Books: The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3

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I have nothing more to tell you, but a trifle, a very trifle.
The King of Prussia has totally defeated Marshal Daun.(116)
This, which would have been prodigious news a month ago, is
nothing to-day; it only takes its turn among the questions, "Who
is to be groom of the bedchamber? what is Sir T. Robinson to
have?" I have been to Leicester-fields to-day; the crowd was
immoderate; I don't believe it will continue so. good night.
Yours ever.

(116) At Torgau, on the 3d of November. An animated description
of this desperate battle is given by Walpole in his Memoires,
vol. ii. p. 449.-E.

Letter 56 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, Thursday, 1760. (page 104)

As a codicil to my letter, I send you the bedchamber. There are
to be eighteen lords, and thirteen grooms; all the late King's
remain, but your cousin Manchester, Lord Falconberg, Lord Essex,
and Lord Flyndford, replaced by the Duke of Richmond, Lord
Weymouth, Lord March, and Lord Eglinton: the last at the request
of the Duke of York. Instead of Clavering, Nassau, and General
Campbell, who is promised something else, Lord Northampton's
brother and Commodore Keppel are grooms. When it was offered to
the Duke of Richmond, he said he could not accept it, unless
something was done for Colonel Keppel, for whom he has interested
himself; that it would look like sacrificing Keppel to his own
views. This is handsome; Keppel is to be equery.

Princess Amelia goes every where, as she calls it; she was on
Monday at Lady Holderness's, and next Monday is to be at
Bedford-house; but there is only the late King's set, and the
court of Bedford so she makes the houses of other people as
triste as St. James's was. Good night.

Not a word more of the King of Prussia: did you ever know a
victory mind the wind so?

Letter 57 To George Montagu, Esq.
Strawberry Hill, Monday, Nov. 24, 1760. (page 104)

Unless I were to send you journals, lists, catalogues,
computations of the bodies, tides, swarms of people that go to
court to present addresses, or to be presented, I can tell you
nothing new. The day the King went to the House, I was three
quarters of an hour getting through Whitehall; there were
subjects enough to set up half-a-dozen petty kings: the Pretender
would be proud to reign over the footmen only; and, indeed,
unless he acquires some of them, he will have no subjects left;
all their masters flock to St. James's. The palace is so
thronged, that I will stay tilt some people are discontented.
The first night the King went to the play, which was civilly on a
Friday, not on the opera-night, as he used to do, the whole
audience sung God save the King in chorus. For the first act,
the press was so great at the door, that no ladies could go to
the boxes, and only the servants appeared there, who kept places:
at the end of the second act, the whole mob broke in, and seated
themselves; yet all this zeal is not likely to last, though he so
well deserves it. Seditious papers are again stuck up: one
t'other day in Westminster Hall declared against a Saxe-Gothan
Princess. The Archbishop, who is never out of the drawing-room,
has great hopes from the King's goodness, that he shall make
something of him, that is something bad of him. On the Address,
Pitt and his zany Beckford quarrelled, on the latter's calling
the campaign languid. What is become of our magnanimous ally and
his victory, I know not. It) eleven days, no courier has arrived
from him; but I have been these two days perfectly indifferent
about his magnanimity. I am come to put my Anecdotes of Painting
into the press. You are one of the few that I expect will be
entertained with it. It has warmed Gray's coldness so much, that
he is violent about it; in truth, there is an infinite quantity
of new and curious things about it; but as it is quite foreign
from all popular topics, I don't suppose it will be much attended
to. There is not a word of Methodism in it, it says nothing of
the disturbances in Ireland, it does not propose to keep all
Canada, it neither flattered the King of Prussia nor Prince
Ferdinand, it does not say that the city of London are the wisest
men in the world, it is silent about George Townshend, and does
not abuse my Lord George Sackville; how should it please? I want
you to help me in a little affair, that regards it. I have found
in a MS. that in the church of Beckley, or Becksley, in Sussex,
there are portraits on glass, In a window, of Henry the Third and
his Queen. I have looked in the map, and find the first name
between Bodiham and Rye, but I am not sure it is the place. I
will be much obliged to you if you will write directly to your
Sir Whistler, and beg him to inform himself very exactly if there
is any such thing in such a church near Bodiham. Pray state it
minutely; because if there is, I will have them drawn for the
frontispiece to my work.

Did I tell you that the Archbishop tried to hinder the "Minor"
from being played at Drury Lane? for once the Duke of Devonshire
was firm, and would only let him correct some passages, and even
of those the Duke has restored some. One that the prelate
effaced was, "You snub-nosed son of a bitch." Foote says, he
will take out a license to preach Tam. Cant, against Tom.
Cant.(117)

The first volume of Voltaire's Peter the Great is arrived. I
weep over it. It is as languid as the campaign; he is grown old.
He boasts of the materials communicated to him by the Czarina's
order--but alas! he need not be proud of them. They only serve
to show how much worse he writes history with materials than
without. Besides, it is evident how much that authority has
cramped his genius. I had heard before, that when he sent the
work to Petersburgh for imperial approbation, it was returned
with orders to increase the panegyric. I wish he had acted like
a very inferior author. Knyphausen once hinted to me, that I
might have some authentic papers, if I was disposed to write the
life of his master; but I did not care for what would lay me
under such restrictions. It is not fair to use weapons against
the persons that lend them; and I do not admire his master enough
to commend any thing in him, but his military actions. Adieu!

(117) The following anecdote is related in the Biographia
Dramatica:--"Our English Aristophanes sent a copy of the Minor to
the Archbishop of Canterbury, requesting that, if his grace
should see any thing objectionable in it, he would exercise the
free use of his pen, either in the way of erasure or correction.
The Archbishop returned it untouched; observing to a confidential
friend, that he was sure the wit had only laid a trap for him,
and that if he had put his pen to the manuscript, by way of
correction or objection, Foote would have had the assurance to
have advertised the play as 'corrected and prepared for the press
by his grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.'"-E.

Letter 58 To The Rev. Henry Zouch.
Arlington Street, Nov. 27, 1760. (page 106)

You are extremely kind, Sir, in remembering my little commission
I troubled you with. As I am in great want of some more painted
glass to finish a window in my round tower, I should be glad,
though it may not be a Pope, to have the piece you mentioned, if
it can be purchased reasonably.

My Lucan is finished, but will not be published till after
Christmas, when I hope you will do me the favour of accepting
one, and let me know how I shall Convey it. The Anecdotes of
Painting have succeeded to the press: I have finished two
volumes, but as there will at least be a third, I am not
determined whether I shall not wait to publish the whole
together. You will be surprised, I think, to see what a quantity
of materials the industry of one man (Vertue) could amass and how
much he retrieved at this late period. I hear of nothing new
likely to appear; all the world is taken up in penning addresses,
or in presenting them;(118) and the approaching elections will
occupy the thoughts of men so much that an author could not
appear at a worse era.

(118) On the then recent accession of George III.-E.

letter 59 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, Dec. 11, 1760. (page 106)

I thank you for the inquiries about the painted glass, and shall
be glad if I prove to be in the right.

There is not much of news to tell you; and yet there is much
dissatisfaction. The Duke of Newcastle has threatened to resign
on the appointment of Lord Oxford and Lord Bruce without his
knowledge. His court rave about Tories, which you know comes
with a singular grace from them, as the Duke never preferred any.
Murray, Lord Gower, Sir John Cotton, Jack Pitt, etc. etc. etc.
were all firm whigs. But it is unpardonable to put an end to all
faction, when it is not for factious purposes. Lord
Fitzmaurice,(119) made aide-de-camp to the King, has disgusted
the army. The Duke of Richmond, whose brother has no more been
put over others than the Duke of Newcastle has preferred Tories,
has presented a warm memorial in a warm manner, and has resigned
the bedchamber, not his regiment-another propriety.

Propriety is so much in fashion, that Miss Chudleigh has called
for the council books of the subscription concert, and has struck
off the name of Mrs. Naylor.(120) I have some thoughts of
remonstrating, that General Waldegrave is too lean for to be a
groom of the bedchamber. Mr. Chute has sold his house to Miss
Speed for three thousand pounds, and has taken one for a year in
Berkeley Square.

This is a very brief letter; I fear this reign will soon furnish
longer. When the last King could be beloved, a young man with a
good heart has little chance of being so. Moreover, I have a
maxim, that the extinction of party is the origin of faction."
Good night.

(119) Afterwards Earl of Shelburne, and in 1784 created Marquis
of Lansdowne.-E.

(120) A noted procuress.-E.

Letter 60 To The Rev. Henry Zouch
Arlington Street, Jan. 3, 1761. (page 107)

Sir,
I stayed till I had the Lucan ready to send you, before I thanked
you for your letter, and for the pane of glass, about which you
have given yourself so much kind trouble, and which I have
received; I think it is clearly Heraclitus weeping over a globe.

Illuminated MSS., unless they have portraits of particular
persons, I do not deal in; the extent of my collecting is already
full asgreat as I can afford. I am not the less obliged to you,
Sir, for thinking Of me. Were my fortune larger, I should go
deeper into printing, and having engraved curious MSS. and
drawings; as I cannot, I comfort myself with reflecting on the
mortifications I avoid, by the little regard shown by the world
to those sort of things. The sums laid out on books one should,
at first sight, think an indication of encouragement to letters;
but booksellers only are encouraged, not books. Bodies of
sciences, that is, compilations and mangled abstracts, are the
only saleable commodities. Would you believe, what I know is
fact, that Dr. Hill(121) earned fifteen guineas a-week by working
for wholesale dealers: he was at once employed on six voluminous
works of Botany, Husbandry, etc. published weekly. I am sorry to
say, this journeyman is one of the first men preferred in the new
reign: he is made gardener of Kensington, a place worth two
thousand pounds a-year.(122) The King and lord Bute have
certainly both of them great propensity to the arts; but Dr.
Hill, though undoubtedly not deficient in parts, has as little
claim to favour in this reign, as Gideon, the stock-jobber, in
the last; both engrossers without merit. Building, I am told, is
the King's favourite study; I hope our architects will not be
taken from the erectors of turnpikes.

(121) Dr. Hill's were among the first works in which scientific
knowledge was put in a popular shape, by the system of number
publishing. The Doctor's performances in this way are not
discreditable, and are still useful as works of reference.-C.

(122) This was an exaggeration of the emoluments of a place,
which, after all was not improperly bestowed on a person of his
pursuits and merits.-C.

Letter 61 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, Jan. 22, 1761. (page 108)

I am glad you are coming, and now the time is over, that you are
coming so late, as I like to have you here in the spring. You
will find no great novelty in the new reign. Lord Denbigh(123)
is made master of the harriers, with two thousand a-year. Lord
Temple asked it, and Newcastle and Hardwicke gave into it for
fear of Denbigh's brutality in the House of Lords. Does this
differ from the style of George the Second?

The King designs to have a new motto; he will not have a French
one; so the Pretender may enjoy Dieu et mon droit in quiet.

Princess Amelia is already sick of being familiar: she has been
at Northumberland-house, but goes to nobody more. That party was
larger, but still more formal than the rest, though the Duke of
York had invited himself and his commerce-table. I played with
Madam and we were mighty well together; so well, that two nights
afterwards she commended me to Mr. Conway and Mr. Fox, but
calling me that Mr. Walpole, they did not guess who she meant.
For my part, I thought it very well, that when I played with her,
she did not call me that gentleman. As she went away, she
thanked my Lady Northumberland, like a parson's wife, for all her
civilities.

I was excessively amused on Tuesday night; there was a play at
Holland-house, acted by children; not all children, for Lady
Sarah Lenox(124) and Lady Susan Strangways(125) played the women.
It was Jane Shore; Mr. Price, Lord Barrington's nephew, was
Gloster, and acted better than three parts of the comedians.
Charles Fox, Hastings; a little Nichols, who spoke well, Belmour;
Lord Ofaly,,(126) Lord Ashbroke, and other boys did the rest: but
the two girls were delightful, and acted with so much nature and
simplicity, that they appeared the very things they represented.
Lady Sarah was more beautiful than you can conceive, and her very
awkwardness gave an air of truth to the shame of the part, and
the antiquity of the time, which was kept up by her dress, taken
out of Montfaucon. Lady Susan was dressed from Jane Seymour; and
all the parts were clothed in ancient habits, and with the most
minute propriety. I was infinitely more struck with the last
scene between the two women than ever I was when I have seen it
on the stage. When Lady Sarah was in white, with her hair about
her ears, and on the ground, no Magdalen by Corregio was half so
lovely and expressive. You would have been charmed too with
seeing Mr. Fox's little boy of six years old, who is beautiful,
and acted the Bishop of Ely, dressed in lawn sleeves and with a
square cap; they had inserted two lines for him, which he could
hardly speak plainly. Francis had given them a pretty prologue.
Adieu!

(123) Basil Fielding, sixth Earl of Denbigh, and fifth Earl of
Desmond. He died in 1800.-E.

(124) daughter of the Duke of Richmond, afterwards married to Sir
Thomas Charles Bunbury, Bart.-E.

(125) Daughter of Stephen Fox, first Earl of Ilchester; married,
in 1764, to William O'Brien, Esq.-E.

(126) Eldest son of the Marquis of Kildare.-E.

Letter 62 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, Feb. 7, 1761. (page 109)

I have not written to you lately, expecting your arrival. As you
are not come yet, you need not come these ten days if you please,
for I go next week into Norfolk, that my subjects of Lynn may at
least once in their lives see me. 'Tis a horrible thing to dine
with a mayor! I shall profane King John's cup, and taste nothing
but water out of it, as if it were St. John Baptist's.

Prepare yourself for crowds, multitudes. In this reign all the
world lives in one room: the capital is as vulgar as a country
town in the season of horse-races. There were no fewer than four
of these throngs on Tuesday last, at the Duke of Cumberland's,
Princess Emily's, the Opera, and Lady Northumberland's; for even
operas, Tuesday's operas, are crowded now. There is nothing else
new. Last week there was a magnificent ball at Carleton-house:
the two royal Dukes and Princess Emily were there. He of York
danced; the other and his sister had each their table at loo. I
played at hers, and am grown a favourite; nay, have been at her
private party, and was asked again last Wednesday, but took the
liberty to excuse myself, and am yet again summoned for Tuesday.
It is triste enough: nobody sits till the game begins, and then
she and the company are all on stools. At Norfolk-house were two
armchairs placed for her and the Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of
York being supposed a dancer, but they would not use them. Lord
Huntingdon arrived in a frock, pretending he was just come out of
the country; unluckily, he had been at court, full-dressed, in
the morning. No foreigners were there but the son and
daughter-in-law of Monsieur de Fuentes: the Duchess told the
Duchess of Bedford, that she had not invited the ambassadress,
because her rank is disputed here. You remember the Bedford took
place, of madame de Mirepoix; but Madame de Mora danced first,
the Duchess of Norfolk saying she supposed that was of no
consequence.

Have you heard what immense riches old Wortley has left? One
million three hundred and fifty thousand pounds.(127) It is all
to centre in my Lady Bute; her husband is one of Fortune's
prodigies. They talk of a print, in which her mistress is
reprimanding Miss Chudleigh; the latter curtsies, and replies,
"Madame, chacun a son but."

Have you seen a scandalous letter in print, from Miss Ford,(128)
to lord Jersey, with the history of a boar's head? George Selwyn
calls him Meleager. Adieu! this is positively my last.

(127) "You see old Wortley Montagu is dead at last, at eighty-
three. It was not mere avarice and its companion abstinence, that
kept him alive so long. He every day drank, I think it was,
half-a-pint of tokay, which he imported himself from Hungary in
greater quantity than he could use, and sold the overplus for any
price he chose to set upon it. He has left better than half a
million of money." Gray, Works, vol. iii. p. 272.-E.

(128) Miss Ford was the object of an illicit, but unsuccessful
attachment, on the part of Lord Jersey, whose advances, if not
sanctioned by the lady, appear to have been sanctioned by her
father, who told her "she might have accepted the settlement his
lordship offered her, and yet not have complied" with his terms.
The following extract from the letter will explain the history
above alluded to:--"However, I must do your lordship the justice
to say, that as you conceived this meeting [one with a noble
personage which Lord Jersey had desired her not to make] would
have been most pleasing to me, and perhaps of some ,advantage,
your lordship did (in consideration of so great a disappointment)
send me, a few days after, a present of a boar's head, which I
had often had the honour to meet at your lordship's table before.
It was rather an odd first and only present from a lord to his
beloved mistress; but as coming from your lordship gave it an
additional value, which it had not in itself; and I received it
with the regard I thought due to every thing coming from your
lordship, and would have eat it, had it been eatable. I am''
impatient to acquit your lordship and myself, by showing that as
your lordship's eight hundred pounds a-year did not purchase my
person, the boar's head did not purchase my silence."-E.

Letter 63 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Monday, five o'clock, Feb. 1761. (page 110)

I am a little peevish with you-I told you on Thursday night that
I had a mind to go to Strawberry on Friday without staying for
the Qualification bill. You said it did not signify--No! What if
you intended to speak on it? Am I indifferent to hearing you?
More-Am I indifferent about acting with you? Would not I follow
you in any thing in the world?--This is saying no profligate
thing. Is there any thing I might not follow you in? You even
did not tell me yesterday that you had spoken. Yet I will tell
you all I have heard; though if there was a Point in the world in
which I could not wish you to succeed where you wish yourself,
perhaps it would be in having you employed. I cannot be cool
about your danger; yet I cannot know any thing that concerns you,
and keep it from you. Charles Townshend called here just after I
came to town to-day. Among other discourse he told me of your
speaking on Friday, and that your speech was reckoned hostile to
the Duke of Newcastle. Then talking of regiments going abroad,
he said, * * * * * With regard to your reserve to me, I
can easily believe that your natural modesty made you unwilling
to talk of yourself to me. I don't suspect you of any reserve to
me: I only mention it now for an occasion of telling you, that I
don't like to have any body think that I would not do whatever
you do. I am of no consequence: but at least it would give me
some, to act invariably with you; and that I shall most certainly
be ever ready to do. Adieu!

Letter 64 To George Montagu, Esq.
Arlington Street, March 7, 1761. (page 111)

I rejoice, you know, in whatever rejoices you, and though I am
not certain what your situation(129) is to be, I am glad you go,
as you like it. I am told it is black rod. lady Anne
Jekyll(130) said, she had written to you on Saturday night. I
asked when her brother was to go, if before August; she answered:
"Yes, if possible." long before October you may depend upon it;
in the quietest times no lord lieutenant ever went so late as
that. Shall not you come to town first? You cannot pack up
yourself, and all you will want, at Greatworth.

We are in the utmost hopes of a peace; a Congress is agreed upon
at Augsbourg, but yesterday's mail brought bad news. Prince
Ferdinand has been obliged to raise the siege of Cassel, and to
retire to Paderborn; the hereditary prince having been again
defeated, with the loss of two generals, and to the value of five
thousand men, in prisoners and exchanged. If this defers the
peace it will be grievous news to me, now Mr. Conway is gone to
the army.

The town talks of nothing but an immediate Queen, yet I am
certain the ministers know not of it. Her picture is come, and
lists of her family given about; but the latter I do not send
you, as I believe it apocryphal. Adieu!

P.S. Have you seen the -,advertisement of a new noble author? A
Treatise of Horsemanship, by Henry Earl of Pembroke!(131) As
George Selwyn said of Mr. Greville, "so far from being a writer,
I thought he was scarce a courteous reader."

(129) Mr. Montagu was appointed usher of the black rod in
Ireland.

(130) sister of the Earl of Halifax.

(131) Tenth Earl of Pembroke and seventh Earl of Montgomery. The
work was entitled "Military Equitation; or a Method of breaking
Horses, and teaching Soldiers to ride." A fourth edition, in
quarto, appeared in 1793.-E.

Letter 65 To The Rev. Henry Zouch.
Arlington Street, March 7, 1761. (page 111)

Just what I supposed, Sir, has happened; with your good breeding,
I did not doubt but you would give yourself the trouble of
telling me that you had received the Lucan, and as you did not, I
concluded Dodsley had neglected it: he has in two instances. The
moment they were published, I delivered a couple to him, for you,
and one for a gentleman in Scotland. I received no account of
either, and after examining Dodsley a fortnight ago, I learned
three days since from him, that your copy, Sir, was delivered to
Mrs. Ware, bookseller, in Fleet Street, who corresponds with Mr.
Stringer, to be sent in the first parcel; but, says he, as they
send only once a month, it probably was not sent away till very
later),. I am vexed, Sir, that you have waited so long
for this trifle: if you neither receive it, nor get information
of it, I will immediately convey another to you. It would be
very ungrateful in me to neglect what would give you a moment's
amusement, after your thinking so obligingly of the painted glass
for me. I shall certainly be in Yorkshire this summer, and as I
flatter myself that I shall be more lucky in meeting you, I will
then take what you shall be so good as to bestow on me, without
giving you the trouble of sending it.

If it were not printed in the London Chronicle, I would
transcribe for you, Sir, a very weak letter of Voltaire to Lord
Lyttelton,(132) and the latter's answer: there is nothing else
new, but a very indifferent play,(133) called The Jealous Wife,
so well acted as to have succeeded greatly. Mr. Mason, I
believe, is going to publish some elegies: I have seen the
principal one, on Lady Coventry; it was then only an unfinished
draft. The second and third volumes of
Tristram Shandy, the dregs of nonsense, have universally met the
contempt they deserve: genius may be exhausted;--I see that
folly's invention may be so too.

The foundations of my gallery at Strawberry are laying. May I
not flatter myself, Sir, that you will see the whole even before
it is quite complete?