Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

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(820) Brother to Lady Diana Beauclerc.

(821) The family of the Hon. Edward Bouverie, brother to the Earl
of Radnor.

(822) Of Berkeley.

(823) Lady Craven became a widow in the following month, and was
married to the Margrave of Anspach in October. See ante, p. 387,
letter 305.

Letter 389 To The Miss Berrys.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 11, 1791. (page 517)

Though I am delighted to know, that of thirteen doleful months
but two remain, yet how full of anxiety will they be! You set out
in still hot weather, and will taste very cold before you arrive!
Accidents, inns, roads, mountains, and the sea, are all in my
map!- but I hope no slopes to be run down, no f`etes for a new
Grand Duke. I should dread your meeting armies, if I had much
faith in the counter-revolution said to be on the anvil. The
French ladies in my vicinage (a, word of the late Lord Chatham's
coin) are all hen-a-hoop on the expectation of a grand alliance
formed for that purpose, and I believe think they shall be at
Paris before you are in England; but I trust one is more certain
than the other. That folly and confusion increase in France
every hour, I have no doubt, and absurdity and contradictions as
rapidly. Their constitution, which they had voted should be
immortal and unchangeable,-though they deny that any thing
antecedent to themselves ought to have been so,-they are now of
opinion must be revised at the commencement of next century; and
they are agitating a third constitution, before they have thought
of a second, or finished the first! Bravo! In short, Louis Onze
could not have laid deeper foundations for despotism than these
levellers, who have rendered the name of liberty odious--the
surest way of destroying the dear essence!

I have no news for you, but a sudden match patched up for Lord
Blandford, with a little more art than was employed by the fair
Gunnilda. It is with Lady Susan Stewart, Lord Galloway's
daughter, contrived by and at the house of her relation and Lord
Blandford's friend, Sir Henry Dashwood ; and it is to be so
instantly, that her grace, his mother, will scarce have time to
forbid the bans.(824)

We have got a codicil to summer, that is as delightful as, I
believe, the seasons in the Fortunate Islands. It is pity it
lasts but till seven in the evening, and then one remains with a
black chimney for five hours. I wish the sun was not so
fashionable as never to come into the country till autumn and the
shooting season; as if Niobe's children were not hatched and
fledged before the first of September. Apropos, Sir William
Hamilton has actually married his Gallery of Statues, and they
are set out on their return to Naples. I am sorry I did not see
her attitudes, which Lady Di. (a tolerable judge!) prefers to any
thing she ever saw: still I do not much care. I have at this
moment a commercial treaty with Italy, and hope in two months to
be a greater gainer by the exchange; and I shall not be SO
generous as Sir William, and exhibit my wives in pantomime to the
public. 'Tis well I am to have the originals again; for that
wicked swindler, Miss Foldson, has not yet given up their
portraits.

The newspapers are obliged to live Upon the diary of the King's
motions at Weymouth. Oh! I had forgot. Lord Cornwallis has
taken Bangalore by storm, promises Seringapatam, and Tippoo Saib
has sued for peace. Diamonds will be as plenty as potatoes, and
gold is as common as copper-money in Sweden. I was told last
night, that a director of the Bank affirms, that two millions
five hundred thousand pounds, in specie, have already been
remitted or brought over hither from France since their
revolution.

(824) The marriage took place four days after the date of this
letter.-E.

Letter 390 To The Miss Berrys.
Strawberry Hill, Friday night late, Sept. 16, 1791. (page 519)

As I am constantly thinking of you two, I am as constantly
writing to you, when I have a vacant quarter of an hour.
Yesterday was red-lettered in the almanacks of Strawberry and
Cliveden, Supposing you to set out towards them, as you intended;
the sun shone all day, and the moon at night, and all nature, for
three miles round, looked gay. Indeed, we have had nine or ten
days of such warmth and serenity, (here called heat,) as I scarce
remember when the year begins to have gray, or rather yellow
hairs. All windows have been flung up again and fans ventilated;
and it is true that hay-carts have been transporting haycocks,
from a second crop, all the morning from Sir Francis Basset's
island opposite to my windows. The setting sun and the long
autumnal shades enriched the landscape to a Claude Lorrain.
Guess whether I hoped to see such a scene next year: if I do not,
may you! at least, it will make you talk of me! The gorgeous
season' and poor partridges. I hear, have emptied London
entirely, and yet Drury-lane is removed to the Opera-house. Do
you know that Mrs. Jordan is acknowledged to be Mrs. Ford, and
Miss Brunton(825) Mrs. Merry, but neither quits the stage? The
latter's captain, I think, might quit his poetic profession,
without any loss to the public. My gazettes will have kept you
so much au courant, that you will be as ready for any
conversation at your return, as if you had only been at a
watering-place. In short, -a votre intention, and to make my
letters as welcome as I can, I listen to and bring home a
thousand things, which otherwise I should not know I heard.

Lord Buchan is screwing out a little ephemeral fame from
instituting a jubilee for Thomson.(826) I fear I shall not make
my court to Mr. Berry, by owning I would not give this last
week's fine weather for all the four Seasons in blank verse.
There is more nature in L'Allegro and Penseroso, than in all the
laboured imitations Of Milton. What is there in Thomson of
original?

Berkeley Square, Monday night, 19th.

You have alarmed me exceedingly, by talking of returning through
France, against which I thought myself quite secure, or I should
not have pressed you to stir, yet. I have been making all the
inquiries I could amongst the foreign ministers at Richmond, and
I cannot find any belief of' the march of armies towards France.
Nay, the Comte d'Artois is said to be gone to PetersbUrgh; and he
must bring back forces in a balloon, if he can be time enough to
interrupt your passage through Flanders. One thing I must
premise, if, which I deprecate, You should set foot in France; I
beg you to burn, and not to bring a scrap of paper with you.
Mere travelling ladies as young as you, I know have been stopped
and rifled, and detained in France to have their papers examined;
and one was rudely treated, because the name of a French lady of
her acquaintance was mentioned in a private letter to her, though
in no political light. Calais is one of the worst places you can
pass; for, as they suspect money being remitted through that town
to England, the search and delays there are extremely strict and
rigorous. The pleasure of seeing you would be bought infinitely
too dear by your meeting with any disturbance; as my impatience
for your setting out is already severely punished by the fright
you have given me. One charge I can wipe off; but it were the
least of my faults. I never thought of your settling at Cliveden
in November, if your house in town is free. All my wish was,
that you would come for a night to Strawberry, and that the next
day I might put you in possession of Cliveden. I did not think
of engrossing you from all your friends, who must wish to embrace
you at your return.

Tuesday.

I am told that on the King's acceptance of the constitution,
there is a general amnesty published, and passports taken off.
If this is true, the passage through France, for mere foreigners
and strangers, may be easier and safer; but be assured, of all, I
would not embarrass your journey unnecessarily; but, for Heaven's
sake! be well informed. I advise nothing: I dread every thing
where your safeties are in question, and I hope Mr. Berry is as
timorous as I am. My very contradictions prove the anxiety of my
mind, or I should not torment those I love so much; but how not
love those who sacrifice so much for me, and who, I hope, forgive
all my unreasonable inconsistencies. Adieu! adieu!

(825) An actress of considerable talent and personal attractions.
Her sister, also a popular actress, was married, in 1807, to the
Earl of Craven.-E.

(826) The jubilee took place on the 22d of September, at
Ednam-hill. On crowning the first edition of "The Seasons" with
a wreath of bays, Lord Buchan delivered an eulogy on the poet,
containing the following singular passage:--"I think myself happy
to have this day the honour of endeavouring to do honour to the
memory of Thomson, which has been profanely touched by the rude
hand of Samuel Johnson: whose fame and reputation indicate the
decline of taste in a country that, after having produced an
Alfred, a Wallace, a Bacon, a Napier, a Newton, a Buchanan, a
Milton, a Hampden, a Fletcher, and a Thomson, can submit to be
bullied by an overbearing pedant."-E.

Letter 391 To The Miss Berrys.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 25, 1791. (page 520)

How I love to see My numeros increase.(827) I trust they will
not reach sixty! in short, I try every nostrum to make absence
seem shorter; and yet, with all my conjuration, I doubt the next
five or six weeks will, like the harvest-moon, appear of a
greater magnitude than all the moons of the year, its
predecessors. I wish its successor, the hunter's moon, could
seem less in proportion; but, on the contrary! I hate travelling,
and roads. and inns myself: while you are on your way, I shall
fancy, like Don Quixote, that every inn is the castle of some
necromancer, and every windmill a giant; and these will be my
smallest terrors.

Whether this will meet or follow you, I know not. Yours of the
5th of this month arrived yesterday, but could not direct me
beyond Basle. I must, then, remain still 11 in ignorance whether
you will take the German or French route. It is now, I think,
certain that there will no attempt against France be made this
year. Still I trust that you will not decide till you are
assured that you may come through France without trouble or
molestation; and I still prefer Germany, though it will protract
your absence.

I am sorry you were disappointed of going to Valombroso. Milton
has made every body wish to have seen it; which is my wish, for
though I was thirteen months at Florence (at twice ), I never did
see it. In fact, I was so tired of seeing when I was abroad,
that I have several of these pieces of repentance on my
conscience, when they come into my head; and yet I saw too much
for the quantity left such a confusion in my head, that I do not
remember a quarter clearly. Pictures, statues, and buildings
were always so much my passion, that, for the time, I surfeited
myself; especially as one is carried to see a vast deal that is
not worth seeing. They who are industrious and correct, and wish
to forget nothing, should go to Greece, where there is nothing
left to be seen, but that ugly pigeon-house, the Temple of the
Winds, that fly-cage, Demosthenes's lanthorn, and one or two
fragments of a portico, or a piece of a column crushed into a mud
wall; and with such a morsel, and many quotations, a true classic
antiquary can compose a whole folio, and call it Ionian
Antiquities!(828) Such gentry do better still when they journey
to Egypt to visit the pyramids, which are of a form which one
think nobody could conceive without seeing, though their form is
all that is to be seen; for it seems that even prints and
measures do not help one to an idea of magnitude: indeed, the
measures do not; for no two travellers have agreed on the
measures. In that scientific country, too, you may guess that
such or such a vanished city stood within five or ten miles of
such a parcel of land; and when you have conjectured in vain, at
what some rude birds, or rounds or squares, on a piece of an old
stone may have signified, you may amuse your readers with an
account of the rise of the Nile, some feats of the-Mamelukes, and
finish your work with doleful tales of the robberies of the wild
Arabs. One benefit does arise from travelling: it cures one of
liking what is worth seeing especially if what you have seen is
bigger than what you do see. Thus, Mr. Gilpin, having visited
all the lakes, could find no beauty in Richmond-hill. If he
would look through Mr. Herschell's telescope at the profusion of
worlds, perhaps he would find out that Mount Atlas is an
ant-hill; and that the sublime and beautiful may exist
separately.

(827) Mr. Walpole numbered all the letters written by him to the
Miss Berrys during their residence abroad.-E.

(828) The first volume of "Ionian Antiquities," in imperial folio
edited by R. Chandler, N. Revett, and W. Pais, was published in
1769; a second, edited by the Society of Dilettanti, appeared in
1797.-E.

Letter 392 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 27, 1791. (page 522)

Your letter was most welcome, as yours always are; and I answer
it immediately, though our post comes in so late that this will
not go away till to-morrow. Nay, I write, though I shall see you
on Sunday, and have not a tittle to tell you. I lead so insipid
a life, that, though I am content with it, it can furnish me with
nothing but repetitions. I scarce ever stir from home in a
morning; and most evenings go and play at loto with the French at
Richmond, where I am heartily tired of hearing of nothing but
their absurd countrymen, -absurd, both democrates and
aristocrates. Calonne sends them gross lies, that raise their
hopes to the skies - and in two days they hear of nothing but
horrors and disappointments; and the poor souls! they are in
despair. I can say nothing to comfort them, but what I firmly
believe, which is, total anarchy must come on rapidly. Nobody
pays the taxes that are laid; and which, intended to produce
eighty millions a month, do not bring in six. The new Assembly
will fall on the old,(829) probably plunder the richest, and
certainly disapprove of much they have done; for can eight
hundred new ignorants approve of what has been done by twelve
hundred almost as Ignorant, and who were far from half agreeing?
And then their immortal constitution (which, besides, is to be
mightily mended nine years hence) will die before it has cut any
of its teeth but its grinders. The exiles are enraged at their
poor King for saving his own life by a forced acceptance:(830)
and yet I know no obligation he has to his noblesse, who all ran
away to save their own lives; not a gentleman, but the two poor
gendarmes at Versailles, having lost their lives in his defence.
I suppose La Fayette, Barnave,(831) the Lameths, etc. will run
away too,(832) when the new tinkers and cobblers, of whom the
present elect are and will be composed, proceed on the levelling
system taught them by their predecessors, who., like other
levellers, have taken good care of themselves, Good Dr.
Priestley's friend, good Monsieur Condorcet, has got a place in
the treasury of one thousand pounds a year:-ex uno disce omnes!
And thus a set of rascals, who might, with temper and discretion,
have obtained a very wholesome Constitution, Witness Poland! have
committed infinite mischief, infinite cruelty, infinite
injustice, and left a shocking precedent against liberty, unless
the Poles are as much admired and imitated as the French ought to
be detested. I do not believe the Emperor will stir yet; he, or
his ministers, must see that it is the interest of Germany to let
France destroy itself. His interference yet might unite and
consolidate, at least check further confusion and though I rather
think that twenty thousand men might march from one end of France
to the other, as, though the officers often rallied, French
soldiers never were stout; yet, having no officers, no
discipline, no subordination, little resistance might be
expected. Yet the enthusiasm that has been spread might turn
into courage. Still it were better for Caesar to wait. Quarrels
amongst themselves will dissipate enthusiasm; and, if they have
no foreign enemy, they will soon have spirit enough to turn their
swords against one another, and what enthusiasm remains will soon
be converted into the inveteracy of faction. This is
speculation, not prophecy; I do not pretend to guess what will
happen: I do think I know what will not; I mean, the system of
experiments that they call a constitution cannot last.
Marvellous indeed would it be, if a set of military noble lads,
pedantic academicians, curates of villages, and country
advocates, could in two years, amidst the utmost confusion and
altercation amongst themselves, dictated to or thwarted by
obstinate clubs of various factions, have achieved what the
wisdom of all ages and all nations has never been able to
compose--a system of government that would set four-and-twenty
millions of people free, and contain them within any bounds!
This, too, without one great man amongst them. If they had had,
as Mirabeau seemed to promise to be, but as we know that he was,
too, a consummate villain, there would soon have been an end of
their vision of liberty. And so there will be still, unless,
after a civil war, they split into small kingdoms or
commonwealths. A little nation may be free; for it can be upon
its guard. Millions cannot be so; because, the greater number of
men that are one people, the more vices, the more abuses there
are, that will either require or furnish pretexts for restraints;
and if vices are the mother of laws, the execution of laws is the
father of power:-and of such parents one knows the progeny.

(829) The Constitutional Assembly closed its sittings on the 30th
of September; having, during the three years of its existence,
enacted thirteen hundred laws and decrees, relative to
legislation, or to the general administration of the state. The
first sitting of the, Legislative Assembly took place on the
following day.-E.

(830) The King, on the 14th Of September, had accepted the new
constitution, and sworn to maintain it.-E.

(831) For expressing his opinion, that the new constitution
inclined too much to a democracy, Barnave, after fifteen months,
imprisonment at Grenoble was tried before the revolutionary
tribunal, condemned to death, and guillotined on the 29th of
November 1793.-E.

(832) The two Lameths, Charles and Alexander, fled the country,
The latter, having fallen into the hands of the Austrians with La
Fayette, shared his captivity, till December 1795.-E.

Letter 393 To Miss Hannah More.
Berkeley Square, Sept, 29, 1791. (page 523)

My dear madam,
I have been very sorry, but not at all angry, at not hearing from
you so long. With all your friendly and benevolent heart, I know
by experience how little you love writing to your friends; and I
know why: you think you lose moments which you could employ in
doing more substantial good; and that your letters only pamper
our minds, but do not feed or clothe our bodies; if they did, you
would coin as much paper as the French do in assignats. Do not
imagine now that you have committed a wicked thing by writing to
me at last: comfort yourself, that your conscience, not
temptation, forced you to write; and be assured, I am as grateful
as if you had written from choice, not from duty, as your
constant spiritual director.

I have been out of order the whole summer, but not very ill for
above a fortnight. I caught a painful rheumatism by, going into
a very crowded church on a rainy day, where all the windows were
open, to hear our friend the Bishop of London preach a charity
sermon here at Twickenham. My gout would not resign to a new
incumbent, but came too; and both together have so lamed my right
arm, though I am now using it, that I cannot yet extend it
entirely, nor lift it to the top of my head. However, I am free
from pain; and as Providence, though it supplied us originally
with so many bounties, took care we might shift with succedaneums
on the loss of several of them, I am content with what remains of
my stock; and since all my fingers are not useless, and that I
have not six hairs left, I am not much grieved at not being able
to comb my head. Nay, should not such a shadow as I have ever
been, be thankful, that at the eve of seventy-five I am not yet
passed away?

I am so little out of charity with the Bishop for having been the
innocent cause of the death of my shoulder, that I am heartily
concerned for him and her on Mrs. Porteus's accident.(833) It
may have marbled her complexion, but I am persuaded has not
altered her lively, amiable, good-humoured countenance. As I
know not where to direct to them, and as you cannot suppose it a
sin for a sheep to write to its pastor on a week-day, I wish you
would mark the interest I take in their accident and escape from
worse mischief.

I thank you most cordially for your inquiry after my wives. I am
in the utmost perplexity Of mind about them; torn between hopes
and fears. I believe them set out from Florence on their return
since yesterday se'nnight, and consequently feel all the joy and
impatience of expecting them in five or six weeks: but then,
besides fears of roads, bad inns, accidents, heats and colds, and
the sea to cross in November at last, all my satisfaction is
dashed by the uncertainty whether they Come through Germany or
France. I have advised, begged, implored, that it may not be
through those Iroquois, Lestryons, Anthropophagi, the Franks; and
then, hearing passports were abolished, and the roads more
secure, I half Consented, as they wished it, and the road is much
shorter; and then I repented, and have contradicted myself again.
And now I know not which route they wilt take: nor shall enjoy
any comfort from the thoughts of their return, till they are
returned safe.

'Tis well I am doubly guaranteed, or who knows, as I am as old
almost as both her husbands together, but Mrs. B-- might have
cast a longing eye towards me? How I laughed at hearing of her
throwing a second muckender to a Methusalem! a red-faced veteran,
with a portly hillock of flesh. I conclude all her grandfathers
are dead; or, as there is no prohibition in the table of
consanguinity against male ancestors, she would certainly have
stepped back towards the Deluge, and ransacked her pedigrees on
both sides for some kinsman of the patriarchs. I could titter a
plusieurs reprises; but I am too old to be improper, and you are
too modest to be impropered to: and so I will drop the subject at
the herald's office.

I am happy at and honour Miss Burney's resolution in casting away
golden, or rather gilt chains: others, out of vanity, would have
worn them till they had eaten into the bone. On that charming
young woman's chapter I agree with you perfectly; not a jot on
Deborah * * * * whom you admire: i have neither read her verses,
nor will. As I have not your aspen conscience, I cannot forgive
the heart of a woman that is party per pale blood and tenderness,
that curses our clergy and feels for negroes. Can I forget the
14th of July, when they all contributed their fagot to the fires
that her presbytyrants (as Lord Melcombe called them) tried to
light in every Smithfield in the island; and which, as Price and
Priestley applauded in France, it would be folly to suppose they
did not only wish, but meant to kindle here ? Were they ignorant
of the atrocious barbarities, injustice, and violation of oaths
committed in France? Did Priestley not know that the clergy there
had no option but between starving and perjury? And what does he
think of the poor man executed at Birmingham, who declared at his
death, he had been provoked by the infamous handbill? I know not
who wrote it. No, my good friend: Deborah may cant rhymes of
compassion, but she is a hypocrite; and you shall not make me
read her, nor, with all your sympathy and candour, can you esteem
her. Your compassion for the poor blacks is genuine, sincere
from your soul, most amiable; hers, a measure of faction. Her
party supported the abolition, and regretted the disappointment
as a blow to the good cause. I know this. Do not let your piety
lead you into the weakness of respecting the bad, only because
they hoist the flag of religion, while they carry a stiletto in
the flagstaff. Did not they, previous to the 14th of July,
endeavour to corrupt the guards? What would have ensued, had they
succeeded, you must tremble to think!

You tell me nothing of your own health. May I flatter myself it
is good? I wish 1 knew so authentically! and I wish I could guess
when I should see you, without your being staked to the fogs of
the Thames at Christmas; I cannot desire that. Adieu, my very
valuable friend! I am, though unworthy, yours most cordially.

(833) An overturn in a carriage.

Letter 394 To Miss Berry.
Strawberry Hill, Oct. 9, 1791. (page 526)

It will be a year to-morrow since you set out: next morning came
the storm that gave me such a panic for you! In March happened
your fall, and the wound on your nose; and in July your fever.
For sweet Agnes I have happily had no separate alarm: yet I have
still a month of apprehension to come for both! All this mass of
vexation and fears is to be compensated by the transport at your
return, and by the complete satisfaction on your installation at
Cliveden. But could I believe, that when my clock had struck
seventy-four, I could pass a year in such agitation! It may he
taken for dotage; and I have for some time expected to be
superannuated: but, though I task myself severely, I do not find
my intellects impaired; though I may be a bad judge myself, You
may, perhaps, perceive it by my letters; and don't imagine I am
laying a snare for flattery. No! I am only jealous about myself,
that you two may have created such an attachment, without owing
it to my weakness. Nay, I have some colt's limbs left, which I
as little suspected as my anxieties.