Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

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Berkeley Square, Thursday, 16th.

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

Friday noon.

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

(806) Am`elie de Boufflers, wife of Armand-Louis de Gontaut,
Duc
do Biron, better known in England by the title of Duc de
Lauzan.
By a letter from Madame Necker to Gibbon, the Duchesse appears
to
have been at Lausanne in October; but in the following
September
, tempted," says Gibbon, " by some faint, and I fear,
fallacious
hope Of clemency to the women", she was induced to revisit
France, and perished by the guillotine, in one of Robespierre's
bloody proscriptions. See vol. v. pp. 133, 400. The Duc was
entrusted with the command of the army of the republic in La
Vend`ee; but, being reproached with having suffered Niort to be
besieged and with not having seconded westermann, he was
denounced at the bar of the Convention, delivered over to the
revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to death. He suffered on
the 31st of December 1793, and is words upon the scaffold are
said to have been, "I have been false to my God, my order, and
my
king: I die full of faith and repentance." See his "M`emoires,
"
in two volumes 8vo. published in 1802.-E.

Letter 384To Miss Berry.
Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1791. (page 510)

Wo is me! I have not an atom of news to send you, but that the
second edition of Mother Hubbard's Tale was again spoiled on
Saturday last by the rain; yet she had an ample assemblage of
company from London and the neighbourhood. The late Queen of
France, Madame du Barry, was there; and the late Queen of
England, Madame d'Albany, was not. The former, they say, is as
much altered as her kingdom, and does not retain a trace of her
former powers. I saw her on her throne in the chapel of
Versailles;(807) and, though then pleasing in face and person, I
thought her un peu pass`e. What shall I tell you more? that Lord
Hawkesbury is added to the cabinet-council--que vous importe? and
that Dr. Robertson has published a Disquisition into the Trade of
the Anchellts with India;(808) a sensible work--but that will be
no news to you till you return. It was a peddling trade in those
days. They now and then picked up an elephant's tooth, or a
nutmeg, or one pearl, that served Venus for a pair of pendants,
when Antony had toasted Cleopatra in a bumper of its fellow;
which shows that a couple was imported:-but. alack! the Romans
were so ignorant, that waiters from the Tres Tabernoe, in St.
Apollo's-street, did not carry home sacks of diamonds enough to
pave the Capitol--I hate exaggerations, and therefore I do not
say, to pave the Appian Way. One author, I think, does say, that
the wife of Fabius Pictor, whom he sold to a proconsul, did
present Livia(809) with an ivory bed, inlaid with Indian gold;
but, as Dr. Robertson does not mention it, to be sure he does not
believe the fact well authenticated.

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

Lord Fitzwilliam has flown to Dublin and back. He returned to
Richmond on the fourteenth day from his departure, and the next
morning set out for France: no courier can do more. In my last,
the description of June for orange-flowers, pray read roses: the
east winds have starved all the former; but the latter, having
been settled here before the wars of York and Lancaster, are
naturalized to the climate, and reek not whether June arrives in
summer or winter. They blow by their own old-style almanacks.
Madame d'Albany might have found plenty of white ones on her own
tenth of June; but, on that very day, she chose to go to see the
King in the House of Lords, with the crown on his head,
proroguing the Parliament.(810) What an odd rencontre! Was it
philosophy or insensibility? I believe it is certain that her
husband was in Westminster-hall at the coronation.

The patriarchess of the Methodists, Lady Huntingdon, is dead.
Now she and Whitfield are gone, the sect will probably decline: a
second crop of apostles seldom acquire the influence of the
founders. To-day's paper declares upon its say-so, that Mr.
Fawkener is at hand, with Catherine Slay-Czar's(811) acquiescence
to our terms; but I have not entire faith in a precursor on such
an occasion, and from Holland too. It looks more like a courier
to the stocks; and yet I am in little expectation of a war, as I
believe we are boldly determined to remain at peace. And now my
pen is quite dry-you are quite sure not from laziness, but from
the season of the year, which is very anti-correspondent. Adieu!

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

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

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

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

(811) Walpole rarely makes mention of Catherine without an
allusion to the murder of the Czar Peter. in a letter written to
Madame du Deffand, in 1769 he thus indignantly denounce
Voltaire's applauses of the Empress:--"Voltaire me fait horreur
Avec sa Caterine: le beau sujet de badinage que l'assassinat d'un
mari, et l'usurpateur de son tr`one! Il n'est pas mal, dit-il,
qu'on ait une faute r`eparer: eh! comment reparer un meurtre?
Est-ce en retenant des po`etes `a ses gages? en payant des
historiens mercenaires, et en soudoyant des philosophes ridicules
`a mille lieues dc son pays? Ce sent ces `ames viles qui chantent
un Auguste, et se taisent sur ses proscriptions."-E.

Letter 385 To Miss Berry.
Strawberry Hill, Tuesday night, July 12, 1791. (page 512)

I had had no letter from you for ten days, I suppose from west
winds; but did receive one this morning, which had been three
weeks on the road: and a charming one it was. Mr. Batt,--who
dined with me Yesterday, and stayed till after breakfast
to-day,--being here, I read part of It to him; and he was as much
delighted as I was with your happy quotation of incedit Regina.
If I could spare so much room, I might fill this paper with all
he said of you both, and with all the friendly kind things he
begged me to say to both from him. Last night I read to him'
certain Reminiscences; and this morning he slipped from me, and
walked to Cliveden, and hopes to see it again much more
agreeably. I hope so too, and that I shall be with him.

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

Letter 386 To The Miss Berrys.
Strawberry Hill, July 26, 1791. (page 512)

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

Lady Cecilia tells me that her nephew, Mr. West,(812) who was
with you at Pisa, declares he is in love with you both; so I am
not singular. You two may like to hear this, though no novelty
to you; but it will not satisfy Mr. Berry, who will be impatient
for news from Birmingham: but there are no more, nor any-whence
else. There has not been another riot in any of the three
kingdoms. The villain Paine came over for the Crown and
Anchor;(813) but, finding that his pamphlet had not set a straw
on fire, and that the 14th of July was as little in fashion as
the ancient gunpowder-plot, he dined at another tavern with a few
quaking conspirators; and probably is returning to Paris, where
he is engaged in a controversy with the Abb`e Sieyes, about the
plus or minus of rebellion. The rioters in Worcestershire, whom
I mentioned in my last, were not a detachment from Birmingham,
but volunteer incendiaries from the capital; who went, according
to the rights of men, with the mere view of plunder, and
threatened gentlemen to burn their houses, if not ransomed.
Eleven of these disciples of Paine are in custody; and Mr. Merry,
Mrs. Barbauld, and Miss Helen Williams will probably have
subjects for elegies. Deborah and Jael, I believe, were invited
to the Crown and Anchor, and had let their nails grow
accordingly: but, somehow or other, no poissonni`eres were there,
and the two prophetesses had no opportunity that day of
exercising their talents or talons. Their French allies, cock
and hen, have a fairer field open; and the Jacobins, I think,
will soon drive the National Assembly to be better royalists than
ever they were, in selfdefence.

You have indeed surprised me by your account of the strange
credulity of poor King Louis's escape in safety! In these
villages we heard of his flight late in the evening, and, the
very next morning, of his being retaken.(814) Much as he, at
least the Queen, has suffered, I am persuaded the adventure has
hastened general confusion, and will increase the royal party;
though perhaps their Majesties, for their personal safeties, had
better have awaited the natural progress of anarchy. The
enormous deficiencies of money, and the total insubordination of
the army, both apparent and uncontradicted, from the reports made
to the National Assembly, show what is Coming. Into what such a
chaos will Subside, it would be silly to attempt to guess.
Perhaps it is not wiser in the exiles to expect to live to see a
resettlement in their favour. One thing I have for these two
years thought probable to arrive--a division, at least, a
dismemberment of France. Despotism could no longer govern so
unwieldy a machine; a republic would be still less likely to hold
it together. If foreign powers should interfere, they will take
care to pay themselves with what is `a leur biensance; and that,
in reality, would be serving France too. So much for my
speculations! and they have never varied. We are so far from
intending to new-model our government and dismiss the Royal
Family, annihilate the peerage, cashier the hierarchy, and lay
open the land to the first occupier, as Dr. Priestley, and Tom
Paine, and the Revolution Club humbly proposed, that we are even
encouraging the breed of princes. It is generally believed that
the Duke of York is going to marry the Princess of Prussia, the
King's daughter by his first wife, and his favourite child. I do
not affirm it; but many others do.(815)

Thursday night, late.

Lady Di. has told me an extraordinary fact. Catherine Slay-Czar
sent for Mr. Fawkener(816) and desired he will order for her a
bust of Charles Fox; and she will place it between Demosthenes
and Cicero (pedantry she learnt from her French authors, and
which our schoolboys would be above using); for his eloquence has
saved two great nations from a war--by his opposition to it,
s'entend: so the peace is no doubt made. She could not have
addressed her compliment worse than to Mr. Fawkener, sent by Mr.
Pitt, and therefore so addressed; and who of all men does not
love Mr. Fox, and Mr. Fox who has no vainglory, will not care a
straw for the flattery, and will understand it too. Good night!

(812) The Honourable Septimus West, uncle of the present Earl of
Delawarr. He died of consumption in October 1793.

(813) The great dinner at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in
celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution.-E.

(814) The flight of the Royal Family of France to, and return
from, Varennes.

(815) The marriage of the Duke of York with Frederica Charlotte
Ulrica Catherine, eldest daughter of the King of Prussia, was
solemnized, first in Prussia, on the 29th of September, and again
in England, on the 23d of November, 1791. For Walpole's account
of her Royal Highness's visit to Strawberry Hill, see his letter
to the Miss Berrys of the 25th of September, 1793.-E.

(816. Mr. Fawkener was the son of Sir Everard Fawkener, He was
one of the principal clerks of the privy council, and had been
sent on a secret mission to Russia.-E.

Letter 387 To Miss Berry.
Strawberry Hill, August 17, 1791. (page 514)

No letter from Florence this post, though I am wishing for one
every day! The illness of a friend is bad, but is augmented by
distance. Your letters say you are quite recovered; but the
farther you are from me, the oftener I want to hear that recovery
repeated: and any delay in hearing revives my apprehensions of a
return of your fever. I am embarrassed, too, about your plan.
It grows near to the time you Proposed beginning your journey. I
do not write with any view to hastening that, which I trust will
entirely depend on the state of your health and strength; but I
am impatient to know your intentions: in short, I feel that, from
this time to your arrival, my letters will grow very tiresome. I
have heard to-day, that Lord and Lady Sheffield, who went to
visit Mr. Gibbon at Lausanne, met with great trouble and
impertinence at almost every post in France. in Switzerland
there is a furious spirit of democracy, or demonocracy. They
made great rejoicings on the recapture of the King of France.
Oh! why did you leave England in such a turbulent era! When will
you sit down on the quiet banks of the Thames?

Wednesday night.

Since I began my letter, I have received yours of the 2d, two
days later than Usual; and a most comfortable one it is. My
belief and my faith are now of the same religion. I do believe
you quite recovered. You, in the mean time, are talking of my
rheumatism-quite an old story. Not that it is gone, though the
pain is. The lameness in my shoulder remains, and I am writing
on my lap: but the complaint is put upon the establishment; like
old servants, that are of no use, fill up the place of those that
could do something, and yet still remain in the house.

I know nothing new, public or private. that is worth telling.
The stocks are transported with the pacification with Russia, and
do not care for what it has cost to bully the Empress to no
purpose; and say, we can afford it. Nor can Paine and Priestley
persuade them that France is much happier than we are, by having
ruined itself. The poor French here are in hourly expectation of
as rapid a counterrevolution as what happened two years ago.
Have you seen the King of Sweden's letter to his minister,
enjoining him to look dismal, and to take care not to be knocked
on the head for so doing? It deserves to be framed with M. de
Bouill`e's bravado.(817) You say you will write me longer letters
when you know I am well. Your recovery has quite the contrary
effect on me: I could scarce restrain my pen while I had
apprehensions about you; now you are well, the goosequill has not
a word to say. One would think it had belonged to a physician.
I shall fill my vacuum with some lines that General Conway has
sent me, written by I know not whom, on Mrs. Harte, Sir William
Hamilton's pantomime mistress, or wife, who acts all the antique
statues in an Indian shawl. I have not seen her yet, so am no
judge; but people are mad about her wonderful expression, which I
do not conceive; so few antique statues having any expression at
all, nor being designed to have it. The Apollo has the symptoms
of dignified anger:(818) the Laocoon and his sons, and Niobe and
her family,(819) are all expression;' and a few more: but what do
the Venuses, Floras, Hercules, and a thousand others tell, but
the magic art of the sculptor, and their own graces and
proportions?

I have been making up some pills of patience, to be taken
occasionally, when you have begun your journey, and I do not
receive your letters regularly; which may happen when you are .on
the road. I recommend you to St. James of Compost-antimony, to
whom St. Luke was an ignorant quack. Adieu!

(817) "The Marquis de Bouill`e, in order to draw upon himself the
indignation of the Assembly, addressed to it a letter, which
might be called mad, but for the generous motive which dictated
it. He avowed himself the sole author of the King's journey,
though, on the contrary, he had opposed it. He declared, in the
name of the Sovereign, that Paris should be responsible for the
safety of the Royal Family, and that the slightest injury offered
to them should be signally avenged. The Assembly winked at this
generous bravado, and threw the whole blame on Bouill`e; who had
nothing to fear, for he was already abroad." Thiers, vol. i. p.
197.-E.

(818) "In his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity." Byron.-E.

(819) "Go see
Laocoon's torture dignifying pain--
A father's love and mortal's agony
With an immortal's patience blending:--Vain
The struggle: vain against the coiling strain
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,
The old man's clench, the long envenom'd chain
Rivets the living links,--the enormous asp
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp." Ibid.-E.

Letter 388 To The Miss Berrys.
Berkeley Square, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 1791. (page 516)

I am come to town to meet Mr. Conway and Lady Ailesbury; and, as
I have no letter from you yet to answer, I will tell you how
agreeably I have passed the last three days; though they might
have been improved had you shared them, as I wished, and as I
sometimes do wish. On Saturday evening I was at the Duke of
Queensberry's (at Richmond, s'entend) with a small company: and
there were Sir William Hamilton and Mrs. Harte; who, on the 3d of
next month, previous to their departure, is to be made Madame
l'Envoy`ee `a Naples, the Neapolitan Queen having promised to
receive her in that quality. Here she cannot be presented, where
only such over-virtuous wives as the Duchess of Kingston and Mrs.
Hastings--who could go with a husband in each hand--are admitted.
Why the Margravine of Anspach, with the same pretensions, was
not, I do not understand; perhaps she did not attempt it. But I
forgot to retract, and make amende honourable to Mrs. Harte. I
had only heard of her attitudes; and those, in dumb show, I have
not yet seen. Oh! but she sings admirably; has a very fine,
strong voice: is an excellent buffa, and an astonishing
tragedian. She sung Nina in the highest perfection; and there
her attitudes were a whole theatre of grace and various
expressions.

The next evening I was again at Queensberry-house, where the
Comtesse Emilie de Boufflers played on her harp, and the
Princesse di Castelcigala, the Neapolitan minister's wife, danced
one of her country dances, with castanets, very prettily, with
her husband. Madame du Barry was there too, and I had a good
deal of frank conversation with her about Monsieur de Choiseul;
having been at Paris at the end of his reign and the beginning of
hers, and of which I knew so much by my intimacy with the
Duchesse de Choiseul.

On Monday was the boat-race. I was in the great room at the
Castle, with the Duke of Clarence, Lady Di., Lord Robert
Spencer,(820) and the House of Bouverie(821) to see the boats
start from the bridge to Thistleworth, and back to a tent erected
on Lord Dysart's meadow, just before Lady Di.'s windows; whither
we went to see them arrive, and where we had breakfast. For the
second heat, I sat in my coach on the bridge; and did not stay
for the third. The day had been coined on purpose, with my
favourite southeast wind. The scene, both up the river and down,
was what only Richmond upon earth can exhibit. The crowds on
those green velvet meadows and on the shores, the yachts, barges,
pleasure and small boats, and the windows and gardens lined with
spectators, were so delightful, that when I came home from that
vivid show, I thought Strawberry looked as dull and solitary as a
hermitage. At night there was a ball at the Castle, and
illuminations, with the Duke's cipher, etc. in coloured lamps,
as were the houses of his Royal Highness's tradesmen. I went
again in the evening to the French ladies on the Green, where
there was a bonfire; but, you may believe, not to the ball.

Well! but you, who have had a fever with f`etes, had rather hear
the history of the new soi-disante Margravine. She has been in
England with her foolish Prince, and not only notified their
marriage to the Earl,(822) her brother, who did not receive it
propitiously, but his Highness informed his lordship by a letter,
that they have an usage , in his country of taking a wife with
the left hand; that he had' espoused his lordship's sister in
that manner; and intends, as soon as she shall be a widow,(823)
to marry her with his right hand also. The Earl replied, that he
knew she was married to an English peer, a most respectable man,
and can know nothing of her marrying any other man; and so they
are gone to Lisbon. Adieu!