Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

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Letter 400 To Miss Hannah More.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 9, 1793. (PAGE 535)

My holy Hannah, WITH your innate and usual goodness and sense,
you have done me justice by guessing exactly at the cause of my
long silence. You have been apt to tell me that my letters
diverted you. How then could I write, when it was impossible but
to attrist you! when I could speak of nothing but unparalleled
horrors! and but awaken your sensibility, if it slumbered for a
moment! What mind could forget the 10th of August and the 2d of
September; and that the black and bloody year 1792 has plunged
its murderous dagger still deeper, and already made 1793 still
more detestably memorable! though its victim(844) has at last
been rewarded for four years of torture by forcing from him every
kind of proof of the most perfect character that ever sat on a
throne. Were these, alas! themes for letters? Nay, am I not
sure that you have been still more shocked by a crime that passes
even the guilt of shedding the blood of poor Louis, to hear of
atheism avowed, and the avowal tolerated by monsters calling
themselves a National Assembly! But I have no words that can
reach the criminality of such inferno-human beings, but must
compose a term that aims at conveying my idea of them.
For the future it will be sufficient to call them the French; I
hope no other nation will ever deserve to be confounded with
them!

Indeed, my dear friend, I have another reason for wishing to burn
my pen entirely: all my ideas are confounded and overturned; I do
not know whether all I ever learned in the seventy first years of
my seventy-five was not wrong and false: common sense, reasoning,
calculation, conjecture from analogy and from history of past
events, all, all have been baffled; nor am I sure that what used
to be thought the result of experience and wisdom was not a mass
of mistakes. Have I not found, do I not find, that the invention
of establishing metals as the signs of property was an useless
discovery, or at least only useful till the art of making paper
was found out? Nay, the latter is preferable to gold and silver.
If the ores were adulterated and cried down, nobody
would take them in exchange. Depreciate paper as much as you
will, and it will still serve all the purposes of barter.
Tradesmen still keep shops, stock them with goods, and deliver
their commodities for those coined rags. Poor Reason, where art
thou?

To show you that memory and argument are Of no value, at least
with me, I thought a year or two that this papermint would soon
blow UP, because I remembered that when Mr. Charles Fox and one
or two more youths of brilliant genius first came to light, and
into vast debts at play, they imparted to the world an important
secret which they had discovered. It was, that nobody needed to
want money, if they would pay enough for it. Accordingly, they
borrowed of Jews at vast usury: but as they had made but an
incomplete calculation, the interest so soon exceeded the
principal, that the system did not maintain its ground for above
two or three years. Faro has proved a more substantial
speculation. But I miscarried in applying my remembrance to
the assignats, which still maintain their ground against that
long-decried but as long-adored corrupter of virtue, gold.(845)
Alack! I do not hear that virtue has flourished more for the
destruction of its old enemy!

Shall I add another truth? I have been so disgusted
and fatigued by hearing of nothing but French massacres, etc.
and found it so impossible to shift conversation to any other
topic, that before I had been a month in town, I wished Miss
Gunning would revive, that people might have at least one other
subject to interest the ears and tongues of the public. But no
wonder universal attention is engrossed by the present portentous
scene! It seems to draw to a question, whether
Europe or France is to be depopulated; whether civilization can
be recovered, or the republic of Chaos can be supported by
assassination. We have heard of the golden, silver, and iron
ages; the brazen one existed while the French were only
predominantly insolent. What the present age will be
denominated, I cannot guess'. Though the paper age would be
characteristic, it is not emphatic enough, nor specifies the
enormous sins of the fiends that are the agents. I think it may
be styled the diabolical age -. the Duke of Orleans has
dethroned Satan, who since his fall has never instigated such
crimes as Orleans has perpetrated.(846)

Let me soften my tone a little, and harmonize your poor mind by
sweeter accents. In this deluge of triumphant enormities, what
trails of the sublime and beautiful may be gleaned! Did
you hear of Madame Elizabeth, the King's sister? a saint like
yourself. She doted on her brother, for she certainly knew his
soul. In the tumult in July, hearing the populace and the
poissardes had broken into the palace, she flew to the King, and
by embracing him tried to shield his person. The populace took
her for the Queen, cried out "Voil`a cette chienne, cette
Autrichienne!" and were proceeding to violence. Somebody to
save her, screamed "Ce n'est pas la Reine, c'est--"
The Princess said, "Ah! mon Dieu! ne les d`etrompez
pas." If that was not the most sublime instance of perfect
innocence ready prepared for death, I know not where to find one.
Sublime indeed, too, was the sentence of good Father Edgeworth,
the King's confessor, who, thinking his royal penitent a little
dismayed just before the fatal stroke, cried out "Montez, digne
fils de St. Louis! Le ciel vous est ouvert." The holy martyr's
countenance brightened up, and he submitted at once. Such
victims, such confessors as those, and Monsieur do Malesherbes,
repair some of the breaches in human nature made by Orleans,
Condorcet, Santerre, and a legion of evil spirits.

The tide of horrors has hurried me much too far, before I have
vented a note of my most sincere concern for your bad account of
your health. I feel for it heartily, and wish your frame were as
sound as your soul and understanding. What can I recommend? I am
no physician but for my own flimsy texture; which by studying,
and by contradicting all advice, I have drawn to this great age.
Patience, temperance, nay, abstinence, are already yours; in
short, you want to be corrected of nothing but too much piety,
too much rigour towards yourself, and too much sensibility for
others. Is not it possible to serve mankind without feeling too
great pity? Perhaps I am a little too much
hardened, I am grown too little alarmed for the health of my
friends, from being become far more indifferent to life; I look
to the nearness of' my end, as a delivery from spectacles of wo.
We have even amongst us monsters, more criminal, in speculation
at least, than the French. They had cause to wish for correction
of a bad government; though, till taught to dislike it,
three-fourths of the country, I maintain, adored theirs. We have
the perfectest ever yet devised; but if to your numerous readings
of little pamphlets. you would add one more, called "Village
Politics,"(847) infinitely superior to any thing on the subject,
clearer, better stated, and comprehending the whole mass of
matter in the shortest compass, you will be more mistress of the
subject than any man in England. I know Who wrote it, but will
not tell you, because you did not tell me.

(844) On the 21st of January, Louis the Sixteenth had been
beheaded in the Place Louis Quinze, erected to the memory of his
grandfather. M. Thiers thus concludes his account of this
horrible event:--"At ten minutes past ten, the carriage stopped.
Louis rising briskly, stepped out into the Place. Three
executioners came up; he refused their assistance, and stripped
off his clothes himself; but, perceiving that they were going to
bind his hands, he betrayed a movement of indignation, and seemed
ready to resist. M. Edgeworth, whose every expression was then
sublime, gave him, a last look, and said, 'I Suffer this outrage,
as a last resemblance to that God who is about to be your
reward.' At these words the victim, resigned and submissive,
suffered himself to be bound and conducted to the scaffold. All
at once, Louis took a hasty step, separated himself from the
executioners, and advanced to address the people. 'Frenchmen,'
said he, in a firm voice, 'I die innocent of the crimes which
are imputed to me; I forgive the authors of my death, and I pray
that my blood may not fall upon France.' He would have continued
but the drums were instantly ordered to beat: their rolling
drowned the voice of the Prince, the executioners laid hold of
him, and M. Edgeworth took his leave in these memorable words,
''Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven!' As soon as the blood
flowed, furious wretches dipped their pikes and their
handkerchiefs in it spread themselves throughout Paris, shouted
Vive la Republique! vive la nation! and even went to the gates of
the Temple to display their brutal and factious joy." Vol. ii. p.
228.-E.

(845) "The causes which at this time put assignats apparently on
a par with specie were the following. A law forbade, under heavy
penalties, the traffic in specie, that is, the exchange at a loss
of the assignat against money: another law decreed very severe
penalties against those who, in purchases, should bargain for
different prices according as payment was to be made in paper or
in cash: by a last law, it was enacted, that hidden gold, silver,
or jewels, should belong partly to the state, partly to the
informer. Thenceforth people could neither employ specie in
trade nor conceal it; it became troublesome; it exposed the
holders to the risk of being considered suspected persons; they
began to be afraid of it, an(l to find the assignat preferable
for daily use." Thiers, vol. iii. p. 213.-E.

(846) Louis-Philippe-Joseph, Duke of Orleans, who had
relinquished his titles and called himself Philippe Egalit`e, and
become a member of the National Convention, in giving his vote
for the death of his kinsman, had read these words:--"Exclusively
governed by my duty, and convinced that all those who have
resisted the sovereignty of the people deserve death, my vote is
for death!" The atrocity of this vote occasioned great agitation
in the -assembly; it seemed as if, by this single vote, the fate
of the Monarch was irrevocably sealed. On the 6th of November,
in the same year, the Duke was himself brought before the
revolutionary tribunal, and condemned on account of the
suspicions which he had excited in all parties. "Odious," says
M. Thiers "to the emigrants, Suspected by the Girondins and the
Jacobins, he inspired none of those regrets which afford some
consolation for an unjust death. A universal disgust, an
absolute scepticism were his last sentiments; and he went to the
scaffold with extraordinary composure and indifference, As he was
drawn along the Rue St. Honor`e, he beheld his palace with a dry
eye, and never belied for a moment his disgust of men and of
life," Vol. iii, P. 205--E.

(847) A little work which Miss More had Just published
anonymously. The sale of it was enormous. Many thousands were
sent by government to Scotland and Ireland. Several persons
printed large editions Of it at their own expense; and in London
Only many hundred thousands were circulated.-E.

Letter 401 To Miss Hannah More.
Berkeley Square, March 23, 1793.(page 538)

I shall certainly not leave off taunting your virtues, my
excellent friend, for I find it sometimes makes you correct them.
I scolded you for your modesty in not acquainting me with your
"Village Politics" even after they were published; and you have
already conquered that unfriendly delicacy, and announced another
piece of which you are in labour. Still I se there wanted your
ghostly father, the )Bishop of London, to join you to be quite
shameless and avow your natural child.(848) I do approve his
doctrine: calling it by your own name will make its fortune. If,
like Rousseau, you had left your babe among the enfans trouv`es,
it might never be heard of more than his poor issue have been;
for I can but observe that the French patriots, who have made
such a fuss with his ashes, have not taken the smallest pains to
attempt to discover his real progeny, which might not have been
impossible by collating dates and circumstances. I am proud of
having imitated you at a great distance, and been persuaded, much
against my will and practice, to let my name be put to the second
subscription for the poor French clergy, as it was thought it
might tend to animate that consumptive contribution.

I am impatient for your pamphlet, not only as being yours, but
hoping it will invigorate horror against French atheism, which, I
am grieved to say did not by any means make due impression. very
early apply to your confessor, to beg he would enjoin his clergy
to denounce that shocking impiety; I could almost recommend to
you to add a slight postscript on the massacre of that wretch
Manuel. I do not love such insects as we are dispensing
judgments yet, if the punishment of that just victim might
startle such profane criminals, it might be charity to suggest
the hint to them.

24th.

I must modify the massacre of Manuel; he has been a good deal
stabbed, but will, they say, recover.(849) Perhaps it is better
that some of those assassins should live to acknowledge, that "Do
not to others what you would not have done to you" is not so
silly a maxim as most of the precepts of morality and Justice
have lately been deemed by philosophers and legislators--titles
self-assumed by men who have abolished all other titles; and who
have disgraced and debased the former denomination, and under the
latter have enjoined triple perjuries, and at last cannot fix on
any code which should exact more forswearing. I own I am pleased
that that ruffian pedant Condorcet's new constitution was too
clumsy and unwieldy to go down the throats of those who have
swallowed every thing else. I did but just cast my eyes on the
beginning and end, and was so lucky as to observe the hypocrite's
contradiction: he sets out with declaration of equality, and
winds up with security of property; that is, we will plunder
every body, and then entail the spoils on ourselves and our
(wrong) heirs.(850)

Well! that bloody chaos seems recoiling on themselves! It looks
as if civil war was bursting out in many provinces, and will
precipitate approaching famine. When, till now, could one make
such a reflection without horror to one's self? But, alas! have
not the French brought it to the question, whether Europe or
France should be laid desolate'! Religion, morality, justice,
have been stabbed, torn up by the roots: every right has been
trampled under foot. Marriage has been profaned and undermined
by law; and no wonder, that, amidst such excesses, the poor arts
have shared in the common ruin! And who have been the
perpetrators of, or advocates for, such universal devastation?
Philosophers, geometricians, astronomers--a Condorcet, a Bailly,
a Bishop of Autun, and a Doctor Priestley, and the last the
worst. The French had seen grievances, crying grievances! yet
not under the good late King. But what calamities or dangers
threatened or had fallen on Priestley, but want of papal power,
like his predecessor Calvin? If you say his house was burnt -but
did he intend the fire should blaze on that side of the street?
Your charity may believe him innocent, but your understanding
does not. Well! I am glad to hear he is going to America; I
hope he will not bring back scalping, even to that National
Assembly of which he was proud of being elected a member! I doubt
if Cartouche would have thought it an honour. It was stuck up in
Lloyd's coffeehouse lately, that the Duke of Orleans was named
"Chef de la R`epublique." I thought it should be "Chef de la Lie
publique."

(848) Miss More had informed Walpole, that she was occupied in
writing her "Remarks" on the atheistical speech of M. Dupont,
made in the National Convention; and to which the Bishop of
London had recommended her to put her name.-E.

(849) Manuel was deeply implicated in the massacres of 1792; in
consequence of which he was nominated a deputy to the National
Convention. He resigned his seat in January 1793, and retired to
Montargis, where he narrowly escaped assassination. He was
afterwards seized as a suspected person. On being brought before
the revolutionary tribunal, he reminded his judges of his
services, and desired it might be engraved on his tombstone, that
he had occasioned the events of the 10th of August. He was
guillotined in November 1793.-E.

(850) In the following July, Condorcet was accused of being an
accomplice with Brissot, and, to save his life, concealed himself
in the house of Madame Verney, where he remained eight months.
Having at length learned that death was denounced against all who
harboured a proscribed individual, he fled in disguise from
Paris. He wandered about for some time, until, driven by hunger,
he entered a small public-house at Clamar, where he was arrested
as a suspicious person, and thrown into prison. On the following
morning, March 28, 1794, he was found dead on the floor of his
room, having apparently swallowed poison, which he always carried
about with him.-E.

Letter 402 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, June 13, 1793. (page 540)

I thank you much for all your information--some parts made me
smile: yet, if what you heard of your brother proves true, I
rather think it deplorable! How can love of money, or the still
vainer of all vanities, ambition of wearing a high but most
insignificant office, which even poor Lord Salisbury could
execute, tempt a very old man, who loves his ease and his own
way, to stoop to wait like a footman behind a chair, for hours,
and in a court whence he had been cast Ignominiously? I believe
I have more pride than most men alive: I could be flattered by
honours acquired by merit, or by some singular action of `eclat;
but for titles, ribands, offices of no business, which any body
can fill, and must be given to many, I should just as soon be
proud of being the top squire in a country village.(851) It is
only worse to have waded to distinction through dirt, like Lord
Auckland.(852) All this shifting of scenes may, as you say, be
food to the Fronde --Sed defendit numerus. It is perfectly
ridiculous to use any distinction of parties but the ins and the
outs. Many years ago I thought that the wisest appellations for
contending factions ever assumed, were those in the Roman empire,
who called themselves the greens and the blues: it was so easy,
when they changed sides, to slide from one colour to the other;
and then a blue might plead that he had never been true blue, but
always a greenish blue; and vice versa. I allow that the
steadiest party-man may be staggered by novel and unforeseen
circumstances. The outrageous proceedings of the French
republicans have wounded the cause of liberty, and will, I fear,
have shaken it for centuries; for Condorcet and such fiends are
worse than the imperial and royal dividers of Poland. But I do
not see why detestation of anarchy and assassination must
immediately make one fall in love with garters and seals.

I am sitting by the fire, as I have done ever since I came
hither; and since I do not expect warm weather in June, I am
wishing for rain, or I shall not have a mouthful of hay, nor a
noseful of roses. Indeed, as I have seen several fields of hay
cut, I wonder it has not brought rain, as usual. My creed is,
that rain is good for hay, as I conclude every climate and its
productions are suited to each other. Providence did not trouble
itself about its being more expensive to us to make our hay over
and over; it only took care it should not want water enough.
Adieu!

(851) On the 29th of this month, the Earl of Hertford was created
a Marquis. He died on the 14th of June, in the following year,
at the age of seventy-five.-E.

(852) On the 23d of May, William Eden, Lord Auckland, had been
created an English peer.-E.

Letter 403 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, Wednesday night, late, July 17, 1793. (page 541)

I am just come from dining with the Bishop of London at Fulham,
where I found Lord and Lady Frederick Campbell, who told me of
the alarm you had from hearing some screams that you thought Lady
Ailesbury's, and the disorder brought upon you by flying to
assist her. I do not at all wonder at your panic, and rejoice it
was not founded, and that you recovered so soon. I am not going
to preach against your acting so naturally: but as you have some
complaint on your breast, I must hope you will remember this
accident, and be upon Your guard against both sudden and rapid
exertions, when you have not a tantamount call. I conclude the
excessive heat we have had for twelve complete days contributed
to overpower you.

It is much cooler to-day, yet still delicious; for be it known to
you that I have enjoyed weather worthy of Africa,(853) and yet
without swallowing mouthfuls of musquitos, nor expecting to hear
hyenas howl in the village, nor to find scorpions in my bed.
Indeed, all the way I came home, I could but gaze at the felicity
of my countrymen. The road was one string of stage-coaches
loaded within and without with noisy jolly folks, and chaises and
gigs that had been pleasuring in clouds of dust; every door and
every window of every house was open, lights in every shop, every
door with women sitting in the street, every inn crowded with
jaded horses, and every alehouse full of drunken topers; for you
know the English always announce their sense of heat or cold by
drinking. Well! it was' impossible not to enjoy such a scene of
happiness and affluence in every village, and amongst the lowest
of the people; and who are told by villanous scribblers, that
they are oppressed and miserable. New streets, new towns, are
rising every day and every where; the earth is covered with
gardens and crops of grain.

How bitter to turn from this Elysiurn to the temple at Paris! The
fiends there have now torn her son from the Queen!(854) Can one
believe that they are human beings, who 'midst all their
confusions sit coolly meditating new tortures, new anguish for
that poor, helpless, miserable woman, after four years of
unexampled sufferings? Oh! if such crimes are not made a
dreadful lesson, this world might become a theatre of cannibals!

I hope the checks in Bretagne are legends coined by miscreants at
Paris. What can one believe? Well, I will go to bed, and try to
dream of peace and plenty; and though my lawn is burnt, and my
peas and beans, and roses and strawberries parched, I will bear 4
with patience till the harvest is got in. Saint Swithin can
never hold his water for forty days, though he can do the
contrary. Good night!

(853) Bishop Porteus, writing to Miss More on the 12th of August
says, "Your friend Lord Orford and myself are, I believe, the
only persons in the kingdom who are worthy of the hot weather--
the only true genuine summer we have had for the last thirty
years: we both agreed that it was perfectly celestial, and that
it was quite scandalous to huff it away as some people did. A
few days before it arrived, all the world was complaining of the
dreadfully cold northeast wind; and in three days after the
warmer weather came in every body was quarrelling with the heat,
and sinking under the rays of the sun. Such is that consistent
and contented thing called human nature!"-E.

(854) Marie Antoinette was separated from her sister, her
daughter, and her son, by virtue of a decree which ordered the
trial. Weber, in his memoirs of her, states, that the separation
from her son was so touching, so heartrending that the very
gaolers who witnessed the scene confessed, when they were giving
an account of' it to the authorities, that they could not refrain
from tears.-E.

Letter 404 To The Miss Berrys.(855)
Tuesday night, 8 o'clock, Sept. 17, 1793. (page 542)

My beloved spouses,
whom I love better than Solomon loved his one spouse--or his one
thousand. I lament that the summer is over; not because of its
uniquity, but because you two made it so delightful to me, that
six weeks of gout could not sour it. Pray take care of
yourselves-not for your own sakes, but for mine: for, as I have
just had my quota of gout, I may, possibly, expect to see another
summer: and, as you allow that I do know my own, and when I wish
for any thing and have it, am entirely satisfied, you may depend
upon it that I shall be as happy with a third summer, if I reach
it, as I have been with the two last.

Consider, that I have been threescore years and ten looking for a
society that I perfectly like; and at last there dropped out of
the clouds into Lady Herries's room two young gentlewomen, who I
so little thought were sent thither on purpose for me, that When
I was told they were the charming Miss Berrys, I would not even
go to the side of the chamber where they sat. But, as Fortune
never throws any thing at one's head without hitting one, I soon
found that the charming Berrys were precisely ce qu'il me
fallait; and that though young enough to be my
great-grand-daughters, lovely enough to turn the heads of all our
youths, and sensible enough, if said youths have any brains, to
set all their heads to rights again. Yes, sweet damsels, I have
found that you can bear to pass half your time with an
antediluvian, without discovering any ennui or disgust; though
his greatest merit towards you is, that he is not one of those
old fools who fancy they are in love in their dotage. I have no
such vagary; though I am not sorry that some folks think I am so
absurd, since it frets their selfishness. The Mackinsys,
Onslows, Miss Pelham, and Madame de Cambis have dined here; and
to-morrow I shall have the flamptonians and other Richmondists.
I must repeat it; keep in mind that both of you are delicate, and
not strong. If you return in better health, I shall not repine
at your journey. Good night!