Books: Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

H >> Horace Walpole >> Letters of Horace Walpole, V4

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67

(872) Widow of Dr. John Hunter.

(873) A manner of designating the Countess of Ailesbury.

(874) Two old ladies of his society, whom he thus called.

(875) Sisters to the great Earl of Mansfield.

(876) Samuel Lysons, Esq. brother to the Rev. Daniel Lysons, of
whom a notice has been given at p. 438, (letter 344, note 674(,
and author of several works relating to the Roman Antiquities of
Great Britain. He also published, in conjunction with his
brother, the earlier volumes of the "Magna Britannica." In 1804,
be succeeded Mr. Astle as keeper of the records in the Tower of
London; which office he held till his death in 1819. Mr.
Mathias, in November 1797, described him as "one of the most
judicious, best-informed, and most learned amateur antiquaries in
the kingdom in his department;" and his work on the remains of
the Roman villa and pavements near Gloucester, as "such a
specimen of ingenuity, unwearied zeal, and critical accuracy in
delineating and illustrating the fragments of antiquity, as
rarely had been equalled, certainly never surpassed." See
Pursuits of Literature.-E.

(877) The following is Mr. Gifford's opinion of the
qualifications of the lady for such a work--"Though no one better
knows his own house' than I the vanity of this woman; yet the
idea of her undertaking it had never entered my head; and I was
thunderstruck when I first saw it announced. To execute it with
any tolerable degree of success, required a rare combination of
talents, among the least of which may be numbered neatness of
style, acuteness of perception, and a more than common accuracy
of discrimination; and Mrs. Piozzi brought to the task, a jargon
long since become proverbial for its vulgarity, an utter
incapacity of defining a single term in the language, and just as
much Latin from a child's syntax as sufficed to expose the
ignorance she so anxiously labours to conceal." See Baviad and
Maviad.-E.

Letter 410 To Miss Berry.
Berkeley Square, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 1793. (page 552)

I begin my last letter to Bransby, that I may have it ready to
send away the moment I shall have any thing worth telling; which
I certainly have not yet. What is become of Lord Howe and Co.
you may guess if you please, as every body is doing--

"I'm weary of conjectures--"

but shall not end them like Cato, because I take the fate of a
whole fleet a little more likely to come to a solution than
doubts in metaphysics; and if Lord Howe should at last bring home
two or three French men-of-war, one would not be out of the way
to receive them. In the mean time, let us chat as if the destiny
of half Europe were not at this moment in agitation.

I went on Monday evening with Miss Damer to the little Haymarket,
to see "The Children in the Wood," having heard so much of my
favourite, young Bannister, in that new piece; which, by the way,
is well arranged, and near being fine.(878) He more than
answered
my expectation, and all I had heard of him. It was one of the
most admirable performances I ever saw: his transports of despair
and joy are incomparable, and his various countenances would be
adequate to the pencil of Salvator Rosa. He made me shed as many
tears as I suppose the original old ballad did when I was six
years old. Bannister's merit was the more striking, as, before
"The Children in the Wood," he had been playing the sailor in "No
Song no Supper," with equal nature. I wish I could hope to be as
much pleased tomorrow night when I am to go to Jerningham's play;
but there is no Bannister at Covent-garden!

On Sunday night I found the Comte de Coigni(879) at Lady Lucan's.
He was to set out the next morning with Lord Moira's expedition
as a common soldier. This sounded decent and well; but you may
guess that he had squeezed a little Frenchism into his intention,
and had asked for a vessel and some soldiers to attend him. I
don't know whether he has condescended to go without them. I
asked him about his daughter; he said, he did not believe she was
in prison. Others say, it is the Duchesse de Fleury, her
mother-in-law. I have been surprised at not seeing or hearing
any thing of poor Fleury(880) but I am told he has been forced to
abscond, having narrowly escaped being arrested by a coachmaker,
to whom he owed five hundred pounds for carriages: which, to be
sure, he must have had, or
bespoken at Paris before the revolution.

Thursday noon.

Yesterday came a letter to the Admiralty, notifying that Lord
Howe has taken five of the Brest squadron: but this intelligence
is derived through so many somebodys, that handed it to
somebodys, that I am not much inclined, except by wishing it
true, to believe it. However, the wind has got much more to the
west, and now we shall probably not remain much longer in total
darkness.

Three o'clock.

Another account is come to Mrs. Nugent's(881) from her husband,
with the same story of the five captive French men-of-war; and so
that reading is admitted: but for my part, I will admit nothing
but under Lord Howe's own hand. It is tiresome to be like the
scene in Amphitryon, and cry one minute "Obvious, obvious!" and
the next "Dubious, dubious!" Such fluctuability is fit only for a
stock-jobber. Adieu! I must dress and dine, or I shall not be
ready to wait on your grandfather Seton.(882)

(878) See the Memoirs of this admirable comedian, by Mr.
Adolphus, recently published in two volumes octavo. The drama
here spoken of was the production of Mr. Morton, and formed from
the ancient ballad of the cruel uncle who murdered his brother's
children in a wood, that he might inherit the family estate.-E.

(879) Younger brother of the Duc de Coigni, the grand `ecuyer of
Marie Antoinette and great uncle of the present Duc de Coigni.

(880) The Duc de Fleury, the Count de Coigni's son-in-law.

(881) The wife of Admiral Nugent.

(882) he means Mr. Jerningham's play, the Siege of Berwick.

Letter 411 To The Miss Berrys.
Friday, December 13, 1793. (page 553)

You will not wonder at my dulness about the time of your setting
out, and of the giles you are to make on the road: you are used
to my fits of incomprehension; and, as is natural at my age, I
believe they increase. What augmented them was my eagerness to
be sure of every opportunity of sending you the earliest
intelligence of every event that may happen at this critical
period. That impatience has sometimes made me too precipitate in
my information. I believed Lord Howe's success too rapidly: you
have seen by all the newspapers, that both the ministers and the
public were equally credulous, from the collateral channels that
imported such assertions! Well! if you have been disappointed of
capturing five or six French men-of-war, you must at present stay
your appetite by some handsome slices of St. Domingo, and by
plentiful goblets of French blood shed by the Duke of Brunswick;
which we firmly believe, though the official intelligence was not
arrived last night. His Highness, who has been so serene for
above a year, seems to have waked to some purpose and, which is
not less propitious, his victory indicates that his principal,
the King of Prussia, has added no more French jewels to his
regalia. I shall like to hear the National Convention accuse him
of being bribed by a contrary Pitt's diamond.(883) Here is
another comfortable symptom: it looks as if Robespierre would
give up Barr`ere. How fortunate that Beelzebubs and Molochs
peach one another, like human highwaymen! I will tell you a
reflection I have made, and which shows how the worst monsters
counteract their own councils. Many formerly, who meant to
undermine religion, began by sapping the belief of a devil.
Next, by denying God, they have restored Satan to his throne, or
will; though the present system is a republic of fiends. The
Pandemonium below recalls its agents, as if they were only
tribunes of the people elected by temporary factions. Barnave,
called the Butcher in the first Convention, is ,gone, like
Orleans and Brissot. If we do not presume to interpret
judgments, I wonder the monsters themselves do not: enough has
happened already to warn them of their own fate!

The Conways are in town for two or three days: they came for Mr.
Jerningham's play. Harris had at last allowed him the fourth
night; and he had a good night. I have a card from Lady Amherst
for Monday; and shall certainly go, as my lord behaved so nobly
about our cousin.(884) I have another from the Margravine of
Anspach, to sup at Hammersmith; whither I shall certainly not go,
but plead the whole list of chronical distempers. Do you think
if the whole circle of Princes of Westphalia were to ask me for
next Thursday evening,(885) that I would accept the invitation?

Saturday, Dec. 14, 1793.

I am glad this is to be the last of my gazettes. I am tired of
notifying and recalling the articles of news: not that I am going
to dislaurel the Duke of Brunswick; but not a sprig is yet come
in confirmation. Military critics even conjecture, by the
journals from Manheim and Frankfort, that the German victories
have not been much more than repulses of the French, and have
been bought dearly. I have inclined to believe the best from
Wurmser; but I confess my best hopes are from the factions of
Paris. If the gangrene does not gain the core, how calculate the
duration? It has already baffled all computation, all conjecture.
One wonders now that France, in its totality, was not more fatal
to Europe than even it was. Is not it astonishing, that after
five years of such havoc, such emigrations, expulsions,
massacres, annihilation of commerce, evanition Of specie, and
real or impending famine, they can still furnish and support
armies against us and the Austrians in Flanders, against the Duke
of Brunswick and Wurmser, against us at Toulon, against the King
of Sardinia, against Spain, against the Royalists in La Vend`ee,
and along the coast against our expedition under Lord Moira; and
though we have got fifteen of their men-of-war at Toulon, they
have sixteen, or more, at Brest, and are still impertinent with a
fry of privateers? Consider, too, that all this spirit is kept
up by the most extravagant lies, delusions, rhodomontade; by the
extirpation of the usual root of enthusiasm, religion; and by the
terror of murder, that ought to revolt all mankind. If such a
system of destruction does not destroy itself, there is an end of
that ignis fatuus, human reason; and French policy must govern,
or exterminate mankind.

I this moment received Your Thursday's note, with that for your
housekeeper, who is in town, and with those sweet words, "You
need not leave a card; we shall be at home." I do not believe I
shall send you an excuse. Marshal Conway has stopped in to tell
me, he has Just met with his nephew, Lord Yarmouth,(886) who has
received a letter from a foreign minister at Manheim, who asserts
all the Duke of Brunswick's victories, and the destruction or
dispersion of the French army in that quarter. The Earl
maintains, that the King of Prussia's politics are totally
changed to the right, and that eighteen thousand more of his
troops have joined the allies. I should like to know, and to
have the Convention know, that the murder of the Queen of France
has operated this revulsion.

I hope I send you no more falsehoods-at least, you must allow,
that it is not on bad authority. If Lord Howe has disappointed
you, you will accept the prowess of the virago his sister, Mrs.
Howe.(887) As soon as it was known that her brother had failed,
a Jacobin mob broke her windows, mistaking them for his. She
lifted up the sash, and harangued them; told them, that was not
the house of her brother, Who lives in the other part of
Grafton-street, and that she herself is a widow, and that that
house is hers. She stilled the waves, and they dispersed
quietly.

There! There end my volumes, to my great satisfaction! If we are
to have any bonfires or illuminations, you will be here to light
them Yourselves. Adieu to Yorkshire!

(883) He means bribed by the then prime minister.

(884) Lord Amherst, the then commander-in-chief, had appointed a
cousin of Miss Berry's to an ensigncy, on his recommendation.

(885) The persons addressed were to arrive in London.

(886) The present Marquis of Hertford.

(887) A person of distinguished abilities, She possessed an
extraordinary force of mind, clearness of understanding, and
remarkable powers of thought and combination, She retained them
unimpaired to the great age of eighty-five, by exercising them
daily, both in the practice of mathematics and in reading the two
dead languages; of which, late in life, she had made herself
mistress. To those acquirements must be added warm. and lively
feelings, joined to a perfect knowledge of the world and of the
society of which she had always been a distinguished member. Mr.
Walpole, from misinformation of her conduct towards a friend of
his in earlier life, had never done justice to her character--a
mistake, in which she did not participate, relative to him.-M.B.

Letter 412 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Berkeley Square, Jan. 10, 1794. (page 555)

I certainly sympathize with you on the reversed and gloomy
prospect of affairs, too extensive to detail in a letter; nor
indeed do I know any thing more than I collect from newspapers
and public reports; and those are so overcharged with falsehoods
on all sides, that, if one waits for truth to emerge, one finds
new subjects to draw one's attention before firm belief can
settle its trust on any. That the mass and result are bad, is
certain; and though I have great alacrity in searching for
comforts and grounds of new hopes, I am puzzled as much in
seeking resources, as in giving present credit. Reasonine is out
of the question: all calculation is baffled: nothing happens that
Sense Or experience said was probable. I wait to see what will
happen, without a guess at what is to be expected. A storm, when
the Parliament meets, will no doubt be attempted. How the
ministers are prepared to combat it, I don't know, but I hope
sufficiently, if it spreads no farther: at least I think they
have no cause to fear the new leader who is to make the attack.

I have neither seen Mr. Wilson's book(888) nor his answerers. So
far from reading political pamphlets, I hunt for any books,
except modern novels, that will not bring France to my mind, or
that at least will put it out for a time. But every fresh person
one sees, revives the conversation: and excepting a long
succession of fogs, nobody talks of any thing else; nor of
private news do I know a tittle. Adieu!

(888) It was entitled "A Letter, Commercial and Political,
addressed to the Right Hon. William Pitt-, by Jasper Wilson, jun.
Esq." The real author was Dr. Currie, the friend of Mr.
Wilberforce; who commends it, "as exhibiting originality of
thought and force of expression, and solving, finely the
phenomena of revolutions." See Life, vol. ii. p. 13.-E.

Letter 413 To Miss Berry.
Thursday evening, April 16, 1794. (page 556)

I am delighted that you have such good weather for your
villeggiatura. The sun has not appeared here to-day; yet it has
been so warm, that he may not be gone out of town, and only keeps
in because it is unfashionable to be seen in London at Easter.
All my evening customers are gone, except Mrs. Damer, and she is
at home to-night with the Greatheds and Mrs. Siddons, and a few
more; and she had a mind I should go to her, I had a mind too;
but think myself still too weak: after confinement for fourteen
weeks, it seems formidable to sally forth. I have heard no
novelty since you 'went, but of more progress in Martinico; on
which it is said there is to be a Gazette, and which, I suppose,
gave a small fillip to the stocks this morning: though my Jew,
whom I saw again this morning, ascribed the rise to expectation
in the City of news of a counter-revolution at Paris;-but a
revolution to be, generally proves an addled egg.

The Gazette arrives, and little of Martinico remained
unconquered. The account from Sir Charles Gray is one continued
panegyric on the conduct of our officers soldiers, and sailors;
who do not want to be driven on `a la Dumaurier, by cannon behind
them and on both sides. A good quantity of artillery and stores
is taken too, and only two officers and about seventy men killed.
There is a codicil to the Gazette, with another post taken--the
map, I suppose, knows where I do not--but you, who are a
geographess, will, or easily find it out.

At my levee before dinner, I had Mrs. Buller, Lady Lucan, Sir
Charles Blagden, Mr. Coxe, and Mr. Gough. This was a good day; I
have not always so welcome a circle. I have run through both
volumes of Mrs. Piozzi. Here and there she does not want parts,
has some good translations, and stories that are new;
particularly an admirable bon-mot of Lord Chesterfield, which I
never heard before, but dashed with her cruel vulgarisms: see
vol. ii. p. 291. The story, I dare to say, never happened, but
was invented by the Earl himself; to introduce his reply. The
sun never was the emblem of Louis Quinze, but of Louis Quatorze;
In whose time his lordship was not ambassador, nor the Czarina
Empress: nor, foolish as some ambassadors are, could two of them
propose devices for toasts; as if, like children, they were
playing at pictures and mottoes: and what the Signora styles a
public toust, the Earl, I conclude, called a great dinner then.
I have picked out a motto for her work in her own words, and
written it on the title-page: "Simplicity cannot please without
eloquence!" Now I think on't, let me ask if you have been as much
diverted as you was at first? and have not two such volumes
sometimes set you a'yawning? It is comic, that in a treatise on
synonymous words, she does not know which are and which are not
so. In the chapter on worth, she says, "The worth -even of money
fluctuates in our state;" instead of saying in this country. Her
very title is wrong; as she does not even mention synonymous
Scottish words: it ought to be called not British, but English
Synonymy.

Mr. Courtenay has published some epistles in rhyme, in which he
has honoured me with a dozen lines, and which are really some of
the best in the whole set-in ridicule of my writings. One
couplet, I suppose, alludes to my Strawberry verses on you and
your sister. Les voici--

"Who to love tunes his note, with the fire of old age,
And chirps the trim lay in a trim Gothic cage!"

If I were not as careless as I am about literary fame, still,
this censure would be harmless indeed; for except the exploded
story of Chatterton, of which I washed myself as white as snow,
Mr. Courtenay falls on my choice of subjects--as, of Richard the
Third and the Mysterious Mother--and not on the execution; though
I fear there is enough to blame in the texture of them. But this
new piece of criticism, or whatever it is, made me laugh, as I am
offered up on the tomb of my poor mad nephew; who is celebrated
for one of his last frantic acts, a publication in some monthly
magazine, with an absurd hypothesis on "the moon bursting from
the earth, and the earth from the sun, somehow or other:" but
how, indeed, especially from Mr. Courtenay's paraphrase, I have
too much sense to comprehend. However, I am much obliged to him
for having taken such pains to distinguish me from my lunatic
precursor, that even the European Magazine, when I shall die,
will not be able to confound us. Richard the Third would be
sorry to have it thought hereafter, that I had ever been under
the care of Dr. Munro. Well! good night!

Letter 414 To Miss Hannah More.
April 27, 1794. (page 558)

This is no plot to draw you into committing even a good deed on a
Sunday, which I suppose the literality of your conscience would
haggle about, as if the day of the week constitutes the sin, and
not the nature of the crime. But you may defer your answer till
to-night is become to-morrow by the clock having struck one; and
then you may do an innocent thing without any guilt, which a
quarter of an hour sooner you would think abominable. Nay, as an
Irishman would say, you need not even read this note till the
canonical hour is past.

In short, my dear Madam), I gave your obliging message to Lady
Waldegrave, who will be happy to see you on Tuesday, at one
o'clock But as her staircase is very bad, as she is in a lodging,
I have proposed that this meeting, for which I have been pimping
between two female saints, may be held here in my house, as I had
the utmost difficulty last night in climbing her scala santa, and
I cannot undertake it again. But if you are so good as to send
me a favourable answer to-morrow, I will take care you shall find
her here at the time I mentioned, with your true admirer.

Letter 415 To The Miss Berrys.
Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, Sept. 27, 1794. (page 558)

I have been in town, as I told you I should, but gleaned nothing
worth repeating, or I Would have wrote before I came away. The
Churchills left me on Thursday, and were succeeded by the Marshal
and Mr. Taylor, who dined and stayed all night. I am now alone,
having reserved this evening to answer your long, and Agnes's
short letter; but in this single one to both, for I have not
matter enough for a separate maintenance.
I went yesterday to Mrs. Damer, and had a glimpse of her new
house; literally a glimpse, for I saw but one room on the first
floor, where she had lighted a fire, that I might not mount two
flights; and as it was eight o'clock, and quite dark, she only
opened a door or two, and gave me a cat's-eye view into them.
One blemish I had descried at first; the house has a corner
arrival like her father's. Ah, me! who do not love to be led
through the public. I did see the new bust of Mrs. Siddons, and
a very mistressly performance it is indeed. Mrs. Damer was
surprised at my saying I should expect you after you had not
talked of returning near so soon. another week; she said. "I do
not mention this, as if to gainsay your intention; on the
contrary, I hope and beg you will stay as long as either of you
thinks she finds the least benefit from it: and after that, too,
as long as you both like to stay. I reproached myself so sadly,
and do still, for having dragged you from Italy sooner than you
intended, and am so grateful for your having had that
complaisance, that unless I grow quite superannuated, I think I
shall not be so selfish as to combat the inclination of either
again. It is natural for me to delight in your company; but I do
not even wish for it, if it lays you under any restraint. I have
lived a thousand years to little purpose, if I have not learned
that half a century more than the age of one's friends is not an
agr`ement de plus.

I wish you had seen Canterbury some years ago, before they
whitewashed it; for it is so coarsely daubed, and thence the
gloom is so totally destroyed, and so few tombs remain for so
vast a mass, that I was shocked at the nudity of the whole. If
you should go thither again, make the Cicerone show you a pane of
glass in the east window, which does open, and exhibits a most
delicious view of the ruins Of St. Anstin's.

Mention of Canterbury furnishes me with a very suitable
opportunity for telling you a remarkable story, which I had from
Lady Onslow t'other night, and which was related to her by Lord
Ashburnham, on whose veracity you may depend. In the hot weather
of this last summer, his lordship's very old uncle, the Bishop of
Chichester,(889) was waked in his palace at four o'clock in the
morning by his bedchamber door being opened, when a female
figure, all in white, entered, and sat down near him. The
prelate, who protests he was not frightened, said in a tone of
authority, but not with the usual triple adjuration, "Who are
you?" Not a word of reply; but the personage heaved a profound
sigh. The Bishop rang the bell; but the servants were so sound
asleep, that nobody heard him. He repeated his question: still
no answer; but another deep sigh. Then the apparition took some
papers out of the ghost of its pocket, and began to read them to
itself. At last, when the Bishop had continued to ring, and
nobody to come, the spectre rose and departed as sedately as it
had arrived. When the servants did at length appear, the bishop
cried, "Well! what have you seen?" "Seen, my lord!" "Ay, seen;
or who, what is the woman that has been here?" "Woman my lord!"
(I believe one of the fellows smiled; though, to do her justice,
Lady Onslow did not say so.) In short, when my lord had related
his vision, his domestics did humbly apprehend that his lordship
had been dreaming; and so did his whole family the next morning,
for in this our day even a bishop's household does not believe in
ghosts: and yet it is most certain that the good man had been in
no dream, and told nothing but what he had seen; for, as the
story circulated, and diverted the ungodly at the prelate's
expense, it came at last to the ears of a keeper of a mad-house
in the diocese, who came and deposed, that a female lunatic under
his care had escaped from his custody, and, finding the gate of
the palace open, had marched up to my lord's chamber. The
deponent further said, that his prisoner was always reading a
bundle of papers. I have known stories of ghosts, solemnly
authenticated, less credible; and I hope you will believe this,
attested by a father of our own church.