Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

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These reflections were the best proofs of my sense: and, when I
could see through my own vanity, there is less wonder at my
discovering that such talents as I might have had, are impaired
at Seventy-two. Being just to myself, I am not such a coxcomb as
to be unjust to you. No, nor did I cover any irony towards you,
in the opinion I gave you of making deep writings palatable to
the mass of readers. Examine my words; and I am sure you will
find that, if there was any thing ironic in my meaning, it was
levelled at your readers, not at you. it is my opinion, that
whoever wishes to be read by many, if his subject is weighty and
solid, must treat the majority with more than is to his purpose.
Do not you believe that twenty name Lucretius because of the
poetic commencement of his books, for five that wade through his
philosophy?

I promised to say but little; and, if I have explained myself
clearly, I have said enough. It is not, I hope, my character to
be a flatterer: I do most sincerely think you capable of great
things; and I should be a pitiful knave if I told you SO, unless
it was my opinion; and what end could it serve to me? Your course
is but beginning; mine is almost terminated. I do not want you
to throw a few daisies on my grave; and if you make the figure I
augur you will, I shall not be a witness to it. Adieu, dear Sir!

(665) NOW first collected.

Letter 342 To Richard Gough, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, August 24, 1789. (PAGE 435)

I shall heartily lament with you, Sir, the demolition of those
beautiful chapels at Salisbury. I was scandalized long ago at
the ruinous state in which they were indecently suffered to
remain. It appears as strange, that, when a spirit of
restoration and decoration has taken place, it should be mixed
with barbarous innovation. As much as taste has improved, I do
not believe that modern execution will equal our models. I am
sorry that I can only regret, not prevent. I do not know the
Bishop of Salisbury(666) even by Sight, and certainly have no
credit to obstruct any of his plans. should I get sight of Mr.
Wyatt, which is not easy to do, I will remonstrate against the
intended alteration; but probably without success, as I do not
suppose he has authority enough to interpose effectually: still I
will try. It is an old complaint with me, Sir, that when
families are extinct, chapters take the freedom of removing
ancient monuments, and even of selling, over again the sites of
such tombs. A scandalous, nay, dishonest abuse, and very
unbecoming clergy! Is it creditable for divines to traffic for
consecrated ground, and which the church had already sold? I do
not wonder that magnificent monuments are out of fashion, when
they are treated so disrespectfully. You, Sir, alone have placed
several out of the reach of such a kind of simoniacal abuse; for
to buy into the church, or to sell the church's land twice over,
breathes a similar kind of spirit. Perhaps, as the subscription
indicates taste, if some of the subscribers could be persuaded to
object to the removal of the two beautiful chapels, as contrary
to their view of beautifying, it might have good effect; or, if
some letter were published in the papers against the destruction,
as barbarous and the result of bad taste, it might divert the
design. I zealously wish it were stopped, but I know none of the
chapter or subscribers.(667)

(666) Dr. Shute Barrington; in 1791, translated to the see of
Durham.-E.

(667) Much discussion on the subject of the injury done to
Salisbury cathedral, here complained of by Walpole, took place in
the Gentleman's Magazine for this and the following year. "This
good," says the writer of a learned article on Cathedral
Antiquities, in the Quarterly Review for 1825, "has arisen from
the injury which was done at Salisbury, that in subsequent
undertakings of the same kind, the architect has come to his work
with Greater respect for the structures upon which he was
employed, and a mind more embued with the principles of Gothic
architecture."-E.

Letter 343 To The Miss Berrys.
Strawberry Hill, Thursday evening, Aug. 27, 1789. (PAGE 436)

I jumped for joy,-that is, my heart did, which is all the remain
of me that is in statu iumpante,-at the receipt of your letter
this morning, which tells me you approve of the house at
Teddington. How kind you was to answer so incontinently! I
believe you borrowed the best steed from the races. I have sent
to the landlord to come tomorrow: but I could not resist
beginning my letter to-night, as I am at home alone, with a
little pain in my left wrist; but the right one has no brotherly
feeling for it, and would not be put off so. You ask how you
have deserved such attentions? Why, by deserving them; by every
kind of merit, -and by that superlative one to me, your
submitting to throw away so much time on a forlorn antique--you
two, who, without specifying particulars, (and you must at least
be conscious that you are not two frights,) might expect any
fortune and distinctions, and do delight all companies. On which
side lies the Wonder? Ask me no more such questions, or I will
cram you with reasons.

My poor dear niece(668) grows worse and worse: the medical people
do not pretend to give us any hopes; they only say she may last
some weeks, which I do not expect, nor do absent myself. I had
promised Mr. Barrett to make a visit to my Gothic child, his
house, on Sunday; but I have written to-day to excuse myself: so
I have to the Duchess of Richmond,(669) who wanted me to meet her
mother, sister,(670) and General Conway, at Goodwood next week.

I wish Lady Fitzwilliam may not hear the same bad news as I
expect, in the midst of her royal visitors: her sister, the
Duchess of St. Albans, is dying, in the same way as Lady, Dysart;
and for some days has not been in her senses. How charming you
are to leave those festivities for your good parents; who I do
not wonder are impatient for you. I, who am old enough to be
your great-grandmother, know one needs not be your near relation
to long for your return. Of all your tour, next to your duteous
visits, I most approve the jaunt to the sea - I believe in its
salutary air more than in the whole college and all its works.

You must not expect any news from me, French or homebred. I am
not in the way of hearing any: your morning gazetteer rarely
calls on me, as I am not likely to pay him in kind. About royal
progresses, paternal or filial, I never inquire; nor do you, I
believe, care more than I do. The small wares in which the
societies at Richmond and Hampton-court deal, are still less to
our taste. My poor niece and her sisters take up most of my time
and thoughts: but I will not attrist you to indulge myself, but
will break off here, and finish my letter when I have seen your
new landlord. Good night!

Friday.

Well! I have seen him, and nobody was ever so accommodating! He
is as courteous as a candidate for a county. You may stay in his
house till Christmas if you please, and shall pay but twenty
pounds; and if more furniture is wanting, it shall be supplied.

(668) The Countess of Dysart.-M.B.

(669) Lady Mary Bruce, daughter of the Earl of Ailesbury by
Caroline Campbell, daughter of General John Campbell, afterwards
Duke of Argyle.-M.B.

(670) Mrs. Damer, only child of the Dowager Countess of
Ailesbury, by Marshal Henry Seymour Conway, her second husband.
She was thus half-sister to the Duchess of Richmond.-M.B.

Letter 344 To The Miss Berrys.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 4, 1789. (PAGE 437)

You ask whether I will call you wise or stupid for leaving, York
races in the middle-neither; had you chosen to stay, you would
have done rightly. The more young persons see, where there is
nothing blamable, the better; as increasing the stock of ideas
early will be a resource for age. To resign pleasure to please
tender relations is amiable, and superior to wisdom; for wisdom,
however laudable, is but a selfish virtue. But I do decide
peremptorily, that it was very prudent to decline the invitation
to Wentworth House,(671) which was obligingly given; but, as I am
very proud for you, I should have disliked your being included in
a mobbish kind of colhue. You two are not to go where any other
two misses would have been equally pri`ees, and where people
would have been thinking of the princes more than of the Berrys.
Besides, princes are so rife now, that, besides my sweet
nephew(672) in the Park, we have another at Richmond: the Duke
of Clarence has taken Mr. Henry Hobart's house, pointblank over
against Mr. Cambridge's, which will make the good woman of that
mansion cross herself piteously, and stretch the throat of the
blatant beast at Sudbrook(673) and of all the other pious matrons
`a la ronde; for his Royal Highness, to divert lonesomeness, has
brought with him - -, who, being still more averse to solitude,
declares that any tempter would make even Paradise more agreeable
than a constant t`ete-`a-t`ete.

I agree with you in not thinking Beatrice one of Miss Farren's
capital parts. Mrs. Pritchard played it with more spirit, and
was superior to Garrick's Benedict; so is Kemble, too, as he Is
to Quin in Maskwell. Kemble and Lysons the clergyman(674) passed
all Wednesday here with me. The former is melting the three
parts of Henry the Sixth into one piece: I doubt it will be
difficult to make a tolerable play out of them.

I have talked scandal from Richmond, like its gossips; and now,
by your queries after Lady Luxborough, you are drawing me into
more, which I do not love: but she is dead and forgotten, except
on the shelves of an old library, or on those of my old memory;
which you will be routing into. The lady you wot of, then, was
the first wife of Lord Catherlogh, before he was an earl; and who
was son of Knight, the South Sea cashier, and whose second wife
lives here at Twickenham. Lady Luxborough, a high-coloured lusty
black woman, was parted from her husband, upon a gallantry she
had with Dalton, the reviver of Comus and a divine. She retired
into the country; corresponded, as you see by her letters, with
the small poets of that time; but, having no Theseus amongst
them, consoled herself, as it is said, like Ariadne, with
Bacchus.(675) This might be a fable, like that of her Cretan
Highness--no matter; the fry of little anecdotes are so numerous
now, that throwing one more into the shoal is of no consequence,
if it entertains you for a Moment; nor need you believe what I
don't warrant.

Gramercy for your intention of seeing Wentworth Castle. it is my
favourite of all great seats;-such a variety of ground, of wood,
and water; and almost all executed and disposed with so much
taste by the present Earl. Mr. Gilpin sillily could See nothing
but faults there. The new front is, in my opinion, one of the
lightest and most beautiful buildings on earth - and, pray like
the little Gothic edifice, and its position in the menagerie! I
recommended it, and had it drawn by Mr. Bentley, from Chichester
Cross. Don't bring me a pair of scissors from Sheffield - I am
determined nothing shall cut our loves, though I should live out
the rest of Methusalem's term, as you kindly wish, and as I can
believe, though you are my wives; for I am persuaded my Agnes
wishes so too. Don't you?

At night.

I am just come from Cambridge's, where I have not been in an
evening, time out of mind. Major Dixon, alias "the Charming
man,"(676) is there; but I heard nothing of the Emperor's
rickets:(677) a great deal, and many horrid stories, of the
violences in France; for his brother, the Chevalier Jerningham,
is Just arrived from Paris. You have heard of the destruction of
thirty-two chateaus in Burgundy, at the instigation of a demon,
who has since been broken on the racks. There is now assembled
near Paris a body of sixteen thousand deserters, daily
increasing; who, they fear, will encamp and dictate to the
capital, in spite of their militia of twenty thousand bourgeois.
It will soon, I suppose, ripen to several armies, and a civil
war; a fine acheminement to liberty!

My poor niece is still alive, though weaker every day, and
pronounced irrecoverable: yet it is possible she may live some
weeks; which, however, is neither to be expected nor wished, for
she eats little and sleeps less. Still she is calm, and behaves
with the patience of a martyr.

You may perceive, by the former part of my letter, that I have
been dipping into Spenser again, though he is no passion of mine
- there I lighted upon two lines that, at first sight, reminded
me of Mademoiselle d'Eon,

"Now, when Marfisa had put off her beaver,
To be a woman every one perceive her!"

but I do not think that is so perceptible in the Chevali`ere.
She looked more feminine, as I remember her, in regimentals, than
she does now. She is at best a heri-dragoon, or an Herculean
hostess. I wonder she does not make a campaign in her own
country, and offer her sword to the almost dethroned monarch, as
a second Joan of Arc.(678) Adieu! for three weeks I shall say,
Sancte Michael, ora pro nobis! You seem to have relinquished your
plan of sea-coasting. I shall be sorry for that; it would do you
good.

(671) The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York were going to
receive a great entertainment at Wentworth House.-M.B.

(672) The Duke of Gloucester.

(673) Lady Greenwich.

(674) The " little Daniel" of the Pursuits of Literature, brother
of Samuel Lysons, the learned antiquary, and author of "The
Environs, twelve miles round London," in four volumes quarto--

"Nay once, for Purer air o'er rural ground,
With little Daniel went his twelve miles round."-E.

(675) Lady Luxborough died in 1756. Her letters to Shenstone
were published in 1775. In the first leaf of the original
manuscript there is an autograph of the poet, describing them as
being "written with abundant ease politeness, and vivacity; in
which she was scarce equalled by any woman of her time." Some of
her verses are printed in Dodsley's Miscellany, and Walpole has
introduced her ladyship into his Noble Authors.-E.

(676) Edward Jerningham, Esq. Of Cossey, in Norfolk, uncle to
the present Lord Stafford. He was distinguished in his day by
the name of Jerningham the poet; but it was an unpoetical day.
The stars of Byron, of Baillie, and of Scott, had not risen On
the horizon. The well merited distinction of Jerningham was the
friendship, affection, and intimacy which his amiable character
had impressed on the author, and on all of his society mentioned
in these letters.-M.B.

(677) This alludes to something said in a character which
Jerningham had assumed, for the amusement of a society some time
before at Marshal Conway's.-M.B.

(678) Miss More gives the following account of this extraordinary
character:--"On Friday I gratified the curiosity of many years,
by meeting at dinner Madame la Chevali`ere D'Eon - she is
extremely entertaining, has universal information, wit, vivacity,
and gaiety. Something too much of the latter (I have heard) when
she has taken a bottle or two of Burgundy; but this being a very
sober party, she was kept entirely within the limits of decorum.
General Johnson was of the party, and it was ridiculous to hear
her military conversation. Sometimes it Was, 'Quand j'`etais
colonel d'un tel regiment;' then again, 'Non, c'Rait quand
j'`etais secr`etaire d'ambassade du Duc de Nivernois,' or, 'Quand
je n`egociais la paix de Paris.' She is, to be sure, a phenomenon
in history; and, as such, a great curiosity. But one D'Eon is
enough, and one slice of her quite sufficient." Memoirs, vol. ii.
p. 156.-E.

Letter 345 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 5, 1789. (PAGE 440)

You speak so unperemptorily of your motions, that I must direct
to you at random: the most probable place where to hit you, I
think, will be Goodwood; and I do address this thither, because I
am impatient to thank you for your tale, which is very pretty and
easy and genteel. It has made me make a reflection, and that
reflection made six lines; which I send you, not as good, but as
expressing my thoughts on your writing so well in various ways
which you never practised when you was much younger. Here they
are:

The Muse most wont to fire a youthful heart,
To gild your setting sun reserved her art;
To crown a life in virtuous labours pass'd,
Bestow'd her numbers and her wit at last;
And, when your strength and eloquence retire,
Your voice in notes harmonious shall expire.

The swan was too common a thought to be directly specified, and,
perhaps, even to be alluded to: no matter, such a trifle is below
criticism.

I am still here, in no uncertainty, God knows, about poor Lady
Dysart (679) of whom there are not the smallest hopes. She grows
weaker every day, and does actually still go out for the air, and
may languish many days, though most probably will go off in a
moment, As the water rises. She retains her senses perfectly,
and as perfectly her unalterable calmness and patience, though
fully sensible of her situation. At your return from Goodwood, I
shall like to come to you, if you are unengaged, and ready to
receive me. For the beauties of Park-place, I am too well
acquainted with them, not, like all old persons about their
contemporaries, to think it preserves them long after they are
faded; and am so unwalking, that prospects are more agreeable to
me when framed and glazed, and I look at them through a window.
It is yourselves I want to visit, not your verdure. Indeed,
except a parenthesis of scarce all August, there has been no
temptation to walk abroad; and the tempter himself would not have
persuaded me, if I could, to have climbed that long-lost mountain
whence he could show one even the Antipodes. It rained
incessantly all June and all July; and now again we have torrents
every day.

Jerningham's brother, the Chevalier, is arrived from Paris, and
does not diminish the horrors one hears every day. They are now
in the capital dreading the sixteen thousand deserters who hover
about them. I conclude that when in the character of banditti
the whole disbanded army have plundered and destroyed what they
can, they will congregate into separate armies under different
leaders, who will hang Out different principles, and the kingdom
will be a theatre of civil wars; and, instead of liberty, the
nation will get petty tyrants, perhaps petty kingdoms: and when
millions have suffered, or been sacrificed, the government will
be no better than it was, all owing to the intemperance of the
`etats, who might have obtained a good constitution, or at least
one much meliorated, if they had set out with discretion and
moderation. They have left too a sad lesson to despotic princes,
who will quote this precedent of frantic `etats, against
assembling any more, and against all the examples of senates and
parliaments that have preserved rational freedom. Let me know
when it will be convenient to you to receive me. Adieu!

(679) Her ladyship, who was the daughter of Sir Edward Walpole
and the first wife of Lionel, fourth Earl of Dysart, died on the
day this letter was written.-E.

Letter 346 To Miss Hannah More.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. -, 1789. (PAGE 441)

I know whence you wrote last, but not where you are now; you gave
me no hint. I believe you fly lest I should pursue, and as if
you were angry that I have forced you to sprout into laurels.
Yet you say you are vain of it, and that you are no philosopher.
Now, if you are vain I am sure you are a philosopher; for it is a
maxim of mine, and one of my own making, that there never was a
philosopher that did not love sweetmeats. ou tell me too, that
you like I should scold you but since you have appeared as
Bonner's ghost, I think I shall feel too much awe; for though
(which I never expected would be in my power) I have made you
stand in a white sheet, I doubt my respect is increased. I never
did rate you for being too bad, but too good: and if, when you
make up your week's account, YOU find but a fraction of vanity in
the sum total, you will fall to repenting, and Come forth On
Monday as humble as * * *. Then, if I huff my heart Out, you
will only simper, and still wrap yourself up in your obstinate
goodness. Well! take your own way; I give you Up to your
abominable virtues, and will go answer the rest of your letter.

I congratulate you on the demolition of the Bastille; I mean as
you do, of its' functions.(680) For the poor soul itself, I had
no ill will to it: on the contrary, it was a curious sample of
ancient castellar dungeons, which the good folks the founders
took for palaces: yet I always hated to drive by it, knowing the
miseries it contained. Of itself it did not gobble up prisoners
to glut its maw, but received them by command. The destruction
of it was silly, and agreeable to the ideas of a mob, who do not
know stones and bars and bolts from a lettre de cachet. If the
country remains free, the Bastille would be as tame as a
ducking-Stool, now that there is no such thing as a scold. If
despotism recovers, the Bastille will rise from its ashes!--
recover, I fear, it will. The `Etats cannot remain a mob of
kings, and will prefer a single one to a larger mob of kings and
greater tyrants. The nobility, the clergy, and people of
property will wait, till by address and Money they can divide the
people; or, whoever gets the larger or more victorious army into
his hands, will be a Cromwell or a Monk. In short, a revolution
procured by a national vertigo does not promise a crop of
legislators. It is time that composes a good constitution: it
formed ours. We were near losing it by the lax and unconditional
restoration of Charles the Second. The revolution was temperate,
and has lasted; and, though it might have been improved, we know
that with all its moderation it disgusted half the nation, who
would have brought back the old sores. I abominate the
Inquisition as much as you do: yet if the King of Spain receives
no check like his cousin Louis, I fear he will not be disposed to
relax any terrors. Every crowned head in Europe must ache at
present; and the frantic and barbarous proceedings in France will
not meliorate the stock of liberty, though for some time their
majesties will be mighty tender of the rights of their subjects.

According to this hypothesis, I can administer some comfort to
you about your poor negroes. I do not imagine that they will be
emancipated at once; but their fate will be much alleviated, as
the attempt will have alarmed their butchers enough to make them
gentler, like the European monarchs, for fear of"provoking the
disinterested, who have no sugar plantations, to abolish the
horrid traffic.

I do not understand the manoeuvre of sugar, and, perhaps, am
going to talk nonsense, as my idea maybe impracticable; but I
Wish human wit, which is really very considerable in mechanics
and merchantry, could devise some method of cultivating canes and
making sugar without the manual labour of the human" species.
How many mills and inventions have there not been discovered to
supply succedaneums to the works of the hands, which before the
discoveries would have been treated as visions! It is true,
manual labour has sometimes taken it very ill to be excused, and
has destroyed such mills; but the poor negroes would not rise and
insist upon being worked to death. Pray talk to some ardent
genius, but do not name me; not merely because I may have talked
like an idiot, but because my ignorance might, ipso C fiacto,
stamp the idea with ridicule. People, I know, do not love to be
put out of their old ways: no farmer listens at first to new
inventions in agriculture; and I don't doubt but bread was
originally deemed a new-fangled vagary, by those who had seen
their fathers live very comfortably upon acorns. Nor is there
any harm in starting new game to invention: many excellent
discoveries have been made by men who were a la chasse of
something very different. I am not quite sure that the art of
making gold and of* living for ever have been yet found out: yet
to how many noble discoveries has the pursuit of those nostrums
given birth! Poor chymistry, had she not had such glorious
objects in view! If you are sitting under a cowslip at your
cottage, these reveries may amuse you for half an hour, at least
make you smile; and for the ease of your conscience, which is
always in a panic, they require no answer.(681)

I will not ask you about the new history of Bristol,(682) because
you are too good a citizen to say a word against your native
place; but do pray cast your eye on the prints of The cathedral
and castle, the chef-d',oeuvres of Chatterton's ignorance, and of
Mr. Barrett's too; and on two letters pretended to have been sent
to me, and which never were sent. If my incredulity had wavered,
they would have fixed it. I wish the milkwoman would assert that
Boadicea's dairymaid had invented Dutch tiles; it would be like
Chatterton's origin of heraldry and painted glass, in those two
letters. I must, however, mention one word about myself. In the
new fourth volume of the Biographia Britannica I am more candidly
treated about that poor lad than usual: yet the writer still
affirms, that, according to my own account, my reply was too much
in the-commonplace style of court replies. Now my own words, and
the truth, as they stand in print in the very letter of mine
which this author quotes, were, "I wrote him a letter with as
much kindness and tenderness as if I had been his guardian." Is
this by my own account a court-reply? Nor did I conceive, for I
never was a courtier, that courtiers are wont to make tender
replies to the poor; I am glad to hear they do.