Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

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"To cut things short, gone up to Adam,"

However, this Carlovingian hero does not allow that the letters
are forgeries, and rather suspects the novelist, his lady(728)
for the authoress; and if she is, probably Miss Charlemagne is
not quite innocent of the plot: though she still maintains that
her mother-in-law elect did give her much encouragement; which,
considering her grace's conduct about her children, is not the
most incredible part of this strange story. I have written this
at twice, and will now rest.

Sunday evening.

I wish that complaining of people for abandoning me were an
infallible receipt for bringing them back! but I doubt it will
not do in acute cases. To-day, a few hours after %writing the
latter part of this, appeared Mr. Batt. He asked many pardons,
and I easily forgave him; for the mortification was not begun.
He asked much after you both. I had a crowd of visits besides;
but they all come past two o'clock, and sweep one another away
before any can take root. My evenings are solitary enough, for I
ask nobody to come; nor, indeed, does any body's evening begin
till I am going to bed. I have Outlived daylight, as well as my
contemporaries. What have I not survived? The Jesuits and the
monarchy of France! and both without a struggle! Semiramis seems
to intend to add Constantinople to the mass of revolutions ; but
is not her permanence almost as wonderful as the contrary
explosions! I wish--I wish we may not be actually flippancying
ourselves into an embroil with that Ursa-major of the North Pole.
What a vixen little island are we, if we fight wit the Aurora
Borealis and Tippo Saib at the end of Asia at the same time!
You, damsels, will be like the end of the conundrum, "You've seen
the man who saw the wondrous sights."

Monday evening.

I cannot finish this with my own hand, for the gout has returned
a little into my right arm and wrist, and I am not quite so well
as I was yesterday; but I had said my say, and had little to add.
The Duchess of Gordon, t'other night, coming out of an assembly,
said to Dundas, "Mr. Dundas, you are used to speak in public;
will you call my servant?"

Here I receive your long letter of the 7th, 9th, and 10th, which
it is impossible for me to answer now; there is one part to which
I wish to reply, but must defer till next post, by which time I
hope to have recovered my own pen. You ask about the house of
Argyll. You know I have no connexion with them, nor any
curiosity about them. Their relations and mine have been in town
but four days, so I know little from them: Mrs. Grenville,
to-day, told me the Duke proposes to continue the same life he
used to lead, with a cribbage-table and his family. Every body
admires the youngest daughter's(729) person and understanding.
Adieu! I will begin to write again myself as soon as I can.

(725) This celebrated wit and amiable man died on the 25th of
January, in his seventy-second year. He was member for
Luggershall, surveyor-general of the crown lands, surveyor of the
meltings and clerk of the irons in the Mint; "and," add the
newspapers of the day, "receiver-general of wit and stray jokes."
The following tribute to his memory appeared at the time:--

"If this gay Fav'rite lost, they yet can live,
A tear to Selwyn let the Graces give!
With rapid kindness teach Oblivion's pall
O'er the sunk foibles of the man to fall
And fondly dictate to a faithful Muse
The prime distinction of the Friend they lose:--
'Twas Social Wit; which, never kindling strife,
Blazed in the small, sweet courtesies of life;
Those little sapphires round the diamond shone,
Lending soft radiance to the richer stone."-E.

(726) Married in 1798, to the Earl of Yarmouth; who, in 1822,
succeeded his father as third Marquis of Hertford.-E.

(727) Meaning the strange, imagined history Of a marriage
supposed to have been likely to take place between Miss Gunning
and the Marquis of Blandford.

(728) Mrs. Gunning was a Miss Minifie, of Fairwater,
Somersetshire, and, before her marriage, had published several
popular novels.-E.

(729) Lady Charlotte-Susan-Maria; married, first to Colonel John
Campbell of Islay and, secondly to the Rev. Mr. Bury.-E.

Letter 366 To Miss Berry.
Berkeley Square, Friday, Feb. 4, 1791. (page 470)

Last post I sent you as cheerful a letter, as I could, to
convince you that I was recovering. This will be less gay; not
because I have had a little return in both arms, but because I
have much more pain in my mind than in my limbs. I see and thank
you all for the kindness of your intention; but, as it has the
contrary effect from what you expect, I am forced, for my own
peace, to beseech you not to continue a manoeuvre that only
tantalizes and wounds me. In your last you put together many
friendly words to give me hopes of your return; but can I be' so
blind as not to see that they are vague words? Did you mean to
return in autumn, Would you not say so? would the most artful
arrangement of words be so kind as those few simple ones? In
fact, I have for some time seen how little you mean it; and, for
your sakes, I cease to desire it. The pleasure you expressed at
seeing Florence again, forgive me for saying, is the joy of sight
merely; for can a little Italian town, and wretched Italian
company, and travelling English lads and governors, be comparable
to the choice of the best company of so vast a capital as London,
unless you have taken an aversion to England? And your renewed
transports at a less and still more insipid town, Pisa! These
plainly told me your thoughts, which vague words cannot efface.
You then dropped that you could let your London house till next
Christmas, and then talked of a visit to Switzerland, and since
all this, Mrs. Damer has warned me not to expect YOU till next
Spring. I shall not; nor do I expect that next spring. I have
little expected this next! My dearest Madam, I allow all my folly
and Unreasonableness, and give them up and abandon them totally.
I have most impertinently and absurdly tried, for my own sake
merely, to exact from two young ladies, above forty years younger
than myself, a promise of sacrificing their rooted inclinations
to my whims and satisfaction. But my eyes are opened, my reason
is returned, I condemn myself; and I now make you but one
request, which is, that, though I am convinced it would be with
the most friendly and good-natured meaning possible, I do implore
you not to try to help me to delude myself any more. You never
know half the shock it gave me when I learned from Mr. Batt, what
you had concealed from me, your fixed resolution of going abroad
last October; and though I did in vain deprecate it,--your coming
to Twickenham in September, which I know, and from my inmost soul
believe, was from mere compassion and kindness to me,-yet it did
aggravate my parting with you.

I would not repeat all this, but to prevail with you, While I do
live, and while you do condescend to have any friendship for me,
never to let me deceive myself. I have no right to inquire into
your plans, views or designs; and never will question you more
about them. I shall deserve to be deluded if I do; but what you
do please to say to me, I beg may be frank. I am, in every
light, too weak to stand disappointment ow: I cannot be
disappointed. You have a firmness that nothing shakes; and,
therefore, it would be unjust to betray your good-nature into any
degree of insincerity. You do nothing that is not reasonable and
right; and I am conscious that you bore a thousand times more
from my self-love and vanity, than any other two persons but
yourselves would have supported with patience so long. Be
assured that what I say I think, feel, and mean; derange none of
your plans for me. I now wish you take no one step but What is
conformable to your views, interest and satisfaction. It would
hurt me to interfere with them -. I reproach myself with having
so ungenerously tried to lay you under any difficulties, and I
approve your resolution in adhering steadily to your point. Two
posts ago I hinted that I was weaning myself from the anxiety of
an attachment to two persons that must have been so uneasy to
them, and has ended so sorrowfully to myself but that anxiety I
restrict solely to the desire of your return: my friendship, had
I years to live, could not alter or be shaken; and there is no
kind of proof or instance of it that I will not give you both
while I have breath.

I have vented what I had at my heart, and feel relieved. Do not
take ill a word I have said. Be assured I can love you as much
as ever I did, and do; and though I am no longer so Unjust as to
prefer my own satisfaction to yours. Here I drop the subject;
before Tuesday, perhaps, I shall be able to talk on some other.

Monday, 7th.

Though the Parliament is met, and the town they say, full, I have
not heard a tittle of news of any sort; and yet my prison is a
coffeehouse in a morning, though I have been far from well this
whole week. Yesterday and Saturday the gout was so painful in my
right shoulder, that I could not stoop or turn round. To-day it
is in my left elbow, and, I doubt, coming into my right foot: in
short, it seems to be going its circle over again. I am not very
sorry; sufferings reconcile one to parting with one's self.

One of our numerous tempests threw down Mrs. Damer's chimney last
week, and it fell through her workshop; but fortunately touched
none of her own works, and only broke two or three insignificant
casts. I suppose you know she returns through Spain. This
minute I have heard that Lord Lothian's daughter, Lady Mary St.
John, and daughter-in-law of Lady Di Beauclerc, died yesterday,
having been delivered of a fine boy but the day before. As you
are curious to know the chief topic of conversation, it is the
rival Opera-houses, neither of which are opened yet; both saying
the other is fallen down. Taylor has published a pamphlet that
does not prove that the Marquis(730) is the most upright
Chamberlain that ever dropped from the skies, nor that the skies
are quite true blue. Adieu! if no postscript tomorrow. None.

(730) of Salisbury.

Letter 367 To Miss Berry.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 12, 1791. (page 472)

I have received your two letters of January 17th and 24th with an
account of your objects and plans; and the latter are very much
what I expected, as before you receive this you will have seen by
my last, No. 18. Indeed, you most kindly offer to break SO far
into your plan, as to return at the beginning of next winter; but
as that would, as you say, not only be a sacrifice, but risk your
healths, can any thing upon earth be more impossible than for me
to accept or consent to such a sacrifice? Were I even in love
with one of you, could I agree to it? and, being only a most
zealous friend, do you think I will hear of it? Should I be a
friend at all, if I wished you, for my sake, to travel in winter
over mountains, or risk the storms at sea, that I have not
forgotten when you went away? Can I desire you to derange a
reasonable plan of economy, that would put you quite at your ease
at your return? Have I any pretensions for expecting, still less
for asking, such or any sacrifices? Have I interested myself in
your affairs only to embarrass them?

I do, in the most. Positive and solemn manner, refuse to accept
the smallest Sacrifice of any part of your plan, but the single
point that would be so hard on me. I will not say a word more on
your return, and beg your pardon for having been so selfish as to
desire it: my only request now is, that we may say no more about
it. I am grieved that the great distance we are at must make me
still receive letters about it for some weeks. I shall not
forget how very unreasonable I have been myself; nor shall I try
to forget it, lest I should be silly again: but I earnestly
desire to be totally silent on a subject that I have totally
abandoned, and which it is not at all improbable I may never have
occasion to renew.

I knew the Comte de Coigny(731) in the year 1766: he was then
lively and jovial. I did not think he would turn out a writer,
or even reader; but he was agreeable. I say nothing on France-
you must know as much as I do, and probably sooner. I will only
tell you, that my opinion is not altered in a tittle. What will
happen I do not pretend to guess; but am thoroughly persuaded
that the present system, if it can be called so, cannot take
root. The flirts towards anarchy here have no effect at all.
Horne Tooke before Christmas presented a saucy libel to the House
of Commons, as a petition on his election. The House
contemptuously voted it only frivolous and vexatious, and
disappointed him of a ray of martyrdom; but his fees, etc. will
cost him three or four hundred pounds, which never go into a
mob's calculation of the ingredients of martyrdom.(732)

Monday morning, 14th.

I have a story to tell you, much too long to add to this; which I
will send next post, unless I have leisure enough to-day, from
people that call on me to finish it to-day, having begun it last
night; and in that case I will direct it to Miss Agnes. Mr.
Lysons the clergyman has just been here, and told me of a Welsh
sportsman, a Jacobite, I suppose, who has very recently had his
daughter christened Louisa Victoria Maria Sobieski Foxhunter Moll
Boycot. The curate of the minister who baptized her confirmed
the truth of it to Mr. Lysons. When Belgiojoso, the Austrian
minister, was here, and thought he could write English, he sent a
letter to Miss Kennedy, a woman of the town, that began, "My
Kennedy Polly dear girl." Apropos--and not much--pray tell me
whether the Cardinal of York calls himself King; and whether
James the Eighth, Charles the Fourth, or what?

(731) a Great-uncle of the present Duc de Coigny.

(732) On the 5th of February, the committee appointed to try the
merits of the petition, reported it to be frivolous and
vexatious. Mr. Burke urged the necessity of taking some step
against the author of it: but the subject was got rid of by a
motion for the order of the day.-E.

Letter 368 To Miss Agnes Berry.
Feb. 13, 1791. (page 474)

The following narrative, though only the termination of a legend
of 'which you know the foregoing chapters, is too singular and
too long to be added to my letter; and therefore, though you will
receive two by the same post, you will not repine. In short, the
Gunninghiad is completed--not by a marriage, like other novels of
the Minifies.(733)

Voici how the d`enouement happened. Another supposed love-letter
had come from the Marquis(734) within these few weeks; which was
so improbable, that it raised more suspicions, and was more
closely examined; and thence was discovered to have been both
altered and interlined. On this the General sent all the letters
down to the Marquis;(735) desiring to be certified of their
authenticity, or the contrary. I should tell you, that all this
has happened since the death of is sister; who kept up the high
tone, and said, her brother was not a man to be trifled with.
The Marquis immediately distinguished the two kinds; owned the
few letters that disclaimed all inclination for Miss Charlemagne,
disavowed the rest. Thence fell the General's wrath on his
consort; of which I have told you.

However, the General and his ducal brother-in-law thought it
expedient that Miss Charly's character should be cleared as far
as possible; she still maintaining the prodigious encouragement
she had received from the parents of her intended sposo. She was
ordered to draw up a narrative, which should be laid before the
Duke of Marlborough; and, if allowed by him, to be shown for her
vindication. She obeyed; and her former assertions did not
suffer by the new statement. But one singular circumstance was
added: she confessed--ingenuous maid!--that, though she had not
been able to resist so dazzling an offer, her heart was still her
cousin's, the other Marquis.(736)

Well! this narrative, after being laid before a confidential
junto at Argyll-house, was sent to Blenheim by the General, by
his own groom. Judge of the astonishment of the junto, when
Carloman, almost as soon as was possible, laid before them a
short letter from the Prince of Mindleheim(737) declaring how
delighted he and his Princess had been at their son's having made
choice of so beautiful and amiable a virgin for his bride; how
greatly they had encouraged the match; and how chagrined they
were, that, from the lightness and inconstancy of his temper, the
proposed alliance was quite at an end. This wonderful acquittal
of the damsel the groom deposed he had received in half-an-hour
after his arrival at Blenheim; and he gave the most natural and
unembarrassed account of all the stages he had made, going and
coming.

You may still suspect, and so did some of the council, that every
tittle of this report and of the letter were not gospel: though I
own, I thought the epistle not irreconcilable to other parts of
the conduct of their graces about their children. Still, I defy
you to guess a thousandth part of the marvellous explanation of
the mystery.

The first circumstance that struck was, that the Duke, in his own
son's name, had forgotten the d in the middle. That was possible
in the hurry of doing justice. Next, the wax was black; and
nobody could discover for whom such illustrious personages were
in mourning. Well; that was no proof one way or other.
Unluckily, somebody suggested that Lord Henry Spencer was in
town, though to return the next day to Holland. A messenger was
sent to him, though very late at night, to beg he would repair to
Argyll-house. He did; the letter was shown to him; he laughed,
and said it had not the least resemblance to his father's hand.
This was negative detection enough; but now comes the most
positive and wonderful unravelling!

The next day the General received a letter from a gentleman,
confessing that his wife, a friend of Miss Charly, had lately
received from her a copy of a most satisfactory testimonial from
the Duke of Marlborough In her favour (though, note, the
narrative was not then gone to Blenheim); and begging the
gentlewoman's husband would transcribe it, and send it to her, as
she wished to send it to a friend in the country. The husband
had done so, but had had the precaution to write at top Copy; and
before the signature had written, signed, M.--both which words
Miss had erased, and then delivered the gentleman's identic
transcript to the groom, to be brought back as from Blenheim:
which the steady groom, on being examined anew, confessed; and
that, being bribed, he had gone but one post, and invented the
rest.

You will now pity the poor General, who has been a dupe from the
beginning, and sheds floods of tears; nay, has actually turned
his daughter out of doors, as she banished from Argyll-house too:
and Lady Charlotte,(738) to her honour, speaks of her with the
utmost Indignation. In fact, there never was a more
extraordinary tissue of effrontery, folly, and imposture.

it is a strange but not a miraculous part of this strange story,
that Gunnilda is actually harboured by, and lodges with, the old
Duchess(739) in Pall-Mall, the grandmother of whom she has
miscarried, and who was the first that was big with her. You may
depend on the authenticity of this narrative, and may guess from
whom I received all the circumstances, day by day; but pray, do
not quote me for that reason, nor let it out of your hands, nor
transcribe any part of it. The town knows the story confusedly,
and a million of false readings there will be; but, though you
know it exactly, do not send it back hither. You will, perhaps,
be diverted by the various ways in which it will be related.
Yours, etc. Eginhart, secretary to Charlemagne
and the Princess Gunnilda, his daughter.

P. S. Bowen is the name of the gentleman who gave information of
the letter sent to him to be copied, on hearing of the suspected
forgeries. The whole Minifry are involved in the suspicions, as
they defend the damsel, who still confesses nothing; and it is
her mother, not she, who is supposed to have tampered with the
groom; and is discarded, too, by her husband.

(733) The name of the family of Mrs. Gunning. See p. 469, letter
365.

(734) George Spencer Churchill, Marquis of Blandford; he
succeeded his father as fourth Duke of Marlborough in 1817.-E.

(735) General Gunning was son of John Gunning, Esq. of
Castle-Coole, in the county of Roscommon and brother of the
beautiful Miss Gunning, married first, in 1752, to the Duke of
Hamilton; and second, in 1759, to the Duke of Argyle.-E.

(736) George William Campbell, Marquis of Lorn. He succeeded his
father as sixth Duke of Argyle in 1806-E.

(737) The Emperor Joseph, in 1705, bestowed on the great Duke of
Marlborough the principality of Mindleheim, in Swabia.-E.

(738) Lady Charlotte Campbell. See p. 470, letter 365, note
729.-E.

(739) Gertrude, eldest daughter of John Earl Gower, Widow of John
fourth Duke of Bedford.-E.

Letter 369 To The Earl Of Charlemont.(740)
Berkeley Square, Feb. 17, 1791. (page 476)

It is difficult, my lord, with common language that has been so
prostituted in compliments, to express the real sense of
gratitude, which I do feel at my heart, for the obligation I have
to your lordship for an act of friendship as unexpected as it was
unsolicited; which last circumstance doubles the favour, as it
evinces your lordship's generosity and nobleness of temper,
without surprising me. How can I thank your lordship, as I
ought, for interesting yourself, and of yourself, to save me a
little mortification, which I deserve, and should deserve more,
had I the vanity to imagine that my printing a few copies of my
disgusting tragedy would occasion different and surreptitious
editions of it?

Mr. Walker has acquainted me, my lord, that your lordship has
most kindly interposed to prevent a bookseller of Dublin from
printing an edition of "The Mysterious Mother" without my
consent; and, with the conscious dignity of a great mind, your
lordship has not even hinted to me the graciousness of that
favour. How have I merited such condescending goodness, my lord?
Had I a prospect of longer life, I never could pay the debt of
gratitude; the weightier, as your lordship did not intend I
should know that I owe it. My gratitude can never be effaced;
and I am charmed that it is due, and due with so much honour to
me, that nothing could bribe me to have less obligation to your
lordship, of which I am so proud. But as to the play itself, I
doubt it must take its fate. Mr. Walker tells me the booksellers
have desired him to remonstrate to me, urging that they have
already expended fifty pounds; and Mr. Walker adds, as no doubt
would be the case, that should this edition be stifled, when now
expected, some other printer would publish it. I certainly might
indemnify the present operator, but I know too much of the craft,
not to be sure, that I should be persecuted by similar exactions;
and, alas! I have exposed myself but too much to the tyranny of
the press, not to know that it taxes delinquents as well as
multiplies their faults.

In truth, my lord, it is too late now to hinder copies of my play
from being spread. It has appeared here, both whole and in
fragments: and, to prevent a spurious one, I was forced to have
some printed myself: therefore, if I consent to an Irish edition,
it is from no vain desire of diffusing the performance. Indeed,
my good lord, I have lived too long not to have divested myself
both of vanity and affected modesty. I have not existed to past
seventy-three without having discovered the futility and
triflingness of my own talents: and, at the same time, it would
be impertinent to pretend to think that there is no merit in the
execution of a tragedy, on which I have been so much flattered;
though I am sincere in condemning the egregious absurdity of
selecting a subject so improper for the stage, and even offensive
to private readers.

But I have said too much on a personal theme; and therefore,
after repeating a million of thanks to your lordship for the
honour of your interposition, I will beg your lordship, if you
please, to signify to the bookseller that you withdraw your
prohibition: but I shall not answer Mr. Walker's letter, till I
have your lordship's approbation, for You are both my lord
chamberlain 'and licenser; and though I have a tolerably
independent spirit, I may safely trust myself under the absolute
power of one, who has voluntarily protected me against the
licentiousness of those who have invaded my property, and who
distinguishes so accurately and justly between license and
liberty.

(740) Now first collected. This letter was written in
consequence of one Walpole had received, informing him that a
Dublin bookseller was about to print his tragedy of The
Mysterious Mother. At this time, and indeed until the Union took
place, there was no act of parliament which regulated literary
property in Ireland.-E.