient room for the length of her veil
and train, and attendants, have a mind
to treat her with Westminster-hall. I hope so, for I should like
to see this com`edie larmoyante; and, besides, I conclude, it
would bring your ladyship to town. You shall have
timely notice.

There is another comedy infinitely worth seeing--Monsieur Le
Texier. He is Pr`eville, and Caillaud, and Garrick, and Weston,
and Mrs. Clive, all together; and as perfect in the most
insignificant part, as in the most difficult.(239) To be sure,
it is hard to give up loo in such fine weather, when one can play
from morning till night. In London, Pam can scarce get a house
till ten o'clock. If you happen to see the General your husband,
make my compliments to him, Madam; his friend the King of Prussia
is going to the devil and Alexander the Great.

(239) M. Le Texier was a native of Lyons, where he was directeur
des fermes. The following account of the readings of this
celebrated Frenchman, is from a critique on Boaden's Life of
Kemble, in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxxiv. p. 241:--"On one of
the author's incidental topics we must pause for a moment with
delightful recollection. We mean the readings of Le Texier, who,
seated at a desk, and dressed in plain clothes, reads French
plays with such modulation of voice, and such exquisite point of
dialogue, as to form a pleasure different from that of the
theatre, but almost as great as we experience in listening to a
first-rate actor. When it commenced, M. Le Texier read over the
dramatis persome, with the little analysis of character usually
attached to each name, Using the voice and manner with which he
afterwards read the part: and so accurately was the key-note
given, that he had no need to name afterwards the person who
spoke; the stupidest of the audience could not miss to recognise
him." Madame du Deffand, in a letter to Walpole, says of him--
"Soyez s`ur, que lui tout seul est la meilleure troupe que nous
avons:" and again in one to Voltaire--"Assis dans un fauteuil,
avec un livre `a la main, il jouc les comedies o`u1 il y a sept,
huit, dix, douze personnages, si parfaitement bien, qu'on ne
saurait croire, m`eme en le regardant, que ce soit le m`eme homme
qui Parle. Pour moi, l'illusion est parfaitc."-E.

Letter 100 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
Arlington Street, Dec. 14, 1775. (page 146)

Our letters probably passed by each other on the road, for I
wrote to you on Tuesday, and have this instant received one from
you, which I answer directly, to beg pardon for my incivility,
nay, ingratitude, in not thanking you for your present of a whole
branch of most respectable ancestors, the Derehaughs--why, the
Derehaughs alone would make gentlemen of half the modern peers,
English or Irish. I doubt my journey to France was got into my
head, and left no room for an additional quarter-but I have given
it to Edmondson, and ordered him to take care that I am born
again from the Derehaughs. This Edmondson has got a ridiculous
notion into his head that another, and much ancienter of my
progenitors, Sir Henry Walpole, married his wife Isabella
Fitz-Osbert, when she was widow to Sir Walter Jernegan; whereas,
all the Old Testament says Sir Walter married Sir Henry's widow.
Pray send me your authority to confound this gainsayer, if you
know any thing particular of the matter.

I had not heard of the painting you tell me of. As those
boobies, the Society of Antiquaries, have gotten hold of it, I
wonder their piety did not make them bury it again, as they did
the clothes of Edward I.(240) I have some notion that in
Vertue's MSS. or somewhere else, I don't know where, I have read
of some ancient painting at the Rose Tavern. This I will tell
you-but Mr. Gough is such" a bear, that I shall not satisfy him
about it. That Society, when they are puzzled, have recourse to
me; and that would be so often, that I shall not encourage them.
They may blunder as they please, from their heavy president down
to the pert Governor Pownall, who accounts for every thing
immediately, before the Creation or since. Say only to Mr.
Gough, that I said I had not leisure now to examine Vertue's MSS.
If I find any thing there, you shall know-but I have no longer
any eagerness to communicate what I discover. When there was so
little taste for MSS. which Mr. Gray thought worth transcribing,
and which were so valuable, would one offer more pearls?

Boydel brought me this morning another number of the Prints from
the pictures at Houghton. Two or three in particular are most
admirably executed--but alas! it will be twenty years before the
set is completed. That is too long to look forward to at any
age!--and at mine!--Nay, people will be tired in a quarter of the
time. Boydel, who knows this country, and still more this town,
thinks so too. Perhaps there will be newer, or at least more
fashionable ways of engraving, and the old will be despised--or,
which is still more likely, nobody will be able to afford the
expense. Who would lay a plan for any thing in an overgrown
metropolis hurrying to its fall!

I will return you Mr. Gough's letter when I get a frank. Adieu!

(240) The Society of Antiquaries, having obtained permission to
do so, had, on the 2d of May 1774, opened the tomb of Edward the
First in Westminster. The body was found in perfect
preservation, and most superbly attired. The garments were, of
course, carefully replaced in the tomb.-E.

Letter 101 To Thomas Astle, Esq.
December 19, 1775. (page 147)

Sir,
I am much obliged, and return you my thanks for the paper you
have sent me. You have added a question to it, which, if I
understand it, you yourself, Sir, are more capable than any body
of answering. You say, "Is it probable that this instrument was
framed by Richard Duke of Gloucester?" If by framed you mean
drawn up, I should think princes of the blood, in that barbarous
age, were not very expert in drawing acts of attainder, though a
branch of the law more in use then than since. But as I suppose
you mean forged, you, Sir, so conversant in writings of that age,
can judge better than any man. You may only mean forged by his
order. Your reading, much deeper than mine, may furnish you with
precedents of forged acts of attainder: I never heard of one; nor
does my simple understanding suggest the use of such a forgery,
on cases immediately pressing; because an act of attainder being
a matter of public notoriety, it would be revolting to the common
sense of all mankind to plead such an one', if it had not really
existed. If it could be carried into execution by force, the
force would avail without the forgery, and would be at once
exaggerated and weakened by it. I cannot, therefore, conceive
why Richard should make use of so absurd a trick, unless that
having so little to do in so short and turbulent a reign, he
amused himself with treasuring up in the tower a forged act for
the satisfaction of those who, three hundred years afterwards,
should be glad of discovering new flaws in his character. As
there are men so bigoted to old legends, I am persuaded, Sir,
that you would please them, by communicating your question to
them. They would rejoice to suppose that Richard was more
criminal than even the Lancastrian historians represent him; and
just at this moment I don't know whether they would not believe
that Mrs. Rudd assisted him. I, who am, probably, as absurd a
bigot on the other side, see nothing in the paper you have sent
me, but a confirmation of Richard's innocence of the death of
Clarence. As the Duke of Buckingham was appointed to superintend
the execution, it is incredible that he should have been drowned
in a butt of malmsey, and that Richard should have been the
executioner. When a seneschal of England, or as we call it, a
lord high steward, is appointed for a trial, at least for
execution, with all his officers, it looks very much as if, even
in that age, proceedings were carried on with a little more
formality than the careless writers of that time let us think.
The appointment, too, of the Duke of Buckingham for that office,
seems to add another improbability [and a work of supererogation]
to Richard's forging the instrument. Did Richard really do
nothing but what tended to increase his unpopularity by glutting
mankind with lies, forgeries, absurdities, which every man living
could detect?
I take this opportunity, Sir, of telling you how sorry I am not
to have seen you long, and how glad I shall be to renew our
acquaintance, especially if you like to talk over this old story
with me, though I own it is of little importance, and pretty well
exhausted.(241) I am, Sir, with great regard, your obliged
humble servant.

(241) To the above letter it was intended to subjoin the
following queries:--

"If there was no such Parliament held, would Richard have dared
to forge an act for it?

"Would Henry VII. never have reproached him with so absurd a
forgery?

"Did neither Sir T. More nor Lord Bacon ever hear of that
forgery?

"As Richard declared his nephew the Earl of Warwick his
successor, would he have done so, if he had forged an act of
attainder of Warwick's father?

"if it is supposed he forged the act, when he set aside Warwick,
could he pretend that act was not known when he declared him his
heir? Would not so recent an act's being unknown have proved it a
forgery; and if there had been no such Parliament as that which
forged it, would not that have proved it a double forgery? The
act, therefore, and the parliament that passed it, must have been
genuine, and existed, though no other record appears. The
distractions of the times, the evident insufficiency or
partiality of the historians of that age, and the interest of
Henry VII to destroy all records that gave authority to the House
Of York and their title, account for our wanting evidence of that
Parliament."

Letter 102 To The Rev. Mr. Cole.
January 26, 1776. (page 148)

I have deferred answering your last letter, dear Sir, till I
cannot answer with my own hand. I made a pilgrimage at Christmas
to Queen's Cross, at Ampthill, was caught there by the snow,
Imprisoned there for a fortnight, and sent home bound hand and
foot by the gout. The pain, I suppose, is quite frozen, for I
have had none; nothing but inflammation and swelling, and they
abate. In reality, this is owing to the bootikins, which -though
they do not cure the gout, take out its sting. You, who are
still more apt to be an invalid, feel, I fear, this Hyperborean
season; I should be glad to hear you did not.

I thought I had at once jumped upon a discovery of the subject of
the painted room at the Rose Tavern, but shall not plume myself
upon my luck till I have seen the chamber, because Mr. Gough's
account seems to date the style of the painting earlier than
-will serve my hypothesis. I had no data to go upon but the site
having belonged to the family of Tufton (for I do not think the
description at all answers to the taking of Francis I., nor is it
at all credible that there should be arms in the painting, and
yet neither those of France or Austria). I turned immediately to
Lord Thanet's pedigree, in Collins's Peerage, and found at once
an heroic adventure performed by one of the family, that accords
remarkably with the principal circumstance. It is the rescue of
the Elector Palatine, son of our Queen of Bohemia, from an
ambuscade laid for him by the Duke of Lorrain. The arms, Or, and
Gules, I thought were those of Lorrain, which I since find are
Argent and Gules. The Argent indeed may be turned yellow by age,
as Mr. Gough says he does not know whether the crescent is red or
black. But the great impediment is, that this achievement of a
Tufton was performed in the reign of Charles II. Now in that
reign, when
we were become singularly ignorant of chivalry, anachronisms and
blunders might easily be committed by a modern painter, yet I
shall not adhere to my discovery, unless I find the painting
correspond with the style of the modern time to which I would
assign it; nor will I see through the eyes of my hypothesis, but
fairly.

I shall now turn to another subject. Mr. Astle, who has left me
off ever Since the fatal era of Richard III. for no reason that
I can conceive but my having adopted his discovery, which for
aught I know may be a reason with an antiquary, lately sent me
the attainder of George Duke of Clarence, which he has found in
the Tower and printed; and on it, as rather glad to confute me
and himself, than to have found a curiosity, he had written two
or three questions which tended to accuse Richard of having
forged the instrument, though to the instrument itself is added
another, which confirms my acquittal of Richard of the murder of
Clarence-but, alas! passion is a spying glass that does but make
the eyes of folly more blind.

I sent him an answer, a copy of which I enclose. Since that, I
have heard no more of him, nor shall, I suppose, till I see this
new proof of Richard's guilt adopted into the annals of the
Society, against which I have reserved some other stigmas for it.
Mr. Edmondson has found a confirmation of Isabella Fitz-Osbert
having married Jernegan after Walpole. I forget where I found my
arms of the Fitz-Osberts. Though they differ from yours of Sir
Roger, the colours are the same, and they agree with yours of
William Fitz-Osborne. There was no accuracy in spelling names
even till much later ages; and you know that different branches
of the same family made little variation in their coats.

I am very sorry for the death of poor Henshaw, of which I had not
heard. I am yours most sincerely.

P. S. The queries added to the letter to Mr. Astle were not sent
with it; and, as I reserve them for a future answer, I beg you
will show them to nobody.

Letter 103To Edward Gibbon, Esq.(242)
(February 1776.] (page 149)

Mr. Walpole cannot express how much he is obliged to Mr. Gibbon
for the valuable present he has received;(243) nor how great a
comfort it is to him, in his present situation, in which he
little expected to receive singular pleasure. Mr. Walpole does
not say this at random, nor from mere confidence in the author's
abilities, for he has already (all his weakness would permit)
read the first chapter, and it is in the greatest admiration of
the style, manner, method, clearness, and intelligence. Mr.
Walpole's impatience to proceed will struggle with his disorder,
and give him such spirits, that he flatters himself he shall owe
part of his recovery to Mr. Gibbon; whom, as soon as that is a
little effected, he shall beg the honour of seeing.